Our Own Way 7 Preview

Here is the first chapter of Our Own Way 7.

You can read the second chapter if you are a 1$/month Patron here.

You can read the third chapter, and onward, if you are a 3$/month Patron here.


“I’d like you to remember that it is still being worked on,” Sadie said as the two of them approached the front door.

“Don’t worry, I’m keeping it in mind,” Gabe replied.

He looked up at the house, still impressed by it. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he could see Sadie waiting in her car in the driveway, he would have been sure he didn’t have the right house. Or the right neighborhood.

A cold wind gusted and kicked up some of the remaining snow as they stepped up onto the front porch and Sadie slid her key into the lock.

“I hate winter,” she murmured, unlocking the door and hurrying inside.

“It’s nice to be inside, at least,” Gabe replied.

He followed her in and heard her laugh softly. “I imagine a lot of life’s troubles must seem rather pale when you have two very attractive, very sexually active women living with you. Let alone four,” she replied.

“That’s a fair point,” he replied, shutting the door and looking around.

Gabe was finally getting the first real look at the house that, at this point, almost certainly was going to be his.

Well, not just his, but his and Ellen’s and Holly’s, and possibly Krystal’s and Liz’s too.

Even now, it still felt impossible.

Three weeks had passed since Krystal had gone back home to seriously discuss the possibility of moving back to Krystal’s hometown and enter into a relationship with three other people that she’d technically never met before. He’d expected more communication from Liz given this development, but she hadn’t really done more than text a few times. Gabe would have been worried about it if he wasn’t still in pretty constant contact with Krystal.

She wouldn’t stop texting and calling.

Now that they’d had some time apart and he’d really examined it, he could see that Ellen was right about the two of them: Krystal was really into him. He could hear it in her voice when she called him and read it in all the messages she sent him. He was actually starting to worry that someone was going to get jealous but the problem hadn’t manifested. At least not visibly. That was what really worried him: he might just be missing it.

There was a part of him that was afraid that Liz would hate him, or at least be really upset with him in some capacity, because of how much Krystal was into him.

But aside from this new development in the curious thing his sex life had become, everything else seemed to be progressing by leaps and bounds.

He was done with his second series about Holly. Everything was written and triple-edited by himself, Ellen, and Holly, it was all properly formatted and actually uploaded to Ignition. At this point, thanks to the ability to set release dates and the automation of that particular process, Gabe didn’t actually have to do anything. Every Monday at midnight the next episode went live. He had three more weeks of space granted to him by that: two more episodes and then the complete collection. Based on how well his previous complete collection had done, and the sales numbers of the newer ones, he was extremely interested to see how this did.

At this point, he was on his way to surpassing any job he’d ever had before in terms of earning. It wasn’t fantastic, given that he’d only ever worked crap jobs with crap pay, but still, it felt like a big accomplishment all things considered.

And thanks to his focus (as much as he was able to muster Ellen and Holly around) he was about halfway through the third series about Krystal, which was taking longer because the amount of words going in kept increasing.

By now, the shorts he wrote were about three times the length of his original pieces. No longer short stories or even novelettes but full-blown novellas.

Things had begun accelerating for Ellen, too.

Mostly she’d been painting, and she had a natural talent for it. She’d painted almost exclusively scenes from Recovery, and had now gone into the realm of fan fiction. Given how sexual their household was, Gabe supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d started painting sex scenes between some of the characters.

And she was really good at that.

In between that, she’d set herself up a website that offered both website design and graphic design, specifically making cover art for people, though she had yet to actually launch the site yet. After all her practice doing it for him, she felt more confident about doing it.

And she’d actually been getting some hits already, from a few work-for-hire sites she’d posted to.

He’d seen some of the work she’d done and could tell in some unspoken but certain way that she was going to do really well at this. It might take time, it almost certainly would, given the nature of modern life, but she had a natural talent and a natural drive. She didn’t need to hustle and grind at this point, but this was already proving that she’d be able to do this probably for the rest of her life and, if not be rich from it, then at least help carve out a living.

Holly had mostly still been relaxing, but had started to ramp things up over the past week. She was still getting her blog set up, and by now it was more complex than ever. He went to check it out every two days or so and at this point he found it intricate. She didn’t just have pictures of places, but also little descriptions written for them. And she’d been adding to the photos. They’d gone out several times, all over town, taking fantastic pictures.

And she’d gotten together her paperwork to do it on a more professional basis. (With a little help from Ellen, who had way more experience navigating bureaucracy.) She was still a ways from doing it professionally, but she at least wanted to dip her toe in and start to get a feel for what it might be like to be hired to take pictures.

It was a wild, interesting, exciting time for all three of them, and he was still shocked that it had taken seemingly so little time to happen.

He supposed that was largely because there had been huge chunks of time where basically nothing had had happened, no progress was made, and it was like he was just existing, stuck in some strange stasis.

