Raw Chapter I Preview

Okay, here it is, the first look at my long-awaited caveman fantasy series.

If you are a patron, you can also read Chapter II here.

He awoke to the sound of the sea, and the mournful call of carrion birds.

Water, frigid and cruel, washed up beneath him, shocking him awake. He gasped, or tried to, but some liquid had settled in his lungs. The gasp turned quickly to a violent fit of coughing and he rolled over, his body spasming as it attempted to eject the foreign matter. He was vaguely aware of a sharp, irritated caw! as he vomited the seawater out in hard contractions. As he finished, left dry-heaving several times, he opened his eyes.

A bleak desolation awaited him.

He lay upon a cold, rocky beach, the seawater coming in on gray waves, like liquid stone. A few feet from him, a giant black bird rested. It peered at him with shiny dark eyes, head tilted. It cawed at him and hopped from one skinny foot to the next. It had a scar on its large black beak. Seawater beaded on shiny feathers. As he tried to wave it off, he realized just how weak he was. His body felt ancient and withered.

A muffled sound escaped his throat and he swatted at the bird once more, coughing. It let out another irritated caw and hopped back two paces, but otherwise remained. The man slowly sat up. Even this act was torturous in how much it seemed to require from him. Breathing slowly and heavily, he sat on a rocky beach beneath a dull slate sky next to a huge bird that was probably waiting for him to die, and he wondered.

“Where am I?” he asked softly.

His voice sounded strange to him. He surveyed the area around him.

Long, lonely stretches of rocky shoreline to his left and his right. More birds, and other, more uncertain shapes farther away, lurked. Ahead of him, the vast yawning eternity of the sea. Which sea? He could not recall.

Behind him…

He twisted around, and several things popped in his back, along his spine, relieving tension. Behind him was dirt and trees, a dense forest swaying in the winds coming in off the sea. A cold wind gusted across him, and he shivered.

That brought on a great deal of pain.

The pain was faint, numbed by the cold and by…

He returned his attention to the front and looked down at himself. He was naked. Not a scrap of clothing on him at all. All he wore was a mélange of bruises and scratches and cuts. They ached and hurt and stung, and he could tell his suffering ran deeper than that, his muscles and bones hurting, but it was all faraway for now.

Another wave crashed upon the shore, this one more violent than the last, and hit him, snapping him out of his dazed state.

He needed warmth, shelter, a fire.

Or he would die.

The man rose slowly, his legs unsteady, his whole body as uncertain as his mind, but he only lost his balance once before standing. He looked over at the crow, which lingered, staring at him with obvious curiosity.

Another thought occurred to him, one that erupted inside of him and brought on an intense panic. It was so powerful he spoke it, too, aloud.

“Who am I?”

Another wave crashed at his feet more intensely than the last, and in the far distance, thunder cracked the sky, threatening rain. But he could not move, not until he had answered that question. Hugging himself, rubbing his arms, he thought furiously. Images came to him, emotions attached to most of them, but it was all so confused and jumbled. A bewildering proliferation of memories assaulted him as he sorted frantically through, trying to find something familiar, something that meant anything to him.

And then he had it, a single, short word.

A name.

Jak.

That was his name, he was sure of it. Jak let out a sigh of relief, but the feeling was short lived. Lightning split across the stone gray clouds, and almost immediately more thunder cracked and boomed. His heart lurched to match it and he looked as the crow took to flight with another call. He watched the huge thing gain altitude and disappear off to his right, heading deeper inland. It seemed like as good a direction to go as any, so Jak began to follow the bird, though he quickly lost sight of it. He walked away from the rocky beach, the stones painful on his bare feet, and came to a strip of land that was mostly dirt that ran parallel to the shoreline.

Jak walked.

He thought.

He tried to remember, rubbing his arms and looking around as stronger winds gusted off the sea and battered the nearby forest.

Already, the memories were slipping away. Becoming more clouded, more convoluted. Something was wrong, he knew that much.

A bad thing had happened.

Even apart from the obvious situation he now found himself in, that notion persisted. He clung to that, tried to use it as a beacon in the mists of amnesia. There were things he could recall. Impressions, if not specifics.

Jak recalled fighting. Lots of fighting.

Even as he thought of combat, saw images of broken bodies and sprays of blood, his hand ached for some kind of weapon. He felt naked without one, but another thought promised him that he could defend himself, even unarmed, if that particular desperation fell onto him. Still though, he began tracking the dirt and grass around him for some sort of armament. All the stones and sticks he saw were insufficient.

Another thought came to him, one that was as clear to him as his name had been: he was an outcast of his people.

That brought an unexpected jolt of several different emotions, all screaming to him at once. Terror. Rage. Guilt…

But a certainty that he was right. A conviction that he was right.

That one stopped him and Jak stared down at his muddy feet, shivering in the wind, for a moment ignoring all other things.

He hunted fervently for the context. Why was he so certain that he was right to do what he had done...whatever that was? He was an exile of his people, this specific piece of knowledge was available to him, but lacking context, it felt almost meaningless. Why? Whatever he had done to gain their ire, to be punished, to be made into a pariah, he felt strangely certain that it was the right thing to do. Not only that, but it was the only thing to do.

Somewhere too close for comfort, something growled.

That was a sound that forced itself through everything else, and Jak jerked his head to the right. Another person he could probably fight with his bare hands, if it came down to it, but a wolf or one of the big cats or the giant lizards?

No, he would be beyond saving then.

Shelter. He needed shelter.

Rain was coming, and he was already cold from laying on the shore. Jak looked up and tried to take a measure of the light from the sky, but it was difficult. The clouds covered the skies from horizon to horizon. The ones above him were stone gray, but he saw some farther off, some that seemed to be drawing closer quickly, that were the dark gray of flint. Those were the ones swollen with a heavy rain, and they were eager to unleash themselves on the land.

He knew he should be inside, or beneath something before then, given his nude state.

Ahead, the land seemed to dip, while the shoreline rose. Jak began moving forward with greater intent. There was a depression in the land, a trench with a wall of trees to the right and a wall of earth and rock to the left. There might be a cave, or even an overhang in that wall of earth. Some part of his mind whispered to him that there would be risk of flooding this close to the shore, but it was a risk he would have to take.

As he strode towards the trench, finding the pain in his battered body becoming more acute as his blood flowed more freely, something else came to him. A sharp memory, this one felt recent, though hazy. He remembered…

A figure, standing over him, against that same stone-gray sky.

The figure was tall and...blue? Jak pondered over that as he walked on. What species did he know that was blue-skinned? Or that painted themselves blue? He thought of the elves and their light tan skin. He thought of...of...what were they called? Large, green, scaly. They were big and dangerous, with sharp teeth, but not monsters, no, they could talk and build, his memories whispered to him. Jak looked down again at his own flesh.

Marred and bruised though it was, he could see a tawny bronze sheen to his skin. It covered him head to toe, uniformed and smooth. Not the result of time spent in the sun, then, though that thought brought on a cascade of sweaty days toiling beneath an unforgiving ball of flame in the sky. Practicing. Practicing what?

Fighting.

He had a brief but vivid vision of himself swinging a bone-club into a man’s skull and crushing it, blood and pulpy stuff flying out in a vicious spray…

Jak turned back to the original memory. Who was the blue-skinned, tall thing he remembered seeing over him while he lay, nearly dying, on the rocky coast?

After a moment, he let out a soft grunt of frustration and dismissal. Perhaps he was confused, or seeing untruths, his mind clouded by an injury. Perhaps it was an earlier memory, some other shore, some other gray sky.

He didn’t think that was true, but he could not be certain.

Jak made it down into the trench and the natural wall to his left rose until it towered over him to the height of three men. The light was fading, and the winds were coming more quickly now, accompanied by other cracks of thunder that seemed to shake the very earth around him. That shelter needed to happen soon, and then he could see about making a fire. But as he hunted the wall in the fading light, Jak felt a bolt of searing pain tear through his skull. He groaned, coming a halt, grabbing his head.

A fresh bolt of pain came again as his hand touched a particularly sensitive spot. He winced, hissing at the sheer agony of it, and pulled his hand back down in front of his eyes, expecting his fingers to be wet with blood. They weren’t, but the pain persisted. It was getting harder to think, to focus.

Something shifted up ahead of him, farther along the trench, something that garnered his attention reflexively and instantly.

Jak looked up, fear flooding his gut, as a dark gray shape detached itself from the dense treeline a little ways ahead of him.

A wolf.

And not a small wolf either.

A quick survey of his immediate area told him that there weren’t even any stones of any decent size he could grasp and use as a quick weapon. The wolf was coming towards him now, head lowered, teeth bared, growling deep in its throat.

His mind, abused though it was, shifted into survival mode and ran quick calculations.

He didn’t like his odds. Another quick survey of the area yet again turned up nothing, but he did see a cave in the wall to his left.

Shelter! A place to get in out of the encroaching storm.

But this wolf, creeping closer, teeth bared, a primal promise of brutal slaughter…

Jak bunched his hands into fists, considering the best way to take it down. If he could move in just the right way, he’d be able to tear its throat out, or perhaps take an eye. That would dissuade it from attacking him. Either that or enrage it past the point of madness and make it all the more dangerous.

The time to decide was nearly upon him.

Thunder roared almost directly overhead, making him jump and giving the wolf pause. That was when the rain opened up, a curtain of droplets plummeting across the land with a nearly imperceptible speed, racing towards him from the seaside.

He and the wolf were drenched in seconds.

Jak prepared to fight. Even though he was wounded and his head felt like it had met with a cloud, he wanted to kill the wolf.

That was meat.

That was food.

Beneath the layers of encroaching numbness and pain, he knew he was hungry. Food was fuel and he would need it.

As he tensed, shifted his weight so that he had a more stable stance, his mind filling with thoughts, visions of blood and death, his own hands covered in–dripping with–blood, all that bravado abruptly collapsed like an old log deep in the forest as three more wolves slunk out of the treeline to his right.

One wolf, he might be able to fight.

But four? Unarmed and injured? No.

Certain death now approached him on large paws, all teeth and shaggy gray fur and black, black eyes.

Jak ran.

He sprinted into the forest with all that he was.

The forest was much darker now as the rain began to fall. Jak grunted as he bumped into a tree, his head spinning from whatever injury had stolen his memory, stomach roiling like the sea he fled from. He rebounded off another tree, stumbled.

His foot caught on an exposed root and he nearly went sprawling, instead managing to wrench his shoulder as he caught himself painfully on an outstretched branch.

Behind him, a wolf howled.

Something shifted within him, something fundamental and crucial at the core of his being. Something important. The world seemed to slide around him for a brief sliver of time, everything growing brighter, sharper, and then everything slammed back into place and he could see. More than that, he seemed to know.

When he began running again, Jak didn’t bump into anything, even as he picked up speed. He cold sprinted through the woods, dodged a tree, ducked beneath a heavy branch, shifted so that his foot wouldn’t hit that rock sticking up out of the ground.

The air carried a hundred different scents.

Flowers, creatures, the sea and the rain, the earth…

Living things that surrounded him in all directions. Trees and plants and four-legged beasts, birds flying overhead, seeking shelter. Small furry things and insects burrowing in the loose earth beneath his feet.

His mind sorted through it like a flash of lightning.

Wolves behind him, closing in.

Something large and dangerous off to his right.

A potential threat somewhere above and to the left, among the branches.

Nothing ahead that he could sense. Jak ran faster, his motion through the darkening forest becoming fluid, smoother. He vaulted over a fallen log, slipped between a pair of trees, raced up a hill, slid down the other side, kept on pushing…

Jak could sense it was burning some reserve in his body, some crucial source of energy, something that was already drastically low.

He couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

But he didn’t have to. The wolves were behind him, the other things he had sensed gone too, and nothing new had appeared on his periphery of awareness. Slowing to a stop, he came into a tiny clearing and looked around.

Abruptly, the heightened awareness dropped away, and he staggered. Almost falling to his knees, Jak looked around, knowing that he needed to get in out of the cold and right now. There. At the edge of the little clearing, he saw a huge, hollowed-out fallen tree. It would have to do. He walked over, breathing heavily, his body hurting everywhere, his movements sluggish. Sleep was coming, whether he wanted it to or not.

In the wan light from the dim skies above, Jak looked into the hollow log. He’d have to duck to get inside and it leaked in a few places, but overall, it was shelter. Not ideal shelter, but shelter nonetheless.

There was the problem of security, though.

He ducked in and walked the length of the log. It was maybe twice his height lengthwise, and it was open at both ends. Coming out the other end, Jak looked around. His gaze fell on a good-sized rock not too far away.

Overburdened mind working, he judged the size of the rock against the size of the opening on this end of the log. They were roughly similar. It would have to do. Jak walked over, got a grip on the rock, and grunted with effort. His muscles strained as he liberated the rock from its home in the mud and rolled it towards the opening.

It took some doing, but he managed to fit it into the rear exit. Once he got it lodged into place as much as he could, Jak walked back around and in through the front. He gave it a few experimental pushes, then studied the edges.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Nothing big could get in without him noticing, at least.

There was more to do. He should build a fire, make even the most rudimentary bed, look for something to eat, but his body was shutting down.

Even as he thought this, the last vestiges of his strength slipped away, and he sat down in the driest spot, towards the back. Away from the front entrance, but far enough from the rock that it would not crush him if it fell over.

Jak stared at the ring of space the entrance showed, the dark clearing and the trees around it. The plants that hung down. The rain as it fell from the skies. It was very dark now, growing darker with each passing minute, it seemed.

He watched the entrance for as long as he could.

And then he tumbled headlong into unconsciousness.

A Warm Place 8 Preview

Okay, sorry this is taking so long. Here’s the first chapter.

As per usual, you can also check out the second chapter if you’re a 1$/month patron. Find it here.

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“Do you see the trail?” I asked after Susan and I had brought the ATVs to a complete halt and killed the engines.

The immense silence that always fell after riding around on them for long stretches of time always felt heavy, somehow intense.

“...maybe,” Susan replied.

“Look slowly.”

“How do you look slowly?” she asked, and I could hear the annoyance creeping into her voice.

“I mean move your eyeballs slowly, don’t dart your gaze around,” I replied evenly. She was walking that razor’s edge where she was sliding towards a bad mood but was still far away enough that she could be brought back from it.

Honestly, I was amazed at how much I had managed to learn when it came to reading the women I now shared my life with.

“Okay yeah,” she said suddenly, perking up. “I see it. Them. Two trails of boots. It looks like they’re going up to that hill.”

“Let’s walk up there,” I replied, getting off the ATV and looking around, taking stock of the area surrounding us.

A whole lot of frozen Kansas desolation and not a lot else.

I popped the little hood and detached the starter from the engine. I was lucky these things didn’t run hot.

“We’re gonna be like right there, do we really gotta take them out every time we’re gonna go more than five feet away?” Susan asked as she stood and stretched.

I stared at her from behind the darkened goggles I’d taken to wearing while riding.

She heaved a sigh. “Yeah, yeah. Risks are stupid, playing it safe is playing it smart. All right,” she said, walking around and repeating my action on her ATV.

“You’re learning,” I replied. “As stubborn as you are about it. Remember: you asked for this. You asked me to take you out here. You were adamant about it, actually.”

“I know,” she muttered, pocketing the starter.

The ATVs were an absolute game-changer when it came to getting around. They were a bit dangerous to drive around in the snow, but if you were careful, and with a bit of luck, they were mostly just fantastic to have.

I could cover so much more distance so easily.

And they were solar powered. The way the panels worked meant that they were pretty much always passively gaining energy so long as they were in the sun.

I looked up and around.

Today was a bright sunshine kind of day.

It felt like a good omen.

“Come on,” I said, heading off towards the hill, “let’s see if there’s anything obvious.”

Susan followed after me, our boots crunching in the snow.

A week. I’d been working for a solid week now.

After all the shit with the bunker, getting it back home, and helping give Pine Lake a reprieve from our impending doom, I’d taken a break for two days because I’d been so physically and mentally exhausted, and battered, that my body had almost given out. I probably should have taken three or four days off, but there was too much to do, and I was getting restless.

I had at least agreed to light duty for the first few days.

That largely meant bouncing between meeting with Lisa and Melanie and Hannah actually, (Lisa had partially taken her on as an assistant because she seemed to have a mind for organization on top of being just generally sharp), figuring out precisely how fucked we were, and doing smaller things like gathering firewood or helping the people hunt through the ruins of the township. Lisa was getting a little desperate and had most of the population going over the fire-gutted ruins of the buildings that remained for anything useful.

We had found a few things so far, but we were over halfway done and didn’t have much to show for it.

