Not Dead Yet (25 page)

“Sounds like a nest of rattlers.  Do you hear that, Donald?”

“Yeah, I do,” Donald replied, fear rippling through him.  “I hate snakes.  Leave them be,” he ordered.

“Hey, I know!  Let’s feed them to the rattlers!” Nathan beamed, jerking his head toward the truck.

“If you want to, go ahead, but I’m not going nowhere near those damn snakes.  Come on, let’s get us some whiskey.” 

The screen door of the store was dented and propped open with a battered, faded milk crate that may have once been red.  Donald and Nathan strolled into the store where a dirty fan oscillated to stir up the dust inside.  The floor was not capable of looking clean after fifty years of scuffs and stains.  A thin layer of dust covered the shelves and merchandise.  Small boxes of household staples were lined up on shelves, along with automotive items, maps and out of style sunglasses.

Impressively raunchy nudie magazines were partially obscured in a stand behind the counter.  The corners of the magazines were bent, since Pop caught up on his reading during long hours at the store.  Along the back wall of the store were built-in compartments for cold and frozen items.  Years ago they held groceries.  Now they contained beer, malt liquor, soda, energy drinks, a few wine coolers, and more beer.  In the freezer compartment were bottles of liquor.  There was an entire aisle of junk food, with a couple boxes of dog biscuits and a carton of tampons at the end next to the wasp and hornet spray.

“Hey,” the old geezer sitting on an uneven stool behind the counter greeted them. He took a long draw on his cigarette and set what was left down on an old mayonnaise jar lid.  “Y’all from around here?”

“Nope,” Nathan replied and turned away.

Pops picked up his cigarette with his bony hand. Prominent raised dark veins spidered over his liver-spotted hands, which shook with slight tremors.    

Starved for conversation, the old man chattered on.  “Looks like rain,” he said.  “Lord knows we could use some rain.  Been so hot the trees are bribing the dogs to piss on them,” he cackled.  

Donald and Nathan continued to ignore the old man, who shrugged his bony shoulders and went back to smoking his cigarette and leafing through his porn.  His greasy ponytail reached halfway down the back of his “Don’t Tread On Me” t-shirt.  There was barely any hair on top of his shiny head.  The ponytail came from the fringe on the back of his head.  He looked at the pictures in his magazine, occasionally glancing up at Nathan and Donald, who wandered through the dingy little store snatching beef jerky, potato chips and some engine oil. 

“Damn truck burns a quart every hundred miles,” Donald grumbled. He looked around for Nathan and found him staring at the open freezer compartment of liquor as if gazing on the Holy Grail.

“God damn it!” Nathan said with reverence.  “I ain’t had Southern Comfort since before they put me away.” He reached into the freezer and grabbed all three bottles.

Donald handed him an empty cardboard box.  “Here, fill this up,” he said.  Nathan crammed about ten bottles of Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and Wild Turkey into the box. He opened the door to the cold storage and took out a four pack of wine coolers, “To put the ladies in the mood,” he grinned. 

They swaggered up to the counter.  The old man looked hopeful that they were going to buy all that stuff, which would be more than he usually sold in a week, but suspicious that he was about to be robbed.  Again.  That happened when you had a store out in the middle of nowhere.  Once or twice a month someone came into the store, grabbed some stuff and ran out the door. 

At his age, he didn’t feel like chasing anybody.  Since he hadn’t claimed an income for years, whatever he got was good enough, in his mind.  Beat having a real job and having to pay taxes.  And since he had never paid into Social Security, he wasn’t going to get checks from the government any time soon.

“Gimme some Marlboros, and a couple of those girlie magazines,” Donald ordered.

“Did y’all hear about the prisoner who escaped from the courthouse the other day?”  the old man asked.  “Just opened a window and climbed right out, so I heard.  Man, the cops must be dumber than a bucket of hammers to let that happen.  Which Marlboros you want?” he asked.  Donald pointed.

