He tried to ignore them but couldn't, thought of walking around them to reach his vehicle but didn't want to show his fear. They were wearing what looked like black raincoats -- long jackets made of shiny jet material that was deeper than the night, darker than the shadows, but somehow reflective of both.
He didn't know why they were wearing raincoats -- it wasn't raining, wasn't even overcast, and their choice of garb seemed not only odd but menacing.
He took a step toward his car.
The figures took a step toward him.
"Hey," he said. "What do you think you're doing?"
There was no response.
No word, no grunt, no chuckle.
Only silence.
"Get out of my fucking way," he ordered.
None of them moved.
He considered going back inside, calling the cops, but he'd have to find his key on the key ring and then unlock the door, and he did not want to let these creatures out of his sight for a second.
_Creatures?_
He noticed for the first time that he could not see the faces of the figures. They looked like indistinct white blurs in the darkness.
_Too white to be human_.
Now he was just being stupid.
The figures started to advance.
"What do you want?" he demanded. He tried to make his voice angry, but it came out frightened.
There was no response. The figures -- nine of them, he saw now -- kept walking silently toward him.
He wanted to run. The silence, the raincoats, the white faces, everything seemed crazy, spooky. But he didn't want them to win, didn't want to give them that satisfaction, and he held his ground, reached in the pocket of his pants for his jacknife.
The figures pulled out weapons.
Knives.
_Fuck it_. He turned, started to run. In the diffused light, the posters in his window looked eerie. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Kurt Cobain. He realized for the first time that all of the musicians in the window were dead men.
He dashed as quickly as he could toward the side of the building. If he could make it around back, there was a deep ditch abutting the trees that wasn't visible in the dark. He could jump it before the rest of them rounded the building and they wouldn't notice it and would fall in and break their fucking necks. If he was lucky.
He was already panting, almost out of breath.
Who the hell were these guys and what the hell did they want from him?
Doane reached the corner of the building just as the figures reached him.
He rounded the curve and was promptly shoved into the wall, the abrasive brick scraping open the skin of his face. A knife sliced into his right side, and he screamed as he fell onto the dirt.
He was still screaming as he looked up into the circle of blurred white faces and dull silver blades that surrounded him.
The figures crouched down, their knives beginning their work, and as the blood began to spurt, he suddenly realized why they were wearing raincoats.
They were going to get wet.
NINETEEN
1
There was an employee meeting a half hour before The Store opened, and Shannon barely made it. She was the last downstairs, the last to arrive, and she saw the look of disapproval Mr. Lamb gave her as, huffing and puffing, she took her place in line.
Still, she felt good. She'd lost three pounds the past five days and had not even aroused her mom's suspicions. She'd decided to take Mr. Lamb's advice, pull the scarf-and-barf routine instead of skipping meals, and it was working like a charm.
If things continued at this pace, she'd reach her desired weight by the end of the month.
All of the employees on duty this morning stood straight, hands clasped behind them, feet spread shoulder-width apart in the official Store stance, as Mr. Lamb informed them that a new outlet was opening in Hawk's Ridge, Wyoming, today. This placed the number of Stores in the United States at three hundred and five. And three hundred and five, he said, was a very powerful and spiritually significant number.
Here in the Juniper store, he told them, there was going to be a one-day sale on baked goods in the Grocery department as well as a weeklong promotion on coolant and antifreeze in the Automotive department.
He finished his talk and then came the part Shannon hated.
The chanting.
Mr. Lamb stood before them, looking from one to the next, all the way down the line, then pointed to May Brown, in the middle. The line parted at that point, May and everyone to the left of her stepping to the opposite side of the concrete room, Mr. Lamb remaining in the center between them.
"Okay," he said. "Repeat after me: My loyalty is to The Store."
"My loyalty is to The Store!"
"Before my family, before my friends, comes The Store."
"Before my family, before my friends, comes The Store!"
Shannon could see her sister standing across from her, on the other side of the room, three people down. Sam was chanting for all she was worth, caught up in the moment like a Holy Roller at a revival meeting, and the sight of her sister getting so caught up in all this made her a little uneasy. Shannon herself did not enjoy chanting, had her parents' disdain for any type of groupthink, and the fact that Sam so obviously responded to this coerced excitement, this forced camaraderie, made her uncomfortable.
They ended with the traditional "Long live The Store!" and then they ascended to the floor in groups of five to prepare for this morning's opening.
It happened just before noon.
They caught her.
In a way, it was a relief. She'd spent every hour that she'd worked on the floor worrying about whether her mom or dad would walk in and see her. It hadn't been so bad when she was in the stockroom or one of the non-public areas, but ever since her first day of work she'd been living with a dread born of certainty that her parents would find out that she'd gotten a job at The Store rather than George's.
Luckily, Sam was with her when it happened. Her sister had walked over to borrow a quarter for the Coke machine in the break room, and Shannon was just starting to dig through her purse for coins when she looked up and saw her parents striding purposefully up the aisle toward her.
All traces of saliva instantly evaporated from her mouth.
Her parents stopped in front of her register. Her dad's lips were flattened into a grim straight line. "You lied to us, Shannon."
She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do. Her parents had never hit her, had seldom even punished her, but she stood in fear of them now, afraid to face them. Why had she done such a stupid thing? What could have possibly possessed her? She stared down at her hands, which were not shaking only because they were pressed flat against the register counter.
"Didn't we talk about this?" her dad said.
She looked up, nodded meekly, dumbly.
He met her eyes, held her gaze. "I want you to quit." He glanced over at her mom, who nodded. "We both want you to quit."
"She doesn't have to," Sam said.
"I say she does."
"Why don't you ask her what _she_ says?"
Shannon stared again at her hands. She didn't want to stop working, but she didn't want to hurt her parents, either, and she could not reconcile the two. It was impossible. This was what it meant to grow up, she supposed, breaking away from your parents.
_Before my family, before my friends, comes The Store_.
"I like working here," she ventured.
This time her mom spoke up. "I don't like it," she said. "It's not a healthy place to work."