"Harley killed the other one. By the way, what is he...some kind of redneck ninja or something?"

"Huh?"

"No, nevermind that," she shook her head as if irritated with herself. "The point is it's down, and you should be able to do this without getting caught. Just duck into the men's room and go to the last stall. Climb up through the ceiling there and you should be able to go right over the wall into Big Earl's office. Got it?"

"Yeah," he shrugged without enthusiasm. "Okay."

"Deke, you have to do this. If you don't...we're all dead. Stacey, too."

"I know," he set his jaw. "I know. I'll do it. I'm just trying to figure out how this could suck any worse than it does."

"You could be on fire," she suggested as she gripped the doorknob to the employee's entrance to the store.

"Oh ha-ha, and here I thought Stacey was the comedian of you two."

"Oh, trust me," Marisa rolled her eyes and glanced back up the hallway. "She has her moments. Now, I'm going to open the door on three. Are you ready? On three...One..."

"Wait a minute. Do you mean..."

"Oh, nevermind!" she hissed and pulled the door open a bit to take a peek out. "You're clear. Just go! And stay low until you're in the bathroom."

"Right."

"And hurry!"

"Right!"

Deke took a deep breath and slid around the door into the short rear hallway of the store. He crouched low, one hand on the floor and located the bathroom door only six feet away. Behind him, the door to the back hallway closed with a soft click.

He was now in enemy territory...and scared half out of his mind.

But so far, still alive.

The killers must have been at the front of the store like Marisa had predicted. Deke had an unobstructed view down one aisle and to his relief it stood completely empty. But something had definitely happened there. The floor was littered with broken glass and cans, and the steel shelf on the end was bent down into a shallow "U" from some kind of impact.

He could also hear things.

From somewhere in the front corner of the store, where the cash register ought to be, he could hear a strange, soft whimpering punctuated by the tear of cloth and rustle of movement. His mind rebelled at the image the sound conjured and focused more on the scrabbling noise emanating from the direction of the door to the restaurant. There was an occasional squeak, like the sound of a hand sliding on glass, consistent with Marisa's tale of the things trying to push their way in to get to the rest of them...

...a reminder that time was of the essence here.

Deke ghosted over to the entrance to the men's restroom. He pushed the door open with slow care, trying not to make either noise or a sudden motion that might catch the attention of the monsters, and slipped inside. Once in, he eased the door closed while holding his breath...expecting it to be slammed open again by some skull-faced horror any second. When that didn't happen, he wasted no time in hurrying over to the far toilet stall.

Step one had been accomplished.

This was an industrial style toilet, without a tank on back. It only had a pipe leading up from the toilet itself featuring a valve handle on it's side. Deke stepped up onto the bowl and then the top of the pipe in two quick strides and examined the ceiling. A rectangular fluorescent fixture hung over the center of the stall, but in the back corner a large ceiling tile provided exactly the exit he was searching for.

He pushed up the tile with alacrity, did a quick check of the top of the wall for spiders or other vermin he had no wish to put his hands on, then grabbed the wall top. The young man pulled himself up into the ceiling with limber ease and found himself crouching in the dark recesses of the ceiling, on top of an eight inch wide strip of concrete wall. A stray part of his mind noted he was getting filthy, but it barely pinged on his consciousness at the moment.

"Okay," he muttered while reaching for a tile on the opposite side of the wall from the bathroom. "If Marisa is right, then this should be the ceiling to the office."

He pulled up the tile to reveal a square of blackness below.

"Naturally, the lights are out," he grumped. "Oh well, here goes the dashing Deke leaping blind into the jaws of...uh...whatever."

The boy grabbed the top of the wall, and slid his lower body down through the hole as fast as he could and still maintain control. He worried he might end up hanging down the side of the wall, and have to let go and drop in the darkness without being able to gauge where the floor was beneath him. As it turned out, the exact opposite became the problem.

His feet hit an obstruction just as he had the top of the wall at chest level.

