Discount Noir

by Patricia Abbott

  They were home free when they hit the parking lot. Because of certain unfortunate events in the past that had resulted in dead shoplifters, Megamart had a strict no-chase policy. Not everybody followed it, however, and behind them Horace Gibson motored along. Burl flipped him the bird as they dived into the pickup.

  Royce squealed the tires as he backed out of the double slot and squealed them again as he took off. He hit an empty cart that someone had left in the lane. The cart clanged off a car and skidded along the asphalt. Royce and Burl laughed like loonies.

  * * *

  Horace met them that night.

  “You get in any trouble?” Burl said.

  “Hell, yes. I shouldn’t have chased you even in the store, but they didn’t fire me. They think I love the place. They just chewed on my ass. Pay up.”

  Burl handed him a couple of twenties and a ten. “Your cousin still work at the Megamart in the next county?”

  “Yeah. Want me to give him a call?”

  “Tell him we’ll see him Thursday.”

  “I love Megamart,” Horace said.

  Thirty-One Hundred

  By Loren Eaton

  The typical family saves $3,100 a year by shopping at Megamart. Wofford Ortlund Marshall, though, could only claim $1,358 as his annual average. But that amount helped him find love.

  Also, with it he saved the city from The Scourge of Walking Dead.

  Wofford’s first hint that something was wrong came while browsing Megamart’s music aisle during his afternoon break from Mal’s Hamburger Hut. (The Hut, with its faux-Tiki columns and mo’ai-esque bust of founder Malcolm Criswell over the entrance, was across the street.) Wofford saw Criswell himself shamble through the grocery entrance, which was odd. The self-made millionaire hated the Big Blue Box like a literary critic hates clarity. Also odd was his torn Armani suit. And his gray pallor. And the fact that he began gnawing at the greeter’s throat.

  The screaming started soon after.

  Wofford put down the Kenny Rogers exclusive box set he’d been eyeing and walked to the hunting counter. “Excuse me,” he said to the cashier, who had her back to him, a cell phone to her ear.

  She turned, and words fled Wofford’s mind.

  Her skin glowed like alabaster. Chestnut waves of hair cascaded about her shoulders. And even though she’d obviously been crying, her eyes mirrored the green of ocean inlets. Her nametag read, “Virginia.”

  “Oh, gosh, sorry,” she sniffed, slipping the cell into a pocket. “My stupid boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, I guess.”

  A muumuued woman with a rat’s nest perm barreled past them, shrieking.

  “I’m Wofford,” Wofford managed.

  “What a unique name.”

  “Yeah. Family name. I’m the fifth.” Wofford hated his name, but he’d have gladly held it up for ridicule if only to keep Virginia speaking.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Wofford glanced away long enough to see a security guard leveling a Glock at Criswell’s gory form.

  “Five generations?” Virigina said.

  “Yeah,” Wofford said.

  Pop! Pop! Click! the Glock said.

  “I’d hate that,” Virigina said.

  “Yeah,” Wofford said.

  “Rawrghhh!” Criswell said.

  “Myarm! It’s got my—yurghlmughgah,” the security guard said.

  Virigina blushed, which somehow made her look even prettier. “I’m sorry, I hope that didn’t hurt your feelings.”

  “It’s okay. Really. Could I get a .30-06? Like, right now?”

  “Sure. The Marlin XL7 is popular.”

  “It’ll take that Leupold scope?”

  “Let’s see.”

  Virginia handed him the scope, and Wofford sighted down the aisle. The guard’s arm looked awfully lacerated. As did the rest of him.

  “It’s perfect,” Wofford said. Or was it “you’re”? He wasn’t sure.

  Virginia’s blush deepened, and she busied herself with unlocking the display case. “Do you hunt a lot?”

  Wofford took down the Marlin and began mounting the scope, willing his ears to stop burning. “Yeah. Elk. You?”

  “No. Oh, sorry, you can’t load that in the store.”

  “Could we make an exception?” He cocked his head toward Criswell, whose excavation of the guard’s abdominal cavity was being interrupted by a second guard with a can of mace.