That so much change could happen over the course of months, or even weeks, felt ludicrous.

“This way,” Sadie said, bringing him back to the present.

His eyes dipped briefly to her ass, which was showcased so very nicely in the tight jeans she was wearing. There was a lot to like about Sadie, but her ass was amazing. He was still having a hard time believing that unloading into her mouth was a memory and not a fantasy. Gabe followed after her, out of the entryway and through an open door to the left.

They had been discussing moving to another property with Sadie and after talking about it for awhile and doing some prep work, she had been ready to show him the other house that she owned. It was on the other side of town, in a more upscale neighborhood that made him vaguely uncomfortable to be in.

It was empty and felt somewhat cavernous as they walked through it, passing through one room, then into the kitchen, then back across the hall again.

“Bathroom,” she said, open door. “And then this would be a bedroom, or an office.” She opened the door next to it and they looked inside. It had a barren look to it and he could see why she’d been a little reluctant to show him.

She’d bought the property last year and had been slowly having it fixed up, but before she hadn’t really had any real rush to do so, as property management was something she’d gotten into awhile ago but didn’t have a great taste for.

They went upstairs are touring the rest of the first floor and looked through another three empty bedrooms and a pair of bathrooms, then she took him down into the basement.

“I’ve gotten most of the pertinent stuff taken care of,” she said. “Plumbing, the roof, some foundation work. It all checks out, and I intend to have a full inspection run by someone I can trust after I finish up. There’s still some electrical work but most of the work left is cosmetic. I want to get everything repainted and new carpets laid in, and replace a few of the windows. And finish out this basement. It’ll look a lot better once the carpet’s down and the painting is done. You can almost certainly turn this into a bedroom or maybe a den or...sex dungeon. I don’t know, I’m not completely sure what you’re all into.”

He laughed. “I don’t know if we’ll go that far.”

“Just so long as you don’t do any damage, I don’t really care what the five of you do,” Sadie replied.

They headed back upstairs. As they came to stand in what would be the living room, he studied Sadie. She looked different. She’d always looked good to him, but now she looked as good as he’d ever seen her. Part of it was her haircut. She’d gotten it cut in a sexier style. She was also wearing tight clothing that made her seem shapelier, that accentuated her body more. He thought she might be wearing a bit of makeup as well.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“I think it’s great and we’re going to go ahead with this,” he replied. “Even if Liz and Krystal decide they don’t want to join us, it would be nice to have a bigger place. Especially with all the work we’re doing nowadays that requires a bit of space.”

“It’s good to see the three of you working on things you care about, that you’re passionate about. Is that why they didn’t come?” she asked.

“Uh...I mean, I think that’s why Holly didn’t come,” he replied, laughing a little awkwardly. “She was out taking photos and busy. Ellen was busy but…”

“But?” she prompted, a small smile on her on face. She really liked it when he was awkward or embarrassed, he’d noticed.

“I’m pretty sure the real reason she didn’t tag along was because she wanted you and I to get some more alone time.”

“Oh.” Sadie blushed a little. Now it was her turn to be awkward. “I’m close,” she said, “to being ready.”

“Like I said, no rush,” Gabe replied. “I want you to feel good about it.”

“Oh I feel very good about it,” she said, her smile returning with a bit more intensity. She took a step closer to him. “Very good about it. At this point I’m just waiting on my test results. I should hear back any day now.”

He nodded. Something that was floated once they’d started seriously talking about all this, and something Sadie herself had independently mentioned as well, was getting tested for STDs. Everyone, including Sadie, was basically ninety nine percent sure they had nothing, but given there was going to be unprotected sex going on, Gabe didn’t think it was unreasonable at all to cover their bases. So far everyone in his circle, including Krystal and Liz, had come back negative. Sadie had been dragging her feet a little out an admitted hatred of anything doctor or medical related. Given some of the stuff she had told them about running into, he didn’t blame her.

“And then you’ll be down to fuck?” he asked.

Gabe didn’t want to pressure her, but he also didn’t want her to think he wasn’t interested or was faking it. She was still nervous about that, apparently.

Plus, well, he really wanted this.

It wasn’t necessarily that he thought she was teasing him intentionally, dragging it out on purpose, but she was teasing him sexually to a certain degree. It was more that she was teasing him and she happened to be needing awhile to adjust to the whole idea of sex with him. She’d been off the scene for over a decade.

Even after all their interactions, it had to be kind of an intimidating prospect.

“Yes,” she said, smiling and reaching up, tracing a finger slowly along his jaw, “and then I will be down to fuck...I still can’t fully believe that you’re into this. Especially with Ellen and Holly and, good lord, Krystal. I’d understand if it was just ‘another notch on the belt’ kind of thing, but I can read it in your eyes: you’re attracted to me.”

