Horror and Thriller Fiction posted July 26, 2024 |
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A cart pusher gets more than he bargained for.
Carry Out
by Zach Gallows
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.![](https://www.fanstory.com/usr/1024288/Designer.jpeg)
Every small town in America has the same carbon-copied supermarket with the same parking lot. In every one of these parking lots, closest to the door, is always a large, blue and white handicapped zone. It never fails that much of the time, these zones are occupied by vehicles that have no business using such a space.
JD watched the minute hand on the clock hanging above the breakroom door inch ever closer to 9pm. Only forty-five minutes to go until he could rip off his piss-yellow smock and peel out of the backlot. The tires on his Monte Carlo would burn hot rubber as he flew by Katie Wallace on her way out. Chicks dug that kind of thing, he reckoned. Katie was a dime to be sure.
JD crumpled up the empty paper cup he had been slamming pre-workout laced water out of and headed back to the front of the Cash-King superstore. Cash-King was the only place in town to get everything under one roof and, hell, it was the only place in this little backwater to get anything. All little towns had their own versions of The Grocery.
Forty minutes to go now as he walked out across the lot in the humid summer air. Sweat at once started dripping from his pits and other unsavory regions. JD was at least grateful for nightfall; he had been pushing carts in the roasting sun all afternoon. Pretty shitty work but the bills don’t pay themselves and it was about the only job he could get right out of high school. Fuck going to college.
He started at the far end of the lot with the drifting derelicts abandoned in the mad dash to flee home and zig zagged his way back towards the building. After nesting about six carts together (he’d found six to be his soft limit and could do eight on a good day) he pulled out a long tow strap from his smock’s kangaroo pouch and attached it to the rear cart. JD moved to the front of the makeshift locomotive and slung the strap over one shoulder, leaning in and using his bodyweight to pull it along.
He could chain up to about twenty carts at the same time using the strap like this. That meant it would only take about two full trips to clear out the lot. The buggies rattled and bumped over the uneven, cracked asphalt on their final voyage hope. At the loading bay left of the grocery side entrance JD checked his phone for the time.
Thirty minutes to go. He would have to slow his stride to drag the last load out until he could knock off for the day. It was about a five-minute walk back to the breakroom to hang up the ol’ smock.
Something at the front of the building caught his eye.
Loafing in the wide, blue handicap space was a large, ancient box on four bald tires. Metal lettering on the rear read “Astro,” whatever that meant. The van itself was not unusual. IT had lived in the spot all day like a silent sentry keeping a vigilant eye on the sliding grocery doors. JD was used to seeing vehicles camped out for a full day, or even multiple days. In such a small town the manager did not want word getting around that he towed vehicles.
No, what had caught his eye was the bubbling smoke coughing out of the rusty, wagging tailpipe. Dirt and grime caked to the windows completely obscuring the interior. A taillight was busted open exposing its wiry innards and the front bumper was hanging limp on one side supported by duct tape and a prayer. Fastened above the rear bumper (absent of any such handicap indicators, JD noticed) was a Maine license plate reading 34T M3.
Long drive to the Midwest for such a rundown beater.
A burst of static roused JD from his revelry and he suddenly remembered the walkie-talkie hanging loosely from his back pocket.
"Courtesy associate," the voice bleated in the monotonous tone of one who was versed in repeating the same lines all day. JD pulled the radio from its clip and held it up a little way from his mouth and pressed the talk button.
"Go ahead," he answered knowing full well his night was about to get a little longer.
"We have a carry out on five, Jacob," it was Katie’s voice. JD hated being called by his Christian name but somehow it sounded okay on Katie’s lips.
"Be right there," JD responded and let the transmit button go, heaving out a tired sigh. He returned the walkie to its butt clip and headed back inside, checking his watch.
Twenty minutes to go.
The overhead fluorescent lights made JD squint after being out in the engulfing darkness. Register five sat at the far side of the front end against the wall encasing the tobacco bullpen. It was the only register left open this late and the only place in town other than the Gas’n’Grab on Route Nine to grab a pack of smokes.
JD had recently traversed into the world of spitless chew. Much less messy and he didn’t have to lug around an empty Gatorade bottle he pumped full of stinking brown goop.
Katie was out of the bullpen leaning on an overstuffed cart filled with all manner of different goods. It looked like a last-minute survival haul to escape the coming apocalypse.
