The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 614

Chapter 614

After all the years Nicole had shared a bed with Zeph, this was the first time she had ever seen him caught in a nightmare. She quickly shook him a few times.

Zeph’s eyes flew open. He dragged in several deep breaths, still half trapped in the dream, his expression dazed and stricken.

Nicole waved a hand in front of his face. “Zeph?”

Only then did he fully come back to himself. He abruptly pulled her into his arms and held on tight. “Nicole, don’t leave me.”

The man who was usually so calm and steady looked completely shaken. Apparently, the apocalypse had left its mark on him, too. He just never let it show.

Nicole wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. “Bad dream?”

Michelle’s death in childbirth must have hit him harder than she realized..

That was exactly what Zeph dreamed about. In the nightmare, Poppy was still nothing more than the stripped skeleton he once found. Then he and Nicole fell in love, only for Nicole to get pregnant and die in childbirth.

“It was just a dream. Bad dreams don’t come true.”

Nicole would never knowingly risk her life, but life was unpredictable. Accidents could happen. What if sfre somehow got pregnant one day?

When Beatrice miscarried, Nicole didn’t witness it herself, so it didn’t affect her nearly as deeply. But seeing Micheile die shook

her.

She and Zeph were living together, and Poppy was getting older, too.

Years of surviving one disaster after another had made Nicole painfully aware of how much she still didn’t know.

There were too many gaps in her knowledge, and she needed to fill them before an emergency happened. Otherwise, when the time came, she might not even have a chance to figure out what to do.

After they washed up and sat down for breakfast, the radio broadcast an unexpected announcement: the night market was

reopening.

After being shut down for two years, the marketplace was finally coming back.

Since the city was still trapped in polar night, the authorities apparently decided to lean into it and simply call it the night

market.

Nicole didn’t expect that. The government was actually encouraging people to go out and trade for whatever supplies they needed, though everyone was strongly advised to travel in groups rather than alone.

If the authorities were willing to reopen the market, it meant public safety during polar night had improved dramatically.

Nicole noticed the difference the last time they went out. Streetlights were on along both sides of the road, and they didn’t run into a single robbery on the way there or back.

Clearly, the huge bounties on violent criminals worked better than anyone expected.

Where there was money to be made, people always found a way to make it. Over the past two years, bounty-hunting crews popped up everywhere, and the more capable ones were reportedly doing very well.

Nicole even heard that some people tried turning bounty hunting into a business, recruiting members and offering specialized training for different kinds of missions. The government eventually shut those operations down by force.

In times like these, private armed groups were strictly forbidden. Anyone who tried to organize one would be treated no

differently from the wanted criminals they hunted.

+15 Bonus

News of the tnarket reopening sent the entire neighborhood into an uproar. The wealthier residents who had endured two brutal years of polar night were especially overwhelmed with relief.

Even men in their fifties and sixties broke down crying.

At last, they could retrieve the supplies they had hidden elsewhere. They wouldn’t have to keep surviving on black moss, barely scraping by from one day to the next.

“Hahaha! I made it! I actually made it!”

They laughed through their tears, then broke down all over again as entire families clung to one another.

“Things are finally getting better.”

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