Thirty days before the Great Scorch

Chapter Six

Daniel sat at his kitchen table with a pen between his teeth and a notebook full of scratched-out plans. The apartment was quiet. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional car horn from the street below.

He closed his eyes and the memories came flooding back without permission. The scorching heat. The dry, cracked feeling of his own lips, his body growing weaker every day. The look on Vivian's face when she pushed the knife in. Not anger. Not guilt. Just boredom. Like she was popping a blister that had been annoying her.

His jaw tightened until his teeth ached.

In the previous life, when things got bad, people did not turn into survivors. They turned into animals. Worse than animals. A starving dog will fight another dog for a bone, but it will not pretend to love you for six months just to eat you when the bone runs out.

He had no weapons last time. No walls. No plan. He had trusted two snakes with his food, his home, and his life.

"Never again."

Daniel picked up the pen and started writing.

First thing: reinforce the penthouse. Steel plating on every door and window. Industrial-grade locks. Heat-proof insulation thick enough to block a hundred and sixty degrees. Solar panels on the roof. Security cameras on every angle. He needed a professional contractor, someone who would not ask too many questions and would finish fast.

Second: cooling. Portable air conditioners, generators, fuel, fans, cooling towels by the thousands. All of it going straight into the Storage Space.

Third: medicine. Antibiotics, painkillers, bandages, surgical kits, rehydration salts, heatstroke treatments, vitamins. In the apocalypse, a simple flu could kill a person faster than starvation.

Fourth, and this was the part that made him grin: food.

Not canned garbage. Not freeze-dried cardboard. Real food.

Daniel grabbed his phone and started calling every restaurant he had ever liked. His favorite steak house. The barbecue joint on Fifth Street. The Italian place near downtown. The seafood restaurant by the pier. One by one, he placed bulk catering orders.

"Yes, one thousand portions. No, I'm not joking. Yes, I'll pay upfront."

The managers thought he was planning a corporate event or a wedding. He let them think whatever they wanted. Over the next two days, he would have three million dollars' worth of hot, freshly cooked meals delivered to his apartment, and every single plate would go straight into his Storage Space, frozen in time at the exact second it left the kitchen.

While the apocalypse turned the rest of the world into a burned-out graveyard, Daniel Cross would be eating medium-rare ribeye and garlic shrimp, with a glass of ice water in his hand.

"That should cover a lifetime of meals," he muttered to himself, leaning back in his chair. "Now for the fun part."

He looked at the clock. Six thirty p.m. The dinner with Vivian and Gavin was at seven.

Daniel changed into a plain black shirt and jeans. Nothing special. Nothing that said "I'm about to toy with the two people who killed me in my last life."

He grabbed his car keys and headed out.

The firewood-roasted chicken place was a small, noisy restaurant on the east side of Denver. The kind of spot where the tables were sticky, the beer was cheap, and the smoke from the kitchen drifted over everything like fog. Daniel had brought Vivian and Gavin here dozens of times, and he had paid the bill every single time without fail.

Vivian and Gavin were already seated when he walked in. They had picked the corner table, the one farthest from other diners. Privacy for their performance.

Vivian spotted him first. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, all warmth and concern, every muscle in her cheeks perfectly arranged to sell the lie. "Daniel! Over here! We were so worried about you!" Her voice was sweet enough to rot teeth, and she waved him over with both hands like she was welcoming home a soldier from war.

Gavin stood up and clapped Daniel on the shoulder, squeezing hard, his grin so wide and fake it could have been painted on with a brush. "Bro, you had us scared to death. What happened with that psycho Diane? Sit down, sit down. I already ordered your favorite wings."

Daniel sat down across from them and looked at their faces. Two masks. Two perfectly rehearsed performances. In his previous life, he would have melted from the warmth of their attention. He would have poured out his heart, thanked God for having such loyal friends, and probably cried a little.

Now, looking at them felt like watching cockroaches crawl across a dinner plate.

"I'm fine. Really. I just got tired of that place." Daniel shrugged, keeping his voice casual, his expression relaxed.

