They ran, scattering, and King laughed. 'I love to do that,' he confided.
'You can do it, too. Try it sometime.'
He would, Bill thought. And he'd enjoy it, too.
Especially when it came to Mr. Lamb.
King turned back to the door, opened it, and they walked up a flight of stairs until they were in the manager's office. There was a huge desk, a refrigerator, a computer, a wall-mounted video screen. The entire south wall was a window made out of mirrored one-way glass that looked over the store below.
Cool air from a hidden vent blew into the room, keeping the air temperature even more comfortable than that of the rest of the building. 'Like it?' King asked.
Bill nodded.
'Excellent! Want to sit in your chair?'
Bill shook his head. He'd gone through this in the simulation, but it was different being here in real life, and he didn't yet feel comfortable. It would take him some time to get used to all of this.
'After the tour, then.' King walked around the desk, pressed a key on the computer. A section of the wall opposite the window slid open, revealing an elevator. King grinned. 'Pretty neat, huh?' He walked over to the elevator, got in. 'Come on.'
Reluctantly, Bill followed him into the small cubicle.
King pressed a button labeled NM. 'The rest of you wait here,' he said.
'We'll be back.'
The doors closed. The elevator dropped. Bill looked over at Newman King, then immediately looked away, not wanting to see that face this close. He smelled chalk, dust.
'They don't teach you this part in the training,' King said. 'I like to do this myself.'
'What is it?'
King smiled. 'You'll see.'
The elevator continued descending -- how far down were they going? -- and the CEO stared up at the lighted numbers above the sliding doors. He was still smiling, practically bouncing on his heels with amused excitement.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
They were in what looked like an enormous lunchroom, a white-walled, white-floored, white-ceilinged rectangular chamber filled with parallel rows of long white tables. At the far end was a silver counter and a darkened kitchen.
There were fluorescent lights in the ceiling, but only about half of them were turned on, and the huge room was filled with a dim, diffused illumination.
Seated at the center tables, unmoving, was a group of men dressed all in black.
The Night Managers.
There were forty or fifty of them, maybe more. Cups of coffee sat on the tables before them, but the cups remained untouched, and the Night Managers sat with their hands folded, unmoving. Even in the dim light, their faces looked white, and there was no expression on them. The room was completely silent, the only sounds coming from King and himself.
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.'
