Message-ID: <27757asstr$976183807@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: X-Original-Path: not-for-mail From: "Al Steiner" X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 X-Original-Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 00:12:15 EST Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner - Ch 7 (MMF, reluct) 1/2 Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 05:10:07 -0500 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: english, dennyw AFTERMATH By Al Steiner Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com Previous chapters can be found at www.storiesonline.net CHAPTER 7 Just across the road from the main gate of the Garden Hill subdivision was the hilly, wooded area where the community gathered most of its firewood. Many of the trees here had been knocked down by the high winds that had occurred the first few days after the impact. Every day a work crew of five or six people, mostly women but always with an armed man to guard them, spent a few hours hacking away at these trees with chainsaws and axes. Though the women had protested vehemently at first that such a thing was "man's work", they quickly warmed to the idea when it was realized that the average shift of a wood gatherer was only about three hours in length. About an hour after the meeting in the community center broke up, while Brett was marching from guard post to guard post to check on the state of his people, this day's crew was in full operation. A Dodge Ram pickup that had once belonged to Brenda's husband was parked with it's nose facing back towards the gate and chunks of pine were being loaded into the back of it, piece by piece after they were cut. There were five women today pulling the duty, all of them town women, and one man, who sat behind the truck and kept an eye on things. Jessica was also out there, a rare appearance since she made it a point to never venture outside the walls. She was talking to the three women who were carrying the chunks of wood from the pile to the truck, following them from one place to the other but not offering to don a pair of work gloves and lend a hand. "I'm telling you," she told them, "that hussy actually ADMITTED that she was having sex with that poor boy. She confessed it to us right there in the meeting. Can you believe that?" They could believe it. "I TOLD you," one of the women said knowingly to a companion. "That little bitch is shameless. Absolutely shameless." The companion shook her head sadly (although secretly wondering just what it would be like to have sex with a fourteen-year-old). "I knew she was a slut," she said as if in disgust. "But I didn't think ANYONE was that slutty. Shocking." There were some more comments tossed back and forth between the four of them, all of them disapproving at what Stacy had done. The word "bitch", "slut", "hussy", and even that most hated word among those of the female species: "cunt" were used with increasing frequency. Finally Candice, or Candy as she was known, broached the subject that Jessica had really wanted addressed. "So what are we going to do with her?" she asked. "Is she going to be banished?" "I would certainly hope so," one of the others put in. The rest then echoed this sentiment. "She will not be banished, or even punished for that matter," Jessica said sadly, shaking her head as if a great travesty of justice was taking place. "She won't?" they cried. "What do you mean?" "Paul won't vote to expel her," she said. "I tried and I tried to get him to see reason but he just won't do it. I tried to explain to him that this was a CRIME. That it was RAPE. He just kept saying that he didn't see anything wrong with it and that he wasn't going to do anything about it." "Unbelievable," Candy said. The rest of the group agreed with her. "He's been influenced by Brett too much," Jessica told them. "I'm telling you, Paul does whatever Brett tells him to do and votes however Brett wants him to vote. Brett may as well be the one who is on the committee, that's how much influence he has over him. So anyway, Paul kept us from being able to exile that bimbo like we all know she should be, and now she's going to walk away Scott free and be allowed to just keep molesting him all she wants." This declaration caused a fresh outburst of anger. "Do you mean that nothing is going to be done about it?" someone asked. "Nothing at all?" "Nothing," Jessica confirmed. "There's nothing that we can do. We can't very well put her on kitchen duty, can we? Of course I moved that we at least order her to stay away from him." "I would hope SO," Candy said righteously. "And of course Dale and I both voted yes, which means that she has a committee order telling her to stay away from that young man. But she told us herself that she won't do it and there's nothing we can do to stop her. Paul said he won't vote to exile her no matter what and there isn't anything else we can do to her for punishment. Not that anything less than exile would be acceptable anyway." "So you can't do anything about it?" the woman next to Candy asked as she dropped a log into the truck. "We just have to put up with her doing... doing that to him?" "It looks that way," Jessica agreed sadly. "Unless...." "Unless what?" they all wanted to know. "Well this is just an idea," she said mysteriously, as if it wasn't something really worth mentioning. "What?" they all demanded of her. "Well," she said, speaking slowly as if this was just occurring to her that moment. "It seems to me that the will of the community should take precedence over a committee meeting, shouldn't it? I mean, that's how Brett and his friends got to stay here in the first place. The committee voted that we wouldn't let him stay, but we put it to a community vote and the ruling was changed. Why shouldn't that same thing apply to banishing that slut? If the community agrees that she should go, then she should go, right?" This darkened the expressions of three of the women present. These were three that had been either caught at or suspected of fornicating with an attached man; an offense that Jessica wished people expelled for. But before the thought that what she was suggesting could one day be turned against them was even fully formed, Jessica covered that particular loophole. "Now you'd have to understand," she said, "that it should take more than a simple majority vote to overturn a committee decision. Particularly for something as drastic as exiling someone. I would think that nothing less than a two-thirds majority would do for something like that." "Two thirds?" "Two-thirds," she said. "Like when they tried to impeach Clinton a few years ago, remember? If two out of every three people of voting age in this town say that that pregnant hussy should be exiled for what she's doing, then that should be what happens." There was a momentary pause as everyone went over this thought in their head, their minds doing some quick addition. Though there were probably enough people against what Stacy had done to get her thrown out of town using that rule, the same ratio would not hold up when it came to simple fornication. The people most against the act of sleeping with another woman's partner were the women who had the partners, or roughly, twenty-one of them. Twenty-one was not even a simple majority, let alone two-thirds. There did not seem to be any danger involved in supporting this plan. "That sounds like a pretty good idea Jess," Candy said carefully, still trying to find the hidden loopholes that Jessica was so famous for. "Yes," one of the others put in. "I think the town would go for something like that." "It gives us a little more power," said another. Jessica smiled, knowing that she had them. "I think it's a good idea too," she said. "I'm going to propose this amendment at the next committee meeting tomorrow morning. Now I don't know how Dale or Paul are going to vote, but I'm certainly going to say aye to a rule allowing the community to overturn a decision." "And what if it passes?" Candy asked, already knowing, as did everyone else present, that it was as good as passed as long as it was only a majority committee vote and not a unanimous one. "Are you going to use it to throw her out." "You bet your butt," she said. "We'll have a community meeting at dinner tomorrow night and have a vote on it. If two-thirds of the people want her out, then she'll be walking across the bridge the next morning." They all grinned as they thought of this, as they envisioned Stacy waddling across the canyon out into the forest beyond the bridge. They all thought that would be a sweet sight to see, that hussy being ejected from their town, although none of them could have told you just WHY that would have been a sweet sight. Jessica left them to their work a few minutes later, knowing that those five women would vote the way she wanted them to. With a smile she reentered the subdivision and found her way back to the community center. Outside was a work-crew of four, also staffed exclusively with town women, that was tending the fires that heated bath and cooking water. "Hi Jess," they greeted with mixed levels of enthusiasm. Though she was valued as a gossip source and a