She unzipped his pants, freeing his cock, which started to harden even as she licked her lips, preparing herself. Emily made a conscious decision she wasn’t going to waste even a second thinking about the circumstances surrounding the man she killed. She refused to let the late Private Andrews ruin blow jobs for her forever.
Taking a deep breath in anticipation, she lowered her face to Mason’s lap and ran her tongue down his shaft.
“More,” he said, and she swirled her tongue around the tip of his cock, licking the little slit at the end, teasing it with her wet caress until a drop of pre-come shone at the top of his cock, rewarding her efforts. She licked it off immediately.
“I need more,” he gasped, grabbing hold of her hair, fixing her head in place. She wrapped her lips around the head of his cock, sucking slowly until he was completely in her mouth. He groaned and slowly thrust back and forth, his hips raising to meet her mouth.
She held his heavy balls in one hand, gently massaging them. Suddenly he stiffened and ejaculated a steady stream of hot, salty come into her mouth. She sucked harder, swallowing it all. When he finished she sat up, pleased to see the satisfied smile on his face.
“Thank you,” he said. “That was an unexpected pleasure.”
“I needed something to eat, since I’m hungry,” she teased. “And your cock is very tasty.”
Mason smiled. “You know, I heard semen is a good source of protein and calories.”
“That’s not exactly true. There’s only like five to seven calories in the average man’s semen. But,” she said thoughtfully, “it does contain some fructose and protein secreted by the prostate gland to give the sperm something to energize them for their swim.”
He laughed, running his hands through her hair as she closed her eyes. “Where’d you learn that?”
“I’m a nurse,” she reminded him. “Or was the knock on your head so bad that you forgot who nursed you back to health?”
“You should rest now, while you can,” Mason said, his tone serious again. “But you have to take me seriously when I say we need to get out of the city.”
She sighed. “I know. Let’s go now, while we still have some sun.”
Mason opened the car door and slid out. He held his hand out to her and pulled her out. She was still exhausted, but the small break had revitalized her enough to start the journey again.
Mason walked a bit in front of her, his heavy footsteps pounding on the cracked pavement. His ass looked amazing in the cargo pants, but the camo shirt he wore, with the rifle slung over his shoulder, and now even his short hair, made him look so much like a soldier she had to keep reminding herself he wasn’t.
If he were, he would have killed her by now.
A man stood by the side of the Hudson River Parkway, his face dirty, his hair so long it had become dreadlocked. He mumbled to himself, which was the only reason Emily noticed him. He was so filthy he almost blended into the landscape.
“Mason!” she hissed under her breath. “Look.”
They both ducked down, staring at the man. He talked animatedly to an invisible companion.
“How is that guy still alive?” Mason wondered aloud.
The man saw them and shrieked, throwing his hands in the air.
“It’s okay,” Emily said softly. “We’re not bad guys.”
The man pointed shakily to Mason. “He is.”
“No, no, it’s just a costume. Like playing pretend.” Emily walked slowly toward him.
Mason held her back, putting his arm out. “What are you doing?” he asked her.
“He needs help,” she said. Then again, he wasn’t starving to death. He actually looked quite well fed. But how? “Where do you live?” she asked the man.
“At the hospital. We all do.” He grinned, his mouth filled with rotten teeth. He was doing something with his lips, moving them around all weird. It reminded Emily of psychiatric patients who had been on antipsychotics for so long that they produced irreversible extrapyramidal symptoms—like that lip-smacking thing. Although this guy, like everyone else, was off his meds.
Hospital. Must be the New York State Psychiatric Institute—it wasn’t far away.
Mason nudged her. “Maybe he was really obese to begin with,” he whispered, as if he could read Emily’s mind when she wondered how he could be a normal weight while everyone else starved. “Hey!” he said, startling the man. “What do you eat?”
The man kept grinning, smacking his lips in that freaky way. “Are you hungry? There’s lots to eat at the hospital. You can come, if you want. Come.”
Emily’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food. Was it possible? Maybe, if a food truck had broken down nearby, or if they had just had their kitchen fully stocked, and then everyone’s family came and got them, so there were only a few people left to share the food… no. No way.
“It’s a trap,” Mason said warily.
“Or maybe they really have a ton of food at the hospital,” Emily said. “We can go check it out, see if the other patients are willing to feed some travelers, and go on our way.”
Mason nodded. “But I’m keeping my gun in my hand.”
Emily looked back at the psychiatric patient. “I’m Emily, what’s your name?”
“Chaz. You can follow me. You’ll like it where we live.”
Emily took Mason’s hand, for support, and they followed Chaz down off the highway. His feet, Emily, saw, were barefoot and bloody. She shook her head sadly. All the doctors and nurses must have left the hospital, leaving those poor patients to fend for themselves.
Like she had done to her patients.
No! That’s wasn’t true. Her supervisor had told her to leave, told her everyone would be okay. But maybe all her supervisor really wanted was to feel better about leaving as well.
She didn’t want to think about it. Everyone who hadn’t evacuated was dead now anyhow.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Mason whispered. “We should leave.”
