The Store

THE STORE

by Bentley Little

PROLOGUE

The DeSoto drove along the rutted dirt road through the series of low desert hills that signaled an end to the Texas flatlands. A cloud of dust accompanied the car -- enveloping the vehicle, not merely following in its wake -- but the dust was preferable to the heat, and the windows remained open.

It was the third day of their honeymoon, and although Nancy didn't want to admit it, she and Paul seemed to have run out of things to say to each other.

They had not spoken since Houston, save for Paul's occasional requests to hand him the map, and though she tried to come up with something that they could talk about, there seemed to be no subjects that would sustain a conversation more than a few minutes. She figured she'd better save those for El Paso and dinner.

She fanned herself with the map. The unbearable temperature didn't help any, either. She couldn't think in weather like this. She'd never been so hot and uncomfortable in her life. She would've liked to take off her top and her bra. The old Paul would've liked it, too. It was the type of wild spontaneity that newlyweds were supposed to engage in, the sort of madcap antic that would make the honeymoon memorable, that they would be able to look back at and laugh about years later. No one else would see her -- they hadn't come across a single other car for the past two hours -- but even without asking, she knew that Paul would not approve.

They were supposed to have been married three years ago, but he'd been drafted, sent off to Korea, and though she'd wanted to marry before he shipped out, he wanted to wait . . . just in case. Each time she mentioned it, he'd remind her of Scarlett O'Hara's first husband in _Gone With the Wind_, the boy she'd married just before he'd gone off to his death in the Civil War, and though Nancy knew he was joking, his underlying meaning was serious, and it terrified her to think that he might not return.

Return he had, though. Alive and unharmed. But there'd been something different about him after the war. He seemed changed somehow, although it wasn't anything she could really put her finger on. She'd noticed it immediately, had considered asking him about it, but she figured if he wanted to talk he would, and she decided to let him be. She was just happy that they were together again.

Man and wife. And if the silences were a little too long, they were comfortable silences and she knew that once they started their new life in California, once they made friends and had kids and settled into marriage, those silences would disappear.

Ahead, at the foot of a sandstone cliff on the right side of the road, was a small brick building that appeared incongruous out here in the middle of nowhere. A strip of green grass fronted the structure, bisected by a short white sidewalk. There were no windows on the building, only a large black-on-white sign on the wall to the right of the door.

"That's odd," Paul said, slowing the car.

Nancy nodded.

This close, they could read the words on the sign:

THE STORE

GROCERIES -- PHARMACEUTICS -- MERCANTILE

Paul laughed. " 'The Store?' What kind of name is that?"

"It's straightforward and honest," she pointed out.

"Yeah. I guess it is that. But you'd never make it in a big city with a name like 'The Store.' You'd need something catchier, something with more pizzazz." He laughed again, shook his head. "The Store."

"Why don't we stop?" Nancy suggested. "Maybe they have cold soda. A nice cold soda sounds real good right now."

"Okay." There was no parking lot, but Paul pulled off the side of the dirt road and stopped directly in front of the small building. He turned toward Nancy. "What do you want?"

"I'll go in with you," she said.

He placed a firm hand on her arm. "No. You stay here in the car. I'll get us the sodas. What do you want?"

"Yoo-Hoo," she said.

"Yoo-Hoo it is." He opened the driver's door, got out. "I'll be back in a flash."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back as he walked down the short sidewalk, but her smile faded as she watched him open the glass door and step into the store, disappearing into the murky dimness of the building. She suddenly realized just _how_ odd this place was. They were fifty, maybe a hundred miles from the nearest town, there were no visible telephone lines or electrical wires, she could not believe that there was water, and there certainly was not any traffic. Yet the store was open and ready for business as if it were in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh and not in the middle of the Texas desert.

Something about that made her uneasy.

She stared hard at the door, trying to see into the store, but she could make out nothing. No shapes. No sign of movement. It was the glass, she told herself, and the angle of the sun. That was all. Besides, if the interior of the building were really as dark as it looked from out here, Paul would not have gone inside.

She tried to make herself believe it.

Paul emerged several minutes later looking stunned, carrying a large paper sack. He opened the driver's door of the DeSoto and sat down, placing the sack between them.

"You were just supposed to get sodas," she said.

He started the car.

"Paul?"

He didn't respond, and she began digging through the sack. "Light bulbs?

What do we need light bulbs for? We're on vacation. Tissue paper? Whisk broom?

Masking tape? What is all this?"

He glanced furtively back toward The Store as he put the car into gear.

"Let's just get out of here."

Nancy felt a chill pass through her. "But I don't understand. Why did you buy all this? And where are our sodas? You didn't even buy our sodas."

He looked over at her, and there was fear on his face, fear and anger, and for the first time since they'd gotten married, for the first time since she'd known Paul, she was afraid of him. "Shut up, Nancy. Just shut the hell up."

She said nothing but turned around to look as they sped away. Before the car rounded the curve of the hill, before the dust completely obscured the scene behind them, she saw the door of the building open.

And, in a sight she would remember until her dying day, she thought she saw the proprietor of The Store.

ONE

1

Bill Davis quietly closed the front door of the house behind him as he stepped outside. He walked off the porch and stood for a moment at the head of the drive, doing knee bends and breathing deeply, the air exhaling from his lungs in bursts of visible steam. When he reached the count of fifty, he stopped. Standing straight, he bent to the left, bent to the right, then walked down the drive to the road, where he inhaled and exhaled one last time before beginning his morning jog.

The dirt changed to asphalt at the bottom of the hill, and he ran past Goodwin's meadow and turned onto Main.

He liked running at this time of morning. He didn't like the running itself -- that was a necessary evil -- but he enjoyed being out and about at this hour. The streets were virtually empty. Len Madson was in the donut shop finishing up the morning's baking as the first few customers straggled in, Chris Schneider was loading up the newspaper racks, and here and there individual trucks were heading off to construction sites, but otherwise the town was quiet, the streets clear, and that was the way he liked it.

He ran through downtown Juniper and kept going until he hit the highway.

The air was chill but heavy, weighted with the rich scent of moist vegetation, the smell of newly cut grass. He breathed deeply as he jogged. He could see his breath as he ran, and the brisk air felt invigorating, made him glad to be alive. On the highway, the view opened up, the close-set trees that had been lining the road falling back, making visible the sloping landscape. Ahead, the sun was rising behind broken clouds that floated, unmoving, over the mountains, the clouds silhouetted against the pale sky, black in the center, pink-orange at the edges. In front of the sunrise, a flock of geese was flying south in a morphing V-formation, the shape of the flight pattern varying every few seconds as a different bird moved into the lead and the other members of the flock fell in behind it. Shafts of yellow light slanted downward through the clouds, through the pine branches, highlighting objects and areas unused to attention: a boulder, a gully, a collapsed barn.

This was his favorite part of the jog -- the open land between the end of the town proper and the small unincorporated subdivision known as Creekside Acres. The dirt control road on the other side of the Acres that looped back to his street was wider and more forested, but there was something about this mile or so stretch that appealed to him. Here, the tall trees ringed an overgrown meadow that sloped up the side of a low hill. An outcropping of rock on the south side of the meadow stood like some primitive idol, its erosion-carved facade giving it the appearance of something deliberately sculptured.

He slowed down a little, not because he was tired but because he wanted to savor the moment. Glancing to his left, he saw the brightening sunlight captured and amplified by the brilliant yellow aspens that were interspersed among the pines. He shifted his gaze across the highway, to his right, toward the meadow, but something here was different, something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he noticed instantly that there was an element in the meadow that was out of place and did not fit.

The sign had changed.

Yes. That was it. He stopped jogging, breathing heavily. The weatherworn sign announcing "BAYLESS! OPENING IN SIX MONTHS!" that had been posted in the meadow for the past decade was gone, replaced with a new sign, a stark white rectangle with black lettering that sat solidly atop twin supports sunk deep into the ground.

THE STORE IS COMING

FEBRUARY

He stared for a moment at the sign. It had not been here yesterday, and something about the cold precision of the type and the flat declarative promise of the message made him feel a little uneasy -- although he wasn't quite sure why. It was stupid, he knew, and ordinarily he was not one to go by hunches or intuition or anything so nonconcrete, but the sign bothered him. It was, he supposed, a reaction to the idea of something -- anything -- being built here in the meadow, in what he considered _his_ spot. Sure, a Bayless grocery store was supposed to have been built at this location, but ground for the construction had never been broken and the sign had been there for so long that its promise was empty, its words had ceased to have any meaning. The sign had become part of the landscape and was now merely another picturesque relic by the side of the road, like the fallen barn up ahead or the old Blakey gas station that had collapsed into the brush on the highway west of town.

He glanced around, trying to imagine a huge, new building in the middle of the meadow, the grass around it paved over for a parking lot, and it was depressingly easy to conjure up such a picture in his mind. Instead of seeing the glistening sparkle of dew on the grass, he'd see black asphalt and white paint lines stretching before him as he jogged each morning. His view of the hill and the rocks would probably be blocked by the square concrete bulk of the store. The mountains up ahead would be unchanged, but they were only a small part of the beauty of this spot. It was the convergence of everything, the perfect integration of all elements that had made this stretch such a special place for him.

He looked again at the sign. Behind it, between the posts, he saw the body of a dead deer. He had not noticed it before, but the shifting clouds and the rising sun had changed the emphasis of the light and the brown form was now clearly visible, its distended stomach and unmoving head protruding from the meadow grass. The animal had obviously died recently. Probably during the night.

There were no flies anywhere, no sign of decay, no wounds. The death was clean, and that somehow seemed more ominous to him than if it had been shot, or hit by a car, or crippled and attacked by wolves.

How often did animals drop dead of natural causes next to construction announcement signs?

He would have called it an omen, had he believed in omens, but he did not, and he felt stupid for even thinking about it, for even pretending in his mind that there was a causal connection between the two. Taking a deep breath, he resumed jogging, heading down the sloping highway toward the Acres, looking ahead at the mountains.

But he remained troubled.

2

Ginny was already up and had cooked breakfast by the time he returned.

Samantha was peacefully eating her Cream of Wheat in front of the television, but Ginny and Shannon were arguing in the kitchen, Shannon insisting that she didn't have to eat breakfast if she didn't want to, that she was old enough to decide for herself whether or not she was hungry, Ginny lecturing her about bulemia and anorexia.

Both of them assaulted him the second he walked into the house.

"Dad!" Shannon said. "Tell Mom that I don't have to eat a big breakfast every single day. We had a huge dinner last night and I'm not even hungry."

"And tell Shannon," Ginny said, "that she's going to end up with an eating disorder if she doesn't stop obsessing over her weight."

He held up his hands. "I'm not stepping into this. This is between you two. I'm taking a shower."

"Dad!"

"You're always chickening out," Ginny said.

"You're not dragging me into this!" He grabbed a towel form the hall closet and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door. He turned on the water, drowning out the noise from the kitchen, then quickly took off his jogging suit and got into the steaming shower.

The hot spray felt good. He closed his eyes and faced into the water, the tiny streams simultaneously hitting his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The water ran down his body, pooling around his feet. Low rainfall in the spring/summer months and low snowfall last winter had led to a reduction in the water table and rationing for the houses in town, but they had their own water from their own well, and he stood there for a long time, luxuriating in the shower, letting the heated liquid caress his tired muscles.

The girls had taken off for school by the time he finished his shower, and he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"I could've used some support," Ginny said as she put the girls' dishes into the dishwasher.

"She's not anorexic, for God's sake."

"But she could be."

"You're overreacting."

"Am I? She skips lunch now. Almost every day. And now she wants to skip breakfast. Dinner's the only meal she eats anymore."

"I don't want to burst your bubble, Gin, but she's chubby."

Ginny looked quickly around, as though Shannon might have surreptitiously returned in order to eavesdrop on their conversation. "Don't let her hear you say that."

"I won't. But it's true. She's obviously eating more than dinner."

"I just don't like the way she's always worrying about the number of meals she eats and the size of her food portions and her weight and her appearance."

"Then stop harping about it. You're the one drawing attention to her. She probably wouldn't be as conscious of it if you weren't focusing on her all the time."

"Bullshit. She'd eat one meal a week if I let her get away with it."

Bill shrugged. "Your call." He checked the pot on the stove. A small dollop of hardened Cream of Wheat lay clumped against one rounded side of the metal cookware. He grimaced.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Ginny said. "Pour in a bit of milk and heat it up."

He shook his head. "I'll just have toast." The open bread sack was still on the counter, and he took out two pieces, popping them in the toaster. "I saw a new sign when I was out jogging. It said The Store was coming --"

"That's right! I forgot to tell you. Charlinda told me about it Friday.

Ted's company is bidding on the roofing contract, and she said that he stands to make more from this one project than he did all last year. If he gets it."

"I'm sure a lot of construction workers around here'll be happy."

"I thought you'd be happy, too. You're always complaining about the high prices in town and moaning that we have to drive down to Phoenix in order to find a decent selection of anything."

"I am happy," he told her.

But he was not. Intellectually, he supposed he could appreciate the coming of The Store. It would be a big boost to the local economy and would mean not only a temporary increase in construction jobs, but a permanent expansion of sales and service positions, particularly for teenagers. It would also be good for consumers. It would bring big-city discount prices and a big-city selection of products to their small town.

On a gut level, however, the arrival of The Store did not sit well with him -- and not just because it was going to be built on his scenic spot. For no reason that he could rationally justify, he did not want the chain store in Juniper.

He thought of the sign.

Thought of the deer.

"Well, I'm sure local shop owners aren't too thrilled," Ginny said. "The Store'll probably put some of them out of business."

"That's true."

"Just what we need in town. More abandoned buildings."

His toast popped up, and Bill took a butter knife out of the silverware drawer, grabbed a jar of jam from the refrigerator.

"I'd better get ready," Ginny said, walking around him. She went into the bathroom, and he heard her brushing her teeth as he prepared his toast. She emerged a few minutes later, makeup on, purse in hand. "Hi ho, hi ho. It's off to work I go."

"Me, too." He walked over, kissed her.

"Will you be home for lunch?"

He smiled. "I think that's a safe bet."

"Good. Then you can finish the dishes."

"Ah, the joys of telecommuting." He followed her to the front door, kissed her again, then watched through the screen as she walked down the porch steps and across the drive to the car. He waved as she drove away, then closed the door, finished eating his toast, washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and walked through the living room and down the hall to his office.

He sat down at his desk, turning on the PC. As always, he felt a thrill of almost guilty pleasure as the computer booted up, as though he was getting away with something he shouldn't. He swiveled in his chair, looked out the window.

This might not be _exactly_ the life he had imagined -- but it was pretty damn close. In his mind, the house had been a large, glass-walled, Frank Lloyd Wrightish structure, and he'd been seated at a huge oak desk, looking out a giant window into the forest while classical music wafted into the room from a state-of-the-art stereo. In reality, he worked out of this cramped back room, the walls of the office little more than an extension of his bulletin board, with magazine articles and Post-It notes affixed to nearly every conceivable space. And he wasn't nearly as cultured in his real life as he was in his fantasies -- instead of classical music, he usually listened to classic rock on a portable radio his daughters had discarded.

But everything else was on the mark. The room did indeed have a big window, and that big window did look out onto the forest. And, most importantly, he was doing what he wanted, where he wanted. His reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he had not sold out. He had not given up his dream and settled for a lesser fate, choosing the least offensive alternative. He had stuck to his guns and here he was, a telecommuting technical writer, working for one of the country's largest software firms a thousand miles away from the corporate office, communicating with his superiors by modem and fax.

The computer finished booting up, and he checked his E-mail. There were two messages from the company -- reminding him of his deadline, no doubt -- and a message from Street McHenry, who owned the electronics store in town. Smiling, he called up Street's message. It was two words long: "Chess tonight?"

Bill typed a quick reply and sent it back: "See you there."

He and Street had had two separate chess matches going for most of the past year -- one online and one on a traditional board. Neither of them were really chess fanatics, and they probably would have stopped long ago were it not for an interesting and unexplainable fact: he won all the computer games; Street won all the board games.

It shouldn't have worked out that way. The mediums were different but the game was exactly the same. Chess was chess, no matter what pieces were used or where it was played. Still, that was the way it broke down.

Every time.

That oddity was enough to keep both of them interested in the matches.

Bill fired off a quick E-mail message to Ben Anderson, informing him of tonight's game. The newspaper editor, the other member of their online triumverate, had only recently learned of the Great Juniper Chess Mystery, as he called it, but he was fascinated by it and wanted to be present at all board games and eavesdrop on all online matches to see if he could detect any patterns in their playing, any logical reason why they won and lost as they did.

The situation until this point had seemed lighthearted, their approach to it curious but not serious, their manner half-joking, but as Bill stared at his E-mail screen and thought of their past year of chess games, he was reminded for some reason of The Store.

_The sign_.

_The deer_.

Suddenly, their win-loss pattern didn't seem quite so benign, and he wished he had canceled out on tonight's match instead of agreeing to it. He already knew what the outcome would be, and he now found that a little unsettling.

He looked out at the trees for a moment before finally turning back to the computer. He wasn't in the mood to jump straight into work, so instead of calling up his two messages from the company, he exited E-mail and logged on to Freelink, his online service, in order to check out this morning's news.

He scanned the wire service headlines.

THIRD STORE MASSACRE IN A MONTH.

The words jumped out at him. There were other headlines, more important stories, but he did not see them and did not care. Feeling cold, he displayed the text of the article. Apparently, a sales clerk from The Store in Las Canos, New Mexico, had come to work with a .45 caliber pistol tucked into the waste band of his pants, hidden beneath his uniform jacket. The clerk had worked from eight to ten in the morning, as always, then, on his break, had taken out the gun and started shooting his fellow employees. Six people were hit before the clerk stopped to reload and members of The Store's security team wrestled him to the ground. Five of those . six people were dead. The sixth was in critical condition at a local hospital.

According to the article, similar incidents had occurred at the chain's stores in Denton, Texas, and Red Bluff, Utah, within the past month. In the Texas store, it was a customer who had started firing on employees, killing three and wounding two. In Utah, it was a stock boy who had opened fire on customers. The stock boy had had a semiautomatic weapon, and he had managed to mow down fifteen people before being shot by an off-duty policeman.

Corporate officials of The Store would not comment on the incidents but had issued a press release stating that the possibility that the occurrences were related was being investigated.

Bill read the story again, still feeling cold.

_The deer_.

He signed off Freelink and stared at the blank screen in front of him for several long minutes before finally getting back into E-mail and accessing his messages from the company to start his morning's work.

