The Warning Nobody Heard

The soft voice, almost a purr, said, "It's just me, Morning Star."

I put the revolver back on the table and sat up.

"Is something wrong?"

I couldn't see her, but I felt her sit down on the bed beside me. Then, I felt her hand sliding down my belly.

"Yes, something's wrong. I haven't had sex in months and I need to be fucked."

"But it was only when I said I'd never ask you for anything like that you said you'd stay, and now you want to have sex?"

The hand on my thigh found my cock through my underwear then, and a second later, was working down inside my waistband. Her voice purred in my ear.

"I didn't say I didn't like having sex. I just said that's all those men wanted from me. I don't want to have sex, Will. I need to be fucked. I hope you know the difference. Now, lay back down and stop talking."

Since she pushed me down on my back, I didn't have much choice. A second later, Morning Star pulled the blanket and sheet down to my feet, then pulled on my underwear until she got them off too.

I couldn't see her in the dark, so I didn't know she was naked until she straddled me and I felt hair brushing my cock. That brought my cock to half-mast, and when Morning Star pulled my hands to her bare breasts, it rose all the way.

It was more out of instinct than anything else because I was still taken aback by what she was doing, but when my finger tips touched her small nipples, Morning Star moaned. A second later, I felt her hand guiding my cock between her soft, wet lips, and when she found the right place, she started slowly impaling herself.

She caught her breath, raised back up a little, and then started lowering herself again. She didn't stop until she was sitting on my thighs. Then, she murmured, "Oh, God, I need this", and began raising her body up.

Now, I wasn't an expert at sex, but I wasn't totally ignorant about how women react. I'd always found that a woman needs some stimulation before she'd ready to be penetrated. Evidently, Morning Star wasn't like the other women I'd slept with. If she hadn't been so tight, I wouldn't have felt much because she was so wet and slippery inside. As it was, though, she was still getting to me because it had been a long time for me too.

It was the way she just abandoned herself to what she was doing. I'm sure she wasn't really thinking about me, because everything she did seemed to excite her even more. Before I knew what was happening, she was grinding her crotch into the base of my cock and moaning when she did, then lifting her body up until my cock head caught in the tight ring just inside her. She'd sort of gasp then before starting back down over my cock.

I knew she was close when she leaned down, pushed her right nipple into my face, and whispered, "Suck and I'll get there fast". I did and she did, and it was pretty fantastic. I was pretty much just laying there with her nipple in my mouth when she started speeding up her strokes. A second later I was feeling little contractions around my cock and she was starting to hold her breath until she was down all the way and then gasping.

I'd been doing my best to hold back, but when Morning Star gasped, "Oh God, now", I couldn't anymore. She was stroking up and down so fast, and I was feeling those contractions get stronger, so I finally gave up and met her stroke with my own just before my cock throbbed out the first spurt. Morning Star gasped again, and her legs started to shake. She rammed herself down over my throbbing cock and then rocked her hips really fast. When I made my second spurt, she was shaking all over and mewing like a kitten. A second after my third, she collapsed on top of me, still shaking and still rocking her hips. That continued for a while as did the contractions around my cock. When those almost stopped, Morning Star lifted her head and whispered, "Thank you, Will. I really needed that. Can I sleep here tonight?"

When I woke up the next morning, I was sure it had all been a dream, but when I rolled over, there was Morning Star on her side, holding herself up on one elbow, and smiling.

"Did you sleep as well as I did, Will? I haven't slept like this in months."

It took me a while to answer because she'd pulled the sheet and blanket down enough her breasts were bare. I hadn't seen them the night before, and when she was dressed, she didn't look all that big. I guess she must not have been wearing a bra to hold them up.

"Yes, I slept really well, but I kinda need an explanation for what happened last night."

Morning Star stuck out her lower lip.

"Didn't you like it? I thought it was great."

"I thought it was great too. I just can't figure out why it happened."

She smiled again.

"Well, it's just how I get sometimes. I'm not always so forward, but when I'm under a lot of stress, that's the only thing that relaxes me. God knows, I've been under stress for months, so it kind of built up."

