The End of the World

"I have a great appreciation for the amazing things this big world has to offer, but I was never so happy as I was when we settled down here. It's where I've always belonged. I would have happily lived the rest of my life on this property."

"I think we would have made your house our home," he says. "It's big enough for five kids."

"I was actually thinking six or seven, but I didn't want to scare you."

He grins. "I was thinking the same thing."

"And the house is big enough that your folks could have moved in with us if necessary," I say. His expression shows his appreciation that I'd think about his family's wellbeing, but it would have been no great sacrifice on my part. Walter and Cathy were already like family to me.

Of course I fully realize that Greg and I are totally talking about hypotheticals here. We're not going to be running a ranch or raising a bunch of kids, but talking about it helps to keep the mind off the reality of what must be happening outside.

"And don't forget about the bomb shelter," he says. "It turns out that it's a good thing to have one of those close by if you're going to live in this particular neighborhood."

"So true."

"But what about Crystal? She must own half your ranch, right?"

"Nope. Our inheritance was the property and our folk's investment savings. Crystal thought we should sell the ranch and split the proceeds, but I worked out a deal to buy her out, using my share of the investment funds."

"There was that much capital?"

"Yeah, my dad made bank as a government contractor, and other than building this crazy bunker, he was careful with his money, like I am. There were also the life insurance proceeds. The ranch had no mortgage, so I own it free and clear."

"Then Crystal must be sitting on a pile of cash."

"She was -- for a while." Then I shudder. "We all handle loss differently I guess, but Crystal went on a nearly hysterical spending spree. She moved to LA and bought a Porsche. Then it was first-class world travel, designer clothes, constant partying, and a new set of boobs. Worse, she developed a very expensive cocaine habit and had to pay for rehab out-of-pocket, because she hadn't bought health insurance.

"I think she's kicked the drugs, but she managed to spend her entire inheritance in a little over a year. Even after selling the car, she had to borrow money from me to get a plane ticket home. For the last few months she's been waitressing down at the diner and living in her old bedroom. Well, except for the two weeks that she spent living with Braylin."

Greg shudders. "I remember Braylin from high school. He was a skinny guy and always looked strung out."

"And he hasn't changed a bit," I say. "That arrangement just didn't work out."

"So how is it that you're so different than your sister?" he asks.

I shrug. "Everyone's got different talents. When Crystal dances, it takes my breath away, but I've got two left feet. She sings like an angel, but I can't carry a tune in a bucket. She can walk into a room full of strangers and have everyone eating out of her hand within minutes, but I'm that wallflower over there in the corner who can't wait to leave. She drives me nuts with the crazy stuff she does, but she's my sister and I'll always love her."

"Song and dance aren't exactly my bread and butter either," he says. "I like that you got more than your share of common sense. And you've definitely got better money management skills than Crystal."

"Oh, I squeeze a penny until it squeals because I have to. It doesn't take a genius to do that."

"Still, it's a good ability to have. My family's always been careful with money too. My folks paid off their own mortgage before I hit high school. You and I would have been starting out debt-free."

"But none of that is ever going to happen," I say sadly. "When, and if, we leave the bunker, nothing will be the same, even if we don't end up taking any near hits. We can't graze cattle on land that's had radioactive fallout. And after an EMP attack like that, technology will be strictly nineteenth-century for years, if not longer."

"I'm going to guess that over the coming months," he says, "we'll be communicating with The Little Silo on the Prairie to keep up with local events. A lot is going to depend on just who was involved in the attack, how many bombs were dropped, and whether or not there's an actual invasion. That's all long term, though."

"Yeah, it is."

I shift a little and suddenly realize that Greg has become hard again. I can feel his stiff head pressing into my still slippery folds. The look on his face says he's just noticed it too.

"Oh God," he murmurs.

I feel the same way, and my body is screaming to do something about it, but there's a war going on. I feel guilty already for the pleasure I've taken while the rest of the world is in mortal peril.

"Greg," I say, "If things were different outside, I'd want to make love with you right now."

"I feel the same, Lana. I want you so badly, but this isn't the time."

I kiss him, then lift myself as far as I can and settle on my side next to him, my leg over his, but not teasing his erection. I lay my head comfortably on his shoulder.

