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Message-ID: <28551asstr$980370605@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Al Steiner" <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 01:47:57 EST
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner - Ch 12 (FF, MF, nc) 1/2
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 16:10:05 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

AFTERMATH
By Al Steiner
CHAPTER 12 PART 1 OF 2
Send all comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Previous chapters can be found at www.storiesonline.net





"Don't let anyone try to fault you Bracken," Barnes said as he puffed on a
cigar.  "You did the right thing by aborting the mission.  It may not be
glorious to turn away from a fight, but you stayed within our doctrine and
brought everyone home."

"Yes sir," Bracken said, sipping from a bottle of beer and taking a puff of
his own stogy.  "Some of the other men wanted to push ahead anyway, but I
figured a forty percent casualty rate was a conservative estimate for that
kind of operation.  That's just way too high."

"I would've skinned you alive if you would've got half your people killed,"
Barnes assured him.  "If any of those men give you any shit about it, you
have them come talk to me.  I'll straighten them out."

"Yes sir."

They were in Bracken's modest house, just down the hill from the high
school.  It was the first evening since the return of the company from their
broken mission.  Though he had already been given an official debriefing
that afternoon, Barnes had invited himself over for dinner so he could get a
more informal view on the Garden Hill situation.  Though most of the town
ate community meals at pre-set times in the high school cafeteria, those in
Barnes' inner circle, which Bracken certainly was, were privileged with a
certain amount of personal groceries from the stock each week.  Utilizing
these groceries, Jean and Anna, two of his wives, had prepared a stroganoff
dish out of dry noodles and canned beef.  The remains of it were now
littering the dinner table where the two men sat.

"I must say," Barnes told his newest official captain (that news had been
the first offered that evening) as he patted his stomach, "your bitches
surely did a good job on dinner."

"Thank you sir," Bracken replied, pleased with the praise.  Though both Anna
and Jean were hovering nearby, one clearing plates away, the other
delivering fresh bottles of beer, it did not occur to either man to extend
that thanks to them.

"Maybe I'll send two of my bitches down here to take some cooking lessons
from them," Barnes said reflectively.  "God knows they could use them."

"Anytime sir," Bracken assured him.  "Anytime."

Bracken's other two "bitches", as the term went in Auburn, were sitting on
the couch just outside the dining area.  Kelly, the blonde, was spooning
pureed meat into Sharon's mouth.  Barnes looked at this sadly for a moment.
"Still no improvement with her huh?" he asked.

"No," Bracken replied.  "I think the comet has driven her completely insane.
I've been hoping she'll snap out of it but so far she just keeps getting
worse.  I'm afraid I might have to... you know... put her out of her
misery."

Barnes nodded understandingly.  "Whenever you think the time is right, I'll
sign the order for you," he said.  "We can't keep feeding people that aren't
able to function as productive members of the society."

"Maybe we'll do that in the morning," he said.  "It's a pity.  She really
was a fine bitch when I first got her.  She had one of the tightest cunts
I've ever felt."

"Well go ahead and give her one last ride before you bring her in," Barnes
grinned.  "It should still be tight, shouldn't it?"

While they laughed about that Jean and Anna, their faces completely
expressionless, made a trip to the kitchen with their dishes.  By the time
they returned a minute later to finish clearing, the subject of Sharon had
been tossed aside in favor of Garden Hill.

"So what do you think it will take to counter the forces at Garden Hill
painlessly?" Barnes wanted to know.

"Well," Bracken replied, "taking into account their air superiority and
their bunkers, I'd say that four hundred to five hundred men would be
required just to make them consider giving up without a fight."

"And suppose they demand a fight?  Would that many men be sufficient to
win?"

"We would have won with the men we had," Bracken said confidently.  "The
question is not of winning or losing but of what casualty rate we take and
what sort of damage we inflict upon the spoils that we're after. I'm sure we
could TAKE them with little more than a hundred men, but in order to
minimize casualties to an acceptable level, we'll need at least five
hundred."

"We don't HAVE five hundred men," Barnes reminded him.  "The last class from
Grass Valley has been through the training now and that brings us up to a
grand total of 445 troops.  A lot more than we had in the beginning, but not
nearly enough to attack in the strength that you are suggesting and still
maintain enough of a force here for security and self-defense.  What if I
gave you 300 troops?  What kind of casualty rate would you expect from
that?"

Bracken thought about that for a minute.  "High," he said.  "But I could
minimize it by attacking from two different directions at once."

"Use a diversionary force?"

"No," Bracken shook his head.  "The chopper they have rules out that tactic.
With three hundred men I would have two full-blown attack forces hitting
them simultaneously from two different directions.  Overwhelm their defenses
all at once and basically use speed to get inside that wall before too many
of us get chopped up.  It's not pretty but its sound."

"The D-day technique," Barnes agreed.  "That would do it."

"But losses would still be rather high.  Maybe as high as thirty percent if
we were unlucky."

