He’d seen enough. Actually too much, since if he’d had the slightest bit of common sense he would’ve run for his life along with all the other customers the moment he saw the employee being attacked. He ran to grab his cart and sprinted it towards the front of the store, as behind him the noise of destruction and unleashed fury continued. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to find the rioters chasing him down, but he seemed to have escaped their attention.
After a nightmarish eternity that couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds he reached the front of the store. Once there he stopped, looking around helplessly. The doors were choked with customers streaming outside, pushing full carts of even carrying armfuls of stuff. All of it had to be stolen, since there were no cashiers behind the registers and what few employees remained had either fled or converged on the disturbance at the back of the store.
Which left him in a bit of a bind. He wasn’t a thief and didn’t plan to start now, but at the same time he really wanted the things in his cart. A lot of this stuff could make a huge difference for his family if trucks weren’t bringing in necessities.
As he stood there debating ethics a bright blur of motion from the back of the store caught his eye, and he turned in time to see flaming rolls of toilet paper arcing over the aisles, burning tails fluttering like comets. Almost absurdly, as he watched the sight his immediate thought was that he should’ve picked up some toilet paper himself.
From the source of the thrown projectiles someone was gleefully shouting about toilet papering the place, and a few loud, high pitched yips of laughter followed the suggestion as more flaming rolls flew. As far as Matt could see no fires had started just yet, but even with plastic floors and metal shelves it was only a matter of time.
He pushed down his panic, and before he could think better of it ran his cart to one of the self checkout stations and began running everything over the scanner as fast as he could, stuffing it all into plastic bags. The small station was mostly meant for purchases of just a few items and the pile of bags quickly overflowed onto the floor, but he kept going with almost manic desperation, flinching at every shout and crash behind him.
Once again he found himself regretting that he’d left Nelson’s gun behind in his room. Sure, carrying a gun around town was viewed as strange these days, but with riots breaking out all over the nation there was literally never a better time to open carry. As he was seeing for himself right this very moment.
Idiot! It was like he was still stuck in stolid citizen mode. Even while watching on the news as entire neighborhoods burned and state capitols were torn apart, and after deciding to leave the city before the chaos reached it too, here he was jaunting off to the grocery store to go shopping for a few things before hopping in his car and fleeing for his life. He was even paying for his goods while the store literally burned around him!
Finally Matt’s patience ran out as somewhere in the store a woman’s screams rose over the other shouting and yelling before abruptly going silent. He grabbed the most expensive item left in the cart and scanned it a dozen times, hoping that was enough, then with fumbling fingers yanked out his credit card and ran it, pounding out his PIN. It seemed to take forever for the card to authorize, and while he waited the deafening noise of rioting behind him continued and he actually thought he could smell smoke. A red glow was spreading from the back of the store.
The card scanner abruptly made a buzzing noise and text popped up on the small screen. “AUTHORIZATION FAILED: SERVER DOWN.”
“Are you kidding me?” Matt muttered under his breath. He’d definitely stayed too long now and he didn’t have any more time to waste on this BS, so he tossed his credit card on the scanner along with all the cash from his wallet and began stuffing the full bags into his cart on top of all the loose items he hadn’t been able to scan.
The doors were still clogged with fleeing people when he pushed his cart into line. From what he could see the doors at the opposite end of the front of the store were stopped completely by what looked like the beginnings of a brawl as the owners of two carts jammed in the doorway punched at each other while the crowd around them shoved wildly trying to force them through. For no reason he could see he watched a woman waiting behind the two fighting men abruptly jump on one’s back and begin pummeling his shoulders and head, screeching, at least until they both went down and were swallowed up by the crowd behind.
Matt turned back in time to see a young man in the line ahead of him twist around and snatch one of the bags from his cart. “Hey!” he shouted.
The kid, who was around 14 or 15, sneered at him. “What, got a problem with me stealing your stolen stuff?”
He was about to protest that he’d paid for his things, kind of, but before he could the line in front of the door moved and they were both shoved forward, caught in the flow of panicking people struggling to leave the building. As he was pushed along Matt hunched over his cart to discourage any more would-be thieves, and after what seemed a nightmarish eternity of pushing and shoving he finally burst out into the afternoon sun, the crowd around him dispersing in all directions now that they were past the bottleneck.
Matt fled across the parking lot in the sea of humanity, while behind him he heard the deafening crash of glass breaking. He glanced back to see that the rioters had reached the front of the store and were throwing carts through the windows, while behind them a hellish red glow spread and wisps of smoke escaped into the outside air.
The crowd around Matt streamed off in different directions as he pushed his cart out of the parking lot and started up long hill that led to his dorm. Nobody seemed to be going the same way, or at least they didn’t follow him up the sidewalk, which was a relief since it meant he wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.
After a few minutes he decided he’d made it a safe distance from the store, so he pushed the front wheels of the cart off the edge of the sidewalk so it wouldn’t roll away and pulled out his phone.
The first people that had popped into his mind after escaping the chaos of the supermart were his sister April, her husband Terry, and their two young sons. The family lived up in Midvale, nearly smack dab between Utah and Salt Lake valleys where trouble from either could spill over to them. He turned his phone back on to call her.
April answered on the third ring, and in spite of himself Matt was relieved to hear her voice. “You okay?” he immediately asked.
“Isn’t that my line little bro? You’re the one calling me.”
Matt wasn’t in the mood for banter. “Listen, I just escaped a riot in a supermart.” He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s burning behind me. With how tense everything is I’m afraid it might spread.”
“Wow, really? The fire or the riot?” Although April’s words still seemed lighthearted she sounded genuinely worried.
“Yes.” It was a common game between them to provide two options and answer yes for both, but for Matt the response was almost automatic. “Are things quiet up there?”
There was a long pause. “Yeah I think so. We’ve spent the last few hours cataloguing our food storage so I haven’t even checked the news. I don’t hear shouting or sirens, though.”
That wasn’t too reassuring. “Listen, I’m heading down to Mom and Dad’s. I really think you guys should too.”
“We’ve talked it over,” April answered, sounding a bit frustrated. “Terry hasn’t been able to find any gas anywhere. He’ll keep looking, but with enough food storage to last us through the winter we decided we should stay put and hope the government sorts this all out. We’re on the outskirts of things so if we lay low we should be able to avoid any riots or other trouble happening in denser populations to the north or south.”