Bentley Little: The Store

Bill thought for a moment. "You're all fired!" he said loudly.

The Night Managers dropped.

He did not know if he was killing them or doing them a favor, if he was freeing trapped souls or merely pulling the plug on mindless robots, but he knew that, whatever it was, it was the right thing to do.

There was no place for Night Managers anymore.

In front of him, the aisle was now blocked by unmoving black-clad bodies that stretched half the length of The Store.

They would have to walk down another aisle just to be able to get out of the building.

He turned back toward the employees. "Come on," he said. "Let's walk around."

"I think Jim went to call the cops," someone said.

Bill nodded tiredly. "Good." He walked around a display of breadmakers, down a short row to the next aisle, and trudged toward The Store entrance.

Outside, through the open doors, in the dark parking lot, he could see a crowd of people milling about, waiting. There were already the sounds of sirens in the distance.

He turned to look back at the Night Managers as he crossed the center aisle. In the center of the blackness was a lone light figure.

"The King _is_ dead," Holly said behind him.

He turned to look at her, nodded. "Yeah. He is."

* * *

Back at home, Ginny and Shannon were watching the news on TV, and both of them screamed and threw their arms around him the second he walked through the door. "Thank God," Ginny cried. "Thank God."

Shannon hugged him. "We thought you were dead, Dad!"

"No, we didn't!"

"I did!"

"I'm fine," Bill said.

"You've got to see this." Ginny led him over to the television, pointing at the screen.

The Black Tower was collapsing.

He turned back toward Ginny, heart pounding. "What about -- ?"

"Sam?" Ginny smiled. "She called. She's fine."

"She's coming home!" Shannon said.

_She's coming home_.

Bill's stomach twisted. He forced himself to seem happy, excited, but it felt false, strained. He wanted her back, of course, wanted her home, but . . . .

But he didn't know what he was going to say to her.

He felt Ginny's hand on his arm. "I guess it worked, huh?"

He nodded.

"Do you think Newman King --"

"He's dead."

"What happened?" Shannon asked.

Bill shook his head.

"What?"

"I'll tell you guys later." He turned his attention back to the television. CNN was cutting between the Black Tower and property on the south side of Dallas that was owned by Newman King and was supposed to be the site of the first Store in a major metropolitan area.

The Tower was collapsing into a sinkhole. Police had blocked off a square block area, and two cross streets were almost buried under falling debris. But it was the empty property, the vacant lot, that was the most fascinating, because dogs and cats, rats and rattlesnakes, birds and bats were all being drawn to the land and dropping dead. Police had the area cordoned off, but people were even walking onto the property and falling in their tracks. The news cameras captured several of them on tape.

"He _was_ The Store," Bill said, staring at the screen.

"What?" Ginny asked him.

He turned away from the television, looked at her, smiled. "Nothing," he said. "Is it over?" she asked.

Bill nodded, threw an arm around her, held her close, and for the first time in a long while, he felt happy. "Yes," he said. "It's over."

EPILOGUE

1

For weeks, the Internet had been buzzing with news of The Store and the bodies. Photos from all over the country of the people who had driven, walked, or crawled to the parking lots of the individual Stores had been electronically transmitted and transferred, scanned and analyzed. The conspiracy theorists and the UFO fanatics had had a field day, postulating outrageously complex scenarios that conformed to their preconceived ideas and at the same time explained the Store occurrences. Even legitimate news agencies had given the story play, although they were strangely silent on the causes, and their usual experts were not publicly offering any opinions.

In Juniper, sixteen men and women, all Store employees, had crawled to the parking lot to die.

Several dozen animals had done the same.

Street had returned. He'd seen the commotion on the news, from the trailer he'd been renting in Bishop, California, and he'd known that it was finally safe to come back. He'd driven to Juniper the next day, reopened his shop as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He let Bill know he was back in town not by stopping by, not by calling, but by leaving an E-mail message: "Want to play chess tonight?"

Bill had driven to the electronics shop immediately after reading the E mail, and Street filled him in on what had occurred the night he'd left. Bill, in turn, explained what had become of Ben.

They were silent for a moment after that, each of them thinking of their lost friend, then Street walked into the back, pulled out two beers from the fridge, and the two of them toasted their old companion.

Bill had missed his deadline on the human resources documentation, but it was no big deal. The city for which the package was intended was in no great hurry, and besides, it was the first deadline he had ever missed. His supervisors at Automated Interface assumed that it was because they had not given him enough lead time, and his deadline had since been readjusted.

He was well on the way to meeting it.

And that was that. Life was already settling back into its normal routine.

A new town council had been elected last week, and though it was a tricky business and the town had had to hire an outside lawyer and accountant to sort through the red tape, the police department was once again a municipal agency, and most of the remaining Store-sponsored "reforms" were on their way to being rescinded. There'd been a town meeting in the gym the night before last, with Ted, the new mayor, presiding, and though it went against the basic instincts of most of the people present, they'd agreed unanimously to levy on themselves a temporary one-cent sales tax until Juniper was in the black again.

The Store was still open. Bill had resigned, and Russ Nolan, an employee who was somewhere in the chain of command, somewhere on the management fast track, had been appointed temporary manager. He'd no doubt been gung ho for all of the old ways, but he'd adapted, changed, and he seemed fairly levelheaded.

No one knew how long The Store would stay open, though. There were rumors that the entire chain would be bought out by Federated or Wal-Mart or Kmart.

When Bill called Mitch, the manager could not substantiate any of those stories, but he did not automatically discount them.

Another rumor had Safeway or Basha's buying the old Buy-and-Save and converting it to one of their stores. While Bill had no desire to see another corporate chain open up an outlet in Juniper _ever_, Ginny seemed excited by the prospect, and he had to admit that he wasn't about to put up any real fight against it.

He didn't have much fight left in him.

He and Ginny were still healing. They'd talked through what had happened.

Many, many times. On the surface, everything was fine, everything was back to normal. And neither of them had brought up Dallas in several weeks. But it was still there, between them, and Bill did not think it would ever entirely go away. He understood that, though.

He could live with that.

It was late, after midnight, after sex. Shannon was fast asleep in her room down the hall, and the door to their own bedroom was closed and locked.

They lay in bed, naked atop the covers, and Ginny traced the brand on his buttocks, her fingers lightly following the ridges. He'd been permanently marked by The Store, and while he and Ginny had talked about having the brand removed by a plastic surgeon, he had decided that he was going to keep it. It no longer hurt, and he wanted the scar.