A monstrous bird unfurled its wings inside Amy’s chest and her anger felt bigger than the world. Everything they had done, all the horrors inside the store, it was as if none of it had happened. She felt lonelier than ever before in her life.
“I’m truly sorry about what happened,” Pat said. “We will privately extend our condolences to the families. We will talk to the architects and the contractors and we will hold them accountable for this tragedy. We will work something out so that everyone’s protected. You and Basil cannot blame yourselves for this turn of events. Matt and Trinity and Ruth Anne were not your responsibility.”
Amy swung at his head. She’d never hit another person before, and the result was something between a slap and a punch, surprising Pat more than hurting him.
“You asshole,” she shouted. “That’s exactly what they were!”
Orsk did come up with an answer it could live with: a massive water main break, coupled with a complete malfunction of the sprinkler system. When insurance adjusters finally got into the store, they found the false doors sealed, the wardrobes shattered, no penitents, no bodies, and no proof of anything beyond an enormous flood. The entire inventory was written off as a loss.
Matt, Trinity, and Ruth Anne were never found. Orsk paid for their memorial services and provided a settlement to the families. In the case of Matt and Trinity, they handled things quietly, without any admission that the two of them had been in the store. There was additional arbitration between the corporate offices, the building contractors, and the architectural firm, but no one sued and no one spoke to the press. As for Carl, his body was never found and his name never appeared in any of the articles about the disaster. Amy didn’t know if that was because he was homeless or because he had never existed, but she seemed to be the only person on earth who remembered him.
There were three memorial services: one for Matt, one for Trinity, and one for Ruth Anne. Trinity’s was closed to anyone who wasn’t a member of her church. Matt’s was packed with his friends from high school and community college, and there were several meaningful readings and a really bad singer with too much vibrato. Basil was there, but Amy avoided him. One hundred thirty-four people went to Ruth Anne’s memorial. Every single one of them was an Orsk employee or customer. They gave eulogies, cried, talked about the little kindnesses she had shown them. Snoopy was sitting on a table at the front surrounded by flowers and framed photos. A lot of people wore their Orsk uniforms. Amy stood in the back for half of the service and then she left, feeling more numb than when she’d arrived.
A week after the events at the store, the Orsk legal department contacted Amy, writing that the company considered all of its partners to be part of the Orsk family and claiming that it wanted to demonstrate its goodwill. If Amy would sign a release and covenant not to sue, Orsk would, without admitting any responsibility or wrongdoing, write her a check for a generous severance. Amy didn’t care. She signed the paper without even reading it. The check arrived via DHL ninety days later. It was for $8,397.
She couldn’t sleep. That first night, her mom’s new husband, Gerard, picked her up at the ER and brought her home to the trailer. Her mom had been too upset to think straight, so she’d taken a pill and gone to bed before they arrived. Amy turned on every single light and closed all the curtains. She told Gerard an edited version of what had happened, a version without the penitents, or the tunnels, or being nailed in wardrobes, but even then it still sounded unreal, and she could tell he thought she was lying. After a while, he went to bed and she was left alone. Exhausted but still too scared to be on her own, she dragged a pillow and blanket into her mom’s bedroom and lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, unable to close her eyes.
The next day, Amy kept dozing off at random moments: in the middle of lunch, while trying to talk to her mom, while talking to her old roommates on the phone. They called her four times before she answered and put her on three-way calling to tell her how brave she was, and what a hero she was for surviving, and asking her what it was really like. After a few minutes, they realized she wasn’t going to give them the juicy answers they wanted, and then it was just a matter of figuring out how to end the call in the least awkward way possible.
A few days later, Gerard drove to her apartment and picked up her stuff. Amy never knew it, but he wound up writing a check to cover the rent she owed. He helped Amy move her boxes back into her old bedroom, but she never unpacked. She wore the same sweatpants every day and spent most of her time sleeping.
Her mom made a fuss at first and even Gerard seemed to be having an Amy renaissance, but eventually their general disappointment crept back in. It didn’t take long. Gerard delicately raised the subject of her going back to community college or getting another job. Any job. It didn’t have to be retail. She could be a dog walker. She just needed to do something. She couldn’t sit in her bedroom watching TV for the rest of her life.
