The Storm Read Online Free Page A

store holding a new large screen TV box. I slowed as I approached the checkout counters several aisles down from where most people were entering the store and fanning out. A couple of the faces coming in I recognized as neighbors. One Chinese guy lived a couple of blocks down from me but never socialized with anyone, and I didn’t know his name. Another was Brata or Brataslav from my cul-de-sac. I could never remember, but he always insisted we call him Slav. He took pride in his Serbian heritage. Our eyes locked, and he saw me, gave just a tiny glance down at my full cart, then back at my eyes. He never stopped walking or gave the cursory head nod of acknowledgement. I was so worried about paying that I never gave it much thought that night.
                  An old man with a half-full cart stood beside me and looked as perplexed as me. “What do we do?” he asked.
                  “Hell, I don’t know.” I half-laughed as I said it. “Look over there.” Twenty feet away was an emergency exit, and people with shopping carts were pushing out through it. An alarm was ringing, but nobody seemed to care.
                  “Should we?” he asked.
                  “I guess so. Everyone else is. I saw people fighting back there, and it’s getting ugly real fast.”              
                  “Yeah, I don’t want to be a modern day Rodney King. These people are getting crazy.”
                  “Yup, they are. Ok, F it. Let’s do it. You’re my witness. I will send them a check and add up prices when I get home”.
                  “Good idea. Me too. They got security tapes and things. Don’t want some officers knocking on my door in a few weeks over this.”
                  A lady in long jean shorts and a mullet was in front of us and pushed through the door. We stayed right on her heels before it could close and made it outside safely. The whole parking lot was full now and people continued to stream in. It was as if the store had announced a ninety-nine-percent-off-everything deal and everyone heard about it at the same time. Amazingly, people were still parking in defined spots, so getting out wasn’t impossible.
                  I opened the rear hatch of the SUV and immediately started throwing everything in as fast as I could. Nothing was bagged, so it was two hands and two items at a time. Cans, boxes, small containers. Damn, it took a while. The car was near the front of the store and people continued to walk by me as they were going into the store. A few tried to leave the front door with their full carts and were blocked and then seized by the mob. Somehow in their desperation, the people coming in realizing that everything was gone focused their rage at the people who were just like them but only a few minutes quicker to the store. One man was on the ground and three or four others stood over him, kicking and stomping as he covered his head and screamed. Others paid no attention and stole whatever they could out of his cart.
                  My biggest pet peeve in life was always people who were too lazy to take their shopping carts back to the front of the store or into an assigned cart collector. Lazy people that just left the cart next to their parking spot and drove off always drew my ire. That night, I pushed my cart away and it slammed into a red sports car a couple of spots away. There was no time to care. The mobs would start fanning out of the store soon and I had more than any one person’s fair share. It was time to get out of Dodge.
                  “Shit,” I said and froze right after I turned the ignition on. “I forgot dog food.” We had a big bag at home that would last a few days but maybe not as long as we needed. Screams were now heard and finally flashing lights of police cars were coming on the scene. I backed out and drove down