Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles, #1)(41)

A plump, dark-haired woman ahead of me stopped dead in her tracks and I almost ran my cart into her.

"Excuse me." I smiled.

She glanced at me, her eyes wide. "Did you see that?"

"I'm sorry, see what?"

"Over there." The woman pointed to the seven-foot-tall freezers.

I studied the units. Bright square packages of frozen pizza, bags of corn, peas, and Normandy mix. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"I guess I'm just going crazy." The woman frowned.

"What do you think you saw?"

A harsh, grating noise cut through the quiet. Something sharp was scratching across metal. I looked up. Above the freezer on the white wall sat a stalker, fastened to the drywall by its huge claws.

The woman gasped.

Son of a bitch. Out in broad daylight.

No broom. Security cameras. A carnivorous alien monster in a warehouse full of unsuspecting people. I took a split-second inventory of the shelves in front of me and my cart. Shelves: paper towels, paper plates, napkins. Cart: ten three-liter bottles of Mello Yello, big bag of dog food, plastic bags filled with bunches of mint and basil, cookies, twin jugs of Clorox, olive oil...

The stalker swiveled its head, its evil, vicious eyes measuring the distance between it and us.

"What the hell is that?" the woman whispered.

The stalker turned, twisting its body as if it were boneless.

"Run," I barked and grabbed the metal shelves, sending a precision pulse through the building. The magic zapped through the shelving and into the floor.

God, this place was huge. I pushed harder, the magic streaming from me, dashing through the wires under the floor and in the walls.

"What?" The woman gaped at me.

The stalker's muscles bunched.

"Run!"

The woman planted herself. "Like hell! This place is full of old people and kids."

The one time I get caught in the open and my bystander wants to stand her ground instead of running away.

The magic "clicked," wrapping around the right set of wires. The security cameras died.

The stalker leaped, claws poised for the kill. I yanked the gallon-sized jug of bleach from the cart and swung it like a bat. The jar connected with a solid thud, knocking the stalker aside. It flew, righted itself like a cat, and landed in the aisle, sliding back. Claws scraped the concrete.

The beast charged me. I swung the bleach again. The stalker dodged left. The dark-haired woman grabbed a six-pack of Del Monte canned corn from her cart and hurled it at the creature. The blow took it on the shoulder. The stalker stumbled and shied toward me. I smashed the bleach over its head. The stalker jerked back and raked the bottle with its claws --the plastic held.

A huge jar of tomato paste crashed into the beast's side. The stalker snapped at the woman, lashing with its claws. The tips of its talons cut across the woman's forearm, and she cried out. I grabbed a bottle of olive oil from her cart and brought it down like a hammer. The stalker leaped back. I threw the bottle at it.

The stalker made an eerie, whispery growl that raised every hair on my body. The woman swiped cans from her cart and threw them one after the other. The stalker retreated under the barrage of cans, baring ugly red teeth. Step, another step. The shelves loomed behind it.

The stalker leaped straight up, scuttled over the plastic-wrapped inventory on the shelves so fast it was a blur, and leaped straight at me. I had no time to react. The huge claws caught my arms, ripping through the fabric. Pain lanced my shoulders. The impact knocked me back and my spine hit the metal shelves. The red teeth snapped an inch from my face. Fetid, sour breath washed over me.

I twisted the cap off the bleach and dumped it over the ugly face.

The stalker's scream was like nails on a chalkboard.

The woman took a running start and smashed her cart into it, knocking it off me and driving the cart and the creature into the shelves. The stalker squirmed, pinned between the metal framework and the cart.

I pushed from the shelves. It liked bleach, I would give it bleach. I ran and dumped the bottle on the beast's face. The chlorine drowned its eyes and mouth.

The stalker convulsed. The cart went flying, cans and meat scattering on the concrete. The creature thrashed about, spasming, its limbs twisted. Cramps wracked its body. It jerked off the floor and crashed back like a fish out of water, and its head hit the concrete with a wet crunching sound. Cracks split its skull, seeping white slime. It hammered its head against the floor, leaving wet puddles.

The beast arched its back, clawed at the air, then stopped moving.

The woman picked up a set of cans wrapped in plastic off the floor. Ten jars of Bush's Best Baked Beans rose above her head and came down on top of the stalker's skull with a solid, crunchy thud. Score one for Homo sapiens.

The woman stared at the ruined body. Blood dripped from her arm. A fine spray of red covered her face --must've been cast off when she slammed down the cans. She wiped her face with her left forearm and kicked the stalker's corpse with her sneakered foot. "Don't mess with Texas."

I looked at her.

She shrugged. "Seemed like the right thing to say."

I had a dead stalker in the middle of Costco. There was no place to hide it. Even if I managed to miraculously stuff it somehow behind some paper plates, it would stink and be found, not to mention I had an eyewitness who probably wouldn't change her story and if someone suggested she was crazy would likely hit them with a thirty-six-ounce can of vegetables.