"Not with a bang but a whimper" (closed)

[Alice2015]

"Not with a bang but a whimper"

Closed​

Millie Rhodes
Picture: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/1b/fb/671bfb5bf12aa05e8664c41f5234c10a.jpg
Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 115 pounds
Measurements: 34B-23-34
Petite figure with pert breasts and fair skin.
Very straight, nearly black hair reaching almost to her belt.
Deep brown eyes.


Millie enjoyed standing watch at the South Cliff Outlook. To the north was a National Forest, and to the east was a Wilderness Area. They both appeared natural and untouched from here, with little evidence of logging or other human development. To the west was the ocean, which these days only rarely included a passing boat or ship. And to the southeast was the bay, which while it was surrounded by several cities and towns, showed little signs of human activity anymore.

From here, at an elevation of almost 1,100 feet, Millie could just imagine that she was sitting on top of the world. She didn't think of herself as queen of the world, though. That was Carol's job, in a sense. As a sign of respect, Millie and the other 32 member of their community called her their Matriarch. Carol was the reason the people of New Hope were alive and well. And New Hope wasn't simply surviving. It was thriving.

That couldn't be said for the rest of the world's population.

The plague of 2026 had nearly wiped out the human race and in just a bit more than a year. The virus had been an engineered biological weapon, released almost simultaneously in more than 30 countries. It had been both highly contagious and highly virulent.

Within a month, billions had died. Within a year, the world's population had been reduced to the low tens of millions. No one really knew how many people had survived. Survivors living in remote or isolated locations weren't exactly telling others where to find them because the virus was still killing. A small percentage of the population -- estimated to be less than 2% -- was being called Immunes for their ability to survive the virus. However, these individuals were still carriers. It only took a casual stroll through an as-of-yet-uninfected community by an Immune to leave a trail of death and despair in his wake.

After decades of fear that the world might one day end in the horrific and explosive destruction of nuclear war, Humanity instead was simply snuffed out. No one had proved who was behind the bio-weapon, and all nations of the world had been affected. No nuclear nation sought revenge on another by launching its missiles. And while there had been some small incursions across national borders to secure badly needed resources, there had been no major invasions or loss of life in significant numbers.

As had been written by T. S. Eliot in his 1925 poem, "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper​

New Hope's pre-plague residents had died in that whimper, too. When Carol led its current population of 34 Immunes -- counting Carol herself -- to this isolated location, they found its former owners dead in their bed, holding one another. There was a pistol on the floor and signs of a mutually agreed upon murder-suicide pact. It had been both a tragic and loving scene.

The location had once been a small vineyard. But global warming had rendered the land useless for grapes. It had been converted into a WWOOF farm and ranch where its owners, staff, and volunteers taught other volunteers about organic farming.

The property sat at the end of a private, gated road that reached 18 miles up into the Williamsham Wilderness Area. The land had remained in the family's hands -- grandfathered -- after the forest around it was closed to development, logging, mining, and other destructive ventures. For more than a decade, the only activities taking place in the forested hills around the property had been hiking and camping, fly fishing, and other recreational activities.

Carol hadn't been willing to risk New Hope's future on a long driveway and a gate, though. At the junction with the highway, they'd used a borrowed excavator to tear up the first 100 feet of the driveway. Trees were fallen across the ground where the pavement had been removed to camouflage the entrance. Road signs were torn down indicating the upcoming intersection.

In case that didn't work, 4 culvert bridges over the winding creek were removed and more trees were fallen to further hide the road after it was buried with dirt, pine needles, and other natural debris. One road cut through a small hillock was blocked. All in all, the New Hopers had done an excellent job of hiding their existence for the past 2 years.

Which was the reason Millie was shocked when she came upon an unknown man as she was on her way home just after sundown. Initially, she simply froze, staring at the man who was sitting upon a low lying rock in the middle of a small clearing.

Who was he? Where'd he come from? And more importantly, what was Millie to do about him? She looked around for others but saw no signs of more company. She studied him for a long moment and realized that he was injured and looking pretty bad. He was favoring a leg that Millie thought might be broken in the way his foot twisted awkwardly. When he looked up and made eye contact with her, the man showed virtually no reaction. Had he seen her before she'd seen him? Or, was he so weak that he couldn't even address her?

