Also by A.P. Fuchs
Undead World Trilogy
Blood of the Dead
The Axiom-man™ Saga
(listed in reading order)
Axiom-man
Episode No. 0: First Night Out
Doorway of Darkness
Episode No. 1: The Dead Land
City of Ruin
Of Magic and Men (comic book)
OTHER Fiction
A Stranger Dead
A Red Dark Night
April (writing as Peter Fox)
Magic Man (deluxe chapbook)
The Way of the Fog (The Ark of Light Vol. 1)
Devil’s Playground (written with Keith Gouveia)
On Hell’s Wings (written with Keith Gouveia)
Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead
ANTHOLOGIES (as editor)
Dead Science
Elements of the Fantastic
Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head
Non-fiction
Book Marketing for the
Financially-challenged Author
Poetry
The Hand I’ve Been Dealt
Haunted Melodies and Other Dark Poems
Still About A Girl
* * * *
Dead Science
Edited
by
A.P. Fuchs
Published by Coscom Entertainment at Smashwords.com
This book is also available as a paperback at your favorite online retailer like Amazon.com, or through your local bookstore.
* * * *
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons living or dead or living dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN – 13 978-1-897217-86-3
All stories contained herein are Copyright © 2009 by their respective authors. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.
Published by Coscom Entertainment
www.coscomentertainment.com
eBook Edition
Cover art by Scott Story
Edited by A.P. Fuchs
* * * *
Bowels
Sashimi Á la Morte by Lorne Dixon
Arch Enemy by Glen Held
Better Living Through Chemistry by Becca Morgan
The Decay of Unknown Particles by Mark Onspaugh
Blood, Spit and Aspartame by Adam J. Whitlatch
Walking With the Dead by Anthony Giangregorio
Spark of Life by Gina Ranalli
In the Blood by Eric S. Brown
No Man’s Land by Jason V. Shayer
Mr. Hanson Goes to the Lab by Michael Cieslak
Thanks for the Memories by Gustavo Bondoni
Homeless Zombies by Vincent L. Scarsella
The Valace Standard by Ryan C. Thomas
Those Undead Writers
* * * *
Dead Science
* * * *
Sashimi Á la Morte
by
Lorne Dixon
Doctor Silas Drundtl stood under the flickering parking garage lights, fanned out his keys in his palm, and wondered which would open his car door. The batteries inside his keychain remote were dead. For the first time since buying the luxury sedan, he would have to use its key.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the slightest clue what most of the keys in his hand opened. He recognized the keys to his house, his office, and his safety security and post office boxes, but that left a half dozen more. He hated his need to hang on to things.
Silas closed his fist around the keychain, dropped his head and closed his eyes. It had been too long a day, three procedures, with one that ended with him telling a sixty-five-year-old woman that she was a widow. He needed to drink a cheap domestic beer in his bed and let the sound of the air conditioner lull him to sleep.
“Drundtl? Is your name Silas Drundtl?”
Opening his eyes, he turned towards the voice. It belonged to a tall wire sculpture in a designer suit and bifocals. Behind him, two greasy bodybuilders in European dress shirts stood with arms crossed. The trio didn’t have the word “criminals” tattooed on their foreheads—that would have been too subtle—but Silas assumed the word was inked on their hearts.
When he didn’t immediately answer, the man asked, “Don’t you speak English? I can probably accommodate. I speak six languages. I do international law.”
One of the thugs asked, “You Drundtl or what?”
“Why do you ask?” he said, and realized at the same moment that “Never heard of him” was probably a better response.
The tall man’s head bobbed like a peacock when he spoke. “I’m not asking. Enzo Occhialini, my boss, he’s the one who’s asking. You just imagine him standing right here between Guili and Cesare.”
Silas inched towards the men. He knew Occhialini’s name from the weekly papers—retired-billionaire-cold-war-biochemist-turned-seafood-restaurateur—with multiple indictments for money laundering and extortion. “And your name?”
The peacock’s head shot straight up. “I’m Mr. Fitcher.”
Fitcher extended his hand. Their eyes locked and Silas stared into two swirling black holes. In most men’s eyes there were hints of their humanity—a twinkling of humor, a gleam of nobility and purpose. Fitcher had the eyes of a corpse. Silas took the offered hand and shook it.
“Tonight you’ll make one hundred thousand dollars for a couple hours work,” Fitcher said, pupils dilating like a high tech guidance system locking in on a target. “Our car is waiting.”