We have nowhere we need to be, and nothing we need to do right now. If we get a message through the terminal, we'll hear it. I'd be content to stay just like this for the rest of the afternoon. As a matter of fact, I'm so comfortable that when Greg speaks again, I realize that I've drifted off.

"Lana," he says, "there was something odd in our conversation with Lt. Garcia."

"Hmm, what's that?"

"You told him your name was 'Alana,' but later he called you 'Lana.'"

"I didn't notice that. Are you sure?"

"Yeah, but I didn't think about it until later."

"Well, I suppose Lana would be the most common nickname for Alana, or maybe he heard the Colonel refer to me that way. It's what my dad called me. Or it could have been a typo."

"All true, but it got me to thinking about some other things," he says.

"Like what?"

"Like when exactly was it that Braylin and your sister were dating?"

"For the last couple months. Why?"

"So they're dating now?"

I'm not sure where he's going with this. "Yeah. Braylin went on the cruise with Crystal."

"We're talking about Braylin Grant, right?"

"Yeah. How many guys named "Braylin" could there be around here? And why is this such a big deal?"

Greg ignores my questions. "Does he work at the 7-Eleven?"

"Yeah, for the last few months. How did you know that?"

"Lana, I saw him this morning, wearing his store uniform, walking out of there when I was filling up. He didn't see me, but I recognized him immediately."

"That's not possible."

"Lana, he got into an old red Chevy Lumina. I remember him driving that car back in high school. Oh, it was him alright."

I want to believe him, but he can't have seen what he thinks he saw. "Greg, Crystal called me from Miami yesterday afternoon. She said she and Braylin had gone aboard the ship and were pulling away from the dock. There's no way they could have gotten off the ship in time to get back here overnight. You can't have seen Braylin this morning."

My rapid-fire rhetoric trails off as I see the patient look on Greg's face. He's obviously a few steps ahead of me. I'd lay money that he was thinking about this while I was drifting off. I take a calming breath and think hard. What are the logical possibilities? One jumps out at me.

"Unless they never actually went on that cruise," I murmur.

Greg nods his head almost imperceptibly.

For a moment, I'm panicked by the thought that Crystal could be trapped above ground with the fallout and the imminent arrival of fire from the sky, but then I follow the train of logic to its natural conclusion. Why would she tell me they were going on a cruise if they really weren't? To what end?

Then the obvious explanation finally hits me. "Greg, are you implying that this whole thing is some kind of sick joke?"

His face gives nothing away. He answers my question with a question again. "What's today's date, Lana?"

"Who cares what the date is? I refuse to believe that Crystal would do a thing like this!"

"The date, love."

The use of the endearment slows me a little and I concentrate on his question. "It's March thirty-first." He raises a questioning eyebrow at me, so I think on it a little bit more.

When you spend so much time alone, you tend to lose track of the days, but Johnny Temple was the weekend guy, so this isn't Friday, it's Saturday. Which means this isn't the last day of March, it's the first day of...

It all finally falls into place.

"It's April Fool's Day!" I gasp. "Oh my God, I can't believe how stupid I've been." I begin to wiggle loose. "I'm gonna go out there and--"

"Hang on," he says, gently but firmly holding me in place. "You may want to think about this for a minute."

"What is there to think about?"

"Well, for example, how do you know I wasn't in on this?"

That brings me to a complete stop. I stare at him.

"I wasn't, by the way," he says quickly, "but I want to make sure that you're certain of that before you start to wonder. That is, if this really is a practical joke."

He's right, I don't want to go off half-cocked. I begin to talk it through, out loud, starting with the possibility of Greg being involved in this. Hmm, there are some interesting aspects there...

"Okay," I say, "I guess it is rather interesting timing that after I haven't seen you for five years, you would be here at just the moment I get a prank call about World War III. I mean, I can imagine a situation where a truly desperate guy might pull that kind of stunt, convincing the girl he spurned years before that she needs to take him with her into the bunker. If he were the proverbial 'Last man on Earth,' he might even get laid."

Greg looks stricken. "Hey, I didn't mean for you to question my non-involvement quite so seriously."