"Don't move! Don't move!" Millie finally reacted, tossing her weapon up before her as she took a defensive stance. "Move and I'll shoot!"

She looked around the clearing and the forest's edge again; no one. She left the trail and began a slow circled around the man, maintaining her distance. The AK-47 she pointed at him wobbled a bit; it was a bit too heavy for the rather petite 20 year old. The weapon itself was nearly 8 pounds, and the 75 round ammunition drum added almost another 5 pounds.

But Millie liked carrying it. In her mind, it was the truest example of Go ahead, make my mother fuckin' day, asswipe, or however Clint Eastwood said it in that movie from the '70s. She'd told Carol that if anyone ever approached New Hope and didn't follow orders to stop, she was going to turn them into Swiss cheese. She'd practiced with it occasionally inside a shipping container they'd sound proofed for such noisy activities. She'd gone through her share of the 7.62×39mm ammunition; they'd found tens of thousands of rounds of the bullets in a cargo container at a nearby Survivalist Camp where, ironically, no one had survived.

Millie had completed half of the circle around the man that she'd intended when he suddenly slumped over to the ground. That was when she noticed that his pant's leg was dark with blood. She moved closer to a better look, finding him unconscious. Suddenly, she remembered the proper procedure for intruders. Millie pulled out her radio, keyed the microphone three times quickly, paused, keyed it two more times, then keyed it four times. That was the code that would bring others to the South Trail.

She wanted to help the man somehow as he may have been bleeding to death. But Millie was almost certain he was an Immune, which meant that he was a carrier. All of New Hope's citizens were Immunes, so the man shouldn't be able to do them any harm. But Carol -- who was a doctor and had worked on the initial trials to find a vaccine -- had always warned that the virus could mutate and put them all in danger.

Morse Code suddenly erupted on Millie's radio. No one spoke on the radios as Carol thought it was safer to use Morse and use codes as well. It would take a skilled encryption technician to figure out what those at each end of the communication were saying to one another.

All Millie could do was wait. The message asked for more info, she told the Radio Watch the situation, and they told her someone would be bringing HazMat suits and a stretcher. That kind of surprised Millie. The last time a wanderer had gotten near New Hope, Carol had personally dealt with the situation, which meant she'd taken him down the hill and buried him after shooting him in the head. Most of the others didn't know about that, of course. Carol, Millie, and two other Watch Standers were the only ones in the know on that situation.

She finished her circle, noting his weapons and considering whether they were a threat. Not while he's unconscious, she thought. When she was back on the trail again, she sat down to study the man. He was handsome, and while his clothes and packs hid some of his form, Millie thought he was likely well built as well. She couldn't help but hope he was Immune and safe and would live. She blushed as she contemplated what it would be like to be naked with the man. It had been a while for her; it had been a long while.

 

[The_gladiator]

Former sergeant William Blakemore sat on a rock, leaning on his rifle. The weapon was the M4A1 carbine. The more modern little brother to the m16. It’s shorter barrel, telescoping stock and modular design made it easier to carry and to attach various modifications to. A long time ago, it had been his service weapon, but that felt like a lifetime ago. A world and time barely remembered.

All William knew in that moment was pain. It came and went in waves, from the broken leg that he had dragged through this god forsaken forest. Survivors got very territorial, and not everyone cared for runners. In times of need people arose to fill niches in society. Those that salvaged materials and delivered them to those in need, and even transported supplies across country boarders were known as runners. However, some thought of them as thieves, out to take their goods. One such group had thought that of Him and promptly opened fire. However, it hadn’t felt like a normal territorial dispute, something was up, but William couldn’t focus on that now. His brain wasn’t focusing much beyond finding the survivalist camp that was rumored to be in this region. Tough people they should be able to help him. The bullet had only nicked his leg, it was the fall that had broken the limb.

