Monica was so thrown off kilter by Dar’s behavior she was in a state of complete disorder. First, he seemed furious with her for no reason she could fathom and then he nearly crushed her as if he thought she was trying to escape. Then he kissed her with such ferocity that it was like swallowing lava. Fire poured through her and her body erupted into quaking steam vents.
She wasn’t certain her body could take cold to molten eruption in zero to warp speed without busting some gaskets—which was one of the main reasons she had to do an internal body scan for damage when Dar set her down almost as abruptly as he’d snatched her up. Her body was still clanging like a bell. She’d hit her peak but hadn’t stopped quaking.
It was more like ice to flaming volcanic eruption and back to ice, she decided, shivering in the aftermath and glancing around in bewilderment.
She felt weak.
Her body was shimmying and quaking like gelatin.
Kael, she saw, was watching her, his expression guarded. When she looked at him, though, he surged forward and curled an arm around her.
She wasn’t certain she wanted to hug him back, fearful that he might decide to snatch her up and fuck her brains out and drop her like a hot rock as Dar had.
Instead, he moved away to wedge the torch into a crack to hold it and then back to her and curled both arms around her. “Is ok,” he murmured, stroking her back soothingly.
“I don’t understand,” she said when she’d mastered the urge to burst into tears.
It had been going so well! She’d been startled both by the abruptness of it and the ferocity, but there was no getting around the fact that he’d thrilled her beyond anything.
Then he’d just discarded her.
That was the part that made her want to cry.
“Stupid,” Kael growled, almost as if he’d read her mind. “Scared. Make crazy, unerstan?”
Monica shifted closer to him, shivering, mulling over what he’d said. Dimly, she recalled getting lost when she was little. Her parents’ reaction was to beat her ass and then hug her so tightly she felt like they would break her bones.
That was fear and love. Anger bore of fear. Fear born of love.
And it was a lesson—a good one because she never forgot even though she was very young at the time.
Should she … could she take that to mean that Dar cared about her? That he wasn’t just taking care of her because he felt obligated?
Or was it something else?
It didn’t seem to her that they’d been together long enough for love to grow—only a matter of weeks, maybe a month.
But she supposed they had had time to bond in the sense of mutual needs. That sort of thing was based upon a conscious or unconscious realization that one’s survival depended upon another. Bonding in a time of crisis was fast and it was real.
And it was necessary to survival.
Sometimes it outlasted that specific need and sometimes not, but it was certainly real enough to have caused the reaction she got because Dar had thought something had happened to her.
Her throat closed with emotion at that thought.
She thought part of it was from the realization that it might well be a temporary thing.
But part of it was empathy because he was a tough man and she knew there must have been difficult losses for him to deal with since the world ended to make him go into a panic because he didn’t find her where he thought she would be.
Clearing her throat, she looked up at Kael searchingly. “Good thing for me you didn’t panic,” she murmured shakily.
He cupped her face with one hand and dipped his head to press his forehead to hers. “Did panic. Took walk to clear mind.”
Monica smiled at him when he lifted his head. “So … want to fool around?”
Not that she felt any need to have sex—Dar had thoroughly satisfied her. But she did feel a need for the comfort of human contact—well physical contact.
His eyes gleamed with heat for a split second and then wariness took its place. “No.”
Monica gaped at him, but he grasped her arm above the elbow and firmly escorted her back to their room.
Dar was standing at the doorway, staring at nothing—because the wall they’d built had blocked his view.
“I have found a refrigeration unit!” Kael announced, excitement threading his voice.
Dar turned and looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “A what?”
“We can use it to make a smoker!” Kael frowned. “At least, I have seen it done so I am sure we can figure it out.”
It took a few moments for that, and the implications, to sink in but when it did Dar was as excited as Kael. “Let us get it.”
Kael frowned uncomfortably. “It will take some work. The door to that area is almost completely filled with rubble.”
Some of Dar’s delight vanished. He dragged in a deep breath and sighed. “That is the way of things now. Nothing is easy. Let us hope we can retrieve it without either of us getting killed.”
He flicked a look at Monica. “Stay here.”
Monica was so taken aback by the order she was still gaping when he and Kael disappeared into the nether regions of their ‘home’.
As they disappeared, though, simmering anger began to slowly replace her shock.
How dare he order her around!
She considered defying him for a little while, but it really didn’t take a lot of thought to realize how stupid it was to put herself in danger just to defy him.
God only knew how long she would end up having to stand in the snow before he realized she had defied him!
She supposed she could wait until she heard them coming back and then show her defiance by going out to the outhouse by herself.
That way she wouldn’t look like a total moron—like she’d done something completely stupid just to make a point.
She hated that she had absolutely nothing to occupy her time but her thoughts.
That made it very hard to tamp her anger and find peace.
