“Made it,” he admitted with pride.
“From an animal?” It occurred to me I’d only seen one type of living creature.
Seeing my face, he laughed. “Yes, an animal!”
“Is it rat?” I’d always been taught they and cockroaches would be the only things that would survive the apocalypse.
“It’s rabbit. The ones immune to the plague have been multiplying like crazy. Lack of predators in the wild has been helping.”
I loved bunnies. In the olden days, I would never eat one. Protein, though. I bit into the jerky and felt happy. “I thought you were a fish man.”
“Mostly. But I’m also practical. This salts easier and doesn’t take up much room.”
It was salty and delicious, as was his cum because I later did something I didn’t do for many guys.
But he was special. He made me feel special. Happy.
After the sex, he showed me the building and the security he’d built in. When we’d come up the stairs, I’d assumed he had almost none, other than the brace on the stairwell door. After all, the apartment was left open. What I didn’t see was the threads he’d placed over some entrances. Subtle and yet clever.
He’d barricaded ventilation shafts. Created a noisy curtain over the elevator opening. As for the stairway, in case they made it past the main floor to ours, he showed me the bucket he kept over it.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Oil.”
“How did we not knock it over last night?”
“The bucket is for when I’m in residence. When I leave, I put the thread over the door. If someone opens it, the thread I crazy glue over the seam snaps.” He pointed to the remains. They seemed like a cobweb.
“I never noticed yesterday.” Then again, I’d been out of breath and eager to stop climbing by that point.
“And I doubt the mutants will either, or any survivors that come poking.”
“I just kept my door locked,” I admitted. Only once did I get a visitor who insisted with an axe on coming in. A so-called human. I did the world a favor and made sure he wouldn’t repopulate.
“How often do you go out scouting?” he asked.
“I try to stock up for a month or more at a time. For winter, I usually make sure the building I’ve found has a few apartments still loaded with stuff.”
“How often do you leave the city?”
I hesitated before admitting, “I don’t.”
He didn’t blink before saying, “You’ve made yourself a prisoner.”
Feeling discomfited, I blurted out, “I don’t take unnecessary risk. How often do you leave your safe place?”
“Every day.”
My turn to gape. “Isn’t that tempting danger?”
“More like courting it. I wasn’t kidding when I said I hunted the mutants. So long as they exist, we will never be safe.”
“You can’t really think you can kill them all?”
“No, but I can try.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to move away? You said the country is pretty good.”
“Yes, but the raw supplies are still mostly in the city. Ordinary people shouldn’t have to risks their lives to access them.”
“So you risk yours?” I noticed how he didn’t think of himself as ordinary. Then again, anyone who actively sought out mutants probably was a whole different level.
“Someone should. Besides, it’s not as if I’m that important.” He shrugged. “No family to care.”
I almost opened my mouth to say I cared, and stopped. I’d known him a day.
As we headed back up the hall, I glanced back at the bucket. “How does the oil help? Is it for tracking?”
“Setting them on fire.”
I gaped as he entered the apartment.
Savage. And yet, could I really say anything? Our lives hung in the balance.
“Lunch?” he asked as I entered. He held out something that claimed to be spray cheese and a box of crackers. The paste was processed orange salty goo that in my healthier days I would have turned up my nose at.
I groaned and moaned eating it.
Best lunch ever.
After our meal—and the sex for dessert—he dressed and strapped on some weapons. I remained in a T-shirt and panties.
“Where are you going?” It would be dark in a few hours.
“Hunting. Want to come?””
“Hunt mutants?” My eyes widened. I shook my head.
That first day, I let him go alone. Once night hit, I paced. Worried. Ranted. Railed.
Xavion returned dirty but alive. I pounced him, so happy he’d come back.
When he left the following day, I joined him, insisting I didn’t want to fight but could act as a lookout. I didn’t want to be alone and wondering.
I put on my stealth gear, including weapons, but when it came to the mask, I held it out and chewed my lower lip. Subconsciously I’d known for a while I’d probably developed an immunity to the plague. Yet, I’d been afraid. I was tired of living like that. The mask went into my pocket.
Off we went, side by side, him alert but attentive to me, showing off the places he’d cleared. A few held a lingering stench of smoke. He taught me how to see signs of buildings that had mutant activity. The monsters didn’t usually use the front door, and once I looked in the right places, I could spot their presence. He let me track the block after that lesson, and I led us into an alley and a metal door pried open. Entering the kitchen of a fast food restaurant that would never serve burgers again, he immediately sought a way down into the basement below, where he dispatched a pair of monsters hiding behind the boiler.
I watched him do it. The brave knight facing off against the hissing beasts. He was poetry in motion, using a sword in a way that proved it wasn’t just an accessory to his outfit.
It was so fucking hot we had sex on the counter that used to serve drinks and the bar food.
It became a pattern for us. Hunt by day, returning by twilight, locking up and having wild sex.
Sometimes we made it to the bedroom. Other times, I ended up back against a wall, a leg around his hips as he fucked me.
We both came each time. Flesh to flesh. No pulling out. No condom. And years since I’d taken birth control.
I didn’t care. I’d been resigned to spending my life alone. Now I had Xavion and plenty of morning-after pills. Every few days, I took an expired one. I wasn’t dumb enough to want to get pregnant.
Not yet. But for the first time in a long time, I could see a future…with Xavion.
He taught me that I’d been barely surviving. I learned to properly fight. Hand to hand, and with a knife. He took me blocks away to practice firing a gun on top of a roof in full daylight.
I’d not realize it the first night, but he showed me later on, that he never took a direct route home. Just in case we were followed.
We didn’t just kill mutants, though. We accumulated supplies. Canned food. Rice. Pasta. Those latter two lasted a long time if kept dry. Sugar and spices. Salt being important in the making of jerky he informed me.
It was the romantic apocalypse I’d fantasized about. The last man and woman on earth finding each other and falling in love.
I should have known we’d eventually hit the part in the movie where bad shit happens. I just never expected it to happen while we were in bed at home.