A huge, fat, cockroach lazed across the drive-through camera lens outside. It took on prehistoric proportions as it was broadcast waddling across the monitor screen inside. Jack pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
He’d been staring at the drive-through monitor for over three hours without a single customer it was almost midnight, closing time. The cockroach stopped, then turned and ran back the way it came. Too late! A giant thumb crushed the bug against the lens.
Jack froze, then sat bolt upright on his stool, unsure what the hell had happened. He rubbed his eyes again and looked back at the monitor. The remains of the murdered insect were still plastered across the lower half of the screen.
Then Jack saw something, crouched near the menu sign. His heart paused, before pounding so hard it hurt. The man was pale, and thin as a crack whore. He had stringy, dark hair and eyes that looked like solid black orbs on the monitor.
He stared straight at the camera, as if he could see through it, or sense Jack watching through the camera. He slurped the cockroach from his fingers.
Jack shivered as an icy chill descended over him, mixed with nausea. There were never any customers past ten o’clock but Mad-Cow Burger Shack franchises had to maintain company hours. As usual, his cheap ass step mom had sent the crew home and left him to finish the shift alone.
He squeezed his eyes tightly and opened them again. The man was still there. He smiled fiercely at the camera and raised a handgun. Jack heard the shot, then the drive-through monitor went black. Jack’s breath caught in his throat.
This was it. Twenty years since the last robbery in Clark City and it is happening now, one hour short of my twenty-first birthday! Why else would someone shoot out the camera? Only the drive-through camera though, the security cameras still showed on the main monitor.
Jack studied the monitor. The man was avoiding all four security cameras, or else he was gone. There was the tap of metal on glass.
He turned to the drive-through window in time to see the ghostly visitor press his face against it. Jack sat pinned in terror to the stool, his heart marking the seconds, blood rushing through his ears. An image of the baseball bat he kept leaning beside the back door came to mind, but he couldn’t move.
Jack watched, helpless, as the man pushed his snakelike fingers through the crack between the halves of the drive-through window, prying it open. He threaded his small, greasy head through the gap, followed by his shoulders, as he slithered into the restaurant and dropped to the floor.
In seconds, Jack found himself at the foot of the stool, flat on his back, his attacker’s foot in the middle of his chest. He was looking up at the last face he would ever see. The man appeared even more ghostlike this close-up.
He stood over Jack his shoulders slumped forward. His rail-thin arms swung loose at his sides. His right arm tensed. He pointed the barrel of the large automatic
square between Jack's eyes. Jack closed them tight.
He tried to pray, but all he could think about was the fact he would never make love to a woman, or have his first real beer. He’d only ever tasted the watered-down stuff Chuck’s dad gave them when they went to play pool in his bar.
He’d never get to use the plane ticket to Vegas; he'd bought himself for his 21st birthday. He’d never get married, never have kids … he had to stop, or he was going to cry, the last thing he wanted, if this was the end. He swallowed and waited for the man to pull the trigger.
“Open your eyes,” the man hissed.
Jack did. He focused on not pissing himself, since it seemed he might live to be embarrassed about that.
“Get up.” The man waved the gun to indicate that Jack should stand. “You alone?”
“Uh, yeah, my uh step mom is too cheap…”
“Shut up and just nod yes, or no,” the man said.
Jack stood and nodded. The man moved behind him and pressed the hard steel of the gun barrel against Jack’s spine. Jack's arms rose until his hands were even with his head, fingers spread.
He hoped he was doing it right. Was there a wrong way to put your hands up, he wondered.
The man laughed. “Why do people do that? I never tell them to do that, they just do!” He wormed around Jack, swooping low to look up into his face, “Why?”
Jack swallowed, hard. The man peered up at him, lifting his eyebrows and looking up at Jack’s raised hands as if to say, “Well?”
Jack’s mind raced. Who was this person? What did he want? Was his life over less than an hour short of his twenty-first birthday?
He cleared his throat, “I don't know. You don't want me to?”
He was disappointed. If these were his last moments, where was the clarity? The only things he could think of were things he hadn’t done yet. He had been waiting for this one day for something to start, and now it might be too late.
The man waved Jack toward the office. Jack stepped forward, letting his arms drop halfway. He moved them back up as he felt the pressure on his spine increase.
Just co-operate, Jack told himself. At least, that’s what the little cartoon manager had said in the safety video Jack had watched once. He remembered it
clearly, before his very first shift at the Mad-Cow Burger Shack, back when his dad was alive and running the place. What was he, eight at the time?
Just give this guy what he wanted. It would all be over soon. Besides, there was only $40 in the register, not worth being a hero over.
The office was at the back of the kitchen down a grease spattered, plywood
paneled hall. Open storage shelves overflowing with straws, Styrofoam containers and ketchup bottles lined the top half of the walls. The door stood closed.
The man reached around Jack and tried the knob with his right hand. For an instant, jack considered grabbing the arm. The thought of seeing his guts sprayed over the office door stopped him. “Unlock the door, Jack,” the man hissed in his ear. His cold breath was unnerving.
How did this freak know his name, anyway? Jack was certain he had never seen the man before.
Jack fumbled with his belt, his fingers brushing past the holster of the pepper spray can he always wore, ironically, in case of a robbery. He saw someone get Maced once: Carl Weathers, behind the gym in seventh grade. Greg Hickey found his mom’s pepper spray and offered $20 to anybody who would take a blast to the face.
Carl was stupid like that.
“The door, Jack.” The barrel of the gun pressed harder, jerking him back into the moment.
“Okay, but there’s nothing in here. The money’s all in the register.”
Jack found the bulky key ring. He pulled the office key up on its spring-loaded lanyard and unlocked the knob. The door swung inward, and he stepped inside the office.
The tiny room was a converted broom closet, six feet square, with a built-in workstation. Shelves lined the wall, floor to ceiling. Stacks of safety sheet binders, brochures, and unread self-help books filled every surface.
The man slid past Jack leaving a cold, slug-like trail of sweat that soaked through his thin uniform shirt and lay clammy on his skin. The man leaned over the desk and moved aside a stack of manuals to reveal a wall safe. Jack had never seen the safe in the six years he had run the restaurant, hell in the fifteen years he had grown up in this place.
He knew this restaurant like the back of his hand; a restaurant that he would inherit as his father’s sole heir in less than an hour. That safe did not exist and yet, there it was another weird thing to add to the list.
Needle-thin fingers turned the dial, and the door to the safe swung open to reveal a single thumb drive in a clear sandwich bag. The man trembled as he picked it up.
“You know what this is?” he asked with a fierce whisper. His voice rattled in his throat as the words slid out.
Jack shook his head, “No.”
Weren’t these things usually filled with top-secret government plans, or bank account numbers worth billions? Jack almost laughed at the thought. Nothing like that around this place; the Mad Cow was habitually mundane. Until this freak showed up.
“What?” For the first time the man used more than a hiss, and it came out as a shriek. Jack covered his ears. The man chuckled, dangling the bag from his fingers.
He swung it, pendulum like, inches from Jack's nose. “It's the key to the universe.”
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