Doomsday Rebirth: Building the Ultimate Shelter

The knife came from behind.

Drew was crouching in the corner of a shattered pavement, chewing on a piece of moldy bread he’d dragged out of a dumpster behind a burned-out grocery store half an hour ago. Thick, fuzzy green fungus covered the crust. He’d scraped at it with his thumbnail, but he couldn't get it clean; with his stomach burning like hot iron from pure acid, he had no choice but to force it down anyway.

Three days without a bite of food. His stomach was practically digesting itself. Life in the wasteland followed a simple, brutal law: skip food for a day, and you're a beggar; three days, you're a beast; a week, and you cease to be human altogether.

Then came the cold metal.

No footsteps preceded it—just the wet tear of a blade biting through tattered leather and dry flesh.

The blade punched through his back, sheared between his ribs, and poked out straight through his stomach. As the dark blood burst forward, Drew caught the glint of the bare steel tip caught in the dim, gray daylight.

Bread crumbs slipped from his mouth, dropping into the dirt below.

He looked down, numb.

The hilt was black, wrapped in old electrical tape with frayed, peeling edges. A loose tail of the tape fluttered in the draft blowing through the alley.

He knew this knife.

Tyler’s knife. His brother-in-law—Madison’s own flesh and blood.

“Don’t hold it against me, man,” Tyler’s voice came from behind his shoulder, casual and light, without a trace of malice—as if he were just passing the time. “You were in the way. Besides... my sister paid way too well.”

Drew tried to turn around and hit him, but his legs cut out instantly.

His knees slammed into the cracked asphalt, sharp gravel biting into his skin. The half-eaten chunk of bread rolled off into the dust, coating itself in ash and dried blood.

A flood of warmth spilled from his gut.

The blood soaked his filthy shirt in seconds, ran down his trousers, and hit the pavement with a heavy tap, tap, tap. A few stray drops at first, quickly turning into a rushing stream.

A blinding white beam suddenly flooded the mouth of the alley.

It wasn't the long-dead streetlights—those had gone dark the day the first EMP blasted the grid five years ago. It came from a heavy armored vehicle parked crosswise at the entrance, cutting off the street. Its headlights blared with punishing intensity, while its half-open side door spilled out a warm, dim yellow glow and a faint draft of dry heat.

Two figures stood bathed in the light.

A woman leaning against a thick, heavy-set man.

She wore a plush, dark brown mink coat that would have cost a small fortune before the war. Her long, manicured fingers—adorned with chipped red polish—rested lazily on the fat man’s chest.

Madison.

And Gregory.

His ex-wife, and the rich bastard she’d been whispering to long before the world ended.

Madison saw him. Drew watched her body stiffen for a fraction of a second before she leaned in close to Gregory’s ear, placing a hand over her mouth as if sharing a casual joke. Gregory let out a booming laugh and raised a glass across the filthy alleyway toward Drew.

A crystal wine glass, filled with real red wine.

Who the hell still drank out of crystal in a world like this?

“Finally got rid of that dead weight.”

The ringing in Drew’s ears drowned out the sound, but he read her lips perfectly. It was the same sentence that had haunted his nightmares for five years.

The blood kept pouring out.

A bone-chilling cold started at his toes and crept rapidly up his legs. Drew knew what it was: shock. His heart was giving its final, ragged thumps. He was dying right here.

Five years ago, when the bombs fell, he was sleeping under a concrete bridge.

Madison had kicked him out just one week before that. And one week prior to his eviction, he had still been living in that warm house, dutifully drinking the hot soup she served him every night.

Then his body had broken down.

It started with faint spells of dizziness whenever he stood up too fast; he’d assumed it was just overwork and lack of sleep.

Then came the sudden, violent nosebleeds—blood pouring down his throat, filling tissues, tasting like iron.

Then came the crushing fatigue. Carrying a case of water up a flight of stairs left him gasping for air as if his lungs were collapsing.

He’d spent his savings at the clinic, only for the doctor—a specialist funded by Gregory’s medical firm—to pat his shoulder and say, "Just severe stress, son. Get some rest and cut back on smoking."

Drew didn't even smoke. But he had trusted the doctor, just like he’d trusted Madison when she gently suggested he go out of town to recuperate.

He’d drunk that soup for two full years.

Five years in the wasteland.

He’d lived like a rabid dog in the dirt for five long years—eating rats, drinking stagnant well water, and stitching up his own open wounds with rusty needles and fishing line. He’d killed for half a bottle of dirty water and laid buried under rotting corpses for three days to hide from radioactive rain.

And the entire time, she had been safe behind the high walls of an enclave, wrapped in mink, sipping wine, and watching him claw through hell.

His vision blurred, fading into a washed-out grayscale.

The copper taste of blood filled his mouth, cold sweat mixing with dirt on his forehead.

Above, the sky remained a suffocating, ash-choked gray. For five years he had stared up at that sky every single day, wishing with every fiber of his being that he could start over.

His hands were filthy, caked in grime and dried blood, a deep scar running across his left palm—left by a raider who had tried to gut him before Drew ripped the man's throat out with his teeth.

Yet today, he was dying in a garbage-strewn alley, stabbed in the back by the boy he’d once fed, while his ex-wife toasted to his death.

If there’s a next life...

If I ever open my eyes again...

He would force that poisoned soup right back down her throat.

He would tear that innocent, pious mask off her face with his bare hands.

A blinding white glare detonated in his eyes.

Searing, absolute light swallowed the alley, the armored car, Tyler, Gregory, Madison, and the pool of dark blood cooling on the stone.

Drew felt weightless, falling endlessly into a vast, silent void.

He grit his teeth, and closed his eyes.