The day after: An apocalyptic morning (136 page)

              "Oh God," Jessica moaned as she dropped to her knees in her bathroom and put her head into the toilet of water. She retched several times, sweat breaking out on her brow, but nothing more than a little bit of bile came up. She coughed and choked for a moment and then, almost as fast as it had hit her, the nausea was gone, leaving her a little shaky but otherwise all right.

              She rubbed her stomach a few times and then stood up, wiping her forehead with her forearm. Her stomach had been very unstable lately, ever since she'd taken the first overt steps towards the rebellion that was now over and done with. She would be going about her business as usual and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, the nausea would hit, sometimes with enough suddenness that she was unable to get to the nearest bathroom or garbage can in time. She had attributed these bouts to nervousness as her plan approached the zero hour, but now that the plan had been successfully carried out, why was she still having it? It didn't make sense. Barnes was dead, his blackened but still recognizable skull hanging on a spike outside the main entrance to the high school. He wasn't a worry. The other men were firmly under control, used as slave labor during the day and locked securely up in storage rooms under guard at night. They weren't a worry either. Nor were her worries about acquiring and maintaining power in town. That had certainly come to pass with unbelievable ease. If there was one thing Jessica knew how to do, it was take charge of and lead groups of women.

              So what was the problem? Why was she still having crippling fits of nervous nausea?

              As she poured a bucket of water down into the toilet to flush it she figured that it was the upcoming battle with the militia that had her worried. That must be it, she told herself. She did not stop to think that there had been one other time in her life that she had felt like this: a time three years before the comet.

              Jessica had taken over both Barnes' office in the principal's office and his bedroom in the former vice-principal's office (although she had changed the bed). She brushed her teeth with water from the sink and then stepped out to the doorway where Alice, her personal assistant, stood by with a gun strapped to her waist.

              "Good morning, ma'am," Alice addressed her, not actually saluting but certainly coming to attention. "How was your night?"

              "Very good, Alice," she told her. "Who do you have on cleaning detail today?"

              "Pillows and Staleworth," she said. "They're working on the downstairs right now. The rest of the men are out chopping firewood or hauling propane or diesel fuel over."

              "Good," Jessica said with a smile. "I want to be sure to keep this building heated and lighted. I'm sick of sleeping in the damn cold. And it's nice to have a damn computer working again."

              Alice nodded, not pointing out of course that Jessica was the only one in town now that had the luxury of a propane fired furnace and electric lights. She didn't feel a lot of resentment about this. After all, Jessica was their leader, the woman who had led them to this point, and didn't leaders deserve special privileges?

              "Have Pillows come in here right away and clean up my quarters," Jessica said. "And have that other asshole, who was it?"

              "Staleworth, Ma'am," she said.

              "Right, have him run a hot bath for me in the bathing room. I'll be down there in ten minutes and I expect it to be ready when I get there."

              "Right away," Alice said, picking up her portable radio. She said a few words into it and Jessica's orders were carried out.

              Prior to the uprising there had been no baths in Auburn. The men, when they bothered at all, had used the shower attachments in the locker rooms which had been set up to be powered by electric pumps run from the generator. The women had been forced, for the most part, to sponge bath themselves with cold water from collected rain barrels. That had been one of the first things to change. Now the bathing area of the Auburn high school was in the female locker room. As in Garden Hill, a large marble bathtub had been moved in from one of the nicer of the abandoned houses and placed with its drain directly over the shower drain. Unlike in Garden Hill the water was heated with propane instead of firewood, but the principle was the same. The town was under the impression that this innovation was Jessica's idea. She felt no need to correct this notion since it was unlikely that Paul would ever contradict her when he showed up here after the militia captured him.

              As she entered the room Staleworth, the former sergeant, was just finishing the task of adding the hot water. Bubbles covered the surface of the water and steam rose lazily into the air. The smell was of rose blossoms. Cindy Mahoney and Laura Jones, two of the women who had been assigned to interior guard detail, were standing close by, keeping their eyes on Staleworth's every move. To say that the women were nervous about having men walking around free after their recent ordeal was a vast understatement. Both women were armed with semi-automatic rifles that they kept their hands on at all time.

              "How's the water, asshole?" Jessica asked him, stepping close. She was still wearing her pajamas and had an armful of clothing in her hand. She set the clothing down on a shelf near the tub.

              "It's fine, ma'am," he replied, responding to her just as he had been taught to respond to any woman in town now. To not do so was to risk having a rifle butt up the side of his head. To fail to do so twice was to have it swung into his testicles.

              She reached over, taking no particular precautions to stay away from him, and dipped her hand in. It was steaming hot, nearly hot enough to bar entry. Just the way she liked it. "Very good," she said, starting to undo the buttons on her top. She turned to the two women. "Leave us."

              They looked at her as if she were mad. "I beg your pardon, Ma'am," Cindy said, "but I don't think that's a really good..."

              "Don't worry," Jessica said. "Put yourselves right outside the door. If there's trouble, I'll let you know."

              "But..."

              "Leave us," she said, more firmly this time.

              They gave her one last look and then reluctantly did as she asked. They walked to the door and stepped out of it, shutting it behind them. Staleworth and Jessica were now alone.

              She looked at the male who she had personally chosen to be a member of the interior staff. He was tall and very good looking, had been a personal trainer at one of the local gyms before the comet. His hair was blonde, his features Nordic. His arms and chest bulged with muscle. He looked back at her nervously, not knowing what to expect but thinking very uneasily of what had happened to Barnes.

