Anything Can Be Dangerous by Matt Hults Page A

Ron
repeated.
    They retreated to the back of the
building, all moving in reverse to keep and eye on the entry to the
hallway. Ron expected the madman to come rushing after them at any
second, but they reached the storeroom unmolested.
    “ Jesus!” Greg gasped. Sweat
glistened on his brow. “What the fuck was that about?”
    Ron didn’t bother speculating on an
answer. Instead, he charged to the storeroom’s rear wall, heaving
aside a hill of empty boxes and other useless scrap. There, hidden
behind the heap, he uncovered the set of loading doors he’d been
hoping he would find.
    To his dismay, a padlocked chain
secured the push-bars to the frame.
    “ Wendy, do you have a key
for this?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
    The girl shook her head. “Just the
code for the one up front.”
    “ Shit!” Greg
cried.
    Ron dug into his pockets. Found his
cell phone. “Look for something we can use as weapons!” he said,
then glanced to the empty hallway, wondering how long they had
before their disgruntled guest came to file a complaint.
    He looked to the phone, but it didn’t
even light up.
    “ My phone’s dead,” he said.
“Anyone else—”
    “ In the car,” Wendy
replied.
    Greg shook his head.
    Ron held back the avalanche of
obscenities that almost rolled off his tongue and sat down on a
stack of milk crates to mentally scrutinize his options.
    No phone. No windows. And
no key to the only door. Which leaves trying to get past the
psychotic hobo with the ax .
    Just then, he spotted several boxes of
press-paper dinnerware and plastic utensils on the other side of
the room.
    Back on his feet, he crossed the floor
and grabbed a package of paper cups, tearing it open.
    “ What are you doing?” Greg
asked.
    “ I’m getting him his
drink.”
    “ Are you nuts?”
    “ Would you prefer he come
back here and look for it, where we don’t have any way to
escape?”
    The idea seemed to sink in, and the
man sagged into silence.
    Ron cracked open a container of
plastic lids for the cups. “Look, you saw how he eased off when I
said we’d feed him, right? So let’s keep it up. We’ll pretend to
fill his order, and when we go back up front, we can try getting
out the drive-thru window.”
    “ I don’t think I’ll fit!”
Greg replied. “Jesus, man, you can’t leave me!”
    “ We’ll help Wendy out,
then. She can go for help, and I’ll stay here with you…unless
either of you have a better idea?”
    They made a quick detour through the
kitchen, rummaging through the equipment for whatever they could
use. In the far corner, Ron discovered a ten-inch butcher knife in
a plastic crate beside the wash-station. All three of them stared
at it, seeing its horrible potential, but said nothing as Ron
slipped it into his belt and covered it with his shirt.
    “ Let’s go,” he
said.
    He led them toward the registers,
finding the wild-eyed derelict exactly where they’d left
him—
    But now there were six more people
lined up behind him.
    Ron’s stride faltered when he saw
them, and Wendy and Greg almost ran into his back.
    He saw a slack-jawed boy in tattered
overalls holding a shotgun.
    A grossly overweight woman sucking a
pacifier.
    A blindfolded girl with a badly
bruised neck—
    Greg gave him a shove, prodding him
onward.
    “ Just one minute folks,” he
mumbled, and then they were at the end of the counter, where they
slipped into the drive-thru station alcove and mercifully out of
sight of the patrons.
    “ What hell is going on?”
Greg asked.
    “ Did you see their faces?”
Wendy whispered. “My, God, did you see them?”
    Ron nodded. He looked down and
realized he’d crushed the paper cup into a wad. Now he tossed it
away and moved to the window, sliding it aside. He stepped back and
kicked out the plywood board covering the frame.
    Static suddenly hissed out of the
nearby intercom.
    Ron jumped at the sound of it, facing
the small metal box as an unearthly voice issued from the