The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Harri, there’s nothing you can reasonably do!” Erica said loudly. “You’re fucking shot, and you don’t have any of that equipment that Miriam sent you. It’s the risk-reward thing all over again.”

“What am I supposed to do then, Erica?” I asked. “I get it, but this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Everything else was meant to just be extra.”

“Fuck, I know!” Erica grunted. “I just don’t want you to fucking die.”

“I don’t think you guys should rush into this either,” Dani said.

We were still on the drive back home from the Falls—a drive that usually took 16 minutes but that we were probably going to make in 10 the way that Kyla was driving. As soon as Vanessa had hung up with us to keep trying to hold things together back on the site, I had called Ivy while Erica had been calling Leo. Everyone other than Vanessa was currently safe and keeping an eye out for people trying to get into our Compound, though my first worry was that could change at any moment.

Men with guns were attacking the construction site. That’s all that Vanessa had really been able to tell me. Multiple vehicles were reported over the worker radios across several locations. And people had heard gunshots.

“I’m not saying you’re not capable, Harri,” Dani continued. “But we just finished a workout, and you are recovering from a gunshot. Kyla, tell him this is a bad idea.”

“Did you put both of the M4s in the back?” Kyla asked me.

“Only place we had for them,” I said.

“Kyla!” Erica said.

“He’s not going to not help, Erica,” Kyla said sternly as she gripped the steering wheel hard and continued to drive. “And arguing with him is going to mess with his head.”

There was a long moment of silence in the truck. “Fuck,” Erica said. “Fuck. Fine. Yes, you’re right. Harri, you be fucking careful, OK?”

“As I can be,” I said, turning in my seat to look through the plexiglass into the back. “And you know, I bet if Ivy was here you would be the one telling her to stay calm and let me do this.”

Erica blew out a breath and narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe,” she said.

“Dani, can you do me a favour and freak out more so that Erica can calm you down?” I asked.

“Asshole,” Erica sighed, smirking at me a little.

I winked at them both.

My phone rang as we were about two minutes out, based on Kyla’s speed, from the driveway to the site.

“Captain,” I answered.

“Sheriff,” Captain Bloomberg said, her voice tense. “The Colonel is spinning up an emergency response. What’s your status?”

“I was off-site when I got word. We’re about a minute out,” I said.

“The boundaries of your land are a military installation even if there isn’t much there yet, Sheriff. You have Shoot-to-Kill authorization for anyone threatening the project. This is a matter of national security.”

“Fuck,” Dani said in the back seat.

“Am I on speaker?” the Captain asked.

“Sorry, I’m in the truck with Kyla, Erica and Dani,” I said.

There was a beat of silence and I could tell I was going to need to get her a gift basket or something. “Hello, ladies,” she finally said. “And yes, ‘Fuck’ is an appropriate response. Sheriff, we can’t lose any more workers, especially the men who are currently vaccinated and partnered.”

“Fuck,” I said, taking my turn to curse. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that we had a lot more people vaccinated around us now than just our little families.

“Your first priority is to save lives. Your second is to find out who the hell these people are and put them in the dirt,” the Captain said. “And that’s me using legal-friendly terms, Harri.”

“Understood, Captain,” I said.

She hung up.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on in the military,” I said mostly to myself. “But the Captain is performing way outside a regular JAG’s role.”

“Did I miss something, or did Harri just get a James Bond license to kill?” Erica asked.

“Not the time, babe,” I said, bracing as Kyla took the to the shoulder off the highway and skidded the truck to a halt right next to the turn into the driveway. I quickly dialled Vanessa.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“End of the driveway,” I said. “What’s the situation?”

“Best we can tell, there are something like six vehicles around the site looting tools and supplies, two or three guys in each one. They’re all armed, and they’re holding up the crews at gunpoint and shooting at anyone who tries to stop them. I’ve got reports of multiple gunshot wounds, and people are reporting more shots that we don’t know the source of yet. Harri, I can’t get anything from the local services. I don’t think we can even get one ambulance, let alone what we’ll need.”

“Miriam is coming down as fast as she can,” I said. “Just stay calm and triage like your safety courses taught you. You’ve got this, you just need to stay calm and stay safe.”

“Harri, one of the trucks buzzed by the compound,” Vanessa said. “I sent guys in a bulldozer to chase them so they didn’t stop, but they got close.”

I looked across the cab at Kyla, and I could see the same thing I was feeling. Abject fear boiled and baked into a hard point of anger.

“Where are they now, Vee?” I asked.

“At least a few have already left,” Vanessa said. “I’ve got three different reports without follow-up right now. Two in the eastern area near the brush clearing crews, and one in the western area near our supply drop-off point.”

“We’ll go east,” I said. “I’ll call you when I know something.”

“Be safe, you guys,” Vanessa said. “And give them hell. Love you.”

“To be fair, she’s got stuff to manage,” Erica grumbled in the back seat. “It’s easier to be a badass when you aren’t sitting on your hands in the back of a cop car.”

That got a snort out of Dani, and I was happy at least one of us could appreciate Erica at that moment. My mind was elsewhere.

Kyla and I got out of the truck and went to the back, opening the gate and keying into the compartment under the bed. “We should really start keeping the heavy vests here,” I mumbled as we pulled out the lightweight bulletproof vests we’d been using since I’d first been named sheriff.

“We didn’t think we’d have a situation like this, dear,” Kyla said as she strapped on hers.

I pulled out the M4s and all the magazines of ammunition we kept in the back of the truck. Before the ambush in Portland, I’d kept three with our one rifle, but now we each had four.

Kitted out with as little as we had, I felt like a joke. I was wearing a t-shirt, workout shorts and gym shoes with a bulletproof vest. Kyla was almost worse, wearing lavender tights and a small tank top under her vest.

“At least you look cute,” I said with a little smirk.

She rolled her eyes and smiled back, and we closed the back of the truck. We got Erica and Dani out of the back, something I probably should have thought of doing first, and they piled into the front and Erica lowered her window so I could talk to her.

“Run the lights and sirens,” I said. “And go right into the camp. You’ll be safer surrounded by lots of people.”

“Harri,” Erica said, a serious frown on her face. “Just… I’m sorry.”

“I know, babe,” I said and kissed her through the open window. “I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Tell him to come home to those titties of yours,” Dani said from the passenger seat. “That’ll make sure he comes back in one piece.”

“Go, babe,” I said. “Kyla and I will be fine.”

Erica put on a fake smile for me, trying to show me she wasn’t as worried as she was, and then they peeled away up the driveway leaving Kyla and I behind.

“Erica wasn’t wrong,” Kyla said. “She just feels powerless in these situations or else she would handle things better. She’s a doer, not a waiter.”

