The day after: An apocalyptic morning (170 page)

              "You... seduced Maggie?" he asked, the vision of Christine and Maggie making love together rising into his head. It was not an unpleasant image in the least.

              She nodded, her face a little shamed. "After the first hit and run attacks we made," she told him. "I couldn't help it, Skip. I was horny and you weren't around and Shellie was asleep and Maggie and I were naked together getting cleaned up and... well... I did it."

              "You did it?" he asked, wanting more details than that.

              "I started touching her," she said. "And then... and then I ate her out."

              "Wow," he said, staring at Christine, finding himself quite aroused by what she was telling him. As Paula had suspected, he was not the least bit upset by this admission. "And then what happened? You said Paula was involved?"

              And so they told him the entire, sordid story, taking turns narrating it and turning him on greatly in the process. He particularly enjoyed the tale of their last encounter in the storage room.

              "And so you sat on her face?" he asked, fighting to keep his hand away from his turgid penis.

              By now, Christine was starting to see the effect that their admission was having upon him. Her nervousness at confessing her actions was being quickly replaced by sexual stimulation. "Yeah," she said, her eyes shining. "I sat on her face and she stuck her tongue all the way up inside of me. It felt so good, Skip."

              "Did she make you come?"

              "Oh yeah," she said, rubbing her legs together now as she felt moisture seeping out of her. "Her face was drenched by the time I was done."

              "And you ate Maggie out while she was doing this?" he asked Paula, who was also showing unmistakable signs of arousal now.

              "I made her scream," she confirmed. Unable to help herself any longer, she reached over and took him into her hand, slowly stroking up and down.

              "Ahhhh," he groaned at the touch. "Well, needless to say, I forgive you both. In fact... Ohh that's the way..."

              "Let me help," Christine said, reaching over and putting her hand on him below Paula's. She began to stroke as well.

              "You were saying, Skip?" Paula prompted as they developed a pleasing rhythm.

              "Oh," he said, finding it suddenly hard to concentrate. "I was just saying that if you ever want to... you know... have some fun with Maggie again... well, I'm not about to complain about it. It sounds like the poor girl needs a little release now and then."

              The two women exchanged a smile with each other. "Well, as a Micker of fact," Paula said, "that's kind of what we wanted to talk to you about - Maggie needing release."

              "Yeah?"

              "Yeah," Christine confirmed, reverting back to nervousness a little - although this did not prevent her from continuing to stroke up and down. "You see, Maggie is... well... lonely. She hasn't had a man of her own since the comet you know. And she and I... and Shellie... we've been talking a lot lately. And she thinks you're really nice... and... and..." She trailed off, unsure how to continue.

              "Are you saying that you want me to fuck Maggie?" Skip asked carefully, thinking that he must be wrong. A man's wives wouldn't ask him to fuck someone else, would they?

              "Well," Paula said, taking over for the moment, "we probably wouldn't have termed it that way. We would've said 'make love to Maggie', but yes, that is what Christine was suggesting in that cute, shy little way that she has."

              "I'm not shy," Christine said, half-playful, half-offended. "I've just never asked anyone anything like this before. It's so weird."

              "Like I have?" Paula said with a grin.

              "Wait a minute here," Skip said, letting his hands drop from their legs. "Let me just get this straight here. You two, my wives, are telling me that you want me to have sexual relations with another woman. Is that what you're saying?"

              "Not just sex," Paula told him. "We want you to... you know... let Maggie in on our relationship."

              "Let her in on it?" he asked, even more surprised now.

              "At least on a trial basis," Christine said. "We both like her a lot and she needs a man. She wants to be part of a family... our family."

              "And Christine and I think she would make a good addition," Paula said.

              "Wow," Skip said, a little overwhelmed.

              "If it doesn't work out then it doesn't work out," Christine said. "But we'd like to at least give it a try. I think it'll work. Maggie's really sweet. She's not at all like she used to be when Jessica was here. She's changed a lot."

              "She knows what's important now," Paula added. She smiled a little. "And, she's got really nice fake titties. You could tit-fuck her without even having to hold them together."

              This cracked Skip up. He spewed laughter at the serious way in which Paula had thrown that in. It also served to break a little bit of the tension. He shook his head in amusement when his laughter died down. "Like I told you before," he said to them. "I'm a man. There's no way in hell that I'm going to turn down the addition of another woman into the equation. To do so would be... well... unmanly."

              Paula and Christine both smiled at him gratefully. "I thought you would feel that way," Paula told him. "In fact, I anticipated it." She turned to the door. "Come on in, Mags," she yelled. "You're all set up."

              Skip looked at them in surprise. "You mean Maggie is here? Right now? She's been here this entire time?"

              Paula nodded. "A little liberty on our part," she told him. "We knew you would agree to this, so we worked to avoid all possible delays in the initiation."

              "It helps keep people from changing their minds," Christine put in.

              "You two are conniving," Skip said, not disrespectfully.

              Maggie appeared in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a tight shirt that accented her unnatural breasts nicely. She had a nervous, shy smile upon her face, as if she wasn't completely sure what she was doing here. She hesitated just inside the room, looking from face to face uncertainly. She seemed to be trying to avoid looking at the erect pole that was being stroked by the two women although her eyes kept flitting to it.

