The Store

by Bentley Little

  He could almost hear Jack nodding over the phone. "Oh, yes," he said. "Oh, yes."

  Another week of waiting and researching, a week of writing after that, and this puppy was ready to be sent out and shopped around.

  But he needed another angle, some personal involvement between reporter and story. That was the trend these days. That's what people liked. Hard research and solid quotes were fine, but the news-hungry public now wanted more than that. They wanted an element of danger. They wanted a tale of intrigue and infiltration.

  Which was why he was going to spend an entire night in The Store.

  And see the Night Managers for himself.

  He'd been planning the stunt for the past three days, and he was pretty sure he could pull it off. Just before closing, he would go into the rest room, hide in one of the stalls, crouching on top of the toilet so his feet could not be seen in the gap beneath the stall door, and wait until everyone had gone.

  It was a risky plan, of course. For all he knew, The Store might make its employees conduct a thorough search of every nook and cranny within the building. The door of each toilet stall might be individually opened and checked. But he was betting that on Friday, at the end of an ordinary, uneventful week, such precautions, even if in effect, would not be followed to the letter.

  Besides, he had a head start going in. Despite the appalling number of security cameras all over The Store, there were no cameras trained on the men's room door.

  It was something he had checked, double-checked, and rechecked.

  The Store did not keep track of who entered and exited the men's rest room. Of course, the perverts had a video camera inside, on the wall opposite the urinals. But he'd come up with a way to take that camera out without being noticed and without making it seem suspicious.

  There was an element of danger to this. He knew that going in, and he didn't want to involve anyone else. But he needed help. He needed someone to drop him off at The Store and act as lookout while he secured his hiding place.

  Bill was the logical choice. He'd hated The Store since the beginning since _before_ the beginning -- and he was both reliable and trustworthy. But he also had a family. And his daughters worked for The Store. Bill himself worked for a corporation that was supplying computer software for the chain, and Ben didn't want his friend to lose his job if they got caught.

  Lose his job?

  The Store would do worse than that to them if they were caught.

  No, he thought. Bill had too much to lose. Street was the better choice in this instance.

  He started to call Street, then put down the receiver and drove to his house instead.

  Never could tell. The phone lines might be bugged.

  Probably were.

  Street wasn't too thrilled with the idea. He agreed to go along with it, had no problem playing his part, but he didn't think there was any need to spend the night in The Store. "It's stupid," he said. "It's a fucking Hardy Boys plan.

  Something Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would do. Not the way a respectable journalist would get his story."

  Ben laughed. "Since when have I been a respectable journalist?"

  "Good point."

  But Street remained troubled, and Ben had to admit that his friend's reservations were valid. He began having second thoughts himself. But even as he inwardly debated whether or not he should go through with this, they were doing what they were supposed to do, taking the actions they'd planned and coordinated, and before they knew it, they were in the empty men's room, Street locking the door and pretending to take a piss while Ben used his cover to sneak under the video camera and, with the help of some handy-dandy tools, disconnect the video feed.

  "What time do you have?" Ben asked, walking over to the sink to check his appearance in the mirror.

  "Almost ten."

  "They'll be closing," Ben said. "You'd better hit the road."

  "In a minute."

  "Now."

  "I really do have to take a leak," Street told him.

  Ben laughed. "Sorry." He leaned over, pretended to peek. "Wow! You have a big dick!"

  Street grinned. "But of course."

  There was a knock on the rest room door, and they both froze.

  "Is anyone in there?" someone called.

  "I'll be out in a minute!" Street answered. He flushed the urinal and ran the sink tap. Covered by the noise, Ben locked himself in the far stall, crouching on the toilet seat.

  "I owe you," he whispered.

  "Check in with me when you're finished. I want to know that you're safe."

  "Will do."

  Street unlocked the door, stepped out, and Ben heard a Store employee say, "Is there anyone else in there?"

  "Just me and my diarrhea," Street announced cheerfully.

  "That door's supposed to remain unlocked during business hours."

  "Sorry," Street said. "I just don't like people to hear me making disgusting noises."

  The door closed, and it did not reopen. Ben waited. Fifteen minutes, a half hour. An hour. The lights did not switch off, but no one returned, and when he checked his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight, he realized that they'd gotten away with it.

  Carefully, quietly, he stepped down from the toilet, nearly falling from the sudden shift of weight on his cramped, weakened muscles. He stood in place for a moment, stretching, then walked across the tiled floor and pushed open the door to peek into The Store proper.

  The building was silent.

  All of the lights were still on, but The Store appeared to be empty.

  He walked out carefully, practically tiptoeing, listening for noise but hearing nothing. Even the air conditioner had been shut off. There might be a security person around somewhere, maybe someone monitoring the other video cameras, but there was no one else around. No one could be this quiet unless they were asleep.

  The other video cameras. He'd forgotten about them. He should've brought a mask to wear, something to hide his features so they wouldn't be able to identify him on videotape There was the sound of an elevator door opening.