Vivian leaned forward, her chin resting on her folded hands, her eyes soft and glistening with manufactured emotion. "Daniel, you can't just quit your job and run away from us. That's not how life works. What are we going to live on? You have to think about our future. And the villa deposit is due Friday. I already promised the agent." Her voice trembled at the edges, like she was about to cry from pure concern.

Inside Daniel's chest, something cold and hard twisted like a knife.

This woman had stabbed him through the heart. She had watched him bleed out on the floor and felt nothing. And now she was sitting here, performing worry like she deserved an award for it.

"No villa, Vivian. No SUV, either. I told you, I have enough money to last a lifetime. I don't need to work." Daniel picked up a chicken wing and bit into it, chewing slowly.

Gavin jumped in fast, his voice carrying that big-brother tone he always used when he wanted to steer Daniel somewhere. "Daniel, listen to me. You're emotional right now. You just lost your job. That's normal. But blowing your inheritance on some RV road trip? That's what a dog chasing its own tail does. You're smarter than that, bro."

Daniel almost choked on his chicken. Gavin calling someone else a dog was the richest thing he had heard in two lifetimes.

"I'm not being emotional. I've actually been thinking about this for a while." Daniel wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked straight at Gavin. "I'm planning to sell the penthouse too."

The table went dead silent.

Vivian's smile cracked for just a second before she glued it back together. Gavin's eyes went wide, then narrow, then wide again. "Sell the penthouse?" Gavin's voice came out strangled. "Daniel, that place is worth millions. You can't just sell it on a whim. That's your parents' legacy. What would they think?"

"My parents are dead, Gavin. They don't think anything." Daniel's voice was flat and final.

Vivian reached across the table and grabbed Daniel's hand, her fingers wrapping around his wrist with practiced tenderness. "Daniel, please. Don't do anything you'll regret. We're your family. We just want what's best for you. At least take some time to think it over." Her eyes were so wide and so wet they looked like glass ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Daniel looked at her hand on his wrist. In his previous life, that touch would have made his heart race. Now it made his skin crawl, like a spider walking across his arm.

"I've already thought about it. I'm done working. I'm done chasing promotions. I'm done trying to impress anyone." He pulled his hand back gently and picked up another wing. "I've got enough money saved. I don't need a career. And honestly, Vivian, I'm not sure I want to stay married."

That last sentence hit both of them like a truck.

Gavin's chopsticks froze halfway to his mouth. Vivian's left eye twitched. The marriage was the heart of their entire scam. If Daniel walked away from it, he would never hand over his money to Vivian. If he did not hand over his money, their entire plan collapsed.

"You don't want to stay married?" Vivian's voice came out thin, almost breaking. "Daniel, you're only twenty-six. You can't give up on love."

"I'm not giving up. I just don't see the point anymore." Daniel bit into another wing and chewed like he was discussing the weather.

Gavin and Vivian exchanged a look across the table. It lasted less than a second, but Daniel caught every flicker of it. Gavin's jaw was tight. Vivian's nostrils flared. They were panicking.

Their ATM had just announced he was closing his account.

Daniel stood up from the table and dropped his napkin on the plate. "Excuse me. Restroom."

He walked away without looking back, leaving the two of them sitting across from each other with the ruins of their scheme crumbling between the empty plates.

The second Daniel disappeared around the corner, Gavin leaned across the table, grabbed Vivian's arm, and hissed through his teeth. "He's slipping. He's actually slipping. If we don't lock him down tonight, that twenty million walks out the door and never comes back."

Vivian's face had gone pale, all the fake sweetness drained away, replaced by something raw and desperate.

"What do we do? He won't listen to me anymore. He didn't even flinch when I touched him. Something is different about him, Gavin. He's not the same Daniel."

Gavin's fingers dug into the tablecloth, his knuckles bone white, his mind racing like a rat trapped in a box.

"Then we change the plan. If the leash doesn't work, we use the cage."

Vivian's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

Gavin looked toward the hallway where Daniel had disappeared, and a slow, ugly smile spread across his face. "I mean we stop playing nice."