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Quaranteam-Northwest: Part 10

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Quaranteam-Northwest: Part 10
Catching Up With Barry.

Based

on a post by Break The Bar. Listen to the
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at Explicit Novels.



 

We went back down into the

yard and I think for the first time since the whole thing had started I
actually felt cooped up. Our little compound wasn't that big when it
came down to it. Now with nine people living between the two RVs and not
knowing if we could step outside... well, I wasn't feeling claustrophobic. I was
dreaming a bit about the old house and being able to step out the back door and
lose myself in the forest within half a minute of walking.

I think Erica and Kyla could

both tell I was a little off and decided between the two of them that they
should give me some space. I gathered up all the firearms and brought them into
the storage container with the gun safe, leaving the doors open and hanging up
an electric lantern that plugged into the RV. I was just starting on the second
shotgun when Dani slipped in. She didn't say anything, just looked at what I
was doing and then went and got another towel and organized her own little
workstation across from mine.

We cleaned each gun. The only

talking was when she had to ask about a specific make or model and how it was
supposed to come apart. It was soothing to focus on and restful for my mind and
body to do something that took focus but was also mindless.

Once the last firearm had been

stowed away in the gun safe, Dani and I were left with the 1911 between us.

"Russian roulette?"

she asked with a smirk and a chuckle.

"I think we'd need a

revolver for that," I laughed.

She grinned, then reached

across the table we'd used for our workstations and took my hands in hers.
"Harri, thank you," she said. "I know you don't feel like you
need it, but you deserve to hear it."

"Dani, I,”

"Just say, 'you're

welcome,' jarhead," she said with a soft smile.

"You're welcome," I

sighed. She was right, I didn't feel like I needed any thanks for today. If
anything I felt like I should have been able to do more. Be more. The girls
never should have felt as scared as they did.

Dani stood up and came around

the table, surprising me by sitting in my lap and wrapping her arms around my
shoulders and neck, hugging me tightly. "Seriously, Harri. You're one of a
kind. Thank you."

I hugged her back lightly,

but she squeezed me harder and I sighed and gave her a full bear hug. She felt
good in my arms and I realized that over the last month I'd come to love Dani.
Not like Erica, or Ivy. But not like my sister either. It was weird because I
knew there wasn't ever any way anything could happen between us, most
importantly because she was with Leo. But also because of the vaccine
Imprinting. I loved her in a way I couldn't really put my finger on. She was
part of my life, part of the family. I felt like she'd been with us since the
beginning, and not just since the vaccine.

And despite all the reasons

that we would only ever be platonic, she felt good in my arms. I kissed her on
the cheek and she did the same to me, and then we separated and she stood up.

"Feeling better?"

she asked.

"I do," I said.

"Thank you."

She patted my shoulder with a

smile. "You really are like my Dad," she said. "It would be
weird if you weren't so cute."

I snorted and she stuck out

her tongue between her teeth as she teased me, and we went back out into the
compound.

In the end it was Miriam who

came to tell us the results. Vanessa and I met her just outside of the compound
after she texted she was on her way over. When we saw she had her gas mask on I
was a little worried, but she quickly assured us.

"It's just

precautionary," she said. "The good news is that your blood tests
both show that you were exposed to Duo Halo, but your vaccines are working.
Vanessa, we'll probably want to test you again in a couple of days to make sure
your situation is stable.

"Okay," Vanessa

nodded. "Any word on my Dad?"

Miriam nodded. "Yes.

Brent did test positive for Duo Halo as well, but it was early and he was on
the first truck back to Portland. We had a few different lists of potential
testers for the next phases and as soon as we knew we needed an emergency
response we've been getting in contact with them. We'll do our best to pair up
people properly, but it's become life and death now. If he isn't matched up
already, your father will have a bonded partner within the next couple of
hours."

Vanessa took a deep breath

and nodded, running her fingers through her hair. "That's... so fucking
weird, thinking of my Dad having a new... whatever. Girlfriend, let's say. He
hasn't been with anyone that I know of since the divorce from my Mom. I thought
he'd be single for the rest of his life."

In the back of my mind I was

wondering how they were going to find someone who would be happy to be with
him. Brent was a nice enough guy, and professional when he wasn't pissed at me
for sleeping with his daughter and getting her entangled in our whole thing,
but he was also one fat man. It was something I really hadn't considered at
all; Leo and I were both relatively fit. So far we'd lucked out on the women
we'd partnered up with being attractive. What if someone had shown up who I
didn't think was sexually attractive? What happened then?

"So what now?" I

asked, pushing my other questions to the back of my mind. "Are you going
to have enough people ready to go?"

Miriam's smile slipped and

she took a deep breath. "No. We're not," she said. "At best
guess, my Docs are expecting fifty per cent losses."

Vanessa almost collapsed, but

I caught her.

"Five hundred

people?" she gasped.

Miriam nodded. "About a

hundred and fifty are too far gone to even make it off the site. We're doing
what we can for them in Dormitory 1. We're triaging as best we can, but we
expect another two hundred will hit that point before we can get them to
Portland. And the last hundred and fifty or so we'll lose just because of the
time it will take to process everything. We're flying a new batch of the
vaccine up from down south, but the way Duo Halo works, the worst of the worst
have already been infected for a couple of weeks and we're looking at the tail
end of the process. The people on the borderline will have been infected for a
week and a half or so."

Vanessa let go of me and

stumbled a few feet away and threw up.

"There's nothing else

that we can do?" I asked quietly.

Miriam shook her head, her

expression grave. "We'll do what we can to save as many lives as
possible."

"Okay," I said,

stepping over to Vanessa and rubbing her back once her dry heaving was coming
to an end. "What about us? What's happening with the site?"

"The site and all the

offices are on quarantine," Miriam said. "Once we're done out here
we'll tape everything off. We'll send teams out soon to scrub the whole place
down and sterilize it. Then we'll clear out the deceased's belongings, and
we'll start by getting crews in to refab the dormitories. We'll want to get
work back rolling as fast as we can, but things are going to look a little
different. Prepare for a lot more women moving out here with their
partners."

"Oh my God, I can't even

start to think what that will look like," Vanessa groaned. She'd wiped her
mouth and was spitting out the taste of her puke already.

"We'll figure it

out," Miriam assured her. "As for you all, give it a day or two again
before you start going out. Do more, ah, rounds together. Sex between partners
seems to be the single best thing vaccinated folks can do to make sure they are
healthy. After that, you can head off-site to do whatever errands you need to
do, and we'll keep you updated on when we'll be on site. We're combing the
forest for anyone who slipped off, so once we're done and we've accounted for
everyone I'll also give you a green light to go do your thing to be a mountain
man."

I sighed and nodded along. It

was good news that we weren't just going to be trapped here, and I already felt
a bit of pressure lifted off of my chest. "Okay," I said and took a
breath. "How are you?"

Miriam pressed her lips

together in a not-quite smile. "It's not the worst thing I've been
through, but it's up there," she said.

"Well, I'm thinking

about hugging you," I said.

"Thanks, Harri,"

she said. "Maybe next time I can get that hug and that beer."

"Two beers. Actually, a

whole fucking case," Vanessa said. "And not the cheap stuff."

