The Store

by Bentley Little

  "It's _my_ Store!"

  Bill was thrown back, off the table, against the counter at the rear of the bar, and all of the breath was knocked out of him. King had not touched him, but _something_ had shoved him backward, a force that had not put pressure on any one part of his body but had slammed into all of him equally, an overwhelming wall of unseen energy.

  King continued to advance, his decaying face a terrifying mask of rage and hate that Bill knew was only a milder version of the real face beneath it.

  Bill sucked in his breath, stood to face King. He wanted to run, but he knew he couldn't, and he -- was thrown back again, the force this time slamming into his chest and midsection, feeling like a cannonball.

  "I _am_ The Store!" King cried.

  Once more, Bill staggered to his feet. He stood proudly, breathing painfully. "The Store is ours," he said. "And _this_ Store is _mine_!"

  He was flattened against the counter this time, pinned in place by unseen energy. Through teary eyes he saw more employees fleeing, saw the Night Managers press forward.

  King smiled at him, and the sight was truly terrifying to behold. "How come you didn't get rid of the Night Managers, huh? Why didn't you terminate them?" King looked at him, the smile turning into a snarl. "Because you couldn't! They're not yours, they're The Store's. They're mine."

  Bill struggled, strained, broke free of the grip of whatever was holding him. King was standing directly in front of him at this point, and the CEO pushed him back, but there was no accompanying invisible force, no bolt of power. There was only the pressure of King's hands, strong and cold and unnaturally bony.

  Bill grabbed one of King's arms, thrust it away.

  The CEO looked at Bill, confused.

  Bill shoved him.

  King did not move back at all, was not thrown even the least bit off balance, and Bill felt only iron immobility against his hand muscles as he shoved, but for the first time, he saw what looked like fear on King's face. It lasted only a second, was preceded and then replaced by anger, but it had been there, however briefly, and even as King threw him to the floor, Bill smiled.

  "You have no power here," he said.

  In a rage, King whirled around toward the Night Managers gathered behind him. He snapped his fingers, clapped his hands, pointed. "Kill him!" the CEO ordered.

  The black-clad managers remained in place, unmoving.

  "Kill him!" King screamed.

  And the Night Managers turned on him.

  Bill scrambled to his feet, backing up against the counter.

  King was confused, taken completely by surprise, and he stumbled, falling.

  Bill was equally surprised, and he did not know what to say, did not know what to do. His eyes darted toward the converging aisles in front of the espresso bar, and he saw that most of the remaining employees were not running away, not moving forward to watch, but remained in place, waiting to see what happened next.

  King was trying to get up, trying to right himself, but the Night Managers had completely surrounded him now, and they were kicking, hitting, punching.

  They _were_ The Store's, Bill realized.

  They were his.

  And they were protecting him.

  One of them withdrew from his black garb a knife.

  "No!" King cried.

  More knives were drawn.

  Bill should have been happy. He should have felt good. This was what he'd wanted. This was what he'd been hoping for. But somehow it didn't seem right.

  The Night Managers, who were victims of The Store, were also part of The Store.

  They had turned against Newman King, but they were using his tactics. They were his creations, his children.

  In a sudden wave, the Night Managers moved in, dozens of knives flashing in the dim light. The knives disappeared, reappeared, and they were covered with red. There was the sickening sluicing sound of blood and rent flesh. Between the moving, shifting forms of the Night Managers, Bill saw the body of Newman King jerk once, the head rising, then collapse, unmoving.

  A black inky shadow moved upward from the melee, fluttering wildly, dissipating in the air, and the Night Managers, as one, bent and stood, the contingent in the center picking up the limp dead body of Newman King. Holding it aloft, they moved out of the espresso bar and began walking silently down the center aisle of The Store toward the door that led to the basements.

  Bill remained flattened against the side of the kitchen counter for several shocked seconds before finally straightening and facing the employees who were left. The looks of disgust and startled confusion that greeted him must have mirrored his own. Sucking in his breath, he strode between the overturned tables and out into the center aisle. He faced the departing Night Managers.

  "Stop!" he ordered.

  As one, the Night Managers halted.

  He ran to catch up with them, other employees following. Near the back of the group, amidst a cadre of unrecognized faces, he saw Ben. Like his brethren, Ben's face was blank, impassive, and dotted with small splatters of blood. But the corners of his mouth appeared to be turned up a fraction, and it seemed as though he was smiling.

  Bill looked up at the body of Newman King, then back at the Night Manager who had once been his friend.

  "You're fired," he said softly.

  Ben collapsed.

  There was no transformation, no change in expression or appearance, only an immediate slumping to the floor, as though the Night Manager had been an electric toy and his power cord had just been yanked out of the socket.

  Bill thought for a moment. "You're all fired!" he said loudly.

  The Night Managers dropped.

  He did not know if he was killing them or doing them a favor, if he was freeing trapped souls or merely pulling the plug on mindless robots, but he knew that, whatever it was, it was the right thing to do.

  There was no place for Night Managers anymore.

  In front of him, the aisle was now blocked by unmoving black-clad bodies that stretched half the length of The Store.

  They would have to walk down another aisle just to be able to get out of the building.

