The Lonely Watch
The Lonely Watch
Miami can be lonely when you have no one to curl up against.
Cigarette in hand and a bottle of tequila at my side, I sat at the front of my small shack and kept watch for my two-weeks of required service. Fifty miles out, on the ruins of what had once been one of the great highways way back when. I took a hit, my breathing mask lowered from my mouth and I felt the quiet marsh air whistle and chirp around me - crickets, hopefully the small ones, singing and telling their stories.
They called it the lonely patrol. I always volunteered for it, but only because I liked being alone, with the radio, my gun, and two weeks rations and several packs of cigarettes. The company Psych's were worried about me, always out here alone - but I didn't pay them much heed - and many were thankful that I'd take this lonely patrol and they'd give me extra pay, and extra payments of cigarettes from the soldiers I replaced. It was a good deal, I thought, I didn't like being around people anyway.
My shack, more of a car on its side reinforced with tin and wood with three lines of sight for a long-rifle, provided me with plenty of shelter, and I loved how the rain sounded when it fell on the tin roof during the hurricane season. And the lonely place let me see many interesting things, such as distant light, faint glows, and the strange mutants that crept but kept their distance from me and my point of look out. I had several journals written about it, and when I finally tired of this patrol, I'd be certain to publish it.
Tonight it rained heavier than normal, and the lightning struck at my shack again and again, but I feared not the lightning - I'd seen that several conducting wires went around the shack to prevent me from getting fried. My jacket was dry and snug, and I held my rifle beside me, looking through my heavy, night-vision-enhanced goggles and worked on my cigarette. The rain and thunder illuminated the swamp, and the glow of the woods continued on - promising secrets for the fools who wanted to go that far in. I wasn't that brave. No, not that brave.
I should have shaved, but the growth helped keep my face warm, even if it itched against the mask I wore. The mask was a required thing for the heavy bloom of plants, never mind the potentially toxic spores that could send me into a sick spiral. I finished my cigarette and pulled the mask and cover cloth back up, flicking the butt off to the side and into a small plastic trash-bag. They could be recycled and cleaned, and every little bit helped, or so I'd been told. I didn't care, I just did what I was told.
The rain howled with the fury of the angels, and it worked to wash and scrub the fallout that still hung in the sky seventy years after the fact. Most of the mainland was under ice and snow, if not burnt out - the equatorial regions were the least effected, with many thanks be to God. We produced enough that we could secure most of the state, and the greater ravages were kept to a minimum, except for the mutation of several species. It was almost like something out of a cheesy science-fiction movie, I'd been told by one of my teachers. Well, what had been cheesy to them was damn well fact to my life.
I'd been born thirty years after the bombs fell, after Armageddon came and went and wiped out most of the world and it's population. Many major settlements of the Normar, or Northern America, had been leveled or mutated through high chemical attacks. Southern America made out well with a hearty, surviving people who had made do with little, and suddenly had a lot more of it to deal with. We didn't know about Europe or the rest of the world - we didn't care, either. The ocean wasn't very friendly to travel, nor could the ancient relics, the Flying Machines, work too well. The winds were wrong, and the tilt of the planet was off., or something like that. I didn't know. I didn't pay attention to the old studies
Plus, the studies were good for the lucky bastards that were engineers, not for we grunts who risked our lives every day out in the patrols, and the military force. I wasn't bitter, I just didn't have the analytical nature to process their advanced theories. I didn't care - they could theorize all they wanted - I was happy to write my journals, and keep patrol, pondering and admiring the beauty of a nature that barely shrugged at the damage that it's once dominant species had done to it.
Still, I hoped the engineers choked on their pride - it was their type who enabled the drop of the High Grade in the first place. Bastards.
The rain continue to pelt and fall, washing the face of the world and dropping the clouds and their bursts - letting the radiation and fallout slowly clear away and hopefully promise that the world would make do and heal itself, once the weather patterns fixed themselves in a few thousand years. I wouldn't be around to see it, unless I volunteered for one of the ‘Transfer' projects, and uploaded my consciousness into one of the being-built machines. It was technical immortality, at the cost of everything you were, and only those under the age of forty were hearty enough to mentally survive the transference.
I was thirty, thirty two, I wasn't sure how many years and it didn't really matter to the soldiering class. As long as I could shoot, run, and survive, that's all that mattered. My psych-profile wasn't key enough to make it into the programs, and they'd want someone a little less book-dumb. Screw them. I'd make my immortality my own.
