Anything Can Be Dangerous (9 page)

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 whispered, 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
after 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!”