A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 44

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TaLtos6
TaLtos6
1,932 Followers

She asked him if he had a name and he'd smiled as if it seemed a little funny to him that she'd think that he might not have one. He told her and then he'd walked off as she stood looking at his tail.

She stood in her doorway watching him walk and wondering about him. She had to admit that she'd never really seen a demon who looked like that, and from what she could see, she was even more surprised that she liked the way that he looked, though she stared after a few seconds as she watched him change back to looking like the man who she'd seen at first, clothes and all.

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When he got back to where he lived, the one there smelled another female on him in an instant and she almost tore his eyes out in her rage before he'd even gotten the chance to tell of it. It was already after dark, and he didn't know it, but she caused it to rain in her anger. In the cold temperatures, that rain froze in seconds wherever it landed.

He drew back and touched the scratches on his face, looking at the blood on his fingers. "I didn't do anything but try to help somebody, that's all. She fell into the stream and she was freezing. She'd have never made it to her home."

"Was she thankful?" the female sneered, "Did she let you fuck with her after that? Tell me where, and I'll make sure that she does not bother you when you hunt anymore." She grabbed him by the fur on his chest then and pulled hard, "I am your female. Me."

She began to tell him what he would do and when as far as she was concerned, but she found herself on the floor holding a hank of his fur and watching him as he walked away toward one of the other dwellings in the empty community. She raised her hand and he turned, feeling what was meant before it happened.

"Do that," he said quietly, "and you lose me. All that I've heard for weeks is how important it is that we are not the last of our kind. I doubt that you've considered the possibility, but I'm beginning to think that we don't belong here."

"But I love you," she said.

"And I love you," he replied, "but we're killing that off nicely too. I helped someone who needed it, and you act like I was doing something that I shouldn't have been doing. Now you're talking nonsense as though I'm your slave or something. I've lived all of my life without you or that thing between your legs. If you think that I'm hopelessly tied to either one, ..."

He turned and began to walk again, "I'll see you in a day or so and we'll talk then. I figure that you have a whole lot of feelings and things coming up in you right now on top of feeling sick. Now isn't the time."

"Why?" she asked, "I am sick from your child. I am not losing control of myself."

He laughed, "My child? Not yours at all? You were forced somehow and played no part?"

He shook his head, "Look at your hand. You stand there ready to throw your rage at me with your will. I know you enough to see that you are having such trouble with the last of your control. I understand it, as least I try to. You see nothing but yourself and what you think you want."

She tilted her head, "What is it that you want?"

He shrugged, "I want the one back who loved me so," he said, "the one who laid her heart out to me. I want to struggle to make her life better as she tries to keep her stomach down. I want to try to comfort that one."

She opened her mouth, but he was quicker, "I don't want to hear accusations which are absurd. I don't want to be treated as though I am a servant who has done something wrong, and right now, I want to be alone. You're not the only one who is upset."

As he made up a bed of sorts to sleep on, he already knew that she'd be gone in the morning. It wasn't what he wanted, but her knew that as long as she was like this, there was no reasoning with her. It had happened before.

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As she sank into her hot bath, the young woman at the farm knew nothing of any of this. She'd locked the place down tight, but she was still afraid -- though not of the one who'd helped her. She relaxed into the heat of the steaming water, glad that she'd survived her ordeal, and feeling better for what had happened afterward when she'd gone to wash, knowing that even so, she had to be careful now not to get sick.

In a minute, she felt herself smirk. She didn't think that she'd expected something sinister out of him in a biblical sort of way, though she had been rather prepared to hear something difficult to pronounce with a ton of consonants.

Even so, she thought, Billy was a strange name for a demon.

The next day, she felt better and the one after that, she was back at her friend's place, working to put together a short-term dream of hers. It was short-term now that it was nearing completion, but it was very important to her all the same.

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It had taken a while and a little experimentation, but Rudhi learned that there were differences in the way that these demons who beset her flew and how she did. What she did was not really flying, it had much more to do with her will, and she could do it without thought or effort and certainly without any flapping. And there was another thing here, she realized.

