Message-ID: <46681asstr$1076911804@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Al Steiner" <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Collateral Damage by Al Steiner (MF, future)
Lines: 2354
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:10:04 -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

Author's Note:


For several years now I've been playing around with various
stories that take place in a certain universe - as such things
are in the writer's mind - over a timeline that stretches for
several hundred years into the future. Most of these stories are
things I've written under my so-called "normal" identity and
include two novels and numerous short stories.  Recently,
however, I included an Al Steiner story in this
universe/timeline, mixing some of my serious science fiction type
work with the erotic elements of the Steiner identity.  The
result was the novel "A Perfect World", which is currently being
run at Ruthiesclub.com.  I was pleased with the mix of the two
elements and decided to experiment with it a little more. 
"Collateral Damage" is the result and I'm posting it here instead
of at Ruthiesclub mainly to get a little feedback, so please,
please, let me know what you think about it.


But first, a little explanation of the universe and timeline
itself.


In this world I've created, everything is just as it is in our
own world until January 1, 2009.  On that date, a devastating
conventional World War begins when Chinese and Indian armies make
a surprise attack into Siberia. Within months of this initial
attack, overwhelming numbers of "Asian Powers" forces conquer
Russia and the Middle East, dig in solidly in Eastern Europe, and
then invade North America via the Bering Straight into Alaska. 
From Alaska, they drive southward, through Canada and into the
continental United States before finally being stopped at the
Columbia River in Washington.  From there, they swing east,
crossing Snoqualmie Pass, taking Spokane, and then turning south,
where they are halted again, after a particularly vicious fight
termed "The Battle of Viola", in a broad line in Southern Idaho.
From there, the war enters a long period of stalemate, with
millions dying on both sides, but neither able to force the other
back.  The stalemate is finally broken when the Western
Hemisphere forces (as the allied armies are called) develop
practical anti-tank and anti-aircraft lasers, allowing them blast
a hole in the lines and slowly push the Asian Powers back to
Asia.


In "A Perfect World", this portion of the timeline is touched
upon in the later sections, although the majority of that novel
takes place 188 years after the war, when Mars has been colonized
and has rebelled from its mother planet, forming it's own
government.  The idea of what life would be like during these war
years, however, is what prompted me to expand upon that theme in
one of my conventional novels and in the story you are now -
hopefully - about to read.  "Collateral Damage" is a fairly basic
erotic fiction plot taking place in an unusual setting - a normal
American suburb in the first years of this devastating war.


Again, please let me know what you think of it - whether it's
good or bad, sexy or boring.


Al Steiner


COLLATERAL DAMAGE

By Al Steiner


April 11, 2011

Roseville, California


The Roseville High School cafeteria was particularly crowded with
students during the lunch period on this day.  Every table was
full and a few kids were even forced to sit in the corner, in
plastic chairs that were usually reserved only for official
assemblies.  The crowding - while unusual - was not because of
the special announcement Principal Bauer was going to make.
Everyone already knew what the announcement was going to be, had
been through such announcements many times before, and had little
or no interest in the words he would speak other than a morbid
one.  No, the real reason everyone happened to be inside today
was an unseasonable rainstorm that had been pounding the
Sacramento region all that day.  The students who normally ate
outside had been forced in.


Principal Bauer knew this but didn't really care.  His enthusiasm
for such announcements had faded long before as well.  They were
all too common these days, especially in the last two weeks,
since the Asian Powers' spring offensive against the Western
Hemisphere Alliance had begun.  Still, it was a part of his job
and he walked with dignity to the podium at the front of the room
where he asked for, and eventually received, the relative
attention of the early lunch students, most of whom were juniors
and seniors.


"It is my sad duty to announce," he said into the microphone,
"that another member of the Roseville High School alumni has
given his life for his country on the active front.  May I draw
your attention to the Wall of Remembrance?"  He nodded in the
direction of the south wall, which was covered with framed, 8x10
photographs taken from yearbook files.  Each one was of a
Roseville High graduate who had been killed in action.  With this
latest addition, there were now 93 of them up there - 78 males
and 15 females.  And these were only the official KIAs.  They did
not include the 124 alumni who were listed as missing in action.
Nor did they include the 84 who had been killed in training
accidents or in non-combat situations. Nor did they include the
345 who had been wounded in action severely enough to be
discharged and put on a lifetime disability pension.


"Newly unveiled on our wall today," Bauer continued, "is the
image of John William Ringwell, Class of 2010.  He was a member
of the United States Army assigned to the 12th Armored Calvary
Regiment and stationed on the active front in southwest Idaho. 
He was killed in combat two days ago during a tank battle with
Chinese forces.  Let us all bow our heads for a moment of silence
in his honor."


Everyone dutifully bowed their heads and kept their mouths shut
as asked. When the moment was up, Bauer invited them to pay their
respects to the photograph as they left the cafeteria that day. 
He then made his leave, hustling back to his office to continue
working on the budget reports for the next fiscal year.


At a table near the rear of the cafeteria, Eric Rowley sat with a
group of his friends.  Eric, a senior, had turned eighteen just
three weeks before. He was technically old enough to be drafted
now but like any high school student he was still covered under
the Primary Education Deferment, which forbid the United States
Selective Service from compelling him to go to war while he was
still in school.  The moment he graduated or dropped out of
school, however, that deferment expired.  "Anyone hear how
Ringwell bought it?" he asked his friends as he shoveled
processed lunchmeat into his mouth.


"The dumb fuck was in a tank," said Tyler Bentley, another
senior.  "They burned his ass to a crisp.  That's how the tankers
always go."


"That's a fuckin' retreat," said Matt Smith, who was munching on
a microwave burrito.


Tyler simply shrugged contemptuously.  "That's what he gets for
going low-pro," he said, which meant that Ringwell - who they all
remembered as a shy, somewhat nerdy senior while they had been
juniors - had chosen to go "low profile", which meant he had not
volunteered for the service upon graduation, instead waiting for
the draft board to call him.  Low-pro was considered a pussy
thing to do among the 16 to 19 year old crowd.  And it was also
nothing more than a delaying tactic.  Internet statistics showed
that a graduating senior going low-pro would get nailed by the
draft within six months anyway.  The statistics also showed that
a disproportionate number were assigned as crewmen on tanks,
which everyone knew was the most dangerous place to be in an
extremely dangerous war.  Ringwell was a perfect example of the
statistics in action.  He had been drafted three months after
graduating and had been assigned to tanks in southern Idaho - the
most active portion of the front line, where more than two
million soldiers from the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and
Brazil were faced off against more than two million soldiers from
China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea.  And now Ringwell was dead,
burned to death by a Chinese-designed, Japanese manufactured
anti-tank missile, just one of nearly a million Allied soldiers
killed since the war had started a little over two years ago.


"I'm tellin' you," Matt said.  "Put me on the fuckin' line with a
rifle. I'll kill all the chinks they want and take my chances
against the artillery.  Fuck that tank shit.  Can you imagine? 
Being stuck inside one of them death traps and burning to death?
The dumb fuck probably never even saw it coming."


"That ain't propaganda," Eric said solemnly, sipping out of his
milk carton.


Matt gave him a sour look.  "What the hell do you care about it,
Rowley?" he asked.  "You're Mr. Valedictorian, aren't you?  You
and your goddamned 3.9 GPA.  You ain't gonna be going to the line
when you graduate.  You get to kick it in some college for four
fuckin' years and if the war ain't over by then they'll just
stick you in the rear somewhere."


Eric blushed a little at this jibe.  It was true that he was set
to graduate with a GPA higher than 3.8, which, under Selective
Service Rules, would qualify him for one of the rare college
deferments from the draft as long as he actually attended an
institute of higher learning.  Among his friends he was the only
one with a high enough GPA, something that caused a considerable
amount of resentment at times.  "Hey, sarge," he said.  "Just
because I get the college deferment doesn't mean I have to take
it.  I can still volunteer, you know."


"Yeah right, like you would do that," Matt said.


"I'm just keeping my options open," Eric said.  "You think I want
to be some pussy college student while all my friends are on the
line?  Fuck that shit."


This appeased Matt, Tyler, and the rest of the seniors at the
table.  Among the adolescents of the day - all of whom were
constantly bombarded with patriotic songs, television shows, and
armed forces recruiting commercials - signing up for the service
was the "static" thing to do, what everyone strived for.  Not
even the 93 pictures on their cafeteria wall could dissuade them.


"You the commander, Rowley," Tyler told him, holding up his hand
for a high five.  "Fuck that college shit.  Let's go kill us some
chinks."


Eric slapped hands with him and then did the same with Matt. 
They all left the cafeteria a few minutes later, walking by the
Wall of Remembrance on the way.  None of them so much as glanced
at it.


+++++


The rain was still coming down as he rode his bicycle home after
school that day.  His body was covered with a vinyl rain slicker
that was decorated with the winter camouflage scheme so popular
among teens these days.  He kept his head down as the drops
pattered into him, as his wheels sluiced through puddles in the
middle of Cirby Boulevard.  Every once in a while he would look
around in wonder at the six-lane road he was on, trying to
remember what it had been like before the war, when automobile
traffic had choked every intersection, when the smell of exhaust
had permeated the air.


