Lucky

by Sage du Toit

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  Chapter 17

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  9 November 2020 N-Day +122

  Fort Jackson, SC

  The night before Sam had taken a warm shower with Tom and even though Sam was feeling frisky, she saw Tom was tired. He complained he was sore from stooping over connecting solar panels, so after the shower she had him lay down on the bed so she could give him a deep massage. He fell asleep while she was massaging, so she let him sleep.

  The morning had a chill to the air, Sam snuggled up under the blanket against Tom’s side. She could feel his slow breathing of a deep sleep. She ran her hand down his chest, marveling at the hard muscles. She pulled the cover down and looked at the tattoo on his chest. She had discovered that Tom had quite a few tattoos, but this one was her favorite, it was a colorful bald eagle with the American flag in the background. She gently traced her finger around it and then ran her hand down over his flat ribbed stomach. He had muscles all over and very little fat, yet he ate everything in sight. She often brought him back candy bars and snack cakes, one of the privileges of being on a supply search team was she got to pick out a few things for herself or friends if she wanted. She was never greedy and rarely did it, unless it was something for Tom.

  He was still breathing evenly and she moved her hand down under his boxers. She gently stroked his shaft a few times then moved her hand down and gently massaged his soft sacks. She gently rolled them around in her hand and then moved her hand back up. His shaft had grown and she stroked it more, marveling at how big it was as it filled her hand. She paused and listened to his breathing and looked at his face in the dim room, he still appeared to be asleep.

  She gently slid under the covers as she pushed his boxers down, trying not to wake him. She moved all the way down under the covers until her head was even with his groin. She ran her tongue over the head of his shaft and licked the sweet drop of pre-cum what was leaking out. She sucked the head into hear mouth and slowly started moving her head up and down while she ran her tongue under the bottom of his shaft. She started moving faster and faster and she heard him moan and she smiled as she continued. His hands found her head under the covers and he gently ran his hands over her hair then he grabbed her head and started pushing harder into her mouth. She felt wetness suddenly build up between her legs, the harder he pushed her head down and pushed into her mouth, the wetter she became. She pushed her hand down between her own legs and pushed her panties off to the side and sank two fingers into herself. She moaned on his shaft and he pushed harder. Suddenly she felt him stiffen and his hot cum filled her mouth and throat.

  He physically pulled her up his body and kissed her passionately on the mouth. He pulled back and saw that her hand was still stuffed down her panties and he pushed her over on her back and removed her hand from her panties and placed her fingers in his mouth. He gently sucked her fingers while looking her in the eye and then ripped her panties off. He pushed her legs up and back and moved down between her legs. He ran his tongue up her slit and she gasped loudly. He pushed a finger inside of her and found her hard little nub with his tongue and pushed hard on it, circling around and around as he moved first one, then two fingers in and out. Quicker than she expected she felt her body clinch and she shouted his name as she exploded, her hips bucking out of her control. Sam lay on the bed, smiling and satiated. Tom moved up and kissed her hard then lay down beside her.

  Tom smiled a huge smile at her and said, “That was nice and unexpected, but greatly appreciated.” She smiled and kissed him. She told him that as much as she would like to stay in bed and continue this all day, they had work to do. She rolled out of bed and as she was walking away he reached out and slapped her on the butt. She smiled back at him and went to clean up and get ready.

  As they were getting ready Tom brought up a topic she had been thinking about a lot lately. He told her that his family and her family had been on his mind lately and asked her if she wanted to take a trip to Texas. He added that he had mentioned it to John and asked him if they would give them supplies and fuel for the trip and John said they would, but that they would be really sad to see them go because they were both such valuable members of their group.

  Sam laughed and told Tom that she had also talked to Maria about the same thing, to see if they had enough to supply them with a trip to Texas. And Maria had said the same thing as John. Sam said, “But the real question is when?” Tom said he thought they should go as soon as possible. It would be winter here soon and he didn’t want to wait and chance ice on the roads, even though the chance of snow here in the south was low, he said he didn’t want to take a chance with ice. Sam agreed and they decided they would try to finish their current projects up and leave in a week.

  When they got down to breakfast they made the announcement to everyone at their table. There was the expected round of comments and questions; “No, you can’t go!”, “When will you be back?”, “Are you coming back?” and “Just tell us what you need, it’s yours.” They told them that it depended on what they found in Texas. If it was not good, and Sam didn’t want to contemplate that, then they would return. If their families were there and didn’t need their help, they might return. But most likely they would stay there.

  Sam had a supply run scheduled and she checked with the kitchen to see if they needed anything in particular. Other than the standard jokes of fresh food and good food they said they were running low on milk. Most of the standard places had already been checked, restaurants, grocery stores, big box stores. Sam knew that one of the things that made her so good at the supply runs was she tended to think of different places to look for things they needed than the obvious stores.

