The day after: An apocalyptic morning (74 page)

              And then, two days later, while traversing a rise, Mick, who had been on point, had spotted a group of men picking their way through the woods. The four travelers hid themselves for nearly an hour, guns trained outward as the twelve scraggly, bearded, filthy men, all armed with rifles, made their way past them and disappeared up the hill. Had they been the cannibals? There was no way of telling for sure without making contact - there was, after all, still the occasional deer or bear to be found - but everyone strongly suspected they were.

              "We really have it soft in Garden Hill," Mick said, thinking of all he had seen. "I always knew that intellectually, but until I saw what others are doing to survive..."

              "That's hideous," Paula said, not wanting to discuss it. "Eating human flesh. Killing people in order to do it. What have we come to, us humans? What have we come to?"

              "We've come down to basic survival," Skip said. "And hopefully our group will come out on top of the chain."

              "I would kill myself before I would eat another person," Paula said sternly. "I just couldn't do it. I think my soul would die."

              "You never know what you're capable of until you're faced with it," Mick said. "What about the Donner Party or those rugby players that crashed in the Andes?"

              "I would still rather die," Paula told him. "But in any case, that's different. They didn't go out hunting for people and shoot them in the back of the head so they could eat them."

              "At least not as far as we know," Mick said. "Truth be told, I'm not quite sure what I would do if I was faced with either starvation or cannibalism. I hope I never have to find out."

              "Amen," Skip said, finding the entire discussion somewhat disturbing. "And if we can get that chopper tomorrow, hopefully we won't ever be faced with that choice."

              The last of the light left the sky, signaling bedtime for those still awake. Mick and Jack shared one lean-to and Paula and Skip shared the other. Everyone stripped down to their underwear and climbed into their sleeping bags. In the case of Paula and Skip, they both climbed into one large sleeping bag that had been formed by zipping two together.

              "Keep me warm," Paula said with a shiver, pulling her body against his, sharing her warmth with him. As had been the case before with Christine, neither one of them smelled particularly good after eight days out, and Paula's legs were quite scratchy with stubble, but the pleasure of touching flesh to flesh made the aesthetics of the situation a secondary concern.

              "Mmmm," Skip whispered to her, his hands on her bare back. "This is the advantage of taking your woman with you on an expedition. Guaranteed warmth."

              "Is this how you and Christine used to sleep?" she whispered back, pressing herself even tighter against him.

              "Pretty much," he agreed. "We would usually end up with her cuddled up on top of me by the end of the night."

              "She told me that you used to make love every night while you were out there. Every night?"

              Skip shrugged in the darkness. "What can I say?" he asked lightly.

              "You haven't done me a single time out here," she said next. "What's up with that?"

              "When I was doing it with Christine," he replied, "I didn't know that others could hear us. Now, thanks to some straight talk by Jack, I do know that. It's not that I don't want to."

              "I can feel that," she said teasingly. "I feel you get hard against me every time we lay together." She slid her hand down and grasped his erection through his underwear. "Like right now for instance."

              "Paula," he said, making no move to stop her as she squeezed and kneaded him. It felt so damn good.

              "We can do it quietly," she told him, kissing his ear. "And if they hear us, so what? I want you, Skip. I need you inside of me."

              He gave in, as she had known that he would. Over the past twenty days she had come to know his triggers fairly well. She slid her hand into his BVDs and began to fondle him in earnest. His own hand found its way under the elastic band of her panties at the crotch. She was very wet and slippery, her clit a hard little bump. He pushed his underwear down to mid thigh and climbed slowly on top of her, taking care not to rustle the sleeping bag too much. She spread her legs for him and pulled the crotch of her panties to the side, giving him the access he needed. He put the head against her slit and slowly pushed forward, sinking into her warmth inch by agonizing inch until he was buried in her body. Her hands on his butt pulled him tightly against her.

              "So nice," she said softly into his ear. "Eight days is too long to go without."

              "I agree," he said as he slowly began to move in and out of her, his hips rising and falling carefully, silently.

              In truth, going eight days without had been almost akin to torture after the pace of his first twelve days as part of a polygamous marriage. All three of them had been swept up in an almost honeymoon-like atmosphere and if Skip was called on to perform his husbandly duties only once a day, it was a slump. Usually he would make love at least twice, sometimes three times; something he would not have thought himself physically capable of. Having two women to pleasure and be pleasured by did wonders for the libido it seemed. Though no firm rules had been set, as had been agreed upon from the beginning, a pattern of sorts had developed nonetheless. Typically he would make love in the morning to whichever of the two women he had not slept with the night before. This would usually take place on the marital bed in the master bedroom, and usually the other woman was in the bathroom at the time, getting cleaned up and ready to face the day. As Paula had predicted, they were rapidly losing their modesty around each other and, while making love to one woman while the other was combing her hair and putting on her deodorant was still very exciting, it no longer seemed strange or perverted. And though both women never discussed these things openly, it was quite obvious that both of them enjoyed surreptitiously watching the other in the act.

              At night, when they went to bed, another session, a more private one, would typically occur with whoever's turn it was to sleep with him that night. These sessions tended to be longer, more drawn out, more intimate and loving. It was during such sessions that new things were tried, that new techniques were explored. It was during such a session that Skip learned of Paula's affinity for anal sex. She loved it when he slid it in and out of her in the missionary position long enough to get both of them thoroughly wet and then slid his cock down to her other hole and used this natural lube to put it into her tight back passage. It was during the night session that he learned that Christine loved to straddle his head, her wet and dripping pussy on his face where she could rub it back and forth over his tongue. Christine was also quite fond of being taken from behind, in the doggie-style position, while Skip grasped her roughly by the waist and pounded her with all of his might.

