Chuck Schading

This piece recently won a second-place award in the second round of NYC Midnight’s 2024 short story contest. It had to be a thriller /suspense story of no more than 2,000 words featuring a fast-food worker and a traffic jam.

“Jesus H. Christ. Hurry up! We’re starving over here!” barked the voice on the other end of the intercom.

It wasn’t Dane Wilkerson’s fault that the fries weren’t done. 

It wasn’t his fault that he had to tell the guys in the black BMW to pull to the side to wait for their order.  

It wasn’t his fault that he had no money. 

That his wife left him. 

That he’d never see his daughter again.

That his name was Dane Wilkerson now.

That he was in witness protection working as assistant manager of the Happy Burger just off Route 80 in East Bumfuck, Iowa. 

Okay, a few of those were definitely his fault. But when he complained to the FBI about the location and the job? They responded just as politely as he was about to:

 We apologize for the inconvenience.

******

“Brittany, get to the window and give the guys pulling up their drinks and cash them out,” he told the meek, pale-faced girl trying to hide in plain sight near the slushie machine. 

Brittany scrunched up her freckled face and slowly smacked her chewing gum.

“I only did that a couple times, Mr. Wilkerson,” she said. “I don’t know if …”

“Just figure it out!” he yelled. “There’s a line around the friggin’ building, Brittany. The University of Iowa game must have just ended. All hands on deck.”

“What’s that mean?” she asked as she blew a small pink bubble and meandered toward the drive-thru window. 

“Just do it,” Dane muttered as he willed the deep fryer to fry faster.

******

The BMW sat idling in a dark corner of the lot. The windows were heavily tinted but Dane could still make out the silhouettes of four large men inside it. Beyond the lot, headlights filled the main drag as traffic from the game left the road in gridlock.

“Let’s go!” the voice called out.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, guys,” Dane said as he strolled up, counting the minutes until his shift was over. “Your fries are piping hot though and I did throw in some coup ….”

The recognition was instant on both sides.

“Holy fucking shit,” said the driver, an olive-skinned behemoth with shoulders so wide and muscular that they swallowed his neck. “Pauly Petrucci. You fucking rat!”

The scar running across the driver’s fat, crooked nose was unmistakable, especially since Pauly Petrucci was the one who had put it there the night he ran out of options and called the FBI.

The two takeout bags slipped from his hands, hot fries and burgers spilling out onto the pavement like the brains of a crosstown rival who’d just been clipped. 

As Pauly turned to run, Brittany popped her head out of the drive-thru window.

“Um, Mr. Wilkerson?!” she cried out. “I think I need some help in here.”

*****

Despite all his years of smoking and boozing back in Jersey, Pauly was in surprisingly good shape. 

Maybe all this wholesome Midwest living actually has been good for something, he thought as he ran full speed down the street in his brown and orange Happy Burger uniform. 

“I’m gonna blow your fucking brains out, Pauly!” screamed Dante Sparzana, the fittest and youngest of the four and the closest behind. 

Dante, decked out in a flashy white track suit and pristine Jordans, and the other two — was it Sardani and that Irish dope McDermott maybe? — were uncomfortably close already. And there was no doubt what they were reaching for in their waistbands. 

Big Tony, the one with the scar over his nose, the one whose hands had been around Pauly’s throat the day the Sparzanas learned the truth, was far behind, already winded, his custom-made suit threatening to burst at the seams.

To the people stuck in their cars, it may have appeared that Pauly was running aimlessly up and down the street, but he was actually working his way back to the only place that made sense: The Happy Burger. 

Because that’s where his car was. And if he could get to it he had a chance. 

That was the idea, at least.

Three seconds after he shut the door, the car was peppered by a hail of bullets, plastic and glass shattering all around him. 

Thunk! Thunk! … Thunk thunk thunk! … Thunk! Thunk!

“Jesus!” he shouted, tearing the Happy Burger hat and hair net from his head as he ducked, exposing his thinning hair to the elements for the first time all day. 

It was chaos now as dozens of people who had been stuck in traffic and in the drive-thru fled their cars and ran every which way to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, while others screamed and cowered in their vehicles and hoped for the best.

Pauly revved the engine as he spotted Dante, Sardani and McDermott working their way between the cars. Big Tony was surely close by now too, if he hadn’t keeled over from the exertion. 

A few more shots. Thunk thunk thunk. Hissssss. The car lurched under him as both tires on the driver’s side exploded. 

“Fuck this!” Pauly shouted. 

Driving down the sidewalk, even on flat tires, was his only way out now, but before he could even get there, the world spun around him and his senses filled with the sounds of crunching plastic and metal and shattering glass.

He had been clipped by the BMW, Big Tony behind the wheel. Pauly’s car, what was left of it anyway, came to a rest wedged between a crimson sedan and a white SUV in the drive-thru line.  

Unable to open the doors, Pauly frantically kicked at the windshield, head on a swivel, knowing all four would be there within seconds. Finally it gave way and he climbed through, rolling off the hood and under the SUV.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stolen from the mob, he thought.

