Chapter 4: Wasteland Gourmet

Chloe's POV

The crowd had doubled since I put Zac's wrist into the table edge.

Emily had moved in front of him after that, and the standoff went quiet — nobody throwing the first word, everybody waiting. Zac was still breathing hard, sauce smeared across one shoulder, his right hand balled into a fist. Emily had already said "We're leaving." Not loud. "There are cameras here."

She turned and gave the onlookers a smile that wasn't meant for me, then took Zac's arm and started moving him toward the pickup. Zac shook her off and planted himself in front of me, lifting his chin at Emily. "Drop the act, Em. Tell her. Tell her you and Brad are together."

An answer wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to watch my face come apart.

So he's going straight at it, I thought. I settled my breathing and let my voice go soft. "Is that true?" I kept my eyes on Emily.

Last time I asked that question because I genuinely didn't know. This time I'm standing outside the answer, making myself ask it again.

Emily's shoulders went tight first — caught off guard, half a second of it — then she let them down and the smile came back, pleased with itself. "Yeah. We're together."

No apology. That line item had never existed in her ledger.

I let my eyes go down her and back up. "Then we've got equally bad taste. Do me a favor — the two of you stay together."

Two enemies apart are just enemies. Two enemies welded together are one account I can close with a single cut.

Zac still hadn't gotten what he came for. The first time hadn't taught him anything — he stepped in again and reached for my wrist, hard and sloppy, the way a man grabs somebody in a street fight.

I forced my own hand back down. The lot was full of people and phone cameras. The second I moved first, I stopped being the girl who got grabbed.

Someone caught his wrist before I had to.

Taylor Aldridge. He'd been leaning against the hood of his truck two spots down, a couple of his fraternity brothers with him, close enough to have seen the whole thing from the start. Robert's son by his first wife — by the time Sarah married in he'd already put two years into private school, my stepbrother on paper.

He crossed the distance in about three strides and locked Zac's wrist with his fingers and didn't look at me. "Who the hell treats a woman like that? However low we go, not like that."

He had no use for me, thought I was cold, no friends, every sentence coming out like an invoice. But an outsider putting hands on an Aldridge was a different item entirely.

The rest of the fraternity closed in. Whistles, raised phones. Zac's knuckles popped audibly and he didn't swing — the cameras were on him, the clerk was watching from behind the glass.

Brad's car still hadn't moved.

Emily moved first. She caught Zac's arm and gave the crowd a smile. "Our mistake. Sorry about that."

She looked back at me before she went. Not remorse in it. A running tally.

The pickup backed out and its taillights turned at the corner. Taylor rounded on me, temper still up. "You're just letting them go?"

"Let it be. Don't come around me again."

"No lesson for them?" He wasn't buying it. "You're this soft?"

The smell of alcohol hit me off him when he leaned in. "You can't even stand straight. Letting you get into it on my behalf is the stupidest option. Just leave it."

"I—"

"I said leave it."

I could see what was in Zac's eyes. Last life I'd seen that look up close — Zac coming back from a run with blood drying on his boots and nothing behind his eyes. Taylor's crowd were college kids who'd never been in that place. If it went to hands, whose head hit the concrete was anybody's guess. I didn't say that part out loud.

The food truck owner's youngest son handed the packed bags out through the window.

I took them and headed for my truck, throwing one line back over my shoulder. "You'd better get home early these next two days too."

Behind me, a second of quiet. Someone muttered something and Taylor snapped back. "Shut up. That's my sister."

Last time around, he'd been the one to sit me down and tell me my mother and stepfather were dead — a car wreck, driving out to pick me up. He was furious when he said it. After the shelter broke apart I never heard the name again.

I could still feel the stare all the way to my truck. He was probably thinking, she bought that much?

Sure enough, I heard it behind me. "When did she get that strong..."

I was opening the door when he called after me. "Hey. You should go see Sarah. She's been—"

I stopped. "She's been what?"

There was something wrong with that hesitation. It didn't sound like a casual mention. The only thing my grandfather asked of me on his deathbed was don't let your mother die before you do. I'd already meant to get out to the Aldridge house before the rain came.

Taylor rubbed his nose. "Noth— nothing much. Just go see her."

"I'll go tomorrow."

Sarah could wait one more day. Tonight the priority was heat — cooked food, the kind that wouldn't exist in seventy-two hours. I drove out of the lot with that settled.

Two blocks down there was an underground garage; I pulled in, put the windows up, locked the doors, and only then took the barbecue out of the bags and set it into storage piece by piece.

【Fresh cooked food detected. Achievement unlocked: Wasteland Gourmet. Reward: End-Times Temperature-Locked Ration Bay ×1.】

I blinked at it, then laughed. The first reward since I came back that was purely about eating. The bay divided itself into shelves, drinks on their own row, the grease still shining on the meat. Time in there didn't move.

I asked about experience points while I was at it. The answer came back flat: initial tasks pay out in function, not levels. Experience only came off the Blighted and the mutated cores in them.

Same as last life.

I didn't go home that night. My pickup orders started landing — Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, one after another. Speed helps when you're running fifteen stops in a single night. I drove the city end to end, collected each one, dropped each one in. Dick's burgers, Paseo's Caribbean sandwiches, the fish tacos off the food trucks, all of it still hot going in, all of it something money wouldn't buy a few days from now.

It was past midnight when I got back to Ironridge. Seven hundred-odd portions in the bay by then. I pulled the frozen Kirkland bread dough, the Bibigo dumplings, the Amy's breakfast wraps out of the freezer and ran them through pots and pans in batches. Cooking is too much trouble once the world goes. Food is one thing you can never have too much of.

While I waited on the stove I pulled up the safehouse. Level one is a thatch hut, level two a plank shack. Mine is level three — a red-brick hunter's cabin, currently compressed into storage form, small enough to sit in the living room corner.

【Defense 30 | Range 2 miles | Withstands ordinary attacks from 200 Blighted | Conceals biological signature 3 hours | 3 exterior configurations.】

Thirty was enough. Three hours inside and nothing out there could smell us. Last life, I used it to walk a whole crew through horde after horde. They didn't know why the cabin worked — just that it did — so they stood watch outside in shifts, too scared to cough, while I slept.

By the time the steamer went cold the sky had gone pale gray. I hadn't slept and I went out anyway. The target was breakfast: bagels, English muffins, breakfast wraps, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches. Frozen product doesn't hold up against fresh-baked, and the end times might run a whole lifetime. Three days was too short.

I walked into the place in Ballard and said my company had an event coming, needed a big order. Shops here run corporate catering every week — nobody asks twice.

"Before tomorrow morning, a thousand bagels and five hundred breakfast sandwiches. Paid in full up front. I'll send a truck for it in the morning." Swiped ten thousand dollars, offered over market for anything extra, never signed a contract.

Macrina, Daily Dozen, Bakery Nouveau, Le Panier, a few brunch spots and a couple of food-truck fleets — I ran a dozen-plus places across the city, sat down with each one in turn, bought out a full day's output.

Whatever else I lose in the end times, I'm not losing my appetite.