Home, an Interrogation, and a Revelation

Ten minutes later you reach the destination. It is a small garage with solar panels on the roof. Inside there are many cans, few piles of clothing, two sleeping bags and a cheap short range electric vehicle. It looks much better than your own hiding place.

"Gwen, go get some sleep. I need to talk with him outside." You feel dread in the pit of your stomach about this conversation, but you knew it was coming sooner or later. Wallowing in self-pity, you miss Lea grabbing bandages and first aid kit. As you lean against a wall, and get reminded of the blade in your shoulder, Lea is **** to suppress a giggle at your stupidity.

"Let me look at your wound," She shows you her hands full of medical supplies, and empty of daggers. You hesitate a bit considering the possibility of getting a dagger in your back and turn around. After all she will not trust you if you will not show trust to her.

"You are a very lucky bastard. There is almost no blood. Time for some disinfection. It will hurt a bit," One second later you know that her words are a lie. It isn't a bit. You don't know what kind of liquid she poured on your bleeding injury but it is even more painful than when the dagger slashed you flesh. When she was done she let out a big sigh. "So, this talk we need to have.."

You squat against a wall, and end up with your butt on the grass. Lea comes to stand over you, her arms firmly crossed. "Alex, where have you been the last couple months?"

"Mostly in town I guess," You let out a nervous chuckle, trying and failing to keep your calm seconds into this interrogation.

"No, I mean the plague started a couple months ago, and you've only killed one person, so what have you been doing all this time?" This confuses you, since time was difficult to tell down in the concrete basement, but it didn't seem like months had passed.

"What do you mean months? I was hiding under the mall in a room without sunlight, but it's been a few days, maybe a couple weeks right?" You look up, and she has a very concerned look on her face.

"No, it's been a month or two. The virus started in the early May, and it's nearly September I think. It's a little hard to count days right now." She then waits for you to process this information.

"Well, I guess I'm even less put together than I thought," is the only response you can give her. A couple minutes pass of you staring at the middle distance before Lea speaks again.

"Nest question: What the fuck were you thinking with Gwen?!" Her hard glare is set on her face again. You really can't keep eye contact as you think about your answer, but you make an effort to look her in the eye when you respond.

"I don't know."

"Bullshit." You end up staring ahead again.

"I was scared. She was the first person I had seen in apparently months, and she was armed, while I wasn't. I swept up behind her, disarmed her, and we struggled. I ended up on top of her, and then something changed. It was like I stopped being human for a couple minutes. All I cared about was the sex. I didn't care about her, about how either one of us would feel afterwards, or any of the things I normally would during.." You pause your rambling there, realizing that you were about to enter TMI territory. "Anyway, I walked away after, and the feeling lasted about ten minutes maybe. Ever since I came back down from that there's been this huge ball of guilt in my stomach." You look up to see that Lea's face had softened. "I'm never going to be able to make this right, am I?" Lea takes a seat next to you, and you share a moment of quiet in the oncoming dawn.

"Gwen seems to want you around, so I'm not going to just get rid of you without a good reason. The Virus ended up killing something like ninety-nine percent of the population. Maybe a tenth of everyone that survived is smarter than a rabid dog. The gender ratio is so skewed that there might be one woman for every ten or twenty men, and you are the first guy either one of us has seen to think about more than just food and sex." You feel a need to remark on that, but she puts up a hand to silence you. "That remorse you feel is the only reason you are currently alive." She puts a hand on your injured shoulder, and uses you to stand up. "Take first watch. If I live long enough to take second watch, you get to sleep. From there we take baby steps alright?" You nod in agreement.

"And Alex?" You see her in the doorframe. "What I said.. 'Like a pig'... I'm still serious about that." You nod again.

"I'll hold you to that." You call back as she closes the door, and your first watch as part of a group begins.

Early parts plagiarized from Hvast (who I recently discovered, with the search function on my browser, has written nearly a sixth of this entire story)