by Misty Vixen
“Oh shit, what happened?” Delilah groaned.
“Are you okay?” Megan repeated.
I looked around slowly. My brain was having trouble catching up. I saw the chair in front of the door, still in place. Saw orange-tinted sunlight, dim, coming in through the windows. I saw the fire, down to embers but not yet totally out.
I saw Megan and Delilah sitting up in the bed to my left, looking at me with concern.
“Yeah,” I managed and shivered.
“Chris, get over here, now,” Megan said, getting up. “Delilah, help him.” She began moving over to the fireplace and restarting the fire.
“Come here, Chris,” Delilah said, getting closer to me.
I gritted my teeth, making myself crawl back onto the bed. Shit, how long had I been laying on the floor? Probably not that long, I thought, or hoped. I experimentally moved my toes, my fingers as I got under the blankets. They moved, so that was good.
“Oh my God, you’re freezing!” Delilah gasped as she touched me.
“Sorry,” I managed, shivering.
“It’s okay. Here, closer to the fire, come on,” she replied.
I ended up laying in front of the fire that Megan got restarted, with three blankets on top of me. I felt like shit.
“I was having a nightmare,” I said after a bit.
“What about?” Megan murmured.
I hesitated, probably long enough for them to realize it was a lie. “I can’t remember.”
Neither said anything, though Megan paused in her activities long enough that I knew she was considering pressing me for the truth. But she kept going. I watched her work, the heat slowly, painfully bringing my body back online. I sat there and felt like a dumbass. Falling out of bed, for fuck’s sake.
How had I even managed that?
I guess it happened every now and then, although I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had some kind of major shift during sleep. I let it go after a bit, realizing I was focusing on the wrong thing. That nightmare had been bad. I’d had some bad ones since this apocalypse started, but I think everyone did unless they were a sociopath or enormously well-adjusted. And those dreams had been bad, especially in the beginning, but they’d mostly settled down. But this one…
Fuck, I don’t know. It wasn’t even so much what had been happening as…
I don’t know.
Just something about it, the emotions I was feeling.
After what felt like too long, I finally got warmed back up, and when I had, Delilah had me lay down on my back.
“What for? We should get going,” I said.
“I’m going to administer a dose of painkillers,” she said with a smile that told me she was about to make me come.
Well, that would definitely help with the pain, physical and emotional.
I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to get it up with my mood, but Delilah got it up. She climbed on top of me and rode me nice and easy, and I laid there and enjoyed every second of it. When I came, it hit hard and rolled like a hot, rejuvenating wave through me, pushing away the cold and the pain and the unease.
Delilah smiled down at me as I grabbed her hips and shot my load into her, becoming totally enraptured in the bath of bliss that was washing over me.
When I was finished, she stayed on top of me for a few moments as I went slack, waiting for my breath and pulse to calm back down.
“Better?” she asked.
“Better,” I murmured.
She lost her smile. “I’m sorry you had a nightmare. It must’ve been bad.”
“Yeah,” I replied. I could sense she was trying to draw me out a little, but I still wasn’t willing to give. Not yet. I still didn’t know what to make of all this.
She waited a little longer, then gently patted my chest and got up off of me. I laid there for a bit longer, since I knew we had some time. Megan had set snow to melt and then boil, and that took a little while. Even with the orgasm and the warmth, everything still felt sore and stiff and for about fifteen minutes I laid there and really, honestly considered just staying here for the day. I could do it and I doubted either of them would argue with me. Hell, they might actually be wanting to do that themselves. Moving around in the world was a bitch and a half now, even under ideal conditions. But I guess that was what got me going.
If we had good weather, I didn’t want to waste it, and I did want to help Delilah find her friend. It must be good to have a friend, a real friend, waiting for you somewhere.
Megan headed out, saying she’d check the area.
I took a moment to pull back the bandage over my forearm. Although it had been over a week since the wolf attack, hell, almost two weeks now, it still hadn’t fully healed. They had been deep bites, but I was glad to see that they were almost healed, and the scarring probably wouldn’t be too bad. Shit, I had several scars by now. I didn’t really care most of the time, but it was getting a little ridiculous. I was fucking twenty five and I had like a dozen prominent scars. And I knew it was only going to get worse as life went on.
“Does it still hurt?” Delilah asked.
I looked up. She was washing now, but was staring at the wounds on my arm. “They’re fine,” I replied, taking the opportunity to put a new bandage on after washing the wounds. It had been a couple of days since the last bandage change and honestly it was more paranoia and caution than anything else. I could get by without one now, but that was one of the rules for this new world.
Be cautious.
An infection could fucking kill you, and brutally, too.
I took a moment to do some stretching to help with my sore, stiff body, then washed, and by the time I was dried off and began dressing, Megan came back inside. “I don’t see anyone or anything out there,” she reported.
“Good,” I replied as I finished lacing up my boots nice and tight. I stood and popped a few joints. All in all, I felt better, and I’d feel better than that once I got breakfast in me. “Let’s eat.”
