Zombie apocalypse fiction – Ruth’s Story #170 Morning after outside Baker City #TEOTWAWKI #SHTF #WROL

I awake with a large, warm tit in my left hand. Raising my head, I realize that I am spooning the red-head. My back is cold; Iain’s customary place is empty. Raising my head from the cloud of clingy red hair, I look around for Iain.

Iain is nowhere in sight, but the camp fire is banked and my little dented tea-pot sits in the sand nearby. From the condensate line on my tea-pot, I can see that Iain filled my tea-pot for when I woke up.

I gently disengage myself from the red-head, who mumbles in her sleep as I drop the blankets covering her. I do a few stretches in the cool air; goose bumps erupt on my skin. Dressing quickly, I hop over to the fire wearing one boot while attempting to get the other on my resistant foot.

My tea-pot is indeed full of fresh cold water. While waiting for the water to boil I look around for Iain. I finally spot Iain way up on the hill across the river, standing above the igneous rock dike. Grizzly Adams he may look, but Iain is anything but a simple man.

Watching Iain, I realize that he is looking over the valley from his vantage point, without silhouetting himself. Using his old pair of pale green Leica binoculars Iain scans the countryside. As Iain turns with the binoculars I see that he has his suppressed P90 hanging on a single point sling across his chest.

Across Iain’s back is his old battered 30-06 bolt-action rifle. Iain’s monstrosity of a sword, all four feet of fine German steel, hangs on his left hip in its black leather scabbard. Finished his surveying, Iain reaches down to the ground and picks something furry up.

He walks down the side of the hill and across the bridge. Pausing to look at the sleeping red-head, he gives me a good morning snog grabbing my ass with one hand while he does so. Iain holds two furry beasts up, stating plainly, “breakfast.”

“What the hell are those,” I stupidly ask. I have not had any tea yet and I am still sluggish. The damn sun is not even up high enough to clear the ravine walls.

“Rock chucks, as they are called around here, but properly yellow-bellied marmots,” he says with a shrug. Leaving the old, bolt-action rifle leaning against the bridge, Iain walks down to the river. Cleaning the two rodents quickly, Iain pulls out his frying pan and starts making breakfast.

“Might as well start the day on a full stomach,” he mumbles as pieces of marmot sizzle in the pan.

I sip my tea while Iain cooks breakfast. Just as Iain is scooping fried chunks of marmot on to pieces of steaming, fresh bannock bread red-headed sleeping beauty emerges from the blankets. Slowly strutting naked to the fire, she squats on her haunches, brazenly opening her legs so that both Iain and I can see between her legs. I notice that the woman is neatly trimmed but not shaved bare.

This red-head’s bush is a lot different than Carol’s, the last red head I knew. Despite the warmth of my tea, I am cold and slip on my jacket. I pointedly ignore the gross display in front of me. Iain has the good sense not to comment, handing the kneeling woman a tin plate of bannock and marmot in silence.

I am always cold and our bunker is not centrally heated. If I am freezing I cannot imagine how the naked woman is not shivering. I know she is cold because she could put someone’s eye out with her nipples; they stick so far out of her chest.

We eat in silence and I wonder what we are going to do with this woman, whom still has not told us her name. I take our plates and wash them in the river, while Iain stows our campsite. The fucking crazy woman takes a dip in the river – she as fucking crazy as Iain is, getting in water this cold.

We debate leaving the wagon but decide to take it as Flower and her tribe might be able to use it. Iain drives the wagon with the now dressed red-head beside him on the buck board; I ride in front of the wagon.

We pass the remains of an old zombie lying beside the road. This one has been dead a while. Exposed to the elements with no way of reaching shelter, the zombies break down fairly quickly, rotting away to nothing.

This zombie had a real bad case of “meth mouth,” something that Iain says was nearly a pandemic in this area before KCAP. The desiccated, shrunken remains of the zombie are little more than inky black bones, with thick black tendons running along the bones.

Even the scavengers will not eat a corpse infected with KCAP. KCAP was a mother fucker of a Malthusian catastrophe. Leaning over my horse’s side I look at the zombie’s corpse with no more than a little remorse.

Despite the fact that I have killed thousands, if not tens of thousands of zombies, I do not like to see one suffer. This zombie was stuck outside, both of its legs shattered and was abandoned by its nest mates.

I imagine this zombie died a slow, miserable death. Flicking my reins and tapping my heels to Mary-Margaret’s sides, I urge my mare to catch up to the wagon. I am worried that the foal has not returned to her mother.

Thinking of animals, I realize that Tripod and Cyclopes did not come into camp last night. I wonder if I should mention it to Iain?