$10M Hush Money: My Doomsday Survival Fund

Seven days until the zombie apocalypse. And right now, an arrogant society matron just slapped a tenmilliondollar check on the table as my hush money.

She was convinced I was her husband's illegitimate daughter. I stared at the paper. The ultimate funding for my doomsday stockpile had just delivered itself.

Chapter 1 I starved to death, and then I woke up. Exactly one week before the zombie virus tore the world apart. My freeloader of a roommate hadn't paid rent in months.

Instead of paying up, that bitch played the victim and had her fratbro boyfriend literally toss my luggage right out the front doors of our apartment building.

When it rains, it pours. Dragging a busted suitcase and a heavyduty trash bag holding my entire life, I ducked into a random funeral home to escape the sudden downpour.

Inside, a highend memorial service was in full swing. Muffled sobs echoed through the polished halls. The sheer weight of my miserable existence crashed down on me.

I dropped my bags, buried my face in my hands, and just lost it, bawling my eyes out.

A sharplydressed older woman at the front stared at me, frozen. "That old bastard actually had an illegitimate daughter!" The room went dead silent.

Every eye in the chapel snapped to me. I opened my mouth to explain, but panic seized my throat. My vision blurred, black spots danced across my eyes, and my knees gave out.

The matriarch sighed, her perfectly manicured hand tightening around her designer clutch. "Since you're crying so hard, take this as an advance on your trust fund." "Ten million dollars.

Take the money and disappear. Don't even dream of getting another cent from our family." Ten million.

The sheer shock finished the job my panic started, and everything faded to black. But right before I hit the marble floor, someone caught me.

Strong arms wrapped tightly around my waist. Wait.

Why did the old man's grandson look exactly like Beckett, the college senior I'd been secretly crushing on? [Maeve, what the hell is going on?

How did you suddenly become my grandfather's illegitimate daughter! This is a misunderstanding, right?] The sharp scent of hospital bleach stung my nose.

I stared at the screen on my phone. That was the most Beckett had ever texted me in his life. My thumb hovered over the keyboard, a knot twisting in my stomach.

After agonizing over it, I typed out a cowardly reply, desperate to buy time. [I'm dealing with an emergency right now.

Can I explain everything to you later?] [Sure.] Three dots didn't even appear. Just one single word, and then dead silence. Classic Beckett.

The untouchable god of the business school. In my past life, I'd only survived half a month before starving, but I'd heard the crackling radio broadcasts.

The Beckett family had funded massive relief efforts across the country. He probably didn't even need my warning about the apocalypse.

I logged into my mobile banking app, my finger shaking as I traced the long string of zeroes on the screen. It was real. I had the money to buy food. I wasn't going to starve again.

I pulled the rough hospital blanket over my head, laughing so hard tears streamed down my face. Surviving a zombie apocalypse required prep.

I'd seen enough movies to know the drill. I'd previously snagged a dirtcheap, topfloor apartment in a supposedly haunted complex out in the suburbs.

The leasing agent had literally bolted when he saw the dried blood splatters on the living room wall. I used that to negotiate another two hundred bucks off my monthly rent.

Who knew a murder house would turn out to be the ultimate safe zone when the undead started walking? But the place needed major fortifications.

The standard aluminum windows wouldn't hold up for shit. I glanced at my tenmilliondollar balance and immediately booked a private contracting firm.

I had every window ripped out and replaced with aerospacegrade titanium framing, throwing in maximum soundproofing for good measure.

I hired a crew to replace the front door and the bedroom door with bankvaultlevel military steel, rigged out with multiple deadbolts and biometric scanners.

Even if the zombie horde rushed the building, this place was going to be an impenetrable fortress. But a girl still needs to breathe.

I searched online and hired a specialized crew to weld customized security grilles covered in razorsharp steel spikes over every ventilation point.

These suburban apartment blocks sat right by the ocean. Aside from summer tourists, they were practically ghost towns yearround. But you could never be too careful.

Even with private elevator access to my floor, desperate people could still scale the balconies.

In the apocalypse, human nature was ten times more terrifying than any rotting corpse.

Though, to be fair, in my past life, I hadn't seen a single living soul before I starved to death.

Chapter 2 Stepping out to stockpile supplies, I did a quick sweep of the fire escape. The sixth, seventh, and eighth floors were vacant.

