She did call back. In fact, it was less than an hour later.

            “Hey, Co?”

            “Yeah, Val.”

            “Have you looked through that new shipment Nass brought?”

            “No. Should I?” He looked over at the boxes still sitting near the door. Normally, he would have stacked them next to the other boxes, but he’d been lazy this time around.

            “Go check yours,” she insisted.

            “All right. Hold on.” Walking over to the pile, he opened the top box to reveal the food packets inside. Picking up one labeled CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE FROSTING, he returned to the radio. “What am I looking for?”

            “Is your food expired?”

            He flipped it over to read the date. What he saw stunned him. “Yeah. It’s expired. Hellaciously expired.”

            “Like several years expired?”

            “Yeah. What the fuck! Hold on. I want to check a couple more.”

            He returned to the box, but this time he dug down to the bottom, grabbed one, and lifted it out. SPAGHETTI WITH MEAT SAUCE. He checked the date.

            Five years. It had expired five years ago, and he let her know what he’d found. “Is your food that outdated?”

            “Yeah. I found a few that were ten years expired. What the hell is going on?”

            “I don’t kno— Wait. What about our last delivery? The one before this partial one? The haul we’re eating on now?”

            “I checked,” she told him. “It’s expired, too, but more recently.”

            “Let me check mine. Give me a sec.”

            He snagged a packet from the box he was currently eating from and took it to the table. “This bean and bacon soup expired last year.” He gave an exasperated growl. “Either they’re deliberately sending us food that could be tainted, or nobody cared to check before shipping it out.”

            “How about both?” Val suggested. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the Coalition made a deal with one of their buddies who deals with this sort of thing. They give him money, of which they get a cut of, and he gets to make a profit off something he would have had to throw away.”

            He grunted. “We can’t eat this delivery.”

            “I dunno. I was taking inventory, and there are a couple of things I found I’ve never gotten before.”

            “Such as?”

            “Peach cobbler. I love peach cobbler. And the packets I got aren’t that old.”

            “Val, no. Don’t risk it.”

            “It has fruit and lots of sugar in it,” she lightly remarked. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen? That it ferments inside the container, and I get drunk on the contents? Since I won’t need a designated driver, I can just sleep it off here.”

            “It’s still not worth the risk, Val,” he pressed. He heard a sigh come over the radio, and he knew his warning was too late. “Val, please tell me you haven’t—”

            “Just the peach cobbler,” she softly admitted.