The Store

She wasn't sure if she hated him or still loved him, but he definitely provoked an emotional response within her. Her hands were sweaty, her heart pounding, and she felt nervous even being this close to him.

His eyes met hers, and she quickly looked away.

"Okay!" Jake announced. "Teams!"

He read off a list of pairings and told each team where they were to conduct their sweeps. Shannon was to work with Ed, and the two of them were supposed to round up derelicts at the park. They would be provided with batons and handcuffs, if necessary.

Shannon talked with Ed for a moment. She didn't want to do this, and she made that clear to him, but he was a gung ho member of The Store Corps, and he considered her attitude treasonous.

"But it don't matter," he said proudly. "I don't need your help anyway. I can do it by myself."

"Whatever," she said.

They were driven into town in three vans and dropped off at their assigned locations. The vans were parked equidistantly from each team, providing easy access.

Shannon and Ed walked slowly onto the grass of the park. Behind them came a loud scream, and Shannon turned to see one of the other teams -- Rob and Arn beat a homeless man across the back with their batons and force him into the van behind them.

She felt sick. It was not the same as it had been at the training session.

It was nothing like that. The man was neither hostile nor belligerent. Instead, he seemed confused, hurt, and though he was not uncooperative, they hit him anyway, intentionally hurting him, inflicting pain, and he cried out as he stumbled into the back of the van.

"There's one," Ed said excitedly.

She followed his pointing finger, saw a bearded man in a long coat who looked like the guy on one of her dad's old Jethro Tull albums.

"He's mine," Ed announced.

She stood, watching, as he ran across the lawn and tackled the man. He had no baton, but he began beating the surprised derelict with his fists, shouting joyfully while the man bellowed in pain and vainly tried to ward off blows.

This was wrong. She didn't know whether or not it was legal, but it was wrong, morally and ethically over the line, and she felt queasy as Ed stood, hauled the man up by the collar of his coat, and she saw the bright red blood streaming down his face.

Grinning hugely, victoriously, Ed dragged the man toward her.

"Stay away," she warned him.

"You're supposed to be helping me, Shannon. You're not much help so far."

"Knock it off, Ed."

He was close to her now, and he pushed the bloody man in her direction.

She ran. She heard Ed laughing raucously behind her, and then she was at the edge of the park, panting, feeling nauseous, feeling faint.

She bent over, gulped air, and promptly threw up into a bush.

Then Jake was there, leaning over her, and there was malicious glee in both his voice and his expression. "Get back in there, Davis."

She wiped her mouth, hand shaking. "I . . . I can't do it, Jake. I can't -"

"How the fuck did I ever go out with you?" He straightened, moved away.

"Get busy," he ordered. "You have a quota to meet. And you'll be out here until you reach it."

Behind her, Ed continued to laugh. "Yeah!" he yelled.

Shannon closed her eyes, tried to stand straight, tried to walk away, but almost immediately she saw the derelict's gashed and bleeding face, and she doubled over again, heaving into the bush until there was nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

2

There were no vagrants on the street.

Ginny noticed it for the first time, although she had the feeling that that had been the case for a while and she simply had not registered the fact.

She looked up Granite as she pumped gas into the tank of the car. She had not liked seeing the homeless people, but there was something even more ominous about their absence. The streets and sidewalks looked clean, even the empty buildings appeared freshly restored, and she found herself thinking of _The Stepford Wives_.

That was it exactly. There was something artificial here. Clean and wholesome, yes. But not in a good way. In a creepy way, an unnatural way.

The pump stopped at nine dollars and eighty-nine cents, the tank full, but she topped it off until the counter read ten dollars, then walked into the office of the gas station to pay.

Barry Twain was working this afternoon, and he smiled at her. "Hey there, Ginny. How goes it?"

"Could be better."

"But it could be worse." He squinted at the fuel monitoring box next to the cash register. "That'll be ten dollars."

She handed him a twenty, and he gave her back two fives.

"How are things with you?" she asked.

"Not good. I heard The Store's going to start selling gasoline."

She stared at him, shocked. "What?"

Barry laughed wheezingly, pointing at her. "Gotcha!" he cried. "Gotcha good that time!"

Against her will, she broke into a smile. "That you did."

"You bought it! Hook, line, and sinker!"

"It's not that far-fetched."

Barry's smile faded a little. "You're right."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to --"

He waved her apology away. "Don't worry about it. Gasoline's one thing that can't be sold inside a store. And even if they do build that auto center and eventually decide to sell gas, I'm not worried about it. I've built up a lot of customer loyalty over the years. And I have a lot of friends in this town.

Like you."

She smiled at him. "Barry, I'd still keep coming here even if your gas was two dollars higher than theirs."

He cackled. "Hell, maybe they _should_ come up against me. Then I'll be justified when I jack up my prices, and I'll make a fortune."

"I'll go to Texaco." she said.

"Traitor!"

She laughed, waved, walked out the door. "Later, Barry!"

"See you, Ginny!"

On the way home, she did see a homeless man. A big, burly, bearded guy in a dirty fringed jacket.

He was being shoved by a group of uniformed Store employees into a black Store van.

She drove past quickly, not wanting to see the faces of the Store people, not wanting to discover that her daughters were among them.

She told Bill about it when she arrived home, describing what she'd seen, and he nodded, admitting that he'd witnessed a similar scene the other day.

"But these homeless people," she said. "Where are they taking them? What are they doing with them?"

He shrugged tiredly. "I don't know."

"Our daughters are involved in this."

"How does it feel to have members of the Hitler Youth in your own family?"

"This isn't funny."

"I'm not joking."

They looked at each other.

"Doesn't it feel a little Red Guardish?" he asked. "What if we do something that ticks Sam off? Is she going to turn us in? Is The Store's gestapo going to come after us and load us into vans?"

"Stop it," she said. "You're scaring me."

"I'm scaring myself."

She confronted Shannon about it later, after dinner that evening, and the girl burst into tears, running from the room. Ginny told Bill to stay out in the front, and she followed her daughter back into her bedroom.

"I'm sorry," Shannon sobbed, throwing her arms around her mother as she sat down on the bed. "I'm sorry."

Ginny held her. "Sorry for what?"

"There was nothing I could do. They made me go on the sweep."

"What happened?"

"I didn't help. I just stood there. I just watched. But I . . . I didn't do anything to stop it. I just stood there. I just watched."

"What happened?" Ginny repeated.

"They . . . beat them up. The homeless. They beat them up and put them in vans and . . . drove them somewhere."

Ginny felt cold. "Where?"

"I don't know. They didn't tell us." She started sobbing again. "Oh, Mom, it was awful!"

"It's okay." Ginny held her tightly. "It's all right."

"There was nothing I could do!"

"It's all right," Ginny said again.

"I wanted to make them stop it, but I didn't! I couldn't!"

"It's all right." Ginny hugged her even harder, a tear squeezing out of the corner of her own eye. "It's all right. It's all right."

3

Ginny emerged from Shannon's bedroom a half hour later.

"So?" Bill said.

"She was there, but she was just a witness. She refused to help."

"Help with what?"

"She doesn't know much more than we do. Apparently, The Store's forcing its employees to volunteer for what they call morning sweeps. They're trained by a cop, and they're sent out to, quote unquote, clean up the streets. When Shannon went out, that meant that they beat the homeless men with fists and batons, and threw them into vans. The vans were driven away and none of the homeless men have been seen since."

Bill pounded his fist against the counter. "_Goddamn_ it!"

Ginny put a hand on his arm. "She wants out."

"And we want her out. But what the hell can we do about it?"

The pipes shuddered as Shannon started the shower in the bathroom.

"She has something she wants to show you," Ginny said. "She's going to bring it out after she takes a shower."

"What is it?"

"I'm not supposed to say. She wants to show you herself."

"Come on."

"All right. Don't tell her I told you. It's _The Employee's Bible_."

"_The Employee's Bible_?"

"She had to smuggle it out of The Store and she's really nervous about it.

I guess it's a book they're given when they get hired. It's forbidden for outsiders to see it."

Bill felt a rush of excitement. "It probably explains all about The Store," he said.

Ginny nodded.

"This may give us some info we can use."

Shannon came into the living room after finishing her shower, dry-eyed and wearing a bathrobe. She handed him a black-bound book and sat on the couch. She wouldn't meet his eyes, would only look at her hands, which were twisting and bunching the robe in her lap. "We're not supposed to show this to anyone. It's for Store employees only. But I thought you'd want to see it."

_The Employee's Bible_.

Bill flipped through the pages, scanning the subheadings: THE STORE IS

YOUR HOME. BECOMING ONE OF US. DEALING WITH TRAITORS. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.

TERMINATION PROCEDURES.

Shannon nervously twisted the robe material. "I'm not supposed to bring that home. It's not supposed to leave The Store."

He continued looking through the book. It was appalling, frightening, both its words and the accompanying drawings making his skin crawl. But he'd been hoping for more. Weaknesses. Trade secrets. Achilles' heels. It seemed to be mostly propaganda, ham-handed attempts at intimidation, and there was not really anything that could be used against The Store. Even the references to what he knew were illegal acts were couched in careful language, carrying another, more innocent, meaning.

"I work tomorrow," she said. "I have to bring it back."

He nodded, turned to the index, scanned the entries. "School's going to be starting in a few weeks. What's going to happen then? Are they going to let you quit?"

"They're cutting down my hours. But I can't quit. My work contract runs through October. The end of October."

"That's only two more months," Ginny offered.

"Two more months of sweeps? Two more months of . . ." She shook her head.

"Forget it."

"Maybe there's something in here," Bill said. "Some loophole we could exploit. Maybe we can get you out of there."

"They're smarter than we are," Shannon said dejectedly. "There aren't going to be any loopholes."

She was right. If there were any, he couldn't find them, but he scanned as many of the book's pages as he could into his PC before giving it back to her.

He'd study it more carefully tomorrow, see if he couldn't come up with something.

He wished Ben was here. And Street. Three heads were always better than one.

Both Shannon and Ginny went to bed early, but he wasn't tired, couldn't sleep, was too wound up, and after kissing Ginny good night, he remained in his office until well after midnight, faxing and E-mailing messages to Arizona's two senators, to their local assemblyman, to the county Board of Supervisors, to the Better Business Bureau, to the Federal Trade Commission, to the FBI, to the Commerce Department, to anyone he could think of. He even sent a fax to The Store's corporate office in Dallas, addressing it to Newman King himself, detailing his complaints and suspicions, his problems with The Store, demanding that his daughter be released from the involuntary servitude in which The Store illegally and unconstitutionally held her.

Ginny was asleep and snoring when he finally crawled into bed, and he put his arm around her and cupped her breast. She stirred, moaned, backed against his hardening penis. He wanted to make love to her. It had been over a week since they'd done it, but he restrained himself, moved his hand down to her belly, closed his eyes, and concentrated on falling asleep. He wanted to do it, but they couldn't. They had no protection. He had no condoms, and she was out of spermicide for her diaphragm.

They'd have to go to The Store tomorrow and buy some.

THIRTY

1

There was a faculty meeting the week before school started, and Ginny called up various friends on the staff to see if any of them needed a ride.

None of them wanted to go with her.

She'd been afraid of that -- it was the real reason she'd called, to gauge the mood of her coworkers -- but instead of intimidating her, making her nervous about showing up, it angered her, fortified her, and she was determined not to cave in to any sort of pressure.

She drove alone to Juniper Elementary, took a seat at the front of the assembly room. The other teachers filed in, took their seats, talking among themselves, but there remained a circle of empty seats around her, an artificial barrier that none of the other faculty would cross.

Until Meg sat down next to her.

Ginny had never been more grateful to anyone in her life, and though she had never really liked Meg, though "coworker" had always been a more accurate description of their relationship even than "acquaintance," she reached out and spontaneously hugged the other teacher.

The older woman smiled. "I guess we misfits have to stick together."

Ginny smiled back. "So where are you shopping these days?"

Meg burst out laughing.

"So what happened here?" Ginny asked. "Why did they all jump ship?"

"I don't know. I've never been privy to their thoughts, never shared their confidences. You were always closer to the rest of the staff than I was."

"Until I suddenly became a leper."

"You have standards," Meg said. "You have integrity. You and I may have totally different teaching techniques. We may disagree on almost everything. But one thing we have in common is that we stand up for what we believe in. And we don't back down in the face of adversity. I've always admired that about you."

Ginny was genuinely touched. "Thank you."

"The rest of our fellow teachers are easily corruptible sheep."

"And so are the kids and their parents," Ginny said.

Meg nodded. "It's going to be a long year."

The principal came out then, walking to the front of the assembly room, and those teachers who were standing took their seats, everyone growing quiet.

"There are going to be some changes this year at Juniper Elementary," the principal said after making a few introductory remarks. "And I'm very excited about them. I hope you will be, too." He explained that the teachers' union, the district, and The Store had just finished hammering out an agreement by which Juniper's elementary, junior high, and high schools would be privately rather than publicly funded, on a trial basis, for this school year, The Store volunteering to foot the town's educational bill in exchange for a few small concessions.

"Firstly," he said, "there will be new textbooks. As we all know, our current books are embarrassingly out of date and woefully inadequate. The Store will be providing us with new texts that we will be required to use." He held up a hand, anticipating objections. "I know that teachers are usually involved in the selection process for classroom materials, but your union leadership agreed to this arrangement because of the last-minute nature of the talks. As I said, the final agreement has only just been worked out, so I assume you will all be voting on it later. Let me just assure you that The Store has started similar programs in other towns in Texas and Arkansas and New Mexico and Oklahoma, and that a panel of nationally recognized educators was chosen to evaluate and select texts for each grade level. Teachers at the other districts all seem to be very satisfied with the provided materials.

"The Store will also be giving us free computers," he continued. "With appropriate educational software and access to FOLS, the Freelink Online Learning Service."

The principal cleared his throat. "The other big change involves class schedules. There will be no adjustments to the number of hours that you will work each day, but we will be adopting the same format as the junior high and high school. Which is to say that students will no longer remain in one class all day long but will have seven periods throughout the day."

"What?" Meg said angrily.

He ignored her. "The periods will not be divided by subject, as is traditionally the case with the upper grades, so teaching specifics will have to be worked out between you in regard to the individual children."

Meg stood, refusing to be ignored. "What is the point of this?"

"The students need flexible hours."

"Why?"

"To accommodate their work schedules."

Work schedules? Ginny glanced around the assembly room. A few of the teachers were talking among themselves, a few looked unhappy, but the majority of them sat unmoving in their seats, listening to the principal.

"The Store is donating money and materials to help educate these children.

The least the students can do is donate an hour or so of their time each day to help The Store."

Now Ginny stood. "What does that mean?"

"It means, Mrs. Davis, that they will be sweeping, picking up trash, doing the type of work that I used to do as a child. It will foster responsibility and make them feel as if they are part of the community. They'll be contributing to their town and learning about the importance of the work ethic at the same time."

_Sweeping?_

"It's called child labor," Ginny said. "There are laws against it."

"It's called volunteerism and the school supports the concept fully."

"Elementary school children do not learn as well with their day broken into separate periods with separate teachers," Meg said. "It's been proven. They need the stability of a single class with a single teacher and a set group of classmates."

"That is the way we _used_ to do it," the principal said, giving her a withering glance. "This is the way we will be doing it now."

Ginny and Meg continued to argue with the principal for the next half hour or so, but none of the other teachers joined them, and eventually their objections were cut off and they were told to sit down.

"Why don't you retire?" Lorraine said to Meg as they all walked out the door after the meeting. She held up her voodoo doll and stuck a pin in its face.

Ginny grabbed the doll and threw it on the ground. "Bitch."

"I can get one for you, too," Lorraine said.

"Go ahead."

"Maybe I will retire," Meg said as they walked out to the parking lot. "I don't exactly see myself fitting in with the new order."

