Two for the Road

[Wrecking Ball]

I'm very interested to see the reason why the Doc felt it necessary to not communicate with everyone when he could all along....

Yea, I feel like in the upcoming installments Ryan's going to go to Doc and get into that after debating whether or not it was his imagination or not.

[Bearcat]

I'm very interested to see the reason why the Doc felt it necessary to not communicate with everyone when he could all along....

Yea, I feel like in the upcoming installments Ryan's going to go to Doc and get into that after debating whether or not it was his imagination or not.

Yeah I was hoping it's not some spiritual psychic connection or bond they can share. But I think that PonyBoy is a better writer than that.

[wyecoyte]

Perhaps the Doc always could just to traumatized to speak english afraid if he got to know everyone that he would start to like them. Maybe this was his way of coping by keeping people at a distance. Maybe the delivery or potential made him want to talk or forced him to.

Great read as usual Ponyboy enjoy your work and real envious at the speed your putting this one out.

[walterde]

i think tara is better endowed than daphne. thats why she acts like she does. she developed early and got used to flashing some cleavage to get what she wants. but not anymore. those days are over.

I'm going with a large B to small C for Daphne and a D for Tara.

i can agree with that. maybe large c for tara.

Ok, I can deal with the large B to small C for Daphne, but I dont know about Tara as a D. Well personally I'm not into the whole D cup thing anyway. Not that the handfull saying is accurate maybe 2 handfulls for each, but not a basket full. Anyways, like you said to each his own. I'm gonna go with a nice solid C for both, I got to give Tara something though cause she does have red hair, and as long as the carpet matches the drapes she can get away with a lot.

[TheGunslinger]

Yeah, ok, one or two posts was enough. Can we knock it off about the boobs?

[KnightoftheRoc]

Perhaps the Doc always could just to traumatized to speak english afraid if he got to know everyone that he would start to like them. Maybe this was his way of coping by keeping people at a distance. Maybe the delivery or potential made him want to talk or forced him to.
My thought was similar, and that it was the pressing NEED for communication- a life at stake, well, two, really- that made him open up.
Great read as usual Ponyboy enjoy your work and real envious at the speed your putting this one out.

+1 to that!

[Ponyboy314]

“I have climbed highest mountains,
I have run through the fields,
Only to be with you, only to be with you,
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”

from I Still haven’t Found what I’m Looking for by U2



So ended the time of Nicole Sawyer and her child who died without a name, buried in the snow a few miles from the camp, perhaps to be seen one day by other survivors who might wonder, perhaps even marvel that mother and child had not been separated even in death. Or maybe none would ever pass that way again and her grave above the ground would be forever undisturbed, much like the grave of one Sean Plainwater, who was frozen stiff in a small grocery store a few miles north of the final resting place of Nicole.

There were no more words to say. There were no flowers, no priests, no headstones…this was it. A dead woman left by the trees with a dead baby in her arms. There was a terrible lack of dignity in it, and both Ryan and Daphne knew that she deserved better, but better was beyond their ability. Such was the world. Such was this terrible new time.

On the way back, the snow began to fall again, though it was fairly light. After returning, they simply went inside and lay down in their bunk, holding each other, unable to say anything that could put this in perspective. They both fell asleep, and remained asleep for so long that when Daphne woke up, she saw dinner inside their door. It was already nighttime.

Ryan and Daphne slept after dinner and through the night in each other’s arms and only woke up when Ryan heard breakfast being slipped inside the door. That same day at lunch, Ryan looked around at a gathering of the silent. No one spoke, not even to thank Kristin or Yolanda for making lunch. Looks were blank, voices were still, and hands visibly shook. Ryan said nothing, knowing that a single day was not enough time for the group to get past the cruel deaths of Nicole and her child. They had all seen people die before, and in harder fashion than Nicole had suffered, and they would move on, but this was not the time for forgetting their dead friends. Ryan and Daphne kept to themselves, as did Aaron and Kristin, as well as Manny and Yolanda, keeping Michelle inside and away from everyone else as much as possible.

