The day after: An apocalyptic morning (71 page)

              When Skip left Paula's breast behind and began to kiss his way down her stomach, Christine's knees began to tremble. Suddenly his head was between those well-muscled legs as he began to eat her. Paula moaned loudly at the first contact, her hands pulling forcefully at his head, drawing him in tighter. Christine moaned as well, unaware that she was even doing it, unaware that Paula had clearly heard her.

              Though Christine had never before masturbated outside of the privacy of her own bedroom with the door locked, her fingers reached for the buttons on her jeans. She practically ripped them open and shoved them down to mid-thigh, pushing her panties down with them. She was able to smell the odor of her own musk, a sharp, wet tang that made her nostrils flare. As she continued to watch Skip orally pleasuring another woman, she put her fingers on her wet slit and began to rub, moaning again at the contact.

              By the time that Paula began to buck up and down on the bed and cry out in orgasm, Christine was panting, her fingers drenched in her own juices, waves of pleasure spreading throughout her body. When her own orgasm hit her - striking with the speed and force of a lightening strike - her knees buckled and she nearly fell down.

              "Now fuck me," Paula demanded, pulling Skip upward. "Oh God, fuck me now!"

              Christine moaned again, her fingers continuing to move, starting another wave of pleasure in motion. She watched Skip push Paula's legs back, watched his buttocks sway back and forth as he positioned himself against her. Her hands grabbed those buttocks, her nails biting into them, and suddenly, he sank down upon her, both of them groaning in sheer pleasure. His ass, the ass she loved so much, began to rise and fall, slowly at first, but rapidly picking up the pace, a wet squish reaching her ears with each motion.

              Christine's fingers became a blur once more, her juices running over her hands and she dropped to her knees next to the door, no longer able to hold herself up. She did not miss so much as a stroke as she fell, did not take her eyes off the action on the bed for so much as an instant.

              Skip was thrusting in and out of her, feeling the exciting clench of her muscles against his cock, touching the softness of her skin anywhere that his hands could reach. He was panting as he kissed her neck, her shoulder, occasionally dipping down to give a nipple a wet slurp. He became reacquainted with the fact that Paula, somewhat in contrast to Christine, had a very vocal and profane tongue during sex, particularly when she neared orgasm.

              "Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me harder," she nearly shouted into his ear between licks and bites at his earlobes. Her fingernails scratched almost painfully both upon his ass and his back. He pounded in and out of her with increasing force, grinding his pubis into her. And then he heard a distinct moan coming, not from Paula, but from behind them, from the other side of the doorway, audible even over all of the noise that Paula was making.

              Was Christine watching them? He had noted that the door had been left slightly ajar, had been about to close it in fact, while he and Paula had been shedding their clothes. In the excitement of the initial touches he had put it out of his mind, but now it came back to him. Paula had deliberately left that door open, had purposely kept the candles lit, and now Christine was watching them in their act of copulation, was moaning as she watched. He had a sudden mental image of her standing back there playing with herself, putting her fingers in and out of her pussy. Was she really doing that? Was she? Why else would she have moaned? That had not been a moan of pain or anguish, it had been of pleasure.

              "She's watching," Paula whispered breathlessly, just loud enough for him to hear. "She's back there watching us." She did not seem the least bit bothered by this. In fact, it seemed to drive her on. Her hips began to push back against his thrusts with a little more power. Her hands moved back and forth upon his sweaty back with a little more speed. And, though he wouldn't have thought it possible, her pussy seemed to get a little wetter around his cock.

              "Uhhh," Skip grunted, incapable of speech.

              "It's exciting," she whispered, her wet tongue sliding into his ear. "Isn't it?"

              "Yesss,"

              "Oh yesss," she said, now biting at his neck.

              She came a minute later, screaming out guttural profanity at the ceiling, her fingers raking scratches in his back. He was right behind her, his lower regions exploding with pleasure for the third time that strange day. As he poured himself out into Paula's body he heard the high-pitched squeals of Christine from the doorway, squeals that he knew intimately meant she too was coming.

              As Skip and Christine collapsed into a naked, sweaty heap, as they shared the deep, loving kisses that men and women shared in the afterglow of lovemaking, Christine slowly pulled her fingers from her slit. She too was panting and slightly damp from perspiration, her heart hammering in her chest, her muscles twitching from the effects of three rapid orgasms.

              Slowly she got to her feet. With shaking hands she pulled her pants and underwear back up, not bothering to refasten the buttons. Shuffling along in the darkness, she made her way to the spare bedroom, where she removed all of her clothes and lay down in the bed.

              She thought that it would be a long time before she would get to sleep. She thought that she would lay awake most of the night being tormented by the thoughts of Skip and Paula, being wracked by guilt and self-disgust for having watched them in their intimate act.

              So thinking, she drifted almost immediately to sleep, her nipples still hard, her sex still leaking moisture. Her dreams were filled, not with images of death and destruction brought on by the events of earlier in the day but of erotic images of pleasure brought on by the events of later.

              Skip, in contrast, thought he would go immediately to sleep once he rolled off of Paula and cuddled up in her arms. Fatigue pulled at him strongly, both from his bout of sexual congress and from the many and varied stresses of the past day. Indeed his body desperately wanted to go to sleep, but his mind stubbornly refused to let him.

              This might have been understandable had he lay awake agonizing over his new relationship with two women, or over the deaths in the town, or over the possibilities of future invasions. But that was not what he kept thinking about. For some reason that he could not put his finger on, he could not get the image of Paul out of his mind, specifically Paul as he had looked at that moment after the battle when he had first been given report that the town was secured.

