A Savage Shore Vignette

This vignette takes place after the events in 'Upon a Savage Shore'. I wanted to give a glimpse of the family life of the former castaways.

Also, I wanted to let folks know I am still around. For a proper update on my situation and plans, please go to http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=91908346&posted=1#post91908346

In addition to those two things, I am going to include an author's note at the end of this tale. I was going to leave it here, but after consideration, I was afraid of spoilers. Hope you enjoy the story!

*****

A Savage Shore Vignette

General Liam Carter woke with the absolute certainty he was being watched. Opening his eyes to slits, he discovered his room illuminated by more than just the lights on his computer's desk. By the angles of the shadows, he knew his door was open. The light was coming from the hallway. He sniffed. No scent from any of his wives. Adrenaline flowed and his heart rate leapt. Fingers closing on the EP 12 under his pillow, he rolled from bed into a shooter's crouch, weapon aimed at the door. In the instant, he snapped it up, muzzle to the ceiling and safety on.

"Sally! What are you doing in here?" he demanded, voice a harsh whisper.

Silhouetted in the doorway stood his youngest Human daughter, adopted after the armistice.

"There's a monster in my closet," she said seriously.

Liam closed his eyes and suppressed a groan. This was one of his few nights alone, his wives having grudgingly agreed that sometimes he should have an opportunity to rest.

"Sally, aren't you a bit old for monsters?" he asked softly, sitting on his bed and rubbing his eyes. "You're, what, nine?"

"Ten."

"Ten. Kind of old for monsters, right?"

"But..." The little girl hesitated.

"But?" he prompted. Double-checking the weapon's safety, he slid it back under his pillow. He looked to the little girl. "But?"

"But... it's real," she whispered. "I saw it."

"Saw it?"

Sally nodded fervently, sending her dishwater blonde curls swaying.

"Like, saw it?" he pressed. "With your eyes?"

"I saw it," she said firmly, nodding again.

Liam pressed his lips together and seriously considered what his adopted daughter was saying. Any other child might be telling a story or recounting a bad dream, but this was Sally. Precocious, imaginative and inventive, sure, but she was also a survivor. She was not prone to lying or false alarms. She was, however, somewhat prone to seeing threats that weren't there. Her psych profile indicated this was due to trauma from being orphaned at such a young age. It was mild paranoia and it had kept her alive for three months before a rescue ship had evacuated her out of the war zone. Nevertheless, it was time she started dealing with this sort of fear. She tended to run from challenges. While that might save her, it could become ingrained, perhaps crippling her in the future.

"Lights on low," he said into the dimness. The room brightened and he looked Sally in the face, searching for any sign she might have imagined the monster in her closet, finding none. Again, he asked, "It's really there?"

"Really, really," she confirmed, stepping closer and nodding to punctuate her words.

He looked her up and down. She was wearing what she always wore to bed in cold weather; a long flannel nightshirt. Additionally, she wore her scarred and battered cruit-boots, damp from melted snow. All the children had been supplied with military gear in addition to various civilian patterns they could download from the database. Only Sally actually liked wearing the clunky footwear, though.

"All right," Liam said, sliding his hand back under his pillow and retrieving his weapon. He held it out to her, butt first. "Let's go take care of it."

Wide-eyed, Sally took the large pistol in both hands. She kept her fingers away from the safety and trigger as she had been taught and lowered the weapon to point the muzzle at the floor.

"What are we doing?" she asked uncertainly.

Liam rose and took his cold weather fatigue trousers from the back of his chair.

"We are going to make sure this particular monster does not come back," he said, stuffing his legs into his trousers and pulling them up over his shorts. "Is it cold out?"

"Freezing," she said. "There's snow."

"Why didn't you wear your coat?" he asked, pulling on his socks and boots.

"It's in my closet," she said.

"Right," he acknowledged and fastened his belt. Reaching into his footlocker, he took out a hooded PT shirt. "Put this on."