“You might as well just give up, rat!” the nasally McDermott called. Pauly was positive it was him now, and he was sure the Boston transplant hadn’t forgotten the time he cheated him out of ten grand in a game of pinochle. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so stupid to think I could get away with skimming off the top of my weekly rounds. 

“You got the wrong guy!” Pauly yelled as he crawled on his hands and knees behind the row of cars.

Maybe I should have tried to lie my way out of it instead of hitting Big Tony in the face with a 7-iron.

“Bullshit!” screamed Dante. “We been looking for you for years, Pauly! You got a debt to pay back home.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have turned on them.

“You still owe me for that shipment of H you boosted, you fuck!” Sardani yelled.

Maybe I shouldn’t have testified. 

Pauly paused for a moment behind a giant silver pickup with a pair of rubber balls dangling from the hitch. The macho man who drove it had abandoned his golf clubs when he ran.

But then I wouldn’t even be here.

He reached into the truck bed and pulled the 7-iron from its bag like a sword from its scabbard.

I’d just be dead.

“It’s going in the back of your head this time, Big T,” he whispered.

*****

From his vantage point under a tricked out Miata, Pauly could see all four of the Sparzana men spreading out as they searched for him: One on each side of the line of cars and one in the lot, with Big Tony headed into the restaurant. 

Brittany can deal with him until I get there, he thought. Maybe she’ll annoy him to death. 

He’d have to deal with the rest first.

He got lucky with McDermott, sneaking up behind him near the Dumpster and clamping the 7-iron around his neck before he could make a sound.

“How did you find me?!” he whispered into McDermott’s ear as he dropped him. “How?!”

He got no answer.

Sardani, on the other hand, took Pauly by surprise, catching him as he crawled under a tarp on the back of a landscaping trailer.

“I got him!” Sardani yelled out to his companions, grabbing Pauly by the leg and dragging him out.

Unfortunately for Sardani, Pauly had grabbed something too, a gardening stake from the back of the trailer. 

“How … did you … find me?!” he yelled as he kicked the gun out of Sardani’s hand and drove the stake forward. Sardani went down in a heap, the stake still in his eye. 

Within seconds Pauly was on the move again, staying low behind whatever he could find, Sardani’s Glock in one hand and the 7-iron in the other. He took another peek inside the restaurant and could see Brittany at the counter, Big Tony sitting comfortably at a table in front of her. 

The peek almost wasn’t worth taking, however, as a bullet whizzed by his left ear as soon as he popped his head up. He was in Dante’s sights now.

Too close, Pauly thought. That would have put a hole in my Happy Burger hat for sure.

As good of a shot as Dante was though, he was better. Always had been. 

“Dante, isn’t it past your bedtime?” Pauly yelled out.

“Fuck off, rat!” Dante yelled back. “Come on out so I can pop ya!”

Rather than giving the heir to the Sparzana crime family another chance to blow his brains out, Pauly instead threw the golf club like it was a grenade.

It wasn’t enough to break the restaurant’s front window, but it was enough to draw Dante’s attention away for a split second.

Then he calmly stood up, took aim, and fired a single shot, dropping Dante Sparzana less than ten feet from where from his No. 3 value meal lay scattered across the pavement.

Pauly wanted to run. He did. 

But also he knew they would just keep coming. 

So, gun in hand, Pauly Petrucci fearlessly strode toward the front door of the restaurant he had assistant managed as Dane Wilkerson not fifteen minutes before, and now surely never would again. 

He picked up the 7-iron on his way in.

“Mr. Wilkerson? Where have you been?!” Brittany shouted. “I told you I can’t work the cash register right and the fries got burned and there’s a lot of noise and craziness outside and I don’t know what to do now. Can I just go home please? Why do you have a …”

Big Tony stood up just then, drew a massive Desert Eagle from his chest holster, and leveled it at Pauly Petrucci. 

Pauly the Pusher. 

Pauly the Cheat. 

Pauly the Rat. 

“How did you find me?” Pauly asked.

Big Tony laughed, his huge body rippling as he did.

“Find you? We were here for the game, you dumb ass,” he said. “The boss bet big on Iowa to win. He needed us to convince the Wisconsin quarterback to miss a few passes. You remember how that works, right?”

Dumb luck. 

Out of all the Happy Burgers in all the world, this was the one they stopped to eat at. 

And Dane Wilkerson was the one to bring them their food.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Pauly said. 

Before either man could fire, it was Brittany who got the drop on both of them.

“O-M-G!” she screamed as she poured the contents of the deep fryer over Big Tony’s head.

The agony was immediate, and Big Tony dropped to his knees screaming. A moment later, he fell unconscious on the floor near the soda dispenser, his head and face still sizzling. 

“You okay?” Pauly asked Brittany.

She was shaking but nodded yes. 

“Can I go home now?” she asked.

“Sure, Brittany,” Pauly said, pulling out his cell phone to call the FBI. “I guess I can handle the cleanup on my own tonight.”

Where the hell are they gonna put me this time? he thought. Sorry for the inconvenience, my ass.