Doomsday Haul

Arthur swiped his credit card to settle the fifty-thousand-dollar balance at the wholesale seafood pavilion, then climbed into the truck cabin beside Harper. As the heavy engine rumbled to life, Arthur adjusted the rearview mirror and glanced at his daughter. He asked a few quiet questions about the spatial dimension, wanting to understand how the internal climate functioned. When Harper revealed that the soil inside could sustain active plant growth and nourish living roots, Arthur slammed his foot on the brake at the intersection. Without a second thought, he cranked the steering wheel hard to the right, abandoning the direct route home and charting a course toward the city’s largest agricultural wholesale nursery.

Arthur took wide strides through the commercial greenhouses, barking orders at the nursery staff. He selected ten industrial seed packets each for staples: hearty russet potatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, sweet yellow corn, yellow onions, hardneck garlic, crisp carrots, bell peppers, romaine lettuce, savoy cabbage, and bush green beans. Once the vegetable varieties were loaded onto pallets, he walked straight to the fruit tree section. He pointed out mature potted saplings, demanding ten healthy specimens each for crisp apples, sweet cherries, hardy dwarf bananas, purple plums, highbush blueberries, strawberries, concord grapes, bosc pears, and white peaches.

The nursery invoice ran up to thirty thousand dollars. Arthur paid on the spot and had the workers haul every pot into the covered bed of the truck under the guise of an estate landscaping project. As soon as the workers stepped away to process the paperwork, Harper brushed her fingers across the wooden crates, pulling every seedling and sapling into her space.

From the nursery, Arthur drove straight toward the regional industrial equipment depot on the city perimeter. A reliable power grid would be the first infrastructure to collapse when disaster arrived, making off-grid energy an absolute priority. Inside the cavernous commercial showroom, Arthur sought out the head sales manager. He ordered ten commercial-grade high-capacity solar battery banks alongside ten heavy-duty monocrystalline solar panels. To guarantee portable illumination, he added twenty rugged solar-powered work lanterns. For mechanical backup, he bought five commercial gasoline generators and five heavy-duty diesel generators, ensuring they had engines capable of running on whatever liquid fuel they managed to scrounge.

The industrial hardware totaled two hundred thousand dollars. Arthur produced his corporate card without a flicker of hesitation.

Arthur turned toward Harper while the warehouse forklift loaded the crated generators onto their flatbed. "Take a look around, sweetheart. Does this cover our power needs, or should we grab more backup units?"

"This will keep us running for years," Harper said, shaking her head with a faint smile. "Let's head back home and check on Mom and Declan."

When they pulled into the residential complex, Declan and Cora were already unlocking the front door of the penthouse. The family gathered around the kitchen counter to cross-examine their inventories and track their expenditures.

Declan laid a heavy tactical case onto the marble surface. He had tracked down a commercial telecommunications broker and secured ten rugged satellite communicators at six thousand dollars apiece. Alongside the devices, he bought ten prepaid satellite SIM cards at one hundred dollars each. Every card carried three hundred minutes of active satellite bandwidth, remaining shelf-stable for seven years if left unactivated. In addition, Declan had tapped an old acquaintance in private security to source four professional compound hunting crossbows paired with one thousand carbon-fiber target bolts, with the hardware scheduled for personal pickup early the following morning.

Cora dropped a stack of pharmacy receipts on the counter. She had driven across three municipal districts, visiting distinct hospital dispensaries and regional retail pharmacies to evade local scrutiny. She spent over one hundred thousand dollars stocking up on broad-spectrum antibiotics, prescription painkillers, sterile trauma dressings, surgical disinfectants, and anti-inflammatories. On her way back, she avoided the neighborhood markets where their acquaintances operated stalls, visiting agricultural supply hubs on the city limits instead. There, she collected one hundred pounds of cured farmhouse sausages and one hundred pounds of fresh farm eggs.

Cora wiped her brow and sighed softly. "The clinical pharmacies have strict purchasing caps on prescription antibiotics, so I couldn't clear the shelves like I wanted. But the digital dispensaries still allow direct deliveries without the same curbside oversight. We need to run another series of orders through our personal accounts tonight."

"Let's get it done right now," Harper said, nodding in agreement.

The four of them sat around the table, tapping away on their smartphones. They placed bulk orders for fever reducers, iodine tinctures, water purification tablets, and sterile bandages, selecting urgent next-day home delivery.

Once the medical orders cleared, Harper shifted her focus to thermal survival supplies. A sudden drop in global temperatures would turn unheated concrete apartments into freezing tombs. She searched for commercial-grade chemical heat warmers, ordering ten thousand individual warming packs packaged in cartons of fifty. She deliberately split the massive digital order across dozens of separate online vendors, routing the delivery addresses to automated self-service pickup lockers spread across the neighborhood. The parcel kiosks operated around the clock without physical attendants. When the delivery trucks dropped the boxes, customers simply punched in digital pickup codes, meaning no human observer would ever notice a single family hauling hundreds of cartons away into the night.

After eating a quick lunch, the family left the apartment together to tackle their personal wardrobes.

Cora and Harper usually wore tailored silk dresses and designer heels, keeping only a couple pairs of running shoes in their closets. That lifestyle would prove fatal when the streets crumbled into frozen rubble. At the central shopping plaza, the family bypassed the luxury fashion boutiques and headed directly into outdoor clearance outlets. Because the summer heat was peaking, the retailers had dumped their leftover winter inventory onto sales racks at steep markdowns.

The family loaded industrial shopping carts with heavy-duty waterproof combat boots, reinforced windbreakers, and ripstop tactical trousers. From there, they swept through the thermal displays, stripping the shelves of merino wool base layers, thick cashmere sweaters, and heavy-duty goose down parkas. Other shoppers were browsing the clearance racks for off-season discounts, so their heavy carts failed to draw any suspicion.

