Anything for Food - A Post-Apocalyptic Erotic Tale

Anything
for Food

A
Post-Apocalyptic Erotic Tale

by:
A. Morrel

Text copyright © 2013, Amy Morrel

All
Rights Reserved

Table
of Contents

Andi fled through the woods as though her life depended on it.
She'd been fleeing for hours, ever since lunch time, and dusk was now
falling.

When she and Patrick sat down to their first decent lunch this
week they were careless. After finding an abandoned house with some
canned goods still on the shelves, they took the food and left.
Patrick built a fire outside and, once it was burning well, slid an
opened can into the edge of it to heat.

As the food warmed, three men appeared from nowhere and charged
them. Patrick drew a knife and turned to face two of the three. The
men drew knives themselves and went after Patrick. When Andi saw the
first stab sink home in Patrick's side, she started running. She'd
been running ever since.

Her tired legs eventually failed her. She stumbled and fell,
striking her head on a tree root that protruded from the ground. Andi
was thirsty and starving. When the added pain of a throbbing headache
struck her, she gave up caring about anything. She curled up into a
fetal position and sobbed as the light leached from the sky and the
scent of rotting leaves surrounded her.

She lay there crying and wondering how the world could have gone
so crazy in less than a month. Slowly her tears subsided, segueing
into snores as her exhausted body took over from her mind and
demanded rest. Her mind, no longer in control of her body, slipped
into dreams of the past month and the insanity that had replaced the
world as she had known it.

Andi dreamed about the last few weeks as she slept:

The bank she worked at closed in the middle of the day. She was
glad she'd taken her coat and purse to lunch with her since they
weren't letting anyone into the building and they were escorting
those inside out.

A day or two later the restaurants just didn't open one morning.
The grocery stores followed suit two days later.

Her boyfriend left for work one morning and she never saw or
heard from again. When she started looking for him she found that he
never showed up at work. No-one had any idea where he was or what had
happened to him.

At the end of the month, when she tried write a check for rent,
her landlord told her.

“Cash only. The damn banks aren't open to cash a check at.”

She went back to her parents' house and stayed with them for a
while. With no job and no apartment, she had nowhere else to go, so
she moved back in with her parents. She just stayed there in her
parents' house all the time; at least until the food ran out after
the first two weeks. She and her parents were the lucky ones. The
neighbors ran out much sooner. After her parents ran out of food
she'd spent some time out of the house, looking for food to no avail.

As if the previous dreams weren't bad enough they continued on
into the more recent past.

She relived her parents' house burning down in the middle of the
day. No firefighters or police responded to the flames. She still
didn't know if her parents made it out of the fire or not. The entire
neighborhood had gone up in flames just because someone was stupid
about how they tried to stay warm. She tried to find her parents but
there were so many people running and screaming that she couldn't.
When the crowd started turning ugly and violent she'd left and begun
walking.

She admitted it to herself once she was out of town. She was
running in terror. She was not one of those people that was willing
to do violence at the drop of a hat. She would much rather simply
leave, since she didn't think there was anything at all worth doing
violence over.

She left the suburbs and headed out towards the more rural areas.
Lots of people did the same and most of them did so much sooner than
her. After five days of looking for anyone that needed help of any
sort, she'd had no luck.

The electricity had gone out everywhere after her second day of
walking so the nights were truly dark now. There were no tiny little
beacons of light from people's houses, no streetlights, and no hum
when you passed under the power lines. Once again the night sky was
ruled by the moon and stars.

She was lucky while she was searching for work. A couple of people
were kind enough to give her a meal, but that was all. They didn't
need any more help. The two households that gave her food were
already swollen by the addition of extra people, refugees from the
city. She continued walking and on the far side of the rural
community that she made her way through while looking for work, she'd
met Patrick.

Patrick had scrounged some food and he'd shared with her. They'd
talked and, if he asked, she probably would have slept with him. But
he didn't ask. He was just happy to have someone for company and no
longer be alone.

Patrick's food lasted for a week. They holed up in an abandoned
house and used his little camping stove to cook it. The fuel ran out
before the food so they ate the last couple of cans cold. Then they
set out again, together now, looking for anything that might help
them survive.

She and Patrick had spent several days with no food, getting their
water from streams and ponds. Eventually they found another abandoned
house to break into. Down in the basement she found a small stash of
home-canned food. They stayed in the house for a few days eating
their prize and resting, but this time they decided to start moving
before the food ran out.

When the food was gone it was a week before they found more. They
were down to trying to eat some of the plants that were just poking
their sprouts up when they finally found more food. It was only five
cans of vegetables so they started moving again immediately after
splitting a can between them.

The next afternoon, they were cooking their lunch when three men
appeared. Without a word, they'd rushed Patrick and the cans of food
next to him. Andi was sure the men killed Patrick since she saw one
of them thrust a knife into his side. She hadn't stayed around to
find out or to make herself a target. She'd been fleeing ever since.
Her fear that they might think she possessed something they wanted
pushed her beyond her normal endurance. She was sure they were
chasing her so she kept pushing herself along as quickly as she
could, even when her fastest was only a staggering walk.