Four days passed as everyone slowly put things in perspective and tried to carry on. They began speaking to each other again and doing their chores. The mood was still a somber one, but they began to rebound. They still cried for their friend and the baby now buried in the snow with her, but life, as always, carried on.

Ryan and Daphne passed out that night, four days after the tragedy, after a night of wild sex, which seemed their remedy for just about anything. They fell asleep in each other’s arms and no dreams haunted them that night.

The next morning at breakfast, the mood was far from jovial but there was low chatter as the group continued trying to be more sociable and not let the recent death of Nicole destroy everything. When it was over, Tara even volunteered to take Mitch his breakfast, since he had still not come out of his cabin in the daylight. They talked about little of importance as Tara came back, seemingly on edge about something.

“Uh guys? Mitch isn’t in his cabin.”

Ryan looked over his shoulder at her. “Is he in the bathroom? Did you hear a shower running while you were out there?”

“I can’t go into the guy’s bathroom!”

“Are you kidding me? Just go look.” Ryan shot back. She was gone for another thirty seconds or so before returning.

“I just checked. He’s not in the crapper or anything.”

Ryan thought for a second. “Okay, everyone get up. Let’s just go find him or we’ll start freaking the hell out. Make sure the snowmobiles are still here, check all the other cabins, look inside the cars, just check everything.”

About ten minutes later, they finally had to concede that Mitch was not in camp anymore. They checked his cabin, but his belongings were still mostly there. There was no sign of him or what had happened to him. Whether he was alive or dead, the one thing that was clear what that he wasn’t anywhere inside the fence. It was Ike who found one clue, which he quickly pointed out to the others.

“Guys, look at this.” He was pointing to tracks, and one did not have to be an Apache scout to see that they led from the general direction of Mitch’s cabin to the gate and out into the world. “Goddamn it, I think he went out. I think he left.”

Ryan immediately began barking out orders. “Okay, we’re taking both snowmobiles to find him. I need one person, that’s it. We need to get out there and we need to do it fast before the snowfall fills in his tracks.”

“Ryan…” Yolanda attempted to say, but she was quickly cut off.

“If we don’t go now, we’ll lose his tracks! It won’t take long before the goddamned snow fills them in! We’ve got to go now! Aaron, get on the gate! If anyone is coming with me, now’s the time!” Ryan ran back to his cabin and got the first weapon he could grab, which turned out to be his trusty Remington 7mm rifle, the same one that had dropped the dead from his station in Pueblo. By the time he got on his snowmobile, he saw Ike already getting on the other, with his M16 across his back. They both gunned their engines. “Let’s go!”

Aaron let them out and they sped down the snow-covered gravel road, following Mitch’s tracks. He certainly had a head start, that was for sure. His tracks led all the way back to Highway 50 before entering the tree line on the other side of the highway. Ryan almost kicked himself in anger. “He went into the fucking trees! The stupid fucker! How the hell are we supposed to follow him?”

“On foot, Ryan! Come on! We can probably still catch him!” Ike then looked up, because the snow had started to fall harder. “Shit…we’ve got to go!”

“Are you kidding me? The snow is already a couple of feet deep! You have snowshoes stuffed up your ass?”

“Mitch is my friend and I’m not giving up on him, Ryan!”

They dismounted and headed into the trees, their feet sinking deep in the snow with every step. His tracks were still visible, but the snow was slowly filling them in. They could barely make any distance at all, and how Mitch had done so was beyond Ryan.

“For fuck’s sake, Ike! We’re barely moving!”

“Just keep going! We’re not going to lose Mitch too!”

They tried their best to follow Mitch’s tracks for almost an hour, until their feet felt frozen and their faces were almost like a nun’s cold tit to the touch. The snow had made the tracks almost impossible to see, and when Ryan saw them, he wondered if it was actually one of Mitch’s tracks or just a random shape in the snow.

“Ike! The snow is too strong! His tracks are almost gone! We can’t keep going like this!”

