1 Second Chance

All I could feel was pain, and as zombies bit into me over and over again, I screamed with all my might. I couldn't believe that I was betrayed by one of my closets friend that had been with me for the past five of the ten years of the apocalypse. Tossed into a horde of zombies and mutants as a distraction so that she could escape.

"So long Natasha, I knew that you would be helpful eventually."

Laughing, she ran away, leaving me to die.

'Why does the world have to be so cruel?!' Was the last thought that passed through my mind as I was swiftly torn apart by the horde.

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I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding. I could have sworn that I was dead. I looked around my irregular surroundings, thinking that they looked familiar. Then it hit me, it was my old bedroom from before the apocalypse! I quickly stood up from the bed that I had been laying in, looking around my old room.

I then looked out my window. There were no shuffling zombies or the low grunts of the undead. It was just a normal sunny morning, that is, before the apocalypse. I quickly check the mirror, I had returned to what I looked like ten years ago. I looked like a pretty, 17 year old girl, though I was actually 20, untroubled by the harshness of the world. I had lost the wrinkles gained through constant fear and hiding, my pale, dry skin had become young, flawless, and beautiful again. If anything, I felt that I was even more beautiful and healthy than I was when before all this happened. My pretty ginger hair had also regain its fullness, in great contrast to my horribly unkempt hair in the apocalypse.

Suddenly, I hear a knock on the door,"Natasha, I made breakfast for you. You better get up before it ge... are you okay? Why are you looking at me like that?" As I saw my younger sister, Amelia, walk into my room, I was overcome with immense joy! My sister had been killed in the early years of the end of the world, brutally raped and murdered by a bunch of thugs while trying to find a new safe place to hide. Our affection for each other ran deep, and I almost couldn't bear living knowing what happened to her.

I rushed over to her, holding back tears, hugging her tightly,"Tess! What are you doing?" She struggled, but her physical strength as a 15 year old couldn't overcome my grip, leading to her giving in eventually. I just stood their hugging her for two whole minutes before I regained my senses,"Sorry, I just have had a rough night" I decided not tell her why I was so happy to see her, and when she questioned further, I waved it off to just having a bad nightmare.

We walked downstairs towards that kitchen on the first floor. There, I ate with my sister some cereal with milk that she had prepared for us to eat as breakfast. When I asked her what the date was, she said it was October 23, 2018, exactly one year before the world ends. My eyes fill with dread upon this, knowing that we had only a year before the apocalypse started.

After eating breakfast, I return to my room, saying to my sister that I felt tired and was going to take a nap, but I just really wanted to think about what I was going to do to prepare for next year. I had always been told that I was a very determined person, and that was true. If I was faced with a problem, I would work day and night solving it to perfection.

Arriving at my room, I closed the door behind me and began to think and lay out a plan. My parents, at around 40 years old, had both been killed in a hit and run two years ago, and the custody of my parents' home, possessions, and wealth.

As we were a comfortable upper middle class family, I had inherited around $200,000 in savings and liquid assets. This was now around $150,000 from my sister's and my living expenses, and school tuition. And only spending that much was through living frugally.

As I was worrying and planning out what I was going to do, I heard a chime in my head.

What is this?! What is that weird monotone voice in my head?

I was reeling at what I had just heard and saw in my mind. I appears as if there is something in my head that calls itself Apocalypse System. Wait... could this be like one of those system that I had read about in novels before it all started? If that was true, then if I opened <User Status>, I would get to see my body in terms of numbers.

I try to access my status by 'clicking' at it in my mind, and then a status board pops up.

'This is so awesome!' I kept saying this in my head because I couldn't get over how cool this was. First, I had been transferred to the past and got a second chance, but now I get a system too!

I first noticed that I didn't have any active or passive skills, which was to be expected, but I was still a little disappointed that I didn't have any yet.

Looking at my stats, I was a little confused. I was assuming that 10 was the average number for the average adult. Seeing my Health, Strength, Agility, Endurance, I wasn't very surprised. I had been pretty constant in working out at least an hour a day, and that got reflected into my stats. I wasn't really surprised by my Intelligence either, I had always been the one that got really good marks during school and memorizing things came easily to me.

My high willpower is a little surprising, but explainable. My years surviving in the apocalypse, seeing horrors, deaths, and more, you either had to toughen up or break.

When I saw that my luck was at 10, I became really excited. If luck is a stat, then that means that I can increase it, right? I really hoped that it was like that, because to me, having a really high stat in luck would greatly effect how I would survive. I could get really lucky and find resources without running into zombies, I could get out of tricky situations from pure luck alone. I decided that I would put special emphases on increasing my luck stat.

What really surprised me was my Charm stat. At 13, it was pretty high. I had always been called cute by my friends, and I got a decent amount of people how wanted to date me, but I knew that I wasn't THAT pretty.

I walked over to the mirror again and took a good look at myself this time. Looking closely, I could see that my skin was absolutely flawless, which I don't remember having. My bust and hip size also increased a little. I used to be a B cup, but I was now a C cup. My entire figure also appeared to have increased in 'quality'.

Seeing this, I was at first startled, how could I change so drastically?! But then I realized that it probably had something to do with my rebirth, so I will gladly take it.

Turning around to head back downstairs, I was suddenly hit with a wave of tiredness, so I decided I would just get a good rest before starting to plan what I was going to do and how I was going to use this new system to its fullest.

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Waking up at a little past 2:00, I got up and looked around my bedroom with relief. It wasn't a dream after all, I had really gone back in time. I almost slumped back down onto my bed in relief, but I cleared my mind and got dressed into a light blue dress.

When I came downstairs, I saw a note from my sister on the kitchen counter saying that she didn't want to disturb my sleep and left lunch in the fridge.

'She's probably hanging out with her friends' I think to myself.

I was really touched that she was so thoughtful as to make lunch for me, but when I looked into the fridge to see what she made, I realized that she hadn't changed a bit.

Staying constant with her behavior as a young troublemaker, she had left me with her half eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Laughing at this, I took it out and started eating what was left. I wasn't very hungry in the first place, so the sandwich filled me up.

After finishing my lunch, I decided to check out the system that appeared in my head last night.

I tried thinking 'System Open' as a first try, and the familiar screen popped up to greet me. I decided that I would check out the other things in the system other than my stats for now.

I 'clicked' in my mind to open the System Information.

The first thing that I saw was that there was a credit system. When I saw that, the first thought that I had was that I could gain credits from doing certain things, like killing zombies, and that they could be spent in the store.

Before I went any further into the system, I decided that I needed to find a good place to sit, because I had a feeling that it was going to take a long while to understand.

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