leader, they did not like her personally. "Hi girls," she said, putting back on her solemn expression. She gathered them around her and then began to speak, her topics neutral at first. Within two minutes however, the subject of Jason and Stacy was brought up, giving her an opening. "It's interesting that you should mention that hussy," she said, putting her angry expression on. "We had a meeting about that just this morning." "You did?" she was asked. "Of course," she said. "After I found out that that young man had been in the hussy's house half the night, I certainly wasn't going to let the issue drop." "So what happened?" they inquired. "Well," she said, settling down into storytelling mode, "We brought the two of them in for questioning about just what happened in there. And guess what they said?" "What?" And so the story was told again, to the shock of the latest bunch. Just like with the wood-gathering crew before, they fumed and cursed about the outrage of Stacy's actions and then asked what was being done about it. When told that nothing was being done about it, they demanded to know why. When told why, they ranted for a few more minutes about the injustice of it all and then Jessica slyly slipped in the suggestion about the two-thirds majority rule. As before, after a few uneasy worries were soothed, the idea was embraced with enthusiasm. From the fire-tending crew, she moved on to the child care crew. From there, she moved on somewhere else. She figured that she would be able to talk to every woman in town by 2:30, which would give her more than enough time to catch her afternoon nap. +++++ Guard position 4 was located in the top story of one of the abandoned houses in the southeast corner of the subdivision. Except for the bridge lookout, it was the most isolated of all the posts, far away from any of the occupied houses. It watched over the rough hills between the eastern wall and the sheer impassible cliffs beyond them. It was a post that would have been obsolete had Brett been allowed to station guards on Hill 5107, but for now, it was manned and on this day Michelle and Maria Sanchez had the duty. At 3:30 Brett made his visit to the post after making the fifteen-minute walk to it from the community center. He found Maria and Michelle seated before the window in card table chairs, a pair of binoculars, their walkie-talkie, and a game of gin rummy laid out on the endtable between them. Leaning against the table was the high powered rifle that every guard position had and one of the AK-47s. "Good afternoon," Brett greeted them as he entered the room and sat down on the bed. "Hi Brett," Michelle greeted, offering him a friendly smile. Maria too gave him a semi-cordial greeting. Unlike many of the town women, Maria, who was Hector's official woman, was used to hard work and didn't complain much about being assigned to the detail. As such she did not seem to have as many hard feelings for Brett as others did. He made small talk with them for a few moments, asking them how their shift was going. They reported that they had not seen a single person all day, making it nearly two straight weeks since a straggler was last spotted from this particular position. Soon Maria, who had heard the rumors about Brett and Michelle, sensed that her presence was not exactly wanted at the moment. She announced that she was going to go out on the front porch for a cigarette and got up, disappearing down the stairway. "So how are you feeling today?" Michelle asked once she was gone. "Like shit," he said honestly. "My first post-comet hangover. A historical moment indeed." "Me too," she said. "I forgot how miserable I felt after drinking until this morning. Now I remember. But what I meant was how do you feel about what happened last night? And what we talked about last night?" "Oh," he said with a sigh. "THAT how do I feel." "That's the one." "I don't really know," he told her after a moment. "My mind is having a hard time convincing me that you were serious about what you suggested." "I was serious," she said. "I suppose I could now tell you that it was the alcohol talking, but it wasn't. The alcohol just gave me the courage to bring it up. The idea itself was conceived and perfected while I was cold sober. And I still think that it's the only way." "It just seems so... strange. I could understand if you were trying to steal me away from Chrissie, but to SHARE." He shook his head a little. "That's the bizarre part." "But you mentioned it to Chrissie?" she asked. "How did you know that?" he asked. "She gave me a look at breakfast this morning that spoke volumes about how she felt about me. It was more than just the look that she would have given had she merely heard the rumors about you and I. I was pretty sure that you told her my suggestion. Did you do it while you were still drunk?" "Yes," he said. "She was waiting up for me when I got home. The subject was kind of forced upon me. As you guessed, she didn't react very favorably towards the suggestion." "I told you that she wouldn't at first," she reminded him. "It is quite a shocking suggestion to have to deal with. I think she'll come around though. There's not really anything else for her to do." "She slapped me across the face," he said. "And it hurt. I don't think a woman who reacts with physical violence to a suggestion is going to work her way around to accepting it." Michelle shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not," she said. "Time will tell. But you never answered my question. How do YOU feel about it? Besides thinking it's bizarre and strange that is?" "I'm a man," he said. "If two beautiful women want to share me with each other, I'm certainly not going to say no. Does that answer your question?" "It does," she said with a smile. "And don't worry too much about Chrissie. I'll talk to her at dinner tonight after shift." "I don't think that's a real good idea," he said, thinking instantly of the gun that Chrissie carried on her hip. He had a frightfully clear vision of Michelle lying dead on the gym floor beneath the table, a large bullet hole in her forehead, and Chrissie being marched across the bridge the next day, exiled for murder. Michelle could tell what he was thinking. "Don't worry," she said. "She won't hurt me and I won't hurt her. If she reacts too strongly to my talking to her, I'll just leave and try again tomorrow. I have patience." He gave a very doubtful look but offered no further protests. "Have you heard about Jason and Stacy?" he asked her. She nodded. "Maria filled me in on the latest when she came on shift at twelve. Quite a powder keg brewing, isn't it?" "To say the least," he said. "Did she tell you what Jessica is up to now?" "About the two-thirds community vote?" "Yep." "Yes, she told me about it. Jessica caught her before she came out here and gave her the spiel. It sounds like she is being very persuasive. Maria is not even a town woman and she hates Jessica with a passion but she came in here spouting about that hussy and that bitch and using phrases that I know she could have only been fed by Jess. If she can rile up Maria like that, I can only imagine how riled up the town women are getting." "They're pretty riled all right," he said. "You should've heard some of the things they were saying to us while we were moving his things over there this afternoon." "He still moved in with her huh?" "He did," he confirmed. "He wasn't going to be talked out of it. He told me that if they throw Stacy out of town then he'll be going across the bridge with her." "You have to admire his devotion," she said. "It's too bad that this hen party we call a citizenry doesn't see that. He's much more dedicated to his woman than any other man in town, isn't he? Do you think Dale would walk across the bridge with Jessica if we threw her out?" "I'd sure like to make the experiment," he said, making both of them laugh. "Will what she's trying to do really work?" she asked him. "Yes," he said. "I don't see any way to stop it. At tomorrow's committee meeting Jessica will propose that a two-thirds vote of the entire community can override any committee decision. She'll vote for it and so will Dale and that means it will pass. At the community meeting that night, she'll move that we vote on overturning the committee's decision not to exile Stacy for statutory rape. I've sampled the mood of those women out there. She won't have any problem getting a two-thirds majority, even if all of the men vote no." "Great," Michelle said, slumping a little in her chair. "I'll try talking to some of them after dinner tonight and at dinner tomorrow. Maybe I can swing some of them over to my bandwagon. It can't hurt." "Why don't I just give you the day off tomorrow and you can spend all day doing it?" he suggested. She shook her head. "Not a good idea," she said. "It would be counter-productive if you had to assign someone to my position so I could go politic for you. It would look rather shady, especially in light of the rumors that are already floating around about the two of us." He sighed. "I guess you're right," he said. "Now I know why Paul told me the first night that living in a town full of women was a pain in the