He had to keep going, but somehow sitting here, resting felt so good that he didn’t wish to stop. That’s when his pain fogged brain registered someone telling him not to move. He obeyed, for he wasn’t sure he could move if he wanted. He tried to focus on her, but only managed to slump to the side half unconscious.

Some minutes later he woke there laying on the ground and his eyes found her, sitting, seemingly waiting. Was she waiting for him to wake up? Probably she was waiting for backup. He began to ease his carbine into firing position, preparing for any threat. He moved so slowly that perhaps she wouldn’t notice. He didn’t want her to notice. That AK47 looked wicked. He could barely focus through the pain but continued on, trying to move trying to swing the rifle around to cover her.

 

[Alice2015]

Millie had lowered to one knee while she watched the man, laying her weapon across her thigh. When he regained consciousness and began looking back at her, she only stared without a reaction. But when he began to shift his weapon, she sprang back to her feet and pointed the Czech version of the originally Russian weapon at him again.

"Don't move!" she repeated in her best growl. "I told you not to move."

The intruder wasn't fully balanced, and he pressed the butt of his rifle to the ground to support his weight as he shifted his position. Millie charged forward the three steps between them, kicked the rifle butt, and backed up a step as the man fell to the ground again with an awkward thud.

"I said don't move!" Millie repeated. She snatched the rifle and jerked it from his hands. She gave it a toss to get it away from her; she'd made the mistake of forgetting that she couldn't touch anything he'd touched, in case his virus had mutated to something different and potentially dangerous from her virus. She mumbled to herself, "Fuck."

Millie watched the man as he righted himself again, this time on his haunches on the dirt trail. He still had a pistol on his side, but it was in a closed holster. She moved again toward a rock near the trail and sat. For a long moment, she only looked at him, wondering what to do now.

"I'm Millie," she told him, finally deciding that the thing to do was get to know the man. She pointed the AK-47 right at him and asked politely, "Would you mind to much tossing the pistol out of your reach … so that we can talk? I have people on the way. They'll be here in a couple of minutes. It's not far, and I called them here before you passed out. It would sort of make me look good if I was able to tell them who you are and how the hell you found us."

Of course, the man hadn't found them; he'd stumbled across them, and really he hadn't done that because they were still more than half a mile from New Hope. But Millie couldn't know all that. All she knew was that she was going to be in trouble when Carol got here for touching the man's rifle.

 

[The_gladiator]

That hadn’t gone as planned were his thoughts as she disarmed him of the rifle with quick steps and an economy of movement. He sighed as he tried to right himself, pain evident in his eyes as he sat back up, injured leg splayed out to the side awkwardly.

“Jumpy aren’t we,” he muttered to himself as she spoke again. Drawing the 9 mm pistol out of it’s holster, he tossed it to her. This did not leave him unarmed, but she seemed satisfied with the visible weapons at this time.

He tried to muster up the energy to be polite as she introduced herself, “Blakemore,” he finally replied between his clenched teeth. He turned his attention from her to his leg. If she were going to have shot him she would have done so by now, or so he told himself. He reached to his good leg, producing a knife from the boot there, and began to cut strips from his pants, looping one about his leg seeming to be trying to fashion something to stop the blood flow from the wound. “You could make yourself useful, rather than trying to do some kind of rambo impression,” he commented somewhat dryly.

 

[Alice2015]

“Jumpy aren’t we?" the man muttered.

He was correct, of course. But these were trying and scary times, and having strangers -- armed ones -- just show up out of no where wasn't a calming event for Millie. This didn't happen often; only six wanderers -- including this man -- had managed to reach New Hope following the plague due of its remote location and the steps by its residents to hide it, and for off then had managed this only because they'd been here in the pre-plague days.


“Blakemore,” he told her.

Millie smiled, then laughed. "Sounds like a Bond movie villian."

He turned his attention to his injury. “You could make yourself useful, rather than trying to do some kind of Rambo impression.”

Millie smiled again. She'd never seen any of the movies from the First Blood franchise, but she knew full well who John Rambo was. And she found herself a bit flattered by the comparison.

