Chapter 2
The highway meandered for some distance, the birdsong overhead providing a peaceful backdrop to Tiffany’s surroundings as she walked along it for days, the melodic sound of insects and birds only broken by the faint tap of the fallen branch she used as a walking stick.
The grassy stretches had given way as the trees grew thicker, providing more shade.
She didn’t worry about it being one of the fae forests.
As long as she was near human roads, she was certain that she was safe.
Its beauty didn’t possess the haunting danger and ethereal glamor that she had heard the fae forests possessed.
That was fine with her.
It was beautiful to her.
It was certainly a marked improvement from the town.
She didn’t know what she had been thinking when she settled there.
Here the air was fresh and clean, and the breeze refreshing.
She tipped her head back as the wind whipped through her hair and drew in a deep breath.
No choking smell of unwashed bodies crowded into the small confines of the buildings, but she was going to need a bath herself soon.
Her hair felt greasy, and her scalp and skin itched from the accumulating sweat.
She sniffed delicately at her underarm and wrinkled her nose.
Yeah, a bath was called for.
Following the sound of insects, she plunged down a dirt road that broke off from the highway, disappearing into what appeared to be an old forest that had long grown by the road.
The road looked like the sort that would be taken by recreationalists in the past when they were looking for ideal camping and fishing spots.
She had memories of doing those things as a child with her family though they were distant and faded like old photographs she occasionally found.
Old branches grew out over the narrow road the further she went until she was forced to push her way through them as she attempted to avoid those laced with webs from perfectly normal spiders.
She heard the water first and caught the fresh scent of it before she saw it.
The road flattened out at a grass turf beside a river.
Tiffany sidled up to the water’s edge and looked down at the gentle current.
It appeared brisk enough so that the water didn’t grow stagnant there and wouldn’t breed many mosquitos—or so she hoped.
With a hopeful smile tugging at her lips, Tiffany followed the river a short distance so that she was not directly in sight of the dirt road—just in case.
Setting her backpack by a rock, she bent down and quickly drank her fill of the fresh, running water.
Once that need was taken care of, she immediately proceeded to seeing to her other need as she stripped out of her shoes and clothes and tucked them between the two large stones before digging out her soap.
She couldn’t wait to get clean! She hopped a little in excitement, her breasts jiggling with the momentum, as she turned to the water and looped the netted bag holding her soap over her neck so that it wouldn’t get lost.
Jewel-colored dragon flies chased each other over the water, seemingly in invitation.
“Don’t mind if I do,”
she told them, and laughed quietly at her own giddiness.
She dipped her foot in the water and shivered.
“Brr that’s a bit chilly. Perfect.”
She splashed forward into the river, the small, smooth stones digging into the bottom of her feet.
She squealed softly, giggling as she made her way out there, hopping from one foot to the other briefly as she chased away the shocking chill.
It felt good though.
Even though the river only came up to just below her breasts at its center, she could feel the cool water working into her muscles and washing against her skin soothingly.
Tiffany bit her lip and crouched, sinking deeper into the water so that the water lapped against her neck as the gentle current rolled around her.
Dropping her head back, she soaked her hair and ran her fingers repeatedly through it, rinsing the grime from its length.
Gods that felt good.
How long had it been since she had a decent bath? She didn’t believe she had a proper one since moving into town.
Water had to be drawn daily, and there was a limit per person that left little to wash properly if one wanted enough to drink during the day.
Most of her baths were little more than a rag dipped in water and hastily washed while using what little water she had left from the day to scrub her hair to the best of her ability while bent over her washing basin.
Fully submerging in clean water was a luxury she hadn’t felt in a while.
She lifted her head from the water and quickly lathered her hair with the soap.
It didn’t smell like fresh flowers like she had hoped it would when she helped her neighbor make it—actually, it kind of had a bitter tea scent that didn’t really appeal to her.
But at least it would get her clean, so she ignored it as she rubbed her scalp vigorously, the refreshing tingle of the mint and rosemary rushing over her head in passing.
Dunking her head, she rinsed her hair thoroughly before tackling her body with the same spirit.
She was standing in the river, water pooling around her thighs as she soaped her midriff when a crack of branches from the shore sent several birds into startled flight.
Her muscles tightened with fear.
Who could possibly be out in the middle of nowhere, far from any settlement? Veiling her privates with her hands to the best of her ability, her head swung in the direction of the sound.
As her gaze flicked among the trees, a small tremor raced through her.
Her first instinct was to call out, but she snapped her mouth shut and pinched her lips tightly together as she slowly sank down into the water.
The last thing she ought to do was draw attention to herself.
Even if someone suspected that there was a lone woman, she certainly wasn’t dumb enough to confirm their suspicions.
Tiffany held her breath and sank even deeper into the water so that everything except her eyes and the top of her head was submerged as she quickly drifted back behind a fallen tree leaning at a steep angle in the river.
Only then, when she was certain that she was well concealed behind its trunk and its mass of branches dipping in the river, did she slowly rise from the water enough to spy on the bank from her vantage point.
There was another loud crack and another as the nearby undergrowth within the forest shook aggressively with whatever was moving through it.
As much as encountering a predator frightened her, she genuinely hoped it was a bear.
At least a bear would get bored and amble off even if she had to wait it out for a short time.
“Timmy, over this way,”
a coarse voice broke from the trees.
“Coming, Burt.
Damn brush caught me by the ass of the pants,”
the man’s companion replied plaintively.
“Are you sure that there’s someone out here? I don’t recall seeing sign of any females this way.
I sure as hell don’t want to be chasing after some guy.
We don’t need any more men in our camp, that’s for sure.”
She instinctively stopped breathing, her entire focus narrowed in on listening and watching as they crashed through the brush.
