Welcome to the Splatter Club II by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Blood Bound Books
Published: 2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

HELL COMES TO THE BURGER HUT

MATT WEBER

A portly family of four sits at the front window of the Burger Hut, each of them stuffing their faces. The restaurant staff appears shorthanded—only three workers in sight, and they’re all buried in their duties.

These hicks won’t know what hit them.

My wife sits alone stationed at a corner table across the lobby, pretending to sip a fountain drink. She gives me a wink. Jet-black hair, deep blue eyes, and a smile to charm a snake. Natalie possesses a beauty that can leave a man speechless. I’m lucky to have her. She’s the love of my life and my top operative.

We’re stationed off I-65 in a suburban podunk called Trapper Valley, Alabama. I selected this place for its proximity to the freeway, but also because of its disgusting everyday Pax Americana.

Fast-food lovers are treated to cheap, wobbly plastic chairs scattered around eight rickety foldaway tables. Two condiment islands divide the lobby’s black-and-white checkered floor from the long cashier’s counter. Along the glass-paned front wall squats a row of three dining booths with a captain’s view of the interstate on-ramp.

At the table next to us, a skinny boy with a gawky face takes a seat across from a chubby girl with acne. The teenagers hold hands and close their eyes. They bow their heads and mumble something.

Amen, he says.

The kid removes a small carton from a greasy paper sack, places it in front of him and opens the top. The smell of cooked meat clouds the air. He plunges a fork into his chili dog. Visions of slaughterhouses and offal piles rush through my mind. I hear the squealing of pigs and the baying of dying cattle. I see the glassy, terror-filled eyes of the animals, and see their gaping, pleading mouths calling for help that will never come.

The boy lifts up a plug of the frank as a brown lump of spiced beef plops off the fork. He shoves the bite onto his tongue and chews with his mouth open, smacking his food as juice runs downs his chin.

A gray-haired man in a leather jacket walks through the Burger Hut’s front door. He greets the woman at the register, “Afternoon, Mabel.”

“Howdy, Mayor!” Mabel pushes her bifocals back on her nose and flashes the man a grin.

This is a huge stroke of luck. With a politician in the fold, we can count on a wall-to-wall news blitz. They call that kind of publicity “earned media,” and it has more reach than any paid advertisement.

The only other people present are two old biddies having coffee and a loner with a scruffy beard and hunting jacket. He’s the type to carry a pistol under that jacket, so I watch him like a hawk.

The time is prime, because the mayor and Mabel are distracted in conversation, and I can tell by Natalie’s expression we’re on the same page: start with the big fish; don’t let him get away.

From her seat, she gives me a glance, one eyebrow raised.

I respond with a nod.

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