But she understood what the man meant. She contemplated his request a moment. She set her rifle on the ground near where she was squatting, shed her backpack, and dug a zippered bag out, and tossed it to him.

"There're some rapid release morphine tabs in the little red baggie," she told him.

She further helped him understand what else the med kit offered, but she made no attempt to help him physically. Millie was still leery about getting too close to the carrier.

He stemmed the blood flow and did all he could to support the broken bone. Millie was happy to see him better off, which was ironic, seeing how she didn't know him.

"Why are you here?" she asked bluntly. "Where did you come from? Have you come here to steal from us...? Kill us?"

 

[The_gladiator]

“Clearly that is my surname.” He responded to her bond Villain comment. His response was dry but he did appreciate her attempt at levity. “My friends earn my first name.” He paused to look up at her as he caught the med pack, she threw to him. “My friends don’t point AK47 rifles at me.” Again, with the dry humor. He clearly recognized she was doing her job.

He Swallowed a couple of the morphine tablets dry, a handy skill for the times when there wasn’t water around. He found and fashioned a makeshift splint for the bone. “Hopefully you’ll let me see a doctor, then again if I’m to get shot in the head guess it won’t really matter.” However, her actions to help him suggested that they didn’t wish him dead, otherwise why waste valuable medical supplies on him?

When finished with the knife he straightened and threw it at her, sticking it in a tree limb just to the side of her. “If I was here to kill you, that would have been your throat it hit.” He said after the pregnant pause that followed his actions. “I don’t steal, I salvage,” he finally said trying to break the tension that he had just generated. “What was I doing. Didn’t know it was against the law to pass through. But apparently this town isn’t big enough for the two of us, that about, right?” he asked turning the questioning back on her.

 

[Alice2015]

“My friends earn my first name.”

Millie considered what the man said as he worked on his leg. His comment about her pointing a weapon at him didn't surprise her. She would feel the same way if he'd threatened her this way.

“Hopefully you’ll let me see a doctor, then again if I’m to get shot in the head guess it won’t really matter.”

"No one's gonna shoot you in the head," Millie said without hesitation. Millie couldn't honestly say that, though. Carol and others were on their way here from up the hill, and for all Millie knew, only the New Hope residents would be making the walk back. "And we have probably the best ... maybe even the last real doctor in the State, so ... yeah."

Millie had been watching the man's use of his knife and hadn't been concerned. Then, suddenly, it flew through the air and thunked into the trunk of the tree near her. It happened so quickly that Millie couldn't have stopped it if she'd wanted. She snatched up her rifle from the ground next to her instinctively.

But she didn't point it his way. Millie understood the point he was trying to make almost as quickly as the event had occurred.

"If I was here to kill you, that would have been your throat it hit."

He explained about being a scavenger, not a thief. Millie wasn't surprised by his description. The sudden and dramatic decline in human population from the plague 2 years ago had had two significant and opposite results: production of consumer goods took a nose dive, eventually coming to a full stop; at the same time, though, homes and businesses across the country were suddenly devoid of occupants and yet were still full of resources over which a man like Secret Agent Blakemore were salivate.

He commented about not knowing that he was trespassing, adding, "But apparently this town isn’t big enough for the two of us, that about, right?”

Before Millie could respond, though, she caught movement of off the corner of her eye. She stood at the sight of 4 armed Hopers hurrying her way down the trail. Millie stood and pointed the AK-47 at the intruder, whispering, "Don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you. I just have to make this look good."

"What the hell, Millie?" were the first words she heard as the quartet neared. A tingle ran up Millie's spine as she realized it was Carol asking the question. In her sternest voice, the community's Matriarch commanded, "Back away from him."

Millie did as ordered, putting another rev feet or so between herself and Blakemore. Carol demanded a full explanation of the events of the past dozen minutes or so, which Millie gave.

"Did you make physical contact with this man?" Carol asked, using man to refer to Blakemore despite Millie having already given her superior his name. "Did you get near enough to have--"

"Yes, ma'am," Millie said even before Carol had finished her question. The girl with the big gun looked to the Matriarch with a meek expression, explaining, "I'm sorry. I was trying to disarm him."

