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Dec 15, 2025

big river

joel miller x f! reader. 31k words cw: dubcon. free use. quid pro quo. violence. gore. heavy smut. 18+ mdni a lone hunter ambushes you on your way to the nearest QZ. you'll do just about anything to survive. he doesn’t abide dead weight. or [read on ao3]

Ringing in your ears notwithstanding, the road is quiet.

It’s not a pleasant sort of quiet, though. Not hushed breezes and evening birdsong; it’s a droning silence. Thick as tar and just as sticky.

The air is dense and it hums with it, it beads on your forehead and sinks heavy in your chest. Not a lick of wind stirs the dust on the pavement. The powerlines that drape overhead are dead still, devoid of any perching birds that might trick you into thinking life carries on in a backwater town as stagnant as this one.

Still, quiet is promising. You follow the stripes of black bitumen that stitch the cement as you wander down the crumbling road, ears perked up for the presence of any company — shuffling feet, objects knocked over, the forlorn moaning of an infected.

There’s nothing.

You’re not arrogant enough to be hopeful. It hasn’t been a week since your last remaining companion bit the dust, and she didn’t go nicely. Big juicy bite on her hand where the fucking walker took her entire thumb in its mouth. Worse, there was no quick way out. Neither of you had a gun. She wanted death with a shortcut, so one of you had to get their hands dirty — and it was you, in the end. You cut a deep knick in her carotid and she leaked to death in a few minutes. Didn’t look like a bad way to go, in your estimation.

You miss her, though. Maya was her name. There had been a group of you for a while, six people strong, following the Arkansas river — slowly picked off by varying injuries, diseases, suicides. It was just you and Maya for a good two weeks. Now it’s only you.

There’s something uniquely terrifying in being alone. In total, vacant, consummate solitude, meandering along with an existential terror that you might be the last person left on earth; paradoxically filled to the ears with dread that there might be someone watching you, listening, waiting for you to turn the corner.

Typically you’d prefer the beaten path to paved street, temperate woods to abandoned buildings — but desperate times call for desperate measures, and you’ve not got much in the way of a choice.

You have avoided any population centres for the last few days, following the river as closely as you can without venturing near any roads or buildings. Wasn’t worth the risk until it was, because now you have no food left. Don’t have any antiseptic, either. For all your tools and trinkets, you’ve got nothing much more than three bandaids and a few remaining sachets of berry cherry Kool-Aid.

You spot a pharmacy up the road. The sun-bleached sign sticks up like a flagpole from the sidewalk; Medi Quick Discount Pharmacy.

If you’re going to find infected anywhere, it’ll be a pharmacy. You know this, regrettably, from experience. People get bit and the first thing they do is run to a chemist, sweeping the shelves for anything that might help them, a pitifully futile last resort.

Peering in through the sludgy storefront window, though, you can’t see any movement. Can’t see much of anything, really, grime and dust plaster the window in a thick enough film that the interior is dark, especially in the orange lowlight of the evening sun. Looks like there aren’t any spores, though. Windows aren’t broken. Maybe you’re in luck.

You try the main door and it’s locked, even with a good shake. Next option is to smash the glass, but that’s noisy. Instead you wander around the store, crowbar tight in your fist, eyes scouring the mossy brick walls for any alternative entrance — and, look, there’s a staff entrance round the back. You twist the handle and the heavy door cracks open with a mournful whine.

The inside is dim, a haze seeps in through newspaper-covered windows, and the air is so thick with dust it’s foggy with it. You’re not hit with the savory odour of spores, but you strap on your mask just in case. Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Not to say what you’re doing is particularly safe.

You find yourself in a stockroom behind the dispensary, and predictably, the shelves have already been thoroughly plundered.

Since you were driven out of Kansas City, though, you’ve become something of a scavenging maven. Every shelf, every cabinet, every drawer, you finger through until you get blisters. You’ve found some treasures that way: a firesteel, sewing needles, bars of soap. Even a few little trinkets that serve no purpose other than making you smile, like the plushie frog bag charm you found in an old toy store, or the pair of Prada sunglasses you plucked from the glovebox of a rusting sportscar, or the bobby pins you use to keep your hair out of your face.

And with an unfathomable amount of luck — and a good half an hour combing through the pharmacy tooth and nail — you hit the jackpot.

Someone else’s stash tucked in a cupboard in the bathroom. Blanketed in dust, so you can safely say nobody is coming back for it. They had good taste, whoever they were — two bottles of codeine, three boxes of ciprofloxacin, ibuprofen blister trays, five droppers of betadine, a vial of gentamicin, an epipen, a box of Ural, surgical tape, gauze, and three sealed hypodermic needles.

You just about squeal in glee before you bite down on it, scooping every last bit into your backpack, bursting at the seams because holy shit holy shit holy shit — you just won the fucking lottery.

Little Rock is still several days away, but maybe you’ll survive the journey after all. And you’ve even got stuff to barter with. Gentamicin, you giggle to yourself, the shit’s liquid gold. You hope you can sell it sooner than use it.

Before then, though, you’ll need food.

Nothing of the sort could be found in the pharmacy, so you flip the latch on the main door and swing it open before stepping back out into the stree—

Bang.

There’s a split second between the blistering air that brushes against your face and the earsplitting crack that shockwaves out from a distance.

For a moment you think you’ve hallucinated. The clap of thunder is gone as it came. A spate of adrenaline floods your body so quickly that your vision falters for a heartbeat, and you flick your head around to see where it had come from, and — there, down the street, a silhouette of a man.

He’s pointing a rifle at you.

You move on instinct. It thunders in your temples and buzzes down to your fingertips; the fumes of pure epinephrine, driving you to bolt back inside. You double back and barrel through the pharmacy, hopping over the dispensary counter and bulldozing through the back door you left ajar.

You sprint in full strides, bounding through the car park and down a perpendicular street, feet landing so hard against the concrete you can feel the shock in your shins.

You take a left. Bolt down the block. And you don’t hear another gunshot, so you’re safe, maybe — but you think you hear footsteps, heavier than yours, and suddenly they’re closer, faster — and is that panting? You can’t look over your shoulder to check, because you’ll trip if you do, but that’s definitely panting, unmistakable now, the hounding breaths of a man in unrelenting pursuit.

Now you shriek. It tears itself out of your lungs as you run for your life, a protolithic reaction to a terror so violent it makes your bones ache and your heart ignite like a grenade with the pin pulled.

There’s nothing but running. Your mind and body become one unfaltering engine, entirely devoted to running, running, running, and leaping over the hoods of cars, and over short fences, and through gates that you slam shut behind you, and soon you find yourself shouldering into another store, a maze of shelves, perhaps you’ll lose him in here—

A weight slams into your back with the force of a train, and you collide with the vinyl-coated cement so hard it leaves you gulping for air.

There’s a crack down one glass eye of your mask, your teeth ache where they clacked together, and your crowbar shrieks along the floor as it skids out of reach. It takes a good second for your mind to catch up, but when it does, the scream that erupts from your chest so plangent it warbles in your own ears — because he, whoever he is, is clambering on top of you, grunting and growling and out of breath, wrestling as you wriggle underneath him.

“Christ, you’re fuckin’ noisy.” His voice comes out gnarled and tight, panted through a grinding jaw as he fights to keep you still.

Whatever prey-like instinct had compelled you to run melts away when the hunger to fight for your life kicks in. It’s scorching under your skin, voltaic along your nerves, magmatic in the fibres of your muscles — a rage so visceral you can feel it in your teeth, and all you want to do is maim.

You buck and kick, you reach behind you for something to claw at — you find skin, a head, and you dig your nails in like you might peel the leathery face away from the bone. You fling your elbows, throw your head back in the hopes of breaking his nose, and you growl and spit like an animal in the fray — a get the fuck off me! and a few fuck yous while you’re at it.

But he’s so heavy, and persistent, and his hands are somehow everywhere at once; forcing a shoulder into the floor with one and pinning a wrist with the other as you reach desperately towards the shelf beside you — there’s a screwdriver on the floor. Still strapped to its cardboard but the pointy end is pointy enough. Maybe you can reach it, with one hard buck, you can just about brush it with your fingertips—

You hear the click of something metallic, and then, right beside your face and held in a fist too big for it, is a revolver.

The boiling fight that had flooded you leaks out like piss and puddles around you on the floor. A wounded whimper huffs out from your throat, because the gun shifts out of sight, and you feel its cold metal mouth against your scalp.

“Yeah,” he drawls when you go quiet; breathless, satisfied. “Easy now.”

Your hands open flat on the vinyl beneath you, and you remain so still that it aches, but — though you try to keep it in, bite your tongue hard enough to bleed — you sob. It all floods out of you in heaving gulps, spluttering and whimpering and begging for your life.

The weight on your back shifts. “You gon’ make me kill you?”

