After I Fully Prepared for the Apocalypse, the Ungrateful Cried with Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Robin lets Nolan in on her own rules: the scale house, his phone in a lead-lined cooler, never touching her father's notebook; at dawn Amos reports a dark van behind her fence, and Nolan says it isn't his.

"Hands where I can see them," Amos said.

Nolan Kearns held them out in front of him.

I kept my own hands in my jacket pockets. My palms were warm already.

"You were at the table," I said. "You wrote in a notebook while they read out my bank statements."

"Yes."

"My mother paid you."

"Twenty thousand dollars, to drive you to a place called Calder Wellness Center."

He took a folded slip of paper from his coat with two fingers.

"I mailed the money back at seven o'clock tonight. This is the receipt."

I read it under Amos's flashlight.

It was a postal receipt for a cashier's check, addressed to Beverly Hartigan.

"That doesn't explain why you're on my road," I said.

"I used to work security at Calder Biologics," he said. "I know what they keep in the north buildings."

"And?"

"And I know what's scheduled for the twenty-eighth."

Amos looked at me.

I had never told Amos the date. I had only told him to buy more diesel.

"My father left me a notebook with that date in it," I said.

"I know," Nolan said. "He worked there."

The road was quiet. Down the hill a dog barked at nothing.

"What did my father do at Calder?" I asked.

"I can tell you what I know about the twenty-eighth," Nolan said. "I'd rather not guess about your father on the shoulder of a road."

That was not an answer, and I knew it.

But he was alone, and he had no weapon on his belt.

He was also the first person in a week who hadn't called me sick.

I wanted him where I could watch him.

"Amos, go home and eat your pie," I said. "Keep the dog inside tonight."

"You sure?"

"No," I said. "But I'll call you at six."

Amos took the shotgun with him.

I opened the inner gate with my phone.

It rolled back with a low hum. Nolan walked through it first and did not look at the road.

I put him in the scale house, the little brick office at the front of the property.

It had a cot, a desk, a sink and a window that faced my front door.

I had built it for a night guard I never hired.

"Here are my terms," I said.

"All right."

"You sleep here. You don't come into the house, and you don't go into the silos unless I'm with you."

"Understood."

"Your phone goes in there."

I pointed at the grey cooler by the door.

It had a lead lining that I had paid a man in Dayton to install, and it blocked every signal.

Nolan didn't ask why. He took out his phone, held it a moment, and set it inside.

I closed the lid.

"The third rule is my father's notebook," I said. "You never read it."

"Fine."

"If I find you with it, you're out the gate."

"I won't touch it," he said, and he sounded sure.

I should have wondered why he agreed so fast. I was too tired to wonder.

"You're staying until the twenty-eighth," I said. "After that I'll decide."

"Where do you want me in the morning?"

"In the warehouse. I need forty bags of rice moved to the second floor before Monday."

"I can start tonight."

He did start tonight.

I watched from the doorway while he carried the first fifty-pound bag over his shoulder.

He climbed the stairs without slowing down and came back for the next one.

The lamp over the loading dock lit his forearms.

I stopped watching, because I did not need to be thinking about that.

I walked back to the house and lay on top of my blankets in my boots.

I listened to the bags land one after another on the warehouse floor.

At six o'clock I called Amos, as I had promised.

"Robin," he said. His voice was low. "I've been sitting at my window since midnight."

"What's wrong?"

"There's a van on the farm road behind your fence."

I sat up.

"Dark grey, no plates I can read," Amos said. "It pulled up at two o'clock with its lights off."

"Has anybody got out?"

"Not one soul."

I crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain.

The scale house door was already open.

Nolan stood in the yard in his shirtsleeves, looking at the line of trees where the van sat.

"That's not mine," he said.

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