Chapter 10- Of Eavesdropping and the Importance of Phones

Author's Note: Well, I had planned on this nearing more along the lines of 3,000 words or so, but you can blame my auntie dearest. I thought I should put something out for today- and since I don't know how long the omg-you're-leaving-for-college Lifetime story of the week drama dinner is going to last, I thought I could put this out into the world. Sorry. I seriously wish she would get a clue and quit bugging me with her empty promises and damn bratty, spoiled kids, but alas, it is MY time she must eat up, along with yours. I cannot say that to anyone else but you, my people, so enjoy the little slice that is the hell my life is becoming. My relatives seem to think that the last full week I have on planet Shitsville is reserved for sob time. Augh.

At any rate, enjoy.

-- Mad Red Queen

When he finally came to the entrance of the strange, abandoned-looking gas station, he believed that by all means he should have been foaming at the mouth. Gerald was exhausted, feeling lonesome, and still just slightly high off of the realization that not only had he survived a car crash that should have killed him, but he had found a building that was the first one he had seen in hours on the road.

After the ecstasy of realizing that he had found the building in the first place, thoughts that what he was walking into was actually just some old mess of a gas station were roughly pushed out of his mind. He could, after all, only handle so many set-backs all at once before he would snap.

As he walked into the building, he began to become aware of his surroundings as his eyes adjusted to the, he had believed on first entering, unlit darkness. The second hint, other than the lack of lighting, that the building was abandoned was the apparent lack of air conditioning. Surely nobody who would live out in the middle of nowhere in this desert would survive without some air conditioning...

Looking around, he finally allowed his eyes to adjust to the deep gloom of the place. It took him a few seconds of blinking and trying to make out what was in the room before he caught sight of the soft glow of a small collection of freezers that were what a person would expect in the frozen section of a convienience store.

He sighed, relieved at the sight of the softly glowing piece of electricity. If there was still some form of electricity in this place, chances were good that there was somebody still here. That much was obvious, even to him.

As we walked over to the freezers, he nearly knocked into one of the shelves that stood up from the floor. As he brushed off the near accident, he saw the quantity of dust that lined everything on the shelf. Curious, Gerald picked up the box of what he could just barely identify as Bran Flakes, looking for the expiration date. After rubbing a thick skin of dust off, he read it. It had expired in May. Twenty years ago.

Gerald threw the box back down on the shelf, and wondered what twenty year old breakfast cereal would look like. He didn't want to think about what it would taste like. He walked past the shelves and to the first freezer he could reach. Opening the freezer wasn't quite the relief he had imagined. Obviously, the freezer, along with the rest of the place, had aged a great deal. There was just barely a chill coming out of the opened freezer.

Inside of the freezer were cartons of milk. While they looked newer, he nevertheless did not want to pick one of the cartons up. The smell of spoiled milk would most likely do the job that the sight of a corpse in a car had been unable to do before, and make him throw up all over the dusty, sand-layered linoleum floor of the gas station.

Grunting, he shut the freezer's door, moving to the one on the right of it. Opening it, he saw that it housed a great number of water bottles. His heart leapt in his chest.

He looked down at the lukewarm bottle he held in his hand. Reaching in, he removed one of the biggest bottles and replaced it with the lukewarm bottle. The bigger bottle wasn't as cold as he would have liked, but it cooled his hands nicely.

Sighing, Gerald pressed the water bottle to his forehead. He stood there with it on his forehead for a while, enjoying the sensation. As he did, his thoughts had stilled into a pool of contentment. It allowed him to grow accustomed to the deep silence of the building. Or, at least, what he had believed to be silent.

Beyond the big doorway that lead, he had guessed, deeper into the store, Gerald heard the buzz of a conversation that had already been winding through for, probably, awhile. Hearing the voices, he took soft steps towards the doorway, trying to be as quiet as possible. He crouched near the wall to the left of the doorway, and tried to listen to what he could.

The first thought he had was that somebody had a TV turned on somewhere beyond the doorway. As he heard the voices, though, he became aware that he was listening in on a conversation.

"...you ought'na consider just where you belong when it all'll happen." a strangely accented voice said. It sounded powerful to Gerald.

"But what are you saying?" another voice, aged, exhausted-sounding answered back. "This is insane... she set up that place like it ought ta be. You an' the boys take care of huntin'. She took care of all of ya." when he spoke again, his voice sounded as though it held a challenge in it. "Or did ya forget?"