“No — nonono, please,” you wail — Christ, it’s pathetic aloud — “please, plee-he-heeease don’t, don’t kill me — please, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die—”

The steel weight against your skull moves away, though you don’t know where he puts it. “Settle down, ‘n I won’t.”

You do your best to hush yourself but your body stiffens on reflex, because heavy hands are already raking over your body; down your arms, waist, thighs, lingering over the swell of your ass to fish something out of your back pocket.

It’s a compromising position he has you in, and it turns your blood cold; face down on the floor, kept flat by the weight of him, a knee on the back of your thigh.

Surely, you pray, he’s only frisking you. He has more pressing priorities than getting his dick wet. Then he yanks the straps of your backpack down your shoulders, jerking back your arms to pull the whole thing off you, and you find yourself remorsefully wishing for your first fear to be true.

Instead you hear him unzip your bag and rummage through its innards, and your tears start up again, because now you understand the depth of the shit you’re in.

He’s a hunter.

And what do hunters do?

“God damn,” he murmurs to himself, slick with satisfaction — must have found your jackpot.

“Please don’t take it,” you plead, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, because without your backpack your death is as certain as the one offered by the gun against your head. “Please — I’ll, I won’t make it without my stuff.”

“You all alone out here, huh?” He asks, nonplussed.

The question sends a needling shiver down your spine, and you don’t want to answer it, because there isn’t a right answer. Not as if he’d let you go if you lied about having friends somewhere nearby, but admitting to being by yourself feels like signing a death warrant. You wonder if he has friends of his own.

“No — I’m not,” you whimper.

He lets out a huff, not quite laughter. “Not much of a liar.”

You yelp when two big hands grip you by the shoulders and flip you ungracefully onto your back, and you finally get a good look at him as he settles a knee either side of your hips.

He’s broad. Heavy.

That’s the first thing you notice, and it frightens you, because only one kind of person can maintain bulk like that in a world like this one. His sun-leathered arms are thick with muscle and a healthy padding of fat, sleeves of his brick plaid shirt are tight around biceps. Hefty thighs secure you casually to the floor through weight alone.

In his forties, you guess. His eyes are life-worn and wrinkled in the corners, cheeks and forehead russet with old sunburn that may once have been pink but has aged into bronze. A dense-bearded lumberjack type, you think, there’s the odd silver curl in the black scruff on his jaw and flecked through the hair on his temples.

His expression is what unsettles you.

Manifest apathy.

His stare is phlegmatic, dim, hollowed out by years of means-justified survival, and you can read in them that you are far from the first person he has had in this position. Splayed out beneath him and begging for their life, while he indifferently considers their fate. What you can’t tell, though, is whether or not he is enjoying himself.

He grabs your gas mask by the filter and pulls it from your face, plucking a few hairs with it, and drops it to the linoleum with a clatter. There’s a near imperceptible shift in his expression as you meet his eye; a renewed weight in his glare, a tightening in his lips, the faintest furrow in his brow. Why do you feel exposed?

“Look at you,” he mumbles, and you’re not quite sure if he is talking to you or himself. He takes your jaw in a hand, rocking your head to the side as if to get a better look, and you groan in uneasy dispute. “Ain’t that somethin’.”

You don’t like his tone. All too familiar.

He huffs, releasing your chin like he had to force himself to. “You sure ain’t gon’ last long out here.”

After a heavy beat he sets to standing up, grunting as he does and taking your backpack with him — and where you had just been fighting to get away from him, you’re suddenly scrambling to get him to stay.

“What do you — wait,” you splutter, pushing yourself up from the floor, “wai-wai-wait – you can’t just take my stuff and leave me here—”

“Said I wasn’t gonna kill you,” he says frankly, adjusting the rifle slung over his shoulder and peering down at you indifferently. “Doesn’t mean I’m stickin’ around.”

You can’t let him take your supplies. You can’t. But you’re not stupid — there’s no chance you can fight him off to get them back, you’ve no weapons beyond your crowbar, and the worse you could do is break it over his head as he leaves; but his skull looks hard as concrete, and you’re sure that just for the inconvenience he’d put a bullet in yours.

You resort to sobbing. “But I’ll die without my stuff.”

“Not my problem,” he grunts.

Next you’re unabashedly supplicating, on your knees and all — and now, well, you haven’t much left but your last resort. “Please — what if — can you take me with you? Then you — that way you can keep my stuff, as long as I can come with you, please, I don’t wanna die out here, please—”

Something in him seems amused, but there’s no smile. “Don’t need no dead weight.”

“I won’t be dead weight,” you cry, you’re all slobbery with it, “I promise — I-I’ll pull my weight. I’ll be helpful — ‘n I won’t be slow I promise, I’ll keep up.”

He’s unswayed. “Doubt you’re good for much besides lookin’ pretty and eatin’ my food.”

“No, I promise, I’m good at, um — I’m good at finding things and, and climbing, and I’m good at stitching stuff, and I passed the FEDRA medic course, and—”

There’s a glint of something in his eye, and he sighs indignantly. Maybe he’s considering it, maybe, if you just push a little harder, he might—

“That mouth good for anythin’ besides makin’ noise?”

“I — I’m…” your voice trails off, because suddenly all the air is sucked from your lungs, and there’s none left to breathe.

Only as the question bounces around in your harried skull does the insinuation sink in, gooey and unpleasant as it is. You don’t need to ask like what, because it’s clear enough to make your belly churn.

What else can you do but indulge him?

It comes out as a whisper. “Yeah.”

He bounces a shoulder to adjust his rifle strap. “Gon’ show me what else it can do?”

He asks it straight-faced. Tired, almost. An indignant expression consequent upon a taxing day and a struggle he didn’t anticipate, sour that you made him chase you. Maybe he’s thinking you can make up for it, that you owe him, because twice he thought about shooting you and twice he decided against it. Probably thinks he’s being merciful. Offering the possibility that you’ll survive him if you — if only you’d — if you’d deign to…

Fuck — is that what he is asking of you? Are you really going to suck him off?

Bruise-kneed, sweaty all over, sticky on the vinyl floor? Seems he’s unbothered that you’re all grimy and slobbery, still panting from his pursuit. A pitiful lump of meat and bone with a convenient hole or two or three depending on how much he decides to ask of you — or take from you, maybe, if you attempt to refuse him.

That’s the coin you toss. Tails: you fight him and fail, and he does what he wants anyway — rapes you, kills you, in whichever order he feels like, as hunters are wont to do. Heads: well, that’s self-explanatory.

You’re pretending you have a choice. Truth is, you don’t hold your dignity above your own survival. That’s the only reason you’ve made it this far.

You sniff. “Will you—” Every word you utter singes your throat on its way out, “—will you let me keep my stuff if I do?”

His face shows no tells. It’s dead-eyed and wanting. There's no gleaning from his body language whether he intends to return your belongings, let alone whether he has any interest in keeping you alive but for the warm throat you might offer him.

“Might do,” he grumbles. “You gon’ make a fuss?”

The breath you let out is shallow and shaky. “No.”

He takes a heavy step towards you, then. “Alright.”

“I—” You choke on a swallow, your tongue suddenly uncooperative, “—right now?”

He lets out a long breath, ragged and frustrated, and you can tell by the thinning of his lips that he’s considering it. Maybe he can spare a few minutes, he’s thinking, as his olive-oil eyes rake over you like he’s assessing a show heifer; you’re already kneeling, after all, and he probably doesn’t have anywhere to be…

“No,” he grunts instead, jaw tight. “Get up.”

“I don’t — but—”

“Make me tell you twice ‘n I’ll leave you here.”

Your heart skips over and you don’t waste a second before scrambling up to your feet. You’re dizzy, and your head is throbbing, but you think — that’s what he meant, right? — is he letting you come with him?

He shoves your pack impatiently into your chest and you just barely catch it, releasing a puff of bewilderment through slack lips.

“Thanks,” you murmur warily, slipping your arms through the straps as you return your backpack to its rightful spot. It feels lighter. He probably pillaged everything inside it; but as long as you stick with him, at least, it’s all still within reach. Maybe you could find a way to snatch it back if he drops his guard.

He snorts. The ghost of a smirk is gone as it came. “Sure.”

His tone is mordant and you get the distinct sense that he knows you have nothing to be thankful for; but, in truth, the fact that you’re still breathing is enough to leave you feeling resentfully, shamefully, overwhelmingly grateful.

“Headed to Little Rock,” he says bluntly, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Your eyes brighten a little. “Oh — that’s, that’s where I was heading, too.”

“Ain’t you lucky,” he sneers. “I wanna be in Coal Hill before dark.”

You nod vigorously. “I can keep up,” you insist, “I’m quick.”

“No shit,” he says, without a drop of amusement. You wonder if he’s still a little out of breath from the chase. “Alright then. Move. If you dawdle I ain’t waitin’ for you.”

