This time, I awoke to a pale-skinned woman lying naked on my chest. The shelter was still and dim, the only sound the faint crackle of embers settling in her stove and the slow, even draw of her breathing. I didn't move. Something about the stillness felt fragile — the kind that breaks the moment you reach for it — and whatever this was, whatever she was, I wasn't ready to end it yet. So I lay there and looked at her for a long time as she slept.
Up close, there was no mistaking what I had only half-registered in the fever haze of the previous days. Her skin was pale in the way that suggested it had never really seen light, the kind of pale that read almost luminous in the low glow of the stove — but it wasn't simply fair. Now, with her pressed against me, I could see the texture of it. Almost like scales. Overlapping, impossibly fine, the way a snake's hide catches light differently depending on the angle, shifting from one shade to another as she breathed. It wasn't grotesque. It was precise. Like whoever or whatever had made her had been working from a different template entirely and had done an extraordinarily thorough job of it. Her hair lay across my collarbone, dark and heavy, and the weight of it felt entirely human. That contrast was the thing that kept catching me — the parts of her that read as woman layered over the parts that didn't, and neither set canceling the other out.
Then her tongue came out of her mouth in sleep, slow and involuntary the way a dreaming dog might twitch its legs. Long and forked like a genuine snake's, testing the air for something even in unconsciousness. I watched it retract and felt the strange prickling at the back of my neck that I'd learned long ago to pay attention to. Not fear exactly. Something more like calibration — my nervous system quietly updating its working model of the world to include this new information.
The revelation was unsettling in the clinical sense. It should have had me pulling back, creating distance, reassessing. But I also felt something else sitting right alongside the unease, and I was honest enough with myself to acknowledge it rather than pretend it wasn't there. There wasn't a sense of danger or predatoriness about her. No threat signature, nothing that tripped the deep animal wiring that had kept me alive through worse situations than this one. I'd spent enough of my life around genuinely dangerous people to know what that felt like — men and women both, the ones who smile and mean something other than warmth by it, whose stillness is the stillness of a thing deciding. In the realist sense, people like that are predators. I'd learned to feel it before I could name it. I didn't feel that from her. No hostility, no calculation lurking under the surface warmth of her care.
What I did feel was that she was hiding something significant. Whether that concealment came from fear of my reaction, from some deeply conditioned instinct toward self-protection, or from something I hadn't mapped yet, I couldn't say. People hide things for as many reasons as there are people. I knew better than to assume the worst before I had evidence for it, and the evidence I had was this: she had found me dying in whatever this world had made of Griffins County. She had carried me here, or gotten me here somehow. She had dressed my wounds with knowledge and precision and care. She had stayed.
Whatever she was hiding from me, she had not left me to die. That weighed more than my unease.
I also knew, with a clarity that had nothing to do with logic, that even if her motives turned out to be something I'd object to in the cold light of full information, it wouldn't change the way I felt looking at her. That was the uncomfortable truth I sat with in the quiet of her shelter while the embers shifted and she breathed against my chest. I had been drawn to her the moment I had enough consciousness to register her presence. The feeling hadn't faded as I got better — it had sharpened. She was dangerous in a way I couldn't comprehend and couldn't measure, and rather than pushing me back it pulled me forward, because it was a kind of danger I hadn't encountered before. Not the danger of malice. Something older and stranger than that. Something that made me feel like I was standing at the edge of a question I'd never thought to ask. I had to find out what that feeling was, or I'd spend the rest of whatever time I had in this place wondering.
She stirred. A slow surfacing, the kind that doesn't happen all at once. She yawned wide and stared into the middle distance with those eyes that weren't like human eyes — the pupils wrong, the color sitting in the iris differently than it should — and stretched both arms out with an unselfconscious animal ease that made something tighten in my chest. The change came a few moments after that, whatever subtle shift occurred each morning between the version of her that slept and the version of her that inhabited the waking world. I still hadn't fully catalogued it. I wasn't sure I could. This woman may not have been entirely human, but if she wasn't, then she belonged to this world in a way I'd never be able to claim. She knew how to survive here. She had been surviving here, alone, for what seemed like a very long time.
She smiled when she finally registered that I was awake — a real one, not performed, the kind that arrives before a person has decided whether to let it — and rose without self-consciousness to begin the morning's work. I watched her move across the shelter toward the supplies and the bandages laid out on her workbench, and I realized with a strange jolt that I didn't even know her name.