"Ordinarily that would be an unacceptable loss," Barnes told him.  "But in
light of the need to either capture or destroy that helicopter, it becomes
acceptable.  We have to get our hands on that machine and its pilot, no
matter what the cost."

"I understand that sir," Bracken replied.  "And I agree with your reasoning.
However, if we could take that town painlessly or force a surrender,
wouldn't that still be the more acceptable option."

"Of course it would.  What are you suggesting?"

 "If you could give me 400 men," Bracken told him, "I think that just might
be enough to convince them to give up the fight.  I could hit them from
three different directions at once - three companies of 120 men apiece and
one reserve platoon of forty that could be moved to wherever it's needed.  I
think that we'd have a decent chance of forcing surrender very early in the
battle if we did this.  And if not, the sheer numbers alone will make it a
very short fight.  I would project no more than ten- percent losses at worst
with those figures and we might very well be able to overwhelm them before
the helicopter can even leave the ground.  After all, it takes a few minutes
for it to spin up and lift off, you don't just jump in it like a car and
start driving."

Barnes clearly didn't like this idea too much.  "That would only leave 45
troops inside the town," he said.  "What if we're attacked?  That is
stretching our defense way too thinly."

"Who's going to attack us?" Bracken asked him.  "We've already cleaned out
every other town within a thirty mile radius."

"Somebody from beyond that thirty mile radius," Barnes returned.  "We don't
have the luxury of that helicopter like Garden Hill does.  We don't KNOW
what is out there except for the places we've physically walked to on the
ground.  If a major attack comes two days after you take four hundred troops
out of here, we're fucked."

"What if we left you some of the most experienced men and most of the
automatic weapons?" Bracken countered.  "That would make your 45 men more
like ninety.  And I wouldn't need either the experience or the rapid-fire
capability as much.  Just give me some squad leaders and some officers who
know what they're doing and the sheer numbers will do the rest."

They discussed this back and forth for a few minutes as Jean and Anna
finished clearing and cleaning the table.  Barnes, though clearly reluctant
to commit so many of his troops, eventually decided to go with the plan.

"I'll need to reorganize them in to different units and exercise them for a
bit first," Bracken said.

"Of course," Barnes agreed.  "When can you have them trained up?"

"Give me three weeks and they'll be ready to march," he said.

"Three weeks," Barnes said.


+++++


Jean and Anna said nothing to each other as they went about cleaning up the
kitchen.  Though they had much they wanted to discuss with each other - the
day had been rife with rumors and stories from the returning attack force -
neither dared talk inside the house.  There was too much danger of Bracken
or Kelly overhearing their words.  It was best to pretend they knew nothing,
heard nothing, saw nothing.  So they washed dishes in the large tub of cold
water and dried them with a towel.  They put them neatly away in the oak
cabinets over the useless sink.  They did not even share a meaningful glance
at each other.

And then it came time to take out the garbage that had developed.  They each
grabbed an end of the large plastic tub that they stored disposable matter
in and lifted.  After informing Bracken that they were going to dump
refuse - it was required that a woman check with her man before leaving the
house unexpectedly - they went out the back door and began walking slowly
down the darkened, rainy street.  A Ford F-250 was parked at the
intersection, discreetly hidden in the closed garage of an empty house.
This was the street's garbage collection point.  Whenever it got full a
work-crew of men (it used to be women until Marla's escape - it was
suspected that she hid in the garbage to get out and that the other women
covered for her) drove it two miles outside of town to a dumping area that
had been established.

"Garden Hill is still there," Anna whispered excitedly.  "They couldn't
attack it!"

"It doesn't sound like Marla made it there though," Jean said.  "I heard
Asshole tell the head asshole that that woman they picked up said she never
made it."

"Oh fuck Marla," Anna said.  "We knew that she was probably dead all the
time.  Think about us for a moment."

"Us?"

"Us," Anna confirmed, slowing her pace a little more so they'd have more
time to talk.  "If we can get out of here, there's someplace for us to go
now!  Someplace where the women aren't slaves."

"Anna," Jean said carefully, "they're in there right now planning on how
they're going to attack that place.  What good would it do for us to go
there if Asshole is just going to destroy it next month?"

"Maybe if we warn them," Anna suggested, "they won't be able to take it.  If
nothing else, maybe they can evacuate everyone to someplace else."

"Or maybe they'll still take the place and hang us once they do."

"It's a chance Jean," she said.  "We might die, but if there's any hope of
getting out of this life, I'm going to take it.  I'm going to go.  You can
stay here if you want."

"I'll go if you go," she said with a nervous sigh.  "You know that."

"I know," she said, giving her an unseen smile.

"But how do we get out?" Jean wanted to know.  "How do we escape and get far
enough away so they can't catch us?  And then there's the fact that it's
almost a ten-day walk to Garden Hill.  What will we eat?"

They reached the house where the garbage truck was parked.  They set down
their tub and lifted up on the garage door, which was kept unlocked.  They
picked the tub back up and then, with a coordinated heave, they dumped the
contents into the back amid the rest of the garbage.

