The Apocalypse Connection

by Kyle Kenze

  Red rocked back and forth on my lap, her long legs wrapped around my waist, tree trunk and all. Casey and Maddy engaged in a girl-on-girl sixty-nine, Casey the one on her back with her graceful knees curled to her ears.

  “You're my captive.” Red was suddenly talking very loud. “You can never get away.”

  Yeah. I'd heard it too. A snap of a branch somewhere. And then another. Criminals think they know how to move quietly, but they're rarely right about that.

  “Don't be too sure, bad girl.” I spoke loudly too. It was important to carry out the charade. Or was it a charade when I was really notching my arrowhead between her hot pink folds?

  We had to look as if we hadn't heard a thing. As if we had no clue they were coming.

  As if we had no idea anyone in the whole wide world might be watching.

  Chapter Twelve

  My hips rocked, and so did Red's. When her knees locked around my back― bound wrists, tree trunk, and all― I thrust higher. Taut internal muscles began to pulsate along the length of my fine upstanding spike.

  She wasn't edging me now. She wanted to hurry and drain me. We worked faster. More frantically. The roaring of blood in my ears didn't blot out the sounds of the surrounding forest. All my senses were on full alert.

  They were watching. Waiting.

  They'd tell themselves they were being extra-cautious in their approach. But, of course, they'd also want to get an eyeful of the free porn show taking place right in front of them. They'd tell themselves the best moment to attack was in that loose, lazy moment after we all finished coming.

  They weren't so worried about me, since I was tied to a tree.

  But they'd want to take the girls without hurting them. They'd want them loose-limbed and relaxed, maybe even asleep, the better to snatch them without a fight.

  I fucked faster, and Red bounced higher.

  Casey and Maddy double-sucked each other with a reckless urgency.

  Red's pussy exploded in a convulsive jerk that triggered me instantly. Casey and Maddy thrashed together, their tongues wedged miles deep into each other's cores.

  The forest around us seemed to be holding its breath.

  Red slumped on top of me, the picture of a drained girl ready for a long post-fuck nap. My balls were drained, and my dick was retreating, but the obvious spasms working through my inner thighs made it obvious I hadn't faked this fuck.

  Casey and Maddy too had slumped. They curled into each other. Two almost-sleeping beauties.

  This was the moment.

  The perfect moment.

  The girls were ripe for the plucking. If you wanted to take them when they were loose and helpless, the time was now.

  Right. Fucking. Now.

  One of the two dirty, bearded slobs had actually holstered his weapon, the better to lasso the nearest girl. So dumb-ass. The other guy carried his AK-47 carelessly, but at least he did carry it. His reward was to be the guy I blasted away first.

  Second creep dropped the rope to put up his hands. “Hey, hey, hey. It isn't what you think.”

  “It's exactly what I think.” I got to my feet without lowering the Heckler & Koch from his center of mass.

  “We just wanted the girls, man. You don't need all three girls. Three guys, three girls. Everybody gets one girl. That's only fair.”

  “Two guys now.” Red toed at the dead man on the ground at our feet. He made a bad first impression and a worse second one. Only committed criminals get that much ink on their face.

  “You have to share in a survival situation.” This loser couldn't figure out when it was time to shut up.

  “Sure, buddy. You came in peace to share for the good of all humanity.” Madison stood up, her hand out to help Casey to her feet.

  The stranger seemed dazed by all the naked boobies. “You have to share,” he repeated.

  “They don't have to do a fucking thing they don't want to do,” I said. “They're free Americans, same as you and me.”

  “You wouldn't have a chance with us if you were the last man on earth.” Maddy, grim, was already looking around for her Sig Sauer.

  Casey was looking for something else when she stepped closer to our guest. “Where's Shaunie?”

  He blinked. “Shaunie? You mean the old guy? He was already dead. I didn't have fuck-all to do with him getting that way.”

  “But you took the body,” Maddy said.

  Now he was the one who toed at his friend's corpse. “It was his idea, bro.” Even if it wasn't, the dead man wasn't going to contradict him. “That guy was some rich asshole. We could tell from the way he dressed. He was going to bring trouble when people started searching for him. Fucker needed to pay for that.”

  “So you brought the body back to your hideout with the idea of holding him for ransom,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You been spying on us?”

  “Nope. I just play a lot of poker, and I know how to figure out the mentality of angle-shooting assholes.”

  The rest of it was pretty much what we already figured. Escaped violent offenders on the run. They were already getting tired of their wilderness retreat, and then Shaun Saunderson's body tumbles down like manna from heaven. These guys were impulse thinkers, so they didn't invest much energy trying to figure out where he actually came from.

  “Rich assholes do all that rock-climbing bullshit,” he said. “We figured it was something like that.”

  They hadn't seen our plane go down. Didn't even know about our little camp. Their hideout was in a cave on the back of this mountain. The natural caves were probably what made it an attractive location for a bunker to begin with. They'd be a starting place for the excavation.

