A Warm Place 2 - A Post-Apocalyptic Men's Adventure

by Misty Vixen

  We didn’t want to make them feel bad though, so opportunities to actually do something about it were few and far between.

  But it wasn’t that.

  I’d awoken...not irritable, but anxious. Like something bad was going to happen. I’d been looking for clues all day but hadn’t really seen anything in particular. The winds were particularly cold and had been picking up slowly ever since we’d set out, but that wasn’t exactly a new problem. The light from the sky had been a little...odd. But that wasn’t new either. Thanks to the screwy weather, strangely colored sunlight happened every now and then. Nothing crazy, more just stuff that we mostly weren’t quite used to seeing.

  It wasn’t the food, either, at least not now.

  Not long after waking, we’d come across a sign promising a rest stop, like a real one, a truck stop, and although there was no promise of food there, I thought there was a decent chance we’d find something there.

  Plus, I thought tonight was the night where we were all going to have sex again. Delilah seemed pretty much back to her usual self by now. She’d been flirting with me and Megan, and even hitting on Elizabeth, who blushed a lot and seemed to be taking well to it. Elizabeth seemed to be relying more on Delilah than before, which I found a little interesting, given their roughly ten year age gap and differences in background and personality. But that was how it went sometimes. I’d seen them holding hands more than once today.

  If anything, that should put me in a great mood, because I’d never had a chance to fuck three women at the same time.

  Let alone three women this downright hot.

  So what was it?

  As I continued rooting around in the trunk (there was mostly just trash there that obviously lots of other people had pawed through and found useless, like myself currently) I couldn’t help but think about some stories I’d heard of how people could feel dangerous weather on approach. Like tornadoes. They could actually sense the changes in the air pressure and their body would start panicking. Or those stories of how some dogs could sense earthquakes incoming. Birds flying away when a tsunami was on the horizon.

  Was it weather?

  I mean, if it was weather then surely there’d be signs, like in the sky-

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Megan asked as I looked up. “Chris, what!?” she demanded.

  For several seconds, I couldn’t reply. I could only stare.

  Stare up at that strange alien sky that had formed above me.

  I knew only mindless terror for a few seconds as I stared. It was like hearing a little noise in the middle of the night, getting up and going to your door, and opening it to see a bear or something waiting for you in your hallway.

  Megan gripped my arm. “Chris!”

  I shook my head. “We have to get inside,” I replied.

  “Why!?”

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” I heard Elizabeth say from somewhere behind me.

  “Holy shit, what’s going on with the sky?” Delilah asked.

  Overhead, the sky had begun shading towards an awkward teal color, but it wasn’t the color that had me flipping my shit. It was the horizontal lines. They cut through the clouds that covered the sky horizon to horizon, east to west.

  They looked unnatural.

  That strange teal light bled through each of the lines.

  “Let’s go!” I snapped, and immediately started walking towards the truck stop maybe a quarter mile ahead of us.

  Would it be enough to keep us safe?

  I wasn’t sure, but I caught sight of a house to the right and a few more buildings off to the left. One of them was going to have to do.

  “Chris, tell us what the fuck is going on, now,” Megan demanded as she strode up beside me.

  “I’ve only ever seen clouds like this once before. It was about a month after I started walking around. Pure fucking luck I happened to be in a small town, staying at a pretty secure place. I saw those exactly clouds and that day, a blizzard hit. A bad one. I mean really bad. It was a freeze, a deep fucking freeze. It was like negative eighty or ninety or something. All I know is that a lot of people froze to death. It was cold.”

  “Holy shit, I’ve heard about this happening,” Elizabeth said.

  “I haven’t. Jesus,” Megan whispered.

  “What do we do?” Delilah asked.

  “How long do we have?” Megan asked.

  “I think we’ve got a few hours at least. If I remember right, the last time this happened, there was about a six or seven hour gap between when I first noticed the sky and the actual blizzard hitting. It got steadily worse, getting colder and windier, and then it hit like a fucking hammer. It lasted all night and partway into the next day, and then just broke. If I had to guess, I’d say it lasted twelve hours once it actually hit.”

  “Great,” Megan muttered.

  “We’re going to need to find a secure place to bunker down for the night, seal it off as best we can, get a lot of stuff to burn, prepare for the worst.”

  No one responded, which was fine by me. I thought I’d gotten through to them just how severe this was going to be. Instead of talking, we buckled down and hurried up. It often felt like time was short in this new world, but now it was shorter than it had been in a long while. I wasn’t completely sure if we were going to survive this one.

  But I fully intended to try my hardest.

  I’d heard all sorts of weird stories and rumors and almost fables now about weird weather or strange things happening. I remember hearing a story about how one place had endured a rain of ice needles. There was another story of a strange, glowing blue fog that had rolled into one town and killed everyone before blowing on. I’d heard that one a few times now. Some say it happened over in California, someone else told me it was up in Maine, another guy said he’d heard it over the radio of it happening in Sweden.

  Did that mean it was bullshit or a phenomenon that happened all over the place?