“Very,” he agreed.

“It’s a little strange, after a lifetime of...not exactly being the belle of the ball, and then feeling like my looks were going down the drain even before forty, and that they were gone by fifty, and now I’m five years beyond that. I’ve never placed a lot of emphasis on sex or relationships, but I don’t disregard them completely...I guess, what I’m really trying to say is that it feels surprisingly good to have the attention of such a handsome young man.”

She’d laid her hand flat against his chest now, staring into his eyes.

“It feels about as fantastic as I thought it would to have the attention of such a hot cougar,” he replied.

She laughed. “I never thought I would be a cougar. I knew a MILF wasn’t on the table simply because...well, obvious reasons. But a cougar...I kind of thought it was a little bit of a sexual myth. That men who were into noticeably older women were very rare, and even then only women who were unusually attractive even as they headed into middle age.”

“If there’s a thing that I’m learning,” Gabe replied, “it’s that ‘attractive’ is largely bullshit. I mean yeah, conventionally attractive people have it easier, but I’ve definitely learned that attractive truly is a roll of the dice. I never in a million years would have thought that Ellen or Holly or Krystal or you would be genuinely sexually attracted to me.”

“You know, I was attracted to you before we even met,” Sadie murmured, settling her other hand on his hip now.

“Really?’

“Yes. You’ve got a very sexy voice. When we first spoke, it honestly made me horny to a degree I hadn’t been in a few years...I very seriously considered jumping you when we first met.”

“What stopped you? Because that would have been amazing,” he replied.

She laughed. “I suppose I was uncomfortable with the age difference...and I wasn’t sure if you were single or not. And ultimately I lost my nerve.”

“And now you aren’t worried about the difference?”

“No. Not really. You’re...a lot more mature than a lot of people at your age.”

“If you say so...you wanna make you?” he asked.

She exhaled sharply and blushed again. “I...wasn’t expecting that,” she murmured. “Yes.”

And then she kissed him, and he slipped his arms around her, leaning into the kiss. Such a rushing thrill of excitement burst within his stomach as their lips met and he tasted her and he felt her against him. He thought of her naked and how it felt to put his dick in her mouth, how it felt to have he wrap her fingers around his cock and jack him off. Feeling her up, seeing her masturbate, having sex in front of her.

What it might feel like to be inside of her.

Her tongue in his mouth was even more thrilling.

“You know,” he said, “I honestly don’t have to wait for the results to come back. We could fuck right now if you wanted to.”

She pulled back slightly, staring at him, flushed and breathing heavily. Then shook her head slightly. “Not yet,” she managed. “I’m sorely tempted but...not yet. I want it to be right. Believe me, I love the idea of a spur-of-the-moment, impassioned tryst as much as the next girl but...it’s been a decade. I want it to be...proper. Very soon, though, Gabe.”

“I’ll be ready,” he said.

She smiled and kissed him again, then pulled back, letting her hands fall to her sides. She sighed. “This is agitating,” she admitted. “I’m very horny right now.” She sighed. “Obviously you are too...but you have a pair of women you can go home to and get...help. Satisfying that urge.”

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, “don’t worry, I’m not the jealous type. You and Ellen and Holly are all so good to and for each other. I’m happy.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome...now come on, there’s business I need to tend to elsewhere. The renovations shouldn’t take more than a week, perhaps two at the very longest.”

“What about rent?” he asked as they headed for the front door.

“I don’t know...honestly I’m tempted to just let you have it for free. The rent has just been a pretext at this point.”

Gabe was reaching for the knob but he hesitated and then turned to face her. “Why are you doing this for?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, really? I appreciate it, we all do, and I trust you, but...it doesn’t fully make sense.”

She looked back at him, twisting her lips, seeming to consider his words. “It took awhile, but I became good at making money,” she replied finally. “I won’t say I’m rich, but I am very well off at this point. Honestly, by now, I have enough to last me the rest of my life if I’m not stupid. Hell, even if I’m stupid. It’s been like that for fifteen years or so. After a certain point, I just...don’t really care. I have a nice house with nice stuff and a nice car, and a fat savings and retirement fund, some good stock options. I went on several vacations. To Europe. To South America. I went to Japan two years ago. And that was fun, and I’ll probably still go on a few of those trips, but I have more money than I know what to do with. The thing that remains is my desire to help people, somehow. So now I donate to charities and help out around town if I can...that’s why.”

Gabe thought there was a little more to it, something in the way she was talking, or maybe the way she was looking at him, but she seemed to hedge a little. Before he could respond, his phone buzzed. He checked it.

There was a text from Krystal: I’M COMING FOR YOU DUDE!

And then a pic of her tits popped up. She had pulled her shirt and bra up in the car and taken a picture. He felt a hit of direct lust, made all the more powerful by his makeout session with Sadie. He replaced his phone.