But that was exactly what Amy wanted to do. She watched a lot of Real Housewives of Wherever until she realized that she had seen every episode of every season at least twice. Then she started buying movies on iTunes, racking up $147 in charges in one week. Basil e-mailed her five times, but she deleted his messages without reading them. Reading took too much concentration. She tried a few grief and trauma books, she even picked up the Bible and ordered a Koran from Amazon, but after reading a couple of sentences her mind would wander and eventually she’d give up.
For the first week after the disaster, she followed the news religiously, watching everything about Orsk with a feverish intensity. But after a few days the story slipped from the headlines, and so did her interest. She ate, she slept during the day, she ignored questions from her mom and Gerard until they stopped asking them. She existed.
Six months passed. Seven months. Amy stayed in her room over Christmas, and her mom drove out to see her aunts and uncles without her. She fell asleep at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and woke up at three in the morning and couldn’t fall back to sleep for two days. January came and went. February passed. Each day was crossed off on the calendar, and each day was just like the one before.
Sometimes Amy cried for no reason. She’d spend hours experiencing either great wracking sobs or tears silently streaming down her face that she couldn’t explain. March passed. April. Gerard and her mom went on vacation to see her cousins in Niagara Falls without her. Staying in the trailer alone was too much, so she checked into a hotel while they were gone. Otherwise, Amy didn’t go outside, she didn’t talk, she refused therapy. She just slept when she could, and ate, and existed.
And then, one day, she discovered what she had to do.
After the flood, after the newspaper stories, after a segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews in which a spokesperson for Orsk USA fielded questions about his company’s commitment to the safety of its employees, after the memorial services, Orsk slipped out of town. The building was infested with toxic black mold. It needed to be torn down and rebuilt, and Tom Larsen had no interest in making a huge investment in a store with so many negative associations. It was better just to cut and run.
To everyone’s surprise, another big box retail store bought the property. Thirteen months after the disaster, Planet Baby opened in the same location. A one-stop retail shopping solution for all your baby’s needs. With Planet Baby, having a baby wasn’t just the greatest choice you could ever make—it was the start of a thrilling new lifestyle.
The day she read about the opening, Amy drove out and completed a job application. She couldn’t believe it when the next day someone in HR called her cell phone, explaining she’d been hired as an assistant floor manager. She hid the news from Gerard and her mom for as long as possible. The night before she started the job, she revealed her plan. Their happiness was qualified, but Gerard seemed to speak for both of them when he said: “We’re glad you’re getting back on the horse that threw you, because we think it’s time you started contributing to the rent. That settlement isn’t going to
last forever.”
The morning of her first shift, Amy dosed herself with Visine, drank six cups of coffee, started up her old Honda Civic, and drove the route she remembered so well, taking the feeder road to River Park Drive. Out of habit, she pulled into the parking space she’d always used, around the side of the building, back when it was Orsk, before it was Planet Baby.
The store was different but the same. The muted color scheme had been replaced with bright primary hues. Signs that looked like an unusually literate toddler had scrawled them in crayon hung everywhere, reminding Mommy and Daddy to buy all the right things for Baby who needed them so badly but could not yet communicate his (or her) wishes, so Planet Baby was generously interpreting them for him (or her). Thank you, Planet Baby.
Inside, Amy reported to the back of house and met the head of HR. She had bought her own uniform and went to the locker room to change into the soft denim jeans and smocklike pink shirt that erased her shape. No one here wore Chuck Taylors. She noticed it was all Reeboks, pink for girls, blue for boys. Amy made a note to buy a pair. She wanted to fit in.
She was running a few minutes late, so her shift sponsor guided her across the massive floor to an orientation tour that was already in progress. There were some of the same room displays as in Orsk, placed in some of the same areas, with a significant emphasis on playrooms, nurseries, and baby’s first big boy (or big girl) bedroom. Amy was quietly pleased to note that several of the rooms had fake doors nailed to the walls, to complete the illusion that customers were peering inside an actual house.
The sponsor took her through Planet Baby’s winding aisles and crammed displays, chattering all the while, until they finally reached a group of trainees listening to the floor manager. “We want to guide customers but not overwhelm them,” he was saying. “Planet Baby is a total experience, but it should always be a good experience. First retail contact is vital.”
The manager giving the orientation nodded to acknowledge Amy’s arrival and then returned to his speech.
