by David Lucin
Gary scrunched up his face and cracked his knuckles as he seemed to mull that over. “Fine,” he said. “But first sign of trouble, you hightail it out of there. And this isn’t just about you breaking the law—something I hope you don’t have to do. Those security guards at the Go Market, they’re nothing but thugs as far as I’m concerned. They sign up, get weapons, and go to work without any training. They’re plain dangerous.”
“No problem,” Jenn said. “We’ll be careful. I promise.”
“Good,” Gary said, slapping Sam on the back again. There was no indignation this time, just encouragement. A way of saying thanks, maybe. Sam kept his back straight and clapped his hands together, suggesting he read the gesture in the same way as Jenn. “Now let’s go get Sam’s car and put this awfulness behind us.”
15
They retrieved Sam’s car from the underground parking garage and loaded in the oxygen compressor and batteries, a stress-inducing affair for Jenn. Without power, the overhead LEDs were all off, and the only light they had to guide them came from Gary’s flashlight.
Gary drove—in manual, of course—and took the first left onto Milton. After only two blocks, he spotted a roadblock not far from Minute Tire. Hoping to avoid another run-in with the police, he hung a quick U-turn around a stalled red pickup, then turned back onto the main drag through campus.
“You can drop us off here,” Jenn said from the front seat, pointing ahead and to her right. “We can go through the alley and get to the Go Market from there.”
“Are you sure?” Gary said, slowing the car down and scanning ahead.
“Yeah. If there’s a roadblock on Milton, there’s probably one up ahead, too. I don’t know if anyone will stop us again, but I’d rather not take that chance. Me and Sam can just cut through here.”
Gary shoulder-checked his right, then pulled over to the curb. Once stopped, he put the car in park and reached into the center console. “Here,” he said, holding out his flashlight. “Take this. Could be dark in the Go Market, too.”
Jenn took it and stuffed it into her jeans pocket. “Thanks.” She opened the door and swung a leg out but felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Hold on,” Gary said.
She sat back and turned to him. “What’s up?”
He ran his fingers along the steering wheel. “I’ll stay here,” he said, “and wait until you two get back. If they let you in and you get some supplies, it’s not safe to walk back to the house with them, especially if people are desperate. Come back here so I can drive you.”
In the corner of her eye, Jenn caught a glimpse of Sam’s face: an arched eyebrow and scrunched cheeks. “Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes. Now get moving. And bring the wheelbarrow. If there’s as many people there as I think there is, I doubt you’ll find a shopping cart.”
“You got it,” she said, pulling herself out of the car.
She met Sam at the back of his Tesla. He pulled off the bungee cord strapping the wheelbarrow down, then held the handles while Jenn gripped the front wheel. Heaving it up, she spotted Sam’s tire iron lying in the corner of the trunk.
They set the wheelbarrow down, and Sam put a hand on the truck to close it, but Jenn stopped him. Shaking her head and mouthing the word wait, she reached into the trunk and pulled out the tire iron. Discreetly, she laid it in the wheelbarrow, hoping Gary wasn’t watching in the rearview mirror.
Confident he hadn’t seen her, she shut the trunk. She took the wheelbarrow and pushed it toward the alley leading to the Go Market, but Gary’s voice stopped her. “Remember,” he said, one hand on the steering wheel as he leaned toward the passenger side window, “any trouble and you leave. I’ll be right here.”
Jenn gave him a thumbs-up and made for the alley.
“What are you planning on doing with that?” Sam asked, gesturing to the tire iron.
Feigning ignorance, Jenn said, “With what?”
“I hope Gary doesn’t get a flat.”
“It’s fine,” Jenn said. “Just in case.”
At the far end, a chain-link fence, a few feet taller than Sam and running perpendicular to the alley, marked the back of the Go Market. They followed it right, then turned left and continued along it and toward Milton.
Voices rumbled from the parking lot. Jenn turned and peered through the fence.
“Holy shit,” Sam said.
Dozens of cars stood idle in their stalls, and a crowd of two or three hundred collected near the nearest entrance. “Let’s go,” Jenn said, pushing the wheelbarrow forward.