              He would try to shut his mind off, would try to think of something else, but again and again, he would see Paul in the make-shift hospital room, agonizing over the three victims he was caring for. He would hear Paul express his hopelessness at the situation and at the fact that he was all that they had for a doctor. "Back before the comet when me and my fire-crew responded to shit like this, they didn't die," he heard Paul say again and again. "We just called for the medivac chopper and flew them off to Sacramento or Reno. They went into a nice trauma center and had their injuries patched up and then they went about their lives."

              Why was this seemingly meaningless moment in time coming back to him again and again? Why, while he was laying against a naked woman on his first night of a polygamous relationship, were these words haunting him? He didn't know, could not figure it out. Eventually, more than two hours after the sweat dried on his skin, while Paula was breathing the deep and regular pattern of solid sleep, fatigue got the upper hand and he started to drift off.

              It was as the last vestiges of consciousness were slipping away, as the final power plug of waking thought was being pulled, that it hit him. In a flash, his eyes flew open and he sat up, moving so abruptly that Paula groaned and thrashed for a moment next to him.

              "Son of a bitch," he whispered, wondering why he hadn't thought of it earlier. Could it be possible? Could it? Probably not, he was forced to conclude. He was probably chasing a pipe dream at best. But if there was the slightest possibility...

              He tried for a few minutes to go back to sleep, intending to talk to Paul first thing in the morning, but now that the thought had entered his mind, he could not get it out, would not be able to until he knew the answer.

              A moment later he was up and putting on his clothes in the darkness. Paul would be over at the community center, caring for his patients. He would just go ask him.

              He nearly sprinted the short distance, his feet splashing through puddles, his breath tearing in and out of his throat as he followed a flashlight beam through the streets. At the front door of the community center the night guard, Mike Harris, nearly shot him when he saw an unexpected figure approach.

              "Sorry, Mike," Skip told him excitedly. "Didn't mean to scare you."

              "It's not too hard to do after today," he said, reholstering his pistol with a shaky hand. "What are you doing out here this late? Is there trouble?"

              "No trouble," Skip said, walking past him and opening the front door. "I need to ask Paul something. Is he still in there?"

              "Yeah, or at least he hasn't come out this door."

              "Cool, I'll just be a minute." He rushed into the darkened building, his flashlight illuminating his path, his feet squeaking. He made turns and went down hallways until he reached the opened door of the supply room where the patients were being kept.

              As he entered it, a part of his mind noted that Dale was no longer there, which could only mean one thing. He dismissed that for the moment, his concern with other things. Sherri was still deeply asleep and didn't so much as stir when his light invaded the darkness, but Paul, and Janet who was sleeping next to him, both jerked up in alarm.

              "What? Who is it?" Paul barked as Janet clutched at him.

              "It's Skip," he said, lowering the beam so it wasn't shining directly in their eyes. "Sorry to wake you up."

              "What's wrong?" Paul asked fearfully. "Is something going on?"

              "No," Skip replied. "No trouble, nothing like that. I just needed to ask you a question."

              Paul looked at him as if he were insane. "You came barging in here in the middle of the night to ask me a question?"

              "Sorry," he said, walking over and sitting on a chair near their bed, "but it's a very important question potentially. Something you said earlier today has been nagging at me all night and I just figured out why. Now that I figured it out, I have to know. I won't be able to sleep until I know."

              "Until you know what?" Paul asked, quite exasperated. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

              "No," Skip said, calming himself a little, "I guess you don't." He took a deep breath, now afraid to ask because he might get an answer that he didn't like. But he had to. "Earlier today, when I was in here talking to you right after we finished securing the town, you told me that when you had people injured like that, you used to just fly them to a hospital in Reno or Sacramento."

              "Well... yeah," he said. "We're way out in the middle of nowhere here, at least as far as hospitals are concerned. The closest trauma center is either Roseville Community outside of Sacramento or Washoe Medical Center in Reno."

              Skip shivered a little in excitement. "Where," he asked carefully, "was the helicopter that flew them based at?"

              Part 9

              It had been twelve days since they had observed the strange battle for Garden Hill and Lieutenant Bracken's platoon was now nearly in sight of home. Weary from more than three weeks out in the field, they emerged from the heavily wooded hills above town and onto the black surface of Interstate 80, near an exit sign for Bell Road, which skirted the edge of the foothill community. Less than a mile ahead of them was the outer defensive perimeter for the town, a perimeter that was aligned along the Foresthill Road exit, which led to the strategic bridgehead that they held. Bracken, lingering in the rear as he usually did, knew that the guard positions ahead had probably already sighted his men.

              "Keep it slow up there, Stu," he said into his radio, talking to the sergeant of the squad that was on point. "We wouldn't want to get shot at by our own sentries, would we?"

              "Slowing up," Stu's voice answered back a moment later.

              This had been a good trip in many ways, not the least of which was the discovery of the vulnerable and seemingly rich Garden Hill community. It had also given Bracken more opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of Stu and his people. There had been some doubts raised about how the former convicts would fit in with the militia's operations. Though he was perhaps overly aggressive on certain Mickers, and though his squad, which was made up of the ten best of his men, were constant disciplinary problems, Stu had kept them under control and had followed the commands that were given to him. In all, he seemed a satisfactory leader with a fairly keen sense of tactics and strategy. He had performed well in combat conditions when they'd taken Colfax prior to this deployment, and he had done equally well on the long-term recon mission they'd just finished.