The Overnight (40 page)

"Hey, that's some plan. Why don't we try that."

She's lowering the phone so as not to be tempted to blurt a retort when Jill hurries several paces down her aisle, brandishing one palm. "Connie …"

"Have you decided I wasn't hearing things after all?"

"No, I was wondering if you should ask when they're coming for Agnes."

Connie wants to be out of the worst of the dimness but lifts the receiver once more. "I wonder—"

"I heard what someone wondered. No need to do their talking for them."

"Then what's the answer?"

"No."

She has to take time to be certain it isn't the fault of her brain that the reply seems wholly unrelated to the question. "You're saying …"

"Why do we need to call anyone when Nigel's there?"

Connie sucks in a protracted breath to begin an explanation that she's afraid will outdistance any patience she has left, and then an idea struggles from beneath whatever's weighing down her mind. "Because they could let you out as well."

"You got me there. Why don't you try calling."

"I will, then. I'll just …" She waves a hand in a generalised fashion at her colleagues and fumbles to plant the receiver on its stand before he can say any more. She wants to be closer to the others and the window, not least because of an unpleasant though surely irrational notion that someone has shuffled to the opposite side of the door and is quivering with mute amusement. As she hurries through the muddy darkness of the Psychology aisle her shoulders grow tense in case Woody's voice falls like a spider on her. She reaches the counter without being questioned, however. "Don't let me slow you down," she says, since even Greg has stopped to watch her. She picks up the nearest receiver and dials 999, then stares at the fog as if her parched gaze may help bring a response.

It only confuses her. She imagines she can hear the surges of the fog, pretending to give ground but actually stealing nearer. Of course the noise is static, even if it sounds increasingly thick and solid. She ends the connection and leans towards the keys to be sure she's obtaining an outside line, and dials again. The same sound oozes out of the earpiece, and a third attempt seems to entice it closer. Rather than yield to the fancy that it's gathering in her brain, she cuts it off and thumbs the intercom button to dial Woody's extension. "I can't get out to anyone."

"I could have told you so."

"Why didn't you?" she says through her unsmiling teeth.

"Figured you might as well find out for yourself in case any of you thought I was trying to stop you phoning."

Connie supposes he's right, but it distresses her to realise they've become so distrustful. It seems to intensify the threat of the lurid unnatural light and of the shadows that have engulfed much of the shop. "I'm sure nobody can now," she tries to reassure him or herself.

"I guess that's worth a smile."

"I expect so."

By the time she understands he isn't asking one of her she has sent it guiltily towards the ceiling. His only rejoinder, if it's even that, is "I'm through talking if you are."

She turns from laying the receiver down to find Jill watching her. "What were you so pleased we can't do?" Jill says at once.

"Nothing, Jill, honestly. I'd be happy if we could all do the same thing."

Jill's immediately expressionless face tells Connie she shouldn't have used those words. It must cost Jill an effort to say only "What are we going to do about Agnes?"

"What would you suggest?"

"Did we just hear you say Woody wasn't able to phone either? Nigel's had more than enough time. Someone else should go for help."

"Are you volunteering?"

Jill blinks out at the fog, which appears to greet her by proposing a slithery dance. "If nobody else does."

Every other face turns inert as the grey light until Ross clears his throat unevenly. "I will."

"To do what?" Greg objects.

"Had you better try security first just in case, Ross?" Jill suggests with her back to Greg. "If nobody's there you'll have to phone from Stack o'Steak. They're open all night, aren't they?"

"Nigel will have thought of that," says Greg.

"What do you want us to do then, Greg?" Jill demands, whirling to face him. "How long would you like Anyes to stay in the lift in the dark?"

That silences him, though perhaps he's mutely answering the question. "It won't do any harm for someone else to get help," Connie intervenes. "If you have to call emergency, Ross, you can always ask if anyone already has."

The thud of a book on a shelf conveys Greg's opinion of this. "Are you going to be warm enough, Ross?" says Jill.

His hand gropes at the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, which looks doused in the grubby light. "I'll run."

