Zero Dollar Haul

Declan caught Arthur by the forearm before their father could reach for the front doorknob. "Dad, let me handle the rooftop reinforcement. You and Mom should head to the wholesale agricultural markets instead. You know how to select quality produce, cured meats, and fresh poultry. Harper and I cannot tell the difference between good grain and old stock, but you spent years working the supply depots."

Arthur paused, his chest rising and falling as he processed his son's words. He looked toward Cora, then nodded with firm resolve. "Your brother is right. Let us split up so we can cover twice the ground. Cora, put on your walking shoes and grab your jacket. We are moving right now."

Arthur pulled Cora toward the bedroom corridor. Even after their bedroom door clicked shut, his gravelly voice echoed down the hall, thick with protective rage. "Nobody threatens my little girl. Those animals think they can climb our building and push us out into the cold? Not while I have breath in my body."

Once the hallway quieted, Declan turned back toward the center of the stripped living room. The hard, practical mask he wore for their parents softened as his gaze locked onto Harper. He stepped closer, studying the dark circles under her eyes and the strange, hyper-vigilant posture she held.

"How long did the collapse last?" Declan asked quietly.

"I do not know," Harper answered, meeting his dark eyes without flinching. "When I died, fifteen winters had passed. Even after twenty years, there was no sign of recovery."

Declan watched her face carefully. He had always been perceptive, catching the smallest shifts in tone or posture long before anyone else noticed. Her reaction when she first saw them that morning, combined with the impossible storage space she possessed, told him everything she left unsaid. She had survived alone out there. The girl who used to complain about cold drafts and bruised fruit had stood on the edge of the world with no one at her back.

He could see the phantom weight resting across her shoulders. Arthur and Cora had spent their lives shielding Harper from hardship, hoping only that she grew up safe and content. Declan had worked double shifts and late contracts with that exact goal in mind. He wanted his younger sister to live without fear or want. Yet in the timeline she remembered, they had failed her. They had vanished, leaving her to fend for herself in the ruins.

Declan exhaled a slow, heavy breath. He reached out and placed his warm palm on the top of her head, ruffling her hair just as he used to do when they were kids. "This time around, I will stay beside you until the very end. We will face whatever comes together."

"Deal," Harper whispered, a tight knot loosening in her chest.

"We need food before we start burning daylight," Declan said, dropping his hand and pointing toward the grease-stained paper bags on the kitchen counter. "Eat your fill. Then we gather supplies."

Harper nodded, pulling out a stool. She had spent a decade and a half dreaming about the savory taste of hot food, scavenging through moldy ruins for stale crackers and gray broth. The aroma of seasoned beef patties, melted sharp cheddar, and toasted buttery buns hit her senses with overwhelming force. She ate steadily, consuming slider after slider without stopping to catch her breath. By the time she finished twelve mini burgers, Declan gently slid the paper basket away from her reach, worried she would rupture her stomach from sheer volume.

With their bellies full, they walked downstairs to the parking lot and parted ways. Declan climbed into his truck, bound for the industrial lumber yard and hardware suppliers to secure rebar, steel plating, and structural fasteners for the roof. Harper slipped behind the wheel of her sedan, her GPS locked onto the city's largest foreign-owned membership warehouse.

She did not care about peacetime laws or commercial property rules anymore. The infection had already taken root in the neighborhood below their windows. The card players who collapsed that morning carried the pathogen. The collapse could erupt into open panic at any hour, which meant survival took precedence over every societal norm. She could not afford overseas travel or slow shipping logistics. Her priority remained staying close to her family while stockpiling everything they needed to outlast the siege.

She pulled into the expansive concrete parking bay of the wholesale club, grabbed an oversized flatbed cart from the entrance bay, and walked past the glass sliding doors.

A crisp chime chimed in her mind the moment her boots crossed the threshold.

"Surveillance shielding activated. The host is scrubbed from all optical feeds and network recordings."

Harper smiled faintly under her baseball cap. The system was remarkably efficient. Buying supplies through normal registers would trigger fraud alerts, invite prying eyes, and require days of physical hauling. Silent confiscation under the cover of digital camouflage suited her reality far better.

She guided the heavy cart up the ramp toward the upper dry-goods level. Immense steel racking rose twenty feet into the air, laden with bulk pallets and industrial cardboard crates. Because it was early on a weekday morning, only a handful of staff members roamed the main corridors, setting up breakfast tasting stations for the sparse crowd of shoppers.

The pallet racks measured nearly three feet deep, packed to the ceiling with shrink-wrapped stock. Harper steered her cart between two towering rows of grain storage, stepped into the shadow of the steel crossbeams, and reached her hands deep into the stacks.

She focused her intent on the nearest pallet of long-grain white rice. In a silent flicker of distorted air, fifty heavy boxes, each holding forty pounds of vacuum-sealed grain, vanished directly into her internal dimension.

Next came the flour section. She moved along the shelf, claiming fifty thirty-pound crates of high-gluten bread flour, all-purpose flour, and delicate pastry flour. From the adjoining bay, she gathered dried legumes and specialty grains. Black turtle beans, green lentils, red kidney beans, steel-cut oats, wild brown rice, risotto arborio, and raw peanuts slipped into her dimensional void in sets of twenty boxes each.

