Apocalypse Wow, Pt. 12

In Part 11...

The four survivors Jim and Caroline met in Durden turned out to be the survivors of a soccer team who had been travelling home to Ohio on the First Day. And although they enjoyed the comfort and safety of the house, they decided to continue their journey home.

As work progressed on research and making improvements to the house, Jim was perturbed by his second sexual encounter with Caroline. But with a little help from Simone and Chloe, any misgivings either of them may have had were were and truly resolved with an explosive third.

***

It's the End of the World as Jim Knows it.

Part 12 - "I don't know if I really like the term fuck buddies"

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Hey there, been a while.

*Hey Jim. Yeah, I've been feeling pretty shitty the last couple weeks.

How bout now?

*Better I guess. Mornings are still pretty rough, but I'm OK.

I guess we spoke too soon before, huh? Well, it's good to see you Dani, I missed you.

*Me too. So how's the ankle?

Much better actually, no crutches or anything anymore. I was talking to Lou about maybe setting out after the scouts, they're not outside the boundary yet, I could still catch them.

*...... Oh......

Come on D...

*I really don't want to talk about this Jim.

Right... yeah... sorry...

*Let's just... let's just keeping going, OK?

OK, yeah, sure... where were we? The picnic, right? Right.

So I guess the next few weeks after that, after the picnic I mean, kind of ran into each other a little bit. Mostly on account of us being so busy.

Simone and Chloe had made a pretty good plan from their days at the yard and we started using some of the heavy machinery to move materials back to the house. There was a tractor with a long trailer and forklifts for moving the stuff onto it. So the fence was coming along pretty nicely.

Actually, Simone and Chloe did most of the work on the fence. Caroline and I helped out obviously, when they needed us, but we were working on another project. The yard and Chloe's house also had some electrical infrastructure so we started to remove it and retrofit it into the house, another couple of battery modules and plenty more solar panels. We all agreed it was a good idea to have a more constant supply and that, if we did start to grow food, it would be helpful it we could set up some cold storage. And for that we'd need more power.

So anyway, like I said, things were coming along. And we were pretty settled. Caroline and I were spending occasional nights or... sometimes days together, and having a lot of fun and if anything I felt even closer to Simone and to Chloe too.

From the day they'd left us, it was four weeks almost to the minute when the girls from Ohio came back.

We had all of the posts for the fence installed by then. We used the biggest ones Chloe's dad's yard had, twelve feet long. We buried them four feet into the ground leaving us an eight foot fence. The idea was that we'd install rails one under the other for a solid wall. Caroline and I were helping Chloe and Simone with installing the rails when we heard the noise.

I think if it had been the RV we found them in the first time we would have recognized it pretty fast but, at first, it was just an engine noise so we didn't immediately assume it was them. Caroline had insisted that, even though we were so close to the house, we always keep at least one rifle with us so as soon as we heard the engine, she picked it up and handed it to me. She ran to the house and came back with three more.

From where we were, we couldn't really see the road. Even though the land naturally sloped down in that direction, with the trees and all, we couldn't see who or what it was until they turned into the drive.

And like I said, if it had been the RV coming up, we would have taken an immediate sigh of relief, but it was some dark colored SUV we didn't recognize.

"Cover," Caroline said and we all knew what she meant. We'd continued training and drilling with her and, coupled with our experiences with red-eyes, we'd learned to take every threat deadly seriously. We spread ourselves out a little and took cover behind the posts and rails already installed and took aim at this strange car.

I'm not sure if they saw us aiming at them but they pulled up pretty short of us and when we saw Lola get out and wave we definitely did take that sigh of relief.

And like when they'd left, there was a lot of hugging. I don't know, like I said before, maybe it was a little weird to feel so connected to people who we'd only known for little more than a day but... well... I guess that feeling of connection to people, any people, just by virtue of the fact that they're alive, that just didn't exist before the First Day but is so much a part of life for everyone now was starting to take hold.

With all the elation of seeing them again, it actually took a minute for us to realize that there were only three of them.

