‘In this store. I’m the law!’ Mike shouted back. ‘Now go home, cool down, and come back in the morning! There’s no crisis, we have plenty of supplies, but I can’t endanger you or my staff by letting all of you in right now. You got me?’

‘Just shove it up your ass,’ snarled the tall surfer, and roughly elbowed Mike aside. Mike tried to grip the chrome handrail by the door, but he caught his back against a stray shopping-cart, lost his balance and fell against the liquor counter. The next thing he knew, the doors were being forced open again, and crowds of whooping and shouting people were pouring in to the store.

‘For Christ’s sake, let’s have some order!’ yelled Mike. ‘Just take what you want, but don’t panic!’

He tried to stand up on the handrail so that he could make himself heard over the hideous shrieking and gabbling of the crowd, but a fortyish-looking man in sunglasses grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down again.

‘I ought to beat your brains out!’ Mike screamed at him. The man shrugged. ‘I was doing you a favour. You’re wasting your breath, trying to stop the great American public from panicking. It’s their favourite occupation.’

‘Just get out of my way!’ Mike told him. ‘Tony – let’s get back to the office! Gina, Wendy – clear out of your cash registers and lock them up!’

‘Asshole,’ said the man in sunglasses, unaccountably. Mike helped his checkout girls take the cash boxes out of their registers, and then he and his staff fought their way through the aisles back to the office.

All around them, the store was surging with hysterical shoppers – fighting and scrambling and tearing at each other as they attempted to cram their baskets and their shopping-carts and even their pockets with anything they could lay their hands on. A five-foot display of baked-bean cans clattered to the floor as Mike and Tony led the checkout girls past, and Mike was hit on the side of the face by a falling can. Right in front of him, a woman in stretch ski-pants and curlers was kneeling on the floor, gathering up packs of bacon in her arms and whimpering.

There were shouts and splintering crashes as shelves collapsed under the weight of people climbing up on to them to reach the topmost boxes of food. A woman screamed, ‘I’m pregnant! For God’s sake don’t push me! I’m pregnant!’