“I want to see how he’s so well fed,” Emily argued. “As much as I love living off your come, it’s not really going to keep me going indefinitely.”
Mason sighed. “You’re right.”
Chaz was apparently excited to be showing them around his hospital. “Welcome welcome,” he muttered, still smacking his lips.
Emily stepped inside, nearly gagging at the horrible stench. There was no dedicated toilet area, and from the urine and feces covering the tiles, the patients had been going wherever the mood struck them.
Mason covered his nose with his shirt, and Emily would have had to follow suit if she weren’t so used to horrible smells from her career as a nurse. Instead, she breathed through her mouth.
There was an underlying smell, too. Like something rotting.
Emily and Mason followed Chaz down the hallway. She peered into one of the rooms. A putrefied corpse was in restraints on the bed. Emily could imagine what had happened.
After the Pulse, the nurses tried to keep everyone safe, but after a month, maybe less, the meds would have run out, and the patients would be, at least some of them, dangerous. As much as modern psychiatry preferred to not restrain patients, if it was a choice between the patient killing himself or someone else and pulling the old restraints out of the supply room, Emily knew all too well what would happen. What did happen.
And then—the nurses left, or died themselves. And the patient was left to die, strapped to the bed. The thought horrified her.
She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach.
“Come on!” Chaz said. They continued down the hall. A doctor sat behind the nurse’s station—dead.
He had a bloody wound on his head and his skin was blue and mottled. One of the patients must have killed him—or maybe, she reasoned, he had an accident and died, and they had set him in his rightful place. She shuddered.
“That’s Doctor Gupta,” Chaz said cheerfully. “Good doctor, good doctor.”
Emily and Mason looked a
t each other. She realized now the stupidity in coming here. “Chaz, we’re hungry, do you have food for us?” she asked sweetly, trying to redirect him.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Amy,” he said, pointing to an older woman, who looked to be a bit chubby. How was that possible?
“Hi, Amy,” Emily said carefully. Amy ignored her, her eyes glazed.
Then she opened her chapped lips and belched. Without looking at Chaz, she said, “Make me dinner.”
Chaz grinned at her and turned away, going into a room across the hall.
Emily looked at Mason quizzically. He shrugged, standing awkwardly in front of Amy, who continued to ignore them.
Chaz came out of the room fifteen minutes later holding a plate with a chunk of pink meat of some sort on it, blackened in places from the fire it seemed he had grilled it on. “Here,” he said, kissing Amy on top of her greasy hair as he handed her the plate. Amy grunted and started shoveling the meat into her mouth, barely pausing, it seemed, to chew.
It smelled, and looked, like pork. But where had they gotten pork from? There certainly were no pigs roaming around New York City that Emily could think of. Her stomach grumbled again and she looked at Mason.
Mason coughed. “Where’d you get the meat, Chaz?”
Chaz smiled that rotten-toothed smile of his and gestured for them to follow him. “We have plenty, you can have some.”
At this, Amy looked up. “No, they can’t. They don’t live here.”
“Maybe they will live here,” Chaz said. “At least they move around and talk, which is nice. More than the others. More than the doctor.”
Emily got a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was possible, she realized, that Chaz and Amy were the only survivors here. The “others” who lived there, if they were anything like Doctor Gupta… were dead.
She gulped, suddenly not hungry anymore, not wanting to follow Chaz into the room with the fire and the meat.
But Mason was already walking with him, and Emily couldn’t stay alone with Amy. She hurried to Mason’s side, grabbing his shirt desperately. “I was wrong, this place is bad, we need to leave,” she whispered.
“I want to see what they’re eating,” Mason said.
Chaz opened the door. Inside a small fire was going in a metal wastebasket topped with a homemade grill made out of wire hangers. Clever.
And hanging over the hospital bed was a carcass. A human carcass.
Grand Central Terminal
JENNA
Jenna didn’t know what to make of Emily’s message about the radio. The fact that the army, which was supposed to keep her safe, had been lying to her all this time about the outside world made her so angry she could spit.
Part of her wanted to tell everyone. To let all the girls on the Tracks know there was another way, another life, perhaps. Out there—outside of Grand Central. But there’s no point, she realized sadly.
If even Jenna wasn’t willing to risk being cold and hungry and in danger from bandits and who knows what else out there on the road, why should she expect anyone else to want to take on that risk?
But they should at least know.
Or should they?
Jenna grit her teeth. She wished she didn’t have this information, so she could go on without worrying about all this stuff. But she did have it. So now what?
It would be nice to hear the radio. What had Mason called it? American Victory Radio. It used to be she’d come home from work and veg out on the couch, watching whatever dumb reality show was on at the time. Now she hadn’t even seen a computer screen or a television in ages. And since the soldiers wouldn’t let her bring anything with her to the camp, she didn’t even have any books to read.
If only she could listen to that radio, she could find some paper and write down what the broadcast said, and post it for everyone to see. But there was no way that could happen.
Or could it?
She stood up from the hard plastic subway car bench and stretched her legs. Peering her head out of the car, she saw a lone soldier walking down the Tracks. Excitement rushed through her at the thought of the winning combination of food and sex—both of which would soon be hers if she played her cards right.