The old man smiled at him with a few snaggly, discolored teeth, and turned around to get the items.  Donald pulled out his handgun and shot him three times in the back.  The old man crumpled to the floor, his right arm outstretched as he had been reaching to get their items.  Nathan laughed, climbed around behind the counter and stuffed all the cigarettes into plastic shopping bags.

Picking up a girlie magazine, Nathan flipped through the pages, showing Donald a two page spread.  “Hot damn!  Look at the titties on that one!” he hooted.  He filled another bag with magazines. “I can put these to good use.”

Donald punched buttons on the cash register until the drawer opened.  He emptied the cash into a bag.

Donald and Nathan bounced down the aisles, using their arms to sweep everything off the top shelves onto the floor.  They threw glass bottles against the walls and laughed at the crashing sounds.  Nathan tore up a large cardboard display at the end of an aisle.  Donald shook up soda bottles and sprayed them on the walls and displays.  They found a baseball bat the old man kept behind the counter, and smashed the glass cases by the register.

Nathan picked up some firecrackers, grinned at Donald, and threw a bottle of alcohol on the floor.  When it shattered, he lit and threw the package of firecrackers on the puddle of alcohol.  The flames spread quickly as Donald and Nathan strolled out of the store playfully punching each other.

Pop.  Pop.  They both fell, motionless.  Jack stood up from behind the parked truck. 

While Donald and Nathan had been in the store, Jack had worked on the ropes until he got one hand free.  After that, he easily untied his other hand and then his feet.  In their haste to get away from Foster, the brothers had not tied him well, and Jack had training on escape tactics.

“Keep silent and don’t move around,” Jack had cautioned Lu and Colleen.  “I’m going to look for a weapon, then I’ll untie both of you.”

“Untie me now!” Lu demanded, on the verge of a panic attack.

“If we don’t have a weapon when they come out of that store, they’ll just tie us up again.  I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Jack carefully looked under the edge of the tarp at the entrance to the store.  He shimmied to the back of the truck bed and untied the tarp on the side that faced away from the store entrance.  He positioned himself so he could slip out, and said, “Colleen, check for me.  Do you see them?”

Colleen pushed the tarp up as Jack had done, and peered out. 

“No,” she said.  “I can’t see anyone.”

Jack slipped over the side of the truck without a sound.  He opened the driver’s door and reached under the seat, pulling out a loaded pistol.  Patting around under the seat again, he retrieved a worn box of bullets.  Closing the door as much as he could without making a sound, he looked back at the store entrance.

At the sound of the firecrackers, Jack crouched down on the driver’s side of the truck and worked his way to the front end.  When he heard Donald and Nathan’s voices as they exited the store, he whirled around the front corner of the truck and dropped them where they stood.  They barely had time to register surprise on their faces.

Holding his gun on them, Jack used his foot to roll them over on their backs.  He checked for a pulse on each brother, patted them down and removed all weapons from them.  Thanks to his years of training and experience, his movements were precise and without sound or emotion.

He stepped inside the store and used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire, which had not yet gone farther than the junk in the aisles.  Jack looked around and found the old man.  He was stone dead.  Jack checked the bathroom and the other interior door, which led to a storage room.

He called out as he approached the truck, “Lu, Colleen.  Everything’s okay.”

“Get us out of here!” Lu demanded.

Jack removed the ties and slung the tarp to the ground.

“Good God!” Colleen shouted.  “I damn near had me a heart attack!  What the hell went on out here?”

Jack removed the ropes from Lu’s hands.  She untied her feet while Jack freed Colleen and helped both women out of the truck.  Colleen swayed but Jack caught her and held her against him.  Lu came up and wrapped her arms around both of them.  Jack put his other arm around her.

“We made it.  We’re alive,” Lu said, tears streaming down her face.  “When I saw Rose, I thought for sure we were dead.  I feel numb,” she rubbed her arms.  “Why can’t I feel anything?  After everything that happened today, you’d think I’d feel something.  I can’t even feel my arms and legs, much less emotion.  I’m still not completely sure this is real,” she babbled. “Maybe we’re dead and I just don’t know it yet, and this is a dream.  Or maybe I’m afraid to let myself feel anything, because I’m afraid I’d go mental and jump off a bridge,” she added in a bewildered voice. 

