Three Shots

by HUNKxTofu

Two zombie apocalypse survivors find something worth living for. (Artwork by me.)

THREE SHOTS

I: Scavenger

Sonia Perry was out scavenging—looting other people's abandoned property—and there were just too many hordes of the walking dead around, for someone alone and unarmed, anyway; she had neither gun nor mêlée weapon, not even a sharp stick. She thought of that guy Marcus's survivor group—she'd been out scavenging a few days ago, unarmed and alone then, too, when Marcus came by and offered to help. He'd said his radio person had told him she'd heard of "scavenger activity." Sonia had almost said, "You have a radio person? That's their only job?," but didn't quite. She'd offered Marcus half of whatever she found, and he didn't even need it. He said he was just making friends, from survivor group to survivor group—there weren't many living people left; they needed to help each other out. Sonia liked that. Marcus was a good guy. Chill. Extremely competent in a zombie fight. They hadn't spoken much. Sonia had considered asking him out on a post-zombie-apocalyptic dinner date, but then that seemed silly. Besides, there was no privacy anymore. The world was upside-down. Sonia hadn't got laid in weeks.

The only things Sonia's four-person survivor group had in plenty were radios and AA batteries, so Sonia got on the general survivor-calling-for-help channel—the one Marcus's group had set up—and reached Lily, who clearly never required sleep and who took a few minutes to send anyone Sonia's way, but when Lily said help finally was on its way, she really meant it . . . Marcus himself would be coming.

Sonia lost track of precise time—her phone battery had gone uncharged for weeks—but knew it wasn't long after Lily said help was coming before Marcus got there. It seemed his whole group used cars. She'd seen and heard more than one car about lately, and those she'd been able to flag down to see who they were and whom they were with had all said they were in Marcus's group. They'd mostly been women. They didn't have a group name. Sonia's friend Kaitlyn, in her own group, called Marcus's group the Car Crew. Nobody else used cars.

It seemed like Sonia heard Lily say help was coming, then a few seconds went by and suddenly a zombie—a walker, a rotter, a stench, a zed, an undead shambler—had her by the shoulders. Sonia wasn't a kung fu expert or ninja by any means, but she thought of herself as alert, at least while scavenging. That was the new normal. And she'd never been caught off-guard like this before. She did stupid shit by accident sometimes—let zeds get too close, made loud noises—but they never snuck up on her. As a matter of fact, zeds didn't sneak at all. So how the fuck?—

Then there was this noise, like someone closing a book too hard, and the zed's body lost all strength and went limp; it dropped like a rucksack full of rocks. A rucksack full of anything, really; they all seemed impossibly heavy once they were full, whatever you loaded them with. The zombie was so close to the farmhouse's wall that when it slumped and started collapsing it almost knocked her over with it, something it hadn't managed to do while alive. Well, dead alive.

"Hey. You okay?" someone said—but not just any someone; Sonia recognized the voice immediately. It was Marcus. He looked like he'd just looted a gun store for all it was worth.

Marcus had lost the down vest he'd been wearing the last time she saw him. He'd lost weight. And, unless he really had just scavenged a gun store, his group had found or perhaps conjured by magic even more guns, because he had several guns about his person now—not just one like the last time she saw him, or none like she had herself—and none of his guns was the one he'd had the last time she saw him, some black handgun with a silencer. She didn't know what kind of gun he was carrying now, but it was small enough for him to use one-handed and it looked weird and futuristic. It was also silenced. And it'd only taken him one shot to drop the zombie that snuck up on and grabbed her. So he'd gotten better at shooting, too.

Sonia pretended not to be thrilled and relieved to see him.

"I'm good. Thanks," Sonia greeted him.

"It's nothin," Marcus said, looking around for more zeds.

"So are you okay watching my back, while I go through this place?" Sonia said.

"Sure," Marcus said. He even had gun holsters now. And a big military backpack. Lucky bastard, Sonia thought. She didn't even have weapons; Marcus not only had weapons but had so many for himself he needed ways to carry them all. No one in her whole survivor group had any weapons. Sonia was almost angry at how much better his group was doing than hers.

"You can have half of whatever I find," Sonia said. "When we get back to my place." She said it as a formality. Marcus wouldn't rip her off. Even if he needed anything she uncovered. Others had tried to rip her off, if not done so—found what they wanted and abandoned her, just been awful backup and then ditched her, or even tried to get her killed.

"Okay," Marcus said. "You don't have a weapon?" He said it flatly, with no tone, but it still annoyed Sonia—that he was right, and that he didn't have the same problem.

"No, I still don't," Sonia said.

Marcus frowned and shook his head; Sonia raised her eyebrows and said, "Don't judge me."

"I was just playin," he said, smiling. He holstered his weird future-gun on some kind of tactical cowboy holster on his right thigh, swung his backpack down in front of him, and started looking through it. He made his backpack look light, but she was sure it wasn't. He opened a side-pouch and took a fancy-looking black handgun and a silencer out of it, then started screwing them together. "You can use some loaners I carry," he said as he went about it all.

"You have loaners?" Sonia said. "How fucking many guns does your group have?"

"A lot," Marcus said. "We don't even look for them anymore. We just keep finding em." The silencer looked nice, like it had been made before the zombie apocalypse. The last time she'd seen Marcus, the silencer on his gun then had looked really sketchy, like it was made from a paint can, a screwdriver, a hammer and a real lack of patience.

"How many?" Sonia repeated.

"I stopped counting," Marcus said. He managed to look abashed.

"Can we . . . have some?" Sonia said—joking. But hopeful if it was such a joke to him he'd just give her one or five to keep, on a whim.

"Okay," Marcus said, like he wouldn't miss any, finishing with the silencer. He held the gun and started digging around in his bag. "We have so many we seriously started usin them for paperweights and shit."

Sonia laughed out loud. She didn't even remember the last time she'd laughed. She said, "That's not funny."

Marcus looked up at her and didn't say anything, but his expression suggested incredulity.

Sonia cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms and said, "My survival is no laughing matter, Marcus."

Marcus said, "I think the zombies awoke a certain dark humor in all of us."

Sonia giggled.

"Oh, there it is," Marcus said, not looking at her. There was a hatchet, fancy- and tactical- and expensive-looking, hanging off one of his bag's many straps by way of a scabbard that only covered the hatchet's blade-head, or whatever it was called. Marcus unclipped it and handed the whole thing to Sonia. She took it at once. "You can keep that," he said. "I include the nylon belt sheath free of charge."

Sonia smiled at him. "Can I really keep it?"

"Yeah," he said. "Get it out, please. You might need it."

She saw wisdom in that. She clipped it on her blue jeans' waist, suddenly desiring a belt, then figured out the complicated series of button snaps on the sheath and got the thing out. The belt clip was cold. The hatchet had a wrapped grip made of black paracord. The thing's shaft or whatever was made of a sickly neon green-colored material, which was weird, but it also weighed nothing. Excess paracord at the bottom made a lanyard.

"I worked at one of those outdoor-type stores," Marcus said. "Before. Anyway, that's your main weapon," he said, pointing at the hatchet. "The best tactic is to just avoid them entirely. Zeds. Or make a distant loud noise to distract them, like fireworks. But if you can't avoid em, use that before guns. If you can find a bow, that would be good too. The loudest hatchet is still quieter than the quietest gun."

"That's some philosophy right there," Sonia said, grinning.

"Real talk," Marcus said—but looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, my group's been having me do these survival workshops all the time lately. It's like, most of them forget to talk to me like a human. It's . . . " He shrugged. "Sorry."

"It's fine!" said Sonia, who'd been trying to cut in since the first "sorry." She went on, "It's fine. I . . . That helps. All of it. I've been wanting a gun—any gun—for so long I never thought about how loud they are."

"Or how many zeds the noise attracts," Marcus said. "I'd give you more suppressors but we don't have enough to spare. So only shoot if you have to. Anyway, yeah, right. I did too, my first time. I was so excited I didn't have to get up close I forgot how loud guns are. I almost got somebody killed. Noise draws them. Really, it does, their hearing's better than their sight. It—I'm coming off patronizing—" Sonia tried to interrupt but failed. "—but I'm just trying to help you not make the same mistakes I made."

"Which is why it's fine," Sonia said, only then noticing she'd been staring intently at the gun he'd said he'd give her.

"Do you know how to use one?" he said, of the silenced gun in his hand.

"Nope," she said.

"I could show you," Marcus offered. "You got time?"

"I'm good," Sonia said. "Let's do it." She remembered how very big Marcus's survivor group was. "Do you have time?"

"If you ask Lily, no," Marcus said. He looked, and listened, around for zeds. "Can we step outside? We have to be quiet, but it's a lot easier for them to sneak up on you inside."

"Sure," Sonia said. She'd never thought of that. They headed outside. As they went, she said—quietly—"How many people are in your group? They must be asking you to do shit all the time."

"I dunno," Marcus said. "Maybe fourteen. And . . . low key, they're annoying as fuck. Can I just show you? On the radio."

Mostly failing to suppress a laugh, Sonia said, "Oh my God, please do."

"This is why I never get anything done," Marcus said, taking off his belt a serious-looking walkie-talkie. Maybe you had to call it a radio when it was serious. He said, "Nothing I really want to, anyway."

Marcus turned his radio on and got Lily, mid-sentence, saying she managed to record some of some male survivor agitatedly asking for a distraction. Then there was less than a second's pause, then Lily said Marcus was so awesome at surviving outside of their home base he should give people like her lessons. Then less than a second's pause again and Lily was saying bring on the zombies, their base was so well-defended. Then another short pause and Lily said, "You should really see what's going on at the courthouse." Sonia wondered what that meant. Lily started saying something else, but Marcus cut her off, turning the radio off and stowing it.

"All day," Marcus intoned, with emphasis but not volume. They were outside now, in open air, at night.

"What channel was that?" Sonia said. "I've never heard her talk that much."

"Ah," Marcus said. "That's the . . . regional survivor help network. Hotline. I don't even have time to monitor that one, anymore, myself. What I showed you was our own general chatter channel. It's encrypted. The main network you talk to her on is just, anyone with a CB can listen in."

"How'd you get encrypted radios?" Sonia said.

"Uh, we looted a police station," Marcus said. "The channel's encrypted, not the radios."

"Oh. Is that where you found literally every gun in the world?" Sonia said, gesturing at his multiple guns. He had some kind of AR-15 strapped to his chest that was small and looked so deadly she wanted to call it a deathgun. It looked like if you pointed it at a zombie and fired the zombie's whole body would just explode.

Marcus looked confused.

"Because your group has so many guns," Sonia said. "Is what I was going for."

"Oh," Marcus said. They both giggled. "We don't have every gun in the world. I really want more rifles, so we can take out juggernauts from range."

"Juggernaut?" Sonia said.

"Those really big ones," Marcus said. "Somebody in my group called em that and everybody else liked it. I wanted to call them 'evil big bastards' but nobody went for it."

"'Juggernaut' sounds like a comic book name. Jokey. I'm not scared of that. I saw one of those—" Sonia sighed. "—juggernauts at a distance once. I stayed well the fuck away from it."

"Good," Marcus said. "What were we talking about?"

"You were gonna give me that," Sonia said, gesturing at the silenced gun in his hand.

He started handing it to her but then stopped and said, "You're not gonna shoot me and take my stuff, are you?"

"No," Sonia said like that was the most ridiculous and shitty thing in the world, because it was. "Marcus—we're, like, friends now. I want us to help each other too."

"Okay," Marcus said, then took the clip out of the gun. He did it so quick Sonia couldn't even tell how he did it. He knew what he was doing. Maybe there was a button somewhere. Or did you just pull it out? Then he quickly pulled back the top of the gun and a bullet flew out—there was a flash of gold in the moonlight—and Marcus caught it in mid-air. He really knew what he was doing. She wondered how he could even see the bullet, in the mostly-dark. The moon was nearly full, but there weren't any lights on. Maybe he'd known where it would go.

Sonia cut in: "Showing off?" She put her hatchet away.

"I'm just—yeah, I was totally showing off," Marcus said. She laughed. He smiled. He kept the clip and the bullet but spun and rotated the gun around in his other hand without dropping it—strong hands—and extended the gun to her so she could take it by the handle.

She took it—

And evidently immediately did something wrong, because by reflex Marcus sort of jumped to the side. Sonia noticed she'd probably been pointing the gun at him, without even meaning to. As he hopped out of what would've been the bullet . . . zone, he also shoved her hand in a different direction.

"Don't point it at people," Marcus said.

"Okay, lesson number one," Sonia said, trying to play it cool—and failing, because without even noticing it she must've pointed the gun at him again. He pushed it away again. Reflex, self-defense, not trying to prove a point.

"Back at the store a couple times Ed and some other people almost shot me with that type a shit. There was a shooting range in the store," Marcus said. "Plus other survivors, since . . . all this. Sorry for bein jumpy."

"I think I understand," Sonia said. "I wouldn't want me pointing the gun at me either. Don't apologize." She had to consciously keep the gun pointed away from Marcus, which took more brainpower than she expected it to. "Who's Ed?"

"That's my friend from work. He's an accountant," Marcus said. "He's in my group, too. We were up at Mount Tanner on vacation when—"

"You were on vacation when the world ended?" Sonia said, grinning.

Marcus smiled. "Yeah, I was," he said.

Sonia could only shake her head.

"What were you doing?" Marcus said. "When it first got to you."

"Masturbating," Sonia said.

"Nice," Marcus said. Sonia liked his reaction a lot.

"Not really," Sonia said. "I was wrapping up stuff at work and one of those things attacked me. I do construction."

"One of those special things attacked you?" Marcus said.

"No, I just meant a normal zombie," Sonia said. "It seemed special then, though. I'd never seen anything like it. Then. I still remember how it felt unreal to me, that's why I called it a thing."

"Did it bite you?" Marcus said. He held on to the loose bullet and handed her the gun's clip and watched her hands—or, more likely, made sure she didn't point the gun at him again. Sonia took the clip.

"I smashed its head in with a sledgehammer," Sonia said.

"Didn't even know it was a zombie," Marcus said, joking.

Sonia laughed out loud and hard. She knew she was outside, she just couldn't help it, even then. Marcus went to put a hand over her mouth, but she beat him to it. Apparently in so beating him she also carelessly pointed the gun at him, again. He was off-balance from reaching out and leaning in, and when he pushed the gun to aim it away from himself, he fell forward.

For an incredibly long instant, it seemed like Marcus's surprised face was going to fall right between her breasts. He wasn't quite that close to her; instead, he fell into her crotch. His forehead impacted her belly. She was pretty sure his mouth hit the fly of her jeans.

Marcus tried not to, but he took Sonia down with him. They fell in a heap of loose limbs and elbows. Sonia heard something metal hit Marcus's head. Sonia lost the gun, but somehow not its clip. The loose bullet wound up in Sonia's support camisole, between a cup and her right boob, but she didn't figure that out until later. And both of them were laughing. Pretty hard.

It took the laughing mass of them a while to untangle. Marcus was a true gentleman, to her surprise: He didn't use the chance to feel her up, ass or titties. She only wished he had.

They eventually became separate individuals again, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. Which you could actually see with no electricity anywhere near.

Their laughter abated. Eventually.

"We're makin too much noise," Marcus said.

"Oh my God, Marcus, we should make this a regular thing," Sonia said.

"Me tackling your taut belly with my face?" Marcus said. They turned their heads to look at each other.

"Thank you for noticing," Sonia said. "And no, just us hanging out. It's been . . . I don't know, a month since it happened, and you're the first person I met who has a sense of humor. I love it."

"You're welcome," Marcus said. "And thanks." He sat up, checking around for zombies.

Sonia sat up and did the same thing. It was instinct, now. She was alert again. She'd been having far too much fun, really connecting with someone for the first time in what seemed like ever.

Much quieter, Marcus said, "We should go back inside."

"Yeah," Sonia said. She heard distant moans. And not the fun kind. While they'd been talking, she hadn't heard any. But now at least one of the hordes she'd seen, and called for help because of, was heading their way. Not alerted, just drawn to any noise.

Gentleman Marcus stood, then offered her a hand up. She took it. He glanced down her shirt, but clearly accidentally. It was okay. She liked it. She felt good.

He looked at her hands—clip, but no gun—and got out one of those old military bent flashlights, and turned it on. He kept it low, below the top of the long grass. Its light was red.

She looked with him, and they found the gun in about a minute.

Then they looked for the loose bullet, and gave up after maybe a minute.

Marcus took the lead back to the farmhouse, turning off the flashlight and stepping past her and looking at her tits, which was nice. Then he froze—eyes still on her tits.

"What?" she asked self-consciously. She was almost certain he'd just noticed she had big tits. She was very proud of them. Natural. She looked down in case her shirt and cami had fallen off, or something, but they hadn't.

"Do you have only one pierced nipple?" Marcus said, still looking at her tits.

"What?" Sonia said reflexively. Her clothes were still on, but there was clearly something amiss. Now she checked more thoroughly by just grabbing her tits. "No," she said as she did it. It was too dark to see details anyway. And . . . there was a huge lump, which felt numb, on her right boob. An insect! One that would surely bite her nipple, and probably instantly also make her die, somehow. She panicked and swatted at it without thinking. She inadvertently let out a muted "Ahh!" and ran around a little. All she accomplished was smacking herself in the boob, and whatever kind of bug it was, it didn't go away. Marcus tried to stop her.

"It was the bullet!" Marcus said. It took Sonia a while to notice what he'd said. And now he was holding a small, flat-tipped bullet up right in front of her face. She checked for the insect-lump on her tit and it was gone.

"That was on my tit?" she said.

"Yeah," Marcus said. "I'm disappointed it wasn't a piercing."

"I like my sensitivity right where it is. I like my tits, too, and I don't want one of my nips to get ripped off," Sonia said without thinking. Then she looked between him and the bullet. "When did you get that out of there?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I just snatched it out." Sonia frowned and crossed her arms under her tits. Marcus noticed that—the look of disapproval, and the shelving of her tits. "Seriously! I thought you had some kinda nervous reaction to it and were gonna start yelling, or something. So I just grabbed it."

Sonia nearly felt uncomfortable. She took a second to just get a measure of Marcus. And see how he handled the silence.

"I'm genuinely sorry," he said. "If I wanted to touch some titty, I would've either asked first or just done it. There would be no confusion now." He was being honest with her, she could tell. Something in the eyes. He'd been trying to do the right thing for both of them.

"I thought it was a cicada, or . . . some titty-loving alien," Sonia said. They both chuckled. "Can I borrow that red light for a second?"

"Sure," Marcus said and handed it to her.

She took a second to figure out how to make the flashlight turn on, turned it on and pulled her shirt out to look under it, anxious there would be bugs in her cleavage, or under a boob, or something else awful. Marcus looked away, embarrassed at her lack of pageantry. She didn't pull her tits out, though, just pulled her shirt out to check. "You can look, I don't care," she said to Marcus, grinning at his excess of chivalry. Her right nipple was A-OK. So was the left. She had some dirt on the large exposed portions of her upper chest and neck, but no insect assassins anywhere. She glanced up—Marcus was looking now. It was a nice feeling. Sonia liked to be watched. Well, she did when she wanted to be. When she didn't she didn't. Sonia brushed some of the dirt off. She felt dry sweat all over her. She needed a shower. There wasn't running water anymore.

