It was hard to linger, though, with the dark tweaking my ponytail. I swung the torch down into the pit and around the sides of the workshop. Along the back wall hung the tools. I glanced the light down into the dark pit again, just checking, before I stepped over and grabbed a crowbar, a hammer, a saw. A pair of pliers. Working as quickly as I could. In and out. I spotted a car battery. I scraped it across the floor to the entrance, dumped the lot, and went back for a sledgehammer and some metal cutters.
On the way out the door to fetch the car, I struck gold: fuel canisters. I washed the flank of the Beast with most of the first one, but got the knack and topped the car up to overflowing. The heady smell of the jerry cans took me back to Africa: my father loading the roof rack of the safari truck before dawn, while I huddled in the warmth of the headlights. The Beast’s headlights glinted off the sopping canisters, and I wondered if I was just imagining the shimmer of rising vapors. Those fumes would be overwhelming in the car. I found a short ladder and some bungee ties inside the workshop. The ladder swung into place on top of the bike rack. Securing it was simple, but hauling a full jerry can onto the roof was not; it weighed as much as Billy. A dead weight. I apologized to the Beast as I gouged scars into its side by pushing the canisters up onto the bonnet and then scraping them over the windscreen, swearing all the way. Finally, the fuel was fixed onto the modified roof rack, and I jumped back down into the gravel.
“It’s okay.” I patted the Beast where I’d scratched it. “You look the part now.”
I slid the workshop doors closed to hide the ice cream van, a strange little secret for someone else to discover.
The first gray houses of the village straggled down the hill, but I flashed past them, braking hard when I spotted the green sign of a grocery store up a side street. I reversed and turned up a steep concrete ramp into the small car park. Empty. A good sign. I bumped up onto the pavement and across a short pedestrian area to stop right outside the double doors, leaving the lights on full beam. The windows were covered by vibrant pictures of tempting delicacies: red wine gushing from a bottle, tomatoes as big as my head. But the doors were shuttered. I picked up the axe, crowbar, and sledgehammer from the passenger seat.
I found the lock at the bottom of the shutter and heaved at it with the crowbar. The metal slats roiled and clattered, the loudest noise I’d heard for hours. I glanced up and down the street, reassuring myself there was no one to disturb. The windows of the surrounding bungalows were as blank as their inhabitants. As if to brazen it out, I grabbed the sledgehammer and slammed the lock, felt my spine rattle like the metal slats. I tried lifting the shutter an inch or so with the crowbar and hacking at the lock with the axe. Nothing budged. I stood up and arched to stretch my back. The moon was just rising over the slouching rooftops. I was grateful for the light.
I picked up my tools and switched on the Maglite to look for a back door. In fact, there was a side door, which did little to resist the crowbar. I shone my light down a corridor, strode past a staff toilet and a windowless office, pushing through swing doors into a loading area, and then into the shop itself. I listened for buzz, but there was just the sticky sound of decay. And a smell like the bottom of the fridge after my longer business trips. With the crowbar, I forced the main entrance doors from the inside, and found a simple padlock that held the shutters closed. An axe blow to the chain and the shutters rattled up to knee-height. I pushed them up, letting moonlight luster the checkout and magazine racks.
Outside, I dropped the tools on the passenger seat and walked over to pull free a trolley. It bucked out of my hands, and I realized that it was chained, needing a coin. “You are kidding me,” I muttered. My handbag was back at the camp. I had no money. I checked the car for coins—the center console, the door pockets, under the seats.
“Fuck’s sake!” I shouted into the night. Ache, ache, ache, the echo came back down the street.
“Fine.” The axe was back in my hand and I swung it high, bringing it down onto the tinny little chain that held the trolley. “Don’t worry,” I shouted to the other trolleys as I dragged one out, “the rest of you can go free.” I swung the axe and smashed chain after chain, pulling a few trolleys out and pushing them off into the car park, where one collapsed onto its side, but two others gathered speed down the slope toward the road. “That’s it!” I called. “Go! Go on, run free!” I hacked more trolleys from the pack and sent them off in singles and pairs, shouting after them as they jiggered away like shackled ponies. When I had freed a line of trolleys, I let the axe drop onto the paving stones and caught my breath. I rubbed my hand over my face. “Ducks back in a line,” I said, and pushed my trolley into the supermarket.
I finished stacking the first trolley-load in the boot of the car. The shop was small, but densely stocked, so I went back for more. Against the back wall, I compared types of charcoal. Decision made, I shone the torch across and saw disposable plates and cutlery. As I pushed the trolley along the aisle, I heard the twin rattle of a trolley outside.
I stopped dead.
Silence. I opened my mouth to breathe more quietly.
Another burst of trolley rattle from the car park. I clicked off the Maglite and crouched down to the floor, instinctively looking for something to crawl under, but there was no cover.
Silence again. Long silence.
Maybe a trolley had rolled down the hill by itself?
I waited a few minutes longer and stood back up. I clicked on the Maglite, moved to the end of the aisle, keeping the torchlight low to the ground. I could see the moonlit entrance, the railings outside, the headlamps streaming in from where the car stood out of sight to the left. I should turn those off, I thought, in case the battery dies.
As I took another step toward the entrance, a moonlit shadow darted across the path. Tall, fast, human. I hit the floor again, scrabbling the torch off. As I did, the shutter came rattling down in a shower of noise, and I was huddled in darkness.
“Quick!” A voice outside signaled a burst of trolley rattle. Running footsteps, fast and light. I crawled back toward the loading bay and crouched along the corridor to the side door. Creeping round the outside of the building to the pedestrian area, I saw dark shapes engulf my car.