All Chapters of Reborn Before Doomsday: The Ex-Military Wife’s Revenge: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

I woke up with the phantom sensation of teeth tearing into my throat.I bolted upright, my hands instantly dropping to my neck, expecting to feel the hot, sticky rush of arterial blood. My fingers met smooth, unbroken skin. I gasped, pulling in a massive lungful of conditioned air. No rotting flesh. No the smell of copper and ash. Just the faint scent of lavender diffuser. My heart hammered against my ribs as I threw off the duvet. I checked my arms. No bite marks. No defensive scars from the makeshift shivs I’d used in the quarantine zones. My skin was pristine. I swung my legs out of bed and stalked to the full-length mirror. Bright, clear eyes. No dark, sunken circles. I looked exactly the way I did before the world went to hell. I snatched my phone from the nightstand. The screen flared to life. August 12th. Exactly sixty days until Patient Zero. Sixty days until the rabies-mutation went airborne and turned eighty percent of the population into flesh-eating husks. I stared at

By six the next morning, the sky was still a bruised purple, and I was already standing in the cavernous warehouse of a restaurant wholesale supplier on the edge of the city. I didn’t bother with grocery stores. Supermarkets would be looted to the bone within forty-eight hours of the outbreak. I needed commercial bulk. I bought five hundred pounds of white rice, two hundred pounds of dried beans, canned meats, powdered milk, and blocks of dehydrated butter. I cleared out their entire inventory of water purification tablets, heavy-duty Mylar tarps, and industrial first-aid kits. The clerk, a bored teenager with a nose ring, stared at my new black Amex like it was a winning lottery ticket. "You need us to deliver this, ma'am?" he asked. "No," I said, swiping the card. "I'll take it out back."I walked out to the secluded loading bay. The air was crisp, smelling of diesel and damp concrete. I placed my hand on the wooden pallet holding three hundred pounds of rice. I closed my eyes an

The angle grinder screamed, throwing a shower of orange sparks across the concrete floor. I was watching the crew weld the final hinges onto the inner blast door when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Arthur Sterling. I wiped the grease off my hands with a rag and answered. "Tell me you have good news, Arthur.""I have news," Arthur's crisp voice came through the speaker. "Mr. Thorne filed an emergency injunction at nine this morning. A judge just granted it. Your joint accounts and any assets tied to the marital estate are going to be frozen as of ten 10:00 "I didn't flinch. I just leaned against the cold steel of the doorframe. "He actually did it," I said. "He believes he has secured a leverage point," Arthur said, sounding deeply unimpressed. "He thinks he's trapped you, Miss Vance.. I advised him that the irrevocable trust is untouchable, but he's proceeding under the assumption that the liquid capital in your joint checking and savings is marital property.""Let him think that," I

The first time I tried to do a pull-up, I hung there for exactly four seconds before dropping onto the mat like a sack of wet flour.I stared up at the ceiling of the private gym, my arms trembling, my palms raw. The pull-up bar creaked above me, almost mockingly.Pathetic.In my past life, I could do thirty consecutive pull-ups in full combat gear. I could run ten miles with a sixty-pound ruck and still have breath left to shoot straight. That body was gone. This body, the one I'd woken up in, was soft. The skin was smooth, the muscles undefined, the core weak from three years of carrying groceries and bending over to pick up Leo's toys.I rolled off the mat and landed on my feet, wincing as my unconditioned knees protested. "Again," I muttered to myself.I jumped up, grabbed the bar, and hung. My shoulders burned. My grip slipped. I dropped."Again."By the twentieth attempt, I managed six seconds. By the fiftieth, I managed twelve. My hands were blistered, my forearms on fire, and I