Money cannot buy happiness, but fifty million dollars can buy an impenetrable steel fortress that will keep the apocalypse locked outside.Mr. Sterling was trembling so that his costly pen dropped out of his sweating fingers as he stood inside the First Imperial Bank. He looked at the obsidian-black Vance card, and then up at my cold, dead eyes. He didn't say another word. He merely typed wildly on his keyboard.The transaction was done within ten minutes.I didn't waste a single second. I left the bank and made three phone calls. The first was to an underground real estate broker who catered to paranoid billionaires. I bought, with thirty million dollars in liquid cash, Shelter 04 - a decommissioned, military-grade bunker buried deep beneath the industrial district of the city. It possessed five underground floors, titanium-alloy walls that were independent, and a geothermal generator. It was not on the grid at all.The second one was to the biggest wholesale food distributor in the

The steel suspension cables of the bridge groaned, snapping one by one under the sheer, terrifying weight of the beast.It was with a shoulder height of ten feet easily. Its chest and back were covered with thick and grey bone plates resembling organic medieval armour.Its tail was terminated in a heavy, spiked club which smashed a parked sedan into scrap metal in one, lazy swing. It was a Tier-2 Armored Behemoth, a monster that would otherwise not be seen until months into the apocalypse. The time scale was not merely moving, but disintegrating.Kaelen... said Maya, in the passenger seat, and her voice shook so violently that I could hardly hear her. She cowered in the seat of leather and looked through the windshield at the glowing red eyes of the monster. We can not fight that. Reverse. I beg you, just reverse.There is no turning back in the apocalypse, Maya, I said, and my voice was as steady as ever. You either pass on their bodies, or you are the body.I did not take my hunting

A vast number of claws will defeat all steel door defenses. The defense walls will protect you until the horde reaches full strength, which will result in the obstructions blocking all air circulation, the exhaust pipes freezing, and you being buried under a mound of dead bodies and ice.I observed the red radar screen which illuminated Shelter 04's command center. The bio-signature cluster located less than one mile from us was moving at a fast pace. The horde's dark black dot at its center pulsed with a dark rhythm. A Tier-3 Dominator.Maya insisted through her appeal which she made while standing behind me that "Kaelen we have titanium walls." "Just lock the primary doors! They can't get in! "My surface territory belonged to them if I remained inside the building I stated while turning away from the screens. I walked toward the armory area where my boots produced loud sounds on the steel structure. Maya, the apocalypse revolves around territory. If I allow them to take control of

Bullets are nothing more than fast-moving rocks to a predator, and I was entirely tired of having pebbles thrown at my throne.Commander Graves screamed "Fire! Kill that freak!" while his voice broke under the weight of his extreme fear.Twenty elite mercenaries pulled their triggers at the exact same time. The freezing night lit up with the bright yellow flashes of muzzle fire. Hundreds of military-grade armor-piercing bullets tore through the howling wind to hit my head and chest.A single bullet would have ended my existence during my previous life. The bullets today failed to make me react.The heavy rounds slammed into my chest. Clink. Clank. Ping. The projectiles struck my bone-plated skin, which produced a bright spark before they dropped harmlessly into the blood-soaked snow. I remained in place without moving back from the position I took above the dead Tier-3 Dominator while the Vance Family's finest soldiers fired their weapons at my unbreakable body.Graves yelled "Reload!

The greatest joke of the apocalypse is that the guilty always expect mercy.At my feet, in the freezing snow, stood a woman, her hands gripping the rim of my armored jacket, Elena knelt. Dirt and frozen tears smeared her face. She looked pathetic. The haughty, vicious woman who laughed behind a locked door while I shivered through the night was completely gone.Elena sobbed, and forced a beautiful, tragic smile onto her frozen face, "I knew you wouldn't leave me. "Kaelen, I was so wrong. Marcus... Marcus forced me to lock you out! He threatened me! If I have not been able to live I would only have been able to do so because of you. Take me to your bunker, I'll be a good wife. I swear!"I didn't blink. I didn't get angry. I merely glanced at her, my eyes like the dead city around us.“You threw a child to the monsters just to jump a fence,” I said, my voice barely audible off the icy brick walls. You put an old man outside to rob his heater, you are a parasite, Elena, and parasites do