Road to Santa Barbara (1/3)

In a copse of thin grey spruce she woke, lying on her back and staring up at the length of motheaten tarp she'd scavenged from a gas station storefront some five or ten or fifteen miles back. The dawn light was a kind of powdery bluish-white, and it filtered strangely through the deep green fabric of the tarp so that it was something not quite any of the three by the time it reached her. Groaning, Ellie rolled over onto her side and cupped her eyes behind her fingers, as if trying to wring a few more hours of sleep from them the way they used to strain the water out of pasta back in the great before of everything.

Twenty minutes later, she was up and crouching on the bank of a nearby river, shivering coldly and gritting her teeth as she scrubbed yesterday's panties between her palms. They were white fullbacks with a waistband frilled and pink; much of the gusset and portions of the front and back were all shot through with holes, and the band was fraying into wispy fragments all around its loose circumference. She'd had them too many years, so long they scarcely even fit her anymore and were as good as falling apart at the seams besides. But still, she persisted with them. Dina had seen her changing out of them one night on the long road to Seattle and asked her, with a grimace, "Little past the return date, don't you think?" She'd tried to explain it, but the words had tangled up inside her throat. There weren't many objects with sentimental value still around these days. History was a hard thing to come by; same was true for people, come to think of it. Ellie paused for a moment, sighed to herself, hummed an old familiar tune under her breath, then drew herself up to her full height, turning the dripping panties this way and that to inspect them. She was naked save for a fitted white vest, the subtle mounds of her breasts pressing into the ribbed white cotton, the pointed summits of the nipples outlined sharp and stark against the grooves, bare toes wriggling slowly in the chalky black dirt, the slender paleness of her legs rising smoothly up into the fork between her well-toned thighs. A wiry thicket of bush was growing in over her pussy—blemished and stubbled lips giving way to a wild salmon blush of flared and ribboned folds, all of it spilling out from underneath the coppery-brown foliage. Her glutes were round and well-defined, a good strong pair of freckled half-moon cheeks, with a little taut jiggle that started up in earnest as she cast a wary eye across the river, then turned about and crept back through the trees toward her camp.

As the campfire stood there softly crackling, she sat with her legs crossed whittling a stick into a sharpened stake with a shard of flint-rock while she waited for her underthings to dry. The flames warmed her, and cast a winsome orange glow over everything in sight, even worming its way between her legs and licking at the folded ribbons there. It made her think of Dina; something in the eager warmth of it, she guessed. Ellie felt her thoughts begin to wander, and when she closed her eyes for a moment she was suddenly convinced that she was at home in her bed, riding out the waves of pleasure while a certain shape with a certain mouth went lappingvat her underneath the quilt. She had the notion to touch herself to the image, but when she shifted her hips the scratchy down of undergrowth on which she sat up and went and bit her on an unprotected cheek. After that, she sat up and unfolded her legs, then drew her knees up to her chest to stop the fire breathing on her there again. A shy sliver of vulva peeked out through the undersides of her thighs, full lips, whiter at the edges and a measure darker near the puffy, tight-pressed pouting of her slit.

An hour and a handful of change passed. Standing, she went over, checked the fabric of her panties for dryness, and found them good enough for her to wear. Delicately, she stepped into them and slid them up her legs and stuffed the copper thicket down the front where it was bulging out, then carefully fished the back out from between the curving half-moons. They seemed smaller on her every time she put them back on, more of them swallowed by either the slit at her front or the crack of her ass behind her. Despite the sentiment, despite the history, Ellie couldn't help but feel a little stupid when she wore them. Like a girl caught short in a raunchy video from the before, like the one she'd found once in boarded-up video store in the Safe Zone, way back when. Blonde in a red bikini on the cover, but the top of it's missing and she's covering her tits up with her hands, eyeballing whoever chanced to look at it like an idiot. Don't tell, her eyes seemed to say. Don't go and let anybody know you saw me all like this! Ellie used to think about that girl a lot. Daydreams about how she might have lost the top, night dreams about how she might yet lose the bottoms. Just for fun, didn't mean anything. Not at the time, anyway. Not until later. Now she had more, now she had Dina.

Not with her, not on her person like a locket on a chain or a ring on her finger... but still, she had her. She'd had her when she left the farm, that big old whitewashed house on the hill, crowned by the sunrise on the mountaintops across the valley and moated by a rush of golden wheat. She'd had her then, her and the baby, and that was good... but it wasn't enough. Santa Barbara calling to her, her hands still tingling when she thought of it, as if all that blood she'd spilled was still all over them. One last thing to take care of, one last notch on the belt, then she could rest and her and Dinah and the boy could be the family they ought to be. Furling up her bedroll and pulling on her jeans, Ellie took the sharpened stake she'd made and slipped it into a loop on her backpack. After a few rounds of stretching, she started on cutting down the tarp and folding it up and away inside the pack, dashing out the campfire, covering her tracks as best she could. Her panties kept slipping into her as she went, friction and motion twisting them back into a cotton braid between her lips and cheeks; still, she persisted.

Maybe it was just to be expected. Too much comfort wasn't such a good thing, not on this road anyway.

