Bentley Little - The Store

The celebration stopped the second they walked into The Store. As if on cue, employees placed their banners and balloons and confetti into a lidded bin just inside the door and scurried off to their assigned positions in their individual departments. The change was too abrupt, too complete. Perhaps the employees were just trying to demonstrate their efficiency. Perhaps they really had been excited to see them and were now just as intent on proving what good workers they were, but Bill could not help wondering how much of it was genuine and how much of it had been staged by Mr. Lamb.

Mr. Lamb.

The personnel manager stood nervously off to the side, flanked by Walker and Keyes, waiting for an acknowledgment from Newman King.

King ignored all of them.

He walked slowly up the main aisle, an arm clasped around Bill's shoulder.

There were strong muscles in that arm -- Bill could feel them -- and beneath the muscles, in unusual places, in places they should not have been, were bones. Too many bones.

But it felt good to be walking with King, good to return triumphant to the site of his defeat, and he found that he was proud to walk beside the CEO.

"You will have complete autonomy," King said. "You can hire and fire whomever you want." He stopped walking, paused, smiled. "You can _terminate_ whomever you want."

They were walking again, faster this time. The yes-men from the plane, who'd driven to Juniper in a series of cars behind them, were following Bill.

Lamb, Walker, and Keyes were following them.

King stopped before a door in the wall. "The manager's office," he said.

"_Your_ office." He frowned, looking over Bill's head. "What are you three doing here? Did I ask you to tag along with us?"

Bill turned around, saw Mr. Lamb shaking his head nervously. "No, sir. I

just thought --"

"Don't think. It's not your strong suit." He pointed toward the Customer Service counter at the far end of The Store. "Back to your offices. Back to work. Now."

All three men were bowing. "Yes, sir," they said in unison. "Yes, sir."

"Fuck off!" King yelled.

They ran, scattering, and King laughed. "I love to do that," he confided.

"You can do it, too. Try it sometime."

He would, Bill thought. And he'd enjoy it, too.

Especially when it came to Mr. Lamb.

King turned back to the door, opened it, and they walked up a flight of stairs until they were in the manager's office. There was a huge desk, a refrigerator, a computer, a wall-mounted video screen. The entire south wall was a window made out of mirrored one-way glass that looked over the store below.

Cool air from a hidden vent blew into the room, keeping the air temperature even more comfortable than that of the rest of the building. "Like it?" King asked.

Bill nodded.

"Excellent! Want to sit in your chair?"

Bill shook his head. He'd gone through this in the simulation, but it was different being here in real life, and he didn't yet feel comfortable. It would take him some time to get used to all of this.

"After the tour, then." King walked around the desk, pressed a key on the computer. A section of the wall opposite the window slid open, revealing an elevator. King grinned. "Pretty neat, huh?" He walked over to the elevator, got in. "Come on."

Reluctantly, Bill followed him into the small cubicle.

King pressed a button labeled NM. "The rest of you wait here," he said.

"We'll be back."

The doors closed. The elevator dropped. Bill looked over at Newman King, then immediately looked away, not wanting to see that face this close. He smelled chalk, dust.

"They don't teach you this part in the training," King said. "I like to do this myself."

"What is it?"

King smiled. "You'll see."

The elevator continued descending -- how far down were they going? -- and the CEO stared up at the lighted numbers above the sliding doors. He was still smiling, practically bouncing on his heels with amused excitement.

The elevator stopped.

The doors opened.

They were in what looked like an enormous lunchroom, a white-walled, white-floored, white-ceilinged rectangular chamber filled with parallel rows of long white tables. At the far end was a silver counter and a darkened kitchen.

There were fluorescent lights in the ceiling, but only about half of them were turned on, and the huge room was filled with a dim, diffused illumination.

Seated at the center tables, unmoving, was a group of men dressed all in black.

The Night Managers.

There were forty or fifty of them, maybe more. Cups of coffee sat on the tables before them, but the cups remained untouched, and the Night Managers sat with their hands folded, unmoving. Even in the dim light, their faces looked white, and there was no expression on them. The room was completely silent, the only sounds coming from King and himself.

Bill knew the Night Managers were his to use as he saw fit, his own private Store army, but they still scared him, and he felt a slight shiver of cold fear as he looked at them. If he had been taught about them in his training, if he had had the opportunity to work with them at the Black Tower, he might have felt differently, might have already been used to working with them, but as it was they seemed just as frightening to him now as they did before he went to Dallas.

King clapped his hands. As one, the heads of the Night Managers turned toward him. He clapped twice more, and the Night Managers' heads swiveled back to their original positions.

The CEO laughed. "Isn't that great? You try it."

Bill shook his head. "No --"

"Come on!" King clapped his hands three times and the Night Managers stood up. Four times and they sat back down again. "It's fun! Go ahead!"

Bill clapped, and the Night Managers' heads turned toward him. He clapped three times and they stood.

What were the Night Managers? he wondered. Zombies? Vampires?

No. It was nothing so simple. They weren't monsters. They weren't mythical undead creatures. They weren't corpses that had been brought back to life through magic or alchemy or science. They were men. They were . . . victims of The Store. Men that The Store had captured.

The Store had captured their souls.

_I owe my soul to the company store_.

Old Tennessee Ernie Ford had been more right than he'd known.

"Clap again!" King said. "Five times!"

Bill clapped five times and the Night Managers sat down in their original positions.

"Great, huh?" King clapped once, stomped his foot on the floor, and the Night Managers yelled "Yes!" in unison.

"Isn't it fun?"

It was kind of fun, Bill had to admit. And the Night Managers no longer seemed quite so frightening to him.

"So what are they supposed to do?" he asked. "Why are they here?"

"They have the run of The Store at night. And they'll audit the day's doings. And if they find something they don't like, they will tell you. Other than that, they're yours to use as you wish. Security guards, police, fill-in clerks -- they can do it all. And they'll respond to voice commands, too."

King stomped his feet twice, and the Night Mangers yelled, "That's right!"

"But the clapping and stomping are more fun." He turned toward Bill. "The details are spelled out in your _Concordance_." He put a strangely formed arm around Bill's shoulder. "Come on. Let's go back to your office and finish up our business. I want to return to Dallas before nightfall."

They stepped into the elevator.

The yes-men had remained unmoving, were in exactly the same positions they'd been in when he and King had left. They came to life when the CEO entered the office, talking to each other, going over papers.

"Any questions?" King asked.

Bill shook his head.

"I guess that's it, then. The hotline number is in your _Concordance_