DUCK AND COVER

by Holly Rennick

AUTHOR'S NOTES

   "Come on, let's twist again like we did last summer."

   "Yea, let's twist again like we did last year."

   "Do you remember when things were really hummin'?"

   "Yea, let's twist again, twistin' time is here."

Listening to http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Lets_Twist_Again.mp3, who gives a cracked hula-hoop if "last summer" was 1960?  "Come on everybody, clap your hands.  Now you're looking good!"  Chubby Checker's still on the road, but I'm betting he can't do the Limbo Rock any more.  If you're confusing this with the band Twisted Sister, what follows will be really dull.  Chubby would never have cross-dressed.

If you've forgotten why twistin' time was a strange era, look at this farewell picture of your hometown, http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Cloud.jpg, then, http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Shelter.jpg and measure your back yard.  Life Magazine featured a newlywed couple who honeymooned in a steel-and-concrete cube 12 feet underground.  "Fallout can be fun," the article said.

Listen to these radio spots.

   http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Holly_Rennick/Fallout.mp3.  What's radioactive fallout, where it comes from and why it's dangerous.  "You might have to use a fallout shelter for up to two weeks."

   http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Holly_Rennick/In_the_Open.mp3.  The basic "Duck and Cover" drill when you notice a "brilliant nuclear flash."  Just "curl up in a ball and cover your head with your arms."  (What's sometimes added is, "And kiss your ass goodbye.")

1959's On the Beach (set in far-off 1964) features "Waltzing Matilda" played sometimes with nationalistic fanfare; other times, funereal.  When Ava Gardner takes Gregory Peck trout fishing before arrival of the nuclear cloud, they find drunken Aussies, increasingly annoying until a tenor solos the final verse.

How might Duck and Cover's 1964 music have sounded?  Well, the Beatles wouldn't have appeared on Ed Sullivan, for a start:  "All My Loving", "Till There Was You", "I Saw Her Standing There", and "I Want to Hold Your Hand".  But best of all, "She Loves You".

Chubby Checker never would have even done the Limbo Rock.

PART I

LET'S DO THE TWIST

So why in the Lord's name does Howard want to build us a bomb shelter, Susan wondered?  Married to the man 16 years and he still gets these ideas.  The Reds nuke us and everybody's gone anyway.  If Nixon had won, at least the Commies would know whom they're up against.  Kennedy, being Catholic, might let his religion get in the way of pushing the retaliate button fast enough.  Parade Magazine had shown our missile silos in the Dakotas, but the article just said, "undisclosed location."

She had come home from Coffee Club and there was Howard, already home from the office, pointing the contractor to where the jungle gym stood in the side yard.  The jungle gym was a project requiring diagrams spread over the kitchen table while Howard calculated the proper foundation for playground equipment.  Can't have it topple over on a neighborhood child, he'd declared.  As if their own Ronald didn't count?  And now a bomb shelter!

Howard was explaining, "Not too close to the fence.  Your backhoe will fit by the garage.  I measured."  The man was taking notes.

Ronald was inside with his friend Sandy.  The two got along so well together, thought Susan.  Lots of 15-year-olds just roughhouse around.

"Hey, Mom," Ronald greeted her return.  "We used up the Root-Beer Fizzies."

"That's fine, dear.  Hello, Sandy."

"Hello, Mrs. Mumford."  Sandy was such a polite child, she thought.  So grown up for his age.  Such curly red hair!

Noting her purloined Aluminum foil, "So what are you boys making?" more to the neighbor than to her own.

"A rocket to ray-gun the Russian satellites!"  Sandy grinned.  "Is Mr. Mumford really building a bomb shelter?"

"I think he's decided to, just for safety's sake.  You boys can see how."

"Cool!  With a transistor radio and everything?"

"I'm sure."

"Maybe it can be our hangout," wondered her son.

"I think it's just for emergencies, but maybe."  They probably wanted some place to try smoking, she guessed.  Maybe they should just get it our of their system, coughing in a cement room/

"Duck and Cover!" yelled Ronald and both boys dived under the coffee table, laughing and pushing one another back into the fallout.

Well, Susan realized, maybe they're not totally past the roughhouse stage.

*****

It was in provisioning the Mumford bomb shelter, warmer below ground than the January afternoon above, that the neighbor boy touched her breast.

The two boys were helping her stock the foodstuffs, mostly tinned goods she'd never serve guests.  Howard's shelving design ran deep and high and access to the upper items required both boost and balance.  A ladder would be forthcoming, he'd assured, filing the improvement to his to-acquire list.

The boys had found the radio.  Howard didn't want the battery run down, but Susan rather liked the music and her husband had stocked extra Ray-O-Vacs.  The bunker was wired to the house, but Howard said that the bomb would decimate the grid.

   "Come on baby.  Let's do the twist."

   "Come on baby.  Let's do the twist."

   "Take me by my little hand,"

   "And go like this."

Susan rather liked Negro music.  This Chubby Checker was nothing in comparison to Nat King Cole, but the music was fun.  She'd seen the youngsters dancing the twist at the Elk's Club, but Howard didn't want to learn.  He was pretty good with the more standard steps, he judged; no reason to hop onto every fad the kids saw on their American Bandstand.

Ronald was showing Sandy the three-tier bunk bed, Dad's carpentry design.  Susan had fabricated the narrow foam mattress covers.

To arrange the Spam reserve (48 cans, Howard's recommendation), Susan had to ascend a footstool perched on a chair, stable enough if nothing slipped.  A skirt wasn't what she'd want to wear during a Soviet attack, she decided, but at least she had her slip on.  "One of you come over to steady this stool."

Ronald dodged the interruption, but Sandy complied.  Maybe he's just a kid, Susan noted, but at least he's tall enough.  Balanced now, she was glad for Sandy's proximity.

"Just stand there and let me put my hand on your shoulder."  But if she reached to steady herself on him, she then couldn't access far enough into shelf.

"No, how about you just hold my waist?" patting her side.

Sandy complied, but to steady her better, put one hand on the small of her back, the other on her stomach, disquieting to Susan, but prudent.  He was just a boy and she was doing a precarious task.

"Just be a minute, Sandy," she assured.

Leaning forward as she had to, the bottom edge of her brassiere pressed the side of his thumb.  His not pulling his thumb away surprised her, but then maybe touching the edge of a brassiere didn't mean anything to him.

Realizing how her bending made her stomach roll into a fleshy fold, she sucked in so at least he wouldn't think of her as fat.  She wished she'd worn her girdle, but why would you think to put one on to work in the bomb shelter?  Not totally sure of the propriety, though, she glanced over her shoulder at Ronald, who was facing the other way, reading a Civil Defense pamphlet on radioactivity.

She almost had the tins ordered when the stool slipped a fraction, not enough to collapse her platform, but enough to warrant emergency stabilization.  Sandy's steadying shifted, now supporting her balance from the underside of her bosom.

"Thanks," she offered, glad not to be the impending war's first casualty and again glancing toward Ronald.  Fortunately, he'd not turned.  Susan figured that had she crashed to the floor, he might have asked if she were OK, but probably wouldn't have stopped reading.

When Sandy didn't drop his grasp, she didn't know how to suggest him doing so without sounding prissy.  In any case, her coned, missile-like cups assured that he felt nothing of her.  But even still, his hand was where it was, undeniably cradling a breast.  Well, so what?  They were working.

She completed her task judiciously.  It's not wrong to have somebody accidentally touch your chest, just the bottom part, that is.  She remembered when she was about the boy's age, how Tommy Lee had reached around from behind when they were playing Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free.

Descending required forethought.  "OK, down to the chair," she determined.  She swung a foot back, knowing it not far down to the chair's seat.  With Sandy there, she'd not tumble.

Maybe she'd not adequately warned her assistant, she wondered as her foot found its mark.  He should have dropped his hold with her and not let her slip partway through his arm, dropping her breast fully into Sandy's palm.  My God!

But even in her astonishment, she again looked back at Ronald, mercifully still engrossed.  Susan instinctively sensed that she shouldn't look at the boy whose hand was still on her.

Does he even realize? flashed through her mind.  He must have seen my check on Ronald!  Why doesn't he move his hand?

It wasn't until Susan was safely on the concrete that Sandy let go.  When he did, it seemed to Susan that he'd registered nothing.  Maybe there was nothing to it.

"Safe landing," he offered, always one to smile.

That night, Susan made love to Howard.  He was considerate, something she always appreciated.  But after he rolled away, she took her breast in her own hand, the way the boy had held her.  She didn't think her nipple had been hard when he'd touched her, but in any case, he'd not have been able to tell.  But it was hardening now.

*****

Sandy was such a nice friend for Ronald, so easy to have around.  Susan was always glad when he'd come over.  She'd chided him for calling her, "Mrs. Mumford".

"You're grown up enough to call me Susan," she noted, when her husband wasn't present, but it was still "Mrs. Mumford" when both were there.

She wondered if he even remembered helping her in the bomb shelter?  Probably not, of course.

But again and again over the spring, he again touched her breasts.  They were all accidental.

The Mumford house, 431 N. Elmwood, was an already-dated product of the post-war boom: VA financed, three bedroom, full and half bath, garage, modern kitchen.  A modern kitchen, at least until General Electric took over from General Eisenhower.  Appliances of the 60's were larger, more consumer-orientated.  As the space allocated for an old Frigidaire was a bit small for a refrigerator with a full freezer above, their new appliance stuck out, blocking "just a little, just temporarily", according to Howard, of the kitchen-dining room passage.  The constricted doorway was no longer two-persons wide.

The second time that Sandy touched her breasts (and this time it was both), she'd been entering the kitchen while he was leaving.  She'd backed against the jam and his arm had brushed.  She'd had no time to turn another direction.  This following occasion was accidental, too, the only difference being their directions and that he'd been saying something to Ronald ahead of him.  Her son hadn't brushed her.

