Hunter of the Dead (5 page)

“Perhaps. But I don’t wish to be told I’m any man’s treasure. Instead, I’d rather be the giant, gobbling up the world by the mouthful. Claiming what is mine.”

“So you’re Iði himself.”

“Yes. But I’m not Norse. I’m Han.”

“Idi Han, then.”

A knock echoed through the room. Idi Han turned to look, worried that perhaps she had forgotten to bar the doors when she came in. She had remembered. A massive board that would’ve taken five mortals to lift sealed the doors shut. The knock sounded once again, more urgent this time.

“A friend of yours?” Cicatrice asked drily.

She turned to look at him. Everyone she knew was ten thousand kilometers away.

“Father, I don’t…I haven’t…”

“Relax. A joke.”

“Then you know who it is?”

“Not for certain, though I have a suspicion. Certainly no one I’ve invited.”

The knocking turned into a pounding. The pounding turned to a thunderous flurry of blows and Idi Han gasped as the massive plank shuddered, and then finally cracked, sending the half-ton doors flying open.

Two

All eyes in Phillip’s Fill-Up were locked on the owner of the Saab that had just pulled up. Nico Salazar, who at twenty seemed way too young to already be a shift manager, stood behind the cash register grinding his teeth. Carter Price, who at fifty-something, seemed way too old to not at least be a manager, stood behind the deli case polishing his hands with a dirty rag.

“You think he’s coming in?” Nico asked.

“I don’t care what this guy does,” Price replied, continuing to punish his knuckles with the rag. “At midnight I turn into a pumpkin.”

Nico bit his upper lip. Saab guy was rich. Well, maybe not “rich.” “Rich enough” seemed like a more adequate description. He was dressed to impress…well, someone, but obviously not a convenience store shift manager. Right now he was alternating between fiddling with the gas pump and glancing up at the store entrance, possibly making sure the lights were still on. Whether he decided to come in or not still seemed to be a coin toss.

“Your shift’s not over ‘til the last customer leaves.”

Price grunted in disgust and tossed his rag off somewhere.

“That asshole is not going to want a sandwich.”

“He might,” Nico replied, dragging the second word out into a lengthy sing-song, “and you can’t clean up until all the customers are gone.”

“The hell I can’t.”

Price began disassembling the deli slicer. For an old dude, Price was pretty strong. He had a rough look to him: cut, like maybe he worked out, but more like prison lifting than to keep himself pretty. Prison was where he had no doubt learned to lift, after all.

Nico could hardly picture Price shaving, but he always seemed to have just a day or two of stubble, so he must shave sometimes. His hair was clipped close enough to bald that Nico could never quite identify the color.

Strangest of all, Price’s right wrist had been bandaged for a while. Considering the nature of
that
sort of wound, Nico had never pried into it. But now that they’d been working together a while, he was starting to wonder if the bandages weren’t an affectation. If he had been suicidal once, it should have long since healed by now. Of course, he might have been a cutter. Price seemed too old to be a cutter, but either way it was simply yet another conversation Nico never ever wanted to have with an employee.

“Don’t do it. You’ll curse us. Now he really will want a sandwich.”

Price groaned and threw his arms up in the air before finally settling into his customary slouch against the sink to wait it out. “The Ballad of Whether We Can Close Up or Not” was one that seemed to play every night at about this time.

As Saab guy began to pump, the bell indicating the back door opening rang. Nico glanced up at the security monitor. Jackie, the delivery lady from the bakery, waved at the camera as she wheeled the next day’s donuts in.

“Still warm,” Jackie announced when she hit the floor, “You boys want one?”

Price licked his chops and held out his hands in a clamshell.

“Toss me a Boston Cream, Jax.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she replied, as she began stacking the donuts into their case for the fast-approaching morning shift. “Come get it yourself.”

“Maybe I will come and get it,” Price replied, and strutted toward the donut case.

Flirting again.

Jackie was a real nice lady. She was a tad overweight, but who could blame someone who carried pastries everywhere they went for a living? It wasn’t like she was pumpkin-shaped, either, she just had a little more junk in the trunk than Nico preferred. Otherwise she was blonde, pretty, and about Price’s age.

