He entered her from behind and she reached back with both hands, pulling him against her. “Oh, my God!” she whispered.
She began pushing back and forth. After a couple of minutes they were both breathing heavily, their rhythm growing clumsier with each stroke until Veronica gasped in climax, sinking toward the floor barely able to grip the handlebars. Forrest held her up the best he could, finishing only a few seconds behind her, groaning deeply, both of them dropping to the floor where they lay in one another’s arms on the cold concrete, their pants bunched up around their ankles.
“Holy shit,” she panted. “I almost passed out.”
He was holding handfuls of her hair, still breathing hard into her chest. “I never came so hard in my fucking life,” he chuckled. “It actually hurt. Fuck, that was a long time coming.”
“Again,” she said, laughing as she tried clumsily to get up. “We have to do it again.”
“Not here,” he said. “In the missile silo. I don’t want to be interrupted.”
“That seems to be the popular place,” she said, working her pants back up over her thighs. “Just don’t take me to your usual spot.”
“What usual spot?” he said, standing and pulling up his pants. “I haven’t been with anybody but my wife in twelve years.”
“Really?” She grabbed his face and kissed him. “I thought that you and Andie…”
“She’s never asked and I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to.”
“So how long has it been for you?”
“More than two years. Almost two and a half.”
“Oh, you poor baby,” she said, hurting for him. “Well, let’s get you caught up.”
They stopped at the door and had a long, tender kiss. “I’m so fucking glad you found me,” she said softly.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “The world’s dead and we’re down here feeling like this.”
“Isn’t it what you planned?”
“This? Hell, no. I didn’t think we’d survive the fucking impact!”
Thirty-Two
The next morning, Marty awoke in his own motel room beneath a pile of musty smelling blankets and lay staring at the ceiling. He had slept fitfully the night before, and he was feeling incredibly guilty for not having killed himself when he’d had the chance. That was an easy situation to remedy, however. The first chance he got, he would grab a gun, shoot a couple more bikers—if he could manage it safely this time—then kill himself.
He couldn’t get over how badly they had smelled the night before, all of them crammed into the Humvee together for the ride back into the city. He had also been able to smell what he was sure was human flesh cooking on the way up the stairwell.
He got out of bed, took his winter coat from the chair and pulled on his shoes, then went to the window, seeing the same gray world as the day before, dark and dim as before a heavy rain. There were spits of dirty snow in the air, and it was only late August. He considered jumping off the balcony but thought better of it. That was just too scary.
The door flew open and he spun around, half expecting someone to attack him.
“In the hall,” Gig told him.
Marty obeyed and stood in the hall waiting to see what the man wanted.
Brutus stepped from a room a few doors down, pulling a female soldier with dark red hair and stocking feet along behind him. The soldier’s hands were tied behind her back, and Marty recognized her immediately as the medic from the highway.
Brutus came up to him and said, “You can go. You killed the sorry fuck who killed my brother, and we made you kill your old lady. Makes us even.”
Marty wondered how in the hell that made them even. It was obvious from the look in Emory’s eyes that she recognized him, but she didn’t say anything or acknowledge him in any way. “Well, can I have my guns back? I won’t make it very far without them.”
“Gig, get him his shit when we get downstairs,” Brutus said, towing Emory toward the stairwell. “Then bring the truck around front… but don’t make it obvious.”
“Is something wrong?” Marty asked.
“There’s some shit comin’ down,” Brutus said. “So keep your mouth shut.”
They hurried him down ten flights of stairs to the lobby, where a couple of other bikers sat around in blue parkas, each of them with a biker chick in his lap for warmth.
“Hey, Brutus man, is that the dude who killed the Jeeper?”
“Yeah,” Brutus said, shoving Emory down in a chair. “Don’t get up, bitch!”
“What’s goin on, Brutus man? Somethin’ up?”
“I’m lettin’ this cat go,” Brutus said. “Gig’s gonna give his ass a ride outta town.”
Gig led Marty behind the counter and into an office where they kept the weapons.
“What’s goin’ on?” Marty asked again, seeing a number of machine guns on the table. He slung Joe’s carbine over his back and tucked his .45 into his belt.
“It’s time to ditch the rest of these dudes,” Gig said. “It’s gettin’ too hot here.”
“Oh,” Marty said. “Hey, suppose I can have one of these too?”
Gig thought it over for a second then shrugged and gave him an MP-5 submachine gun, showing him how to operate it. “Ain’t hard,” he said.
“No, seems easy enough,” Marty said, blasting Gig across the room. He grabbed some extra magazines and dashed back into the lobby where the other bikers were jumping up and grabbing for their weapons. He sprayed them with automatic fire and in short order had either killed or wounded each one, the house mice included.
Emory was already running toward him. “Cut me loose!”
He found a pair of scissors in a drawer behind the motel counter and cut the lace that was bound so tightly around her wrists that her hands were a deep crimson.
She flexed her fingers and took the MP-5. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” She ran to where Brutus was crawling on his belly toward a shotgun, hit through both lungs and his spleen, and stepped on his back, taking the hunting knife from his belt.
“Remember me?” she said, grabbing his golden braid and jerking his head back. “This is your last fuck!” She stabbed the knife into his anus and he let out a shriek. Then she gave the blade a twist and jerked it free, using it to scalp him before stomping on his head. She threw his scalp to the floor and whipped around in time to gun down three more bikers who came scrabbling into the lobby to see what the hell was going on.
“Ammo!” she called as they ran for the exit.
Marty gave her the extra machine gun magazines, and she jammed them into the cargo pockets of her trousers.
“What about your feet?” he asked as they burst through the doors and ran down the outside wall of the motel.
“I got worse shit to worry about,” she said, dumping the spent magazine from the weapon and inserting a new one. “Like how the fuck I’m gonna tell my kid I scalped its father.” She checked around the corner and pulled her head back.
“You mean he got you… ?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Emory said. “I’ve been puking every morning for a week.”
“Why were they in such a hurry to get out of here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They were spooked about something, though. I think a lot of their people are still asleep. Let’s see if we can find a car with some gas.”
There was a loud blast, followed by a secondary explosion that took out the lobby of the motel. They spun on their heels to see an M60 tank at the end of the street, a cloud of smoke dissipating before it.
“All right!” Marty said. “We’re saved!”
She looked at him. “No, hon, we’re in twice the shit we were ten seconds ago.”