by Misty Vixen
How could I explain it?
“I don’t know,” I said finally, a little exasperated. “Tanner and I, we...talked, in that room. Before I...killed him.”
“You were totally in the right-” Megan began, but I cut her off.
“No, no. It’s not-it isn’t that simple. It isn’t that I killed him. I mean, yeah, that fucks with me too, but I’ve had to kill people before.”
“What did he say to you?” Delilah murmured.
I was silent for a long time, trying to find the right words, and then heaved a sigh because I realized I still hadn’t even been able to articulate it to myself, let alone someone else. I shook my head again. “I don’t know. I’m not ready to talk about it. I haven’t...I haven’t figured it out yet. It’s fucking with me and I need to think some more.”
Megan nodded and gave me a hug suddenly. I hugged her back tightly, and then enjoyed another from Delilah.
“You told me earlier that sometimes, when you need a pick-me-up, you choose a location in the distance and go there,” Megan said, surprising me. “Why don’t we, after our search, go to that cabin by that radio tower on the hill?” she suggested.
“You remembered that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied, half-defensive. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it seemed rare people full-on remembered inconsequential stuff I’d told them, even from a few days ago. I’d mentioned it to her while we were recovering at Hazel’s after dealing with Tanner.
“Okay,” I said, because honestly, I just wanted to feel better, and I thought she was onto something. Plus, we might as well go there anyway. Getting there might not be difficult, exactly, but it looked like it might be enough of a pain in the ass that it’d keep at least some appreciable percentage of people away from it.
Meaning there might actually be stuff there.
We set off down the off-ramp and started making for the nearest building: the gas station. I figured, between Delilah and myself, if there was anything to find in these buildings, we’d find it. And there had better be food there.
I admittedly did feel better as we walked down that off-ramp. I imagined a lot of that had to do with the fact that Megan and Delilah had pushed. Being alone and relying on nobody but yourself certain had its appeals, but traveling with people had massive upsides, too. Knowing that people cared about you, and actually experiencing that care, was…
It was powerful.
I guess that was the old human brain at work, given we’d evolved to work together. I think that’s why civilization is even a thing. I did okay in civilization, I guess, but I think I did better on my own, usually with a few people. Maybe just one. I’d spent a lot of time traveling alone, but I’d also spent a lot of time traveling with just one woman.
Although I had to admit, traveling with two was better.
Or maybe it was just traveling with these two.
“Hey Chris, I was curious…” Delilah said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Has your dick every gotten you in trouble?”
“Yeah, I want to hear about that if it has,” Megan said with a smirk.
I sighed. “I mean yeah, it has.” They both waited and stared at me. I sighed. “Just a couple of times. First time, I was maybe a month into living on the road. I stop at this little town in Georgia, find work as a woodcutter, live in a motel room. Next door is this couple. They’re always fighting, I can hear them arguing through the walls. But every time I run into the woman, she’s maybe thirty five, thirty six, and hot, too, she’s always hitting on me.”
“So you fucked her?” Megan asked.
“What’d she look like?” Delilah asked.
“She was like five five, pale, although most people were at that point, dirty blonde, brown eyes, kinda curvy. Excellent hips. That’s what I really remember about her is those fucking hips of hers. But, I mean, she was married. I could see the ring on her fucking finger. But she always kept hitting on me over the course of like two weeks and finally she shows up suddenly right after I get home from my job, and she tells me her and her husband had split, and she wanted some celebration sex, and she was super into me.”
“She was bullshitting, wasn’t she?” Megan asked.
I sighed. “Yeah. And I knew it. I could just tell she was lying. But I was thinking about leaving town anyway soon so...I fucked her.”
“You bad, bad boy,” Delilah murmured.
I felt myself reddening and I sighed again. “I mean, what can I say? Dude was an asshole. Always treating her like shit. They’d been together for like fifteen years or something. So, I mean, I said yeah.”
“And you fucking nailed her so hard, didn’t you?” Megan asked.
“I fucked the shit out of her,” I replied, then chuckled awkwardly.
“Details,” Delilah almost demanded.
“She pretty much jumped on me as soon as we got into my room and locked the door. She was fucking desperate, or pressed for time. We stripped fast and just fucking screwed. Did it missionary first and I pounded her so fucking hard I put a crack in the wall.”
“Seriously!?” Megan asked.
“Yeah, the headboard was heavy and kept banging into the wall and it was a shit wall anyway. It wasn’t a huge crack or anything, but God was she fucking horny. She must’ve come like three times during that first session. She let me go raw and I came so fucking much inside of her. It was amazing. Then we washed up and we fucked again, doggystyle, and I was pulling her hair and smacking her fat ass and grabbing those huge hips of hers...we came again and then we laid there for awhile. We were gonna go again and then we heard her husband coming back home to the next door room. She freaked out. And had reason to, because apparently he knew what was up. He kicked my fucking door in and there we are naked.”
“Holy shit,” Megan said, grinning broadly.
“Yeah, I’m glad you think this is fucking hilarious.”
“You were being a bad boy,” Delilah replied with a shrug, “you knew what you were doing.”
