The day after: An apocalyptic morning (25 page)

              "The water comes from the fire engine?" Skip asked.

              "The cold water does," she said. "It'll take a minute for him to get it going. In the meantime, you can put the garden hose in the tub and start putting in the hot."

              "Hot water?" Skip said, shaking his head in wonder. "Where does that come from?"

              "Paul rigged up a big rain barrel for us near the side of the building," she said. "He diverted one of the rain gutters on the roof so that it would dump into it and keep it full for us. We have a fire burning under it all the time. Ted - he was a plumber before the comet - rigged a faucet in the side of the barrel and we ran the hose in from there. It doesn't flow very fast so you probably want to get it started right away. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes to get your bath at the right temperature." She shrugged a little, as if to say that somehow, they were coping with these primitive conditions. "It works."

              Paul picked up the garden hose and put the end of it into the tub.

              "Be sure to close the drain first," Missy warned. "We try not to waste hot water here."

              "Of course," Skip said, pushing down the locking drain button. He then opened the nozzle on the end of the hose. Water began to slowly flow, at about a third the rate of a normal faucet. It was lukewarm at first but, by the time he heard the sound of the fire engine's motor turn over outside, it was too hot to touch. Steam began to rise into the air.

              "Here," Missy said, bringing over the fire hose. "You can leave that one in there and spray in the cold with this one. It comes out pretty fast. Be careful not to overspray it."

              "Right," Skip said, taking the heavy hose in his hands after leaving the smaller one on the bottom. He examined the controls of the nozzle for a moment and then, pointing it into the tub, slowly opened it up. Water began to spray out, slowly at first and then with considerable force. The tub began to rapidly fill.

              "Here," Missy said, "let me put some soap in there for you." She had a bottle of dishwashing liquid in her hands. She squirted a generous amount into the flow of water. White bubbles immediately began to form.

              "Thanks," Skip told her, looking over at her for a moment. She had taken off the rain slicker that he had first seen her in and was dressed now in Levi's jeans and a flannel shirt. Though her clothing was baggy it was still easy to tell that she had a nice body beneath it. Her hair was dark brown and cut short. Her face was without makeup but was still very pretty. He wondered what her husband had done. Had he been a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant?

              "That's enough cold," she told him when the tub was about two-thirds of the way full. "Shut it off and let the hot water fill up the rest."

              He did as she said, shutting down the nozzle and cutting off the flow of water. He set the hose back down on the floor.

              "I'll have Hecky keep the pump running," she said. "As dirty as you are you're gonna need two tubfulls to get everything clean. Get the worst of the dirt off and wash your hair and then we'll drain it and start over. The second tub will get the rest of it off and you'll be squeaky clean."

              "Squeaky clean," he said. "I didn't think I'd ever be squeaky clean again."

              As they waited for the hot water to heat the tub up, Missy sat on a bench just outside the shower area while Skip sat on the end of the tub. She asked him about how he had come to be in their little town and he explained about Christine and Jack and his desire for something approaching safety.

              "I can't believe you actually lived out there for almost two weeks," she said, her eyes wide. "It must've been horrible."

              "It wasn't a PTA meeting," he said. "That's for sure. Hopefully you'll never have to find out just how nasty it really is."

              "God forbid," she said. She did not ask him about just why he was still here and what his current status in the community was. Apparently that rumor had already spread to her.

              He asked her about her former life, just to make conversation. She told him that she was twenty-six years old and had been the wife of a senior auditor for Arthur-Anderson. Her husband had been in a Sacramento high-rise, well into his seventieth hour for that week when the comet hit. "I imagine his building probably collapsed around him in the earthquake," she said, without a trace of sadness in her voice. "It hit pretty hard down in the valley from what I understand."

              "Do you have kids?" he asked.

              "Two girls," she said. "Four and six years old. The older one was in school, the younger one was home with me when it happened. Luckily the school stood up to the quake and Megan was all right. They're both over at one of the other women's house right now. We kinda watch out for each other's kids when someone has guard duty."

              "I see," Skip said, putting his hand into the tub. The water was nice and toasty, just begging for him to enter it. He dragged out the hot water hose and shut down the nozzle. "Well," he told Missy. "I guess it's time."

              "I guess it is," she smiled, making no move to leave her perch on the bench.

              "Any chance of getting a little privacy?" he asked her.

              "Paul told me to keep a close eye on you, didn't he?" she asked sweetly, her eyes teasing.

              Skip took a deep breath, remembering what Paul had told him about the women in town. He sighed. What could he do? "All right then," he said. "Just be advised. What you're about to see won't be pretty. I haven't had a bath since before I left Stockton. The only thing approaching clean is my teeth, and that's only because we found some toothbrushes in that trailer."

              "I'll take my chances," she said.