After that, I’d personally gone out to visit both the junkyard outpost and Brandy’s inn to make sure that had our agreements were ironed out and actually get our operations flowing.

The ‘contract’ with the junkyard was simple: they dedicated themselves to hunting game and picking any eatable plants they could find and gave us the excess, and in return we helped them with any problems that might crop up, but mostly we promised to absorb them into our population once we had a permanent solution for our ‘staying alive longer than a month’ problem.

Right now, that was looking like resettlement.

To where, no one knew.

There were options, but moving an entire population of people across the snowy wastelands of the Midwest was a risky proposition at best.

Our deal with the inn-owner Brandy was a little bit different.

She and her crew were happy where they were, and happy to amass a store of stuff to trade. And because she had an odd fondness for me, (I think I was the only guy to have sex with her who actually got off on her general badass attitude and facial scar), she gave us a sweet deal: we brought her shit to trade, they gave us any excess food they could scrounge up and would start dedicating more time to hunting game and foraging as well.

So that was another thing we were trawling the ruined town for: anything worth trading.

I had learned over the past two and a half years that this could mean so very much. There was obvious stuff: guns, bullets, medicine, food, tech. But there was other stuff like jewelry and scrap metal and even money.

Yeah, some people still used it. Or wanted it, at least.

Although I was wondering if that was beginning to fade. Even though she liked me, Brandy hadn’t seemed too impressed with the five grand we’d managed to come up with, saying fewer and fewer people seemed to give a crap.

Couldn’t blame them. Personally I’d just use the stuff as fuel for a fire.

My trip up to see Brandy had been solo and I’d ended up spending an extra hour out there making good on a promise I’d made her.

I had to do that again sometime soon. And bring one of my girlfriends with me this time.

After those initial two trips, others had taken over the ATVs and the jobs of going out and hauling back food once every three days.

When that was out of the way, I was still recovering, (I was bruised and battered and cut from all the falls and fights I’d had going after Megan and that stash, even now I still ached), but I had energy to burn so I ended up spending time with the girls on their jobs because for now, Lisa didn’t really have an immediate use for me.

Everyone was pitching in, somehow, someway.

Lara, Susan, Delilah, and Lindsay tended to go on foraging expeditions. Lisa had begun systematically having teams search the areas for traces of life that had survived the storm. Not all the plants had died, we’d found, but too many of them had, and all that was left was to find the survivors and harvest them in the hope of extending our lifeline a bit longer.

Every little bit helped…

But I was still worried.

I’d gotten good at hiding it, I think a lot of us had, but this really sucked.

Susan and I made our way up the hill. I glanced back briefly at the ATVs out of habit, reassuring myself they were still there, and no one was creeping up on them.

While having those ATVs was indeed an absolute game-changer, it also painted a huge potential target on your back.

A lot of people would most definitely kill to get their hands on even one of them.

Or at least try to take off with it. Taking the starter out was my little insurance policy. Couldn’t even hot-wire the damn thing without a starter.

“Okay, that looks like a place they might go,” Susan said as we finally got up to the top of the hill.

It gave on a large snowbound field that was covered in big lumps about as tall as I was, things buried in snow that I recognized as bales of hay. A farmhouse, a decent and expensive one by the looks of it, even from this distance, sat within the boundaries of a wooden fence that had long since lost its integrity to time, weather, or desperate hands looking for fire food.

I took a long, sweeping look around the area.

At the moment, we were tracking a pair of wayward people who’d gotten lost during a storm.

Just yesterday, a group of about a dozen had shown up out of the blue. They were hungry and in poor health and low on supplies. Apparently they were the only survivors of another settlement dozens of miles away that had suffered a fate not too dissimilar from Pine Lake’s, although their fire had been an accident it seemed.

They’d been wandering, desperately looking for a place to live ever since.

Lisa was reluctant to accept them, and even more reluctant to send out a search party, but in the end she did both.

Especially when she learned that one of the missing people was a nurse, and that two of the new arrivals were veteran hunters.

Hannah and I had gone out on the ATVs, trying to pick up a trail, but hadn’t had any luck last night.

This morning, Susan asked to go, and Hannah had taken a little convincing, but she’d relented when she saw how much Susan wanted to and I’d asked her to say yes.

She was still learning about compromise, something she was taking a furiously fast crash course in given the fact that she was sharing me with six other women.

I was still wrapping my head around that, so I could just imagine how she felt.

She wasn’t really in a relationship with any of the others in the same way I was, except for Megan. There was something there, but I wasn’t sure what yet.

I think they weren’t either.

Right now, there was too much shit going on anyway.

I brought my binoculars up after raising my goggles and studied the farmhouse. I didn’t see anyone moving around, but the front door was hanging open.

Don’t know why but that pinged my radar.

“All right, yeah, let’s check it out,” I said, heading back to the ATVs.

Susan followed after me and after reattaching the starters, we fired the vehicles back up and drove up over the hill, down the other side, and crossed the big field separating it from the farmhouse. Personally, I was eager to find these people and get back home. We’d been using these ATVs for hunting expeditions during the off days, driving out past the perimeter of the dead territory we were now at the center of to try and do some hunting of our own. I wanted to go on one of these expeditions and I was finally feeling up to it.

I subconsciously clenched most of my muscles as we got through the fencing and headed for the house.

I was expecting a gunshot to ring out.

The ATVs weren’t exactly what you’d call subtle. Their engines weren’t overwhelmingly loud, but certainly they were kind of annoying, and with snow blanketing everything, they announced you from a fucking long way off.

We got up to the front lawn without a problem though, and I saw no activity in the windows or the open front door.

No one peeking out at us, from what I could tell.

When we’d started out again today, I didn’t like our chances of tracking them down. But we’d gotten lucky, found a shack that showed clear signs of occupation not that far from where they’d last been seen.

Susan had climbed a nearby tree and spotted a half-collapsed cabin in the distance.

It was enough of a trail to go on.

Now it had led us here.

We killed the engines as we parked near the porch, making sure to turn them around first so they were facing back the way we had come, (in case we needed a quick getaway, yeah, I know, the starters, but even the few seconds of having to reverse and turn around could be the difference between life and death), took out the starters, and then pulled out our pistols and set to work. We made a quick perimeter sweep, finding more evidence they were here, or had been here. So that was what prompted me to do what I did next.

I cleared my throat as we walked in through the front door. “Is anyone in here?”

I waited, listening. Couldn’t hear a thing, but that didn’t always mean it was empty.

“My name is Chris, I’m looking for two people named Marty and Opal! Your friends sent us to find you!”

I waited and listened again.

Still nothing.

“What do you wanna do?” Susan asked.

“Stay here and watch the door and the ATVs. If they are here they might be freaked and stressed. Don’t want them to try and run while I’m searching.”

“I’ll yell if I see anything,” she replied.

I nodded and then headed into the house. It looked like it had once been pretty decent, but the environment had not been kind to it. Or maybe just passing people. A lot of windows were broken out, and there were holes in the wall.

Snow had gathered in piles in most of the rooms.

I definitely found evidence that people had been through recently. Disturbed stuff, bootprints in the snow.

Frozen blood.

Not a good sign.

I searched the first floor, then moved up to the second story. Both of them looked pretty damn ransacked, and both of them revealed no hiding or dead people.

There was some evidence that they had begun setting up camp, but had abruptly stopped in the middle of it.

Why?

Two ideas came to mind: someone or something dangerous had abruptly arrived, or they found a better place to make camp.

Since I couldn’t find any corpses, they obviously hadn’t died in the middle of making camp. But all that was left was a shed out back.

I mean, it was a nice shed, obviously a lot of work had gone into it, but I didn’t think it would be that much of a better place to stay than where they’d initially set up. The living room had a fireplace and its window had been boarded over pretty firmly, keeping out the cold for the most part. Well, no other choice.

“Nothing,” I said as I rejoined Susan and began leading her to the back of the house. “They might be in the shed, though.”

“Why?” she asked.

“No idea, but it’s the only place left to search.”

We got up to the shed. It looked like one of those you could buy from the bigger industrial stores, have shipped out and put together. The kind of thing made of durable material. Given we were now in permanent winter, it had held up pretty well.

I peered cautiously in the single window, but I couldn’t see much. It hadn’t broken, but it had iced over.

Walking up to the door, I knocked on it a few times. “Anyone in there? I’m here to help! Jay sent me!” I waited.

No response.

I had Susan back up and carefully opened the door. Moving cautiously inside, I cleared the shed. There wasn’t a lot in it, not a lot of places to hide, but something immediately leaped out at me: there was a cellar door built into the floor at the back.

If that led to what I thought it did, then yeah, this would be a way better place to camp out.

There was blood on the floor, and faint prints of snow heading towards the door. I quickly checked any potential hiding places, then had Susan come in.

Just in case someone was standing on the other side with a gun, I made sure we were out of the way as I pulled open the cellar door.

It wasn’t locked, but I could tell the lock had been broken.

“Anyone down there? I’m looking for Marty and Opal! Jay sent me!”

This time, I was almost positive I heard something. Harsh whispering. Peering cautiously over the edge, I saw a stairwell leading down into the earth.

Something shifted deeper in.

“Seriously, I’m here to help. Your group found me and sent me to find you. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, just tell me so and I’ll go away. I don’t want problems.”

After a pause so long I began to try again, a reply finally came.

“How do I know you aren’t full of it?” a man asked.

His voice was hoarse and tired.

I had actually prepared for this.

“Your name is Marty Sanders. Your group leader, Jay Peterson, sent me. He’s got a scar on his forehead. He says your favorite food is sardines and to prove he sent us, to remind you about that one time the two of you found that pink cellphone.”

I had no idea what the fuck that meant, but Jay had seemed sure it would work.

It did. I heard a faint laugh, then a groan. “Shit, that’s Jay...what’s your name?”

“Chris. I’ve got a friend named Susan here with me.”

“Me and Opal are in bad shape, how far away is it?” he asked.

“About forty five minutes. We’ve got rides. ATVs.”

“...for real?”

“For real.”

“All right, we’re coming up.”

“Okay.”

I stepped back and we waited for them to come up. I had to admit, I was intrigued by whatever was down there. Either a storm shelter or a prepper bunker. If the lock was broken, then there was a good chance it had already been plundered, like the house, but people missed things. Or one man’s trash was another’s treasure.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to search it, our priority here was these two.

After a lot of shuffling, two people finally emerged. A tall, decently built, dark-skinned man appeared, supporting a pale woman who did not look good. I knew fever delirium when I saw it. I’d been through that shit before.

“She’s sick?” I asked as they came up.

“Yeah. Fever. And we don’t have any medicine. I think I’ve got an infection now, too. Wolf got me on the run,” he replied. “Cleaned it best I could.”

“All right, you trust us to help?” I asked. “Because we have supplies and knowledge.”

He eyed the MP5 slung across my chest nervously, but finally nodded. I think he just knew it was this or death for both of them, which was a shit situation to be in.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

I helped ease Opal down into a sitting position against the nearest wall, and then Marty sat down, wincing. The bite was obviously on his leg, as his right pant leg had a fair amount of blood on it. He pulled up the jeans he was wearing.

“Fucker got me on the calf, hurts like hell,” he muttered.

“I can do a decent patch job,” I said as I set my pack down and dug out the medical supplies. Susan was doing the same, looking at Opal.

“Is she hurt?” she asked.

“No, just sick. Caught a bug a few days ago, but it’s gotten a lot worse,” Marty replied.

“Okay. I’ve got a few things for that,” Susan muttered.

“We’ve got an actual doctor that can look at you,” I said.

“So you have a settlement?” he replied.

“Technically yes. Your people made it there.”

“Why technically?”

“It’s no longer sustainable. Storm came in and froze everything to death. The plants, the animals, some of the people. We can’t hunt or forage enough to realistically sustain even a relatively small population right now. We’re working on a more permanent solution. But try not to worry about it. For now, just know that we’ve got a secure location with reasonable people and decent supplies, and we’re working on the problem.”

“Fine by me,” he muttered, then winced as I worked.

“Quick question, what did it look like down there? Were there still supplies or was it looted?” I asked.

“Looted pretty thoroughly from what I could tell, but it was dark,” he replied.

I nodded and kept working.

It took another ten minutes to patch them up and get them onto the ATVs, but we did it.

As we drove away, I was already formulating how I was going to word coming back here to more thoroughly check the bunker to Lisa.

A Warm Place 7 Preview

Work on the next A Warm Place novel continues. I’m nearing the climax right about now. It should definitely be published within the next seven days.

Anyway, here’s the first chapter preview. If you also want to read the second chapter, check it out on my Patreon.

Ideally I’ll be releasing the cover in the next few days, and then the novel itself a few days after that.

---

“What’s wrong with Megan, and where is she?” I asked, staring down into Delilah’s intensely blue eyes. I tried to force control over myself, but fear was already beginning to flood me. From the worried look in Delilah’s eyes, that fear was threatening to turn into panic.

“We don’t know anything for sure,” Delilah replied quickly, and she must have seen the terror she had cast onto me because she made a visible effort to collect herself and calm down. “She went with a team, away from the town, to track-” she hesitated and looked around, sudden aware of her surroundings, “-something. They’ve been gone too long.”

I relaxed slightly. Okay, so, she wasn’t presently dying or being held hostage.

Well, at least as far as they knew. Missing was almost as bad, though, but I knew Megan. She’d been tough when we had first met, and I’d seen her skills and tenacity sharpen and harden over the months we’d spent together.

Wherever she was, I figured there was a good chance she could handle it.

The fear came back into Delilah’s eyes. “Chris, Pine Lake got hit by one of those storms. One of the really, really bad ones we ran into on the highway.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, the fear coming right back. I hesitated, looked from her to the others, who had gathered in a loose knot nearby, looking uncertain and uncomfortable. My gaze shifted to Lindsay, who was approaching. I nodded quickly to her and she smiled nervously and nodded back. I needed a minute to think and get the details. I looked around, but there wasn’t any obviously good place in the room around us. “Um,” I looked at the others, “grab a seat and get your strength back. We might need to leave again. I have to figure this out. I’ll be back inside in a minute, okay?”

They all looked nervous, but Lara, surprisingly, appeared the calmest, and she seemed to step up and take charge. “We’ll be here, Chris. Go figure it out.”

“Thanks,” I said, then took Delilah’s hand and led her out the front door.

I guess it made enough sense. Although Lara wasn’t the best at dangerous survival situations, she’d no doubt navigated hundreds of socially awkward or uncomfortable or intense moments. The cold hit me as we stepped back outside. I looked around and saw no one in the fading twilight. There was a barrel near the front entrance that was alive with flames, left there for people to step out and catch some air and probably also as a beacon for travelers.

“Okay, Delilah, tell me everything you know,” I said.

She nodded and made another effort to compose herself. “We’ve had a run of really, really shitty luck. It started with a pair of hunting accidents about a month ago. A hunting team was mauled by a pack of wolves. No one died, but three of our best hunters were down for awhile with bad injuries, and two got an infection. A few days later, another hunter fell and broke his leg. The storm came just a few days after that. Since me and Elizabeth and Megan knew what to look for, we managed to warn Lisa, and we managed to get everyone into reinforced buildings and gather up supplies. Unfortunately, the storm was really bad, worse than the last one. It lasted for almost two days and I think it got colder. The people managed to survive, but it killed just about all the animals and all the plants for several miles around the town.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, the implications building in my brain. That would be a good way to kill the whole settlement. “But what about-”

“The hydroponic garden we were setting up around the time you left? It was ruined. The cold killed most of the seeds we had stored and we didn’t get a chance to properly reinforce the hydroponic building. Most of the equipment we’d found or cobbled together broke. They said it got too cold and snapped or cracked. Whatever happened, it’s gone now.”

“And the food stores?” I asked, the fear digging its frigid claws deeper into my guts.

She looked crestfallen. “The building they were in collapsed. We managed to salvage some of it, but a lot of it was lost in the rubble.”

“Holy fucking shit,” I muttered, turning away briefly, staring at the setting sun. Whatever I decided, I knew we had to make at least some more progress towards Pine Lake tonight. I looked back at Delilah. “Then what happened?”

“We spent a few days hunting and foraging, but that was when the full implication of what had happened really sunk in. Megan led a team to check out a big house that someone had seen while out exploring. It was about eight miles away and even out to there the storm had hit. She was searching the house and they came across a dead guy, and he had a map on him, with stuff written on the back. I don’t know all of it, we didn’t have much time to take with all that was happening, but basically it was supposed to lead to a bunker full of supplies. The guy had been on his way to it when he died in his sleep or something, I don’t know. But Megan left about two weeks ago with Melanie and a few others to track it down,” Delilah explained.