Movement broke me from my revere, and I lifted my scope up to catch and look through, watching the flashes of lightning towards where I had last seen the telltale sign of motion. Lightning rippled off something two-hundred yards away and I centered my scope on it - watching as something loped, limped, its way towards my hut. At first I thought it an alligator, but no, alligators didn't walk on two legs.
They also didn't wear necklaces of teeth, carry a bundle on their back and definitely didn't look like it was afraid. No, the last one definitely wasn't an alligators trait even if I could blame the other three on being a little tipsy, and I centered the shot over her chest - watching blood leak from an arrow or spear lodged into her shoulder. She was swaying as she ran through the marsh, her clothing stained, dirty, and bloody, and she looked to my shack as shelter.
My instincts were to drop her, but a second sight behind caught my attention and made me not quite as happy as I should have been. There were four others chasing her, if their markings and being armed and aiming at her said anything. I didn't like anyone poaching on my territory, and lifted the scope of the gun, centering on the one with a bow and taking a slow breath to consider what I was doing. The bipod grunted a bit and held it's weight as I took long, slow breaths - watching them draw closer the injured one. And on this, I trusted my instinct, and fired a single shot - which dropped the archer in a heartbeat.
I couldn't feel guilty about killing someone attacking an unarmed and defenseless creature - or so I tried to rationalize it. I centered the gun again and tracked the bob of a javelineer, and my second shot dropped him down while I caught the bolt and trailed after the third - whom didn't seem to overhear me because of the rain and thunder. The shots were not as hard to make as it seemed - they moved slower than a human, and I had the element of surprise on them.
At a hundred yards, she stumbled and fell onto the dirt and concrete, her body skidding and the large bull mutant rushing towards her with his heavy spear, ready to impale her through the stomach. He charged on long, unsteady legs and raised the spear up for a killing stroke - and I really couldn't have anything like that on my territory. Taking a breath I squeezed - and he slumped over with the cough of my rifle - his body falling over her own, despite it cracking and driving the arrow deeper into her shoulder. He fell and I could hear her scream in the dark. She had a voice on her - deep, low, gravely.
I lifted myself from the shelter stool and reached for my side-arm, a plastic manufactured weapon which hung not more than three pounds at my shoulder. Stepping out, with my jacket ruffling in the wind, I made my way down the torn and twisted walkway, and made a quiet line for this fallen mutant who writhed and struggled to get free of the beast atop her. I took my time in preparation for ambush and rain-slicked walkways, and found myself not a dozen feet from her in no time.
I didn't hold the weapon at the ready though it was in easy grip - and I circled, getting a look at her through my mask as lightning lit the backdrop of the marsh and my shelter. I looked down at her and reached, pulling at the body of the mutant and groaning - the bastard was at least three hundred pounds of muscle, sans the top of and most of his jaw, which had been rendered into a fine mist of gore and bone. She continued to watch me with a look of terror as I freed her, then more when I held my hand down and tried to pull her up. And with one look at me - I whom must have been a demon to the simple mutant, I felt her go limp.
Damn she was heavy to carry back to my shelter.
By dawn her breathing had regulated from the slow and shallow to deeper breaths, even as I operated on removing the lodged arrowhead from her shoulder and push out the pus, in hopes that it wouldn't turn septic on her. A careful application of tequila helped clean and wash it out, followed by the basin of fresh water, which I used to wash out the surprisingly bloodless injury. A triple-wrap helped keep the wound closed with some fishing-line stitches, which would last long enough for a natural knitting before I removed them.. I worked through the whole of the night treating her, and helping her keep warm, if my guess about her cold-blooded anatomy was right.
Her wrap was old food, perhaps junk and left-over's, some of it rotten and none of it edible though some of it could be useful for making penicillin. I set it aside and into its own container so I wouldn't have to smell it, and dozed beside her, though I kept her shoulder immobilized by a wrap. I slept light, because I didn't trust a mutant, even if she owed me her life. One could never tell what they were going to do or were thinking, and I didn't want to risk my throat to it. I kept the gun near me as I dozed.
And a few hours later I was awoken to the sound of her chewing and cracking something - something which sounded like a bone. Opening one eye and gazing through my goggles, I saw her bent down and sorting through some left-over I'd not been able to finish through - including a bone-hock from a large animal I'd caught. I watched her chew and eat as she rummaged - and got a rather pleasant view of a surprisingly shapely backside, if I liked mutants. I paid little heed as I stood up and gave a soft cough - which whipped her around and shattered one of the seats with the heavy sweep of that long, thick tail. She backed away in fear and held the bone in front like it were a club - and from the look of her, it could have felt like getting hit by one even if she was bare handed.