  Virginia hesitated, then said, “Well, they can only fire me.”

  “Great. You, uh, want to learn a little about hunting?”

  “Are you teaching?”

  Wofford did a double take, but there it was—her smile breaking like dawn through darkness. He nearly dropped the rifle. “Okay. First, make sure the safety’s off. Then you bring it up, close one eye to sight, and squeeze the trigger. Like this.”

  Criswell’s right hand, which was reaching for the second guard’s head, exploded into a shower of blood and bone.

  “Can I try?” Virginia asked.

  “Here you go.”

  Their hands met as he passed her the gun, and Wofford would’ve sworn on a stack—no, an entire warehouse—of Bibles that lightning leapt up his arm.

  Virginia’s smiled widened. Then she took the rifle and blew off the top of Criswell’s skull.

  “You’re a natural,” Wofford exclaimed. “Say, would you like to get dinner sometime?”

  “I’d love to. When?”

  “Probably not tonight,” Wofford said, because at that moment a stream of ravening, shrieking undead began pouring into the store. “You keep that. Can I add a few items to my ticket?”

  “Be my guest,” Virginia said, chambering another round.

  In addition to the Marlin and the Leupold, the final bill of sale included a Remington double-barreled shotgun, most of the in-stock ammunition, a Gerber sport axe, a Black & Decker electric chainsaw, an extension cord, and (for the survivors who huddled behind the counter during the slaughter) a case each of Dinty Moore, Cool Ranch Doritos, and lemon-lime Gatorade. Even granting Megamart’s everyday low prices, the total would’ve emptied Wofford’s savings if Virginia hadn’t applied her employee discount and if the military hadn’t cleansed the surrounding area with napalm. As it stood, it came out to just under $1,500.

  That left enough for Wofford to take Virginia to Chili’s the next week. And to the justice of peace the week after that.

  WWGD?

  By John DuMond

  I love the DVD bargain bin at Megamart. DVDs for five bucks. You can’t beat it. Of course, these days the bin has been reduced to just a couple of small shelves. Easier to search than a bin, but a much smaller selection. A lot of the movies you’ll find there are crap, but once in a while you’ll find a gem tucked away under a pile of Rob Schneider vehicles.

  I was in a pretty good mood one night after having found White Lightning and Gator. Both movies star Burt Reynolds as Gator McClusky. I’d recently seen Gator on cable. It was a kick-ass flick. Turns out it was the sequel to White Lightning, which I hadn’t seen yet. I’d managed to score both of them together, and I couldn’t wait to get home and watch them back to back.

  As I got to the front of the store, I saw there was only one register open. No surprise, it was just past midnight after all. One woman was in line, with a huge order the cashier had just started ringing up. She was probably in her late thirties, but looked a lot older. A high-mileage model, if you know what I mean. The massive amount of makeup she was wearing didn’t help. She was Amy Winehouse-skinny and her hip-hugger jeans hung low, revealing the top of a red g-string and a tramp-stamp tattoo that read “Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me!” The image that created in my mind left me wondering in which aisle they kept the brain bleach.

  I had been waiting just shy of eternity when a guy with a shopping cart got in line behind me. I looked into the cart and saw he had a couple baseball gloves, two bats, and a baseball. He saw me looking into the cart and said, “My son’s going to play Little League.”

  �
�Cool,” I said.

  “I figured I’d better get another glove for me so he’d have someone to practice with.”

  “Good idea,” I said. I wish my dad had taken some time to play catch with me when I was a kid.

  I turned back toward 69 Girl to see if she was almost checked out yet. A guy had joined her. He was paunchy and wore a wife-beater under an imitation silk jacket that read “Porn Star” on the back. I found myself wondering about the brain bleach again.