  Ben's blood began racing, his adrenaline pumping. He ducked quickly behind a shelf of CD players and adjusted his angle so he could peer through the stacked merchandise to the source of the sound.

  They emerged from the elevator and the stairwell next to it, one after the other, a line of whey-faced men dressed entirely in black: black shoes, black pants, black shirts, black jackets. They moved silently, and there was something about the absence of sound that bespoke danger.

  The Night Managers.

  The elevator and stairwell were only a few yards down from the rest rooms, and he realized that if he had waited a few moments longer, if he had spent even another minute stretching his cramped muscles, they would have caught him.

  But what would they have done to him?

  He didn't want to find out. There was something terrifyingly unnatural about the appearance of those blank white faces, and he suddenly wished that he had heeded Street's advice and given up on this whole infiltration idea.

  Of course, now that he was here . . .

  He checked the miniature tape recorder in his shirt pocket, took out the tiny camera with which he planned to surreptitiously photograph the Night Managers.

  The lights in the building winked off.

  He jumped, startled, and nearly fell, almost knocking over a CD player. He caught himself before anything happened, and the only sound was a slight click as his hand steadied the stereo component, but even that noise seemed outrageously loud in the stillness, and he remained tensed, unmoving, waiting to see if he'd been caught.

  The lights came back on.

  He was safe. The Night Managers were walking up and down various aisles, robotically, in groups of three, not looking around, not stopping, not slowing, simply pressing onward, like unstoppable windup toys. They did not even know he was here.

  He moved away from the CD players, saw three Night Managers moving down an aisle away fro
m him, and he quickly snapped a picture of their retreating backs.

  To his left, two rows over, three others were passing by, not looking to the left, not looking to the right, facing straight ahead, and he took a profile photo. The lights went off again.

  He didn't panic this time, simply waited. This was obviously part of some standard chain of events, some sequence that happened nightly, and he stood in place until the lights came back on.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, gripping him tightly.

  He dropped his camera, startled, and turned to see one of the Night Managers.

  Grinning at him.

  They'd known he was here all along.

  They'd been playing with him.

  No, he thought. Not playing. The Night Managers of The Store did not play.

  The others surrounded him, their trips up and down aisles all ending at precisely the spot where he was standing.

  "I can explain . . ." he began. He trailed off, expecting to hear a "Shut up," or a "There's nothing to explain," or some other such order, but there was nothing, no noise, only silence, only those grinning white faces surrounding him, and it was the absence of noise that scared him more than anything else.

  He tried to break away, tried to run.

  The grip on his shoulder kept him from moving.

  "Help!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Help!"

  A cold white hand clamped around his mouth. Over the white knuckles that covered half his face, he saw the other Night Managers all withdrawing knives from somewhere on their persons. Long, shiny knives with sharp, straight edges.

  He tried to squirm away, tried to kick, tried to lash out, but he realized that all of his limbs were now being held, and then he was lifted into the air and then he was dropped flat on his back on the floor.

  Something snapped in his spine, and suddenly he couldn't move, and the hand was still over his mouth as the knives began carefully entering his flesh, cutting his skin.

  He prayed for unconsciousness from the depths of his screaming agonized mind, and when he finally felt himself slipping away, he was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, grateful that the end had come.

  But it was not the end. He regained consciousness sometime later, in a dark room in one of the basements, and he learned that it was nowhere near the end. It was only the beginning.

  2

  From the first, there seemed something wrong with the deal. Night Managers or not, there was no reason for Ben to sneak into The Store and spend the night.

  It was not necessary for the article and, as far as Street was concerned, it was unnecessarily dangerous.

  He told this to Ben. Several times on the way over. But Ben was in his Woodward-and-Bernstein mode and nothing could dissuade him from what he perceived to be his higher calling, his mission to uncover The Truth.

  Ben told him to hit the road after leaving him in the men's room, to get out of there, and The Store director who caught him coming out of the bathroom had been a pretty good impetus to do exactly that, but he couldn't simply abandon his friend, and he left The Store lot and parked along the edge of the highway instead, waiting.

  He waited for nearly an hour, but then the lights in the parking lot went out, and when they turned on again a few seconds later, they were pointing not down at the parking lot but out toward him, trained on his truck like searchlights, and he quickly turned on the ignition, put the truck into gear, and took off.

  _Maybe they'd gotten Ben_.

  He didn't want to think about it.

  Arriving home, he was still shaken. He picked up his phone, tried to dial Bill, but the line was dead, no dial tone even, and he immediately turned on his PC to check whether it was the phone or the line.

  His monitor brightened into existence, but the screen, instead of displaying his usual menu, showed row after row of the same sentence, the same four words, moving up from the bottom of the screen and disappearing at the top:

  THE STORE IS COMING

  He closed his eyes, hoping this was just some sort of hallucination, a panic attack, but when he opened his eyes and looked at his monitor the words were still there, scrolling faster than ever:

  THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS

  COMING

  Suddenly the scrolling stopped. The last appearance of the sentence remained at the top of the screen, followed, halfway down, by two new words:

  FOR YOU

  They knew! They'd captured Ben and now they were after him! His thoughts were racing a mile a minute, his mind filled with conflicting options and contingency plans, but his body was listening to some rational, logical section of his brain, and even as he tried to figure out what to do, he was turning off the PC, unplugging it, rolling up the cables and power cords.

