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.
