Chapter 1

After the Cosmic Pulse Event, human civilization was wiped off the map.

Some people turned into zombies. Others awakened abilities.

In my previous life, I hadn't awakened anything yet when I made the mistake of letting my uncle's family in — I was too soft-hearted. They thanked me by killing me and my parents.

Given a second chance, I kept that door locked. No matter how much my uncle's family wailed and threatened, I didn't budge.

But when the apocalypse finally broke, I awakened a Farm Ability — while my uncle outside awakened a Killing Blade.

Chapter 1

The air raid siren screamed like a dying animal, tearing across the Texas sky.

I stood behind the bulletproof window on the second floor, watching the pack of animals outside through three layers of tempered glass. The sky was a sickly rust-red. The air reeked of char and ozone. The emergency broadcast on what was left of the TV network kept looping: "Three minutes until the radiation dust storm arrives. Proceed immediately to the nearest shelter facility—"

Outside my farm gate, Uncle Ray was behind the wheel of his modified Ford F-350, ramming the iron gate for the fifth time.

Clang.

The metal shriek set my teeth on edge. Sparks exploded from the frame, but the welded hinges didn't give an inch. I'd spent three months of my discharge pay and my parents' life savings building this line of defense. I built it for exactly this moment.

"Jack! Jack Thomas!" Uncle Ray shoved his greasy face out the driver's window, the lard-like sweat on his forehead catching the dying light in a way that turned my stomach. "Open up! We're family! Blood is thicker than water, boy!"

Family.

The word sliced through my mind like a razor.

I remembered what that face looked like thirty seconds after I opened the door in my last life — the way he personally shoved my mother into a crowd of infected. I remembered how his son Billy used a crowbar to break my father's spine. I remembered how they stripped the place of food, tied me to a chair, and watched through the window while the creatures outside gnawed through the boards, inch by inch.

Three days ago — in another timeline.

The apocalypse arrived without warning.

The bureaucrats in Washington called it the Cosmic Pulse Event. The Associated Press ran one final headline: Unidentified Radiation Dust Storm Sweeps Globe — Governments Issue Emergency Response. But Texans had a simpler name for it.

The sky fell.

It started with satellite signals going dark. Then the power grid. Then cell service. Then people.

The radiation dust storm didn't just kill. It rewrote the rules. Like an invisible hand picking up an eraser and wiping clean a blackboard that humanity had been writing on for thousands of years — then, in the blank space, writing two words:

Abilities. Infection.

Within seventy-two hours of the pulse passing through, one in ten people would awaken an ability. Some grew skin like steel. Some could shoot fire from their palms. Some turned their own shadows into blades. The Governor of Texas, in his last emergency broadcast before going dark, called it God's gift to humanity.

The other nine didn't fare so well.

The mutant spores carried in the dust storm bored into the lungs. Within forty-eight hours: high fever, hemorrhaging, loss of speech. By hour seventy-two, the eyes turned red. The skin began to ulcerate. They attacked anything that moved. The TV networks called them "the Infected."

I called them zombies.

More precisely: zombies that could run. Zombies that could bite. Tens of thousands of them, packed together, driven by the scent of blood, hurling themselves at any heat source they could find. Dallas fell four days after the dust storm hit — half a million people, and within three days four hundred thousand of them had become one of those things.

The remaining hundred thousand tore each other apart in the rubble, fighting over food, water, weapons, territory.

The old order was gone. Police departments, courts, the federal government — all worthless. The Texas landscape had reverted to the law of the jungle. The man with the most guns, the hardest fists, the most food — that man was king.

And in my last life, I was nothing. I thought blood ties were a shield. I thought those three words — "we're family" — could buy the most basic decency in the apocalypse. I opened the gate and let in seventeen beasts wearing human skin.

The price was my parents' lives, and three days and nights tied to a chair, waiting to die.

So this time, I would never open that door.

"Fuck your 'family'!!!"

I shoved open the bulletproof window. The barrel of my Remington M870 shotgun jutted out over the sill.

Uncle Ray's smile froze on his face. Behind him in the truck bed, my cousin Billy, my cousin Sarah, and seven or eight other redneck thugs wearing the label of "relatives" simultaneously raised their weapons — hunting knives, baseball bats, a rust-eaten .22 rifle.

