The Walmart store was abuzz with tension as the impromptu meeting began. A crude stage had been set in the center of the apparel section, and a large crowd of store associates, customers, and even a few curious knights had gathered. Lady Amelia and her Order of the Rose stood near the back, watching with interest, actually surprised that Derreck wasn’t in charge of this place. In her world, ruling was a matter of nobility or proving yourself in battle. Yet, these strange people seemed intent on having a debate to prove who’s intentions were more noble, and why was there not already a lord in charge of this fortress, did they die some time before she arrived?
Paul, ever eager to assert himself, strode to the front, a confident smile plastered on his face. “I think we can all agree that the need to establish a leadership structure here in this situation is very important” he said, his voice firm. “And since I’ve been running this store for about a year before all this happened and my management structure is already in place, I’m more than qualified to continue leading this store. there’s no need to change it.”
There were murmurs of agreement, mostly from a few managers close to Paul, but the crowd wasn’t entirely convinced. Several customers shouted their protests.
“Qualified? You haven’t done a damn thing!” one customer yelled. “We’re only alive because of that guy has saved us so far!” pointing to Derreck.
A gruff voice broke through the murmurs. “Yeah! What’s this idiot done besides bark orders?” The man who spoke was a customer named Jacob, a towering figure with a deep voice and commanding presence. He stepped forward, his arms crossed over his chest. “We need real leadership in a crisis like this. I say we build a wall around this place, to keep out the orcs the knights and everything else. We ration the food, wait this whole thing out. Might just reverse itself.”
“Build a wall?” another voice piped up, and Gary the flamboyant associate from the electronics department stood, waving his hand dismissively. “What we really need is to tax this territory. Get these farmers to grow food for us. We’ll be kings here with a little modern technology hell maybe even gods!”
The crowd erupted into chaos as various groups argued, voices rising over each other in a cacophony of complaints and misguided suggestions. The knights, standing stoically in the back, exchanged glances of bewilderment. This was not how leadership was chosen in their world. Lady Amelia folded her arms, eyes flicking between the loud, bickering crowd and Derreck, who sat quietly, observing with increasing frustration.
Derreck, sitting on a crate, massaged his temples, feeling a headache coming on. He listened to the squabbling for as long as he could, this wasn’t going to go anywhere and no one was confident in anyone’s leadership, they had to move past it and agree on something, maybe he should have left after all. That was it, his mind now formed a plan to spark them into moving and electing someone, as long as it wasn’t him or even worse Paul he could deal with any problems as they came up and there were a lot of those of course. he finally stood up and began to walk away.
“Hey, where are you going?” a customer shouted.
Derreck stopped, turned back, and in a low, measured voice, he said, “At this point I’m leaving, and you should too. If any of us stayed here for this nonsense to play out, we’d all be dead within thirty days. If you want you can come with me and head south to lower Varinja because walling ourselves up in here will only while the world outside turns to ash will only end in us starving or in a siege and either one will kill us, and our modern technology is half crippled without the internet anyway and the rest will run out long before these people decide to worship us.”
A ripple of shock passed through the crowd. Lady Amelia’s knights shifted, watching Derreck closely, while Captain Clyde rose from his seat and signaled to his men to follow. The Order of the Rose was soon after them, their eyes fixed on Derreck. They respected him and had come to admire his courage, and if he was leaving, so were they.
Paul, noticing the exodus, hurried after Derreck, stepping in front of him with a nervous laugh. “Whoa, hold on there, buddy. You can’t just leave. Not all of you! Who’s going to defend us?”
Captain Clyde’s voice cut through the tension like a blade. “we of the Free Companies don’t serve you or any of your people, by the time this rabble decides on anything that won’t get you killed the next horde will be at the gates or worse those fanatics from Zion” he said flatly. “I pledged my loyalty to him.” He nodded toward Derreck. “And he’s right. None of you know the first thing about leading or keeping your people safe.”
Lady Amelia added, “The Order of the Rose holds no ties to this place either. Our loyalty lies with that knight. If he leaves, so do we.”
The crowd was stunned. The knights they had assumed would protect them in all this were ready to walk away. Panic began to set in.
Paul, his hand trembling slightly, placed it on Derreck’s chest, trying to block his path. “Look, I know you don’t give a shit about this place anymore—not since you got demoted—but these are people you’re leaving behind, the least you could do is order the knights to stay. Don’t let your divorce—”
Paul didn’t get to finish. Derreck’s fist slammed into his stomach, cutting him off mid-sentence. Paul doubled over, collapsing to the floor in pain. The crowd gasped, but no one intervened.
