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“If anything bad happens, head straight home. I’ll meet you there.”
    He hopped out of the truck and headed for the Publix. As a matter of habit, John always kept two hundred dollars in cash in his wallet, so he’d have enough to cover what he was about to buy. Water was high on his list, as well as canned goods. They needed things that would last, especially now that the fridges weren’t working. In fact, when they got home, the first thing they would need to do was empty the meat from the freezer and begin bottling it in sealed jars.
    In the past, John had always dreaded heading to places like Walmart on the weekends becaus e of the hordes of annoying shoppers. Entering the Publix, he felt that same feeling as masses of shapes hurried about the dark store. There were only three carts left and John had to rush to grab one.
    Moving from aisle to aisle was slow. It hadn’t been more than a few hours since the electricity had stopped and already most of the shelves were picked clean. He knew why too. A regular power outage wasn’t unheard of and rarely sent anyone rushing to clear out the store shelves, but when you added the stalled cars and lack of communication, the first signs of panic had already begun to settle in.
    The lack of power was also slowing things down since it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of you, let alone what was on the shelves. Angry voices nearby filled the air as fights broke out over the few remaining items.
    John headed straight for the drink aisle and scooped up as many two-gallon water jugs as he could find. The human body could go weeks with minimal food, but only days without water, which made that a priority. Once home, he would empty what was in the pipes to fill the bathtub and as many buckets as possible before the water pressure finally gave out. Afterward, he could always use a clean garden hose to drain the water heater in the basement if push came to shove.
    Now that he had a good number of two-gallon jugs, John headed for the canned food section. Beans, pasta, corn, spam, vegetable soup. He needed to make sure his family got the widest array of vitamins and minerals. Many preppers concentrated on foods that were easy to store without thinking of a balanced diet. In the old days, sailors crossing the Atlantic had often succumbed to scurvy until they realized it was caused by a lack of vitamin C. It would only be a question of time before illnesses like scurvy that had been far behind them began to rear their ugly heads once again.
    He then stocked up on salt, sugar and cooking oil. These were other common items often overlooked in emergencies.
    It took an excruciating thirty minutes before John’s cart was filled to capacity. Next he would have to wait in a twisting line for the cash. And cash was the right word, since credit and debit cards were completely useless. He was amazed at how many people were forced to leave empty-handed because credit was all they’d brought. The other thing that amazed him was how the tenuous threads of law and order still hung in the air. Those angered shoppers without cash left shooting off little more than their mouths. They threatened lawsuits and all manner of nonsense, but not one of them tried to steal the food. How long that veneer of civility would last, John could only guess. It would end when grumbling bellies began to take charge of people’s behavior.
    A woman in front of him with two small boys and a girl was visibly shaken. Either her husband was stranded at work or she was a single mom, trying to weather this crisis alone. John’s heart went out to her. She turned to him and smiled weakly.
    “Crazy , isn’t it?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, I hoped something like this would never happen.”
    “There are so many rumors flying around I just don’t know what to believe.”
    He glanced in her cart and saw fruits, vegetables and three heads of lettuce. His heart sank even further. She’d fumbled an opportunity to stock up on