"We need to start stashing food," Anna said thoughtfully.  "We need a place
to hide it where we can recover it later."

"How will we do that?"

Anna looked at the mounds of debris in the back of the truck and had an
idea.  "We'll throw it away," she said.

"Huh?"

Anna explained what she meant.  Soon Jean was smiling as well.  "Brilliant,"
she said.  "Is that what they teach you in college."

"Yes," Anna said seriously.  "It was a two semester class."

They shared a small laugh as they closed down the garage.  They picked up
their tub and began heading back home.

"How are we going to actually get out though?" Jean asked.  "If we can't do
that, then it doesn't do much good to solve the food problem."

"I'll have to work on that one," Anna said.  "Give me a little time."

"A little time is all we have," Jean reminded her.


+++++


Not too far away, unseen and unheard by anyone in the town of Auburn, a
small black and white helicopter was hovering in the darkness.  It was at an
altitude of 3000 feet above the north side of the town, about half a mile
from the closest habitation or manned position.  Brett, behind the controls,
was sweating nervously, his eyes ignoring the blackness outside the
windshield and concentrating on the instruments in front of him.  He was
experiencing a strong sensation of vertigo, common among pilots under
instrument conditions.  His mind, with no visual inputs to counter the
notion, was telling him that he was slowly descending and drifting to the
right.  His instincts cried at him to correct for this.  Only the radar
altimeter and the artificial horizon, which told him he was holding steady,
kept him from actually doing this.

"Let's do this quick," he said to Jason, who was peering at the FLIR display
just as intently.  "I don't like just sitting here like this.  It's
disorienting in the dark."

"Copy," Jason said, using the controls to move the pod back and forth.  He
was seeing a black and white view of the nearest guard bunkers, the four
guards manning them clearly visible as light figures on the darker
background.  "I've got the bunkers, I'm gonna pan over the residential area
now."  He moved the controls, seeing rows of houses, some of them brighter
on the display than others.  He saw a few people on the streets, a few of
them obviously women, most men carrying guns.  The men seemed to be some
sort of interior guard force.

"How's it look?" Brett asked him, not wanting to take his eyes off the
instrument panel.

Jason told him what he saw in fairly good detail.

"The houses that show up lighter on the display," Brett told him.  "Those
are the occupied ones, or at least the ones that have some sort of heat
source inside of them."

"Got it," Jason replied.  "There's not too many of them in this section,
most are dark.  It must be the outskirts of town.  Spin around about twenty
degrees left, I'm at the end of the panning range."

"Spinning," Brett said, slowly manipulating the anti-torque pedals so the
tail swung to the right.  Again, the vertigo gave him conflicting signals.
It felt to his body that he was not rotating at all.  Only the compass told
him that he was in fact changing his orientation.  It moved slowly from 180
degrees to 170 to 160, where he stopped it.

"Okay," Jason said, "I'm getting some good shots now.  I have a whole
cluster of houses just below the hill by the bridge.  Almost all of them are
brighter on the display than the others.  There's a few more women walking
around, mostly in pairs.  A lot of them seem to be carrying tubs of some
sort.  There's also a big building on the top of the hill.  It's glowing a
lot brighter than anything else and there are some guards posted out in
front of it."

"I can see it on visual," Brett said, daring to look away from his
instruments for a second.  Sure enough, there was a glow that could only be
caused by electric lights showing plainly before him.  "They've got power in
that building.  Probably from a portable generator or something.  It's got
to be their headquarters."

"I got it on tape," Jason said, referring to the video recorder that was
included in the FLIR processor.

"Can you get shots of the other bunkers from here?" Brett asked, putting his
eyes back on the instrument panel.

"I should be able to get all but the bridge bunker," he answered.  "You'll
have to rotate back and forth for me though."

"I'm yours to command," Brett told him, wanting to wipe the sweat from his
brow but not daring to take his hands from the controls.

For the next five minutes Jason had him rotate left and right while he
filmed the defensive arrangements and staffing levels in infrared.  He then
took a few more shots of the sparse activity on the darkened streets.  He
was able to figure out that there were two distinct sets of interior guards
and that the women on the streets seemed to be in the process of dumping
garbage into the garages of houses.  He articulated all of this to Brett as
it occurred.

"Good job," Brett told him.  "Now let's go get some shots of the bridge and
the bunker over there."

"How are you going to get over there?"

"We're gonna go west until we're clear of the town and then cut south over
the canyon.  We'll creep up the other side until we're in sight of our
target.  We'll use the canyon itself as a reference point.  So keep that
FLIR pointed at it and tell me if I start to drift too far away."

"Copy," Jason agreed a little nervously.

It took them the better part of twenty minutes, with several lapses of
communication that had Brett turning or moving the wrong direction, but
finally they were hovering a half-mile southwest of the bridge bunker on the
far side of the canyon.  Jason, once Brett's positioning was stable, locked
the FLIR onto it and started recording.  He saw that the two men in the
bunker were standing, looking off towards the town instead of towards the
approaches.

