Chapter 1

I have a portal connecting my world to the apocalypse.

Three years ago, a girl stumbled out of it. She said she had fallen in love with me and wanted to be my wife.

But it wasn't until she charged back through that door with her real man and an army that I realized... these past three years had been nothing but a lie.

Chapter 1

"No!"

I bolted upright in bed, gasping violently for air.

It felt as if a handful of crushed glass had been shoved into my chest; even my breath tasted of blood. Cold sweat had already soaked through my T-shirt, clinging wetly to my spine.

Even though I was awake, the hellish landscapes from my nightmare were still burned into my retinas.

Old Tom's severed head, hanging from a telegraph pole like a shredded football, was staring dead at me with unblinking eyes.

Mrs. Mary's heart-wrenching screams seemed to still echo in my eardrums. Her beautiful blonde curls, matted with blood, were pressed into the mud as three hideous wasteland soldiers violated her.

The main street of Red River Town, which I had patrolled countless times, was paved with severed limbs and guts. My familiar neighbors lay strewn across pools of blood.

And in the center of that grisly tableau lay my corpse.

A rusty combat knife buried deep in my chest.

Elena's tactical boot was pressing brutally down on my cheek.

She was laughing maniacally from above, commanding the wasteland army that swarmed out of the portal like a plague of locusts.

It was me. This apocalyptic hellscape was crafted entirely by my own damned, foolish hands.

With trembling hands, I grabbed the old-fashioned alarm clock off the nightstand. Its eerie green luminescent hands ticked in the darkness.

3:47 AM, October 24, 2024.

Exactly seven days before Red River Town becomes a living hell.

My hands were still shaking as I pulled out a Marlboro and lit it. The harsh smoke filled my lungs. The nicotine barely suppressed the manic throbbing in my veins, allowing me to gather my thoughts before I lost my mind completely.

Three years ago, in the dark basement of this old house, I discovered a spatial rift glowing with a bizarre, faint light.

That was where Elena tumbled out and fell before me.

"Please, save me..."

When we first met, she clung desperately to my arm, her sapphire eyes brimming with helpless tears.

She told me she came from a parallel world destroyed by nuclear war. It was a wasteland overrun by mutant monsters, and I was her only lifeline in an endless sea of despair.

As it turned out, five years of a comfortable sheriff's life in rural Texas hadn't just rusted my marksmanship; it had rotted my brain.

A 35-year-old, persistently lonely ex-Army Ranger, faced with a gorgeous woman possessing an angel's face and a devil's body who relied completely on him—it tragically triggered my hero complex.

Like a foolish medieval knight, I believed every single word she spun.

I used the combat medicinal skills I learned in the Rangers to stitch up her wounds; I leveraged my authority as sheriff to procure controlled antibiotics for her infections; I even tapped into my military connections, operating on the fringes of the law, bringing in massive quantities of military supplies to dump into that godforsaken wasteland.

For three whole years, I labored like a tireless worker ant.

High-concentration antibiotics, C4 plastic explosives, entire crates of MREs, water purification tablets, gas masks... Whatever she wanted, if I could get it, she had it.

And what was Elena's return on my investment?

Every few days, she would cross through, wrapping her arms around my neck like a water snake, staring at me with those innocent blue eyes.

Her voice was sweet enough to melt steel: "Luke, we owe it all to you. The kids in the refugee camp got to eat a full meal today. Everyone says you're a true savior."

It wasn't until my previous life ended, when that rusty combat knife pierced my heart, that my absurd savior dream popped like a soap bubble.

"Hahaha! You stupid pig!"

In my memory, Elena stepped on my corpse, her exquisite face twisted with pure venom and mockery:

"Did you really think a woman like me, who's seen enough corpses in the wasteland to last a lifetime, would actually fall for a soft, backwater sheriff like you?"

"For three years, the gunpowder you provided allowed my boss to conquer an entire territory! Now, it's time to use the blood of you cowards to christen our new empire!"

My soul, floating in mid-air, watched helplessly as the portal violently expanded under some unknown energy, growing large enough for armored vehicles packed with thugs to drive through.

Old Tom was decapitated in the street, Mrs. Mary was dragged into an alley, and even twelve-year-old Tommy had his skull crushed by a steel pipe.

Two hundred and thirty-seven lives. In just one hour, Red River Town was reduced to a slaughterhouse.

And the ammunition for all of this had been delivered by my own hands.

The cigarette burned down to my fingers, and a sharp sting pulled me back to reality.

With a cold face, I stubbed the butt out in the ashtray, rolled out of bed, and threw on a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt.

Since God had given me a second chance, the tables were turned.

Right now, I knew a fatal secret that Elena was completely ignorant of:

In seven days, the portal would naturally expand due to a breakdown in energy conservation between the two worlds.

At this very moment, she still naively believed the portal could only accommodate her passing through, and was currently losing her mind over a massive, impending horde of mutant beasts threatening the wasteland.

I pulled open the basement door. My combat boots made a dull, creaking sound against the wooden stairs.

The basement remained exactly as it was last night, as if mocking me.

Piled up in the corner were ten crates of highly concentrated penicillin imported from Germany, twenty barrels of C4 explosive raw materials scrounged at high prices from the military black market, and thirty crates of high-calorie military rations.

