Zombie apocalypse fiction – Ruth’s story #123 More aftermath of the battle on the farm #SHTF #TEOTWAWKI

Doc and Jeff glance momentarily at each other as if to decide who speaks first. Doc speaks first.

“We’ve got 12 KIA, mostly perimeter guards and Scouts at the SARBOO. There are 16 wounded, of those four are not likely. We’re going to have to close the SARBOO. We’ve just lost too damn many people to man both it and our perimeters. As for the Adventists, they’ve lost only a few personnel, mostly incidental losses in the line of fire. Most of their KIA were wrong place at the wrong time. But losing Phyllis is going to be a real blow to the Adventists.”

Sam takes a bite of his (by now) cold, dripping BBQ Spam sandwich grimacing as some of the sauce drips on his BDU blouse.

Jeff sets his half-eaten, cold Spam sandwich down in his lap. He consults his notes on his ever-present clipboard. Looking up from his clipboard around at the assembled staff, he pushes the thick Army-issue black framed glasses up his nose. Those damn glasses are so thick and heavy they are always sliding down Jeff’s nose. Jeff speaks in a low voice.

“Material loses are fairly minimal. Losing the farmhouse hurt. With it, we lost most of our paper maps and a few personal effects, but nothing that we cannot replace, well – other than the personal effects anyway. We’ve lost some livestock but not as many as originally feared. Cooks tell me we will be eating mutton for a few days.”

Jeff takes a small sip of his beer grimacing at the taste. Looking briefly at his notes, and replacing his glasses again, he continues.

“Thankfully, unlike pork or beef, there is no religious prohibition eating sheep. Looking at my notes, we’re going to be eating quite a bit of mutton. Good thing the smokehouse escaped damage. But the delayed Kayak Point trip to acquire salt is now even more critical.”

Jeff pauses again, sipping from his beer and grimacing at the taste. I do not believe that Jeff likes the taste of beer. Jeff continues after swallowing noisily.

“With the new kids added to our personnel, we’ve gained several more mouths to feed with little or no helpful skills. It could be argued that the gain of the girls offsets any strain on the resources, but that is arguable. Ammo expenditure was minimal, but the loss of several motorcycles damaged in the fighting cannot be replaced. Our Scout loses essentially offsets the loss of motorcycles as we now possess enough motorcycles to outfit each remaining Scout.”

Sam interrupts Jeff. “We will need to train more Scouts before we head north. Add that to the list of other important shit we need to do.”

Jeff uses Sam’s opportune interruption by drinking a large swallow of his beer making a strange face again at the taste. Jeff shoves his eyeglasses back in place.

“We did not lose any of the fuel tankers thank God, which apparently, was one of the goals of the attackers. We are back to tent city though. The farmhouse was our last wooden structure. We must concentrate on the essentials – shelter, sanitation and food.”

While Jeff talked, Carmine and Pastor silently joined our meeting. Both men appear rough, but not nearly as haggard as the women. Shack and I noted that the men slim down and get a hard-lived look to them, that is not necessarily unpleasant or at least to my jaded eyes.

However, the stress of this post-apocalyptic life takes a toll on the women. The women look much worse than the men. Perhaps I rely on too much on personal criticism and self-criticism; required practices in every socialist social unit. In my adolescence, I learned how to criticize not only myself but also my peers as well.

Shack and I discussed at some length the many reasons why mostly men have survived the KCAP pandemic. The main difference between the sexes, at least that we have concluded, is the presence of children. Many women had children to care for, making them more at risk. A lot of the men only had themselves to worry about, so more males survived than females.

Carmine and Pastor have little to add to the meeting that ends shortly after their arrival. I note that Pastor and Carmine each appropriated one of the Obrez pistols taken from the attackers. During my IDF service Obrez pistols of varied craftsmanship turned up from time to time usually in the arms of insurgents.

Carmine carries an Obrez pistol made from a beautiful Japanese Type 38 Arisaka rifle with the Imperial Chrysanthemum intact. I wonder just how many of the Japanese cartridges Carmine possess. Carmine’s Arisaka pistol is very well done with beautifully carved wood.

