Authors: Kevin L Murdock
“I don’t give a damn, man,” shouted the tall, lanky black man. “I was here first, and you stole my thunder and took a couple already.”
“You have plenty of other food in your cart. I don’t. I need that for my family,” retorted back the short but stout Hispanic guy. He had a huge chest with almost no neck and looked like a construction worker. This would be ugly.
I turned my attention away from them for two seconds to grab a few cheap hot dogs from some nasty brand that Stacy would never have permitted in the house prior to today and then heard the crash.
The black guy was on the ground and was being pummeled with repeated blows. “Why you do that, man? “Why you gotta be that way?” The Hispanic man was perturbed and not relenting. He had blood coming from his nose too, so I missed who threw the first punch, but it was obvious who was going to toss the last one. F this, I had to move and get out of there. I grabbed a few cheap cuts of meat that I saw and was pushing my now heavy cart away as fast as I could. Who knew how much food I had, but it felt like enough for an army. It would have to suffice.
From the corner of my eye, I saw two men hop behind the counter of the butcher station and start opening the shelves in the back to get at more inventory. A sharp sound splintered from close by. I heard the sound of shattering glass. I still intended to pay and was already fumbling for my wallet as I pushed around crowds of people coming in the store who were sure to be pissed at not finding food and come after people like me with a full cart. This was going downhill fast. A fear and rage pulsed through everyone. It was palpable and present, much as one feels static around them.
The loudspeaker came on again, though I could barely hear it over the roar a thousand panicked voices around me all shouting as if someone was listening. A different voice this time, one that projected management. In a deep but clear tone with some assertiveness mixed in, it echoed across the store “Attention, LeapMart shoppers, please leave the store at once. The police have been called. All employees, code B! I repeat, code B! Get your asses out of there and be safe!”
Dozens more were streaming into the store. Most now didn’t bother with a shopping cart; they just ran and were hoping to get whatever they could. Ahead of me, I saw a man running out of the store holding a new large screen TV box. I slowed as I approached the checkout counters several aisles down from where most people were entering the store and fanning out. A couple of the faces coming in I recognized as neighbors. One Chinese guy lived a couple of blocks down from me but never socialized with anyone, and I didn’t know his name. Another was Brata or Brataslav from my cul-de-sac. I could never remember, but he always insisted we call him Slav. He took pride in his Serbian heritage. Our eyes locked, and he saw me, gave just a tiny glance down at my full cart, then back at my eyes. He never stopped walking or gave the cursory head nod of acknowledgement. I was so worried about paying that I never gave it much thought that night.
An old man with a half-full cart stood beside me and looked as perplexed as me. “What do we do?” he asked.
“Hell, I don’t know.” I half-laughed as I said it. “Look over there.” Twenty feet away was an emergency exit, and people with shopping carts were pushing out through it. An alarm was ringing, but nobody seemed to care.
“Should we?” he asked.
“I guess so. Everyone else is. I saw people fighting back there, and it’s getting ugly real fast.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be a modern day Rodney King. These people are getting crazy.”
“Yup, they are. Ok, F it. Let’s do it. You’re my witness. I will send them a check and add up prices when I get home”.
“Good idea. Me too. They got security tapes and things. Don’t want some officers knocking on my door in a few weeks over this.”
A lady in long jean shorts and a mullet was in front of us and pushed through the door. We stayed right on her heels before it could close and made it outside safely. The whole parking lot was full now and people continued to stream in. It was as if the store had announced a ninety-nine-percent-off-everything deal and everyone heard about it at the same time. Amazingly, people were still parking in defined spots, so getting out wasn’t impossible.
I opened the rear hatch of the SUV and immediately started throwing everything in as fast as I could. Nothing was bagged, so it was two hands and two items at a time. Cans, boxes, small containers. Damn, it took a while. The car was near the front of the store and people continued to walk by me as they were going into the store. A few tried to leave the front door with their full carts and were blocked and then seized by the mob. Somehow in their desperation, the people coming in realizing that everything was gone focused their rage at the people who were just like them but only a few minutes quicker to the store. One man was on the ground and three or four others stood over him, kicking and stomping as he covered his head and screamed. Others paid no attention and stole whatever they could out of his cart.
My biggest pet peeve in life was always people who were too lazy to take their shopping carts back to the front of the store or into an assigned cart collector. Lazy people that just left the cart next to their parking spot and drove off always drew my ire. That night, I pushed my cart away and it slammed into a red sports car a couple of spots away. There was no time to care. The mobs would start fanning out of the store soon and I had more than any one person’s fair share. It was time to get out of Dodge.
“Shit,” I said and froze right after I turned the ignition on. “I forgot dog food.” We had a big bag at home that would last a few days but maybe not as long as we needed. Screams were now heard and finally flashing lights of police cars were coming on the scene. I backed out and drove down the lane away from the store. In the rear view mirror, I could see two police cars pulling within feet of the main entrance to the LeapMart. A vibration rattled in my shirt pocket, and I almost jumped. My nerves were shot.
It was Stacy calling. She probably wanted to know where the hell I had driven off to at 11:20 at night. She could wait until I got home in a few minutes. It would be quite a story and until then, one of the scariest moments of my life. I was safe with food and going home. It was nice but naive to believe that the worst was behind. The time was 11:45 p.m.
