What happens when the richest nation on God’s Earth is driven to the outer limits of starvation?When the grain crop failed in Kansas it seemed like an isolated incident and no one took much notice. Except Ed Hardesty. Then the blight spread to California’s fruit harvest, and from there, like wildfire, throughout the nation.Suddenly America woke up to the fact that her food supplies were almost wiped out. Her grain reserves lethally polluted. And Botulism was multiplying at a horrifying rate.

WHAT MAKES A MAN TURN INTO A MURDERER OVERNIGHT?FAMINEThe Greek-looking man said: ‘This food in here—you think that you’re going to keep it all to yourself? All of it? Just because you’re a storekeeper you think you’ve got some God-given right to survive while everybody else starves?’Nicolas didn’t even want to think about it. He said: ‘I’m giving you three. You understand me? Three, and then I shoot.’The first shot missed. The revolver bucked in his hands, and he heard the bang of broken glass at the back of the store, followed by a sudden rush of green olives from three broken jars. He fired again before he could allow himself to think, and the Greek’s shoulder burst apart in a spray of gory catsup. And then there was a deep, deafening bavvooom! and Nicolas realized with strange slow horror that the Greek had fired back at him with his shotgun, and that he’d been hit, badly hit, in the belly and the thighs…