Грэм Мастертон - Famine

‘Have you heard the news?’ Mike asked him, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

‘News?’ asked Tony.

‘Yeah. It seems like these crop blights we’ve been hearing about – all those excuses why they couldn’t deliver the grapes and the tomatoes and the celery and all of that stuff – well, it seems like we’re in for some kind of a national famine.’

‘That bad, huh?’ asked Tony.

‘That’s what I hear,’ said Mike.

Tony scratched the back of his neck. It was quite obvious that he didn’t understand the implications of what Mike had told him at all.

‘I’m going to close the store,’ said Mike.

Tony frowned at his digital watch. ‘It isn’t time yet.’

‘I know. But it may soon be too late, unless we close this place up.’

‘Too late?’ asked Tony, baffled.

‘Sure. I mean – what would you do, if you heard that there wasn’t going to be enough food for you and your family during the coming months?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tony. ‘Stock up, I guess.’

‘Exactly. And that’s what people are going to start doing tonight, as soon as they realise how serious this situation’s going to be. Take a look at it now – have you ever seen so many people here on a Sunday evening? And look at those people there – those shopping carts are filled to the top.’ Tony peered through the window of the office into the store. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said, slowly. ‘Look at that woman there – she’s got herself a train of three carts tied together.’

‘That settles it,’ said Mike. ‘I’m going to close the place up.’

‘What for?’ Tony wanted to know. ‘If things go on this way, we could make ourselves three times the weekly turnover, all in one night.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Mike told him. ‘We’ve got a responsibility to the whole community around here – not just the first fifty people with enough wit and enough money to clear the place out. And even if we do sell everything tonight, there’s no guarantee that we can restock until next week. If at all.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong,’ said Tony. Mike looked at him sourly. ‘You can think what you like, but right now I’m the manager and I say we close. So get to it. And make sure you put up the steel shutters.’

Tony saluted him. ‘ Jawohl, mein Führer ,’ he said, with no pretence of a German accent.

Mike had only just gone back to his desk when his buzzer went. He returned to the window, and saw that there was a scuffle going on in one of the aisles. He quickly opened his office door, and made his way beside the cold meat counter to the scene of the disturbance.

‘All right,’ he demanded. ‘What’s going on?’

The woman with the three shopping carts tied together was jostling with an elderly man in mirror sunglasses and a pale-blue shirt. She was loud, and rinsed with strawberry blonde, and Mike could see at once that she was going to be difficult. One of his assistants was trying to hold her back, while another one was picking up boxes of cereal that had scattered all across the aisle.

‘This lady thinks she can corner the cereal market,’ protested the elderly man. ‘All I want is a couple of packs of cornflakes, but she’s got every single box in the store.’

‘They’re all out of cornflakes, that’s all,’ snapped the woman. ‘Is it my fault if they’re all out?’

‘I think I have more cornflakes in the stockroom,’ said Mike. ‘How many did you want?’

‘Two packs, that’s all,’ said the elderly man. ‘I’m not an hysterical hoarder, like this lady.’

‘Who are you calling a hoarder?’ the woman wanted to know. ‘Do you have a family with six kids to feed? Do you have to worry about a husband who’s paralysed on one side? My family’s supposed to starve, so that a dusty old geriatric like you can have breakfast?’

‘Come on, madam,’ said Mike. ‘Nobody’s going to starve for the sake of two packs of cornflakes.’

‘Oh, no?’ the woman demanded. ‘Did you see that Kansas farmer on the television? He says we’re all going to starve, and that the President’s stocking up with food at the White House. Well, let me tell you, friend – if the President can do it, then sure as hell so can I.’

‘Listen, madam,’ Mike said patiently, ‘nobody’s going to starve. We have plenty of supplies right here in the store, and even more in the stockroom, and still more on order from our central depot. So don’t go panicking, huh? If you panic, you’re only going to help to create an artificial shortage.’

‘You’re trying to tell me how much I can buy?’ demanded the woman.

‘I’m just asking you to cool it, that’s all. Walking around the store with these three trolleys all tied together, that’s a hazard to other shoppers. Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d pay for your groceries and leave.’

‘You make me leave,’ the woman challenged him. ‘You just lay a finger on me and see what happens.’

Mike was about to answer with another of his soothe-the-angry-customer routines, when he heard shouting and scuffling at the front doorway of the store. Tony was shouting, ‘We’re closed! Don’t you understand me? We’re closing up!’

Somebody yelled back, ‘You can’t close! We’ve got a right!’

Mike left the lady with her three trolleys and her piles of cornflake boxes, and pushed his way through the crowds of customers to the doors. Tony had managed to lock two of the doors, but the last one was being forced open by a press of angry people. There must have been two or three hundred of them outside, all jostling to get in.

What goes on here?’ Mike shouted. ‘Hey, mister – we’re closed! We’re closing up now!’

A tall young man with shoulders as broad as a surfboard and floppy sun-bleached hair was gripping Tony’s shirt and trying to push him out of the way. Behind him, a husband and wife in matching pink T-shirts that read GOODBYE J. P. SARTRE were struggling to force a shopping-cart into the store. Behind them was a wrestling turmoil of anxious and angry men and women, already panicked by the warning that America was going to starve.

‘You can’t close!’ shrieked a woman with frizzy hair. ‘Your sign says twenty-four-hour store and you have to keep that! It’s the law!’

‘In this store. I’m the law!’ Mike shouted back. ‘Now go home, cool down, and come back in the morning! There’s no crisis, we have plenty of supplies, but I can’t endanger you or my staff by letting all of you in right now. You got me?’

‘Just shove it up your ass,’ snarled the tall surfer, and roughly elbowed Mike aside. Mike tried to grip the chrome handrail by the door, but he caught his back against a stray shopping-cart, lost his balance and fell against the liquor counter. The next thing he knew, the doors were being forced open again, and crowds of whooping and shouting people were pouring in to the store.

‘For Christ’s sake, let’s have some order!’ yelled Mike. ‘Just take what you want, but don’t panic!’

He tried to stand up on the handrail so that he could make himself heard over the hideous shrieking and gabbling of the crowd, but a fortyish-looking man in sunglasses grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down again.

‘I ought to beat your brains out!’ Mike screamed at him. The man shrugged. ‘I was doing you a favour. You’re wasting your breath, trying to stop the great American public from panicking. It’s their favourite occupation.’

‘Just get out of my way!’ Mike told him. ‘Tony – let’s get back to the office! Gina, Wendy – clear out of your cash registers and lock them up!’

‘Asshole,’ said the man in sunglasses, unaccountably. Mike helped his checkout girls take the cash boxes out of their registers, and then he and his staff fought their way through the aisles back to the office.