The day after: An apocalyptic morning (16 page)

              "I like it when you play with my boobies," she told him, kissing at his neck now.

              He pushed her back onto the seat and then scooted himself backward just a tad before leaning down and taking her left nipple into his mouth. He let his tongue slide all around it, feeling the little ridges and bumps that marred its surface, tasting every square millimeter. He sucked it until she began to moan and run her fingers through his Micked hair and then he switched to the other one.

              It wasn't long before both tired of foreplay. "Let's get undressed," Skip said, pulling himself free of her.

              "Yeah," she agreed, reaching down for her boots.

              They shed their clothes in record time, throwing each piece over the seat in front of them, forming an untidy pile of shirts, socks, pants, underwear, and holstered guns. Since neither of them had been able to bathe in recent memory, the smell in the enclosed car was very strong and thick and not, in the strictest sense of the word, terribly pleasant to inhale. Neither one cared however. The moment they were naked they reached for each other, their lips once again closing into a passionate exchange of tongues and saliva.

              Skip ran his hands up and down the smooth skin of Christine's back as he held her to him. She rubbed her bare thighs against his, her hands dropping down once again to grasp his turgid erection.

              "Fuck me now," she told him, nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth. "Put it in me and fuck me!"

              "Come up here," he said, pulling at her by the armpits (which had developed more than a little hair over the past week and a half), dragging her onto his lap. She swung her legs over the top of his, straddling his thighs and inching forward until her bare stomach was touching his. Her crotch pushed towards his straining member and he felt warm wetness and coarse hair. She began to undulate back and forth, smearing her juices on him. He put his hands on her ass and pulled upward a little, forcing her to raise up. "Put it in," he told her.

              "I've never done that before," she panted.

              "It's time to learn," he replied. "Grab it and put it inside."

              She reached down between their bodies and took hold of him again, her hands smearing more of her juices over the head and the shaft. She moved it back and forth for a moment, trying to line it up just right, rubbing the head against her folds as she did so. Skip groaned at the sensation and pulled on her ass, trying to force her down upon him.

              The head slipped inside of her at last and, with a gentle tug on his part and a gentle push on her part, she sank down, pulling the rest of him in. Though he had experienced the exquisite tightness of her before, it still came as an altogether pleasant surprise to feel her clutching at him, engulfing him. Both sighed as the penetration occurred, as their crotches joined at the hairs. He began to thrust upward, grinding himself against her body, pushing on the nerve channels that gave her pleasure. They kissed each other hotly as they fucked, his hands squeezing the cheeks of her ass, her hands scratching at his back.

              "Oh God, it feels so good," she breathed, moving her lips to his neck once again.

              "Yeah," he panted back, thrusting upward with more force, squeezing her ass together at the top of each stroke.

              Where their first coupling had been gentle and hesitant, this one was wild and forceful. They began to thrust faster, with more power, grunting and groaning, licking and biting. He dropped his head down to her breasts again and buried his face between them, tonguing the tangy skin, sucking it into his mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders and used them as leverage to push and pull herself up and down. They started to sweat, their bodies sliding together on a film of sticky perspiration.

              Skip reached down to her crotch and found her clit, which was swollen and wet, a firm little nubbin just begging to be touched. He began to rub it with a finger, using a firm circular motion. Christine went immediately and completely wild at the contact.

              "Oh Godd," she moaned, "ohhhh, ohhhh, yessss!"

              "You like that?" he panted into her ear.

              "Yes, yes! Keep doing that!"

              "Are you going to come all over me?"

              "Yesssss!" she screamed, her thrusts speeding up, her hands pushing painfully down onto his shoulders.

              "Do it, Christine," he told her, increasing the pressure and thrusting up into each of her downthrusts. "Come on me, baby, come on me!"

              "Ohhhhhhhhh," she whined, slamming up and down so hard now that Skip began to fear she might dislodge the car from its resting place and send it further down the hill. She arched her back and stiffened up, her teeth biting into his shoulder. "Goddddd!"

              Her spasms went on for the better part of a minute and, with them, her chasm gripped and squeezed spastically on his cock. He leaned forward and took over the burden of thrusting from her, putting his hands to her waist and holding her in one place while he raised his hips up and down. He felt his own orgasm straining to be released and he fought it down, not wanting this wild ride to end.

              As soon as Christine's orgasm passed he began whispering in her ear again, trying to drive her towards another one. He continued to move himself upward and downward, rotating and grinding as he thrust. It didn't take very long before she began to pant and moan once more. This time, when she was at the height of her spasms, as her teeth buried themselves into the flesh of his shoulder, he let himself go. Now it was his hips that were rising and falling spastically, his lips that were moaning out uncontrollable pleasure.

              "Oh yesss," she cried from the throes of her own pleasure. "Come in me, come in me, come in meeeeeeee!"

              When the peak hit him he thrust upward hard enough to bash her head into the roof of the car. Undaunted, he continued to drive into her as his sperm blasted out of his body and into hers. She held onto him tightly as she was bucked up and down like a woman on a mechanical bull. Finally, after an eternity, the spasms died down, with it, his thrusts. They slumped against each other, both dripping sweat, both breathing heavy from the exertion.

              "That was totally awesome," Christine said when she was capable of speech.

              "Totally awesome?" he said, kissing her sweaty forehead. "Now just partially awesome, huh?"

              "Totally," she giggled, holding him tightly.

              They stayed like that for a while, just holding each other, his penis shrinking within her but remaining nestled in her folds. The rain continued to patter on the roof of the car.

              "So what happens now?" Christine asked him. "Between us, I mean?"

