Back From The Dead: My Apocalypse Level-up System novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Ladders

By the second day the new gate stood across the farm road, and it was ugly and perfect.

Hattie had welded it from scrap rails and two truck axles.

It had a lock my father would have approved of and a chain on the inside, and it had cost me two thousand dollars in steel.

"Now the roof," she said.

"What about the roof?"

"If you're serious about a watch post, you need a platform on the barn." She wiped her hands on her coveralls. "Ladder's in the shed. I'll go get it."

"I'll get it."

"You'll hold it. I'm not falling off a barn for a woman who pays in cash."

She went across the yard grumbling, and I climbed the first rungs of the old ladder alone.

I was halfway up, with a coil of rope over one shoulder, when a truck horn sounded twice at the gate.

I knew that horn.

Conroy Gallagher sat behind the wheel of the gray salvage truck, which was loaded to the roll cage with drums.

"Rent's due," he called through the open window. "Second installment. Where do I put it?"

"Barn. Right side. Hattie will show you."

"Hattie's in the shed arguing with a ladder," he said.

I hadn't seen him get out of the truck.

He was at the bottom of my ladder, with his hand flat against the rail.

"You shouldn't climb that alone," he said.

"I'm fine."

"It's rotten on the left."

I looked down.

He was right.

The left rail had a soft gray stripe running down it, and my boot was an inch from the worst of it.

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