"Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day" (closed)

[RobbieRand]

Dead thread. No longer writing this. We have moved on to something bigger and better.

"Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day"

Surviving, thriving, and building a better life
in a post apocalyptic world.

[PM me to apply to be my writing partner]​

Paul Davis made his way up the West Fork River, carefully navigating the rocky bottom so as to not end up falling into the 38 degree water as he had the day before. In one hand he grasped his dinner by its now broken neck, while in the other he held tightly to the hand built net with which he'd caught the 22 inch long trout as the fish navigated the weir Paul had built to funnel potential prey into a narrow, controllable catch zone.

Paul would roast the beauty in the smoke of his campfire this evening, drying it's pink meat to the core. He could feed off a fish this big for as much as a week if he didn't find anything more to eat. It wasn't much in the way of necessary calories, but it was better to spread the food out over many days than devour it all now and starve for the week or more to come. Paul hadn't been doing very well in the catch and kill department recently: two rabbits, three squirrels, this fish and a smaller one earlier, and a couple of dozen song birds caught in a trap he'd made of wire mesh and an old milk crate. It sounded like a lot of meat until you realized that that had been his catch for the past month! But he wasn't starving, and that was all that mattered.

He reached the shore near his camp, stepped one foot up on the muddy bank, and hung the fish through its gills on a broken tree limb. Then suddenly, his foot slipped off the steep bank and down he went, front side first right into the foot deep water.

"Fffffffuuuuuuuck………!" he growled to himself as every bit of clothing on him was very quickly soaked with the agonizingly chilly water. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, then carefully rose to his feet again. He could feel the water filling his hip waders and he repeated again, "Fuuuck. Again? You're a better mountain man than this, Paul."

And he was, normally anyway. Paul had grown up in a small rural town just eight miles from here and had spent his life out here in these woods hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and more. When the plague struck and began killing off humankind, Paul found he was one of the lucky ten or twelve percent who were immune to the virus.

He thought at the time he was safe, but that had turned out to be wrong. The government took him into custody against his will, wanting to study his immunity. A sympathetic nurse had helped Paul escape.

Then the mayhem of the plague and the dead was supplanted by the mayhem of the living and their yearning for control. Militias began fighting one another as they struggled for control of anything and everything of value, including other people. Again, Paul was taken into custody, if you could describe being enslaved as a laborer in that way.

Again, he escaped, and this time he headed straight for the woods that he knew so very well. He'd had very little with him when he fled, but he'd found the family's little shack still intact and not yet pillaged. But it wasn't exactly isolated deep in the wilderness, instead sitting just 50 yards off a poor but still paved road.

Paul packed up as much as he could carry and hid the rest deeper in the woods. And for the next six months, he'd lived out here in a nationally designated Wilderness Area. It had been a mild winter, thankfully, so he'd been relatively comfortable in a succession of lean-tos he'd built as he searched for a more permanent place to live. He stayed put so long as he could find food, listening and watching for signs of other people.

Paul had been at his last camp for fifteen days when he'd heard voices in the distance carried his way over a fast moving wind. It was time to move, which had brought him to this river bank a couple of days ago.

Now, with his body already trembling from the sudden drenching of mountain water, Paul got himself to his feet and stomped his way up the steep bank. Over an old, worn reinforced plastic tarp he used as a camp cover on rainy days, he began shedding his clothes: leather jacket, long sleeved wool shirts, hip waders, jeans, wool socks, boxers.

Eventually, Paul was standing on the tarp in nothing more than his tee shirt, which was the only part of his ensemble that hadn't gotten wet. He turned the boots over to empty out the half gallon or so of water inside each, rang more water out of the jeans and over shirt and tossed all of it closer to the fire with the intent of arranging some limbs over the fire to hopefully dry them out before bed time.

And that was when he looked up and saw her!

 

[Alice2015]

(Imagine her in the woods rather than on the plains.)

Alice Peters stood on a small rise above the man who was now staring at her. She had an arrow notched and pulled back ready to fly. She didn't want to kill him of course. She just wanted the fish she'd seen him pull from the river and hang on a broken lower limb of a tree near where he'd fallen into the river. Alice had been creeping up on the camp site ever since smelling the smoke of the fire wafting down the river's shore. She'd located it unoccupied, surveilled the area for its resident, and (when she saw him coming up the river) finally began the last couple of dozen silent steps closer.

Then he'd fallen in. Alice had very nearly laughed aloud but caught herself. She'd only been 20 feet from the camp (about 30 feet from him) when he emerged from the water. And stripped! Alice froze in place unsure of what to do. He was occupied with shedding his wet clothes and she could have surged forward to take control. And yet she found herself just standing there watching as he became more and more naked with each stitch of clothing tossed aside.

When he was down to no more than an under shirt he turned her way enough to let her see his dangling cock. Despite having just been doused in cold water, Alice could tell that under normal circumstances it was likely a bit more than average in length and girth. She simply stared at it, at him, at it again. This hadn't been what Alice had expected when she first smelled the campfire and decided to check the situation.

And suddenly she'd realized that he was looking directly at her. Alice had again lifted the sagging bow and drew back the string. She warned with a sincerely menacing tone, "If you move I'll put this right through your heart!"

 

[RobbieRand]

"I'm not going to move," Paul said without any hesitation. He did, though, slowly raising his arms upward and outward in a sort of surrender gesture. He repeated, "I'm not going to move."

His eyes moved from the bow with its deadly projectile to the woman, back, and back again. Paul couldn't believe that he was already noticing it but the woman was absolutely stunning: long flowing, sun-bleached blonde hair; a full, shapely chest; a slim figure with long legs and a well rounded ass. Despite having an arrow pointed at his chest -- the only part of his body not naked to her -- Paul could feel a tingling in his cock that had him worrying that he was about to become very inappropriately stiff.

"Do you mind if I just--" He slowly lowered a hand to point toward his boxers, sitting on the tarp with the rest of his clothes. "--put on my boxers. It's getting a bit chilly out here."

If she did or said nothing threatening, he would very slowly lean down, pick up his underwear, and just as slowly step into them. If she did, he would just stand there and hope she didn't shoot him. And that he didn't start pointing her way with his own weapon of sorts.

 

[Alice2015]

"I'm not going to move."

He did move but only to ask if he could retrieve his underwear. Alice maintained her aim on him but allowed him to retrieve and don the boxers. It was probably good timing, too. Alice took one last glance at the man's cock as he was leaning to get his underwear and he had most definitely begun to stiffen a bit. She thought it was odd considering the circumstances but then how many stiffies had men suffered upon seeing her in the past? Alice knew men liked the way she looked and liked to look at her. Hell, some women did, too. She liked it. She liked feeling attractive and yearned for. Just not right now by a naked man in the woods who she planned on robbing.

"I'm taking the fish," she said as he was putting his underwear on. She registered his reaction then bettered her aim at him to remind him of who was calling the shots right now. She made quick glances about his camp and saw other things she'd like to have. "Back up. Back up! I'm taking your pack, too."

 

[RobbieRand]

Paul noticed his semi-erect state as he slipped the boxers up his thighs. It was embarrassing, of course. But his immediate concern was having an arrow pointed at his torso.

Then she said, "I'm taking the fish."

He didn't immediately understand what she was saying, and by the time he did she was adding, "Back up. Back up! I'm taking your pack, too."

Paul slipped his fingers between his waist and the boxers's waist band to put them properly in place as he said in as non-threatening a way as possible, "I can't let you do that. If you take my pack... If you take everything I own... I'll die out here. You'll kill me. You'll be responsible for my death."

Paul began contemplating ways to get out of his situation. He could leap suddenly for the river and very likely make it without her putting an arrow into or through him. Once over the bank and in the water, he could remain submerged in the two to three foot water for long enough to get out of range. Maybe.

He could rush her, or he could throw something in an effort of rattling her. But what? He could do one of those old 1980s TV cop rolls toward his pack or the fire or a branch or rock. It always worked for the good guys in the shows, right?

Instead, Paul simply said with a gentle voice, "I haven't done you any harm. And I won't do you any harm. I'm sure you've seen a lot of tragedy and horror and cruelty in the past months. I know I have. And I'm sure we each will see more in the near future. But... that doesn't have to be what we see here today."

