“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.