Cultivator in a Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2)

Chapter Four - Her Doting Fathers

"Hey, we're back."

"Where's our princess?"

"Upstairs, asleep. How'd it go?" Dexter asked the pair of smiling men, noting that however weary the taller man appeared, his lover was as energetic as always.

"Fine," Cole yawned and handed over a couple of large flasks to Dexter before running his hand through his nearly shoulder length hair with a grimace. He once more questioned his oath never to cut his hair again after the disaster caused by Shaun that last time. His own body odour reached his nose, causing his expression to twist more so. "I'm gonna take a bath, is there water?"

"Should be," came the nonchalant reply. "Kairo filled up the hot water tank this morning."

Hearing that, Cole couldn't help but sigh with relief. What Tyler, their other main water user thought was 'hot' water these days could barely be considered as lukewarm. Just that Kairo was just a teen, not as powerful as Tyler and couldn't be held responsible for the whole community's daily hot water supply needs. It was good enough that he'd taken over a bit of the burden these past couple of years so that Tyler could focus more on piercing zombies with spears of ice from the heights of the walls.

"Care to join me?" Cole turned to Chang Min as he headed towards the stairs. The other man's eyes narrowed to smiling crescents as he nodded enthusiastically, while Dexter rolled his eyes, wishing that they'd flirt when he wasn't in earshot.

A piercing baby cry sounded from upstairs, causing Dexter's darkened face to once more brighten. Who told these wannabe fathers to attempt to gain a few extra minutes of couple's time? Sure enough, Cole was left standing alone, reality splashing cold water in his face as his lover took one step to bound up the stairs towards Dexter's bedroom. Cole could only sigh and follow, before his stinky self was ushered into the bathroom to wash up alone.

They'd been out for a week on a mission that had taken them to the sea along with an allied squad from the Little America base, as it had come to be known. It was not an unusual situation for them to unite with this squad in order to complete missions that the L.A. Base had set, they gained as much as a third of all spoils in this manner. To outsiders, this seemed like a losing deal for the squad, but as Chang Min's strength alone could be considered more than twice that of the ten members of the squad, it was probably them winning in the end. Yes, they could take more squad members out in order to complete the mission without outside help, but the issue boiled down to fuel or lack of it.

Before the end, their nation imported a fair amount of their fuel requirements in order to meet the increasing demand for diesel and even if this was not so, even if there had been no need to import petrol, which base had the manpower to focus upon producing this now? Some bright spark had managed to reproduce a biofuel, but could only supply it in small amounts, therefore making it extremely expensive in terms of trade. Therefore, conserving the remnants of fuels were a must these days. One way squads dealt with this issue was to pack the strongest of their men and women into a reasonably fuel efficient vehicle and have it tow a trailer or gutted out small caravan in order to bring things back. It was not unheard of for these too to carry squad members or see people riding on the roofs of the vehicles.

This mission had been to extract salt from the ocean, something that needed numbers as well as a strong defence against hostiles while they were stationary and working. The small Haven community had the strength, but could not afford the numbers less they left themselves lacking the ability to defend themselves, but adding salt to their depleted reserves was not something that they would wish to miss out on and so Chang Min volunteered to join the mission and Cole naturally followed him.