“There are two kinds of shopper at Planet Baby,” he continued. “Those who buy nothing, and those who buy everything. Up here in the Showroom, it’s less about acquisition and more about aspiration. The serious shopping doesn’t happen until they get downstairs into what we like to call the Baby Store.”
Amy settled back and let the familiar retail hypnosis wash over her again. Her shift ended at six o’clock and she enjoyed a leisurely meal at Panera Bread, just up Route 77. Then she stopped at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Home Depot for a couple of last-minute purchases. Then she returned to the Planet Baby parking lot and waited.
The cleaning team arrived at eleven o’clock—a stream of yellow-shirted custodians swiping their way through the partners’ entrance. Amy opened her car door and tightened the straps on her backpack. It was heavy but only because it was full of flashlights, batteries, a screwdriver, a knife, five hundred yards of fishing line, a hundred-foot roll of glow-in-the-dark tape, motion sickness patches, and three of Planet Baby’s own Magic Tools. She wasn’t getting lost in the tunnels this time. She would use the tape and fishing line to mark her path, and when she found the others she would lead them back out again.
The last of the custodians was a short stocky guy with a goatee and neck tattoos. As he passed his card over the reader and entered the building, Amy sprinted toward the entrance, flying over the asphalt, trying to catch the door before it closed. She wasn’t going to make it. She’d parked too far away. She reached for the knob, but her fingertips barely grazed it and the door slammed shut. She kicked the base of it, hard.
“Let me get that,” a voice said.
She turned and saw Basil walking up. He’d gained a couple of pounds, but his face had healed nicely. There was the small worm of a scar bulging from his chin, a slight twist of a scar in his left eyebrow. He wore a repetitive stress injury brace on his right forearm. He had his Planet Baby ID card out.
“I thought I saw your name on the schedule,” he said. “What’s in the backpack?”
There was no way in hell she was telling this backstabber anything. But she couldn’t resist a dig.
“Too bad your big career with Orsk Corporate didn’t work out,” she said. “It must have taken some serious surgery to extract you from all the way up Tom Larsen’s ass.”
“I never e-mailed him,” Basil said. “I couldn’t do it. I wound up working in a McDonald’s for most of last year.”
“Well, goodie for you,” Amy said. “You grew some morals.”
“I’ve been here three months,” Basil said. “Deputy operations manager. What’s in the backpack?”
“I have to go,” Amy said, turning away. “If you see me on the floor, don’t talk to me. We have nothing to do with each other, you understand?”
“I bet it’s the same stuff I’ve got in mine,” Basil said. “Flashlights, batteries, pocket hand warmers, I even brought some pepper spray, although I’m not sure if that’ll work on those things. I was just on my way to pick it up.”
Amy’s fury drained away, replaced by confusion.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“They were my friends, too,” he said. “More important, they were my responsibility. I tried telling you that before, but you weren’t listening.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I already stayed once, by the way. The doors are still open. The Beehive’s still there.”
“How about Matt? Or Trinity? Did you see them?”
“Not yet,” Basil said. “Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m getting them out,” she said, nodding. “Everyone keeps telling me it’s all over, that it’s back to normal, but I don’t want to go back to normal. I don’t like the person I used to be. I want to keep being the person I was that night.”
“It might be harder than you remember,” Basil said. “The penitents are less organized without their leader. Easier to evade. But the store still gets inside your head, and all the baby merch makes it extra freaky. You want to avoid looking inside the cribs, understand?”
“I’m going to go slow and careful,” Amy said. “I’m going to figure out how this place works, and I’m going to keep coming back again and again until I find them. Day and night, I’m not quitting until it’s over.”
They almost smiled at each other before Amy looked away. The air was humid and the frogs were roaring in the marsh. She heard an electronic eep as Basil swiped his ID over the scanner. The lock clicked inside the doorframe, and he held the door wide.
Bugs flew in, attracted by the light. Amy wanted to say something, to reassure him that she’d changed, to tell him she was glad he’d come back, she was glad she’d been wrong about him. Instead, she just stepped inside the door. There was no more time to waste. They had work to do.
GRADY HENDRIX has written for Variety, Slate, the New York Post, Playboy, Village Voice, Strange Horizons, and the anthology The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. He spent several years answering the phone for a parapsychological research organization. He is currently employed by Orsk, Manhattan.
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