Rebate King: I fed them to rule the apocalypse

Three days before the world ended, my landlord threw my mattress onto the street.

"You're two months behind, Ethan," he’d said, not even looking me in the eye as he locked the deadbolt. "I’m running a business, not a charity. Go find a shelter."

I didn't argue. There was no point. My bank account sat at a miserable $4.12. I had spent the last six months working twelve-hour night shifts at a warehouse that eventually went bankrupt, leaving me with empty pockets and a pile of unread medical bills for my mother. She had passed away in a sterile, underfunded county hospital room three months ago, and the debt had swallowed whatever was left of my life. I was twenty-two, completely broke, and living out of a mildew-stained basement storage unit I rented for fifty bucks a month.

Then, the sky tore open.

It didn't happen like the movies. There were no giant spaceships or glowing aliens. Just a sudden, violent hum that vibrated through the earth, followed by massive fissures ripping across the city streets. From those cracks came the fog, and with the fog came the Lurkers—pale, skinless monstrosities that hunted by sound. Within forty-eight hours, the government collapsed, the grid went dark, and the city turned into a slaughterhouse.

By day three of the apocalypse, I was crouching behind the rusted frame of an overturned delivery van in Sector 4, my fingers digging into the wet, gritty concrete.

The cold rain didn't wash away the stench of rotting meat; it just made it heavy, pressing the smell deep into the cracked asphalt. My breath came in shallow, controlled bursts. In this place, noise was a luxury that got you killed. My stomach growled violently, a reminder that I hadn't eaten a real meal in forty-eight hours.

Suddenly, a sharp, desperate gasp shattered the rhythmic patter of the rain, followed by the wet, heavy slosh of boots hitting puddles.

I stiffened, my muscles locking. Peeking through the shattered rear window of the van, I saw a girl sprinting down the narrow alleyway. Her dark hair was plastered against her forehead by the downpour. She wore a torn denim jacket, her jeans shredded at the knees, revealing pale skin smeared with mud and dark blood. In her arms, she clutched a small, dented metal tin like it held the cure to the world.

Behind her, the shadows of the alley seemed to stretch. A low, guttural click echoed off the brick walls—a sound that made the hairs on my arms stand up. A Lurker. They couldn't see, but they could hear a heartbeat from twenty paces.

The girl tripped. Her boot caught on a jagged piece of rebar sticking out from the rubble, and she went down hard. The metal tin skittered across the wet asphalt, stopping just a few feet from my van. She groaned, scrambling backward on her hands and knees, her eyes wide with pure, feral terror. She looked straight toward the van, locking onto the darkness where I hid. She didn't see me, but she was looking for any kind of miracle.

*Leave her,* the cold, rational part of my brain whispered. *If you move, it hears you. If you help, you die.*

Then, a strange, crystalline chiming sound echoed inside my skull, so loud and clear that it completely drowned out the rain. A translucent, pale blue interface floated in my field of vision, hovering right before my eyes. It didn't look like a screen; it felt burned into my retinas.

**[Target: Sarah Jenkins]**

**[Trust Level: 5% (Deep Distrust / High Alert)]**

**[100x Rebate System: Give items to eligible targets to trigger a randomized multiplier reward. Lower trust levels yield higher quality rewards.]**

I blinked, rubbing my temples. A system? Like those web novels I used to skim through during my breaks at the warehouse?

I looked back at the girl. She was shaking, trying to pull herself up. The clicking sound from the alley was getting faster, louder. The Lurker was closing in, its pale, hairless torso emerging from the fog, its jaw distended into an unnatural, wide maw.

I looked down at my waist. Tied to my belt was my sole prize from scavenging a ruined pharmacy earlier that morning: a single, unopened, half-liter bottle of clean water and a crushed sleeve of stale crackers. It was everything I had to live on. If I gave this away, I was effectively starving myself.

*If I'm losing my mind and hallucinating this, I’m giving away my life,* I thought. *But if I stay here, that thing will find me next anyway.*

I made my decision in a split second. I didn't stand up. I didn't play the hero. Instead, I slid the bottle of water and the crackers across the wet ground, straight toward her trembling hands.

"Take it!" I hissed in a sharp, quiet whisper.

Sarah flinched violently at the sound of my voice, pulling her hands back as if the bottle were a snake. Her eyes darted from the darkness of the van to the food, her expression twisting into intense suspicion. Who would give away food in the middle of hell? To her, it had to be a trap. Poison, maybe.

The interface in front of my eyes flickered violently.