Breakfast was our remaining supply of canned tuna. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get us going. I still wasn’t too comfortable with the amount of food we had left. We needed to find something, and soon. Maybe five days had been an overestimation on my part…
I realized, abruptly, that the only reason I was casting the shadow of doubt over my previous assessment was because I’d had that bad nightmare and woken up in pain and in a shit mood. I felt a small urge to write in my journal, but I couldn’t come up with a reasonable enough reason to go lock myself in the bathroom or somewhere else private for enough time. I think they’d respect my privacy, probably, but I didn’t want to give them more questions than they already had. For whatever reason, I didn’t want anyone, not even Megan and Delilah, to know about my journal. So I pushed the urge down and promised myself I’d do it later.
While the other two finished packing up and preparing themselves for another long day of walking, I took the opportunity to step outside. The cold hit me but I was used to it by now. I took a look around. It was pretty out, the sun rising now, the skies holding a slightly orange tint with the early dawn. Hard to believe it was September. I mean, I thought it was. I was guessing, but I tried to keep track of the days even now. Months had largely lost their meaning. I guess the only division between the seasons now was the length of daylight.
I sighed softly as I looked around, taking the whole environment in while the others finished. It was beautiful out, in its own way. For most of my life, I had actually been one of those people who ‘stopped and smelled the roses’, figuratively speaking. Usually once a month, maybe twice, I’d just drive down to a park and sit and look at nature and animals. Squirrels and birds and whatever else was scurrying around. There was something about nature that always struck me in some true and powerful way. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that we, humans, had spent far, far more time living among nature than among dwellings.
I mean, even the oldest city, as we really understood them, was ma
ybe ten thousand years old, if that? Whereas humans had been around for hundreds of thousands of years. I glanced at the sky. Shit, maybe. I mean, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about history. I could be wrong. But I had the impression that we lived as wandering nomads for way longer than we’d lived in cities, even small ones. So it tracked that we were far more accustomed to nature. Or fuck, maybe it’s just me and a handful of other people who think nature looks awesome.
But even now, even with everyone frozen and dead, it still looked nice in its own way.
Sometimes, anyway.
Sometimes I just fucking hated it. But today everything was oddly beautiful. The way the sun reflected off the snow-capped trees and orange-tinted skies and the way the ice clung to everything, making it look almost ethereal.
The effect was even more powerful at night.
Sometimes I regretted how tired I was by nightfall, that I crashed into a long, hard sleep more often than not, simply because I missed out on seeing the same landscape in the strange starlight. But during mornings like this, it was…
Almost magical.
The door opened behind me and Megan and Delilah emerged.
“We good?” Megan asked.
“Yeah, we’re good,” I replied. I hadn’t seen or sensed anyone or anything lurking around.
“Okay,” she said. She stepped up beside me, hesitated for a second, then kissed me on the cheek. It was an oddly kind thing to do, not that Megan lacked for kindness, but generally she seemed either guarded or, at best, neutral. Maybe preoccupied by her own thoughts.
“What was that for?” I asked, grinning despite myself.
“I like you,” she replied. It sounded like a cover answer, and I thought it was more maybe because she thought things were bothering me, wanted to help, but didn’t quite know how to. Honestly, I appreciated the gesture.
I kissed her back. “I like you, too.” I kissed Delilah, because I didn’t want either of them feeling left out, even a little. “And you.”
She grinned. “I really like both of you.”
Feeling a bit better, I started walking back towards the highway. They followed a few paces behind me. I’d traveled in groups before, and while I’m not one to talk myself up, more often than not it did seem like I was looked to as a de facto leader. I’d like to think it was because I kept a level head and could make half-decent decisions under pressure, but it was more just because I was big and looked scary, and unfortunately for a lot of humans that subconsciously signaled ‘authority’. Which is fucking dumb, but I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity.
Especially if it made women more likely to fuck me.
Of course it also made men more likely to fight me.
But for pussy, eh...it was worth it, to be honest. Plus, I was actually half-decent at being a leader, so I liked to think I’d led a lot of people to safety who otherwise might not have gotten there. Like what I was doing now.
We got back onto the highway and it looked clear as clear could be. Back in the day, it seemed like people were coming and going a lot through my town. Eventually, that tapered off, but even when I got onto the road after over a year, it seemed like I’d run into people a lot more often. Now, not so much. I wasn’t sure why that was. Fewer people in general? That made sense, I guess. It wasn’t like we’d had time to repopulate. Maybe most people were just settled. Or maybe I was just in a really unpopulated part of the country now.
I glanced sidelong at Megan, then at Delilah.
Traveling with someone you were having sex with, but you weren’t actually like...together, was a weird experience. Or it could be, anyway. I don’t know if anyone but true sociopaths could truly separate sex from emotion. I didn’t do it, not completely. I didn’t want to, honestly. I liked emotions. I liked the feeling of being connected, of intimacy. Sex felt great, but sex with someone you connected with on an emotional level was a lot better.
