All Chapters of Reborn 90 Days Before The Apocalypse : Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Chapter 1 “Caspian, please! Open the door!” My fists hit the steel door again and again. My hands were bleeding. I could not feel them anymore. The wind behind me screamed like an animal, and the ash was so thick that I could not see my own feet. “Caspian! It is me! It is Elowen!” On the other side of the door, I heard a small voice crying. It was Pip. He was only six, and he was calling my name. “Aunt Elo! Aunt Elo is outside!” Then a woman’s voice snapped at him. It was Briar. “Be quiet, Pip. Come here. Now.” I pressed my face to the cold metal. It was day thirty-one of the Sunless. The sky had been black for a month. The power was gone. The streets were full of frozen cars and frozen people. I had been out all night looking for medicine for Odette, my mother-in-law, because she said her heart was bad. I had found it, and I had carried it for six miles through the ash. I had a bag of pills on my back. I had a family inside this shelter. I thought that was enough. For

Chapter 3I did not go far on the first night. I booked a cheap room at a small inn near the bus station and paid in cash. The bed was hard, and the walls were thin. I slept like a stone.In the morning, I faced a problem. I had four thousand dollars in savings and no job that would last past the Sunless. Even if I spent all of it on supplies, it would not be enough to feed one person for a winter that lasted years. I needed real money. I needed it fast.I sat on the bed and chewed the end of my pen. In my first life, there had been one small thing I never understood. After my grandmother Ines died, a lawyer kept sending letters to the Vale house with my name on them. Odette always said they were junk mail. I never saw one. Back then, I was too busy to ask.Now I thought about it very hard.Why would junk mail come from a lawyer?I paid for one more night at the inn. Then I called a taxi and went back to the Vale mansion, but not through the front door. I waited until Odette and Corde

Chapter 5By day sixty, I had spent a lot of money, and I felt like a thief in my own shopping.I never bought too much at one time. That was the rule. If I bought a thousand blankets in one store, someone would ask questions. So I went to twenty different stores in three different towns. I bought blankets here, canned beans there, and fuel in small drums from a farm supply shop that did not ask what I was doing with it. Goldie came with me on weekends and wrote everything in her careful nurse handwriting.“You have bought forty boxes of bandages,” she said, frowning. “Are you opening a hospital?”“Maybe,” I said. “We will see.”She gave me a long, worried look but did not push.Everyone else thought I was crazy. My old coworkers whispered when I called to resign. A woman from my old church said she was praying for me. Caspian told people that I had a breakdown and was “resting.” He said it with such a sad, patient face that people patted his arm and brought him casseroles. I only fou

On the fifty-first morning, I went to the harbor market for fresh bread, and I saw Briar Lockhart.She stood at a flower stall with a paper cup in one hand, her dark red lips pressed tight, and her sharp eyes sweeping the crowd. I did not need to wonder who she was looking for. She turned, and her gaze landed on me, and she did not even pretend to smile.“Elowen.”“Briar.”She walked up slowly, in neat heels on wet stones. Up close, she looked tired. There was powder under her eyes, and her coat was not buttoned right. “You have been avoiding my calls.”“I do not know your number.”“You do.” Her lip twitched. “You have been getting my texts.”I thought of the message in the bedroom. You should not have left him. You will regret this. And the second one. I know about the money, Elowen. We need to talk.“That was you,” I said.“I am being kind, trying to warn you.” She leaned in, and her perfume was sweet and heavy. “Your lawyer filed something about the hidden rent. About where Caspian