“Okay,” you nod again, reaching for your crowbar out of habit, because it has been glued to your palm for a month straight and its absence makes your hand itch.

Before your fingertips graze it, though, there’s a fist around your bicep, tight enough to hurt. “Fuck you think you’re doin’?”

“Grabbing my — ow,” you bleat. “I’m not gonna do anything with it.”

“Think I’m stupid?”

“No, I just — you don’t want me to be dead weight, right? I need it, without it I’m—”

“Christ,” he sighs hoarsely, and you sense he’s already regretting his mercy — but, God, you hope he isn’t, because you don’t want to starve to death in this podunk fucking town with nothing but your thoughts to mock you as you die.

“Please, I won’t hit you with it or anything, I promise.”

He squints at you frustratedly as he considers it. You anticipate a no the longer he’s quiet, and you won’t push your luck by insisting any further — but eventually, with a rub of his temple, he grunts; “Fine. But you do anythin’ stupid with it ‘n I’ll put a bullet where it hurts.”

Your relief deflates you. You don’t like being unarmed. “I swear I won’t.”

There’s enough give in his grip for you to clutch at the red steel bar, and you snatch it before he tosses you by the arm in the direction of the exit.

“Move it,” he orders.

You nod and hurry towards the front entrance, nudging open the swinging door and returning to the street. The town is quiet again, but for the laden footsteps of the man that follows you out, and his ireful scoff when you turn and stare at him.

He’s tall. In the amber of the sunlight you might even mistake him for somebody kinder, but you don’t let the notion stick. No sense in pretending he’s anything more than what he is, in taking the risk of assuming he might be a half-decent man beneath that callused shell. He has made himself your only option by force and you’d best not forget it.

Still, you await direction, because you suspect any disobedience will piss him off. He says nothing but begins striding ahead down the road, and that’s instruction enough to follow.

You’re quiet for as long as you can bear to be; perhaps you don’t want him to forget that you’re there, a few strides behind, or maybe you missed conversation more than you thought you did. Solitude is maddening, in your experience. Turns you daft after a while.

“What’s your name?” You ask, cautiously but loud enough for him to hear, and his head turns just slightly over his shoulder. “Since I’m…” — there has to be a nicer way to put it — “Since we’re sticking together, or, you know. Whatever.”

“Speed up,” is all he says, more of a bark. “And keep your mouth shut.”

That leaves a pit in your stomach. You’re temporary.

The three-hour walk to Coal Hill is as uneventful as it might have been if you had made the trek along Route Sixty-Four by yourself, though it goes by a lot quicker.

He’s a quiet man. You’re not sure if it’s a survival tactic or a facet of his nature, but when he speaks it’s in single words, or sometimes two, if he’s telling you to shut up.

You haven’t been particularly talkative either. Every time you open your mouth it’s a gamble, a test of the waters — you want him to like you, as much as it humiliates you to admit, enough that he doesn’t immediately kill you for inconveniencing him. He walks with his revolver in his fist and his head on a swivel.

Inspecting him is all you can do in the silence, as you cling to his side or slightly behind, when your legs fail to keep up with his much longer ones.

He’s a hunter, alright. It’s written all over him so vividly it might as well be inked in his skin; kill or be killed. You get the sense there’s a lengthy trail of bodies behind him, enough that there might still be blood dried in the creases of his palms even after he rinses them. Forearms that have seen many throats, knuckles many noses, boots many ribs. You’re lucky you haven’t been at the end of them yet.

But — and this is something you noticed when he pursued you, though only now do you have the breathing room to consider it — he’s alone.

Hunters operate in packs, that you know. That’s what makes them so dangerous, so potently terrifying – where there’s one, there’s many, and by the time you spot one of them the rest have already ambushed you. These are the sorts of things you were told during your education in the Kansas City quarantine zone. You’d always been a touch circumspect of FEDRA’s rhetoric, but then you encountered a pack of them yourself, and the scaremongering suddenly seemed markedly understated.

You got away by the skin of your teeth the last time, and with not much left but a fuelless lighter and a bullet graze on your shoulder; but you had friends, then. Now you’ve got none.

Seems he doesn’t have any, either. And you’re not sure whether that’s much of a good thing.

By the time he finds a place to stop, the sun has set and the shadowy town is dark as pitch. If there’s a moon in the sky you can’t see it, and its lack of light does little to help you find your way as you walk quietly behind him, eyes flicking up from the rubble-covered road to the gas station you approach. There’s an empty pickup under the canopy with a door hanging from its hinges, and the smell of gluey gasoline hangs in a smog around the rusted old pumps.

“Are we stopping here?” You whisper, squinting at his silhouette as he leans his ear against the glass of the sliding door.

“Shut,” he hisses, before he hooks his fingertips into the door’s metal frame, and pulls it along its tracks; seems it doesn’t want to be opened, because it squeaks and moans for every inch it’s forced wider until it’s finally open enough for him to fit. He steps in before you, and you mousily follow along.

He flicks on a torch. Flecks of glowing dust drift through the cone of light, stirred up by feet the floor hasn’t seen in a decade, you guess. He combs the shelves with the torchlight, and they are bitterly empty. You imagine thirteen years ago, once the news of the outbreak hit this isolated hillbilly town, some lucky fucker got here first and swept every shelf clean, carting his spoils off in his truck to some field where nobody would reach him. You wonder if he made it far.

Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that anyone was left behind.

“Seems like there’s nobody here,” you breathe.

He grunts in agreement, shambling over to the counter before he slips his pack from his shoulders and dumps it on the surface, and the torch points up towards the ceiling. He lets out a beleaguered huff as he leans on his knuckles, head drooping from thick shoulders, and you’re certain that to speak would annoy him, but—

“Long day?” You ask, quietly but not quite a whisper.

To that he scoffs. You’re not sure if you amused him.

“Yeah,” he huffs, turning to face you as he leans himself against the counter. “Long day.”

“Me too,” you say, a touch sheepish; his rude arrival in your day made it a hell of a lot longer than it needed to be, and you’re sure he’d say the same thing about you. “Least we can get some rest now, right?”

Fraternising with him feels strange, like an embarrassing faux-pas, because despite efforts you haven’t quite forgotten the deal you had apparently struck. What are you doing here, someone might ask with their nose turned up, you should have cracked him over the head with your crowbar when you had the chance.

And to that, you’d say; you’re a survivor, just as much as he is. The methods may differ, sure — his is marauding and yours is consorting, two vastly antithetical means, but you’re sure that underneath the ethos is the same: the ends justify them.

You’re not a fighter, you think. You didn’t do much combat training while you were holed up in a FEDRA shithole and the brief taste of it you did get you were terrible at. You’re better at making friends. Or, allies, better fitting — people aren’t especially friendly in a world like this one.

This beast of a man is built for the slaughter, that much you can tell. Many will have tried to fight him, and that many will be dead. You don’t plan on being one of them.

“Uh-huh,” he drones, uninterested.

You foolishly think, for a moment, that’s the end of the short conversation. That next he’ll tell you to shut up again and to find a spot to lay out a bedroll, because you’ll be up bright and early to continue the journey south-east.

Seems your luck is still running short, because instead he crosses his arms, and with an impatient huff, grumbles;

“Time to get that mouth busy, girl.”

Well — Jesus — you definitely didn’t expect something so brazen nor immediate. Your guts turn to lead and just about plummet out of you once he says it.

“You want—” you hesitate, digging fingernails into your palms, “here?”

“Yeah. Here.”

A dispute bubbles up your throat like a nervous burp, and you almost let it out before you swallow it. You’ve made it too far to refuse him now, and frankly you’re scared of what he’d do if you even attempted to; he’d probably scold you for wasting his time and shoot you in the head. Maybe he’d rend open your jaw like a bloater and fuck you in the throat anyway. Most likely, though, and somehow worst of all — he’d take everything you have and leave you here to die.

It’s only fair, you tell yourself; he has held up his end of the deal so far, because you’re still breathing. He’s simply cashing the cheque you surrendered to him.

“You’ll… you’ll take me with you to Little Rock, right? If I…” God, why can’t you say it?

He lets loose a harried sigh. “Sure.”

Not altogether convincing. Even if he said so just to appease you, though, what recourse do you have? It’s a gamble, sure, but — nothing ventured, nothing gained, so the old adage goes.

“Okay,” you murmur, but the sound barely escapes you, as you slip your backpack from your shoulders and place it gingerly on the floor. You sweep a few loose hairs from your face as you draw in a slow breath, inching closer to him warily as if anxious he’ll bite.

Lowering yourself to your knees is enough to make you nauseous with chagrin.

