From the looks of it they were carrying grocery bags filled with hair care and beauty products, and Matt couldn’t help but wonder what possible use they thought they were going to get out of them. Maybe they’d originally come for food and felt they couldn’t leave empty-handed.
Matt had no such illusions. He’d check the food aisles as he passed them, sure, but his goal was the sporting goods section. It occurred to him that a lot of things that would be useful for camping would be equally useful in a general survival situation.
Surprisingly, in spite of the larger than usual crowds the checkout lines weren’t all that crowded. Had people just come to browse hoping they might find something useful? That seemed a waste of time to Matt, especially when he was feeling greater and greater urgency about leaving the city. He grabbed a cart and hurried into the store.
As he’d expected the food aisles were all bare, not so much as a sideways can or crumpled cereal box to be seen. Even so a few people were poking around the shelves, as if searching for places where food might have fallen and been overlooked. Matt was more interested in a display of AA batteries in front of one aisle that still had several packs left. Into the cart they went.
When he reached the sporting goods section he immediately saw that the guns and ammo were all gone, nothing but bare shelves and empty gun racks. Either the store had pulled the items at the behest of the government or because they anticipated future trouble or all the guns and every single bullet had already been sold. The thought of the dozens of weapons those racks behind their locked cases had held and the ammo to shoot them tens of thousands of times being somewhere out in the city in the hands of who knew how many people with dubious purposes made Matt distinctly nervous.
Why hadn’t he brought the Glock Trev had given him? This was exactly the time when he’d feel better about having it, but instead he’d left it in his room like a good law-abiding citizen entering a potentially lawless situation.
In front of the gun aisle was a stand filled with cans of bear spray, a spillover from the hunting and camping supplies the next aisle over. Matt couldn’t help but notice that the spray was effective up to 30 feet and capable of incapacitating a full grown grizzly, at least according to the sign. It was almost funny to see that even though every single gun and round of ammunition was gone only a couple of the cans, which would be a very effective and mostly non-lethal method of self defense, were missing from the display.
Those seemed like just the sort of potentially useful trade goods Matt had come for, so he picked up the stand and dumped the dozens of cans into his cart. As he did a few passing shoppers tossed him dirty looks. “Did you want some?” he asked.
The only response came from a woman with a cart loaded up with blankets and sheets, who sniffed. “No, but you could at least save some for other shoppers.” Matt looked pointedly at her own cart, and she had the grace to look slightly embarrassed as she hurried on.
The encounter reminded him that it might not be a terrible idea to check out blankets himself. With winter on the way they seemed pretty important.
The camping aisles were depressingly empty of things like knives, machetes, matches, flashlights, candles, lanterns, and charcoal briquets. He did find a few tarps, tents, and sleeping bags to toss into his cart, as well as some bug spray and mosquito netting, although he wondered if those last two were the most useful things he could be purchasing. There was also a display of slingshots that people had overlooked in favor of more obvious weapons and hunting implements, and like with the bear spray he emptied the display.
The next aisle was tools and hardware. Here, too, the things that could make potential weapons like hammers, sledgehammers, crowbars, and gardening implements had all been snatched up. The sight made Matt feel almost as uneasy as the empty gun racks. How else could he feel about a place where food was nowhere to be found and people were stocking up on improvised weapons? He did stop and pick up all the available boxes of nails and several measuring tapes, since they were small and useful, and almost as an afterthought grabbed a few empty gas cans and some plastic tubing. They’d probably be useless but he could store water in them if nothing else.
Then it was on to the sports aisle.
True to form baseball bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, and even things like baseballs and golf balls were nowhere to be found. Matt couldn’t see anything useful here unless he was trying to stave off sheer boredom, although he did empty a display of playing cards at the end of the aisle into his cart. That was one of the main ways his family had always entertained themselves on camping trips, so they seemed like a good thing to grab.
His cart was nearly full, so he decided he’d swing by the bedding aisle and then head for the checkout lines.
There weren’t many blankets to be found, although he found some mattress pads and loaded them into his cart since they were basically the same thing. As he stood in the aisle debating whether to grab pillowcases for improvised carrying sacks sudden furious yelling from the back of the store not far away caught his attention, and he cautiously made his way to the end of the aisle to see what was going on.
That wasn’t the shouting of disgruntled customers. It was the hoarse, top of the lungs, pissed off to the point of having an aneurism screams of someone who was either in the middle of a total meltdown or was about to start seriously beating someone.
He peeked around the shelves and saw that the noise was coming from behind a swinging door leading back to the stockroom. As he stared, tense, a sudden ringing made him nearly jump out of his skin. His phone. Acting purely on panic he reached into his pocket and shut it off before it could draw any attention to him.
When he’d silenced the call he peeked around the shelves again, just in time to see an employee stagger backwards through the swinging door. At first Matt thought the man was running away from something, but when he collapsed to the ground curled up in a fetal position clutching his face Matt realized the employee had been hit.
Only moments later several men about Matt’s age or younger, carrying improvised weapons that might have been the missing merchandise he’d noticed in the aisles he’d passed through, burst out the door and began kicking the downed man. “You said there’d be food back there!” the same man who’d shouted hoarsely before yelled.
“I warned you we mostly just use that area for breaking down boxes and almost all our merchandise is kept stocked on the display shelves! I just said it’s a big space and there might be some stuff hidden away and forgotten in a corner or something.” The employee screamed at a particularly savage blow to the head, curling up in a tighter ball. “Please, stop! I’m helping you.”
That invited a burst of profanity from several of the punks as one slammed his wooden baseball bat down across his victim’s shoulders. “You’re supposed to have groceries!” he yelled.
“What do you think you’re doing?” an older man demanded, approaching. He wasn’t wearing an employee uniform so Matt had no idea why he’d decided to intervene, but it immediately turned out to be a mistake as the enraged gang turned and rushed him with their weapons. In moments the good Samaritan was a bruised and beaten heap on the ground like the employee, while all around them customers began screaming as they fled in all directions, many abandoning their carts.
The hoarse ringleader made a beeline back for swinging door into the stockroom, pushing it open to shout through. “No food, no guns, nothing! Let’s trash this place!”
In response dozens more college age men streamed out of the stockroom, most with their own weapons and a few even brandishing guns. They immediately began shoving over shelves and smashing displays, all the while making noises that sounded more animal than human, amidst some of the vilest language Matt had ever heard.