Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

“What people did not realize was that war had started. By 1 p.m., a few minutes after Molotov’s speech, queues, especially in the food stores, began to grow. The women shoppers in the gastronoms or grocery stores started to buy indiscriminately-canned goods (which Russians do not like very much), butter, sugar, lard, flour, groats, sausage, matches, salt. In twenty years of Soviet power Leningraders had learned by bitter experience what to expect in time of crisis. They rushed to the stores to buy what they could. They gave preference to foods which would keep. But they were not particular. One shopper bought five kilos of caviar, another ten.

“At the savings banks the people clutched worn and greasy passbooks in their hands. They were drawing out every ruble that stood to their accounts. Many headed straight for the commission shops. There they turned over fat packets of paper money for diamond rings, gold watches, emerald earrings, oriental rugs, brass samovars.

“The crowds outside the savings banks quickly became disorderly. No one wanted to wait. They demanded their money seichas immediately. Police detachments appeared. By 3 p.m. the banks had closed, having exhausted their supply of currency. They did not reopen again until Tuesday (Monday was their closed day). When they opened again, the government had imposed a limit on withdrawals of two hundred rubles per person per month.”

-Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad ( 1969)

Farmington, New Mexico October, the First Year

At that same time that Andy Laine was at the Haji-mart in Afghanistan, his brother Lars was 11,500 miles away, rolling a cart into a Sam’s Club store in Farmington, New Mexico. It was 6:52 a.m. in New Mexico and 5:22 p.m. in Zabul province, Afghanistan. Both men had the same thing on their minds: stocking up, in quantity and immediately. The Laine brothers shared a sense of urgency, realizing that there would likely be very few opportunities to stock up on things before mass currency inflation destroyed the value of their savings. The news outlets made it clear that things were falling apart quickly-very quickly.

The Sam’s Club store in Farmington, New Mexico, was about to open for the day. There was a large crowd of perhaps a hundred anxious shoppers, many waiting with their membership cards in hand, standing behind oversize shopping carts and flat cargo carts. Lars Laine eyed his wife, Lisbeth, who was seated on their cart, next to their six-year-old daughter Grace. Beth was thirty-four, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. She was slightly overweight and had struggled all through their marriage to maintain her figure. As Grace was doodling in her coloring book, Beth was adding items to an already long shopping list. She stood up, leaned close to Lars, and spoke directly at the hearing aid in his good ear, “We’d better hit the canned-food section first, hon,” she suggested. He nodded and answered, “Roger that.” Beth smiled, gave him a peck on the cheek, and again sat on the cart to wait.

Lars glanced around, sizing up the crowd. The middle-aged woman standing next to him was staring at his left hand. Lars hated that. It was hurtful to him that people stared so much at the flesh-colored rubber prosthetic. They always seemed transfixed, as if the hand were some alien creature that had just landed on Earth. They stared at his left hand, or at the left side of his face, or alternated between them, staring at both, and it made him feel like a circus freak.