TWO

1

Greg Hargrove looked down at the contract on his desk, frowning. He didn't like doing business this way. It might be the wave of the future and all, but he still liked to deal with his clients the old-fashioned way -- in person. All this faxing and phoning and Fed Exing might be fine for Wall Street investment firms, but, damn it, the construction business wasn't a service occupation, or a paper-pushing job. It was manual labor. It involved real work by real men. Men who created something with their hands, who produced something tangible.

And it didn't seem right to approach it this way.

He picked up the contract. This was the biggest job he'd ever had, maybe the biggest job he ever would have, and it just didn't sit well with him to be communicating through paperwork. He wanted to see a face, to feel a handshake, to hear a voice.

Well, he'd heard a voice. Several voices, actually. All talking to him over the phone. Official-sounding corporate voices that talked at him, not to him, and didn't seem to give a damn what he had to say.

The past few days, there hadn't even been that. There'd been only the forms and the lists and the specifications and the requirements.

It was especially annoying that so much of the paperwork was faxed to him overnight. It was bad enough not being able to do business with an honest-to-God human being, but doing it when he wasn't even there? Having to find out in the morning, after the fact, what was going on? That really bugged the shit out of him.

He was used to being able to show a client around a site, to explain what was being done and why, to walk him through the various stages and steps, to answer questions and allay fears.

He wasn't used to filing reports.

And having his reports critiqued.

That was what bothered him the most. The loss of control. On all projects before this one, he had been the one in charge. He had been the one to call the shots. Sure, he had built to suit, he had carried out the client's will, but within that broad framework, he had been the one making the decisions. Now, though, he was just another worker, following orders, not allowed to think.

He didn't like that.

And they were just in the planning stages now. God knew what it would be like when actual construction started.

Better, he told himself. It had to be better.

There was a knock on the doorframe behind him, and Greg turned around. Tad Buckman stood on the porch of the office, grinding his cigarette into the cement slab with his work boot. "Ready to roll, boss? We're going to start surveying."

Greg sighed, nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I'll be right with you. Just let me get my spec sheets." He dropped the contract back on the desk and walked over to the file cabinet for the specs, stopping by the fax machine to pick up this morning's modifications.

2

Her period was late.

Shannon closed her locker and twirled the combination lock, shifting the textbooks from her left hand to her right. She was never late. Some girls, she knew, varied all the time. But she was as regular as clockwork. Her menstrual cycle had never been so much as a day off in her life.

Now her period was three days overdue.

She held the books in front of her as she headed down the hall toward Algebra, her first class. It was stupid, and she knew it was impossible, but she felt unbearably conspicuous, as though she were already showing, and she tried to cover her belly as she walked.

Maybe her mom was right. Maybe she should be eating more. That way she could attribute her expanding abdomen to weight gain rather than pregnancy.

Maybe she wasn't pregnant.

She sighed. With her luck?

No, she was almost certainly pregnant.

Probably with twins.

In movies, in books, in magazines, girls always shared this stuff with their sisters, but there was no way she could do that with Sam. She'd like to be able to have one of those after-hours bedroom conversations while their parents were asleep, to be able to explain her problem to her sister and get some sympathy and advice, but there was no way that was going to happen. Sam was just too perfect. She was pretty, she was popular, her grades were always good, she never got in trouble. Although boys had been chasing after her since she was fifteen, Shannon doubted that her sister had had sex yet. She'd probably wait until she was married.

If anything, Sam would be even more disapproving of her than her parents.

No, she couldn't talk about it to her sister.

She couldn't talk to Diane about it, either. Diane was her best friend, but she was still a blabbermouth, and Shannon knew that if she even hinted about her fears to Diane, the news would be all over school by the next day. And greatly exaggerated.

She didn't want that.

The only one she could tell was Jake. And she knew he wouldn't be happy to hear it. She didn't know exactly what his reaction would be, but she had a pretty good idea, and just the thought of the ensuing conversation made her stomach knot up with tension.

She wished she knew for sure. That would make it easier. It was the not knowing that was the worst part of it. If she knew that she was definitely pregnant, at least she could make plans, plot a course of action. As it was, she could only worry and wonder, her mind vacillating back and forth between scenarios.

She'd buy one of those home pregnancy tests and perform the test here in the bathroom at school, but she knew that no matter where she bought it, word of the purchase would eventually get back to her parents.

One of the many disadvantages of living in a small town.

That was one good thing The Store would bring, she thought. Anonymity.

The Store.

It was pathetic how excited everyone here was about The Store. You'd think Neiman Marcus was coming to Juniper, the way everyone was talking, not just some chain discount retailer. It was like Her left foot slid backward beneath her.

She hadn't been paying attention to where she was walking, and she realized instantly that someone had spilled something on the floor and that she'd slipped in it. Scrambling to maintain purchase, trying not to fall, she clutched her books hard and stumbled backward, accidentally bumping into Mindy Hargrove.

"Hey!" Mindy said, pushing her away. "Watch it, Davis."

Shannon regained her footing. "Sorry. I slipped."

"I'll bet."

"It was an accident."

"Right."

Shannon frowned, moving way. "Oh, eat me, Mindy."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

There was a chorus of whoops from the smattering of kids still in the hall. Shannon held up her middle finger and continued walking toward Algebra.

Seconds later, Diane came running up next to her, laughing. "That was great."

"You saw that, huh?"

"You smacked right into her. Practically knocked her over."

"There was water on the floor or something. I was spacing and I slipped on it." "Serves that stuck-up bitch right."

Shannon looked mock-offended. "Stuck-up? Mindy?"

Diane laughed, and the two of them walked into class just as the bell rang. She didn't see Jake until History. She'd been half hoping that her period would come sometime during the morning, during one of her classes, but it hadn't. She desperately wanted to talk to him, wanted to tell him, but though they sat together in class, there were too many people around and it was not a good place to bring it up.

She decided to wait for lunch, but when the time came, she couldn't think of a way to broach the subject. The two of them sat alone together, on a wall near the Junior Circle, eating in silence, and Shannon started to tell him several times, but then she thought of the way he'd probably react to the news, and she couldn't decide how to begin.

Her distress must have been obvious, because halfway through lunch he took her hands in his and asked, "Is something wrong?"

She almost told him.

Almost.

But then she thought that her period might come at any minute, might come before the end of lunch, might come during her next class, and she shook her head and forced herself to smile and said, "No. Nothing's wrong. Why?"

3

Ginny sat in the staff lounge, eating her lunch as she watched the kids on the playground. The blinds were half-closed, but she could still see the tetherball and hopscotch courts as well as the bottom portions of the slide and monkey bars. Amidst the chaos of activity, she saw Larry Douglas chase Shaun Gilbert across the asphalt and through a hopscotch game, causing the girls involved in the game to scream for one of the lunch monitors.

Ginny smiled as she finished her Cup O' Noodles. Meg Silva, who taught sixth grade and had been staring out the window as well, shook her head. "Those Douglas kids are all troublemakers. I had Billy Douglas last year. I heard he just got suspended from junior high for vandalizing school property."

"Larry's not a troublemaker," Ginny said. "A little overactive maybe, but he's not a bad kid."

Meg snorted. "You learn to spot 'em. Talk to me in another fifteen years."

The older woman crumpled up her sandwich wrapper and threw it in the trash can under the table before getting up from her seat and walking slowly over to the couch. Ginny watched Meg settle in, then looked back toward the playground. She wondered if she would be as burnt-out when she was Meg's age. She didn't think so.

It was possible.

But she didn't think so.

She liked teaching grammar school. Her father wondered why she didn't teach high school, thought she was wasting her talents here, but she enjoyed working with young children. She felt as though she had more of an influence on them at this age, that she could do more to help mold and shape the way they turned out. Besides, grammar school kids were nice. Junior high students were brats, and high school students were too involved in their own teenage world to pay any attention to adults. But students this age still listened to her, still respected her authority. And, most importantly, she genuinely liked working with them. Sure, there were a few bad apples. There always were. But overall, they were good kids.

Mark French, the principal, walked into the staff room and over to the coffee machine. "Looks like culture is finally coming to Juniper," he said.

Ginny looked over at him. "What?"

"The Store." He held up the newspaper in his hand. "It says they're going to have a cappuccino and sushi bar instead of a regular snack bar. And they're going to carry videotapes of foreign films. For sale and rental. Northern Arizona is finally entering the twentieth century."

"Just as it's ending," Meg said.

"Better late than never." The principal finished pouring his coffee and walked out of the lounge, nodding good-bye. "Ladies."

"Ladies?" Meg snorted.

Ginny laughed.

She stared back out the window at the playground, feeling good.

Cappuccino? Sushi? Foreign films? This was like a dream come true.

She couldn't wait to tell Bill.

He was going to be so happy.

THREE

1

He awoke to the sound of blasting.

At first, Bill thought it was part of his nightmare. He'd been battling creatures from an alien world, and when he heard the explosions, he thought they were merely a continuation of the dream. But Ginny was stirring next to him, and it was obvious that she'd heard the sounds, too.

She turned toward him, her eyes still half-closed. "What is it?"

"Blasting," he said.

"Blasting?" she said groggily. "Are they widening the highway or something? We would've heard about it if they were."

"No," Bill said. He pushed the covers off and rolled out of bed.

She shook her head. "What?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep."

He slipped into his jogging suit as she silently snuggled back under the blankets. He knew what was happening, and it wasn't roadwork. There was only one major construction project in town this fall.

The Store.

His alarm wasn't set to ring for another fifteen minutes, so he turned it off on his way out of the bedroom. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face to fully wake himself up, then went into the kitchen and downed a quick glass of orange juice before quietly sneaking out of the house.

Skipping his usual preliminary warm-up, he hurried down the drive to the road and started jogging.

Juniper seemed even more deserted than usual, and for once he found the lack of people oppressive rather than refreshing. He'd expected to see more lights in the houses, to see more people in the streets -- hadn't anyone else heard the explosions? -- but the town remained dark, dark and quiet, and he almost breathed a sigh of relief as he passed by the last of the downtown buildings and headed toward the highway.

Although the sun had not yet risen, there was a lightening of the sky behind the mountains as he approached his favorite stretch of highway. The forest was dark, the close-set trees still clinging to the blackness of night, but the open area ahead was clearly visible and bathed in a fading blue. He slowed down, not to savor the moment this time, but to see what was going on.

He stopped directly in front of the sign.

In the twenty-four hours since he'd last passed this spot, it had changed completely. The sign was still in place, but gone were the saplings and small bushes that had dotted the meadow. Gone was the meadow itself. The tall grass had been plowed under. Bare earth and surveyors' sticks marked the boundaries of the construction site. A portion of the hill had been blasted away, fallen timber and chunks of boulder fanning out onto the flat section of ground away from the remaining slope.

He stared at the scene, shocked. He'd seen pictures of rain forest destruction, the aftereffects of wanton slash-and-burn policies in underdeveloped countries, but even in his most pessimistic projections he had not expected to see anything like that here. Yet that was exactly what it looked like. The carefully planned and orderly executed clearing of the land that he would have thought a major chain like The Store would insist upon was nowhere in evidence. No trees had been saved, no effort had been made to preserve or protect the character of the area. The trees had been simply cut, the land gouged, the hillside blasted.

And they'd done it all in a day.

There was no sign of the workers, only the equipment -- bulldozers, Caterpillars, shovels, cranes -- parked side by side in the southeast corner of the site and set off by a chain-link fence. It had been only a half hour, maybe less, since he'd been awakened by the explosions, but the men who'd set off the blasts were nowhere to be seen. He looked carefully around, trying to spot someone, anyone, moving amidst the equipment. Nothing.

He frowned. Even if work was only performed at night, there was no way that there wouldn't be at least a few men still about -- unless they'd detonated the explosives and then immediately vacated the site.

But he'd seen no cars on the highway, had met no vehicles on the road.

He jumped the small ditch adjoining the highway and walked past the sign onto the property, his jogging shoes sinking into the newly turned dirt. As he walked over rocks and ruts, around branches and boulders, his puzzlement over the workers reverted back to anger over the destruction of the meadow. How had this been allowed to happen? Where were the building inspectors? The code enforcement people? Juniper's zoning laws didn't allow builders to just decimate the landscape. The town's master plan specifically required all new businesses to "conform to the spirit and style of the existing community and its buildings, and to make a concerted effort to retain all geologic formations and as much natural vegetation as is feasible." The plan had been drafted in the early 1980s by the then-town council in an attempt to preserve the unique character of Juniper and its environs, and every council since had reinforced the town's commitment to controlled growth, making sure the builder of an apartment house incorporated an existing stand of ponderosas in his landscaping plans, withholding approval for a gas station until the company agreed to shift its building fifteen feet to the north in order to accommodate a huge house-sized boulder that had become a local landmark in the years it had sat on the undeveloped land.

Now, in one day, The Store had managed to circumvent that entire process and single-handedly destroy the most beautiful stretch of road within the town limits.

Well, that wouldn't last. As soon as it opened, he'd go directly to town hall and He stopped walking, his stomach sinking.

The perimeter of the site was littered with the carcasses of dead animals.

He took a deep breath as he stared at the scene before him. A wall of debris from the cleared meadow had been pushed back by bulldozers to the rear of the property and formed a semicircular barrier to the land beyond. He had seen only trees and bushes at first, logs and branches, but this close he could see that there were animal parts mixed in with the rest of the cleared brush, bodies lying on the ground in front of the debris. As his gaze moved slowly from left to right, he counted four deer, three wolves, six javelina, and over a dozen raccoons, squirrels, and chipmunks.

How had this many animals been killed?

And why?

_The deer_.

The deer had been an omen, a taste of things to come. He had thought it odd at the time, eerie even, but now the animal's death seemed downright malevolent. It was as if the deer had died as a result of the erected sign. And now these other animals had died because the land had been cleared.

Their deaths seemed to be the price of construction.

It was a trade.

That was stupid, he knew, but logical or not, something about the idea felt right to him, and goose bumps arose beneath the cooling sweat on his arms as he stared at the curved line of bodies.

He began walking forward. The first deer had not been shot or injured. Had these other animals died naturally?

He strode quickly across the unevenly graded ground. Two days ago, he would have laughed had anybody suggested anything as ludicrous as what he was thinking. This was a construction site. Local workers, people he probably knew, had been hired to clear a piece of land and build a building. There was nothing strange or unnatural about that.

Only there was. He didn't know how, didn't know why, but somehow within the last twenty-four hours everything had changed. The entire world seemed different. His unshakable faith in the rational and the material had been shaken, and while he wasn't ready to believe in ghosts and goblins and little green men, he wasn't quite the skeptic he had been. It was an unnerving feeling, and it didn't sit well with him, and once again he found himself wondering if it wasn't his personal connection with this area that was coloring his viewpoint.

_Third Store Massacre in a Month_.

Then again, maybe it wasn't.

He reached the first animal, a wolf. Like the deer, its stomach was distended. Also like the deer, there was no physical sign of violence. The wolf did not even appear to have been pushed here by a bulldozer. There wasn't a mark on it. It was as if it had walked or crawled to this spot of its own free will and died.

He looked past the dead animal to the wall of cleared debris immediately beyond.

And saw an arm protruding from the tangle of rocks and brush.

Bill's heart leaped in his chest. He took a hesitant step forward to verify that what he thought he was seeing was what he really _was_ seeing.

Sticking out between the bare branches of a dead manzanita bush was a white hand and forearm, smeared with mud and blood.

He backed up, stumbled across the rutted remains of the meadow, and, as the sun rose over the mountains, ran down the highway as fast as he could toward the police station in town.

He returned with the police to the scene, answering questions and watching as they pulled the corpse out from the rubble. After the body had been loaded into an ambulance and taken away, he rode back to the station with Forest Everson. The detective took down an official statement, which Bill read and signed.

It was after ten when he was finally through with all of the forms and questions and reports. In the furor over finding the body, The Store's destruction of the meadow and its wanton disregard for local zoning ordinances had been pushed to the side, but though Bill was still disturbed by what he'd found, he had not been distracted from his original purpose, and he walked next door, to the town hall, and explained to the young acne-scarred clerk behind the counter that he wanted to talk to one of the building or code enforcement inspectors.

"Mr. Gilman's out for the week," the clerk said.

"And who is Mr. Gilman?"

"He's the code enforcement officer."

"Isn't there anyone else I could talk to?" Bill asked.

"Well, what exactly is the problem?"

"The problem is that whoever's in charge of clearing the land for The Store has totally ignored Juniper's zoning regulations. They cut down every tree on that property, they blasted a section of hillside --"

"You want to talk to Mr. Curtis. He's the Planning Director."

"Fine," Bill said. "Let me talk to him."

"Actually, he's not here right now. He's attending a seminar in Scottsdale. If you want, I can have him call you when he gets back. It's just a one-day thing. He should be in tomorrow."

"Look, all I want to do is let someone know what's happening so inspectors can be sent out there before any more damage is done."

The young man looked uneasy. "I, uh, think everything's been approved."

Bill stared at him. "What?"

"I think that was all okayed." He looked around the office, as though searching for someone higher up to help him out, but there was only a secretary seated at a desk against the far wall, typing on a computer and pointedly ignoring the exchange. "You'd have to talk to Mr. Curtis, but I think the Planning Commission gave The Store a waiver."

Bill was stunned. "How's that possible? I didn't hear anything about it."

The young man shifted his feet uncomfortably. "You'd have to talk to Mr.

Curtis."

"Mr. Curtis? I want to talk to the mayor!"

"He's not in his office, but I could leave a message to have him call you." "Is _anybody_ in their office right now?"

"There's a town council meeting tonight. Six o'clock. You might bring it up in open discussion."

Yes, Bill thought. Open discussion. A public forum. That was exactly where this needed to be brought up. There was something fishy going on here. Decisions affecting the entire town had apparently been made by the Planning Commission in closed sessions, without any input from members of the public. He didn't know whether or not there had been any bribes involved, any promises made in exchange for cash or stock options or whatever, but something wasn't right, and it needed to be brought to the attention of the public.

He'd call Ben, make sure the editor put it in the paper.

"Thank you," Bill told the clerk. "I think I will bring it up in front of the council. What time does the meeting start?"

"Six o'clock. In the council chambers next door."

"I'll be there," Bill said.

Ginny called at lunch to find out how things had gone. He'd phoned her earlier, when he'd first run to the police station, to tell her that he'd found a dead body and wouldn't be home before she left for work. Now he filled in the details, explaining that they didn't know who the man was or how he'd died but that the body was being taken up to the county coroner's office in Flagstaff.

"Was he murdered?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess we won't find out until they do an autopsy."

"That's so creepy."

You don't know the half of it, he thought. He was silent for a moment, considered telling her about the animals, but something kept him from it, and he switched the subject to The Store's desecration of the land.

"So that's what that blasting was," she said.

"They totally destroyed it. Drive by after work. You won't even recognize it."

"And that's how you found the body? When you were looking at the damage?"