"Will you be all right on your own?" Jake says.

Greg mutters something Connie would ignore if Mad didn't ask "What were you inspired with just then, Greg?"

"My mistake. It's not a ship."

His comment had to do with rats and sinking. "Thanks anyway, Jake," Ross says. "I expect I'll be faster on my own."

"Depends who's coming after you, would you say, Greg?"

Greg's face grows so furiously blank it's clear that he was thinking along those lines. "If you're ready then, Ross," Connie says and hurries to the exit. As she reaches for the keypad on the door, her fingers falter inches short of it. She can't recall a single digit of the code.

Exhaustion must have driven it out of or too deep into her brain, but the harder she strives to dredge it up, the more her head feels as if it's filling up with some of the fog that's prancing shapelessly beyond the glass. She has been reduced to fingering the air in front of the keypad in case her hand remembers, the same way it knows the layout of the computer keyboard, when Woody's voice darts out of all the darkest corners at her. "Gee, am I watching more not work?"

She tries to make light of it as she uses the nearest phone on the counter. "Just my brain."

"Uh huh."

She wouldn't mind a reply that sounds less like agreement, even though he isn't announcing it to the entire shop. "I can't remember the exit code," she tells him.

"Right."

Surely he doesn't mean the situation is. "Could you remind me?"

"Why are you going to want it now? Doesn't look anything like daylight down there to me, and there's a whole lot of work to finish."

"We'll get it done faster if we have Anyes to help, and besides, we really need to let her out. We don't know how much air is left in there."

"In an elevator with just one person in it? Plenty, I'd think."

She's dismayed to suspect that she could have persuaded him by concentrating on the notion of releasing Agnes to work. "She's in the dark as well," Connie nearly pleads. "How can we leave her like that?"

"Nigel isn't, is he?"

The prospect of explaining in any detail about Nigel makes her head feel stuffed with worse than dullness. "It doesn't sound as if he's had much success."

"Seems like he isn't on his own there." Before she can decide if that's aimed at her, Woody says "So it's Ross you figure is expendable, right?"

"He put himself forward."

"You'd maybe wonder why he's anxious to desert."

"I don't think he's that at all."

"He'd tell me the same if I asked him, you think?"

"I'm sure he would."

"Then I won't bother. The one that wants to go has to be the one we need least. Go ahead if that's your decision."

Static rushes into the silence Woody leaves behind, and she's afraid he has forgotten or no longer cares what she asked. "You were going to remind me of the code."

"Which one was that? Numbers or behaviour?" The static sounds like breathing over his shoulder. "Okay, see what this does for you," he says and gabbles digits.

How mocking does he mean his voice to be? He surely wouldn't give her an incorrect code, but is he thinking the right one won't work? She returns to the exit and uses a single finger to ensure she's pushing just the numbers he helped her recall. She closes her fist around the handle, which feels like the chill of the fog solidified, and tugs.

The door snags on nothing she can see and then swings inwards with a glassy creak. It seems to invite the dankness and the stale smell of the fog. Although Ross didn't hear Woody's comments she feels bound to encourage him, but can't think of much that would. "Don't catch cold and don't get lost," she tries saying, and has to add "Only teasing. Anyes will be grateful. We all will. Hurry back."

He's out of the shop before she has finished speaking. She trails after him to watch. As he passes the window, almost running, he throws Mad an uneasy sidelong glance. He hasn't reached the end of the building when the fog starts to fray his outline and fade him. It engulfs him and muffles his footsteps until they sound as though the pavement is growing soft. She's hearing them dwindle and wondering if she should call out a last reassurance when Woody demands "Have we lost Connie as well?"

She could imagine the entire shop is doing duty as his mouth. She steps back through the doorway to shake her head at whichever camera is on her. The interior of Texts resembles the night outside more than she likes: the grudging flat discoloured illumination, the clinging insidious chill, even the way the opposite side of the room appears to recede into a greyish dimness more substantial than air. She shuts the door hastily and jabs a finger at the keypad, but has second thoughts. Why is she locking Ross out? Suppose she's unable to let him back in? She can't face an argument with Woody over this. She fingers each digit of the code without any pressure, and then looks up at the cameras as she heads for the drumming of books on shelves. "Now you got it, Connie," Woody declares. "Everyone else check it out. That's what I call a smile."

