The sliding glass doors rattled as the two associates rolled them open, the customers outside standing side by side,
a quiet unmoving hoard. All eyes stared out towards Larry Waid, a little man in a blue and white striped shirt with pencil-thin glasses, a dirty machete tucked into the loop of his belt. Once the produce department manager, now the official wrangler and herder for the morning shift, Larry rolled his tongue in his mouth as he looked out towards the mob that was illuminated in the crimson red light of dawn, watching children shudder in their heavy coats in a cold July, blackfrost tinging the edges of their clothes.
“Welcome to Wessler’s Super Store,” Larry said, posture like a tin soldier. “We thank you for shopping with us today. We ask that you file in one by one,” Larry swung one of his arms behind him, pointing to Ethel Greerson. Ethel, customer greeter, sat at her chair, thin hands curling around the stock of her rifle.
“If you try to run through the door, Ethel will shoot you,”Larry said, voice still in a monotone. “If you cut in line,
Ethel will shoot you. If you-“
“We know how to shop, asshole!” the customer’s voice bounded through the quiet parking lot, an obscene replacement of the birds that would always greet the day until two weeks prior. Larry nodded, stepping to the side and taking out his machete, pointing the blade towards the inside of the store, a pirate captain declaring where the next raid for booty should be. Larry decided he didn’t care enough to go on about the
rules. He wasn’t paid enough. He wasn’t paid at all.
One by one the people entered the store. What stopped them from swarming in, from challenging old Ethel and seeing just how good her aim was, none could say. Perhaps all the chaos of the previous week had left them defeated enough that they agreed in unspoken accord they all just wanted something normal. Something they understood. Wessler’s Super Store. Great hours. Great savings. A great anchor at the end of the world.
For some it was just something to do. Children ripped through boxes of toys, tearing out action figures and dolls,
squealing in delight as they ran about the store with them, waving them in their parents faces, asking if they could really take them. Josh Lyles, the toy associate, was too busy trying to teach two kids how to skateboard to pay any attention. They didn’t have any value anymore. The kids or the toys, Josh reckoned. Let them go wild if they wanted.
The check-out lines were quiet affairs, cashiers standing by and bagging merchandise, managers nearby to barter with customers over what they brought to trade. One customer, Eric Fineland, angry that the manager wouldn’t take his old radio for the canned food he wanted.
“You could scavenge it,” Eric said, slapping a hand on the counter. “You could – I dunno – take it apart, use it or some shit.”
“For what?” the manager said, keeping her flashlight centered on the radio like a tepid spotlight, the growing beet
red daylight too dull to shine. “Electronics aren’t worth a damn anymore. If you don’t have anything else, sir, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“I have this,” Eric said, as he pulled a box cutter out of his pocket, pushing the blade open.
The customer behind him grabbed his arm. The one behind that, his shoulder. All as one, the customers behind him dragged Eric under. They piled on him, scratching at Eric, the weight keeping Eric from lashing out with his box cutter. The hand down his mouth keeping him from screaming.
Mark Schulster, who had been near the back of the line, stepped over the mass that had buried Eric and laid his
cans of green beans and vienna sausages on the counter. “I’ll take these, please,” Mark said.
In the garden area, Harold Spelner, thin and awkward and just eighteen was starting his second week on the job by
watering the edible plants with life giving toilet water. He kept his head down as he watered, pulling the edges of his jacket together, zipper long busted. Trying to ignore the scurrying sound he could hear underneath the steel shelves that lawn tools were haphazardly thrown on.
“Hey,” said a voice. Harold turned his head towards it to see a woman who looked like Pippi Longstocking, grown up and gone punk rock, arm cradling some vegetable pots. “You have any potting soil left? Can’t grow shit in my garden anymore.” she shifted a little, moving a pot that had the thinnest peppers Harold had ever seen growing out of them from one arm to the other. “Had this great big oak in my yard, been there as long as my parents. Black frost got it. Thing just started falling apart in these icy chunks.”
“Yeah, back wall inside,” Harold said, small wisps of frost rising from his mouth. He’d have to head inside soon, cover the plants. Hope that it would protect it from the frost. Not wanting to chance the frost is what had kept him here.
He watched as punk rock Pippi headed inside. Soon he would go inside too, would break apart one of the older pallets and start a fire fueled on charcoal lighter and cheap plastic on the linoleum floor. Harold turned his head as he heard the scurrying underneath the steel increase, expecting a rat half the size of God to pop out of it and stare him down.
Instead he saw a good sized hare there, grey fur pallored by the crimson light of day. Its ears twitched and then it was off, shooting through a hole in the metal gate and out into the dead parking lot where frostbitten cars with flat tires now laid.
It looked back at Harold once more, then it was gone.
The impetus for the story is, oddly enough, that image of a "Pippi Longstocking, grown up and gone punk rock". Having worked in retail for years and occasionally having to fill in as a door greeter, you'd see some interesting people enter and exit the store. One of the most vivid I could ever recall was this girl who looked like Pippi Longstocking, or maybe Wendy from the fast food chain, wearing a dark leather jacket and combat boots with dark framed glasses on. The image stuck and lasted with me, and it's always found some expression no matter which version of the story I've tried to write. Sometimes she ends up a main character. In both the versions I've ever completed, she's a minor one.
That the image led to me imagining an end of the world scenario is perhaps just indicative of my fucked up imagination. *