"You can't retire," Ginny told her. "The school needs you."

The older teacher smiled. "Who'd've thought that you would be asking me not to retire and saying that the school needs me?"

"Politics make strange bedfellows," Ginny said.

"I guess it does. I guess it does."

"Besides, I found out that you were right."

"About what?"

"Those Douglas kids are all troublemakers."

Meg looked puzzled for a moment, then she started to laugh.

They were both laughing as they walked out to their cars.

2

Shannon sat alone in the break room, eating a rubbery pastry she'd bought from one of the vending machines. School was starting next week and her hours would be cut, so to make up for it The Store had scheduled her to work every day this week, from opening until closing, thirteen hours a day.

She shifted uncomfortably on the hard seat, her inner thighs chapped from the tight pants and rough leather underwear.

Sam was supposed to meet her here for break, but her sister had canceled out on her the past three times they'd arranged to get together, and her absence wasn't a big surprise. Shannon glanced up at the wall. Ten more minutes to go.

Sam wasn't going to make it.

She missed her sister. They'd never been particularly close, weren't best friends or anything, but obviously they'd been closer than she'd thought, because she longed to talk with Sam the way they used to, longed to have one of their stupid arguments over a meaningless matter. They still talked, she and Sam, but there was distance between them now, a barrier, and it wasn't quite the same. Her sister had never even invited her to the house The Store had given her, and while Shannon told herself she didn't care, it didn't matter, she did care and it did matter.

With five minutes left to go on her break, Sam finally showed up. Smiling, she walked quickly over to where Shannon was sitting. She even looked good in the ridiculous Store uniform, and Shannon couldn't help wondering how many of her fellow employees had come on to her.

_The bloody panties_.

Shannon felt guilty for even briefly entertaining jealous thoughts about her sister, and she smiled and nodded as Sam sat down. "Hey," she said.

"Sorry I'm late, but there was trouble in your old department. Kirk was letting himself be berated by a disgruntled customer, and I had to go over there and set things straight."

"What if you couldn't set it straight?" Shannon asked. "Would the manager have to take care of it?"

"I suppose so," Sam said.

"Have you ever seen the manager?"

Sam shook her head, and for a brief fraction of a second, she looked troubled, "No," she said. "I never have."

"Has Mr. Lamb?"

"Oh, I'm sure he has."

"So Mr. Lamb's above you?"

"No one's above me except the manager. I'm second in command. I'm assistant manager." Sam laughed. "Why the third degree?"

Shannon shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "No reason."

"So how're Mom and Dad?"

Shannon shrugged. "The same, I guess."

"Dad still on the warpath?"

"Always."

Sam laughed. She was about to say something else when three chimes sounded over The Store's PA system. "Three rings," she said. "That means all nonessential personnel." She looked over at Shannon. "Is someone covering for you right now?"

"Mike."

"Come on, then. Let's go."

Shannon followed her sister out of the break room and down a short hallway to stairs that led to the basements.

Mr. Lamb was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps. "You're just in time."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"We caught Jake Lindley stealing. From The Store. Apparently, he was on his break, and he decided to pilfer a Snickers bar from the check stand display next to Francine Dormand, with whom he was having a oneway conversation." Mr. Lamb smiled dryly. "Francine turned him in."

The personnel manager's attention shifted to Shannon. He eyed her intently. "You used to date him did you not?"

She felt nervous, frightened, but Sam stood up for her. "Yes, she did. And Jake broke it off, although I fail to see what bearing that has on this case, Mr. Lamb."

"Quite right," he said, bowing obsequiously. "Quite right."

"So what is the penalty?" Sam asked.

"As per the rules spelled out in _The Employee's Bible_, he shall be taken to the Hall of Punishment and the appropriate disciplinary action will be there decided."

Sam paled. "The Hall of Punishment?"

Mr. Lamb smiled. "The Hall of Punishment." He motioned toward an open door halfway down the corridor. "Come. The others are waiting."

Sam shook her head. "I can't oversee something like that."

Mr. Lamb's smile never faltered. "I'm afraid you have no choice, Ms. Davis. It is the manager's day off, and you are in charge during his absence."

"Then we should call him --"

"To again reference _The Employee's Bible_, the manager is not to make any decisions or oversee any disciplinary actions on his day off. Those responsibilities automatically and irrevocably devolve to the assistant manager." He took her hand, led her toward the door. "Come."

Ignored by the personnel manager, forgotten about by her sister, Shannon nevertheless followed them down the corridor and through the door, down a short flight of steps and into another basement.

She had never been here before, and she stopped, looking around, feeling frightened. The walls were black. As was the ceiling. As was the floor. Wrought iron Gothic chandeliers with red flame-shaped bulbs offered what little illumination there was.

Ten or twelve employees were lined up in the usual double row in the center of the high-ceilinged room. In this light, she thought, in this place, with their stylized leather uniforms, they looked like medieval torturers.

Members of the Inquisition.

Sam and Mr. Lamb walked between the two rows to the head of the room.

_The Hall of Punishment._

A rack of gleaming metal instruments, tools she did not recognize and had never seen before, was wheeled out by two tall exceptionally pale men wearing shiny black coats. They immediately retreated back through the side door from which they'd entered, and Mr. Lamb lovingly touched what looked like some sort of knife.

They were going to hurt Jake, she realized.

_Kill him?_

No. Even The Store wouldn't go that far. It couldn't. Such a thing was illegal. They might beat him, yes. Humiliate him. Punish him. But they wouldn't _kill_ him.

Would they?

She stood just inside the doorway, watching the scene unfold, feeling not only nervous and anxious and terrified but . . . something else. Something more personal. This was Jake they were talking about. Her Jake. He was a jerk and an asshole, and she had no doubt that he had ripped off a candy bar while he was trying to pick up on a big-titted babe, but that didn't mean that he deserved to die. Stupidity was not a capital offense.

And The Store had no right to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

_Die? Capital Offense? Executioner?_

She realized that those words came naturally to her, that they did not seem at all far-fetched or out of place in this hellish black room.

But this was still America. Laws still applied. To The Store as well as to individuals. The Store might be able to fire Jake, might be able to press charges and go after him in court if he'd done something illegal, but they could not physically harm him.

She stared at the twin rows of leather-clad employees, at her sister and Mr. Lamb standing beneath the flickering glow of the red-lighted chandelier.

No, that was not true.

They _could_ harm him.

And they would.

And no one could stop them.

She felt sick. Even after everything, even after what had happened at the sweep, maybe, somewhere deep down, she did still love him.

Sam looked over, meeting her eyes. "Maybe you'd better go back to work," she said. Her voice, authoritative and powerful, carried clearly across the Hall. Shannon shook her head, her mouth dry, unable to speak.

"It's not a suggestion," her sister said. "It's an order." There was hardness in her voice, a tone of command, but there was also concern, a caring intent hidden from all but herself that told her she had better leave. Next to Sam, Mr. Lamb stood grinning.

Shannon looked away.

"Leave," Sam said. "Or I will have someone escort you back to your post."

She wanted to stay, wanted to fight, wanted to protest whatever they were going to do and protect Jake from The Store's punishment, but she nodded, acquiesced, and turned to walk out.

From somewhere far away, in another room, another basement, she heard Jake. He was screaming. She recognized his voice, and her heart sank within her, but she did not stop, did not turn around. Instead, she increased her pace, trying to get away from the horrible sound. She actually felt relieved when she was once again among customers and merchandise on the floor.

Sam came over to her register an hour later. Shannon was helping a customer, and she wanted that customer to remain forever; she did not want to be alone with her sister, did not want to know what had happened, but the customer paid for his purchase, thanked her, and left.

Shannon pretended to fiddle with some receipts and void forms, then finally gathered her courage and looked up. "What happened?" she asked. "To Jake?"

"He's been . . . reassigned."

Shannon felt cold. "What does that mean?"

Sam met her gaze, and the expression on her face was one of muted horror and stunned disbelief. "He's a Night Manager," she said softly.

3

The alarm woke her up at five, as it always did, and Samantha rolled out of bed. She missed living at home. It had been exciting at first to have her own place, and The Store had given her a decorating allowance, letting her choose items from the Furniture department to furnish the house. But even though this cottage was all hers, it wasn't home. Home was where Shannon and her parents lived. And she missed it.

She missed a lot of things. And there were times that she wished The Store had never come to Juniper. She'd be starting school right now if she hadn't gone to work for The Store, beginning her first semester in college, surrounded by guys and girls her age, meeting interesting people, learning new things.

Instead, she'd met - Mr. Lamb.

She shuddered, pushed the thought out of her mind.

There were a few negatives, but overall she liked The Store. She had an aptitude for the retail business, and she'd risen quickly through the ranks. The Store had been good to her. The Store recognized and made use of her abilities.

The Store rewarded her hard work.

Still, sometimes, when she was alone, she wished that things had turned out differently. The scariest thing was how easily she'd adjusted to Store life, how comfortable the fit felt. Intellectually, she knew she should be shocked and horrified by some of the things that went on. She should be outraged and refuse to participate. But the truth was that she really had no emotional response to most of what happened. She understood the necessity of it all, and none of it provoked any feelings within her.

Almost none of it.

_Mr. Lamb_.

She would not think of him.

She took a quick shower, masturbated with the shower massage, ate a piece of toast, drank a glass of orange juice, and drove in her new Miata to The Store.

Mr. Lamb was waiting for her in her office, sitting in her chair, his feet up on her desk. "The manager wants to see you," he said.

Her heart skipped a beat. "Me?"

He nodded. "You."

There was a hard knot of fear in the pit of her stomach. She had never seen the manager, and she never wanted to. She'd heard stories about him ever since he'd come to Juniper, rumors, horrible rumors, and if even a fraction of what she'd heard was true, she knew that meeting him was the last thing she wanted to do.

Nevertheless, he was her boss, the person to whom she was theoretically supposed to report, and she tried to put on a brave face, tried to pretend she wasn't frightened. "When?" she asked.

"Now." Mr. Lamb swung his feet off the desk, stood. "Come on. I'll go with you."

He walked around her, and she followed him out the door, down the hall, and onto the floor. The lights in The Store were all on, but the Muzak was turned off, none of the rest of the staff had yet arrived, and the place seemed eerily silent and empty.

"Do you know why he wants to see me?" she asked.

"Yes." Mr. Lamb continued walking, not elaborating, and she knew enough not to press further. The knot in her stomach tightened.

They walked up the main cross aisle, away from the espresso bar, to the manager's door on the far opposite wall. Mr. Lamb rapped loudly three times, the door swung open, and the two of them stepped inside. There was a stairway leading up, and with a flourish, the personnel manager indicated that she was to proceed first.

He just wants to look at my ass, she thought. But she walked ahead, up the stairs, concentrating on the black door at the top of the steps.

The door opened when she stepped onto the landing.

And she beheld the manager.

He was nothing like she'd expected, neither an intimidating thug nor a hideous monster. He was a cowed and frightened old man, hiding behind a too large desk and watching her with scared eyes.

"No!" he said.

"Yes," Mr. Lamb responded from behind her. The door slammed shut loudly, and the personnel manager moved around her, into the center of the room. He turned around, and in his open hands lay a dagger. He held it out, offering it to her.

"What's this?" she asked. "What's going on here?"

"Kill him," Mr. Lamb said.

"No!" the manager cried.

"Kill him and The Store is yours."

Samantha shook her head, backing away. "No. I can't."

"Mr. King wants you to."

That threw her. She shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. "Newman King?"

Mr. Lamb smiled, nodded. "He's been watching the tapes. He's very impressed with you."

The man behind the desk tried to sound strong, failed. "I'm still the manager here!"

"No, you're not!" Mr. Lamb snapped at him. "You're out!" He held forth the dagger, smiled at Samantha. "Take it."

"I can't."

"Do what you have to do."

She backed against the closed door, shook her head. "It's . . . it's murder."

"It's business. And if you don't do it, someone else will. Why should they get the job you deserve?"

"I . . . can't kill anyone."

"I'll call the police!" the manager cried.

"Shut up!" Mr. Lamb roared at him.

"I . . ."

"You can," Mr. Lamb said. "You must."

"It's wrong," she said. "It's murder."

He took her hand, put the dagger in it. "You can," he said.

4

There was a Kmart in Flagstaff, and a Wal-Mart, but the city did not have The Store, and for that Bill was grateful. Newman King had taken Sam Walton's approach and pushed it to its limit, opening stores in small towns in which there were only locally owned businesses, but The Store would not build in a town that was host to another chain.

King hated competition.

Bill needed to remember that. It might be something he'd be able to use.

They stopped at Target, bought toilet paper and cleanser and detergent and other household items, then stocked up on groceries at Fry's. It felt strange shopping at regular stores after all this time. There was no pressure, no tension, no threatening employees, no bizarre products, only a relaxed, pleasant atmosphere and an extensive selection of goods. This was what shopping was supposed to be like, he thought. Fun. Not the horrible ordeal it had become in Juniper.

He had not really realized until now just how deeply The Store had affected their lives. He'd known intellectually, of course, but he hadn't really understood, emotionally, the depth of it, had not fully grasped all of the peripherals. It took this exposure to normalcy to enable him to recognize how strange and skewed everything had become.

Shannon came with them, and though they didn't talk about it, he knew that she, too, noticed the difference.

They returned to Juniper after dark, and the phone started ringing the second they stepped through the door. All three of them were loaded down with grocery sacks, so he quickly flipped on the lights, put his sacks down on the kitchen counter, and grabbed the phone. "Hello?"

It was Sam.

She wanted to tell them the good news.

She'd been appointed manager of The Store.

THIRTY-ONE

1

They received a gold StoreCard in the mail the next day, along with a photocopied form letter, signed by their daughter, that explained the benefits of belonging to the Store Club.

Bill called Samantha for the first time since she'd moved out, thanking her for the card. He was not at all sure that he ever wanted to shop at The Store again -- the drive to Flagstaff seemed infinitely preferable -- but with Sam in charge now, there was an opening, an opportunity, and he made a concerted effort to take a more conciliatory stance.

Their conversation yesterday had been brief. He hadn't known how to take her announcement, and while she was obviously proud of her news and wanted to share it with the family, he could not be proud of her or happy for her, and after awkwardly insincere congratulations, he had handed the phone to Ginny.

He was better today. He'd had time to get used to the news, and he even managed to sound supportive.

At the very least, the breach between them had been healed.

But when he asked her to release Shannon from her contract and allow her to quit, Sam grew rigid, formal, toed the party line, said it was not her decision to make, that even though she was manager, she was still required to follow corporate policy.

He didn't fight with her, didn't try to force her to let her sister go, but he didn't tell her that he understood, either. He didn't make her feel that her decision was all right with him. He was not going to put any pressure on her, but he would make it clear that he didn't approve, and he'd let that work on her for a while.

Maybe she'd come around.

Then he'd ask her about Ben and the others.

The important stuff.

They talked for a little while longer, but she was on break and he had to get back to work as well, and she promised to come over for dinner later in the week. He walked back into his office, checked his fax tray and E-mail to see if there was any news from the company or on the off chance that Street had finally decided to send him another message, but as usual there was nothing. He quickly fired off his daily complaint letters to various business regulatory agencies and to The Store's corporate headquarters, then got busy with his documentation.

He'd gotten another assignment last week, this time a human resources package for a midsize Southern California city, and the deadline was just around the corner. Someone somewhere had screwed up, and he'd gotten involved in the project at a very late date, had not been involved in the development or testing phases at all, and now he was expected to crank out a set of instructions, with almost no lead time, on a system he didn't really understand.

He was going to earn his pay on this one.

He wrote until midafternoon, then Ginny finally persuaded him to take a break and have something to eat, and he walked out to the kitchen and wolfed down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk.

The fax was waiting in the tray when he returned to the office.

He read it.

Read it again.

Read it again.