"Deal," Miriam

said.

I bid my farewells, as

Vanessa had some more technical questions to ask, and I left them to it.

Back inside the compound, I

paused just inside the sheet-door, leaning against the butt of the RV as I
closed my eyes and took a long breath.

Five hundred out of a

thousand construction workers would be dead in hours, if not a couple of days.

It took me several more long

breaths to get myself thinking straight before I walked back around into the
compound proper. Ivy was the first of my girls I saw, and I went right to her
and picked her up in my arms and walked over to a chair and sat down. She
laughed as I did it, and immediately straddled my hips as I sat and gave me a
kiss as she hugged me.

We made out a little, and I

could tell that she knew I wasn't quite right and needed something to ground
me.

As we kissed a hand trailed

across my shoulders and I glanced the way it went to see Erica smiling at me
reassuredly. She'd seen it too.

It was weird, living with

women who could read my body language like that. Who could tell my moods.
Weird, but amazing. Ivy kissed me again and then spun so she was sitting
sideways, and then Kyla was there beside us handing me my latest sketchbook.

"Draw us

something," Ivy smiled. "S'il te plaît, mon amour?"

I exhaled the tension in my

shoulders and smiled. "What should I draw, ma dulcinée?"

"Kyla," she said,

smiling at my Filipino partner. "But as a badass warrior princess, like
she's in Game of Thrones."

Kyla snorted a little laugh.

"Really?"

Ivy grinned and nodded. God,

she knew how to lift my spirits.

"Fine," Kyla said

with a little smirk. "Do I need to pose, or what?"

"Just sit with us,"

I said, gesturing to the chair beside Ivy and me. "I'll make it
work."

So I flipped to a new page

and I started to draw, and I only thought about the deaths when I let my focus
slip from the page or the women in my life.

Kyla looked back at me with a

smile over her shoulder as she walked ahead in the grocery store. We were both
bundled up to the gills, though amidst all of the other chaos that had been
going on for the past five days somehow her things had still been delivered;
the storage containers were starting to get stuffed with all the luggage of the
girls that had been added on top of the stuff from my old house. Now Kyla had
her own clothing again, so she was able to bundle up with her own clothes
instead of borrowing things from the others.

That look she gave me turned

saucy as she checked ahead of herself again, and then looked back and reached
down and flashed me her ass. Her warm-hued cheeks wiggled as she walked, mostly
bare except for the thin band of her thong.

"You are such

trouble," I laughed.

She gave one extra little

booty shake and then pulled her pants back up, turning and grinning at me,
though I could only see it through her eyes since we both had on medical masks
over bandanas. Sometimes I could forget that Kyla was barely 22 years old and
just out of college, and that she wasn’t just the mysterious Filipino
Intelligence background that loomed over our relationship.

"But I'm your trouble

now," she teased me.

I reached out a gloved hand

to her and she took it, squeezing our fingers for a moment as we walked, and
then we went back to filling the cart.

We had nine mouths to feed

between the two RVs, plus I wanted to drop off some extra supplies to Mary and
the kids. Based on what I'd figured out in context between what Mary said, I
knew that she was trying to stretch things a bit. I couldn't blame her; I was
basically their sole source of meals. The state-wide shutdown on evictions
meant that they weren't going to get kicked out or foreclosed on any time soon
so they had shelter, but I could understand a single mom being worried that the
charity could end at any time.

"Fruit Loops or

Trix?" I asked, holding up the two cereal boxes to Kyla.

"For Ivy or for the

kids?" Kyla asked.

I snorted and put them both

in the cart. Ivy, despite currently holding the 'smallest woman in the family'
certificate, could eat like a horse and she had a sweet tooth. She worked hard
to let herself do it; she had a whole body weight only exercise routine that she
followed almost every day to keep her soft but lean figure; but the number of
empty carbs she could put away was still a little astounding.

To be fair, most of the cart

was packed with fruits and veggies. We would do a pickup at the butchers before
heading to Mary's, so we were just going down the middle of the store looking
for any other staples we might be missing. Peanut butter and jam went in the
cart; doubles of both, with one set destined for Mary. A couple of large bags
of coffee. Kyla's preferred tea was in stock, so we grabbed two boxes of that.
Aria had asked us to pick up ingredients because she swore she could make pizza
on the barbeque for us. I was skeptical, but a good pizza wouldn't go amiss so
I was willing to try.

"I really like

this," Kyla said.

"What's that?" I

asked, trying to figure out what she was looking at on the shelves.

She turned and stopped me

pushing the cart, sliding herself into my arms and hugging me loosely around
the waist. "This," she said. "Even with the masks and
everything. Grocery shopping with you. Running errands. It's all so normal. I
think you'd have fun doing it in Manila though, it's more of an
adventure."

I grinned behind my mask and

leaned down to press my forehead to hers. "Maybe we'll get a chance one
day," I said. "But I like this too, babe."

Her eyes narrowed a bit and

the bridge of her nose crinkled. "Not babe," she said. "That's
what Erica calls you. Something else."

"Sugarplum?" I

suggested.

She rolled her eyes.

"Snookum’s?"

"What does that mean?"

she asked, slipping her arm through mine so we could start walking again.

"No idea," I said.

"I think it's made up."

"Then no," she

said.

I sighed dramatically.

"Maybe we'll just need to let it come natural,”

Shouting from the front of

the store cut me off. I frowned and glanced ahead down the aisle but couldn't
see anything. I picked up the pace and Kyla followed, slipping her arm from
mine and spreading out to the walk quickly on the other side of the aisle from
me and the buggy. It was tough to hear what exactly was going on, but someone
was obviously agitated and other people were reacting to it. When we reached
the end of the aisle it was clear that the shouting was off to the right near
the front doors.

I left the cart there,

crossing to Kyla's side, and we peeked around the corner.

Just inside the front door,

the man who had to be the manager was getting screamed at by a pair of
rough-and-tumble-looking hicks. Neither man looked like they had shaved for a
couple of weeks and they seemed more likely to be encountered out on a hunting
trip than in town. They were both very much not wearing masks as they shouted
and made a fuss, gesturing wildly as the dress-shirt-wearing, mask-protected
store manager tried to convince them they couldn't walk around like they were.
I heard big buzzwords like 'constitutional' and 'freedom of travel' and other
drivel that I'd been hearing from hicks angry at the law since I was a kid. To
be fair, almost any redneck or hick had a bit of a bent towards the 'sovereign
citizen' idea; if I wasn't rational enough I may have ended up down that rabbit
hole if I hadn't made the deal with Grierson and they'd forced me off my family
land.

Being told what to do by the

government didn't go over well with folks like me and these guys. The big
difference between us was that I had a few more brain cells to rub together and
see the holes in their screamed arguments.

"Fucking assholes,"

I grunted softly.

"Harrison, I can

literally feel what you're thinking right now," Kyla said. "The store
has security for this."

"I'm pretty sure their

security is a couple of pimple-faced teens and that manager," I said. As
we watched, the manager threw his arms up in the air and started yelling back
at the two guys, giving up on all semblance of de-escalation.