"You good?" Marcus said when she turned the light off and handed it back to him. He took it.

"Yeah," Sonia said. "Just embarrassed."

"Sorry I looked," Marcus said.

"No, I liked that," Sonia said. "I'm embarrassed I got a bullet in my shirt and thought it was an alien."

"You liked me looking at you?" Marcus said. "And don't be embarrassed, we both fell."

"I'm a bit of an exhibitionist," Sonia said quickly. "Let's go inside."

They chuckled.

"Are we good?" Marcus said as they headed in.

"We're very good," Sonia said. She thought he might've been looking at her ass. If he was, that was good too.

Back inside Marcus made sure she could use the gun, and kept trying not to look at her tits. She was proud of them, though. She'd grown them early, at a time when big tits weren't cool. Or maybe they were but not in a way she liked, or not with the people she liked. She'd grown to love and respect and take care of her body, though. She—before the zombie apocalypse happened—had even started seeking out people who didn't only want her for her titties. That had been going great. So she'd started dressing to feel sexy, and confident, rather than to try to conceal her tits, or their size, anyway. The last time she'd been to her pre-zombie-apocalypse home—not thinking it'd be the last time—she'd picked out comfortable jeans she looked good in; a mustard yellow, otherwise plain button-up long-sleeved shirt; deep red and purple boyshorts; and a white support camisole, because she didn't like bras. Now that outfit was all she had, so she had to try to make it feel like a whole wardrobe—for variety, for her own sanity. The first time she met Marcus she was very attracted to him, but he hadn't really looked at her as an individual, hadn't noticed her unique assets. This time, once Lily said he'd be coming, she prepared to be sure he'd notice her personally and undid most of her shirt's buttons, so many you could see her cami, and a lot of flesh and cleavage besides. She looked hot. Not a good general-purpose zombie world scavenging configuration, though. Zombies would claw at you, and they lacked the taste to appreciate or respect a pair of perfect breasts. She was confident Marcus could do more than just appreciate and respect them.

Eventually, Marcus was satisfied she could use the gun without accidentally shooting herself or him.

"I don't have a holster for it, so we might want to jury-rig one here, then get you a real one later," Marcus said.

"That's it!" Sonia said, staring at the gun. Admiring it. Its grip had grooves for your fingers to fit in when you held it. And a cut-out for your thumb. So awesome. Her own gun. Finally. "Jury-rig," she said. "That word. I couldn't think of it. For the longest time."

" . . . Okay," Marcus said.

"You'll get me a 'real one' later?" Sonia said. "You're . . . talking like my survivor group's gonna get to know yours better." It sounded and even felt pretty ham-fisted, as what was supposed to be a sly come-on, but she hadn't planned out what to say, and now it was out there. Marcus cocked an eyebrow at it.

"It can if you want," Marcus said.

"I want," Sonia said. Marcus smiled; a good reception. And he didn't make fun of her momentary clumsiness.

Then Marcus grimaced.

"What?" Sonia said.

"Oh, fuck my life," Marcus said, rubbing at his eyes.

"What is it?" Sonia said.

"My group. They're gonna be super-pissed at me," Marcus said. "I've never had my radio off this long before."

"It's only been a few minutes," Sonia said. Marcus made an expression like "yeah." Sonia switched the—her—gun to her left hand and grabbed his hand. "Let's run away together. Start a whole new life, in . . . Paris."

They laughed. They didn't stop holding hands afterward. Marcus gripped, and rubbed her hand with his thumb. His hand was warm. And strong, but he wasn't trying to impress her with its strength; a wise choice. He was interested in her. But he didn't need it, wasn't desperate. He could take it or leave it. Good.

"I'd love to do that," Marcus said.

"So . . . " Sonia gestured toward Paris. Where she thought east was.

Marcus shook his head. "I can't. My group's so needy. Without me they'd collapse in two days."

"So?" Sonia said.

Marcus looked aghast.

"I'm kidding!" Sonia said. "I'm sorry!"

Marcus smiled. "It's okay. I . . . I'm really trying to set it up so it's sustainable, indefinitely, but that's really hard. We just moved to this new, nice big place, and we're still moving in."

"Where's your new place?" Sonia said.

"Where's your new place?" Marcus joked. Sonia giggled. "It's this huge trucking warehouse in Marshall," he said. "The . . . " He held his hands out in front of him, gesturing like a map of Marshall. In holding his hands out, he brought one of hers along. She didn't let go, and neither did he. It was nice. Connecting with someone. There was this new, special, thrilling current of electricity in her every time they touched. Marcus continued, " . . . north-west-ish part of the city, I think? The downtown part's southeast, I know. This is in the other part."

"I know the area," Sonia said, mostly to stop him talking about geography.

Marcus lowered their hands and nodded. "I know how to get around, now, but I'm not from here. I don't know anything's name."

"I'm from here," Sonia said. "Where are you from?" She poked his chest at "you."

"California," Marcus said, grinning at the poke. "I mostly grew up in Nevada." He had muscle tone. His skin hadn't yielded at the poke.

"Ooh, so exotic," Sonia said, caressing his arm. They chuckled together.

"Are you makin fun of me?" Marcus said.

"No," Sonia said. "It's cool. How'd you end up here?"

"Vacation," Marcus said.

Sonia crinkled her nose. "I knew that, I meant, why here? You could vacation anywhere. Nobody's ever heard of Marshall. Or Spencer's Mill."

"Yeah, the welcome sign said that," Marcus said. Sonia giggled. He smiled. "My friend Ed's from here."

"Ah," Sonia said. "I don't know him. Do you regret coming here?"

"Yes," Marcus said, like it was the most obvious thing ever. They both laughed—and then laughed quietly, remembering their surroundings. Post-apocalypse. Zombie hordes. No refrigerated air.

"No," Sonia said, punching his arm. She was strong too. "I meant apart from the zombie . . . end . . . world. Apocalypse. Zomb-ocalypse. What do you think of the place?"

Marcus looked into Sonia's eyes and said, "It's beautiful here." Sonia smiled. He smiled. "Oh shit; I'm really enjoying talking with you—like really really—but—can we try to talk and scavenge?"

"Let's!" Sonia said, and punched into the air with their joint hand. He went with it.

They started looking through every nook and cranny of the two-story farmhouse, always together, speaking quietly throughout. Cautiously. And silently praying none of the rare freak zombies happened by.

"What kinda gun did you give me?" Sonia said, scavenging.

"Loaned," Marcus said. "Glock 19." He was on guard duty, really—they were scavenging as a team. She focused on the actual scavenging, and he watched her back so she didn't have to rush, or stop every few seconds to make sure nothing was about to bite her. Or fight off something that was already biting her. And he watched her back. Well, mostly he watched everything but her. She would've liked to feel his eyes on her a good deal more—more frequently, more intensely, and with more of her body exposed, too. "Third gen, I think," Marcus said.

"Uh. I recognized the word 'Glock' in all that," Sonia said, still scavenging.

"Sorry. That's a hazard of workin the gun counter a lot," Marcus said, still watching her back by not watching her back.

"And you volunteered for that every day, didn't you?" Sonia said. "Gun nut."

"I never volunteered for it," Marcus said. "I got stuck with it. A lot. You only ever got a bonus for huge purchases. Like more than five guns at a time. And it's boring. Was boring. Either people already knew exactly what they wanted and were in and out—"

"Sounds good," Sonia put in.

"—or they're really just there to chat at a captive audience, and probly won't buy anything," Marcus said. He didn't seem to've heard her suggestion.

"Do you like guns?" Sonia said.

"Not really," Marcus said. "More now than before. I wasn't against them, before, I just didn't really care. California's pretty strict anyway. I picked up most of what I know without trying to. I try to do good work, though—tried, I mean—so after I kept getting forced to be at the gun counter, I just started learning more on my own. I still don't really understand how they work."

"I bet you could tell me the make and model of silencer on my gun," Sonia said.

"Suppressor, not silencer. It doesn't make it silent, just less loud. And no—well, that one's homemade, so there isn't a make or model. One of my people's a gun nut, one's a machinist. They get along well."

"Who's the gun nut?" Sonia said.

"Maya," Marcus said.

"And the machinist?" Sonia said.

"Jenny," Marcus said.

"Can girls be gun nuts?" Sonia said.

"Sure," Marcus said.

"A lot of women in your group," Sonia said.

"Jealous?" Marcus said.

"No," Sonia said.

"It's mostly women, yeah," Marcus said. "I think that's good. Not a lotta dick-measuring goin on."

"Too bad," Sonia said.

"What?" Marcus said.

"Nothing," Sonia said.

They continued scavenging.

"How many people in your group?" Marcus said.

"Four," Sonia said. "Me, Kaitlyn, Gabriela, Charlie."

"That's a lotta women," Marcus said.

"Jealous?" Sonia said.

"God yes," Marcus said.

"That doesn't make sense," Sonia said.

"Not everything has to make sense," Marcus said, looking out a window for zeds. "Some things just are."

"That's so deep," Sonia said.

"That's what she said," Marcus said.

"What?" Sonia said.

"You heard," he said.

"Yes I did," she said, savoring it.

At some point they noticed Marcus didn't even know Sonia's name—she'd never mentioned it the first time they met, Sonia hadn't given it to him this time, and Lily hadn't over the radio either. They were both abashed.

"Sonia Lucia Perry," Sonia said.

"Marcus Campbell," Marcus said. "No middle."

They shook hands. Then hugged.

Then continued scavenging.

"So what's that fuckin weird gun you saved my life—again—with? Is it a space laser gun?" Sonia said, looking through a couple of big plywood boxes.

"A Calico One-Ten," Marcus said. "And yeah, looks crazy. It's good, though. For this. It uses a tiny bullet, so Maya makes fun of it, but it's perfect for general-purpose stuff. Like if a horde comes at me. Light, small, cheap, damn near bottomless magazine. I'm finding high-capacity mags very helpful, in this . . . post-apocalyptic scenario."

"Yeah?" Sonia said. "How many bullets does your One-Ten magazine hold?"

"A hundred," Marcus said.

"What did you say?" Sonia said.

"One hundred bullets," Marcus said.

" . . . "

"You okay, Sonia?" he said.

"I think I just shit," she said. They both laughed. "I didn't think any gun could hold that many bullets."

"Maybe they shouldn't. Takes forever to load," he said. "And I only have one mag like it, so if it runs out in a fight I need another gun. Well—I don't use guns much. Mostly mêlée."

"Ooh, fancy French," she said.

"Not really," he said.

"What's your mêlée weapon right now?" she said, exaggerating the French.

"A bit a wood," he said.

"You got wood, bro?" she said.

Marcus launched into a pretty good impression of Hulk Hogan and said, "I got wood, brother." It was so unexpected and hilarious for Sonia, who'd been taking a breath just then, that she somehow choked on air for a second. Before Marcus could reach her to administer the Heimlich maneuver she was back to normal, and laughing hysterically.

They continued scavenging.

Eventually Sonia was done, though she didn't really want to be.

It was a good haul. Sonia found a lot of food, which her group never had enough of—and which Marcus's always had too much of. "Sold!" Sonia said, joking. Meaning on joining his group, or having regular relations with his, or however else he might interpret it. "Actually, I was sold much earlier at . . . when I decided I really like you."

"I like you too," Marcus said.

They smiled. Sonia just looked into Marcus's eyes for a few seconds that felt both like a minute and way too short. She wasn't sure why she didn't act right then. Or why he didn't. If he'd come and kissed and taken her right then, she would've been totally down for it.

Instead she turned away and took stock of what else she'd found. There weren't any guns in the place. And no ammo. Disappointing. She thought for sure a farmer would have at least one old-timey long gun, or something. The place also had some building materials, which Sonia had no use for, but which Marcus said his group always needed more of.

"What would you even do with it?" Sonia said.

"We build things," Marcus said.

"Oh," she said. "My group's never done that. We should, though. I'm actually good at that stuff."

"Nice," he said. "Have you been with many other survivor groups?"

"Yeah," she said. "I don't even remember how many."

"I've been with one group this whole time," he said. "I feel so sheltered."

"Wow, you really need to get yourself out there—broaden your horizons, try new things," she said. "Like butt stuff."

Marcus laughed out loud.

"How have you only been with one group?" Sonia said. "You're the best zombie survivor ever."

"I don't know," Marcus said. "And . . . thanks. I went on vacation and everything was normal. Shitty, but normal. Two weeks later some zombies attacked Ed."

"Poor Ed," she said, sorting through canned foods.

"I know, right?" he said, keeping lookout.

On their way out, Marcus showed her how like five different zombies had tried to attack her, or him, as she'd been scavenging, rooting around in cupboards and duffle bags and desks of drawers. Occasionally making noise she didn't mean to. Considering how many more zombie corpses were strewn about the place than had been when she got there, alone, Sonia thought he was making a rather conservative estimate. It looked more like ten new ones, to her, but she didn't say that. She hadn't been aware of any of them. Marcus was good. Marcus wrote it off as having got "pretty good with a sword."

At which point Sonia noticed he was carrying a fucking sword, like a knight or a samurai would've back in . . . uh, historic times. It was an impressively bloody weapon when he showed it to her. He said it had to taste blood every time it left its sheath, and almost kept a straight face the whole time he said it. Joking aside, he explained, it was a really good weapon, and had served him well, better than anything else he'd used, including machetes, so he always cleaned it before he sheathed it. So it would last longer. He also claimed that he'd found it by a lady in a lake having thrown it at him.

"God I feel fucking dirty," Sonia said on their way out of the house.

"Oh yeah!" Marcus said.

"No, really. Like need to take a bath in a river," Sonia said.

"Wanna see my place? We have running water. There—"

Sonia halted and grabbed Marcus by the shoulder, steadying herself, went quiet for a second or two and then said, "You have running water!? I think I just had an orgasm!"

"I require proof!" Marcus said.

Sonia laughed. She said, "Maybe after I shower."

"Proposition accepted," Marcus said.

They got to his truck, a big diesel monster which she hadn't even heard pull up. Sonia, a day ago, had seen someone—probably Marcus—driving such a truck right over a horde of zombies, without hesitating or slowing down. The truck was fine after, but the horde was gone.

"You can shower there," Marcus said. "Then we'll go to your place. When you get back you can tell your group how much better all my group's stuff is."

Sonia giggled. "And try to get them to join you?"

"If you want," Marcus said. "I was joking about the 'our stuff's better.' I like the thought of getting to spend more time with you, though."

Sonia smiled. So did Marcus. He gestured, offering to put her rucksack in the truck's flatbed. She gave it to him. He loaded it with care. Meanwhile Sonia said, "I think your group—the Car Crew—needs a manager, to make other people do the annoying little busywork shit you're sick of. You're gonna burn out, my man."

" . . . Point," Marcus said. "Lily's supposed to do that, but she has no filter. She just puts it all on me. I ask her to assign stuff to other people but she doesn't. Then she expects it of me."

"I think Kaitlyn was a middle manager at a tech firm," Sonia said. "Maybe she could do it. Lily could take everything down, then Kaitlyn could assign it. And not give you everything. Call it Logistics."

"I like it," Marcus said.

He drove them and their loot back to his place, a huge trucking warehouse right where he said it'd be in the industrial part of Marshall. He told her to buckle in—doing the same himself—and ran over, on the way to his place, not less than ten zombies. He avoided one juggernaut entirely. She'd never been so close to one, and having been so close now, she was damn glad he avoided this one. "They stop cars," he commented. She believed it.

At Marcus's place, almost everyone seemed awfully on-task and focused. At her base everyone just talked and messed around, mostly. Marcus's group had built several of their own structures, which Sonia gathered was what the building materials were for. One was clearly some kind of workshop—with tools and resources like the ones just lying around in there, Sonia could've made just about anything. It was lovely.

Marcus's group even had a guard tower. To protect themselves from zombies. Marcus called it a "shooting platform." Fancy. It looked like they'd done a decent job of making it, though she would've recommended some improvements, and re-doing a few things that wouldn't last, if she didn't feel awkward. Sonia was so jealous no one in any of her groups had thought to construct such a thing—come up with anything new—she was almost angry. There were four people standing in the guard tower, one guy Marcus said was his friend Ed and three other people Marcus said he hadn't seen before, all practicing shooting with suppressors on their guns, which were all the same—which all might have been the same kind of pistol Marcus had loaned her, the Glock 19. Sonia saw some beer bottles the people in the guard tower had set up on the near side of the concrete barrier around the Swine & Bovine parking lot across the street.

Inside the fence around Marcus's entire base, they also had a couple of sawhorses and tires set up under a tent (itself made, not very fancily, of several tarps), in which two people were running around exercising. Marcus said they'd later turn it into a dojo. A woman was in charge of it, leading the two people.

As Marcus led Sonia through his base, she only saw two people taking a break anywhere: a guy snacking in the warehouse area, leaning against a wall; and a woman in a constructed barracks area, as Marcus called it, with eight-foot-high walls, who was either napping or sleeping—in full clothing, which Sonia thought was odd. She usually slept naked, and not on top of all the blankets. Poor woman must've thought zombies might break in and get her at any second. Maybe she didn't trust the other survivors to come get her, in such an event.

Everyone who saw Marcus greeted him. They all knew him. A lot of them hugged him. A few asked if Sonia would be joining them, noticing the new face. She'd seen a few of them before—people who drove cars that she'd flagged down—but she hadn't seen most of them. Marcus said no, just making friends. Sonia was astonished to see that every single one of them had their own gun, a mêlée weapon, and a decent-sized backpack. She had estimated and joked that they'd all have guns, and Marcus had said that no they actually all did have at least one of their own guns, but it was quite apart from that to see that they all fucking actually did have their own gun. Mostly small ones, handguns, but a few had longer guns, maybe rifles. Of those with longer guns, two had what Sonia was pretty sure were called AR-15s. Marcus had one of those too, but his had a really skinny clip. The other two people—both women—with them had wider clips and more stuff on theirs. Maybe they used different bullets.

Sonia asked one of the more approachable women of the Car Crew, who was carrying one of the longer guns, "What kinda gun is that?"

The woman shrugged and looked to Marcus.

"Winchester Model 70," Marcus said. "Thirty-ought-six."

The woman smiled, said, "Well, there you have it," and walked off to one of the other structures they'd built, outside of the main building but within the tall barbed-wire fence around its perimeter.

Another woman—this one hotter than the others she'd seen, and tougher-looking, and wearing yoga pants she looked great in—came up to Marcus, and hugged him. Like a brother. He hugged her back. Like a sister. She had a long gun too.

"Gonna go scavenge?" Marcus asked the woman before Sonia could ask her what kind of gun she had. "With that?"

"Feral hunt," the woman said. "Swapping weapons." She was abrupt. Curt. But efficient.

"Is it okay that I'm takin a break?" Marcus asked the woman.

"You're good. You've been carrying all of us for weeks," the woman said. "Take the day if you want. It's time we started making these freeloaders pull their weight for once."

That's harsh, Sonia thought. Sonia pointed at the woman's gun and looked at Marcus and said, "What's that?"