Ginny poked her head in the door. "Hey --" she began, but she stopped as soon as she saw the look on his face. "What is it?" she asked, walking up to him. He held up the fax. "Looks like I finally got a response," he said dryly.

Ginny looked at him, already a little frightened.

"It's from The Store's corporate headquarters. From Newman King himself.

He's invited me to Dallas. He wants to talk to me."

They'd debated whether or not to tell the girls and had decided to do so but to downplay it. Now, in bed, they were alone, and the false nonchalance they'd been feigning was gone. The spin they'd put on the situation had not fooled Shannon, but she'd pretended it had, and for that Bill was grateful.

Honesty was nice and communication was important, but sometimes events were too big to be digested at once, and he was glad that she hadn't forced him to talk in detail about this, that she'd allowed him to sidestep the issue. She was a good girl, more sensitive than he gave her credit for, and he was thankful that she'd understood the situation without him having to explain it to her.

He'd pay her back somehow, make it up to her.

If he ever got the chance.

He looked over at Ginny. She'd finished putting on her moisturizer and was fluffing up her pillow before turning off the light.

She sighed, looked over at him. "Why does he want to talk to you? That's what I don't get. He probably gets a thousand complaint letters a day. Why does he want to see you?"

"Because I'm a persistent pain in the ass?"

She kicked his leg under the covers.

"I don't know," he answered seriously.

"It frightens me."

They were both silent for a moment.

"Sam thinks its an honor. I think she has renewed respect for you now."

"Didn't realize what a bigwig her daddy really is, huh?"

Ginny laughed, but it was a forced laugh and it died too soon. "Do you think that's all he wants to do?" she asked. "Talk?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you shouldn't go."

"Maybe that's what he wants. Maybe he's just trying to frighten me and cow me into submission."

Ginny's voice was quiet. "Maybe he wants to do more than frighten you."

"That's a chance I have to take."

"I don't want you to go."

"I don't want to go, either. But I have to."

"Why?"

"Because if I don't, that means he's won. Ben's gone, Street's gone, everyone else has either died, disappeared, or been intimidated into silence."

"Not me."

"You weren't invited."

She kicked him again.

"It sounds paranoid and egotistical and everything else, but it's true."

"I know," she said quietly.

"That's why I have to go."

They made love after that, the first time in several weeks, and though it should have been great, for some reason it wasn't. It was good, though, and they both came, and afterward fell instantly asleep.

In his dream, he flew to Dallas, was picked up by a limo at the airport and driven to The Store's corporate offices, where he was led past desks of secretaries and assistants before finally entering the CEO's office.

There was no one there.

"What -- ?" he started to say. Then he realized the truth. Newman King was a fictional figurehead, a made-up character. There was no CEO. There was no president. There was no leader. There was only the company. It ran itself, and the bureaucracy maintained it, and there was no way on earth to stop it.

Ginny dropped him off at Sky Harbor in Phoenix the next day. Arrangements had been made online, through King's secretary, and he'd been assured that everything was taken care of, but he still wasn't sure what to expect. He assumed there'd be tickets -- coach, probably -- waiting for him at the counter where he was supposed to check in, but instead a tall, straight-backed blond man in a black leather Store uniform met him at the desk and escorted him through a series of doors and hallways until they were outside the terminal and on the tarmac, where a black Lear jet was waiting. Ginny was not allowed to go any farther than the terminal exit, and she pulled him aside, hugged him. "Be careful," she said.

"Always."

"I still don't think you should do this."

"We've been through all that."

She hugged him again. "I'm scared."

He hugged her back, held her. He was scared, too, but it would do no good to tell her that, would only make her worry more, and he said nothing.

The blond man cleared his throat. "We have to go, Mr. Davis. Our flight has been cleared."

He kissed Ginny. "I love you."

She was already crying. "I love you, too."

It felt too much like permanent parting, a final goodbye, and he was creeped out by it. He wanted to postpone it, wanted to linger, wanted to somehow shake off this feeling of dread that had crept up on him, but instead he waved to her, blew her another kiss, then hurried across the tarmac to the loading ramp of the jet.

The flight itself was uneventful. He was the only passenger, and he had the entire center section of the jet to himself. There were couches, a bar and small refrigerator, a television and VCR. The pilot assured him over the loudspeaker that he was free to use any of the luxuries and partake of any food or beverage provided. He was not hungry, but he was thirsty, and he opened a can of Coke. He was nervous, antsy, and was not in the mood to watch TV, despite the impressive selection of videos offered. He was tempted to use the cellular phone to call Ginny, but he knew the conversation would be bugged, and what he wanted to tell his wife was not something he intended to share with officials of The Store. Besides, she'd still be driving back to Juniper.

So he sat on one of the couches for most of the two-hour flight, staring out the small porthole window at the passing desert below.

They were over Dallas when the pilot finally spoke again. "The power's off to your right," he announced over the loudspeaker, and Bill looked out the window to see a black skyscraper situated several blocks from the other downtown high-rises. It probably didn't look that strange from the ground, but from this perspective it appeared that the Black Tower was being ostracized by the other buildings, and the visual symbolism was not lost on him.

He fastened his safety belt, the jet touched down smoothly, and a moment later the hatch was being opened, the same Aryan employee offering to help him down the steps.

Bill declined, disembarking on his own, and he glanced around as his feet touched the tarmac. He was sweating already, the heat unbearable, and he looked up, thinking idiotically of how similar the blue Texas sky was to that of Arizona.

"Over here, sir."

He turned toward the voice, and the hairs prickled on the back of his neck as he saw The Store employee standing next to a long black limousine.

The limo from his dream.

He made no effort to move.

"Sir?" the employee said. "Your ride is here."

Bill nodded dumbly.

A pause. "Mr. King is waiting."

"I'm coming," he said. "I'm coming."

He moved forward, put one foot in front of the other, and it was a cold sweat that dripped down his face as he walked across the tarmac and forced himself to get in the car.

2

He was dropped off directly in front of the Black Tower.

It was like nothing he had ever seen.

The Stores themselves bespoke average American sophistication -- up-to date, but in a way the ordinary swap meet shopper could relate to. They were impressive not so much for what they were but for the context in which they appeared.

The Black Tower was just plain impressive.

Under any circumstances.

He got out of the limo, looked up. The building was not catering to rubes or yokels or the average joe. There was no attempt here to feign modesty or mediocrity. This was the true Store, the real Store, the home of Newman King, and though it possessed superficially the attributes of the average downtown Dallas skyscraper, within those confines it asserted its independence and its supremacy. The Black Tower stood alone, the artistry of its design and the quality of its construction marking it as the property of an extremely powerful, important, and influential man.

Newman King.

The smoked-glass front door of the tower opened, and the same blond employee who'd met him at the airport in Phoenix and the airport here in Dallas strode down the marble walkway toward him.

Bill frowned. This wasn't possible.

The employee drew closer, and now that he looked more carefully, he realized that it was not the same employee after all. The one in Phoenix probably hadn't been the one at the Dallas airport, either. They just looked the same.

He found that disturbing.

"Mr. King's waiting for you," the blond man said with a smile. "I'll take you to him."

Bill nodded. He didn't know what he was going to do, what he was going to say, how he was going to act when he met the CEO. He thought of Ben, and part of him wished he'd brought a gun or a bomb or some type of weapon, but he knew that even if they didn't search him, he'd probably have to go through some type of metal detector.

The two of them walked through the front door into an enormous lobby with a two-story-high ceiling. The floors were marble, the walls were marble, there were palms and cacti, modern sculptural fountains with running water. Behind a gigantic desk, under The Store logo, sat a single receptionist, a pretty blond woman wearing black leather.

He was led past the receptionist, ushered into a glass elevator, and he and his escort rode to the top of the Tower.

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

The CEO's office from his dream.

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

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

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

Newman King.

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Davis, I presume?"

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

Bill nodded.

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

"No, thank you."

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

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

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

"Temporary manager?" Bill said.

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

"I thought she had."

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know everything that affects The Store."

"You drove them out of business."

"So?"

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

"Casualties of war," King said.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why do you?"

King smiled, not answering.

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

"It was an open market."

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

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

They can buy what they want."

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

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

"That's what you're after?"

"Partially."

"And what else?"

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

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

"You're not capable."

"Try me."

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

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

And that knowledge frightened him.

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

"To talk."

"About what?"

"The future."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

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

"So?"

"So I asked you what you wanted --"

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

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

"What's that?"

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

Bill started to respond, then shut his mouth as what King was saying sunk in.

The man was . . . offering him a job?

"Your own store." The voice was soft and seductive, the deep-set eyes piercing and hypnotizing in the pale-skinned face. "You pick the town. You run things the way you want. Juniper's available if you'd like it."

"I --"

The CEO held up a hand. "Don't say anything. Not yet. Don't make up your mind, don't say yes or no." His voice was smooth, mesmerizing. "This is a once in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I'm only going to offer it to you this one time.

You turn it down, and you're out of this building and on your way back to Arizona within the hour."

"Why?" Bill said.

King smiled. "I've always found that my worst enemies, my most bitter critics, those who put up the greatest fight against me, invariably turn out to be the best managers. They're thinkers, they're doers. They're not sheep. They can handle power and they know how to use it when it's given to them. You'd make a great manager."

"Why would I want to?"

King's voice dropped, and he closed his long fingers into a fist. "You can _own_ that town. You can decide what people eat, what they wear, what they listen to, what they watch. You can control everything from their brand of underwear to their type of toothpaste. You can experiment. You can mix and match." He leaned forward. "That's what The Store can give you. Power." He held up the papers. "What I read here in these faxes and messages is that you're not happy with the way things are; you want to change them. Well, I'm giving you the chance to do exactly that. You can rebuild that town in your own image, and it'll be exactly the community you always wanted."

"What I don't like is The Store. That's what I want to change."

"And here's your chance. You can do it from the inside." King dropped the papers on the table. "The dirty deeds are done. That's all over with. You don't have to be a part of that. What we have now is a level playing field. And what I'm offering you is one of the pieces." He grinned. "Now give me your response.

Now tell me if you'll accept the challenge."

"Okay."

He surprised even himself with the answer. He'd been planning to ask more questions before eventually saying no, but the word was out of his mouth before he had time to think about it, and he found that he did not want to take it back.

King was laughing and shaking his hand, clapping him on the back, congratulating him, and the board members around the table were smiling and nodding their support. He wasn't sure why he'd agreed, and wasn't being allowed to think about it, wasn't being given the time to examine his motives. He hated The Store and wanted it destroyed, and he saw the opportunity here to infiltrate the enemy, to do damage from within.

But . . .

But there was something to what King had said, and he was not entirely immune to it. The Store offered power. And power was neither good nor bad. It was a tool, only as good or bad as the person using it. He could do a lot of good as manager of the Juniper Store. He would be in a position to call the shots, he could force the town council to roll back the ordinances it had passed, use it to pass better, more beneficial laws.

"One thing," Bill said. "I want my daughters out of The Store. Now. Today.

Fire them, release them from their contracts, do whatever you have to do, but get them away."

King nodded. "Done."

"They're out? No strings?"

"If they want to be."

"What if they don't?"

The CEO shrugged. "I can't live their lives for them."

Shannon wanted out, he thought. She'd quit. Sam wouldn't, but Shannon would.

It was a start.

And when he was manager, he could fire Samantha.

"So what do I do? Where do I sign? What happens next?"

"Call your wife. Tell her good-bye. You have two weeks of training ahead of you. You won't be seeing her until you're done."

"Is there a phone I can use?"

"On the wall behind you."

He didn't want to talk in front of all these people, but he called Ginny anyway. She'd just arrived home, and he explained briefly what was happening, told her not to worry, told her he'd be back in two weeks.

"They kidnapped you!" she screamed. "They're forcing you to say this!"

"No," he said.

"Then what's happening? Why -- ?"

"I can't explain right now. I'll tell you all about it when I get back."

"They'll kill you!"

"It's nothing like that," he promised. "It's a good thing. But I can't talk now."

They went through this for several more minutes before he finally got her calmed down and convinced that it was on the level. They hung up, exchanging _I love you's_.

If he were her, he wouldn't believe it either, he thought. He had come to Dallas this morning ready to rip Newman King a new asshole, and now he was going to work for The Store? It didn't make any sense.

It _didn't_ make any sense.

So why was he doing it?

He still wasn't sure.

Two guards had entered the boardroom behind him, and he started as they drew even with him and grabbed his arms. "What the . . . ?" he said, looking around at them, then over at Newman King.

"It's training time," the CEO said. "They're here to escort you to our training facilities."

Bill squirmed out of the guards' grasp. "They don't have to treat me like I'm a prisoner."

"Quite right," King said. He made a motion with his hand, and the guards stepped back. "Sorry. Habit."

Bill took a deep breath. What had he gotten himself into here? And how was he going to get out of it?

He suddenly wished he had not taken King up on the offer to come to Dallas.

No. That wasn't true.

The CEO walked over to him. "We're happy you've decided to join The Store family," he said. "You will be a welcome and valuable asset to our team." He shook Bill's hand once again, and his grip was cold. "Please follow the guards.

They will take you to our training facilities." Grinning, he motioned toward the elevator door. "And have a nice day."

3

Shannon was called into Mr. Lamb's office, not during her break but almost immediately after starting her shift. Another employee, a new employee, came by to tell her the news and man the register for her.

There was something wrong.

She was ushered immediately into his office, and he looked up as she entered. There was no preamble, no small talk; he did not offer her a seat. Mr. Lamb stared at her from across the desk with barely disguised contempt and said simply, "You're fired. Turn in your uniform and your _Bible_."

She blinked, not sure she'd heard right. "Excuse me?"

"Clear the fuck out." The personnel manager stood. "You're through, you're fired, The Store no longer wants you, you stupid fat cow. Get off our property.

Now." She was stunned into silence.

"Now!"

She turned tail and ran. She didn't know what was happening or why, but she was smart enough not to question it. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as Grandpa Fred always said. She quickly hurried away from the office, excited and angry at the same time. Excited that she was finally able to get out of here and away, to escape The Store's clutches, but angry at the way she was being treated. The anger was an instinctive reaction, though, an emotionally defensive response, and she knew enough not to act on it. She kept it controlled and sped downstairs to the locker room, where she took off her Store uniform while the camera videotaped her for the last time.

This was too good to be true, and she wanted to get off the premises before Mr. Lamb changed his mind.

She wondered, as she put on her street clothes, why it was that Mr. Lamb could fire her but Sam could not, then decided that Sam had probably arranged this, had probably figured out a way to get her out.

Or her dad had talked to Newman King in Dallas and King himself had arranged this.

No. It wouldn't have happened this fast.

She left her uniform and her _Employee's Bible_ in the locker, went back out onto the floor, stopped by the Customer Service desk to find out about her last paycheck, was told to leave The Store immediately, and then she was outside, in the parking lot, and she was free.

Free!

She almost felt like dancing.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't want to go home yet, and she got in the car and drove aimlessly and happily around town, finally pulling up in front of Diane's house.

She sat in the car for a moment, not sure she was brave enough to go up and knock on the door, but before she could make any sort of decision, Diane opened the front door and started up the walk toward her.

Shannon tried to read her friend's face, couldn't.

"Hey," she said.

Diane smiled shyly. "Hey."

She blurted it out. "I just got fired from The Store."

"They fired you?" Diane was up to the car now, leaning in the passenger window.

Shannon nodded. "Thank God."

Her friend laughed. The awkwardness that had existed between them for most of the summer seemed to have disappeared, and Shannon was glad she'd come by.

"So what are your plans?"

"Don't have any."

"Want to come in?"

Shannon thought for a moment, shook her head. "Want to cruise around?"

Diane nodded. "Okay. Let me tell my mom." She ran back inside the house, emerging a moment later with her purse. She opened the passenger door, hopped into the car.