"Where's... where's Alex..." I said, and immediately regretted it. Where do you think she fucking was? It was a really fucking stupid thing to say.

Louise and Lola looked to each other and I could see tears form in Lola's eyes. Fiona was on the ground with Jerry.

"I'm sorry," I said. What else could I say?

So we were all a little more somber when we moved up to the house. After the initial joy at seeing them and then my stupid question, it took a minute or two to notice that they looked terrible. They were thin without being worryingly so, but I knew they definitely needed a good meal. Quite a few good meals actually. They're clothes were ragged and dirty and they looked totally exhausted. If anything, I think they were in worse shape than when we'd first found them.

Chloe and Simone brought them upstairs to clean up and Caroline and I started on dinner.

We'd made a couple more runs to Durden since they'd been with us before and we'd been able to visit a few more stores so we actually had a much better stocked wardrobe for them when they were done showering.

It was kind of strangely quiet when they came down and we starting eating together. I think from our point of view, Chloe, Simone, Caroline and I that is, we really didn't want to press them. If they wanted to talk about it, of course we'd listen but... I think we all just felt like we just needed to be there for them at that point.

"There was nothing left," Louise said finally. No one had asked her, she just said it. Fiona and Lola were sitting on either side of her and they both put a hand on her back and, actually for the first time, I think I really saw them, really looked at them.

They could have been sisters. I mean, not that they looked very similar or anything but just the dynamic between them was so... close. Actually, they didn't look similar at all, apart from being the same age and maybe more or less the same height.

Fiona obviously had a lot of Irish in her. Actually she was almost a stereotype of an Irish person. Her bright, fiery red hair was cut short and freckles covered her pale face. Louise had cut her hair short too, even shorter actually. She was dark-skinned and had a much more voluptuous body shape than Fiona, who had a really petite frame. Lola's hair, also cut short, looked like it might have been several colors at the same time at some point, there were little bits here and there of various shades but her natural blond was breaking through in most parts. She was a little odd in that, while her frame was as slight as Fiona's, her chest was huge, totally out of proportion to the rest of her.

"What happened?" Chloe asked. We'd stopped eating and silence had fallen on the table. Lola took up the story.

"I don't know," she said, "but... it was all gone. It wasn't a big city or anything so I doubt it had been nuked, but something happened to start fires. The whole place, every building was burned. You could see ruins or whatever but... nothing else, no people just... nothing."

"I'm so sorry," Simone said.

"We stayed the night," Fiona said. "We'd lost the RV by that point, it had given up a couple of hundred miles before so we just kind of camped. You can imagine how we felt. We'd been so hopeful... especially after meeting you that... that someone... something might have survived..."

"In the morning we decided," Louise said. "Actually, we didn't really need to talk about it. The whole journey, we saw no one. We tried to stay away from built up areas whenever we could to avoid red-eyes but, still, we didn't see a single person. Not one. Coming back here was really the only thing we could think of. Ever since the First Day, this was the only place we'd felt... safe... like... like we could just... breathe."

"We lost Alex about two weeks later," Lola said. Fiona's head dropped and Louise covered her eyes with a hand. "We were on maybe our second car since starting back and when it crapped out... I guess we'd just got used to finding another one pretty fast but, I don't know what happened, wherever we were, nothing worked. We spent two days walking, trying to find a town and when we did, even there, nothing worked. We couldn't get any of the cars started. We stayed there that night, in a house and..." She drifted off when I heard her voice catch a little in her throat.

"They came," Fiona said, "the red-eyes. The next morning. We started walking after we got up but we hadn't even made it to the edge of town. There were six of them, maybe more. And they made this... this sound..."

"I know," I said, "we've heard it. It's... terrifying."

"Fucking awful," Louise said, "we were scared shitless. We had the guns and we tried to use the training you gave us Caroline but... fuck... when they started moving they were so fast."

"We got three of them," Lola said, "before... before they reached us but... they just kept coming..."