The two flirted shamelessly with each other every night. It had gotten to the point where Nico had been forced to check whether she wore a ring. (Price decidedly did not.) Now he was just wondering when Price would decide it was time to shit or get off the pot. He could do worse than to date Jackie, and Price had never given a hint that he had a girlfriend or much of a social life at all. Nico idly wanted that for the two of them, but had no real desire to intervene in the lives of two grown-ass adults. He had enough trouble dealing with his own (lack of) love life.

“Nothing for you, Nico?”

Nico shook his head. Jackie left her cart by the donut case and sidled up to lean against the counter opposite Nico.

“What are you two watching?”

Price returned from the donut case to behind the deli counter and began stuffing his face with cream and chocolate.

“We’re trying to decide whether Picky Sandwich here is going to want mustard, mayo, or truffles.”

“Oh, hell no!” Price shouted, rising to his feet, “That’s not a picky sandwich eater. I’ll tell you who that is. That’s a Cigarette Dick. He wants some Benson and Hedges Slim Ultra-Lights or some shit.”

Jackie clucked her tongue and went back to going about her business.

“You two are crazy.”

Nico’s eyes fluttered over to the wall clock, set perpetually slow by the owner, though the employees always ignored it and went by their phones anyway. Even the clock was quickly closing on midnight.

With a single ding of the front door, Nico’s hopes of getting out on time were dashed. When the Saab owner juked toward the cash register instead of the deli, he tried to ignore Price’s childish celebratory dance.

“Parliament Light 100s,” Cigarette Dick announced, without so much as glancing in Nico’s direction.

Nico looked up at his row upon row of assembled brands. Notably absent was the obscure(ish) brand in question.

God damn it.

“I’m sorry, sir, we seem to be out. Would Parliament Lights be all right? Or Parliament Regular 100s?”

Cigarette Dick finally deigned to look Nico in the face.

“Parliament. Light. 100s. Shall I repeat in
Espanol, amigo
?
Parliamento Light-o. Uno hundred-o.
”

Nico kept his face a mask of professionalism. He knew the score with people like Cigarette Dick. Scowl, and they’d yell at you for having a bad attitude. Smile, and they’d yell at you for being a smartass.

“Again, sir,” he said, forcing his voice to remain as static as his face, “We are out.”

“Why don’t you go check? Don’t you know how to do your job?”

Nico reached up and lowered the plastic scaffolding where they normally kept the Parliament Light 100s. Never before had he wished so much that a lone pack had gotten stuck up in the apparatus somewhere. But for the second time he saw that there were none.

“Okay, I just checked again, sir. We are out.” Somehow he refrained from adding “still.”

Cigarette Dick folded his arms and tapped his shoe.

“Why don’t you go check in the back? Like I asked you to, twice? Like it’s your job to do?”

Nico decided to swallow his explanation about how they didn’t keep any secret stores of cigarettes in the back, when they arrived they filled them up at the cash register, and on a Sunday night, right before the next shipment arrived on Monday morning, sometimes they’d be out.

“Of course, sir,” Nico said, “I’ll go see if a pack fell out or something. Excuse me.”

Nico locked the register and walked briskly to the back of the store. Just because he so badly wanted there to be a mislaid pack somewhere, he checked the empty, collapsed boxes of cigarette cartons. Of course, as he had already known, there were no cigarettes which had gone astray. He glanced up at the security camera and made sure that Cigarette Dick didn’t attempt to go over the counter or anything. Nico would’ve been severely shocked if Carter would’ve made any attempt to stop even a blatant robbery.

Nico checked the time on his phone. Customers like Cigarette Dick considered taking the appropriate amount of time to do anything as a personal affront. It had to be long enough to seem thorough, but not long enough to seem like their time was being wasted.

Three minutes.

Nico sighed and glanced at the staff television. Black and white. Nothing good was on. Of course not. Mr. al-Azif, the owner of the gas station (whose first name was rather emphatically not Phillip) refused to pay for cable, so all they got was the God channel and a channel that played reruns from the “best” of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Sometimes Price got really into the Golden Oldie channel, but for the most part the employees just ignored the pointless old box.