"'Scuse me, folks,"

said a voice forcefully behind us. I turned and found myself mask-to-face with
Barry O'Callahan. I hadn't seen him in a couple of months and it looked like
he'd dropped a bit of weight, though not enough to be considered 'fit' by any means.
His cart was full of stuff that looked like he'd just scooped it right off the
shelf and into the cart.

"Barry?" I asked.

His lack of a mask was concerning, though at that moment I had to guess he was
affiliated with the two still yelling at the front of the store.

"Oh, Harrison! What's

up?" Barry greeted me with a grin. "You wanna walk and talk? I'm on a
time crunch here."

I glanced at Kyla, who just

raised an eyebrow at me, so I gestured for her to stay with our cart while I
followed Barry.

"You never came out to

the Beaver," Barry said as I followed him down the next aisle. He pulled
up in front of the cans of soup and started yanking them quickly out of the
little dispenser things, tossing them haphazardly into his cart.
"Seriously, my man. With your time in the military, I bet you'd fit right
in with the guys. You should really come hang out or something."

"Yeah, maybe," I

said. "Barry, what's with the no-mask thing?"

"Hah! They really do

have you fooled, huh?" Barry laughed. He was already moving up the aisle
headed for the tinned pasta. "The whole disease thing is just a sham. A
false flag thing to get us all compliant. It's the fault of the cities, really.
Too many people packed in too tight, and everyone getting so liberal the real
power brokers felt like they were losing their grip on us. So they come up with
a 'pandemic' to make us all too afraid of our own shadows to organize."

"Dude, I've seen the

deaths," I said. "My girlfriend's apartment complex in Portland is
half-empty. People I know are dead."

"Dead, or just

missing?" Barry asked flippantly. "Word is, the government is
forcibly moving people around. Pulling them out of cities under the cover of
night. We're still trying to figure out where the camps are, but we'll find
them."

He moved another aisle over,

and we were in the frozen section. He pulled an entire stack of Hungry Man
microwave meals out and reached for another.

"You realize you sound

insane right now, right?" I asked.

"Hey, sometimes truth is

stranger than fiction," Barry shrugged. "What's more likely, that the
entire human race is at risk, or the government is lying to us again?"

The problem with arguing with

a conspiracy theorist was that there was always just enough kernel of truth to
make the conspiracy plausible. Based on my interactions with Agent Grierson,
the government was definitely lying, or at least causing a lack of
information, with the goal of maintaining order. But after what I'd seen and
experienced at the site, not to mention the very large amount of money the
government paid me for my land, the pandemic was also very real.

"What if it's

both?" I asked.

"Not likely," Barry

shrugged. "Dude, you should totally come up to the Beaver. We've got a
whole set of evidence tracked out, like cops do for investigations. What do
they call it... a murder board? Yeah, something like that. Seriously, it's wild
the shit that they are hiding from us."

Barry was heading for the

front of the store now and walked right past the cashier tills. The two guys
were still arguing loudly with the manager, along with a couple of other
workers who were trying to get them to leave.

"Not going to pay

either, huh?" I asked.

"Hey, when society

breaks down," Barry shrugged. Another guy dressed similar to the two
shouters and Barry came from the other direction, his cart full of loaves of
bread and boxes of soda and what had to be half the Twinkie display.

I stopped about a dozen feet

from the confrontation and Barry just kept right on going, walking his cart
past the manager as the grocery store employees got even more upset. The two
shouters were smirking now, taunting them, as they followed Barry and the other
cart-pusher out of the store. The manager was almost entirely red-faced and
looked like he might have an aneurysm as he stormed off to a back office.

I was standing near a cashier

and I turned to her. "No one called the cops?" I asked.

She shrugged. "They

don't show up, or if they do it's too late and they tell us to file an
insurance claim."

I sighed heavily and went

looking for Kyla. Apparently, Barry and the assholes were escalating their
assholery and adding wingnut conspiracies to the list.

 

"Happy one month and

four days anniversary, babe," I said, clinking mugs with Erica.

We were alone, out on the

edge of the forest. After returning from our grocery run I had gotten to work
on my plan; step one had been moving the portable fire pit out here, followed
by a couple of the lawn chairs. The others had kept Erica busy while I was
doing it, and when I had led her out of the compound at dinner she hadn't
expected anything. I'd already had the fire crackling, and a 'fancy dinner' set
as best I could on a TV Tray between the chairs, draped in a much too large
tablecloth, with the fancy china and silverware that had been passed down through
my family. We'd eaten and watched the sunset, and then as the stars started to
come out Erica had insisted on sitting on the ground, her leaning back between
my legs, as we sipped our cold beers and looked up at the night sky.

"I can't believe it's

only been a month," Erica sighed.

"And four days," I

pointed out with a smile.

"And four days,"

she grinned. "You know, I'm not going to stand for one year and four
days."

"One year exactly,"

I promised her, hugging around her waist and leaning down to kiss her temple.

"Unless the world really

falls apart, obviously," she teased. "Then I think I'll forgive
you."

"Thanks," I

chuckled.

She turned back, pulling me

into a proper kiss. "Marry me?" she asked.

I blinked. "Just like

that?"

"Just like that,"

she nodded. "We wasted years. This month has had more ups and downs than
an elevator, but there's nothing more that I want than you, and this."

I pulled her into a kiss,

hugging her tightly. I wasn't sure how I would have asked her; I wasn't a big
fancy dinner, make a spectacle of it kind of guy. I likely would have
overthought it, and tried too hard to make it special.

"Yes," I said.

We made love on the grass at

the edge of the trees, the fire dimming to coals and the stars and moon our
only real light. When we woke up the next morning with the dawn we were covered
in a blanket, still naked.

"Kyla," Erica

explained as she stretched under the blanket.

"How do you know?"

I asked.

"Because I told her I

was going to ask you," she said. "She was happy for us."

"But you didn't know

about the date," I said. Erica just gave me a look and a smile, and I
shook my head. She'd known the whole time.

We made love again, and then

held each other afterwards and talked logistics. I could afford whatever we
wanted in terms of a wedding now but with the world the way it was it didn't
make sense. Even if we'd gotten together a year ago we'd have wanted a small
ceremony anyways, just our close friends and family. I had a couple of old
military buddies I'd have liked to invite, she had some tattooist friends she
knew across the country.

We'd do a ceremony down the

line if the world got better. My sister was the biggest part of the equation
since we didn't want her to miss it. Neither of us had living parents anymore,
and extended family connections were lacking.

"I love you," she

whispered against my lips as I agreed to let her tattoo my ring on my finger.
"Fiancé."

"I love you too, future

Mrs. Erica Black," I whispered back.

"Erica

Lacosta-Black," she said, then shook her head. "Eh, doesn't flow.
Mrs. Erica Black it is."

 

"Happy one month and

three days anniversary, ma dulcinee," I said, hugging Ivy to me as the
credits rolled on the movie.

She turned in my lap and

kissed me softly. "Happy anniversary, mon amour," she hummed happily.

My date with Ivy had taken a

little more work than with Erica, but it was mostly digging around in the
storage containers to find the right stuff. The flat screen needed our longest
extension cord, and finding the old DVDs proved harder than I expected since I
wasn't sure what box they'd ended up in.

