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Synopsis

Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-map desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location. Now everything you could possibly want is under one roof, at unbelievable prices. But you'd better be careful what you wish for. This place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty. At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping.

Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store. But he can't stop his two teenage daughters from taking jobs there and falling under the frightening influence of its sadistic manager. When Bill finally takes a stand, he will get much more than he bargained for...

Excerpt

1

Bill Davis quietly closed the front door of the house behind him as he stepped outside. He walked off the porch and stood for a moment at the head of the drive, doing knee bends and breathing deeply, the air exhaling from his lungs in bursts of visible steam. When he reached the count of fifty, he stopped. Standing straight, he bent to the left, bent to the right, then walked down the drive to the road, where he inhaled and exhaled one last time before beginning his morning jog.

The dirt changed to asphalt at the bottom of the hill, and he ran past Godwin's meadow and turned onto Main.

He liked running at this time of morning. He didn't like the running itself-that was a necessary evil-but he enjoyed being out and about at this hour. The streets were virtually empty. Len Madson was in the donut shop finishing up the morning's baking as the first few customers straggled in, Chris Schneider was loading up the newspaper racks, and here and there individual trucks were heading off to construction sites, but otherwise the town was quiet, the streets clear, and that was the way he liked it.

He ran through downtown Juniper and kept going until he hit the highway. The air was chill but heavy, weighted with the rich scent of moist vegetation, the smell of newly cut grass. He breathed deeply as he jogged. He could see his breath as he ran, and the brisk air felt invigorating, made him glad to be alive.

On the highway, the view opened up, the close-set trees that had been lining the road falling back, making visible the sloping landscape. Ahead, the sun was rising behind broken clouds that floated, unmoving, over the mountains, the clouds silhouetted against the pale sky, black in the center, pink-orange at the edges. In front of the sunrise, a flock of geese was flying south in a morphing V-formation, the shape of the flight pattern varying every few seconds as a different bird moved into the lead and the other members of the flock fell in behind it. Shafts of yellow light slanted downward through the clouds, through the pine branches, highlighting objects and areas unused to attention: a boulder, a gully, a collapsed barn.

This was his favorite part of the jog-the open land between the end of the town proper and the small unincorporated subdivision known as Creekside Acres. The dirt control road on the other side of the Acres that looped back to his street was wider and more forested, but there was something about this mile or so stretch that appealed to him. Here, the tall trees ringed an overgrown meadow that sloped up the side of a low hill. An outcropping of rock on the south side of the meadow stood like some primitive idol, its erosion-carved facade giving it the appearance of something deliberately sculptured.

He slowed down a little, not because he was tired but because he wanted to savor the moment. Glancing to his left, he saw the brightening sunlight captured and amplified by the brilliant yellow aspens that were interspersed among the pines. He shifted his gaze across the highway, to his right, toward the meadow, but something here was different, something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he noticed instantly that there was an element in the meadow that was out of place and did not fit.

The sign had changed.

Yes. That was it. He stopped jogging, breathing heavily. The weatherworn sign announcing "bayless! opening in six months!" that had been posted in the meadow for the past decade was gone, replaced with a new sign, a stark white rectangle with black lettering that sat solidly atop twin supports sunk deep into the ground.

THE STORE IS COMING

FEBRUARY

He stared for a moment at the sign. It had not been here yesterday, and something about the cold precision of the type and the flat declarative promise of the message made him feel a little uneasy-although he wasn't quite sure why. It was stupid, he knew, and ordinarily he was not one to go by hunches or intuition or anything so nonconcrete, but the sign bothered him. It was, he supposed, a reaction to the idea of something-anything-being built here in the meadow, in what he considered his spot. Sure, a Bayless grocery store was supposed to have been built at this location, but ground for the construction had never been broken and the sign had been there for so long that its promise was empty, its words had ceased to have any meaning. The sign had become part of the landscape and was now merely another picturesque relic by the side of the road, like the fallen barn up ahead or the old Blakey gas station that had collapsed into the brush on the highway west of town.

He glanced around, trying to imagine a huge, new building in the middle of the meadow, the grass around it paved over for a parking lot, and it was depressingly easy to conjure up such a picture in his mind. Instead of seeing the glistening sparkle of dew on the grass, he'd see black asphalt and white paint lines stretching before him as he jogged each morning. His view of the hill and the rocks would probably be blocked by the square concrete bulk of the store. The mountains up ahead would be unchanged, but they were only a small part of the beauty of this spot. It was the convergence of everything, the perfect integration of all elements that had made this stretch such a special place for him.

He looked again at the sign. Behind it, between the posts, he saw the body of a dead deer. He had not noticed it before, but the shifting clouds and the rising sun had changed the emphasis of the light, and the brown form was now clearly visible, its distended stomach and unmoving head protruding from the meadow grass. The animal had obviously died recently. Probably during the night. There were no flies anywhere, no sign of decay, no wounds. The death was clean, and that somehow seemed more ominous to him than if it had been shot, or hit by a car, or crippled and attacked by wolves.

How often did animals drop dead of natural causes next to construction announcement signs?

He would have called it an omen, had he believed in omens, but he did not, and he felt stupid for even thinking about it, for even pretending in his mind that there was a causal connection between the two. Taking a deep breath, he resumed jogging, heading down the sloping highway toward the Acres, looking ahead at the mountains.

But he remained troubled.

2

Ginny was already up and had cooked breakfast by the time he returned. Samantha was peacefully eating her Cream of Wheat in front of the television, but Ginny and Shannon were arguing in the kitchen, Shannon insisting that she didn't have to eat breakfast if she didn't want to, that she was old enough to decide for herself whether or not she was hungry, Ginny lecturing her about bulemia and anorexia.