  If it killed everyone, how did anyone know it was a glowing blue fog?

  People talked about mutant wolves and giant bears. Bigfoot had come back with a vengeance, it seemed. And there were more stories than ever of UFOs nowadays. Shit, I’d had one guy tell me with a dead straight face that his brother had encountered a giant spider in a cave. Fuck, maybe he had, I didn’t know, I wasn’t there.

  I always liked myself a good horror story and the notion that there were monsters or mysterious phenomena or aliens out there was very entertaining to me in its own way, but I’d never truly believed most of it, much as I might want to in some cases. All too often, the truth seemed to be something boring. Like it was a strange and unique, but grounded in reality, set of circumstances. Or someone was confused. Or lying, either the person telling the story or someone pulling a prank trying to convince others.

  Some of the stories had to be true though, I thought.

  It was just impossible to tell more often than not which ones.

  This wasn’t a fable though. All it took was one skyward look to bring my panic back and remind me of all those frozen dead people I’d found that next morning. Maybe two thirds of the town had died that night. It was just luck that I hadn’t. I had hoped to never see something like that again, and yet here we were.

  Goddamnit.

  I scoped out what we had to work with as we approached the truck stop. It wasn’t one of those big giant ones I’d seen in some places, more just a few shops stitched together on the right side of the road. Beyond it, maybe a half mile away from the highway, was a house. That might be our place to go, if the truck stop didn’t work out. Off to the left, down past the ramp, I saw three buildings, none of which I could tell precisely what they were.

  There might be enough time to check all the places out for any and all supplies that might help us stay alive and not freeze to death.

  If we were lucky.

  As I approached the truck stop, in the lead now, I didn’t like what I saw: a lot of broken windows. That was
a bad start.

  “All right, guns out,” I said as we made it to the parking lot. From what I could see, the structure, or technically collection of connected structures I guess, was shaped roughly like a barbell. The building on the right, closest to us, was clearly a garage. The one on the left was a gas station. The long, low building with all the broken windows connecting the two in the middle was probably a restaurant of some kind. I had also made out some kind of fourth building attached to the back of the middle one.

  No idea what that one was, but given what I normally saw at truck stops, either an adult store or a strip joint or something like that.

  My horniness briefly broke through the haze of anxiety that gripped me: maybe we’d find some lube. I’d fucking love some of that.

  I pulled out my pistol and checked that the others did the same. Elizabeth was now toting a small backpack with some extra supplies and (I didn’t tell her this, and if she realized it she hadn’t said anything) her ex-husband’s nine millimeter he’d tried to blow my head off with. Delilah had her twenty-two out and although she looked a little anxious, she was doing better than I’d hoped. I was really hoping not to put her in a situation to fight for her life again. It was very hard to tell, but I was afraid she might choke if she had to pull the trigger again. If she hadn’t pulled the trigger that first time, I’d be dead right now.

  Taking the lead, I brought us up to a door that was ajar in the side of the garage. The two big rolling doors at the front were closed, though several of their windows were broken out, too. Carefully nudging the door open the rest of the way with my foot, my pistol in both hands, I peered inside. The light was good enough to show me a big, mostly empty space. I quickly checked left and right, and didn’t see signs of people around, or any animals that might’ve taken up in the building. So far, those were all good signs.

  “Stay here and check this area out. I’m going on ahead,” I said after I felt decently sure that there was no one in the garage.

  “Be careful,” Megan said.

  “You too,” I replied as I headed off.

  I crossed the grease-and-oil-stained floor, passing some trash and the occasional discarded nut or bolt no doubt stuck to the floor. I moved through the door opposite the one we’d just come in through and found myself in a tiny waiting area where there was just enough room for a desk that personnel would no doubt wait behind and three uncomfortable plastic chairs on the other side. Through a glass panel behind the chairs, I could see into what was indeed a long restaurant. It looked also to be quite vacant.

  Fine, that’d make it easier, but it also mean there’d be less things to burn.

  I quickly moved down the length of the building, seeing a lot of splinters and kindling remains from broken down tables and chairs, though only a few examples of complete furniture. I paused to check behind the counter and duck into the kitchen area. It was pretty cleaned out, most cabinets missing the doors, drawers torn out of their sockets. Nothing in the pantry or the walk-in freezer, or the bathroom that I found.

  There were two exits. I hesitated only briefly before deciding to head on to the far end of the stop, what would be the interior of the gas station, because the door leading to the final mystery area at the back was shut tight for now.

  The sounds of the wind whistling and picking up came to me as I stepped into the derelict gas station. More broken windows, more barren shelves. Empty freezers and cold cases. Made enough sense, given how many people would’ve come through and plundered over the past few years, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Feeling the press of time yet still, I quickly checked behind the counter, in the freezer-stocking area, and in the pair of tiny bathrooms, and found a whole lot of nobody. At this point I was basically just doing a quick bombing run, a security check to make sure we were alone and nothing else.