"They seem kind of antsy about something," Jason said as he watched them
shifting back and forth.  "And they're both smoking.  I can see a bright
flare in front of their faces when they take a drag."

"Smoking cigarettes?" Brett asked, hoping that they were undisciplined
enough to be using marijuana on duty.

"I think so," Jason said.  "They each have one and they're not passing it
back and forth."  A brighter flare on the edge of his view caught his
attention.  "What's that?" he said, panning the FLIR towards the bridge
itself.

"What's what?" Brett asked.  Like any pilot, he did not particularly care
for hearing those two words spoken while in flight.  About the only worse
phrase to hear was "oh shit".

"There's a truck coming across the bridge," Jason said, seeing it's bright
headlights on his display.  "Looks like two men in it."

"What time is it?" Brett asked.

Jason looked at his watch, pushing the light button to get a reading.  "I
got 6:50," he said.

"Must be crew change time," Brett said.

It was.  They hovered and filmed the changing of the bridge guard.  Jason
narrated as the two men in the truck parked at the bottom of the hill, got
out, and then, with the help of flashlights, started climbing up one of the
narrower sections.  It took them about five minutes to reach the top.  Once
up there the two off-going guards exchanged a few pleasantries with their
relief, handed over weapons and radios, and then started down the hill.
While the new crew settled into the bunker for their shift, the old crew
jumped in the truck and drove it back to town.

"I think we got enough," Brett said once the truck disappeared over the
bridge.  "Why don't we get out of this place."

"Sounds good," Jason agreed.  "You gonna skirt around to the north again to
pick up the Interstate?"  Following the Interstate with the FLIR was how
they had navigated to Auburn in the first place.

"Well actually," Brett said slowly, "I was thinking we could make a little
side trip."

Jason looked over at his mentor's silhouette.  "A side trip?" he asked
carefully.



+++++


While Paul was in the community center office with Chrissie, anxiously
awaiting the return of Brett and Jason from their nighttime recon mission,
Janet and Sherrie were at Janet's nearby house, getting Sherrie settled in.
It was her first day free of the traction splint that had been on her for so
long, her first night out of the community center bed and on her own two
feet.  Paul had constructed her a rigid, removable cast out of sanded
plywood and bunjie cords.  It was a crude, bulky device but it allowed her
to walk with crutches and kept her from putting pressure on the mending but
still weak femur.  It had been decided that she would stay with her two
caregivers, Paul and Janet, until such time as she was able to walk on her
own.  There were still quite a few tasks that she needed assistance with.

"Oh my god Janet," she sighed blissfully.  "You can't imagine how good this
feels."  Sherrie was currently reclining in the master bathroom's oversized
tub, her injured leg free of the cast for the moment and stretched out
before her.  Bath bubbles frothed around the edge of the tub and small
tendrils of steam rose into the air around her.  Though the community
bathing center was the easiest place to take a hot bath since it had a
constant supply of heated water, it was still possible to take a hot bath in
the privacy of your own home as long as you didn't mind expending a little
effort.  Cold water could be supplied from the rain gutter system and hot
water could be heated three gallons at a time in a large cooking pot in the
fireplace.

Janet smiled at her.  It had been a lot of work to fill the tub up but
seeing Sherrie's contented face made it worthwhile.  "Here," she said,
handing her a glass of warm white zinfandel from a bottle she had pilfered
from the supply room.  "Have a little wine with it."

"Wine?" she said delighted.  "I haven't had any wine in... well... you
know."

"I know," Janet said, taking a sip from a glass of her own.

They talked of inconsequential things for a while, each of them finishing
two glasses and starting to feel the beginnings of a good alcohol buzz.

"I used to drink far too much wine before the comet," Sherrie said as Janet
poured each of them a third glass.

"Yeah?" Janet asked.

"Yeah," she said a little sadly.  "I think it was an escape mechanism for
the marriage I was in.  I mean, I was the wife of a doctor and that was real
important to me then, and I had a nice house in Garden Hill and I was a part
of the upper crust and all that, but I didn't really LIKE my husband all
that much."

"No?"

"No," she sighed, shaking her head a little at her former self.  "I married
him because he was a DOCTOR.  That was all that I was interested in, that
was all that my mother had taught me to be interested in.  I loved him for
the lifestyle that he was able to give me but I wasn't attracted to him in
any way.  I didn't enjoy looking at him, I didn't enjoy talking to him, and
I certainly didn't enjoy having sex with him.  He was a climb on, rut a few
times, and fire off kind of guy.  If I could get five minutes out of him it
was a good night."

"It seems there was a lot of that in this town," Janet said with a
wine-induced giggle.  "I don't know how many women have told me that exact
same thing."