There was no threat issued, not verbally or with body language, but there was no mistake, either—this was not a job offer to be accepted or refused. With Guili and Cesare flanking him, Silas followed Fitcher to an idling limousine.
They didn’t speak as the driver sped them through the city, hurrying through yellow lights, ignoring crosswalks. After a few minutes, Silas turned away from the window and stared at his feet. He imagined them encased in cement, dangling off a lower east side pier.
The car pulled into a private driveway through a pair of arched wrought iron gates into Occhialini’s estate. As it glided to a gentle halt, Silas asked Fitcher, “Why does he want me? I win the lottery or something?”
A wry grin wormed its way over Fitcher’s face. “Mr. Occhialini’s personal physician died recently after a long illness.”
“What did he have?”
Opening the door, Fitcher said, “It’s a very common disease called infidelity. I believe he caught it from Mrs. Occhialini. In the end, it proved fatal.”
Silas stepped out of the limousine and followed Fitcher past a long rose garden, up marble stairs and through the mansion’s mahogany doors. Guili shut and locked the entrance behind them. In the massive main hall, Cesare took Silas’s coat and handed it to a servant dressed entirely in white. They corralled him through a maze of rooms—parlors, barrooms and lounges—to a large dinning hall.
Occhialini, stick figure thin, sat at the head of a long Ash Birch banquet table. There were no other place settings or chairs. Fitcher nodded to his boss and announced, “This is Dr. Drundtl.”
“I read your paper in The New England Journal of Medicine,” Occhialini said as he unfolded a cloth napkin, freeing a pair of silver chopsticks. “The one about metabolic relativism.”
Silas squinted, his mind blank, and then shrugged. “Oh. That actually wasn’t my work. There’s another Silas Drundtl down in Princeton—”
Occhialini dropped the chopsticks. “You didn’t write the article? You’re not the guy?”
“No.”
Fitcher’s eyes flicked between Occhialini and Silas.
“Did you even read that article?”
Silas took his time before nodding. “Yes.”
“Did you agree with the findings?”
Silas saw Fitcher nod, an almost unperceivable instruction to agree, but said, “Not really. But I’m a surgeon, not a—”
“Well, that’s a relief, actually,” Occhialini said, replacing the fork. “’Cause I think that fool is dead wrong. I chose him for tonight to teach him a thing or two. But, you know, since you’re already here.”
Silas blinked. “Here for what?”
“Dinner.” Occhialini clapped.
A team of Japanese chefs rolled a large aquarium into the dinning hall. The fish inside, half buried in sand, was almost a foot and a half long and covered with flesh-colored plates. Almost flat, it resembled an eyeless catfish suited up in armor, except for the teeth on display when its wide mouth opened. No catfish had incisors like that.
“What is that?” Silas asked.
Fitcher tapped the glass and the fish darted to the aquarium wall, teeth gnashing, scales rising. “It was called Phyllolepis. A fresh water fish extinct since the Devonian age. Well, extinct until now. An intact specimen was discovered on the banks of the Guyandotte River, perfectly preserved in an alluvial fan ridge. It’s an incredibly rare find, a naturally mummified creature with DNA strands intact. Enough to clone this fellow.”
The fish circled in the tank, now agitated.
“I’m a seafood connoisseur. I’ve had delicacies that only kings and pontiffs have tasted. The finest caviar from early season Caspian Sea Sturgeon. The belly of the endangered unarmored three-spine Stickleback. Even giant squid, though that in itself is another story. But the Phyllolepis is different. No man has ever tasted its flesh.”
The fish settled back into the sand.
“Or would survive,” Fitcher said. “We took diagnostic samples from our friend here. Its flesh contains a cocktail of powerful neurotoxins.”
“And you intend to eat it anyway?” Silas asked.
Occhialini smiled. “I do.”
“And you’re here to keep him alive.” Fitcher stepped away from the tank and nodded to the lead chef. He rolled a pair of mesh gloves up his arms.
“Wait. No,” Silas said, raising both hands. “I don’t know the first thing about the toxins. I don’t have the pharmaceuticals or know dosages. I haven’t even examined—”
Fitcher hushed him and pointed. Against the far wall was a mini-bar stocked with medical supplies. “You’ll find everything you need right there. All of the medicine vials have been prepared for Mr. Occhialini’s age and weight.”
Silas’s eyes scanned the mini-bar. It was an impressive—and blatantly illegal—collection. “I still can’t.”
