When the World Ends, She Begins novel Chapter 17

The food was gone.

Braxton and Tiffany were both anxious and frustrated. At the moment, they had no idea what to do about Natalie.

Ever since Natalie killed someone in the building, none of the neighbors dared to mess with her again. But the incident with Vincent and Leandro gave the other residents a new idea.

During a time like this, breaking into other people's homes might be the only way to survive.

The families living between the fifth and sixth floors had run out of supplies a while ago. Cramped in the hallways and stuck in awful conditions, they finally set their sights on Florence.

Everyone knew she lived alone now. That made her an easy target.

So, a group of them forced open her door.

Vincent and Leandro probably never imagined that after they died trying to break into a woman's home, someone else would do the same to their place—only this time, with more people and less shame.

Florence heard the noise from behind her door and yelled out to scare them off. But no one listened. A few minutes later, the group kicked the door open and walked right in.

That's when they saw it—Florence had a 50-pound sack of pasta sitting right in her living room.

All that food, and she'd still been going door-to-door begging for help, lying that she hadn't eaten in days. The old woman had no shame.

Her sons had tried to rob a young woman and got themselves killed. Serves them right.

Feeling morally justified in their "revenge," the group took over Unit 701 like it was their own.

There were four families living between the fifth and sixth floors. But Florence's apartment wasn't big enough for all of them. So after claiming her place, they moved up another floor and found Unit 802 empty. They took that one too.

From Unit 801 across the hall, Tiffany saw a group of burly men occupying her old home. She could only watch in silence through the peephole.

With no way to call the cops, she didn't dare confront them. Instead, she told herself she'd wait until things went back to normal—then she'd report them and sue for damages. She figured it would be like renting out the place for now.

Florence had been kicked out of her own home, too. At first, she yelled and screamed, but when someone pulled out a knife, she backed off immediately.

"Please ... just let me take a little pasta with me," she begged. "If I don't eat, I'll die!"

But no one cared. They shoved her out and slammed the door in her face. Her sons' bodies were tossed back into the hallway like trash.

After the fifth and sixth floor residents took the lead, others began to get ideas.

If you were out of food, maybe you could just take it from someone else.

Most people didn't know how to swim. Even if they risked their lives wading through the flood to find food, they'd only get enough for a day or two. So some started sneaking into others' homes to steal.

One day, someone gets robbed. The next day, they go to rob someone else.

Soon, the entire apartment building turned into chaos. Crime spread like a virus.

The condo was falling apart. Every day, there were screams, shouting, and sounds of things being broken or stolen.

But there was one rule everyone followed. Never mess with the woman on the 14th floor.

No one knew where Florence had gone. Vincent and Leandro's corpses were finally thrown into the floodwaters. By then, they had already started to rot.

Natalie's life, meanwhile, returned to peace.

Who would be so ruthless as to kill this early?

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