"It was a bit of a blur after that," Fiona said. "I lost my gun but... I could hear the others still firing. One of them was on top of me, trying to... to bite me. There was blood dripping out of its mouth."

"I managed to hold onto my gun when one of them jumped me," Louise said, "and... I don't know how but... I was able to shoot it in the head. It just exploded... I was fucking covered in it but I was so fucking panicked I just jumped up. I saw there was one on top of Fiona but I was so scared I'd hit her if I fired but... I guess I thought it was better to die that way than get fucking... eaten or whatever... so I did."

"And then I was fucking covered too," Fiona said.

"I lost my gun too," Lola said. "I mean... the whole thing was... frantic, you know but... I was on the ground and one of them was on top of me and there was this moment where... I just knew. I knew I was going to die and... I don't know... I... I accepted it. I was glad I was with people I loved when it happened, you know, glad I wasn't alone. And then some part of me clicked. It was weird. It was like there was a voice in my head saying you're not fucking dead yet. So I reached for the knife in my belt and just jammed it as hard as I could into its head."

"By the time I saw Lola get up," Fiona said, "Alex was already... gone. I guess she'd lost her gun when they jumped her too and... well... it just..."

"I blew it's fucking head off," Louise said. Her voice was grim and determined and her face betrayed more rage than sadness. Fiona sobbed quietly and a solitary tear slid down Lola's cheek. I think we were all crying at that point, to be honest.

"We... we were pretty fucking scared," Lola said, "but... we... we couldn't just leave her there like that. We buried her, as best we could, before we moved on."

"It was six more days before we found a car that worked," Fiona said. "I don't know, obviously other than the First Day there have been times since that I was scared but... those six nights... I think those six nights were collectively the worst of my life."

"Me too," Lola said. "Honestly... it was this place that kept us going. Just knowing that you guys were here, that there was somewhere we knew was safe...."

"I really think," Louise said, "if we didn't have this place to aim for, we might not have made it."

Fiona and Lola nodded gently and silence descended again. Obviously it had been a fucking harrowing story to hear but... I don't know, I guess at least it did make me feel pretty good that we'd been able to help them, just by being here. That felt good.

"So... I guess..." Lola said, taking Louise's hand in hers, "I guess we, ah, we thought maybe... we'd take you up on your offer from before... you know... to... stay here... for a while."

Now, a thought passed through my mind here. What did for a while mean? When we'd made the offer the last time they were with us, I think the words Simone used were 'as long as you like' but, really, where the fuck else were they going to go? And, perhaps surprisingly, that's actually what I said. Even by then, as I'm sure you'll have been able to tell already, it was usually Simone who spoke for us on such matters but, technically, it was still my house, right?

"For a while?" I said. "You have some place else you'd like to go?" I was smiling when I said it. I didn't mean it to be... sarcastic. But I wanted to be sure they understood me. "Listen," I said, "for a while, as long as you need, it doesn't matter. As far as I'm concerned, this house is your home now too. As much as it is for me and for Caroline and Simone and Chloe, you'll always have a place here, as long as you want it."

I'm not sure how the others felt about how I'd put it but, looking around after I'd said it I knew straight away they were in total agreement and I felt Simone's hand rub my back gently. There was more silence for a minute while Louise and Lola and Fiona took in what I'd said. They looked at us and looked at each other. Honestly, there was a massive lump in my throat and I was finding it a little difficult to see with the tears in my eyes. I wanted so much for them to stay, to be in a place where they'd be safe and happy.

Anyway, after a few seconds, Lola stood up and moved around the table towards me and I stood up too. There wasn't any discussion or hesitation or anything. She just wrapped her arms around me and I did the same. And... we just cried together for a minute. Louise and Fiona joined in and then Simone and the others until we were just this one big pile of hugging, sobbing people in the middle of the kitchen.

When it finally broke up, Lola said thank you. I'm pretty sure the others did too actually. I remember Caroline looking at me and smiling and I just nodded at her.

"You get that one for free," she said, just as I'd said to her on her first night with us, "but no more thanks. We're just glad you're here."