Some part of you wishes he’d just fuck you instead, it’d be much less effort and far less humiliating — but it’s a mouth he wants, so it’s a mouth he’ll get. You wonder if he gets off on your embarrassment, if he enjoys the image of you debasing yourself for a chance at his mercy. You wonder if it’s been a long time since he’s had a girl blow him; stealing pussy from ambushed victims is easy, a pragmatist like him might say, since it doesn’t come with the risk of teeth. Or maybe, if you give him just a sliver of grace, he simply likes getting his dick sucked.

His eyes track you on your way down, black as beads in the dim torchlight bouncing off the ceiling, and his hands are already at the buckle of his belt.

Your heart races high in your chest, and your blood is molten, metallic on your tongue from where you bit it when he tackled you. Stomach’s all knotted and queasy with apprehension and it fizzes in your throat. If he has any sort of infection, you loathe to consider, you’ll most certainly contract it.

But when he pulls his fly down, and you awkwardly shimmy to sit on your knees so that you’re eye-level with it — the cock he pulls out of his boxers is, to your relief, nice. Looks clean, looked after, like he might have even bathed today. A small mercy, you suppose, but your mouth still goes cotton-dry at the thought of swallowing it.

All of it is surreal. Some kind of humidity-induced fever dream, feels like, all sweltering and thrumming — or maybe you just hit your head harder than you thought — because how the fuck have you ended up here? A few hours ago you were still dithering about setting foot on a paved street for fear of awakening a clicker, or setting off a shin-height nailbomb.

Now you’re on your knees and you’re looking at a cock.

One that was only half-hard when it was first presented to you, but you watch it thicken and climb before your eyes, head rubescent and shiny as it fills with blood. It’s a rake of a thing, just about doubling in size as it swells, protruding heavy from a bed of black curls; darker around the base but ruddy pink at the tip, the clear delineation of a circumcision two-thirds of the way up.

It’s strained. Angry and belligerent as it bobs with his heartbeat and waits for your tongue.

He’s not patient. Time slowed as he unsheathed himself but you know, rationally, only a few seconds have passed before his hand is at the crown of your head, fingers clawing through your hair to pull you in.

He draws a breath through his teeth when your timid hand curls around him, half-heartedly running up the rigid length of him and back down, because the less time his cock spends in your mouth the better.

You repeat mantras to yourself. Just a dick. You can do it. Just a dick, and you’ll get your stuff back, and you’ll survive. You’ll survive. You’ll survive.

When you brush the soft head with your lips, you falter.

“Watch those teeth,” he growls, before you’ve even opened your mouth; “f’you even think of bitin’ I’ll hurt you worse.”

A threat both menaced through a tight jaw and breathy with a want so savage it sends a shiver prickling down your spine. You don’t doubt it, either. His pistol is — well, actually, you’re not sure where he’s put it — but you bet he’d find ways to use his hands to follow through, if he felt so inclined.

Instead those hands busy themselves with the hair at the back of your head, and the tip of his cock twitches against your lips, so you hold your breath and open your mouth.

Goosebumps prickle from your scalp to your ankles as the underside of his glans drags smoothly along your tongue, deeper into your mouth, until you’re halfway down. It’s salty. Briney and sticky with sweat. It takes up more space than you expected it to, sliding against the inside of your cheeks until your mouth starts to water, gooey saliva pooling under your tongue.

His breathing frays but his hands speak for him; fingers finding a grip on your hair and cradling the base of your skull, he drives your head back and then pulls it in, and it’s clear what he wants from you. No doubt your timidity is making his teeth grind together, too tentative to do it properly; so with a wet breath through your nose, you shut your eyes and swallow your pride.

It’s not your first time sucking a dick. Maybe if you pretend this one belongs to that cute medic from Kansas City, you could even force yourself to put the effort in. You balance yourself with a hand on his thigh, fingers hooking into the folds of his jeans, and the other hand busies itself around the base of him. You suck your cheeks in, and you run your tongue up and down the ridge underneath, paying special attention to the base of his head; and that pulls a hoarse groan from deep within his chest, one that resentfully makes your cheeks burn hot.

“Yeah,” he grunts approvingly. “‘Atta girl.”

It comes out harsh and breathless, almost proud, and — God, why did that make your stomach flip?

It’s only biological, you think. Something programmed by millennia of evolution and embedded in the very fibres of you; it’s not like you can control it, how your pussy beats like a heart, rataplan in the organs wound up between your hips.

Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, though, no matter how much you try to rationalise it. Your mind is cleaved into contradictory thirds, by turn eager to satisfy him (for pragmatic reasons, of course), and resentful that you’ve lowered yourself to this point, and humiliated that you might even be — no, you’re not enjoying it, it’s something else. Something you don’t quite have the self-awareness to dissect and you’re not sure that you’d even want to try.

It helps a little, you loathe to admit. Makes your mouth wetter and your throat looser when he groans like that, all hoarse and jagged. You can swallow him a touch deeper with each bob of your head, and your hand moves with it, tightening around the base of him — and soon he’s all but growling, callused fingertips burrowing into the nape of your neck.

He only gets rougher as he climbs closer.

Warm saliva oozes out of the corners of your mouth and dribbles down your chin. He ruts into your mouth as if driven to, clutching your skull with each mammoth hand, touch-starved, and you try to slip breaths in during the short seconds before the thick head of his cock plugs the back of your throat.

It doesn’t surprise you that he’s not very talkative. It’s all grunting and ragged huffs through gritted teeth, and every now and again he lets you move your head of your own volition — if you’re charitable, really charitable, maybe he is actually trying to be gentle with you. Gentle as a man like him can be, at least, making an effort not to tear your scalp from your skull or choke you to death with his dick.

“That’s it,” he chuffs, voice low and raw, punctuated by a grunt, “easy.”

Your head swims, submarine throbbing in your ears, skull so full of blood and confusion and cock that you begin to lose track of up and down — easy? You think that means slow down, so you do, but that only encourages him to drive his cock deeper into your throat, and it hits a spot that induces a noisy gag and a wet splutter. You look up at him plaintively and meet his tight-jawed stare; now your eyes are watering, and your nose is running, and you just want him to hurry up and—

“Mph—fuck,” curses spill from his maw as he fists at your hair, pulling it tight enough to make you chirp but the sound gets stuck in your halfway up your neck.

You feel his dick jerk in your mouth to the tune of a ripsaw groan, and heat fills up the back of your throat; thank God, you think, he’s coming. Finally. You don’t taste much of it before you swallow, but then it keeps pumping; it’s brackish and bitter, tacky, coats the roof of your mouth as you coax the last of it out with your tongue. Not particularly pleasant. You shudder as it slides down to your stomach until you’re glutted with it.

His greedy hands are a little softer, now, easing their grip on your hair as you drink the rest of it down. No spitting, you tell yourself; you’re not about to half-ass it, not while your life still balances precariously on his desire to keep you around.

He slumps back against the counter with a sated huff, and winces when you move your tongue; maybe he’s the type who’d like it if you kept going, you wonder, but then he pulls your head back with your hair in a fist, and his still twitching cock slides from your mouth. A band of glossy saliva sticks to the wet tip until it snaps and lands on your chin.

The quiet that settles is leaden. Broken up only by his abrasive breathing and the noise of you smacking your lips.

He glowers down at you with a gravity that frightens you, and you feel it sinking in your stomach — panic, because just like that, you’ve ostensibly served your purpose. If that’s all he wanted from you, a throwaway hole to fuck and a mule he could plunder supplies from, then you have little use left.

Your typical hunter would have killed you by now. Really, your brains should be leaking out on the floor of that hardware store.

The thought has crossed his mind, you can tell. A glimmer of blood red in the back of his eyes like it had caught the reflection of the torchlight. It’d be easy, if he wanted to. He’s got your throat nice and exposed with his grip on your hair, pulling your head back until you’re facing the ceiling. Heavy stare rakes over you like he’s considering the best way to do it.

Instead, he lets go of you.

Maybe your luck hasn’t yet run out.

“Was,” you pause to swallow, “was that good?”

That seems to amuse him, he lets out a dry huff as he wipes down his cheeks with an open hand. He says nothing for a moment, only regards you circumspectly with tired eyes.

“Yeah,” he hums, tucking himself back into his boxers and zipping up his jeans. “Y’did good.”

There’s a buzzing in your chest when he says that; because that must mean you’re not as expendable as you had feared, and surely, surely that means he has decided not to be rid of you.

Still, the urge to ask nudges against the back of your teeth a few times before you finally let loose the question, and it comes out as a deflated murmur.

“Are you gonna kill me now?”

He isn’t as amused by that question. He rubs his brow with his thumb and shuts his eyes as if exasperated by your persistent eagerness to live.

“Get yourself some sleep,” he grumbles. “We’re rollin’ out at dawn.”

Your optimism isn’t yet entirely snuffed out. Seems you might survive until morning after all.

You lay out your bedroll beside his, on the dusty sticker-tile floor behind the serving counter.

