The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 613

Chapter 613

The Goodmans still had a lot to deal with. Everyone was exhausted and grieving, so there was no need to worry about thanking Nicole and Zeph until after Michelle’s funeral arrangements were settled.

After seeing them off, Gabrielle didn’t have time to fall apart. She explained to Lydia how to care for the newborn, then turned her attention to Michelle’s body.

The world was too dangerous now. People were buried every day, only for desperate survivors to dig up the graves afterward.

Gabrielle refused to let that happen to Michelle.

She told Derek to trade some food for gasoline or enough firewood for a cremation the next day.

Her grief was no less than Victor’s. She was already getting old, and after finally gaining a granddaughter-in-law she adored, she spent the past two years teaching Michelle everything she knew.

Gabrielle had always believed that after she was gone, Michelle would be the one capable of keeping the three men in the family from doing anything stupid and holding the family together.

Instead, Michelle was suddenly gone, leaving behind a newborn who would need constant care.

How much longer were these disasters going to last?

Zeph drove in silence, but he couldn’t shake what he saw. He had come close to death more times than he could count, yet he rarely felt fear like this.

The moment he saw Michelle lying there, his mind went straight to Nicole. If that were ever her, what would he do?

Zeph tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Nicole, I don’t care if we ever have kids. What matters is that we stay alive and stay together.”

Nicole felt the same way. Adults could barely survive in this world. She saw no reason to bring a child into it only to suffer.

Still, she didn’t answer right away. “Do you want kids?”

“Poppy’s enough for me.”

Whether he ever had a biological child didn’t matter much to him. There was such a big age gap between him and Poppy tha even though she was technically his younger sister, he practically raised her like a daughter.

He was already worried about Poppy constantly. He worried he wasn’t taking good enough care of her, that she was too trusting, that she would end up around the wrong people.

Raising a kid was exhausting.

“And Cola.” Zeph reached over and took Nicole’s hand. “As long as we take good care of those two, that’s enough for me.”

Nicole thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah.”

Love didn’t have to mean having children. In a world where simply staying alive was already a struggle, choosing to risk your life to bring a baby into it could come at a devastating cost.

Victor and Michelle hadn’t done anything wrong by falling in love and getting married during the apocalypse, but they should’ve been more careful about preventing a pregnancy.

Victor might not have thought much about it, but Michelle…

The reason her labor had gone so badly was that the baby had been in a severely abnormal position.

Nicole realized it during the C-section. There was no way Michelle could’ve delivered naturally without serious complications.

+15 Bonus

Maybe the Goodmans didn’t know. Maybe notie of them had enought experience to recognize the danger. Maybe there simply wasn’t a doctor available.

Or maybe Michelle understood the fisks and decided to take the chance anyway.

If they had caught the problem a few months earlier, they might’ve been able to find an experienced doctor and prepare for the delivery ahead of time.

And if there had truly been no safe way to continue the pregnancy, ending it might have given Michelle a far better chance of surviving.

Now, Michelle was gone, and the Goodmans had a newborn to feed and protect. If the disasters somehow ended tomorrow, raising one more child wouldn’t be impossible.

But Nicole knew things were only going to get harder.

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