"6:55 AM: Thank you for the advice yesterday, Midsummer bro. I got back with food: twenty packs of ramen, one jug of water, ten packs of bread, five packs of sausages, and seven chocolate bars. Dad and my stepmom said I did great. My little brother said if HE'D gone out he'd have brought back way more, and cheaper stuff too."
"7:30 AM: Bad. My brother is dead set on going out now, and Dad wants me to go with him. I don't know what to say. It's really dangerous out there. I don't want to go again."
"7:42 AM: I'm heading out. Dad says get while the streets are still empty, take my brother, bring back lots. Wish me luck everybody!"
I read all three posts in a row. The comments had exploded — half of them praising the girl, half of them cursing the brother, a third crowd begging me for my playbook. I skimmed, said nothing. The girl had DM'd me plenty too; I left those unread as well, and simply bookmarked the thread.
Watching the livestream, basically. Then I closed the laptop and went back to training.
Ten days of the reinforcement window. Every minute counted.
Same routine: a long perimeter run around the base to warm up and patrol my ground at the same time — checking for anything abnormal, checking the traps hadn't been disturbed. Nothing. Back inside, into the training. Every set pushed to the very edge.
Three minutes in, I was drenched. Five minutes in, every muscle was screaming, my whole body riding the edge of its limit, every second.
Break through. Break through. Break through.
One extra second per set — that was the whole program. And the program was the most scientific one there was, with proper rest intervals built in, so the training broke my limits instead of breaking me. Under that near-monastic grind, my body improved at the maximum rate a body could.
Five hours of training. Then the hot shower, and the rice cooker hugged to my chest, ten meal packs piled on the rice.
Burn in, fuel in. Eat big, digest big — my body was a furnace right now, converting everything into the physique I was building.
"I'm about to lose my mind!! My brother and I made it back — he nearly got us killed several times on the way. The road really didn't have many of them, so we got home. And then we find a wound on him! He wouldn't say what happened, until my little sister spotted his finger going black — a zombie scratched him with its claw!! What do I do?!"
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A photo under the post: the skin of his finger broken, the flesh already shading to purple-black.
The comments came fast — he'll turn, get him out of the house.
I left one comment of my own.
"Kill him. NOW."
The reply came quickly.
"Midsummer bro, you're finally on! I just showed everyone's advice to my dad and stepmom — they cut his finger off with a cleaver. They say the wound is small, he'll be fine."
Idiots. I was already typing. "LEAVE THE HOUSE. NOW!"
That message was never answered. I sat with my spoon in the air, staring at the screen, a good fifteen minutes, until the rice in the spoon went cold. Nothing.
The turn took one to ten minutes. A weak body: about a minute. A strong body, a strong will: maybe ten. And amputating the bite? A joke. The virus hits the bloodstream first and floods the whole body in seconds — there is no surviving it, no window to save anyone. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
I could see how it would end. The brother first: breathing fast, then blackening, then a dozen seconds of cold and rigid. Kill him in that window, and the rest of them lived. But a father that biased and a stepmother that doting would never let me touch him. Those ten seconds of hesitation — that would be the family reunion. All of them, down together.
I shook my head, shut the forum completely, found something light — a family sitcom — and ate dinner in front of it.
It wasn't that I'd never helped. If the girl had listened — hidden in that convenience store from day one, cut herself loose from those people completely, or put her brother down when it mattered — she wouldn't be trapped in this.
But ninety-nine people out of a hundred are like that. They can't tear free of the net pressing down on them; even when every instinct screams no, they jump back into their own fire pit, eyes open. Stupid, exactly the way I had been stupid in my first life.
Good thing that this life, I wasn't repeating it. Anyone who tried to press on me — I'd end them. Live exactly as I pleased, want what I wanted, take it. In the end times, be my real self.
I closed the forums for good and went back to work. Digestion training first, easy movement until my stomach settled; then the heavy stuff.
Seven more days went by like that. Train, shower, eat, train. Eighteen hours of the twenty-four, on a program so professional I came out of it sharper instead of wrecked.
The changes were visible. A ten-thousand-meter run that once left me gasping now didn't even redden my face. Strength had doubled — the hundred-pound rice sack I used to hug upright, I now lifted one-handed. My fighting had come all the way back: unarmed, I could put down five grown men at once; with any weapon in hand, one strike, one kill.
Today's training done, I sat down to attack a whole slab of braised beef.
From the five hundred pounds of fresh beef I'd stocked before the end — spiced, pressure-cooked until the flavor went all the way through, then chilled and sliced, with dipping sauce on the side. Fresh braised beef was criminally good. My tastes had gone uppity these days; I didn't even want the meal packs and instant noodles anymore. When you have the fresh stuff, who eats emergency rations? I had more than enough for one, and it was all mine.
Summer got his own pot: a big bone stew hung thick with meat, no extras, just a pinch of salt. What I ate, Summer ate. Woman and dog, eating well inside the walls.
And outside the walls, the world had already turned into something else.