  A couple minutes later, 69 Girl got into it with the cashier about the price of one of the items. The cashier got on the public address system and called a manager to the register for a price check. While 69 Girl was bitching at the cashier, Porn Boy turned and looked at me. I guess he caught me rolling my eyes, because he said, “You got a problem?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  He pulled his jacket aside to reveal an automatic pistol sticking out of the waistband of his pants and said, “If you’re not careful, you’re going to have one, understand?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He glared at me for a moment, then turned his attention back to 69 Girl and her meltdown.

  I looked down at the DVDs in my hand. Gator McClusky stood holding a shotgun on the cover of White Lightning. It occurred to me that Gator would have handled this whole situation better than I did.

  I turned to Little League Dad. He stood there pie-eyed, his jaw hanging open. Guess he saw the gun too. I poked him in the chest with the DVDs and said “Hold on to these for a second.” He took the DVDs. I reached into his cart and took out one of the bats, a nice aluminum one. I held it in my best two-handed grip and took a batter’s stance.

  “Yo, tough guy,” I said.

  Porn Boy turned toward me. When our eyes met, I swung for the left field fence.

  * * *

  A couple hours later, two detectives told me that Porn Boy was a parole violator with a violent history who was almost certainly on his way back to prison. If he survived the recent blunt force trauma to his noggin. Two eyewitnesses heard his threat and saw the gun, so it looked like I was in the clear.

  The detectives also told me that I should check out Deliverance, that it was probably Burt Reynolds’s best flick. I figured I’d keep an eye out for it next time I was searching through the bargain DVDs. You never know what you might find at Megamart.

  Part-Time

  By John McFetridge

  What JT liked best about Megamart was that so many people still used cash there. He’d never thought about it till he was looking at a website, thing called The People of Megamart, that had pictures of the freaks who shop there—mullets and furs and wedding dresses, no shoes and so many people in their pajamas, what the fuck—and the girl he’d brought home the night before said there’s no way those people have credit cards.

  JT said, what do you mean, and she said she worked at a call center, one of those places that sends out that automated message about how it’s the third and final warning to get lower interest rates on your credit card, making it sound like a collection agency so people call back and half of them don’t even have credit cards.

  “If they sound OK we’re supposed to sign them up, but if they sound like they look like that,” pointing at JT’s laptop, the fat guy in coveralls with no shirt, “we get off the phone quick.”

  Made sense to JT. Back when he was a street dealer, there was no way he’d front a guy wearing a garbage bag for a skirt.

  He checked out a few Megamarts, surprised to find there were fourteen in Toronto and that didn’t even include the 905 suburbs. The ones in the shittier parts of Scarborough and Rexdale and Mississauga were full of people who couldn’t possibly have credit cards, people going straight from the check-cashing places across the street to the one-stop shopping, standing in line with frozen pizzas, underwear, and cheap electronics.

  And plenty of them looking normal enough, a lot of teenage girls pushing baby strollers, a lot of chicks in those head coverings, long dress-things to the ground, looked like tents, and almost all of them using money, cash. Had to be more going through a single Megamart in a day than ten banks.

  Once he decided on the big one, the Megamart Superstore on Eglinton in Scarborough—what he used to call Scarberia but the kids were calling Scarlem for Harlem—he hung around a few days watching the armored car deliveries and pick-ups. Didn’t matter he was in the store so much; the staff was almost all part-time and never there long enough to really notice him.

  The armored car deliveries weren’t always the same guards at the same time, but it didn’t take long for JT to see the pattern, the guards on a three-day rotation and then back to front so the guards that came in the morning one day came at night three days later. It was easy to pick his target. One crew had a man and woman who carried the money in and out of the store, the woman in her early thirties, okay looking, carrying a little extra weight, friendlier than the guy, stopping to talk to some of the employees. One day while the guy had a smoke beside the truck JT saw the woman buy a box of Star Wars Legos and that sealed the deal. He got a hangaround, Boner, to follow her home. One of the best things about being in the Saints of Hell was guys you could count on.

  Three days later, the armored truck pulled up behind the Megamart at five-thirty in the afternoon and the guy and the woman got out. JT stepped up to them and held up his phone.

  The woman guard said, “My son,” and JT said, yeah. “This picture was taken two minutes ago.”