“We follow them until we can’t see them anymore! I’m not giving up on Mitch, goddamnit!”

“He’s the one who gave up! He doesn’t want us to find him, don’t you get it? We have to turn back! We have to follow our own tracks back to the highway, and if they get filled in, we could get lost out here and fucking die! We have to go back now!”

Ike stopped where he was and stood, looking into the trees ahead with eyes devoid of hope. He stood still for nearly a minute before dropping to his knees in the snow and hanging his head. “We…”

“Let’s go, Ike. We can’t help him. He doesn’t want our help. He’s gone. He went his own way.”

“Ryan…”

“We have to go, Ike.”

It was slow going to get back, and their tracks had been mostly filled in by the snow and by the time they got back to the tree line (another hour and a half later), their tracks were almost gone. Ryan was in agony, as though he could drop and die right where he was. He had never felt so cold in his life, or at least that’s what his mind told him as it looked back several years, hoping to find a comparable memory of freezing despair that could at least give him the hope that he could make it through this one. He felt as though he was about to break apart when he climbed back on his snowmobile, but Ike stopped at the trees and looked back, dropping to his weary knees once again, and began to scream.

“Mitch! I’m sorry!”

[walterde]

Yeah, ok, one or two posts was enough. Can we knock it off about the boobs?

yea it did die quickly, no one really seemed into it. So, ok no more boob talk.

[Wrecking Ball]

i was expecting mitch to go out and find nicole, but if he walked that whole way how did he not freeze much sooner? That's some hell of endurance.

[mypps]

Yeah, ok, one or two posts was enough. Can we knock it off about the boobs?

yea it did die quickly, no one really seemed into it. So, ok no more boob talk.

yeah its tough carrying on a conversation about imaginary boobs. its something that needs to be seen to fully appreciate. carry on.

[Yeti]

So Mitch ran off.
On their return, I would attempt to see what he took with him.
If he took all his cold weather gear and a pack with him, than he is sane and needed to leave.
If he just went buck naked, than he is nuttier than a jaybird and not much can be done for him.

Far as him lasting for a time, the other guy survived after a long time out in it as well.

What I'm really wondering is why Ryan hasn't done what he did with Aaron and Kristin and teach the rest of them hand-to-hand stuff. After the attack on Kristin, and the loss of Sean this is stuff they should learn.

Another thing is what was the normal population of Delta? I'm suprised that Ryan hasn't thought of raiding the local City/County/State buildings for various blueprints of city buildings and police supplies.
With the city plans and a knowledge of the approximate population pre Z-day, he could figure out how many they need to wipe out.
I think a trip to Delta in the dead of Winter planned for to use one of the acutal empty buildings they have found for several days to allow for other buildings to be opened and freeze the zombies. As well as skull busting any frozen ones they find

[Bearcat]

What I'm really wondering is why Ryan hasn't done what he did with Aaron and Kristin and teach the rest of them hand-to-hand stuff. After the attack on Kristin, and the loss of Sean this is stuff they should learn.

Because they are whiny assholes who chew Ryan's head off for everything. Why would he want to teach them how to kill him? Besides, Ike is a miliary man, he can train his own group if he wants.

[RoneKiln]

From my comfortable safe couch with good coffee and no constant reminder of death hanging over me and no trauma of losing everything I had ever known, it's easy for me to criticize them as well. Teaching everyone the basics of fighting would have been a good start. Clearing Delta out during the winter would also be a good step. With that many houses available to search they may be able to prolong their food stores another year as well as start some large gardens in the spring. At least clearing Delta would allow them to examine a greater range of resources and give them more options. Finding greater fuel sources in Delta would also give the option of searching other towns for supplies during the winter that would normally be impossible to search during the warmer season.

I think part of the problem is so many of them still have a victim mentality. Maybe teaching them to fight would help them rebuild a sense of confidence and control of their destiny. Might have done Sean a lot of good as well. There also may be something reassuring about realizing they have the ability to wipe out an entire town of the monsters they had previously been so terrified of. Sure, most of them would be frozen, but it still reasserts a sense of power and control, which is a vital component to psychological health.

