Nikki, Dino and their baby, Tweet were shopping at Walmart—something they no longer do for food, sticking to their local grocer for safety. However, they can only afford to buy non-food items and clothing at Walmart.
While they were shopping, Niki noticed a young, attractive, suggestively-dressed blonde shopping for sports drinks.
“It was summer time, just before dark and it was warm out, so what she was wearing was not ridiculous considering the low class area, but I think it might have saved me.”
"A middle-eastern-looking man walked by this girl and said something and she started yelling at him, 'How much? How much to go home with you, you greasy bastard! You better get away from me motherfucker—I’m no prostitute!'
"The man didn’t seem embarrassed and just walked off.
"Later on at parcel pick-up I went to get the car. Dino doesn’t want me going to the car with Tweet or with groceries, because so many people get jacked on parking lots. He stays with Tweet and the groceries and keeps an eye on me.
"I got to my car on the other side of this mini-van and heard something. Behind me was that middle-eastern guy, sneaking up on me. I barely heard something—maybe just felt something—and I turned around and he was there, with this really strange look on his face. I backed away and yelled for Dino so he could see me, so I wasn’t behind the van. Then he got in the side of the van as Dino was running across the lot, carrying Tweet like a football, and the van sped off—one of those caravans but without the windows. There was obviously someone else driving—at least one other person.
"That was really scary and it made me think of that blonde girl, what would have happened to her if she was a hooker or some opportunistic slut and went for the money. She’d probably never be seen again. As a woman, I definitely know, that I can’t go into public spaces alone. If I’m not with Dino it needs to be Mom or my friend—Joann, the hot looking insane chick who fistfights men. I thought Mom was weird for insisting on standing lookout and not getting in the car until I’m ready to roll. But now I really understand. People are out to get us and the government does not give a shit."
Walmart may be the cheapest place to shop, but due to its enormous volume the parking lots are hunted by criminals of a very dangerous caliber.
A Once Great Medieval City: 2016: Impressions of Baltimore Maryland
What a nightmare.
That poor little girl is growing up exactly like a kid in some post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, where the parents are straggling across the burned out landscape, scrapping for food and fending off feral cannibals.
The ones that will survive will be, as you said, the ones that can band together in loyal extended families and then link up into communities. To do that takes a real ethos, with religion or something like it.
The others will die out. Even the ones who are better off financially, because maintaining that standard of living without a community takes so much that you can't afford to raise more than one or two kids in acceptable conditions unless you're rich.
Stories of crime at and around WalMart are becoming legion. With such razor-thin profit margins for these stores, how much longer can they afford to allow customers to be scared-off? WalMart refuses to do much about its physical security, even to the point of being fined by city officials for failing to do so. I don't allow my wife to shop there. I've heard stories through my own grapevine of Muslim men prowling there.