  He had to escape, he had to leave, he had to get out of Juniper.

  After that, he could figure out what action to take.

  He picked up his PC and, struggling mightily, ran with it out to the truck.

  3

  Street was gone.

  Bill had wanted to meet with him and hash out what they could piece together about Ben's disappearance, but the shop was closed, and when he arrived at Street's house, the truck was not there, the front door was open, and his friend was nowhere in sight.

  And Ben's car was in the driveway.

  He walked slowly through the empty house. There was no sign of a struggle, no indication that anyone had broken in, and it was Bill's gut feeling that Street had simply panicked and fled.

  But why?

  Because he'd seen what had happened to Ben?

  He walked into Street's bedroom. This was Juniper and not New York, so even though the door to the house was wide-open, nothing had been stolen or vandalized, but in a way that made it seem even more disturbing. He moved on to the guest room. Ben's disappearance, like most of the others recently, seemed to him a legitimate missing person case. But Street's truck was gone, and that said to him that Street had taken off on his own. Someone may have been after him, but he'd hightailed it out of here before they could catch him.

  It was still strange that Street hadn't made even a token effort to get in touch, though. That was the only thing that worried him. Of course, he hadn't bothered to take his clothes or personal belongings, either, so maybe he simply hadn't had time.

  _Maybe they'd captured him and taken him away in his own truck._

  He didn't want to think about that.

  Not yet.

  He walked into Street's den, and the first thing he noticed was that the computer was gone. And the modem.

  That made Bill feel better. Those were Street's priorities. He might not have had time to pack clothes or family photos, but he'd taken his computer.

  Bill stared at the empty space on the desk for a moment, then turned around, walked out of the house, and headed over to the police station to file a missing persons report.

  "Do you think we'll ever find out what happened to them?" Ginny asked quietly.

  Bill shook his head, closing his eyes against the headache that had kicked the asses of four aspirin tablets and had been with him all afternoon.

  "What about the police?" she said.

  "What about them?"

  "Aren't they supposed to be investigating this?"

  He nodded. "_Supposed_ to be. And I'm sure they're going through the motions, filing all the paperwork, dotting every _i_ and crossing every _t_.

  But, let's face it -- they're working for The Store."

  "Can't we go above their heads? Talk to . . . I don't know, the FBI or something?"

  He sighed tiredly. "I don't know."

  She sat down on the couch next to him. "There's going to be no one left in this town pretty soon."

  "Except Store employees."

  She did not respond.

  "Maybe we should move," he said. "Get out while we can."

  She was silent for a moment. "Maybe we should," she said finally.

 
After dinner, while Ginny did the dishes, he snuck back into his office and checked his E-mail.

  There was a message from Street.

  It was what he'd been hoping for, and he excitedly called it up.

  A message appeared in the center of the screen:. "Pages 1 and 2 of this message have been deleted."

  Shit!

  He scrolled forward, to the end, saw only half a page of text: ". . . So that's what happened. I know The Store owns this shitty little online service.

  So I'm not sure if they'll even let this through. But I had to contact you and tell you what went down. I won't be able to do it again, and it may be some time before I see you, so I just wanted to tell you to keep fighting the good fight.

  I'll miss you, good buddy. You're one of the true. To quote the mighty C. W. McCall, 'We gone. Bye bye.' "

  He stared at the screen, unmoving, and it was not until Ginny came into the office, calling his name, that he realized he was crying.

  TWENTY-NINE

  1

  Shannon arrived early for work. She walked into the locker room to change into her uniform and saw on the bulletin board a new notice:

  KEEP OUR STREETS CLEAN!

  VOLUNTEER CREWS NEEDED

  FOR SATURDAY MORNING SWEEPS.

  PARTICIPATION MANDATORY.

  SIGN UP IN PERSONNEL.

  She stared at the sign as she pulled down her pants and slipped off her panties. Above the row of lockers, she heard the click-hum of the security camera as it adjusted to her movements. She quickly put on the leather Store underwear, covering what she could. She pulled on the tight pants of her uniform, sucking in her stomach so she could fasten the snap.

  She wondered if Jake was the one monitoring the cameras that videotaped her dressing.

  She wondered if he was the one who monitored the cameras in the bathroom.

  As quickly as she could, she took off her blouse and bra and slipped on the leather Store bra and uniform top. She glanced again at the notice on the bulletin board as she sat on the bench and pulled on her boots.

  _Morning sweeps_.

  She didn't like the sound of that. And the fact that participation was mandatory for a "volunteer" crew didn't set well with her, either. Of course, it could be totally innocent. Maybe The Store was promoting environmentalism. Maybe these cleanup crews would simply walk along the highway and the roads, picking up the trash and debris that ignorant drivers tossed out of their vehicles.