by Ryan Horvath
She found him in the living room but he was staring at a tablet, using his long finger to move the text on the screen. He was so focused he didn’t hear or see her come in. She remembered him saying that he had to research something that could help their situation so she decided to let him do it uninterrupted. Her desires would have to wait.
She returned to the bedroom and lied back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. However, instead of her sexual drive cooling down, it heated up. She closed her eyes and fantasized about what she intended to do with Ian when they got the chance. She conjured an image of him in the room with her. He was naked and his muscles gleamed and his penis bobbed in erect anticipation. She guided him to the bed and directed him to sit. This time, she intended to service him and she began to do so, savoring the warmth, taste, and firmness as he passed her lips and touched her tongue. She tried to imagine sounds he would make; he’d been very quiet their first time. After she got him to the point he was producing the fluid that facilitated lovemaking, she pushed him the rest of the way on his back and mounted him, and pressed him into her soft folds until he was fully inserted. She began to slowly move up and down his shaft and rode and tightened and clenched until they achieved mutual orgasm.
While she was building sexual castles in the air, she slid a hand into her pants and panties and worked on herself, trying to imagine her fingers were Ian’s erection and when she was near climax, she urged herself back from the edge. She wanted to do that with him.
She removed her hand from her pants and tried to relax.
The green eyed killer popped into her mind. Not a vision but an unpleasant reminder. She remembered what he had last said to her, about using his cock to rip her to shreds and she shuddered.
Abruptly, her arousal level was gone.
She couldn’t wait to get out of here and as far from the monster as possible; whether he was dead or otherwise.
Karen stood in the shower. The warm water cascaded over her shoulders and down her body in rivulets. She’d left the lights off to conserve fuel in the generator and a candle on a corner shelf provided a little illumination in the dark room.
As she let the water warm her, she thought about her afternoon with Simon.
He was truly a handsome man, in spite of the bandages and the injuries. Hell, if he hadn’t been there to sustain those injuries, the assassin might have had time to strangle her to death before Blaze and River attacked. Karen instinctively touched her neck which was still somewhat sore.
She thought about the electricity she had felt when he stepped behind her to show her how to use the Walther. The smell of him; the strength of him; the feel of his touch on her hands; the look of his youth and his body with a place for everything and everything in its place. All of these things made her heart race.
But guilt nagged at her. Her husband had only been dead a week. Should she be having thoughts about other men already?
And he’s so young! She admonished to herself.
After a moment she thought But I’m a woman in my prime. She and Jack had had a very healthy sex life and she was always grateful Jack hadn’t fallen victim to LOW T in his mid to late thirties like many other men. Their lovemaking was frequent, passionate, and more than satisfying. She would be a fool to think she could just turn that off. She could still miss her Jack. It wasn’t a crime to think about the future without him. The crime, in fact, would be if she did the opposite of that.
Karen finished her shower, dried off, wrapped a towel around her body and used the brush from her purse to straighten out her hair. When she was done, she dressed and left the bathroom. She stopped in the room next to the bathroom and set the bag of clothes and her purse on the floor just inside the door.
After dressing, Karen headed for the kitchen where she saw Simon. She watched him as he moved, him unaware she was there.
He sure does have a nice ass she said to herself and grinned.
She stepped into the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?” she asked Simon and was happy to see his expression brighten when he saw her.
Jack watched his friends, his family now, really, as they engaged in activities that he deduced were a distraction after the radio announcement. He himself was trying to read a magazine that was on the coffee table but it only slightly dulled the words “one billion dead” that had come off the air waves. He watched Karen head for the bathroom, and Amanda, the bedroom. He saw Ian while he scrolled through something on Simon’s tablet and he saw Simon stirring the soup in the kitchen. After a little while, he saw River and Blaze sit together and almost laughed out loud when he saw Blaze lick River’s face. He looked at Brian’s back side, while he stared out the window, appearing to be on watch.
Jack stood up and crossed to Brian. He put hands on Brian’s shoulders and kissed his neck.
Jack silently prayed that none of them would end up included with the dead.
Outside the house in Orono, about twenty yards away and more than two but less than three feet in the ground, something was happening.
69
THE WEE HOURS
In spite of the fact that everyone’s stomachs were full from the rabbit soup that Simon had actually made pretty tasty, no one got much of any sleep as Sunday crossed into Monday.
The house’s four bedrooms all had new occupants now. Amanda and Ian were together in one. Karen and Blaze shared a room and Simon had a room to himself. Jack had retired to the last room and dozed off on the bed that had been left to stage the house. He’d hoped Brian would join him but when he was startled awake about a half hour after he’d shut his eyes, he found himself alone in the bed. He was sweating, a puddle of perspiration had collected over his smooth sternum, and his heart raced, both results of the now fleeting dream he had just been jolted out of.
What had happened? He tried to recall the dream but it faded faster than he could grasp any of its content. He knew it was bad.
Just a dream he told himself.
He wiped the sweat from his chest with one hand and swiped the back of his other hand across his brow. He swung his bare feet out of the bed and onto the floor and felt the chill there.