Millie explained about how she'd kicked away the man's rifle with her foot, then caught his pistol in her hands. She had been and still was wearing her gloves, but that didn't mean much with this ultimate of all viruses.

"Break'em out," Carol ordered one of the female Hopers with her. The woman unwrapped a pair of full body protection suits, tossing one each to the ground near Millie and Blakemore. Carol told Millie, "Don your own, then help him into his."

 

[The_gladiator]

Blakemore watched the exchange as the hopers arrived on the scene. Her comment about making it look good had caught him a tad off guard, it almost made it sound like she might be an ally in this precarious situation.

He wasn’t particularly impressed with the older woman’s attitude. However, it bespoke a matriarch trying to protect her people. He caught on very quickly that they didn’t know if he was a carrier of the virus. Blakemore honestly wasn’t sure. All he knew was he was alive and had managed to stay that way since ground zero, or the day it had been released.

Green eyes watched Millie get into her suit. He made no effort to get his own suit. He would cooperate with these people, but he didn’t have to make it easy on them either. Not to mention he had a perfectly good excuse not to have to worry about it, he was injured and she was ordered to help him.

As she finished and came to him, He assisted her to assist him into the suit. He was struck by the fact that even though she was one of his captors, her touch wasn’t harsh or rough, it was surprisingly gentle. It honestly made him wish he could feel her bare hands on his skin. It had been so long. He was surprised by these thoughts, but they made sense. She was far from unattractive even hidden by her hazmat suit.

Finally, they were both in their suits. The most difficult part had been getting the leg into it and clearly, he was in pain and that shown on his face as he also glared his anger at her, though he wasn’t really angry with Millie, she was just a pawn in this situation. He thanked her softly as she steadied him as he stood, their hands touching briefly as she steadied him. He again was surprised at her strength for her size. He was almost a foot taller than her, now that he stood his weight on his good leg and on her shoulder. “Can you support me, it won’t take my weight elsewise all better have some way to transport me, or a crutch.” He waited to see what her response would be. His eyes finally looking towards Carol and the others, they having previously been behind him and turning hadn’t been worth the effort. Carol was also attractive, though older. He wasn’t sure but there might have been a familial resemblance to Millie in her Face. to Millie in her Face.

 

[Alice2015]

Millie hated the HazMat suits with a passion. Each of the Hopers had one; they'd been scavenged from an Army Reserve Field Hospital after there was no longer anyone there alive, whether patient or staffer. Each of Millie's community members had been given one their size, and they were supposed to take them with them if they left the farm. Millie hadn't, obviously; she hated the extra weight when she walked to the South Cliff Outlook, and not one -- until today -- had she ever needed one.

The only good thing to come out of donning one now was that she got to be up close and personal with Blakemore, even if it was from the other side of a HazMat suit. Millie didn't often get this close to men. Oh, there were plenty of available men in New Hope who were eager to get close to Millie. Hell, there were plenty of unavailable men who wanted the same.

Millie was considered the most beautiful, sexiest young women in the community. And she was single, which was a rarity for the adult age women; most of the community's females were in a union by now. Millie liked sex as much as the next woman, but there wasn't a single man in New Hope for whom she held a torch.

Although she considered herself fully heterosexual, Millie had taken to occasionally finding her joy in the bed of another of the community's females. Roxanne felt the same way about her own sexuality; it had made it possible for the pair of them to occasionally enjoy a friends with benefits relationship that satisfied them both while they waited for Mister (or Missus) Right to come along.

"Can you support me, it won’t take my weight elsewise all better have some way to transport me, or a crutch," Blackmore asked.

Millie happily helped the man to his feet. She wrapped an arm around his waist, grasping his far hip in her wrapping fingers as his hand laid over top of her shoulders and grasped her far upper arm. It was as close to a man as she'd been in two years, and Millie found it both exciting and unsettling at the same time.

An electric cart with a two wheeled trailer that was normally used on the farm had arrived while Millie was dressing the man. She helped Blakemore to and into the trailer. The others maintained their distance, despite the man now being fully enclosed within a HazMat suit.