There were no automobiles on the road now.  With the gasoline
ration set at one gallon per household per month, and with that
one gallon costing 125 dollars, only the very rich could afford
to operate their motor vehicles. Most of the cars these days were
rotting away in garages, or had been sold for scrap iron at a
hundredth of what they had originally cost.  The Asian Powers -
who had captured the Middle East, Siberia, and Alaska in the
first few months of the war, and who still held them - had put a
serious kink in the American commute.  All of the domestic oil
production from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and all
of the remaining foreign oil production from Mexico, Nigeria, and
Venezuela, was being used to make fuel for fighting the war.  The
American economy had nearly collapsed in those first few months
and was still quite far from recovery.  If not for the
suspiciously timely development of practical cold fusion to
generate electrical power, there might very well have been mass
starvation.


Cirby Boulevard ended at the intersection of Foothills Boulevard.
 Eric turned right here and was now riding alongside the
Roseville Train Yard - the largest freight switching facility
west of the Mississippi River.  Miles of track stretched along
the western edge of the Sacramento suburb, with hundreds of
freight cars and flat cars parked or slowly moving about from one
place to another.  The war had made the yard a very busy place. 
The boxcars were full of artillery shells, tank rounds, machine
gun bullets, rifles, and, of course, reloads for the AT-9
launchers - the laser-guided, shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon
most responsible for the bloody stalemate that had developed on
both the American front in the Pacific Northwest and the European
front where the Brits, Germans, French, Spanish, and South
Africans were pitted against two and a half million Indian
soldiers.  The flatcars all contained armored vehicles - M2A1
main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, half-tracks,
self-propelled 155-millimeter artillery guns, and mobile
surface-to-air missile launchers.  On the flatcars heading north
or east, the armor was brand new, the protective covers still in
place.  On the flatcars returning from the front, the vehicles
were smashed, burned, in some cases completely unrecognizable, on
their way back to the southern California area for recycling.


The train yard itself was a frequent target of Chinese bombers
operating out of bases in Southern Washington.  At least twice a
week Chinese pilots flying American designed F-15s or A-6s or
Russian designed MiG-27s or SU-34s would come in low, using the
Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east to hide from radar before
swooping at rooftop level along the Sacramento Valley floor. 
Their weapon of choice were unguided 500 pound free-fall bombs
which, when scattered among the parked trains, could disrupt the
vital railhead for days, sometimes even weeks if they managed to
hit some of the fuel tankers or the munitions cars.  To counter
this threat, the train yard was absolutely lousy with
anti-aircraft weapons.  Riding over the overpass that crossed a
section of the tracking, Eric could see three fixed SAM sites,
more than a dozen mobile SAM launchers, almost thirty heavy
caliber flak guns, and about a hundred 23-millimeter AA guns
within the boundaries of the yard.  Despite all of this
firepower, the Chinese got their bombs through a depressing
amount of the time, as was evidenced by the shattered remains of
train cars that were stacked off to the southern portion of the
yard.


Eric continued down the other side of the overpass and followed
Foothills for another mile before turning left onto a two-lane
street that led into the residential neighborhood where he lived.
 The houses here were all modest tract homes that had been built
in the late 1990s or early 2000s. All of the lawns were now
overgrown and shaggy since there was no gasoline available to mow
them with.  Since it was a bit chilly today, many of the
fireplaces had smoke coming from them because the cost of natural
gas had more than quintupled since the beginning of the war. 
Many of the houses were just plain deserted, the occupants who
could afford it having fled to safer living quarters.  What made
the neighborhood unsafe was not the crime rate - that was at its
lowest level in history in the US since most of America's youth
was now fighting the war - but the proximity to the rail yards. 
The Chinese did not go out of their way to drop their bombs in
the middle of the residential zone, but it happened by mistake
quite often. More common, however, was that a bomber would be
shot out of the sky by one of the yard's anti-air weapons and
would crash down into the neighborhood, wiping out a few houses
or a strip mall.  In the last year, since the Asian Powers forces
had pushed into Washington and Idaho and gotten themselves into
bombing range of Central California, more than fifty homes had
been destroyed, more than a hundred had been damaged, and nearly
two hundred people had been killed in the five square miles of
residential neighborhood adjacent to the yards.  There was talk
of condemning the rest of the homes and forcing the residents out
for their own safety - talk that was met with sometimes violent
protest by the residents in question because they would be
ineligible for any kind of compensation if the resolution were to
pass. Eric tried not to think about what would happen if they
were forced to leave.  He and his mother were barely hanging onto
their home as it was. They would literally have no place to go if
they were forced out.  Nor could they even hope a bomber would
come down on their house one night and damage or destroy it so
they could collect the insurance money.  Such destruction was a
direct result of an act of war and therefore not covered under
the homeowner's policy.


The house where Eric lived with his mother was a two-story,
purchased nineteen years before, during much happier times, when
Roger and Elizabeth Rowley were young parents of a two-year old
girl and Eric was a two month fetus in his mother's belly.  That
had been during the beginning of the dot-com boom, when everyone
was getting rich and mortgage companies were practically giving
home loans away.  These days, the house was a bit ramshackle, its
paint peeling in many places, tiles missing from the roof, the
chimney sagging tiredly.  It was also almost completely worthless
since it was in a neighborhood that would likely be condemned
soon.  His mother literally wouldn't be able to give it away, yet
the mortgage company still insisted on receiving their $1148.43
on the first of every month.  That was not a terribly high
mortgage payment in this day and age, but it was somewhat steep
for a widowed mother on top of her daughter's college tuition and
books and all the other bills.  Eric's sister, Megan, who was a
junior at the University of Santa Barbara, helped out when she
could, but most of the money she earned from her job as a
waitress went for her own living expenses.  Eric too, helped out
when he could.  He had a part-time job as a clerk at a nearby
hardware store.  Half of his weekly salary he turned over to his
mother to help make ends meet.


He parked his bike in the garage and entered through the back
door.  The house was chilly, since the furnace had been
permanently shut down to save money and their firewood had long
since run out.  The aroma of cooking was in the air.  It smelled
like stew, one of the staples of their diet.  Sure enough, when
he came into the kitchen, his mother was standing before a pot on
the stove, slowly stirring her concoction of jarred beef cuts and
vegetables grown in her backyard victory garden.


"Hi, Mom," he said as he came up behind her and took a sniff. 
"How's it advancing?"


"About the same as always," she said tiredly, dumping a few
pinches of salt into the pot.  "How was your day?"


"It wasn't too much of a retreat," he told her.  "Could've done
without the rain though."


She nodded, having barely heard him.  Her attention often
wandered these days, as if she wasn't quite sure where she was
from minute to minute.  The loss of her husband - Eric and
Megan's father - six months before seemed to have taken much of
the life out of her.  Roger Rowley had been one of the civilian
casualties of the war.  A mid-level accountant, he had been
standing on a loading platform one day with a hundred or so other
people, awaiting the light rail train that would return him to
the suburbs after a hard day of bean counting.  Suddenly he had
collapsed to the ground in a heap, the back of his head a mush of
blood and brains.  The police investigation and the autopsy would
reveal he had been struck by a 23mm anti-aircraft round that had
been fired more than twenty miles away, nearly five minutes
earlier in response to a flight of Chinese planes streaking
towards a fuel storage facility in the suburb of Rancho Cordova.
The shell had missed the plane and come down in a ballistic arc,
burying itself in his skull.  He had never known what hit him. 
And, like the homeowners insurance, the life insurance company
did not pay for claims caused by an act of war.


"You working again tonight?" Eric asked her, noting she was
dressed in the ragged blue jeans and sweater that were the
favored attire for the job she had taken after his father's
death.  She worked in what had once been a soup factory in South
Sacramento but what was now one of the primary manufacturing
points for the MREs the front-line soldiers consumed for their
daily rations.  It was a menial, low-paying job for a woman who
held a bachelor's degree in Business but it was all she had been
able to get.


"That's right," she said.  "I'm working a double."


"A double?  Jeez, Mom, you're gonna burn yourself out doing
that."


"When they offer overtime, I don't turn it down," she told him. 
"We need the money.  You know that as well as I do."


"I suppose," he said doubtfully.  "Did you get any sleep?"


"I got enough," she assured him.  "If I get tired I'll catch a
few minutes on my lunch periods.  How about you?  Have they
offered you any overtime down at the hardware store?"


He shook his head.  "No, I'm barely able to keep the twenty-four
hours a week they give me.  Not too many people buying hardware
these days."


"No," she said with a sigh.  "I don't suppose there are.  You
haven't heard back from the Saving Center?"


The Saving Center was a huge food market that employed dozens of
bicycle delivery boys to bring groceries to the elderly and the
war widows with children in the absence of vehicles.  It was a
highly sought after job because it paid well, included tips, and,
rumor had it, the young war widows were sometimes more than a
little friendly with the young boys who brought them their
groceries.  "I'm on their waiting list," he told her, "but they
probably won't be hiring again until summer, when the seniors
they have working for them head off for basic training."