Occhialini rolled his eyes. “Are you going to make us go out and find some other doctor? ’Cause I’m hungry and getting impatient. If ‘no’ is your final answer, that’s fine.”
He pointed a chopstick at Guili. “Take him out back. I don’t want a mess like that time with that incompetent repairman. I had to fly those linen cleaners in from Naples.”
Guili took Silas by the shirt collar, twisted, and lifted him off the floor. His arms flexed, revealing a roadmap of purple veins and arteries. He snarled. “Boss’s pocket watch was still off by four seconds after he fixed it, so I got to fix him. Did too good a job.”
Occhialini slid the watch out of his coat pocket. “It’s an 1898 A. Lange And Söhne not some mass produced Rolex trash, a watch worth treasuring, worth killing for.”
“Agreed,” Fitcher said.
Both hands around Guili’s wrists, Silas croaked, “Wait. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”
Occhialini gestured for Guili to release him and snickered as the doctor dropped, fell to his knees, and rubbed his neck. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Fitcher turned to the chefs and said, “Let’s start.”
The lead chef reached into the tank. The Phyllolepis darted out of the sand, needle-filled mouth open, and attached itself to the chef’s glove. The chef yelled and withdrew his hand, pulling the fish out of the tank. Slamming it down on the table, he tried to catch its tail with his free hand. He screamed as its scales sliced into his fingers.
The second chef took his position at the table, angling a raised meat clever over the fish’s body as it flopped back and forth, tearing through the glove. He swung down, striking the Phyllolepis just below its smooth, bulbous head. Pressing down, he decapitated it.
The lead chef pried the dead fish’s mouth open and slid out of the mesh glove. A few of the needle-like teeth remained imbedded in his ruined hand. He swore in Japanese, bowed towards Occhialini, and ran from the room.
“Spirited fish,” Occhialini said.
Fitcher cracked his knuckles. “Had some fight in it.”
The second chef waited for the fish to move before carving it with a long takohiki knife. He cleaned the fish quickly, scaling off the armor plates, shaving off skin and fat, and slicing off a series of one-inch-thick fillets. He spread out three slices on a square plate garnished with lime slices, bamboo shoots and seaweed. The chef slid the plate in front of Occhialini, bowed, and stepped away.
Occhialini took a sip of lemon water to clear his palate. He fumbled with his chopsticks, grinned and said, “Excuse me, I’m just excited.”
Capturing a fillet between the shaking sticks, he brought it to his lips. The flesh wiggled as he sucked it into his mouth. He chewed.
“How’s it taste, Boss?” Cesare asked.
Occhialini swallowed, took another sip of water, then turned to Cesare and said, “Difficult to describe. Nothing like modern fish. Meatier . . . more . . .”
Occhialini fell silent. There were two indications that he wasn’t just searching for words to describe the cuisine. His white-knuckled fists slapping to his chest was the first. His eyes were the second hint. They exploded.
Guili blurted out a short, ugly word and took an unconscious step away from the table.
Convulsing, Occhialini collapsed onto the table and slid until the chair under him tipped over. He hit the floor, arms curled up over his chest like a dead bird. He stopped twitching.
Fitcher ran to Silas, put a hand on his back and pushed him towards his boss. Prodding him farther, Fitcher screamed, “Help him. HELP HIM NOW—”
Silas broke out of his shock and rushed to the fallen man, not out of the threat of violence or the promised payment for his services, but because he was a doctor. Kneeling, he put a hand on Occhialini’s throat and felt the man’s pulse wither down to a weak occasional pump. “I need a defibrillator and an Epinephrine syringe.”
The goons exchanged empty stares.
Silas pointed. “The crash cart.”
Fitcher reached it first and rolled it over.
Silas pumped Occhialini’s chest with his palms.
“What do I do?” Fitcher asked.
Silas took one hand off Occhialini’s chest and gestured to the defibrillator’s power cord. “Plug it in.”
Eager to help, Cesare snatched up the plug and ran towards the bar. The cord, still wound around the defibrillator’s base, snapped tripwire tight. The cart overturned, spilling the defibrillator, boxes of medical gloves and dozens of syringes across the floor.
Fitcher screamed, “IDIOT.”
Silas continued CPR even though he could no longer feel a pulse.
Cesare scrambled, still searching for a wall socket, dragging the defibrillator behind him. Guili chased the machine, hunched over, hands scraping the floor, trying to free the cord. He slid on a latex glove and fell screaming onto a bed of hypodermic needles.