  He turned back toward the employees. "Come on," he said. "Let's walk around."

  "I think Jim went to call the cops," someone said.

  Bill nodded tiredly. "Good." He walked around a display of breadmakers, down a short row to the next aisle, and trudged toward The Store entrance.

  Outside, through the open doors, in the dark parking lot, he could see a crowd of people milling about, waiting. There were already the sounds of sirens in the distance.

  He turned to look back at the Night Managers as he crossed the center aisle. In the center of the blackness was a lone light figure.

  "The King _is_ dead," Holly said behind him.

  He turned to look at her, nodded. "Yeah. He is."

  * * *

  Back at home, Ginny and Shannon were watching the news on TV, and both of them screamed and threw their arms around him the second he walked through the door. "Thank God," Ginny cried. "Thank God."

  Shannon hugged him. "We thought you were dead, Dad!"

  "No, we didn't!"

  "I did!"

  "I'm fine," Bill said.

  "You've got to see this." Ginny led him over to the television, pointing at the screen.

  The Black Tower was collapsing.

  He turned back toward Ginny, heart pounding. "What about -- ?"

  "Sam?" Ginny smiled. "She called. She's fine."

  "She's coming home!" Shannon said.

  _She's coming home_.

  Bill's stomach twisted. He forced himself to seem happy, excited, but it felt false, strained. He wanted her back, of course, wanted her home, but . . . .

  But he didn't know what he was going to say to her.

  He felt Ginny's hand on his arm. "I guess it worked, huh?"

  He nodded.

  "Do you think Newman King --"

  "He's dead."

  "What happened?" Shanno
n asked.

  Bill shook his head.

  "What?"

  "I'll tell you guys later." He turned his attention back to the television. CNN was cutting between the Black Tower and property on the south side of Dallas that was owned by Newman King and was supposed to be the site of the first Store in a major metropolitan area.

  The Tower was collapsing into a sinkhole. Police had blocked off a square block area, and two cross streets were almost buried under falling debris. But it was the empty property, the vacant lot, that was the most fascinating, because dogs and cats, rats and rattlesnakes, birds and bats were all being drawn to the land and dropping dead. Police had the area cordoned off, but people were even walking onto the property and falling in their tracks. The news cameras captured several of them on tape.

  "He _was_ The Store," Bill said, staring at the screen.

  "What?" Ginny asked him.

  He turned away from the television, looked at her, smiled. "Nothing," he said. "Is it over?" she asked.

  Bill nodded, threw an arm around her, held her close, and for the first time in a long while, he felt happy. "Yes," he said. "It's over."

  EPILOGUE

  1

  For weeks, the Internet had been buzzing with news of The Store and the bodies. Photos from all over the country of the people who had driven, walked, or crawled to the parking lots of the individual Stores had been electronically transmitted and transferred, scanned and analyzed. The conspiracy theorists and the UFO fanatics had had a field day, postulating outrageously complex scenarios that conformed to their preconceived ideas and at the same time explained the Store occurrences. Even legitimate news agencies had given the story play, although they were strangely silent on the causes, and their usual experts were not publicly offering any opinions.

  In Juniper, sixteen men and women, all Store employees, had crawled to the parking lot to die.

  Several dozen animals had done the same.

  Street had returned. He'd seen the commotion on the news, from the trailer he'd been renting in Bishop, California, and he'd known that it was finally safe to come back. He'd driven to Juniper the next day, reopened his shop as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He let Bill know he was back in town not by stopping by, not by calling, but by leaving an E-mail message: "Want to play chess tonight?"

  Bill had driven to the electronics shop immediately after reading the E mail, and Street filled him in on what had occurred the night he'd left. Bill, in turn, explained what had become of Ben.

  They were silent for a moment after that, each of them thinking of their lost friend, then Street walked into the back, pulled out two beers from the fridge, and the two of them toasted their old companion.

  Bill had missed his deadline on the human resources documentation, but it was no big deal. The city for which the package was intended was in no great hurry, and besides, it was the first deadline he had ever missed. His supervisors at Automated Interface assumed that it was because they had not given him enough lead time, and his deadline had since been readjusted.

  He was well on the way to meeting it.

  And that was that. Life was already settling back into its normal routine.

  A new town council had been elected last week, and though it was a tricky business and the town had had to hire an outside lawyer and accountant to sort through the red tape, the police department was once again a municipal agency, and most of the remaining Store-sponsored "reforms" were on their way to being rescinded. There'd been a town meeting in the gym the night before last, with Ted, the new mayor, presiding, and though it went against the basic instincts of most of the people present, they'd agreed unanimously to levy on themselves a temporary one-cent sales tax until Juniper was in the black again.

  The Store was still open. Bill had resigned, and Russ Nolan, an employee who was somewhere in the chain of command, somewhere on the management fast track, had been appointed temporary manager. He'd no doubt been gung ho for all of the old ways, but he'd adapted, changed, and he seemed fairly levelheaded.

  No one knew how long The Store would stay open, though. There were rumors that the entire chain would be bought out by Federated or Wal-Mart or Kmart.