I couldn't bring Ivy out on a

true Dinner and a Movie experience, but I manufactured a Drive-In experience of
our own. It... worked. Sort of. We had the TV blasting, and were pretty much
backed up right in front of the screen as we sat and cuddled on blankets in the
bed of the truck. The popcorn was microwaved, but I'd melted real butter to
drizzle on top, and I'd found a couple of old oversized plastic cups to hold
our sodas.

"Je t'aime," she

whispered with a smile, stroking her fingers through my beard. Erica had
finally decided earlier that day that she preferred it shorter and I'd been
allowed to trim it back down and clean it up. Vanessa and Kyla had both been
thankful for that, but Ivy had admitted she kind of wanted to see how long it
could get so that she could braid it and make me look like a Viking.

"Je t'aime," I

whispered back, stroking her lower back with one hand under her shirt.

"Harrison, I want you to

know, I don't expect a proposal," she said.

I cocked my head.

"I just mean, don't feel

like because we are in love, and you and Erica are in love, that we need to be
the same," she said, putting her hands on my chest and looking at me in
the dark. The light from the TV shimmered in her eyes. "I don't need to
feel...even with her, I think is what you would say?"

I hugged her harder, and with

more purpose. "Thank you, ma dulcinée," I mumbled quietly. It had
been on my mind a bit since Erica had asked me. I still hadn't had time to
really come to grips with it and figure out how I felt. I was still having a
hard time computing the four different relationships I was in, let alone things
like what a marriage would look like. Marrying two women was illegal in Oregon
as far as I was aware. I stroked the curls away from her face and just looked
down at Ivy as she smiled at me. "You are an absolute wonder, you know
that?"

She pursed her lips,

air-kissing to me. "And you are my big, lovable grizzly," she said.
"Fierce and strong and proud, but fuzzy and huggable." She hugged me
back, pressing her cheek to my chest.

"Do you want to watch

another movie?" I asked.

She shook her head without

pulling away from the hug, and then changed her mind and nodded. "One
more," she said. "But something sexy."

"Okay, let me see what I

can find."

Dirty Dancing had been one of

my mother's favorites and was probably the sexiest DVD we'd kept.

Ivy loved it.

By the time the credits were

rolling we were naked and she was licking her way up my cock, gazing up into my
eyes with the same 'hungry eyes' from the famous montage scene. She shifted
higher, straddling my waist and reaching back to wedge my cock between her
tight little ass cheeks to tease me with some dry humping, and grinned.
"One day, I am going to dance for you," she said. "My best lap
dance ever. And the first song you can't touch, but the second one you can
touch me wherever you want."

We kissed, and she slipped my

cock into her ass with that soft little pleased grunt of hers, and we had slow
but hot sex late into the night. And for the second night in a row I fell
asleep naked and outside under the stars with a woman I loved.

 

"Did you hear about what

happened on the Rez?" Fuller called to me as I was making my pickup. We
were edging closer to the middle of June and the heat had just kept climbing
and climbing, so he was waiting until we pulled into the parking lot before he
brought out the three big paper sacks of our order.

"No," I said,

thinking he must have been talking about the protest from last month.
"What happened?"

"Aw, man. It's pretty

awful. From what I hear, some racist fucks broke into their community center
and lit the place on fire, then in the commotion they snuck into a bunch of the
houses and RVs and stole shit. There's a bunch of injuries from trying to fight
the fire, and I guess they were running a food bank out of the center and some
guys were trying to get the food out when the whole place collapsed."

"Fuck," I said, but

it didn't do enough justice to what I was feeling.

My heart had dropped into my

stomach, and I kind of hated that the first thing that came to mind was a fear
that Kara might be dead. She would absolutely be one of those people, inside a
burning building, trying to salvage anything they could before they lost it
all. Even after everything, after the way we broke up, after the lawsuits and
the protests, after last month... she was my first in almost everything.

"Yeah, pretty

much," Fuller nodded, unable to see my expression behind my mask at this
distance. "Shit's totally fucked. Word is the Rez Cops don't have any
leads, and the Statey's don't have the manpower to help out. Whoever did it is
getting away with it."

I thanked Fuller for the news

and loaded up the groceries. When I got back in the cab of the truck Vanessa
turned down the radio, concern bringing her eyebrows down into a furrow as she
picked up on my mood immediately. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Aria was in the back seat and

leaned forward. Neither woman was bundled up and were supposed to just be along
for the ride and the chance to get off the property. It had been over a week
now since the outbreak and every couple of days there were some National Guard
who trucked in to accomplish one task or another, but based on Brent's talks
with Vanessa the work wasn't going to start spinning back up for another week
at least. That left us all feeling just a little cooped up, and so we'd been
spreading out our reasons to go into town and who would make the trip.
Yesterday Leo, Erica and India had hit up the pharmacy. Today Vanessa was dressed
in jean daisy dukes and a black bikini top, her long dark hair pulled back in a
French braid, while Aria was in a thin white tank top (and, to my dismay, no
bra so her large tits were teasing me in the rearview mirror) and some spandex
workout shorts.

"It's,”

"It's clearly not

nothing," Vanessa cut me off. "So you can just spill it, or when we
get back I'll get Erica to get it out of you."

I snorted and chuckled a

little. "There was a fire over on the Rez, and it sounds like it was on
purpose and whoever did it used it as a distraction to rob a bunch of homes.
But at least a few people died."

"Shit," Vanessa

sighed, sitting back in her seat. "When?"

"Fuller didn't say, but

I assume the last day or two," I said. "Sounded like it was fresh
news."

"That's awful,"

Aria said from the back seat. "Do you know anyone from up there?"

"Boy, does he,"

Vanessa grumbled. She was grimacing and texting on her phone with what I could
only describe as agitated thumbs.

"What does that

mean?" Aria asked.

"It's a long

story," I said. "Short version is my high school ex is an important
member of the Rez community."

"And she believes in a

generational grudge against Harri's family and tried to protest the
construction," Vanessa said. "And she got spanked by the military for
it."

".... Yikes," Aria

said.

"Yeah, that about sums

it up," I sighed. Then my phone rang and I fished it out of my pocket.
"It's Erica," I said and thumbed the call onto speaker phone.

"Hey," I said.

"Harri, just go up

there," Erica said.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, don't play

coy," Erica sighed. "You need to know, so go find out. Unless you
think calling her is enough."

"Erica,”

"This is from all of

us," Erica cut me off. "You've got Vanessa with you, and she's
looking hot. Not to mention Aria. So just go up to the Rez and find out if Kara
is alive, and ask if there's anything you can do to help because obviously
that's what your gut is telling you to do. You have our blessings, Okay?"

I looked over at Vanessa, who

shrugged as if to say 'What did you expect?'

"Alright, Mrs.

Black," I said, teasing her just a little.

"That's Mrs. Black,

Ma'am to you, soldier," she teased me back and I could hear the smile on
her lips.

"Love you," I

signed off.

"Love you too," she

said and hung up the call.

"Really, that

fast?" I asked Vanessa.

