The Apocalypse Rebate System: I Became King by Giving

CHAPTER 3 FIRST NIGHT OF THE APOCALYPSE

The power failed before Jack could even lock his apartment door. The lights flickered once, then a second time, before darkness swallowed the entire room. "Dammit."

He dropped the grocery bags and rushed toward the window. Outside, entire sections of the city were losing power. One building went dark, then another, then several more.

Within seconds, huge portions of the skyline vanished into blackness. Only a handful of emergency lights remained visible in the distance.

The sight sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the rapidly falling temperature.

A modern city was not supposed to go dark like this. It certainly was not supposed to happen in the middle of the day in one of the most developed nations in the world.

A notification suddenly appeared on his phone.

NO SIGNAL

Jack's stomach tightened. He immediately opened several apps, but nothing loaded. He tried messaging services. Nothing happened. He opened news websites. Nothing. Social media platforms refused to load as well. The internet was dying, or perhaps it was already dead.

Outside his apartment, voices echoed through the hallway. The residents sounded confused, annoyed, and irritated, but none of them sounded truly frightened, yet that was the problem.

Most people still believed normal life would return within a few hours. They assumed somebody, somewhere, would solve the crisis and restore everything to normal.

Jack walked back to the window. Snow continued falling. The storm had grown noticeably heavier, and the parking lot below was rapidly turning white.

A digital temperature display mounted on a nearby bank building flashed weakly: three degrees Celsius, then two, then one. The numbers vanished as the screen went dark.

Another casualty of the blackout, a loud knock suddenly rattled his apartment door.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Jack froze.

His pulse quickened for a moment before he recognized the voice on the other side. "Hey, Harper!"

It was Mr. Dawson, the loud and overly friendly neighbor from across the hall.

Jack opened the door cautiously. The middle-aged man stood there wearing shorts and a tank top despite the freezing weather. Three other residents stood behind him.

All of them were smiling. All of them were carrying drinks.

They looked as though they were preparing for a neighborhood gathering rather than the collapse of modern infrastructure.

"You hear the news?" Dawson asked. "The power's out."

Jack stared at him. "No kidding."

Dawson laughed. "Relax."

The man took a long sip from his beer. "It's just bad weather."

Several neighbors nodded in agreement. Jack glanced toward the snow-covered window. Bad weather?

The temperature had dropped nearly thirty degrees within a matter of hours. Airports were shutting down, communication networks were collapsing, and the electrical grid was failing across the city.

Yet these people still believed everything was normal.

The denial reminded him of countless examples throughout history when people ignored danger until it was too late. "You should be preparing."

The words escaped before he could stop them.

Dawson raised an eyebrow. "Preparing?"

"Stocking food. Water. Blankets. Anything that might keep you alive if this gets worse."

The group exchanged amused looks. One woman laughed. Another rolled her eyes.

Dawson grinned. "There he goes again."

Jack frowned. "There he goes, what?"

"The conspiracy guy."

More laughter followed.

His jaw tightened. The feeling was painfully familiar. It was the same sensation he had experienced his entire life whenever people ignored him, mocked him, or dismissed him outright.

The worst part was that it rarely happened because he was wrong. It happened because people simply did not want to hear what he had to say. "It's not a conspiracy."

"No?"

Dawson gestured toward the window. "It's snow. People survive snow all the time."

Jack took a step forward. "Then why are people dying?"

The hallway fell quiet. Nobody answered. Nobody could.

Reports of traffic accidents, hypothermia deaths, overflowing emergency shelters, and failing hospitals had already spread across the news before communications collapsed.

The evidence had been impossible to miss, yet people still refused to acknowledge what was happening.

Dawson eventually shrugged. "The government will handle it."

Jack almost laughed. Instead, he simply shook his head. "Good luck with that."

Then he closed the door. The laughter resumed almost immediately outside.

Though muffled by the wall, it still carried the same dismissive edge. Jack leaned against the door and closed his eyes. His chest felt heavy.

The weight had little to do with his neighbors. It had little to do with losing his job. It was not even the possibility that the world might be ending.

What truly exhausted him was the realization that nothing ever seemed to change. People never listened. They had not listened when he was a child. They had not listened when he was a teenager. They were certainly not listening now.

A memory surfaced.

During middle school, Jack had warned his science competition team that their project would fail if they ignored a critical flaw. Nobody listened. The project failed. They blamed him.

Another memory followed. During college, he predicted serious problems with a group assignment weeks before the deadline. Nobody listened. The entire project collapsed. They blamed him.