              He peeled off his filthy clothing, piece by piece, dropping it into a pile near the edge of the tub. Soon he stood naked, his back to Missy, thoughts of her almost forgotten as he looked down at himself in the light for the first time. He could hardly see his skin through all of the dirt and grime and the smell that rose from him was offensive even to his own nose. "Let me in there," he said, mounting the wooden step that stood next to the tub.

              "Let's see if there's a man under all that," Missy said from behind him.

              He ignored her remark, putting his foot into the blessedly hot water. The rest of him quickly followed it in. It was hot enough to sting but the sensation was beyond description. For the first time since the impact, he was hot! The heat caressed every inch of his skin, sank into his muscles, opened his pores. "Ahhhhh," he said in a voice that was near orgasmic. "You can't believe how good this feels."

              "I bet," Missy said, her voice closer than it had been a moment before. Skip looked up to see that she was standing near the edge of the tub. She held a bar of soap in her hands. "Need any help?" she asked.

              "I'll manage," he said, taking it from her. He picked up a washrag and went to work.

              Within a minute the water that he was sitting in had turned a dirty brown color. Even the soap bubbles lost their whiteness in favor of the mud color. He soaped and scrubbed everywhere with the washrag, which itself soon turned as brown as everything else. Eventually he began to see a faint pinkness to his skin.

              "Here's some shampoo," Missy said, handing him a bottle of a popular name brand. "Let me fill up your bucket for you."

              She picked up a one-gallon bucket and released some water from the fire hose into it by spraying for a few seconds. She then picked up the garden hose and warmed the water up by putting some of it in there. "Close your eyes," she told him. A moment later warm water was dumped over his head, thoroughly wetting his hair. "Now lather up."

              He dumped a generous amount of the shampoo, which smelled like fresh apples, onto his hair and scrubbed for the better part of two minutes, rubbing the lather over his face and the hair of his beard as well. While he was doing this, Missy filled up another bucket of water that she dumped on him to rinse the shampoo off. They did this two more times until his hair and beard were clean and sweet smelling.

              "Okay," Missy said next. "Pop the drain and let that dirty water run down it. When it's all gone, we'll hose out the tub and then refill it so you can wash again. That oughtta get the worst of it off of you."

              Skip pushed the drain with his foot. A moment later the sound of water running onto the ground beneath echoed up. He turned to Missy. "Can I get a towel?" he asked her.

              She smiled mischievously. "They're over there on the shelf," she said, taking a step backward, her eyes remaining riveted on him.

              When he finally figured out that she had no intention of getting a towel for him or even turning around to give him privacy, he stood up. Dirty water and soapsuds ran off of him in streams, pattering back into the tub. Not making any effort to cover himself, he stepped out of the tub, putting his bare feet on the cold tile of the floor.

              "You look like you're in pretty good shape," Missy said appreciatively, her eyes continuing to take in his form as he walked over to the towel shelf and pulled a bath towel from a stack.

              "It comes from marching around with a fifty pound pack of canned food on your back," he told her a little testily. He began to towel off, sopping up the dirty water that clung to him. Missy watched his every move, her eyes starting to shine now. Skip knew that he was soon going to have trouble with her.

              "You look semi-clean now," she told him while the brown water poured out of the bathtub and into the floor drain. "I think one more dunking should do it for you."

              Once he was dry he wrapped the now-filthy towel around his waist and walked back over to the tub. With disgust he realized that he had not just left a ring on the sparkling white surface, he had coated the entire thing with grime. Missy handed him the fire hose and he spent the next ten minutes just hosing it out and scrubbing it down with another washrag. She stayed carefully behind him as he worked, paying particular attention to the view that was provided whenever he bent over.

              "Now I know how secretaries feel when their bosses drop pencils for them to pick up," he told her, annoyed.

              She did not seem to be particularly concerned with his feelings. "And now I know how those bosses feel," she said. "You have a really nice ass you know."

              "Jesus," he said, scooting around the other side of the tub. "Can I fill this thing up now?"

              "By all means," she said.

              He closed the drain and put the hot water hose back in. Once it was running, he picked up the fire hose and began to spray. As before, he shut it off when the tub was two-thirds full. When he set it back down on the concrete, Missy walked over to the window that the hose came in from and stood on a small ladder that had been placed there, climbing until her face was looking out over the parking lot.

              "You can shut it down now, Hecky," she yelled. "He's done with it!"

              A moment later the rumbling of the fire engine cut off. A minute after that, Hector appeared in the doorway, his expression neutral as he took in the sight of Skip in a towel standing around waiting for the tub to fill while Missy watched him. As soon as she saw him she walked over to him. They held a whispered conversation for a few moments, during which Hector developed a pleased grin upon his face. They said one last thing to each other and Hector disappeared, heading in the direction of the community center's front door. Missy, wearing a smile of her own, walked back over to Skip.

              "What was that all about?" he asked her.

