Jackson Cook was cleaning his sword.
“Are you going to polish it in between every skirmish?” one of his companions, Mike Ringer, asked. They sat on a rough wooden bench inside a large wooden structure that once been a barn and was more recently part of a cider mill.
Now it was a siege fort.
Mike’s voice betrayed a growing annoyance with the amount of attention Jackson was focusing on his weapon rather than on providing emotional reassurance for Mike.
“Oh leave him alone,” a woman’s voice said. Jackson glanced up from the katana he was wiping with a piece of rough wool and saw one of the newcomers. “He’s not polishing, hon,” she said. “He’s cleaning the blood off.”
Jackson nodded in satisfaction as he examined the blade before sliding it back into the black leather scabbard at his side. It looked a bit odd paired with his Carhartt overalls and plaid flannel shirt, but that didn’t matter to him. He was comfortable. Well, as comfortable as one could be during a zombie apocalypse, anyway. And whatever else the hell was going on.
Mike was a neighbor who had never worked a day on a farm in his life, but now held a small axe in one hand at all times like he was Paul Bunyan. Like Jackson, his weapon of choice looked amiss compared to the rest of his outfit, which consisted of pleated khaki pants and a bright green polo shirt. Jackson and Mike were unlikely friends and only acquaintances by the happenstance of Mike having bought a condo near Cook's Cider Mill. Jackson, who had inherited a farm from his aged parents and an old Katana from a brother who had died overseas, had decided to pass up the option to sell the land to developers and had instead doubled down on the farm as a cider mill years ago, planting a small orchard of his own and also importing apples from various local orchards that dotted the edge of town.
None of that mattered anymore, except that this structure, the large red barn that stood to the side of the road that ran past the mill, had become a defacto gathering and fall-back point for everyone who lived on the street and had survived so far.
This was a depressingly small number of people. There was Jackson and Mike, old man Clearly who worked maintenance for Mike’s condos, a couple of other young condo residents Jackson hadn’t met yet, and the newest bunch, three women who had just arrived a few minutes before as the sun began to set.
“I’m Julia,” one of the women, the one who had been standing beside Jackson and Mike, said. Jackson nodded in greeting. “I’m Jackson. This is Mike.”
“Pleasure. Listen, we saw another group of people out there. Told them we were going to check out your barn.”
“Why?” Jackson pulled a hunting knife from a much smaller scabbard to inspect the blade, make sure it was sharp.
“He’s got another one,” Mike muttered.
“I don’t know,” Julia said, “If I’m being honest, not sure. Just a good landmark, I guess. But it sounded like they might circle back to try to meet up with us here if… I don’t know. If they didn’t find something better. We didn’t know you were… I mean, we didn’t know anyone was here. So.” She shrugged. “Sorry, I guess.”
Jackson shrugged in turn. “It’s what we’re here for.” He stopped short and put his knife away with a sigh. “M’am.”
Julie gave him a sad smile. “You say that to every customer, don’t you? I mean, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Something Dad used to say around the farm. Sort of became a line. You came to the mill?”
She nodded. “Only every October since you opened.”
Jackson grimaced, and she gave a light laugh. “It’s ok, don’t worry about it. I’m in customer service, too. Or I was. I know the game.”
“Well,” said Mike, “how many people are we talking about? In that other group, I mean?”
Her smile fell a bit. “A lot. Relatively. Like… maybe twenty?”
“There goes all the food,” he mumbled.
Jackson shot him a glare. “We have plenty of apples.”
“Thank goodness,” said Julia. “And thank you for sharing.”
They did have apples; not only were there still some coming in on the trees outside, but Jackson and his small staff had already picked apples by the crateful and packed them in cold storage in the cellar beneath their feet. He didn’t know how long you could live on nothing but apples; it seemed like they must be lacking some of the vital nutrients a person needed after a while. But it wasn’t as if he was running a cookie shop or something useless.
Oh, he remembered, there was one good batch of cookies, though, next door in the shop. Along with whatever apple cider and pumpkin donuts were left from the day before. In the intervening day he’d had the presence of mind to bring some milk, cheese, and other perishables from inside the house out to the cellar as well, since all the power was down, but that was meant to be enough for one man over the course of a week or so, not a small army of refugees. Once it was gone, it was gone.