There will be snow on the ground soon Jack thought, testing the nippy floor with his toes. He stood up from the bed and stretched. Sleep was apparently not going to come to him tonight. His heart was slowing down but his adrenaline level was up. He sniffed and could smell the bodily chemical seeping from his pores. He’d been running in the dream.
No he thought. Not running. Trying to get… somewhere… or to something?
He tried to get more but was unable.
Jack sighed, picked up his T-shirt from where he’d left it at the foot of the bed, and slipped it back on. He crossed the room, opened the door and stepped out. He passed Karen’s and Simon’s rooms as he walked down the dark hall and saw both doors ajar and darkness inside. When he arrived in the living room Jack found Brian sitting on the sofa with River on his lap. Neither was asleep but River’s eyes were squinty.
“Hey,” Jack said, sitting down next to them. “I’d hoped you’d come to bed.”
“Can’t sleep,” Brian muttered.
“I decided to keep him company,” River meowed, alert now that Jack had entered. Brian scratched her head and her purring increased in volume.
Jack didn’t say anything right away. When he spoke he said, “Yeah, I guess I can’t either.”
Brian looked at his watch. “Not too much longer,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jack said. He knew that Brian was referring to whatever the thing in the sky was and its “main event.”
“What do you think will happen?” River mewed.
“Not a clue,” Jack responded. Brian said nothing.
“It’s quiet outside,” Jack said. “I haven’t heard a car go by for a while. No close gunfire either.”
“Just fucking great,” Brian said sullenly. He picked River up, plopped her on Jack’s lap, and stood up.
“Hey!” Jack yelped and Rive
r meowed in unison.
Jack wasn’t sure what was going on. He waited and watched Brian walk back to the same window he’d been drawn to all night. When Brian didn’t say anything, Jack did. “Look, babe, you’re the one who can read my mind. I can’t read yours. What’s up?”
“I’m just nervous. This sitting around waiting… maybe to die,” Brian said without taking his eyes off the killer’s grave. “It’s like having terminal cancer.”
Jack didn’t really have an answer for Brian.
“I know were supposed to survive the main fucking event, but what about after?” Brian continued. “Law and order are gone, Jack. Now it’s the laws of nature. Kill or be killed.”
“Technically, Brian,” River meowed, “all living is is waiting to die.”
“That’s a bleak outlook,” Jack said through pursed lips.
“Yeah, but she’s right,” Brian said. He pulled back from the window, returned to, and threw himself back down on the sofa.
“C’mere,” Jack threw a pillow on the floor between his feet and pointed at it. “Sit down.”
Brian moved down to the pillow on the floor and sat with his back to Jack and Jack began rubbing Brian’s neck and shoulders. Slowly, he felt Brian’s tension begin to release.
“What’s with the window, Bri?” Jack asked after about a half hour of silence.
“Just makin’ sure… he’s… he’s still there,” Brian answered quietly.
Jack didn’t say anything for over a minute. Finally he said, “He’s dead. Fucking dead. The worms are probably eating him already. He’s there and he’ll stay there.” But even as the words came out of his mouth, Jack wasn’t so sure of them.
The trio was quiet again for a while and just before 3:00 in the morning, Jack felt Brian go limp and saw that he had dozed off. A moment later, Karen walked into the room. Blaze followed her, his toenails clicked on the hardwood.
“Hi,” she whispered to Jack and River. She gently opened the front door and Blaze scurried outside. She followed him but Jack could see she was standing just past the screen door. She hugged her arms around herself and Jack could see her breath as she exhaled into the early morning darkness. A moment later, Karen opened the screen and Blaze re-entered with her behind him. She closed the front door as quietly as she could and locked it.
“I’m going to get some water. Would you like a glass?” Karen asked.
Jack looked at her. This woman had won and held the affection of his father for two decades. As beautiful as she was at middle age in the middle of the night, with no make-up and fading bruises around her neck, Jack thought she must have been a real knock out when she and his father had met.
“Some water would be great,” Jack replied with a smile.
Karen woke from a nightmare and startled Blaze awake as well.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Blaze. “I just can’t get the image out of my head. That killer. Amanda. Her fear, her pain. His malice, his ecstasy.”
“He’s dead, Master Karen,” Blaze chuffed. “No smell in the air.”
“I know, I know,” Karen said. “Jesus.” She got out of bed and threw on a sweater and her jeans. “Do you need to go outside?”
“Yes, I can do that,” Blaze answered and he jumped off the bed to the floor with a clacking of toenails.
They left the room together. Karen looked to her left and saw Jack and Brian’s door stood open and the room was empty. Across the hall from her, Simon’s door was partly open but it was dark inside. Amanda and Ian’s room was farther down than Jack’s and Karen couldn’t see the door. She went down the hall toward the front door and found Jack, Brian, and River on the sofa in the living room. A small candle was lit and she could see that Brian was sleeping while Jack stroked River’s head.
“Hi,” she said and moved to the door. She opened it and let Blaze out before stepping out herself.
