The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Kyla looked back at me with a smile over her shoulder as she walked ahead in the grocery store. We were both bundled up to the gills, though amidst all of the other chaos that had been going on for the past five days somehow her things had still been delivered—the storage containers were starting to get stuffed with all the luggage of the girls that had been added on top of the stuff from my old house. Now Kyla had her own clothing again, so she was able to bundle up with her own clothes instead of borrowing things from the others.

That look she gave me turned saucy as she checked ahead of herself again, and then looked back and reached down and flashed me her ass. Her warm-hued cheeks wiggled as she walked, mostly bare except for the thin band of her thong.

“You are such trouble,” I laughed.

She gave one extra little booty shake and then pulled her pants back up, turning and grinning at me, though I could only see it through her eyes since we both had on medical masks over bandanas. Sometimes I could forget that Kyla was barely 22 years old and just out of college, and that she wasn’t just the mysterious Filipino Intelligence background that loomed over our relationship.

“But I’m your trouble now,” she teased me.

I reached out a gloved hand to her and she took it, squeezing our fingers for a moment as we walked, and then we went back to filling the cart.

We had nine mouths to feed between the two RVs, plus I wanted to drop off some extra supplies to Mary and the kids. Based on what I’d figured out in context between what Mary said, I knew that she was trying to stretch things a bit. I couldn’t blame her—I was basically their sole source of meals. The state-wide shutdown on evictions meant that they weren’t going to get kicked out or foreclosed on any time soon so they had shelter, but I could understand a single mom being worried that the charity could end at any time.

“Fruit Loops or Trix?” I asked, holding up the two cereal boxes to Kyla.

“For Ivy or for the kids?” Kyla asked.

I snorted and put them both in the cart. Ivy, despite currently holding the ‘smallest woman in the family’ certificate, could eat like a horse and she had a sweet tooth. She worked hard to let herself do it—she had a whole body weight only exercise routine that she followed almost every day to keep her soft but lean figure—but the number of empty carbs she could put away was still a little astounding.

To be fair, most of the cart was packed with fruits and veggies. We would do a pickup at the butchers before heading to Mary’s, so we were just going down the middle of the store looking for any other staples we might be missing. Peanut butter and jam went in the cart—doubles of both, with one set destined for Mary. A couple of large bags of coffee. Kyla’s preferred tea was in stock, so we grabbed two boxes of that. Aria had asked us to pick up ingredients because she swore she could make pizza on the barbeque for us. I was sceptical, but a good pizza wouldn’t go amiss so I was willing to try.

“I really like this,” Kyla said.

“What’s that?” I asked, trying to figure out what she was looking at on the shelves.

She turned and stopped me pushing the cart, sliding herself into my arms and hugging me loosely around the waist. “This,” she said. “Even with the masks and everything. Grocery shopping with you. Running errands. It’s all so normal. I think you’d have fun doing it in Manila though, it’s more of an adventure.”

I grinned behind my mask and leaned down to press my forehead to hers. “Maybe we’ll get a chance one day,” I said. “But I like this too, babe.”

Her eyes narrowed a bit and the bridge of her nose crinkled. “Not babe,” she said. “That’s what Erica calls you. Something else.”

“Sugarplum?” I suggested.

She rolled her eyes.

“Snookums?”

“What does that mean?” she asked, slipping her arm through mine so we could start walking again.

“No idea,” I said. “I think it’s made up.”

“Then no,” she said.

I sighed dramatically. “Maybe we’ll just need to let it come natura—”

Shouting from the front of the store cut me off. I frowned and glanced ahead down the aisle but couldn’t see anything. I picked up the pace and Kyla followed, slipping her arm from mine and spreading out to the walk quickly on the other side of the aisle from me and the buggy. It was tough to hear what exactly was going on, but someone was obviously agitated and other people were reacting to it. When we reached the end of the aisle it was clear that the shouting was off to the right near the front doors.

I left the cart there, crossing to Kyla’s side, and we peeked around the corner.

Just inside the front door, the man who had to be the manager was getting screamed at by a pair of rough-and-tumble-looking hicks. Neither man looked like they had shaved for a couple of weeks and they seemed more likely to be encountered out on a hunting trip than in town. They were both very much not wearing masks as they shouted and made a fuss, gesturing wildly as the dress-shirt-wearing, mask-protected store manager tried to convince them they couldn’t walk around like they were. I heard big buzzwords like ‘constitutional’ and ‘freedom of travel’ and other drivel that I’d been hearing from hicks angry at the law since I was a kid. To be fair, almost any redneck or hick had a bit of a bent towards the ‘sovereign citizen’ idea—if I wasn’t rational enough I may have ended up down that rabbit hole if I hadn’t made the deal with Greerson and they’d forced me off my family land.

Being told what to do by the government didn’t go over well with folks like me and these guys. The big difference between us was that I had a few more brain cells to rub together and see the holes in their screamed arguments.

“Fucking assholes,” I grunted softly.

“Harrison, I can literally feel what you’re thinking right now,” Kyla said. “The store has security for this.”

“I’m pretty sure their security is a couple of pimple-faced teens and that manager,” I said. As we watched, the manager threw his arms up in the air and started yelling back at the two guys, giving up on all semblance of de-escalation.

“’Scuse me, folks,” said a voice forcefully behind us. I turned and found myself mask-to-face with Barry O’Callahan. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months and it looked like he’d dropped a bit of weight, though not enough to be considered ‘fit’ by any means. His cart was full of stuff that looked like he’d just scooped it right off the shelf and into the cart.

“Barry?” I asked. His lack of a mask was concerning, though at that moment I had to guess he was affiliated with the two still yelling at the front of the store.

“Oh, Harrison! What’s up?” Barry greeted me with a grin. “You wanna walk and talk? I’m on a time crunch here.”

I glanced at Kyla, who just raised an eyebrow at me, so I gestured for her to stay with our cart while I followed Barry.