"Yeah. I was walking onto the meadow -- or what used to be the meadow to check it out, and I saw an arm sticking out of the debris. I hauled back to the police station and told the cops." He leaned back in his chair, looked out the window at the forest. "There's not a tree left on that site, Gin. By the end of the week, the rocks and the hill and everything else will be gone, too. It'll just be a flat cleared space."

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know. I guess I figured they'd make a token effort to make the store blend in with the area, you know, not piss off the locals. But they just raped the place. Slash and burn. It looks like some Third-World construction site." He paused. "I'm going to the town council meeting tonight to talk about it. I think they violated the town's zoning ordinances, but when I talked to a guy at town hall, he made it sound like the Planning Commission granted them an exemption."

"Did you ask Ben if he knew anything about it?"

"No. I'm going to call him later."

"So what are you planning to do?"

"Nothing. Ask some questions, get some answers. I can't say I'll be completely surprised if our local leaders sold us down the river, but I want to make sure they're held accountable for it. You want to go with me tonight?"

"No."

"Come on."

"I have to work in this town. Those people you'll be butting heads with are my students' parents. I'm staying out of this."

"All right. I'll go with Ben."

"That's fine."

Ginny only had a half hour for lunch, and she said she had to hurry up and eat before recess ended, so he let her go, hung up, and walked into the kitchen to fix his own lunch -- a can of ravioli.

Later that afternoon, he called Ben, and the newspaper editor told him that the body was that of a transient, a hitcher apparently passing through town on his way to Albuquerque. A preliminary examination indicated that the man had died from exposure, not from any injuries or inflicted wounds.

"I guess he was just lying there in the brush and got scooped up by a Cat or something while they were clearing the lot," Ben said. "It's kind of weird, but it's perfectly understandable."

"Is it?" Bill asked.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. You going to the council meeting tonight?"

"I always go. It's my job. Why?"

"I need someone to sit next to. Ginny doesn't want to go."

"Candy ass. I sit by myself every meeting."

"You're a he-man."

The editor snorted. "Why are you going?"

"To stop The Store from building here in Juniper."

Ben chuckled. "A little late for that, don't you think?"

"Probably. But have you seen what they've done to that land?"

"It's their land."

"There are zoning ordinances, building codes, rules, laws."

"And sometimes they get waived."

Bill was taken aback. "What have you heard?"

"I'm not a complete dunderhead. I ask questions when I see things that seem a little odd to me. I'm supposed to do that, you know. Being a reporter and all." "And?"

"And, off the record, I was told that concessions had to be made if Juniper was going to get The Store. Otherwise, it was going to go to Randall.

There was sort of a bidding war going on between our two fair towns, and whoever came up with the sweetest incentives would get the extra jobs, the added property tax revenue, and all those other wonderful perks that new businesses bring."

"Shit."

"You're going to be a lone ranger on this one. The town's hurting. A lot of people here would peddle their own mama's ass if it would bring in new jobs.

They're going to think bending a few cosmetic rules a small price to pay for economic security."

"What do you think?"

"What I think doesn't matter."

"But what do you think?"

Ben was silent for a moment. "Off the record?"

"Off the record."

"I'll deny I ever said this. I'm supposed to be impartial. My livelihood's involved here, too."

"Understood."

"I wouldn't've minded if The Store went to Randall."

Bill realized that he'd been holding his breath. He exhaled. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't know," the editor admitted.

"Come on. You can tell me."

"I'm being honest," he said. "I really don't know."

"But you don't like The Store."

"No," Ben said, and his voice was low, quiet, serious. "I don't like The Store."

2

They ate dinner early so he'd be able to get to the council meeting on tune. Samantha offered to go with him, but he could tell that both of the girls were apprehensive about him speaking in front of the council, and he told her that it was okay, he was going with Ben.

Shannon was more direct. "Don't embarrass us, Dad."

He grinned. "Do I ever?"

"Constantly."

He and Ginny laughed.

The girls didn't.

After dinner, he drove to the town hall, glancing out the window at the empty storefronts and abandoned buildings as he drove. Downtown had been slowly dying ever since the lumber mill had closed in the late eighties. Blame had been placed by the locals on "environmentalists," a nebulous group that included not only the loose coalition of scientists, national ecological organizations, and ordinary Arizona citizens who had rallied to the defense of the endangered pine squirrel and had succeeded in getting the federal government to impose a moratorium on logging in this section of the Tonto, but also anyone who supported any sort of government regulation, be it health and safety standards or prohibitions against the dumping of toxic waste. The truth was that the pine squirrel had only hastened the inevitable, probably to the long-term advantage of the town. Logging could not have continued at its previous pace for more than another half decade before the entire supply of timber in the region would have been depleted. Trees were a renewable resource, and the logging companies had been pretty good about reseeding the land, but the fact remained that they were cutting a lot faster than the trees were growing.

Tourism had always been Juniper's second-biggest industry, and it would have disappeared had the area's scenery been marred by deforestation. No railroad ran through Juniper, no major thoroughfares passed through the town, it was neither convenient to reach nor strategically important to any company or corporation. The beauty of the pine country was Juniper's only selling point.

The recession had hurt tourism, but the recession was ending, and despite the dying downtown, the region was realigning itself with the changing economy.

Outside investors had bought land and built time-shares, and there was even talk about putting up a resort near Castle Creek.

Still, the high wages and steady employment of the lumber mill days were long gone, and the town council and chamber of commerce had been trying for some time now to lure corporate offices and software firms and other light industry to the area in order to bring jobs back to the region.

Now they'd landed The Store.

Bill pulled into the small, partially paved parking lot and swung his Jeep next to Ben's pickup. The editor had already staked out a seat in the front row of the council chambers, and Bill scooted in next to him. He glanced around the room. "Not very crowded."

"Never is. Here." Ben handed him a single sheet of paper with double-sided printing. "Council agenda."

"Anything exciting?"

The editor shook his head, grinning. "Nope. Looks like you're going to be the lead in my article. Give 'em hell."

The meeting commenced soon after. A local minister led the attendees in a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, there were some routine votes on procedural matters, then the mayor said, "We'll open the floor to comments from the public."

Ben nudged him. "That's you. Stand up and talk."

Bill stood, wiping his hands on his jeans. He was suddenly nervous, and he realized that he hadn't planned what he was going to say. He should've written it ahead of time and printed it out so he could read from a prepared text. Now he was going to bumble and stumble his way through a probably incoherent diatribe and forfeit any hope of credibility. His chances of effecting any sort of change were going to go straight into the toilet.

The mayor nodded at him. "Please step up to the podium and state your name and address for the record."

Bill walked up the side aisle to the front of the council chambers and stood at the speaker's podium. He adjusted the microphone in front of him and spoke into it. "My name is Bill Davis. I live at 121 Rock Springs Lane."

The mayor motioned for him to continue.

Bill glanced around the council chambers and cleared his throat nervously.

"We all know that The Store is coming to Juniper, and I'm sure most of you have noticed by now that construction workers have decimated a stretch of land next to the highway just this side of the Acres. I jog by there every morning, so I saw it immediately. I understand that that's The Store's property, and I realize that they have to clear the land in order to put up the store and parking lot and everything, but I'm pretty sure that our local building codes are not being followed, and I know this goes against the town's Master Plan."

He paused, was about to continue, but the mayor spoke first. "We appreciate your concern, Mr. Davis, but The Store has proved in other towns to be a responsible and respected addition to the community. It's true that designs for The Store do not conform to Juniper's Master Plan and do differ in some respects from our local codes and ordinances, but compromises were required to lure The Store to our town, and we think the tradeoffs were worth it. More jobs are going to be created, better goods will be provided to our citizens, everyone will be better off in the long run."

"I understand that," Bill said. "But why doesn't The Store have to follow the same rules everyone else has to follow? I don't think they should be exempt from the law, and I'll bet a lot of our local businessmen feel the same way."

"The Store is a national chain," the mayor said. "For obvious reasons, they have their own building designs and construction standards. They want all of their retail outlets, in every town, to look the same so they're easily recognizable. The corporation does not cave in to local pressures because it has a national agenda."

"It's like McDonald's or Burger King," Bill Reid, the councilman to the mayor's right, spoke up. "They all look the same. They have to. Otherwise, their national ads wouldn't work."

"I also have to point out," the mayor added, "that all of the towns that have a Store allow the corporation to dictate the terms of its construction. If we hadn't acceded to their wishes, Randall would have. And we would have lost The Store."

"I think we could have kept The Store and maintained our local standards, preserved the character of our town. I don't think it was necessary to totally decimate the property in order to put up a building. Hell, that's what those codes and ordinances are supposed to prevent. Our strongest selling point here is our natural beauty. I don't think we should let anyone take that away from us." A burly, bearded, belligerent-looking man seated in the back of the council chambers stood up and strode angrily to the front of the room. Bill didn't know the man, but he'd seen him around town and he stood aside as the man stepped up to the podium and the microphone.

"State your name and address," the mayor said.

"Greg Hargrove," the man said. "1515 Aspen Road."

Bill wasn't sure if his turn was over and he was supposed to sit down, but he wasn't through talking, so he remained where he was.

Hargrove turned on him. "What's your problem, mister?"

Bill was taken aback. "What?"

"My company cleared that land. We followed the specs given to us by The Store, and we have all the proper permits. What the hell's your problem?"

"I have no problem with you," Bill said. "You were just doing your job. I have a problem with The Store's plans and with the fact that the Planning Commission and the council allowed the company to ignore our local ordinances and destroy one of the most scenic pieces of property in the area."

Hargrove shook his head disgustedly. "The Store will create jobs. Don't you understand that? All you tree-huggers care about is saving squirrels. You don't give a damn about people."

"You're wrong. I do care about people. I care about the people in this town. And I'm thinking of what's best for the long-term interest of all of Juniper, not just the short-term benefit to you and other construction workers."

"Bullshit!"

Hargrove was getting angry, really angry, and Bill stepped back, taking his hands out of his pockets and keeping them free -- in case he needed to use them to defend himself.

"We will not have that sort of language in the council chambers," the mayor said.

"We moved to this town because of the area," Bill said evenly. "Believe it or not, the environment here - the trees, the forest, the mountains -- is the town's major selling point. People don't move here for city reasons or city jobs. That's why they move to Phoenix. Or Chicago. Or L.A. That's not why they move to Juniper."

"All you care about --"

"Maintaining jobs and protecting the environment are not mutually exclusive. You're thinking in old terms. You're thinking of the past. That's one of the great advantages of the Information Superhighway. With computers, you can now work for a company in New York or Los Angeles or, hell, even Paris or London, and have your office right here in Juniper. That's what I do. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, we need jobs here, but we can bring jobs to our area without sacrificing our quality of life."

"Well, I'm not a computer geek. I own a construction business. You can't do my work with a computer."

"I understand that --"

"You don't understand shit! All you environmentalists want to protect every square inch of land, but you don't give a damn how it affects businesses like mine. How much more do you want to protect? The government already owns all the land around here! The whole fucking county's practically BLM territory!"

"Mr. Hargrove!" the mayor said. "If you continue to use that sort of language, I will have you removed from the council chambers."

"Sorry, your honor." Hargrove looked embarrassed.

"Look," Bill said. "If Ted Turner or Bill Gates or some other billionaire bought exactly that same land, decided to protect it and put up a big fence around it, leaving it as is, you'd have no problem with it. Why is it okay for an individual to save land for himself but not okay for the government to save land for future generations? Two hundred years ago, there were only thirteen little colonies on the east coast of our country. Now we have chain stores in Juniper! If things continue at this rate, our great-grandchildren will be living in a world like _Soylent Green_ or _Silent Running_!"

"_Soylent Green_." Hargrove grinned. "Good movie."

"That's not the point. We need to think about the future --"

"Mr. Davis," the mayor said. "I think we've had enough discussion on this subject. I appreciate your concern, but I think you're starting to get a little melodramatic. The world is not going to end because The Store is coming to Juniper. What will happen is that we'll have more jobs and a better place to shop. Period. I think you should both sit down." He looked out at the sparsely populated auditorium. "If anyone else has anything to add on this subject or has anything else to bring up, please step forward to the podium."

Bill walked back to his seat, slumped into the chair next to Ben.

"Game over," the editor said. "Davis zip. Store takes it in straight sets."

Bill looked over at his friend. "Thanks."

He drove home angry, feeling depressed. The mayor had been right. He _had_ been melodramatic, and that asshole Hargrove had gotten him off on a tangent and his whole argument had gotten derailed. He thought again that he should've written everything out ahead of time and read it.

But it was too late now. The damage was done.

The front of the house was dark when he arrived home. He let himself in, checked on the girls. Sam was in her room, studying. Shannon was on the phone.

He told them both to go to sleep early, it was a school night, then walked back to the master bedroom where Ginny was riding the exercise bike and watching TV.

"How'd it go?" she asked. "Did you stop construction and get The Store to rebuild the hillside and replant the trees?"

He sat down on the side of the bed, took off his shoes. "There's no reason to be sarcastic."

"Sorry." She stopped pedaling. "So what happened?"

"What do you think? Nothing. The council's bending and spreading 'em for The Store." He shook his head. "They're so shortsighted. They're willing to ruin a way of life for short-term economic gain."

"Then why don't you run for council?" Ginny said. "Why don't you stop complaining to me and get out and do something about it?"

"I might do just that."

Ginny got off the bike, walked over to the bed, and sat down next to him.

"It's not the end of the world, you know. Don't you think you're overreacting just a little bit?"

He smiled wryly. "That's just what our fair mayor said."

"Things change. Yes, The Store tore down trees and everything -- and they shouldn't have done it -- but I heard that they also bought that vacant lot next to the old Checker Auto and they're going to make it into a baseball diamond.

They're trying to do something for the town."

"You're missing the point."

"What is the point?"

"Never mind."

"Never mind? You want to --"

"I'm all talked out," he said. "I've been talking all night. I just want to go to bed." He stood, took off his pants.

She watched him for a moment. "Fine," she said, and there was an angry tightness in her voice. "That's just fine."

They slept apart, not touching, on opposite sides of the bed.

He fell sleep almost instantly.

He dreamed of dead animals and dead bodies and the unending construction of a black building that reached miles into a polluted sky.

FOUR

1

Shannon sat at one of the tables outside George's Hamburgers, nursing a Coke and trying to read her history textbook. Jake was supposed to have met her here after school, but it had already been a half hour and he hadn't shown and she was starting to get restless.

She finally closed her book, giving up all pretext of studying. She stared across the street at the grassy lawn of the park and the dark pines of the forest beyond. Above the trees, the mountains were capped with irregular slices of white. The snow had not yet dropped below the timberline, but despite the sunny days of the past week, it had not melted off the peaks, and it was only a matter of time before winter arrived in full force.

The snow on the mountains reminded her of the Alps, and the Alps reminded her of _The Sound of Music_, and she found herself thinking of the oldest daughter and her boyfriend in the movie. The boyfriend was a mailman or something and he would pretend to deliver letters in order to secretly meet with the girl. Shannon had always found that relationship very romantic and very sexy. Especially when the daughter sang "Sixteen, Going On Seventeen." There was something sensual in the way she danced in the gazebo, in the sly expression on her face as she twirled for the boy, letting her dress fly up, letting him see her underwear. She seemed so much older than he did at that moment, so much more experienced.

She liked that.

She liked to think that was the sort of relationship she and Jake had, but she knew that wasn't the case. Jake had had several girlfriends before her, whereas he was the first boy she'd ever held hands with, ever kissed, ever . . . done anything with.

It worried her a little that he'd had other girlfriends. He'd assured her that nothing had gone beyond the hand-holding stage -- and she chose to believe him about that -- but he had no doubt told each of them that he loved them and that they'd be together forever.

The same things he told her.

Which meant that he could leave her the same way he'd left them.

If he found someone better.

That scared her. She'd seen him looking at her sister when he thought she wasn't watching, and though she told herself it didn't mean anything, was just a natural response, it still hurt. She knew that if he had been allowed to choose between the two of them, he would probably have taken Sam. Of course, who wouldn't prefer Sam? Her sister was prettier than she was, smarter. She'd be any boy's first choice.

She didn't blame Sam, though. If anything, she blamed Jake, although that was not something she'd ever admit to or bring up with him. But Shannon did not hate her sister. Sure, she was jealous sometimes, but she admired her sister more than resented her. She wished she herself was more like Sam, but she didn't blame her sister for that.

Some people just got lucky.

Some people didn't.

She herself had gotten a little bit lucky this time. She wasn't pregnant.

Her period had come today during Algebra, and she'd never felt as relieved as she did when the cramps started.

Which was why she was so anxious for Jake to show up.

Where was he?

She glanced up and down the block, saw him come out of the grocery store across the street, eating a candy bar. He saw her, waved, but made no effort to hurry across the parking lot. She wanted to run over to him, tell him the good news, but something about his unhurried, nonchalant attitude annoyed her, and she remained at her table, sipping her Coke, until he arrived.

"So?" he said, sitting down on the rounded plastic bench across from her.

"Any news?"

"I'm not pregnant."

"Thank God." He exhaled deeply, then took her hand across the table and smiled. "You had me going there for a while. I was trying to think if you should have the baby and we should get married, or find a place to get an abortion, and if we'd have to quit school, and where we'd get the money. We really lucked out on this one."

"We have to do something, though. Before we make love again. I don't want to go through all this every time."

His smile faded. "I'm not going to wear a rubber."

"Then I'll . . . get something."

"What?" he asked. "And where? And how?"

She looked at him. Was he stupid? Hadn't he learned anything from the close call they'd just had? It sounded like he was arguing against using any form of birth control, like he wanted her to have sex with him and just take her chances.

"Fine," she said. "We'll wait till we're married, then."

"You can't get pregnant with oral sex."

She stared at him in shock.

He nodded enthusiastically. "You could just suck me instead, and then we wouldn't have to worry about it."

She didn't know what to say or how to respond. They had never performed that act before, had never even talked about it, and though she knew about oral sex, she'd always planned on avoiding it. The idea of having sperm in her mouth disgusted her, especially after she'd seen how thick and sticky and snotlike it was, and she figured that if Jake really loved her, he would never ask her to do that.

"That way," he said, "we could still have sex, we wouldn't have to worry about a junior coming along, and I wouldn't have to wear a rubber."

"What's wrong with a condom?"

"I don't want to have anything between us."

So you'd rather just use my mouth as a sperm receptacle? she thought. You don't care about my feelings at all? A condom's uncomfortable, so you want me to give up having my orgasm and be grateful that I get to make you have one?

But she said nothing.

He squeezed her hand. "I think it's more romantic if there's nothing between us."

She forced herself to smile, though she felt sick inside. "Me, too," she said.

Her parents were asleep, and she had just finished chronicling the series of misadventures that had made up today and was hiding her journal beneath her mattress when Samantha walked into the room.