They could only fly so high. She'd figured that out only after days of flying over the ocean. But after seeing land below her again and landing to learn what she could there, she found that there were demons here as well, and that for some reason that she didn't understand, if they saw her, they attacked her.

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Randi Farber shivered a little as she watched the rising fuel level through the filler in one of the fuel tanks on her big-assed pig. When it neared full, she turned off the flow with the valve and jumped down to hurriedly hang the hose up on the bracket which she'd fabricated that morning. It was a bit of grunting, but Randi got the hitch in place and kicked the frozen locking latch free so that it the fuel rig would remain hitched.

She looked around for a minute and wondered where Copper had gotten to. She hadn't seen her for a while now and out here, you tend to worry about your friends if you don't see them for a time. It had been almost a month. She shrugged after a moment and clambered up to shimmy into the hole over the driver's seat, heaving a little to pull the hatch shut over her as she did before she dogged it down tightly.

She knew that she should have been wearing her coat for this, but she was just so fed up and tired of winter. She was also not thrilled about getting her new coat smeared with grease -- and besides, with Copper gone, she'd had to do a lot of the final set-ups and checks by herself. Everything had been tested over and over. What didn't work was removed and replaced if there were spares, and if there were none, what didn't work had been repaired. Now it was time to see if all of that sweat was going to pay off.

She shivered a little, even though she was sitting on a fleece laid over the driver's seat. There was compartment heat available and she'd turned it on, but the metal interior would still be cold for a little while as the ancient machine warmed up for the first time in more than four centuries.

Randi was a redhead and she had the classic temper which came with that -- once her fuse had been lit and had burned a little while. She stood about 5 feet 6 tall and she was a little slim. Her ancestry had been pure human and for a time, she'd been one of the girls that Copper and Luddy had hated back when they were all in school. But that was then, and even so, Randi had never been one of the ones who had poked fun at anyone who was a little different. It wasn't until almost the end of their time at school, but the three girls had become good friends by then.

Randi and Copper had a relationship based on things which they each excelled at. Copper could brew up a batch of something which could make you forget your troubles right quick and Randi had long ago learned the way to make incredibly fine-tasting meat products - sausages and smoked roasts, mostly, which just went with Copper's talent. But producing what she did, and the heavy nature of that had always been a pain in the butt to her.

She didn't have a place to sell out of and hauling everything to sell in the market at the town was a problem in both directions. Meat products were heavy, and a wagon-load rolling slowly through these mountains tended to attract a lot of hungry noses. More than once, she'd had to cut the traces on her horses and jump up on one to leave her work to the bears and try to get away. The return trip was sometimes fraught with another peril -- men who wanted your money and almost always wanted your ass too.

That was when she'd seen what Copper had built up with her late father and Randi had gotten her brainwave. She'd wanted a Bradley too, but she didn't think that she'd need all of the toys, bells and whistles that her friend had. She'd have been fine with just a rolling, lockable frame and maybe a gun, though not the sort of thing that Copper had mounted. But after a lot of talk and a half a keg of Copper's brew, well, the two of them had looked around the place where Copper lived.

Building up another Bradley would have removed a lot of usable spare parts for Copper so that was out. And whatever they did, it had to be diesel-powered. Copper had found huge tanks of the stuff buried in the ground on that base. There had been a lot of turbine fuel as well for the newer heavy tanks, but that had turned to jelly long ago.

So it had to be a diesel and Randi wanted something that a bear just couldn't get into and something where she could sit and laugh at the thieves as well. A long look around had brought them to a small number of older tanks in the reserve portion of the base.

It seemed that the farther back they walked in the rows of now-ancient armor in the storage buildings, the older the tanks got, but there were still a few in good condition.

The two friends decided on a couple of projects for the future; one old main battle tank for Copper to fool with and a lighter one as a solution to Randi's problem. There were a handful of very old Sheridans on the base, including a couple of well-painted gate guardians and out of that handful, they'd put together a working one. What she'd wanted was something that could get her and her produce to town and back in safety.

