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.