"What is your name?" I whispered.
"Aphanea Isisha…," she whispered as she carefully changed my bandages.
"That's a beautiful name. I'm Thomas Hawthorne," I whispered.
"I am honored to meet you…," Aphanea whispered.
She continues to dress my wounds. I admire her sensual nude body. All I want to do is lay her down and make love to her or bend her over the bed. Her eyes instead shifted to my erect manhood under the animal skin cloth. I couldn't hide it now, anyway. With both hands, she massages my cock under the cloth. The way she rubs my rod slowly with her hands is gentle, and her touch is soft. By now, her sharp nails didn't bother me at all. She removes the cloth after a short while. I can feel her forked tongue licking the head on my shaft. It wraps around my cock before she swallows my huge junk. As it is, there is no way she will be able to swallow my swollen stud down to its base, but she tries to bobble her head up and it down to its base. The woman knew exactly how to fellatio a penis. I knew she was a virgin from the sex we had. After the ordeal, she thoroughly cleansed her body but bled plenty. My eyes lock with hers as she works her tongue and mouth. She holds my gaze as I suddenly climax. Her mouth catches a torrent of hot semen, filling her mouth to the brim. She sucks up every drip, and I am left clean and dry as she suckles the tip of my penis.
As soon as she finishes cleaning up, she looks me straight in the eye. I couldn't resist bringing her close to me and kissing her passionately. For a moment, she's surprised by my gesture, but she responds with enthusiasm. We almost make love right there, but she pulls back. The look on her face told me that she was serious. The look on her face told me that she was serious.
"I must check the perimeter lest the monsters come back," she whispered.
I nod in agreement. This woman has lived alone like this for some time. It's become part of her daily routine. 'I wonder why she is alone in this dead place.' Her nude body filled my mind, and my eyes went over every detail of her body. I watch her hastily dress and leave. Her absence has a physical effect on me. It hurts, and needles prick my heart. I found myself worrying about her safety and cursing myself for being weak. I test the weight of my body. As I thought, I was still too weak. Next time I cross paths with that monster, I know what it fears. That will be our last encounter and revenge for killing those boys the way it did. By my count, I estimate two days have gone by, but realistically. The days here are a toss-up. I check my gear to ensure everything is in order. Even my rations were still there. I check the radio and call Farrah.
"This is Thomas. Is everything okay in the cabin?" I whispered.
"Thank god you're alive! What happened to you?" Farrah cried.
"I don't know how to say this, Farrah, but I'll just come out and say it. Is Appoline and Dalilah near?" I asked. "Yes, they're right here. So are Deputy Orkan and Doctor Wise," she answered.
"Brad, Lawrence, and Todd are… they're dead. No one should come out here without being armed and having access to fire. There are… monsters beyond the passage to what used to be Griffins County. As you know, it's not there anymore. I don't know where I am at the moment, but I'm fine. I'll find a way back. Just stay safe," I said.
I could hear them crying in the background. Deputy Orkan came on next.
"Should we be worried?" Rhonda asked.
"Yes… this thing was deadly. I almost… Well, you get the picture. How long has it been?" I asked.
"One day, but at least forty hours since you disappeared. It is just about to get dark. Everyone is at the hospital or High School. Right now, Dad is sure these are all that is here. Around three hundred. Don't worry, we're armed. The girls are going to the hospital with me. So, I hope you don't mind. I helped myself to some arms and hardware from you, dad." Rhonda explained.
"Take what you need. Remember, this thing isn't fond of fire. It's not the only thing out here. I came into contact with some raptor dinosaur-like creature, and they lurk out here too," I revealed.
"Copy that… stay alive out there…," she said. I stuff the radio in the backpack and hobble back to the bed.
Aphanea knows how to survive. I should find out more about her. She uses her workbench for various things. However, I am still determining what those uses would entail. There's a makeshift stove in the east area of her shelter, but it's sturdy. Many Shelves display dried vegetables hanging from the ceiling. She has a bow with arrows hung on the wall, along with a bone sword. Most of her tools are bones with animal hides kept together. The same goes for furniture. She has another stove against the wall to the west, where she keeps herbs for medicine. I had seen no signs of vegetation, but it must be here. The Long-term survival of our town depends on many factors, which is why we need to focus on learning what dangerous lies beyond. Unless we can achieve this in the long run, we can never survive on this planet. We must learn to live like Aphanea, who has lived here for a long time, to live here and prosper in the future.