Sil

 They were cold and exhausted and hungry, but for tonight at least, they were in a house. 

For 3 days they’d been trying to get back to the squad. Three days of hiding, dodging, running and as Sil nodded off, Wesley began to feel hopeless. He didn’t know where the rest of his squad had gone, or if they’d even survived the ambush. 

But when the dust had settled, Sil was dragging him through the dirt and they were alone. 

The small bedroom had just a mattress on the floor with exposed springs suspicious stains, but it felt like heaven compared to anywhere they’d become used to sleeping. His eyes fell heavy, and it seem like he’d only allowed them to shut for a moment when he felt a tug at his arm and heard Sil whispering. 

“Boss. Wake up man. We’re fucked.”

Welsey rose, tried to jump up, but Sil pulled him down and said, “dude. quiet. “

Then Wesley heard them. Boots stomping. Doors opening and closing. They were going room to room and cleaning.

Wesley remember when they got here sil saying, “let’s sleep here. Last room they’d  clear.”

Welsey was trying to devise a plan when Sil broke it. 

“Boss. Gimmie your pistol.” Sil might have said, “give me a piece of gum.”

He was always so casual. So calm. Wesley handed his sidearm over with no hesitation.

Sil gave him a nod and a thin smile. 

Then, as the voices gathered in the connecting room, and their boots began to close in, he walked to the door, swung it open, and fired five shots.

Then silence. 

Wesley hadn’t moved. His ears rang from the gunshots and he was still processing what he’d just been a part of when Sil walked over, handed his pistol and said, “we should probably find a new place to sleep.”

They were settling in under a bridge outside of town. 

They hadn’t spoken since they left the house. Sil broke the silence with “night boss.”

“Are we having a sleep over?” Wesley muttered. 

Sill sat up, “huh? What’s up?”

Then Welsey blurted out the thought he hadn’t meant to say aloud, “whats wrong with you man?”

Sil cocked his head. He looked wounded. And Welsey tried to clarify “i mean, your just..”

Sil interrupted. “I know what I am. I’m a killer.”

They sat quiet for a moment wearing those words like a blanket. 

Sil spoke again, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. But you can’t tell the others. When I’m done. If you wanna leave me here. I’ll understand.” 

Wesley didn’t reply. He just…waited. 

Sil began to speak but never looked at Wesley as he did. 

“I was 5. My dad was enlisted in the CCA. He enlisted me. They gave me a gun and told me to shoot. I did. I was good. At 7 they gave me a dog. A white one with curly hair. I named her Cotton. 

I taught her to sit. Stay. Speak. She went everywhere with me. Drills. School. She wasn’t gun shy. She wasn’t afraid of anything.

On my tenth birthday I was told to report to my commanding officer. He said, “congratulations merit Officer Sil Army.” He pinned my collar and handed me a pistol….at that rank you get to Cary a side arm….. I was one of the youngest ever. 

Then. He said it. 

“Shoot the dog.”

I didn’t want to. I tried to not hear it. I froze.”

Wesley saw a tear fall down his face. But his voice never cracked as he continued. 

“He smacked me hard and yelled it again. Shoot the dog boy!”

I did. 

I shot her. 

And he smiled. 

Then he said, “I knew it. A killer.”

I was sent to a recon team two months later. 

By 16 I was in Alpha unit. At 17…I was given my first solo assignment. “

My dad was in the room because he was part of the intel unit. Him saluting me as his superior was weird. 

When they gave me my assignment; infiltrate and kill the governor of a free city called Dodge City, my dad stood. He protested. He said “please, don’t send my son on this suicide mission.”

Captain Thorne was nobody to mess with. He said “your son? This soldier is CCA property” 

He continued his protest and didn’t notice the general walk a behind him. 

Captain Thorne told him to sit. 

He told him to stop.

My father refused, he got loud, he slammed his fist. 

The General shot him on the spot. 

