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As far as the end of human civilization as we knew it was going, I had to admit, I was having a pretty good time.
We’d been on the highway for almost two days, and so far it had been a thankfully uneventful pair of days. After everything that had gone down over the past week, from my car crash, to the assault on not one but two different groups of armed and dangerous assholes, to the handful of encounters I’d had with dangerous wildlife (my arm still hurt from that fucking wolf), uneventful was not just good, it was welcome.
Although I had started the trip with some uncertainty and anxiety brewing in my head and my gut over that last conversation I’d had with Tanner, I was able to pull myself into a better mood before too long. Between having two very attractive and friendly women that I had already been intimate with and would continue to do so around, and engaging in one of my favorite activities, (hitting the open road after a stay in one place), it was easy to prop myself back up with all those feel-good chemicals. And I’d managed to maintain it for all of yesterday and most of today.
Though like the setting sun, with nightfall scheduled for the very near future, I could feel bad vibes darkening my own emotional horizons.
I tried to tell myself to get over it, but that had a low chance of being successful.
Presently, as we walked down the highway, which was mostly clean and clear, topped with a layer of snow that crunched under our boots, I studied my traveling companions.
Delilah was the kind of girl who looked good regardless of what she was doing. I mean, personally, I thought they were both like that, but Delilah was what you would call ‘photogenic’. Dressed up in her faded bluejeans (that she’d since repaired), a gray, ragged hoodie, and a white beanie that she’d found in one of the many abandoned cars we stopped to search, she looked great. She looked like a model on her way to one of those fucking ‘ironic’ photoshoots, the kind intended to sell ‘pre-faded’ or ‘pre-ripped’ brand new jeans for two hundred fucking dollars to dipshits. Her vividly red hair peeked out here and there from beneath her cap, her vibrant blue eyes seemed to spark in the fading sunlight, and her pale, pale face was still smoothly beautiful despite the exposure to frigid weather. Some people are just born traditionally beautiful, and Delilah was one of them. I was very lucky that she was riding my dick twice a day.
Megan was the opposite of Delilah in several ways. Where Delilah was trim and petite, Megan was taller and more filled out, more built. She probably had a good five inches and twenty five pounds on the redhead. Decked out in some brown cargo pants, heavy hiking boots, and a thick gray jacket over a hoodie, she looked a lot more...aggressive. Everything about Megan was aggressive. The way she walked, the way she talked, her stance and expressions. We had more in common, I had to admit. I wouldn’t call Delilah timid, exactly, but she was definitely a lot more submissive. Megan was a lot more assertive.
Her tan skin sported more scars than Delilah’s, and her black hair, cut shorter than Delilah’s own red hair, was often worn in a rough, short ponytail. She also had on a black beanie, just like me. Her angry brown eyes were distant often when I glanced at her, and I wondered what she was thinking about. Probably nothing good.
Tragedy had befallen pretty much everyone since the snow began, but some of us had been hit a lot harder than others.
And some of us had always dealt with it.
Megan had had a hard life, from the bits and pieces I’d gathered from her so far. She was a hard woman, consequently.
Something that drew me intensely to her.
I was also extremely lucky that she had agreed to let me stick my dick in her.
There had been some tension between the two of them when they’d first met, pretty much exclusively coming from Megan, given she was jealous of Delilah’s natural charisma and uncomfortable, if not outright hostile towards the idea that Delilah had agreed to have sex with me in exchange for my protection and getting her somewhere safe. If we didn’t get along so well, I would have thought Megan might have a point, but thankfully it was turning out that Delilah liked me so much, it almost seemed like the ‘deal’ was an excuse to fuck me immediately. Not that she really needed one.
Delilah was a fucking supermodel to me.
But another problem that I thought would manifest had yet to. Although I think most reasonable people know that despite the fact that we think we can predict a lot of outcomes, the nature of individuality and, well, being a human, means that things can often go in a different direction, I was also a little interested to see if Delilah might not take at least a little offense that I...well, preferred Megan.
It wasn’t intentional, and it wasn’t like I was trying to snub Delilah. It was more just the way it had fallen. Megan happened to hit more of my buttons than Delilah. And it wasn’t even like I thought there should be conflict there.
Honestly, I was happier when everyone got along, and I hated anyone hurting or feeling left out.