Her lungs were already beginning to burn by the time they finally stumbled from the trees.
Her eyes were watering from the effort to remain silent before she consciously dared to risk taking a breath.
With great effort, she slowly, and quietly, released her pent breath to sip in another.
Although she doubted that they could hear from so far away, every sound she made was unusually amplified to her.
Every breath sounded like a gust of wind, every drip of water or ripple in the surface of the river when she moved sounded like a violent splash.
Even her heartbeat thumped far too loudly in her ears.
Because of that, some paranoid part of her was certain that they could hear her and use it to discover her location.
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip hard as she worked desperately to control her breathing so that she didn’t break out into a panicked pant.
They were getting closer and closer.
The leaves were rattling and branches breaking ever louder with their passage.
Suddenly the brushed parted and two men half-stumbled from between the trees.
They hadn’t come from the path that she’d taken but it was as if they had emerged from the heart of the woods itself.
She shivered as they watched them.
They did not look like any of the men from the settlements.
Their beards were long and even with wild growth and their clothing stained and worn thin in many places which meant that they hadn’t bothered to salvage in any of the deserted towns nor learned to weave cloth like some of the men in the settlement town that she had escaped from.
Instead, dirt clung to them to such a degree that she was certain that if she was any closer to them, the sour smell of their body odor would have made her eyes begin to water anew.
But that wasn’t what she was most concerned about.
There was something about the way they moved and the way their eyes scanned the banks as they drew closer that made her cling harder to the fallen tree and ducker lower among its branches.
It was the sharp hunger in their eyes that reminded her of a starving predator tracking its prey.
Only they wouldn’t merely kill her to feed as some of the monsters have done to humans they hunted.
No, her fate would be one of endless suffering at their hands.
Her teeth sank deeper into her lip until she tasted the faint bite of blood.
They were now at the edge of the river’s embankment, scouring the water’s edge as they tromped up and down the length of the small clearing.
“You see anything?”
the one called Burt shouted but Timmy shook his head and tucked his hands in his pocket with a sharp jab of frustration.
“Nah.
Hank swore he saw a woman heading down this way from his lookout, but I don’t see anything.”
He grimaced with so much disappointment that Tiffany smothered her smile behind her hand just in case she unexpectedly broke out into a giggle of relief.
It seemed that they hadn’t come across where she’d tucked her clothes away.
He shook his head with disgust.
“I swear to god, he needs to lay off the hooch when he’s on duty.
Remember when he sent up an alarm about a pack of wolfmen following the river? Caused a whole lot of panic for nothing.”
Tiffany froze.
Wolfmen...
along this river?
Burt slapped his knee with a shout of laughter that startled her hard enough that she would have lost the soap completely if not for the net bag around her neck.
It slipped from between her fingers, hitting her torso as it plopped into the water.
To her horror, Burt’s hand went up, silencing Timmy as he turned slowly back toward the river.
Tiffany felt a prickle of tears in her eyes.
Please.
Please.
Please, don’t let them find me.
A couple of minutes passed, and a goose squawked loudly as it took off from the water with wild splashes of its wings.
Tiffany could have kissed that silly bird with the way the tension receded from Burt as he shook his head and scoffed aloud.
“Damned bird.
I guess no soft company for us tonight.”
He sighed and moved back from the embankment.
“As for Hank—he’s no longer taking moonshine up into the lookout after that whole episode.
Lawrence doesn’t allow it
Timmy squinted over the water and Tiffany immediately shrank further into the tree’s branches until both men disappeared completely from sight—just to be on the safe side.
“Yeah, yeah.
So, you really don’t think he was seeing things again?”
Burt shook his head and spat loudly onto the ground.
“Nah, I don’t think so.
There was a woman.
He wouldn’t get so excited for nothing.
He just misjudged where she entered the forest is all.
We will catch up eventually.”
“Yeah...
well, I hate this damned forest,”
Timmy loudly complained.
“It’s hard to know where the original forest is and where the unnatural parts just come up on you and surprise you.”
His companion grunted loudly in agreement.
“We will just go a little farther downriver and call it quits for the night.
No sense in becoming lost once the sun starts to go down.
That’s when the things that look to eat you come out.
We will head back to camp and head back out with the dogs if we don’t come across her.
She won’t be able to run far, not if she wants to stick close to a guaranteed water source.”
“That means we’ve got her.
Good thinking,”
Timmy chortled.
“Let’s hurry on then.
I’m sure hungry.”
Tiffany made the mistake of peeking out just then as he grabbed his crotch lewdly.
“But if I can’t have that hunger satiated, I’m ready to have my stomach filled too.”
“I hear you, brother,”
Burt replied, a broad grin stretching his bearded face.
“Let’s go and see if we can find our girl.”
Over her dead body.
Tiffany’s nose wrinkled but she remained perfectly still as they re-entered the forest, not daring to move at all from the water until she was certain that they no longer remained in the area.
Even so, she was practically shaking with nerves as she dove from the water and rushed back up the embankment to remove her belongings from their hiding place.
She stumbled over the rocks jabbing her feet, dancing in place as she rapidly pulled her clothing back on before stomping her feet back into her boots.
She gave one last regretful look at the water.
She wouldn’t be able to safely travel along its banks now.
Nor could she risk stopping to camp for the night—not when she needed to put as much distance between them as possible.
At least she wasn’t the na?ve little girl that they seemed to believe she was.
That at least had to weigh in her favor a little—at least for a little while.
And in this world, there was only today with no guarantee that one’s luck would improve or remain unchanged tomorrow.
That was just how craptastic it was.
She shook her head as she turned back toward the forest and shouldered her pack.
Damned if a post-apocalyptic world wasn’t a terrible fucking place to be a woman.