"Still friends?" Shannon said.

Diane smiled. "Always."

"It would've been a long senior year without you."

"Tell me about it." Diane looked at her. "I'm glad you're back."

Shannon smiled. "I am, too," she said, starting the car.

She put the vehicle into gear and burned rubber toward Main Street.

THIRTY-TWO

1

For the first three days, Bill was kept alone in a completely dark room.

Solitary confinement. There was no light, no sound, no furniture, only padded floors and walls, rounded corners. No one opened the door to feed him, but there were sacks of potato chips, bagels, and fruit against one wall, plastic bottles of water and soft drinks next to them. There was a toilet in one corner, a trash can in another.

This was supposed to be training?

He should have expected something like this from The Store.

He couldn't help thinking that he was being watched, observed, videotaped with an infrared camera, and even in the pitch-dark he felt acutely self conscious about his movements and behavior and facial expressions. He could not relax, could not get comfortable, was always performing for an audience that might or might not be there, and when he was finally let out, blinking and flinching from the light in the training facility's main corridor, his muscles were knotted, tense, both his neck and back hurting.

He'd been allowed to keep his clothes on in the dark room, but now he was stripped and placed naked in a glass cage in the center of a crowded office, pointed to and laughed at by secretaries and executives. He was left there for twenty-four hours, forced to defecate in front of staring strangers, since the office never closed and workers were at the desks night and day.

What in God's name had possessed him to agree to this? If he'd said no, he would be back in Juniper now, with Ginny and Shannon, and Samantha would be over-seeing The Store.

Maybe.

He had only Newman King's word that he could have refused with no repercussions.

The truth was that they could all be dead now if he had refused. King could have had them all killed.

He would not put it past the man.

Or whatever he was.

They might be dead anyway, his wife and daughters. There was no way to know, no way to check, and it was the uncertainty of the fate of his family more than his own discomfort and embarrassment that consumed him.

He was let out of the cage by two guards, a collar looped around his neck, and led naked and filthy through the office of giggling secretaries, down a long corridor, to an all-white room, where a huge blond man sat on a white bench.

"Good morning, Mr. Davis. I am your instructor."

Bill licked his cracked lips, trying to wet them. He hadn't eaten since he'd left the dark room more than a day ago. "I thought this was supposed to be management training."

The instructor smiled coldly. "It is."

"But what's the point of . . . all this?"

"Humiliation is the key to cooperation. That is why we turn out such effective and efficient managers here."

Bill licked his lips again. "Can I get something to drink?"

"In a moment." The instructor stood, and Bill saw that behind the huge man was a freestanding black rectangle with several handles poking out from a hole in its top. Even from here, he could see the shimmering air of heat waves radiating from the object.

The guards pushed Bill forward. They tied him naked to the bench, bending him over, buttocks up.

"You will now receive The Store brand," the instructor told him.

Behind him, he heard sizzling. He craned his neck, twisting to see the instructor holding a red-hot branding iron that he'd taken from the black rectangle.

"No!" Bill screamed.

"This is going to hurt," the instructor said.

The hot metal seared the flesh of his buttocks, and he passed out.

When he came to, he was strapped to a chair in a darkened cell, facing a gigantic television on which Newman King paced back and forth in a featureless white room, talking to himself. The pain was tremendous, unbearable, and he passed out again almost instantly, but he awoke sometime later in the same position, and Newman King was still on the TV screen, talking.

"Greed. It's the impulse that drives us. Not sex, not love, not the desire to help others, but the desire to acquire, the need to own. It is from this impulse that love and sex spring. Relationships are a form of ownership . . ."

He passed in and out of consciousness, in and out of sleep, and always, whether his eyes were open or closed, he heard the melodious voice of Newman King. ". . . If people don't want it, we make them want it. We make sure that everyone around them has it and they feel left out if they don't. We use peer pressure to our advantage. We exploit their . . ."

Hours went by.

Days.

Sometime during the week -- he'd lost track of time -- the television was turned off. He was released from his bonds by a man dressed in a doctor's white smock, was given an injection in his arm and was allowed to stand and walk around the room.

The pain in his buttocks had completely disappeared.

He was fed a sumptuous meal of deliriously unhealthy junk food brought in on a cart by a gorgeous, bikini-clad young woman. As he ate the meal, the instructor returned with a portable chalkboard, and using lectures and drawings he explained the duties of a manager, went through the organization of The Store. He read extensively from both _The Employee's Bible_ and _The Manager's Concordance_, and Bill was allowed to stop him at any time and ask questions.

The lecture continued after he had finished his food and the woman had taken the table away. Bill was so grateful to be able to talk to someone, to be able to again communicate, so thankful for any sort of human response, that he paid close attention to what the instructor said and asked as many questions as possible.

That evening, he was brought by elevator to what appeared to be a huge, expensive hotel suite, complete with a walk-in closet filled with fine clothes, a king-sized bed, and a whirlpool bath. It was, without a doubt, the most luxurious place in which he had ever stayed, and after the deprivation of the past several days, it seemed to him like paradise.

There was a phone, but he could not dial out, could only call for room service, and there was a television, but he could watch no network or news stations, could only watch cable movie channels or view videotapes of recent blockbusters. He was still in the Black Tower, he knew, but aside from those small reminders, the illusion was perfect, and through the huge windows in the bedroom he watched the sunset dying over the desert.

After the orange ball of the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, he looked through the leather-bound menu, called room service, and ordered lobster and filet mignon, with wine. The meal was again delivered by a gorgeous woman, this one in an evening gown. She offered to remain with him, to bathe him and give him a massage after dinner, but he told her that he wanted to be alone, and she left.

She returned a half hour later to take away the empty plates, and he locked the door to the suite and went into the bathroom where he soaked for a long time in the whirlpool, letting hot jets of water massage his muscles. His head resting on an inflatable pillow, he watched a Tom Hanks movie on the bathroom television set.

This was nice, he thought. He could get used to this.

He put on the robe that had been provided, walked out into the bedroom. He fell asleep almost immediately after crawling into the soft bed, but his sleep bound imagination was not at all influenced by his surroundings.

He had nightmares.

There were several, but in the only one he could remember, Newman King showed up in class with the instructor. The CEO seemed even stranger and more frightening than before, and Bill could not look at him at first, was forced to focus his attention on the instructor, the chalkboard, the bare walls of the room.

"This will be a short test," King said. "I just want to see how you're progressing." He smiled. "As a Store manager, you may be called upon to do things that are personally repugnant to you. But it is your duty and your obligation to put the welfare of The Store before any of your own personal concerns. As an example, I will let you watch the termination of one of our employees who has not performed to expectations."

A black-raincoated man brought out Samantha.

Bill's heart lurched in his chest. "No!"

"Yes."

His daughter was squirming and crying, her eyes filled with terror. The man held her firmly while another Store employee in an identical black raincoat carried in a stunned-looking middle-aged man, walked up to the front of the room, and stood on the opposite side of the CEO.

King smiled. "Now, here's the test. One of these two must be terminated.

Which one should it be?"

Bill shook his head. "No. I'm not falling for that. I'm not playing this game."

"Come on. It's your decision."

"No."

"Choose."

"I can't do it."

King nodded to the other manager, held out a knife. "Kill her."

"No!" Bill screamed, jumping up. Hands grabbed him from behind, forced him back down into the chair.

King's smile broadened. "Very good, Mr. Davis. You've made your first decision. You'll make a manager yet." He turned toward Sam, handing her the knife. "Kill him."

The man in the raincoat let her go; she grabbed the knife and moved past the CEO. She pushed back the other manager's forehead and drew the blade across his throat.

Blood spurted onto her face, onto her clothes, splashed onto the raincoats of the other Store employees. She fell to the floor, dropping the knife, laughing or crying, Bill could not tell which. He wanted to rush to her and hug her, wanted to scream at her and hit her, but he could do nothing, could only sit there, with the strong hands on his shoulders holding him down, and watch as Sam was led out of the room.

King patted Bill on the head on his way out. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

He was provided with a wake-up call the next morning, and after he finished his breakfast, he was brought back to yesterday's classroom, where his lessons continued.

The real training was nothing like his dream. Despite his prejudice against The Store, despite his animosity toward Newman King, he had to admit that a lot of what he was being taught made sense. There seemed to be a lot of merit in The Store's approach to everything from retail strategies to labor relations, and he found himself understanding and agreeing with a lot of what he was being taught. The knowledge seemed useful to him, the ideas effective. Power might have been misused in the past, but it was not intrinsically bad, and even King could not have total control over everything that went on beneath him. On the surface, at least, King's methods seemed far less extreme than those of his proteges, and while he had absolute power in regard to his empire, he delegated authority and gave each manager complete autonomy over The Store to which he or she was assigned. The CEO wasn't necessarily aware of and didn't necessarily approve of everything that was perpetrated in his name.

As taught by the instructors, King's managerial theories and entrepreneurial goals seemed sound.

Maybe King wasn't the threat after all, Bill thought. Maybe it was the petty bureaucrats under him, the over-zealous managers who misused the power they were granted.

The training went on for several days. In addition to lectures from three separate instructors, he was given readings and worksheets that reinforced the lessons he'd been taught verbally, and tests that measured his retention of that knowledge. He memorized the standard Store layout and the hierarchy of positions within each retail outlet. Eventually, he was brought into another classroom with other management trainees and they all participated in a roundtable discussion of general Store management techniques and addressed specific problems and incidents that were bound to come up during the course of their work. His fellow trainees proved not to be incipient monsters or tyrants in training but merely ordinary men like himself who were trying to make the best of their situation.

He even became friendly with several of them.

Each evening, he was rewarded for a good day's work with a generous present, always accompanied by a humorous card signed by Newman King. One night it was a palm-sized camcorder and a large-screen television, one night it was keys to a new Lexus, one night it was a gift certificate for free ski lessons and a week's stay for him and his family at The Store's executive condo in Aspen, Colorado.

Each evening he was also offered a bath and a massage by the parade of beautiful women who delivered his dinners, and though he always declined the bath, he accepted the massage his second night. His muscles were aching, and the woman said that she was a certified masseuse. The idea of having trained hands relieve the pain and tension in his muscles sounded wonderful. Following her instructions, he undressed in the bathroom, came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, and lay down on the bed. She did his back first, and the massage was indeed fantastic. All pain fled beneath the ministrations of her expert fingers.

She rolled him over and started working on his thigh muscles, and against his will he became aroused. She noticed, slid her hands under the towel and touched him there, but he pushed her away, feeling guilty and embarrassed. Smiling, she continued with the massage.

The ritual was repeated each night.

He began to take all of this luxury for granted. It was not a hard thing to get used to, and he started to feel that he deserved to be pampered after his long day of lessons. Restraint, denial, and asceticism were worthy and noble, all well and good, but there was something to be said for the high life.

As King wrote in _The Manager's Concordance_, rejection of and disdain for the material world were merely ways for the have-nots to make themselves feel morally superior to the haves.

"And in retail," he wrote, "we are only concerned with the haves."

The man was on to something, Bill thought that night as he sipped champagne and received his massage. The man knew what he was talking about.

He closed his eyes, let the beautiful masseuse do her work.

2

Training ended with a daylong practice session in which he acted as manager over a group of employees in a huge Store mock-up.

The week had been building up to this, with an increasing number of tests and quizzes focusing on appropriate reactions to specific in-store situations.

King's rules were harsh, but within his broad boundaries he provided a lot of leeway for individual managers to assert their own personalities, and it was clear that today Bill was supposed to show King and his corporation the stuff he was made of.

There were no other trainees in the classroom today, only himself, and he was issued a black leather uniform and told to put it on. He did so, and was taken by elevator to a gigantic room that was an exact double for the Juniper Store. For all Stores. He walked slowly up the main aisle, marveling at the thoroughness of the illusion, the extent of the make-believe. There were employees and customers, fully stocked shelves, and piped-in Muzak. Everything, down to the last detail, was perfect. This was all located somewhere within the Black Tower, but it was indistinguishable from a real Store.

He was led by the instructor to the manager's office, was given a Xeroxed sheet that described a short history of the "problems" facing this particular Store, and was left alone to perform his managerial duties.

He loved it.

The power felt good, and he was comfortable exercising it. He found that he liked having authority over people, liked having them answer to him, liked making decisions, and he easily and quickly addressed the problems that had been created for him. He held a meeting with the department managers, went over sales figures, approved exchanges and refunds. While performing his rounds of the departments, he caught a teenaged boy shoplifting, and a feeling of satisfaction coursed through him as he ordered security to detain the boy and call the police. On a monitor in the Security room, he caught something none of the observers did -- a female clerk smoking marijuana in one of the rest room stalls. He fired the girl and was gratified to see her cry.

He was on his feet all day. The experience was tiring but exhilarating, and back in the classroom that evening he was handed a printout that critiqued his performance.

He had received an almost perfect score.

The instructor smiled at him, shook his hand, handed him a diploma.

"Congratulations," the instructor said. "You have successfully completed The Store's manager training course."

"That's it?"

The instructor laughed. "That's it. You've graduated. You are now qualified to run your own Store."

He was exhausted but happy as he returned to his luxury suite. A three course dinner was waiting for him, still steaming hot, and he ate it gratefully, sorting through the new pile of videotapes that had been provided for him. There was no woman tonight, but he wasn't in the mood for a massage anyway, and he didn't bother to call for one. Instead, like the first night, he soaked in the whirlpool bath and watched a movie before crawling into bed and instantly falling asleep.

He awoke in the middle of the night with a woman straddling him.

The room was dark, lights off, doors and drapes all closed, and he could not tell how she had gotten into his suite. He had locked the door before going to bed, thrown the dead bolt, but of course he had always known in the back of his mind that if King wanted someone to be able to enter his room, that person would be able to do so.

He felt soft thighs gripping his midsection, pubic hair touching his stomach.

He was quickly kissed by sweet feminine lips, a warm tongue was lightly flicking against his own, and a few seconds later the pressure on his midsection disappeared.

Then she was kissing him between his legs. Her mouth began working on him and it was the most exquisite thing he had ever experienced. There was no hesitation, no sloppiness, no scraping of teeth, no awkward tongue, only smooth velvety lips and an unfailingly even rhythm that made him hard almost instantly.

He wanted to push her off, wanted to tell her to stop, but he lay there unmoving, saying nothing, letting her continue. He felt guilty, horribly, tremendously guilty, absolutely reprehensible, but, God help him, he did not want it to stop. It was wrong, it was immoral, it was a violation of his marriage vows and everything he had ever stood for.

But it was also the best sex he'd ever had.

Tonight's present, he thought. His reward for today.

Courtesy of Newman King.

He told himself he shouldn't do this, couldn't do this, had to put a stop to it, but in his mind he was already rationalizing the experience. The sex had been forced on him, he'd been sleepy, too tired and confused to react; he hadn't known what was happening, and by the time he did figure it out too was too late.

He'd been tricked, coerced, raped.

He had never cheated on Ginny before, had never even considered it, but he was cheating now and it was too late to turn back and what difference did it make if he finished? The damage had been done.

Besides, there was no way she'd ever know.

The woman's lips slid to the bottom of his penis, taking in all of him, and he came in her mouth, an explosion that never seemed to stop. She did not pull away as Ginny so often did, did not gag and spit out his semen, but continued to hold him between her tightly closed lips, waiting until he had completely finished before licking the final drop off the tip with her expert tongue.

He lay there for a moment panting, trying to catch his breath. He wondered which of the massage women had been sent to reward him, and he wanted to turn on the light, but then she was squatting over his face, obviously expecting him to reciprocate. He could feel the wiriness of her pubic hair against his face, could feel the soft flesh of her sex against his mouth, could smell the muskiness of her arousal in his nose, and he began licking her, his tongue working between her vaginal lips and into her ready opening.