The night was clear and an infinite number of stars twinkled in the black sky. The chill in the air caused her to hug herself and she noticed her breath. The sight of it spooked her a little. She’d never seen her breath this early in October at home in Virginia.
Blaze hadn’t gone far and he was soon back and ready to go back in. She let them in the house and gently closed the door and engaged the lock. She looked at Jack.
The young man sitting before her was nearly his father’s identical twin and had Karen not seen this Jack’s smooth torso, which differed from her Jack’s furred one, she would have been certain this was her husband seated before her. The expression he wore at this moment was one she’d seen a thousand times on her husband’s face. Affection. She knew the man before her was gay and young enough to be her son. It wasn’t romantic affection she saw. It was family affection.
“I’m going to get some water,” she said to him. “Would you like a glass?”
“Some water would be great,” he answered with a smile.
Karen returned with the glasses of water and handed one to Jack.
“Thanks,” Jack said, accepting the glass.
Karen sat in the easy chair opposite the sofa. Blaze sat by her feet.
“I’ve been… I’ve been wanting to ask you. Would you tell me about my father?” Jack asked.
“Of course,” Karen replied without hesitation. “What would you like to know?”
“Anything I guess. What was he like?” Jack asked.
“My husband… your father; he was the world to me. We met when I was fresh out of college. He was a few years older than me and my parents didn’t like that but it never mattered to me. At the time, he was an assistant campaign manager for a Maryland senator. He was very good at that job and such a smooth talker. I turned him down the first two times he asked me for a date but his quick tongue and persistence got me to say yes the third time.” She pinched her chin while she remembered the way her Jack had won her over.
“Was he a good man?” Jack asked.
Karen looked at the young man on the sofa. A tear pooled in the corner of her eye. “Yeah. Yes, Jack, he was. Good. Intelligent. Resourceful. After he got into office, he really tried to do the right things. He fought for gun control, birth control rights, the environment, even equal rights for gays. Yes, you would have been proud of him.”
Jack though about her answer and then his next question came out. “Did you and he have any kids?”
“Sadly, we never got around to it,” she said regretfully. “We were both just so busy that we only had time for our careers and each other.” She looked down at her feet and thought about the missed opportunity of not having children. She wondered if they had had children if those children would survive the morning.
“Did you love him? Did he love you?” Jack asked, hoping Karen wouldn’t be offended by his frankness.
“I sure did. I truly believe he did too.” Tears were slowly falling down her cheeks. “We were… together… just before he died. It was as fresh as if it had been the first time.”
Jack blushed at her revelation.
“Don’t be like that,” she said and laughed through her tears.
“Sorry, sorry,” Jack said and laughed.
The laughter stirred Brian awake and fifteen minutes later, Ian and Amanda joined the group in the living room. They spent the next couple hours chatting and telling stories and they seemed like a real family.
And, like the black sheep of the family, although it was not his intention to be, Simon appeared. He was shirtless and wearing just his brown trousers. He held his tablet in his hand and showed it to them.
“Guys, it’s time. It’s happening,” he said.
70
THE END
In Orono, Minnesota, it was still dark outside while Simon showed the others the image on his tablet. In northern Florida, the former mayor of Miami, his sister, her fiancé, and the adopted calico kitten who had chosen the name Bella, woke from sleep in a tent to the first vestiges of sunlight in the sky. However, the sun had been up for quite some time over Paris, France on the morning o
f October the fourth, 2013.
The former City Of Light was a ghost town with only deserted or burning buildings remaining. In the wake of the eclipse, the Parisian people were quick to move through the city, hoarding and scavenging and slaughtering until the resources were gone and there was an inconceivable amount of dead human corpses decomposing freely both in the roadways and in private places in Europe’s largest city. Flies buzzed loudly in the streets as they skipped from dead body to dead body’s shit, to another dead body, and savored the flavors of early putrefaction. Among the dead were police officers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergy people, taxi drivers, drug dealers, artists, sales people; rich people, poor people, and people in between; African people, Hispanic people, Caucasian people, east Asian people; straight people, gay people, and bisexual people; people of all ages including newborn infants to elderly grandparents. Death didn’t discriminate when it came to survival and the blood bath that was drying in the streets of the city on the Seine was clear evidence of that.
Overhead, almost directly above the Louvre Museum, which had been locked down almost immediately following the eclipse, the object from deep space stopped moving in its orbit.
Minutes before, the object had ceased scanning and analyzing the planet beneath it. Seconds before it stopped moving, the liquid inside fully occupied the space; its molecules agitated in a boiling like manner. Seconds after that, the cloaking device disengaged and the object, once again, came into view in the blue sky over the French capital city.
Then, four seconds after the object stopped moving, it exploded. Debris from the object’s shell rained down on the museum and plaza below effectively burying them and the surrounding structures in a collapse of alien metal and rock that would take an excavation team a decade or more to identify and uncover. The explosion wasn’t loud but the sound of the detritus falling was as it smashed through concrete, wood, metal, and glass.
