THE LAST 100 DAYS

Fair Share

Chapter 15: Fair Share

"Give me the bigger portion, or I take it."

Brandt stood over the ration table with two friends at his back. He was a broad man, one of the new arrivals, and his knuckles were already white around a pipe.

The line behind him went quiet. Dana's hand froze on the ladle.

"We hold the north wall," Brandt said. "We bleed for this place. So we eat first."

"Everyone eats the same," Ethan said.

He had crossed the yard before he'd decided to. Two hundred and twelve people now. Four days ago there had been forty-six.

"Same?" Brandt laughed. "You killed that thing in the yard. You know what strength is worth."

"I know what it costs."

"Then pay us what we're owed!"

The pipe came up. Marcus was already moving from the left. Cole stood frozen by the cook fire, heat rolling off his hands, eyes wide with the fear of his own temper.

"Cole," Ethan said, without turning. "Cold thoughts. Don't."

"I'm trying."

"Brandt." Ethan stepped in until the pipe nearly touched his chest. "Hit me. Go ahead. Then explain to the two hundred people watching why the guy who built your walls got a skull fracture for asking you to share."

Silence.

Brandt's friends exchanged a look. One of them lowered his hands.

"Don't," the friend muttered.

The pipe dropped an inch. Then it dropped to the ground.

Ethan didn't smile. His hands were shaking behind his back.

---

By midnight, the shaking hadn't stopped.

He sat alone in the foreman's office with a bucket of cold water against his ribs and a column of numbers on a stolen whiteboard. Beds, forty short. Antibiotics, nearly gone. Food, six days. Guards, nineteen. Every number had a face.

*Killing a monster was easier.*

A monster didn't argue. A monster didn't cry in the dark because her ration was cut. A monster didn't look at him like he owned the answer.

Marcus knocked on the doorframe. "You're not sleeping."

"I almost let that turn into a fight."

"You didn't."

"Because they were afraid of me." Ethan pressed the bucket harder against his ribs. "That's the part I can't stop thinking about. It worked because I'm the one who killed the beast. If I'd been nobody, he would've hit me."

Marcus sat across the desk. "So?"

"So that's how Victor started. Strength first, then rules. Fear first, then order." His voice cracked. "I don't want to be the reason they behave."

Marcus said nothing for a long moment.

"Then write down why they should."

Ethan looked up.

"Rules don't work because you're scary," Marcus said. "They work because people can *see* themselves in them. Give them something worth defending."

---

At dawn, Ethan stood on the loading dock with a stack of paper and two hundred people staring up at him.

He did not feel strong. He felt like a man about to be wrong in public.

"Four rules," he said. His voice carried further than he expected. "Everybody hears them. Everybody can argue them. Nobody gets to break them."

The yard was dead silent.

"One. Everyone contributes according to what they can do. A fighter fights. A nurse heals. A kid carries water."

"Two. Food and supplies go by need and by what each person brings to the group. Not by who's loudest."

"Three. No violence inside these walls. Not for food, not for pride, not for anything. You settle it with words or you settle it with Marcus."

Someone laughed. Marcus raised one eyebrow, and the laughter faded.

"Four." Ethan's throat tightened. "Nobody gets left behind without somebody trying to bring them home."

The silence changed. It wasn't hostile anymore. It was stunned.

"That includes the sick," a woman called. "The old."

"Yes."

"The ones who can't work?"

"*Yes.*"

Brandt stood at the edge of the crowd with his arms folded. Ethan met his stare and didn't look away.

"Anyone who thinks that's weakness," Ethan said, "can leave. I'll give you water for the road. But I won't build another station with a nicer door."

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then Dana walked to the front and set her ladle on the dock like an oath. Pete followed. Then Priya. Then Hollis. Then forty people. Then a hundred.

Brandt looked at the growing crowd. Slowly, his arms came down.

"Fine," he muttered. "But I want the north wall."

"It's yours," Ethan said. "You've earned it."

---

That afternoon, Marcus drew defense lines across the yard. Noah pinned a hand-painted map to the office wall and began assigning scouts. Ethan stayed at the gate, watching people carry crates and argue about bunks, and felt something strange settle in his chest.

*They're doing it without me.*

Nobody was waiting for him to tell them how to lift a box. For the first time since midnight, he wasn't counting the next hour. He was thinking about next month.

*If I die tomorrow, will this still stand?*

He didn't know. But for the first time, he wanted it to.

Noah's voice came softly at his shoulder. "Ethan. You need to see this."

He handed over a pair of binoculars. A mile east, a line of figures was walking toward the factory in perfect formation. They carried matching armbands. At the front, a man in a clean tactical jacket carried a white flag.

"He's not here to fight," Noah said, low. "Not yet."

"Then what does Victor want?"

"I don't know." Noah swallowed. "But he's brought nearly three hundred people."