Sally fussed and wriggled for a moment, trading the pistol from one hand to the other while she complied. When she got the shirt on, it fell down well past her knees and she had to scrunch the sleeves up onto her arms so much she looked like Popeye. Liam carefully did not smirk at her. She would have been offended. Regardless, he wished he had a camera.

"SarJ`ant?" Tem`Ma`tel, his second wife, asked softly from the doorway. Dressed only in her loose-fitting parachute silk caftan, she was tall and beautiful, her red-gold fur mussed from sleep. Her golden cat-like eyes were keen, though, and she was fully alert.

"Sally saw a monster," he told her, pulling on his jacket. From the shelf beside his closet, he took his helmet and his usual sidearm.

"What?" Tem`Ma`tel asked. Her ears rotated forward and her whiskers vibrated.

"There's a monster in my closet, Mama Temee," Sally said seriously, using the familial name she had given her adoptive mother.

Liam slid his door wide and waved Sally out into the dimly lit hallway. Boots clunking, the little girl tromped resolutely out and he followed.

"A monster?" Tem`Ma`tel asked, obviously confused.

"In her closet," Liam said with a nod. He smiled warmly and kissed is wife, his hand brushing her hip as he passed.

"What is happening?" M`pel E`kmel, Liam's third and oldest wife, asked from her own doorway. She was tying the sash of her silky green robe and looked concerned. Clot`ilda, his first and youngest wife, appeared beside her, naked under a blanket and blinking sleep from her eyes. Liam smiled at her, thinking she looked really cute like that. Clot`ilda was only about a head taller than their daughter, though her pointed ears helped make her look taller than she really was. She and M`pel E`kmel had apparently been enjoying each other's company.

"We're going to get a monster out of Sally's closet," he explained as he passed them.

"Why has she got a pistol?" demanded M`pel E`kmel.

"Pistol?" Clot`ilda blinked and cocked her ears forward as if trying to focus her muzzy thoughts.

Neither Liam nor Sally answered as he slid open the courtyard door. Cold, early spring air greeted them with a bite. Behind them, his three wives burst into sudden action, darting into their rooms for proper clothing. Liam did not wait. He and Sally marched across the compound to the dormitory constructed to form part of the embassy's outer perimeter. Mountains beyond loomed in the darkness against a starlit sky. Flurries of snow drifted on the wind but nothing compared to the downfalls they had endured throughout the winter. A heavy form separated itself from the shadows near the infirmary, standing forth to challenge them with a grunt and a rattling of long quills.

"It's us, Rover," Sally called and the shape shambled out to resolve into the massive plains-walker that had become as much a part of Liam's family as his wives and children.

"Go back to sleep, boy," Liam told him. The beast snorted again, though he made no move to comply.

By the time the pair had reached the dormitory's second floor landing, his wives and Rover caught up to them, the big beast filling the stairwell below.

"SarJ`ant, what are you going to do?" Tem`Ma`tel demanded.

"Why has she got a pistol?" Clot`ilda wanted to know.

"Sergeant?" M`pel E`kmel hissed.

"Monsters have got to be dealt with," he said knowingly and gave the three jZav`Etch females a confident smile. "Time she started dealing with them."

The women exchanged worried looks but made no further protest. They simply followed with expressions of apprehension. Behind them, Rover looked dubious.

Liam pushed Sally's door open and donned his helmet. Activating his full spectrum scopes, he performed a block scan of the room starting with the wall furthest from the closet. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared until he settled on the partially open doors of the freestanding armoire. Made of utilitarian plastic like most everything else in the room, it could not shield the heat source concealed within.

"Is there something there?" Clot`ilda whispered, easing up close behind him. Rover poked his long head up under her arm and snuffled the air as she absently scratched behind his small ears.

"Yeah," Liam replied, surprised. "How the hell did that get in?"

"What is it?" M`pel E`kmel asked, craning her neck to get a better look. "What do you see?"

"One of those scavenger things," he said. "What did you call them, babe?"

