I speak to Dedmond Walking?

  The return pallets were stacked in a clearly fotteion of the warehouse, between rows of cubicles and workstations and the trash pactor. A marked forklift path led directly from the pallets to a bay door which also looked exceptionally mistreated. He had brokehe first pallet, sifted through the boxes looking for the small “something” Cooper had slipped into them. Apparently the camera quality had been shitty even for a small time retail outlet, and EP’s best guess was “either like a small envelope, or maybe a box, maybe for some headphones.”

  So far, he had only mao coat himself in a thin yer of cardboard dust, rendering his probably carefully thought-out camo useless. He was sidering swiping some of Lindsey’s explosives to make the ore iing, when the ph. He thought about answering it, but decided that Philip would throw him irash pactor if he did, so he went back to cutting open the sed pallet.

  “An, ahe Phone,” EP said. For a sed he thought he imagi.

  “What?”

  “Ahe phone.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Ahe phone!”

  He sat the box cutter on the sed pallet and jogged to the desk.

  “What should I—”

  “Act like you work here! Receiving desk!”

  He picked up the thirty-year-old flesh colored phone and held it to his ear as his earbud clicked off.

  “Uh, regional Distribution, this is receiving.”

  “That’s weird, I called the extension for returns.” The voice was cold and mog.

  “Oh, they might have ged the extensions. You wanna call back? I don’t know how to transfer.”

  There was a dusty silence.

  “No. Hey, now that I think of it, aren’t yall closed? Why are you still there?”

  “Back orders. You know how it is. Gotta go that extra mile, what with Amazon and—"

  “You know, your boss is pying with fire, pissing off GSK like that. ’t he tell this is an off-the-books union job? Your whole outfit is one bad step from being thrown into Nightmare.”

  “Uh, sir, I am but a humble warehouse worker—”

  “Are you the new hire? We tell. Saw you shitting yourself behind that SUV.”

  “Well, when you gotta go—”

  “You don’t even know what Nightmare is do you?”

  Gradie tried to think of another witty retort, but the question bred a curiosity that got in the way.

  “It’s a pce for those who don’t py nice, or don’t py by the rules, in your case. Those who bee a nuisao the big shakers. Ae what you may have heard on the ball, it’s not like hell. Oh no, it’s much worse. You know that really bad day you had when you were a kid, maybe six years old, thinking your dad was gonna kill you or something? They’ll trap you in it forever. Fire and brimstone don’t have shit on the misery of a helpless child.”

  “Sir, this is a Wendy’s…distributioer—”

  “Get ready boy. Won’t be ah heads on go-carts this time. I’ve watched presidents die.”

  The line clicked off. The desks and racks watched him through dust that ate up the word “die” like they had been waiting on it.

  “So, did you trace the call?” he asked, in as much a ce of a joke as he could manage.

  “Get back to work. Like your life is in those boxes.” EP beeped off.

  *****

  Across the city, on a wide empty parking lot o the rising web of the Mixmaster, a pack of armored vehicles stood waiting. Someone inside a sedan got a call and the earted up. A few moments ter they were tearing up the sword bde curve of an on-ramp. As their engines faded into the night, they spread out and blended among the stream of cars on the highway, but everash stu the shoulders khey didn’t belong.

  Do you think the team would really be thrown into nightmare, or is it just a bluff to psych them out? ime, the exits disappear, and its do or die. Or maybe do and die. episode, Encirclement.