She was quiet, did not moan, and though he usually liked to hear a verbal reaction to lovemaking, there was something sexy about the silence. It allowed him to hear the noises of their bodies more clearly, the harsh raggedness of their breathing, the wet sounds of his tongue lapping between her legs.

She took him in her mouth again and miraculously breathed life back into him. Soon he was hard once again, and she moved off his face and straddled him, taking him deep within her, moving carefully up and down in such a way that he could not even feel the weight of her body atop him. He grabbed her buttocks to help, and then he was coming again, the soft muscular walls of her vagina contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, pumping out every last drop until his penis was sore and spent.

She rolled over next to him, held him close, hugged him, and he hugged her back, tears silently escaping from his eyes and rolling down the side of his face as the enormity of what he had done sunk in, thinking in the darkness, _Ginny Ginny Ginny_ . . .

The woman was gone when he awoke the next morning, and a moment later the phone rang, an old lady's voice informing him that there would be no breakfast today, that he was to get dressed immediately and then report to Newman King.

The walk-in closet was empty save for the black leather suit he had worn yesterday to the simulation, and he put it on and walked out of the suite. A blond man in an almost identical uniform was waiting for him in the hall, and he was led over to the elevator and back up to the top of the Tower, back to the boardroom. King was alone this time, there were no other men seated around the table, and the guard who had escorted him this far moved back into the elevator.

The doors closed, and for the first time he was alone with Newman King.

Even after all that had happened, even after all he'd been through, the physical presence of the CEO still seemed frightening. There was nothing rational, logical, or intellectual about it. This was animal fear, pure and instinctual, and with every fiber of his being he wanted to recall that elevator and run out of this room as quickly as possible, but he maintained a calm exterior and stood unmoving as King walked slowly toward him.

As always, the mouth was smiling, but there was a dark wildness in the eyes. King reached him, stood before him, grinned. "Congratulations. You are our top managerial graduate this year. It's time to celebrate your accomplishment."

He made a wide sweep with his hand, taking in the map on the wall. "You can have a Store anywhere you want!" he said. "Pick a spot!"

"Juniper," Bill said. His voice sounded weak, uncertain.

The CEO laughed heartily. "Where else? Ordinarily, when we have a new manager, we move the entire family and have them set up in their new home by the time the manager's training is completed. But this time, we had an opening at the Juniper outlet, and since you'd already indicated that that was where you preferred to be assigned, I gave it to you."

He beamed broadly, and Bill had to look away from his pale, creepy face.

Again, as if pulled out of thin air, there was a sheaf of documents in King's hand, and he laid out a series of pages on the table in front of him.

"How did you enjoy your little celebration last night?" he asked. He raised his eyebrows conspiratorily.

Bill felt sick.

"Don't worry. These little perks are only for managers and we don't like to let anyone else know about them." He chuckled, nudged Bill with an elbow. "I

won't tell if you won't, eh?"

Bill nodded.

King withdrew a pen from somewhere and handed it to him. "Now if you'll just sign these contracts, we'll be all set."

Bill wanted to read each document before signing, but he felt uncomfortable being alone with King, being this close to him, and after giving each page a cursory glance to make sure there was nothing obviously tricky or unusual there, he scrawled his signature on the appropriate lines and handed the pages to the CEO.

King clapped him on the back. "You're one of us!" he said. "You're now part of The Store!"

The elevator door opened, and a group of business-suited yes-men, wearing happy smiles and party hats, streamed into the boardroom and congratulated Bill, shaking his hand and patting him on the back before taking their places around the table. The elevator doors opened again, and a phalanx of bikini-clad women pushed steaming food carts into the room.

King beamed. "Breakfast time!" he announced. "Eat up! We have a full day ahead of us!"

He held up a glass of orange juice. "A toast to Bill Davis, our newest Store manager!"

An hour later, they were in the black jet, on their way back to Phoenix.

He and King and an entourage of the yes-men. King chatted amiably on the two hour flight, talking of the future, expansion, the day when any city he flew over, anywhere in the country, would be home to The Store. He sat gracefully on an elegantly designed chair, dressed impeccably, but he looked as though he was trying to be something he wasn't, and his strange features and unnatural skin seemed even more obvious and noticeable against the mundane background of the airplane interior.

It was a monologue, not a dialogue, and for the most part Bill listened without speaking. He found himself rerunning the events of last night over and over again in his mind. How could he possibly face Ginny after what he had done?

He had failed her; he had betrayed her. He'd been corrupted by The Store. He had gone to Dallas to fight it and had become part of it. He had been contaminated and infected and he'd defected to the enemy.

No, that wasn't true. He had the opportunity now to do a lot of good for Juniper. He could reverse the damage that had been done to the town, could implement new policies, could overturn the destructive, divisive decisions that had left the community in the state that it was today. He was working within the system now instead of outside it, and that would enable him to accomplish a hell of a lot more than he would otherwise be able to do. He had made the right decision. He had not sold out.

But he had still betrayed Ginny.

No rationalization that he was working for the greater good could ever excuse that.

The end did not justify the means.

He thought of her lying in bed, alone, asleep, waiting for him, praying that he returned safely, blindly trusting him.

What would he say to her? What could he do to make it up to her? How would he ever deserve her again?

He realized that he was crying only when King leaned over and whispered, "Knock it off. You're acting like a pussy."

He stared at the CEO, wiped his eyes and nodded, looking out the window.

"Be a man," King said. "Act like a manager."

It was midmorning when they landed at Sky Harbor, and they took a limo from Phoenix to Juniper. He pretended to sleep on the ride over, not wanting to talk, but the CEO either knew he was faking or didn't care, and he continued to chatter nonstop all the way there.

Juniper.

It had changed in his absence. Not really changed, not physically, but there was a difference now. It no longer seemed like a dying town, like a lost cause. He no longer felt powerless to stop its decline. He had power now, and rather than looking like a shell of its former self, he saw the town as a blank canvas, a place that could not only equal but surpass what it had been before.

He wanted to go home first, to see Ginny and Shannon, make sure they were all right _alive_

-- but the limo drove them straight to The Store. King smiled to himself as they passed the abandoned Ford dealership, chuckled as they drove past an empty feed-and-grain wholesaler.

It was just as well, Bill thought. He didn't know if he was ready to face Ginny yet, anyway. He needed more time to prepare himself, to figure out what he was going to say and what he was going to do and how he was going to act.

King's coming had obviously been announced in advance, and The Store was closed, the parking lot empty and closed off. Two uniformed guards pulled open a barricade to let the limo pass, and the long car moved slowly between twin rows of employees lined up in a path to the front entrance. The employees were holding balloons and signs, throwing confetti, cheering wildly. This was a big event, and seemingly every employee who worked for The Store was there. Bill looked carefully through the window at the passing faces, and his muscles grew tense as he saw no sign of his daughters.

"I had Shannon fired," King said, as if reading his thoughts. "I thought that would make you happy."

"What about Sam?"

"I've transferred her to the corporate office. She's too valuable to lose."

The limo pulled to a stop in front of the entrance, and Bill slid across the seat and opened the door, getting out of the car.

King got out on the opposite side, the side facing The Store, and a huge cheer went up as employees gathered around him, fawning over him, asking for his autograph, trying to touch him. He smiled graciously, magnanimously, and he motioned for Bill to join him as he walked toward the open doors of the building.

Bill felt exhilarated as the adulation expanded to include him. He liked the warm greetings, the cheers, the slavishly obsequious behavior of his new underlings. It felt good to be adored, the object of attention, and he smiled and waved at the rejoicing employees. In the back of his mind was the thought that these were the same employees who had so disdained him and his wife, who had made their lives a living hell, and the fact that he was now their lord and master gratified him immensely.

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

Mr. Lamb.

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

King ignored all of them.

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

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

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

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

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

Lamb, Walker, and Keyes were following them.

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

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

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

just thought --"

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

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

"Fuck off!" King yelled.

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

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

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

Especially when it came to Mr. Lamb.

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

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

Bill nodded.

"Excellent! Want to sit in your chair?"

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

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

Reluctantly, Bill followed him into the small cubicle.

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

"We'll be back."

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

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

"What is it?"

King smiled. "You'll see."

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

The elevator stopped.

The doors opened.

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

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

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

The Night Managers.

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

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

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

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

Bill shook his head. "No --"

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

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

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

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

The Store had captured their souls.

_I owe my soul to the company store_.

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

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

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

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

"Isn't it fun?"

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

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

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

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

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

They stepped into the elevator.

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

"Any questions?" King asked.

Bill shook his head.

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

should any problems arise." One of the yes-men placed an _Employee's Bible_ and a _Manager's Concordance_ on the desk. "And here's your contract." The CEO

handed Bill a copy of one of the multipage documents he'd signed back in Dallas.

"Take care of my store," King said. "Don't fuck it up."

He strode out of the office, the other men following close behind, and Bill stood at the window and watched as they emerged from the door in the wall below and moved purposely down the main aisle of The Store toward the entrance.

He stayed by the window, staring, looking at all of the different people in all of the different departments of the store.

_His_ store.

A few minutes after King and his cronies had gone, Mr. Lamb emerged from his office behind the Customer Service counter. He stared up at the window, and though Bill knew the personnel manager could not see him, could see only mirrored glass, it felt as though Lamb was looking right at him, and he had to force himself not to move aside and hide.

Mr. Lamb disappeared back into his office, and a moment later the phone on Bill's desk rang.

He walked over, answered the phone. It was Mr. Lamb. In a voice so obsequious that it had to be sarcastic, the personnel manager told Bill how excited he was to be working with him and how honored he was to have him as his manager. "I've taken the liberty of asking all of The Store's employees to gather in the assembly corridor downstairs so that you can meet with them and lay out the groundwork for your regime."

"Not downstairs," Bill said. "Tell them to line up by the front entrance.

Next to the shopping carts."

"I think the assembly corridor is better --"

"Who's manager here, Mr. Lamb? You or me?" He was gratified to hear silence on the other end of the line. "I'll be down in five minutes."

A moment later, the personnel manager's voice echoed over the PA system:

"All employees will gather at the front entrance of The Store immediately. This is not a drill. Repeat. All employees will gather at the front entrance of The Store immediately. This is not a drill."

Bill looked around his office one more time, then walked downstairs. On the floor, employees were already scurrying toward the front of the store. He smiled to himself. He was the manager here; he was the boss. Everyone in this building worked for him.

He liked that.

He reached the front entrance, and everyone immediately snapped to attention. His troops were before him, clad all in black, and he felt an involuntary rush of power as he scanned their faces. They were his to command in any way that he saw fit, and he could use them to make his Store run perfectly, the way he wanted. The real world was messy, chaotic, but here, in the world of The Store, that didn't have to be the case. Here in _Juniper_, that didn't have to be the case. He could remake this town in his own image, he could He shook his head, closed his eyes.

What was he thinking? That wasn't why he had done this. That wasn't why he was here. He did not want to remake Jumper in his own image. He wanted to return it to the town it had been before The Store's arrival. He wanted to use his new power for good.

He opened his eyes, saw the employees all staring at him, some with fear, some with hope, some with a fanatic determination that made him extremely uncomfortable.

"Get back to work," he said quietly.

Mr. Lamb stepped forward. "Mr. Davis --" he began.

"Get back to work," he ordered. "Everybody."

Once again, there was scurrying as employees returned to their departments.

The personnel manager walked up to him. "I must say, Mr. Davis, that I do not approve of this sort of micromanagement. I have always been in charge of --"

"I don't want to talk to you, Mr. Lamb."

"Mr. King himself appointed me --"

"I don't want to talk to you, Mr. Lamb."

"If it's about your daughters --"

"Of course it's about my daughters!" Bill turned on him, enraged. "What the fuck do you think it's about, you little prick?"

"Hey! Language!"

He turned to see Holly, from the old cafй, standing next to the shopping carts, smiling at him. She was wearing a Store uniform, but she still looked like the same Holly, unchanged, untouched, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eye. He stared at her, and it was like unexpectedly coming across a friend in a foreign land. He found himself smiling back at her. "Holly," he said.

"How've you been?"

"As well as can be expected, I guess."

Customers had been let in by this time -- on whose orders he did not know -- and he glanced around at them. They seemed nervous, cowed, intimidated. None were walking alone; directors were leading them through The Store as though they were the docile residents of a nursing home.

I can change that, he thought. I'm the manager. I can change that policy.

He turned back toward the personnel manager. "Mr. Lamb?" he said.

"What?" the other man said belligerently.

"You're fired."

The change that came over him was immediate. A look of panic crossed his face. "Please!" he said beseechingly. "I'll do anything you say! I won't disagree with you! I won't try to tell you my opinions!"

"Mr. Walker!" Bill called out. "Mr. Keyes!"

The other two men had been standing nearby, trying to be unobtrusive, and they hurried over.

"You're fired. You're all fired."

The three stood trembling and terrified before him.

"No!" Mr. Lamb said. "Please!"

"You gentlemen no longer work for The Store."

Mr. Lamb fell first. His body stiffened and toppled forward. He made no effort to stop his fall, did not put his hands out in front of him, and his face hit the floor with a loud smack. Like dominoes, Walker and Keyes stiffened and fell as well, Walker forward, Keyes backward.

Bill didn't know what to do, didn't know how to react, didn't know what was going on. He dropped to his knees, tried to feel Lamb's wrist for a pulse, but there was none. He wanted to scream for help, wanted to order someone to call an ambulance, but he knew that all three men were dead, that nothing could save them or bring them back.

The Store had been their lives.

Bill stood, backed away. Several directors and their customers looked at the unmoving men as they passed by, but none of them stopped, and none exhibited more than a mild curiosity.

Bill turned toward Holly. She smiled at him. There was no fear on her face, no confusion, only a look of satisfaction. "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

He nodded. He wanted to feel bad, wanted to feel remorse, wanted to feel . . . something, but he shared Holly's satisfaction, and he thought: This is for Ben. An employee Bill didn't know came running up, looked at the men on the floor, then looked over at Bill. "I'll take care of this, sir. Don't worry about it." He ran off the way he'd come, and a moment later his voice sounded over the loudspeaker.

"Cleanup in aisle one!"

He went home after the bodies had been taken away.

He wanted to see Ginny and Shannon.

He'd called first, from The Store, unable to wait, needing to know if everything was all right, and he practically wept when he heard his wife's voice.

_How was he going to face her?_

He'd been supplied with a company car, a boxy black sedan, and he took it, speeding home as quickly as he could. Ginny was waiting for him in the drive, and he threw the car into park, jumped out of the vehicle, and ran into her arms. They were both crying, hugging each other crazily, kissing.

"Where's Shannon?" he asked.

"Over at Diane's." Ginny wiped the tears from her eyes, smiled. "Mr. Lamb fired her."

"I fired Mr. Lamb."

"You're really the manager now?"

"I really am."

"Where's Sam?"

He licked his lips. "She's been transferred to Dallas."

Ginny faced him. "Do you think she'll be all right?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

He suddenly remembered when Sam had been ten years old and he'd taken her hiking and she'd twisted her little ankle and he'd given her a piggyback ride all the way home.

Ginny took a deep breath. "Will we ever see her again?"

He looked at her. "I don't know."

He saw Sam as she'd looked in June, at her graduation, smiling up at them from the field as she'd accepted her diploma.

Ginny reached out, hugged him again. He hugged her back, held her tightly, thought of what had happened last night in his suite. What had he done? Why had he been so stupid? Why couldn't he have been stronger? He blinked back the tears that were welling up in his eyes.

"I'm glad you're back," she said.

"I am, too," he said, starting to cry. "I am, too."

THIRTY-THREE

1

He found that he did not really want to change The Store.