The voice that had sounded intimidating and powerful spoke back. "It has been years..." the voice lowered, so much so that Gerald could not hear what was said, with the exception of the rumble of the whispering voice talking. The voice finally raised up to a level that Gerald could hear "...and anything either of you had ta'gether has to be dead by now. Ya must believe that, 'least."

The old man spoke then. He sounded more resolute. "Some bonds can't be killed. I think you know that, Jupe. So, why are ya here, when you knew all along I was gonna tell ya that?"

"Old man," Jupe said, anger rising in his voice. "make no 'stake. She will either be thrown out, or she will be hunted. She's too past her old self ta lead anymore. An' she's been feedin' us this lie since a few months 'go- she said that she's got it in good that our next leader is comin' in. No, wait, that's not exactly what she said," the voice sounded cruel as it turned into a laugh. The sound of the voice laughing made Gerald feel as though someone had begun to rub him all over with pieces of sand paper. "it was more like, "the comin' of a great lightenin' storm will bring the next destined leader of the Scorpion clan. The Mother clan." she's lost whatever it is that made her a leader, and she's jus' makin' up nonsense now." he laughed again, then spoke, bitterness plain in his voice. "An' the sad thing is, mos' of us are believin' her."

"She's never let you down before..." the old man said. Even to Gerald, who was fighting to listen, he sounded uncertain of himself- and frightened. "she's saved you guys many times from the other drifter clans... if it wasn't for her, you guys would have been-"

"I know what we would have been, if not for her," the powerful voice snarled. "she had her time ta be a great leader- but not anymore!"

Gerald had not been paying attention to what he had been sitting next to as he eavesdropped on the bizarre conversation. What he did not know was that as he listened in on the two voices, his left arm, which had unconsciously reached out to try to rest against the wall that he thought was right next to him, had actually hit a large mirror that had been resting near on the wall. The floor, dirty linoleum, did not stop the frame as the mirror began to slip suddenly off of the wall. Its bottom end slid out suddenly, hitting Gerald, scaring him more than hurting him.

Gerald yelped.

Gerald turned to look behind him, then around him, at first not comprehending what had caused the movement so close to him. As he settled down, he became aware of the deep silence that had replaced the talking that he had heard before. When he finally heard a voice speak from inside of the doorway finally, it was the more frightening man's voice that Gerald heard.

"What th' fuck was that?"

Gerald thought he was in some kind of horrific nightmare when he heard the footfalls that neared the doorway. He didn't think as he slammed his hand over his mouth- to stop from screaming or crying out- and scuttled backwards, past all of the freezers, then behind the shelf on the side of the store he was nearest to- like a spider. As soon as he got behind the shelf, he crouched low, not daring to peek at the person who he had heard walk into the room.

He waited, barely drawing in breaths for fear of being heard. Waited. And waited.

Then, finally: "Musta been one o' your mice."

"More like rats." the voice of the older man replied sarcastically.

The voices disappeared back into the doorway, too far away for Gerald to hear them as they continued talking. Not that Gerald cared anymore- he now cared too much about getting the hell out of the Twilight Zone he was in than hearing anymore of the bizarre conversation.

He didn't know how to go about it, though. Planning was not something Gerald did beyond the extent of what to pick up at the video store. And it did not help that Gerald was as shaken as he was, sitting behind a shelf, where he hoped that he was well and out of sight. He finally did come to the painful decision that he had to choose what was most important then- needing to stay inside, or finding a way to beat a retreat as fast and as quietly as possible.

A phone. That thought gave him hope.

They had to have a phone somewhere in the old building- and as long as it wasn't in the back room...

Gerald waited a moment before he turned and sat up to look around the shelf and around at the interior of the store. From where he was, he could see nothing that even looked remotely like a phone. No wall phone, nothing on the counter where the cash register was...

His eyes were drawn to the area where he had sat next to the large mirror and had listened in on the two men talking. Above where he had been sitting was a wall phone. His jaw nearly dropped to the floor. How was it that he hadn't noticed it?

Remembering to keep as quiet as possible, Gerald started to walk across the floor to the phone, crouching low to the floor. The fear of one of the men from before walking out of the back area as he went across the room was an overriding fear. Each footfall he executed was careful and painfully slow. When he finally reached the other side of the room, nobody had come out of the back area, and he had not caused any noises that would have brought any of the men out to investigate. He did not hesitate as he sat up from his crouch and grabbed onto the yellowed plastic of the phone. --