After a moment of letting her contemplate his words, he said, "My name is Paul. Paul Davis. What's your name?"

Another moment later he asked, "Would you like to eat with me? The fish. Let me put on my clothes... cook it... share it...? I promise, I won't hurt you. You can sit clear over there, out of reach... watch me the whole time."

 

[Alice2015]

"I can't let you do that," the man began.

Alice began to get nervous as he tried to convince her not to rob him. She didn't want to kill him. She'd hoped to find the camp empty. When she didn't, she'd hoped the threat of injury or even death would convince the man to just give up his valuables.

"I haven't done you any harm. And I won't do you any harm.

He was telling the truth, of course. But could she trust him? So many men both before and after the plague had lied to her about a variety of things for a variety of reasons.

"My name is Paul. Paul Davis. What's your name?"

Very slowly and very carefully, Paul reached for his clothes. Alice kept the bow trained on him but did nothing to stop him. She thought it was too early to find trust in him. But at the same time to loose the arrow and possibly kill him would have seemed premature, too.

Alice relaxed the bow string but kept the arrow notched. Paul pulled his pants on, struggling with the wet fabric as it clung to his legs. When he reached for a pair of dry boots Alice pulled the bow string back again and aimed. "No!"

He pulled his hands back from the boots. Alice relaxed the bow again. She bent her knees until her haunches found the rotting wood of the log at the back of her feet. She kept the bow close but made it obvious that she was no longer threatening Paul. She said simply, "I could eat. We could discuss your pack later."

 

[RobbieRand]

"No!"

Paul froze at the woman's sudden warning. He slowly pulled his hand back, then raised and parted his hands in his surrender gesture again.

"It's good," he said softly, staring at the bow that was once again ready to end his life. "We're good. Everything's good."

Paul stood tall again, unsure of how the hell he was going to make her trust him enough to either escape, to convince her to let him keep his things, or even to get the jump on her and turn the tables.

Then she surprised him by releasing the tension on her bow string and taking a seat upon a log. "I could eat. We could discuss your pack later."

"Okay," Paul said simply enough. "Okay. I'll cook. I'll cook, which involves me using my knife."

He gestured easily toward the bow, adding, "And you won't kill me because you think I'm doing anything other than gutting a fish, right?"

He gave her an opportunity to respond if she wished, then moved very slowly to retrieve the fish and get to work. He glanced her way often just to ensure she was still calm. And all the while Paul contemplated his options and which if any were looking more likely than the others.

Once the fish was over the fire with a stick down its gullet and, essentially, out it's ass, and Paul had some mushrooms, edible roots, and wild onions in a frying pan on the coals, he stood and looked the woman over again, asking simply, "So, what's your name?"

 

[Alice2015]

Alice's threat as the man reached for his boots had achieved its purpose. She was unsure of what direction this situation was going and even unsure of what direction she wanted it to go. She could just put an arrow in him now, steal the fish and pack, and be gone. Or she could see if there might be a better way. It was like the man said: he hadn't done her any harm. Would he? Or was there truly a better way.

She relaxed but at the same time remained on guard as the man, Paul, set about cooking the fish. He was obviously experienced at this outdoorsy crap. Alice had been a city girl before the plague and had had no idea how to survive in the wild. She should have been dead by now. But she'd been provided a different fate.

"So, what's your name?"

She didn't answer for more than a minute. She just watched him cooking in silence. Then finally when he glanced her way yet again, she answered, "Alice."

More silence passed as he was cutting things up and tossing them into a frying pan. Some of it was familiar. Some of it Alice didn't recognize at all. Soon enough, though, Paul was filling two metal plates with it and fish. Alice's stomach growled at the thought of having something in it. It had been two days since she'd eaten. And even then it hadn't been enough to satisfy her tummy. Alice stood again as Paul offered Alice her share of the food. She was on guard a bit more now that she knew she had to descend the slight rise an be nearer in his camp.

 

[RobbieRand]

"Alice," she finally said after what seemed like forever but probably wasn't.

"Alice," he repeated. "Nice to meet you, Alice. Paul Davis. I think I already told you that."

Still moving as cautiously as he had been, Paul began gathering the last necessities for their meal: forks, plates, cups for the wild mint tea he was brewing in a small pot. His gaze fell on his open pack for a moment. The grip of the 9mm Beretta was just barely in view. Paul hesitated for a moment, telling himself it was a bad idea to go for it.

So far, Alice had let him live. Oh, she might still kill him or simply rob him of all he needed. But so far...

Paul passed on the weapon and instead began filling the plates. The meat of the trout was, by this time, very soft and easily to accidentally disassemble and, thus, lose into the fire. But he managed to cut it into four pieces, put one on each plate, and the rest in the overturned lid of his stew pot for use later.

He put the rest of the food on the plates, asking Alice if she liked this, that, and the other. He caught her expression and wondered whether she was still not warmed up to him enough to answer the question or possibly didn't know what all he'd cooked for them. He smiled and identified the six different items on the plate, adding also why each was good for her.

"You can live on this, just this," he told her as he stepped a bit her direction and set the plate atop an old rotting stump. As he backed away, Paul told her, "Of course, it would be better if you were eating twice this amount every day of the week. But-- Hard times and all."

He sat on yet another of the stumps from the tree harvest of about 20 years earlier. The dead remains of the once 30 inch diameter Douglas fir brought back memories of how, as a teenager, he'd been part of a protest that blocked the clear cut of his treasured forest.

"Dig in," Paul told Alice as he did the same. "It's hot, so, careful."

He conspicuously tried each of the offered foods to show her that it all was indeed edible. If he wanted to harm her via her digestive system, he knew how to do that. But there was none of that going on here now.

"Have you been out here since the beginning of the plague?" he asked after a couple of bites. "I have. Sort of anyway. They took me into custody in those early days to study my immunity, but it had the feel of one of those Nazi medical experiment studies from the '40s, so I got the hell out of there. Spent some time in a labor camp. Never thought I'd see slavery return to the post-Civil War United States of America, but, there it was. Got out of there, too."

He ate another bite of the fish, spitting out a bone that had gotten past his careful removal of the animal's skeleton after it was cooked. He glanced about the woods, continuing, "I grew up in these woods. I don't mean to brag, but you could say they are still here because of me."

He took a bite and leaned back against the trunk of the tree behind him to look up into the towering firs. "When I was 15, I lived up there in the canopy for 44 days. Ran ropes between eight trees to support a platform. It wasn't very stable. Every time the wind came up, which was always, the waving trees would cause the platform to move. Up and down, left and right, back and forth. It was seriously like being on a boat in the ocean. Got sick two or three times that first day and had a sea sickness headache for the first week or so. But I adapted."

Paul looked back toward Alice. "There were six of us at the start, spread out over more than 50 acres. We were in radio contact with one another. Walkie Talkies. This was before everyone had cell phones, of course. Besides, there wouldn't have been any tower coverage up here anyway. The logging company would try to keep us from keeping in touch with one another by flooding the channels we were on with recordings of Sunday Gospels or they'd rant at us with foul language. Talk about how they were going to fuck us all to death in the night and throw us out of our tree houses to the ground."

Paul shrugged his shoulders and took another bite of fish. "We'd just turn off the radios. Wait them out. Listen to nature. At night we could talk to one another through the canopy. It was so quiet and peaceful out here then. Like now."

He looked to Alice for her reaction to his monologue and obvious joy for the forest. He laughed suddenly as he continued, "I could only see one of the other platforms from where I was. Normally, Cooper Timms was in it, but every once in a while some of us -- not me, I never left -- but some of us would descend to the ground in the dark of night and be replaced by someone else, for a break from the tree sit."

Paul leaned back again and stared up into the canopy. "A girl -- a woman -- named Sally McGee would slip in at night, signal the current sitter, and replace him. Or her. There were females, too, though not as many. She could take her place in the canopy for a few days, then move onto another stand to relieve someone else."

He went silent for a moment, remembering the day. "My God, she was something. She was 22, a junior at Oregon State. Beautiful, blonde, bosomy. Like yourself, Alice."

