Iron Mike (18 page)

“There’s bottled water,” she offered shyly. “We can wash.”

Mike frowned, not liking the thought of the cold water, and then he reconsidered with a wry smile. At his nod, Kari stepped back into the hall, leaving the door open so the candle could provide a bit of light. She returned momentarily with two gallon jugs of spring water. They wouldn’t waste it; whatever was left in the morning would be tucked into the sidecar with their canteens and the ten gallon water containers. Kari smiled as she stepped back into the bedroom, the candle making the room feel warm and cozy. Mike took the water from her while she turned and re-locked the door. He headed into the master bath, which was well-appointed and clean, save for the light coating of dust. He set one of the jugs on the counter, meeting Kari’s eyes in the reflection of the mirror.

“Go ahead,” he said, his voice still dry. “I think I’ll use the shower.”

Kari bit her lower lip to stifle her laugh and watched him in the mirror as he pulled off his boxers and carried the jug of water into the shower stall, closing the glass door behind him. God … he had a nice ass! With Mike facing away from her, naked, Kari could see how lean and hard-muscled he had become. He was definitely not a gawky teenage boy anymore! Kari sponge bathed, listening to the sounds of Mike preparing to wash himself, and the sudden inhalation as he poured the bottle over his head and chest, the water mercilessly cascading down his body and killing his erection.

When he stepped out of the shower and toweled off a few minutes later, Kari was in the bedroom, naked, the bed already turned down and most of the pillows stacked on a chair. She smiled, a bit shyly, a bit seductively, as he came into the room. She slipped onto the bed, pulling the sheet up to cover herself. Mike got in on the other side and immediately pulled the sheet away and down. “No,” he said firmly. “I want to see you. All of you.”

Kari nodded. She lay back on the bed slowly, forcing herself to relax. Her body was nothing to be ashamed of – the past three months of hard living and merciless calisthenics had taken care of the ten pounds she’d needed to drop before the invasion. Now, her body was slim and toned; she was as fit as any other soldier, but still very much a woman.

She sighed in contentment as Mike moved over her, holding her face gently as he kissed her. Time slowed and her head spun, the sensation of safety and pleasure so rare it was almost alien. She kissed Mike back, running her hand down his back and cupping his ass, already feeling his renewed erection pressing against her leg. So much for his cold shower!

Mike trailed kisses down Kari’s neck, pausing and inhaling appreciatively. “What is that?” he murmured, curious. He’d never smelled the scent on Kari before.

“Cashmere Mist,”
she replied, a bit self-consciously. “It’s Donna Karan. The woman who lived here must have used it. Do you like it?”

“Mmhmm,” Mike affirmed, returning his attention to her neck and then to the hollow of her throat. He was aching with fullness, but he was determined to satisfy Kari first, even if he needed to use every trick he’d read about.

Mike moved downward, cupping Kari’s breast and gently laving a nipple. His hard cock seeped and then jerked, as if of its own accord. Kari moaned softly and arched upward, the softness of her breast pushing into his mouth. He obliged her unspoken request, sucking with more pressure, pleased to hear her breathing hitch. He allowed his hands to wander then, relying on instinct even more than thought. Kari’s soft exhalations or gasps told him when he found sensitive areas, and he remembered them as though he were a cartographer mapping her body. She squirmed, arching upward with a gasp when he reached her mound, touching the warm slickness with a sense of exultation. He moved his fingers slightly, finding a rhythm and following the soft gasps she made, and the slickness spread, making it even easier to move his fingers in her soft, warm folds. Kari cried out suddenly, the muscles in her stomach contracting as her first orgasm hit her, taking Mike by surprise. He slowed his fingers, and then stopped, leaving them in her wetness as he kissed her passionately, much of his earlier hesitation gone.

She reached for him, and Mike evaded her, shaking his head. “Not yet,” he said firmly. Kari raised an eyebrow. “I won’t last long,” he explained simply. “I’m too close already. But I know you have more in you, so as long as we have nothing better to do, I intend to play.”

