The Pulse (22 page)

Mason laughed. “I’d prefer a Big Mac.”

Emily nodded. “Before the Pulse, I would have disagreed. But now, I’d seriously consider that paradise.”

Then she brightened, looking at Mason. “You know what they need?” she asked, walking faster up the highway. “Nurses, I bet. Everyone needs nurses. If they have sick or injured people, they might want someone to take a look. Maybe help.”

It wasn’t a bad idea.

They kept walking until Mason felt his leg muscles starting to cramp and he knew Emily must be feeling even worse. “We have to stop for the night, I suppose,” he said.

Emily didn’t respond right away. It was like she’d drifted into her own dreamland, dazed, walking without thinking so that she didn’t have to be aware of her physical body.

“Em?”

“What? Yes, Let’s stop.” She nearly crumpled right there along the side of the highway.

Taking her hand, he led her to a stalled SUV. “This one looks roomy. We can sleep in the back.”

Emily nodded and they climbed in. Whoever had owned this SUV must have had children. Emily immediately closed her eyes and started to doze, but Mason searched in the deep pockets behind the front bucket seats, and then under the seats in the back. If there were young kids, then the mom must have packed snacks, right? That’s what moms did. And kids, well—dropped things.

Mason fished a half-eaten bag of Doritos out from under the seat and whooped.

“These things are probably still good,” he said, handing her some. The taste of year-old stale chips filled his mouth and he relished it. “I’m going to look in the back of the truck,” he said.

Emily nodded, her mouth full, as she rolled her tongue around the little chip in her mouth. “Yum.”

Climbing over the back seat, Mason tore through the junk back there, all things the family had apparently abandoned. Or maybe, he mused, maybe it was just the mom, driving home to relieve the babysitter, when the Pulse happened. And she left the car and started walking, not realizing the things in her car might be helpful later.

They were far enough out in the middle of the highway, between towns, that no one had scavenged the cars out there.

And then, Mason saw the last setting rays of the sun glint off something glass. A jar of peanuts.

Really?

Mason had to hold it in his hand to see if it was true, if he was dreaming. An entire jar of shelled honey-roasted peanuts. He tamped down his first instinct to open it and shove the peanuts into his mouth and climbed into the back seat instead. Emily was still savoring a piece of stale Dorito.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, a smile on his face.

She laughed as if to say
always
.

“How would you like some peanuts?” He brandished the jar, and she stared at it in silent confusion for a second.

“Did you find these in the back of the SUV?” she asked.

“Yup. They were hidden from sight. So—they’re a year old, but they’re all ours.”

Worry creased Emily’s brow and Mason’s pulse spiked in sudden concern.

“Wait,” he said, “you’re not allergic to nuts or something, are you?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m thrilled about the nuts, I just—I wonder what might have happened to that mom. And her kids. If she ever found them again, and if she did—if they… If they lived.”

Mason stilled. He couldn’t focus on that, it was too painful. If he focused on that, he’d have to start thinking about his sister Stephanie, and wondering if she was okay out in Los Angeles. Wonder if he’d ever find out. If he thought about all the people who had died, he wouldn’t be able to focus on the fact that he had lived.

He emptied a few peanuts into his hand and handed them to Emily, who tentatively took only one, like he had, and ate it. “Oh my God,” she said. “Delicious.”

“And tons of protein too. These nuts were a jackpot.”

“I’d rather find a bunch of food than a million dollars at this point,” she mused.

“Of course. What’s paper money good for now, anyway? Other than as toilet paper?”

Emily laughed and they crunched more nuts. “Let’s save these for tomorrow. They’re portable and we don’t know what the food situation will be like.”

“The next time we come across a town,” Mason said, “you should talk. I think your idea about telling them how you’re a nurse might work, actually.”

Emily smiled. She looked sleepy but so beautiful, even with the dust from the road covering her and the black eye. At least her eye wasn’t swollen shut. He shuddered when he recalled that the guys at the barricade thought he had hit her.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered, but even as she said that, she sat on his lap in the back seat of the SUV.

Mason groaned and his cock hardened as she wiggled on his lap as if to get more comfortable. He gasped as she rubbed against him with her movements.

“I like sitting on your lap,” she said, shifting her weight, “but it’s a bit uncomfortable with that huge thing in your pants, poking me.” She writhed more, as if to prove her point.

“What thing?” he joked. Then she shifted again and he gasped. “I hope you weren’t planning on going to sleep anytime soon,” he warned.

“I was,” she said. “Why? Did you have other things in mind?”

He didn’t respond, just reached around between her legs and held her groin, over her jeans. As she wiggled on his lap, he kept his hand firm in place, making her rub herself against his grasp. Soon her movements brought him to a near orgasm, and he could tell from her breathing she was close too.

“Please,” she said. “Take my pants off.”

He shook his head and kept rubbing her over her jeans. “You said you were tired,” he reminded her. “So we’re not going to have sex tonight. I don’t want to tire you out. We’ll just sit here, with you on my lap.” As he spoke he squeezed between her legs tighter and she trembled.

“Come on,” she moaned, bucking against his hand. He was so hard it hurt. Finally, he groaned and unzipped her jeans, sliding his hands over her wet pussy, running his thumb over her swollen clit. He pinched it gently, rhythmically, over and over and she came, gasping for air.

“Oh please,” she breathed, even though he wasn’t sure what she was asking for. He kept rubbing her, overstimulating her swollen clit until he heard her breathing quicken again and she climaxed once more, covering his fingers with her come.

Her second orgasm was too much for him to watch without taking her. Unzipping his pants, he freed his cock, so hard it was nearly purple, and held her tightly on his lap as he slid inside her, thrusting his hips up and down, holding her impaled on his cock. She leaned forward for leverage and bounced, raising and lowering her hips to meet his thrusts, until he burst inside her, coming hard. Resting his forehead on her back, he breathed slowly until he felt calm and relaxed. His cock slid out of her wet pussy and he helped her pull her pants back up before pulling up his own.

