Ian and Erin stared at them.

  "That is without a doubt the single stupidest thing I have ever heard," Ian said at last. "There is no such thing as fate. Death isn't some malevolent entity with a scythe and a book of names. The universe is just a series of random events. There is no order. It is only the deep-seated human desire to have reasons for everything, to assign blame and motive to accidents, that makes people think there's some grand scheme behind everything. You guys are thinking like medieval peasants."

  Kevin resisted the urge to reach out and shake Ian and make him listen. Ian had gone into full lecture mode now and was not even remotely willing to listen to anything they had to say.

  "Show them the pictures, Wendy," Kevin said through gritted teeth.

  Wendy nodded and fished in her bag until she found the picture of Ashley and Ashlyn. She handed it to Ian, who held it with one hand while he drove with the other.

  "Great," Ian sneered. "Two scoops of dick bait and a school of hungry dicks. What exactly is the significance of this supposed to be?"

  He held the photo out to Erin, who looked at it with similar dismissive contempt.

  "How did Ashley and Ashlyn die?" Wendy asked.

  "They burned up in tanning beds," Erin replied. "A more fitting death for a pair of looks-obsessed fashion whores I truly can not imagine."

  "Now look at the picture," Wendy said. "See, they look like they're on fire."

  Erin rolled her eyes. "Oh, please," she said. "You have got to be kidding."

  "Come on," Ian said. "They're just lit up by an off screen red light. Are you trying to tell me that somehow predicted their deaths? I'm sorry. I'm afraid you are just not overwhelming me with your application of the scientific method."

  "Okay fine," Wendy said, snatching the picture back. "Laugh all you want, but I'm not done." She took another picture out of the pile, but held it close to her chest. "So, tell me. How did Frank Cheek die?"

  "It was the cooling fan from Kevin's truck, right?" Erin said. "They said it broke loose when that moving truck rear ended Kevin's ride, and it flew out and chopped Frank's head off."

  "Right," Wendy said. She handed the picture of Frank to Ian. "So, what does that look like to you?"

  Ian pulled back, eyes wide. He curled his lip. "Well, isn't this charming," he said. "Surely it wasn't you who shot this piece of panty fetish pornography."

  Kevin flushed. "I took that one," he said. "But that's not important."

  "Your vulgarity exceeds even my expectations, Fischer," Ian said, arching a withering eyebrow. He passed the picture to Erin. "And exactly what are we supposed to gain from this bit of lowbrow sleaze?"

  "You're totally missing the point," said Kevin. "Look behind the skirt. Who's behind the skirt?"

  Erin peered closer, squinting. "Is that…" She touched the surface of the photo with one black fingernail. "Is it Frank?"

  "That's right," Wendy replied. "And what's that right up above him?"

  "A ceiling fan. It looks like… well…" Erin faltered as the truth started to slowly sink in. "Like it's chopping his head off."

  "Give me that back," Ian snapped, reaching for the photo.

  Erin passed the picture back to him and he examined it more closely. He frowned, as if troubled, but then tossed it back at Wendy.

  "Random nonsense," he said. "It doesn't mean a thing. It could have been anyone in the background of that shot."

  "That's the point," Kevin said, slow and deliberate. "It could have been anyone, but it wasn't. It was Frank. And now Frank is dead."

  Ian made a skeptical face. "And I suppose you have a picture of Lewis too," he said. "A shot that is somehow suggestive of him getting his head crushed by weights? I can't even imagine what that would look like."

  Wendy tucked the picture of Frank back in the pile and pulled out the one of Lewis, appearing headless with the weight blurring above him. She passed it to Ian. Ian stared at it for a long moment, and licked his lips. He passed the picture to Erin. She paled, kohl smudged eyes wide.

  "Wow," she said quietly.

  "You are not actually buying this bullshit, are you?" Ian said to Erin. "I mean, really, how do we even know whether or not these pictures are actually legit? You can fake pretty much anything with Photoshop these days."

  Kevin's brows creased, baffled. "Why the hell would we bother to fake something like this?" he asked.

  "Oh, I don't know," said Ian. "Maybe to give credibility to your new girlfriend's mystical vision?"

