Page 74 of The End of the World As We Know It

“Y’all want a lift?” asked Derek.

“Nah,” said Mary. “We’ve got one.”

That’s when the two figures emerged from the dark behind them. Large men. Crew cuts and muscle shirts.

A chain rapped against Alan’s skull, splitting his forehead open. A lead pipe cracked against Derek’s knee. They both dropped to the ground, splayed out screaming in the parking lot.

The beating was slow and laborious, both of the crew cuts taking their time, savoring every punch, every kick, as Sheila and Mary cheered them on. “Get ’em!” yelled Mary, clenching her fist and spitting as she yelled. “Rack that fucker!”

“You want this?” asked Sheila, motioning to her body as one of the crew cuts took a breather from whaling on Derek. Derek looked up, shaking his head, left eye already beginning to swell shut. “Yeah, you do, you liar. You wanted this real bad. Too bad you hicks are just some dumbshits too stupid to know your shit from Shinola.”

“Yeah,” said one of the crew cuts, kneeling down next to Derek. “They wasn’t lying about breaking down. But a couple of hicks like you probably had no reason to help out some girls without a little trade.”

“And we weren’t about to let that happen,” said Mary. “No hard feelings.”

“Do we have to kill them?” asked Sheila.

The crew cut beating on Derek looked up, stopping for a moment, cocking his head in confusion. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Yeah,” said the other crew cut. “Do you know what these guys wanted to do to you? Well, whatever it is you think it is, it’s probably way worse than that.”

“Yeah,” said the first. “When they were done with you, you’d likely end up in their freezer, cut into pieces like a deer. You know how thesegood old boysare.”

“We’re not like that,” begged Derek. “We ain’t like that at all.”

Derek’s crew cut kicked him across the face, opening a wide gash. “Shut up, you lying shitkicker.”

“Guys?” a voice offered meekly from around the side of the store. “Guys.”

The four interlopers looked up as a large, burly, tattooed biker stumbled from behind the store. He looked down at his gut, where there was a massive gash, exposing his innards, a fistful of entrails dangling from his hand. “They have a friend.”

At that, the loud chugging scream of a chain saw cut through the quiet afternoon air.

The chain saw swung out from behind the building, cutting the biker in two at the waist. His torso toppled backward, spilling organs out as it did, while his legs crumpled forward to the ground.

Bill emerged, roaring chain saw in hand, machete and hand ax dangling from his tool belt, a sickening smile on his face. “Bet you thought you were pretty smart, having a lookout and all.”

“Smarter than you, hillbilly!” yelled one of the crew cuts, reaching for a .38 Special tucked into his waist. He raised it at Bill, ready to plug him for having killed his friend, only to find he’d been a hair too slow.

The chain saw severed his forearm at the elbow, dropping it to the ground, gun still gripped tightly in hand, as a spray of blood began spurting out like a sprinkler at the speed of his racing heart. For a moment, everyone stared in shock as the crew cut gawked at his dismembered arm. “What the FUCK?!” he shouted as Sheila shrieked behind him.

Those were his last words. The chain saw swung down from overhead, slicing six inches into his chest, bisecting his sternum. He careened backward into Mary, who raised her hands, pushing his limp body from toppling onto her, while stepping back screaming.

The chain saw went into her next, slicing straight through her stomach and out her back, the teeth of it chewing her flesh as it rested in place, spitting a rain of blood that painted a Jackson Pollock across the cinder-block wall of the Food Mart behind her.

“Wrong fucking place, wrong fucking time,” said Bill, before pulling the chain saw from out of Mary and letting her slump to the ground next to her boyfriend.

The remaining crew cut grabbed Sheila by the arm and pulled her back through the shattered front door of the store, both in shock and neither of them thinking straight. Together, they disappeared again into the dark of the mart, only realizing seconds later that there was likely no way out.

Bill cut the engine to the chain saw and called into the store. “You know that part in horror movies when you’re sitting there and the dumb jock and his bitchy girlfriend run towards a house or a cabin and you yell, ‘Don’t go in there! There’s no way out!’ ’Cause I was friends with the guy that owned this place and a lot of kids driving through used to steal beer and run out the back, where their friends were waiting to drive off. So, he added a double lock on that back door, and it requires two keys to open from the inside.”

“Do you always talk so fucking much, you fucking fuck?!” called the crew cut from inside.

Derek stood, then helped Alan to his feet. They were beat to shit, blood running down both their faces, but they had a renewed look of determination. “No,” Derek called into the store. “In fact, I reckon that might be the most number of sentences I’ve ever heard him string together at once.”

Bill smiled, pulling the machete from his belt, and handing it to Derek.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Derek, refusing the offering.