The next occasion was again accidental on Sandy's part, she assured herself, but she'd removed her apron and moved toward the doorway upon hearing the boys on the back steps.  She'd have gone that direction anyway, she told herself, to return the frozen lima beans.  Sandy entered the kitchen first, but let Ronald pass him as the two passed the sink.  When Sandy passed Susan, she was sure he'd leaned her way.  But maybe she was leaning, also.  Her sweater had hardly been drawn sideways, but the wool's slip over the synthetic fiber below left her heart pounding.

Why did I let myself get in the doorway like that, she asked herself?

And there were more, not always in the kitchen doorway, sometimes in spaces where she could have backed away more.  Any words exchanged would be either as a greeting before or as adieu afterwards.  Never in the passing.

And there were incidents inadvertently proximate for other reasons.  Once she drove Ronald's Scout patrol to a parade.  Seven boys, four in the sedan's back, three plus herself in the front.  Fortunately, it wasn't far, as the ones in the back were cracking up over an ill-disguised joke about farting.

Sandy had ended up next to the driver.  She'd plenty of room, their Plymouth being an automatic, but Sandy was definitely against her shoulder.  As the other boys exited, she turned slightly and he'd rested against her.  She'd not planned it that way, but wondering if she'd felt soft or hard.

And there was the good-natured horseplay.  She would of course never push around with one of Ronald's friends, but with Sandy anyway, moments might get a bit juvenile.

"Here you go, Sandy, a scarf so you don't catch cold," making as if to loop it over his neck.

"Not my color, ma'am," he'd protest, dodging, but not too far.

"Tell it to the doctor," she'd lasso him.  Somehow in the exchange, they'd have bumped.  Or maybe it was the moment when she was adjusting it from the back, her blouse against his shoulder.

And then there were the times they'd not even touched, but it felt as if they had.  Ronald thought it was absurdly uncouth, his own mother asking how the kids did the twist.  Why'd she want to learn?  But Sandy, to her son's good-natured derision, agreed to show her.  Learning how was part of the fun, even if you'd never dance it in public.  Sandy's explanation that you're holding a towel and drying your buns, she found so funny.

   "Yeah, you should see my little sis."

   "You should see my, my little sis."

   "She really knows how to rock."

   "She knows how to twist."

Susan was, as they called it, "rocking and rolling," laughing at her antics.  Only when the 45 was completed did she realize that she was excited, but it didn't matter with her bra's industrial-grade construction.  It was if Sandy had been toweling her backside.

But there was also the encounter she couldn't even think of how to excuse.  She'd been saving coffee cans; Howard had said such containers would have a multitude of uses in war's aftermath.  She knew just where the MJB cans would go, top shelf, by the Spam.

Ronald and Sandy were doing homework.  Even when they had different classes, she liked Ronald's studying with a friend who buckled down.  Maybe something would rub off.

"One of you give me a hand a minute and I'll bake some Toll House cookies," adjusting her apron, knowing who'd help out.

Sandy and Susan hauled the empty cans to the shelter, opened the bunker hatch ("Plate steel, counterweighted like a feather," Howard boasted) and descended the steep and narrow stairs.

Without comment, Susan balanced the stool and motioned Sandy where to stand.

At first, his fingers interlaced her bottom ribs, then questioningly nuzzled the lower edge of her brassiere.  He must have felt the reflexive suck of her tummy.

She tried not to shudder when the boy at last cupped her undersides and not to thrust outward when a finger passed over the tip of her left breast.

Susan's only thought was to hold still, to act as if she felt not a thing.  Could he feel the thump pf her heart?  The warmth?  The protrusion of her nipple?  Surely not, she told herself.

As she returned to arranging the cans, one by one, he massaged through cotton, gingham and nylon.  She had no way to explain it, shy of admitting that she'd made herself accessible and he'd acquiesced.

Only when her task was done did she look at her breast, his hand still attending to it.  When he realized she was watching, he ceased.  Knowing that he was confused (as if she weren't also, but she was the adult), she swung her foot backwards to signal her descent.  By the time she reached the floor, he wasn't holding her at all.

Actually, she realized, she'd known he'd let go.  If she'd feared he wouldn't (as she might have expected from an adult male), she'd not have induced him into the bomb shelter.

Returning chair and stool to their assigned positions, the two ascended and shut the cover, a word never spoken, yet everything communicated.

*****

Susan knew she'd been taking the easy route, lettings things happen, finding hints of forbidden delight, supposing nothing in the longer haul.

At first she'd not have confessed to anything being a "forbidden delight", but with time, she'd acquiesced to the "delight" part, looking forward to being by the doorway when the boys rushed by.  She'd not asked Sandy to sit by her in the car, but she'd been motionless when he'd leaned back.  The first time in the bomb shelter, she'd been surprised.  The next time, affirmed.

The "forbidden" she knew to be true, not because anybody had said no, but because she would never let it happen without ensuring against observation.  The "forbidden" came from herself.  But what was forbidden?  Liking her son's friend?  Everybody liked Sandy.

The fact that they'd bumped, not that many times, in the course of household activities?  Well, it wasn't lewd or anything.  They were all short-time encounters, weren't they?  Things that were nobody's fault.

It was hardly even sexual, though in mentally countering such assertion, she realized that element.  A woman's body just does things, sometimes.  Not that any of her Coffee Club friends had affairs, but if they did, that would be what people meant by "sexual".

It was a little different when Sandy had deliberately fondled her, but it was just one time.  Teenagers get confused.  It would have been rude to antagonize the moment.  Besides, he'd only touched the outside.

She'd of course been a virgin when she'd married, but she'd let Howard rest his hand on her thigh when they dated.  It wasn't as if with Sandy, she'd been very far.

She didn't dwell on what Sandy, tentative as he was, did to her.  She'd been glad Howard hadn't snuggled up the evening after Sandy had massaged her.  Once her spouse was breathing evenly, she feigned getting up to read.

She looked around the darkened den.  Everything a modern family would want.  Her life lay out like the new Interstate Highways, cruise control like the new Pontiacs.  Of course she wasn't going to detour.  She just wasn't going to walk away from being her own self, she argued.  She'd not do anything stupid, anything that would carry over.  It was just that Sandy's hand had felt nice on her apron, there in the bomb shelter.

So in Howard's Lazy Boy she did what she never thought she'd do again.  Her orgasm was about a pretend boyfriend taking off her apron, blouse, slip and brassiere

She'd never tell them, but the girls in Coffee Club would understand about a good husband who worked too much, had too many answers, spent too much time planning bomb shelters and never just reached over and felt his wife's breasts.

She'd have not said she was frustrated with Howard, for how can you be frustrated with one who's just what he is?  To Susan, it was more about needing just a little something extra, something maybe a boy might offer.

LET'S TWIST AGAIN LIKE WE DID LAST SUMMER

Susan had known from the start that the Camelot media blitz didn't mean that JFK had what's needed to take care of a pip-squeak dictator in cahoots the Russians.  Nixon would have rescued the Bay of Pigs patriots.

Howard had reseeded over the shelter's earthen cover, so by June the construction wasn't so obvious.  If strangers knew the Mumfords had one, they might try to force their way in.

The kids, maybe two dozen, were in the back yard, grilling hamburgers, gulping A&W and listening to Chubby Checker.

Howard was strict that the bomb shelter wasn't to be a clubhouse (there were too many things that might get moved out of place), but he was a good sport about opening it up for inspection.  "Duck and Cover" wasn't enough.  If they had any questions about nuclear safety, they could ask him.

It was the kind of summer evening that you remember years later, Susan reflected.  Friends, food, music, flirtatious fun.  Most of the vault visitors seemed to be couples, she noted, but wasn't worried.  These were good kids.  Maybe some girl would get her first kiss, right there by the air vent.

   "Come on, let's twist again like we did last summer."

   "Yea, let's twist again like we did last year."

   "Do you remember when things were really hummin'?"

   "Yea, let's twist again, twistin' time is here."

Did she remember when things began hummin'?  Yes she did.  In the bomb shelter, stacking Spam.  Susan wondered what might be their relationship if she'd turned to him and put his hand back on her?  She was glad she hadn't, but on her back on the Lazy Boy, as she now did frequently, she wondered.

"Come on, Mrs. Mumford!  You know how."  It was Sandy from the midst of the twisters.  "You don't even need a partner, just crowd in the middle."

Howard was discussing something about emergency sirens with a couple of the boys.  He'd be pleased to see her also interacting with the youth.  Sliding into the throng of imaginary-towel holders, she gave herself a few backside swipes.

"Mrs. Mumford's looking good!" somebody hollered and she wasn't almost 40 any more.

After the party wound down, Sandy stayed to help put things back in order.  Howard made sure that the charcoal was extinguished.  Ronald had the lawn chairs to reposition.

Howard's guarantee that the Mumford bunker was rodent proof didn't convince Susan.  She'd never seen a place that survived against determined gnawers and didn't want any abandoned hamburgers inviting a mouse invasion.

There wasn't evidence of hamburgers in the bunker, but there was a folded blanket on the bench.  Probably some girl got smooched, Susan smiled.  More?  Well, maybe petted a little, but the blanket's not being on the bunk suggested affections moderated.

Susan was still absently tidying up when she realized someone had descended the steps behind her.  She was facing away, but knew whom.  Husband or son would have said something.

She stood quietly as Sandy reached an arm under hers and crossed to her chest to her other shoulder.  When he pulled her back the few inches to fit her body to his, she realized he was trying to tell her something.

"Sandy, I don't think..." she managed, doing nothing to free herself.

"You want me to," he tried to explain.  Susan could tell by his voice that he, like her, wasn't sure where this was going.

"If you want to, I mean," he suggested.

