"I don't care!"
"Come on. Let me drive you home."
"I don't want to go home."
The bartender walked over, confiscated his bottle and glass. "Your friend's driving you home. You've had enough."
Ben nodded docilely, got off his stool, almost fell, then, concentrating hard, walked toward the door. Bill followed him, ready to offer support if necessary. He didn't feel entirely clearheaded himself, but he wasn't drunk, and he led Ben over to the Jeep, buckled him in, and drove him home, making sure that he was safely inside the trailer before driving off.
The movie they'd been watching had long since ended, and Ginny had turned off the lights in the front of the house and was in the bedroom riding the exercise bike. She told him to get ready for bed, but he wasn't tired and he said that he had some work to do.
He walked back to his office, sat down in front of his PC, and accessed Freelink. He thought for a moment, then called up a global bulletin board and typed in the heading: "The Store." In the space reserved for message text, he typed: "Is there anyone else out there who's had problems with the discount retail chain The Store?" He gave no name but left his E-mail address, then went out to the kitchen, heated up some old coffee, and sat back down.
He already had five messages waiting.
His heart began to race. He'd gotten the coffee because he thought it might help him stay awake, but now he didn't even need the caffeine, and he pushed the coffee cup aside and called up his E-mail.
The first message was from someone calling himself Big Bob, and it described efforts to get a simple refund for a sprinkler as a cross between _1984_ and _Catch-22_. The second message was from an anonymous Hispanic woman who claimed that The Store discriminated against minorities and that not only had The Store refused to hire her, but it had banned her from shopping there.
The reason she could not give her name or the name of her town, she explained, was because she had filed suit against The Store and she had reason to believe that her phone lines were tapped, that The Store was listening in on her phone conversations and reading what she wrote online.
A chill passed through Bill as he read the woman's story. Under other circumstances, he'd probably consider her tale the unfounded allegations of a raving paranoid. But he believed every word she wrote, and he found himself wondering if _his_ phone lines were tapped, if The Store's security people were listening in on his conversations, reading his online messages. He looked around the room. His office seemed suddenly darker, filled with shadows, and he wished he'd turned on both lights instead of just the little desk lamp.
He called up the third message. This one was from a journalist, Keith Beck, who said that in his town The Store had not only economically decimated the area by killing off local businesses but had instigated feuds among local residents. The Store was a disruptive influence, Beck said, and was completely changing the character of the town. He added that The Store had constructed its building on an environmentally sensitive parcel of land, not waiting for the conclusion of an environmental impact report, buying the cooperation of elected officials.
It was Juniper's story exactly. Bill couldn't believe his good fortune.
This was what he'd been looking for, and he wished that Ben was here to read this with him. He printed out a hard copy, then sent Beck a message directly, typing out a description of The Store's doings in Juniper. He left out the weird stuff -- the deaths and disappearances -- but he described the arson at Richardson's store, and he explained the problems he'd run into trying to extricate his daughters from The Store's clutches. He also told Beck about what had happened to Ben.
After sending off the message, he printed copies of the rest of the mail in his in box, now up to eight messages. All were horror stories of dealings with The Store that had led to business failures or firings or lawsuits or other sorts of personal hardship.
Bill printed the last message, then checked his in box again. Sure enough, Beck had already sent a reply.
He eagerly called it up. The journalist expressed sympathy for Juniper's problems, said he understood what was going on, but he was not particularly encouraging about efforts to combat The Store.
"We tried," he wrote, "in our own little way, to fight The Store, but we were defeated. The outcome of our battle was a foregone conclusion. The Store is a powerful enemy."
Bill sent another message. "Any suggestions?" he typed.
The reply, when it arrived, was short and to the point: "Local, county, and state governments do not have the financial resources to fight The Store.
The federal government _should_ get involved, but interstate commerce regulations have been defanged over the past two decades and allocating resources to go after a major employer is not politically feasible in these antigovernment, pro-business times. You're on your own."
_You're on your own_.
The words jumped out at him, resonating in his brain. Beck had apparently tried going through the proper channels in his fight against The Store and had exhausted those possibilities, coming up a loser.
What was left? Using The Store's own tactics? Arson? Terrorism?
Bill stared for a moment at the screen. The journalist was obviously burnt-out and discouraged, but maybe there were other people out there, in other communities, with different backgrounds, who had ideas and suggestions.
He decided to try again, taking a different tack, posting another message on the bulletin board. "I am looking for information concerning activities and practices of the discount retail chain The Store," he typed. "Specifically, I am looking for ways to prevent The Store from completely taking over the town of Juniper, Arizona. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know."
He posted the message, the screen went blank for several seconds, then a one-line statement appeared: "This communication has been deleted."
What? He frowned. How could the message have been deleted? That made no sense.
He typed the words again, tried to post them on the bulletin board, and once more the statement "This communication has been deleted" appeared on his screen.
He thought of the Hispanic woman's claim that The Store was eavesdropping on her computer conversations, and he quickly fired off a note to Keith Beck, asking the journalist if anything like this had ever happened to him.
A new message appeared onscreen: "This communication cannot be transmitted. It is in violation of Paragraph 4 of your Freelink online service agreement."
Online service agreement?
He searched through the shelf above his desk until he found the box containing the diskettes and instruction book for Freelink. He took out the book, opened it, and before he could even find Paragraph 4, saw on the inside of the front cover, in tiny letters, words he had never noticed but that now sent a chill through his heart.
He immediately turned off his PC.
Mouth dry, heart pounding, he reread the notice inside the book's front cover: "Freelink is a subsidiary of The Store, Inc."
In his dream The Store was alive and sentient, walking around with giant brick legs, leaning over as it walked, looking behind other buildings, looking behind hills.
Looking for him.
2
There was a board meeting on Tuesday afternoon at five, and though Ginny usually attended meetings only during salary negotiations, word had come down that the district was going to be in dire financial straits next school year again -- and that layoffs were being considered.
Bill had been cloistered all day in his office, working, and she popped her head in and told him that he and the girls were on their own for dinner, she was going to the meeting. He nodded absently, and she wasn't sure he'd understood what she said, but she assumed he'd figure it out when his stomach started to growl, and she grabbed her keys from the bedroom and yelled an unanswered "Good-bye!"