6 World's End - Road Trip

6 World's End - Road Trip

Jack and Delandra explore....each other.

Delandra and I left the station just after dawn, making our way down into the deep shadow of the mountain along the gravel double track that I hadn't traveled since before the event. It was cold, just a dozen degrees above a frost, the air still, wet and penetrating. The forest absorbed our footfalls and sent back birdsong. Other things rustled in the thick woods.

Last evening, after the long afternoon's post-coital sleep, dad and mom made sure we were equipped for the journey. My mother filled a duffel with a couple of days worth of food and minimal changes of clothing for Delandra to carry. She also gave her the gray fleece cap that she'd worn most of last winter. Clearly mom had taken the girl into her maternal care.

My father set me up with a razor-sharp machete and a big pack that rested well on my hips, holding the hammock tent from their Brazilian rainforest days, one sleeping bag and assorted essentials, like a flint firestarter, some rope and our one old USGS map. He made sure we each had a pair of sharply pointed walking sticks.

"Jack, you've got to find some firearms out there," he said firmly, "I don't like to cause anxiety amongst the women, but we're nearly defenseless against bears and...other things."

"This explains your compulsion to sharpen sticks?" I joked.

"Not funny, Jack." He gave me a grim look. "And you keep your eyes out for sign like I showed you. That machete isn't much use against a bear. Best to see them before they see you and stay far apart."

"Look, you don't think we'll run up on any dangerous people, do you?"

"It seems unlikely, but you should plan for the worst and hope for the best."

Shit, I thought, I'm worried about getting hungry, not getting hijacked. Still, I girded my loins, so to speak and didn't mention his concerns to Delandra.

Beth had hugged each of us long and hard. "Come back quick," she said, looking up at me with those dark almond eyes, "I'll take good care of mom. In Korea all kids are taught first aid. I can even deliver your baby, so don't worry about us. Just be safe...and hurry..."

"We'll be back way before then," I couldn't do any more to make her feel secure than to be confident in my newly found Conan-courage and trust in Delandra's experience on the road. So with determination, hope and no small reluctance, we parted in the dewy dawn, the old trumpet strapped to my pack, a kind of promise of return.

I was glad to have the boots I'd found, now well shaped to my feet. I wore a hoodie and an old denim jacket to cushion the pack. The kilt served me well on the road. My core stayed warm - my knees, and my swinging package, seemed to revel in the chill. Walking, we made our own heat.

As we descended, breath-clouds floating slowly up from our bodies, careful on the loose gravel patches, I followed my new 'sister eve', as my mother had named the newcomers. Delandra had found a pair of corduroys and a hooded UT sweatshirt. She hid her hands in the pouch, her high, tight ass flexing as she picked her way among the growth that infiltrated the old track. We could see where dad had bushwhacked through earlier, but just a year after the event nature was making steady progress in reclaiming the narrow scrape of pathway up the mountain. I used the machete in the thickest undergrowth, but let the black girl set the pace. The summer rains had washed out the side ditches in many places and scoured the roadbed so we had to pick our way carefully, kicking through the first of the fall leaves.

"Listen," she turned to me, "there's at least six kinds of birds calling out here." She smiled with delight and graced my view with the sight of the duffel strap tight between her cotton-clad bosoms. "I feel like I can't get enough of the smell of this place. It's so rich."

I felt the primal connection to the forest, too. My senses seemed heightened as we got farther from 'civilization'. The sun hadn't reached us. We could see the western ridge glowing dawn-gold, but we were easing down into a particularly dim, moist, green fold of the old, worn down chain. I liked to imagine the mountains as the body of a sleeping woman. Here we were tracing like a fingertip into her intimate spaces.

An hour along the road curved sharply into the crook of a stream bed, lined with wet, mossy rocks, the stone cliff face on our left dripping with the seep of clear, cold water. A steep drop off to our right absorbed the stream in a rhododendron forest. Ferns and mosses made a vibrant emerald curtain, closing us in. Where the road crossed the stream a concrete ford had been laid, its edges undermined by the rains. We took off our shoes for a blisteringly cold wade across, feeling the pull of the current that plunged over and energetically downward, churning a chill mist. Vertigo passed through me briefly as I looked down, the water grasping at my ankles.

