Beyond the Barriers (2 page)

The sky didn’t have a hint of cloud; it was as unusual for a late October day as you can get. I wore a light jacket to take advantage of the unseasonable warmth. I was pretty sure rain was on the way tomorrow, but when you live here, you just get used to it. I backed out of my driveway, my gaze on the pristine front lawn with its deep, green grass, plants in the front, including two shades of rhododendron right next to each other. They looked like they were about to call it a day for the next six months. The other plants were pretty well soaked from a recent deluge of rain, and hung limply as if they had given up.

My house was a little two-story—not the brick sort you see on TV on a perfect day, with a perfect family inside. It was white, an off-shade, and it had light blue trim, which Allison made me put on after we moved in. I remembered standing on a ladder, eight or nine feet off the ground, while I ran the brush back and forth. She would come out from cleaning the inside and check on the status, like a general inspecting her army. It was a hot day and she brought me lemonade, fresh squeezed from organic lemons, because the advertisers told her organic was that much better for you.

I couldn’t tell the difference, and now that she was gone, I just bought whatever was on sale.

I drove through my neighborhood and saw curtains pulled back, and faces hidden in shadow watching as I drove away. I thought I saw a wave from one house, so I waved back. The streets here were calm and quiet, which was eerie, because a day like this should have seen children playing in the streets, people walking dogs, taking their babies places.

I made it to the main street, navigating through smaller side streets—going the “back way,” as I liked to call it. This dumped me out on a main drag called Arthur Road, which would take me to the almost-highway numbered 322. That drag was old and always jammed with cars. The City of Vesper Lake sprang up over the course of twenty years, and the roads were never designed to support that much traffic. Housing developments like mine became all the rage as prices near downtown Portland went nowhere but up.

It was stop and go as I competed with other cars at the lights. I managed to maneuver behind a lifted truck. It flashed its lights and honked at me, but I didn’t care. I then took off like a shot at the light and got around a few more cars before arriving at my destination.

* * *

The parking lot was a nightmare, so I pulled up in front of the store, made a spot out of the loading zone, jumped out, and locked my car with a click of the button on my key. I had a baseball hat on backwards, and I guess the look on my face, which was probably determined, kept shoppers from saying anything to me about my choice of parking spaces.

I walked in like I owned the place. A/C blew down from giant units above the entrance, creating a wall of cold to keep the day at bay every time the automatic door slid open. A security guard was keeping an eye on nervous-looking shoppers who stood in an orderly line. I didn’t stop when he approached me. He was big, not as big as me, but he was overweight, and his forehead was covered in sweat.

“Sir, I can’t let you skip ahead like that.” But I ignored him and kept moving. The line of people behind me disintegrated as the folks who had been patient saw me take control. Making people wait in line while the world fell apart made no sense. They should have been packing people in here, getting the last of the money while they could.

The guard ran back, with his hands outstretched on either side, and yelled at them to get back in line, but they ignored his calls and streamed around him like a school of fish breaking up around a large predator. I moved past a couple that were filling their cart with fresh fruit and vegetables. The wife was inspecting each one like they were shopping for the weekend.

That wouldn’t last long. Fruit and veggies would go bad if the power went out in a couple of days. They should have been collecting canned goods. Things that would last for a while. I thought of boxed raisins, and decided to grab some if there were any left.

I went to the shelves, but found most had been swept clean. Employees moved around in their bright blue Walmart shirts and tried to keep order, but it was descending into a chaotic situation, and had been since I walked in the door. The stuff they were talking about on the radio. The screens above the aisles were running coverage of the attacks. Some stopped and stared, while others kept their eyes down, avoiding the images like it would somehow save them.

I found an unattended cart with a few items in it. I didn’t pause to look for the owner; I just put my hands on the handle and kept moving toward the back of the store. I tossed out the contents, some boxes of cookies and Twinkies, and kept moving like it was mine to begin with. Stopped at a canned goods section that had some things on the shelves and dumped Spam and corned beef into the cart. Then I swung through another aisle and found a lone, five-pound bag of white rice, and it went in as well. There were some sardines on another aisle, lots of sardines, so I swept those up too. Better a little protein and the vitamins they would provide than the sugar from a bunch of snacks.

Gunshots from outside elicited screams from other shoppers, but I moved on. I had heard plenty of gunshots in my life, and if a stray bullet had my name on it, well, nothing to be done about it once I was on the ground. Or deep in it, for that matter.

I ran into a traffic jam, where a guy was arguing with another guy over a few bags of Cheetos. Both men looked to be at their wits’ end, and I suspected it would come to blows soon.

I moved on toward the outdoors goods, hoping there was stuff left. I found a backpack hanging from a shelf and added it to my collection. It was one of the Swiss Army ones with straps and pockets everywhere. I hoped it had the same build quality as their knives. A good bag would go a long way, if the world did indeed go down the drain.

Then I hit the emergency section and found a pair of those flashlights that you shake to charge. A small wind-up radio was next to them, so I tossed that in as well. It was lying on its side, next to a couple of opened tents, through which someone had rummaged.

I came to the hunting supplies, and found some knives in a large glass case. I looked around for an employee, but folks were running here and there, and the store looked like it would descend into complete chaos at any moment. So I grabbed a wrapped poncho and tore the packaging open. Then I unrolled it and held it to my side. I put the thin, glass door to my back, glanced around to see if any security watched, and quickly swung my elbow into the door as hard as I could.

Glass shattered behind the bag, which muffled the noise for the most part. I took out a game cleaning kit, putting it in the bag, then a couple of Gerber knives. There was a small axe in there as well. It had a short haft, and the burnished metal finish was dull in the florescent lights.