A gust of wind rattled the barn doors on their hinges and more than one set of eyes fell on them, then turned to Jackson. He ignored them. He wasn’t a leader, he didn’t like speaking or dealing with people any more than he had to. He hadn’t turned the farm into a mill so he could chat with customers all day. He’d just been looking for a way to keep the land.
“Jesus, it’s picking up,” Mike said.
One of the women who’d come in with Julia made the sign of the cross over herself.
The wind blew again, and this time the gust was punctuated with four quick knocks at the door. Jackson stood and strode across. Julia followed closely.
“Hello in there?” a voice called. “Anyone inside? It’s getting pretty rough out here and, well, we’d rather not get caught in it.”
Jackson reached a small knot in the wood with a crack running through the middle that served as a makeshift peephole and had a look.
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A large group of people—mostly young men, but also some women—stood outside the doors. They were all armed in some fashion. Some wielded hunting bows, a sensible choice, Jackson reflected. Others, axes. Still others among them looked to have put together some makeshift armor with cookie sheets draped over their stomachs and backs and pots on their heads like helmets. These had clearly raided a Bed Bath and Beyond or something and they looked frankly ridiculous, but they were still alive, so on balance, they must have been doing something right. He grudgingly gave them his respect.
A woman led the group. She stood an inch or two higher even than most of the men, and in her hands she held the long shaft of a sledgehammer. Her arms were toned and muscular, bared against the cool evening wind. She shifted her weight to hold the massive tool in one hand and reach out with the other to knock again, but Jackson opened the door.
“Welcome to the mill,” he said softly. “We have walls and apples. Can’t promise much more, but you’re welcome to at least ride out the storm, so long as you don’t cause trouble for us.”
She nodded to him. “Can’t ask for anything more than that. I’m Riley. And this,” she gestured with her chin to the crew behind her, “is the Oakland Community College LARP club. We accept and appreciate your hospitality, Mr. Cook.” She strode in past him as his eyebrows rose.
“You know my name?”
“Oh man,” one of the young men in ridiculous kitchenware said as he walked in, “you betcha. You’re like, a local celebrity, man. Those pumpkin donuts. God, they’re good! Get ‘em every year.”
“Whoa!” a girl said, her brown eyes lighting up in the candlelight as she spotted Jackson’s weapon. “That a katana? Like, a real, actual katana? How’d you score that? Oh my god what a find. Can I see?”
“Uh…” Jackson gave up trying to register every person who walked past him through the door. “Yes, it is. It was my brother’s. He died. Um, Afghanistan. And no.”
“Oh.” Her face fell a bit. “I’m sorry. Was he a collector?”
Jackson nodded. Mike, of all people, came to his aid, clapping an unwanted hand on his shoulder. “Our friendly neighborhood cider shucker here is the quiet sort, miss…”
“I’m Charlie,” she said brightly.
“Right. You certainly are.”
“Alright people, gather round,” Riley called out, and to Jackson’s surprise, the large group actually collected into some semblance of an orderly formation, all falling silent and turning their eyes to Riley. She was clearly their leader.
“The fuck is LARP?” Mike asked under his breath.
“Was wondering the same thing,” Julia said from Jackson’s other side.
A ghost of a smile crossed Jackson’s lips as he remembered his older brother, back before the military. “Live Action Role-Playing,” he said.
“Role Play? Like… whips and leather dungeons, or D&D dungeons?” Mike asked.
Julia snorted.
“Like D&D,” Jackson said. “Except instead of sitting around a table and talking it all out, they go outside with armor and weapons, usually great big foam stuff that can’t really hurt anyone, and they act out… whatever it is. To scale. Usually ends up being a battle.”
“Oh sure, ok,” Mike said, “like paintball. But without the balls.”
Jackson nodded. “Exactly like paintball.”
Julia gave them a sideways glance. “Ok, I see it now.”
“Sorry?” Mike said.
“Bromance of the apocalypse, here. You two are the odd couple but you’re going to bond over your shared knowledge of varied ways boys play dolls without dolls.”
Jackson shrugged. “I played with dolls. Storm troopers. Still have my original Millenium Falcon.”
“Oh man!” Mike’s eyes grew wide. “The one with the top piece that just came all the way the fuck off?”
“That’s the one.” He paused a moment. “It was my brother’s.”
“I’m sensing a theme,” Mike said.
