Larson considered waiting. It was logically the best strategy. Sooner or later someone would come along, a carload of teen­agers cruising the town or an addled housewife who’d forgotten the cat food and a quart of milk at the Kroger store earlier in the day. If he was patient, someone would come, and he could take them out there on the sidewalk and he wouldn’t have to worry about being invited in. But like all of his thoughts these days, the idea just came and went. He did not retain much; memories and ideas and emotions all eddied through his brain as they never had in life, unimpeded now as they had been by acculturation and his own close-mindedness. But the gray matter that his thoughts passed through was dead now, no more than a gravel bed for his stream of consciousness. Some things were retained and acted on from time to time, but only if triggered by that feral cell that ruled him. The hunger was all-important. The hunger was what drove him. As it always would. And right now it saw the young cashier and it said it must have him. Period.

He walked to the door and rapped on the glass with a dirty fist several times before the boy glanced up from his comic. “What is it?”

“Let me in.”

“The door’s open.”

He hit the glass harder. “I said let me in, prick.”

The cashier sneered and shook his head. “Goddamn drunk,” he grumbled under his breath and turned his back to the door.

Larson shook with frustration. He could shatter the window if he wanted, but that still wouldn’t gain him entrance. Not unless invited. But how could he be asked in looking like he did, shot up, torn, leaking—a barely disguised nightmare. He sagged against the door, trembling like an addict . . . and the door swung inward with him. The small bell above it dinged, and he was partway across the threshold before he realized it. But how? he wondered. Then he saw the big orange sign taped to the glass just above waist level, WELCOME, it read, COME ON IN.

Larson grinned. He pushed the door open all the way.

The young man at the register saw him enter from the corner of his eye. Oh, great, he thought, just what I needed, another slobbering, shit-faced drunk. “The beer’s at the far end, pal,” he gestured without looking up. Maybe he’ll just get a twelve-pack and go, he hoped. But the man came to the counter instead. The boy sighed and looked up from The Incredible Hulk. “What’s the problem? I said the beer’s at the . . .”