After swiping their cards at the registers, Harper and Cora carried the bulky branded shopping bags straight into the multistoried mall's third-floor public restroom. It was the only functional area inside the complex completely free of digital surveillance cameras. Harper stood inside the handicap stall, brushing her fingertips over the stacks of bags until every piece of clothing vanished into her storage void.

Coming out of the restroom corridor, Harper spotted an outdoor sporting emporium displaying expedition gear.

Harper grabbed Declan by his sleeve and tugged him toward the entrance. "Come on, Declan. Time for your wallet to do some heavy lifting."

They wandered through the aisles, grabbing solid aluminum baseball bats, reinforced protective helmets, tactical knee pads, four-season expedition tents, and zero-degree sleeping bags.

As Declan stepped up to the front counter to lay down his black card, Harper leaned against the counter, giving him a playful nudge with her elbow. "You've only been out of university for a couple of years. Are you certain your personal accounts can handle this without running completely dry?"

Declan cast a dry, patronizing glance over his shoulder. "Ignorance isn't a crime, little sister. I will let that comment slide just this once."

Harper wrinkled her nose at his arrogant smirk, but she did not argue. She gladly let him swipe his card to cover the four-figure total. Declan shoved the mountain of gear bags into her arms and tilted his head toward the restroom corridor, prompting her to repeat the clean-up trick before anyone spotted them.

Once the sporting gear vanished into her void, the family descended into the subterranean mega-mart on the lowest level of the commercial plaza. Each family member grabbed an oversized steel cart, splitting up to wander the dry-goods aisles.

Whenever Harper wheeled her cart into camera blind spots between high shelving units, her hands moved like lightning. Boxed instant noodles, shelf-stable mac and cheese, canned stews, dry pasta boxes, parboiled rice packages, and ready-to-eat ration trays disappeared into her dimension in clean sweeps. By the time they rolled their legitimate purchases through the checkout lanes, Harper had covertly accumulated hundreds of cases of convenience meals, eleven hundred pounds of polished white rice, six hundred and sixty pounds of wheat flour, and over a thousand bottles of purified drinking water.

It was late evening by the time they drove back down into the underground garage of their luxury residential tower.

Harper pushed open the truck door, rolling her sore shoulders. Before she could walk toward the elevator lobby, a sharp, familiar voice cut across the concrete garage.

"Arthur! You've got the whole household out together tonight?"

Gavin Cross stepped out from behind a white sedan, accompanied by his wife Fiona and their twenty-two-year-old son, Leo.

Harper felt her jaw tighten. Gavin and Fiona had both worked alongside Cora at the central hospital years ago. Their son, Leo, had been placed in the same classes as Harper all the way from preschool through high school graduation. When Arthur bought these two adjoining apartments, Cora had mentioned the property to her old colleagues, thinking it might be useful to have medical professionals living nearby in case of unexpected family emergencies.

The Cross family had promptly bought the apartment directly beneath them on the twenty-ninth floor. Ever since Harper entered college, Fiona and Gavin had relentlessly floated the idea of an arranged match between Leo and Harper, hoping Leo could move straight into Harper’s fully-paid luxury apartment once they tied the knot. Cora had never entertained the idea seriously, preferring to leave the decision entirely up to her daughter. Since Harper found Leo arrogant and repulsive, she had kept him at arm's length for years.

Arthur stepped smoothly in front of Harper, his tone polite but distant. "The weather has been miserable inside, so we went out for an early dinner. What brings you three down here at this hour?"

Gavin lifted a plastic grocery sack stuffed with generic produce. "We just drove back from my parents' place across town. They packed us some home-cooked food."

Leo did not look at the adults. His eyes locked onto Harper, scanning her face with unvarnished hunger. He stepped around his father and walked toward her, puffing out his chest under his designer polo.

Leo offered an oily smile. "Harper, let's catch a movie together tomorrow night. I can take you out for dinner afterward."

"No thank you, Leo. I have a full schedule," Harper said, keeping her tone flat and cold.

Leo took another step closer, reaching out to grasp her bare forearm. "What could you possibly be busy with? You're probably just running around the mall trying on skirts. I can easily come along and hold your bags for you. I know an upscale restaurant downtown where a single steak costs two hundred dollars. My treat."

"I told you I have actual plans." Harper sidestepped his reaching hand, deliberately looping her arm through Declan’s elbow. "My brother and I are running important personal errands tomorrow. If you don't believe me, you can ask him yourself."

Declan stepped forward, his broad frame completely screening Harper from Leo's reach. He glared down at the younger man with chilled indifference.

Declan spoke with an icy edge that made Leo flinch. "My sister already gave you her answer. We have business to take care of."

Leo drew his hand back, his smile turning tight and bitter.

The two families stepped into the residential elevator together in suffocating silence. Nobody spoke a word while the digital floor indicator climbed up the shaft. When the elevator chime signaled the twenty-ninth floor, the doors slid open, and the Cross family stepped out into the private foyer.

The moment the elevator doors sealed shut behind them, Fiona's mask slipped, her voice turning into a venomous hiss.

Fiona kicked the front door of their apartment open, glaring down the hallway. "Who does that little brat think she is, acting like she sits on a golden throne? Leo has been chasing after her for years, and she won't even grant him a simple dinner date! If her father didn't run that logistics business, I wouldn't waste five seconds looking at her family!"

Leo sneered, tossing his car keys onto the credenza with cold confidence. "Relax, Mom. Let her play hard to get for now. Once she marries me, both of those luxury penthouses her family owns will belong to us anyway. And that Porsche Cayenne her dad bought her? That's going to be my daily drive to the office."