If he’s irritated by your proximity he doesn’t say so; not in words, anyway. Perhaps it seems overly ingratiating, an unctuous effort to cozy up with your captor — but in truth, it’s practical. If he gets up and tries to leave without you, you’ll hear him.

Besides, if he wanted to kill you in your sleep, you think, he’d do that whether you were right next to him or on the other side of the gas station.

You do your best not to ruminate on the fleeting feeling that it’s nice to lie next to another human again. The sound of steady breathing, of rustling fabric as he rolls onto his side away from you; something about it mollifies you. A paradox of distrust and unease webbed with a deep-seated, primal relief that you’re not alone anymore. It’s nauseating to consider that your inborn desperation for company has you welcoming the presence of a man like this one. Has you willing to swallow his come and sleep beside him like he isn’t a threat to your life.

Maybe if you knew just something about him, you wouldn’t feel like a reprobate for it.

“Gonna tell me your name, now?” You whisper, lying on your back, head tilted to stare into the back of his head.

His shoulder rises and falls with a beleaguered breath, and at first you don’t expect an answer.

“Joel,” he murmurs. And just as you open your mouth to reply, he adds, fed up; “don’t go tellin’ me yours. I don’t wanna know.”

That makes your brows scrunch together. What, does he think it’ll be easier to be rid of you if he never learns your name? Maybe that’s the only way he’s ever done it, shooting innocent people before they get the chance to speak, so he can pretend their deaths mean nothing. In obscurity they’re all just game to be hunted, you guess. Empty vessels to steal from, wastes of the bodies they occupy.

You’re not about to let yourself stay nameless, not after what you’ve done for him.

You tell him your name anyway.

He says nothing.

Your sweat-addled dream is interrupted by the moaning of a wounded cat.

That’s what you think you heard, anyway, the echo of it bounces around between your ears as you break the surface of consciousness, and you’ve already forgotten what your dream was about. And as you lie awake, grasping at thoughts adrift to get your bearings back, you begin to wonder if you had dreamt the noise, too.

Then you hear it again.

Mournful, gurgling, the pained wail of something dying.

It came from inside the station. You’re certain. Next there’s the lazy, inconsistent shuffling of feet, the thump of something heavy knocking carelessly into a wall. The stink, too. You can pick it out from anything. That putrid, meaty miasma that oozes from their open, fungus-glutted wounds; yeast and liver meat and old piss.

Infected.

You’ve been lucky not to encounter any up close in the few days since Maya died, and even while you were with her your only hope was to run as fast as your legs could drive you, praying that the sound of your beating footsteps didn’t lure even more of them to your tail.

Alone, though, you’d have no idea what to do. In such close quarters, a quick-footed runner could intercept you easily if you dared try to bolt past it. Just moving could alert it to your presence there, and if it gets any closer to where you have tucked yourself behind the till, it’ll hear you breathing.

But, you remember, you’re not alone.

He lies on his back, a hand resting on his stomach, face twitching as he ignorantly dreams. He looks less jaded, less hateful in his sleep; permanently furrowed brows are softer, indignant lips loose and murmuring. In a way, he looks slightly worried. You’re sure myriad horrors infest his nightmares.

The thought crosses your mind, only briefly, a whisper of a thing — maybe, you could take his things and dash into the night. Leave him to die at the hands of the infected woman shuffling around between the aisles. You could take his handgun, it’s right there, you can see it tucked into his jeans. There’s a rifle propped up by his backpack, that’d be useful. Or valuable. He probably has food, too. Lots of it, by the looks of him.

By your estimate, though, your odds of surviving are ironically higher with him around. In this very moment, at least, while a runner hobbles around a few feet away from you.

You gingerly lift an arm, careful not to rustle your sleeping bag, and nudge him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” you breathe, so quietly you suspect it wasn’t even audible; and despite a jab to the arm, he doesn’t budge. “Joel.”

With that he awakens suddenly and with a sharp breath, eyes bursting open like you had slapped him awake — and before he can make a noise, you slap a firm hand over his mouth. Beard is oddly soft.

His eyes dart to you, and there’s a burgeoning fury burning up within them; but then the runner splutters out a well-timed cry, and his knitted brow smooths over in realisation. You carefully withdraw your silencing hand and glare at him supplicantly — please, you want to tell him, don’t let us die.

He sits up slowly and you back away, watching in silence as he rises to a crouch and peeks around the corner of the serving counter. Returning to you, he points at the floor, and you interpret it to mean stay put — you can read it in his stiffened expression, too — so you do. Your stare follows him as he makes his way to his feet, every movement controlled and balanced; until he takes a step toward the noise, and in panic you grab the jeans at his shin.

“What are you doing?” You mouth. Surely he’s not planning on approaching the thing unarmed — what kind of fucking lunatic tackles a runner?

He snatches your hand by the wrist and tugs it away. Hisses through teeth; “I’ll handle it.”

Well practiced in this, you suppose, as he releases your hand and you tuck it into your chest. You wonder if he’s the type to kill all the infected he encounters, instead of running from them as you do. His odds of survival against them are markedly higher, you bet. Proven, in fact, by the way he stalks towards the runner you can now see, shambling through the aisles aimlessly and jerking like a marionette played by a toddler. With his shoulders hunched, entire body at the ready — he lunges.

You’d sooner shoot yourself than attack an infected hand-to-hand, and yet he has sprung on it like a mountain lion; with your eyes peeking out from behind the counter, you watch him drag the thing down with a thick arm locked tightly around its throat. It splutters and spits and coughs out wet cries, gulping on nothing as he chokes the air out of it — after a moment the noises die down, and he finishes it off with a wrench of his arm and the bone-chilling crack of a snapped neck.

It flops to the floor once he lets go of it, limp as a sack of flour. A sharp breath escapes him before he pushes himself to stand with a hand on his knee. Just like that. What would have likely been a life-ending encounter for you had you been on your own, done and dusted.

“Sun’s risin,” he mutters, as he leans and looks out the glass door of the entrance. Still closed. “May as well hit the road.”

Still looks dark as night by your estimation, but after that display you’re not about to argue. You roll up your sleeping back and stuff it into your backpack, picking the grains of sleep from the corners of your eyes as you stand yourself up. You feel vividly awake by virtue of all that adrenaline pumping from your chest.

“How the fuck’d that thing get in here?” You ask exasperatedly, creeping over to get a closer look at it.

Recently infected, as far as you can tell; had functioning eyes, it seems, though blood-red and sunken. Black blood around its mouth and under its fingernails. Doesn’t fill you with confidence to think she likely would only have been bit in the last week or two.

“Probably wandered in through the back,” he says, unfazed.

You shiver at the thought that they might be intelligent enough to open once-closed doors. “Thanks for killing it.”

“Uh-huh,” is all he says.

You wait by the sliding door with your hands around your straps as he puts on his pack, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and returning his handgun to the back of his jeans. You take a mental note of that.

Opening the door is just as noisy as it was the first time, though now it frightens you tenfold, because you expect there’ll be more infected hidden just out of sight, docile until alerted to your presence; he seems unbothered, though, as he indifferently gestures for you to go through the gap.

Almost smug in his lack of concern, as he strides ahead through the forecourt and back to the unending road. You can’t help but let his confidence rub off on you; if he isn’t worried about some stray infected, maybe you needn’t be either. While you’re stuck with him, at least. Just so long as you don’t get yourself in harm’s way. You don’t expect that he’d rescue you.

“Where are you headin’?” You ask, scurrying to catch up to him. Right ahead of you lies the imminent sunrise, the faint yellow glow of it beneath the horizon, turning the black sky a vibrant shade of deep blue. You’re still heading east, as you have been for the last week or two.

“Reckon we’ll head back up to the I-40,” he says frankly, voice still rough with sleep. “Follow it down to Knoxville ‘n stop there for the night.”

We. You try not to cling to the relief. “How far is that?”

“‘Bout twenty miles.”

That pulls a moan from you. “That’s ages away.”

He scoffs as if to laugh. “Use ‘em quick legs of yours.”

It’s baking morning by the time you speak again.

Normally you’d feel compelled to fill the prickly silence, a pathological need to talk and talk and talk, pursuing at least some connection with anyone in your company. It’s a good practice, in your experience, ensuring that you’re likeable, if memorable. Tactic as much as a habit.

There’s an elephant in the room preventing you from going about normal conversation, though, great and ugly and stuck in your gullet. You don’t know whether to acknowledge it or tip-toe around it; whether you should behave any differently or attempt to act as normal about it all as you can, given the circumstances. It’s not often you suck off a man without knowing his name and under not-quite-stated duress.

You have questions, but you daren’t ask them; does he expect you to do it again? Will he want something more the next time, if he does? Or, were you lucky enough to get away with sucking his cock only once in exchange for permanent protection all the way to Little Rock?

