by Sky Winters
“You aren’t funny,” I said, but a smile was already creeping across my lips. We laughed as we walked through the streets. I was still on the lookout for danger, but I was just enjoying having someone else around. We found a park near the edge of town and pushed the stretcher into a small circle of pine trees that would provide at least some cover for us. It was in a little residential neighborhood, and it didn’t seem like any of the houses were being occupied.
The night air started to get a bit chilly. I looked over at Dallas and I let out a little laugh. He looked at me and I threw my hands up, “It’s nothing.”
“What are you laughing about?” I tried to walk away, but Dallas picked me up and set me down on the stretcher. I had put my arms around his neck when he first grabbed me and decided to leave them there. His skin was still warm to the touch. “What is it?”
“I just noticed that the night air was making you shrink,” I laughed.
“Oh really,” his face was getting closer to mine.
“Yeah, and I was just thinking that it is kind of like a thermometer.”
“I can fix that,” he said as he kissed me deeply. I was off the stretcher as he lifted me into his arms. His strong arms wrapped around me and held me tight against his muscled chest. He was holding me up with one arm as he took off my scrubs and continued to kiss his way down my body. I felt like a doll in his strong hands. That was when I found myself upside down and staring right at his thermometer. It was no longer getting smaller.
He was driving me crazy with his tongue and teeth as I tried to deal with the amazing sensations and the blood rushing to my head. I decided to focus on pleasing him. I used my hand on the shaft and teased the head with my tongue. It felt amazing, but I was so glad when he finally put me down on the stretcher. I was up on my knees, and he was standing beside the stretcher with his hands on my waist. He was teasing me with the head as he lightly touched along the edges.
His skin was so much warmer than mine. I could feel the difference as he pushed forward and started gently moving back and forth. I rocked my hips to try and feel him deeper inside of me. I wanted to take everything in. The gentle breeze was covering my skin in goosebumps. Every inch of my skin was alive. It was the mix of cool air and hot skin and the rhythmic motion of our hips. I gripped the tiny rubber mattress and screamed with my whole body.
A large hand clapped itself over my mouth as Dallas grunted and let go deep inside of me. I turned around and kissed all over his sculpted chest and abs. He laid down on the gurney and I pulled myself together. I wrapped myself around him as we tried to share the tiny bed. I was idly running my fingers over his smooth skin.
The stars were amazingly bright. Without the light pollution I could actually see them. Dallas pointed out the constellations. “I grew up on a farm,” he explained, “There have always been this many stars.” I was sure that he was wrong. There was no way a sky had ever seemed this beautiful.
“I thought I had seen stars,” I said as I followed a shooting star along the edge of the horizon. It was too magical to be ordinary. We laid there and talked about life and the world.
“I have always wanted a family, but not a shifter family,” Dallas said. He was watching the skies, but I thought I saw a tear welling up in his eyes. “I don’t think it is right to bring a kid into a world he doesn’t belong in.” I was surprised to hear him talk like that, but I realised that I didn’t know much about him.
“How can you say that? You are the most amazing person I have ever met,” it sounded corny, but I meant it. He had already saved me twice. He could heal instantly, and he was ridiculously strong. I was amazingly hot. I was having trouble seeing the down side.
“But I am not a person,” Dallas sat up and looked me right in the eyes. “I am a monster.”
“You can’t think that,” I was crying and I didn’t know why exactly, but it hurt me that he felt like this. “You are not a monster, those guys in the hospital, those guys are monsters!” I was almost mad at him for talking about himself that way.
“Sshh, oww!” He shook the hand that I bit. He was trying to cover my mouth again. “Don’t bite me!”
“Why you’re a monster, aren’t you used to being bitten?” I said without really thinking about if it made sense. I was just mad at him for feeling this way. He was just shaking his head, and then he started to turn away. I playfully bit his nipple as he tried to turn away. I had never felt like this before. He had awoken an animal inside of me. I felt brave, and brazen, and I wanted him to feel that way too. I wanted him to know how he made me feel. Somehow that made me bite him. Maybe it was the trees, or the night air, or that he could turn into a bear, I felt wild.
“What was that for?” Dallas looked more surprised than mad.
“I am feeling monstery,” I laughed. A smile finally cracked through his sullen expression. It was a little smile, but I had worked so hard for it I counted it as an accomplishment. “For the record I would love to have kids like you,” I said as I laid back down to gaze at the sky.
“Well, I guess we will never know,” Dallas said to the sky.
We didn’t talk for a long time. I was just lying there enjoying his presence. I stretched my arms and legs and let out a yawn. “I will take the first watch,” Dallas said as he stood up. “I am about to fall asleep,” he explained as I begged him to stay beside me.
“I just need my teddy…”
“Cut that out!” His tone was playful, but I could tell that he meant it. He didn’t like the bear cracks, but that only made me want to say more of them. I watched the naked man as he moved off into the moonlight to check the perimeter.