Paul paused to glance at the woman eating part of his trout. He smiled and continued, "She had this rain collection apparatus -- we all did -- for drinking and cleaning. Most of us used tarps to block the wind, especially at night when it could get really cold. The platform I could see Sally in did, too. We usually pulled them open during the day, so that we could see each other. Sometimes we could talk to one another, if there was no wind. But we'd pull them closed again at night or when we were sleeping or cleaning up. Sponge baths I guess you could call them, but with just rags wet with rain water."

He drew a deep breath as he looked back to the canopy, reminiscing. "Sally knew I had binoculars. We all had them. Every day she was in that platform, sometimes morning and night, she would strip to nothing and bathe. But she wouldn't pull the tarp closed. I could see her. Clearly. At first, I hid inside my own tarps. Didn't want her to see me looking at her with the binoculars."

Paul laughed, stuffed a roasted root into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and continued. "Then one day she looked right at me, waved, and blew me a kiss. While she was washing her beautiful, nude body with that wet rag. She knew I was watching her. She didn't care. I think she was doing it for me to watch. I stopped hiding behind the tarp."

He could have added, Except afterward when I would unzip my pants and masturbate. But it didn't really seem appropriate considering the current audience. He laughed again, adding, "Someone told me later she did the same for the guys on the other platforms, too, when she moved around from tree sit to tree sit. Said it was to incentivize us to stay in the stands, to keep on the good fight. I didn't believe them, of course. I wanted to believe she'd only done it for me. I was 15 and still a virgin after all."

He laughed again, looked at Alice, and said, "What is it they used to say? TMI? Too much information?"

He looked back to the forest again and after a moment finished his tale, "We won. Didn't happen often, but in this case the Courts blocked the clear cut and allowed only selective cutting."

He patted the stump on which he sat and the one on which he'd laid Alice's plate. They were two of only a dozen stumps within their field of vision. "Few years later the President declared this a Federal Wilderness Area. Since then, no logging. I lived in a logging town, so a lot of my neighbors came to despise me for being a tree hugger. Got into more than one fight over it during high school."

He donned a proud smile. "Won most of them, so, eventually people began leaving me alone. I really felt as though I'd been part of something important, that I'd made a difference. I only had one regret."

Paul looked to Alice with an evil smirk. "I never got to be with Sally McGee."

He finished the last of his rather meager meal, stood slowly, and moved to his pack. Once again, Paul was tempted to grab the gun and end this little situation. Instead, he pulled out a bar of soap and -- after explaining himself to Alice -- went to and down the bank to wash off his dishware.

As he looked out over the river, Paul's face filled with a solemn expression. "Those people, the ones who'd wanted this all gone, just for money. They're all gone now."

He contemplated how the world had changed so drastically and rapidly. Then he shrugged it off and lowered to a crouch to wash his plate, fork, and knife.

 

[Alice2015]

Alice tensed a bit when Paul neared his back pack. It was open, and the flap wasn't such that she could see inside it. But he only removed some metal dishware and small containers. Then he returned to cooking. He showed some friendly courtesy in telling her what he was doing and cooking. Alice wasn't certain whether or not he was really a nice guy. Maybe he was just trying to befriend her before attacked her? She didn't want to believe that. But the last many months following the plague and the militias and the basic thieves, rapists, and murderers had made her hard.

"You can live on this, just this ... Of course, it would be better if you were eating twice this amount every day of the week. But-- Hard times and all."

And then he set a plate of food out for her and backed away. Alice hesitated, but not for long. She was starving, and she knew that trusting Paul even just enough to sit down to a meal with him was simply necessary. She released her arrow from its notch and stuffed it into her quiver, slung her bow over her head and shoulder, and quickly pulled a butcher knife from a makeshift scabbard. She made sure Paul saw the weapon before she moved down the inclined to the plate.

They sat there on their respective sides of the camp fire. Alice watched Paul for a moment as he himself dug into the meal. She'd had the same thought he thought she would have. He was trying to poison her. But no sooner had she seen Paul dig into a little bit of this and a little bit of that, she dug in. And her days of having gone without serious food showed. The first bite of the fish led to Alice to begin rapidly devouring her portion of it.

"It's hot, so, careful."

Alice opened her mouth to breath in and blow out quickly as the meat burned her tongue. Now he tells me, she thought. She almost laughed but feared she would blow the bits of fish out onto the ground. She carefully but quickly finished it before moving onto the rest of the known and unknown foods. Some of the roasted, fried, and boiled plant life was without flavor. But Paul reassured her that it was all nutritionally satisfying.

"Have you been out here since the beginning of the plague?"

She listened to Paul describe his post-apocalypse history. He'd been through a lot, assuming any of it was true. She had been, too. But Alice wasn't about to tell him about her adventures. Besides, she was still eating.

"I grew up in these woods"

Paul began telling about his childhood experiences here in the wilderness. It could have been bullshit, just as his post-horror tale. But Alice was quickly realizing that she believed him. When he got to the story about Sally McGee, Alice actually smiled with delight. She could see a committed woman doing that to keep a young man interested. Alice had done similar things when she was young. When I was young, she thought. She still was young at just 24 years of age. But the last year after the plague and, honestly, the couple of years before it had been very hard on Alice. Sometimes she felt as though she had the life experiences of a woman twice her age.

As he continued, Alice thought about Paul's compliment of her: Beautiful, blonde, bosomy. She hadn't made comment at the time. Her mouth had been full of fish and something else, so although she'd smirk derisively at him, Paul likely hadn't noticed. You're not the first man to flatter me when I had something he wanted, she thought. Wanted more than to fuck me, anyway. Did he mean any of it? He seemed to. But again, was he just trying to get Alice to lower her guard so that he could attempt to overwhelm her? Restrain her? Murder her? Rape her? Maybe not in that order or maybe so?

Regarding his fantasies about being Sally's only audience, Paul confessed, "I was 15 and still a virgin after all. ... What is it they used to say? TMI? Too much information?"

"Yeah," Alice murmured, more to herself than to Paul. It was the first word she'd spoken since admitting that she could see herself eating.

Paul continued his story about Sally, the Wilderness declaration, his neighbors and their closed minded hate, and his growing up to be a tough guy. Then, down at the waters edge he mused, "Those people, the ones who'd wanted this all gone, just for money. They're all gone now."

"Karma," Alice said, this time loud enough for Paul to hear. When he looked to her, she explained, "You sound like you lived a good life. Sound like you were a good person. I was, too. I think I was anyway. And we are both still alive. They talk about immunity to the plague and why some people have it and how they don't know why these people -- you and I -- why we have it. Maybe it's because we were good people."

Alice shrugged her shoulders. She didn't really mean that, of course. She didn't know why she'd lived when so many of her friends and family, critics and enemies didn't. But she didn't prescribe to the notion that she'd lived because she'd gone to church every Sunday or because she'd volunteered at the homeless shelter or because she'd read books to the blind or illiterate. There was just something in her blood that had saved her. It was really that simple.

She looked to her plate, then licked the juice and crumbs off it. She retrieved the big butcher knife from where she'd stabbed in into the stump next to her. Then, with the weapon hanging unthreatening at her side, Alice walked slowly over to stand above Paul at the bank. She leaned slowly forward to hand him the plate and fork.

"Thank you for feeding me," she said with a genuine tone. "It was delicious."

 

[RobbieRand]

As he was looking out over the river toward the far bank, Paul caught movement in his peripheral vision and turned to see Alice standing and licking her plate. He chuckled softly. "There's more if you're still hungry."

She crossed to stand over him, offering out her dirty dishes. "Thank you for feeding me. It was delicious."

Paul glanced conspicuously at the knife in Alice's other hand, then back up to her face to ensure that she'd noticed him noticing it before he moved a step closer to take the dishware. "You're welcome. And thank you."

He turned and knelt again to clean Alice's dishes, adding, "Imagine what I could do with some garlic and butter."

When he finished, Paul ascended from the water's edge. Alice backed away, guarded but not nearly as much as she had been earlier. Was she no longer afraid? Or was she confident that she could fend him off with that big knife before he could do her any harm.

"I have a cache of food a few miles from here," he told her, looking to build some more trust. "There's probably two weeks worth, maybe four, of quality food for two people. I haven't gone back for it because I feared exposure. But, if you wanted to go with me..."

He gave her a moment to consider the thought as he set the dishware down to air dry. He added, "There's safety in numbers, even if that number's only two."