Chapter 3:
Night Rainbows
It was just another night on my street, Rambell Court. As I parked and got out of the car to look around and see who was watching me, it appeared that nobody was up or cared. I took deep breaths. The craziness at the store still had my heart beating fast. The adrenaline had worn off, and my hands shook like a geriatric grandma’s on top of the steering wheel while I sat in the car sucking in deep breaths. Nobody was around; it was late. Time to off-load the goods from the scariest grocery trip I’ve ever made. Running to the house, I quietly opened the door. Stacy was there waiting with our dog, the Murphy monster.
“Where the hell did you go? I tried to call you. We have extra toilet paper in the basement, you know?”
I stood there trembling in the door, just staring with blood shot eyes staring at her the same way I would if I had just drunk twenty soft drinks.
“Josh, what’s the matter? What happened?”
Stacy was a lovely wife and very emotional, so tough news was often best broken to her gently. There wasn’t time for that. “Something bad is happening, hunnie. The president was on TV and some sun storm is coming at our planet, and we’re going to lose electricity for a while. I went to get some food, and people just went crazy. I . . . I . . . I don’t even know where to begin. Are the kids asleep?”
“Yes, I was too, but I heard you leave and came down here.”
Murphy was rubbing himself around my knees, looking for attention. He didn’t know what was happening but could sense my distress. His dog kisses on my extended hand helped ground me. “Help me unload the car as quickly and quietly as possible. I loaded up.”
She flipped the outside lights on, and my reaction was immediate.
“Keep the lights off!”
“O . . . K . . . You’re kinda scaring me here.”
“I know, I know,” I came back at her. “Just trust me, hun. We have to quickly get what’s in the car into the house and then probably hide it and keep it a secret.”
A half hour passed as we unloaded everything into the house and unpacked. Stacy shot me the confused angry look when she saw several dozen cans of spaghetti and meatballs. The spam and canned fruit drew a disgusted look. After stocking several large bags of rice, she had emotionally recovered somewhat but nearly lost it when the jar of pickled pig’s feet appeared. I’m still not sure how that even found its way in.
The time was 12:23. Time for a drink or three. Also time to explain to her what’s going on in detail and make last-minute preparations. “Stacy, let’s relax in the dining room.”
“Ok, pour me a glass of wine too, please.”
Finally settled enough so my hands had stopped shaking, I opened a special bottle of red wine from the volcanic island of Santorini we had held onto since our honeymoon. Our palettes would never forget its beautiful acidic flavor that was so unique. With two glasses filled to the very top that I spilled a few drops on the kitchen counter, we sat down on the couch and finally relaxed for a moment.
Stacy always had a peacefulness to her that was contagious to others. Whether it was her soft tone or the trusting deep gaze she could gave, she’s always been able to bring tranquility even when I had my most hot-tempered outbursts. This time more than ever. “Stacy, I went to LeapMart and was one of the first ones there. People started crowding in, and then they were fighting and things were breaking and it turned to a mob scene. The police finally showed up as I was leaving.” I continued on and filled her in with the details of my shopping adventure.
“Wow. That’s like something out of a movie. If it was that crazy, how did you pay?”
“I didn’t,” was my terse reply.
A pause for reflection, then she spoke. “You stole all that food?”
“Babe, I didn’t have a choice. They would have beaten me, or worse. I had to. That’s why I asked you to write down everything as we unpacked. I’ll pay them later.”
“All right. Did you see anyone there we know?”
“Just our neighbor, the Slav guy. I think he saw me too. Hopefully he left with a lot of good stuff too.”
“He’s so weird. I think he’s a hoarder. Have you seen into his house when the door is open? It’s disgusting.”
Finally a laugh broke the chill we felt, and I gulped half my wine. “I don’t know what’s next. The storm should hit soon. Who knows how long we have.”
“Should I backup the computer?” asked Stacy. Our minds were now shifting focus to the house and what else needed to be done.
“No, but maybe we should unplug things. When I was a kid and we used to stay at my granddaddy’s cabin in Harlan County, we would unplug the TV and microwave when there were strong thunderstorms. It can’t hurt.”
Reflecting for a second, Stacy was in agreement. “I’ll get the upstairs, you get down here and the basement.”
“Deal.” After taking care of the basement and den, I walked into the kitchen. So many little devices. The can opener, the juicer, the toaster, the microwave, the little food processor. All were unplugged, and then it hit me as I spoke my thought out loud, “I won’t be able to eat popcorn for a while.”
Men in prisons who were set to be executed get the “privilege” of choosing their last meal. Often, a steak or something nice is on the menu. For me, on the cusp of being inserted into a modern stone age, my choice was microwave popcorn. Something taken for granted often but oh so good.
As the bag popped loudly and Stacy came to chastise me for making enough racket to wake the kids, I pulled out my cell phone. It was beeping in my pocket. That darn online video game with the Greek city states at war had roped me into it for a while now. It was a live world that ran twenty-four hours a day. My “empire” had been built over the previous year and I warred with others in the online setting. The beeps came because someone was attacking me again. I sent a graceful message to SuseMonster, my archenemy, and bid my game farewell. Curiously, I pondered where I would found my next cities if the power came back on and I was able to resume playing. Amazing how much our minds can get lost in the three minutes it takes to pop a bag of popcorn.
It was always a struggle to keep the house clean with little Paul and Tabitha continuously making messes. Food was never allowed to be eaten around the couch, but now we broke our own rules. Stacy continued to sip her glass of wine while I was killing off my third glass. The popcorn was good and we looked at pictures on our tablet of the kids that we always wanted to get printed but haven’t yet.