  Since they no longer had the internet to look up where to find things, Sam had taken to using the local yellow pages and a map. The yellow pages were a huge book and what she was looking for today was kids playground equipment. She found two Academy Sports in the Yellow pages and they were both farther outside of Columbia than they had yet to venture. The team yesterday had checked the two local Walmart's and neither of them had the large playground equipment, they had gotten a few other smaller play things there, but they wanted a big jungle gym. Sam planned out their route and decided on the one on the other side of Columbia. Their trucks were fueled and packed with extra equipment in case they got caught out overnight, they also had extra MOPP suits, water and MRE’s in case they came across survivors. Sam then informed John where they were headed.

  Sam and her team checked out their guns and ammo from the armory and loaded up in the 2 ½ ton truck with Sam navigating, Austin driving and Sally riding shotgun and the Lowe’s box truck following behind with Leroy driving and Bryan riding shotgun. They always wanted extra capacity to haul stuff back in case they found an abundance. They were all wearing tactical vests with extra magazines, flashbang grenades and three of them had pistols in addition to the M16’s. She hoped they didn’t find trouble. She told Austin where they were going and which direction to head and they took off. Sam looked back and saw Tom on the roof of Dozier Hall waving to her and she waved back.

  They were taking I-20, a major highway around the outskirts of the city, she hoped there wouldn’t be too many vehicles blocking the way. The road was clear and they didn’t have any problems until they had to turn off I-20 on to I-26, the off ramp was completely congested with cars. Sam studied the map and saw there was a looping on ramp from I-26 coming on to I-20 and decided to give that a try. It didn’t matter if they stayed on the correct side of the road. They drove further down and that ramp was clear.

  The going from there was clear, but it was much farther outside of Columbia than she expected. She kept checking the map and the exits. She knew the store was on the south side of the road, so she kept looking for a place to cross over so they wouldn’t have to take the long ramp around, in case it was congested. There were concrete barricades the whole way. She saw several stores and places she really
wished they could stop but they had a specific list for today, and if they had time they would check some of the stores on the way back.

  She saw the sign for their exit coming up and she told Austin. There was a big Home Depot on one side of the road, and a Walmart with a Sam’s club on the other. She completely forgot about those other stores and decided they would definitely visit the Sam’s club. Austin took the exit ramp and it was clear, but once they passed under the overpass there were quite a few cars and even dead bodies in the road. They had to drive through a few of the parking lots and Sam was looking around at the different businesses trying to decide if any of them would be worth visiting. She noticed that some of the buildings had a big red X painted on the front of them, including the Walmart and Sam’s Club and she wondered about that. She considered that maybe they should turn around but they were here now, so she decided they would just proceed with extra caution.

  They pulled around to the back of the Academy building and backed into the two loading docks at the back. Sam told everyone to keep a sharp eye out. The two loading bays were not open, but the door next to them on the side was unlocked. They lined up to enter and clear the building, Austin first, followed by Sam, then Leroy and finally Sally. Bryan would stay and guard the two trucks until they returned.

  Austin entered and Sam followed on his heals, moving off to the left as he moved to the right. Leroy and Sally quickly moved in as well with Leroy going left and Sally going right. They cleared the back warehouse area and then went through the double swinging doors to the front of the store. Their headlamps cast long shadows on the walls as they moved quickly through the building. Sam made mental notes as they moved through the tall shelves. The building was cleared and Sam told Leroy to go back and let Bryan know they were going to start shopping.

  Sam had noticed when they were pulling around the building that this one also had a big X on the front of it. She also noticed as they were clearing the building that someone had emptied out the stores dried foods and put a big dent in the camping gear, plus all of the candy and beef jerky that was on the counters at the front checkout. The hunting rifle cases were also empty. She had found the area in the front where they had pictures of play equipment available and under it was a paper you turned in to the clerk that had a stock number on it. She took the paper for the largest one, it had a swing set, include a baby swing, a straight slide, a curved tunnel slide, a climbing wall, going to a club house on top and a picnic bench underneath.

  Now she just had to find out where in the warehouse it was. As she looked through the shelves for B15A she saw two cases that had the word ‘milk’ on it and she stopped to see what it was. It was Muscle milk, not the milk she was looking for but still a good thing to have for underweight people. She was wondering how the people that cleared out the other stuff had missed that.

  Finally, she found the boxes she was looking for and she tried to drag one out into the aisle but it was too heavy to even drag. She saw a small forklift at the back and turned the key to see if it worked. It was slow to grind, but it started up. She drove the forklift over to the playground equipment and left it there after shutting it off. She grabbed the two cases of muscle milk that were on the shelf and carried them to the truck where the others were unloading the items they had found. She let the others know it was probably going to take all of them to maneuver the large play equipment out to the truck. She helped them finish unloading what they had found. Sally found some spices and packets for fish frying and hoped the cooks might be able to use it. Austin found an assortment of hatchets, knives, socks and boots. And Leroy found some dumbbells and other exercise related equipment. They were no longer looking for just food, they were also looking for things to improve their lives in the community. Once done they all went inside except for Sally this time, who stayed to guard the trucks.

