7 Hooters at the End of the World

7 The Hooters at the End of the World

Lust conquers all.

As it turned out Delandra and I were able to bushwack downstream for about a mile where we found the river wide, shallow and slow. The morning was again chill, the girl bundled in her hoodie and backpack, the dew on my legs bracing. Even more bracing was the wade across the cold water, at places up to my navel. Of course we stripped entirely for the traverse and held our kit above our heads as we tiptoed through the pebble-paved riverbed, leaning against the current. It was a good way to wash off the sex muck from the night before, too. There was some shrieking from each of us as our bodies' sensitive parts went under.

Delandra was constricted by the cold as was I, all our erogenous flesh shriveled into rubbery nubs. We hurried to dry and put our clothes on once we'd clambered up the bank and across a grown-over field to the asphalt of the road. The sun warmed our backs as we began to put in some real mileage. The wider state road wasn't nearly as invaded by new growth as the track to our station, so we enjoyed the hike all morning, striding to that symphony of resurgent nature that we'd grown accustomed to.

We didn't waste time exploring any of the buildings we passed, most homes back from the road on weedy driveways and the few commercial buildings looking as abandoned as those my father and I had scavenged just after the event occurred. There wasn't any sign of human disturbance, only that of animals. There were some canned food stocks that we made lunch of. Dinty Moore Beef Stew is really good after the apocalypse. When on the road we stayed wary of inadvertently encountering a bear, boar or dogs since we still were only armed with sharp sticks and the one machete.

On the one occasion we sighted a bear ahead of us along the road we were able to frighten her off with a loud series of blasts on the trumpet and arm waving. It kept us very alert. Those coyotes made night noises, but we never saw them by day.

Delandra and I spent short nights in the hammock tent industriously and pleasurably attempting to impregnate her and falling quickly into exhausted sleep. We were in a hurry, so we walked during all the daylight available and approached Middlesboro in the late hours of our third afternoon, very pleased with our progress and eager to begin exploring the town's resources.

"Stop!" Delandra whispered fiercely, suddenly still, crouched and looking intently toward a house that had just appeared as we rounded a sweeping bend that would bring us within sight of our first intersection on the outskirts of Middlesboro. I followed her gaze and it took me a moment to realize what she was alert to. It was a simple single story ranch home like many we'd seen, with a weather-beaten air and an empty pickup in the drive on deflated tires.

But the grass was mowed!

I crouched beside the girl and we just watched for a long minute. Silence in the hot afternoon sun, insects clouding the air, a light breeze in the treetops, no other sign of life at the house. Without consultation we both crept toward the building. I was stunned to find sign of other humans. This could change everything. What if survivors were scattered only every sixty miles? There'd sure be a lot more of us. Would life be less precarious if we made a larger band? Would there be fewer orgies, or more?

I had the sudden urge to turn and run back to the station. The life we'd built was hard, but filled with many compensations - three horny women top of the list. I realized that I quite liked being the only breeding male in the population. I didn't want any competition or, especially, the prospect of disputes over mates.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

And indeed what we found next only added to the puzzle. Under an oak in the front yard stood a gravestone at the head of a soft mound of soil carefully planted with marigolds. Crudely chiseled into a granite block was: Joe Coyner '41 - '24 RIP. The area of mowed grass appeared to center on this burial.

We cautiously peered in the house's windows but it looked as abandoned as all the rest. The unlocked door opened to a dusty and empty home without any sign of recent habitation. I called anyway, "Hello?" And received just the hollow echo of desolation.

"That grass ain't mowed itself," Delandra said, quizzically, "there must be somebody around here."

"Let's find a good place to observe from and wait for night. See if there are any lights." So we diverted up into the woods behind the house, locating a spot on a ridge that looked down over Middlesboro and the river that it hugged. Checking against the USGS map, we were facing northwest and sighting across the few downtown blocks toward the Home Depot and Walmart that marked the far edge of the small county seat. In between would be the library and community college we hoped to scavenge. Also the fire and police departments that might have some radio gear.

As we waited for night to fall we ate cold beans straight from the can and the last of our squirrel jerky. In caution, we didn't pitch the tent, but stayed low in the brush and watched the sun sink behind the far mountains. No impregnating tonight.