Both of them assaulted him the second he walked into the house.

"Dad!" Shannon said. "Tell Mom that I don't have to eat a big breakfast every single day. We had a huge dinner last night and I'm not even hungry."

"And tell Shannon," Ginny said, "that she's going to end up with an eating disorder if she doesn't stop obsessing over her weight."

He held up his hands. "I'm not stepping into this. This is between you two. I'm taking a shower."

"Dad!"

"You're always chickening out," Ginny said.

"You're not dragging me into this!" He grabbed a towel from the hall closet and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door. He turned on the water, drowning out the noise from the kitchen, then quickly took off his jogging suit and got into the steaming shower.

The hot spray felt good. He closed his eyes and faced into the water, the tiny streams simultaneously hitting his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The water ran down his body, pooling around his feet. Low rainfall in the spring and summer months and low snowfall last winter had led to a reduction in the water table and rationing for the houses in town, but they had their own water from their own well, and he stood there for a long time, luxuriating in the shower, letting the heated liquid caress his tired muscles.

The girls had taken off for school by the time he finished his shower, and he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"I could've used some support," Ginny said as she put the girls' dishes into the dishwasher.

"She's not anorexic, for God's sake."

"But she could be."

"You're overreacting."

"Am I? She skips lunch now. Almost every day. And now she wants to skip breakfast. Dinner's the only meal she eats anymore."

"I don't want to burst your bubble, Gin, but she's chubby."

Ginny looked quickly around, as though Shannon might have surreptitiously returned in order to eavesdrop on their conversation. "Don't let her hear you say that."

"I won't. But it's true. She's obviously eating more than dinner."

"I just don't like the way she's always worrying about the number of meals she eats and the size of her food portions and her weight and her appearance."

"Then stop harping about it. You're the one drawing attention to her. She probably wouldn't be as conscious of it if you weren't focusing on her all the time."

"Bullshit. She'd eat one meal a week if I let her get away with it."

Bill shrugged. "Your call." He checked the pot on the stove. A small dollop of hardened Cream of Wheat lay clumped against one rounded side of the metal cookware. He grimaced.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Ginny said. "Pour in a bit of milk and heat it up."

He shook his head. "I'll just have toast." The open bread sack was still on the counter, and he took out two pieces, popping them in the toaster. "I saw a new sign when I was out jogging. It said The Store was coming-"

"That's right! I forgot to tell you. Charlinda told me about it Friday. Ted's company is bidding on the roofing contract, and she said that he stands to make more from this one project than he did all last year. If he gets it."

"I'm sure a lot of construction workers around here'll be happy."

"I thought you'd be happy, too. You're always complaining about the high prices in town and moaning that we have to drive down to Phoenix in order to find a decent selection of anything."

"I am happy," he told her.

But he was not. Intellectually, he supposed he could appreciate the coming of The Store. It would be a big boost to the local economy and would mean not only a temporary increase in construction jobs, but a permanent expansion of sales and service positions, particularly for teenagers. It would also be good for consumers. It would bring big-city discount prices and a big-city selection of products to their small town.

On a gut level, however, the arrival of The Store did not sit well with him-and not just because it was going to be built on his scenic spot. For no reason that he could rationally justify, he did not want the chain store in Juniper.

He thought of the sign.

Thought of the deer.

"Well, I'm sure local shop owners aren't too thrilled," Ginny said. "The Store'll probably put some of them out of business."

"That's true."

"Just what we need in town. More abandoned buildings."

His toast popped up, and Bill took a butter knife out of the silverware drawer, grabbed a jar of jam from the refrigerator.

"I'd better get ready," Ginny said, walking around him. She went into the bathroom, and he heard her brushing her teeth as he prepared his toast. She emerged a few minutes later, makeup on, purse in hand. "Hi ho, hi ho. It's off to work I go."

"Me, too." He walked over, kissed her.

"Will you be home for lunch?"

He smiled. "I think that's a safe bet."

"Good. Then you can finish the dishes."

"Ah, the joys of telecommuting." He followed her to the front door, kissed her again, then watched through the screen as she walked down the porch steps and across the drive to the car. He waved as she drove away, then closed the door, finished eating his toast, washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and walked through the living room and down the hall to his office.

He sat down at his desk, turning on the PC. As always, he felt a thrill of almost guilty pleasure as the computer booted up, as though he was getting away with something he shouldn't. He swiveled in his chair, looked out the window. This might not be exactly the life he had imagined-but it was pretty damn close. In his mind, the house had been a large, glass-walled, Frank Lloyd Wrightish structure, and he'd been seated at a huge oak desk, looking out a giant window into the forest while classical music wafted into the room from a state-

of-the-art stereo. In reality, he worked out of this cramped back room, the walls of the office little more than an extension of his bulletin board, with magazine articles and Post-It notes affixed to nearly every conceivable space. And he wasn't nearly as cultured in his real life as he was in his fantasies-instead of classical music, he usually listened to classic rock on a portable radio his daughters had discarded.

But everything else was on the mark. The room did indeed have a big window, and that big window did look out onto the forest. And, most importantly, he was doing what he wanted, where he wanted. His reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he had not sold out. He had not given up his dream and settled for a lesser fate, choosing the least offensive alternative. He had stuck to his guns and here he was, a telecommuting technical writer, working for one of the country's largest software firms a thousand miles away from the corporate office, communicating with his superiors by modem and fax.

The computer finished booting up, and he checked his E-mail. There were two messages from the company-reminding him of his deadline, no doubt-and a message from Street McHenry, who owned the electronics store in town. Smiling, he called up Street's message. It was two words long: "Chess tonight?"

Copyright © 1996 by Bentley Little

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