You don't usually get to see a catastrophe coming. That's one of the hallmarks of a true disaster. It behaves like lighting: it strikes fast, in a flash that hits without warning, and you don't hear the thundering boom until after it has already left you burnt and your home in cinders. Only then do you get the chance to sit and think about what happened. A real catastrophe is a punch to the gut. Swift, undeserved, brutal.

The Olive Plague was of that kind. At first, at least. When it rolled across the earth like a tsunami, birthed out of some lab or by some cruel twisting of nature, and whole lives and cities and cultures were swept away underneath it. The human race went into shock. This was a pandemic so infectious that when you opened your eyes in the morning, you could never be sure if your face had grown olive boils while you slept, however careful you might've tried to be in the days before. But it didn't just kill you. If it had, the end of civilization as we knew it might have been mercifully quick. Nobody can truly hate the bullet that enters your brain and ends your life before you've even had the time to realize you've been shot.

But those touched by the Olive Plague died slow deaths. They lived on for months after symptoms began. They moaned, they suffered, they begged. So humanity had time to understand what was happening to us. There were long weeks where we could let it sink in: the end of our kind, our way of life- the end of the mark our race got to leave on this little blue marble. The only difference between catastrophe and tragedy is time.

These are the kinds of thoughts that Mama Jones has.

When she's sitting on the porch of her old plantation home late in the morning like this, drinking her sweet tea out of a glass jar, her mind can go off on all sorts of philosophical musings. It's the kind of thinking she would've scoffed at once. Jones was raised on a farm, a woman of the soil. She went to college, her daddy was rich, and he left most of that wealth to her- being an only child had upsides- but she didn't often let her mind fly up into the clouds like this. Thinking about humanity and fate. What silliness. The End will do that to you.

And, well, it's better than thinking about the Mounted Skulls.

They're coming. The Jonesgroup doesn't have long to prepare. A couple of weeks, maybe. There were a few men from the Mounted Skulls in Bluffton just yesterday. They were up on Maple Ridge Crest, talking to the Neighbors, asking for information about what the Jonesgroup has been up to. Or so the two Neighbors who've come down to the Jones land today have been saying. They've come in a pair, an thirty-something blonde woman and an old gray-haired man on horseback. When did the Neighbors get horses, Mama Jones wonders? They have everything these days.

They're also swearing that they didn't tell the Mounted Skulls anything, that they just sent the raiders on their way without a word of useful information, but Mama Jones has her doubts. It would be just like the Neighbors to play on both sides of the fence. So to speak.

She sips her tea. She thinks some more. These Neighbors, that's their problem- they're too sly to be trusted for long. The Dixie are no help, either; Mama Jones never wanted to join up with them, and they don't help folks who aren't their own. The Rangers might come to their aid. If someone could get word to them. But, in the end? It'll be up to the people of the Jonesgroup to save themselves. In her heart she knows that. They all do. Down to the last soul.

She looks out at the land that, in her own mind, she still owns- the woods, the little footprint of clearing around it. These stragglers and drifters she's taken in over the long years have gradually been trying to build this land into something better. By the end of the month, will it all have burned?

Caleb ‘CC’ Carr

Woke up this mornin’… Got myself a gun.

The sun was beginning to creep over the horizon, which meant that it was time for Caleb to get up. They tossed their unravelled sleeping bag aside and eased themselves out of their cot, stretching a little and working the sleep out of their eyes as they adjusted to the dawning light. Having been with the Jonesgroup for years, they had a routine worked out by now: a risk according to every survival manual they’d read, but you couldn’t live life by how pre-collapse survivalists thought it’d go down. Lord knew that Caleb had broken plenty of old rules and mantras in the past seven years… and they’d be breaking another one this morning, as they did almost every morning at this point.

But first, getting themselves organised. They rekindled their little wooden stove, threw on their clothes and went to fetch water, setting a kettle to boil as they went through the usual morning ablutions to try to keep the grime from getting too bad. Once that was done, they could burp their mason jars, before taking a little of their cured product and carefully breaking it up, sprinkling the green bud down into a multihued glass pipe. They had finished the process just as the kettle began whistling, pouring out boiling water into a metal camping mug and following it up with a spoonful of instant coffee.

Instant. Fucking. Coffee.

There was something almost distinctly dystopian in CC’s mind when it came to the massive tin of instant coffee siting near their stove, still stamped with a faded Walmart symbol. It never went bad, they’d learnt. Tea, kept in cardboard boxes and with its rather fragile, degrading nature, had lost most of its flavour or simply been wasted ages ago. But vacuum-sealed tins of freeze-dried coffee? Consistently terrible, year after year after year after year.