[Mr. E. Monkey]

Another thing is what was the normal population of Delta? I'm suprised that Ryan hasn't thought of raiding the local City/County/State buildings for various blueprints of city buildings and police supplies.
With the city plans and a knowledge of the approximate population pre Z-day, he could figure out how many they need to wipe out.
I think a trip to Delta in the dead of Winter planned for to use one of the acutal empty buildings they have found for several days to allow for other buildings to be opened and freeze the zombies. As well as skull busting any frozen ones they find

Delta's population was around 6400 per the 2000 census, but probably in the 7-8000 range nowadays. Not counting people living out of town, of course. Or people living in Olathe or Montrose, not much farther south. The Uncompahgre and Gunnison rivers meet down there, and the valley has a lot of farmland. Olathe grows some really nice sweet corn, by the way.

Zombies of the corn. *shudder*

Delta tends to be milder in the winter than a lot of other places out there, but a really nasty winter is a really nasty winter.

I've made the trip through there (actually, the whole Grand Junction through Gunnison trip) several times back in college. Never really liked Delta.

There ought to be a few farm/ranch supply places in the area that might be of some use to them, assuming that they haven't been trashed as badly as the typical Walmart would probably be.

[Ponyboy314]

“And another one gone, and another one gone,
Another one bites the dust,
Hey, I'm gonna get you too,
Another one bites the dust…”

from Another one Bites the Dust by Queen



Ryan and Ike returned to camp, both feeling utterly defeated, as though their luck, such as it ever was, had now run out and the world had begun to snipe at them as it cackled from afar. Little by little, circumstance was picking away at their group, and only one had been lost because of the dead. Even when the dead had ceased to be a threat, the world itself could still hunt them.

Upon parking, everyone was silent. They had been through this before, when Ryan, Daphne, and Ike returned without Sean some weeks earlier. They did not need to be told that Mitch was, in all probability, lost to them forever, and if he was even still alive, he was seeking his own death out there somewhere, having finally reached the point where he could not longer care. Still, it was inevitable that someone would ask about what they found. That happened to be Manny.

“Where is he? Is he dead? Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

Neither Ryan nor Ike answered. As they dismounted Ryan fell forward and face-planted right in the snow, his body giving out after too much time stomping around in knee-deep snow. He was utterly unable to move, and for a brief second, some part of him did not want to, as though lying where he was until the cold took him would be a sweet release from the pain that gnawed at him and whatever pain still lay ahead. Of course, that is not what happened.

Daphne screamed at everyone, “What the hell are you looking at? Fucking help me already!” A few of them got Ryan to the bathroom, where they proceeded to give him the same treatment they had given weeks earlier to David Carlyle, as Ryan slowly became almost delirious from the cold and stress.

“Mitch? Mitch? Mitch are you there? Come on, stop hiding, man…we need to get back…”

“What’s wrong with him?” Manny asked.

“He’s loopy, that’s what!” Daphne replied. “Help me get these clothes off of him! Yolanda, run to our cabin and get him a fresh set of clothes, now!” They almost threw Ryan into the shower and let him warm himself, as he babbled incoherently, but as the warm water ran over him, he slowly started to come around. They forcefully dried him off and made him get dressed.

“Fuck…what the hell happened?”

“You just got a little messed up from the cold. You need to get under the covers and stay warm for a while, Ryan.” Daphne said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Ryan fell into bed and Daphne tucked him under the covers and let him sleep, which he did for most of the day. Most of the group wasn’t nearly as shocked or devastated over the fate (whatever it may have actually been) of Mitchell Royce as with Nicole’s death and that of her baby. She had, for lack of a more descriptive explanation, run out of luck and died under circumstances that no one should have, but Mitch clearly chose his own way out, and at least some, especially Boyd who was always the practical sort, had expected something like this. How much pain could one person suffer without looking for any possibly way for it to end? Mitch had apparently looked for, and found his own way out.