ass." +++++ At 5:30, just as the unseen sun was nearing the horizon, John Kramer and Bill Blades had one last conference. They, as well as all of their men, were sequestered behind the last group of hills before the open ground along the northern wall, almost exactly halfway between guard positions two and three. The recon they had done had convinced them that these were the only two posts on this side of the subdivision. The time had come to stop watching and to start attacking. "We ready to get into position?" John whispered to Bill. "I think so," he replied. "Is everyone's watch synchronized exactly?" "I've checked my guys three times," he said. "They're all tuned exactly to my watch and my watch is tuned exactly to yours." "Good enough," John told him. "Remember, we move into position at two in the morning and hide ourselves. You can fudge a little on that time, but not on the attack time. At eight o'clock sharp we strike. No more, no less. It's vital that we take out those guards before they have a chance to call in. Don't shoot unless you absolutely have to. Make those Raid-bombs do the job. I don't think they'd be able to hear gunfire all the way over at the community center with this rain, but you never know." "We'll do it," Bill assured him confidently. "Two o'clock we penetrate, eight o'clock and the Raid bombs go in. Once the guards are down, we meet in the middle and move on the community center." "If we do this right," John told him, "We'll be sinking into some nice pussy in about fifteen hours. Tell your men that. It'll pep 'em up." "Already did it." "Okay. It's time. Get your people into position and I'll see you tomorrow morning." The two men each joined their group. Bill's group, which was tasked with taking down guard position 3 (although they did not know that was the name of it) consisted of Bill and seven of the hunters, all of them armed with their rifles and plenty of ammunition, two of them armed with the special "Raid-bombs" that they had devised and found so effective in quickly taking out people in enclosed places. John's group was tasked with taking down guard position 2 at exactly the same instant. His group also consisted of seven hunters in addition to the leader, two of whom also had the Raid-bombs. While they still had some daylight left, the two groups moved in opposite directions, staying behind the concealment of the hills but paralleling the wall. Each leader would periodically check position by peering carefully around a tree or over the top of a rise to see how close to their targets they were. When they found themselves to be almost exactly across from the guard positions, they stopped and hid themselves carefully in the foliage. They had just enough time before it got completely dark to make one last check of their supplies and ammo. Everything was as it should be. The sun deserted them and so did the light. They settled in and waited, knowing it was going to be a long night but anxious for the rewards that awaited them on the other side of it. +++++ Chrissie was mostly picking at her dinner instead of eating it. She pushed it around with her fork and occasionally took a small nibble, but her stomach, which was tied up in knots due to all the worries on her mind, did not embrace the offerings she gave it. As if the problems with Brett and Michelle were not enough, now she had her brother to worry about as well. He had relieved her at her post less than an hour ago and had told her his plan to walk across the bridge with Stacy if it came to that. She had argued and pleaded with him for nearly ten minutes, trying to get him to change his mind. Although she liked and respected Stacy much more than she did any other female in town, she did not want to lose her only brother when she was kicked out. And she had no doubt in her mind that kicked out was exactly what was going to happen. Jessica had visited the guard post that day while she had been on duty and in the space of less than five minutes had been able to whip Brenda, her partner, into a seething fury at Stacy's "crime". "Do you realize that if you vote to kick her out, you'll be sentencing her to death?" Chrissie had asked Brenda after Jessica's departure. "No," Brenda has answered indignantly (the way she always talked whenever she addressed Chrissie) "We'll be exiling her, not executing her." "Don't kid yourself," Chrissie had responded. "If you send a pregnant women across that bridge, she's as good as dead. You just won't have to have to watch it." The conversation had deteriorated from there, eventually ending with Brenda storming out of the room and going downstairs for the rest of her shift. Chrissie was glad to be rid of her. Now, as she forced herself to swallow a small portion of canned peas, she wondered if she should just go with Jason and Stacy when they left. Why not? If they could talk Paul into giving them a couple of guns and few days worth of food, maybe they could live for a while. Maybe they could make their way to Auburn eventually and see what life held for them down there. A figure approaching her in the nearly empty gym distracted her from these thoughts. She looked up and at first couldn't credit what she was seeing. Was it really Michelle, the woman who had aspirations of sharing Brett, coming over to her? She wouldn't be that crass, would she? It seemed that she would. As she got to within ten feet it became obvious that she was heading for Chrissie. Chrissie shot her the glare that had cowered her so well that morning, warning her to stay away. This time however, the glare did not work its magic. Michelle stopped directly across from her, holding her own plate of food, and looked down. "Can I sit with you?" she asked. Chrissie looked up at her in disbelief. "I don't think so," she said, venom dripping from her words. "You are the last person that I want to eat with." Michelle didn't move. "Even worse than Jessica?" she asked. Chrissie didn't smile. "Go away," she said. "We need to talk Chrissie," she said. "I have nothing to talk to you about." "But you do," she said. "You have a lot to talk to me about and I have a lot to talk to you about. So why don't you behave like the adult I know you are and give it a shot, huh? That's what adults do when they have a conflict with each other." It was her tone that did the trick. It was not the least bit condescending, not even when she said "adult". It was so rare that someone talked to her that way that she found herself responding to the words. "All right," she said, waving to the seat across from her impatiently. "Sit down. Talk." "Thank you," Michelle said, setting her plate down. She eased herself into the seat and looked across the table, making no move to pick up her silverware. "I talked to Brett today," she said. Chrissie shrugged. "So you talked to him. So what?" "He told me that he brought up the uh... suggestion that I had about you, him, and I." "You mean sharing him?" she said, hissing a little but keeping her voice down. "Yes, he brought it up. Did he tell you what I did?" "He said you slapped him," she said tonelessly. "Damn right. And I oughtta do the same thing to you too." Now it was Michelle who shrugged. "And what would that accomplish? It would hurt my face, it would probably hurt your hand, and nothing will have changed. We would still be sitting here with the same problems that we had before." Chrissie did not know how to respond to that. She simply continued to stare. "Tell me something," Michelle said. "Why is it that you are so opposed to what I have suggested?" "Why? Are you serious? Because it's sick!" "Why is it sick?" Michelle wanted to know next. "What?" "I believe you heard me," she said. "Why do you think that two women sharing a man is sick? I will admit that it is somewhat unconventional to our upbringing, and that it is something that I never considered before the comet fell. I will even admit that it is far from ideal from our perspective. If it were up to me I would much prefer having one man to myself. But that is not the reality that we live in anymore. You think that it is sick because it goes against the values that you were raised with, right?" "Of course it goes against them," she said. "Doesn't it go against yours? Or did your father have two wives?" "My parents divorced when I was young," Michelle said. "But that is neither here nor there. I too was raised to believe that monogamous relationships were the way things were supposed to be. Everybody was raised to think that, whether they did it in practice or not. But then everybody was also raised in a world where there was an equal amount of men and women, weren't they?" "That doesn't matter." "It DOES matter Chrissie. That's what I'm trying to tell you. We have five women for every man in this town. Five to one. Would you agree that that ratio is creating problems in this town?" It seemed like a trick question and she hesitated for a moment. Finally she reluctantly said, "Yes. It is creating a big problem." "We don't live in normal times anymore," Michelle told her. "The civilization that we grew up with is dead and most of the values that we were raised with cannot apply anymore. Do you agree that you should be allowed to sleep