You don’t particularly want to know the answer to any. Seems he won’t bring it up, so you won’t either.

The silence is wounding, though. It throbs within your skull like a headache, pounding and angry.

“Um,” you start with a clear of your throat, “have you got any water?”

As you think about it, you haven’t had a drink since late afternoon yesterday, because your bottle ran dry. You’d been boiling river water for weeks, and couldn’t help but fantasise about finding a jug of unopened spring water sitting in an old corner-store fridge, free of silt and sand. You were interrupted before you could find yourself anyway.

“Haven’t got any o’ your own?” He asks, disapproving.

“No,” you murmur. “I ran out.”

He’s quiet as he considers how generous he wants to be. “How thirsty are you.”

You get briefly stuck on how honest to be. The last thing you want is to be demanding or burdensome, because the everpresent threat of his abandonment looms ahead like a black cloud. The answer is very, though. You’re very thirsty, and the more you think about it, the chalkier your mouth feels.

“I’m — I haven’t had anything to drink since yesterday.”

“Jesus, girl,” he grumbles, pulling his pack around to his front and unzipping a pocket. “Ain’t got a clue how you made it this far.”

You scoff. “I would’ve got myself some if you hadn’t attacked me.”

He gives you a hard look as he pulls out a metal waterbottle, navy enamel chipped around the dents in it. “Count yourself lucky I didn’t put you down,” he sneers, unscrewing the lid. “C’mere.”

He slows to a stop and you follow suit, just about outstretching a hand to take the bottle you expect him to offer you; instead, though, he catches your jaw in a hand and you almost bite your tongue in the shock.

You’re in trouble. “I wasn’t—”

“Y’get three sips,” he says rigidly, “no more’n that.”

“Okay,” you eke, his thumb in your jugular, and he tips your head back as you open your mouth.

Your eyes fix to him as he begins to pour, and the lukewarm water pools in the back of your throat. He’s miserly with it, a paltry stream of water fills your mouth until you swallow; he continues pouring until your second gulp and with that his generosity runs dry, leaving you lapping at the air once the water stops coming.

He lets go of you, and you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, watching mournfully as he takes a sip or two himself before screwing on the lid and putting the bottle away. It was scarcely enough to slake your dehydration, and if anything it leaves you thirstier — still, you’re grateful, and earnestly surprised he gave you any at all.

“Thanks,” you say, squinting in the glare of the hot morning sun as he continues ahead, and you follow. After a minute or two, the need to talk rears its head once again. “Why don’t we cut through the forest?”

As you’d expect, he’s irked that you even spoke. “What.”

“It’s so hot,” you lament. “At least we’d be in the shade. Plus I bet there’re more infected hanging around this fuckin’ town.”

“Takes too long,” he says, after a while. “Only one way to go if we follow the road.”

You sigh glumly. “I’m sweating buckets.”

“Better find some more water, then.”

“I could, if we were following the river.”

“I ain’t stoppin’ you,” he jeers, “you wanna wander off, be my guest.”

“That’s not fair,” you grumble.

“Ain’t it?

“You have my stuff, so I can’t go anywhere else.”

He clicks his tongue. “Guess you’re stuck, then.”

If he’s trying to rile you up, it’s working. Frustration simmers up in your chest and you feel it flare hot in the back of your neck.

“You make a habit of taking people’s shit so they’re stuck with you?”

“No. I usually kill ‘em.”

“Gonna kill me next, then?” You argue, though the regret is quick to swallow you.

He looks at you, and while you don’t meet his glare you can feel it weighing on you — and, like the last time you asked, he takes too long to reply. Busy dwelling on the thought, you bet, combing his eyes over you to look for an excuse.

“You gonna give me a reason to?”

You catch his eye, then, and his expression is severe. Crow’s feet crinkled in the sunlight and lips in a line. You could ask him what would count as a reason as far as he’s concerned; only attacking him? Refusing to another sexual favour? Simply saying the wrong thing?

Doesn’t matter. You don’t plan on doing any of those things. Not yet, anyway.

“No,” you murmur.

“Good,” he says. “I like you better breathin’.”

You blink at him. Nicest thing he’s said yet, but you don’t let it fool you. He likes you breathing because a dead girl can’t suck his cock.

“You killed a lotta people?” You ask, frank about it as you can be, though you’re not altogether sure why you asked it. Maybe he’ll show a lick of guilt, and the knot of worry in your stomach might loosen just a touch.

He huffs. Not a good sign. “Just keep walkin’.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” you murmur.

“Take it however you want.”

The only respite from the heat of the midday sun is a northerly breeze, zephyrs that are cool and dry and evaporate the sweat that lacquers your skin.

The stretch of road you walk is mercifully lined with tall and bushy shagbark hickories that, if you walk as close as you can to the edge of the street, offer spotty shade from the sun that sits at its zenith in the middle of the sky.

The highway itself is largely empty. Overgrown shrubbery and kudzu vines spread over the scant cars and guardrails alike, and every now and again you think you see a rat scurry out from beneath the greenery. If Maya were with you she’d try to catch one for lunch. The thought makes your tummy rumble.

“Do you have anything to eat?” You ask, swallowing at the thought, and you wish you hadn’t seen that rat.

He turns to look at you as if he had forgotten you were there. Squints at you from the shade of his sun-bleached ballcap, orange canvas faded into beige with a Longhorns logo embroidered on the front of it. He’s down to a t-shirt now, having shirked his overshirt an hour ago, once the temperature reached its peak; a Rorschach of fabric darkened by sweat travels down the centre of his back, and you wonder if he’ll end up forsaking that one, too.

“Not much,” he says, after a moment, turning ahead to continue walking.

“What do you have? More biltong? Or…”

“Couple cans of beans.”

You’re hungry enough that wet, lukewarm kidney beans sound appetising. It takes you a second to gather the courage. “Can I have some?”

He shakes his head. “Saving ‘em. I’ll get us a rabbit or somethin’.”

That’s enough to brighten you with excitement; fresh meat, real meat, the thought alone makes you slaver at the mouth.

“Soon?” You ask hopefully, legs moving a little faster, and you catch up to him.

“Later.”

You groan. If later is an hour away you’re not sure you’ll last that long. “Surely you’re hungry too.”

“M’always hungry.”

You bet. “Then why can’t we stop for food now?”

“”Cus I said so.”

Your head tumbles back off your shoulders, though he’s not looking at you to see it. “How long, then?”

He grunts irately. “Will you stop fuckin’ whining?”

You scoff, briefly offended, almost having forgotten the pretense of your being stuck with him. It’s incongruously easy to forget that your life is provisional to him, a switch he can flick off should the impulse strike him; but you’re not versed in apathy. It doesn’t come naturally to you, reticence nor disinterest, because you’ve spent a lifetime cozying yourself up to people stronger, hardier than yourself.

Typically, in your experience, that necessitates congeniality. You’re finding it difficult to maintain the opposite, even in the interest of placating him.

Spite keeps you quiet for now, and perhaps that was his goal. You seal your tongue to the roof of your mouth and spare him the inconvenience of your voice for another twenty-odd minutes of walking, walking, and walking.

Only once you approach a bridge does he deviate from the highway, hopping over the guardrail and veering into the treeline with a dry, “C’mon.”

“Where are we going,” you ask mutedly.

“Findin’ a spot to stop.”

You let out a moan in relief. “Thank God.”

He snorts, and you follow him down an overgrown slope, elbowing your way through bristly shrubs towards the bank of a bubbling creak. A minor tributary of the Arkansas river, you suppose. The canopy of the summer trees is dense and bushy along the waterside, it’s well-shaded, the air far cooler than on the sun-baked highway.

He stops at a bend in the riverbank, where a flat promontory of smooth stones and gravel feed into the water. He kicks one of the rocks as if assessing it.

“How’re you at startin’ fires,” he asks, hands resting on his hips as he watches you come to a stop beside him.

“I’m good at it,” you affirm. “I’ve got — well, I mean, assuming you didn’t take it, I’ve got a firesteel.”

“Good, but it ain’t magic,” he tuts, painfully condescending. “Y’still need good kindling — dry kindling, then you’ll need some—”

“I know,” you bite, squinting at him indignantly.

“Alright then,” he sneers, as he slides his hunting rifle from where it was hung on its shoulder and holds it in both hands.

As you see it up close — slender wooden frame, long thin barrel, bolt-action — you can ascertain the thing is designed for small game. Not something for picking off people at a distance, as you had first assumed. You’re surprised he carries such a thing at all, a weapon that isn’t for human quarry. He must hunt a lot of rabbits.

“Go’on and light us a fire, then. I’ll catch somethin’ for lunch.”

“Okay,” you murmur spitefully — and, as he turns to walk along the river; “Make sure you step quietly, y’know, so the prey don’t hear you. Heavy guy like you, don’t wanna scare ‘em all off, do ya?”

