by Misty Vixen
“To be fair, they have a lot of security breaches,” Cait said. “I mean, they’re a farm.”
“Okay, okay, fair enough. So how can you prove yourself?” Evelyn asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper. “I need to find one of these.”
Evelyn took it carefully and studied it. “Hmm,” she murmured. “I gotta admit, this is kind of outside my area of expertise...”
“April?” he asked.
Evelyn passed it to her and she studied it, then shook her head. “No. I know medical stuff, but not this.”
“Cait?”
She accepted the paper and studied it for several seconds. “I have a few ideas of where one of these might be.” She passed it back to him. “It’s a start at least.”
“Okay. Well, I gotta do this. You wanna show me these places?” he asked.
“Yeah, I can do that.” She brushed off her hands and then started heading for the door.
David sighed softly as he looked at Evelyn and April.
“What?” Evelyn asked with a small smile.
“I miss you,” he replied. “Both of you. I keep having to leave. And it makes the most sense for you to stay here because there’s things that need doing and this place needs protecting. And I...just miss spending time with you.”
“I know,” Evelyn said, and she stepped up to him and enfolded him in her arms. “It’s okay. We miss you too, don’t we April?”
“Of course,” she said, and came up beside them. Evelyn raised one arm, and April got against the two of them, and Evelyn added her to the hug as well.
“But there are things that need doing, David. You’re being responsible. It’s sexy, honestly.”
“Is it now?” he murmured.
“Yeah. Guys being responsible is hot. Especially guys that are my boyfriend. You are capable and responsible and it’s hot. It warrants lots of dick sucking.”
He laughed. “That’s good to know.”
“So go with Cait, find that gear, and secure this alliance. And you will have provided us with food. I know guys like to provide for their girlfriends, traditionally.”
“I do like the thought of that,” he murmured.
“Exactly. And you will be rewarded for this with lots of pussy and head. And the happiness of your girlfriends.”
“That last one is really rewarding,” he said. She let go of him and looked down at him, pursing her lips. “And obviously the first two are really rewarding. I just didn’t want you to think I was only interested in the sex.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “That much is obvious to me, David. Now go. And be safe. And good luck.”
“Come back to us safe,” April said.
“I will,” he replied. He kissed both of them, then hurried upstairs to join Cait.
…
David wasn’t happy about the first destination Cait had in mind, but he couldn’t argue with her logic on the situation.
They were going back to the train station.
He’d had nightmares about that place last night. And the rippers. He shuddered thinking about them. That had been a close call. From the way she was acting about it, he figured she felt pretty much the same way.
“How’d you meet Ellie?” he asked as they walked north.
Cait smiled. “By saving her life.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Don’t mention this to her, or anyone for that matter. You know how she is.”
“I do. And I won’t.”
“Okay. I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything. Just some bad luck. It was like six months ago. I’d heard about her at that point, and I thought I’d seen her a few times, I mean, she’s pretty distinctive, not many jags have blue fur, but we’d never formally met or anything. I heard a lot of fighting going on one day. I was down in a gorge off to the east, across the river, checking out an old building. Hurried to investigate, because it sounded serious, and I found Ellie on top of a house, fighting off some wildcats. They’re good climbers, both Ellie and wildcats. Right as I got there, she fell off the side of the house. Barely managed to catch herself on the edge of the roof, but dropped her gun in the process. And the wildcats were closing in on her. So I killed them, giving her enough time to climb back up. Once they were dead, we started talking. She kind of held a grudge against me for the first few weeks of our friendship.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d saved her life. Ellie...her personality type makes it difficult for her to see something like help as anything but an insult. She has a lot of difficulty. And saving her life...whew boy, that was big help. So it was a big insult. The problem, of course, is that she didn’t quite know this fact. She only knew that it pissed her off, that I pissed her off. After that, we kept bumping into each other, and, okay, sometimes I tracked her down. I’m good at tracking. She’s better, but I often think she let me track her down. And we’d spend some time together, because she did like me, as much as I pissed her off. And we’d fight, and...one day we got into a fight. A real fight.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. It was...not good. It was raining and we were both miserable. She’d agreed to work with me on something, looking for something, but it had gone poorly. All day it had gone poorly. And then we got into an argument, that became a fight, and it got a little physical. And I finally confronted her about, you know, her feelings towards me. Why she was so pissed at me, because she was so fucking afraid of being vulnerable. That...shocked her. It kind of put the pieces together for her in a way she hadn’t before. And she apologized. We became a lot closer after that. We had sex a few days later, and that was really good. She...let her guard down.” She paused, probably lost in memories for several seconds.
“And, well, that’s how we met. I believe she said she saved your life, and that’s how you two met, right?”
“Yeah,” David replied. “Basically. She saved me from wildcats, and she was on the roof of a building as she did it.”
Cait laughed. “Well, maybe she saw that as oddly appropriate. That would’ve made her happy, at least. She loves saving people. She just doesn’t want people to know that. People...see it as a weakness. And people like taking advantage of weakness.”