Thorne said. “Good then. Captain Silvius Alpha. Complete your mission and report back.”

I saluted. I walk out of the room and had to step over my dads body and pretend it was normal; that it was ok.

The carriage I brokered from the weirdest man I ever met,  This skinny man with blue eyes…it stopped in Lincoln. He was supposed to take me on but was gone in the morning and just…never left. 

That’s where I met you 2 years later.

If you want to leave me here, i get it.”

Wesley walked to the person he’d forgotten was still just a teenager, put one hand on his shoulder, and said “I’ve never been more proud  to have you here with me.”

Creating the world

 There is a whole world outside the one Harlan inhabits. I mean this in a since that, while Harlans where the spotlight lands in his story, that does not mean he’s all that exists.

In fact, it’s unlikely the majority of the world even knows he exists, and those who encounter him might forget him just as fast. 

We see him walk Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa and that’s it.

There is a wall in Florida doing….something. There are 3 men in Hannibal walking the line of moral corruption and actually caring about the city they live in.

But what’s happening elsewhere?

I don’t know.

I hope to find out though. 

There are stories in the other parts of this world. I just need to go find them…or be led to them by whatever drags me through this world.

I do not think Thomas’ tale ends in that pool.

Discovering home

I was already doing something else. Thinking about something smaller. Safer. The kind of thought that fits in a pocket and doesn’t demand answers.

Then the street appeared beneath my feet.

Plainview does not announce itself. It never has. There is no gate, no sign worth remembering. The road simply widens a little, like a person loosening their shoulders, and suddenly you are inside it.

The air smells of grain dust and old oil. Not enough to be unpleasant. Just enough to linger. Coal smoke hangs low, thin and gray, caught between buildings that were never meant to be tall but have been standing long enough to feel important.

The street is quiet, but not empty.

Boot prints are pressed into the dirt, layered and overlapping, like the town keeps walking even when no one is present. Wagon ruts cut shallow lines through the road, guiding movement the way grooves guide a record needle. Everything here knows where it is supposed to go.

On my left, the general store squats wide and patient, its windows crowded with goods that look identical until you stare too long and realize none of them are quite the same. Cans. Rope. Soap wrapped in paper gone soft with handling. A bell hangs above the door, frozen mid-swing, its shadow stretched long across the glass.

Inside, I can see shelves packed too tightly. Someone has learned how to make scarcity look like abundance.

Across from it, the apothecary smells faintly of lavender and alcohol, even from the street. Bottles line the window like soldiers—opaque, colored glass meant to obscure more than display. The lettering is neat, reassuring, and slightly dishonest. Remedies for nerves. For sleep. For women who think too much. For men who cannot.

The sign creaks, but the sound never finishes forming.

Further down, the dress shop catches the light. Fabric hangs stiff and formal, pinned into shapes that suggest bodies more than accommodate them. A mannequin stands near the window, headless, waist cinched tight. Someone has adjusted the hem recently. The pins are new. The intention is not.

The blacksmith’s forge sits back from the road, respectful of fire. Tools rest where hands left them—hammer angled just so, tongs still open like they are waiting to bite. Ash coats everything evenly, the way snow settles when no one is watching.

I notice then that the town is not frozen.

It is… restrained.

Smoke rises, but slowly. Dust drifts, but only a little. A loose shutter taps against a frame and then stops, as if it remembered it was being too loud. Plainview is holding itself together through habit, not effort.

The saloon leans inward on its own shadow. The windows are dark, but not empty. Tables sit where arguments once ended and began again. Cards lie facedown, corners curled. A glass rests on its side, a ring of something darker marking where it used to stand. The piano lid is closed. Mercifully.

This place has learned the value of silence.

Farther along, past the businesses that sell and fix and soothe, the buildings grow more honest. Storage sheds. Grain houses. A low office with narrow windows and a door that has been reinforced more than repaired. Paperwork lives there. Rules. Decisions that pretend to be temporary.

