Chapter Three

The courtroom corridor after the divorce seemed to shut out the chill of the outside world, but my heart was calmer than the snow of deep winter. Only seven days remained until that blood-soaked catastrophe. In those seven days, I had to outrun death.

I walked straight into my office on the top floor of the tech park. Valerie Chen, sitting behind her desk, was scrutinizing me with the eyes of a predator. She was a well-known powerhouse in Silicon Valley, and the biggest competitor to my five-million-dollar tech company.

"Ethan, you've just gone through a miserable divorce, what brings you here to talk to me?" Her long, slender fingers tapped on the table, her expression cold.

"No beating around the bush, Valerie." I threw a draft equity transfer agreement in front of her. "A five-million-dollar company, three million, deal now, transfer immediately."

Valerie was stunned. She looked at me like I was crazy, her red lips slightly parted: "Are you serious? If it's just to spite Emily or vent your emotions, this kind of cheap sale isn't very clever. It's practically charity."

"I don't have time for a business debate with you." I stared into her ambitious eyes, a cold smile playing on my lips. "Either accept, or I'll go ask your most hated rival in a minute. Decide in ten seconds, or I'm leaving immediately."

She looked at me, a flicker of surprise in her eyes, but faced with such a huge profit, this hesitation lasted only five seconds.

"Although I don't know what you're really up to, a sucker like you is definitely worth signing."

The notification sounded as the funds arrived, and together with my original savings, I now had three and a half million dollars. In the week before the apocalypse, this was my bargaining chip for survival.

After leaving the company, I didn't even go back to my old home, driving straight north.

For the next five days, I was like a paranoid madman, not even sleeping a wink. I led the top construction team from the local building company to that remote hunting lodge in Montana.

"Build this into a true fortress," I said, tossing a thick stack of blueprints in front of the boss. "Bulletproof reinforced concrete walls, deep underground bunkers, a self-powered solar system, an external high-voltage power grid, a rainwater filtration and recycling system, a closed greenhouse, and at least five 20-square-meter underground cold storage rooms. Five days? Can you do it?"

The boss looked at me like I was a delusional fantasist: "Young man, this is deep in the mountains! And you want bulletproof facilities? This budget…"

"One million two hundred thousand," I transferred four hundred thousand as a deposit. "This is the deposit; the remaining eight hundred thousand will be transferred immediately upon successful inspection."

At that moment, the doubt in the boss's eyes was instantly replaced by greed. Without hesitation, he mobilized hundreds of workers from three neighboring states overnight, working in three shifts, even dismantling the hunting lodge down to its skeleton before quickly reconstructing it with reinforced concrete.

While construction was underway, my procurement of supplies was like a terrifying tidal wave of moving.

I rented two heavy trucks, one towing a refrigerated container, the other loaded with my hopes for survival, built with money. Antibiotics, various vitamins, piles of seeds, DJI drones capable of remote surveying, state-of-the-art Starlink terminals, military rations, bottled mineral water… I even bought the entire slaughterhouse inventory: thirty pigs, forty sheep, and fifteen cows.

Alone in the cold warehouse, I moved tons of supplies. The heavy boxes squeezed my lungs, and the blood from my fingers mingled with the packaging paper. At that moment, I felt I wasn't just moving things, but building the foundation for my rebirth.

When the dawn of the fifth day illuminated the valley, the hunting lodge had vanished completely. In its place stood a true fortress. A

five-meter-high reinforced wall closed in, surrounded by a deadly high-voltage electric fence; bulletproof steel doors with iris recognition locked off any spying; deep well pumps hummed, drawing pure groundwater into the interior.

The night the workers left, the entire valley returned to deathly silence. I began the final work alone. All the supplies from the two large trucks had to be unloaded into the basement and cold storage via that hidden sliding passage. I moved tirelessly, the white steam from the freezer blurring my vision, the muscle aches replaced by numbness.

Until the last box of bullets was pushed into the gun rack, the first rays of sunlight pierced through the dense coniferous forest, illuminating the barbed wire. Exhausted, I collapsed onto the floor, surrounded by my supplies—enough to sustain me through the long, bitterly cold years.

I closed my eyes, breathing in the slightly damp mountain air. Emily and Julian should be lying in that so-called luxury villa now, mocking me, this "loser" driven from the city, huddled in a dilapidated house.

Enjoy it, it's your last moment of peace.

Because death… is already waiting at the door.