Chapter 133: She Came for the Snacks

Edrik drove the paved front road, passing the flooded bridge turn without trying it. Dove watched water running along the gutters from the passenger seat. They had a truck, not a boat, and she wanted to keep the distinction clear.

The warehouse stood on a raised concrete pad behind a chain-link fence. Its public entrance faced the road at the top of a shallow ramp. Around the far side, loading shutters opened onto a roofed dock above the lower yard, with the drainage channel and bridge beyond it. Dove could see brown water breaking across the bridge rails through the fence.

"Front door looks lovely," she said. "Let’s be deeply boring and use it."

Edrik parked on the high side beside the front ramp. Thorne unloaded their handcart while Dove climbed out. A deer beastman came from the office and stopped so suddenly his keys hit the doorframe. Apparently he hadn’t expected a woman to be inspecting his warehouse today.

"You’re a woman," he said, looking from her blonde ears to the fitted shirt beneath her open coat.

"That’ll save us a very awkward conversation later. Are you the one selling a share of the cold stock?"

The caretaker introduced himself, flustered. The business owner had left him in charge before the roads closed, and the same cook at the freight yard could confirm his arrangement. Dove sent Edrik to check by the caretaker’s working radio before she touched anything. She liked free goods. She liked having to defend them from a second owner considerably less.

Thorne returned and put a hand at her waist when the caretaker stepped closer. The man’s nostrils flared, and he stopped looking at the clipboard. Dove moved it between them.

"Stock first. Whatever you’re thinking about my neck can wait until I’m somewhere else."

The man flushed, but showed her the rooms. Dry cartons filled the left half of the warehouse. A block of insulated walls held the cold room on the right, and a wide aisle led between them to the rear loading shutter. The diesel generator stood outside under a roof, its exhaust clear of the building. It sounded like something shaking nails in a can.

Edrik returned with the cook’s confirmation. Dove agreed to help clear the cold room to the front ramp in exchange for one quarter of the usable food they recovered. Dry goods cost a separate share of labor, so she negotiated those too. They would move the caretaker’s dry cartons uphill; she would get the listed damaged-box stock whose inner packages were still sound.

She read the list herself. Chocolate snack cakes, coffee, crackers, work shirts, and cleaning supplies. Finally, a man who understood how to tempt her without bringing jewelry.

The caretaker had been recording the cold room’s temperature, and it was still running cold when they entered. Dove checked dates and packaging with him, marking questionable containers to leave out. She could sort stock and lift manageable boxes. She couldn’t promise every sealed tub was safe because Sprout had put a shiny dot on her map.

"No temperature miracles?" she asked it privately.

"No food repair or cold storage benefit is included."

"Lovely. A useful answer with no mention of my husbands’ pants. Keep practicing."

The first load held sealed chicken trays and prepared vegetables. They stayed in the cold room until the path was clear. Thorne and Edrik shifted the dry cartons from the center aisle while Dove stacked empty carriers near the front door. She found a flat dolly behind an office partition and asked the caretaker before using it.

Her task was already finished, but Thorne needed shirts without holes and she wanted coffee worth getting out of bed for. She searched the approved office shelves while her men moved the heavier load. Sprout could stop counting whenever it liked; she wasn’t done looking.

Two sealed cartons of coffee had split outer boxes but intact inner packs. A bundle of work shirts had fallen behind a desk. Dove touched the smaller bundles and stored them separately, then sat on the office step with water while the effort passed. Thorne carried the rest to the cart without asking why she hadn’t swallowed the whole shelf into her space.

"Aren’t you going to tell me to leave something?" she asked him.

He looked at the stacked shirts. "Are you going to listen?"

"Eventually. You could make a day of it."

His laugh was worth the interruption from Sprout. She closed the notice and gave him a shirt to hold against his shoulders. Dark green, broad enough across the chest, and not a tear in either sleeve. He looked unfairly good in something that wasn’t even on him yet.

Edrik passed behind them carrying two cartons. "Take it. You’ve been looking at him like that for a full minute."

"And you counted? Find a hobby."

"I had one. You married it."

She laughed hard enough to lean against Thorne, who looked pleased with the shirt and much more pleased with her. Edrik set the cartons down and offered her a sealed snack cake from their approved share.

Dove took it, then broke it into three pieces. Both men protested that she’d wanted it, and both opened their mouths when she held out their portions. Pathetic creatures. She intended to keep them.

They went back to work with the taste of chocolate still in her mouth. The cart held dry goods under its cover. The food carrier waited at the front. Thorne checked the loading shutter when the caretaker tried to raise it farther for the next crate.

A wheel caught in its bent guide, leaving the shutter stuck halfway down. Dry cartons waited in the roofed dock recess beyond it. The caretaker reached for the control again, but Edrik stopped him.

Outside, the generator coughed twice and fell quiet. The cold-room fan slowed above Dove’s head. Through the low gap under the shutter, she could see water spreading across the rear yard toward the loading pad, and their largest food crate wouldn’t fit through the narrow front office doorway either.