Thirty days before the Great Scorch

Chapter Five

"Sir, I'm being serious." Daniel tried one more time. "Better safe than sorry. There's no downside to stocking up."

The old man shook his head, let out a long, disappointed sigh, and looked at Daniel the way a teacher looks at a student who just failed the easiest question on the test.

"Son, you look like a decent young man. Why are you out here talking crazy? What a waste."

He clasped his hands behind his back and walked away without looking back, every step radiating the kind of righteous pity that only old men who think they know everything can produce.

Daniel stood there, caught somewhere between laughing and wanting to punch the shelf next to him.

He had offered a genuine warning, a real chance, and the man looked at him like he was a stray dog foaming at the mouth.

"See? This is exactly why I don't bother." He muttered it to himself, barely moving his lips. "Even if I gave them a detailed timeline of the apocalypse, they'd ship me off to a psych ward."

The shoppers nearby had overheard the exchange. They shifted away from Daniel as if he might be contagious, throwing sideways glances, keeping a safe two-cart distance, their eyes full of the careful wariness people reserve for someone who might snap.

Daniel ignored all of them. He pushed his three overloaded shopping carts toward the checkout counter.

Denver in June was brutal. Even with the air conditioning cranked, the supermarket felt like a sauna packed with too many bodies. Sweat beaded across Daniel's forehead and soaked through the back of his t-shirt.

"That'll be twenty thousand, three hundred and sixty-two dollars, sir."

The cashier announced the total and Daniel scanned his card without a word.

He did the math in his head. A hundred thousand at the restaurant this morning. Twenty thousand here. That was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars gone in a single day. He felt the card in his pocket and his chest tightened even though he knew, rationally, that money would be worth less than toilet paper in thirty days.

"If people could take out crazy loans just to hoard groceries, I'd be tempted."

He laughed at himself, then immediately thought about the hundred thousand dollars' worth of supplies he had stolen into his Space, and the math balanced itself out nicely.

"My cost of living might actually be the lowest in the whole country. What a deal."

Now came the problem he had been dreading. Transportation. The supermarket was packed with people. Cameras covered every angle. He could not make three carts of groceries vanish into thin air without getting himself dissected by government scientists before the apocalypse even started.

"One trip at a time."

He left two carts with the cashier, pushed one home, came back, pushed the next, and repeated. By the time he rolled the last cart through the gates of Summit Ridge Towers, it was past two in the afternoon and the entire neighborhood had noticed.

Old men paused their chess games. The square-dancing ladies lowered their music. Young mothers with strollers stopped walking. Everyone stared.

A cluster of middle-aged women on a bench dropped their voices to that poisonous whisper pitch that carries further than a shout.

Daniel did not need to hear the words. He knew exactly what they were saying. Spreading gossip was their Olympic sport.

"A bunch of clowns."

He shook his head and kept pushing.

In one month, when the heat came and food vanished, these same people would not have time to whisper. They would be screaming. And when word spread that Daniel Cross had stockpiled a mountain of supplies, every single one of them would come scratching at his door like hungry rats. He was not worried. His penthouse would be a fortress by then. And if he could get his hands on weapons, he would show exactly zero mercy to anyone who tried to take what was his.

The stone path through Summit Ridge Towers was uneven. With the cart overloaded, every few steps a bag of chips or a box of crackers tumbled to the ground. Daniel bent down, picked them up, put them back, walked five more feet, bent down again. His patience was being sanded thin.

One bag of imported fries and a bar of dark chocolate hit the pavement. A small hand scooped them up before Daniel could reach.

He looked up. A boy, maybe seven or eight, stood clutching the snacks behind his back, chin tilted up, wearing a grin that had "I dare you" written all over it.

Behind him stood an old woman with her arms crossed. Mrs. Whitaker. The most notorious troublemaker in all of Summit Ridge Towers. Her son was Professor Whitaker at the university nearby. She had moved in to help raise the grandchild, but she treated the entire neighborhood like her personal property. She let the boy relieve himself in the garden beds to save water at home, and when property management tried to talk to her about it, she threw a screaming tantrum, accused them of bullying the elderly, and threatened to sue.

Daniel took his phone out, opened the camera, and set it on the cart, lens aimed directly at the pair.

"Mrs. Whitaker, your grandson took my chips and my chocolate. Give them back, please."

Before the old woman could open her mouth, the boy piped up, voice loud and bratty. "I picked it up off the ground. Finders keepers!"

He hugged the snacks against his chest and squeezed them like they were his birthright.

Daniel stared at the child. This little punk was going to grow up and see the inside of a prison cell. He was sure of it.