I immediately decided to wrap heavyduty iron chains around the stairwell doors starting from the sixth floor. I pulled up the survival checklist on my phone. I didn't hesitate.

I booked four heavyduty box trucks through a commercial freight app, negotiating a flat rate of five hundred bucks a trip for the hauling.

I told the rig drivers to pull straight into the loading dock of the biggest Costco in the area and wait.

With recent virus spikes constantly on the news, no one batted an eye when I walked into the manager's office wearing a pulleddown baseball cap and a heavy N95 mask.

I had my cover story locked and loaded. I told the store manager I was coordinating a massive relief drop for quarantined zones.

He bought it instantly and assigned two floor supervisors to personally escort me. The memory of my stomach digesting itself in my past life still burned in my gut.

I headed straight for the survival food aisles. Two hundred crates of militarygrade MREs. Two hundred boxes of highcalorie tactical protein bars.

I pointed, and the workers loaded. I cleared the shelves of dehydrated mac and cheese, thickcut beef jerky, and instant oatmeal, stacking up over a hundred more boxes.

Passing the freezer aisles, I grabbed fifty bulk bags of frozen dumplings and pizza rolls, not even checking the brands.

Canned fruit, Spam, canned chicken, and bulk tubs of mixed nuts. Four to five hundred cases in total. That alone swallowed an entire box truck.

I packed another halftruck with vacuumsealed bread and snacks. Familysized bags of potato chips and sunflower seeds were necessities for keeping sane.

Rolling past the beverage aisle, one of the supervisors asked if I wanted to add some soda or energy drinks to the donation. I shook my head.

I pointed at the pallet of purified water and ordered a hundred bulk cases of the fivegallon jugs. Sugary drinks just make you thirstier.

Taking up premium bunker space with that garbage was a rookie mistake. Just the foundational food supply maxed out three full trucks. I quickly tapped my app and called in two more.

To keep a low profile, I had the drivers slap "Emergency Pandemic Relief" banners across the sides of the trucks. With that, no one gave us a second glance.

I skipped the raw rice and cooking oil. In my last life, the power and water grids collapsed in days. Buying stuff that required boiling or frying was pointless.

Plus, the smell of cooking food drifting out a vent would instantly put a target on my back. That thought triggered a pivot.

I had the staff load up a dozen ultraquiet portable generators and two massive crates of heavyduty power banks.

I grabbed a few pairs of highpowered tactical binoculars while I was at it.

We packed those onto the truck along with pallets of toilet paper and massive crates of personal hygiene supplies. This run was all about the daily essentials.

Body wash, antibacterial soap, toothbrushes, bulk packs of wet wipes, and a multiyear supply of tampons and maxi pads. My only rule: buy it all.

Everything ran like a welloiled machine. Until I hit the checkout line and locked eyes with Beckett. "Stocking up?" His dark eyes pinned me down.

It felt like he was slicing right through my skull. I dug my fingers into the hem of my shirt. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

The floor supervisor quickly stepped in to save the silence. "The lady is coordinating a massive relief drop for the quarantine zones.

Otherwise, one person couldn't eat all this in ten years." Beckett let out a low hum. His gaze stayed anchored to my face.

I twisted my shirt fabric, my knuckles turning white, and mumbled a vague warning for him to grab some extra groceries before the virus got worse.

Chapter 3 I hired several hauling crews from the north side of the city, paying triple their standard rate to bring them south.

I staggered their shifts so they never crossed paths, having them haul the massive stockpile from the underground parking garage up to the eighth floor.

I left the seventh floor empty. On the sixth floor, I deliberately left a small stash of supplies as bait.

Elevators would become metal death traps the second the grid failed, so I secured every fire escape door with heavy iron chains starting from the sixth floor.

After the crews cleared out, I used the elevator to haul the absolute essentials from the eighth floor up to my penthouse apartment.

By the time I dragged the last boxes of onlineordered vitamins, rubbing alcohol, and cold medicine inside, my muscles were screaming. I collapsed onto the floor.

Then I remembered the dozens of bags of cat litter still sitting downstairs. I paid a gym bro from the building across the street to haul them up, telling him I fostered rescues.

That litter was going to be my lifeline when the plumbing inevitably backed up. "Thanks for the heavy lifting." The guy was built like a tank.