Derreck leaned down, grabbing Paul by the back of his neck and violently jerking him back up to meet his eyes, his voice dangerously calm. “Don’t you ever bring up my personal life again, we’re not friends, not even coworkers anymore, don’t assume you know anything about who I am or what I’m willing to do to survive what’s coming. And you have no idea what’s going on here. All these people will die here if you don’t start solving real problems right now you fuck head!—where our running water, sanitation and planning for sewage so we don’t spread cholera or worse plague, what’s your solution to housing all these people or do we all just sleep on the floor in a huddled mass, what about our food rationing and inventorying of our resources, how about a plan to establishing trade routes with locals for supplies we don’t have but desperately need, or a plan for our defenses and reinforcing this place against a battle or worse a siege. Not to mention what we do when the orcs choose a new warlord on the new moon, or the worst possible thing, if old Tarrack Nor the great warlord of all orcs comes to claim vengeance for the burning bodies that aren’t even cold yet. Unless you make hard decisions like yesterday, you’re all screwed.”
The room was silent as Derreck let Paul fall back to the ground. Even Lady Amelia looked at Derreck with a mix of respect and admiration for the depth and complexity at which he thought about each issue his people were facing, this was leadership. It was what this place needed. she could also tell by the look in his eyes that he had already considered solutions for most of these problems at least as many of his people were now realizing. The other key players in this little debate were clearly out of their depth.
“But... we have plenty of food,” Paul managed to choke out.
Derreck’s eyes narrowed. “You idiot. Do you think people haven’t started hoarding and hiding food already? It’s the first thing I did and I’m not that smart. How long did you think it would take before the rest of you caught on? And what about the rest of the fresh produce and meat that’s rotting away right now because no one’s organizing people and making it a priority to can it or smoke it, what did you think plastic would keep it from rotting?”
A sobering realization washed over the crowd that their little political factions that formed after being thrust into this world had just created laziness and an unequally divided labor system that wasn’t getting anything done. In the realization of all this the crowd went over Derreck’s words finding the painful truth in all this.
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Finally, one customer spoke up in a confused but impressed tone, “Wait, you came up with like a plan for all that this in just a couple days?”
Derreck didn’t flinch. “That was in my first thirty seconds you idiot, if we’re all going to survive we have to consider all of our basic survival issues as a whole and work to fix them all at the same time because if any of those issues fail it’s all interconnected, so it all falls apart. some of our comfort issues will take a little time to work out but for right now we should consider some basic ground rules we should all live by until a new government makes a constitution or we subjugate to another kingdom and live under their rule as a province, then we can worry about who has the bigger dick in this little pillow fight and let them be in charge.”
Everyone, even Paul was silent waiting for Derreck to continue, he sighed heavy. He had no aspirations to be in charge of any of this, he didn’t think it was a good fit, but he also didn’t want it to go this far. His plan was to get them to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see the bigger picture and agree on some of their base issues and find the strongest voice to carry it all out but now no one else was talking, no strong voice to carry them through just him. Oh well he thought, he would push it a little further until he found his candidate. After a moment Derreck began to speak, he played the survival game before many times but this was the master class edition what did he need to let them all survive and more importantly what they would have to do to get it.
“So if no one wants to start I will. So ground rules, alright so first off starting now everyone works no excerptions no excuses, if you don’t work, you don’t eat, you’re not hungry enough to need to eat plain and simple. I know not everyone especially some of our older cashiers can lift stones to build walls outside so not every job is equal I’ll admit that and those of you who can do more physically will complain, I get that too just don’t think it will get you any more than anyone else, I’m sorry in advance, but there is so much to do we can find something productive for everyone, and when I say productive I mean hard. I’m tired of people standing around talking or watching while they do the least amount possible and let the rest of us pick up the slack and any of us that have worked here long enough knows exactly who that is, it’s not just the managers we’re all bitching about so don’t think your good at hiding it. Fuck you Gary, you lazy bitch.” The crowd stopped cold at Derreck’s last words as Gary’s normally flamboyant nature was absent, he nervously looked around as several eyes were now on him as he ran his fingers through his blonde puffy hair as he wondered why now that he took so many smoke breaks outside.
“Also everyone able bodied man needs to be trained as part of the standing army to defend this place, and I don’t want to hear any sexist shit if any of you ladies want to complain then sign up and shut up, I won’t turn away any extra help if you can handle the training because there’s no ladies program, you do the same training as everyone else. I know these knights are skilled but there aren’t enough of them to fight off every threat we are going to face living where we got dropped in this world, and more importantly why should they go off and die while everyone sits inside bitching that the war should be over by now, hell no this is your home now and if your able to you will fight for it, if you don’t feel you should or you don’t have the courage to defend this place and the people here that can’t defend themselves then leave, I’ve already fought for this place and I’ll keep fighting, and so will you. Also if your curious what able bodied means, basically unless the new government deems you unfit for service as a special circumstance just assume that if you can hold a weapon you’ll be learning how to use it.