“You never came out to the Beaver,” Barry said as I followed him down the next aisle. He pulled up in front of the cans of soup and started yanking them quickly out of the little dispenser things, tossing them haphazardly into his cart. “Seriously, my man. With your time in the military, I bet you’d fit right in with the guys. You should really come hang out or something.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Barry, what’s with the no-mask thing?”

“Hah! They really do have you fooled, huh?” Barry laughed. He was already moving up the aisle headed for the tinned pasta. “The whole disease thing is just a sham. A false flag thing to get us all compliant. It’s the fault of the cities, really. Too many people packed in too tight, and everyone getting so liberal the real power brokers felt like they were losing their grip on us. So they come up with a ‘pandemic’ to make us all too afraid of our own shadows to organize.”

“Dude, I’ve seen the deaths,” I said. “My girlfriend’s apartment complex in Portland is half-empty. People I know are dead.”

“Dead, or just missing?” Barry asked flippantly. “Word is, the government is forcibly moving people around. Pulling them out of cities under the cover of night. We’re still trying to figure out where the camps are, but we’ll find them.”

He moved another aisle over, and we were in the frozen section. He pulled an entire stack of Hungry Man microwave meals out and reached for another.

“You realise you sound insane right now, right?” I asked.

“Hey, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction,” Barry shrugged. “What’s more likely, that the entire human race is at risk, or the government is lying to us again?”

The problem with arguing with a conspiracy theorist was that there was always just enough kernel of truth to make the conspiracy plausible. Based on my interactions with Agent Greerson, the government was definitely lying, or at least causing a lack of information, with the goal of maintaining order. But after what I’d seen and experienced at the site, not to mention the very large amount of money the government paid me for my land, the pandemic was also very real.

“What if it’s both?” I asked.

“Not likely,” Barry shrugged. “Dude, you should totally come up to the Beaver. We’ve got a whole set of evidence tracked out, like cops do for investigations. What do they call it… a murder board? Yeah, something like that. Seriously, it’s wild the shit that they are hiding from us.”

Barry was heading for the front of the store now and walked right past the cashier tills. The two guys were still arguing loudly with the manager, along with a couple of other workers who were trying to get them to leave.

“Not going to pay either, huh?” I asked.

“Hey, when society breaks down,” Barry shrugged. Another guy dressed similar to the two shouters and Barry came from the other direction, his cart full of loaves of bread and boxes of soda and what had to be half the twinkie display.

I stopped about a dozen feet from the confrontation and Barry just kept right on going, walking his cart past the manager as the grocery store employees got even more upset. The two shouters were smirking now, taunting them, as they followed Barry and the other cart-pusher out of the store. The manager was almost entirely red-faced and looked like he might have an aneurysm as he stormed off to a back office.

I was standing near a cashier and I turned to her. “No one called the cops?” I asked.

She shrugged. “They don’t show up, or if they do it’s too late and they tell us to file an insurance claim.”

I sighed heavily and went looking for Kyla. Apparently, Barry and the assholes were escalating their assholery and adding wingnut conspiracies to the list.

“Happy one month and four days anniversary, babe,” I said, clinking mugs with Erica.

We were alone, out on the edge of the forest. After returning from our grocery run I had gotten to work on my plan—step one had been moving the portable fire pit out here, followed by a couple of the lawn chairs. The others had kept Erica busy while I was doing it, and when I had led her out of the compound at dinner she hadn’t expected anything. I’d already had the fire crackling, and a ‘fancy dinner’ set as best I could on a TV Tray between the chairs, draped in a much too large tablecloth, with the fancy china and silverware that had been passed down through my family. We’d eaten and watched the sunset, and then as the stars started to come out Erica had insisted on sitting on the ground, her leaning back between my legs, as we sipped our cold beers and looked up at the night sky.

“I can’t believe it’s only been a month,” Erica sighed.

“And four days,” I pointed out with a smile.

“And four days,” she grinned. “You know, I’m not going to stand for one year and four days.”

“One year exactly,” I promised her, hugging around her waist and leaning down to kiss her temple.

“Unless the world really falls apart, obviously,” she teased. “Then I think I’ll forgive you.”

“Thanks,” I chuckled.

She turned back, pulling me into a proper kiss. “Marry me?” she asked.

I blinked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she nodded. “We wasted years. This month has had more ups and downs than an elevator, but there’s nothing more that I want than you, and this.”

I pulled her into a kiss, hugging her tightly. I wasn’t sure how I would have asked her—I wasn’t a big fancy dinner, make a spectacle of it kind of guy. I likely would have overthought it, and tried too hard to make it special.

“Yes,” I said.

We made love on the grass at the edge of the trees, the fire dimming to coals and the stars and moon our only real light. When we woke up the next morning with the dawn we were covered in a blanket, still naked.

“Kyla,” Erica explained as she stretched under the blanket.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because I told her I was going to ask you,” she said. “She was happy for us.”

“But you didn’t know about the date,” I said. Erica just gave me a look and a smile, and I shook my head. She’d known the whole time.

We made love again, and then held each other afterwards and talked logistics. I could afford whatever we wanted in terms of a wedding now but with the world the way it was it didn’t make sense. Even if we’d gotten together a year ago we’d have wanted a small ceremony anyways, just our close friends and family. I had a couple of old military buddies I’d have liked to invite, she had some tattooist friends she knew across the country.

We’d do a ceremony down the line if the world got better. My sister was the biggest part of the equation since we didn’t want her to miss it. Neither of us had living parents anymore, and extended family connections were lacking.

“I love you,” she whispered against my lips as I agreed to let her tattoo my ring on my finger. “Fiance.”

“I love you too, future Mrs Erica Black,” I whispered back.

“Erica Lacosta-Black,” she said, then shook her head. “Ehn, doesn’t flow. Mrs Erica Black it is.”

