Todos los capítulos de Apocalypse Reborn: This Time, I Lock the Door: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 7

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

Before ordering bulk supplies, I needed cash.When the power grid dies, credit cards are just useless pieces of plastic. Paper money is the only thing that talks.At 9:15 AM, I walked into the First National Bank branch on 4th Street. The lobby was quiet, smelling of cold air and floor wax.I stepped up to the counter and pushed my ID, debit card, and withdrawal slip under the glass window: $18,000.00.The teller frowned. She looked at the paper, then up at me."Eighteen thousand in cash?" she asked, keeping her voice down. "We usually issue cashier's checks for anything over five thousand.""I need cash," I said calmly. "Hundred-dollar bills."She didn't open her drawer. Instead, she picked up her desk phone, whispered a few words, and hung up."Mr. Miller, our assistant manager, has to approve large cash withdrawals," she said, pointing to a glass office behind her. "Please take a seat inside."My jaw tightened.I had never pulled more than $800 from an ATM. Now, trying to take out

Saturday morning, October 24.Five days remained until Thursday noon.The fifteen thousand pounds of grain and water already secured in the stasis of my mental void were my survival foundation. But dry goods had one fatal flaw: they required heat, clean water, and time to cook.In a sub-zero urban collapse, cooking was suicide.I had seen it happen in my last life. Three weeks into the freeze, a family on the fourth floor of my apartment building boiled a pot of white rice on a camp stove. The savory steam drifted through the ventilation shafts like a beacon. By morning, their door was splintered off its hinges and their apartment was stripped bare. No bodies, no blood—just gone.When temperatures plunge below zero, high-rise buildings act like giant chimneys. Warm cooking smells vent through window seams and hallway cracks. To starving men roaming the corridors with tire irons, the aroma of boiling stew is an open invitation. Lighting a burner in a dark building would paint a target

Monday morning, October 26.11:30 AM.The apartment was completely still.I sat at the kitchen counter under the warm yellow beam of a battery lantern. In front of me sat a stainless-steel bowl of spicy beef noodle soup, pulled straight from the void behind my forehead. The broth bubbled faintly along the metal rim, venting a rich steam of roasted chili oil, scallions, and tender braised beef.Not a single degree of heat had bled off.I ate with measured, steady bites, letting the hot calories settle into my core.Outside the blackout curtains, the day was overcast and gray. My outdoor window thermometer hovered right at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, held in place by the brisk northern front pushing down from the border.I rinsed my bowl with water from a plastic jug, dried it with a clean cloth, and set it on the rack.Behind me, the front entrance stood like a bank vault. The three-hundred-pound steel slab was anchored eight inches deep into solid cinderblock. Two forty-pound pig-i