"Hey," Shannon said, looking up.

"Hey." Samantha sat down on the edge of the bed.

Something was wrong. Sam didn't just come into her room to hang out. When her sister dropped by it was always for a reason. She wanted to borrow something. Or she needed Shannon to help her lift something. Or she wanted to complain about the messiness of the bathroom.

She did not just come by to chat.

Samantha looked around the room. "Is there anything you want to talk about?" she asked.

Shannon frowned. "No. Why?"

Sam's face reddened. "I just thought . . . we're sisters, you know. You can talk to me if something's wrong."

No, I can't, Shannon thought, but she said nothing.

Sam took a deep breath. "We both share the same bathroom, you know. I can't help noticing if things . . . change."

Oh, God. She'd noticed that there were no maxi-pads in the wastepaper basket! Shannon felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach. "There's nothing wrong," she said.

Samantha's blush deepened. She almost stood, almost left, then changed her mind and started to say something, but only ended up clearing her throat. She looked away. "I know your period hasn't come," she said.

Shannon felt her own face grow hot. She didn't want to talk about this with her sister.

"Does Jake know? Have you told him?"

"There's nothing to tell," Shannon said. "I was just late. God, do I have to discuss every aspect of my body with you? Do you want me to tell you when I have to blow my nose? Do you want to know when I have diarrhea?"

"No!" Sam's face was now completely red. "I was worried, that's all."

"Well, worry about yourself! Don't worry about me!"

Samantha stood, strode out of the room. "Sorry I was born!"

"So am I!" Shannon hurried after her sister and slammed the bedroom door shut behind her. She stood there for a moment, shaking, then sat back down on the bed, leaned her head against the pillow, and closed her eyes.

It was a long time before she fell sleep.

2

"Check."

Bill watched as Street McHenry moved his rook down the length of the board to steal Bill's bishop.

He thought for a moment, then picked up his knight, started moving it to capture the rook, but saw that that would leave his king undefended and allow Street's queen to take his king. Slowly, he moved his knight back into place.

Street shook his head. "What a pussy."

Bill grinned. "That's exactly what I said to your sister last night."

"Before she burst out laughing?"

"Laughing? She was gasping. In awe. My length is my strength."

"Just make your play," Ben said. "Christ, if you two spent as much time playing chess as you did napping your gums, we might get out of here before midnight one of these evenings."

"Midnight?" Bill said. "It's only eight o'clock."

"Just play the damn game."

Four moves later, the game was over.

Street won.

As always.

Bill had won the computer match the night before.

As always.

"Record unbroken," Ben announced.

The three of them stood, stretched. Street finished off his beer, gathered up all of their cans and carried them to the kitchen.

Bill turned toward the editor. There'd been an article on The Store in today's paper, a fairly long feature describing the chain's history and plans for the Juniper store. The article had quoted Newman King, founder and CEO of The Store, extensively. "I read your Store article," he said. "You actually interviewed Newman King?"

The editor snorted. "Hell, no. They sent me a press release, quotes included, and I stole liberally from it."

"I was wondering. I thought he was like a Howard Hughes character, didn't like to appear in public and all that."

"Them's the rumors," Ben said. "To be honest, I did try to call corporate headquarters and get my own quotes, but if King ever did deign to speak with the press, it'd probably be to Barbara Walters or Jane Pauley, or Dan or Tom or Peter, not to a lowly podunk reporter like yours truly. I was told, politely but firmly, that King speaks to his customers through press releases and that those were the only quotes I'd be getting." He shrugged. "So I used them."

Bill nodded. "I should've known it was something like that."

Street put away the board, and the three of them walked out of the house and down the road to the cafй as they always did after these chess matches. The night was clear, the air cold and brisk. It felt good, and Bill exhaled as he walked, trying to blow smoke rings with the steam of his breath.

"Saw your article on Bill," Street said. "You made him sound almost articulate."

Ben grinned. "That's my job."

They laughed.

"I'm not too keen on The Store, either," Street admitted.

Bill shook his head. "That building'll totally fuck up the character of the town."

"Not just that, it's going to cut into my business. The Store sells electronic equipment. Stereos and radios and tools and wire and adapters. And they can probably sell it cheaper than I can. I'm not exactly rolling in dough as it is. I don't know how I'll be able to survive once they come in." He glanced over at Ben."I was thinking maybe you could do some type of story on how The Store will affect local merchants, try to drum up some support for us. I know the town council and the construction companies are all gung ho for this, but none of us in the chamber of commerce are thrilled. A lot of us are just hanging on by a thread. The Store might finish us off."

"Sure," Ben said. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself."

"I won't shop there," Bill said.

"You never shop in town anyway. You always go down to Phoenix."

"I shop at your place."

"That's true," Street conceded. "That's true."

"Maybe I'll start shopping here more."

"It's about time."

They reached the cafй, walked inside. A family was seated at one of the booths next to the window, a teen-aged boy and girl at another. Buck Maitland and Vernon Thompson, the two old men who seemed to live at the cafй, were sitting on stools at the counter, full coffee cups and empty french fry dishes in front of them.

Street waved to Holly, the waitress behind the cash register, and the three of them sat down in the booth closest to the door. Holly stopped by, menus in hand, but they said they just wanted coffee, and with a look of annoyance she retreated behind the counter to pour their orders.

Street and Ben were already talking about something else, some suspense movie they'd both seen on cable, but Bill wasn't listening. It had taken him only a few seconds to determine that the two old men at the counter were talking about The Store, and he tried to tune out everything else and zero in on their conversation.

"Yeah," Buck was saying, "my son's working on that project."

"How's it coming?"

Buck shrugged. "Don't seem too happy."

"Why not?"

Buck took a sip of his coffee. "Don't rightly know. But it seems like a hard job. You know how some jobs just go smoothly? Everything kinda flows together? Well, this ain't like that."

"I heard there's been a lot of accidents," Vernon said. "My brother-in-law knows the blaster on that job. He's a powder monkey from way back, worked on Boulder and Glen Canyon, and he said the same thing. Said they've had more accidents on this job, which should've been a cakewalk, than they had on that stretch of highway they blasted through Pine Ridge. Said this is the toughest blast since the canyon."

"You heard about Greg Hargrove, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Vernon said. "The cliff road." He shook his head. "Guy was an asshole, but he didn't deserve to die that way."

"That's why I'm not real happy with my son there. Like you said, a lot of accidents."

_Accidents_.

Bill felt cold.

"Earth to Bill, Earth to Bill."

He turned to see both Ben and Street staring at him.

"Are you back on this plane?" the editor asked.

He laughed. "Sorry. I was thinking about something else."

"Everything all right?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah."

But he still felt cold.

3

Ginny stopped by the farmer's market after work.

She did most of her shopping at Buy-and-Save, but the store's produce was consistently poor and she preferred to purchase her vegetables from the local growers who sold at the farmer's market. The prices were a little higher, but the quality was a hundred times better and she would rather her money go to local farmers than to some anonymous produce supplier.

She bought tomatoes and tomatillos, lettuce and onions, then drove home, where Shannon and Samantha were both lounging around the living room, watching TV. "Where's your father?" she asked as she dumped the sack of vegetables on the kitchen counter.

"Music store," Samantha said. "He told us to tell you he was bored and restless and needed some new tunes."

Ginny sighed. "He must be in the middle stretch. He always gets antsy when he's halfway through a manual. Did he say when he'd be back?"

"No."

"Well, we're having tacos for dinner. If he's not back by the time I finish chopping the vegetables and cooking the hamburger, he's on his own." She started unloading the produce sack.

Samantha sat up, then stood, walking over to the kitchen. "Need any help?"

"No. But change the channel. I want to hear the news. If you guys want to watch something else, do it in your rooms."

"Mom!" Shannon said, but she switched the station.

Samantha pulled out a stool, sitting down at the counter, watching her mother fold the sack and put it in the cupboard under the sink. "I think I'm going to go to ASU next year," she said.

"I thought you wanted to go to UC Brea or New Mexico State."

"Well, unless you or Dad win the lottery, chances of that look pretty slim."

Ginny laughed. "Glad you finally see it our way."

"The thing is, I'm going to need money. Even if I get a scholarship -- and I probably will -- my counselor said that'll only cover tuition. After that, there's books, room and board. I'll need transportation, too." She glanced out the window. "I figure if I start saving up now I'll be able to afford to afford a used car by the end of next summer."

Ginny nodded. "Your father goes to that car auction in Holbrook during the summer. Maybe you could find something there."

Samantha nodded. "It's worth a try." She paused. "The thing is, I want to work at The Store --"

In the living room, Shannon laughed. "Dad'll love that."

Samantha looked at her mother. "That's why I was hoping you could sort of smooth the way for me. Maybe if you brought it up . . ."

Ginny held up her hands. "No. This is between you and your father."

"Come on, Mom. Please? You know his brain snaps on that subject. And if I bring it up he'll automatically say no and that'll be that. You can pave the way for me, get him used to the idea."

Ginny opened the top drawer, took out her chopping knife.

"Mom?"

"He's not going to want you to work at The Store."

"But you could hint around about it, soften him up."

"Why can't you work someplace else? George's? Or Buy-and-Save? Or KFC?"

"There aren't a lot of jobs in this town, in case you haven't noticed.

Besides, I heard The Store pays better. Five bucks an hour, part-time."

"Wow," Shannon said. "That is pretty good." She walked up to the counter.

"Maybe I can work there, too."

"If your grades don't improve, you're not working anywhere."

Shannon leaned across the counter, grabbed a piece of lettuce.

Ginny blinked, feigned shock. "Are you actually eating voluntarily?"

"Of course."

"Shannon Davis? This can't be true. Are your eating disorder days actually over?"

"They were never here. Except in your mind." Shannon stole another piece of lettuce and retreated back into the living room.

"So what do you say?"

Ginny looked at Samantha, sighed. "All right," she said. "I'll give it a shot. But I'm not promising anything."

"You're the most wonderful mom in the world."

Ginny laughed. "Just remember that when your father turns you down."

FIVE

1

There was a light layer of frost on the ground, but Bill awoke early as usual, put on his sweat suit, put on his gloves, put on an extra pair of socks, put on the knit ski cap Ginny called his "homeless hat," and went out for his morning jog just like he always did. He knew he was being a bit of a fanatic, but he'd made a promise to himself when he'd started exercising that, rain or shine, sleet or snow, he would jog at least three miles every day.

It was a promise he had kept.

He quickly sped through his stretching exercises, then ran down to the edge of the drive. He jogged up the dirt road, through the trees, down the hill, but when he reached the paved road and Godwin's meadow, he continued straight rather than turning into Main.

He had stopped jogging on the highway.

He ran past the trailer park into Juniper's residential area, careful not to slip on the frosty asphalt. He had not varied his jogging route in the ten years that they'd lived in Juniper -- partly out of habit, partly out of intent.

He was not the type of person to arbitrarily change his routine. Once he found something he liked, he stuck with it.

But he had changed his routine now.

He thought about the site of The store, the stretch of land that had been his favorite but was now the area he specifically avoided. There was something about the razed trees and flattened ground that did not sit well with him. It reminded him of Orange County, the place where he'd been born and raised, where he'd seen orange groves and strawberry patches give way to peach-colored condos and cookie-cutter shopping centers, and it depressed him to see the cleared earth, the demolished hillside, the chain-link fencing surrounding the heavy machinery. It upset him, angered him, and it ruined the mood of his morning jog.

But it wasn't just that, was it?

No, he had to admit. It wasn't.

It had been disconcerting at first to realixe that he was not the calm, levelheaded rationalist he'd always believed himself to be, but he had made the adjustment to the new instinctual Bill Davis much more easily than he would have thought possible. It had been a basically painless transition, and he now found himself, without apology, looking for unseen and nonlinear connections between unrelated events in the same way he had previously searched for the logical reason behind every occurrence. It was strangely liberating, this reliance on gut feeling rather than hard fact, and in a way it required more intellectual acumen, more comparative analysis, more of the mental disciplines usually associated with the scientific method than did a strict adherence to a preconceived mind-set.

But that was intellectualizing.

The truth was that he was frightened of The Store. He might be able to come up with reasons for his feelings, but whether or not he could rationalize them, whether or not he could explain their existence, they were there, his natural reaction to the site, and that was why he had changed his jogging route.

The last time he'd been by, the previous Tuesday, when he'd had to drive up to Flagstaff with Ben to buy a water pump for the Suburban, he'd noticed the framework of the building already going up. They weren't wasting any time.

Ordinarily, construction projects dragged on for months around here -- the local contractors were notoriously slow -- but The Store must have offered some sort of early completion bonus, because it had been less than a month since he'd found the body and already the ground had been graded, the unusually deep foundation dug, the cement poured.

There was something creepy about that.

He turned onto Granite, jogged down the street a mile or so to where the houses ended, then took Wilbert back up to Main. His cheeks were burning with the cold, the brisk air harsh in his lungs. The sun was rising but was little more than a bright spot in the uniform gray cloud cover that filled the sky.

Turning left onto Main, his back to the highway, Bill jogged up onto the sidewalk that ran the length of downtown. Instantly, he slowed his pace. Across the street, there was a banner hung in the window of the empty storefront between Yummy Ice Cream and the Video Barn:

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THE STORE.

Even in this weather, at this hour of the morning, a line of people stood on the sidewalk. Not just teenagers but adults. Well-dressed women and able bodied men.

He stopped in front of the newspaper office, pretending to tie his shoe but glancing across the street instead. It looked like a recruiting office, he thought. There was something vaguely militaristic about the setup of the empty storefront, about the precise lineup of people and the stoic manner in which they were standing. He could see their breath in the cold air, but he could hear no voices, and he realized that no one was talking.

That was odd.

What made it even odder was that he recognized most of the people. Many of them were neighbors -- hell, many of them were friends -- but they were all grimly, uniformly silent, staring fixedly at the empty storefront, not even engaging in the polite, idle chitchat of strangers.

Paul Mitchell, the KFC manager, glanced across the street, caught his eye, and Bill straightened, smiled and waved, but the other man did not respond and refocused his attention on the banner.

Bill began jogging, heading quickly through downtown Juniper. The sweat was cold on his skin, and his heart was pounding. He was more unnerved by the waiting applicants than he wanted to admit, and he could not help noticing that there were large shadowed sections of the street, dark areas untouched by the dim, cloud-shrouded sunrise where night still held sway, and he did not relax until he had turned off Main and was heading past Godwin's meadow toward home.

2

Christmas was not the holiday it should have been.

Ginny surveyed the damage in the living room as Bill gathered up all the boxes and wrapping paper and carried them to the trash can outside. Christmas vacation had started late this year, and she hadn't had much time to go shopping for presents. They'd gotten up to Flagstaff but hadn't made it down to Phoenix, and they'd had to choose from what was available, making compromises on their gifts for just about everyone. Next year, she thought, it would be easier. She'd be able to shop in town, at The Store, and they wouldn't have to worry about traveling to a bigger city in order to buy presents.

Both Samantha and Shannon were in their rooms, listening to the new CDS they'd gotten, looking at or putting away their other presents. For the first time, none of their grandparents had been able to make it -- Bill's parents spending the holiday with his sister in San Francisco, her parents visiting her brother in Denver -- and both girls had obviously missed their presence. The mood this year had been subdued, and they'd all unwrapped their gifts rather perfunctorily, without the usual greedy gusto.

Bill hadn't been himself, either, but then he hadn't really been himself since he'd found the body of that transient. That was understandable, she supposed, although she didn't really understand this phobia he seemed to have in regard to The Store. Yes, the body had probably freaked him, and she understood his anger toward The Store for raping that beautiful piece of land, but she didn't understand this almost pathological grudge he seemed to have against the place. She'd been feeling out of sorts herself lately, and although she put that down to the usual holiday pressures and Bill's one-note Store complaints, there was another, missing element as well, and she couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Bill returned, picked up his presents from the living room floor, and put them on the kitchen counter. He took her in his arms, kissed her, smiled at her.

"Thanks for the presents," he said. "It was a wonderful Christmas."

It wasn't, and she knew it, but she smiled back, kissed him. "I love you,"

she told him.

"I love you, too."

Next year would be better, she thought. She'd make sure it was better.

SIX

1

There was something about The Store building that he didn't like.

Ted Malory stood up straight, wincing as his back unbent. He'd been up here for three days now, with his usual crew and a group of four pickup workers.

He'd never landed a job this big before, and he'd been pretty damn excited when he'd gotten the contract. Every roofing company in Gila, Coconino, and Yavapai counties had bid on this one, and when he'd learned that The Store had awarded it to him, he'd been ecstatic. Not only would this mean big bucks, but if they pulled off this baby, he'd be able to parlay it into other, bigger jobs. He saw them roofing NAU buildings and Little America in Flagstaff, the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon.

Who knew where this might lead?

But it hadn't worked out the way he'd planned.

For one thing, he discovered, there wasn't as much money to be made as he'd originally thought. Or as much as the size of the job warranted. The Store had a take-it-or-leave-it standard contract and did not negotiate. They set the terms, and if he didn't like it, there were plenty of others who would jump at the opportunity to do the work.

So he'd taken it. He didn't like it, but he'd agreed to it.

Part of the deal was that he was responsible for all costs. The Store was paying a flat fee, and out of that, he had to pay labor expenses and purchase all materials for the job. He had no problem with that. His price quotes usually included supplies, and he got a good deal from his buddy Rod Hawkins in Mesa.

But the terms of this agreement specified that he had to buy all material from The Store's wholesale supplier, and those prices were much higher than Rod's.

The Store's representative also seriously undercalculated the time it would take to roof the building, considering the time of year and the total square footage of the project. They'd already lost two days because of snow.

The way he figured it, after this was all over, he'd barely be breaking even. But that wasn't all.

That wasn't even half of it.

Ted looked over the raised edge of the roof toward the mountains. Snow still covered Hunter's Peak, and the other mountains closer in were also swathed in white. He took a deep breath, glancing over at the northwest corner of the roof and the black plastic garbage sack. He quickly looked away. Each morning when they'd arrived, there'd been dead birds on the roof. Crows. They hadn't been shot, they seemed to have no injuries, they'd just . . . died.

And fallen out of the sky onto the roof of The Store.

It was unsettling and a little creepy, but Joe Walking Horse thought it was more than that, and the second time it happened, he quit. On the spot. He'd simply turned and stepped back down the ladder the way he'd come up.

Joe was his best man, his most experienced worker and fastest shingler, but Ted had been so pissed off that he'd told the Indian that if he left now he'd never work for his company again. Joe had not even hesitated as he'd continued down the ladder. He'd simply called out to Ted that it had been a pleasure working with him and had walked across the open ground to his pickup, gotten in and driven off.