I chuckled then.

"How often does this happen...just so I can be prepared?"

She grinned.

"Oh, I don't know. I get stressed pretty easily, so maybe once a week or so. Still want me to stay with you?"

I smiled.

"I wanted you to stay no matter what. Still do. This just makes it a little more complicated, that's all."

Morning Star stroked my chest with her index finger.

"What makes it complicated?"

"Well...you need to know I can't have sex with a woman without starting to feel something for her. If this is going to be a regular thing, I'll never want you to leave, not because of the sex, but because of how I feel about you.

"The other thing is we're out here all by ourselves. What happens if you get...if nature takes its normal course? There probably isn't a doctor in a hundred miles even if there are any left."

Morning Star rolled over beside me, pressed her breasts into my chest, and hooked a thigh over me.

"If I didn't like you, this wouldn't have happened, so I already feel something for you. As for the other thing, I figure people are about done unless the people who are left do something about it. Women have been having babies for thousands of years without doctors and I could too. It would be nice to have another woman with me, but I think between the two of us, we could manage."

Morning Star then pulled the sheet and blanket off me, found my cock, and started gently stroking it.

"Could we do this again? I need to."

As the seasons flowed from spring into summer and then into fall, Morning Star and I sort of started acting like man and wife. I kept setting snares and catching rabbits and kept fishing so we'd have some variety in our diet. We did hunt deer once fall came, and got four with our bows. I was a little worried that we wouldn't be able to eat all those deer fast enough to keep them from spoiling even though it was below freezing most nights. Morning Star said she needed a smoke frame to fix that and told me how one was constructed. Once I built what she wanted, she spent two days slicing deer meat into thin strips and hanging it over a fire beside the house. She said her grandmother taught her how to smoke meat like the early people had done.

Morning Star never did sleep in my second bedroom. After that first night, she slept beside me. Usually that meant sex before we went to sleep. Usually, it wasn't "fucking" like she'd said we did the first time. It was sex between a man and a woman who care about each other and show it by making love together.

It was pretty strange at first. I mean, I'd always been taught that a man had to court a woman for a while before thinking about marriage, and that the man and woman should be married before they had sex. I believed the first part and it was hard to understand how Morning Star had been attracted to me so quickly.

At first, I chalked it up to being the only man she'd seen she wasn't afraid of, but as time went on, we sort of got comfortable living with each other. It was like I remembered Mom and Dad being.

The second part about no sex before marriage I didn't believe, and I don't really think Mom and Dad did either. That was because they'd told me they lived in a commune during their "hippy" days, and from what I'd read about those days, everybody was into having sex just for fun. There was also the fact that I was born seven months and four days from the day they were married. Unless I'd been really premature, and I wasn't, they'd had some fun before they were married too.

That part with Morning Star was a little strange too. I could rationalize why she stayed with me. With me, she had somebody to talk with and somebody who could give her some security. The sex...well, I wasn't complaining, but it was still a little hard to figure out.

I figured we'd just live together until hopefully things got moving again. Here again, I was trying to rationalize the situation using what I knew of the past. That I was completely wrong about our situation was proven one day the next spring.

Morning Star was working on the two deer hides from the deer we'd taken the day before. She wanted to try to make leather like her grandmother had taught her. I was fishing in the stream to catch lunch.

I heard a human voice from up the road to our house. There were some turns in that road, so I couldn't see who was talking, but I decided it would be safer to be cautious and ran back to the house.

I told Morning Star what I'd heard and she looked terrified.

"It might be like those men I saw in Kentucky."

I tried to calm her.

"Now, Morning Star, we don't know that and they might be friendly. Just the same, let's go inside until we know for sure."

I'd kept both my AR-15's with the magazines loaded and ready, just in case, and I picked up one and loaded a round into the chamber. Then I opened the window facing the road and crouched down behind it. Morning Star got her bow and quiver of arrows and did the same by the other window.

It took a little over five minutes before they came into view in front of the house.