He smiled at the bemused expression on her face and proceeded to do exactly what he said. He explored all of her, with all of his senses. He smelled her, musk mixed with the scent of soap. He tasted her, surprised it was nothing like what the
Maxim
articles described. He felt her, the soft, warm slickness beneath his tongue and the involuntary jerks and spasms. And he heard her, the moans and gasps giving way to cries, then sobs, of pleasure. And finally, when her body was limp and lethargic, and the pleased smile on her face told him her tension was sated, he guided himself into her, feeling her legs wrap around his waist. He thrust experimentally, then again, the sensations reeling through his mind and body. He was right. He didn’t last long at all.

The first time.

March 15.

Mike

They slept past sunrise, both waking with a start at almost the same moment. Mike glanced at his watch – it was almost 0900!

“Shit! Get a move on, soldier!” he said, softening the harsh words with a happy grin as he hopped out of the bed and began searching for his clothes.

Kari pulled a pillow over her head. “Five more minutes, Dad, pleeeeaze?” she whined.

Mike grabbed the pillow from her and mercilessly yanked the comforter off as well, exposing her to the frigid cold of the bedroom. Kari yelped indignantly, but she got up and started scrounging for her own clothes. They packed everything up in fifteen minutes. Mike hesitated a moment, and stepped into the bathroom, emerging with a rolled up towel. Kari raised an eyebrow, but Mike said nothing, simply adding the towel to his backpack. They were on the road heading for Ashland by 0920.

They made good time, and Mike felt better than he had in months. He wasn’t sure how much of that was due to the perfect weather, the good travel conditions, or the fact that he and Kari had made love in every way they could think of all through the night, finally falling asleep close to three in the morning. Mike chuckled to himself, thinking the last probably had a bit more to do with his mood than the bright sunshine and warm spring breeze.

At one point on I-64, they were actually able to hit interstate speed on the interstate. That lasted almost seven miles before another tangle of wrecked vehicles blocked the roadway again, slowing them to twenty miles per hour. They got through that mess in about half an hour, so they hit the outskirts of Ashland close to 1300. Mike signaled for the break, and they pulled over to the side of the road. Kari used the telescoping aluminum pole from Mike’s camera bag to prod the ground for Feeders while Mike dug two of the shit-brown MREs out of the sidecar. They both sat on the road and peeled open the food packets, using a bit of water from their canteens to activate the chemical cookers.

“You seem Cheshire-cat pleased with yourself,” Kari scolded teasingly as they waited for their meals to heat.

“And why not?” Mike replied. “It’s a beautiful day, got a great ride … oh, yeah, and there’s that whole passage to manhood thing last night.”

Kari snorted and rolled her eyes.

“What?” Mike challenged, grinning at her. “Rite of passage – it’s a big deal, trust me. Mrs. Persky could go on about it for hours.” He pulled his MRE pouch out of the heating bag and squeezed the contents, trying to distribute the heat evenly. Kari laughed, the sound like bells to his soul.

“For me, it was Mr. Kelly,” she smiled. “And yeah – rite of passage and ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’” She said the last in as deep a baritone as she could manage, eliciting a chuckle from Mike.

They ate their food without much enthusiasm. MREs got old the first time you ate them, and they’d each been on enough training exercises and scouting missions to be well beyond sick of them. Still, protein was protein and carbs were carbs, so they both finished the ready-made meals without complaining.

Something about the apocalypse makes a person grateful for even the crap things in life,
Mike thought as he finished fueling up the bikes.
All the more so for the sweet.
He mounted and adjusted his helmet, watching Kari’s long legs as she slid over the seat of her motorcycle. He pulled his visor down quickly so she wouldn’t see his appreciative leer – he didn’t want to get punched again.

With a rev of the engine, he took the lead, starting them off at a good forty miles per hour. The weather was holding, and it seemed to Mike it was going to be a perfect day.

Of course, that’s when all hell broke loose.

Hershey

Hershey paced back and forth in the small office at work, his brown forehead wrinkled in worry. His stomach growled, and his head felt dizzy and heavy. He was very hungry, but the thirst was, by far, much worse. His throat felt like he had swallowed sand. He walked back into the room with the pens, his ears down and his tail tucked tightly beneath him. Another one was dead, this time the corgi mix. He couldn’t smell her yet, but he knew anyway.