You’re surprised when he chortles, and warns; “Watch it.”

He doesn’t make it ten strides down the river before your worry rears its head. Speaks to a deep-set fear of abandonment, bordering on phobia, so irrational that the possibility of even this man leaving you behind — one who attacked, threatened, extorted you — is enough to send you into panic.

You don’t want to be a nuisance, nor needy, nor risk reminding him that you’re ostensibly a leech; but the dread is crushing, and the plea tumbles from your mouth anyway.

“You’re coming back, right?”

He keeps walking. “Uh-huh.”

You busy yourself in the time he is gone, collecting dry grass and brittle twigs, and a few larger branches that you break into smaller pieces over your knee. You set up a proper fire, the very picture of one; a nice circle of round stones to contain it, a pyramid of twigs and a bundle of straw within it.

It’s a good forty minutes before he returns, not long after you hear the distant crack of a gunshot carried by the breeze; and by then, you’ve got a nice steady flame going, tending to it dutifully with a prod here and there.

You look up to see him approach, and from his fist hangs a limp rabbit. Huge thing, a swamp rabbit, grown fat on damp river sedges and overgrown grass without anything to bother it.

“You caught one,” you say, biting your tongue, because you don’t want to sound too giddy.

“Mh,” he placidly agrees, dropping his pack on the rocks, and leaning his rifle against it.

“Big one,” you remark through a smile.

“Yep.” He sits himself down opposite the fire with a tired grunt.

You quietly observe as he grabs his ball cap by the brim and returns it backwards, then pulls a buck knife from his pocket and unfolds it with his thumb. He’s casual, almost thoughtless about it; holds the dead rabbit in a hand, belly-up, and drags the tip of the blade down its stomach; puts the handle of the blade between his teeth as he slides his fingers into the incision, separating furry skin from meat, working it loose from both flanks; and with a few pulls, its hide comes off whole with the ease of a jacket, and the naked pink carcass beneath it is floppy and shiny.

His focused stare flicks up briefly and catches yours, and you’re suddenly conscious of how raptly you had been watching him work. You didn’t expect that a hunter — and the irony is not lost on you — would be so competent at it. A deft enough butcher that every movement looks as natural as habit.

And, well — you abhor that the thought even smears its way through your head — you can’t look away from his hands. From the tendons that shift beneath the skin as he beheads the thing as easily as slicing butter and tosses it into the river. Bronzed forearms that flex and stiffen as he cuts open its belly and pushes his fingers inside, fishing out its stringy innards in one vinous mass and dumping them onto the rocks beside him.

“How ‘bout you make yourself useful,” he mutters, when he glances up to see you still spectating.

“Okay,” you agree, it comes out more sheepish than you had intended. “What d’you want me to do?”

“Find me a nice green stick, ‘bout three feet long and yay thick—” he pinches his bloody fingers together to show you a gap of about half an inch, “—’n make sure they’re green.”

“Yes sir,” you snip, standing yourself up and dusting off your bottom as you head towards the underbrush.

It doesn’t take you long to find one. The summer shrubbery is lush and busy with new growth, and you pull a freshly sprouted branch from a riverside tree. You pluck off the little leaves on your way back, and present it to him a little too proudly.

“That’s good,” he drawls, taking it and placing it beside him. “Now how strong are those arms o’ yours?”

“Um,” you pause, looking down at them thoughtfully, “depends.”

“Reckon you could lift a big rock or two?”

“I can try.”

“Alright,” he nods. “Fetch a couple decent rocks, then. Somethin’ to prop the spit on.”

Now you understand what his goal is, and you nod enthusiastically. “Right. Okay.”

This task takes a while longer. Not only for a lack of suitable rocks — you hunt for craggy ones with flat edges that a stick could balance on, and not soft round ones — but also because you are not as strong as you had hoped.

You were proud of yourself when you managed to pick up the first rock you found, even carried it a few feet; but before he could turn around and see it your arms had given out and you dropped it on the riverbed, where it promptly cracked into smaller pieces.

Eventually, though, you find one large rock that you roll towards the fire with great effort, then two smaller rocks that stack up to a roughly equivalent height. He watches you while you arrange them on either side of the fire, carefully balancing the second stone on top of the other, then stand once you’re satisfied.

“There,” you pant, dusting off your hands, “how’s that?”

He looks up as he finishes whittling the end of the stick you gave him into a sharp point, and nods simply.

“Good,” is all he says, but that’s approval enough for you to sit back down with a huff.

You’re back to observing, then. Eyes that follow his movements as he picks up the flaccid rabbit carcass from where he left it on the dry stones, then lines the point of the stick up with its rear; he impales it piecemeal, holding its chest in a big hand and shoving the skewer up its middle, push, push; before eventually the sharp end pokes out through its butchered neck, and he slides it down cleanly, so that an even amount of stick juts out from either end.

Now your mouth is watering, and you’re slightly uneasy, a feeling in your belly that you can’t pin. Must be hunger, you think, it’s making your mind fog up and your stomach all twisty.

He’s up and stomping on the fire until it dies to embers, spreading the coals out evenly to, you surmise, distribute the heat for a slower, more even cook.

“Oh, wait—” you chirp, suddenly standing and heading for your pack, “I’ve got salt.”

He looks at you blankly. “Huh?”

“I’ve got a salt grinder,” you repeat, burrowing through a zipped pocket to find it is one of the few things he hadn’t stolen from you. A glass grinder full of rock salt that you plucked from a convenience store a couple of weeks ago.

He snorts. “‘Course you do.”

“It’ll make it taste good,” you deride, a little patronising, as you walk over to where he stands with the skewered rabbit between his hands.

“Don’t matter how it tastes.”

You half-heartedly roll your eyes, but he doesn’t stop you when you grind a dusting of salt over the sticky pink carcass — even flips it so that you can salt the underside, too. It might have made you snicker if your hunger wasn’t souring your mood.

“There,” you say, satisfied.

“Happy?”

“Mhm.”

He chuffs, almost a snicker, as he goes to lay the skewer over the coals, balancing the stick on the rocks you had propped up for him.

“How long will it take?” You ask.

He sits himself down with a long, harried sigh. “‘Bout an hour.”

The groan you let out is petulant, and your stomach punctuates it with a deep rumble. You reconsider your frustration, though, when you realise that means a nice long rest, and you can finally give your legs a deserved break. You don’t know how much more walking you’ll need to do today, but you can safely assume it’ll be more than you’d like.

In the hour it takes for the rabbit to cook, he flips the spit every now and again, and you fill up and boil a few pots full of river water to replenish your empty bottles. You find yourself feeling restless after sitting for too long. Doesn’t help that the small hard stones of the riverbed are not all too comfortable to sit on.

He’s snoozing, by the looks of it, lounging against the trunk of a tree with his cap pulled down over his face — so you go for a listless wander up the riverbank. It’s blackberry season, and you’ve become a practiced picker. For a time it was the only food you survived on, after Maya bit the dust, because you weren’t nearly as good at trapping animals as she was.

The overgrown banks along the river are abounding in thorny bushes, spiky leaves turned vibrant green by the late summer, and their vines are laden with glossy black bundles. You pick yourself handfuls and eat them by the bunch, even taking a few of the sour red ones just to add to the mass, smacking your lips as you go. You’re sure your lips and teeth turn purple with the quantity that you scarf down, and you eat so many that it makes you burp.

Once you’ve had your fill, you decide to fill your hands with a pile of juicy black ones, and return them to Joel.

If it were any other companion, you think, you’d have done the same. He caught the rabbit, besides — if he’s going to feed you, you should feed him. Really, though, you feel compelled to ensure he continues to deem you useful. Not something only good for looking pretty and eating his food.

You nudge him with your boot where he leans against the tree, and he takes a sharp breath as he wakes up from his kip. He adjusts his cap on his head as he looks up at you.

“What?”

You hold out your handsful. “Found some blackberries,” you say. “Want some?”

“Mh,” he grunts, sitting upright, and opens a hand to receive them; you pour them into his palm, and the berries that had fit in two of yours fit in one of his. “Sweet ‘o you.”

Seems that’s his way of thanking you, so you return with a placid smile. “You’re welcome.”

Your hands are sticky with plum-purple juice, and you suck your fingers clean, briefly considering going back for more; instead you rinse your palms in the running water, and wipe them dry on your pants.

It’s another ten minutes before Joel deems the rabbit ready, and by then you’re practically frothing at the bit for it. Its once rosy flesh has turned brown and crispy, the outermost layer bubbles and drips fat down into the embers below. You can smell it, fried meat and grease, the sagey, smokey smell of cooked game, and your tummy is obnoxiously loud as you go to sit next to Joel by the firepit.

He lets it cool for a minute or two, holding the spit upright in the air and waving away the greedy flies that dare try to take your meal from you.

