ROTC

It’d all started out with Bryce thinking she was a hero. People started turning into monsters, willingly or unwillingly, and she was sure she wouldn’t change. Not into one of those freaks and not into the kind of person who’d kill someone over a can of beans either. She’d be one of the good ones.

But it wasn’t up to her. Oh, she didn’t Twist—not physically, at least—but she couldn’t overpower those who wanted to use her. Didn’t know how to fight, didn’t know how to use a gun, didn’t even own a knife. She hadn’t thought to take one with her when the military evacuated the city.

Then she thought someone else would be a hero. A woman, preferably. Someone strong and wonderful, like the woman she would’ve been, if she could’ve been. But there weren’t any. Other women she met were either in the same straits she was in or didn’t give a damn. And it occurred to her that they weren’t in her position because they didn’t give a damn.

It took some time… not being a virgin several times over by now… for her to realize the truth. For it to crystallize. It wasn’t a matter of heroism or monstrosity. It was evolution. They’d regressed, all of them, down the evolutionary ladder. Losing civilization, heroism, all of it. An amoeba, the lowest form of life, only concerned itself with eating. Grass only soaked up sun and water. You went higher up the food chain, you got beings that concerned themselves with finding a mate and a lair, other such niceties…

It was only as you got near the top of the mountain that your species cared about romance and feminism… really everything that she’d cared about, back when she was a person. They didn’t matter now. In fact, they were hindrances. She could get killed, thinking anyone cared about her literary aspirations. She’d be lucky to find someone who cared about getting her a tampon when she was on her period.

She ended up—Bryce couldn’t for the life of her remember exactly how, for there were entire months when she had to be an animal and they were walled off from the human her’s memory—at a trading post.

She didn't remember the first days of the Apocalypse, the Youtube doomsday prophecy. That time was just gone. She remembered being a SoCal sorority girl, a virgin. She remembered realizing that her trust fund and 3.6 GPA were no longer worth a tenth what she could get for opening her legs or her mouth. Between those two signposts in her life, she had been on cruise control.

She'd lost weight since then, good weight, leaving her ribs peeking out from her skin. Her Barbie-tan was now China-doll-pale. And her smile was just gone.

Her sexuality hadn't helped much. Those she'd trusted to protect her hadn't, and she changed hands like a boy's marble, ending up with someone who specialized in people who needed to be taken care of. People who'd do anything to be taken care of.

She'd prayed for death and the Kid had come, with a cart of furs for sale. Fast fashion wasn’t much good after the ending, rotting away. The well-to-do now wore tanned leather, homespun fabrics, things meant to last. A man who could go out and get hides was an entrepreneur.

It was not safe to travel at night and not wise either, in the dead of winter, so they’d sat and played cards. The Kid had the devil’s own luck; Bryce had ended up being bet by her owner to cover his losses. It was early on in the night. He bet her before his whiskey or his guns.

The Kid had won her, but barely spared her a look before going back to his cards. He'd asked her owner how he treated women. The Kid hadn't liked the way he'd bragged, or hadn’t cared. He shot the bastard either way, after the man had decided to make good on his losses by going for his gun.

After that, the Kid let the girls go, along with the boys. The other girls had left, probably to find new masters. Bryce stayed with the Kid, who could take care of her better than anyone else.

He hadn’t encouraged her, hadn’t dissuaded her. He had enough food to share with her and no real reason not to, for you could kill yourself carrying too much as easy as by having empty pockets.

It was something like freedom. He made no demands on her, other than to ‘make yourself useful’ from time to time and help him with anything that required more than two hands. Would a time come when he’d board a train and not bother to buy her a ticket? He talked about going West, or East… when it was cold he wanted to be South and when it was hot he wanted to be North.

Bryce still had no skills, beyond what everyone had picked up. Riding horses and tying knots. Her weight ran to three digits again, giving her curves, and pale as she was, her skin didn’t seem washed out anymore. She’d even squirreled away some cosmetics. A dab of red lipstick, she was convinced, brought out the fieriness of her hair. Got the Kid to look at her like she was there instead of something he was merely used to: sky, ground, Bryce

But he didn’t look at her like something he could do without. And that was the thing that mattered. An animal needed a strong mate. She had to give him what he needed. Take the decision away from him. Be in control of who was in control of her.

It happened weeks after he’d won her in that card game, when the ice had melted and even the nights were hot and sweaty. They’d made camp a little shy of a lake, enjoying the fresh water. The Kid went out to soak and usually Bryce would leave him to it, cherishing the protected isolation of having a man who’d come running if she yelled.

This time, though, she gathered her thoughts and set her mind into place. She had to separate herself from what had been. Technically, she’d had sex plenty of times… tonight, she would initiate it, though. Make it happen. Try to enjoy that.

Things that had happened in the past… she thought… it was all a blur. This time, she would be herself. This new self…

She snuffed the fire, as there wasn’t much use to it besides making coffee, and pushed through the few scrubs that separated their campsite from the water, so that no one headed there would spot them for free, as the Kid would say.

The Kid was out there, naked, floating on his back and seemingly asleep. Bryce made herself quiet. If he challenged her, asked her what she was doing, she’d never be able to explain it. She had to get to the point where it was obvious what she was doing. She left her shoes and socks on the shore, then hauled her dress over her head and stood completely naked in the shallow water.

She looked down at her silvery reflection in the shimmering water. It made her smile; she gently ran her long, tapered fingers over her voluptuous figure. Beginning at her firm, round breasts with their taut nipples and rose-colored areolas. Then she shut her eyes and slid her hands down her stomach—no longer hollow from bad food, no food, but flat and smooth, almost toned. There was no note of disgust with herself to obscure the delightful sensation her touch sent through her body.

Slowly Bryce advanced to the sparse triangle of pubic hair. She gasped when her fingers touched and lingered on the silky lips that led inside her—moist with readiness, twitching with eagerness. She stepped deeper into the water, covering her naked chest with her arms, as she would until the last possible moment.

The Kid noticed her, as the water sloshed up to her waist. He came up off his back and bodily sputtered for a moment, with no bottom under the water for him to get a foothold on. After a second, he was treading water, looking at her and turning away and looking again.

“Shit, Bryce, what are you doing out here? If you’d wanted a turn a-washing yourself, you should’ve called out. I wouldn’ta looked.”

Bryce smiled broadly at his Southern Gentleman shtick. He wasn’t really one, but he tried to be. Or at least he was in the habit of trying. “I thought you wouldn’t want me shouting all over creation—‘giving away our position’. Not when I could just come in for a swim.”

The Kid recognized his own words bouncing back at him. Bryce wondered if it was that or her lustful scrutiny of his nakedness that had him flushing red. Even when it was just his head and shoulders above water, he had nice shoulders. Nice arms.

She was embarrassed too and the thought that she could be sweetly ashamed of herself, after all she’d been through, excited Bryce intensely.

“Someone might come, even without you giving away our position.”

“I don’t care,” Bryce told him.

“You don’t have to care,” the Kid retorted. “I’m the one who’ll have to shoot anyone gets in the water with you.”

“And if I want them in the water with me?” Bryce asked, her face rolling with sweat, her body tremoring with a curious mix of stress and arousal—the sickly sweet feeling of being poised on the razor’s edge between acceptance and rejection.