with Brett in the first place." "What?" "Should this town allow you and Brett to sleep together? Should it allow your brother and Stacy to sleep together?" "Well... yes," she answered. "What does that have to do with anything?" "Because it's a value that has been changed to suit the situation. Would you have slept with Brett if you had met him before the comet?" "No," she said slowly, seeing where this was heading. "I would've told my dad and had him call the police if he would've tried." "And how about Stacy and Jason? If you would've found out that a twenty year old pregnant woman had seduced your fourteen year old brother before the comet, what would you have done?" "Told my dad and had him call the police," she said. "Exactly. Yet now, after the comet, you accept Brett as a lover without question, don't you? You accept Stacy as your brother's lover, don't you? I saw you hugging her this morning. So that must mean that you have changed your value system a little bit to accept these new realities." Chrissie shook her head. "You're talking about apples and oranges," she said. "My brother and I are adults now because of the comet and what happened. All that has changed is that we're trying to be treated like adults and given the rights that we deserve. That is not the same thing as changing my values to accept another woman into my relationship. I won't have any part of that." "But you're already a part of it, whether you like it or not," Michelle said. "You are one of the women in this town where men are endangered species. We are the glut here Chrissie and the men are the demand. It's going to come down to either sharing what's available or going without." "I'll go without then," she said defiantly. "For how long? Forever? That's real easy to say right now. But what about later, when you need him." "I don't need him." "And what about Brett himself?" she asked. "What about when the town finds out about the two of you and Jessica riles them all up to exile him for having sex with a minor. I don't even have to convince you that she can do that, she's already doing it with Stacy." "How will they find out about the two of us if we're not together anymore?" Chrissie asked. "I think you maybe know the answer to that," she said softly, leaning forward a little. Chrissie became very uncomfortable all of a sudden. "What... what do you mean?" "How late is your period Chrissie?" she asked her. Chrissie paled as she heard this. How had Michelle known? How could she possible have known? She had not even told Brett about that! She had hardly even told herself about it, not wanting to face what it meant. "How late?" she repeated. "How did you know?" she whispered, trembling a little. "Elementary," she said. "I mentioned this possibility to Brett last night and it got me to thinking. This morning, before I went out to my position, I took a look at the supply room log. In the entire time you've been here, you have not signed out a single box of tampons or pads. You should have had at least one period in the time you've been here; maybe even two if the timing was right. And you don't seem the type that would've gone in and taken them without signing for them. So how long?" She continued to look at the woman across from her, feeling a reluctant respect for her deduction skills. "Almost three weeks," she finally admitted. Michelle nodded. "A little too long to blame on stress, wouldn't you say?" Chrissie felt herself starting to cry as the very excuse that she had been giving herself all of this time was thrown back at her. In her mind it had seemed a reasonable explanation. Spoken aloud by another person, it sounded ridiculous. "You're pregnant Chrissie," Michelle said gently. "You're carrying Brett's baby in you. Even if you don't want to keep it, which I doubt, there is no way available here to put a stop to what's going on inside of you. We don't have any doctors or medical equipment here. The best we can offer is Paul, who was an EMT on a fire engine and who is equipped with the basic first aid kits that came with it. He's real good at putting ice on sprains and bandaging up cuts, but I don't think he knows how to abort a pregnancy." "Oh god," Chrissie said, fighting not to face the facts and losing miserably. More tears began to fall, dripping from her face into her food. "It's okay," Michelle said gently, reaching across the table and taking one of her hands. Chrissie did not protest. "It isn't anybody's fault, it's just the way that things work. You didn't think that you'd live long enough to have to worry about this. But, thanks to Brett bringing you here, you have lived that long. Why not be grateful that you're still around to cry about it?" "How can I bring a baby into this world?" Chrissie asked. "What kind of life is it going to have?" "The kind of life that we provide for it," Michelle answered. "And in a way, that's what I'm trying to improve by having this talk with you right now." "What?" she asked, sniffing a little. "Let's take things one step at a time, shall we?" Michelle told her. "In the first place, there's the pregnancy itself. What's going to happen when you start to show, when it becomes obvious that you're expecting? Who is the first person that they're going to look at?" "Brett," she said, seeing the point immediately. "And what do you think they're going to do to him?" "You know what they'll do with him," she said. "They'll exile him." "Right," Michelle said. "They'll exile him for statutory rape, just like they're planning to do with Stacy. So what we have to agree upon here is the fact that there is no way that your relationship with Brett can be hidden from the town forever. They are going to find out about it. All we can hope to do is control the manner in which they find out about it." "And how does sharing him with you help with that?" she asked, some of her previous bitterness coming back. "Because I am a respected member of this town and I am somewhat of a trendsetter. Now I don't know for sure if my involvement in the relationship will be able to counter Jessica's opposition to you and Brett, but I know for damn sure that without it, all hope is lost." "Why do have to share him?" she wanted to know. "Why can't you just give us your support from the sidelines? Or are you trying to blackmail us?" "I want to share him," Michelle said. "I need a man to hold and to have sex with just as much as everyone else in this town and, to me, Brett is the most desirable that we have. Those are my main reasons for suggesting this arrangement. If it doesn't work out that way for whatever reason, then I will still give my support to you and be a voice against Jessica. I will do that Chrissie, no matter what. However, I think my words will carry much more power with the other women if I am actually a part of a relationship with you. My arguments will seem more legitimate to them and there will also be the side-issue of the polygamy to take a little of the heat off of the under eighteen issue." Chrissie shook her head, not understanding. "Look at it this way," Michelle explained. "Most of the women in town do not have an official man and they desperately want one. They will embrace the polygamy issue the same way that I do; by concluding that it is better than what they have, which is nothing. They WILL side with me on sharing men, I have no doubt about that. So if they side with me on that against Jessica and the other women who have official partners, they will be hard pressed to side with Jessica against you being with Brett in the first place. They will not be able to jump on both bandwagons at the same time. By tackling both of these issues in one single battle, we will be able to prevail with both of them." "This is just too much," Chrissie said, realizing almost belatedly that she had been giving serious consideration to what Michelle was saying. "Too much has happened today. I can't think." "But you have to," Michelle said. "Time is running out. You don't need to make any decisions right now, but you will have to make one soon. And as you're mulling all of this over, try to think about that baby in you. You mentioned what kind of world you would be bringing it into. It won't be the world that you were brought into, that is a given. But it would be nice if it was a world with some sort of order to it. Sharing men is not perfect, but if we start the ball rolling, it will catch on and it will bring order to this chaos that we have here. And maybe someday that baby's children or grandchildren will be able to go back to the values that we used to have." "That would be nice," Chrissie said. "It would be, but... I don't think that I could share a man with someone. I just can't see myself doing that. How could we live with the jealousy?" "It will take some time," Michelle said. "I suspect that we would probably fight with each other quite a lot at first and we would have to change and rearrange how we would go about certain... things. It won't be a cakewalk. The only way it would work would be if we were friends with each other. And Chrissie, despite what has happened, I do consider you to be my friend. I like you a lot and I care about you. And most of all, I would be honored