“Did you just slash that guy’s tire?” Steve asked, exiting his car as Dawn and Gore followed.

“Yeah. Guy’s inside taking a leak.” The angel pointed past the other parked cars to the station/bait shop. “He’s got a business appointment he’s gonna be late for.” The angel laughed profusely. “Probably lose his job too!”

Steve looked the robed man up and down and made a conclusion that Dawn immediately stated in the reverse.

“You’re the best angel ever!” Dawn proclaimed.

“Naturally,” said the angel.

“Angelic fool! How dare you come between us and our prize!” Gore challenged, unsheathing his sword.

The angel reached into the inner pocket of his robe and unsheathed a cigarette. “You mind, buddy?” the angel asked Burney, and pointed the cigarette his direction. “Course you don’t.”

As Gore glared down at him, the angel lit his cigarette on Burney’s head. Burney screamed in response to the smoke being exhaled on top of him as the angel said, “You’re a great man, don’t ever change.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” Steve asked.

“Name’s Jack. Howyadoin?” Jack the angel said, extending a hand to Steve.

Steve did not return the gesture.

“Okay, no handshake from you,” Jack said. Instead of reaching out a hand toward Dawn, Jack gave her a very old-fashioned kiss on the back of her palm. “That’s for you.”

When Jack turned toward the sword-bearing Gore, he said, “And… see, I would give your butt a nice squeeze or something, a nice friendly good-game, eh? But I’m thinking you wouldn’t have a chance to enjoy it, and neither would I so why bothah?”

Burney screamed.

“You, I’ll only touch with one of those window squeegee things,” Jack said in response to Burney’s question.

“You may not touch the hind quarters of me or any of my companions!” Gore challenged.

“I’m not here to touch butts guys, chill.” Jack leaned against the gas pump, taking a contemplative glance at the window squeegee and its proximity to Burney.

“What are you here for?” Steve asked.

“I’m an angel,” Jack said. He took a drag from his cigarette as one of the owners of the parked cars approached. “And I take my job very seriously. Now watch me uppercut this guy in his holy bits.”

With that, Jack walked over to the innocent convenience store patron, leaned close to the gravel-covered ground, and punch upward into the patron’s testicles.

“Yeesh!” Steve grimaced as Gore cackled with delight.

“I don’t think he deserved that at all,” Dawn said, though she was also laughing.

“Deserve got nothin’ to do with it,” Jack said, and walked away from the man who was now twitching on the ground. “God works in mysterious ways. And I get to do some of the most mysterious parts.” Jack blew smoke and laughed. “Course everything I do’s gotta have a nice outcome in tha end. Take that guy who’s holiest of holies I just laid into.”

Everyone looked down at the squeaking man.

“He’s gonna meet the love of his life soon, maybe even have half his working genitals to use. I’m not for sure on that part, don’t always look too deep into things,” Jack said as he smoked and laughed. “Or the guy with the slashed tire. Sure, he’ll miss his appointment and lose his job, but he’ll have a shot at a job in another city for twice the pay and less hours. His wife won’t stab him for working too hard too.”

“Do you do that part too?” Dawn asked.

“Nah. That’s all put into play. I get to do the mean bits. That’s my heaven, heh-heh. Course, it does take a little of the fun out of it that everything’s gotta have a happy ending and all. Silver lining, bah, blah, I just like messin’ with people, ya know?”

As Jack spoke, a minivan with a stressed driver and a pack of kids pulled into the gas station. The driver’s side window was open, so Jack flicked his lit cigarette inside. The driver screamed and pealed out, careening back onto the exit and swerving back and forth several times before regaining control of the vehicle.

“What good will come of that?” Steve asked.

“Who knows?” Jack asked, and laughed. “Don’t ruin the moment. Oh, wait. Man, that was my last cigarette. Maybe she’ll come back.”

The minivan peeled out as the driver tossed the cigarette out her window, flipping Jack the bird as she tore down the highway.

“Nope,” Jack said.

“I desire to wreak random havoc upon innocents as well,” Gore said, strangely bonding with the angel as he sheathed his weapon.

“Yeah, maybe you could do something charitable and even each other out one of these days,” Steve said.

“Out of my jurisdiction,” Dawn said, putting her hands up. “Blow up the whole gas station for all I care.”

“Huzzah!” Gore said, and once more unsheathed his sword.

“Ah-ah!” Steve said, and grabbed Gore by the arm before the hell knight could cleave the gas pump and blow them all to pieces. “We still need gas. Unchain Burney so I can get the pump working.”