"Sad but true," she sighed.  "Being a trophy wife does have its
disadvantages.  Funny how my mother never mentioned any of that to me.  And
so I would spend my afternoons while he was at the office sipping Chardonnay
from a box in the refrigerator.  I would never get bombed and pass out or
anything, but I would go through each day with a strong buzz and have to
take a nap before Josh got home from the office."

"You weren't the only one I'm sure," Janet said.  "Why do you think we have
so much wine, so much booze, so much pot and crank and cocaine and Prozac
and Xanax in the supply room?  They're all symptoms of the trophy wife
syndrome.  That's what happens when you marry for status or money instead of
for love, you end up needing a crutch to get you through the days and the
weeks.  I wasn't all that different."

"You weren't?" she asked, surprised.

"Nope," she said.  "I wasn't quite in the same class as the women in this
town before the comet, but I married for pretty much the same reason.  I
grew up poor in South Sacramento.  My mother supported my half-sister and I
with child support payments and alimony from two different husbands.  I was
taught that the thing to do was find yourself a well-off man, marry him, and
then divorce him once you put in "enough time" - as my mother put it - to
get yourself a good settlement.  My mom always taught me to do better than
she had in that department.  She had only found herself a construction
worker and a car salesman, both of whom were abusive and rarely employed."
She gave a cynical smile.  "I did do a little better for myself.  I went to
college on a freakin' cheerleading scholarship and got myself a bachelor's
degree in education.  I became a kindergarten teacher because I really loved
kids but I must admit that in the back of my mind, I was hoping to meet me a
nice divorced father to take me away from it all and set me up.  That's why
I turned down job offers from the Sac Unified system and waited until Placer
Hills Unified offered."

"So did you meet the nice, divorced father?" Sherrie asked, taking a large
sip of her wine and smoothing some bubbles over her chest.

"No," she said, "not quite.  Instead, I found the principal of the first
school that I worked at down in Newcastle.  His marriage was teetering on
the brink when I started working there.  I pushed it over the edge by
seducing him into an affair.  He divorced his wife and married me once it
was final.  They had to transfer me up here to Garden Hill when we became an
item.  He probably died when the water came in."

"Just like everyone else's husband," Sherrie said sadly.

"Just like it," Janet agreed with a sigh and a large sip.  "I never really
loved him.  I was just putting in my time like my mom taught me.  I really
didn't know what love was like until I met Paul after the comet.  Its kind
of funny that it takes the end of the world for me to find out what's really
important in life, isn't it?"

Sherrie grunted a little.  "At least you figured it out then," she said.  "I
had to get shot and almost die to figure it out."

"But you've learned?"

"Yeah," she said.  "A little too late, but I've learned."

Janet held up her glass for a toast.  "To the important things in life," she
said.

"To the important things," Sherrie agreed.  They clinked their glasses
together and had a drink.


+++++


"There are people there!"  Jason yelled excitedly as he peered at the FLIR
display.  "There are people Brett!  You were right!"

They were hovering 3500 feet above the ground a half mile west of the
remains of El Dorado Hills.  It had been a rather harrowing 25-minute flight
from Auburn, with Brett creeping along at forty knots over the shoreline
between the Sacramento Valley/Sea and the foothills, Jason guiding his turns
with the FLIR.  They had done this until they'd found Highway 50 rising out
of the black water and then they'd turned east, using the Highway as their
reference point to guide them in.

Now, Jason could see that what he'd assumed was a dangerously mad mission
had been worthwhile after all.  On the screen before him, as he panned the
FLIR back and forth, he could clearly see nearly sixty houses that were lit
up with the white glow that betrayed a heat source within them.  In
addition, he could plainly see the white figures of twenty to thirty people
walking here and there on the streets.

"What do you see?" Brett, who, when he dared to avert his eyes from the
instruments, could see nothing but the faintest of glows before him, asked.

Jason gave him a quick summary of the overview and then began to go into
more detail.  "There's a group of buildings that looks like an elementary
school near the south side," he said.  "That's where most of the activity
seems to be.  Most of the occupied houses are surrounding it.  I have
brightness coming from the biggest building in the school."

"The cafeteria?" Brett asked.

"I think so," he agreed.  "And there's also a glow coming from the smaller
building next to it.  There are two guards standing in front of that
building.  They both have rifles - looks like assault weapons of some sort."

"What's the sex of the guards?" Brett asked.  "Can you tell?"

"One male and one female it looks like," he said.  "They're talking to each
other but they seem to be paying fairly good attention to what they're
doing."

"Coed guard teams," Brett said with a smile.  For some reason this idea
comforted him.  "Any other people with guns about?"

"Not that I can see," Jason said, panning back and forth.  He directed Brett
to turn to the left so he could get a better view of the north side of town.
He took shots of all there was to see there and then began looking at the
hills surrounding the town for guard positions.  It took a while but
eventually he found two different sets.  "I got two people in the treeline
near the top the hill on the east side of town," he said when he spotted the
first one.  "I can only get a glimpse of them between two of the trees, and
only from the shoulders up.  It looks like they're pretty well hidden in
there."

