The dense traffic certainly wasn’t helping his mounting frustration as the minutes ticked slowly by and the rumble of his engine reminded him that precious gas was being burned away the entire time. Trev did his best to control his temper as he drove past another packed station with a row of closed pumps. All that time, and more importantly fuel, wasted searching for an open pump when he should’ve realized it was pointless in the first place.
The street he was on took him past a supermart, and on impulse Trev pulled into the parking lot and searched for a spot close to the entrance. If he couldn’t get gas he could at least use his remaining funds to purchase some stuff he might need to survive while stores still had stocked shelves, before the trucks stopped coming in and everyone realized how much they needed those necessities and began hoarding them towards their own survival.
Which may already be happening. Since the gas stations had been crowded it was unsurprising that the store, too, was crammed with people looking to stock up for lean times. People who in retrospect had probably made the right choice compared to everyone still trying to find any gas that hadn’t been seized.
He made his way into the store, and in spite of himself was a bit surprised by the commotion.
Over the years he’d seen videos from before hurricanes where people descended on stores like locust swarms to fill their carts with every single edible thing on the shelves, even pet food. He’d assumed since this current disaster wasn’t quite so obviously immediate people wouldn’t be as voracious. But from the long lines of customers waiting to go through checkout with food items spilling from their carts, it looked as if even if they didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten they’d still decided to err on the side of caution.
Trev grabbed his own cart and made a beeline for a specific aisle. From what he could see the locusts still hadn’t picked the store bare just yet, but more importantly they were going for all the wrong things. The carts around him were filled with perishables from around the edges of the store, fruits and vegetables and dairy and meats, as well as heaping piles of freezer bags and cartons from the frozen food aisle. Stuff that was easy to prepare, especially if you had a microwave, but would eventually go bad even if their fridges kept working.
And with no fuel there was no telling how long the power would be on.
A few of the more levelheaded shoppers were going for canned goods, which was obvious from the huge bare swatches on the shelves when he arrived at his aisle of choice. Unlike the other shoppers who’d grabbed specific items Trev was indiscriminate as he shoved his arm to the back of a shelf and literally swept the cans from it into his cart as he walked down the aisle.
Near the end the shelves were lined with plastic bags of rice and dried beans which looked as if nobody had taken any at all, a regrettable oversight on their part considering how long those foods would last if properly stored. And they were also some of the cheapest products in the store! Trev abandoned his hunt for cans and gathered up as much rice and beans as the cart could carry, making a hill that rose over its walls so bags threatened to slide off with every movement.
Not finished there, he began gathering the boxes of cans tucked at the back of some of the upper shelves and shoved them into the bottom space above the wheels. A part of him wished he’d grabbed another cart, but he was pretty sure that would’ve been unmanageable. Besides, he didn’t know if he had enough money even for what he had here.
At long last he made his awkward, wobbly way to the front with his cart, catching bags as they fell and stopping once to adjust everything. His only other stop along the way was to pick up a few cases of bottled water that he awkwardly balanced on the pushbar leaning against his chin. By that point the cart was so weighted down it was actually slightly difficult to push and the wheels squeaked alarmingly as he went, and he couldn’t help but notice a lot of people giving him odd or amused looks. Although some were looking at their own carts piled high with junk food and cereal as if having second thoughts. Those odd looks made the wait in the checkout line uncomfortable, but finally it was his turn to start stacking things on the conveyor belt.
The cashier gave him a dirty look as she finished ringing up the previous customer, which Trev ignored as he piled the belt higher and higher. He had a feeling she was going to be even more annoyed with him soon.
With gas prices doubling over the last year prices for just about everything else had jumped up too, in some cases several times more than they’d been. Food especially, which he was seeing at the moment as his purchases were rung up and he saw the outrageous numbers flashing across the screen. Ironically smaller stores that tried to draw from local sources of dairy and produce were now competing nearly as well as the retail chains that shipped things a far greater distance. He’d heard that some of those big name stores in smaller towns had begun closing in droves, as many as one a day, while business was still thriving for the local marts.
Of course since trucks didn’t have fuel to bring in goods it wouldn’t be long before every store closed, and even before that the outrageous prices he saw today would look reasonable compared to how they’d skyrocket as the shelves emptied. Assuming store managers reacted fast enough.
“Can you just ring me up to $143.00?” he asked the cashier as she whipped things across the scanner, the total already over $50.00. She paused to glare at him, forget that the customer was always right, and he felt almost bad as he continued. “And then can you ring me up another $275.00?” That was the cash he had in his wallet and the balance on his debit card, respectively. “The rest you can ring up on my credit card.”
“Dude, are you kidding me?” one of the customers behind him demanded.
Trev turned and gave the man a level look, then turned back and noticed the cashier hadn’t started again. “Look, sorry for the hassle but it’s the only way I can do this.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you decided to singlehandedly host Cinco de Mayo,” the same customer back in the line said snidely, glaring at the bags of rice and beans overflowing on the belt.
Trev ignored him, also weathering the cachier’s glare as he waited for the older woman to start ringing him up again. “I knew I should’ve called in sick this morning,” she finally muttered as she got going again. Thankfully she did as he’d asked and tallied up three separate bills for his different payment methods.
Which took even longer than he’d been afraid of, to the point that he was worried a riot would start in the line before she was done. By the time he swiped his credit card and waited for it to authenticate for the final purchase people back there were openly swearing at him, using some pretty foul language too. The girl directly behind him had even intentionally rammed her cart into his back twice. He was glad his card didn’t reject the large purchase or someone might have shanked him with a carrot.
The three totals added up to just over a thousand dollars, which put him firmly into debt. At this point he hoped he was right and the economy actually collapsed, or he was going to have to do another summer’s work installing security systems just to pay off his credit card debt. Then he felt bad for hoping for a disaster even if it was almost certainly going to happen.
He thought he might still have a bit more money on his card before hitting the limit, but as he helped the bagger finish loading up his cart and started out of the store he decided he’d pushed his luck far enough and it was time to pack up his goods and head down to Aspen Hill.
It felt good to load everything into his car and see how much space it took up. That was a lot of meals he’d be taking down to the shelter with him, which made him feel better about the fact that his own food supply there wasn’t nearly as large as his cousin’s. Considering what he’d seen of Lewis’s preparations last time he’d been down there even this wouldn’t come close to evening things up, but he’d be better off than he otherwise would’ve been.