He dropped the massive bags without breaking a sweat. "No problem. I'm a huge cat guy anyway. Happy to help." One day left.

The stockpile was basically complete, but a cold knot still sat in my stomach. I was completely unarmed. If something forced me out of my bunker, I'd be dead meat.

I didn't waste another second. I headed straight out to secure defensive weapons. Highvoltage stun guns, tactical tomahawks, and industrialgrade bear mace—I cleared them all out.

I hit up a tactical supply shop and swept their inventory of highlethality tactical compound crossbows and coils of barbed wire.

I was going to rig the stairwells with lethal traps to shred the first wave of zombies that tried to rush my floor. Freshman year, I'd joined the wilderness survival club.

We camped deep in the backcountry, and Beckett had taught me exactly how to rig perimeter defenses against predators. Everything was falling perfectly into place.

Except for returning that ten million to the Beckett family. The bank flagged the massive transfer on my new personal account.

After arguing with the bank tellers in circles, the branch closed. And then… time ran out. The virus hit at exactly midnight.

In my past life, I'd been sleeping like the dead in my dorm, popping in earplugs after the screaming woke me up. This time, I stood vigil by the window.

I peeled back a sliver of the blackout curtain and raised my tactical binoculars. Below, rotting figures dragged themselves through the streets in twisted clusters.

Their milky, bloodshot eyes scanned wildly for fresh meat. The night air ripped with shrieks and desperate pleas for help, quickly drowned out by guttural, wet snarling.

By sunrise, the slaughter in the streets had quieted down. I wasn't a saint. I didn't want to be locked in a psych ward for screaming about the end of the world.

I just wanted to survive. In these early stages, the infected had terrible vision. They hunted purely by sound. Cut the lights, kill the noise, and you were a ghost.

As a sick, bloodred sun crested the horizon, the horde began clustering around the dry fountain in the apartment courtyard.

From the fire escape, muffled, guttural roars echoed through the concrete shafts. I forced my breathing to steady.

I cracked open a can of peaches, forcing the syrupy fruit down my throat, and brewed a cup of black coffee to kill the exhaustion. I twisted the sink handle.

Thick, foulsmelling brown sludge sputtered from the faucet. I dropped the dirty mug into the basin. The water grid was already compromised.

The power, the gas, and the internet were next. Chapter 4 Night fell.

Across the courtyard, a jarring cluster of crimson light flared in the windows of the opposite apartment building. Candles.

I peeled back the blackout curtains—something I’d barely dared to do in my past life—and raised my tactical binoculars. My jaw dropped.

Through the floortoceiling glass, the guy lighting the candles was Beckett! What the hell was he doing living in a dump like this? It took me a few seconds to connect the dots.

Beckett wasn't your average trustfund baby. He’d literally taken a job delivering takeout in the dead of summer just to experience real life. His very first delivery?

A cake I’d ordered for the trashtier guy I was crushing on at the time.

Naturally, I found out the guy was a cheating scumbag right after I hit place order, and I'd spent a solid ten minutes crying my eyes out over it.

When I went down to pay the balance, Beckett somehow figured out the whole pathetic story.

Without missing a beat, he marched right back into that scumbag’s dorm, snatched the cake right off the table in front of everyone, publicly exposed the guy for the rat he was, and then personally delivered the cake straight to my hands.

Looking back, that was the exact moment I fell hard for him. My heart slammed against my ribs. I scrambled to lower the binoculars, but I froze.

Beckett was standing right at his window, staring straight at me with his index finger pressed against his lips. Shh.

What could possibly be more humiliating than suddenly becoming your crush's aunt? The kicker? I wasn't his grandfather's illegitimate daughter. I wasn't his freaking aunt.

To avoid starving to death in the apocalypse, I’d gladly thrown my dignity out the window. But now?

Now I was trapped in a literal staring contest with Beckett from across the courtyard. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

I snatched up my phone, frantically dialing his number to tell him to kill the candles before the light drew the horde. The call wouldn't even connect.

The cell towers were already dead. My screen showed 99+ unread messages. All from Beckett, sent right before the grid collapsed.

I’d been so obsessed with tracking the infected that I missed them.

I grabbed a cheap lighter I used for mosquito coils, struck the flint to create a brief flash of flame, and immediately blew it out. Through the lenses, I saw Beckett freeze.

A second later, realization hit him. He killed the candles.

