Back From The Dead: My Apocalypse Level-up System novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Tailgate
Brent throws Devon off a truck to the dead while six people watch, a single shot rings from the overpass, and she wakes thirty days earlier with a system and the man who killed her asking about her cellar.
Brent had carried my bag and shared his water for five days.
Then he shoved me off the back of the truck while six people watched.
I hit the highway on my hip and both palms.
The truck didn't stop.
It slowed, because the road was jammed with cars, and that was all the time he needed.
"She's bitten!" Brent shouted. "She got bitten, we can't take her!"
I wasn't bitten.
I had a scraped elbow from the barricade, a bottle of water in my jacket, and the map to my father's farm in my head.
The farm key was gone from my ring.
He had taken it off while I slept, and I hadn't noticed until I was lying on the asphalt.
"Brent!"
He didn't turn around.
He was looking at Lacey, who sat on the cooler with her arms around her knees.
Lacey had been my best friend since we were eight.
That morning she had squeezed my hand and said, "Brent would never leave anyone behind. That's why you picked him."
Now she put her palm over the eyes of the boy beside her.
"Don't look," she told him.
She didn't look either.
The dead came out from between the cars.
There were so many more than there had been an hour ago.
I got to my feet and ran, and the first one caught my leg.
I kicked it off.
The second one caught my jacket.
I screamed Brent's name until I had no air left, and the truck turned a corner and was gone.
Then a shot cracked from the overpass above the road.
I looked up.
A man in a gray jacket stood at the rail with a rifle against his shoulder.
It didn't hurt.
Everything went white.
I woke up on my own couch with my cheek stuck to a cushion.
The light was gold and ordinary.
A dish was running in the sink, and somebody was humming.
I sat up and ran my hands down my leg.
No bite.
No blood.
There was a text on my phone from the vet clinic about Monday's schedule.
The date at the top was thirty days before the day the dead got up.
I knew that date.
I had counted back to it over and over on the road, six days long, trying to find the day it started.
[LUS online. Host revived. Thirty days to the Turn.]
The words sat in the air above my coffee table in thin purple letters, and nobody else in the room could have seen them.
"Hey, sleepyhead."
Brent came out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder.
He was smiling his party smile.
He had put on the blue shirt I liked.
He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
I held still.
"You were out cold, Devon," he said. "Long week, huh?"
"Long week," I said.
My voice came out steady, which surprised me.
He sat on the arm of the couch and rubbed my shoulder.
I could feel the exact hand that had pushed me.
"So I was thinking," he said. "Your dad's farm. The cellar under the barn. How big is it, really?"
Thirty days from now, he would have counted every person who could fit in it.
"Why?" I asked.
"Lacey was wondering," he said. "She's been reading these prepper blogs. She thinks it's smart, to have a place."
He said it easily.
Lacey, wondering.
I looked at his face and remembered how it looked turned away from me.
I could have screamed.
I could have thrown the lamp.
But he still had a key to my apartment, and a man who did what he did on the highway would do worse with a reason.
I wanted him out of my home before I let him see anything.
So I smiled.
"It's just a root cellar," I said. "Potatoes."
He nodded, and his smile slipped for half a second.
"Hey, Brent."
"Yeah, babe?"
"I'm tired," I said. "I think I'm going to sleep early. Go home."
"Okay." He stood and picked up his keys.
At the door he hesitated.
"Love you."
"Mm," I said.
The second the latch clicked, I pushed the chain across and put my back against the door.
I stayed there until my hands stopped shaking.
Then I took my father's old ring of keys out of the junk drawer and counted them.
All of them were there.
I would never let any of them leave my sight again.
Then I turned off my phone, and I decided.
I was done with Brent Lasker.
I would not answer him, and I would not forgive him, and I would be standing on that farm with the gate locked when the dead came.
[Another bearer detected. Distance: 0.8 miles.]
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