Then came the memory of work, months of effort, months of preparation, months of warnings. Nobody listened. Then they fired him. Again and again, the same pattern repeated itself.

The circumstances changed, but the outcome never did.

His hands slowly clenched into fists. Nobody ever listens. Outside, the wind howled through the city. The sound resembled the cry of some wounded animal wandering through the darkness.

Jack pushed the thought aside and focused on survival. He immediately got to work.

He moved furniture, reinforced vulnerable windows, sealed gaps beneath doors, organized supplies, and created a basic survival plan.

The apartment was small. It contained only one bedroom, one bathroom, and a tiny kitchen. Yet it was still shelter, and shelter meant life. Hours passed.

The temperature continued falling. The cold grew increasingly vicious with every passing hour. Each breath felt sharper than the last, and every draft seemed to cut through his clothing.

By sunset, frost covered the outside of the windows. By nightfall, ice had begun forming on the inside. Jack had never seen anything remotely like it. Without electricity, the apartment slowly transformed into a freezer.

He wrapped himself in layers of blankets and wore two jackets over three shirts. Even then, the cold found its way through every layer. Then the emergency broadcast arrived.

His battery-powered radio crackled suddenly, filling the room with static. A moment later, a voice emerged from the interference.

The speaker sounded weak, distorted, and unmistakably frightened. "This is an emergency government announcement."

Jack immediately turned up the volume.

The voice continued. "Citizens are advised to remain indoors."

Heavy static interrupted the transmission before the signal returned. "The temperature decline is accelerating beyond all projected models."

Jack's heart sank.

Projected models?

That meant experts had known something was happening. More importantly, it meant the situation was advancing beyond their expectations.

The announcer continued. "If you lack adequate heating, seek emergency shelter immediately."

Another burst of static overwhelmed the signal. Then the transmission disappeared entirely.

Jack stared at the radio. Nothing about that announcement had been reassuring. Outside, sirens echoed across the city. Emergency vehicles raced through the streets.

Then, one by one, the sirens stopped. The silence that followed felt unnatural.

It pressed against the city like a physical weight. Hours later, darkness covered everything. The city looked dead. No lights illuminated the skyline. No traffic moved through the streets. No signs of life appeared anywhere beyond the endless snowfall.

Jack checked his phone. Five percent of the battery remained. There was still no signal. The outside world might as well have ceased to exist.

Then a faint cry drifted through the darkness. Jack froze.

A woman was screaming somewhere below. The sound carried through the storm. He rushed to the window. The scream continued for several seconds before abruptly stopping.

Silence settled over the city once again.

Jack's stomach twisted. Someone had died. He could feel it. The realization horrified him, not because death itself was unusual, but because this was only the beginning.

Thousands of people across the city were trapped in apartments just like his. Many had no heat. Many had no supplies. Many had never prepared for any kind of disaster.

How many would survive until morning?

Jack had no idea.

Every strange sound pulled his attention away from rest. Every gust of wind made him tense. At some point, the building itself began making noises.

The structure creaked and groaned as though it were struggling against the extreme cold. Jack sat alone in darkness, listening carefully, waiting, enduring. Then he heard the first scream.

The sound was raw, terrified, and unmistakably human. Jack shot upright. The scream had come from somewhere inside the building, not outside. Then a second scream followed. Then another. Then several more Doors slammed. People shouted.

Panic spread rapidly through the hallways. Jack grabbed his flashlight and rushed toward the door. His heart pounded violently against his ribs. Something was happening, something very bad.

A man suddenly sprinted past his apartment. "Help!"

The terror in his voice sounded different from ordinary panic. This was not fear of the cold. This was fear of something else, something worse. More screams erupted. Dozens of them. Men, Women, and Children.

The entire building seemed to descend into chaos. Jack looked through the peephole. The hallway was crowded with frightened residents. Some were crying. Others were running.

Several pounded desperately on neighboring doors. "What happened?"

"What's going on?"

"I heard something!"

The questions echoed endlessly through the corridor. Then a tremendous crash erupted from the floor below. The entire building shook. Fresh screams erupted from every direction.

Jack felt his pulse spike. A strange noise followed.

The sound was low, deep, and animalistic. It was unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was not human. It was not mechanical. It did not belong anywhere inside an apartment building.

A stunned silence spread through the hallway. Every resident had heard it. Every frightened survivor stood frozen. Then the sound came again. This time it was closer. A growl.

A deep, rumbling growl that vibrated through the walls, Jack felt his blood turn to ice because whatever had made that sound was no longer outside. It was inside the building.