This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
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Due Date: 119 days away
I eyed the carts suspiciously. I didn’t bring gloves, so I had to touch the cart where everyone else had touched it. At least the quarter I used to unlock it was mine.
No one else seemed to hesitate.
Then again, neither did I. The hesitation was all in my head.
From the outside, I walked up, like everyone else, and confidently apprehended a cart for my shopping.
They’d taped a hand-written sign to the glass beside the automatic doors.
ATTENTION CUSTOMERS: Due to current conditions, some items are currently out of stock. We ask that customers limit purchases on specified items. We apologize for the inconvenience. -Management
I wondered what it would actually look like inside. I took out my phone as I clanged my cart over the threshold.
The first aisle looked fine. Crackers, chips, junk food. It wasn’t until further down that I noticed the bread had all been scooped up. I took a picture. They had two packs of hot dog buns left.
The weirder thing to me was how everyone dressed. Most people didn’t look any different than normal. Most were like me. A few people, though, had brought plastic gloves or even thin work gloves. I thought it was odd that one guy was wearing a mask but no gloves.
I opened the refrigerator door to get my milk by grabbing the bottom of the handle. Not foolproof, but I figured it might help my odds. The doors were the biggest thing that worried me.
I noticed some people trying to stay further away from each other than normal. But there were also plenty of people walking around like they didn’t care. Surely they’d heard the news.
The vegetables were lighter than normal, but I could still get what I needed. All these photos of grocery store shelves decimated by shoppers felt a little unfounded. Propaganda, not from the government, just the cumulative effect of ordinary citizens.
And then I turned the corner to the toilet paper aisle. That was real. Not a paper in sight. No toilet paper, no paper towels, no paper plates. I didn’t even see those paper table clothes they sometimes carried. They had a couple bottles of dish-washing liquid. Other than that, they didn’t have anything left to disinfect or clean.
That week right before toilet paper weekend, the week I first really heard about the virus, Liz had spotted the pallet of toilet paper when we were shopping together.
“Better get some of this,” she said. “Never know, the virus and all.”
We laughed. A woman next to us in the aisle smiled at us, and then grabbed a pack herself.
“Good idea,” she said.
It was good idea, thank God. We didn’t need any, partly because of that joke. Not like that was the biggest worry.
I kept shopping.
The canned food section, the section where I wanted to stock up, had a bunch of yellow signs posted. Limit 1. Limit 2. One or two said Limit 4. I got as much as I could of the items we ate each week, mostly black beans and green beans, some fruit.
I basically skipped the meat aisle after taking a photo of it from the far end. Not only was all the fresh meat gone, but even the hot dogs, kielbasa, and other lunch meats. They had two packs left of Italian sausages. I picked up one, even though it didn’t say there was a limit on them, and then circled back around to get a couple jars of spaghetti sauce and noodles, the cork screw kind since the normal spaghetti noodles were all gone. Pretty much a vegetarian week except for those sausages.
I did get a couple more boxes of taquitos. No one had realized they could survive on those.
I looked down at the list Liz had texted me.
I got maybe 20% of the items on it. That was being generous. Entire meal plans had been scrapped.
In the checkout lane, they’d taped lines on the tile floor six feet apartment. This was where everyone felt more suspicious of each other, everyone’s eyes darting around to see how everyone else behaved.
“Not trying to stock up,” I told the cashier, loud enough for the person behind me, six feet away, to hear. I loaded up my canned goods. “Just shopping for my family for the week.”
It didn’t feel like a lie until I started saying it. Was I really just shopping for the week? Wasn’t “stocking up” what Liz and I talked about? Did I just feel like I wasn’t stocking up because I was late to the game and couldn’t get everything I wanted?
“Planning ahead,” I clarified. It didn’t make me feel any better.
The cashier looked back at the line forming behind me as she swiped my black beans.
“Everyone’s going a little bananas,” she said.
Did she mean me? Or, everyone else?
I loaded my car, returned the cart, and then flipped through the photos on my phone.
I’d only taken pictures of the empty shelves.
Like everyone else.