Ryan did not wake up until sometime after eight that evening, where he saw Daphne lying awake next to him. “Hey Ryan. Are you okay?”

“I’ll live. Fuck me, it was cold out there…my feet are burning a little…burning from the cold…what a fucking irony.”

“Well, stay under the covers. We had dinner late, so Kristin will be along with yours any second. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you find out there? Did you even find him? Is he dead?”

“We followed his tracks until we got to the highway. He crossed over it and into the trees. We kept going for a while, maybe a couple of miles I want to say…I can’t be sure…but the snow covered his tracks. We couldn’t keep going. The snow made it a bitch to get back. If we’d kept going, we might not have been able to find our way back.”

“After only a mile or two?”

“Blinding snow, freezing cold, nothing but trees, no tracks…I assure you, you can get lost and die like that.”

“So Ryan, we have no clue where Mitch is or what happened to him?”

“In the absence of any information, he’s out there in the woods somewhere frozen to death. Has anyone been in his cabin?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Maybe we should have a look in the morning, you know, see what he took. Or maybe we should just say ‘fuck it,’ and let it go. He didn’t want to be found. He wanted to die out there, and if he was just trying to get somewhere else, he sure as hell wouldn’t have gone at least a couple of miles into the trees. No, he went out there to die. Ike wanted to keep going. We both might have frozen out there if we did. I was the one who insisted we turn around. Even if we’d found him alive, we probably would have been lost and all just died together. I don’t think there was anything we could have done, and even if we could have brought him back alive, I doubt he would have wanted to come. He didn’t walk out there to amuse himself, you know.”

“What do you think is going to happen now? You think everyone’s about to take a plunge? This came right on the heels of what happened to poor Nicole, and that wasn’t long after Sean getting his stupid ass killed. I’m worried Ryan, I’m worried that everything is about to fall apart.”

“I’m not that worried about that, strange to say.”

“You’re not?”

“No, not really. You should have seen Ike out there. This one hurt him pretty badly. Mitch was one of his guys, not ours so much. I liked him okay, but…I don’t know how to say it. I knew we wouldn’t be able to save everyone. I just knew it. This world can still fuck you up without a walking dead guy doing the dirty work. I knew that something would get some of us. I just knew that.”

“I’m surprised you’re handling this as well as you are, Ryan.”

“It wasn’t you, Aaron, Kristin, or Michelle. That’s why I’m handling it well.”

[The Sarge]

“It wasn’t you, Aaron, Kristin, or Michelle. That’s why I’m handling it well.”

Hey, that rhymes!

[Ponyboy314]

"Drifting into time passages,
Years go falling in the fading light,
Time passages,
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight..."

from Time Passages by Al Stewart



The next morning, they (as in Ryan and Ike) went through what Mitch left behind, which seemed to be just about everything. His winter boots were gone (though his tracks had shown that he was wearing them, so that was no shock) as were his heavy coat and gloves. Whatever survival gear he had owned was left behind, or at least what gear they knew about. Ryan had to use his police officer’s mind (which he hadn’t needed in a while) to deduce that Mitch went out into the wild to die away from everyone else, but wanted to be warm enough to put some distance between himself and the camp. It was as good a theory as he could come up with, but the only way to be sure was out there somewhere, lost to them forever, frozen in the snow, probably with the name “Nicole” on his dead lips.

Following that, there was nothing else to do but to take an account of what Mitch left behind and see if anyone had use for it. Tara couldn’t touch it and was adamant in her assertion that anyone who did was an opportunistic scavenger.

“This is wrong, this is just fucking wrong. We’re all just vultures.”

Ike replied, “Knock that crap off, Tara. Almost everything we have, we took from someone else. How much of our stuff did we loot? The only reason we could is because whoever owned it before us is dead. That doesn’t change just because we knew Mitch and Nicole. Everything we can make use of from them is something we don’t have to get out there, so use what you can.”


“I just don’t feel right about it, that’s all.”

“Well, welcome to the new world. This is what we have to do from now on. So, take what you can use, and that’s it. If it’s personal, like a picture of his parents in his wallet or something, you don’t take that. But this is not a world in which we can afford to waste anything.”