The pine trees made pretty good cover, and I was sure that if there was anyone around they would have heard us earlier, but Dallas insisted on checking. I went to the brown backpacks and got out a bunch of hospital sheets. It was chilly, but not cold, however the linens were so thin I knew I would need about a hundred of them to be warm. I thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but that was before I stopped moving. As soon as I got comfortable I could feel sleep taking over. It had been months since I had really felt safe. Right now it didn’t matter who was out there or what was going on inside of me. I had a protector. I looked up at the sky one last time and then everything went dark.
The light broke through the trees. It was a bit disorienting at first. I was not sure where I was for a split second. The chilly morning air had numbed my senses. I looked around to find Dallas, but he was nowhere to be seen. I got my clothes back on under the thick layer of thin sheets that I had piled on top of myself. I was a little worried as I was only supposed to be taking a nap and then I was supposed to take a turn on guard duty. Why didn’t he wake me up?
I walked through the trees to find Dallas going through the supplies. “We have to make ourselves more mobile,” he said as he turned to see me coming around behind him. There was a fear in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“What’s going on?”
“We need to get out of this city,” he was scanning the streets around us as he talked. “It isn’t safe here.” It was something that I already knew, but I could see that something had happened to him last night. “They ate her.”
“What are you talking about?” I put a hand on his shoulder, but I was sure that he couldn’t feel it. He was in some kind of shock.
“I thought it was group sex,” he was taking things out of each bag and putting them into the orange bag. “Or something weird, but she was heavily drugged, or delirious and they were eating her alive. I had no idea what was going on until it was too late.”
He stood up and put the back pack on my back. “I am going to rejoin my family,” there was a look of sincerity in his eyes. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course,” I was surprised he felt the need to ask. I thought I had made it clear that I wanted to be with him.
“Alright, we are travelling fast, we don’t need to worry about all this stuff. Once we are in the woods I can take care
of the rest,” his skin was already rippling before he changed. The fur was popping up all over his body in clumps. It was so amazing to see the transformation. I climbed on his back and we ran.
“Whoa! Easy there,” I yelled as he took off. It was hard to hold on at first. I joked that he needed reigns. It was hard to tell how he felt about my joke in bear form. Although he had seemed impossible to read in human form as well. I could tell he was shaken up. He did not stop running until we were well clear of the city.
When we reached an abandoned farm house he came to a stop. “You know that fur is attached to me right?” He asked his eyes still wide from the shifting. His face looked ferocious during the transformation and it made everything he said at those times seem angry and savage. I tried not to smile.
“I’m sorry, where am I supposed to hold you?” I was surprised to see a smile come across his face again. I had thought we were back to angry Dallas.
“I don’t know, I have never been used as a mode of transportation before.” Dallas opened the door to the old, red brick farm house. I decided to hang back and wait for him to give me the okay. I had done very little exploring since the outbreak.
I had gone in for a twelve hour shift and I just left the hospital last night. My mother had been among the first to die of it. Dad had come to tell me, but by the time he made it to the hospital he was too weak to ever leave again. I didn’t look in on them before I left for work, and I would always feel guilty about that. It was not that I could have saved my mother, but I could have had more time with her. It was also hard to deal with the fact that it was likely me who gave them the virus. My mother always did my laundry and it was likely my scrubs that infected her. These thoughts always flooded my brain whenever things got too quiet.
I sat down on the front porch swing. The porch was a beautiful, fenced in porch with intricate wood detailing along the railing. I gently kicked out my feet and felt the swing move under me. The chain was old and the seat well worn. I was worried that I was going straight to the ground, but the swing held together fine. It creaked a bit, but it was definitely stronger than it looked.
“It’s piss warm, but we have a whole case of it,” Dallas said handing me a beer. “From the dust in there I would say nobody has moved in that house for about a month,” he took a long swig as he finished talking. The swing moaned as he sat down with a thud on the bench. It was nice to see him looking so relaxed. He was wearing a pair of baggy sweat pants and an unbuttoned plaid shirt.
“Nice,” I said putting a finger through a hole in the leg of the pants. I had brought scrubs from the hospital, but none of them were big enough for him to wear. All the pants looked like capris on his long muscular legs. Even these beat up old sweats were a little on the short side.
“None of the jeans fit,” Dallas shrugged as he sat down beside me on the porch swing. “You don’t like them?” We both laughed and I snuggled into his side.
“So what’s the plan?” I was hoping he had one.
“We’ll stay here tonight and then we will keep heading west,” Dallas was staring out over the horizon. It was late afternoon. “I am thinking if we look in that barn we will probably find some mode of transportation that will speed this trip up.”
“Like a tractor?” I had never really been on a farm. I was kind of excited about the idea of taking a tractor anywhere, but it seemed like it might be a little slow.
“Like an ATV, motorcycle, or a truck, something not completely ridiculous.” Dallas was laughing at me, I glared at him. “I just mean something that moves a little faster.” He threw his arm around me and we walked into the barn.
“You know this isn’t going to be easy, right?” I turned to see a very serious look on Dallas’s face. He seemed very concerned about something. “Being a shifter is a hard life. There is no way for me to lead a normal life.” I put my hand on his arm.
