The Trunk

by Linda Mooney

  And, in a way, she would be glad when the first ships arrived, because Mykail would finally believe her. One hundred percent believe her. Which meant that anything further she had to tell him he wouldn’t question or doubt.

  She stepped inside the tub. For the next however long she took, she luxuriated in the warm water pouring over her. She didn’t hesitate to lather herself down twice with the body wash and utilize the back scrub for those hard-to-reach places between her shoulder blades. She also shampooed her hair twice. At one point she stared at a length of dark hair sliding through her fingers. Many times she’d considered cutting it, but always vetoed the idea. She’d seen other women who’d chopped off their longer hair, claiming it was easier to manage in these new trying times. But then she’d observed them constantly brushing the hair out of their eyes or away from their faces, before finally resorting to wearing bandannas or tying a scarf around their heads. With her long hair, all she needed to do was tie or braid it behind her head, and that was sufficient. And when her hair got oily and thick from not being able to wash it, it was even less likely to fly into her eyes.

  And that one split second of being distracted because you have to tuck your hair behind an ear could mean the difference between life and death.

  Reluctantly, she got out of the shower to find the mirror steamed up. She used her towel to wipe it down, and made use of Mykail’s simple comb to get the tangles out of her hair. Putting on the t-shirt and gym shorts, she walked barefoot out of the bathroom.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I used your comb,” she started to apologize, then froze. Mykail was sitting up in his chair, his mouth open, his eyes riveted on the TV set. Cold, hard fear crept into her bloodstream, turning her blood to ice as she also stared at the picture being projected on the screen. Her legs threatened to buckle as she heard the news announcer breathlessly announcing.

  “NASA has now confirmed at least nine meteors are heading toward us, but our sources at the Pentagon have assured us that our defense system satellites will be able to take them out. The satellites will deploy lasers to break up the rocks, one of which is estimated to be the size of the Freedom Tower in New York City. Once these meteors are blasted into smaller sizes, they will completely disintegrate once they enter the atmosphere.

  “Let me repeat. Authorities assure us we are in no danger. These meteors appeared from behind the moon, which is why we had little warning to their approach until they passed by it.”

  The woman continued to drone on, but Mykail muted the TV and turned to her.

  “Emlee, are those the spaceships you told me about? The ones that will take us out?”

  “They’re the advance guard,” she admitted in a soft voice. “But they’re not the ones we have to be afraid of. Just wait until the motherships show up.”

  “Motherships?” He emphasized the plural.

  “Yeah. It’s still going to happen, Mykail. They’re still going to destroy the world. Me coming back in time has changed nothing.”

  She collapsed before she could say anything more.

  Chapter Eleven

  Moment

  She felt him trying to roll over to find a more comfortable position, but his ribs continued to pain him, despite the medication he’d taken. Yet, she got the impression it wasn’t so much his injuries that prevented him from getting any sleep than it was the discovery of the in-coming so-called meteors.

  Turning onto her side, she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. He responded by clasping her hand with his.

  “Am I keeping you up?” he murmured. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Guess your side is giving you fits.”

  “Kind of.” There were a few seconds of silence, when he admitted, “I’ve just got a lot of things on my mind.”

  Emlee scooted closer. “I understand. It was a pretty big shock. I guess that jury finally made a decision on that undecided ten percent?”

  He slowly maneuvered himself, grunting softly in pain, until he faced her. Taking her hand again in his, he lifted it to his lips.

  “Never, in all my years, did I ever believe time travel was possible. Neither did I even once believe aliens could land on Earth and pull a War of the Worlds.”

  She sensed a hesitation in him, and remarked on it. “You’re still having problems accepting it, aren’t you?”

  “Well, hell, yeah! Don’t you have days where you stop and ask yourself if you’re having a nightmare of epic proportions, and hope that when you wake up, everything will be as it used to be?”

  “I did. For the first couple of months. But after you narrowly escape death a few times, you stop thinking that.”

  He kissed the backs of her fingers again. “I think it’s facing the unknown, what’s going to happen next, that’s got me scared out of my wits. But you know what’s coming up. You know what’s going to happen because you’ve already lived through it.”

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.

  “But you know what I’m more worried about?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “It’s losing you. Call me silly. Call me paranoid. Call me irrational. But there has to be some reason why you’re here. Why you came back to this timeline. Why you’re saving me.”

  She snickered. “Now who’s calling who crazy?” she teased. A stray thought came to her. “Mykail, what were you doing, I mean, what would you be doing if I wasn’t here?”

  “I don’t know. Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’d been thinking about going sailing this weekend.”

  She raised her head from her pillow to look down at him. “Sailing? You know how to sail a sailboat?”

  “Yeah. Uncle Dean has a small sailboat down at Pier C. I’ve been out on it in the past. He doesn’t use it that much anymore. He said I was welcome to take her out whenever I wanted to.” His eyes brightened as the same idea hit them. “Emlee, we can take the sailboat! Tomorrow, let’s pack up all the groceries and stuff we’ll need, and go down to the marina. We’ll put as much distance between us and the city as we can before the shit hits the fan.”