She hated that there was never really anything to do.
She’d had a job on the colony ship!
And when she wasn’t working, she’d had her quarters and clothing to clean.
And when she wasn’t doing that, she could find something to entertain herself with.
Not that there wasn’t a lot of things here that should be done! But there was nothing to do with—nothing to clean or to clean with for that matter. Nothing to entertain herself with.
It took like five seconds to clean the three broken cups they used and the two things they’d scrounged up to help tend the meat when it was cooking.
They all watched the fire to make sure it didn’t get too low or go out, periodically stirring it and adding more fuel.
Dar and Kael did the hunting and butchering and they found the fuel for the fire.
She could sit and stare at nothing and cough on smoke and try not to think too hard about anything until her butt felt numb from sitting, and then she could get up and stir the fire and put something else on it to burn and then pace until she was tired of that and ready to sit down again.
She wondered what the guys had found to keep them occupied with in the back so long.
The temptation was strong to sneak back just to see what they were up to, but the realization that it wasn’t at all likely that she could sneak up on them convinced her not to try.
They’d just get all pissy and macho man again—as if she was so helpless she couldn’t do anything without getting herself killed!
She dwelled on the way they’d behaved before until a stray thought snagged her attention.
Why had Kael turned her down when she’d offered sex?
She didn’t think she had misinterpreted the desire that had briefly lit his eyes and then vanished.
Was it whatever he’d discovered and dragged Dar back to look at? Was that all that it was?
She shrugged. She’d had sex with both of them at least once a night since that fir
st time they’d succumbed to the lure of sex—finally. As if they’d finally accepted that she was all they were going to get the chance at.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of it like that, but what else was she to think? They’d been sleeping in a pile together—for warmth and safety—since they’d been together and neither one had shown any disposition toward sex with her.
And then they’d been ferociously passionate for days and now Kael, at least, had lost interest.
Maybe she was just unhappy because it seemed that Dar cared about her and Kael didn’t?
Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d been totally comfortable having sex with both, and right under their noses. She’d tried to tell herself that it must be their custom. Neither one seemed jealous or possessive like human men were.
But of course that might simply be because neither one particularly cared for her.
So … believe what Kael had said or at least suggested?
Or not?
It didn’t take a lot of thought to acknowledge that she’d felt a lot better when they’d initiated sex. Practically speaking, it was absolutely essential for everyone to pull their own weight when they were in a survival situation, and she knew she hadn’t done anything to earn her keep. She’d felt, right or wrong, that it was only a matter of time before they got tired of pulling all the weight and dumped her.
It wasn’t especially great for her ego that their only use for her seemed to be for sex, but there was no denying it had made her feel … safer that she was at least of some use to them.
Well, actually a lot more than that, but that was the practical side of the situation however much she would’ve preferred that it not be.
It was what it was.
She couldn’t hunt. She thought she might have been some help in that aspect if she hadn’t lost her weapon, but she didn’t think she could master sword fighting or pitching spears to bring something down or a bow and arrow if they’d found anything to use to make those.
Which also meant that she couldn’t pull her weight in defense of the group.
Burning meat on a spit or a rock didn’t require a lot of skill. They could handle that as easily as she could.
No—as hard as she tried, she couldn’t think of a single damned thing that she was needed for except sex.
And really not even that.
They could do each other even if they weren’t inclined to want to.
Thankfully they weren’t and they thought she was worth feeding and protecting just so they could occasionally have sex.
And it was damned occasional!
After trying to fuck her to death for days, they quit having any interest in it at all—starting with the day when she’d gone exploring.
Granted, they had been totally preoccupied with building a smoker. Of course, she hadn’t realized at first that that was what it was supposed to be and therefore didn’t see why it was so all consuming.
But it certainly turned out to be something grand!
Once they got the hang of smoking meat.
They were able to preserve enough to keep them going when, for days on end, their hunting expeditions turned up nothing.
Beyond that, once they’d set it up where the camp fire was, it funneled the smoke through the chamber and out the chimney/pipe Kael had set up and not only eliminated a lot of smoke, but it radiated heat and made the place far more comfortable despite the fact that the weather remained cold and it snowed almost every day.
They’d also managed to find some preserved food that was still edible so that they were able to expand their diet beyond just meat.
It improved their lives in a very noticeable way.
The only down side as far as Monica could see was that they seemed to have decided they weren’t really interested in her for sex after all.
That disinterest lasted until she got her period again.
She was so bowled over by all the attention that she almost didn’t have enough brain function to figure out what was going on.
Almost.
Chapter Thirteen
It was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. Monica laughed herself silly and then cried for hours.
The men decamped and left her in sole possession of their shelter.
She didn’t know or care when they left.
She didn’t have a clue of why she felt like crying until she was exhausted, but she felt like it and she couldn’t seem to stop.