Julia shushed them both. Riley had begun to speak to her group.
“My friends, before we bed down for the night, I call the roster. One eye’d John!”
“Here!” a boy called out. Jackson picked him out by the costume eyepatch he wore.
“Slick Dick Chesterton!”
“Present!”
“Sammie the Thunder Sanchez!”
“Present!”
“Patricia!”
“Here.”
One by one Riley called their names and they answered. Jackson surveyed them. They were just kids. College kids, old teenagers and young twenty-somethings, but kids in his eyes. Jackson himself wasn’t quite pushing thirty but he had never gone to college. By the time he was eighteen he had lost his sibling and both parents and had to work his ass off like a grown man in order to preserve his family’s land. He was a fifty-eight year-old soul in a twenty-eight year-old body. But these kids?
They were really just kids.
Young souls, one and all.
“Alright,” Riley continued with the measured tone of command, “you can all thank whatever gods you pray to in private, but in public you’re to thank Mr. Jackson Cook of Cook’s Cider Mill for putting your sorry asses up for the night. Make no mistake, this building and everything inside it belongs to Mr. Cook. I don’t want to hear any reports of any of you taking apple rations or anything else without asking or having them assigned. In the morning I’ll assign two patrol groups for the day as a thank you to our host. The rest of you will go scouting with me for fellow survivors. Tonight I want Sammie, Patricia, and myself to take the watch, two hours at a time. The rest of you, you’ll be bedding… ah,” she paused and found Jackson with her eyes, “where would you like us to go, Mr. Cook? Ok with you if we camp up in the loft?”
“That’s fine,” he said.
“You heard the man,” she continued. “Bed up in the loft. Now get moving, up you get! Duties to be assigned bright and early.”
With some quiet grumbling about their duties and more than a few words of thanks to Jackson, the kids moved toward the ladder and climbed upstairs. Both Mike and Julia looked agog at Riley, who stood watching them climb, like a mother hen.
“I’m sorry,” Mike finally said, “is this the actual fucking military? I thought you were a bunch of gamers. Nerds nerding… you know, without the actual games.”
Riley smiled. “Oh, we’re nerds alright. Answer me this, mister…”
“Mike.”
“Mister Mike. Would you rather we cower in fear, scatter like insects, or come together to try to survive?”
“But this isn’t some game!” Mike’s voice moved from incredulity to anger. Jackson frowned. Riley’s face grew serious as well. “People are dying in droves out there, kid. You don’t know. You don’t understand—”
“I don’t know?” She took a step closer to him, her voice dropping in volume but growing in intensity. “You think I don’t know? You think I haven’t already lost friends? Family? People I love? Fought for them and failed, watched them die, had to order tactical retreats to trade ten lives for one? Because that’s exactly what my twenty-four first hours of hell have looked like.” She looked around at the sturdy wooden beams of the barn. “Must be nice to live so close to a place like this.” Her voice was cold but her eyes burned as she stared Mike down.
“Well… well…” He floundered, sensing his mistake but either unwilling or unable to reconcile the gamified way Riley ordered her troops with the severity of the actual situation. “But they’re just… kids. Fuck.”
Riley’s face softened a bit. Then she asked, “Where is the actual military?”
Mike opened his mouth but nothing came out. “Well, there isn’t a base anywhere near here. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Police, then? Firefighters? Hell, any actual emergency responders, martial or otherwise?”
The room was silent. From up in the loft they heard the creaking of boards and the giggling of college kids bedding down for a sleepover. One of Julia’s companions, who had been handing out shiny red apples, placed one in Riley’s hand. When Riley continued she was calm but her voice brooked no further argument.
“The way I see it, it’s game over, or it’s game on. The world as we know it has ended, boss. And somehow I’ve found myself in charge of a group of humans, because six months ago they voted me in as club president, and twenty-four hours ago the apocalypse arrived in the middle of our mid-semester all-nighter. If I can pull them along and keep them alive, hell, maybe even help a few of them grow up and get stronger, by continuing the club, then sue me, boss, but you know what I’m going to do?” She took a bite of her apple, turned, and walked to the bottom of the ladder. Before she climbed it she called back to them over her shoulder.
“I’m going to LARP the shit out if this.”
Mike watched her climb, his mouth hanging slightly open.
"That went well," Jackson said, patting Mike's shoulder before returning to his seat on the bench.