The fact he was allowing himself to descend rapidly meant he essentially landed on whatever it was, with his legs now absorbing the brunt of his weight as opposed to arms. The result of this was his arms suddenly ceased to support him and he reflexively relaxed them, and then a second later he flailed in the darkness as the surface starting slipping out from under his feet. Instinct told him he must have landed on the desk, and on a large stack of papers, because now he was slipping and kicking them all over the darkness in a desperate dance to keep his balance.

"Aw shit!" he yelled as one leg kicked a tad too far and he went down in a crash of plastic, glass, and papers.

"Deke?" A worried voice came through what had to be the door to his right. "Are you okay? What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" he retorted while flailing on the floor to get his feet under him. "Where are the lights in here?"

"On the wall, near the door."

Her tone left "where they always are" unspoken but not unsaid.

"Right."

Fumbling his way up the wall, he found the switch and turned it on. As he expected, the office now qualified as a wreck. Papers, pens, and plastic desk trays covered the floor. And the desk... he hoped Big Earl was in a forgiving mood when he saw this, because the desk was going to have to be replaced. It had broken in the middle when he had fallen and landed on it.

"I did that?" he muttered, astonished at the destruction.

On the bright side, the lap drawer had been forced open, and now revealed the object of his quest.

"I got it!"

Deke snatched the large key ring from the broken drawer and held it aloft like a prize.

"Well," the girl retorted from the other side of the door, "then hurry up and get out here with it!"

"Right," the youngster sighed and turned towards the door. He twisted the little knob in the handle to unlock the door, then turned his attention to the dead bolt above.

"Aw crap!"

"What now?"

"The dead bolt takes a key on this side too! There has to be forty keys on this thing!"

Marisa said something in Spanish that Deke suspected wasn't very nice...and probably had something to do with him. He was beginning to get irritated with her attitude, but understood it probably had a lot to do with the fact their time was running out. Besides, she was Stacey's best friend so he figured it wise to stay on her good side.

"Okay, look," he said, "I'm not going to waste time trying all these keys on this lock. I'm just going to go back the way I came. Be there in a minute."

"Good thinking!" the voice sounded relieved. "Be careful."

"You just be ready to open that door for me, okay?"

"I'll be there."

Since the desk was a collapsed heap, he couldn't use it to get back into the ceiling. He cast around for something else, and settled for the file cabinet in the corner. Rushing over, Deke grabbed the metal cabinet and pulled with all his might. The thing was heavy, but he was now desperate and in a hurry. Redoubling his efforts, he dragged the thing close enough to the ceiling hole for him to use, before clambering on top and grabbing the top of the wall.

Deke jammed the big key-ring into his front pocket and grabbed the top of the wall again. This time he knew where he was going, so he practically vaulted himself up over the wall and started lowering himself down the other side. This had already taken longer than he intended, and the pressure to get the key back to Marisa spurred him to greater effort. Not to mention, he wanted to get through the bathroom and hallway and back behind the safety of the employee's entrance door as fast as possible...

...which was why he wasn't paying attention and stepped on the handle of the toilet on the way down the other side.

The toilet thundered with a roar Deke knew from prior experience could be heard all the way to the front door.

"Oh shit!" he groaned. "Nobody in here but us dead guys taking a crap. Seriously!"

Fearing the worst, the young redneck dropped the rest of the way to the floor and scrambled out of the stall. He clutched his hat to his head as he raced across the bathroom to the door, his boot heels echoing on the tile floor. Behind him, the stall door banged shut with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast.

"Oh shit ohshitohshitohshit..."

He reached the door and ripped it open, fully expecting to be greeted by a carnivorous horde of death faced killers.

He was almost right.

The hallway still stood empty, but when Deke came out of the bathroom a motion caught the corner of his eye and he turned to face a nightmare coming down the aisle towards him.

She must have been old.

Curly white hair hung in wet mats down the sides of her head, and she wore a filthy white dress that looked more like a nightdress than the usual formal wear women were buried in. Half of her skull still boasted the grey cracked skin it wore in the coffin, leaving just one eye to glare at Deke with insane hunger. The partial death mask split at the cheek, allowing the teeth on that side of her face to continue the skeletal grin started on the other side.

She flew down the aisle towards him, jaws wide in a silent scream of bloodlust.

