BOUGIE APOCALYPSE
A daily 1950s pulp-style serial
Chapter 18: The Decision
Who’s in charge when the beans run low
We shoot the Walkers… then we go back to the beans.
The fire crackled low that evening, throwing long shadows across the little clearing we’d come to call home. The percolator hissed steadily on the Coleman stove while a smaller pot of rice and the last of the canned chicken warmed beside it. Supplies were getting tight — we all knew it.
I sat on my usual stump, Wilson Combat holstered, AR leaning nearby. Raych sat to my left. Tom, Sarah, and Mikey completed the circle. For a while we just ate in comfortable silence, the kind we’d grown used to. But I could feel the question building.
I thought I was going to have to say something when I saw Tom make up his mind. So, I waited.
Tom finally spoke, poking the fire with a stick. “We can’t keep doing this forever, Jack. The go-boxes are getting light. We’ve been lucky in the swamp, but if we stay here much longer we’re going to start getting desperate.”
Sarah nodded, glancing at Mikey. “I don’t want to leave either… it feels safer here. But we’re burning through food faster than we expected.”
I took a slow sip of coffee, letting the words settle. I’d been thinking the same thing for days.
Raych looked at me, her voice quiet but direct. “You’ve been making the calls, Jack. Training us. Setting watch. Deciding when we go out and when we stay put. But we’ve never actually said it out loud.”
The circle got quiet. Even Mikey stopped mid-bite.
Tom cleared his throat. “Way I see it… we need a leader. Someone whose word goes when it matters. I vote Jack.”
Sarah didn’t hesitate. “Jack.”
Mikey looked up at me with complete trust. “Yeah. Jack.”
Raych gave me that small fierce smile. “Jack.”
I stared into the fire for a long moment, the weight settling on my shoulders.
Before I could answer, Tom spoke again, voice lower. “And we all need to pay closer attention out there. Those last two Walkers — the ones Jack had to handle with his frying pan — they were moving faster, weren’t they? Not like the slow ones we saw at the beginning.”
I noticed it too, I thought. They were faster. More purposeful. That second one damn near got me before the De Buyer came into play. It could have gone really sideways.
The words hung in the air. A chill went through the group that had nothing to do with the night air.
I nodded slowly. “I noticed it too. They’re changing. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow. But for tonight…” I looked around the circle. “If you’re all willing to have me lead, then yes. I’ll lead. We stay human. We protect each other. We don’t become what the world wants us to be.”
Raych reached over and squeezed my hand. Tom gave a single, respectful nod. Sarah looked relieved. Mikey grinned like I’d just handed him the keys to the whole world.
“Alright then,” I said, raising my coffee cup. “Tomorrow we start planning the next supply run. And we do it smart.”
The percolator kept hissing. The rice and chicken stayed warm.
We weren’t just a group of survivors anymore.
We were a crew.
And for the first time, we had formally said it out loud.
Bougie Apocalypse
A daily serial about heirloom beans, carbon steel skull-crackers, and refusing to let the apocalypse win.
#BougieApocalypse #TheDecision #TheCough #StayHuman
Jack Harlan’s adventures continue right here for now, but the official home for the whole Bougie Apocalypse series is moving.
Come find us at JackHarlanStories.com and BougieApocalypse.com — same beans, same bullets, same stubborn civilization.