When he was on the outside looking in, he had not realized what being manager of The Store entailed. He had not understood the rigorous demands of the job. There were sales quotas that had to be reached, a payroll that had to be met, people who had to be instructed and guided, a thousand little daily decisions that had to be made. As much as he hated to admit it, The Store was the engine that drove the town, and that meant that the entire economy of Juniper was now resting on his shoulders. He sympathized with his old concerns, but he realized now that the inconvenience of a few individuals had to be weighed against the needs of many.

Of course there was no way he could ever condone what had happened in the past: the disappearances, the fires, the systematic destruction of enemies and rivals. But, as King said, that was all over and done with. This was the beginning of a new day, and he was going to legitimize The Store in Juniper.

He reviewed some of The Store's practices, those that seemed to him somewhat suspect, but on closer examination, he saw that all of them were necessary. He had not liked the idea of having Security monitor every square inch of the floor, letting employees spy even on customers' most intimate acts, but shrinkage -- theft and shoplifting -- were major problems for any retailer and were a primary source of revenue loss. Besides, while people needed privacy at home, there was no reason they needed it when they were on Store property, shopping.

Directors, too, were a concept that had offended him, but he understood that despite his personal prejudice against them, they were a valid retail tool and enabled customers -- elderly customers in particular -- to easily find what they were looking for. The directors made shopping quicker and more efficient.

All the way down the line, the things that had seemed wrong to him proved to be not only legitimate and worthwhile but indispensable.

The Store's policies weren't as bad as he'd thought.

Ginny didn't seem thrilled. She disagreed with his decisions even after he explained them to her, and she seemed to think that he had sold out, that he had been brainwashed back in Dallas.

_The best sex he'd ever had_.

She still loved him, of course, and was grateful to have him back, but she was wary of him, not open and honest the way she had been, and he vowed to himself that after he got The Store shaped up, he would work on repairing their relationship.

He owed her at least that much.

At The Store, he hired new employees to replace Mr. Lamb, Mr. Walker, and Mr. Keyes. He fired some of the clerks who were not fitting in and replaced them with others who would be better able to take orders.

He had not been able to bring himself to meet with the Night Managers. He was still a little afraid of them, and though they seemed to be doing a fine job with their nighttime audits, and the reports they left each morning on his desk were both thorough and easy to follow, he could not help thinking of what he had seen in New Mexico, of the rumors Shannon had told him. He was their boss, yes, but he did not understand them and he did not know how to deal with them or what to do with them.

Still, they were part of his Store, part of his responsibility, and as King had shown him, he had absolute power over them. He should try to utilize their services and incorporate them into his management strategy.

He sat in his office for an entire morning, reading his _Manager's Concordance_, trying to learn everything he could about the Night Managers.

There was no clue as to their origins, of course, but there were examples of how to use them, as well as a detailed description of the commands that would control their actions.

He'd wanted to switch the locations of two departments ever since he'd returned. Shoes and Children's Clothing seemed to him to be in the wrong places.

But swapping them, moving all of the merchandise and fixtures, would take up a lot of time and require a lot of effort. He would either have to disrupt normal operations for a day and inconvenience shoppers or pay overtime to employees who stayed after their regular shift in order to do the job.

But he realized now that the Night Managers could do it.

It was a legitimate solution to a legitimate problem, and it also enabled him to ease into using the Night Managers, feel out the situation.

He closed the _Concordance_, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the ceiling. Part of him wanted to bring along someone else, a subordinate, but he realized that he was being weak, and he knew that this was something he had to do on his own. He took a deep breath and forced himself to get out of the chair and pick up the _Concordance_.

He took the elevator down to their room.

The air seemed colder, the lunchroom light dimmer than before. He was not scared, exactly, but he felt uneasy, and he stood close to the open elevator door as he stared across the long room toward the tables where the back-clad figures sat.

As before, there were coffee cups before them, although once again the figures remained unmoving, staring straight ahead, not drinking, not even touching the cups.

He wished Newman King was here with him.

Licking his suddenly dry lips, Bill opened the _Concordance_ to the page he had marked. He cleared his throat, yelled out, "One! Two! Three!"

The three Night Managers nearest him stood.

He walked forward slowly, stopping when he reached the edge of the tables.

He looked down at the book again, stomped his foot three times.

The closest Night Manager turned to face him.

It was Ben.

Bill sucked in his breath, a wave of nausea passing over him. He suddenly felt weak. He stared at his friend. All color had been drained from the editor's face, all emotion, all expression, all trace of humanity. There was only a blank look of dull mindlessness on the features that had once belonged to Ben and an automatonic demeanor identical to that of all the other Night Managers.

Bill peered into his friend's vacant eyes, saw nothing there. He felt hollow himself, empty, lost. A profound grief was threatening to settle over him, a bitter despair that he knew would be overwhelming, so he gave in to the other emotions within him: hatred and anger. Blind hatred and searing anger directed not only at Newman King but at himself.

What had he been doing? Who had he been kidding? Ginny was right. He had been suckered, he had been co-opted, he had been corrupted. The Store had not changed. The Store could not change. _He_ had changed. He had bought into King's bullshit and had allowed himself to believe that The Store was different than he'd thought, than he'd known. He had put blinders on and had rationalized his involvement. He had been seduced by the power, by the luxury -- _the best sex he'd ever had_ -- by the promises and assurances of Newman King, and while his initial motives had been pure, he had embraced his new job unthinkingly, without considering the moral consequences. He had even begun believing the lies that had been perpetrated in order to continue The Store's reign.

But no more.

He saw The Store now for what it was, for what it always had been, and he hated himself for swerving from the path, for going against what he knew was right. He had betrayed not only Ginny, but Ben, Street, the town.

Himself.

He wasn't going to resign, though. He wasn't going to quit. He was going back to his original plan. King had given him complete autonomy over the Juniper Store and he was going to use it to return things to the way they were. He was going to strip The Store of its power and reverse the changes it had made to the town. He was going to downsize The Store until it was what it should have been in the first place -- a discount retail outlet. No more, no less.

It was Ben who had brought him to this point, who had made him realize what he was doing, and he stared at his friend, feeling again the emptiness, the sadness.

He moved forward, put a hand on Ben's shoulder, felt the cold even through the layers of black material.

"Thank you," he said softly.

The Night Manager did not respond.

He called a meeting that afternoon of every Store employee. Every department manager, director, stock boy, secretary, clerk, custodian, cook, waitress, security monitor. The first thing he told them was that there would be no more uniforms. Everyone was expected to wear nice clothes -- skirts for the females, shirt and tie for the males -- but uniforms were out. Instead, everyone would be issued a simple name tag.

There were murmurs and whispers, expressions of surprise and disbelief. He caught Holly's eye, saw her smile and give him a thumbs-up sign.

There would be no more directors, he told them. There were cries of protest against this, but he explained that there would be no layoffs, either.

Not for those employees who wanted to work for the new Store. The directors would be reassigned to other positions. Jobs would be found for them.

The meeting lasted most of the afternoon. It was not merely a speech to the troops, but a true dialogue, and though there was some reluctance at first, he got almost all of them involved in the discussion, making them believe that he really was going to change the way The Store operated and letting them know that their input was valuable, necessary, that he did not know the details of how everything worked and would appreciate their comments, suggestions, and help in modifying the workplace.

That night, tired but happy, he returned home and told Ginny what had happened. She was horrified by the story of Ben but was thrilled that he was finally going to start loosening The Store's grip on the town and dismantling its fiefdom.

"Do you think you can do it?" she asked.

"Watch me."

It would take some time to sort through all of the tangled webs woven by The Store, discover all of the city services that it had taken over, all of the work that had been contracted out to it, all of the other businesses that were being bankrolled and overseen by the corporation, but Bill vowed to track everything down and put it right.

He closed The Store for a week while they took inventory. The employees, in teams of two, cataloged every item on every shelf, entering the data into hand-held computers, and he himself sorted the information on his own PC. He wiped whole sections off The Store map, returning items to The Store's corporate warehouse, replaced them with more appropriate stock from traditional distributors until The Store's inventory more closely approximated that of ordinary discount retailers.

"You don't think King's going to put a stop to this?" Ginny asked him one night. "You don't think he's going to find out and come after you?"

"He'll try."

She hugged him close. "You can't hope to fight someone like that.

_Something_ like that. He's way out of your league."

"Don't worry," he told her.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you." She paused. "Or to Sam."

He looked at her.

"She's working at his corporate offices. God knows what he'll do to her when he finds out."

"He told me I could do this," Bill said. "It's how he suckered me into working for him. He said the store was mine to do anything I want with."

"What if he changes his mind?"

"I'll deal with that when I come to it."

He fired twenty-six people over the next three days, fully a third of lite Store's workforce. He did not trust them, did not feel they could adapt, was sure they preferred King's ways, and he did not want them working for him. That was one advantage of having absolute power over his Store. He did not have to give legitimate reasons for firing someone, did not have to have valid cause. He could simply kick someone out and banish them from the premises. He felt a small thrill of satisfaction, a return of the old sense of power, as he told some of the more belligerent employees to get out, they were through, but he refused to allow himself to enjoy it, forced himself to remain impartial and above it all, to think only about the good of the town and not his own petty emotional gratification.

Some things remained unresolved. The transients, for example. No one would tell him where the homeless people who had been rounded up by the sweeps had been taken or what had happened to them. He questioned everyone, but they all claimed ignorance.

Perhaps it was just as well.

He was not sure he wanted to know.

Then there were the Night Managers.

They were one of the big problems. He had not gone down to their lunchroom since finding Ben, had purposely stayed away, but he knew he could not avoid them forever. They continued to roam The Store at night, to audit and report on what was happening, and their reports were becoming increasingly less objective.

There were no conclusions drawn, no adjectives used, only facts and figures, but the way those facts and figures were presented bespoke criticism, and he knew that he was going to have to confront the Night Managers sometime.

On Friday, he went down there again, this time with Ginny, and though she wanted to see Ben, he made her stay by the elevator door and did not tell the Night Managers to move from their stationary positions at the tables. He had read and reread _The Manager's Concordance_, but there was nothing in it about firing or getting rid of the Night Managers, and he knew that if he was going to get rid of them, he'd have to figure something out on his own.

The two of them stood next to the wall, staring across the long, dimly lit room.

Ginny shivered. "They're spookier than I thought they'd be."

He nodded.

"Are they . . . dead?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't think so, but . . . I don't know what they are."

"Maybe we should try to talk to Ben, try to jog his memory or something."

"No," Bill said.

"Have you looked at all of them? Maybe some of the others are people we know . . . knew."

Now it was Bill's turn to shiver. "Let's just do this and get out of here." He cleared his throat, took a deep breath. "You're fired," he announced loudly. "All of you."

The Night Managers remained unmoving.

"You no longer work for The Store!"

No response.

"I relieve you of your duties!"

Nothing.

"Get out of here! Hit the road! Get off The Store's property! Fuck off!"

"It's not working," Ginny said.

"I know that!" he snapped at her.

She pulled away from him, and he apologized immediately. "I'm sorry. I

just . . . I'm sorry."

She nodded, obviously understanding.

"You have any ideas?" he asked.

" 'Leave?' " she said.

"Leave!" he repeated loudly.

Nothing.

He continued shouting orders, screaming at them, but only succeeded in making a contingent of Night Managers in the middle of the group walk over to the steel counter next to the kitchen.

"Let's go," Ginny said. "I don't like it down here."

He nodded dejectedly, and the two of them stepped back into the elevator.

In the seconds before the elevator doors closed, he saw the contingent of Night Managers walk away from the kitchen, back to their brethren, carrying new cups of coffee.

On their own.

2

He had rescinded the curfew several days ago and people were again allowed outside at night, but the fear was still there, and he drove home on an empty road, seeing no other vehicles, even downtown.

There was supposed to be an election in a few weeks to choose a new town council, but no one had as yet indicated that they would run for any of the positions.

After what had happened to the last two councils, maybe people thought the job was cursed.

Ginny and Shannon were both home, waiting for him, and they ate together.

Meat loaf and mashed potatoes. He tried to be cheerful, they all did, but as always Sam's absence seemed the most acute at mealtime, and they drifted off into silence, thinking their own thoughts as they ate.

They had not heard from her since her transfer to Dallas, and he prayed that nothing had happened to her.

School had started yesterday, and Ginny already had homework to grade and Shannon already had homework to do, so he spent the evening alone, numbing his brain with a video game on the PC. He was on the fourth level of Alienblaster when Ginny came barging into the room, shutting the door behind her. She hurried over to the window, pulled open the drapes.

"What's this?" Bill said.

"Night Managers."

He stood. "What?"

She turned toward him, her face white, blanched. "Look outside."

He did. "I don't see anything."

"Turn off the light."

He did so and again stared out the window. His eyes adjusted, and now he could see them, behind the trees, just as she'd said.

The Night Managers.

They were watching his house.

An involuntary shiver passed through him, goose bumps popping up on his arms.

Ginny pulled the drapes shut. "They're spying on us!"

Bill took a deep breath. "They're spying on me."

"Can't you call them off?"

He nodded. "I should be able to. But I didn't order them here."

"What's that mean?"

"I think it means King's coming."

"What's he going to do?"

"I don't know." Bill looked around the floor, picked up his shoes and socks. "But I'd better get down to The Store and meet him."

She grabbed his arm. "No! You can't go!"

He pulled away. "I have to."

"What if he --"

"I have to," he repeated. He quickly walked out of the room and down the hall. He stopped in the living room to put on his shoes and socks, then checked to make sure all of the doors and windows were closed and locked. "Don't open anything. Don't let anyone in." He looked around. "You still have that baseball bat somewhere?"

She nodded.

"Get it. Just in case."

Shannon had walked into the living room from her bedroom. "What is it?

What's going on?"

"The Night Managers," Ginny said. "They're surrounding the house."

"Oh, God." Shannon started crying. "Oh, God. I knew it. I knew it."

"Just stay calm," Bill told them. "I'm going to The Store. Hopefully, they'll follow me. I think that's why they're here."

"What's going to happen?"

He sucked in his breath. "I think Newman King wants to meet with me."

Shannon's sobs grew stronger. She ran across the living room, threw her arms around her father. "Don't go!" she pleaded. "It's a trick. It's a trap."

"Maybe you should wait until morning," Ginny suggested.

"And maybe he'll come here."

"At least it's your home turf."

"The Store's my home turf. It's my Store. Besides, I don't want him here."

"Maybe we should come with you. There's safety in numbers. And we're female. He might not --"

"He doesn't care what you are." Bill hugged his daughter, kissed her forehead, then moved over to Ginny, pulling her close. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"What if you never come back?" Shannon sobbed.

"I'll be back."

The Store's parking lot was empty when he arrived, but the lights were on inside, and through the front doors he could see Night Managers moving through the aisles.

He felt cold, frightened, but he forced himself to get out of the car and used his key to open the doors and let himself in.

The Night Managers were walking quickly through the building, moving up and down the aisles, between the racks. They were supposed to be auditing the day's events, taking inventory and recording transactions, but they did not stop moving even for a second and did not even appear to be looking at any of the merchandise.

They just kept walking.

The Store was completely silent save for their footsteps, and the lack of Muzak, the lack of air-conditioning noise, the lack of any other sound whatsoever was extremely unnerving. Bill walked forward slowly, up the main aisle.

The lights snapped off. Behind him, he heard a metallic click. There was a sudden breeze, a rush of cold air, and he quickly turned around.

King stood in the doorway, backlit by the headlights of his limo.

"Bill," King said. "Nice to see you again."

There was no joy in his voice, no friendliness, only a hard, dangerous flatness that sounded completely inhuman. He stood just inside the building, alone, unmoving, a dark, frightening figure, little more than a silhouette. The strangeness of his body, so obvious up close, was also visible in the peculiar outline of his form, and Bill was filled with an instant, instinctive fear. But he held his ground, faced King. "Good evening," he said calmly.

The lights came back on, and the CEO strode up the aisle toward him.

Stage tricks. King was using theatrical lighting in order to draw attention to himself.