“I feel like if we find a way to fix that, we’re planning on this shit happening more and not less,” I said.

“It wasn’t a suggestion to give her tactical training, Harri,” Kyla said. “I think Erica with proper training would be more trouble than we could get into ourselves.”

I could only imagine how a pissed-off Erica with jiu-jitsu or krav maga training would deal with assholes out in the normal world. Then again, it was entirely possible there wouldn’t be a normal world left pretty soon.

Kyla and I started jogging, and I could tell Kyla was keeping an eye on me and my leg. It ached every time I put weight on it, but it was a dull pain instead of a sharp one so I was able to mostly ignore it. We headed east, prioritizing the crews and where there were potentially more of the looters over the threat to the supply drop-off. I tried to pick up the pace as we veered off of the main gravel driveway and into one of the cut swathes that the crews were making, but as soon as I went from a light jog to a run the pain got sharper and I backed off.

“There’s a vehicle coming,” Kyla said, and I looked up and heard the rumble of a diesel engine coming from ahead of us.

We moved off of the cut line, stepping into the foliage of the forest, and we both tensed as we raised our rifles. The truck that came around the turn about thirty yards from us looked for all the world like a construction rig loaded down with tools and supplies, and I would have assumed it was someone trying to get to safety if the truck wasn’t also flying a full-sized confederate flag from the roof of its cab.

“You gotta be shitting me,” I mumbled.

“Let them go?” Kyla asked.

“You heard the Captain,” I said, my finger tightening on the trigger. “But you don’t need to do it if you don’t want.”

Kyla’s answer was opening fire, and I quickly joined her. We peppered the truck as it sped by us, but it didn’t lose control or slow down in the slightest. We pivoted as it burned by and kept firing, and I heard a shout and saw a flash of red in the open bed of the truck.

It disappeared around another bend.

“Shit,” I said. I wasn’t exactly used to shooting at a fast-moving target like that.

“We hit someone,” Kyla said.

“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “Won’t be useful to us unless they bring him to a hospital, or they dump him out the back and we can ID him.”

“What now?” Kyla asked. “Follow them?”

I shook my head, looking back up the way they had come from. “There’s still another one out here somewhere.”

We pushed on after reloading since we had both used most of a magazine on the speeding truck. A couple of minutes later we rounded a bend and saw that we’d reached the end of the cut we’d been following. There was a big log-hauling truck a dozen paces from where the crew had been clearing trees, and an excavator with a claw on the end of its big arm that would load the logs onto the truck. There were also several men in high-viz vests and helmets buzzing around in a clump. As we got closer I realized they were working to try and help two crewmen who were on the ground and wounded.

“What’s the situation?” I asked loudly as we approached.

Several of the men jumped, but when they saw it was Kyla and I in our Sheriff vests they calmed down. “We got attacked by those fucking assholes,” one of the men said, an older guy with a scruffy goatee. “We heard the shit on the radios, then they came tearing down here. There were four of ‘em and they were armed with shotguns and rifles. Gaz tried to tell them off and got hit with birdshot that’s torn up his arm and side pretty bad, then Lukas tried to jump one of ’em and he might lose his fucking leg. They made us load all of our tools and equipment into their truck and took off a couple minutes ago.”

“We saw them. Hit one, too,” Kyla said, and that brought some nods from the men.

I did a quick survey of the damage—the thing about working on a site full of construction workers was that everyone was trained in safety and emergency situations. Working with heavy machinery required it. And while gunshot wounds might not have been covered in the heavy workplace safety and first aid training plenty of the guys on the crew had, they were doing their best to keep the wounded stable.

“I already called for medics on my radio in the truck,” said a younger guy. He had the vest but wasn’t wearing a helmet so I assumed he was the driver.

“Gaz should live, but I’m worried about Lukas,” said the older guy. “He went into shock and he needs treatment fast.”

“Can you get the truck around to bring him to camp?” I asked.

“Not with any kind of speed,” the driver said. “It’s a whole process to back my way out of these lanes until they get connected.”

“Fuck, alright,” I grunted. “Radio in again and tell whoever answers that this cut lane is clear and that the Shariff cleared it himself.”

“Thanks,” the older guy grunted and nodded, shooing the driver back to the truck to do so.

“What’s the last thing you guys heard on the radio about—” Gunshots cut me off.

“North-east,” Kyla said, pointing in the direction. We were already in the easternmost third of the land, and I took a moment to try and remember the latest planned roadmap.

“It’s got to be the access road on the border,” I said. I hadn’t thought they’d started cutting it yet, but I wasn’t exactly up to date on everything all of the crews were accomplishing. The planned access road was supposed to be for utility work only since the compound would have backup power and water generation from the river that fed into the Nehalem. That river was partially fed by the spring I loved so much.

Kyla and I took off, heading into the bush due North first since there was an old hiking trail we could use to skip around a couple of the rockier areas. That brought us above where the shots had come from and we had to come back down South as we pushed east through a copse of evergreens until we stopped when we heard voices.

It was tough to hear what they were saying at first, but it was clear they were angry. I went to my belly near the edge of the evergreens and crawled under the last branches to peek out at the clearing ahead, trying to keep my hiss of pain from my leg quiet enough that Kyla didn’t hear.

The work crew had been cutting the utility access road just like I’d thought, though at the moment it seemed more like a single lane than what would probably be needed later. They had an excavator like the last crew, but no logging truck—instead the clearing crew had been pushing everything to the side of their path, and it would get cleaned up by another crew sometime in the future. That left logs and debris mounded on either side of the path, making it difficult for me to see what was going on.

“Stay here,” I whispered to Kyla and motioned that I was going to crawl closer to listen. She frowned but nodded. I put my time doing army PE drills to use and crawled my way through the brush to the mound. It sucked for my forearms as they scraped rock and dirt and rough vegetation, but it sucked even more for my leg as it ached like hell with every bump it took.

At the mound, I was able to peek over a log.

There was another pickup truck, and while this one wasn’t flying a confederate flag it definitely had the same dinged-up look to it. It also happened to have three men dressed in rough camo and holding rifles standing next to it while they overlooked a crew of six workers. The workers all had their hands up and were on their knees.

“Tell us what this place is for!” shouted one of the scruffy men at a worker who was pulled out from the rest of the group. The white helmet on the ground nearby told me he was likely in charge of the crew.

“Dude, what the fuck?” he grunted, keeping his eyes down like he thought that might stop the trio from doing anything. “I told you, it’s a housing project.”

“That’s total bullshit,” the tallest of the raiders said. “There’s no way this is just some housing thing. In the middle of this fake-ass pandemic? What are they building here during the cover-up?”

“Naw, man,” the third one said. “Maybe it is housing, but it’s for like… aliens. Or for the aristocrats of some invading army once they take over the country.”