"Kids just don’t show the right respect these days," the voice came from a customer JD hadn’t seen over the register divider. He was lounging languidly in a motorized chair. "Not like you, my dear."
"Anything I can do to help," Katie said back, her long white-blond hair falling in bountiful waves down her back. Piercing baby blue eyes looked up and spied JD walking across the front of the store. "Oh good, here he comes. You have a great night, hon."
"You as well love," the old man said, and his head turned stiffly toward JD with the hungry eyes of a lion moving in for the kill. A faltering smile was drooping down into a disappointed smirk buried beneath a thick copse of bristly white beard that looked like dirty snow. He was morbidly overweight in a stretched AC/DC t-shirt that rode up to his navel. On his head was a leather cap that read POW-MIA and under that Vietnam. His left eye drifted listlessly to the left like it couldn’t decide on what to look at.
What caught JD’s attention the most was the tartan quilt covering most of the vast thighs and hiding what had to be the stump of a leg since only one croc-clad foot rested on the cart. Veiny flesh bubbled up through the rubber holes like boiling cheese.
"You ready?" JD asked in a voice that did not really broach a response. He did little to obscure the fact that he was checking the time on his phone.
Fifteen minutes left. This guy better be quick.
"I guess I am." The old man’s voice dripped with venom as the façade of joviality disappeared. "Getting late out there. Don’t much like driving in the dark." The good eye flashed Katie a lurid wink that she returned amicably.
Feeling his temper rising, JD grabbed the heavy cart and shoved it toward the door.
Over the monotonous drone of the electric chair’s struggling motor, JD could hear the old man grumbling and muttering under his breath. It sounded like an argument one would have in front of a mirror and ended with what sounded like, "Better than the girl."
Out of earshot of the cute cashier and bouncing over the threshold of the store, the old man cocked his head and fixed JD with his good eye. The lame eye gazed stupidly, drifting even farther away and bouncing back like a broken metronome.
"You in some kind a hurry, kid?" The old man asked like he would tease a child. "Got not time for us that came before, huh."
"Look man, it’s late and I get off in ten. Let’s just get this over with and go our own ways."
"Not much for conversation either, then. No respect these days." The old timer hawked a thick loogie onto the crosswalk. "Fought in two wars you know. Left my leg in the damn jungle." He patted the outline of a fat leg ending just above the knee. "Got spit at, cussed at, stabbed at when I come home. Girlfriend left too. Couldn’t deal with a man can’t provide."
They crossed the blue and white striping of the handicap space to the far side of the van. The rear door slid slowly back on mechanical tracks like an ancient tomb opening to reveal deep, dark blackness. JD stifled a retch as an unholy stench assaulted his nostrils. It smelled of dirty socks and rotted meat and something much more corpulent that he could not place.
The inside of the van was like an abyssal chasm filled by a serial hoarder; used soda cups from a number of fast-food joints, plastic grocery bags full of candy wrappers, and crumpled boxes of sugary snack cakes like Little Debra or Mostest. One such bag tumbled forth and burst upon the pavement like a bloated pinata filled with fetid slop.
"Don’ mind my mess."
JD turned at the voice to look at the old man, noting the facetious smiles peaking from underneath the yellow tinged mustache.
"Should be plenty of room in there. Toward the back." The old man said with a phlegmy chuckle.
"Whatever, man." JD scoffed letting his displeasure be known. With little care he began to toss bags of fruits, vegetables, canned goods, chocolatey sweets, and more into the open pit of the van. Just get this shit done and get out, he thought to himself.
"I don’t wanna do it again." The old man said loudly to no one in particular but himself it seemed. The light in the vestibule of the store clicked off. Dammit I’ll have to walk around back now.
"NO! I don’t want to. But it must be done," The old man was babbling, and JD did his best to ignore it. "He demands it, though. He hungers and it hurts." JD shot a furtive glance at the old timer and this and stopped short, dropping the load of bags he was about to chuck.
The old, one legged, fat man had discarded the tartan quilt and was balancing on one foot, extending up to his unforeseeable height.
