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Chapter I

Trudging through the hot pine forest was becoming tiresome after three days. Back in the last town I had frankly been too tired to argue with King about the "local" map he picked up from the piles of refuse outside the burned out gas station we had passed.

Initially I thought the charred remnants of the topographical map he found were from the wrong part of the state (or a different state altogether), but the charcoaled edges revealed no useful information, and he had a point that coming out of the mountains a lot of places carried these kinds of maps for hikers and outdoorsmen, and it could help us find our way to civilization faster.

We had been slowly moving out of the relatively safe haven of the mountains for the past few weeks for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost we were getting to the end of the summer, and I sure as shit wasn't going to survive this long just to freeze to death on some mountainside. Supplies were hard to come by in the small mountain towns, and we were finding it harder and harder to scrounge up enough food to keep going.

So against my better judgement I gave into his suggestion that we follow his shortcut through a small patch of forest to reach the nearest highway, and keep moving inland towards more fertile looting grounds. I even chuckled at the lion when he used the term 'civilization', because what the fuck did that mean anymore?

Annoyingly as I often found in these situations, I was right again. The map was not from the area, so we now found ourselves starting our fourth day of aimless hiking through this oppressively humid landscape of scrub pine trees and fallen logs.

I hadn't the heart or the energy to point out how much King had fucked up, and I took his unusually quiet demeanor to mean that he at least realized to some degree that his brashness had gotten into another bad situation.

On top of that, all we had was each other, so I had taken it upon myself lately to try to take it easy on the lion, hoping that reducing the tension between us would help us cope with the daily grind a bit better. Things had not been going swimmingly lately, we hadn't even had the energy or motivation to fuck in days, and I could tell we both were on edge.

Reaching a small stream, we stopped to fill all the water containers we had on hand, and take a few minutes to rest. I thought carefully for a moment on how to ask King where the hell we were, but he cut the silence first.

"How much further you think we go until we hit a town?" he asked.

His voice sounded strained and tired; we had to keep cutting food more and more the longer we were stuck in the wilderness, and todays breakfast had been a whole half of a stale candy bar that we both split.

"Not sure," I said uncommitingly, not wanting to waste any energy on arguing with him.

The lion took a swig from the last of the gallon jugs he was filling at the stream, capped it, then slumped down on the ground against a large rock.

"I'm sorry," he said after a period of silence, "I fucked up with the map, we should have stuck with your plan of following the roads down the mountain, we would at least have hit some shit town by now."

King didn't ever like to admit he had fucked up, so I just stared ahead at the bubbling water, taking swigs of lukewarm water every now and then.

The lion stood up and walked over to me, kneeling right in front of me. His paw grazed my face, trailing down across the side of my muzzle.

"Did you hear me?" he asked, "I said I fucked up, you were right."

I looked up into his eyes, those amber stars that never seemed to loose their light or luster.

"It doesn't matter," I finally replied, "for all we know the road would have been full of walkers or worse. We haven't exactly found any friends among the living either, and anybody coming down the highway with a car could have wasted us just as quickly."

While we still had guns, the state of our ammunition was deplorable, an early mistake by two rookies you might say. Ammo is heavy and was further down the list than food and water was when it came to filling our packs, and we were down to slim pickings.

We both kept a pistol a piece on our hips at all times and had at least an extra clip a piece for those, but we had long since ditched the military carbines we scrounged from the National Guard post. The ammunition was impossible to find in the mountains, and in looting the random cabins and houses we came across, we had at least found a couple nice hunting rifles to pick up. The problem was our dumbasses spent the first few months being gung-ho against the roamers we came across and had wasted most of the rifle ammuntion we had collected. I had a few shells jangling around in my pocket just in case, but I let King keep his fully loaded since he was the better shot.

Honestly the main reason we hefted them around at the moment was in case we came across anybody living; you could never tell who was a friend and who wasn't, and at least the sight of two relatively large armed loners in the woods might deter the random asshole from trying anything stupid.

Thankfully it had been a long time since we had come across anything with a functioning brain. The last one was a skittish young weasel with a bite mark clearly visible on his shoulder. I offered to end things quick for him, but he didn't have the balls to do anything other than sit on the ground, rocking and crying, so King and I made tracks before he turned. I didn't like to dwell on things like that.

When we did come across any walkers we used our blades now; I had picked up a hefty machete from a farm supply store, King was a bit bigger than me so he had the reach to use a knife, one of those carbon steel deals they give the military guys. The thing was even strong enough to cut firewood for a while until we picked up a hatchet.

It was intimidating at first not using a gun, but as long as you attacked them and took the initiative, they usually went down pretty easy. Not to say we didn't have some close calls early on, but we were slowly gaining experience, and the blades didn't attract attention the way the guns did. Not to say I didn't still have that moment of being scared shitless right before I took one down.

I was always conscious that one slip meant the end for me, not to mention what King would do to himself without me. We were on a rocky patch at the moment, but I knew that feeling was still there for both of us. We either made it together, or not at all.

"So," King asked, snapping me out of my thoughts, "what now?" I knew if he finally had broken down to ask me, he was serious about what he said.

"I think we follow this stream down until we hit something, a high vantage point, a lake, something other than hundreds of square miles of fucking pine trees. Besides," I said, "all these pine needles keep digging in between my paw pads and they are starting to annoy the shit out of me."

A smile crept across the big cat's face, "Oh poor Queen, the one wolf who can't cut it in the forest, what a disgrace to your species," he chuckled. I picked a pine cone off the ground and half-heartedly chucked it at him, the big oaf didn't even flinch when it hit him square in the face. "First off," I said tight-lipped, drawing close to his face, "I grew up in the city and not the goddamned forest." "Secondly," I said turning to look at him, flashing him a wide grin across my muzzle, "you know I hate that fucking knickname."

