Message-ID: <27517asstr$974725810@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Al Steiner <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner-Ch 5 (Fm, preg) 3/5
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 08:10:11 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

AFTERMATH
By Al Steiner
CHAPTER 5 - PART 3/5
Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Missing parts can be found at www.storiesonline.net


She offered him a smile, the first he had ever seen her offer anyone.
"You work twice as hard as anyone else around here," she told him.
"Why shouldn't you get a little extra chow at mealtime?  Just don't rat
me out, okay?  That bitch Jessica would have a shitfit about it."

"Mum's the word," he told her, returning the smile.  He was surprised
that she was talking to him.  Stacy was usually one of the quietest
people in town.  She was also one of the most talked about in gossip
circles.  The women loved speculating upon just who the father of her
illegitimate child was.  Jason had heard Jessica and several of her
cronies advance the firm conviction that it must be "a nigger" that had
knocked her up.  Why else wouldn't she tell people who he was?

"Do you mind if I join you?" she asked him, grabbing a plate of her own
once she handed him his.  "You're the last of the guard detail to
stagger in and I just have enough time to get a little down myself
before I gear up for the main breakfast.

"Uh... sure," Jason said shyly.  "Be my guest."

She gave him another smile and began to fill her plate with food.  When
she was finished she waddled her way along next to him to one of the
tables.  They sat down next to each other and began to tear into their
food.

"I hate the morning service," she said as she cut up her pancake with a
fork.  "The little alien doesn't like me to be up this early."

"The little alien?"

"That's what I call the baby," she said, patting her large stomach
affectionately.  "Remember that movie?  That's what it feels like to
have something growing inside of you.  It's weird."

"I bet," he said doubtfully, unable to think of anything else.

They continued to chat idly about various subjects, mostly their work
schedules and their respective jobs.  Jason was unsure at first of just
what her motivation was for engaging him in conversation.  Usually when
the town women talked to him in a friendly manner it was because they
were either trying to ingratiate themselves with one of Brett's "kids"
or were trying to hit him up for personal information about Brett.  But
Stacy did not seem to fit this category.  As they talked and as the
words began to flow more easily from their mouths, Brett's name did not
come up at all.  It occurred to him that maybe Stacy just craved human
company and that he was the only one who would provide it for her
without making snide remarks or being condescending.  If that was so he
was glad to be the one to give it to her since, necessarily, it meant
that she had no snide remarks or condescending tones of her own to
offer him.

He told her an abbreviated version of how he had come to be in the
mountains on that particular Thursday afternoon.

"Your mom was a wildlife photographer?" she said.  "That's like, so
cool.  What magazines was she in?"

"Oh... National Geographic a few times, Life Magazine once, and a
couple times a year the Sierra Club magazine would publish her shots.
Those were the ones she was really proud of.  Most of her work was just
for home display or for the UC Berkeley paper."  He felt a pang of
sadness wash over him as he thought of her emerging from her darkroom
with the latest batch of shots from her outings.  "You know, it's
funny," he told Stacy.  "Me and Chrissie used to hate it when she would
force us to sit down and look at another stack of her stupid animal
pictures.  But now... now I'd give anything to be able to be annoyed by
them just one more time."

Stacy nodded, patting him on the shoulder companionably.  "I know what
you mean," she said.  "My mom used to tell me I was too skinny, that I
didn't eat enough, that I wasn't taking care of myself.  After I
started growing the little alien she got even worse.  "Stacy, you're
not gaining enough weight for that baby," she would say.  Or "Stacy,
are you taking your vitamins the way you're supposed too?"  I swear, I
wanted to kill her sometimes.  But like you said..." she sniffed a
little, a single tear running down her face, "if I could just hear her
voice one more time."  She looked over at him, embarrassed for
herself.  "I'm sorry.  We hardly know each other and I'm crying in
front of you.  Us pregnant women don't have a lot of control over our
emotions."

"It's okay," he said.  "Really.  There's been a lot to cry about since
that day and not a lot of time to do it in.  I understand."