“To be fair, I thought there was a chance they had split. Anyway, he was fucking drunk. That’s what he’d been doing: drinking. She thought he’d be gone for longer, but he probably had suspected something like this and the paranoia might’ve finally gotten to him. I tried to tell him she’d told me they had broken up, but he wasn’t having any of it. I was so fucking lucky he hadn’t thought to grab a gun or a knife. Came at me with his fists.”
“What’d you do?”
“Cold-cocked him. Guy had a glass jaw. Which was good, because he was a pretty big dude. Knocked him out fucking cold, pulled on my clothes, grabbed my shit, and just left.”
“What about the dirty blonde?” Megan asked.
“I actually offered to take her with me. She almost went. Almost. But she stayed. She said she still loved him, and this had been fucking stupid, and she was almost sure he’d take her back. That it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened...for either of them. So I just, you know, walked away from that mess.”
“You are a fucking whore, you know that?” Megan asked.
“You fucking asked!” I replied, exasperated. “It’s not like I’m proud of it.”
“I get it,” Delilah said. “I mean fuck, you fucking wreck us like every fucking night and then again in the morning. You’ve got a wild fucking sexdrive. I imagine it makes it...hard to keep in control. Am I right?”
I heaved another sigh. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m better about it now. But after spending years of thinking I wasn’t very good with women to suddenly having a lot of women be into me...yeah, I wanted all the pussy that was offered.”
“Don’t know why you were having problems,” Megan muttered. “You’re tall, you’re big, you’re strong, you’re hot.”
“I am not hot,” I replied.
“Yes, you are,” she said, dismissing me.
“What, was that your first thought when you saw me? ‘Wow, he’s so hot!’”
“No! My f
irst thought was ‘if this guy tries to make me blow him, I’m biting his fucking cock off, I don’t care if he kills me’,” she snapped.
“Fair enough.”
“But yes, even during our initial encounter where things were a lot more...unstable, I was frustrated with how attracted I was to you.”
“You are pretty hot,” Delilah murmured.
“Only now apparently,” I replied. “Would’ve been nice in high school.”
“High school is bullshit anyway,” Megan said, waving one hand. She snickered as we approached the gas station. “You home-wrecker.”
“You’ve never wrecked any homes?” I fired back.
“No,” she replied with an air of easy confidence. “I have not.”
“You sure about that? Or have you just never been made aware of the fact? I’m sure you’ve hooked up quick and easy before,” I replied. “It’s easy to hide that in some situations.”
“He’s right,” Delilah murmured.
Now Megan got to be annoyed. “Okay, fine. As far as I know, I’m not a home-wrecker. Happy?” she growled.
“Happy enough,” I replied with a shrug.
She punched my shoulder playfully and then regarded the gas station. “Do you think anyone’s in there?” she asked.
“Probably not, but let’s be careful,” I replied, pulling out my pistol.
We set to work. The gas station had big, obvious windows, most of which had been broken out, that gave a view on a stark interior. Already, I could see barren shelves and empty stands. Nonetheless, I made sure to do it the right way, nice and slow. I checked the exterior first...and hesitated. Couldn’t be sure, but I thought someone might’ve been around. With the way the snow blows, footprints can disappear quick even on a relatively clear day, but I thought I caught very faint imprints of boots in the snow around the back.
“Be careful,” I said as I came back around to the front and walked in through the front door. I had my pistol out but lowered, partially obscured. The lobby wasn’t too big, but it had two big shelves parallel to each other, creating a little aisle between them, facing towards me. There were places to hide, namely behind the counter and whatever else was back there.
“If anyone’s in here, I’m not looking for trouble!” I called, and waited, listening.
Nothing. I was reminded of the time I’d run into a beautiful woman named Mary in a gas station much like this. That time I’d been a lot more sure someone was inside, now I couldn’t tell one way or the other. I took a few steps in and then whispered Megan’s name while motioning gently with my free hand behind my back.
She joined me.
Without taking my eyes off the front counter, I nodded to the left, where the bathrooms were. “Check them. Carefully. I’ll check out the rest.”
“Yep,” she whispered, and headed off, her own pistol out.
Delilah, thankfully, took her cue and remained where she was, standing just inside of the store now, her little twenty-two in hand. I headed back, peering into the freezer area to the right to see if I could catch any movement through the frosted glass doors. Nothing. No food, either, from what I could see. Carefully, I moved up to the counter and then back around behind it. The little flat surface that would fold down or up, admitting or denying access, was folded up. Not conclusive, exactly, but certainly indicative.
I heard a loud creak and tried not to jump, turning back and looking. Megan was wincing, her hand on one of the bathroom doors. She peered in, gun first, scoping it out. Couldn’t be helped. Some shit just made noise.
But I sensed no shift, no change elsewhere in the gas station.
However, as I got a good look behind the counter, I saw something in the sunlight from one of the broken windows.
A puddle of melted snow in the shape a boot.
SIX
“Someone was here,” I said.
Behind me, I sensed Megan freezing up. They waited as I looked around. There were three doors back behind the counter. One clearly led to the freezer area, not sure about the others, but all three of them were opened, and the place looked disturbed. Like someone had been through recently, doing exactly what we were doing right now.