  As I jogged back into the restaurant and made for the final section, I was already making plans in my head. The next course of action was going to be to leave the girls here, as much as they might not like that, and get my ass down to that house to scope it out. I needed to know exactly what we were working with before making a serious plan of action. The first order of business was that, and the second was to find and secure a base of operations. Once we got that out of the way, I’d have a better sense of our survival chances.

  I opened the last door and laughed softly as I saw what was inside.

  It was a strip club. Of course it was.

  I shook my head and then hurried in to complete my search.

  NINETEEN

  I didn’t find anyone in the strip club.

  It was a pain to force myself to do a thorough search, and even then I might’ve missed something, as there were damn near no windows in that part, for obvious reasons, and I had to break out my flashlight, but I thought we were clear.

  I hurried back to the garage, where I found the women hunting the place over.

  “Okay,” I said, getting their attention, “it looks like we’re alone here. I want you to comb this whole place over as fast as you can. Grab whatever supplies you find, but I want you to gather up anything that burns and put it in the central room behind me, the restaurant, in a pile. Wood scraps, wooden furniture, paper, whatever you find that we can safely burn. And obviously keep an eye out for food, but also keep an eye out for tape, specifically duct tape, and anything we can use to cover up windows. Plastic sheets, clingwrap, blankets. Anything.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Megan asked, already picking up on where this was going.

  “I’m going to head down to that house back there and see if it might be a good place to hole up. This place might do, maybe, but I’d prefer a place with an actual chimney and fireplace or wood-burning stove at the very least.”

  “One of us should come with you,” Megan said.

  I shook my head sharply. “No,” I said, with more force than I meant to. I sighed. “Look, this is bad, okay? This is really bad. Just please...do what I say, okay?”

  She must have sensed how close I was to panic, and this was probably as worried as they had ever seen me, because Megan didn’t argue.

  She just nodded. “Okay. We’ll get to work here. Just...be careful, and hurry.”

  “I will, you too,” I replied, and then I was off and running.

  There had been an exit at the back of the strip club, in what had probably been a manager’s office, and that’s where I went. I’d already poked my head out back and got a better look at the house. I didn’t need to bother with the off-ramp because the slope down to the plain the house rested in was gentle enough. Better yet, it was huddled up next to a cluster of trees. A small forest. Once this freeze was over...provided the animals survived it, anyway, I could do some hunting, maybe. The impression I’d gotten from that first freeze I’d endured was that it had been very localized. I didn’t know for sure, but it seemed to have been maybe ten miles across at most. So a really damned small storm. What the fuck caused it?

  Shit, I don’t know. What caused any of this stupid shit?

  I jogged down the snowy incline towards the lone house, finding myself wondering vaguely who kept building these houses just off the highway. It was lucky enough for us, I guess, but did people really want to live this close to a highway? Maybe the house had come first, the highway later. Some of these houses did seem pretty old.

  I looked at the sky again and then decided maybe I shouldn’t.

  It was really freaking me out.

  Thoughts came and went with a shaky speed through my mind, zipping by with a bit less substance than normal. I won’t say I’m particularly smart, but I could focus when I really had to. It was harder to now, though. So shit, maybe I couldn’t quite focus when I had to, because I fucking had to. When I was about halfway between the truck stop and the house, a hard, particularly frigid gust of wind smacked into me and nearly knocked me to my feet. I stumbled, recovered, and kept going at a somewhat less brisk pace.

  This was really just reminding
me that complacency was something to be fought against, at least a little bit. But was it even possible? Even if I woke up every morning and ensured that I reminded myself not to take things for granted, to prepare for the unexpected to occur...wouldn’t that then just become a part of my routine and lose its meaning? It seemed like I’d have a few good weeks, maybe even a month at a stretch, where things largely went how I thought they should go, with a mishap or two thrown in there…

  And then something like this would happen.

  How the fuck did you prepare for something like this?

  I guess by working stuff like exercise, survival training, and situational awareness into your everyday routine.

  To a certain extent, I already did that, although admittedly I’d been slacking on the exercise recently. Although to that although I had to say I was still getting a lot of exercise in other ways, so it probably balanced out.

  It was this relative devotion to situational awareness and my own heightened state of anxiety that probably let me survive what happened next.

  I was maybe thirty yards from the house when the front door suddenly opened and I realized all at once I’d made a mistake. I should have approached it from the woods, but I didn’t want to take the extra time of wandering over to the woods first and then getting to the fucking house. But that impatience might cost me my life, I saw, as someone leaped out with a pistol and opened fire on me. I took off towards the woods. They were close, but they seemed impossibly far away as bullets came at me.

  “Stop! Stop!” I screamed. “I don’t want trouble!”

  Apparently they did want trouble because they wouldn’t stop shooting. Bullets cracked off, flying by me, punching into the snow at my feet and touching off like miniature explosions. I started to feel that rage come back, that anger that used to be more commonplace in my life, as I ran and staggered towards the woods. Would the girls hear this? I doubted it, the winds were pretty loud just now. Abruptly, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t make the woods unless I gave them something to fucking cry about.