Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse

by Williams, Beverly

  “Check out your wheels!” Eric said, sounding pleased with himself. I did. They were perfect—the right hardness, with well-oiled bearings that allowed them to spin beautifully. Not standard-issue. They were opaque and yellow, and exactly the right width, with grip that would be good for indoor or outdoor skating.

  Eric turned on dozens of battery-powered lanterns around the edges of the rink’s floor, then returned and put on skates of his own. “We powered up a laptop with some solar panels, and I burned this CD for us!” He was adorably proud. He stopped at the edge of the floor as I rolled onto it, and he turned on a CD player, playing music which seemed made to skate to, starting with “Hey Ya” by OutKast. I used the song as a warm-up, speeding around the rink and running through a series of skills. Eric caught up to me and grabbed my hand, and we raced, turning the corners so fast wind blew tempestuously through my hair.

  “This is fantastic,” I told him, turning backward crossovers while holding his hands during a slower song. I couldn’t believe he’d set it all up just for me. “Thank you.”

  “Glad you like. I half expected you to call it wasteful.”

  “It is extravagantly wasteful, but I love it.” I didn’t want to know how many batteries were being run dry as my wheels spun. For once, I didn’t care about conserving our resources.

  A Mouse on Mars song began to play, “Actionist Respoke.” I stopped abruptly, pushing my toe stops down to arrest my backward motion. Eric picked me up, managing not to run into me first. I was impressed at his balance and at this proof of his security with his skating abilities. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and finally kissed him as fully as I meant it, as he continued to glide us across the floor.

  “Okay, down!” he announced. “Before my—ahem—distraction gets us both hurt!” He’d returned us to where we’d sat to put on skates, instead of just setting me down. He settled us on the bench and I pressed against him. I kept my limbs around his body and made sure he had ample distraction to justify having stopped. We stayed on the low, carpeted bench until the next song (“Hey Mami” by Fannypack) ended. I released him, and we returned to skating.

  “That Mouse on Mars song makes me…” I trailed off, not wanting to try to finish the sentence.

  “Frisky!” Eric supplied exultantly.

  I blushed.

  He hugged me. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Though I am filing it away under ‘Songs That Get Kit Hot.’”

  “You’re going to have a mighty folder, if you continue with that collection.”

  “As Mattie would say, it’s going in the Vault, and the Vault is limitless.”

  I blushed once more, and he chuckled. He pulled my hand, and soon we were racing over the smooth floor again. We skated for a couple of hours, then closed the place up and headed home for lunch.

  I’d found sugar drinks at a convenience store. Those little plastic barrels, with foil seals on top? Four of them. The kind of drink only kids usually enjoy. I’d tucked them away and forgot about their existence, until one rolled out from under a pile at the back of the lean-to when Thom threw a shirt down.

  “I used to love those!” Thom said as I leaned over to pick up the drink.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, digging the rest out and offering Thom the first choice. He grabbed a red one, Matthew took a red one, and Eric took the blue one. Orange for me.

  We chugged the sickeningly sweet drinks down. Not used to so much sugar, we got restless and giddy. Eric and Thom left to fetch water, trying to burn off their sugar rushes.

  “Wanna?” Matthew said, standing up and punching the air.

  “Bring it.”

  So Matthew and I were fighting. At the beginning, he was holding back.

  “Don’t fight like Sarah!” I finally yelled at him, waving my hands in the air as she had. We resumed our fighting stances, beginning to circle each other again.

  And now it was a full-on battle. He was large and powerful, but I was quick. I had a lot of tricks that would surprise him. We were enjoying our brawl.

  “What the hell!” Thom and Eric roared into the area.

  Both distracted, Matthew looked away and I couldn’t pull my punch in time. It caught him right under his eye. His hand flew to his face in surprise.

  “Sorry!” I cried out, moving to check the damage, worrying he’d be upset.

  He laughed, though. “It’s okay, it’s okay!”

  “Damn. I was having such a good time.”

