The day after: An apocalyptic morning (99 page)

              "I don't need any help right now," Sherrie said, feeling goose bumps rising on her skin as the lambskin touched her navel. "I think maybe we've had a little too much wine and..."

              "You like it when I give you your baths, don't you?" Janet asked softly.

              "What?" she said with a start.

              Janet smiled. "When I bathe you," she said, continuing to make slow circles around her belly button, "your nipples get hard, just like they are now. And your pussy gets wet. When I'm washing your legs and your thighs, I can smell it when you get aroused, and I can see your clit gets hard. It turns you on to have me touch you, doesn't it?"

              "No," Sherrie said, shaking her head, knowing that she was lying. Over the past two weeks she had become incredibly aroused whenever it was bath time, so aroused that she looked forward to it almost as much as Paul's medical exams. She had refused to acknowledge this to herself, had refused to delve deeply into the meaning of it in her mind, but there was no denying it. She liked Janet's hands upon her body.

              "Let's be honest with each other, Sherrie," Janet said, sliding the dildo a little further to the south, so that it was just touching the top of her pubic hair. "You're wet right now, aren't you?"

              "Janet..." Sherrie said, confused.

              "Aren't you?" Janet repeated. "Don't fib to me. You're lying there with your legs open and you're letting me slide this thing all over you. I can see the wetness on your pussy. You want me to put this in you, don't you?" She let it slide for just the briefest moment over the top of her clit and down between her pink lips.

              "Ohhh," Sherrie said, startled as electricity shot through her nether regions. Her hips jerked upward, instinctively trying to increase the contact. What was happening to her? Why was Janet acting this way? Why was she responding to it?

              "Tell me, Sherrie," Janet said, letting the dildo trail over her inner thighs now. It left a small smear of wetness where it touched. "Do you want me to put it in you? Do you want me to fuck you with it, to make you come?"

              "Yes," Sherrie said helplessly, giving in. "Put it in, Janet. Put it in me."

              Janet smiled. "That a girl," she said, bringing the tip back to those wet lips. "Honesty is always the best policy, isn't it?" Slowly, she began to twist the dildo back and forth, pushing on it with delicate pressure so that the lips parted, allowing a half-inch to penetrate her.

              "More, Janet," Sherrie pleaded, her hips gyrating and trying to drive it in deeper. "Put it all the way in!"

              "I'm getting there," Janet said, pushing a little harder, so another inch slid inside of her. She gave it a few twists and then pulled it back out a bit. Before Sherrie could protest, she pushed it back in, a little deeper this time, and then pulled it back out, and then put it back in. Slowly, inch-by-inch, stroke-by-stroke, she pushed and pulled until the entire nine inches was sliding in and out, it's surface wet and slippery with juices.

              "Ohhh, Janet," Sherrie cried, her breathing somewhat rapid now, her hips bumping with the rhythm. Though she had shoved that pink dildo in and out of herself hundreds of times before, never had it felt so good, never had it turned her on as much as she was at this moment. What was happening to her?

              "Have you ever played around with another girl before?" Janet asked her, picking up the speed a little, giving the dildo an extra little twist with each stroke.

              "No," she breathed, her head falling back on her shoulders. "Not really."

              "Not really?" Janet asked, her free hand finding a breast and beginning to softly caress it. "What does that mean?"

              "Well," she said, "when I was in high school this woman I... ohhhh... I babysat for tried to... you know."

              "To fuck you?"

              "Yeah," she said, pushing her breast into Janet's hand to increase the pressure. "She started kissing me one night... ohhhh God, Janet... turn it on. Make it vibrate."

              "Tell me the story first," Janet said, pushing it in to the hilt and then slowly withdrawing it for an instant. She then resumed the strokes, though at a slower rate.

              "She started kissing me on the couch one night after she came home," she said. "I was so surprised that I let her. And then after a minute or two, I started getting... you know... kind of hot."

              "And then what?"

              "And then... oh God... and then... well... I was wearing a skirt. She took my panties off and put her face down between my legs. She started eating me."

              "Did it feel good?"

              "I never felt anything like it before," Sherrie said. "But I was ashamed. I thought that maybe I was a lesbian or something. I ran away before she finished. I never talked to her again."

              "She didn't make you come?"

              "No," Sherrie said. "I only let her do it for a minute or so."

              "But you liked it?"

              "Yes," she said softly.

              "Did you always wish you would've let her finish?"

              "Yes."

              Janet smiled, licking her lips a little. "I'll finish it for her," she said.

              "Janet, I don't think we should..."

              "Shhh," Janet said for the second time that night. She flipped on the vibrator, making it hum. "I don't think you should think right now. Thinking just gets in the way of things sometimes." As she began to push and pull the humming contraption in and out with vigor once again, she slowly lowered her head to Sherrie's right breast. She licked the nipple slowly and then took it into her mouth, suckling it.

              "Oh, Janet," Sherrie moaned, letting the sensation take her away. "Oh God."

              Janet suckled the nipple for a moment and then switched to the other one, making it firm and puffy with her mouth. She then let her head move downward, tonguing her way across Sherrie's stomach and pelvic area until she was right above the dildo moving in and out. By now it was starting to get warm. She licked her lips one more time, inhaling the exciting scent of female pheromones, and then began lapping at the swollen clit.

              It was a little over three hours since Skip had safely and uneventfully landed the helicopter safely back in the community center parking lot. A debriefing meeting had been held almost immediately afterward, with Christine, Paula, Mick, and Paul attending while Jack ran the video player and Skip narrated the events. Copious notes and observations had been made both about the layout of Auburn and about the newly discovered town of El Dorado Hills.

