by Misty Vixen
She smiled suddenly. “And me.”
“God, I would love to see that,” I replied.
“You will. Tonight.” She frowned suddenly and looked at the strange teal light coming in through the windows. “If we make it.”
“We will, don’t worry,” I replied. “Keep searching.”
She nodded and got back to work.
We worked our way through the ruins of the store, shifting what remained, hunting for anything that might help us.
Either in our survival or our sex life.
All in all, we managed to find a handful of very useful things. We tracked down an actual box of a dozen tubes of sealed, basic lube, the kind that keeps forever. We found a strap-on dildo that I immediately began to imagine Megan banging Delilah with. We found a little vibrator that would be useless until we found some batteries but hey, nice find. We also found a few blankets that I definitely intended to use, and someone had tucked away a little stash of emergency supplies in the back of a storage closet that held some food and medicine. Nothing great, but hey, it was always great to add to our own supplies.
“Tonight, provided we can make everything else work, is going to be absolutely fucking awesome,” I said as we headed back out.
“Oh yes it is,” Delilah agreed, and it was good to hear the same confidence as before in her voice. She was back on her own territory, and I had the idea that she probably looked at Elizabeth as someone to conquer, sexually speaking.
Outside, it was colder. The winds seemed to have calmed down very slightly, but it was definitely colder. Delilah and I immediately began making our way back towards the gun shop. I really was not sure if this was all going to be enough. I had been hoping to find more stuff, but it seemed like we might be shit out of luck.
Sometimes, that was just the way it happened.
While I was considering this, considering how exactly we were going to make this whole thing work with the supplies that we had managed to scrape together so far, wondering about what sort of window I had left to play with, a gunshot suddenly rang out.
A bullet landed somewhere to my left. We were maybe twenty yards out from the gun shop. There were three figures up on the highway, bearing down on us.
Shit!
I grabbed for my rifle as all three of them opened up with pistols. Thank God, they didn’t have a rifle. But fuck, what if there was another one trying to get into the gun shop? Or another one with a rifle hidden somewhere?
“Go! Get inside!” I shouted as I brought the rifle to bear.
They were raining down fire on me and Delilah, but they were apparently bad shots, combined with the way the wind was blowing and the distance, and that was keeping us alive for now. I aimed and fired off a round. I didn’t hit any of them, but it did cause them to stop firing and fall back briefly. I heard the door to the shop burst open and glanced very briefly that way just to confirm that it was a friend and not a foe.
Megan came out with her own rifle.
“Delilah get in here!” she snapped, then took aim and fired.
She did not miss.
They all had decided to immediately return fire and I saw one of them take the bullet straight through the skull. Fuck she was a great shot. I really wanted to press this opportunity, so I lined up my own shot and squeezed the trigger.
Fuck! The winds were picking up again and I just barely missed the second guy, who then ducked back out of sight. They had the high ground, the highway maybe twenty feet up an incline on this side, and that was going to make this difficult.
I hurried over to join Megan, who never took her eyes from their location or lowered her rifle. “I take it this is them?” she asked.
“I think so,” I replied. “Can’t be sure, but probably. Listen, I’m going up the ramp. Keep me covered. We have to take them out if they’re this violent.”
“Yep,” she agreed. “Go.”
I saw that Delilah had disappeared into the gun shop and caught just the barest sight of her embracing Elizabeth, and then I was off and running.
The next however long of time seemed torturous in how long it seemed to take to pass. It took forever to get to the base of the ramp, and then it seemed to take an eternity to get up it. Megan kept firing and at one point I heard someone scream, so apparently she’d seriously wounded one of them. I kept looking back over my shoulder, rifle at the ready, which is part of what made the journey take so fucking long. It would be all too easy for one of them to pop off a lucky shot and nail me. But only a few shots came my way, all missing, thankfully.
Although one bullet buried itself in the snow right beside my foot.
I was careful as I finally got towards the top. It took it slow then, realizing that there were no more gunshots from either side. I glanced briefly back over at the gun shop as I got my breath back and saw Megan was still there, still holding her shooting stance. Good. My head finally broke the surface of the highway and I got my first real look at it. The off-ramp was close to the truck stop, opposite it, and I wondered if any of them had hidden there.
This would be a perfect place for an ambush.
But something about these guys didn’t strike me as smart.
This all seemed pretty reactionary.
I saw something that was, well, if not inspiring then at least grimly satisfying: two corpses, and a blood trail that led across the snow directly to the truck stop. Well, they looked like corpses, anyway. I knew for sure one of them had taken a shot to the head.
The other might just be playing dead.
And the third guy might actually be setting up an ambush right now, even wounded. And from the blood trail that was rapidly disappearing beneath the snow being disturbed by the heavy winds, he was indeed quite wounded.
The trail led up to and inside of the gas station. I couldn’t see any movement in that direction and decided to chance checking on the other two assholes. One way or another, I was going to have to turn my back on someone, and it seemed to me that confirming these two were, in fact, all the way dead, would be the best solution.