The smallness of it, the mundane practicality of the dramatic convention somehow made Bill feel less afraid.

"What do you think you're doing?" King asked.

"Standing here."

"I mean, what are you doing with The Store?"

"My job."

The two of them faced each other. Again, Bill noticed the strangeness of King's skin, the artificiality of his teeth, the ferocity in his eyes. He looked away, unable to gaze for more than a few seconds upon that unnatural visage.

"This is not the way you were trained to manage a Store."

"No, but I decided to do it this way. I thought it would be best for Juniper."

King practically shouted. "I decide what's best!"

"I don't think it can be that standardized. I think things have to be tailored to the individual communities. Things aren't the same here in Arizona as they are, say, in Ohio --"

"They're the same everywhere!" King stepped forward, and Bill quickly moved back. Wind swirled between them. "I will not have you thwarting the will of The Store and jeopardizing its future on some personal whim!"

Bill was terrified, having a tough time maintaining his false calm front, but he forced his voice to stay level. "I'll run this Store the way I see fit."

"Then you will not run this Store at all!"

"You gave me complete autonomy," Bill said. "It's in my contract."

"You're not managing it properly. Obviously, I misjudged you. You're not Store material."

"What are you going to do? Take it away from me?" Bill paused. "Are you going back on your word? Are you going to break your contract?"

"You fucker," King said softly. "You worthless piece of shit."

Bill held his ground, said nothing.

A Night Manager passed between them, walking.

For a brief second, it looked as though King was about to attack. He glared at Bill, his muscles tensing, fists balling up. On his head, his _hair_ seemed to be moving.

Then he smiled. He glanced casually around the store. "Did I tell you we're expanding? In addition to sushi and espresso bars, we're going to have brothels attached to our stores. There's a lot of money to be made in the sex trade. It's the last bastion of pure unexploited commerce in this country. It's about time someone franchised it and marketed it."

Bill had a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He thought he knew where this was going.

King was suddenly holding a videocassette in his hand. He tossed it to Bill. "Your last night in Dallas. It's one of our training materials." He grinned. "You might want to look at it."

Bill dropped it on the floor, crushed it beneath his boot.

King was holding another one. He laughed. "Let's look at it together, shall we?"

Next to one of the front checkout stands was a television and VCR, a display used to sell Disney video-cassettes. King walk over, popped out the _Sleeping Beauty_ tape in the machine and put in his own. He turned on the television.

The room had been pitch-black, but there was none of the red- or green tinted monochrome that characterized most film shot in the dark. Indeed, the images on the screen were dim but color-perfect, the angle straight-on. The camera had obviously been hidden behind the mirror over the dresser, and Bill watched as a nude woman entered the suite. She was looking down at the ground, hair obscuring her face, but though he could not see her features, he did see for the first time her breasts, her pubic hair, and he felt shamed and embarrassed as he thought about touching her there, as he recalled what he'd done with her.

_The best sex he'd ever had_.

He wanted to look away but couldn't, and he exhaled loudly as he realized that he'd been holding his breath. On the screen, the woman climbed onto the bed, straddled his chest, looked up at the camera.

It was Sam.

The revelation was so shocking, so totally unexpected, that for a full thirty seconds he had no reaction, no response at all. He simply stood there stupidly, continuing to watch the screen as his daughter began working on him.

Then he was flooded with emotion: humiliation, anguish, self-loathing, disgust. He was filled with a despair blacker than anything he had ever known, a horror so profound and all-consuming that he had not known he could experience anything like it. Beneath that, or on top of it, or mixed in with it, was an agonizing grief for Sam, a bone-deep sorrow for what she had done, what had happened to her, what he had _allowed_ to happen to her.

And overriding everything was a pure, hard hatred for Newman King.

He turned toward the CEO.

"She's going to be one of our best hookers," King mused.

Bill rushed him. There was no plan, no thought behind it, only a blind desire to do damage, a need to kill. He was acting on impulse, following instinct, and his feet were pumping furiously, fists railing. He threw himself at King And then he was on the floor, stunned, shaking his head. A Night Manager passed in front of him, kept walking. He wasn't sure what had happened, but the television was off, he was lying on the ground, and King was standing in the open doorway, on his way out.

The CEO smiled. "I'll be sending a copy to your wife." He paused. "Unless you fall back in line."

"This is my store!" Bill said.

"No. It's _my_ store. I let you play with it."

"Fuck you!" Bill yelled. He tried to get to his feet, was overtaken by dizziness, fell.

"I'll give you a day to think about it."

And then King was gone.

Bill lay on the floor, screaming with rage, sobbing, hating himself, wanting to kill King, wanting to kill himself, wanting some sort of violence. He tried to stand, was finally able to do so, and was a hairbreadth away from going over to the Sporting Goods department, grabbing a gun, and ending it all.

But something held him back.

He didn't know what it was, didn't know why, but he stood in the middle of the aisle as around him the Night Managers continued walking. He saw Ben, saw another face he thought he recognized but couldn't quite place.

There'd been something different about King this time, he realized. He'd seemed genuinely angry at one point, rattled by Bill's rebellion and initiative.

He'd shown, for the first time, human emotions. And that made him seem . . . Less in control.

Weaker.

Maybe he wasn't invincible.

Bill stared through the still-open doors, into the dark night outside. He suddenly understood what had happened here.

Nothing.

He hadn't been killed, he hadn't even been fired -- although King clearly possessed the power to do both. He'd been right. King was not able to break the contract. The contract gave him complete autonomy over this Store, and there was nothing King could do about it. The CEO could try to force him to quit, could try to blackmail him into leaving, but he could not be fired, and obviously he could not be harmed. The contract protected him.

He was in.

Bill felt an absurd sense of exhilaration. This was the first time, no doubt, that someone had stood up to King, the first time that the training had not taken, and it was clear that the CEO had not expected this, had not prepared for something of this nature. Bill was not something that King had planned for.

He could not be bribed and he would not be blackmailed. He would stand tall and fight, do what he knew was right. He would come clean with Ginny, he would continue with his rehabilitation of the Juniper Store, and he would go up against Newman King.

What about the managers of the other Stores? They could do the same thing.

They could stand up to King as well, run their Stores their way, do what they wanted with their towns.

King could be broken.

What would he do if all of the managers broke away? If they all defied him and started doing things the way they wanted? Would he destroy them? Or would he be so weakened by the loss of power that he would become impotent?

He would still own the corporation, of course. He would still be incredibly rich. He would still be able to hire new managers if the old ones quit or died off. But would the dissipation of his influence over day-to-day retail operations siphon off his dark power?

Bill thought of Mr. Lamb, Mr. Walker, Mr. Keyes.

Maybe he would die.

There were still tears drying on his face, still sickened horror in his heart, but there was hope there as well, an optimism that hadn't existed before.

He was still slightly woozy as he walked, but his sense of purpose overcame the lingering effects of whatever King had hit him with, and he went through the doors, locking them behind him, and out to his car.

He drove home.

Ginny and Shannon were waiting anxiously in the living room when he arrived, and he hugged them both and told them everything was all right, and sent Shannon into her bedroom so he and Ginny could talk.

He told her what happened his last night in Dallas.

He should have come clean before, but he'd been afraid. He hadn't had the guts. He'd been a moral coward, and in that sense he had still been a part of King's team. He told her everything now, though, and she grew increasingly quiet as he described his encounter. He explained that he'd been awakened, that the woman had already been on top of him, and that he'd had no choice in the matter.

He was tempted to let her think that he'd been helpless and overpowered, forced into it, but he was determined to be honest with her, and he told her that he had had an opportunity to stop it but had not. He emphasized that this was after two weeks of King's so-called training, after the deprivation and the rewards, but while he made sure she knew the context, he did not avoid his own complicity, his own responsibility for what had happened.

He did not tell her it was Sam, though. It was a lie, he knew, but it was a lie that he felt was justified. They might be able to get past an incidence of adultery, but their marriage would not survive an incidence of incest. Ginny would never be able to live with him, knowing that he had had sex with their daughter.

He would have a tough time living with that himself.

Bill was crying by the time he was finished, but Ginny was stone-faced, and he thought then that their marriage was probably over. He didn't blame her.

He understood her feelings. He'd feel the same way.

Still, he was glad he'd told her. It might ruin his life, but at least it liberated him from the influence of Newman King. At least he knew now that he was free to do as he chose without having to worry about his misdeeds coming to light.

Ginny was still not speaking, still staring at him with that hard, unreadable face, and he continued, explaining what had happened tonight in The Store, describing Newman King's anger, the CEO's inability to break the contract he had made, the possibility that he could be defeated.

Afterward, Bill collapsed on the couch, exhausted, emotionally drained.

Ginny continued to stare at him. "I understand," she said finally. "I'm not sure I can forgive and I definitely won't forget, but we'll wait until all this is through before sorting it out. Right now, our first priority is to get rid of Newman King. And to get Sam back."

_Sam_.

Bill swallowed, nodded.

"I think your idea's good. I don't know if it'll bring down his whole corporation, but taking the individual Stores away from him is bound to hurt him. I think you need to contact the other managers."

"I'm going to."

They stared at each other in silence. Bill wished he knew what she was thinking, but her face was unreadable to him. He took a deep breath. "Where do you want me to --" He cleared his throat. "Where should I sleep?"

She looked at him, thought for a moment. "The bed, I guess." She held up a hand. "This doesn't mean I forgive you, but I understand that these are not normal circumstances."

"I --"

"And I don't want Shannon to know. As I said, we'll sort it out afterward."

Bill nodded.

Ginny sighed, and now there was a tear in her eye. She wiped it away with one strong finger. "Come on," she said. "Let's go to bed."

3

He was in his office at The Store the next morning, paging through the rambling, incoherent notes his predecessor had left on the computer, when the phone rang. His personal line. He picked it up immediately. "Hello?"

"Bill?" It was Ginny. "I got a package from Sam. Federal Express."

His heart lurched in his chest.

"I haven't opened it yet. I thought you might want to be here."

"I'll be right over," he said.

She'd opened the package by the time he got there, but she had not watched the videotape, and she sat there, solemn and pinched, holding it in her hand.

She looked at him when he walked in, thought for a moment, then handed him the tape. "I'm not sure this is something I want to see," she said.

"It's not," Bill told her.

She nodded. "Do what you want with it."

He dropped the videocassette onto the floor and stomped on it, breaking it into pieces. He picked up the pieces, unspooled the tape, threw everything into the big garbage can in the garage.

"Have you called any managers yet?" Ginny asked.

He shook his head. "I've been trying to get up the courage. I just keep thinking, what if they're on his side? What if they don't want to do anything differently than the way he tells them? What if they decide to come after me on their own, on his behalf. The contract prohibits him from harming me. I don't think it applies to them."

"Didn't he say his worst enemies make the best managers?"

"Yes," Bill admitted.

"Then how about the other managers you met in that training course? You got along with them, right? Why don't you start there?"

He nodded. "That's a good idea." He sighed. "But King's probably blackmailing everyone. Just in case the training didn't take. He sets us up, then uses it against us."

"But if they're strong enough to stand up to him, if they're strong enough to admit their mistakes and face what they did wrong and accept the consequences . . ." She left the sentence unfinished.

"It might work," Bill said. "I'll contact them."

"But be careful."

"I know. King's probably monitoring my E-mail, bugging my phones. I need to find another way to get through to them."

"Mail," she said. "Regular mail. Or Federal Express."

"The old-fashioned way."

"It's secure."

"As long as the other managers don't have a Mr. Lamb opening their mail for them."

"It's a chance we have to take."

He was still nodding. "We might be able to pull this off."

She kissed him. For the first time since he'd told her about his betrayal.

"Think positive."

"We _will_ be able to pull this off."

"That's the spirit."

He'd been provided with a list of all of the other Stores in the United States, as well as a business number for each, but there were no managers' names listed, and he sure didn't want to talk to them while they were at work.

He ended up calling each Store, asking the manager's name, then dialing information for each area and obtaining the managers' home phones. Two were unlisted, and he let those slide. He called the rest individually, at night or in the early morning, and though he was awkward and hesitant at first, not sure how to bring up what he needed to say, it became easier as he went along, and he discovered that most of the managers were like him, forced into their positions, unwilling participants, and most of them secretly hated Newman King.

A few of those he dialed seemed suspicious as he felt them out over the phone, and for those he invented some business-related reason why he'd called.

They might be willing to go along with the scheme, but they might also be King loyalists, and he couldn't take a chance of trusting them if he wasn't a hundred percent positive.

He was lucky that the first manager he called, Mitch Grey, the man to whom he'd spoken most often in the training classes, seemed to hate Newman King almost as much as he himself did. Mitch was now in Ohio, and he caught on to the idea right away. He even offered to help contact other managers.

"I'm going to put together a package," Bill explained. "Send it through the mail to everyone's house. I'll describe what happened here. I'd like to have some sort of simultaneous switchover, a prearranged time when all the managers take over their Stores at once and start rolling back what King's done. I've been doing things gradually here, sequentially, but if we all did that, it might give him time to prepare, time to come up with something, a way to fight us. I'd like to catch him completely by surprise. And I think we really might be able to hurt him if we drain his power all at once."

Mitch was silent for a moment. "What do you think he is?"

"I don't know," Bill admitted.

"Why do you think he's doing this?"

"I don't know."

"You really think we can fight something like that?"

"We can try."

"But do you think we'll win?"

"Yes," Bill said. "I do."

Mass firings, he decided that night, were the best way to signal the start of the war. Get rid of all King loyalists at every Store in one fell swoop, then immediately start cutting back on The Store's power. He wrote out a tentative schedule, an outline, and saved it.

The next morning, he called more managers.

Within two weeks, it was all set.

Videotapes, ostensibly from Sam, had been arriving by Federal Express each day, but he and Ginny destroyed them all without watching them. King called his office daily, left voice mail and E-mail messages, sent unordered merchandise that had to be shipped back, contacted employees at home, ordering them to carry out his will, offering them promotions, did everything he legitimately could to destabilize Bill's power, but Bill had chosen wisely in his Wrings and firings and the loyalty held fast. The Store's influence was almost completely gone outside the borders of its property, and slowly but surely Juniper was sloughing off the yoke of Store oppression.

Not all of the managers were on board, but most were. He and Mitch had together contacted over two hundred managers, and only ten had been so obviously despotic that they hadn't even been approached. Another fifteen seemed borderline, and so, just to be on the safe side, they hadn't mentioned anything to them. But the other 175 were solidly in their corner, willing to do what it took to topple King, willing to endure humiliation and embarrassment, the ravaging of their personal lives, in the service of the greater good.

Bill was proud of them all.

The plan was for the participating Store managers to call a special meeting of all their employees Sunday morning at five o'clock Pacific time, six o'clock Mountain time, seven o'clock Central time, and eight o'clock Eastern time, so that all of the meetings would correspond and occur exactly at the same moment, no matter what time zone the individual Stores were in. Sunday was chosen because it was the day that The Store opened latest.

Besides, Sunday was supposed to be the Lord's day.

And the God connection couldn't hurt.

King's people would be fired at the meetings, directors reassigned, security departments dismantled. Inventory should have been taken at each of the Stores by that time, and the managers would sign chargeback forms and order invoices in order to instantly change, at least on paper, the contents of The Stores' stock.

It was a bold plan, and even if the results didn't turn out exactly the way they intended, it was still a hell of an organizational achievement.

And it was bound to hurt King.

The only question was, how much?

Sunday morning, Bill and Ginny and Shannon awoke early. Ginny made breakfast, Shannon watched TV, Bill read the newspaper, and all three of them tried to pretend that this was an ordinary day, that nothing momentous was going on, but they were all anxious and nervous, quieter than usual, and the countdown to the hour seemed to take forever.

The time came.

Went.

