Chapter Forty

I sat on the ground behind the counter, warming a pot of water over a trashcan fire in hopes of making myself another cup of coffee when I heard the door scrape open. Not the front door, though. Someone was coming inside—sneaking inside—through the back entrance.

I tossed a packing blanket over the flames, smothering out the fire in an instant. Then I grabbed Ricardo and waited. By scattered candlelight, I could see the monstrous shadow creeping across the walls. Whatever cast it was big. It walked softly, but I could hear it breathing. It didn’t come to buy groceries. It was hunting. Luckily, I knew how to hunt back. As soon as it passed the other side of the counter, I snuck out and readied for my attack.

It was enormous and hairy, standing on two feet with its back to me, scanning the room for any signs of life. This was my chance. I lifted my bat and went for the kill.

But somehow, in the time it took for my bat to come down as fast as I could swing it, the man spun around and caught it in the palm of his gargantuan hand. I froze. That was so incredibly cool that I couldn’t even come up with the correct reaction. Before I could find the words to say, the man yanked my weapon away from me. He towered over me, and the look on his face made it clear that he was royally pissed off, and rightfully so.

“Oh,” I said once I realized what kind of monster this was. “It’s you.”

“Jack!” screamed Benjamin as he tossed my baseball bat behind him. “What the ever-loving hell is wrong with you?!”

“Sorry, you had a mosquito. I was trying to get it before it—”

He grabbed me by the neck with his gigantic monster-killing hands and proceeded to drag me into the bathroom, where he filled the sink with cold water and forced my face under. I assumed this was it. He found a way to kill me without even wasting a bullet. But like so many other near-death experiences, this one ended just a few seconds after I’d determined I was certain to die.

He yanked me from the water like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, then tossed me to the ground. I hacked and spat and coughed until my throat was cleared enough for me to breathe normally, then I asked, “Why?”

“I needed to get your blood flowing again. Look at you. Your brain is mush, and I can’t work with you if you ain’t got any sense left.”

He crouched down next to me on the ground and smacked me across the face. Hard. Definitely harder than he needed to, I think. (But who am I to question his methods? He’s the expert.)

“Ow.”

“How long have you been moping around this place all by yourself?”

I tried to think, but couldn’t exactly nail down an accurate estimate. I’d been without electricity for months, at least. I was rotating through the same small box of clothing for longer than I cared to admit, washing them in the bathroom and hanging them out back to dry. (At least, until that guy in the bear costume stole my favorite pair of pants. Since then, I’d been leaving wet clothes on a drying rack in the supply closet.)

I looked Benjamin in the eyes and answered, “A while.”

He grabbed me by the collar, stood up, and yanked me to my feet.

“Alright, kid. Do you still have any coffee in this dump?”

“As a matter of fact, I was just about to make some when you showed up.”

“Good. Make sure you use bottled water. I’m going to go lock the doors, then you can tell me what the hell happened. Sound good?”

In typical Benjamin fashion, he didn’t wait for me to answer. He pulled out a handgun and went to secure the perimeter. I made the trash-fire coffee extra strong. Something told me we were going to need it.

In ten minutes, we were back in the booth by the door. Benjamin’s idea of “locking up” involved chains and actual locks and pushing the frozen drink machine flush against the front door so nobody could see in or out.

Something about this Benjamin didn’t feel right. He was different. Not just because this was the first time one of the Benjamins ever snuck in through the back, but he also looked different. He had a gnarly scar below his left eye that looked like someone got him with a lightsaber. I’d hate to see the other guy.

I sipped my coffee. Benjamin gulped his down in three loud swallows. “Alright you mentally unstable son-of-a-bitch, let’s get on with it. What’s going on this time? I got alarm bells going off left and right. All these reports keep tying back to your shithole of a town. I try calling and no answer, so I book a flight. I arrived yesterday and you know what I found? Nothing out of the ordinary. Place looks perfect. Full of happy Stepford wives and smiling children and folks mowing their lawns. What am I missing?”

I tried taking a bigger sip of coffee just to see how hard that must have been for him to down it like that, but I ended up burning the roof of my mouth and instantly dropped it all back into the cup with an awkward blagh.

Benjamin narrowed his eyes at me.

“If you’d seen this town before everything started, you’d already know what’s wrong. People here don’t mow. They don’t smile. And they sure as hell can’t be described as happy or perfect unless you’re aiming for ironic.”

“Okay,” he said. “So what are we dealing with? Something in the water?”

“I wish it were that simple.”

“Then what is it?” He was growing more impatient by the second.