"They must've seen us coming the other day when we did the first fly-by,"
Brett said reflectively.  "They probably have radio communications in place
down there and warned everyone in town to take cover somehow.  That must be
their defense; to hide and pretend they're an abandoned town if an unknown
force probes them."

Brett hovered for the next ten minutes, turning this way and that and
allowing Jason to film a complete infrared view of El Dorado Hills.

"All right," Brett said when they were done.  "Let's get ourselves home.
They're probably worried about us."  He applied power, bringing them up to
an altitude of 6200 feet above sea level, a height that put them well above
any peaks between the valley and Garden Hill.  It was also high enough that
the El Dorado Hills residents would not be able to hear their engine as they
passed over.

"Are we gonna go back to Auburn and backtrack?" Jason asked.

"Negative," Brett replied.  "Keep the FLIR on Highway 50 and we'll follow
along it until we get to Cameron Park.  Once we get to the airport I
literally can fly us blind back home.  Those sixteen flights I did back and
forth from there let me lock in the exact course."

"The exact course?"

"From the airport, if I fly straight on a heading of 54 degrees, I will pass
right over the Garden Hill bridge.  Of course the wind would have to be
factored into the equation if there was any, but we seem to be a little
short on that lately."  Since about impact+45 days, there had been almost a
complete cessation of air movement in the atmosphere as temperatures became
relatively equalized around the globe under the thick cloud cover.
Strangely enough, Maggie, Chrissie's newest friend, had provided this
information to Brett and the others.  Maggie had majored in meteorology back
in college while she had been waiting to meet her Prince Charming.

"I see," Jason said, filing this fact away in his rapidly growing lexicon of
aircraft knowledge.

Once they were underway, Brett asked him if he had been studying the
materials he had prepared for him.

"Yep," Jason assured him.  "I've got them memorized.  Coming up on a curve,
bank five degrees left."

"Banking," Brett answered, making the turn.  "How we looking?"

"A little too much," he said.  "Go back right about a degree.  There you go.
On course."

"So tell me about the collective," Brett said.

"The collective?"  Jason asked.

"That's right.  What does the collective control on this aircraft do?  If
you've memorized the materials, you should know this."

Jason smiled confidently.  "The collective," he said.  "It is..."



+++++



"Do you want to put a nightgown on?"  Janet asked as she and Sherrie entered
the spare bedroom where she would be staying.

Sherrie had a towel wrapped around her body and one wrapped up in her wet
hair.  She was leaning heavily against Janet to avoid putting weight upon
her injured leg, which was still free of the improvised cast and would
remain so for the duration of the sleeping hours.  The process of movement
from one room to the other was made more difficult by the fact that both
women had consumed four glasses of wine in the past hour.  "No," Sherrie
replied.  "I'm gonna sleep naked tonight in honor of my new freedom.  I've
had those damn nightgowns on for too long."

Janet giggled.  "You're the boss," she said, guiding her over to the side of
the neatly made twin bed  "But don't be surprised if Paul finds some reason
to come in here and check on you half a dozen times tonight."

This made Sherrie blush in embarrassment.  She had of course noticed Paul's
recent attention to her body whenever he examined her.  His eyes always
seemed to be focused on her braless breasts or between her legs.  Truth be
told, she actually encouraged his eyeball explorations, finding them
exciting in their forbiddenness.  She often kept her gown just a little
higher than necessary and her legs just a little wider than necessary during
such times.  She had not, however, been aware that Janet had noticed this as
well.  At least not until now.  She went with her instincts in response,
which was to deny.  "I don't think Paul would do anything like that," she
said with a tone of dismissiveness that didn't come across very well.
"Besides, who would want to look at this broke up body anyway."

Janet smiled knowingly.  "Give me a little credit Sherrie," she said.  "He's
been looking at your pussy every chance he gets.  And do you really think he
needs to feel up your leg twice a day?"

Sherrie honestly didn't know what to say.  In the olden days such words
would have meant a war was being declared and would have been spoken in a
threatening tone.  That was not the case here though.  Janet was speaking
lightly of these things, as if they were cutely amusing traits.

  "Here, let me pull the covers back for you," Janet said, bending down and
doing so.  "In with you now."

Slowly Sherrie was lowered to the bed, keeping her injured leg as straight
as possible.  Janet then reached down and lifted up on her feet, helping her
swing them up onto the mattress.  This served to open her crotch up almost
obscenely for a moment, giving Janet a premium view right up under her
towel.  She did not avert her eyes as a woman typically would under such
circumstances.  Instead, she took a good hard look at what was revealed.

"I can see why Paul likes to look at it," she said with a smile.  "You
really do have a nice little slit there."

"Uhhh... well... thanks.  I mean... uh..." Sherrie stammered, unsure just
how to handle such a situation.  Janet had seen her vagina a hundred times
when she'd bathed her and helped her with the bedpan.  Why was she making
comment on it now?  And why was she talking about it in such a... such a
decadent manner.