  “He’s at my Mom’s. I don’t—”

  JT said, “You pile all those bags in here,” opening the side door of a minivan. And the woman looked at her partner and said, “They’ve got Dawson,” and the guy looked more pissed off than scared and JT opened his coat, showed the guy the .45 in his belt, and said, “Hurry the fuck up.”

  They started tossing the bags into the minivan, the guy saying, “You won’t get away with this,” and JT saying, “I don’t call my friend back in five minutes, he kills the kid and the old woman and that other kid she’s looking after.”

  The woman said, “No,” tears rolling down her face, but she never stopped moving the bags.

  JT hopped in the minivan, Mitch driving away before the door closed. They pulled onto Eglinton, four lanes in each direction, and disappeared in the traffic. JT was thinking how the guard woman looked like she was good at her job but probably got hired because she was a single mom and wouldn’t ever talk back or complain about the shift work or overtime or anything. He’d seen it at plenty of jobs.

  Too bad, he figured now they’d probably fire her and the best she’d get would be working part-time at Megamart.

  Cold Feet

  By Toni McGee Causey

  “That’s him?” Danette asked.

  “Yep.” I inclined a half-inch to see past the shampoo display that promised me shiny, happy hair. Where’s the friggin’ Life Shampoo when you need it? “Does he look good?”

  “What are the statutes of limitations on how long ago you could be stupid and I’d still be friends with you?”

  “Nine years, three months, seven days, and twelve minutes,” I answered, a little absently because Adam had paused, engrossed in the endcap display of teeth whiteners.

  “Did you have a lobotomy before you broke up with him?”

  I’d wondered myself, especially since moving back here. “Cold feet, I guess.”

  “He shops like a bachelor,” Danette said. “Plus, no ring.”

  “Really?” He’d married not long after our breakup.

  If he was single, maybe I could find a way to engineer a chance meeting… maybe wear that little black dress I’d exercised my way into, dammit, and not these slouchy jeans and over-sized sweatshirt.

  “Well, at least you weren’t Spousal Unit #1. Youcould be the Permanent Spouse. The one he was pining for and—oh, shit. He’s headed this way.”

  Turns out there aren’t all that many places to hide in a Megamart shampoo aisle.

  “Fluff!” Danette snappe
d and immediately tried to tousle my always-boring hair. I checked my reflection in a mirrored display—apparently a very grouchy beaver had decided to have eight kids and abandon them on the top of my head. Danette “shopped” a couple of feet away.

  “Marguerite!” Adam said, all warmth and charm. “My God, itis you. You look amazing!”

  “Geez, Adam, you still lie beautifully. But thank you. I appreciate the effort.”

  He laughed. He was still well built, lanky. Nice suit. Great hair. Crinkles around those stunning blue eyes. What the hell had been wrong with me? I must’ve been on crack.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re gorgeous, as always. You know I always loved you in jeans.”

  Well. No. Adam had hated me in jeans. “Um, I think that was Shira. Your wife?” Shira looked like a runway model. The bitch.

  “Oh?” Hard lines of grief overtook his expression. “Right. You forget too much when someone has passed on.”

  “Shedied?” I’d blurted it. Loudly. And maybe a little too happily. Danette rolled her eyes.

  Adam didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. Almost five years ago. Terrible car accident.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss. Five years is never enough.”

  He cocked his head, quizzical. Then, “Oh, Shira. No, sorry, I was thinking of Rita, my second wife. Rita’s the one who died in the car accident.”

  “Oh. Wow. Okay. Um, what happened to Shira?”

  “They never found Shira.” Sad confusion marred what had been a handsome face.

  “So… how’d you declare her dead, so you could get remarried?”

  “You have to do that?” he asked.

  I didn’t know Danette’s eyebrows could actually hit her hairline.

  “Er, generally, yeah. So, um, look at that! Time to go! Good to see you.”

  “No,” he kept on, still puzzling. “They pretty much declared her dead due to all the blood in evidence. Not like when Connie disappeared.”