“Happy one month and three days anniversary, ma dulcinee,” I said, hugging Ivy to me as the credits rolled on the movie.

She turned in my lap and kissed me softly. “Happy anniversary, mon amour,” she hummed happily.

My date with Ivy had taken a little more work than with Erica, but it was mostly digging around in the storage containers to find the right stuff. The flatscreen needed our longest extension cord, and finding the old DVDs proved harder than I expected since I wasn’t sure what box they’d ended up in.

I couldn’t bring Ivy out on a true Dinner and a Movie experience, but I manufactured a Drive-In experience of our own. It… worked. Sort of. We had the TV blasting, and were pretty much backed up right in front of the screen as we sat and cuddled on blankets in the bed of the truck. The popcorn was microwaved, but I’d melted real butter to drizzle on top, and I’d found a couple of old oversized plastic cups to hold our sodas.

“Je t’aime,” she whispered with a smile, stroking her fingers through my beard. Erica had finally decided earlier that day that she preferred it shorter and I’d been allowed to trim it back down and clean it up. Vanessa and Kyla had both been thankful for that, but Ivy had admitted she kind of wanted to see how long it could get so that she could braid it and make me look like a viking.

“Je t’aime,” I whispered back, stroking her lower back with one hand under her shirt.

“Harrison, I want you to know, I don’t expect a proposal,” she said.

I cocked my head.

“I just mean, don’t feel like because we are in love, and you and Erica are in love, that we need to be the same,” she said, putting her hands on my chest and looking at me in the dark. The light from the TV shimmered in her eyes. “I don’t need to feel… even with her, I think is what you would say?”

I hugged her harder, and with more purpose. “Thank you, ma dulcinée,” I mumbled quietly. It had been on my mind a bit since Erica had asked me. I still hadn’t had time to really come to grips with it and figure out how I felt. I was still having a hard time computing the four different relationships I was in, let alone things like what a marriage would look like. Marrying two women was illegal in Oregon as far as I was aware. I stroked the curls away from her face and just looked down at Ivy as she smiled at me. “You are an absolute wonder, you know that?”

She pursed her lips, air-kissing to me. “And you are my big, lovable grizzly,” she said. “Fierce and strong and proud, but fuzzy and huggable.” She hugged me back, pressing her cheek to my chest.

“Do you want to watch another movie?” I asked.

She shook her head without pulling away from the hug, and then changed her mind and nodded. “One more,” she said. “But something sexy.”

“OK, let me see what I can find.”

Dirty Dancing had been one of my mother’s favourites and was probably the sexiest DVD we’d kept.

Ivy loved it.

By the time the credits were rolling we were naked and she was licking her way up my cock, gazing up into my eyes with the same ‘hungry eyes’ from the famous montage scene. She shifted higher, straddling my waist and reaching back to wedge my cock between her tight little ass cheeks to tease me with some dry humping, and grinned. “One day, I am going to dance for you,” she said. “My best lap dance ever. And the first song you can’t touch, but the second one you can touch me wherever you want.”

We kissed, and she slipped my cock into her ass with that soft little pleased grunt of hers, and we had slow but hot sex late into the night. And for the second night in a row I fell asleep naked and outside under the stars with a woman I loved.

“Did you hear about what happened on the Rez?” Fuller called to me as I was making my pickup. We were edging closer to the middle of June and the heat had just kept climbing and climbing, so he was waiting until we pulled into the parking lot before he brought out the three big paper sacks of our order.

“No,” I said, thinking he must have been talking about the protest from last month. “What happened?”

“Aw, man. It’s pretty awful. From what I hear, some racist fucks broke into their community centre and lit the place on fire, then in the commotion they snuck into a bunch of the houses and RVs and stole shit. There’s a bunch of injuries from trying to fight the fire, and I guess they were running a food bank out of the centre and some guys were trying to get the food out when the whole place collapsed.”

“Fuck,” I said, but it didn’t do enough justice to what I was feeling.

My heart had dropped into my stomach, and I kind of hated that the first thing that came to mind was a fear that Kara might be dead. She would absolutely be one of those people, inside a burning building, trying to salvage anything they could before they lost it all. Even after everything, after the way we broke up, after the lawsuits and the protests, after last month… she was my first in almost everything.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Fuller nodded, unable to see my expression behind my mask at this distance. “Shit’s totally fucked. Word is the Rez Cops don’t have any leads, and the Statey’s don’t have the manpower to help out. Whoever did it is getting away with it.”

I thanked Fuller for the news and loaded up the groceries. When I got back in the cab of the truck Vanessa turned down the radio, concern bringing her eyebrows down into a furrow as she picked up on my mood immediately. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Aria was in the back seat and leaned forward. Neither woman was bundled up and were supposed to just be along for the ride and the chance to get off the property. It had been over a week now since the outbreak and every couple of days there were some National Guard who trucked in to accomplish one task or another, but based on Brent’s talks with Vanessa the work wasn’t going to start spinning back up for another week at least. That left us all feeling just a little cooped up, and so we’d been spreading out our reasons to go into town and who would make the trip. Yesterday Leo, Erica and India had hit up the pharmacy. Today Vanessa was dressed in jean daisy dukes and a black bikini top, her long dark hair pulled back in a french braid, while Aria was in a thin white tank top (and, to my dismay, no bra so her large breasts were teasing me in the rearview mirror) and some spandex workout shorts.

“It’s—”

“It’s clearly not nothing,” Vanessa cut me off. “So you can just spill it, or when we get back I’ll get Erica to get it out of you.”

I snorted and chuckled a little. “There was a fire over on the Rez, and it sounds like it was on purpose and whoever did it used it as a distraction to rob a bunch of homes. But at least a few people died.”

“Shit,” Vanessa sighed, sitting back in her seat. “When?”

“Fuller didn’t say, but I assume the last day or two,” I said. “Sounded like it was fresh news.”