              Overall, Paul thought as he walked wearily home, the mission had been a success, well worth the fuel that had been burned to run it. They now had some good, solid information about the town down the hill. They knew that only the men carried the guns and staffed the guard positions and that the women seemed to carry garbage and clean things up. They knew that their headquarters was a high school atop a hill and that they powered their headquarters with a diesel generator that was fueled from a tanker trailer parked behind it, a trailer that had probably been scavenged from the Interstate. None of this information was particularly enlightening as to the intentions of the Auburnites, but at least it gave them an idea of their make-up and armament.

              And then there was El Dorado Hills. It was quite exciting to discover that there was another group of people out there, people that were adept at hiding themselves at the approach of enemies. Paul had given Skip a stern talking-to about the unauthorized side-trip and asked him not to operate outside of his mission orders any more, but he was, in retrospect, glad that he had done it. The El Doradans seemed, at least from the blurry infrared images, a lot more like the Garden Hillians than those in Auburn were. In EDH they used women on guard detail! That one little discovery spoke volumes about the type of society they were operating under. There had been some talk about possibly trying to make contact with them in the future.

              As he walked up his driveway, slogging through the ever-present puddles, he was mulling over just how they could go about making that contact if the time came. Certainly just having Skip land his helicopter in the middle of their town was far too dangerous. What other options were there?

              The house was darkened as he entered it. He hung up his rain jacket in the entryway and then, operating by feel, lit a candle that had been sitting just inside the formal living room. Using it's meager light, he navigated his way through the damp clothing hanging from the drying line and into the hallway. He went first to the guestroom, where Sherrie would be sleeping, so he could check up on her. Of course he had no reason to believe that she was in any sort of peril, but he checked anyway. He took any excuse he could to look in on his beautiful patient. He was sometimes concerned with how attracted he had become to her over the past few weeks but the attraction was undeniable. Though he loved Janet deeply, he lusted strongly after Sherrie, that lust growing every time he caught a glimpse of her vaginal area or saw her bra-less breasts bouncing beneath her nightgown or put his hands upon her soft legs. He wanted her badly and had taken to imagining it was she that he was making love to whenever he made love to Janet (which he did frequently these days). It wasn't that he didn't desire Janet any more it was just that Sherrie was different and variety was what men craved.

              The first thing he noticed when he stuck his head into the guest bedroom was the smell. In the poorly ventilated room the odor of musk was almost overwhelming. Paul had no trouble identifying what that odor was - he had smelled it often enough in his life - and his penis began to stiffen at the first whiff. What the hell? Had Sherrie been playing with herself in there? That very thought was enough to stiffen him up completely.

              As the light from the candle penetrated the darkness he saw an amazing sight. On the bed, sleeping soundly, was not just Sherrie but Janet as well. They were in bed together! Though the covers were pulled up to their necks, hiding their bodies from his sight, it was quite obvious that they were cuddled together, Janet's head nestled into the crook of Sherrie's neck. Lying on the floor beside the bed was a dildo! A dildo! What had happened in here? Had the two women had sex together?

              "Holy shit," he whispered, trembling a little as he envisioned the two of them, naked and sweaty and using that dildo on each other. That had to have been what had happened! It had to! Why else would it smell so strongly of sex in the room? Why else would they be cuddled up together?

              Janet, a light sleeper even under the influence of wine, opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. She blinked a few times and then looked up at him, giving him a smile. He opened his mouth to say something to her but she put her finger to her lips, hushing him. Slowly she extricated herself from Sherrie's grasp, sliding out from beneath the covers and standing naked. She walked towards him, continuing to hold her fingers to her lips, and then kissed him lightly on the mouth. The strong taste of musk was upon her lips.

              "Janet..." he stammered softly, "what have... I mean..."

              "Shhh," she said, giving him one more kiss. "Let's go the bedroom. We need to talk."

              The next day was very busy for the residents of Garden Hill. The operation to recover the freight train supplies began in earnest. A group of eight people - Paul in command of them - were flown out to the sight of the train and lowered down on the ropes to the tracks. Utilizing empty hot water heaters that had been stripped from the houses and modified with latched lids on the top, more than two tons of rice was moved from the grain carriers and placed into storage in the community center. The water heaters were used both to airlift the commodity and to store it, eliminating the step of moving it from one container to another once back in town.

              Nearly everyone in town participated in the operation in one way or another, even the children. And as they worked a variety of new rumors and stories circulated among the townspeople. First and foremost was the story about the existence of another operating community in El Dorado Hills. Excitement at the discovery of fellow human beings that had survived the comet was on every lip.

              But coming up a close second was the story about the newest triple that had been formed in town. By mid-morning the rumor was confirmed. Paul, their leader, and perhaps the most respected man in town, was taking himself a new wife.

              Jessica had been in a state of complete disbelief for the past three days. Like any new woman brought to Auburn, she had been housed in the high school under guard and subjected to the "education class" in which the rules and laws of town had been explained in exacting detail to her. Two women had been the one's to give her these so-called lessons and with each word out of their mouths her disbelief had grown.

              Don't speak to your husband or any other man unless you are first spoken to? Infidelity to your man was punishable by hanging? No leaving the house without first asking permission? No leaving the town at all? No handling of firearms or reading of books under punishment of hanging? What the hell were these ditsy women trying to hand her? Surely they could not be serious? Had she been placed in the care of the mentally deranged? Never once did she consider that these mad ravings could be actual town rules that were enforced. That was simply impossible. Sure, she was living in a male oriented society, that was easy enough to see. But then hadn't society always been male-oriented? Hadn't women like her always found a way to grasp and exert power through those men? Surely this place couldn't be any different.