She smiled again, wiping away the tear.  "You're a sweetheart," she
said.  "Thanks for putting up with me.  There are not a whole lot of
people in this town that I can talk to.  I'm not exactly one of the
girls"

"I know the feeling," he said.  "Believe me, I do.  And you can talk to
me anytime you want to."

"Thanks.  I'll be taking you up on that.  Count on it."


+++++


Brett was somewhat disappointed in the number of people that signed up
for his permanent guard force.  Though he had not expected the numbers
to be overwhelming by any means, he HAD expected that maybe ten or
fifteen people would realize that security detail was a vital job.  Not
so.  Of the nearly one hundred and fifty people in town that were old
enough to sign up he got a grand total of six volunteers of which
Chrissie and Jason were two of them.  Though he and Chrissie were still
not speaking to each other or sleeping together because of the Mitsy
incident his first night, Chrissie was not a vindictive person.  Her
name had topped the list followed by her brother's.  Of the other four
volunteers, personal interviews had shown Brett that two of them were
women who thought that signing up for his detail would help win his
favor.  When told that it would not, one of them promptly withdrew her
offer and the other had given him a look that seemed to say: "we'll
just see about that."

On the plus side of the equation, two of the volunteers - one a man,
one a woman - genuinely did seem to realize the importance of the
position and, at least in the interviews, seemed to have signed up in
that spirit.

The male was Matt Engle, a 33 year old that had been one of the
teachers at the town's small elementary school - a colleague of Janet.
Though he had no military experience of any kind, he did hold a
master's degree in history and did seem to realize just what kind of
atrocities the human race was capable of when pushed to the edge as it
had been.  "I think the formation of a protective force - an army if
you will - is vital to the continuation of this society here," he told
Brett.  "It shames me greatly that no one seems to be taking the very
real threat of invasion seriously.  I don't know a lot about how to
protect us from it, but I'm willing and even anxious to learn."

"Good enough for me," Brett had said upon hearing this.  He held out
his hand for a shake.  "Welcome to the Garden Hill security force.
Training will start tomorrow morning."

The female was Michelle Westover who, at 30 years old was the third
oldest woman in town.  Brett, who was suspicious of the motivations of
every female that crossed his path, spent a good deal of time
interviewing her.  She had been a town woman before the comet and she
was attractive in a plain-Jane sort of way, but at the same time she
was not quite cut from the same mold as the other Garden Hill women.
In the first place it had been she, and not her husband, who had been
the primary breadwinner for the family prior to the comet.  She had
been a free-lance writer whose talents had been much sought after by
various women's magazines.  A regular contributor of articles to
Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Vogue, she had pulled in more than eighty
thousand dollars the previous year by telling the nation's women how
best to please their man in the bedroom and how to get the most out of
their cosmetic and fashion dollars.  Her husband, who she had genuinely
loved and who she genuinely missed, had been a cameraman for a
Sacramento news station who had happened to be on assignment in Modesto
at the time of the impact.  "It is just incredible to me," she had told
him, almost angrily, "how locked up in the gossip and relationship war
everyone in town is.  Three days after the comet I was still grieving
for Stan, still crying myself to sleep over everything that was gone,
even debating suicide because I didn't think I could go on.  And the
rest of the town, what were they doing?  They were fighting each other
over who was going to pair up with whom, who is officially attached to
someone and who is trying to move in.  It's obscene.  It's absolutely
obscene."

"So why do you wish to be a part of the guard force?" he asked her.

"Because I've decided to live," she said matter-of-factly.  "I want to
see the sun again, I want to be one of the people whose grandchildren
rebuild everything that's been smashed.  I know that the only way that
is going to happen is if people make the effort to keep us alive.  I'm
scared to death of guns and I don't know the first thing about guarding
a town but I want to learn.  Most of these women here are the types
that expect things to just be taken care of for them.  They want to
just live in their houses and do what everyone else is doing and be
important without having to work for it.  That's why you're having so
much trouble with them now.  They need someone to tell them how to live
and how to act and what to wear.  They were the women I wrote those
stupid articles for.  But I am not one of them.  I'm a fighter Mr.
Adams, willing to claw my way upward to achieve a goal.  That's how I
went from editing term papers at Sac State to being able to name my own
price for an article in a magazine.  I proved myself.  I'm willing to
prove myself now and help defend this town so the rest of these idiots
can go on pretending like they're in high society."

