Beyond World's End

Beyond World's End

Slowly we were becoming barbarians. In a good way. That is, we were transitioning to a technology and a culture that one family could manage sustainably. Dad's hope was that we'd end up with bronze age skills; crude smelting, metal plows, leather, coarse hand-knit clothing and subsistence animal husbandry, as our twenty-first century artifacts failed us one by one. Of course, if we didn't learn how to do those things we could plummet right on down to hunting and gathering in deerskins.

In regard to modern clothing we had a limited number of pieces and needed to ration due to wear and tear. I had to save the warmest for winter, so I gathered all the solid-color curtains from the station and devised a way to use the fabric to make a kilt-like garment. Like a weather-beaten highlander I kept the rest of my muscular, hairy self bare in a wide range of conditions. It was surprisingly liberating to let my equipment swing free underneath. Glad of my foreskin, I clambered around Bald Ridge like a real mountain man.

Mom had her own skirts and went topless mostly, too. Amongst all the newly enlivened wonders of nature around me I savored seeing her swelling mammaries swing free the most. I supposed, if Beth and Delandra became part of the family, that she would be a sort of mother to us all while my baby grew in her. The girls, as we called them, were sharing the small stock of shirts we had. I didn't know how many panties mom had to share but it wouldn't be long before we all went commando. Or maybe we'd all be wearing loin cloths eventually.

In their first week at the station the girls slowly recovered, helping my mother in her lush, green garden. I couldn't get a word out of them. Dad apparently scared them even more with the red and black tattoos all down his front. I could sympathize. Six-foot-two, hairy and half-naked, in our beards, dark tans and often dirty from the hard work of prepping for winter, me in my kilt, dad looking like an extra from Deliverance, we must have seemed like barbarians to them, too. My pre-event self would have been wary. And in awe.

After my first family orgy I had begun bunking with mom and dad downstairs in their room full of mirrors. I liked watching us all fucking, too. Strangely, it was less lonely. I hadn't pulled up the Brandi Love video since that night. The girls were given the room that had been mine up the creaky stairs. It became a ritual for mom to sit with them until they fell asleep, curled together like kittens, she reported.

On the second night after their appearance, and after mom put them to bed, we three were in our bedroom, showered and glad to all be together again. Mom clung to dad and I ran my hand affectionately along the line of her hip, thinking of the view from Bald Ridge where the folded Appalachians looked like soft ranks of sleeping women.

"I know this is new territory," I said, "this idea of my sperm repopulating the world, but is Beth even old enough to have a baby? She looks like she's maybe fifteen."

"Before she spoke a word to me," said dad, "she showed me her visa. Like I was going to deport her or something. She's nineteen. South Korean."

"You two are getting a little ahead of the script, I'm afraid," cautioned mom, "They're traumatized. I think it'll freak them out to bring up our sexual situation too soon, let alone broach the idea that they need to get pregnant."

"You mean," said dad, "that you don't want them to know that Jack's the father of your child."

"Well, that, yes, not yet," she offered, "and maybe we shouldn't be having our orgies where they might see."

"Even off by the pond?" I asked. I really liked having sex with mom and dad by the pond.

"Even there," mom affirmed, "Maybe just keep sex to this bedroom."

"But we'll have to be quieter," I complained, "and half of the fun of sex is working ourselves up all day. We can't grab-ass and fondle in the garden?"

"And," observed dad, "we're going to have to tell them eventually."

"I think they'll accept it pretty quick, "I said, "my generation is more open to alternative relationships. I mean, they already must have noticed we sleep all in the same room."

"But incest?" mom insisted, "Isn't that a bit too far?"

"Not under the circumstances. You convinced me of the reason in it."

"You're a sex-starved nineteen year old. It wasn't that difficult.

"Have you considered that they might be sex-starved, too?" I countered.

"Jack, honey, I think they're lesbians. I mean, judging from how they act with each other."

"Oh, Mel," said dad, "You're jumping to conclusions. Just because they sleep curled up together like kittens doesn't mean they're exclusive."

"And I think you two are afflicted with wishful thinking," laughed mom.

"OK," I relented, "Let's keep the heavy foreplay and sex to the bedroom and let the girls set the pace in how we share this information. If they ask, we tell."