As we sat to dry our feet and put our shoes on again, Delandra said, "Why'm I so fucking horny, Jack? This cold doesn't even touch it. Is it the smell, the solitude...the way you look at me like a hungry animal?" She gave a coy smile. "I'm half tempted to jump you right here."

"Me, too. Of course. But I'm betting you're as eager to get some miles in today."

"Yeah, you're right. What your dad said about the urgency of connecting to others out there makes sense. He said that number changed to four hundred last night, right? So they're counting the same days since the event as we are. I want to know who's out there, too. It's gonna take a couple of weeks, I guess. And my body wants yours right now."

I felt that. I felt that very strongly. I'd watched the girl in flagrante delicto with Beth and both of my parents. The union and seeding that I felt compelled to engage in nearly undermined my purpose, like the determined rains had undermined the road. Thoughts of Delandra leaning against a coarse-barked oak while I stood behind her, my hands squeezing her firm, meaty ass and my cock spreading her hot-pink sex filled my imagination.

"What about a compromise?" I suggested, to which she raised an eyebrow, "Tell me your fantasies and I'll tell you mine to fill the time between now and when we pitch the tent."

"You're pitching a tent right now, Jack," she smirked, inclining her head toward the upraised fabric of my kilt. "If you don't get up and walk I'm likely to straddle you and put that to use."

"You're bringing out the best in me," I said as I rose to my feet and shouldered the pack.

"Later you put your 'best' in me, then," she laughed and joined me in walking carefully down the hollow. It would be about eight more miles of this steep gravel before we came to asphalt. I hoped we'd meet up with the sun before then. But with our fantasies we also made our own heat.

The woman was quiet for a while. The gravel scrunched, the undergrowth whisked and birdsong sailed across the steep, wooded, rocky slopes along which our eroding path wound. Gray, flaky lichens patterned the old granite outcroppings, the stream making a chorus in the background, beating the old mountains into sand. I breathed in the crisp air, alert to all around us. The trees formed a cathedral above, limbs intertwined, leaves going from green to yellow, red and brown. Looking up through the skein into the blue sky I watched air filled with dust, the language of plants, nature atomized, particles on their way to being part of something again. Maybe that's what we were - two of five lonely humans, seeking connection. Would we be blown about helplessly or could we navigate our own path?

"Dad thinks that overcrowding in the before times explains why we all feel so horny now," I offered. "Like our reproductive urges were somehow repressed when we were so numerous."

"Hmm, maybe," she said, "it's certainly true that many species reproduce more actively when the environment has more room for them." Delandra paused again. "You know, I did a paper on pheromones and there's not enough research on humans, but mating signaling increases in species at risk."

"I wonder if there's something about the smell of this forest that does it to me. Like you, we've all been horny as hell since the event."

"That's rot and mold and life being made over in the loam under the trees. It's the fecund odor of creative destruction, or something like that, I think some poet said."

"Yeah," I mused, "maybe the event was just a natural process. Maybe Gaia pulled the plug on the human experiment. And we're the compost of a new world."

"I kinda like the Adam and Eve metaphor better, Jack." Delandra smiled and I know we both felt the excitement of our journey and also of our impending mating. After a minute, she said, "I'm not sure you want to know all of my fantasies." She didn't look at me.

I didn't answer.

After another five minutes of quiet pathfinding, she spoke, "I know you like to see two women loving each other, right?"

Thinking of her and my mother in the sixty-nine the day before I couldn't deny it.

Delandra continued, "You know slash fiction, too, right?"

"Um, you mean like Kirk and Spock?"

"Yeah, Kirk-slash-Spock or Harry-slash-Ron." She paused again. "I'm into that."

It was my turn to pause and reflect. So in the before times Delandra enjoyed reading about male same-sex encounters. I didn't feel qualified to judge or add much. "Tell me more," I said.

"It's not just the sex, you know. These characters love each other. I mean, as written, they give men a more female side. They're both masculine and feminine, not so much gender stereotypes."

"I'm guessing that, you being bi, those stories make the characters more what?, interesting, accessible?" I felt awkward for a moment and said in a rush, "I'm assuming you're bi...you haven't said out loud that you're bi...are you bi?"

"Beth told me you talked about letting go of old gender constructs the other day, remember?"

"Uh, yeah...she was saying she was confused about her orientation a little. I was comforting her."