"I see," Brett said, impressed with her statement.  "There is one other
thing that I think I should add.  Forgive me if it portrays me as
somewhat arrogant."

"Of course," she said, her eyes telling him that she already knew what
he was going to say.

"You must realize that joining my detail will not assist in any
endeavor you might have towards acquiring me as a male companion.  That
is NOT why I'm asking for volunteers."

She laughed, her intelligent eyes amused.  "That IS rather arrogant,"
she told him.  "But it is understandable considering the current socio-
sexual climate.  I understand Mr. Adams and you can rest assured that I
have no interest in you in that way.  Stan was the only man for me.  He
was my soulmate and I will grieve for him for the rest of my life.  As
for sexual outlets, well, I've written more than one article on how a
woman can take of that matter for herself and believe me, I have a lot
of those research devices still in my house and I know how to use them."

Brett was not the easiest person in the world to make blush, but this
declaration by Michelle was more than enough.  "I see," he said slowly,
extending his hand.  "In that case... uh... welcome to the detail.
Training starts tomorrow after breakfast."

"See you then," Michelle told him with a smile.


+++++


Brett and Paul had to fight and argue with Jessica and Dale over each
aspect of the training program that Brett wanted his new guards to go
through.  They did not want to release the volunteers from the other
duties that they had been assigned to, they did not want to have Paul
assign other people to guard detail during the training time, they did
not want to allow the release of four hundred rounds of ammunition for
firearms training.

"They're security guards!" Jessica had yelled, quite exasperated.
"What kind of training do night watchmen need?"

Fortunately the issue was not one that required a vote by the committee
since the establishment and training of the guard force had already
been voted in.  Their arguments were more for form sake than anything
else.  The personnel roster was adjusted, the ammunition was released
from the supply room and the training went forth as planned.

Brett led his troops just outside of the subdivision wall on the north
side, within easy view of the guard post there.  He then ran them
through a complete course of firearms training that included all of the
various types of weapons in the Garden Hill inventory.  They qualified
on the pistols, the shotguns, the hunting rifles, both scoped and un-
scoped, and the assault weapons, both the semi-automatics like the AK-
47s and the AR-15s as well as the fully automatics like the M-16s.
Brett had them learn the assembly, cleaning, and relative advantages
and disadvantages of each type of weapon.  He then had them shoot at
fixed targets like cans and human shaped silhouettes that he had
constructed from black paper scavenged from the elementary school.

Everyone did well except for Georgia Miles, the slinky former housewife
who had joined with the hope of gaining Brett's favor.  She had jumped
in feigned fear each time a cartridge was exploded from her weapon,
giving a girlish squeal and constantly trying to get Brett to give her
more personal instruction.  Twice he had had to bat the barrel of her
loaded weapon downward as she turned to talk to someone and
unconsciously trained the weapon towards them, her finger on the
trigger.  After the second of these incidents he pulled her weapon from
her hand and told her to go back to town.

"What do you mean?" she'd asked.

"I mean I need people a little more dedicated than you are.  You're
dismissed from guard detail."

"Dismissed?" she nearly screamed.  "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means you're washed out," he said.  "You can leave now."

"You can't fire me from this shitty detail!" she yelled, standing
before him with her hands on her hips.

"On the contrary," he said calmly, "I not only have the ability to do
so, but the obligation.  Your services are no longer needed here."

She had of course gone immediately to Jessica and Dale to complain but
her complaints fell upon deaf ears.  While the popping of weapons
continued from just outside the wall, Georgia went back to the wood-
gathering detail she had been on before.