"Well, that's only a few more months," she said.  "Maybe you can
get three months work in before you head off to college."


"Yeah," he said vaguely.  "Maybe I will."  He didn't tell her
that he was seriously considering being one of those seniors who
would be heading off to basic training.  After all, college would
still be there after he did his four-year commitment, wouldn't
it?  And he would still have that 3.9 GPA on his record.  He
could do his part to help push the Chinese out of North America
and then use the money he earned to start working on his dream of
one day becoming a doctor.  But his mother didn't need to know
about this just yet - not while she still had two and half months
to try talking him out of it.


"Anyway," she said, "I need to get myself down to the light rail
station if I want to make it to the factory on time.  You know
how long it takes to get across town these days.  Let the stew
simmer for about two more hours and then you can eat it.  And be
sure to put what's left in the refrigerator.  I put a lot of
sweat into those goddamned vegetables."


"Okay, Mom," he said.


She picked up a plastic Tupperware bowl.  "And fill this up and
take it over to Victoria," she told him.  "I told her I'd send
some over for her."


"Sure," he said, unable to keep the sour tone from his voice. 
Victoria was their 26-year-old next-door neighbor.  She was
unemployed, spending all of her time taking care of her
debilitated husband, who had been injured in the Battle of Viola.
 Since her only source of income was the paltry disability
pension the government gave her, Eric's mother frequently helped
her out with food donations.  Eric had a hard time being
sympathetic towards Victoria's plight since he and his mother
barely had enough food to last between paydays themselves, but
his mother - who loved to feel sorry for people - insisted on
sharing what they had.


"Don't you give me that tone," she warned.  "You know Vickie only
gets her check once a month.  If we didn't help her out from time
to time she wouldn't be able to make it from one paycheck to the
next."


"Yeah, yeah," he said, unimpressed, as always, with her plight.


"And don't you go giving her mostly broth either.  Lots of meat
and lots of vegetables.  I'll check."


"Yes Mom," he sighed.  "I'll give her the cream of the stew, I
promise."


She looked at him for a moment, as if wondering whether to make
further comment and then decided not to.  She picked up her
purse, clipped her personal computer - or PC, which served as a
combination cellular phone and pocket computer - to her waist,
and headed for the door.  She walked out into the rain towards
the electric bus stop half a mile away.


+++++


Two and a half hours later, after eating three bowls of the
fragrant stew and four pieces of the homemade bread, Eric packed
up the Tupperware bowl with as much broth and as little meat and
vegetables as he thought he could get away with and went next
door to Victoria's house.  It was one of the smaller models in
the subdivision, a single story, three bedroom - the kind
referred to in happier times as a starter house.


The front door swung open to his knock and Victoria herself stood
there. Though the stress of the past few years had aged her a
bit, and though Eric harbored a considerable amount of resentment
towards her, he could not deny that she was still an attractive
woman.  Her hair was a rich brunette and her body was well
formed, with feminine curves in all the right places.  Her
breasts, while not particularly large, were not small either. 
Her face was pretty in an innocent sort of way, with rounded
cheekbones and a dainty nose, the sort of features women had once
paid top dollar to have a plastic surgeon mold for them.  Eric,
despite his annoyance, couldn't help but admire her form now, as
she stood there in a pair of gray sweat shorts and a plain white
T-shirt that didn't quite cover her belly.


"Hi, Eric," she said, a smile coming to her face as she saw him
standing there.  "What brings you over here today?"


He pushed the Tupperware container towards her.  "My mom made
some stew today and she wanted me to bring some over to you."


"Oh, that was awfully sweet of her," she said, taking the
container.  "And it's still hot, too.  You two always help me out
so much.  Are you sure you can spare it?  Believe me, I know how
tough things are these days."


He bit his tongue against the reply he wanted to give.  "We can
spare it," he grunted.


"Well thank you so much," she said.  "And thank your mother too."


"I'll do that," he said, catching one last glance of her legs and
then turning to go.


"Oh, Eric," she said in her patented can-you-do-me-a-quick-favor
voice.


He turned slowly back to her.  "Yeah?" he asked, not bothering to
completely mask his annoyance.


"I'm sorry," she said.  "You do so much for me and I know I'm a
bother sometimes, but the ceiling fan in the living room is
making this ticking noise.  You're good with your hands.  Could
you maybe take a look at it for me?"


He sighed, considering just telling her to turn the damn ceiling
fan off it was bothering her but knowing his mother would be
pissed if he did and word got back to her (as it almost certainly
would - the two of them gabbed to each other almost every day). 
"Sure," he said, resigned.  "I'll come in and take a look at it."


He followed her into the house and through the formal living room
to the family room, staring at her ass the entire trip.  She
really did have an attractive derri�re.  And no one was even
touching it these days.  Men were scarce in the landscape and the
one she had was certainly in no shape to do anything for her.  Or
for anyone for that matter.


John Massley - Victoria's husband - had been a civil engineer
before the war, an employee of Sacramento County whose specialty
was traffic-flow projects.  His background and schooling had
earned him a commission in the army once the war started.  He had
been a lieutenant in charge of a combat engineering platoon
during the Battle of Viola, the decisive battle named for the
small town in Southern Idaho where the Western Hemisphere forces
had finally -after being ground backward for more than a year -
halted the advance of the Chinese armies and stabilized the North
American front into the bloody stalemate it now was.  During the
most vicious fighting of this two-month battle, Lieutenant
Massley had been frantically directing his platoon to wire a
bridge for destruction when a one inch piece of jagged shrapnel
from a Chinese 155mm artillery shell had lanced through the side
of his head, destroying his optic and olfactory nerves as well as
tearing out most of his frontal lobe.  Incredibly, he had
survived his injury, despite having been triaged as "expectant",
or "dead in sixty seconds" by the medics who rushed to his side.
But he hadn't died in sixty seconds, instead, he continued
breathing and moaning for the better part of thirty minutes
before they decided to re-designate his status and put him on the
dust-off chopper to the MASH unit.  Once there, the combat
surgeons gave him the lowest possible priority, not wanting to
waste time treating a dying man.  He had lain on a stretcher for
hours while they'd treated every other casualty that had come in
and still his respiration and heartbeat had chugged on. Finally,
with nothing else to do with him, they closed all of the bleeders
in his head and stitched him up, expecting him to expire within
hours.  He didn't.  He hung in there for six more days before -
again with nothing else to do - they'd shipped him off to the VA
hospital at Travis Air Force Base. The neurosurgeons there
patched him up a little bit more but they told Victoria he
wouldn't live a week, that the crude lobotomy would surely not be
compatible with survival.  They too had been wrong.  It had been
more than a year now and he was still hanging in there, although
there were many who would say he really had died that day in
Idaho and his body simply didn't know it yet.


He was sitting in his wheelchair before the television set as
Eric entered the room, his sightless face facing the evening
newscast.  As he always had to when looking at John Massley, Eric
had to suppress the urge to wince.  He fought hard to keep his
eyes cast away but it was impossible not to stare at what had
become of the man who had once helped a younger Eric fix his
bicycle when it was broken, who had once owned sophisticated
model airplanes he would cruise at the park around the corner. 
There was a jagged, zigzagging, Frankenstein-like scar on the
side of his head and his forehead had a curious, sunken
appearance.  His eyes were clouded over, pointing in different
directions, staring sightlessly forward without comprehension,
without blinking.  His mouth hung open, a sheen of drool
perpetually running down his chin and along his neck to soak into
a bib tied there.  Installed in his neck was a tracheostomy tube
that was always clogged with whitish yellow mucous and that made
a disgusting slurping sound with each breath he took.  His arms
and legs hung limply in place, rarely moving, the once powerful
muscles now slack and emaciated with atrophy.  A urine bag that
was connected by a rubber hose to a permanent incision in his
abdomen hung from a hook on the bottom of the chair.  Protruding
from the top of his pajama bottoms was a blue diaper that
Victoria had to change at least twice a day. Though he still had
his hearing, he gave no indication that he had heard Eric enter
the room.  He reacted to no stimulation whatsoever, at any time.
He was, in fact, a living, breathing piece of meat and little
else.  He was fed a liquid diet through a feeding tube installed
in the top of his abdomen.


As she led Eric over to the ceiling fan Vickie moved him out of
the way as if he were no more than a piece of furniture, with no
more emotion than if she had been moving the coffee table.  She
didn't talk to him, caress him, or even touch him.  "This is the
one," she told him.  "Do you hear it?"


He put John Massley out of his mind (the best he could anyway)
and tuned his ear into the rotating fan blades.  Sure enough,
there was a steady ticking noise and the entire assembly was
wobbling in rhythm with the rotation.  "I hear it," he said.  "Go
ahead and turn it off."


She flipped off the switch and the fan slowly revolved to a halt.
 He reached up, standing on his toes, until he could touch one of
the blades. He wiggled it back and forth, finding it was loose in
its mounting - a victim, no doubt, of not receiving any
maintenance since the man of the house had gone off to war.