“That’s awful,” Aria said from the back seat. “Do you know anyone from up there?”

“Boy, does he,” Vanessa grumbled. She was grimacing and texting on her phone with what I could only describe as agitated thumbs.

“What does that mean?” Aria asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Short version is my high school ex is an important member of the Rez community.”

“And she believes in a generational grudge against Harri’s family and tried to protest the construction,” Vanessa said. “And she got spanked by the military for it.”

“.... Yikes,” Aria said.

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” I sighed. Then my phone rang and I fished it out of my pocket. “It’s Erica,” I said and thumbed the call onto speaker phone.

“Hey,” I said.

“Harri, just go up there,” Erica said.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t play coy,” Erica sighed. “You need to know, so go find out. Unless you think calling her is enough.”

“Erica—”

“This is from all of us,” Erica cut me off. “You’ve got Vanessa with you, and she’s looking hot. Not to mention Aria. So just go up to the Rez and find out if Kara is alive, and ask if there’s anything you can do to help because obviously that’s what your gut is telling you to do. You have our blessings, OK?”

I looked over at Vanessa, who shrugged as if to say ‘What did you expect?’

“Alright, Mrs Black,” I said, teasing her just a little.

“That’s Mrs Black, Ma’am to you, soldier,” she teased me back and I could hear the smile on her lips.

“Love you,” I signed off.

“Love you too,” she said and hung up the call.

“Really, that fast?” I asked Vanessa.

“Better than you stewing over it for the next couple of days,” Vanessa said, then got a thoughtful look. “Then again, when you’re stewing over something you are just that bit more intense when you fuck. You’re right, we should definitely ignore this and go back.”

Aria broke into a brief snicker in the back seat and I just rolled my eyes. “Alright. Next stop, the Rez,” I said.

I hadn’t driven up the road to the Rez for going on fifteen years. Little things had changed, but mostly it was the same. There were some new signs. A couple of holes in the treeline I didn’t remember. Some of the woods had been cut back on the right hand for a stretch where new power lines had gone in.

“The last time I made this drive, I was trying to figure out Kara’s message to me. We broke up right there,” I said, pointing at an overhanging little rockface. “She didn’t want me coming any further up at the time. Said it wasn’t fair for me to step on their land after my family stole some of theirs.”

“Sounds like angry teenage bullshit to me,” Aria said.

“Sounds like just plain angry bullshit in my book,” Vanessa countered. “You didn’t see the protest.”

There wasn’t an entrance to the main Rez community so much as a sign and a little information kiosk that could be set up to act as a ticket booth when the tribe held cultural events. Apparently, someone had decided to use it to build a barricade and now there was only one lane worth of traffic for someone to go in and out. A couple of big, angry native guys were manning it, and one held up a hand for us to stop as we approached.

I pulled the truck to a halt and rolled down the window.

“Rez is closed to outsiders,” the guy said, leaning down to look in the window. He was wearing big, dark sunglasses so I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me, or glancing over to Vanessa in the passenger seat in her less-than-appropriate clothing for being out and about.

I wasn’t sure of the legality behind closing the reservation off to outsiders, but I wasn’t about to argue with the guy. “Understandable,” I said. “I’m here to see Kara Swiftwater. Any shot that can happen quickly?”

He considered us for another long moment and then nodded and my heart gave a thump in my chest because that meant she wasn’t dead. “She’ll be up at the community centre. You know where that is?”

“I think I remember,” I said.

“Alright. If you’re not back through in fifteen minutes we’ll come looking for you,” the guy said.

“Noted,” I nodded.

He backed off and waved me through.

“I’m getting major bad vibes from this,” Aria said.

“I know,” I said, driving up the road past the old parking areas used for the festivals. I made the turn but second-guessed myself when I couldn’t see the structure of the community centre I was supposed to go to.

Then I realized it hadn’t just been a fire. The whole place had come down.

I had to park a ways back from the blackened structure. It wasn’t smoking and there weren’t any fires going or anything, but both of the Rez ambulances were on standby and there had to be a hundred people working together trying to pick through the wreckage.

Turning to the girls, I grabbed Vanessa’s hand. “Do me a favour and stay in the truck,” I said.

Aria nodded, and Vanessa looked like she wanted to argue for a second but took another glance outside and then nodded. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a rescue operation, or a place where a tragedy had just happened.

I got out of the truck and rolled my shoulders uncomfortably, looking around. Several people were staring at me, and the last thing I needed was someone recognizing me as the guy who they’d so recently been protesting. I took one heavy breath and started walking towards what looked like the tent where they were doing most of the organizing efforts.

I didn’t get far—Kara apparently heard that someone was coming to see her, and when she saw me in the parking lot she glanced around as well as if checking if anyone had seen me and then speed-walked over. She was dressed in jeans and boots, with a grey tank top and a collection of bead and feather necklaces. For a second I thought she had work gloves on, but as she got closer I realized her hands were bandaged, along with one of her arms past her elbow. She also wasn’t wearing a mask, and from a distance it looked like only half of the people around were.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as she came into angry-whispering distance. “I’ve got enough problems going on, Harri. I can’t deal with you gloating over the protest.”

“Fuck me,” I grunted in frustration. “Seriously, Kara? You really think that low of me?”

Her anger immediately broke into embarrassment. “I- Sorry,” she sighed in frustration. “No, you wouldn’t. But there’s a lot going on and that military bitch—”

“Refused to prosecute anyone, and made sure all your vehicles got brought back here,” I cut her off. “And she also happens to be someone I respect, so how about you take one fucking breath and we actually talk for a second before your big guys from the entrance come looking for me.”

Kara pursed her lips and closed her eyes, actually taking my advice and sucking in a deep breath and blowing it out. “Why are you here, Harri?” she asked once she opened her eyes.

“I heard what happened,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure you were OK. What happened with your hands, were you inside?”

