by Mike Arsuaga
The colonel was not asleep. The unmistakable sounds and scents of human lovemaking filled the room. Lorna eased the closet door open. Lit up by the moonlight like a white enameled wind-up toy, the colonel’s heart-shaped buttocks undulated on the dark shaft of the male pinned beneath her. They had to act fast. If the scents of sex worked their way down the line of those following, Lorna worried one of the young lycan males would be overcome and morph, bursting into a howl. Out the window would go any element of surprise.
“Ed,” she whispered. “You and I have to take them. Follow me, and close the panel behind you.”
With her mate close behind, she opened the closet door and morphed. In an instant, they fell upon them. The colonel had enough time to turn her face halfway around in response to the noise. An imperious expression of outrage turned to terror when she realized monsters do live in closets. A single, dark eye above a prominent cheekbone gleamed at Lorna. Downturned lips painted purple parted to cry out. Lorna cut off the colonel’s brief scream in mid-note by breaking her neck.
The male was too wrapped up in an orgasm to notice much of anything until Ed killed him with a skull-crushing blow.
“Wash the bodies in the shower. The water should take away most of the scent so the boys can stay focused on the job at hand,” Lorna said.
Ed grunted as he hefted the female’s corpse into position under one arm. With the male in the crook of his other arm, he carried them into the bathroom. Lorna remembered seeing two white, moonlit butts locked in Ed’s powerful grip before he closed the door. A second later, the light came on, making a bright line across the bottom of the doorway. When the shower started, Lorna sprayed some of Cynthia’s perfume around to mask the lingering traces of passion.
Ten minutes later, the leadership gathered for a council of war. Lorna spread the mansion floor plans on the carpet. “In this wing, and the one west of us, are all the officers above the rank of major.”
“Where’s Uncle Bobby?” Cynthia wanted to know.
“Time enough later for settling scores. No one wants to more than I,” Ed announced. “But let’s take back our home, first.”
Within an hour, the command structure of the East Mexican force sat in the main dining room, tied to the velvet-covered chairs. Taken by surprise no one had fired a shot. The general sat erect in his underwear, crossing a pair of spindly, hirsute legs almost daintily. He wore the smug expression of someone who expected to be bailed out at any moment.
Ed stood in front of him, giving him a cold, level stare. “My friend,” he said calmly. “You’ll get dressed and accompany my son and niece to tell your men to prepare to leave the island.”
“Why should I?” he answered. “I have three thousand to your two hundred.”
“That might be,” Lorna interjected. “But as we speak, Brazil is being appraised of the latest developments here. If they weren’t inclined to help before, they will now. You have no senior leadership. Without coordination, even a small Brazilian force could beat them, but we both know Brazil does nothing small. What will your superiors say to the loss of three thousand men in addition to a quarter of your country’s navy?”
“Even if there is no help, your men will be a leaderless mob because none of you will leave this house alive unless you agree to the terms we offer.” Ed added.
As the logic of the argument sunk in, confidence drained from the general’s face. He shrugged, less confident than before. “I will dress.”
The last one they found was Bobby. Dressed in a servant’s uniform in order to pass as a member of the staff, he’d planned to escape on the plane bringing Ethan. For two days, he hid in servant bunking until someone in the group recognized him on the day his brother arrived. Donatello led three vampires, who slapped on hand and leg cuffs, trotting him up to Ed’s reclaimed office.
Ed stood to his full morphed height in front of Bobby, demanding, “What do you have to say for yourself? Give us a reason why you shouldn’t be killed.” When Bobby hesitated, Ed added, “Everyone’s listening.”
Bobby surveyed the room. Besides Lorna and Ed, his brothers and Thomas were present. Ed’s morph, combined with the array of hostile relatives, didn’t intimidate him. “This wasn’t all my doing. Things got out of control, and I couldn’t get out.” Sensing a gain of leverage, he pressed the advantage. “Father, I did what I had to.”
