"You know, eventually you get used to the noise when you stand under it long enough."
I looked through the iron fence that separated the incoming door from the outgoing door. Sam, the man checking receipts, had been chummy from the moment I'd arrived. He was nice enough, though I hadn't seen his face with our backs turned towards our respective doors, but it was nice to have another voice to drown out the repetitive drone of the overhead speaker.
"Thank you for shopping at Walton's World, please place all personal belongings on the conveyor to be scanned, this includes backpacks, purses, and children under three."
"I feel like I'm going to be hearing this voice in my sleep., " I said as I stood, arms crossed beside the sliding doors. I don't consider myself an intimidating person, back home I was considered short at only six feet tall, and on the weaker side since I usually needed a friend with me to pull trucks out of snow banks, but ever since moving out of Minnesota I'd noticed that people looked at me the way I tended to look at bears that wandered into our yard; with disinterested amusement, but with the understanding that I might need to shoot it.
As such, persuading people not to come in had been a breeze, crossing my arms and making eye contact was usually enough to drain the social batteries of most suburbanites, and the rain was doing the rest of my job for me.
"So how long have you worked here?" I asked through the fence.
"Oh, about four months, I just needed a second job to help make ends meet."
"Oh, so what else do you do?"
"I teach math."
"Oh cool, my sister's an elementary teacher, where do you teach?"
"I'm an adjunct professor at the local college." He said "Not so many classes over the summer, so I usually pick up whatever work I can get."
I glanced back over my shoulder and suddenly noticed the grey hairs at the edge of Sam's hairline, which I also noticed was thinner than I had expected.
"Oh," I said to myself as I returned to staring into the parking lot. I noticed someone approaching and did my best to look intimidating as two men in lab coats stepped out of the rain and towards the sliding doors.
"Good evening, sirs," I said, "We're closing if you wouldn't mind coming back tomorrow..."
"Oh, they're fine," Sam said, turning for the first time and showing the age on his face. "Evening Dr. Wells, Dr. Prendick."
"Evening Sam." One of the two men said as they walked through the door.
"Anything interesting on the docket tonight?" Sam asked.
"Behavior analysis and demographic studies, the usual." One of the doctors said as they continued into the store.
"Who are they?" I asked as the two men disappeared from earshot.
"Oh, the American Association of Retail Science, it's a think tank headquartered down the road. You know how you hear about those studies about how chewing gum makes you smarter and drinking certain brands of coffee can ward off erectile dysfunction? That's those guys."
"So they just make up stuff about products to help sell it?" I asked.
"No, they do demographic research and studies on shopper behavior. A lot of how Walton's World is designed comes from their research."
"Thank you for shopping at Walton's World, recent Supreme Court rulings have been interpreted to mean that these checks are not a violation of your Fifth Amendment rights. Thank you for your cooperation."
"I see," I said, returning my gaze to the parking lot. I remembered what Paul had said about the doors closing at 11 and was suddenly worried about how close I was to the shutters. I glanced around for a clock, but couldn't see one anywhere, and Allison's comments about the designers of Las Vegas Casinos came to mind. I'd taken everything she'd said with a grain of salt, but the longer I was here, the more I started to worry that maybe she wasn't just fucking with me.
"Hey," I said, leaning back against the fence, "You know Allison?"
Sam finished checking another shopper's receipt, then leaned back against the fence.
"Yeah, I was surprised to see her here as well."
"Wait, what?" I replied.
"Well, she always did so well at school, and then one day she stopped showing up, then she was here when I started."
"She was a student at the college?"
"You aren't?"
I was about to try and explain when I saw a figure moving out in the parking lot. She was thin, gaunt, and seemed unsteady on her feet. Her blonde hair was cut into an inverted bob, and she wore a purse large enough to fit a well-loved dog or middlingly tolerated infant. She wore a white tank top under a blue windbreaker which I vaguely remember having been in fashion around the same time I was busy being born. I crossed my arms and stared at her, but she met my gaze and advanced. It was like I was beam-locked with the villain, and they were starting to overpower me.
"Good evening, ma'am," I said, stepping politely but firmly into her path. She stared at me and slightly cocked her head.
"Are you open?" she said in a willowy voice.
"I, uhm..."
While the walls of the store lacked clocks, and on second inspection, fire evacuation signs, there were plenty of cameras, including one pointed directly at me. I remembered from my training, that I hadn't been paid for, that lying about hours of operations was a fireable offense, as well as chronic lateness in clocking in, clocking out, and returning from the strictly monitored bathroom breaks.
"Uhm, yes, we're open." I said "Although the store will be closing in..." I glanced around, desperate for a timepiece.
"Three minutes," Sam whispered from behind the fence.
"Yes, three minutes and the cash registers can't be opened after 11."
"Oh." The woman said, "Well, I just need one thing." she said, shakily holding up a single finger which trembled in the thick, humid air."
"Oh, um, well, like I said, the registers will be closed soon, and you can't get from here to the registers in three minutes."
I know, I thought because it'd taken me six minutes to make that trip in reverse.
"Are you the manager?" she asked, slowly and methodically.
"Uhm, no, I'm not."
"I'd like to speak to the manager."
