I pushed the tip of the broom handle onto the button and the motor whined. The door began to slide back down. It touched the thickest of the tentacles first, the one that had been investigating in Myron's direction. It indented its hide-skin, whatever-and then pierced it. A black goo began to spurt from it. It writhed madly, whipping across the concrete storage-area floor like an obscene bullwhip, and then it seemed to flatten out. A moment later it was gone. The others began to withdraw.

One of them had a five-pound bag of Gaines dog food, and it wouldn't let go. The descending door cut it in two before thumping home in its grooved slot. The severed chunk of tentacle squeezed convulsively tighter, splitting the bag open and sending brown nuggets of dog food everywhere. Then it began to flop on the floor like a fish out of water, curling and uncurling, but ever more slowly, until it lay still. I prodded it with the tip of the broom. The piece of tentacle, maybe three feet long, closed on it savagely for a moment, then loosened and lay limp again in the confused litter of toilet paper, dog food, and bleach cartons. There was no sound except the roar of the generator and Ollie, crying inside the plywood compartment. I could see him sitting on a stool in there with his face clutched in his hands. Then I became aware of another sound. The soft, slithery sound I had heard in the dark. Only now the sound was multiplied tenfold. It was the sound of tentacles squirming over the outside of the loading door, trying to find a way in.

Myron took a couple of steps toward me. “Look,” he said. “You got to understand—” I looped a fist at his face. He was too surprised to even try to block it. It landed just below his nose and mashed his upper lip into his teeth. Blood flowed into his mouth. “You got him killed!” I shouted. “Did you get a good look at it? Did you get a good look at what you did?” I started to pummel him, throwing wild rights and lefts, not punching the way I had been taught in my college boxing classes but only hitting out. He stepped back, shaking some of them off, taking others with a numbness that seemed like a kind of resignation or penance. That made me angrier. I bloodied his nose. I raised a mouse under one of his eyes that was going to black just beautifully. I clipped him a hard one on the chin. After that one, his eyes went cloudy and semi-vacant. “Look,” he kept sing, “look, look,” and then I punched him low in the stomach and the air went out of him and he didn't say “look, look” anymore. I don't know how long I would have gone on punching him, but someone grabbed my arms. I jerked free and turned around. I was hoping it was Jim. I wanted to punch Jim out, too. But it wasn't Jim. It was Ollie, his round face dead pale, except for the dark circles around his eyes-eyes that were still shiny from his tears. “Don't, David,” he said. “Don't hit him anymore. It doesn't solve anything.” Jim was standing off to one side, his face a bewildered blank. I kicked a carton of something at him. It struck one of his Dingo boots and bounced away. “You and your buddy are a couple of stupid assholes,” I said. “Come on, David,” Ollie said unhappily. “Quit it.” “You two assholes got that kid killed.” Jim looked down at his Dingo boots. Myron sat on the floor and held his beer belly. I was breathing hard. The blood was roaring in my ears and I was trembling all over. I sat down on a couple of cartons and put my head down between my knees and gripped my legs hard just above the ankles. I sat that way for a while with my hair in my face, waiting to see if I was going to black out or puke or what. After a bit the feeling began to pass and I looked up at Ollie. His pinky ring flashed subdued fire in the glow of the emergency lights.

“Okay,” I said dully. “I'm done.” “Good,” Ollie said. “We've got to think what to do next. “ The storage area was beginning to stink of exhaust again. “Shut the generator down. That's the first thing.” “Yeah, let's get out of here,” Myron said. His eyes appealed to me. “I'm sorry about the kid. But you got to understand—”

“I don't got to understand anything. You and your buddy go back into the market, but you wait right there by the beer cooler. And don't say a word to anybody. Not yet.”

They went willingly enough, huddling together as they passed through the swinging doors. Ollie killed the generator, and just as the lights started to fail, I saw a quilted rug-the sort of thing movers use to pad breakable things-flopped over a stack of returnable soda bottles. I reached up and grabbed it for Billy.

There was the shuffling, blundering sound of Ollie coming out of the generator compartment. Like a great many overweight man, his breathing had a slightly heavy wheezing sound.

“David?” His voice wavered a little. “You still here?”

“Right here, Ollie. You want to watch out for all those bleach cartons.”

“Yeah.”

I guided him with my voice and in thirty seconds or so he reached out of the dark and gripped my shoulder. He gave a long, trembling sigh.

“Christ, let's get out of here.” I could smell the Rolaids he always chewed on his breath. “This dark is... is bad.”

“It is,” I said. “But hang tight a minute, Ollie. I wanted to talk to you and I didn't want those other two fuckheads listening. “

“Dave... they didn't twist Norm's arm. You ought to remember that. “

“Norm was a kid, and they weren't. But never mind, that's over. We've got to tell them, Ollie. The people in the market. “

“If they panic—” Ollie's voice was doubtful. “Maybe they will and maybe they won't. But it will make them think twice about going out; which is what most of them want to do. Why shouldn't they? Most of them will have people they left at home. I do myself. We have to make them understand what they're risking if they go out there.”

His hand was gripping my arm hard. “All right,” he said. “Yes, I just keep asking myself .., all those tentacles... like a squid or something... David, what were they hooked to? What were those tentacles hooked to?”

“I don't know. But I don't want those two telling people on their own. That would start a panic. Let's go.”

I looked around, and after a moment or two located the thin line of vertical light between the swing doors. We started to shuffle toward it, wary of scattered cartons, one of Ollie's pudgy hands clamped over my forearm. It occurred to me that all of us had lost our flashlights.

As we reached the doors, Ollie said flatly: “What we saw... it's impossible, David. You know that, don't you? Even if a van from the Boston Seaquarium drove out back and dumped out one of 'those gigantic squids like in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, it would die. It would just die.”

“Yes,” I said. “That's right.”

“So what happened? Huh? What happened? What is that damned mist?”

“Ollie, I don't know.”

We went out.

V. An Argument with Norton. A Discussion Near the Beer Cooler. Verification.

Jim and his good buddy Myron were just outside the doors, each with a Budweiser in his fist. I looked at Billy, saw he was still asleep, and covered him with the ruglike mover's pad. He moved a little, muttered something, and then lay still again. I looked at my watch. It was 12:15 P. m. That seemed utterly impossible; it felt as if at least five hours had passed since I had first gone in there to look for something to cover him with. But the whole thing, from first to last, had taken only about thirty-five minutes. I went back to where Ollie stood with Jim and Myron. Ollie had taken a beer and he offered me one. I took it and gulped down half the can at once, as I had that morning cutting wood. It bucked me up a little. Jim was Jim Grondin. Myron's last name was LaFleur that had its comic side, all right. Myron the flower had drying blood on his lips, chin, and cheek. The eye with the mouse under it was already swelling up. The girl in the cranberry-colored sweatshirt walked by aimlessly and gave Myron a cautious look. I could have told her that Myron was only dangerous to teenage boys intent on proving their manhood, but saved my breath. After all, Ollie was right-they had only been doing what they thought was best, although in a blind, fearful way rather than in any real common interest. And now I needed them to do what I thought was best. I didn't think that would be a problem. They had both had the stuffing knocked out of them. Neither-especially Myron the flower-was going to be, good for anything for some time to come. Something that had been in their eyes when they were fixing to send Norm out to unplug the exhaust vent had gone now. Their peckers were no longer up.