Feast of the Locusts Read online

  Kate began unbuckling her tactical vest. “What if they have a limit on how much one person can purchase?”

  Don answered. “Get as much as you can for two people. If need be, Jack and I will make a second run while the two of you cover overwatch. But this is a highly volatile situation. We don’t want to all go in with no one to cover us if things get hot.”

  Gavin gazed across the road. “The line looks long. It could be a while.”

  “We’ve got all day. Take your time.” Jack pulled a dolly out of the van which had been configured to lay flat as a handcart. Zip ties secured a section of plywood to the platform of the cart to provide a wider cargo area. “Keep the weight in the center. Light stuff on the edges. Otherwise, it will spill over on you.” He handed Kate a collection of bungee cords in various sizes. “Use these to wrap around your goods and keep them together on the way back.”

  Kate hung the bungees on the handle of the cart and pulled her plaid shirt down over her in-the-waistband pistol holster. She looked at the series of military tents in the mall parking lot across the street. Desert tan Humvees at regular intervals formed a battlement behind coils of concertina wire strung out like an instant parapet. The line of despairing people snaked like a hungry serpent through the mall parking lot and behind the razor-sharp spirals of steel. Sad faces were the ornaments of desperate souls who’d been ravaged by the crisis; all here in a last-ditch effort to gain sustenance which might see them through the gray days ahead.

  Only the soldiers posted between the military vehicles looked well fed and clean. The masses seemed to be hanging by a singed and rotting cord. Leery, dusty, hungry, tired, agitated, and on the edge, one after another, more of them joined the tail of the great serpent whose head disappeared into the colossal tent offering a meager hope to an otherwise perishing lot.

  “The line isn’t getting any shorter.” Kate turned her attention back to Gavin. “Are you ready?”

  Gavin put an extra pistol magazine in one pocket of his hoodie and the radio in the other. “Ready!”

  The two of them cautiously pushed the cart across the road.

  CHAPTER 4

  And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee. Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.

  Deuteronomy 28:37-38

  Kate sat on the cart while waiting in line. Her phone vibrated and she pulled it from her pocket. “I got a text from Shu.”

  Gavin asked, “The cyber-security girl in Silicon Valley?”

  “Yep.” Kate read the text, standing up to show Gavin. “Tell me if this looks familiar.” She zoomed in on the attached picture which revealed a long line of code. “Looks like a locust. What do you think?” Kate’s stomach sank at the sight.

  Gavin studied the image. “Where did she find it?”

  Kate quickly messaged back to Shu. “Where’s it from?”

  Shu’s reply was almost instantaneous. “Can’t say.”

  Kate replied with a question mark.

  Shu eventually replied back. “What I will say is that PG&E is a company I do contract work for.”

  Kate quickly searched PG&E. “Pacific Gas and Electric.”

  Gavin’s face lost its color. “The virus is in the electrical grid.”

  Kate looked up from her phone. “If a locust has infected one of the companies, they’re probably in all of them.”

  “Ask her if the code was in the Systems Control and Data Acquisitions.” Gavin’s face was tense.

  Kate messaged Shu. “SCADA?”

  Shu simply replied back with a mouthless emoji.

  “She won’t say.” Kate let the phone fall to her side. It buzzed once more. She lifted it to see another message from Shu.

  “What does it say?” Gavin quizzed impatiently.

  Kate looked at her screen. “Good guess.”

  Gavin shook his head. “Not good. Not good at all.”

  Kate looked around at the throngs of people in line to purchase basic goods. “I feel like we’re wasting time just standing here. We need to get ready!”

  Gavin took her hand. “We’re doing exactly what we should be doing. We’re buying provisions to get the community through the winter.”

  Kate’s anxiety flared up. She wanted to run, to hide, to do something, anything that might burn off the nervousness. Instead, she stood still, her fingers interlocked tightly with Gavin’s.

  The coming torrent of certain doom weighed on Kate, making the minutes seem like hours. “We should at least tell Don and Jack, so they can be coming up with a plan.”

  Gavin stroked her arm as if to soothe her. “Our radios are on an open channel. Anyone with a scanner can hear us.” He pointed to the military Humvees surrounding the large tent where the FEMA commissary had been erected. “I bet you a million dollars that those guys have scanners.”

  Kate took a deep breath. “Maybe one of us could run back to the van, tell them in person.”

  “We’re not going to split up, Kate. Let’s stick to the plan, and we’ll tell Don and Jack after we get our provisions.”

  Kate agreed to follow his recommendations. She knew it to be the best course of action, yet she needed to hear it from him, to drown out the screaming voice of her anxiety telling her to deviate from the objective.

  Two hours passed and they finally made it to the door of the tent. Inside, tempers were short, people were pushing, looking at one another with tense, worried, and angry eyes. A large sign hung above the door, which read $500 Limit, Per Person, Per Day. Kate surveyed the pallets of food lined up like a warehouse grocery store. “Where do you think they got all of this?”

  “I assume they bought it or commandeered it from the large food processing plants. The actual raw products to make everything were probably already moving through the supply chain.”