There were four men and one woman, and what I saw didn't look very promising as far as them being friendly. Each man carried a firearm. I saw a double-barreled shotgun, a revolver much like like mine, a pump shotgun, and what I recognized as an AK-47.

The woman had her wrists tied together and a rope led from her tied wrists to one of the men. She was dressed, but barely. It looked like at some time in the past her blouse had been ripped open because it was gaped open enough I could see most of her breasts. Her jeans were ripped too, though that may have been just the style.

They stopped walking and I heard one of them say, "Hey, Bill. There's smoke coming from that chimney. Somebody must live here."

Bill was the tallest of the group and also the one with the AK-47, so I figured he must be the leader. His reply confirmed that.

"I ain't blind, you dipshit, and you can't smell worth a fuck. I smelled the smoke way back past that last curve in the road. Why the hell do you think I kept walkin'? Since you think you're so fucking smart, you stay here with Emma so's she don't run off while Walt, Harold Eugene and I go take a look inside."

They were half way from the road to the cabin when I called out, "Stop walking and tell me what you want."

I saw the man called Bill grin.

"We was just passing through and smelled your smoke and thought we'd say hello."

He hadn't answered my question, and that put me even more on the alert.

"Passing through to where? This road ends around the next bend."

He was still grinning.

"Just passing through. Ain't no law says we gotta walk on a road. Hell, there ain't no laws anymore even if there used to be one. Maybe we was gonna walk through the woods and get us a deer for dinner."

I wasn't sure what else to do, so I tried to keep this Bill guy keep talking while I figured it out.

"That rifle you're carrying -- it doesn't look like any deer rifle I ever saw."

Bill just chuckled but the look on his face told me he was running out of patience.

"These seemed to work for the Commies pretty good. If it'll put down a man, it'll put down anything I shoot at with it, anything from rabbits up to anything...anything the size of a man."

There was the threat I'd been waiting to hear. Morning Star heard it too. I glanced over and saw her starting to draw her bow. I decided they had to leave, but I couldn't let them take the woman with them.

"Why do you have a woman on a leash like a dog?"

That's when Bill's grin changed to a firm mouth and he lifted the AK-47 from pointing at the ground to pointing at the house.

"That's none of your fucking business and you'd do well to forget about her."

"Looks like she doesn't want to be with you. Tell you what, you leave the woman here and then turn around and go back where you came from."

He now had the AK-47 at waist level and pointing at my window.

"Can't do that. She stays with us, and we're done talkin'. We want whatever you got, and if you play nice, we'll let you keep living here and doing all the work. We'll live her too, of course, but you'll get used to us... either that or you'll get dead."

Well, that pretty much eliminated any chance they might just leave. For an instant, the memories of those old movies about the breakdown of society flashed through my mind. There was only one solution and I didn't like it. If we let them get close enough, there were enough of them they might overpower the two of us. They didn't know about Morning Star yet, and I intended to keep it that way.

I yelled back, "I'm not in a position to give you anything. If you know what's good for you, you'll walk back down the road and leave me alone."

Bill fired one round at my window before I heard Morning Star's bow twang. The bullet hit the side of the house above the window, and a second later, an arrow appeared in his chest and he fell to the ground.

The other two had raised their weapons, but hadn't located where the arrow came from yet. The one with the shotgun didn't get a chance to look very long. Morning Star's second arrow hit him in the throat and he went down without a sound.

The third, the guy with a revolver, fired in the general direction of the house, but he only got off one shot before I fired three times with my AR-15 and he fell to the ground

The fourth, the guy holding on to the rope tied to the woman, dropped the rope and came running with his shotgun. I took him out with three shots to the chest before he got half-way to the house.

When I looked up at the woman of the group, she was standing there shaking like a leaf and holding her hands up in the air.

"P-p-please don't kill me", she yelled. "I'm not one of them. They tied me up and forced me to go with them."

I whispered to Morning Star, "You stay here while I make sure they're all dead. Then I'll go talk to the woman and see if I believe her."

Morning Star just grinned and shook her head. I know the two I got are dead and that woman's scared to death. She needs another women to talk with her, so you go check your two while I talk to the woman."