Before the day was out, anything that had belonged to Mitch or Nicole that could be of any use was distributed to everyone else and what personal possessions that could not be used were disposed of by throwing in the dumpster, reminding Ryan and Daphne of the unceremonious way that they had buried Nicole and her child. But this world still took lives even when it was not the dead doing the taking, and there was nothing to do but carry on. There had been so much death and they had all suffered the loss of just about everyone they had known from before. There was no getting used to it, but they had to accept it to move on.

And moving on was exactly what they did, although some handled it better than others. Morale took some time to rebound, since they had suffered four deaths in a short time, and one of those was one that never had even a chance for a single dream. That hurt the most, and it took a person of practical mind to understand that at least that poor baby was spared the horrors of the world that almost certainly would have taken it in short order, but no one spoke of it.

It would be nearly three weeks before things were back to whatever passed for normal these days. The group could not hide forever, and Manny and Yolanda allowed Michelle to interact more and more with the others, and had told them in their own way about how some of their friends just couldn’t stay with them any longer, just like her own parents could not. They had already come close to clearing out the junk food from the canteen, and the food in the mess hall was starting to reach the level that would concern a farsighted person. But it was just after the arrival of March that Ryan saw what concerned him the most. He looked one day at the sky and saw a break in the clouds, a break that showed the sun. Not long after, the cloud cover, which had been more or less absolute since winter began, started to break apart little by little. The most ominous sign that their little haven would soon have to be abandoned came in the form of icicles melting as the sun peeked through the clouds. Things were changing, and the next stage of their adventure was soon to begin. As they had done every week since arriving, Ryan and company cranked the engines of all the vehicles to make sure that winter wouldn’t kill them, but their group had shrunk, and not all would make the trip away from this place when the time came. Although morale did not plummet as spring approached, everyone grew understandably nervous. That world had not done them much good, and soon, they would no longer be able to hide from it.

One night, Ryan was sitting up in bed, smoking his pipe and reading a Time-Life book about aviation history, specifically about the air war in World War One called Knights of the Air, when Daphne came back from the shower, hair still wet, looking quite lovely to Ryan, thank you very much.

“Cold as a witch’s nipple out there.” Daphne said.

“But not like it used to be. Spring is coming, and it’s going to suck when it does.”

“Not that it was a great winter, Ryan. We survived it, but it was still pretty fucked up.”

“Hmm, you mean with an attempted rape, a dumb kid getting killed because he wanted to be a bad ass, a poor woman dying in childbirth and her baby not even drawing a breath in the outside world, and her guy wandering off to go join her? To say nothing of everyone being selfish or lazy, or in Tara’s case, ultra-bitch? Yeah, this one is for the books.”

“But we did survive. If Kristin hadn’t told us about this place, where would we be?”

“All dead. But then, look how lucky we were. We were damned lucky we even stopped at their cabin to begin with. It led us to everything else. Suppose we kept going. Supposed we had no idea that anything made it worth stopping there. You think we would have lasted long?”

Daphne thought on that, but the answers came pretty quickly. “Probably not. We might have made it through Delta by the skin of our teeth, but if we had headed north, we might have still run into Ike’s group, but if we had gone into Grand Junction, we would have gotten wasted there. And without Aaron’s place to chill for the summer and get to actually know each other, I would have gone right on thinking you were nothing but a fascist pig and you would have never thought I was anything but a biker whore. One of us might have tried to ditch the other if things didn’t change, and we would have either died together or died apart. I don’t see anything else happening.”

“Probably. You’re probably right. And what would we have missed? A couple of dependable friends like Aaron and Kristin, a little angel like Michelle, and a jack-of-all-trades like Boyd, and bad mother fucker like Ike…everything would be different…and worse. But hey…if I had found Ike’s group without you, you know, if you hadn’t made it that far, I’m sure I would totally be nailing the shit out of Tara right now.”

