by Strand, Jeff
Now he opened his mouth to do just that when something banged deeper in the building.
They all jumped.
“What the hell?” Greg asked.
Then it came again, the noise of something crashing in the dining room.
“That sounded like the door,” Ron said.
He edged past Greg and Wendy, striding down the hall, to the front of the restaurant—
Where a man stood before one of the registers as if waiting to place an order.
All three of them jerked to a stop at the surprise.
The newcomer stood glaring at them from under a whirlwind of white hair, his eyes locked on them like gun sights. He wore a brown stain-splotched trench coat that looked as though it had seen a lifetime of squatting in abandon houses and sleeping under bridges. Although Ron had just laid eyes on him, the deep scowl of anger on the stranger’s face told him they were in for trouble. Across the room, the restaurant doors were closed.
“Food,” the derelict demanded.
Greg smirked. “Does this place look open to you, pal?”
The man hefted a double-bladed ax into view as his answer. It had been concealed by the counter, but now he brought it up fast, swinging it over his head and slamming it down into the register. The huge blade cleaved the machine in two. Sparks jumped into the air.
Greg flinched so hard he collapsed backwards on his ass.
“Food!” the crazed customer shouted. “Give me a burger!”
Ron stepped forward, shaking with adrenaline. The ax-wielder spotted him and readied another swing.
“We’ll get it right away,” he said, the words coming out of his mouth on autopilot. “How would you like that prepared, sir?”
It seemed surreal given the insane situation, letting his managerial instincts take over, hearing his voice adopt the familiar apologetic tone an angry customer always wants to hear, but amazingly it worked. The maniac relaxed, releasing his grip on the ax to scratch the stubble of his chin.
“Rare, I reckon,” he said in an almost-normal voice. “With, ah… fries and a sody-pop.”
Ron forced a smile. “Rare burger with fries and a drink. That’ll be just one moment, sir.” He backed up as he spoke, urging the others to follow. Greg shuffled rearward on the floor.
“No goddamn onions, though!” the man roared after them.
“Hold the onions!” Ron repeated.
They retreated to the back of the building, all moving in reverse to keep and eye on the entry to the hallway. Ron expected the madman to come rushing after them at any second, but they reached the storeroom unmolested.
“Jesus!” Greg gasped. Sweat glistened on his brow. “What the fuck was that about?”
Ron didn’t bother speculating on an answer. Instead, he charged to the storeroom’s rear wall, heaving aside a hill of empty boxes and other useless scrap. There, hidden behind the heap, he uncovered the set of loading doors he’d been hoping he would find.
To his dismay, a padlocked chain secured the push-bars to the frame.
“Wendy, do you have a key for this?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
The girl shook her head. “Just the code for the one up front.”
“Shit!” Greg cried.
Ron dug into his pockets. Found his cell phone. “Look for something we can use as weapons!” he said, then glanced to the empty hallway, wondering how long they had before their disgruntled guest came to file a complaint.
He looked to the phone, but it didn’t even light up.
“My phone’s dead,” he said. “Anyone else—”
“In the car,” Wendy replied.
Greg shook his head.
Ron held back the avalanche of obscenities that almost rolled off his tongue and sat down on a stack of milk crates to mentally scrutinize his options.
No phone. No windows. And no key to the only door. Which leaves trying to get past the psychotic hobo with the ax.
Just then, he spotted several boxes of press-paper dinnerware and plastic utensils on the other side of the room.
Back on his feet, he crossed the floor and grabbed a package of paper cups, tearing it open.
“What are you doing?” Greg asked.
“I’m getting him his drink.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Would you prefer he come back here and look for it, where we don’t have any way to escape?”
The idea seemed to sink in, and the man sagged into silence.
Ron cracked open a container of plastic lids for the cups. “Look, you saw how he eased off when I said we’d feed him, right? So let’s keep it up. We’ll pretend to fill his order, and when we go back up front, we can try getting out the drive-thru window.”
“I don’t think I’ll fit!” Greg replied. “Jesus, man, you can’t leave me!”
“We’ll help Wendy out, then. She can go for help, and I’ll stay here with you… unless either of you have a better idea?”
They made a quick detour through the kitchen, rummaging through the equipment for whatever they could use. In the far corner, Ron discovered a ten-inch butcher knife in a plastic crate beside the wash-station. All three of them stared at it, seeing its horrible potential, but said nothing as Ron slipped it into his belt and covered it with his shirt.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He led them toward the registers, finding the wild-eyed derelict exactly where they’d left him—
But now there were six more people lined up behind him.
Ron’s stride faltered when he saw them, and Wendy and Greg almost ran into his back.
He saw a slack-jawed boy in tattered overalls holding a shotgun.
A grossly overweight woman sucking a pacifier.
A blindfolded girl with a badly bruised neck—
Greg gave him a shove, prodding him onward.
“Just one minute folks,” he mumbled, and then they were at the end of the counter, where they slipped into the drive-thru station alcove and mercifully out of sight of the patrons.
“What hell is going on?” Greg asked.
