by Strand, Jeff
He was more concerned about Wendy than himself, though. She followed him like his shadow, crying out each time one of the malformed workers came within arm’s reach of her—which had become a regular occurrence given the cramped conditions. More than once he’d needed to lift her from the floor after she’d slumped into a corner.
Now he looked up as he deposited a fresh container of salt and pepper packets at the counter, shocked to see a normal-looking gentleman in glasses approach the register. He had a nervous, sheepish way about him that reminded Ron of the acting style of Woody Allen, and he almost screamed at the guy to run and find help.
Then the man smiled a mouth full of razor-pointed teeth. “Do you happen to have any live children?” he asked.
Ron stood frozen. “Fresh out,” he replied, praying it was the first and only time such a request had come in.
The gentleman snapped his fingers. He pushed his glasses up. “I guess I’ll just have a chicken sandwich, then.”
Ron keyed in the order and fled back toward the kitchen—
Where he noticed Wendy had disappeared.
“Wendy!” he shouted. He hurried through the kitchen, pushing past the workers as they went about their chores, but couldn’t find her. He dashed past the freezer. “Fucker!” the thing inside barked—and rushed down the back hall.
He found her in the manager’s office, tucked into the corner beside a plastic potted plant. The small room appeared immaculate, a far cry from when he’d first viewed it. The furniture all looked new now, as did the various office-related supplies and corporate-themed decor. Behind the desk, the picture of the Last Supper gleamed as if just painted.
“It’s my fault,” Wendy wailed when she saw him. “I knew something was wrong when I drove up. The place was fixed! When I first toured it last month, the building was just a burnt out shell. But today… I should’ve said something, anything, but I needed the commission… ”
Her confession deteriorated into a sorrowful moan.
He sat down beside her. Took her hands in his.
“We’ll be all right. We just need to feed the customers and obey the rules.”
“But what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like we’ve skipped the Twilight Zone and gone straight to Hell. All I know is that we’re still alive, and if we can stay that way long enough, we’ll find a way out of here… this place seems to need us.”
“Which is why we’ll never get out,” she said. Despite her tears, the words came out soft and calm, sounding frighteningly like acceptance.
He opened his mouth, not yet sure what he planned to say, only knowing that he had to get her back to work before whatever force controlled this place decided she was slacking.
“Look we—” he started, but stopped when he spotted something lying forgotten under the desk. He let go of Wendy’s hands and crawled over to it.
He picked it up and hope instantly charged his nerves.
“Look at this!” he said. “It’s the ID badge of the previous manager.”
When she didn’t move, he returned to her side, holding the badge forward. He tapped the headshot under the laminate. “Wendy, do you recognize this guy?”
She stared at it for a moment, eyes blank, but then a look of understanding enlivened her features. “Al Tolbec,” she whisp-ered, reading the signature on the badge. “Yes! He’s the owner, the one who tried to burn this place down.”
Ron could see a fresh glint of resolve in her eyes, a growing excitement he felt himself.
“And where is Tolbec now?” he asked knowingly.
“A mental hospital,” she replied. “That’s why the insurance company dropped the arson suit and ownership of the property reverted to the bank, because the courts found him insane!”
“Of course they did!” Ron laughed. “Imagine trying to tell a judge you built a restaurant that caters exclusively to the dead!”
He got up, helping Wendy to her feet. “That’s not the important part, though. What matters is that Tolbec got out. He got out and tried to destroy this place. And if he found a way to escape—”
“So can we!” Wendy finished for him.
Ron nodded.
From the hallway came the background noise of the workers laboring in the kitchen, along with the constant undertone of the feasting creatures in the dining room.
Ron crossed the office and checked the hall, finding it vacant. He eased the door closed, wiping a layer of nervous sweat off his forehead.
“Okay…” he said, pacing back and forth. “For whatever reason this place seems to function on the same principles as an average fast-food business. Maybe we can use that somehow?”
Wendy pondered the problem, chewing her lower lip.
“We seem to be integral to servicing the customers,” Ron thought aloud. “Which would make us employees, I guess… But we can’t just quit and walk out… ”
Suddenly Wendy’s face brightened. “You could fire me!” she said.
“What?”
She stepped around the desk to stand before him. “Listen, the workers—those ghosts, or corpses, or whatever they are—they all listen to you! They came to you to get hired. They act like you run the place! If what you’re saying is true, that makes you the manager. I’m just another employee to them. If you fired me, I’d have to leave!”
Ron mulled it over for a moment, seeing her reasoning, but finally shook his head no.
“I can’t let you risk yourself like that,” he said. “I have a feeling that in this place you don’t get fired; you get terminated.”
Her expression of optimism dissolved into a shudder.
