Take the Long Way Home (10 page)

“Get down, you motherfuckers,” the taller one shouted. “On the floor, right now!”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Charlie said. “We were just—”

“Fucking do it,” the other one, Scar-face, spat, motioning with the gun. “If I have to say it again, I will waste your ass.”

I held my hands out in front of me, and noticed Lopez the manager’s blood was all over them. I must have stepped in it, too, because the soles of my shoes seemed stuck to the floor.

“Steve . . .”

“Are you fucking deaf?” Scar-face glared at Charlie. “I told you to—”

Charlie ducked, sprinting for the door. The skinhead fired as the door swung open. Charlie darted through. Glass shattered. The door buzzer rang, almost drowned out by the gunshot. And then Charlie sped across the parking lot and was gone—vanished into the night.

The tall one nodded at his companion. “Go get the fucker, Skink.”

So Scar-face had a name.

“He ain’t gonna do shit, Al,” Skink said. “Cops are busy elsewhere.”

Skink and Al. Even their names seemed surreal.

The tall one, Al, spit on the floor. “I said go after him, goddamn it!”

“What about this guy?” Skink pointed at me.

Al smiled. “I’ll take care of him.”

Cursing, Skink ran after Charlie, his boots crunching on the fragments of broken glass.

Al glowered at me. “Come out from around there, shit-head. Slowly.”

“Look,” I said. “We don’t—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND MOVE!”

Too afraid to open my mouth, I did as he said, stepping over the manager’s body and almost slipping in his blood. Lopez’s eyes were open, but I couldn’t tell if he was still alive. I wondered what had happened to Frank and feared the worst. I crept out from behind the counter, my hands still in the air, and left bloody footprints on the floor.

Well,
I thought,
I guess that guy Tony was right and Charlie was wrong. There really are murderous skinheads running around tonight.

I wondered if these were the same ones who’d apparently hung the
child molester from the overpass. The one in front of me, Al, was
young—maybe in his early twenties. He looked nervous, but angry. His
sloped brow creased in frustration.

The thug studied my face. “You got one ugly fucking nose, you
know that?”

“S-so?” I cringed at the tremor in my voice. I sounded anything but
brave.

“Jews got noses like that.” He cocked his head. “You a kike?”

“No,” I lied. My voice was steadier this time. My fear was slowly
being replaced with anger. Believe it or not, this was the first time in
my life that someone had ever called me a kike to my face. I didn’t like
how it felt.

“What’s your name?” Al demanded.

“Steve.” I took another step towards him. “What’s yours? I mean, I
know your name is Al, but what’s the rest?”

I realized I was babbling, but couldn’t seem to stop. My voice rose
in pitch.

He reached inside his coat and pulled out a knife. “Don’t you worry
about my fucking name. I’m asking the questions. Get over here.”

I glanced around for a weapon, for anything to defend myself with. The cash register, the lottery and credit card machines, a display rack
of candy bars. Nothing.

“Hey,” Al snarled. “I see you. You’re checking out the register. You
are
a fucking Jew, ain’t you? Worrying about the money.”

I inched closer. “You shot the manager.”

“No, I didn’t. Skink did.”

“How about our friend? He went in the back. Did you kill him,
too?”

Al grew angrier. “I’ll cut your fucking throat if you don’t move
faster and do what the fuck I tell you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” said a man’s voice from behind me.

I froze. So did the skinhead. He stared over my shoulder, his eyes
narrowing. I thought I recognized the voice. It sounded vaguely
familiar.
The temperature inside the store suddenly dropped. I saw my
breath in the air, drifting like fog. In the back, near the pet food section,
the fluorescent bulbs exploded. The rest of the lights grew brighter. I
heard the electricity surging through them. The hair on my arms
and head stood up and static crackled across my skin.

“He is one of God’s chosen,” said the voice. “One of the one hundred
and forty-four thousand spoken of by John the apostle in the Book
of Revelation. He is a saint of the tribulation, and he has many miles to
go before he dies. It will not be by your hand, Albert Nicholas, nor will it be tonight.”

Al was visibly startled. “How the fuck do you know my name?”

“I know everything.”

I wondered whom the new arrival was, and if they were friend or
foe, and what the hell they were talking about. What was it he’d said
about me? I was a saint of what? I focused on the voice, trying desperately
to figure out where I’d heard it before. But I didn’t dare turn around.

“Get your ass in here, nigger,” the skinhead snarled. “Or I’ll cut
you, too.”

“Cut me?” My savior, who judging by the skinhead’s reaction was
black, laughed. “Think again, Son of Cain. Not with that you won’t.”

“What? You don’t believe me, fucker? Look at the size of this
blade.”

The skinhead glanced at his knife. I did, too.

We both screamed at the same time.

His weapon was no longer a knife. Instead, he now clutched a live, thrashing
snake. It was about twelve inches long and had brown and yellow
scales and beady black eyes. Its tongue flicked across his knuckles and
the tail coiled around his wrist. The creature’s head weaved from side
to side and then darted downward. It sank its fangs into the flesh
between Al’s thumb and index finger.

“Fuck!” Shrieking, Al ripped the serpent loose and flung it across
the store.