And lastly we have to realize that all of our modern technology will go to shit sooner than you think and we can’t reproduce any of it so we have to ration and preserve it, none of us knows how to make cell phones, the gasoline in our cars and in the pumps at the fuel station, guns at the sporting goods counter or personal weapons some of us have on us or in our vehicles, definitely ammunition considering our store only has rifle and shot gun ammo so if you own a pistol your fucked. Even if you know how to reload ammo we don’t have the equipment or gunpowder itself so we’re limited to what we have until we can manufacture weapons and maybe produce black powder, eventually. But that’s sometime after our current crisis, even things we take for granted like plastic and the steel that builds our aisle uprights and our shelves that hook into them those are all resources. We can’t make any of that shit right now so we need to ration everything, which means whatever government we decide on today owns it not any one individual. Which I know rubs some of you the wrong way but dammit do you want to survive or be stubborn about your rights because the second option get us all killed I can promise you that. All this stuff is now a precious resource and if we don’t act right this second and give up our shit for the common good we may lose something for tomorrow we can’t get back. We have to stop thinking about ourselves and share everything, not just food. I promise you that moving forward we will need to do everything we can so ALL OF US, can survive the coming winter and this war and right now no one is doing enough, not even me.”
Laughter erupted from a corner of the room, followed by clapping as an old man sitting in a wheelchair said. “that’s the best campaign speech I ever heard. Hell, he’s got my vote!”.
The sentiment quickly spread, and soon the crowd began chanting Derreck’s name. some people tried to downplay his moving words that offered hope if they just had the courage to follow it. The people had seen the truth: Derreck not only had knowledge of this world, but he was already planning long-term about the survival of everyone here. He also had an army at his disposal, which was more than any of the other contenders could say. He demonstrated was the only one capable of leading them.
It wasn’t long before a vote was called, and even though Derreck stated he wanted no part of being their leader but his words were seen as being modest, and in a landslide, Derreck was elected to lead the store’s new "kingdom" as their king, because as Ameila explained to the people no king in all of Varinja would except the authority of an elected official and because he held the title of Rupert Vargas already made him the lord of these lands. The people agreed But in an act of open defiance to this Derreck’s first official decree instituted a council of leaders, a group of freely elected representatives tasked with ensuring Atalantha’s prosperity, the council itself would work with Derreck to establish a constitution, institute plans for everything from trade agreements to housing arrangements, they would also make judgements in legal matters like a high court who’s judgement only Derreck could overrule, and most importantly they could vote to remove Derreck from power if their vote was unanimous. Derreck specifically added that last part as an open check to his authority, so his people would never suffer a tyrant, even if it was him.
In the days that followed, Walmart underwent a grand transformation, Derreck led a massive redesign of the store. most of the merchandise in the store was moved to its backroom to be crammed in tightly but neatly to secure it from theft while most of the entrances were blocked off to limit access, a handpicked team kept it under guard and managed bringing out items to sell also counting their stock daily The large sales floor became a bustling market, with goods from the backroom brought out to trade. A residential area of individual houses was constructed by rearranging aisles and blocking them off to make rows of little apartments and avenues between them, giving the residents modest but secure living quarters. Workshops and an armory took over the back section of the store by the sporting goods section, where weapons and equipment were made, while the auto care center became the hub for maintaining their fleet of vehicles now that all vehicles became property of the kingdom. And in the front of the store by the produce and deli area was a converted to a large food court to service residents and travelers alike. the store now functioned as a trade fort inviting travelers to come in and rest also to trade for goods some of which were real wonders like pens that held their own ink as well as fine writing paper, some of the finest dyed fabric and multitudes of thread, clothing fit for a king, as well as all manner of goods for the home from cooking pots to the softest blankets. And of course an abundant supply of spices, sugar, and salt more pure than any seen before and worth a fortune on the open market. While on the outside the knights constructed towers on the four corners of the building from mud clay hardened with white wood ash and branches making a durable stone block almost as strong as modern concrete and much needed gatehouses were erected on each of the front doors putting Henrick’s fears at ease as the other entrances like the back truck bays and the garden center door were walled up on the outside with stone blocks and barricaded with cardboard bales on the inside, both sides covered in the same mud clay and wood ash mixture. The store was now a self-sufficient fortress, with associates managing inventory, trade, and Knights handling security.
And so, Atalantha was born—a floating fortress of commerce.
But as the new moon approached, Derreck’s thoughts were drawn elsewhere.