"Don't catch cold and don't get lost," Connie says and follows it with a giggle so stifled by embarrassment she sounds as if she's producing it in her sleep. "Only teasing. Anyes will be grateful. We all will. Hurry back."

Just now Ross would rather not even glance back, because everything about the shop looks like a nightmare he's having. He's out of it—the shop, at least—before Connie has finished talking about Agnes. As he flees past the window he risks a blink at Mad. Her appearance and everyone else's still dismays him: her greyish face and dim eyes balanced on flesh bruised by shadow make her resemble a corpse put to work, and her mechanical actions—stooping to lift yet another book, rising stiffly to find a place for it—don't help. She sends him a quick smile meant to be heartening, and a response tugs like a tic at his lips. Then he's past the window, and has the notion that the fog has hidden him from Connie. She mightn't notice if he makes for his car.

His entire body wavers towards the staff car park, but he won't give in. He doesn't care whether Agnes is grateful or how much of a pain she continues to be; he can't leave her trapped in the dark. At least now he's able to see what he's doing, more or less. The emergency services can surely restore power to the shop, which will give Mad and the rest of them their looks back. He has told everyone he'll help. He can't let them down, especially Mad. He hurries past the alley, averting his gaze.

All the same, he wouldn't have minded some company. If Greg had kept his mouth shut for once, Ross might have had Jake. Still, no doubt Jake would be anticipating aloud what may lie ahead. Ross concentrates on walking fast, not giving himself an instant to think of a reason to falter. His footsteps sound isolated and shrunken to childishness by the silence, which is as oppressively pervasive as the fog. Even when he remembers that the motorway is closed, that doesn't make the silence seem any less unnatural, though since the retail park is artificial, isn't black silence closer to its natural state? He feels as if each of his breaths is gathering fog to lie stagnant in his lungs and seep into his brain. Under the floodlights that are fattened like cocoons restless with eagerness to hatch, the glaring murk drags itself over the deserted pavement and the tarmac bare of vehicles and peels itself reluctantly away from the shopfronts. Posters in the window of Happy Holidays remind him of a dozen or more places he would rather be, although he thinks several of the handwritten destinations are misspelled, or is he too tired to recognise how they should be spelled, or both? In TVid someone has left the televisions on, presumably tuned to a sports channel, since they all show people fighting, figures so blurred and unstable they appear to be sinking or melting into the darkness behind or below them. In Teenstuff the air-conditioning must be on; flimsy clothes shift in the dimness as though at least one intruder is crawling behind them, unless the intruders are too small to need to go on all fours. He even fancies he sees a head, or rather less than one, writhe into view from the neck of a bellying dress on a hanger. He hastens past that and the sight of far too many identical cloth faces staring glassy-eyed out of Baby Bunting, but his speed does him no good. He's left with the impression that among the dolls he glimpsed a face pressed as flush as the underside of a snail against the pane; he also imagines he saw its flattened grey blobs of eyes move, smearing the glass, to watch him. When he twists around, of course he can locate nothing of the kind, and surely the glistening vertical trail down the pane must be condensation. Now he's alongside Stay in Touch, where any number of mobile phones on stands blink nervously in the dark. He has no idea what has set them off, but he's assailed by the notion that they all have the same message for him: perhaps that if he owned a mobile he could have made the call without venturing so far, or might it be information he would welcome even less? Walking faster only brings him to the unoccupied section, where the words scrawled on the boards over the shopfronts have abandoned all resemblance to language; trails of moisture have distorted them and the crude figures that accompany them so much that they suggest first attempts at writing and drawing by a mind too elementary to be called childish. All this is beginning to make him feel as though Fenny Meadows has reverted to a state worse than primitive, an era before there was anything worth describing as intelligence in the world. He finds he's grateful beyond words to hear a voice.