“No,” she said. “I was outside coordinating people when the roof gave out. We thought we had more time. I got burned trying to dig people out.”

“Shit,” I sighed. Of course she did. “I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that, I’ll start asking where you were two nights ago,” she grimaced.

I rubbed my forehead for a second, looking over at the scorched wreckage. “How many?”

“Eight,” she said quietly, looking back over her shoulder. “We’ve only found four so far.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because it’s a shitty situation and you can call me a masochist for offering,” I said tightly.

She softened a bit more, her stance shifting a little uneasily as she realized she just kept antagonizing me. “Harri, I’m sorry,” she admitted.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked her again.

“Unless you’ve got a shitload of food to help feed a bunch of people, or know who did it, I don’t think so,” she said.

“Send someone over to my truck, I was out doing a quick run to Fuller’s butcher shop when I found out about everything,” I said.

“Harri, a few burgers or a couple of steaks aren’t going to put a dent in things,” she sighed.

“I’ve got three big bags of meat,” I said. “Do you want it or not? It’ll feed maybe twenty-five people in one go, thirty if you stretch it.”

She hesitated but then nodded. “Thanks.”

“None necessary,” I said. “Anything I can do for you? And I do mean you, Kara. I know you’re not thinking of yourself at all right now.”

“No, I’m fine,” she shook her head. “I’ve got a couple of gals cleaning up my place for me, and they’ll stick around to help me while my hands heal up.”

“Yours was one of the houses that got robbed?” I asked.

She nodded. “Didn’t get much of value other than my wallet,” she said. “I’m not even sure what they thought they were going to find. But they sure made a mess looking for it.”

I blew out a long breath from behind my mask. “OK, well, let me know if there’s anything.”

“There won’t be, Harri. Just…” she paused, reaching up to shift a bit of her hair from her face awkwardly with her bandaged hands. I stepped forward and did it for her after she couldn’t get it, tucking the hair behind her ear. That just made her sigh. “Thank you for coming to check. You didn’t need to do that.”

“I did,” I said. “If I didn’t you would have been living in my head rent-free and my fiancee would have gotten annoyed.”

“Fiancee?” Kara asked in surprise.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Uhm, you met her kind of that first time you came by last month. Her name’s Erica.”

“The white lady with the tits?” she asked.

“Yeah, Kara,” I said. “The white lady with the tits. How would you like it if she started calling you ‘your native ex’ or something? Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, sorry, I just—” Kara huffed. “There were just two white women there that time, the construction one and the- your fiancee. I thought the construction one had a thing for you.”

“Yeah, well, we’re seeing each other now,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s a whole thing,” I said.

“You’re Poly?” Kara asked incredulously. “You, Harrison Black, whose father was the staunchest conservative hick stick-in-the-mud ever, are Poly?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.

“Sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I bet it is.”

“You know what? Just forget it,” I said, starting to turn and walk away.

“Harri! Harri, I’m sorry. Look, it’s a little shocking, you have to admit. Finding out the one who got away is seeing two good-looking women,” she said.

“The one who got away?” I asked.

“Oh, fuck,” she said, and this time it was her who turned to start walking away, but she pivoted back after taking a breath. “Yeah. Sort of. I’ve dated a couple of guys, but it never got as serious as I wanted. So over the years you’ve kind of overshadowed a lot of my first dates. Even back then you were a lot to compare a guy to.”

A radio crackled and Kara fumbled to pull it off of the back of her belt. She got it but winced a little at gripping it through her bandages. “Repeat that?” she asked.

I couldn’t tell what was said, but she grimaced and I could see the walls come back up. Walls that I hadn’t seen weaken or slacken in well over a decade. “I need to go,” she said.

“Just like that?”

“They found another body,” Kara said.

“Shit. Or good, I guess,” I sighed.

“Both. Neither,” she said.

“Maybe next time we can try to find a way not to need to keep apologising to each other,” I said.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. The walls were firmly in place again, not a crack in sight. “You sure about the food?”

“Yeah, send someone over. I can spare it,” I said. “Just do me a favour?”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Wear a fucking mask,” I said. “This shit is real. You all need to take it more seriously. I’ve seen it myself and it’s bad.” I fished an extra medical mask out of my jacket pocket and held it out to her.

She hesitated for a long moment, and I knew every instinct in her wanted to argue. Wanted to tell me anything the government told her had to be a lie. But she looked me up and down, sweating my ass off in full-length clothing with a bandana and a medical mask over my mouth and nose during the hottest summer the North West had seen in decades. “Alright,” she said and sighed heavily as she took the mask. “Thanks, Harri.”

Huh, I thought as she walked back towards the burned-down community centre and the dozens of people working to clear the rubble. Maybe there is a crack.

I texted Fuller as I walked back to the truck that I was going to need to make another pickup. At this rate, I had to be his favourite fucking customer.

“You did what you could, babe,” Erica said. She was sitting behind me on the bed, running her fingers through my hair and occasionally massaging my scalp. We were alone, the others giving us some space. Vanessa must have texted Erica what was going on as we drove back in a soft silence. I’d told her and Aria what little information I’d had, and I guess they could feel my mood because there wasn’t any teasing or jokes afterwards.

“I shouldn’t need to do anything,” I said.

“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

Things were getting worse and no one was doing anything. Or they were, but the stuff they were doing was so high-level that all of the little things were getting missed. Which Senators or Congresspeople were paying attention to what happened out in the rural sticks? Miriam was able to mobilize the fucking National Guard in hours, which meant they were already active, but where were they?

The answer was obvious—they were dealing with the cities, or waiting in staging areas for events like the outbreak or the protest. Probably quarantined away when they weren’t in hazmat suits.

“It’s not your fight, Harri,” Erica whispered.

I leaned back against her, feeling her chest press against my back. We were fully clothed, but I could still feel her. It made me crack a little smile.