It's not about what I want, she told herself, but didn't answer.

He moved his other hand to her belly and slipped it under her pullover.

Susan's knees wanted to buckle, but Sandy was holding her up.  She didn't even know why she reached behind to disconnect her strap and again leaned back into him, her knees now strong, her hands cocked behind her on his hipbones.  She knew without a bra, she felt soft.

Her nipples were like the frozen lima beans in her freezer and she bit her lip to keep from saying, yes.  Turning, she gave the boy a kiss, not a long one, but on his lips.  They weren't the only couple who'd kissed down here that evening, she told herself.  Probably she wasn't the only girl who'd been fondled bare skin.

Sandy acted almost surprised, but didn't object to the kissing while she backed him to the bench and straddled him, a knee on either side.  His hardness was not explicit, but recognizable to her press against his fly.  He surely knew what she was feeling.

But it was better that he be the initiator.  "We gotta go up, Sandy," was hard to say, but the right thing to do.

Sandy went up the stairs first, carrying the war-surplus fold-up shovel.  If anyone asks, whispered Susan, say that you're going to throw the barbeque ashes on the flower garden.  They have lots of potassium.

She re-did her top and when Sandy gave three tiny taps with the shovel handle, she ascended and slipped into the safety of her kitchen.

What does that boy think of me, Susan asked herself?  A grown woman who wants to pet?  Surely he wouldn't think that I wanted him to.

She delayed finishing the dishes until Howard was asleep and returned to the bomb shelter.  The hatch felt feather-light and she wasn't scared about the steepness of the stairs.  Flashlight extinguished, she lay on the bunk and finished what Sandy started.

*****

Susan didn't see her son's friend for several days, and even then, it was just in passing.  If, Susan realized, he turned shy, or worse yet, glum, she'd have to accept that she had overstepped his own bounds, a boundary she couldn't set.

But picking Ronald up from the Municipal Pool with his buddy was positive.  Instead of piling in the back with Ronald, Sandy slid into the front seat.  Not close, like on the Scout trip, but up there beside her.  When she dropped him off, he said for both to hear, "See you around."

And she did see him around, the next afternoon when Ronald was bagging at the Piggly Wiggly.  Sandy's mumbled, "Is Ronald here?" told Susan that he knew he wasn't.

"No, he's working, but come on in."

The fact that Sandy followed confirmed why he'd come.  "About the other night..." she began.  It was silly on her part; it didn't mean anything.

But he pre-empted her excuse.  "I just wasn't thinking," he suggested.  "I'm sorry."

She looked at him.  Teenagers can't lie that well.  "You're sorry?"

"I mean I shouldn't have."  He looked downward.

She put a palm on each side of his face.  "You're not sorry at all," and kissed him.  When he reached his hands around her back, she pulled his shoulders against hers.  He may have not been quite ready for the next move, she realized, but then he's just a boy.

"Come on," she whispered, as if others were at home.  Where they stood, anybody at the front door could see.  The kitchen was too aluminum and Formica.  It didn't occur to her to think about the bedroom.

The shelter was their sanctuary.  She closed the iron lid after them, leaving them subterranean, incandescent light their sun.  The bunk was just wide enough for two to lie side by side.  He'd seemed surprised how promptly she'd stretched out, but had little choice but to join.

Sandy was at first content with her blouse, but after a few moments in which the kisses took deeper root, she knew.  She let him open her blouse and push her bra up under her armpits to ponder her white breasts, maroon areole and ready nipples.  Had he seen those of girls his own age?  Lots of girls' breasts, she knew, were as big and most stood higher on their torsos.  Hers hadn't suffered unduly from motherhood, she'd been pleased to find, but even if they had lost some of their tone, that was OK.

"Wow, Mrs. Mumford, Susan, I mean.  They're really pretty," pushing one a little toward the other.

Susan giggled.  He was trying to act so grown up; she was feeling so girlish.

"You don't mind?" he wondered.

She shook her head emphatically, guiding his chin toward her breastbone.

He kissed her chest with more confidence as Susan raised her hands so he could bare her top completely.  At first, he seemed reluctant, but once she pulled his tee shirt over his head, he became less self-conscious.

"Let tryst again, trysting time is here," she thought, the lyric modification making her happy.

It took Sandy little time to assume the advantage of being on top, and Susan, no time at all to spread herself beneath.  Maybe she could lift against his thighs just a little, she decided.  She grinned inwardly as she increasingly made her pelvis his counterpoint, his ridge of proud manhood against her mound of knowing femininity.  He wasn't that little a kid.

She had only to wait.

When Sandy at last climaxed, she held him like it was the most normal interaction in the world.  When he was slow to dismount, she slipped out from under him and extinguished the light to not see what she expected was the wetness on his pants.  Boys need their not-so-secret secrets, sometimes.

*****

The following afternoon (she'd been counting the hours), after the two again together descended into their secret shelter, she stripped to her white panties and suggested that he do the same, "So there'll be less in the way."  The electric bulb shadowed her underwear's crease.

When he hesitated, she turned again off the light and in pitch-blackness heard his zipper.  When he climbed upon her, she felt cylindrical flesh against her abdomen.

He'd known that it would be yet better without underpants.  While they kissed, she pushed off her panties to match his nakedness.  She wondered if his hair was red, too, like her brother's.  She still remembered playing Doctor and Nurse, pushing and pulling on Rusty until he squirted white pee.

Sandy's hand migrated downward, first rolling his fingertips in her tangle, at last, cupping her skin.  A single finger ventured further, cascading almost accidentally, she wondered, into her vagina.  She wasn't sure if he realized the full meaning of her wetness.  Maybe he thought it was normal.  His probing was a bit pedestrian, but she knew it was new territory for him.

Sandy pulled toward her enough to lay his penis, rigid, circumcised and warm, in her palm.  She cradled his testicles, but his erection was what she wanted, lubricating his crown up and down her labia.

She'd have masturbated him, what she thought a 15-year-old might want, but he pushed himself downward to be aimed into her.  The fact that he was foregoing manual climax told her that this afternoon was of his design.  He was on top, the boss.

Rather than the creeping insertion she'd prefer, he impaled her with one mighty thrust.  Not an unwelcome thrust, just a hurried one.  Maybe he thought that he'd be impeded, she wondered afterward.

Once penetrated, however, Susan took control, her pelvis moderating his enthusiasm.  Smaller than Howard, Sandy didn't afford as much friction, but plenty enough to make each stroke better than the last.  Lovers, one within the other, make things work.

She knew she'd not have much time, but even if Sandy ejaculated quickly, she'd harvest his waning moments.

She knew that Sandy was climaxing not from his penis, its habits yet unknown to her, but from his breathing.  Hearing his gasps so close to her ear, she pulled his shoulder blades to drive him to her cervix.  Sandy momentarily paused when she begin to shudder, but realizing that it was in excitement, pushed inward until he was spent.

Susan, all of a sudden both weak and strong, held him to her until her own contractions expelled his slicked limpness.

"That felt so nice, Sandy," after the two were closer to normal respiration.

"You're OK?"  Susan sensed that he wasn't too sure how good sex, brief as it might be, leaves a woman.

"I'm really OK, every bit of me."

"I wasn't planning to," demurred the boy, as if culpability need be established.

"Me neither," lied Susan.  Well, it was true; when they'd entered the bomb shelter, she'd no specific plan.  Even when they stripped, she'd not thought through what to do next.  But maybe, she realized, the back of her mind had anticipated the eventuality.  "Maybe just being down in this hole makes us want to.  Like we're the last survivors," turning on the light quickly enough to confirm the totality of his red hair.

*****

The nearest the two came to disaster was later that summer when Ronald came home early from the Piggly Wiggly.  She'd left the metal hatch propped for fresh air.  Susan was straddling Sandy on the floor, the bunk too low for imaginative eros.  She'd successfully worked him up inside for her orgasm and afterwards they'd rotate, never disconnecting, and he'd come.

"Hey, Mom, you down there?" the voice from above.

"Just a min, Hun," only after a brief pause and in what she hoped was a normal tone.  "There was this dust devil," hoping to explain the cover's status and praying that Ronald wouldn't come looking.  Fortunately, they'd left the light on, so she'd not need to explain working in the darkness.

Susan was dismounted before the metal cover's opening creek and had skirt on and top closed before the fourth step on the stairs.

Sandy was grabbing her under-things off the floor and ducking behind the water barrel.

"Need some ice cream?" Susan uncharacteristically suggested, blocking Ronald before his eyes adjusted.  "I got some Hershey's," simultaneously searching to explain of why the mattress was on the cement, but Ronald didn't ask.

When Ronald finally headed from the kitchen to his room, she found the bunker vacated, her paramour apparently having made his escape over the fence.  The whereabouts of her undergarments remained a mystery until after dinner, when Sandy stopped by to pick up Ronald to walk to the American Legion double header and dumped the items in the laundry hamper.

Smart boy, she thought.

*****

Coffee Club was delighted with Susan's announcement.  A crib, high-chair and stroller were offered before the hubbub subsided.  A 16-year gap between pregnancies made you young all over, they all agreed.  Everyone had a story about women even in their 40's.  Of course you get a new baby shower, the agreed.  We'll plan it.

Howard was pleased as well.  Maybe the guys at work thought he wasn't virile, so he'd showed them.  Ronald would be off to college in a few years, so a sibling didn't really impact him.

The practical problem, Susan realized, would be if little baby bumpkins were a flaming carrot top.  Fortunately, Rusty spoke to such genes in her family tree, though from where no one had a clue.  Susan had always taken Rusty's mop as a fluke of nature, but maybe, just maybe, she now wondered, their mother might have been more of a flapper than Daddy ever realized.

Susan thought of Ronald's Civil Defense comic book, Bert the Turtle demonstrating how, in the event of an attack, "You duck to avoid the things flying through the air and cover to keep from getting cut or even badly burned."