I ducked down, tossing a glance towards the house in the distance. No one there, nothing stirring, and nothing in the area around it that I could see. I was almost positive that the guy I’d shot in the leg was still there, no way he’d come up here with a gunshot wound to the leg. Well, probably. Something about this group seemed off.
Coming up on the two who were downed, I quickly realized that yes, they were, in fact, dead. One guy’s right eye was nothing but a bloody crater, the other had half his fucking skull blown away in a disgusting spray of gore behind him.
I glanced briefly back at the gas station, still saw no movement, then looked down at Megan and waved for her to come up.
She looked back into the shop, I imagine said something to Delilah or Elizabeth or both of them, to update them on the situation, and then started coming towards me. I crouched down for a moment and checked the bodies over for anything immediately useful. Nothing but the guns, which I put on their bodies to keep them out of the snow, and then hesitated as I caught a strong whiff of something. Leaning down, I sniffed and confirmed it.
Yep, these guys were piss stinking drunk.
That explained a lot, actually.
In a way, I found it kind of inexplicable, but I had to remind myself that not everyone who was still alive was a hardcore survivor who always knew what they were doing and always made the better decision that was required to stay alive.
Like, you know, not wandering out into a fucking storm blind drunk to take potshots at a random stranger.
I thought that by now, two years in, people like that would be dead because of the fact that their stupid-ass decisions would have killed them.
But that wasn’t always true.
It had killed a lot of them, to be sure, but not all.
I got back up and began to head back towards the top of the ramp to meet Megan.
I thought this whole situation had just changed, and maybe for the bette
r.
TWENTY ONE
“One of them is still alive,” was the first thing I said to her.
She was already looking at the blood trail. “Let’s get him them. I shot him in the chest, he can’t be in too good of shape.”
“I’ll take care of him,” I replied. “I need you to do two things.”
“What?”
“Go back to those bodies there, strip them of anything useful, and keep a watch on the house while you do it. I’m positive there’s at least one other guy, the one I shot in the leg. They were drunk,” I said. “Not as much of a threat, but still a threat. So just keep close watch. I’m going to go check on this guy, put him down if he’s still alive, then I’ll join you.”
“Fine,” she said. I thought she was getting annoyed with me that I kept splitting us up, but we were seriously running out of time.
Especially for what I was considering next.
We split up and I got my pistol out. The blood trail was quickly fading in the shifting snow being kicked up in the heavy winds. I kept my focus entirely on the structure ahead of me, not moving too fast, preparing myself to react. A gunshot to the chest, especially a rifle shot, would take most people out of the game, but I’d seen some people take a shot that should’ve done that and keep going, and obviously this guy had made it to the gas station. Being drunk could be as much a help as a hindrance too, maybe.
Either way, I had to be careful.
I got up to the door and carefully looked in through the window beside it, one of the few still left intact. The blood trail, already freezing over, continued for a ways into the room beyond. I didn’t quite see where it ended, and I didn’t see a body, either. Nice and easy, I went into the gas station lobby and began checking around, trying to hear over the winds. Following the trail led across the lobby, around a large shelf, and then up to the door that led into the restaurant. Shit. He was almost certainly waiting for me there, perfect place for an attack.
I stared at the open door, feeling like I was in a horror movie, the wind shrieking madly all around me, blood on the floor, gun in my hand.
Swallowing, I forced myself on.
In a way, it was a little like finding a spider in your bedroom right before you went to bed, trying to kill it, failing, and it scurried off and now you can’t fucking find it. No way you could sleep until you had found and killed that fucker.
There was no way I was going to feel comfortable if someone who had tried to murder me wasn’t fully accounted for.
Slowly, very slowly, I got up to the side of the door, then carefully edged my head around, exposing as little of myself as possible.
What I saw made me relax, though I was still paranoid.
The blood trail continued into the restaurant, ending maybe a few yards into it in a body sprawled out on the floor. Could be another person in there. I was dealing with drunks, but you never knew how situations could change.
I didn’t get this far by assuming everything was gonna be just fine.
It took me another minute to get into the restaurant and scope it out. But it was as it appeared: the man had collapsed. He’d dropped his pistol and I nudged it away with my foot, then, covering him carefully with my own pistol, I kicked him onto his back. He was dead, I saw, wincing at the ugly wound in his chest.
He also reeked of booze. Jesus, what the fuck were they doing? I honestly felt kind of bad about this whole thing, but shit, if this was how they reacted to me just walking up to their house then how many other people had they murdered, or worse? They reminded me of the shitheads I’d rescued Delilah and Megan from.
That made me think of Tanner, which was a can of worms I didn’t want to open up again, especially not now.
Taking one more quick look around, I headed back outside. Megan was making her way back towards me and I met her halfway.
“Well?” she asked.
“He’s dead,” I replied. “Very good shots. Now-” I began, but she cut me off.
