Read Online Anything Can Be Dangerous by Matt Hults - Free Book Online

a man with no eyes; a
woman half-enshrouded by mold; a pale sexless figure covered in
ants.
    They were something else, he realized,
something super-natural, and he and Greg and Wendy had somehow
become trapped here, held specifically for their
servitude.
    But Greg had broken the
rules…
    Wendy was already shaking her head,
fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “You’re crazy!”
    Before he could explain himself, a
chair from the seating area smashed against the opposite side of
the wall, shattering two of the heat lamps, pelting them with hot
glass. He looked up and saw the crowd massing before the registers
like rioters lined up against a barricade. A hundred voices
hollered, “Food!”
    “ Trust me,” he said,
hauling Wendy to her feet. “We need to feed them! Start looking for
anything we can use!”
    Together they attacked the kitchen,
clawing open cabinets, searching shelves, rummaging through the
detritus scattered throughout the room. Ron had no idea what
eatables they could possibly find—if any—but as they searched the
building, they discovered hidden caches of all imaginable
ingredients: buns, condiments, spices, vegetables, canned fillings,
pre-made mixes that declared: Just add
water!
    Ron went to the walk-in freezer,
certain that there couldn’t be anything salvageable inside—not with
that horrid smell seeping from the door—but when he looked, he
found row after row of plastic-wrapped hamburger patties waiting
for the grill. The temperature inside the freezer easily rivaled
that of the kitchen, and though Ron knew the patties had to be
rancid, he snatched up a bag in each hand and called for Wendy to
come help him.
    Something growled.
    The sound made him jerk with fear,
dropping the bags of hamburger as he drew the butcher knife from
his belt.
    Wendy ran to his side, reaching him in
time to witness a cloudy white eyeball pop open on the gigantic
pile of reeking meat heaped against the freezer’s far
wall.
    Her scream ripped across his eardrums
at the very moment a lopsided mouth tore a hole in the huge mound
of ground beef staring back at them. The meat-pile yawned as they
looked on, displaying teeth made from broken bones and disgorging a
huge bovine organ that must’ve been its tongue. Five smaller eyes
surfaced at various points around the first one.
    The thing’s attention focused on the
knife in Ron’s hand. Its eyes narrowed.
    A second later it coughed up a watery
stream of red-brown liquid that struck Ron dead-center in the
chest, soaking his shirt and hair, spraying in all
directions.
    He slammed the door and threw the
locking pin in place, looking at Wendy, meat juice dripping off his
face. Her mascara traced the paths of her tears down both
cheeks.
    “ Co…come on,” he said,
picking up the bags of patties. “We need to hurry.”
    At the stove, he fired up the burners,
switched on the deep fryer. Overhead, the malfunctioning lights had
ceased flickering and now glowed bright and steady. Readout LEDs
flashed to life on almost all the other appliances.
    They completed sixty orders at an
average rate of four minutes per meal, a miracle time born of
high-pressure stress and good ol’ fashion terror. The customers
came, ordered, and paid whatever they felt like paying. Currencies
from around the world disappeared into the cash drawers, along with
shells and stones, bones and teeth. At one point, a skinny girl
with blue-grey skin dressed only in fishnet stockings and a frayed
leather dog collar offered Ron a “freebee” in exchange for her
chocolate milkshake, to which he politely replied, “It’s on the
house.”
    Wendy refused to follow him to the
counter, opting instead to watch the grill while he dealt with the
horde of unearthly customers up front.
    “ We’re out of hamburger
patties,” she said when he rushed to change the baskets in the deep
fryer. She cast a furtive glance at where they’d stacked a dozen
canisters of soft drink mix in front of the freezer
door.
    Ron