Duck and cover?  Well, Sandy had ducked behind the water barrel and she'd covered her tracks.

They'd need more supplies for the Mumford bomb shelter, of course.  A year's supply of formula, for one, since nobody breastfed any more.

America's future might depend upon it.

END OF PART I

PART II

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1961

Probably no one will ever know the complete chronology.  The decision-makers on both sides were killed and much of the corroborating evidence was vaporized.  The best way to leave it might be that Khrushchev and Kennedy equally stood their ground and too many ICBM's had their safeties off.

In any case, it was quick and both sides could claim that they'd punished the aggressor, the other.  An aftermath with neither ground invasion nor aerial mop-up speaks to warfare resources exhausted.

It would be a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Howard had been in St. Louis on business, better than saying he'd probably been incinerated in the brilliant flashes.  Susan had been watching Huntley-Brinkley when the emergency warning interrupted.  She'd hardly time to grab Ronald, Sandy and Darlene from the den where they'd been working on their Science Fair project (something about a photographic telescope, she'd been explained).  Sandy, she'd made love with just the afternoon before and Darlene she hardly knew, other than that her father was on the School Board.  She may be 16, too, thought Susan, but any cop seeing her behind the wheel would probably doubt it.

The four were in the bomb shelter wondering if it was just another test when they felt the tremors.  Even with the hatch secured, they could hear the winds that followed.

Then it was black silence, the transistor radio emitting nothing but crackles.  Susan lit a candle and saw her own terror mirrored in the faces of her three charges.  There wasn't anything to say.  Just sit in fear.

Ronald was the first to move.  "I'll look out," as if maybe they'd been misled.

"No, I don't think we'd better.  There might be more and maybe there's radioactivity," his mom cautioned in her adult voice.  The radio spot warned about sand-like particles.

"Just a quick peek," argued her son.  Boys, she realized, would always the first to look, the first to fight, the first to die.

She didn't have the energy for further protest.

Ronald un-cinched the crossbar and cracked the lid.  Then, "Oh, Jesus," re-engaging the lock.

It didn't occur to Susan to object to the profanity.

No one wanted to ask, but he told.  "It's just gone except for some trees and parts of buildings.  There's too much smoke to see much.  And dust."

So this was what it had come too.  Win the War, as American always did, but lose the world.  Was anybody else still alive?

She searched for another thought.  "We're better down here.  Pretty soon somebody will come to rescue us."  Probably nobody believed it, herself included, but waiting gave them purpose.  The radio spots said that after two weeks it would be safe.  Anyway, where would they to go if they ventured out?

Where was Howard?  Maybe they'd only rocketed here and every other place was OK.  She looked at the supplies so diligently sequestered and realized that he'd made this place very well.  But he'd never even know.

The kid's classmates who'd dutifully ducked under their dining-room tables and covered their heads?  Just blown away.

At Coffee Club, they'd been designing summer vacations.  Disneyland, with its Magic Kingdom, looked so fun.  Probably ashes.

All three kids were crying.  Should she try to comfort them, assure them that things would get better?  But she knew they wouldn't, that they were in a hole in the ground with lots of food and nothing above.

Susan cried too.

Nobody wanted to eat, just to lie on the bunks.  Susan didn't mind if Darlene squeezed in with her, at least a touch of companionship.  Unlike the boys in the two berths above, neither slept.

*****

It was the second day before they begin to establish a semblance of logistical enforced proximity.  The toilet was under the stairs and private.  The lime seemed to keep it tolerable.  Changing clothes could happen there, or just wait till the evening's candle was extinguished.  Clothes-wise, the boys had Ronald and Howard's stock to share.  Darlene and Susan just had Susan's, most of it oversized for the girl.  At least nobody was cold.

They tired to play Rummy by candlelight, but nobody tried very hard.  When Darlene sat on Susan's lap without explanation, the mother in Susan wrapped her arms around the youngster and rocked her.

Nighttime settled slowly, Susan realizing by then that she wanted the girl close by.  She wanted Ronald's nearness, for he was hers biologically, but he was already entering those years of separation.  He would kiss her goodnight, his arm around her, even, but not lean against her.  With Sandy, of course, she'd shared what some people think is the ultimate nearness.  But that was before, measurable by the clock in hours, but measurable by the soul in eras.

Darlene apparently wanted nearness too.  Maybe females tend to be first to ask.  After the candle, both women removed their now-sweaty tops and snuggled full breast to small one, Darlene's kiss was what a daughter would share.

*****

Darlene didn't even bother to put on her bra the next morning.  She hardly needed it and was wearing a Yellowstone National Park sweatshirt.  Would parks survive?  Susan, of course, slipped back into her foundation.

Again Darlene spent hours cradled in Susan's lap, but at least by now the four dimness dwellers conversed to kill time.  Nobody wanted to speculate much about what might be above, but Sandy shared his tales of Scouting misadventures and Ronald, his opinions on who'd be in the World Series, his effort at pretense.  Given Whitey Ford's fastball, and even despite an injured Mantle, the Yankees all the way.  He didn't like Roger Maris as much, but could that guy belt 'em!

When Darlene wrapped Susan's arms around her and in the shadows guided Susan's hand to her breast, hard like a half-apple, Susan massaged the girl as she herself would have wanted.  The girl's head was thrown back on Susan's shoulder, her lips brushing below Susan's ear as Susan's hand rubbed from one breast to the other.

At bedtime, again early and already one of only a few demarcations of bomb shelter time, it seemed natural for the girl to push up her shirt for the cooler air and then draw Susan's own shirt likewise.  Darlene backed against Susan, soft flesh now against Darlene's shoulders.

In the darkness, Susan and Darlene snuggled closer all the time.

It seemed yet natural when the girl pulled Susan's hand to her belly, letting Susan first knead the softness of her stomach, then draw downward.  The elastic waistband was loose enough to slip within.

Why was she doing this?  Susan didn't really know.  A union when all bonds seemed broken?  Trashy novels of women making love to women excited her not the least.  We make love with men.  Our husbands.  Maybe sometimes a lover who might even be a boy.  But not with your own gender.  Everybody knew that much!

Darlene spread her knees when Susan touched her flaxen pubic hair and locked her heel over Susan's thigh when Susan parted the girl's fold.  But it wasn't about sex, Susan justified; it was about sharing where there was really nothing else.

Would it be wrong, she asked herself once more?  It might maybe the girl's only orgasm, ever.

She masturbated Darlene as she would have masturbated herself, a single digit back and forth, moistening the miniscule protrusion.  The two worked silently together, making hardly a sound.  Susan wondered if the boys above could feel the bunk's tremble, but maybe they were already asleep.

When Darlene climaxed, Susan felt at least a hint of ascension within herself.

The girl turned to caress and was sleeping before Susan got them covered.  She rested Darlene's hand on the inside of her own thigh and reclaimed the mound between the girl's legs, softly, as not to waken her.

Susan's pleasure was the first good thought she'd had since the emergency warning.  You need at least a memory of pleasure in the worst of times, most of all.  Susan had read about Jews who'd survived only by recreating the recipe a particular bowl of soup.

The night passed dreamily, Susan drifting between girlhood to motherhood.  She dreamed of lying naked, touching herself, then being touched by another.  In drowsy alternation between slumber and semi-consciousness, she was spectator to her own climax.  But when she regained her thoughts nearer to what would have been dawn above, she'd no evidence.  Her slip was up, but that could have happened accidentally, she decided.

She rolled to face Darlene, who, in her own awakening, turned to receive her.  It seemed so right, molding together until their mons were one against the other.  Susan lazily humped Darlene, not forceful enough for orgasms, but with enough friction to drive both their heartbeats.

*****

The fourth night, the boys heard.

Maybe they'd wondered about the two holding hands that day, but probably not.  Bunker existence drives people to more noticeable eccentricities, Ronald bouncing his tennis ball, for example.

Darlene stripped before slipping under the sheet and tugged at Susan until only her panties remained.  Darlene wanted to be loved again and Susan wanted to love her.  Maybe love is the only hope left.  You wouldn't have to remove your clothes to love, but then again, maybe that's how it's best acknowledged, Susan decided, herself removing her remaining piece of attire.

When Susan reached for her lover, Darlene twisted to hold Susan in return.  And when Susan touched between the girl's legs, Darlene slid her hand into Susan's crotch and found it already moist.

Susan's first reaction was to pull away, but their bed's narrowness afforded no option.  Susan could have deflected Darlene's hand, but for what end?  In a way, Darlene's touch even felt familiar.  Susan wanted to be wanted too.  Maybe the climax she'd dreamed last night had been real.  Maybe Darlene had already freed her.

Maybe from the night before, Susan wondered, the girl knew how a woman wanted to be touched.  While the top arm of each securing the other, the lower hands excited each other to impending orgasm and then penetrated with single fingers.  With guys, Howard and Stanley, for Susan anyway, foreplay was so rehearsed.  She and this girl just seemed to be automatic.

It was only after they'd climaxed did Susan realize they'd not been silent.

"What's going on?" from her son far above.

"Shut up, Ronald," from Sandy.  "It's none of our business."

Oh, Lord!

But Darlene kissed Susan again and maybe it didn't matter.

*****

The next morning, Ronald was glum, glum for being stuck in a hole in the ground, even.

Should she apologize, say it wouldn't happen again?  After all, she owed some standard to her own kin.  But Darlene was again holding her hand and even reached up into Susan's blouse when the two were in full candlelight.  The boys pretended not to notice.

It was later in the afternoon (such solar standards becoming less and less pertinent, but evolutionary in the human timepiece) that Ronald motioned Darlene to the stairs where they could converse in muted voice.  When they descended, Darlene was looking downward, not at Susan.

