Systemic Shock tq-1

by Dean Ing

  They elected to eat the canned food in the garage. It was Quantrill who realized that a sparing rinse in bleach, followed by a soaping and rinse from a garden hose, might disinfect them externally. They soaked their clothes as well, rinsing them outdoors in darkness, joking about the effects of bleach to decoy their attention from their mutual and necessary nudity.

  But jokes were not equal to the dimly-outlined grace of Abby Drummond. He held the hose as she rinsed her dark shoulder-length hair and erred in thinking that her eyes were closed. He saw the gentle curve of her buttocks, the faint pendulous sway of foam-flecked teats, the effulgent gleam of water on her thighs, and turned slightly away from Abby as his desire had its usual effect. In silhouette, his erection was now a gravity-defying flag.

  She wrung her hair dry, squatting, as he turned the stream of water on himself. It wasn't exactly a cold shower, but… "I've been thinking, "she said, and took the hose and soap from him. “We've done a lot for each other in the past twelve hours. Let's not stop now."

  She began to lather the small of his back, both of them squatting in the grass, and gradually her hand scrubbed to the back of his thighs. Quantrill held his breath until his ears popped, mesmerized by the soft huskiness of her voice and the progress of that bar of soap. “We could both be sick, or worse, in a week," she continued. And continued. Now he was breathing quickly, a sense of warmth flooding his loins, rising up the back of his neck. For a moment, Quantrill imagined that his ears must be glowing in the dark. At least his ears.

  "Hey; you don't know what you're doing," he breathed.

  "I know exactly what I'm doing," she insisted, purring it. "I'm making sure you're nice and clean. And when you're all good and soapy, you can help me clean where I can't do it alone."

  "I think you'd better not," he said after a moment.

  She paused. "If you really and truly don't want me to," she said.

  His laugh was embarrassed, frank, sorrowful: "God no, Abby, but in another minute I won't have anything left to, ah, soap you with."

  Again the hand, now both hands, sleekly caressing his belly as she wriggled beneath him. She manipulated him, let him feel the warm accepting cleft that pulsed at the exact tip of his body, resumed rubbing him, now cupping his buttocks. “You take your time, lover," she said, "and scrub me out good."

  When he felt some control return Quantrill eased downward, pressed into her carefully, felt her move to accommodate him with small sounds of pleasure. He stopped again, his control ebbing.

  "Think of yourself as the rotorooter man," she said, understanding better than he, "doing an unpleasant job. Or just think about something else — but not for very long," she teased. Presently her own breathing quickened and, as he gently swept strands of damp hair from her face, she moved against him in repeated sinuous thrusts.

  At last she lay still, stroking his ribcage as he moved above her. "Penny for your thoughts," she whispered.

  Gruffly: "Wondering — if the — neighbors — can see," he said. "You?"

  Insinuating: "Wondering if you know I've already come."

  The heat in his loins was suddenly a fever. "Liar."

  "Truth. Yes," she crooned, then in vehemence, sensing his urgency, "oh yes; absolutely, please yes," she said, empathizing the synaptic explosions that thundered down the halls of his mind.

  For perhaps a minute they lay communicating their satisfaction with grunts of pleasure, brief kisses that said more about reassurance than of lust. Then she gave his backside a playful slap. "Now you'll have to scrub me outside," she said. "There are chiggers in this damn' grass."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Later, when Quantrill offered to open ajar of mint jelly for her, Abby made the first reference to their earlier delights on the grass outside. “I can cope," she snapped, wrenching the lid loose. "Why do southern men still think sex makes a weakling of a woman?"

  "Never thought about it," he shrugged, watching the TV.

  "Think about it," she growled, tasting the jelly, watching the set of his jaw as he refused a taste. "Oh, hell, you were just trying to help, Ted. I'm on edge." She laid a hand on his shoulder as she asked softly, "Was I your first, urn, experience? Wait; forgive me, don't answer that."

  "First one that was like they say it's supposed to be," he said, "and don't tell me whether to answer you, and don't forget it was your idea! And even if I was klutzy I'm not one damn' bit sorry. You want me to go now?"