She garbled something in a pidgin language, which sounded vaguely like a mix of English and one of the island-tongues to the south. I tried to think in on it - but couldn't focus too much without getting a headache from the deeper rumble when she opened her mouth. I gave her a look and glanced out the shack then back at her, before reaching over and offering her a bucket of water, and wincing as I saw the look at her shoulder. She scented strangely - much like wet leather. It wasn't at all unattractive.
She trembled but snatched the bucket back from me, and looked into it, then at me again. I maintained a cool, calm demeanor through all of this, even though I felt a little afraid and was quite tempted to leap out the window that was no more than six inches behind me. I was trained to handle terrifying situations on a very infrequent basis at the least. I still didn't know why I'd even interfered and saved her life. I wanted to kick myself, so I sat down and reached for a pack of cigarettes and slid the mask off my face. The rain had stopped, so I could breath the air a bit more safely.
She watched me, a look of confusion passing through her face - or so I hoped was confusion if the quirky shape of her tail said anything. I counted the lovely ridges along the back and up to just past her buttocks, and shook my head out, trying to clear my thoughts. I'd been alone too long that I was even finding one of these strange mutants to be fascinating and sexy. The fact I was calm and non-threatening seemed to relax her, as she slid to a crouch and sat down, a dazed look filling those big, gold colored eyes. They reflected the sunlight quite nicely.
She sat and drank from the blue bucket and seemed capable of taking in a lot of water - it glistened as it ran down her jaw and made a splatter of a mess on the carpet below. Of course, the carpet was pointless and was trampled flatter than a pancake, but it kept my butt warm on the cold days and my feet could not worry about stepping on cold concrete. Finishing the entire bucket, she set it down in front of her and tugged her legs closed, looking shy and nervous around me, and even a little bit cold. I took pity and reached over, lighting one of the hand-lamps that projected a nice, warm beam - and I set up a few notches. There were sixteen car batteries in reserve if this one failed, not to mention the fuel-cells which had a shelf life of over a hundred years. There was very little drain from a heat lamp, and she seemed to wake up and warm a little more for it.
She smiled. She had many sharp teeth.
After a few hours of staring at each other, and me sharing one of my MRE meals with her, which meant she ate most of it and I got the biscuit out of it, we seemed to warm toe ach other a little more - or she warmed, and I sweated. Florida may have had an odd tilt with the weather, and it was cold at night, but damn if the day got hot fast - enough that I wondered if this wouldn't be a desert if not for the proclivity for being a swamp. She watched me with those strange, beautifully alien eyes and I gave her a smile, even sharing a few words with her. Showing her that I had washed most of her carry able things - meaning the brown wrap - she seemed surprised that under the brown it was more of a white color, and looked surprised when I gave it back to her, even so far as to offer her some MREs to eat from.
She ate well. Obviously the girl was hungry. And she devoured through them in almost no time. If I was guessing right, she was under-nourished compared to the bodies I had dropped down below, and she had much need for extra calories to put her up to a respectable weight class. I was happy to supply her with the old, stockpiled MREs that I'd been able to secure through my lucky self-scouting expeditions. And as she ate, I pointed at different thing, from ‘Wall' to ‘Ground' to ‘Human' to ‘Boomstick', which she seemed the most fascinated by but understood when I refused to let her touch it. She respected the warriors weapon, at least.
Plus, no one wanted a mutant able to shoot you.
It seemed her name was Trovokia, and she was from swamp, if I could piece it together. Her rumble gave her words an extra depth to it that I wasn't used to and her anunciation was off due to the snout, but what she spoke did sound a little on this side of being a form of American lingo with some Aztecan thrown in. She proved to be as dumb as dirt though, which meant she was as smart as I was - and my ego didn't have to take a hit for it. And though she kept to her corner, she didn't present herself as a threat, even as I began to wait for radio signals and kept watch on the swamp for any of her cousins - which few seemed willing to poke their head out - maybe there were none. And during this time we talked.
"From north. Far north." She said, or so I imagined that she garbled out. I listened as she continued to roll and move her shoulder, which made me wince at the thought of her ruining the work I'd done repairing it. I kept watch as we walked and she went with me on a patrol - keeping a walking pattern back and forth, and she keeping up on those long legs of hers. She sauntered, her now-white cloth wrapped around her shoulders and back and hanging empty - unlike the food she had in it. She didn't want to look at it after I'd given her the MREs, which she was ever thankful for. "Chase. Lost. Was not able find home."
