Promise of Survival

The crisp air bit at Sadie’s exposed skin as she stepped out of her apartment building, the medical mask concealing her flawless face. It was Saturday, and the College District was a pulsing vein of life. Crowds of university students spilled across the sidewalks, laughing in loose groups, their hands intertwined, ignorant of the ticking clock hanging over humanity. The streets were lined with small diners and bustling food stalls, emitting thick, savory clouds of roasted meats and fried dough.

At first, Sadie kept her head down, her mind racing with logistical survival plans. But the moment the rich, greasy scent of seasoned beef hit her nose, her stomach cramped with a ferocious, audible growl. She stopped in her tracks.

It had been eight years since she had eaten a proper meal. In the darkest, most agonizing days of her past life, true starvation had rewritten her brain. She vividly remembered dropping to her hands and knees in the freezing mud, gnawing frantically on dry, dirt-caked tree bark just to put something solid in her shrinking stomach. She remembered choking down putrid, stringy rat meat, treating the rancid flesh like a rare, priceless delicacy. The phantom taste of ash and rot coated her tongue.

Her mouth watered with a painful intensity. Driven by the visceral, lingering trauma of that absolute starvation, Sadie abandoned her planned route and marched straight toward Macaroni Deli, her favorite haunt from before the world ended.

She pushed through the glass doors and ordered with frantic urgency. A massive bowl of hot macaroni, a dripping sloppy joe, and a towering plate of freshly baked mini bagels. When the food arrived, Sadie sat in the corner booth and devoured it with an animalistic, desperate intensity. She shoved forkfuls of rich, cheesy macaroni into her mouth, burning her tongue, not caring about the heat. Every heavy, carb-loaded bite was a deliberate act to ground herself in the reality of her rebirth. She swallowed the sloppy joe in massive bites, savoring the grease and the tang of the sauce, letting the sheer weight of the food remind her that she was alive. She wasn't starving in a frozen wasteland. She was here.

Once she had eaten enough to make her stomach ache, Sadie packed up the four leftover mini bagels. They were still steaming in the cardboard takeout box. She carried them out of the deli, slipped into a quiet, deserted alleyway behind the building, and prepared to test her newfound dimension's preservation mechanics.

She held the warm box in her hands and focused on the pristine white void in her mind. In a blink, the box vanished from her palms. She checked her internal spatial awareness; the bagels floated neatly in the center of the silent room.

Just as she prepared to step back onto the main street, her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Sadie pulled it out. A bank notification flashed across the bright screen: a massive $60,000 deposit had just cleared into her account. A second later, a text from her mother, Diane, popped up.

*“Go check out some cars, but don’t buy anything yet. Your dad already bought a ticket—he’ll be there tomorrow.”*

Her dad was flying in tomorrow. He wanted to help her navigate the car dealerships.

A profound, suffocating wave of emotion crashed into Sadie’s chest, stealing her breath. Her eyes stung with sudden, hot tears. In her previous apocalyptic timeline, her parents had been miles away when the catastrophic floods struck. Failing to reunite with them before the rising waters destroyed the infrastructure and blocked the highways was her most agonizing, enduring regret. She had spent years searching for them, only to find nothing but devastation.

She swore to the heavens she would never repeat that fatal error.

Sadie leaned against the cold brick wall of the alley, her mind adapting rapidly. Her original plan had been to stockpile what little supplies she could afford in Valmont and then drive straight back to her hometown of Oakhaven. But the impending disasters required significantly more capital and physical labor. The Floodfall would strike first, permanently severing the 600-mile highway north to Oakhaven. The roads would become submerged death traps.

She needed her parents here, in Valmont, right now. If the three of them pooled their resources and stockpiled supplies together, they could weather the initial collapse before making a calculated move.

She dialed Diane’s number. The line rang twice before her mother answered.

“Thanks, Mom, I got the money,” Sadie said, her voice tight with genuine anxiety. “Can you come with Dad tomorrow too?”

Diane hesitated, the line crackling softly. “I can’t, sweetie. I’d be gone for a few days. Who’s going to take Toby to school? He can’t just be left on his own.”

Sadie’s grip on the phone tightened. She needed a solution immediately. “Sometimes Toby eats dinner at Helen’s house anyway,” Sadie urged, her tone rushed. “We could ask her to take him to school for a few days. It won’t be long. Classes are going to shut down soon anyway.”

Helen Mercer was their trusted neighbor who lived downstairs. Her grandson, Callum, was older than Sadie, and the two families had shared countless dinners over the years. Leaving her younger brother Toby with Helen was a safe, logical choice.

But Diane’s sharp maternal instincts flared instantly at the strange, frantic request. “Sadie, what’s going on?” Diane demanded, her voice dropping into a serious register. “Why do you need me to come along so badly?”

Sadie didn't need to fake her reaction. Relying on the genuine, traumatic tears welling in her eyes from the memories of their violent separation, she let her raw desperation bleed into her trembling voice.

“Mom, something’s happening,” Sadie choked out, a sob catching in her throat. “Please. You and Dad need to come tomorrow as soon as you can. And bring the physical savings account books from home.”

Diane gasped, her panic spiking over the line. “What is it? Tell me right now! Sadie, are you... are you pregnant?”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Sadie said, maintaining a soft but firm refusal to elaborate. “Something is going on, but it’s not safe to explain over the phone. Please don’t panic. Just be careful on the way. We’ll talk when you get here tomorrow.”

Before Diane could interrogate her further, Sadie pulled the phone from her ear and intentionally ended the call. She stared at the darkened screen, offering a silent apology to her terrified parents. She knew they would abandon everything and rush to her side. It was a cruel manipulation, but it was the only way to save their lives.