Despite that, there was a part of me that assumed Delilah would be maybe a little offended that I preferred Megan to her, given that, by most accounts, Delilah was more ‘conventionally’ attractive, whereas Megan didn’t seem to give much of a shit if she was attractive or not. (Or, at least, she tried to hide it. I think it bothered her how much she gave a shit about being attractive she still gave. Honestly, I could sympathize.)
But Delilah seemed as happy as ever.
Which made me curious. It could be that she just hadn’t picked up on it. Or it could be that she just didn’t care.
Sometimes, though, if someone didn’t care about something, it was because something else that was more important to them had overridden it.
Maybe she just didn’t care because she was happy about another thing.
And that’s what I’d been teasing out all day long, in my head at least: what was she happy about? Finally, I had come to a conclusion.
She was happy we were going to that town she’d asked me to take her to.
It was the basis of our relationship, personal and business, and she seemed fairly particular about getting to, specifically, this one town.
Which made me wonder…
“Delilah.”
“Yeah?” she asked, glancing at me.
“I was curious...is there a specific reason we’re going to this town?” I asked.
A look of anxiety passed over her face that she tried to control, which was interesting.
“Yeah, where are we going? I just realized I’ve never actually, like, asked,” Megan said.
“It’s called Pine Lake, small place,” she replied, not quite looking at either of us.
I waited. Then, “Delilah...is there something you’re not telling me?”
Megan glanced over, suddenly intrigued.
Delilah hesitated, then sighed, her breath puffing on the air. “Kinda.”
“What, you got a boyfriend waiting for you up there? I bet that’d be awkward given what we’ve been doing with you,” Megan said, grinning.
“No! Not a boyfriend. My friend. She’s a girl. We always said...we’d meet there, if things got really bad. You know how like you think about the end of the world or the collapse of civilization and sometimes with your best friends you say ‘if it all goes to hell, we’ll meet up and stick together’? Well, we really had a plan. Like we actually talked about it. And it got more serious the worse the weather was getting. She moved away a year before everything went to hell. Her boyfriend at the time got some job in a town that was kinda close to Pine Lake. So...I’m hoping she’s waiting there for me.”
“It’s been two years,” Megan murmured.
Delilah sighed. “I know, I know...I was scared to go out for a long time. I kept thinking ‘maybe this’ll get better’ or ‘she probably is somewhere else’ but finally I just said ‘fuck it’ and started heading that way. I’ve made a lot of progress…”
“Why were you worried about this?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I’m not...sure. I guess it’s really close to my heart, and I like you a lot, like a lot, but...I’m...I don’t intend to, like, stay with you, or anything. Once I final Lindsay, you know, I’m sticking with her. And I guess I was worried you might change your mind if you knew that.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Delilah,” I replied. “A deal’s a deal. And you’ve more than held up your end. As long as you don’t actively fuck me over, I’ll get you there. And if your friend isn’t there, I’d probably be willing to help you track her down.”
“Really?” she asked, looking at me with a renewed enthusiasm.
“Yeah. Believe it or not, I like you a lot, too.”
“And here I thought all you two had was hate sex,” Megan murmured.
“No, that’s just you and me,” I replied, and she laughed.
A few seconds of silence went by. “So you’ll take care of me?” Delilah asked quietly.
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s what I told you. You don’t have to worry about that.”
She gave me a small smile. “You did come for us.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I replied. I’d probably said that a dozen times now. Although that last conversation I’d had with that fucking asshole was messing with me in a more abstract way, the other thing was messing with me in a bigger, more obvious way: I hadn’t been there. I’d been off getting my dick sucked and they’d gotten-
“Chris,” Megan said, interrupting my thoughts. I glanced over. “We’ve been over this: you told us exactly where you were going, gave us a chance to ask you to say. We knew the risk. It turned out for the best. The assholes are dead. It’s fine. We’ve forgiven you for what happened. Don’t keep beating yourself up over it.”
“Yeah,” I managed. It was going to fuck with me for awhile, but she was right.
I could sense she wanted to ask me about what had gone down after she’d left. They must have heard some of it, or even if they hadn’t, she must have been wondering what had taken so long after she and Delilah had left the room. I hadn’t said anything yet, and I think at least Megan could tell that something had happened and it was bothering me. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to talk with either of them about it.
Fuck, I hadn’t even written about it in my journal. I’d written about pretty much everything else that had happened…
Just not that.
My journal. Heh. What all this had been about.
