Chapter four

Nobody at Tri-County Wholesale had ever seen a woman order six hundred cases of instant noodles and smile about it.

"Ma'am," Mack said, squinting at his clipboard. He was the dock manager, with a bad knee and a good pen. "Six hundred cases of noodles. Two hundred cases of canned corn. Are you opening a chain?"

"Something like that."

"Where's it all going?"

"I have a lot of cousins."

He shrugged. "The check cleared. You can have a hundred cousins."

His crew stacked the first pallets on the dock. I put my palm flat on the shrink-wrap and thought in.

The pallet vanished.

Mack dropped his pen.

"Union break," I said, and walked to the next one.

By the end of the afternoon, I had learned the rules of the Pantry, and there were only two. Anything I touched could go in and come out, and time stopped inside, so nothing ever spoiled. After my fifth big load, the dock tilted and I had to sit down on a crate with my head between my knees.

"You okay, lady?" Mack asked.

"Low blood sugar."

I wrote on the back of my hand with a pen: Five loads a day. No more.

Around four o'clock, a man in a gray suit climbed out of a black car and walked straight up to Mack.

"I represent Mrs. Margaret Lockhart. She would like the account of Ms. Vera Hale suspended, effective immediately."

Mack looked at the man. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at his clipboard.

"Ms. Hale paid in full," he said. "Cashier's check. It cleared this morning."

"Mrs. Lockhart is one of your largest clients."

"Mrs. Lockhart orders party napkins once a year," Mack said. "Ms. Hale just bought forty pallets of noodles. Take a hike."

The man in the gray suit left without another word. I gave Mack a hundred-dollar tip, and he put it in his pocket without looking at it.

The plan was simple. Noodles first, because they are cheap, light, and last forever. Then meat, because nothing rots in a place where time stops. After that came everything dull and necessary, which is what kills people in the first month of an apocalypse.

"Forty tons of pork, chicken, and beef?" asked Walt, the manager at the cold-storage depot. "What do you run, a prison?"

"A very hungry family."

"Cash or check?"

"Cashier's check."

"Then it's a family I like."

I bought toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, rice, cooking oil, salt, painkillers, bandages, and water filters. I nearly forgot the can openers until I remembered the two hundred cases of canned corn. A critic knows a plot hole when she's standing in one. I also bought boots, coats, and every pair of work gloves in the county.

SURVIVAL RATE: 2.2% → 11.4%

"Lady," Mack said on the second day, watching another pallet disappear. "Where do you put all of it?"

"Logistics."

"I watched that pallet vanish."

"Then you saw nothing," I said, and handed him another hundred.

"I saw nothing," Mack agreed.

A delivery driver in a brown cap came up the ramp with a tablet. "Sign here, Mack." Then he stared at me. "Wait. Are you the lottery lady from the paper?"

"I'm a lady who likes noodles."

"I bought four cases of water this morning," he said. "I don't know why. I just had a feeling."

"Your feeling is right," I said. "Buy four more."

He grinned like I had handed him a prize. "I'm Brett. If you ever need anything delivered, I'm your guy."

"I'll remember that, Brett."

On the night of the nineteenth, someone knocked on my motel door. Tiffany stood in the hallway in a pink coat, holding her phone.

"Mom says the car broke down, and you owe us for years of room and board."

"You mean the years your mother wore my mother's pearls?"

"They were Mom's—"

"Tiffany." I leaned against the doorframe. "Your mother has twenty-four hours to return the rest of my mother's things. A silver brush. A wedding ring. A recipe box. If they aren't on my doorstep tomorrow, the police get a list."

Her mouth opened and closed. "You can't just order us around. You don't even have a house."

"I have a motel room with a lock on the door," I said. "That's one more thing than I had last week. Twenty-four hours, Tiffany."

"I'll tell her."

"Please do."

The next morning, a cardboard box was sitting outside my door. The brush, the ring, and the recipe box were all inside, along with a note in Gail's handwriting: Sorry for the misunderstanding. I threw the note away and kept the recipe box.

That afternoon, Damon found me on the loading dock. He was holding a bouquet, of course.

"Vera. I saw your name in the paper."

"I'm sure you did."

"I've been thinking about us," he said. "I made a mistake."

"You mean you did the math."

"That's not fair." He stepped closer. "Lily is a child, Vera. She cries when I don't text her back. You were always the strong one. Come home."

Something twisted in my stomach. Vera had loved him, and her body still remembered.

"Your mother called me a thief at a dinner table," I said, "and you let her."

"She made me—"

"Damon?"

The voice behind us was small and wobbly. A cab had pulled up, and Lily climbed out in a white coat, holding a thermos with both hands.

"I brought you soup," she said. Then she saw the flowers. "Who are those for?"

"Lily, this isn't what it looks like—"

"You said you'd never speak to her again!" Her voice cracked. "I gave up everything for you!"

"Lily, please—"

She slapped him. The sound echoed off the loading dock, and eight dockworkers turned around to watch.

Mack handed me a coffee. "Better than TV."

Lily whirled on me, and her sweet mask slipped. "This is your fault!"

"I think you'll find it's his," I said. "He's the one holding the flowers."

She stormed back to the cab, and Damon ran after her. I watched the cab circle the block twice before it stopped.

That evening, a driver in a black car delivered an envelope to my motel. Inside was a check for five thousand dollars, signed by Margaret Lockhart. For your trouble.

On the back, I wrote: I'd like an apology instead. I handed it back to the driver.

Then I sat on the bed and counted the days.

Nine.

My list had one thing left on it, and it wasn't a thing at all. It was a medic named Rhys Calder, who had exactly one paragraph left to live.