“And they never came back?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. There were more storms, a lot more storms, but more normal ones, after they left, so Lisa thinks that might’ve slowed them down, but she’s...she’s really nervous, Chris. I am too, we all are. It’s really bad. I think she’s really desperate. When I reminded her that you probably would be back sometime soon, she ended up asking me and Lindsay to go here and wait for you, or see if maybe we could find you some other way.”

“How’d she know I was here?” I asked. “Or that I’d been here?”

“Some traders visited a week after you left and mentioned this place and you,” Delilah replied.

That made sense. Jesus fucking Christ, this was bad.

I felt all sorts of awful emotions rolling around in my guts, but mostly I felt guilt, and shame. I’d gone out to fucking ‘find myself’ and Pine Lake had been brought to the brink of extinction while I’d been off fucking around with Hannah and the others.

“Oh, Chris, I missed you so much,” Delilah said suddenly, and hugged me again.

I hugged her back, holding her tightly against me. “I missed you too, Delilah. Fuck, I missed you so much...how’s Elizabeth?” I asked.

“She’s doing okay. There weren’t any big problems or anything. Me and Lindsay have been hanging out with her a lot, especially since Megan left. She misses you too. So much.”

“God, I’ve missed you all a lot. More than I’ve ever missed anyone.”

She pulled back suddenly and looked up at me. “Did you...figure it all out? Are you going to stay with us?” she asked.

The question, the way she asked it, and the look on her face might have been the most vulnerable I had ever seen Delilah, and it threw me off a lot. She was always so confident and sure of herself, it was unreal.

“Yes,” I said, “I figured it out and I’m staying with you. I’m not leaving.”

The relief on her face was like the sun breaking through the clouds. She smiled broadly and kissed me on the mouth, holding me to her again.

“What are we going to do?” she asked as she pulled back once more.

“Um...if I remember right, there’s a house about a mile down the road, right? You can see it from the highway?”

“Uh...yeah. Yes. I remember that. We saw it as we came in.”

“Did it look like anyone was there?”

“No.”

“Okay, good. I want go there. But first, I want to get all the food this place is willing to trade to us. Tell me you brought stuff to trade,” I replied.

She nodded. “Yeah, I did. Lisa loaded Lindsay and I up with stuff to trade for food in case we ran into anyone.” She paused, and then a familiar small smile came onto her face. “Chris, was that four super attractive women I saw following you?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Are you fucking them-”

“Yes.”

“How-”

“I’ll catch you up to speed later,” I replied. “We have to move now.”

My expression and tone seemed to sober her, bring her back to the moment, and she nodded. It was interesting seeing her like this. When we’d first met, Delilah had been very casual and laid back, and due to the nature of our original arrangement, pretty much happy to let me solve problems and run her life. That had changed slowly over the months that we’d known each other. She’d found a niche for herself and had settled nicely into it, though from what I’d seen, she’d largely seemed to switch to letting Lindsay make bigger decisions for them. Or me, depending on what was up. Now it seemed like she was the one stepping up.

We got back inside and I quickly scanned the interior of the inn’s main room. I saw my people sitting around the largest table off in one corner, talking quietly to each other. I saw Brandy, the woman with the facial scar I’d first hooked up with on my way out of Pine Lake, behind the bar, looking at me surreptitiously, no doubt curious about what the hell was going on. Two others were deeper in the room, also behind the bar, talking quietly. I vaguely recognized them as being part of the group that ran the place. There was another pair of people sitting at a table, seemingly trying to mind their business. Okay, so, two groups to trade with.

I walked with Delilah over to my group.

“What’s going on?” Hannah asked.

“Things are bad. The town’s in trouble. Right now, what that means is we’ve got another mile to cover and quickly, but before that, we need to trade for as much food as we can. Get all of our extra trading shit out on the table. Delilah, Lindsay, will you go to those other two and see if they have any food they’re willing to trade?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’ll get on it,” Delilah said. Lindsay got up and joined her, heading over to the unfamiliar pair.

I began to turn towards Brandy, prepared to ask for whatever food she was willing to give me, but then hesitated. I turned back. “Everyone, I’m really sorry to be short like this and just dump this all in your lap, but it’s an emergency. I’ll bring you up to speed once we’re at the house.”

“It’s okay, Chris,” Jessica said, “we get it. Go do what needs doing.”

I looked around and the expressions on Susan, Lara, and Hannah’s faces told me they seemed in agreement.

“Thank you,” I replied, and headed off to the counter.

That was one thing off my mind, at least. This situation was stressful enough as it was. Like the fact that I was going to have to ask Brandy for help. I genuinely didn’t know how it would go, or, fuck, if she even remembered me. I didn’t get the impression that she was a jerk from our brief time together, but I did get the impression that she was a hardass and might think I was trying to fuck her over with a sob story that I thought she was more likely to believe just because we’d fucked. That tended to piss people off.

“Brandy,” I said as I approached. “Uh…” I thought about how best to approach this, felt the press of time, and decided fuck it. “You remember me, right?”

She stared at me with a mostly flat expression for a few seconds, then grinned. “Yeah, Chris. I remember. After that night, I’m not going to forget you anytime soon.”

Well, off to a good start, at least. “Same, honestly,” I replied. “Uh, I need to trade. For food.”

“What’s going on, exactly?” she asked. I hesitated further because my thoughts were starting to get jammed up in my head. “Just tell it to me straight,” she added.

“The town I’m from got hit by a brutal storm that wiped out our food stores and killed off almost all the plants and animals. We’re fucked for food, I’m just finding out right now, and I have to grab as much food as I can and get back there pronto.”

“Shit, I remember that storm,” she replied. “Although I don’t think we got the worst of it. It wasn’t that bad out here. But yes, Chris, I’ll help you out. We’ve got some food to trade. Lemme bring it over to your table and we can figure it out.”

“Thank you, Brandy,” I replied. “I really appreciate it. Literally everything you’d be willing to spare.”

She nodded and went to talk with the others.

I rejoined my group and then took off my pack and started pulling out all the extra stuff I’d been gathering over the past few months that had potential trade value. Mostly it was jewelry, whatever was leftover of the weed, booze, and cigarettes I’d managed to come across, as well as that bottle of pain meds I’d found way back when I’d first moved in with Lara and Susan. Susan had talked up taking them, but she’d only had a few, and as much as I wanted to hang onto them, I knew they were powerful trading items.

By the time Brandy came over with two others, each carrying a plastic bin full of food, the table was scattered with an assortment of odds and ends. Rings and old batteries and cash (some people still valued it), drugs and office supplies and some paperback novels. We only haggled for a few minutes, and it went like how I hoped it would.

Brandy and her people took everything off the table. At first glance it might seem like a lot, but if this was a real negotiation, I knew she’d be holding out for something bigger and better, like guns and ammo. Or medical supplies. Fire-starting materials. Rare stuff. That she didn’t meant she really was giving us a good deal, especially given the amount of food she was offering. Between the bins, there were almost thirty assorted cans of food, a dozen jars full of pickles and peppers and seasonings and other foodstuffs, and probably about fifty pounds of meat either wrapped in wax paper or sealed in plastic containers.

It was a pain in the ass, but we managed to get it all stuffed away into our backpacks, as well as Lindsay’s and Delilah’s packs, when they came back. They reported that they managed to do some trading, but the two travelers just didn’t have as much to work with, so we put the leftover food into their backpacks.

“All right, is there anything else that needs doing here that anyone can think of?” I asked as I got my now overstuffed pack onto my back. No one had an answer for me and after a moment of consideration, I couldn’t think of anything else. The daylight was fading fast. Even as it was, I doubted we’d actually make it there before dark, but we had to try. Another mile traveled today probably meant we could make it back to Pine Lake by tomorrow night. “Okay, head outside and wait for me by the fire barrel. I’ll be out in a minute.”

They all nodded and headed outside. I moved over to Brandy. “Thank you, seriously. And I’m really sorry I can’t spend the night. Last time you said-” I hesitated, and couldn’t help but grin, “...well, I’m sure you remember.”

“Oh yeah, I remember,” Brandy replied with a grin of her own. “I remember everything about that night, Chris. You’re not as sorry as I am that you aren’t sticking around. And I don’t mind helping you. Listen, if I come across any traders, I’ll send them your way and tell them you need food. And the hunting isn’t too bad around here, from what we’ve experienced. We can’t feed a whole town, but I wouldn’t be against you sending some people up here and using this place to sleep for a hunting expedition, and also for trade, as we always try to keep a lot more than we need, as you can tell from the trade.”

“Thank you for the offer, I’ll definitely mention it to my people.”

I started to turn away but Brandy reached out across the bar and gripped my wrist. “Hey, not so fast. Give me a kiss before you go, I want something before you wander off with half a dozen attractive women.”

I laughed awkwardly, looking back at her. God, she was so wicked hot. When we’d slept together, I could tell that, although she tried to hide it, she was somewhat self-conscious about the big, obvious scar she had down one cheek, but I’d done my best to convince her I thought it looked good. And I did. She was one of the most uniquely attractive women I’d seen in a long time. I leaned across the bar and she grabbed my coat, pulled me closer, and kissed me on the lips for a long, wonderful moment. Then she let go of me.

“Come back sometime,” she said.

“I will,” I promised.

And then I headed back out into the cold, back to my life and my now desperate responsibilities.

A Warm Place 6 Preview

I’m still aiming to get A Warm Place 6 out before the end of the month. Honestly, I’m aiming to have it out before the week is through, but while I have a solid layout for what I need to write, how many words that can end up being tends to be a bit random. So it might bleed into next week.

Anyway, here’s the first chapter of the novel.

And if you’d like to look at the first two chapters, follow this link to my Patreon!

I’ll likely be doing a cover reveal near the end of the week.

---

“It doesn’t look bad, Chris.”

“What?” I asked, a little startled, dropping my hand back to my side instead of gently probing my wounded face.

“Your face.” Hannah fell silent for a few seconds as we walked among the trees, the freshly fallen snow crunching beneath our boots, wreathing everything in the forest in frigid silence. “I, um, saw you looking at it before we left. In the window’s reflection.”

I glanced briefly at her. She was looking straight ahead, ostensibly because she was trying to find a building among the trees, but she seemed nervous.

More so than usual.

Although I guess I’d say Hannah wasn’t usually nervous, more just…

Alert? Angry? Both? Was there even a word for that?

“How could you tell?” I replied finally, looking off to the right, away from her.

“The way you were looking into the window, and the angle you were holding your head at. It looked more like someone looking in a mirror than out a window,” she replied, her voice carefully neutral for some reason.

“Huh,” I replied. “Well thanks. I think it looks kinda bad.”

I still had a nasty black eye and a bruise on my cheek, as well as a split lip and cut eyebrow, from the fistfight I’d endured with Thomas from a little while back. Certainly they were all healing up, but they were still pretty noticeable.

Still was a little pissed that the bastard had brought a knife to a fist fight.

Not surprised, though.

“The others seem to like it,” Hannah said.

“Did they say that?” I asked, a little surprised.

“No. Lara implied, though. And I can just tell in the way they look at you.”

“What do you think?”

She shrugged noncommittally and I didn’t push it any further.

Hannah had been acting weird recently.

It had been three days since our big fight with the wolf pack up at the ranger’s station. Mostly I’d been laying low, trying to heal up and actually rest for once, but I was so easily rendered restless. The first day I’d made myself get up and go check on Alec and Kayla, bringing Susan and Jessica with me, because they were in such poor shape. Between his bad bite wounds and Kayla’s infection, I wasn’t sure they’d make it.

But when we had gotten up there, he seemed a bit better and Kayla was improving enough from the stronger antibiotics we’d found her that we actually got a chance to meet her. We talked for a little bit, but not too long because the two of them were down for the count and needing their rest. After dropping off a care package of spare food and some extra meds, we’d headed back and I had just shut myself up in the lodge the rest of that day and all of the following day. Yesterday my need to do shit had finally gotten to me.

I’d gone for a walk initially but that had turned into revisiting Lara’s and Susan’s old place, wanting to see if there was anything left behind I could grab. There wasn’t much, a few things, mostly books, but when I got home Lara was waiting for me. She’d talked me and Jessica into going back to that cabin in the woods where I’d first met Jessica, and where Lara and Jessica had gone to have their affair. Lara wanted a proper threesome in that cabin, as we’d never actually had the chance to return after that first meeting I’d had.

And we’d given it to her.

So that had been fun.

Hannah had been acting weird. The first day I’d put it down to shock. Facing down nine wolves in a tight area was terrifying no matter who you were, and she’d never dealt with anything that serious before. Or not often enough to be able to shake it off after. I’d talked to her a bit, but ultimately she’d just gone to see her mom and I figured Jessica could help more than I could. I didn’t see her the day after that, which again I didn’t think much of.

But when I hadn’t seen her at all for most of yesterday, it had started to stand out. I’d gone looking for her after getting back from my threesome with Lara and Jessica, and couldn’t find her for awhile. Apparently she’d gone out walking to the south and had discovered a building. Snow was coming and it was obvious enough that she’d turned back before being able to properly investigate the place.

That’s what we were doing right now.

It had stormed last night but died off sometime before sunrise, leaving today sunny and good for investigating, if a bit cold.

She’d come to tell me about the find when she got back home and I’d tried talking with her a little, but it was obvious she didn’t want to talk to me. I wasn’t sure what was up. With Hannah, it could be anything. Maybe she was pissed about something. Maybe she was mad at me over something I’d done or something she’d thought I’d done.

I had to say, I seemed to have a thing for running into angry, belligerent women.

Though between her, Megan, and Susan, Hannah was definitely the most aggressive.

Also the only one I wasn’t fucking. I had to admit, that was bugging me. Not like I was angry that I wasn’t having sex with her, if she didn’t want to, then she didn’t want to, but more like I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

About what she’d look like naked.

About what she’d look like riding my cock.

About what she’d sound like, panting and gasping and moaning.

She had a nice voice and I always found myself wondering about what women sounded like during sex.

But I could keep a lid on it, keep things purely professional between us. Or I guess closer to friendly. There was a word for it…

Platonic.

I could keep it platonic between us, but not if she was going to cut me out. We’d spoken over breakfast about going out to investigate the building she’d seen. She had seemed conflicted, but then suddenly had agreed to it, and I still didn’t know what that meant. That thing about my face was the first thing she’d said to me after telling me the rough direction the building was in and we’d started walking. We had headed south, away from the lodge, into the woods there. I had to admit, I didn’t really know how to handle this.

Words were not a strength of mine. Same with comforting people. I mean apparently my hugs helped, but I had the impression Hannah wouldn’t want a hug right now. Or, at the very least, not from me. I still wasn’t sure if she was mad at me or not. Although after that last exchange, I now was not sure if she was sure if she was mad at me or not.

“Hey, there it is,” she said, breaking my train of thought.

Probably for the best. I kept getting distracted by her and it would probably be a pretty bad idea to actually pursue anything with her.

I focused on the structure through the trees ahead of us. It was a simple, low, rectangular structure, a building of wood and glass sheathed in ice and a fresh layer of snow that blew away in contrails from the winds that gusted through the forest.

We slowed to a halt about five yards back from the edge of the clearing the structure was built into.

“So, what’s first?” I asked quietly.

“You’re asking me?” Hannah replied.

“Yes. I’m asking you, Hannah.”

That seemed to get her to focus. She was very sharp, but it was obvious that her attention had to be focused for that sharpness to really come into play most of the time. She hadn’t yet had enough practice to cast a wide net of awareness, to be constantly paying attention to everything around her. For whatever reason, she was focused on me, and that had to stop.

“Okay,” she murmured, staring at the building. “First. Check for danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

“People. Wildlife.”

“And?” She struggled silently for a few seconds, then sighed, the frustration plain on her pretty features. “Traps,” I said.

“Oh. Right...what do they look like?”

“Usually they don’t. You just have to be paranoid. In my experience, traps are rare. But at this point ‘better safe than sorry’ is a way of life now. Because if you’re sorry instead of safe, you don’t tend to actually live to be either of them again. So, you look for signs that people have been around. See any footprints in the snow?”

She stared hard at the building, then carefully pulled out her rifle and put the scope to her eye. She studied silently for a few moments.

“No,” she murmured finally.

“But?”

“But...it snowed last night. Someone could’ve come in last night, laid a trap, and the new snow covered everything.”

“Exactly. And you have to be aware of the general wind. On a windy day, the snow can cover the tracks just as effectively as actual snowfall. Keep looking, tell me if you see anything.”

She kept looking. Personally, I didn’t feel any warning signs. But I’d been wrong in the past, and I wanted to see if she came up with anything.

I was sharp, but I had the idea that, given time, practice, and experience, Hannah could end up sharper than me.