“I really appreciate it, Sadie,” he said. “Honestly, you’ve changed my entire life. For the better by far.”

She smiled. “That makes it worth it. I had a very good feeling about you, Gabe, and I’m so glad to find out that it was right...now, I assume that was a woman wanting sex?”

He laughed awkwardly. “Kinda yeah. Krystal and Liz are coming back down today and they’re on the way apparently.”

“Give me a kiss and get back to them, then,” she said.

He and Sadie shared another kiss, and then he was out the door.

A Warm Place 9 Preview

Here’s the first chapter of A Warm Place 9.

You can read Chapter Two if you are a 1$/month patron here.

You can read Chapter Three, and onward, if you are a 3$/month Patron, here. (Here’s a blog explaining this latest development.)


Awake again.

Panic again.

I sat up, as the panic was more mild this time, and already I was questioning it, and looked around. Everything was moving, gently. It was subtle, but it was obvious, like I was in a car driving along a highway. Only that didn’t happen anymore, for the most part. It was dark, though not completely so.

A single shaft of light spilled into the room and gave me a view of it, and I relaxed as it came back to me again and slowly laid back down.

After two and a half years of snowy apocalypse where almost nothing actually worked anymore, it was still incredibly jarring to wake up on a moving train. For me, at least. And Hannah and Susan. As far as I knew, the others didn’t have a problem adjusting to it. We got nightmares somehow related to being tied up or buried alive for some reason, but as I laid there in the dim light, I realized that I couldn’t remembering having one last night.

Maybe I was getting used to it.

For a moment, I just laid there and stared at the ceiling. The light in our cabin came from a single bullet hole in the exterior wall. We’d debated for a bit about what to do about it and ultimately I liked the idea of having even a tiny extra window to provide sunlight in the morning. The problem with our pair of windows was that there was no in between. The metal shutters were either sealed tight, hiding the light completely, or fully open. Considering we were all supposed to be sleeping in, me especially, we didn’t particularly want sunlight blazing into the cabin every morning. We didn’t quite want perfect darkness either.

The bullet hole seemed like a nice little compromise. Normally I’d light candles, to help me see during the night, or have a fire going in a fireplace. But candles in a moving train made me nervous that they might get knocked off while we were sleeping and catch something on fire, and the train was built well enough that having a fire going in the wood-burning stove that had been added to the cabin before we’d gotten there made it unbearably hot. So, we’d found some thick plastic, cut a piece to fit the hole, and shoved it in.

It worked well enough.

Like having the blinds or curtains open just a crack.

I wondered idly what time it was. The quality of the light put it definitely past dawn. It might be towards noon even.

I wasn’t prone to sleeping in, but Lisa and Melanie both had told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to spend as much time sleeping and resting as possible while the train was running as it was supposed to and we had the time.

For once, I didn’t argue.

The main reason was that the last several weeks had really kicked my ass in a way it had never been kicked before. Starting with the trek back to Pine Lake, the run-in with the asshole group, then the furious race to find Megan and Melanie and Fay, to the desperate rush that lasted for weeks trying to keep Pine Lake alive, and finally getting this train operational…

When we’d taken off, heading north towards, hopefully, our salvation, I was more tired than I ever remembered being in my entire life.

I’d probably slept half of the past five days away.

My body was beaten, bruised, and battered, and my exhaustion was bone-deep.

It felt worse than when I’d been recovering after getting shot.

Even now, I could feel that I wasn’t healed up completely. I knew I owed part of that to the fact that after two days, I hadn’t been able to really stay down when I probably should have. There was a lot to do on the train and I felt too much like shit just laying there while everyone else was getting it done. I’d argued with Lisa about it and she’d finally given me some light duty. Mostly I hung out in the kitchen with Elizabeth and Delilah and a few others preparing meals or sorting food, making sure we had enough.

One of the girls murmured in her sleep and shifted. I looked over. It was Hannah. She lay between Megan and I. Across from the foot of the bed was another, smaller bed, a twin size where Lara and Susan slept together. We’d agreed that five of us should share the room given that it was pretty large.

I had to admit, it was sure nice enough for me.

That was another reason I probably wasn’t healing up as fast as I could be: four horny and willing women who were usually naked in here with me.

How could I possibly turn them down when they offered?

Megan and Susan seemed to be the more responsible of the four, tending to hold off or not go for longer sessions, but Lara and Hannah?

Lara was hypersexual, it seemed, and Hannah was still in the midst of discovering just how fucking awesome sex could be.

And then of course there was Jessica, and Elizabeth. Two horny MILFs who lived right next door who had both gotten out of shitty, sexless marriages not all that long ago and had figured out that sex with me was really, really nice.

