AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Alice almost felt like some kind of the end of the world Santa Clause. She was going through the boxes slowly and meticulously. At the moment they weren't hurting for anything and no one seemed to object to her taking her time and dividing things into categories.
The boxes contained really a wealth of things. Some of the items were utterly useless in their whole forms, like the two electric coffee pots she'd come across, but in their broken down state they could serve some purpose. For instance, Alice knew that the chords could be severed from the pots to use as binding since they were sturdier than any basic twine they might come across. The caraffes from the pots could be used for carrying water or holding anything they needed to use them for, but their basic heat resistance made them even more useful than something that might have melted or burst from coming too close to the fire.
And some of the things were even less useful, but they were still nice things to have around. Alice sorted many of those to the back of one of the trucks with the idea that she could go about handing them out later to bring a smile to some people's faces in an otherwise glum existence.
She'd been working for almost a week on simply going through the boxes. The food and beverages she immediately passed to Jim, one of the men there that she was getting to know well, who was responsible for moving that to a space where the other women had fallen responsible for organizing the food and feeding the group.
It was the other things that took more time. But Jim was patient and was a loyal assistant.
Alice had asked him all kinds of things about his life, but he was pretty hush hush about everything. His family was dead and he'd survived, that's all he would say about it. He insisted that was all there was to his story.
Alice imagined that might be all there was to anyone's story at this point. They're gone and I'm here. They died and I didn't. And I don't understand for a moment why it is the way it is…
When Alice was done sorting for a bit, she wandered down to the main part of the camp in search of drinking water and took one of the full bottles of boiled water and meandered down to where the other women were washing clothes, caught up in some kind of eternal struggle to stay ahead of the filth that was creeping up around all of them.
But the women down there working, Andrea, Carol, and Jacqui, seemed to be in good moods. They were all laughing and chatting as they worked, the air much lighter than it had been even a week before.
"Ladies, ladies!" Alice announced as she came down to the edge of the water. "Can I help?"
"Sit," Carol commanded. "We've got it and you've got to be hot."
Alice nodded and sucked down part of the bottle of water. She was hot, that much was true. The back of the trucks were almost like ovens and she had to break every now and again simply to keep from passing out from the heat.
Alice waded into the water unapologetically and soaked herself as thoroughly as possible. The other women laughed at her, not realizing that she didn't care if she was soaked. The heat would dry her clothes around her in a matter of minutes.
"So…while Jolly Old St. Alice is going through the trucks, what do you ladies want in your Christmas stockings?" Alice asked. "What do you miss most of all?"
"We don't even know what you've got in there," Jacqui replied. "You're too secretive about it all."
"I'm not!" Alice said. "You asked what I had and I told you everything. It's almost the truth, too. Looks like these were pretty nice deliveries to a store that sold everything from Tylenol to small appliances. There's a toaster in there…if you had electricity and bread you'd be in toaster heaven."
"I miss my coffee pot," Jacqui offered.
"Do you miss coffee?" Alice asked, raising an eyebrow. "Or just the coffee pot?"
Jacqui snickered.
"The coffee…but good coffee," she said. "Not the dirty water we have these days that we're calling coffee."
"The only reason the coffee we have these days is ridiculously bad is because everyone's trying to make it go a mile," Alice said. "There are some coffee pots in there, if you'd just like one to snuggle up to at night for sweet dreams, but I'm afraid they won't do you any good unless someone around here has figured out a way to get us some electricity."
"T mentioned that he might be able to figure it out," Jacqui said. "Given enough time there's got to be a way to make electricity…solar panels maybe?"
Alice shrugged. She had no doubt that given the time and the resources they could rebuild society to something, perhaps, even better than it had been before. Honestly the question was simply whether or not they were going to be given that time or given those resources.
"Andrea? What do you want?" Alice asked.
The blonde looked at her and then she shrugged.
"I'd take the coffee," she said. "I'd love a good hot bath…a chance to shave my legs…some soap that smells nice. Those are the things I miss the most. The things I took the most for granted. I used to hate to take a bath and shave my legs. I'd run the bath and soak for about three minutes before I had something else I had to do. Now I'd soak for three hours if I could."
"You are some boring ladies," Alice remarked.
Andrea raised an eyebrow at her. Then she smiled and tipped her head to the side.
"You want non boring things we're missing?" Andrea asked.
Alice slipped a little deeper in the water, dipped her head back enough to soak her hair, and sat up, pushing the water out of her face with her hands.
"As long as we're doing it," she said, finishing her water and tossing the bottle toward the bank so that they could refill it later with more fresh water.
"I miss my vibrator," Andrea said.