You bite your tongue, tempering your expectations, because you’re sure he’ll have his fill and then give you what meat remains on the bones when he’s done.

He cuts a V into the flank, skewering a chunk of stringy white meat on the tip of his blade, briefly assessing to ensure it’s not raw inside; and then, confounding you, he holds it out for you to take.

“Oh,” is all you can respond with at first, because the amalgam of surprise and joy keeps your tongue tied. “Thank you.”

You probably should have taken the hunk of meat with your fingers, but instead you lean forward, and eat it straight off the blade like a dog. Make the mistake of meeting his eye as you do it, and the dark look in his eyes is fleeting but familiar; the delight that fills you when your teeth sink in, though, is enough to flush away any shame that reared its head.

“Fuck,” you purr, through a mouthful, sitting back and chewing it thoroughly. It’s salty, smokey, the meat imbued with the gamey, peppery taste of a rabbit that lived on onion grass and berry thicket. “Mmm. That’s so good.”

He chortles as he breaks a whole leg off the thing, bone snapping where it dislodges from the hip; it’s dripping, and steaming, and you watch keenly as he takes a wolfish bite out of the shank. Though he conceals it well, you can tell he’s enjoying the seasoning you added. He shuts his eyes as he chews it.

It doesn’t take long for the two of you to strip the animal clean to its skeleton. He offers you a leg and another few hearty chunks, but the rest he keeps for himself. The meal ends with you sucking clean the bones, even the ones he discarded, nibbing off the last dregs of meat uncaring that they had been in his mouth already.

He’s amused by it. “Must’ve been damn hungry.”

You nod, pulling the last bone from your mouth with a pop and promptly licking your lips to savour the last of its taste.

You’re sure the slurping sounds you’ve been making aren’t doing yourself any favours, especially not when you glance up at him while your wet tongue runs along your bottom lip. He’s rubbing his cheeks as though contemplating. Ruminating.

Your tummy feels tight and you look away. Wipe your mouth with the heel of your palm, and clear your throat. Apprehension heavy as a stone sits low in your gut.

“Alright,” he huffs, standing up with a grunt, grabbing his rifle on his way up. “Let’s get movin.”

Your shoulders loosen, and you nod. “Okay.”

By the time you make it to evening your body is a husk. Skin brine-wet and beaten by a full day of sweltering late-summer sun, legs soft as jelly and just as wobbly.

Post-sunset brings a mild sense of relief, at least. The air is still humid as a greenhouse and too thick to breathe, but at least the sun has dipped below the horizon, and the residual heat is tepid opposed to scorching. Twilight-woken cicadas roar loud enough to make your ears ring, busy music of songbirds sweet enough that you can pretend the wild outside the zones is kind enough to let you live.

You’ve been trying to keep up with him for a good six hours since lunch, following the unending highway so long that you can see the cement when you blink, and you’ve got blisters on the soles of your feet. You passed a threshold somewhere close to fifteen minutes ago, a mechanical limit on your ability to persist; you can feel your vision closing in, buzzing and psychedelic in your periphery, and suddenly the road beneath you looks a little closer.

“Can we stop soon,” you breathe, as you stumble along, legs locking a few strides behind him. “Please.”

It takes him a moment to even acknowledge you, lumbering ahead uninterested in your moaning. With a sigh, though, he eventually relents. “Yep. Reckon we can find a spot for the night up ahead.”

“Okay,” you pant. “Okay, good. My legs are, so, sore.”

“I ain’t about to carry you if they stop workin’.”

You snort vindictively. “Wasn’t counting on it.”

His insistence on following the I-40 has meant that you’ve bypassed most urban centres, which you’re silently thankful for. The further he keeps you from risk the better, because you know he’ll exert no effort to rescue you should the worst come to pass.

Still, your limbs ache for somewhere to lie down, and the open road isn’t a particularly wise place to lay out your bedroll.

“There’s not going to be anywhere to sleep on the highway,” you say, “Should we turn off?”

“We’ll see.”

“But there might be an empty house, or something,” you plead. “We could sleep in actual beds.”

He rubs the back of his head with a stiff hand, and you know you’re testing his patience, so you decide to let the matter lie for a little longer. You stumble along behind him for another ten minutes, with your head hanging from your shoulders, watching as the mossy road passes underfoot.

But, your legs are weak. So weak. Bones hollowed out by exhaustion. You think you might have fifty steps left before you inevitably collapse.

“I can’t keep walking,” you lament, “I think i’ll die.”

“Settle down,” he replies, and you can barely lift your head enough to look at him. “Here.”

“What,” you say dimly.

He stops at an RV, parked on the edge of the road. Something out of the nineties, you think, long and angular and painted with stripes, colours you can’t discern in the bluish dark of the evening. It’s rusted, on a slant by virtue of two flat tires, and one of the windows on the side is smashed in. A torn, mouldy curtain floats out through the spikes of glass left in the frame.

“C’mon,” he orders, as he tears open the side door, and it opens with a loud crack. “We’ll hole up here.”

“Okay,” you breathe, as he gestures for you to step in before him.

Inside it’s murky with dust, and the dry air smells like mould and burnt paper. It’s dark, too, save for the low blue light of the evening suffusing in through the lace curtains.

There’s a small dining booth with a peeling vinyl bench seat wrapping around it, a decrepit kitchenette, and at the end of the narrow space, past some cupboards, a double bed with a striped blanket crumpled up on the mattress. Seems like as good a spot as any. No back doors for an infected to stumble through. Joel steps in behind you and shuts the door.

You sluggishly go for the cupboards, driven purely by habit as you swing them open and burrow through the shelves — though you find, literally, nothing. The entire RV has been completely gutted, evidently, not even empty cans or rubbish left behind.

You stop by the table. There’s a small piece of paper sitting on it, torn out from a ringbound notebook, weighed down by a teal-oxidised quarter.

You drop your pack on the floor and lean on the edge of the table as you pick up the note.

Lisa,

I’ll be gone when you read this. I don’t have a good reason to give you, I’m sorry. Please don’t miss me.

— Jacob

What a prick. The fact that the note was left on the table tells you Lisa never returned to see it, and you hope she died thinking the man wrote it hadn’t abandoned her and taken everything with him. You also hope Jacob, whoever he was, met a deservedly painful end.

Joel’s in front of you when you look up from the letter, and your heart suddenly quickens; his arms are crossed over his chest, and he’s looking down his nose at you. Eyes leaden and wrinkled in the corners, and in the near-dark they almost look black.

“How’re them legs,” he asks. You assume the worst of the question; if you’re unable to walk he’ll put you down like a lame horse.

“They’re fine,” you murmur. “Numb, mostly.”

He lets out a humourless puff of air, offering no sympathy. Then he nods at the paper in your hand. “What’chu got.”

“Just a note,” you answer, and you crumple it. “Doesn’t matter.”

You take a slow breath. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you, you can feel it; you’re not sure if it's resentment, or something worse, because he doesn’t speak. You fish for words to give him instead.

“How much longer ‘til we get to Little Rock, d’you think?”

He scratches his chin, runs his fingers through the coarse hair of his beard as he thinks about it. “Couple days.”

“Damn,” you say, deflated. And after a moment, ask; “you got someone waiting for you there?”

“S’none o’ your business.”

You half-roll your eyes, because despite efforts to the contrary he answered your question. “Who is it?”

“Fuckin’ nosy, aren’t you,” he grumbles.

“No, I’m just — I’m making conversation.”

He exhales irately. “I don’t want conversation.”

“What do you want, then.”

You regret the words as soon as they spill from your tongue, because there’s a shift in his expression, and his arms unfold. Hands hook on his hips as he sucks down an irascible breath.

“What d’you think.”

He says it so bluntly that it almost doesn’t register as something uttered in hunger, especially considering he hasn’t even put a hand on you yet; instead he’s patient, waiting for you to come to the realisation on your own, because he likely expects you to acquiesce without the need to force it.

“Um,” is all you can muster, because your heart is tripping over itself, and you don’t know what to say. “I thought…”

“Thought what.”

You grimace as you search for euphemisms for what you want to say, because you can’t quite muster the bravery to tell him you thought — hoped, rather — that you’d only have to suck his cock once. That you might have proven your worth beyond the succor your body can offer him. You suppose, as you think about it, that a handful of berries alone was never going to be enough to satisfy a man who was initially going to kill you.

Refusing is, most likely, a fruitless endeavour, and it’s one you don’t want to risk taking. Not when he’s looking at you like that, and the tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife.

“I um—” Christ, it’s hard to speak, “—I don’t want to, to use my, um, my mouth again.”

That amuses him. “No?”

You shake your head.

“That’s alright,” he concedes. “Turn ‘round, then.”

sorry lovies, this puppy is too long to have in one part on tumblr. read the rest on ao3 <3

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