"A Winchester 1894," the woman said like Sonia was a moron. Sonia wasn't sure if she was a moron for asking Marcus instead of the woman with the gun, or for not knowing the gun's exact name like the woman did.

"It looks like a cowboy gun," Sonia said.

"It is a cowboy gun," the woman said. She looked to Marcus. "Mind if I take the AKM? The custom."

"Sure," Marcus said. "Enjoy."

The woman walked off abruptly. She walked pretty fast.

Sonia looked to Marcus like, "What the hell just happened?" She didn't have to say it, though. He started answering before she needed to.

"That's Maya," Marcus said. "I would've introduced you, but she was in a bit of a mood."

"She's hot," Sonia said.

"Yeah, kinda," Marcus said.

"Ever fuck her?" Sonia said privately, only to Marcus.

"No," he said. He turned like they should resume walking. "You're hotter."

Sonia smiled and took one of his hands in hers. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Marcus said. They laughed; Sonia felt so safe in this place she didn't try to stifle it.

They went through a multipurpose bunkroom inside the warehouse that also had lockers—and a toilet and a shower Marcus said they hadn't got to work yet—then across a hall and into another enclosed room, with one way in or out, with a divider in the middle made of a stripped-down shipping container that was about a third showers, a third locker room with a bench, and a third working toilets with privacy curtains around them. The showers weren't private. Marcus showed her the whole place's basic layout in case whatever happened, but she couldn't remember it. He'd let her shower first, then give her a gun that wasn't a beat-up loaner and a holster for it. They could trade for other stuff if she wanted it. There were four showers, which looked recently custom-made and like Heaven on Earth. He said they all worked. No one else was in that room, just her and Marcus. There was an old-looking rifle against one shelf of lockers. Sonia pointed at it.

"SKS," Marcus said. "We don't have enough ammo for it so it's resting right now." Sonia smiled. She almost asked what kind of ammo it used but that seemed too technical. Marcus pointed to the door: "That has a real nice deadbolt on the inside," he said, showing her that it worked. "Most of us just leave the door open when we're showering now—it's not even sexual—but you don't really know anybody here, so I was gonna close it."

"That's fine," Sonia said. She felt so dirty she didn't really care, at this point, open or closed. She didn't really want to be watched, though, unless it was Marcus watching.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to take a pretty quick shower," Marcus said. "None of us are great with this stuff—so, we rigged a gas-powered generator and a water heater together, but it's loud, and fossil fuels are finite, and it only seems to give a few minutes of hot water—"

"I don't care about temperature," Sonia said. "I just—" She was frustrated with her own group's crappy situation. She let herself come to a full stop and start over, change gears. "You have working showers, Marcus. This gives me hope for the future."

"Seriously?" Marcus said.

"Yeah," Sonia said.

He showed her how to work the showers. She gasped when water actually ran. They'd rigged a bunch of long PVC pipes to and from the river out back, he said. She wondered how long that system would hold up with use.

Marcus said, "You can take as long as you want, cold water could run forever. I'm really happy you feel hope. Oh! Towels! Let me show you."

Towels were in a few of the lockers. Clean and dry. They also had a lot of soap, shampoo, body soap, loofahs, and other nonessential-to-survival accoutrements they'd scavenged from stores, mostly while looking for other things.

"Do you have a working washer and dryer?" Sonia asked.

"No," Marcus said. "Not yet." He gave her this private smile. Sonia smiled back, then looked at the shower and felt jealous again. Or was it "envious?" Marcus went on, "For now we just change clothes, and wash dirty ones in the river, then hang em to dry out front. I'd offer that right now, but it takes a really long time to dry."

"That's fine," Sonia said. "I'd feel weird putting my panties out in front of a bunch of people I don't know."

"Mostly fellow girls," Marcus said, "but I feel you. You can have new clothes if you want em."

"No thanks," Sonia said. She felt kind of awful and embarrassed to accept as much as she'd already decided to.

"Okay," Marcus said, not minding. "Do you carry around a toothbrush, or deodorant or anything? We have some of that stuff too. I didn't think of it before. We all just carry around deodorant and soap now—sometimes you get stuck out in the wilds."

"I'd forgotten about all those things," Sonia said, and just then noticed: "Damn, this place smells nice inside!" She took a very deep breath. Let it out. Enjoyed it.

"Thanks," Marcus said. "A couple of us worked on that. It didn't smell great when we got here. One of us is really into scented candles. Like, she had an online business and everything. I liked candles too, before, I just wasn't particular."

"Can we just tell my group to come here right now? Over radio? I never wanna leave," Sonia said.

Marcus laughed. "They'd think I abducted you."

"No they wouldn't," Sonia said. "Our place smells like sweat and feet. Don't judge me for that, okay? I know I stink now. But I won't in a minute."

"I wasn't judging," Marcus said. His eyes were honest, open. He really wasn't judging. That was a nice change, from the kind of people she was used to being around.

He led her around the room to pick out deodorant, and a cheap but still-in-the-shrink-wrap toothbrush, and locate a communal thing of toothpaste. He explained they used to let everyone have their own toothpaste but people started leaving them around and it became a problem, so now they had only two or three communal toothpaste tubes going at a time, and the rest stowed.

Sonia started setting her things down and stripping. Marcus was comfortable, and interested in her, but still looked away. She felt crestfallen. Then she sniffed one of her armpits and decided she needed to shower first anyway.

"You're not gonna watch me?" Sonia said to his back—as a joke, now—as he went to close the door behind him. She took off her shirt, the yellow long-sleeved button-up, without unbuttoning the other half of its buttons or rolling the sleeves down; she needed that shower now.

"I want to, for sure, but it feels wrong," Marcus said. "We're at sort of an imbalance, right now."

"So?" Sonia said.

"And you stink," Marcus said, about to close the door behind him.

"Point," Sonia said, then, "Oh!" She put her shirt back on so Marcus would look at her. "Do you have any shaving razors? Or . . . woman products?" He came back in and closed the door.

"Of course we do," Marcus said. "I'm so sorry I didn't offer any before. We don't have electric—"

"You can look again," Sonia said, undoing one of her shirt's buttons.

He peeked cautiously first, like he suspected she'd somehow be completely naked already—which was wise of him to expect her to do—but she was clothed, so he acted normally. She continued unbuttoning the shirt. He sounded dazed as he said, "We don't have anything electric, though . . . "

Sonia unbuttoned the rest of her shirt's buttons. Two. She took the shirt off.

"TITS!," Marcus's eyes seemed to say.

Only the camisole covered them, and it left most of her torso naked. He looked right at her tits. He couldn't help it. She looked at her own tits, too, joking, but also checking that they looked okay. They did. You couldn't see her nipples through the camisole. She wished you could.

"Damn, girl," Marcus said after a second. He started to speak, presumably to change the subject, but she cut in.

"You like big tits?" Sonia said.

"I try not to care, but . . . yeah I do," Marcus said.

Sonia bounced up and down, not breaking eye contact with Marcus. He didn't look away. She couldn't help but giggle. She was trying to be sexy, though. Funniness was very sexy to her, but she wasn't sure what Marcus thought about it. Or if he liked funny women. He seemed to like her just fine. Marcus still had on all his gear and clothing and weapons.

Marcus groaned and put his hand over his face and looked away—tore himself away.

Sonia was pleased. He wanted her.

"I didn't bring you here for that," Marcus said, not looking at her. Apparently not getting hard, either, though. Sonia liked to imagine that to avoid popping a boner he was thinking of walking his dog, that she assumed he had. Maybe a husky.

"I know," Sonia said. "I'm just having fun. I like you."

"I like you too," Marcus said. "You asked about razors?"

Sonia sighed. "Fine. Yeah, I did. My legs are a little rough."

"You do you," Marcus said. Sonia laughed.

"I do," she said.

"Good," he said. "Uh, we don't have any—" He looked back to Sonia. She just stood there, innocent-like. "—electric razors, so for now it's just safety blades and shaving cream, or scissors. Or duct tape." Sonia giggled at that, but kept on teasing him too; as he said, "Sorry," he watched Sonia's hands touch herself, starting on her thighs and sliding up to her tits. "Don't you dare," he said before she got there.

She dropped her hands as if he'd caught her, and they both laughed.

He showed her where razors and related paraphernalia were, in the same room. The, as he put it, "period stuff" was in the same room too, but in a different spot. She momentarily forgot how gross she probably looked and smelled and stood very close to him as he showed her. Making sure he got a lot of boob pressed up against him. He pretended not to notice how close she was and told her not to be at all ashamed of any "women stuff," which she thought was pretty cool of him. He was used to it, even before the zombies happened. Even if he wasn't, he said, there shouldn't be a taboo against it anymore. She was to consider that done with. Sonia put a metaphorical gold star next to Marcus's metaphorical profile picture in her metaphorical book. He meant it, but he'd said it because he was uncomfortable with how she kept trying to come on to him and wanted to keep his mind off of it.

"So—you good?" Marcus said. "Can I leave you to it?"

"I'm good," Sonia said. Realistically, she could use some time to herself. She paused and nearly said, without joking, "I want you to stay and watch," but then she didn't say it. She bit her lip.

She couldn't tell what was holding Marcus back.

"I'll stay outside so nobody bothers you," he said.

"Okay," she said, wondering how likely anyone was to bother her. "Can I take like twenty minutes after to clean my clothes? Pit stains." The last two words came out before she could stop them. She felt a heat of embarrassment hit her, felt sweat trickle out of one of her armpits or maybe her back somewhere.

"That's fine," he said.

"Will you help me scrub my back?" she said.

Marcus didn't hesitate this time—looking into her eyes, he said, "If you ask me to." Sonia smiled. Marcus smiled.

She didn't ask him to.

Marcus left and told her to deadbolt the door behind him. She didn't.

Sonia found an unused, unopened shaving razor and shaving cream, and showered and washed her clothes and shaved her legs at the same time. She washed and conditioned her hair. That felt great. She got dirt out of her nails—toes and fingers. She got dried blood out of her hair, and off her skin everywhere. She got what felt like fifteen layers of old sweat off her whole body.

The water wasn't all that cold. She felt reborn about ten seconds into the shower. By the time she finished, she felt like she'd been given a fresh new copy of her own body, even-more-reborn. Double-reborn. She'd forgotten feeling clean.

She considered masturbating but didn't.

Her work shoes were a lost cause; she'd ask if she could trade for running shoes, maybe.

They didn't have any perfume she liked.

She lost all sense of time, but didn't linger on anything despite temptation. This was a gift. One she'd wanted so badly for so long she'd never have dared ask for it. She felt human again.

After she was done—just organizing things, drying her clothes—she called to Marcus, through the door.

"Yeah?" he said, back through the door. He sounded ready for anything. Relaxed. He thought she was naked. Which she was. If she told him to, he'd come in and fuck her right now.

"I'm almost done, just drying my clothes off," Sonia said. She wasn't sure why she didn't tell him to get in there and give her a good rogering.

"Okay," Marcus said. "You're good. No rush."

"My shoes and socks are kinda ruined," Sonia said. "Could I trade for new ones?"

Marcus said, "What size are you?"

"Nine," Sonia said.

"Did you lock the door?" Marcus said.

"Yeah. Why?" Sonia said. She had no idea why she lied.

"I'll be away for a second to grab stuff," Marcus said. "What kinda shoes and socks are you lookin for?"

"Running shoes," Sonia said. "Any socks."

"I think you have a few choices," Marcus said, still through the door. "I'll go get some, okay?"

"Sounds great," Sonia said, thinking "How about you come in here and get some?" so loudly she almost thought Marcus had heard it.

He told her when he got back. He wasn't gone long. She hadn't even heard anyone else walk by. It was strange—she'd felt surrounded by living people when she got here, overwhelmed really, but now she felt like she and Marcus were alone in the world.

"My clothes are almost dry," she said. Her panties already were. She was waving a couple-foot-wide-and-tall piece of white-stained-yellowish poster board at the rest of her clothes to dry them. She hadn't washed her jeans, just tried to get some blood out in spots; it wasn't out, but they looked much less foul now. "I'm glad it's. . . . What time of year is it?"

"Not winter," Marcus said.

"I'm glad it's not winter," Sonia said. "And not humid."

"Yeah, me too," Marcus said through the door. "Either would be bad." She liked how he pronounced "either." There was a pause, then he spoke again: "I really don't know why I'm not charging through this door." Sonia found it simultaneously very funny and very sexy. She hoped he was the only person who heard the way she laughed at it. "I want to, it just doesn't seem right, now. And—not to put too fine a point on it, but it wouldn't be a quickie, and your group's waiting for us. They seemed kinda desperate. Like they need that food right now. I'd feel selfish putting it off. More."

"You're right," Sonia said. She'd been thinking entirely about herself since . . . around when she saw Marcus, however long ago that was. Maybe two hours ago. Everything but her shirt was dry, and it was close enough. "Is that why you didn't do it before?"

"I think so," Marcus said.

"Let's, um . . . let's definitely talk, after we drop this stuff off back at my place, okay?" Sonia said.

"Sounds good," Marcus said.

"About fucking," Sonia said. "I wanna talk about us fucking."

"Yeah," Marcus said. "I got that."

"Sounds very good," Sonia said, mostly to herself.

"I heard that," Marcus said.

"Ah, shucks," Sonia said. "Me having to play with my own titties all by myself in here. Alone."

"Don't tempt me," Marcus said.

She felt bad for teasing him so much before, and put all her clothes back on before she let him in with the shoes and socks. He came in with some caution, like maybe he thought she'd still be naked after all that. Normally she would've been.

Marcus had a beat-to-hell black Nike drawstring bag full of the entire rainbow of socks, in color and style, and had piled four different pairs of shoes in his arms. She was feeling so great then she almost tried to blow him—from the whole pampering experience, the first-class treatment, not the shoes or socks but the shower and soap and towels and guaranteed safe-time and redemption. Sonia chose grey ASICS and some brand-new socks from a Zip-Locked baggie so short they ended below her heels. She liked the Reeboks but they were way too small.

"I forgot about those. Kyla says those are sixes but fit like fives," Marcus said of the Reeboks. He sounded a touch bored, but he still wasn't rushing or pressuring her at all. For sex or to get out.

"Who's Kyla?" Sonia said.

"My bottom bitch," Marcus said. "She wears fives."

"Excuse me?" Sonia said.

"Oh, shit, sorry. In-joke," Marcus said. "I'm not insulting her, or whatever. She tells me to call her that. She's cool, but she's always in sort of a bad mood. I think she was a cop."

"Have I seen her?" Sonia said.

"I don't think so," Marcus said. "She came by and asked who was in here while you were showering. I said 'Temptation.'"

Sonia laughed heartily.

"Not really," Marcus said. "I called you a friendly neighbor. I felt weird. And like I was a . . . door guard? I don't like being passive. Plus the sex we're dancing around. We—my group—haven't had an invited visitor like you before. Usually it's only people who've already joined us who come in. One time a Wilkerson toadie came uninvited."

Sonia hadn't heard that name before. She put her new shoes on. Well, they weren't new, but they weren't worn-in either. It was surprisingly invigorating to be able to walk and not feel the floor directly with one of her toes.

"I'm gonna give you a gun," Marcus said. "One that's not a loaner. Do you like the hatchet?"

"Yeah," Sonia said. "Are you—Really?" She couldn't pretend not to be surprised and excited and honored.

"We have too many guns," Marcus said. "We're about to start melting them down to make a curtain wall around the base. Like a castle. Not funny? Okay. You need a gun. Seriously. Besides, I have more influence with this group than I know what to do with."

They checked a few pistols for whether they felt okay to her. Marcus ultimately gave her one she'd never seen before he called a "CZ 75 B." The gun said that on the left side. It felt great in her hands. Reassuring. It was bigger than the loaner Glock, and also had the same kind of professional-looking suppressor screwed on to its barrel; he said it was more accurate, more durable, less used, and its most common mags held a few more rounds. She was so shocked to be gifted anything she actually needed she kind of saw all this happen from afar.

"Why are you being nice to me?" Sonia said—seriously, and abruptly.

"Say again?" Marcus said.

"Can we just . . . put all our cards on the table? For a second?" Sonia said.

"Yeah," Marcus said. That relaxed him. He seemed like he was being honest, but she didn't want to somehow give him the wrong idea.

"I'm . . . " She leaned closer to him. Very close. "I wanna fuck you, Marcus," Sonia said. "So . . . I'm a sure thing. Already. So . . . are you doing this to get me to let you do something weird to me? I don't understand why you're giving me stuff. Pampering me."

"I'm not into anything weird," Marcus said. "And no." He looked around, listened—checked for privacy. "I'm sorry it looks like that. I'm just—you said it before, I'm really burned out. I had to break my routine. Like had to had to. I decided to give you a gun earlier. Before I thought you actually wanted to have sex. I thought of letting you take a shower before that too, and said something because I just want to be out of my fucking routine for as long as I can be. I'm afraid when I get back into it I might let myself get stuck in it, again, for days. I may never get out. I don't know. I'm just sick of everything. You're . . . new. Different. I could lose a gun, while I'm out doing everything, and not notice it. Letting you come here and shower cost me nothing, either. Giving you a gun, ammo, and a suppressor doesn't cost me anything. I'm so busy with bullshit that if your group got besieged—say that just that happened an hour after I dropped you off—if you asked me for help, you might all be dead before I even got there. Because I have so much shit to do. That no one else will. Giving you stuff I don't need is—it makes your chance of survival better." He paused. "I'm having trouble putting it to words. I'm sincerely sorry that I pampered you. I didn't notice it looks weird til now. It's just something I could do that didn't cost me anything, and I like spending time with you. Sex or no."

"Everything you just said makes me wanna cry," Sonia said. Marcus looked like he kind of wanted to too. "Thanks for telling me. I was worried you thought if you didn't give me stuff I wouldn't fuck you. I'd fuck you if you didn't give me anything. And I don't wanna fuck you more now that you gave me stuff."

"I really wasn't tryin to buy anything," Marcus said. "It's not a transaction."

"I know, honey," she said, and put a hand on his forearm. She wished she'd touched him long before. Actually, no—she felt such an intense, electric sexual energy from the contact that maybe she'd better hold off. She should get the supplies to her group before she fucked him. She wanted to take her time with him. Enjoy it. Go deep. Not rush. "I really do. You're good."

"Okay," Marcus said. "I'm sorry it looked like that."

"It didn't," Sonia said. "Well, maybe a little. You seem cool. I just wanted to check that we're understanding each other."

"I think we are," Marcus said. "We're friends, right? Basically?"

"Right," Sonia said. "But not basically. We are friends."

"And we're attracted to each other, right?" Marcus said.

"Very right," Sonia said. They both smiled.

"We're just doing survivor shit right now," Marcus said. "At a later time, or date, we may choose to have sex. Or not. We don't owe each other anything."

"I think I kinda owe you a blowjob," Sonia said. "Or maybe I just wanna do that to you anyway."

"You don't owe me anything," Marcus said. "Really. Don't even joke about it. I would let you do that, though. Let's not worry about it until after I drop you off. If you still want to hang out with me after that, we'll talk about it then. Sound good?"

"Yeah," Sonia said.

"It's okay if you change your mind," Marcus said.