“Chris, you’re not going off on your own again,” she growled.
“Megan, I have to, and I don’t have time to argue. I know it’s a risk, and I know I’m asking a lot. Please, just do this. Okay?” She looked at me for a long moment, I wasn’t sure if she was going to let me. Abruptly, I said, “I found a vibrator.”
A look of confusion and surprise came across her face. “You really think that’s going to change my mind?” she asked.
“...maybe? Also found a strap-on. Sooner we stop arguing, sooner we can put it all to use,” I said with a shrug.
She growled. “Okay, fine. Goddamnit. What do you want me to do?”
“Strip him of everything you can, then go back home. Have Elizabeth lock the place down and be as secure as she can, then take Delilah to the woods. Gather up as much firewood as you can. Only do one trip, all right? I’m going to the house. I’ll go with you down the ramp, because I want to approach the house from the woods, and I can only do that by entering the woods on this side. I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can with whatever I find, okay?”
“You’d fucking better not die out there, understand me?” she replied with a growl.
“I don’t intend to,” I replied. “Now come on.”
~
We stripped the third corpse down quickly, grabbed some more of the wood that had been gathered and left behind earlier, then headed back outside and down the ramp.
As soon as we hit the bottom, I gave her a hug and a kiss and started moving as quickly as I could, no longer taking my time. It was fucking freezing now and I was starting to go numb. I didn’t even want them to go get that firewood but we honestly needed it. I pushed myself, hurrying along the bottom of the hill the highway sat atop on this side. It slowly rose up the closer it got to the forest. My plan was relatively simple.
Hit the forest on my side, cross the highway after doing the bare minimum of scouting, move through the forest on the other side until I was near the house, the sneak in through the back if possible. Although it was possible there was more than that one injured guy in there, I thought it unlikely. I didn’t really look forward to the thought of breaking in and killing some guy I’d already shot but...and this definitely sounded like a shitty justification to me: he was probably gonna die soon anyway. Even if the hellish blizzard didn’t get him, almost certainly an infection was going to set in thanks to the gunshot wound, and I doubted he’d fight it off.
God did I just want this to be fucking over with.
We were close, really close, but our survival rates were going to depend heavily on what I found in that house. Maybe they had some good stuff, or maybe not. It was a total crapshoot. They might be thieves who’d gotten lucky in less drunk times, or maybe they were on the verge of starvation or something. Maybe desperation had driven them to attack. Maybe they were cannibals. That was becoming more of a thing nowadays.
Not that I’d quite be willing to eat human flesh.
There, finally! Fuck! I hit the forest and rushed up the remains of the incline until I reached its edge. Peering out onto the highway in either direction, I didn’t see a soul. Good enough for me. I glanced back very briefly to the gun shop and saw Megan and Delilah just setting out in my direction. Good. I trusted them to get their job done, and hopefully Elizabeth was in the process of getting the place set up inasmuch as she could.
I crossed the highway at a brisk pace and hit the woods on the other side maybe five or seven yards deep, hopefully enough to hide me from view as I approached the house. The next several minutes passed by in frozen misery as I navigated through the iced-over trees, stomping through the snow, constantly seeing that teal light, listening to winds shriek, feeling my whole body going numb, shivering violently.
By the time I actually reached the little house in the plain, standing at the edge of the forest maybe ten feet from its side, I was honestly wondering if I was going to be able to aim my pistol, let alone use it. My fingers were mostly numb and stiff. But I kept it out, finger on the tr
igger, and shifted a bit farther down, to the back of the house, and came out of the trees.
As I began approaching the front door, it began to snow.
Fuck, fuck!
I was really under the wire now. Shit!
I got up to the back door and tried it. Not locked, thank fuck for that, at least. I twisted the handle and opened it up, pistol raised and ready, or as ready as I could make it. As I slipped into the house, I again found myself thinking of Tanner and his people. I’d done the same thing just a few weeks ago. I’d never quite done shit like this before. My life had been, if not easy, then at least simple before now, before running into Delilah and Megan. At worst, I had to fight for my life every now and then. I don’t know if I was just lucky or if maybe, in some way, I was asking for trouble now. Here I was, breaking into another house.
But my hand felt forced.
I found myself looking into a teal-lit hallway. Several open doors there. Great. I slipped in and checked the first door on my right, straining to hear anything beyond the window. It led into a messy kitchen, the counters covered with blood and the remains of whatever animals these guys had been hunting. Nothing else in there that I could see, so I moved on. The door opposite it led to a little disused bathroom that held nobody either.
As I moved on down the hallway, I thought I heard someone move or shift. I waited. The wind blew. I waited a bit longer, then kept going. I was truly about to get fucked here by the weather. I wasn’t even sure there was time to get back home now but I had to hope. Next door led to a bedroom with a bunk bed that looked well-used. I carefully checked behind the door and in the closet. There was stuff in the room and the closet, useful stuff, but it could wait for now. I left the bedroom and kept walking.