I smile and touch him on the tip of his cute nose. "Don't worry. I think I know you better than that. Besides, you couldn't have known I would call your folks' place looking for help. I told Crystal I'd be able to do the entire installation myself. I didn't realize until this morning that my engine hoist wouldn't go up high enough to lift the panels into place after all. You're totally off the hook."

"That's a relief."

"But by the same token, Greg, how do you know that I'm not pranking you?"

The turnabout seems to catch him by surprise, but he bends to the task. "Hmm," he says slowly, "the timing of that phone call you got was rather convenient, wasn't it? And the power going out before I could call anyone, and how you said calling from my folks' place could expose this goofy-sounding 'Hackensack Network'? A truly desperate girl might pull a stunt like that. Especially one who just happens to have a bunker in her backyard."

It's my turn to look stricken.

"Relax," he says. "It would have been quite difficult for you to have planned something like this, because even I didn't know I'd be coming back home until this morning. There wasn't enough time for you to dream up a scheme like this and put it into action."

"Then I'm in the clear?"

"As far as I'm concerned, you're as pure as the wind-driven snow."

"Crystal and Braylin, on the other hand..."

"Are you sure they're both in on this?" he asks.

"Well, there's no way Crystal could have hacked that terminal, but Braylin was a Communications Technician in the Army for a couple of years before he got his General Discharge. That also probably taught him enough military lingo to have posed as Lt. Garcia."

"Yeah," Greg laments, "they had me going there, and I should have been more suspicious of how much operational information a 'lieutenant' was willing to give out to a random civilian during a national crisis."

"Now that you mention it, yeah, that was a little flakey, but that whole conversation proves that Crystal was involved too. She was the only one who could have known about the Hackensack Network, Clifford the Big Red Truck, and my dad's story about the electromagnetic pulse satellites. Knowing that I understood EMP would make it plausible to me that the radios could be dead -- which they had to be for the prank to last more than five minutes."

"Yep, that sounds about right. Oh, and I'll be sure to keep this business about the network to myself."

"I'd appreciate that, and I'm going to swear Braylin to secrecy as well. Then I'm going to kick Crystal's ass for talking about it, among a dozen other reasons."

"There's no hurry," he says, "and just to be sure, I'd like to check those radios again."

I quell my impatience and nod. "Just to be sure."

Greg slides out first, then helps me get to my feet. We slip our jackets on and he takes my hand as we walk down the hall to the Comm room. I take a peek and decide that I like the way his flaccid cock bobs against his thighs as he walks.

Greg unplugs the shortwave and pops the back panel off again. He reaches in and gently pulls on the wire that connects the fuse to the power supply. It comes loose in his hand. He leans in close and examines the end. "Son of a bitch," he mutters.

"What is it?"

"Just how technically savvy is your sister?"

"You could easily sell her a bottle of blinker fluid for her car."

"Okay, so it must have been Braylin who did this. He cut the wire right where the insulation starts, then slid the plastic back and cut out a short section of the wire itself. Then he slipped the empty insulation back over the little stub of wire coming from the power supply. The wire looked like it was connected, and the fuse checked out just fine, but the radio wasn't getting any juice."

"So it's not dead?"

"Let's find out."

Greg strips away the excess insulation, then makes quick work of reconnecting the wires, using a soldering iron from his bag. He replaces the back panel and plugs the cord into the power strip. "Give it a shot," he says.

I press the power button and a crisp, upper-class British voice fills the room, talking about some vote in Parliament. I look at the frequency. That's the BBC. I push the button for plain old FM radio and hear Johnny Temple's afternoon counterpart reading the news and weather. She makes no mention of fallout or thermonuclear events.

Only now, upon hearing the sounds of normal life going on outside, does the full reality of this prank hit me. What in the hell had Crystal been thinking? This wasn't funny at all. And it wasn't just about me either. Greg has been screwed with, just as severely as I have, all because he was near me at the wrong moment. If I was him, I'd be livid.

"That bitch!" I mutter, almost too angry to speak. "She made us think the world was ending."