"That sucks." I said, while taking a look out towards the marsh to the north through my binoculars - scanning for troublesome movement, which there hadn't been for years. This was really just a legacy position during the first reclamation wars between what was now the Free Republic of Florida, and the Southern Confederacy. For some reason they'd stopped attacking some twenty five years ago - but this lonely post was kept as the first warning. "Maybe after you heal, you can find home?"
"No. Too far to find. Maybe find new home. New people." She seemed adamant about that little fact and I let her talk, while we circled and did the four-mile walk along the cross-road of the highway - with my shack right at the forefront. This had once been a highway-cross-section way back when, but was now just a good view spot. I tended the crops I had growing - the few that wouldn't die from the radiation that fell almost nightly. "Xavier need clan?"
"Xavier has no clan." I replied back, following the line of her conversation as I pulled a few fruits off of one of the vines, tomatoes and the sort. I let her carry them as she seemed to be interested in pulling her own weight and keeping close to me. I let her and checked on the growth of a few more vines around and through the shell of a car - including a few grapes that actually grew pretty well despite the weather. I tested one, found it sour, and let them continue to grow in peace. "Xavier live alone, near the boarder, keep people safe."
"Oh. Xavier should have female. He alone." She stated and walked along, as I finished my rounding patrol and checked the cameras, seeing that they still worked and moved like they should, as well as the energy levels were well within allowed ranges. Covered and protected, they gave plenty of warning where I couldn't watch, and let many different people see how the world was outside of the city limits and farmlands. "Been alone many years. Maybe someday not be so alone. Maybe."
"Maybe Xavier not be alone?" She asked, and gazed at me with those eyes half lidded. I felt nervous. Very nervous.
"Xavier always alone." And we had little else to say.
Or maybe I didn't want to say anything else.
The evening found the rain starting to fall again, and she stayed near me while we talked, and I finished off the entry for the nights journal and daily entry, and I took my time while she looked in wonder through the scope and goggles, and I let her play with a few of the toys as she desired. She didn't break anything, and even seemed interested in how they worked. I couldn't explain it, but she didn't mind either. The writing helped me keep my mind off of her, and off that scent which made my chest and nose tingle. Even the breathing mask did little to keep her scent from disturbing me.
"Xavier, how long can stay? Is not safe to walk alone. Want stay safe." She asked me, while her tongue showed to lick across the edge of her jaw. I tried not to think of the teeth as I took a deep breath through the old filters of the mask while the air grew wet with the falling rain. "Please, stay a while?"
"Yeah. You can stay. But I've got a caravan coming tomorrow and they won't take kindly to a mutant nearby." I replied back, while she drew against me and the lamp for warmth, if only to keep her body temperature up and keep from falling asleep any time soon. I leaned a bit away from the heat lamp but couldn't avoid her leaching on me, and didn't feel like I had the energy to tell her no. She was warm and her scales were smooth, and I found my hand stroking her shoulder in between writing out my thoughts. Why was I doing that? "You can stay for a while."
"Caravan? What is this?" She asked, while her body curled in, she easily a hundred pounds heavier than I was, never mind being taller and with a far deadlier means of being. I played my fingers along the scale of her shoulder and admired the make of her physique. Strong, capable, durable.
"Traders. They bring food, and I bring news and tips. Good people. They get attacked by a lot of mutants. They don't like mutants." I replied, my arm wrapping her shoulder and I resting my cheek against the top of her domed brow. Her scent drew in through the filters, and I felt my body tighten a little. I wanted to keep her safe, and close. I couldn't explain it, but I didn't want to either. She might a been a mutant, but, I could live with that.
"Xavier keep me safe?"
"Yeah." I said, my eyes growing heavy due to being held. "Xavier keep you safe."
Sleep was good. Good, and better than it had been in almost a year, and I relished the slow process of waking up, feeing a body curled and slumbering against mine, and feeling the soft curves of the shoulder and back, and over the bumps of her scales.
Scales?
My left eye cracked open and I saw her body curled against mine, my shirt and jacket off and our bare flesh together. She was leaching my warmth and I was savoring the coolness of her body against mine, and she laid atop me, pinning me down and wrapping around me in a vice. I could breath without trouble, but moving with three hundred pounds of gator atop me was a bit on the difficult side. She gave a soft wurfling sound as she snored, and I laid my head back on the old pillow, seeing her through the goggles, for the rain was still sprinkling and I didn't want to get too much of the water around me.