Sonia smiled. She kissed Marcus on the cheek. He was sweet. They hugged for a long moment. She sat back down with him, on the lockers' bench. "I feel like I've experienced every emotion with you now. I trust you more. I know you. Thanks for talking about that with me."

"Sure," Marcus said.

"You're still gonna get laid," Sonia said, pointing at him like that was a threat. "Just as long as I do too."

They smiled together.

Marcus cut in, jokingly, "We're doin anal."

"Okay," Sonia said. They laughed.

"Ever try that?" Marcus said. Not being horny or dirty, not like it's something he'd expect, but with a kind of genuine conversational curiosity. He was comfortable talking about sex; Sonia loved that.

"What, giving?" Sonia said. They laughed again. Sonia leaned closer, spoke more quietly: "Of course I've tried it. I'm a very sexual woman, Marcus. It's not my kink, but it can be fun, sometimes. And we can do anal if you really want to. Just don't, like, suddenly try to push your dick in my ass out of nowhere. That's rude. There's a . . . loosening procedure. I'd need lube."

"I know," Marcus said. "I haven't done it a lot, but I know some of the basics."

"Naturally," Sonia said. "You're a gentleman. Gentlemen know these things."

Marcus smiled. "Naturally. Is that a good thing, being a gentleman?"

"Yes," Sonia said. "Like, be nice, don't expect anything, ask for consent. Just don't be afraid to be—what's the phrase, an animal in the sheets? Something like that."

"Challenge accepted," Marcus said.

Sonia laughed so hard at that, and the way he said it, one of her boobs popped out. Marcus tried not to stare. Sonia had very full and wonderful breasts, and nice but kind of small nipples. Well, nipple; only one fell out. Sonia put her boob back in without thinking, then kind of wished she'd either done nothing or taken the other out, too, instead of putting anything away, and then climbed onto Marcus's lap and put his head between them and told him to motorboat her, and then they'd just be fucking somehow. She'd worry about the specifics later. Or never. They'd be fucking eventually, anyway.

Marcus threw in a couple of loaner Glock 19s—they really did have a lot of them—lesser suppressors, more than one loaded magazine per gun, a few Molotov cocktails for special zombies, and one mêlée weapon for everyone in Sonia's group. Not very nice ones, but they were all much better than not having any at all. Sonia had killed a zed with her bare hands once. It had taken a very long time.

"Just for clarity," Marcus said, "I do hope we fuck, sometime. I want that. But if we get back to your base and you decide you don't even like me anymore, it's okay. This all hasn't cost me anything. Except time. But I needed the break, so it's like you're giving me as much of a gift as I've given you. Seriously, I just needed the break. We're good, right?"

Sonia kissed him on the cheek again, but took her time doing it. Hugged him. Jug-hugged him, maybe. "Nuh-uh, you're not getting rid of me that easy! We're BFFs now," Sonia said. She held the hug while she spoke. "I'm also never gonna let go, like this. This hug is just how we both live now."

"Okay," Marcus said, his mouth over her head. He was tall. Both of them paused everything for a second. Sonia really enjoyed it, a moment of calm. Relief. Marcus had a strong heartbeat.

"It's gonna be hard for me to jerk off like this," Marcus said. His hips were near her belly somewhere.

"We'll make it work," Sonia assured.

II: Friend

The drive back to Sonia's group's meager home base, and reality, went by entirely too quickly. Sonia asked to drive. Marcus said no. Sonia didn't react to the joke. He said, damn, he'd hoped she'd continue their witty post-apocalyptic repartee.

"That was a break for me too," Sonia said. "Reality's coming crushing back." She also said joking about not letting women drive wasn't funny.

Marcus pantomime-shot himself in the head, then pantomimed a comically huge amount of brains spraying out of his head for a very long time. They both laughed.

Then Sonia said she was just fucking with him and it was funny before, grabbed his dick (it would be amply sufficient), then climbed into the truck's passenger seat.

"Do you not want to drive?" Marcus said. He barely reacted to the dick-check.

"I hate driving," Sonia said.

They came across a mere six or seven zombies on the way to Sonia's home base. To make up for it, Marcus and Sonia made sure to hit every one of them, which involved stopping and reversing and driving over them again several times. Sonia shot one out of her window.

"We should start every day like this," Sonia said. She was holding one of Marcus's hands in both of hers. She'd assured him that only quitters drove with both hands on the wheel. He'd said he definitely didn't want to be a quitter and so removed a hand. She'd taken that one.

"I do start every day like this," Marcus said.

"No, I mean us hanging out," Sonia said.

"Oh. For sure. Runnin over zombies and smashin puss," Marcus said.

They both laughed. "Fuck yeah," Sonia said. "Also tits."

"True, true. Can't forget about them tittyballs," Marcus said, running over a lone zombie. The way its head came apart, he didn't need to go over it again.

Sonia laughed.

There were a lot of zombies outside of her home base, a house in the northwestern part of Marshall—the same part of it Marcus's trucking warehouse was in—but she didn't put it all together until later.

Sonia went to un-buckle, get out and fight the zeds, but Marcus stopped her with a hand to the shoulder and a firm but nice, "Wait." He drove past the house, slowing down; every zed in front of her group's house heard the truck's engine and went right for it. Marcus stopped two houses down, reversed and ran over all the zombies that had been in front of her house in one pass. He was good at driving in reverse; the zeds weren't all in a line. The zeds were so stupid they ran right into the back of the truck, even as it barreled toward them. Sonia thought about that—normal zeds always just went straight at you. So that made sense. But it hadn't occurred to her that they'd still do itwhen people were in cars. She hadn't driven a car since before.

"Sometimes this takes longer—but it saves you a lot of energy," Marcus said. "Which you always need. Plus sometimes when you make just one bad decision things pile up on you quick. I almost got killed like that once."

"How?" Sonia said as Marcus stopped, shifted the truck back into drive, and ran over three more zeds she hadn't even noticed.

"I was scavenging—early on—a house in Spencer's Mill, and I jumped out through a window. I don't remember why," Marcus said. "There were a buncha zeds around. They all heard it. I was very tired, at the time. Shouldn't have been scav'ing. And carrying a rucksack full of medical stuff. And already hurt. They damn near killed me."

"How'd you . . . not die?" Sonia said.

"Maya," Marcus said.

"She was with you?" Sonia said.

"No," he said. "I ran all the way back to our base. I didn't use cars, at the time. And our base was a church then. Zeds dogged me the whole time. I'd kill one, but then two more would come up, and I'd get hit and almost fall over. Then I got back to the church. I thought I was gonna die. Maya just happened to be outside eating a snack, at like two in the morning. No one was on duty at the watch tower. Someone was supposed to be. Maya came running out. Saved me."

"I thought she was kind of a bitch," Sonia said.

"More like hardass," Marcus said. "But I feel you. She's a good person, though. She doesn't always say nice things. But we trust each other. Still do. If she trusts you she won't leave you hanging."

Sonia said, "Did you start bringing backup with you whenever you scavenged, after that?"

"Hell no," Marcus said.

Marcus parked the truck in front of Sonia's house, then together they took out two more random zombies drawn by its engine—she fired her new suppressed CZ 75 at one zed twice, missing both shots, and then it was so close she could (and had to) press the suppressor right between its eyes, so she did that and fired and it was frighteningly awesome. Its head fell apart. Marcus slashed the other zombie with his sword once and split its head open, killing it, then checked on Sonia and almost intervened with her target, but then saw her hit it and then some. She looked to him, saw him looking at her, and smiled back. "It helps to have weapons, huh?" she said.

She left his cut of their plunder—building materials—in his truck's flatbed. He left his backpack in the cab, but kept all his guns with him, which looked unwieldy. His movement didn't seem affected by the guns.

They went up to the front door together.

Sonia was about to open the door, and only then heard zombies—inside the house. Maybe she'd heard them before but thought they were elsewhere. "Oh fuck!" Sonia said, too loudly. She stepped back and opened the door. Marcus got his Calico M-110-future-pistol out, facing the door head-on.

Then a feral leapt out, tackling Marcus. It seemed like a long jump, even for a feral. It must have smelled him. Sonia hadn't even heard it roar. Marcus must not have either.

But he was such a good survivor that when he landed on his back from the feral's tackle, he had his gun pointing up; he landed with the business end of it, of its suppressor really, in the feral's mouth. Sonia saw that and, she was pretty sure, heard the feral whimper—Marcus pulled the trigger. The feral's head jerked back, but didn't explode like she'd expected it to.

As she watched the feral's corpse fall, six undead hands grabbed at Sonia—she was standing on the porch by the door, looking the wrong way—at the same time, and at least three hands caught her. She felt herself pulled hard in several different directions.

She yelped and tried to bring her new gun up to shoot any of them, but two zombies' bodies blocked it. She shoved one zed away with all her strength—it lost its grip on her and fell, tripping backward over something—then got out her hatchet, inwardly thanking Marcus again for the gifts, and hoping they'd be enough to save her life. She held one of the closest two zombies off with her left arm and swung the hatchet, nearly blindly, at another.

The zed on her arm bit down. Sonia screamed. But nothing happened. She looked—the zed was a toothless old man.

She'd held the hatchet wrong—she'd hit the other zombie on the head, yes, but with the broad, flat side of the blade, not the sharp part or even the extra spike on the back of the blade. She'd broken the walking corpse's nose but accomplished nothing.

Sonia let the old zed gnaw on her forearm—it was blocking countless others behind it, inside the house, and they probably weren't lacking for teeth—and turned the hatchet and swung again, in such a rush that she did so still without checking which way it was facing. She hit it with the correct axis of the hatchet head, but the wrong end of it—the spike on the back of the head rather than the actual blade. The spike still did the job, though. She felt that zed—a woman wearing blue scrubs, maybe a nurse in life—go limp, and ripped her hatchet out of its head before it took the hatchet to the floor with it.

Sonia cleaved the old zed's skull open real nice, with the part of the hatchet she actually meant to do it with for once. The old zed's head made a disgusting squelch noise, but splitting it apart felt incredibly satisfying. The blade freed itself this time. Sonia took a few quick steps back before some other zed could grab her.

Sonia looked into the house. There were too many zeds by the doorway to count them; at least six. She saw and heard no sign of any of her three friends, her survivor group, but she was so high on fight-instinct-adrenaline, so happy to feel she was strong and powerful enough to even get the fight instinct rather than flight, she couldn't think about anything but herself in that instant.

Two more zeds took the old one's place. And behind it more tried to get through.

Sonia brought her CZ 75 up and shot one of those. Right before she pulled the trigger, the other one got shot in the face—she heard a loud slap, and a tiny dot of grey and red appeared on its forehead, then she heard the book-closing noise; Marcus had shot it—and it fell, then she heard Marcus say, "Get back! Let em come outside!"

Sonia turned tail and fled. The stairs leading down were too far away so she vaulted over the patio's edge. She was only a foot away from it. She felt an army of zeds close behind her. One was close enough for her to feel humid, hangry moaning breath, if you could call it that, on the back of her neck as it moaned feverishly in chase. She seemed to smell rotten eggs. Or rotten milk.

Sonia got over the edge of the patio and jumped over—didn't use her hands or arms; couldn't without dropping a weapon; she felt dumb for lack of planning—and almost fell over when she hit the ground, but rolled to take the fall and somehow popped right back up onto her feet. Nothing hurt.

Marcus intercepted the eggs-and-milk zed closest behind Sonia with his sword—just let it run its own head through on his blade—halting it, then held the sword still and brought up his pistol and fired it so fast it sounded fully automatic. Maybe ten shots. Or twenty. Three of the zeds who'd chased her out onto the patio dropped dead, with various degrees of head-explosions from headshots. Marcus only missed once that she noticed—hit the ceiling. Sonia heard a dangerously sharp-sounding ricochet. The other bullets Marcus fired all hit zeds, just didn't kill them. As Marcus fired, the eggs-and-milk zed fell over. He kept the sword in his hand, just rotated it in his hand as the thing came to rest on the ground.

Sonia checked that she hadn't stabbed herself—no, she was good—and still had her gun—yes, somehow—then got back into the fight.

Marcus blazed away maybe twenty more bullets, capably one-handed, and the wave of zombies at the door was nearly gone. Sonia hadn't seen many people use guns since the zombie apocalypse, but of those she had, she'd never seen someone fire anything so much. Except one guy with some automatic rifle who panicked as like ten zeds started pulling him apart; he probably missed every shot. Marcus was calm. He wasn't even wasting ammo. Nearly every shot was a headshot.

One zombie reached Marcus and he mis-timed his counter-attack—rushed and ripped his sword out of the eggs-and-milk zed, then lined up a swing, swung too late. His sword went sideways between the new zed's teeth, which clacked loudly, and many of which broke, as it bit down on the sword's blade. Just by pressing itself into the blade, trying to reach Marcus, it slashed a line most of the way through its own cheeks. Which was horrifying to look at. Its tenacity, drive, and either not feeling or totally ignoring the pain. The sword's blade got stuck in its jaw, in bone, mutilating its face but not killing it. Marcus used the sword to push it back, shot it in the head once and then snapped the wrist of his sword-hand, knocking it loose of the sword. He let it slide off the blade.

Another zed came at Sonia, but then Marcus got between it and her. Its brain—well, whatever disease allowed it to move around after death—saw the new, closer target and went for it, changing its course of action too soon for a sure bite; it stumbled into Marcus, frantically grabbing at him for a bite, but couldn't get a hold of him. It missed his shoulders completely and eventually got his gun-arm; the left, because he was using the sword with his right. Marcus let the gun go, stepped back and took his sword in both hands and cut the thing in half down the middle with a grunt of effort. He bent over to retrieve the gun. It would've been cooler if he'd snatched it out of the air, but he was too busy not letting it kill him to do that.

Another zed went after Sonia. It had followed her from the front door. She timed her hatchet-strike well, but aimed it poorly, and removed one of its arms just below the shoulder rather than its head. The force of the blow still staggered it. She swung again, and took a chunk of its head off. A piece of skull and hair went flying. But not enough to kill it. She swung a few more times, leaning away from the one arm it still had as needed, and ended it with a good, solid smash into the side of its head which hit so hard it spun the zed. She heard skull crunch. The force was enough for her hatchet to roll out of the wound by itself, so she didn't have to follow it to the ground and work her blade out of it.

Sonia looked to Marcus—all good, checking his gun—then back to the house: dark inside. All the details she could make out in the dark were glowing eyes, points of light, at various heights—more zeds. More than three. She put her hand through her hatchet's lanyard instead of putting it away and let it dangle, and fired her new gun two-handed. Which worked better. Easier, smoother, and as far as she could tell more accurate. After she'd popped off a few rounds, she landed headshots regularly. Not all the zeds she shot's heads exploded. But some did.

A second later Marcus was shooting, with her, too.

Two seconds later the doorway was clear.

Sonia looked at her gun, which had stopped firing. It looked broken. Part of the top was all the way back, like when it was throwing empty shells out.

"What do I do?" she said to Marcus, for an instant feeling completely lost. "Did I break it?"

He came over and glanced at it and said, "No, you're just empty."

Everything he'd taught her earlier rushed back into her mind. The top part was the slide. It locked back on empty, automatically. Sonia dug for her next magazine, in the left-cheek butt pocket of her jeans. She pressed a button on her gun—her CZ 75—on the grip behind the trigger and the current mag slid partway out. She shook it out of the gun—she'd retrieve it later, once she knew her friends were okay. She got a fresh fully-loaded mag out, turned it to slip it in the grip correctly, and put it in all the way. It locked in place. She had two more loaded mags. She clawed at the middle-top of the gun with her thumb—you always had to press down harder than she thought she needed to; to release the slide stop, she recalled—then found the right amount of pressure and the slide snapped forward promptly, ready to rock, solid.

Marcus shot down two more zeds who—that—came to the noise while she reloaded, both from inside the house. He turned his red flashlight on. He'd clipped it onto the V-neck of his shirt. Zeds looked strange in the red light; surreal. Demonic.

"Oh my fuck, where'd you learn to shoot like that?" Sonia said.

"Just . . . on my own," he said. "Experience." Marcus holstered his pistol once she was set, then said, "Stay behind me." He kept his sword out.

He went into the house first, wary, calm, looking awfully competent. She saw another pistol holstered on the back of his Army belt she hadn't even noticed before. It had another suppressor on. It occurred to her suddenly, every gun she'd noticed someone carrying at Marcus's base had its own suppressor. That's why they didn't have any left over.

"Hang on," Sonia said, moving and feeling the unwieldy bulk of her food rucksack and remembering she was still wearing it. She took it off carefully, mostly to stay quiet, and set it down on the patio. Marcus backed out of the house and waited for her. She got her hatchet in her right hand and her CZ 75 in her left, switched on a white bike-riding light on one of her backpack's straps, then nodded to Marcus.

They went into the house together, cautiously, with enough space between them that they wouldn't accidentally strike each other or block each other in doorways.

Marcus struck down a zed before she saw it, and then they were in the living room.

Sonia saw three normal zeds, and a bloater in the kitchen. She knew how to deal with bloaters, now that she had a gun. Before, she'd generally throw rocks. It would take a few, but they'd get the job done. Any time she'd seen someone use a gun on a bloater, one bullet had been plenty. She stepped to Marcus's side and shot the bloater once in the belly before it knew any humans were present. It popped at once. The kitchen instantly became a cloud, a nauseating yellow-green haze. She felt herself gag at its stink even from across the house.

Marcus launched into two of the normal zeds, who were outside of the bloater's jizzsplosion miasma, with his sword. The third saw that and ran for Marcus, but Sonia shot it down before it reached him. She'd already gotten better with guns; it only took her one shot.

Marcus ducked and dodged, weaving between lunging zed teeth and arms, swinging his sword back and forth from zed to zed quicker than Sonia would've imagined a sword could be swung. Limbs and pieces thereof flew away from the small mêlée. Then two heads did. Their bodies dropped.

Sonia thought she saw one of her friends in the kitchen and felt herself running that way, even though the bloater gas would take at least another minute to clear. No, more than that. Enclosed space. No open windows. The back door, in the kitchen, was closed.

Marcus stopped her, desperately. He was just trying to keep her from walking into the bloater jizz. He felt like iron. He didn't yield. She saw desperation in his eyes. That snapped her out of her . . . whatever she was having, and she stopped trying to move.

"Wait," Marcus said, whispering.

"Thanks," Sonia whispered back. Marcus removed his arm. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"It's fine," Marcus said. "Let's go around, outside, open some windows." He gestured. The urgent energy he'd had seconds ago when he stopped her in her tracks was gone. Sonia didn't understand why yet.

Sonia called, "Kaitlyn?" It came out too loud.

Marcus put a hand on Sonia's shoulder—stopping her. She hadn't even noticed she'd started stepping forward again. The bloater miasma hadn't thinned out at all. She didn't know what she thought she'd seen.

She thought about her friends' faces: pretty Kaitlyn with her big nose; Gabriela's perfect lips and resting bitch-face; even the cook guy, Charlie, and his stupid pornstache.

Sonia found herself outside with Marcus, circling the house. No more zeds around. Marcus was opening unlocked windows, which was most of them. That seemed like a tactical error on her group's part. Not that zeds would try to open windows before diving through them.