“Is that it?” the first one demanded. “Are you assholes building shit to hide aliens or enemies of the state?”

“Dude, if that were even true, do you think I would know?” the foreman said. “We’re just clearing trees for a road.”

“He knows more than he’s saying,” the second guy said.

“Maybe we should shoot one of these guys, make them take us serious like,” the third one suggested.

Well, that sent my plan to try and find a natural opening out the window. I slipped back down the mound a bit and started crawling to my left, hoping to put the excavator between me and the firearms. My leg was killing me now, but I shunted that feeling into my gritting teeth and held it there. I didn’t have time to think about it.

The guys argued back and forth a bit more. Two of them sounded reluctant to just shoot someone in cold blood, which was good. It meant I had a chance to possibly diffuse the situation. Once I was a good way along I peeked over the edge of the mound again and saw that I’d gone far enough, and I slipped over and got up into a crouch as I adjusted my grip on the M4 and rolled my neck to get myself focused. Creeping around the side of the excavator, I took a quick peek.

One of the men had his shotgun pointed at the foreman about an inch away from the guy’s head, and the foreman was silently crying as the three rednecks continued to argue. One of the crew guys saw me and his eyes went wide. I raised my finger to my lips to try and keep him quiet, and he nodded more with a feeling of nodding than actually doing it.

“Fuck, this is taking too long!” the second raider said. “The others are probably gone by now. We need to go.”

“Why? Ain’t like the cops are coming out here,” the third one said.

“You don’t know that, idiot,” the first one grunted.

“Fine. So we grab this guy and another one, and we get them to talk back at HQ,” the second one said.

I grimaced and slid around the excavator fully, starting my as-quiet-as-possible run while they were busy arguing. If I could get up behind one and take them at gunpoint, I could probably talk the others down. Then it would be a simple matter of the crew helping me keep them pinned until I could get handcuffs or zip ties out here. Well, that and making sure the crew didn’t kick the shit out of the rednecks.

Things were going great until the foreman looked up for the first time since I’d been watching and saw me rushing the group. He whimpered in a distinctly relieved way.

The rednecks turned to see what he was looking at.

And my leg gave out with a sharp needle of pain.

It’s possible, if I hadn’t been falling sideways as my leg stopped wanting to work, that I could have out-shot the first guy. As it was I couldn’t get my rifle up properly and it was pure luck that the blast of birdshot went over my head as I collapsed.

After that first blast, it was chaos.

The one with the shotgun who shot at me died first, his body jerking sideways oddly as gunfire opened up and a bullet tore somewhere through the back of his jaw.

The second one, who had a hunting rifle, had pivoted as he saw me dropping but heard the crew of men scrambling to their feet and rushing the rednecks. He fired almost point blank at them and one of the construction workers stumbled, but the others tackled him and started going to work on him.

The third one, the one with delusions of an invading force coming to take over the US, pulled the trigger on his shotgun and blew the face off of the foreman. He swung around, raising his double-barrel towards me but then flinching and redirecting towards the rushing crew. I managed to get my rifle up and winged him in the shoulder, which spun him and gave Kyla a clean target to put two through his back, the exit wounds popping from his chest like weird bloody pimples.

The whole thing took less than four seconds, and in my mind I flashed back to the shootout scene in Django Unchained. I’d been in my fair share of gunfights, let alone the two in the past few weeks. I’d never seen one pop off so fast, and bloody, and methodical. The sprays of blood had been almost artful in that weirdly cinematic way.

But it wasn’t really over.

The construction workers we beating the absolute fuck out of that second guy. Steel toe boots were doing most of the real damage, though one guy had the foreman’s hard hat in his hand and was smashing it down repeatedly using the hard plastic bill, and another had gotten the rednecks rifle and was slamming the butt of it down on him.

“Stop!” I screamed. I’d wanted it to be a shout, but it was too hoarse and slightly horrified to be a proper booming command.

I scrambled to my knees and used my M4 to help me get to my feet. My leg was wobbly but I could stand, and I staggered towards them, shoving the crew away from the bloodied body. I pointed to their fellow crewman, the one who had gotten shot by the rifle. “It’s done! First aid, do what you can,” I ordered them, my voice thick with adrenaline but now growling powerfully.

The five construction workers were bloodied, their eyes a little wild as they realized what they’d done, but one of them got the others moving quickly.

The bodies around me were broken. The foreman died instantly, that was for sure. The redneck that Kyla hit in the throat was letting out his last gurgling breaths, and the other she’d shot in the back was going pale as his life seeped out of him. The last one wasn’t breathing either, and I couldn’t really look at it.

“Harri,” Kyla said, hurrying over to me from out of the brush. She rushed and stopped just short of colliding into me, her face a mask of concern as her eyes scanned me. Her frown deepened when she saw that there was blood seeping on my leg—I’d pulled my stitches for sure, and hopefully not anything worse. But she reached up and touched my head, and her hand came away bloody.

“I’m fine for now,” I said. “I don’t feel it.”

“Harri, we—”

“Wait,” I grunted, and I went down on one knee painfully next to the redneck who was shot in the chest. I leaned over him and slapped his face lightly to get his attention, and he winced and his eyes focused on me.

“Dying,” he gasped.

“Yeah you are, you dumb motherfucker,” I said, not even bothering to put pressure on his wounds since he was so close to going out. “Who the fuck are you people?”

“Dying,” he gasped again, reaching up with the last of his strength like he was asking me to hold his hand.

I took it, even though I didn’t want to. “Who needs to know?” I asked him.

The look in his eye told me he thought of someone, but I would have needed to be a mind reader to know who because his lips worked but no sound came out, and then there was the bone-chilling last breath as he died.

“Fuck,” I grunted.

“Harri, you’ve got two gouges in your scalp,” Kyla said, and I realized she’d been standing over me and looking through my hair.

“Birdshot,” I groaned, blinking a little as the pain started to hit me. “I’ll get it checked out. Boys, how’s he doing?”

“Gutshot,” one of the men said. He was the one who’d grabbed the rifle, his hands and boots less bloody than the others. They’d gotten their buddy turned over.

“Kyla, call Vanessa,” I said. “Get someone out here for him. Gutshot is bad, but one bullet doesn’t mean he dies if we can get him treatment quickly.”

She nodded and took out her phone. I pulled out my own and found my hand was bloody as I started touching the screen. It was the redneck’s blood from holding his hand. I dialled Miriam.

“Status?” she asked abruptly as she answered.

“One more possible vehicle on site, though I doubt it. I’ve got three dead hostiles here, look like… fuck, they look like rednecks. Maybe a militia group or something, though they only had really light arms. Shotguns and hunting rifles. Nothing automatic or military-grade. I’ve also got one dead and one seriously wounded civilian, plus more wounded confirmed.”

