by Ryan Schow
“Just waiting for the dam to break,” he said with a casual air. He glanced over at Marcus, sized him up and said, “You hungry, too?”
“You’re not?”
“Not for food,” he said, cryptic.
“What then?” Marcus asked as the noise of near rioting to get into the grocery store peaked.
“They say the meek will inherit the earth,” the man said.
He had striking blue eyes, and a curious tattoo. It was on his neck and it was a triangle with fire on the inside and three emerging swords. He also had tattoos of ghosts and devils and women writhing in bliss (or pain) on his arms spanning from shoulder to wrist. This guy definitely had some edge to him.
“Are these people the meek?” the stranger continued. “In a society where no one knows how to do anything on their own, let alone survive, will they eat each other when the time comes?”
Marcus looked extra hard at him, and then he looked at the sullying masses and he said, “I believe a few of them will. But you know what they say, ‘The cream rises to the top while the crap sinks to the bottom.’ How would you define the cream and who would be the crap?”
“That’s a deeply existential question,” he said as two women tried to push past the guards only to get cracked on the skulls and shoulder blades with wooden batons. “In terms of survival, I’d say the cream rising to the top are those men and women who would do anything to survive, and the crap are the poor suckers left for dead because their weakness is in their inaction.”
“So tomorrow’s meek will be today’s cream?”
“Yes. Which begs the question—”
Just then the full mass of the crowd began to shove forward, pressing the line, taking the hits from the security guards and the push-back from the employees. Two gunshots went off, but the crowd had enough.
“What’s the question?” Marcus asked as he moved forward with the crowd.
“Which are you?”
“I’m the guy thinking there is no way back from this,” Marcus answered, “and no guarantee that God is on the other side of it.”
“Societies have bounced back from wars like this for eons,” he said shoving forward like everyone else in the mix, but without much emotion behind it. “There is always an end, always a rebuilding, always hope. Look at all the countries ravaged by war, by famine, by disease. One day they’re going to build the most beautiful condos in Chernobyl. People will sunbathe on the beaches outside Fukushima while sipping martinis. North Korea will be a vacation destination for the ultra rich. There is always a way back, but only for those who have what it takes to survive.”
“What about you?”
“I think only the losers call the victors meek. The meek don’t inherit the earth. Only the meanest sons of bitches left standing get that privilege.”
“And that’s going to be you?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah.”
“You going in then? Because the meanest looking of this group isn’t you or me, but the ladies getting clubbed up front. They’re the ones pushing the line.”
“I’ve got other plans,” he replied, nonchalant.
“Such as?”
“Let them do the shopping,” he said, pulling away from the group. “Filling your carts with everything you need doesn’t insure you get home with all your groceries.”
“Well I’m going grocery shopping in there,” Marcus said, hanging back for a second, “and if you try to poach off me, I’ll put a bullet through your head.” Pointing at his right eye, his finger only an inch from the man’s face, he said, “I’ll put it right there.”
Smiling, the man said, “What would I want from a washed out juicer on a mountain bike?”
Marcus got off the bike. He didn’t care that it fell over. Pushing and nudging past the crowd of protestors, he managed to shove his way to the front of the line where an older man in a security uniform was hitting people with his baton.
Marcus grabbed the baton mid-swing, ripped it out of the man’s hands, blocked a strike from his partner’s baton, then rammed his way through them making a hole in the line.
One of the college-aged employees came after him and he swung the baton down toward the girl’s head so hard, it was a death blow for sure. But he didn’t connect. Instead, he stopped the baton within a half inch of her skull and she damn near wet herself.
“This store is not worth defending!” he boomed. The crowd fell to a hush, all eyes on the guards and the employees. “Your lives and your well-being is at risk, all for people who are starving and will do anything to feed themselves and their families.”
Within a few moments of stark realization, the security guards and the employees began to move away, to let people aside. With that, Marcus turned and went through the grocery store’s front doors, grabbing a rolling cart and moving inside past a small gathering of terrified employees.
The store became a veritable frenzy as he loaded up his cart with things he couldn’t find in homes he could easily rob. He was loaded for bear by the time the mob overtook the store and became unruly.
At first everything was mostly civilized, but then people realized the shortages before them. The first fight broke out over water. What started out as angry words soon became angry fists. While two men were going to blows over a 24 pack of water, a girl with blue hair and piercings, an employee, snuck the water from them. She stuck it in her cart then was promptly jumped by two women who may or may not be related to the men fighting. The blue haired girl had her piercings ripped out and eventually she got knocked out cold.
The agitation in the air amplified. Skirmishes broke out everywhere. Someone tried to take a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide from Marcus’s cart, but he hit the man’s hand with the wooden baton he’d stolen from the security guard out front and that was the end of that.
As he was heading toward the front of the store, Marcus saw the gathering of men outside: skinheads, every last one of them. They were waiting for everyone to leave with their groceries then they were taking the carts by force.
Smart. Cruel and merciless, but smart. Naturally, the guy he was talking to earlier, the skinhead with the tattoos and the theories on survival in times like this, he was heading up the action.
