Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door

The cold did not feel like ice anymore. It felt like fire.

I was slumped against the frozen concrete wall of the water depot, my combat boots soaked through with gray slush. Two hours earlier, an iron beam had collapsed in the basement while I was hauling out the last two crates of operational rations. My right knee was crushed. Every tiny twitch sent white spikes of agony shooting straight up into my hip.

Standing over me was Preston Ashgrove.

He was not acting like the man who shared my apartment and slept in my bed. He was acting like my old infantry squad leader. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw was tight, and his face had that flat, dead look men get when they make peace with leaving someone behind.

Tucked under his arm was my heavy sub-zero winter coat. He had stripped it right off my shoulders while my hands were too numb to fight back. Clipped to his chest rig were my hunting knife, my service pistol, and the last three packs of emergency ration bars.

Behind the thick glass of the airlock hatch, Delphine stood watching us from the dry warmth inside. She had my spare wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders, holding tight to Preston’s spare tactical belt.

"Preston," I choked out. My lips were split and bleeding, and breathing the freezing air felt like swallowing ground glass. "The outer perimeter fence is down. Scavengers are less than fifty yards away. Pull the latch."

Preston didn't reach for the lever. He tightened the straps of his vest, his eyes looking right past me.

"You can't walk, Wren," he said. His voice was completely flat, without a single shred of hesitation. "You can't walk, you can't run, and you can't carry a rifle. In the field, we don't bleed rations on dead weight. Delphine still has two good legs."

"I hauled those ration crates out of the basement," I whispered, blood warm on my tongue. "I kept your group fed for three straight months."

"And your job is done," he said.

He reached down and gripped the heavy steel locking bar.

CLANG.

The heavy metal dropped into its slot with a dull, sickening thud.

Behind the glass, Delphine looked down at me. She didn't scream. She didn't look sorry. She just pulled my blanket higher over her face, turned around, and walked deeper into the warm depot.

Down the gravel road, heavy footsteps crunched through the frozen sleet. Shouting echoed through the dark. Five or six desperate men with iron crowbars and butcher knives were coming up the gully. With a crushed knee, no coat, and empty hands, I had nowhere to run.

The sub-zero wind cut straight through my thin shirt.

The cold stopped hurting. My vision tunnelled into nothing, and my heart gave out.

Gasp.

I sucked in a lungful of air, my chest heaving so hard my ribs ached.

My arms snapped out on pure combat reflex, throwing elbows left and right to clear room, my heels digging in hard to kick an attacker off me.

My back slammed against something solid and smooth.

Polished wood. A varnished headboard.

I stopped moving, frozen in place, my breath coming in short, ragged bursts. Habit took over before my brain could process what was happening. My hands swept down my own body in a rapid five-second trauma check: throat clear, ribs unbroken, no bleeding from my legs. I grabbed my right kneecap and bent my leg.

Full motion. No grinding bone. No pain.

My skin was warm. No gray frostbite patches on my fingers. No dried blood beneath my nails.

The room smelled of fresh lavender detergent and clean sheets. Morning sunlight poured through the open blinds, casting warm squares across the wooden floorboards. Down on the avenue outside my window, the normal, boring morning traffic rumbled by: the hiss of city bus air-brakes, delivery vans shifting gears, car doors thudding shut.

The world was completely alive.

I threw the blankets off and stood up. My bare feet hit the warm hardwood floor.

On the nightstand, my phone began to buzz violently against the glass coaster.

I grabbed it and tapped the screen awake.

Thursday, October 22. 7:02 AM.

A wave of pure adrenaline rushed down my neck.

October 22.

Seven days.

Exactly one hundred and seventy-three hours before a massive solar flare slammed into the planet at twelve o'clock sharp on October 29.

Seven days before every electrical substation burned to the ground, every modern vehicle with a computer chip died in the middle of the road, and municipal water pipes ran dry.

I hadn't died against that concrete wall. I had been dragged back an entire week, dropped clean and whole into the final days of the modern world.

Two text notifications sat on my lock screen:

Preston (6:48 AM): Morning babe. The private bridge lender needs the deed paperwork for your mother’s house signed by noon. If that $420k equity line doesn't clear by tomorrow morning, the broker cancels our down payment on the downtown high-rise. Call me the second you're awake.

Delphine (6:52 AM): Wren! My landlord put an eviction notice on my door! Preston said you just got your quarterly bonus from the logistics depot—wire me the eighteen hundred dollars right now! I'm your sister, you can't leave me out on the street.

I stared down at Preston’s message.

In my first life, I had believed him. I thought he was an ambitious operations manager trying to secure our future.

Now, reading it with cold eyes, the truth was obvious. Preston hadn't been buying a luxury condo. That erratic, sweating desperation he always tried to pass off as "job stress" was a ticking debt clock. Underground bookies had him by the throat, and he had until the end of this week to produce four hundred thousand dollars before they broke his bones.

He was bleeding me dry to balance his gambling debts, and the second the lights went out, he threw me away like an empty cardboard box.

I set the phone down and walked toward my dresser, my pulse thudding in my ears.

My foot caught the edge of a woven floor rug, knocking a small cedar box off the wood. It hit the floor with a clatter, spilling an old, tarnished silver chain across the boards.

Tangled in the links was my grandmother’s teardrop pendant, its antique casing worn smooth around the edges.

I knelt down to gather it. As I pulled the chain straight, the sharp edge of the bent clasp sliced into the pad of my right thumb.

A quick, stinging pinch. A dark bead of blood welled up, smearing across the tarnished silver.

The pendant flared with sudden, blistering heat.

A violent shock surged up my arm, ripping straight into the center of my skull. The bedroom tilted forty-five degrees. My knees hit the floorboards, my breath catching in my throat as nausea washed over me.

What is this? Did I have a stroke? Is this brain damage?

I slammed my palms flat against the hardwood to steady myself, but the room wasn't spinning anymore.

Behind my forehead, something had opened.

It was not a memory. It was not a headache. It was an unnatural, dead-silent abyss suspended inside my consciousness—a hollow vault carved out of pure blackness. It felt ten paces wide, ten paces deep, and completely, terrifyingly empty.

Cold sweat prickled across my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed both thumbs hard into my temples, and tried to force the sensation away.

It didn't leave.

My physical eyes were closed, but my mind was looking directly into an impossible, weightless void that had no business existing inside human flesh. It sat there, humming with a strange, dry pressure against the back of my eyes, waiting.

Am I losing my mind?

Before my brain could process the impossibility of it, a harsh, violent electronic chime shattered the silence.

The intercom buzzer on my wall screeched, followed immediately by heavy, impatient knuckles pounding against the wood of my hallway door.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

A brass key scraped roughly into the lock outside.