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.