Sure enough once the dusk got deep there was one sparkling light out in the town. Looked to be near or at the Home Depot. That made sense. Any survivors would have a shitload of resources there.

At dawn we debated our next step; watch from where we hid or boldly go right to the source of the light? We finally chose boldness, figuring the mowed gravesite gave evidence of a sensitive and reasoning surviving human, or humans. We compromised on our approach to the Home Depot. Once we were across the bridge and within a quarter mile I began to play loudly what little I could on the trumpet so we wouldn't surprise whoever was living there. My rendition of reveille was pretty bad, but I didn't know how to play but the one note.

We strode right up the middle of the four-lane road and turned into the parking lot. To our left, the Home Depot, to our right, the Walmart. At the sound of a gunshot we stopped, poised to run. Faintly we heard, in a woman's voice, "Stay where you are!" There was a figure in coveralls standing tall in the shadow of the entrance holding a long gun. We were too far away to make it out clearly. Home Depot parking lots are wide. It felt very alien to be in such a suburban wasteland after my year in the mountains.

"We can't hear you!" I shouted.

"Stay. Where. You. Are!"

I shouted again, "OK! But we still can't hear you very well!" I hadn't really imagined how it might be to meet another survivor. This one seemed scared. "We don't have any weapons!....I mean, except these sticks and a machete!"

"What?!" shouted the figure in the entrance.

"We're friendly!" hollered Delandra, clearly frustrated. To me she said, "Put down the machete and let's slowly get closer, OK?"

We edged across the first ten parking spaces and, holding our empty hands out to our sides, waited for a response. She fired another shot and we stopped. Now I could see a blond-haired head and sunglasses.

"How many of you are there?" Delandra yelled.

"Twelve! And we're all armed!" I didn't see any sign of others.

"Well, there's only two of us! I want to see the others!" I shouted, getting hoarse. I hadn't needed to yell like this in a long time.

"What?!" the blond yelled, sounding strained too.

"Listen!," Delandra shouted, "We just want to find some radio gear and go back where we came from!" Her voice faltered as she spoke.

"There's no beer!" shouted the woman.

"I can't keep shouting like this!" Delandra said, then repeated it, slightly louder, to the woman.

"What!?"

"OK, I'm coming closer just by myself!" the black woman said, then to me, "Just hang back for a minute while I sort this woman out. I remember how frightening it was to stumble on your dad." She walked slowly with her arms out wide toward the Home Depot. I watched, ready to run to her aid, but she stopped and knelt about fifty feet from the doorway. I could tell they were talking, but I couldn't catch the words.

I waited. At one point Delandra sat back on her haunches. Then she sat cross legged. The conversation went on for a long time. I sat down, too, in the warm September sun, letting the reflection of warmth off of the asphalt lull me to nearly dozing. I half-dreamed about cruising the Walmart aisles for frozen pizza, for Coke, for corn chips. I realized that I didn't actually miss things like underwear or soap or video game consoles.

"Jack!" Delandra yelled, "come here!"

I left my pack in place and walked to her, also keeping my empty hands showing. I was just in my kilt, boots and ragged t-shirt. Feeling weird, I waved to our new acquaintance and smiled like I was harmless.

"Jack, this is Sandy," said Delandra pointing. The woman waved her gun barrel in a way that seemed not entirely threatening. "She just buried Joe last week. They made it through the winter here and haven't seen anyone else but us before now."

"You'd think if there were many more folks around, some locals would have thought of the resources in these stores..."

"She's afraid, like Beth and I were."

"Will she put the gun down any time soon do you think?"

"I've explained our situation roughly, without saying exactly where the station is, but I think it's going to take special measures to get her to trust us," Delandra confided, "But I have an idea."

Before I could ask, she stripped her hoodie off over her head.

"What's this?" said the Home Depot woman loudly.

Delandra said to me, "Take off your clothes." Then she stepped out of her pants, now completely naked in the autumn sun. Hers was a body to flaunt, all muscled planes of mahogany and smooth rounds of feminine flesh, her nearly bald head held high.

"We've got nothing to hide, Sandy," she said as I untied the kilt and let it fall, then peeled out of the t-shirt, standing there in my worn boots. I was used to being naked with others now and, except for the uncertain reception of our new 'friend', I felt proud of my own body and how others saw it. Surviving had made me hard all over, and hairier. I had stamina and a life force so vital that I could restock all of humankind by myself it seemed like. My summer of toiling in the sun had bronzed me nearly as dark as Delandra and my cock hung from its cloud of dark hair like a fist.

