Breakers by Edward W. Robertson Read Free Book Online

faded into condos, apartments, and bungalows no bigger than his own, replaced, in turn, by warehouses and office buildings. Spotting a fish and aquarium store that didn't look too bad to clerk, he pulled into the same kind of dingy but shoppable strip mall he'd seen in every corner of the country.
    From the Ralph's on the other side of the lot, a white guy rushed from the entrance, pushing his shopping cart in front of him like a game show contestant. Blue bottles gleamed and clanked from his cart. A navy-jacketed security guard raced behind him.
    Raymond popped his glove compartment, stuffed the revolver under his belt, and stepped into the sunshine.
    At the automatic doors, a second shopper sprinted into the parking lot. Raymond jogged forward. The guy with the liquor bottles stopped beside a pickup with rusty wheel wells, yanked down the tailgate, and got tackled to the ground by the security guard. Raymond crossed into the sweetly air conditioned store.
    Cashiers continued to ring up shoppers while the shoppers watched in shock as other patrons ran down aisles flinging food into their carts. A bottle of spaghetti sauce smashed across the tile. Loose cereal crunched under shoes and rickety wheels. At the cigarette counter, a bulky manager yelled into a phone. A middle-aged woman in platforms pushed past Raymond, cart loaded with Saran Wrapped steaks.
    He'd already reached his decision. The city cops were overstrained, incapable of showing up to a fucking armed break-in in time to do anything more than harass Raymond about an 80-year-old revolver. Around him, people screamed while others shoveled armloads of food into their carts. The scene was already far too chaotic for one security guard and one well-muscled manager to do a damn thing about. Load up, get out, drive home. In five minutes he could secure two weeks of food for himself and Mia. That would be all the cushion they'd need. Anyway, it was just one chain store. They'd be insured. And what if this was just the start of a trend? What if, by the time they could afford groceries, there weren't any left?
    He grabbed a cart and jogged toward produce, loading up potatoes, bananas, bell peppers. As screams kicked up from the front of the store, he rushed down the cereal aisle, sweeping cardboard cartons into his cart, then swerved for the breakfast meats, where he pitched packages of bacon three at a time. Others clogged the aisles, ignoring each other as they snatched up frozen pizzas, 12-packs of Coke, plastic rings of peeled shrimp. Trampled bags of chips spewed greasy crumbs across the floor. In dairy, a bald man tore a half gallon of creamer from another man's hands. The victim cocked back his fist and punched the bald man into a display of taco shells.
    Raymond skidded through a slick of strawberry soda, grabbing at pasta and bottles of alfredo, then swung around to the opposite aisle to top his cart with bagels and bread. It was a good thing, he reflected on his way to the doors, the chains stuck to such ironclad, marketing-bolstered floor plans; with a layout nearly identical to the Ralph's down the street from him in Redondo, he'd wasted almost no time tracking stuff down.
    He flew for the doors with tight-chested glee. A faint guilt, too, but he'd hardly been the only one plunging into the chaos. And you know what? He highly doubted anyone in that store was a month away from potentially starving. They weren't taking because they needed it. They were taking because everyone else was and they feared there might not be anything left tomorrow. They were taking because they were scared a few old people had died barfing blood. They were taking because talking heads on NBC predicted billions of dollars could be lost to sick days, potentially cratering the recession into outright depression, while talking heads on FOX claimed the flu pandemic was directly attributable to government involvement in the American medical system.
    Right then, Raymond didn't really give a