  When Bill called Mitch, the manager could not substantiate any of those stories, but he did not automatically discount them.

  Another rumor had Safeway or Basha's buying the old Buy-and-Save and converting it to one of their stores. While Bill had no desire to see another corporate chain open up an outlet in Juniper _ever_, Ginny seemed excited by the prospect, and he had to admit that he wasn't about to put up any real fight against it.

  He didn't have much fight left in him.

  He and Ginny were still healing. They'd talked through what had happened.

  Many, many times. On the surface, everything was fine, everything was back to normal. And neither of them had brought up Dallas in several weeks. But it was still there, between them, and Bill did not think it would ever entirely go away. He understood that, though.

  He could live with that.

  It was late, after midnight, after sex. Shannon was fast asleep in her room down the hall, and the door to their own bedroom was closed and locked.

  They lay in bed, naked atop the covers, and Ginny traced the brand on his buttocks, her fingers lightly following the ridges. He'd been permanently marked by The Store, and while he and Ginny had talked about having the brand removed by a plastic surgeon, he had decided that he was going to keep it. It no longer hurt, and he wanted the scar.

  To remind him.

  So he would never forget.

  "Where do you think Sam is now?" Ginny's voice was soft.

  He rolled over, sat up. "I don't know."

  "She said she was going to come back."

  A hot flush of shame crept over Bill's face, and he looked away from her, saying nothing.

  "You think she's all right?"

  "I hope so."

  "But do you _think_ so?"

  "I don't know," he admitted.

  Ginny began sobbing quietly, her shoulders heaving, tears rolling down her cheeks, but only a muffled inhalation of breath escaping from her mouth. He leaned over, pulled her to him; hugged her tightly.

  "We'll get through it," he said. "We'll survive."

  He was crying, too, suddenly, and she pulled back, looked at him, wiped the tears from his cheeks as he wiped the tears from hers.

  "Yes," she said.

  And, through the tears, they smiled.

  2

  They'd been traveling for most of the day, hadn't seen a real town since Juneau, hadn't seen a building since an hour or so after that. Pavement had ended long ago, and though the four-wheel-drive Explorer was having no problem handling the rocks and ruts of the muddy road, Cindy Redmon didn't like being this far away from everything, this far out in the middle of nowhere. She appreciated Ray's desire for a unique honeymoon, and the idea of an idyllic week in the woods had definitely appealed to the romantic within her, but the reality of Alaska was not quite what she'd expected. It was beautiful, yes. As picturesque as the brochures and books had led them to believe. But it was cold as well. And remote. And the farther they went into the woods, the less comfortable she felt with the knowledge that the CB was their only lifeline to civilization.

  What if there was an accident?

  What if one of them had a heart attack or choked on a piece of salmon?

  Ray, seeming to sense her mood, smiled over at her. "Don't worry, hon.

  Everything'll be fine."

  And then they rounded a curve, and in a small clearing carved out from a stand of monstrous trees, they saw The Market.

  They were silent, both of them. It wasn't a particularly impressive place.

  It wouldn't have stood out in a real city, in a real state, in a civilized area of the nation. But here, in the backwoods of Alaska, it seemed downright miraculous, and she stared at the small building as Ray slowed the Explorer. It was about the size of a convenience store and
was built in the same style, with a flat front and an upward-sloping roof. But there were no windows, only a one door entrance and cinder block wall. Strangest of all was the sign, a brightly lit freestanding rectangle bearing the name of the place in green-on-white letters: THE MARKET.

  "The Market," Ray said. "What the hell kind of name is that?"

  "Got _your_ attention," she pointed out.

  He laughed. "Didn't need a sign to do that. Not way out here." He pulled up in front of the building. "Feels like _Apocalypse Now_ or something, doesn't it? That part where they think they're out in the middle of the jungle and come across that high-tech stage with the USO show?"

  He was right. There was some of that surrealism here. But there was something else as well, something she didn't like, something that was beginning to make her feel very uncomfortable.

  "Let's go," she said. "Let's get out of here. I don't like this place."

  "Let's at least check it out first."

  "I don't want to."

  "Come on."

  "What if there're crazy survivalists in there? Or some psychotic cannibal?

  Norman Bates or Jeffrey Dahmer could be hiding in there for all we know."

  He laughed. "I'll take that chance." He opened the door, got out of the vehicle. "I'm going in, get me some bait. You want something?"

  She shook her head.

  "Sure you don't want to come?"

  She nodded.

  She watched him clomp through the partially hardened mud, open the heavy wooden door, and step inside.

  She shouldn't have let him go, she thought. She should have made him keep on driving.

  She held her breath and didn't realize that she was gripping the armrest until he emerged from The Market a few minutes later carrying a large grocery sack.

  A large grocery sack?

  He got into the Explorer and put the sack down between them, looking dazed.

  "What is all this?" she asked as he started the vehicle. "What did you buy?" She dug through the sack, drew out a comic book, a box of Cream of Wheat, a pair of socks, a Tom T. Hall cassette. "I thought you were going to pick up some bait."

  "Shut up," he said, and there was something in his voice that put her on edge, that made her not want to ask any more. "Let's just get out of here."