  “Me too,” he assured me. “This isn’t over. You may have won a battle, but this war is on.”

  “What was that about?” Eric asked.

  “Just letting off some steam,” Matthew answered. “Thanks for making me lose.” He punched Eric’s arm fairly hard.

  Thom wiped blood from where my punch had broken the skin of Matthew’s cheek. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”

  “Temporary,” Matthew shrugged, tousling my hair. “Chicks’ll dig it. Plus I’m getting a rematch.”

  “I’m looking forward to beating you up again,” I remarked.

  We agreed to adopt “Hold” as a signal to stop from then on.

  was alone, walking out to the picnic area, when Eric approached me from behind. I listened to his steps, and watched his shadow overtake my own. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tightly to him.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He smelled like sunlight-baked dirt and new sweat. A pleasant, earthy combination.

  Eric didn’t speak, just brushed my hair to the side, kissing my neck as he slid his arms around my torso. One of his hands kept moving, lower. I sank back against him. His fingers crept beneath the fabric of my yoga pants, down between my legs. It felt good, and I wanted it—whatever the “it” was he had in mind. I immediately felt unexpectedly weak.

  “I’m going to fall!” I protested.

  “Mm-mm. I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’ve got you. Relax.”

  I trembled as his fingers manipulated my body, moaning as he finally, finally slid one of those fingers inside me. He’d been waiting, and he’d been right to do so: I wanted him even more because of it. My desire to feel him completely wiped out any anxiety about how the rest of things would go. It was worth the long wait. I groaned and leaned hard against him. My legs shook and I attempted to tell him once more I was likely to fall. “Ngh… gonna—”

  “I’ve got you.” His other arm closed around my ribs like an iron bar. Not crushing me, just supporting, stable. I clung to that arm, an anchor. I wrapped one arm around it and also held tightly to the arm that held the hand that held the finger that held me captivated. He paused, allowing me time to feel secure again. Then…

  His finger moved.

  I wanted to purr, it felt so good.

  I surprised Eric, and he inhaled sharply. I’d clamped my muscles around his finger, rippling them by compressing and releasing them in a way he hadn’t expected. I’d been exercising these muscles every day, hoping I could be pleasing to him in this small way when the right time came. (Apparently it wasn’t such a small way. I blushed when Thom alluded to it later, and also when Matthew mentioned it, later still.) Eric moved on. Wave upon wave crashed over me. I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began.

  So I was clinging to his arm, and one of my hands was low on my abdomen, and I could feel it. I could feel his finger moving, under my hand.

  “Hold. Hold, hold!” I stopped him.

  He froze.

  I tugged at his iron-bar arm, positioning his fingers low on my belly. “Feel! Oh, um. Unhold?”

  Eric moved his finger again. Then he stopped. Then he restarted. He moved more vigorously. I groaned, and my legs threatened to give way. I was still taloned to the arm connecting us, from his body into mine, and I felt the muscles in his arm moving.

  “Huh!” he exclaimed, fascination filling his voice.

  “Gonna fall,” I warned, panting and trembling.

  “Nope, I’ve got you.” He strapped his arm back across me. “Alway
s.”

  After we finished, Eric stood holding me a few moments. Then he licked his finger.

  I smacked him on the arm. “Seriously?”

  “Mm. Mm-hm!”

  I felt frustrated with myself for not being able to keep quiet when Eric was… making me feel. I’d always been able to silently bear pain. Well, not always, but most of the time, since I was six years old or so. I had experience with being quiet for pain. I had no education to draw on in order to keep quiet during sex.

  Instead of complaining about that, I said to him, “That was many times of nice.”

  Happiness twirled invisibly in the air around us. Eric left to meet up with someone about something and I continued through the forest to the picnic tables, lost in thought.

  “I turned her down,” Thom said, breaking the companionable silence between us. “Sarah.”

  “When?” I asked, looking across the lake. We were on the far side today, facing the camping area. Sarah stared out at us. Stare-Ah.