In addition to firearms training Brett taught them the basics of
movement and squad procedures, going into more detail than he had been
able to with Jason and Chrissie on their march to town and also having
them practice the techniques as well.  His four-person squad was forced
to crawl on their bellies in the mud, to practice flanking the grocery
store and breaching it under simulated fire.  He taught them the
various communications signals, both hand and verbal, and went over the
importance of keeping in close contact with one's teammates.  During
the second day of training Paul even participated giving a two-hour
lecture on basic first aid as it applied to the types of injuries they
were likely to encounter in battle.  His lecture was followed by a
practical lab session in which the firefighter made them dress and
triage simulated injuries.

"Well," Brett told Paul after the course was completed, "they're not
exactly Navy SEALs or anything, but they're a damn sight better than
they were before.  Even Chrissie and Jason, who were pretty tip-top
before the class, have shown significant improvement."

"So you think we're a little more secure?" Paul asked.

"A little," he agreed.  "But not much.  Until I get more people to sign
up and take the training seriously we're still fighting an uphill
battle if we're attacked.  But at least I have four people who can take
charge of some of the others if the shit hits the fan."

"You do what you can in this world," Paul said, clapping him on the
back.  "Come on, let's go get ourselves a little drink from the supply
room.  I think we deserve it."


+++++


Once the permanent guard volunteers were trained, Brett tried to keep
two of them on duty at all times.  He did not order them to work double
shifts at their posts but they all did this anyway, Chrissie and
Michelle usually working the day shifts while Matt and Jason worked the
night shifts.  The trained guards were never posted together in these
early days, although that was eventually what Brett wanted to do.
Instead, they were augmented with the conscripts assigned by Paul each
night.  Brett's orders were of course that the trained guard was in
charge of the post but he knew that it didn't always work out that way,
particularly when Jason and Chrissie were involved.  Nobody was willing
to take orders from them.

In all it was an imperfect, very flawed system that still utilized sub-
standard positions and was staffed, for the most part, with people who
did not wish to be there.  The fornication on duty, though slowed by
the same-sex rule and driven deeper into the shadows, persisted none-
the-less, particularly at the posts where one of Brett's people was not
part of the team.  Brett was rendered pretty much powerless to prevent
this from occurring since Jessica was only interested in finding out
who it had been so she could try to push the issue of banishment for
fornication.  She didn't care that it was on guard duty, just that it
had occurred at all.

"I don't give a rat's ass what they do when they're not on duty," Brett
had pleaded with her on one occasion after he had caught two of his
female guards having sex with a male visitor.  "They can stick live
gerbils up each others asses if that floats their boat as long as they
do it OFF shift."

"I cannot differentiate between on guard duty and off guard duty," was
her answer to this argument.  "They are either punished for every
fornication episode - and the only appropriate response is exile - or
we don't punish them at all.  Now I know Dale feels the same way as I
do about this problem."

"Of course," he said.  "We can't have people fornicating.  It's wrong."

"But," she went on, "Paul still will not vote with us to banish these
people and, unlike most of our other decisions, banishment has to be
unanimous!"

"I will not vote to kick anyone out of here for sexual impropriety,"
Paul said before she could get started on her lecture.  "But I do think
that some form of punishment for those who do it on watch is
appropriate.  Brett has suggested three days of house arrest.  What's
wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it," Jessica said, "is that by banning fornication
in one particular instance, it automatically says that it's okay in
other instances.  I cannot be a party to that.  It's either banishment
for every instance or nothing."

"I agree," Dale said, rapping his fist firmly on the table.

And so the problem persisted, worsening even once the word of the
committee's inaction spread throughout the town.  Guard detail once
again became a favorite assignment for the fornicators.

"There's gonna be a reckoning in this town one of these days," Brett
warned the committee during his morning briefing at one point.  "And
you'd better hope its not too bloody because that blood is gonna be on
your hands."


+++++


Meanwhile, at the house where Chrissie, Brett, and Jason all lived,
tensions remained very high.  Chrissie continued to sleep in the small
twin bed that had been provided for her instead of the large bed in the
master bedroom where Brett slept.  She did not talk to him unless it
was absolutely necessary and even then she kept her responses to as few
syllables as practical.  Whenever he tried to sit down and discuss the
matter with her she shunned him, not even favoring him with a response,
simply leaving the room.  She spent most of the time that she was not
on shift either reading books from the supply in the community center
or sleeping.  Brett began to wonder if she was ever going to come
around.