Hershey looked anxiously at the black lab, wishing his friend would move to the cage door to touch noses with him like he had done so many times before. The lab looked up at him, thumping his tail once, without energy. He was weaker and even thirstier than Hershey; when the water was gone from Hershey’s bowl, he, at least, was able to use the water bowl in the small room where the humans went to sit and mark their territory.

For once, Hershey didn’t even wonder why they wasted their urine like that; his brain was too foggy and his throat too sore for him to care. When he first went into the room to use the water bowl, he thought to himself he would have shared some of the water with the big black lab, if the lab could get out of his pen. Even then, though, he knew he was lying to himself. He wouldn’t have shared it. He would have growled at the lab, and even fought him for the water. But he drank the last of the water the afternoon before, and all day today, he was without.

Hershey moved back to the front door and whined again, scratching at it hopefully. He had done that hundreds of times since his human went outside two days ago. He knew something was wrong. Clare never forgot work. Work was the most important thing a human could do. Also … she wouldn’t have forgotten him.

Getting no answer to his whines and scratches, Hershey lay down in his bed, his head aching miserably. He wished he hadn’t drunk all the water from the porcelain bowl. He sure would like a drink now.

Kasoniak

Kasoniak stood behind his desk and read the handwritten scouting report, his brow furrowed in a slight wrinkle. He added another red pin to the large map, this one just south of Old Louisville, and frowned at the pins. There were six red pins now, standing out in a comparable ocean of white pins … forty-three white pins. Kasoniak sighed. Forty-nine of his people dead…several of them civilians. One, a child. They needed to find a better way to deal with these “Feeders,” as Mike and Kari called them. There simply weren’t enough flame throwers to adequately equip the scout patrols, much less the troops assigned to protect the civilians. The soldiers he’d assigned to manufacturing the napalm finally got it right, but four good men died in the process. That put their direct casualties up to fifty-three people. That was almost six percent of the current surviving population, and that was too goddamned high a loss rate.

Kasoniak frowned at the window, gazing at the same forest, the same pond, and the same deer grazing at the same place, divided into four even sections by the old wooden window frame. His brain had long ago stopped being fooled by the painting, but still his eyes rested on it when he felt contemplative. He was appreciative they’d managed to get inside the Mint in February, and he valued the security the thick walls provided … but he would have given a year’s pay for a real window and real sunlight. Working inside the Mint was like being entombed alive.

There was a sharp rap at the door. “Come,” Kasoniak called, not turning away from the map. The problem was there was no discernible pattern to where the Feeders showed up. They could, literally, show up anywhere; one of the six they killed had been inside the Mint compound. The forty-year-old soldier who was ordered to put down the fifteen-year-old girl entrapped by the damned thing broke that day. He was still on desk duty and would probably never be reliable in the field again.

Kasoniak pushed his thoughts away and turned, preparing to deal with whatever new complication arrived. He returned his aide’s salute and mildly advised the man to stand at ease. The soldier complied, but his body did not relax. His eyes were tense in a way that made Kasoniak steel himself for more bad news.

“What is it, Sergeant Riggs?”

“Sir, I’m sorry to inform you your daughter is AWOL,” Riggs said, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he spoke. He continued, explaining quickly but professionally. “She didn’t show to PT this morning, and Sergeant Andreskevitch told me she missed training yesterday afternoon. I went to her tent, since she’s assigned out in the quadrant where that flu outbreak started, but she wasn’t there.” Riggs held out several sheets of paper. “Seems she went with Corporal Sanderlin, sir.”

Kasoniak’s eyes shuttered at the word “daughter” and went cold at “AWOL.” He nodded but didn’t reach for the paperwork. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, his mind already returning to the scouting report.

The sergeant hesitated, and then saluted. Kasoniak read the expression on his face. “My daughter gets no special treatment, Sergeant,” he said, his voice characteristically mild. “Tell Andy to write her up for an Article 86.”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied, stepping out the door and closing it softly as the colonel returned to the map behind his desk. He shook his head, smiling in bemusement as he left. No wonder they called Kasoniak “Fucking Hard Ass” when he wasn’t there to hear it. No way could Riggs have been so composed if it was his daughter.