Then Marcus opened the back door.

Gabriela rolled out, partway, like she'd been sitting up against the door. Marcus's calf stopped her before her head hit the wooden steps leading in. Gabriela was dead. Her dark hair was matted with blood and bloater goo. One of her eyes had been eaten out.

Marcus looked to Sonia. Sonia glanced at him, then looked back down to Gabriela. Sonia dropped her gun on the grass and went to the back steps and took hold of Gabriela. Gabriela was . . . uninhabited. Uncanny. Her soul was gone. The body was just unwieldy flesh. Incomplete remains.

"I got her," Sonia said.

Marcus moved his leg.

Sonia dragged Gabriela outside onto the lawn's soft grass.

The kitchen inside looked clear of bloater goo, now. How long had she been looking at Gabriela's corpse?

Marcus went back in, through the back door, first. Sonia was right behind him.

Charlie's body was in the kitchen too, as he would've wanted, his head smashed into a pulp. Feral, Sonia thought, recognizing the kind of messes they made. Some other lesser zombies had been at his intestines, too.

Kaitlyn was in the study in the back. She'd been ripped apart into very small pieces, a lot of which seemed to be missing. Sonia could only tell it was Kaitlyn by the short, strawberry blonde hair.

Sonia sat at the dining table, and suddenly she was crying. She let herself pour.

"Marcus," she called out. She was standing. She didn't remember standing.

He was already there. As soon as she turned, he held her. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him hard and cried into his chest for what felt like hours.

Later they were sitting together outside, in the back yard on grass. Marcus had an arm around her. Sonia was just short of lying on him. She didn't know where her backpack was. She was looking at Gabriela, wracking her mind trying to think of good times they'd had together.

She couldn't think of any. With Gabriela or their whole group. They'd met by chance in two groups of two in some gas station in Marshall, her with Kaitlyn, Gabriela with Charlie. Gabriela said she and Charlie had worked together at a church. Sonia had never asked where, or which one, or what kind.

"Will you help me bury them?" Sonia said.

"Sure," Marcus said.

They organized things, first. Marcus seemed to have invited her to join his survivor group unspokenly. Or maybe spokenly and she just didn't remember. "Spokenly" probably wasn't a word. Sonia had accepted the invitation unspokenly. They put all her group's gear in his truck's flatbed. Then they dragged Charlie out back. They couldn't find any big or recognizable pieces of Kate, so they just took her favorite hair clip as a memorial. She'd been a hairdresser. No, a stylist, Sonia corrected herself.

Sonia guarded her three friends' remains while Marcus found two shovels and told his group what he was doing with his radio. Minutes, maybe. He looked no different when he got back with the shovels. Hadn't broken a sweat. No new injuries.

One shovel was wood and old, rusty. The other folded up small and somehow looked like 1980s military surplus.

Marcus did most of the digging by volume. Sonia was unable to use any of her energy, or maybe had none. Slow. She dug Kaitlyn's memorial grave all by herself, though. She wanted to.

Sonia spoke to her three dead friends for a while before she and Marcus left. Marcus said something too, but she didn't hear most of it through tears. She heard him saying, "I wish I'd known you."

They drove to Marcus's place at a somber speed.

Sonia was someplace deep in her mind when Marcus next spoke. Something about his voice and presence woke her up, brought her back to reality. Or whatever this was.

Marcus said, "I have to say something completely inappropriate, rude, and not well-timed. I don't even know why I'm saying it. I apologize in advance. Just . . . end of the world stuff, I have to."

Sonia said, "Okay," staring out ahead of them. She looked to Marcus. His eyes were beautiful. "Say it."

"Your tits are amazing," Marcus said. "Incredible. They look fantastic like that. In that shirt. Or, just all of it. All of you. And it's incredibly distracting." He was examining her with his eyes, but only in glances; he was an attentive driver.

She loved it. The attention, openness, sincerity. She felt completely safe. She touched herself—squeezed the breast closer to Marcus, the left one. "Yeah?" she said.

"Oh, yeah," Marcus said. Then stopped himself. "I'm sorry. I know it's—"

Sonia snatched one of his hands and held it over her breast. She licked her lips without noticing she was doing it. She wanted to feel Marcus's cock inside of her. She made him squeeze her tit. Knead it.

"I want you to fuck me," Sonia blurted out. "I need it. Now."

"In the car?" Marcus said. He started feeling her tit on his own initiative. Assertively. It felt amazing. He found her nipple, somehow, over her clothes—through her shirt and the support cami beneath it. Both freshly clean. Maybe sweaty now, but not nearly as gross as before . . . before.

"Not in the car," Sonia said. She wanted the space to do it right.

"Do you like to get loud?" Marcus said.

"That depends entirely on you, loverman," Sonia said.

"Do you?"

"Yeah."

"I can only think of one place," Marcus said. "I wanna be alone with you. Is that okay?"

"Yes," Sonia said. "I'd prefer it that way." She later noticed—she'd already told him her kink. Of course he'd ask that. In this moment she thought he was being an excessive gentleman. Or maybe driving distracted him. It would've distracted her.

"There's this one nice neighborhood on a hill—the windows are intact, and you can't hear the inside from the outside," Marcus said. "Or vice versa."

Sonia looked into his eyes and reached for his crotch, feeling along his thigh on her way. He wasn't hard. Yet. She found his cock and started rubbing at it through his pants. "Go."

He took his hand off her tit and started driving with renewed vigor.

Sonia used her other hand to touch herself—she pinched a nipple, then went to her pussy. She touched herself and Marcus. She couldn't remember any time she'd wanted to fuck so badly, that she'd even try that. It was really exciting—her arousal compounded itself. She was surprised how turned-on she already felt. She couldn't feel much through her jeans—real work jeans—so, considering those limitations, she went right to her clit. She seemed to notice herself breathing harder. She moaned. A release of pressure. Necessary. Apart from that she didn't notice much except how turned-on she was.

"I wanna touch you right now, but we need to clear the house first," Marcus said. "I'd feel like I was teasing you."

Sonia ignored what he said. "I've wanted to fuck you since the first time I saw you," she said. "Did you know that?" She was pretty sure she'd found the head of his cock. She paid special attention to it.

"No," Marcus said. He groaned at her ministrations. Glanced at her. "You're so sexy."

"I wish you'd known," Sonia said. She found a good spot and angle on herself, through her pants and the boyshorts under them. She stayed right there, and focused on him more. She wondered what he liked.

"Is it cuz I'm black?" Marcus said.

"No," Sonia said. "It's just cuz . . . you."

"Had to ask," Marcus said. "Tell me what you like."

"I like diiiick," Sonia said, dragging a finger over her clit agonizingly slowly. Harder than normal so she could feel it through the layers. She tried to figure out where Marcus's balls were. She hardly ever did anything in cars. Plus they were moving. It was hard to find anything not part of her own body. "Are you gonna give me dick, baby?"

"As much as you can take," he threatened.

She hummed and said, "Good answer." She had to take her other hand back to pinch one of her nipples. Over the clothes wasn't enough; she had to just reach under, below her stretchy cami, this time. It felt great. "I like to talk dirty," Sonia said. She needed to get her clothes off.

"I can get into that," Marcus said. "Do you like to be called names, or anything?" He took one of his hands off the wheel as she closed her eyes to focus on her nipple. She felt his hand caress her other breast. She gasped, enjoying it so much it was unfair to her. She looked without thinking, had to, and adored the sight of him glancing at her, while still driving carefully, monitoring the effect his touch had on her. Her lovers told her she was very responsive. They were almost at that neighborhood. She knew the place he meant. It was nice.

"Fuck," she moaned when he touched her, even over her clothes. He was too much of a gentleman. She would've damn near come on the spot if he just reached under her clothes. He wasn't doing anything wrong, though. His touch was incredible. Not too hard. Not too soft. He either guessed or quickly figured out the right spots to touch. Sonia answered him: "No. Just call me baby. Or my name."

Her clothes, thin as they were, dulled his touch. She pulled both of her tits out, over her cami and shirt. She needed to feel it all, and directly. He didn't look, just went with it. He rubbed and pinched. She moaned, louder than she meant to let herself get—she meant to use words to tell him how good his touch felt, but no words came out. Her nipples were pretty sensitive. He was playful. No hesitation. Exploring her body, and what felt good to her, what she liked. He took his hand back, licked a few fingers, and touched her again with those fingers. Wonderful. She felt all this heat, growing deep inside of her, but all over her body too. She wanted to take her clothes off. This was going to be good. He twisted her nipple softly and she felt it roll all the way through her body, from her head down to her toes. She had to rub her own lips, but she couldn't explain why.

She said, "I don't wanna roleplay. Just fuck." He rubbed her nipple. She moaned and giggled. She couldn't feel her hand on her pussy well enough through her clothing; she switched her hands around, one on his dick over his clothes, one on her other nipple. "Fuck yeah."

"Okay," Marcus said. He took his hand back and parked.

III: Lover

Clearing a house with a raging hard-on was awkward at first, but Marcus got used to the feeling and pressure quickly. Somehow he stayed hard the entire time. Very hard. If he'd actually come across any zombies in the house, he could and probably would have used his dick against them as a bludgeon.

Marcus tried to get more likes/dislikes out of Sonia, who was all over him and often out of her clothes while clearing the house, but she didn't give him much. She kept touching herself and flashing him her tits—which was all wondrous—and trying to drive him crazy, and just generally being really cool and horny. She told him to do what she says and pay attention, and mostly to take or do what he wants, and also tell her what he wants.

Unfortunately, to make sure the house was clear and safe to have fun in, Marcus had to ignore her sometimes. Mostly her touch. He never had to ignore her words. He told her to stop touching him—only for this!—after two rooms. She understood, but pretended not to. Which was fun. He had to keep telling her to put her clothes back on—he loved, lusted for her body, and that she wanted to do that, but he wanted her—once the house was clear—to tease him, not reveal her body entirely yet. He wanted to watch her get naked, and stroke himself to hardness while she did it. He wasn't sure if he mentioned that aloud or not.

The house was clear, surprisingly. No zeds in or near it. But you had to be sure. Marcus locked all the doors, closed all the windows.

The master bedroom was in the back, and not windowless, but at least its windows were good quality and intact and clean. The room itself was clean—perfect, untouched. The family, or whoever, had left the house early on during the outbreak. The master bed was still made, and still smelled clean. It didn't squeak, even if you jumped on it, as Sonia proved with her tits out, by jumping on it. It would do well. The room's door could close. And it still had a door.

"I wish we could play music," Sonia said. "I like to dance."

"Yeah?" Marcus said, hurriedly closing the room's curtains. They were nice. You couldn't see through them. They might even cut sound down. He was genuinely curious, but he knew everything he said would be tinged with lust because of how aroused he was.

"Mmhmm," Sonia said. "I wanna dance with you." Marcus looked at her. She'd put her tits and ass away, as he'd asked her to, for the moment. She'd set down her backpack, and had just finished unbuttoning and untucking her long-sleeved shirt. When she saw his head turn she leaned down, forward toward him, and squished her tits together. The pose was striking. It seemed to be touching Marcus's dick directly—making it throb.

"Oh my God," Marcus said, trying to make the noise that came out of him more than a groan.

"You like my tits?" Sonia said, looking into his eyes and shaking her tits.

"I love your tits," Marcus said. He closed the room's door. He dropped his backpack as quickly as he dared, unslung and nearly threw down his Colt 9×19mm sub-machinegun—his group kept calling it a Samurai PDW, but he didn't understand why—then undid his web belt and his thigh holster's straps, removing it all.

"Wanna see me twerk?" Sonia said, standing up and turning to point her ass back at him. She leaned forward.

"Hell yeah, baby," Marcus said.

Her form was all wrong—she just stood normally; she—hummed? moaned?—contentedly and shook her ass. She wasn't good at it at all. He loved that she was comfortable doing it, and wanted to, though. Her body was sexy and her ass was really nice. "You like that?" she said, looking over her shoulder at him, smiling.

"Fuck yeah," Marcus said. He didn't have to exaggerate. He wasn't even sure if he was fully hard yet—was only dimly aware of his own body at all—but he got this urge: he wanted to come right then. Shoot his cum all over her ass, even with all her clothes on over it, even though it would be sexier to come on her naked ass, even though she didn't twerk good. He wanted to have her reach behind herself and jerk him off, make his balls empty on her. He was nowhere near orgasm.

Marcus kissed her, and peeled her shirt off and threw it away somewhere, then peeled her camisole off too. He'd already seen both her breasts out in the open, sometimes jumping, but not like this. He didn't really look at them now, either—didn't take the time to appreciate the sight of them, didn't think to. He barely looked at her tits, just kissed her for a few seconds and groped her tits and then gave in to a new impulse: he bent down and kissed around one lovely dark nipple a few times, then did the same to the other nipple, then went back to the first one and sucked on it. He did it all, and gauged how to do it in ways she enjoyed, mostly by feel. And listening to her.

Marcus grabbed her other tit with his hand and squeezed it, enjoyed her nipple. He held her somewhat still with a hand on her hip. Sonia moaned when he kissed around her nipples, and keened when he sucked on one.

She never stayed still. He liked that. One of her arms came up and held his head right where it was, fingers weaving into his hair firmly; her other hand held his hand down on her other tit. Then she moaned, and that hand left his to tend to her pussy. She rubbed herself between her legs. It was incredibly arousing seeing, feeling and hearing how turned-on she was. "Fuck yeah, baby," she said, breathy, moaning. She kept getting more turned-on. He nibbled at her nipple and she gasped in pleasure and said, "Baby." Sounding desperate.

Marcus switched tits, used his fingers on the nipple he'd just been sucking and moved his mouth to the other one. He used his other hand to hold that tit, squeeze it. He licked the nipple, kissed around Sonia's areola.

"Yeah, suck my titties, baby," Sonia said, clenching fists in his hair, reaching around him to keep rubbing her pussy through her jeans.

For a second he used his mouth alone, just held her by her waist, sealed his lips over her second nipple, sucked and licked. He brought his hands both down to where her thighs met, then remembered not to rush and felt up her thighs with one hand instead of going straight to the intense heat of her pussy. Which was the only place he really wanted to be, he noticed suddenly. His cock throbbed just thinking about licking her there. He brought his other back up to her other tit.

He kept sucking on her nipple for a few more seconds that turned into minutes, then explored her chest and belly, kissing all over, occasionally returning to her tits to lick and kiss, then brought one of his hands to her pussy, found it, and started rubbing all around it. "Oh fuck," she sighed when he got there. Her hand went over his—he wanted to feel around her labia first—and guided him to what—without opening his eyes—he was pretty sure was her clit, and showed him she wanted him to rub it a teeny bit harder and faster.

Marcus broke contact between his mouth and her right tit—not wanting to—to say, "Is this too hard? On your pussy."

"No it's good," Sonia said in one breath. She was breathing hard and fast. Her eyes were closed. She was absolutely beautiful. Looking the perfect kind of pleased and pained. Her face and chest had flushed red. Turned on. He liked to see how fast her belly expanded and contracted. She had a nice belly. She must have exercised before all this, too, not only after. He liked even more than watching her belly to watch her tits move as she breathed. Sonia's tits were fantastic.

He wanted just to watch her, but couldn't. He had an undeniably strong urge to keep making her feel better and bringing her higher. He hoped she didn't have trouble reaching orgasm. It was okay if she did, but he hoped she didn't.

Marcus went back to sucking on her nipples and switched to the other one, then said, "Can I get you to come like this?" between nice, lusty, long sucks and licks of each of them. It occurred to him a second later that she might feel pressured by his asking that. Whoops.

Sonia seemed to be thrilled by the question, though—she liked it. She groaned and bit her lip, then opened her eyes, giggling. "You sure can, baby," she said, and brought a hand back to his head to keep him close. "But—I gotta hold out longer." She brought his head up and kissed him. She was happy. He kept rubbing at her pussy through her clothes and just held one of her tits for a moment, cupping it in his hand—it just barely overflowed his hand—kissing her again.

A very long time seemed to go by of just them kissing. Marcus wanted to fuck her, but he was in no rush to. He wanted to take his time with her. He intended to do so for both of their pleasure. That seemed to be rather effective, so far; she just kept getting hotter and hotter. It was wonderful.

Marcus smiled and kissed her some more and held her by the waist and hips, spreading his fingers out, then rubbing over her back and belly.

"I don't want you to hold out," Marcus said. "Or feel like you have to. There's—I just wanna make you feel so good."

"You're already doing that, baby," Sonia said. "Take your clothes off."

He leaned down to undo his pants and found her nipples at his eye level. "Damn . . . your tits, baby," he said. He couldn't find words for how great they were.

"Like em?" she said, fondling both of them, then used just one hand on her own tits and brought the other back to her pussy. She wanted to get fucked. She'd be happy if he got right to it, right now. Something about the way she moved, and squirmed when he touched her; he was sure of it. He wasn't going to jump forward into fucking her, though. She'd have to wait.

"Fuck yes," Marcus said.

She stepped closer and put his head between her tits, giggling and laughing and loving every second of it. He reacted and felt the same way.

He started motorboating her tits—couldn't help it—turning his head back and forth and making his best boat-motor sound. They laughed. It was fun and sexy. He remembered to undo his pants and pushed them down until they dropped to his ankles. He undid the front button on Sonia's jeans. She moaned.

He'd forgot his shirt was still on. He felt Sonia pulling it up. He backed up to allow it—even though he'd just decided he wanted his head to remain between her tits forever—but not before kissing one of her tits and nibbling at the edge of the other's areola. After the deep moans he got anytime he sucked one of her nipples, he heard and felt a sharp intake of Sonia's breath at that, the nibble; then she moaned some more. She was so . . . sensual. Amazing. She ran a hand through his hair, then used both hands to take his shirt off.

Marcus took Sonia's face in both his hands and kissed her—long. Deep. He wanted to taste and feel her lips, but before a second of that went by, her mouth opened. He loved that too, even if it wasn't what he had in mind. He moved his tongue toward her mouth to respond and found her tongue halfway there. They both giggled and sighed and licked each other. He kept touching her as they kissed and their tongues interwove.

He felt all over her body, everywhere he could reach, partly exploring and enjoying himself, partly seeing what she responded to or didn't, and where she liked certain things, or to be touched, or felt indifferent about. She didn't feel indifferent about anything, though, by then. Her whole body was an erogenous zone.

Marcus broke the kiss to say, "Are you sure you want to do this?" He'd been meaning to ask for a while, but she seemed to be coming at him too so strong he kept either forgetting to ask or putting it off.

"God yes, Marcus," Sonia said, and kissed him again. A delirious tongue battle ensued.

She broke that kiss off after a minute or three—but didn't stop him feeling her up all over. She seemed to love all of that. Any time he touched her. "I'm . . . I'm a very sexual woman, Marcus. And . . . I just need to feel something other than pain, right now. Okay? I really want it to be this. With you."

"Yeah," he said. "Let's do this." He kissed her again. They resumed the tongue battle. He still touched her everywhere, but now he lingered on certain spots rather than wandering everywhere. He devoted one of his hands to rubbing her pussy with her, in time. He occasionally messed with her pace or rhythm, as a joke. She seemed to enjoy that too. "If you change your mind or anything it's okay," he said. He had to finish the thought before it left him forever. "Just tell me."