  “I bet they bought it with the new emergency credits that the government created with a wave of their magic wand.” Kate loaded several bags of flour onto the cart. “The supply chain locked up once they had no money to keep it lubricated. When the government began pumping out the electronic credits, I guess it was like flipping a light switch back on.”

  “Exactly—until the raw products already in the system run out. Then, the party is over.” Gavin stacked ten 20-pound bags of rice onto the cart. “People will get wise to the fact that these credits are printed out of thin air. Everyone will try to spend them as fast as they can, inflation will skyrocket.”

  Kate positioned 5-pound bags of beans next to the rice. “I’m not so sure about that. The emergency credits aren’t that much different than the money the Fed was printing out of thin air before.”

  Gavin pushed on the cart, which was getting heavier and harder to move. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Never underestimate the naivety of the masses.”

  Kate loaded cases of pasta sauce onto the cart. “I doubt inflation will have a chance to take off anyway. The locusts will probably take down the grid long before we have to worry about that.”

  “Good point.” Gavin inspected the boxes of spaghetti. “Some of these are name brand and others just have a white box with black ink.”

  Kate helped him stack the boxes on the cart. “FEMA probably took over the manufacturing plants and had them print the black and white labels. The name brands were likely already in the warehouse.”

  Gavin exerted a little more effort to get the cart going. “Are you keeping a total of how much we’ve spent?”

  Kate entered some numbers into her phone calculator. “We’ll never be able to fit a thousand dollars’ worth of food on this cart.”

  “Then let’s pick up some of that canned meat.”

  Kate walked in front of the cart. “Chicken, tuna, beef stew, beef ravioli…”

  “Get it all. We may not get another chance to spend our credits before the locusts turn off the lights.” Gavin began wrapping the supplies with bungee cords
so they wouldn’t fall off the cart during the long walk back to the van.

  “Oatmeal and brown sugar. Think we can keep it on the cart?” Kate picked up a bag of each.

  Gavin held up two more bungee cords. “We can try. Those credits won’t be worth anything after the grid goes dark anyways.”

  The cart was soon loaded to absolute capacity and Kate helped Gavin shove the heavy cargo toward the exit door. Once there, they found yet another line to check out. The payment line wasn’t nearly so long as the one to get into the tent.

  Fifteen minutes later, a FEMA worker scanned the items on the cart. She was a robust woman with short hair. “You’ll have to take off the bungees so I can scan the items in the middle.”

  “Sure.” Gavin removed the bands and helped the woman unstack the goods on the outside of the cart.

  “That’s your limit,” said a tall slender man holding a tablet computer.

  “Okay, you can put the rest on her account?” Gavin took the tablet.

  The man put his hands on his hips. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “The sign says per person, per day. It doesn’t say anything about not sharing a cart,” Kate protested.

  “It doesn’t matter what the sign says. It matters what I say.” The thin man stood upright to assert his authority.

  Gavin began off-loading the heavy items right in the aisle. “Okay. I guess you’ll have to put all this stuff back.”

  The lanky dictator rolled his eyes and waved his hand. “Fine, fine. Put it back on the cart. Enter your PayPal information on the tablet and pay so I can ring her up.”

  Gavin winked at Kate and logged into his account.

  After the other goods were tallied, Kate entered her email and password on the tablet. She clicked Pay Now and the total was deducted from her emergency credits.

  Gavin was already leaning on the cart handle to get it moving when Kate handed the tablet back to the skinny authoritarian. She helped Gavin heave it out of the tent and toward the parking lot.

  “Oh no!” said a young hipster. He stepped in front of the cart to stop them.

  “What’s the problem?” Gavin asked.

  The hipster was followed by a menagerie of young people with various hair colors and facial piercings. His hair was black, jet black like from a bottle, and his lip sported a shiny metal ring which looped through like a fish which had been caught but managed to break the line and wriggle free. “You are two people. This is way more food than two people need to get by for a week.”

  Kate explained rather than escalate the conflict. “It’s for our community. We have elderly people and kids, they’re back in Waynesville and couldn’t come.”

  “We don’t know that.” A fat girl with pink hair and tattoos on her knuckles stepped forward. “You could just be making that up.”

  Gavin’s voice was polite. “We bought less than the FEMA daily allowance.”

  Another brutish girl, thick and meaty with blue hair and a silver stud on her cheek put her hands on the cart. “FEMA can’t maintain social equity. It’s up to the citizens to make sure everyone is treated fairly and no one steps over the boundaries of social justice.”

  Kate needed to hear no more. “Let us through.”

  The blue haired girl picked up a can of ravioli and tossed it to one of her companions. “Or what?”

  “I’ll tell the soldiers that you’re harassing us.” Kate glanced at Gavin who nodded his approval.

  “Go ahead,” said the plump girl with pink hair.

  Gavin handed Kate the walkie. “You know what to do if they won’t help.”

  Kate took the radio and sprinted to the nearest Humvee.

