The day after: An apocalyptic morning (169 page)

              Jack lifted off into the rainy sky and headed for Garden Hill. His control adjustments and altitude changes were no longer jerky or hesitant. Nevertheless Skip did not like sitting in the back of the chopper, unable to see what was going on. Like most pilots he did not enjoy not being in control of an aircraft in flight. Thankfully he at least had the headset for the back.

              "Did you check on the militia today?" he asked Jack as they climbed up to cruising altitude.

              "On the way over here," Jack said. "Of course I didn't have Mick with me since I was making a pick up, but I was able to get a good visual on them. They've reached the first mudfall now and are moving south along it. It looks like one of the wounded they were carrying on the litter died somewhere along the way."

              "Uh huh," Skip said, trying to squirm into something approaching a comfortable position. "And what about the maintenance regime? Have you..."

              "I have it scheduled for today," Jack told him. "Right after the ceremony."

              "Good," he told him. "How's your altitude? Are you steady?"

              "Steady on five thousand feet," Jack assured him. "Right on the line."

              "And your airspeed? Have you..."

              "Skip," interrupted Hector, who was wearing the front seat headset and listening in. "Give the man a break, will you? He's doing just fine."

              Skip gave him a break and soon they were safely on the ground once again in the parking lot of the community center. A large crowd was present to greet them and the atmosphere was almost festive. Paul personally shook hands with each of the returning wounded and many of the women hugged and kissed everyone. Maria was there to greet Hector, which she did most affectionately and with large tears in her eyes. Christine and Paula were there as well. Both of them made a point to hug and kiss him for an extra long time.

              Hector and Susan were able to walk into the community center - although Hector was a little slow - but Skip had to be placed on the rolling table that was Garden Hill's gurney. No sooner were they safely inside then Jack spun up the helicopter once more to head back to El Dorado for another load. In all everyone but the most gravely of wounded were brought home, in each case with medical supplies and careful care instructions.

              At 1:30 that afternoon, after everyone had finished lunch, the burial ceremony for the dead was held in the park next to the playground. Of course the bodies - wrapped in sleeping bags instead of coffins - had already been placed in the graves the day before by the same team of workers that had dug them. In all there were seven graves and eight grave markers standing in a stark line beside the six graves from the first attack on the town months before. Each marker was a wooden cross made from scavenged two by fours and treated with creosol to keep it weatherproof. The horizontal beams of the crosses bore the names of the dead as well as their dates of birth, dates of death, and the conflict that they had fallen in: The Second Battle of Garden Hill.

              The funeral services themselves were short but emotional. Paul led the ceremony, speaking to the assembled townspeople from a small podium that had been set up. He thanked those that had fallen for their sacrifice and vowed that they would never be forgotten. Skip, who was crammed into a homemade wheelchair that had to be carried over the muddy ground, then took the podium and spoke for a longer period. He gave a eulogy for each individual person, talking of their strengths and giving anecdotes about them. He addressed the small children of those that had them, telling them that their mommies were gone but that everyone else was still here because of that. He then expressed a very sincere wish that Garden Hill would never have to endure such a ceremony again.

              After the speeches the townspeople took turns shoveling the muddy soil back into place, covering the sleeping bags one by one. Within an hour, the work was done. Everyone went back to their jobs for the day or, if they happened to be off, back to the community center. The mood would remain somber for quite some time after.

              Madeline looked at the pile of towels in the gymnasium of the elementary school gloomily. They were the bath towels from the previous day and she was responsible for getting them all washed and hung up to dry by the end of the workday. The pile was more than eight feet high and more than ten feet across - nearly a third of all the towels available in town. As the Garden Hill women had before them, the Auburn women certainly liked their baths. Currently there were eight tubs set up and running and each woman was entitled to three baths per week. That was unless you were one of Jessica's inner circle, in which case you had access to Jessica's private bath whenever you wished.

              Madeline sighed, biting back another burst of anger at what had become of and got to work. She picked up an armload of towels and carried them over to the large inflatable swimming pool that was filling with water from the fire engine outside (the fire engine idea had come from Jessica - she claimed to have thought of it back in Garden Hill). Half of a box of laundry detergent had been dumped into the pool and a foamy, gritty lather was now forming. She tossed the towels into the pool and then went back for another load. Four loads later the pool was close to overflowing and the pile of towels was not noticeably smaller at all. She shut down the hose and then went outside to shut down the engine of the pumper truck.

              It was as she was turning off the switches on the truck's panel that Darlene Annadale - one of her former guard supervisors - came over to her from the area of the kitchen. Darlene had been removed from guard detail the day before after protesting the removal of Madeline herself to Jessica. Nor was Darlene the only one. Two other supervisor rank guards and five of the guards themselves had been removed in a similar Micker for similar reasons. All had been placed in menial, labor-intensive jobs as a replacement. Darlene had been put on dishwashing detail, her job to clean the thousands of dishes that were dirtied with each meal period.

              "You all done with that hose?" Darlene asked her, her expression sour. "We need it inside to rinse the dishes off."

              "Sure," Madeline said, reversing the motions that she had been making to the panel and reactivating it. "It's all yours. I'll need it again in about another half hour or so."

              "We should be done by then," she said. "We just have to do a final rinse on everything." She shook her head angrily. "We need another ten people on this detail at least. I can't believe that cuntasaurus has half the town doing nothing while we're in there scrubbing our asses off."