“I don’t see anything,” she said finally. “Am I missing something?”

“No, not that I can see.” I expected her to get mad at me, but she said nothing. “I was wondering if you’d see something I missed,” I added finally, vaguely uncomfortable. I almost laughed. I wondered if my time around women like Megan and Susan had reprogrammed me to just expect anger and get uncomfortable when it didn’t happen.

“Okay,” she said. “So we go?”

“Yes. But what’s next?”

“Secure the outside and beware of the inside,” she replied.

“Good. You break left, I’ll break right. We make a complete circle, meet back at the front door,” I said.

“Got it.”

We moved forward and did our little security ritual. I’d known a couple people who’d gotten annoyed with me that I was this level of paranoid. It’s why I tended to travel alone. One of them had actually triggered a trap someone had left behind and broken a leg. It wasn’t fun dealing with that extra bullshit hitch in the plan, but I did. I was out hunting awhile back with a few others as part of the job I’d taken on to stay in some little settlement. We’d found a big warehouse type building out in the middle of nowhere and they wanted to search it.

I honestly should have walked on past that settlement. I almost did, bad vibes coming from it as I found a place to get in for the night. I’d just decided to walk on the next morning after doing some trading when a thick redhead had caught my eye and given me a pretty overtly suggestive look…

I came around to the back of the building and met Hannah there, unable to keep from checking her out just a little as we passed.

Redheads were always a massive weakness of mine.

I didn’t think this place was trapped or occupied. It was a curious building. Didn’t look like it was there for the civilian population, nor commercial reasons either. But it also didn’t look like a ranger’s station or their bunkhouse. It had the air of something official, something government funded, but I guess I lacked imagination in that department because I wasn’t sure what it could be. I guess I’d find out inside.

Looks in through the windows didn’t reveal much as I passed along the other side of the building, heading back up towards the front. A barren kitchen area. A vacant office. A long-abandoned lounge. No people, no signs of people.

We met back by the front doors, which were closed.

“Now what?” Hannah murmured.

“Now we go inside and do the same thing, nice and easy. I’ll go first, you watch my back,” I replied.

She nodded and I tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.

I opened the door, my pistol in hand by now, and peered cautiously inside. A mostly empty lobby waited for us. I stepped inside.

“Wait in the doorway,” I said. “Close the door behind you, lock it if you can. Keep watch.”

“On it,” she replied, doing as I said.

I started my check of the area. Hannah had asked me to teach her. Apparently I’d impressed her enough with my abilities as a hunter that she wanted to know things, practical things. Like how to survive. Something her father had kept from her out of annoyance and I’m sure some vague notion that, even in the face of Armageddon, there were some things that women didn’t do. An opinion I’d personally not only never shared, but never understood. It was stupid enough before the snow, but now? Such an enforcement of an opinion seemed ludicrous.

I’d agreed to teach her how to hunt and gut, how to clean a weapon. She already knew a lot of the stuff, in the sense of what she had to do, she just hadn’t actually done any of it.

And even if I was dubious about whether or not I’d be a good teacher, or my knowledge was all that great, I wanted to teach her more. What was more impressive was that she was willing to listen. Either she was getting to trust me more, or she was too distracted to get angry. I was hoping it was the first one, because distraction was a problem out here.

I was tempted to have her stand guard while I searched the building, but that didn’t seem fair to her. She had to know how to do this and a line that had to be crossed to reach that knowledge was actually doing it in real life.

“Come on, watch my back, we’ll secure this place,” I said.

“Okay,” Hannah replied, joining me.

We walked through the structure, passing through a door at the back and coming into a hallway that cut the building in half. The door directly across led to an open area with several desks and chairs and a lot of papers scattered around. The other doors led to a small dining area, a bathroom, another office, and the kitchen area I’d seen earlier. We also found what once had been a storage room, another office, and a completely empty room.

All of them were clear.

“So that’s it? We’re good?” Hannah murmured as we came to the empty room, the very last room, and checked it out.

“Yeah, although you can’t let your guard down completely,” I replied.

“Right,” she murmured.

“Now, we’re gonna split up and search this place over. See what you can find. Yell if you find anything dangerous or interesting.”

“Okay.”

I left her in the empty room and went back to the lobby. As I began my search, I briefly considered how best to approach whatever problem Hannah was having. I didn’t think it was like a general problem, because she seemed to be able to talk with everyone else. But after just a few minutes, I turned away from it, because I thought it was best just to leave it alone. I didn’t want to. Honestly, I just wanted to deal with it how I dealt with all my problems: confront it head on. But that wasn’t always the best solution.

Instead, I thought about Pine Lake. And Megan, Delilah, and Elizabeth. Lisa, Melanie, and Lindsay. It was time to go back. Theoretically I could stay out for probably a bit longer given the timeline I’d promised, but I no longer wanted to. At all. I had no reason to stay out here any longer, and I had every reason to go home.

Home.

There was a word I’d never thought I’d be able to say again and actually mean it. For the longest time, home was wherever I was. As much as I liked that nomadic mentality, as much as it appealed to me...apparently, having a fixed home with people I cared very much about was far more appealing. I wanted to go home and see them.

And I wanted to bring the others home and get through the potential problems that might arise from the fact that my ‘harem’, as Lara and now Jessica and Susan were so fond of calling it, had fucking doubled in size while I was out here. I didn’t see Delilah having a problem with it. Elizabeth and Megan, on the other hand, were wildcards. Megan more than Elizabeth. I know Delilah wasn’t actually ‘dating’ me, she was dating Lindsay, but the more I thought about it the more I thought she practically considered herself in a relationship with me and Lindsay, she just didn’t say so. Why? No idea.

Maybe it would concern Lindsay, but Lindsay seemed really laid back.

But the real reason I was thinking about it so much was the reason I was still here and hadn’t decided to leave quite yet.

I wanted to bring something home.

Something practical and very useful. Something big. Something you couldn’t just find anywhere. I wasn’t sure what that was yet, and if I didn’t find it either today or tomorrow, then I’d just move on regardless and hope to find it on the way, but I wanted it.

Why?

I guess if you cut right down to the core of it, I intended it to be an apology.

I felt bad about leaving in the first place. I had to do it, I saw now. It had had the intended effect: I now appreciated Pine Lake and the concept of a fixed home. And certainly I appreciated the fact that I had met Lara, Susan, Jessica, and Hannah. But I still felt bad about it, and I wanted to have something practical and extremely useful in hand when I returned.

My own personal revelation didn’t feel all that important stacked up against the needs of a township, and it was clear that while they didn’t need me to live…

I definitely made it easier.

With a soft sigh, I kept searching.

A Warm Place 5 Preview

Work is proceeding on the next A Warm Place novel. Here’s the first chapter.

If you want to also read the second chapter, you can do so if you are a 1$/month Patron over on my Patreon!

---

I opened the door the second I recognized Jessica’s voice.

Though I didn’t let my guard down completely, given the fact that she could’ve been here under duress, used as bait, or, hell, maybe she’d turned against us. Didn’t seem likely, but it wasn’t totally out of the question.

I slowly began to raise my pistol as, in the blowing whiteout that reduced visibility quite a bit, I saw not one but two figures.

Neither were armed though, and the other was a woman and another redhead, though that was all I could tell about her, bundled up as she was.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I stepped back to make way. Jessica and the other woman stumbled in, panting.

“I left my husband,” she managed, leaning against the nearest wall.

Great. All at once, a few pieces fell into place. At the very least, I realized that Jessica was making good on the promise I’d made her: if she really needed my help, she could come to me and I would help her. I wasn’t upset, and I didn’t plan on revoking that, but damn, she could’ve picked a better time for it.

“Did he follow?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

I leaned out carefully and looked around, but it was practically useless. Visibility was down to barely ten feet. I couldn’t even see the trees at the edge of the property. I didn’t see anyone moving out there and no one was creeping up alongside the house. It would have to do. I shut the door and locked it tightly.

“Chris?! What’s going on?!” Susan called from the kitchen.

Right. Didn’t want to keep them in suspense. “It’s okay! It’s Jessica! Come here!”

“Jessica?” Lara called, and both women began walking closer.

“I’m so sorry to drop in like this,” Jessica said, looking at me as she leaned against the wall.

“I’m impressed you made it through the storm,” I replied. “And glad.” I glanced at the other woman, who had yet to speak. Her body language was standoffish, if not outright hostile. Her face was mostly hidden by a scarf and hat, only her eyes visible. They were extremely blue and they looked a lot like Jessica’s.

In fact, if she wasn’t standing right there, I’d have assumed I was looking at Jessica.

Those eyes were staring daggers at me, and they didn’t look away when I looked into them.

A sister, maybe?

Lara and Susan came into the hallway.

“Jessica,” Lara repeated, coming over and wrapping her in a hug. “What happened? Why did you go out in a fucking blizzard!? You could have died!”

“I know, I...didn’t think it through,” Jessica replied. “It was kind of sudden.”

“So what’s actually going on?” Susan asked. I glanced at her and noticed she was kind of standoffish right now, too.

Though that was really her natural demeanor.

“I got into a fight with Travis, my husband. It...escalated. I…” She broke off as Lara stepped away, shivering violently, and I realized she must be freezing.

“Come on, come to the living room, by the fire,” I said.

She nodded and she and the other woman followed us out of the hallway and into the living room. They both went to stand before the fire and I crouched down, throwing on another log and getting it a bit more blazing with the poker. “Did he hit you?” I asked.

“He shoved me,” she replied. “I hit him.”

“It’s about fucking time,” the other woman said, speaking for the first time.

“Hannah!”

“He deserved it.” I looked up and saw her taking off her scarf and hat. She let down short, vividly red hair, and as she revealed a strikingly beautiful face, I saw that there was no question: she was related to Jessica.

Had to be her younger sister, or cousin, maybe?

Jessica took off her own hat and tried to shake the snow from herself. “Anyway, uh, I left. We left. I remembered how to get here, from the time Lara showed me, and, well…” She looked directly at me now, blushing, uncomfortable. “You told me you’d help me. If I really needed it. And I really need it.”

“I’ll help you,” I said, and the relief on her face was obvious. As I stood up, she embraced me, and I hugged her back, held her tight.

Hannah’s body language definitely turned hostile and she crossed her arms, glaring at me.

What was her deal?

Did she know I was fucking Jessica? I guess that could be it. Could be awkward.

This wasn’t awkward, though. This was anger.

“Thank you,” Jessica murmured into my chest. “God, I’m so tired.”

“How did you actually make it here?” Lara asked.

“It wasn’t all that bad when we set out, but we did get lost for a bit. Honestly, I think it was just luck that we managed to get here,” Jessica replied.

“It was extremely lucky,” Susan murmured.

As Jessica disengaged from me, Hannah stepped closer to me. The way she did it kicked on some reactive instincts and I shifted my weight. I seriously thought she was going to swing on me or something. She hesitated, staring at me hard.

“You’re Chris,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied, wondering if I was going to get an answer as to why she was so pissed at me. The thought that maybe she was just pissed in general because she’d been through a trying, maybe even traumatic event, occurred to me, but no, it was obvious that it was at me.

“Thank you,” she said through gritted teeth after a few seconds, like she had to force it out.

“For…”

“Talking her into leaving that prick,” Hannah replied.

“Hannah!” Jessica hissed again.

“He is a fucking prick!”

“He is your father,” she replied.

“Whoa, wait, what?” I asked.

“Hannah’s your daughter?” Susan asked at the same time.

“Yeah...didn’t that ever come up?” Jessica asked.

But I was staring at Hannah, then looking over at Jessica, comparing the two. I was right, they were related, but…

Hannah didn’t look very young, then again, Jessica was forty years old. Though she didn’t quite look it. Hannah looked older, I thought maybe a few years older than me, but now that I looked at her more closely...yeah. She did look younger, youthful, and not just from good genes.

“What do you mean?” I asked finally, coming back around to what Hannah had originally said. “How did I talk her into it?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what she insinuated,” Hannah replied.

I looked curiously at Jessica, though the thought going through my head at that moment was that it made a little more sense as to why she didn’t like me.

I was fucking her mom, and she had to know that. Or, well technically I had fucked her mom at least once.

Jessica brushed some hair back from her face. She was blushing now. “When we...met, it made me think. About a lot of things. When you asked me why I was-” She glanced at Hannah. “-um. Why I was, uh…” she stumbled and her mind seemed to go blank.

Hannah sighed explosively. “God, mom! I know already, okay!? I know you’re fucking him and I don’t care! Dad’s a fucking asshole!”

“Hannah!” Jessica cried, part shocked, part exasperated. “You have no tact, you know that?!” The way she said it made me think that it was something she’d said hundreds of times and from the angry, volatile gaze in Hannah’s eyes, I could tell that was probably true. Or rather, she seemed like the kind of person who didn’t bother with tact.

Being as attractive as she was, she could get away with it.

I pumped the brakes there and put that in check. She didn’t seem like a teenager, although she very well could be, and honestly I was reluctant to go to that age. Not that I should even be thinking thoughts like that when I’d already hooked up with Jessica though.

Jessica looked back at me. “When you asked me why I was-” She stumbled again, but pressed on. “Why I was cheating on my husband, it made me think about it. Really think about it. And I started realizing a lot of things. And it ultimately led to the argument and us being here and…” She sighed softly and fell silent, looking just tired now.

This was too much. I glanced at Lara and Susan. Lara looked concerned, Susan looked…

Mad.

Crap. Now I had two of them glaring daggers at me.

And I at least knew why with Susan: I’d never run any of this by her as even a possibility. I really should’ve mentioned that I’d made a promise like that to Jessica, but I didn’t think it would come up so soon!

“Okay, um, this is a lot,” I said, stepping up and taking control of the situation again, because this was what at least some of the women in the room seemed to either want or be comfortable with, “so why don’t the two of you sit here and catch your breath and warm up. We’ll, uh, we were just finishing up lunch, so you can join us.”

“Fuck, I need to check on that,” Susan muttered. “Be right back.”

She disappeared into the kitchen and I looked at Lara, who gave me a worried look. No doubt she was concerned about something similar to myself: Susan was very close to blowing up at one or both of us. I can’t imagine she reacted to abrupt change very well, especially if she was already concerned about our living situation.

And that set off a fuse of anxiety inside my own head even as I thought it.

Now, instead of providing for three mouths, I was providing for five.

Shit.

And I had exactly one bullet left in the rifle.

Double shit.

Susan came back a moment later. “It’s fine, I took it off the stove.” She was clenching her jaw and a tendon in her slim white neck was taut as a bowstring as she stared hard at me. “Can I please speak to you somewhere else?” she asked tersely.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll be right back, just...relax here.”

“Okay,” Jessica said. Then she said, “thank you, again.” Then she added, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, and you’re welcome,” I replied, and set off.

Susan and Lara followed after me as we walked down the hall and finally came to Susan’s bedroom. Once we walked inside, she slammed the door.

“What the fuck is this, Chris?!” she snapped, stepping right up to me and staring at me with obvious fury.

Submission be damned this woman did not back down when she was pissed.

I had to admit, I really liked that about her.

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “When we met, after we had sex and I got an idea of how shitty her relationship with her husband was, I...offered her help. If she ever really needed it. It was the right thing to do.”

Susan glared at me and crossed her arms.

“Susan,” I said, more firmly, “it was the right thing to do.”

She stared at me for a few seconds longer, holding my gaze with her angry green eyes, then she sighed and relaxed ever so slightly. “Fine,” she replied begrudgingly.

“You really want her to stay in an abusive relationship?” Lara asked.

Susan sighed more heavily and threw up her arms. “I said ‘fine’! I just…” She looked at me again and her expression grew less angry, more worried. “Chris, this is a lot to take in, okay?! God, this house is just big enough for three of us, and now there’s five of us!? We’re doing okay for food right now, but this will cut our reverses almost in half!”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I didn’t even know she had a daughter…” I muttered.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mention that,” Lara said.

“There was no reason to. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is: they’re here, they need help, we’re going to help them...right? We’re agreed?” I asked, looking at Lara, then at Susan.

“Yeah,” Susan said after a few seconds. “Obviously I’m not going to kick them out. They can stay here. But we’ll obviously need to rearrange things.”

“We’ll get it figured out later,” I said. “Let’s go eat for now. That’ll calm everything down.” I paused and looked at Lara. “Is there any reason Hannah would hate me? Beyond the fact that she knows I’m fucking her mom?”

“I don’t know, but I noticed that, too. If looks could kill you’d be fucking six feet under.”

“Well she’s got no tact,” Susan said, “so you’ll probably find out soon enough when she screams it at you, if it’s more than that.”