“You know, she called you ‘the white lady with the tits?’” I asked.

“Well, I guess she isn’t wrong,” Erica chuckled.

I turned and rested my head on those tits, and Erica hugged me to her. “I still feel like I should be doing something,” I said.

“Of course you do,” she said, stroking my shoulder. “Because you’ve got a hero complex. And it’s attractive as hell when it isn’t pissing me off or making me worried.”

The RV door opened down the length of the vehicle and Vanessa stepped in. “You guys OK?” she asked.

“We are,” Erica said, waving her down to us.

Vanessa kicked off her shoes at the door into the messy pile of shoes and sandals that we’d built up there, and on her way back to us she pulled off her bikini top. Now half-naked, she crawled onto the bed and up to rest her head on the pillows next to Erica. Her casual nudity was a heart-warming sexiness, knowing she was comfortable with us like that.

“I just talked with my Dad,” she said, reaching over and running her hand through my hair for a moment, pulling a long lock of it back out of my face. “He said there’s probably another week still until work is going to start on refabbing the dorms, but I guess it’s a good thing because changes are coming down.”

“What kind of changes?” Erica asked.

“Pretty much everything,” Vanessa shrugged. “Fewer lots and houses, but bigger. He can’t figure out why and no one is telling him, but we’re going from McMansions to McMansion Deluxes with Cheese.”

That made me snort a little. “Really?” I asked.

Vanessa grinned and shrugged. “He thinks in terms of food. All the architects are in a dither I guess. They were off-site so their team wasn’t impacted. The surveyors and planners are shitting bricks though, needing to rework all their maps while they are all quarantined away in hotels with their new partners. Dad says an order came down that our house is going to be big as fuck, though. I told him I was going to want to see any plans because there’s no fucking way I’m letting a random architect design my house without some input.”

“Good idea,” Erica smiled. She leaned over and softly kissed Vanessa, who accepted with a little smile. “Let us know if you want help.”

“Help, no. Input, yes,” Vanessa said. “I’ll make sure we get everything we need.”

We cuddled there for a bit, and then Erica’s top came off, and soon I was under the both of them with Vanessa moaning on my cock and Erica’s delicious, slippery pussy leaking onto my tongue. It was an excellent way to end a shitty afternoon.

I woke with a start, grunting a little as I blinked awake at the sudden noise ringing through the bedroom. It took me a second to realize it was my phone, and all four of my girls were blinking themselves awake as well.

“The fuck?” I groaned. Ivy shifted to let me move, having practically fallen asleep on top of me, and I reached over Erica for my phone. I had to blink a few times to see the call display was Mary, and it was two in the morning.

I thumbed it open, wondering if maybe she was drunk dialling me. We’d dropped off a couple of bottles of wine the last time we’d been there and had only finished one with her as we sat on her front lawn. She’d been happy to hear about Erica and I, and we didn’t go overboard explaining the whole situation. It had felt like back before the pandemic, introducing my girlfriend to people I knew, even if I hadn’t seen Mary since high school. Erica had made it a point of being extra friendly and warm; and not with her customer service personality. Stronger, more personable. By the time we’d left Mary’s eyes had been brimming she’d enjoyed ‘adult time’ so much and we promised to do it again.

“Mary?” I asked drowsily.

“Harrison,” she said, and the panic in her voice immediately had me sitting up. “Harrison, I don’t know what to do. 911 is busy, I don’t know what to do!?”

“Hold on, Mary,” I said, sitting up and starting to scoot my way to the end of the bed. “One step at a time. One big breath, in and out, and tell me what’s happening.”

She did, though the sound of the breath was wavery. “There’s men,” she said. “Breaking into houses down the street. I think they’re going house by house.”

“How many houses away?” I asked, scrambling to yank up my jeans while keeping the phone to my ear. Hands appeared from behind me and deftly got them up and buttoned them. Erica was on her knees on the bed helping me out, and Ivy was already finding a shirt and tossing it to me. Vanessa slipped past me, flicking on the light for the bedroom and quickly walking naked into the main area of the RV, getting my boots out of the pile of shoes by the door.

“About ten, I think?” Mary said. “They’ve only been through a couple, but I keep trying 911 and it keeps going to a busy signal. What should I do?”

“How long have you been trying?” I asked.

“Ten minutes, maybe?”

I got my shirt on and realized Kyla was also getting dressed. She gave me a look not to argue with her.

“I’m on my way. Get the kids up, go hide in the backyard. Try and get something heavy between you and the house, like a shed or something. And no matter what you hear, don’t come out until I call you on your cell, OK?”

“OK,” she mumbled. “OK. Please hurry.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

Kyla was out the door first, and I paused at the door of the RV as I worked my boots on to look back at Erica and Ivy sitting on the bed.

“Go,” Erica said. “Do what you need to do.”

“Be careful, mon amour,” Ivy said, holding Erica’s hand.

Vanessa had disappeared outside as well, and I found her and Kyla in the storage container at the gun safe. I must have missed her grabbing it, but Vanessa was only mostly-naked now with one of my button-down shirts thrown over her shoulders. “Should I go get Dani?” she asked.

Kyla, turning with my DDM4 in one hand and the Remington 700 in the other, shook her head.

“To hell with that,” Dani said, stepping into the storage container behind me. “What’s going on? Erica texted me.” She was dressed in plain grey sweats that she still somehow looked sexy in.

“There’s looters or something down at Mary’s,” I said. “Kyla and I are going to go there, and you’re going to stay here and keep a lookout.”

I could tell Dani wanted to argue, but when I tossed her one of the shotguns and slid a box of slugs towards her she knew I was serious. You didn’t load slugs unless you were really planning on fucking up someone’s life.

Kyla and I were in my truck and burning it around the construction site within two minutes. She was in the passenger seat loading the DDM and the 700, my M9 already holstered and loaded at my hip and my granddad’s old Model 29 revolver hanging in the open glovebox for Kyla.