What she'd gotten, well, ...

It weighed 'only' 34 thousand pounds and could travel over flat and level ground at as fast as 40 miles per hour -- if you didn't mind the way that your teeth crashed together over some of the bumps. But that didn't matter to Randi. She could ride with it buttoned up tight, safe within its metal shell, and though it had been meant to have a crew of four, it was drivable by one, and with a little practice, she could turn it into a thing to be feared -- by more than only her.

It had been made to do a lot of things but as with all jack-of-all-trades, it had turned out to be a master of none in actual service. Too light and small to mount a main gun which could deliver a kinetic energy penetrator to another armored target in a fight, it mounted a large 152 millimeter low velocity gun -- something which Copper referred to as a B.A.G. or 'Big --Assed Gun'. All that it could fire was High Explosive, Anti-Tank ammunition and canister shot, but for a longer reach, it could launch a Shillelagh missile through the same thick barrel.

None of this really mattered to Randi, she just thought that it looked too mean to want to tangle with it, though she did learn as much as she could about it all from Copper's manuals, just in case.

Randi had learned about wrenching from Copper over the winter and now she sat getting warm in her M551A1 Sheridan light tank. She remembered how Copper was quick to tell her, "It's not a tank -- not in the old books anyway, it's a 'reconnaissance vehicle' -- whatever that is," she'd laughed, "Looks like a tank to me too."

By the book, it wasn't quite as quick as Copper's Bradley, but Randi didn't care about that either and today was the day to try it. She'd have waited for Copper a little longer, but she had meat to sell, so today was the day after getting herself fairly covered in grease as she'd lubed it up. Thank God that Copper had taught her how to drive the thing using an old tracked utility vehicle as a teaching tool.

She was a little lurchy with it at first, but she got the hang of it soon enough as she rumbled along happily. She sat there grinning from ear to ear as she went and slapped the top of the instrument console in front of her affectionately as she toned her voice to sound something like her mother's had sounded to her once long ago, "Ooh, Momma just LOVES her little piggy," she laughed as she adapted a few new words to an old nursery game.

"This little piggy goes to market,

So that Momma won't have to stay home.

This little piggy hauls roast beef,

And the bears and the robbers get none."

She rolled along until she came to a place where there was a wall of granite facing her across the valley. With a little squeezing and careful maneuvering, she was in the gunner's station and the turret transited smoothly to lay the barrel of the main gun on the face of the cliff four hundred meters away.

She loaded a HEAT round, hoping that it was still good after all of the time that it had been in storage and, making a small sighting adjustment as Copper had taught her to allow for the range in her rangefinder, she stuffed her ears with some small bits of rags and ...

The tank moved a little, the back end of the gun moved a lot and, rags or not, Randi almost jumped straight up out of the chair, remembering just in time to look through the viewfinder as the shell slammed into the granite wall. It made a bit of a mess over there, but ... Randi laughed.

Fuck the bears, she thought and fuck the thieves as well. "Because THIS little piggy," she laughed to herself quietly, "Well, this little piggy goes BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, all the way home!"

She ran the breech through its fairly slow cycle and after a bit of careful grunting, she stuffed one of the missiles into the breech very carefully and stood there puffing for a minute. She hoped that it would work the one time that she wanted to try it. The damn thing weighed sixty pounds.

This time, it was only a matter of sitting and guiding the missile with a controller, and the mess that the thing made gave her a nice feeling, though the doubted that she'd ever use it for anything. She missed Copper now. It would have been a lot more laughter if they'd done this together.

She straightened the turret and began to motor along. She wanted to get home and start loading up for her trip to town the next day. Not having the big doors that Copper had was going to make loading this with her produce a challenge, but that was life, she supposed.

She hit the brakes a while later when she saw a figure step out of the bushes, recognizing the man who had beaten and raped her as well as robbing her twice before. The sheriff hadn't done a thing when she'd complained. More than anything, he was the reason that she carried a shooter on her hip these days. She supposed that he'd been the real reason why she was scared to death to ride through this valley and the underlying motivation to want to have this vehicle in the first place.