  His growing enthusiasm was contagious, but there were too many unknown variables to fully convince her.

  “What about food, Mykail? When the food we’ve bought runs outs, what’ll we do then?”

  “We’ll fish. We’ll pull into harbors and troll for crab and shrimp.”

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  “No, but what other choices do we have?” he countered, and gently touched the bandage on her palm. “How difficult was it to find food in the future?”

  “Very difficult. Your best bet to find any is to venture into the suburbs because most cities are just bombed-out ashes and rubble. But everyone else knows that, and they’ve moved into the outlying small towns and suburbs, too.”

  “So you basically have to decide between eating but possibly being killed, or starving but avoiding the homicidal mobs,” he deduced.

  “That’s…pretty much what it boils down to.”

  She was hit with a horrifying thought. Mykail saw her reaction and squeezed her hand. “What? Talk to me, Em.”

  “What if something happens to me, and I’m sent back to my time? I mean, what if whatever cosmic fate discovers I was sent to this time by mistake and corrects it? Without warning? What if I was never meant to come here?”

  “Shh, shh. You can’t dwell on that. If it happens, it happens. Just like you coming here in the first place.” He managed a weak grin. “If I have to, I’ll wait for you. If you just somehow go poof! and disappear back to the future, I’ll do everything I can to survive so that we can meet up again six years from now. Six years, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “If by some weird chance you’re thrown back to this time again, and it’s before I’ve met you, don’t hit me with a broom again, okay? Please?”

  She laughed. “I promise.”

  He laced his fingers throug
h hers. “Do you know how special you are?”

  She gave him a puzzled look. The moonlight shone almost directly on the bed as it streamed through the narrow windows, making him clearly visible.

  “What do you mean? I’m not special.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve managed to survive for six years on your own in a future that only a very few have seen. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve witnessed, or what you’ve been through. And the fact that you’re still mentally sound is nothing short of a miracle. Do you realize that you’ve already changed my future by coming here? I may not have survived the initial attacks the first time around. But with you coming here, you’ve completely altered my timeline.”

  He continued to stare at her, as if he was memorizing her face. The impulse to kiss him was too strong to resist, and she leaned in. His hand released hers and buried itself in her damp hair to hold her head steady.

  His kiss was anything but weak. His lips possessed hers, his mouth moving, almost demanding, over hers. The last of her resistance caved, and she reached for him.

  It was dizzying, how much passion flowed between them. Before too long, she found herself gasping for breath, wanting more of his kisses, more of him. She tried to press herself against him, when he groaned softly.

  “This isn’t going to work,” she murmured. Not waiting for him to answer, she sat up in bed and quickly threw off her t-shirt. Shoving the gym shorts down her legs, she kicked the garment out from under the sheets. “But this might.”

  He didn’t try to stop her when she reached for his shorts and jerked them past his hips. His erection sprang upward, the bulbous head glistening in the pale white light. Unable to resist, she bent over to take him into her mouth, and was rewarded with a loud groan. His hand fisted in her hair, but he didn’t try to stop her or guide her. He let her work him as she wanted.

  She normally didn’t care to perform fellatio on her partner. The few times she’d done it, she’d been asked to do it, but in a tone that let her know it was more of an order than a request. Mykail didn’t give her that impression. His body went rigid as she licked and nibbled the taut shaft, sucking loudly on it, then pumping her mouth over him. When she took his balls in her hand to massage them, his moan sent delicious shivers through her.

  She hadn’t planned on having sex with him. Yes, she’d thought briefly about it, maybe as a way to thank him for all he’d done for her. But then, in the car, when he’d reached over to take her hand as she broke down on their way home, she’d realized the ugly truth of it all.

  She was falling in love with him.

  To make matters worse, she was no longer afraid for herself. She was more afraid she’d lose him. Life alone in a destroyed society, where every survivor did whatever they could to find their next meal or next drink of safe water, was horrifying. She couldn’t take another six years of such solitude. But if Mykail was willing to stick with her, no matter where, no matter what, how could she not give her heart to him?

  A tightening of her scalp was her signal to stop. “Em,” he almost choked.

  Moving carefully, she straddled his hips and started to guide his heavy length to her entrance, when he abruptly stopped her. “Wait. Em, I don’t have a condom.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t had a period in years.”

  He gave her a dubious look. “How’s that possible?”

  “The tension. The stress. Don’t worry. I’m fine.” She gave his dick another squeeze. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done this,” she admitted.

  He grinned up at her. “It’s been a long time since I wasn’t the one on top.”

  She lowered herself over him, taking him inside her a little at a time, until he filled her, thick and hot. She teased him with her muscles, squeezing and releasing, sending goosebumps flashing across her skin.

  Leaning over, she took his face between her hands and kissed him again. His hands reached up to clutch her breasts, and he gently pinched her nipples. He continued to play with her breasts as she sat up and leaned back. Closing her eyes, she relished his touch, the way he lightly ran his nails down her skin and over her belly. He insinuated his fingers between them, until he met where his dick entered her. She felt him nudge between her lower lips until he found her clit.