              So far, though the two women had seen each other in the act many times, and though they walked around naked in front of each other without a second thought, they had shown no leanings towards touching each other or even sleeping in bed with him at the same time. Though having two women at once was every man's fantasy, Skip was a glass is half-full kind of person and was therefore quite pleased with the fact that he could simply have two women separately.

              In other aspects of the relationship, things were going better than they had had any right to expect. So far there had been a few minor squabbles over things such as who was in the bathroom first or whose turn it was to do the laundry, but no major battles of any kind. They were in a discovery phase of their new relationship and all three were making an impressive effort to make things work out. So far, things seemed to be working well and the two women seemed to be becoming best friends with each other.

              Like with Jack and Stacy however, the subject of the trip to Cameron Park had created the most turmoil in the relationship to date. Christine had wanted desperately to be the one to accompany him, making the argument that she already had experience outside the walls and was therefore more qualified than Paula. Strangely enough, that very argument was the exact reason that he wanted to take Paula and leave Christine behind. Christine had already done her time outside the wall and he wanted Paula to gain the experience that moving a long distance as part of a squad offered. Christine had pouted about this for a few days but had eventually seen the wisdom of his decision. The blow was eased further when Skip put her in charge of the security division in his absence. He was interested to know just how she was doing in that capacity and just how the members of the detail and the rest of the town were taking being directed by a sixteen-year-old girl.

              "A little harder," Paula whispered excitedly, thrusting her hips up at him. "I'm almost there."

              "I'm going as hard as I can without making noise," he whispered back, already cognizant of the thick smell rising around them and the distinct squishing noise that accompanied each thrust. Nevertheless, his instinct was to please. He put just a little more power behind his thrusts, twisted his hips just a little bit more to grind into her clit.

              This did the trick. He felt her pelvis bucking beneath him felt her nails tightening on his ass, felt the spasms of her vaginal muscles around his cock. She bit into his shoulder to keep from crying out as she peaked.

              "Your turn now," she told him, pulling him still harder against her. "I want to feel you come in me."

              It didn't take him very long at all, so pent up was he. He released the mental block that had kept him from blasting off prior to this and within seconds the waves of pleasure were spreading from his groin outward. His muscles clenched almost painfully and he could not help but let a small groan escape as he began to shoot his seed into her receptive body.

              "Very nice," she said when he was done. "I knew you had it in you."

              "Actually, I had it in you," he said, giving her a kiss. "Hopefully we'll be in our own bed tomorrow night and we'll be able to do it right."

              "I can't wait," she said. "Let's get some sleep."

              "Right."

              They rearranged themselves slowly, still trying to avoid making noise, not knowing that they needn't have bothered. Both Mick and Jack had heard the entire thing.

              The next morning, back in Garden Hill, Christine was out in the rain near the old grocery store with a group of seven women. These women were not part of the Garden Hill guard force. They were mostly wood gatherers, children watchers, or fire tenders. Christine was teaching them the basics of the firearms the town possessed, showing them how to load, unload, shoot, and clean each variety. She had just finished with her last demonstration of the lesson - the shotgun.

              "So you see," she told her students as she held up a Remington model for their perusal, "the shotgun, for our purposes here, is a weapon of last resort. It is good only for close in fighting at less than ten yards or so. And while we hope that any combat we find ourselves in doesn't degenerate to the point that we're that close, if it does, this could very well be our saving grace. This weapon, when loaded with the double ought buckshot rounds, packs quite a punch and will easily mow down any person within its range with a minimum of aiming."

              Maggie, the woman that had stood by Christine during the battle, raised her hand timidly. "So all you have to do is point it and shoot?" she asked.

              "That's right," Christine said. "You'll see what I mean when we shoot it. You just point the barrel at your target and fire. The ten pellets in the round will do the rest."

              For the next half-hour they all took turns examining the shotgun and learning to take it apart. They all practiced loading it, unloading it, and clearing chambered rounds. Christine watched over them like a mother hen, occasionally stepping in to demonstrate if someone was having trouble.

              It had been Skip's order, approved overwhelmingly by a community vote, that every person in town learn to shoot, whether they wanted to or not, whether they were a part of the guard force or not. Though the guard force would serve as point defense in any battle, Skip had argued - quite successfully now that he didn't have Jessica countering his every word - that if push came to shove, every person in town would need to know how to fight. "We might never be faced with such a situation," he had said. "And God willing, you folks may never have to use this knowledge, but if we need it, this basic firearms training just might make the difference between us standing and us falling."

              Skip, after running the first sixteen guard force volunteers through his two-day regiment, had trained up many of the non-guards himself. But now that he was off in the wilderness looking for a helicopter, the responsibility for training up the rest of the town had fallen on the acting security chief.

              At first they hadn't wanted to listen to her. Several of them had even refused to show up at their assigned times, forcing her to enlist the aid of Paul and his threats of house arrest to bring them to her. But once they were there, once she went into her lecture, their condescending attitudes had gradually changed to respect. Christine had a gift for coming across like she knew what she was talking about, especially when she did know what she was talking about. She laid down her instructions in simple, easy to understand terms and utilized a lot of hands-on training. So far, not a single person had walked away thinking that her class had been a waste of their time. Like with Jack, she had proved herself well enough that they stopped calling her by cute little terms of endearment and started calling her by her name.