“I guess you’d know,” I replied.

She was turning towards the door but she spun back to face me. “I have tact you fucking giant prick!”

“How’s that not a compliment?” I replied.

“You are insufferable sometimes, you know that?!” she snapped, and I actually couldn’t tell if she was angry or just mock angry.

I decided to test it. I reached out and traced a finger across her throat. “Keep it up, and I’ll show you suffering,” I replied.

She gasped softly and shuddered, closing her eyes briefly. Okay, either mock anger or I’d just hit her with a hard injection of horniness and pushed aside real anger.

“L-let’s just get lunch,” she managed.

I laughed. “Yes. Let’s.”

We went back out.

When we returned to the living room, I found the atmosphere to be uncomfortable and awkward. They were both sitting on the couch at opposite ends, not looking at each other. They seemed to have warmed up now, at least.

“Come on, let’s get lunch,” I said, and pointed them towards the dining room.

“Thank you,” Jessica replied as they got up.

We took a few moments to get the mountain lion stew Susan had been preparing. She’d made a lot of it with the intention of freezing the leftovers, but as it was, it was just enough for five of us to have a full meal’s worth.

“What is this?” Hannah asked once we were all settled.

“Vegetables and mountain lion,” I replied.

“Where’d you find a mountain lion?” she asked, and I noticed a little bit, just the tiniest bit of edge came off her voice.

“Little ways up north. Susan and I had to fight it.”

“You killed a mountain lion?”

“Technically Susan did,” I replied.

She looked at me, then at Susan, then down at her food and didn’t say anything as she began eating. We all ate, and for several minutes, no one spoke. I could tell that Jessica was still pretty shaken up over the whole thing. She looked pale and unhappy and stressed, and I found myself wishing there was something I could do to help her.

Maybe I could give her a good, hard dicking. An orgasm would help her relax, I think.

Or maybe I was just thinking with my cock.

I glanced briefly at Hannah. Shit, this was gonna get awkward fast.

“So, uh, listen,” I said after several minutes, “this house isn’t really big or anything. There’s just two bedrooms. I was thinking Lara and I could move into the master bedroom,” I glanced at Susan, and she just shrugged and nodded, “and you two could take Lara’s room. We’ve only got two beds, although I guess we could move one of the couches in there…”

“No, I don’t care about sharing at this point,” Hannah said. “We’ve had enough shitty sleeping situations that it’s whatever.”

“That will be fine,” Jessica said. She looked around as she chewed on her lower lip, and her gaze came to rest on Susan. “I’m really sorry about this,” she said. “I know Lara and Chris had at least some idea something like this could happen, but obviously they never got around to telling you, and I’m so sorry to impose like this, I just-”

“Jessica,” Susan said, “it’s okay. I know. You didn’t have a choice. I’d rather be inconvenienced than have a good person in a bad situation.”

“What makes you think I’m a good person?” Jessica muttered, looking down at the table suddenly.

“Lara trusts and likes you, that’s good enough for me,” Susan replied.

“Well...thank you. Really,” she said after a long moment.

“You’re welcome,” Susan replied.

We went back to eating after that, and no one seemed to be able to think of anything else to say.

A Warm Place 4 Preview

Hey, finally making some good headway on A Warm Place 4! If I’m very lucky, I might actually manage to get it done by the end of the week, but that’s a big if.

For now, here is the first chapter. If you want to also see the second chapter, check it out on my Patreon!

---

I was alone.

Alone was nothing new to me. I had been alone a lot of times in my life. But this time, it felt different.

I was alone and I was thinking of chemotherapy.

Carefully stalking a deer through a snowbound, heavily-wooded hinterland somewhere in northern Kansas, or maybe even southern Nebraska now, I wasn’t sure, I tried to make as little noise as possible, and keep my mind from drifting too far.

But that got difficult, I was learning, when you spent too long in hard isolation.

Icy trees surrounded me in all directions and I was careful to keep the deer in my sights, my rifle at the ready. I wasn’t too keen on my odds of bagging this deer, but I was kind of desperate right now because my food was really low.

As in, I had like a meal left low.

But chemotherapy kept creeping into my brains the same way I was creeping up on this deer, trying to ignore it all: the cold, the hunger, the encroaching darkness and storm. I knew a storm was on the way and I’d have to get in soon.

I was thinking about how, in some cases of extra bad cancer, they sometimes tried something desperate: double chemo. But they weren’t supposed to because it carried all sorts of crazy risks, but it had a better chance of wiping out the cancer.

That was what I was doing right now, though to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure exactly what the risks of what I was doing entailed.

I mean, some were obvious.

That I could starve to death, or freeze to death, or get mauled by an animal, or killed by another human looking to rob me, or worse.

But that was just a fact of life nowadays. Those risks were risks I had faced, endured, and ultimately triumphed over time and time again over the past year and a half, ever since I’d decided to set out into this new, frozen, post-apocalyptic wasteland on my own. I was used to being by myself, I was used to wandering for long stretches of time alone.

This, however, was different.

Abruptly, the opportunity to make the shot appeared and I knew it was now or never. I froze, took aim, and fired.

And missed.

Just barely, I saw some of the deer’s fur fly off in a puff, but I had missed. The deer took off in an instant, vanishing from sight into the trees, galloping away to safety. I let out a long, heavy sigh of disappointment as I lowered the rifle, my breath appearing on the air in a haze.

Well, shit.

There went food for the next few days.

I looked around, knowing that I was either going to have to find manmade shelter of some kind, or a cave, or make some sort of really miserable lean-to, because I’d lost my tent to a scrap with a pair of wolves three days ago. It had been shredded all to hell.

My bow had also gone during that battle, snapped into pieces after my big ass fell on it. Not that it mattered quite as much, as I was out of arrows at that point anyway. I’d been doing some hard living over the past month, and my supply level reflected that.

Finally, I saw what appeared to be a lone structure up ahead, barely visible through the trees and the dim gray fading light.

I set off, and as I began walking, it started to snow.

I glanced up, a little startled. That always freaked me out a little bit, the way it could just begin to snow in perfect silence. Sometimes it was obvious, mostly through the winds, and I knew that some kind of storm was coming, but sometimes I’d wait three hours for it to actually manifest, and then just abruptly, big fat snowflakes were falling out of the sky in all directions, not a sound to be heard. It was oddly creepy.

In some vague way, it reminded me of spiders, and how they were perfectly silent.

You only noticed them when you saw them or, God forbid, felt them.

Spiders largely dying out as a result of this apocalypse, or at least dying out on the surface and in a lot of buildings, was one of the things I put under ‘benefits of Armageddon’. Yeah, I know, I know, they’re crucial to the ecosystem and they aren’t inherently evil or anything, but I fucking hated them and the world was fucked anyway, right?

As I headed through the falling snow, picking up the pace, my body already most of the way to numb thanks to all the time I’d spent outdoors today, I kept thinking.

It had been three months since I’d helped bring Pine Lake back from the brink of death, since I’d gotten shot and damn near gotten myself killed.

I had healed up and settled nicely into my new home. Honestly, the motel room at Pine Lake was the closest I’d ever come to a home since I began wandering, and it had felt nice. The first month was good.

Lindsay moved in with us, and they got a second bed, really more of a mattress they put in the corner, where she and Delilah tended to sleep. They had definitely become a couple, though it hadn’t stopped either of them from having sex with me regularly. Delilah more than Lindsay, I think she was intimidated by me, though she at least didn’t seem threatened by me. So that was nice. Elizabeth really liked me, and we’d spent a lot of time together.

The same was true of Megan.

Lisa wasn’t sure how to feel about us. She’d been awkward in the days following my recovery, but finally, after some hot sex and then some more hot sex, she’d eventually settled into a casual relationship where she tended to jump me once or maybe twice a week if she was feeling really up to it. The same thing had happened with Melanie.

God, I loved fucking that woman.

And that was my life for the next month, and it was really fucking good.

I helped out. I built things. I hunted. I protected people. I harvested and gathered and salvaged from the countryside and the dead part of the city.

I had great sex with the women in my life.

All the while, living in fear of the wanderlust bug.

It left me alone for a solid month, but near the end of that month, I felt the first tickles of that urge. That intense desire. That lust to wander, to just get out and be free and explore uncharted lands. Meet new people, see new places, do new things.

Test myself against the untamed wild.

For two weeks, I ignored it, but it got worse. During the third week, I began trying things, going out camping or staying up at the hunting lodge with the hunters. It helped, but only a little. The fourth and final week was the worst.

I felt anxious and irritable and sometimes like I couldn’t breathe.

I felt somehow caught.

It didn’t occur to me until Elizabeth gave birth that I was waiting for some event to transpire, something to somehow give me the go ahead to make a decision.

That event was it.

I ended up talking with the women about the problem, listening to suggestions, bouncing ideas off each other, and ultimately, this was what I had come up with.

I would leave, I would head north, into deep isolation, and then I would come back after, at most, two months.

That was about one month ago.

I didn’t want to just do what I normally did, although that was what I had done during the first week. I was exuberant and blissful as I hit the highway and headed north. I ran into a caravan of people, traders and travelers who seemed on the level, heading south. I spent the night with them and had amazing sex with the forty-two-year old platinum blonde who used to be a schoolteacher after being a model and now ran this group.

She could suck dick like few others I’d run into.

I pointed them towards Pine Lake and told them they’d find kind people and good trading there, then I’d gone on my merry way.

Shortly after leaving the caravan I began to feel guilty for feeling so good. I was practically high I felt so damned good.

I ran into a few more traders, and finally I stopped at a small simple encampment that seemed kind of like a way-station for travelers along the highway. It was built into the remains of a partially collapsed warehouse of some kind, and half a dozen people maintained it. Now it served as an inn. I’d spent the night and after flirting, took one of them to bed. She had been pretty hardcore, had a scar down one side of her face, and more on her body when I’d gotten her clothes off. She had muscles, and short brown hair, and she fucked rough.

It was a good night, and she was the last chick I’d hooked up with.

The next morning, I’d gathered my things, ate breakfast, made a few trades, and then I’d struck off in an almost totally random direction, into the nearest woods.

I was out here to burn out this need to wander, and after thinking on it for awhile, I had decided that the best way to do it was to go into total isolation.

And it had worked.

I had yet to see a single human being, let alone speak with one, since leaving that way-station.

Three solid weeks.

It was the longest I’d gone without human contact.

“Here we are,” I muttered as I reached the structure. It was some old, very old cabin, something that looked like it had been built a century ago. It had a chimney, it was dark, and it looked intact. Those were the only three things I actually cared about at the moment.

“Let’s make sure we’re safe,” I murmured.

I had learned that for whatever reason, talking out loud helped offset the...negative aspects of the isolation.

I walked around the exterior of the building, checking for threats and to see if it was as intact as it looked. The windows, I saw, were boarded over, but this looked to have been done a long time ago. Perhaps even before Armageddon. I didn’t see any people around, nor any wolves or bears or cougars. I thought I was far enough north that they might be a problem. Or mountain lions. Or were those the same thing?

Shit, I didn’t know.

I walked up to the front door and knocked on it firmly a few times.

“Is anyone in there?” I asked. Waited. Nothing. I knocked again, harder. “Is anyone in there?” I asked louder.

Still nothing. The place felt like a mausoleum.

I tried the handle. It turned, and the door opened when I pushed. It was dark inside, the thin twilight not nearly enough to help me see. With a sigh, I reached onto my belt and detached the miniature lantern there. It was solar-powered and really useful. I’d found it on a dead man a week ago, probably just someone like me, way out in the middle of nowhere. He’d been mauled to death by wolves, I assumed, and left to freeze in a lot of blood.

The kill had looked old, months at least.

It occurred to me that this would be an extremely lonely and miserable place to die.

The light came on and seemed to fill the interior of the single-room structure. I quickly played it across the inside, finding myself looking at hardly anything. There was a mattress on the floor, no bedding or pillows. A single chair. A fireplace. A toilet and sink off in one corner. I saw the remains of some cabinets that had no doubt been chopped up for firewood, and the scattered remnants of other random stuff on the wooden floor.

It was empty of life, at least.

I got inside, closed and locked the door to the best of my ability, then set my shit down on the floor beside the mattress with a loud groan. I was tired. It had been a long damn day, even though it really hadn’t, it just felt like it.

It was December now. Actually, by my count, and I could be wrong, we were nearing the beginning of 2039.

As if that meant anything anymore.

The only thing it meant to me was that at this point I was another year older, (my birthday was in November, oh what a birthday Megan and Delilah and the others had made it), and that the days were shorter than ever.

I think we were past the equinox, which meant that technically the days were beginning to get longer now, but that wouldn’t matter practically to me for at least another few months. It got dark at five fucking PM and that sucked shit.

Plus, it was winter.

Although it was winter all the time now, it still did actually get generally colder and more miserable during this time of year. Blizzards and snowstorms and absolutely bleak frozen days seemed more common during winter. Like today. It had to be below zero.

I saw that there was still a bit of burning fuel left by the fireplace, so I arranged it all as best I could and got a fire going. I sat there for a few minutes, not thinking of much at all. In fact, I considered that a luxury. As that warm washed over me and took me momentarily to heaven, it was like my brain and all my worries and anxieties and bad feelings were put on hold. It was really nice, and I now looked forward to it immensely.

But soon enough, the bad thoughts began leaking back in, so I got back to work.

First thing was first: I went back outside while there was still daylight left, though not much of it, and quickly began gathering up enough firewood to last me the night. It took me fifteen minutes and by the time I headed back inside, the last of the light was totally gone, and darkness swallowed the world with a gloomy absolution.

Stacking the wood a safe distance from the fireplace, I then set my thermos beside the fire so that it could heat my last meal that I had on me.

Tomorrow was going to be an…

Interesting day. If not a desperate one.

In the past, I’d gone for about two days at a stretch without any food, just water, and it fucking sucked. I knew I could go a lot longer, the problem was, hunger fucked with you. It fucked with your ability to focus and concentrate, it made you weak as it sapped your strength, made decision-making difficult. So it tipped the odds out of my favor, the longer I went without food. Once the thermos was in place, I began the process of methodically searching the cabin over.

I wondered who it had belonged to and why it was out here. Maybe some old miner or factory worker had it built, or built it himself, way back in the day so he could just fuck off and be by himself when he wanted to. Maybe there was a nice pond or river nearby, good hunting, (though that wasn’t my experience right now, that deer was the first I’d seen in days). Maybe he’d retired out here. I’d heard enough of those ‘disappear into the mountains when I get old’ stories and fantasies. I wondered how long it had been since this place had seen a human.

There wasn’t anything worthwhile in the cabin. Nothing tucked away or hidden or shoved up under something.

Nothing in the roof or ceiling, as far as I could tell.

The place didn’t even have a closet.

With a heavy sigh, I made my bed, wanting to get the physical labor out of the way as quickly as possible. I was exhausted, but I knew I’d stay up for a few hours more, then wake with dawn’s first light. Hopefully earlier, so I could get a jump on the day’s chores. I put my pack down for a pillow and got out my thermal blanket.

With that done, I took off my boots and sat down in front of the fire after dragging the chair over. And there I just sat for awhile.

It felt good to sit, and to know I didn’t have to get up if I didn’t want to for at least an hour or so. Unless there was some kind of emergency.

But I felt fear creeping over me.

This was the worst part of the day. The absolute worst. This was the part of the day where night came on and I was winding down and the loneliness set in.

I wasn’t normally a lonely person. I mean, yeah, sometimes I missed people. Sometimes I missed my family. Sometimes I missed some of the women I’d slept with who made an impression. I missed Mary. I hoped she was okay, wherever she was now.

But after the first week in absolute isolation, the loneliness had really started to settle in.

It had caught me off-guard, and after a few days it was so bad that it made me want to go home. I’d actually almost seriously considered heading back to Pine Lake. I knew enough to figure out how to get back, between the basic cardinal directions and a map I had of the larger area and my knowledge of a few highways, I knew I could do it.

But I’d held out.

I’d been a little skeptical at first, wondering if maybe this intense loneliness was a thing that would fade, if it was some anomaly. But it wasn’t. After another few days, I realized that it came on at night, usually around bedtime. I’d lie in bed, whatever bed was that night, and miss Megan and Delilah and Elizabeth terribly.

Sometimes I’d missed them so horribly it hurt and I damn near wanted to cry.

Crying wasn’t exactly easy for me.

But as bitter and miserable and wretchedly lonely those feelings were, in a way, I actually relished them intensely.

Because it meant something.

It meant this was working.

A Warm Place 3 Preview

Okay, here is the first chapter of A Warm Place 3! You can read the first two chapters if you are a 1$/month or higher Patron on Patreon here!

