Doomsday Rebirth: Building the Ultimate Shelter

Chapter 5: the Shopping list

Drew walked through the house, room by room.

Kitchen. Living room. Master bedroom. Bathroom. Basement.

He wasn't looking at it as a home; he was evaluating it like a seasoned engineer inspecting a bunker.

Walls: reinforced concrete, thick enough to take small-arms fire and shrapnel. Windows: high, narrow, easy to board up and defend. Doors: solid wood anchored with heavy deadbolts. Basement: dry concrete floor, windowless, equipped with its own separate side entrance.

It was a perfect foundation for a safehouse.

While it wouldn't survive a direct nuclear strike, against the desperate mobs, raiders, and opportunists that would flood the streets once the grid died? It would hold.

Drew sat down on the leather couch, pulled a cold beer from the fridge, and cracked it open with a sharp snap.

He didn't bother turning on the TV. He just stared at the blank screen, thinking.

He had the house back, and the viper was gone. But that meant nothing if he couldn't survive what was coming.

Ninety-one days.

Ninety-one days until the mushroom clouds lit up the horizon.

He pulled up his bank app and checked the balance: $9,447.

Nine grand.

Drew let out a dry, bitter laugh. In three months, that balance wouldn't buy a single tin of spam. Right now, though, it was all the capital he had to prep.

He pulled over a legal pad, clicked a pen, and let five years of wasteland instincts draft the survival list:

• Food: High-calorie cans, rice, flour, cooking oil, pure salt, sugar, MREs.

• Water: Bottled water, purification tablets, gravity filters, heavy-duty barrels.

• Medical: Antibiotics, painkillers, iodine, sterile gauze, suture kits.

• Defense & Tools: Tactical body armor, machetes, trench shovels, heavy steel pipes.

• Power & Utility: Diesel generator, solar panels, power banks, fuel drums.

He ran the numbers in his head.

Bare-minimum rations for a year would take at least four grand. Basic medical supplies, another two. A reliable solar and generator setup would easily run upwards of twenty thousand. That wasn't even factoring in firearms, ammunition, or fuel.

Nine thousand bucks wouldn't even cover the down payment on his supplies.

Drew leaned back, tapping his pen rhythmically against the wooden table.

He couldn't get a job—not with ninety days on the clock. He couldn't play the stock market—he had no idea how it worked, and the market would crash before he could liquidate anyway. He couldn't hit a bank—too many cameras, and the cops would lock him down in ten minutes.

He needed dirty, untraceable, liquid cash. Fast.

Then a name flashed in his mind like a bolt of lightning: Vince Rourke.

Three years into his previous timeline, while scavving through a dead suburb for penicillin, Drew had broken into an abandoned villa occupied by a gang of raiders.

A brutal firefight had broken out. Drew ended up putting a round through the owner's skull, eventually finding a heavy black safe hidden in the basement containing thirty-five thousand dollars in stacked hundred-dollar bills.

The guy he’d killed was Vince Rourke.

A high-level local meth dealer.

Drew remembered every detail of that basement. He remembered the hidden compartment behind the garage wall, the heavy steel safe, and the combination card he’d pulled off Vince’s corpse: 38-24-38.

Five years of surviving in the ashes had etched those numbers into his mind.

In the wasteland, thirty-five grand was just useless paper to start a campfire.

But right now, in September 2024, that cash was enough to turn this suburban house into an ironclad fortress.

"Vince..."

Drew stood up slowly and walked over to the window, looking out at the noisy, oblivious city below.

Traffic crawled down the avenues, people went about their afternoon routines, completely unaware that their world had three months left to live.

Vince Rourke didn't know it either. But his personal apocalypse was coming tonight.

Drew let out a cold smirk, turned back to the desk, and took the pen. At the very top of his pad, above the list of supplies, he must have his first plan:

Make some money, the more money the better.