Ted regretted his behavior already, and he planned to apologize to Joe and offer him his old job back once The Store was finished. But Joe's dread seemed to have affected the rest of the men as well, and it had been an unusually somber few days. Hargus hadn't even brought his boom box to work, and Hargus brought his boom box everywhere.

Even he had felt uneasy, and though he'd tried to make sure they worked fast in order to finish this roof as quickly as possible, he also made sure they did the best job they could.

He didn't want to have to come back to fix mistakes.

He hadn't said word one to Charlinda, though. She still thought this job was a godsend, and he let her think so. She was superstitious enough as it was, what with all the astrology and tarot cards and crap, and the last thing he needed to do was tell her that Joe Walking Horse had walked and that they were all spooked by the place. That'd send her off the deep end.

He yelled out for everyone to take a ten-minute break, and he grabbed a beer out of the cooler and walked over to the edge of the roof, glancing down at the parking lot. It had just been given a layer of sealant the day before, and was scheduled to be painted tomorrow. The lot was massive, stretching all the way out to the edge of the highway, big enough to accommodate every vehicle in town with room to spare. Nine acres of asphalt.

It was a shame, really, because this had been such a nice meadow. With only minimal effort, it would have been possible to do what had been done with Buy-and-Save or KFC -- construct the lot to fit the contours of the land and keep the biggest and best trees. But not only had the existing trees been cut down and hauled away, no new ones had been planted.

No shade.

In Arizona.

He shook his head. Oh, well. He supposed it would boost The Store's sale of windshield sunscreens come June.

Actually, he was a little surprised by the lack of landscaping. Even small businesses usually tried to make their places attractive and eye-pleasing. But The Store's exterior was strictly functional: tan cinder-block building, white sidewalk border, flat black parking lot. No plants, no trees, no decoration. It looked more like a prison than a retail outlet.

Below, a worker carrying a large metal pole was walking out of The Store to his truck, parked directly in front of the entrance.

Ted looked off into the distance. Hargrove's death hadn't even slowed down construction. The Store had simply brought in one of its own men, and work had continued, alternating shifts working twenty-four hours a day the last two weeks in order to meet the deadline for the bonus.

He'd heard from Frank Wilson, who'd worked with Hargrove on the project, that the building had a basement as deep as all get out, and that there were a couple of other construction quirks that The Store had insisted upon. No one knew why, but no one had dared ask, and The Store's plans had been followed to the letter.

Dead birds and secret basements.

It was all a little . . . spooky.

No, not a little.

A lot.

Shivering, he finished off his beer, dropped the can on the roof, and walked back to where he'd been working.

2

"Can I talk to you?"

Shannon looked up from the dirt to see Mindy Hargrove sitting on the weathered pine bench by the side of the road that served as a school bus stop.

Mindy hadn't been to school much lately, had been acting, well, weird, since her dad died, but now she looked positively freaked. Her hair was uncombed, her jeans filthy, her once-white blouse half-unbuttoned. There was a wildness to her eyes and the cast of her features that Shannon had never seen before and that made her feel a little bit frightened. She wondered if Mindy was having some sort of nervous breakdown, if she'd gone crazy, and she quickly looked up and down the road, searching for signs of someone else, but there was no one here except Mindy and herself.

"Uh, I have to get going," Shannon said. "I'm late already, and my mom's waiting for me."

Mindy stood, walked toward her. "I know your dad doesn't like The Store.

That's why I thought I could talk to you."

Shannon shifted her books from her left hand to her right. Mindy had been bad enough when she'd been a spoiled stuck-up bitch, but this new Mindy, this intense, emotionally disturbed Mindy who for some strange reason wanted to talk to her, even though they'd been bitter enemies since third grade, was even worse. She wanted to get out of here and away from her as quickly as she could, but she forced herself to remain pleasant and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. "It's not that he doesn't like The Store. It's more that he doesn't like where they're building it and the way they're building it."

Mindy glanced furtively around to make sure they weren't being spied upon.

"It's built with blood," she said.

Shannon started backing away, keeping her eyes on the other girl. "Look, I've really gotta go."

"I'm serious. They put blood in the concrete. It was in the plans they gave my dad. Tell your dad. Maybe he can tell that guy from the newspaper and they can do something about it."

"Okay," Shannon said, humoring her. "I'll tell him."

"It's built with blood. That's why my dad was killed."

Your dad was killed because he was driving drunk, Shannon thought, but she smiled and nodded and continued backing away, finally quickening her pace, breaking into a jog. She looked behind her as she ran, but the road was empty, the bench was empty, and Mindy was gone.

3

Bill finished the GIS documentation on the last Saturday of January. He uploaded the completed manual, sent it off to the company, and celebrated the way he did at the end of every project: he opened his middle desk drawer, took out a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, cranked up the radio, leaned back in his chair, and enjoyed.

He stared out the window as he ate. It had been raining for two days, the rain melting away the last of the snow, and it was still drizzling now, the trees outside little more than black silhouettes in the mist. He finished his Reese's, tossed the wrapper in the wastepaper basket. This was when he was really able to take advantage of the fact that he worked at home. Instead of sitting at his desk, finding papers to shuffle, pretending to look busy for the benefit of any supervisors who happened to pass by, he could watch TV, read a book, take a trip, do whatever he wanted until the next project came along. He was on salary, not an hourly wage, and as long as he did his work and met his deadlines, the company didn't care how he spent his extra hours.

In other words, his competence and efficiency were rewarded with spare time.

God bless technology.

He switched off his computer, stood, stretched, and walked out of his office and down the hall. The kitchen smelled of Campbell's tomato soup, and the insides of the windows were fogged with condensation. It seemed warm, cozy, and comfortable, and with the girls gone, it felt almost the way it had when they were newlyweds, when they were too poor to go anywhere or do anything and their chief form of entertainment had been sex.

Ginny was at the stove, stirring the soup, and he walked behind her, reached his hand between her legs, grabbed her. She yelled for him to knock it off and practically hit him with the spoon, a spattering of hot soup hitting his cheek. "Jesus!" he said.

"That'll teach you not to sneak up on me like that."

He wiped the soup off his cheek. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," she said. "I'm making lunch. I wasn't expecting to be molested."

"Who did you think it was? I'm the only one in the house."

"That's not the point."

"I used to do that all the time. You used to like it."

"Well, now I don't." She did not look at him but kept her back to him as she continued stirring the soup. "Wash up," she said. "It's time to eat."

He sighed. "Look, let's not fight. I'm sorry I --"

She turned around, surprised. "Who's fighting?"

"I thought you were angry with me."

"No."

He grinned. "Then how about bending over the table so I can do my manly duty?"

She laughed. "How about washing your hands so we can eat lunch?"

"After lunch?"

She smiled. "We'll see."

They did make love after lunch, a quickie in the bedroom in case Samantha or Shannon came home early, and afterward he decided to get out of the house and take a walk. The rain had stopped sometime in the last hour, and he'd been cooped up inside for far too long and felt like getting outdoors. He asked Ginny to go with him, but she said she wasn't in the mood, and besides, she had some magazines to catch up on.

He walked into town alone, enjoying the smell of fresh rain on the roads and the sight of the clearing sky, the cracks of blue that were peeking out from between the parting grayness. He walked over to Street's store, said hello to his friend, shot the breeze a little, then stopped by Doane Kearns's music shop across the street, digging through the bins of used records against the far wall to see if he could find anything interesting, picking up a bootleg Jethro Tull and an old Steeleye Span album that he'd had in college but had lost somewhere along the way.

Before heading home, he walked into the cafй for a quick cup of coffee. As usual, Buck and Vernon were sitting at the counter, arguing. Today's bone of contention was country music.

"So sue me," Vernon was saying. "I like Garth Brooks."

"Garth Brooks is a pussy! Waylon Jennings. Now there's a real singer."

"Language!" Holly called from behind the counter.

"Sorry," Buck said.

Vernon grinned. "Is Waylon Jennings still alive?"

"You'll rot in hell for that one, son."

Bill sat down at the opposite end of the counter, nodding to the two men, who nodded back.

Holly stopped by, asked if he wanted a menu, but Bill said that all he was after was coffee, and she turned around, poured him a cup, and set it down in front of him.

"Bill."

He swiveled in his seat to see Williamson James, the owner of the cafй, walking out from the kitchen through the door next to the jukebox.

"How goes it?"

Bill shrugged. "Can't complain."

The cafй owner sat down on the stool next to him, motioned for Holly to pour him a cup of coffee as well. "Catch that game on Thursday?"

Bill shook his head.

"That's right. You don't go in much for football, do you?"

"Football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey. Don't watch any of 'em."

"You ever even play sports?"

"Nope."

"What about in school?"

"Well, yeah. PE. I had to. No choice. But not on my own."

"Why not?"

"Never liked 'em. Sports are for people who can't handle freedom."

"What?"

"They're for people who need to be told what to do with their free time, who can't think of things to do by themselves, who need rules and guidelines to follow. Like people who spend their free time going to Vegas, gambling. Same thing. Rules. You're told what to do. Other people decide for you how your time is to be spent. I guess for some people it takes the pressure off. They don't have to think on their own; everything's been set up for them already."

The old man thought on this for a moment, digested it. He nodded slowly.

"I can see your point," he said.

Bill laughed. "You're the first person who has."

Williamson cleared his throat, leaned forward. "I'm putting the cafй up for sale," he said.

"What?"

"Shhh. Keep it down." The old man made a lowering gesture with his hands.

"I haven't told anyone yet. Even Holly doesn't know."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter. It's just that . . ." He trailed off. "The Store's going to be opening pretty soon. It'll be putting a lot of us out of business."

Bill shook his head. "That won't affect the cafй."

"They're going to have their own coffee shop. Not just a snack bar. A coffee shop."

"Doesn't matter."

"I'm afraid it does."

"This cafй's a landmark. People aren't going to abandon this place in order to eat and drink inside a discount store. This place is a part of Juniper."

Williamson smiled sadly. "The fact is, no one cares about supporting us local businesses. Yeah, the cafй's a landmark, and when it's gone everyone'll miss it, and your friend Ben'll write a heartwarming story about the way things used to be. But the truth is that once The Store's coffee shop starts offering coffee for a nickel cheaper than mine, or fries for a quarter less, these guys'll be out of here so fast it'll make my head spin." He nodded toward Buck and Vernon. "Even those two."

Bill shook his head. "I don't think so. It's not the prices that bring people here, it's the atmosphere, it's . . . it's everything."

"You're wrong. You might not think it's price. But it is. Everything's economics. And once The Store starts buying big flashy ads in the paper, trumpeting their great bargains, everyone'll flock over there.

"I'm barely making it as it is," Williamson continued. "I can't afford to compete. I'd get my ass whupped in a price war. The Store can hold out forever.

It can lowball me until I'm bankrupt." He sighed. "I can see the writing on the wall. That's why I want to unload this place before the shit hits the fan, while I can still get a decent price for it."

He was silent for a moment, looking around the cafй. "What I wanted to ask you about is advertising on that Internet thing. I figured if anybody'd know how to go about doing something like that it'd be you. I'm going to put an ad in the trades and all that, maybe even one with Ben, though I don't think any locals can afford to buy the place. But I thought I might send it out by computer, too.

See if I get any response."

"Yeah," Bill said slowly. "I could help you do that."

"What if I write out what I want to say? Could you send that out on the Internet for me?"

"Sure, but do you really want to do that right now? Why don't you wait, try to stick it out, see what happens. The people of Juniper may surprise you.

They might rally around the cafй. It could even be good for your business.

Things might really pick up once everyone knows what's going on."

Williamson sighed. "Times have changed, son. Everyone today is so fragmented. This isn't a country anymore. It's a collection of tribes, all competing with each other for jobs, money, media attention. When I was young, we were all Americans. Back then, we did what we had to, or what we could, to make this a better nation. We did what was right, what was moral. Now people do what's expedient, what's 'economically feasible.' " He shook his head. "Used to be, we cared about our community. We were willing to do what it took to make this a better place to live. Now all anyone cares about is how much it costs."

He met Bill's eyes. "No one gives a shit about preserving our town, our community, our way of life. All they care about is saving a few bucks so they can afford to buy their kids the latest name-brand tennis shoe. It's a nice thought, but no one's going to 'rally around' the cafй. That's just not going to happen."

He finished off the last of his coffee. "That's why I'm getting out now.

While I still can."

4

Six inches of snow fell in a storm that hit on President's Day, and it was another twenty-four hours before the plow came by to clear the street. By the end of the week, however, it had all melted off, and they decided to drive to the Valley on Saturday to relax and do some shopping.

They left early, just after dawn, stopping around eight for a breakfast of Egg McMuffins in Show Low. Ginny stared out the window of the car as they traveled, watching as the passing scenery segued from pine to cactus country, the clean lines of the forested Mogollon Rim giving way to the wilder rockiness of the desert Mazatzals. Samantha and Shannon slept in the backseat while Bill drove happily and hummed along with the radio.

The vistas were spectacular, the canyons and mountains majestic, and, as always, Ginny felt awed and humbled. It was here, looking at the landscape, that she felt the presence of God. She had been born and raised a Catholic, had gone to mass twice a week from the time she was an infant until she went off to college, but she had never felt the inspiring exhilaration in church that she felt here, on the highway. The wondrousness and magnificence of God that she had heard about had been an intellectual abstraction for her until she had married Bill and moved to Arizona, and nothing in church had ever made her feel as religious, as profoundly touched by God, as the sight of her first desert sunrise on their honeymoon.

That was the problem she'd had with Catholicism, its smallness, its vanity, its emphasis on self. As a girl, she was led to believe that the world revolved around _her_, that if she ate meat on Friday or didn't give up something for Lent or had a mild sexual fantasy about David Cassidy, she'd be damned for eternity. God was watching her always, ever vigilant in His study of the minutiae of her life, and she'd felt constantly under pressure, as though her every thought and movement were being continuously scrutinized.

But as she'd gotten older, she'd discovered that she wasn't the focus of everything, she was not the fulcrum upon which the world and the church were balanced, and if she rubbed herself in the bathtub or called Theresa Robinson a bitch, Western civilization would not instantly come to an end. Indeed, she came to see herself as a minor character here on earth, barely worthy of God's attention, and she decided sometime during her high school years to simply be a good person, live a good life, and trust God to be smart enough to separate the good people from the bad once judgment day rolled around.

It had been the land here that had reawakened the religious feelings within her. She had seen in it the glory of God, had realized once again how small were her problems and concerns in the overall scheme of things -- and how there was nothing wrong with that. It was as it should be.

She glanced over at Bill, singing along with an old Who song, and she found herself smiling. She was lucky. She had a good husband, good kids, a good life. And she was happy.

Bill caught her smiling at him. "What?" he said.

She shook her head, still smiling. "Nothing."

They arrived in the Valley shortly after eleven and drove to Fiesta Mall in Mesa, separating once they were within the air-conditioned confines of the shopping center, the girls going off on their own to clothing and music stores, she and Bill heading to the multiplex to see a movie, all of them agreeing to meet at two o'clock in front of Sears.

The movie they watched was a romantic comedy, what Bill called a "cable movie," but everything was better on a big screen, and she was glad they'd gone to see it. Afterward, they hung out for a while at B. Dalton. She bought the latest _Vanity Fair_, and Bill picked up a new suspense novel by Phillip Emmons.

Sam and Shannon were already waiting on a bench in front of Sears when they walked up. Shannon had bought a cassette by a currently hot rock band, a band Sam apparently hated, and the two girls were arguing loudly over musical taste.

"Break it up," Bill said in the gruff voice of a boxing referee. He sat down between the two. "You girls're starting to draw a crowd here. If we put you in bathing suits and a hot oil pit, we could start charging admission, make a little extra cash for the family."

"You're gross," Shannon said.

"Yeah, well, that's my job." He took both their arms and pulled them to their feet. "Come on, kiddos, let's hit the road."

They headed out, Ginny driving this time. The sun was setting by the time they reached Payson, and night had fallen before they hit Show Low. As usual, the girls were fast asleep in the backseat. Bill was dozing as well, his head slumped against the glass of the passenger window.

Ginny enjoyed the time to herself. There was something comforting about being surrounded by her family and at the same time being able to be alone with her thoughts. The highway was empty and had been since they left Show Low, and the scenery, so awe-inspiring in the daytime, was hidden completely by the black cover of night, only a narrow section of the road ahead illuminated by the car's bright headlights. Here and there, off to the side, the lights of individual cabins and ranches could be seen, lone beacons in the darkness of the landscape.

She was driving through the flat stretch of forest just before the long rise into Juniper when she noticed for the first time that they were not alone on the highway. In the rearview mirror, several miles behind, she could see the powerful headlight beams of an extraordinarily large vehicle, traveling fast, gaining quickly. Her heart rate immediately accelerated, and her first instinct was to wake up Bill, but she forced herself to remain calm and just continue driving. It was only a truck. Speeding. Not exactly a rare occurrence on an Arizona highway. But still, her initial reaction was one of fear and panic, and she understood how people living off by themselves, away from others, became jittery and frightened, ended up seeing UFOs and believing in widespread government conspiracies. There was something unnerving about contact in the wilderness, about the incongruity of seeing something where you hadn't expected to see it. Even on the highway.

Ginny glanced down at the speedometer. She was going five miles over the speed limit, but the truck was gaining on her quickly, cutting the distance between them. She thought of _Duel_, checked in her rearview mirror. The mirror was tilted up for night driving, but still the headlights behind her seemed impossibly bright, almost painfully so, and she saw as the lights grew closer that there was not just one set of lights, not just one truck.

Then the first truck passed her.

It was black, pure black, both the cab and the van matching perfectly the surrounding darkness, even the windows of the cab tinted. A shiver passed through her, and she clutched the steering wheel tightly as the enormous vehicle cut in front of her and sped down the highway into the night, only its red taillights visible.

The next truck passed.

And still the brightness continued behind her.

Again, she thought of waking Bill, but something kept her from it, and she slowed the car and pulled slightly to the right as, one by one, ten speeding trucks passed illegally over the double yellow line.

On the back door of the last truck, as it pulled in front of her, her headlights illuminated two words, shiny black against flat black: THE STORE.

Their car was once again alone on the highway, and she exhaled deeply, realizing that she'd been holding her breath. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing unusual about the caravan, that the trucks were merely bringing merchandise to The Store, that she was just succumbing to Bill's paranoia.

She almost made herself believe it.

SEVEN

1

The entire town turned out for The Store's grand opening. Though it was a weekday, it was as if the town had declared a holiday. Several businesses were closed, construction had been suspended on more than one house, and it looked to Bill as though a lot of people had called in sick to work.

He drove slowly up and down the rows of the parking lot, looking for an open space.

"Just park out by the highway and we'll walk," Ginny said. "You're wasting your time. You're not going to find any spots."