In the kitchen, Ginny washed the dishes; on the television, _Heathcliff_ sequed into _Bugs Bunny_. There was no big change in the fabric of existence, no earthquake or lightning, no killer wind or sonic boom. There was no way to tell if everything had occurred as planned -- or if anything had happened -- and Bill paced nervously around the living room, out of the house, into the garage, down the drive, back to the house, clenching and unclenching his fists, waiting a full forty-five minutes before deciding to call Mitch.

The phone rang just as he was about to pick up the receiver and dial.

He grabbed it excitedly. "Hello?" he said.

"It's done." Mitch. "Everything went according to plan here, and I called a couple other managers and they said the same."

"Everyone's supposed to check in."

"They will."

"Any difference? Any change?"

Mitch was silent for a moment. "I don't know. I didn't _feel_ anything, if that's what you mean. I don't . . . I don't know."

"I guess we'll have to wait."

"You could try calling Dallas, ask to speak to Newman King."

Bill chuckled. "I think I'll wait."

"I'll call back if anything happens."

Over the next hour and a half, they all checked in. Bill didn't know what was going on in Dallas, but in small towns all over the United States, the devolution of The Store's power had begun. He was the impetus behind it, and he felt a surge of pride as the last manager, from a little town in Vermont, checked in.

"What do we do now?" Shannon asked.

"Go on with our lives. And wait."

"For what?"

"Newman King."

"What do you think he's going to do?" Ginny asked.

He shrugged. "We'll have to wait and see."

He called a meeting himself that night, closing The Store early, in order to tell his employees what had happened. He'd shared the news with a few of them throughout the day -- the ones he talked to, the ones with whom he had come into contact -- but he wanted to let them all know that the managers had rebelled, that Stores all over the country had seceded from the corporation. It was possible there were still some King supporters among his employees, but he had no problem with them knowing what went down. The worst they could do was inform on him, tell King. And he had the feeling King already knew everything.

Maybe King was dead, he thought.

He remembered Lamb and Walker and Keyes, falling to the floor.

No. It was too much to hope for.

The CEO would not go so easily.

If King was not dead, he was undoubtedly pissed, and Bill was not at all sure that his power came solely from the Stores he controlled. He thought of that arm with too many bones, those deep wild eyes in the white plastic face, and he shivered.

For the first time in several days, he allowed himself to think about Sam.

She'd never been far from his mind, but she'd had to share space in his thoughts with other concerns, and he'd only been able to contemplate her in short spurts.

The memories of her were tainted, though, his fatherly feelings for her overlaid with a guilty shame, and he was unable to think of her without seeing that image on the video, without remembering how she'd felt in his bed. It was uncomfortable to think of her now even as a child, and he wondered what was going to happen when she returned, how they were going to act toward each other.

Maybe she'd been hypnotized and would remember none of it. Maybe the two of them would just avoid the subject, never speak of it, pretend it didn't occur.

Maybe she wouldn't return at all.

Maybe King had had her "terminated."

No, he thought. Anything but that.

He tried to remember her the way she was before. Before The Store. She'd been a kind and gentle girl. Smart, pretty, thoughtful, nice. Even-tempered even as a baby. A girl with a great future ahead of her.

And King and Lamb and all of their cohorts had turned her into a conscienceless automaton, willing to do whatever they told her.

He was glad Lamb had died. And Walker. And Keyes. And if he could see Newman King die as well, he would be a happy man.

Maybe King would commit suicide, he thought hopefully. Maybe he would kill himself.

Bill stood before the assembled employees. He climbed atop one of the tables in the espresso bar and faced the men and women, boys and girls, who were packed into the junction of aisles and rows in front of him. He'd gathered them here rather than downstairs in the assembly corridor or one of the multipurpose rooms because he wanted to emphasize the difference between the old Store and the new Store, and he was gratified to see no fear or hatred on any of their faces, only expectant interest and curiosity.

The tenor of The Store really had changed.

He raised his hands for silence, announced what had happened, what the managers had done. He explained that nearly all of the stores in the chain had renounced the old ways and that from now on they would be managed and operated individually. "The corporation's power has been decentralized," he said, "and everyone is using us as an example."

A cheer went up.

"As most of you know, I have had my little disagreements with the corporate office in the past --"

Laughter.

"-- and I am gratified that Newman King will no longer be able to dictate how we operate. His tyranny over Juniper is ended."

"The King is dead!" someone yelled, and everyone cheered.

"Long live the King_."

The voice was like thunder, like that of a god, and it cut through the noise like a knife, instantly silencing the assembled employees. The clapping stopped, the cheering disappeared, and all heads turned toward the source of the voice.

Newman King.

He stood in the center aisle, looking toward the espresso bar.

Looking straight at Bill.

"You little shit," he said.

The lights in the building dimmed.

Bill held his ground as King strode down the aisle toward him. The Store was silent, the only sound King's boot heels clicking on the tiled floor.

The crowd parted nervously before him as he approached. The CEO drew closer, and Bill saw that his face had begun to corrode. The plastic teeth were gone, replaced by decayed stumps. The skin was now yellowish white and stretched thin in places, blackness visible beneath it.

Only the eyes remained the same, and Bill could sense the burning intensity radiating from them and he was afraid.

_What was he?_ Bill thought.

King raised his hand, snapped his fingers, and instantly, from the opposite end of The Store, came the Night Managers. They did not spread out and begin walking past racks and displays like they usually did. but marched forward en masse.

King was at the front of the espresso bar now, but he made no effort to move any closer. He stood at its edge, looking at Bill on top of the table. "I

_built_ The Store," he spit out. "I made it! I invented it!"

"You ruined it!" a brave soul in the crowd called out. A kid.

King swiveled, turned, cast a withering glance at the assembled employees.

"I made you!" King said. "I gave you jobs! I made you what you are today!"

He turned his attention back toward Bill, and Bill was frightened, but he heard the anger in the CEO's voice, felt the panic, the desperation. King was dying, he realized. Just like Lamb and Walker and Keyes. And he felt a small twinge of satisfaction at the thought.

King advanced slowly. "I should've killed you when I had the chance, pussy boy. But instead I took you under my wing, trained you, allowed you to be a manager."

"You shouldn't've used my daughter," Bill said, holding his ground.

"That whore!" King roared.

Hatred and anger drove away what was left of the fear. "You have no power here," Bill said coldly. "This is _my_ Store. Get the fuck out."

In front of the espresso bar, the Night Managers were moving forward, passing through the rapidly dispersing crowd. Employees were slinking away, hiding behind racks of clothing, backing up the aisles. Several headed for the doors, making a run for it.

"I will not allow you to do this," King said. "I will not allow you to take The Store away from me."

"You killed my friends. You killed my town."

"It's _my_ Store!"

Bill was thrown back, off the table, against the counter at the rear of the bar, and all of the breath was knocked out of him. King had not touched him, but _something_ had shoved him backward, a force that had not put pressure on any one part of his body but had slammed into all of him equally, an overwhelming wall of unseen energy.

King continued to advance, his decaying face a terrifying mask of rage and hate that Bill knew was only a milder version of the real face beneath it.

Bill sucked in his breath, stood to face King. He wanted to run, but he knew he couldn't, and he -- was thrown back again, the force this time slamming into his chest and midsection, feeling like a cannonball.

"I _am_ The Store!" King cried.

Once more, Bill staggered to his feet. He stood proudly, breathing painfully. "The Store is ours," he said. "And _this_ Store is _mine_!"

He was flattened against the counter this time, pinned in place by unseen energy. Through teary eyes he saw more employees fleeing, saw the Night Managers press forward.

King smiled at him, and the sight was truly terrifying to behold. "How come you didn't get rid of the Night Managers, huh? Why didn't you terminate them?" King looked at him, the smile turning into a snarl. "Because you couldn't! They're not yours, they're The Store's. They're mine."

Bill struggled, strained, broke free of the grip of whatever was holding him. King was standing directly in front of him at this point, and the CEO pushed him back, but there was no accompanying invisible force, no bolt of power. There was only the pressure of King's hands, strong and cold and unnaturally bony.

Bill grabbed one of King's arms, thrust it away.

The CEO looked at Bill, confused.

Bill shoved him.

King did not move back at all, was not thrown even the least bit off balance, and Bill felt only iron immobility against his hand muscles as he shoved, but for the first time, he saw what looked like fear on King's face. It lasted only a second, was preceded and then replaced by anger, but it had been there, however briefly, and even as King threw him to the floor, Bill smiled.

"You have no power here," he said.

In a rage, King whirled around toward the Night Managers gathered behind him. He snapped his fingers, clapped his hands, pointed. "Kill him!" the CEO ordered.

The black-clad managers remained in place, unmoving.

"Kill him!" King screamed.

And the Night Managers turned on him.

Bill scrambled to his feet, backing up against the counter.

King was confused, taken completely by surprise, and he stumbled, falling.

Bill was equally surprised, and he did not know what to say, did not know what to do. His eyes darted toward the converging aisles in front of the espresso bar, and he saw that most of the remaining employees were not running away, not moving forward to watch, but remained in place, waiting to see what happened next.

King was trying to get up, trying to right himself, but the Night Managers had completely surrounded him now, and they were kicking, hitting, punching.

They _were_ The Store's, Bill realized.

They were his.

And they were protecting him.

One of them withdrew from his black garb a knife.

"No!" King cried.

More knives were drawn.

Bill should have been happy. He should have felt good. This was what he'd wanted. This was what he'd been hoping for. But somehow it didn't seem right.

The Night Managers, who were victims of The Store, were also part of The Store.

They had turned against Newman King, but they were using his tactics. They were his creations, his children.

In a sudden wave, the Night Managers moved in, dozens of knives flashing in the dim light. The knives disappeared, reappeared, and they were covered with red. There was the sickening sluicing sound of blood and rent flesh. Between the moving, shifting forms of the Night Managers, Bill saw the body of Newman King jerk once, the head rising, then collapse, unmoving.

A black inky shadow moved upward from the melee, fluttering wildly, dissipating in the air, and the Night Managers, as one, bent and stood, the contingent in the center picking up the limp dead body of Newman King. Holding it aloft, they moved out of the espresso bar and began walking silently down the center aisle of The Store toward the door that led to the basements.

Bill remained flattened against the side of the kitchen counter for several shocked seconds before finally straightening and facing the employees who were left. The looks of disgust and startled confusion that greeted him must have mirrored his own. Sucking in his breath, he strode between the overturned tables and out into the center aisle. He faced the departing Night Managers.

"Stop!" he ordered.

As one, the Night Managers halted.

He ran to catch up with them, other employees following. Near the back of the group, amidst a cadre of unrecognized faces, he saw Ben. Like his brethren, Ben's face was blank, impassive, and dotted with small splatters of blood. But the corners of his mouth appeared to be turned up a fraction, and it seemed as though he was smiling.

Bill looked up at the body of Newman King, then back at the Night Manager who had once been his friend.

"You're fired," he said softly.

Ben collapsed.

There was no transformation, no change in expression or appearance, only an immediate slumping to the floor, as though the Night Manager had been an electric toy and his power cord had just been yanked out of the socket.

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

The Night Managers dropped.

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

There was no place for Night Managers anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

"No, we didn't!"

"I did!"

"I'm fine," Bill said.

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

The Black Tower was collapsing.

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

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

"She's coming home!" Shannon said.

_She's coming home_.

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

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

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

He nodded.

"Do you think Newman King --"

"He's dead."

"What happened?" Shannon asked.

Bill shook his head.

"What?"

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

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

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

"What?" Ginny asked him.

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

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

EPILOGUE

1

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

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

Several dozen animals had done the same.

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

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

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

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

He was well on the way to meeting it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He didn't have much fight left in him.

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

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

He could live with that.

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

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

To remind him.

So he would never forget.

"Where do you think Sam is now?" Ginny's voice was soft.

He rolled over, sat up. "I don't know."

"She said she was going to come back."

A hot flush of shame crept over Bill's face, and he looked away from her, saying nothing.

"You think she's all right?"

"I hope so."

"But do you _think_ so?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

Ginny began sobbing quietly, her shoulders heaving, tears rolling down her cheeks, but only a muffled inhalation of breath escaping from her mouth. He leaned over, pulled her to him; hugged her tightly.

"We'll get through it," he said. "We'll survive."

He was crying, too, suddenly, and she pulled back, looked at him, wiped the tears from his cheeks as he wiped the tears from hers.

"Yes," she said.

And, through the tears, they smiled.

2

They'd been traveling for most of the day, hadn't seen a real town since Juneau, hadn't seen a building since an hour or so after that. Pavement had ended long ago, and though the four-wheel-drive Explorer was having no problem handling the rocks and ruts of the muddy road, Cindy Redmon didn't like being this far away from everything, this far out in the middle of nowhere. She appreciated Ray's desire for a unique honeymoon, and the idea of an idyllic week in the woods had definitely appealed to the romantic within her, but the reality of Alaska was not quite what she'd expected. It was beautiful, yes. As picturesque as the brochures and books had led them to believe. But it was cold as well. And remote. And the farther they went into the woods, the less comfortable she felt with the knowledge that the CB was their only lifeline to civilization.

What if there was an accident?

What if one of them had a heart attack or choked on a piece of salmon?

Ray, seeming to sense her mood, smiled over at her. "Don't worry, hon.

Everything'll be fine."

And then they rounded a curve, and in a small clearing carved out from a stand of monstrous trees, they saw The Market.

They were silent, both of them. It wasn't a particularly impressive place.

It wouldn't have stood out in a real city, in a real state, in a civilized area of the nation. But here, in the backwoods of Alaska, it seemed downright miraculous, and she stared at the small building as Ray slowed the Explorer. It was about the size of a convenience store and was built in the same style, with a flat front and an upward-sloping roof. But there were no windows, only a one door entrance and cinder block wall. Strangest of all was the sign, a brightly lit freestanding rectangle bearing the name of the place in green-on-white letters: THE MARKET.

"The Market," Ray said. "What the hell kind of name is that?"

"Got _your_ attention," she pointed out.

He laughed. "Didn't need a sign to do that. Not way out here." He pulled up in front of the building. "Feels like _Apocalypse Now_ or something, doesn't it? That part where they think they're out in the middle of the jungle and come across that high-tech stage with the USO show?"

He was right. There was some of that surrealism here. But there was something else as well, something she didn't like, something that was beginning to make her feel very uncomfortable.

"Let's go," she said. "Let's get out of here. I don't like this place."

"Let's at least check it out first."

"I don't want to."

"Come on."

"What if there're crazy survivalists in there? Or some psychotic cannibal?

Norman Bates or Jeffrey Dahmer could be hiding in there for all we know."

He laughed. "I'll take that chance." He opened the door, got out of the vehicle. "I'm going in, get me some bait. You want something?"

She shook her head.

"Sure you don't want to come?"

She nodded.

She watched him clomp through the partially hardened mud, open the heavy wooden door, and step inside.

She shouldn't have let him go, she thought. She should have made him keep on driving.

She held her breath and didn't realize that she was gripping the armrest until he emerged from The Market a few minutes later carrying a large grocery sack.

A large grocery sack?

He got into the Explorer and put the sack down between them, looking dazed.

"What is all this?" she asked as he started the vehicle. "What did you buy?" She dug through the sack, drew out a comic book, a box of Cream of Wheat, a pair of socks, a Tom T. Hall cassette. "I thought you were going to pick up some bait."

"Shut up," he said, and there was something in his voice that put her on edge, that made her not want to ask any more. "Let's just get out of here."

He peeled out, bouncing through a half-frozen puddle and over a rocky bump. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, not looking around, not looking at her, not looking back, and the expression on his mouth was grim.

Before they hit the next curve, before the close-growing trees obscured the view behind them completely, she turned around in her seat and squinted through the dusty back window, her eyes focusing on a hint of movement.

The door to the building swung open.

And, in a sight she would never forget, she thought she saw the proprietor of The Market.