“There’s hundreds of people here,” Sam said. “We need to hurry.”
They reached the end of the fence and stepped onto the sidewalk at Milton. Jenn expected another roadblock or at least a few police on foot, but with so many people at the front entrance, all available bodies had likely been assigned to crowd control. She rounded the end of the fence and entered the Go Market’s parking lot, then plotted a course between the stalled vehicles and to the front doors.
The crowd loomed and the shouting grew louder as they closed in. Jenn imagined pushing her way to the front, then fighting through the entrance if it opened. Clenching her jaw, she recalled squeezing into Minute Tire. She’d never forget the smell of that man’s breath from behind her. She winced and set the wheelbarrow down. “What do you think?” she asked Sam. Part of her hoped he had a plan. Another part hoped he didn’t so they could turn around and head back to Gary and the car.
Sam put a hand on the small of her back. “I think we need to get closer,” he said, standing tall and stepping forward without hesitating.
Not the answer Jenn wanted to hear, but Sam’s confidence was contagious. “Alright,” she said. “Lead the way.”
They reached the back of the crowd, and Sam squeezed between two women carrying grocery bags. They backed apart enough for Jenn to move between them with the wheelbarrow. Next, Sam moved right, around an elderly man wearing pajama pants and a white Phoenix Suns T-shirt. He, too, backed away. The next group, young parents with a twelve- or thirteen-year-old son, did the same.
Soon, people stood shoulder to shoulder. Jenn could hardly move her arms without touching someone else. The shouting had grown louder, too, engulfing her from all directions.
Sam tapped a thick man with red hair on the shoulder. “Excuse us,” he said.
The man spun around, his cherry red tank top painted to his chest and dark tattoo sleeves running down both of his arms. He squared up to Sam. “Fuck off, mate,” he said in a thick British accent. “It’s a queue.”
Backing away, Sam gripped the front end of the wheelbarrow, then steered it away from the Brit.
A voice boomed over a megaphone. “Everyone, please go home.” The voice was deep but warm, almost pleading. “We’re working with management on a plan to open the store. We’ll make an announcement when it’s open.”
A woman, her hair dyed purple, raised a fist and screamed, “Fuck you, pigs!” A man beside her yelled expletives and held up a cardboard sign with “Food Not Fascism” written on it in big block letters.
Her grip on the handles tightening, Jenn looked down the nose of the wheelbarrow.
Sam was gone.
Her breath caught. She inspected each person in her line of sight, looking for Sam’s khaki shorts and blue T-shirt. Not finding him, she reached forward and pulled out the tire iron.
A man beside her carried a baseball bat. A woman to her right had a bulge on her waistline. A gun, maybe. Everyone, it seemed, appeared armed. “Sam!” she shouted.
Sweat fell into her eyes and settled on her lip. Someone bumped into her.
“Sam!”
Did he go in without her? No, he wouldn’t leave her behind like that. Maybe the crowd had swallowed him. She tried pushing the wheelbarrow forward, but it nudged a man in the hip. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he stood on his toes and continued hollering at the people ahead. She jerked the wheelbarrow left but hit the woman with the bulge on her waistl
ine. She told Jenn to fuck herself, then shoved her way forward.
Jenn considered turning around, but the crowd had encircled her. She doubted she could turn if she tried.
Then a loud cracking sound echoed off the Go Market. Screams followed. Hands went up and covered heads and faces. Bodies dropped to the blacktop.
Crack! Crack!
Jenn let go of the wheelbarrow to cover her ears but lost balance as a weight crashed into her right. She toppled over, taking the wheelbarrow with her. The tire iron fell to the ground.
Pop!
A body fell on top of her and pressed into her chest and ribs. She reached for the wheelbarrow and felt it. She patted the ground, looking for the tire iron, but only found pavement. The shapes of legs and feet clouded her vision.
Crack!
Pop! Pop!
Pain erupted in her right leg and shot up her knee. Then a pressure on her stomach pushed the wind from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. She tried calling out but hardly made a sound.