"Can you fix it?" she asked hopefully.


"I think so," he said.  "Do you have a step-stool and a
screwdriver?"


"Yes," she said.  "I'll go get them."


She left the room, Eric staring at her buttocks and sexy legs
until they disappeared around the corner.  Once she was gone he
turned his attention to the television set to avoid having his
attention recaptured by the gurgling, living-dead respiration of
Vickie's husband.


"There was heavy enemy air activity over the Sacramento region
last night and in the early morning hours of today," an
attractive, late-twenties woman told him and the rest of the
viewing audience.  Behind her, on the graphic screen, was a
generic image of an F-15 Strike Eagle laden with bombs and
Chinese markings on the tail.  "Chinese bombers struck at
Executive Air Base in South Sacramento at around 8:30 PM and
again at 11:45, dropping anti-runway munitions throughout the
former civilian airport.  More bombers struck at McClellan Field
in North Highlands at around 2:30 AM, again, utilizing
anti-runway munitions in an apparent attempt to put the field out
of commission.  Both runways at Executive were heavily damaged
and one of the runways at McClellan was slightly damaged in the
raids.  These two bases, as you know, are where planes of the
325th California Air Guard are based.  Since these planes are the
primary air-to-air defense against Chinese incursion into
Sacramento area airspace, military analysts warn that a larger
air raid is probably on the way, either tonight or tomorrow
morning.  Such an air raid would be directed against a high value
strategic target, such as Sacramento International Airport, where
the EA-12 AWACS aircraft are based, or the fuel storage tanks in
Rancho Cordova, or, most likely, the Roseville Rail Yards, where
supply and fuel trains bound for the active front in Idaho or the
inactive front in the Portland, Oregon region are assembled."


"Wonderful," Eric grumbled.  "Nothing but good news."


"Civil authorities tell us that old advice is good advice," she
continued cheerfully.  "When you hear the air raid siren, proceed
as quickly as possible to your designated shelter.  If you have
no designated shelter in your neighborhood, remain indoors until
at least five minutes after the all-clear is signaled."


"I'll do that," he grumbled, deciding that Vickie's husband was
actually more cheerful to look at.


Vickie returned a few minutes later, a flat-blade screwdriver in
one hand, a small stepladder in the other.  She handed them
across to him and he went quickly to work, arranging the ladder
in the proper place and then climbing to the top step.  The fan
housing was now only slightly above eye level.  He quickly
tightened up the loose screws that held it in place and then did
the same for the screws that held the blades themselves to the
housing.  He gave them whole thing a shake, noting with mute
satisfaction that it no longer wiggled under the pressure.


He looked down at Vickie, who had been standing next to the
ladder during the operation, and took in a sharp intake of
breath.  Her T-shirt had come away from her body and he found
himself looking directly down it.  Her breasts, encased in a lacy
white bra, were plainly visible and the sight was more than a
little appetizing.


"Is everything okay, Eric?" she asked softly, seemingly unaware
of the view she was giving him.


"Uh... uh... well, yeah," he stammered, feeling himself blush. 
He cast his eyes away reluctantly.  "Go ahead and... uh... turn
it on."


She smiled.  "Sure," she said, turning and walking to the wall
switch.  She turned the control knob and the blades whirred to
life.


Eric turned away from her and looked up at the fan.  It was
spinning silently along, just like brand new.  "I think I got it
fixed," he told her, climbing back down to the ground.


"Yay," she said cheerfully, walking over to him again.  "You're
such a sweetie."


She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, her breasts
pushing into his chest.  While he was still trying to adjust to
this, she leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek, her
soft lips lingering for several seconds.  He felt the blood rush
to his face again, and other burst rushing to his penis, which
stirred in interest inside of his pants.  Annoying or not, needy
or not, her body felt nice against him and her lips felt even
nicer.


She pulled her face back, her brown eyes gazing up at him, a
sparkle in them he'd never seen before, her arms remaining around
his back.  "That's for being such a good friend," she said. 
"Thank you so much."


More blood rushed into his penis.  In a moment it would develop
into a bona fide hard on.  "Uh... you're... uh... you know...
you're welcome," he blurted, his own hands reaching up and just
barely touching the back of her shoulders, which technically, he
supposed, completed the hug.


She held the embrace a moment longer and then released him.  Her
face was now whimsical, almost melancholy.  "John used to take
care of stuff like that," she said.  "He used to take care of
lots of things, if you know what I mean."


He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she meant what he
thought she meant.  His experience with the opposite sex was
somewhat limited, particularly with members of the opposite sex
that were older than he was. No, he finally concluded, he was
probably just imagining things.  "I... uh... guess so," he
finally said.


An awkward silence developed, the two of them staring at each
other, Vickie with that melancholy look, Eric with a growing
sense of nervousness. Finally he told her that he had better get
going.


"Are you sure you don't want to stay for a little bit?" she asked
him.  "I could make us some ice tea.  Or maybe you'd like a beer?
 I have some in the fridge."


"Uh... no, I've got some studying to do," he said.  "I'd better
get going."


She looked a little disappointed but she nodded.  "Okay," she
said. "Studying is important these days, isn't it?  You don't
keep those grades up and you'll end up on the line."


"Right," he said.


A set of awkward goodbyes were exchanged and a minute or two
later he was back outside.  The rain was still coming down.  It
didn't look like it was going to stop anytime soon.


+++++


It didn't stop.  At 9:30 that night, it was still pouring down
from the overcast sky in a steady stream.  Eric was in his
bedroom upstairs, sitting before his computer terminal, hearing
it patter against the window behind him.  On the screen was the
text from his microbiology CD.  He had a test in the subject the
next day and was trying to study but his mind kept wandering to
the thought of Vickie's breasts pushing against his chest, or the
way they had looked when he had seen down the front of her shirt,
or the way her lips had felt touching his cheek.  And then there
was her offer for him to stay for a little while.  What exactly
had she meant by that?  Why would a 26-year-old woman want to
hang out with a high school senior?  Did she just miss having
company that much?  It stood to reason that John, who never spoke
or communicated in any way, probably got a little boring after a
while, but was she so desperate she would want to chat with her
friend's son?  Or was there maybe something else implied in her
offer, something a little more intimate?


As much as he wanted to believe the latter was the case, he
simply could not convince himself it was true.  He had no
illusions about what he represented to the opposite sex.  He was
not exactly unattractive, but he was certainly no sex god either.
 He was a tall and somewhat gangly, awkward in the way of
teenagers.  His face was still very young looking - the kind of
face that aunts loved to pinch - and a smattering of adolescent
acne still made a regular appearance.  True, he had had a few
girlfriends.  He had even managed to get himself laid a few times
earlier in his senior year.  But those girls had all been younger
than him and only marginal in the physical attractive department
themselves.  Vickie - despite her annoying traits - was a very
attractive woman, the kind of woman he masturbated thinking about
but knew he would never have.  In the universe as Eric saw it,
hot 26 year olds did not toss sexually provocative innuendo at
awkward 18 year olds.


Nevertheless, the very thought, coupled with the views and
tactile sensations he'd experienced earlier, now had his cock as
rigid as steel and demanding some sort of release.  Every few
moments he would let his hand stray down to the bulge it had
caused in his jeans and he would rub it a little, making it even
harder and more demanding.  Finally, unable to take anymore, he
put his microbiology text in the background on his computer
screen and stood up so he could close the blinds on his window
and then lay down and lube his missile to the thought of Vickie's
naked body.  Before he got halfway across the room, however,
there was a warning chirp from his computer.


"Son of a bitch," he muttered, looking over at the screen.  Sure
enough, it was now showing a warning screen sent to it by the
Placer County Department of Civil Defense.


AIR RAID WARNING, the text read.  FEDERAL CIVIL DEFENSE RADAR
STATIONS REPORT A LARGE FLIGHT OF ENEMY PLANES EMERGING FROM THE
SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS NEAR GRASS VALLEY AND MOVING SOUTHWEST
TOWARDS THE ROSEVILLE/ROCKLIN/PENRYN AREA.  TARGET UNKNOWN.  ALL
CIVILIANS REPORT TO DESIGNATED SHELTERS OR TAKE COVER IF NONE
AVAILABLE.  REMAIN UNDER COVER UNTIL AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES AFTER
THE ALL CLEAR IS SOUNDED.


No sooner had he finished reading the text than the sound of the
air raid sirens began, swelling up from the north and east of
him, the relatively slow speed of sound making the cyclic rise
and fall of the various transmitters uncoordinated.


"Static," Eric muttered, continuing his walk to the window.  He
opened it up, letting in the cold wind and a few raindrops.  His
view faced to the west, towards the rail yard.  At the moment,
nothing was visible, but that would probably change.  The Chinese
were bombing the rail yard again.  There was no other target in
the vicinity that a "large flight of enemy planes" would be going
after.  He had been through this many times before and had no
plans to leave his bedroom.  There were no designated air-raid
shelters in the neighborhood.  They were just a little too
expensive to build.  The nearest one was at the high school, more
than three miles away.  The planes would be overhead in a matter
of minutes.  He was just as safe in his bedroom as he would be
anywhere.  If it was his time to die, than it was his time to
die.  His attitude was quite typical of those who lived near
frequently bombed targets.