The woman just stood there and let the gun slowly droop. She said, confused, "What are you doing?"

"Aren't you horny all the time, too?" said Delandra, sympathetically. She turned to me and knelt on the wad of my kilt, took my cock in her hand and squeezed. It flexed for her and swelled to a fat sausage. "We're repopulating the Earth, Sandy."

Then Delandra put her mouth over my knob. Looking up at me she winked. One hand on my ass, she pulled me into her and her tongue did that magic thing with my foreskin. Sandy watched, sunglasses glinting.

"You're fucking brilliant," I sighed and put a hand on the black woman's tight-cropped curls. She gobbled me for a while and I went along for the ride. I didn't know her plan, but I suspected and hoped some kind of orgasm was at the end of it. I smiled at Sandy in the most benign way I could with my cock in Delandra's throat.

We certainly had her attention. Then Delandra stood and turned, putting her palms on the ground and her ass to me. That spread her cheeks and pressed the thick labia, wet with her arousal, open for me. "Show her what you've got, Jack," she said.

Hard enough to be pointing toward the noonday sun, I had to grasp myself by the root and press downward, holding Delandra by one firm hip, to nest my dripping glans between her hot pink lips. "Unngh," she grunted, "Sandy, you can shoot us now. Or you can get some of this kind of relief yourself." I just pressed my cock slowly as deep as it could go, feeling the hot and the wet of her insides cloak me.

Sandy remained still, but she seemed riveted.

"We aim to be fruitful and multiply, Sandy," she said, her head between her arms and those fleshy melons swinging. "It's the garden of Eden all over again." To me, Delandra whispered, "Sandy said she thinks this is what the book of Revelations foretold. I'm hoping we can reframe that so she's not so scared."

I was happy to be a visual aid in that lesson plan. Yes, let Sandy watch us procreating in the Home Depot parking lot if that's what it took to save humanity. And our own skins. Skins that slid on each other with such slick sweetness. Skins that fit one inside the other so tightly, mine swelling and hers squeezing, both blood-filled and boiling with the need to breed. If I had to die let it be balls deep in my lover. Amen.

"You can have some, if you want it, Sandy," Delandra offered, "I've been sharing him with two other horny women. There aren't any other potent men. No more steel-hard members, no manly organs like this one, maybe anywhere in the world. We're making a new heaven on earth right here, right now." And she punctuated that somewhat deceptive speech with thrusts back onto me, sweat dripping from her forehead onto the asphalt and slicking where my thighs slapped up against hers.

"He's a good man, Sandy, a good lover, too. He's had three women to teach him...ahhhh." Delandra was shaking now as her body rocked with a release. "I'm coming, Sandy..." Then she just shook her head and made mewling sounds as I pounded and she shivered through her climax.

"You people are crazy..." Sandy said, but sounded almost amused. She raised the gun again. "OK, get over here. Slowly."

Delandra went to her knees and my wet cock sprung free, pointing again to the sky, redder and shinier than before. Sandy noticed. She waved us to the shaded entrance with the gun. It looked like she'd made her home in the space between the inner and outer automatic doors of the store. I guess it got better sunlight and was easy to secure.

That part of my brain was recording data, the part that was rooted in my amygdala was noticing that Sandy was nearly as tall as I am, at least six feet. Her blond hair was sunburnt, short and choppy, the coveralls cinched tight around a narrow waist. Above and below, it flared around a fuller figure. Amazon, I thought, fierce. The sunglasses made her seem predatory, like a praying mantis. The name patch stitched over her breast pocket said Sandy, Hooters Volleyball.

"You sit over there," she said to Delandra, pointing with the gun, "You lie here." Still mostly hard, I knelt on the mattress she indicated, made up with military precision. She hadn't lost discipline after the event, I observed, and maybe she was in that field. I lay on my back and my cock lay wet on my hip.

The tall woman used one hand to unsnap the coveralls, cradling the butt of the gun in her elbow, pointing it between us. "You," she commanded me, "turn so your head's toward her."

Delandra said, "Sandy, we're just trying to save humanity. I was alone with Beth in the wilderness for a year before I found this man's family. And it took all of three days to see what my purpose is." If there was fear behind that exposition I couldn't hear it.