“Do you know if the dead civilian was vaccinated?” Miriam asked.

I coughed and looked over at the men. “Hey, anyone know if your foreman was vaccinated?”

“Yeah, we all are,” said one of the men. “Fuck, what does that mean, now?”

I ignored him and turned my attention back to my phone. “He was,” I said.

“Fuck. OK,” Miriam said. “I need- Shit. This is classified and fucking rude as hell to ask, but does he still have his testicles?”

I didn’t have the brainpower at the moment to even be shocked by that question. “Yeah, he should,” I said.

“Alright. I’m flying down with a crew of medics. I need that body ready for travel ASAP,” Miriam said.

“Not the wounded?” I asked.

“They’ll be taken care of, but I’m going to need to know who that dead man is.”

“Do I- no, I don’t want to know. I’ve also got a vehicle here. Oregon plates.” I rattled off the plate number to her.

“I’ll have someone start looking into it,” she said. “Harri, are you—?”

“Hurt but OK,” I said.

“You need to stop calling me like this,” she said, and I could hear the frustrated little smile on her lips.

“You need to make some time to come see us when it isn’t an emergency,” I pointed out.

“We’ll be there in under half an hour. Have the wounded brought to camp if you can move them, and make sure that body is ready for travel.”

“Got it,” I grunted.

She hung up and I looked up at Kyla. She was frowning as she gazed down at me. I tried to get up to hug her, but she put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down, shaking her head. “Sit,” she ordered me. “Vanessa is sending a couple of trucks.”

I sucked in a breath through my nose and felt it come out wobbly. My head was starting to hurt, and my leg was still hitting with that sharp pain, though it had mellowed out some.

“Uh, sir?” one of the crewmen said. Most of them were busy trying to fuss with their gut shot buddy.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Is- um. Are we going to…?” he glanced at the bloody and beaten corpse.

“In this case? Probably not,” I groaned painfully, leaning back until I was laying flat. “They were looters and threatened to kidnap at least one of you at gunpoint. I’m not lookin’ to press charges here.”

“Just don’t start thinking doing this is a good idea,” Kyla said.

“Yes, ma’am,” the guy nodded, turning back to his friends. He had to be in his early forties. His calling Kyla ‘ma’am’ made me smile for some reason.

“What?” she asked as she looked down at me.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Nothing.”

The good news was that, amongst the 75-odd women who had already been moved into the camp, seven of them had nursing training. Four of them had been working as nurses when they got the call about the vaccine, and one of them even had ER experience.

Kyla, the wounded construction worker and one of his friends were picked up in one of the white construction pickups first, while the bodies and I got picked up in the second one. I left the rest of the crew with explicit orders not to touch the redneck truck—if I was going to figure out who the hell these guys were and where they were coming from, I would need every clue I could get.

Back in the main camp I ended up sitting on a folding table that had been set up outside in the ‘courtyard,’ which was the open space in between the original portable office buildings and adjacent to the first big bunkhouse. I tried to tune out the chaos going on around me as I was seen to by one of the nurses and she wrapped my leg in new bandaging. There weren’t exactly limited supplies on the site between the first aid kits in the offices and bunkhouses, but it was all standard supplies. No anaesthetic, and the painkillers were limited to acetaminophen. That was probably a good thing most of the time based on Vanessa’s worries about drugs among the construction workers, but with a dozen men triaged and in pain from injuries ranging from bruises to concussions to gunshot wounds I wondered if maybe a small supply of morphine might be something I’d be securing sooner than later.

The nurse was quick about her work and my leg was bandaged tightly, then she moved on to checking my scalp but I could tell she was uncomfortable.

“Move,” ordered another of the women, and she practically pushed the first one out of the way and took my head in her hand and started quickly looking me over. “You’ll need a couple of staples,” she said briskly. “Three lacerations, but only one is deep enough to be a problem. Head wounds bleed more than most. You get hit with something?”

“Birdshot,” I said. “Ducked most of it, thankfully.”

“Should have just kept your head down, let the security guy deal with it,” she grunted.

“That would be me,” I said.

She pulled back with a frown, then looked down at me more closely. To be fair to her, I looked like a mess—my vest was covered in drops of blood that I’d accidentally smeared around, and my shorts were yanked all the way up on one leg so that the last nurse could wrap my leg properly.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry, Sheriff. I, uh…”

“Harri,” I said, offering her my hand. Thankfully I’d been able to wipe it off with some sanitiser earlier.

“Georgette,” the nurse said, peeling off her glove to shake my hand back.

“Everyone triaged?” I asked.

“As far as we know,” she said. “Yours was the last group to come in. Um… Thank you. My Duke was out there with you and he says you saved their lives.”

I had to wonder how Duke was feeling now that the adrenaline was gone and he was remembering what he’d done. “Are we going to be losing anyone else?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, but shrugged at the same time. “Hard to say,” she said. “The guy who came in with you is pretty bad, but I’ve got him stable and getting him fluids. If the proper medics get here as fast as they say they can he should live.”

“That’s good,” I sighed. “And they will.”

Georgette nodded. “I should get back at it.”

“Go,” I nodded.

I wasn’t alone for long as Vanessa and her father Brent came to find me. Brent looked like he wanted to punch me in the face again, hug me, and shake my hand all at once. I could understand the feeling. Vanessa limited herself to one quick, but deep, kiss with me—the second since I’d been driven into camp—and then I was getting updates that changed even while we were standing there and more supervisors and foremen reported in.

The last truck, the one raiding the supply drop-off, had driven off sometime in between Kyla and I firing on the first one we found and the fight at the second. They’d made off with a bunch of raw materials meant for the third barracks that was being built, though the father and daughter duo had no idea what they would want with the stuff since it wasn’t even good quality timber and just the prefab sheeting. It would delay the third barracks by maybe a few days at worst to get more shipped out. The variety of tools and other equipment stolen from the crews that were assaulted didn’t make sense either.

“Stop trying to make sense of it,” I said after listening to them come up with theories. “They were just getting whatever they could put their hands on. Were we missing anything back when the spin-up started again?”

Brent frowned. “Some of the crews reported equipment missing from the field. A couple of generators and spotlights, toolboxes from the back of trucks, that sort of thing. Not enough to make us think anyone had been through, just that things had gotten misplaced in the chaos of the outbreak.”

“Well, some of it might just be missing, but I’d bet a truck or two came exploring at some point,” I said. “We should have installed a gate or something to discourage people from taking a look where all the chaos had been going on. No one came up to the main camp, but I couldn’t keep eyes on the woods and all the road-cutting areas. They probably figured more people here meant more stuff to steal.”