Still. It was caffeine. They couldn’t complain, even if they really wanted to. With the granules dissolving in their mug they set a mess tin of leftover stew from under their cot and set it to reheat, adding a little of the boiling water to get it going a little quicker. With breakfast on the way, they took a home-made match and pressed it against the hot ashes at the bottom of their stove, the pine tar quickly sparking to life. They transferred the flame to their pipe, tossed the match into the flames, then took their mug and stepped out of their small, cramped annex, pressing the glass to their lips to draw in a deep, smoke-filled breath.

Hold it in. One second. Two seconds. Exhale deeply. Around them, the day was rapidly coming to life. Birds chirped, something rustled through the foliage not too far away from where they stood, and a few other early risers in the community could be seen moving about. They took a sip of the scalding instant coffee and swallowed before the taste could become clear over the burn.

Another long inhale. Another brief pause before smoke began to trickle out from their nose. Another sip of coffee. It was a meditative time. Good for contemplation. Good for thinking at what needed to be done, what could be done, and what had to be prioritised. You had to make a list before you could tick it off, after all.

And an excellent time to ruminate on the biggest threat to their little community. The Mounted Skulls. CC couldn’t help but pull a face at the idea of that particular confrontation. On the one hand, there really hadn’t been another option at this point. Their eyes lingered a little on the empty chicken coop, disused since the bikers had taken all the hens as ‘tribute’ during the winter… But they were still… Well… A heavily armed raider group with a methhead for a leader. They wouldn’t be taking ‘Mama’ Jones’ defiance lying down.

Their musings came to an end as the green in their pipe turned brown and their coffee was nothing but dregs. They emptied both out onto the ground, put them back into their annex, scoffed down their breakfast stew and finally got the day’s work started, shutting their door firmly and grabbing their axe, walking away whistling a tune.

Check their traps. Reset their traps. Check for any signs of animals in the night. By the time they’d finished their little stroll the effects of their morning smoke had settled across their mind, a light yet pleasant fog that eased away the physical twinges and the mental niggles. It had been a quiet night – a single hare had found its neck trapped in a snare and another had been tripped but not caught its prey, but the bigger ones were untouched and the only tracks to be found was a slightly worrying rooting trail from a wild hog.

The hare could be dropped off at the main house’s kitchens, to be used as the cooks saw fit, and then it was to the fields. May was a busy time when it came to planting. The maize in the greenhouse needed to be transferred outside, they had to set fresh support for beans, and… Well, that was just the start. Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and spinach was all in, and they weren’t one to waste time when this much work had to be done.

Their first bout of labour lasted from their walk until what their watch told them was some time around eleven. They were entering the hottest part of the day, and they needed something more than a bit of soup to keep themselves going. With hands covered in mud and endorphins replacing the THC in their system, they’d head for the plantation house, pausing to say their good mornings to ‘Mama’ Jones on their stoop before going inside and seeing who was about and what might be around to eat.

Another day, another morning, Cal thought as he could feel the morning sun on his face, and he lay in bed on the second floor of the old plantation. Alerting him that the sun had come up, he lazily opened his eyes and slowly got up from his bed. He was careful not to wake up Matt or Thomas, the other two who were still sleeping in his room. While he did miss sleeping alone and did not have to worry about waking anyone up. Not being cramped in a barracks was as nice, and the quality of the beds was certainly better than the ones he had on the road.

So after getting up and carefully getting his clothes and putting them on, Cal quietly left his room and started to stretch. It was a part of his morning routine, and once he felt like it was enough. He headed downstairs and to where he kept his drones.

It is a good thing they do not take up much room and are lightweight, or there might be a problem. Either way, he did what he always does. Check to see that they are still working and fully charged. It is a quick but careful step since no one touches them, and he keeps them functional since finding and repairing them. But, as always, his two drones still work and are fully charged.

This is not surprising considering the care he provides for them since they represent the main useful thing about him. Being an aerospace engineer was cool and worthwhile to him. It does not really have much use in surviving an empty world. While drones are useful, they are limited by the need for electricity. Each one has only twenty minutes of power before they need to recharge, and with no electricity in the plantation. That means whenever he uses them, it is precious power he cannot get back, and he would feel even more useless with depower drones.

Once he was done with his inspection of the drones, Cal did the next thing in his routine. Getting something to eat, he walked over to the kitchen.

Cal did not see anyone in the kitchen. He did see that someone had left some food on the counter. His eyes went for the instant oatmeal, and it was a done deal. It only took a minute to make the oatmeal, and he took a spot at a nearby table and started eating. He tolerated the taste, but it tasted better than some of the other old canned foods that they had. Still, a good morning so far.