Paul wanted Alice to be convinced that he had no intention of harming her and gestured toward the pack. "Main pouch, just below the flap. Check it out."

He backed up to give her more room, saying, "You can trust me, Alice."

 

[Alice2015]

Alice found herself again questioning Paul's honesty as he claimed to have a cashe of food nearly. She found it hard to believe that he hadn't gone back for it. Even if there had been dangers, so much food couldn't be ignored.

But after his tales about being held in custody and later enslaved, Alice realized that Jeff had good reason not to expose himself. And obviously, he had the ability to support himself out here in the wilderness.

Then he told her, "Main pouch, just below the flap. Check it out."

She must have looked hesitant because he added, "You can trust me, Alice."

She gripped her butcher knife tightly as she backed up and flipped the flap to reveal the pistol. She pulled it out for a better look. It was so heavy. She'd only ever shot smaller revolvers, .22s and .38s. She'd never held a semi-automatic like this.

"You could have pulled this and shot me," she said after studying the weapon and Paul both for a moment. "Why didn't you?"

 

[RobbieRand]

Paul noted that Alice didn't look particularly comfortable with the weapon. Had she never held a handgun or had she never held one of this caliber? Or maybe she simply didn't like them.

"You could have pulled this and shot me," she said. "Why didn't you?"

Without hesitation, Paul looked to the bow slung over Alice's back and responded, "You could have shot me with that. Why didn't you?"

He shrugged his shoulders and donned an expression of curiosity. "Maybe we're both hoping there's something here between us. That maybe we can trust each other, rather than robbing or killing each other. I'd give it a chance if you would."

Paul's smile widened and he chuckled as he raised one of his still bare feet. "We could take that walk to my cache, but, of course, it would be easier if I had my boots on."

 

[Alice2015]

When Paul proposed that maybe they hadn't killed one another because each of them was hoping there might be something more between them, Alice couldn't help but smiled broadly. The way he'd said it sounded as if he was speaking of something more intimate. The last time she'd heard similar words had been from a guy who was picking her up at a bar a couple of years back. She'd laughed at him then, asking playfully if that was his best line. Despite knowing it had been a play to get her in bed, she'd gone to a motel with him anyway. Not because of the line but because he was such a beautiful man and she'd been so horny.

"We could take that walk to my cache, but, of course, it would be easier if I had my boots on."

Alice looked to Paul's clothes where he'd hung them between tending the food. They probably weren't dry yet. But that really wasn't Alice's concern, was it? She'd refused him his boots to keep him from fleeing with ease. But Alice was beginning to trust Paul. Beginning to. Close, but not yet entirely.

She slipped the big knife into the makeshift scabbard on her hip. That was easy. She slipped the pistol into the small of her back. That wasn't as easy. Her belt was a bit to tight to make room for the big semi-automatic gun. She had to suck in her gut before she succeeded.

"Let's go," she said as she pulled the knife out again and let it hand at her side. Smiling knowingly, she added, "You first."

Alice was serious. She was ready to follow Paul to this supposed cache of his. If he wanted to just head off down the trail, she was ready. If he wanted to dress more appropriately or pack up his stuff, so be it. She wouldn't argue so long as she didn't think he was going to try anything.

 

[RobbieRand]

Paul hadn't expected Alice to pocket his pistol, but once she did, he wondered what exactly he had expected her to do with it.

She told him, "Let's go. You first."

"Now?" he asked with surprise. "Seriously?"

But she meant it. He asked if he could pack up his camp, and Alice told him sure. It didn't take long as he wasn't going to take every thing. He liked this location and, even though he hadn't built a lean-to or other larger structure, he imagined that he probably would.

What he didn't put in his pack Paul hid under a camouflage tarp, leaves, and limbs in between some downed logs. In less than 30 minutes, he looked to Alice and said, "Okay, here we go."

He headed them north toward Highway 30, off which was the family's little cabin. Paul explained that it was mostly flat but that they would have to deal with one long incline and subsequent decline, as well as one steep pass that might require the use of lines, depending on what the recent weather had done to the trail.

"Alice, will you spend the night with me?" Paul asked with a feigned suggestive tone after he'd explained that they would have to stay overnight at one of the two lean-tos between here and there. "I promise I'll still respect you in the morning."

It wasn't there only bit of humor along the way. They became more conversive and relaxed as they went along, even though Alice maintained a gap of about 30 feet between them at all times. Paul was okay with that, though. She might have had all the weapons which should have given her some confidence, but Paul had confidence that he could cause some sort of distraction and overwhelm her if it became necessary.

But he didn't think it would come to that. Paul was beginning to trust Alice more with each passing hour, probably more than she was trusting him. They stopped to rest and rehydrate every hours for five minutes, and each time they did they talked a little more about the plague, the mayhem that followed, their lives since all of that, living in the wilderness, and more.

The sun had fallen beyond the western ridgeline just as they reached the first of the lean-tos. It sat in a thick wood near the bottom of the steep rise about which Paul had told Alice.

"We should stay here tonight," he said, shedding his backpack and beginning to empty out what they would need for a meal. "The next lean-to is three hours away, and it'll get cold fast."

They built a small fire over which they cooked a can of beans Paul had retrieved from an old Coleman cooler hidden in the woods. He wandered the woods not far from the shelter and found just enough mushrooms and other edible foliage to make the meal seem to less out of the can than it was.

He laid out his sleeping bag under the lean-to, then folded the tarp in half atop some bows of fir on the other side of the fire. He told Alice, "You take the sleeping bag. I'm sorry if it smells like man, but, well, it probably does."

He arranged more logs on the fire such that as the lower logs burned, upper ones would fall down in place. It was a neat trick actually called a self-feeding fire that kept the fire small but also kept it burning all the way to dawn.

When she settled down for the night, Paul studied the woman' face in the light of the dancing flames for a long moment before finally asking, "Alice, how did you survive out here all this time on your own. Don't get me wrong, but, I've been watching you and listening to what you have had to say. You aren't a wild woods kinda gal. How have you managed this all alone for almost two years?"

 

[Alice2015]

By the time they got to their overnight camp, Alice was beat. Unlike Paul she wasn't the hiking type. Oh, she was now and always had been in good shape. She'd used all the right exercise machines in her condominium's gym and ate right. But that had all been about looking good. She'd been a woman living in a world where looks had been more important than most every thing else in most situations. Hell, even the national news only covered bizarre murders and missing people if they looked liked good. It had been sick.

But all this walking up, down, and all around on rough, uneven, sometimes gravelly ground and tilted slopes had her entire body aching by the time they reached Paul's lean-to. Or what he called a lean-to. Alice had been picturing something more. Something akin to a picnic canopy tent at a wedding or Saturday market. It was barely large enough to keep one person in a sleeping bag dry if the wind wasn't blowing the wrong direction.

"Well, I guess I don't have to worry about you respecting me in the morning," she quipped as she watched Paul barely get his sleeping bag laid out under the tilted wooden and moss covered frame. She explained, "Cuz there isn't enough room in there for the two of us to get busy anyway."

They performed a lot of work in the hour before it began to get seriously dark and significantly colder. Alice was actually very impressed with Paul's little camp once she watched him prepare for a night there. The campfire was constructed to feed itself all night rather than force someone to get up every few hours to feed it more wood. With another tarp hidden in a container in the woods, the little lean-to was suddenly more like an enclosed tent. He had more cooking gear here, also hidden. Soon, he had dinner over the fire, clean water, and even some herbal tea. They shared a can of fruit cocktail that was okay but a bit mushy what with being a year past the Use By Date.

When they laid down, Alice did notice that Paul's sleeping bag had a bit of what he called a man's smell. But it wasn't the sleeping sweaty scent she'd feared. It, well, it just smelled like man. And that wasn't so bad. It brought back memories to Alice of once having had a male lover. Of being in love. Or being loved. And of course of being a lover. As she lay here in Paul's bag, Alice had to admit to herself that she'd been checking out his ass off and on throughout the 6 or 7 hour long hike. He was older than here, almost enough so to be her father. And he wasn't really the type of man she'd been with (physically or not) in the past. She smiled, remembering what Paul had called himself earlier: tree hugger. Hell, she doubted that she'd ever dated a man who'd climbed a tree, let alone lived in one.