“Yeah, I get that,” David muttered.
“I’m glad you aren’t like that. And that Evelyn or April aren’t like that. Ellie’s not like that. I mean, on the one hand, she isn’t afraid or above fucking someone over if they really earned it. But she helps people, or at the very least doesn’t fuck them over most of the time. Ellie’s a really good person. I like and respect her a lot.”
“I do, too...so you don’t know, like, her history or anything?”
“No. She’s very tight-lipped about it. She doesn’t give up much of anything about herself. I’m positive something really bad happened to her. Probably several somethings...”
“Do you know where she is? I haven’t seen her for awhile.”
Cait shrugged. “Around. That’s our nature: we’re always moving. She could be anywhere. If I had to, I could probably track her down without too much trouble. I’ve got a rough idea of where she’s likely to be right now. I could be wrong, but I’d probably be right. Same with her, she knows how to find me.”
They broke through the treeline of the dead forest and then stopped as they caught sight of the train station and the abandoned car. Neither spoke for a few seconds, just stared. It looked as intimidating as ever. He ran his hand across the cold barrel of the submachine gun he’d brought along with him. After the incident with the rippers, David felt like packing a little more heat. He’d checked out the SMG they’d recovered yesterday and after making sure it worked, he’d loaded it up, grabbed some spare ammo, and added it to his usual arsenal of a pistol and a knife. It actually made him feel a lot better.
“There probably won’t be more rippers here, but be ready for anything,” Cait murmured.
“I’m ready,” he replied.
They set off, crossing the spa
ce between the treeline and the platform. They took a moment to search the train car again, but it remained undisturbed. From there, they went into the platform, taking it nice and slow. They went inside, and David’s instincts told him that they were actually alone here this time. After performing a search of the area, they were confirmed correct: they were the only things here. And so they set to work. It was unhappy work, about as unhappy and disgusting as yesterday, since the smell hadn’t really abated.
If anything, it had gotten worse.
But they were thorough and diligent, and spent a solid forty minutes searching everywhere they could think of, and they turned up a grand total of nothing. Well, that wasn’t true. They’d found a few more supplies that they had evidently missed in their initial search. Nothing major, just a few tools, some scrap metal, and a few stray bullets that still looked serviceable, once they were cleaned. David added it all to his pack and they left the building.
“So now what?” he asked, extremely grateful to be back in the daylight.
“Now we walk to a barn in the middle of nowhere,” Cait replied. “Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”
They began walking north, along the train tracks, towards the river.
…
They walked north until they hit the road that David and Evelyn had first come in on, and then began walking west. Before long, they passed the road that led to River View. He could see the burned remains of the small settlement as they passed by it, and what seemed to be a few shapes moving around. He couldn’t tell if they were zombies or people.
“Hey Cait, I want your opinion on something,” he said as they kept walking, moving at a decent pace alongside the river.
“Shoot,” she replied.
“The campgrounds we’ve got now...do you think it’d be a good idea to maybe bring some people together? Maybe build, like, a community?” he asked.
She seemed to think about it. “I think it would certainly be a good thing to do. Whether or not it’s a good idea is up for debate. Because you have to think of the ramifications of that. A few people living together, sure, you’re liable to get some negative attention, thieves looking to rob you, shit like that. But you’re harder to find. Gathering together a group of people, on the other hand...that’s a bit more like painting a target on yourself. A group implies hoarded resources. Whether or not that’s true. Eventually the group gets big enough that it becomes extremely unlikely that you’ll be attacked. River View, for example, was pretty unlikely. It had been there for years, basically unchanged. And there are some bad groups in this region.”
“Like who?” David murmured.
“The thieves who attacked River View, for example. I know they have some kind of camp around here somewhere. There’s a lot of them. Several dozen. They’ve been causing problems a lot more recently. But there’s others. There’s a military group to the south. They aren’t a threat, per say, but...in the dealings that I’ve had with them, I do worry about them. Their leader is a little...he’s been leaning more towards tyrant recently. He’s got a good second in command, she keeps him level for the most part, but that could turn bad. And there’s another group farther off to the north, I don’t really know about them, but I’ve been running into their scouts more recently. They’re always hostile. They’re like the thieves, only better organized.”
“Not good.”
“Exactly. These are the kinds of groups you might draw the attention of.” She shrugged. “Are you thinking about starting a town or something?”
“I don’t know. Not a town. But we’ve got all this space, and it’s pretty secure. And there’s people out there, families, I know of two at least, who could really use help and a place to stay, you know? We’d all help each other out...”
“I think, personally, you should do it. Because you’re right: you have a good, solid, secure location there. If you brought in people you could trust, people you had an understanding with, people who could help, then I think that’d be a really good thing. Of course, you would have to understand that you and Evelyn and April would be the leaders.”
“Would we?”
“Yes. It’s your place. You settled it first, or most currently at least, you would be the ones inviting others into your space. I know how this works, I’ve seen it before. They will look to you to solve their problems,” Cait explained.