And there was also Lisa, Fay, and Melanie, who I was having casual side sex with, although Fay and Lisa had been too busy since we’d begun living on the train and Melanie had only fucked me once. I got the impression she was holding back for just the reason that she was a doctor and knew I needed to rest and recover.

With a sigh, I sat up and got to my feet, then moved into the tiny bathroom and took a piss. I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep at this point, I could just tell. Probably a good idea to get up anyway.

I flushed the toilet and was again struck by how much I missed that sound. Goddamn was it good to have a working toilet. I glanced at the shower stall. And shower. We had to ration, because there was only so much hot and clean water, but still, a five minute hot shower every two days and a functional toilet was just amazing.

I brushed my teeth and was considering who to wake up to take my shower with, because it made sense to double-up while showering and I hadn’t taken one yesterday, which meant I got to take one today, when I heard someone moving in the bedroom behind me. A moment later there was a light knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said.

The door slid open and Susan appeared, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Hey...I gotta pee,” she murmured.

“Want to shower with me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied immediately.

“Brush your teeth and pee, then we can shower,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied.

I finished up and then stepped out. She went in and shut the door and got to her business. Lara was still out, I could see, and so was Megan, but I thought Hannah would be up soon. I was surprised Susan was the one who’d gotten up first, normally she was a heavy sleeper. Although honestly, I was more surprised that Hannah wasn’t already awake. But I guess the past few weeks had taken a heavy toll on her as well.

I heard the toilet flush and the shower start up and slipped back into the bathroom.

~

Twenty minutes later I emerged from our quarters with Hannah and Susan, dressed and feeling refreshed.

The bad thing about doubling up on showers was that it tended to take longer...for obvious reasons.

The good thing about doubling up was that technically speaking, we each had five minutes, which meant that what was supposed to be a five minute shower had turned into fifteen minutes of sex in the shower with Susan and then Hannah.

So that was pretty cool.

We walked down the hallway to the dining area of our cart, which was almost empty. Only a few people were sitting at the tables, and I could see why: judging by the position of the sun out the windows, it was maybe an hour before noon. These few people were either taking late breakfasts like us, or an early lunch. We got our food from the serving area, finding vegetable stew and venison on offer, and orange juice. That one was nice, there had been a huge stash of long frozen OJ on the train and we were making good use of it since there was a decent chance we wouldn’t realistically be able to bring most of it with us when the train broke down.

So far, this vehicle we’d found had held up pretty well.

I’d hardly seen Fay because she’d been so busy running maintenance all over it, but she seemed happy. Busy, but happy.

The few times I’d spoken with her she seemed confident that it’d keep going for at least several more days before something went wrong. That was something she had stressed: it was going to break down, and it almost certainly was not going to make it to where we wanted it to. And I thought she was right.

So far, the going was slow.

Besides the fact that we were literally going slowly, both to keep the train from being too stressed and also to make it possible to stop in case there was something blocking the way or like a bridge or something was out, we also tended to stop at least once a day, sometimes twice. For a number of reasons: to gather energy from the solar cells more effectively (they didn’t work as well while in motion), to gather snow to melt for the water supply, to go on a hunting expedition.

So far I had yet to leave the train during one of these stops, except twice to stretch my legs and walk around outside for a bit.

By now, I was feeling the effects.

“What are you thinking about, babe?” Hannah asked, and I felt her foot brush mine under the table. I had been staring out the window at the frozen landscape of fields and trees and abandoned vehicles and buildings. I glanced over at her. She was smiling at me, a calm, warm smile, and I couldn’t help but return it.

Hannah had become extremely affectionate since we’d settled onto the train. It wasn’t that she wasn’t this way before, it was just that it was very obvious now. I wasn’t sure what was causing it but I liked it.

“I was thinking that whenever we next stop, I’m getting off this train and going on a hunting trip or something. Maybe explore a building,” I replied.

“You sure Melanie or Lisa will let you?” Susan murmured with a small smirk.

“I think they won’t be able to stop me. I’m still healing, but I’m no longer down for the count. I’m starting to get some cabin fever...what are you smirking at?”

“I just think it’s a little, uh...amusing, the way Lisa and Melanie...make you do things, I guess,” she replied.

“They’re very convincing,” I replied.

“Who’s the most convincing?” Hannah asked, brushing my foot with hers again.

“Oh no, I’m not heading into that territory. That’s just a variation on ‘who’s the prettiest?’ or ‘who fucks best?’. I don’t answer those questions.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Hannah murmured.

“That’s a smart man,” a new voice said. We glanced over as Lisa walked up to our table. “Mind if I join you?”

“You’re always welcome to join,” I replied.

She smiled and took a seat. “You seem to be doing better.”

“I am,” I replied, wondering how much she’d heard of what I’d said earlier about leaving the train. I knew she wouldn’t like it. She’d been worrying over me a lot. “How are things going on the train lately?”