“Well, hello there, Private,” she said brightly, stepping out of the subway car. The guy, a younger kid, probably barely twenty-one, smiled at her shyly. “Yeah, you, honey,” she said to him, smiling, putting on her friendliest face.
“Hi.” He coughed uncomfortably, looking at his shoes.
“I’m Jenna.” She stuck her hand out to him, and when he took it she gently pulled him toward her so he could properly feel her body against his. That one trick almost always clinched the deal for her.
“Will,” he said, still not looking at her.
“Will,” she said, “you look like you want to get laid by a woman who knows what she’s doing, am I right?”
His blush, which rose all the way up to his hairline, answered for him.
“Do you have food, Will?”
He nodded, patting his pockets. He took out a half of a sandwich wrapped in paper. The bread, she knew, was half sawdust, to help fill their bellies. The meat was almost definitely chopped rat. But it looked good.
“That’s great, Will,” she said encouragingly. “Let me eat this first and then you can lie back and let me do all the work.” She figured he was new enough not to know she usually didn’t get to eat until after, but she wasn’t going to back out, so she didn’t see the problem in changing things up a bit.
Will nodded and handed her the sandwich.
It tasted pretty good. She liked to pretend it was something else—maybe a chopped steak sandwich on bakery bread. When she finished, she stripped her top off, letting it fall onto the floor of the subway car.
Will, she could see, didn’t need any prepping—his erection strained against his pants. Running her fingers to his waistband, she unzipped his fly, setting his cock free. He may have been young but his cock was all man. She smiled and pushed him down onto the mattress in the corner of the car.
He lay on his back, unbuttoning his shirt, his dog tags lying on his hairless chest.
Jenna straddled his head, holding herself up so she didn’t completely crush him. “First you gotta get me off, soldier,” she purred. Once again, that was hardly the rule, but Will was a newbie so she may as well have some fun.
He licked her pussy tentatively, then harder, getting into it. She moaned as he twirled his tongue around her slick folds, reaching up and holding her ass in his hands.
It wasn’t long before a wave of pleasure crashed over her and she climaxed, moaning as the young man sucking her clit kept going, either because he didn’t know she had come or because he was enjoying himself so much. An aftershock hit her, making her gasp and buck her hips against his mouth.
She pulled herself off his face, still straddling him, and leaned forward to kiss him, liking the taste of her come on his lips.
“Did I do that right?” he asked.
“That was incredible,” she said truthfully. “You’ve got skills, sweetheart.”
He grinned. “I did the alphabet with my tongue. That’s what the other guys said to do when I asked. Although,” he said, a wry smile on his face, “they also said I didn’t have to eat pussy if I didn’t want to out here on the Tracks.”
Damn. “Well, you’re a true man, and a true man likes to eat pussy,” she said, winking. He puffed his chest in apparent pride.
“Now tell me, Will,” she said, positioning her wet pussy over his cock and sliding down slowly, making him gasp. “A man like you probably knows all sorts of things.”
“Like what?” he asked, reaching up and touching her breasts, seemingly mesmerized by how they moved as she gyrated her hips.
“Like, what sorts of things does the radio say?” She rocked forward so his cock hit her G-spot perfectly.
“Oh yeah, I know about that,” he said, still watching her breasts bounce. He gave an experime
ntal pinch to her nipple and she squealed, making him grin in delight. “They’ve rigged whole camps to run on solar power generators and windmills. They’ve got lights that go on at sundown and stay on until bedtime at ten o’clock at night.” He pinched her nipple again, harder this time, but she barely noticed. The news about there being other camps with electricity hit her like a shock wave.
“Where? Where are those camps?”
He shrugged, then groaned as she started riding him faster. “Not just military camps. Communities, too, I think. Nowhere in the city, though,” he said, frowning.
Jenna couldn’t believe it. Yeah, Mason had told her some of it from Emily’s message, but whole communities with access to electricity? She imagined sitting around a comfortable room, fresh from a shower, wearing clean clothes, gathered around a table lit with a lamp instead of a smoky garbage fire, maybe even listening to a radio, talking with friends. The thought was too good to be true. It sounded like paradise.
A sharp slap to her ass brought her back to reality. She looked down at the young soldier in surprise. Where had he learned that? She rode him faster and he grabbed her hips, grunting as he came inside her.
“Hey,” he said, his cock wilting as she climbed off of him. “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about that stuff.”
“It will be our secret, Will,” she promised. Leaning over, she kissed his lips. They still tasted faintly like her. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“If you tell,” he said, suddenly looking much older than his years, “you’ll be in danger, I think. So don’t go telling anyone, seriously.” He paused, then looked at her warily. “How’d you even know about the radio in the first place?”
“Everyone knows about it,” she lied instinctually. Because if everyone knew about it, they’d be less likely to consider her an expendable threat to their secrets.
“Everyone?”
“Ye-yes.”
The young soldier’s eyes darkened as he pulled his clothes back on. “I heard the only one who knows about it is the whore who murdered Private Andrews. Do you know anything about that?”
The Pulse: Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy Page 13