"Yeah, she did a pretty good job of it." He's being much calmer about this than I am. Then I look closer and decide that maybe it's not actually calm I see in his expression, but preoccupation with some other thought. "I think we're entitled to some payback," he continues, "but in the meantime..."

Greg walks over to the terminal and begins to type.

"WE ARE HAVING A TECHNICAL ISSUE WITH THE POWER AND NEED TO SHUT DOWN OUR INVERTER FOR AN HOUR OR TWO. WE WILL TELL YOU WHEN WE ARE BACK UP."

Greg sends the message, then turns back to me. I can't help but notice that his remarkable manhood is back at full staff. "The world's not ending after all," he says softly.

The anger I'm feeling toward my sister evaporates. It didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of standing up to the much more powerful emotion that's spreading like wildfire from my loins. "What I want is for you to make love to me, Greg," I say, looking him straight in the eye and reaching out to give his rod one long, gentle stroke.

The terminal beeps, almost unnoticed. "UNDERSTOOD."

Greg presses the power button and the screen goes dark. Then he silently takes my hand and leads me down the hall. We stop in front of the door I'd skipped during the tour.

"This is the master bedroom, isn't it?"

"How did you know that?"

"Because even as little as I knew about your mom, I know there was no way she would have slept in one of those bunks."

"She did have her standards," I admit. I find myself holding my breath as he turns the knob.

"Holy shit," he murmurs. "Are we still in a bomb shelter?" He enters, and I step in beside him. "Everything else in the bunker is so utilitarian. How did this happen?"

"Well, when my dad first laid out his proposed floor plan for this place, my mom indeed said there was no way in hell she was sleeping in a bunk bed. To get her buy-in for the project, my dad had to steal space from the other rooms to give her a soothing master bedroom."

"Then I'm glad your mom put her foot down. This place is awesome."

Yeah, it kind of is. It's got faux stucco walls, a vaulted ceiling with wood beams, thick carpet, a queen-size bed, soft lighting, a reading nook with twin recliners, nice artwork and--"

"Sheer curtains over a simulated window?" he murmurs.

"It almost looks real, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. If I didn't know we were way underground, I'd think it was just a cloudy day outside. What's the light source?"

"It's an array of daylight LEDs with a diffuser. It was my dad's design."

What I don't mention is that the fancy finishes are much more recent. Part of my horny mind kept imagining my being alone with Greg in here, and I redecorated the room accordingly. The fact that he's here with me -- and that we're about to make love -- is nearly mind-blowing.

"And hey," he exclaims, finally noticing, "it's warm in here."

"Yeah, my mom never did well with cold, so my dad installed a little propane furnace that serves just this room. I turned it on while we were in the utility room."

"Your intention being?"

That's a good question. Perhaps I was subconsciously thinking that I wouldn't want to sleep in the bunkroom with Greg. Perhaps I'd been thinking that I'd want a pleasant place to go to get away from him. Honestly, though, that wasn't it.

"Greg, I think I subconsciously knew that you really couldn't have been as big a jerk as I tried to tell myself you were. And I guess I hoped that we'd at least be sleeping in the same bed."

"I like the way your subconscious thinks," he says.

I close the door behind us.

Without another word, Greg tosses his jacket onto one of the recliners. He walks to the head of the bed and takes the top edges of the comforter, blanket and top sheet, then pulls them down the bed until they pile onto the carpet at the foot. He turns back to me, slipping my jacket off and putting it with his. Then he wraps me in his arms. His stiff member presses hard into my belly. "You are amazing, Lana Erickson. I almost wish I was going to be locked in here with you for the next year or two."

"Oh, I bet we could probably sneak in here from time to time anyway," I say coyly. Then I don't say anything else because his lips are on mine.

Moments later, his arm is at the back of my legs and I find myself cradled, our kiss unbroken as he lays me down on the smooth fitted sheet. His hand is stroking my breast as he lays down on his side next to me. My hands are on his head, holding his face to mine as our tongues duel.

Eventually Greg moves over the top of me, his legs between my eagerly spread thighs. His hard cock settles into the valley between my swollen labia and begins to slide up and down, spreading my bountiful lubrication between us.

I wrap my ankles around the back of his thighs as he strokes against me. The wet pressure and friction against my clit is driving me crazy.