Chapter 1

When the zombie apocalypse hit, my girlfriend called me weak and hypocritical. She said only the strong deserved to survive, then handed the map of the base I had spent two years building to a warlord and watched me bleed out in the dirt.

Then I opened my eyes and woke up four months earlier.

The warlord had not arrived yet.  

I did not expose her. I did not beg her to stay. I quietly reinforced the walls, emptied the warehouse, and dug traps beyond the fence.

She passed the intel like before. She opened the gate like before. She thought she would win again, and she thought I would be softhearted again.

She only realized the truth after leading them into the warehouse and finding an empty cage.

She dropped to her knees in the mud, begging the warlord to take her with him. But the strong man she chose kicked her off the truck and left her for the dead.

At last, she tasted the rule she worshipped.

————

The moment the iron gate was rammed open, I knew this factory was lost.

The blast tore a hole in the outer wall, and steel nails and broken bricks swept into the workshop like a hard wind. A second explosion followed, ripping away the steel plates we had welded into place.

Flames ran along the spilled engine oil, casting broken shadows across the floor. The first things forcing their way through the breach were the zombies being driven forward. Behind them came Marcus Kane’s convoy, their gun barrels lined up in neat rows like a wall of black iron pressing in.

This place had once been an abandoned auto parts factory on the outskirts of town.

A few months into the apocalypse, we made it our home. At our peak, there were a hundred and six of us here—more than a dozen children, seven elderly people, and always a few wounded.

We had survived this long on rules, on shifts, and on the little food and water we’d managed to stockpile.

But we forgot something. In the apocalypse, the most dangerous thing isn’t the zombies. It’s people.

Before the world fell apart, Marcus and his men had been armed smugglers running the port district, dealing in guns and contraband. When the outbreak began, they were the first to seize the police station and warehouses, locking down trucks and firearms. After that, they swallowed one survivor camp after another under the name of “protection fees.” If you handed over food, guns, and people, you got to live. If you didn’t, you died. They didn’t care about rules. They only believed in power and profit.

“Inner gate! Fall back to the inner gate!” Ryan shouted into the radio.

His left leg had been injured two weeks ago, but he still braced a machine gun at the mouth of the corridor and forced the first wave back by sheer firepower.

I raised my rifle and fired in controlled bursts, each shot punching through a zombie skull. But for every one that dropped, more kept coming.

Worse still were the men behind them. They didn’t charge. They didn’t scream. They simply used rockets and breaching tubes to tear apart our cover, then pinned us down with rifle fire.

I swapped magazines as I retreated, my throat raw from smoke. “Get the kids into the office first! All wounded fall back!”

Behind me, people were lifting stretchers, dragging crates, and holding corners with pistols.

We weren’t soldiers, but we weren’t useless either.

We had divided the work long ago. Some handled water purification. Some repaired generators. Some patrolled. Some worked medical. Some went out to scavenge.

When I reached the corner, I saw Miller hurl the last two Molotovs at the entrance. Fire leapt up at once, turning into a wall.

He didn’t even look back. He only shouted at me, “The escape route is at the side door! Take them and go!”

I wanted to drag him back, but the corridor was already packed with zombies.

A second later, they swarmed him, and the firelight swallowed his shadow whole.

I clenched my teeth and turned for the side door.

The escape route ran through the drainage ditch behind it, my last fallback. If we could crawl through two hundred meters of it, we’d reach the woods. At the very least, the seed group might survive.

At the side door, Harry was pulling down the iron shutter with shaking hands. When he saw me coming, there was no hesitation in his eyes.

“Go!” he shouted. “Don’t look back!”

“Get over here!” I roared.

Harry shook his head, as if he’d made peace with it long ago. The shutter slammed down, leaving him on the other side.

My steps faltered. Something drove straight through my chest.

But I kept running, because I knew stopping would only make his death meaningless.

The mouth of the drainage ditch was only a few yards away. People at the edge were lowering children down into it.

Ryan limped after me, his face black with ash. His machine gun was empty, so he raised a pistol instead and covered my back.

I covered Ryan as he climbed down first. Once he was clear, I lifted my foot to jump into the ditch—

And then a blinding searchlight hit.

The beam turned the ditch entrance bright as day.

Behind it stood several modified armored trucks, their guns all aimed in a single line.

A man’s voice drifted through the wind and fire, calm and unhurried.

“Ethan Cole.”

Marcus Kane.

I had never met him in person, but I knew his rules: hand over your food, your guns, and your people. Refuse, and you die.

We had stayed out of his territory as long as we could.

Not long enough.

In the center of the searchlight, two men dragged out a woman. Her hands looked bound, her shoulders gripped tight.

The moment I saw her face, my breathing stopped.

Vanessa Hart.

I thought she was dead.