"Sure, baby," she mewled.

The next kiss lasted a long time, basically. Occasionally one of them would break it to breathe or kiss the other's face, but then they were right back to it. Lips and tongues. They groped each other. Sat down, very close, on the bed. He broke the kiss again, not wanting to, to explore how she responded to kisses over the rest of her body. Her neck was very sensitive, and she loved to be kissed and touched there. A special spot.

Marcus finally got to her waist, and before he could try to ask her by touch if he could take her jeans off, she rolled back and lifted her hips so he could and would do just that. It was slow-going at first, but he was losing patience, he wanted to taste her pussy, so then he rushed her pants off.

"Tell me if you want something," he said, his mouth briefly otherwise unoccupied. "Or don't want something." He wanted to fuck her hard. He wanted to break the bed and come all over her tits.

"Okay," she said. He wanted to leave her wearing nothing but her cotton? spandex? booty shorts, but he only got a half-second-long view of them before she tugged them off herself. He wanted to look at her ass in them. Maybe later.

"Sorry," he said. "Enjoying the view." She smiled and sighed. Then he helped her. They were . . . hard to tell, a light color. He wanted to know their color, for whatever reason, but couldn't be bothered to actually look at them. The boyshorts' crotch was wet all over. The area caught the moonlight leaking in from a hole in one of the curtains perfectly for a moment. He took over for her hands at about her mid-thigh, neatly taking them off her. He didn't remember either of them taking her shoes or socks off, but off they were. She smelled good. Clean. He threw her booty shorts off somewhere.

He couldn't see her pussy well—the room was too dark—except to see it was soaking and she'd done a very clean job of shaving it bare very recently. He didn't see any razor burn, but then, he wouldn't in such low light. He loved shaved pussy just as much as he loved un-shaved pussy—he didn't care. Wouldn't have asked for anything specific, except for occasional changes just for variety. He got a heady breath of her smell, her musk, and he forgot about everything in the world but her for a moment.

He had certain plans, but must've forgot them; the next thing he knew she was on the bed, on her back, her legs far apart, one hooked over one of his shoulders, and his head between her legs, lapping away at her pussy, and fingering her with two fingers. He kissed and licked around her pussy lips, then sucked around, but not yet on, her clit. He'd let her rub at it, but he hadn't touched it directly yet. He wasn't sure about her sensitivity. Her clit didn't seem very sensitive.

"I'm gonna come," she said when he put his lips around her clit—not on it. She sounded deliciously worried. He adjusted his pace, changed the pattern of his fingers, started curling them inside of her more. Then added a third. She was so wet.

"You taste so good," he couldn't help breaking off to say. He was going to go straight back down, but as he started to, she shoved his head back down.

A few seconds later he had to move a hand from her thigh to her belly to hold her down. She'd been squirming the whole time, but she kept squirming and wiggling and writhing more and more. She was getting unwieldy. He loved it. Something about seeing her hips turn and buck threatened to drive him crazy. He didn't want to get like that, yet, though.

He changed his tact, again, by about 2 per cent.

"Just like that!" she said desperately.

He kept doing it just like that.

"I'm coming!" she said, rather loudly, sounding worried somehow. Her thighs squeezed his head, hard. It seemed like the best feeling ever until he tried to imagine what it might be like to have his cock buried in her and her legs locked around his waist, with them both holding each other and kissing and making eye contact. Marcus kept doing everything just like he was, and he also forgot how to breathe for a few seconds. With her thighs clamped around him tightly, he might not have been able to anyway. Then he remembered his nose.

She tried to speak—impossible to tell what she wanted to say, apart from she was feeling very good, because she couldn't form any words. Though she tried. All he could make sense of were noises, moans, yelps.

Her pussy clenched at his fingers, spasming rhythmically. He tried to hold her down, and breathe, but focused mainly on doing all the things she'd told him to do.

She was still coming, but the orgasm was starting to recede when she abruptly said, "Stop," and pushed his head away at the same time.

He felt awful. Horrified at himself. He'd done something wrong. He stopped, backed off, slipped his fingers out of her pussy, and tried to prepare himself for the worst. Bare minimum, the worst feeling of blue-balls ever.

"I didn't say stop fingering me!" she said immediately. Either her eyes were closed or she just didn't look down, because she reached out for his hand blindly, missing it. She would've grabbed his fingers hard if she'd found them. She couldn't find any part of him, though, so he put his fingers in her hand, feeling very confused. She pushed them back into her pussy.

"Too hard?" Marcus said, trying to understand what the "Stop" was about. He remembered she implied not to stop fingering her, so he resumed that. It took him a few seconds to remember the exact pace she'd set for him.

"My clit got really sensitive," Sonia said. "Just for a second."

"Okay," Marcus said, still feeling uncertain. "I'm sorry. Is that all? I feel like I did somethin wrong."

Sonia laughed and he could hear her smiling, but she didn't move or look as she said, "Shut up. You're perfect." She lay on her back, reclined, relaxed, her head up in the clouds somewhere. Her body went limp. Her legs lost all tension. She took a few deep breaths. "You're so sexy, baby." She pulled his hand out of her pussy again and brought it to her mouth—he went along with her—and she kissed the back of his hand. There was some of her cum there, but she was doing it to kiss him, not to taste herself. "Come here," she said. When he looked, her eyes were open and looking into his. "Hold me." She patted the bed beside her. She looked so wild. It was great. He felt very confident.

She looked sleepy. He crawled up to her—boxers still on, dick very hard—and lie on his back. She rolled and adjusted so roughly a third of her was on him, and rested her head on his chest. He held her. He wanted to fuck, and get off, but if this was all he got, he was content with it. Just this had been exceptionally good.

"You made me come so hard," she said, catching her breath and laughing. Her tits jiggled, which wasn't really all that attractive, which somehow made it much more lovely and natural and real than anything she could've done for him to see. He tried not to stare, and tried not to want to start stroking himself.

A few seconds went by. Sonia's breathing became very even. "Babe?" Marcus said to the beautiful woman in his arms. His raging erection would've disagreed, but if she was asleep, it was okay.

She didn't answer.

"Sonia?" he said. He nudged her.

No response.

He felt tired. He'd give it a few minutes—he really wanted to get off too, after all, even if it was only a handjob or something—but then just let go of all this. Go back home and sleep. All the time he'd spent with Sonia had already been great. As close to perfect as he'd ever get. He hoped Sonia would come home with him and sleep with him there. He'd have to get back to reality and post-zombie-apocalyptic work tomorrow.

Marcus wanted to sleep here, like this, alone with Sonia, but he knew too well it wasn't safe for them. Not safe enough to go to sleep.

He nudged Sonia again—nothing; she took even, deep breaths—then he got up. He was careful not to move her around too much, or take a 5-minute break just to play with her boobs or whatever, though he wanted to. She was beautiful even asleep. Even if her hair was a mess. He wanted to stare and let himself enjoy looking at her, but he didn't do it.

He peeked out the curtains—nothing; safe—then looked around the house doing much the same wearing nothing but boxers. He carried his Calico M-110 with him, confident he wouldn't need it. But he'd been certain he wouldn't need weapons a few times before, and he'd almost always been wrong, and usually got hurt because of it. The place was still quiet, no zeds inside, no special ones nearby.

Marcus found a few candles out in the open, in the bedroom where Sonia slept. They were the kind of candle that was already in a glass jar. He was glad he always had at least one lighter on him or in his big backpack. He usually had a few road flares in the bag, too. If you packed well they didn't take up any space at all.

He made sure their bedroom was light-proof this time—didn't hastily close the curtains—and then lit the candles, in places he was pretty sure they were safe in. His dick was soft, he noticed by the time he lit the third. He was disappointed by that, in himself.

He sat by Sonia, who was still asleep. He looked over her body. No, it wasn't an illusion. She was still lovely. Lean, from surviving for weeks. Her boobs still really were big and awesome and full.

Marcus rested his eyes.

A few seconds went by. He was lying down on the bed, he noticed. His dick tingled, and felt warm and wonderful—because Sonia was stroking it with one of her hands.

Sonia lay on her side, right up against him, looking between his face and his dick. She'd pushed his boxers down past his balls but not taken them off. He didn't remember taking his shoes or socks off, but they were off.

Marcus closed his eyes and took a few seconds to just let himself enjoy it—her attention, being touched, having alone time with anyone he liked so much. They might go all the way—or not—together; maybe this was all he'd get. He groaned inadvertently. Then he opened his eyes again.

"You're awake," Sonia said, meeting his eyes, giggling. He was getting hard rapidly.

"I wasn't trying to hide it. Just takin a second to enjoy it. I've never woken up so well before," he said, taking a deep breath. "That feels so good." He looked around at the candles. Still lit. He'd been asleep not more than an hour.

"I'd make the best girlfriend ever," Sonia said.

"I believe you would," Marcus said. He watched her hand pumping his cock. He felt it filling with blood and excitement. His heart beat faster. He watched her arm's muscles bunch up and release with each pump of his cock. He watched her tits shifting; he could see them pretty well, from how she and he were positioned. "You fell asleep. We shouldn't sleep here."

Sonia smiled and licked her lips slowly. Her tongue looked great. He wanted to feel it all over him. "Do you really want to talk about that now?" she said, slowly, among strokes.

"No," Marcus said. "Do you wanna keep doing this?"

"Yeah. You didn't fuck me," Sonia said.

Marcus's cock was definitely hard now. "You callin me a liar?" he said.

Sonia bit her lip, thinking, then her hand went still—she squeezed his cock. She leaned into him and kissed him. "I wanna suck your cock," she said afterward. The way she said it was quiet, private, conspiratorial. He kind of loved that, but wasn't sure why.

"I want you to suck my cock," Marcus said.

Sonia grinned and sat up. He tried not to stare at her tits, and mostly succeeded. "Stand up," she said. She pointed next to the bed. "Right there."

He stood right there, and took his boxers off. Just now, his cock felt huge, somehow.

"I love the candles," Sonia said, getting up. Marcus offered a hand to help her stand—she wouldn't need it, but he never wanted to stop touching her—and she accepted it. They smiled. She kissed him. He tried not to watch her tits shift as she moved toward him and mostly failed. He wanted to come on them. Big, milky, firm, perky. "I feel very sexy in this light," she said, kneeling, looking at the flickering shadows and areas of heat on her skin.

"You are very sexy," Marcus said. She looked happy, too.

Sonia knelt in front of Marcus. She pretended to be timid. Marcus didn't like timidity, but something about the way she pretended to be so—playful, teasing—excited him. He kept thinking he couldn't possibly get more excited, then Sonia did something great and he was even more excited.

Sonia kissed around Marcus's cock, and pumped a hand over the whole thing while she did it. She did all of it slowly, taking her time, flourishing. Maybe nourishing too. Sometimes the hand stroking his cock stopped on the head, sometimes she slid her hand all the way off. Sometimes she'd grip it by the base and squeeze and use her other hand to hold it still while she squeezed it. A few times she teased him—brought her lips close to his cock, but didn't let them meet. Marcus felt himself throbbing, at what she was already doing and thinking about what more she'd do. He was confident she felt him throbbing too. She seemed to get off on that alone. She was as aroused as he was. Marcus tried to be quiet and admire her and enjoy what she did, and how she made him feel, but couldn't only do that. He wanted to touch her, be involved, give feedback. He wanted to touch her back, too, in some way that felt good to her. He couldn't reach anything but her head without bending over awkwardly. So he focused on feedback. At first it was just sighs, groans and moans, but he got more vocal throughout, so Sonia could know how well she was doing. He thought he should do that anyway, but she seemed to very much enjoy it, and put all the more enthusiasm into her ministrations the more feedback he gave her—or just let come out. "You're so sexy, Sonia," he noticed himself saying once. "Fuck that's good," he said another time. "God damn. Suck on the head, baby." He wasn't thinking. Just letting her do whatever she wanted, and allowing himself to enjoy it. The feelings. Sonia. Sonia's mouth. Her hands. Her tongue. Her lips.

After a minute or two, he got somewhat used to her awesome big tits and stopped staring at and thinking about them so much. He started thinking more about how even though he definitely wanted to do it right now—now would be an impolite and probably unwelcome time—he wanted to hold her head, grip her by the hair, and fuck her face.

Sonia started taking into her mouth more of his cock than just the head, before long. Marcus wanted this to continue forever, but it had probably only been a minute or two. He wasn't close to coming, though; he didn't have to be ashamed of himself. Something about seeing his cock's head push Sonia's lips apart and jaw open was immensely thrilling. Then he felt her mouth's silky embrace, wet heat. Then the sucking started. He moaned, loudly and without meaning to. He might've called out, "Fuck!" He wasn't sure.

Sonia moaned too—he loved that, but wondered how she was enjoying this so much—and slipped his cock right out of her mouth with a wet pop. She pumped most of the shaft with a hand and said, "You like my mouth, baby?"

"Yeah. Your mouth is wonderful," he said, and then noticed she was using her other hand—her dominant hand, the right—to touch herself. He saw her hand moving up and down, swirling around her clit, her fingers bending and finding a good spot. Something about that turned him on even more than getting his cock sucked. She was getting off on getting him off. Incredible. Marcus moaned. "God damn, baby," he said, watching her, in awe. He put one of his hands on her head as she went to take his cock back into her mouth.

She stopped the awesomeness her mouth was doing at once and said, "Don't force me, okay?"

"I won't," he said. "I wasn't going to. Just a rest. I wanna always be touching you. And stop myself from clapping."

Sonia laughed, then must've hit a good spot on herself because she shuddered. Feeling that tremor go through her body to her hand on him felt wonderful. She was getting more and more turned-on, just like him, holding his cock, rubbing her clit. Her tits jiggled gloriously, beautifully, he couldn't help but notice. "Oh yeah?" she said.

"Yeah, baby," he said. "This is so good." He brushed hair out of her face so they could keep eye contact. Which, now that he noticed it consciously, was also a driving-him-crazy kind of threat. He had to keep control of himself. Not be selfish. Was letting her keep going down on him selfish? She seemed to really want to do it, and enjoy doing it to him.

Sonia cocked an eyebrow. "I like that you wanna touch me. But if you think that's good . . . " she said, and kissed the head of his cock, then shuffled her knees closer to him and, without warning, slipped the entire length of his cock into her mouth and down her throat—Sonia deep-throated his cock. She did it in one smooth motion, without hesitation. She made it look easy. He moaned, incredulous. He was dimly aware of swearing something, but he had no idea what. Then he noticed himself saying, "God damn, Sonia," but wasn't aware of consciously choosing to say it. Sonia's tongue slipped out and licked his balls. It couldn't move around much, but the heat that spread on his balls was delightful. Then Sonia sucked on his cock. Marcus heard someone moaning in disbelief. It was him, of course. Sonia twisted her head.

"Fuck," he said out loud—and then he started clapping.

Sonia slid her head all the way off his cock. It looked soaked, glistened brightly. He could count on one hand the amount of times somebody'd ever deep-throated him. What was best about it wasn't how it felt. Maybe it was that someone was accepting so much of him. Or their control over their body. Or experience.

Sonia laughed hard at his clapping. One of her eyes had teared up. She looked ecstatic. She bowed.

"Will you marry me?" Marcus said, laughing with her. Still clapping.

"Sure," she said. She dabbed. He laughed and stopped clapping. He'd never seen someone look so good doing that. It was so hilarious he was somehow more aroused. He cheered, for real but not loudly.

Sonia looked up at him and put both her hands on herself—pinched a nipple, kneaded a tit, then used both hands to spread her pussy lips—which, as best Marcus could tell in the room's relative dark, seemed kind of open already—and used both hands on herself. One was just two fingers around her clit, the other dragged around her pussy lips. She looked just as aroused as he felt. She smiled, looking between his cock and his eyes. She kissed his cock, then stopped touching herself for a second to say, "Can you still do that, after a zombie apocalypse? Get married?"

"I don't see why not," Marcus said. He felt some kind of how-am-I-not-smashing-that-puss withdrawal and started stroking his cock. Had to. "Wanna try being girlfriend/boyfriend first?"

She watched him stroke himself. She seemed to be aroused by that too—seeing how turned-on he was, with and because of her. "Yeah, let's," Sonia said.

Sonia had backed up, at some point. Marcus inched forward and dragged his cock over Sonia's lips—open out of necessity from how hard she was breathing. Sonia sighed as he did it; enjoying it, closing her eyes, leaning her head back to give him a better target. He moaned. She left a hand immobile down at her pussy, and brought the other up to twist and pinch one of her nipples, then just rub around it. He kept dragging the head of his cock over her face. Over her lips. He didn't push it in her mouth, or try to, though he kind of wanted to do that. Pretend he was making her do it.

"Do you like sloppy blowjobs?" she said, opening her eyes. Her hand at her pussy started rubbing over her pussy lips. Her other hand grabbed his cock, held it, so they both had a hand on it; she locked hers right up against where his hand was when hers got there. Then they started stroking the length of his cock together. A few seconds later it felt like one big warm grasping hand. A moan-inducing feeling.

Marcus stopped moaning and then said, "Yeah. Do you like to give em?"

"I do, baby," she said, smiling, happy, excited. She worked her jaw and throat, released his cock and spit on her hand. He took his hands off everything and just let her do her thing. He really wanted to know what she was about to do, how specifically she was going to be sloppy.

She rubbed her spit over his cock with her hand—lubed it up with more than superficial saliva. "That's the good stuff, from the back of my throat," she said. He wasn't sure if he'd moaned or not since she'd started using her good spit as lube, but he definitely moaned after she said that. She deep-throated him again. In one smooth motion, again. His cock disappeared. He moaned deeply.

He was too spellbound to clap. He wanted to grab her head in both hands and push his cock as deeply down her throat as it could get. He didn't do that. If he'd been able to think . . . anything, he would've. Maybe best he didn't, though—she might've thought he wasn't taking it or her seriously.

She kept sucking, bobbing her head on and off of him. She never let his whole cock get out of her mouth; as close as she got was the edge of the head.

Two minutes later, he felt himself getting dangerously close to the point of no return. If he didn't stop her, he wouldn't be able to until after he came. He stopped her; hooked a thumb on her chin and pushed her back off his cock.

"Still wanna fuck?" he said. Instead of, "Stop."

"So much," she said, arranging herself to get up. She just kept getting more aroused. So did he. Both those things continually surprised him. She put her arms up, like he should lift her. So he did, immediately. She started saying, "Help me up," but he reacted faster than she spoke. She finished saying it anyway.

Once she was up, after her waist bumped into his cock by accident, she was unsteady. He liked to think she was just so turned on her knees were wobbly, but she said, "Bum knee."

"Damn," he said, and kissed her. He meant for it to be brief because he had plans, but she held the kiss. They made out. He found her clit with a hand then dragged his cock over it. Sonia liked that very much. She went to push it inside of her, but he stopped her. "Thanks for doing that for me," he said, maybe a half-second before he lost the thought completely.

"I did that for me," Sonia said. "But you're welcome."

"Seriously, you got a bum knee? I hoped you were just that turned on," he said.