I notice that Carmine now also carries a Japanese Type 30 bayonet. With no bayonet socket on his Obrez pistol, I suppose that Carmine will use the Japanese bayonet with its 15” blade as a sword. Carmine with his Escrima skills will be very deadly with the long Japanese blade in addition to his Filipino sundáng.

By comparison, Pastor’s Obrez made from a battered, disreputable-looking Mosin Nagant rifle is one ugly piece of work. Whoever carved the Mosin rifle stock into a pistol grip had little or no woodworking skills.

Pastor now wears a brown leather Mosin rifle bandolier around his hips. He still wears his shotgun bandolier. Pastor’s battered shotgun, now hanging from an OD green woven paracord sling hangs over his right shoulder.

At least we have lots of the ammo for the Mosin rifles even if most of it is old corrosive crap. The zombies do not seem to care if we shoot them with corrosive ammo or not.

The subject of the new kids in the camp is going to something that is going to be settled later. Perhaps some of the older kids might want to travel north with us while some might prefer to remain here with the Adventists.

In our bedroll Shack and I gently make love. Afterwards, we get a few hours of sleep before taking over the night watch in the radio tent. Since the morning that I awoke to Shack buried to the hilt inside me, taking the path to pleasure that only men may take, we have been making love fairly regularly.

Despite my fear of pregnancy, we have not used any contraceptives. Shack sweetheart that he is, during the first time even asked if I wanted him to pull out before he orgasmed. I merely locked my heels behind his ass encouraging him to thrust faster and harder.

Unlike most of the women in the camp, my periods have stopped completely. At first I feared that I might be pregnant. A few of those home pregnancy kits confirmed that I was not to be a mother – yet.

Doc tells me that women who are under a great amount of physical stress can have their monthly periods stop. Stopped cycles were a common problem among professional women athletes who had to reduce their physical exercise in order to conceive. A famous woman Ironman Triathlon athlete, used to running 15 miles a day, had to reduce her daily runs to a mere two miles so that she could conceive her first child.

Rain, still the holdout among the women, has yet to choose a single lover. Despite her promiscuity or it is because of it, no serious fights have broken out. Many of the men still court Rain hoping to be the lucky final one she chooses. I do not see Rain often, but I do occasionally bump into her in the women’s shower.

I started practicing yoga again. The stretching and peace of mind imparted by yoga has greatly helped my state of both mind and body. Frequently I am joined by the Princess and Honey now both sporting visible baby bumps.

I was not aware that the Princess practiced Bikram yoga until she mentioned it after a morning yoga session. I imagined the Princess, dressed in the chicest and most expensive yoga attire, attending some yuppie Mercer Island yoga place. From the description of the Princess’s yoga before KCAP, I might not have been too far off the mark.

We cannot heat any space sufficiently for her preferred style of yoga, but the Princess does not seem to mind. Vinyasa and Ashtanga are my two preferred styles of yoga. I may never be as advanced a yogi as Amy was, but at least I never embarrassed myself.

I find the coordination and stretching of yoga complements Krav Maga quite well. I have tried to convince Shack to join me in yoga every time, so far with little success. Shack will occasionally join me for a little while, but the boy is incredibly stiff, and many of the forms are hard for him to attain. If Shack keeps stretching, he may become limber enough to attain the proper forms.

I have told Shack that he needs to stretch more and the forms with practice get easier. Shack seems more interested in perving on my ass as I stretch, rather than stretching himself. Damn skin tight yoga pants. I have learned that some men have an inordinate puerile desire to stare at a woman’s ass while she stretches.

At least Shack is allowing me to teach him Krav Maga in which I have found him to be an apt if a little too stiff pupil. Surprisingly one of my best students has been Honey, despite her pregnancy. Honey is incredibly limber; her strength and speed is frightening. Honey also possesses and excellent memory able to remember the basic forms and techniques.

Honey usually puts Thing 1 in a play pen while we practice Yoga, or I teach Krav Maga. At least he quit screaming after a few times in the play pen. Thing 1 is already walking while his baby brother is only crawling. That little monster gives me the creeps; the way he follows Honey everywhere is unsettling.