Pushing a grocery cart, I bypassed the massive vegetable displays at which Mom would always stop and make us fan out with veggie lists. In the fruit section I picked up a bunch of bananas and dutifully made for the scale so as to weigh it for the price sticker. I put it on the scale then glanced back at the code on the display. I started keying in the SKU number and stopped mid-type as it dawned on me that my weighing and typing was pointless. I smiled, but… free stuff was no world’s end perk. This wasn’t a party. Still isn’t. Floating and terrified, that’s me. That’s us, right, Maggie? You terrified? You were on the ride home, weren’t you? Sorry for that, girl. Okay? I’m sorry. I’m tousling her scruff. She looks over her shoulder, her face drenched in sun and blinks her eyes dolorously at me. Apology accepted.
I started grabbing. My mind thought in survival terms now. What I needed and how long things might last. Who knew how long we’d have power. I had no idea what went on at the power plants, water management facilities, what to do, how to maintain anything. I didn’t even know where the power facilities were. Internet, gone. The smartphones which had dumbed us down (it’s all up in the cloud!) didn’t work. And if we got a phone book and a paper map and we found the power station, we’d pull a lever and blow ourselves up.
I panicked a little at these accumulating thoughts. Feeling very claustrophobic in this wide-open, not-so-brave new world.
Fresh things first. That’s a good call. Get a bunch of fruit and vegetables. Meats. I talked to myself. “If we need to, we can use the fridges next door.” I thought of what we might find in other houses. All the other houses.
“Why not just leave it here, then? If the power goes out, it goes out everywhere.”
I had a discussion with myself. Like a madman.
“Sure. But it’ll be close. And maybe we can get gas-powered generators going. Besides,” and I stopped talking, tried to organize my thoughts.
“Besides… what?” I stood in the aisle, my mind toggling.
“Others may be out there and others may come and take more than their share. We need to get what we can when we can.”
My stomach moaned long and demanding. It echoed. I let out an airy laugh through my nose.
Johnny’s voice: “Your stomach sounds like an old Slavic woman trying to get out of bed.” He stepped out in front of me from the side aisle. I audibly gulped.
It’s a couple of miles from Rebecca’s, at least. How in the hell…?
We stood at an impasse—trust, for the moment, gone.
“Why’d you run off with them?”
“Did I…?”
“I didn’t bring you here, Johnny.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so confused.” His tone was flat.
“Will you stay with me? Help me?”
He looked over his shoulder. Held his head. Stepped to me and hugged me.
He slipped to his knees, grabbed my legs, and I rubbed his hair. We remained there for a few moments, him quietly sobbing, my flight-or-fight impulses receded. Sobbing and Muzak.
He peered up, his chin quivering. “We’re still going to be okay, right? You and me?”
I couldn’t say anything else but, “Yeah, J. We’ll be okay.” He stood up. “We just have to find out what’s what out there, wrap our heads around it, and come up with a plan.”
He just blinked at me. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either.”
“Why is this happening, Kevin?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a reason. I don’t think reason has anything to do with it. It just is.”
“What is?” His eyes red, his nose wet.
“I think…” and I struggled with saying this because it sounded so final. “I think it’s the end of the world, J. As we’ve known it, anyway.”
I could see in Johnny’s face that he wondered why I was here, why Kodie. He stared at me, blinkless. Looking into his face, I envisioned that wave fetching upriver.
He fell out of his trance when I spoke again. “I think, at least for tonight, as long as we have power, we need to keep food close to us at home.”
“We staying there?”
“Why fly off half-cocked until we know more? We should, at least for tonight, until things settle and we can think.” Johnny furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and nodded.
Now I took him in. He wore army pants I’d gotten him at the Army Surplus for his birthday and a Run DMC T-shirt from the Fun Fun Fun Fest we went to together, just us. My band friends had become real douches by then, about the time I started hanging out with Bass. We ditched them and watched the music together without the head-up-your-ass selfie-posting and tiny talk that goes on.
I heard a bang, maybe a wooden pallet, back at the loading area. Johnny and I looked at each other, arms full of fruit. We quietly put them in the basket. Just around the corner stood the stainless steel doors with rubber trim leading to the cold storage rooms and the loading area behind the building. That’s where the sound came from.
“Hello?” I called out. We listened to dead air. “Hello?” Louder this time, taking a step forward. In the resounding quiet, I felt the prickles of panic. “Real quick, let’s go back and see if the girls are all right,” I whispered to Johnny. We loped back to the front. Johnny fell behind. Kodie saw me and I flashed a questioning thumbs-up. She nodded to me with a surprised look on her face, a smile even—what? I shook my head, mouthed nothing.
No time to dwell, I turned and redirected Johnny back past the imported oddities, the dewy organic delicacies. When we got to our cart, something felt wrong, like the air had just been displaced and we were arriving in the wake of its disturbance. Up ahead I saw the stainless steel doors swaying.
“Look.” Johnny pointed to the cart. Still attached to a banana bunch lay exposed the meaty inside of one having been peeled, and a bite taken. The white inside a red apple framed by teeth marks.
Among the oranges sat a brown, fist-sized stone. I stared at it vacantly. My mind capered in a corner of my skull somewhere. Johnny dug it out and held it in one hand, feeling its weight. Once I blinked out of my stare, I asked rhetorically, “What in the hell?”
To lighten the mood, Johnny took the stone and placed it on the SKU scale. The digital numbers blurred to a stop at a little over a pound and a half. He dialed in a number he saw in front of him, the Vidalia onions, and out came the barcoded sticker. He tore it out and pressed it onto the smooth stone, put it in a plastic bag, spun the bag so it twisted up a straight line to be tied and knotted.
“Nice work.” I patted the gun at my ribs. “C’mon.”
Johnny knew where. With a set look on his face, he started walking ahead of me carrying the stone by the baggie knot between curled knuckles, the stone swinging idly. I whispered to him to hold up. He lagged, I caught up. We went straight for the metal doors and stood before them, nodded to each other once like in the movies, and I kicked them open, gun drawn.
We stepped through into the storage room the size of a squat gymnasium. Boxes and pallets and cool fecund air drifted in from far continents. Nobody there. Then came the echoing laughter through the catacombs of boxes and stacked pallets. Johnny snapped, “Hey, would you guys please stop it?” As if he knew them, a fidelity in his voice. “Why don’t you come out if you’re so smart? Come on out.” Johnny’s voice had command in it that I’d never heard him use before. They had numbers so they assumed strength within themselves. But the quiet that followed said they weren’t so confident and had nothing to gain by confrontation. Then, the air no longer held that pregnancy. I was sure they were gone. Johnny stood there stunned as if having been assailed by knowledge.