Page 4

(Axel)

“Come on, Pops, let’s get you back to bed,” Axel encouraged.

“You don’t need ta get me nuthin’ but another beer,” his father snarled, slapping at his hands as Axel tried to help him up.

Axel grabbed hold of his sweaty, crusty shirt anyway and dragged him away from the puddle of puke he was about to faceplant in.

“I said get off me, you ungrateful little shit.”

“Ungrateful?” Axel snarled, hauling him all the way to the stale-smelling bedroom, where everything smelled of spilled beer and cigarette smoke. “Would you rather pass out in a pile of puke again?”

“Pass out wherever the hell I please,” his pops grumbled, but most of the fight had gone out of him now, and his words were starting to slur together more. “This is my place. My place. Don’t you come up in here tellin’ me what to do. I’m your father; I make the rules here. I make the rules.”

“Yeah, pops, you make the rules, and one of them is that I bring in my half of the bills,” Axel reminded him. “So I need to get to work.”

“Don’t forget the goddamn milk this time,” his father grumbled from behind him as he left the room, whatever else he had to say muffled behind cheap wood dotted with several holes from his fists.

The door hung crooked again. Might be a good idea to try and find one at the salvage store before this one came down completely.

Last time it had taken the old man months to get a replacement, treating Axel to a view of him and his on-again, off-again girlfriend going at it more times than he could count.

The worst had been when she’d spotted him slinking past on his way to the bathroom and drunkenly called out for him to join them.

As if there was any scenario someone could dream up to make that happen.

The gas station didn’t pay enough to let him sock away much cash, not after he’d forked over his half of the bills and covered anything his old man missed when he was busy throwing his paycheck away on booze and bets at the casino.

Even when he did get lucky, he just pissed that away too, instead of investing in the materials to fix the place before it fell in on their heads.

It just sucked that there was no getting out of this trailer.

And no time to fix anything for breakfast, not that there was much left in the fridge anyway, just two cracked eggs in a carton and a potato with eyes sprouting from it that he didn’t have time to peel or dice to fry up.

He grabbed the bag from the Frosted Flakes box and the inch of cereal and dust it held at the bottom, eating it on his walk to work.

It wasn’t enough to fill his belly, but at least there was something in it to slow down the gnawing feeling he’d woken up with.

That burger he’d scarfed at the end of yesterday’s shift hadn’t really been enough to carry him through to morning, but at four dollars a pop, he hadn’t had enough in his pocket for two.

But at least today was payday, and Mrs. Martinez and her husband, who owned the combination gas station-grocery store, always paid him in cash because they knew he didn’t have a bank account.

He was grateful to them for that too, since the check-cashing place he’d have had to use always demanded eight percent to cash something.

That sixteen bucks might not seem like a lot to some, but the two hundred dollars he made each week rarely stretched as far as he needed it to.

He'd rather hand that sixteen dollars back to Mrs. Martinez and take home a gallon of milk, a pound of ground beef, and a box of pasta he could use to make supper for him and his pops. Might soak up enough of the beer in the old man’s belly to put him in a good mood, maybe even enough to play a card game the way they used to.

He had that on his mind as he started his day, stocking shelves and rotating products until the older stuff was in the front and the newer in the back, so things stayed fresh.

They didn’t have a lot of loss, but from time to time something expired on the shelf.

There was always a sheet to fill out with product removal; it helped Mr. Martinez decide what to order and what to change out, so the shelves stayed filled with the things the people in the community needed and used.

When he finished, he did the same with the coolers and changed out the price tags for this week’s sales while Mrs. Martinez manned the registers and the pumps, happily engaging with regulars and occasionally giving directions to the Merchant’s Market when out-of-towners couldn’t locate it with their GPS.

Market Square did have a unique location, but that was part of what made it such a special part of the town.

It could only be accessed through one of the shops on the four blocks that bordered it, and the reason for that was easy to understand once you stepped into the space.

The back of each building opened to it, with shop owners lining the backs of the buildings with products from inside their shops, while other tables filled the center, selling everything from mini-pies and honey to handmade jewelry, woven baskets, and original artwork proudly displayed by the artist who’d created them.

