Rebirth: 100 Days Before Doomsday

Kevin and a couple of snipers positioned themselves on rooftops nearby, setting off controlled explosive charges to draw the infected away from the building. As expected, the creatures snarled and turned toward the sound, their slow, mindless movements shifting their focus.

With their path temporarily cleared, Grace led the charge into the building. The lower floors were mostly abandoned - rotting furniture, broken windows, and dried bloodstains marking past struggles.

Reaching the top floors, she knocked on the barricaded door. "We are here to get you out."

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. But then came hesitant shuffling before a man’s wary voice called back. "How do we know this isn’t a trick?"

"If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have wasted time knocking," Grace replied bluntly.

The barricade slowly shifted and the door was finally creaked open, enough for the people inside to take a look out.

Grace didn’t rush and just waited for the group of survivors to take their time to study the situation. She even had Captain Harlow and his shoulders standing behind her as the military’s presence was seen as a welcoming sight by these struggling survivors.

Her plan worked because the door was finally pulled further open to reveal a group of seven people. They all were worn otm malnourished, but... alive.

The leader, a man in his mid-forties who introduced himself as Raul, studied her carefully. "Who are you?" He might have guessed that despite the soldiers’ presence in her team, she wasn’t from military.

"I’m Grace... from Greenstone. I’m here to offer you place in our sanctuary." She went straight to the point without beating around the bush. There was no time to waste.

Her words were met with surpised gasps from the survivors’ group. They seemed to have recognized the name ’Greenstone’.

"You... are really offering us a place in Greenstone?" Raul asked.

Grace nodded. "Food, shelter, security - your group will receive all these. In return, you all will need work just like the rest of the residents of Greenstone. You contribute, you survive. That’s the deal."

Raul turned his attention to the survivors of his group, only to see all of them nodding their heads urgently. They all knew that Grace’s offer was their only chance at survival.

They had over thirty people in their group at beginning, but now only seven were left. It was just a matter of time before these seven would have ended up losing their lives as well. Hence, they were ready to grasp any chance at survival they would have gotten, let alone one as good as the one Grace just made.

Turning his attention back to her, Raul confirmed what Grace had already guessed. "Alright, we are in."

* * *

One month later ~

Grace was standing on the watchtower of Greenstone, surveying the growing settlement below.

What had once been a small sanctuary for a few hundred people had now become a structured, self-sustaining fortress. With each new survivor group integrated into Greenstone, the settlement was growing stronger day-by-day.

But expansion wasn’t just about increasing numbers. It was also about ensuring stability.

More people meant more mouths to feed, more shelters to build, and more resources to secure. She knew that she couldn’t simply keep adding people without making full preparations.

And as this realization settled in, the expansion became a long-term project.

For the next few weeks, her team, soldiers, and the residents, focused on renovating the housing units, and setting up new greenhouses. The vegetable gardens were extended, and efforts were made to breed livestock within controlled environments.

For livestock, Grace took out pairs of hens, roosters, goats, and cows from the farmhouse inside her space. She did pretend to find them during her mission of infected-killing one particular afternoon.

And at this point, the soldiers and residents of Greenstone had stopped asking her nay sort of questions about the supplies she kept finding during her missions and distributing among them.

Either they believed her completely, or they just didn’t care as long as they were enjoying the benefits. In short, Grace no longer needed to create a full-planned story about the supplies she was sharing with Greenstone.

She worked with the residents and soldiers to set up a good shelter for these livestock. While meat was no longer something they could enjoy because of the little livestock they had in possession, they were still able to enjoy eggs and milk which was already a luxury.

It was during this time that the soldiers discovered an underground water system set up in one of the farthest buildings of the residential area. The system was set up during the construction period of Greenstone and hadn’t been used ever since.

Upon giving it a try, they succeeded in bringing the system back to life, but the water they got was heavily contaminated with virus. Fortunately, Grace came to their rescue.

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She set up a big water filter machine and added the mutated plant’s harvest that was able to further clean the water of any sort of remaining toxins.

But all these developments were requiring a lot of time and effort. Since they were creating a fortress of survival, they needed to plan everything accordingly.

Another month went by quickly as the expansion work continued, and then another even before anyone realized it.

Every now and then, snowstorms kept returning - covering the landscapes with a heavy layer of snow and forcing them to stop the works for a day or two, but there was no other danger for the time-being.

As Greenstone continued its slow but steady expansion, Grace also continued with her task of securing as many Spirit Stones as she possibly could with her body schedule.

She ventured further into dangerous zones to track and kill mutated Beasts. But none of these hunts were easy as she always had to spend hours battling the infected.

It was only at this point she was realizing just how high the country’s population was. No matter how many infected she kept killing, it was barely making any difference in their never-ending numbers.

If she cleared one city today, the same place would be flooding with infected tomorrow or the day after. But this didn’t stop her from killing them.

With her team by her side, she took down one infected after another, one Beast after another and extracting as many Spirit Stones as she found.

It wasn’t until the month was almost at its end, did she finally found a Level Six green Spirit Stone.