Chapter 5: Eight Hundred Hot Meals

Saturday morning, October 24.

Five days remained until Thursday noon.

The fifteen thousand pounds of grain and water already secured in the stasis of my mental void were my survival foundation. But dry goods had one fatal flaw: they required heat, clean water, and time to cook.

In a sub-zero urban collapse, cooking was suicide.

I had seen it happen in my last life. Three weeks into the freeze, a family on the fourth floor of my apartment building boiled a pot of white rice on a camp stove. The savory steam drifted through the ventilation shafts like a beacon. By morning, their door was splintered off its hinges and their apartment was stripped bare. No bodies, no blood—just gone.

When temperatures plunge below zero, high-rise buildings act like giant chimneys. Warm cooking smells vent through window seams and hallway cracks. To starving men roaming the corridors with tire irons, the aroma of boiling stew is an open invitation. Lighting a burner in a dark building would paint a target on my forehead.

I needed hot, calorie-dense meals ready to eat in pitch blackness.

Because the void was dead stasis, heat stayed locked. If I loaded the food boiling hot, it would stay boiling hot until I called it back.

At 8:30 AM, I drove a rented cargo van (an open pickup bed would have put every pan on display) to the wholesale food district along West Avenue, pulling up outside Apex Commercial Kitchens—the largest industrial commissary in the district.

Inside the front office, a woman in a blue uniform and hairnet was typing behind a glass barrier.

"I need eight hundred hot meals prepped by five o'clock today," I said, leaning toward the counter. "One hundred and sixty deep half-size aluminum pans, five generous portions per pan. Forty pans of roasted chicken and potatoes, forty pans of beef stew, thirty pans of glazed pork chops, and fifty pans of seasoned rice. Double-crimped foil lids."

The typing stopped. She looked up at me over her glasses.

"We don't take walk-ins," she said. "Production slots are booked by licensed enterprise accounts thirty days in advance."

I pulled out an envelope. "Full invoice paid upfront in cash, plus a twenty percent rush f*e."

"Company policy doesn't care about cash," she said, pushing the envelope back across the marble. She glanced toward a glass office behind her, where a floor supervisor was watching the lobby. Her voice dropped. "The system requires an active vendor permit. I'm not getting fired for an off-the-books run. Try a diner down the street."

I didn't waste breath pushing an immovable clerk. When the front gate is locked, you look for the side door.

I took the envelope and walked down the gravel service alley behind the building.

The rear alley smelled of grease traps, bleach, and idling diesel engines. Halfway down the lane, under a dented roll-up door, sat Clara's Catering & Events.

A woman in her late forties with gray streaks in her dark hair was hosing down rubber floor mats on the damp concrete. On an upturned milk crate beside her sat three unopened envelopes stamped with bright red past-due warnings.

I stopped outside her wash bay. "Good morning."

She shut off the spray nozzle with a sigh. "If you're collecting for the landlord, tell him he gets half the rent on Tuesday."

"I don't work for your landlord," I said. "And I don't need a job. I need someone with an Apex commercial account to book a rush bulk order."

Clara wiped her wet hands on a towel and scoffed. "Then go to the front desk."

"The front desk turned me away because I don't have an enterprise vendor ID," I said. "You do. I need one hundred and sixty deep half-pans of hot food ready at Bay 4 by five o'clock. Apex charges $6,800 for the run."

I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the First National envelope, and counted out twenty $100 bills.

"You book the order on your vendor terminal," I said, holding out the $2,000 cash. "I pay the $6,800 invoice at the desk with cash right now. This two grand is yours for ten minutes of work."

Clara looked at the stack of bills. Her throat moved as she swallowed. Two thousand dollars in cash meant keeping her gas turned on and her doors open.

"Eight hundred meals," she murmured, looking up at me. "Why so much? Why today?"

"Private catering contract for a youth retreat up north," I lied smoothly. "Our supply truck leaves tonight. If the pans aren't on the road by five, I lose the deposit. The cash is clean."

She stared at my eyes for five seconds. People who have worked on their feet their entire lives know when someone is desperate.

