New York City
Seniority had its perks, and working aisle nine was one of them. Fred (Freda) Byrd was on the short side—five feet two—and most of the stuff in the baby-food aisle was light and easy to pack. The baby-food jars almost went together like Lego pieces, and the diapers were fluffy and big and acted like padding for the breakable goods when Fred had to put overstock back on the storage pallet. Win-win-win. Plus, Fred got to look at pictures of smiling babies all night long, which wasn’t bad for her mood now that both of her chicks had left the nest. There were worse ways to get out of the house. Greg’s back had finally forced him to quit driving his fuel truck, and Fred guessed she loved him, but having him around all the time after twenty-eight years getting used to having time to herself was seriously getting on her nerves.
As a general rule, Fred took her time facing up the aisle. Wayne Lehardy wasn’t too bad as stock-crew bosses went—he and Fred had worked together at the old store on Oceanside ten years before—but Wayne would still make Fred’s life miserable if he thought he could get more work out of her. But tonight, Fred was pushing it a little so that she could go help the new girl out over on the canned-vegetable aisle.
Robin Hanks was cute, and Randy Prutko had been finishing up on aisle five early so that he could go “help her out.” It wasn’t any of Fred’s business, not really, but Robin wasn’t some pretty little thing shaking her rear end to get the dumbass males to do her work for her—Fred had seen a few of those in her time. Robin was quiet and a hard worker. The girl was working a night job because it went along with her waitressing hours and her community college classes, and she didn’t want any part of any Randy Prutko, but Robin didn’t know how to handle him.
Fred didn’t really know how to handle Randy Prutko either, but Fred wasn’t a cute young girl, and she could at least put herself between them. There was something wrong about that shitheel. It wasn’t just that Randy was big and knew it, wearing tight T-shirts that showed off his arms even if they made his stomach stick out like a basketball. It was something hiding in the back of those flat, shiny eyes. Something growling in the back of his throat when Randy talked about how nobody could make any money working for somebody else, or complained about stuck-up college bitches. Wayne made the stock crew take breaks together—he said it was to help them be a team, but they all knew it was so he could make sure nobody took too much time off—so Fred got to hear plenty of Randy Prutko’s views on life.
Fred got to watch Randy sit too close to Robin, too. Got to watch him make little comments that were supposed to be funny, speculating on what a wild party girl Robin probably was off the clock, or asking the girl fake-friendly questions that any fool could see she didn’t want to answer. Nothing too out of line, but enough to bring out Fred’s maternal instincts.
“I don’t mean you. You ain’t one of them stuck-up college bitches, Robin,” Randy had said two nights before, while Wayne was taking a bathroom break. His voice had been so sugary, it made Fred feel like her teeth were getting drilled at the dentist’s office. All of the other men on the night crew had shifted in their chairs a little uncomfortably, but none of them wanted any trouble. They just wanted to do their jobs and get home.
“Yeah, she is.” Fred had stepped in before Robin had to respond. “So take your sorry ass somewhere else.”
The rest of the guys had laughed at that, and Randy’d had to pretend to laugh with them because he couldn’t punch Fred, and any other reaction would have cost him his job or some serious respect. But he’d shot Fred a brooding look, and Robin had given her a grateful one, and now Fred was in some stupid race trying to straighten up the baby jars so she could get over to Robin’s aisle before Randy could toss up those dog food bags.
Fred was almost ready to start wheeling her last pallet jack back to the storage area when the lights began flickering, and then the store went completely dark. “JUST WAIT FOR THE EMERGENCY LIGHTS,” Wayne called out calmly from aisle ten. “THEY’LL BE ON IN A SECOND.”
But that second went, and it took a few other seconds with it on the way out. August Vaughn said something over in the frozen-food section that made Fred hope there weren’t any customers in the store. Fred was fifty-five years old, so she didn’t already have her cell phone in her hand, but when it finally occurred to her to use the device as a light source, the screen wouldn’t light up. Fred kept tapping it dumbly. Why would a blackout affect her phone’s batter … oh, hell. Fred was from a generation that grew up half-expecting to die in a nuclear war at any minute, and she remembered something about how pulses from nuclear bombs would wipe out all the electricity.
As soon as Fred had that thought, a dozen more crowded through her head, too many to fit through the door all at once. What would she do if this was for real? Should she try to get home to her basement? Should she load up her car with canned goods and water? Would her car work? Was this some kind of Korean or Russian attack? A terrorist thing? Why wasn’t she freaking out more? Where were Tyler and Savannah right now? How was she going to get in touch with her kids if the phones weren’t working?
An animal sound derailed that last train of thought, a scream that echoed loudly off the walls and ceiling as if the dark grocery store were the size of a private bathroom. Fred had never heard any noise like it before. The growl had a human’s messed-upness rumbling around in something that didn’t sound like a human’s chest. Too full of itself and hating it to be an animal. Too loud to be anything else. Maybe it was only because Fred had just been thinking about him, but an image of Randy Prutko’s creepy eyes flashed through her head, followed by a thought that shook her so hard that it seemed like knowledge from some distant memory. A memory Fred hadn’t known she’d had until that very second. That sound was Randy Prutko. That sound was Randy’s creepy insides turned inside out.
Even though that was crazy.
There was another loud sound, a huge crash followed by another and then another, glass shattering and metal clattering and people yelling, and then packages of diapers were cascading all around Fred, cushioning her as the heavy weight of a store shelf pushed her farther down to the ground. Fred wasn’t sure how long it went on. She grabbed a huge pack of diapers and curled herself around it on the floor like she was hugging a teddy bear, closing her eyes even though it was dark. She stayed still long after the floor stopped shaking and scattered voices started yelling.
Pretty soon, there was a faint orange light. Fred forced her head up through a bunch of diaper packs and hit her head against something metal. She didn’t have a very clear view, but she could see Wayne Lehardy’s legs and the glow from one of those yard torches that were supposed to keep insects away. The long line of shelves on Fred’s aisle had been knocked over, the ones on her left catching on her pallet jack and tilting it over before halting. It left a slanting tunnel about three feet high, mostly filled with spilled baby goods.
“Wayne!” Fred yelled, and it was as if her voice was a signal. The store was filled with another scream that was loud and human and also not human in a way that just wasn’t natural. Like a human scream but bigger. There was the sound of metal clanking, and then Fred saw a black-armored leg come down into her field of view. Something lashed out and cut Wayne Lehardy almost in half; he folded in a spray of blood and exposed bone and … and Fred threw up. No gagging, just spewing. Fred was a spray can, and someone had pushed down on the top of her head. At the end of the aisle, a big black armored hand reached down and grabbed the torch that was still lit, lying in the middle of a small spreading pool of igniting citronella oil.
It was crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Fred’s mind shut off while that thought kept coming back and getting stuck. But when the thing picked up the torch and lumbered off, Fred knew where it was going. To the canned-vegetable aisle. Robin’s aisle.