She spoke like an assassin with their hand on their hidden blade, ready to strike. I gulped and glanced back into the void of consumerism that was the massive showroom floor. Paul was likely at the refrigeration section in the western end of the store, and the entrance was on the northeast corner. Dragging him over would take too long, and walking with her to the east end seemed to defeat the purpose of him being here.
"I can get you a manager!" Sam said from behind the fence. He reached over and grabbed the phone that sat beside the doorframe.
"Chester Arthur to the main entrance please, Chester Arthur to the entrance."
I bit back a smile, he was technically management, and was also, conveniently, not my direct supervisor.
Convenience of convenience, he happened to be close by.
"Sam, I'm standing twenty feet from you, you don't need to get on the PA to call me over."
"Well, you know how corporate gets when employees yell in the store., " Sam said.
"Yeah, yeah," Arthur said as he stepped into view on the opposite side of the fence from me and the woman.
"Sorry ma'am, we're conducting repairs, but they'll be done in the morning if you want to come back then."
"Manager?" The woman said, looking through the fence towards Arthur, she spoke each syllable separately.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm the manager, and I..."
A shriek pierced my ears and made my eyes water as the woman spun on her heels and slammed into the iron fence. She screamed and reached her arm through, grabbing onto Arthurs's cheap polo shirt and dragging him towards the fence. He screamed as Sam grabbed hold of him and tried to pull him back. The woman's jaw unhinged itself and dangled from her mouth as she screamed into Arthur's horrified, screaming face, flecks of spittle sprinkled across his glasses as he tried to push back against the fence.
"Everyone out!" Sam screamed to the few stunned customers who hadn't already left. I realized that at some point I'd fallen onto my back, a spectator, watching events unfold.
The entryway was suddenly bathed in a red glow, and a warning chime sounded. Over the screams of the woman and Arthur, a similar woman's voice played an automatic message.
"Thank you for shopping at Walton's World, the time is now 10:59 PM, and the doors will be closing in 60 seconds. Please vacate the vicinity of the doorway now. Walton's World would like to remind you that staying within the boundaries of the store after 11 is considered criminal trespassing while being crushed by an automatic door would be considered a case of civil liability, our lawyers would like us to ask you if you consider the risk worth it. Doors will close on 30, 29, 28..."
"Peterson!" Arthur screamed, "Do something!"
"The door!" Sam screamed, "Get her out the door!"
I snapped out of my stupor and scrambled to my feet. My first thought was to grab her, but I feared what she might do to me if her attention was drawn away from the fence. Looking around, I could see a fire extinguisher beside the door. I ran past the screaming woman, pulled the fire extinguisher from its mounting and thought back to Boy Scouts. PASS, Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep, which was the process for using a fire extinguisher against a fire, but maybe the same principles applied to using it to distract a horrible she-beast.
I pulled the pin, held up the nozzle, and screamed with all my might as I gripped the butterfly valve and pulled.
A cough of white dust flitted through the air beneath the extinguisher, and a glance at the inspection tag told me that, unless George W. Bush was still the president of the United States, the extinguisher was past its useful shelf life.
I decided to come up with my acronym, BEAM, Bludgeon the woman with the extinguisher, Extract her from the fence. Assist her in getting out the door, Maybe consider applying to a different job.
I swung the extinguisher over my head to get some momentum going and stepped forward. I swung the extinguisher with all my might and brought it down on the woman's head. She released her grip on Arthur who went tumbling back onto Sam. I let out a happy and unmanly squeal of joy which became a squeal of terror when the woman, instead of collapsing to the floor, turned to face me, jaw lagging as she turned.
"7, 6, 5..."
I turned towards the door, I realized that while having her on the outside of the door was the ideal scenario, being on the opposite side of the door from her was technically the minimum condition for success, to me at least. Sure, it might mean dooming everyone in this building to a horrible and unknowable fate at the hands of a bloodthirsty monster, and even worse, it meant going back on the job hunt, but I'd be safe, and maybe that was enough.
I grabbed the extinguisher and dove for the door.
"2, 1."
I landed just shy of the door as the woman lunged for me. I took the extinguisher and slammed its base onto the hazard line, marked yellow and black save for the occasional stubborn red stain.
"Thank you for shopping at Walton's World, don't let the door hit you on your way out!"
The shutter dropped. The metallic clanging of the unrolling metal created a deafening roar that descended like the blade of a poorly maintained guillotine. The heavy bar at the bottom struck the top of the extinguisher, crushing the pressure gauge, and unblocking whatever had caused it to malfunction seconds ago. Like a homemade submarine built by credulous men with more money than sense, The cheap aluminum cylinder imploded in on itself, blasting its contents over me and my attacker.
The she-beast let go as a cloud of chemical dust filled the air. I covered my eyes and rolled away towards the electronics department. The beast shrieked and ran from the entryway, the sound fading as she went.
I stood up and looked around, blinking the powder from my running eyes.
"Peterson!" Arthur said, "Peterson, are you there!"
"I'm okay!" I choked through the dust "And my name is Patterson!"
"Peterson you son of a bitch!" Arthur swore, "Employees aren't allowed to use fire extinguishers without express, written permission from corporate, we're taking that out of your next check!"
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