But Alice had to admit that she could see herself with Paul. He was very capable, very confident, very sure of himself and his abilities. He was the type who could and would protect those he loved. She knew this from listening to him as they'd stopped for breaks and talked. And from his making sure she was as comfortably here in his camp (in his bag) as she could be. And from the fact that not once had he asked for his pistol back. (It had proved uncomfortable in the small of her back. Alice had moved it to her own little pack. And again, Paul only proved his honesty when he saw it was put away out of reach and made no effort to take her down and it back, despite many chances.)

They were laying there a few minutes ready to drift off when Paul asked, "Alice, how did you survive out here all this time on your own. Don't get me wrong, but, I've been watching you and listening to what you have had to say. You aren't a wild woods kinda gal. How have you managed this all alone for almost two years?"

Alice contemplated her response for a long moment before speaking. She was becoming to trust Paul greatly. But she wasn't sure how much of her past she was ready to open to him. "I wasn't always out here, in the wild. In your wild. And I wasn't always alone. I am now. I mean, not counting you of course."

She stared into the flames heating her face. Alice went on, "I should be dead. I nearly was a few times. But I'm still here."

Alice let it go at that and closed her eyes. She knew Paul could see her face and she hoped he would not ask more. She was ready to see this day end. It had been nice. Very nice. But if they continued to talk, Alice feared she would end the day in tears.

 

[RobbieRand]

Paul did, in fact, see Alice's eyes close. He thought of asking more questions, of looking for some clarification, but it was obvious to him that she was done talking about her past, at the least for now.

He rolled to his back and looked up into the black sky. The occasional sparks from the small fire danced about the bright field of stars, reminding Paul of all the nights over all the years that he and his father had slept under the open sky like this when he as a kid and young man.

His youth seemed all so far away now. His youth, his father, his family, his previous life. It was all gone now. He had no idea -- and somehow doubted -- that anyone else in the family had lived through both the plague and the social upheaval that followed.

The population of Paul's hometown of 3,000+ had pretty much been wiped off the map. The plague had gotten most of them, perhaps 90%. Fear of the gangs, which then began to call themselves Militias, Army, Police Forces, and more, drove the survivors out for safer places.

The last time Paul had slipped up close to the town, looking down upon it from a wooded hill, he found a gang of outlaw bikers occupying the downtown section. Well, bikers might not have been the right word. They were men with motorcycles and guns, and some of them wore black leather and the other typical biker type clothing. But for all Paul knew, they were just another militia using motorcycles for transportation to rule over the area.

What would happen when the gasoline finally ran out? Paul remembered the original Mad Max movies, with Mel Gibson. The first one was the end of the world and gasoline was running low; the second one the gas had ran out except for a single oil well and tiny refinery in the middle of the Outback; and by the third, the only vehicles running were using methane produced from pig's shit.

Would that happen here? American's had had a love affair with their combustion engines and the vehicles built around them for more than a century. Would it continue even after the vast majority of that American population had perished? Would it continue after the gas produced and the oil extracted pre-plague finally ran out? Would people find other ways to fuel their Fords and Chevrolets and Toyotas and Freightliners?

Maybe we'll all start riding horses again, Paul mused as he closed his eyes. Of course, with the end of mass food production and the survivors -- most of whom knew nothing about hunting or planting their own food -- had begun eating just about anything animal they could kill, including horses, milk cows, and goats, breeding sows, and egg laying chickens. Rather than toughing out a growling stomach and thinking about the future, many people were eating that future after roasting it over an open fire.

………………​

"Shush! Quiet!" Paul whispered in a grown to Alice as he practically lay atop her with one hand pressing firmly over her mouth and the other trying to control her movements. She struggled wildly to get away from him, but Paul had a good hold of her inside the sleeping as he pressed his mouth close to her ear and whispered, "Someone's out there. Someone's here. Be quiet."

He leaned Alice's head to let her look out beyond the lean-to. The fire was out, having been quickly douse by a bucket of dirt Paul always had near it for just such an occasion. Only the glow of a few still uncovered coals joined the light of a sweeping flashlight to illuminate the night.

"They don't know exactly where we are," Paul whispered again very close to Alice's ear. "But they're looking, coming up the trail. Probably saw the light of our fire."

He lifted his hand off Alice's mouth and again whispered, "Quiet. We have to go. Are you wearing your shoes?"

As soon as he'd asked the question, Paul recalled Alice taking them off and putting them behind her in the lean-to. He helped her unzip the bag as quietly as possible, told her to slip on her shoes, and asked "Where's my Beretta? My handgun?"

A moment later Alice was putting Paul's pistol into his hands. He hadn't seen her put it anywhere in particular at bedtime, but obviously she had kept it close at hand. There was a slight metal clicking sound of the semi-automatic's de-cocker -- most people incorrectly called it a safety -- as Paul moved it to the fire position. As Alice had done the day before, Paul slipped the weapon into the small of his back.

"Are your eyes adjusted?" he asked after reaching out to pull Alice very close to him. He clarified his question, can you see the ground enough to walk quietly? We have to get away from the camp, to the woods, to hide."

 

[Alice2015]

Alice's first reaction was instinctive panic. She was being attacked in the dark by unknown persons in an unknown location for unknown reasons. By the time she consciously remembered that she was in a lean-to in the woods with a man she didn't know and who had probably finally decided to rape and murder here, Alice was hearing Paul's words in her ear, "Shush! Quiet! Someone's out there. Someone's here. Be quiet."

She felt Paul tilt her head to look out on the camp. The fire he'd promised would keep her somewhat warm until sunup was almost entirely absent. But its light had been replaced by the beam of a powerful flashlight.

They started getting up and around quickly but quietly.

"Where's my Beretta?

"Your what?"

"My handgun?"

Alice didn't even hesitate to pull it out of the sleeping bag and hand it over to him. She was beyond not trusting him anymore. And compared to whoever was out there in the dark, right this moment Alice trusted Paul more than anyone on the planet.

She snatched up her bow, quiver, and pack just as Paul asked if she could see well enough to walk quietly through the night. She looked about herself, but all Alice could see was varying shades of black and dark grey. She'd never been very good in the dark of night. She looked to Paul with a bit of panic in her expression and shook here head frantically. She wanted to ask questions of him. Who was out there? What did they want? How did they find us? And more. But she knew she had to be quiet. And besides, the panic she was beginning to feel was about to cause her to begin sobbing in fear.

 

[RobbieRand]

Paul could see the rising panic in Alice's face even in the low light of the stars and moon above them. He slung his own back pack onto her shoulders, then donned her smaller, lighter one onto his. He warned softly, "Hold on, and don't make a sound."

He leaned over, pushed his shoulder into Alice's waist, and suddenly slung her over his shoulder. And they were gone, heading away from the camp back down the trail they'd ascended the day before. Paul took it slow and cautiously, his night vision and experience in the woods serving him well. He slipped a couple of times and very nearly fell over once, but soon enough they were a good hundred feet or so down the slight decline.

Paul stopped just off the trail, dropped to his knees, and dropped Alice to knees and haunches. He shed Alice's backpack, setting it before her, and pulled the Beretta out of his waist. Pointing toward a large log that had likely been rotting on the ground for a century, Paul told her, "Get behind that. Stay down."

He grabbed and wiggled the bow in Alice's hands to ensure she knew about what he was speaking. "Keep that thing unloaded or unnotched or whatever the archery term is. Don't think you're going to use that. Don't try to be a hero."

He looked into Alice's face for a moment, contemplating the strange twist his existence had taken over the past year and a half, as well as over the past half a day. And he found himself marveling at how beautiful Alice was. He could barely see her, but Paul had looked upon her enough during the previous daylight hours to know she was incredible. And he'd experienced enough of her during those hours to know -- or at the least feel -- that her beauty went farther than skin deep.

Suddenly, before he even knew he was doing it, Paul set the Beretta on the ground, took Alice's face in both hands, and pressed his mouth firmly to hers in a passionate kiss. It would be brief if she reacted negatively; it would last longer if she responded with the same emotion running through him. But eventually it would end with Paul pulling his face back, smiling broadly, and telling Alice, "Gimme a minute. I'm going to go try to be a hero."