  “We had solar chargers for our burners, but we couldn't call out anymore for some reason. The usual places where we got a bar or two weren't working. So we decided to head back and play a little in-person visit to...” He named the address in Holmby Hills he got off Saunderson's license.

  Like a guy like this was ever getting into a neighborhood like that.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I don't know.” He shook his head. “It's like we got to the edge of the horizon, and then... nothing. There wasn't any there there. The next morning, we woke up again at the hideout. We tried it a few more times, but it was always the same thing. We never got to any place that was a place. It was freaky, man. It's like we're a goldfish in a bowl. You can't see the glass, but it's there.”

  “A mole in a hole,” Red said in a soft voice.

  “Then we found that place over there.” He gestured in the general direction of the bunker. “You saw the signs. It's a government experiment. They're fucking with us. The judge didn't say anything about the government being allowed to experiment on us. I know my rights, and that's bullshit, bro. Complete and total fried bullshit on a stick.”

  How much of this could we believe? This creep didn't have a strong grasp on consensus reality to begin with, and he'd lost the little he had.

  “Have we got all the information we need from this asshole?” Madison raised the Sig Sauer P320 at his center of mass.

  “Please.” He threw his hands up again. “I didn't mean anything.”

  “Oh, you meant plenty. You were going to kill Brock and take us away to be your unwilling sex toys.”

  “It was only fair. He had three girls. We had zero. Fair is fair. Be reasonable, girl. A man has needs.”

  “Fuck fair, and fuck your needs. We're not your toys to be divided up.”

  “We don't have to shoot him,” I said. “If he surrenders his weapon peacefully...”

  “That's a pretty big if,” Red said.

  Too big an if, apparently. At the same moment Casey stepped forward to take away his AK-47, he made a grab for it.

  Maddy got him in the heart.

  I got him in the head.

  A simultaneous double-tap.

  Chapter Thirteen

  And so I cut through barbed wire, and we walked on. Less than
half an hour later, we rounded a bank of trees to find ourselves confronted with a concrete wall some thirty feet tall and topped off with good old-fashioned razor wire and broken glass.

  Deja vu hit me with the force of a physical blow. I'd been here before, and not in a fucking dream.

  The signs here were larger, in red print instead of black, and they were probably stolen from ranchers, not the Department of the Interior.

  NO TRESPASSING.

  THIS PROPERTY GUARDED BY SMITH & WESSON.

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.

  We fanned out in search of a door, and soon we found it. It was solid steel, ten or twelve feet high, and currently flung wide open to block the path around the wall.

  Once that door had served as a shield for men on horses.

  Not this time.

  I waltzed on inside. The girls hung back a moment, then scurried in behind me.

  Three more steps, and I was kicking at a cold fire ring. Beyond it sat two cheap blue pup tents that would never host their owners again. “Looks like this is as far as they got.”

  No sign of horses. Where did I get the idea there should be horses?

  The inner concrete wall had its own steel door complete with a blinking electronic box. Solar power, just as we'd surmised. Casey was already lifting the USB drive to the waiting slot.

  I put my hand on her hand. “Wait.”

  Her dark eyes searched my face. “All right. Why?”

  Because we don't know what's on the other side. Because I'm not ready.

  Maybe it's a bunker full of survival supplies.

  Maybe it's a ticket back to another world.

  And, once we go back, there's no guarantee we ever meet up again.

  Everything here seemed so real, and yet I knew it wasn't. It couldn't be. I could blind myself to that fact for only so long. My premonitions were too on the nose. They weren't dreams. They weren't visions. They were lives I'd lived before I died and got reset.

  “So.” My hand still on Casey's hand, I turned to Red. “Have we passed the audition?”

  Green eyes blinked at me. “What?”

  “Have we done it? Have we performed the right sequence of events, are we about to open the right file and return to the real world?”

  “I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Oh, you know. You've known all along. What's in that fucking bunker? What's in the fucking file? Are we even fucking real? Or are we just a line of code in your encryption algorithm?”

  At last, she sighed. “Hell. We're real, all right. But you're asking the wrong question.”

  “And what's the right question?”

  Madison was the one who answered that. “Can we get back to ourselves after we've been here so long? Or are we lost forever?”

  “Her people can pull us out at any time.” My gaze had locked with Red's, and I wasn't going to let it break. “They're the puppet-masters.”

  “That was only true at first,” she said. “Now this place has taken on a life of its own.”

  “And so you volunteered to step inside to see it from our point of view. To test us, to figure out if people on the inside can ever find the path back to the real. To see if we can ever escape.”

  She laughed a short, sad laugh. “I wouldn't say I volunteered.”

  ←↑→

  After that, we had little more to discuss. Nobody knew if we could escape this trap. Nobody knew if we could get back to the real world waiting up ahead for us. Nobody knew if we'd ever see each other again if we did.

  All we knew was that winter was coming, and we had to keep moving.

  That first concrete wall was not, of course, the last or only barrier to the bunker. I counted at leave five concentric rings of concrete walls, each with its tall metal door and electronic box. Each time, Casey slipped the key into its slot to make the door swing open.

