Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's webpage: http://members.xoom.com/Funkhouse/ozindex.html

Author's disclaimer: God Bless all those who would follow the golden rule, and God Bless Petfly, who rightfully own Blair & Jim, not me.

"There is no job that makes one man better than the other. There are no good or bad jobs."

That's what they tell you, and that's what you believe, at first. After awhile, once you've been at it long enough, any job becomes routine. I imagine some days the President herself feels that way.

They also tell you that there are no good or bad books: just misinformation and stuff that's useful to know. And since there's really no sure way to tell the difference, it's some people's job to catalog the sources of information, and filter out the stuff you don't need, and put the rest on telebooks.

I used to think such a job would be the very worst in the world. Boring. Relentlessly mind-numbing. So much reading, so little of it worth the precious manufactured resource it's written on.

Then I found a book, "The History of Art , Volume Nine: The Early Italian Renaissance". Just like they said, pages and pages devoted to trivial details about what and where and why and what they were wearing and who was the King and how many horses he owned. But the pictures! Nobody had ever told us about the pictures, yet they had to have known.

Later, I found an entire library, and before I reported its quadrants to the Recovery Team, I took some of the books and hid them. I was too young to understand the possible consequences of such an action, or to believe that I would be held liable, if I had been caught.

I now know otherwise. What I had done was an act of sedition. Had my transgression been discovered, I would have been punished just like anybody else.

There are a lot of things I now know otherwise. For instance, I know that filtering books for useful information is probably the most wonderful job a man or woman can have. A million times better than my job. That much I know, if I know nothing else.

Another thing I know is that, when you take the face mask off and breathe the aboveground air, you do not fall down dead. The insides of your lungs do not develop festering sores that blister and explode inside your body, infecting the rest of your internal organs with creeping necrosis. I have known this for over 10 years. I feel certain there are others besides me who know this, and, like me, they keep it to themselves.

Do the Commanders and Generals and the President know that the air is not poisonous, and hasn't been for quite some time now?

This is what I asked Sandburg - if I know, how can they not? He answered by asking me a question: Did I believe everything they tell me?

I have tried using my extra hearing and my extra sight when I am around the Commanders, the Generals, and even the President, to gain some kind of insight, but they are very careful around me and my kind. I suspect that they have invented a secret, silent language to evade our extra senses.

But I gave up trying to figure out what is really going on a long time ago. I just do my job. I go where they send me. I find the LeftBehinds and I report their quadrants to the Recovery Team. What happens to the LeftBehinds after that, I do not know.

Occasionally I'll find a book. I no longer turn the books in for filtration. I take them with me, or make note of where I found them should I ever return to that particular location.

I know that to the Commanders and Generals I am no better than the LeftBehinds. More useful, but no better. It doesn't matter that I am the President's son. When I am no longer useful, they will do me the same as they do the LBs.

And, until I met Sandburg, I didn't care. I was close to accelerating that day, matter of fact. That's why I took the face mask off the first time. To die. When I didn't die, I found I had something to live for. After a few years, I didn't care again. Finding a new book became the only reason to look forward to another day.

That's all changed, now. What a difference a day makes.

I was three days out on foot at a pace of ten miles a day. FrontLiner RecoveryTeam Member1 had followed a straight line at an angle slightly less than 90 degrees southwest from our starting point. RecoveryTeam Member3 left at an identical angle northwest. As RecoveryTeam Member2, I was headed dead-on west. We were to keep the same pace of approximately 10 acres per hour, stopping at the exact same interval for rest and refueling. Within his or her quadrant each TeamMember walked a zig-zag pattern, covering a parameter of six furlongs by six furlongs. With our ears wide open, our hearing was acute enough to hear gophers burrowing 10 feet underground, or children laughing.

It was the children who gave the LeftBehinds away, ninety per cent of the time.

As was my habit, I had taken my mask off less than two miles into the walk.

I heard him before I saw him. He was whistling. I've been a FrontLiner for over 20 years, and in all that time I have NEVER seen a LeftBehind aboveground. His whistling was accompanied by a clanksnick-whoosh sound so purposeful in its rhythm that at first I thought he was making music on some kind of instrument. I concentrated my cones in the direction of the noise until he came into focus: an old man, effortlessly plunging a shovel into the pliant earth. He was moving forward with each scoop, turning over the dirt and forming neat, straight rows. He must have been at it for a long time: there were twenty rows spaced about two feet apart, each at least half an acre long.