Alice crowed out a laugh, clapping her hand over her mouth at the unexpected burst. She had never thought that Andrea might say something like that. Jacqui and Carol were laughing too, Carol blushing a little at Andrea's declaration.
"I do!" Andrea insisted. "I've got needs…I took that for granted too."
Carol hummed low in her throat.
"Me too," she admitted. "I miss mine too."
When her confession brought about another round of laughter, she blushed deeper and bit the end of her tongue.
"Jacqui?" Alice asked.
Jacqui laughed and shook her head.
"My coffee pot," she declared. "That's as out there as I'm going."
"Boo," Alice declared. "You're the most boring one of all now."
She pushed herself up, exiting the water, and picked up the plastic bottle she'd thrown to the side to return it to camp and get back to baking in her oven before she finished drying off entirely.
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Merle dropped off the load of firewood that T-Dog had chopped and piled up for him to haul back to camp. He'd spent most of the day working with the man and he was starting to get used to him. He didn't like him…but he was getting used to him.
Somehow, while Daryl was out running some snares, the two of them had been chosen most likely to do the manual labor around while it seemed that the two cops, two men that seemed quite suiting to their positions given what Merle knew about the fine citizens who chose the profession of law enforcement, engaged in "important conversations" with the Chinese boy about the future of their camp.
Clearly, neither Merle nor T-Dog could have anything to contribute to these conversations. Clearly, Merle wasn't smart enough to tell them that he'd had a good look at their "safety precautions" and had determined that they were about as effective as something kids might rig up to keep people out of their clubhouses.
The only reason their asses hadn't become dinner in their sleep was because none of those things had decided to eat them. It certainly wasn't for their precaution. He'd snagged a shoelace on one of the wires and in the process of trying to get the lace loose without sacrificing it, he'd snatched half the damn thing down.
Clearly, though, the fine police officers didn't want to hear what Merle had to say. They were too busy having something of a pissing contest over which one of them, both self-declared leaders, was going to be king of this smelling pile of shit.
One he dropped the load of wood off, Merle wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and ran a quick glance around the camp. Alice was occupied, but he knew where the hell she was. It wasn't too damn long and he caught sight of his brother. Daryl was cleaning rabbits…apparently some of the snares hadn't come up empty after all.
And then he scanned his eyes over the bunch of women that were scrambling about and setting up fires to get food cooking and later keep them all from being eaten alive by mosquitos.
There wasn't much to choose from when it came to women at the camp. The bird woman wasn't Merle's taste in any way at all…too damn skinny, not enough spunk to fill a thimble, and besides that she had both the cops crowing around her like her pussy was made of fourteen karat gold. The youngest of the blondes was barely more than a girl, not Merle's taste.
He figured that Alice was likely to lay claim to the widow woman if it was possible.
So that left, for him to poke at a bit, the eldest of the blondes. Merle singled her out in his line of vision and watched her, sucking his teeth a little and chuckling to himself as she bent over to rearrange the wood for a fire she was preparing.
She had a nice ass…and nice tits. She might not be an award winner as far as personality went, but if she had an itch, Merle figured he was just the man that would be willing to scratch it for her.
When she straightened up and turned around, in his direction, to start toward the wood pile he'd just dropped for more wood, Merle didn't take his eyes off her. He wasn't the kind of man who shied away and pretended he wasn't checking out the goods that he was contemplating. No sir. If he was interested, he wanted to be fair and let her know.
She curled her lip at him slightly as she walked toward him, keeping her eyes on him. He chuckled to himself and winked at her and she scoffed.
There was something about the thrill of the chase that made pussy taste that much better when you finally got it. And Merle always got it if he really wanted it.
"Do you need something, Merle?" Andrea growled.
"You offerin' already?" Merle responded, chewing his lip. "I figured you was more of a challenge, sugar tits."
She scoffed again and dragged more of a chuckle out of Merle.
"Not if you were the last man on Earth," Andrea muttered, gathering up some of the wood. Merle boldly leaned a little to position himself to be in a prime location to look at her ass when she did so and she very nearly ran a circle to get away from him when she realized it.
He laughed and whistled at her as she stomped back toward her camp.
"Leave her the fuck alone, Merle," Merle heard his brother's voice ring out. He turned to see Daryl passing off the skinned rabbits to the widow woman.
Carol thanked Daryl and he offered her something of a smile…the little crooked smile that Daryl offered any woman that he thought was pretty, always too damn embarrassed to do a thing about it…and then he walked on down toward the water to wash the blood off his hands.
Merle decided, for the moment, to heed his brother's words, but that didn't mean he was going to give up on the blonde entirely. His brother might like living the rest of his life with blue balls, but Merle Dixon didn't have any interest in the celibate lifestyle…especially not if there as a good damn chance they were living on some seriously borrowed time.