I pass the stable, where the smell of hay and animal warmth cuts through the smoke. One stall door is ajar. A hoof print marks the dirt outside it. Fresh enough to matter.

Somewhere behind me, something moves.

Not a footstep. Not a voice. Just the sensation of being counted. Not watched—cataloged. Like the town is making sure all its parts are still present.

I check my reflection in a window.

It does not appear.

The glass shows the street behind me perfectly. The storefronts. The dirt. The absence of people. But where I should be, there is only space that looks recently vacated.

Plainview, I realize, does not need witnesses.

It needs participants.

I keep walking. Slower than necessary. The street allows it. It always does. This town has learned that if it does not rush you, you will stay longer.

At the edge of it, where fields begin again and the road narrows back into something forgettable, the town loosens its grip.

Sound returns elsewhere. Motion resumes out of sight.

Behind me, Plainview remains exactly as it was.

Open.

Working.

Waiting.

Jax

 They were moving house to house, slow and quiet, looking for a place to sleep and anything that hadn’t already been stripped bare.

Eastern Kansas looked like something had passed through and decided not to finish the job. Burned frames of houses. Blackened barns. Streets littered with the small debris of lives interrupted. The CCA had done what they always did. Took what they needed. Killed who they felt like. Left the rest to rot.

Wesley raised a fist and the Daisies stopped.

The house ahead of them was still standing. Just barely. Windows boarded. Door reinforced from the inside. Smoke stains climbed one side of the porch like fingers.

Someone was in there.

Before anyone could approach, a man stepped out into the street.

He was big. Broad in the shoulders, thick through the arms. He held a sledgehammer like it weighed nothing, the head resting against his shoulder. In another man’s hands it might have looked heavy. In his, it looked casual.

Behind him, through the broken doorway, shapes shifted. Women. Children. People who hadn’t learned how to disappear yet.

Jax didn’t shout.

“If you want this house,” he said evenly, “you gotta deal with me.”

The Daisies froze.

Sil raised his rifle an inch, then stopped. Aubrey glanced at Wesley. Tuck tilted their head, reading the room. No one moved.

Wesley stepped forward slowly, hands open.

“We’re not here for your house,” Wes said. “Do you need supplies. Or medical attention.”

Jax didn’t lower the hammer.

“You’ve been checking every place on this street,” he said. “That’s how this goes. Men with guns come. Say they’re not here to hurt anyone. Then someone screams.”

“We’re not them,” Wes replied.

Jax snorted. “That’s what they all say.”

A child coughed inside the house. A wet, ugly sound. Jax flinched despite himself.

Wes caught it.

“You got injured people,” Wes said.

“Yeah,” Jax answered. “And I got exactly one way to slow you down.”

He shifted his grip on the hammer. Took one step forward.

Wes didn’t reach for his weapon.

Instead, he nodded back over his shoulder. “Kash.”

The medic stepped out, hands already busy, eyes scanning the doorway.

“We’ve got bandages,” Wes said. “Food too. Not much. But enough to share.”

Jax studied him for a long moment. His knuckles were white around the handle. The hammer shook, just a little.

“You come in hot,” Jax said quietly, “and I swing.”

“That’s fair,” Wes replied.

Another cough. Louder this time.

Jax exhaled hard.

“Alright,” he said. “One step closer and I swing anyway. Just… slower.”

They helped that night.

No speeches. No recruiting pitch. Just food passed hand to hand. Bandages tightened. Water boiled. Kids fed until their eyes stopped darting at every sound.

When it was over and the Daisies were packing to move on, Jax stood in the street again, hammer resting at his feet.

“Where you headed,” he asked.

Wesley shrugged. “Somewhere worse before it gets better.”

Jax nodded once.

“Figures,” he said, and picked up the hammer. “I’ll walk with you.”

And just like that, Jax became a Death Daisy.

Not because he wanted a fight.

But because when it came to his door, he didn’t step aside.