Monster - A. Lee Martinez [1]
He nodded. “Oh, Christ, Dave. Just give me the keys to the office already.”
On the way to the office, she passed the freezer. The yeti was making a mess, and she’d probably be the one who’d have to clean it up. She didn’t mind. She needed the overtime.
The emergency phone number book was a spiral notebook with a picture of a happy snowman on its cover. She sat in the creaky chair, propped her feet on the desk, and thumbed through the book. It wasn’t arranged in any particular order, but she wasn’t in a hurry. Fifteen minutes later, she decided on the only possibly appropriate number, picked up the phone, and dialed.
The Animal Control line was automated. A pre-recorded voice informed her of the hours of normal operation, and she was unsurprised to discover that three in the morning wasn’t among them. She almost hung up, but it was a choice between listening to a recording or starting on the canned goods aisle, so it really wasn’t any choice at all.
After two minutes of interminable droning that Judy only half listened to, the voice instructed, “If this is an emergency, please press one now.”
She did.
The phone started ringing. She counted twenty-five before she distracted herself with an impromptu drum solo using the desktop, a pen, and a pencil. She was just settling into her beat when someone answered the other line.
“Animal Control Services. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
“Yeah, uh, I know this is going to sound kind of weird, but we’ve got, uh, like a yeti or something, I guess, in our store.” She winced. She should’ve just said they had a big rabid dog. They might’ve believed her then. “I know how that sounds, but this is not a prank, I swear.”
“Please hold.”
Judy waited for the click and dial tone to replace the steady buzz in the earpiece. It didn’t come. The clock on the wall ticked off the seconds. Maybe they were tracing the call right now and dispatching a squad car to arrest her. Or at the very least, give her a stern talking-to. Well, let them. When the cops got here, she’d just show them the yeti and it would become their problem.
“Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services. Can I have your name, please?” The woman sounded supremely disinterested.
Judy hesitated, but she figured it didn’t make much difference at this point. “Judy Hines.”
“And you believe you have a yeti in your freezer—is that correct?”
The words were beginning to lose their absurdity. “Yes, I think so,” she said, though she wasn’t as certain as she had been five minutes before.
“Can you describe it?”
“It’s big and white and eating all the ice cream,” she said. “What flavor?”
“What?”
“What flavor does it seem to prefer? Yetis generally go for rocky road. Now wendigos, on the other hand, prefer strawberry in my experience.”
“What’s a wendigo?” Judy asked. “Like a yeti, except meaner.”
Judy considered that this woman might be screwing with her. If Judy were working a lonely job in the middle of the night and got a crank caller, she’d probably do the same.
“It didn’t seem to like vanilla.” There was an awkward pause. “I am not making this up.”
“Just stay out of its way. We’ve dispatched an agent. He should be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I didn’t tell you the address.”
“We trace the emergency calls.” The operator hung up. Satisfied she’d done her job, she went to the front of the store. She shouted, “They’re sending a guy, so I’ll go wait for him and take a smoke break while I’m at it, Dave!” There was no indication he’d heard her, but he’d figure it out.
The night was cool, and she wished she’d thought to grab her sweater. It wasn’t cold enough to bother going back. She sat on the coin-operated rocket, lit a cig, and waited.
She wondered about the yeti. It didn’t make much sense for a mythical monster from the Himalayas to be in the Food Plus Mart freezer. She hoped the guy the city sent would know how to handle this. She doubted that pole with the loop of rope would be up to the task.
A white van pulled into the parking lot. The plain black stenciled letters on its side read monster