Somehow I wasn't afraid, either. Even with the amazon holding her gun over us I sensed like I had back home at the station that there was a larger energy flowing through us. We lonely hominids were driven to connect, not to destroy. The force of our DNA and its drive to replicate had the upper hand over all of us, had its own gun aimed at our hearts. Cupid's shotgun, so to speak.

I watched Sandy peel off the coveralls and reveal her full, creamy breasts. She had the tight pink areola of a woman not yet a mother. Maybe I could change that. Maybe with my baby in her they'd broaden and darken and grow thick, plummy knobs for our baby to nurse from. They'd leak milk all round whenever the child cried and I'd get a taste of the extra when they got too painfully full. I was hard and leaking, too.

Awkwardly she shimmied out of the garment and stood on the legs to pull it off entirely, then stepped aside. From below, her fuzzy yellow muff hid her sex. Sandy's buttocks were firm, her legs were long, her belly was tight, with an actual set of abs like I'd never seen on a woman. Amazon, indeed.

"If you try to take me, I'll shoot her," Sandy said to me, "so just do as I say."

"I recommend you sit on his face first," said Delandra, "you won't regret it."

The woman hesitated, looking at my swollen member, then my bearded face. She growled and stepped over my chest and, shotgun trained on Delandra, slowly lowered her knees until my shoulders were trapped under her shins and her vulva hovered inches from my mouth. It was pungent. Extremely pungent. She smelled of unwashed woman and desire. My body thrilled to the scent and my cock twitched. I reached my tongue up and ran it into her tangled furr. She jumped and gasped. Nearly dropped the gun, but recovered and eased herself down onto my mouth, sighing.

"Later," Delandra whispered conspiratorially, "we can ride him together." Rolling my eyes up I could see she was touching herself and hugging her breasts. "That's what Beth and I like to do. We take turns on his tongue and his cock. See who comes first."

She might have been stretching the truth a bit, but it couldn't hurt to paint the big picture. I was certainly willing to have them both ride me. My wet tongue met her oozing vulva through the matted hairs of her untrimmed bush. Our beards tangled and the juices mingled. Sandy dragged her sex along my face, grinding on my nose when her clit slipped over it, letting me penetrate her thick lips with my rigid tongue and draw out the paste there. She was so heavy with womanly desire I could almost chew it.

Sandy rose quickly in arousal. I heard Delandra breathing hard as she watched. The shotgun barrel rested on the floor as the woman slowly rocked on my face. My cock drooled on me, waiting impatiently.

I felt Sandy tense and saw those abs contract when the orgasm rippled through her. She seemed surprised, she seemed energized. Quickly she rose up and moved back, putting the gun beside us and reached down to grip my cock, lever it up and, as my tip touched her sopping vulva, made small rotations that eased my crown into her. "Aaaahhhhhh," she sighed.

"RRRRrrrrr," I responded and reached up to cup those full jugs that swung above me. I lifted my mouth to one nipple and sucked it hard, pulling as much tit into my mouth as I could. The woman dropped down my shaft eagerly and began propelling her hips up and back down with some speed.

Quickly, she hit another peak and rode with increasing ardor to another one. Had she gone so long that there were dozens of orgasms backed up? They were being released in a flood now, her juices making our union slick and hot. My cock, without the relief of a varied pace, also raced toward explosion. My body went stiff under her and lifted her up. Her body sucked at my root, clamped on my shaft, drew into itself all the manhood I had to give.

Then my release came and I grabbed her by both hips and jammed the woman down onto me over and over. Neither of us were any longer aware of our surroundings. Didn't care about guns and danger. Only wanted to recreate the world, like all lovers do in that blinding moment when Cupid's shotgun blast obliterates reality. Our crying out rang in my ears and echoed through each diminishing shot from my barrel. Slowly we sank back to the coarse bedding and the real world.

I realized that I'd never had sex with a woman I'd only met minutes before. I determined to act as if that was perfectly normal. No awkward morning after for me, or rather, moment after. I was the god seeding the world and if our bodies were going to insist we mate, then by golly, I was going to own it. It seemed reasonable to expect this wouldn't be our last time. Somewhere amidst these fanciful after-sex thoughts I fell asleep.