I watched it twist and sail through the air and crash into a junk food
display, sending bags of potato chips flying. When I looked back at Al,
I screamed again.

Al was gone. A white, crystalline statue stared back at me instead,
a statue that looked an awful lot like him. Powdery residue fell from its
shoulders.

“No harm shall come to you,” the voice whispered behind me, and
I finally recognized it. The voice was that of Gabriel, the black guy from the crash site. The
one wearing the tie with a cross on it who’d caught me when I passed
out.

I spun around. The store was empty. Gabriel was nowhere to be seen.

“I know it’s you,” I called. “Gabriel? Are you following us?”

Silence.

“Gabriel? Thanks for the help. That’s twice today.”

The temperature inside the store returned to normal. I jumped when
the compressor switched itself back on.

“Come on out, man.”

Gabriel didn’t reply. Outside, through the broken glass in the door,
I saw a lone car cruising slowly up the street. One of its headlights was out.

“This Phantom Stranger shit is getting old, Gabriel.”

I turned back to the statue of Al. Hesitantly I reached out and
touched the coarse, white substance. Then I brought my fingertips to
my mouth and tasted.

Salt. The skinhead had been turned into a pillar of salt.

“Holy shit . . .”

I backed away from the statue. Salt granules crunched beneath my
feet. I checked the aisles, but they were empty. There was no sign of
Gabriel—if he’d even been here. I felt a little part of my mind slip away
and tried to get a grip. Last thing I needed to do now was lose it. I had
to get home to Terri. What had just happened couldn’t have happened.
Knives didn’t turn into snakes and skinheads definitely didn’t turn into
pillars of salt.

And half the human race didn’t vanish in the blink of an eye, either . . .

Looking around the store, I saw the snake’s tail disappearing
beneath the coolers, and I decided that it was all very real after all.

Biblical, in fact.

I checked on the manager, but he had no pulse. His skin was cold. His
eyes stared sightlessly. I reached out to close them, but couldn’t bring
myself to touch them. Eventually, I closed my own eyes and just did it.

Then I remembered Frank.

“Fuck!”

Being confronted by Al and Skink, Charlie’s fleeing, and everything
else that had happened after it had made me forget all about
Frank. I cursed my stupidity. He’d called out after the gunshots. Was he
okay?

I ran into the back room and found him lying dead on a stack of
skids. His glassy eyes gazed at the ceiling and a thin line of blood
trickled from his open mouth. There was more blood on his shirt; so
much, in fact, that I couldn’t figure out where he’d been shot.

“I’m sorry, Frank. I am so sorry, man.”

He hadn’t deserved this. He was a good guy. He’d joked and
laughed for most of our walk, even though he seemed sad underneath it all. Well, of course he’d seemed sad. Still carrying a torch for his ex-wife—it was apparent to strangers like us even if he was oblivious to it himself. No kids or even a beloved pet waiting at home. The only thing Frank looked forward to was the next beer. And now he wouldn’t even have that. Even though I’d only known him for an evening, it felt like I’d lost a good friend. I tried to remember things about him, and was surprised by how little I actually knew. I had to think about it for a minute before I could even remember his last name. Some eulogy. It wasn’t fair, Frank dying like this, gunned down so senselessly by two racist scumbags. All he’d wanted to do was go home.

Maybe now he had.

Frank’s blood was on my hands, literally and figuratively. I reached out to shut his eyes, swallowing the same revulsion I’d felt when doing the same for Lopez.

After closing Frank’s eyes, I pulled out my cell phone and attempted to call 911 again. At the very least I should report what had happened. But in truth, after what the cop had told us, I didn’t even expect to get a signal, so imagine my surprise when I saw that the phone showed five bars.

Immediately, I forgot about calling the authorities, and instead dialed home. The phone rang, and it was the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

“Yes! Come on, Terri. Pick up. Oh, pick it up.”

It rang again.

“Come on, sweetie, be home.”

A third ring. A fourth.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up . . .”

Five more rings.

“Answer the goddamn phone!”

It rang three more times before our answering machine finally picked up. I listened to my own voice telling me that Steve and Terri weren’t home right now and to leave a message at the beep.

“Terri, it’s me. I’m okay. If you’re there, pick up the phone! Something’s happened, and Craig is missing and people are dead, but I’m okay. Are you there? Terri? Pick up! Pi—”

The machine beeped again, indicating that it was done recording. A recorded voice told me that the mailbox was full.

“Goddamn it!”

I threw the cell phone across the room, and stalked back out to the front of the store. On my way out, I noticed a small, wooden plaque hanging on the wall, discreetly hidden from the view of customers. I studied it. It was some kind of poem, one I wasn’t familiar with, obviously of Christian origin. It was called ‘Footprints’ and was attributed to an unknown author.

One night
, the poem began,
a man had a dream. He dreamed he
was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed
scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in
the sand; one belonging to him, and the other to the Lord. When the last
scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in
the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there
was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the
very lowest and saddest times in his life. This really bothered him, and
he questioned the Lord about it. “Lord, you said that once I decided to
follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that
during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of
footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you most, you would leave me.” The Lord replied, “My son, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”