  Kevin narrowed his eyes, coldly furious. "Wendy is not my girlfriend," he said through clenched teeth.

  Ian shrugged, irritatingly casual. "Could have fooled me," he said. "And with poor sainted Jason less than a month in the ground." He made a mild, scolding tut tut sound with his tongue against his teeth. "You don't waste any time, Fischer, I'll give you that."

  Kevin felt a red flush of rage and he cocked his fist back to let Ian have it, but Wendy grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

  "Don't," she said. "This is not helping."

  "Yeah," Erin said, stepping in front of Ian. "Come on, knock it off, Ian."

  "Wendy," Kevin said, shaking off her grip and turning away, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Please tell me that I am not in Ian's photo, because I'll tell you, I'm about an inch away from killing this smug little fucker myself."

  "All right," Ian said. "Look… Even if these photos are real, that doesn't make them magical oracles of future doom. I can see how, to a superstitious, under-educated mind, this series of pictures might seem to give an impression of prescience, but… but it's all bullshit. I bet if you gave me any random pictures of kids who had died, and then told me how they died, I bet I could find something in each picture that would seem to suggest some 'warning' from beyond. But it's all after the fact. It's like looking at a Rorschach inkblot after the psychologist has told you what to look for. You're going to see whatever you want to see whether it's really there or not."

  "So," Erin said, uneasily, as she handed the picture back to Wendy. "Is there really a photo of Ian? Is there one of me too?"

  "Yeah," Wendy said. "There is. It shows the two of you together, but it doesn't seem quite as obvious as the others. Still, it seems clear that something's going on."

  She sorted through the stack of photos until she found the right one and then handed the picture to Erin. Erin looked down at it, silent and Kevin looked over her shoulder. It showed her and Ian standing together at the shooting gallery counter. A row of pointed tan banners hung above them. In the foreground, Erin held a rifle in one hand, and was holding her other hand up before her face like a famous celebrity trying to avoid being photographed by paparazzi. Her glossy black fingernails reflected the flash of the camera, like glistening drops of crude oil. Ian was slightly behind her. His arms were also up, trying to block his face, but they were a little too high, forming an X just above his forehead. He looked more embarrassed than frightened.

  Erin scowled, relieved that the photo wasn't scarier and clearly happy to be able to scoff again.

  "So what?" she said, sarcastically. "This proves that I'm going to OD on nail polish? And Ian is going to die of acute embarrassment?"

  She handed the photo to Ian. He looked relieved too, though he would probably never admit it. He laughed, a short, derisive snort.

  "Okay," he said. "See, obviously your theory kind of runs out of steam on closer examination." He tapped the glossy surface of the photo. "I don't exactly see the specter of Death leaning over me and tapping me on the shoulder with his bony finger here."

  Kevin glowered, annoyed at Ian's flippancy and still wanting very badly to knock some sense into him.

  "Well, I don't know," Wendy said. "There's a gun in the picture. You don't see that as significant?"

  "Do you own a gun?" Kevin asked. "Either of you?"

  "Of course," Ian said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Bin Laden ain't got nothing on me. Don't you watch television? All us doom and gloom, gothy geek, trench coat Mafia types are armed to the teeth and ready to go on a wild school shooting spree at the drop of a hat."

  "He's kidding," Erin said. "We both own several antique knives, but honestly, guns are just so… I don't know… so uncouth."

  "How about any crazy relatives with guns?" Kevin asked. "Any neighbors with itchy trigger fingers?"

  "The McKinley's don't have neighbors," Ian said. "And all my crazy relatives are long dead."

  "I don't know any of my neighbors," Erin said. "Except Mr. Show, the old hippie, but he has a poster on his door that says 'Make Love Not War' so I'm guessing he's not much of a gun nut. A dirty old man maybe, but not a gun nut."

  "Okay, fine," Kevin said, more annoyed than ever. "We're just trying to warn you. Just trying to save your lives. We thought, since you're both so smart, maybe you could help us figure out how to get out of this, how to stop it, but forget it. Me and Wendy have plenty of time. See, you guys come before us, so that means that until you're dead, we're safe."

  "What do you mean, 'we're next?'" Ian asked, looking up sharply. "What kind of vindictive shit is that?"

