I stared at Rosalie, wondering just who exactly this woman was and what in the hell was going on before I stored the bear mace, colpsed the shovel, and pced it into my bag as well. I shouldered it again and picked up the bckbox from where it had fallen before we started heading back towards town. As we walked, she told me her story. The world’s story. The most spine-tingling horror story I’d ever heard.

  “I worked for the Air Force initially, before Lazarus scooped me up. Technically, I'm still with the Air Force, but the project has people from all branches. I went with them for a better pay grade. I was told that Lazarus would be behind the st line of defense should the worst happen. We were supposed to be the ‘ashes that the phoenix shall rise from.’ They were thinking of nuclear war, but somehow this almost seems worse. More personal.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly hard to do.” I responded, half-joking. “Nuclear war isn’t exactly a pinpoint strategy. Not the most ‘personal’ way to take someone out.” She didn’t ugh. She didn’t even crack a smile. When my own grin slid off my face, she continued.

  “About two months ago, the first whispers of a viral outbreak reached the ears of the CDC. It had to have started at least a couple weeks before that, because you’re not symptomatic until the st few hours and the symptoms don't start until twelve to sixteen days after infection. Nobody knew where it came from, at first, but men all over the world were getting sick and dying. From the first symptom, you had about twelve hours before you were gone.”

  “Wait, just men? No women caught this thing?” I asked in amazement. “I thought you said you had it. That we had been close enough for you to infect me.”

  “Women did, do, catch it. We act as carriers that the virus doesn’t harm, to make sure it reaches its intended targets.” Rosalie responded with a sigh. “If you don’t have a Y-chromosome, the virus is harmless to you.

  “Two days after the CDC heard about this thing, when we were starting to realize how fucked we were, a video surfaced. It was from a group of radical environmentalists calling themselves the ‘Hand of Gaia.’ They cimed responsibility for the virus, and said it was the only way to rid the earth of the cancer of humanity.”

  “By killing every man on earth?” I excimed. “How fucking crazy can you be? How the hell did they even make this thing? Why did nobody stop them?”

  Rosalie stopped and turned to look at me. “I personally suspect they hoarded a bunch of sperm samples to repopute the earth with. I think this was meant to be a cleansing, but not an extermination. We don’t know how they made it. Obviously they had access to some incredibly smart bio-engineers and advanced b equipment, which should have been under lock and key.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I muttered, wiping a hand down my face. “This is so fucked. So there’s a virus out there, which I’m probably carrying, and it’s trying to kill every man on the pnet? Do I have that right?” I felt myself getting angry, and she was the only convenient target for it.

  “No!” She snapped at me, her own temper breaking through as well. “It already has killed every man on the pnet. The first two days, we thought we’d lose twenty-five percent of them. After the next two days, we only had twenty-five percent left. Now? Maybe a few hundred. Genetic lottery winners who happen to be immune to the disease.”

  “How do you know if you’re immune?” I asked fervently. “Is there a blood test or something to take?”

  “You’ll know in a couple weeks, probably.” She responded coldly. The world spun around me; I was suddenly dizzy, and I crashed to my knees in the snow. I felt sick, and I dry-heaved without results. I’d left the entire contents of my stomach in the supermarket’s parking lot.

  “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult to hear.” Rosalie said, nudging me with a crutch. “If you’ve survived this long, there’s a good chance you’ll be fine.” I knew it was a bald-faced lie, but it did help to calm my racing heart. When I’d collected myself and stood, she continued speaking in softer, gentler tones.

  “We think there’s something in the genes of certain males that have rendered them immune to the virus, but the dies in the b tell me that it’s incredibly complex and they are struggling to find out anything with such a small sample size. There’s only so much that can be done about it.”

  We walked in silence until we reached the road. “Where to?” I asked, my voice still shaky.

  “We need somewhere that will keep us warm tonight.” Rosalie responded, looking up at the sun, already past its zenith and beginning its descent in the western sky. “It’s likely that we’ll be here for a day or two before they can recover us, so we’ll probably need to go back to the grocery store again as well.”

  She saw me shudder at the memory, and pced a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t make you do it if I was able to get in and out by myself.”

  I looked at her askance, and stole her words from earlier. “I’m not a fucking pansy.”

  Her eyes were downcast as she responded in a depressed, bitter tone. “I mean, you’ve already been exposed by being around me, so I guess sending you in doesn’t really have any effect at this point. If you’re not immune, you’ll likely be dead in a couple weeks.”