              "Hecky's got a little thing going on the side with Brenda Callahan," she told him. "He's living with Maria Sanchez you see. She was one of the cart girls at the grocery store, but Brenda's been doing him for a few days now, trying to steal him away. Myself, I think he's just tearin' some off for the fun of it. Hecky likes Mexican girls and Maria's the only one in town. He won't leave her."

              "Shouldn't he be helping you guard me?" Skip asked, a big part of him appalled by the fact that he had left her alone.

              "You're not gonna attack me," she said. "You would've already done it back on the wall earlier if you were gonna do it. Did I tell you that you almost made me pee my pants when you yelled at us?"

              "No," he said dryly.

              "You did," she said. "You scared the crap out of both of us."

              "If you would've been paying attention to your duties as perimeter guards instead of gossiping with each other, maybe you would've seen me before I had a chance to scare you."

              She scoffed a little. "Do I look like a damn security guard?" she asked him. "I grew up in Granite Bay and went to private schools all my life. How the hell was I supposed to know that you were going to be up there?"

              "You weren't," he told her. "But you could've at least kept an eye out. Don't you know that the world is a different place now?"

              "I'm starting to learn that," she said. She pointed at the bathtub. "Looks like you're full up. Are you gonna climb in?"

              He climbed in after dropping his dirty towel to the floor and pretending not to notice Missy's interest in what was revealed by this motion. As before, the water was stinging at first but he quickly got used to it. This time he did not immediately pick up a washrag. Instead, he leaned backward against the sloped rise of the tub and relaxed, letting his body soak in the warmth, letting it ease his sore muscles. He closed his eyes, intending to ignore Missy in the hopes that she would go away or at least retreat back to her bench. This hope turned out to be quite naïve.

              He heard the sound of her boots being unbuckled and slipped off. He opened his eyes and saw that she was doing exactly that. As soon as they were free of her feet, she unbuckled her belt, sliding the holstered gun free and setting it on the towel shelf.

              "What are you doing, Missy?" he asked her wearily.

              "We're only allowed three baths a week," she said, undoing the buttons on her flannel shirt. "It's not my turn for another two days and I thought, since you've already got it full, that you wouldn't mind if I cheated a little." She winked at him. "A girl really does love her baths you know."

              "I would prefer to go it alone," he said, watching as her shirt opened up revealing a white bra beneath. Her breasts were small, smaller than Christine's, but they were nicely formed and the contrast of the white bra cups against her tanned skin was alluring.

              "Oh, don't be such a prude," she told him, shrugging the shirt off her shoulders. He could now see her smooth stomach and her belly button. "Surely you've taken a bath with a woman before. I don't bite."

              "But maybe I do," he said, unable to tear his eyes away from her skin. She really was a very attractive woman. Her curves were prominently displayed for him as she slid her hands down to the buttons of her jeans.

              "We've already been over that," she said, unsnapping the first button. "You wouldn't hurt me."

              "Missy," he said firmly, "I don't want to do this with you. I just want to get cleaned up and get some sleep."

              "Who says we're going to do anything," she said, feigning disinterest in him. She popped open the second button, revealing the top of her pink panties. "I just want to sneak in an extra bath. Help a girl out, will you?"

              "Then I'll get out," he said. "You have your bath and I'll get dressed."

              "Oh no," she told him, shaking her head. "I'm supposed to guard you. I can't do that if I'm in the tub and you're not." She undid another button, revealing even more of her panties.

              He began to feel his penis filling with blood, very much against his will. "Missy," he told her, shifting uncomfortably in the tub. "I'm trying to get accepted into your town. My very survival depends upon it. If I get caught naked in a bathtub with you on the first night, it won't look real good for me."

              She pushed her pants down, revealing her long legs. They, like her stomach and her chest, were nicely tanned. They were athletic legs, with hardly an ounce of fat on them. It seemed that Missy had spent a good portion of her adult life working out. She stood with them slightly apart, her weight distributed evenly. Her pink panties were bunched up just a little bit, the crotch showing a distinct dampness, a few stray strands of black pubic hair sticking out from the sides. His erection grew larger, reaching maximum pressure. "If we get caught," she told him, stepping out of her pants and walking a step closer to the tub, "I'll tell them that you were under duress." She smiled, reaching behind her for her bra strap. "In a way, you are you know. I have a gun over there on the shelf."

              "Jesus," he breathed, his hand unconsciously sliding down beneath the soapsuds to grasp his penis. He slid it up and down a few times without even realizing what he was doing.

              Her bra came free with a quick twist of her fingers and, with a single shrug of the shoulders it fell to the floor at her feet. Her breasts were perfectly rounded mounds that stuck out from her chest proudly. They did not sag. There was not enough of them to cause a sag. Little more than the size of avocados, they were capped with disproportionately large nipples and aureoles. The nipples were starkly erect, protruding outward more than half an inch.