Ollie and I trudged towards the workshop, shivering as we forced our way through a foot and a half of snow.
When we turned the corner, I was surprised to see the forge area had changed a bit. Several sturdy, but makeshift wooden walls had been erected around the forge. They attached to the awning above, so that the forge was much more protected from the elements.
April had the forge running and was busy pounding at something on the anvil. When we ducked past the windbreaks and underneath the cover of the awning, I saw it was a blade of some kind. By the looks of things, it'd started out as one of the ingots we made. She was trying to lengthen it out into some sort of shortsword.
Ollie immediately tried to move in close to see the forging in action, but I held her back with a hand. We didn’t want to get in the way of someone wielding a large hammer and a chunk of red-hot iron.
My blacksmith friend turned the flattened stake of iron with her tongs so it was standing on its edge and began to hammer it flat in that direction. Every swing of the hammer caused her lithe arms to bulge with effort, and in approximately zero seconds flat I was no longer looking at her work. Christ, she was toned.
Every now and then, her veins would pulse with magic, and heat would bloom once more in the iron. Eventually she ran out of heat though, and then it went back into the gently smouldering forge.
Wiping sweat off her brow, she looked up and grinned. "Wassup. This your girlfriend, Kai?"
Ollie and I glanced at one another and laughed. That was… not something I'd ever consider. Our relationship was solidly platonic.
"Nah," I said. "She's a friend. Her name is Ollie. Ollie, this is April. What are you working on?"
"Uh… a sword,” April said a little sheepishly. “I know we’re all using axes and shit, but swords are cool and I wanted to practise my blacksmithing since I’m actually a bit of a newbie. Welding and panel beating are where my skills lie.”
“Might be able to make some pretty sick plate armour then,” Ollie mused. “It’ll be like panelbeating, but it goes on people, not cars.”
“Eventually,” April chuckled softly. “Right now I gotta get used to working iron the old fashioned way.”
Ollie tapped her leg. “I want armour, ASAP. All I have right now are these jeans and this leather jacket.”
The thick, very vaguely protective clothing looked sorta… big for her. She needed something that actually fit her.
“I don’t recognise the fit. Where did you get it?” I asked.
She pinched the leather and pulled it away from her. “Stole them from the thrift store yesterday. I figured some baggy jeans and a jacket are better than nothin’ right?”
“I could reinforce them. Adding armour plates would be hard… unless… If I had some leather to fix them to, I could probably make it work,” I said, thinking aloud.
Ollie tilted her head. “Why leather?”
Tugging at my own jeans, I explained, “Stitching metal directly to the denim wouldn't work. I could bolt the plates to something thicker, though, then stitch that to the jeans.”
“Oh, I know!” April said, snapping her fingers. “You do a little metal and plastic sandwich. It goes armour plate, then a layer of plastic, then the jacket, then some roughed up plastic for extra sticking power, then a thin sheet of metal for stability, then some sort of foam padding. Rivet it all together, and you have some pretty good armour.”
Oh, I liked the sandwich idea. The number of layers April suggested sounded like a bit much, but… still.
I grabbed Ollie’s arm. “Come on. I was agonising over the armour thing all night and April just found a nice apocalypse-chic solution.”
“Oh,” Ollie said wait a delighted snort. “Alright. Catch you later, April.”
“See ya, Stacks,” April waved while we disappeared inside.
“Stacks?” Ollie asked me.
I shrugged, leading her to a workbench. “April gives people nicknames, I dunno why. Let's work on your armour.”
“Okay, so…” I said, slapping the table lightly. “Jacket off.”
Ollie giggled. “Kai. You can't just ask a lady to take her clothes off like that.”
I raised an eyebrow, and said, sternly, “Off.”
There was a beat of silence, then she cleared her throat. “Right. Um… Y-yeah. One second.”
She unzipped the jacket and shrugged out of it. She had an uncharacteristically shy expression on her face when she handed it to me.
Rolling my eyes, I spread it out on the table. “Don't get weird on me, Ollie.”
“I'm not… shut up!” She huffed, kicking the workbench. Despite being made of heavy hardwood, it shifted a foot. “Oops. Wow, I'm not used to the strength I have now.”
Smiling, I tapped the jacket. “Where are we putting plates?”
Sucking in a deep breath, she eyed the jacket thoughtfully. “Um…forearms, thighs, shins, shoulders… chest, I guess?”
Nodding, I walked over to a bin full of squiron plates and began dragging it over. Ollie quickly hurried to help, making the task much easier.
“Thanks,” I said, as I began to pull plates out and place them on the jacket. “So… here, and here, and here…”
I put two longer plates on each arm, one on the shoulder, then a V shape of five smaller plates on the chest, where they would sit on the upper slope of her breasts. After a little thought, I put three down over the belly area.
“I think that's the best I can do,” I said finally. “At least, for the front.”
“Why aren't we covering my whole front?” She asked, pointing out the several gaps.
Picking up one of the plates, I waved it absently. “Well, with armour this crude, I think it's important to give you a good range of motion. The best defense is still not getting hit. It's harder to dodge if you're weighed down by a bunch of squiron.”
“Okay,” she nodded slowly. “Alright. What's next?”
“Drilling and sewing,” I sighed theatrically.
