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 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.