Down in the courtyard, the rotting bodies that had started to swarm toward his building gradually lost interest and drifted away. I let out a massive breath, my shoulders sagging.

He shot me a quick twofinger salute, yanked his heavy blackout curtains shut, and disappeared. Did he actually listen to my warning? Did he buy food?

The anxiety chewed at my nerves until I finally passed out. Morning, day two of the apocalypse. I peeked through the curtains and aimed my binoculars at Beckett's window.

A massive, lightcolored bedsheet was plastered against the glass.

Painted across it in sharp, block letters: [ARE YOU OKAY?] No shit, I muttered under my breath, but my hands were already moving.

I grabbed a spare sheet, hastily scrawled a reply with a thick marker, and taped it to my balcony door: [I'M FINE. YOU? DID YOU STOCK UP ON FOOD?] Beckett pulled his sheet down.

A minute later, a new message went up: [I BARELY LIVE HERE. DON'T EVEN HAVE A STALE CRUST OF BREAD. TOSS SOME SUPPLIES OVER, MY DEAR LITTLE AUNTIE!] My dear little auntie.

The words hit me like a physical blow. Through the glass, I could see that distinct, infuriating smirk playing on his lips. My entire face burned redhot.

I forced a stiff, sarcastic smile, scrawled a massive [WAIT] on my sheet, shoved it against the glass, and dropped the blinds. There was no way I was compromising my perimeter.

I’d had the contractors replace the balcony sliders with ballistic glass reinforced by spiked steel grates. As long as I kept them locked down, no rotting freak was getting through.

Chapter 5 Ironically, the spiked barricades actually made it easier to set up a supply line. I eyed the gap between our buildings. It wasn't too wide.

Tossing a heavyduty climbing rope across to build a zipline was totally doable. To anchor my end, I lashed the rope securely to the heavy coffee table in my living room.

I tied a bulky can of meat to the other end for throwing weight. Across the gap, Beckett looked frantic.

He mouthed something aggressively, snatching up a bedsheet that read: [DON'T THROW] Too late. I'd already hurled the heavy coil with every ounce of strength I had. Thwack! Clang!

The knot slipped. The heavy can detached midair. The unweighted rope whipped downward, dropping straight into the courtyard below.

A chorus of guttural shrieks spiked, vibrating painfully against my eardrums. A swarming horde surged toward the base of my building.

Down in the chaos, something grabbed the dangling rope. Hard. I lunged forward to untie my end. CRASH. The massive coffee table flipped.

The heavy wood screeched across the floor, rocketing straight at my shins. The sheer kinetic force wiped me out. I flew backward.

The back of my skull slammed hard against the iron window grate. The world went black. Bzzzzzz— A mechanical whine drilled into my ears.

My skull throbbed like it was splitting down the middle. I scrambled up from the floor. The metallic reek of rotted blood hit the back of my throat. The snarling was right outside.

I tracked the buzzing sound. A drone hovered outside the glass. But right next to it, less than three feet from my balcony, a massive figure clung to the climbing rope.

Its decaying face twisted into a grotesque, hungry grin. I recognized that sheer bulk. It was the gym bro who had carried my cat litter upstairs.

No wonder he could scale a sheer vertical drop so fast. Gllrrrrg. A wet snarl ripped from his ruined throat. I dryheaved, the dizziness threatening to pull me under again. THWACK.

A heavy, armorpiercing crossbow bolt tore through the air. It drove straight through the freak's hand, pinning it to the exterior concrete wall.

Through the glass across the gap, Beckett stood with his custom tactical crossbow. His chest heaved.

Thick veins popped on his forearms, his eyes bloodshot from the physical strain of drawing the heavy string. I bit down hard on my lower lip.

The sharp tang of copper shocked my system awake. I snatched up the heavy tactical tomahawk, swung with everything I had, and severed the freak's arm right at the joint.

Black sludge splattered my boots. The massive body plummeted into the dark void below. After that nightmare, I changed tactics.

I let Beckett fly his drone over, carefully tying the rope to its landing gear to pull it across.

Once the zipline was fully anchored, I hooked a heavy plastic bag filled with MREs and bottled water and sent it sliding his way. The apocalypse had shattered reality.

Stranded in our concrete boxes, Beckett and I became each other's literal lifelines. He never asked why I played along as his grandfather's bastard daughter.