He held up his hand and it made her laugh a little when he commanded the thing to stop, by the way that his mouth was moving, though she was sure that he couldn't see her as she watched him through the bullet-proof glass of the small driver's periscopes. She kept going slowly and he scrambled ahead out of the way, but she saw him draw his pistol as he backed up yelling that whoever was in there had better stop or he'd shoot.

So Randi stopped, and she could hear his shots from outside faintly.

She'd stopped and he'd still fired.

Randi revved the engine and lurched forward as the thief began to run and Randi allowed it, wanting him out of her way. She had no intention of wasting one of her shells on his ass.

Though it was a nice thought, she smiled.

"Fuck you Mister, and you have a nice day now," she smiled. She had a scar on her lower lip from his ring when he'd hit her six months ago and she still had nightmares, but at least she was still breathing and she hoped that now he'd never bother her again.

"Yea, though I drive through the valley of the shadow of death," she smiled to herself grimly, "I shall fear no evil -- because I've got a seventeen ton dick."

There was a shortcoming to all of this, she realized after a few more miles. This was comfort, she thought, this riding around in her new rolling home away from home. Now she understood what Copper had been blathering about to her all of those times. Oh, she'd gotten it before all of the work, but now as she swayed and bounced along slowly, she finally knew real protection and personal safety. All that it needed was one of those 'Home Sweet Home' knick-knacks on the wall, she smirked.

But she didn't have one. It wouldn't really have mattered if she did; there wasn't enough blank wall space in here to hang one up -- and there was another thing that she didn't have, she realized a little sadly. With the way that this rolling hunk of steel bobbled and bounced, she realized that she didn't have a piss pot -- and she really needed to go.

Then she remembered the hatch in the floorpan in this compartment. She rolled to a stop and climbed up into the turret, traversing it in a 360 degree circle to see if there was anyone out there. Seeing no one, she slid back down and went forward to open the emergency escape hatch. She took a quick look-see with her head hung down before she squatted over the opening and went.

Well this was nice, she decided, but as time went on, she became aware of a change in the ambient sounds outside. She could hear the rumbling and quiet clattering of the 300 horsepower Detroit 6-cylinder supercharged diesel engine, and she could hear the hiss of her urine, but as the seconds went by, she could hear a rising sound, like wailing or, ... screaming.

She finished hurriedly and slammed the hatch shut, dogging it tightly before she jumped up and scrambled back to the turret. As she swung it around, she saw something that caused her jaw to fall open.

There was a dark smudge out there, downslope from her. It wasn't large, but it was moving uphill through the air close to the ground on a path which would take it past the front of her vehicle, and it seemed to be completely oblivious to the cloud which was chasing it or, ... well that's what it looked like to her. She stepped up the magnification and the smudge turned into a woman in a black cape, flying slowly up the slope somehow and not seeing the , ... Randi groaned.

Demons.

A whole great big flock of the things that the woman was about to be overtaken by. Randi had heard tell of these strange flocks and how they moved over the land, but that there now seemed to be more of them than ever before and the flocks seemed to be getting larger as well. She didn't know anything about the woman, who seemed to be able to fly somehow, but if they caught up to her and she just sat in her shelter as it happened ... she didn't even want to think about that.

She looked around the panels in front of her and found the switches for the smoke grenade launchers and fired one of the six of them attached to the outside of her turret -- a holdover from a time when vehicles like hers could hide themselves in clouds of thick smoke though Copper had told her that thermal imagers had negated any benefit. She turned and scrambled up to open the commander's hatch on top.

"HEY!" she yelled as she pointed, "Behind you!"

She saw the woman look back at what pursued her, but her head snapped around to look at Randi, who knelt on the turret and beckoned to her frantically -- all the while asking herself if she was nuts. It would have been a little funny in a strange way to Randi -- as the woman turned to see what followed her, she'd said a few words to herself and though Randi didn't understand what was said, she just knew that somehow 'What the fuck?' was in there somewhere.

TaLtos6
TaLtos6
1,932 Followers