A meaty hand as thick as a ham and just as juicy smashed JD in the face and everything blinked out of sight. He could feel his feet leave the ground from the blow and soared lightly through the air, slamming against the interior of the van. Vision swimming back and forth and seeing double, JD propped himself up on his elbows. The van rocked like a raft on stormy waters as the old man leapt lithely inside, ramming the door along its tracks to enclose them in darkness.
"I wasn’t alone when I crawled out of that jungle." The old voice was solemn in the quiet dark. People will come looking, they’ll see I didn’t clock out. My car is still in the goddamn lot!
"He saved me," the old man said, "And all he asks for in return was this. A small price to pay, every once in a while."
The orange glow of an electric lantern grew out of the blackness until JD could see the flabby, hairy jowls and the lame, wandering eye that was pointed all the way to the ground.
"Look man," JD rasped through uncontrollable heavy breaths, "I don’t know what sick shit you’re into, but my friends will be out here looking for me. Any minute now they’ll find us."
"Then it’s good this don’t take too long. Wouldn’t want your cutesy friend getting hurt.” Sausage fingers gripped a grubby, tied off pantleg and pulled it up to reveal a stump of mottled, sickly-looking flesh. A maze of pulsing veins and gangrenous green scabs covered the stump, and a foul-smelling sludge began seeping from the tip.
A hole split open at the nub looking like the head of a pecker.
JD could feel the deli burrito he’d had for lunch come lurching up at the sight of creamy pus and the smell of roadkill in the summer sun. Vomit exploded from his lips and covered his lovely smock, filled the stomach pouch with brown chunks. Something poked out of the pecker hole.
"The fuck," JD gasped as a fresh round of bile issued from his sore esophagus. The protuberance started to squelch as it elongated, sounding like a boot slowly being pulled from the mud. It kept on growing, feeling it’s way across the floor of the van like a blind man’s cane. JD pulled his feet in as it neared.
"I can hear him always in my head," the old man whispered, "It was hard at first. Didn’t quite know what I was doing at the time. Felt sick to my stomach when they cried. Most shit themselves before it’s over."
The fleshy appendage stretched over JD’s sneaker and crept up his leg like an overeager teen. He could see the tentacle was tipped with a hard, chitinous pointing hollowed out in the center, like a scorpion tail.
It reached his crotch and he recoiled at the feeling of the proboscis mashing into his junk then it pulled back and reared up as a cobra.
"Please," was all JD had time to say before the mucusy tendril darted forward and he felt a sharp pain stab into his sternum.
"Don’t talk," the old man’s voice now oozed with elation, "it’ll make it hurt more." He was moaning as he spoke, a twisted lover in the heat of forbidden passion. The thing began to pulse and throb, the veins pumping as it was sucking out his chest.
Whatever it was, was drinking him.
Breathing became hard and shuddery. More of his life essence flowed into the fetid stump and he could feel his body get lighter, his vision fuzzing out of focus.
"Not long now," the voice was barely audible in the encroaching dark like it came from the other end of a long tunnel. The world began to spin circles around and around. I shoulda left this fucking town, JD thought before everything shut off as the lights went out. He slumped down the wall and as the thing leeched the last of his life and the old man cooed into the nothingness.
"That’s better."
Katie Wallace and the rest of the evening crew had called the police when they found JD crumpled up like old wrapping paper and stuffed into the parking lot trash bin. His body had been drained and the brittle bones had snapped like twigs. The detective had many questions for the crew, but nobody could seem to recall what the old man had looked like or what he had driven. Some said fat and tall in a big pickup, others short and skinny in a tiny clown car. The only thing that could be agreed upon was that he had been camped out in the handicap space.
Every small town in America has the same carbon-copied supermarket with the same parking lot. In every one of these parking lots, closest to the door, is always a large, blue and white handicapped zone. It never fails that much of the time, these zones are occupied by vehicles that have no business using such a space.
Benji pulled the shutter down over the cart corral, feeling revolted at what he’d heard on break. Two days ago, a body had been found stuffed into a trashcan at a sister-store on the other side of the state. It wasn’t safe for anybody working these days. Benji had hoped to persuade the manager into having the cart pushers work in teams but there just wasn’t enough bodies to go around.
And then something caught Benji’s eye.
An aging derelict van huffed and puffed in the handicap space closest to the store.
A crackle of static burst from the radio clipped to his belt and Benji could hear the voice of the closing manager from far away.
"Benji, we need a carry out."
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