David thought about that. About the implications. About the responsibility. And...it didn’t worry him. If anything, it almost made him...happy?
“I’m okay with that,” he said.
“You are?”
“Yeah. I’m okay with that. I want to help people. I like helping people. I want...to make a place where people are and feel safe. I mean, I want other things for myself, you know. I want good food and my own shelter and safety, health...sex. A lot of sex. But that only takes up so much of the day, you know? And I’m restless. I like to stay in every now and then, but I hate being idle. I want to do things. And what’s better than helping people?”
“Not a lot,” Cait replied. “You’re making me horny again.”
He laughed and glanced at her. “You get horny over weird things.”
“Do I? You’re telling me you’ve never been attracted to someone because of their conviction? Their passion? Their dedication? Their kindness? It’s just tits and ass with you?”
“No, of course it’s not just tits and ass with me.”
“I know. I was just making a point. I mean, yeah, you’re really cute. You’ve got a good body, and I really like your face, and your hair actually. But I more like your kindness, and compassion, and motivation...what do you like about me?”
“Your bravery,” he replied. “Your compassion. Your openness. How accepting you are.” He chuckled. “Your highly sexual nature.”
“Duh,” she said, grinning. “Well, thank you.” She slowly lost her grin. “I wasn’t always this way.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “I guess now’s as good a time to talk about my history as any.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he replied.
“It’s all right. I like you. I...want to be a part of your life, and I want you to be part of mine. I’m admittedly not sure how much, in either capacity. I tend to just...feel my relationships out, you know? But I’ve got a really good feeling about you and Evelyn and April. We seem to mesh really well together. Now that I’ve had sex with all three of you...yeah, I think we can be very good friends. I mean, the fact that I asked for a permanent room there is a pretty big deal. I don’t really ask for that often. Honestly...I haven’t asked for that in years. It’s a big show of trust. But anyway: my life. I wanted to talk a little about my history, if you’d be willing to listen.”
“I am definitely willing to listen,” he replied.
“Good! Well, I was born in a little settlement to the south and west. I believe the region used to be called Arizona. It’s a desert. Lots of reps around. I was...born into wealth, you might say. For a long time, I genuinely didn’t know how fucking awful it was, or how awful it could get. I was in a very secure town, we had ready access to water and food, we had a largely human population. Almost a thousand people lived there. My father was a doctor, my mother was an engineer. Naturally, they were both in extremely high demand, and as a result, they were able to set themselves, and consequently me, up in some pretty comfortable conditions. Shit, we even had power.”
“Wow,” David murmured.
“Yeah...turns out, if you raise someone like that, and you have a tendency to think of yourselves as better than other people, then that really rubs off on your offspring. I was an entitled little shit for the first...oh...sixteen years of my life. I thought I was better than pretty much everyone else. I thought people had to earn my respect. People had to listen to me. People had to do what I said. Because, for the most part, they did. I didn’t know at the time but my father was actually pretty powerful, pretty influential, and he would use that power
and influence to punish anyone who bad-mouthed him or his family.
“It...wasn’t good. Finally, it all came crashing to an end. Literally. We were hit by an earthquake. A bad one. It practically leveled the town. Hundreds died. And it was pretty far reaching. We probably would have eventually been okay, but...there had been tensions in the region for a long time between the remains of the old world military and a militia of reps that had formed over the past few years in response to, well, a lot of racism. The earthquake put the military in a bad way, and the rep militia took the initiative, and there was a lot of fighting. A lot of bad fighting. My mom had died in the earthquake, and although we tried to stay in our old life at the town I grew up in, it was too far gone. We had to move.”
“I’m sorry,” David murmured.
“So am I. I loved my parents, but...I have to admit to myself that they were bad people. In the end, we relocated a few hundred miles east in a small town and on the way there, I began to realize just how bad the rest of the world was. I realized the danger, the reality, the scarcity of resources in some places, the suffering. The sheer magnitude of the suffering. My dad was able to get decent pull, given he was a doctor, and the place we ended up in would’ve been great by an average person’s standards. I thought I was living in hell. Running water only a few days out of the week, no power, people didn’t respect or know me anymore...” she shook her head.
They came to a small bridge that crossed the river and walked across it. David looked into the chilled water as it raced past them, heading south, presumably towards the lake she had told him about earlier.
Upon reaching the other side, they began moving into a forest, north again.
“Let’s just say that I had a wake-up call there. I almost got killed because I was being...well, a racist shit. It was common for humans to come before reps where I grew up. I didn’t know that was wrong. I didn’t know that it was actually an extremely shitty thing to do to demand you be serviced before someone else, even though they were there before you, based solely on their physical appearance. Or that it was wrong to cut in line in front of a rep. They never argued where I grew up, because they were scared. So I actually didn’t know. I was that stupid. I cut in line one day and...well, the rep guy I did it to didn’t really care that I was some stupid teenage ditz. He pulled a fucking gun on me.”
