Chapter 2

I snapped, "Do you think our village is a playground?

"We're busy. Fuck off."

I didn't wait for a reply, just hung up and blocked Roger's number.

That time, if anyone was playing games, it was me running the show.

After hanging up, I stared at my dwindling bank balance on my phone, my brows furrowing.

It still wasn't enough.

We fixed up the tunnel, bought a ventilation system, and stockpiled fuel and medicine. It was a money pit that never ended.

I gathered everyone in the village under thirty at the chapel.

"Everyone, take out your phones," I said.

I fired up the projector, and the screen was covered with the names of more than fifty loan apps.

I continued, "Forget about the interest; forget about your credit score. If you can get a loan, squeeze them for all they're worth."

The villagers just stared at me.

"Jenna, how are we supposed to pay this back? Are we going to end up in jail?" Vernon asked.

I let out a bitter laugh.

I said, "In seven days, money will be nothing but scrap paper. The loan sharks could be sitting on piles of cash, but they won't even be able to trade it for a single bread roll.

"I've already hit up every loan app myself. Don't worry. Go home and use your family's info to squeeze out whatever you can too."

That night, everyone in our village turned into loan dodgers.

Staring at the extra money in my mobile banking account, I felt a little more at ease.

Out of one last bit of kindness, I shot off an anonymous email to the government.

It contained only a few lines: [On the night of December 23rd, a deadly freeze and a plague are coming. It's the end of the world for humanity. Brace yourselves.]

Whether they believed it or not, that was none of my concern.

I was just a regular college kid. I couldn't save the world, but all I wanted was to keep my village safe.

With the money in hand, we started upgrading our defenses like there was no tomorrow.

I knew the scariest thing in the apocalypse wasn't the zombies; it was the evil inside people.

We couldn't afford a military-grade armored vehicle, but we could roll up our sleeves and make everything ourselves.

Myron Garcia, the village's go-to mechanic, brought out the giant combine harvester.

"Jenna, how do you want to trick this beast out?" he said, eyes shining with excitement, welding torch ready.

I pointed at the big drum up front.

I said, "Rip that drum off and swap it for some high-strength manganese steel spinning blades.

"Stick chainsaws on both sides, weld a ram to the front, and change out all the glass for bulletproof."

A few days later, we powered it up for a test run.

The engine roared like a wild beast, and the spinning blades howled through the air with a sound that sent chills down one's spine.

Myron flashed a grin, his pearly whites gleaming.

He said, "With this monster, forget zombies; even if a grizzly showed up, I'd grind it into ground meat."

Besides this beast, we also tricked out every single one of our crop protection drones, making sure they'd keep running even in the dead of winter.

Finally, there was the tunnel, the thing we depended on to stay alive.

It was an old relic from the resistance days, staying warm in winter and cool in summer. Now, it was our best refuge from the deadly freeze.

At the entrance, we installed an explosion-proof alloy door, just like the ones in bank vaults, and put up a regular door outside as a decoy.

On the second underground level, we set up a vegetable greenhouse with plant grow lights so nobody in the village would be short on vegetables.

The villagers handling the stockpiling weren't slacking off either.

They had stockpiled five hundred tons of anthracite coal, mountains of butter, vacuum-sealed wheat, generators, diesel, and so on.

So many trucks rolled in that the cement road at the village gate was cracking under the strain.

The village dogs, who usually barked at every stranger, were dead tired those days. They just sprawled out with their tongues hanging, too lazy to even open their eyes.

With just one day left before the apocalypse, we were putting the finishing touches on our defenses.

A blast from a car horn shattered the village's peace.

An off-road vehicle rumbled onto the village road.

The window rolled down.

Roger's greasy face, hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, came into view.

A woman with an overly plasticized face sat in the passenger seat beside him, her hand clamped over her nose in disgust.

"Mr. Flores, is this the wild countryside you were bragging about? It smells absolutely rank," she complained.

Roger laughed loudly, took off his sunglasses, and gave the villagers working by the roadside a disdainful once-over.

"Where's Jenna? Tell her to drag herself out here and welcome me," he said.

The folks in the village didn't even glance his way. They kept hefting rocks.

"A bunch of hillbillies, are you all deaf or what?" Roger snapped.

Feeling snubbed, Roger slammed the gas pedal and barreled right into the village.

But Roger had no clue we had dug a deep pit right on the main road into the village to keep outsiders out. We covered it with a thin layer of straw and loose dirt as camouflage.

A heavy thud shook the ground.

Roger's car dropped halfway into the pit.

The wheels were hanging in the air, and no matter how hard he stomped the gas, all he got was mud splattering everywhere. The car was stuck, not moving at all.

"Ah! My nose!" the woman with an overly plasticized face shrieked as she smacked right into the dashboard.

Roger crawled out, dusty and pissed off.

He yelled, "Damn it. What the hell is up with this crappy road? Is this even meant for people?

"Who built this damn road? Get out here and face me."

The villagers closed in, shovels and hoes at the ready, their faces full of hostility.

The silent intimidation was enough to make Roger's two spoiled friends and the woman he brought along visibly uneasy.