"Yeah, Dad," Shannon echoed. "We're going to be the last ones in there."

"The Store's not going anywhere," he told them. "It'll be here all day."

Nevertheless, he drove to the far end of the lot and into one of two adjacent open parking spaces facing the highway. Samantha and Shannon immediately opened their doors, got out of the car, and hurried toward the flag festooned building. "Later!" Shannon called.

"Don't leave without telling us!" Ginny called after them. She smiled at Bill as she got out of the car. "Exciting day."

"Yeah," he said.

He pushed down the lock button on the car door, slammed it shut, and turned toward The Store. He'd started jogging along the highway again during the past month. He seemed to have been cured of his physical aversion to the construction site, and he'd begun running past the area each morning, curious about the progress of The Store and unable to stay away. He found himself watching the stages of development with a sort of morbid fascination, the same sort he'd felt toward a decomposing dog he and his friends had discovered in a vacant lot near their junior high school. He was disgusted by what he saw but powerless to look away.

Even in _his_ mind, though, The Store was already a part of the town. An unwelcome part, but a part nevertheless. It was difficult for him to remember exactly where the hill had been, what the outcropping of rock looked like. He could see only The Store now.

He wondered if someone somewhere had a photograph of the meadow the way it used to be.

Probably not.

The thought depressed him.

"Come on," Ginny said. "You can't put it off any longer." She moved around her side of the car, took his hand, and together the two of them walked up the row of parked vehicles to The Store.

The day was warm, unusually so for early spring, but the temperature cooled considerably as they stepped into the shadow of the building. Bill looked up as they approached. The structure was massive. He'd known it was big, but it had been impossible to get a true sense of scale from the highway.

Here, however, in front of the building, walking up to it, Bill was daunted by its sheer size. The Store's facade was the length of a football field and nearly three stories high. There were no windows, only several sets of tinted glass doors in the otherwise uniform tan of the giant block building. It looked like a high school gymnasium on steroids. Or a bunker for a race of giants.

Customers and curious browsers streamed from the parking lot, over the bordering sidewalk, through the automatic doors, and he and Ginny joined the crowd.

They walked into The Store.

Inside, the building was not intimidating at all. Rather, it was modern, friendly, and welcoming. The temperature was comfortable, the barely perceptible Muzak pleasant rather than cloying, and the silently circulating air smelled of cocoa and coffee and candy. The high white ceiling was lined with long wide light bars that clearly illuminated the entire store with a cheerful brightness that made the natural sunlight outside seem pale and faded in comparison, and the white tile floor gleamed between endless shelves fully stocked with an amazing array of products.

An old man Bill had seen around town but didn't know smiled at them, welcomed them to The Store, and offered them a shopping cart, which Ginny took.

They walked forward slowly, looking around. A double row of cash register stations were lined up to their left, parallel to the exit doors. Already there were people pushing shopping carts through the checkout lines, taking out checkbooks and credit cards, requesting paper bags instead of plastic from the smiling, clean-cut clerks.

It was hard to believe that such an obviously well-stocked, state-of-the art store would choose to build in Juniper. It was even harder to believe that such a store could make money. It seemed out of place here, incongruous, like a whale in a goldfish tank, and Bill had a tough time understanding why a large corporation like The Store would place an enormous retail outlet in a town this small. The local residents were, for the most part, poor, with little or no discretionary income, and even if The Store paid only minimum wage, the overhead for a place like this had to be at least double the most optimistic sales projections.

He didn't see how The Store could make a profit in Juniper.

"Hey, stranger."

He glanced over to see Ben, notebook in hand, camera slung over his shoulder.

The editor nodded to Ginny. "Hey, Gin."

She smiled. "Front page news, huh?"

"Don't knock it. No news is good news, as they say, and if we're fortunate enough to live in a place where a store opening is a major news event, we're pretty damn lucky."

Ginny touched Bill's arm. "I'm going to look at clothes. You take the cart."

"You don't want to be interviewed for the paper?" Ben said. "I need some reactions from local shoppers."

"Maybe later."

The editor turned toward Bill as she walked away. "Come on. How about you?

You don't want to make me actually work, do you? I figured I could hit up friends for quotes and not have to annoy real people."

"Real people?"

"You know what I mean."

"If you really want a quote from me, I'll give you one. But I don't think it's what you want to hear."

"You think right. The Store's our biggest advertiser now, and word came down from on high that negativity would not be appreciated in Grand Opening coverage."

"Newtin's caving in?" Bill couldn't believe it. The publisher had always told Ben that the content of the paper was up to him, that he would not interfere with the presentation of the news or attempt to influence the paper's editorial slant.

Ben shrugged. "It's a new dawn."

Bill shook his head. "I never would've believed it."

"So you don't want to lie? Give me some fake words of praise and encouragement?"

"Sorry."

"I'd better find some other suckers, then." He nodded. "Later."

"Later." Bill pushed the shopping cart forward. He looked to the right, thought he saw Ginny's head above a blouse rack in the crowded women's clothing section but could not be sure. He continued forward down the center aisle, past rows of housewares, past shelves of cleaning supplies. He stopped by the book and magazine section. He was impressed by The Store's selection, he had to admit. The giant magazine rack contained not only _People_, _Newsweek_, _Time_, _Good Housekeeping_, _Vogue_, and the usual mainstream mass-market periodicals, but such obscure specialized publications as _The Paris Review_, _The New England Journal of Medicine_, and _Orchid World_. There were even copies of _Penthouse_, _Playboy_, and _Playgirl_. A first for this town. The bookshelves next to the magazine rack were stocked with works by King, Koontz, Grisham, and other best-sellers, as well as novels by Wallace Stegner, Rachel Ingalls, and Richard Ford.

Even the music selection was impressive. He moved on to the electronics department and glanced through the CDs, finding everything from currently hot rock and rap groups to such little-known contemporary classical artists as Meredith Monk and the Illustrious Theatre Orchestra.

He had been prepared to hate The Store -- he _wanted_ to hate The Store and he was disappointed that there was really nothing he could find to criticize or disparage. Indeed, he found himself grudgingly, against his will, having fun, enjoying his exploratory trips down the endless aisles. It was not something he would ever admit to aloud, but he actually admired The Store for what it had done here.

He felt guilty for even entertaining such blasphemy.

He met up again with Ben in front of the crowded espresso bar near the automatic double doors that led out back to the nursery. The editor, sipping a cafй au lait, gestured expansively about him as Bill approached. "Quite a place, here," he said. "Quite a place."

Bill nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Quite a place."

Ginny walked slowly, looking around her in awe, filled with a pleasant feeling that was at once immediate and comfortably nostalgic. The Store was beautiful. It was like being back in California -- only more so. Aisles stretched endlessly before her, stocked nearly to the ceiling with merchandise so new she wasn't even familiar with it.

She remembered the first mall she'd ever been to -- Cerritos Mall -- with Ian Emerson, her boyfriend at the time. That had been like this: the size, the scope, the wonderful impressive newness of it all. Cerritos at that time had been a small dairy farming community in the middle of the Southern California sprawl, but it had taken only a few years for an entirely new city to spring up around the mall. It had been like a catalyst for change, a magnet for houses and businesses and other stores, the hub around which everything revolved. Would this be like that? Would Juniper's population suddenly explode and a rash of development sweep through the town, obliterating their quaint, rural lifestyle?

She hoped not.

But it might almost be worth it.

The Store was a godsend.

She touched a pair of Guess jeans hanging on a rack, fingered an Anne Klein blouse. She hadn't realized how much she missed having easy access to all this. Driving down to the Valley and shopping at Fiesta Mall or Metro Center had always been fun, something she enjoyed and looked forward to, but having contemporary fashions here in town, being able to try on nice clothes anytime she wanted to, without having to plan a trip and spend an entire day, was totally different. She felt as though she'd been holding her breath for a long period of time, conserving her oxygen, and now she'd been set down in a rich atmosphere and was able to breathe freely, deeply. She'd been depriving herself, doing without, and while she'd adjusted to such an extent that she hadn't even noticed what she was missing, now that it was again available she was grateful.

This was heaven.

They'd never have to go to Phoenix anymore.

Everything they needed was right here in Juniper.

The Store was wonderful.

Shannon wandered happily through the Juniors clothing department. The items here were as good as or better than those in any mall she'd ever been in.

It was as if they'd taken all the best clothes from all the best shops and combined them in one store.

A discount store.

It was like a dream come true.

She pulled a skirt off a rack, held it up. There were fashions here that she'd only seen in magazines.

She put the skirt back, looked around for Samantha. Her sister was over by the shoe section, talking to Bernadine Weathers. Bernadine was a bore and a half, and Shannon didn't feel like listening to the older girl drone on in her usual monotone about what _she_ thought of The Store, so she moved away, deeper into the clothes department, past mothers and their daughters, past old women and middle-aged housewives, until she found three of her own friends by the lingerie.

"So what do you think?" Diane asked as she walked up.

Shannon grinned. "Awesome."

"No kidding." Diane glanced around furtively, as though checking to make sure no one was eavesdropping. Ellie and Kim, next to her, giggled. She leaned forward. "Have you seen some of the stuff they have here?" She motioned toward the lingerie.

Shannon shook her head.

Diane glanced around again, then walked back a few steps into the nearest aisle. She surreptitiously lifted a red lace teddy from one of the hooks on the aisle partition. "Crotchless," she said. She shifted the garment, holding the crotch out, and Shannon saw a large slit that had been intentionally incorporated into the design.

"Maybe you should get one," Kim said.

Ellie giggled.

"I bet Jake would appreciate it."

Shannon reddened. "Yeah, right," she said.

But she stared at the teddy as Diane put it back and thought that Jake probably would like it.

And she would like to wear it for him.

2

Ky Malory looked straight ahead at the shelves of the toy department, his eyes widening. Firecrackers, cherry bombs, and M80s in a multitude of colors were arrayed in a beautiful display before him, and he reached out and tentatively touched one, shivering with excitement as he felt the cool rough paper covering.

Weren't fireworks illegal in Arizona? Or had he and his friends been lied to about that? It wouldn't be the first time. Adults often seemed to lie or exaggerate when it came to things they thought were dangerous for kids to do.

"Ky?"

He looked up to see his dad standing next to him, smiling down at him. He quickly, guiltily, pulled his hand away from the shelf, stepped back, but the rebuke he expected did not materialize. Instead, his dad continued to smile at him. His dad was too tall! He couldn't see the fireworks!

He smiled to himself. That made him happy; that made him feel special.

Most stores arranged things for adults. Even the toys. But here was something just for kids like him, something specifically planned so that adults couldn't see it. It was obvious that the fireworks were put on a shelf this low so that parents wouldn't find out about them. Maybe they were illegal. Or maybe The Store just knew that parents didn't like fireworks. Either way, it was as if a pact had been made between him and The Store, and he vowed not to tell either his mom or his dad about it.

If he'd liked The Store before, he loved it now.

They were partners in this.

His dad's big hand clamped down on his shoulder. "I roofed this store, Ky.

Did you know that? This entire store. From one side to the other. From front to back."

He nodded at his dad, pretended to be interested, but his attention remained focused on the fireworks. The cherry bombs, he saw, looked like real cherries, their bodies red, their fuses green, like stems.

He'd never seen anything so cool in his life.

And the best part, the most bitchen part, were the prices posted next to the bar codes on the small ledge below the shelf.

M80s: twenty-five cents.

Cherry bombs: fifteen cents.

Firecrackers: five cents.

Five cents apiece!

If he and his friends put their money together, they could buy tons of them. They could drop them in trash cans, put them in mailboxes, tie them to cats' tails. They could blow up the whole fucking town!

"So how do you like The Store?" his dad asked. "Isn't it nice?"

Ky grinned up at him. "It's great," he said. "I love it."

EIGHT

1

Bill had fully intended to boycott The Store, but to his own dismay he found himself going there quite often. He was offended by the way the corporation had bought off town officials, hated the way The Store had bulldozed its way into Juniper, was suspicious of the unexplainable strangeness surrounding its arrival, but he had to admit that The Store had an excellent selection of . . . well, almost everything.

And the fact was, it was much more convenient to shop here in town than drive up to Flagstaff or down to Phoenix.

Still, he always tried to buy whatever he needed at locally owned businesses first. If they didn't have what he was looking for, _then_ he'd check The Store.

But the uneasiness he'd felt, that strange sense of disquiet that had remained with him since he'd seen the first dead deer, seemed to have vanished completely. It was hard to credit animal deaths and mysterious accidents when people were snacking on sushi and drinking espresso in a modern, well-lit, state-of-the-art retail store in which the newest books, CDs, video games, fashions, cosmetics, and household appliances were a mere aisle or two away.

Again, he felt like a traitor to his principles. But even that feeling faded as the days passed, and it was not long before going to The Store was like going to Buy-and-Save or going to Siddons Lumber, something he did easily and naturally, without thinking.

That troubled him when he thought about it.

But he seemed to think about it less and less, and when Ginny said to him one night that Sam wanted to apply for a part-time job at The Store, he did not say that she couldn't.

"You know," Ginny said, "she needs to save up some money for college. Even if she gets a scholarship, she'll still need money. And she wants to buy a car, too. She mentioned something about going with you to the auction in Holbrook."

Ginny had hinted around several times before that Sam wanted to work at The Store, and he'd thought of those people outside The Store's recruiting office, thought of all the weirdness that had been buzzing around the place since it had begun building in Juniper, and he'd automatically vetoed the idea.

But it was hard now to maintain that sense of ominousness. What could happen to his daughter? Especially if she only worked part-time. Other people would always be around, both employees and customers, and it was virtually impossible for him to imagine all of them affected by some bizarre supernatural occurrence.

Supernatural?

Even the thought of it seemed ludicrous.

"The Store lets part-timers work flexible hours," Ginny added. "And they pay better than George's or KFC or any of the other places kids in town usually work."

He looked over at her. "We'll see," he said. "We'll see."

2

The Store was the talk of the school.

Ginny could not remember when one topic had so dominated all conversations. Local, state, and national elections, wars, international incidents -- nothing had captured the interest of faculty, staff, and students the way The Store had.

It was a sad state of affairs when the opening of a discount retail outlet had more of an effect on people's lives than important world events.

Still, she found herself right in there with the rest of them, talking about the astonishingly new fashions and the amazingly low prices and the vast array of household products now available in town.

"I'm already in debt," Tracie Welles said at lunch one day when they were talking about how much they'd spent at The Store. "I'm maxed out on my MasterCard, and I had to put a couple of things on layaway."

For a brief second, Ginny thought of those black trucks traveling at night, thought about large segments of Juniper's population going into debt to The Store, and a quick chill passed through her.

Then it was gone, and she was laughing with the rest of the teachers in the lounge as they speculated about what their spouses would say when the credit card bills started rolling in.

What really surprised her was Bill's complete reversal on The Store. For months he'd been almost pathologically hostile toward anything even remotely connected to the business. Now, suddenly, all that negativism had disappeared.

It was as if he'd been instantly converted. He'd gone to the grand opening, had seen that there was nothing strange or out of the ordinary, nothing evil or unusual, and all of his reservations had vanished. He went there, he shopped there, sometimes he even just browsed there.

And last night he'd pretty much agreed to let Sam work there.

Miracles never ceased.

After work, Ginny drove past the high school on her way home. It was a bad habit, she knew. And, as her friends told her, she should probably trust her daughters a little more. But she worked at a school; she knew what kids these days were like.

Besides, even good girls did bad things.

That's how Samantha had been conceived.

Ginny didn't regret it. She loved her daughter. But the fact remained that her life would probably have turned out far differently had she not gotten pregnant so young. She would have finished earning her master's degree, for one thing. Might even have gone for a Ph.D. But the responsibilities of motherhood had been thrust upon her, and almost before she knew what had happened, she'd dropped out of college, she and Bill had gotten married, and her plans for the future had been radically redesigned.

She wanted better for her daughters. She wanted them both to finish their educations, to find themselves before they were forced to take on the roles that they would play for the rest of their lives. She did not want them to go straight from being a daughter to being a mother. They needed time to be adults themselves, to forge their own identities apart from parents or mates or children.

So, yes, perhaps she did keep too tight a rein on them sometimes. She didn't let them run around totally unsupervised. She checked up on them to make sure they were where they said they'd be. She and Bill both enforced strict curfew hours. Bizarre behavior by Juniper's redneck standards. But hopefully their daughters wouldn't end up like most of the other girls in town.

She stopped off at the farmer's market for vegetables, then picked up bread and milk at the Buy-and-Save before heading home. Bill was gone -- at Street's, according to a note attached to the refrigerator -- and she had the house to herself. For once.

Shannon arrived a half hour later while Ginny was chopping tomatoes for pasta sauce. She tossed schoolbooks on the table next to the door, plopped down on the couch, and immediately used the remote control to turn on the television.

"Silence is golden," Ginny said.

"Silence is boring," Shannon replied. "I hate coming home to a quiet house. It's creepy."

"I think it's nice," Ginny said, but her daughter was already flipping channels, trying to find the talk show with the most outrageous topic.

Samantha walked in a few minutes later. She smiled, said hello, went into her bedroom to drop off her books, then came back into the kitchen and got a can of Dr. Pepper out of the refrigerator. She sat down in the breakfast nook, across from where Ginny was chopping.

She sighed loudly, melodramatically.

Ginny tried not to smile, continued chopping.

"I need money," Samantha said.

"You could try getting a job."

"That's what I'm talking about." She leaned forward. "The Store's still hiring, but I don't know for how much longer. Those jobs are going fast. They need people to fill those positions."

"Then why don't you get an application?"

"Can I?"

"It's fine with me."

"I know it's fine with you. But what about Dad?"

Ginny stopped chopping, smiled. "Ask your father," she said. "I think it'll be okay."

"You talked to him?"

"What are mothers for?"

"Oh, thank you, Mom!" Samantha leaped up, ran around the counter, threw her arms about her mother and hugged.

"Puke," Shannon said from the couch. "I think I'm gonna barf."

Ginny laughed. "You could learn a little bit about the art of gratitude from your sister."

"Yeah, right."

Samantha remained in the kitchen, talking excitedly about how she'd juggle school and work, while Ginny finished making the sauce and then started to boil the pasta. She stopped talking when Bill came home, lapsing immediately into a nervous, expectant silence, and Shannon giggled at her from the living room.

Ginny silenced her younger daughter with a quick glance.

"Hi, Dad," Samantha said, moving out of the kitchen to greet him.

Bill frowned suspiciously, an expression that was only half put on. He looked from Samantha to Shannon to Ginny. "All right, what's going on? Who wrecked the car? Who broke my computer? Who had the nine-hundred-dollar phone bill?"

"Oh, Dad," Samantha said. "Can't I even say hello to you without you going overboard and reading something into it?"

