I arrived at Fatty’s Tacos at 9:30pm on the dot. There was a closed sign hanging on the door, but I opened it anyway and saw a group of ten or so men sitting around three tables that were pushed together. They all wore white dress shirts and had neatly combed hair, except for Gerald. He wore the black clergy robes with gold accents running down the middle.
“You made it!” he said when he saw me come through the doors. The faint smell of ground beef and cumin wafted through the air, and seemed to get stronger as I approached the table to sit down.
”Yep,” I grumbled, pulling a chair out. Its legs screeched against the white tile floor. “Just wanna learn more about Jesus.”
”Of course, of course,” Gerald smiled, and the rest of the group followed his lead. Aside from Gerald, everyone else sitting at the table had smooth, bald heads, giving them a uniform, serpentine look. Their crooked smiles didn’t make them look any more appealing. I pretended not to notice.
”Before we begin our lesson, though,” Gerald started, “I was curious about the tattoo on your hand. Did you get that recently?”
He went to grab my hand for examination, but I yanked it away. Shit. I don’t think Anita’s plan had gone as flawlessly as we thought — or maybe it had. I never know with that woman. Her plan could have very well been to get me killed. My heart thumped in my ears, but I maintained a look of calm ignorance.
”Yeah, not too long ago,” I said. “Got too drunk one night and told the guy at the tattoo parlor to make my arm look like a lava lamp. Stupid, I know. It’s one of the reasons I’ve found God — I haven’t had a drink in over two weeks.” Damn, I almost impressed myself with that lie. I hadn’t even planned it — just made it up on the spot.
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“Cut the bullshit, Derrick,” Gerald said in a raspy whisper. The other men around us cackled in unison with their hands over their mouths. Seeing a group of men do something in unison like that was enough to send a shiver down my spine. It’s why I never watched synchronized diving.
“Do you really think we thought you were handing out pamphlets in good faith?” Gerald continued. “If we did, we would’ve slit your throat already. But we know what you are. We’ve read all about you. Or, we hope we have at the very least. We will see soon enough. Come with us, to the walk-in freezer.”
Gerald stood up unreasonably quickly, which startled me, and his gang of silent, bald creeps stood up in the same way a second later. They formed a single file line behind their leader, which sort of reminded me of a kindergarten class, and walked through a swinging side door into the restaurant’s kitchen. Against my better judgment, I followed.
We passed towers of tortillas and refrigerators full of varieties of salsas until we made it to the back of the kitchen, where a heavy door with a latch across the middle sat before us. Gerald unlatched it with a ceremonious flick of the wrist, and a blast of cold hit me, even from a few feet away.
The freezer was almost entirely full of icy boxes of ground beef, shredded chicken, and carne asada, but there was a narrow path down the middle that we could walk through one at a time. I followed the bald creeps from the back of the line, freezing my ass off, wondering if I was willingly walking to my death.
Thinking about what they said to me, I took solace in one thing: they read about me, but hadn’t been told about me, so they must only know about my mark through whatever fucked-up books they keep in their tunnels. They wouldn’t try to kill me immediately, I didn’t think. They weren’t friends of Alec or his buddies, but they could have information about the mark and who created them.
So when Gerald moved a stack of meat boxes to reveal a trapdoor, I followed them down.