Chapter 1

Hanah's POV

I opened my eyes.

An old television was on. The anchor's voice was lifeless and emotionless as he read: "Highly pathogenic influenza is on the rise across the region. Please take personal precautions, limit your time in public, avoid unnecessary gatherings, stay warm."

CDC called it the flu.

Dead center sat a fat old woman, sixty or seventy, hair gone gray, glaring at me. "My dear grandmother", Martha Hale.

The living room was cramped — maybe three hundred square feet total. An old couch was stuffed shoulder to shoulder with middle-aged men and women.

I had died. Died at the East Coast Survivor Base, in the moment the dead tide came over me and swallowed me under.

And now my fingers bent and straightened when I told them to. My heart beat in my chest, steady and heavy.

Fifteen days before the apocalypse. The day they came to pressure me out of my own condo.

Martha, slapped the arm of the sofa and got started on me. "Now your brother's getting married. He needs you to clear out your condo for your brother — what are you so stingy about? Your mother's been gone, and your stepmother raised you like her own — everybody says what a good woman she is! You're a thankless brat that can't be raised right!"

Linda Hale, my stepmother, sat beside Martha wearing her heartbroken face and smoothed it over. "Mom, Hannah's not a brat. She'll be grateful."

I laughed out loud.

At that age, I had been angry at the whole world and starving for somebody to love me.

I was fourteen when my mother died in that car wreck.

Before long, Linda moved in and brought a son with her, and she was good to me — so attentive about everything. I let that softness wrap me up. Over the only condo my mother ever left behind, I hesitated one second and nodded.

Then the apocalypse came. From beginning to end, I was one bite of meat on their plate and one mouthful of blood. They left me behind more than once. To get on a rescue truck, somebody kicked me off the back end of it.

When I was squeezed dry, they kicked me away. That was when I learned what fake affection means.

I would have liked to turn around and slap the stupid girl I used to be across the face.

Bang. In front of all of them, I dumped the few bags of cheap fruit off the coffee table straight into the trash and sat down across from them.

My stepbrother, Trevor Hale, looked up from his phone and yelled at me. "My mom bought you those imported apples special. She said apples are your favorite. How can you throw them out!"

I gave him a cold look. Apples were my favorite? That was news to me.

"Do you have any standing to talk to me about the condo?"

I didn't raise my voice. But ten years of living alone through the end of the world were sitting in my eyes, and Trevor's nerve cracked. His gaze slid away and he folded.

Linda jumped right in — "the woman's family insists on a downtown condo", she said. Then she softened her voice and begged. "Just do this for me, sweetheart. I'm begging you like your mother would. When you get married, we'll find a way to get you your own place."

My father Robert Hale, quiet up to now, finally opened his mouth. "You really think this condo is yours? What does a girl need a house for! This condo goes to your brother! When you get married, your husband can buy you one!"

I couldn't be bothered to get angry anymore. Trevor was Robert and Linda's kid, born before the two of them ever married — Robert's own flesh and blood. To him, I was nothing.

After the apocalypse, that face of them got even uglier.

I held up two fingers. "Two million."

The title was in my name. The condo had been my mother's premarital property, signed over to me through a notarized legal trust.

"You want it, bring money. Two million and it's yours."

The room erupted. Every one of them took it for a joke. I turned my digital watch toward them. "You get five seconds to think it over. Say no and I sell it to somebody else. Five."

"You thankless brat, I'll beat you to death!" Martha shrieked.

"Three. Two."

Robert shoved himself up and came at me. I kicked the chair out from under him and he went down flat on his ass.

"One."

I pulled out my phone and dialed. "Ms. Larkin, I want to list my condo. Two million —"

"Stop talking, we agree!" Linda was on her feet, white as paper. "Hannah! Sell it to us!"

A condo worth three million on the market, and two million walks it out the door. New construction downtown came with every restriction there was — you had to qualify.

They weren't about to let that discount land in an outsider's hands. Flip it and they were a million up.

The corner of my mouth hooked. I hung up.

The price of two million was a loss. But I needed time and I needed cash, and more than either one, once that money left their hands, they wouldn't have any left.

Three days before the apocalypse, the government would push out a warning telling everybody to stock up. I wanted to see what they'd stock up with.

Half an hour later, at the bank counter.

Ding. Deposit received, two million dollars.

Linda and the rest looked like they'd swallowed a bug, but the money went over.

Larkin's phone kept ringing off the hook, and willing or not, Linda didn't dare open her mouth about it.

I stalled them. "The County Clerk's Office has suspended operations until further notice."

Linda squinted those fox eyes of hers and smiled sweet and pretty. "Don't worry about the transfer. We'll handle it in a few days."

I knew exactly what that was. She wasn't guarding against me. She was guarding against the daughter-in-law who hadn't married in yet, terrified of that girl's name ending up on the deed.

My smile widened. Perfect.

Outside the bank, Trevor flipped on me.

"The condo was bought and paid for," he said. "So get out — haul the junk and trash out of the house. I didn't want a single piece of it; I will brin my wife over to buy all new furniture."

Linda pretended to back down. She said, "How's she supposed to move out in such a short time? Let her stay a few more days. She's sensible, she'll definitely pay you a storage fee. Maybe she'll replace the furniture."

"Look at that face," Trevor shot back. "Money's the only thing she understands. She doesn't deserve anybody going easy on her."

Then he tacked on one more thing. "And get that worthless mutt out of the house. If it's still there when I get back, I'll kill it and eat it."

Mutt. The word buzzed hard in my skull. Summer was still alive.

I didn't waste another second on them. I turned around and ran home.

I pushed the bedroom door open and a German Shepherd was sitting there quiet, not making a sound. The second she saw me, she launched into my arms.

"Woof!"

"Summer!"

Holding her, I nearly cried.

A retired military working dog. My mother's gift to me on my tenth birthday.

Smart the way people are smart. After my mother passed, she was what carried me through the worst of it.

Linda's family tried to dump her or give her away more than once, and every time I tore into them over it.

Linda kept her for the sake of her good name and shut her up in my room, and she didn't have room to move until I moved back into the condo my mother left me.

Not long after the apocalypse hit, she got old. Trevor's family waited until I was out looking for food, and they ate her. I've blamed myself ever since.

"Summer, don't worry." I buried my face in her coat. "This time around, I will never let anything hurt you again."

She barked, like she understood.

The condo had been rented out for years and it had aged.

But the tables and chairs were all things my mother picked out while she was alive, and they'd cost real money back then. While she was here, I lived in this place with her the whole time. None of it was worth anything, and all of it was memory.

I stood in the room and let my eyes linger.

And then.

Ding. Super Bunker System activated.

Within one hour, every one hundred fifty dollars' worth of materials you carry earns one cubic meter of storage.