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Chapter IV

The next couple weeks went by in a haze of exhaustion and emotion. There was a constant tension between King, I and Rachel, which wasn't helped by the fact that she seemed to always be watching us, or at least have seen what we were doing, even when we couldn't see her. Every day ended with me feeling a mix of exhaustion, fear, tension, apprehension, and a million other little emotions that kept me feeling on edge nearly every second I was awake, which was nearly all the time now, because I was frankly too nervous to sleep between the dead that might come across us outside, and the psychotic coyote inside.

What we did every day was boring, unfulfilling, and mundane. We cut firewood, collected water from nearby streams, foraged food. Why we were doing this when the coyote said she intended to escape the coming winter was beyond me, but I contented myself with the fact that the pistol she always had on her stayed on her hip, and not pointed at King or I.

Gradually she left us alone and more unsupervised; at first I thought it might be a sign of trust, but King pointed out that our packs she had us go back and collect were locked in the cabin, and running into the wilderness without a weapon or supplies was essentially a death sentence.

She still kept her distance, and barely showed a shred of compassion towards us. With her stockpiles of water and food, she only threw us a scrap of food or a jug of water every now and then, largely forcing us to subsist off what we could find in the woods around us.

Thankfully King knew how to snare small game, and I knew where to find edible berries or we would surely have starved to death. I didn't think we could have gotten an skinnier than we were before we came across the cabin; I was sadly mistaken, and after I while we both started to look skeletal, more like the dead that stumbled around than the living.

One positive was that for one reason or another, this area seemed almost completely clear of the undead. When we did spot them we stayed low and quiet, and Rachel did actually go out and finish them off for us when they got too close. It was a token gesture I'm sure, not so much a favor to us but a way to further take care of herself by keeping her patch of land clear.

She never used a gun or even the bow she had, just strode right up with a small hunting knife and drove it right through their skulls. It was like she had no fear, and that somehow scared me more than I already was.

So things went on like this for almost two weeks, monotonous, laborious, exhausting. King and I had little energy by the end of the day, as we worked practically from sun-up to sundown and collapsed into our small tent. We spent many a night talking about how to kill Rachel, but the rigors of the day eventually forced us into sleep. It was a pipe dream anyhow, she was always on point; always watching, always ready. If she hadn't have spoken I'd have thought she was dead already the way she stared at us.

Finally one night after a particularly brutal day of clearing brush out to begin to set up what Rachel said was going to be a barbed wire fence to surround the cabin, she made her first...peace offering I guess you could call it.

King and I were hard at work picking thorns out of our fur, cleaning our cuts and blisters the best we could, when we heard the cabin door creak open. I had smelled the fire burning all day but thought nothing of it, I just assumed it was to draw in more poor saps like ourselves.

Instead Rachel came out carrying a large metal pot, burnt black with soot at the bottom, steam seeping from the lid that capped the top. I noticed for the first time she didn't have her pistol on her, just her hunting knife.

Momentarily I thought about taking a chance to overpower her, but King was far from me and I couldn't catch his eye, and if I was serious with myself I didn't have the strength to so much as throw a punch, much less try to take her down. And I had seen how quick she was with that knife, so maybe it was good I just sat and looked at her.

"This," she barked, "is for you two." She set the pot down, placing two wooden spoons on top of the lid. "First you eat, then we talk." And with that she turned on her heel and went back inside, clicking the numerous door locks behind her.

King came over and we both sat around the steaming pot. As King lifted the lid I instantly salivated at the smells emanating from within it. My nose picked out carrots, potatoes, thyme, and could it be? Chicken? Before I could ask King what he thought was in the stew, I heard a loud_slurp_, so I took that as my cue to stop thinking and start eating.

We went at the pot with reckless abandon, our first real meal in recent memory, made with food I never thought I would ever see again. Sure beat the hell out of the little chipmunks and squirrels we managed to snare every now and then.

In record time we emptied the entire thing, taking turns drinking the remaining broth straight from the pot, not caring that the soot on the bottom caked our paws in black. King looked over at me for the first time in a long time with a sideways grin across his muzzle, gave a long sigh, and collapsed back in the grass.

I smiled back at him, chuckled softly, and did the same. I reached across to grab his paw, raw with cuts and bruises, and we both sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, looking up at the clear blue sky as it slowly began to darken. The grass felt soft and cool under my fur, and when King turned his head to smile softly at me, I was almost at peace.

We hadn't sat like this in ages, and if every bone in my body wasn't screaming in pain, if in the back of my mind I wasn't thinking about a walker stumbling across us, we might have been right back on vacation at that mountain resort before the world went to shit.

As if by design, Rachel chose that moment to slap the door of the cabin open, and ruin our small moment of peace and happiness. King and I slowly sat up, feeling the aches and pains we had been carrying for days now.

Instead of keeping her distance, Rachel walked right up to us, and sat cross-legged right in front of the two of us. Reaching into the pocket of her jacket, she tossed a candy bar at each of us.

"Here," she said, "dessert." King and I both ripped them open and scarfed them down in about two bites, they still tasted fresh. We then looked up at Rachel, I'm sure both waiting for an explanation for her sudden change of heart.

"I'm sorry," she began, sighing heavily, "those initial questions were just bullshit, and I guess you could call these past couple weeks the real test."

"Damn right you should be sorry," King said gruffly, "you about worked us to death you know."

Rachel raised a paw in response, "Just let me explain for a few minutes, then you can yell and scream at me all you want, I'm sure you have more than enough resentment built up."

She looked over at me expectantly, as if to endure my part of the complaints, but I only glared at her from under my brows. I was still having fleeting thoughts of grabbing the cooking pot in front of me and bashing her brains in with it.

