All Chapters of Reborn50 Days Before The Apocalypse Now; My Ex Begs For Food: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Chapter TwoMichael laughed, a short, cracked sound."A divorce? You? You don't have a cent to your name, Sharon. Where would you even go?"Sharon didn't answer. She walked to the wardrobe, pulled out a worn suitcase, and set it on the bed. Her hands were trembling, not from fear but from the weight of a death only she remembered. In her last life, she had died watching her husband's arm wrap around another woman's waist.Not now. You can grieve later. You have fifty days."Answer me!""Sit down, Michael.""Don't you tell me to...""Sit. Down."Something in her voice made him obey. He dropped onto the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to his bruised shoulder, glaring at her like a cornered dog.Sharon opened the bottom drawer, lifted the false panel beneath her old sweaters, and took out a thick brown folder. She had hidden it there three years ago, on the night he first put his hands on her. She had told herself it was only a precaution. Some part of her had always known.She tossed

Chapter FourAunt Helen's dining room smelled of roasted chicken and old grudges. Nothing had changed: the same ticking clock, the same heavy curtains, the same silence that always fell when she walked in unwanted.Sharon stood in the doorway with the brown folder under her arm. At the long table sat Uncle Richard, Aunt Helen, her cousins Carla and Ben, and her grandmother at the head, small and silent in her wheelchair.On the table, Helen had laid out Sharon's mother's good china, the cream plates with the thin gold rim that had always been kept in the cabinet for Christmas. Sharon's chest tightened. They had taken even that.She counted faces and felt the old grief rise. You all locked the gate. She thought.In her last life, on the day the zombies came, she had run barefoot through the streets to this house. She had pounded on this very door until her knuckles bled, begging. She had heard them inside. She had heard Carla whisper, "Don't open it, she'll bring them in."Then she

Chapter SixThe receipt was still crumpled in Sharon's fist when she reached her car.She sat behind the wheel with the engine off, staring at the name until the letters blurred. Vivian Cole. The loops were round and cheerful, the same handwriting that had signed every birthday card Sharon owned.She had kept those cards in a shoebox for years. Even in her last life, in the final days, she had thought of that shoebox and wished she could go back for it.She remembered her parents' funeral. Her knees had given out at the graveside, and one pair of arms had caught her.I'm here, Vivian had whispered into her ears.I'm not going anywhere. For eight years, Sharon had believed it.Her hands shook on the wheel. She had spent thirty-eight days building walls against Michael, her family, and the dead. She had never once built a wall against the girl who held her up at a funeral."Harbor Road, Unit 14," the delivery slip read.She drove.The wipers dragged back and forth across