They Fed Me to the Dead, So I Woke Up Before the End novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Forty Jerry Cans

Reese tries to buy a bulk order of fuel and gear from Jonas Hale, and learns a tall man with a nice smile bought half his gas cans that morning.

Hale Farm and Fleet opened at seven, and I was on the step at six fifty with a list.

The sign over the door was hand-painted and peeling.

Under it, a poster for the volunteer fire department's pancake breakfast had been taped to the glass.

A man unlocked the door from inside and looked at me through it.

He was tall, maybe thirty, with dark hair going gray at the temples and a red flannel shirt with the sleeves shoved up.

His name tag said JONAS.

The name on the memorial board at the Anchor had said J. HALE, DAY 12, and under it, in marker: held the overpass.

I had walked past that board every morning for almost a month.

I had never once thought about the man.

"You're early," he said, and opened the door.

"I know. I'm sorry. I need a lot of things, and I need them this week."

"Okay." He went behind the counter and flipped on the lights. "Let's hear it."

I read it off the page.

"Forty five-gallon fuel cans. Fuel stabilizer. Two generators, the quiet kind. Water barrels. A fifteen-hundred-gallon tank. Chain saws, spare chains, a hand-crank radio, fencing, wire, seed, a gun safe."

He stopped writing.

"Forty fuel cans."

"Yes."

"Ma'am, what are you running, an airport?"

"My stepfather's putting a cistern and a generator shed on his land. He wants to be self-sufficient."

It was a thin lie, and it came out smooth because it was half true.

Jonas Hale set down the pen.

He looked at me for a while, with brown eyes that missed very little.

"Gas goes bad in six months," he said. "Nobody buys forty cans for a shed."

"He's very thorough."

"He's something." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll tell you what I tell anybody who asks me for a bunker. You're scared of something. That's all right. People are. But the thing you're scared of is usually not what you think."

"It's exactly what I think."

I hadn't meant to say it that flatly.

He heard it.

Something in his face shifted, not toward doubt, but toward attention.

"Okay," he said, more quietly. "Let's do this properly, then."

He didn't ask again.

He pulled a clipboard, and for the next twenty minutes he walked me through his own shelves, and I understood how he had run this place alone since his father died.

He knew which generator ran loud and which ran quiet.

He knew that I needed more stabilizer than I'd written down.

He asked what my stepfather's well was like, and when I said I didn't know, he said, "Find out. If it's good, skip the cistern and buy a hand pump."

I wrote that down.

He loaded the dolly himself, and I watched his forearms work and made myself stop watching.

"I can't sell you forty cans," he said at the register.

My stomach dropped.

"I can sell you thirty. The rest stay on the shelf. Half the county's got a farm or a fire truck, and they'll come in October and want some."

"October," I said.

"Harvest." His eyes narrowed a little. "Why? What happens in October?"

"Nothing. Corn."

He laughed, short and surprised, and the sound loosened something in my shoulders.

I put down my card.

"Funny thing," he said while it ran. "You're the second person this morning with a list like yours."

I went cold from the neck down.

"Who was the first?"

"Fellow came in at six-thirty, before I'd even flipped the sign. I was sweeping up. Tall guy, real nice smile. Bought twenty cans, a generator, and every tarp I had. Paid cash." He tore my receipt off. "He didn't want one of these. Said they were for a camping trip."

"Did he say his name?"

"He did not. He called me 'buddy' four times." Jonas looked up. "You know him?"

I thought about the van, and the sleeves buttoned at the wrist, and my boyfriend's voice saying maps.

"No," I said. "I don't."

He took in my face and didn't believe me, and didn't push.

He wrote a number on the back of the receipt and slid it across.

"My cell," he said. "I do deliveries Saturdays. If your stepfather's tank goes in, I'll bring it out myself and help set it."

I held the paper in both hands.

In the other life, a man with this phone number had died on the Riverside overpass, thirty-five days from now.

I had thirty-five days to keep that from happening again.

I put his number in my phone and typed under it the only thing I could safely type.

Jonas, Farm.

Then I went out to the car and called my mother and asked her what her well was like.

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