Janie's Got A Car

Part 2

Bev and I ran screaming down the hall back into the restaurant and toward the nearby exit. We shoved past Shelly, the irate manager, who was hurrying to find out what the roaring and crashing noises were coming from her new bathroom.

"No! Run!" I yelled back at her, but she didn't stop, straight-arming her way through the bathroom door just as the guy with the chainsaw started it back up again. Her brief scream was cut off abruptly and the sound of the chainsaw changed to a horribly lower, labored pitch for a few moments before returning to its former high wail.

The people in the busy restaurant were mostly staring in shock. Some of them were standing and gaping uncomprehendingly at the roaring noise of a chainsaw inside the Dairy Royale, but they were not yet moving. The exit was right in front of us, but the line from the counter blocked it with kids waiting to order on someone else's tab. Why was there only one exit in this place?

"Move! Move! Get out!" I tried to push my way through the crowd with Bev at my heels. They saw the guy coming down the hall after us and panicked, pushing and shoving, jamming people into the doorway. I realized we were trapped and not knowing what else to do, ran around the corner and into the restaurant, losing track of Bev.

The people stuck in the doorway were sitting ducks when chainsaw guy got to them. He quickly swung his weapon through the crowd at chest height, opening up a bloody line across the screaming mass of people and effectively stuffing the doorway with moaning, writhing bodies.

Not even pausing, the guy roared and swung the chainsaw around the corner after me, shredding the 8-foot plastic ice cream bar that had stood there as long as I could remember. Mr. Dip's smile shot a three foot arc of sparks that illuminated chainsaw guy's sparkly face and shirtfront.

Snuffy, a fat redneck nicknamed for the perpetual wad of Copenhagen in his lower lip, stood and pulled a handgun from his extended waistband and aimed it right over my shoulder. I dove out of the way under a booth as the gun went off, missing widely as Snuff was jolted by the panicking mob. Plaster rained down over the dining room.

Our would-be savior was buffeted on all sides by people running and screaming around him as chainsaw guy advanced, grinning manically and swinging the chainsaw back and forth through anyone and everything he could reach, blocking the kitchen. Blood and guts spattered nearby tables and Snuff shot several more times, hitting the soft serve maker and exploding the waffle cone display before he finally got a shot close. Unfortunately, it pinged off the whirling chainsaw blade and through the head of a really annoying know-it-all from my chem class, spraying gray matter on a flock of cheerleaders running past. When she said she wanted to share her brain with those less fortunate, I don't think that was what she meant.

People desperate to escape threw chairs through plate glass windows, showering me with glass in my hiding spot and trapping me under the booth as they scrambled over my table to safety. Across the room, I saw a dumpy, middle-aged worker lose her mind completely and get stuck trying to dive headset-first through the drive-thru window.

The roar of the chainsaw was so close now as I cowered under that booth, trying to make myself invisible in the corner. Snuffy's legs backed toward me as he fired his last shot and tried to run. My booth shook as he scrambled onto one seat and tried to go over the table and out the window. His high-pitched scream above me as the chainsaw found him made me clap my hands over my ears against the painful sound.

The whole booth jolted around me and a waterfall of hot blood cascaded over the table edge onto my shoulder a second before his heavy body fell onto the seat right next to my head, his dying eyes finding mine for his last moments. The table vibrated and shook above me as the chainsaw cut into it. That's it, it's all over, I thought. This redneck's dead fish eyes are the last thing I'm going to see. No, I corrected, his chew spit dribbling onto my leg is the last thing.