"Tuth`thut," Clot`ilda said. She narrowed her eyes and sniffed, shaking her head, disgusted by the faint spoiled meat scent.

The feathery things were not particularly dangerous. They were, however, slightly larger than a housecat with extremely long hind legs like a cricket or grasshopper and equipped with claws and sharp beaks ideal for stripping meat from bones. Liam reckoned they filled a role in the local ecology somewhere between a vulture and a raccoon. How this one got inside the dormitory would need to be discovered. He couldn't risk any of the kids getting bitten and these things were certainly capable of killing a girl as small as Sally. Fortunately, they did not travel in groups. That would make them a real threat.

"All right, Sally," he said, squatting down and putting an arm around her narrow shoulders. With his other hand, he reset the power output and the shape of her pistol's rounds to prevent ricochets. "It's in the back corner of the closet. I want you to fire six rounds. Stitch the doors from left to right. Got it?"

"Yes sir," the girl said, lifting the EP 12 and aiming carefully.

"Don't stick your tongue out."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. Remember, deep breath and let half out."

"Sergeant," M`pel E`kmel grumbled in a warning tone.

Tem`Ma`tel quietly pulled her own EP 12 from its holster and flicked off the safety.

"Whenever you're ready," Liam said, holding Sally steady against the slight recoil.

Sally bit her lower lip, closed her left eye, took in a deep breath and let half out the way she had been taught. When she depressed the trigger, the room lit with flashes of blue light and filled with the slapping impacts of subsonic rounds. The closet door slammed shut at the first shot and the whole thing rocked under the flail of a dozen bullets.

"Woah! Woah! Woah!" Liam laughed, dragging the weapon from his daughter's fingers. "I said six rounds, girly-girl. Not the whole magazine."

"What was that?" "What's going on?" "Momma?" "Holy crap!" cried the other children from up and down the hall.

"Everything is all right," called Tem`Ma`tel, waving them back to their rooms.

"What happened?" What's going on?" "Who's shooting?" they wanted to know.

"I had a monster in my closet!" Sally cried exuberantly, bouncing up and down. Her sweet face split in a wide grin and her blue eyes sparkled with excitement. "I killed that mother fucker! I killed it good!"

"Sally! Language!" M`pel E`kmel scolded, stepping forward to gather the little girl under her arm. "Indoor voice!"

Liam crossed the bedroom, opened the armoire and turned to his wives with a smugly satisfied smirk.

"She killed it good, don't you think?" he asked.

Clot`ilda glared disapprovingly. M`pel E`kmel, tail lashing, curled her lip in disgust. Rover snorted and ambled backward to the stairs like a truck in a narrow alley. Only Tem`Ma`tel seemed remotely supportive as she pressed her lips tight and flicked her ears the way she did when she was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Well?" Liam pressed.

"You clean the mess, SarJ`ant," said Clot`ilda and stomped off.

M`pel E`kmel only shook her head and sighed a long suffering sigh before going to shush the other children and get them back to bed. Tem`Ma`tel finally allowed herself to smile, her fire gold eyes glimmering as merrily as Sally's. Liam lifted an eyebrow questioningly. She responded by cocking her hip suggestively and flicking her tail.

"It's supposed to be my night off," he said.

"It is almost dawn," she purred, her tail flicking harder.

He moved closer and they kissed.

"Let's get the closet out in the hall and put Sally back to bed," he said.

"And then we can go get warm," she purred, nuzzling his neck.

"Sounds good to me, Marine."

*****

Author's Note:

I wrote this because I was considering what kind of family man Liam would be. And then I recalled a couple of movies on a similar subject: 1955's 'The Private War of Major Benson' starring Charlton Heston and 1995's 'Major Payne' starring Damon Wayans. I admit the scene in the dormitory is a little more than inspired by 'Major Payne'. I did not wish to rip off a comedy classic of the '90s without giving credit where it is due. It has been years since I watched either movie, but as I recall, both are worth the time.