Грэм Мастертон - Famine

All around them, the store was surging with hysterical shoppers – fighting and scrambling and tearing at each other as they attempted to cram their baskets and their shopping-carts and even their pockets with anything they could lay their hands on. A five-foot display of baked-bean cans clattered to the floor as Mike and Tony led the checkout girls past, and Mike was hit on the side of the face by a falling can. Right in front of him, a woman in stretch ski-pants and curlers was kneeling on the floor, gathering up packs of bacon in her arms and whimpering.

There were shouts and splintering crashes as shelves collapsed under the weight of people climbing up on to them to reach the topmost boxes of food. A woman screamed, ‘I’m pregnant! For God’s sake don’t push me! I’m pregnant!’

People were taking everything. Not just cans of vegetables and meat; not just staple supplies; but pet foods and bottles of lavatory cleanser and fluorescent plastic sandals. They seemed to have forgotten why they were there, and what they had come for. Now they were even ripping the plastic edging from the shelves, and smashing the refrigerator cabinets. Mike, as he managed to usher everybody into his office, saw one man in a flowery Hawaiian shirt beating his fist against an empty spice rack until his fingers were spattered with blood; and another sight that was to stay with him for days afterwards – a pretty young girl in khaki jeans clutching five or six crushed French loaves, and wetting herself, all down her thighs.

Mike pushed Tony into the office ahead of him, slammed the door and locked it.

‘Jesus Christ,’ shuddered Tony. ‘Have you ever seen anything like that in your life? They’ve gone bananas!’ Mike went over to the telephone, and dialled 625 3311, for the police. The telephone rang for a long time before it was answered, and outside the office window the screaming and the smashing grew louder and even more frightening.

‘Come on, come on,’ breathed Mike ‘What’s the matter with these people? We’ve got a riot on our hands.’

At last, a dry voice said, ‘Police. Is this in connection with tonight’s emergency?’

Mike hesitated. ‘It’s a riot, if that’s what you mean. Up at the Hughes supermarket on Highland.’

‘Okay,’ the voice told him. ‘Hold on for a moment, and I’ll have you connected with the emergency squad.’

Mike held his hand over the receiver while it rang on a special extension. Through the office window, he could see a middle-aged woman trying to climb up on to the cookie shelves, to reach three or four scattered bags of Pepperidge Farm ginger-nuts. Another woman leaped on her back, clawing at her T-shirt, until it ripped apart. The two women fell into the aisle, fighting and scratching, and knocking over two other women as well. Mike saw blood and torn-out hair and bare breasts scored with livid red furrows.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said into the telephone. He loosened his necktie, and unbuttoned the first couple of buttons of his short-sleeved shirt. One of the checkout girls, Wendy, was starting to sob.

At last, a snappy police sergeant said, ‘Yes? Emergency squad.’

‘I’m the manager of the Hughes supermarket on Highland,’ said Mike.

‘Okay,’ said the sergeant, ‘Hughes supermarket. I’ve made a note of that. We’ll get there when we can.’

‘When you can? We have a riot here! People are getting hurt!’

‘Listen, mister, we have a riot in every supermarket in the city. Four supermarkets on Santa Monica boulevard are burning. All I can say is that we’ll get there when we can.’

‘But what am I supposed to do? They’re stripping the place!’

‘You’ll just have to let them strip it. I’m sorry, mister, but we simply don’t have the manpower. I’m sorry.’

Mike didn’t know what else to say, how else he could plead. He held the phone in his hand for a moment, listening to the sergeant say, ‘Hello? Are you still there? Hello?’ But then he laid it back in its cradle.

‘What did they say?’ Tony asked him.

‘They said they’d do their best. It turns out that every supermarket in Los Angeles is being tom apart the same way. Four supermarkets are burning.’

‘Mother of God,’ said Tony, in a hushed voice.

Gina, the Mexican check-out girl, looked up from comforting Wendy. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do? Those people out there, they’ve gone crazy.’

Tony went close to the window. ‘They haven’t reached the stockroom yet. But I guess it’s only a matter of time.’

‘Is the stockroom locked?’ asked Mike.

Tony nodded. It was always locked. He made sure of that, personally. He combed his hair a lot, and yawned a lot when he was making out shelf inventories, but he never failed to obey instructions.

Mike joined him at the window. They couldn’t quite see the stockroom door from the office, but they could see the corner of the frozen dairy foods cabinet next to it. There was a pushing waltzing scrum of people there, and the floor was plastered with pink yogurt.

They heard a rattling noise, and they knew that the crowds were trying to pull down the stockroom door.

‘If we want to keep that food intact, we’re going to have to do something fast,’ said Tony. ‘That’s a pretty good lock on there, but it won’t hold them out for ever.’

Mike covered his mouth with his hand. Halfway up the hardware aisle, a woman lay doubled-up on the floor, bleeding and sick. Another woman was walking unevenly through the crowds that still milled around the supermarket, her hair awry and her eyes staring.

‘I have an idea,’ said Mike. ‘Gina – pass that sack of waste-paper, will you?’

An hour ago, Mike had been irritated to find that the cleaner hadn’t taken the plastic bag of trash away. It was nothing more than crumpled-up wrapping paper, out-of-date invoices, used carbon paper, and string. But it would suit his present purpose just fine. He carried it to the office door, propped it up against his legs, and then reached in his pocket for matches.

‘You’re going to set fire to the place?’ asked Tony.

‘Just a limited fire, I hope,’ Mike told him. ‘Enough smoke and enough yelling to get these people out of here.’

He struck a match, and paused for a while to let it burn up. The rattling of the stockroom door grew increasingly ferocious, and he thought he heard a hinge tearing. Then he dropped the match into the bag of waste-paper, and watched it flare.

‘Are you ready?’ Mike asked Tony. ‘When I give the word, we open the door and go out yelling fire. And I mean yelling .’

‘I’m game,’ said Tony. He reached into his shirt pocket, took out his green plastic comb, and ran it with a stylised flick through his hair.

‘You look like a prince,’ said Gina, with friendly sarcasm. Tony realised what he had done, and grinned sheepishly.

‘It’s kind of a habit,’ he said.

The bag of trash was blazing hot and smoky now. Mike said, ‘You set?’ and before Tony could answer, he tugged open the office door, and kicked a shower of fiery paper into the store.

‘ Fire! ’ he screamed. ‘Fire! Fire! The place is on fire!’

‘ Fire! ’ yelled Tony, right behind him.

The effect on the crowds was immediate; and even more dreadful to Mick than the way in which they had first surged into the store. They let out a low quavering moan, like a wind on a seashore, and then that moan rose into a scream. Then, there was nothing but scrambling and pushing and a chopped-up shrieking which made him turn away towards the smoke and the burning paper with a grimace of disgust.

He didn’t feel holier-than-thou. He knew that if his own life was at risk in a fire, he’d be struggling to get out along with everybody else. But somehow the way that the crowds in his supermarket were tearing at each other to get to the exits, the way that women were wrenching at each other’s clothes, the way that men were screaming like small children, that all turned his stomach.