“You’re using the 700,” I said through my gritted teeth as I peeled in a cloud of dust onto the expanded driveway.

“Obviously,” Kyla sighed. “I have training, Harri. Not practical experience.”

“If things go really bad, you get out of there,” I said.

“If things go really bad, I’ll be dead anyways,” she countered. “If you die, I die. Remember?”

Fuck. I hadn’t even thought of that.

If I died, Erica, Ivy and Vanessa would all be bonded to a dead man.

“Fuck,” I said.

Kyla finished loading the weapons. “Phone,” she said, holding out her hand. When I fished it out of my pocket and handed it to her she thumbed in the password—because of course she knew the password—and started dialling a number. “I’m calling Miriam.”

“Shit,” I said. “Yeah. Good thinking.”

She put it on speaker and the call got picked up in the middle of the second ring. “Harri?” Miriam asked.

“I’m doing something stupid,” I said.

“Focus on driving,” Kyla told me.

“What’s going on?” Miriam asked over the phone.

“Miriam, this is Kyla Bautista. A local woman is in danger from looters and called Harri for help because 911 isn’t picking up. We’re responding to the call.”

There was a moment of pause. “Armed?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kyla said.

“Shit,” Miriam muttered. “Fuck. Shit. If I could get one full night of sleep. Alright. I’ll see what I can do from here, but I can’t spin up some emergency response. Do me a favour and stay alive, yeah?”

“I still owe you a beer. Can’t die on you yet,” I said.

“Fuck you, you owe me a case of beers, a full pizza and a gallon of ice cream motherfucker,” Miriam said. “Kyla, you wouldn’t happen to have diplomatic immunity as the daughter of an Ambassador, would you?”

Kyla ran her tongue over her bottom teeth and glanced at me, and I shrugged. I didn’t know how much Miriam knew about her. “I don’t know what my current diplomatic status is, actually,” Kyla replied.

“Well… fuck. OK. Do what you need to do,” she said. “I’d ask you not to kill anyone, but that would just be jinxing it.”

“Two minutes out,” I said. I was driving like a maniac, but the roads were completely clear at this time of night.

“Fuck,” Miriam said. “Alright. I’ll do what I can. Fast and hard, Harri. Don’t give them time to figure out what’s going on.”

“You got it,” I said.

Kyla hung up. “Should we go in quiet or loud?” she asked.

Realistically, against an unknown enemy force with unknown skills and equipment, quiet would be the way to go. But my blood was up. I could feel it like lava in the veins of my neck as my heart hammered, adrenaline pumping through me. “Both,” I said. “You cut out and take up a position at this end. I’ll peel it into Mary’s yard and make a show and use the truck for cover. Don’t shoot until I do, and maybe we can pincer them.”

“Alright,” she nodded.

I turned onto Mary’s street. It was an offshoot from the highway and the road itself banked around a copse of trees before forming the little neighbourhood. I pulled off on the shoulder and Kyla was out of the cab before I was even at a full stop, shutting the door quietly. As soon as she was clear I gunned the engine, peeling back onto the road and around the bank. After clearing the trees I could see two sets of dull red brake lights ahead. There were a couple of big pickups idling on the street, and a couple of guys were jogging back and forth from one of the houses. They all turned at the noise of my engine roaring and then had to fling up their hands as I flickered my high beams on and off rapidly, strobing them.

They were at Mary’s neighbours.

There was no curb or ditch so I veered off the road and went right at them. They shouted and dodged out of the way, scattering, and I didn’t give a fuck about how I tore up the lawns. I ran the truck in a tight circle, pointing the headlights back at the trucks, and didn’t even take out the keys. I put her in park and rolled out of the door, dragging the DDM with me.

One in each truck, three on the front lawn. An unknown number in the houses.

I came up on one knee and raised my rifle, aiming through the basic bitch precision sight and wishing I’d splurged for something a little more. The guys were shouting, picking themselves up from the lawn. They were angry. One of them had a crowbar, another a baseball bat.

Oops. Looked like they forgot this was America.

I fired a warning shot into the side of the bed of the closer truck. The boom of the weapon was loud and I wished I’d brought earplugs. Baseball Bat dropped the bat and turned around, running for the trucks. Crowbar froze in place, his fight-or-flight response putting him in a momentary shock, so I ignored him. It was Player 3 that I was watching because he was ducking behind a tree and shrub combo on the front lawn and reaching behind his back.

Could be nothing. Could be a gun tucked in his waistband.

I put three rounds into the shrub and side-stepped towards my truck, putting the wheel well between me and him.

Baseball Bat was shouting for the trucks to drive as he hopped into the back. Crowbar decided to run, the crowbar flailing in his grasp as he screamed. The back truck roared to life and started peeling away immediately.

Three guys came out of Mary’s neighbour’s place, streaming out from the side further from me. Two of them had handguns out and immediately saw the truck and pointed their guns towards me, though I wasn’t sure if they could actually see me.

I put a bullet into the gut of one before either of them could get a shot off. The other fired in a panic and a window in my truck cracked. I put four shots down range, two hitting him in the chest while the other two were backstopped by the next house up.

The third was running for the truck that hadn’t driven away yet but was honking its horn to hurry up his friends. I peeked around the end of my truck and pulled back quickly as the shrub guy unloaded his pistol at me, the bullets panging off my front grill and shattering the windshield and probably the rear window as well.

“Suck a dick, cocksucker,” I yelled.

“Fuck you!” he shouted back.

Boom.

“Aaagh!”

I knew the sound of the 700.

I peeked around the end of the truck again and saw the guy sprawled out on his side, but he still had the pistol in his hand and was struggling to raise it in my direction. I sent three more bullets down range at him and his arms collapsed.