Some people did it casually. Like Delilah. I think she was just a lovey type person. She connected with people quickly, or allowed herself to, anyway. Actually, that might be putting a bit more agency to her than she quite had. I think she just felt good about someone and attached to them. She was twenty two, after all. Not that I minded, but I could see how it would be easy to take advantage of her. Or shit, maybe I’m wrong, and I’m the dumbass and she’s just playing me. If so, still worked out for me. It wasn’t like I was falling in love with her.
With her pussy? Yes. But if we parted ways today, it would suck, to be sure, but I’d get over it. No disrespect to her, she was great, but you had to teach yourself how to move on, and quickly, if possible, nowadays. With murderers, freezing temperatures, and dangerous wildlife all over the place, it was hard enough staying alive, let alone mourning yet another lost lover.
Then there was Megan. She was the more curious of the two. Hardheaded, stubborn, angry. And yet, for whatever reason, she trusted me. I honestly didn’t know if it was going to go anywhere, she was unpredictable at best. For now, I figured I was an ally of convenience to her. She felt like she could trust me, I could help keep her alive, and I was a safe bet for a good lay. No risk of STDs, no risk of pregnancy, no risk I’d hurt her or try to make her do things she didn’t want to. Or, at the very least, in her eyes, an acceptably low risk.
I realized my mind was wandering a bit much and I should just be happy that I was in the situation I was in, and focus on staying that way.
Looking ahead, I saw nothing but clear highway, and the occasional car to investigate.
Here was hoping things were looking up.
FIVE
The next two days passed with relative ease, but things didn’t quite look up.
For me, at least.
I had nightmares both the following nights, and it was getting harder to keep up appearances of being in a good mood, or even neutral. And that was saying something, considering I had two really big reasons to be not just neutral, but in fucking ecstasy, in Megan and Delilah. We had good times both nights, but the nightmares still found me.
I got close to breaking out the weed, but hadn’t yet.
We spent the first night in an abandoned camper. Not ideal, but someone had already created a makeshift wood-burning stove with proper ventilation, so we made it work. The second night we found a little log cabin and put up there. Nothing noteworthy happened beyond the sex and the nightmares. We hadn’t found anymore food anywhere. Not in the cabin, not the camper, nor any of the cars we searched, nor the two houses we stopped to check along the way. I was honestly beginning to get worried about the situation.
By now, we’d eaten the rest of our wolf meat, as well as all the food that both Megan and Delilah were carrying. At this point, as we headed out today and got underway, I was currently holding the last of our food: six cans. Three of black beans, three of mixed vegetables. I had to admit that I thought the wolf meat would last longer, and I had also been banking on us finding fucking something so far. But that had been stupid of me.
We walked mostly in silence for the first part of that day, but when we came to the first real sign of civilization, I stopped.
“What is it?” Megan asked.
“I want to look around,” I replied, walking over to the left, up to the guard rail. There was another little section of land, not all that dissimilar from the one I’d met Delilah and Megan at. The sort of little place just off the highway. We were a little ways up and I could see about a half dozen buildings, all along a rough stretch of road that terminated in a rise of forested hill and what looked to be a cabin not far from a radio tower.
“What are you thinking?” Megan asked, coming to stand beside me.
“We need more food,” I replied, trying to discern what the buildings were.
The nearest one was clearly a gas station. There were three more stretched out down a little road beside it. One of them was definitely some kind of fast food place, but the other two could be anything. Snow had covered or faded their signage. The only other
building that lay farther on down the main road, maybe halfway between here and the radio tower, was a house. It wasn’t a great prospect, I’m sure this had once been a well-traveled area, and these buildings were all within extremely easy reach of anyone walking down the highway.
But a lesson I had learned time and again was: you won’t know until you actually do it.
Kind of the same principle of asking someone out. You look at them and think ‘they’re fucking way outta my league’, but for all you know, they could be wishing you’d ask them out, or at least receptive to a date.
It was a slim chance, usually, but better than no chance.
And in this case, it made more sense to do it. Plus, there were woods in the area, which meant two possible things: game or some super food. Some of those genetically enhanced seeds they’d dumped via drones all over the place when it became obvious the snow wasn’t going away. I’d come across a lot of weird plants out in the middle of nowhere and some had saved me from starvation, but this area seemed annoyingly bare.
But, again, you never knew.
“We should stop here, search those buildings,” I said.
“I agreed,” Megan said. Then she hesitated and reached out, put her hand on my forearm. “Chris...I wanted to talk to you about something.” It was weird to see her so hesitant, but I was pretty sure I knew what this was about.
I waited, looking at her.
She steeled herself, straightening up a bit, and it was interesting seeing her face fight between being kind and worried, but also hardening in anticipation of something going wrong.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, “I know something’s bothering you. Something that happened back there and it’s really fucking with you and...I want to help. We want to help.”
I looked at Delilah, who was staring at me as well, nothing but empathy on her face, and I felt bad.
“Is it...are you still upset about us getting captured?” Megan asked.
I sighed and shook my head, looking back at her. “No, it’s not...that. I mean, yeah, I’m upset. I feel stupid and guilty about it, but that’s just...a natural reaction, I think. No, that’s not what’s bothering me. It’s…” I hesitated, thinking about it.