Damn I had to take a piss. I couldn't quite dislodge her and as I lifted, her claws dug into my sides. That wasn't pleasant. I slowly unwound one arm and part of her leg, enough that I could slip myself free, and was able to sit up - then stand up with the help of one of the shelves. Feeling free, I stepped past the sleeping reptile and outside, then to the drainage corner and was able to drop my pants and open my jacket, relieving some much hated pressure. Release, sweet release.
I caught my own scent and winced - it had been a few days and I did need a bath - and with a ready collected trough of filtered water, I was able to slip into a too-small tub and apply some lye and fat, which made for a tingly soap that did it's job in making sure nothing would grow on me and I'd come out with less of a smell. Sometimes it was hard to get the soap content right, this time was too much lye and my skin was a little on the rose-red side of things.
"Xavier?" She asked, my attention drawing from scrubbing my belly up to seeing the long, moss-green scaled snout which poked back at me. I looked up, seeing Trovokia staring down at me in curiosity. I covered myself with a hand and crossed my legs as she sniffed at the soap, then made a face - even she could recognize that I'd used a bit too much lye. "What you doing?"
"Bathing" I replied with a grunt, and turned onto my side to keep from flashing her - she was a mutant, sure, and probably didn't care but I didn't want to be too rude in front of a lady. I still thought she was a lady - and hadn't seen anything saying I was wrong on that regard. She smiled down at me simply, and sat at the edge of the shelf above the tub. She shelf groaned a bit, but didn't buckle as I feared it would. "Trying to get clean. Stop being so itchy."
"Oh. Trovokia itchy too." And she slid directly into the water with me, her body sliding atop mine and pinning me against the old, worn porcelain tub. She settled and arched against me, laying her body over mine and letting the soapy water cover her, and myself. The damn thing was now far too small for two - but I don't think she minded sharing such closeness. Her scent boiled up against my nose and I was forced to breath it from her neck. I had to admit, it made me shiver in the nicest ways. My thoughts clouded just a little bit. "Help Trovokia be not so itchy?"
It was hard to think, being pushed and pinned on my back, my head just slightly above water and her neck crossing my jaw - I breathing in the scent and the lightly oiled musk that came from her throat. It was hard to think, because she smelled so good - she smelled like leather and dust and fresh water and female - it was a strange mix of reptile and human that made my mind unable to focus. I liked it, the oil was like a drug, the musk was salvation to the damned. It made me quiver. My mind grew distant and my body made its demand.
The demand was made, and I put my hand upon her shoulder, gazing up at her with a slow nod of my head. Staring along her and watching at her beautiful face, I applied a warming little stroke against her jaw, and my lips came up to kiss against her snout. Her lips were musky but sweet, her lips were warm, and I basked in its taste. She ran with the sweet oil of her musk, and of her heat. I ran my hand along her side and we slowly stood - raising our bodies up and I taking a long, slow look along her body. She was beautiful, and I couldn't think of anything but her.
The musk ran her body - throat and shoulders and along her thigh and groin, I basked in her scent, my nostrils at her throat and I kissing at her, nuzzling forward with a low, hungry moan leaving my lips. She arched against me, her musk brushing and sending fire racing through my senses. I needed her, so very much I needed this reptilian beauty. I saw the pulse fo oil draw down from under one of her scales, and my lips caressed the line, and my tongue, in its eager quest, ran over the small little indention in the scale, tasting her. She moaned, and I bit.
Plying my fingers along her, as she squeezed at my hips, I drew her back and against the side of the shack with a grunt. Her left leg, strong and thick, wrapped against my back and I bent her back and onto the side of the car which made up the shacks southernmost end. I bent her backwards and climbed her body, and my erection slapped against her thigh, the musk there sending shudders through my nervous system. How could someone so alien make me so hot, feel so good, effect me like this? I didn't know, I didn't care. No, I had to have her, to have more of her scent, and I went down to my knees.
I looked upon the pale yellow of her sex - and my lips hungered, trailing the fine, supple scales that touched around her cloaca, and I trailed my fingertips around her most intimate places. I gazed, watched her body as she arched, and I slid my lips up first to kiss, then to seal, to taste her sex, her flavor, her heat. Her tail hugged my naked, wet body, and I assaulted her with a sudden push of my tongue over her fire. She was musky, she was sweet, she was female - and she was mine. My tongue turned, and I rolled it over where I felt her clitoris should have been, and was rewarded with her urgent cries. She liked it.
