Monsters of the Week

Shot Caller

Hectór shook his head as the Renault pulled away from the pump, obviously in the wrong direction, and reversed field in front of the semi trailer sliding in in a spray of gravel, barely avoiding getting crushed like a beer can. French plate, and the driver spoke Spanish like a German. What the hell was this world coming to, that someone like that could just pull up to a gas station here in the mountains like nothing, like they belonged here? The semi truck hadn't pulled in to one of the gas berths, so he headed back inside; the rain was picking up again, and if he didn't have to, he'd rather deal with that twit Emir than the storm.

Inside the minimart, Emir was playing with his phone again, which wasn't so bad since there were no customers in, but Hectór knew from experience that even if there were, he'd probably still be chopping up fruits or throwing birds around or whatever it was he did instead of making sure customers could find stuff and weren't shoplifting, and he couldn't shake the feeling that these kids would probably get the DTs if their phone battery ever ran out. At least it looked like he'd paid for the godawful "energy" "drink" he was sipping on; it had taken him a while to convince Emir that the store stock was not just for free, and that he had to pay retail instead of the discounted case rate if he wanted to drink stuff in the store. Had he been that dumb when he was a kid? Maybe, but he certainly hadn't looked that dumb: in his day, hats went on your head, not perched on top of your hair, and you certainly didn't shove goddamned backgammon pieces through your earlobes.

Emir hadn't looked up from his phone when the bell attached to the door rang, so Hectór tried to get his attention. "Hey." He still didn't look up. "Hey. Did you put more ice in the slurpee machine? It was running low, right?"

"Checkaaa," Emir said, swiping something on his game and still not looking up. What the hell did that even mean?

"Hey kid, I am talking to you, and I don't speak whatever language you think you're talking. Did you put more ice in the slurpee machine or not?"

"Yah, I got that, shit's nailed down, brah." He still wasn't looking up from his phone, and Hectór couldn't make out exactly what he was trying to say, but it sounded like he'd taken care of it, maybe, and it wasn't like anyone was going to come in looking for a cold drink in this weather anyways.

"Ok, if you say you did, I'll hold you to that. I'm going to go work on the lift in the second inspection bay, give me a yell if you get stuck on something or if someone needs their gas pumped." Emir barely nodded, still absorbed in his game, but Hectór was through with trying to deal with him, and he went out through the service door into the open garage. The hydraulic lift in the second bay had been balky for a while, but he didn't get a lot of time to work on figuring out why, or how to start fixing it, and it wasn't like they ever needed to have more than one car up on the lifts in the garage at any one time.

The doors of the garage bays were open, of course, advertising that anyone who needed some work could pull up and start negotiating on a price, and Hectór noticed that the semi was still parked out in front, not quite blocking the bays off from the road, but definitely getting in the way of anyone who might be looking for a garage going past. It was a weeknight and raining hard, about to blow up into a real storm and a half, though, so it wasn't likely that someone was going to come by. The driver of the semi, it looked like, was walking around in circles frantically poking at his cell phone; that was kind of pointless up here, miles away from any tower and tucked into the shadow of the mountains. Even the emergency repeaters along the A-52 didn't reach over here, and it was just as well, or he'd never get Emir out of his damned Facechat or Snaptime or whatever. The lights in the garage flickered, and the driver threw up his hands and stuffed his phone back down his overalls, then ran pell-mell in the direction of the minimart.