Morning Star still had her bow with an arrow knocked, but she was carrying it at her side when she walked toward the woman. I was checking Bill when I heard her say, "I heard them say your name is Emma. My name is Morning Star and that's Will looking at those guys. Emma, you're safe now. We won't hurt you. Let me untie you and then you come in the house with me. It looks like you could use some new clothes and something to eat."

I'd checked all four men for a pulse and found they were all dead. As bad as it sounds, that was a relief to me. Shooting someone who was shooting at me was something I didn't like but knew was necessary. Shooting a man who was still alive was too much like murder, but there was no way I was going to help him live.

I was picking up their weapons and searching their clothes and packs for anything useable when I saw Morning Star with her arm around Emma's waist and leading her to the house.

After going through their pockets and packs, I figured they'd just been walking around and scavenging whatever they could find. They didn't have much ammunition for anything except the shotguns, but that would be because a lot more people have shotguns than have AK-47's and revolvers. The revolver was a .357 magnum and the shotguns both 12 gauge, so they could use the ammunition I already had. Bill had about fifty rounds for the AK-47.

They all carried knives too, but I didn't find any food in any of their packs. They were probably hungry, and if they'd just told me that, I'd have given them some deer jerky. I guess they figured force would serve them better, and probably had in the past. Now, they were all dead, but I couldn't feel sorry for them. If anything, I was mad that any human would sink to that level. In my mind, I knew it was probable there would be some, but I figured they'd all be in the larger cities, not up here in the Smokies.

I took the backpacks and weapons back to the cabin and found Morning Star and Emma sitting at the table. Emma was wolfing down the stew Morning Star had started for our dinner. Morning Star looked at me and put a finger to her lips, then got up and walked over so she could whisper.

"Her name is Emma Moore. She and her husband lived on a farm in one of the valleys south of here. Those men killed her husband and then made her go with them. They kept her tied up and...well, you can imagine what else they did to her. She's pretty shaken up, so it would be best if you don't talk to her for a while. She needs to understand you're not the same kind of man first. When she's ready, she'll talk to you.

"Now, what do we do with those men? We can't just leave them laying in the front yard. I left a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel, and some clean clothes in the other bedroom for Emma. Lets go do what we're going to do while she's washing and getting dressed.

It would have taken us a week to bury all four men, so we didn't try. What we did was drag them a couple hundred yards into the woods and then down into a ravine. I'd have liked them to be further away because they were sure to attract the bears we'd seen from time to time, but by the time we got them that far, both Morning Star and I were beat.

For the next few days, Morning Star and I would do what we usually did, and we wouldn't see Emma except for at meal times. Then, she'd come out of her room, eat as quickly as she could, and then go back. I'd usually hear the click when she locked the door.

On Monday of the second week, Emma came out of the bedroom when she heard Morning Star starting to fix lunch. I was outside, so I didn't hear what they said, but Morning Star told me Emma thought she should do something to help out. When I went in for lunch, they were both sitting at the table and talking.

It was two days later that Emma finally said something to me, and I felt pretty good about what she said.

"Will, I should have told you this sooner, but I was so afraid you might be like they were. Thank you for getting me away from those men. After the first night, I wished they'd killed me like they killed my husband, and it only got worse. Thanks to you, they only had me for four days.

"Morning Star told me you were ready for them and that's how you were able to kill all of them. It's good that you did. They were talking before they started for your house. They were going to kill you and live here. If they'd done that, they'd probably have made me and Morning Star bury you like they made me bury my husband while they sat there and watched. They'd have both me and Morning Star then and I don't know what we could do about it. I don't even know what I'm going to do now."

I smiled and held out my hand.

"Emma, I appreciate your thanks, but we just did what had to be done to protect ourselves and it was pretty obvious you weren't with them because you wanted to be. As for what you're going to do now, you can do whatever you want to do. If you decide to stay here, you'll be welcome as long as you help out with things. If you decide to leave, we'll give you as much as we can spare to help you get where you're going."