She giggled. "I am that turned on. But I gotta bad knee too," she said. "If I fell right then, it would've been an un-sexy fall. I, um . . . I enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I would. You're so responsive, baby," she said, with this awesome filthy smile. "I've never been so turned-on from sucking cock."

Marcus was too stunned to say anything.

Sonia flicked the head of his dick. It stung. Not a good sting. "Ow."

"Don't let that go to your head, though," Sonia said. "I don't always feel like giving head."

"Gotcha," Marcus said. He looked at her knee. He remembered something he'd thought of a minute ago: he said, "Turn around."

"Mmm, baby," she said. She loved the order. She looked at him for a second, then kissed him sloppily, briefly, and turned around eagerly. Bubbly. She braced herself against the wall with both her arms, spread her legs, and stuck her ass out at him.

That wasn't the idea, but he loved her response. It inspired further ideas. He took his time and just touched her and felt her for a minute—didn't do what she seemed to be expecting; didn't just shove his cock in and pound away. He teased her. He hadn't touched her back much—ass, back of thighs, small of her back, shoulders, back of her neck. He made up for that now.

She loved his touch. He worked her like a fine musical instrument. Getting her more and more taut—hot, wet, turned-on—and humming all over.

He did all that just to get a good clear look at her ass to say: "How'd you get an ass like that if you can't do squats?" He probably went too long between having her turn around and saying it. He meant to say it plainly, without a tone, but went with an impulse and moved up against her—pressed against her, mainly his chest and legs—touching her all over—and got his mouth close to her ear and said it low.

She moaned and sort of inarticulately said, "Baby." Begging for more. Loving how sexy he was to her. She ground her ass against his cock, which had come to resting upward between her ass cheeks. He kissed over her neck, massaged her shoulders—relaxed and eased her muscles for a few minutes. He wanted to forget all about himself for a while, but wanted to be and stay so close to her that he couldn't absolutely do that.

Plus she had butt dimples, sacral dimples. When he saw those two little chunks on—or, off, really—her back just above her ass he badly wanted to paint them with his cum, mark them and her as his, for however long he had left alive.

He tried to resist touching himself, but then playfully spanked her with his cock.

"What about squats?" Sonia said at some point between long breaths, sighs, moans, and these other pleading breaths that were threatening to make him go full-animal. She kept saying quietly, "Please." The first time she said it he couldn't tell what she'd said. She didn't say please what, but he knew what she wanted.

"Bum knee," he said absentmindedly, kneeling to nudge one of her knees—to spread her legs further—before caressing it, and then caressing and feeling all over her thighs with his hands. All from behind. She had great thighs. Toned. Not too fit. Utilitarian. Like him, she'd probably been doing a lot more walking and running since the zombie apocalypse. Not much space for fat. Marcus had been too into exercise before all this—he felt like he looked too toned, like he was trying too hard. Like he cared too much. Whereas Sonia was perfect; she didn't care too much. And she was sexy as hell.

He got low and kissed around the insides of her thighs, kneeling, still behind her with her up against the wall. The inside-thigh stuff was driving her crazy. "Fuck," she said, during a surprised, short moan. "Baby, can I keep you forever? You're too sexy." She took one of his hands and leaned down—she'd be able to lick the back of her legs, she was easily flexible—and kissed it. Briefly sucked one of his fingers into her mouth. She pulled his forearm so it touched her pussy and dragged him against herself as she sucked a finger. Then she pulled him even closer. "I dunno," she said, answering his question—how'd she have an ass like that without doing squats. He hadn't meant her to answer it. It was supposed to be a compliment. But he liked talking with her. He liked even more that they were comfortable enough to talk during sex at all. "Same for my tits. I barely do anything. I just run a lot."

Marcus took his arm back—the finger popped out of her mouth like his cock had earlier. He shuddered with need. He took his arm back and kissed her ass—"Mmmm, naughty baby," she said—and stood and dragged a finger down the middle of her back, kissing behind it every few inches as it traveled downward. Sonia moaned, desperate to get fucked; urged herself at him. "Please," she said again, low and dangerous and wanting more. Marcus knelt again to rub and adore and knead and kiss and softly bite her ass. Sonia couldn't hold off anymore and started rubbing her clit again, slowly but intensely. Moaning. "I want you to fuck me, baby," she said.

Marcus stood and pressed himself close against her again. He aimed his cock so it would rest between her thighs. He was taller than her, so it had bent downward.

"Fuck me," Sonia begged, breathy with moans. He dry-humped her, between her thighs but bumping against her pussy, teasing, but also trying to say he was about to give her exactly what she wanted. She could tell.

She closed her thighs down, some, on his cock. It really wasn't dry-humping at all. The whole area was wet, lubricated, slippery.

Marcus looked down Sonia's front side—watched her belly rapidly fill and empty. She was sweating. Her skin was hot. He leaned down to rub her pussy with his cock—when he pushed forward, it was mostly against her pussy instead of the insides of her thighs.

Marcus held her tits, caressed them, kneaded them in both his hands, twisted and rubbed and pinched her nipples, all the while grinding against Sonia. They moaned together.

Marcus kissed and licked and nibbled around Sonia's neck for what felt like twenty minutes. She kept getting more and more responsive, more into it and into him. It was great. She loved everything he was doing, but was losing her mind, close to breaking from his teasing. Marcus could tell she was having trouble resisting, delaying her own gratification even though he was sure she knew he was doing that deliberately. Tease so you enjoy the straight-up fucking even more. He thought she was getting close to coming.

Marcus let go of her tits, reluctantly, to hold her by her hips. She braced herself over again, with both arms, against the bedroom's wall. Angled her hips so her pussy was in a great spot for him to enter easily and push in deeply.

He didn't, yet. He kept a hand on her waist, but used the other to turn her head to the side. He walked her up closer to the wall. She squeezed his cock with her thighs. He ignored it. She did it even harder. He still ignored it. She took a hand off the wall to rub at his cock's head, wonderfully. He didn't actually want her to stop squeezing his cock's shaft between her thighs or rubbing its head, but he wanted to keep being playful with her, so when she started touching its head—he held back a moan at the pleasure of it—he slapped her ass. She took her hand off his cock and released much of the pressure her thighs had about his cock's shaft. She moaned and even breathed desperately at his touch, even the rough smack of her ass. He watched her lips part to allow moans and heavy breaths out. He leaned into her face and kissed her and held the kiss, but not for long. She leaned her head back, broke the kiss to say, "Please." She couldn't take much more teasing. She'd throw him down or tackle him and fuck him—she was being very generous, letting him lead and control and tease for so long—and he probably wouldn't be able to hold out for at all long, then. She didn't seem to care too much if he held out forever or came quickly, but he really wanted to impress her. This was already so great, he hoped if he did well enough she'd want to do it again.

"Please what?" he said, kissing and lightly nibbling around the back of her neck. He held her ass with one hand.

"Please fuck me, baby," Sonia said.

Marcus put a hand on her waist, to steady her, and held one of her tits with the other. He pinched her nipple. He bit her earlobe. Not too hard. She moaned and brought a hand down from the wall to her clit and started rubbing it, fast.

"Please," she said again. "I can't—"

"I'm gonna smash your pussy so hard," he said.

"Give it to me, baby," Sonia said as he leaned back, and moved his hand from her waist to his cock to line up.

"Oh God, Marcus," she said, eyes clenched shut, feeling what he was doing. She said yes slowly, then said it again louder, then again, louder. She urged him on.

He dragged the head of his cock all over her pussy—outer lips, then inner.

Marcus felt her knees threaten to give out. He loved it. She moaned loudly, losing her mind. He had to hold her up. He considered throwing her on the bed and bending her over it, but he strongly wanted to begin this way—both of them standing, him behind her, fucking her.

He stopped teasing mercilessly and pushed his cock inside of her pussy. Not all of it, though; he didn't stop teasing entirely. She pushed her pussy lips apart for deeper access. He stopped pushing his cock into her just past the head.

Sonia reflexively surged back against him, trying to drive him in deeper, wanting much more. He halted her progress—she did bury him deeper—by pushing her into the wall.

She went from almost breaking, getting sick of his teasing, to loving it somehow in that instant. The hint of roughness, maybe. "Oh my God, baby," Sonia said.

"Just the tip," he said, like it was a reprimand.

She moaned. Nearly yelled.

Marcus would pull his cock all the way out of Sonia's pussy, then push it back in, but only the tip. Then he'd do it again, with variance but mostly the same. He got her to go along with that—in and out, just the tip—for about a minute before she couldn't take it anymore. He kept stopping her from going back further, and she kept fighting him, deliciously for both of them. She later told him she loved the way he made her feel restrained—it felt dangerous, uncertain, but she also trusted him, and he trusted her; she felt safe. If she wanted him to stop, decided he wasn't getting any more pussy today, he'd stop even if it hurt. Over the course of that minute or so, he shifted from holding her back by way of holding her waist to holding her back by her hair. She loved having her hair pulled, he noticed and confirmed quickly.

Eventually, just to try to keep her off-balance, as she tried to thrust back against him harder and harder to get more of his cock, he kept hold of her hair, but didn't keep her away anymore, by the hair or with the hand on her back. He completely let her go. She was getting desperate, and didn't angle it quite right, so she didn't get all of his dick in her, but she shoved in much more than she already had, certainly more than she expected to get just then. She nearly screamed, in pain and pleasure and victory and very lovely surprise.

Marcus gave her exactly what she wanted . . . but only for a few pumps. He did it harder each pump, which she seemed to love. He didn't think it was time to fuck her good and proper yet. On his very first thrust, the only noise was him sliding in and out of her slick pussy. The last two or five thrusts, their skin slapped together loudly. It was awesomely graphic and filthy. She said something dirty, or at least said something she meant to bedirty, with every thrust. In the moment it was all very arousing, though when he later tried to recall some, all he could remember was absurdity. After the first pump she stopped rubbing her clit and braced herself on the wall again, with both arms; after two or three pumps, she needed to. By the last thrust he was going hard enough that she had to actually push against him just to stay still enough for him not to slip out, which happened a few times. His thrusts were measured and even, but her movements were sloppy, in the best way. One thrust might pull his cock out accidentally, but then the next thrust might be amazingly good for both of them.

Then he stopped fucking her entirely. She could tell just by feeling, and by listening to him, that he wasn't coming, or even about to be, so for a second she was just confused. After the few—well, quite a few—hard, deep pumps, he broke his pace completely, re-setting. He started to push into and pull out of her extremely slowly, slower than she thought even he'd have the patience for, but now took the time to push his cock all the way into her, and then he'd pull it almost all the way out, rather than giving her the kind of random, shallower but harder thrusts.

Two very slow thrusts in, she figured out what he was doing and said, "Fuck, Marcus," loving it, but after that lost coherence; made noises, but no words. She grabbed and squeezed one of her tits. Then brought her hand to her clit to rub it.

Then he started to kiss and nibble at her neck, and hold her tits, while he pushed in slowly, and pulled out even slower, but still pushed his cock all the way into her pussy every time. He started to go harder, after a bit, but he kept it irregular, hard and then soft, then hard, then hard, then soft; she could never be sure what he'd do next. Neither could he. She loved it. Sometimes he'd mercilessly push all the way into her, get very, very deep, slowly, and then the next stroke would be quick and forceful but barely go in past the head of his cock. Sonia kept getting louder, sexier, wilder.

He'd been wrong before—something about the teasing let her hold out longer, as she'd mentioned; she hadn't been on the verge of orgasm like he'd thought. Damn.

Marcus started to fuck Sonia faster and eventually just lost himself, focusing on how she felt, making her feel good, bringing her higher and higher. He didn't think of himself at all.

One particular stroke, not all that fast but kind of hard and deep, must've been just right, because Sonia screamed again.

That brought Marcus back to reality, and himself, and control of himself. He desperately wanted to make Sonia come standing up against the wall, with him holding her tits and giving her a good deep fucking, but she was too loud. Risky loud. He enjoyed risky, but not in that sense. He didn't want her to be coming and himself getting close to it and then a zombie was biting him from behind and he hadn't even noticed it approaching, or worse.

Marcus kept himself sheathed deep in Sonia's pussy, but said, "Come here," and put his hand over her mouth and guided her by the waist to the bed. She had no idea what he wanted at first, but figured it out quickly, and went along with it.

He bent her over the bed. She loved it, glanced back at him smiling. He reached for a pillow, under the covers, but she got the same idea—maybe feeling him reach over her—and got one before he did and put it under her face. She yelled "Fuck me!" into it. He loved it. He kept his cock sheathed in her the whole time, even during the move. Sonia spread her legs far apart, and brought both hands around to her ass to spread her pussy further, for him to go deeper. He briefly considered teasing her, pretending he wanted to do anal, now that she was exposing her asshole to him. Technically. She might even have wanted him to try anal. He was pretty sure she didn't, though. And even if she did, he wouldn't start fucking her up the ass without talking about it, and loosening and lubing up her ass and his cock first.

He slapped her ass and started to fuck her again. She got loud, but the pillow kept her relatively quiet. He started losing himself in her again. He wanted to ask if she'd like a thumb in her ass, but forgot to after just a few thrusts.

Maybe a minute into the new position he adjusted himself, put one leg up on the bed and set that foot by one of her knees, so he could push his cock deeper into her. He had a better angle, more leverage. He found a speed and depth and force that seemed to do a lot for Sonia. Then just to keep her on-edge he pretended he wasn't sure if she liked it for a bit. Then he went back to how she definitely wanted it right now. She didn't give him any guidance until that instant—one thrust into it, she turned her head to say, un-muffled, "Just like that!" and he kept doing it, fucking her exactly the same way. It just happened to be shoving all of his cock inside of her. Not all that hard.

She moaned a few times without the pillow muffling her voice, then turned her head and let go of her ass and moved the pillow so she could still breathe well and let out her pleasure at the same time.

A few seconds later she came. She didn't call her shot, but he felt it. She moaned and yelped especially loudly, powerfully—though still quietly because of the pillow. She reached down under herself to get at her pussy and rub her clit. Her other hand went out in front of her on the bed and fisted the sheets. He had to hold her by the hips, where they met her waist, or else he would've pelvic-thrust-shoved her across the bed and thrown her on the floor. The thrust she liked wasn't too fast, but it was hard.

Eventually Sonia got quieter and pushed the pillow away to breathe normally. She relaxed. She still breathed hard, and moaned, but she wasn't explosive anymore.

After what seemed like five minutes, Sonia cooled back down, pushed herself up on her arms and looked back at him over her shoulder. He'd been getting less turned-on, somehow. She sort of pulled back inside of her own body when she came; he felt less connected with her, like they were less of one joined thing, together. But when she looked back at him with her ass deep in his crotch and her tits hanging down, happy and shameless like she should be, he felt himself jump back up to full arousal. He wasn't sure if his cock had softened at all—didn't feel like it—but if it had, now it was back to full diamond-hardness. "That was . . . wow," she said, giggling. Marcus smiled. He stopped pushing into and pulling out of her. Didn't really want to, but it didn't seem to be doing anything for her. He wanted to check in with her. He just enjoyed holding her by the waist.

"Did you come?" Sonia said.

"Not yet," Marcus said, then remembered, Oh yeah, I'm here too. He was feeling pretty damn good, but he didn't seem too close. He looked from her eyes to her back, and down her back to her ass and her pussy, which was flexing and squeezing, trying to hold his cock in. Wait—yes: "I'm close," he said.

"Good," Sonia said, looking very pleased. He feared she'd be disappointed, or something else he would've felt really bad about, but she seemed to really like that he was close to coming. He didn't want to disappoint her. "What do you want me to do about it, baby?" she said. She didn't move, but she was offering herself. It was really hype of her.

"I wanna come on your tits," he said without thinking. After he said it he noticed it seemed like just about the sexiest, hottest, perfectest thing he could do right now.

"I'd fuckin love that," Sonia said. "Do you want me to use my mouth?"

"I think I'll do it like this," Marcus said, and resumed fucking her. She moaned, thrilled. "Can we get in doggy style?" he said.

"I thought you'd never ask," she said, energetically hopping up on the bed, slipping his cock out of her with a sigh, crawling forward, then offering her back to him. She was loving this. Tempting him. Pushing him to the edge.

Marcus got in position, put his cock back in her, and said, "Then I want you on your knees, okay? When I say," and started thrusting his cock in and out of her again.

"I could just lay down on the bed," she said, getting fucked. "When you get there."

"I'd like that, but I might hit your face," he said, fucking. "I want you to get on the floor."

"Oh," she said. "Are you a shooter?"

"Like, does my cum shoot?" he said.

"Yeah," Sonia said. "Does it?"

"Yeah," Marcus said. "Not the whole load, but—I think most of it will this time."

"I can't believe—" She shuddered from a suddenly more forceful thrust, moaning. She went on, speaking quickly: "I can't believe how much talking about your cum is turning me on." He spanked her hard and she nearly yelled. She loved it. "Fuck yeah!" Sonia said. "You're not gonna be done after you come once, are you?"

"Fuck no," Marcus said, and spanked her again.

She yelped. "Good," she said, between quiet low moans and deep breaths. She was still very into it, just not close to orgasming again. "It's okay if you need a break. Just . . . I'm not gonna be able to sleep for a while. I'm too into this."

"I feel like that too," he said. He felt himself getting very close. He loved feeling his balls slap against her. He loved that she loved it when he fucked her. She seemed to enjoy every thrust. He loved that she wanted him to blow his load on her tits. Cover her with cum.

"So—when you're ready—I'll get down as fast as I can. Kay?" Sonia said between moans.

"Perfect," he said.

She let her head go slack for a second, moaning. "You can come in my pussy," she offered.

"Nah," he said, and kept it simple like that. He wanted to shoot a thick load into her pussy, but it didn't seem right. He didn't want to get her pregnant. He shouldn't. For her. But, it occurred to him, it might sound too sensitive, or something, if he said that. So he left it at the no.

"Okay," she said. She really would've liked him to come in her pussy, he could tell, though she didn't care very much. She cared that he had an orgasm, not what he did with the cum. "Get really close before you pull out, okay baby? I don't wanna just sit there waiting."

"Sure," he said. He made his thrusts get harder and spanked her, hard. She loved it.

"Yeah, fuck my pussy, baby," she said.

He wasn't sure how long it took, but it felt like a minute or two—so probably about a half-minute later, he was building to a finish. He somehow knew she could feel it. He didn't want her to know when he was getting close. Then he felt dumb for not wanting her to. Then he re-focused on fucking this beautiful woman's wonderful pussy. He was about to come.

She got ready to move. She got even more turned-on. She giggled excitedly and egged him on: "Yeah, gimme that cum, baby."

"You want me to come?" he said. He didn't know why, but he wanted to hear her say "cum" some more. He kept fucking her. So close. He leaned to the side to watch her tits jerk and bounce wildly with each of his thrusts. He felt like he was going to come pretty hard. It felt huge.

"Fucking come for me, Marcus!" she said, then looked back at him, checking him out. "Give it to me."

"You ready?" he said.

"Yeah," she said, poised.

"Get down," he said, pulling his hips back to get his cock all the way out of her pussy. He was so close he didn't dare stroke himself, though he wanted to, while he waited for her to move.

