2.1 Refuge
1 – Refuge
Andy looked at the group of people standing near the “gate” outside Construction City. They’d moved a large van aside, making a hole in the wall of cars that surrounded the lot, and though they held weapons, none of them looked eager to fight. It wasn’t hard, with his Reaper’s Senses, to make out a familiar face in the group—Oscar. Glancing at Lucy, he said as much, “That’s Oscar in the middle. With the crossbow.”
“Holy shit!” Bella said, nudging Jace. “Funny that he’s here, huh?”
Andy frowned, not sure what Oscar’s presence would mean for the peace talks. Before he could say anything more, though, Bea asked, “Who is Oscar?”
Bella answered before Andy could, “A guy who came to our settlement looking to defect. He left, though, supposedly to lead their boss into a trap, but they attacked us instead.”
“Yeah,” Andy said, adding, “He was with that group that Shawna and Silas were a part of.”
“Ah.” Bea frowned, slowing her steps. Everyone stopped and kind of huddled, eyes on Andy as she asked, “Didn’t they die in the attack?”
“They did, yep.” Andy looked left and right, making sure everyone was listening when he said, “I know we’re all suspicious of him, but we really don’t know exactly what he told Brooks. It’s entirely possible that he followed through with our plan, but that Brooks chose to ignore him and attack the settlement anyway.”
“C’mon, Andy,” Bella said. “Even Shawna said he was a good liar.”
Andy sighed. “Yeah, I know.” He started walking again. “We gotta see what he has to say, anyway, and it won’t do any good to pick fights, so…” He trailed off, hoping the others would get his meaning.
Andy looked left and right as he crossed the street, his mind conjuring images of the giant scavenger monster he’d seen on his first visit to the big-box hardware store. This time, the street was quiet, and he didn’t see anything moving as he approached the group of Construction City citizens. They were all watching intently, but none of them looked threatening. None of them looked ready to start any trouble.
As he reached the curb, Oscar stepped forward. “Andy, hey. Glad you made it.”
Bella muttered something, but even Andy, standing right beside her, couldn’t make it out. He nodded to Oscar. “Hey, Oscar. So how is this going to—” Before he could finish the question, the System flashed a lengthy message into his eyes:
***Attention: Recognized Settlements — Sleepy Saguaro Trailer Park and Hardhead Construction City. Welcome to one of Earth’s very first Settlement Accord Events.
Objectives of Accord:
- Establish binding terms of coexistence.
- Ratify a recognized political structure:
- Independent Peers
- Tributary–Vassalage
- Settlement Merger
- Conclude negotiations with a signed System-sanctioned Accord Agreement.
- Each participating settlement will receive +1 Boon Point.
- Tributary–Vassalage: Unlocks Inter-Settlement Communication Protocols (direct message relay).
- Full Merger: Grants an additional +1 Boon Point to the unified settlement.
- No settlement rewards granted.
- Accord Event will expire and may only be reconvened at significant cost.
- Intentional sabotage will result in further penalties.
“Uh, did anyone else see that?” a young woman standing behind Oscar asked.
“Yeah,” Jace said.
“Jesus, man!” another of Oscar’s people said—a lanky guy wearing a U of A baseball jersey and holding a big fire axe. “Is that guy a monster?”
Jace growled, unhelpfully baring his sharp fangs. “What did you say?”
“Calm down,” Andy said, waving his hands. “He’s a person. The System just woke up a dormant bloodline—”
“You should get used to that, young man,” Bea said, stepping forward. “You’re going to be meeting all manner of folks who might seem strange to you, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t people. How would you feel if your little sister walked into school on the first day and someone asked if she were a monster?”
“What?” The guy looked genuinely confused. “My, uh, sister?”
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Oscar waved him to silence. “It doesn’t matter. Let it go.” He looked at Andy. “How you wanna do this?”
Andy shrugged. “Got a place we can sit down?”
“Yeah, man.” Oscar motioned for them to pass through the opening in the vehicle wall. “Leslie and Chuck, you’re on gate duty.”
“Yeah,” the tall guy with the axe said, moving to the side. He stared at Jace as they walked through, but didn’t betray any further emotion.
When they were walking across the big, mostly empty parking lot, Lucy leaned close to Andy and whispered, “I guess it’s good the System will punish them if they try to kill us.”
He nodded to her, but Oscar interrupted any response he might have had, “Hey, Andy, I’m glad you came. I’m real sorry about how things went last night. I tried to talk Brooks out of attacking.”
“It’s true,” one of the men with him said. “I heard the whole thing.”
“Yeah,” confirmed the woman who’d asked if they’d all gotten the System message. “Brooks called him a chicken shit.”
Andy shrugged. “It is what it is. Is Laura okay? Her sister?”
Oscar looked at him and nodded, his face solemn. “They made it, but Laura’s not well. It was a, uh, traumatic confrontation.”
Bea looked at Andy, and he tried to decipher her expression, but he couldn’t tell if she was just showing sympathy or if she was trying to get him to say something. After a second, it clicked, and he said, “Oh, hey, Bea can talk to her, if you think it might help. She’s got some healing magic.”
