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Chapter III

Although he said he wasn't going to kill us, I still sat on edge, shaking from the adrenaline of the almost-execution that had just occurred. King sat next to me in some chairs up against the wall across from the stranger's bed, and I could still feel how tense he was. He may act haphazardly, goofily sometimes, but I never forgot that King deep down could get as harsh as he needed to be, do what he had to. The two guys in the National Guard armory? We never spoke of that incident again.

Pistol in hand, the stranger folded his arms and slid back further on the bed, so that his back leaned up against the rough wooden wall. Candlelight flickered and danced across the room, but he still sat shrouded in a cloak of darkness, a shadow within a shadow.

"You two are not to bright," he began bluntly, "the fire I light in that hearth," he said, gesturing towards the fireplace, "is the simplest lure I have, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker"

"But don't feel too stupid," he continued, "everybody else tried to grab a gun when I...announced myself, so there hasn't been anyone smart enough yet to survive the initial meet and greet. I had to gun down a lot of furs I'm sure deep down were good, but they never gave me the chance to find that out."

"I let you live because you listened carefully to what I said-"

"Like we had a choice," I interrupted sarcastically, glaring daggers at him.

"Quite right, you had no choice, but you listened all the same. You didn't bullshit me with names or phony stories, and that went a long way. Because I could tell you were both, and still are, scare shitless. It gets really hard to lie effectively the more frightened you are, so that's why I do things the way I do them."

Cracking his knuckled loudly he continued, "The cabin is my home, but it is also a lure, a fortress, a base of operations. I looted motion sensors from security companies at the very beginning, they run on batteries and I know when anybody gets within a mile of this place in every direction. I'm not sitting here because I'm stupid," he finished.

"I've been in this cabin for a long time, and I have defended it myself for just as long. I do have rules, crazy as they may seem to you, but they keep me alive, and they will do the same to you if you are willing to make the effort."

"So what?" growled King, "everyone has principles, it's called being a sentient fucking being, and you don't have to push them on people at gunpoint." I could tell King was starting to get really pissed and that was not good.

"How do we know you're not just the kind of guy that gets off kidnapping and murdering people that happen across this place?" King continued loudly, "you know we were half-starving out there. We just wanted to make sure the area was safe and we were going to walk openly up to the cabin, just to see if we could get some food"

"With 30-06 rifles in tow you were going to just knock friendly on your neighbors door for a meal? Gimme a break," he said shortly. "You were watching my cabin for hours, waiting for it to get dark, what was I supposed to think?"

"You would have shot me the same as anyone else, that's how things work now. If the dead don't kill the living, the living do the dead's job for them," he said, rather morosely.

"That's not true!" I exclaimed, "We are good people and we don't kill just to kill, only walkers. That's what you gotta do to stay alive."

"So you never shot another living thing, never once?" he snarled, "And be fucking honest or we can go back to the handcuffs and all that jazz."

King and I just sat in muted silence, I was genuinely afraid to try to lie, and I knew King didn't ever like talking about what happened at the National Guard post. I never had the courage to ask him what had really happened, I wanted to believe his story. There were plenty of bodies out back that hadn't turned and had been killed, but the fox and 'yote we kipped up with weren't a foot off their bedrolls when the shots woke me up. Maybe King had been attacked, maybe his instinct told him that was what those guys planned to do...I guess I just loved and trusted him enough not to ask.

"That's what I thought," he said simply, "but I don't hold that against you, at least not yet. People have lost their fucking minds since this whole deal started, and there's worse than me and you out there," he explained. "So much worse," he said more quietly after a pause.

"There's groups out there you can't even begin to comprehend. They are worse than feral, they-they...there are worse things than death," he finally stammered out.

"If you ever get into the cities you're gonna have to be a whole lot more careful than you have been," he remarked. "Your gonna have to keep your dicks in your pants and your eyes and ears open all the fucking time," he continued, "because the walkers will swarm you in a second, and the gangs running the towns..." he trailed off for a moment, "let's just say if they saw you two doing what I saw, you'd wish I had just shot you out front a few minutes ago."

