Chapter 46: The Garden's First Fruit
The garden’s artificial sun had become our circadian rhythm. For three days, we lived by its harsh, blue-white cycle, watering, adjusting, watching for the first faint green hints in the soil. The work was meticulous, calming, and it made the walls feel closer. The warehouse, for all its fortified strength, began to feel like a gilded cage. We needed to stretch our legs, to test the perimeter of our silence, to see if the world beyond our door had shifted.
“Scouting run,” I announced that morning, checking the magazine of my pistol. The snap of the slide was a sharp, familiar punctuation. “West, toward the old commercial strip. We haven’t been that way in weeks.”
Ellie looked up from sketching the first tentative sprouts in a ledger. “We’re low on fabric for bandages. And… other things.” Her meaning was clear. Sanitary supplies. The predictable cycles of our bodies were a logistical challenge in this world.
Mary nodded, already lacing her boots. “The hydroponic nutrients will run out in a month. If there’s a hardware or garden store, we need more.”
Our daughters needed no instruction. They were checking their own weapons—makeshift clubs, sharpened rebar—and pulling on their cardigans over the white shirts. The schoolgirl uniform was our armor, a bizarre and potent symbol. Our lovers stirred from their watchful posts by the garden, a low rustle of anticipation moving through them. A run meant potential danger. It meant purpose.
We moved out just after dawn, when the grey light made the rubble look soft and the things that hunted at night were usually retreating. The world was a symphony of decay. The crunch of broken glass under our boots, the low moan of wind through shattered windows, the distant, ever-present cawing of carrion birds. Our lovers flanked us, two ahead, two behind, their movements silent, their heads constantly turning, sniffing the acid-tang air.
The commercial strip was a graveyard of consumerism. A laundromat with its windows blown out, tables and chairs flung through the gaping mouth of a fast-food joint, a pharmacy that had been picked cleaner than a bone. We moved with practiced caution, from doorway to doorway, our shadows long and thin in the morning sun.
It was Dee who saw it first. A narrow storefront, its windows surprisingly intact, frosted with grime but unbroken. The sign was faded but legible: “Haven Smoke & Vape.”
“Probably cleaned out,” Mary murmured, her voice barely a breath.
“Worth a look,” I said. We hadn’t had a real luxury, a pure indulgence, since before the fall. Tobacco, alcohol—they were painkillers, bartering tools, moments of stolen calm.
I gestured to my lover. He approached the door, a rusted metal thing covered in peeling concert posters. He gripped the handle, braced himself, and yanked. The lock tore from the rotten frame with a shriek of protesting metal that seemed to echo forever down the silent street. We all froze, listening. Only the wind answered.
The inside was a time capsule. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light cutting through the dirty windows. It smelled of ancient incense, mildew, and underneath it all, the rich, sweet odor of unburnt tobacco. Shelves were still stocked. Not with food, not with medicine, but with treasures of a lost civilization.
“Holy shit,” Anya whispered, her voice full of awe.
It was an Aladdin’s cave of vice. Whole cartons of cigarettes, some brands I recognized, others foreign and exotic. Glass jars of loose-leaf tobacco, honey-brown and fragrant. Dozens of vape pens in blister packs, their colors garish. Intricate hookahs, their glass bowls gleaming dully under coats of dust. And along the back wall, a cabinet with a glass front—shelves of liquor. Whiskey, vodka, rum, their labels solemn and promising.
For a long moment, we just stood there, the reality of it sinking in. Then, a collective, slow smile spread among us. It was Ellie who moved first. She went to the cigarette cartons, ran a finger through the dust, and pulled out a soft pack of something with a elegant, cursive logo.
“These were always too mild,” she said, a ghost of her old self in her smile. She opened the pack, tapped one out. It was a sound so normal it was heartbreaking.
Nancy found a Zippo on the counter, crusted with old lighter fluid. She flicked the wheel. It sparked, then caught with a solid, yellow flame. She held it out to Ellie.
Ellie bent her head, the blond hair falling around her face, and put the cigarette to her lips. She drew in, the tip glowing a fierce orange in the dim store. She held the smoke, her eyes closed, and then exhaled a long, slow, luxurious plume that twisted in the dusty air. A sigh of pure, unadulterated pleasure escaped her. “Oh, god.”
It was a trigger.
We moved like women possessed, not by hunger, but by memory. I grabbed a pack of my old brand, the paper crackling familiarly. Mary, ever pragmatic, went straight for the highest-proof vodka. Cass found a case of pre-rolled joints, sealed in smell-proof tubes. Bec was admiring a rose-gold vape pen.
We piled our finds on the glass counter. Cartons and bottles and packages, a heap of illicit joy. Then we looked at each other, and the same thought passed between us without words. Our lovers stood by the door, vigilant, watching the street, but their attention was being pulled inward, to the ritual unfolding.
“Let’s give them a show,” Nancy said, her voice low and sly.
We each made our choice. I lit my cigarette, the first hot drag hitting my lungs like a welcome assault. Mary cracked the seal on the vodka, took a long, grimacing pull straight from the bottle, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Nancy chose a joint, lighting it and inhaling the sweeter, earthier smoke. Ellie kept her cigarette, posing with it between two fingers. Anya and Bec took vapes, their electronic hiss alien in the quiet. Cass and Dee found little bottles of flavored schnapps, giggling as they twisted the caps.
Then we turned, forming a loose, deliberate line facing our lovers.
The contrast was obscene. The pristine white cotton of our shirts, the tidy blue cardigans, the innocent swing of our plaid skirts. And in our hands: the instruments of our corruption. Smoke curled around our faces. Liquor glugged in bottles. We were schoolgirls playing hooky in the apocalypse.