  He stared toward the ancient TV, which was running a plea for voluntary induction. In its wisdom the Department of Defense trusted in the blonde charms of wide-eyed Eve Simpson, the child star whose cleavage was no longer childish, whose buxom bogus innocence permitted just enough jiggle to enslave the daydreams of youthful — and many not so youthful — males. Little Evie moistened her lips to croon her fascination with 'our boys in uniform'.

  Abby Drummond realized that young Quantrill might soon be wearing a uniform. She stepped toward the TV, paused. "May I?"

  Quantrill nodded. She snapped off the set, sat on a box facing him, placed the jelly between her thighs in subtle symbolism, asked permission again as she took his hands.

  At first he glanced over her shoulder, then into the dark; anywhere but into her face as she said, "I take too much for granted. And I'm a shitty dancer because I like to lead, and I'm sensitive as hell about the big-strong-man syndrome. So I've sent you some rejection signals I didn't mean.

  "You may have tears in your eyes, and you may not have a lot of experience, but the best men start that way, lover. At everything. You're being forced to become a man faster than anybody should, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Have you ever seen anyone die?"

  After a moment he met her eyes. "No," he lied.

  "Neither have I, but we will. Lots of them, maybe. I'm having a hard time dealing with you because I see you as needing an older person's advice, and as being a man who usually does things right the first time. So I act as though there were two of you. I'll work on that. If you don't want any of teacher's advice, tell me now and I'll do my God-damnedest to quit. But don't ask me to forget you're a man, mister. You are altogether too good at making love to a woman."

  "Why the hell," he sighed with the faintest of smiles, “is that last thing so important to me?"

  "I don't know, Ted. Maybe advertising has given it more importance than it deserves. But with the bod you have, and the tenderness you show me, — well, don't you worry about it, luv. Hell, I'm giving advice again!"

  His smile now more confident: "Don't stop, Abby. Things're going too fast for me and I don't have anybody else to trust. In fact, I wonder if I should trust anybody's advice a hundred per cent."

  "You're a natural," she grinned back at him. “Trust your instinct a lot, because it's dead-center. For example, it told you not to trust anything too much. It was right. I saw how you willed yourself to be a child today at that road-block, on the spur of the instant. I think you're a born actor; not all great actors are long on brains but they have great timing and they have terrific instincts. Come to think of it, the smartest actors know how to hide half their brains so they don't scare other people off. If I have any advice on how you'll survive best, it's just to act like a kid and hide half your brains."

  "From everybody?"

  She saw the direction of his inquiry. “Not quite; you'd die of loneliness. Your instinct will tell you who you can open up to." She placed a middle finger in the mint jelly, placed a tiny smear of it on her lower lip, licked the finger clean, smiling all the while. "No, not quite everybody. Now you take me," she said, leaned forward, transferred the sticky smudge to his own lips.

  Quantrill did not have to be told twice.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Wednesday morning, Quantrill was awakened by roving hands for the first time in his life and learned that there was something better than merely breakfast in bed. He fluffed out their bedrolls later while Abby opened canned fruit, and wondered aloud whether Jane Osborne
was coming home. "It'd be nice to take a shower in the house," he said.

  "I'm going to take a chance on us," she said, and after using bleach on her hands she went into the house. She returned while Quantrill watched the TV. "Recorded message at the museum," she said. "It's now a crisis relocation center and it's full. Taking no messages at the, har, har, moment — maybe a year-long moment. That's not like Ellis; something tells me the museum directorship is in new hands," she went on, more to herself than to him.

  "Let's take a shower and then go find out."

  "Oh; forgot to tell you. No more water pressure. We'd better drain that hose for drinking water. There'll be more in the hot water tank and the tank behind the toilet."

  Abby found her old watercouch folded away and, with Quantrill's help, half-filled it in a rear niche of the Chevy. The hundred liters of water would last them two weeks, she said. They used the toilet water for its customary purpose, a single flush serving them both.

  Of still more importance was the penicillin they found in Jane Osborne's medicine trove. Abby admitted she had acted from unreasoning fear in swallowing her tabs the day before, and convinced Quantrill that he should not begin to take his fresh ones unless he developed definite symptoms. She was telephoning fruitlessly to find a source of radiation meters when the TV and hall light winked off.

  "Well, that's all the omen I need," she said grimly, and after locking the house they drove through eerily silent streets to the museum.

