Free Take the All-Mart! by J. I. Greco Page B

squinting.
    Trip nodded. “That beer-slinging jailbait, yeah. It’d be wrong to say the whole tattered dust bunny thing is totally doing it for me, wouldn’t it?”
    “Way better look than the Lederhosen,” Rudy said, swallowing, “but yeah, very wrong.”
    The dayshift workers were escorting Brenda towards the break area now. She was trembling, wild eyed and panting.
    “Morty,” one of them said, “she says she needs to speak you.”
    “Catch your breath, child.” Sorta-King Morty took her hand and led her to the couch. “You all get back to work,” he told the dayshift workers. “And somebody go get Stan, tell him his girl needs him.”
    Brenda plopped down into the couch, shivering. “Fuck that, get me a drink.”
    Sorta-King Morty nodded at Shemp to do as she asked, then turned back to Brenda. “What happened?”
    “It was the All-Mart,” Brenda said, grabbing her knees and hugging them close to her chest. “They were praying to it and all of a sudden it just... grabbed them.”
    “What do you mean ‘grabbed them’?” Sorta-King Morty asked.
    “Grabbed them,” Brenda chocked out, blankly staring past him. “These huge arms of smoke came out and it pulled everyone inside.”
    “Everyone?”
    Brenda nodded. “Everyone... all of them... even...” Brenda managed to bring herself to look directly at Sorta-King Morty. “Her too. She yelled at me to run and get help, right before she got swallowed up. I ran, took her bike. — I left them all there... I left her there... I’m so sorry.”
    Sorta-King Morty stammered, sagged down onto the couch next to Brenda.
    Shemp returned with a jug of beer. He handed it to Brenda, helped her take a sip. “You did the right thing, Brenda,” he said.
    “I should have stayed,” Brenda said, taking another sip. “Fought it... somehow...”
    “You couldn’t have,” Shemp said to her, then turned to Morty. The Sorta-King’s cloudy eye was staring at nothing, the other one at the ceiling.
    Shemp snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Morty, you okay?”
    “We have to save her!” Morty blurted, sitting up. “Them. All of them. Sound the alarm! We’re going into the All-Mart to rescue my daughter!”
    Nobody moved for the longest moment. Shemp’s fellow nightshift workers were suddenly staring at their boot tops.
    “Umm...” Shemp said sheepishly.
    Sorta-King Morty’s head snapped around. “What?”
    “We’re beer makers, Morty. Not soldiers.” Shemp lifted his P-90. “Hell, these things aren’t even loaded.”
    “They’re not?” Trip blurted, then in a whisper: “Vishnu’s herniated septum. Rudy?”
    “On it.” Rudy flinched his right wrist rapidly three times, popping the miniature circular saw implant out from under the concealed hold-out skin flap on his right forearm. It immediately spun up to speed with a high-pitched buzz, cutting through his twine and tape binding from the inside.
    “You’re cowards!” Sorta-King Morty spat at Shemp. “All of you.”
    “It’s the All-Mart, Morty,” Shemp said. “Nobody ever comes back out. It’d be suicide, and I’ve got kids. We all do.”
    “So do I.” Sorta-King Morty’s whole body sagging. Brenda offered him the jug of beer. He took it, cradled it. “And that thing has her.”
    “I know,” Shemp said. “But besides her, all the sisters are from other towns. Nobody’s going to be willing to risk it. Sorry.”
    “We have to do something...” Sorta-King Morty took a long, comforting slug from the jug, then stared into it, his face contorting with resolution. “I’ll rescue Roxanne myself!” He bolted to his feet, unsteadily, and promptly fell over, face down and out cold on the floor at Trip’s feet.
    “Roxanne?” Trip said, snapping his fingers. “Oh — that’s where I know him.”
    “What?” Rudy asked, his hands free now and stepping behind Trip to start in on his bindings with the tiny buzzing blade.
    “Nothing — my clever plan worked, is all,” Trip