Finally, she lapsed into a crying jag coma and slept like the dead.
When she woke Dar and Kael were back, tending the fire and heating one of their horrible concoctions.
And pretending she didn’t exist.
She studied them resentfully for a while and finally got up and headed out to the outhouse.
It had snowed, again.
She stepped into a drift and nearly drowned.
Dar fished her out.
She slapped his hand off and resumed the trek to the outhouse—more carefully.
She was nearly frozen by the time she made it back inside and she felt like embracing the smoker to absorb the heat it was producing. Ignoring the men, she moved as close as she dared to it, tapping at it lightly with her hands until the heat thawed them enough it was uncomfortable to touch it. Then she settled on her rock and stared at the glowing embers beneath the smoker/stove, making no attempt to think at all.
Slowly, brain function intruded on her happy ‘nothing’ world, though. Some of the thoughts that had triggered her crying jag trickled in.
“I can’t have children,” she said finally, struggling to keep from bursting into tears all over again, “so your careful timing doesn’t matter.
“The colony ships were filled to capacity. There was no way to make enough ships to save everyone. It just wasn’t possible—no matter how hard everyone worked. It was all we could do to make the ones we did and stock them.
“And that meant zero birth rate for the duration of the trip. Even with the warp drives this was a very, very long trip—years. We couldn’t afford to increase the population at all so the women had to agree not to have children. The penalties were …. Extreme if you breached that part of the contract so I opted for a tubal to make sure I didn’t have any accidental pregnancies.
“It was fully reversible … by Earth trained physicians.
“So … even if it was possible that you could get me pregnant given that we aren’t even the same species, it’s not possible because of the surgery that isn’t reversible here and it never will be.”
She supposed it was totally insane for such a thing to even cross her mind. They were barely surviving. And the future looked grim. It seemed more than possible that things would continue to deteriorate until they all died.
But she had always intended to have children, to have a family. It was crushing, nearly impossible, to accept that she wouldn’t.
She supposed, given how hard it was to accept anyway, the little improvements they’d made had been enough to make all of them feel … hope. To think there might be a future for them even though they knew in their heart of hearts that it was a long shot at best but mostly just unrealistic.
It would be cruel and selfish to bring a child into such a world even if she was capable of it.
And yet, without fulfillment what sort of future did they really have? The only thing they could hope to achieve would be to survive a little longer.
Was there any joy, at all, to be had in such a world?
“A toilet!” she said abruptly and then glanced at the men. “If we’re going to stay here very long at all I damned sure don’t see traipsing through the frigging snow to do my business or take a piss! I want a toilet that works and a shower that works. There has to be a way to bring in a little, basic civilization!”
Dar and Kael exchanged a long look—as if they thought she’d lost her mind—but both of them got up and followed her when she headed into the depths of the structure. And both of them seemed to instantly gras
p what she wanted when she pointed to the toilet on the wall.
She waited until the two had moved closer to examine the ‘problem’ and then she headed deeper into the structure.
Kael and Dar followed her.
She stopped and frowned at them but finally merely shrugged.
Everything they found was broken and it looked to have originally been office type furnishings anyway—which was to say not terribly comfortable. But it beat the hell out of sitting around on rocks and lying on a fur rug on stone. They dragged everything out that they could get to and examined it to see if there was any way to repair it, or use it without repairing it.
That criteria—useable or fixable—narrowed their discoveries down to a couple of wobbly chairs that they managed to tighten enough they thought they might not be a death trap; a broken couch they were able to tear the seat and back off of and make a bed with that was slightly less miserable than the floor; and a table that only tilted slightly. Everything was pretty battered and looked like hell, but it was still a morale boost after living like cave people so long.
Monica actually felt happiness for the first time in a very long time when, a little over a week later, Dar and Kael presented her with a—sort of—working bathroom.
There was no way to heat the bath water, unfortunately, and it was more of a drip than a shower since it was melted snow, but it was a slightly warmer and far less drafty place that made it less like hell to try to keep clean.
The ‘throne’ worked in the sense that it only took half a day to melt enough snow to fill the tank so that it could flush—and it did flush. And beyond that, she didn’t have to stare at the sky and listen for intruders.
Dar even managed to get enough pipe to rig up a sort of basin with running water in their ‘kitchen’/living space that they could use for preparing food and clean up. Of course there was no real control for it, no faucet, but he managed to plug the pipe with material that filtered the water and allowed it to drip into a container they’d found.
It flickered through Monica’s mind that they were about as well off as the beggars that lived on the streets of the big cities on Earth—or at least that had before—but it was a definite improvement and she resolutely appreciated it and refused to think about life before when everything was much better, easier, more convenient and comfortable.
Exodus: Extinction Event Page 12