“It’s an invasion. Those people you saw in town are not real.”

Benjamin laughed. It ended as abruptly as it started once he realized I was being serious, and the look of bemusement slid right off his face.

“Elaborate on ‘not real’ for me, please.”

“Shit got weirder than usual, and now all the people in town have been replaced by something else.”

I could hear the sound of the seat beneath him creaking loudly as Benjamin leaned forward to ask, “Well then what happened to all the originals?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I answered. “I didn’t quite get that detail. I assume they’re all dead now. But that might just be my irrational optimism.”

Benjamin looked around the store. “Where are your friends?”

“Gone.”

“Gone!?”

“Yeah.” I looked out the window and noticed the black SUV parked by one of our empty pumps. “Hey Benjamin?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that your vehicle?”
“Yeah, why?”

That’s strange. The Benjamin mimic never drives here. He always walks from town.

“No reason.”

He scratched his beard as he thought for a second, then said, “Alright. I’m going to need you to dig real deep. I need you to pull yourself together for a little bit longer, and I need you to tell me exactly what happened here. Can you do that?”

I turned and looked at the back door. He followed my gaze and asked, “What is it?”

“You didn’t hear that?”

He raised his handgun and pulled back the hammer. For the first time I noticed that this wasn’t one of his usual guns. It looked newer than the two he always brought. We sat in silence, him staring at the door, me staring at the unfamiliar gun, until he looked back at me and mouthed the word “What?”

I whispered, “I think we might be in trouble,” before getting to my feet, grabbing Ricardo, and slowly starting towards the exit with the bat on my shoulder.

Benjamin caught up and blocked me off.

“Just where do you think you’re going?”

“I was going to check it out.”

“I should kill you for being so careless, but I’m sure that’ll self-correct on its own as soon as I leave.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re probably right.”

He let out a long, irritated breath and held out his weapon in front of me, “Here. Take this.”

This was unexpected… Plenty of people have tried giving me guns in the past. But why would a mimic do something like this? What kind of bold new strategy was he trying here?

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Just keep it pointed at the ground and try not to shoot either of us, okay?” With the sound of a shink he pulled a knife from his belt that was big enough to make even his giganto-hands look delicate by comparison. (If we want to get technical, it might have actually been a small sword.) Benjamin gave the blade a couple test swings, then turned to me with a cocky smile and said, “Stay close.”

I propped Ricardo next to the wall and held the unfamiliar pistol with both hands as we stepped out back into the sticky night air. Benjamin used a heavy-duty Maglite to scan the area before gesturing that it was safe for me to follow. I walked up next to him and gazed out into the darkness.

“See anything?” he asked, waving the flashlight back and forth at the tree line.

“No, but—” I raised the heavy gun and pointed it at the dumpster, “I’m pretty sure I heard something.”

I took a few steps before Benjamin clamped onto my shoulder and yanked me back.

“Stay,” he barked. “If there’s something in there, what are you going to do? Hope it chokes on you?”

I took a step to the side and waved my arm towards the dumpster. “After you, then.” With a withering side glance, Benjamin raised his sword-knife and took slow, deliberate, quiet steps forward.

My heart was pounding loud enough for me to hear it. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. This was going to suck.

Right as he got to the dumpster, he reached his hand out, and I closed my eyes.

SHUNK!

A blood-curdling scream and then…

SHUNK!

Another, just as loud and grizzly as the first.

As much as I would have loved to keep them shut, I opened my eyes because I had to. I had to see the damage and make a plan.

The light was on the ground by my feet. When I went to grab it, my fingers touched warm blood. I aimed the light at the ground by the dumpster. The first bear trap snapped around his right leg, the teeth digging into the meat just south of his knee. The second trap went off after he hit the ground. He must have used his knife hand to catch his fall, because the blade was a few yards away in a pile of high grass and the second trap was clamped down around the middle of his right arm.

He instinctively tried to crawl away from the traps with his good limbs. I yelled out, “Don’t! You’re not going to want to do that!” But then—

CLANG.

Another scream.

The chain attaching the traps to the dumpster had abruptly run out of slack. He fell onto his back and grunted loudly as I stepped closer to him.

“FUUUCK!” he screamed into the sky.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that must hurt like all holy hell. I’m really sorry about it.”

He was bleeding like crazy, turning the area into a puddle of blood mud. Through gritted teeth he forced out the words, “You KNEW about the traps?”

“I planted them.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Where have I heard that before?

“Okay.”