---

I had seen destruction before.

Burned down buildings, collapsed buildings, places that had been shot up.

But I don’t think I’d ever, in real life, seen so much destruction.

The rise in the land we had come out of the forest onto dipped gradually towards a frozen river maybe half a mile away, and the township of Pine Lake lay maybe another half mile beyond that. The incline continued until about the river, where it leveled out with the rest of the ground the town was built onto, so we had a decent view as we hurried through the snow. And I kind of wish we didn’t have a decent view.

It was making me a little sick with worry and anxiety.

There had probably been about eighty to a hundred structures grouped together in the town proper, and the fire had destroyed or seriously damaged damn near all of them. From what I could tell, the only part of the town that still showed any activity was an untouched section of ten or so buildings closest to us, set slightly apart from the rest of the settlement. There were twin rows of structures situated along a stretch of road that was probably intended to be the city’s primary entrance or main street.

I saw people moving among the buildings, but not as many as I would have liked to see.

“What do you think happened?” Megan asked as we hurried along. We’d slowed after five or so minutes, as it was obvious that whatever had happened was already over with and although people likely needed help, it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference if we arrived there a few minutes early. That and a mile through snow and cold wasn’t something you could just marathon your way through, at least not quickly.

Plus we had Elizabeth to think about.

So we settled into a slower but steadier pace.

“Either some kind of accident, maybe a generator or a fire got out of control, or some dipshit with a cigarette did the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or they’ve got an arsonist problem. Or there was an attack that got way out of control,” I replied.

“God I’m almost hoping Lindsay didn’t come here,” Delilah muttered.

“We’ll find her,” I promised, “one way or another.”

“Yeah,” Delilah replied quietly, and said no more.

We reached the river not much later. It wasn’t a massive river, I was glad to see, and it looked pretty frozen solid. We took the time to move a little ways to the left, where it narrowed to maybe six feet across and looked pretty firm, and then walked over one by one. No one fell and the ice didn’t shift or crack even a little, so lucky break there. I always hated walking on ice. Even when it looked three feet thick, I was still paranoid that it would give way beneath me. I hadn’t taken a plunge so far, but there was a first time for everything.

I tried to get a sense of what was happening and found myself wishing for binoculars. People weren’t running around, I could tell that much, but they were moving with purpose, it seemed. I heard some sounds come echoing out: voices, hammering. It was hard to tell if there was anything happening in the dark mass of burned buildings beyond because so many of them were still smoking, but I didn’t think there were any active fires left.

Hopefully not, anyway.

My mind began running through a list of things that were likely going to have to be taken care of, or at least checked on. Ninety percent of their town had just burned down, and while there was certainly the possibility that either some stores of supplies had survived in the burned out parts, or that they had stashed a healthy cache elsewhere in the region, or they’d lucked out and one of the buildings that had survived intact had been a massive cache of food or medicine, I figured they would need help anyway.

Good settlements had systems in place, but no system, no matter how good or how quality the backup might be, needed some amount of help when some huge wrench got thrown in the gears like this. This was a full-blown disaster.

Then again, depending on how many people had died in the fire, their new population might also reflect their new levels of supplies.

Dark, but it would take a lot of the pressure off, potentially.

I was still thinking about this when the people actually seemed to take notice of us and began reacting. I was in the process of preparing what I was going to say to them once we got close enough when, abruptly, one of them raced to the edge of the town and opened fire on us with a pistol. Delilah shouted and dropped to the ground. Megan went down on one knee immediately, grabbing for her rifle. I stepped in front of Elizabeth.

“STOP! WE’VE GOT A PREGNANT WOMAN!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. We were lucky: sound carried pretty well here, and we had managed to get close enough that they heard us. It was the first thing that popped into my head and apparently it worked, because the shooting stopped right away.

A few other people approached the one with the gun and they began to talk, though I couldn’t make out a word.

“Megan, relax,” I said. She had the rifle out and shouldered.

“If they feel like turning hostile-” she began.

“Then we’re probably fucked,” I replied. “There’s no cover out here. Maybe we might be able to do something, but I’d rather not start shooting what are probably innocent people who are dealing with the aftermath of a disaster that probably killed most of their population.”

She sighed and lowered the rifle. “Fine.”

I offered Delilah a helping hand. She looked a little embarrassed as she got up out of the snow, brushing it from her clothes, but if Elizabeth hadn’t been with us, I’d’ve been joining her in diving. In a way, I was a little surprised, (though not unpleasantly), to discover that my natural instinct was to step in front of her and try to shield her with my own body.

The little conference seemed to end and one of the people, a blonde woman, I thought, it was hard to tell at this distance, separated from the group, stepping closer to us.

“What do you want!?” she called. Yes, definitely a woman.

“We’re looking for someone!” I replied after a moment, deciding honesty was going to be the best policy for now. “And we need a place to stay.”

A pause. “I’m sorry, but unless you’ve got an amazing trade, we can’t afford to take on any more people!”

“We’ve got a lot of guns and bullets to trade!” I shouted back.

Because hey, we did.

Another pause. The woman turned around, talked with the other three or four people gathered there in a loose knot for about a minute, and then turned back.

“Fine! Come over here to me! Nice and easy! Then we can talk!”

“On our way!” I said. As we started walking, I talked to the others. “No sudden moves, and keep your hands away from your guns. They’re obviously jumpy, and I’d say from their reaction that either this was done to them on purpose or they suspect it was. Outsiders suddenly showing up likely won’t be viewed as good, at least at first. Even with the guns to trade we’ll probably be operating from a weak position, so don’t get pissy.” I paused. “Got it, Megan?”

“Yes,” she growled. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know you aren’t stupid, it’s just that you’re-”

“Emotional. Yeah. I get it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to fuck this up,” she replied, and she sounded calmer, at least. So that was good.

Probably reminding herself that most of their friends and family had just been set on fire probably the previous night.

The whole ‘someone else has it worse’ argument tends to be pretty hit or miss with a lot of people, honestly miss with most people from what I’ve seen, but when a horrific example of that argument is dead on front and center for you, it works a lot better.

Pain has a way of motivating people and tragedy has a way of humbling them.

As we crossed the final distance of snow between us and them, I knew for sure that I was going to offer my help. I mean, unless it turned out they were total assholes or something. If anyone needed help, then fuck, it was these people.

I could tell that even as we finished drawing closer. There were five of them standing in a little group, and more people had stopped, strung out along the road behind them, looking at us. They all looked tired, haunted, and grim. Most of their faces were marred with either ash and soot or dried blood.

The woman who had spoken, who I could tell right away was their leader, pale, blonde, and not much bigger than Delilah, stared hard at us. Maybe five and a half feet, not petite but she seemed slim under her heavy brown coat and dirty gray snow pants. She had a revolver in her hand and the way she held it, the stance she had, told me she knew how to use it quite well.

“Okay, that’s close enough,” she said when we were about five yards out. She regarded us each one after another with tired brown eyes. “I’m coming over,” she said after a minute, holstering the pistol, “try anything and my people will shoot you dead.”

“Understood,” I replied simply.

That seemed to surprise her, just a little. She turned around and hesitated. “Get back to work!” she yelled at the dozen or so people scattered about the street.

Oh yeah, she was in charge.

She had that voice.

That ‘pay the fuck attention to me and do what I say right goddamn now’ voice.

She walked over to us and three of the people slipped pistols from their holsters, not actively aiming at us, but clearly ready to draw and fire, pregnant woman or no. Fair enough, I supposed, but it did make me quite nervous.

She stopped maybe two yards out and up close, I could tell two things right away: she was mature, both physically and in her authoritative air, and she was very attractive. She reminded me of Hazel.

“First, show me what we’re talking about here. We’re not looking for fucking pea shooters. We need actual guns,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, and carefully got out of my backpack, then motioned for Megan to do the same. We put our packs down in the snow and unzipped them. I pulled out five pistols, all gotten from the assholes who’d tried to kill us before the blizzard, and showed each to the woman.

“Four nine millimeters and a thirty-eight. All presently unloaded. We’d have to formally go through it all, which I’d like to do in a better environment, but I’d say there’s enough for two full loads for each pistol.”

“What about one of those rifles?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they’re non-negotiable, but we are willing to work with you, and Megan and I here are very good shots,” I replied.

The woman considered that for a moment, staring at us hard, probably trying to figure out if we were full of shit or not.

Her eyes cut to Elizabeth, then down to her belly.

“I hate to ask but...can you show me your stomach? I’ve had people try to bullshit me before about pregnancy, they think it’s a sympathy ace to play,” she said, sounding honestly apologetic.

Elizabeth looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders, indicating it was her call.

“Fine,” she said. She unzipped her coat, then lifted her shirt and undershirt, exposing her pale, rounded belly. “Satisfied?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” the woman replied.

Elizabeth quickly bundled back up.

The woman’s expression hardened again after a few seconds as she looked at me. Great. “I’ll take these five guns and one full load for each as an entrance fee to consider further trading.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Megan said, and I tensed. “You want five guns and all those bullets just to consider allowing us the pleasure of trying to trade with you?”

“Yes. Take it or leave it,” the woman replied bluntly.

“We’ll take it,” I replied.

“Fine.” She turned and gestured at the group standing guard. Two broke away and began walking over. “Get the ammo out, once we have it collected it up, you can walk with me to the gas station over there and we can negotiate further.”

“All right,” I replied.

She frowned as we got the bullets out. “If we do reach an agreement, whatever it is, good trade or no, all four of you will have to pull your own weight if you intend to stick around. And there’s a shitload of weight to be pulled, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I understand,” I replied, accepting and quickly checking the magazines Megan handed to me from her pack before setting them carefully down next to the pistols.

The woman stared at me a moment longer as I zipped up my pack and slowly stood back up. The two men came to stand beside her.

“Grab it,” she said. As they did so, she looked into my eyes. “I’m Lisa.”

“Chris.”

When they were finished, she turned and began walking away. “Come on.”

We followed after her. I could tell Delilah wanted to ask about Lindsay, or at least wanted me to ask, but I looked right at her and gave my head a very short but firm shake. Not yet. As I’d said, we were already playing from a disadvantage, and although I was getting good, just strained, vibes from Lisa, I didn’t put it past almost anyone to take advantage at least some of the time. If our hand was weak now, then letting them know how desperate we were to find a specific person, or giving them a name too early might make the situation worse for us. Although that game could only play out for so much longer.

We were going to have to put our cards on the table, and soon.

The gas station she’d indicated was the first structure on the left side of the street. Directly across from it was an old restaurant, what might have been a Tex-Mex place, judging by the faded red sign over the front entrance.

At a glance, I counted a grand total of nine buildings left standing. I spied an apartment building at the end of the road, one of those long, low motels that was a string of a dozen or so rooms, and the rest could’ve been just about anything. Stores, shops, or restaurants of any kind. Lisa’s armed entourage followed in our footsteps while she walked ahead of us. Nobody said anything. I thought I heard someone crying somewhere nearby. The people were moving things around the street. Several were carrying dead bodies.

We walked into the gas station and an old bell dinged loudly as we did. Lisa walked right up to the front counter, got behind it, and faced us.

“What, exactly, are we negotiating for?” Megan asked.

“What do you want?” Lisa replied.

I glanced back. Two of the men stood out front, two stood just inside. They stared hard at us. I looked back to Lisa. “A place to stay for the four of us. Preferably all in one room.”

“That’ll be expensive,” she replied. “You’ll have to make a pretty big down payment just to get a room, and then we’ll have to assign you work. And you’ll have to do it, and not whine about it, and not do a shit job, either.”

I heard Megan begin to draw in breath and responded quickly. “I’m sure we can manage,” I said, walking closer.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

I set my backpack on the counter, and had the other three women do the exact same thing, and also empty out their pockets. I could tell she wasn’t bluffing about the down payment. She must be desperate for supplies.

“You’ve got wounded?” I asked as I started pulling things out of my own pockets, and then my backpack.

“Yes. Any of you a doctor? A nurse?” Lisa replied, and I could tell she was trying to keep the hope , and desperation, out of her voice.

“No, unfortunately,” I replied.

“Well, one of you is going to have to help out there. Changing bandages and checking temperatures isn’t that hard.”

“Okay,” I replied.

It took half an hour, and Lisa basically cleaned us out. I let it happen, because I knew it was going to a good cause. She wasn’t just taking all our shit for the fun or greed of it, she needed this stuff and that was obvious.

All the spare guns went, and even some of the none spare ones. Delilah and Elizabeth both lost their sidearms. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t think they’d be heading out anytime soon. Whatever happened, they were staying in town for now. Megan and I both managed to hang onto a nine millimeter. I took the one that held twenty round mags, her the fifteen-round one. And we each managed one full load and one spare. We both kept our rifles, though we now only had ten bullets apiece.

I managed to hold onto my thermos and most of my other cooking supplies, some matches, a bit of basic medical stuff, and some of my personal grooming shit. We all were allowed to keep our thermal blankets and a single set of spare clothes. Delilah kept her novels. I made sure of that. But everything else went. All our food. All our other medicine and fire-starting gear. All our spare clothes, blankets, anything of any trade value, spare knives. My compass, my hand-crank flashlight. Delilah’s and Elizabeth’s backpacks even.

It was a tough trade, but it did get us something that I wasn’t actually sure we were going to get: a room to ourselves. I imagined space was at a premium now, and I wasn’t sure if it was my cooperation, Megan’s fuming, or something else, but Lisa seemed to ease up there near the end of the trade. When it was all said and done, and we all put what was left of our stuff back, Lisa seemed a lot less tense. She almost seemed kind.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you to where you’ll be living.”

With that, we headed back out into the cold.

A Warm Place 2 Preview

All right, since we’re nearing the release of A Warm Place 2, here is the preview! You can read the second chapter if you are a 1$/month Patron right here!

---

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.

Like A Fine Wine 4 Preview

Okay, I’m finally on the home stretch of Like A Fine Wine 4. I’m hoping to have it wrapped up before the end of the month, but my mental state has been unfortunately very unpredictable the past few weeks. Either way, here is the preview.

If you want to see Chapters 01 & 02, check out my Patreon.

---

Jack came awake slowly, aware that someone was talking.

“...no, it’ll be fine...yes, I promise.” A sigh. “Lyra, it’s a guarantee...yes, I already asked him, he really likes you...oh my God, Lyra, stop it! You’re being ridiculous...no, he’s asleep right now...yes, it’ll be-okay, good. Just...I promise, you’ll have a great time.”

Elizabeth was whispering, but Jack was getting the impression that she didn’t have a great concept of what whispering actually meant.

When he heard the very soft chime of a radio being turned off, he asked, “What was that all about?”

Elizabeth jumped slightly, then sighed heavily. “You were awake.”

“You woke me,” he murmured, fully opening his eyes and rolling over. She was sitting on the side of the bed, naked, looking pretty great, even just from the back.

Well, especially from the back.

“Sorry,” she said. “Lyra. She’s nervous about sleeping with you.”

“She shouldn’t be,” he replied, then yawned and sat up. Stretching, he popped his neck, then his back, rolled his shoulders.

Elizabeth had gone hard on him last night.

“I agree, but Lyra’s just...an anxious woman. I think she knows it’ll be fine, anxiety is just reflexive for her at this point.”

“Could it be she doesn’t want to? I don’t want to make her uncomfortable…”

Elizabeth smiled. “Trust me, she wants to. We’ve...spoken. More than once. She really wants to. And she’s going to. She’s just...never been good with this kind of thing. She’s awkward. But she’s, well, prepared for it.”

“Prepared how? You say that with some significance,” he replied, intrigued.

“You’ll see.”

“Oh. All right.” He smiled and slid closer to her back, reaching around and cupping her huge, pale breasts in his hands while beginning to kiss the back of her neck.

She gasped softly and shuddered, then groaned. He paused. It sounded like an unhappy groan. Reaching up, she pulled his hands gently from her breasts. “Not right now.”

“Why?!” he moaned, falling back onto the bed, exasperated and horny but not prepared to actually argue with her if she was saying no.

“Trust me, I want to. Badly. In fact, I intend to go have sex with Riley or Sylvia soon…”

“What the fuck!?”

“You need to put a moratorium on sex until you hook up with Lyra,” Elizabeth said firmly. She stood and began pulling on her workout clothes.

“What is it with you women and these fucking moratoriums?” he growled.

“Hey, have we been wrong?” she shot back, turning to look at him.

He sighed heavily. “No. The sex is better if I wait for it. Just...it’s frustrating! Especially after all the fucking we’ve been doing.”

She smiled and reached down and patted his leg. “I promise I’ll make it up to you after you’ve hooked up with Lyra. Just think of the threesomes we’ll have.”