Clanksnick-whoosh. He was wearing a ragged straw hat, and had a bandana tied around the bottom of his face. I zoomed in for a close-up and then quickly backed away when I saw that the skin above the bandana was cracked and peeling off in thick flakes.

I admit that it scared me. My immediate impulse was to blast him, though from that distance it wouldn't have done any more harm than to singe the hair on his forearms.

Curiosity influenced my decision to get a closer look. I stripped out of my protective jumpsuit and hid it with my weapon, locater and rations pack in a small rock formation.

I circled around the old man and approached him from the rear. Apart from the shovel, he was unarmed. His loose fitting clothes were torn and filthy, hanging in shreds from his surprisingly fit body. His heavy workboots were at least two sizes too big for his feet. He was intent on his work, and oblivious to my approach. I called to him but he didn't turn around. Thinking he must be deaf, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned reluctantly, and regarded me without fear.

In fact, he greeted me with an off-handed "hello," and pulled the bandana off his chin. I quickly looked away, not wanting to see the rest of his face at this close range. "Sorry. I wasn't ignoring you. I thought you were someone else," he said.

"Who did you think I was?" I asked, keeping my eyes averted from his ruined face, but watching his hands carefully in case he lifted the shovel.

"Well. Nobody," he answered, and laughed.

His voice sounded youthful, pleasantly deep and throaty. Curiosity won again as I finally brought my eyes into complete focus upon his face. He wasn't an old man at all, nor afflicted with a horrible skin disease. He was at least 10 years younger than I, and his face was covered in a thick layer of mud that had dried and caked in the harsh sunlight.

"Does covering your face with dirt prevent damage from the sun?" I asked.

He touched his cheek, then opened his mouth wide and laughed, cracking the crusty layer even further.

"Oh, shit," he said, and scraped at the dirt with his fingernails. "This is my cure for freckles."

I looked at him blankly.

"Actually, I really should be doing this work when the sun goes down, but Christ, it feels so good, doesn't it? So, when did you figure it out?"

"Figure what out?"

He leaned back, tilting his face towards the sky, filled his lungs with the sun-baked air, then looked back at me with a smile so broad I could see a wide expanse of his pink gums above the perfectly straight, small white teeth. "This, man. The sky, the air, the sun...."

I noticed that the fullness of his lips did not diminish, even stretched as they were in a wide smile. Full and smooth, not chapped like mine. I licked my lips with a dry tongue, and realized I was thirsty.

"Your skin is so pale," he said. "How do you keep from getting sunburned?"

"I travel at night, mostly." I explained. "I was forced aboveground. My people....there was an earthquake. Everything caved in. I was near the surface; I managed to dig myself out. I dug for days, looking for survivors. I didn't realize I was outside, breathing the air. I didn't think about it. I was just trying to find the others."

He was studying my hands. I glanced at them too, at the clean, trimmed fingernails. We both looked up at the same time. His eyes were the deepest blue. I wondered what the rest of him looked like, underneath the dirt.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," he said.

He would run, now, to warn the others. And I would catch him. Hold him down, my hand covering his mouth and nose, my body pinning him to the ground. He would struggle...he was nearly a head smaller than I, but he was muscular, compact. It would be hard, he'd give me a good fight. I'd win in the end. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing. I listened to his heartbeat: it was faster than normal, but it wasn't racing. He wasn't afraid. Was it possible that he hadn't yet figured out why I was there?

"We've been moving steadily east, for the last few years," he continued. "The earth seems to be more stable, the further east you go. We'll probably be moving again, one of these days soon. How long have you been aboveground?"

"I don't know. I lost track of time. Your people....are they near?"

"I don't have any people. It's just me."

"You said ‘we'."

"Figure of speech."

He wasn't making it easy. If he broke and ran, my body would take over on instinct and the process of eliminating him would begin. Instead, he turned around and resumed digging.