Jason of course saw all of this occurring but kept mostly out of it,
neither taking sides nor attempting to mediate the dispute in any way.
He knew what the problem was of course.  The story about Mitsy and
Brett on that first night had not escaped his attention.  And though he
was somewhat disappointed that Brett had cheated on his sister he
thought that maybe it was time for her to get over it and get on with
her life.  After all, Brett could have practically any woman that he
wanted.  Chrissie was lucky he had only slipped once.  But he kept his
mouth shut and remained on friendly terms with both of them and they
remained on friendly terms with him.

Another person that he remained on friendly terms with was Stacy Keagan
of the kitchen detail.  After that first morning chat she had made a
ritual out of sitting with him and having her breakfast as he wolfed
down his own.  She always slid him a little extra something in his
plate and always poured just a little more of the juice of the day for
him, telling him that he deserved it for working so hard.  He found her
very easy to talk to despite the six year difference in their ages and
he typically stayed at the table with her long after he was finished
eating, until it was time for her to start working on the full
breakfast service.

As they became friendlier with each other, she began to tell him more
personal things about herself.

"I hear everyone speculating on who the father is," she told him one
morning.  "It's almost funny in a way.  Jessica thinks it's a black
baby since I'm not telling anyone, Mitsy thinks I'm a lesbian and that
it's from artificial insemination."

"Really?" he asked, laughing.  "I haven't heard that one."

"It goes on my list as most original," she said, laughing back.  "I
guess since I have a nose ring and I dye my hair black and I worked in
a Starbucks that makes me a lesbian by default, doesn't it?  I swear,
sometimes these women here are just too much."

"At least they don't muss up your hair when they see you," Jason said
sourly.

"You mean like this," she giggled, reaching over and grabbing a handful
of his brown locks.

"Stop it," he cried, though he made no move to enforce his words.

"Oh Jason," she cooed in a falsetto voice.  "You're just soooo cute.
How's that handsome man you live with doing today?  You think he'd like
to come over and unplug my plumbing for me?"

This sent both of them into near hysterics, her words made all the more
amusing by the fact that someone had asked Jason that very thing the
previous day.

"Oh god," Stacy said, untangling her hand.  "Sometimes I crack myself
up."  She pushed his hair back into somewhat of the position it had
been in before.  "There," she said, admiring her work.  "Good as new,
almost anyway."

He said nothing, simply blushed.  He had really enjoyed the feel of her
hand moving through his hair.

"Do you want to know who the father is?" she asked him.

"Uh..." he stammered.  "Well..."

"It's okay," she told him.  "I never really tried to keep it a secret
from anyone until they all started speculating about it.  You see,
while they were all thinking that its some black football player or
some anonymous sperm donor, I realized that the truth would actually be
somewhat disappointing for them, anticlimactic even.  Far be it from me
to spoil the fun they have spreading rumors around."

"So who was it?" Jason asked.

"He was the manager of the Starbucks I worked at down in Auburn before
I transferred up here.  He was a white, middle-class small business
manager in a hick town.  Nobody in this town even knows him.  It's
totally boring, isn't it?"

"Well, uh... yeah," Jason admitted.  "It is."

She shrugged, giving him her smile.  "He was married," she said.  "I
guess that makes it a little more interesting of a story.  He told me
he was going to leave his wife for me, that he loved me.  The same shit
that a thousand married guys have told their pieces on the side and I
fell for it just like all of the other one's did.  And then my birth
control pills didn't work the way they were supposed to one month and I
got knocked up.  Funny how if you "forget" to take them for a week or
so that kind of thing can happen.  Funny how when you confront your
lover with a pregnancy and try to push the issue of leaving his wife,
he never does.  Christ, didn't I read enough Ann Landers and Dear Abby
when I was growing up?  I guess I didn't."