  Oh. She was worried she had just killed one of, apparently, very few men left on earth. I did my best to shove my own impending mortality into the back of my mind, determined to deal with it ter. Much, much ter. Still, the thought of a woman doing the unseemly work for me prickled my pride. I wrapped her in a side-armed hug, squeezing her shoulders. She melted into the touch for a moment, then wrinkled her nose.

  “Even for the apocalypse, Solomon, you fucking stink.”

  “I’ll shower tonight.” I promised. She raised an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. I had my methods, even if there wasn’t running water.

  I tried not to think about what was to come as we trudged back through town. My mind was still desperately avoiding the topic of my likely infection with some kind of super-virus. I decided to focus instead on the cold biting at my skin and the sound of the crutches as Rosalie walked beside me. She must have incredible upper body strength, to have gone from not using crutches to making this multi-mile journey at the drop of a hat.

  When we finally reached the supermarket, I grabbed a cart from the parking lot and stopped it at their stack of firewood next to the doors to remove a bundle and pce it on the undercarriage. I pushed the doors open wider, and rolled the cart inside. I did my “shopping” as quickly as I could, avoiding looking down whenever possible.

  Once I’d gotten the essentials for a couple days in town, including a new axe, fresh water, food, toiletries for both of us, and a camping “shower bag,” I picked out a heavy coat for both of us and a few changes of clothes. I didn’t even bother with trying to pick out a bra for her. No matter what I grabbed, it would be wrong.

  I emerged with a comically full cart, and pushed it towards the road, Rosalie limping along behind me on her crutches. I was heading directly across the street for the small road motel. Rosalie didn’t comment on my choice of shelter, choosing instead to follow silently while gncing around every now and then. The vigint soldier.

  I peeked in the windows of each room, eventually finding a stretch of three that had been unoccupied when shit hit the fan two months ago. I reasoned that the middle one would have the best shot of not smelling like decay, since its neighbors were empty. The room I picked was number thirteen. Rosalie looked at me in mild amusement.

  “You’re certainly not afraid of bad luck, are you?” She asked.

  “If there’s anything unlucky about that room, it’s only got a couple weeks to catch me.” My attempt at bck humor felt forced, but it was either that or scream. “Wait here, I’ll get the keys.”

  I left her and the cart at room thirteen and went to find the main office. The door was open, but nobody was inside. Behind the counter, I found all the room keys in a drawer and pulled out the ones for thirteen before hurrying back outside.

  When I returned, I let Rosalie into the room first and shoved the cart in after her, only removing the firewood to leave it outside. I wouldn’t be able to build a fire inside without smoking us out of the room, so we’d be relying on hot water bottles, with the added benefit of sharing body heat with each other to stay warm tonight.

  I built the fire outside, breaking some of the smaller logs into kindling in order to get the fire going strong enough to burn a full log, while Rosalie unpacked what she could out of the carts and organized our supplies. I was just getting it started when she called my name from behind me. I finished what I was doing, and ensured the fire was going to withstand a gust of wind before turning to heed her voice.

  She was in the doorway, holding up the single thermal bnket with a cocked eyebrow. I shrugged at her. “You tough enough to get through the night without one?” She asked drily.

  “We’re going to have to share body heat. We might be indoors, but these walls are thin. I have more insution in my cabin and I still woke up frozen this morning.”

  Rosalie sighed and turned to go back inside. “Just keep your drawers on.”

  I followed her in and grabbed the enormous kettle and the folding grate I’d picked up from the store, filled the kettle with a bit of the clean water, and headed back outside with them. I set the grate over the fire and the kettle on the grate to boil. When it began to whistle, I took it back inside and poured it into one of the rge water bottles I’d grabbed before handing it to Rosalie to heat the food with.

  “You must be a boy scout or a prepper if you're not military.” She said. “Only they would have this much foresight and preparation.”

  “Eagle scout, actually.” I responded with a smile. Being in the scouts had been one of the biggest highlights of my childhood. I loved being able to show my grandpa everything I’d learned, and he would in turn show me how the skills could be further refined. “If you’re gonna do something, do it right.”

  She rolled her eyes but took the hot water, and I went back outside to boil more for our showers. While I was boiling a full gallon this time, she had enough time to rehydrate and heat the .s, and we ate gratefully.

