Sudden excitement surged through Lewis, even more than when he’d first heard the news. “You found a supply of smokeless powder and primers.”
“Now how did—” his dad started, looking genuinely surprised and a bit put out. Then he sighed and shook his head. “You’re way too sharp, son. Can’t even let your old man spring a pleasant surprise on you.”
So it was true, his dad had found him a source. After all this time waiting and searching. Lewis wished Jane could be here for this, but she was out on patrol, using her typical method of keeping an eye out for game as well as threats. Still, it would be good news for when she got home.
As they gathered up their gear to head outside his dad coughed a few times, pausing to lean against the doorway. Lewis watched it with concern; it wasn’t the first time his dad had coughed like this in the last couple days. “Are you okay?”
Lucas straightened with a slightly irritated smile. “Guess I’m just not reacting to the cold all that well.”
“Doesn’t say much for our Viking heritage,” Lewis joked. Then he sobered up. “Seriously though. Think it’s possible you might’ve picked something up while you were with Grimes’s soldiers?”
His dad waved that away, even more irritable. “It gets cold, people cough. No need to read more into it than it is.”
Lewis nodded doubtfully. “Okay. But rest if you need to. The rest of us can take care of getting ready for the winter well enough if you need to take a few days.”
“Let’s just go get your reloading supplies,” his dad grumbled.
A lot of people in town were coming out to see what the trader had to offer. Even though most of them didn’t have anything they could afford to give as trade items they still wanted to see what was available. The two Halsson men joined the parade to the north end of town, watching as the truck rumbled down the road towards them.
Trev hadn’t exaggerated his description of the vehicle. It was covered with neat writing in white paint, large enough to read from a good distance away, of various items on offer at reasonable prices. Judging by how packed with goods the cab was Lewis assumed the covered bed would be equally crammed. A good sign.
Two men could be seen through the windshield squeezed in among the goods, an older man in the driver’s seat and a massive younger man who looked like a bodyguard, leaning out the passenger window riding literal shotgun with a 12 gauge in his hands.
Trev and his defenders intercepted the truck before it reached the crowd, and Lewis watched his cousin make his way around to the driver’s door to speak to the older man. About taking all the best stuff for the town.
Lewis wasn’t terribly happy about that. He got Matt’s argument about unscrupulous people hoarding essential goods for profit while their neighbors suffered. But considering Lewis was one of those with the means to purchase items his family and the shelter group in general could really use, and the town was stepping in and preventing him from doing so, it was a bit annoying.
Still, the smokeless powder and primers should be a different deal entirely, and if Matt tried to horn in on that Lewis was going to have a real problem with him. He’d been trying to get his reloading business off the ground for over a month now and had already invested a lot into it, and his dad was the one who’d made the deal with the trader that brought him here in the first place, specifically so Lewis could acquire those items.
He was probably just being paranoid though. He couldn’t see his friend shafting him like that for the town’s benefit, assuming the town even could get some benefit from propellants they’d have limited use for.
Still, there was plenty of other stuff he wouldn’t be getting his hands on since Aspen Hill had first pick. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so excited about gathering up his precious metals. Then again, maybe there were potentially useful items Matt and the others would overlook, giving him a shot at them.
… which would then leave him with the dilemma of informing the town of their potential utility to benefit Aspen Hill, or withholding the information for his own benefit and doing exactly the kind of thing Matt had wanted to prevent. Crap.
He spied the Mayor making his way through the crowd to join Trev and fell into step next to him for a few seconds. “You sure have a way of making an exciting event less fun,” he muttered, hopefully low enough that only his friend could hear.
Matt gave him a confused look. “You mean first pick for the town?”
“Yeah.”
His friend grinned. “You know the town still owes you some for the food you and Trev sold us. Among other things. We need to pay you off somehow.” He patted Lewis’s shoulder and kept on going to greet the trader.
Well, that made him feel a little better.
It turned out the trader, Ned Orban, knew the sorts of things that were worth burning diesel to cart to potential customers. His truck was filled with small but valuable items like water filters, ammunition, nails, screws, hinges, and latches, larger items like wood burning stoves, a variety of saws, axes, hammers, picks, and sharpening tools, and squeezed into the top he’d crammed rolled up blankets and cold weather clothing.
And candles. Lots of candles of every size and shape. And oil lanterns, and electric lanterns and flashlights and hundreds of batteries. If Matt didn’t pick up every single means of producing light Ned was selling to get the town through this winter he was an idiot; solar power could only do so much, most of what their panels provided was limited to the Halsson and Smith homes and the clinic and town hall, and the nights were going to be long and dark.
The trader also had a shocking array of incredibly expensive jewelry, probably looted from an upscale store somewhere. Lewis noticed Trev, Rick, and a few others perusing the items on display, suspiciously watched over by Paul, the bodyguard. Even Matt poked his head in, although he seemed to lose interest when he saw the prohibitive price.
Sure, the cost wasn’t anywhere near what things like white gold, platinum, and diamonds were actually worth. But way more than anyone struggling to survive could afford for luxury items.
Unfortunately what Ned was willing to trade for was pretty limited. The list started at food and ended at… food. Aside from things of obvious value and utility, for instance he was interested when Lewis mentioned the town had solar panels and livestock, although disappointed they weren’t willing to trade any, he really didn’t want much of what the townspeople had to offer.
With the town facing an ammunition shortage Matt was able to trade some of their spare guns and parts for a surprisingly generous return, and a few people who were better off for food managed to get decent returns on other items they desperately needed.
As for Lewis and his dad and their precious metals, Ned was interested but not willing to offer anywhere near the full value for gold, silver, or platinum, unlike Newtown had when Lucas had traded there. Lewis had other things to trade, such as condoms from his stockpile and other small but valuable and useful items he’d prepared from before the Gulf burned.
The trader was very interested in Lewis’s hard drives, too. Lewis balked at first, until he realized the man had drives of his own and what he wanted was the terabytes of movies, music, books, and other media Lewis had stored on them.
“That sort of archive’s a valuable thing to have, one that few people thought to put together when they had the chance,” Ned said. “That deserves some reward.”
It was a good thing Lewis had all those things, because the boxes full of neatly stacked bottles of smokeless powder and carefully sealed packets of primers the man had brought weren’t going to be cheap. There was enough of both there to craft a lot of cartridges, anywhere in the area of ten thousand judging by Lewis’s hasty calculations. But Ned knew the value of his reloading supplies and wanted a good return on them.