He checked his phone again.

It’s been long enough, I suppose.

Shaking his head in defeat, Nico exited the back room and lifted the leaf to enter the register area. He straightened his bright green polo shirt out and gazed into Cigarette Dick’s eyes. He shook his head in false commiseration.

“So sorry, sir. None in the back either.”

Like I already fucking said.

“You know what, kid? I want to talk to your manager.” Cigarette Dick jabbed a finger at Price. “Hey, you!”

Price pointed his own thumb at himself by way of response, his mouth too full of chocolate and donut filling to say anything.

“Yeah, you, shitbird. I want to report this kid.”

Price swallowed his ill-gotten pastry.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Hey, Nico, this guy wants to report you. So write yourself up or something.”

“Please finish cleaning up, Carter.”

Price pretended to salute with two fingers, but busied himself at the sink. Cigarette Dick raised an eyebrow. He looked Nico up and down.

“You’re the manager?”

“Shift manager, yes.”

“And this fifty-year-old guy works for you? Hey, shitbird, what are you, an ex-con or something?”

Nico was mortified to see Price pull a sudsy paring knife out of the sink. Water and bubbles from the knife dripped to the deli floor.

“Yeah, actually, I am. You want to make something of it, you…”

Jackie stepped away from her cart and positioned herself surreptitiously in between Price and the customer. Her hand was on her hip, where Nico knew she kept a stun gun. She did late-night deliveries and didn’t take chances with being mugged or raped.

“Carter!” Nico had no idea what Price had gone up the river for, but he didn’t want to witness a repeat if it was a violent offense. “Sir, I’m happy to take your complaint, but I won’t have you abusing me or my staff.”

Cigarette Dick paused long enough to form a nasty expression on his lips when the front doorbell dinged.

“I’m sorry, I know the lights are on, but we’re closed. What the fuck is that?”

Nico’s expression must have turned to sheer horror because even Cigarette Dick turned around to look at the newcomer. Nico had no idea what he was looking at. The thing that stood on their plastic mat was a hulk of a creature. Even slouched over with its knuckles on the floor it was taller than Cigarette Dick’s easy six feet.

Its skin was solid gray and its body was hairless. It could’ve been a man once, but its entire lower jaw was missing, its ears were long and flappy like batwings, and its eyes were solid yellow.

“What are you supposed to be?” Cigarette Dick asked, “Is there a comic book convention in town or something?”

Nico’s heart stopped fluttering as he realized the man was probably right. It was just a costume. But in the store’s bright lights it seemed so real.

With two steps the thing was on top of Cigarette Dick. It reached out and with the ease of a delinquent child pulling the wings off a fly, ripped off both of Cigarette Dick’s arms in one smooth motion.

“Holy fuck!”

Nico jumped back, away from the grisly display. With the monstrosity closer to him than before, he could see its tongue lolling out of its bottomless mouth. The teeth it retained in its upper jaw were sharp like knives. The customer had fallen silent, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

Jackie leaped forward and fired her stun gun at the creature. Two tiny chunks of metal flew out of the gun and 50,000 volts shot through it. Unfazed, it turned and buried its face into hers.

Unsure what to do, Nico slapped the silent alarm. He’d never had to use it before and didn’t know how quickly the cops would show up. Suddenly a piercing whistle cut through the air and Nico and the creature both looked up to see Price standing on top of the deli display, a half-assembled meat slicer in his hands whirring away.

“Hey, asshole,” Price said loudly, “why don’t you try tangling with me?”

The creature hissed and let Jackie’s lifeless body drop to the floor. Nico noticed with alarm that her face had been half chewed away while in the thing’s godless embrace. With a single bound it leapt into the air at Price, though he had to be eight feet higher than it, positioned as he was on top of the deli display.

With a perfection that beggared belief, Price swung the meat slicer and caught the monster full in its neck. Nico watched in horror as Price held the meat slicer steady and the thing’s jump halted. It seemed to be standing in mid-air as the slicer spun, making a hash of its face and neck but surprisingly casting off no blood, ichor, or other bodily fluids.

The thing dropped to the ground and Price flung the heavy meat slicer after it. He caught Nico’s eyes.