“We have to try something simple,” he said. Then, after a second of contemplation, he grabbed her hand. “Follow me!”
Ron raced out of the office, towing Wendy along with him, heading for the storeroom—
But slid to a halt after only a few feet, stopped by the sight of one of the skeletonized workers in the hall, blocking their path. It leaned against the wall, glaring at them like a back-alley thug.
Ron forced a commanding tone. “Afraid that wall will fall over if you don’t hold it up?”
The thing straightened. Its sneer vanished from its shrink-wrapped head, replaced by a definite look of unease.
“Get your bony ass back to work!” Ron boomed.
To his surprise, the figure spun away and hot-tailed it back to the kitchen.
He looked to Wendy. “Let’s move!”
They hurried to the storeroom, to where three waste barrels sat to the right of the chained doors. Each overflowed with stuffed trash bags.
He hefted a bag in each hand and turned to the doors. He took a deep breath.
“This place is a goddamn disgrace!” he said, voicing his words to the entire room. “Do I have to do everything around here?”
He looked to Wendy. “I’m taking the trash out.”
He knew it was a long-shot, an outright absurdity given the fact new supplies seemed to arrive out of thin air whenever needed, but when he looked back to the door, the padlock fell open.
Wendy gasped.
Ron pulled the chains away, dropping them to the floor. When he depressed the push-bar, he heard the beautiful sound of the latching mechanism release.
He faced Wendy. “Stay here,” he said.
She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. “No—”
“I’ll make sure it’s safe first,” he rushed on. “Obey the rules, remember?”
She held his stare, her eyes wide with fright, but her grip slid away from his arm and she nodded her understanding.
He pushed the door open.
Outside, darkness surrounded the restaurant. Ron hadn’t worn his watch and couldn’t recall seeing any clocks in the building, but he had the distinct feeling that the black air outside wasn’t a result of the passage of time. There was a substance to the abysmal depths that went beyond his full understanding, a presence that seemed to loom in at all sides, and afte
r only several steps out the door, his exposed flesh had gone as cold as the plastic skin of a body bag.
He walked forward, forcing himself to ignore it.
Fifty feet away, a single lamppost stood in the gloom. It spotlighted a grime-splashed dumpster in a yellow cone of light, looking like two props on a vast empty stage.
He saw no stars overhead. No silhouettes of the trees that bordered the parking lot.
Thirty-some feet from the restaurant, he looked to the left, to where he should’ve been able to spot the concrete of the expansive four-lane highway, but again saw only the all-encompassing darkness.
He quickened his pace, finally stepping into the lamp’s circle of light. He glanced up to see its wooden post waver, as if not entirely solid.
He lifted the lid of the dumpster.
A hot breath pushed past his arm when he did, and his mouth fell open as he found himself staring into a massive tooth-lined throat that descended into a hazy orange oblivion of fire.
He stumbled away, shaking.
There was a heart-stopping moment when he felt the trash bags begin to fall from his grasp, and it only came out of the sheer terror of not knowing what might happen if he didn’t finish the task that he found the strength to heave them into the dumpster from a distance.
He turned and started back toward the restaurant at a fast walk.
From here, all he saw of the building was the white rectangle of light that marked the open back door. Wendy’s silhouette stood at the threshold, eagerly awaiting his signal to join him.
He shook his head as he neared, praying she saw it.
Don’t come out! he wanted to scream. Whatever you do, don’t come out here!
He’d closed to within sight of her when he spotted a new employee enter the room behind her.
“Wendy!” he cried, voicing her name far louder than intended. He’d meant to warn her that his plan had failed, that she should stay put, but she must’ve misread the horror on his face and thought he was reacting to the thing approaching behind her.
“Phone call for you, sir,” the worker announced.
She spun to face the man, and when she did Ron had a clear view of the creature.
It was Greg.
Though torn limb from limb just hours ago, the man appeared whole, pieced back together like some horrific jigsaw puzzle. Thick black sutures followed the bloody lines of his wounds like a network of interconnected rivers, crisscrossing the visible parts of his body. He had on the same type of grease-stained apron worn by the kitchen staff—which bowed inward over his stomach, as if covering a huge hole—as well as a creased paper hat.
Wendy ran.
She charged forward without a sound, bolting into the unknown.
Ron lunged for her as she ran past, but only grazed the soft skin of her hand.
“No! Don’t!” he cried.
He turned around to see the darkness flow forward, coming at them like a wave. Wendy froze at the sight of it, watching as it swallowed the dumpster and lamppost, racing toward her.
Ron grabbed her. Pulled her back to the doors.
But then something had her.
Both of them screamed as her feet got yanked out from under her, and Ron swung around to see her legs lift off the ground, immersed up to her knees in the darkness.
