Page 7 of Baiting Kong

“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.

Most days he didn’t believe that, but this morning he worried that he was making the situation worse. His teeth clacked together as he snapped his mouth shut and moved to open the register, glad Mrs. Martinez had made it to the back and hopefully locked the door to the office where her husband had been. As he did, the robber turned his attention away from the guy by the motor oil, who chose that moment to charge him.

Axel hit the floor when they started wrestling over the gun, so when the first shot went off, he didn’t see anything but the tile. There were two more shots before the sirens came, the crash of something falling over, and items hitting the ground, rolling, and exploding.

In the chaos that followed, shattering glass mixed with yelling, it was the cries of pain and groaning that drew Axel from behind the counter. Through the front window he could see theblue and red lights, but no color was as bright as the puddle of blood slowly creeping across the floor as it oozed out of Ms. Esperanza; a mom who often dropped in with her son to get a treat after school. A burst gallon of milk lay on the floor beside her, white mixing with crimson, both flowing around the loaf of bread and the bananas she’d dropped.

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