"Mom," begin Ronald, gathering his fortitude.  "Me and Darlene were almost going steady."

That was news to her, probably having more to do with school hallways than actually going anywhere, she suspected.

"So, we're kind of a pair."  He paused again.  "Not that you and Darlene don't have a lot in common, too...  But we don't know what's out there and we like each other," as if that explained things.  Another regrouping of thoughts.  "So can we be together?"

Be together?  He's asking me if he can be with Darlene?  She looked at the girl.

"It's true, Mrs. Mumford.  Maybe we shouldn't have, but I wanted to.  I still want to...  But I like Ronald, too.  You understand."

Susan guessed she did.  How could she say, no don't go with my boy because I want to sleep with you?  Ronald had even asked her, not just tried to sneak something by.  But how'd you sneak anything by anyone in this environment?

She really didn't have much choice.  It wasn't like they were sitting in 431 N. Elmwood.  Things were different.  "Sure, kids, I understand.  There's a future if we're lucky."

"I'll still be with you too," Darlene encouraged.  "It's not like Ronald and I will be really married or anything," brightening.  "Just going steady."

"It's kind of public, you know?"  Susan managed a smile.  "You better take the bottom bunk."

That night, Susan heard Ronald lose his virginity, Darlene whispering suggestions.  The girl's cherry Susan wasn't sure about, but did it matter like they used to think?

*****

The next night, their sixth, Susan knew from the comments below that Darlene had assumed command.  She wanted Ronald to just hold it in her, let her do the wiggling.

How long ago it seemed that she'd made love on that bottom bunk with a boy so much younger than Ronald.  But her pregnancy, nearly two months now, proved they did.  Sandy wasn't that boy; for now he was just someone entombed too.

Maybe she and Darlene would deliver each other's babies, her child and her grandchild.  Survival is not just about memories; it's about hope.

*****

When she awoke, she knew it.  She knew it as surely as she knew her own name, Susan Marquis Mumford.  She knew how to carry on.  It was about not deceiving.

After they finished their water oatmeal, she announced it.  Maybe she should have told her own son first, or maybe she should have told her ex-lover.  Or maybe she should have told Darlene, as a girl maybe senses things boys might discount.  It was just better to tell all three.

"You kids all know that I'm pregnant, right?"  They nodded.  She'd never told Sandy, but surely Ronald had told his buddy and apparently had hinted the same to Darlene.

"Well it's maybe not who's it should be."  There, she'd almost said it.

The three stared in incomprehension, and then disbelief as the inference connected.

Ronald's look was pure incredulousness.  This was his mom!

Darlene seemed equally astonished, though perhaps more realistic.  Teenagers know about this sort of thing.

Sandy shook his head.  Surely he must have wondered if it could be his, Susan presumed, but maybe at his age he felt no need to know.

"Maybe it's my lover's"

"But Mom!"

"Maybe, Ronald, I don't know.  But it's where I am."

Darlene enveloped Susan.  And to her maternal surprise, Ronald, too, came over to hold her.

"Things are different now, anyway, Mom.  We just want it to be healthy.  And you, too."

Susan wasn't about to pull Sandy down with her.  Maybe it wasn't his anyway, but Sandy joined them.

"Your mom's a brave woman, Ronald.  'Cause she wouldn't have had to say anything.  You're really brave, Susan."

"No, I'm not brave.  We're just in this different world now and can't start off with a bunch of lies."

Sandy nodded, thought, and then nodded again.  "No, not lies," walking away to face the trio.  "I made her do it."

"You what?" queried Ronald.

"Do it.  Do it with me."

"No!"

"It wasn't her fault."

"No!"  Ronald moved forward, white in the flame's illumination.

It was Susan who averted violence.  "No, Ronald.  I wanted him to.  Was waiting."

Ronald looked back, confused.

"Ronald, you don't understand, but it happened and I wanted it.  It's not about Dad; it's about me.  I loved Howard, but still let it happen."

"You slept with Sandy?"

"Yes."

"Oh," the brevity masking un-resolved.

"Don't blame Sandy."

Ronald looked at his mother and sat down.  "Maybe it doesn't even matter any more," unconvincingly.

Susan went to him.  "It matters."

"I mean maybe here we are and Dad's dead and there's Sandy still."

"Maybe, I guess."  She wasn't looking for vindication.

Darlene looked at Sandy, defying anything but the truth.  "Did you love Mrs. Mumford?  Because I do and if you don't, I'm not staying in this hole with you."

"Before we did anything, even.  And still."

Darlene weighed the veracity.  "I can kill you, you know.  Fuck you and then kill you."

Ronald re-entered.  "Back off, Darlene, he's my friend still, whatever happened."

As in their initial subterranean hours, the four clung together, the difference being a bond of not just four fears, but now the hints of mutuality.

Both couples, Ronald and Darlene, and Sandy and Susan, made love in the cramped darkness, neither muting their fulfillment.

It had been a week, a week in which millions were dead, millions more dying.  But the quartet was safe for now, a week yet to bide and then maybe to move upwards.

*****

Day eight had purpose.  The males hammered and sawed the bunk from three tiers to two and the females split the third mattress, affixing half to each of the other two.  Even the bedding they turned three into two.

For supper, Susan made sweet and sour Spam and Darlene made biscuits.  Before the candle was puffed away, the four contemplated their chances.

"We at least have some tools and seeds to start a garden," Ronald reminded.

"Plus our library tells lots of stuff about medicine," added Sandy.

Labor and delivery, wondered Susan?  But she wasn't fearful.  They'd do the best they could.  She'd not missed Sandy's use of "our"; this was all four's abode.  Howard had purchased the volumes he'd deemed useful for re-settling America, and as much as he'd not anticipated the circumstances, would be glad for their use.  It's odd, Susan though, how distant he already seems.

"It's all about having kids to carry on," Darlene pointedly looking at their new sleeping arrangement.  "But me and Mrs. Mumford still get time together.  And if we hear any hanky-panky above us, we'll take our chances with the mutants who got radio-activated."  It was the first time the four had laughed, so much so that Sandy got a side ache.

"So tonight you two little kids just listen to how," Susan surprised herself.  Talking about sex to teenagers!  But why not?  "We kept bumping our heads last night.  Now we have room, don't we, Sandy?"

The neighbor boy may have found such frivolity a bit embarrassing, but at least smiled.

"Hey, Mrs. Mumford?"  It was Darlene.  "Me and Ronald aren't the little kids here.  It's the two boys."

The boys laughed, but didn't argue.

The males were to their underwear long before lights out.  Knowing so much about each other, why beg false modesty?  Susan didn't mind them seeing her bra, but waited to pull off her half-slip.

With Sandy the night prior, they'd been hurried, wedged together, even a little unsure.

Now in their bigger bed, they played for the two above.  It had never occurred to Susan that sex was something in which you'd find pride, but when she climaxed on top and then they'd flipped, his turn, she knew that at least Darlene would appreciate the fete.

And sure enough, the next morning, Darlene gave her both a thumbs-up and a wink.

*****

Oral sex wasn't at first within Susan's realm.  Perversities occurred in alleys and under bare light bulbs.  But when first Darlene and then Sandy moved to kiss between her legs, she let them.  It couldn't do any harm, could it?

Darlene knew where a tiny flick would excite.  She didn't guide Susan, but when the elder turned to caress the younger, the girl's thighs were already next to Susan's chin.  Darlene would do to Susan what Darlene would want done to herself, so it was easy.  Susan even liked the smell.

Reciprocity with Sandy was less refined, his sloppy licks inducing her own ventures.  She knew he liked it when she trailed his penis against her face, but couldn't will herself to engulf him.  Maybe he wasn't too sure either, as he never tried to force her.  What worked was to roll her gums back over her teeth ("Let Granny give you a little kiss," she wanted to murmur.) and lightly lock him, her tongue's return play then teasing him to orgasm.  Usually she'd let him escape in time, but when she didn't and caught his first pumps, it was easily enough spit out.  It didn't really have any taste.

Her first experience anally involved copious Vaseline.  She'd been on hands and knees, ready vaginally.  But she'd fallen forward on the mattress, Sandy's chest being too heavy on her back.  Spread as she toppled, his erection wedged her butt.  It hadn't occurred to her that she'd find it exciting.

He, of course, would have let her regain her position, but when she didn't lift herself, his momentum sought the nearer cavity.  Only then did Susan realize their difference in size.  She'd never heard of relaxing her ass, and even if she had, wouldn't have had the confidence.

"Just a minute," reaching for the first aid satchel under the bunk.  She'd heard how GI's were issued petroleum jelly "to coat their gun barrels" and knew from the Coffee Club giggles that there was more to that story than rifles.  She slathered the jell and grabbed both sides of the bed frame.  She didn't care if it hurt, but still might need to steady herself.  How much of her life had she feared things that "might hurt", she wondered.

In fact it hardly hurt at all!  Admittedly he'd not entered deeply, but as far as he got, he fit.  Expecting only the novelty on her part, she lay quietly while he came.  When he withdrew, she felt disquieted, but at the same time pleased.

In a bomb shelter, what pleases assumes legitimacy.

*****

Days and nights lost their significance as their wait progressed.

Nobody wanted to parade around in full nudity, but there wasn't the space to preclude occasional exposure.  Darlene seemed to care not at all about being bare-chested, nubile and free.  At first it seemed bold to Susan, but maybe it was just easier.

Susan made every effort to cover her top, even if only be brasserie, but she knew that Ronald at times saw.  Maybe you just smile, she wondered.  Or let him see, even, so it's not a big deal.

Not having seen Ronald naked for years and years, hers was maternal curiosity, Susan hoped, just not obtrusively such.  Her glimpses of Ronald were brief, usually when he was changing, back to her, but turned a little to one side or the other.  It wasn't big, but then, it wasn't at all small.  Jet black hair, though unless he was facing the light, it was hard to really judge.  If she feigned sleep, easy enough to do, sometimes she could watch him longer.