to share a man with you." Chrissie left a few minutes later, without a decision made one way or the other but with a lot on her mind. She walked slowly home and entered the house, seeing that Brett was lying on the couch, reading a paperback novel from the supply room. He looked up at her anxiously, not saying anything. "Hi," she said softly. "Hi," he replied back. Instead of retreating to her bedroom as she usually did, she stayed at the end of the couch. They continued to look at each other and then they began to talk. They mentioned nothing about Michelle or polygamy. She said nothing about the near-certainty that she was pregnant. Instead they talked about Jason and Stacy and the possibility of her being voted from town the next night. He vowed that he would do everything in his power to prevent that, both before and after the vote. He told her that Paul was going to try to enlist the aid of the other men in town in support of Jason; a prospect which might be promising if they pressured their official women to vote nay and try to convince others to do so. He did not mention that Michelle would try to talk to some of the other women, not wanting to bring up her name. She told him that she was keeping her hopes up, that things had a way of working out. And then she said goodnight and went to her room. It was not exactly a mending of the relationship, but it was the most that they had said to each other with civil tongues since the day he had told her about Mitsy. +++++ At precisely 2:00 AM, Bill gave the order to his men. It was time to move in. They stood shoulder to shoulder, moving slowly so that their equipment would not clank or make any other sort of noise. They linked arms so that no one would stray off in the wrong direction in the darkness. They then began to move forward, towards the wall. Each step was made carefully and slowly, the ground beneath their feet being tested before the weight was shifted onto it. It took them nearly twenty minutes to cross the fifty yards of open ground but finally Bill, who was on the end of the line of men, felt wet concrete against his outstretched left hand. We whispered the word "wall" to the man next to him. That man whispered it to the man next to him. Within three seconds the message had been passed to everyone and they came to a complete stop. They unlinked arms and everyone reached out to touch the wall. "I'll go up first," Bill said to the man next to him. "Once I'm over, you come up. We do it one by one that way." "Right," the man replied. He then passed the message on to the man on his right. "Give me a boost," Bill said. It took a few moments of fumbling in the darkness but finally he was able to insert his muddy boot into the clasped hands of the man next to him. His rifle and pack over his shoulder, his hands touching the wall, he pushed upward with his foot, elevating his head above the top of the wall. He could see nothing on the other side except a distant faint glow from an occupied house. The guard position, he knew, was in front of him and to the left. There was no light coming from it at the moment and it was therefore invisible. He pulled himself completely atop the wall and then, moving with extreme caution, slid his feet over to the other side while continuing to hold to the top with his hands. There was a small clank as his rifle shifted but not loud enough to be heard more than ten feet away. He eased downward until he was dangling from the top by his hands only and then, with a deep breath, he let go. He had worried incessantly that there might be a hole or a bush or a sprinkler head beneath him that would cause him to land badly, injuring himself and creating noise, but this worry turned out to be groundless. He landed in soft, spongy mud where grass was currently dying from the lack of sunlight and excessive watering. He sank about six inches into it but was able to easily pull himself free. He stepped a few paces away and waited for the next man to come over. Now that someone was safely on the other side, it became much easier to get the rest over. As each man swung his way over the wall, the man before him would grab him around the waist to help him down. The second to last man remained up for a moment to give the last man a hand to the top. Then they were both helped down. Less than ten minutes after Bill's hand first encountered concrete, all eight of his group was inside the subdivision less than a hundred feet from the guard position. There was no indication of any kind that they had been seen. They moved on to the next phase of their insertion. As Brett had done when he had penetrated the town by using the bridge, Bill used his extensive recon knowledge to get himself and his group to safety. Though he could not see a thing, he knew that he was directly across the street from the single story house that was next door to the guard position. He also knew that that house, like many of the others in Garden Hill, had lost a good portion of its perimeter fence to a combination of the windstorms and the earthquake. It was a collapsed mess of wooden planks and posts lying along the western side of the house. The group once again linked arms and spread out into a line. Slowly, deliberately, they walked step by step across the street, up over the gutter, and onto the house's driveway. When Bill's fingers encountered the metal of the garage door, they stopped. One by one, moving by feel, they then moved around the corner of the house to the side yard, placing the bulk of the house between themselves and the guard position. "Okay," Bill whispered once they were all safely there. "I'm gonna turn on the light now." With that he activated a small penlight that ran on AAA batteries. The illumination it provided was scant indeed, but it was enough to allow them to move into the backyard without stepping on any of the fence debris. They made their way onto the patio, which was covered with a roof and took shelter there between the wall of the house and a dead hot tub. "Good job everyone," Bill said once they were in position. "Now we wait until morning." Three quarters of a mile to the west, at the house next door to position 2, John and his team had found even better luck. They had found that the house had actually been unlocked and they settled down to wait in the darkened living room behind closed blinds. At position 3, Jason and Tim Harding, a former PG&E electrical worker, were on duty. Tim, who had come on at midnight, was in the walk-in closet with the door closed, using his flashlight to read a Penthouse magazine that he had found in the former grocery store. Jason, who had long since given up trying to keep his partners alert to their duty, was looking out the window into the darkness. He had seen nothing although he had been looking almost directly at the spot where the men had penetrated. Nor had he heard anything. At position 2 Mitsy and Laura Lewis were pulling the duty. Neither one of them had been looking out the window when the penetration occurred. Instead, the two women were gossiping about Stacy and Jason and wondering just what Brett was going to do when that bitch got voted out of the town. Mitsy was of the opinion that he wouldn't have the balls to say or do anything. Laura, on the other hand, thought he might try something dramatic, although just what that might be, she couldn't say. When one of John Kramer's men lost his grip on the wall as he came over and fell to the ground, a loud clank was clearly heard as his rifle barrel hit the concrete at the base. "What was that?" Laura said, taking a careless glance out into the darkness. "I don't know," Mitsy said, shifting herself in her chair. "Probably something falling over. There's all kinds of weird noises out there." "Oh, okay," Laura replied and there was no more discussion on the matter. A second later they went back to gossiping in the darkness. Twice between the time the invaders hid themselves and dawn, the night perimeter patrol passed by the houses they were in or behind. Though they had heavy-duty flashlights they did not shine them on the houses, let alone notice anything amiss. When the first touches of daylight came to the sky at 5:45 the next morning, Bill's group left the shelter of the patio and eased over alongside the eastern fence of the backyard, where a lengthy section was still standing. They knew that the guard posts changed crews in fifteen minutes and they wanted to make extra sure that a random sighting by the oncoming or offgoing crew as they entered or exited did not give them away. It was a small chance at best that anyone would have noticed them on the patio but it was best not to take chances. If living in the wilderness had taught them anything, it had taught them that. +++++ At guard position 2, Michelle and Brenda, the assigned crew for that first portion of the day, arrived promptly at 6:00 AM, relieving Mitsy and Laura. As was normal when one female crew relieved another, the offgoing lingered for a few minutes to share the latest gossip. Michelle took up her position near the window and listened for a few minutes as the three of them began talking about the latest developments in the Stacy and Jason saga. All