Chapter 4

Bryan flipped the light switch and grabbed without looking for the notebook on the nearby counter. He leaned over and touched the power button on a computer sitting nearby, letting it run through its routines while Feeling his fingers fall upon it, he was already walking down the aisle, checking the inventory of each section as he went along. "Need two of those, need one of those. Need to get another case of that..." Walking down the aisle he made notes in the notebook.

The store room was fifty feet long constructed of concrete blocks, with a matching concrete slab ceiling and floor. There were four aisles three feet wide and ten feet to the ceiling. In each section there was a staple of life, something not produced on the farm, or something not produced in adequate quantities and had to be purchased off the farm. Checking the quantities of each, he added numbers which would add an additional week to the checklist, making it possible for the family to survive without outside purchases for a given amount of time.

Bryan had begun such preparations while still married to his first wife, but his reasons were geared more toward making sure she and the kids were cared for when he left her. When she had learned of the existence of Silver, she had fled the house with the kids, never to return. Bryan had been stuck with all of the extra food and supplies and eventually began to use them in the first few years of their marriage when money was tight.

He arrived at the section containing the toilet paper and began scribbling notes. The family of eight used an obscene amount of toilet paper and he was attempting to lay in a year's supply. Forecasting what that meant was proving difficult because the kids had begun hoarding it in their rooms. Noting yet another acceleration in use (or at least procurement) he did a quick multiplication problem in the margin, grimaced at the result and made the note before continuing.

At the end of the aisle he visually inspected one of the two electric dehumidifiers which kept the humidity in the space a constant. It appeared to be running correctly and the tank was draining without issue into a nearby drainpipe plumbed for just that purpose.

On either side of the dehumidifier there were doors leading to two adjoining rooms which had a much higher humidity for the purposes of storing raw vegetables. He knew that one was empty and the other was nearly empty.

Turning, he addressed the next aisle in the same manner, pausing at the other end to inspect the opposing dehumidifier for problems. It was important to keep the concrete-fringed underground room at approximately 40% relative humidity to keep many of the dry goods from spoiling quickly. One dehumidifier would keep the room at about 50% relative humidity, the second would make up the difference. Without them water would drip from the ceiling and condense on any surface, rusting and spoiling anything not hermetically sealed.

Two more aisles later, he sat down at the computer terminal which he had started near the door. The system automatically started a program for recording the inventory, into which he began translating the notes he had taken.

Noting that he had at least a forty-six week supply of everything on record, he added an additional week. He then sent a query which asked the database to output a shopping list to get his supply up to the forty-seven week mark.

Pressing the print button, he reached up to catch the paper that landed in the tray of the printer above his head. It spit out an extra page, though it only printed the page number on it so he flipped it over and stuck it back into the drawer at the top of the pile.

Scanning over the page he made note of what was required and what was optimal. The shopping list wasn't terribly large. A week worth of non-perishable items was usually less than $100, even for a family of eight.

He folded the list, and taking his wallet out of his pocket, slipped it inside. He planned on doing the normal shopping for the week the next day, and all he needed was on that list.

Standing and stretching, he looked at the time on a clock near the door. It typically took Silver an hour of alone time to wind down from the day and he had left her just about that.

He turned to leave, then absent mindedly remembered to check the mouse trap. Set into the concrete floor was a plastic bucket. It received the drainage from the nearest dehumidifier and had two overflow pipes to keep the level of water at a constant near the middle of the bucket.

Balanced over the top of the bucket was a metal bar. It had a washer welded to one end on which was smeared some peanut butter. On the other end was a counterweight and there was a fixed pivot near the center. It took approximately one quarter of an ounce to cause the peanut butter end to drop suddenly, causing whatever was holding on to fall into the water below.

Bryan peered into the bucket and noted that there was nothing floating in the water. A good sign, he thought. He had installed the trap as an added precaution, and had only fished a handful of rodents out of the trap in the two years since the store-room had been finished. It seemed that the multiple doors had served to keep the mice out, not that there were a lot around to begin with, what with all the garden fowl prowling aboveground.

He flipped the light switch off, shrouding the room in total darkness except for the lone bulb down the hallway. He closed the heavy steel door behind him and felt it click as the heavy locks fell into place.

The locks would never be enough to stop someone determined, but they did keep casual strangers from observing that he had a convenience store hidden in his basement.

He walked out of the adjoining room which, though dark, was visible in the semi-lit conditions. He noted the tables and benches set around the room used for dividing large bulk quantities of supplies into smaller packages and walked down the hallway toward the light bulb. On either side of him were shelves filled with empty canning jars, packages of freezer bags, and butcher paper.

He stopped at the solid door in front of him, pushing it open with quite a lot of force. Switching off the light he stepped through and the door swung shut behind him, closing with an audible click. The door itself steel covered in concrete veneer to match the surrounding room. No latch was visible, and even tapping on the wall would tell nothing due to the way that the room and door were constructed.

The shelves in the room were filled with more of the same types of supplies as the larger store rooms, though this one was approximately the size of a large closet. There was a hard oaken door to his right and a lone bulb on the ceiling above with a pull string was the only light in the room. He reached for the string at the same time that his other hand contacted the door latch. He stumbled out of the darkness into the pantry off of the kitchen, which again was loaded with more supplies.