"Better than you stewing

over it for the next couple of days," Vanessa said, then got a thoughtful
look. "Then again, when you're stewing over something you are just that
bit more intense when you fuck. You're right, we should definitely ignore this
and go back."

Aria broke into a brief

snicker in the back seat and I just rolled my eyes. "Alright. Next stop,
the Rez," I said.

 

I hadn't driven up the road

to the Rez for going on fifteen years. Little things had changed, but mostly it
was the same. There were some new signs. A couple of holes in the tree line I
didn't remember. Some of the woods had been cut back on the right hand for a
stretch where new power lines had gone in.

"The last time I made

this drive, I was trying to figure out Kara's message to me. We broke up right
there," I said, pointing at an overhanging little rockface. "She
didn't want me coming any further up at the time. Said it wasn't fair for me to
step on their land after my family stole some of theirs."

"Sounds like angry

teenage bullshit to me," Aria said.

"Sounds like just plain

angry bullshit in my book," Vanessa countered. "You didn't see the
protest."

There wasn't an entrance to

the main Rez community so much as a sign and a little information kiosk that
could be set up to act as a ticket booth when the tribe held cultural events.
Apparently, someone had decided to use it to build a barricade and now there
was only one lane worth of traffic for someone to go in and out. A couple of
big, angry native guys were manning it, and one held up a hand for us to stop
as we approached.

I pulled the truck to a halt

and rolled down the window.

"Rez is closed to

outsiders," the guy said, leaning down to look in the window. He was
wearing big, dark sunglasses so I couldn't tell if he was looking at me, or
glancing over to Vanessa in the passenger seat in her less-than-appropriate
clothing for being out and about.

I wasn't sure of the legality

behind closing the reservation off to outsiders, but I wasn't about to argue
with the guy. "Understandable," I said. "I'm here to see Kara
Swiftwater. Any shot that can happen quickly?"

He considered us for another

long moment and then nodded and my heart gave a thump in my chest because that
meant she wasn't dead. "She'll be up at the community center. You know
where that is?"

"I think I

remember," I said.

"Alright. If you're not

back through in fifteen minutes we'll come looking for you," the guy said.

"Noted," I nodded.

He backed off and waved me

through.

"I'm getting major bad

vibes from this," Aria said.

"I know," I said,

driving up the road past the old parking areas used for the festivals. I made
the turn but second-guessed myself when I couldn't see the structure of the
community center I was supposed to go to.

Then I realized it hadn't

just been a fire. The whole place had come down.

I had to park a ways back

from the blackened structure. It wasn't smoking and there weren't any fires
going or anything, but both of the Rez ambulances were on standby and there had
to be a hundred people working together trying to pick through the wreckage.

Turning to the girls, I

grabbed Vanessa's hand. "Do me a favor and stay in the truck," I
said.

Aria nodded, and Vanessa

looked like she wanted to argue for a second but took another glance outside
and then nodded. She wasn't exactly dressed for a rescue operation, or a place
where a tragedy had just happened.

I got out of the truck and

rolled my shoulders uncomfortably, looking around. Several people were staring
at me, and the last thing I needed was someone recognizing me as the guy who
they'd so recently been protesting. I took one heavy breath and started walking
towards what looked like the tent where they were doing most of the organizing
efforts.

I didn't get far; Kara apparently

heard that someone was coming to see her, and when she saw me in the parking
lot she glanced around as well as if checking if anyone had seen me and then
speed-walked over. She was dressed in jeans and boots, with a grey tank top and
a collection of bead and feather necklaces. For a second I thought she had work
gloves on, but as she got closer I realized her hands were bandaged, along with
one of her arms past her elbow. She also wasn't wearing a mask, and from a
distance it looked like only half of the people around were.

"What are you doing

here?" she asked as she came into angry-whispering distance. "I've
got enough problems going on, Harri. I can't deal with you gloating over the
protest."

"Fuck me," I

grunted in frustration. "Seriously, Kara? You really think that low of
me?"

Her anger immediately broke

into embarrassment. "I; Sorry," she sighed in frustration. "No,
you wouldn't. But there's a lot going on and that military bitch,”

"Refused to prosecute

anyone, and made sure all your vehicles got brought back here," I cut her
off. "And she also happens to be someone I respect, so how about you take
one fucking breath and we actually talk for a second before your big guys from
the entrance come looking for me."

Kara pursed her lips and

closed her eyes, actually taking my advice and sucking in a deep breath and
blowing it out. "Why are you here, Harri?" she asked once she opened
her eyes.

"I heard what

happened," I said. "I'm sorry. I wanted to make sure you were Okay.
What happened with your hands, were you inside?"

"No," she said.

"I was outside coordinating people when the roof gave out. We thought we
had more time. I got burned trying to dig people out."

"Shit," I sighed.

Of course she did. "I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that,

I'll start asking where you were two nights ago," she grimaced.

I rubbed my forehead for a

second, looking over at the scorched wreckage. "How many?"

"Eight," she said

quietly, looking back over her shoulder. "We've only found four so
far."

"Anything I can do to

help?"

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it's a shitty

situation and you can call me a masochist for offering," I said tightly.

She softened a bit more, her

stance shifting a little uneasily as she realized she just kept antagonizing
me. "Harri, I'm sorry," she admitted.

"Is there anything I can

do?" I asked her again.

"Unless you've got a

shitload of food to help feed a bunch of people, or know who did it, I don't
think so," she said.

"Send someone over to my

truck, I was out doing a quick run to Fuller's butcher shop when I found out
about everything," I said.

"Harri, a few burgers or

a couple of steaks aren't going to put a dent in things," she sighed.

"I've got three big bags

of meat," I said. "Do you want it or not? It'll feed maybe
twenty-five people in one go, thirty if you stretch it."

She hesitated but then

nodded. "Thanks."

"None necessary," I

said. "Anything I can do for you? And I do mean you, Kara. I know you're
not thinking of yourself at all right now."

"No, I'm fine," she

shook her head. "I've got a couple of gals cleaning up my place for me,
and they'll stick around to help me while my hands heal up."

"Yours was one of the

houses that got robbed?" I asked.

She nodded. "Didn't get

much of value other than my wallet," she said. "I'm not even sure what
they thought they were going to find. But they sure made a mess looking for
it."

I blew out a long breath from

behind my mask. "Okay, well, let me know if there's anything."

"There won't be, Harri.

Just..." she paused, reaching up to shift a bit of her hair from her face
awkwardly with her bandaged hands. I stepped forward and did it for her after
she couldn't get it, tucking the hair behind her ear. That just made her sigh.
"Thank you for coming to check. You didn't need to do that."

"I did," I said.

"If I didn't you would have been living in my head rent-free and my
fiancée would have gotten annoyed."

"Fiancée?" Kara

asked in surprise.

"Oh, yeah," I said.

"Umm, you met her kind of that first time you came by last month. Her
name's Erica."

"The white lady with the

tits?" she asked.

"Yeah, Kara," I

said. "The white lady with the tits. How would you like it if she started
calling you 'your native ex' or something? Jesus Christ."

"Sorry, sorry, I just,”

Kara huffed. "There were just two white women there that time, the
construction one and the; your fiancée. I thought the construction one had a
thing for you."

"Yeah, well, we're

seeing each other now," I said.