“Ron!” she cried.
He held her with one hand, seized the push-bar of the door with the other.
Greg’s corpse watched them indifferently.
“Ron! Oh, God! Help, me!” she screamed.
The darkness consumed her up to the waist, pulling her higher, until Ron was looking up at her as he fought the pull her inside.
Grunting, he held on with all of his might, feeling his muscle fibers stretch to their limit. The veins of his arms stood out like lightning bolts. But he wasn’t only fighting the brute strength of the entity outside, he discovered; he was straining against uncounted hours of sweating over a hot grill, handling food drenched in oil.
Skin slid over skin.
First he had her whole hand.
Then just her palm.
Then only her fingers.
He looked into her face as he felt her nails reach the edge of his grip, knowing that in the next second he’d lose her. With tears slipping from his eyes, he tried the only thing left that might save her.
“Wendy!” he shouted.
The terrified girl looked down, meeting his eyes.
“You’re fired!” he yelled.
Her screams cut off, replaced by stunned silence.
“Effective immediately,” he added. “Get off the property!”
She held his stare even as the darkness seeped over her face.
And then she was gone, pulled out of his hands.
The doors flew shut. Ron collapsed to his knees.
He sat on the floor in the aftermath of his actions, doubling over as a flood of emotions washed over him. “Oh, Christ,” he cried. “What’ve I done?”
Behind him, the thing that was once his friend repeated its message. “Phone for you, sir.”
Ron faced it, finding no hint of compassion.
He pushed to his feet, wiping tears from his face. “Where?” he asked. “There’s no phone in the office?”
“Up front, sir.”
He pushed past the thing, striding down the hall, trying not to dwell on the fact he’d just lost his last tether to the rational world.
Please, God, let her have made it out…
He didn’t look at the swarm of customers as he rounded the corner. Instead, he focused on the black rotary-dial phone mounted beside the notorious sign that outlined the restaurant’s enigmatic rules.
He snatched up the handset, expecting some disgusting slurping noise or something requesting an order of flame-broiled afterbirths.
“Hello?”
“Finally!” Diane’s voice spoke from the receiver. “You’ve had me worried sick for hours!”
Ron’s heart convulsed at the sound of his wife’s words. He almost dropped the handset as his whole body went weak. “Diane!”
“What’s going on up there? I thought you’d be back by now. Do you know how long it took to track down this number—?”
“Diane, listen,” he cut in, unable to suppress his desperate tone. “I need help! Call the police, or—”
Ron fell silent as he saw a fresh batch of customers enter the restaurant. It was the first time he’d seen the doors open since setting foot inside, and his eyes boggled at the warm yellow sunlight glowing outside.
Where he spotted a van sitting in the parking lot.
Cartoon letters announced “We Deliver!” across the vehicle’s side.
Ron licked his lips, thinking fast. Four feet away, a decomposing cashier turned from his register to face him.
“Place an order!” Ron whispered into the phone.
“An order?” his wife echoed. “But I thought—”
“I know, I know,” Ron said. “Just do it. Whatever you want! Please!”
“You know I don’t like the kids eating that stuff.”
“Please!” Ron nearly screamed.
“All right…” his wife answered. “Just bring home some hamburgers, I guess. But no pop! You know how Eric reacts to sugar.”
“Four hamburgers to go!” Ron called to the kitchen, almost laughing. “Right away, ma’am! Thank you for ordering! I love you!”
“Are you sure you’re—”
Ron hung up the phone.
“Let’s go!” he shouted. “I got a VIP order to deliver, pronto!”
He moved through the kitchen, spurring the workers faster, simultaneously searching for keys. Miraculously, he found a set on a pegboard not far from the phone.
“Are we ready?” he called.
Four burgers were passed to the front, boxed for delivery.
He placed the keys on top of the stack, scooped them into his arms.
And turned around to meet the cadaverous face of a young man sporting a mouth
ful of worms. A glossy tag pinned to his shirt identified him as a “Deliveryman.”
“I’ll get that for you, sir,” he said, taking the boxes.
And before Ron could react, the thing was walking away, vanishing into the throng of inhuman customers.
Ron stared after him, numb. He spun to reach for the phone, but now the wall showed no sign of ever having had one installed.
Thoughts clashed in his mind, from the question of whether or not Wendy had returned to the real world and was even now trying to find help, to the idea that a reanimated corpse was driving cross-country with four boxes of god-knew-what, bound for his family.
In the end, he pushed those mind-shattering contemplations aside.
He’d wait, bide his time. But he had to remain sane.
At the counter, he slipped on an apron, faced the masses waiting to order, and stepped up to a register.
He cleared his throat.
“Next.”