“Idiots,” Fitcher muttered.
Silas pulled his hands off Occhialini, stood, and turned to Fitcher. “It’s not going to matter. He’s dead.”
Cesare and Guili ran to Fitcher’s side.
“You can resus—”
“—bring him back with the paddles—”
“—ain’t, you know, dead dead, right?”
Silas firmly shook his head. “He’s dead dead, yes.”
Cesare’s eyes filled with tears. He dropped the defibrillator. It crashed to the floor, crushing syringes, its hard plastic case cracking. “You gotta do something. You gotta, man.”
Silas said, “There’s nothing I can—”
Cesare’s hands came down on Silas’s shoulders like bolts of lightning. He lifted the doctor off the floor and tossed him onto the dining table, pushing into his throat with a bulbous elbow. He shook Silas and spat as he spoke. “The boss took me in when I was seven after my father died. He treated me like . . . like a son . . . taught me everything he could. I was never real smart. I was never gonna be a boss like him, but that never . . . that never mattered to him. He treated me like a son—”
Silas sputtered, unable to respond, and flailed his arms. Intense heat swam up from his throat. His lungs began to twitch as they tried to expel the depleted oxygen trapped within. Cesare’s face began to darken as consciousness began to fail.
Cesare turned, his mouth dropped open, and he lifted himself off Silas. Silas pushed himself across the table, out from under the thug’s shadow, hacked out a series of rapid coughs. He turned his head.
Occhialini sat up.
Cesar bolted to his side, slid onto his knees and wrapped his large arms around his boss. “You okay now, Boss? You scared the hell out of us. He said you was dead, y’know, dead dead.”
Occhialini’s head snapped to one side, pivoted to face Cesare, and smiled. Dozens of sharp teeth no wider than needles had sprouted in his mouth. He launched his jaws into Cesare’s face, biting down, lacerating open a gaping hole. Cesare’s face disappeared in one bite, replaced by a hollow red cavity that exposed the skull underneath.
The skull face screamed as Occialini’s head whipped back, tearing the wound open even further. The boss’s tongue snaked out, twined itself around the flap of flesh dangling from his mouth, and sucked it in.
Fitcher backed away until he was against the kitchen door. Guili pulled a handgun out of a leather holster under his jacket, aimed it at his boss, and said, “Get away from him, Mr. O. I don’t wanna have shoot at you, but you gotta get away from him. He needs a doctor. He—”
Guili spun on his heels, eyebrows raised, and pointed at Silas. Still sprawled across the table, Silas flinched. Guili yelled, “You’re a doctor. You get over there and help him. He needs—”
Silas shook his head.
Occhialini tossed Cesare’s body to the floor and stood up. Guili turned, waving the gun between Silas and his boss. “You, Boss, you don’t move. You, Doc, move.”
Silas reached out for one of the chopsticks.
Occhialini rushed towards Guili.
Guili screamed and fired. Two slugs pounded through Occhialini’s chest. The shots drilled right through, sending twin jet streams of blood twirling behind him, but the boss didn’t lose any momentum. He leaped onto Guili, arms grappling, head cocked back, toothy mouth open. Guili landed a single punch across Occhialini’s chin a second before the dead man’s face burrowed into his neck. Guili dropped to the floor in a shower of fluid.
Silas wrapped his hands around the chopstick, dropped off the table and drove it into Occhialini’s gut. The dead man’s arm snapped up, slapping him away with incredible force. Silas fled.
Occhialini tore the chopstick out of his body. A five–inch-long intestinal tapeworm wriggled on its end, impaled but still alive. Membrane separated as the tapeworm grew a snarling mouth on both ends, filled with tiny teeth.
The boss dropped the chopstick. The worm freed itself and slithered across the floor, heading for Silas.
Cesare’s body rose from the floor, eye liquefying and running down the creases of his face. Guili stopped shuddering and stood up. He tore his eyeballs out of their sockets and chewed on them with his new teeth.
Fitcher swore in every one of the six languages he spoke. Silas only spoke English, but he understood each word perfectly.
Silas sprinted for the door. Fitcher followed close behind, arms swinging as he ran. Silas glanced back and saw the dead men shambling across the floor like a trio of angry drunks. Guili’s size-eleven shoe came down on the tapeworm. It shrieked and squirmed; its body flattened under his heel.