As daytime was but defined by candle or battery, it became harder to coincide sleep.  There wasn't much reason to get out of bed, anyway.  And if you were in bed, there wasn't much reason to ignore the moment.  One pair might be making love, scarcely draped with a sheet, while the other dutifully attended to domestic chores.  Darlene would even turn off the burner and hold the canned chili until Susan and Sandy finished and recovered.

For Darlene and Ronald, even, what happened under covers and what happened otherwise merged into just what happened.  Live for the moment.

On one occasion, Darlene was in her underpants when she sat on Ronald's lap to read and the two were having sex in the chair not three minutes later.  It was three minutes, Ronald teasing down the girl's panties and then Darlene pulling his erection up between her breasts, that Susan watched from her bed, not six feet behind the chair.  Ronald surely didn't know, but Susan wasn't sure about Darlene, the way she worked his swelled penis into view.

She'd never seen her boy erect before.  It was like Howard's.

Sandy, watching with her and quickly stiff, seized the opportunity to impale Susan abruptly, but at least under the blanket.  Susan giggled her acquiesce, but never looked away from the copulation on the chair, by now rocked enough for her to follow the paleness of her son's hardness burying itself into the shade of Darlene's down.

After Susan climaxed, she let the blanket slide to the side, knowing that Ronald could see between her legs too.

That night (or was it just later that day with the room darkened?), Darlene made love to Susan, mastering her with one hand, using the other to mute her.

*****

The foursome's sheets became uncontrovertibly stained, but as water was precious and drying nigh impossible, nothing was laundered.  There's comfort in familiar smells.

Coffee Club had agreed that while morning sickness affords an excuse for domestic perks, maybe something especially tasty, maybe not having to stand at the sink too long.  In the shelter, Susan's sensed her condition mostly as a tipsy stomach and a palate wanting ice cream.  But of course she'd want ice cream, a memory.

Morning sickness surely didn't curb Susan's appetite for sex; if anything made her want more.  When Sandy was scraping off the dishes, she'd approach from behind, reach into his pants and pull him backwards.  He'd be ready by the time they backed to the mattress.

If the boys were engrossed in checkers and Darlene gave Susan the look, the girls would curl up together, the guys pretending they weren't listening to the females under the bedcover.  Or maybe Susan gave Darlene the look.  It was all the same once they curled up.  The boys didn't understand how well Darlene made love to Susan because the boys thought it was more about motion.  Sometimes it was just Darlene's fingertip and breath.

Howard had never done his wife full justice.

*****

Susan knew it was ridiculous when the kids wanted to squeeze all four onto the lower bunk, "just to see how we fit, all together."

She'd be just inches from her son.  Actually, they'd surely touch.  But they'd be off to the sunlit world, whatever its threats, in just a few days.

To Susan, this bedtime was as if she had three lovers.  Sandy was the one inside, of course, expert in that art, but she'd locked an arm with Darlene and half of what Susan saw and felt was Ronald.  When mother and son hooked feet accidentally, she tried to free her ankle, but his foot pulled her leg back toward him.  She liked how he took control.

Her son's attention was appropriately directed toward Darlene, but there was no way for Mom not to recognize his touch, at first just the footsie, but in the increasing confusion of four bodies churning, his hardness at times nuzzling her hip.  She at first tried not to acknowledge its proximity, but as the four lost their differentiation, it ended up in her hand as Ronald twisted in her direction.  Finally, though, Darlene's demand called him back and Susan rose to meet Sandy, probably surprised by her readiness.

Even when Ronald was humping Darlene, his palm found his mother's ribs.

Susan tried to ignore what seemed to be corresponding interactions between Sandy and Darlene.  They were all just too together.  But it was so hard to remember that with Ronald, it was just accidental.

Hearing Ronald's climax, almost of on top of her, Susan's own orgasm was both confused and consuming.  The semen smeared on Susan's outer thigh was surely that of her son.

Ronald's foot was again over hers and after she'd wiggled a spent Sandy a bit to the outside, Ronald again found her hungry nipples.

The slickness wetting Susan's thigh beckoned her hand.  She hoped that Ronald's arm couldn't detect the motion as she spread the fluid upward into her own.

Later in the fleeting moments of cognizance between dreams of lovemaking (or was she only dreaming that she'd come awake?) she still tingled where she'd put his wetness.

Her last dream was of the creator of that wetness gliding it into her.

The next morning, Sandy and Darlene had already slipped out, leaving son cuddling mother, c within C.

In her yawning stupor, Susan first thought it was Sandy's wake-up call hard against her backside, Sandy's arm draped over her chest.  But it was Ronald, still fast asleep.

Where were the others?  A bomb shelter's not where people can exit.  It was the vibration that told her the two were ensconced above, in what they were engaged.  Kids!  She could tell from the thumps, not sliding sounds, that Darlene was on top.  Probably Sandy had a hand on each of her breasts.  Susan knew the boy's erection, the girl's vagina, how well they'd fit.  Marlene had enjoyed Ronald last night and now she's up there with Sandy.  Kids!

Listening to the lovemaking, Susan played her fingertips against Ronald's knuckles to make him reflexively stroke her nipples.  She was surprised how he kept fondling after she ceased.  Probably dreaming of Darlene, she supposed.

When Susan rolled her hand from her hip to his hipbone, the pressure made him roll back and her hand fell into the chasm, coming to rest beside his penis.  It's common for boys to wake up hard, she'd heard say in Coffee Club.  That's why he is.

She'd not planned to touch, of course, but that's where she was.  Instinctively, she hefted him, letting the tip slide across her fanny.  Just to see what it feels like.

She was, in her mind, hardly squeezing, not stroking, but whatever she was doing was enough to further his reaction.  And the more he grew, the more secure was her grasp.  She wiggled it down to catch between her cheeks.

Thank God he's asleep, she thought.  Worn out by Darlene.  That girl!

I won't do much more of this, just a little, she pledged, reaching down enough for the penis to roll against the inside of her wrist.

Or would he want me to relax him again?  In his sleep.  With my hand, of course.  I'll be dressed before he wakes up.  It's natural that he'd want it.  It's why boys have wet dreams.  Do boys ever think of their moms?

She remembered the first time she'd held Sandy's, how she'd started the masturbation.  She slipped Ronald's skin up and down

Her boy was quickly on his back, pushing and pulling in reverse.

Maybe he's not that asleep, she realized, the way he's lifting.  But she couldn't back out now.  It wouldn't be healthy for him to be left halfway.

And so what if he knows?  He needs me.

When she kissed his cheek, pledging to make it good, to her surprise he turned his face toward her.  They'd never kissed in more than in familiar affection, but these lips seemed those of a lover.  She didn't think he'd want her tongue (How long had it been since she'd done that with Howard?  Before Ronald was born, to be sure.), but he turned head at right angles to hers and won the tongue duel.

All the while, she never ceased stroking, lightly but commandingly.

With one hand he pushed her breast and with the other, he clenched her grasp more tightly around him.

She sucked in when he touched her stomach.  It was good when his fingers combed her tangle.  Mother's knees were spread when son's forefinger opened her part.

She'd not anticipated his boldness, but it didn't seem competitive.  They both wanted the same for the other.  Susan could satisfy Ronald's need without compromising herself.  It would be OK, though, if he brought her a similar pleasure.  Love's not a one-way thing.

Would he know how to masturbate her, she wondered?  She could guide him with her free hand.  It only took a few pushes, her fingers over his, to train him, but maybe he knew something already from Darlene.  But Darlene didn't matter, as he protruded Susan's nubbin with her own juices.  She used her hips to show him how to do it best.

They broke their kiss and lay side by side, both wet, both concentrating shut-eyed on the other's manipulations.  Even when Ronald forgot his duties and probed her again and again with his longest finger, it was what mother wanted.

Susan mesmerized her gaze on a knot in the plywood above, then realized that this wasn't like doing it alone where imagination was everything.  What would Ronald's climax be like?

She twisted her head to watch him come, and in so doing realized he'd turned to watch her.  It only seemed right that they both turned more.

At first it was just accidental, but when Susan moved the tip of his penis against her pubic hair, she knew he liked it.  She'd like it if that's how he came, soaking as it would into the follicles.

It wasn't as if there weren't room enough for both their hands to work side by side, but when his hand disengaged to pull her hips forward, Susan knew to pull him against the front of her slit.  Or even in just enough, she realized, to play against her clitoris.  She climbed to an angle more comfortable and locked her calf over his leg, masturbating his erection as his erection masturbated her.

She hardly had to slide him at all to make it work for her.

But why was she even needing to figure out how to make it work, she wondered?

Given what the two had together been through, why would there be a limit?  Did who had sex together even matter in this destroyed world?  A mom and a son were just two survivors.  He was hers and her body was what she wanted to give.  Already pregnant, she'd run no risk.  The two above wouldn't have left them cuddled together if they'd thought it wrong.  In a few days, life would either restart or terminate.  Until then, love was what they had.

Yes!  Susan wasn't sure if she just thought it or actually said it, but Yes!

Having the whole bed to themselves, pulling Ronald above her was effortless.  It was if he were already balanced to roll that way, even.  If he'd willed to the contrary, he'd have had little chance for protest, as her mouth again covered his.

He'd come out of her womb and now he'd return.

She held his hips up to fixate on his erection and prolong the anticipation.  She'd want to draw him fractionally, squeezing and yielding, showing him everything about her.

But as their bodies flowed together, Susan wasn't even conscious of the mechanics, just their uniting.

Ronald was still the offspring, demur to her pace, her breathing, her tremors.  His head was beside hers.  Susan watched his ear as he coupled deeper, not something learned from Darlene, she recognized, but a mating innate to mother and son.