Jason didn't know what to say.  He had never had a conversation even
remotely like this one before.  He said nothing, only listened.  And in
doing so he gave Stacy exactly what she had been after: a sympathetic
ear.

"He told me he would pay for the abortion," she said.  "That was
awfully big of him, wasn't it?  I told him to go fuck himself and
threatened to call his wife and tell her what had been going on between
us.  Of course, I wouldn't really do anything like that but he didn't
know that.  He made the arrangements for my transfer up here and my
promotion to assistant manager.  I don't know how many strings he had
to pull to do that, but he pulled them."

"You didn't get the abortion though," Jason said.

"No," she said.  "I mean, I think a woman should have a right to do
that if she wants to but... it wasn't for me.  I couldn't bear the
thought of them sticking things up into me and ripping the baby out.  I
told him that I was going to keep it and he hit the roof.  He
threatened to have me fired if I didn't get my ass to the clinic that
day.  He told me if this was all some scheme to get him to pay child
support that I could just fucking forget it."

"Jesus," Jason said.

"That was perhaps the biggest mistake he ever made," she said with a
predatory grin.  "And it was a dumb one too since I'd already told him
that as long as he relinquished any custody claims to the baby that I
wouldn't ask for any child support.  He could've been home free if he
would've just let it drop.  But he didn't.  When he tried to pull his
strings and get me fired, I filed a sexual harassment suit with
corporate and told them the whole story.  He lost everything.  They
fired him a week later and his wife found out the story of how it had
happened and she left him too.  Then he had the balls to come crawling
back to me and asking me for forgiveness, can you believe that shit?
He wanted me to take him back.  I sent his ass packing and told him if
he ever showed his face in front of me again I would get the cops on
him.  I haven't seen him or heard from him since then."

"Do you miss him?" Jason asked.

"Yes," she said.  "I hate to admit it, but I almost called him half a
dozen times before the comet hit.  I mean, I was in love with him, I
really was.  It's hard to let love just die like that, even when you
see the person for who they really are and that person is a piece of
shit.  Sometimes I think we women are just a hopeless species.  I'm
really starting to think that now that I see how everyone in this town
is behaving."

"Brett says that Auburn is probably still there," Jason told her.  "Do
you ever wonder if maybe he's still down there alive?"

She gave him a warm look.  "You're pretty insightful Jason, you know
that?" she asked him.  "I catch myself thinking about him all the time,
wondering if he was in town when it happened, wondering if he ever
thinks about trying to come up here for me.  If he's alive he would've
known that I was at work that day and not down in the valley."

"Would you go with him if he came?"

"I don't know," she said looking at him.  "There's not a lot for me
here.  Sometimes I think that this is my punishment for trying to trap
a man like I did: I'm sentenced to be an illegitimate mother in a town
full of hypocritical rich women."

"So would you go?"

"I probably would," she admitted.  "I know myself well enough to say
that.  I probably would.  Who would miss me here anyway?  They'd have
to find someone else to help cook their damn pancake mix and mix their
damn orange juice, but would anyone miss Stacy?  Would anyone miss ME?"

"I would," he said.

She smiled, leaning forward and giving him a hug.  "You're a sweetie
Jason," she said.  "Thank you for being my friend."

He returned her embrace, feeling the weight of her stomach pushing into
him, feeling the softness of her in his arms.  He liked the feeling a
lot.  "Thank you for being mine," he told her.

Later that morning, as he lie in his bed at the house, he took himself
in hand as he always did at this time of day.  Jason was, after all, a
normal 14-year-old boy in most respects of the word and masturbation
was something that he did at least once every 24-hour period.  Usually
the fantasies that accompanied this jacking were somewhat vague in
nature.  He thought of girls he had known in school, of women that he
lusted after in the town itself.  This time his thoughts spun only to
Stacy.  Though he had never thought of a pregnant woman as being erotic
before, he did now.  As he envisioned seeing her naked, seeing that
bulging stomach in all of its glory, as he remembered how her softness
had felt when he had hugged her at breakfast he exploded in a
spontaneous orgasm of staggering power.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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