“Did you see their faces?” Wendy whispered. “My, God, did you see them?”
Ron nodded. He looked down and realized he’d crushed the paper cup into a wad. Now he tossed it away and moved to the window, sliding it aside. He stepped back and kicked out the plywood board covering the frame.
Static suddenly hissed out of the nearby intercom.
Ron jumped at the sound of it, facing the small metal box as an unearthly voice issued from the speaker. “… ausage … muffin… an… two sma… ingers wit… side… f brai… s.”
Ron gaped at it. Beside him, Greg pushed past him and stuck his face to the glass.
“There’s a car!” he cried. “Hey! Help us! We’re trapped in here!”
Ron heard the growl of an engine. A cough of exhaust.
A second later the car pulled parallel with the takeout area––it looked like a fusion of a hearse and a 1950’s Buick—and the driver’s window rolled down, revealing nothing but a solid, impenetrable darkness.
“Get us out of here!” Greg pleaded.
But before he could say another word, a hand extended out of the void inside the car, a green sore-speckle thing that stretched impossibly long, bridging the gap between the vehicle and the building to reach through the takeout window and grab Greg’s shirt.
“Get off me!” he bellowed.
Both Ron and Wendy seized his arms, yanking him free to the sound of tearing fabric.
The arm withdrew, taking a scrap of cloth with it.
“Fuck this!” Greg screamed.
Ron’s grip on him had loosened as he watched the elongated appendage vanish back into the inky darkness of the car, and the other man broke free, twisting away, running for the front.
“Greg!” Wendy cried.
Her voice snapped Ron back to attention, and he bolted after his friend, rounding the corner in time to see Greg vault the counter, half-leaping, half-falling off
the other side.
Where now over thirty customers shuffled about the main room, falling into lines before each of the registers!
Ron watched with paralytic wonder as they turned on Greg in unison.
Before the man even managed to regain his balance, the customers tackled him to the ground, dropping over him like bloodthirsty monsters in a zombie film. Ron stepped forward, about to lunge after him, but several of the closest patrons turned on him, each holding something sharp.
He froze in place behind the counter, covering his mouth as he heard what sounded like ripping carpet arise from beneath the pile.
Followed by a piercing scream.
He watched the things tear and gnash and snarl, and finally spun away when he saw the creatures begin passing around severed limbs and handfuls of dripping crimson gore. Fresh blood drooled from their mouths.
Wendy shrieked the entire time, crying out so powerfully that Ron’s ears rang with each new exhalation. Without looking to the feasting masses, he clutched her to his chest and guided her to the kitchen.
“Oh, God!” she sobbed. “They’re crazy! They’re going to kill us! What do we do?”
Ron peered through one of the heat lamp stations, looking at the motley collection of customers now churning shoulder-to-shoulder in the dining room. Those who hadn’t attacked Greg clustered at the counter, no longer content to stand in orderly lines. They pressed forward, leaning over the edge, searching the cashier area.
A wrinkled old man crawling with bugs jabbed a pitchfork at a register. A one-armed lady whose eyes glared through a net of bandages threw a rock at the menu. Behind her, a pair of suit-clad young men wrestled over a dead rat.
But none of them followed us, he thought. Why not?
“Because customers aren’t allowed behind the counter,” he whispered to himself.
Wendy’s sobbing slowed. She gazed at him as though a third eye had opened on his forehead. Ron met her eyes, thinking of the green hand that had tried to seize Greg, stretching out to reach him like something from a nightmare. He sensed a revelation teetering at the edge of his understanding.
“We have to get cooking,” he said. “Before they eat us, too.”
A small smile ticked at the corner of the girl’s mouth, like a seam about to come undone.
“Cook…” she echoed in a tone of disbelief. “For them?”
Ron nodded, eyeing the sign over her shoulder, the one Greg had spotted earlier.
Feed the Customer… Obey the Rules!
He looked to the crowd once again, his gaze drifting over a dozen ghastly sights: a man with no eyes; a woman half-enshrouded by mold; a pale sexless figure covered in ants.
They were something else, he realized, something super-natural, and he and Greg and Wendy had somehow become trapped here, held specifically for their servitude.
But Greg had broken the rules…
Wendy was already shaking her head, fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “You’re crazy!”
Before he could explain himself, a chair from the seating area smashed against the opposite side of the wall, shattering two of the heat lamps, pelting them with hot glass. He looked up and saw the crowd massing before the registers like rioters lined up against a barricade. A hundred voices hollered, “Food!”
“Trust me,” he said, hauling Wendy to her feet. “We need to feed them! Start looking for anything we can use!”
Together they attacked the kitchen, clawing open cabinets, searching shelves, rummaging through the detritus scattered throughout the room. Ron had no idea what eatables they could possibly find—if any—but as they searched the building, they discovered hidden caches of all imaginable ingredients: buns, condiments, spices, vegetables, canned fillings, pre-made mixes that declared: Just add water!
