The Unpocalypse Series - Volume 1

Jaye - Captain Jayke Harding and his Rough-Riding 7th Cavalry Company

The Elm Wood became Jaye's favorite place. It was a neutral territory where he and Mikel, Alder, and Shain could play unmonitored. It was their base of operations and their universe of imagination. Jaye could recognize that the acts of claiming and fixing the tree fort and defending it from aggressors had forged them into some sort of team. It would be years, however, before he would be old enough to understand that the timing of the formation of this team was significant. The war that was known then as "The Jinni War" (later, The First Jinni War) had been over for almost a decade. Just enough time had passed for some of the worst parts to begin to heal, but it was still recent enough to romanticize and celebrate the victories. The Captain Harding series, to which Jaye had introduced his friends, was well-known for the latter. The overall effect was that the boys grew up in a time where bravery and patriotism were taught as virtues in their community and in entertainment and the arts.

During these periods of waiting, they would act out battle scenes from the magazines, using sticks and toy guns. Shain wore a military hat he took from his dad's trunk. Mikel used a looking glass he'd taken from his grandpa's study and would pretend to spot faraway Jinni soldiers. They took turns being New Anglian cavalry and Jinni Soldiers. They practiced their cursing during their mock battles, and each died many dramatic deaths.

One night, Jaye scrambled excitedly up the ladder and Alder thundered up behind him. Shain and Mikel were waiting anxiously inside the fort and already had the oil lamp lit against the dusk half-light.

"Alder's dad just got the new issue in. We ran straight here!" Jaye said, out of breath.

"Well let's hear it, fucker," Mikel said with a smirk, then lit a cigarette. Over the last few weeks, the other boys had begun to copy this habit, and when Shain saw Mikel light up, he pulled out a pipe which he had stolen from home. It looked enormous next to his tiny face when he lit it, but Shain played the role of a pipe-smoker with the dead seriousness of an old whaleboat captain.

Jaye tried to get settled, cleared a spot for himself near the oil lamp, checked to see if the wick would go any higher, opened the book, and started flipping the pages.

"Hold on! I 'm getting past the advertisements and that – okay, last time we left off..."

"Some of Harding's men got lost in a sandstorm," Alder said, trying to maneuver his mass into the tiny space his friends had left him.

"Yeah, and then they got surrounded," Shain added.

"Yeah, that's right," Jaye said.

In our previous installment, six riders of Captain Harding's band were out on a scouting mission when they were caught in a maelstrom the Jinni call a haboob.

The boys all laughed at this.

"Boob." Shain said, and shook his head, grinning.

"Alright shut up when I'm readin' guys," Jaye said.

The haboob is a desert tempest that is dry, made only of wind, dust, and sand, but can be so thick that it darkens the very sky the color of blood red. The storms drive sand into the eyes of man and animal alike, blinding them, and can even enter the breathing passages and asphyxiate them.

"Does afixiate mean 'choke'?" Mikel interrupted.

"Yeah," Jaye said, deliberately not correcting his pronunciation, and tried to continue right on with the story, but Alder chimed in.

"I can't imagine what it feels like to get sand inside your bellows - to die just from trying to breathe in a dirty wind." Alder looked contemplative as he held up a cigar and a match to light it.