They sped through the cocktail lounge, their feet landing hard on the polished cherry hardwood, and into another spacious room furnished with plush leather sofas and a massive television. Fitcher slipped on a loose roll of medical gauze partially unfurled on the floor. Catching his balance, he avoided tumbling over an overturned first aid kit.
There were pools of blood on the largest sofa. Silas reacted first, skidding away from the bloodshed, his eyes focusing on the two bodies tangled on the floor just ahead of the furniture. The lead chef burrowed into his subordinate’s chest with both hands, digging like a dog tunneling under a fence, tearing open a wide crater. His lips were smeared with blood, an ugly red line, like a prostitute’s lipstick after a quick twenty-dollar transaction.
Occhialini and his men broke into the room, desperate hands slapping against the door frame, noses twitching as they sniffed the air. Their foreheads had melted down over their eyes, leaving a crest of thick wrinkles just above their cheekbones. Silas thought of the Phyllolepis’s smooth, eyeless head, but only for a moment. He cut across the room, Fitcher trailing, then through a white door.
“Not left,” Fitcher screamed, but it was too late. Silas had already spun through a second door. The lawyer stopped, hands spread. “Not in there.”
Guili’s hands grabbed Fitcher from behind, jerking him back. Silas reached out and caught hold of his hands, planted his feet against the door’s molding, and pulled. Fitcher screamed. Cesare rounded the corner and dove headfirst on top of Fitcher, burying his teeth in the older man’s shoulder, tearing through his shirt and the loose flesh underneath. Fitcher’s scream ended as the strain on his vocal cords grew too intense and his voice failed.
Grunting, Silas leaned hard against the wall and pulled on Fitcher’s arms.
Cesare bit down deeper. Silas heard bone snap.
Occhialini appeared over his henchmen’s shoulders, grinning through a thick forest of needle-thin teeth.
Silas yelled and jerked hard on Fitcher’s hands.
Fitcher came loose from their grasp and they fell into the room. Silas barely noticed that Fitcher’s arm remained in the hallway, dangling from Cesare’s mouth. It seemed to wave to them as Silas slammed the door shut, locking the monsters out.
Fitcher’s hand covered the stump at his shoulder. He made hoarse little yelping sounds with every hyperventilating exhale.
The monsters pounded on the door. The dead goons were big men. Silas knew it wouldn’t take much time for them to get through. He stood up, intending to survey the room for weapons. He didn’t get the chance. Shock struck him, freezing him in place, until the sound of the wooden door cracking returned him to his senses. He asked Fitcher, “What is this?”
“It was . . . was an indoor . . . spa . . . but . . .”
Only a few feet into the room the tile floor descended into a massive pool. A massive filtration system hummed. On the bottom of the pool Silas saw dozens of Phyllolepis swimming in lazy circles.
“. . . can’t clone . . . just one . . . gotta clone . . . a whole . . .”
On the other side of the spa pool there was a set of glass doors leading out to a deck. Silas’s eyes darted to the walls. There were only narrow ledges, maybe three inches thick, on either side of the water.
“. . . school.”
The door began to splinter. The dead were breaking through.
Silas bent down and tried to pry Fitcher off the floor. “Come on, you have to help me. We’ve got to get across—”
Fitcher shook his head. His face paled. “We both know . . . I’m not . . . going any . . . where.”
The door gave way in a shower of wood splinters. Occhialini stepped over the threshold, a long tongue slithering out from between quivering lips.
Silas released Fitcher and scurried to the east wall. He stepped onto the ledge, hand flat against the tile wall, and carefully took three quick steps. He felt his weight shift and his knees wobble, but he kept his balance.
Occhialini pounced on Fitcher, hands and teeth tearing. Fitcher grappled with his employer, not pushing him away but pulling him close. They began to roll. The two men splashed into the shallow end of the pool, blood seeping into the water. Guili and Cesare followed, wading in, chasing down the slope to the deep end, until the water reached their waists.
The Phyllolepis swarmed towards the men.
Silas took another step. He saw Fitcher nod under water, signaling him, a moment before a fish latched over one eye and Occhialini tore out his throat.
Trembling, Silas put his left foot in front of his right. The battle in the shallower water had created a tide. Waves crashed over the ledge. Silas’s right foot slipped as he took another step.
He plunged into the water.
Underwater, he saw half of the Phyllolepis turn and swim towards him, a volley of arrows shot from a line of artillery bows. He kicked off the bottom and swam, arms stretched out in wide arcs, towards the end of the pool.