              "What happens now," he said, "is that we live life one day at a time. This is the kind of world where you have to do things that way, wouldn't you say?"

              "So you're not going to tell me it's all over between us in the morning, that it was all wrong what we did?"

              "No," he told her. "I don't think that it is wrong anymore. We used to have laws against doing what I just did but those laws, as much as I used to agree with them, were passed for a world where people didn't try to kill other people for the food they carried, where you didn't have to wonder if you were going to be alive the next day. That was a world where people worried about retirement plans and whether or not there would be Social Security when they got old enough to need it. This isn't that world anymore. And while I like to think that some of our old morals are going to survive, I've already determined that a lot of them aren't. There are certain morals that we simply don't have the luxury of embracing anymore."

              "And sleeping with me is one of them?" she asked, half-seriously.

              "As far as I'm concerned," he said. "Like I told you earlier, you're a woman now. You proved that today quite nicely. A woman can make her own decisions. While we're on this little journey of ours, I'll be proud to share a sleeping bag with you, if you'll have me."

              "Oh I'll have you all right," she told him, grinding herself a little atop him. "I'll have you every night if I can get it."

              He kissed her. "You won't get any arguments from me there," he said.

              They left the car a few minutes later, not bothering to dress themselves, donning only their boots to keep from getting their feet muddy. They carried their clothes in their hands as Skip led them slowly and carefully back to the lean-to, relying only on his sense of direction to find it.

              They discovered that Jack was awake when they got back.

              "Where were you guys at?" he asked, his voice a little nervous. "I woke up and you were gone."

              "Sorry," Skip said. "We went for a walk. We didn't think that you would wake up or we would've told you."

              "You went for a walk in the dark?" he asked incredulously, and quite naively. "Why would you do that?"

              "Just because," Christine barked impatiently at him in her older sister tone. "Don't worry about it."

              "We'll let you know if we ever decide to do that again," Skip said, feeling guilty for scaring Jack that way. "I'm sorry if we scared you."

              "I wasn't scared," he said quickly. "I was just wondering where you went. It's no big deal."

              Jack seemed to have finally figured out what was up between the two of them. He asked no more questions of them, not even when he heard them struggling to zip their two sleeping bags into one large one.

              "Good night, you guys," he said, when he heard them crawling in.

              "Good night," they both replied.

              The two lovers snuggled their naked bodies together in the tight confines of the sleeping bag. It was a close fit, forcing them to spoon their bodies together, Christine's back to Skip's front. But neither of them minded in the least.

              Part 3

              The next two days passed fairly uneventfully for the three survivors. They continued to work their way along the rim of the canyon, keeping consistently just far away from it to hear the roar of the flood waters within, but not close enough for that sound to overwhelm their sense of hearing. They did not directly encounter anyone else although on multiple occasions their presence was noted by other survivors, all of them desperate and starving but none of them quite desperate enough to tangle with the mean looking group that Jack, Christine, and Skip had obviously become. Even those with no evil intentions in their heads, who just wanted to try to beg food, kept their distance, electing to try their luck elsewhere.

              On a few occasions the trio was shadowed for a while, usually by groups of three or more armed men, and usually to scope out whether an ambush would be possible. In all cases, once these groups got a good look at just how the trio moved, how they coordinated their every step, how they constantly checked their rear, the would-be attackers elected to move on to weaker and less capable victims. At this point in the aftermath, there were still other victims to be had.

              Skip caught the scent of a few of these groups as they shadowed him. Nothing was so strong as the two marijuana growers but on several occasions he had felt the beginnings of that instinct tickling his neck as he realized they were being watched from afar. In each case a signal to his teammates to spread out a little and keep a sharper eye to the sides and the rear (they had gone over many more hand-signals and pre-planned evasion techniques since the shootout) had been the clincher for the stalkers. These were not people to be trifled with. In a world where the strong now preyed upon the weak, Skip's group certainly did not fall into the latter category.

              Skip toyed with the idea of a rotating watch at night while they camped, just to keep anyone from sneaking up on them and killing them as they slept. But every time this thought crossed his mind, he was forced to conclude that it was an unnecessary waste of precious sleep. The blackness that fell over the land when the sun went down was simply too absolute to allow any sort of attack upon them at night. Unless they had night vision goggles - something that was highly unlikely - a group bent on taking them would not be able to approach or shoot with any degree of accuracy even if they knew exactly where they were. For the time being, they kept a watch until the light was gone and then they went to bed.

              Skip and Christine continued to share a sleeping bag together during their slumber hours, enjoying the warmth of each other's body and, at least once during each sleep period, a slow, careful session of sexual coupling. They took great pains to be quiet and still during these sessions, neither very wild about the thought of Jack listening in on their activities. If he heard them (and he did, every single time) he said nothing about it.

              As they continued to climb in altitude - on the day after the shooting they passed 4500 feet - the air grew steadily colder, without any significant difference between day and night temperatures. This was mostly due to the increasing elevation but it was also due to the fact that it was just getting colder everywhere. When the clouds had initially covered the planet after the strike they had served almost like a blanket, trapping the residual heat beneath them and keeping temperatures reasonably high despite the lack of sunlight. But now, at impact+10 days, much of that trapped heat was being slowly leeched away in the mid-latitudes and the equatorial regions, dissipating towards the poles instead. Skip began to wonder if the rain they were experiencing would turn to snow at some point or, even worse, if it already done so at the higher altitudes above them. If too much snowfall accumulated at the mountaintops it would eventually come sweeping downward in a tremendous avalanche.