“You didn’t, ‘have to’ kill twenty-five of our people,” Lorna said. “Poor Ulbert loved you like a son. You let him and Valeria die like dogs in the streets.”
“Wait, Father, you have it all wrong,” Bobby countered. “The Mexicans wanted some measure of payback for the attack on the officer’s barracks. That was the least I could offer them.”
Ed weighed the explanation. Lorna worried he might be softening. Then Thomas slapped a cell phone on Ed’s desk top. “If you want to hear his exact words,” the small man said. “They’re all here. You may judge for yourself.”
He played a recording of the scene in the hallway. Everyone winced at the sound of Valeria’s horrified reaction when Bobby ordered the selection to begin with her. When the recording ran out, Ed’s stare locked on Bobby. “Well?”
Bobby opened his mouth, but nothing came out. For once, he had nothing to say.
“Ethan, Toby, I want you to come with me. Bring your brother. We’ll pick up Cynthia along the way.”
The brothers smiled, lifting a confused Bobby off his feet. Lorna got up to accompany them, but Thomas shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s a matter of blood they must finish among themselves.”
The small procession passed Lorna, taking Bobby through the Operations Center. Employees paused at their passing. Bobby’s protests became louder and more frantic. Apparently, he realized something had been decided and it wasn’t going to be good. At Ed’s signal, Cynthia joined them. The five of them drove into the jungle in an open top touring vehicle. Her glossy black hair trailed in the breeze like Death’s pennant. An hour later, the three vampires returned with their lycan relative.
No one talked about what happened.
Cynthia seemed to emerge a different person. A few weeks before, the persona of corporate window dressing would’ve sickened at the prospect of executing anyone, much less a relative.
Lorna decided the process that began with the plague concluded the night Bobby got his punishment. In addition, living as a guerrilla and participation in a blooding after each raid must’ve helped the change along. Later, she confided to Lorna they’d thrown Bobby from a cliff. She described the incident in the manner of eliminating a minor household pest. The new Cynthia reported he screamed all the way to the bottom.
If the East Mexicans had second thoughts about leaving the island, the arrival of a Brazilian force of twelve thousand removed all doubt. Lorna helped Ed negotiate a favorable deal with the Brazilian military for the use of island facilities.
“Looks like until we get to Mars, it’ll be Orlando or Rocket city for us.” Ed’s comment met no resistance. “Will you miss this place?” he asked Lorna. They stood on a balcony under a night sky surrounded by relatives.
“Only our little room and furniture.”
“You’re in luck. Our agreement with Brazil doesn’t include furnishings and personal items.”
Ethan chimed in. “Well I’ll miss this place.”
Cynthia eased beside him. She gestured, encompassing the cosmos overhead with the sweep of a long, elegant arm. “Our future is there now. What waits for us will make everything we experienced so far seem a bore. Do you agree, Uncle Ed?”
Ed nodded. “One thing certain, things will be different.” He paused with the Chairman’s expression of practicality designed to bring things back to the ground. “Relocating our community and all the humans we can becomes the new priority. The revenue from the deal with Brazil will help fund the project.”
“I’ll still miss it,” Ethan said.
So, the island passed from their lives. Costa Rica
protested Brazil’s occupation of the island in the strongest terms with the United Nations Security Council. After several weeks’ worth of debate, the issue deadlocked in final vote.
Nobody cared.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Six months later, Lorna stood beside Ed on the threshold of their new house in Rocket City. Lorna entwined him while breathing the odors of new paint, poured masonry, and fresh cut wood—the smells of new construction. “It’s beautiful,” she said, snuggling close.
“The place turned out very well, if I say so myself,” he answered. “We’ve a home you could spend the rest of your life in.” His last statement hung heavily between them. The ominous prospects of 2107 threatened to put strict limits on the concept of “the rest of your life”.
Lorna shook off the depressing thought. “Take me on a tour.”
“Happy to, madam.” With relief, he began. In the past, there’d been some very stressful interactions when the subject time remaining came up either in conversation or in the form of a reminder through current events.