Pottery, stained glass—it was all so beautiful, too beautiful for him to risk bringing a piece home.

Even in his room it wouldn’t have been safe from one of his old man’s more ferocious benders.

“Axel, come here a moment, please,” Mrs. Martinez called.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied as he set aside the half-empty case of pop he’d been unloading to hurry up to the front, where she stood, looking concerned. “Is everything okay?”

There were only three people in the store: Ms. Esperanza, he knew well, a blond guy with mismatched eyes who looked vaguely familiar, and a bigger blond he’d never seen before.

Had Mrs. Martinez caught one of them shoplifting?

Damn, he really hoped it wasn’t the big guy in the leather jacket.

He had a patch that didn’t match the local motorcycle club.

The Rollin’ Jokers had a distinctive backpiece with a demonic jester’s face; the one this guy was wearing was a snarling, three-headed dog that looked pissed as hell.

“I’m not sure, but look, there on the camera. Is that man wearing a mask?”

As Axel bent to look where she was pointing, a prickle of unease ran up the back of his neck. It was the middle of summer, for fuck’s sake; there was no good reason for having a mask like that on.

“Get to the back and tell Mr. Martinez,” Axel said, hurrying to lock the door. He made it three steps before it burst open, as two men they hadn’t spotted on the camera, black ski masks covering their faces too, stepped inside with guns drawn.

“Nobody better fuckin’ move!” One man yelled.

“Get your hands in the air,” the other demanded.

The sheer cliché movie bad guy declaration might have been funny if it weren’t for the guns being waved around the store.

“Make up your minds,” the guy with the hound on the back of his jacket said. “Do you want us to put our hands in the air, or do you not want us to move, ‘cause we can’t do both?”

Great, this motherfucker had less of a filter than Axel did. Happy motherfuckin’ joy-joy to him; they were all gonna die. Ten o’clock on a Friday fuckin’ morning, and from the way these guys were twitching and glancing around, they were tweaked outta their fuckin’ minds.

Next time Brandon asked him to switch shifts, he’d tell him to go to hell. If he lived to see another shift, anyway.

“Just, just don’t fuckin’ do anything!” The guy on the right hissed.

“Empty the register!” The man on the left demanded. “And, and no hitting buttons and shit either.”

Oh, fuck, the guy couldn’t even remember the word alarm.

“Shove everything in a bag and pass it over, and toss a couple packs of cigarettes in too,” the guy on the right chimed in.

“You want menthols or regular?” The guy with the hound on his back said.

He’d inched a little in front of the guy with the mismatched eyes, Scout, that was his name, Axel had seen him around the Joker’s compound. Big guy’s arms were crossed over his chest, fingers inching towards the seam in the side of that jacket like he was about to go for a piece too.

Okay, so maybe Axel had been thinking the exact same thing, but self-preservation kept him from saying it out loud.

Clearly, the guy with the jacket didn’t feel the same, since he was boldly leaning against the shelf where they kept the motor oil.

From that cocky smirk on his face, Axel thought he was itching for everything to go to hell.

“Shut the fuck up! You just shut up! Don’t say another word! Do you hear me?” The guy on the left bellowed, swinging the gun from Axel to the guy with the jacket, who didn’t even flinch when it was pointed his way.

“Half the town hears you,” Scout said, sounding as smart-assed and unbothered as the one in the jacket. “You might wanna take it down a notch.”

“Just put the money in the bag!” the second robber demanded, turning half his attention back towards Axel, who’d already hit the silent alarm panic button the moment he’d ducked back behind the, hopefully bulletproof, partition meant to separate the cashier from the customers.

“You want paper or plastic?” Scout grumbled, even as Axel reached for a plastic bag.

“Surprise me,” the robber on the left said.

“Sure, how about I toss in a hand grenade free of charge?” Axel muttered as he stuffed in a handful of tens.

Preservation must have decided to take a little trip south because Axel was suddenly feeling bold…or as arrogant as the two men in the aisle.

Shit.

Cockiness will get you killed.