And in a flash Paul was gone, heading back up the trail and disappearing quickly into the darkness. He slowed his pace and stepped more softly as he got nearer and began seeing the beams of now three flashlights. The intruders had found the camp by now and their search had become more systematic; one man's flashlight showed that he was searching the lean-to while the other two lights swept the woods looking for the missing campers.

Paul listened to the hushed conversation between the men and recognized at least one, maybe two of the voices. They were from the so called Sweet Home Militia, the gang of thugs who had enslaved Paul last year and put him to work performing any labor they were too lazy to do themselves.

He knew he should just let these three men be, that he should wait for them to leave the camp and move on. But Paul knew they were determined to find the camp's missing occupants. And he knew that right now, he had the advantage. Oh, they knew that their quarry was near or had been recently, but the men didn't know Paul was right here in the dark as near as 30 feet to the closest man. And armed. It was his best opportunity to ambush them for his and Alice's safety while also getting some revenge for that which they'd put him through for no other reason than they'd had the weapons, numbers, and power at the time.

Paul searched the ground before him for the least noisy path, then waited for the flashlight beams to sweep past him and off into other directions. Snatching up a rock and heaving it over the camp to the opposite woods, he stood quickly and surged forward.

The rock hit tree limbs and then fell to the leave and needle covered ground creating a lot of movement-sounding noise. All three flashlights swung toward the sound of the rock, and when he was less than ten feet from the nearest man, Paul fell to his belly and aimed the Beretta out before him.

Crack!

Paul hesitated, watching the man near him twist, turn, and begin falling back as his death overcame him in an instant from the bullet that had penetrated his back and clipped his heart.

The lights swung but not directly into his Paul's eyes. He aimed just to the left of the nearest light, presuming correctly that it was being held by a right handed man who was likely carrying a gun in his dominant hand. Crack! Crack!

The beam waved wildly before the light producing it fell to the ground along with the man who'd been holding it. This man didn't die immediately, though, and as he writhed on the ground he cried out in pain and panic.

Paul aimed the Beretta for the third light but suddenly found himself overwhelmed with the powerful light as the beam fell directly upon him. He squinted against the horrifically bright light and rapidly pulled the trigger. Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

A moment later Paul found his eyes struggling to regain their night vision with the beam no longer in them. He found the flashlight laying on the ground, pointing off at nothing in particular. He waited for signs and sounds of movement for a long moment, and when he saw and heard neither, he slowly lifted himself a bit to study the scene.

It was hard to see the darkly clothed -- maybe even camouflage dressed -- men as they lay on the ground. Paul found the first men he'd killed, then heard and saw the second as his cries of pain were waning. He looked for the third man but couldn't find him. He stood slowly, looking toward the discarded but still lit flashlight.

Suddenly a dark hulk came out of nowhere at him, growling in anger as if a grizzly bear chasing down its dinner. Paul raised the Beretta quickly firing off most of the rest of his clip -- Crack! Crack! Crack! -- before the big man crashed into him. The both flew backwards, slamming to the ground. The assailant's weight surpassed Paul's, and Paul's breath surged from his chest as he was crushed beneath the man's body.

And then, nothing. Paul lay there stunned for a long moment, struggling to get his breath back while the big man just lay there motionless atop him. Paul managed to get the man off him, took a moment to regain himself, and then once again stood. He pulled his Maglite mini flashlight from his pocket to survey the scene: the big guy was dead, blood pulsing out a hole in his neck where Paul had miraculously hit him; the first hit was as motionless as he had been when he'd hit the ground; and the second intruder had by now gone silent and still as well.

He appeared safe, which meant that Alice seemed to be so as well. But there was another issue -- a new issue -- with which the pair of them now had to deal. Paul found a rock upon which he could sit, ran his hand over his lower torso, and then raised that hand up before his Maglite. It was covered in blood from the knife wound the big man had inflicted before his own death.

 

[Alice2015]

Alice was shocked when Paul simply threw her over his shoulder and began down the hill. She was sure he would drop her or fall. Yet off into the night down the trail they went. She grasped for his waist, finding his belt and loops. She held on tightly, trying to help him by staying fluid and not stiff for him.

Soon he dropped her to the ground, told her to hide--

And kissed her!

Alice's eyes widened hugely in surprise. It had been unexpected to say the least. And yet without hardly even thinking about it, she grasped Paul's face as he had his and matched the passion of his lips. The kiss lasted several seconds before they separated and he told her boldly, "Gimme a minute. I'm going to go try to be a hero."

As he turned Alice begged, "Don't go! Paul! Don't go up there!"

But he was gone.

She sat there in the dark trembling from both fear and cold. Alice didn't know what to do. He'd told her to stay. This was where he was comfortable. This was his arena. She should do as he said. It was smarter. It was safer. And for a while she did. But he was going to get himself killed. And if Paul died, she would die. She would be found, captured, raped, enslaved, raped again, sold, raped yet again, and finally killed. She couldn't have that. She couldn't let Paul die.

Alice shed Paul's backpack, threw her quiver over her head and shoulder, and headed back up the trail. She slipped in the dark almost immediately. She went down hard on the rocky trail, ripping open the skin of a knee and palm. Grimacing but forcing herself not to cry out, Alice continued onward. She could barely see the trail. The moon was in and out of cloud cover. The trees between the half bright orb and Alice sometimes deepened the shadows so much that she had to feel rather than see her way forward.

Suddenly there was a shot. Alice dropped to her hands and knees. Her already racing heart was now pounding so hard she could feel it in her ears. Another two shots rang out a moment later. Alice tried to force herself to her feet but couldn't. Then the night exploded with a string of shots. After quite a while she finally stood and forced herself up the trail. She stopped again at the sound of three or four more shots. But this time she didn't fall. She hesitated, then headed up the hill again.

She knew she was at the camp when she saw the beam of a flashlight on the ground. Then there was another. And a third. They were no longer moving. Alice knew why they were just laying there. Paul had killed the men. But, where was Paul. She searched the scene, seeing nothing. Then the moon came out from behind yet another cloud. And there he was, atop a rock.

"Paul?" she asked softly. He didn't answer. "Paul!"

It occurred to Alice for a brief moment that maybe that wasn't Paul. But the moonlight told the truth. It also told her that something was wrong. Paul was just sitting there, staring at her. And holding his side.

"Oh my god!" Alice murmured as she hurried forward to him. "Paul, are you shot?"

She reached to his side and pulled back a bloodied, hand, just as he had. She went immediately to work. Although she hadn't told Paul, Alice had been a nurse up to and into the plague. She quickly unbuttoned his shirt to expose the wound. She turned the little flashlight over in his hand for better illumination and told him, "Hold it here. Light the wound."

It was bleeding but not profusely. It was most definitely a knife wound. She'd seen enough of those working the Emergency Room. She urged Paul to his feet, telling him, "C'mon, we need to get over to the fire."

Alice sat him on the overturned dirt pot and stirred the coals to move aside the dirt and raise the flames to life again. She checked the pot of water, finding it was still warm. She looked for her pack, only to remember it was down the hill. She needed bandages. She needed cloth, preferably but not necessarily clean ones. Infection wasn't the immediate concern but bleeding out was. Alice looked around for something cloth but only found plastic tarp. There was the sleeping bag, of course, but it was synthetic and hadn't been washed for God knows how long.

She looked out into the dark to where the bodies were. Who knew what the hygiene of the dead men was like. Alice had changed into a clean tee shirt for sleeping and now ripped it off over her head. It wasn't hospital level sterile but it was better than anything else she'd find on this hell. A chill flooded over her body but Alice did her best to ignore it. She found her butcher knife in the lean-to where she'd shed it for bed. She began slicing the shirt into bandages and tie strips. It wasn't exactly Band-Aid brand first aid, but it would do. And soon enough she had Paul's wound covered and bound.

"I don't think they hit anything vital," she reassured him, "but you need stiches to stop the bleeding."

Alice told him she was going for her pack, which had a first aid kit in it. The world may have ended and the human race was nearly extinct. But she had maintained her habit of always carrying a Emergency Room level first aid kit with her.

