Tony, Mike’s under-manager, had been put in charge of security. In the early part of the week, there had been a temporary police encampment on the dusty triangle of asphalt just opposite, where Franklin and Highland intersected. There had been two patrol cars, a machine-gun emplacement with sandbags, and a couple of roving motorcyclists; and although they had been positioned there to intercept looters who were trying to escape north on to the Hollywood Freeway, their presence had kept scavengers and looters well away from the battered supermarket.

Now, however, the police had been pulled back to headquarters, and the post was deserted. The looters were back, in vicious little droves of a dozen at a time. Tony had barricaded the rear exit doors with piles of wooden pallets, snopping carts, and stockroom junk. Even if the looters managed to break the locked steel-and-glass doors, they would be caught in a ceiling-high tangle of metal banding and splintered wood that would catch them as effectively as barbed wire.

The front doors, already cracked and broken from Sunday night’s rioting, had been locked, and then the steel railings which separated the checkout desks had been unscrewed from their original positions, and slotted through the door-handles to prevent anyone from pushing them open.

Tony had cleared an area of five or six feet in front of the doors, and this was his ‘no-go’ zone. Anyone who managed to break into the supermarket as far as this would find themselves in a crossfire between Tony, with a .22 target pistol, and Gina’s uncle, with a scatter-gun. That was all the firepower they had, since not one of the congregation of the Church of the Practical Miracle had brought a gun, or even owned one. Carl had a .38, which he had kept to scare off burglars, but only one round of ammunition. Tony had grinned, and slapped him on the back, and told him, ‘make every shot count, huh?’