"Here," Janet said, reaching down and tugging on the towel.  "Give me that
thing so I can put it in with the laundry for tomorrow."

Sherrie raised up a bit to let the towel come free of her, leaving her
completely naked atop the sheet.  She quickly reached down and grabbed the
covers, concealing herself.  Janet did not try to stop her, although she
feared that she might.

"I got a lot of your personal stuff out of your house, just like you asked,"
Janet told her, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Thanks."

"I got your make-up supplies, your razor, your deodorant, some of your
clothes and underwear."  She paused, giving a wicked look.  "I also got your
toy out of your nightstand and brought it over."

"My... toy?" she said slowly, hoping that Janet wasn't referring to what she
thought she was.

It was a hope that turned out to be a vain one.  "Your toy," she said,
reaching over and opening up a drawer on the nightstand.  She reached in and
pulled out a seven inch vibrating dildo.  "It's a nice one.  Top of the
line."

Sherrie was familiar with this particular dildo since she had purchased it
herself at an adult store in Citrus Heights about a year before the comet.
It was the only thing that had given her any orgasms throughout her married
life.  "Oh my god," she said, appalled at seeing her most personal
possession in Janet's hand.

Janet smiled.  "Nothing to be embarrassed about," she said lightly, making
no move to put it away.  "These things are the staple of trophy wife
syndrome, aren't they?  Remember when we went through the empty houses
looking for supplies?  We found dildos of various shapes, sizes, and colors
in almost every master bedroom.  And in those houses that we didn't find
them, it was probably only because they'd hidden them too well.  Hell, I got
one myself."

"You... you do?"

"Of course I do," she said.  "I was a trophy wife of sorts wasn't I?  I used
to bust that thing out whenever Frank went to sleep before me and fire it
up.  I went through at least a set of batteries a week.  How else is a girl
gonna get a good come?"

Sherrie started laughing.  She was still acutely embarrassed and more than a
little uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going, but she
couldn't help herself.  "I thought I was a pervert," she giggled.  "I used
to hide that thing in the bottom of my sewing cart so my husband wouldn't
find it.  I would've died if I'd thought the other women knew I had one.  I
mean, we used to joke about it sometimes, but no one ever ADMITTED to having
one."

"The suburban housewife's best friend," Janet said, still holding the object
in question in her hand.  "Mine's just a standard ten dollar model.  This
one looks like it must've run you fifty bucks at least."

"Sixty-five," Sherrie said, making both of them laugh.  "That's genuine lamb
skin it's lined with.  It even has a warmer in it to make it... you know...
warm."

"Oooh," Janet said, giving it a few strokes with her hand.  "I thought it
felt awfully nice.  You must've missed it during your convalescent period,
huh?"

"Well..." she said, her face flushing brightly again.

"You should've asked for it.  I would've got it for you.  I mean, the hand
is okay in a pinch, but nothing beats the old latex friend when it comes to
relieving the pressure.  Or at least nothing but a good, real one that's
attached to someone that knows how to use it."

"I wouldn't know," Sherrie said.  "I've never come from the real thing
before."

"Never?"

She shook her head.  "Never," she said.  "I've only slept with four guys in
my life and none of them were all that good at it."

"That's a shame," Janet said sympathetically.

"Isn't it though?  And you're right.  I really did miss my friend while I
was in the community center.  It seems that this last week I've really been
wanting him."

"So I did good bringing it over," she said brightly.  She let her hand drop
down to Sherrie's leg and began rubbing the head of the dildo back and forth
across it over the covers.  "I bet you want to use him now, don't you?
After the bath and the wine and all.  I always found that that's when I was
the horniest."

Sherrie looked at her friend's hand nervously, watching as the lambskin
dildo pushed against her thigh.  What was going on here?  Surely Janet
wasn't coming on to her, was she?  "Well..." she said carefully, "maybe a
little later."

"Oh come on Sherrie," Janet said, using her other hand to tug on the covers.
Before Sherrie had a chance to realize what was happening, they were down
below her waist, revealing her nakedness.  "Why don't you play a little.
You deserve it after all you've been through."  She began to slide the dildo
over her breasts, making the nipples hard.

"Janet," she said, almost paralyzed from the turn things had taken.  "I
don't really... I mean I'm not a..."

"Shhh," Janet said, sliding the dildo between her breasts and trailing it
slowly down her stomach.  "Just relax a little.  I'm here to help you, just
like I always was."

"I don't need any help right now," Sherrie said, feeling goose bumps rising
on her skin as the lambskin touched her navel.  "I think maybe we've had a
little too much wine and..."

"You like it when I give you your baths, don't you?" Janet asked softly.

"What?" she said with a start.

Janet smiled.  "When I bathe you," she said, continuing to make slow circles
around her belly button, "your nipples get hard, just like they are now.
And your pussy gets wet.  When I'm washing your legs and your thighs, I can
smell it when you get aroused, and I can see your clit gets hard.  It turns
you on to have me touch you, doesn't it?"