We were interrupted by the sound of helicopters as three of them flew overhead, and Brent waddled off to wait for them to land in the clear area across the camp. I still hadn’t met the woman he’d paired with, but either the stress of the job or her influence on him had Brent looking just a little slimmer than I’d seen him last time.

Vanessa hung back and she stepped between my legs as I continued to sit on the table, reaching up to grab me by my beard and pull me down into a kiss that left her face smudged with the dirt and blood that was still in the nooks and crannies on my own. “God, Harri,” she said. “I almost lost you.”

“No you didn’t Vee,” I said, deciding that if she didn’t care about the mess then I didn’t either and pulling her into a hug. “I’m fine, baby.”

“If I don’t walk away and get busy I’m going to start crying,” she whispered to me.

“OK,” I said and pulled back and kissed her cheek. “Go be the boss.”

She smiled softly and gave my beard another tug before sighing and stepping back. “I’m going to need you tonight,” she said.

“Looking forward to it.”

She left me, and about three minutes later the courtyard was full of medics and doctors streaming in from around the buildings. Georgette started calling out directions for her triage system, and soon the worst of the wounded were being loaded onto stretchers and carried back towards the helicopters. I also noticed the body bag for the foreman—I never did learn his name—was quietly found and moved as well.

Soon I had a medic and a doctor looking me over, and I had a bottle of water poured over my head so they could clean my wounds and get a better look at them. The skin on my scalp got pinched and I had two sharp bursts of pain as they stapled it. Then the medic did something I’d never heard of before and braided the hair around each of the wounds tightly, pulling the scalp together. I couldn’t wait to hear how the girls would bother me about letting some random Air Force medic braid my hair when I hadn’t let them do it yet.

The doctor checked my leg, re-stitching it, and I’d been rolled over onto my stomach and had my ass up in the air as he double-checked the exit wound which I’d assured him hadn’t ripped open.

“Harri, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were taking advantage of my doctors,” Miriam said from somewhere behind me. “Now isn’t the time for your proctology exam.”

“Harrharrharr,” I said, turning to see her approaching. I’d noticed that all the medics and doctors were wearing basic medical masks, but the full hazmat suits hadn’t made a show like before. Miriam was in her fatigues and had a medical mask on as well, and she looked put together and in command. “You finally going to let me cook you that steak or what?”

“Did you stage all this just to get me out here for dinner?” she asked with an audible smirk, coming over to stand beside me at the table.

The doctor let me roll over and sit up, and when I did Miriam leaned in and kissed me on the cheek through her mask. Thankfully the bottle of water over my head had led to me being able to wipe my face so she didn’t end up looking like Vanessa.

When she pulled away Miriam immediately was all business and she recorded my fast report on her phone as we talked about emergency security logistics. It became apparent very quickly that this wasn’t, or couldn’t, be the sort of ‘shut down’ event that the outbreak had been. People weren’t being moved out, and work had to continue. At the minimum, we needed to get a gate installed at the main entrance to the site, plus another gate for the utility access road. We’d also preferably see the main gate manned by armed guards. It turned out that wasn’t much of an issue—Miriam had access to more airmen for security than just the ones in her building in Portland. They would stage them in the closest motel and get things rolling quickly. The gate wouldn’t take much more effort, and she’d work it out with Brent.

The real problem was that if these looters and raiders were willing to drive right onto the site in the middle of the day, what else were they willing to do?

“We’re talking about rednecks here,” I said. “Motivated rednecks equipped with hunting gear. That means they aren’t afraid of hiking in here from anywhere off-property. Hell, they could just drop someone off outside of view of the gates and hike it in.”

Miriam blew out a breath and I could tell she was clenching her jaw rapidly as the corner of her mask fluttered a little. “We were hoping to not need to wall or fence this place in,” she said. “Part of the reason your land was chosen to begin with was because it’s so out of the way.”

“Government didn’t plan on rednecks, huh?” I asked. “Well, I’ve got one way to make sure they don’t come looking.”

“What, mount their heads on pikes by the road?” Miriam asked.

I shook my head, the vision of the construction workers beating the man to death still too close in my mind for that joke. “I track them down and deal with them,” I said. “One way or another.”

“Harri…” Miriam said.

“It can’t be the military doing it,” I said. “Well, unless you’re willing to have that sort of thing spread like wildfire. It could be the FBI, but rednecks are already going to be suspicious of anyone who even smells like a Fed.”

“The FBI is busy as hell right now,” Miriam said. “At least as far as I know.”

“So it’s me,” I said.

“It can’t just be you. You’ll need support of some sort,” Miriam said quietly.

“I’ll ask for it if I need it,” I said. “So maybe come up with a list of people who might want to run an off-book mission in the backwoods.”

“You’d be surprised how many people I know who would do that if I asked,” Miriam said. I’d forgotten that she’d been working with the Pararescue specialists through Intelligence. She really did know some badasses.

“Well, like I said, I’ll let you know,” I said. “It’ll take a bit to figure out where these bastards are coming from.”

“And what are your girlfriends going to think of that?” Miriam asked. “Or your other girlfriends?”

“I’m going to pretend I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with that ‘other’ comment,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure Erica and the girls won’t be happy about it. I think I’m going to move them to that place I told Captain Bloomberg about.”

Miriam raised an eyebrow. “That’s safer than here?”

“It’s a total secret to the local community,” I said. “No one knows it’s there. That’s safer than here right now.”

She frowned behind her mask but nodded. “I need to get back to things. There’ll be airmen here within the hour—I already have a truck driving out. And not those National Guardsmen, real Air Force goons. Is there anything else you need?”

“A nap, a general raising of the national average IQ, and an end to world hunger,” I said.

“Sorry, soldier,” Miriam said with a smirk. “No can do on any of those.”

“I’ll make do with a visit from you that isn’t preceded by gunfire.”

“That could actually happen if you stopped getting into these situations and gave me a chance to get all the shit in this state together.”

“Hey, I went like three weeks there without getting into a gunfight,” I said.

“I think it was closer to two, Harri,” Miriam sighed. “And this time it was three days. I’ll swing by to say hello before I leave, alright? Your girls will be needing you.”

I nodded, and she left me to find my own hobbling way back to the compound.

“I should stay here with you and Vanessa,” Erica said as I slammed the trunk of her car, sealing in the luggage.

“Erica, I love you, but there’s no fucking way,” I said as I took her face in both of my hands and kissed her hard. She took a moment to breathe in through her nose before she kissed me back properly, at which point she melted into it a little bit.

I’d already been fussed over enough by the girls and I’d made the call about them needing to go to the Falls. A quick conversation with Abi over the phone confirmed they were welcome, and had raised questions that I was going to need to answer when we got there. Now Leo, Dani, Aria, India, Erica, Ivy and Kyla were all going to move over there, leaving just Vanessa and myself to watch over the compound. Vanessa couldn’t leave because her work was too integral on-site, and I was still technically the Sheriff even if there were now USAF Airmen posted at the entrance to the site running security.