*******

We had so many questions for them! But we were patient while mom nursed the girls back to health. She learned that they'd taken most of the last year to travel on foot from Roanoke, Virginia across about two-hundred and fifty miles to our redoubt in eastern Kentucky, mostly following Interstate 81. The girls were so traumatized that they hardly spoke even to her. They were inseparable, often holding hands, even going to the privy together.

On the fourth morning I offered Beth a handful of blackberries as we worked the garden. Mom had cut her straight, black hair to a short page-boy. Her t-shirt said If You're Not Part Of The Solution, You're Part Of The Precipitate. Her asian face, so unlined and childlike, turned up to me with a hint of curiosity. Behind her thick-rimmed glasses I noted walnut brown eyes. I ate a berry. The thin girl cautiously held out her palm. She smiled tentatively and made a little bow when I put the berries in her small hand. The girl popped a berry in her mouth. I noticed her small, white teeth. Beth murmured a thank you and bent back to her pea picking. It was a step forward.

On the sixth day, at the family table in the kitchen, Dad stood with his arms crossed, in his most serious mood. Clearly he wanted data to draw conclusions that might help us understand what happened. He was barefoot but still had on the dirty, ragged overalls he wore most of the time. His beard was fairly neat. Mom wore the tattered, soft sweatshirt that she used when she cooked on the woodstove we'd put under a shelter in the yard.

Dad began, "Did you see any other folks on your way?" They shook their heads. "Why were you heading west?"

"Ron," cautioned mom, "this isn't an interrogation." She took them each by the hand. "We know you've seen some horrible things and you're scared. I hope you'll feel safe here. I do."

I just watched, eager to see life in these women. In my and my parent's minds was the idea that humankind now had a wider DNA pool to draw from if it really was our task to repopulate the planet. I kinda felt like even if it wasn't some cosmically ordained fate, that I'd give it my very best effort anyway. It sure was fun trying to impregnate my mother. Her baby bump proved that my sperm were viable. I was proud of myself. I felt like a barbarian of the Conan type - tall, muscled, tan and virile. A man in command of his world. Able to face any challenge and rise to it. If that meant impregnating these two as well....

"Do you remember where you were when what we call 'the event' happened? When everyone else disappeared?" asked mom gently.

Beth stole a quick glance at Delandra and said, shyly, her thick accent hinting that she was in the States to study, "we were in our dorm room doing, uhh, stuff."

"Oh, what school?" asked mom, clearly interested.

"Hollins," said Beth, pushing her glasses up.

"That's an all-women's school, isn't it?" observed mom, "I know a couple of very good biologists who graduated from there."

Beth was showing some energy now. "I'm majoring in environmental studies."

Delandra looked up for the first time. "I'm biology."

"Ron and I are biologists, too, Delandra. You two have skills we really need now."

Beth was slight and struggling to put on weight after their trek and she was lost in mom's smallest t-shirt. It was hard to tell, but she looked to have tiny boobs to go with her skinny frame. Delandra, though, had some meat on her bones and fuller breasts and an ass that filled out her borrowed plaid shirt. Her legs were lean and well muscled from the long walk. She sported a sleek, short, roughly scissored afro.

"We were going to Lexington. Where my parents live," said Delandra, warming. "They're teachers at UK."

"Oh! We're here on a grant...or rather, were here on a grant from UK." said mom, "What college?"

"Ag, Food and Environment," said the black girl, "I want to be like them." She looked deeply sad then and began quietly weeping.

Mom hugged the girl to her soft bosom and rocked her for a bit. "What are your parent's names, Delandra?" She looked meaningfully at dad.

"Denise and Gerard Holloway."

"My god," whispered mom, "They oversaw this grant. We knew them."

"Beth, Delandra," dad said with a sigh, "I think we should be accustomed to assuming that everyone we knew is gone." Now mom was looking daggers at him. "Until the unlikely event we're proven wrong."

"Ron, these two already proved you wrong." Mom was quietly fuming. That night the conversation was over. We reverted to letting them set the pace.

*******

Late September in the Eastern Kentucky mountains brought cooler nights. Good for our garden, it rained about a third of the days of every month of the year, but late season thunderstorms could be fierce. It was a luxury for me to climb Bald Ridge to watch the clouds building and building over the western Appalachians on a late summer afternoon. I felt powerful up where I could see so far beyond our small clearing in the forest and could have spent hours. But there was too much work to do. We put in a lot of time harvesting now and stocking my root cellar. For good or ill we were going to be eating a lot of potatoes.