He smiled back, offering his paw to help me up off the ground, the tension eased for a moment.

"Let's go wolf, we'll see if the city boy can find his way in nature after all." Shouldering our packs and slinging our rifles up on our shoulders we began to gingerly climb down to steep embankment that surrounded each side of the stream, moving a little quicker now that we were moving downhill.

After about a half hour the landscape started to open up into more fields, we spotted the odd roamer here and there, but as long as we kept moving they weren't fast enough to keep up with us. A breeze followed us down the shallow valley and the sun didn't seem quite as hot, and maybe being in better spirits gave us a new perspective on the heat of the day.

King was getting abit ahead of me, but as he rounded a grove of trees he suddenly stopped. Instinctively I grabbed for my pistol, but he made no move to unshoulder his rifle or crouch down, he just looked back at me and waved me forward.

"Would you look at that?" he remarked. Glancing through the trees to the clearing ahead stood a small, weathered farmhouse, the first structure of any kind we had seen in almost four days. And squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun, just barely visible from the brick chimney on the south side of the house, was the faint trail of blue-grey smoke rising into the air. King and I looked at each other for a moment, checked that we had rounds chambered in both our rifles and pistols, and started cautiously moving down the hillside towards the house.

There wasn't much cover across an open field, so we stuck to the edges of the forest, which thankfully stretched almost all the way next to the house, keeping us relatively hidden. The hunting shops in the mountains also had a plethora of camouflaged, rugged outdoor clothing, so I felt relatively safe creeping closer and closer.

As we neared the edge of the trees it became more and more evident that someone was indeed holed up in this little cabin. Evidence was all over the place; tattered clothes hung on a laundry line, piles of wood were neatly stacked and covered near the front door, a fire pit filled with burnt trash abutted the side of the house.

There was nothing frightening about the house except for the absence of the owner. King already had his pair of binoculars out, and his silence said everything.

"You think he's in or out?" he asked me.

"What's worse?" was all I could think to reply. If he was home he wasn't going to take too kindly to a couple strangers banging on the door, and if he wasn't, well that created a whole new set of problems for us.

"Wait him out?" the lion queried, glancing sideways at me.

"Yeah," I sighed, "unless you feel like knocking on the door.

So we settled into a thicket of bushes and trees that gave us a wide view of the property. We had the high ground, and could see anybody coming and going from every direction. We both kept our eyes scanning constantly, trading the pair of binoculars every time we thought we'd seen a bit of movement, but it was just the wind faintly rattling a tree branch, or the odd bird fluttering across our field of view.

After a couple hours the sky started to tint to an orange haze, we were running out of time to make camp for the night, and I didn't want to set up so close to someone elses' house, for obvious reasons.

So King and I started packing up the few things we had set around us during our surveillance mission. We each snacked on a handful of nuts and berries we had foraged along our hike that day, food was going to be a real problem real quickly, and part of me hoped we did run into this guy.

Maybe he was one of the good ones, maybe he had some food since he seemed to be living out here so self-sufficiently, maybe was all we had to go on for now. So the lion and I hefted our packs up, and began to trudge back the way we came to the high ridge that overlooked the house.

As we slowly hiked back, I suddenly froze as I heard a large * CRACK* to my left. I instinctively crouched and drew my pistol, until I saw King emerge from behind a tree with his hands raised, and apologetic look on his face.

"Sorry," he said, "I stumbled and had to grab onto a branch, it just broke off."

I laughed as I safetied my pistol and put it back into the holster, it was hard to not to constantly be on edge these days.

I stood still until he got up next to me, reaching up to stroke that beautiful, now very dirty and unkempt mane of his.

"You know," I said, if we set up camp fast enough, we might just have some time for some campfire activities."

"Oh really?" he said with a smirk, "you learn a lot of campfire songs in the city?"

"No," I said, inching closer to him, "but I know a couple things that are pretty fun to do by the firelight." I ran my paws down his chest, down the waist of his pants to grope his ample cock and balls.

"Ahh," he said, hardening up already at my touch, "I think I learned a little of that too."

Giddy with excitement we both picked up our pace, heading back to a small clearing of trees we had spotted earlier that would give us some cover from all sides as we slept. The prospect of some sexual release was something we both desperately needed right now, and I could care less if we even set up camp tonight.

We rounded the last corner of the trail, spotting the clearing up ahead. We quickly chucked our packs to the ground, and made a stupid game of trying to grab and pin the other. Even though malnourished, King still had a couple inches of height and a few pounds on me, and he quickly pinned me to a tree, a look of pure lust in his eyes.

"Guess you got caught," he breathed heavily at me, his now rock-hard groin pressed into my stomach.

"You got that right," said a sharp voice from behind us, paralyzing us both.

I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell rack into the chamber, and just over King's broad shoulders I could make out a dark figure step out from behind a large maple tree.

"Sorry to ruin date night, but I'm gonna need you both to take those pistols off your waists and toss them towards me slowly," the figure growled.

Still frozen with fear neither King or I made a move, until the figure shouted again.

"If you think I'm fucking around I can just shoot the two of you right now, by the looks of things those pistols were coming off with your pants in another minute or so anyways, so just toss the guns over."

Slowly and carefully, King and I separated from each other, reached for our pistols and tossed them towards the shadow near the tree.

"Much better, much better," the stranger snidely remarked, "now comes the hard part."

Before I could so much as process the question King piped up in a squeaky, nervous voice, "What's the hard part?"

The stranger cackled, but never moved an inch from behind the cover of the tree, barely more than the obvious glint of a shotgun barrel showing next to the bark.

"The hard part," he parroted King, "is whether or not to kill you right now."