Rob shook his head. He’d stayed open until the shelves were bare, then sent his few remaining staff home with stern warnings to heed the evacuation announcements and get out while they could. He’d even made sure they all had at least $100 in cash for gas before he did a final walk through. He locked the doors and pulled the shutters down where they would hopefully stay until the coast was clear to come back, and the trucks were able to get in and resupply them. If they didn’t, then it was likely there wouldn’t be much of a store to restock in the short term.

No matter how well they stocked up, they never seemed to have enough. It was like no one planned for these storms.

How could you live in Florida and not plan for hurricanes? Rob wondered.

…and it wasn’t just newcomers or tourists, some of the folks he saw in the store before they finally had to lock the doors were regular customers. People who had lived around here since before Andrew roared through.

He walked over to his car at the back of the lot and beeped off the alarm.

“Hey mister.” came a gruff voice from around the dumpster off to his right.

Rob turned to the voice, raising his right hand as he slid his left hand up on his hip under the edge of his jacket. Three guys stepped closer to him. The leader had his hands out and was eyeballing him, while the others were looking tough and each had their right hand tucked under their jackets. Great, Rob thought, a shakedown. I don’t have time for this.

“Can I help you with something? We’re closed because we ran out of stuff and I sent all my people home to get out of town.”

“Yeah, we seen that.”, The leader said. “So you must have a sweet roll of cash and no one to help you take it to the bank. We can help you with this…little problem of yours.”

“No problem all all.”, Rob chuckled. “…and I sent the cash to the bank with one of my people an hour ago so I could lock up and secure the place. All I have is about fifty bucks and the credit card paperwork.”

“Yeah, well we figure our services are worth more than that, so we’ll have to see how you can compensate us.”

“Hey, I’m just a grocery manager, I don’t have a pile of cash laying around, so I think you may have wasted your time here, sorry about that.”

“You’re going to be sorry if you don’t hand over the keys and the cash.”

“No need to make threats fellas. We all want to get out of town before there isn’t a town left.” Rob said, keeping his voice calm.

“Yeah, you stupid or something? That’s just the government scaring everyone out of town so they can come in and clean up. They be getting all the street people out and knocking stuff down. ‘Gentry-fication’ they call it. Kicking people out of their homes, I call it.”

The wingmen nodded solemnly, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

“Okay, yeah, I doubt it, but I’m not going to get in your way.” Rob remarked sceptically.

“Keys. Money. I’m not screwing around.” The leader barked.

“Okay, okay.” Rob slowly pulled the store cash bag out from under his jacket with his right hand, still keeping his left hand on his hip, and back from the robbers. He slowly placed the bag on the ground and kicked it over to them. All three sets of eyes followed the bag as it slid over to the leader. When their heads came back up, Rob was levelling a black Glock in a left-handed combat stance at the leader’s head.

“Stop!” he bellowed.

The two wingmen froze. The leader paled.

“Guns on the ground. Fingertips only. No stupid moves and we all walk away from this.”

“Hey, you…” the leader started.

“Stop.” Rob barked again. The wingmen flinched as if struck. The leader’s eyes widened.

Rob’s aim didn’t waver from the leader’s right eye. If he had to shoot, he’d put two in the leader’s chest to limit over-penatration, but it looked a lot more intimidating to these punks this way.

“Just stop.” Rob said, sounding tired. “Guns and weapons on the ground. Fingertips only.”, he repeated. “Back away slowly.”

The would-be robbers placed their guns on the ground and backed away from them and the cash bag. A couple of knives and extra magazines joined them.

“Hey man, you can’t leave us without…” the leader started.

“Without what?” Rob snarled. “Without guns so you can take advantage of more people desperate to get out of town? Be thankful I don’t shoot you and tell the cops you were looters.”

The robbers paled.

“Now get your punk asses home and look after getting your families out of town before it’s too late.”

Realisation that he wasn’t going to shoot them dawned across their faces and the trio turned and ran down the alley.

Rob shook his head as he holstered his pistol and collected the guns and cash bag. He’d hoped to never draw his weapon again off the range, but disasters like this made people stupider than normal. He unloaded and safed the three pistols and put them in the travel safe in the trunk with the extra magazines.