"You pay the counter directly," Clara said, setting her towel down. "My company name goes on the manifest, but your money pays the bill."

"Deal."

Ten minutes later, Clara scanned her vendor badge at the Apex commercial desk. With an enterprise account on the screen, the clerk didn't ask a single question. I counted out sixty-eight $100 bills onto the counter. The cash counter whirred, and the register spat out a receipt stamped PAID IN FULL.

"Bay 4 at 5:00 PM," the clerk said.

At 4:55 PM, I backed the cargo van against Bay 4.

The metal roll-up door rattled open, venting a wall of thick steam. The rich scent of roasted garlic, seared beef, and rosemary filled the cold afternoon air.

Two line cooks in grease-stained aprons wheeled out four rolling carts loaded with aluminum catering pans.

Forty pans of roast chicken. Forty pans of braised beef stew. Thirty pans of glazed pork. Fifty pans of seasoned rice. One hundred and sixty deep half-pans in total—five dense, hot portions per pan.

"Hey! Hold up a minute!"

A sharp voice echoed across the loading dock. A bald shift supervisor with a clipboard and radio clipped to his belt walked briskly out of the dock office.

"What order is this?" the supervisor demanded, eyeing my rented van. "Private vans aren't supposed to load at Bay 4 without an enterprise freight seal. Who signed off on this?"

My chest tightened. If he held the shipment for an audit, the food would sit in the loading bay until inspectors arrived on Monday.

Clara stepped right off the ramp, blocking his line of sight.

"It's my account, Dave," she snapped, shoving her printed receipt into his chest. "Order 4108. Paid in full at the desk an hour ago. My catering truck broke an axle this morning, so my client brought a rental. You want to hold up paying customers, or do you want me to call regional management?"

Dave looked at the receipt, then glanced suspiciously toward the back of my van.

"Get it loaded and clear the bay in ten minutes," he grunted, turning back to his office. "You're blocking the overnight trucks."

I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the handles of the first hot pan. The double foil radiated intense heat, scorching straight through the leather palms of my work gloves. Biting the inside of my cheek, I stacked the pans four high inside the van bed, securing them with wooden blocking slats.

Within eight minutes, all one hundred and sixty pans were inside. I tipped both cooks fifty dollars, shook Clara's hand, and pulled the van doors shut.

I climbed into the dark cargo bed and slid the interior latch into place.

The air inside the van was humid, scalding, and smelled like a Thanksgiving banquet.

I knelt on the ribbed metal floor, stripped off my work gloves, and pressed my bare palms against the hot aluminum foil.

Store.

The first forty pans vanished into the dark void behind my forehead.

Store. Store. Store.

Chicken, beef, pork, and steaming rice disappeared into total silence. Within two minutes, the metal floor of the van was completely bare.

Inside my skull, the pans floated in perfect stillness, suspended in dead stasis. The pressure against my temples tightened slightly; the void was now nearly sixty percent full.

Eight hundred hot meals.

At two generous rations a day, it was enough to keep a single person fed and functional for over four hundred days. Or enough to keep an entire fortified outpost alive through four months of brutal winter without lighting a single burner or venting a trace of food odors.

I climbed out of the cargo bed, slipped behind the steering wheel, and turned the ignition key.

The van’s engine rumbled to life. I reached out to turn off the radio, but a sudden burst of sharp, shrieking static blasted through the dashboard speaker.

‘—emergency bulletin from the Space Weather Prediction Center—’

The radio host’s voice was strained, competing with heavy magnetic interference.

‘—Class X-20 coronal mass ejection detected from solar region 3842. Atmospheric monitors report unprecedented proton flux acceleration. The projected Thursday timeline has collapsed. Initial geomagnetic shockwaves are now expected to impact the upper atmosphere within forty-eight to thirty-six hours—’

A high-pitched whine tore through the speaker, and the broadcast dissolved into roaring white noise.

My hands tightened against the wheel.

The flare wasn't waiting for Thursday.

Zero Hour had just been moved up to Monday.