Chapter 1

The searing pain of a torn carotid artery felt all too real as I jolted upright in bed, gasping for air.

Cold sweat instantly soaked through my cotton shirt; my hand clutched my throat. Beneath my fingertips, my pulse pounded violently—skin intact, no warm blood gushing, no razor-sharp zombie fangs.

Before I could even recover from the suffocating near-death sensation, a sharp intake of breath came from beside me. My wife, Lena, sat up in the same frantic motion, her hands gripping the sheets, knuckles white.

I turned my head. Sunlight sliced through the blinds across her face—and in her once-gentle brown eyes, the same raw terror and confusion that I felt surged like a storm.

We stared at each other. No questions. In that shared gaze, a chilling understanding passed between us—we had both crawled back from hell with the memories of our past life, to the moment before the nightmare began.

I grabbed the phone from the nightstand. The screen lit up, a stark number slamming into my vision: September 1st.

Exactly seven days until the apocalypse fully broke.

The past life burned in my mind like a branding iron. On day nine of the apocalypse, communication severed, cities turned into meat grinders. My mother-in-law Carol, her son Derek, and his screeching girlfriend had somehow made it to our farm.

Carol wailed outside the iron fence, using tears and family bonds as weapons, even kneeling on broken glass to beg. Against my better judgment, I softened and opened the final door.

That door let in something more poisonous than any zombie.

For just over two weeks, things were calm. Then, on a dark night, Derek stole the weapon cache key I kept on me at all times. When the horde—attracted by the commotion they'd caused—breached the front yard, Carol shoved me off the back wall in the chaos, buying her precious son more time to escape.

I fell into the horde; the stench of rotting jaws swallowed me. In my final seconds, I looked up—and saw Lena at the second-floor window, reaching for me with a desperate scream, until Carol yanked her back by the hair into the darkness.

"This time, don't open the door."

Lena's trembling yet icy voice cut through my memory. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist like a vice, nails nearly drawing blood.

"Never." I stared into her eyes, each word deliberate.

Lena took a deep breath. The fear in her gaze receded, replaced by something sharper, more resolute: "I won't let her set one foot inside our gate. We're going to live—and I want to watch Carol and Derek run out of options."

The bonds of blood had burned to ash in the betrayal of our past life. Now, we were comrades tied by one fate.

"We have to get out of this city apartment—now." I threw off the covers, my mind already racing through the timeline. "We're going back to Montana—the farmhouse my parents left me."

It was the perfect fortress. Far from the main roads, open terrain, the solid two-meter wooden fence intact. More importantly, my parents—old-school farmers who'd lived through the Cold War—had a hoarding instinct that bordered on obsessive. The basement was permanently stocked with diesel, high-yield crop seeds, and enough basic tools to open a hardware store. That would get us through the worst of the initial vacuum.

"List this place today. Mark it down thirty percent—cash only, full payment, must close within three days." I pulled a blank sheet of paper toward me, pen scratching across it. "Once we have the cash, we're hitting military-grade building supplies, freeze-dried rations, antibiotics, and military water purification systems. In seven days, paper money won't even be good for wiping."

Lena didn't hesitate. She grabbed the property deed and ID. "I'll call the agent. You get your parents here."

Her decisiveness steadied me. I grabbed the satellite phone from the drawer and dialed Florida.

In the three seconds it took to connect, my heart nearly burst from my chest.

"Hey! Son! What's with the early morning call?" My father's rough, hearty voice came through, brimming with joy.

Hearing that long-missed voice, my nose stung and my throat tightened. In the past life, snowstorms and comms failure had cut us off completely—it had been one of my deepest regrets.

"Dad, I miss you guys. Book tickets for today—get Mom on the first flight here." I forced down the tremor in my voice, keeping my tone light.

A beat of silence on the other end, then the sound of a scuffle. My mother grabbed the phone, her voice brimming with barely contained excitement: "Is Lena pregnant? Oh my God, I knew that church visit last month would pay off!"

I went along with it, humoring them: "You'll find out when you get here. Don't bring too much luggage—just yourselves. As soon as possible."

I hung up and let out a long breath. The first piece of the puzzle was in place. Once my parents arrived, Mom could take over livestock and greenhouse planting; Dad, with his military engineering background, would be perfect for reinforcing the farmhouse.

I walked to the window and yanked the blinds open.

September sunlight poured over the city. On the distant highway, morning traffic flowed in steady steel currents. Office workers in suits hurried past with coffee, students with backpacks horsed around at the crosswalk.

Everything seemed so peaceful, so prosperous.

None of them knew that in just seven days, this place would become hell on earth. Morality would be crushed by hunger; order would be washed away in blood.

I pulled the blinds shut, cutting off that false peace entirely.

Turning back to the desk, I opened my modified laptop and typed a long string of complex commands, logging into an encrypted channel and onto the dark web.

The brutal lessons of my past life had taught me one thing: pure defense is slow suicide. You have to take control.

The cursor clicked through shadowy pages. Four sets of IV-grade ballistic steel plates, low-light thermal imaging night vision, high-power vehicle-mounted shortwave radios, directional listening devices, micro-beacon transmitters, and two long-range broadcast units.

These gray-market tools had saved countless lives in my past life. This time, I would use them to weave a deadly net.

The numbers in my bank account plummeted, but I didn't blink.

Every dollar spent, every steel plate shipped back to the farm, stacked the odds in our favor. I stared at the green "Order Confirmed" prompt on the screen, a glint of ruthlessness in my eyes.

The countdown had begun. We would forge every remaining minute into ammunition for the end of the world.