I pinned her against the table and buried my face between those strong thighs of hers, my face rewarded with the heat of her scent and I undulated my tongue harder, faster, sharper against the opening of her female sex, and I was rewarded with the sounds of primal need - even as she twisted against my head and knocked me over. She had rolled and I was glad I'd not had her straddle my chest, or I'd have had a broken neck. But seeing her position, I slid and crouched behind her again and gave one last, firm, wet kiss to her promise and stood behind her - tasting her on my lips, and feeling her beg for me with all she was. I couldn't deny her, I didn't want to deny her.
She was bent in prostration, her tail was up and thighs splayed, she presented herself to me and I was captivated by the view, of those supple, strong cheeks of her backside and the long, elegant tail that was bent up and over her back - I watched the trail of her moist thighs as she groaned and gave low rumbles of her interest - and I remembered the taste, as I stepped up and ran my engorged interest against the back of her left thigh - and up, along the curve of her buttocks. I saw a bead of my desire touch the barest hint of her backside, and mix with the musk that was my ambrosia. I slid forward, touched against her, then arched my hips into her. She opened, like a rose, and I was held by a surprisingly hot, slick, wet heat.
Sliding into her, I was rewarded with the smack of my hips into her own, and the writhe of her body as her claws left ruts in the metal of the vehicle - I'd have to patch that up when I was a little more sane. My hips met her backside and her tail wrapped, squeezing me. Lifting her body up with a soft shiver, and with a groan of my bones and muscles, I held her thigh and began to slowly, lovingly, longingly thrust into he flesh, watching her vulva as it made slick my erection. She clamped and milked me, like a vice around my being, and I bred her - took her, and made her know I liked her quite a bit more than I should have.
Her musk was potent, and I'd given myself an overdose, and as I split her open and rode her body, I could feel orgasm after orgasm ripple through her - and felt her strangle my erection for all it was worth. We made love passionately, my testes slapping against her thighs when I lifted her other leg and lowered her left - I felt her quake, quiver, and shudder with a roar of blood through her body, and the pressure building in my lower belly. I was close, so very close to erupting, and I think she knew it too. Her thighs clamped and squeezed against my hips as I licked the back of her neck and over one of the ridges of her spine - as I bit her shoulder and suckled her musky flesh. We made love, and I, soon enough, was ready to complete it.
And then I came.
Like fire through my veins, did I give her my release. Like napalm did I feel my body flush and my mind was blasted away from the force of what spilled out of me, and what shot deeply into the heat of her womb. I came hard and eager and surrendered all of myself to her cloying depths. She wriggled and her hips jerked my own, bucked backwards with a roar leaving her - a beautiful sound, as I draped heavily over her back and was rewarded with scratches, but I couldn't complain. A thousand cuts were worth the delight of her - and I think she knew it.
We laid there for an hour, and I didn't mind her at all.
It was an hour before I pulled myself out of her, and before she even made any motion beyond a stupor and doze, and I limped back, feeling the aches and looking at the scratches along my thighs and belly - but could care less, even with the effects of the musk leaving me. I licked at my lips and quietly washed myself in the remaining bath water - though I was almost hesitant to wash the feeling of her off my spent penis. But no matter, I cleaned off, dressed, and helped her into the shack, where she sat heavily even with the remains of our pleasure leaking her thighs.
I blushed, and didn't know why, feeling even nervous as I sorted through and looked for something to give her to wear - there was plenty of scavenging to be done even sixty years after the Apocalypse, and I made sure to always get at least one long hunt a week. Pulling some old clothes together, I began to shred them and sew them into a wrap for her hips - which she accepted confusedly until I helped her wear it. I don't think she understood, but she accepted the gift anyway.
It would cost me some profits, of course, as my savaging helped supplement my smoking, and it helped keep the caravan masters happy, and thus, kept them willing to deal with the military and carry out this small errand on their way to bigger game in the northern communities. I was happy to do so in either case. But how would I explain my guest. My guest.
My companion? My lover?
Maybe I was still a little high off the musk, but I didn't want her to leave me. No, I wanted her to stay, to be with me, to keep the lonely watch with me as long as we could. I wanted to keep her as mine. My mate.
My mate?
Miami was a little less lonely when you had someone to curl up against.