Sonia whipped around and sort of tripped—she was going for the floor but fell onto the bed. "Oh fuck," Marcus said inadvertently, suddenly stroking himself because he just couldn't help it, near to bursting. Sonia sat up and got on the edge of the bed, sitting with her legs apart. Marcus got between them. She reached out for him, but he was too far. He came closer. She leaned forward and grabbed his slimy cock and started stroking. Her other hand grabbed his balls and rubbed them.

Marcus groaned loudly and deeply and a rocket of his cum shot from his cock all the way across the room. It hit a framed photograph on a dresser and knocked it over.

Marcus and Sonia stroked his cock together as he unloaded. He took the head, stroking it slowly, and aimed his cock at her tits, and she stroked along the shaft, from base until her hand hit his just short of the head. She rubbed and tugged his balls hard with her other hand. "Fucking come on my tits," she said after the first shot sailed over her. He didn't remember anything she said later, but she definitely talked while he came. Encouraged him, celebrated. She was so cool.

Marcus shot an astoundingly large load all over Sonia's tits. One rope got on her neck, accidentally. Some of his cum dripped off her tits or ran between them down onto her belly and thighs and pussy. One later string of it slipped off the tit it impacted on and fell to the floor, lost; she pulled him closer to her by his balls, saying, "Don't fuckin miss!"

"God damn, Sonia," he said, shuddering, as she milked the last few drops of cum out of him.

She giggled, smiling, pleased with herself, loving everything happening. The messiness of it. How together they were. She pushed his hands off his cock and let him catch his breath, or try to anyway, and kept milking him, stroking him softly but firmly along the whole length of his cock, massaging his balls. Then she licked his cock clean.

They rubbed his cum into her skin together—except for the first rope that shot across the room and the one that fell to the floor between them. They both enjoyed every moment of it, playing with his load. After a few minutes his cock went soft, which disappointed him, though she didn't care.

They kept fucking for the rest of the night, just having fun, trying things out, enjoying each other, getting to know each other better as lovers. They tried almost everything they could think of (they had a few limitations).

They never counted Sonia's orgasms—too many—but, without speaking of it, they both counted Marcus's. Neither of them knew why. Keeping time, maybe.

The second time he came, she took it from him, and had the time of her life doing it. She was riding him, on top, facing him. They kept kissing; he held her face in both of his hands, and she just enjoyed herself, leaning down over him, trying not to accidentally let his cock slip out of her. She got inspired when he said: "Fuck. Baby, I'm gettin close."

"Yeah?" she said. He nodded, grabbing one of her tits and kneading and squeezing it. "I'm close too," she informed him. Then she said, "Hold out til after I come. Then I want you to shoot it on my tits again." But it was a lie.

"Okay," he said. Seemed perfectly reasonable. He'd enjoyed blasting nut on her tits so much before he was sort of shocked she'd want him to do it again, two in a row. But before anything she said she wanted happened, she did her very best on him—she knew she was good, and she was also pretty in-tune with him by then—and made him come first. Extracted it from him. "Baby, you gotta stop," he warned, but she didn't stop. He suddenly knew she was doing this deliberately. Not misjudging him. "I'm gonna come!" She kept bouncing on him. She moved a hand from aside his head, on the bed's surface, to his chest and worked on one of his nipples. It felt good, but his nipples weren't sensitive. His mind was, though, and once he realized she was trying to make him come first, everything she did clearly for that purpose drove him crazy. He kept one hand on her neck, but moved the other to her tits and squeezed one. "Fuck!" he said, erupting inside of her. Without a condom.

"Oops," she said, shrugging (which didn't really translate, in this position), loving it. Sexy as hell. He laughed, amused, coming. He wondered if she could feel his cum spurting into her body. Later she told him she felt maybe the third or fourth burst of his cum land inside of her, then lost it herself. All he could be sure of at the time was maybe two seconds into his orgasm, hers hit too, and seized her up, and made his much more intense. She wanted to ride the whole length of his cock while he came, but she mostly lost control of herself and could barely move while her orgasm took its course. He pushed up into her, but couldn't get the kind of thrust he wanted.

After they both cooled down, and Sonia leaned up to look at him, and Marcus bent up some of a bed sheet to wipe off cum leaking out of Sonia's awesome pussy, he said, "You lied!" He was joking, pretending to be shocked and appalled.

Sonia did a kegel—he grunted and blinked—then teased, "Did I?"

"You didn't really want me to come on your tits again," he said, pretending he was just noticing it.

She shrugged. It came across this time. Then she laughed and kissed him and started grinding her pussy against his pelvis, with his cock still buried all the way into her—sheathed in her. He sighed, then groaned. "Yeah, I wanted you to come in me like that," she said, giggling, then sighing herself. Then moaning.

"What if I held out?" he said. He moved his hands to her hips. He just loved feeling her.

"I knew you couldn't," she said.

"Dammit, woman," he said, trying to hold her still and stop her grinding. It didn't work at all.

"But if you did, then on my tits, yeah," she said. He found himself staring at her tits, watching them move just after she moved. Sonia's tits were delightful.

"Did you not like it when I did that before?" he said. "On your tits? I feel like I missed something."

"No, I loved that, baby," Sonia said. "All of it. I told you that." She kissed him. And stopped that damnable grinding. It was easier to pay close attention to her without the grinding and deep waves of pleasure it gave him. "I loved it. I like cum. I don't always wanna taste it, but I do like it. I loved rubbing it into my skin with you, too. Don't worry."

"Okay," Marcus said. "I guess I felt like, I love that you'd do something because I wanted to, but I don't want you to feel like you have to do whatever because of me."

"I didn't," she said. He leaned up and indicated what he wanted with pressure at the back of her neck—she came down to meet him; he kissed her. "But it's great that you respect me like that." She smiled and kissed him.

"Can we do anal now?" he said. He was obviously joking. They laughed.

"No," she said. She paused. "Maybe later."

He pretended to be put off by that. He didn't care, though.

They made out for a while, still touching each other all over, but no penetration. Marcus wanted his cock to go soft—it seemed appropriate—but he stayed hard the whole time. He kept forgetting about his cock entirely, then they'd bump into it at some awkward unexpected angle and it would painfully remind him of both its existence and its hardness.

Later they rolled over and did more doggy style. Sonia loved to get her ass spanked and have her hair pulled. She came again, Marcus remembered later. The position seamlessly became face-down-ass-up, and Sonia put her face in a pillow again—a different one this time—to let loose, to not need to hold back expressing herself, to be as fucking full-throated as she felt like being, zeds be damned.

This was the best sex she'd had in a long time, she told him as she took a break after a particularly earth-shattering orgasm. She'd collapsed on her belly and patted the spot next to her like he should join her. So he did. He said pretty much the same thing to her. She probably worded it better.

A few minutes after that Marcus said, "I'm gonna say something—kinda put myself out there." They were lying in each other's arms. "And I know it's an awkward time to mention it."

"Okay," Sonia said.

"I think I love you," Marcus said. "Like really do."

Sonia was elated. "You said it first," she said with glee. "I love you too, Marcus."

"I'm not saying that just cuz I like sex with you, a lot," he said. "I think I'm really feelin somethin else, too."

"So am I," Sonia said. "Uh, I don't want to . . . look bad, now, but could you please finger me? I wanna come again."

"If I must," Marcus said, eagerly doing as she asked but feigning reluctance.

"You must," Sonia said, rolling onto her back, getting into position so he could service her.

Marcus blabbed about feelings without meaning to: "Um. Sex is important to me," he said. "Maybe that's why I thought to say how I felt now. If we couldn't—love on each other freely, the relationship wouldn't last. For me. So this has been great."

"Good," she said. "I want this just for me, okay? You can touch yourself, or whatever, but I need to just lay back and enjoy."

"Okay," Marcus said. He liked that. That she wanted it and told him so. "Enjoy, baby."

She did.

The third time Marcus came, they were spooning, and fucking—slow but deep. He couldn't keep his hands still—they just always had to be all over her body. She later told him it'd felt like that, like he was all over her; she'd adored it.

"I'm almost there, Sonia," he said. He was just sharing information, but he sounded desperate. She loved it when he said stuff like that. Well, pretty much anything he said during sex was great, she told him later—she loved talking, especially dirty talking, during sex—but that was a special treat. She'd been trying to get him to orgasm for a while, though not exactly force it from him this time, so she was very happy when he said that.

"Come in my pussy, Marcus," Sonia said.

"Yeah?" he said, filling one of his hands with tit and squeezing hard. He had trouble telling when she'd like him to squeeze hard or not, with her tits, but he was pretty sure she'd like hard this time. She very much did. She moaned, and clenched around his cock and writhed in his arms. He moaned too. He kept fucking her.

"Better idea," Sonia said between deep, low moans. God, she was loving this. "Come in my mouth."

"Fuck, Sonia," Marcus said, not meaning to say anything, but meaning what he said in the best way. Impressed with her, and how cool she was.

She had him get close, but not so close that he accidentally shot in her face or, maybe worse, wasted his cum by launching it across the room again. Then she had him stand. She got on her knees and took a minute to tit-fuck him—or, if she was doing it to him, maybe it was more like jerking him off with her tits? Or . . . people used the word "wank" sometimes. Tit-wank. Marcus groaned deeply. It felt nice, but the sight of it was much more exciting than the feeling; it looked absolutely incredible. Her face, her tits, her neck, her tongue leaning down to lick the head of his cock. They'd done it—either she'd jerked him off with her tits or he'd fucked her tits—before on a few occasions, but never when he was so close to coming. It was for fun, not any specific purpose. She liked doing it, but kind of got bored in a minute; she wanted to feel him in her mouth. She finished him off with a blowjob.

"I'm gonna come," Marcus said.

Sonia deep-throated his cock on the spot, which pushed him over the edge and then some. He burst down her throat. She rubbed his balls and looked into his eyes lovingly while he came. Her eyes teared up. She adored his orgasm face. "So sexy," she told him later. He talked while he came that time, but neither of them remembered what he said, apart from her name. She tried to save into her spank bank a moment when she felt a spurt of cum shooting out of him at the same time he looked into her eyes and loudly moaned, "Sonia." She also told him she loved the intimacy of feeling his cock inside of her, spasming, unloading into her mouth, between her lips, pulsing. He was so vulnerable. He trusted her. He liked the same things about it from his own perspective. She breathed through her nose, and kept sucking and licking him, and rubbing his balls, until he ran dry.

His orgasm was done, then Sonia kept going for about another minute. Or two. When she pulled off his cock, a thick string of spit revealed itself, keeping her tongue joined with the head of his cock. She slurped up the spit and swallowed it, then licked his cock clean.

"How was that, baby?" she said, looking delighted. "Did you like that I cleaned your cock?"

Marcus caught his breath and said, "Incredible." He took a deep breath. "Life-affirming." He sat with her on the floor. She let go of his cock. "Did you taste any of it? I'm sorry if—"

Sonia shook her head. Then said, "Oh—did you want me to?"

"No, I was just—" Marcus said.

"I usually do it so I can't taste it," she said. "I love feeling guys come in my mouth. Uh, I mean, you, only you."

Marcus laughed and hand-waved that away. "I don't get jealous," he said. "I wasn't gonna ask about other people you've been with. But—if you wanna try bf/gf we should talk about that. Not exes, I mean like if you want an open relationship, or whatever."

"I don't," she said, before he got to "or whatever."

"Okay, works for me," Marcus said.

"For serious?" Sonia said. "You don't get to say that and then cheat."

"No, I have trust problems, I don't cheat," he said. "I won't."

"Okay. I trust you. If you cheat I'm gonna be super-pissed," she said, warning him.

"I won't," he said. "You can't cheat, either, now, though."

"I won't either," Sonia said. "I don't like the lying. Or abusing trust. I want you to just be with me. I'll do the same."

"But if you do cheat, just tell me," Marcus said. "I—the lying, n shit, is worse than being cheated on."

"Yeah," Sonia said. "I have trust problems too. I feel like I started trusting you too easy. Do you . . . respect me, still?"

"Yeah, I really do," Marcus said. "If you're wondering, I'm not gonna tell anybody else anything about what we did. Just, we hung out for a while. The zombie apocalypse—zombocalypse—changed all the rules, of life. In real—in normal life I might've taken months to trust you. But now it's just, is she gonna shoot me in the back? Does she lie? And you don't. We might all be dead in a few days. There's no time. I trust you too. I really hope you don't think badly of me, for getting into bed with you this easy."

"Well put," Sonia said. "I felt like that too."

"Oh! We were talkin about cum!" Marcus said. They both laughed. "Did you say you liked it?"

"At the right times," Sonia said. She made this expression like "Yeah that's depressing. Let's get back to talking about sex." She said, "Sometimes. I didn't want to, just then. That's why I got below you, so you'd shoot down my throat. Cum can be fun to play with. I loved the first time you came."

"I loved that too," Marcus said.

"Did you want me to taste it, just now?" Sonia said. "Would you have liked that?"

"Not unless you wanted to," he said. "I probly would've enjoyed watchin you play with it. But not if you didn't like it."

"Do you like to taste your own . . . stuff?" she said.

"Nah," Marcus said. "If you wanted me to, in the moment, sure. It's not something I'm into, though. Just, it's wrong of me to want you to taste it, or for me to shoot it on your tongue or whatever, if I wouldn't taste it myself. So then I would. You get me?"

"Yeah," Sonia said.

"I don't really care," Marcus said, and kissed her. "It's just—sex is fun."

She kissed him back. "Sex is fun," she said, then kissed his cheeks a few times.

Marcus said, "All I really want is to make you feel good. Hopefully you'll do stuff to make me feel good too. I'm not worried about myself."

Sonia kissed him, then smiled like she'd found her soulmate. "I'm like that too," she said. "I wanted to make you feel good. Too." She kissed him again. Then he kissed her back. He stood and extended a hand to help her up. She accepted. They fell onto the bed together. Both wonderfully, awesomely naked. "I'm not—" she began. "I might get especially naughty sometimes. If you wanna come on my face or whatever it's okay, just ask first. I'm not always gonna like that. But I might say yes if you ask."

"Okay," Marcus said. "That's awesome of you. I appreciate that. I don't normally think about facials, but I might get the urge. You can do whatever you want to me too. But maybe ask first." They laughed and kissed again.

"Well, good," Sonia said.

Marcus got on his back. Sonia climbed mostly on top of him. Marcus saw her looking up at the room's ceiling fan longingly. "I wish the house had power," Sonia said.

The sun was coming up.

"I watched porn a lot," Sonia said. "Before. If you want me to do that thing—"

"Creampie?" Marcus said.

"I like that," Sonia said. "But no, I meant, when the guy comes in the girl's mouth and then I push it up on my tongue, like to show you, in my mouth. Tell me if you want stuff like that, and maybe I'll want it too. Or maybe not. Sometimes I just want you to do whatever you want with me. I like to submit. Be dominated."

"If I'm gonna do something that would feel like forcing myself on you, I'll want to be really sure about it with you. Like that you're comfortable and trust me to," Marcus said. "I'll try to read the room."

Sonia laughed. She leaned above him and kissed all over his face. "You were so good, baby," she said. "That was great."

"Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah," she said. "All of it." She lay back down on top of Marcus, then held a hand up. To high-five. Marcus high-fived her. They laughed. "Was I good?"

"You were amazing," he said. "I was just worried I was crappy."

"You were fucking great," she said.

"You were so sexy," he said. "Très sexy."

Sonia giggled. He smiled.

"I watched porn too," Marcus said. "I feel like everyone did. I hope I didn't watch too much. I remember what you said, you being very sexual—I think I am too. High sex drive."

"Good," Sonia said. "Maybe you'll be able to keep up." She cocked an eyebrow, teasing.

"I hope so," Marcus said. "Uh, I mean, Yeah, for sure." They laughed. "I think porn is where I got the idea to wanna see my lady play with my cum. And . . . I just hope mine tastes okay."

"I'm sure it's good," Sonia said. "Drink mango juice. Or . . . I dunno, coconut or whatever."

"Before I saw porn I don't think I would've thought about myself coming," Marcus said. "I woulda just emptied in your pussy or something and not even thought about it."

"Cumplay can be really hot," Sonia said. "For me it's like a special present for how good I am. Your cum, I mean. I just hafta be in the mood for it."

They high-fived again.

"I've never talked that much about cum before," Marcus said.

"Me neither," Sonia said. "Good to get it out of the way, I guess. Now we can talk about better stuff."

They kissed for a while.

They cleaned up, got dressed, put out the candles ("Those were a great touch," Sonia said), opened the blinds and curtains and went home together.

"I wanna make us a regular thing," Marcus said. "Would you be okay with that?"

"Yeah," Sonia said. "Let's."

---

A/N: Is there something wrong with this site, or am I doing it wrong? The sub-section/-chapter titles are supposed to be bold and centered, but when I look at it myself they're only centered.

As ever, I'm trying stuff out in this. I'd really appreciate feedback; please tell me if you have any thoughts, feedback, constructive criticism or the like—I post stuff I write online only for that, to get better. So far it's almost entirely been a waste of time. Though I've met and talked with a few nice people.

With this, I got an idea and set out to write and post it really fast, rather than taking months or years like I normally do (I started writing this 14 July 2018).

OCD-detail-note: I'm trying writing more in specific—limited—characters' points-of-view, but still third-person (at least for now, I don't like first-person and I can't articulate why), rather than sort of general third-person omnipresent + omniscient as in "Goodsprings Scorpion Scramble's" crummy first draft. Likewise neither Sonia nor Marcus know a ton about guns or weapons in general. That's why I don't go into extreme ballistic details, or whatever. Lol. For example, what both of them think of as a hatchet is really one of those ultra-modern tomahawks, a United Cutlery M48 Apocalypse Tactical Tomahawk. Marcus's "Samurai PDW" Colt 9mm SMG is an RO635 (Model 635).

Artwork on my DeviantArt; I call it "SkullHeart." I'd try putting a link here but I don't think it'd work. I tried linking to it in my profile and that doesn't seem to work either. My name on DA is the same as my penname here, though, I'm not hard to find.

Anybody into podfics? I don't know if anybody else here does this, but I always read stuff I write out loud to myself—mostly to check for typos. Arbitrarily, this time I decided I'd record that, and then make it into some kind of fanfiction audiobook, because I've always wanted to. I don't have a sound studio or anything, though, so it's probably kind of crummy. I'll post it when it's done. I know other people do that—audio-fan-work/transformative-work-books—and I *love* it, though I've never come across any for anything I'm into. Whatever I do with that, I'll at least attempt to link to it here. I'm a high-quality snob—I'd go into detail but shouldn't so I won't—but figure I may have to compress it for online sharing. I'll almost certainly post it on YouTube (like with a picture for video) and link to it from here too. And hope the YouTube version doesn't get taken down. Lol. I'd probably make that as one video, and include timestamps for the sections, or something. Maybe Literotica too, I know there's some audio stuff there. (Update: 5 October: Whoops, my first recording in July was bad, so I re-did it. Editing all over again now! I'll post the podfic online ASAP. Probably in individual sections as .mp3 files, one all-together .m4a "podbook," and one version on YouTube with artwork that I hope doesn't get taken down quickly.)