That still seemed kind of unreal to me. Intellectually, I was aware of how one change could lead to a vast array of changes. But actually experiencing it was still weird. If I hadn’t crashed, I wouldn’t have met these two women. Fuck, Delilah almost certainly would have just frozen to death right there on that cabin floor, and Megan...might have escaped. Or might have provoked one of those shitheads into killing her.
I guess it was more about the crash than the journal, but then my obsessive nature about getting the damned thing back had put me on the path to Tanner.
I still don’t know precisely what it was about that fucking conversation, but I know it had done something to me. Was it bad? Good? Or neither? I think some of it was that he was the first person I’d ever come across who had tried to basically use me to commit suicide...again, as far as I knew. A few people had just come at me, no words, no warning, just whackjobs in the woods that I figured were looking to kill and rob me.
No, I needed to stop poking at this, stop thinking about it.
Just focus on something else.
Well, on the plus side, I’d met Hazel, and damn if she wasn’t one of the best lays I’d had. I knew older women could fuck but wow had she been something else. I missed her, though thankfully in just a sexual way. Maybe that sounded really shallow or callous, but I think it was for the best I didn’t miss her emotionally, because we were almost certainly never going to see each other again. We’d just bumped into each other, so to speak, and now we had long since drifted apart. I was northbound on a highway, she was living happily in an isolated lake house. Though I felt bad for her that she didn’t have someone around to fuck her.
Maybe she’d find someone.
Thinking about that was, admittedly, turning my mind to more carnal desires. I was finding myself really wanting a threesome with Delilah and Megan. I actually hadn’t had too many in my life before meeting them. The few I’d had were one-off situations. But now I was traveling with not one but two attractive and very willing women. Delilah was just straight-up super sexual, and Megan, after some hesitation, was comfortable enough with the two of us that she didn’t mind responding fully to that sexuality.
And, well, obviously I was just fucking horny most the time.
That thought spurred another: we should really find a place to bunk down for the night. If at all possible, I always tried to sleep indoors. I no longer had a tent with me and even if I did, and even as much as I’d enjoyit...it would be a tight fit with three of us. Especially with my big six foot two, bulky-build ass.
“It’s starting to get late,” I said, pausing. We were in the middle of the highway. There was pretty much nothing but plains, lots of frozen plains off to the left, and it had been that way for awhile. To the right, though, were some signs of civilization. “We should find a place for the night.”
“It would be nice,” Megan said, and yawned, then popped her back. “Fuck, I’m tired.”
I nodded and walked off to the right guardrail. Walking all day was really tiring. Walking all day in the snow, even on a relatively flat surface like a highway, was really tiring. I’d tried not to push too hard, but I did want to make meaningful progress with the good days that we had. A blizzard could blow in and last three days pretty unexpectedly. Even some shitty snowy weather could ruin a whole day of progress, and it wasn’t like we were making a lot of progress. We’d probably made it fifteen miles so far, what with the stops to search cars, breaks to keep frostbite and hypothermia at bay, and to eat meals.
Plus, we’d slept in this morning, and I intended to tomorrow too. It wasn’t like we were on some tight timeline. Delilah seemed happy enough that we were just moving towards the settlement and so long as we didn’t take a month to do it, I imagined she’d be okay with it. I figured we’d be there inside of two weeks, provided we didn’t run into any problems. Though that was a big ‘if’ given the shitty nature of the world now.
So far, we hadn’t seen any other people on the road yet, and any wildlife we’d seen had been from a comfortable distance.
That could change quickly.
Getting up to the guardrail I was glad to see immediately that there was a house off a little ways that looked small but intact. Thankfully, in this area the highway was basically level with the road. Although unfortunately that was good and bad. The house was a pretty obvious target. But that was always a risk, and anyway, few people traveled at night and we weren’t going to be there for more than a night anyway.
“We’ll try there,” I said.
“What if someone’s there already?” Delilah murmured.
“Well, either we’ll barter with them for a place to sleep, they’ll try to kill us and I’ll have to kill them, or we’ll move on. There’s some cars down the way there,” I said, pointing maybe a mile on down the highway, “we’ll camp in one of them if we have to.”
“Fun, fun,” Megan muttered, and hopped the guardrail. “Let’s go, I’m starving and horny.”
“Same,” I said, jumping the guardrail as well and then turning to help Delilah over if she wanted. She did and I took her hand. She didn’t let go after stepping over and so we held hands as we started walking through the snow towards the house.
After a moment, Megan took my other hand.
I couldn’t help but smile.
Definitely, it’s the little things that can be great sometimes.