"Could you apply that thinking to yourself?" Delandra offered over her shoulder as she led the way down the shadowed track. Her cloud of breath hung in the air like her words.

"What do you mean?" I hedged.

"I like to imagine you and your dad, you know, doing each other."

I didn't reply and she didn't prompt me. As we trailed down the south side of the northwesterly running stream we had watched the sun slowly illuminating the opposite flank. At first the ridgeline glowed golden, then the meridian flowed down the slope toward us, gaining hour-by-hour. We approached another ford that would take us across to the north side, the sunny side of the stream. I saw an outcropping over there a few score feet above the road that caught sunlight.

"Let's take a lunch break on those rocks," I said, pointing, "A good place to dry our feet, too."

Delandra let the subject simmer and just nodded as she knelt and undid her laces and rolled up her corduroys again. The stream was deeper here, nearly to our knees at the middle of the ford. We put dad's pointed sticks to good use and had to hold hands, going slowly, testing for the less mossy patches, feeling the force of the current and the water's urge to pull our feet out from under us. It kept my attention. The cold current clarified my thinking, too.

Up on the outcropping, we chewed some rabbit jerky and a cold baked potato quietly for a while, letting the sun heat our bare feet. The air remained still down in this defile. Our backs to the lichened rock, we got quite warm in the sun. Delandra removed the fleece cap and I was surprised to see she'd scissored her hair down nearly to her scalp.

"When'd you do that?" I asked, "and why?"

"Too much trouble to deal with it out here in the woods." She rubbed her pink palms

across her fuzzy head and smiled. "Too butch?"

"No, it's just a surprise." She did have a well shaped skull. It suited her. I immediately wondered what it would feel like to run my fingers over her head when she sucked me. When she finally sucked me all by herself. Later tonight...my fingers tingled, already. My gaze lingered on her pillowy, pink lips. Noticing, Delandra laughed loud, showing her teeth.

"Oh, I'm full of surprises, Jack." She pulled the sweatshirt over her head and sat there in just a loose, v-neck t-shirt, braless, nipples quickly rigid in the chill air. I stared, smiling. She knew full well my instincts. Then, without preamble she pulled the t-shirt off, too.

"Mmmm, the sun feels good..." she closed her eyes and rested back on the rock, hands clasped in her lap, letting me appreciate her beauty. Maybe she was watching me through slitted lids. Those breasts, with their dark and broad areola, nipples crinkled and straining sunward, hung heavy, swollen and mouth-wateringly close. Her long, slow breathing animated them. I wanted to reach out and palm one, heft it, pinch a nipple.

Instead, I said, "I want to jump you, too, Delandra. I want to pick you up and throw you over my shoulder, find a mossy spot and end up with my knob as deep in you as it can go." She sighed and pulled her elbows in, pressing the mammaries together, extending the nipples. "But we'd better do a little sublimating, and put this energy into making some miles today."

The black girl didn't really look disappointed, just kind of crafty. "I'll tell you my fantasies, then, shall I?" And she pulled on her socks and shoes. "You're going to have to go first, though."

"OK," I growled, playing along. In a minute we set off again, this time with a topless Delandra in the dappled sunshine, duffel strap between her breasts, and me with a heavy shlong hanging in my kilt.

"Did you fantasize about having sex with your mother for a long time?" she asked, matter of factly.

"Not before...you know, but increasingly afterward."

"In detail?"

Did Delandra mean did I fantasize in detail or did she want details? "I guess if you can admit to reading slash fiction I can admit to watching mom-slash-son vids, can't I?"

"Go on."

I cleared my throat, considered my words, "You know my mom and I love each other and, well, even before I found out that she was thinking the same thing, I'd imagine her coming to me all horny and eager..." This sounded kind of mundane saying it out loud, like standard fare

"Was she dressed seductively? Did she leave the bedroom door open accidentally? That kind of thing?" Delandra chuckled.

"Yeah, I guess I'm hardly original in my fantasies," I chuckled, too, "but to my credit, I hope, we always made love as people in love, not just horny avatars of some porn addict's imagination."

"You licked her pussy with love? You gazed lovingly in her eyes as you sank that magnificent boner between her juicy lips?"

"Yes!" I laughed, "I devotedly drove her to peak after peak of ecstasy with the loving care that only a son can bring."

"And your dad showed you how, I understand," Delandra grinned, "He was there with you. You often fuck your mom together?"