I leaned back against the counter, one foot crossed over the other, pulling on my cigarette. I held the smoke, then let it spill from my lips in a grey veil, my eyes locked on my lover. His gaze was fixed on my mouth, the movement of my throat as I swallowed the sensation.
Ellie struck a pose straight from a vintage pin-up, one hand on her cocked hip, the other bringing the cigarette to her lips, her head tilted back. The smoke she exhaled curled up around the long fall of her blond hair. Her lover’s hands, which had been hanging loosely at his sides, clenched into fists.
Nancy, more demure, took a slow hit from the joint, holding it with a delicate grace before offering it to her lover’s lips. He didn’t move to take it, but he leaned in, nostrils flaring, breathing in the scent that clung to her fingers and her breath. A low, appreciative rumble sounded in his chest.
Mary was all stark challenge. She took another brutal swig of vodka, her eyes watering, then held the bottle out toward her lover like a dare. “Bet you wish you could feel this burn, don’t you?” she rasped. He just stared, mesmerized by the liquid sloshing in the glass, by the defiant set of her jaw.
We were in control. Not just of them, but of this moment, of this small rebellion. We were not just survivors, not just breeders, not just gardeners. We were women tasting a fragment of a forbidden past, and we were doing it for the sheer, fucking thrill of it. The power dynamics of the night, of the breeding, were one thing—a brutal, biological transaction. This was different. This was psychological. This was us reminding them, and ourselves, of the complexities they craved and could never fully have.
“Look at them,” Cass giggled, sipping her sickly-sweet schnapps. “They don’t know where to look.”
It was true. Their eyes darted from the cigarettes to the bottles, to the vape plumes, to our faces, to the way our uniforms stretched over our pregnant curves. The innocence of the outfit and the sin of the actions created a dizzying friction they couldn’t comprehend, only desire.
I took a final drag, then dropped the cigarette, grinding it under the heel of my boot. The act felt deliciously wasteful. “Alright,” I said, my voice smoky. “Enough teasing. Let’s pack it up.”
We moved with efficiency now, the moment of theater over. We emptied backpacks of less critical scavenged items—old magazines, worthless trinkets—and began to fill them with our treasure. Cartons of cigarettes, bags of tobacco, the vodka and whiskey, the vapes, the packages of rolling papers and filters. We took it all. The hookahs were too bulky, but we grabbed the hose attachments and the cleanest bowls.
My lover watched me stow a bundle of cashmere-soft rolling tobacco. As I zipped the pack closed, I caught his eye. I walked over to him, until I was close enough to smell the earth and ozone scent of his skin. I still reeked of smoke.
“You like that?” I asked quietly, my breath ghosting over his face. “The smell of it on me?”
A sharp, quick inhale was his answer. His eyes were dark, pools of pure want.
“It’s a memory,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Something you can’t give me. Something that’s just mine.” I reached out and traced the line of his stubbled jaw with my thumb. He leaned into the touch, a silent plea. The complexity of the gesture—the tenderness, the reminder of lack—was its own kind of cruelty. A beautiful, necessary cruelty.
We hauled the laden bags onto our backs. The weight was significant, but it was a weight of potential pleasure, of future barter, of small victories. We left the shop as we found it, minus its heart. The broken door yawned behind us.
The return journey was tenser. The noise we’d made, the time spent, it had stretched our luck. Halfway back, a feral howl echoed from a side street, too close. Our lovers instantly closed ranks, forming a tighter cordon around us, their bodies tense, heads swiveling. We picked up the pace, boots scraping on asphalt, breaths coming harder under our burdens.
But we made it. The sight of the warehouse’s reinforced door, its barbed wire gleaming, was a relief that washed through my bones. Mary gave the all-clear knock—three fast, two slow. From inside, we heard the heavy scrapes of barricades being moved.
The door swung inward, and we spilled back into the dim, familiar safety. The smell of damp earth from the garden greeted us, mixing strangely with the new smells clinging to us: tobacco, alcohol, cannabis.
We dumped our packs in the central living area with a series of heavy thuds. The haul spread across the floor was staggering. A tangible representation of a different kind of sustenance.
Ellie sank onto a pallet couch, pulling out her half-finished cigarette from her shirt pocket. She relit it, the flame steady in the still air. “We’ll need to hide the bulk of it,” she said, taking a drag. “In case… in case we ever have unwanted visitors.”
“Separate caches,” Mary agreed, already planning. “Some near the garden, some by the generator, some in the sleeping area.”
Nancy was pouring a small measure of whiskey into a scavenged tin cup. She sipped it, shuddering as it went down. “For medicinal purposes,” she said with a weak smile.
The adrenaline of the run and the nicotine and alcohol buzz were creating a loose, almost giddy atmosphere. Our lovers had resumed their posts, but their attention was divided, constantly flicking to the piles of contraband, to the way Ellie’s skirt rode up her thigh as she reclined, to the bottle in Nancy’s hand.
The tease in the shop had been a spark. The return, the display of our haul, the casual way we were now incorporating these vices into our fortress… it was fanning that spark. The air grew thick, not with danger, but with a charged, anticipatory heat. The normal rules of the day were blurring.
I caught Ellie’s eye across the room. She saw my look, understood it. She took a last, long pull on her cigarette, then carefully extinguished it. She stood up, smoothed her plaid skirt, and walked not toward me, but toward her lover.
She stopped in front of him. He looked up at her, his body trembling with the effort of his stillness. She still smelled of smoke and perfume.
“You watched me,” she said, her voice a soft melody. “You watched me do something dirty. Something just for me.” She reached down and took his hand, guiding it to the hem of her skirt. “Does that make you want to get dirty with me?”
A raw, cracked sound escaped him. It was all the answer she needed.