“What is normal?” I hadn’t experienced anything normal in a very long time. “Is it normal to have gangs of looters roaming the streets? Is it normal to have your whole family die?”
“Things will go back to normal at some point,” Dallas said pulling his arm away from me. He walked off toward what looked like a small workshop inside the barn. “Right now you need protection, but what happens when the government gets everything under control and they have found the cure? What happens then?” Dallas turned back to me, “I have to know before this goes any further.”
I was really blown away by what I was hearing. He was starting to go through the drawers filled with screws and bolts, but I could tell that he just couldn’t look at me. “So that’s it, I have to know everything right now, or you are just done with me.”
“I will take you anywhere you want to go,” He said as he closed he drawers and walked past me. He was headed toward a red ATV. He started testing the tires and checking the gas tank. I watched him for a minute. I was flustered and hurt by what he was saying, but I knew in my heart that the only place I wanted to go was with him.
I walked over to him as he was pretending to fiddle with the throttle and I took his beer and set it on a tray next to the ATV. He lifted me onto the seat and I pulled his face in for a kiss. His body was so warm it was amazing just to be near him. “I want to go with you, and be with you.” He went in for another kiss and I could tell what he was thinking, but there was no way it was happening in this stinky, dusty barn. I dodged under him and ran through the barn toward the door.
“Ohh! Get back here!” He yelled as I ran to the house I could hear him gaining on me. I had one foot on the stairs when he pulled me backwards. We rolled onto the grass. He landed up on his elbow with me underneath of him. It was nice to see him eye to eye. He kissed me again and this time I didn’t try to run away. I pushed back his ratty plaid shirt and ran my fingers gently along his chest. I pinched his nipple and he bit my lip.
I pushed him over onto his back and climbed on top. He tried to protest, but I already had his cock in my hand. I grasped it firmly so he knew that I was in charge. I slipped off my pants and I got on top. He moaned as I slid down, and my eyes were rolling back into my head as I looked skyward. We rocked our hips together as he rolled my nipples in his fingers. I was losing control as I felt him erupt inside of me. I collapsed on top of him and listened to his heart beating right against my ear.
I could feel his finger tracing the curve of my hip and running up my back. I was in heaven. There was a warm summer breeze and the only sound was the rustling of leaves in the trees. It was hard to remember that any other part of the world existed. I felt like I was becoming a part of him. The dim light of the setting sun was the only indication that any time had passed. Dallas stood up and carried me over the threshold of the farm house.
“We can’t stay here,” were the first words out of my mouth when I saw the house. The dirt and dust, the smell was the worst part for me. The house hadn’t been cleaned in months and suddenly I was wishing that I hadn’t touched that bottle of beer. Anything that came out of this house was definitely going to kill me.
Dallas led me to the pantry. It was the real food that won me over. I had been living on pudding for so long that anything would’ve been preferable, but the loaded pantry was an unbelievable sight. “How could they have just left all this food behind?” I asked as I walked through hanging sausages and baskets of potatoes. The entire basement of the house had been converted into cold storage.
“The outbreak happened so fast that there are places like this all over the world,” Dallas explained. “This is what we have been doing. My family, we are all out gathering and then we are heading back to the den.”
I think he must have noticed the look I gave him, because he continued to explain, “It’s the name of our compound. On the outside it looks like a salvage yard, but it’s great.” I didn’t say a word, “Anywhere I go right?”
“That’s what I said,” I smiled as I grabbed food of the shelves. I was just excited to eat a meal that wasn’t mainly composed of pudding. I h
ad been worried that my stomach was going to turn into pudding. We headed back up the stairs and started cleaning, there was no way I was eating in a kitchen that dirty.
We spent almost a week in the old farm house. I was glad to be out of scrubs. Although the clothes left behind were a little dated, they were at least a change of pace. Dallas only found two pairs of pants that fit him and he was too big to wear any of the shirts. I told him I liked it better that way. We said every night that we were going to pack up and leave the next morning.
As the sun went down on the sixth night, I was doing the dishes when I felt a large hand glide across my stomach through the thin fabric of my sundress. I put my hand over top of it and interlocked my fingers. I turned around to kiss Dallas, but I was met with a wide eyed stare.
“Something’s wrong,” his expression worried me. I was sure he could sense something wrong with the virus. I felt my heart drop. He had told me that his kind were very sensitive to the body and to the release of hormones. I was sure he was going to tell me that I was going to die. I was carrying a deadly disease, everybody was, and my virus had been activated.
“What’s going on?” I asked as he started to walk away. “If I am dying I have a right to know.”
“You’re pregnant,” He said as he just kept walking. “I am so sorry…what?” My expression seemed to surprise Dallas.
“How can you know that?” I was sure he was wrong. It felt like he had to be teasing me. The virus had made people, all people, sterile.
“Your smell has changed,” he said the words like it was a normal thing to say. I felt very exposed. His words made me feel like I should go put on a gallon of perfume. I wanted to plug his nose permanently. This seemed like an awful invasion of my privacy. “I can’t help it,” he said as if he was also reading my mind. “I can just sense a change in your hormones.”