“When will she hook up with me? I’ll be honest, I can wait, but not that long.”

“You are such a fucking addict.”

“Oh like you aren’t. And come on! I’m around six insanely attractive women, five of whom are highly sexual and fucking me every day for weeks now.”

“Fair enough,” she said, relenting. “Today. I’m confident it will be today. Let’s go workout and get our shower in so we can have our morning meeting. I believe Maureen has some information for us regarding our next course of action.”

He just grunted and got up.

As Jack began his morning routine, first pissing and then brushing his teeth and then pulling on his own workout attire, he thought about the recent past.

It had been three days since Riley had come rescued them from the canyon. Although it hadn’t been as harrowing, (mostly), as the last two times they’d gotten themselves into a bad situation, Jack was pretty happy to just relax with Elizabeth and fuck her brains out as often as she’d let him. And that was mostly what they had done: fucked, slept, worked out a few times, and had pleasant meals. They helped with the cosmetic repairs but there was even less of a sense of urgency at getting them done than there had been before, that is to say hardly any. If anything, Maureen seemed keen on them slowing it down for the moment.

He was getting the impression that she was enjoying the working vacation and the downtime, possibly more than she realized she would, and wanted to extend it. He knew how she felt. This place was nice, the work was nice, the people were nice, obviously. Although more and more recently he was feeling that sort of itch that he’d lost over his last year of service. The call of adventure. Jack was realizing now more than ever that he’d been depressed, and depression was...many things. But in his case it had been a sort of blanket.

It had blanked out or muted most of his other emotions.

Namely: his enjoyment of going to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people and, maybe most of all, doing crazy or exciting shit.

The canyon and the scorpions had been frightening and dangerous, but also very exciting.

He was surprised to realize that he wanted more.

Maybe not more super extreme life-threatening stuff, but more adventure.

Jack finished dressing for the workout and joined Elizabeth in their gym. It was tough focusing, because oh good lord did she look so good and he wanted her so fucking bad, but he managed to get through the workout with too much difficulty. He finally went back to his own quarters and showered alone. He’d had a lot of sex with Elizabeth recently, and he had the idea neither of them intended to stop anytime soon.

Well, besides the pause she’d put on their sex life.

As he got dressed, he heard her and Riley shouting in sexual ecstasy and groaned. It was crazy how much he wanted to run in there and join them, or even just go hop in bed with any of the others. They’d almost certainly agree to it...although maybe they wouldn’t. Elizabeth seemed intent on her assertion that Lyra would jump him soon, and if she thought so, certainly all the others would, too. And they’d probably agree with her assessment that he should stop fucking until she was ready to take her clothes off with him.

How fucking ridiculous it was that being able to practically constantly satisfy his lust had done nothing to sate it.

It just made it worse.

Although it was probably good for the women, given there were six of them and one of him. They had each other, for sure, but they also had brought him along for a reason. And he fully intended to fulfill that reason to the best of his ability.

Promising himself that sex with Lyra was going to be stellar when it happened, and worth the wait, Jack finished dressing and headed for breakfast.

Everyone but Elizabeth and Riley were already around the table, eating. Lyra looked up as soon as he came in and immediately looked back down at her food.

She had still been awkward as hell around him.

Hopefully that would end today.

He grabbed his meal and sat down. Digging in, as he was hungry, he didn’t get a chance to talk before Elizabeth and Riley finally came in.

“Took you long enough,” Maureen said.

“We were busy,” Riley replied flippantly.

“Mmm-hmm. I’m ready to talk about our situation,” Maureen said.

Elizabeth and Riley quickly grabbed their own meals and joined them at the table. Maureen immediately shifted into what he had come to recognize as her business mode. It must be one of the places she flourished: leading a meeting or just talking to a group of people in general. He thought she was a natural at it, but she also had decades of experience by now.

“So, we’ve been discussing finding new contracts for awhile now. Since we all agreed that we would enjoy it, I have found what I believe to be a fair compromise between our various wants. Some of us want to hang around here, continue working on the outpost at our leisure, and do an occasional job here or there, some of us...want something a bit more.”

“Fucking adrenaline junkie,” Riley muttered with a smirk, looking at Elizabeth.

“Give me a break. How many times have you fucked in public?” she shot back.

“Focus,” Maureen said, and both women fell silent. “So I’ve picked up a few additional contracts in this region that we can complete at our leisure, and I’ve also managed to locate a small cluster of them in a region far to the north of here. Based on all the available evidence, I believe it would make the most sense for Jack, Elizabeth, and Lyra to take the shuttle, and the rover, and use the shuttle as a mobile base. How do you feel about this?”

“I’m game,” Elizabeth replied immediately.

“Yeah, me too,” Jack agreed.

They looked at Lyra, who squirmed under their gazes. “I...uh…” She seemed to steel herself suddenly and looked up, her glowing white eyes focusing on them. “Yes. I want to do this.”

“Good!” Maureen replied, looking genuinely pleased. “I’ve found you three contracts. The first is to recover data from a downed atmospheric probe. The second is to grab the inventory and perform a visual inspection of a rental storage facility. The third one is a bit grimmer: recovering any available data, and corpses, from a failed colony. But I figured you’d appreciate the opportunity, given it will offer closure, potentially, to several families.”

“I’m always up for that,” Elizabeth said.

“So, we’re all in agreement then?” Maureen asked, looking around the table. Jack, Elizabeth, and Lyra all confirmed that they were ready and willing to do this. “Excellent. I will download all the relevant data to the three of you and when you’re ready, you can begin the process of packing for the trip and preparing the shuttle.”

“I’d like your help with that, Riley,” Lyra said.

“Can do,” Riley replied.

“And I’d like you to eyeball the medical crap, Sylvia,” Elizabeth said.

“Obviously. You three would be in a lot of trouble otherwise,” Sylvia replied with a smirk.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh.”

Jack glanced at Lyra. He noticed her looking at him, but as soon as his eyes met hers, she immediately looked back down at her food.

This was going to be interesting.

…

It took longer than he assumed it would to get ready.

Or maybe that was just his perception. Jack was getting antsy, and not just because he was horny and none of them would have sex with him even if he asked. They all did indeed agree with Elizabeth’s philosophy of waiting, as he had casually broached the topic with all four of the other women, and they had promptly shut him down. Though he could tell they felt bad for him. He thought Riley came close to trying to jump him.

No, there was another reason he was anxious.

Lyra.

Of all the women he had been with, she was the most intimidating. Although that could simply be the fact that she was the only one he hadn’t seen naked or been intimate with yet. In their own way, they had all been intimidating, some a lot more than others. Riley and Anya were casual and sexual enough that whatever anxiety he’d felt had pretty quickly been put at ease. Maureen and, to a lesser extent, Sylvia really exuded that ‘mature cougar’ persona that was not unlike a teacher or a boss. They just had an air of authority.

And, obviously, Elizabeth had produced worry in him. Honestly, she still did. But even with Elizabeth he had a connection there with the shared history of being a Marine. They got each other on a level none of the others quite did.

But Lyra was just…

Different, somehow.

She seemed apart from the group, in her own class, maybe. He wasn’t sure what it was about her. She was confident, or, at the very least, he had seen flashes of confidence from her. When it came to technical expertise she was one of the most competent and confident women he’d encountered. And over the past few weeks, when they’d been talking off and on, she’d seemed to relax and open up to him. Then she’d snapped back shut again, right when she’d seen that picture he’d taken. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

As he prepared for the coming trip, Jack resolved to talk to her on the flight out there. She’d be piloting, but autopilot would handle almost all of the actual flight, and Elizabeth would probably be happy if they got things sorted out between them.

So he prepared. He took a look over his suit of armor and his weapons, bringing his pistol, the assault rifle he’d grown a bit fond of over the past several weeks, and a short-barreled shotgun that packed quite a punch. After running into the scorpions, he wanted something that had more of a kick. Something that could fucking demolish a monster with the pull of a trigger, but that didn’t actually explode. It took almost two hours to disassemble, clean, inspect, and reassemble all that gear, but it helped calm him and pass the time.

He packed the armor carefully in one crate, and placed the rifle and shotgun in a long gun case with a padded interior, then loaded up on magazines and shells. He also snagged a dozen grenades, mostly fragmentation, with a few high explosives for good measure, and secured them as well. After that he packed himself half a dozen changes of uniforms and underclothes, and an extra set of boots, just in case, and finally made sure that his photography editing software and all his photos were still synced to his suit’s database, as well as the library of digital books he’d been slowly working his way through.

As he finished all this up, Elizabeth came into his room.

“Done packing?” she asked.

“Yeah, how’s it going out there?” he replied.

“I’ve packed mine and Lyra’s armor and arsenals, and I just got done checking over our emergency medical stash. It all looks good. I figured you’d want to pack your own arsenal and I thought I’d do a little inspection.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, a small smile on her face, “you wouldn’t take offense to that, would you?”

“Please, be my guest,” he replied, sweeping a hand towards his bed, where all his gear was packed up in crates.

She walked over and opened up the gun case, studying the contents.

“Of course,” he said, getting up behind her and settling his hands on her big ass, “I might like to do an inspection of my own.”

He felt a tremor run through her body. “You know we can’t do anything now. For Lyra’s sake,” she murmured quietly, like she was having a hard time focusing.

He couldn’t help but smile. “I didn’t say anything about ‘doing anything’,” he replied, and ran his hands slowly around to her broad hips. She began to say something, but he slid one hand forward and rested it on her crotch, between her thick thighs.

“You were saying?” he asked.

She exhaled sharply and shuddered again. “We should stop,” she whispered.

“You want me to? I will. Just say the word,” he replied, his hands hesitating.

She paused for several long seconds. “...no,” she murmured.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

“Don’t stop, you fucker!” she snapped.

He laughed and brought his hands up, cupping her breasts, feeling them through the fabric of her uniform. She was breathing more heavily now. Jack began running his fingers over her nipples, which he could feel even more through the fabric, and her breath caught. He was hard as a rock now and knew this was a stupid idea because all this lust had nowhere to go and the only thing this was doing was building up useless horniness and making both of them risk saying ‘fuck it’ and fucking like crazy. Elizabeth had a lot of discipline, but did she have enough?

“Jack…” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he murmured.

“Maybe we could...just do it once.”

Apparently not. Interesting. Not that he could talk, he was ready to pull his cock out and go to town on her, but he was admittedly impressed with himself that he turned her on enough to get her to give in.

“Maybe,” he said. Then he stopped, knowing that if he didn’t stop right now, he wouldn’t stop. Neither of them would. “No.” He took a step back and heard her exhale sharply. “We shouldn’t. Lyra’s going to want my full attention.”

Elizabeth growled and stood facing away from him for a moment, rigid and ramrod straight. Then she turned around. “If you knew that, why the fuck did you get me going?” she growled, somewhere between frustrated, aroused, and actually angry.

“I guess I wanted to see if you’d actually be willing to,” he admitted.

She sighed. “You are a fuck, you know that?”

“Can you blame me? I mean, come on, even you can recognize the ego boost of knowing that you have the capacity to turn on someone who’s not just really fucking attractive but really fucking badass so much that they can’t help but give in.”

She stared at him for another long moment, then issued a sharp laugh and shook her head. “Yeah, fine. I’ll give you that.”

“Well, I imagine you’ll want to go use Riley to get off now,” he said.

“I want to but...no. You know what? I’m going to save it, too. After Lyra’s had you, I get you and I’m not fucking letting go until I’m done with you tonight, understand?”

“...what does that mean, exactly?”

“I guess you’ll find out,” she replied with a coy smirk, and she walked out of his room.

Well, great. What had he gotten himself into, exactly?

…

After another few hours of double-checking their gear and finishing running maintenance on the shuttle and the rover, as they were bringing both, and finally attaching one of the two huge converted cargo containers, they were done.

From how Elizabeth explained it, the two massive cargo containers they had brought down could be slung under the wings of the shuttle, and would act basically like expansions. Functionally speaking, they were survival shelters, though they had been decked out, obviously, given the nature of the trip. One of them would be able to handle the three of them without too much trouble, in terms of space. A lot of stuff folded up into the walls or ceiling.

Finally, after a lunch break and one more round of checking everything out, they were off. Lyra settled into the cockpit and ran through the pre-flight checklist while Jack and Elizabeth took a seat in the seating compartment and buckled up. After fifteen minutes, they were off, rising into the air, aiming north, and shooting off into the horizon.

“You should go talk with Lyra,” Elizabeth said.

“You think so?” he replied.

“Yeah. I think she wants to talk, but she doesn’t quite want to initiate it. Plus, she’s most comfortable in the cockpit, I think. Give her time and keep things calm, but be direct with her, and you’ll both do fine,” Elizabeth said.

He nodded, unbuckled, and stood up. Behind Elizabeth’s head he could see the landscape disappearing beneath them as they rose to a suitable height. He opened up the door to the cockpit and stood in the door.

“Hi, Lyra,” he said, and she jumped slightly, turning to look at him in her seat. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Can I join you?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m on autopilot now.”

As he came in and closed the door behind him, she turned the seat around and looked at him. Her glowing white gaze seemed intense.

Okay, he thought, slow, calm, but direct.

“Lyra,” he said, “I wanted to discuss, uh...well, our intended sexual interaction.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding. “I want to talk about it. I’m sorry I haven’t, you know, said anything. Or done anything. And that I’ve been so weird.”

“It’s really fine,” he said, he looked around, suddenly wanting to sit.

Lyra seemed to pick up on that immediately. “Sorry, it’s just the one chair...we could both sit on the floor,” she suggested.

“If you’d be comfortable with that.”

She nodded and stood, then sat down with her back to a console to his left. He moved to the right and sat down opposite her.

“I’ve sat on enough floors in my life,” she said.

“Me too.” He paused. “The first thing I want to get across is that I’m not upset, or irritated, in any way. I’m still completely comfortable with going at whatever pace you want to set, and I’m also comfortable if you’ve decided you don’t want to do it. I don’t want you to feel pressured in any way. Okay?”

She smiled. “I really appreciate that. I’m still certain that it’s a yes from my end. Honestly, I promised myself I was finally going to directly talk about this with you on the way out here, so I’m glad you came in. So...I want to have sex with you. Tonight. Honestly, I want to have sex with you as soon as we land and get everything set up. I want to fuck you like two or three times. I want to suck your dick and taste you. I want to fucking ride you like crazy and squirt all over you. I want-” she paused, breathing more heavily now, then laughed softly. “Well, let’s just say that I want a lot of things tonight. And from now on.”

“Great,” he replied. Already, he had a hard-on just thinking about fucking her tight little brains out. She looked fantastic, sitting there with one leg stretched out, the other drawn up, one elbow resting on the raised knee, an awkward smile on her pale face. “I was curious…”

“Yeah?”

“I guess two things. The first is: do you have a specific reason for being so hesitant? Second, why did you like...lose the ability to look at me or really talk to me after I showed you that picture I’d taken?” he asked.

She laughed quietly and looked away for a few seconds. “Sorry...I just…” She looked down at the floor now and sighed. “Where to begin?” Her eyes came back up. “I’m awkward. I’m sure you’ve heard the word a lot from the others when they’re talking about me. And they’re right. I don’t think I’ve very good at social interactions, most other people make me feel weird and nervous and anxious. I’ve gotten way better at it over the decades, but for whatever reason I’m stuck with it. Sex is...weird. For me. For two reasons. Well, I guess three, one of which we just covered. The second is my family and society. Probably no surprise, but xenians are weirdly conservative about sex. Especially interspecies sex.

“And, lo and behold, I was into other species. Like a lot. And bisexual. But the other problem that’s cropped up over the past twenty years or so is that my sexdrive has dropped off a lot. I think some of it is just my personality and the way I live my life, but I know it’s a thing that can happen to a lot of xenians. Humans too, from what I’ve heard. I mean, I’ve had sex and relationships before, casual and a couple more serious ones, but ultimately it all fell away and I kind of just focused on my job.” She frowned, momentarily becoming lost in thought.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, not sure what else to say.

She shook her head, focusing on him again. “No, it’s fine, really. I was happy with it. I am honestly. I love taking things apart, fixing things. I’ll be happy to go on doing it for another half century and beyond. But anyway, about your other question. It boils down to: I really like you. I haven’t been attracted to someone like you in a long time. Like, thirty years or more. When we met, it woke up my lust, though it was still subdued. When I went on this trip, I knew exactly what I was in for, and that I’d want to enjoy it. So I got some supplements. Basically, they kickstart xenians female sexdrives. I’ve been taking them in tiny doses over the past week or so, as I kept putting it off. But that day I realized you’re actually into taking pictures…

“It was a triple threat. First, I was already super into you. Second, I had just doubled my dosage that day. Three, and this is the big one: I am so into creative types. Some people go for strength, some for looks, some for wit, I just...fucking love creative type guys. And girls. Writers, artists...photographers. That picture evoked an emotional response, an intense one, and that’s basically like a mainline of lust. It was...overwhelming. It kind of freaked me out, how much I wanted you. I almost propositioned you to fuck me literally right then and there on the table.”