Ed opened the cut crystal double front doors. The day before, the movers had delivered the furniture. Ed had supervised the placement.
“I wanted to be there,” Lorna said. “Men are so incompetent when it comes to furniture arrangement. I’m not sure I trust your judgment.”
“Don’t worry,” he retorted. “I had plenty of advice from the daughters-in-law and Cynthia. Trust me. You’ll be pleased. Besides, if you supervised the move, who would’ve taken care of little Jimmie and Samantha?”
“That’s what babysitters are for.” Lorna sighed in anticipation of having to perform a large rearrangement. She needn’t have worried. “You missed your calling,” she said, finally. “If you ever need a second job, consider interior decorating. Donatello would be proud of this.” For an instant, she wondered how her former Fairy Godmother liked his new home on Mars.
“Gee, thanks.”
They’d named the children after The First Parents. “There have been too many Eds in the family,” Ed had asserted. “Great-pop doesn’t like “juniors”, but technically, the kids won’t be.”
Lorna laughed. “What are they going to do? Disinherit us?”
In a mimic of their namesakes, Samantha, or Sammi, had the red hair and green eyes, while Jimmie exhibited the dark eyes and coloring Lorna shared with Great-pop. The boy also seemed to inherit Ed’s height and build.
On the house tour, Lorna and Ed passed through the tiled foyer into a high-ceilinged dining room. The two chandeliers from the mansion hung suspended on brass chain, part of the furniture, personal effects, and fixtures retrieved from the island. The collection filled a small freighter, ending up in the homes of various family members.
Lorna surveyed their bedroom, featuring the massive round bed with the history of love and happiness contained therein. “It safely made the trip?”
“Yes, but you understand it is only on loan. My grandparents can’t wait to get it back.” He led the way to an adjacent sitting room. “Look what showed up.”
“You got the little bed!” Lorna squealed with excitement. Appearing isolated in a much larger room than the sparse cell on the island sat the iron-framed pallet where they’d first made love, freshly made up with a white comforter. New pieces provided company. The movers had consigned the old furniture to the scrap heap.
A memory of dear, sweet, courageous Ulbert flashed through her mind.
“And sir,” he said on the morning he found us together. “It is good to see you entertaining again.”
“Yes. I had to personally rescue the old thing from a scrap heap,” Ed replied, returning her to reality.
As if seeing old friends after a long separation, Lorna smiled at the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Turning toward him, she pressed her pelvis against the flank of a hard thigh. “What do you say we try it out? A quickie before the sitter brings the kids?”
Ed didn’t have to be asked twice, immediately spanning her waist with two large, sure hands. She amazed even herself at how quickly she’d regained her figure after the children were born. With humans and hybrids, recovery took months, if at all. In Lorna’s case, six weeks after giving birth, she appeared as if she’d never been pregnant.
While she breathed hot moisture in his ear from red, painted lips pursed into something approximating a triangle, he lifted her up. A pair of firm legs wound tightly around his waist. The white chiffon of her camisole did little to shield the feel of aroused nipples. Feeling his manhood growing to full size under his denim jeans, she warmed and moistened down below. Supporting the firm bulbs of her buttocks, he slid her in the bed.
Lorna threw off the chiffon blouse, revealing hard, erect, coffee-colored nipples. Ed peeled off the jeans and shirt. As always, she admired the coppery head-to-toe tan of his hard male form before her gaze came to rest on a specific part that tilted down and slightly left, steel hard, but warm to the touch.
Lying back, she opened for his entry. Hovering above, he gently occupied her mouth with his tongue and their faces joined together. Hot inner thighs molded themselves around him. Their faces remained plastered to one another while scents of sex mingled among those of new construction. Their passion gained momentum. The springs of the small bed protested with their usual gusto against their amorous locomotion. Lorna cupped a butt cheek in each hand, pushing him inside until his hips pressed against her. Disengaging from his kiss, she threw her head back. Keening wails of building climax surrounded them in an invisible blanket.