  The lead soldier kept one finger on the trigger guard of his M-4 and put his other hand up. “Slow down. What’s going on?”

  “This gang is harassing us. They won’t let us leave.”

  The soldier shook his head. “I’m sorry. We’re only authorized to provide support for the tent. The parking lot is outside of our jurisdiction. That’s a problem for local law enforcement.”

  “Can you call the local police for me?”

  He shook his head again. “Sorry, we’ve been specifically instructed not to coordinate with local authorities. But from what I understand they’re stretched really thin. Less than a quarter of their officers have reported back to work.”

  Kate bit her lip in frustration. She turned and walked back toward Gavin who was chasing the hooligans around as they picked items off the cart, one at a time, and tossed them to one another like a wake of vultures. She pressed the talk button on the radio and explained what was happening to Don and Jack.

  Don came back over the radio. “Try to bluff them. Tell the ruffians that the soldiers will detain them if they don’t disperse. Call me back if it works. If I don’t hear back from you in one minute, I’ll create a diversion. We’re heading in your direction, just in case.”

  “Got it, I mean, 10-4.” Kate hustled back to Gavin where the cart was slowly being picked apart like a road-kill opossum’s carcass.

  Kate knitted her brows together and spoke gruffly. “The soldiers said you people have to leave or you’ll be detained.”

  “You people?” The girl with the blue hair stepped forward. “What is that supposed to mean? Like you freaks? Are you a racist, homophobe, clinging to your white privilege?”

  “What?” Kate was more confused than offended by the accusation. “What does that even mean? You’re all as white as me.” She pointed to a pale anorexic girl in the back of the mob. “She’s even whiter.”

  “Oh, so she’s too white for you?” The beefy blue-haired girl snatched two bags of brown sugar from the cart. “You know what I think? I think you’re lying. If the soldiers want us to leave they can come tell us themselves.”

  The rest of the pack closed in on the supplies like ravenous wolves. Kate reached for her pistol and looked at Gavin.

  Without speaking he mouthed, “Don’t do it.”

  Kate let her shirt fall back over the pistol and tried to push the cart. Just then, a hail of gunfire broke out from the parking lot across the street. Kate looked at Gavin. “That’s our cue. Come on! Push!”

  The gaggle of pixie-dusted delinquents quickly dispersed and began running, along with everyone else in the crowd.

  A megaphone atop one of the military Humvees announced the obvious. “Shots fired! Shots fired!”

  Kate glanced back only for a moment to see that the soldiers were indeed staying near the FEMA tent and not seeking to pursue the threat. She and Gavin pushed with all of their might to get the cart back to the van. Another round of gunfire echoed off the buildings surrounding the mall.

  Kate and Gavin both gasped for air to fill their lungs, shoving the gargantuan load. They crossed the street and came around the corner of the building where Don stood holding his AR-15 with one hand and waving them on with the other. “Come on, come on! Hurry, we gotta go!”

  Jack stood ready and waiting by the back of the van. “Just toss it all in here. Don’t worry about being neat.”

  Don stood guard while the other three loaded the van as quickly as possible.

  “That’s all of it, let’s get out of here,” Jack said. People were still running in confusion, some spotting Don with the rifle and turning around.

  “What about the cart?” Kate asked.

  “Leave it!” Jack jumped in the driver’s seat of the van.

  Gavin shook his head and grabbed the handle. “Come on, Kate. Help me get it in the back of the pickup. They don’t know what we know.”

  Kate quickly assisted Gavin in hoisting the cart into the truck. Then, just before getting into the driver’s seat, she drew her pistol in case they were followed.

  CHAPTER 5

  All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume. The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou s
halt be the tail. Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee.

  Deuteronomy 28:42-45

  The two vehicles raced toward the highway. Kate kept her eyes on the side view and rear view mirror for several miles. After she felt relatively sure they weren’t being tailed, Kate picked up the radio. “Do you think it’s safe to tell Don and Jack about the locusts over the air?”

  Gavin sat in the passenger’s seat, his hand on the barrel of his AK. “It’s not like back at the commissary. If anyone hears us, it won’t make any difference. Go ahead.”

  Kate pressed the talk key. “Don, I think we should try to hit the other commissary. Scott said another one is near the Biltmore Village.”

  His voice soon came back over the radio. “No way. This place is entirely too volatile. We need to get home. We picked up quite a lot of supplies. What we have will go a long way in helping us through the winter.”

  Kate pressed the button once more. “I got a text from a friend while we were waiting in line. I didn’t want to say anything over the radio then because I didn’t know who was listening. She’s in cybersecurity and one of her clients is Pacific Gas and Electric. She’s identified another one of the locust viruses in PG&E’s SCADA system.”

  Don seemed to need no further explanation to know this was a serious threat. “We’ll stop at that grocery store ahead.”

  The two vehicles pulled into the parking lot of the BI-LO. All the windows had been broken out and the store appeared to have been looted of anything that wasn’t bolted down. Kate stepped out of the truck, watching her surroundings closely. The four of them stood between the truck and the van.