“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.