«What did you hear?» one of the other men asked. He worked for the town road department; his name was Jim something.
«I don’t know. A scraping noise. Slithery. I don’t want to hear it again.»
«Nerves,» the other fellow with Ollie said.
«No. It was not nerves.»
«Did you hear it before the lights went out?»
«No, only after. But …» But nothing. I could see the way they were looking at me. They didn’t want any more bad news, anything else frightening or off-kilter. There was enough of that already. Only Ollie looked as if he believed «Let’s go in and start her up again,» the bag-boy said, handing out the flashlights. Ollie took his doubtfully. The bag-boy offered me one, a slightly contemptuous shine in his eyes. He was maybe eighteen. After a moment’s thought, I took the light. I still needed something to cover Billy with.
Ollie opened the doors and chocked them, letting in some light. The bleach cartons lay scattered around the half-open door in the plywood partition.
The fellow named Jim sniffed and said, «Smells pretty rank, all right. Guess you was right to shut her down.»
The flashlight beams bobbed and danced across cartons of canned goods, toilet paper, dog food. The beams were smoky in the drifting fumes the blocked exhaust had turned back into the storage area. The bag-boy trained his light briefly on the wide loading door at the extreme right.
The two men and Ollie went inside the generator compartment. Their lights flashed uneasily back and forth, reminding me of something out of a boys’ adventure story — and I illustrated a series of them while I was still in college. Pirates burying their bloody gold at midnight, or maybe the mad doctor and his assistant snatching a body. Shadows, made twisted and monstrous by the shifting, conflicting flashlight beams, bobbed on the walls. The generator ticked irregularly as it cooled.
The bag-boy was walking toward the loading door, flashing his light ahead of him. «I wouldn’t go over there,» I said.
«No, I know you wouldn’t.»
«Try it now, Ollie,» one of the men said. The generator wheezed, then roared.
«Jesus! Shut her down! Holy crow, don’t that stink!»
The generator died again.
The bag-boy walked back from the loading door just as they came out. «Something’s plugged that exhaust, all right,» one of the men said.
«I’ll tell you what,» the bag-boy said. His eyes were shining in the glow of the flashlights, and there was a devil-may-care expression on his face that I had sketched too many times as part of the frontispieces for my boys’ adventure series. «Get it running long enough for me to raise the loading door back there. I’ll go around and clear away whatever it is.»
«Norm, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,» Ollie said doubtfully:
«Is it an electric door?» the one called Jim asked.
«Sure,» Ollie said. «But I just don’t think it would be wise for-»
«That’s okay,» the other guy said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head. «I’ll do it.»
«No, you don’t understand,» Ollie began again. «I really don’t think anyone should-»
«Don’t worry,» he said indulgently to Ollie, dismissing him.
Norm, the bag-boy, was indignant. «Listen, it was my idea,» he said.
All at once, by some magic, they had gotten around to arguing about who was going to do it instead of whether or not it should be done at all. But of course, none of them had heard that nasty slithering sound. «Stop it!» I said loudly.
They looked around at me.
«You don’t seem to understand, or you’re trying as hard as you can not to understand. This is no ordinary fog. Nobody has come into the market since it hit. If you open that loading door and something comes in-»
«Something like what?» Norm said with perfect eighteen-year-old macho contempt.
«Whatever made the noise, I heard.»
«Mr. Drayton,» Jim said. «Pardon me, but I’m not convinced you heard anything. I know you’re a big-shot artist with connections in New York and Hollywood and all, but that doesn’t make you any different from anyone else, in my book. Way I figure, you got in here in the dark and maybe you just … got a little confused.»