I never asked how he knew exactly which apartment I lived in. I sent over a message detailing how the infected relied entirely on sound after dark.

I also sent over some winter gear. On the ninth day of the outbreak, a freak torrential storm was going to hit. The temperature would plummet, freezing anyone caught unprepared.

As for why I specifically sent over a neon pink, waistcinching women's puffer jacket? Because I'm petty as hell. That's what he gets for teasing me with that little auntie crap.

Put it on, my untouchable muscle god! We started exchanging daily survival updates. He swore up and down he would rather freeze than put on that women's coat.

I just smiled and kept quiet. Midnight. The torrential rain hit right on schedule. Heavy, erratic thuds echoed from my building's fire escape.

A cold spike of dread nailed me to the floor. Chapter 6 Crash. A massive clap of thunder shook the apartment.

The torrential downpour hammered against the glass, almost drowning out the metallic scraping echoing from the fire escape. Zombies were brainless.

They didn't meticulously pick locks. There was only one logical explanation. I wasn't the only survivor left in this building. They’d seen the supplies I sent to Beckett.

They’d watched, they’d waited, and now they were making their move. I'd chained every stairwell door from the sixth floor up.

But heavy iron only stopped rotting corpses, not desperate people with tools. This freak storm was forecasted to last at least a week.

That was more than enough time for them to chew through the stairwell chains and eventually breach my titanium vault door.

I immediately moved to transfer a backup stash of supplies over to Beckett. I grabbed the zipline. The thick climbing rope snapped in my hands like dry rot.

The freak acid rain had eaten through the fibers. Damn it. Through the torrential rain across the gap, a flashlight flickered. Short, sharp bursts. Morse code.

Beckett was asking what was wrong. There was no point hiding it. I flashed the truth back. Sitting around waiting to be slaughtered wasn't my style.

I shoved the industrial bear mace into my pocket, gripped the highvoltage stun gun, and unlocked my steel door.

The lethal tripwire traps I'd rigged on the seventh and eighthfloor landings were still untouched. My chest unclenched a fraction. I crept down.

Whoever these neighbors were, they were fast. In under thirty minutes, they had already sheared through three heavyduty brass padlocks on the sixth floor.

Through the iron bars of the seventhfloor gate, I spotted them.

A balding, middleaged guy was grunting, throwing his entire body weight onto a massive pair of bolt cutters clamped over my chain.

Right behind him stood his wife and their heavyset son, both gripping heavy red fire axes, watching his back.

I hid the stun gun behind my back and stepped into the dim light of the stairwell. "Stop." The guy's head snapped up.

He slammed the heavy steel cutters against the iron gate. "Open the damn lock, bitch. Hand over the stockpile, or we're going to get real ugly." Like they were being polite now.

He barked threats while his hands kept aggressively working the cutters. They knew exactly what I was sitting on.

If I actually opened that gate, they'd butcher me in a heartbeat. "I left a massive stash of supplies on the sixth floor.

That's more than enough to keep you alive for a long time," I said, keeping my voice dead even. "Don't be stupid.

This noise is going to draw the horde, and then we're all dead." "Those scraps? Not a chance." He spat on the concrete. "You better play smart, little girl.

Open this fucking door right now, or I'll split your head open the second I get through." The fat son nervously checked the pitchblack stairwell below. "Dad, I hear something down there.

Are the freaks coming up?" "Shut up and watch my back! I'm almost through!" I hadn't even hidden the bait boxes on the sixth floor. They had definitely seen them.

It just wasn't enough for their unfiltered greed. The metallic grinding flared my nerves.

I tightened my grip on the stun gun, thumbed the dial to maximum voltage, and jammed the live prongs straight into the conductive iron gate. ZAP. A violent blue arc crackled.

The heavy current surged right through the damp metal and into the bolt cutters. The smell of searing flesh hit the air.

The man screamed and dropped the heavy tool. "Back off." Under the cover of a massive thunderclap, the family erupted into vicious cursing.

The battery light on my stun gun flickered and died.

The second the heavyset son saw the blue sparks fade, he shoved past his father and hacked at the weakened chain with his fire axe. The heavy steel chain was already compromised.

Three brutal strikes later, it snapped. The father kicked the gate hard. "You dead bitch! I'm gonna tear you apart—" "In your dreams