That afternoon I grunted while I dug the spuds and enjoyed being close to the three females. Dark clouds slowly dragged themselves over the tree-spiked mountaintops above us. It was much cooler than it had been. Rain threatened and we worked diligently to fork up the potatoes and stack them under the kitchen shed to cool and dry. Working side-by-side, mom and dad and I touched now and then. We'd become a much more affectionate and frisky family. Being virtually naked in my kilt and near to the girls had my organ half hard all day. I caught Delandra eying me occasionally. Beth kept her distance.

Later, as the sun sank over the ridge, a searchlight of red and yellow slanted under the roof of clouds and turned our bedroom golden. Mom and dad lay in that glow and kissed. The girls were asleep upstairs. I stood by the bed admiring the physical beauty of my parents. I remembered the first night I peeped them through the window. Like then, they were at the peak of human condition - animals fully alive in their toned bodies, uncomplicated by clothing or social status, just ready and eager to mate. In the mirrors their golden bodies glowed. For a long time they just hugged, mom with her sun-bleached hair across dad's colorful chest, one leg thrown across his.

"I want to drink in this moment, Ron," she sighed. "I let so many days get away from me chasing other things."

"I get it, darlin'" he replied, "we can't say what'll happen tomorrow."

"Right now your body feels so good. Powerful, safe, reliable, competent."

"Sounds a bit like a sales brochure..."

"I want Beth and Delandra to feel those same things," explained my mother, her hand absently squeezing his fat organ. "I want them to welcome your cock when you have sex with them. Jack, too, of course," she added, smiling at me. She crooked her finger and I joined them, lying on the bed, hugging her from behind. My erection nested between her cheeks.

"Do you think they'll ever be ready?" I asked.

"I can't make predictions, Jack, but I sense they're slowly accepting this weird fate of ours." Mom wiggled her butt back against me. She reached down, grasped me and clamped me between her thighs while she went on slowly stroking my father. It was already wet down there. And hot. I dragged my stiffness along her spongy, warm labia. "Just keep it really low-key with your attention to them. Eventually our routine will help them feel stable and maybe then we can talk about sex."

Dad rolled toward her and kissed her. I trailed my fingers across the swell of her breast and tickled the nipple. Her legs gripped tighter. She angled her hips, her hand found my shaft and pressed my knob into her.

"Mel, do you want to be there when I screw Delandra?" breathed dad between kisses. "Do you want to hold her while I push my wide cock in her deep?" Dirty talk never failed to amp up mom's pleasure. "Do you want to feel me push her back into you every time I drive into her wet twat?"

Mom had both hands on dad's cock now and he gave a punctuating thrust.

I pressed myself deep into my mother and she shuddered, sighed, "I want to feel Jack's cock deep like this while the girl gets it from you, Ron."

Dad and I shared a grin over mom's shoulder. I kept palming her breast and he resumed kissing, long and slow. Mom worked her hips back to make me deeper, grinding for a few minutes.

"Switch now," sighed my mother and I pulled out, dragging juices across her thigh. She angled dad in and hunched on his cock as it sank into the soupy, hot hole I'd just left. They gently slid on each other while I bit at the nape of mom's neck and pinched a nipple. I pressed my slippery cock between her thighs, feeling the heat and the hardness of dad moving in and out of her. Over the next hour we switched back and forth, taking turns driving her higher toward climax. It was our habit on many nights to end with this gentle, quiet game. Mom could just lie there and receive pleasure with the least effort and dad and I could last longer.

But we always rose to our releases. Dad and I made sure mom came a couple of good times before letting ourselves go. Sometimes dad got sloppy seconds, sometimes I did. That night all of us fell into a deep and relieved sleep afterward, huddled in each other's arms.

Sometime later a tremendous crack of thunder woke me. The windows rattled and rain knifed across them. It seemed like those earlier clouds had lowered themselves right down onto the station. The room lit up and another boom came a split second later.

"That was close," said mom, sleepily. Dad barely stirred.

