Money wasn't the problem. Time was. She had to get to B City before the downpour. By the apocalypse's fourth year, every town and city had a safe zone.
Back then, she'd assumed all the bases were government-run. Plenty of other people had thought the same. They'd eventually learned otherwise. The E City base she'd lived in, for one, wasn't.
The only government-run base she'd heard of was in B City. Any others had kept a much lower profile.
She crossed her purchases off the list. Two full pages of supplies still remained. Outside, the sky had gone dark. Emma's exhausted eyes slipped shut, her phone falling sideways beside her.
She slept without dreams. When she woke, she lay staring at the ceiling. It hadn't been a dream. She really was back. What a relief.
Bank alerts filled her screen. Six million dollars spent overnight. Available balance...
She looked at what was left. Using up a two-billion-dollar budget over the next fifteen days would be easy.
She grabbed fresh clothes and took a shower. In the mirror were an oval face, waist-length hair, and clear eyes. A smile brought out a small dimple in each cheek.
Her fair skin and youthful features still belonged to someone the apocalypse hadn't touched.
"The hair has to go." License in hand, she took the elevator down to the underground garage and drove a Bentley out of the Ziyuan villa community.
Down a narrow side street stood a little barbershop, its sign faded, a colorful rotating light out front.
She pushed the door open. "I need a haircut."
"Want it washed?"
"No."
"Take a seat. What are we doing today?"
"Just cut it short." She didn't care about the style. Practical was all that mattered. The stylist, though, hated to see such lovely long hair go.
Fifteen dollars. A bargain. Sporting an ear-length bob, Emma opened her navigation app and searched for wholesalers nearby.
Traffic clogged the road before she even got there. She parked, found a rental e-bike, and scanned its code.
Three whole streets of wholesalers. They sold just about everything.
Try buying a single item here, and the owner would think you were kidding.
She pedaled up to a cooking-oil wholesaler and stopped.
After a look around, she pointed at the shelves. "A metric ton of every kind of cooking oil you've got up there." That was about 2,205 pounds of each.
He gave her a look that said she had to be an idiot. Still, what if she was serious? "One moment." He had another customer to finish with.
Once he'd seen the customer out, he rubbed his hands together and smiled. "I've got that much in stock. But it won't come cheap."
"I can send a deposit right now." She opened her banking app and held up the transfer screen. "Money isn't an issue."
His condescending smile vanished. She looked serious. "Five hundred thousand up front. The balance after you've checked the goods."
The payment alert chimed almost at once. His expression changed again. Now she was a walking payday. "And what name should I put down, miss?"
"Bennett."
"Ms. Bennett. Everything's in my warehouse behind the shop. Shall I arrange delivery, or will you have someone pick it up?"
"Got any other warehouse space? I'd like to rent it." She didn't want anyone noticing how much she was buying.
"Two more warehouses out back. I could give you a good rate, Ms. Bennett."
"How much for six months?" She opened another bank transfer.
"Twenty-eight thousand. Going into business?"
"A supermarket chain." She transferred the rent. She'd only meant to rent for one month, but she didn't want anyone looking too closely at her story.
"A chain? Well, Ms. Bennett, I've got a few buddies in the wholesale business here. What else do you need? I can put you in touch."
She gave him her best spoiled-rich-girl impression. "Sure."
He sat her down with coffee and made a dozen-plus calls.
"Carter, what's going on? You really found someone with money to burn?" A heavyset man came in, his beer belly so large that Emma wondered whether he could see his toes when he looked down.
Money to burn? Was that supposed to be her?
The shopkeeper got up, tugged the man outside, and murmured something to him. They came back grinning.
"Don't mind him, Ms. Bennett."
"I don't." Spending money was exactly why she was here.
About fifteen minutes later, a dozen or so men and women had gathered. The oil wholesaler, Mr. Carter, introduced them.
Rice. Fruit. Seafood, vegetables, appliances, household supplies, general merchandise, bread and pasta, drinking water. Pork and beef, too.
Perfect. She wouldn't even have to go looking.
Three of them sold rice. She bought out all three, by the metric ton, taking everything they could give her. They were delighted. At last, a sucker willing to take the stock they'd been stuck with.
Rice prices were down this year. A newly introduced variety was proving popular with shoppers.
She bought a variety of seafood as well, plus instant noodles and drinking water by the metric ton. After the apocalypse, one packet of noodles and a bottle of clean water could buy a life.