Two years ago, when the apocalypse first hit, we ran out of the city together. We survived the first lockdown together. We split half a bottle of water in the back room of a supermarket together.

Later, I decided to gather people and build this base. Then, four months ago, after a fight, she stormed out. I chased after her and searched for hours. All I found was her backpack and a pool of blood.

And now here she was. Alive. In Marcus’s hands.

“Drop your gun,” Marcus said. “Throw it over. Fire once, and I shoot her first.”

My grip tightened around the rifle.

Then I slowly lowered the barrel and set the weapon on the ground.

Marcus chuckled. “That’s better.”

The gunshot came a second later.

The bullet hit my chest. My body jerked backward, and my knees slammed into the dirt.

I looked up at Vanessa, wanting to tell her it would be okay.

But she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t struggling. The man gripping her shoulder let go, and she pulled free with an easy motion, smooth as if she had practiced it.

Then she walked toward me.

Slowly. Calmly.

She even turned her head to glance at the fire spreading through the plant, as if she were judging the damage.

That was when I understood.

She had never been a hostage.

No wonder our base had fallen so easily.

She had been directing them from the start.

Ryan, who had already escaped down the drainage ditch, heard the shot and climbed back out. The moment he saw the scene in front of him, he understood everything. With a furious roar, he raised his gun—

And a bullet tore into his head.

He dropped where he stood and didn’t move again.

Marcus’s men stepped past us and stormed into the compound, heading straight for the warehouse, the cold storage, the generator room.

They moved with the confidence of men who had done this before. Some tossed our canned food into the trucks crate by crate. Some ripped the fuel lines from the generator. Some dragged out wounded survivors who were still alive, looking them over like merchandise.

The last resistance in the factory was crushed almost immediately. The dull thud of rifle butts striking flesh came one after another.

I tried to stand, but I had no strength left. All I could do was look up at Vanessa.

“Why…”

Vanessa let out a soft sigh. “Because of your hypocrisy.”

I stared at her, not understanding.

“Your hypocrisy was always going to get us all killed, Ethan,” she said. “This is the apocalypse. The strong prey on the weak. Survival belongs to the fittest. That’s the law of this world—not whatever fantasy you were playing at, building a base and pretending you could save a bunch of useless people.”

I wanted to argue.

The people who had stood in front tonight had repaired walls, kept watch, hauled water, moved supplies. When things went bad, they had stepped forward and risked their lives.

They weren’t useless. They had every right to survive.

Vanessa’s tone stayed calm. “I’ve been telling you for two years to stop wasting yourself on those people, but you never listened. With our abilities, we could have survived much better in this world. Instead, you insisted on feeding a bunch of parasites.”

I suddenly wanted to ask her what ability she thought she had.

Since the apocalypse began, I was the one who found supplies. I was the one who killed zombies. She had done nothing. She had only stood beside me.

The only “ability” she had was selling out the base in exchange for Marcus’s resources.

When I said nothing, Vanessa seemed to think I was finally listening.

“Ethan, you have a savior complex,” she said. “You’re a moral exhibitionist. You want to look noble and kind, but you never once thought about me.”

My vision was darkening by the second.

I had always saved people within my limits. I had never acted recklessly, and I had never forced Vanessa into anything.

She had never lacked for supplies because of me.

Suddenly, I almost wanted to laugh.

Because at last, I saw her clearly.

“You don’t hate that I save people,” I forced out. “You hate that I give things to anyone but you… As long as it isn’t all yours, you think you’re losing.”

Vanessa sighed, as if giving up on educating me. “See? You’re still that stubborn. You never listen.”

Bootsteps crunched closer over broken stone.

Marcus stepped into the light and looked down at me, then at Vanessa, as if confirming the final payment on a deal.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Load up and move. Don’t leave loose ends.”

Vanessa stepped aside, like she was making room for an execution.

Then she added quietly, “In your next life, don’t be such an idiot.”

Marcus raised his gun at me.

One shot.

I collapsed into the mud.

The searchlight in my vision became a swaying blur of white. The fire stretched, shrank, stretched again.

Somewhere far away, I heard someone shouting my name, like through a thick wall.

The voice grew fainter.

And then—

I snapped awake.

I was lying on the old sofa in the factory office, its worn cushions sunken beneath me. There was no gunshot wound in my chest. No blood. Outside the window, there was no fire, no screaming—only the evening wind slipping through a crack in the glass, carrying a faint chill.

A shattered cup sat on the table. The water on the floor was still fresh.

The door was still swaying lightly, as if it had just been slammed shut.

Vanessa had only just left.

I sat up and pressed a hand to my chest. It was whole, but I could still feel the phantom impact of the bullet. I stared at the door, my fingers slowly curling into a fist.

She hadn’t “disappeared” yet.

She hadn’t brought them back yet.

From this moment on, everything could still be changed.