  Emlee gasped and began pumping up and down. His hand stayed on her nub, grinding it with his knuckles as she rode him. As her momentum increased, he grabbed her hips to keep her centered over him, until he finally exploded. Mykail cried out, but Emlee continued to seesaw, until she found her own release. Taking his softening erection between her fingers, she masturbated herself, keeping herself going, extending her pleasure as long as she could.

  Gradually, she slowed down, bent over, and rested her face in his neck. Mykail’s arms slid around her, cuddling her, the both of them breathing heavily. As her body relaxed, she extricated herself from his embrace and rolled to the side.

  Drawing the sheets and blanket up over their naked bodies, she laid her head on his pillow. The last thing she remembered was the feel of his lips on her forehead as he kissed her goodnight.

  Chapter Twelve

  Return

  A warning siren went off. Its nerve-racking screech awoke them both, startling and confusing them simultaneously.

  Mykail snatched up his cell phone where it was recharging on its stand beside the bed and glanced at the screen. “It’s the emergency broadcast signal. It’s telling everyone to turn on their TVs. Television, on!” he announced loudly.

  Emlee scrambled out from under the covers and hurried to recover her clothing, slipping them on as Mykail slowly rose into a sitting position. She joined him on his side of the bed as they watched the news announcer, this time a man, giving the latest update.

  “—the spaceships. The Pentagon confirms that the satellite defense system has not been deployed, as Congress is debating on whether or not to allow the ships to land. Congresswoman Nita Barnstall Quinn is demanding we give the incoming aliens a chance.”

  There was a shot of a middle-aged woman standing behind a podium. “How do we know these are not peaceful peoples? Why are we suddenly on the defensive? I’ll tell you why! It’s because of all those movies we watched as we were growing up! Just because they’re here doesn’t mean they’re dangerous! I call on my fellow congressmen to allow these visitors from outer space a chance to prove whether or not they’re dangerous. We simply cannot automatically assume they’re here to conquer us!”

  “That woman’s an idiot,” Emlee commented as the delegate continued to rant. “It’s people like her who gave the Tlok enough time to put their plan in place. If we’d blasted them all from the get-go, none of what’s about to occur would happen.”

  The newsman returned. “President McInerny has issued a DEFCON One alert. In addition, all military branches have been called into service in the event the alien spacecraft are dangerous.”

  “All the military, all our weapons, will be useless against them,” Emlee noted. “We never stood a chance.”

  “When do they strike?” Mykail whispered. Both of them remained riveted on the broadcast. For her, this was the first time she’d seen it, having been at work when everything initially went down.

  “Tomorrow. Tonight we’ll get to see what the Tlok look like, right after it’s announced that one of their spaceships was brought down.”

  He turned his head to look at her. “Em, is it possible the Tlok’s initial purpose for being here was peaceful? And it wasn’t until they were fired upon by us first that they decided to come down hard in retaliation?”

  She admitted she’d never thought of it that way. “It’s very possible. It could also explain why they pretty much leave the rest of us alone. The survivors. Because they knew they’d taken out everything that might cause them harm.”

  “Like our electrical grid and such?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So there are no ships and such roaming the countryside, hunting down stragglers?”

&
nbsp; “No.”

  A photo flashed onto the screen. Emlee pointed to it with a gasp. “That’s them. Those are the scout ships. Or what I call the scout ships.”

  “When do the motherships arrive?”

  “Tomorrow. After we shoot down one of those spaceships.”

  Mykail nodded, his lips pressed together in a thin line as he bowed his head in thought. “Television, off.” The screen went blank, and he rubbed his hands over his face. He reached for his phone and called a number. His head remained bowed, his eyes closed, as he made the call.

  “Hi, Mom. I just called to see how everyone was doing.” His voice was strained as he fought the tears. “Just wanted to tell you and Dad how much I love you. When you get the chance, call me back, okay? Love you. ‘Bye.” He laid the phone on the bed beside him as his shoulders began to hitch.

  Emlee pulled him against her, letting him press his face to her shoulders as he wept, stroking his face and hair as he dealt with his grief. In a way, she knew what he was going through. She’d also lost her family, friends, and loved ones in the holocaust. But, unlike him, she didn’t have the chance for one final goodbye.

  “Thank God you’re still here,” he said, his voice muffled against her shirt. “I was afraid you’d be gone this morning.”

  “To be honest, I’m surprised, too.” She kissed his hair as he clutched her. “Where do your parents live?”

  “Santa Fe.”

  “Are they retired?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a corner of the sheet, then pulled away from her embrace to slowly get to his feet. She saw him wince slightly and stood, taking his hand.

  “Take another pain killer.”

  “No.” He shook his head, sniffing. “They make me drowsy, and I need to keep a clear head. I’ll take a couple of ibuprofen.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  He looked over at the kitchen. He was composed again. Level-headed. “I say we have ourselves a big breakfast. Then we pack up everything and make our way to the marina. There’s an ice chest in the garage we can put all the cold foods in.”