‘Well that’s convenient, since there’s a lot of shit in there to nail out. But come on, you would have never gone there, would you?”

“If I had gotten lonely, probably. And I would have hated her even more had I fallen for her, you know? Loneliness is a hard fucking thing to handle, and the end of the world has only made it harder. Summer wasn’t easy to get through, despite what you might think.”

“We were safe, and we had friends, Ryan. And maybe things could have gone differently if you had opened your eyes. You know I actually first wanted to sleep with you sometimes back in July?”

“No, I did not know that. Why did you wait? I could have had an awesome summer if you hadn’t.”

“Because I wanted to wait until I was sure you’d want the same thing, and I started thinking that you might never come around, that the line between us would never fucking go away. Cop to the bitter end, that’s what you seemed like.”

“Daphne, you know when I fell for you?”

“It wasn’t the first night we screwed?”

“No. If memory serves, it was sometime back in August.”

“Why didn’t you pull the trigger? I’d have gone for it.”

“Because I didn’t know that. I didn’t know if you were still hiding behind that line, the one between a cop and a criminal. I just didn’t know. But I dreamed about it when you just happened to be in my cabin, and then…well, you know the rest. Maybe it happened exactly when it should have.”

“Maybe. But I’ll tell you what. We keep each other alive, and we’ll keep screwing and doing all the gooey shit that couples do that makes everyone else sick. How’s that?”

“I believe we have an accord.”

[IAmWillIAm]

So, just out of curiosity, all this banging Ryan and Daphne are doing.... we're not gonna hear the pitter-patter of little feet any time soon, are we?

[Ponyboy314]

So, just out of curiosity, all this banging Ryan and Daphne are doing.... we're not gonna hear the pitter-patter of little feet any time soon, are we?

Not for a while. I will say no more on the subject. All will be answered.

[Wrecking Ball]

While rummaging through the 4-H campground, Ryan found a lamination machine, which he promptly stuck his junk into and sealed it tightly. After which he proceeded to find Daphne and fuck her.

[Yeti]

So, just out of curiosity, all this banging Ryan and Daphne are doing.... we're not gonna hear the pitter-patter of little feet any time soon, are we?

Not for a while. I will say no more on the subject. All will be answered.

I could have sworn there was a point Daphne or Kristin grabbed something needed from a store that was overlooked. But I can't find it now.

[Ponyboy314]

So, just out of curiosity, all this banging Ryan and Daphne are doing.... we're not gonna hear the pitter-patter of little feet any time soon, are we?

Not for a while. I will say no more on the subject. All will be answered.

I could have sworn there was a point Daphne or Kristin grabbed something needed from a store that was overlooked. But I can't find it now.

Perhaps they did. Maybe they have a bunch of those lying around. But not every little detail is going to get mentioned. But again, some people have questions about this particular subject, and they will get answered in time.

Keep it here, folks.

[Ponyboy314]

“Still don’t know what I was waiting for,
And my time was running wild,
A million dead-end streets and,
Every time I thought I’d got it made…”

from Changes by David Bowie



As March wore on, their discussions had moved from lamenting those they had lost to the future and what it held, and the group was not maintaining a high degree of optimism. Winter was quick to loose its grip and the sun was shining more and more, and every time a melted drop of water plunked on the ground from the icicles still clinging to the eaves of the buildings, it was a reminder that the good life, such as it was, had an expiration date that rapidly approached. Inside the fence, it was there world. Sure, it had been cramped and personalities had clashed, but it was their little world and the dead had never interfered in it. But out there was a world without a fence, without a freezer full of food or private cabins for all. Out there was the darkness and the cruelty, the fear and the nightmares, and of course, the moans and gnashing teeth of the unholy monsters that had usurped them as the masters of the earth and had brought their civilization to its knees with their rotted hands. Out there, nothing remained but a shattered world and billions of walking corpses, corpses who might one day finish what they had started: the extinction of humankind and the abrupt end of millions of years of evolution that had resulted in humanity dominating everything on the face of the earth. It was no longer the world of the living, but it was a world they would have to face nonetheless.

