Bentley Little - The Store

"It's a little bit funny."

Diane smiled. "Well, maybe a little. But the point is, compared to me, you have nothing to complain about."

"I wouldn't say that."

"I would. So your dad's a little whacked-out about The Store. Big deal.

There're a lot worse things he could be."

Ahead, through the trees, they could see open space. Sunlight on car windshields. Black asphalt and brown brick. The Store.

"At last," Shannon said. "Civilization."

"Can you imagine what it must have been like in pioneer days? Traveling for months without seeing another human? Living on, like, a drop of canteen water a day?"

Shannon shook her head. "I don't even want to think about it."

They broke through the trees at the side of the parking lot and slid down a short dirt embankment to the asphalt. Diane leading the way, they wound their way through the rows of parked cars toward The Store entrance.

Suddenly Diane stopped short. "Oh, my God."

Shannon almost ran into her. "What is it?"

Diane pointed toward the row directly in front of them. "Mindy."

Mindy Hargrove, her hair disheveled, her clothes in disarray, was running toward them, away from The Store, crying uncontrollably. Shannon stood next to Diane, staring, not knowing what to do. She hadn't seen Mindy for a long time.

The girl's attendance had been sporadic for most of this semester, and for the past month she hadn't been in school at all. The rumor was that she wasn't going to be promoted from eleventh grade, that she'd still be a junior next year.

Everyone felt sorry for Mindy because of what had happened to her father, but at the same time, she'd always been a bitch and no one really felt _too_ sorry for her.

For the first time since it had happened, Shannon thought of her encounter with Mindy on the road home after school.

_It's built with blood_.

The two of them had not spoken since then, although they'd seen each other a couple of times in the halls, and Shannon had sort of assumed that Mindy had been embarrassed by her outburst and had not wanted to be reminded of it. She'd stuck to her nervous breakdown theory and figured that Mindy had merely been looking for a scapegoat for her dad's death.

But for the first time, the thought flashed through her mind that maybe there _was_ something wrong with The Store. Maybe her dad and Mindy weren't so far off.

She immediately dismissed that idea. It was stupid, childish.

Diane moved forward, stepping out from between the cars into the open row of the parking lot.

Mindy suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs and darted to the right, stopping next to the driver's door of an old Buick.

"What's she doing?" Diane said.

Shannon didn't answer. She watched as Mindy, still screaming, pulled a set of keys from her right front pocket and started sorting through them. Her unchecked cries had attracted the attention of a handful of other people in the parking lot and all were staring at her nervously.

"This is spooky," Diane said. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Shannon agreed, and they slipped between cars, moving around to the front of the building.

From behind them came the unmistakable sound of metal on metal, and they turned to see the Buick scrape the side of a Volkswagen as it sped through the parking lot away from them, heading toward the highway. A second later, it rounded the far end of the row and sped half the length of the lot, turning down the aisle directly in front of The Store's entrance and immediately accelerating.

"Oh, my God," Shannon said. "She's going to ram the building."

The car gained speed, its engine racing loudly as it shot toward the front doors. Mindy was screaming, her face red and contorted, and even from this far away, Shannon could see the expression of fanatic determination on her features.

The car hit hard with a noise that sounded like an explosion, a crunch that Shannon felt in her stomach and under her feet, like a sonic boom. The bumper and right front panel of the car smashed against the brick, crumpling instantly, but the rest of the car plowed into the doorway, glass shattering inward.

There were screams from all around, inside and outside the store, seemingly everywhere, and Shannon was suddenly aware of the fact that she was running toward the accident, Diane at her side. Mindy was slumped over the steering wheel, completely limp, held in by a shoulder harness, and it looked like she was dead, but with one convulsive jerk she was moving again, and the car, whose engine had never stopped running, lurched backward, tearing free from the building with an excruciating squeal and nearly plowing through the gathering crowd behind it.

From the side, Shannon saw Mindy's face, and it was covered with blood, but that look of crazed determination was still there, and she watched helplessly as the car backed up and then sped forward to make another run.

This time, Mindy missed the entrance entirely and the Buick smashed against the brick wall, bouncing back. It spun once and came to a stop, engine steaming, pieces of metal continuing to fall from underneath the vehicle as it stood there. The air seemed suddenly quiet after the crashes, the cries of the crowd muffled, and Shannon looked through the car's broken window to see if Mindy was still screaming, but she could not see Mindy's face, could only see the stem of the steering wheel that had been embedded there.

From somewhere came a policeman, a uniformed officer who pushed his way through the gathering onlookers and tried unsuccessfully to open the smashed driver's door of the Buick. Unable to budge either the driver's or passenger's doors, he pushed one burly hand through the glassless window, put a hand against Mindy's neck, feeling for a pulse. He looked back, shook his head.

"Is she -- ?" Diane began.

The policeman nodded. "She's dead."

FIFTEEN

1

He heard the saws when he awoke. The saws and the earthmovers.

The Store was expanding.

Bill got up, put on shorts and a T-shirt, went for his morning jog.

Construction had indeed begun on the recently approved addition, and an army of men and machinery were hard at work demolishing the stand of trees behind the building. These were obviously not local construction workers -- the customized state-of-the-art equipment told him that much -- but there was no site sign announcing the contractor's name. He jogged off the highway, into the empty parking lot, and as he drew closer to the side of the building, he could clearly see the logo on the side of a black bulldozer: a shopping cart filled with consumer products.

And the words beneath it: THE STORE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. A DIVISION OF

THE STORE, INC.

Ben was already at the site, behind the makeshift chain-link fence, taking photos for the paper. Bill saw the editor crouched next to a crane, camera pointed toward the rear of The Store.

"Hey!" Bill called.

Ben saw him, waved, and continued taking photos, moving around the crane to a tangle of fallen trees that were being cut into segments by ten or twelve men all armed with power saws. Bill stood outside the fence, watching, waiting.

Finally, the editor finished his roll of film and walked past a tractor, through the gate, and out to the parking lot.

Bill walked over to meet him. He had to shout to be heard over the saws.

"Why are you out here taking pictures this early? I thought you left that grunt work for your underlings."

"Grunt work? This is what passes for a glamour assignment here in Juniper.

They'll cover this afternoon's Little League game and tonight's school board meeting. I get The Store."

"Dan Rather look out."

"Eat me."

Bill laughed, and the two of them headed slowly across the lot toward the front of The Store, where Ben had parked his car. Bill glanced to his right as they walked. The front entrance of the building had been repaired yesterday. By local workers, he had assumed at the time. Now he was not so sure. He gestured back toward the construction workers. "Are they the ones who fixed the front of the building?"