  When the kettle whistled, I retrieved it and filled the shower bag, mixing the hot water with some cold to prevent it from scalding her skin before hanging it in the shower for her. She followed right behind me with the bag of clothes I’d gotten for her and assessed the setup. The shower bag itself was just a clear, pstic bag. It had a small tube on the bottom with a little valve on it, and the end of the tube had several holes poked in it. You just open the valve, and the small "shower head" sprinkled water down on you. It was just enough to get you wet and rinse off soap, but wouldn't do well for hair as thick as hers.

  "You won't have enough to do your hair, just so you know." I said, showing her the valve. "I can boil more if you want."

  "That's fine. I can get a real shower when we get back to base." She shooed me out of the bathroom.

  While Rosalie cleaned herself up, I tended the fire, boiling water for my own shower. I also sucked up the remainder of my willpower for the day, washing my hair quickly, outside in the freezing chill. I wasn’t going to make Rosalie boil gallons of water for me to do it properly, so I just hoped I wouldn’t catch a cold.

  I managed to get my hair untangled for the most part, and a good amount of dirt washed out of it by the time she was finished. I heard her call that the shower was mine, and I banked the fire before going inside. She had donned only her underwear. At least she wasn’t going to be difficult about the skin-to-skin contact portion of sharing body heat. I admired her form for far longer than was decent, and she just stood there, allowing my eyes to roam.

  Her skin was the color of a light oak wood, not quite pale, but cking any kind of real tan. She was well-toned, and her long, shapely legs gave me the impression that she could run for hours without stopping. She had removed the ace bandage, and her ankle was looking significantly less swollen now. She had a defined six-pack, but she wasn’t muscled like a body-builder. When my eyes trailed over her generous bust, hidden by the bra she was wearing when she crashed, and up the fwless skin of her neck to finally nd on her face again, it had a wide smirk.

  “Been a while, huh?” She asked. I blushed furiously and averted my gaze. She ughed at me and said, “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t exactly py fair, coming out like this.” I said nothing, which drew another ugh from her as she strutted past me and folded into the bed.

  “Don’t take too long now, or I might freeze to death.” She said, and I could hear the smile on her face from beneath the bnket.

  I huffed and grabbed the kettle of hot water, filling two of our rge water bottles with the scalding liquid and tucking them into the foot of the bed before heading to the shower. I had grabbed a scouring brush from the store, and I used it now to remove months worth of grime from my skin, leaving it bright red and shining with irritation.

  As I was running the remnants of my water through my hair, to help heat my scalp back up, that I realized I'd left my clean clothes out in the bedroom. I'd been so flustered by her brazen dispy of her body, I hadn't even thought to grab them before hurrying in here. I sighed with the st few drops of water, then used several of the thin motel towels to thoroughly dry myself off.

  I sighed again and wrapped myself in a towel before going to face the music. Out in the main room, Rosalie was ying on her left side, facing the bathroom, wrapped in the bnket. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing seemed even. I stepped to the side she wasn’t facing, and dropped the towel. While I was grabbing the boxers, I heard a short inhation of air. I quickly yanked them up before turning around. She was holding her breath. She had, it sounded like, seen my bare ass at the very minimum.

  I debated calling her out on it, but she hadn't made a big deal about me eye-fucking her less than thirty minutes ago, so I decided to leave it be and just climbed into the bed beside her. It was insanely warm, almost uncomfortable. I very gently moved into the big spoon position behind her, only pressing against her with the barest amount of pressure necessary to make sure we were touching. I folded my left arm up under the pillow and kept my right arm stiffly at my side, decidedly NOT wrapping it around her.

  Rosalie took a different, more sensible approach to sharing our heat. She pushed back into me firmly, wriggling into my warmth, then reached back and grabbed my right wrist, pulling my arm across her stomach. She remained as mute as I was during the whole process, but I could feel her muscles rex as she melted into my form. It somehow seemed to make her shrink and, despite her being nearly the same height as me, I was able to comfortably wrap myself around her.

  “Thank you Solomon.” She whispered.

  “Not exactly the most heroic thing, climbing into bed with a beautiful woman.” I joked, trying desperately to keep from stiffening as Rosalie continued pressing back against me.

  “I meant the bear, you jackass.” Her tone gave away her pleasure at the compliment, but I was sure that she was more shaken up than she let on.

  “Anytime, Rosalie.”