Jack was not used to hearing his sister sound fragile.

He held Lu tighter, but Colleen pulled away.  No tears stained her face.  She stood rigid and angry, and jerked her head at Donald and Nathan, lying on the ground.

“They dead?” she demanded.

Jack nodded.

“Fuck,” Colleen said.  “I wanted to kill them.  Give me that gun.”

Jack handed the gun to her.

“Rose, this is for you.”  She shot Donald in the crotch, then did the same to Nathan.  The arrowhead tumbled out of his pocket.  She stared at them as if debating whether to shoot them again, and if so, where.  The loud gunshots seemed to awaken Lu from her dazed state.

“Want me to reload?” Jack offered.

“Naw.”

“We good?”

Colleen nodded.  “Yeah, we’re good,” and handed the gun back to him.  She sat on the ground next to the truck, put her head on her drawn-up knees and sobbed.  Lu and Jack looked at each other awkwardly, not knowing if they should try to comfort Colleen or give her space.

“Jack, can it really be Foster back there?  Theia told me he was dead,” Lu said.

“Well now we know what happened to the body,” Jack said.

“What are you two talking about?” Colleen asked.

“Theia told me Foster’s body went missing at the hospital.”

“What?  Who ever heard of that?  Well now we know why all this weird shit has been happening,” Colleen said.

“So what do we do now?” asked Lu.  “We have to do something.”

“We call the authorities,” Jack said, going back into the store.

Behind the counter was an old wall-mounted phone. 

Jack called the sheriff’s deputy and told him about their situation and about Theia being back at the farmhouse. “Call for backup, you’re gonna need some,” Jack urged.

“Damn straight!  I’ll get the Highway Patrol and some other counties in on this.  How are you all doing?”

“We’re beat up but okay,” Jack urged. “Don’t send any units to the store.  Send everyone out to the farm. We’ll meet you there.”

After hanging up the phone, Jack gently asked Lu and Colleen, “How are you guys?”

“Better now that those bastards are dead,” Lu said.

“Amen, sister,” Colleen said.  “They died way too quick, considering what they did to my sister and to us, but they’ll never touch another woman,” she said smugly.

Jack rummaged through the store and found bottled water and a roll of paper towels.  “Here,” he shoved the supplies at them.  “Get cleaned up.  We have to hit the road.”

“What?” Lu squeaked.  “Where are we going?”

“To get Theia,” Jack said.

“I’m afraid to even think about what she is going through right now,” Colleen said as she wiped her face with her hands. “Come on, girl,” she said to Lu. “Let’s patch ourselves up so we can get her out of there.”

“We’re going back?” Lu asked, clearly terrified.  “I’m scared too, but we gotta help her.  We can’t just leave her there,” Colleen said.

“I know, but this is really going to be hard.”  She took a few breaths, then put her shoulders back.  “Ok, let’s get this done.”

“There’s a bathroom over there,” Jack indicated.

Lu and Colleen went into the one-seater bathroom together.  There was no modesty left between them. Splashing cool water on themselves, Lu gushed, “Oh, this feels so much better!”

“Damn straight.  For a while there, back at the farmhouse, I would have had to feel better to die.”

“What are we going to do if one of those bastards knocked us up or gave us an STD?” Lu asked, her voice cracking.

“We deal with it.  First thing we do, when we get back to town, we go to the doctor and get tested for every damn thing.  And we get a morning after pill,” Colleen said.  “I’m not gonna carry the spawn of Satan.”

“Okay, that sounds like a plan,” Lu agreed. “You know, I always said that if a man ever gave me an STD, I’d kill him.  Now that one may have, the bastard’s already dead,” Lu said, shaking her head.

“Honey, if any of our tests come back positive, I’ll dig up the bodies with you so we can beat them with baseball bats,” Colleen assured her.