"No," Sherrie said, shaking her head, knowing that she was lying.  Over the
past two weeks she had become incredibly aroused whenever it was bath time,
so aroused that she looked forward to it almost as much as Paul's medical
exams.  She had refused to acknowledge this to herself, had refused to delve
deeply into the meaning of it in her mind, but there was no denying it.  She
liked Janet's hands upon her body.

"Let's be honest with each other Sherrie," Janet said, sliding the dildo a
little further to the south, so that it was just touching the top of her
pubic hair.  "You're wet right now, aren't you?"

"Janet..." Sherrie said, confused.

"Aren't you?" Janet repeated.  "Don't fib to me.  You're lying there with
your legs open and you're letting me slide this thing all over you.  I can
see the wetness on your pussy.  You WANT me to put this in you, don't you?"
She let it slide for just the briefest moment over the top of her clit and
down between her pink lips.

"Ohhh," Sherrie said, startled as electricity shot through her nether
regions.  Her hips jerked upward, instinctively trying to increase the
contact.  What was happening to her?  Why was Janet acting this way?  Why
was she responding to it?

"Tell me Sherrie," Janet said, letting the dildo trail over her inner thighs
now.  It left a small smear of wetness where it touched.  "Do you want me to
put it in you?  Do you want me to fuck you with it, to make you come?"

"Yes," Sherrie said helplessly, giving in.  "Put it in Janet.  Put it in
me."

Janet smiled.  "That a girl," she said, bringing the tip back to those wet
lips.  "Honesty is always the best policy, isn't it?"  Slowly, she began to
twist the dildo back and forth, pushing on it with delicate pressure so that
the lips parted, allowing a half-inch to penetrate her.

"More Janet," Sherrie pleaded, her hips gyrating and trying to drive it in
deeper.  "Put it all the way in!"

"I'm getting there," Janet said, pushing a little harder, so that another
inch slid inside of her.  She gave it a few twists and then pulled it back
out a bit.  Before Sherrie could protest, she pushed it back in, a little
deeper this time, and then pulled it back out, and then put it back in.
Slowly, inch by inch, stroke by stroke, she pushed and pulled until the
entire seven inches was sliding in and out, it's surface wet and slippery
with juices.

"Ohhh Janet," Sherrie cried, her breathing somewhat rapid now, her hips
bumping with the rhythm.  Though she had shoved that pink dildo in and out
of herself hundreds of times before, never had it felt so good, never had it
turned her on as much as she was at this moment.  What was happening to her?

"Have you ever played around with another girl before?" Janet asked her,
picking up the speed a little, giving the dildo an extra little twist with
each stroke.

"No," she breathed, her head falling back on her shoulders.  "Not really."

"Not really?" Janet asked, her free hand finding a breast and beginning to
softly caress it.  "What does that mean?"

"Well," she said, "when I was in high school this woman I... ohhh... I
babysat for tried to... you know."

"To fuck you?"

"Yeah," she said, pushing her breast into Janet's hand to increase the
pressure.  "She started kissing me one night... ohh God Janet... turn it on.
Make it vibrate."

"Tell me the story first," Janet said, pushing it in to the hilt and then
slowly withdrawing it for an instant.  She then resumed the strokes, though
at a slower rate.

"She started kissing me on the couch one night after she came home," she
said.  "I was so surprised that I let her.  And then after a minute or two,
I started getting... you know... kind of hot."

"And then what?"

"And then... oh god... and then... well... I was wearing a skirt.  She took
my panties off and put her face down between my legs.  She started eating
me."

"Did it feel good?"

"I never felt anything like it before," Sherrie said.  "But I was ashamed.
I thought that maybe I was a lesbian or something.  I ran away before she
finished.  I never talked to her again."

"She didn't make you come?"

"No," Sherrie said.  "I only let her do it for a minute or so."

"But you liked it?"

"Yes," she said softly.

"Did you always wish you would've let her finish?"

"Yes."

Janet smiled, licking her lips a little.  "I'll finish it for her," she
said.

"Janet, I don't think we should..."

"Shhh," Janet said for the second time that night.  She flipped on the
vibrator, making it hum.  "I don't think you should think right now.
Thinking just gets in the way of things sometimes."  As she began to push
and pull the humming contraption in and out with vigor once again, she
slowly lowered her head to Sherrie's right breast.  She licked the nipple
slowly and then took it into her mouth, suckling it.

"Oh Janet," Sherrie moaned, letting the sensation take her away.  "Oh god."

Janet suckled the nipple for a moment and then switched to the other one,
making it firm and puffy with her mouth.  She then let her head move
downward, tonguing her way across Sherrie's stomach and pelvic area until
she was right above the dildo moving in and out.  By now it was starting to
get warm.  She licked her lips one more time, inhaling the exciting scent of
female pheromones, and then began lapping at the swollen clit.

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