She turned into the cooking oil corridor. Rows of gallon jugs gleamed under the industrial fluorescent lights. Harper systematically swept through the tiers, storing thirty jugs each of pure vegetable oil, golden corn oil, cold-pressed olive oil, and high-heat canola oil.

A few early shoppers strolled past the end of the aisle, their eyes focused on sample cups of toasted bread. No one glanced into the recesses where Harper worked. She kept moving, rounding the corner into the bulk seasoning aisle. Twenty bottles of concentrated dark soy sauce and twenty jugs of aged vinegar vanished from the low shelves. She pulled fifty multi-packs of essential whole spices—cinnamon bark, star anise, crushed chili flakes, bay leaves, dried fennel, black peppercorns, and ground cloves—into her dimensional storage.

For salt, she showed no restraint. Salt preserved meat, sanitized wounds, and maintained cellular hydration during brutal summer heatwaves. She cleared seventy full cases of coarse non-iodized sea salt and fine table salt, with each case containing ten five-pound bags.

Harper maintained a careful rhythm. She intentionally left partial displays intact so the floor managers would not immediately sound an inventory alarm. Furthermore, her space was vast, but she had to balance volume with variety until she understood the outer boundaries of her storage capacity.

Right as she stepped away from the dry pantry aisle, a bright notification flashed directly across her retinas.

Ding! "Limited-time expansion event active. For the next sixty minutes, every one thousand dollars in gathered provisions grants twenty additional square feet of dimensional terrain."

Harper paused, her pulse quickening as she calculated the conversion. Space meant safety. A larger dimension could hold agricultural soil, water cisterns, and power generation rigs.

She pivoted sharply and wheeled her cart toward the walk-in cold storage and butcher displays. High-end animal proteins carried the steepest price tags in the building.

Harper marched directly up to the refrigerated glass counters. Working with quick, decisive hands right beside the restocking staff, she began loading premium cuts into her cart by the armful.

Pork ribs, three pounds per pack at one hundred and twenty dollars each. Ten packs added twelve hundred dollars.

Pork shoulder roasts, three pounds each at eighty dollars. Ten packs yielded eight hundred dollars.

Pork tenderloins, three pounds per pack at seventy-five dollars. Ten packs contributed seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Cured pork trotters, three pounds per unit at ninety dollars. Ten packs added nine hundred dollars.

Heritage black pork ribs, two pounds per pack at one hundred and ten dollars. Ten packs brought eleven hundred dollars.

Pork cartilage strips, three pounds each at one hundred and ten dollars. Ten packs added another eleven hundred dollars.

Prime black pork spare ribs, one and a half pounds per pack at one hundred and thirty dollars. Ten packs brought thirteen hundred dollars.

Thin-sliced beef brisket rolls, two pounds per tray at one hundred and thirty dollars. Ten packs tallied thirteen hundred dollars.

Aged ribeye steaks, one and a half pounds per cut at one hundred and eighty dollars. Ten packs contributed eighteen hundred dollars.

Marinated lamb skewers, one pound per bundle at one hundred dollars each. Ten packs brought one thousand dollars.

The cart groaned under the weight of the meat, totaling ten thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in raw protein.

The butcher behind the glass looked up, wiping his hands on his apron with a bewildered expression. Because the club catered to restaurant owners and bulk caterers, he assumed she operated a luxury dining venue. Since the store maintained no maximum purchase quotas, he could only push another loaded cart out from the walk-in freezer to replenish the empty trays.

Harper steered her laden cart toward a quiet blind spot between the oversized freezers and an emergency fire exit. Shielded by the system's camera disruption, she touched the stacked meat and pulled the entire load into her dimension in a single breath.

With thirty minutes left on her mission countdown, she sprinted toward the consumer electronics and modern home department. Water and municipal electricity would fail within weeks, but her spatial retreat held independent utility feeds. Modern hardware would degrade, wear out, and fail under constant survival use. Backup appliances were vital.

She stopped in front of the robotic cleaning displays. Smart robotic vacuums retailed at thirty-six hundred dollars each. She loaded three units onto the platform, adding ten thousand eight hundred dollars.

Industrial-grade HEPA air purifiers stood nearby, priced at four thousand dollars apiece. Air quality would plunge once wild fires and urban decay swept the region. Harper claimed all ten units on the shelf, logging forty thousand dollars in value.

She rolled forward to the luxury kitchen displays. Built-in dishwashers with high-heat sanitation cycles stood at twenty-six thousand dollars each. She transferred two floor units, securing fifty-two thousand dollars.

Next came multi-season bladeless climate fans featuring integrated heating elements and cooling humidifiers, marked at thirty-eight hundred dollars each. She added five units, claiming nineteen thousand dollars.

She skipped the traditional wall air conditioners because their family apartment already had heavy-duty split units she could unbolt later. Instead, she rounded the display toward the home entertainment kiosks.

Two flagship gaming consoles caught her attention at four thousand dollars each. She grabbed both for Declan, adding eight thousand dollars to the ledger.

Finally, she reached the locked commercial optics cabinet. Long-range surveillance drones with thermal tracking capabilities sat behind the glass, priced at five thousand dollars per drone kit. Harper slid her fingers along the rear frame, pulling all six boxed drone setups directly into her dimension, logging thirty thousand dollars.

Standing in the aisle, Harper checked her system interface. Her rapid sweep through the electronics displays had pushed her total intake to one hundred and fifty-nine thousand eight hundred dollars.