"You watched..." I stated the obvious.

"Yeah, and it made me hotter than any slash fiction, knowing you two were nearly having sex with each other."

"But we're not having sex with each other."

"That's hair-splitting, Jack."

"I don't su, er, uh, shit, I don't suck his dick." Now the image was in my head, though.

"Not yet...but just imagine for a minute," she said animatedly, her breasts wobbling as she gestured. "You've tasted each other's sperm, right?"

"Hmm, granted..."

"You've rubbed your cocks together."

"I haven't touched his with my hands...or my mouth!" I argued.

"I bet you've thought about it, hmm? Thought about reaching down and feeling his shaft slide between your mom's pussy lips. Getting your fingers all gooey and letting his hardness slip between them into her?"

"This is what turns you on, Delandra, not me." I took a deep breath, "And I'm not into anal, really, even with mom." Except, I thought, when she wants a finger judiciously inserted at just the right time.

She stopped abruptly and turned to me, reached into my kilt and grasped my erection with a look of triumph. "No, no that stuff doesn't turn you on."

"Watching your tits waggle's what's turning me on."

"OK, the prosecution rests. I'll give this trial a short adjournment." She dropped me and started walking again. I stayed silent, disturbed a bit. Aroused. Was I destined to accept the idea of bi-sex with my dad? Or was it just the thrill of a topless woman talking dirty? Pheromones?

"I've gotta pee," she said. "You could give me a hand, Jack."

I just looked at her. Delandra set down her duffel and pulled down her corduroys spreading her feet wide and extending her hands to me, naked but for the bunched pants at her knees and her dark, thick bush. "Hold me up," she said, beginning a pigeon-toed crouch. "It's a lot easier than finding a tree limb at just the right height."

I took her hands and leaned back against her weight and she just let her bladder go with a hiss into the bare patch in the middle of the road. She sighed and looked at me with an impish grin. "I'd like to give you a hand peeing."

"What?"

"Another of my fantasies." She used a leaf to wipe herself, then rose and pulled up and fastened her pants. "You can pee right here, too." She reached into my kilt again and pulled me out into the air. I was half hard and tried to stay that way. I wanted her to help me piss.

"Look, he's a handful, even soft." Her delicate hand cradled my organ, warm and gentle. She didn't squeeze. My wrinkled cowl pinched at the end.

"Might be hard to relax," I warned, "and pull back my foreskin a bit." She did and my tip emerged into the sun.

"Listen to the stream rushing over there. Think of all that water flowing down the mountain, all that water you've drunk today, the pressure..." Oddly, it worked and I felt the relaxing of my bladder, my stream of urine released. "Oooh, that's cool," she said when the piss began flowing, "it's so full. Your hose is pulsing with it." Delandra giggled and started waving my organ, tracing arabesques in the dust, mixing my piss into the wet spot she'd made. It felt weird, it felt hot, it felt intimate.

"Oooooo, I've wanted to do that for a long time," Delandra sighed.

"Want one of your own?"

"Sometimes...I'm pretty sure my strap-on isn't the same." As I came to the end of my tank my cock rose in her hand. "We're sublimating today, right?" she said with a wicked twinkle in her eye. Then she bent and took my knob in her mouth for one hard, hot suck and put me away vibrating, neatly straightening my kilt. I stood there steaming, like the piss in the gravel.

Delandra reshouldered her duffel and walked away down the track. I took off my jacket and hoodie and went topless as well in the benevolent sunlight. How many miles to nightfall?

Maybe I should have been thinking about bears and other dangers instead of daydreaming about sex. I did feel the tension between fear and love. We were two soft and edible humans alone in what was quickly returning to wilderness, the sound of resurgent nature all around us. We couldn't turn up the thermostat if we felt cold. Out here we'd have to boil water and hope to find dry fuel. No nine-one-one.

At the same time the sun felt like a lover's caress on my shoulders. Birdsong made a symphony. And, I realized, the wilderness ran straight through our bodies - that urge to merge that drove us to seek connection was the same urge animating all the life around us. Life sought to send its DNA into the future, everything else was window dressing. Why shouldn't I be thinking of screwing Delandra as I watched her beautiful breasts bobble? Maybe the thing that separated us from the other raucous life around us was that we could wait a few more hours to do it, putting one practical goal ahead of the one my body told me was so urgent.