"No," he said.

Shannon laughed.

Ginny saw an expression of understanding dawn in Bill's face. He glanced over at her, and she nodded almost imperceptibly, telling him with her eyes to keep his promise.

"Your mother tells me that you want to work part-time," he said.

Ginny looked at him gratefully.

Samantha nodded. "I'm going to need money for college next year."

"And you want to work where?"

"At The Store?" she said hopefully.

He sighed.

"I know you don't like The Store," she said quickly, "and I understand.

But the pay's good, and it's only part-time. They'll also work my hours around my school schedule."

"You already talked to them?"

"No. I thought I should ask you first."

"Well, in that case . . ." He pretended to think for a moment. "Okay," he said. "I can work there?"

He nodded grudgingly. "I suppose so."

"Thanks!" She gave her father a big hug. "You're the greatest dad in the world!"

"This is getting _really_ pukey," Shannon said.

"He is!"

"Shut up, all of you," Ginny said, laughing. "And wash up. It's time for dinner."

3

Samantha looked up at the front of The Store, took a deep breath, wiped her sweaty palms on the back of her dress, and walked inside, running her tongue over her teeth to make sure no lipstick had smeared off.

She was nervous. She'd expected that job positions would automatically be given to the first applicants, but she'd heard at school that The Store was actually turning people down. According to Rita Daley, Tad Hood had applied for a box boy position, and they'd said thanks but no thanks. Apparently, they were looking for specific qualities in their potential employees and were not willing to settle for anything less.

In a way that was good. It meant that there were still job openings. But it also upped the pressure factor. Maybe she herself wasn't what they were looking for.

Maybe she wasn't good enough.

She thrust that thought out of her mind. She was the smartest girl in her class, bound to be valedictorian, probably prom queen as well. If she wasn't good enough, who was?

The cold air hit her the second she passed through the doorway, and she was grateful for it. Despite her attempt to be confident, despite her pep talk to herself, she was still anxious, still sweating, and she stood for moment just inside the door, letting the air conditioning cool her off.

An older man with a plastic smile on his face, wearing The Store's green vest over a white shirt, was standing near the shopping carts, and Samantha approached him. "Where would I pick up a job application?" she asked.

"Customer Service," he said, pointing.

"Thank you." She headed in the direction he'd indicated, and a second later spotted the words CUSTOMER SERVICE on the wall high above the electronics department.

Shannon's boyfriend, Jake, was at the Customer Service counter, getting his own application, and he smiled at her as she walked up. "Hi," he said.

She smiled back. "Hi."

She'd never really liked Jake, and she wondered what her sister saw in the boy. He'd been a brat and a wiseass when he was a little kid, and even now there was something Eddie Haskell-like about him, some obnoxious smarminess that set her teeth on edge and that she couldn't believe Shannon didn't see.

"What are you applying for?" he asked.

"Whatever's available."

Jake laughed. "Me, too." He looked at her in a way that seemed far too personal, far too intimate, and made her feel more than a little uncomfortable.

"You going out with Shannon tonight?" she asked deliberately.

"Uh, yeah," he said.

"Well, have fun." Smiling sweetly, she turned away from him and faced the young woman behind the counter. "I'd like an application for a part-time job."

"Sales?" the woman asked.

"Yes."

The woman withdrew a form from a shelf beneath the counter. "You can take it home, fill it out, and bring it back when you're ready." She inserted the form into a square featureless machine that clicked loudly. "Deadline's a week."

"Is there an interview . . . ?"

"After your application is reviewed, then you may be invited back for an interview."

"Thank you." She smiled at the woman, took the application, and turned to leave. Jake was walking slowly down the center aisle of the electronics department, pretending to look at boom boxes, obviously waiting for her, but she quickly made a detour around the televisions, through the household appliances, and emerged near the checkout stands.

She glanced down at the application in her hand, quickly scanning some of the questions. She'd look good on paper, she knew. Once she filled in some of the biographical info, the clubs she belonged to, her GPA and extracurricular activities, she'd be in. There was no way they'd find someone better.

She felt good, she felt confident, and she decided to come back later, after she'd completed and turned in the application, to do a little shopping. It couldn't hurt to let her future employers know that she shopped here herself.

Besides, she needed some new jeans.

She looked behind her, toward the electronics department, to make sure that Jake was nowhere in sight, then hurried past the checkout stands and through the exit doors to the parking lot outside.

4

"Every department, every aisle, every corner of The Store is equipped with hidden video cameras that are on twenty-four hours a day and record all activity within our boundaries."

Mr. Lamb walked through the stockroom. No, not walked. _Strode_. His bearing was that of a military man, his gait almost a march, and he moved purposefully past the warehouse shelves filled with crated merchandise toward a white door at the far end. Jake hurried behind him, trying to keep up. He'd heard bad things about The Store from July Bettencourt and some of the other kids who'd tried to get a job here and failed, but so far he'd had no problems.

He'd turned in his application yesterday afternoon, and Mr. Lamb had called him this morning and told him to come in for an interview. The interview had been mercifully short, and now the personnel manager was taking him on a tour of the place and acting as though he'd gotten the job. He didn't know whether he had or hadn't.

And he was afraid to ask.

Mr. Lamb was an intimidating guy.

They reached the white door, Mr. Lamb pulled it open, and the two of them continued down a narrow white hallway that Jake estimated ran parallel to the hardware department, behind the tire wall.

"Here is our monitoring room," Mr. Lamb said, opening a door and stepping inside.

"Wow," Jake said.

Mr. Lamb smiled thinly. "Yes."

The walls of the room were covered with television screens, each showing a different area of the store. Ten or twelve men, none of whom Jake recognized, were seated in front of individual stations at a control console that wrapped around the room. Each man seemed to be responsible for keeping tabs on what was happening on a bank of six televisions that was three screens tall and two screens wide.

"This is our security team," Mr. Lamb said. "Right now, we're utilizing an interim crew from corporate headquarters. They're here to set up shop and assist with training. We hope to have a locally recruited team in place by the end of the month." He turned toward Jake. "You're our first recruit."

He _had_ gotten the job.

Jake licked his lips, nervously cleared his throat. "I'm still going to school," he said. "I can only work part-time."

"We are well aware of your schedule, Mr. Lindley." The personnel manager's voice was cold. "We have three shifts. Yours would be swing -- three in the afternoon until nine at night -- if that is acceptable to you."

Jake nodded timidly.

"Very well." Mr. Lamb turned back toward the nearest wall. "As a security monitor, you will be responsible for observing customers on these video screens here and logging any inappropriate activity so that management can later determine whether it's feasible to prosecute or take other necessary action." He moved closer and pointed to a series of numbers on a digital readout below one of the screens. "As you can see, everything is taped. If an incident occurs, you will record the number corresponding to the tape location so that the incident can be easily referenced."

Jake nodded, not sure if he was supposed to be paying close attention, if this was part of his training, or simply an overview of information that would be repeated when his actual training began.

"Uh, when will I be starting?" he asked.

"When would you like to start?"

"Tomorrow?" he offered.

Mr. Lamb smiled. "That will be fine. There will be a two-day training session, before you begin monitoring the card department. If you are effective in this assignment, you may eventually move up to" -- he paused dramatically "the women's fitting rooms." His smile growing broader, he led the way across the room and pointed to a screen above the head of a young man with a blond crew cut. On the screen, in a closed dressing room, Samantha Davis unbuckled her belt, unbuttoned, unzipped, and pulled down her jeans. The crew cut man turned a knob on the console, and the camera zoomed in on her crotch. Her panties had a hole in them, and through the small tear in the patterned cotton he could see blond pubic hair.

Jake was immediately aroused, and he casually moved his right hand in front of his crotch, surreptitiously trying to push down on his growing erection. He had often imagined what Shannon's sister looked like naked, and here she was in the flesh.

A natural blond.

She adjusted the panties, pulling them tight, clearly outlining the cleft between her legs, before trying on the jeans that she'd brought into the dressing room with her.

He dared not move, for fear that even that slight friction would set him off. He stared up at the screen in wonder. He could sit here and spy on the girls in town as they tried on clothes, see them in their underwear, and get paid for it? This was heaven.

Mr. Lamb grinned, put an uncomfortable arm around Jake's shoulder.

"Sometimes," he said, "they don't even wear panties."

5

Bill stared at his computer screen.

Street had won the chess game.

It took a moment for him to realize what had happened. He hadn't expected this, hadn't been prepared for it, and he was mentally thrown off balance. When his brain finally did assimilate what had occurred, he leaned back in his chair, a shiver passing through him.

It was not an earth-shattering moment. Nothing important had occurred.

Hell, by rights this was something that should have happened a long time ago.

The surprising thing was that it hadn't occurred before now.

But after so many consecutive wins, this loss seemed somehow ominous, and he found himself reading into it an import that perhaps wasn't there.

_Perhaps?_

There was no "perhaps" about it. There was no larger meaning to the loss of a chess game; there was no significance to it at all.

So why did he feel . . . uneasy?

The phone rang. Street, no doubt. "I'll get it!" he called out. He picked up the cordless from his desk and pressed the "Talk" button. "Hello?"

It was Street, but he hadn't called to gloat, as Bill had expected.

Instead, he seemed subdued. "I won," he said, and there was a superstitious hush to his voice, as though he had just broken a mirror and was waiting for the imminent arrival of seven years' bad luck. "I didn't think I'd win."

"I didn't either," Bill admitted.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Want to call Ben and come over for a board game?"

"Sure." Bill searched around his desktop, trying to find where he'd laid his watch. "What time is it?"

"Still early. Why don't you come on by?"

"Okay," Bill said. "See you in ten." He started to turn off the phone, then held it once again to his mouth and ear. "Oh, I almost forgot. Congratulations."

"Thanks," Street replied, but there was no joy in his voice.

Bill switched off the phone, switched off his PC, and emerged from his office, walking into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

"He does still live here," Shannon said loudly from the living room.

"Very funny." He made a face at her.

Ginny looked over at him from the couch. "You could spend a little more time with your family and a little less time hiding in your room with your computer."

"Yeah, Dad."

"You're with that computer all day. Do you have to do it at night, too?"

"Sorry." Bill grabbed a glass from the sideboard, rinsed it out, poured himself some water from the sink, and drank.

"So what's your plan now?" Ginny asked. "Are you going to stay here with us for once, or are you going to hang out with your cronies?"

"My cronies?"

"Your cronies." Ginny looked at him levelly.

"Well . . . I was going to go over to Street's house for a quick game."

"Jesus. Don't you think for once you could do something with me instead of your friends?"

All lightness, all trace of bantering, had left her voice. If it had ever been there. Shannon was on the floor, moving closer to the television, trying to pretend she couldn't hear what was going on.

Bill put his glass in the sink. "Fine," he said. "I'll stay home. We'll have our match tomorrow."

"But you're going to be angry about it, aren't you? You're going to be silent and pout all night."

"What's with you today?" He moved around the counter, into the living room, sitting down on the couch next to her. "That time of the month?"

"You're gross," Shannon said.

"Are your little hormones telling you to be angry with me?" He pinched Ginny's side, tickling her, and against her will she laughed. "You _are_ gross," she said.

"But that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, you like it."

"Dad!"

"Okay, okay. Sorry." He gave Ginny a quick kiss. "Just let me call Street and cancel."

"You sure you're not going to pout?"

"No," he said. And as he walked back down the hallway to his office, he realized that he hadn't been lying to Ginny. He wasn't angry. In fact, he wasn't at all upset that they wouldn't be playing chess tonight.

He was relieved.

"Thank you, Fred," Street said as he handed the customer his change.

The old man nodded, took his bag of adapters. "Thanks."

Ben waited until the customer had left the store, then turned toward Street. "Whatever happened to the words 'You're welcome'?"

"What?"

"It seems like every time I say 'Thank you' to someone, they say "Thank you' back to me. Everyone's thanking everybody these days. No one says, 'You're welcome' anymore."

"What is this crap? You trying to be Andy Rooney or something?"

"Like what just happened here. What are you supposed to say when someone buys something from you? Do you thank him for buying from you and patronizing your store? You do, right? Then he's supposed to say, 'You're welcome.' That's the correct response to Thank you.' But, instead, Fred said, 'Thanks.' Why?

What's he thanking you for? Giving him his change?"

Street shook his head. "Give it a rest, will you? It's been a crappy day."

The editor looked over at Bill, changing the subject. "Well, maybe this'll start a new pattern. Now maybe he'll win all the computer games and you'll win all the board games."

"Street's right," Bill said. "Give it a rest."

He didn't feel like talking about the chess game. In fact, he didn't feel like playing chess ever again. He _had_ won the board game in their little test, and that pattern reversal had shaken him far more than he cared to admit. It had not been a surprise -- hell, he'd been expecting it -- but confirmation only made it that much worse.

Street, too, had avoided discussing the subject. Only Ben seemed to be unfazed by what had occurred, viewing it dispassionately, talking about it as though he were a geologist who had just found some sort of interesting crystal formation.

The editor sighed. "Boy, you two are a barrel of laughs today. If you guys are just going to sit around and mope, I'm going back to the office."

Bill smiled. "And actually do some work?"

"He _is_ still alive!"

"They're talking about raising the sales tax a quarter of a cent," Street said. "The city council. Either of you know anything about it?"

Bill shook his head.

Ben nodded. "I think it's done deal. That's the rumor."

Bill frowned. "Why? I never even heard about this."

Street snorted derisively. "Apparently, The Store wasn't required to pay for the traffic impact report, the easement fee, hookup fees, or anything else that the rest of us had to pay. They were given preferential treatment."

"Incentives," Ben concurred.

"Now the rest of us have to make up for those lost revenues."

"I imagine our local citizens are going to be pretty unhappy with that,"

Bill said.

"I hope so."

"It's only a quarter of a cent," Ben said. "A penny for every four bucks."

"People still won't like it."

"You know, that's something that always seemed ironic to me," Ben said.

"It's the one who are so antitaxation that are usually so gung ho about the military. They're willing to kill for their country but not pay for it."

Bill smiled. "You old hippie you."

"I admit it."

Street shook his head. "It's not that simple. These are the taxes that really hurt small businesses like mine. Someplace like The Store can afford to absorb the loss and not pass the tax on to the consumer. But the rest of us here are just making ends meet. My prices are going to jump. Not much, but maybe just enough to give The Store that extra edge."

"Besides," Bill said, "this is not providing better roads or better hospitals or things that will actually benefit people. This is subsidizing a successful business with taxpayer money. At the expense of our local merchants -"

"Damn straight," Street said.

"I know. I understand that. But what they're going to argue is that this is a small price to pay for so many extra jobs. And that, in the long run, The Store will bring in more revenue to the town than it's taking in these incentives."

Street snorted. "And you buy that load of horse pucky?"

"That's not what I said."

"Sounds like it."

"Look, I don't want to fight. Of course I'm against raising the sales tax to benefit The Store. But I just got through interviewing Rod Snopes and his militia buddies for a piece I'm writing, and I have to say that I'm pretty sick of this knee-jerk antigovernment, antitax shit."

Bill laughed. "And you call yourself an old hippie?"

"Reformed."

"You talk like a respected member of the status quo."

"Not really. It's just that a lot of these loonies like Rod are so worried about the federal government, and I never saw a government agency that worked worth a damn. These guys're so afraid of Big Brother and creeping totalitarianism, but our government's always seemed to me to be full of inept bunglers, not brilliantly organized master planners. Hell, they couldn't even pull off a third-rate burglary. It's the corporations we have to worry about, I think. They're the ones with the money. They're the ones who can afford to hire the best and the brightest, to competently carry out their plans. They're more efficient, better run, better organized. Shit, they can buy _off_ politicians if they need a political favor."

"Like The Store," Street said.

"Exactly."

"Okay," Bill said. "I apologize. You're still a hippie."

"This isn't funny," Street said. "We're talking about my future here." He stared gloomily out the front window. "Or lack of it."

"You could always get a job at The Store," Ben suggested.

"Not funny." Street sighed heavily. "Not funny at all."

NINE

1

There were no windows in the room, nothing on the walls. It looked like a prison cell or a place where the police might conduct interrogations. There was only the one door, and a table and two opposing chairs underneath a bar of fluorescent light in the center of the ceiling.

Samantha shifted in the seat, adjusting her buttocks on the hard chair.

She tried to remain calm and still, to maintain a pleasant expression on her face. They were probably watching her, she knew, studying her from behind a wall or through some hidden video monitor, and if she hoped to get the job she needed to make sure that she made a good impression.

Mr. Lamb walked in a moment later, looking down at a clipboard and what she assumed was her application. He sat down in the chair opposite her. "Sorry for the delay," he said.

"That's okay."

She watched as he read over her application and made small checks next to certain items with a red pen. There was something about the personnel manager that made her nervous, something in the implacability of his face: the coldness of his eyes, perhaps, or the hint of a smirk on his straight-lined mouth. She didn't like being alone with him, and she wished someone else was here, another manager or an assistant. Someone.

"First things first," he said. "We need you to take a short aptitude and placement test to determine your abilities and qualifications."

She nodded as he handed her two stapled pages and a second clipboard he'd been hiding under the first. _Why didn't you give me this with my application?_ she wanted to ask. _Why do I have to fill it out now?_

But she said nothing, merely took the pen he offered her and began answering the questions on the top sheet. He watched her silently as she completed the test. She could not see his face clearly, could only see him with her peripheral vision, but she had the impression that he stared at her without blinking, his eyes as still as the rest of his body, and that unnerved her.

She finished the test as quickly as possible, handing the clipboard back to him.

"Thank you." He gave the top page a cursory glance, then looked up at her.

"As you may or may not know, The Store is a drug-free workplace and we have a policy of zero tolerance."

She smiled politely. "No problem."

"If you are going to work here, you will be required to take both a lie detector test and a drug test."

"Okay."

He stood. "I will bring in the polygraph."

Samantha was confused as she watched him leave the room once again. The woman on the phone had told her that she was being asked back for an interview, but Mr. Lamb hadn't asked her any questions. She'd expected to respond to queries regarding the answers on her application, to clarify any questions about her they might have, to basically sell herself as a potential employee. Instead, she'd taken an aptitude test and was about to take a lie detector test. Had she already gotten the job? It almost seemed like it -- as though these were merely preliminary requirements, the red-tape steps she had to go through before being officially hired.

Mr. Lamb returned a moment later, wheeling in a peculiar-looking device on a two-tiered cart. The body of the machine was about the size of a small television set, but there were thin red and black wires spread across the cart top, and several cables that connected to what looked like a battery on the lower shelf.

He pushed the cart next to her, began untangling wires. "This is the polygraph," he said. "I will be administering the test, but the results will be recorded and then evaluated at the corporate office since I am not qualified to interpret them." He turned toward her. "Please remove your blouse and your bra."