Ollie's expression lit up. “Oh! Sewing? I can sew!”
I almost sagged with relief. “Thank fuck.”
If there's any one craft I despised, it was hand sewing. It's just so painfully fiddly, but if you try to go faster you just end up with wonky stitching. I did not have the patience for it.
So, while I got started on drilling holes in plastic sheet and squiron plates — still an awfully difficult, repetitive task — Ollie sewed and babbled about everything that'd happened. I listened with varying degrees of interest and made ‘mhm’ noises every so often.
“So… why are you here, where are the others?” I asked, as we finished fixing up one of the arms.
Ollie groaned. “They went out again, but I was getting a bit stiff and achy in my leg. I think there's a little damage that the healers didn't fix.”
“Should you go see them?”
She looked up. “The healers?”
I nodded.
“I'll rest it first. I don't want to bother them,” she said tightly. “They're dealing with enough already.”
I hummed acknowledgement.
“I'd love some of that muscle cream George uses,” she muttered, rubbing her thigh.
We both stilled at the mention of our dead friend.
Her throat bobbed with emotion, and she carefully put her needle and thread down so she could breathe. I had to do the same with the hand drill I was using.
It was starting to really sink in that our friends were dead. Gone. Beautiful people snuffed out by the bullshit luck of the apocalypse. They didn't get clean deaths either. There was no consolation, no silver lining, and it left this aching hole in my chest every time I thought about them.
Estelle and George were just two of many, too. The scav teams were finding more and more bodies as they went from house to house. The scene was the same everywhere—normal people ripped apart by crazed, mutated, and frightened animals.
People were talking about doing proper burials, but we really didn't have the time or the manpower for that. Morbidly, I hoped the animals ate the bodies before the rot really began to take hold. The only thing worse than a dead body is one that's puffed up like a horrific gore balloon. I saw a dead cow like that once. I didn't want to know what a human looked like in that condition.
To top off the butcher's bill of the apocalypse was the realisation that in a really fucked up way, we were lucky that they were dead. Modern society's population was reliant on a complex web of logistics that had ceased to function the moment our electronics fritzed out. Without the global chain of goods and services, important products couldn't get to their intended destination.
The most important of those products? Food. Most people don't realise how far some of their food has come before it ends up on their plate. It was scary to think that the biggest killer in the next few months might be starvation rather than monsters.
I shuddered and tried desperately to focus on my work instead of all the nasty shit that'd happened. Drilling holes through squiron using normal drill bits was rough enough without drowning in depressing thoughts.
“Sewing done,” Ollie said, pointing to the jacket.
With a nod, I put more effort into drilling. I still had a few more to do.
Ollie kept me company while I finished, talking about lighter subjects. It made the work go by quickly, and I groaned, flexing my fingers when the drill finally punched through the last plate. It was time to rivet the plates in place.
An hour after we'd started, Ollie tried on her new reinforced jacket with a big grin. To our delight, her range of movement was just fine — not perfect, but good enough. The armour was ready to go!
Obviously, it wasn't the most glamorous or protective thing in the world, what with the big gaps between the plates, but it was better than anything else we could make. All in all, I was satisfied.
So naturally, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing the same to her jeans. It took us until dinner to finish both, and by that time I was more than ready to fall back into bed. I was really paying the price for my night of shield-making.
At dinner I got updates from everyone about the day's activities. Edgewood now had enough mattresses and such for each person to lay on when it came time to sleep. Some people even managed to get their own bed stuff from their houses, along with prized possessions that were left behind. Oh, and on the topic of scavenged houses… there was talk from one of the teams about a nearby house that couldn't be entered. The family who owned it were apparently out of town when the apocalypse hit, but some friends of theirs wanted to check it.
I was glad my wards worked. Now that I knew it was safe, I might upgrade the house a bit and experiment with the ‘changing rules’ as Cynath called them. Then, when I levelled up, I could try to put one around the school.
There was one important piece of news that had everyone buzzing — other survivors. About ten blocks down the ridge from the school, one of the teams found a group of people holed up inside a church. Unfortunately, they weren't able to convince them to come over to the school. The Captain had plans to go speak to them more, but things were still hectic, and it'd have to wait til he had time.
When dinner was over and I was handing in my tray before I went to help April with her weapon crafting, I felt a presence next to me.
Turning, I found Chloe of all people, but she wasn't wearing her signature scowl.
"What?" I asked, feeling my hackles rise.
She cleared her throat nervously and glanced away. "Uh. I um… Estelle isn't here?"
"No, Chloe," I said as a flare of anger burned through me. Why did she care if Estelle was okay?
Taking a deep breath to calm myself and push away the grief, I shook my head and clarified in a much more chill fashion, "She's gone. Monsters. I didn't see the aftermath, but my friends did."
Chloe's face drained of all colour, and I noted that her breathing stuttered when she replied, "Oh."
She worked her jaw for a moment while her eyes went glassy. Then, she turned and walked away. Not even an empty, 'I'm sorry for your loss' or anything. Typical.
Although… her reaction was damned strange. Why was she of all people upset that Estelle was dead? They used to chat every so often, until one day they suddenly decided to hate one another. Odd. Very odd. If I weren't so exhausted and busy, I might've even asked her… but no, I had shit to do.