              Jessica continued unbuttoning her top, letting it drop to the ground, wincing a little as the material grazed across her nipples, which had been ultra sensitive lately. She then pushed her bottoms down, leaving her standing only in a pair of cotton panties. She dropped these as well, revealing her sex. Her pubic hair, which Stinson had insisted she kept shaved, was just starting to grow back and was now a fine fuzz of black hairs. She sat on the edge of the tub.

              Staleworth cast his eyes away from her as she undressed, not because he found her unattractive - she was still quite appealing to look at - but because he was deathly afraid of offending her.

              "Look at me," she told him.

              Trembling a little, he did. Her legs were spread and he could see that she did not seem to be in a state of particular arousal. Her nipples were flaccid against her breasts and her vagina was closed, the lips not the least bit swollen or wet looking.

              "You used to rape Cathy, Lorene, and Nancy, didn't you?" Jessica asked, her fingers dropping down to her sex and beginning to idly play there, the tips stroking up and down her dry lips.

              Staleworth swallowed a little. "They were... uh... my wives before..."

              "You raped them," Jessica said, raising her voice a little. "They were not your wives. They were assigned to you by a lottery or traded to you by the other assholes in this town. They never consented to sex from you, you simply took it because your... species held the power. Isn't that right?"

              "Well... I suppose that's one way of looking at it," he finally stammered. Was it only a short week ago when he could have had this woman hanged for talking to him like this?

              "They tell me that you were quite the ass man," Jessica said, continuing to play with her vagina as she talked. Now the lips were starting to moisten a little. "Stinson, that fuck, was like that as well. He liked to put his cock up my ass. A lot of you were like that."

              Staleworth had no answer for her. It seemed safer somehow not to talk.

              "Come over here," Jessica told him, spreading her legs a little wider. Her fingers began to pick up speed between her legs. Her nipples finally started to harden. She was not the least bit attracted to Staleworth in a physical sense, but the thought of what she was going to have him do, what she was going to do to him, of the power that she held over him, was starting to turn her on greatly.

              Staleworth slowly walked over to her, stopping, as directed, three feet before where she was splayed out obscenely on the edge of the tub.

              "Take off you clothes," she said. "All of them."

              Staleworth nodded and then began to remove the shirt, jeans, and T-shirt he wore. His body was very impressive to behold but Jessica didn't waste much time looking at it. And despite his fear at what was to come, at the bizarre circumstances that he found himself in, his cock had hardened. Jessica saw this when he dropped his underwear.

              "You will do exactly what I say without question," Jessica told him. "If you do not, or if you try any sort of violent move with me, I will scream and those two armed women outside the door will be in here within a second. They will drag you off and by nightfall you will meet the same fate as your glorious commander did. Do you understand?"

              "Yes, ma'am," he said, looking at her a little more hungrily now. After all, if Jessica wanted him to fuck her, that wasn't the worst duty in town, was it?

              But Jessica didn't want him to fuck her. "Kneel down between my legs and lick my ass," she said.

              He looked at her, his mouth opening to give protest.

              "Not a word," she said, glaring at him. "Just do it. You like asses so much, it shouldn't be much of a problem for you, should it?"

              "No, ma'am," he said, feeling his gorge wanting to rise a little. He could plainly see that her ass was not terribly clean. Nevertheless, he sank to his knees before her, his face between her spread legs. Her lips were very swollen and wet now, exuding the powerful odor of feminine arousal.

              "Get to it," she told him, spreading her legs a little further, until they were as wide as she could make them. "And make sure it's sparkling clean."

              He began to lick, plunging his tongue up and down through the crack of her ass, over and under her anus. The erection he'd had wilted as he felt the surprisingly unfeminine roughness of that area of her body.

              Jessica, on the other hand, felt true pleasure at his work, enjoying it on a physical level as well as a degradation level. "Yes," she told him, her hand grabbing a handful of his hair and jerking it roughly. "That's a good asshole, make it nice and clean."

              He licked up and down until it was clean and slick with his saliva. But she wasn't done with him yet.

              "Now stick your tongue in it," she told him. "As far as it will go. Clean the inside too."

              He was able to get his tongue surprisingly far up into the orifice thanks to the regular reaming of it that she'd received from Stinson and several of his friends. While he licked and probed at her she put her fingers back to her pussy, playing with her clit. Soon she was crying out in orgasm, the first she'd had in a very long time.

              "Now get up," she told him once the last of the spasms eased off.

              He brought his wet and dirty face out of her crotch and stood before her once more. He was panting a little and still struggling with his gorge. The taste of her shit was in his mouth!

              "Just stand there," Jessica said, sliding backwards into the blessedly hot water of the tub. "I'm not done with you yet."

              She luxuriated in the warmth of the bath, feeling the bubbles caress her skin, feeling the heat draw away the aching in her muscles and the soreness of her breasts. While Staleworth stood there before her, she used a sponge to cleanse her legs, her breasts, her arms. At some point, while he was watching her do this, the revulsion of what he had just done gave way a little to arousal as he watched her glistening skin. He began to stiffen once more.

              Jessica had been waiting for this, had deliberately encouraged it. Wordlessly, she reached for his crotch and grabbed him by the testicles. She squeezed as hard as she could, grinding them together and sending immense pain shooting through Staleworth's body. He squealed and dropped to the floor, vomit spraying from his mouth.