It was still pretty early I guess but it was also clear that the three of them were totally exhausted so, with a little encouragement they went to bed for some sleep. We decided to take the rest of the day off working on the fence. We'd make a pretty big racket and we didn't want to disturb them. And I guess it also felt like.... we just needed to stop for a minute. I mean, even then, I think we understood in some way that something pretty extraordinary had just happened. In an instant, the population of our little sanctuary had almost doubled.

We didn't do much, really we just kind of sat around and talked. There was practical stuff to think about, like sleeping arrangements for example. The last time they'd been with us they'd been happy to share for the night, and Chloe and Simone had both slept with me. Not that I had major objections to that being a more permanent state of affairs, but I didn't think it'd be that practical. So we made plans for the next day to head up to Chloe's house with the truck and bring back some beds. If we cleared out the old storage room upstairs properly, it would definitely fit an extra bed and Caroline insisted that her room could take an extra one too, she didn't mind sharing. We thought about using my dad's old office at the front of the house as a bedroom but, actually, we all felt it was nice to have a space like that in the house, especially now that there'd be more people here. It was lined, wall to wall and floor to ceiling with shelves of books and movies. It was always my favorite room in the house, probably in any house. Still is actually.

And we talked about power. Like I said, Caroline and I had been working on expanding our capacity and now that we had extra people in the house, we were going to need it. But even that, I mean those projects, the fence and the power and stuff, it didn't escape our notice that with three extra pairs of hands, there was so much more we'd be able to do.

And yeah... I mean... obviously we talked about... other arrangements. We needed to decide what to tell them... when to tell them... They knew from their first visit about Simone and Chloe and I but I guess our collective experience with how Caroline had found out about that meant that we were pretty sure we needed to be totally up front with them about the fact that I spent the occasional night in Caroline's room, especially given that it wasn't going to be just Caroline's room anymore.

We were a little bit nervous about it. I certainly was. Sure we'd had this really nice, emotional moment together, wanted them to feel at home here but... well... I guess it was on my mind that... well... put plainly, I didn't want them to feel like... I mean, up to now there had been three women living in this house and I had a regular and very healthy sexual relationship with all three of them, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, I didn't want them to feel like that was what we were all about, you know? Like, they'd feel different or excluded somehow because they weren't a part of it. And I definitely didn't want them to feel as if they somehow had to be a part of it.

Honestly, I swear to god, that thought had not crossed my mind. I mean, sure they were obviously three very attractive young women, of course I'd noticed that but... honestly, I really thought that I was just about getting the hang of effectively being in a relationship with two women at the same time while also having pretty regular mind-blowing sex with another one.

Anyway, I'm not sure if we watched a movie that night. In any case, the new girls didn't get up. They slept right through till morning, eighteen hours or something. Simone and Chloe were sleeping in so it was just Caroline and me in the kitchen when they got up. Actually, this was kind of the plan we'd made.

Caroline had made breakfast. Powdered eggs aren't a thing anymore, but people from before the First Day would have said they were pretty much garbage, but we'd really grown to love them. We didn't have them everyday, we didn't have that big of a supply, but it was nice occasionally. Louise, Fiona and Lola definitely thought so.

Anyway, if things had been pretty heavy the day before, I think everyone was in a much lighter mood that morning. They'd noticed the fence obviously and we talked about that and the power project and our plans for starting to grow food and stuff. Caroline made plans to meet with them all separately for a medical check-up. They were all feeling OK, and much better after eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep in a warm bed, but none of them objected to talking to Caroline.

I wasn't sure exactly how it would go, if I would have to bring it up. The night before, we'd agreed that we had to talk about it one way or another but that, maybe it would just come up on its own and we could roll with it. And it did. I wasn't surprised that it was Lola who mentioned it. She'd been the one when they were with us the previous time who seemed to take the most interest in our... domestic situation. "Pretty kinky," she'd called it.

"So Jim," she said, a little smirk on her face, "you and Simone and Chloe still going strong?"