  "Boy, I never saw a museum like that before," Quantrill muttered at the gate. The cyclone fence was strung on heavy pipe, an obvious jury rig blocking the drive to the foremost building. He spied other structures in the distance.

  "You said it," Abby replied, peering at the rump end of a cargo van that faced away from them in the drive, twenty meters inside the gate. Concrete blocks had been stacked chest-high in a vee that protected the van, and bullet holes pocked the metal panels that showed. She fumbled for her wallet, murmured, "Just be your boyish self," and stepped from the Chevy.

  The voice that issued from the van was a shocking study in contrasts, warmly feminine but powered at the hundred decibel level. It would have been audible a kilometer away. "PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER THIS CRISIS RELOCATION CENTER. THE CENTER IS CROWDED FAR BEYOND CAPACITY, AND THESE PREMISES ARE UNDER MARTIAL LAW. YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE BY HEAVILY ARMED OFFICERS. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT WITHOUT FURTHER WARNING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE."

  Waving her identification, Abby called out, "I work here! Abigail Drummond, grounds maintenance records; I'm sure my supervisor will be glad to see me."

  "PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER THIS CRISIS RELOCATION CENTER," the voice began again, and repeated its stentorian message. Abby plugged fingers into ears and waited until the bullhorn thanked her again for her patience.

  "I am vitally needed here," she shouted. “May I speak to Mr. Ellis, or Miz Osborne, please?"

  "PLEASE DO NOT—," the bullhorn replied, fell silent, then said in crisp male tones, "YOU IN THE CAMPER! GET OUT AND STAND IN FRONT, LEAN FORWARD, BOTH HANDS ON THE HOOD."

  Quantrill did as he was told, prickles of fear and anticipation on his spine. From the tail of his eye he saw an armed man approach the gate from the van. The man said nothing, only thrust a pocket comm set through the gate slit to Abby.

  Her talk with the new administration was short and not particularly sweet. Perry Ellis was in custody; Jane Osborne would verify the stranger's identity when she returned from a work detail; and what made a grounds keeper think she was vital to the center?

  Abby's reply was a brilliant bit of temporizing. The center would need expert maintenance of its grounds equipment for latrine trenches and protective earth ramps, and someone to coordinate it with the computer. She and her cousin, Ted Quantrill, could operate heavy equipment and the diagnostic machines that made breakdowns few and far between. She and her cousin would wait in the camper for Ms. Osborne's return.

  Sliding back into the Chevy's cab, they rolled up the windows and exchanged a quick handsqueeze. "I hope you know how to operate heavy equipment, 'cause I can't even drive. You sure you want to go in there?"

  Drumming fingertips on the doorsill: "All I know is, a lot of people can stay alive there. It used to be a center for civil defense studies. I suspect they aren't overcrowded, and they don't intend to be. Ellis in custody, hm? It takes a decision from the Governor to initiate martial law, Ted, and we haven't heard anything about that. I think it's a scam — but a damned effective one. Once we get inside we're going to be like prison inmates. But we can still stick together. It's got all the advantages of organization, and all the disadvantages too."

  A swatch of Ray Kenney's sarcasm, invented to spite a scout leader, popped into Quantrill's head. "Every hour is a sixty-minute asskiss," he quoted.

  "It beats radiation poisoning," she said. "If you know a better place to go, tell me."

  Until that moment Quantrill had thought of himself as an uncomplicated risk-taker; the sort of loner who would always gamble against long odds rather than submit to regimentation. Suddenly and with startling clarity he saw that, when the risk was not a bloody nose but life itself, he could be downright conservative. "I'll go with you," he said, adding with sudden concern, "if they'll let me."

  "Why wouldn't they? Gorgeous young specimen like you," she grinned. She learned why they wouldn't, five minutes later.

  Without preamble the bullhorn crackled: "ABIGAIL DRUMMOND, YOU ARE VERIFIED AS A SEASONAL EMPLOYEE. YOUR SKILLS ARE USEFUL, IF NOT VITAL. IF YOU'RE AN IMPOSTOR YOU WILL BE SHOT, LADY, DON'T THINK WE WON'T. SEND YOUR COUSIN AWAY; WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY MEN."

