burning like blue sulfur and, in contrast, the sky looked black. She reluctantly shifted to the driver’s seat and took manual control of the vehicle.
She had to scout fifteen minutes before she finally found a parking spot on a residential street five blocks away. She got out of her car. Not the best neighborhood. Houses were fifty years old, made of preformed Duratex. Most of the Duratex had minute cracks in it. Weeds grew waist-high in some front yards.
She finally reached the Stedman’s parking lot. Not only was it crowded with cars, but with people as well.
Glenda walked to the shopping cart corral and discovered that all the shopping carts were gone. She looked around and saw an elderly couple unloading groceries into the back of their car.
She walked over. “Can I take your cart when you’re through?”
The lady looked at her in sympathy. “We had to do the same thing. It’s like dollar days.”
Once the couple was through unloading, Glenda pushed the cart to the store, only to discover that there was a long lineup to get in. People waited with expressions of grumpy impatience on their faces. She peered to the front, where a pair of armed security guards regulated the flow. She looked in through the big front windows and saw that the lines to all the cashiers were backed up. She sighed. This was going to take forever.
She had to wait forty-five minutes before the security guards finally waved her through.
Inside the store, she immediately sensed that this wasn’t a regular grocery crowd. There was an undercurrent of desperation, even fear.
To maneuver up and down the aisles, she had to wait a minute or two for other people to pass. The shelves were all but empty. Especially of canned goods. She got the last two-kilogram bag of rice. Also a nineteen-ounce can of stewed prunes. And some cat food, even though they didn’t have a cat, but if worse came to worst…
She reached the bottled-water section but there wasn’t any bottled water left. At the meat counter she got some pig’s feet and spiced pork chops, the only things remaining. As for fruit and vegetables, she obtained the last bag of russet apples, two bundles of leeks, a turnip, some garlic, and three onions that were starting to sprout. She wanted cheese because cheese was protein, but there wasn’t any left. She wanted juice because it had vitamins, but the cooler was empty. From the dairy section, she managed to get a jug of soy milk that was leaking. She now felt plugged in to the current of desperation and fear. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the crowd rioted.
She approached a stocking unit and asked the machine when they were going to get more cheese.
“Current delivery date undetermined, pending emergency federal legislation, re: FEMA relief contingencies.”
She grabbed a bag of sugar. A box of salt. Someone had spilled a package of spaghetti all over the floor. She picked up as many strands as she could and stuffed them into a loose plastic bag. She mentally tallied the groceries and knew she had at least a hundred dollars’ worth. Not the two hundred dollars she had hoped for, but maybe it would be better to hold onto the remaining money for emergency backup.
Who knew what was going to happen in the next week or two?
She struggled to the drugstore section of Stedman’s.
As she waited to get Hanna’s prescription filled, hundreds of nervous thoughts rustled through her mind.
Only she couldn’t stop thinking about how all the plants were going to die. What happened when photo- synthesis stopped worldwide? What happened when every tree, flower, and blade of grass croaked?
She finally got Hanna’s medicine, enough to last her daughter a month, went to a Customer-Assisted Checkout Line, and waited again. That’s when she heard people yelling at the front. Then the smashing of glass. Then gunshots.
She dropped to the ground. So did everybody around her. But then other people came running down the aisle. And these other people were just normal, everyday Raleigh citizens, yet they had wild looks in their eyes and guns in their hands, and two of them came up to her grocery cart and emptied its contents into garbage bags.
“Hey! That’s my stuff!”
“Lady, it’s every man for himself.”
They took everything.
But as they ran away, a hole developed in their bag.
Prunes. Salt. Pork chops. They were hers, but the people in front of her snatched them up. More gunshots. Some screaming. And sirens outside.
At least she still had Hanna’s drugs—and that’s what she had really come for anyway.
Glenda got home halfway through the president’s speech—she didn’t tell the kids about the looting because she didn’t want to upset them—and caught bits and pieces of it as she got supper started in the kitchen.
“The United States and its allies view the shroud as a blatant act of aggression,” Bayard was saying.
“Despite our repeated attempts to open high-level diplomatic channels with the Tarsalan delegation to protest the shroud, all such attempts have failed. The Tarsalans say through their junior staff that until their immigration demands are met the shroud will remain in place. A lot of you have come to the conclusion that, should the shroud block out the light of the sun, it might have a direct and drastic effect, in the short term, on food supply, in particular on our crops next year. This is an unreasonable fear, and I can assure the American people that we have the situation well in hand. In spite of this, some of our citizens feel they must resort to civil disorder.”
Glenda listened more closely.
“We’ve already seen numerous instances of looting. Let me assure you, my fellow Americans, and especially those of you who feel you must participate in this unlawfulness, there’s absolutely no call for criminal activity. I warn you now—looters will be dealt with harshly.” He raised his hands in a calming manner. “I can only say this to people who feel they must loot—everyone will be fed. Our response to this emergency has been quick and appropriate. What have we done? For starters, I’ve asked state governors to mobilize and make ready their various relief agencies. I’ve ordered my chief administrators at FEMA to study the feasibility of implementing contingency rationing plans on a nationwide basis, and have empowered the military to take control of and administer the commercial food-distribution system when and if it is deemed necessary. I’ve asked the National Science Foundation to make a full and complete study of the shroud. If we can dismantle the shroud in any reasonable time frame, my experts in the Department of Agriculture believe we’ll still have our crops next year, and the food pressure will be off. So while we might have to tighten our belts in the short term, I believe in the long term we don’t face any real, serious food shortage. I urge calm, and vow to you that your government, and governments all over the world, are working hard to solve this problem. I urge civic responsibility. I urge you to support your government—and your neighbor—any way you can.”
Bayard gripped both sides of the lectern, and a conciliatory smile came to his face.
“And I especially appeal to those of you who are Secessionist Movement supporters, and I know there are a good many of you. Now is not the time to think of splitting up the country. Now is the time to show solidarity in the face of what is turning into a considerable national emergency. I know that in at least three states, Secessionist referendums have been proposed for the November election period. I would ask that supporters of these referendums put any and all such campaigns on hold for the time being. I would ask that we pull together and beat this thing as fellow countrymen. The color of your vote doesn’t matter. Red or blue, we all have to stand together.”
He let go of the lectern and squared his shoulders.
“In the meantime, the toughest decision your president faces is how to respond to this blatant act of aggression by the Tarsalans. Right from the start, we knew they were asking for immigration rights. They told us that they were a peaceful people and that they desired to conduct senior negotiations with us in regard to the possibility of immigration. This was reasonable. It was practical. And it promised mutual betterment to both our peoples. We in the United States have always understood immigration. We all come from immigrant ancestry. But we also understand that an immigration policy must be managed. It has to be based on common sense and sustainability. We know that to flood our shores with an uncontrolled influx of immigrants would not only be