He looked down at his cart full of groceries, then he looked at the loaded .357 on his hip, and then he checked the stolen Beretta and realized he didn’t have ammo enough to shoot his way out of there.
Could he be discreet? Take a few of them out with his Reaper2 blade?
As he inched toward the front of the store, eyes on the chaos ahead and contemplating his strategy, he wondered about a back door. When he turned to check the other side of the store, he was immediately cracked on the top of his head by what he was certain was a wine bottle. Dazed, he stumbled backwards on unsteady legs only to be besieged by about six people. Someone stuck a finger in his eye, grabbed his beard, socked him in the nose.
They swarmed him, and as he fought to get his wits about him—especially after the blow to the skull—they kicked out his legs and tried to steal his cart. He got to his feet, but there were too many of them. Not skinheads.
Freaking locals.
Looking up through the flurry of legs and stomping feet, he saw the spurned security guard taking the baton out of Marcus’s cart and swinging in down on him. Marcus rolled out of the way, the heavy stick clanking on the tile floor.
The vibration rattled up the man’s arm, slowing him.
Marcus rolled over, kicked the guard’s ankle hard enough and in the right place. Bones broke and the man folded first before going down hard.
Marcus seized the moment.
He grabbed the cart as it was being pulled away, withdrew his .357 and said, “Who wants a little too much lead in their diet?”
It was the worst line ever, or maybe the best, but either way it put a sudden stop to the ruckus. Then he was kicked in the back again and he turned to shoot the attacker, but it was the college girl he nearly brained with the baton.
“You again?” he said.
Seeing the look on his face, she got scared and ran. Looking back around, the gun leveled on the four or five people trying to take his stuff, he jerked the cart.
They held strong.
While chaos practically swirled around them, Marcus said, “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to shoot one of you.”
“You won’t,” the woman said as several people pushed by her. She looked exactly the way most powerful women in real estate look: bitchy and entitled.
“Go ahead and test me, sweetheart,” he said. “One, two—”
They finally let go, but that was about the time the skinheads rushed into the store and started punching people. He got to his feet just as they set their sights on him. He put two rounds in their faces, stopping that action. The place went into an absolute frenzy of screaming, running and shoving. His reaction was probably unwarranted, but he’d have to live with that.
He was now a target.
Should he defend his cart? Defend himself? This wasn’t the Middle East. This wasn’t Afghanistan. And shouldn’t he take his own advice? The advice he gave earlier?
The contents in the cart were not worth his life.
People took flight, their carts now battering rams against other shoppers and the surge of thugs. The weak and the slow went down quickly. He navigated his cart away from the crowds, hurried to the back of the store where the masses were not. If he could break from the pack, isolate himself, he could see the skinheads coming. Or at least find a different way out of there.
The back way out had been found, though, and people were jamming it up. This was perfect for the swarm of skinheads. There must be twelve or thirteen of them! He might have that many rounds in both guns, but there were weapons all around him. Men who would be shooting back. That meant possible collateral damage and he couldn’t live with that.
Marcus ditched his cart and ran for the now barren soda aisle. All that remained was a twelve pack of “healthy” sodas that were both warm and looked like the worst flavor ever.
Ginger lime.
When Marcus was in college and his old man insisted he either enlist or earn himself a scholarship, Marcus had chosen baseball. He was a great outfielder, but not great when it came to batting percentages. He was always trying to kill the ball rather than just connect with it. Looking back, he only played ball so he could not enlist and piss his father off. What angered more was not Marcus’s desire to avoid going into the Marines, but the fact that when he did enlist, Marcus did so in the Army. Now, with a broken open twelve pack of sodas in his hand, he was drawing back on those two years of outfield experience and hoping his arm and his aim would serve him well.
The minute he had the advantage, Marcus began overhanding the sodas at the heathens. Aiming for their foreheads, the first two sodas hit their marks. The push of action suddenly changed from going after the grocery carts to going after him.
He went through the entire twelve pack, hitting most of what he aimed at, slowing the oncoming rush but not stopping it. He then ducked down out of sight, hustled to the end of the aisle, found himself face to face with two of these hoodlums. They both got the sharp end of his blade. One in the gut, the other across the neck.
Two more appeared.
They had guns they were shooting at him. He rolled left, withdrew his .357, stuck the knee and shot both of them in the chest.
More appeared behind them and he shot those as well. Heart throbbing mightily, he snatched up the better of heir guns, shot another in the back of the skull heading for the door (shameful but necessary), then made a bee-line to his grocery cart. By now much of the crowd had dispersed through the back door.
He followed, now heavily armed with no resistance.
Out the back door, in the loading docks, he saw two black Suburbans and all the desperate shoppers on the loading docks either bleeding or bled out. Most of them were on their knees, sobbing, obviously roughed up. While he was in here trying to save the store, and these people, the skinheads pulled around back to take what they’d come here for. Two guys were loading the stolen groceries into the SUVs, and then there was the skinhead with the blue eyes and the tattoo on his neck. He stood between the injured masses and the Suburbans.