Then there were other bodies shaking the bed as they climbed in. In the next strobe I saw Delandra pulling up the covers and rolling back in against me. It must have smelled thickly of sex. Beth looked scared and pale standing by the bed, a ghost in her loose t-shirt. Another strobe and Delandra grabbed her hand to pull her down. Beth, without her glasses, looked startled by the audience of mirrors. The black girl spooned her into her arms and pressed her butt back into me. The shirt rode up and my cock, wet with mom's juices and all of our spunk, found its natural nest between her cheeks as it had between moms.

The girl didn't seem to notice. Maybe she was too afraid of the storm. Mom reached over me and patted each of the girl's shoulders. "It's OK," she said, "These storms pass quickly. You're safe here." We all lay there listening to the booming storm move across the landscape, the room leaping into focus with each lightning slash. Beth had her eyes tight shut and lay curled in the black girl's arms. Delandra's eyes were wide open. She trembled and I tried to look reassuringly at her in the mirror. Meanwhile our bodies were communicating on their own.

My sticky cock was hard and pressed up against her ass. Maybe that was why her eyes were so wide, maybe she was just afraid. Or both. Did she press back and wiggle a bit in lust or seeking comfort? I wrapped an arm around and caught both girls in my embrace, careful to keep my hand at about belly button level. But Delandra took my hand and brought it to her breast, then sandwiched it between their bodies. Beth was stiff, curled tight, her ribs hard against the back of my hand. I thought I could hear her whimpering. The storm marched off ponderously eastward and, our bodies warm, eventually we all slept again.

*******

In the morning the girls were gone from the bed. I woke after mom started breakfast and dad had gone out to piss. Just like clothing, we rationed the station's septic system. The spring-fed cistern should give us water indefinitely, but the septic had a limit. So we didn't flush. Dad found a way to divert the kitchen and shower waste water to the garden and he had assigned to me the task of digging a privy down the hill. Why was I always digging things? I guess barbarians aren't just closer to the earth but halfway under it. One of dad's random facts was that in colonial times folks used old corn cobs to wipe their asses. Guess what we were stockpiling.

I wrapped on my kilt and went out barefoot to the privy, passing dad on his way back.

"Must have rained last night," dad said, fighting a smile, "Nice skirt."

"Asshole" I replied, amiably, "You'd look just as good in one." Funny what makes people laugh. Here we'd been about as intimate as two men can be, sharing mom between us, and my kilt made him smirk. The kilt did make pissing easy - just pull apart and let the snake drain, shake it off and drop the fabric, then swing comfortably back to the house.

The girls didn't come down to eat so mom went up to check them. She was up there a long time. Dad and I finished our eggs and potato pancakes.

"Might as well wait for it to dry a bit before we start digging those god-damned potatoes," grunted dad. He began whittling stakes for our stock of pointed sticks. Barbarians can never have too many pointed sticks, he seemed to think. "Go make sure nothin' got soaked," he directed and I made the rounds of the station.

The sun was warm, but the wet foliage brushed cold on my body as I made sure we'd protected our hoard well. Fortunately, the roofs of the station buildings hadn't started leaking badly yet. It was a matter of time, though. It was interesting to me to discover that as things felt so precarious that I could better live in the moment than when life was more secure. Maybe there was just too much to worry about. We did our best today and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Back at the kitchen I found mom and the girls at the table. "...afraid of them." I heard Delandra say as I walked in. Beth was curled in her own arms in a chair, the black girl standing behind her. Mom was topless again, her jugs full, her nipples stiff from the chill of the room.

"Still, they're just men," said mom, reassuringly, standing and opening her arms to me. I hugged her and tried to look benevolent. Like her protector.

"They're like fantasy men, though, you gotta understand, Ms Melonie," said the black girl. "Like from a movie or a romance novel." She looked at me with a kind of incredulity.

"Why, because of their size?" mom asked, "I guess I'm too familiar with them."

"We haven't ever seen men this, well, manly," Delandra said. Beth peeked at me. I soaked in the praise, former nerd that I was. "We know you all sleep together and see how you are with them..."

Mom put her hand on my shoulder and I put my hand on hers.

"Do you..uhh..," Delandra asked, nervously, "sleep with Jack?" Beth was looking at me with intense interest, her eyes tracing me from foot to forehead.

"This is Jack's baby," mom said, cradling her bump. "His father's had a vasectomy." She let them connect the dots. We all sat quietly for a minute. The girls exchanged a knowing glance.