**[Trust Level: 2% (Extreme Paranoia)]**

**[Transaction validated. Calculating multiplier...]**

**[80x Rebate triggered!]**

Before I could even process the words, a heavy, solid thud echoed inside the dark cabin of the delivery van right next to me. I jerked my head around. Where there had been empty, rusted flooring a second ago, there was now a massive, military-grade wooden crate. The lid was slightly ajar, revealing rows of pristine, vacuum-sealed MREs and stacks of heavy-duty plastic jugs filled with crystal-clear water.

My heart hammered against my ribs. It was real. It actually worked. The less she trusted me, the more I got.

Outside, the Lurker shrieked—a high-pitched, tearing sound that vibrated through the metal of the van. It had detected her movement. It lunged forward, its long, emaciated limbs covering the distance in terrifying leaps.

Sarah screamed, abandoning her suspicion out of pure survival instinct. She grabbed the bottle of water and the crackers, scrambling backward toward the opposite wall, but her ankle was badly sprained. She was trapped.

My eyes scanned the interior of the delivery van. Deep in the corner, half-buried under rusted tools, was an old, heavy iron crowbar. It wasn't much, but it was a weapon.

*If I give her a weapon, what happens?* I grabbed the iron crowbar. The metal was cold and heavy in my grip. I slid it out through the broken window, letting it clang loudly against the asphalt right in front of her.

"Use it!" I shouted, no longer caring about the noise.

Sarah looked at the crowbar, then her eyes met mine through the gloom. There was no gratitude in her gaze—only the raw, ugly realization that I might be using her as bait to fight the monster for me. She grabbed the crowbar anyway, her knuckles turning white.

**[Trust Level: 3%]**

**[100x Rebate triggered!]**

A sharp weight materialized directly into my right hand, nearly pulling my arm down. I looked down and gasped.

It was a combat shotgun—a pristine, matte-black 12-gauge tactical shotgun, its metal cold and smelling heavily of fresh gun oil. Attached to its side was a shell carrier loaded with six dark-red, brass-capped cartridges. Beside it, a heavy tactical vest materialized on the floor, its pockets bulging with extra ammunition boxes.

I didn't hesitate. A strange, icy calm washed over me as the weight of the firearm settled into my hands. I racked the slide, a loud, mechanical *clack-clack* echoing through the alley.

The Lurker was already on top of Sarah, its long, clawed hand reaching out to tear into her shoulder. Sarah swung the crowbar with a desperate yell, the heavy iron striking the creature’s temple with a dull *crack*. The monster hissed, shaken but barely slowed down. It raised its long claws to strike back.

I stepped out from behind the van. I raised the tactical shotgun, aligning the front sight with the pale, hairless mass of the Lurker's chest.

*Boom!*

The roar of the shotgun was deafening in the narrow alley. A brilliant flash of orange light illuminated the falling rain. The heavy blast of buckshot hit the Lurker square in the chest, tearing through its pale flesh and throwing its broken body backward into the mud. It twitched twice, its dark blood mixing with the rainwater, before going completely still.

Silence returned to the alley, save for the ringing in my ears and the sound of Sarah’s frantic panting.

Sarah slumped against the brick wall, the crowbar slipping from her weak fingers. She looked at the dead monster, then slowly looked up at me, the barrel of my shotgun still smoking slightly.

She didn't thank me. She shrank back, her eyes fixed on the heavy weapon in my hands, her body trembling with a new, deeper fear. To her, I wasn't a savior. I was just a dangerous man with a gun in a world where rules no longer existed.

The text in my vision suddenly blurred, flashing a violent, deep crimson color.

**[Warning: S-Rank Threat Level detected within 50 meters.]**

I turned my head toward the deep end of the alleyway, where the fog was thickest.

From the shadows, a figure slowly walked out. It wasn't a Lurker. It was a girl, looking no older than twenty, wearing a dark, hooded cloak that was dripping wet. In her right hand, she dragged a long, jagged machete against the concrete, creating a horrific, metallic scraping sound that vibrated directly in my teeth.

Her face was pale, her expression completely vacant, but her eyes—they were an unnatural, striking crimson, glowing faintly in the darkness of the ruined street.

The air around her felt freezing cold. My finger tightened on the trigger of my shotgun, every instinct I had screaming that the monster I had just killed was nothing compared to the thing now standing before me.

The hooded girl stopped ten paces away, her gaze shifting from the dead Lurker to me, and finally down to Sarah, who was frozen in sheer terror.

The girl raised her machete, pointing the stained blade directly at my throat. Her voice was low, melodic, and completely devoid of human emotion.

"Hand over the food," she said softly. "Or I'll take it from your corpse."