“I don’t think they’re here now,” I added finally. “Just wait there.”
I moved carefully to the first door, the one immediately to the right, that led to the area behind the freezers. Cautiously poking my head inside, I looked around, but could quickly tell no one was here. Though I saw more melting snow on the floor. With that out of the way, I moved over to the next door and waited there for a moment, listening for any telltales of someone hiding away. But I heard nothing. No subtle shifts or movements, no breathing, nothing. I looked inside, gun ready. What I found was a little office where the owner or whoever happened to be manning the station would take breaks in. Just a desk, a swivel chair, some filing cabinets, some shelves, some boxes knocked over and obviously rifled through.
No place to hide.
I moved on to the final door and looked inside. Here was a storage area that had also obviously been cleared out, and I relaxed.
“We’re clear,” I said, putting my gun away.
“So what do we do?” Delilah asked uncertainly.
I moved over to the window behind the counter, on the west side of the store, and looked through it at the way yet gone. I saw the road continuing off to the west, away from the highway, and the hill with the radio tower. The next building was close, a bit farther up north along another road, one I hadn’t been able to determine what it was. I tried to put myself in the shoes of whoever had been here, but it was hard, given I knew so little about them.
They’d searched the place and then moved on. We hadn’t seen anyone on the highway, and we would’ve for sure. It was a clear day out and a straight patch of road. So they were probably still somewhere in the area. Where could they have gone? I guess it depended on where they’d initially come from. After a moment, I decided the only thing that made sense was to assume they were in one of the other buildings in the area, and to be careful.
I said as much to the others.
“You think they’re hostile?” Megan asked, her voice low.
I sighed and shrugged. “Impossible to tell. They’re alone, I’m pretty sure about that. Or, well, they were alone here. Best guess? It’s a traveler or salvager or trader who saw some buildings to investigate and has investigated them, or is still. Just keep an eye out and don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want to get into a shootout if I can avoid it.”
They both nodded. We were in agreement there.
“Megan, you got lookout. Delilah and I will search this place, although I don’t think we’re going to find much. The place has been tossed to hell and back.”
“I’m on it,” Megan replied, taking up position at the front door.
The back door had been in the manager’s office and it was shut, but I made a mental note of it. In fact, I went back and checked that it was locked. Once I was sure, I set to work with Delilah in searching the place.
I tried not to rush, but now that I knew someone was (potentially) in the area, I wanted to get to the part where we ran into them. Either it was going to be violent or it wasn’t.
Or, hey, maybe I’d get lucky and it was a hot chick down to fuck.
That was always nice.
I poked around, looking in all the likely places. Getting out my lighter, I crouched down and began probing the depths of the shelf space under the front counter. I found a lot of dust, some trash, some mouse droppings. Wonderful. After a long five minutes, I sighed softly and finished my search with a grand total of nothing. From there, I moved on to the back office, which showed the most promise. Delilah was in the bathrooms, hunting as I was. I pulled open the drawers and then took them out, looking for anything at all, but they were dead empty. This lent credence to the theory that this place was bone dry.
My mind wandered as I searched, thinking of stuff I would do with Megan and Delilah the next chance I
got. The way they looked naked. The way they looked eating pussy. How they sounded when they were coming. But also how comfortable they were around me. Delilah didn’t surprise me. Almost from the beginning I could tell she was a sexual woman, though I had the notion that I was the first person in awhile she’d felt full-on comfortable being outright sexual with. But with Megan...well, I had learned that with some people it was a throw of the dice how exactly they would react after you’d fucked.
Sometimes they freaked out for one reason or another. I’d woken up to find women just gone. I always freaked when that happened, because I was worried they’d robbed me, but so far that had yet to actually be the case. No, they’d just panicked, maybe. Or maybe they thought I’d be weird or controlling or an asshole or something and they’d just wanted sex but nothing else, so they left. It often sucked, waking up alone. Sometimes, though, they stuck around and things got weird, and not in a good way. They’d start picking fights with me or suddenly acting like we were a super close couple after a one-night stand. Sometimes they’d tried to use me to beat up exes or to rob people or some other fucked up shit.
It was hard to trust people, it’s why I liked to keep things simple.
I was glad things had turned out the way they had with Megan. So far, anyway. I had to keep reminding myself that shit could turn sour quickly, even if I didn’t think it would. People were more likely to throw in their lot with yours pretty fast nowadays, but inversely, they were just as likely to abruptly decide you weren’t working out anymore. And it wasn’t even necessarily their fault. Maybe they had been feeling fine up until suddenly they didn’t.
Unfortunately, I was right again: the gas station was a bust.
Not a goddamn thing. Literally nothing but trash and dust left.
“You see anything?” I asked as Delilah and I rejoined Megan.
“Nothing,” Megan replied.
“Let’s move on then.”
We stepped back out into the brisk cold. I kept my eye out as we made the short walk across the snowbound parking lot to the next closest building that, the closer we got, the more convinced I was it had been abandoned. Sure enough, as we got around to the front and peered in through one of the plate glass windows, I saw a whole lot of nothing.