  “Just before you arrived. Then when we moved into the lean-to, she got jealous. And she saw when you were helping me with the migraine. She misread the situation and got angry and even more jealous. She’s only making it worse, taking it out on you.”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “It bothers me.”

  Eric and I had found and searched a small, remote house hidden in the woods. We cleared it and raided it for supplies. After a thorough search, we packed a few bags of usable items. We had searching buildings down to a science now, always clearing and locking up before scavenging. In the brief time I was with Saul’s group, I witnessed them hopelessly botch a few such missions. Watching them blunder through houses, often coming out with fewer people than went in, had been cautionary examples of what not to do.

  Eric and I removed all the booby traps we found. Like arrows. Like snares to catch a person to hang helplessly by a foot. Like homemade mines. I loved traps: they usually forfeited useful supplies and signified that a house was safe to search (i.e., not full of disease) and that there was something worth having inside.

  Eric guided me down the hallway and into a bedroom. He sat down on the bed and leaned back against the headboard.

  “Eric Chair?”

  “Eric Chair,” I replied, sitting and leaning back on him.

  “Now with new special features!” he chirped dopily.

  I turned my head to kiss him and reveled in the feel of his fingers tracing figure eights on my hips and thighs.

  “You’re like an owl!” Eric exclaimed. “How’d you end up with a neck that’s so bendy?”

  I shrugged and nibbled his lower lip as we kissed again, just a gentle nip. He bit mine back, not as gently. My body was tingling.

  Eric pushed my hand down between my legs. I yanked it back as if I’d touched a hot burner. A knee-jerk reaction. I felt horrible about pulling away. I looked at the leather that covered the ruined flesh of my palms and thought of how the flesh was not the only thing ruined.

  I’d figured out how, at a fairly young age. My body was sensitive that way; it was easy to get off. Apparently, though, masturbation was against my stepfather’s random rules. Until I gave up and stopped trying to pleasure myself, he’d punished me with reminders I would see all day, every day.

  “You still may,” I said by way of apology.

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, but Eric didn’t need for it to be. He got it. “That’s what those scars are about?” he whispered, running a finger along the palm of my glove.

  I gave a tiny nod.

  “How old were you?”

  I closed my eyes, remembering. “Four. And five. And six.”

  “So you never touch…? Not since then?”

  “Hygiene only. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing that, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “What do you remember?” He still looked incredulous.

  I let out a bitter laugh. “I remember nothing of the rewards that came before the punishments,” I said, taking a shuddery breath. “Just… blazing, searing. And the smell—flesh burning.”

  Eric slowly peeled off my gloves. I was shocked to realize I was letting him. He kissed my palms.

  “It’s time for more reward, then.” He slid his fingers lightly up the inside of my leg. “No more punishment.” The way he spoke made it clear he knew the punishment hadn’t ever stopped, even though the once-acute pain was long gone.

  Eric lifted me from his lap and set me on the bed so he could move. He knelt on the floor and patted the blanket in front of him. “Scoot.”

  I crawled across and sat on the mattress’s edge, unsure of what to expect.

  Eric kissed me, his tongue tasting uniquely like him. I pulled back to study his face. Almost immediately he kissed me again, then his mouth moved across the front of my neck. My breath caught in my throat. Every nerve was humming and awake, alive. And not hurting.

  I threw my head back. My hair tumbled over his arm in waves. He kissed my neck harder and my nails bit into his shoulders and the back of his neck.

  “Mmm…” came from my mouth, a vibrating note that tickled my lips.

  I realized what my fingers were doing and released him from it. He placed my hands back where they’d been.

  “Please,” he urged.

  He pushed me onto my back. He kissed a line down my neck, down my shirt, down my belly, down. He slid off my pants and my bikini bottoms. I dug into his shoulders helplessly.