Deke gave a terrified squawk and raced to the door in the back hallway. In his panic he tried to open it himself, then remembered it was locked from this side. Oh well, there certainly wasn't any point in silence now.

"MARISA!" he screamed and hammered on the door with his other hand. "Open the door!"

"I'm trying! Let go of the knob!" came the muffled reply.

He felt the doorknob try to twist in his hand and realized he was keeping the girl from being able to open it from the other side. Crap! Even as he released the handle, he knew time had run out. He turned to face his attacker, arms instinctively raised as a shield.

"Aw shit," Deke groaned.

The horror landed on him like a rotting nightmare.

Downpour - Holly.

"What do you mean 'a line will come open shortly!?' This is 911 goddammit! You can't put me on hold!"

Holly stared in disbelief at her cell phone. She knew she was running on borderline hysterics and fought to keep from screaming at the little piece of technology in her hand. The girl figured she was holding it together pretty well considering only three minutes earlier her biggest concern was wondering when Gerald's lecture on not clinging to provincial old ways and friendships would end.

Then the screaming had started.

Something bad had started somewhere in rear of the building, and almost everybody in the place had run back there. After a few seconds, the tall redneck, Harley, came rushing back out and ran out the door to the store on the other side of the wall. There had been more screaming from the back, and crashing coming from the direction of the store. She started to get up herself, but Gerald caught her hand and pulled her back down.

Then, almost simultaneously, the screaming in back had stopped and the dark haired waitress came flying in the door from the store with the man in the beat up cowboy hat not far behind. The obvious fear in their faces when they braced themselves against the door unnerved her, but when she saw what piled up on the door behind them she thought she was losing her mind.

It was like something out of a bad horror movie.

Now Holly frantically tried to call for help while Gerald and the other man struggled to keep the monsters out. So far, her efforts were getting her nowhere. For the second time an answering machine at the Masonfield PD picked up the phone to tell her all their lines were busy but to stay on the phone and one would come open shortly. Her teeth clenched in panicked fury at this unheard of development.

They were going to die and evidently the police had better things to do than come save them.

Holly snapped the phone shut and took a deep breath before returning her gaze to where Gerald and the tall redneck, Harley, were holding the door shut. She hated looking at them because she couldn't avoid seeing the ghastly faces behind them against the glass. The semi-bare skulls pushed tight against the door, their teeth making unpleasant sounds as they dragged across the glass.

The way they all piled up against the door with mindless intensity scared her almost as bad as their ghoulish appearance. The look of strain on the bigger man's face as he fought to hold the door shut didn't reassure her either. Gerald was also red in the face from exertion, And with no police coming, she realized if they were going to live through this, it was going to be due to their own efforts.

"Is there something I can do?" she offered.

"You want to take my place?" her boyfriend panted. "I'm wearing out fast here."

"No, Gerald," she barked, surprising both him and her, "I meant maybe I can squeeze down between you guys and sit on the floor with my back against the door."

"It would help," Harley gritted, "but if we have to move fast, like retreat to the kitchen, you would be trapped behind our legs on the floor. Not good. I think you would be more use as my eyes and ears for the moment."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, first of all, ma'am," he shifted his position slightly lower and rebraced his legs, "I need a head count of how many of those things are pushing against me...err...us right now. Can you do that, please? I know they ain't pleasant to look at, but it would sure help."

"Okay, "she nodded doubtfully, "but it's awfully hard to see."

"Go ahead and stand on a booth. That will give you a better angle, and even let you see past them a little bit."

"Right."

Holly moved over to the booth directly opposite the door, and clambered up on the bench as instructed. Then, setting her jaw, she turned and faced the door and its horrors again.

Her turning to face them seemed to excite the creatures. They all gaped their jaws in unison and their assault on the door increased in intensity.

"What the hell?" Harley gasped.

"Holy shit!" Gerald exclaimed. "Whatever you're doing...stop it! You're pissing them off!"

"I-I'm not doing anything!" She stood like a deer in the headlights on the booth seat, almost paralyzed by the glares of sheer bloodlust being directed at her. It was hypnotic, like locking gazes with a hungry lion at a zoo.

"How many..."

"What?" she shook her head and refocused on Harley.

"How many of them?"