"What?"

"It's a whole

thing," I said.

"You're Poly?" Kara

asked incredulously. "You, Harrison Black, whose father was the staunchest
conservative hick stick-in-the-mud ever, are Poly?"

"It's more complicated

than that," I said.

"Sure," she said,

shaking her head. "I bet it is."

"You know what? Just

forget it," I said, starting to turn and walk away.

"Harri! Harri, I'm

sorry. Look, it's a little shocking, you have to admit. Finding out the one who
got away is seeing two good-looking women," she said.

"The one who got

away?" I asked.

"Oh, fuck," she

said, and this time it was her who turned to start walking away, but she
pivoted back after taking a breath. "Yeah. Sort of. I've dated a couple of
guys, but it never got as serious as I wanted. So over the years you've kind of
overshadowed a lot of my first dates. Even back then you were a lot to compare
a guy to."

A radio crackled and Kara

fumbled to pull it off of the back of her belt. She got it but winced a little
at gripping it through her bandages. "Repeat that?" she asked.

I couldn't tell what was

said, but she grimaced and I could see the walls come back up. Walls that I
hadn't seen weaken or slacken in well over a decade. "I need to go,"
she said.

"Just like that?"

"They found another

body," Kara said.

"Shit. Or good, I

guess," I sighed.

"Both. Neither,"

she said.

"Maybe next time we can

try to find a way not to need to keep apologizing to each other," I said.

"Yeah, maybe," she

said. The walls were firmly in place again, not a crack in sight. "You
sure about the food?"

"Yeah, send someone

over. I can spare it," I said. "Just do me a favor?"

"What's that?" she

asked.

"Wear a fucking

mask," I said. "This shit is real. You all need to take it more
seriously. I've seen it myself and it's bad." I fished an extra medical
mask out of my jacket pocket and held it out to her.

She hesitated for a long

moment, and I knew every instinct in her wanted to argue. Wanted to tell me
anything the government told her had to be a lie. But she looked me up and
down, sweating my ass off in full-length clothing with a bandana and a medical
mask over my mouth and nose during the hottest summer the North West had seen
in decades. "Alright," she said and sighed heavily as she took the
mask. "Thanks, Harri."

Huh, I thought as she walked back towards the burned-down

community center and the dozens of people working to clear the rubble. Maybe
there is a crack.

I texted Fuller as I walked

back to the truck that I was going to need to make another pickup. At this
rate, I had to be his favorite fucking customer.

 

"You did what you could,

babe," Erica said. She was sitting behind me on the bed, running her
fingers through my hair and occasionally massaging my scalp. We were alone, the
others giving us some space. Vanessa must have texted Erica what was going on
as we drove back in a soft silence. I'd told her and Aria what little
information I'd had, and I guess they could feel my mood because there wasn't
any teasing or jokes afterwards.

"I shouldn't need to do

anything," I said.

"I know," she said

softly. "I know."

Things were getting worse and

no one was doing anything. Or they were, but the stuff they were doing was so
high-level that all of the little things were getting missed. Which Senators or
Congress people were paying attention to what happened out in the rural sticks?
Miriam was able to mobilize the fucking National Guard in hours, which meant
they were already active, but where were they?

The answer was obvious; they

were dealing with the cities, or waiting in staging areas for events like the
outbreak or the protest. Probably quarantined away when they weren't in hazmat
suits.

"It's not your fight,

Harri," Erica whispered.

I leaned back against her,

feeling her chest press against my back. We were fully clothed, but I could
still feel her. It made me crack a little smile.

"You know, she called

you 'the white lady with the tits?'" I asked.

"Well, I guess she isn't

wrong," Erica chuckled.

I turned and rested my head

on those tits, and Erica hugged me to her. "I still feel like I should be
doing something," I said.

"Of course you do,"

she said, stroking my shoulder. "Because you've got a hero complex. And
it's attractive as hell when it isn't pissing me off or making me
worried."

The RV door opened down the

length of the vehicle and Vanessa stepped in. "You guys Okay?" she
asked.

"We are," Erica

said, waving her down to us.

Vanessa kicked off her shoes

at the door into the messy pile of shoes and sandals that we'd built up there,
and on her way back to us she pulled off her bikini top. Now half-naked, she
crawled onto the bed and up to rest her head on the pillows next to Erica. Her
casual nudity was a heart-warming sexiness, knowing she was comfortable with us
like that.

"I just talked with my

Dad," she said, reaching over and running her hand through my hair for a
moment, pulling a long lock of it back out of my face. "He said there's
probably another week still until work is going to start on refabbing the
dorms, but I guess it's a good thing because changes are coming down."

"What kind of

changes?" Erica asked.

"Pretty much

everything," Vanessa shrugged. "Fewer lots and houses, but bigger. He
can't figure out why and no one is telling him, but we're going from McMansions
to McMansion Deluxes with Cheese."

That made me snort a little.

"Really?" I asked.

Vanessa grinned and shrugged.

"He thinks in terms of food. All the architects are in a dither I guess.
They were off-site so their team wasn't impacted. The surveyors and planners
are shitting bricks though, needing to rework all their maps while they are all
quarantined away in hotels with their new partners. Dad says an order came down
that our house is going to be big as fuck, though. I told him I was going to
want to see any plans because there's no fucking way I'm letting a random
architect design my house without some input."

"Good idea," Erica

smiled. She leaned over and softly kissed Vanessa, who accepted with a little
smile. "Let us know if you want help."

"Help, no. Input,

yes," Vanessa said. "I'll make sure we get everything we need."

We cuddled there for a bit,

and then Erica's top came off, and soon I was under the both of them with
Vanessa moaning on my cock and Erica's delicious, slippery cunt leaking onto my
tongue. It was an excellent way to end a shitty afternoon.

 

I woke with a start, grunting

a little as I blinked awake at the sudden noise ringing through the bedroom. It
took me a second to realize it was my phone, and all four of my girls were
blinking themselves awake as well.

"The fuck?" I

groaned. Ivy shifted to let me move, having practically fallen asleep on top of
me, and I reached over Erica for my phone. I had to blink a few times to see
the call display was Mary, and it was two in the morning.

I thumbed it open, wondering

if maybe she was drunk dialing me. We'd dropped off a couple of bottles of wine
the last time we'd been there and had only finished one with her as we sat on
her front lawn. She'd been happy to hear about Erica and me, and we didn't go
overboard explaining the whole situation. It had felt like back before the
pandemic, introducing my girlfriend to people I knew, even if I hadn't seen
Mary since high school. Erica had made it a point of being extra friendly and
warm; and not with her customer service personality. Stronger, more personable.
By the time we'd left Mary's eyes had been brimming she'd enjoyed 'adult time'
so much and we promised to do it again.

"Mary?" I asked

drowsily.

"Harrison," she

said, and the panic in her voice immediately had me sitting up. "Harrison,
I don't know what to do. 911 is busy, I don't know what to do!?"

"Hold on, Mary," I

said, sitting up and starting to scoot my way to the end of the bed. "One
step at a time. One big breath, in and out, and tell me what's happening."

She did, though the sound of

the breath was wavery. "There's men," she said. "Breaking into
houses down the street. I think they're going house by house."