Something hit her nose. Tasting copper on her tongue and feeling tears stream down her face, she brought up both hands to shield her eyes.
She forced herself onto her side and brought her head and knees to her chest. She called for Sam again but he didn’t come.
He was gone.
16
Jenn felt a hand shake her shoulder. She kept her arms and knees tight to her body, pretending she was dead.
“Jenn!”
It sounded like Sam. She opened her eyes and saw a pair of knees below khaki shorts. Following the shorts up, she made out a blue shirt and then Sam’s face.
He reached out and took her arm, then helped her up. He lowered his face to Jenn’s, and she smelled spoiled eggs on his breath. “Jesus, Jenn. Are you okay?”
She sniffled and felt something wet under her nose. She wiped it with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of blood running from her knuckles to her wrist. Turning away from Sam, she spit a red lump onto the ground. “Shit,” she muttered.
Sam lifted the bottom of his shirt up to her face and dabbed at her nose. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I lost you. I thought you were right behind me.”
“It’s okay,” she said, pushing Sam’s hand away from her face and looking past him. The crowd, still thick, had rushed the doors.
“They broke in,” Sam said, reaching down for the wheelbarrow. “We don’t have much time.”
Jenn stood, her knees vibrating. Her hands shook, too, and she shoved them into her pockets to keep them still. “Where’s the security?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Where’d the police go?”
“I don’t know,” Sam answered. “Probably inside. Here.” He held out the tire iron.
“Sam, I—”
He pulled her hand from her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the tire iron. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now.”
She wiped blood from her lip and held back tears. Her feet felt stuck, like they’d frozen to the ground. She tried to move them but couldn’t.
Sam let go of the wheelbarrow and put a hand on each of her shoulders. He leveled his face with hers. “Hey,” he said, giving her a light shake.
After a hard blink, she met eyes with him.
“You can do this,” he said, his brown eyes wide and locked on Jenn. “Gary and Maria need you to do this.”
They did. Gary was waiting for them. She couldn’t return with nothing. And now, with the floodgates opened and the crowd spilling in, the clock was ticking. If they didn’t act, they might miss their chance.
She thrust the tire iron through a belt loop on her jeans. “Okay,” she said.
Sam took the wheelbarrow and jogged forward in front of Jenn. They reached the back of the crowd. Soon, more bodies piled in behind, squeezing Jenn as she shuffled through the doors. They jostled her left, then right, almost knocking her down. Someone stepped on her toe. Another elbowed her in the breast. Biting her lip, she shut her eyes, put a hand on Sam’s back, and let him lead her inside.
Glass crunched beneath her feet. Then the bodies crushing her scattered. She expected a wall of crisp air-conditioning to greet her. Instead, the air was thick and clung to her tank top. The stench of body odor assaulted her as the roar of shouting echoed off the high ceilings like she’d entered a cave. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in some sun from outside, which spotlighted the checkout tills near the door. She made out shapes of aisles deeper in the store, but little else.
She wiped her palms on her pants.
Ahead, near the tills, a man in a yellow windbreaker, the white tag dangling from the sleeve, tumbled over and spilled a bag of canned goods and vegetables. He crawled forward, cradled them in his arms, and scrambled to his feet before running past Jenn. A woman, her hair frazzled, pushed a cart filled with a wild assortment of items: vacuum-sealed dinners, a bottle of bleach, a forty-eight pack of toilet paper, among others things.
Jenn reached for the flashlight in her pocket. “This way,” she said, leading them left.
They passed a man pushing a cart, this one full of vegetables and at least three bags of dog food. A line of blood trickled down his chin. He eyeballed Sam from head to toe as he rushed past and made for the exit.
Jenn stopped at the edge of the produce section. The islands that normally housed cheap vegetables like onions, tomatoes, celery, and mushrooms were bare. The fruit stands stood empty, like usual. Plastic and paper littered the floor. The locusts had descended and left nothing in their wake.