I took one of the Gerbers out of a box and slid it into my pocket. It was a four-inch blade with a serrated edge. It felt good to have some kind of weapon with me, no matter its size. Next up was a real weapon. I passed the archery stuff and stopped at the gun rack.

A couple of years ago, the liberals tried to get Walmart to remove guns from their stores. For the most part, the gigantic company complied, but some stores in smaller towns, like ours, kept them. A lot of hunters stopped here on their way to the mountains, for needed ammo and the occasional hunting rifle.

A man stopped to look at the knife rack and the mess on the floor. A thin guy with a Hawaiian shirt stuck to his body, he panted like he’d run all the way here.

“What happened?”

“I guess someone got impatient,” I told him.

“Think anyone will mind if I help myself?”

“I don’t think anyone will care. In a few days, we won’t care about anything.”

“Jesus, it’s not that bad. The government will reestablish order soon.”

“Hey, you can’t do that.” An employee came around a corner aisle with a woman in tow. She was looking at the signs, and he was obviously trying to find something for her.

The thin guy looked between us, then marched off like he didn’t know what to say or do. He just spun on his heel and left. I stared at the employee until he looked away.

“You got a key for this?” I pointed at the gun rack.

“Yeah, but we aren’t allowed to open it anymore. The manager is worried about a riot, about someone getting a gun and shooting at people.” He was short and stocky. Perspiration covered his face over a sheen of oil. How many hours had he been here trying to keep order? Trying to milk the last dollar out of the consumers?

“That makes no sense,” I said.

The woman who had followed watched our exchange, then shook her head as if just remembering something, and walked off as well. There was a buzz to the air, and things were going to get violent at any moment. I didn’t want to stick around that long.

“Just open it for a second. I’ll even leave my credit card with you. Charge whatever you want.” I took my wallet out of my back pocket, extracted my Visa Platinum, and set it on the counter. My name gleamed back at me, embossed in plastic.

He looked at it, then at me, and started to leave. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, man, you know about those things, right? You got a family? You got a gun to protect them?”

“It’s not that bad out there. Everyone is overreacting.”

“Overreacting? I just watched a guy on CNN get torn to pieces. You married, Patrick?” I said, looking at his nametag.

“I have someone at home.”

“Then do us both a favor. Open the door, take a gun, and go there. Trust me on this one, pal. You don’t want to be here when those things arrive.”

He stood there for a few seconds, unsure what to say. I watched a drop of sweat leave his hairline and run down his forehead, until it dripped down his nose and onto the floor. He looked up and down the aisle for a manager, then he took a key out and unlocked the case.

Shotguns and rifles stared back at me. I took out a smaller-barrel shotgun, a 20-gauge, and laid it on the counter. Then I pulled out a Marlin .30-06 and looked down the barrel. The store didn’t have the highest quality guns, but I felt a weight lift just having the weapon in my hand.

Allison hated me having weapons, and I got rid of them for her. I sold my .40 caliber pistol, which I missed dearly, and got rid of my old hunting rifle, which was superior to the gun I held now. The worst loss was an M-16 semiautomatic I had treasured for a few years, but I gave it all up for her, and she left me for another man. I would have done better to get rid of her back then.

“What should I take?” The clerk’s gaze roved up and down the selection. He looked at the assortment and swallowed so loud that I could hear it from a few feet away. He even reached to touch one or two barrels.

I found a 12-gauge shotgun and handed it to him. It was good up close, and a blast would leave no doubt that his target would be dead. I was going for the smaller shot, because I knew from experience this gun was more of a hunting weapon, and worked better at a longer range. It didn’t have the impact of a gun like the one he held, but it would do for me.

Not wanting to stand around and comfort the clerk, I pulled a box of shells off the shelf and put them next to his new shotgun. Then I took a couple of boxes for my selection and put them in the cart with the rest of stuff.

“Wait. You can’t buy a gun and bullets at the same time.”

“Right.” I added a couple more.

“It’s against store policy.”

“Call a cop. If he can get here in five minutes, he can arrest me.” I took my credit card when he didn’t make an attempt to run it.

Pushing my cart down another aisle, I looked for some Sterno cans. When I found them, I grabbed as many as I thought I could carry. Now it was just a matter of getting out of the store.

I loaded as much as I could into the backpack, heading out of the hunting area as I packed. While I rushed to jam stuff in, I almost missed one important area. An upended rack held a wealth of camouflage clothing. I pawed through them quickly and found a Large. Holding it to my chest, I decided it would do all right.

People moved around me, rushing to find anything of use at the last minute. I felt like one of
them
, and cursed again that I didn’t go shopping earlier. A woman eyed my canned meat, and I stuffed it in my backpack with a scowl. A man stopped and stared at the guns in my cart, asking where I got them. I pointed him in the direction of the hunting goods, then made for the door.

The security guy who tried to hassle me on the way in saw my goodies and decided to get in my face. He was at the same door and had managed to regain some sort of control. I gave him the once-over, glad to see he wasn’t armed, except for a can of mace. I was willing to bet if he pulled it, I could take him down before he sprayed me.

“You pay for all that stuff, man? Mind if I see your receipt?”

“Yep. Forgot my receipt. If you hustle, you may be able to get it from the guy at the gun counter.”

“Okay, I’m gonna have to ask you to put that down.” He slipped one foot back, like he was going for a fighting stance. I studied his body language, marked striking points and his center of balance. I really didn’t want to hurt him. He was just doing his job, and, in his shoes, I would probably be doing the same. The only thing that stopped me from taking him to the ground was a scream at the entrance.