All Chapters of Reborn Before The Apocalypse: My Survival System : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The gate closed with a sound like a coffin lid.Sera Vale slammed both palms against the steel. The cold burned straight through her gloves. Nineteen days of blizzard had swallowed the city whole, and the shelter on the other side of that gate was the last warm place left alive."Damian." Her voice cracked apart. "Damian, please."Through the narrow security window she could see him. Her husband of six years, wearing the wool coat she had saved three months of overtime to buy him. One arm was around Celeste, the adopted sister who had shared Sera's bedroom since they were nine. His other hand held Leo, Celeste's five-year-old son. Behind them, Margaret Cross, his mother, clutched her white poodle inside her fur collar like a crown jewel.Four people. A dog. One seat left on the guard's manifest.Sera had dragged the generator through the ice for them. She had fed them from her own rations for nineteen days. She had given Margaret her sleeping bag and Damian the last of the antibiotics

The door opened without a knock.Damian Cross walked in wearing the face of a heartbroken husband. The tragic eyes. The gentle frown. The slightly rumpled collar, as if he hadn't slept. Sera knew every muscle of that performance. She had been its only audience for six years.Behind him came Gregory Pruitt — silver-haired, charcoal suit, a slim leather briefcase, and a smile like a closed drawer."Sera." Damian crossed the room in three steps, hands out. "Thank God. We've been so worried."She did not move. "Sit down, Damian.""You left in the middle of the night. My mother hasn't stopped crying." He lowered his voice, as if confiding in the room. "Mr. Whitmore, forgive the intrusion. My wife hasn't been herself for weeks. Episodes. Paranoia. Delusions about the family."There it is.In her last life, Sera had only been called crazy after the world ended. Damian had simply started earlier."Mrs. Cross is unwell," Pruitt said smoothly, setting his briefcase on Whitmore's desk. "We have

The mountain groaned again, and this time the lightbulb swung on its cord.Dust rained from the vault ceiling. Sera grabbed the edge of the steel table. Gideon was already moving — one hand on his radio, the other on the pistol at his hip, his whole body turned toward the corridor like a compass needle finding north."That wasn't an earthquake," he said."No." Her voice came out thin. "It's the countdown. Something moved with it."He gave her one hard look. He didn't ask what she meant. She could see the question sitting behind his eyes — and she could also see him decide to put it away for later.The radio crackled. The whispering voice was gone, replaced by a flat electronic chirp from his perimeter sensors. Gideon snatched a tablet from his thigh pocket and thumbed the screen awake.Four camera feeds jumped into view. The first three showed empty forest.The fourth showed the front gate.Three black SUVs idled in a line across the gravel. Doors were opening. Men in dark jackets cli