Hoping the deli and bread section hadn’t been picked clean yet, Jenn stepped forward, but Sam held out an arm to stop her. “There!” he shouted, darting forward a few bounds. He bent down and reached for the bottom shelf of a fruit stand. Potatoes. Jenn rushed forward, too, and gripped the top of a ten-pound bag in each hand. She tried lifting them, but they slipped through her sweaty palms. She dropped one and cradled the other in her arms.
Sam retrieved the wheelbarrow and pushed it over. Jenn laid her bag in and reached for the other. Sam snatched the last one. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Jenn said. “This place looks empty.”
“Everyone wants fresh food,” he started, adjusting their loot in the wheelbarrow. “The stuff that’s expensive, like meat and fruit. But it’ll go bad in a couple days anyway.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Follow me.” He spun the wheelbarrow around.
Jenn’s vision adjusted to the dim light as they crossed the store. On their left stood the freezer aisles. Most of the glass doors hung open, the light from outside reflecting off pools of water on the polished concrete floor.
A few steps later, five or six people scurried across Jenn’s path. One had an armful of potato chips. Another carried a basket filled with bottled water.
In the next aisle, a woman had climbed the shelves to pull items from the top. A man stood beneath her, holding her hips to keep her from falling. Opposite them, two women stood over a cart, pointing and shouting at each other. Behind, farther into the aisle, two men locked together. One had his arm around the other and tugged him to the floor. They both collapsed, drawing the attention of the woman on the shelf, who jumped down and hurried away.
Sam made a sharp left at the next aisle. The shelves closed in on Jenn as the light from the windows faded. She clicked on the flashlight and shone it ahead. On both sides, people pulled boxes, bags, and bottles from the shelf.
Sam stopped, then reached up and swept his arm across the shelf, dropping four or five boxes into the wheelbarrow.
Jenn scanned the shelf on the other side. Rice. Spaghetti. Macaroni. She held the flashlight in her mouth and snatched two boxes and a bag. She wasn’t even sure what they were. Pivoting on her foot, she spun and deposited them in the wheelbarrow, then pulled down another handful.
A body slammed into her. She staggered but found her balance.
A flood of dark figures poured into the aisle. Sam manned the wheelbarrow again. “Let
’s go!”
She threw the boxes in with the others and followed Sam. He led them toward the checkout stations, then took two sharp lefts into the next aisle over.
Jenn made her way into the darkness. She shone the flashlights on the shelves, revealing mostly useless things like vanilla extract or cooking sheets. Ahead, Sam had stopped. He lifted a bag from the bottom of the shelf and heaved it into the wheelbarrow. Then a second.
A few more steps and a yellow bag caught Jenn’s eye. Cornmeal. Her father used to make cornbread every Saturday. Maria never made it, but Jenn could show her how. She only needed cornmeal, salt, and baking powder. It didn’t even need an oven, just a pan to fry it. Maria had the baking powder and salt. She just needed the cornmeal. Jenn clamped down on the flashlight with her teeth and clutched a bag in each hand.
“I found flour,” Sam said with a huff.
Jenn dropped the cornmeal into the wheelbarrow. “Cornmeal,” she said, taking the flashlight out of her mouth. “There’s more.”
“Grab it,” Sam said, wheeling past her. He pulled two more bags of cornmeal from the shelves and tossed them into the wheelbarrow. It was over half full.
Crack!
Jenn dropped into a crouch. A bead of sweat rolled into her eye. The shouting nearly stopped.
Crack!
Pop!
Jenn’s fingers tingled and the pain in her nose vanished. Her pulse thundered in her temples and her vision narrowed. The shots sounded louder that time—closer, maybe.
Deciding it was time to go, she stood. Then something gripped her ankle and jerked her leg back. She lost balance. For a moment, she was airborne. She dropped the flashlight to break her fall. Her knees hit the floor first, then her elbows. The flashlight skipped ahead, spun, and came to a rest, the beam of light shining into her face.
She rolled over. A man sporting a thick beard and shaved head stood above her. He wore black pants, and his shirt, blue with a collar, was unbuttoned and untucked. She recognized the uniform immediately—Go Market security. But no gun. Not that she could see.
