Chapter 1: The Day Before Everything Ends

The air was thick with the stench of sweat, fear, and the sticky sweetness of spilled soda. People darted in and out of the big-box stores, clutching bottled water, snack cakes, and toilet paper, carts screeching over dirty linoleum. Out in the parking lot, SUVs double-parked, car doors slammed, alarms wailed, and somewhere a PA system shrieked, 'Clean-up in aisle four!'

But I was the only one clutching an axe, desperate and out of place as I sprinted up the mountain.

My hands were slick with adrenaline, white-knuckled on the axe handle. I hurdled a fallen shopping cart, lungs burning, weaving through gridlocked traffic snaking up the sloped road out of town. People gawked—arms overflowing with cereal boxes and bottled water—but I didn’t care. All I could see was the tree-lined ridge, my only hope, looming above the chaos.

They don’t get it—the zombies aren’t the real nightmare.

Everyone’s glued to the news, fixated on monsters on TV, blind to the real disaster creeping up behind them. The evening sun glared off the clouds, almost laughing at the idea that everything could change in a heartbeat.

In less than twenty-four hours, the sea will rise, and everything below 1,600 feet elevation will vanish under the waves. That’s the real extinction event.

You can feel it—a deep, rumbling dread beneath your feet. It’s not the dead that’ll get us. It’s the water: cold, silent, and merciless.

If you want to survive, you have to climb. No stockpile, no bunker, no basement’s gonna save you. It’s up or nothing.