“Help me with this!” His right arm was clearly broken, but that didn’t stop him from trying to pry open the trap with his free hand. It was a valiant effort, but ultimately an impossible task.

“That’s not going to work,” I said in my most soothing voice.

“Then give me the fucking gun so I can shoot the chains free!”

He reached for me, but I was careful to stand just out of range.

“That’s not going to work, either.”

“Don’t just stand there like a dumbass! Do something! Help me!”

I lifted the heavy gun and pointed it at the center of his chest. From this distance, it would be nearly impossible to miss. But leave it to me to mess up something this easy. I didn’t want to do it at all, but it was way better than leaving him to wail and thrash and hurt himself worse until he completely bled out.

“I’m sorry.”

He screamed at me, “What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Just close your eyes. It’ll all be over soon. Not to brag, but I’ve gotten pretty good at this.”

“Wait! Jack! Hold on a second! Talk to me. You’re confused, right? Let’s not do something you’re going to regret.”

“Look, whatever you are, I know you aren’t the real Benjamin, so drop the act! Frankly, it’s a little insulting.”

He screamed wildly, calling for help.

I started screaming, too, mimicking him. We both screamed at the top of our lungs, calling loudly, desperately, begging anyone who could hear us to please god send some help. After our voices had both nearly given out, I explained it to him:

“Nobody can hear you out here. Nobody will hear the gunshot either. We’re just too far away. This isn’t the first time I’ve caught one of your kind. Heck. I’ve buried dozens of you by now.”

I pointed at the rows of raised dirt lined up outside the back doors.

“Okay kid. Listen to me, you don’t know what’s happening. You have mental problems.”

“I don’t disagree. But the head in the box clocked you as soon as you came in.”

“The what?!”

“The head in the box. Behind the counter. He talks to me. And he can tell when somebody is real and when they’re… like you. The second you walked through the doors, he told me you weren’t real.”

“Take a fucking second and reflect on what you just said. A severed head in a box told you that I’m a pod person and that’s good enough for you to kill me?”

I chuckled softly. “Wow, when you put it like that, it really does sound crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s think about this. If I were one of those copies, I had a hundred chances to kill you already. Why wouldn’t I have done that?” So weird that this one won’t use the word “mimic.”

“Sure, you didn’t kill me. But I’m starting to think that you can’t kill me. I’m starting to wonder if maybe nothing can kill me. After all the times I’ve been in death’s mouth and had him spit me back out, I’m starting to think that either you can’t get me, or you aren’t allowed to hurt me, so this is the new plan. Drive me crazy, and try to get me to do it myself. I don’t know why. I’m not the evil mastermind. I’m just a guy. I don’t want to be the last line of defense against a world-ending Borg assimilation, but everybody else is gone now so I have to stay here and do this all by myself. Which means I have to make the bad decisions because if I don’t, you guys will finally get the gas station. But as long as I’m alive, anyone that tries to take it from me is going to end up in a shallow grave out back. Do you understand now, ‘Benjamin’?”

He pushed himself upright and looked me in the eyes. “I understand. You’re all alone here. Hey, it’s enough to make anybody lose their marbles, and you weren’t exactly starting at the same baseline as the rest of us. You need a friend. Help me out of this and I’ll stay with you. We’ll get through this thing together. I promise.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and crouched down just out of arm’s reach.

“It’s a nice trick.”

“What?”

“Mixing things up. The new clothes. The new gun. The new car. Oh, and that scar under your eye, a stroke of pure genius. I see exactly what you’re going for. Send a hundred identical clones, then send one that’s just different enough to notice. Oh, I want to fall for it. Trust me. But I’m terrible when it comes to judging character. And right here, right now, it’s better to err on the side of caution, isn’t it? After all, Benjamin (the real Benjamin) did once make a really good point about war. You can’t make peanut butter without smashing a few nuts.”

He held up his good hand in a pose of surrender and said, “Okay, okay, I see what’s going on. I believe you. Those guys—those other Benjamins—those were clones. But not me. I’m the real deal. They must have set this whole thing up to trick you into killing me. They’re fucking with both of us.”

I pulled the trigger.

He coughed and shook and in a few seconds, he was on his back, completely still.

I got to work quickly. I had to. Just in case he was one of the fast healers. I grabbed the can of gasoline hidden behind a tree nearby and soaked the newest body, then I set it ablaze. While it burned down, I dug another hole next to the other graves, just deep enough to hide the charred corpse, and when I was finished, I went inside. The body could wait until morning, and then I’d drag what was left into the hole to be buried. It was such a simple routine.