Erica and Leo’s cars were both stuffed full of people and luggage, and I was borrowing Brent’s pickup to carry the rest of the luggage. I had the police truck, but I wanted this to be as quiet a move as possible and my truck could draw attention. The last thing we wanted was to draw attention to the Falls that afternoon.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” Erica sighed as she held me close and pressed her forehead to my shoulder. “I don’t know if it’s just me feeling like I can’t do anything to help you, or just feeling trapped in general a bit without any power over my life, but I know you didn’t need me second-guessing you and getting in your head.”

“I know, babe,” I said, rubbing her back. “I think getting out there with the ladies might be a good change of pace, even if it’s just for a week or two.”

“It better not be that long,” Erica muttered. “Our RV already smells like pussy constantly, I don’t want to guess what all that sweaty pussy up in those dorm rooms is like.” That made me snort and laugh a little, and she squeezed me tighter. “You need to be careful, Harri,” she said. “As much as you can. I- You joked about it, but you almost died today. I can’t handle losing you when I finally have you.”

“I know,” I whispered, squeezing her back. “And I will. But I need you to promise me something too.”

“Anything,” she said, pulling back a little so she could look up into my eyes. She’d done up her makeup like she used to and had that fierce, punky look going on like she’d raised her armour.

“Don’t go trying to recruit more of the ladies into your web of sex,” I said with a little smirk. “I have more than enough with you four.”

“So just Josie, then,” she said with a sneaky smile.

“Erica,” I sighed.

“I hear you, babe,” she said, and kissed my chin and then my lips. “But I’m not promising that.”

We separated and I swatted her butt as she went to get into the driver’s seat of her car. Kyla met me before I got to the borrowed truck.

“You have everything packed?” I asked.

“All of it,” she nodded. “Except what you asked me to leave for you.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Give some lessons to anyone who wants them. I’ll make sure to figure out how to send more ammo for everything. The more of the ladies who are comfortable with firearms, the better they can protect themselves if this shit keeps getting worse.”

“I know,” she said and moved her bangs out of her face as she looked up at me.

“Fuck, Kyla,” I groaned, and I swept her up in my arms as I kissed her hard. My one hand was on her ass to hold her up, and she wrapped her legs around my waist as I walked her to the back of the truck and sat her on the bed as we kissed.

“What was that for?” she asked when it finally ended.

“I just had a moment to remember how young you are,” I said. “And how much you’re being forced to change for this.”

She looked at me with her eyes brimming a little as she smiled sweetly and put her hands flat on my chest. “I’m not that young, and I’m not changing that much,” she told me. “You were younger than me when you joined the army.”

“You’re changing more than you should need to,” I said. “Doing things you shouldn’t have to. I’m sorry.”

She knew what I meant, but she responded by sitting a touch higher and summoning me to kiss her again. I did, and we got lost in each other until a honk from Leo’s car knocked us out of it.

“Come on, you two,” Aria called out the window. “You can fuck in public once we get there. Bigger audience, too.”

Kyla blushed, and I felt my own face get a little warm too as I stepped away and offered her a stabilizing hand down from where I’d sat her.

We hit the road, and I led the way down the driveway and stopped at the quartet of Airmen at the bottom. Each of them was in fatigues and they looked out of place next to the little outhouse-sized covering where Patrick used to happily check us in and out.

I rolled down my window and flashed my badge to the Private who came over. “I’ll be coming back in. I assume you were told about me?”

“We were, sir,” he nodded. “Any chance you have an ETA?”

“Not sure, but I won’t be far,” I said.

“Alright,” he nodded and waved me through.

Ivy was alone with me in the borrowed truck by design, even Macho riding in Erica’s car, and as we drove I held her hand tightly and tried to make small talk with her. Again, more than Erica, she’d been the one left the most out of the loop on what she could do when the shit hit the fan. It wasn’t her fault, but she’d been shaken when I’d shown back up even more wounded than when I’d left.

She cried a little as she held my hand with both of hers, and when we reached the driveway up to the Falls I pulled off to the side and waved the others ahead of me. Once they had disappeared into the forest I pulled Ivy out of her seat and she climbed over the middle console and curled up in my lap, crying harder as she held me. I just hugged her to me and let myself go.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t lay the actual words out for her. About watching men die in horrible ways over stupidity. About knowing I was inches from dying. About how my death would have meant something horrible for her, and Kyla, and Erica, and Vanessa.

I let myself go and we cried together, and her feeling my chest heave and hearing my own grunts of despair let her know that I needed her just as much as the others.

Erica was my wife. Kyla was my partner. Vanessa was my girlfriend.

Ivy was my heart.

“Thank you,” she whispered to me when the tears had stopped for both of us. Her fingers wiped them from my cheeks and she looked at me with those big blue eyes of hers as she studied my face. “Thank you, mon amour.”

“Thank you, Ivy,” I whispered back, leaning my forehead against hers. “Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime,” she replied with a soft smile and then kissed me delicately.

I checked to make sure there wasn’t anyone on the road ahead or behind us potentially watching where we would go before I pulled into the driveway and headed up to the Falls. The girls had already gone through the gate and I ended up needing to close it manually since I didn’t have the automatic opener. Up in the parking lot, I found that the introductions were already going on, and almost every woman in the place must have been out there helping carry in luggage, greeting the new faces and fawning over Macho as he was passed from bosom to bosom receiving cuddles and kisses.

When we parked and Ivy and I got out I was almost toppled sideways as Josie hit me with a hug that almost doubled as a rugby tackle. I barely managed to stay upright.

“What the hell, Harri?” she said, squeezing me tightly and then letting go quickly as she remembered I was hurt, the opposite of her greeting earlier that day. “You were here what, two and a half hours ago? Three? What the fuck happened?”

“I have some explaining to do,” I said and pulled her back into another hug. With me initiating this one she obviously felt more comfortable doing it, and she held me tightly for a long time.

“Well?” she said as we finally let go of each other.

“It’ll be better if I tell everyone all at once,” I said.

Several of the other women came to talk with me, some out of concern and others just trying to get a little nugget of more information than anyone else got first. Melina in particular, though she blushed heavily when she approached, fussed over me. It was almost weird to think that the whole thing in the showers had been less than a few hours ago.

One thing that stood out was that Abi didn’t come to me like the others, or like she had earlier. And I didn’t know how to feel about that. She was busy getting introduced around to the others, almost tied at the hip with Erica who had easily slipped into the Manager Mom role for our extended family on the move.

Once I extricated myself from Melina and another woman, I headed over to them. “Abi,” I said.