Ron went to the walk-in freezer, certain that there couldn’t be anything salvageable inside—not with that horrid smell seeping from the door—but when he looked, he found row after row of plastic-wrapped hamburger patties waiting for the grill. The temperature inside the freezer easily rivaled that of the kitchen, and though Ron knew the patties had to be rancid, he snatched up a bag in each hand and called for Wendy to come help him.
Something growled.
The sound made him jerk with fear, dropping the bags of hamburger as he drew the butcher knife from his belt.
Wendy ran to his side, reaching him in time to witness a cloudy white eyeball pop open on the gigantic pile of reeking meat heaped against the freezer’s far wall.
Her scream ripped across his eardrums at the very moment a lopsided mouth tore a hole in the huge mound of ground beef staring back at them. The meat-pile yawned as they looked on, displaying teeth made from broken bones and disgorging a huge bovine organ that must’ve been its tongue. Five smaller eyes surfaced at various points around the first one.
The thing’s attention focused on the knife in Ron’s hand. Its eyes narrowed.
A second later it coughed up a watery stream of red-brown liquid that struck Ron dead-center in the chest, soaking his shirt and hair, spraying in all directions.
He slammed the door and threw the locking pin in place, looking at Wendy, meat juice dripping off his face. Her mascara traced the paths of her tears down both cheeks.
“Co… come on,” he said, picking up the bags of patties. “We need to hurry.”
At the stove, he fired up the burners, switched on the deep fryer. Overhead, the malfunctioning lights had ceased flickering and now glowed bright and steady. Readout LEDs flashed to life on almost all the other appliances.
They completed sixty orders at an average rate of four minutes per meal, a miracle time born of high-pressure stress and good ol’ fashion terror. The customers came, ordered, and paid whatever they felt like paying. Currencies from around the world disappeared into the cash drawers, along with shells and stones, bones and teeth. At one point, a skinny girl with blue-grey skin dressed only in fishnet stockings and a frayed leather dog collar offered Ron a “freebee” in exchange for her chocolate milkshake, to which he politely replied, “It’s on the house.”
Wendy refused to follow him to the counter, opting instead to watch the grill while he dealt with the horde of unearthly customers up front.
“We’re out of hamburger patties,” she said when he rushed to change the baskets in the deep fryer. She cast a furtive glance at where they’d stacked a dozen canisters of soft drink mix in front of the freezer door.
Ron sighed. “There’s something that looks like meat hanging in the janitor’s closet… I’ll go cut some slabs off that in a minute.”
He reloaded the fryers and returned to the registers, delivering a tray of fish sticks. Ahead of him, a sea of pale-skinned patrons waited their turn at the counter.
A teenage girl dripping mud and seaweed stepped forward.
“How…” he began, then had to stop, trying to work up saliva. He wiped sweat off his face. “How may I…”
But he pivoted away without finishing, leaning against the ice cream machine, which currently churned a mixture of vanilla soft-server and black sludge.
“Screw this!” he cried. “I can’t. I can’t do it anymore––”
“Hello, sir,” a voice said at his back.
Ron flinched and spun around, recoiling at the sight of a tall gaunt figure dressed in a paper hat and apron. Behind it stood a trio of men with wads of bloody gauze taped over their eyes.
“We’re here about the jobs,” the tall one said. He handed Ron a quartet of papers labeled ‘Application for Employment.’
Ron blinked, stammering a string of unintelligible sounds before finally saying the one thing that seemed the most appropriate. “You’re hired.”
“Thank you, sir,” the emaciated creature answered. It immediately took up a position near the deep fryer, causing Wendy to scream when she saw it coming. The thing reached into the bubbling oil with its bare hands, transferring the cooked food to the proper containers. The other men each manned a register, two up
front and one at the drive-thru alcove.
Wendy hurried to Ron’s side. “What…” she started, but then trailed off, perhaps knowing he’d have no rational answer for her question.
The hours passed. Customers continued to arrive, flooding the dining room far beyond what would normally be acceptable by state safety regulations—yet the restaurant managed to accommodate them. More employees showed up, as well. They no longer approached Ron, acting out the formalities of regular job applicants as the first few had, but just turned up and went to work.
The rhythm of the restaurant filled the air. Pots clanking, registers buzzing, voices calling out the orders. From the dining room came the constant slavering sounds of snapping teeth and chewing jaws while the patrons devoured meal after meal after meal.
And they were getting stranger, too. As were their orders.
Ron glimpsed a walking jumpsuit with a mass of purple vines sprouting from the neckline; a mound of black fur whose hidden claws clicked against the tile; a skinless beast that reminded him of the malevolent mound of sentient beef in the freezer.
He avoided the front line as much as possible now, busying himself by stocking mundane supplies that mysteriously showed up in the storeroom: plastic forks; paper cups; napkins; straws. Occasionally he’d come across a box labeled ‘Dried Monkey Heads’ or an economy-size can of ‘Powdered Semen’, but at least those items were contained and out of sight. It was when he’d encounter a worker delivering some hideous tray of ingredients to the kitchen that he felt his stomach somersault inside him. Twice he’d vomited on the floor, not having time to find the restroom. The first time a dutiful employee appeared with a mop and bucket; the second time they brought a carryout bag.