Chapter 1 – Scene 1 – Draft 3
“I can’t let you do that,” she says, drawing a firm line beyond which he may not pass.
Noah is peering at the retail countertop between them. His eyes narrow at her denial. She knows he knows better.
“The loading dock is closed on Sundays.” She defends the arbitrary line she has drawn with a convenient fact.
The door chime rings and the sound of a passing half-ton rushes in.
“I’m alone today,” she says. “If I’m back there supervising you on the loading dock,”—she jams a thumb over her shoulder—“there is no one to watch the store.”
Footsteps approach, but she can’t see around him. He’s too big. His shoulders, too broad.
“It’s supposed to start raining tomorrow,” Noah objects, gently. His eyes flick up and return immediately to the counter. “You don’t need to supervise me. Ollie wouldn’t mind.”
“No, sir, I would not.” Ollie steps around Noah laying a pudgy hand on his shoulder. “I got this, Angel.”
Her boss smiles and beckons Noah into the back.
The door opens again and Ollie’s wife appears. Her heels click on the tiles.
“Ollie wants to make sure the roof drains are clear before the rain starts.” She explains their unexpected Sunday visit so Angel doesn’t feel spied on. “How are you doing today, hun?”
Angel has been back for a week. Back in Cassandra Point. Back from coastal California—where her marriage broke apart on the rocks. Back to her home in coastal Alaska, where she met the dentist when he first stepped ashore as a tourist.
She’s even back in the store where she worked as a teenager. Back with Ollie and Karen—the unofficial “step parents” who practically raised her.
“Is that Noah’s truck?” Karen nods at a video screen showing the store’s loading dock. Then she turns to Angel and her eyes sparkle like a meddling sister. “I’ll watch the front.”
“No.” Angel stabs a finger at Karen.
“G’won,” Karen waves the finger away, stepping behind the counter to approach the till. “I bet he missed you.”
“Well …” Angel starts a lie she chooses not to finish. Then says: “He’s probably seeing someone.”
But a peek at Karen tells her he’s not.
“I’ve seen him around with women since you left,” Karen reports. “But he never looked at them the way he looked at you.”
Angel feels herself blush a little. But it’s an inside blush, one that won’t reach her skin.
“We were never”—her brain searches for the right words to give her mouth to speak—“that way”—is all it comes up with.
“Go,” Karen provides a gentle push to give Angel momentum. “Just visit with him. Tell him I sent you to supervise, if you want to.”
Chapter 1 – Scene 2 – Draft 3
The ceiling hatch is open and she can hear Ollie’s footsteps thumping on the roof. The overhead door to the loading dock is open, too. Through it she sees distant rain clouds boiling over the Pacific. Noah is moving boxes from a pallet to the edge of the loading dock. Below, on the ground, his three-quarter ton truck looks small. Inadequate.
He sees her coming but keeps working. She knows he’s not ignoring her. He’s just letting her pick the topic.
“She thinks we should”—her fingers curl to make air quotes—“get back together.”
A small smirk lifts the corners of his lips. He hops down from the ledge into the box of his truck. It bounces on its springs under his solid frame.
“People believe what they want to believe,” he says, not for the first time, as he slides the first box off of the edge and carries it to the front of the bed. “It is good to see you though,” he confesses, “much as you’d probably rather not be back.”
He was right. She would rather not be back. But she also couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Life away from Cassandra Point was amazing, for a while. But life away from Noah? She realizes she probably missed him a little, too.
“Are you staying long?” His eyes are down, focussed on his task. She remembers how this bothered her before, why he was never in the running. He talks to her, and he seems happy to be around her, but he doesn’t love to look at her.
“I don’t know.” She is as truthful with him as she would be with her sister. “I haven’t made any decisions.”
“You’re staying with your sister?”
She nods, aware that he surely knew that answer before asking.
“You’re welcome to the guest house,” he offers. “You know where the keys are if you need some space. Alarm codes haven’t changed. Don’t be afraid to help yourself.”
A somber pang of guilt rings through her like a church bell.
“Your father,” she blurts out. “Did you get our flowers?”
“I did,” he glances at her briefly, eyes serious and sincere. “That was kind of you, being it happened on your honeymoon and all.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, imagining his loss, guessing at his pain. Realizing, again, that he’s probably alone now.
He continues loading, turning the cardboard to fill the truck’s box edge to edge, so the load doesn’t shift on the road up the mountain.
She hears Ollie’s feet ringing on the metal ladder and then the hatch slams shut behind him. He fiddles with the padlock, swears, fiddles some more, and then swears a second time.
“Got enough filters?” Ollie joins them at the loading dock just as Noah lifts the last box.
For the first time Angel notices the boxes. Dozens of them. Filters of every sort. Engine filters. HVAC filters. Water filters. Filters for respirators and filters for things she’s never heard of.
“Should do for a while,” Noah says.
“For a decade or two,” Ollie jibes.
Noah shrugs. He turns to consider the dark clouds churning ahead of his truck, out on the western horizon.
“Well if the end ever does come,” Ollie jokes, “I hope you’ll count me as a friend.” He laughs.
Noah does not laugh. He never laughs at prepper jokes. That, too, is a red flag for Angel, although she’s never understood exactly why.
Noah’s not like weirdos in the movies or the lunatics on social media. His father was a prepper who raised a prepper son. Noah didn’t preach about it. And he doesn’t carry a gun.
Might as well be prepared, he told her the one time she asked about it. Things will go sideways eventually.
“Something on your mind?” she asks, trying to smooth over the crudeness of Ollie’s thoughtless tongue.
“Those clouds gonna drown us?” Ollie jumps in, trampling on her good intentions.