“The Judge said I could blow up the gas station!”

“I say lots of things,” Dawn said with a shrug.

“Even so,” Steve said, still holding Gore’s arm, though in truth he had no hope of actually stopping the hell knight should Gore really want to hit something, “we won’t get to Memphis if you blow up the gas station.”

Gore grunted.

“Which do you want more?” Steve asked. “A pickle? Or blowing up the gas station?”

Gore glared through the eye slits of his helmet. Then he lowered his sword.

“Memphis, huh?” Jack asked as Gore removed Burney from the car roof and walked him a safe distance from the gas pumps.

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said, and proceeded to gas up his burnt and dented sedan. He still hadn’t noticed the angel-shaped dent at the front of the car.

Jack noticed the dented bumper, though, and knocked on it with a laugh.

“I have something I need to tell you, Steve,” Jack said.

“That you found my online profile and deduced what my name was to sound mysterious?”

“Nah, the angel you ran over earlier told me your name.”

“Do what now?”

“She was a tool. Boring lady, always talkin bout salvation and stuff. Glad you ran her over because now I get to talk to ya. Steve, people know what it is you’re doin’.”

Steve stared at Jack as gas flowed through the pump, making a humming noise as it clicked off the gallons.

“What are we doing?” Dawn asked, crossing her arms.

“Contemplating if the legends are true that angels ain’t anatomically correct,” Jack replied.

“That’s not true. I already know you’re perfectly functional down there.”

“Functional! Babydoll, I got more than just functionality when it comes to—”

“So you know we’re after a sandwich. Whatever,” Steve said, hoping to avoid whatever train of conversation Jack was leading them.

“Dumb as it sounds, you got the whole heavens worried.”

“I’m hungry. Can’t I just get a sandwich in peace?”

“Not if you plan on going through with what you’re planning on going through.”

“I plan on going through with finding a really good sandwich.”

“And a pickle,” Gore said as he returned with Burney and the gas pump clanged that it had filled the car’s tank.

“There may or may not be pickles.”

“Unholy pickles,” Dawn suggested.

“Pickles of evil incarnate!” Gore added.

“I hate pickles,” Jack said, “but those kinds you describe, I may be interested.”

“Do you want to come with us?” Steve asked. “We could use someone who is willing to kick random people in the groin.”

“I do that all the time!” Gore complained.

“Yes, Gore, but you tend to cut them in half after you do it, and I have to summon a legion of bunnies afterward,” Dawn said.

Gore grumbled.

“Nah. I might kick a few in the berries now and then, but not where you guys are headed. I got other people to ironically injure, lives to pseudo-destroy. I’m gonna go get another pack a’ smokes,” Jack said, and started walking toward the convenience store/house. “Oh, and don’t worry about paying for the gas.”

“You’re going to pay for it?” Steve asked.

“Somethin’ like that.” Jack smiled as he walked inside the building, dinging a little bell that reacted to him walking past.

“Good thing he didn’t try to stop us or anything,” Dawn said, and opened the Honda’s passenger door. “Gore, hook Burney back up. I hear Memphis calling.”

“You sure I shouldn’t pay for gas?” Steve asked.

“Less money spent on gas means more money for fireworks,” Gore noted.

“That is not happening.”

“Do you think if I blew up someone with fireworks, there would be a happy outcome afterward?”

Steve took one last glance at the store and drove out of the gas station, turning onto the highway. Burney resumed his screams of wind-born pain as the car came to speed.

“I don’t think so, Gore,” Steve said, glancing in the mirror at the rapidly fading gas station.

“No, I’m sure that when you maim or brutally scar someone you pretty much just brutally scar and maim them,” Dawn added.

“That’s a relief,” Gore said. He leaned back in the seat, bouncing his helmet against the ceiling so he could laugh at Burney’s screams of pain.

As they drove down the highway, none of the passengers saw the gas station they’d left erupt into a mushroom cloud-shaped inferno. All remnants of the convenience store/bait shop/home/tuna salad sandwich shop, burnt to a crisp or were turned into blazing missiles. One of these projectiles was a singed window squeegee that completely melted as it struck Burney’s backside.

The other projectile was the last of what might have been the greatest tuna fish sandwich ever to be crafted by man. It splashed against the back bumper of Steve’s Honda, and quickly slid, forgotten, onto the road as the car made haste toward Memphis.