"Take him to the Infirmary," Carol ordered. She pulled out her radio and spoke into it, "Code Yellow, Code Yellow. Retrieval Team bringing in a possible Carrier."

Millie looked to the face shield of Blakemore's hood as she passed by him toward the cart. "That only means that everyone's going inside. No worries."

She slipped into behind the steering wheel and accelerated the cart slowly away. Carol called to her to take it at a walking pace; the others fell in behind, keeping an eye on the man, there weapons always at the ready. Millie tried to keep the ride steady and smooth, but the trail was rough and not made for a four wheeled cart or the trailer behind it.

At that pace, it took quite a while to reach the road and almost as much time to follow it to the village. It looked almost abandoned, because of the Code Yellow; the only people in sight were another 4 armed guards whose CY posts were about the buildings. Facing to the rear, Blakemore wouldn't see much until Millie turned the cart to pull up next to the Infirmary, which from the outside looked like nothing more than an ocean going shipping container.

The rest of the property was a bit more impressive. There was a large 2 story, 8 bedroom home with wrap around porches on both floors. It had a sort of Deep South plantation house look to it but without the big round pillars like so many of them had had. The front of the house was almost hidden beneath flourishing vines of honeysuckle, grapes, roses, and other climbing flora.

Off to one side of the Big House, as they called it, were a dozen small, one room cabins. During the property's vineyard days, they'd been used by the harvest season workers, mostly legal and illegal migrants; during the WWOOF days, they had been rented for low cost by the visiting organic farming/ranching hands who would stay for days, weeks, months, or sometimes even years; and now, during the post-plague era, they were occupied mostly by Hopers who were a family unit. Most of the single people -- including Millie -- and all of the unaccompanied minors lived in the second floor bedrooms of the Big House.

Off to the other side of the large home were the outbuildings of the properties farming and ranching operation. There were coops, pens, barns, a milking parlor for a large herd of goats, and a slaughter house; most of the animals were out and about as New Hope practiced free range policies. There were fenced fields to separate those stock animals that needed separation; the males of each mammal species were kept apart to regulate who bred with whom.

And below all of this was the farm. New Hope had a massive garden that grew just about any edible crop that would grow in this terrain and climate. They also had fields of various grains, corn, multiple types of beans, and so much more. It was quite impressive to most people; it was also quite a lot of work, most of which was done by hand and without the use of machinery beyond a few simple tasked performed with a small tractor.

"Get him inside," Carol said when they reached the Infirmary. She opened the door to the shipping container herself, entered, and unzipped the isolation tent door, beyond which was a very impressive medical and surgery room that had also been scavenged from the Army Reserve site. "Bring him inside, Millie."

Again, the others stayed back as Millie helped Blakemore out of the cart and into the Infirmary. It was only a dozen steps from the cart to the examination bed, but Millie could see the pain in the man's eyes, despite the Morphine that had by now fully kicked in. She helped him onto the bed, again not restraining how much touch took place between them.

"Get out of your suit, Millie," Carol said as she left the isolation area.

"What?" the younger woman asked with obvious surprise. "You mean, in here, with him?"

The matriarch zipped the door shut again and smoothed down the Velcro flap to further seal the room. As she began donning her own suit, she explained that by her own description of the earlier interactions, Millie had likely already came into contact with the version of the virus that the man was carrying.

"We don't know whether or not the disease has mutated inside him, Millie," Carol went on as she sat and kicked off her boots. "It is hasn't, no harm will come to you. You'll stay in isolation with him for 96 hours--"

"Four days?" Millie blurted out in shock. "Are you kidding me?"

"I'm sorry, Millie," Carol said as she stood. She stood to remove her blouse, then her jeans as she continued, "You know the rules. You came into contact with a Mic. Four days to ensure that you aren't a danger to the rest of the Hopers."

Mic or more properly M.I.C. was their term for Mutation-Immune Carrier. It meant a person who might possibly be carrying a mutated version of the virus, which -- with the exception of the current Hopers -- meant everyone else on the planet. It wasn't an official term or anything; one of the younger Hopers who had been a "Men In Black" franchise fan had come up with it. It was a long reach to connect MIC to MIB, but hell, the rules of what made sense and what didn't were being rewritten by the plague's survivors, so why the hell not, right?

