Reborn: Apocalypse Tyrant Endlessly Pampers Her Sickly Lover novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Triage List
Damon reads the names of the people who get no medicine, and Tobias's is one; Veda stakes her place on a storm she says will hit at midnight, and it does.
On the nineteenth night after the sea rose, Damon Strake stood on the pool deck and read out the names of the people who would not get medicine.
Nine hundred survivors sat on deck chairs and on the floor of the empty pool to listen.
Veda Vassall stood at the back, against the railing, with salt drying on her jacket.
She had died seven years from now.
Then she had opened her eyes at this railing, nineteen days into the end of the world, and Damon had started to read.
Beside her, Tobias sat wrapped in a blanket in a deck chair.
He was thirty, thin as a rail, and his hands shook around a paper cup of water.
"Evening capsule," he said, and held up a small white pill.
She watched him tip his head back and drink.
The capsule went into the cuff of his cardigan, not into his mouth.
He caught her looking and smiled.
"Saving it for a bad day," he said.
She let it go, because up on the stage Damon had lifted the microphone.
"We have four hundred doses of everything left," Damon said. "Four hundred, and nine hundred people."
His voice was warm and steady, the voice of a man who had carried a stranger's baby up three flights of stairs on day two.
Everyone on this ship loved him for it.
"So the ship's doctor and I made a list. Anyone with a long-term illness goes on the comfort list. We'll keep you warm and fed, and we won't waste what we have."
A murmur ran through the crowd.
Beside him, Celia Fenn held a clipboard against her chest.
She was the doctor who had brought Veda tea that afternoon and told her to eat something.
She did not look up from the clipboard.
"The retired schoolteacher in bed twelve," Damon read.
Somebody on the left started to cry.
He read eleven more names.
Then he said, "Tobias Wrentham."
Veda's whole body went still.
Tobias did not move.
He did not stand, or shout, or look at her.
He looked at his hands and nodded once.
"I'm sorry, Veda," Celia called across the deck, soft and quick. "Nothing changes for Tobias tonight. I promise you that."
It was too smooth.
Veda had spent years listening to men lie to her face, and she knew that tone.
She also knew what came next, because she had sat in this exact chair last time and said nothing.
She had let them write him off.
Twelve days later she had been holding a fire axe over a man's head, and she had not stopped holding it for seven years.
"Veda," Tobias said quietly. "Sit down."
His voice shook.
It was the one thing he had asked of her since the water came, and she had never refused him anything.
"No," she said.
So she walked up the aisle between the deck chairs, past nine hundred faces, and climbed the stage.
Damon turned, still smiling.
"Veda. Good to see you on your feet."
"Take his name off the list," she said.
"I'd love to." His voice was kind. "I can't take a dozen people off to put one on, and I can't tell the others why."
"Then I'll give you a reason."
She took the microphone out of his hand.
He let her.
That was the thing about Damon, the thing she had hated for seven years and understood too late.
He never fought what he could use.
"There's a storm coming," Veda said.
The deck went quiet.
"A big one, from the south. The barometer on the bridge drops three points at ten tonight, and the officers think the front already went north. It didn't."
Damon raised an eyebrow. "How do you know that?"
"At midnight a wave comes over the open decks. It takes the lifeboats on Deck Four off their cradles, and everyone sleeping under them."
A woman near the front pulled a toddler closer.
"There are forty families sleeping out there tonight because it's cooler," Veda said. "Move them inside now."
Somebody laughed.
Somebody else said, "Who is she?"
Damon watched her for a long moment.
"And if you're wrong?"
"Lock me in the brig."
"And if you're right?"
"His name comes off the list, and the keys to the pharmacy come to me."
The silence stretched until the pool deck lights buzzed.
Celia's pen had stopped moving.
At the back of the crowd, Tobias had lifted his head.
For the first time, he was looking at her.
Damon smiled and held out his hand for the microphone.
"Fine," he said. "Move the families in. Humor her, everyone. If midnight comes and goes, she spends the night in the brig, and the list stands."
"Fair," Veda said.
She walked off the stage.
For two hours, nobody talked to her.
They carried sleeping children down the stairs and dragged mattresses into the ballroom, rolling their eyes at her.
Tobias sat on the deck chair where she'd left him.
"You didn't have to do that," he said.
"Yes," she said, "I did."
"Why?" He squinted at her. "How do you know about the storm?"
"I had a feeling."
He studied her face for a long, quiet moment, and the cuff of his cardigan shifted when he lifted his hand to her cheek.
His palm was hot.
"You're shaking," he said.
She had not noticed.
Midnight came.
The sky over the stern was black, with no stars.
Damon stood next to her at the railing with his arms folded and a patient smile, checking his watch.
"Eleven fifty-eight," he said gently. "I'll see you at the brig."
Veda said nothing.
At eleven fifty-nine, the sea went flat and silent.
Then every light on the ship swung sideways, and the first wave came over the rail.
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