'Yeah, well, that's my job.' He took both their arms and pulled them to their feet. 'Come on, kiddos, let's hit the road.'
They headed out, Ginny driving this time. The sun was setting by the time they reached Payson, and night had fallen before they hit Show Low. As usual, the girls were fast asleep in the backseat. Bill was dozing as well, his head slumped against the glass of the passenger window.
Ginny enjoyed the time to herself. There was something comforting about being surrounded by her family and at the same time being able to be alone with her thoughts. The highway was empty and had been since they left Show Low, and the scenery, so awe-inspiring in the daytime, was hidden completely by the black cover of night, only a narrow section of the road ahead illuminated by the car's bright headlights. Here and there, off to the side, the lights of individual cabins and ranches could be seen, lone beacons in the darkness of the landscape.
She was driving through the flat stretch of forest just before the long rise into Juniper when she noticed for the first time that they were not alone on the highway. In the rearview mirror, several miles behind, she could see the powerful headlight beams of an extraordinarily large vehicle, traveling fast, gaining quickly. Her heart rate immediately accelerated, and her first instinct was to wake up Bill, but she forced herself to remain calm and just continue driving. It was only a truck. Speeding. Not exactly a rare occurrence on an Arizona highway. But still, her initial reaction was one of fear and panic, and she understood how people living off by themselves, away from others, became jittery and frightened, ended up seeing UFOs and believing in widespread government conspiracies. There was something unnerving about contact in the wilderness, about the incongruity of seeing something where you hadn't expected to see it. Even on the highway.
Ginny glanced down at the speedometer. She was going five miles over the speed limit, but the truck was gaining on her quickly, cutting the distance between them. She thought of _Duel_, checked in her rearview mirror. The mirror was tilted up for night driving, but still the headlights behind her seemed impossibly bright, almost painfully so, and she saw as the lights grew closer that there was not just one set of lights, not just one truck.
Then the first truck passed her.
It was black, pure black, both the cab and the van matching perfectly the surrounding darkness, even the windows of the cab tinted. A shiver passed through her, and she clutched the steering wheel tightly as the enormous vehicle cut in front of her and sped down the highway into the night, only its red taillights visible.
The next truck passed.
And still the brightness continued behind her.
Again, she thought of waking Bill, but something kept her from it, and she slowed the car and pulled slightly to the right as, one by one, ten speeding trucks passed illegally over the double yellow line.
On the back door of the last truck, as it pulled in front of her, her headlights illuminated two words, shiny black against flat black: THE STORE.
Their car was once again alone on the highway, and she exhaled deeply, realizing that she'd been holding her breath. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing unusual about the caravan, that the trucks were merely bringing merchandise to The Store, that she was just succumbing to Bill's paranoia.
She almost made herself believe it.
SEVEN
1
The entire town turned out for The Store's grand opening. Though it was a weekday, it was as if the town had declared a holiday. Several businesses were closed, construction had been suspended on more than one house, and it looked to Bill as though a lot of people had called in sick to work.
He drove slowly up and down the rows of the parking lot, looking for an open space.
'Just park out by the highway and we'll walk,' Ginny said. 'You're wasting your time. You're not going to find any spots.'
'Yeah, Dad,' Shannon echoed. 'We're going to be the last ones in there.'
'The Store's not going anywhere,' he told them. 'It'll be here all day.'
Nevertheless, he drove to the far end of the lot and into one of two adjacent open parking spaces facing the highway. Samantha and Shannon immediately opened their doors, got out of the car, and hurried toward the flag festooned building. 'Later!' Shannon called.
'Don't leave without telling us!' Ginny called after them. She smiled at Bill as she got out of the car. 'Exciting day.'
'Yeah,' he said.
He pushed down the lock button on the car door, slammed it shut, and turned toward The Store. He'd started jogging along the highway again during the past month. He seemed to have been cured of his physical aversion to the construction site, and he'd begun running past the area each morning, curious about the progress of The Store and unable to stay away. He found himself watching the stages of development with a sort of morbid fascination, the same sort he'd felt toward a decomposing dog he and his friends had discovered in a vacant lot near their junior high school. He was disgusted by what he saw but powerless to look away.
Even in _his_ mind, though, The Store was already a part of the town. An unwelcome part, but a part nevertheless. It was difficult for him to remember exactly where the hill had been, what the outcropping of rock looked like. He could see only The Store now.
He wondered if someone somewhere had a photograph of the meadow the way it used to be.
Probably not.
The thought depressed him.
'Come on,' Ginny said. 'You can't put it off any longer.' She moved around her side of the car, took his hand, and together the two of them walked up the row of parked vehicles to The Store.
The day was warm, unusually so for early spring, but the temperature cooled considerably as they stepped into the shadow of the building. Bill looked up as they approached. The structure was massive. He'd known it was big, but it had been impossible to get a true sense of scale from the highway.
Here, however, in front of the building, walking up to it, Bill was daunted by its sheer size. The Store's facade was the length of a football field and nearly three stories high. There were no windows, only several sets of tinted glass doors in the otherwise uniform tan of the giant block building. It looked like a high school gymnasium on steroids. Or a bunker for a race of giants.
Customers and curious browsers streamed from the parking lot, over the bordering sidewalk, through the automatic doors, and he and Ginny joined the crowd.
They walked into The Store.
Inside, the building was not intimidating at all. Rather, it was modern, friendly, and welcoming. The temperature was comfortable, the barely perceptible Muzak pleasant rather than cloying, and the silently circulating air smelled of cocoa and coffee and candy. The high white ceiling was lined with long wide light bars that clearly illuminated the entire store with a cheerful brightness that made the natural sunlight outside seem pale and faded in comparison, and the white tile floor gleamed between endless shelves fully stocked with an amazing array of products.
An old man Bill had seen around town but didn't know smiled at them, welcomed them to The Store, and offered them a shopping cart, which Ginny took.
They walked forward slowly, looking around. A double row of cash register stations were lined up to their left, parallel to the exit doors. Already there were people pushing shopping carts through the checkout lines, taking out checkbooks and credit cards, requesting paper bags instead of plastic from the smiling, clean-cut clerks.
It was hard to believe that such an obviously well-stocked, state-of-the art store would choose to build in Juniper. It was even harder to believe that such a store could make money. It seemed out of place here, incongruous, like a whale in a goldfish tank, and Bill had a tough time understanding why a large corporation like The Store would place an enormous retail outlet in a town this small. The local residents were, for the most part, poor, with little or no discretionary income, and even if The Store paid only minimum wage, the overhead for a place like this had to be at least double the most optimistic sales projections.
He didn't see how The Store could make a profit in Juniper.
'Hey, stranger.'
He glanced over to see Ben, notebook in hand, camera slung over his shoulder.
The editor nodded to Ginny. 'Hey, Gin.'
She smiled. 'Front page news, huh?'