"How many houses

away?" I asked, scrambling to yank up my jeans while keeping the phone to
my ear. Hands appeared from behind me and deftly got them up and buttoned them.
Erica was on her knees on the bed helping me out, and Ivy was already finding a
shirt and tossing it to me. Vanessa slipped past me, flicking on the light for
the bedroom and quickly walking naked into the main area of the RV, getting my
boots out of the pile of shoes by the door.

"About ten, I

think?" Mary said. "They've only been through a couple, but I keep
trying 911 and it keeps going to a busy signal. What should I do?"

"How long have you been

trying?" I asked.

"Ten minutes,

maybe?"

I got my shirt on and

realized Kyla was also getting dressed. She gave me a look not to argue with
her.

"I'm on my way. Get the

kids up, go hide in the backyard. Try and get something heavy between you and
the house, like a shed or something. And no matter what you hear, don't come
out until I call you on your cell, Okay?"

"Okay," she

mumbled. "Okay. Please hurry."

"I'm on my way," I

said.

Kyla was out the door first,

and I paused at the door of the RV as I worked my boots on to look back at
Erica and Ivy sitting on the bed.

"Go," Erica said.

"Do what you need to do."

"Be careful, mon

amour," Ivy said, holding Erica's hand.

Vanessa had disappeared

outside as well, and I found her and Kyla in the storage container at the gun
safe. I must have missed her grabbing it, but Vanessa was only mostly-naked now
with one of my button-down shirts thrown over her shoulders. "Should I go
get Dani?" she asked.

Kyla, turning with my DDM4 in

one hand and the Remington 700 in the other, shook her head.

"To hell with

that," Dani said, stepping into the storage container behind me.
"What's going on? Erica texted me." She was dressed in plain grey
sweats that she still somehow looked sexy in.

"There's looters or

something down at Mary's," I said. "Kyla and I are going to go there,
and you're going to stay here and keep a lookout."

I could tell Dani wanted to

argue, but when I tossed her one of the shotguns and slid a box of slugs
towards her she knew I was serious. You didn't load slugs unless you were
really planning on fucking up someone's life.

Kyla and I were in my truck

and burning it around the construction site within two minutes. She was in the
passenger seat loading the DDM and the 700, my M9 already holstered and loaded
at my hip and my granddad's old Model 29 revolver hanging in the open glovebox
for Kyla.

"You're using the

700," I said through my gritted teeth as I peeled in a cloud of dust onto
the expanded driveway.

"Obviously," Kyla

sighed. "I have training, Harri. Not practical experience."

"If things go really

bad, you get out of there," I said.

"If things go really bad,

I'll be dead anyways," she countered. "If you die, I die.
Remember?"

Fuck. I hadn't even thought

of that.

If I died, Erica, Ivy and

Vanessa would all be bonded to a dead man.

"Fuck," I said.

Kyla finished loading the

weapons. "Phone," she said, holding out her hand. When I fished it
out of my pocket and handed it to her she thumbed in the password; because of
course she knew the password; and started dialing a number. "I'm calling
Miriam."

"Shit," I said.

"Yeah. Good thinking."

She put it on speaker and the

call got picked up in the middle of the second ring. "Harri?" Miriam
asked.

"I'm doing something

stupid," I said.

"Focus on driving,"

Kyla told me.

"What's going on?"

Miriam asked over the phone.

"Miriam, this is Kyla

Bautista. A local woman is in danger from looters and called Harri for help
because 911 isn't picking up. We're responding to the call."

There was a moment of pause.

"Armed?" she asked.

"Yes," Kyla said.

"Shit," Miriam

muttered. "Fuck. Shit. If I could get one full night of sleep.
Alright. I'll see what I can do from here, but I can't spin up some emergency
response. Do me a favor and stay alive, yeah?"

"I still owe you a beer.

Can't die on you yet," I said.

"Fuck you, you owe me a

case of beers, a full pizza and a gallon of ice cream motherfucker,"
Miriam said. "Kyla, you wouldn't happen to have diplomatic immunity as the
daughter of an Ambassador, would you?"

Kyla ran her tongue over her

bottom teeth and glanced at me, and I shrugged. I didn't know how much Miriam
knew about her. "I don't know what my current diplomatic status is,
actually," Kyla replied.

"Well... fuck. Okay. Do

what you need to do," she said. "I'd ask you not to kill anyone, but
that would just be jinxing it."

"Two minutes out,"

I said. I was driving like a maniac, but the roads were completely clear at
this time of night.

"Fuck," Miriam

said. "Alright. I'll do what I can. Fast and hard, Harri. Don't give them
time to figure out what's going on."

"You got it," I

said.

Kyla hung up. "Should we

go in quiet or loud?" she asked.

Realistically, against an

unknown enemy force with unknown skills and equipment, quiet would be the way
to go. But my blood was up. I could feel it like lava in the veins of my neck
as my heart hammered, adrenaline pumping through me. "Both," I said.
"You cut out and take up a position at this end. I'll peel it into Mary's
yard and make a show and use the truck for cover. Don't shoot until I do, and
maybe we can pincer them."

"Alright," she

nodded.

I turned onto Mary's street.

It was an offshoot from the highway and the road itself banked around a copse
of trees before forming the little neighborhood. I pulled off on the shoulder
and Kyla was out of the cab before I was even at a full stop, shutting the door
quietly. As soon as she was clear I gunned the engine, peeling back onto the
road and around the bank. After clearing the trees I could see two sets of dull
red brake lights ahead. There were a couple of big pickups idling on the
street, and a couple of guys were jogging back and forth from one of the
houses. They all turned at the noise of my engine roaring and then had to fling
up their hands as I flickered my high beams on and off rapidly, strobing them.

They were at Mary's

neighbors.

There was no curb or ditch so

I veered off the road and went right at them. They shouted and dodged out of
the way, scattering, and I didn't give a fuck about how I tore up the lawns. I
ran the truck in a tight circle, pointing the headlights back at the trucks,
and didn't even take out the keys. I put her in park and rolled out of the
door, dragging the DDM with me.

One in each truck, three on

the front lawn. An unknown number in the houses.

I came up on one knee and

raised my rifle, aiming through the basic bitch precision sight and wishing I'd
splurged for something a little more. The guys were shouting, picking
themselves up from the lawn. They were angry. One of them had a crowbar,
another a baseball bat.

Oops. Looked like they forgot

this was America.

I fired a warning shot into

the side of the bed of the closer truck. The boom of the weapon was loud and I
wished I'd brought earplugs. Baseball Bat dropped the bat and turned around,
running for the trucks. Crowbar froze in place, his fight-or-flight response
putting him in a momentary shock, so I ignored him. It was Player 3 that I was
watching because he was ducking behind a tree and shrub combo on the front lawn
and reaching behind his back.

Could be nothing. Could be a

gun tucked in his waistband.

I put three rounds into the

shrub and side-stepped towards my truck, putting the wheel well between me and
him.

Baseball Bat was shouting for

the trucks to drive as he hopped into the back. Crowbar decided to run, the
crowbar flailing in his grasp as he screamed. The back truck roared to life and
started peeling away immediately.

