“Just glad there’s none of those things here,” Jilly said.
“I heard they found one over by Walmart,” a girl named Wendy told them.
“I didn’t hear that,” Jilly said.
“Neither did I,” Noreen agreed. “Who told you?”
“A friend,” Wendy said, her tone a bit meeker than before.
“Was it on the radio?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
The mood darkened as they spent several minutes guessing at what might be inside. Finally, they decided to hop into Noreen’s Honda Civic and make sure there was nothing weird going on at Walmart.
Martina, being Noreen’s best friend from high school, was assigned the front passenger seat, while the three other girls crammed into the back, but Walmart was a bust.
No police. No bright lights. No shipping container.
They ended up going to Carl’s Jr., taking the same booth they’d often used back in their high school days, and sharing several bags of fries while they continued to speculate on the purpose of the boxes.
Finally, with a promise of getting together at least one more time before the holidays were over, Noreen took them back to their cars. Martina’s was last.
“Really is good to see you,” Noreen told her.
“Yeah. Same here.”
Noreen tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.
“You all right?” Martina asked.
“I’m just a little, uh, freaked out,” Noreen said.
“About what? School?”
“School’s okay for the most part. It’s just…” She looked up, a tear running down the side of her nose. “It’s just this stuff today on the news. What the hell could be going on?”
“I don’t know,” Martina said. Though she’d been acting otherwise, it was kind of freaking her out, too. “It’s probably nothing.”
Noreen looked at her. “You think?”
“Sure.”
“Then what is it?”
Martina put on her most comforting smile. “Nothing we need to worry about.”
A few minutes later, they hugged goodbye, and both girls headed home.
In the strictest sense, Martina was right. She and Noreen didn’t need to worry about the boxes. Their immunity ensured that.
But there would have been little comfort in that knowledge.
With only two days left until Christmas, retailers had been anticipating that this would be one of the busiest shopping days of the season. The majority of customers on this day was also expected to be men. Typically, they were the ones who waited until the last minute, then rushed in and scooped up whatever they could find, no matter the cost. Savvy store managers made sure there were several items front and center specifically meant to catch the male eye.
Daniel Wheaton was such a manager, and he was in charge of one of the Marker’s department stores. Marker’s wasn’t a large chain, only five locations throughout the UK, and it certainly wasn’t high end, but it did fill a nice niche in the middle, and generated more than enough business to keep its doors open year after year.
During the Christmas season, Daniel all but lived at the store — going over receipts, making sure customers were being helped, checking inventory, and, in the words of most of the employees, doing anything he could to get in their way.
The one thing Marker’s did not have was an electronics department. This made “catching the male eyes” a bit more difficult, but not impossible. It also meant that when the first news about the shipping containers appeared not long before closing the previous evening, no one in the store had any clue what was going on. Once the day’s receipts had been tallied and the special last-minute displays were in place, it was nearly midnight, so Daniel took the tube home and went straight to bed.
That morning, his alarm woke him at five a.m. He was showered and on his way to the store before six.
The first sign that something was up came when he played the phone message for the automated office line and learned that two employees were not coming in. This was nothing more than an annoyance. He left messages on both of the affected managers’ phones, asking them to call in whoever was next on their list. Once that was done, he promptly forgot about it.
In the next hour, though, six more employees left similar messages, and he began to wonder if there was some sort of mass sickout happening, maybe a coordinated effort to get more pay or something along those lines. But he thought someone would have approached him first before taking this kind of drastic action. He was so concerned about this possibility, it didn’t even register with him that none of the employees had actually said anything about being sick, just that they wouldn’t be coming in today.
Disturbed, he walked out of his office to see if any of the support staff had heard anything, and found only empty desks. Out helping the other employees get ready, he thought, trying not to jump to conclusions. After all, it was almost nine o’clock, nearly time to open.
He sauntered out onto the main floor, and was greeted by dead silence.
“Hello?” he called out.
The office was right outside women’s wear. There should have been half a dozen employees making sure everything was in order, but the department was empty.
“Hello? Where is everyone?”
He walked briskly out into the main aisle, and did a quick circuit of the other departments. He was the only one there.
His jaw tensed. Definitely some kind of protest, he thought.
This was going to be a disaster. Being closed two days before Christmas would be something that would affect them for months. He might even get fired.
He stormed back to the office, and put in a call to Edgar Keller, Vice President of Operations at Marker’s headquarters. Instead of someone answering, the night system picked up. He punched buttons until he reached Keller’s line. After the third ring, he was sent to voice mail.
Confused, he said, “Mr. Keller, this is Daniel Wheaton at London store number two. I seem to have a situation here. I have a feeling there must be an employee protest in the works. It’s five minutes until we’re supposed to open and no one has shown up. I was wondering if someone might have contacted you. Please call me back.”
He hung up, and waited for a couple of minutes. When his phone didn’t ring, he pulled out Keller’s business card from his desk. On it was a mobile phone number, to be used only in the direst of emergencies. Losing a whole day’s receipts, especially this close to Christmas, seemed pretty dire to Daniel.
He dialed the number. It, too, rang three times. He was afraid he’d be shuffled off to voice mail again, but then the line clicked.
“Edgar Keller.”
“Mr. Keller, it’s Daniel Wheaton.”
“Wheaton?”
“London store number two, sir.”
“Oh, right. Why are you calling me?”
Keller had always been a very busy man, but his tone was particularly brusque this morning.
“Sir, I seem to have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“We’re supposed to open…” He looked at this watch. It had just clicked over to nine o’clock. “Well, now. But none of my employees have shown up.”
“And you find that surprising?”
Keller obviously did not, which made Daniel think there was some sort of labor action underway. This was a relief. “What should I do?”
“I don’t care what you do. Me, I’m staying with my family until we know what’s going on. You might want to do that, too.”
Staying with his family?
“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”
When Keller said nothing more, Daniel realized his boss had hung up. He stared at the receiver, feeling very much like he was missing something. Finally, he put it down, and walked back out into the store to see if anyone had shown up. It was as empty as it had been before.