  Abby and Quantrill exchanged a long stare. Abby got out of the Chevy, called toward the van: "I'll drive him back to town."

  After a long pause the bullhorn said, "GOOD DECISION."

  Cursing, Abby drove back toward town. "Already have too many men, do they? I don't like the sound of that. And they have my personnel records so they know my age and what I look like. Now where do we go?"

  Quan trill stroked her hair. "I go away, and you go in there."

  "You're kidding. I'd be petrified in there if you weren't with me. Janie's the fainting type; no help in a tight spot."

  They passed an all-hours market. Behind a shattered glass front they could see a man cradling a deer rifle. “At least I'll have a few days' food," he went on as if he hadn't heard. “If you don't like it there it should be easy to get out."

  "That's an idea," she said, and turned onto a secondary road, talking quickly. Minutes later she drove the Chevy off the road toward a copse of wilting trees and coasted to a stop. "Just past here is the perimeter fence, Ted. They may have sentries, but we have eyes, too. There's a drainage ditch from the maintenance shops that'd hide me almost to the fence. We could set up rendezvous, say at dark, and toss some blankets over the barbed wire to get you in. You could hide for weeks in the tunnels, maybe mix with the others. Or we could get me out, depending how it looks inside."

  They spent a half-hour going over alternatives. Whether it took Abby a half-day or three days to make rendezvous, they were faced with the fact that Quantrill could not drive. Their last half-hour was spent teaching him, a cram session that left them both irritable.

  "At least you're not slamming the brakes anymore," she said as he drove, overcorrecting, toward the gate. "Wait.

  Stop here and turn around, Ted; sure as hell they'll demand the Chevy as an entrance fee. I'll walk from here."

  Sweating with concentration, Quantrill got the vehicle pointed back toward town. “Abby," he said as she slid out. She paused, managed a wan smile. "Abby, I never said I love you, did I?"

  Airily, misunderstanding: "I'd never ask you to tell such a whopper for a one-night stand, Ted. Cheers." She turned away.

  In the distance the bullhorn was blustering. Quantrill ignored it. "But it's not a lie," he shouted, protesting.

  "Don't say it, Ted," she said, not turning. "It wouldn't help."
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br />   He watched her retreat, holding herself unnaturally erect, and realized that she was compensating for simple terror. He drove away quickly, aware that in another moment he would have called her back in panic. Whatever happened, he told himself, at least Abby had reached her sanctuary.

  Quantrill took two wrong turns before finding the bungalow, let himself in with Abby's key, assured himself that the telephone line was still active even without house current. It had been Abby's idea that she might be able to phone him. He spent an hour taping seams in Abby's bedroom, stacking books and magazines against the outside wall, listening to his radio quantify the gradual rise in radiation in the area. He found a certain satisfaction in anger over their decision, the night before, to sleep in the garage. It would have been so much better, infinitely more voluptuous, to writhe with Abby between sheets. On impulse he pulled back her coverlet, thrust his face against her pillow; inhaled. It did not smell of her presence, but mustily of her absence.

  Quantrill did not understand how much the human organism is sexually provoked by sudden social change. He knew only an enormous need, and lying in Abby's bed his daydream led him to assuage that need. He felt guilty afterward, as always — but felt relieved as well.

  Sundown found Quantrill piling blankets on the Chevy's seat. This time he ran over only a few curbs and took only one wrong turn before parking the little camper near their rendezvous point. He had moved stealthily on foot into the grove of small trees, was estimating where he could most easily drive up to the chain-link fence, when he first heard the delta approaching.

  It came as a faint hiss, then a whirr, then the susurrus often billion sopranos whispering in the dusk. When he finally looked to the west the tiling was nearly overhead. The yellow delta slid down its invisible glidepath like a sharply defined cloud, rocking very slightly in warm evening breezes, a rigid polymer-skinned dirigible the length of two football fields, powered by external multiblade propellers. Quantrill had seen the fat spade-shaped cargo craft many times, but always at great distance. Even with its elevons canted and its engine pods gimbaling for thrust vector control, a delta did not look like a steerable craft; certainly not like one that could winch sixty thousand kilos of cargo into its belly and skate away into the sky at the speed of a fast monorail.