  Getting the extremely long and heavy boxes on the forklift and to the loading dock was not too hard. She was afraid to push the boxes with the forklift because it might damage the equipment but they had to get them into the back of the 2 ½ and the forklift would only take it so far. With all five of them pushing and pulling and heaving the boxes, they finally got them all of the way inside. There was still a little room on the sides in the truck, but not much. The longest box still stuck out the back of the truck over the tailgate, so Austin grabbed some heavy duty straps they carried with them and once it was strapped down tight they loaded up.

  Sam had noticed a Dick’s Sporting Goods store up the road and she wanted to check it out. When they pulled up in front of the store she saw the big X on the front. She told Austin never mind, she wasn’t liking the feeling she was getting and decided to follow her gut instinct. They turned around and headed back toward the highway. She looked at the stores as they passed and everything seemed to be marked with an X. Someone had meticulously gone through these stores and removed the food stuffs and marked each place to show they had already looted it. She was thinking it wasn’t worth it to go behind them. From the number of places looted she imagined this must be a big group. She didn’t think the convicts would be so organized as to mark the places with an X.

  She would return back and let them know there was possibly another group on this side of Columbia. They were going through the Denny’s parking lot to get back out on the road and she noticed it didn’t have an X on the building. She had Austin stop and they all got out and cleared the building. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but there weren’t any dead bodies in Academy! There were lots of dead bodies in this restaurant. It was a small place and they had it cleared in under a minute. They ended in the kitchen and did a quick check around. There were boxes of pancake and waffle mix. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, boxes of condiments, and gallons of syrups of several different flavors.

  Sam was standing in front of the walk-in fridge/freezer and motioned Sally over to help her clear it, they never went into a space without clearing it first. When she opened the door, they were both surprised by the whoosh and cold air that came out of the room. Luckily there wasn’t anyone in there, but she wasn’t about to call it empty! The fridge/freezer was packed. There were boxes still stacked in the aisle with a bill of lading on top. Sam looked at the paper and it was dated July 10, 2020. Sam whistled low and loud. The rest of the guys came to look why she was whistling. It was another lucky find of a business with a gas set up, she thought the X people would probably be upset if they knew they missed this.

  They were backing the trucks around to start loading when she realized they were going to have to transfer some of the stuff in the trucks. She wanted to keep all of the perishable food in the Lowe’s truck. She told them what she was thinking and Leroy said, “We got this, you guys can start stacking the stuff on the dock.”

  When she came out with her first stack of boxes she saw they had backed the trucks up to each other and Leroy was quickly passing the stuff over to Bryan. She thought smart, because it also limits exposure to possible contaminants. Once the 2 ½ was full they backed the Lowe’s truck up to the loading dock and loaded the non-perishables first. There were a few things in the fridge that were still good. The eggs were marked as free-range long life, and there were several cases of those. There were four of the big boxes of milk that went in the dispenser, two whole, two low-fat, a big five-gallon bucket of butter and large bags of cheese. She hoped they were all still good but she didn’t want to take a chance and open them, she would let the cooks do that. All of the fresh fruits and vegetables were mush. There were 3 boxes of potatoes and a box of sweet potatoes in the kitchen, they had a lot of eyes but they seemed fine. What she was really happy about was the freezer. Frozen bags of mixed vegetables, French fries, hash browns, boxes of bacon, sausage, ham, steaks and even more. They managed to load everything in the truck and before leaving she turned off the walk-in cooler, no point wasting the gas.

  They were heading back on I-26 when suddenly something caught Sam’s eye. Sam saw two big trucks in a self-storage facility and s
he recognized the logo on one of them as a popular snack brand. She thought, well it might not be the healthiest thing but she would let them know so someone could come back and check it out later. Right now, she had two full trucks and no time to waste! She had them go the safest max speed of the two trucks to make it back in record time. They knew the road was clear and Sam was ready to get back to Tom!

  Chapter 18

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  15 November 2020 N-Day + 128

  Fort Jackson, SC

  Sam was standing outside in the covered play area with Tabitha. They were watching the kids climb all over the jungle gym. They just couldn’t get enough of the outside play area. Joshua had done a fabulous job. The rectangular area inside of the concrete wall had been filled in with a white sand that would cushion the kids falls and allow them to play in it too. They had one whole area marked off with soft foam borders that had buckets and shovels and toy dump trucks and even a toy backhoe so the kids could play in the sand. Beside the big Jungle gym there was a little plastic see-saw, a merry-go-round and a little play house. They had colorful benches and little picnic tables set up next to a big picnic table.

  There were exhaust fans with filters, spaced along the sides of the walls and fans running all down the high ceiling. Joshua assured them that during the heat of summer it wouldn’t get too hot inside and, in the winter,, it would stay warm enough to play outside. The material used for the roof was a dark green material that blocked out the direct rays of the sun, and the material on the side was a thick clear plastic sheeting that allowed them to see out but it wouldn’t easily be ripped or torn. Joshua had also made a small garden at the back and placed planters along the inside in different places. He said the kids could grow their own garden and he provided seedlings and even had the kids help him when they planted it. Sam was very impressed.