“Well enough, I suppose, given what we’re dealing with,” Lisa replied, growing a little more irritable. She sighed. “I know I should be more grateful, and I am, it’s just that...I’m so fucking sick of bad things happening and shit going wrong.”

“You’re handling it really well,” Hannah said.

“Yeah. I mean, as our leader, you have to see the whole pictures, and make all the big decisions. All the rest of us get to focus on one or two little parts of the picture. Most of us couldn’t do that,” Susan added.

“Well, at this point, I can’t claim to run this whole miserable operation on my own,” Lisa replied. “Chris pretty obviously is helping shoulder a lot of this responsibility.”

“Oh no,” I said, “I just get shit done. I’m not a leader.”

“Come on, Chris, you can’t even pretend to claim that anymore,” Lisa said, folding her arms as she sat back in her chair and fixed me with a stern look. “You’ve played a significant role in making several big decisions.”

I stared back at her, a feeling of discomfort settling over me. I wasn’t sure what to say, how to respond to that.

“To be clear, you’re doing well,” she added, her features softening.

“I don’t like that idea,” I said finally.

“Which is a good sign,” Lisa replied.

“I don’t see how. A reluctant person in a leadership position doesn’t exactly instill confidence.”

“Surely you’re aware by now that the best people to make decisions are the ones who don’t want power. People who want power get corrupted pretty easily, or already are. You know who I mean: the jerk-offs who get off on power plays and telling people what to do. The pieces of shit who are content to hide in a bunker while sending thousands to fight and die, instead of being out there and laying their own lives on the line. Reluctant leaders who still understand responsibility and are brave enough to make the hard choices are the best, because they won’t abuse their power. Mostly. I fucking hate my job but I’m decent at it and we’d probably all be dead if I hadn’t stepped up,” Lisa said.

I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I guess you have a point. I still prefer to just be a useful tool. Aim me at a problem and let me fix it.”

“That’s a dangerous mindset,” Hannah said. “If some piece of shit who jacks off to power gets ahold of a ‘tool’ like that…”

“I mean I have to trust who’s aiming me at shit,” I replied.

“That’s a fair point,” she said.

Lisa began to say something but fell silent and began looking around as the train abruptly started to slow.

“What’s happening?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know,” Lisa replied, getting to her feet. “We shouldn’t be stopping.”

“Great,” I muttered, standing as well, abandoning what was left of my breakfast, “let’s go see what happened this time.”

Raw II Preview

The preview is finally here! Which means the actual novel release isn’t that far behind…ideally.

As usual, the first chapter is free, the second one you get access to if you are a 1$/month or higher patron over on my Patreon.

Check it out here.


CHAPTER I

“There will be many, many corpses,” Jak said as he ducked under a branch, then stepped over a large rock. “And we must deal with them today.”

“I’m not looking forward to it,” Rylee replied.

“I suppose it is worth it, if it means we have a new home, and safety,” Niri murmured.

“Safety for now,” Jak said. “You have to remember that we will never truly be safe. Especially not while we have so small a tribe.”

“Do you really think we can find others to join us? We are a strange group: an elf, a magic user, and a man from a mysterious, distant land,” Niri said.

“I think I can convince people to join us,” Jak replied. “They already have a name for me.”

“Who?” Rylee asked.

“The Tolvar. They called me the Amber Warrior.”

“Hmm. I suppose the color of your skin is a little like amber,” Rylee said. “And you are definitely quite the warrior.”

They fell silent as they approached the clearing in front of the cave. Already, Jak could detect the various scents of the recent slaughter. Blood, guts, excrement. Fear. He could smell it lingering on the air, even now. As he caught this awful concoction of odors, Jak felt his body responding instinctively. His senses opening up, preparing to warn him of danger. Usually, if there were dead things around, the thing that killed it might also still be around. Even though in this case he was the thing that had killed, or helped kill, everyone here.

But other things could have shown up since he’d gone to get the women.

Slowly, they emerged into the clearing in front of the cave that was to be their new home. For a moment, they simply stood there together, surveying the carnage.

“This is truly impressive,” Rylee murmured finally. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of something like this. A single man wiping out an entire warparty.”

“It wasn’t a single man,” Jak replied. “It was mostly spiders.”

“But you thought to lead them here. To pit them against each other. And it worked,” Rylee pressed. “This is entirely your doing.”

“You two helped.”

“It was mostly you,” Niri said.

“Well, it’s done,” Jak replied, unsure of how to feel about this. He did feel proud about the bloody battlefield, but it also made him uncomfortable for a reason he could not articulate. “For now, we should explore the caves, and be wary. Other predators or scavengers may come up, and I imagine there must be more Tolvar out in the forest, those who weren’t here when the battle happened.”

“Oh...yes. That is true,” Niri murmured, looking around uncomfortably.