three were of course of the opinion that she would be voted out of town by the end of the night, and good riddance. "What do you think about this Michelle?" she was asked at one point, as she had known that she would be. And so, attempting to utilize every ounce of influence that she had, she began explaining to them that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Stacy and Jason living together as lovers. "What?" they asked, taken aback. She did her best but, as she had discovered the previous night after her conversation with Chrissie, her influence in this matter was not quite as strong as she had thought it would be. They listened to her respectfully and even agreed with many of her points but they were completely unwilling to concede that a fourteen year old, even under the extreme circumstances found in the world these days, was a suitable sexual partner for a pregnant 20 year old woman. All declared that they would be shouting out ayes when Jessica put the matter of ejecting Stacy to vote. "It would set a horrible precedent if we let her stay," Mitsy said, using the exact phrase that Jessica had used when they'd talked the day before. "Yes," Laura added. "Imagine what would happen if we did not respond forcefully to this. Think of what would result in the future." This too was a verbatim quote from Jessica's speech. Brenda then put in her own two-cents worth by borrowing yet another Jessica-ism that had to do with protecting the morals of the young. By the time that Mitsy and Laura finally left at 6:40 (Mitsy heading off in a different direction than her partner), Michelle was seriously worried about what was going to happen at dinner tonight. She of course could not know that less than a hundred feet away were eight men determined to see to it that she did not have dinner that night, or any other night ever again. +++++ At guard position 3, crew-change actually took place at 6:10 that morning since Jeff and Lenny Long, a former grocery store courtesy clerk, were late arriving. This was not an uncommon occurrence at the Garden Hill guard posts and it did not even draw a snide remark from Jason or Tim. Tim headed out the door the moment that the relief crew entered the house, not even pausing long enough to say hello to either of them. Jason tried to give a pass-on report as he had been taught by Brett, but neither one of the two men wanted to hear it. They simply waved him away, although they did offer him their best wishes in the upcoming Stacy vote. "I think its totally bogus," Jeff opined. "I mean, how dare they try to vote someone out for giving up the puss. What kinda shit is that?" "Yeah," Lenny agreed, sitting on the bed and lighting a cigarette, "even if you are just a kid, if you're able to score it, that's one for you. I'm voting nay on that shit tonight, that's for sure." Jason, whose stomach was tied in even worse knots than his sister's, thanked them kindly and then made his leave, heading slowly towards the gym to have breakfast. Once he was gone Lenny and Jeff settled themselves in by rearranging their chairs further away from the open window to avoid the damp breeze the was blowing in. They would have shut the window completely had they not tried such a thing in the past and incurred the furious wrath of Brett on one of his unannounced visits. Neither one of them gave so much as a passing glance out the window. Nor did they check their weapons to make sure they were locked and loaded. The only thing that they did by the book was call Brett on the walkie-talkie to report that they were in position. "Another fucking six hours in this hellhole," Lenny complained, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the endtable, knocking the walkie-talkie to the floor. He didn't bother picking it back up. "It won't be that bad today," Jeff said, pulling a joint out. "I've arranged for a little entertainment for us." "What, the joint? All that does is makes the time pass slower." "Not THAT kind of entertainment," he said, stuffing it behind his ear for later. "I'm talking about REAL entertainment. Mitsy's gonna come over. She just got off shift at position 2 and she's gonna skip breakfast today so she can visit us." "Mitsy," he said, shaking his head. "That doesn't do ME any good." "Dude," Jeff said slyly, "have faith in me. I'll set you up. You'll see." "Set me up?" "I'll set you up. This'll be a shift to remember." +++++ It was 7:05 when Bill, who was looking through a knothole in the fence towards the guard position's front yard, saw someone coming. It was hard to tell much detail because of the rain slicker but he was pretty sure it was a woman. He signaled to his men to settle down and be alert. They all gripped their rifles a little tighter and made themselves as small as possible. The woman didn't even glance in their direction. She walked right on by and cut across the soggy lawn of the guard house, disappearing from their view. When she didn't come back after a moment, they were forced to conclude that she had gone inside. "What the hell?" one of the men asked Bill nervously. "I don't know," he said. "It wasn't the leader that always checks on them, it was a bitch." "What's she doing in there? Is this going to fuck up the plan?" "Not as long as she's in the room with them at eight o'clock," he replied. "We go ahead as scheduled. I don't see any reason to abort." "All right," the man said doubtfully. "Should I start arming up the Raid-bombs now?" "Yeah," he said. "Get it done." While Bill continued to watch through the knothole, two of his men removed the partially assembled bombs from their backpacks. Each bomb was a rather simple device, though very deadly within a confined space like a bedroom. They consisted of standard-sized cans of Raid industrial insect killer, the contents of which was nothing more than pressurized organo-phosphate poison, basically a crude form of military nerve gas. Attached to the side of the can with super glue, primer side up, was a single 12-gauge shotgun shell containing .00 buckshot. To arm the bomb, an ingeniously designed firing mechanism needed to be attached. It was a three-inch length of 3/4 inch PVC pipe with a half-penny nail connected to the spring from a rat-trap. When the spring was pulled back, it would seat the head of the nail a half an inch above the shotgun shell's primer. When it was released - and it took nothing more than the impact of the bomb landing on the ground to cause this - it would drive the nail into the primer, firing the shell directly into the can of raid, causing it to explode spectacularly. The men carefully fitted these mechanisms over the shotgun shells, not activating the springs just yet. They would do that only as they were moving in on the target. +++++ It was 7:35 and they had just finished smoking Jeff's joint. Mitsy, her eyes reddened both from fatigue and the pot, sat on the edge of the bed between the two men. Jeff was resting his hand high up on her blue-jean clad thigh. "Why don't we go check out the other bedroom Jeffy?" she asked coyly, giving his hand a sensuous squeeze. "I got something that I really need to talk to you about." She giggled at her own euphemism. "We can talk in here baby," Jeff said, letting his hand slide a little higher. "Lenny don't mind, do you Lenny?" She giggled again. "This is kinda personal," she said. "I really think we should be alone." He leaned in and began kissing her neck, right at the junction of the shoulder blade. His hand slid firmly into the junction of her thighs, moving so fast she didn't have time to close them. "It's okay baby," he said. "I think Lenny would like to talk too." "Jeff," she said, trying to pull away from him but he was holding her with his free hand. "I want to... you know?" "So do I baby, so do I," he said. "I want to do it ALONE," she told him. "Come on." Jeff nibbled at her ear, his tongue swirling over the diamond earring in the lobe. "Don't be such a prude baby, we both want a little action this morning." "What?" she said, wondering if we was joking or not. One look at his face told her that he wasn't. "No Jeff," she said firmly. "I don't do things like that. That's sick." "What's sick about it?" he asked, standing up and facing her. "I'm horny, you're horny, Lenny's horny, and we're all three here together. Why not take care of everything at once. Right Lenny?" "Well... uh... yeah, I guess so," he stammered, unsure what to say, though very erect inside of his jeans just at the thought of a little double-team action with Mitsy. "You see," Jeff said, reaching down and fondling her left breast through her sweater. "Even Lenny agrees." "I'm not gonna do it," she said firmly, pushing his hand away. "If you want me, I'll do it with you in the bedroom like always. But I'm not gonna do both of you. I'm not that kind of girl." "You'd better learn to be," Jeff said threateningly. "If you expect me to leave Gina and move in with you, I expect you to do the things that I want to do. If you don't want to play the way I want you to, then just get on out the door and I'll be seeing you around." "Jeff," she said, her eyes pleading. "That's not fair. That's blackmail." "That's the way life is now baby. Now you gonna play, or