“Now,” he said, grinning, “we can sleep.”

The sun had set at some point during their lovemaking, and Mason was grateful for the moonlight, the only light out there on the abandoned highway. Hopefully the men who were interested in fucking Emily weren’t interested enough to come hunt them down.

He slept holding his pistol in his hand.

THE FOLLOWING
morning, Emily and Mason got up early, dined on leftover plants and nuts, and started walking again up I-87 North.

Emily had a blister forming on her right foot, so she padded her sock with a piece of cotton from the SUV’s seat cushion, which helped quite a bit. They had been walking for hours when Mason gestured up ahead.

Two armed men.

They weren’t soldiers, it looked like. From what she could see at this distance, they were wearing street clothes but carrying old-fashioned shotguns. Definitely no match for Mason’s M16, but frightening nonetheless.

“There must be another town here,” she said quietly, even though the men were probably still half a mile away. “Why don’t they have a barricade of cars, like the other place did?” she wondered out loud.

Mason shrugged. “Let’s try to convince them to let us spend the night at the town, get a meal, maybe, in exchange for work.”

“You think they might need a nurse?”

“Maybe. If not, I can do manual labor stuff, no problem.”

“God, I hope so.”

They put their hands in the air again as they approached the two men guarding the road. “Hi there,” Emily said brightly. “I’m Emily… Harris. This is my husband, Mason.”

“Call me Luke,” the guard said. Emily guessed they must not see a lot of travelers to speak to them in such a friendly way. Or maybe because a woman approached them instead of a man. “You can put your hands down, Mrs. Harris. Long as your hubby don’t plan on shooting us.”

“ ’Course not,” Mason said, lowering his hands slowly.

“You can go on through, but don’t stop in the town,” Luke said. “We don’t have anything extra to spare, we’re just making do with our own townsfolk.”

“What town is it, anyway?” Mason asked.

“Potterskill.”

“Anybody sick, or hurt?” Emily asked. She’d never heard of Potterskill, not that she would have, living in Manhattan.

The two men looked at each other. “My wife, actually. She just had a baby.” Luke said. “Why?”

“I’m an RN. And congratulations on your new baby. I can assess your wife, see if I can help. In exchange, my husband and I get a meal and a place to sleep tonight. And then we’ll go.”

“Done.” The other guard nodded to Luke and said, “Why don’t you escort them into town, introduce them to Melissa.”

Emily assumed Melissa was Luke’s wife.

They followed Luke down the off-ramp of the highway, turning left at the bottom of a short hill into a small town. They walked down what appeared to be the town’s main street. All of the stores were closed for business, and appeared to have been for a long time.

“We lost a lot of people within the first two months,” Luke said. “We had a nursing home with over a hundred fifty residents on the edge of town, and they all died very quickly without medications, electricity, clean running water, and people to help them. A lot of them just lay in bed, and when there wasn’t enough help to turn them and change their diapers and whatnot, they got horrible bedsores.”

“And then the bedsores got infected, and they died,” Emily finished.

“Yeah.” Luke got quiet, and she wondered if one of the patients who died was a family member.

“Do you mind if we see my wife Melissa first, before you eat?” Luke asked. “She’s been in terrible pain for the past few days. She looks awful. She can’t even hold the baby to nurse. I have to hold him to her breast so he can eat.”

“Of course—” Emily said, but Mason cut her off.

“Emily is hungry,” Mason said. “If she doesn’t eat she won’t have the strength to do her job.”

Luke nodded. “I understand.”

Emily sighed. She was hungry, but then again, she was always hungry. She was getting used to it.

Luke said, “I have food at my house. Beef and corn stew. And Melissa is at my house too.”

Emily salivated at the mention of beef and corn stew. She hadn’t eaten beef in months and months. Mason, she could see, had picked up his pace too, eager to get to Luke’s house.

They followed him down a street lined with trees and small ranch-style houses. All of the front yards had been turned into vegetable gardens. Emily wondered how the crops the military worked on in Central Park were doing. She’d never seen anything growing since they guarded the Park so heavily. If only people in the city had access to their own land to grow food like these people do, she thought wistfully.

Luke led them into a small house. Emily could smell the food and her stomach grumbled. He brought them into the kitchen, gesturing toward a small Formica table. Mason sat down. Emily wanted to find Melissa, to see what was wrong, but the smell of the stew proved too much.

She sat, her mouth watering in earnest now. In a back room somewhere a baby cried, and a woman’s voice shushed him halfheartedly.

“Hang on,” Luke said. “Let me make more.” He reached into the pot of stew on the counter and pulled out some small chunks of meat, and taking a knife off the cutting block, sliced the meat into tinier pieces before throwing them back in. “If I add a few more cups of water to the broth it’ll extend what I have to share,” he said. “I just need to boil it in the fireplace.”

Mason nodded, although Emily could tell it took all of his willpower to sit there calmly with food so close in sight.

She stood up. “Well, while you’re boiling the water, I’ll go check on Melissa and the baby. Mason, why don’t you come with me?”

Mason stood slowly, his eyes still on the stew. “You’ll let us know when it’s ready?” he asked.

Luke nodded. Then, to Emily, “She’s in the back room.”

Emily walked to the back of the house, with Mason close behind. She knocked and opened the door. It was dark inside, and stuffy.

“Hi, Melissa,” Emily said softly.

Walking to the window, she pulled open the drapes and let sunlight stream into the tiny bedroom. Melissa, a woman of about thirty, lay on the bed, curled in a ball, groaning. The baby lay next to her on the bed, crying again.