Chapter 3

The roar of the diesel generator and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 blended together in absurd harmony inside the luxurious living room.

My mother had a custom face mask on, cutting into the last two pieces of top-grade marbled steak with silver cutlery, still complaining:

“Those filthy things crawling on the lawn are disgusting. Tomorrow I’m going to file a complaint with the HOA.”

I sat on the leather sofa opposite her and, right in front of her, twisted open a bottle of polar seal-oil extract capsules worth tens of thousands of dollars.

My brother took a handful from me, didn’t even look, shoved them into his mouth and crunched them loudly—then chased it with a huge bite of high-calorie MRE compressed rations.

“You’ve lost your minds?!” Mother slammed her fork down and lunged like an enraged hen.

I didn’t even stand. I simply lifted my combat boot and placed it precisely against her knee joint.

She toppled onto the carpet, her shriek almost louder than the symphony.

My father walked over from the liquor cabinet holding half a glass of Johnnie Walker Black. He pressed down with that “subordinate” gaze he loved using.

“That’s enough. At first light tomorrow, I’ll give you the tactical shotgun. You two go to the corner supermarket and get your mother fresh leafy greens and sparkling water. That’s called division of labor.”

I stared at his self-important face, about to speak—

when a crash detonated.

Bang!

The entire bulletproof floor-to-ceiling window shattered under massive pressure.

The villa’s glaring lights and all-night noise had finally drawn them in.

A dozen ragged, blood-smeared infected poured into the living room like a black tide, crunching over glass. The rot-stink instantly drowned out the Jo Malone perfume.

My mother went limp on the floor, unable to make a sound.

My father’s whiskey fell onto the carpet. He instinctively spun and scrambled for the second-floor stairs, snatching the tactical rifle hanging there—then forgetting where the safety even was. He wedged himself into a stairwell corner and screamed at the top of his lungs:

“Protect your mother! Hold them off!”

No one listened.

I drew the tactical knife from my thigh and sprang up like a leopard. The first infected—still in a suit—lunged.

I moved into it.

My left forearm braced its snapping jaw, and my right-hand blade drove up under its mandible into the brain, then twisted hard.

First one: dead.

“Three on the right!” My brother’s voice came from the side—cold enough to cut.

He had a fire axe in hand and swung a lethal arc, cleaving a janitor-uniform infected nearly in half.

Blood and meat sprayed across the living room. The Persian rug was soaked through instantly.

I pushed my speed and the killing technique I’d earned in the last life to the limit. Knife-light flickered; every strike came with the dull crunch of breaking bone. No wasted movement. No fear.

In one minute, seven infected that had breached the living room were all down—corpses on the floor.

My father stood up on the stairs, hands shaking so hard the rifle rattled. He looked at me like I was a monster.

He had always underestimated us.

Now that belief was smashed apart by blood.

In this room, the power over life and death sat in my knife—not in his class sermons.

“There are more outside.” I stepped over the bodies and flicked blood from the blade. I glanced at my mother, who could only tremble in place, soul gone. “The generator’s too loud. If you don’t want to die, go to the basement.”

My father woke as if from a dream and hurried down to haul my mother up.

“Right—right! Basement! The basement door’s reinforced!” He thought this was me compromising to protect the “family.”

My brother and I flanked them like escorts, half-pushing and half-dragging them down.

The moment they crossed into the basement’s security door, my father was still forcing calm, still trying to command:

“You two stand guard outside. At daylight—”

Bang!

I didn’t want to hear one more word. From the outside, I slammed the two-hundred-pound solid steel door shut.

Click.

Four mechanical bolts locked home.

“What are you doing?! Open the door!” My father’s scream came through the thick steel—muffled and desperate.

I turned to meet my brother’s equally icy gaze.

In this apocalypse, the two blood-sucking time bombs in our house were finally isolated. The villa’s remaining supplies and control were now completely ours.

“Move.” I tore down the remaining curtains, blocking the light leaking through the shattered window gap. “That breach won’t hold. Those things will follow the blood smell and pour in.”

My brother and I swept the living room and kitchen at high speed, hauling away remaining canned goods, antibiotics, and weapon parts.

But as the search neared its end, my brow tightened harder and harder.

First floor. Second floor. Even my father’s hidden desk compartments—

Nothing.

My father’s spare key for the Dodge heavy SUV—and the few hundred gallons of emergency gasoline he had stashed somewhere—were not in any normal spot.

A memory like an ice blade cut through me.

I knew exactly how vital that fuel would be when the minus-forty deep freeze arrived months later. It would be the only lifeline to keep a shelter warm.

I stood in the wrecked living room, listening to the increasingly frantic pounding outside.

Without that gasoline, we were still dead when winter came.

So where had that selfish old fox hidden the true life-saving card?