Chapter 1

The putrid stench of rotting flesh clung to my skin like a curse, cold, sticky, and inescapable.

I was being torn apart. Jagged zombie fangs sank into my shoulders, my ribs, ripping raw flesh from bone. The last sound I registered was Aunt Clara’s cold, mocking sneer, followed by the lazy indifference of her son Jason.

“Toss him into the horde. He’s got no more money left to squeeze out.”

Without a shred of mercy, they shoved me straight into the surging crowd of the undead.

I died one month after the global zombie outbreak.

I died because Aunt Clara had stolen Grandma Martha’s mining land compensation years ago. She lived in a luxurious suburban villa, drove imported luxury cars, yet refused to lift a finger to treat Grandma’s deteriorating lung disease. I died because her two spoiled children had bullied me relentlessly since childhood, and when doomsday fell, they cast me aside like trash to feed the zombies.

Before the apocalypse erupted, I’d dragged my already sick Grandma all the way to the city, begging Clara for even a little help. She’d slammed the door in our faces, turning a blind eye to Grandma’s labored breathing and fading health. When the zombie plague flooded the city hospital, Grandma had shoved me out of the ward with her frail, aged body, blocking the door alone to hold back the undead, buying me a fleeting chance to run.

And how did I repay her sacrifice?

I’d crawled to Clara’s gated mansion begging for shelter. Instead of mercy, I received a month of endless torture—starvation, humiliation, endless labor—until they finally grew bored and threw me to the zombies to die.

Agony exploded through every nerve. I jolted awake with a ragged gasp, coughing violently, cold sweat soaking my flannel shirt and gluing it tight to my back.

Darkness enveloped the rustic wooden bedroom. A creaky old bed, cracked plaster walls, and the rough wooden beam ceiling of a remote mountain cottage blurred into focus.

This was not the blood-soaked chaos of the city hospital where I’d met my end.

A soft rustle sounded beside me, followed by a gentle cool breeze brushing my forehead. A pair of wrinkled, weathered hands stroked my temple slowly, an old palm fan swaying quietly in the dim night. The faint, familiar scent of firewood and wild mountain herbs wrapped around me instantly.

My throat tightened. I whispered hoarsely, “Grandma Martha?”

I feared this was merely a dying hallucination, that one wrong word would shatter the fragile moment.

“Easy now, Ethan. You had a terrible nightmare.” Grandma’s warm, gravelly voice wrapped around me like a blanket. “I’m right here. Safe and sound.”

Tears burned the corners of my eyes.

I was alive.

I wasn’t torn apart by zombies. I was back in Hollow Creek, a remote mountain town in the Appalachians. I was back before Grandma’s lung sickness turned terminal, back one full year before the zombie apocalypse swept the entire world.

I lay rigid for a long moment, heart hammering like a war drum, the phantom pain of being mauled still lingering deep in my bones.

Morning light seeped through the cracked window and roused me from restless half-sleep. I sat up sharply and stared at the dusty mirror mounted on the old oak closet. The young, healthy reflection staring back was clean-skinned, lean, free of emaciation, dirt, and the hideous bite wounds that had marked my final days in the last life.

This was eighteen-year-old Ethan Cole. Before the suffering, before the betrayal, before the end of the world.

The wooden door creaked open. Grandma stepped inside with a soft smile, dressed in her faded floral cotton blouse.

“Ethan, you’re awake. Aunt Clara and her family are coming back to town today.”

At the sound of that name, my blood turned icy cold.

I knew exactly what this visit meant.

My parents had died in a brutal construction accident when I was little, leaving me orphaned and dependent solely on Grandma. Back then, Grandma had handed every dollar of the accident compensation to Aunt Clara, letting me move into her city home to attend a better high school. Instead of caring for me, Clara fired her paid maid and forced me into unpaid servitude. She beat me over trivial mistakes, scolded me daily, and even plotted to marry me off to a sixty-year-old wealthy supermarket tycoon purely for a hefty bride price.

I’d barely escaped by clinging to my college admission, breaking free from her greedy grasp.

Now it was August 10th, 2222.

Word had leaked that Hollow Creek’s mountain land would be acquired by a mining conglomerate, offering a massive five-million-dollar compensation package. Aunt Clara was rushing back immediately, planning to move her family’s residency back to town, build extra illegal structures on our ancestral land, and swallow the entire compensation for herself.

In my past life, she’d succeeded effortlessly. Grandma was left with only a few thousand dollars, barely enough for a cramped, run-down rental unit. A year later, Grandma was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Clara refused to even let us step foot inside her gated community.

I clenched my fists until my knuckles whitened, cold rage burning in my chest.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand. The screen flared to life, displaying the date clear as day: August 10, 2222.

One year before global zombie eruption.

I had truly reincarnated.

This time, I would protect Grandma with everything I had. I would stockpile endless supplies, seize an unbreakable hidden fortress deep in the mountains, and survive the apocalypse on my own terms. As for Aunt Clara and her cruel, greedy brats? I would drag them into the same abyss they’d pushed me into. No mercy. No forgiveness.

The end was coming. And I was no longer the weak boy who could be bullied and discarded.