“Come on. The sooner we begin this work, the sooner we can claim these caves as our new home, the site of our new tribe,” Jak said, and began making his way across the field of death. Though the large bonfire had mostly gone out by now, a few fires still burned from where something large had crashed into it and scattered burning wood everywhere. Jak was grateful it hadn’t spread to the forest. He studied the area with a focused eye.

The clearing sat in front of a large rock wall that curved up into a broad overhang which shaded almost half of the space. In the rock wall were three cave entrances. The one in the middle was the largest, while the one to the left was the smallest, closer in size to the cave Jak, Niri, and Rylee presently called home.

Perhaps the greatest feature was the waterfall. It was small, about the same size as the one they had been making morning pilgrimages to, off to the east side of the cave complex, just out of sight enough to provide a little bit of privacy, creating a creek that was just big enough to possibly sustain some fish and other creatures.

He tightened his grip on his club as he spied a few blood trails leading into the caves. It was entirely possible that some of the Tolvar had survived the battle and, while he had been gone, come back and hid in the caves to heal. Or that wolves or other predators had come and dragged some corpses into the caves for a quick meal.

Either scenario meant combat.

“Stay behind me,” Jak said as he crouched and picked up one of the more intact burning sticks. He passed it to Rylee. “Use this to light the way.”

“I will,” she replied, accepting it.

“Niri, make sure no one sneaks up behind us,” Jak said.

“All right.”

Jak chose the cave to the right to enter first. He still had a memory of it stored in his mind from his previous run-through before going to get the women. This time, though, he would move more slowly. He walked into the tunnel, studying everything he could see in the daylight and the flickering torchlight. The floor and the earthen walls to either side of him showed signs of life. There were many footprints in the dirt, marks along the walls from hands and weapons, made in passing. It seemed a few Tolvar shared Niri’s proclivity for painting on the cave walls, though their paintings seemed much more crude by comparison.

Broken pottery, bones, bits of flint and slate, vegetation, chunks of meat, burned wood, and discarded tools and weapons lay scattered randomly across the floor of the cave. There was a break in the right wall that led into a small cavern. One of the blood trails led there. Jak gripped his club more tightly, preparing for combat yet again.

He got up to the turn in the tunnel and peered slowly around it, revealing as little of himself as possible. The light was about as good, as a few small holes in the ceiling of the cavern ahead let some sun filter in. There was an unmoving shape near the center of the cavern. Jak waited several moments, then began making his way into the space. He quickly checked to his right and left, but no lingering Tolvar waited for him, no animals hid in the shadows to ambush him. The place was obviously lived in, not long ago likely a communal sleeping place. Several simple furs and bunches of some of the softer plants lay in heaps along the edge of the space.

Jak could see that the lump in the center of the cavern was indeed a body, and not breathing. He prodded it with his club when he got close enough. It didn’t react. He pushed it over onto its back and found a Tolvar warrior, quite dead. The reason was obvious enough: two deep bite marks on his shoulder and a gash across his stomach. He’d been hit during combat and a giant spider had bit him. He’d rushed in here in a panic and died. Maybe he’d had some antivenom stashed somewhere. If that was the case, he clearly hadn’t reached it in time.

Once he determined the sleeping area hid no threats, Jak returned to the main tunnel and followed it to its end. It ended in a split, one tunnel going right and leading to another cavern, this one a bit bigger. One went left and connected to the central tunnel. Jak went right and checked out the second cavern. It was much like the first, though it had the beginnings of somewhat more permanent residence. He saw larger clay pots and several baskets, as well as some basic furniture. There were a few shelves, sticks fitted and bound together with leather strips or vines, as well as a lot more beds. All of it was very crude, though.

Jak wasn’t sure how much of it they could use, but that was to be determined later.

There was so much to do.

He finished his inspection of this cavern and then moved into the central tunnel. It was fairly broad, almost a cavern unto itself, and it was obvious that several of the men had been living here. There were a few fireplaces surrounded by picked-clean bones, and ashes. A dead giant spider and a pair of Tolvar corpses lay near the other end of the tunnel, at the main entrance. He kept moving, checking out a little niche at the back of the primary tunnel, seeing that it seemed to have been serving as a place to store extra weapons and materials.

They walked together along the length of the central tunnel until they were back outside again, coming back out into the daylight, and then moved to the final passageway. It seemed mostly clear. They moved down it silently, following it to its end, where it turned sharply to the left. Something about it reminded Jak of the cave they had been living in. It opened into a third cavern, this one not too big, not too small. It had a single opening at the top and a shaft of sunlight spilled in like a waterfall of light, catching motes of dust in the air. The place seemed oddly untouched, just a bed and some weapons and the remnants of a fire and some meals scattered about. Maybe the Tolvar commander had been using it for himself.

“This will be our home,” Jak said as he looked around.

“You, me, and Rylee?” Niri asked hopefully.