The sound of jet engines began to fill the air a moment later,
rising up from the south and gradually becoming louder and louder
until they drowned out all other sounds.  They passed almost
directly overhead and began to fade.  Those, Eric knew, would be
American F-22s of the California Air Guard, flying from their
base at McClellan Field and heading to intercept the incoming
Chinese planes.  Typically they would shoot down a few of them
(sending them crashing into some residential neighborhood or a
strip mall) but their effectiveness was limited by the
difficulties in finding an enemy who was flying at 500 miles per
hour less than 500 feet over the rooftops.


Just as the sound of the planes faded completely away, the hollow
thumping of AAA guns somewhere off to the east filled the night.
These were the flak guns, which sent up 37-millimeter shells that
burst in front of the enemy. Their effectiveness was somewhat
limited as well, usually only accounting for a plane or two each
raid.  The booming was punctuated by occasional bursts of the
smaller caliber AA guns, which were either radar, infrared, or
optically guided.  It was one such gun that had fired the bullet
that had killed his father.


 From out the window a bright flash of light suddenly rose up
from the direction of the rail yard and streaked out across the
sky.  It was a surface-to-air missile, fired from one of the many
launchers aligned to protect the yard.  It was followed by
another and then two more in rapid succession.  They were gone
from view long before the roar of their rocket engines thundered
into the house, rattling the windows.


There were a few moments of relative silence and then the AAA
guns in the yard itself opened up all at once.  Dozens of heavy
caliber shells flew over the top of the neighborhood, bursting
over the houses in spectacular red blooms, putting a virtual
curtain of flak in the path of the enemy planes. The booming of
the exploding shells was a deep, almost ominous sound, and was
followed by the pattering of shell fragments that came down like
rain all over the roofs and sidewalks, that plunked into swimming
pools and even came down chimneys on occasion.  It was an
experience both beautiful and terrifying, like a thunderstorm or
a tornado.


Suddenly there was a bright flash that lit up the entire sky for
a second or two.  It was followed a few seconds later by a huge
explosion from the south - an explosion large enough to shake the
house in its foundation.  A plane had just been shot down
somewhere fairly close by - within a block or two by the sound of
it.  Whether it was an American plane or a Chinese one, whether
it had been an air-to-air missile or a flak gun that had felled
it, Eric didn't know and didn't care.  His only concern was that
it hadn't hit his house and snuffed out his life.


The sound of multiple jet engines began to swell up again from
the south. Eric had been through enough air raids to identify
them as F-15s by the sound alone.  The old American designed
fighter/bombers the Chinese used had a higher-pitched whine than
the more modern F-22 engines.  The sound grew louder and louder
until once again the entire house was shaking from the vibration.
 From the direction of the rail yard, dozens of red tracer
streams suddenly erupted, probing upward into the night, waving
back and forth, seeking out the offending aircraft.  Some moved
smoothly with the mechanical precision of radar or infrared
guidance.  Most moved jerkily, bespeaking a human hand guiding
them.


The planes passed almost directly over the house, climbing upward
towards their attack altitude.  Eric caught the barest glimpse of
a few of them before they disappeared into the rainy night.  The
jet sounds began to fade just as the flashes of multiple
explosions lit up the western sky.  This was followed by a few
huge fireballs that blew upward over rooftop level - obviously
tanker cars or ammunition cars blown up by the bombs.


"Here comes the fun part," Eric said, holding onto the window
frame and bracing himself for the concussions he knew were on the
way.  Experience told him it would take about twenty seconds for
them to arrive.


They were right on schedule, solid thumps that slammed into the
house at the speed of sound, shaking it as if an earthquake were
going on, rattling windows, knocking loose objects from shelves.
One after the other they slammed in, occasionally punctuated by
larger, heavier concussions created by the secondary explosions
at the yard.  They reached a furious peak for a few moments,
hammering into his chest with nearly enough force to drive the
breath from his lungs.  Behind him, on his desk, a stack of CD
cases fell over and clattered to the floor, as did the glass of
ice water he'd been sipping.  Then, abruptly, they fell off,
becoming sporadic and then ceasing entirely except for the
occasional secondary explosion.  The AA guns stopped firing and
the flak stopped pattering on the roof.  The sound of jet engines
faded.  Except for the continued glow of some horrendous fire off
to the west, the night went back to its normal self.


As if to make this point, the computer chirped again and the
message proclaiming the air raid warning was at an end flashed on
the screen.  The sirens began to sound again, this time with the
all-clear signal.  While they were still cycling upward the sound
of the doorbell began to chime from downstairs, not just a single
chime, but over and over, in a frantic manner.


"What now?" he said, annoyed.  It would have to be Vickie.  No
one else would ring the doorbell at night, especially not with
that panicky, frantic pushing.  She probably had a window that
had jammed from the concussions, or a fucking light bulb that had
burned out and needed to be changed.  And just as he had thought
he was going to be able to settle down and start whacking off.


He went downstairs, passing a few loose objects that had fallen
off shelves and making a note to pick them up later so his mom
didn't have a goddamned bitch-fit about it when she got home
tomorrow.  The doorbell was still ringing away like mad and,
unmindful of the consequences, he yelled out, "I'm coming, for
God's sake! Quit ringing the goddamned bell!"


The ringing stopped and he finished his trek to the front door,
undoing the deadbolt lock and throwing it open.  "What's..." he
started, and then stopped as he saw the state of his visitor.  It
was Vickie all right, just as he'd figured, but she was dressed
in nothing but a short robe that was tied loosely and carelessly
around her waist.  The top of the robe was flapping open,
allowing him to see most of her bare breasts beneath.  He
couldn't quite make out the nipples but he knew if she turned her
body one way or the other he would.  She was soaking wet from the
rain and had wet plaster dust smeared across her face and arms
and in her hair.


Before he had a chance to get properly aroused by her appearance,
she screamed a sentence at him that chilled him to the bone. 
"There's a bomb in my living room!"


"A... a bomb?" he asked, his eyes widening.  "You mean... like
from an airplane?"


"Yes," she said, terrified.  "It came crashing through the
ceiling while I was taking a bath.  It buried itself in the
living room floor!"


"Jesus," Eric said, feeling real fear now.  Unexploded bombs were
as much a problem in Roseville as they had ever been in London
during The Blitz.  They fell from shot down aircraft, or were
dropped and failed to detonate for whatever reason.  Most of the
time they were successfully defused by the Placer County
Sheriff's Department's bomb squad.  But sometimes they detonated
before the bomb squad could get there.  If Vickie indeed had a
500lb bomb sitting in her living room, then every neighbor within
500 meters was in imminent danger.   "Did you call 911 and tell
them?"


"No," she said, shaking her head wildly.  "I just ran out of the
house.  Oh my God, I didn't know what to do!"


"John is still over there with it?" he asked.


"Yes... I mean... well... yes," she blubbered.  "Oh God, Eric. 
We need to get rid of it."


"We need to get you husband out of there first," he said,
stepping out onto the porch.  "Come on."


"But... but..."


"He's your fucking husband!" Eric yelled at her.  "Come on. 
Let's get him out of there and then we'll call 911 from over
here."  And then get the fuck on down the road, he didn't add.


Reluctantly she followed him across the wet, muddy lawn and up to
the front door of her house.  The door was still standing wide
open and he approached it carefully, peering inside, expecting to
be obliterated at any instance. He saw immediately the ordinance
of which she spoke.  It was a gray, cylindrical object, about ten
feet in length, although it was hard to be sure since the first
third of it was buried in the floor.  It was maybe six inches
wide.  Fins, which had been bent and distorted from its fall,
adorned the tail end of it, as did a section of what appeared to
be the mounting bracket that had held it onto the plane.  On the
cover was an American flag. Stenciled in black was AIM-9J.  Eric
breathed a big sigh of relief as he saw this.  "It's not a bomb,"
he told Vickie, who was pushing nervously up against his back.


"What do you mean it's not a bomb?" she yelled.  "It came
crashing through my fucking ceiling and buried in my floor."


"Its an air-to-air missile," he said.  "It came off one of our
planes."


"I don't give a shit whose fucking plane it came off of, it's in
the middle of my goddamned living room!"


"Yes," he said patiently, "but it's not a bomb.  It's a missile
designed to shoot down other planes.  It doesn't have that much
explosive in it, just some fuel and a small warhead."


"Can it blow up my fucking house or can it not blow up my fucking
house?" she screamed, approaching hysterics now.


He had to concede that she had a point.  "Well," he told her, "it
could make a pretty good hole, I suppose.  Let's go get John and
get him over to my house.  We'll call the cops from there and
they'll come and take it away."


"I'm not going in there," she said, shaking her head.


"You're husband is in there," Eric hissed at her.  "We need to
get him out."


"He's not my husband," she spat.  "He's a piece of meat that the
fucking government threw into the meat grinder and then sent back
to me to take care of.  A piece of meat that shits himself twice
a day and has to have his fucking neck tube suctioned every
hour!"