what?" She lowered her eyes and slumped her shoulders in defeat. What else could she do? She didn't have a man of her own and it was starting to look like she might be able to wrangle Jeff away. She was too close to blow that now, wasn't she? "I'll play," she said quietly. "What was that?" Jeff asked, twisting the knife a little. "I said I'll play," she said defiantly. Jeff grinned, slapping Lenny, who had watched the entire exchange in fascination, on the shoulder. "Come on Lenny, she's gonna play for us. Stand on up here and let's start out with a blowjob. She gives the best fucking blowjobs you've ever had." Lenny, despite his discomfort with the manner in which Jeff had manipulated her, still had a raging hard-on. He knew that he should not be taking part in something like this but he couldn't help himself. Mitsy was a hot looking piece. He stood next to Jeff with his crotch right in Mitsy's face. "Come on baby," Jeff told her. "Take 'em out and get to work." Feeling humiliation unlike anything that she had ever experienced before, Mitsy reached out and unbuttoned first Jeff's pants and then Lenny's, pushing each pair down so that their hard cocks were sticking in her face. She gave Jeff one last pleading look but saw no hope for reprieve in his face. With a sigh she leaned forward and took him into her mouth. "Ahhh yess," Jeff said happily, grabbing a handful of her hair and guiding her motions. "Use your hand on Lenny while you're sucking me," he told her. She reached over with the hand that was not jacking up and down on Jeff and began to listlessly jack off Lenny's cock. Lenny didn't care that it was listless. Her hand around his organ, no matter how unenthusiastically she moved it, felt great. He began to piston his hips in and out of her fist. "Feel her titties," Jeff suggested to his partner. "She likes that. They're kinda small but they're nice." Lenny reached down and grasped her right breast roughly through her sweater, making her wince a little. She never broke stride however. He began to squeeze and knead it, moving it up and down, back and forth. Jeff let her suck him for about five minutes and then he abruptly pulled himself from her mouth. "It's Lenny's turn," he told her. "Give him your best." "Jeff, really," she pleaded. "This is humiliating." "But it's your lot in life now baby," he said toughly, pushing her head towards Lenny's crotch. "Now do what you're told." Obediently she took Lenny into her mouth and went to work. Lenny found out in short order that she was every bit the cocksucker that Jeff had promised she was. +++++ Bill checked his watch. It was 7:55 AM. Almost time to strike. He turned to the two men who were the designated bombers of the guard post. "All right you guys," he said. "Are you ready to move in?" They both told him that they were ready. They were obviously nervous about the prospect of attacking such a large settlement, but they were also full of confidence as well. "Okay," Bill said. "Start moving in. Remember the plan and remember not to throw them until 8:00 and zero seconds. Got it?" They told him that they had it and they moved in. They left the backyard by retracing their steps from how they had entered it. Keeping close to the side of the house, they edged over the lumber of the fallen fence and worked their way out into the driveway, keeping their backs as close to the garage door as they could get them without actually rattling it. The window that served as the guard post was less than fifty feet away from them but they were confident that they could get over there without being seen as long as one of the guards did not actually stick his or her head out of the window and look to the left. They continued to edge along the wall of the house until they were near the front porch, well back from the sightline of the guardhouse now. They then trotted over until their backs were against the two-story house itself. They crept along the side of this house until they were at the corner, near the garage door. The open window from which the guards operated was directly over the garage and the driveway. They paused at this corner, waiting for it to be exactly 8:00 AM. When the appointed time came they would have to do nothing but pull back the springs on their bombs, take six or seven steps out onto the driveway, and toss them inside. It was an easy shot through the window but they were using two bombs in case, for whatever reason, one of them missed. "Remember not to shoot unless we have to," the first man whispered to his companion. "I won't," he said, checking his watch again. It read 7:58. +++++ Mitsy was now completely naked, her impressive body on hands and knees on the bed. Jeff was standing on the floor in front of her, his dick in her mouth, enjoying her wet blowjob. His hands were squeezing her small breasts roughly, his fingers occasionally giving the nipples a strong tweak. Lenny was behind her, driving his dick in and out of her pussy from behind. He was holding onto her hips hard enough to leave marks upon her flesh. "Doesn't she have a nice, tight pussy?" Jeff asked with a grin, looking at the rapturous face of his partner. "Yeah," he moaned, feeling the clenching of her muscles upon his cock. Though she was not really any tighter than Carla, his official woman, or Barbara, his main piece on the side, there was something intrinsically nasty and arousing about double-teaming Mitsy at the guard post. This was the best sex that he had experienced since the comet, and he had experienced a lot of it since that fateful day. "Put it in her ass," Jeff told him. "She loves that." Mitsy took her mouth off of his cock and looked up at him. "Jeff," she said, appalled that he would suggest something like that. Jeff took his hand off of her tit long enough to backhand her sharply across the face. "Shut up bitch," he growled at her, grabbing her by the hair. "When I want you to talk, I'll ask you something. Now get back to work." With that he pulled her to his cock again. Lenny was somewhat shocked by the violence that the former Mormon had just displayed. "Are you sure that she really wants me to do that?" he asked timidly. "I told you Len," he said, driving his hips in and out of her mouth now. "She fuckin' loves it. Now stick it up her ass and give it to her." That was enough encouragement for Lenny. He had been looking at that puckered anus longingly the entire time that he had been fucking her. He pulled his cock from her semi-dry vagina and spit in his hand, rubbing more lubrication on it. He then placed the head against the bud of her asshole and began to push. "Yeah Len!" Jeff said enthusiastically as Mitsy grunted in pain around his dick. "You the man motherfucker. Give it to the bitch!" He gave it to her, pushing as hard as he could until he was buried to the hilt in her ass. It was the tightest orifice that he had ever been in in his life, so tight that it was difficult to move in and out of it. Nevertheless he gave it the old college try. Mitsy grunted with each thrust and after a few moments, she loosened up a little and got somewhat used to his presence. He began to pick up the pace as it began to feel better. He was actually fucking Mitsy up the ass! That very thought started the wheels of orgasm into motion. Just as the sensation of inevitable blast-off started to hit him, he saw something come flying through the window out of the corner of his eye, something that looked strangely like a red and black spray can. Before that even registered completely, another one followed it. Jeff, who was facing the window, saw it too. Mitsy, who had her eyes closed and her mouth full of cock, did not. Nobody had time to even become alarmed. The cans both landed just to the side of the bed and both exploded less than a second apart with sharp cracks of surprising loudness. Shrapnel from the aluminum that made up the cans sprayed everywhere and Lenny took the brunt of it. Razor sharp shards sliced into his back, his legs, his neck, and the side of his face. His left eyeball was ripped right out of its socket and a large flap of his cheek was peeled away with almost surgical precision. Another piece sliced neatly through the carotid artery on the left side of his neck before cutting his trachea neatly in two. He fell to the floor in a bloody heap, his consciousness fading away before the poison that had been released into the room could even affect him. Mitsy and Jeff were not so lucky. Though both of them were peppered with shrapnel - Mitsy all over her left hip and flank, Jeff all over his chest and stomach - and although Mitsy in reflexive surprise had bitten down on Jeff's penis nearly hard enough to sever it, neither had been hit in a vital area. Mitsy, dazed and bleeding, fell to the right on the bed. Jeff, holding his injured and hemorrhaging dick with both hands, fell backwards. By the time it occurred to them a few seconds later that they were under attack, it was already too late. The pesticide fumes filled the air in the small bedroom and penetrated their lungs, entering the bloodstream via respiration. It was also soaked in through their very pores, the process made even easier by the fact that they were naked and bleeding. Both