Black Friday by Ike Hamill Page B

moonlight.
    Robby felt his panic rising. It threatened to take over and take away his reason. Like a reflex, an image of his dad popped into Robby’s head. His dad could handle any situation. He would listen carefully to the problem, form an opinion, and immediately return to a carefree, jovial state. That’s what Robby admired most about his dad—his ability to stay positive, regardless of the crisis. Or, Robby corrected himself, that’s what he used to admire most, before his dad had disappeared.
    When he heard his shoelace flapping against the pavement, Robby stopped abruptly. He cocked his head for a second. It seemed, just for a moment, like the sound of movement on the other side of the road had continued a tiny bit longer than his own footfalls. Robby knelt to tie his stolen shoe and scanned the tree line. If there was something there, it had hidden itself quite well. When he stood, Robby scuffed his foot on the pavement. He wanted to see if the noise he heard was just an echo off the trees. It took a quick calculation—at eleven-hundred feet-per-second, sound would take less than one-hundred milliseconds to cross the road, bounce of the trees, and come back. The movement he’d heard was way longer than that, and the echo of his scuffing foot proved it. Unless his ears were playing tricks on him, he’d heard something move.
    When he resumed walking, Robby worked hard to quiet his stride, ears straining for any other sounds. He didn’t hear anything, but that only served to increase his paranoia. He picked up his pace and kept his head turning back and forth, waiting for another sign that something was following him. He reached the parking lot and breathed a little easier when he passed between the rows of parked cars. They didn’t offer him any safety, but they looked normal and tame compared to the shapeless dark woods that lined the access road. Robby crossed the parking lot in the open, but then moved to the shadows again as he walked back up the ramp towards the building.  
    Just as he emerged from between the bushes that flanked the path, Robby saw another blue flash streak down the highway and then disappear out of sight. Robby pressed himself back against a bush and stared off in the direction of the highway. The lightning faded away, leaving Robby’s eyes with a swirly-black afterimage burned into his retinas for several seconds.  
    The wind stopped. Everything Robby could see and hear became perfectly still in the wake of the blue flash. It felt like he’d been dropped into a diorama. The stillness made the building in front of him seem unnatural. It sat, poised to spring, like the jaws of a leg trap. Robby imagined that the whole rest stop had been built as a way to capture unwary travelers, a giant roach motel built to ensnare northbound I-95 traffic.  
    Robby rounded the hedge and moved farther away from the building, keeping it sight. He followed the hedge to the left, in the same general direction as the stolen Volvo. He didn’t like moving in the moonlight—he would have preferred dodging over to the tree line again, but he wanted to see how far the retaining wall extended. If he could find a spot to clear the wall, maybe he could get the Volvo out of the rest stop without crossing the lightning-infested highway.
    Staying at the rest stop for the night no longer seemed like an option. Robby knew that fear was driving his decision, but that was another thing he’d learned from his father. Dad always managed to stay positive, but he also trusted his gut. The hedge didn’t grow as tall or thick over near edge of the woods. Robby saw the lower parking lot through the scraggly branches. He pushed through and got a look at the drop. Even at the farthest edge, near the fence that held back the woods, the retaining wall still dropped a good couple of feet—too far a drop for Robby to attempt with the Volvo.
    Here, in the darkest corner of the dog-walking area, the fence looked ragged. Branches