When Hurricane Luther made his fourth trip ashore greet the citizens of the greater Orlando area, Chester knew he was facing the defining moment in his career. The boys in Bentonville had told him that if he had two more successful years, there would be a big promotion waiting for him. Chester welcomed Luther with open arms and knew that the disaster would move up his promotion two years ahead of schedule.
When the hurricane began to demolish Orlando, Chester realized just how stupid he was for welcoming a disaster. Luther rose up from the pits of hell. The Magic Kingdom stood in ruins. Cinderella’s Castle would only be remembered in the company’s logo; it would be a very long time before it would be rebuilt, if ever. Over at Universal Studios, Hogwarts Castle was no more, the boy wizard himself would not be able to put it together, with or without magic.
Then the city caught on fire.
Chester had no idea how fires could be set in a rain-soaked town. He gave up trying to figure it out and hoped for the best. The General Manager and many of the employees rode out the storm in the store’s loading docks. The employees figured they would be much safer at their work site and Chester welcomed them in because he needed help protecting the store.
Luther answered Chester’s prayers and spared the store. The massive superstore was not untouched, however, but it was one of the few large structures in the Orlando area still standing. At the front of the store, the “W” and “T” had fallen from the sign, renaming the store “almar”. Luther’s massive right hook punched Orlando square in the balls with a world record two hundred twenty-five mile per hour wind. The Safir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale would later be upgraded to max out at a Category 6. Chester was convinced that the Good Lord in heaven above did his shopping at Walmart.
Chester set out to execute his plan for the store that clearly had the blessing of divine intervention. He knew that he must protect the store at all costs. Just the simple fact that the store had no customers meant that he would not manage to meet his goal for the year. Chester shrugged this fact off, as it was clearly not under his control. What was in his control, however, were the tens of millions of dollars worth of inventory for which he was responsible.
Chester was no fool. He knew he was sitting on a goldmine. The first stage in his plan was to barricade both of the front entrances. Thanks to Luther, he only had to complete half of the task. The north entrance had an SUV crammed inside it with a stack of cars behind it. The north corner of the store suffered the most structural damage; the roof of the north entrance collapsed around the SUV and blocked off the entrance from the Home and Garden center. The kind old woman that greeted consumers would have to join her counterpart on the south entrance should the store open again.
The south entrance proved a challenge. It was as pristine as it had been the week before. The first order of business was to use hand-trucks to move four pallets into the entrance behind the locked doors — two behind the outer doors and two behind the inner doors. Not satisfied with the barricade, Chester ordered that the sally port leading into the store be filled with shopping carts chained together. Chester was certain that it would take a dump truck at full speed to breach the security that he had employed.
The next order of business was the loading docks. The sliding doors used to receive the eighteen-wheelers loaded with merchandise were closed and padlocked. Then Chester took a page out of medieval history and had his employees dump vegetable oil mixed with lighter fluid in front of the sliding bay doors. Should angry mobs tear down the doors and make it in, they would be set on fire. His employees joked with each other that all they would do was slip and fall because no one was actually going to set another human being on fire. Their loyalty to their minimum wage jobs had a limit.
The remaining way in and out of the store was the pedestrian entrance to the loading docks. The General Manager and his employees needed a way in and out of the store. The Assistant Manager of the demolished Home and Garden center informed Chester that pallets of dirt and fertilizer were in the north end of the warehouse. Forty-pound bags were stacked chest high in front of the door. Chester picked four very enthusiastic teenagers to stand sentry behind the door. The first two carried high-powered BB rifles to fire at any potential mobs, hoping to scare them off. The other two boys carried a fully loaded pistol and shotgun each, should any angry Orlandites make it inside. The other employees knew that they would not set anybody on fire, they were however, quite frightened that these four boys would play G.I. Joe with much zeal.
The new residents of the retail giant managed to construct a comfortable little fortress. They built a makeshift commune in the middle of the store. They used sleeping bags, comforters, mattress pads, and pillows to make beds. The perishable foods would soon be a total loss, so Chester did not object to them consuming as much as they could before it spoiled. They had a feast of the best steaks and shrimp. Ice cream and beer made for many a happy employee. They were living like kings.
General Manger Chester Stephens was quite proud of himself. Yes sir, he was damned proud. He knew that his move to Bentonville was on the horizon. All that was left to do was wait it out for the cavalry to swoop in and rescue them.
The cavalry never came.
The only people who showed up were ninety percent of the remaining employees of the Kissimmee Walmart Supercenter. Chester welcomed them in, the more the merrier. They were a welcome addition to his army of blue-vested soldiers.
This was the first of Chester’s many mistakes.
The two hundred and forty-seven employees felt they should be able to take whatever they wanted from the store. Chester didn’t mind them eating and drinking, but he did ask them to document everything they consumed. His concern, other than keeping people alive, was being able to provide accurate, detailed records should corporate request them. At first, the employees were more than happy to keep track of what they used. That attitude quickly changed. Chester gave them permission to take bicycles so they could ride back to their homes and check on things. Every employee returned to report their homes and apartment complexes had been obliterated.
The destruction of their homes was not the most troubling thing they had to report. Carnage filled street after street. The stench was overpowering. In the rubble laid twisted and mangled corpses. They were able to identify some men, women, and children, but the majority of the corpses had no discernible gender. Ants and maggots had each taken their turn on the decaying flesh.
Much of the staff came back to the store like shell-shocked soldiers returning from the battlefield. The others returned thinking that they could simply replenish what they had lost. The Walmart workers were even bold enough to grab a few shopping carts and fought and squabbled with each other over merchandise like it was Black Friday. Chester tried and failed to stop them; some even spat on their boss. Chester wiped the spit from his face, pulled out his notepad and wrote down their names. They had ended their careers with Walmart. He would personally see that the traitors lost their jobs and were prosecuted for theft.
Eventually, rage began to replace shock — rage over the fact that absolutely no one was coming to rescue them. It had been over a month and not one plane dotted the sky; no rescue teams could be seen on the horizon. They were alone, living in a third world country that didn’t care whether they lived or died. Surely the American government had learned its lesson with Hurricane Katrina. Surely rescue would come.