Along the interstate, up that sharp black asphalt furrow on the landscape. In the far distance, the skeletal impression of a skyline made faint and dreamy-looking by the smog. Difficult to believe that people used to live there, like trying to picture a day in the life of a silhouette on a painted backdrop. She scanned it, sniffing quietly to herself and adjusting the position of the backpack where the strap was gnawing slightly at her shoulder. By this point, she could scarcely even feel the coverage of the underwear, it was all bunched up inside her, her crotch and her caboose left to the chafing mercy of the denim; felt for all the world like a set of fingernails drawing up and down across that supple, sensitive skin. She did not entirely dislike it, wasn't so very different from standing at the kitchen window washing dishes, feeling those slender hands come around her from behind, loosen her belt and slide behind the waistband of her pants, before sinking into the understated bliss of being felt up while the water and the suds collected on her palms. Once or twice, she put a hand inside her jeans and plucked back out that warm and wadded fabric, splaying and stretching her fingers out inside the thin, sheer strip of the gusset in a futile bid to stop it from re-entering. A little buzz of expectation welled up when her knuckles brushed her undermound, but she swallowed hard and pushed it down. She couldn't do that here, too wide open, too exposed...

Wrong place, wrong time; what else was new?

After near-on two hours of walking, she came to a lone garage by the roadside; it was close to intact, save for a light spattering of rust over the ajar metal shutter. Ellie imagined it must have looked quite the same back in the before, standing tall and proud while the other buildings either side of the road all crumbled down or else burned out in the interim apocalyptic. Had a mind to scope it out, so she crept on up and lowered herself into a crouch, rattling the padlock that held the shutter closed. It made a shrill, sickly squeak, and she figured that meant it wouldn't take too much to break it open. Before trying, Ellie looked back at the ruined buildings across the way over her shoulder, then took off her backpack, retrieved the bolt-action hanging from it and held it up one-handed while she got back up and slipped the pack onto her shoulder once again. Carefully, eyes darting calmly in all directions, she stalked across the road and went to check it out. Hadn't expected to see much, and sure enough there wasn't much for her to see. Burned out husk; upturned tables and chairs all charred to firewood. No bodies, no infected, no anyone or anything. She repeated the process with the other structures—a sagging mini-mart and a fast food joint whose sign had long since rotted into illegibility. She gave them both the usual sweep for supplies, but found only a few unopened cans of food in the first and nothing much of anything in the second.

Returning to the garage, Ellie gave the lock another look, listening closely for the sound it made when she rattled it again, then she took out a pocket knife and worked the blade a while inside the keyhole. It clicked, she felt something give way, and the padlock popped cleanly open. Opening the shutter, she ducked beneath and stepped inside, flicking her clip-on flashlight to life as she emerged into the stifling gloom within and sweeping it around the room. There was a dusty workbench in the corner of the room, a stack of cardboard boxes pushed up against a far wall, a peeling fire door with a window through which a shaft of overcast sunlight was shining weakly through, and a crooked mostly-empty tool rack. Ellie breathed a sigh of relief, lowering the rifle and hanging it from her shoulder by the strap as she started looking over the garage's contents. Amongst them, she found a translucent tupperware box of loose lug nuts, a misshapen lug-wrench, and a stack of motorcycle magazines, their pages black and blue with different overlapping kinds of mould; she made a face, tossed aside the one she'd been handling and pocketed the rest, then turned her attention to the workbench.

An articulated lamp came flickering to life above the wooden work surface when she tested the switch; she took the opportunity to check her guns, tightening bolts and inspecting the rifling for signs of degradation. The rifle went last of all, and she spent the longest time on it, working it over and over in the pursuit of some standard of perfection she could neither visualise nor name. In the end, she became so engrossed in the process that she missed the sound of nearby voices until it was too late. Ellie froze, listening to the depthful, muffled tones, laying down her weapon and licking her cracked lips thoughtfully as she noted the crunch of footsteps on the broken blacktop, and snatches of terse conversation much besides. "Nothin' around here," she heard one of them say. "Same as everywhere around this shithole."
"So...what?" Another chimed in. "We're just supposed to give up? Gotta be something left, gotta be something worth taking.
"Not sure I want to try and find out. Look at those buildings, structures are fucked."
"Yeah? What about that one? Don't look so fucked to me."
"Shutter's busted open, could be anything in there. Bloaters, Clickers..." There was a pause, then came the response: "Don't hear any clicking, do you?"
"They never do, not until it's too late."
"What the fuck ever, man! You stay here comin' up with what-ifs, I'm gonna try and see if I can actually scrounge up something useful." The footsteps halted, and a moment later they resumed, crunching closer and closer toward the garage entrance. Ellie studied the ground, waiting for his shadow to finally to come into view, sliding into view through the gap between the shutter and the concrete floor. She held her breath, glancing down at the rifle. Not enough time to reassemble the barrel, **** but to leave it. Stepping back from the workbench and creeping back across the room, she went to hide behind the stack of boxes, crouching down and watching as a hand appeared under the shutter. The raider **** it up, and stooped a fraction under it, his eyes darting this way and that as he emerged into the room. He was toting a shotgun, wearing body armour and had a greasy-looking black bandana tied around his head.

[Author's Note: I always enjoy and appreciate feedback in terms of what's working and what isn't, so please feel free to like and/or leave comments!]