"I had to see who you really were, and there isn't a way to do that with just words. I could have spent 23 hours a day asking you questions, and in the last hour you both might have killed me for all I know."

With that I snorted loudly, "Yeah with enough guns and ammo to supply a small army, you were the one that was scared, not the two guys chained up then forced into slave labor."

"Listen asshole," she said, the tone rising in her voice, "I do what I have to do to survive, and when two big guys camp on the edge of the woods watching my house, I have a right to be cautious. I told you before you don't know what society has become out there. You can't even imagine.." she trailed off.

"Anyways," she continued on, "you both proved yourselves as trustworthy as I could have hoped for. I gave you nothing, worked you to the bone, and you stuck around. You didn't run off, you didn't try to kill me, and more importantly you showed loyalty and hard work, even if I did force it on you," she finished, answering my sarcastic snort with a glare in my direction.

"You have to sleep in the tent one more night until I can get the cabin packed up a bit more, but from now on we move as a team," she explained. "We're pushing it staying here any longer, soon the frost will be here, then the snow, and we sure as hell want to be in warmer weather by then. So no more manual labor, heal up for a couple days because we need to move soon."

"I'm not going to completely trust you for a while, but until we leave we share the cabin, the food, the water, all of it. If you want to kill me there's plenty of weapons inside and you outnumber me, so do what you want," she said plainly.

King and I just looked incredulously at each other, half surprised, half unbelieving, but mostly relieved that our hellish few weeks seemed to be over.

"Again I'm sorry I had to do things this way, but I don't know who you are, and this is the only way to find out." She stared quietly into the distance before continuing, "If it's any consolation, I didn't enjoy it anymore than you both did. You just can't trust anybody these days, you know?"

And with that she stood up, wiped the dirt from the back of her pants, and turned to walk back into the cabin.

"Wait," I called to her. She paused and turned to look back at me. "Why all this work on the cabin if we're just going to leave, you could have had us dig holes for all it mattered to you."

"Because Mr. Cash," she said, smiling for the first time, "we need this place next spring when we come back. I think long term, and I intend to keep staying alive.

With that she strode back into the cabin, leaving me dumbfounded. She certainly was some kind of woman, albeit a completely crazy one.

"So do we trust what she says?" King asked me after the cabin doors shut and the lights inside slowly went dark, one by one.

"Right now my love, I frankly don't care," I answered back, "I'm going to enjoy having a full stomach and think about not sleeping outside on the ground tomorrow night," I said as I climbed into our small tent.

King stood outside for a while, and through the flap in the tent I saw him standing with his paws on his hips, staring up at the now visible stars. I let him have his moment of contemplation as I settled into our sleeping bag, crossing my legs and placing my paws behind my head. Eyes closed, I focused on my full stomach, and tried to ignore my screaming muscles.

After a few minutes King crawled into the tent, but I was on the edge of sleep and couldn't even open my eyes. I heard him rustling around for a moment but I ignored him, until I suddenly felt a heavy pressure on my chest.

Opening my eyes with a start I saw King with his knees on either side of my chest, his bare ass on my stomach, and his fairly sizeable, fully erect cock about an inch from my muzzle.

"Come on Queen, it's been too long."

I wanted to scold him for using that knickname I hated, but instead I just sat up and took his cock in my muzzle, enjoying the deep groan he made when I took him in all the way to the base. It had been too long, and I was actually happy for once tonight, I wasn't going to ruin it.

I grabbed the base of his shaft and ran my tongue around his tip just the way he liked it, letting him hump softly into my mouth. I could already tell he wasn't going to last long.

He leaned up further on his knees and I grabbed his balls with my other paw, kneading them gently, coaxing the orgasm out of him. I could tell he was trying to hold back but it had been weeks by now, he wasn't going to hold out much longer.

He started humping my muzzle a little more aggressively, and all I gave him was a muffled_uhm-hmm_ when I knew he was on the edge. I took my paws and started grabbing his ass, pushing him deep into my muzzle, and that did the trick.

Load after load shot down my throat, and King leaned forward to grab onto my shoulders, as he finished with a final groan and pulled out. He slid off next to me, grabbing my chin and kissing me deep as he did.

By now I was rock-hard, and I didn't even have to ask. King grabbed at my pants, undoing the belt that had so many notches cut into it to compensate for my extreme loss in weight it was barely holding together, and ripped my pants off.

Leaning across my stomach he started licking my tip, teasing me. My paws grasped at his mane and initially began to stroke his fur, but as he continued to tease me, I found myself trying to push him all the way down onto me.

He pulled his muzzle off, grinning at me, "Okay, no teasing tonight, just lay back Cash." With that he dove down deep on my cock, using one paw to cup my balls, and using the other to squeeze my knot.

He knew what I liked, and I don't know if it was the good food in my belly, the idea that a better day lay ahead, or that fact that the lion I loved was still alive with me, but I was ready to finish in record time.

I held back as long as I could, but when King started bobbing up and down on my dick, running his tongue around my shaft and tip, I just let it all go. With a howl I came harder than I think I might ever had, and King just stayed on my cock, lapping up load after load. When I finished I fell all the way back onto the sleeping bag, panting heavily.

"Well that was unexpected," he chuckled, wiping his lips with the back of his paw.

"Sorry, I needed that more than I thought," I said through labored breaths.

"We both needed that," he replied, kissing me again before laying down next to me, putting an arm across my chest.

"Love you wolf," he said, putting his head up against mine.

"Me too, King, me too," I said.

And with that we both drifted to sleep, sweet, blissful, dreamless sleep.