Oscar shrugged as they stepped in front of the main entry to the big-box store. “I’ll run it by her. She’s not really talking to people right now.” He tapped his knuckles on the glass and, after a moment, someone pushed the sliding door wide. Andy saw a man standing there decked out in heavy metal armor and wielding a wicked-looking, long spear with a foot-long, wavy blade. Even his head was shrouded in leather-lined metal plates, but Andy could see angry-looking brown eyes through the eye slit.
“We set up a table just a little way inside. Didn’t figure you’d feel good venturing too deep into enemy territory.”
“Are we?” Lucy asked.
Oscar looked at her questioningly.
“Enemies?”
“Oh!” He smiled and shrugged. “Hope not.”
Andy followed him into the store, amazed at how different it looked from the image he’d had in his mind’s eye. Of course, he’d been inside stores just like this one many times. He’d been inside that store before, buying supplies for the nursery. Still, over the last week or so, the Hardheads had made some changes. Huge plywood and two-by-four walls blocked off most of what he could see, creating a kind of closed-off area inside the doors.
At first, Andy wondered why, then he saw the blood smears on the concrete and on the plywood. They’d been fighting there—people or monsters, Andy couldn’t tell. Narrow windows were cut in the plywood, and a heavily reinforced door led further into the enormous store. When Oscar saw Andy looking at the blood, he nodded, clicking his tongue.
“Yeah, man. The first few nights, we couldn’t hold the mutants back in the parking lot. They got to the doors and fought their way in a few times. Brooks was an asshole, but he knew what he was doing when it came to reinforcing the store.” Oscar pointed to the walls. “We threw these up in a few hours, and he had people constantly adding to them and reinforcing them over the last few days.”
“Oscar,” a woman said from the inner doorway. “We set up a table for the talks. Just in here.”
Oscar led the way to the doorway, then paused, motioning for Andy and the others to go through ahead of him. Andy held up his hand, stopping his people as he leaned close, spear in hand, peering through. The door opened onto a wide aisle featuring office supplies on one side—toilet paper, paper plates, coffee, cleaning materials—and barbecue grills on the other. Andy didn’t know why the big-box hardware stores sold stuff like that, but he had to assume it was for construction-oriented offices—contractors and the like.
A long folding table had been set up in the middle of the aisle with several folding chairs on either side. He saw people standing around—mostly women and a handful of kids—but they were keeping the area around the table clear. Their presence encouraged Andy; it didn’t feel like an ambush. They all looked nervous and interested, and when they glimpsed him peering through the doorway, some of them even smiled his way.
Andy turned to his group and nodded, then he walked through. Oscar followed and motioned to the table. “Sit down, man.” He saw Andy looking around and added, “I’m not gonna spin a bunch of bullshit. We don’t want to fight. Half of us are wounded in one way or the other.”
Andy looked at him and nodded, wishing he could just trust him, but still feeling like he couldn’t. He wished Shawna were still alive; he would have liked to get her take on the whole situation. He walked over to the table and sat on the left side. One of Oscar’s people, the woman who’d walked back with them, sat across from him. She looked like she was in her thirties, and she looked tired. Dark circles sat under her eyes, and she looked wan, almost queasy, as she tried to smile and nod at him.
“I’m Joy,” she said, watching the others sit around the table.
Andy held out his hand. “Andy.”
She took his hand in a firm, calloused grip and said, “Oh, I know. I heard all about you.”
“Is that bad?” As he asked the question, Lucy sat down beside him, and she looked irritated—maybe because of Joy’s comment.
“I guess not. Some of the people who came running back this morning had some scary stories. Of course, that’s Oscar’s fault.” She nodded to the other man as he sat beside her, across from Lucy.
“Hey”—Oscar held up his hands—“I was only trying to keep people from fighting. I told them what you did to Rhodes and his raiding party. Other people put two and two together when you were killing folks last night.”
Andy folded his arms. “I wasn’t killing folks. I was defending my settlement from an attack.”
“Right. Not saying anything different, man.”
Andy noticed that Jace hadn’t sat down. He pointed to an empty seat by Bella. “Hey, man, take a seat.”
“There are a lot of people around, Andy. You sure we should all be sitting?”
Oscar chuckled, waving a hand. “He’s fine, Andy. We don’t intend to put up a big argument. If he wants to stand there and watch folks, he’s welcome to.”
Andy looked at Bea, just to make sure she was comfortable and listening; he was counting on her to speak up if things got heated. She smiled at him, and he turned back to Oscar. “I take it you’re the new leader of the Hardheads?”
“That would be wrong,” a woman said, stepping out from the small crowd of people standing near a shelf of paper towels. She was short, wiry, and probably around forty. She wore a leather apron and gloves, and had a heavy belt around her waist from which a sledgehammer hung. Andy could see the soot on her cheeks and the gleam of sweat on her bare arms, and his brain was already making the connections before she announced, “I’m Lydia, the Forgemaster and leader of this settlement. You should know that we've renamed the place. Welcome to Grace Refuge.”