Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 174

Chapter 174 Did You Lose Your House?

#Finished

I scanticd the bleak landscape, his brow furrowed as he looked over at the passenger side. “Where is your base, Joanna?”

Joanna pointed past a rusted boundary marker, directing them inside through a hidden break in the perimeter fence. The vehicles rolled onto her five-acre property, enveloped immediately by a dense, towering forest that cut off the view of the highway. Joanna motioned for the other trucks behind them to wait while she drove ahead with Will and Briggs.

Looking at the thick tree line, Joanna let out a long, heavy sigh of relief. Her mapping had been precise this elevation was well out of the impending tsunami’s destructive range. Because it was located miles away from any heavily populated metropolitan areas, the risk of wandering zombie swarms was incredibly low.

As soon as the dense forest finally opened up into a small clearing, she motioned for Will to pull over.

The engine idled down, and the truck hissed to a stop. Briggs stepped out of the cab, his boots sinking into the wet mud as he stared blankly at the bare lot. There was nothing here save for a few wild bushes and a patch of damp grass. He turned to her, his hard military face wrinkling with genuine confusion.

“Did you lose your house, Joanna?” Briggs asked, gesturing to the empty field.

Joanna scoffed, a confident smirk playing on her lips. She pointed directly toward a concealed corner of the clearing, near the base of a massive pine tree.

With a mechanical whine, a heavy steel hatch built flat into the ground slowly began to elevate. The reinforced hydraulic doors parted, and Jake popped his head above the surface, his face splitting into a wide grin. He waved enthusiastically at the arriving convoy before climbing the ladder out into the rain.

“See, Commander?” Joanna called out, wiping the morning drizzle from his eyes as he jogged over to the trucks. “When you actually have the time to prepare for the end of the world, nothing beats a subterranean bunker. Welcome to the shelter.”

Briggs and Will exchanged a long, stunned look before walking over to the reinforced steel hatch.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Will muttered, running a gloved hand along the thick hydraulic arm of the bunker door. He looked down into the brightly lit, concrete-reinforced stairwell stretching deep into the earth. “Underground. No windows for a mob to break, no wooden walls for raiders to burn down. It’s completely invisible from the main road.”

Briggs gave a slow, deeply respectful nod, his sharp commander eyes instantly evaluating the tactical superiority of the structure. For all his years relying on military-grade surface bases, he couldn’t deny the sheer brilliance of the design.

“I have to admit it, Joanna,” Briggs said, turning to her with a rare expression of pure approval. “I’ve spent my entire career building perimeters and securing sightlines on the surface. But out here? Moving entirely out of sight is the smartest move you could have made. This layout is completely secure.”

Jake grinned, visibly proud to hear a hardened military commander validate their hard work. “Exactly. It’s built to survive most threats, and we are high enough out here to be completely away from the tsunami.”

Jake turned his face toward Joanna, his broad grin instantly vanishing as his expression turned dead serious. “Julian was really worried about you guys,” he said, his voice dropping into an urgent undertone. “We just

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09:51 Wed, Oct 7 FMD.

Chapter 174 Did You Lose Your House?

Finished

got word over the emergency bands. The tsunami hit the coast forty minutes ago. Half of Eldon is under”

Whoa-“Joanna shook her head, a cold shiver running down her spine.

She stared back in the direction of the highway, picturing the millions of infected and the shattered remains of the Eldon Gallería being engulfed by an unstoppable wall of ocean water. If she hadn’t pushed them to move, or if they had stayed behind to wait out the freezing rain just a little longer, they would have been swallowed whole by the flood. They had escaped the coastal destruction by a matter of minutes.

Joanna turned to Briggs, her face serious. “How many people do you have under your control?”

He paused, doing the math in his head. “Our largest unit, the one currently in Dillon, has one hundred people, including soldiers and their families. This smaller convoy here has thirty.”

Joanna let out a heavy sigh, and Jake shook his head. “Well, our underground shelter is definitely not big enough for all of them.”

“I still have those other shipping containers built for shelters,” Joanna said, a plan forming in her mind.

She walked over to the opposite side of the clearing, away from the underground hatch. Reaching into her hidden pocket dimension, she began pulling the massive structures out one by one, placing them strategically around the perimeter of the property.

Jake watched, nodding approvingly as the layout took shape. “Perfect. The containers can house the incoming soldiers and act as a solid physical barrier against any wandering zombies.”

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