"Jack, have you lost your mind?" Uncle Ray's voice shot up an octave. "The radiation rain is about to fall! You want to watch your Uncle Ray die outside your door?!"

"Yes."

I pulled the trigger.

BOOM.

The 12-gauge buckshot blew a smoking crater three feet from Uncle Ray's boots. Shrapnel flew, shearing off half his pant leg. The fat pig screamed and rolled under the truck. Billy ducked with his arms over his head. Sarah straight-up pissed herself.

"Next shot, your head." I racked the slide, ejecting the smoking shell. The metallic clack echoed crisp and clear across the dead wasteland. "Two minutes left on the countdown. The farther you run, the better."

"You bastard!" Uncle Ray crawled out from under the truck, his face the color of liver. He yanked the hunting knife from his belt — the one he'd bragged about in bars a thousand times — and jabbed it wildly toward the gate. "Old Thomas! Martha! You're just gonna stand there and watch your son drive his own uncle to his death?!"

I heard my mother's soft sobbing behind me.

I didn't turn around.

"Mom, go to the bunker." My voice was calm. "Dad, take her down. Seal the hatch."

"Son..." My father's hand landed on my shoulder. Heavy. Warm. The last time I'd felt that weight was at the airport before I shipped out. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Through the scope, I watched Uncle Ray's twisted face. Memories from two lifetimes rolled through my mind like blades — those fake holiday dinners, the excuses when he borrowed money and never paid it back, the snide remarks behind our backs. And the vicious ugliness they showed after the masks came off in the apocalypse.

"My land," I said, one word at a time. "No relatives. Only dead men."

My father's hand paused for three seconds. Then he patted my shoulder. Behind me came the hydraulic hiss of the bunker hatch opening. My mother's crying faded into the distance. The heavy alloy door locked with a clunk.

Just me and the animals outside.

"You're going to regret this! Jack Thomas!" Uncle Ray laughed like a lunatic, waving his hunting knife in the air. "When the radiation comes down, when those monsters show up, you'll be on your knees begging me for forgiveness! And when that happens, I'm going to—"

The countdown hit zero.

The siren cut off.

The entire world plunged into an eerie silence. Even the wind stopped. The rust-red sky suddenly shifted to a deep, otherworldly blue — like the eye of some enormous creature staring down at the earth. My skin prickled. Every hair on my body stood on end. The charge in the air made my scalp tingle.

Then—

A column of blue light descended from the sky.

It made no sound, but it tore through my retinas. I squeezed my eyes shut instinctively, but the light pierced through my eyelids, through bone, through every cell in my body. A voice echoed in my skull — something not human. Mechanical, yet divine. It spoke in a language I couldn't understand, rewriting the laws of the world.

[Abnormal soul fluctuation detected in host...]

[DOE Wasteland Manor System] binding in progress...

[Binding successful]

[Welcome to the New Era, Commander]

A cold mechanical voice exploded in my head. I snapped my eyes open. My vision now contained a translucent blue interface — resource bar, construction bar, weapons bar, and a flashing Starter Pack icon.

But I didn't have time to examine it.

Because outside, something inhuman was howling.

Uncle Ray was on his knees, convulsing, clutching his head. The hunting knife in his hand was melting — no, evolving. The rust fell away. The blade elongated. Blood-red veins crawled across the steel like living things, releasing a nauseating stench.

"Power..." Uncle Ray lifted his head. His eyes had turned blood-red, pupils slitted like a reptile's. "I can feel it... infinite power!"

He stood. The knife in his hand had become a monstrous blade nearly two meters long, pulsing veins beating across its surface like a heart.

[Warning: Hostile Awakened detected]

[Target: Raymond Thomas]

[Ability: Bloodthirst Frenzy Blade LV1]

[Threat Level: Medium]

Uncle Ray — no, the creature called Raymond — raised that grotesque blade and pointed it at my farm gate. He grinned, revealing gums threaded with bloody capillaries.

"Now," he rasped, his voice like sandpaper scraping stone, "it's my turn to knock, nephew."

The blade came down.

The iron gate exploded with a half-meter fissure.

I gripped my shotgun tighter and smiled coldly.

On the system interface, the [Starter Pack] icon was still flashing.

"Come on then," I said quietly. "Let's see if that piece of shit blade of yours can crack open the gates of hell."