"Don't move from this place, you understand!" Alice stressed. She hurried out into the dark using Paul's little flashlight to retrieve the nearest of the big lights the attackers had carried. She snatched it up but then paused with a frightening flinch when she heard the man (the second Paul had shot) moan up to her, "Help me. Please."

Alice shone the light into the man's pain filled face. He was just a boy, maybe 15 or 16. Her instinct was to help him as she was Paul. He was the bad guy. The black figure in the night that had tried to harm her. Attack her. Rape her. Kill her. Or, had he been. Alice couldn't know. Maybe he'd just been out for a walk foraging with two other men before getting lost and coming across a camp where a man started shooting at them. How could she know? It wouldn't matter, though. As she stared at the man, with blood gushing out of his chest and neck, his head slumped to the grass and his chest ceases rising in desperate gasps.

Alice hurried back to Paul, told him she was going for her Med Kit, and again told him not to move an inch. Before she left, though, she took his face in her bloodied hands and kissed him passionately again. "Don't move."

And she was gone.

Several minutes later she returned with both of their packs, ready to do some more permanent and suitable first aid on Paul.

 

[RobbieRand]

Sitting there on the rock in the dark, he heard the familiar and very welcome voice of Alice calling softly, "Paul? Paul!"

She rushed up to him, realizing he'd been injured in the firefight but incorrectly believing his wound was from a bullet. She went to work on him with obvious skill, leading him to ask if she knew what she was doing. He'd had no idea she was a nurse and was visibly tickled to learn it now.

"I have this fantasy," he began with a weakening tone as she worked, "of being in the hospital … a beautiful nurse--"

Paul went suddenly quietly as Alice ripped her top off. He stared at her bosom with its fair skin illuminated by the moonlight and contrasted against the dark fabric of her bra. He winced in pain, but undeterred continued about his fantasy and Alice's suddenly and unexpected undressing, "Yeah … that's what happened."

"I don't think they hit anything vital," she reassured him, "but you need stiches to stop the bleeding."

Paul's attention, affected by the pain and blood loss, was fully upon Alice's beautiful face and breasts. He half laughed, telling her, "If you feel the need to make a bandage out of your pants..."

Alice told him she was going for her pack. Paul didn't respond as she rushed off, returned, then rushed off again...

……………​

Paul awoke with the morning sun in his eyes, slipping over the trees in the adjacent wood and under the top edge of the lean-to under which he was sleeping. He winced in pain again, as he tried to move, then instead only spoke softly to no one in particular, "I had the weirdest dream that I was stabbed and a nurse took her clothes off and..."

His words trailed off...

 

[Alice2015]

Alice awoke to Paul stirring and groaning at a pain when he moved. She was laying close beside him. She'd unzipped the sleeping bag the night before, laid him onto the folded tarp, the laid the bag over the both of them.

"I had the weirdest dream that I was stabbed and a nurse took her clothes off and..."

She laughed and raised her head to look into his face. His eyes were closed again but his smile told her he was still conscious. She sat up higher and rested her weight on one arm with a locked elbow.

"I wouldn't get used to that, sailor," she laughed as she looked to the bandage on his otherwise bared upper torso. It was bloody and needed to be changed. "We need to get you up, clean that wound, and figure out what's next."

Alice was back in her sweaty shirt from the previous day's hike. She fed the fire to ward off the morning chill. She helped Paul up and over to the overturned five gallon bucket.

"When I got back last night, you were unconscious," she explained as she carefully peeled back the bandage. "You were in and out. I stitched and cleaned the wound. I stand by my assessment that they didn't hit anything vital. You were covered in blood, and I thought it was yours, but I don't think it was."

She glanced over her shoulder to the big man laying face down out near the trail. "I think it was his. By the way, what do we do with them?"

After she cleaned the wound and rebandaged it, she went to work on the dead guys. She searched their pockets and packs for anything of value. Their clothes were bloody and filthy, like they hadn't bathed in days if not weeks. But their boots were actually nice, as if they each had only been wearing them for a dozen days to a couple of months. She stripped their feet bare and stole the one pair of wool socks she found (which she would later realize were alpaca fiber, not sheep). Then, with a great deal of exertion, Alice rolled the men off into the brush out of sight of the trail. It wasn't a pleasant ordeal, but it was necessary. The animals would eat the corpses, making them disappear eventually. But in the meantime, Alice and Paul simply needed them to be out sight should a search party come looking for them.

"What about your cabin?" she finally asked as they sat down to eat a can of Ravioli they'd found in one of the men's packs. "You can't go down there like this. And I don't know where it is."

They discussed it, and when a quiet moment fell upon them, Alice said with a sincere tone, "Thank you, Paul. You quite possibly saved my life last night."

She had saved his in return of course. But Alice still felt as though she owed Paul far more than he owed her. After another moment of silence she confessed, "I don't live alone, Paul. I live with a group of people."

She waited for his initial response, then explained, "I was out foraging for the Family-- That's what we call it, the Family. I was foraging when I smelled the smoke of your fire. I wouldn't normally track something like that down alone. But we're desperate. There are nine of us: men, women, and children, young and old, sick and healthy. And we are down to a few days of food. We are city slickers, as you like to call me."

Alice smiled and even blushed a bit at some of the polite ribbing she'd taken the day before. "We don't know how to fish and hunt and trap and do all the things you do. We had food and supplies when we got to where we live, enough to get us through the winter. But now we're out. I was desperate, and I shouldn't have come looking for you. But. But now I am."

 

[RobbieRand]

"When I got back last night, you were unconscious," Alice began explaining.

Paul actually though he could recall a bit of those hours. He'd been in and out of consciousness. But it was mostly must a blur.

When she asked what to do about the dead men, Paul told Alice he would hide the bodies in the woods. She forbade it, saying he would only pull open his stitches. But it had had to be done, so she'd reluctantly agreed to do it.

"Check their pockets and bring me their packs," he'd told her. "Look for weapons, keys, notes, food … anything."

He'd gone through the packs, looking up occasionally to watch Alice dealing with the bodies. Paul had wanted to laugh several times, but the morbid nature of what she was having to do prevented him from doing it.

In there packs Paul found evidence that they had likely come out into the woods for just the day. There was virtually no over night gear and most of the food was already gone. More than likely they'd been looking for someone or something in particular or had simply been running a patrol when they spotted the light of Paul and Alice's fire.

They didn't have much ammunition for their firearms, of which only two of the men were carrying. That meant that if they'd become engaged in a fire fight, they would have had to withdraw quickly, possibly bringing back a larger, more heavily armed squad later.

Then again, though, ammunition hadn't been produced commercially for over a year and a half. The only people still holding a lot of it were the militias that predated the plague, white separatists and religious cults and the like; former US Military organizations that had reorganized themselves as militias; and individuals who'd had large quantities of ammo for their own purposes, such as gun hoarders or shooting range owners.

"What about your cabin?" Alice asked over dinner that came from one of the dead man's packs. "You can't go down there like this. And I don't know where it is."

Initially Paul said that they would have to abandon the trek or at least postpone it for a while. "We can backtrack to where we met. I have food there. And we can build a better shelter back deeper in the woods, more out of sight."

That was when Alice told him, "I don't live alone, Paul. I live with a group of people."

She explained about her Family. Paul wasn't all that surprised. He'd thought all along that Alice couldn't have survived out here all on her own. When she explained about their desperation, he told her, "Then you have to go to my cabin."

Alice repeated that she didn't know where it was, but Paul told her she'd find it just fine. He pulled a composition notebook from his pack and ripped out a page, careful to not let the other page attached to it come out at the string backing. He drew her a map, pointing out key landmarks for which she should look.

They went over it several times, but the instructions were really easy and almost impossible to screw up. Paul's real worry was Alice being seen. He spent almost an hour with Alice showing her both how to use the Beretta and how to feel comfortable doing so. He filled the 14 shot clip with the last 8 bullets in the box in his pack.

"You have to go now," Paul finally and reluctantly said after they'd gone over the route, the gun, the positions of the hidden supplies, and more. He looked up to find the sun, telling Alice, "You won't get there until after dark, so when you reach the highway, cross in the dark but find a place to sleep.

"By daylight you'll be more easily seen if the cabin is being watched, but you'll also more easily see if it is. I know, it might sound counterintuitive, but, if someone is watching the cabin or living in it, they might have dogs, they might have traps, they might have sound making alarms, you, know trip wires. It's better if you can see what you're getting yourself into, rather than not."