  “Breathe,” he admonished. Those wisps of light had appeared and I hadn’t realized why until Eric spoke. His head was between my thighs, and his breath was warm on my skin. I shivered involuntarily, anticipating his touch.

  I whimpered when his tongue nudged at me. I put my hand lightly on the back of his head. I stroked his hair and he licked me—slowly, at first. I arched my back and tried to be quiet instead of making foolish sounds. It was no use.

  “Unnh…” I shook all over. He didn’t stop. “Unngh… mm, mm…” And breathlessly, desperately, “PleaseEricPleaseEricPleaseEricPlease-EricPlease…”

  Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, he pulled back, pressing his cheek against the inside of my thigh. Waves of pleasure still washed over me. His breath on my skin was stimulation enough. It took me some time to settle down and stop making idiotic noises.

  “Do you have any idea how sexy you sound?” Eric inquired. “My girl.”

  A thought that had been slowly forming in my mind over a long time finally pulled itself into a sentence, perched on my lips, and took flight to his ears. “No wonder the scars on my palms have so many layers.”

  By the time we were ready to leave the house, the front of it was closed in by layers of rotters. They effectively blocked our exit.

  “Holy,” Eric said.

  I hadn’t seen so many rotters since the city. They were oddly organized, though, keeping themselves in lines instead of attacking us all at once. Eric shook his head, looking grim. In spite of their numbers, he must have known the two of us could handle this crowd. I wondered what the cause of his worry was—and then I saw it. These weren’t randomly herding rotters. They were strung together—attached to each other with heavy-duty fishing line run through hooks in their necks. Someone wanted them to stick together. Someone had strung them all up (possibly before they were turned, possibly after) and they must’ve broken free, out into the world in a group. I knew Eric’s brain would be working overtime on it.

  Eric gave me a boost onto the porch’s roof and scrambled up beside me, so we could clear the danger from relative safety.

  “Who’d even bother doing that?” I leaned over the side of the roof and took out the two closest decomposing walking corpses with my phoenix knife.

  “No one we want to wait around for,” he answered. We picked up the pace and didn’t speak further until we’d cut the herd to a reasonable size. We climbed down to ground level and cleared the remaining threat away. Finishing the rest from tha
t point took almost no time at all: it felt like a dance we’d choreographed and perfected. We were an efficient team.

  I observed the lifeless bodies on the ground before us, and I wondered how long it had taken to assemble them. Whoever “owned” these rotters would probably not be pleased at the ruination of their hard work.

  Eric and I left for camp before the danger could be increased by the rotters’ wranglers’ presence. Eric wasn’t telling me something, but I didn’t push him for information. I didn’t care enough about the rotters to think about it for very long. Eric was a constant distraction, though he wasn’t attempting to be. He had been waking up parts of me I hadn’t thought were even alive. I didn’t think about that too long, either, but I couldn’t ignore feeling it.

  As we walked quickly through the woods toward home, Eric spoke: “I’ve seen something like that before, just not on that scale.” I waited for him to elaborate, but he had nothing to add. Like everyone else, Eric had regular camp chores, but he also had a specialized job. He was the camp’s main security. I don’t mean visible security, like guards. He prowled beyond the perimeter, assessing threats and eliminating them when it became necessary. He was responsible for our invisible defenses. He was the one who developed the strategies which kept us safest—and most of our campers were completely clueless about this. Eric didn’t talk about it. He’d need to eventually, or it would break him.

  Eric took me skating again. He played a different CD this time.

  “Thom put this one together for us to skate to,” he told me. “You know he listens to some weird stuff. This should be interesting.”

  “The Chimbley Sweep” by the Decemberists accosted us with excessive volume from the CD player’s speakers. I lowered the amplification a little, loving the music—at a reasonable decibel level. I sped around the floor, skating more wildly than I had on our previous outing, feeling sure my skills would all come back to me if I allowed them to instead of trying too hard to make it happen. I forgot Eric was watching until the song ended. I returned to him, hugging him tightly and laughing as Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money” boomed from the speakers.