Ten Days to Live

I woke up choking on the phantom sensation of my own throat being torn open.

In the pitch black, I bolted upright. My hand shot toward the nightstand, clawing for my pistol, but gripped empty air. Only then did the familiar ceiling of my bedroom come into focus.

The AC was still humming. The phone screen glowed on the mattress, its date slamming into my eyes like a sledgehammer—October 3rd.

Ten days. That was all the time left before the zombie horde completely swallowed this sector of the city.

In my past life, it was on the night of the tenth day that Ryan Mercer knocked on my door and lured me out.

He claimed a military convoy was stationed at the intersection and needed someone with my engineering background to help fortify the barricades.

I believed him.

Five minutes later, a mob of scavengers cut off my retreat, and a swarm of infected surged out of the convenience store's back alley. I was shoved onto the asphalt, left to rot, watching through the dust as Ryan jumped into my truck and roared away.

This time, he dies first.

I threw my legs over the bed, skipped brushing my teeth, and booted up my laptop.

My retirement account, outstanding contracting invoices, tool rental deposits, my F-150, and the heavy-duty trailer—anything that had value, I liquidated and threw onto the market.

Stocks, crypto, small-scale engineering funds—I dumped them all in one massive fire sale.

By 8:00 AM, I had maxed out every credit line I owned and slammed my truck into park at the construction supply warehouse.

"What the hell do you need this much cold-rolled steel plate for?" the warehouse manager muttered, frowning at my manifest.

"Reinforcing a property," I said, slapping my black card onto the counter. "Load it today. Cash, plus a twenty percent rush fee."

He stared at me for two seconds, then spun around and started barking orders at his crew.

Steel plates, expansion bolts, heavy-duty door hinges, welding rods, barbed wire, industrial padlocks, two diesel generators, four thousand-liter water bladders, fuel drums, power inverters, backup batteries, hemostatic agents, suture kits, antiseptics, canned goods, ration bars, a crossbow, bolts, a framing nailer, coils of nails, and heavy-duty toolboxes.

I checked them off one by one against the mental ledger I had burned into my brain before dying.

This wasn't about surviving in comfort. It was about turning a two-story suburban house into a fully operational, long-term killing fortress.

Before noon, I swept through pharmacies and outdoor supply stores to lock down the rest.

Tourniquets, broad-spectrum antibiotics, gauze, water purification tablets, batteries, headlamps, tactical radios, and high-powered binoculars.

The clerk asked if I wanted to sign up for a rewards program; I ignored him and cleared out the entire shelf.

When I pulled back onto Oak Street, the neighborhood was as dead-silent and mundane as ever.

Kids were riding bikes, lawn sprinklers were turning, and my neighbor Beth waved at me, holding a mug of coffee.

She had no idea that in three days, her husband would bite her nose off in their garage, or that in five days, she would be trapped in her own laundry room, starving to death in the dark.

I didn't wave back. I backed the truck straight down my driveway and went to work.

First up: ground floor lockdown.

I reinforced the interior sides of every street-facing window in the living room, dining area, and kitchen with solid steel plating. On the outside, I left the blinds and glass intact. From the street, everything looked normal.

I swapped the front door out for a solid-core fire door, anchoring massive steel bolts deep into the framing.

The back door got double heavy-duty crossbars, and I rigged tripwires and noise-makers beneath the patio porch.

The garage rolling door was the weakest link. I welded angle iron to create an interior brace, then fabricated a rapid-locking steel mesh gate directly behind it. If something managed to smash through the outer door, they’d have to bleed out on the mesh before getting inside.

By mid-afternoon, I climbed onto the roof, constructing the framework for a reinforced observation nest. I laid down non-slip boards and set up foldable concealment screens.

From up here, I had a clear line of sight to the corner convenience store, Ryan’s front yard, and the main artery road past the church steeple.

I zoned the garage into three distinct sectors: the armory, the fuel depot, and the workbench.

The second-floor master bedroom became the Command Center, housing my monitors, radios, tactical maps, and supply ledger.

The backyard was my primary kill zone. I ran three tiers of barbed wire along the interior of the wooden fence, using old furniture and garden stakes to create a bottleneck funnel. I left a single, highly specific safe path that only I knew, flanked by hidden spike boards and pressure-triggered nail guns.

By dusk, my arms were shaking with fatigue, and my eyes burned from the welding fumes—but the house was finally coming together.

I test-fired the generators. Perfect. They could independently power my tactical lighting, electric water heater, and a small deep-freeze.

The four water bladders were routed directly into a rainwater collection grid with a secondary filtration system.

I logged every food item by expiration date and caloric value, sorted the medical gear by trauma priority, and measured the fuel down to the exact liter.

In my past life, I died because I trusted people. In this life, I only trust steel plates, deadbolts, and inventory numbers.

At 9:00 PM, an unfamiliar pickup truck pulled up outside Ryan's house.

Standing behind the partially fortified observation slit on the second floor, I spotted Ryan. He was wearing his cheap blazer, talking to two men at the edge of his driveway. He dragged on a cigarette, twice gesturing with his chin toward my property.

The distance was too great to hear him, but I read his body language perfectly—he pointed at my windows, my garage, and my backyard.

He was already scoping out my house.

At 10:20 PM, a woman’s shriek ripped through the far end of the block.

It wasn't a domestic dispute. It was a guttural, lung-tearing scream of pure terror.

Then came the sickening crunch of a car impact, followed by a cascade of shattering glass. In the distance, police sirens began to wail.

Almost instantly, a chain reaction of noise erupted across the neighborhood—voices shouting for help, engines roaring as drivers slammed on the gas, and dogs barking frantically in the dark.

The channels on my tactical radio remained dead silent, but it didn't matter. I knew exactly what this meant.

The first infection event was hitting early.

After tonight, this street would never be the same again.