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Chapter 26: The Price of Water
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2026-11-07 13:00:36The journey west toward the rail yards took forty minutes, the long way, through a city rapidly turning to stone.
The temperature sat at ten degrees. With the grid dead and the buildings unheated, the financial district felt less like a city and more like an abandoned quarry. The dry harbor wind scoured the wide avenues and drove gritty swirls of frozen dust into every doorway.
I kept off the main thoroughfares, using service alleys and the shad
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Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 29: Pressure
The night settled over 6th Street with a dead weight.By 5:30 PM, the wind had dropped away completely, leaving the cold to pool in the stone canyons of the financial district. Inside the sorting room, the propane heater clicked quietly in the corner and kept the temperature at thirty-four degrees.I unslung the two scoped rifles I had picked up off the ice and laid them side by side on the oak sorting desk.Walker leaned his cane against the table frame and took up the first one, a bolt-action .30-06 with a synthetic stock and a four-power scope. He worked the bolt with a smooth, practiced motion and caught the unspent cartridge in his palm."Four in the magazine, one in the chamber," he said, setting the brass on the table. "Good action. Clean barrel."He picked up the second and checked the chamber with a click. "A .308. Four rounds. That's nine rounds of real rifle ammunition we didn't have an hour ago.""Nine rounds we don't have to spend until we choose," I said. I took a rag an
Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 28: Your Audit Was Incomplete
Dusk came to 8th Avenue with a sudden, bone-deep drop in the wind.By 4:50 PM, the thermometer clipped to my collar read six degrees. The sky over the harbor had gone from slate gray to the dark indigo of crushed iron, and the cold sat so deep in the stone canyons that each breath felt like inhaling ground glass.I crouched in the dark vestibule of the pharmacy, three feet behind the iron window grate where I had anchored the tow chain.The chain lay under a thin crust of frost across the narrow gap between the pharmacy wall and the rear of Garrick's dead flatbed. I had laid it in a loose, open loop, with both ends made fast to the grate and the flatbed's frame. To anyone walking the avenue, the lane looked wide open: nine feet of clear asphalt leading straight toward 6th Street."Wren," Walker's voice rasped in my earbud. He was at the second-floor window of the post office, two blocks behind me. "Rumble coming up from the west. Up 8th, from 10th.""How many?""One engine. Big. Sound
Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 27: A Line Item He Didn't Budget For
The walk back to 6th Street was fast and low.The wind had picked up, driving needles of frost down the stone canyon of 10th. Behind me, Gault's generator kept up its dull heartbeat, pumping water for forty shivering people while his crew collected their spoons and coins.I kept to the shadowed alcoves under the elevated rail line, my hood low, my eyes sweeping the upper windows. Preston was inside the gates now. I hadn't heard what he'd said. But I had seen the radio pointed east, and I had seen Gault smile, and there was only one reading that fit.A man who hands over his last dime isn't buying food. He's buying an escort.By the time I reached the loading dock gate, my cheeks were numb, and the torn skin along my jaw throbbed with a dull, rhythmic burn.I gave the knock code. Two. One. Three.The bolt slid back at once. Tilly pulled the gate inward, her dark eyes searching my face as I stepped across the threshold into the dim, thirty-six-degree warmth of the vestibule."You were g
Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 26: The Price of Water
The journey west toward the rail yards took forty minutes, the long way, through a city rapidly turning to stone.The temperature sat at ten degrees. With the grid dead and the buildings unheated, the financial district felt less like a city and more like an abandoned quarry. The dry harbor wind scoured the wide avenues and drove gritty swirls of frozen dust into every doorway.I kept off the main thoroughfares, using service alleys and the shadowed underpass of the elevated rail line.Back at the post office, Walker was anchored at the second-floor window with the shotgun, and Tilly was locked in the basement vault with the shortwave receiver tuned to 4.815. We had agreed on a strict five-minute window for check-ins, two quick clicks on a short-range channel, no voice, no names. At the first check, I pressed my collar twice and heard two clicks come back, and the knot between my shoulder blades loosened a little.
Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 25: A Man Who Keeps Receipts
The silence that settled over 6th Street after Preston walked away was heavier than the cold.I stayed on the roof for five minutes, watching the harbor road until the last gray smudge of his silhouette dissolved into the salt mist. The wind whipped frost across the tar and gravel and tugged at my hood. He was gone, but the city around us was only beginning to wake up to the third day of the blackout.Down in the street, the morning light showed what was left of the siege. Two torches guttered on the asphalt. A timber beam lay across the lane like a dropped battering ram. And seventeen tarnished coins glittered in the ice like frozen fish scales.I locked the roof hatch and went down.In the sorting room the air felt warm by comparison, thirty-six degrees, thick with propane and damp wool. Walker sat on a mail crate by the window with the shotgun across his knees, his breathing still shallow from the night's work.
Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door Chapter 24: The Block Is Closed
I took the internal stairwell three steps at a time, my boots silent in the dark.The cold hit me before I reached the roof hatch, a bitter draft that smelled of wood smoke and the frozen salt of the harbor. I shoved the hatch up an inch, slipped out onto the gravel, and dropped flat behind the stone parapet.Below, 6th Street lay in the gray gloom before dawn.The string of yellow lights came up the avenue in a slow, jagged line. Twelve men, maybe fifteen, carrying hurricane lanterns, sputtering kerosene torches, and an assortment of hunting rifles, iron pipes and timber beams.At the head of the column walked Preston Ashgrove.His head was bare despite the cold, his broad face pale under the lantern glare. Three men with tool sacks walked beside him, and behind them came the hungry crowd he had bought on credit.They moved like men who had been promised a feast and only needed to kick in a
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