              "My detail is pretty much the same," Madeline agreed. "I could use at least six people to help wash all the towels but all I have is myself. Be thankful that she didn't put you with me."

              Darlene looked at her meaningfully. "Why are we putting up with this shit, Maddie?" she asked her. "Christ, we might as well leave the town. I heard she kicked another two people off the guard detail this morning - and that they didn't even complain to her about what she did to you. I heard that Jessica did it just because she thought they might be on your side instead of hers."

              "Yeah," said Madeline, who had a quiet though effective way of keeping her ear to the ground. "That's what I heard too."

              "She's taking all of the women you trained out of the guard posts and replacing them with a bunch of yes women who do anything she says. What's going to happen when the men come back? They're going to walk right over those incompetent fucks and then we'll be right back where we were before the revolution."

              "I know," Madeline said. "Something has to be done about Jessica. That's pretty obvious."

              "But what?" she demanded. "We don't have much time and that bitch has got her little circle jerk that she invites to her rape and kill parties supporting her."

              "What have the other women been saying?" Madeline asked, although she knew.

              "What have they been saying?" she asked. "They've been saying that she's a damn nutcase and that we made a mistake making her the leader. What the hell do you think they've been saying? But no one is doing anything about what's going on."

              "No," Madeline said. "No one is doing anything about it. Most of the people here - hell, everywhere - are followers. They won't take any initiative to make change."

              "So nothing will happen then," Darlene said. "Especially when they see what protesting against her gets them. Look at us."

              "Yes, but followers can be made to follow something else - that is their nature."

              "What the hell does that mean?"

              "Just keep doing your job," Madeline advised her. "Things are coming to a head here. Pretty soon Jessica will make that final push over the line."

              Regular guards shifts in the normal positions had been resumed now that the war with the militia was at an end. On this night Paula had just come off of a six hour rotation in position 3 while Christine had spent the day performing her supervisory duties - mostly from their house so that she could keep an eye on Skip, who had been installed in the main bedroom. He spent most of that day laying in the bed and reading from a collection of paperback novels from the supply room. He could get up and use the bathroom on his own when he needed to but it was a major operation involving an extended extrication off of the Mickress and a twenty-foot walk with a pair of improvised crutches. Each trip left him exhausted and sore, his knee and arms throbbing from the effort.

              Now, with night having fallen and the room lit up with candles and gasoline fired lamps, his two women were both home and preparing to give him a sponge bath. Christine had filled up a large bucket with warm water from the fireplace and Paula had gathered soap, towels, and several washcloths. They pulled off all of his clothing leaving him stark naked on the bed. Then they each grabbed a cloth and went to work, dipping it into the soapy water and running it over his chest, his arms, his legs.

              "Ahhhhh, that feels soooo good," he sighed, basking in the sensation of feminine hands scrubbing him clean. "I don't deserve you two, you know that?"

              "We know," Christine said, running her wet cloth over his uninjured thigh. So noticed that a particular part of his anatomy certainly seemed to enjoy the attention that the rest was receiving. "It looks like someone is thinking about more than a bath." She pointed at the rapidly swelling organ.

              "Why yes it does," Paula said with mock sternness. "You pervert. We're in here to get you clean, not to be dirty."

              "Yeah," Christine agreed. "You oughtta be ashamed of yourself."

              "I'm ashamed," Skip told them, reaching out with his hands to stroke their blue jean clad legs from each side. "I'm deeply ashamed." As he said this his manhood continued to stiffen, rising inch by inch into the air until it was sticking straight up in all of its glory.

              "Look at this thing," Paula said as she lathered his lower stomach up, the soft cloth making circles around his skin. "You'd think it hadn't seen any action in a while."

              "It hasn't," Skip reminded. And in fact this was true. Between fighting the war, grabbing a few hours of sleep every now and then, and being injured, he hadn't had an intimate encounter with either one of his wives in nearly two weeks now. He hadn't even paused in all of that to whip off. And now that the prospect of intimacy was presenting itself, his little soldier was standing at rapt attention, very much interested in the goings on.

              "And whose fault is that?" Paula teased him, letting some of the water dripping from her cloth fall onto the head of his penis. " Christine and I managed to keep ourselves amused when we really needed it."

              "That's right," Christine put in, dabbing softly at the flesh of his inner thighs. "Why if it wasn't for Shellie keeping me happy, I would've divorced you for sexual neglect."

              "We were starting to think you weren't interested," Paula told him.

              "As you can see," Skip told them, raising his hips upward a little, trying to get one of them to touch him, "I'm interested now."

              Neither one made any move to put their hands upon his penis. Instead, they simply kept scrubbing him, going through a rinse cycle now.

              "There is something that we probably should tell you though," Christine said, her voice a little more serious.

              "What's that?" he asked.

              "Well..." she said, looking over at Paula for support. Paula nodded to her encouragingly. "Well... the fact is... that I...

              "We," Paula corrected.

              "We," Christine agreed. "We haven't been entirely... well... faithful to you during this dry spell."

              Skip looked at her, wondering if she was being serious or not. She certainly looked as if she was. But she couldn't really be trying to tell him that she... that she and Paula, had cheated on him, could she? "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.

              "I uh... well... I seduced Maggie," she finally blurted.