“It’s the rules!” shouted the sweaty manager at the semi-circle of angry people that was closing in on him. “To get in, you need to show me your Series B rat cards! You need twenty points to buy. Twenty!”
“That’s bullshit,” screamed a dark haired woman of maybe thirty, holding a crying kid of maybe four.
“You even have food in there today?” shouted someone else.
“Yes, but you need twenty Series B points to even come in!”
A large gentleman in a blue work shirt stepped forward. The perspiring manager stopped and looked up, just as the large gentleman grabbed his collar and threw him to the side. The manager crashed into a cardboard cutout of a smiling family carrying overflowing grocery bags beneath the words “THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC PRACTICES FOOD JUSTICE.”
“We’re getting us some motherfucking food, motherfucker,” he said, striding into the store, followed by the crowd.
“Come on,” Turnbull said, looking back behind him but not seeing anything. They entered the store. It was oddly hot – it had never occurred to Junior that it would not be like the air conditioned markets at home. It was also dim – the brownout was in effect and the sputtering portable generator echoing through the cavernous interior only powered the refrigerators.
The workers, all in white aprons, saw the mass of humanity flooding in and quickly made the calculation that if one can’t beat them, one should join them. They turned and rushed down the aisles to gather what they could for themselves.
What jarred Junior most was not the mass of agitated humanity streaming through the door toward the aisles. It was the store itself – the lack of any kind of color or advertising or even endcap displays. A good portion of the shelves were empty, and the rest were piled with a few dozen muted cans or packages. Back home, at an HEB or Kroger’s, besides having cool air circulating and bright lights, there would be displays, colorful ads, and brand signage. Here, none of that – there was so little, there was no need to advertise at all.
They rushed with the crowd, finding themselves in the personal care products aisle. A hundred or so eight-inch boxes of what appeared to be toothpaste sat on a middle shelf; the brand was in Chinese, but there was a smiling Asian woman showing gleaming white teeth that revealed the nature of the product to those not fluent in Mandarin. But there seemed to be no toothbrushes in stock.
Further down, there was a good deal of “Worker’s Friend” deodorant – just one brand, with lots of empty shelf space around it. One of the People’s Republic’s basic premises was that its residents should not be forced to make difficult choices, not between body odor reduction preparations, and not between leaders.
“Did you see someone following us?” Junior asked, catching his breath. More were piling in through the front doors as passersby saw that it was open season on the food center. They stood against the shelves and people passed by them as well as the unwanted toothpaste and deodorant. It was clear the score was the food; now there was yelling and fighting echoing up from the parallel aisles. A white puff of dust – flour? – arose one aisle over, followed by a stream of vicious obscenities screamed by what sounded like an elderly woman.
“I don’t know,” Turnbull said. “But it felt wrong to me. You know how in bad movies they say it’s too quiet? It felt like that. Anyway, we can slip out the back, lose anyone following us.”
“What’s in those packs, man?” asked a leering little guy in his twenties standing in the middle of the aisle. Behind him, three friends, two of them tall, but all of them thin, like most blue staters. One of the tall guys had a daisy tattooed on his left check – either he lost a bet or had jumped into Los Angeles’s least threatening gang.
“Just move on,” Junior said, annoyed.
“I asked you what’s in the bag, bitch,” the little guy said.
“One of my guns,” Turnbull said. The little guy looked puzzled.
“Here’s my other one.” Turnbull’s Glock 19 was out and pointed at the little guy’s forehead. “If you even think – not that you’re big thinkers – that I won’t splatter your fucking brains all over this place, you are dumber than you look. And I seriously doubt that’s possible. So you and the rest of the human centipede need to about face and get the fuck out of here, or I will drop all four of you, and no one will give your twitching bodies a second look while I piss on them.”
The little guy’s jaw started to quiver, like he was about to say something.
“Nope, don’t talk. Turn around, and run. Three.”
The little guy looked puzzled.
“Two.”
He stood there, confused.
“Dipshit, when I get to zero, I’m shooting you. One.”
The four stepped backwards, then turned and ran out of the aisle and off to the left somewhere.
“I thought we were a second from a clean-up on aisle five,” Junior observed.
“Let’s go out the back and –“
Sirens. The PSF was entering the parking lot in force. Turnbull stepped up to the head of the aisle to get a better view. There were at least a half-dozen cruisers piling in, stopping around an unmarked Ford that was already parked there. Two men in plainclothes were standing by it.
“They’re going to need riot cops,” Junior said.
“I’ve seen that Ford before. They’re not here for the riot,” Turnbull said as he was hit from the side by the Daisy-faced punk and sent sprawling.
Junior pivoted as the other tall one rushed him, grabbing the punk’s filthy t-shirt and swinging him around so that his body weight carried him past and into the shelves.
The little one charged Junior, a silver flash of steel in his hand. The knife sliced into Junior’s left arm, sending a jolt of fire up the nerves. Junior struck the little guy’s jaw hard with a right cross, and felt the teeth underneath give way and shift from the blow.
“Get the gun, his gun!” the fourth shouted at Daisy-Face and he grappled on the ground with Turnbull. The guy was tall but light; Turnbull was tall and heavy with muscle mass. Still on his back, he grabbed the punk’s collar with his left hand then reached across the tatted up face with his right, grabbing a hunk of hair and an ear on the right side of Daisy-Face’s head and pulling it hard across into the floor. Turnbull threw pulled the quivering thug off him and sat up. The cheerleader looked on slack-jawed as Turnbull reached under his shirt to produce the Glock.
“Zero,” he said, then he shot the cheerleader in the face. The thug’s head jolted backwards under a fine pink mist; on the ceiling, the round kicked up a bit of dust where it hit. The thug fell, and only at that moment the looters seemed to notice what was happening. There was a momentary pause, and then the frenzy the store was already in kicked up exponentially.
Junior slammed the stunned little guy’s head into an empty shelf; he fell to his knees. The other big one hit Junior from behind. There was a loud blast – a gunshot – and the big guy paused for a moment, confused. Junior drew his Glock and shoved it against the punk’s abdomen.
“Wait!” the punk screamed. Junior pulled the trigger. Adios, liver. The punk crumpled.
Turnbull was on his feet. The store was utter chaos, and outside the cops were taking cover. He briefly considered taking some shots at them to suppress them, but he realized that would invite a massacre when they returned fire. To his right he noticed Daisy-Face trying to stand and casually shot him through the back of the head. His nose came apart as the round exited and splattered against a poster sternly warning that “RATION CARD CHEATS ARE FOOD CRIMINALS!”
Junior was breathing hard. The little one was on his knees in the aisle, drooling blood.
“Kill that piece of shit and let’s go,” Turnbull said, sprinting down the aisle.