Eric was appalled by her words, too young to understand the
contempt that caregivers often develop for their family - no
matter how much they once loved them - when forced to nurse them
with no hope of recovery.  He resisted the urge to slap her
across the face and tried a different verbal argument instead. 
"He's a war hero," he told her.  "If you leave him in there to
die, they'll arrest you.  Now lets go get him out of there."


This seemed to get through.  "Okay," she said, her eyes looking
at the missile in terror.  "Let's do it quick."


They did it quick, easing past the missile in the living room and
under the hole in the ceiling it had caused.  They went into the
back bedroom, where a cheap hospital bed - provided by the VA -
had been set up.  John was snoring away, sleeping the sleep of a
man who had been given sedatives so his wife wouldn't have to get
up in the middle of the night with him.  He was naked except for
the blue diaper.  They wrestled him into his wheelchair and
Vickie threw a blanket over the top of him.  She grabbed his
suction machine and, together, they wheeled him back through the
living room and out into the night, going down the sidewalk and
up Eric's driveway.  Once in the house they parked him in the
living room, where he continued to snore away.


Eric went to the phone.  "I'll call the cops," he said.  "They
should be here in a few minutes to get rid of it."


"Thank God," Vickie snorted, sitting on the couch.


Eric had to swallow as he caught the briefest glimpse up the hem
of her robe as she sat down.  He saw most of her sexy legs and
had the fleeting impression that he might've seen a patch of
black pubic hair.  He tore his eyes away and picked up the
cordless phone to dial 911.


An automated machine answered his call for help, telling him that
all dispatchers were currently busy and his call would be
answered as quickly as possible.  He muttered curses for the
better part of three minutes before a faceless, monotone woman
finally asked him what the emergency was.


"My neighbor has an air-to-air missile in her living room," he
explained. "It came down on the..."


"Okay," she interrupted.  "Let me transfer you to the bomb
disposal unit."


There was a click, followed by a recorded voice imploring him to
buy war bonds for the good of the country.  This was followed by
another voice asking him to volunteer his time with one of the
many civic groups in the greater Roseville area.  At last a male
voice, gruff and businesslike, came on the line.  "Sergeant
Jenkins," he said.  "Placer County BDU.  I understand you are
calling to report some unexploded ordinance?"


"Yes," Eric said.  "It's a..."


"I'm showing you at 3405 Hickory Avenue in Roseville," he cut in.
 "Is that correct?"


"Yes, but..."


"Is that where the bomb is?"


"No, its next door, at 3407, but its not a..."


"What does the bomb look like, son?" he interrupted again.  "I
need to know if it's intact, broken into pieces, still burning,
or what?"


"Well, like I was trying to say, its not a bomb exactly, it's
a..."


"What the hell do you mean, it's not a bomb?" he said, almost
angrily. "Boy, this is the bomb disposal unit, you understand
that?  Now do you got a bomb or don't you?"


"It's a missile," he said.  "A Sidewinder.  It came down in my
neighbor's living room during the air raid."


"A Sidewinder?" he asked.  "Are you sure, boy?"


"I'm sure," he said.  "It has an American flag and says AIM-9J on
the side of it."


"That's a Sidewinder all right," Jenkins said, his voice softer
now.  "It's not on fire or anything is it?"


"No," Eric told him.  "It's just sticking out of the floor."


"All right," he said.  "I've got you logged down on the list. 
Evacuate that house and we'll have somebody by there either
tomorrow or Saturday to defuse it and get it out of there for
you."


"Tomorrow or Saturday?" Eric said, wondering if he'd heard
correctly.  The BDU was one of those public service agencies with
legendary status, like the police and fire department.  They were
supposed to drop everything and respond immediately when called.


"That's correct, son," Jenkins told him.  "Now if there's nothing
else, I've got some other calls pending."


"Well... uh... you mean you just want us to leave the missile
there for two days?" he asked incredulously.


"It's only an air-to-air missile, son," he said.  "It has about
eighty pounds of explosive in it.  That poses a danger only to
your neighbor's house and nothing else.  Meanwhile, as I'm sure
you noticed, we just had a major air raid pass over Roseville and
plaster the train yards.  We shot down five Chink planes while
they were on the way to the target, all of which had a full load
of bombs that needs to be dealt with.  Those bombs threaten
entire neighborhoods so they have to get priority, you
understand?"


"I guess so," he said.


"I'm glad we're on the same page," Jenkins said.  "Now you keep
everyone out of that house until we get there and everything will
be just fine, okay?"


"Okay," he said.  "But what about..." He never got a chance to
finish his sentence.  The moment the "okay" had come out of his
mouth, Jenkins had hung up.  "Asshole," Eric muttered, putting
the phone down.


"They're not going to come tonight?" asked Vickie, who had been
listening in from the couch.


"No," he said.  "They say it's not a priority since it's only an
air-to-air missile."  He shook his head.  "I should've pretended
I didn't know what it was."


"That's okay, Eric," she said with a sigh, wiping at the plaster
dust on her face.  "It's not your fault.  But what am I supposed
to do now?  There's a hole in my ceiling and a missile in my
living room.  I can't go back to my house."


Eric looked over at her.  She had crossed her legs at some point
but she was still showing a lot of thigh.  "I guess you can stay
here until they get rid of it," he told her, the idea suddenly
not seeming as repugnant as he might have thought earlier.


She didn't even bother with token protests.  "Thanks, Eric," she
said gratefully and then looked down at herself.  "My God, look
at me.  I'm a mess.  And I don't have anything to wear but this
filthy robe.  And John doesn't have any of his clothes either, or
his medicine."


"Why don't we just put John in the spare bedroom," he suggested.
"He can... uh... sleep in a regular bed, right?"


She nodded.  "He doesn't move around much, especially not when
he's juiced up on the Haldol."


"We'll find some way to get him some clothes tomorrow.  It looks
like maybe he'll fit into some of mine."  His old ones, he did
not add.  There was no way in hell that he was going to volunteer
his newer clothes.


"What about me?" she asked.  "What am I going to wear?  I don't
have any bras, any underwear, nothing."


That one was going to be a little harder.  His mother was a large
woman, standing 5-10 and nearly sixty pounds overweight.  None of
her clothing would fit Vickie's petite frame.  "We'll have to get
you something new tomorrow," he suggested, knowing, even as he
said it, that his mother would volunteer to buy it for her.  "In
the meantime... well... maybe you can wear some of my clothes
too.  You know, like a shirt or something?"


She smiled.  "I guess that will get me through the night," she
said softly. "Do you think that maybe I could take a shower?  I'm
filthy."


"Sure," he said.  "Let's get John set up in the spare room and
then you can use the downstairs shower."


+++++


Eric felt somewhat dirty after tooling around in the rain and
helping wrestle John into the spare bed.  So, after finding
Vickie a shirt to wear - he had reluctantly given her one of his
longest ones instead of a shorter version that would have showed
more leg - he took the time to take a quick shower himself,
utilizing the upstairs bathroom.  When he emerged into the living
room, now wearing a clean pair of sweatpants and a plain white
T-shirt, he heard the water still running in the downstairs bath.
 He spent a pleasant moment envisioning Vickie's nakedness behind
the door but stopped when it started to produce an erection. 
Instead, he sat down on the couch and turned on the television,
flipping through the channels until he found a rerun of Idaho
Platoon, the teen-oriented war drama series that followed the
adventures of the fictional Lieutenant Mike Smith and his men on
the battlefront.


Vickie emerged from the bathroom about fifteen minutes later, his
San Francisco 49rs shirt covering her body. He lost all interest
in the television when he saw the braless jiggling of her
breasts.  The hem of the shirt fell to about mid-thigh on her,
allowing him to see her sexy legs as well.  Her hair was wet and
falling over her shoulders.  She was carrying one of his mother's
brushes in her hand.  She came and sat next to him on the couch,
ignoring the easy chair that sat right next to it.  Eric felt the
stirrings of an erection again as his mind continued to remind
him that she was completely naked beneath the shirt.  Nothing but
skin!


"I hope your mom doesn't mind me using her brush," she told him
as she began to run it through her hair.


"Uh... ummm, no, I... uh wouldn't think she would," he stammered,
his eyes now locked onto the junction of her arm and her
shoulder.  As she brushed her hair the armhole of the shirt would
open up at the top of each stroke, allowing a quick flash of her
left breast.


"Are you okay?" she asked, looking at him with concern.


He nodded quickly.  "Yes," he said.  "Perfectly fine."


She smiled and went back to brushing.  He continued to look at
her exposed breast out of the corner of his eye.  He caught brief
glimpses of the actual nipple twice, when she raised her arm for
a particularly high stroke.  He finally forced himself to look
away when the front of his sweats actually began to tent outward.
 What would Vickie think if she saw he was getting a hard-on from
looking at her?  She would probably call him a sick pervert,
stomp off to bed, and then tell his mother when she came home
tomorrow evening.  Eventually, grudgingly, the blood left his
penis and returned to other duties in his body.  He breathed a
sigh of relief that was mixed with just a hint of regret.