He laughed. “My God, would they have loved that.”

She laughed as well. “Yeah, they would have. I didn’t though, because I was kind of intimidated by the sheer magnitude of how horny I was. I told myself I needed time to sort it out, which was convenient, because you and Elizabeth were clearly very busy with each other. So...that’s it. My biggest turn-on is artistic people, especially ones who are really good at it or…” she paused, reconsidering. “I guess not necessarily that they’re really good at it, but more that they care about it. You can look at it or read it or experience it and just feel how much the person cared. And that’s what I felt about you. And, well, I was already so into you that it just intensified it so much. So yes, that’s why I kind of regressed and acted so weird.”

“I guess...good for me?” Jack replied uncertainly, making her laugh again.

“Yeah, good for you,” she agreed. She paused, studying him for a long moment, like she was trying to weigh something, if she should tell him or not, or maybe what words to use. Finally, she seemed to decide to plunge forward. “So, um, I want to make sure we’re absolutely on the same page here. Because I’ve come to learn that I’m bad at social cues, especially across cultural boundaries. I want to fuck you. Really bad. And I intend to. Within the next few hours. Like, soon. Do you feel basically the same way about me?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Unequivocally.”

She let out something that was part nervous laugh, part sigh of relief. “Oh good. I’m glad. Also, I’ve done all the research and there’s no reason not to, uh...you know, we don’t have to, um-we can go bareback.”

“That’s good to know,” he replied, trying not to smile.

He thought he was awkward, but Lyra was on a different level. She looked at him for another moment longer, then abruptly got up. “I should keep watch over the cockpit. Just in case. Um...I’ll talk more about this after we land and get set up.”

“Okay, Lyra,” he replied, getting up. He paused. “Can I kiss you on the cheek?”

She was silent for a second. “Yes,” she murmured.

He walked over and kissed her on the cheek, and saw a tremor run through her. “I’m really looking forward to our time together.”

She exhaled sharply. “Me too.”

He walked out of the cockpit, closing the door behind him, and sat back down across from Elizabeth.

“How’d it go?” she asked as he buckled back in.

“Pretty well,” he replied.

A Warm Place Chapters 0 & 1 Preview!

Okay, here’s the preview of the first two chapters of my upcoming post-apocalyptic survival novel A Warm Place!

If you are a 1$/month (or above) Patron over on my Patreon, you can also read the next chapter right here!

A Warm Place will be out January 1st, 2021! Possibly even December 31st, depending on how fast Amazon gets it up.

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ZERO

I can no longer remember the exact day that the snowfall began.

I know it was in June, two years ago now.

Some days I’m convinced that it was the fifteenth of the month, but other days I seem certain, absolutely certain, that it was twenty first. And then other days, I just don’t know. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. A lot of people argue and debate over when the end of the world began, I suppose that’s why I still fixate on it from time to time.

There are those who say it began in this decade or that decade of the previous century. Some even say it began during the Industrial Revolution. They all probably have a good point. It wasn’t any one thing that led us here. It was a lot of little things, a few big things, and mainly just people, rich people, who either didn’t care or actively fought against saving the world.

I mean, I think. I could be wrong.

Shit, it could be aliens for all I know.

But for me the end of the world began when snow fell in June.

I was in Florida when it happened. That was where I had lived my entire life.

There were warning signs. You kept hearing about freakier and freakier weather all up through the 2030s. For me it was ‘out of season’ hurricanes, or ‘unusually strong’ hurricanes that just kept coming. Eventually they wiped Miami completely off the map. And then the news started talking one day about how California was burning again, only this time it didn’t stop.

I remember seeing the Hollywood sign consumed in flames.

I think that’s what finally made it real for a lot people.

Or maybe it was the tornadoes ripping through the Midwest, leveling whole cities.

Or maybe it was the rain. Before the snow, we had rain, and I remember coastal cities just being totally flooded.

They had to evacuate New York City. As far as I know, no one ever went back.

I swear to God, it was like a goddamn disaster movie. Only it didn’t stop.

It just got worse.

Even with all that, I still got floored when it started getting cold, as in cold cold, in the middle of June. I went outside one morning and saw my breath on the air. It felt like stepping into a parallel universe. A few days later, a blizzard hit my town. I think that was when it really clicked home for me that this wasn’t going to just go away. I don’t know why that was the straw the broke the camel’s back for me, but it was.

I still wonder how long the politicians knew. Obviously the scientists knew, but I do wonder how many of them kept silent...or were silenced.

That’s still a really clear memory for me, though.

Stepping out of my apartment building and just stopping as the cold hit me like a hammer. It had been seventy five degrees the day before.

My breath on the air.

My lungs burning in the cold.

Miserably gray clouds overhead.

That was when I knew, somewhere deep, that this was it.

This was the beginning of the end.

ONE

I opened my eyes and was met with confusion and pain.

For several seconds, I had no idea what was happening, what hadhappened, or even where I was. I tried to move. My body was well on its way to numb, my muscles sluggish and unresponsive. I groaned and shifted again.

I was constrained by something, it was across my chest.

I blinked a few times, looked around, shivering, and finally my brain clicked back on at least part of the way. I was inside my damned car. But something was wrong, deeply, frighteningly wrong. I groaned as a wave of pain rolled through my body. My seatbelt was what was holding me in place. I reached down and fumbled with it, trying desperately to figure out what in the fuck had happened. Because obviously something had happened.

That my jeep, I realized all at once, was tilting slightly to the right. And there was a crack through the windshield, a big one. I hit the release and pulled the seatbelt up. My thoughts came slowly, like they had to crawl to get to where they were going. I knew I had to do something. I just wasn’t sure what the fuck it was.

Jesus, how hard had I hit my head?

Judging by the headache that was being kept at bay by the cold, probably pretty hard.

The cold. That was it. The cold. I had to get out of the cold.

“Come on!” I snapped, and jerked my whole body. A bolt of pain seared through me and I felt several different parts of my body cry out in pain. It hurt like fuck, even through the numbing cold, but it served its purpose.

I was more awake and aware.

Okay, I’d been in a crash. I’d been driving along a highway perched up on a steep incline and...I must’ve gone down over the incline. Why? I was pretty careful with my driving. Especially given how fucking foggy it had been.

Then I remembered.

Someone had appeared out of the fog. I’d been going a little faster than I should have. I’d swerved, gone right through the guard rail and down the incline. Shit. After all I’d gone through to get this damned car, the luck of finding it, and I’d only managed to hold onto it for a freaking month and a week!

I looked around, shivering worse now.

Maybe it wasn’t a total loss. But that could wait. The driver’s side window was broken out, as was the back windshield. I could hear the wind shrieking and knew that meant a storm was on the way. As I looked back out through the cracked windshield, I saw from the big fat snowflakes that were tumbling down from the iron gray skies overhead it was already here. Fuck. If I didn’t find somewhere secure in a hurry I could freeze to death.

I tried the door. It wouldn’t open. Feeling a bit of panic, I shoved against it. It should open if it hadn’t been too damaged in the crash, given that my side was the one that was angled slightly up in the tilted car. I began shoving harder, leaning into it and pushing against whatever I could. The door groaned and suddenly popped open.

I fell out into a drift of snow.

“Fucking-fuck!” I snapped, anger and pain briefly overwhelming me as my whole body cried out in anguish. I struggled back to my feet and automatically reached back into the car, towards the passenger’s seat, where my backpack full of all my most crucial shit was. My heart skipped a beat as I failed to find it. I crawled back into the vehicle, pain momentarily forgotten as fear started to overwhelm me.

No, it had to have just fallen down in the-

I looked on the floor, below the glove compartment, which itself hung open.

It was empty.

“Oh fuck me,” I whispered.

Someone had robbed me. I looked in the back fruitlessly. They had even taken the fucking mattress I’d had back there!

There was nothing left.

I stepped out of the car, my head suddenly clearing, my panic suddenly zeroing out.

In the ensuing months of the apocalypse, I had learned that I was oddly suited for surviving in it. Perhaps even thriving in it. One of the reasons, and this was one I had nurtured once I had recognized it for what it was, was that when the shit went down and fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, it was almost like a circuit breaker was flipped in my head. My panic, my anger, my fear, after a certain threshold they just drained away in a hurry.

Leaving my head clear to act.

I stepped up on the seat I had just been sitting in, getting my head above the car and taking a look around the area. Behind me was the incline I’d crashed down and the highway above. Well, I called it a highway, really it was more of a route through desolate nowhere, not one of those big four-lane jobs everyone thought of when you said highway. Nothing back there for me. There wasn’t much to see to my left because the land rose a good six or seven feet. To the right was a relatively flat stretch of land and I could see some trees scattered about.

Dead ahead, though…

The visibility was shit and getting shittier. But through the blowing snow I saw it: a building. It was small, almost certainly a cabin of some kind, but it was, ideally, four walls and a roof. Even that could mean the difference between life and death. Hopping back down, I immediately set out. Marching around the front of my vehicle, I headed off, kicking my way through the snow, careful as I could be to keep from falling in any holes in the ground. That had happened way too often for my liking since this whole thing had begun.

I paused only once, glancing back at my jeep. It was a lonely sight, and a sad one. I’d found that thing six weeks ago and worked hard to fix it. And now it was probably fucked. Well, that was the way of the world now.

Or I guess it always had been, it was just more obvious now.

Telling myself to get over it, that whining about it, even inside my own head, wouldn’t change shit, I marched on.

The cabin grew closer as the winds picked up. Yes, definitely a blizzard. I fucking hated blizzards. Well, I guess that wasn’t entirely true. Some of the most sex-fueled nights I’d had were during bad blizzards.

I tried to think as I marched across the open space towards the cabin, but it was too hard to think. My head was hurting and that, combined with how fucking cold and in pain I was in other places, andthe damned blizzard, made it too hard to think about the before or the after. I guess all I should worry about was the right now.

There wouldn’t be an after if I didn’t get my ass in gear and stay alive.

As I got closer to the cabin, it became obvious that the front door was open. Great. That could mean nothing, and I didn’t notice smoke coming out of the chimney. But someone could’ve just gotten there ahead of me, seen me coming, or maybe heard my crash, (how long had I been out?), and was now laying in wait for me. Fuck, and I didn’t have any weapons on me, either. Or did I? I began checking my pockets patting them down. No, the holster on my hip wasn’t just empty, it was gone. Knife was gone, too.

And my-

A wash of fear broke through my stoic dam as something occurred to me and I reached into my inner pocket.

“No,” I muttered as I began digging deeper into the pocket, even as I knew it was empty. “No, no, no!” I snapped.

My journal!

My fucking journal!

For a moment I was almost overwhelmed by anger, pure, white-hot anger that I hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

I was fucking livid.

But a particularly strong gust of wind almost knocked me over and a throb of pain cut through my body and it was like a dash of cold water across me. I could be angry later. Someone had stolen my journal, but I would deal with that later.

Of all the fucking things that could-

“No,” I muttered as I tromped on towards the cabin. “Fix it later.”

As I approached the open front door, cutting down to maybe twenty feet of space, I realized there was someone inside. They were laying on the floor, apparently passed out. I got a little closer and shifted, trying to get a read on what I was seeing. A woman. An attractive woman. Fuck. I looked around immediately.

This screamed trap.

But I didn’t see or really sense anyone out there. Didn’t mean no one was out there, but normally my instincts were good. Of course, I’d just been in a car wreck, a bad one that I was lucky to walk away from, and in a worsening storm.

And I was unarmed.

Not quite defenseless, but definitely unarmed. I moved forward until I hit the front wall of the cabin and peered cautiously inside. I saw some things: a bed, a kitchen area, a fireplace, but no people other than the unconscious woman. Time to do a perimeter check, see if someone was hiding out back or something.

I considered the possibilities as I walked around, scoping the situation out.

This seemed like a trap because I knew a lot of guys, not everyguy, but too many who were out and about nowadays, would find an unconscious woman and do exactly what you think they would do. I wouldn’t, because amazingly, there was more standing between me and doing unforgivable evil than ‘I’ll get away with it’.

The apocalypse didn’t wipe out everyone’s moral compass, in fact, I’d seen some genuinely self-sacrificing, heroic people since the snow started to fall.

But I think most people don’t realize that a shocking number of us don’t really have a moral compass, or maybe even just a shitty one.

And all these cliché tropes about civilization being the only thing keeping us from turning into barbaric savages was way more true than we’d like to admit.

In a way, it was true for me.

Before, I never would have killed someone.

Now? I had killed people. Not many, and I avoided it if at all possible, but sometimes it literally was you or them.

And it wasn’t going to be me.

I moved around the side, tried to peer in one window, but a curtain was pulled over it. So far, no sign of anyone. I kept going.

It was also possible that the woman had been running from someone, and that someone might still be around, looking for her. All the more reason to get inside and get secure. I came around back. Still no one. Just a thick forest about twenty feet away, barely visible now. Hustling along, I quickly completed my circuit and became about as certain as I could, given the circumstances, that I was alone save for the woman.

I carefully moved inside, ready to fight for my life if I had to, making damn sure to check either side of the open door before I got in.

No one was pressed up against the wall with a gun or a knife or something else to smash me in the head with.

Once inside, I closed the door and the howling of the winds quickly became blessedly muted. Working as fast as I could, I checked the building out. It was small, the kind of place people rented out, usually one, maybe a couple, to get away from everyone and everything for a weekend. So the kitchen, living room, bedroom, all one room. There were only two other doors. One led to a narrow closet that was basically empty with no place to hide, the other led to a bathroom with a shower stall that was going to be useless.

I checked the shower, I checked under the sink and under the bed, I checked everywhere a person could conceivably hide.

Finally, satisfied that I wasn’t going to get jumped, I moved over to the woman.

Crouching, I began to assess her.

She was still alive, that much was obvious, and I couldn’t see any blood or wounds. She wasn’t quite dressed for cold weather, wearing just some jeans, hiking boots, and a thin jacket over a shirt. She was very cold to the touch. Chances were, she passed out from exhaustion and being cold. Something I felt close to doing.

But I couldn’t, not yet.

Carefully, I picked her up and crossed the room. I got her situated on the only bed, a double-wide that was just big enough to hold two people. I got her under a blanket, made sure her head was comfortably on the pillow, then went back to the closet and pulled another blanket I’d seen in it down. Throwing it over her, I moved over to the fireplace.

For a moment, I was stymied. Normally I’d have supplies to start a fire, but I’d been motherfucking robbed and…

There. Relief flooded me as I saw a pack of matches peeking out from underneath a nearby footrest. I retrieved them, opened them up. Only six left, but hey, it worked. I pocketed them and then checked around the fireplace for stuff to burn. There was nothing left in the fireplace itself, and there were just a handful of twigs and a single, somewhat more substantial log left in an area that was clearly designated for fuel.

I threw it all in and then hunted around for a bit longer. There was a desk in the corner to the right of fireplace, beneath a window next to the front door. The top was bare, but as I rifled through the drawers, I found some papers. Good tinder. I set some in after ripping them up a bit and adjusted the fuel as best I could.

I’d need more, I didn’t think I was going anywhere for the rest of the day, but this would do for now. Working carefully and diligently, I got to work.

Firs things first: I checked that the chimney was clear. It was.

God fucking forbid I die of carbon monoxide inhalation after all the shit I’d survived.

It took a few minutes and two of the damned matches, but I got a fire going. It was small but growing. I crouched there, tending to it, making little adjustments and just relishing the warmth. Well, sort of.

Warmth meant my body was going to lose the numbness that was acting close enough to a painkiller. All that pain I was in was going to hit me full force. Making myself leave the primal comfort of the fire, I moved back over to the woman and checked on her. She was breathing less shallowly now and her color was coming back.

I wondered who she was. She looked young, maybe late teens or early twenties. Not too much younger than I was, even if I no longer felt twenty five.

I didn’t know what age I felt, other than old, most days.

She was obviously attractive, a redhead who would have easily been a cam model or vlogger or whatever a few years ago, with a lot of subscribers desperate for her attention. Even bedraggled and half-dead her beauty was obvious. I left her in the bed and walked back over to the door. Might as well scavenge for wood while the storm had yet to go into full swing. I opened the door, glanced back one more time at the mystery woman, then I left.

Back into the hungering cold.