              "Come on in, Mags," Christine said, waving her into the room. "Skip has agreed to bring you in on a trial basis. How does that sound?"

              "Umm..." she said, stammering, her face flushing with embarrassment. "It sounds... uh... you know?"

              "We know," Maggie told her. "Now come on in and get a piece of this. You know you want it."

              She stepped further into the room, her steps that of a child learning to walk. Her eyes took a longer look at Skip's erection, not flitting away this time.

              "Welcome to the family," Skip, who was a little nervous himself, told her. "You come highly recommended."

              The next day dawned with the Auburn guard force minus three more of its members. None of the three had committed any act that could be construed as criminal or negligent - all had in fact been among the best of those that Madeline had trained after the revolution. Their crime had been their friendship and support of Madeline and their criticism - spoken to friends but overheard by Jessica's cronies - of the earlier removals, particularly Madeline herself. The reason for their removal that had been given by Jessica was "questionable loyalties" and "possible seditious acts being contemplated". They were replaced by members of Jessica's clique, none of whom had been through the training course and two of whom had never even handled a firearm before.

              By 10:30 that morning the first death attributed to Jessica's takeover of the guard detail was logged. Peggy Linscott, one of the untrained women, accidentally shot Regina Navas with her M-16 rifle while trying to get the feel of it. She had been examining the various levers and switches of the gun as it lay on her lap with her finger inside the trigger guard. When she pulled the barrel of the weapon up to get a closer look at the safety switch, the weapon went off, sending a 5.56 millimeter bullet five feet across the bunker where it struck Regina - another one of the new guards - in the side of the head. She never knew what hit her.

              Peggy was not punished for her accident. She was not even removed from the detail. Despite the fact that she was now a nervous wreck, racked with guilt over what had happened, she was told to stand the rest of the watch and be more careful. Regina was buried just outside of town in an unmarked grave that was dug by former members of the guard detail.

              Word of these events was brought to Madeline in the high school building by other exiles from the guard force that had contact with townspeople outside of Jessica's circle. Jessica had been foolishly of the opinion that the incident could be kept quiet. Madeline did nothing for the moment. Though saddened by the useless death, she knew that it would most likely not be in vain. She kept washing her towels and hanging them on the overburdened lines in the gymnasium until nearly 2:00 PM when the moment she had been waiting for finally occurred.

              "Madeline?" a voice said from the doorway. "Can I have a word with you for a minute?"

              Madeline pulled her hands from the soapy water and looked up to see Kathy Kingsley standing in the doorway. Kathy had once been a nurse in Sutter Auburn Hospital (before the entire side of town it had been in was buried under billions of tons of mud). She had been off work on the day of the comet and had been traded back and forth between husbands no less than six times during the reign of the men. Kathy was in charge of their medical supplies and had trained up several other women to help her take care of any sickness or injury that occurred. She was neither a friend of Jessica's nor of Madeline's. She was in fact very apolitical as were most of the town's women. She had no wish to get involved in any of the movings or shakings that made the town run, preferring instead to simply do her job and live her life.

              "Hi, Kathy," Madeline said, looking at her, keeping her expression carefully bland. "What brings you down here to the slave galley?"

              Kathy cracked no smile at her joke. "I need to talk to you," she said, walking closer but taking a quick look behind her first to see if she were being observed by anyone. "It's very important."

              "Well come on in," Madeline said. "I'm about due for my break anyway."

              She came closer, obviously very nervous about being seen, and stopped just before the pool of soapy water containing the previous day's towels. "I'm here," she said, "at the request of some of the other women in town."

              "Oh?"

              She nodded. "I'm not a leader or a radical or anything like that," she said. "Usually my policy is to keep well out of things. Do you understand?"

              "I do," Madeline told her. "But things are different now, aren't they?"

              "They are," she agreed, taking another glance towards the doorway. "Look," she said. "Some of the women asked me if I would come talk to you about... well... Jessica."

              "I see," she said, continuing to keep her expression normal. "And what did they want you to talk to me about?"

              "She's crazy," Kathy said. "She's drunk half of the time and she's popping pills the other half of the time. We all know that she is the one that brought in the revolution and all and we're really grateful to her for that... but... she's not handling being a leader very well."

              "Oh really?" Madeline said sarcastically, letting her expression slip just a bit.

              "Everyone supported her at first," Kathy said. "She organized us and helped us get rid of the men. But now she's taking all of the girls who know what they're doing off of the guard detail. She replaced you and a lot of your people just because you spoke out against her. She's torturing the men that are left. Granted, a lot of those assholes deserved to be mistreated after what they put us through - hell, I should know that better than anyone - but she's gone over the edge about it. I was in charge of trying to treat that poor slob that they killed with the crowbar. I also treated all of the others. No one deserves to have that done to them. And anyone who condones that sort of activity is not someone we want leading us."

              "I agree," Madeline said. "And I tried to talk to her about it. That's what got me here."

              "She's not fit to lead this town," Kathy said. "Something needs to be done about her. And quickly. Pretty soon the men will be back in town and we'll have to fight them. It will be a tough fight even with everyone trained highly and ably led. It will be a pushover with those incompetent boobs we have now. And with each day that passes, the men get closer and closer to town and the guard detail gets less and less efficient. Hell, Linda Swenson told me that guard position four was kept unmanned all night last night because all of Jessica's guards were at her little party."