Chapter Twenty Two

We stuck around the cellar for another two hours, raiding the stores for our lunch break and filling our bag with the supplies we could take back to base. We could have been in and out in less than twenty minutes, but it took an hour for the lich survivors to sit up and another hour before they could stand.

While they were still partially incapacitated, White hit them with the same recruitment speech I'd been given. In the middle of it, the teenager I'd seen in the office fell out of the bathroom stall he'd been hiding in. He was very lucky I didn't shoot him. White and I both had our fingers on the trigger when he started blubbering about, "Take me with you."

Doc called the boy several scathing names for staying behind, but sat him down next to the two lich, fed him, and checked him over for injuries. White immediately rushed upstairs to ask Grady and Carver if they'd seen any further movement of zombies in our direction, but it appeared whatever person had been attracting them had left on the chopper. New shufflers had appeared in the streets and none were acting like the building held a locus.

In the end, White made sure the boy understood what he was signing up for. She also checked his age—barely seventeen—and asked after his family—dead, for certain. He was young for a recruit, but teenagers his age were allowed to enlist with parental permission. In these trying times, White thought the Commander would let the lack of parental consent slide. The boy was certainly determined not to be shipped off, claiming he'd strike out on his own first and make us shoot him to stop him.

I had a moment of major dissociation when I realized 'the boy' was less than a year younger than me. We were practically the same age, yet I felt so damn old compared to him. I had to be eighteen, going on eighty.

Overwatch told us to bring him and the two lich to base. We were able to make it in a single trip by shifting the bulk of the supplies over to me and Grady, having the boy and Carver load up behind White, then having the two lich survivors ride behind Doc. If Carver hadn't been so thin and the two lich hadn't been so underweight from dehydration, we wouldn't have made it. As it was, Yoshi, the vehicle maintenance tech, was spitting mad when he saw us land. I was pretty sure he was about to sucker punch someone until Sergeant James came out to soothe his ruffled feathers.

"I'll take these three to medical," the Sergeant said to our squad as a whole. "Head to decon, then report for debrief."

The trio of survivors seemed like they wanted to argue, but none of us intended to hold their hands. No one had held ours. We immediately headed to our platoon's trailer, where the back door to the shower was already propped open and waiting on us. There were several plastic bins already lined up for us to drop off our gear and soiled clothes.

White shucked off her gear first without any regard for modesty. Ammo and spare magazines went into bin one. Weapons, after their barrels were cleared and safeties checked, went into bin two. Vests and helmets went into bin three and everything else went into bin four. Earbuds went into a tiny container on the rear bumper. The only things White kept in her hands were her combat boots and the holster with her personal side-piece in it.

She winked at me as she climbed bare-assed into the shower room and Doc punched me in the arm for staring at her. In my defense, I'd never actually seen a naked woman outside of a porno before and, even then, it'd been so fake I'd never understood why people thought it was so compelling. This was a type of shock therapy I wasn't expecting.

"Is she your type?" Carver asked as he started disrobing the same way White had.

I gripped my junk to check. "Guess not," I replied, feeling no response to the display of tits and ass I'd just witnessed. "Then again, I'm not sure if this thing still works."

The guys thought my comment was hysterical. They laughed their asses off while promising me, yes, my dick was still fully functional and would rise to the occasion when prompted.

"Hey!" I exclaimed in an attempt to defend myself. "You can't blame me for asking. Everything else about me is half dead."

"Sure we can't," Grady teased. "And if it was Happy who stripped down and winked at you?"

The image flashed in my head and I immediately wished it hadn't. In a split second, I learned two things about myself—I liked guys and my dick definitely worked. I don't know why it took me until I was eighteen to figure these things out.

"You suck," I grumbled. The guys roared with laughter as I adjusted myself in my cargo pants, but the joke was on them. White called out to say she was done and it was our turn to shower.

Grady helped to distract me by showing me how to clear my weapon and separate out my gear, even though it was mostly self-explanatory after watching the others. What helped most of all was when he went into mentor mode and explained, "We'll have to clean the weapons ourselves after debrief. They only go back to storage after they're a hundred percent blood-free and dried out. Our armory guys aren't infected or immune, as far as we know, so a drop of blood could kill them. As for our gear and clothes, the immunes who took our loot earlier will put them through the same decontamination routine they used on the packaged goods we bring back."

As I untied my boots and stripped them off, I asked in surprise, "You have people here assigned to laundry?"

"It's an important job," Carver said as he climbed into the shower room. "The cleaners are the only thing keeping the uninfected in the Company from turning into zombies. One drop of blood on the wrong person and we lose half our force. Only platoons five and six go into the field. Platoon one is support—laundry, mess, medical. They're half-and-half on uninfected to non-infected. Platoon two is perimeter security and platoon three are intelligence techs. None of them are infected at all."

I mulled on that as I finished stripping down. It gave me enough to think about, I'd completely forgotten about my cock. I climbed into the shower, carrying my boots and sidearm in its holster like everyone else had. My boots went up against the trailer wall with the toes out so the spray coming off me could wash any blood from them. My holster went on a hook embedded in the shower wall, presumably for the same reason. No one seemed to care if their guns got wet. As a matter of fact, everyone intentionally put them under the shower spray once they were done decontaminating themselves.

No one offered shampoo or conditioner, so I assumed we didn't have any or else the guys simply didn't feel we had time to use them. They passed around a bar of odd, orange-scented soap and we took turns rubbing it over our scalps and bare skin. I kept my eyes focused on the wall, not wanting to learn if other guys could make me repeat my pop-up problem from earlier.

My dick twitched with interest, anyway. I took it as a sign it was time to get out. Shutting off the shower, I continued following everyone else's lead, shaking the excess water from my boots and leaving my holster to drip-dry. I tucked my sidearm into my boot, then accepted a towel from a hidden cache over the toilets. The towels, much like the soap, were shared. It was damp by the time it reached me, but still usable. Doc showed me where to leave it once I was finished so the laundry crew could gather it without needing to climb inside.

Walking into the sleeping section of the trailer buck-ass naked, carrying my wet boots and sidearm, was an odd experience. I'd never been much of a nudist, but I realized why it was appealing the moment I caught Hanson staring at me from the bunk where he'd been sleeping. The heat in his eyes made me aware our relationship could easily go beyond two buddies traveling together at the end of the world.

"Hurry up, Grumpy," Grady called from his own bunk. "We still have to debrief."

Thankfully, no one commented on how I was rising to the occasion. Then again, they didn't say anything to Doc, either, and he was giving White one hell of a show as he tucked his monster in a fresh pair of black cargo pants.

I climbed up on the side of the bunk, using the lower bunk as a footstool so I could get my pack out of the overhead bin. My eyes stayed on Hanson the entire time and he smiled when I said nothing about the way he was checking me out.

Throwing on the first set of clothes that came to hand, I left my bag next to Hanson's legs and reached out to run my fingers through his hair. "We'll talk when I'm done," I said quietly as he leaned into my touch. There was no need for a childish game of 'does he like me, check yes or no'. His gaze told me everything I needed. My lack of resistance told him plenty in return. The only question was how long it'd take for us to be alone so we could do something about it.