Inside the mess hall on one of the walls, situated neatly between a series of 4-H posters and a bulletin board covered in photographs, was a huge map of Colorado, covered in tags and pins showing every 4-H building and campground in the state. Of the camps, they were far away and infested towns lay in between one and the other, and even such a detailed map couldn’t pinpoint the exact location, and without an exact location, trying to get there would be futile, as Ryan had known since September when he first looked at this map. But now he kept studying every country road that would have been too small for a road atlas, but even those couldn't be guaranteed to take them someplace free of the dead.

Everyone had seen him doing this, but they tended to leave him alone at such times, as he was clearly trying to figure out a route that would not get them all killed, but he had no knowledge of the state of many of the towns and roads. All he knew was that some places, like Salida and Grand Junction were death traps. He had no idea which places weren’t, if there were any such places. What troubled him the most was that the snow was melting, so he didn’t even know how soon it would be until the dead were up and moaning again. For all he knew, they already were. And if by some strange circumstance they happened to mob together and head right towards the camp, the snow was still deep enough that driving was not yet an option.

One day, Ike came up to Ryan as he was squinting at the map, looking for answers that it had not provided before.

“Ryan, that map isn’t going to tell you where the safe places are. We might be standing in the only safe place left. When spring hits, this place might not be safe anymore for all we know.”

“I know that, Ike. But we need to at least know which roads lead where. If some place is blocked, we have to know other ways to go. We’re going to be living on the road pretty soon. Let me rephrase that. We’ll be living on the run, like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. Except it won’t be Tommy Lee Jones on our asses, it’ll be a few million fucking dead cannibals. We keep going until we find someplace to be for a while, then we hit the road again until we find another place. Hopefully, we can find another place like this to winter, but when winter gets close, we should think about heading further north.”

“Why there? I was thinking south into New Mexico. Lots of little towns and farming communities. Probably good places to hole up for a time.” Ike looked hopefully at Ryan, not wanting what had been an idea of his all along to get vetoed on the spot.

“We might do that, head down into the desert and see what we find. But we’ll have months to run around down there. But come fall, we need to head north. I don’t think it gets as cold in New Mexico as it does up here. We need to spend the next winter in some place that will absolutely, positively freeze those things out there when the temperature drops. Maybe Wyoming or something, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to matter where we go during the warm part of the year. We’ll scrounge what we can and deal with those things as best we can and hope we can get through. But winter…we’ve got to head north. Just like birds, but the other way around, you know?”

“Ryan, I hate to say it, and I know we have no choice, but that’s no way to live. Who knows what we’ll run into out there? They might not all be in the towns, you know. We might run into a fuck-load of them out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a large group of survivors got out but one of them was bitten or something like that. There could be a hundred of them blocking the highway miles from the nearest town.”

“I know Ike, I know. But I don’t think there’s a such thing as a plan that’s going to have us living nice, long lives. There’s too much out there in the world that can wreck your day, and not all of it shuffles and moans. All we can do is look after each other until some opportunity presents itself.”

“And if none does?”

“Then we’ll all die, Ike. We’ll die just like everyone else did. Sorry, I know you were looking for more optimism than that.”

“I lived on the road much of last summer, and I saw friends die, both in Grand Junction and afterwards, then I saw friends die in this place. I’m not an idiot, Ryan. I know what’s probably going to happen out there. I know that no matter what plans we make, we’re really just biding our time until something kills us.”

That evening at dinner, the sun was higher in the sky than it had been of late, and even though the temperature was beginning to drop to its nighttime levels, the snow and ice were still melting and it was still too warm to snow to begin with, and even so, the clouds had left and for days, had not returned. Things were changing and no force could stop them. Their little Gilligan’s Island in the forest was about to become another ghost town, and the road beckoned them to come and find what fate they would.

However terrible it might be.

[Wrecking Ball]

SO EXCITING! This story has some real depth to it. I honestly was expecting it to be wrapped up after this many posts compared to your others, but now I see how much still can be written, and for that, I thank you!