Susan knew when the lovers in the upper bunk ceased in their own affections to witness that below.  Darlene would be holding Sandy motionless inside her, maybe just moving enough to keep him rigid.

Susan's orgasm must have exceeded whatever hints of approach were sensed above.  Ronald stayed with her the whole apex, not seeding her until her own contractions began to subside.

Not until she and Ronald had stilled did Sandy and Darlene resume their own sexual gaming with a thrilled "Yes!" from the girl and than a celebration forceful enough for Susan to wonder if there were enough nails in the bunk's reconstruction.

When Susan awoke again, Ronald still on her chest, Sandy and Darlene were up and dressed, cooking Bisquick Spamcakes, Darlene's culinary invention.

After breakfast, the four of them again made love, again together on the lower bunk.  But this time she was mostly Ronald's.

*****

It was Day 13, 24 hours before they'd open the hatch the second time.  If they saw only dust, they'd at least have another few weeks of provisions.  There are worse ways to perish than while making love.

Twice earlier they'd heard what seemed to be human noises, in one case a scratching at the hatch perhaps by a crazed refugee.  They'd sat silently, Ronald holding his father's shotgun should the stranger force the door.  But whoever he was stole away.

This was the third potential intruder, this time sounds of blast-blown dirt scraped to expose the steel plate.  The four listened.

Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap.  Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap.

431?

No!  It couldn't be 431!  Howard had been killed in St. Louis!  But who else would know the code, their house address.

Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap.

Susan put her ear to the metal.

"Susan, it's me!  It just took forever to get back here.  I think we even won, but..."  She missed a portion, "And don't worry about the lock jamming.  I brought a cutting torch.  Just hold on.  Are you two OK?"

Susan looked behind her at the shelter, now a mess of opened tins, abandoned clothes, odors.  The now-double bunk bed looked much too large, but then, she realized, it spoke to how they'd survived.

"I'll be in there soon," encouraged the voice, clanking something heavy on the steel.

What do I yell, Susan wondered.  We're alive?  The shelter saved us?  I fucked my brains out?

Overriding the stale smell of unfettered intercourse and protracted mutual masturbations came the fumes of acetylene parting steel plate.

END OF PART II

PART III

AFTERMATH

They buried Howard in the churchyard.  First Methodist was gone, of course, but the yard stayed green.  Susan remembered once telling Sandy that ash contained nutrients, but so, so long ago.  Was it sodium?  Phosphorus?

Susan was never sure of what her husband truly knew.  He had to have recognized that the bomb shelter he'd constructed had become a refuge of consolation.  But he neither asked.  More pointedly, he never pursued Susan about her own participation.  He'd been two weeks in the light and had seen things less fathomable.

He'd just hugged the four survivors (he hardly knew Darlene, but seemed to accept that she was now his ward) and started them planning.  The Howard who went to St. Louis would himself have done the planning, but this new man, already ill from what had rained on him, wanted a five-person process.  The fact that two of the five shouldn't have been in the shelter didn't now matter.

Howard couldn't make love ("Must be psychological," he'd volunteered.  He'd seen males sicker than he was rape woman after woman, as if mere violence might bring cure.), but Susan didn't care.  He was back.  The three kids slept above, to Susan's ear, as chaste as the two below.  The twilight of relentless orgasms seemed transitional.

They were about to move on.

*****

Howard's tale was simple.  He'd been searching for a yellow-and-black public shelter sign when the bomb hit, but while things around him incinerated, he'd been spared.  Maybe something about how the blast reflected down St. Charles Street, he wondered?  In any case, he was hardly burned and, had he found the shelter, might have avoided the bulk of the fallout.  As it was, though, he'd been far too exposed.

Many with like stories were already dead, so it must have sheer determination that got Howard back to her, walking, cycling ("Just lying on the street, almost new.") and rides hitched with refugees, to where, they'd not a clue.

He'd come to hold his wife and say goodbye to his boy.  He'd always known they'd be safe.  It's why he built the thing.  He'd done his part so that they could do theirs.

He would fatigue quickly, need to lie down.  Susan flinched the first time Darlene lay beside him, but then realized that as sexual as was the girl's need with her and the boys, what Darlene most wanted was to comfort.  Stroking Howard's brow, pressing his palm to her chest, wasn't about intercourse.  Even Howard seemed to understand.

If the girl could have induced Howard, Susan realized, she'd have wanted them to make love.

*****

The five provisioned for the bold, but settled for the prudent.  Howard had heard that the mountain states were better off, but with winter's onset and no assurance of welcome, emigration held little promise.  Howard's impression was that some survivors had already united into bands, some out to build, others out to pillage.  The greenback was yet honored in some regions, but trade elsewhere was by barter.  Wherever they arrived, they'd have little with which to establish themselves.

They'd do better where they were, not bunkered down, to be sure, but where they knew the lay of the land, might find past neighbors.  Folks turn homeward when things get tough, even to the matchstick remains.  The building's just the building.

431 N. Elmwood was little more than matchsticks, but the garage had simply toppled forward and most of the wood was salvageable.  Sandy and Ronald could re-erect it, insulate, catch rainwater from the roof and they'd move their day into the sunlight.  If trouble descended, they'd still have their bunker.

The Piggly Wiggly was largely flattened and there'd been looting, but Ronald guessed where the stocks would be less visible.  Howard helped them fabricate a bicycle-tire pushcart and by night they restocked the shelter with so many tins that if the five were again forced underground, they joked, they'd have to eat themselves space.

They moved the goods nocturnally, shotgun loaded, skittish of others.  They would see others, usually traveling, sometimes sheltering, and sometimes share guarded advice and unsubstantiated speculation.  Mexicans were invading.  Eisenhower had resumed the Presidency and would send in the Army with field hospitals.  All the Russians were dead except for a cosmonaut stuck in space.  San Francisco had an earthquake and everybody escaped from Alcatraz.

Howard drilled the boys about the agriculture of his childhood.  How to milk a cow.  Prepare for a labor-intensive spring.  By then, surely, there'd be enough government re-established to farm in safety.  The boys mapped the neighborhood and Howard visited with anybody who'd talk (which was everybody), discussing options for governance, mutual defense, and (strangely to Susan, since he hardly went) a church.  "A church is what will make us stick," he figured.  Perhaps for like reason, he raised the Stars and Stripes, "So that everybody will know what we stand for."

When Howard died, just before the New Year, neighbors Susan had never seen came to pay their respects.  "He'd have been our first Mayor, if we'd had elections".  People even brought food.  "What we're neighbors for."

*****

Howard's passing made them four again, but without the sexual ferocity they'd once shared.  Howard himself had helped his wife let go, talking of the future, not saying what to do, other than reminding her that though only one of the four, she'd more than her share of experience.

Howard had been as attentive to Sandy's development as he was to his own blood.  In some ways, even more so.  As parents, they had a good idea of Ronald's relative merits, steering him as best they could since birth.  Sandy needed more assessment, a crash course at times.  In Howard's view, the boy didn't appreciate his own potential.

Before he died, Howard summarized where he saw things heading.  "There's a lot more to Darlene than meets the eye.  The kid just wanted to help me get better.  If she and Ronald want to pair up, let 'em.  He could do a whole lot worse.  She'll be a good mom."  He smiled.  "Fact is, I think they've already paired, but maybe just don't want to upset me.  Once we get the church going better, it'll be more standardized, but for now, just go ahead."

He thought another moment and ventured an opinion.  "You know, Susan.  If anybody could have got me there, it would be you, but second to that, that girl knows how to do her thing.  You ever notice?"

"Me notice?  I was cooking?"

"And, boy, did your Chef Boyardee taste good that time!" knowing he'd get away with it.  He looked at his partner, her belly.  "But seriously, we got a young one ourselves.  Wish I'd be here."

Susan started crying and he let her.  "You'll do fine.  The boys know about setting up a clean place and unless we get some medics, you've got the neighbor women."  He caught her eyes.  "But don't try to raise him alone.  They need a dad, too.  Maybe one of those dandies who came courting before we tied the knot will show up with a ring.  But if not, Sandy will stick around.  He'd want to, even."

Would Howard be better off knowing, she asked herself?  That her future would be with Sandy.

And maybe he answered her question.  "You got through those first couple of week, the really tough ones underground, and were here for me.  You couldn't have done it better."

Couldn't have done it better?  Couldn't have not fallen into sex?  Couldn't have kept it just with Sandy?

"The thing is, Susan," in the simplicity that dying allows, "I slept with a woman five or six nights on the road.  Alice, but we didn't even have last names.  Heading the same direction.  Kept me going, and I guess I kept her going.  By the end, I couldn't do it and she still stayed with me.  Not near as pretty as you.  She could have robbed me so easily.  And you know what?  She was a Mormon."

Susan curled beside the man she loved.  She hoped the woman was pregnant so there'd be that of Howard carried on.  Alice was her name.  Probably she was really pretty.

"Howard, you know what?  You tell me that story again, more of it, and I'll come for you too."  She lay sidewise across him so that he could watch her hand.

When he again told her that his companion was Catholic, Susan's orgasm made him laugh with her.

"So Susan, here's the deal.  Dying's about being sad.  For sure it's sad.  But me dead means moving while you can.  While you can still come that good.  Damn near broke my ribs, you know?"

"How 'bout some of your favorite, Chef Boyardee?  Nobody else will hardly eat it."

*****

After the funeral, Susan patted her bedside.  "Sandy, he'd want you to.  We'll send the other two down to the shelter."

However Howard had done it, Susan knew that Sandy had been prepared.  "You're pretty pregnant, so maybe just to stay warm," perhaps not totally sure if it should be so soon.

She smiled.  "We don't get 'pretty pregnant'.  We are or we're not.  Just don't lay on my stomach too hard.  I didn't need to for a long time and now I really do."