Noah shakes his head. “If water gets us up here, Ollie, it won’t be coming from the clouds.”
Ollie laughs and slaps him on the back.
“Trust me,” he says. “If the water rises, the whole town’ll be marching two by two up to your place, Noah.” Ollie is proud of his dad-joke. “We’ll ride out the flood on an ark made of filters.”
Noah’s still uncomfortable with the Noah jokes, too, she sees, judging by the small sag of his shoulders.
“We should go for coffee,” she suggests, firmly changing the subject. Then she remembers that it’s Sunday and she has the store alone.
“Do you still have my number?” he asks.
“Text me,” she says. “So I have it for sure.”
As he and Ollie say goodbye, it dawns on her that she expected him to still have her number, although she might not still have his.
She says goodbye and heads for the front in search of her phone. She’s trying to remember if she’s changed numbers. She’s had a few new phones since then.
Where is my phone?
She reaches under the till for her purse and opens it. An electronic knock knock sounds from behind her.
She recalls putting it down on the back counter, behind the till. She turns to find it sitting face down beside a price gun she had been loading with a roll of stickers when Noah walked in earlier.
I’ll be back down Wednesday, says a message from an unrecognized number. Good to see you.
“So?” Karen is eager for the tea.
“So …” Angel ponders for a moment. “I don’t think he’s changed a bit.”
Karen looks puzzled. “Why would he?”
“Toward me … I mean.”
“Ah.” Karen nods.
Angel is pleased she understands.
“You expected him to be bitter.”
“Maybe a little,” Angel confesses aloud. Maybe a lot, she keeps to herself.
“Knowing he was Plan B, you mean?”
Those words jolt Angel. “Noah was never Plan B,” she says. He was never even in the plan. Never that plan, anyway.
Karen looks puzzled again. “Then why would he be bitter?”
Angel can’t explain. She’s not sure why her brain picked that word. But, yeah. She expected him to feel something about her running off and getting married.
Now she wonders if the fact that he didn’t shouldn’t be another red flag.
Chapter 1 – Scene 3 – Draft 3
It was a rough few months for Noah. First he lost his friend. Then he lost his father.
Being alone was not new. He’d been all over the Alaskan wilderness alone: hunting, trapping, fishing. He spent weeks at a time on his own surveilling the Taliban in the mountains of Pakistan.
He was accustomed to loneliness. But it was nice having a friend.
With Angel gone to California, life got simpler. He spent much less time in town. So there were no social things to worry about.
And with his father gone he got to make all of the decisions. So the bunker project finally made sense.
He never liked the idea of allowing outsiders past the bulkhead. He knew that once they were inside they would take control. Change everything.
So the first thing he did was put big red X through that nonsense.
He glances at his phone. Message read. 10:52.
It was nice seeing her again. If she was sticking around, he might have to make room for one more in the bunker.
No.
If Angel came, she wouldn’t come alone. She’d bring the whole damn town with her.
No.
It would be nice to have someone to talk to. It might be years before he could leave the shelter.
But no.
She’d never come alone. Ollie and Karen would tag along. Her bitchy sister with her little girls.
Angel would save the world if she could. Dogs, too, if she picked up any strays.
A week later they’d form a council and vote him off of his own island.
Best to stick with the plan.
Noah finishes sorting the filters and packs them away in airtight containers.
He makes his way down three flights of stairs to the loading dock and seals the bulkhead behind him. Then he turns toward the outside doors where his empty truck awaits him.
The gravel road down to the house is short, just long enough to get another peek at the storm building in the west. Is it east of the Aleutian Islands or over them?
He makes a sandwich. Pours a glass of water. Eats at his desk.
The wall opposite has six screens. CNN is talking about Trump. Fox is, too.
Neither are talking about the storm. Nobody has noticed it yet.
He checks the seismic data. Not a twitch.
His watch buzzes. New messages. Nothing from Harlan. Maybe there is nothing to notice.
It doesn’t feel like it, though. Big storms aren’t common at this time of year.
He knows he has time to warn people. And he knows they won’t believe him if he does.
Angel might. But no one else would. Not in Cassandra Point.
After lunch he runs numbers.
His father allowed for twelve people and a maximum of twenty years.
He runs reconciliation reports to update his inventory numbers. Then he runs the model.
It says: yes. High probability for the first five years. The numbers tick down year by year after that but everything stays within acceptable parameters.
The problem with twelve isn’t resources. It’s politics.
He is not his father. He won’t use a gun. He won’t take prisoners.
But he knows people. He knows how they behave.
They don’t follow rules. They don’t act logically. They can’t stay disciplined long enough.
A few weeks—a few months, tops. They will start to chafe. To weaken. To crumble. They will give up the future in favour of the now.
Decades of work, started by his grandfather, carried on by his father, passed on to him, will be tossed aside one silly whim, one self-serving compromise at a time.
And when he stands up to their foolishness, when he reminds them that three generations of men have calculated every possible outcome … they will resent it.
No.
He is one vote.
If there are two (or more) of them, generations of preparation will have been wasted.
One friend. Only one.
Any more would be suicide.
He checks his phone.
Working wed. Lunch ok?
Perfect, he replies. Let me know when. I’ll pick you up.
He considers the forecast and remembers the storm. He wonders again if it is related.
He checks the radar. It’s a big system east of Eareckson. It’s drifting east, toward his island.
Bring an umbrella, he warns. She responds with an emoji.
The red heart warms him. It’s not yellow. It’s not blue.
He remembers her first :o)
He’d never seen one before.
What is this? “:o)” he emailed back, assuming it was a typo.
It’s a smile, she replied. Turn it sideways.
He thought about that email for a week. He wondered what it meant. He wondered if he should :o) back. He wondered if they were becoming friends.