  Wendy looked over at Kevin, as if trying to decide whether to subject themselves to further ridicule by telling Erin and Ian the rest of the theory. He nodded in silent support.

  At last Wendy sighed and spoke.

  "So far," she said, "everybody who has died after the crash has died in the order they were seated in the roller coaster –in the order they would have died." She held up her fingers and started counting them off. "Ashley and Ashlyn in car seven. Frank Cheek in car eight. Lewis in nine." She looked up at Erin. "You and Ian were in car ten right? And then we were behind you in car twelve."

  "The only people we can't account for are the two who were sitting between you and us, the ones in car eleven," Kevin said. "Wendy has a picture, but it's blocked and we can't tell who they are." He looked from Ian to Erin. "You two don't happen to remember who they were or what they looked like?"

  "Wait a minute," said Ian derisively. "You're trying to tell us that everybody was supposed to die in this neat regimented order, just like they were seated on the ride? That is completely preposterous. Death is anything but orderly and crashes are by their nature chaotic and unpredictable. A person closer to the front could be mortally wounded, but survive a few painful minutes longer, while someone further back could be killed instantly. There is no 'order.' It's an accident, not a line at the ice cream truck." Ian frowned. "And what do you mean you can't remember the people sitting directly in front of you? How is that possible? Or were you just too busy making goo goo eyes at each other while your respective keepers were out of sight and out of mind?"

  Kevin had to turn his back on Ian and start a slow count to ten. It would feel so fucking good to beat the miserable little shit into a bloody pulp, to send him tumbling ass over end into a pile of hedge clippers, but that sudden violent fantasy made him shudder. What if Kevin was part of Ian's death? What if Ian was supposed to goad Kevin into shoving him and starting off the whole deadly chain reaction? Kevin let his breath out slowly. If that was the case then Death would just need to find another method. Kevin flat out refused to play that shit.

  Oblivious to Kevin's inner conflict, Wendy sighed with annoyance and turned back to Erin.

  "You don't remember either, huh?" she asked.

  "Sorry," Erin replied, shrugging. "Not a clue. No wait," she cried suddenly. "Yes I do. Now I remember. It was this guy, with, like, a big black cloak with a pointed hood. And you couldn't see his face, only these two glowing red eyes. The attendant took away his sickle before the ride started."

  "Okay," Wendy said, snatching back the picture of Erin and Ian. "Okay. Go ahead and laugh. You think I care if you think we're crazy? If it saves our lives, I don't care if the whole world thinks we're crazy. At least we're trying to do something about it. At least we're not just giving in to it."

  "Giving in to 'it?'" Ian asked. "Into what? There is no 'it.' Death isn't a person. We just covered that."

  "I don't know," Kevin said. "Maybe it's more like some kind of force."

  Erin hefted a ten-pound bag of plant food out of the shopping cart and tossed it to Ian.

  "Third shelf," she said.

  Ian draped the bag over the rail and pushed a lever. The forklift platform began rising.

  "A force is just… a force, like gravity or magnetism." Ian jogged the lift a bit to the left to get closer to the shelf. "It's only transferred energy. It has no consciousness, malicious or otherwise."

  As Kevin watched Ian rising above them, a tiny wind chime tinkled gently beside him. He saw Wendy turn towards the colorful chimes, hanging from a sign offering them for sale at a discount, and he followed her gaze. The chimes were swaying slightly, though there was no breeze inside the store. He turned around to look first one way and then the other. There was a display of electric fans on sale nearby, but none of them were on or even plugged in. He turned back to Wendy and saw her shiver, face suddenly pale and lips pressed down into a tight line.

  Ian continued his lecture as he positioned the lift next to the shelf.

  "A force has no goals, no desires," he said. "It has no awareness that it is a force."

  As he rose to the third shelf, he came near a line of garden flags and banners that were hung above him from the top of the shelf. Several of the flags tapered to a point at the bottom. Wendy frowned at the flags and looked back down at the picture of Erin and Ian in her hands. Kevin looked over her shoulder at the photo. The flags looked a lot like the line of tan banners that ran above Ian's head in the picture, like a row of serrated teeth. What did it mean? Was Ian's death happening now?