The other truck started to peel away and I seriously considered flipping my firing selector to burst and giving it a spray down as it took off with the squeal of tires, but I already had at least two, and probably three, bodies on me and they were running.

My phone rang in the truck cupholder where I’d left it and I nabbed it quickly.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“One in the backyard,” Miriam said. “Looks like he’s getting ready to hop the fence into the yard you’re in front of.”

“Fuck,” I said and dropped the phone as I sprinted for Mary’s side yard. It was pitch black back there and I dropped the DDM and pulled my M9 as I slammed into the little fence gate and barreled right through the old wood, the latch popping off. I came around the house at a speed walk and raised the pistol just as the fucker was hopping the fence. He had something in his hands. Might have been another baseball bat, or something he’d looted. But I was 80% sure it was a shotgun.

Pop pop pop pop.

He collapsed where he landed.

I closed the distance and kicked the thing away from his hand before anything else, my pistol pointed right at his head. Then I rolled him over and he let out a long wheeze as he died, blood soaking through his rough camo jacket.

I fought the urge to punch him in the face anyways.

“Mary,” I called. “I left my phone up front. They’re gone. Get the kids inside, stay away from over here by my voice.”

Boom.

“Nevermind, stay there!” I called, pivoting and rushing back towards the front. I slowed at the broken gate, sticking to the shadows as best I could and trying to see what Kyla was shooting at. The guy at the shrub was still down, and the trucks were still gone. The guy I put two in the chest was still over on the neighbour’s driveway.

A new body was out in the middle of the yard, about six paces from my DDM.

Not a new body. It was the guy I’d gut-shot.

Kyla came jogging up out of the dark, her face graven as she strictly avoided looking at the people she’d shot.

“That’s all of them,” she said.

I holstered my M9 and went to her, taking the hunting rifle from her and pulling her into a crushing hug. She hugged me back, clutching to my sides for a long moment.

“Hold it,” I whispered to her. “The danger is gone, but hold it, OK? Keep that edge for just a little longer.”

She nodded, and we separated. I went back to my truck, seeing the bullet holes and the shattered glass, but her engine was still thrumming strong. My phone had stayed on, the call still open, so it was easy to find the glow of the screen.

“Miriam?” I asked as I picked it up.

“I’m here,” she said. “You good?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Are you watching me on a satellite or something?”

“High altitude drone that I got repurposed from watching the coastline. I still have friends who owe me a bunch of favours,” she said.

I just shook my head. “Thanks for the heads up.”

“That a lady and her kids back there?” she asked me.

“Yeah. 6 and 4,” I said.

“Then no thanks needed,” Miriam said. “State Troopers should be there in under twenty. The words ‘gunfight in suburban neighbourhood’ put you at the top of their list. I’ll let them know you’re friendlies and not to fuck with you.”

“You have that pull?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised what kind of bullshit I can plough through with just a couple of phone calls,” she said.

“Thanks, Miriam,” I said.

“Don’t make a habit of this, Harri, or you’ll owe me a lot more than booze and a meal.”

“Got it,” I said.

We hung up and I dialled Mary.

“Hello?” she asked, clearly a little shaky.

“It’s me,” I said. “Now you can take the kids into the house. Try to get them in bed, but put headphones on them if you have to because there’ll be cop cars here pretty soon. They’ll want to talk to you.”

“OK. You’re sure it’s safe?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

Mary took care of her kids while Kyla and I analyzed what we needed to do. We ended up putting the 700 and my M9 on the hood of my truck, which I turned off but left the headlights on, and I left the DDM where it was on the ground. I was sure the Troopers would want the scene as preserved as possible. At one point Mary opened the front door to her place and called me in, and at this point I wasn’t caring about the pandemic. I went and hugged her, and then went down on my knees because Thomas barrelled down the hall and crashed into me for a hug of his own. Charlie, the little girl, had apparently gone right back to sleep.

I assured Thomas everything was OK, but told him I needed him to go try and sleep because his Mom was going to be busy for a bit and it was going to be a hard day for her. He nodded solemnly and went off to his room, and I hugged Mary again for a longer time as she gasped and sobbed silently after looking out at the carnage in her front yard. Then I sent her inside to get coffee going, giving her something to do, and I went to Kyla. She was sitting on the open tailgate of my truck, looking down at her hands.

Softly, I took her hands in mine and held them.

“How are you so calm?” she asked.

“Faking it,” I told her, and held her hand to my chest so she could feel the hammering of my heart. “I’ll have an adrenaline crash in a little bit and start feeling it. Keeping a mission goal in mind is helping.”

Kyla nodded, clenching her jaw. She was without makeup and sitting in the back of the truck like that she looked all the world like a college coed who should have been hanging out after a long night on the town. She was beautiful, but I could see the disassociation starting in her eyes a little.

“Hey, stay with me,” I said, squeezing her hands. She looked up, her focus coming back as she met my eyes. “Kiss me.”

She sat up and wrapped a hand around the back of my neck to pull me to her, and she kissed me hard as she put her other hand to my chest again, feeling my heartbeat. We didn’t finish the kiss, it just went on pause as we separated a fraction of an inch to gasp for breath, our foreheads pressed together, and then we were kissing again. I held her waist and her thigh, she held my neck and chest, and we kissed.

We only stopped when the flashing lights and the siren of the cop cars started in the distance. Kyla didn’t let go of my neck though and kept my face close to hers.

“I think I love you,” she whispered. “You’re selfless, and determined, and reckless enough to do something stupid like this for the right reasons. You’re everything I want. I just- I wanted you to know that.”

“I love you too, Kyla,” I said, pulling her to me in a hug as the lights got brighter and the sirens got louder. “You’re everything I want and more, too.”

We separated and I stepped around the truck, raising my hands and going down to my knees as the two state trooper cars came to a wailing halt and the Troopers came out with sidearms drawn. Kyla was right there next to me, and I don’t think anything could have wiped that grin off of our faces.