Ed reached below to manipulate the wet folds at the top of her femininity, searching for a particular small, slippery knot of flesh. Lorna gasped each time he circled the small wet bud with a large, blunt index finger, stopping every fourth time or so to refresh the wetness from her fragrant internal secretions.
“Is this right?” he inquired.
“After all this time, you have to ask?” she countered in a display of desperate eagerness. “Press on.” Planting a lingering kiss, he shut her up.
Eventually, they arrived at the state of complete physical contraction ending in convulsive release. They embraced on a level beyond mere physical contact as the last barriers separating the perfect communion of mind, body, and spirit dissolved for a magic instant.
* * * *
They avoided thinking about the possibility all might end in a flash of radiation and tried their best to live by Mike Geurin’s dictum. “It’s not how much time you have, but how you spend it, that counts.” Or something to that effect.
Grandmother Sam coordinated the migration effort on the Martian end in conjunction with Ed on Earth.
“Are you saying they elected her Dictator for Life?” Lorna asked in the spring of 2105. The migration had entered the last stage, with just over two years until the first possible Doomsday. Scholars who examined the images from the Oom tablets calculated the date to be June 15, 2107.
“Not exactly,” Ed replied. “Well, sort of, I guess. They put her in charge of anything concerning the migration, which includes just about all colonial resources, and projects.”
“Why? Talented grandchildren and other colonists are everywhere. One of them could pick up some of the burden,” Lorna said. They sat on a balcony overlooking the St Johns River. The water stream snaked through the green of pine and palmetto, absorbing the evening sunlight into opaque brown depths.
“Everyone believes she’s the one to keep everything together. Even Toby agrees.”
Toby’s girls had turned twenty earlier in the year, and his family had joined Ethan’s.
The Aurora Borealis fluttered across the northern sky. Solar activity had increased, but for the Northern Lights to be visible from Florida in early evening was even more exceptional.
Ed regarded the green shimmer with wariness. “There seems to be something building,” he commented. “Another mini-CME, perhaps?”
A white crane glided over the lush green toward the river. “Perhaps. Europe hasn’t recover
ed from the one that hit France earlier this year.”
The CME struck the Franco-German border without warning, knocking out power in most of Western Europe. Some didn’t have service restored for a month. There were riots. The affected parts of the former countries declared martial law, which didn’t end after the crisis abated. Thousands died.
“They experienced a minor one, compared to how bad they could be,” Ed answered.
Remembering her dream about the end of the world, a chill ran through Lorna. “I know.”
“No matter. Whether it strikes in 2107 or later, we stay together. I couldn’t live without you and the children.”
Lorna grimaced. No one knows what he can bear until they have to.
She clamped small fingers on his forearm saying, “I love you, Edward White.”
* * * *
Early in the spring of 2106, the White family drove to Orlando to attend Cynthia’s farewell party. The month before, Karla had passed away. After ordering her mother’s affairs, Cynthia, accompanied by siblings and their families, booked onto the next ship to Mars.
“After Cynthia leaves, Thomas is the only relative left, besides us,” Lorna said.
Thomas—poor, sad, old, bachelor Thomas.
“You’re forgetting Sadie, Cassandra’s daughter.”
“If we can locate her.”
Ed’s eyes lingered on the intent face of his new wife, drifting downward to the compact body. “Everyone advises Thomas to leave. Among all of us, he has the least to hold him to Earth, but my brother cannot leave what makes him comfortable. It’s been his nature since we were boys.” He spoke without deviating from his wanton stare.
“Stop that.” Lorna smirked. “The children are in the jump seat.”
He raised his handsome head to face her. “I will remain properly honorable.” He winked. “For now.”
They approached the outskirts of town, where an armed corporation escort picked them up. A line of ragged people, starting at a closed corrugated steel door, snaked around the block. The solemn, dispirited faces touched Lorna. “Lining up for drug prescriptions,” she muttered. “There must be a better way.”