Vickie finished brushing out her hair and then turned somewhat
morose as she watched Lieutenant Smith and the boys fighting
their way towards a Chinese machine-gun nest.  When one of the
nameless platoon members whose purpose was to die honorably did
just that (after making an inspiring throes-of-death speech, of
course), she turned her head aside and shook it.


"Do you really like this show?" she asked him.


He shrugged in the way of teenagers, although in truth he thought
Idaho Platoon was the best fucking thing on television.  "Its all
right," he said.


"It's glorifying this stupid war," she said.  "They're making it
look like going to the line is fun, adventurous, and that if
you're the main character you'll never die.  Its nothing but
propaganda."


He shrugged again.  "I don't take it too seriously," he said,
although, in truth, he longed to be just like Lieutenant Smith
someday, a badass combat veteran who knew how to lead troops
against those Godless, fascist chinks who had invaded his
country.


"This stupid war," she said again.  "Look what its done to us,
Eric.  Look how its messed up our lives.  Your father is dead and
your mother is working in a goddamned factory.  You're probably
going to end up waiving your college deferment because you
believe all the bullshit they put on TV and the Internet and in
those video games about serving your country.  And me..." Her
voice took on a particularly bitter tone.  "Look at what's
happened to me.  When this whole thing started I was a newlywed
who had just married the man of my dreams.  I was just about to
finish up my bachelor's degree and start going after my teaching
credential.  I'd be working in my dream job now if it wasn't for
this damn war, instead, where am I?  My husband is nothing but a
piece of meat, I barely get enough money to live on, I can't go
to school, and now, I'm taking shelter in the neighbor's house
because there's a goddamned missile sticking out of my living
room floor and no one wants to come get rid of it."


She started to cry, her chest hitching in sorrow, large tears
running down her cheeks.  Eric watched her, feeling
uncomfortable, unsure what to do. Should he try to comfort her? 
Should he just pretend he didn't notice what was going on?  He
was only eighteen years old.  He didn't know how to deal with
this kind of shit.


Vickie took matters into her own hand.  "Will you hold me, Eric?"
she asked pitifully.  "I really need a shoulder to cry on
tonight."


"Uh... sure," he said, turning towards her.


She came to him, putting her arms around him, nestling her head
into his shoulder, and her crying picked up in intensity until
she was sobbing her heart out.  He eased his own arms onto her
back, patting her in what he hoped was a consoling manner. 
Despite her tears and anguish, he couldn't help but enjoy the
soft feel of her against him.  He could feel the press of those
breasts on his chest again, could feel the hot sting of her tears
soaking into his shirt, could smell the intoxicating aroma of her
freshly washed hair in his nose.  And the knowledge that she was
naked under that shirt remained at the forefront of his thoughts.
 Those breasts he was feeling had nothing but a thin layer of
cotton atop them.  His penis began to fill with blood again, this
time rapidly, insistently, in such a way that he knew he wasn't
going to be able to will it back down.  Within seconds it was as
hard as a rail spike, sticking straight out from his body and
putting a tent in his sweats that would be all too obvious if
Vickie happened to glance down and look at it.


Her crying went on for the better part of five minutes before
gradually trailing off into occasional hitches and sobs.  At
last, it seemed at an end but she did not release her embrace. 
On the contrary, she seemed to hold tighter to him, pressing more
firmly against his body.  Her hands were now making slow circuits
up and down his back, caressing him through his shirt. He
continued to pat her consolingly and continued to worry she would
see the effect she was having on his cock.  But when she finally
pulled her head away from his shoulder she didn't even glance
down.  Instead, she looked at his face, her eyes sparkling with a
strange expression.


"Will you kiss me, Eric?" she whispered to him.


"Kuh... Kuh... kiss you?"


"Just a little one?" she asked.  "It's been so long since I've
been kissed by a man.  So long."


"Uh... well... I guess," he said nervously, feeling himself start
to tremble in her arms.


She gave a brief smile and then angled her head forward.  Her
soft, wet lips touched his, lingering there for two or three
seconds.  He returned the kiss instinctively, thrills of
excitement shooting through him.


"Nice," she said, her tongue licking at her lips.  "Maybe just
one more?"


"Okay," he told her, moving his own face forward this time.


Their lips came together again, with a little more firmness. 
They slid back and forth just the tiniest bit, holding against
one another a little longer. They parted and looked at each
other, both of them breathing a little heavier than normal now. 
By unspoken consent they came together again, this time with more
passion, with more sliding.  Her mouth opened just a little and
the tip of her tongue shot out, touching his upper lip, his lower
lip, and then darting just barely into his mouth.  He touched it
with the tip of his own tongue and the contact was electric, as
if a charge had been allowed to ground.  Her tongue shot out
again, this time going well into his mouth. Her swirled his
together with it, tasting her, letting her taste him. Finally
they broke apart, a small string of their mixed saliva stretching
between them and finally breaking.


"You're a good kisser," she said, her fingers still rubbing up
and down his back.


"Thanks," he replied, licking his own lips now.  "You too."


"I want to kiss you some more.  Is that okay?"


He nodded.  "Yes."


Their faces came back together, their tongues probing back out. 
Soon the kisses lost all vestiges of being for comfort and took
on the unmistakable air of passion.  Vickie probed deeply with
her tongue, driving it beneath his upper lip, caressing every
nook and cranny of the inside of his mouth. She sucked on the tip
of his tongue playfully and then on his upper and lower lips,
making them swell.  Her hands moved faster up and down his back,
her nails scratching at him erotically.


He let his left hand trail downward, across her hip and down to
the bottom of the T-shirt, until he was touching the bare skin of
her outer thigh.  It was soft and smooth under his fingertips,
the texture richly feminine.  He hesitated there, not moving his
hand up or down, unsure whether he should. But again, Vickie
solved the problem for him.


"Go ahead," she whispered, speaking less than an inch from his
mouth. "Touch me.  Touch me anywhere you want."


A groan escaped from his mouth at her words, a tremor working its
way through his body.  She wanted him to touch her!  She was
inviting him to touch her!  This 26-year-old woman wanted to feel
his hands on her!


He wasted no time, fearing she might have a change of heart any
second.  He slid his hand upward, beneath the hem of the shirt,
over her bare hip this time and then up across her flank.  Soon
he had her right breast in his palm.  It was soft and firm at the
same time, larger than the breasts of his previous girlfriends,
the nipple - which was standing up proudly - much bigger as well.
 It felt like heaven, like shaking hands with God.  He squeezed
it gently at first, marveling that this was actually Vickie's
tit, and then with a little more force.  Vickie moaned at the
contact, pushed her chest into him to encourage his exploration.


He felt the other breast while they continued to tongue kiss each
other.  He then began to move his hand downward, across the
flatness of her belly.  He played with her belly button for a
moment and then moved a little lower, onto the soft skin of her
lower stomach.  Unsure of himself, he slowed his advance here,
trailing his fingers southward millimeter by millimeter.  When he
touched the first smattering of her pubic bush he stopped, unable
to force himself to go on.


Again, it was Vickie's encouragement that moved things along. 
She opened her legs when she felt him stop his trek and moved her
mouth to the side of his neck.  "It's okay," she whispered in his
ear.  "You can touch me there, too.  I want you to."


She started kissing and licking at his neck as he moved his
fingers through her pubic hair on onto her slit.  She was very
wet, saturated even.  Her lips were slippery and swollen under
his fingertips, her clitoris sticking up and demanding attention.
 He let the tip of his middle finger probe into her hot wetness
and she moaned at the intrusion.  He slid it in further and felt
her muscles clenching at him, trying to draw him in.  He added
his index finger alongside of it and pushed further, until both
were buried to the second knuckle.


"Ohhhh, yessss," Vickie moaned, her pelvis pushing upwards
against him.  "Do you feel how wet I am Eric?  Do you feel it?"


"Yesss," he answered, his mouth dry with passion.


"You did that to me," she said, nipping at the skin of his neck.
"You made me that wet."


He was unable to answer her, his verbal circuits seemingly
overridden by passion and lust.  He began to pump his fingers in
and out of her, slowly and then a little faster.  She moaned
again and stuck the tip of her tongue in his ear.  He could smell
her now, the unmistakable odor of aroused musk. He had smelled
such a thing before but never this strong, this demanding. This
was the smell of a full-grown woman in sexual heat, not a
sixteen-year-old girl.


He felt her shift a little beneath him and then suddenly her hand
was on the waistband of his sweats, her fingers probing beneath.
She began to tug on them, trying to pull them down.


"I want to feel you," she moaned.  "Oh God, its been so long
since I held a hard cock in my hand."


He raised his hips up a little bit, allowing her the room to push
his sweats and underwear down.  His cock popped out, swollen and
ready for action.  Her fingers closed around it, stroking it up
and down a few times experimentally.  Her moans told him she
liked what she was feeling.


"Yessss," she said, stroking it up and down, her fingertips
smearing the pre-cum around the tip and then darting down to feel
his dangling testicles. "Oh God, yessss!"


