David Koepp - Cold Storage

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Are you a stalker, Travis?”

“No. I swear.”

“Because that’s creepy.”

“I know. I apologize. I never did that before.”

“I would hope not.”

“I just wanted to talk to you. And then I got—in a jam, and I didn’t know how to get out. I am sorry.”

She looked at him for a long moment, analytically, as if evaluating every piece of him, dissecting his entire character based on the look on his face in that one moment. Finally—

“Okay. Don’t do it again.”

And it was done. He was stunned. This was not how he’d expected this to go. She was letting him off the hook. She was really, truly, for serious letting him take a pass, she wasn’t repulsed or any shit like that. He’d told the truth and it worked. He smiled, and for nearly a full minute, the two of them had forgotten where they were and what was happening.

Then they heard it. It was faint and far away, but it was so deep and down low that it vibrated through the entire cement-and-metal building. The overhead door rattled in its tracks ever so slightly. They both looked at it and then at each other at the same time. Is this what it sounds like when the cavalry arrives?

Teacake stood, almost involuntarily. “They’re here!”

Naomi checked the time on her phone. This didn’t feel right. “I don’t think so.”

On the other side of the metal door, Mike had heard it too. It’d be impossible not to, it was louder out here, the brrrrap echoing off the cinder block. The dull roar was getting louder fast and coming from outside. There were vehicles approaching, Mike knew that much, and vehicles meant there were people in them, and people meant grouping and spread and migration. That was all good and much easier to deal with than the metal door that made his whole body hurt just from looking at it.

I don’t have to get in there after all don’t have to other people

He turned and walked away down the corridor, toward the sound.

OUTSIDE THE ENTRANCE OF THE BUILDING, HEADLIGHTS SWEPT DOWNthe driveway and splashed across the front facade. There were nine lights in all, a pair from the black half-ton pickup and one each from the seven Harleys, which were the ones making all the noise. Griffin’s Fat Boy, outfitted with the straight-pipe exhaust, was the loudest of them all, so loud that even his fellow riders would have told you that it was a little over the top. You know, dude, there are other people in the world.

Griffin banked the bike around in a semicircle by the front door, got off, tossed his goggles over the handlebars, and spit in the gravel. He’d been drunk for nearly ten hours at this point, which wasn’t that big a deal for him, but along with the weed he’d smoked and the half-pound beef burrito he’d wolfed down around two A.M., things were starting to repeat on him a little bit. Even a fat gut has its limits. The other Harleys rolled to a stop around him and the drivers got off one by one—Cedric, Ironhead, Wino, Cuba, Garbage, and Dr. Steven Friedman.

Dr. Friedman, like Griffin, was the sort of person who was impossible to nickname. Nothing seemed to stick, ever. There was just something about him that screamed Dr. Steven Friedman, and so Dr. Steven Friedman he remained, a reasonably nice dentist who liked to ride and wear leathers. Shorty and the Rev got out of the truck. Most of them were in various stages and types of inebriation, with the exception of Dr. Friedman, who had his eighteen-month chip, and Shorty, who was straight-edge.

The night had started innocently enough at Griffin’s rented house, a sparsely furnished two-bedroom ranch-style near Cedar Lake that was down a long driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac. The neighbors were far enough away that they didn’t complain about noise, and Griffin didn’t care what happened to the place or what you did. You could get wasted, pass out, score just about anything you wanted, and Griffin had fifty-five-inch curved Samsung Premium Ultra 4K TVs in the living room and both bedrooms, all three hooked up to bootleg cable, which meant nobody ever had to fight over what to watch.

They’d come to the storage place at four in the morning because of the TVs. After five months of sitting on a stash of two dozen hot Samsungs, Griffin had finally sold half of them tonight. It hadn’t been easy; he’d been working on this group since midnight, and it wasn’t until he brought out the last of his meager supply of coke and passed it around that they all agreed to give him a hundred bucks each and take a TV home tonight in the Rev’s truck. That was one TV for everybody and five for Garbage, who thought he could unload them to his buddy in the electronics department at Walmart for sale out back. That would be pretty hilarious, as Griffin was pretty sure the Walmart resupply depot in Topeka was where the TVs had come from in the first place. But he knew better than to ask questions.

Griffin had agreed to store and sell the stolen TVs back in October and had grown to hate the things. They retailed for $799 and were supposed to be this big deal when they came out, but then nobody gave a shit that the screen was curved. Or that it was 4K, or LED, or Ultra any of that shit, because you could get almost the same TV anywhere for half the price and the picture looked exactly the same. The deal Griffin and the guy made was they would split any sales Griffin could make fifty-fifty, which meant that tonight, for his troubles, he would clear all of $600. It was barely more than the cost of the storage unit for the five months he’d had it, but at least he wouldn’t be underwater anymore, and he’d be halfway out of this problem.

He’d arrived at the storage place angry. He must have called that little turd Teacake a dozen times in the past hour, to tell him he was on his way with some Serious People, and if Teacake knew what was good for him he’d piss off to the other side of the complex and not see things he’d wish he hadn’t. But the kid never answered his phone. The shithead had apparently gotten the message, though, because as Griffin stomped to the door, he could see the front desk was unoccupied. But then he froze, passkey in midair, when he saw the wall. His already bulging eyes bulged out even farther.

There was a hole in the wall behind the desk. Two holes, as a matter of fact, big ones, messy four-foot-wide gashes in the drywall. Griffin’s entire bald head flushed crimson, hot blood rushing into it. “What the fuck that little shit what the fuck what the fuck ?!” he wondered. He swiped his card through the reader, the door buzzed, and he stormed inside. He hunched like a boxer getting ready to throw a punch and stalked over to the desk, staring at the holes, aghast.

Ironhead stepped up beside him. “Whoa, Griffin, your shit’s fucked up. What kind of place you run here?”

“I’m gonna fucking rip him a new one what the fuck did that little fucker do to my fucking place of business ?!”

Cedric and Garbage seemed to think it was kind of funny. Ironhead hopped over the desk, drawn by the blinking lights behind the wall. “There’s a whole bunch of electronics and shit back here. What is this?”

Dr. Steven Friedman stepped up next to Griffin, sober and sympathetic. “Looks like you have some personnel problems, Darryl.” Griffin hated Dr. Friedman, even though he was the only one who used Griffin’s Christian name.

Griffin pulled out his phone and stabbed a thick finger at Teacake’s number again, but the Rev’s voice boomed through the lobby, impatient. “We doing this, or what?”

Griffin hung up. He would kill Teacake later. “Yeah. This way.” He walked to the gate that led to the storage units and swiped his card again. The gate buzzed, and they pushed through, headed into the back.