  "Kevin," she cried, pointing up. "These banners, they're in the picture."

  Kevin looked up and saw Ian returning the bag of plant food to the third shelf, wedging it next to a stack of boxes. Each box was labeled "Muriatic Acid." The boxes rocked slightly. Kevin moved to pull Erin out of the way and shouted up at Ian. "Watch those boxes!"

  Ian ducked reflexively and spun the forklift wheel. It reversed and swerved, and Ian was thrown away from the controls. Kevin pulled Erin out of the forklift's path. Ian grabbed the wheel again, trying to regain control, but before he could, the lift banged into the shelf on the opposite side of the aisle, knocking a bag of birdseed loose. It fell, exploding on the concrete floor as Wendy, Erin and Kevin leapt aside. Birdseed scattered and bounced everywhere.

  Erin grimaced. "Oh great," she said. "Clean up on aisle seven."

  Wendy and Kevin looked embarrassed.

  "Sorry," Kevin said, shrugging.

  Ian shouted down at them from the forklift. "Fuck, man, what are you doing? You said the boxes were falling."

  "I said 'watch those boxes,'" Kevin said. "They were… Well… they looked like they might…"

  Ian shook his head, pissed off now. "They weren't doing anything," he spat. "Christ. You two are a couple of paranoid freaks."

  Wendy put her hands on her hips. "We're not going to apologize for trying to save you," she said. "You haven't seen what we've seen. You haven't been through what we've been through." She looked round at the maze of potential death that was the Home Land home improvement warehouse and shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. "At least not yet."

  "You don't have to apologize," Erin said, handing Wendy and Kevin push brooms from a nearby shelf. "You just have to clean it up."

  She pulled a trashcan and a dustpan out of the shopping cart and dropped them beside the bag of seed. Kevin and Wendy dutifully began sweeping all the birdseed into a pile and scooping it up with the dustpan, as Erin continued restocking the shelves. Ian began lowering the forklift.

  "So tell me," Erin said, voice casual, but sounding just a little forced. "Who's next in this theory of yours? Me or Ian?"

  Kevin paused in his sweeping. "Well…" he said, "we know the order that everybody was sitting on the roller coaster, but we don't have any idea how it works with two people who were sitting together."

  Wendy looked up and nodded. "That's right," she said. "There's not really any way to tell whether Ashley or Ashlyn died first, and Frank and Lewis were both sitting alone."

  Erin laughed, a sound that didn't seem to have much to do with mirth. "Who knew Death was so fucking complicated?" She pulled a large box labeled Sure-Gro out of the cart and hefted it to Ian. "Third shelf again, Zip."

  Ian caught it and pushed the lever that raised the forklift.

  "Death is not complicated," he said. "It's very simple. See, people die. End of story. That's how life works. One hundred and fifty thousand people a day, every goddamn day of the year. We are biological entities. Simply put, death is the end of biological function. There's nothing mysterious or complicated about it." He found the stack of Sure-Gro Boxes and started slipping the return into a gap in the stack. It hit the edge of a box in the second row back and got stuck. He pushed harder, trying to manhandle it into place.

  Kevin craned his neck up to continue the argument. "Okay, maybe death is simple," he said, "but how can you 'simply' explain a premonition that caused us to get off a ride that then immediately killed all of its passengers in a catastrophic accident?"

  "See, you're suffering from an illusion brought on by a…" Ian gave the box of Sure-Gro a final shove. It pushed the boxes behind it back, causing a four-pound box of three inch roofing nails, facing the aisle on the other side of the shelf, to teeter precariously. "By narrowness of focus. You're not looking at the big picture."

  "What do you mean?" Wendy asked, clearly growing impatient with this snooty lecture.

  "Okay, it's like this," Ian said. "Wendy had a 'premonition,' though I think we are safe in calling it a 'fear,' that the roller coaster was going to crash, and 'Whoa, dude,' it crashed. Amazing. Incredible. What you aren't thinking about is all those times the ride has run, and I'll bet that every single time, somebody on it thinks, 'Oh my god, we're going to crash,' but it doesn't. So, the one time out of the million times it has run that it actually crashes, you think it's an other worldly coincidence that you thought it was going to crash."

 

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