She shifted beneath him again, until she was lying on her back,
her legs spread wide.  She reached down and pulled the hem of the
shirt upward to just below her breast, baring her pussy to his
view.  Her pubic hair was thick on the top but trimmed around the
lips.  The lips themselves were an angry red color and spread
widely around his fingers.


"Fuck me!" she told him, demanded of him.  "Put your cock in me
and fuck me! I need it, Eric!  Oh God do I need it!"


He was trembling like a paint shaker now, his emotions in
turmoil.  Never before had anything like this ever happened to
him.  His previous sexual encounters had all been rather tame in
comparison, occurring only after hours, or even days of
frustrating build-up.  No female had ever demanded he fuck her
before.  Nervousness, fear, guilt, and lust all battled for top
billing.  Lust came away the easy winner of course.  He pushed
his sweats and underwear down below his knees and climbed between
her legs.  He took his cock in hand and aimed it towards those
swollen lips.  When the tip made contact, Vickie moaned and
thrust her pelvis upward, sucking the head inside.  She then put
her hands on his ass and pulled.  He sank into her tight sheath
in one smooth stroke.


"Ohhhhhhh," both moaned simultaneously.


He pulled out and then pushed back in, burying himself in her
body.  He felt his balls nestled against the warmth of her ass. 
He ground a little, relishing the feel of her tightness, of her
wetness, of her heat.


"Yes, baby," she moaned, her fingers squeezing his ass, her
tongue licking at his neck.  "Fuck Vickie, Fuck Vickie hard!"


He started to push and pull, driving himself into her body and
then nearly withdrawing only to do it again.  She groaned with
every stroke he offered and her experienced body fucked back at
him, her pelvis rising and falling to meat each thrust.  This was
another new experience for him.  The girls he'd done it with
before had just lain there, unmoving, almost non-participants in
the act.  Vickie was fucking him, was squeezing at him with her
muscles, licking at him with her mouth, thrusting at him with her
body.  The sensation was incredible, almost more than he could
bear, especially since he was not wearing a condom and was able
to feel everything with much more intensity.  He knew he would
not last long as this pace, a matter of seconds and no more. 
Already he could feel his body wanting to cum, to blast his sperm
deep inside of her.


He tried to slow his pace but Vickie would have none of it.


"No," she said, fucking back harder at him, grunting a little
with the exertion.  "Don't slow down!  Fuck me hard!  Pound me!"


"Oh God," he grunted, feeling the wheels of orgasm kick up
another notch, now nearing the point of no return.  "Vickie, I
have to slow down... or... or... I'm..."


"It's okay," she told him, giving an extra-hard squeeze of his
ass.  "Just let it go!  Cum in me, baby!  Shoot your cum in my
nasty little cunt!"


Her filthy words - the likes of which he'd never heard come out
of her  (or any other female's) mouth before - didn't just push
him over the edge, but rocketed him clean to the other side.  A
sound came out of his mouth unbidden, a cross between a moan and
a cry of passion.  Pleasure suddenly exploded through his groin,
building up quickly to an almost agonizing level of intensity. 
His thrusts became erratic, spastic even.  His balls slapped
brutally against her ass.  The first jet of cum shot out of his
body at what seemed the speed of light, its heat blasting deep
inside of Vickie's body.


"Oh yessss!" Vickie moaned as she felt it.  "Oh fuck yes!"


He continued to rut against her, blasting jet after jet of cum,
until it overfilled her wet pussy and dribbled out on the couch.


Slowly, he came to a halt and collapsed against her.  He felt
ashamed of himself for such a pathetic performance.  It couldn't
have lasted more than two minutes.  But Vickie didn't seem to
care.  She held him tightly, kissing the side of his face, his
neck his ears, whispering how great he had made her feel. 
Finally, he lifted his head and looked at her.


"I'm sorry," he said.


"For what?" she asked.  "You just made me feel like a woman
again.  After all this time, I got myself good and fucked."


He swallowed nervously, still a little shocked at her crude
words.  "But... but... you didn't... uh... you know..."


"Cum?" she asked, her eyes twinkling again.


"Well... yeah."


She kissed the tip of his nose.  "I will," she told him. 
"Believe me, I have every intention of cumming, as soon as I get
you back in the game."


"Back in the game?" he asked, having no idea what she was talking
about.


He soon found out.  She squirmed her way out from beneath him and
told him to roll over.  He did so, his sweats and underwear still
wrapped around his feet.  Vickie quickly rectified this, pulling
them off and tossing them over her shoulder.  She then took his
wilted, wet, sticky cock in her hand and began to squeeze it.


"We'll get him back up," she said slyly.  "I have utter faith in
the resilience of youth."


"Wow," Eric muttered, his eyes wide.  She wanted to do it again?
Right now? He had never imagined such a thing.


She stroked him up and down for a minute or so, until the blood
began to flow its way back into him.  She then gave him one last
saucy smiled and lowered her head to his lap.  She took his cock
in her mouth, deep throating him in one quick, smooth motion. 
His breathing momentarily stopped as he saw this, as he felt it.
Never before had his cock been in a female's mouth.  She was
actually sucking his dick!


"Mmmm," she said as she slurped her way back upward.  "God I love
that taste.  Your cum and my pussy all mixed together.  You know
what it tastes like?"


"No," he said, hoping he wasn't going to have to find out.


"It tastes like sex," she said.  "Hot, steamy, stinky, sex
between a man and a woman.  Do you know how long it's been since
I've smelled it, since I've tasted it?  Mmmmm, now I'm gonna
feast on it.  I'm gonna lick every drop up."  She then began to
lick his shaft up and down, back and forth.  Her tongue swirled
around the tip, gathering up every drop.  She took his balls into
her mouth, one by one, gathering all the juices that had clung
there. She licked him until he was shiny and clean.  And of
course, by that time, he was hard as steel once again.


"Now its time for Vickie to cum," she told him, standing up.


"Uh... okay," he said, watching as she lifted the T-shirt over
her head and took it off.


She swung one leg over him, straddling his body, facing forward,
her pussy rubbing against his revived cock.  She rubbed it back
and forth a few times and then sank down on him, engulfing him in
her tightness once again.  She sighed as he penetrated.


"Oh yes," she said.  "That feels nice."  She looked him directly
in the eye. "I'm gonna fuck you now, sweetie.  I'm gonna fuck you
hard and fast and I'm gonna cum all over your ocock.  Are you
ready?"


Words abandoned him once more.  This was far beyond his
experience.  He nodded.


She put her hands on his shoulders and began to rise and fall
against him, her wet pussy sliding up and down his shaft, pushing
and pulling.  At the bottom of each stroke she would grind her
pubis against his.  Each grind made her grunt in pleasure.  She
kept the pace even at first but gradually began to move faster,
to grind harder.  Her face contorted into a grimace of
concentrated pleasure.  She began to sweat, the drops falling
from her face and onto his.


"My tits," she told him.  "Put your hands on my tits!  Be rough
with them!"


Obediently, he grabbed her breasts, one in each hand.  He
squeezed them, felt them, jiggled them back and forth.


"Oh yes!" she moaned, grinding even faster.  "Fuck yes!  Do you
like to feel Vickie fucking your cock?  Do you like it?"


"Yes," he grunted, his own pelvis now rising up to meet her
downstrokes.


"Do you wanna feel Vickie cum all your cock?" she asked him.  "Is
that what you want?"


"Yes!"


"I'm gonna... gonna do it," she panted.  "Oh God, I can feel it!"


Her pelvis became a blur, rising and falling so fast and with
such power that it felt almost dangerous.  There was a wet
slapping sound with each stroke and he could feel her juices
pouring down onto his balls and upper thighs.  A strange mewling
sound began to come from her mouth and her face contorted even
more, into a grimace that almost looked like pain.


"Ohhhhhhh, Fuccccckkkkkkkkkk!" she suddenly cried, leaning down
and driving her tongue into his mouth while her pelvis continued
to mash up and down. She kissed him frantically, desperately as
her orgasm had its way with her, not stopping until the last
spasm was gone.


Now it was she who collapsed atop of him.  He held her tightly,
feeling the hammering of her chest against him, hearing her
breath tearing in and out of her lungs.  She lay still against
him for a few more minutes, until his cock started to wilt a
little.  Finally she looked up.


"Take me to your bed," she said gently.  "I want you to cum in me
again, but I want to do it in a man's bed."


"Uh... okay," he said, weakly.


She shook her head at him.  "Don't think right now, Eric," she
said.  "It's not the time for thinking.  They'll be plenty of
time for that tomorrow. Right now, just take me to your bed and
make love to me and then let me fall asleep in your arms.  Let
tomorrow take care of tomorrow."


"Okay," he said, with more conviction this time.


They got up and went upstairs.  They didn't think about tomorrow.
 After all, what would be the point?  Tomorrow might not even
come.


Al Steiner

2-13-04

------- ASSM Moderation System Notice--------
This post has been reformatted by the ASSM
Moderation Team due to inadequate formatting.

-- 
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: <ckought69@hotmail.com>|
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderators: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|ASSM Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> |
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+