Thirty Days Before the Dead

CHAPTER 4: Seventy-Eight Tons

Pell Wholesale Foods occupied a building the size of a football field on the industrial edge of the city, a long corrugated barn of loading docks and pallet racks. The air smelled of cardboard, diesel fumes, and dry grain, while forklifts beeped as workers moved pallets between towering shelves. Ryan had spent fifteen years around warehouses, but the sight of so much food gathered in one place still stirred something uneasy in his chest. In thirty days, places like this would become battlegrounds.

 Marty Pell confronted him at the loading dock with a standard sized clipboard. The heavyset man had a dyed mustache, a gold chain, and the shrewd, friendly eyes of someone who had sold groceries to six hundred restaurants. He glanced at Ryan, then down at the order sheet, before looking back up with a frown that deepened with every passing second.

 “Calloway! Fifteen years I’ve known you, yoTri-State, andpallets for Tri-State, you never once ordered this.” He tapped the list with his pen. “You want to explain it to an old friend?”

 “I’m opening something,” Ryan said, keeping his expression relaxed.

 “Opening what? A mega-store? An army base?” Marty asked, giving him a doubtful look.

 “A bunker,” Ryan replied.

 Marty stared at him for a moment before letting out a hearty laughlaugh because him to laugh, because the truth sounded like a joke, and there was no point trying to convince a man of something he would not believe.

 The first order went onto the loading dock that afternoon, and Ryan watched the workers begin arranging the supplies with the careful attention of someone who knew exactly what each item would mean later. The list was extensive, covering staples, canned and packaged foods, and frozen meat. Every sack and carton represented another day of survival, another meal for his father, and one less reason to step outside once the streets filled with the dead.

 Staples:

 * 20 tons of white rice in 25-kilogram vacuum-sealed sacks.

 * 8 tons of wheat flour.

 * 3 tons of dried pasta.

 * 2 tons of sugar.

 * 1 ton of salt.

 * 500 kilograms of ground coffee.

 * 300 cases of chocolate bars.

 Canned and packaged foods:

 * 900 cases of canned vegetables.

 * 400 cases of canned meat.

 * 300 cases of canned fruit.

 * 600 cases of instant noodles.

 * 200 cases of self-heating meals.

 * 150 cases of peanut butter.

 * 2 tons of dehydrated vegetables.

 Frozen foods, kept in stasis so they would never thaw:

 * 6 tons of pork.

 * 4 tons of beef.

 * 2 tons of chicken.

 Marty's pen stopped halfway through the total. He looked at the figure, rubbed his thumb across the edge of the clipboard, and checked the calculation again as though the numbers might change if he stared at them long enough.

 “Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars?” he asked, raising his head.

 “Cash,” Ryan replied.

 Marty lowered the clipboard slowly. His smile had faded, and for the first time since their meeting began, he looked genuinely concerned rather than amused. “Ryan, whatever this is, I’m not going to ask for specifics. But I’ve been selling food for thirty years, and nobody buys like this unless they’re feeding an army or preparing for something they don’t want to explain.”

 Ryan felt the familiar pressure building behind his ribs. He could tell Marty the truth, but the man would either laugh again or assume he had lost his mind. Worse, if Marty believed him, he might tell someone else, and Ryan could not afford the attention.

 “I’m preparing for a very bad month,” Ryan said.

 Marty studied his face, searching for the joke that never came. The forklift behind them beeped twice, and a worker shouted for someone to clear a path. For several seconds, Marty said nothing, and Ryan wondered whether he had pushed too far.

 Then the older man exhaled and shook his head. “You know what? I don't need to understand every customer's business. You have the money, and I have the stock. I'll make sure your order gets handled properly.”

 “Thank you,” Ryan said, meaning it more than he expected.

 Marty pointed his pen at him. “But I want one thing from you. If this bunker business turns out to be some kind of investment scheme, don't come crying to me when you discover you've bought enough rice to feed the entire county.”

 Ryan forced a smile. “I'll tryHe remember that.”

 He did not tell Marty that, by the time the county needed that rice, money would be little more than paper and the people who had laughed at him would be fighting over scraps. He simply watched the workers move the first pallets toward the loading area and silently counted the hours he had left.

 The storage problem was easier than the purchasing problem. Ryan had already tested the Void enough to understand its limits, and he knew that the frozen meat would remain exactly as it was when stored. Nothing would spoil, nothing would thaw, and nothing would require electricity to preserve it. Once the supplies reached the right location, he could make them disappear into a space no one else could see or access.

 Still, he had to be careful. The Void accepted only what he touched or could see, and he could not store more than about three tons in a single attempt. That meant he could not simply stand in the middle of the loading dock and swallow the entire shipment in one thought. He would have to work through it methodically, keeping the process ordinary enough that nobody became suspicious.

 While the workers prepared the pallets, Ryan checked his phone. The account balance was still substantial, but every purchase reduced the money available for the other things he needed. Food was only the beginning. Water, fuel, medicine, weapons, construction materials, and the work required to turn his house into a fortress would all demand money, and the deadline would not wait for him to finish budgeting.

 He rubbed his thumb against the brass pocket watch in his pocket. Its familiar weight steadied him, reminding him that he possessed something no amount of money could buy. The Void gave him storage, but it did not give him unlimited time, and thirty days could disappear quickly when every decision mattered.

 “Everything all right?” Marty asked, noticing him checking the phone again.

 “Just making sure the numbers still work,” Ryan said.

 “They'd better. Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars is a serious amount of money.”

 Ryan slipped the phone away. “I know.”

 Marty watched him for another moment, then clapped him on the shoulder and returned to the paperwork. The conversation was over, but Ryan could feel the man's curiosity lingering. He would have to keep his explanation consistent and avoid giving anyone a reason to investigate what he was doing.

 As the afternoon wore on, the warehouse grew hotter. The metal roof trapped the heat, and the smell of diesel mixed with dust from the sacks being moved. Ryan stayed close to the shipment, supervising the order and checking each category against his list. Every mistake now could become a serious problem later, when replacing a missing item might mean risking his life outside the walls.

 By the time the last pallets were accounted for, his shoulders ached from the tension he had been carrying all day. He had secured the food, but he had not yet secured the place where he would live through the apocalypse. His father was still out there, alive and unaware of what was coming, and Ryan could not shake the memory of the missed call on his phone.

 He had thirty days to change the ending. He would not waste them.

 Marty handed him the completed paperwork. “There you go, Calloway. Seventy-eight tons of food. I hope you have somewhere to put all of it.”

 “I do,” Ryan said, taking the clipboard.

 Marty gave him one last doubtful look. “Whatever you're planning, I hope it works.”

 Ryan met his eyes, resisting the urge to tell him just how much he needed it to work. “So do I.”

 He left the loading dock with the paperwork tucked beneath his arm and the pocket watch pressing against his thigh. Outside, trucks rumbled along the industrial road, and the afternoon sun glinted off their windshields. The world looked normal, almost offensively normal, as if nothing could possibly happen to interrupt the steady movement of business.

 Ryan knew better. The countdown was running, and the food was only the first piece of the plan. He still needed to secure fuel, medicine, weapons, and the materials to protect the house, all while keeping his actions quiet enough to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention.

 Most importantly, he needed to get to his father before the world fell apart.

 Ryan climbed into his rented car and started the engine. As he pulled away from the warehouse, his phone vibrated with another notification, and he glanced at t

he screen before the road demanded his attention again. The next stage of his plan was already waiting, and he could not afford to let one successful purchase make him careless.