Mrs. Whitaker lifted her chin, looked Daniel up and down, and spoke in a tone that made it sound like she was doing him a favor just by breathing.

"Little Daniel, you bought so many snacks. Too many is bad for your health anyway. Just let Jake have them. It's not like you can't afford it."

"Mrs. Whitaker, that bag of fries and that chocolate bar cost over a hundred dollars together." Daniel's voice was patient but tight. "How about this. I'll give Jake a bag of spicy snack sticks instead."

"Spicy sticks?!" Mrs. Whitaker's voice went shrill, like he had offered her grandson a dead rat. "Is that kind of junk food fit for my Jake? You're a grown man, why are you so cheap? It's a couple of snacks! Is it worth being this petty?"

"I paid for them with my own money. Why should I give them to you?"

Daniel's patience was gone. He walked over to Jake and pulled the snacks out of the boy's grip.

"WAAAAAAH!" Jake exploded into tears, snot and spit flying, arms reaching and grabbing.

Mrs. Whitaker lunged forward and shoved Daniel with both hands, her voice rising to an operatic pitch.

"What is wrong with you? Bullying a child is one thing, but you're disrespecting an elder too!"

Daniel was ready. He caught his balance and gave a light push back. Not hard. Just enough.

Mrs. Whitaker's eyes went wide. She let out an "OUCH" so dramatic it deserved an award, then crumpled to the ground on purpose, kicking her arms and legs like an overturned beetle.

"MURDER! A young man is beating an old woman! My back is broken! My legs don't work!"

Her voice was a foghorn. Within thirty seconds, a crowd gathered. Residents opened windows and leaned out with their phones.

Daniel stood there and watched the performance. He felt nothing but mild amusement.

"Mrs. Whitaker, I've been recording the entire thing." He pointed at the phone on his cart. "If you want to keep acting, I've got all afternoon."

Her eyes flickered. She had not expected that. But with all these people watching, standing up now would mean admitting she was faking.

"I don't care! You pay my medical bills today or I'm not getting up!"

The crowd murmured. Most of them knew exactly what Mrs. Whitaker was. "She started it." "That old woman loves to pull this stunt." But nobody stepped forward. Nobody wanted to get tangled up with her.

Daniel pulled out his phone, found Professor Whitaker's number on the university's faculty page, and dialed.

"Professor Whitaker, I'm your neighbor at Summit Ridge Towers, Daniel Cross. Your son just grabbed my snacks. After I took them back, your mother pushed me. I gave a light push back and she is now lying on the ground screaming. I have a full video recording. I've sent it to you. If she doesn't stop, I'll be calling the police."

He hung up before the professor could say a word and sent the recording.

Two minutes later, Mrs. Whitaker's phone rang. She answered it, listened to her son's voice tearing into her, and her face went through every shade from white to red and back. She kept saying "I know" and "I'll get up right away."

She scrambled off the ground, brushed the dirt off her pants, grabbed Jake by the arm, and dragged him away without a word.

But right before she disappeared around the corner, she turned and shot Daniel a glare so full of venom it could have killed a small animal.

"Well, that grudge is set in stone now." Daniel watched them go and shrugged. "I gave you a chance. You didn't take it."

By the time Daniel hauled all three carts of supplies into his penthouse, he was drained. Not from the physical work. From dealing with people.

He locked the front door, sorted everything into categories. Processed food in one pile, fresh meat in another, rice and flour and cooking oil in a third. One thought, and all of it vanished into his Space. He collapsed onto the sofa, stared at the ceiling for ten minutes, then dragged himself up, found a notepad and a pen, and sat down at the kitchen table.

For the first time in his life, Daniel Cross was making a real plan.

"First priority: food, water, and clothing."

He wrote fast, his handwriting terrible but his mind clearer than it had ever been.

"Money is still enough for now. Keep buying normally on the surface. Use every opportunity for zero-cost collection into the Space. Hit every supermarket within a twenty-mile radius. Never hit the same one twice in a row. On the last day before the apocalypse, empty out three or four major stores completely. Stock enough to last a lifetime."

"Clothing is the same strategy. Buy a batch openly, take ten times more into the Space. Focus on light, sun-proof layers. Long loose shirts, wide-brim hats, sunglasses, cooling towels. The more the better."

"Water. Bottled water by the pallet, and ice in bulk. In this heat, a cold drink will be worth more than gold."

"Second priority: security."

He underlined that word three times.

The lazy, game-playing, T****k-scrolling version of Daniel Cross was dead. In his place sat someone who had already died once and had no intention of dying again.

Outside the window, the Denver sky was a perfect, cloudless blue.

Twenty-nine days to go.