The statement hung in the air unpleasantly for a few moments, and it started to hit me that although King and I had been roughing it, that we had a relatively easy time wandering the sparsely populated mountains. What had become of the cities I couldn't say, and I didn't want to think about.

"Zombies aren't the only ones eating the living, and some have taken the end of the world as a chance to create a hell on Earth," he said quietly, "I did what I had to do with you because you can't imagine the things I've seen going into the cities. I've gotten to the point where I'd rather be surrounded by the dead than have to face the living. Anybody with a pulse is just a commodity to some of these gangs, rape, torture, anything you can imagine is within their grasp, and a lot of things you can't imagine."

King and I just sat and absorbed the information for a minute; it was like being back at the start of the outbreak hearing all this, hearing that surviving the way we were was easy living compared to most.

"But to get back to the point," the stranger said, "we all have to come to an understanding right here and right now. That understanding is that nobody is gonna do anything stupid for a while, until we feel each other out."

I shifted in my chair, beginning to feel the effects of not sleeping for nearly a full day, but when I glanced at King he had a look of pure murder in his eyes. I was really praying he could hold it together long enough for us to get away from this guy.

"So first things first," he began, "for one week, you sleep outside in a tent I'm going to give you. You're going to do a list of chores I give you every day, and I'm going to make sure you don't starve to death. Keeping the zeds off you is your problem, 100% your problem," he emphazised, "and I will _not_risk my skin to help you," he said coldly.

King and I both looked skeptically at each other, but the stranger either didn't notice, or didn't care, because he casually continued.

"Now I assume you both are wandering down the mountains because the cold is going to hit soon, and you have at least that right," he admitted, "we will all freeze to death up here if we don't move further South, and I would prefer not to have to go it alone. But I can't take people with me I can't trust, and considering you were watching my home with rifles just a few hours ago, I can't say I trust you very much at the moment."

"We do this arrangement for a week, maybe more, and if you don't try anything idiotic, like try to kill me, or run away, then things can go further," he finished.

All this at once was getting to be too much. I was tired, hungry, my adrenaline had stopped pumping and I was barely staying awake, and now the prospect of being in what was essentially a work camp for a pyscho for an indeterminate amount of time was making my blood boil.

"You're out of your fucking mind man," I spat angrily, "you want to set us outside as bait while you sit in here nice and cozy, and on top of that, get some slave labor out of the deal? You've been out here too long man, you've lost it."

"Yeah you have," King added, speaking for the first time in a while, menace evident in his voice, "you just want us to help you stockpile supplies while we work ourselves to death and sleep out in the open? You're a fucking lunatic."

The stranger jumped off the bed shockingly quickly, strode over to King and I, brandishing the pistol right back into our faces.

"Okay, okay. We are going to get two things straight right now, because I have heard this bullshit from you both enough times to split my own head open," he said angrily.

"Number one, I am not crazy," he stated matter-of-factly. "If you haven't noticed the world has gone to shit, and you can't survive the same way you used to. I can't just walk up and wave hello to a couple of strangers spying on my house from the treeline with rifles, and simple mistakes get you killed quick."

"And number two," he sighed, pausing for a moment as if deciding on what to say, "well fuck."

Instead he said nothing, just walked back to the bed, back into the darkness. He began undoing the bindings and removing the gloves on his paws, starting shirking th shapeless cloak that enveloped him. King and I didn't move, just watched transfixed. Who was this guy really?

After a moment's time all garments were removed, and the dark shape started walking slowly towards the circle of light around where King and I sat.

"Number two," he said, "I am not a 'he'".

With that the figure strode into the light.

"I am a she," said a new voice, a voice much higher and clearer than what we had heard before.

Stepping fully into the light, the full effect was like getting a baseball bat to the face. I pretty, young coyote stood in front of us, beautiful streaks of ambers, browns and greys streamed through her fur.

"My name is Rachel, and I would very much not like to kill you."