He felt the first bite just as he broke the water’s surface. The teeth felt like a dozen ribbed barbs, cutting deep into his right knee at crossed angles. He bit down on his bottom lip and flailed out his arms, swimming towards the edge. Another bite, this one lower on his leg but deeper, severing muscle. The next four fish hit his body higher, tearing into his abdomen. He tasted arterial blood in the water, his own, and something worse. He realized one of the Phyllolepis had bitten through a loop of intestine, spilling acid and waste into the pool.
Silas reached up and felt the tile ledge at the end of the pool. He pulled himself up, the fish still attached, and fell to the dry tiles. He felt himself fading as he crawled through the glass doors. The fish ate, devouring him, working themselves inside his body, traveling up his digestive tract.
On the other side of the pool, Occhialini wrestled Fitcher’s remains from the water and dragged the corpse out the doorway.
Silas’s eyes grew hot. He knew he was dying—and changing. Out over the balcony he saw the long driveway leading down to the street.
The lead chef, his coat stained with blood, stumbled past the estate’s gates and headed out into the city.
Silas closed his eyes and felt them liquefy.
The last human thoughts that flickered through his head before death and prehistoric instinct took over were directed to Occhialini. I lied. I did write that paper on metabolic relativism. Maybe you didn’t understand it. So here it is, served up cold: You really are what you eat. And you know what? If I can control my actions even a little bit after I die, I promise you this: I will hunt you down, I will eat you, and I will be you.
* * * *
Arch Enemy
by
Glen Held
“Tell me again about the dream, Stan,” Joey said, his enormous frame taking up the entire office doorway.
I sighed; Joey always wanted to hear our plans for the future when he didn’t want to concentrate on other things. That was okay this time since we hadn’t had a customer for the last two hours and he’d just about cleaned everything up. Not that there was much to clean. Ever since the new highway opened, traffic in our little out of the way franchise was a quarter of what it had been and, at this time of night, virtually non-existent.
“It’s like this,” I began, “as soon as we save enough money and I graduate college, we’re going to open our own restaurant. It won’t be a crummy little franchise like this dump. It’ll be a real restaurant, a nice place where people can sit down and enjoy a good meal. It’s going to be big, biggest restaurant you’ve ever laid eyes on and the most beautiful, too.”
“And we’re going to be the bosses, right?” he asked.
“Right,” I said, and he smiled.
“Thanks, Stan, that’s all I wanted to hear,” Joey said. “You’re a good friend.”
And, still smiling, he was gone.
At twenty-seven past midnight, Joey returned to my office. I knew that was the time since I had been staring at the cell phone display and counting down the minutes until I could shut down this miserable place for the night. The cell was Joey’s which I had borrowed because I’d forgotten mine.
I sighed. “What now?”
“There’s a guy knocking at the front door,” he said.
“Tell him to go to the drive-thru.”
Joey shrugged and left. Although franchise rules called for a minimum of four on duty at night, there was only the two of us. Haradakis, the owner, paid Joey and me extra for that, but only enough to keep us from complaining.
Twelve thirty-two. I put down my car keys that I’d been playing with and decided to check my emails on Haradakis’s computer. Two minutes later, I looked up from the machine. Joey had returned.
“I told him like you said, but he won’t go away,” Joey told me, “and I think there’s something wrong with him. He looks sick.”
Joey moved aside as I got up. It’s been that way since we met in elementary school. In our relationship, I’m the boss; the brains to his brawn. I watch out for him and he has my back.
With Joey lumbering behind me, I walked toward the front of our small restaurant where a figure was knocking at the door. “Inside’s closed,” I yelled. “Only drive-up’s open.” But the guy didn’t listen. Instead, he started to yank harder at the locked doors. I got a good look at him. “Ugh!” He wore clothes way too big for him and he looked like he’d spent the better part of the summer in a dumpster.
“Should I call the cops?” Joey asked and fumbled around in his pocket. “Where is . . . . Oh yeah, you have my cell.”
“Joey, we call the cops and we’ll never be left here alone again,” I said, although if traffic didn’t pick up, the restaurant would soon be closed anyway. “We—” I looked back at the bum and saw the door starting to come off its hinges under the constant pulling. If that door broke, Haradakis would take it out of my paycheck or maybe just fire me outright. And I wouldn’t put it past him to blackball me from working anywhere around here again. No way was I going to let that happen. I moved forward and opened the door.