of them tried to crawl to the radio. Neither of them made it more than a foot before their parasympathetic nervous system rebelled in a big way causing them to simultaneously vomit, defecate, and urinate uncontrollably. They began to choke on their own vomit and a few seconds later, they began to convulse, their bodies flopping around where they lie like fish out of water. It was an agonizing death but thankfully it was a quick one. Less than a minute after the cans had flown in the window, while Bill and the rest of his men were kicking in the front door to clear the building, both of them were dead. +++++ Michelle heard the small beep come from her wristwatch, indicating that it was the top of the hour. She was looking out over the wall, tossing a few ideas - none of which seemed to have much merit - about the Jason and Stacy problem around in her head. Brenda, who was sitting on the bed behind her, painting her fingernails, was chattering on and on about Hector and how she was beginning to suspect that maybe - just MAYBE mind you - he was leading her on. She was about to offer a mildly snide comment about Brenda's powers of deduction when her eyes locked onto a sudden movement directly below her window. Someone had just been right beneath them and was now stepping out into the open. Brett, in their firearm training outside the wall, had made them work extensively with the pistols that they carried. He had done to his guards what the instructors at the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Academy had done to him over the course of his tenure there. He had made it an instinct to draw their pistol whenever danger presented itself suddenly from close quarters. Michelle's .45 was out of her holster and pointing out the window before she even realized what she was looking at. All she saw was a dirty, bearded man, which meant he was a straggler. He had somehow gotten inside the wall and right up to her position, which meant he was dangerous. He had something - she did not have time to identify it - in his hand and he was cocking his arm back to throw it at her. Her brain quickly processed all of this and came to the firm conclusion that she was in mortal danger. Without pausing to send this information to her higher brain, where it could mulled over and completely analyzed before a decision was made, the lower part of her brain, the part concerned with basic survival instincts, commanded her to fire the gun. She pointed it at the center mass of the man and began pulling the trigger. Brenda screamed behind her as the gun in Michelle's hand began to explode with noise and expended shell casings began to fly around the room. Michelle had no idea how many times she shot him but she clearly saw bullets impacting his chest and spraying blood out behind him. Just as he started to drop, just as the object that he had been about to throw fell from his hand, another figure emerged right behind him. He too had an object in his hand and he too quickly turned and prepared to hurl it. Before she could shift her fire to him or even properly process the fact that he was a new threat, the Raid-bomb from the first man hit the driveway and detonated. Some of the shrapnel and the fumes managed to blast upward towards Michelle. She felt a sting in her right arm as a piece of aluminum sliced into it. The gun dropped from her hand and clattered to the ground below. But the majority of the blast hit the two people on the ground. The one she had shot was falling forward at the time and took much of it in the chest. The one about to throw the second bomb felt metal slice into his ankles and thighs. His arm was halfway through the throwing motion when the explosion occurred but it was just enough to throw his aim off. His bomb flew upward and struck the side of the house two feet to the right of the window, exploding almost harmlessly ten feet up. +++++ John Kramer, who, along with the rest of his force, was positioned thirty feet away along the fence line to the side of the house, watched helplessly as his carefully formulated plan began to fall apart. First that idiot falling off the wall early that morning when they had penetrated, almost giving them away, and now this. How had that guard in there shot so quickly? How could anybody react that fast? Now one of his men was dead on the ground and the other was already starting to choke and gag from the effects of the insecticide cloud that was enveloping him. And the two armed guards in that house were still alive. They would be calling in to the community center any moment on their walkie-talkies. "Shoot them through the wall," Kramer barked at his men. He pointed to the side of the house above the garage. "They're right behind that wall! Everybody! Start shooting!" With almost military precision they swung their hunting rifles upward, knowing that the .30 caliber, high velocity bullets would punch through the thin layer of plaster and sheetrock as easily as a BB fired from a child's gun would punch through a sheet of paper. They began to fire. +++++ Brenda was still screaming as the noxious fumes of the pesticide started to penetrate through the open window. Michelle yelled at her to shut the fuck up (which she did not do) and took a moment to look at her wrist. There was a piece of thin, black metal protruding from the side of it, about half an inch sticking out. Blood was oozing slowly around the sides. She moved all of her fingers and found that they still worked as they were supposed to. She pulled the metal free and threw it to the floor, an act that caused the bleeding to increase. Outside, the second attacker, the one who had thrown the can against the side of the house, had fallen to the ground and was convulsing rather grotesquely. Even from fifteen feet away, even over the odor of the pesticide itself, she could smell the sharp stench of feces rising up. Nerve gas of some kind, her well-read mind told her. That was what they had tried to attack with although both of the bomb throwers also had rifles. Who the fuck were these people and how many of them were out there? Dripping blood on the floor, she picked up the M-16 from its place with one hand and the rifle with the other. She tried to hand Brenda the rifle but she was in complete hysterics and wouldn't take it. "Brenda, goddammit, someone's trying to attack us! Take the fucking rifle!" "Ahhhh, ohhhh goddd, ohhhh goddddd!" "Shit," she muttered, throwing the rifle to the ground and starting to head for the radio. Just then there was a pop from behind her and something whizzed over her shoulder. It was quickly followed by five or six other pops and whizzes and holes began to appear in the ceiling and the upper part of the wall. Just as this registered, the sound of gunshots from outside reached her and she realized that she was being shot at. Terrified, but still acting instinctively, she threw herself to the carpet. "Brenda," she yelled, seeing with horror that she was still standing and screaming. "Get down!" Brenda got down, but not because of voluntary action. Though the first volley of shots from the outside missed her cleanly, the second volley did not. Two of the high caliber bullets hit her, one in the chest, the other in the throat. She fell to the ground in a heap, gagging and gurgling. "Brenda!" Michelle yelled, knowing by the way that blood was pouring onto the carpet that there was nothing to be done. "Shit!" The gunshots continued to echo from outside and the bullets continued to fly through the plaster and whiz through the air above her. How many fucking people were shooting out there? She needed to get the fuck out of that room, but first she needed to report what was going on. She began to belly-crawl over the carpet towards the window, where the walkie-talkie was, dragging the M-16 behind her. As she reached up to grab it, one of the bullets whizzed so close to her hand that she was able to feel the wind of its passage. "Jesus," she said, bringing her hand back down and instead rocking the table until the radio fell off. She picked it up quickly, fumbling with it for a moment and trying to orient it towards her face. Just as she was about to key up, the gunfire abruptly stopped. It did not taper off, it just stopped instantly, as if a switch had been thrown. +++++ "Hold your fire!" John had yelled at his men an instant before. Used to following orders from him, they had done just that, lowering their weapons a bit. "We probably hit them," he said, projecting more confidence than he felt. Though logically the bullets should have hit anyone in that room at least once, he was smart enough to know that once things started to go wrong, the trend usually continued. "But we need to be sure. Main group, reload as fast as you can. Jed," he said, pointing at one of the better men of his group. "Get your pistol out and let's clear that house! We're moving in!" They pulled their sidearms, letting their rifles hang from their shoulders, and started to move in. -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Archive: Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository | |, an entity supported entirely by donations. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+