Bentley Little - The Store

The metal doors slid open. Before them was a huge boardroom with windowed walls that overlooked the skyline of the city.

The CEO's office from his dream.

A chill passed through him as he glanced around and saw familiar furniture in familiar places, a scene through the windows he had seen before.

In front of him, fifteen or twenty business-suited men were seated around a gigantic black marble table.

But the only one who mattered was the one at the table's head.

Newman King.

There was something inherently frightening about the CEO, something unnatural and disturbing in his too-pale face, his too-dark eyes, his too-red lips. Taken individually, his features were not that unusual, but they had come together in a way that seemed grotesque, both aberrant and abhorrent. It was not something that translated, not something that could be seen in photographs or on television. There was intelligence evident in his face and an all-American sort of ruthless business acumen, along with an aw-shucks, one-of-the-guys demeanor that could be highlighted or shut off at will, emphasized or de-emphasized according to need. Those things translated.

But that inner wildness, that horrible, undefinable inhumanity -- that could only be experienced in person. Even this far away, across the boardroom, with all of those other people present, it was a powerful thing to behold.

Bill's instinctual reaction was to run, to get as far away from King as he could, as quickly as possible. He felt shaky, his bowels and bladder ready to give at any second, but he stepped out of the elevator and into the boardroom, facing the CEO.

King smiled, and though his teeth were all white and even and straight, there was a sharklike malevolence to the gesture, a vampiric quality about it.

"Mr. Davis, I presume?"

His voice was smooth, strong, carefully modulated, with none of the twangy folksiness he used in public, but again, there was something about it that seemed unnatural.

Bill nodded.

"Welcome. Have a seat." He motioned toward a series of black chairs to the left of the conference table.

"No, thank you."

King's smile widened. "Brave man." He held up a hand and was suddenly holding a sheaf of papers, though Bill could have sworn that both of his hands had been empty a moment before. "Do you know what these are?" He did not wait for an answer. "Your faxes, your E-mail."

Turning on the charm, the CEO began walking around the table toward Bill.

The other board members remained seated, unmoving, staring across the huge table at each other. "If I didn't know better," King said, "I would say you were not a supporter of our organization. If I didn't know better and I was a cruder sort of person than I am, I would say that you're an anti-American agitator. But of course, that can't be the case. You're a Store Club member, your youngest daughter works as a Store sales clerk and your oldest daughter has been appointed temporary manager of the Juniper, Arizona, Store."

"Temporary manager?" Bill said.

"She cannot become a full-fledged manager unless she completes our two week training course."

"I thought she had."

"No."

Newman King was next to him now, and this close he seemed even stranger, ever! more monstrous. Not only was his skin pale, it seemed to be fake, made out of rubber or some sort of malleable plastic. His too-perfect teeth also looked artificial. The only parts of him that seemed real were his dark, deep-set eyes, and they burned with a cruel animal ferocity.

The CEO held up the handful of papers, shook them. "So what do you want me to do?" he asked. "I've been reading your missives, and I can't quite figure out what you want. Do you want me to close the Juniper Store?"

Bill was more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but he ignored his quaking legs and gathered his courage and, in the strongest voice he could muster, said, "Yes."

King was smiling. "What would that accomplish? It would put a lot of people out of work, that's all. It wouldn't bring back all of those other businesses." His smile grew. "It wouldn't bring back your Buy-and-Save market."

The smile stretched into grotesquerie. "It wouldn't even bring back Street's electronics shop."

Bill's heart was pounding crazily. "You know about them?"

"I know everything that affects The Store."

"You drove them out of business."

"So?"

"You killed people. Or you had them killed. Or your people did. All those missing --"

"Casualties of war," King said.

Bill stared at him. If he'd only smuggled in a tape recorder . . .

"Tape recorders don't always record me correctly," King said. He turned away, began walking back up to the head of the table.

Lucky guess, Bill thought, hoped, told himself. Hands shaky, legs wobbly, he started after the CEO, not sure if he planned to jump on him or punch him in the back or simply yell at him. Everything he'd ever thought about The Store, the worst of it, was true, and though he was more terrified than he'd ever been before, he was angrier than he'd ever been before, as well, and he focused on the anger, used it to give him strength.

King suddenly whirled around, and the air between them seemed to shift in a way that emulated but did not quite replicate wind. Bill instinctively moved back.

"You were about to ask me about Store policy," the CEO said. "You wanted to know why we do what we do."

"Why do you?"

King smiled, not answering.

He faced the CEO. "Why did you bring The Store to Juniper?"

"It was an open market."

"But what's your goal? What do you hope to accomplish? You're not just in it for the money. You had that from the beginning. You didn't have to . . ." He shook his head. "You get people dependent on your store, then you switch products on them, force them to buy . . . bizarre items. Why? What's the point?"

King smiled. "I don't force people to buy anything. It's a free country.

They can buy what they want."

"Bullshit." Bill stared at him. "What are you after?"

"We've just about conquered all the hick, hillbilly, Podunk, redneck, backwater, dipshit towns in America. It's time to move onward and upward, to expand our base, to drive Kmart and Wal-Mart and Target and all of the rest of those losers into the fucking ground." He pointed to a map of the United States on the wall next to him that was dotted with blinking red and yellow lights.

"That's what you're after?"

"Partially."

"And what else?"

King shook his head. "You wouldn't understand."

"What do you mean, I wouldn't understand?"

"You're not capable."

"Try me."

For a brief fraction of a second, there was a look on King's face that he could not interpret, an unfamiliar, unreadable expression that made him appear even more alien than he already did. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. "Believe me," King said. "My motives are not even in your vocabulary."

Bill suddenly felt cold. King was right, he realized. He probably _wouldn't_ understand.

And that knowledge frightened him.

"Why did you invite me here?" Bill asked.

"To talk."

"About what?"

"The future."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

King chuckled. "You're a good man, a smart man, a fine chess player, a worthy adversary. I admire that."

"So?"

"So I asked you what you wanted --"

"And I said I wanted you to get The Store out of Juniper."

"And what I tried to tell you was that progress can't be undone. The world can't go backward. It can _not_ go forward, it can stay where it is, but it cannot go backward. The Store is in Juniper. That's a done deal. But I'm offering you the next best thing."

"What's that?"

"As I said, you're a good man. I admire you." He paused. "I'd like you on my team."