"Me, too," his admission.  "Darlene didn't even try because maybe she wanted me to wait."

"Probably harder for her than us."

Sandy nodded and Susan continued.  "Maybe lie beside me for starts and be careful till we see how my breasts feel.  And not too far in, unless I say.  And my feet are swollen, so maybe a foot-rub."

"Can I strip you, first?"

"After you lock the door.  Don't suppose you have any ice cream, do you?"

He looked at her, confused.

"Just kidding.  Maybe we can make a nest out of pillows?"

*****

The Army had arrived the week before Howard died.  No battalion with a tent hospital or anything, but it only took authority, not imposition, to promote stability.  The patrol had seen the American flag and had methodically interviewed Howard for the local perspective on jurisdiction.  Howard had already thought through pros and cons, and by the end, all were agreed that a civilian judiciary was first in order.  "We're not here to run this place," the Captain was adamant, "just to get things rolling," leaving Howard a less-tattered flag.

"Keep that shotgun for hunting, sir.  But you civvies will decide that we're not better off with everybody a gunslinger.  Look where it got us."  The Republican in Howard didn't concede, but he acknowledged that the Constitution might need a few updates.

The soldiers' charge was clearing roadways, installing a fundamental gravity water system, equipping a temporary school and (likely attributable to advice from Howard) prodding the community to pool enough resources to support a part-time pastor.  Howard would have hated the sermons, far too much about Jewish law for a Protestant gathering, but would gladly fork over his contribution.

Their President, it seems, was Sam Rayburn, in the House long before Susan was even born.  Everybody said the guy was way too old and everybody agreed that he knew how to make things happen.  Better than some novice, agreed Susan.  America needed to get to shirt-sleeve-rolled-up work, not flit around with half-baked philosophies.  Few in the community mourned Lynden Johnson's being on Capitol Hill when Washington was flattened.  He was just a crook.

Howard would have approved how effectively property rights pressed restart.  There was no way to process claims of missing persons, guarantee mortgages, execute wills.  You owned what you held when the Army arrived, unless, of course you'd gained it deceitfully and were endangering others.  You were married, so to speak, to whomever you'd settled in with.  If a lost spouse returned, you'd sort it out, and if need be, do a bit of sharing until the numbers evened.

Justice wasn't always served equally, but for most citizens (for that was more and more their self-identity), the good outweighed the bad.

The fact that Susan and Sandy were a generation separated was of issue to nobody.  Sandy served his two-days-per-month collecting garbage.  The men remembered Rosie the Riveter, but few really believed public service to be women's work.  The women didn't mind exemption from sanitation duty, for it gave them time to edit and mimeograph a community newspaper, just four pages, read in every household.

*****

But rights and economics aside, how did the American psyche really pull itself upward?

How do 20 million functional citizens spread over landscape that once supported nine times that reclaim their destiny?

How does any society ultimately self-regulate beneath the veneer of legal trimming?

Sex.

American families needed children.  American men needed something to come home to.  American women needed refreshment.

So how to promote sex efficiently, humanely, lovingly even?

Through coffee clubs.

*****

It was natural to group with other women, happenstance at first, regularly later on.  They'd drink coffee (terrible brew, to be sure, but it was about the idea, not bean), talk about the silly topics they all enjoyed ("All my Tupperware that got left out cracked and they won't replace it!"), compare notes on children ("It's perfectly normal not to walk by one.  Probably you didn't get him proper shoes."), compliment each other's needlework ("A potholder?"), admit things that would never leave the circle ("They've got this pill, so someday we can do it whenever!").  Nobody had the matching tea sets any more, but it was old times.

Coffee Clubs.  Susan's.  Others they'd hear about from relatives.  And much later when things were better understood, in the Soviet Union, even.

Coffee Club oversaw the logistics of Susan's pregnancy, got her what she'd need, knew about umbilical cords, did her vacuuming.  As they saw the evidence, most presumed the baby to be Sandy's.  "You two just got a little jump on the schedule, is all."  Formulating a midwifery team was more complex than pulling a crib from the attic, but not fundamentally different from where her old club had left off.

Actually, many of the girls had taken younger lovers over the difficult times.  "Can't beat an older one for technique, but technique, schmecknique, can't beat a younger one for duration."

The fact that she'd been with Darlene they'd thought entirely reasonable.  Again, many had been with other women.  Pleasuring each other didn't cost America a penny.  And it wasn't all in past tense.  "Just you stay out of my sheets, honey, or I'll teach you things that kid never dreamed about!"

A few might linger after coffee, pairs wandering toward the back.  Susan never arrived with that intention, but had her first orgasm in a bathtub that way.  The week's hostess had been heating water since dawn and the girls were giddy with anticipation.  "Not enough hot water for individuals; you'll have to double up," to fits of giggles.  Susan would have liked the loving even if the water had been cold.  Her shampoo ran from her head, onto her partner's neck and back onto her own breasts.

But a Club member whose indiscretion wrecked relationships rarely survived.  She'd not be notified of the next gathering, be passed over when knowledge and resources were shared.  The men she'd been seeing would be unavailable.  She'd be without community.

And a man who pursued advantage, raped or degraded for perverse pleasure, would be lured to defenselessness, the Club perhaps wordlessly stripping the tools from his shop.  They'd reinvented stocks and were not above bringing their coffee and chatting while punishment was rendered.  ("Should he lose it, girls?"  A negative vote was assured, but not in the anticipation of the malfeasant.)  Punitive, yes, but never outside the Club's oversight.

Sandy, maybe because Coffee Club deemed him both young and a leader-to-be, sipped coffee with them sometimes.  Not of course when they talked girl talk, but when they wanted to convey a thought.  Coffee Club didn't find it threatening when the aware males formed their own "Beer Circle", the brew unfortunately just a brew of yeast and sugar.  The women entirely agreed that it wasn't ladylike to have to threaten.  A Beer Circle visit almost always induced a transgressor to righteousness.

The rotating leadership of both gatherings even went on excursions, "socials", they called them.  Personal bonds might be cemented (the ones that seemed healthy, that is) and mutual concerns resolved.  "Leadership that lies together learns to listen," some said.

Tribal?  No, just pragmatic.

America was again thinking of space travel, the booster technology having been proven.  Tribes don't need satellites.

Darlene and Ronald wanted to stay for the delivery, but they'd an option on farmable land in Humboldt County, far in the forests of California, and needed to establish themselves before planting.  Coffee Club and Beer Circle would be more than adequate community for the two (soon to be three) who remained.

The four's last dinner was for both somber reflection and enthusiastic expectation.  After pie, Ronald looked at Sandy and the two exited to inspect the load lashed to the Impala convertible.

Darlene claimed her place on Susan's lap (at least as much of the location yet vacant) and the two sat by the wood stove, Susan's hand once more in Darlene's blouse.  This nipple may have nourished a kid or two before I hold it again, Susan realized.

The two savored the moment and then the younger led the elder to the bed.  It only took a moment to strip.  Side by side, knowing fingers found desiring flesh and Susan would have come quickly had Darlene not risen to run her face over Susan's pelvis, Susan likewise pulling Darlene to kiss her cleft.  The pair moistened one another, teased one another to erection and only as will-power dissolved, lipped one another to orgasm.

To Susan, the woman-to-woman smell would always be that of the shelter.

"I love you a lot, Darlene.  Thanks for getting in my lap when I was really scared."

"We'll prove it together again," promised the girl.

After Darlene hugged Susan goodnight, Ronald returned, covered his dozing mother with the sheet and assumed the place beside.

She didn't tell him that he needn't be so excessively careful about her pregnancy.  It's good, though to let him respect her difference.

Of his touch to her labia, "I take it that's you down there, buster?  I can't see over my belly."

"He said the Army sent him to check radioactivity," Ronald laughing at his comeback.  "No, honest, your stomach is so pretty to look at," laying his hand on her resolutely-protruding belly button.

"Tell him the range might need a look-at, too." receiving his cautious penetration.

"OK, Mom, am I done now?" in mock exasperation, "You promised I could go out and play"

"You have to smooch your old mom if you want desert," as if in maternal exasperation.

"It's not fair.  None of my friends have to," laughing first and losing the contest.

"You always say that.  Sandy has to every night."

"Well, OK, but not because you make him."

Mother on her back and son beside made languid love, legs intertwined, her boy motionless within her for minutes at a time, until one or the other might give a little wiggle.

She boxed him on the ear, then kissed to make it better as they prolonged their mating.

"I love you, Mom."

*****

Chubby Checker was probably dead, realized Susan.  We'd finished doing the twist anyway.

Having no idea what might follow, the survival of four Liverpool lassies (Their cute little pigtails, all cut alike!) playing their catchy music in Hamburg clubs in wouldn't have seemed significant.  But give the band a couple of years to meld creatively and replace their drummer.  Give the USA a couple of years to re-establish dominant network television and refurbish a totally-square variety show host whom people remembered.  Add a little teenage frenzy, and America would be on its feet.  (And probably all the teenagers would start growing pigtails.)

Susan turned up the record player.

   "He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."

   "He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."

   "And with a love like that,"

   "You know you should be glad."

Sandy, honey!  Got a minute?  Little Ruby needs some more formula.  There's still a ton out in the shelter.

END

HOLLY ON THE WEB

Wherever you found this story on the web, thank you to the server.  My problem is that I've no systematic way to update the various servers.  As literary errors (or just poor word usages) are made known to me, I'll repair that which is salvageable on http://www.asstr.org/~Holly_Rennick/.  My website's not much graphically, I admit, but HTML isn't my native language.

You can contact me via the site's message form, that HTML code by the smart people at ASSTR.

I won't be changing the story significantly, so if you didn't like it before, that much will remain the same.  But if you did like it, an update may read a bit more cleanly.

   Holly

