5. Swampfall
The Cough Is Loose
The deeper we pushed into the swamp, the more the world felt like it was trying to forget us.
By the second night we found a decent piece of higher ground — not much, just a small hammock ringed by water and thick cypress. It would do. I backed the 4Runner in tight and Tom did a decent job positioning his truck. He was shaping up okay for a civilian who’d never been ex-military or a hardcore prepper. Or so I thought. After we got a perimeter set with the trucks and the stand of trees, we could all take a breather tonight. I hoped.
The three strangers — Tom, his daughter Sarah, and the kid they called Mikey — stuck close but not too close. They helped drag fallen branches for a fire line and never argued when we told them where to sleep. Small mercies.
Raych stayed up with me for a bit during the first watch. The percolator was already working its magic again, the familiar glug-glug cutting through the frog noise and occasional gator splash.
She handed me a cup, steam rising in the moonlight. “You really think we can make something here?”
I took a slow sip, letting the bitterness ground me. “Not yet. But we’ve got coffee, a little ham and beans left, and three extra sets of eyes. That’s more than we had two days ago.”
Raych glanced toward the go-boxes stacked in the back of the 4Runner. “How much food, clothes, and sundries did you actually pack in those things?”
I gave a small shrug. “They were more than enough for the two of us for four weeks or so. I’ll do a full inventory again now that we have more headcount. We’ll stretch what we have and get smarter about it.”
The percolator bubbled. The ham and beans simmered. For a few precious minutes the night felt almost civilized.
Then another moan rose, closer this time.
Raych stood first, 1911 already in hand. I followed, Wilson Combat coming up smooth.
The strangers tensed behind us.
I kept my voice low and steady. “Welcome to the new normal. We protect the coffee, the beans, and each other. Everything else is negotiable.”
Raych gave a soft laugh, eyes scanning the darkness. “And if they get too close…”
I finished the thought without missing a beat.
“…we shoot the Walker and go back to the beans.”
The percolator kept bubbling.
The night kept watching.
And for the first time since The Cough broke the world, I had the faint, dangerous feeling that we might actually do more than hide in a swamp while the world ended.
Even if it started with bad coffee, half-decent ham and beans, and strangers we still didn’t quite trust.
Bougie Apocalypse
A serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp story about heirloom beans, De Buyer carbon steel skull-crackers, good coffee, and refusing to let the apocalypse win.
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