“Yes. You, me, and Rylee. We will make our home in this cave.”

They stood there, looking around the cave. It was a little smaller than the one they had previously been living in, but that wouldn’t matter. Before, they had used that cave for everything, but here, they could store extra food, weapons, firewood, building materials, skins, and whatever else they might need in other parts of the cave network. This would be their personal space, their home. There was space for a large bed to accommodate all three of them, for Niri to paint on the walls, a hole in the ceiling to let out smoke from a fire, space for shelves and whatever else they might think to construct as they were making the place their own.

“I like it,” Rylee said finally.

“I do too!” Niri declared. She seemed to beam with happy energy as she walked around the cave. “It is wonderful! I love it already!” She ran over to Jak suddenly and leaped at him, wrapping her arms around him.

He laughed and caught and supported her easily. They shared a kiss.

“Thank you,” she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you so much. You’ve done so many nice things for me.”

“I love you too, Niri,” Jak replied, giving her a gentle squeeze. “You’ve done many nice things for me as well.” Supporting her with one hand, he turned and extended his arm to Rylee, who stepped up and hugged the two of them.

“I’m glad we are together,” she said.

“So am I,” Niri agreed, kissing Rylee on the mouth. “We should celebrate tonight!”

“If we have the energy,” Jak replied, letting her down. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Niri lost some of her good cheer. She sighed softly. “Yes, that is true. And I…” she looked down at herself, “do not quite have the body for hard work.”

“Well...it depends on the work,” Jak replied, reaching up and briefly cupping one of her breasts.

She giggled and blushed. “I suppose that is true.”

“Come on, let us get to work.”

With that, he turned and walked back out of the cave, already imagining what the place was going to look like once he had set his hand to it.

The day was indeed very long.

Jak could tell that the corpses bothered both women, Niri especially, so he took to the duty of handling those. Rylee and Niri seemed happy enough to spend their time gathering up every weapon, every piece of clothing, every tool, every waterskin, every bit of food that was still eatable, everything that the Tolvar had gathered that might be useful. Already, he was thinking ahead. As Jak stripped each corpse and then hauled it off into another clearing a little ways away that he’d scouted out, he was already considering what might need to happen if they actually pulled off making a tribe. It still seemed somewhat unlikely.

Almost everyone he’d met so far had been extremely hostile. Save for Niri, Rylee, and Nessa, and he supposed technically that crow, which seemed to have flown off for the moment, everyone had tried to kill him. Or almost certainly would have tried to kill him, had he not avoided revealing his presence to them for one reason or another. Rylee had said there were others like her out there, and Nessa had hinted at something similar, but after the slaughter he had just instigated, Jak was having a hard time believing it.

The sun moved across the sky and hours disappeared as he stripped and hauled body after body through the woods.

He took a break once to eat, consuming a pouch of berries and nuts that Niri and Rylee had found among the storage area, then drained a waterskin and got back to work. He got the human bodies out of the way first, given he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the giant spider bodies. They were heavier and more dangerous to work with. He still had the antivenom in him, but he imagined it would be a real pain if he accidentally got himself caught on a fang. He kept at it, though, dragging them by their heavy limbs through the woods.

By the time Jak had finished getting all the bodies to the clearing, he was beginning to tire and the sun was starting to set.

Still, no Tolvar had showed up at the cave at least.

The clearing in front of the cave was bloody but otherwise had been cleaned up. He tracked down Niri and Rylee in the rearmost cavern along right side of the caves and found that they had gathered and placed all of the spare supplies and weapons and food from outside in there. There was a lot to sort through.

“We grabbed everything we could find,” Niri said.

“You both did great,” Jak replied.

“A lot of it seemed of low quality,” Rylee said. She was inspecting a spear at the moment. “My people unfortunately rely on quantity over quality. And it seemed especially true for this group. Most of these weapons might do in the immediate sense, but they’ll wear out quickly. Honestly most of them will be more useful for burning.”

“Then we shall burn them, and salvage what we can,” Jak replied. “For now, let us return to our cave. Tomorrow we can finish preparing this place for ourselves and move our supplies here. And claim it properly.”

Niri yawned. “I would much like to see our bed.”

“Me too. I don’t know how you managed to move all those bodies by yourself,” Rylee agreed, seeming to hold back a yawn.

“I suppose I just have a lot of strength,” Jak replied.

“Mmm...yes you do,” Niri murmured, running one hand up and down his arm, then slipping it down lower, resting it over his crotch. “Much strength…”

“Let’s get back to the cave,” Jak said, slipping a hand briefly under her wrap and groping her bare breast, making her let out a little noise of happy surprise.

They headed back out into the clearing. Jak was reluctant to leave the new caves after spending all day cleaning it out, but he knew the time was not yet right.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow they would really make it theirs.

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.


“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.