Free Jacked by Kirk Dougal Page A

straight in front of his body. After about twenty steps he jammed his fingertips into the counter. Tar let his left hand lead them around the corner and, once they were behind the counter, he put his other hand out and reached for the back wall, trailing his fingers down its length until it disappeared.
    Just then a light played across the front of the store. They dropped behind the counter. Tar was sure the Black Shirts would find them just by following the sound of his pounding heart. But the footsteps trailed past the gate and continued on. Only then did he realize Toby gripped his shirt hard enough to make it cut into his shoulders.
    “Let’s go,” he whispered.
    The boys stayed low and moved into the back hallway. It snaked around to the right and then back to the left.
    “You’re going to have to turn the light on for a second,” whispered Toby. “We don’t know what’s back here. We’ll make a lot of noise if we start banging into stuff.”
    “Okay,” said Tar.
    He flipped on the flashlight. In front of the boys were several rows of empty shelves, two of them tipped over so they formed a loose triangle against the wall. Empty boxes littered the floor.
    “We’re going to have to chance it,” Tar whispered.
    He and Toby moved forward, walking and jumping around the debris as quickly as they could while trying to be quiet. Even so, the occasionally slide of a box or kick of a metal hanger made them wince. Once, when he thought he heard something in the front of the store, Tar signaled with his hand and shut off the flashlight, plunging them back into darkness.
    He had no idea how long they stood there, waiting for the shouts and flashlights sweeping across their faces. But after a while, when no one appeared in the doorway, Tar’s breathing slowed. He turned the flashlight on and they continued to the back of the room. On the far wall was a wide double door.
    “Hurry, Tar,” said Toby. “Open it.”
    Tar could not find a tech box alongside the door. He searched one side while Toby looked at the other. The concrete walls were smooth and Tar was on the verge of panic when his friend laughed.
    “The box must be on the other side.” Toby turned the knob on one of the doors and it swung open with only a little squeak from the hinges. “It’s not locked.”
    They walked into the hallway and pushed the door shut behind them. Tar saw his friend had been correct. Outside the door was a tech box on the wall.
    “That’s not good,” Toby said. “That means the Black Shirts can get back here, too. We gotta move, Tar.”
    They took off down the hall toward the back of the building. But they had to be careful. Shopping carts, piles of skids, and empty wood crates were scattered throughout the concrete cavern. Tar kept the flashlight on and looked at every door sign as they passed. It did not take long for him to realize the doors on the left led to stores while the ones on the right were for the more mundane side of keeping the building running. Several doors to the loading docks made him nervous and they went slowly past these, expecting Black Shirts to leap out and grab them at any moment. Once they turned a corner the doorplates said things like “Mechanical Room 12” or “HVAC.” The boys were halfway down the second hall when the unthinkable happened.
    The lights on the walls winked on.
    Not completely on but, after walking and running for so long in the pitch black with only the flashlight to guide them, the red-and-white emergency lights seemed like small suns to their eyes. Even more frightening, somewhere off in the distance, a door slammed, the echo bouncing down the concrete walls and hitting into them like a punch.
    Tar turned off the flashlight and they ran. Toby took the lead now, his longer legs eating up the distance. Tar no longer took the time to read each door’s sign. He trusted his friend to tell him if they had found the garage.
    But it was no longer just their footsteps in the