Three guys came out of Mary's

neighbor’s place, streaming out from the side further from me. Two of them had
handguns out and immediately saw the truck and pointed their guns towards me,
though I wasn't sure if they could actually see me.

I put a bullet into the gut

of one before either of them could get a shot off. The other fired in a panic
and a window in my truck cracked. I put four shots down range, two hitting him
in the chest while the other two were backstopped by the next house up.

The third was running for the

truck that hadn't driven away yet but was honking its horn to hurry up his
friends. I peeked around the end of my truck and pulled back quickly as the
shrub guy unloaded his pistol at me, the bullets panging off my front grill and
shattering the windshield and probably the rear window as well.

"Suck a dick,

cocksucker," I yelled.

"Fuck you!" he

shouted back.

Boom.

"Ah!"

I knew the sound of the 700.

I peeked around the end of

the truck again and saw the guy sprawled out on his side, but he still had the
pistol in his hand and was struggling to raise it in my direction. I sent three
more bullets down range at him and his arms collapsed.

The other truck started to

peel away and I seriously considered flipping my firing selector to burst and
giving it a spray down as it took off with the squeal of tires, but I already
had at least two, and probably three, bodies on me and they were running.

My phone rang in the truck

cup holder where I'd left it and I nabbed it quickly.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"One in the

backyard," Miriam said. "Looks like he's getting ready to hop the
fence into the yard you're in front of."

"Fuck," I said and

dropped the phone as I sprinted for Mary's side yard. It was pitch black back
there and I dropped the DDM and pulled my M9 as I slammed into the little fence
gate and barreled right through the old wood, the latch popping off. I came
around the house at a speed walk and raised the pistol just as the fucker was
hopping the fence. He had something in his hands. Might have been another
baseball bat, or something he'd looted. But I was 80% sure it was a shotgun.

Pop pop pop pop.

He collapsed where he landed.

I closed the distance and

kicked the thing away from his hand before anything else, my pistol pointed
right at his head. Then I rolled him over and he let out a long wheeze as he
died, blood soaking through his rough camo jacket.

I fought the urge to punch

him in the face anyways.

"Mary," I called.

"I left my phone up front. They're gone. Get the kids inside, stay away
from over here by my voice."

Boom.

"Never mind, stay

there!" I called, pivoting and rushing back towards the front. I slowed at
the broken gate, sticking to the shadows as best I could and trying to see what
Kyla was shooting at. The guy at the shrub was still down, and the trucks were
still gone. The guy I put two in the chest was still over on the neighbor’s
driveway.

A new body was out in the

middle of the yard, about six paces from my DDM.

Not a new body. It was the

guy I'd gut-shot.

Kyla came jogging up out of

the dark, her face graven as she strictly avoided looking at the people she'd
shot.

"That's all of

them," she said.

I holstered my M9 and went to

her, taking the hunting rifle from her and pulling her into a crushing hug. She
hugged me back, clutching to my sides for a long moment.

"Hold it," I

whispered to her. "The danger is gone, but hold it, Okay? Keep that edge
for just a little longer."

She nodded, and we separated.

I went back to my truck, seeing the bullet holes and the shattered glass, but
her engine was still thrumming strong. My phone had stayed on, the call still
open, so it was easy to find the glow of the screen.

"Miriam?" I asked

as I picked it up.

"I'm here," she

said. "You good?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Are you watching me on a satellite or something?"

"High altitude drone

that I got repurposed from watching the coastline. I still have friends who owe
me a bunch of favors," she said.

I just shook my head.

"Thanks for the heads up."

"That a lady and her

kids back there?" she asked me.

"Yeah. 6 and 4," I

said.

"Then no thanks

needed," Miriam said. "State Troopers should be there in under
twenty. The words 'gunfight in suburban neighborhood' put you at the top of
their list. I'll let them know you're friendlies and not to fuck with
you."

"You have that

pull?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised what

kind of bullshit I can plough through with just a couple of phone calls,"
she said.

"Thanks, Miriam," I

said.

"Don't make a habit of

this, Harri, or you'll owe me a lot more than booze and a meal."

"Got it," I said.

We hung up and I dialed Mary.

"Hello?" she asked,

clearly a little shaky.

"It's me," I said.

"Now you can take the kids into the house. Try to get them in bed, but put
headphones on them if you have to because there'll be cop cars here pretty
soon. They'll want to talk to you."

"Okay. You're sure it's

safe?"

"I'm not going

anywhere," I said.

Mary took care of her kids

while Kyla and I analyzed what we needed to do. We ended up putting the 700 and
my M9 on the hood of my truck, which I turned off but left the headlights on,
and I left the DDM where it was on the ground. I was sure the Troopers would
want the scene as preserved as possible. At one point Mary opened the front
door to her place and called me in, and at this point I wasn't caring about the
pandemic. I went and hugged her, and then went down on my knees because Thomas
barreled down the hall and crashed into me for a hug of his own. Charlie, the little
girl, had apparently gone right back to sleep.

I assured Thomas everything

was Okay, but told him I needed him to go try and sleep because his Mom was
going to be busy for a bit and it was going to be a hard day for her. He nodded
solemnly and went off to his room, and I hugged Mary again for a longer time as
she gasped and sobbed silently after looking out at the carnage in her front
yard. Then I sent her inside to get coffee going, giving her something to do,
and I went to Kyla. She was sitting on the open tailgate of my truck, looking
down at her hands.

Softly, I took her hands in

mine and held them.

"How are you so

calm?" she asked.

"Faking it," I told

her, and held her hand to my chest so she could feel the hammering of my heart.
"I'll have an adrenaline crash in a little bit and start feeling it.
Keeping a mission goal in mind is helping."

Kyla nodded, clenching her

jaw. She was without makeup and sitting in the back of the truck like that she
looked all the world like a college coed who should have been hanging out after
a long night on the town. She was beautiful, but I could see the disassociation
starting in her eyes a little.

"Hey, stay with

me," I said, squeezing her hands. She looked up, her focus coming back as
she met my eyes. "Kiss me."

She sat up and wrapped a hand

around the back of my neck to pull me to her, and she kissed me hard as she put
her other hand to my chest again, feeling my heartbeat. We didn't finish the
kiss, it just went on pause as we separated a fraction of an inch to gasp for
breath, our foreheads pressed together, and then we were kissing again. I held
her waist and her thigh, she held my neck and chest, and we kissed.

We only stopped when the

flashing lights and the siren of the cop cars started in the distance. Kyla
didn't let go of my neck though and kept my face close to hers.

"I think I love

you," she whispered. "You're selfless, and determined, and reckless
enough to do something stupid like this for the right reasons. You're
everything I want. I just; I wanted you to know that."

"I love you too,

Kyla," I said, pulling her to me in a hug as the lights got brighter and
the sirens got louder. "You're everything I want and more, too."

We separated and I stepped

around the truck, raising my hands and going down to my knees as the two state
trooper cars came to a wailing halt and the Troopers came out with side arms
drawn. Kyla was right there next to me, and I don't think anything could have
wiped that grin off of our faces.

To be continued, Based on

a post by Break The Bar for Literotica

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