  Beyond the rings of concrete, we finally reached a large dome. Its door was of a different design― a round brass closed eye that resembled a movie spaceship's airlock.

  “This is it,” Maddy said. “The VIP elevator.”

  Except it wasn't going to any penthouse. It was going straight down.

  Casey slotted the key into place, and the sleeping eye opened. The interior looked sterile after the living green of the forest. I was reminded of the gold-toned metal boxes that served as fancy VIP elevators in fancy five-star hotels.

  The single button inside didn't have a number on it. And we didn't need to push that button. The door shut as soon as the four of us stepped inside.

  We were descending.

  There was a generator somewhere. Hydro-powered, solar, what? It might be better for my peace of mind if I didn't think too much about where the electricity came from, at least not while the four of us were trapped in this metal box. My stomach dropped, but I adjusted easily to the sensation.

  Down and down and down.

  We descended for a very long time. Enough time to unzip and unbutton. This ride wasn't ending quickly, and it might be the last ride of our lives, so why not?

  Were we going home? Or would we be reset back to the beginning of the adventure?

  Would we have to do it all again, over and over, until we either went mad or got it right?

  What did “getting it right” even mean in a situation like this?

  Three pairs of hands stroked me. I squirmed around to stroke all three of my girls. The scent of our bodies trapped in that small space was erotic beyond description. Little bursts of expensive fragrances like shampoo and French cologne mingled with the natural perfume of athletic female flesh. We kissed, licked, and nibbled. We were tasting each other as much as we were breathing in each other. We didn't need to think ahead. We would find out soon enough what was next.

  For now, there was only pleasure. Only bonding.

  Casey dropped onto the clothes scattered on the floor. Rolling onto her back, she opened her legs wide in frank invitation. She knew Maddy couldn't resist dropping down on top of her in their favorite sixty-nine.

  I had to pile on. Groaning, I performed a slow, deep doggy-style fuck into Maddy's churning pussy while Casey's tongue spanked at the place where we were joined. Red scooted around to hump her flushed triangle against Maddy's face. The blonde worked overtime to lick both Casey and Red's sweet deltas in every long sweep.

  “There's time for us to do everything,” I said. “Let's make good use of it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  And... I was back. Way back. All the way back to my Air Force days.

  I should have known military intelligence was behind an advanced technology like this. It was nothing more nor less than weaponized porn. If Hollywood ever did get its greedy little mitts on this invention, nobody would ever leave their house again. The world would be over, not with a nuclear bang but with a virtual reality whimper.

  Repressing a shudder, I forced my attention to the discussion at hand. “The simulation can be highly convincing at times, but it's still imperfect. On multiple occasions, I experienced severe doubts about the nature of my existence. I felt a deep sense of unreality like I wasn't myself and the world wasn't itself― disturbing stuff. I'd say it was similar to descriptions I've heard of some dissociative disorders.”

  “Major, here's the thing. I can't present this technology as convincing when you, the primary subject, wasn't really convinced.” General Angleton was a master of the exasperated sigh. “The simulation failed. You didn't buy into the reality that you were living out a nuclear end-game scenario.”

  “You're right, sir. I guess I didn't buy into it. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't. Not for very long.”

  “Of course, some of that is to be expected. After a large-scale disaster, many people report a feeling of dissociation. They describe themselves as feeling numb. The Department of Defense has collected many reports where victims of a natural disaster state they can't believe in the reality of what has happened. Still..
.” Angleton rubbed the side of his jaw. “All in all, it will be difficult for me to describe this project as a success.”

  “Maybe that's for the best, General.”

  He looked sharply into my eyes.

  I swallowed hard and went on. “The VR is already real enough to be dangerous. Call it the uncanny valley of the mind. A person who spends too much time in one of these simulations will eventually lose all ability to tell the difference between virtual and actual reality. It was starting to happen to me. Even here, sitting right here in front of you, I can't help wondering if I'm here or if I'm even real or just a ghost in the machine.”

  Angleton nodded but said nothing. He didn't need me to tell him it was dangerous.

  This technology was a weapon. It was meant to be dangerous.

  We sat in silence for a long time before I dared speak again.

  “May I ask, General, what is the ultimate purpose of this experiment? I've earned the right to know. What are we locking away behind all these layers of false reality? Who are we locking away?”

  “That's an odd question, Major. We judged it was better not to tell you.”

  “I surely have the proper clearances, though. I was there in that reality. I was going to figure some things out.”

  He steepled his hands and studied my face. “I have reason to believe you handled one of my personal devices.”

  Remembering the image of a space-pod floating through interstellar space, I nodded.

  “A nod is as good as a wink to a man of your intelligence. You probably figured everything out from there.”

  “Please, General. Humor me. Spell it out in words of one syllable.”

  Another significant pause. At last, he nodded. “After the earth is destroyed in the final war, there may still be survivors in orbit in space as well as in bunkers buried deep in the earth. We've learned a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder in times of war and natural disaster, and we have no reason to believe the species can survive the knowledge of ultimate annihilation. People can't survive as moles in holes. They need a bigger world, a bigger purpose, or they tear themselves apart.”