She woke up, sure that it was all a nightmare, until she stretched
out and barked her knuckles on the protruding tree roots. There were
stars in the sky and a sliver of moon was visible through the small
leaves of early spring, but there wasn't enough light to illuminate
the floor of the forest. She gave up her idea of moving on and, with
a sob, slumped back into sleep.

The nightmares began again.

Andi woke to the damp grayness that preceded dawn. She heard
something or someone moving around in the woods nearby. They were
trying to be quiet but not entirely succeeding. The attempt at
stealth made her fear it was a person and not a wild animal. She sat
up slowly and huddled back against the nearby tree. Andi was cold and
sore, hungry and thirsty, but above all else she was terrified that
the men had caught up with her.

As soon as she sat up, the noises stopped. She knew that whoever
it was saw her movement and was now sneaking up on her, moving more
quietly than they had earlier on. She sat there trembling from the
cold and her fears, waiting for a chance to run. If she could just
see where they were then she could run in the opposite direction. As
the sun slowly rose the area brightened, bit by bit. Finally, she
could see her surroundings. She scanned the area but was unable to
spot anyone.

I
have
to
run,
she
thought,
when I move maybe they will also and I'll be able
to see them.

She slowly inched herself up the tree
until she was standing. When she pushed off from the tree and started
to run, her legs refused to cooperate. She stumbled and fell to the
ground. Her legs would not obey her when she tried to force herself
into a standing position. Despair took her as she lay there, waiting
to be grabbed. She was shocked when a pleasant male voice called out.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to
scare you. I heard something crashing around in the brush out here
last night and thought I might be able to bag a deer if I was out
here early enough. I didn't know it was a person or I would've come
out when I heard you.”

The voice was a solid baritone that
sounded rusty from disuse.

Andi rolled onto her back and saw a man
looking down at her. There was a haunted look in his eyes for a
moment before he shook his head dismissively. After that they were
just ordinary eyes with a hint of curiosity in them.

He leaned over and offered her a hand
to help her up. She instinctively took his hand and he hauled her
onto her feet. Andi was about average height for a woman and she
wasn't at all petite but the man had effortlessly supported most of
her weight with one arm as she stood. She saw that there was a
crossbow slung over his back and caught herself staring at it. She
knew what it was in general, she'd just never seen one up close
before.

Andi continued to lean on his arm, in
order to stay upright. The man noticed where she was looking and
began to speak.

“Oh that, I didn't want to
attract attention with a gunshot if it was a deer, so I brought this
along instead.” he said, gesturing to the crossbow, “There
are far too many other folks in the area that would hear a gunshot
and come to check it out. If I take down a deer I want to keep the
meat for myself, not have to share it out to a bunch of folks that
wouldn't offer anything in return.”

“Oh” Andi said, her voice
scratchy from the dryness of her mouth and her thirst.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Andi coughed several times, trying to
clear the gummy feeling from her mouth.

“Dry mouth, need a drink.”
she said.

The man pulled a canteen from his belt
and handed it to her.

“Just water I'm afraid, but I've
got plenty of that to spare.”

“Thanks” said Andi as she
spun the top from the canteen and proceeded to drain it dry in less
than a minute.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught
him staring at her breasts. She'd leaned back to drink from the
canteen and the movement had made them even more noticeable than
usual. By the time she'd emptied the canteen, the man's eyes were
looking at her face.

“Wow, you were thirsty weren't
you? Well, that's all the water I have on me. If you want to come
back to my place I can get you some more. It isn't far, it's just on
the other side of that rise.” he said, pointing.

“Thank you again... I don't know
your name, I'm Andi.”

His face broke into a wry smile.

“Sorry, I'm Jake.”

“Thank you again Jake. I'm not
sure about your offer. No offense, but I don't know you. I'm pretty
sure someone was chasing me yesterday. I was afraid they were going
to catch up with me so I just kept going until I couldn't any more. I
thought you were them when I heard you moving through the brush.”

“Well, I didn't hear anyone else
out there when I was scouting the area earlier on, just you. So, if
they were chasing you, they aren't close to catching up.”

“Good, maybe they quit.”

“My offer stands, if you want
some more water you can come down and get some. But I don't do
delivery.”

“I'm not trying to be offensive,
but how do I know you aren't a nutcase intent on doing something to
me?”

Jake looked around in an exaggerated
fashion. He raised a hand to waist level, palm up, and gestured to
the surrounding area with it.

“There's no-one in sight. If I
wanted to do something to you, it would be done already.”

Andi looked at Jake, scanning him up
and down. The wry smile that was still on his face decided her.

“Alright, where is it?”

Andi tried to follow when Jake started
to walk towards the rise he had indicated earlier. As soon as she let
go of his arm, her legs started to give out and she had to fight to
remain standing. She paused for a moment, noticing that Jake had
stopped to wait for her. When she tried to take a step again, her
legs cramped up on her badly and she started to fall before Jake
noticed and caught her.