Right about then the house began to creak under sudden, gale-force winds. Through the windows I could see trees thrashing and leaves swirling in light so low it might have been dusk. A moment later, that all disappeared behind a gray veil of pounding rain. The sound of it was something like a roar. In the old world, this is the time I would have pulled out my smartphone to check the radar or a local news live stream.
“Shit,” someone said.
“Exactly,” said Mack. “You need contingencies for the weather. You need to understand what the building looks like and how to approach it. You need to decide exactly when to mount your assault.”
“When?” said Aaron. “We’re hungry as hell. Every minute that goes by, someone else might get there instead of us.”
“I know it seems like a long time to wait,” said Mack. “But I would recommend a nighttime assault. This building will sit on a large asphalt lot, and there may be little cover.”
I hated the way everyone was looking at Mack. As if by offering a couple of suggestions, he had become our leader.
“You go there now, even in the rain, and it may turn out to be a suicide mission. So let’s sit down and sketch what the building might look like, where the entrances might be, and then develop a tactical assault plan.”
“Sounds great,” Jimmy said. “Don’t you think so, Aiden?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“We don’t want to shoot anyone if we don’t have to,” Jimmy added.
“Speak for yourself,” I said.
“That’s admirable,” Mack replied. “But the folks already in the DC will understand what’s at stake. It’s a giant building full of food.”
I looked around, waiting for someone to react to what I had said, but no one was even looking in my direction.
“Assuming we have superior weapons,” I said, louder this time, “we should be able to fight our way inside. After that, if someone tries to approach, we obliterate them with machine gun fire.”
“You mean you plan to stay there? Long term?”
“It’s where the food is. And once we get in, surely with the right weapons we can defend our position.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mack said. “I don’t care how much firepower you have: When you are ten and they are ten thousand, you will lose. Especially when you are well fed, and they are starving to death. And we’re not talking about a bunch of pansies from California, neither. We’re talking about Texans who have been arming themselves to the teeth ever since BHO’s stint in office.”
“I thought you said this was a popular idea,” said Jimmy.
“Depends. Some Walmart DCs are more remote, but this one is on the northern edge of a metropolitan area about to eject seven million hungry people. If you somehow manage to get inside, the next thing you should do is grab as much food as you can and find somewhere else to wait it out. Ideally, it would be off the beaten path, because in a week the city will be a shit show. The problem is how to move supplies without being discovered.”
“How long do you think it will take?” Jimmy asked. “You know, for everyone to—”
“Starve to death? No one keeps much in the pantry anymore. I’d say in a city this size you’re looking at a fifty percent mortality rate within three months. Seventy-five in six months. By a year out, I’d say you’re north of ninety percent dead. In the meantime it’ll be like The Walking Dead around here. So what we should do is grab enough food to feed the folks in this room for ten to twelve weeks.”
“Don’t forget about my mother,” Chelsea said.
“You understand,” said Mack, “the more people we bring, the more food we have to haul away. There’s just no chance for a small group to survive inside the DC. Staying there would be a death sentence.”
“That’s pretty much what we already have,” said Ed.
Mack nodded.
“This tough old world just got a lot tougher.”
A bit later, Mack led us to his garage, where he pointed to a steel door mounted to the concrete floor. It looked like the entrance to an underground storm shelter.
“The weapons I sell in the store, the legal ones, aren’t military grade. They’re look-a-likes that became popular when the Kenyan was elected. For any reasonable advantage, we’ll want fully automatic weapons and high capacity magazines.”
Mack had brought a large, white candle with him, and a book of matches, both of which he handed to Nick.
“Light this while I open the door here.”
Mack retrieved a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and descended into darkness with the candle. When he reappeared, he handed Nick a heavy-looking military rifle. The butt and handle of this gun were made of a polished, amber-colored wood. It turned out to be a Norinco 56 S.
Mack retrieved other weapons: A Norinco 56 S-1, an HK-91, two AK 47s, and a Norinco RPG. In case you’re wondering, RPG is short for Rocket Propelled Grenade.
Outside, the wind shrieked through the trees, and rain pounded the roof so hard it sounded like gunfire. The layering of this noise over the continuous whistle in my ears made me feel chaotic. I wanted something to eat. I wanted to be an agent of a change in this strange new world. I wanted a reason to kill again.
Later we took our weapons into the house, where Mack demonstrated their proper use and handling. The rifles, he explained, had been sourced overseas, built for wars that were ancient history to me. I was impressed by the lot of it and eager to get going. Jimmy, by contrast, seemed amused.
“Where did you get all this?” he asked Mack.
“That’s my business. But there is an active market for weapons like these.”
“Unless you’re planning to break into Fort Knox, why own actual military rifles?”
“Aside from using them to wage war on Walmart?”
Jimmy smiled.
“Look,” Mack said. “This event may be a surprise to you folks, but some of us have been prepping for years. If that star hadn’t gotten us, it woulda been a solar flare. Or a nuke detonated over Kansas. Ever since America turned weak, ever since city folk got used to electricity and iPhones and groceries on demand, it was bound to happen.”
Mack looked around at all of us, clearly pleased with his speech.
“And now here we are,” he added.
But I wondered why, if he was so prepared, Mack was even bothering to help us. Unless it turned out he was low on food himself.
Eventually, the weather cleared and the sun came back out. Mack grabbed some paper and a pencil and sketched a rectangular shape.
“A building like this probably doesn’t have many windows,” he said, pointing. “There may be an office up front, and if so it will be the facility’s weakest point. But the rest of the place will be a huge concrete shell. The loading docks will be garage-style doors. If I were defending the building, I would post men near these docks.
“Chelsea, it looks like your mom’s house will need to be our staging area. You women will stay behind. We’ll post men at the DC and make as many trips as we can back to the house. If we fill a whole room full of high-calorie, protein-rich food, it should be enough for the ten people in this room—plus your mother—to get through the worst of the shortage. Each trip will be dangerous, though, especially if other folks discover what we’re up to. They will beg and eventually they will try to steal.
“Honestly, it’s a huge risk to stay anywhere near the city, but I don’t see another option, not with one pickup and the roads as crowded as you claim. We’ll need to stay out of sight and be ready to fight when the shit gets real. Hopefully it will be enough.