A hand fell on his shoulder, gripping him tightly.
He dropped his camera, startled, and turned to see one of the Night Managers.
Grinning at him.
They'd known he was here all along.
They'd been playing with him.
No, he thought. Not playing. The Night Managers of The Store did not play.
The others surrounded him, their trips up and down aisles all ending at precisely the spot where he was standing.
'I can explain . . .' he began. He trailed off, expecting to hear a 'Shut up,' or a 'There's nothing to explain,' or some other such order, but there was nothing, no noise, only silence, only those grinning white faces surrounding him, and it was the absence of noise that scared him more than anything else.
He tried to break away, tried to run.
The grip on his shoulder kept him from moving.
'Help!' he screamed at the top of his lungs. 'Help!'
A cold white hand clamped around his mouth. Over the white knuckles that covered half his face, he saw the other Night Managers all withdrawing knives from somewhere on their persons. Long, shiny knives with sharp, straight edges.
He tried to squirm away, tried to kick, tried to lash out, but he realized that all of his limbs were now being held, and then he was lifted into the air and then he was dropped flat on his back on the floor.
Something snapped in his spine, and suddenly he couldn't move, and the hand was still over his mouth as the knives began carefully entering his flesh, cutting his skin.
He prayed for unconsciousness from the depths of his screaming agonized mind, and when he finally felt himself slipping away, he was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, grateful that the end had come.
But it was not the end. He regained consciousness sometime later, in a dark room in one of the basements, and he learned that it was nowhere near the end. It was only the beginning.
2
From the first, there seemed something wrong with the deal. Night Managers or not, there was no reason for Ben to sneak into The Store and spend the night.
It was not necessary for the article and, as far as Street was concerned, it was unnecessarily dangerous.
He told this to Ben. Several times on the way over. But Ben was in his Woodward-and-Bernstein mode and nothing could dissuade him from what he perceived to be his higher calling, his mission to uncover The Truth.
Ben told him to hit the road after leaving him in the men's room, to get out of there, and The Store director who caught him coming out of the bathroom had been a pretty good impetus to do exactly that, but he couldn't simply abandon his friend, and he left The Store lot and parked along the edge of the highway instead, waiting.
He waited for nearly an hour, but then the lights in the parking lot went out, and when they turned on again a few seconds later, they were pointing not down at the parking lot but out toward him, trained on his truck like searchlights, and he quickly turned on the ignition, put the truck into gear, and took off.
_Maybe they'd gotten Ben_.
He didn't want to think about it.
Arriving home, he was still shaken. He picked up his phone, tried to dial Bill, but the line was dead, no dial tone even, and he immediately turned on his PC to check whether it was the phone or the line.
His monitor brightened into existence, but the screen, instead of displaying his usual menu, showed row after row of the same sentence, the same four words, moving up from the bottom of the screen and disappearing at the top:
THE STORE IS COMING
He closed his eyes, hoping this was just some sort of hallucination, a panic attack, but when he opened his eyes and looked at his monitor the words were still there, scrolling faster than ever:
THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS COMING THE STORE IS
COMING
Suddenly the scrolling stopped. The last appearance of the sentence remained at the top of the screen, followed, halfway down, by two new words:
FOR YOU
They knew! They'd captured Ben and now they were after him! His thoughts were racing a mile a minute, his mind filled with conflicting options and contingency plans, but his body was listening to some rational, logical section of his brain, and even as he tried to figure out what to do, he was turning off the PC, unplugging it, rolling up the cables and power cords.
He had to escape, he had to leave, he had to get out of Juniper.
After that, he could figure out what action to take.
He picked up his PC and, struggling mightily, ran with it out to the truck.
3
Street was gone.
Bill had wanted to meet with him and hash out what they could piece together about Ben's disappearance, but the shop was closed, and when he arrived at Street's house, the truck was not there, the front door was open, and his friend was nowhere in sight.
And Ben's car was in the driveway.
He walked slowly through the empty house. There was no sign of a struggle, no indication that anyone had broken in, and it was Bill's gut feeling that Street had simply panicked and fled.
But why?
Because he'd seen what had happened to Ben?
He walked into Street's bedroom. This was Juniper and not New York, so even though the door to the house was wide-open, nothing had been stolen or vandalized, but in a way that made it seem even more disturbing. He moved on to the guest room. Ben's disappearance, like most of the others recently, seemed to him a legitimate missing person case. But Street's truck was gone, and that said to him that Street had taken off on his own. Someone may have been after him, but he'd hightailed it out of here before they could catch him.
It was still strange that Street hadn't made even a token effort to get in touch, though. That was the only thing that worried him. Of course, he hadn't bothered to take his clothes or personal belongings, either, so maybe he simply hadn't had time.
_Maybe they'd captured him and taken him away in his own truck._
He didn't want to think about that.
Not yet.
He walked into Street's den, and the first thing he noticed was that the computer was gone. And the modem.
That made Bill feel better. Those were Street's priorities. He might not have had time to pack clothes or family photos, but he'd taken his computer.
Bill stared at the empty space on the desk for a moment, then turned around, walked out of the house, and headed over to the police station to file a missing persons report.
'Do you think we'll ever find out what happened to them?' Ginny asked quietly.
Bill shook his head, closing his eyes against the headache that had kicked the asses of four aspirin tablets and had been with him all afternoon.
'What about the police?' she said.
'What about them?'
'Aren't they supposed to be investigating this?'
He nodded. '_Supposed_ to be. And I'm sure they're going through the motions, filing all the paperwork, dotting every _i_ and crossing every _t_.
But, let's face it -- they're working for The Store.'
'Can't we go above their heads? Talk to . . . I don't know, the FBI or something?'