With her family secured, Sadie quickly adapted her logistical plans. The $60,000 gave her a fighting chance, but she had to move fast. She navigated through the city and rented a massive, empty commercial warehouse on the outskirts of town. From there, she hit a local used car lot, dropping a fraction of her funds on a stripped-down, heavy-duty white van with a reinforced chassis. She tore the back seats out herself, tossing them onto the pavement, leaving the cargo area cavernous and ready.

She drove the van straight to the bustling Braxton farmer’s market. The sprawling outdoor venue was packed with wholesale vendors selling bulk goods. Sadie pulled her medical mask up, fixed her posture, and adopted a cold, professional facade.

She approached the busiest vendor, a massive stall surrounded by towering pallets of raw ingredients. Claiming to be a buyer for a family-owned food distribution business, she aggressively stretched her tight budget, haggling over every single cent.

“I need bulk,” Sadie told the vendor, a sturdy woman with a clipboard. “Two tons of short-grain white rice. Two tons of all-purpose flour. I also need two thousand pounds of grits, sorghum flour, cornmeal, brown rice, wild rice, and barley.”

She moved down her mental list, securing base carbohydrates. “For beans, I want a thousand pounds of kidney beans, a thousand pounds of pinto beans, and a thousand pounds of green beans. Throw in another thousand pounds of assorted lentils and black beans.”

The vendor blinked at the sheer volume but quickly ran the numbers. Because Sadie was buying at steep wholesale margins, the monumental haul came out to just over $30,000.

“You’re buying a lot, sweetheart,” the vendor said, stamping the invoice. “I can’t drop the price any lower, but I’ll throw in two extra fifty-pound bags of premium rice for free.”

Sadie nodded sharply, handing over the payment.

Moving literal tons of grain was grueling physical labor. Sadie pulled her heavy-duty van up to the loading dock. She painstakingly shuttled the massive haul into the back of the van, stacking the heavy burlap and plastic sacks until the suspension groaned under the weight. It took multiple nerve-wracking trips between the market and her rented warehouse.

Every time she pulled the van into the cavernous warehouse, she slammed the rolling metal doors shut, locking herself inside the dim space. Standing in the back of the van, she placed her hands on the towering stacks of grain and systematically transferred every single bag into her white spatial void. Hundreds of pounds of food vanished from the physical world in the blink of an eye, reappearing in her mental dimension.

After the final trip, Sadie locked the warehouse doors and leaned against the cold metal, panting heavily. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. She closed her eyes and inspected the void.

Towering mountains of rice, flour, and beans dominated the eight-hundred-square-foot space. Before doing anything else, she needed to check the bagels. She reached out mentally and pulled the cardboard box back into her hands.

She opened the lid. The mini bagels were still faintly steaming. She pressed her thumb into the dough; it was flawlessly soft, yielding instantly to her touch. Her spatial dimension froze time. Whatever went inside stayed exactly as it was, preserved flawlessly against decay and temperature drops.

An overwhelming wash of relief coursed through her tired muscles. She slumped against the van, letting out a breathless, shaky laugh. Food would never rot. Hot meals would stay hot forever.

She checked her bank balance. She still had roughly $30,000 remaining from her mother’s deposit, plus the small amount she had saved herself. She climbed back into the driver's seat and sped toward the wholesale restaurant supply stores on the edge of the district.

Utilizing her remaining funds, she aggressively bought hundreds of pounds of salt and sugar, spending nearly $7,500. Salt was life in the apocalypse; it cured meat, cleaned wounds, and restored electrolytes. She then dropped thousands more on massive containers of essential spices—black pepper, garlic powder, cumin, chili flakes, and dried herbs.

With her final few thousand dollars, she targeted invaluable, morale-boosting apocalypse luxuries. She bought industrial-sized tubs of high-calorie peanut butter, rich cheese spreads, and crates of durable canned meats, including tuna and heavy beef stew. She remembered her past life, where a single spoonful of mushroom steak sauce had been traded for blood, stretching out over months of miserable, flavorless rations. She bought every jar of savory sauce the store had on the shelves.

Trip after trip, she loaded the van, drove to the warehouse, and deposited the goods into the void.

By the time the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the warehouse floor, Sadie was exhausted. She stood alone in the dim, empty building, projecting her consciousness into her spatial dimension. The pristine white void was rapidly filling up into a chaotic, unorganized mess. Sacks of flour leaned precariously against crates of canned tuna.

She desperately needed industrial shelving to organize the piles and maximize the vertical space, or she would run out of room long before she finished hoarding. Shelving cost money.

She needed more capital.

Sadie leaned against the bumper of the van, her eyes narrowing as she began methodically plotting. Bryce. The handsome, twisted student council president owed her. He had leeched off her wealth for a year, funding his comfortable lifestyle with her money while silently despising her for the birthmark on her face. She needed to force him to cough up every single dollar he had stolen from her.

Right on cue, her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Sadie pulled it out. The screen illuminated the dark warehouse, displaying Bryce’s name.

A terrifyingly cold, hollow smile touched Sadie’s lips. She stared at the flashing letters, recalling how her facial insecurity had once made her a pathetic, eager puppet for his manipulation. He had played the caring boyfriend, masking his selfish, rotten core until the apocalypse tore his disguise away.

She pressed the green answer button and lifted the phone to her ear.

Bryce’s smooth, manipulative voice immediately floated through the speaker, dripping with practiced affection. “Babe, what do you want for dinner tonight? I’ll cook something and bring it over.”