She turned and looked at me, her brow softly drawn down as she smiled a little. “Harri,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not… any worse off.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to talk to everyone all at once; there are things we need to let you all know. I just- I noticed Spencer isn’t out here. How did your talk with her go?”

Abi nodded softly. “She’s… It’s her story to tell.”

“I’d like to talk to her before I address everyone,” I said. “If she’d be alright with that.”

“She’s embarrassed, mostly,” Abi said. “I can bring you up and see.”

“OK,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

We got the rest of the luggage together and everyone helped us bring it in, many hands making light work as we mounted the stairs inside and I got my first look at the upper dormitory floor of Valkyrie Falls. It was a long hallway with a glass wall on one side looking out over the back of the building and into the woods, letting in lots of natural light. The other side was interspaced with door after door in a sleek, black hall. Each door had a whiteboard on it with a custom magnet of the occupant’s name, and pictures, quotes and other bits and bobs decorating them giving a glimpse into each woman’s style. With the occupancy of the building already running lower than normal, Abi and Sarah had set aside a room for Leo and his family, another for Erica and Ivy, and a third one for Kyla.

I made sure everyone was set, and Kyla was particularly happy about getting her own bed for a bit, before I followed Abi down the hall. She led me to Spencer’s door, where I found her whiteboard was plastered with pictures of Spencer grinning widely surrounded by friends from high school or different gyms she’d worked out at, and a couple pictures of horses including one of her riding, and down at the bottom she’d written a quote in cursive—”Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”—Nelson Mandela

Abi knocked while I stayed a step back and averted my eyes a bit, trying to make myself obviously passive. Spencer answered the door.

“Harri was wondering if you’d be OK to talk with him,” Abi said.

“Um. Hi, Harri,” Spencer said.

I looked up at her and gave her a soft smile. “Hey, Spencer.”

She looked a little worn out, like she’d been through an emotional wringer, which was a bit how I felt as well. She was wearing one of her big sweatshirts and her long mane of blonde hair was loose, hanging all the way down past her butt.

“Do you want to talk with him?” Abi prompted the younger woman.

“Um…” Spencer hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. You can come in.”

“We can do it somewhere more public if you want, but still quiet,” I offered.

“No, it’s fine,” Spencer shook her head. “I- My thing earlier wasn’t about you. I know you’re trustworthy.”

“OK, if you’re sure,” I said.

I followed her in, and Abi gave me a look that was both soft and understanding but also pointed and demanding that I not fuck this up. Inside I found the room was much like the others, though Spencer had been there long enough that she’d hung up more pictures and her stuff was scattered around the room, along with having a dozen different hand-written papers taped to the walls with different workout plans and other ideas. It was a bit messy, but considering what my rooms had looked like until a couple of years of military life I couldn’t say much.

“You can sit here,” she said, pulling out the chair from the desk for me before she climbed up on the bed and sat cross-legged, tugging the sheet over her legs and bundling it in her hands nervously.

“Spencer, first off I just want to say how sorry I am for doing whatever caused that response in you,” I said as I sat, leaning forward to try to show her I was being sincere and entirely engaged with her. “I had no idea it would make you remember something, and I don’t need you to tell me what happened unless you want to. I’d… like to know what exactly it was that I did though, since I think you’re a cool girl and you’re a great friend to Kyla, and I’d really like to not put you through that again.”

Spencer chewed on her lip for a second, looking down at her hands clutching the bedsheet, then shook her head. “Harri, I- God, I’m sorry for making you think it was something you did. This- It wasn’t one thing, OK? It was like a sequence of things you sort of stumbled into. Coming up behind me while I was preoccupied, putting your hand on my shoulder, and calling me cutie and complimenting me. It just reminded me of—” She stopped and took a slow breath. “It reminded me of someone, way down in my subconscious.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For whatever happened.”

She swallowed and looked up at me nervously. “Do you want to know?”

“Only if you want and feel safe telling me,” I said. “Spencer, I don’t know for sure how much you all know about me from what the girls have told you. I was an MP before I left the army. That’s a military policeman. And I did investigations in the last year before I left. A lot of the job I did was standing guard places, making sure drunk soldiers learned to smarten up, and occasionally helping track down someone who had gone AWOL. But at the end, when I was doing investigations full time, I- I saw and heard about and investigated a lot of shitty stuff people did to each other. Sometimes it was violent. Sometimes it was sexual. And I didn’t just leave the army, I sort of got kicked out. I was following up on rumours of someone who was blackmailing young female officers, and I happened to come across a bigwig officer in the middle of trying to assault a woman. It was just me, him and her, and I punched him even though he put his hands up and surrendered. So I got kicked out, and I couldn’t help stop any more people from getting hurt like that on my watch, but I never regretted it because that woman ended up becoming a good friend of mine and she deserved to feel safe. So… if it will make you feel safer, I’d like you to tell me, but if you don’t think it will, you don’t have to.”

Spencer was a beautiful girl, usually full of that soft energy and endurance, and it was heartbreaking seeing her so obviously torn as she tried to decide what she wanted.

“It was my cousin,” she blurted out, then swallowed and closed her eyes. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the bedsheet. “It happened the first time when I was thirteen, and I tried telling my parents but they thought I was just tattling on him for roughhousing because everyone in my family is like that, and he was a couple years older than me so they thought I was just being a sore loser. I never even got to tell them what happened, and then I didn’t think they’d believe me. So I avoided him every chance I could, and that was when I started working out. I thought if I could be strong enough I could make him stop if he tried it again. Then, when I was sixteen, we hosted the family reunion and I couldn’t avoid him. I tried to just stay away as much as possible. I locked myself in the basement or went out of the house every chance I got. But I must have left the basement door unlocked later in the day, and I was working out when he came down and put his hand on my shoulder and called me cutie like he did when I was a kid, and told me I was looking hot. And I tried to fight him like I planned but I was sixteen and he was eighteen and he worked out too and—”

She stopped, the words halting their terrible tumble out of her mouth, and she swallowed hard and looked up at me. I tried to push all of my agonies for her into my expression, all of my sincerity while reducing any pity. I nodded silently.

“He left me down there, and when I got myself together I went upstairs and told my parents. At first, my Mom didn’t believe me, but my Dad did. God, he beat the shit out of my cousin. It took my Grandpa and two of my uncles to pull him off, and then my uncles had to pull my Grandpa off him too once he figured out what had happened. That’s when I told them what happened when I was thirteen, and my Mom finally put the pieces together of why I’d changed so much, and she broke down crying. The police showed up and my cousin got arrested. I had to go down to the station and to the hospital to do the rape kit, but I was lucky because it was sort of open and shut. Even his own parents had heard him saying ‘I thought she liked it’ to try and defend himself. He got sentenced to two years in county prison after time served and had to pay some cheap fine because he was only two years older than me. He got out last year and I saw a photo of him—he looks like shit, and I think he joined a gang to try and survive, but no one in the family will talk to him so I’m not sure. I’m not really close to my parents now though—I mean, they’re still my parents, but I think they realized how much they fucked up and it’s hard for us to connect anymore.”