Marcus put two rounds into the two loaders with his Beretta, then he turned the gun on the skinhead.
“You the cream now?” Marcus asked, moving on him quickly.
“Always,” he said.
“Your men are either toast or incapacitated,” he replied, looking at a dead woman and two dead boys, both with gunshot wounds in them. Disgusted by this needless loss of life, he said, “You will not be the meek. You’ll be the crap that sinks to the bottom.”
Right then, the skinhead whipped his hand around his waist, going for what Marcus was sure was a gun. Marcus fired twice on the deviant, both shots hitting the man square in the chest. The blue eyed demon staggered backwards, a surprised look on his face, almost like he was the innocent one there. And with that, Marcus closed the last few feet between them thinking only of how this man was preying on the weak. When he was face to face, Marcus put his gun to the man’s eye and said, “Told you I’d get this eye.”
The crash of gunfire sounded like a cannon inside the loading docks. It also startled him at how easily he’d done this. The deafening roar of the gun brought with it a dreadful silence. He turned and looked around. People were beat up, injured and shot dead. All around, their carts were scattered. They were just people.
They were hungry.
He put his hands to his temples, his gun still smoking, the residue of blood spatter heavy on his face. He glanced around at the eyes of the downtrodden, the defeated, the victimized and that’s when one of the women pointed to the first Suburban.
This wasn’t over…
With one of the weapons he stole from the firefight inside, he covered the SUV moving forward. He wasn’t even sure if the gun he held was loaded.
He prayed it was.
Moving into position, he saw a young man crouched in the SUV’s front seat holding a shotgun. The blast went off the second he saw Marcus, but fortunately the ex-soldier pulled back fast enough. Marcus heard another click, indicating the chamber was dry.
Rookie.
Marcus moved into view and said, “When I say so, throw the weapon out the window, climb into the driver’s seat and buckle up.” The Suburban was still running. He reached in, killed the engine, jerked the keys from the ignition. “Now, homeboy.”
The twenty-something kid tossed the shotgun out his window and climbed over the center console as Marcus made his way around the front of the SUV. Marcus got inside, handed the skinhead the key, then said, “Where are you staying?”
“Like me personally?”
Marcus cracked him on the skull with the gun, then aimed it at him again.
“We’re at the Ramada Inn, just off E. 17th and Superior, across Newport Blvd.”
“That where you’re stockpiling all the stuff you steal?” he asked. When the kid didn’t answer, Marcus said, “Good, take me there.”
Holding his head, angry and hurt yet surprised by the demand, he said, “You don’t want to go there, man. Trust me on this, you do not want to go there.”
“I just took out your whole crew. And your leader? He’s got an extra hole in his face.”
“That wasn’t our leader. He was low level, man. You go to the Ramada, you better have balls the size of watermelons, or a death wish.”
Looking down at his pants, Marcus said, “You see any watermelons in there?”
“So you’ve got a death wish, then.”
“My family is gone, my friends are gone and I don’t have a job or a home to go back to. So yeah, I guess I have a death wish. Now drive.”
Marcus glanced in the back of the Suburban only to find it packed with food and supplies. There were even a few weapons. Turning back he asked, “How many of you are there?”
“Enough. Li
ke I said, man, you don’t want to do this.”
“You think I’m worried?”
“You’d be an absolute moron not to worry,” he said, staring at the big man with a ton of conviction in his eyes.
“This isn’t a coordinated attack to sack a city or overtake a base, bro. This is mass slaughter. People are the targets. Men, women, children, dogs, cats and even scumbags like you and me. The machines aren’t discriminating. I saw a whole family gunned down in the first twenty minutes of this. I’ve seen hundreds of corpses now. In cars, on the side of the road, in hotels brought down on hundreds of innocents. You think your little pack of street slugs gives me even a second’s pause?”
“It’s your funeral, pal.”
Just before they hit Newport Blvd, Marcus saw a Sprouts Market and a Rite Aid on the left. “Why couldn’t you guys just go shopping there?”
“Already did,” he said, po-faced and docile.
“You sacked Sprout’s and Rite Aid?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And Von’s, the Urgent Care Medical Center, the Starbuck’s…this is our turf, bro. This is where guys like me feed and guys like you bleed.”
Marcus leveled him with a bitter stare. “That some sort of catch phrase?”
“I just made it up.”
“Yeah?”
“How’d it sound?” he asked with a bitter grin.
“Convincing. Time will tell if it’s truth or just bluster.”
“What’s bluster?”
“Hot air,” Marcus said.
“It ain’t bluster,” he responded, more serious now.
As they crossed over Newport Blvd and turned left on Superior, his prisoner/hostage/guide said, “Time for reckoning.”
“Will you stop with the theatrics already?” Marcus said as the guy pulled to a stop.
The kid started to speak and in that second, two things happened: one, Marcus saw the Ramada Inn, and two, he struck the kid with the butt of the pistol so hard he fell sideways and slumped over. He dragged the skinhead out of the driver’s seat, left him like tossed trash on the side of the street, then took a deep breath and centered himself.