She blinked. "What?"

"The polygraph measures galvanic skin response. The breast is the most sensitive and therefore the most telling area. It prevents us from having to reperform the test."

Samantha licked her lips nervously. "I think I'd rather do it twice if I

have to."

"I'm sorry. It's policy. Multiple tests are too cost-prohibitive. We only do it once. Please take off your blouse and bra."

There was nothing keeping her here, no one forcing her to submit to this.

She could stand up and walk out and not look back. She wouldn't get the job, but she wouldn't have to expose herself to this creepy, slimy man. And she could always get a job somewhere else. Georges, maybe. Or Buy-and-Save. Or KFC.

She started unbuttoning her blouse.

Even as she did it, she didn't know why. But she methodically went down the row of buttons, unhooking them, pretending this was not unusual, not a problem, that she was calm, adult, professional, and willing to do what it took to secure this position.

She leaned forward, took off the blouse, laid it in her lap. She reached around and unhooked her bra.

"Thank you." Mr. Lamb instantly began applying sensors to her skin: thin pieces of metal sheathed in plastic and coated with some sort of clear gel that felt ice-cold on her skin. He placed one in the middle of her chest, just below her neck, one above her left breast, one above her right.

"Raise your arms please."

She raised her arms, looked down as he applied a sensor below each armpit.

She had never felt so naked and exposed in her life, not even when Todd Atkins had burst into the girl's locker room on a dare in junior high and had seen her and Jenny Newman naked and toweling off. That had been embarrassing but essentially innocent, probably just as scary for Todd as it had been for them, probably just as exciting for them as for Todd.

But this was different. Sitting here in this bare and empty room, stripped to the waist and being viewed so coldly, so clinically, so matter-of-factly, seemed at once more intimate and more degrading. All her flaws were accentuated, her inadequacies exaggerated. Her breasts looked too white compared to the rest of her body, the nipples too small. She looked down as he applied the thin sensors and could see the white powder of her deodorant under her arms, could see the beginnings of stubble beneath the deodorant. Her belly button looked dirty. She should've shaved last night instead of the night before. She should've washed better.

He placed a sensor directly on her right breast. His fingers remained a beat too long there, touched the nipple, then he was doing the same thing to her left breast.

This time two fingers touched her nipple.

She felt violated, humiliated, shamed. But something kept her from slapping his face and walking out. She didn't need the job. Not this badly. Not enough to degrade herself. But she refused to let him see any weakness, refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had gotten to her, affected her.

She pretended she hadn't noticed and remained staring straight ahead, expressionless, letting him think that she thought this was merely a routine formality, something she had acquiesced to many times before.

Mr. Lamb placed one final sensor on the slight bulge of her stomach, then moved around to the side of the cart and began turning dials and flipping switches. There was a slight jerk and a hum as the machine was turned on, then a series of small clicks.

Samantha continued to stare straight ahead, her focus on the opposite wall. He moved the cart in front of her, faced her, smiled slightly.

"All right," he said. "We're ready to begin. Answer only the questions I ask, and answer them as accurately and succinctly as possible. For your protection, as well as the protection of The Store, this test will be audio recorded." He cleared his throat. "Application number two-eleven-A," he said.

"Please state your name and age."

"My name is Samantha Davis. I'm eighteen years old."

"Do you attend school?"

"Yes."

"What is the name of your school?"

"Juniper High . . . uh, Juniper Union High School."

"Have you ever been convicted of shoplifting or stealing?"

"No."

"Are you a chronic drug user?"

"No."

"Have you ever used any illegal or nonprescription drugs?"

"No."

"Have you ever sold or been in the possession of any illegal or nonprescription drugs?"

"No." She took a deep breath. Despite the fact that she had never been involved in anything even remotely illegal, she felt nervous. Her heart rate had accelerated, and she could hear its pulse in her head. Would this affect the outcome of her test?

Mr. Lamb adjusted a knob on the polygraph, then looked up, meeting her eyes. "Have you ever performed fellatio?"

"Fellatio?"

"Oral sex with a male."

She stared at him, shocked.

"Have you?"

She shook her head.

"Please speak your answers aloud."

"No," she said, in a soft small, voice.

"Have you ever performed cunnilingus?"

"Cunnilingus?"

"Have you ever licked another female's vagina?"

"No," she said.

"Have you ever performed analingus?"

"No." She wasn't exactly sure what that was, but after the last question, she had a pretty good idea.

"Have you ever inflicted any fatal injury or intentionally caused harm to another human being?"

"No." Samantha looked away from Mr. Lamb, down at her chest, at the electrodes attached to her skin. What kinds of questions were these? Not only were they bizarre, but they seemed to have nothing to do with the job of being a sales clerk. She found herself wondering if these really were questions that The Store asked of its prospective employees or if Mr. Lamb was doing this on his own. Maybe he was some sort of pervert. Maybe he was taping this session -- but for his own private use rather than as documentation for The Store.

That couldn't be the case, though. A secretary and several other people were in the personnel office right outside the door. And The Store had obviously provided Mr. Lamb with the lie detector and the recording equipment. He couldn't very well edit and doctor the results of this interview before turning them in.

No, The Store knew about all this.

"One last question," Mr. Lamb said. "Have you ever had a recurring dream in which you disemboweled a member of your family?"

"No!"

"Very good." Mr. Lamb flipped a switch, initiating a new series of clicks.

"See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

He started to walk around the cart to remove the polygraph sensors, but she wasn't about to let him touch her again, and she was already pulling them off her skin. By the time he reached her, she had removed all of them, and she handed the jumble of wires to him, quickly reaching for her bra and blouse.

"We're almost done here," Mr. Lamb said. He placed the tangled wires on the cart and pushed the cart to the bare wall on the opposite side of the room.

From somewhere on the cart, he withdrew a glass bottle shaped like a wine carafe and carried it back. "We need you to give us a urine sample for the drug test."

He held forth the bottle. "Fill this up."

She could feel the heat of embarrassment in her cheeks, and she knew that her face had to be bright red. "Where should I . . . ?"

"Here." He looked at her flatly.

She shook her head, not sure she had heard him right. "What?"

"If you take it into the bathroom, there's no way I could authenticate it.

You'll have to do it right here."

"In front of you?"

He nodded. "In front of me."

Had the corners of his mouth crept up? Was he trying to hide a smile? She felt cold, not only deeply shamed but frightened.

Yet, again, no one was forcing her to do this. There was no one holding a gun to her head.

Not exactly.

But she didn't feel she could just get up and walk out. Something was keeping her here, whether it was psychological pressure or her own emotional inability to stand up for herself, and the thought occurred to her that she was being exploited, taken advantage of.

Sexually harassed.

She had never imagined being in this situation, but now that she was, now that it had crept up on her like this, she understood how victims could remain silent about what happened to them, how they could keep these things to themselves and not tell anyone.

Because . . . there wasn't really any need to tell anyone. She could deal with this, she could get past it, it wasn't going to scar her for life.

She could handle it.

"Please fill up the bottle," Mr. Lamb said.

She nodded, stood, took the bottle from him. She placed it on her chair, then reached up under her skirt and pulled down her panties, taking them off, one leg at a time, not letting him see beneath the skirt.

"The skirt as well, please."

She imagined him dead, imagined herself kicking his head as he lay on the ground. But she nodded, took off the skirt, placed it on the chair.

She was no longer cold. It was hot in here, outrageously humid, and she was sweating. She tried to imagine what her parents would say if they were in the room but couldn't.

Squatting, not looking at Mr. Lamb, she held the bottle between her legs.

Filled it.

Handed it to him.

Now he _was_ smiling. "Thank you, Miss Davis. This concludes our interview. You may put your clothes back on. We will call you and let you know the results."

She nodded, put on her panties, put on her skirt.

She did not start crying until she was outside The Store and in the parking lot.

2

Another free day.

Bill woke up late, went for a jog, made himself breakfast, watched TV, signed on to Freelink and read today's headline news, then decided to take a shower and head into town. He didn't mind staying home all day when he was working, but when he was between assignments, the house made him feel claustrophobic, and he liked to get out as much as possible.

He stopped by Street's store, shot the breeze for a while, then walked over to Doane's to see if any new music had come in.

Doane was on the phone when he opened the door and stepped inside the small air-conditioned shop, so he merely waved hello and headed over to the New Releases bin, where he began sorting through the stacked CDs.

Although he'd always considered himself a rock fan, he had to admit that most of his recent purchases had been drawn from the Country section of the CD rack: Lyle Lovett, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Robert Earl Keen, Roseanne Cash, Bill Morrissey. He told himself that rock and roll was an attitude, not a specific musical style, and that if these artists had been around twenty-five years earlier, their records would have been placed in the Rock rack next to James Taylor and Carole King and Joni Mitchell, but the fact was that he was not really interested in most of the rock music being produced today. His tastes had changed over the years.

He wasn't sure he liked that.

Doane finished his conversation, hung up the phone, and Bill stopped looking through the CDs, glancing up. "How's business?" he asked.

The store owner shook his head. "Slow as hard-packed shit."

Bill started to laugh, but he realized almost instantly that Doane was dead serious. "The Store?" he said.

Doane nodded. "Bastards're lowballing me. They can _sell_ CDs for less than I pay wholesale."

"They don't have your selection, though."

"Not the backlist, maybe, but they're stocking the Top Ten two weeks before my distributor can even ship the discs out to me. Teenagers are my bread and butter, man. I don't get those hot tunes in the store and on the shelves, the kids don't come in." He sighed. "Even if I do get the music on the shelves, they probably won't come in. I can't afford to even meet The Store's prices, much less beat them."

"You think you'll be able to survive?" Bill asked.

"I hope so, but I don't know. Maybe I'm being paranoid and have an exaggerated sense of my own importance, but I really think The Store's trying to drive me out of business."

"And have a monopoly on music sales."

"Sure. Then they could jack up their prices and start making a profit instead of taking a loss." Doane smiled wryly. "If I'm touching your heart at all, feel free to buy something today."

"I will," Bill said. "I was planning to."

He ended up purchasing a CD of Cormac McCarthy's first album, a vinyl copy of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua!" and a vinyl bootleg of a 1979 Tom Waits and Leon Redbone concert.

"Where do you get these bootlegs?" Bill asked as he wrote a check at the counter.

Doane grinned, tried to look mysterious. "I have my sources."

Bill walked out of the shop, carrying his purchases under his arm. The bootleg had cost a lot, and Ginny would probably get mad at him, but the album was rare and he considered it a true find, well worth the high price. Besides, he wanted to support Doane and help him out in any way he could. Digging through piles of used albums was one of his favorite hobbies, and he didn't know what he'd do if the record store closed. Shopping at The Store and looking at only new releases was not quite the same.

He walked slowly down the street, noticing for the first time the lack of foot traffic in downtown Juniper, and it brought home to him the fact that some of the businesses here might not survive. He'd known that intellectually, of course, but he had not understood it emotionally, and he now _realized_ that any of these stories could disappear at any time. He'd never thought about it before, but he had expected Juniper to always remain as it was, and he was thrown surprisingly off balance by the knowledge that even in a small town, stability was not a guarantee and nothing was permanent. They had moved to Juniper precisely because it was a small town. They liked that atmosphere, that lifestyle. They wanted to raise their children in a community where neighbors talked to each other, where storekeepers knew their customers by name, and they had expected the town to remain that way throughout their lifetimes, for families that had put down roots here to stay and not move away, for businesses to remain open, for nothing to change.

Now everything seemed to be changing.

He stopped by the cafй for a quick cup of coffee and saw Ben seated at the counter, eating alone, a half-finished bowl of Williamson James's heartburn chili in front of him. He snuck up behind the editor, tapping him on the right shoulder then quickly sitting down on the stool to his left. "Hey, stranger," he said. "Long time no care."

"Asshole," Ben said.

"Language!" Holly called out.

Bill ordered coffee, and Holly poured a cup and brought it over immediately. He took a slow sip, then shook his head, sighed.

Ben took a bite of chili, wiped his mouth with a napkin. "What is it?"

Bill described his visit to the record shop. "I knew The Store would affect local businesses. I guess I just didn't think the effects would be felt this quickly."

"A lot of places are hurting already," Ben said. "Most mom-and-pop stores operate from month to month, and something like this has an immediate impact on them." He shook his head. "Steve Miller told me he's thinking of packing it in.

That shop's been in his family since his grandfather started it . . . when?

Sixty years ago?"

"Isn't there anything he can do?"

Ben shrugged. "Joe Modesto, down at First Western Bank, is setting up a new small-business loan program, to try to help our local merchants out, but I don't think he's going to have too many takers. I think most people here would rather cut their losses than go further into debt." He smiled wryly. "The ironic thing is that the paper's flush. The Store's been taking out full-page ads ever since it opened. As I'm sure you've noticed. They're even adding an insert this week, a two-page pullout with coupons. Our advertising revenue's way up."

"Well, I guess that's good," Bill said doubtfully.

"I'd rather have things back the way they were."

"Who wouldn't?"

On the way home, Bill passed by the new park, saw a clearly delineated baseball diamond with an oversized chain-link backstop and two three-tiered metal bleachers. A crew of workers was putting up a fence around a tennis court adjacent to the baseball field. Across an open expanse of grass was a fully installed playground complete with swings, slides, monkey bars, and teeter totters. Next to that, more workers were pouring concrete for a public swimming pool. The park was nice. New and clean and well planned. Like everything connected with The Store. But at the same time, there was something artificial about it, like a too-expensive present given by an acquaintance trying to buy instant friendship.

As nice as the new park was, he preferred the old park, with its low, sagging backstop made from rusted leftover pipe and torn chicken wire, its overgrown weed field, its tire swing, its primitive sandbox.

Did The Store have to change everything in Juniper?

The first thing he did when he arrived home was check his computer.

He'd received his new assignment: writing instructions for a new accounting package.

An accounting package being developed specifically for The Store.

Bill stared at the color monitor, not scrolling forward, not printing out the message, simply rereading the initial introductory paragraph the company had E-mailed to him. He felt weird, uncomfortable, uneasy. Automated Interface was one of the biggest software firms in the country, and over the past several years he'd written documentation for programs that had been developed by their company for a host of major corporations: Fox Broadcasting, RJR Nabisco, General Motors, General Foods. But even though The Store was a national corporation, he had a local, personal connection to it, and it felt strange to know that he was helping to develop a product for its use.

He felt as though he was working for The Store.

In a sense, he was working for The Store, and he didn't like that. He knew now how all those old antiwar protesters felt when they ended up getting jobs at Rockwell and McDonnell Douglas and other aerospace defense firms. There was a moral dilemma here. He had rationalized shopping at The Store, had told himself that he wasn't betraying his principles by patronizing the establishment or by letting his daughter apply for a job there, and he felt comfortable with that.

But this seemed different somehow, and he reread the message yet again before scrolling forward to check out the details of the project.

He knew he couldn't decline this assignment. He didn't have that luxury.

If he refused to perform the job assigned to him, Automated Interface would simply let him go and hire another tech writer. So, in a sense, it was out of his hands, it was not his decision to make.

He felt guilty, though, felt as though he should do something to avoid contributing to the strength of The Store, and he was still sitting in front of the screen of his PC, rereading the assignment, when Ginny arrived home from work.

They went out for dinner that night. Chicken. He still called the place "Colonel Sanders,' " but the colonel was long dead, and he'd sold the franchise to some corporation years before that. These days, the bright red-and-white sign in front of the restaurant read KFC.

He wondered how many young kids knew that KFC stood for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Not too many.

Their entire lives were run by corporations these days. Companies test marketed names and logos and spokespeople, held conferences and meetings to determine how to best capture their target audience, based decisions on demographics. Chain outlets were given ethnic names or folksy appearances, attempts were made to disguise the individual tentacles of huge conglomerates by making them seem part of some other, smaller company. Actual small, locally owned businesses were becoming a thing of the past.

Shannon saw a group of her friends at one of the other tables and asked if she could stay and hang out with them, and Ginny said it was okay as long as she was home by ten. Sam was meeting two of her friends at the movie theater, so he and Ginny dropped her off on their way back.

"Looks like we have at least a couple of hours to ourselves," Ginny said, snuggling next to him in the car as they drove home.

"Looks that way," Bill agreed.

"You in the mood to make use of it?"

He grinned. "I'm always in the mood."

He wasn't exactly in the mood, though, and it took longer than they'd planned. They barely had time to get dressed and make the bed before Shannon arrived. Sam returned twenty minutes later, and both girls went immediately to their respective rooms, closing and locking the doors behind them.

Later, after they'd both showered, after they'd watched the late newscast from Phoenix, they lay in bed. Bill thought about Shannon's request tonight for her own charge card, and he cleared his throat. "Do you ever worry that the girls are too . . ." His voice trailed off.

"Materialistic?"

"Yeah."

She rolled over to face him. "Sometimes," she admitted.

"It's our job, you know, as parents, to instill values in them." He paused. "Sometimes I wonder if we've done our job or if we've completely failed."

"Society's self-correcting. Kids always rebel against their parents and that's why the pendulum always swings back."

"But I didn't think they'd be so . . . materialistic."

"You thought they'd be more like us."

"Well, yeah."

She sighed. "So did I."

They grew silent again. He thought about Shannon, about Sam, but it wasn't really the girls that were bothering him. It was his new assignment, it was Doane's business, it was The Store, it was . . . everything.

He fell asleep trying to think of ways to avoid writing instructions for The Store's new accounting system.

3

Samantha looked at the descending numbers above the elevator door. She was reminded of an old Dr. Seuss movie she'd seen when she was little, _The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T_. In the film, there'd been a series of dungeon basements, and an elevator operator dressed like an executioner had sung out the gruesome specialties of each subterranean floor as the elevator went down.

Mr. Lamb wasn't dressed like an executioner, but the feeling here was pretty close to the one in the film.

The personnel manager had called her yesterday to tell her that she'd gotten the job. Her hands on the receiver had grown sweaty as she heard his voice, and she thought of the lie detector test, the urine sample. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, that she refused to work for The Store. But in a small scared voice she heard herself agree to go down to The Store the next morning an hour before it opened.

"There are a few formalities we have to get out of the way before you start," Mr. Lamb said. "Once they're out of the way, we'll begin training."

"I'll be there," Samantha said.

The employees' section of the parking lot had been full when she'd arrived this morning, but she had yet to see anyone other than Mr. Lamb. The interior of the building was dark, only dim security lights vaguely illuminating the cavernous room. Lights were on in Mr. Lamb's office, though, and it was here she was taken to sign tax forms and additional information forms and a secrecy oath.

"Secrecy oath?" she said, reading the paper in front of her.

"It's just a legality. An assurance to us that you will not use what you learn at The Store to assist one of our rivals in the retail business."