He Left Me to Die. Now I'll Survive Without Him! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: First Wake
Lena wakes sixty days before the end of the world, finds Brent's forged sale of her farm, and voids it. The buyer is his mistress.
A hand shoved me off the tailgate of my own truck with the dead thirty feet behind me.
I had just pulled him out of the middle of them.
He didn't look back when the truck pulled away.
His "sister's" dog barked from the back seat. Her little boy pressed his face to the glass.
The first one reached me before the taillights turned the corner.
Brent had one thing to say to me, shouted through the open window, so I'd hear it while they tore me apart.
"She's not my sister, Lena. She's my woman. And that boy is my son."
I woke up with teeth in my throat.
I sat up and clamped both hands over my neck. The skin was smooth and whole and dry.
The air smelled of lavender from the diffuser on the dresser. No smoke, no copper, no rot.
I walked to the mirror on shaky legs.
My eyes were clear. The gray hollows under them were gone. I looked the way I had before the world ended.
The phone on the nightstand said October 18th.
I stared at it until the screen went dark, and then I woke it up again.
I knew what day that was. The first dead walked out of Marlow on December 17th.
That gave me sixty days.
"Morning, babe." Brent leaned in the bedroom doorway with a mug in each hand. "You were thrashing. Bad dream?"
He crossed the room and kissed my forehead.
The same hands had pushed me off the truck. They were warm, and they smelled of his cologne.
"Whatever it was, I've got you," he said. "I ran your truck to warm it up, and I topped off the washer fluid."
It was a small, kind thing, and he had done it before dawn.
"Thanks," I said. My voice came out almost steady.
He set my coffee on the nightstand and checked his watch. "Shelby's moving a couch Saturday. I promised my sister I'd help, so I'll be late tonight."
In six years of marriage I had never met his half-sister. She was shy since her divorce, he said.
"Sure," I said.
"You're the best." He grinned, grabbed his keys, and stopped at the fridge on his way out.
A donor appointment card was stuck there under a magnet. Brent Sawyer, O positive.
"Giving again Thursday," he said. "Universal donor, babe. Somebody has to save lives."
I was a combat medic for eight years. I pulled men out of burning trucks.
"O positive isn't universal," I said. "That's O negative."
"Close enough." He winked and left.
I listened to his car back out of the driveway.
Then I got up and went to the desk in the spare room.
I wasn't looking for anything. I wanted the folder with my grandfather's deed, because the farm was the only thing I had ever owned outright.
The folder was in the bottom drawer, but it was thinner than I remembered.
Under it lay a stack of papers with a yellow flag on the top page.
Exclusive Listing Agreement. Eighty acres, ridge road, Bayfield County. Seller: Lena M. Haskell.
My name was signed at the bottom.
It was close. The L had a loop in it that my hand has never made.
The closing date was November 1st. The buyer was Dunning Holdings LLC.
I knew that surname. Brent sent a transfer to a Shelby Dunning every month, labeled "sister's rent".
Under the papers there was a photograph.
Shelby crouched on a playground in the sun with a boy on her knee. Brown eyes, brown hair, a soft smile.
The boy was about six. His eyes were a pale gray, and he was laughing at whoever held the camera.
On the back, Brent's handwriting said: Cody, my guy.
I laid the photo on the desk and didn't touch it again.
I took a pen from the cup. In capital letters across the first page of the listing I wrote VOID.
I tucked the deed into my go-bag, the one that had sat in the closet since my last deployment.
I was not going to be sold, and I was not going to be shoved.
So I picked up my keys and went to take back what was mine.
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