Cultivator in a Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter Ninety Eight - Apples and Pairs

The suffering endured by the pack of single dogs reached new heights.  But what could this group of mostly straight men do when there was a serious lack of available straight women (or single gay males, one particular person pouted during the testosterone filled gym session vent)?  Eyes began wandering towards the one woman still roaming free, but she just stared them down one by one and dropped their hopes into a deep barrel of excretion.  "Don't even bother thinking about it," she warned them as she polished the custom crossbow Shaun had not long finished creating.

It was not that Monika didn't want to find a man to walk beside in her future, just that even before the End, her standards had been higher and she herself would confess to being higher maintenance than their former 'princess' Brooke and she felt no reason to change that.  She would have said that she didn't particularly mind about his appearance, but he couldn't be too ugly, he didn't have to be a kind person, so long as he was kind to her.  The pay check didn't matter too much, but there was no way she'd accept some loafer who wanted to sponge off of her.  Equally, he shouldn't be tight with money, but not a spendthrift.  Educated enough, she couldn't stand dumbasses, but not so educated that they looked down on the publicly educated with average grades like herself.  Naturally no criminals, no addicts, men with bad habits could be fixed but ones with disgusting habits were to be avoided.  The list continued on... obviously now there were a few adjustments, such as the money thing.

She didn't particularly want children herself, but she also recognised that it might be unavoidable; this was an era of survival, if she could get pregnant and chose not too, wasn't that being just a bit too selfish in the long term?  Not that she disliked kids, Lucy was adorable, little x was very cute, despite being a boy filled with drool, but she hadn't the patience for raising them herself, so that would fall on her future man's shoulders... along with all the farming, at least half the housework, the cooking (she burned water) and she wanted a pampering massage at least once a week on top.  Then her inner Empress might just be satisfied.

So the single straight men that outnumbered her quite a bit dropped this idea and all volunteered to be amongst the group transporting the first harvest of apples to the army base.

Autumn giggled once Dexter told her, while he was tapping a pen upon a notepad writing a list of supplies she wanted him to try seek out.  Salt was no longer on the list, but also, they weren't ready to share their discovery wanting to see how their experiments developed before they offered the results to the base.  This wasn't just out of selfishness.  As Ren Zexian had mentioned, the root of the False Nettle was too potent for the consumption of ordinary people, but if they knew about the plant and did not heed the verbal warnings, blame might still land on their doorstep.  What they were hoping to develop instead to share, was a universal 'salt' in dried leaf form for the purpose of cooking, with instructions for its usage.  That way, they could offer this salt solution safely to outsiders.

"Well, I wish them luck," Autumn washed the courgettes, tomatoes and aubergines in a bowl of clean water before placing them to one side.

"They'll need more than luck," Dexter sighed, tossing down the pen.  "I definitely recall seeing more men than women at the base last time.  What's the chance of their being a girl who doesn't have a few men chasing her?  That and I can't take them all with me.  Who'll be left to defend home?"  Autumn dried her hands on a tea towel and came over to squeeze his tense shoulders.  His hand covered hers as he head leaned back to rest against her warm chest. 

"I was actually going to ask, if I could go with you," she confessed, softly, causing him to look sharply upward, his body becoming tense once more.  "I want to help you... but also I wanted to check on Brooke." Seeing his frown, she added; "I know I don't owe her anything, it's just that, it was my mother's last wish for me to look after her."