All of this was the "lifeline" Elena had begged for last night, weeping dramatically with her head on my lap.

"Luke, I'm begging you."

Last night, she knelt on the floor, tears streaming down her face:

"The base is facing the most terrifying mutant beast horde in history. Without these medicines and explosives, our defense lines will be torn to shreds. Everyone will be chewed down to a pulp by the monsters! Do you really have the heart to watch innocent people die?"

In my previous life, my heart broke for her, and I nearly emptied my life savings overnight to prepare these supplies.

As for this time?

Go to hell, you bitch.

I walked over to the workbench and fished out an inconspicuous receiver from the back of a drawer.

Elena wore a radioactive crystal from the wasteland around her neck—a pendant I had polished and crafted for her myself. Born out of a sheriff's lingering professional paranoia, I’d embedded a micro-tracking bug inside its lining.

I never thought I'd need to use it, but today it would be the blade that peeled off her mask.

Turned it on. Tuned the frequency.

After a few seconds of harsh static, a conversation from another world drifted clearly into the quiet basement.

"Victor, you really should have seen the look on that stupid Texan pig's face!"

Elena's voice mixed with the clinking of a glass, filled with a sickening glee. "I just got on my knees, squeezed out two tears, and he felt so bad he would have handed me his heart. He ran off in the middle of the night to scour for explosives for me. It’s absolutely revolting!"

"Hahaha! The dumbfuck actually thinks the flower of the wasteland fell in love with him?"

A gruff, raspy man's voice followed, dripping with unabashed contempt. It was Victor. "An old, thirty-something bachelor waiting to die in the countryside. You wiggle your ass once, and he probably forgets his own last name, huh?"

"Love him? I'd rather kiss a rotting mutant hound's ass!"

Elena laughed hysterically, every word a poison dart. "He's just a walking ATM. I press the buttons, and it spits out whatever I want. These past three years have almost driven me insane. Every time I crawl into that hole, I have to pretend to be a pathetic little flower catering to a spineless weakling."

"It's almost over, baby. Once we use his supplies to wipe out this beast horde, our territory will be secure."

"Exactly! Then we cut contact with his side. As for that useless sheriff, he's been squeezed dry anyway."

"Once the horde is dealt with, I'll head over there myself and snap that delivery boy's neck. Let him see what happens when you touch another man's woman!"

"Whatever you want, he's just trash to be thrown away after use. Come to think of it, that little Red River Town of his seems pretty well-stocked. Who knows, maybe when the door gets bigger, we can just march over and pillage the place..."

Expressionless, I switched off the receiver.

The basement fell back into dead silence.

There was no sudden fit of fury, no screaming or smashing things around.

My heart was unusually calm, as cold as the Siberian permafrost.

Three years... I thought it was a doomsday romance built on mutual salvation. Turns out, in their eyes, I was just a ridiculous free laborer. A fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

Alright then.

Since you treated me like an ATM, today the ATM is officially out of business.

I turned around, raised my heavy combat boot, and violently kicked over the towering stack of medical crates.

Bottles of expensive imported penicillin spilled onto the floor with a crash, like a shattered mask of hypocrisy.

I took down the toolbox hanging on the wall, walked straight to the garage, and lugged in five bags of high-grade quick-drying cement, stacks of red bricks, an electric drill, and a mixing bucket.

From this moment on, that good-natured country sheriff from Texas was dead.

The man who woke up was Luke, the ruthless Army Ranger who hadn't blinked at killing men on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

I turned on the faucet and expertly began mixing the cement.

Every movement was precise and efficient, carrying the mechanical coldness of a soldier. The ratio of water to sand strictly followed structural explosion-proof standards—I needed to ensure that once this wall dried, it was strong enough to withstand low-yield directional explosives.

Laying the bricks, applying the mortar, pouring the mixture.

A layer of red brick, a layer of cement.

I built the wall in absolute silence, as if I were personally entombing my own idiotic past.

The greatest gift of rebirth is the right to cut your losses—and a sharpened knife handed straight to you for revenge.

Two hours and forty-three minutes later.

That faintly glowing portal, along with the sickening schemes on the other side, was completely sealed off behind a reinforced concrete and wood wall over half a meter thick.

Even if Elena and her wasteland thugs beat their heads against it swinging rusty machetes, they would never penetrate a barricade capable of withstanding a direct RPG strike.

Right as I smoothed out the very last crack of cement.

From the other side of the sealed wall, the faint, frantic shrieking of an air-raid siren bled through.

Sounded like the horde of mutant beasts had finally arrived at their gates.

Without my antibiotics and C4, I wish you two—the whore and the gigolo—a very good time.

I let out a cold sneer, slowly and methodically washing the wet cement from my hands in the sink.

Cutting off their supply line was merely the first step of this hunting game.

I walked up the stairs at my own pace and deadbolted the basement's iron door. Next, I needed to make a phone call to my old commanding officer who worked at the Pentagon.

Before that portal spiraled out of control and expanded seven days from now, I had an ample window to complete a military deployment.

Didn't Elena want to bring an army over to conquer Red River Town?

Then let a fully-armed modern iteration of the United States Military properly welcome these arrogant "visitors from afar."