"How will be know whether or not he is a MIC?" Millie asked. When Carol only looked her way and raised an eyebrow, Millie's eyes and mouth both widened. "If I die, we know he's a Mic?"

Carol was now standing before the two of them in a bikini. She'd been in the pool doing laps when Millie reported the intruder and hadn't taken the time to get out of it before responding. As she began slipping into a HazMat suit, she looked to the shipping containers door to ensure that it was closed and no one else could hear her. Then, explaining the other option Millie had had at the time, Carol said, "You could have just shot him and left him for the wolves."

Carol's flippant suggestion had honestly been a possibility. With the near eradication of their greatest threat -- Humans -- the wolves of nearby Idaho and Wyoming had moved west and made a dramatic comeback along the Pacific Coast. It had been a blessing in one way, as the wolves were keeping the deer and elk populations in check. It had a terror as well, as the pack now living to the north of New Hope had begun raiding the community's vulnerable domestic livestock. Three wolves had had to be exterminated before the pack learned to stay away from the ranch.

"I couldn't do that," Millie responded about simply executing Blakemore.

"I know that," Carol said without hesitation. "But now we have to deal with the situation. Either way, you'll be in there for 96 hours."

"What do you mean either way?" Millie asked.

"Either way," Carol repeated, zipping up her suit and beginning to tape up the zipper. "Either you both live, everything's hunky dory, and you come out alive. Or you both die, we burn the bodies, and we mourn your loss."

Millie realized that her eyes were filling with tears. She wasn't the crying sort of girl; she'd lost people near and dear to her during the plague and yet hadn't shed a single tear. But now her own life was in danger, and that had her eyes glazing over beneath the mask of the HazMat suit. At Carol's insistence, she shed the suit; at Carol's continued direction, she helped Blakemore out of his, too. The inside of his suit's leg was covered in blood.

Carol finally entered the tent, and when she did her hands possessed a pair of handcuffs and a 9mm pistol. She gestured to a chair sitting along the wall, then looked to the man and said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to cuff yourself to the chair so that I can treat your leg. Millie may have been willing to take the risk, but I can't. I am this community's only doctor, and I can't risk their future on becoming exposed to a Mic."

 

[The_gladiator]

Blakemore allowed her to help him into the suit and then accepted her support to get to the cart. Her hand stirred something within him as it gripped his narrow waist. He had broad shoulders that tapered nicely to his waist.

Letting out a grunt of pain he settled into the trailer and tried to let the morphine take over. Slipping in and out of awareness. This lasted until they seemed to arrive at their destination. Green eyes took in his surroundings. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have missed anything, yet he wasn’t exactly at his peak condition at the moment.

It became quite clear Carol’s plan for he and Millie as he listened to the women’s conversation. He couldn’t even find himself too particularly interested in Carol’s body as she revealed it to put on the suit. In another time and place, yes, he would remember that glimpse but his world was pain, and their words. “I could have killed her,” was his only comment, coming out a tad slurred. Not even sure if either heard him.

He eyed Carol and then shook his head, “I am not getting off this bed, if you want to put a bullet between my eyes you can fuckin try, but my ass is not moving. He stretched his arms above his head as if to signal he was unarmed, and suddenly realized that just maybe he could compromise.

“Cuff me to the bed frame,” he told Millie abruptly. I can’t get back up, she gets me in bondage gear, and we all try to pretend it’s not kinky… everyone wins, right?” This was the most he’d spoken to her and it was a bit influenced by the morphine probably. However, to his mind it seemed like a good idea.

When Millie had done so Blakemore smirked at Carol. “You do realize that to work on the leg, you will have to take off my pants, though, and I can no longer help you, right?” It was clear that he was trying to needle her, just a bit. So far though he understood her perspective, he wasn’t very impressed with Carol. He found that he was developing a fondness for Millie, but was that just because she had touched him gently?