I had to take in a deep breath as I looked across the space at Spencer. She’d let go of the sheets and was breathing in short, shallow breaths.

“I’m so sorry that happened, Spencer,” I said quietly. “And no one should have to go through what you did. I’m also so completely amazed at how impressive and strong a woman you are. I don’t know how you have the sort of inner strength you do.”

She flushed a little and looked away from me again. “I just… I’m just living my life,” she said.

“I want to give you a hug,” I said. “Is that OK, or no?”

She nodded and slipped from the bed to stand, and I stood as well and slowly wrapped my arms around her and hugged her firmly, and she hugged me back.

“Nice shampoo scent,” I joked as we just sort of stood there holding each other.

“Thanks,” she chuckled, then squeezed me a little tighter. “You give really nice hugs.” That made me smile, remembering what Kyla said after the first time they’d met. “Now, are you going to tell me why you have braids in your hair?”

“How much have you heard about the last couple of hours?” I asked as we let go.

“Um… nothing?” she said. “I’ve been in here the whole time.”

That made me blow out a breath. “Well, long story very short, I got skimmed by some birdshot and it’s helping with the wounds on my scalp,” I said.

“Someone shot at you?!” Spencer asked, her jaw dropping a little.

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

“What- how? Why?” Spencer asked, motioning for me to bend over so she could look at the roots of the braids, and that’s how she found the staples too which she prodded at carefully with a finger.

“I’ve got a lot to tell you ladies. And that’s all of you ladies, so how about we head out there so I only have to say it once?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “Let me just clean myself up a little in the bathroom, I’ll be right out.” She went and opened a door in the room which I thought led to a closet but revealed a small en suite washroom.

“Wait, these rooms have their own bathrooms?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” she said as she went to the mirror and started to quickly apply makeup.

“With showers,” I said.

“Yeah, obviously. Why?”

I blinked and shook my head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” I wasn’t sure how much Spencer knew about the routine that had developed after workouts. How Abi and Josie, and now Melina, had been choosing to shower with me down in the main room when they could have easily just climbed the stairs and showered in their rooms.

Spencer took all of five minutes to get herself feeling together enough to leave the room, and when we walked out one after the other it was like there was a little procession of people waiting to try and casually make sure everything was OK. First was Abi, being the bluntest, but then were Kyla and Josie, followed up by a couple of the other ladies from the Falls along with Dani. Then there were Erica and Ivy.

“Everything OK?” Erica asked me as I stepped into a kiss with her in the doorway to the room she was sharing with Ivy.

“With the world? No,” I said. “Here and now, yes.”

“Good, babe,” Erica said, and pecked my lips again. Ivy shot me a look that told me she wanted to say something dirty, and I silenced her with a kiss of her own.

We all ended up outside again, much like we’d been gathered that first time Kyla and I had been to the Falls and talked to the ladies about the pandemic. This time my family, and Leo’s, were with them even though they knew everything. They were mostly there to try and help answer questions, but the difference between most of them and the Valykrie Falls ladies was kind of funny. Spencer had also been introduced to Macho and based on the look on her face I might have lost him as the family pet, she was beaming such a big grin as she held the little guy.

I stood up on a bench so I could see and talk to everyone. “So… Hi,” I said. “I- Well, we need to fill you ladies in on some stuff that we decided not to tell you yet because it’s more complicated to try and explain. But you all deserve to know the truth, and I think we’ve already been waiting too long to tell you.”

“Harri, babe,” Josie said from almost front and centre. “Stop talking about talking and just tell us.”

“Right,” I nodded. “So, you all know that I’ve been living in a polyamorous relationship, and that Dani is in one as well with my best friend Leo here. What we haven’t told you is that there’s a vaccine for Duo Halo, and that’s why we’re in the relationships to begin with.”

That may not have been the best way to introduce things, as I got a lot of hesitant, confused expressions. It was just the start, though, and I had time to try and make it all not sound so utterly insane.

“And then Josie went over and was whispering with Erica and Kyla for a while,” I murmured. “And there were some more awkward questions. Some of the ladies were sceptical even after all the girls talked about the orgasms and the imprinting process, but I think they were mostly the lesbians in the group.”

Vanessa snorted softly and smiled in the darkness of the RV. “I never thought about that. Do you think lesbians would get the bio-upgraded orgasms from your sperm?”

“I guess,” I said. “Though I don’t know how that would work with them wanting sex or not.”

“We should ask Miriam,” Vanessa yawned, and then she rolled over and lay half on top of me. We were both naked and I could feel her rubbery nipple pressed into the soft skin on my side as I looped my arm around her and hugged her close.

“We can,” I agreed.

“So did Josie ask how she could get her hands on some vaccine so she could join our crew?” Vanessa grinned.

“No,” I scoffed, though I wasn’t so sure about that answer.

“What about Abi or Spencer?”

“Spencer was blushing like crazy, and Abi just sort of frowned through the whole thing but didn’t seem to care after the fact.”

Vanessa’s hand slithered down my stomach towards my already-spent cock. “No one asked if they could join the family?”

“No, Vee,” I sighed. Her fingers had wrapped around my shaft and were playing with its softness. “No one asked to just assign themselves to us for an undetermined amount of time until the government scientists figure out how to make it not permanent.”

Her hand stopped playing. “Harri,” she whispered in the dark. “If they do…”

“I love you, Vanessa,” I whispered back, hugging her closer. “The only way you’ll get rid of me is if you tell me for certain that you don’t want me anymore.”

“Good,” she breathed out. “Because I don’t plan on falling in love again. It was annoying enough figuring out that’s what was happening this time.”

I chuckled, and she kept playing with my cock.

“Three times might be as much as you get after the day I’ve had,” I told her.

“One more, baby,” she crooned softly, wiggling her body against mine. “Please? I want you to fuck me from behind again.” She slid up the bed a bit and pressed her lips to my ear. “Please, lover?” she whispered.

I started to get hard and I could feel her lips pull into a smile against my ear.

“Tomorrow you need to go on the hunt,” she whispered, starting to stroke me. “And the better you hunt down those assholes, the faster our family comes back to us. But I’m going to make good use of our time alone, Harri. I’ll be home at 9 every evening, and I want you at least twice every night.”

“At least twice, huh?” I chuckled.

“At least,” she giggled. “Now fuck me, Harri.”

I did, not realising I could have used a bit more of that energy the way my morning would go.