Famine by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838935757
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Two

That same night, at the Hughes Supermarket on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, Mike Bull was organising his defences. Mike Bull was the supermarket manager, and the medium-sized twenty-four-hour store at the intersection between Franklin and Highland was his first important appoin’I’ment. Before he had been promoted, three months ago, he had been fruit and vegetable manager of a branch further downtown. N ow, at the age of thirty-one – a stocky, terse, but good-humoured bachelor with a face as pudgy as Mickey Rooney – he was running his own ship, and he was determined that night that the rats weren’t going to clamber aboard.

He hadn’t seen Ed Hardesty’s television appearance – nor the frantic and frightened news programmes that followed. But within twenty minutes, a laconic customer with long greasy blond hair and frayed denim shorts had advised him to blockade the store. ‘You should hear the TV, man. Walter Cronkite reckons we’re all going to be starving by Thanksgiving. And you know what that means, don’t you? Folks are going to start stocking up on every damn thing they can get.’

Mike had looked around the store. It was his business to sell what was in it, and if people came in and cleared his shelves, then no matter what the reason, he should be pleased. But the prospect of a food panic made him uneasy. The tough and the young would clear the place out, and leave the weak and the elderly without supplies.

He beckoned his under-manager, Tony, across to his office. Tony was Italian, young, and combed his hair a lot. Tony wanted to make it in the movies, and as far as he was concerned, retail selling was a total pain in the ass. But he liked Mike, and he didn’t like being yelled at, and so he came and stood in Mike’s office with an expression that was almost co-operative.

‘Have you heard the news?’ Mike asked him, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

‘News?’ asked Tony.

‘Yeah. It seems like these crop blights we’ve been hearing about – all those excuses why they couldn’t deliver the grapes and the tomatoes and the celery and all of that stuff – well, it seems like we’re in for some kind of a national famine.’

‘That bad, huh?’ asked Tony.

‘That’s what I hear,’ said Mike.

Tony scratched the back of his neck. It was quite obvious that he didn’t understand the implications of what Mike had told him at all.

‘I’m going to close the store,’ said Mike.

Tony frowned at his digital watch. ‘It isn’t time yet.’

‘I know. But it may soon be too late, unless we close this place up.’

‘Too late?’ asked Tony, baffled.

‘Sure. I mean – what would you do, if you heard that there wasn’t going to be enough food for you and your family during the coming months?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tony. ‘Stock up, I guess.’

‘Exactly. And that’s what people are going to start doing tonight, as soon as they realise how serious this situation’s going to be. Take a look at

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