 

[Alice2015]

"You have to go now," Paul finally and reluctantly said.

"I shouldn't be this scared," Alice told Paul. "I haven't been this scared and yet at the same time so determined to do something since this whole fucking thing began."

Alice laughed at her use of the profane word, then blushed. She went on, "I've been searching the woods, foraging, ever since we came out here. But I've never intentionally went toward people! Always away."

They talked for a long moment during which Paul reassured her she could do this.

"Before I leave..." Alice began.

She finished her statement not with words but with action. She dropped to her knees before Paul, took his face into her hands again, and gave him another passionate kiss. This one lasted longer and was even more sexually intense. He pulled her in close to him, and for the first time since the plague killed most men on the planet and made Alice fear most of the rest, she was actually happily contemplating being with one again. When the kiss and intimate embrace finally ended, Alice she smiled, stood, and said softly, "Now, you're gonna have to give me a minute. I'm going to go try to be a hero."

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

Night fell long before Alice reached the highway as scheduled. She found a couple of large, downed trees laying close and almost parallel to one another. Between them she laid the sleeping bag out upon some bows cut from a living tree and laid down to sleep. It would be a night without sleep though. Alice hadn't been alone since the plague's beginning. She'd had family and friends with her in the beginning. After they'd died, she'd come to have the Family. And the last two nights she'd had Paul. Every animal call or thump of a cone to the ground woke her.

Alice was on the trail again before sunup and at the highway two hours later. She watched the road for more than half an hour before rushing across. She covered the rest of the distance slowly, cautiously. She reached the last landmark before the cabin and got out Paul's binoculars to scan ahead. (His field glasses were military grade and much better than her $9.99 Walmart pair.) She crept forward hiding position after hiding position until she was finally within sight of the cabin.

And she found she had a reason to be frightened.

Alice spent the next three hours watching the cabin and the area surrounding it. She should have backtracked and given up after seeing so much human activity. But she couldn't. She couldn't leave alone what she was seeing before her. A pair of armed, cruel men were forcing others to work. Slavers, Alice told herself as her body began to tremble in fear and anger. She'd suffered her own experience with this shortly before she and others escaped to form the Family.

A man had died helping them escape that tragic but thankfully short period in Alice's life. And she had sworn she would honor that man by protecting and serving the other survivors. She didn't owe these people here at Paul's cabin of course. But as she sat there watching what was happening, she also found she it didn't matter whether or they were Family. It only mattered that they should be.

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

Earlier, just after Alice arrived on the scene:

Carla Keen sat in the stream some 50 yards from the cabin being watched over by one of the three (not two) men who had taken her and five other people captive. She looked back to the man who leered at her with a hungry expression. She growled, "You touch me, and you know what Gregory will do to you."

She watched the man shake his head back and forth lightly as if not caring what she was threatening. But he did. And he wouldn't touch her. Gregory, the leader of the trio, had claimed Carla entirely for himself. Yuki (the other young, attractive woman) was being shared by the other two men. But Carla only had to ensure one unwelcomed cock inside her. Turning her back to the man, she pulled her only piece of clothing up over her head and set it on a rock in the middle of the stream. Naked, she wet a kitchen towel and began running it all over her body from head to toe. The water was warm due to a hot spring bubbling up into the stream about ten feet away. A person could move upstream or downstream, left or right, and find a comfortable temperature for bathing or simply soaking.

When she was done, she dried off with a second towel and pulled her thin dress back over her head. She arranged her still wet hair loosely at the back of her neck. She would have to let it down later to dry and comb but for now she just wanted her waist length mess out of the way. She slid back into her flip flop sandals. They were the only shoes she was allowed because it made fleeing through the harsh landscape difficult and potentially painful.

"I'm ready," she told the man, meaning she was ready to return to the cabin.

"Ready for me?" the man asked with an evil smirk and ogle.

"You'd have to kill me," she warned as she passed by just out of reach. "Otherwise, Gregory would."

The man suddenly reached out and grasped Carla by the arm, wrenching her around to face him. He growled, "You seem pretty confident in G-dog's protection of you. You're just another slit to him. Another cunt to put his cock in. When he tires of you, he'll give you to me. And you'll wish you'd been friendlier to me."

Carla was well positioned to lift a knee hard and fast into the man's groin. But she didn't. If she failed to down him, she knew he'd rape and kill her, G-dog be damned. Instead she just jerked her arm out of his hand and growled back, "I'll forget you touched me this time."

She turned and headed for the cabin, never knowing that just 150 feet away a stranger with binoculars was watching and listening in on what was happening.

The man who'd been watching over Carla as she bathed let her go ahead. When he finally followed behind her, he curled his trail off to where Yuki and an elderly man were skinning a recently shot deer. Two tweens (one girl, one boy) were stacking wood nearby while an adult captive (his feet shackled in chains and padlocks) chopped firewood. They were all being watched over by the third of the captors, armed with an assault rifle.

"C'mon, girl," the man from the river growled. He snagged Yuki by the wrist and began hauling her away. The guarding man objected, saying, "Hey! Today's my day with her!"

"Fuck, you!" the other called back.

He led Yuki away toward the same spot where he'd watched Carla bath. There, he forced her to her hands and knees, ripped down her jeans and underwear, stripped his down just enough as well, and leaped right into raping the crying young woman. Again, as with Carla before her, Yuki couldn't know that a stranger was in the woods seething in anger and wishing she had the opportunity to stop it. The man grunted out his satisfaction. He released his grip on Yuki's hips and pushed her to the ground.

"Go clean up," he demanded.

Yuki stripped the clothes off her lower half and waded into the water. She washed his cum and her juices from her womanhood and thighs. This was nothing knew to her. She'd been doing it daily for three weeks after this man and the other raped her. She'd often contemplated killing herself and ending this once and for all. But their leader, Gregory, had warned that if she did, they would kill, slaughter, and roast the little boy and then let the little girl take over her duties of serving his two underlings.

"Let's go," the man said. He raised his voice, "Let's go! You have work to do."

Yuki slipped her still wet legs back into her clothing, stepped into her crumbling plastic sandals, and returned to the cabin with the man. She went right back to work as if nothing had happened. The expression on the others' faces and the silence that reigned spoke volumes of what they all knew though.

 

[RobbieRand]

Earlier this morning:

Paul watched Alice walk off up the trail and into the woods. He almost called her back, telling her that they could find another way to help themselves and her people, this Family about which she spoke. She didn't have to go down toward what remained of civilization. He could show them how to live off the land as he had for so long, even before the plague.

But he let her go.

He rested most of the day, with short breaks to carefully gather some firewood or cook some food. Other than that, Paul spent most of the day just sitting there on the ridge looking out on the wilderness before him and chastising himself for letting Alice put herself in harms way.

She'll be okay, he told himself repeatedly, unsure of whether or not he believed himself. He knew there was the possibility of Alice seeing people. But they'd just be more survivors living out in the woods like he, Alice, and Alice's Family. She certainly wouldn't run into anyone mean and cruel, not out here.

Would she?


Now:

Gregory looked up from his book at the sound of the cabin's door opening and at the sight of Carla entering. He smiled to her, not expecting a smile in return. "Enjoy your bath, my love?"

She hated him calling her that, which was probably one of the reasons he did it. She wasn't his love, after all, but was instead his sex slave. Oh, he didn't call her that out loud, and because he didn't like to hear it from her, Carla didn't say it aloud either. But nevertheless, she was just that.

Two months ago, Gregory had essentially kidnapped Carla. He was the Vice President of the Riding Thunder Motorcycle Club that was now in control of Sweet Home. The Thunder had been providing protection to Carla's little community just a few miles outside of Sweet Home, but when they weren't able to pay their monthly tribute, Gregory took Carla instead.

Since then, she'd been serving him in anyway he required. That meant in his bed. Or on her knees. Once she'd put together his lunch, Gregory snapped his fingers at Carla and -- after she looked his way -- began unbuckling his belt.

"C'm'ere baby," he said softly. "I'm lonely for you."

He stood, pulled his pants and boxers down to his calves, and sat back down again. His cock was already beginning to harden in anticipation.