"This is the most arable land we've come across. Incredible, really. I'm going to plant sunflowers and corn in alternate rows. Do you know what a sunflower is?"

He stopped digging and turned towards me. I shook my head.

"There are hundreds of species of sunflowers, even more if you include the hybrids. ‘Helianthus annuus', also known as the marigold of Peru, or ‘Chrysanthemum Peruvianum'. The head of certain cultivated species can measure over a foot in diameter. Every part of the sunflower plant has a purpose. The seeds are edible,and can be processed into a highly nutritious oil. The petals of the flower can be used to dye cloth, or steeped into a medicinal tea. The stalks, when dried, make an excellent fire wood, or mulch, or animal feed. The seeds themselves, while an incomplete protein, when combined with other seeds or legumes, provide an adequate foundation for a well-balanced diet. One acre of sunflowers can sustain a family of four for a year: mother, father, and two children. "

"You said ‘we' again."

"You know how to read, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about plumbing?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," I lied.

He dug the shovel hard into the ground, then gestured with his open palms. "Wait here," he said. I don't know why, but I did. Must have been those blue eyes.

The ground he'd been tilling graded off into a gully, where he disappeared. I pulled the shovel out of the ground and began turning the soil over. Before long he returned, accompanied by another man. He was about my age, my size. He had a gun tucked into his belt. Not a blaster, but the old-fashioned kind that used ammo. I could smell that it had recently been fired.

"This is Mr. Bloom," the younger man said by way of introduction. "My name's Sandburg. Blair. Blair Sandburg."

He reached out his hand, then pulled it back, made a token gesture of brushing the dirt off, and offered his hand again. I took it, squeezed it tight. He squeezed back. I hoped he didn't notice how soft my hands were. His were rough and thick with callouses.

Mr. Bloom stuck out his hand. We shook, briefly. His hand was soft and smooth, like mine. His clothes, stiff denim jeans and a khaki work-shirt, were clean and in perfect condition. Like Sandburg, he wore a hat and a bandana around his neck, but Mr. Bloom's hat appeared to be brand new.

"I'm sorry, " Mr. Bloom said. "I didn't catch your name."

"Jim, " I said. "Just Jim."

"Just Jim. Where was the cave-in? Maybe we can help you look for survivors."

"I've been walking for days, really. I just don't think anyone's still alive. Anyway, I'm kind of lost. I doubt if I could backtrack now."

"Mr. Bloom," Sandburg interrupted. "Jim knows plumbing."

"So you said."

As we sized each other up, I listened to Mr. Bloom's heartbeat - steady and purposeful. He wasn't afraid of me, either. What was the matter with these two? Then again, he had the gun. I just had the shovel.

"We found a cistern in perfect condition," Mr. Bloom said, finally. "We're having a little trouble getting it underground. Can you help us?"

I had no idea what a cistern was, and even when they showed it to me, hidden under a tangle of overgrown brush, I still didn't know what it was. Sandburg and I stood behind the cistern and rolled it forward, following Mr. Bloom in the same direction that Sandburg had taken earlier.

"Mr. Bloom has a bad back," Sandburg said quietly, then snickered. Most of the dirt on his face had flaked away, giving me a pretty good idea of what he looked like underneath the sweat streaked grime. Nice. Very nice.

Rolling the thing across a level field was hard enough. I'm still trying to figure out how we got it 15 feet underground. The kid is strong, all muscle and callouses and determination. I collapsed onto the floor, completely missing the cozy-looking cot offered to me. My thighs and upper arms throbbed. The thin skin of my finger pads and palms had transformed into swollen blisters. I could feel them filling with liquid, on the verge of bursting. My lungs and throat burned with fatigue; breathing was painful. My tongue hurt. My body's distress was so complete it made me laugh, and that hurt, too. I dialed down my nerve endings to the point of numbness. I was a helpless bag of useless sinew.

I drifted away for a few seconds, and came back when Sandburg pressed a glass bottle of ice cold water against my forehead. He held it up to my lips and tilted it to my open mouth, letting the water spill over my chin, onto my chest. I turned my nerve endings back up enough to make intimate contact with the icy liquid as it slid down my gullet and into my stomach. I could feel him smiling at me, I swear I could feel it....or maybe it was the water. Something was touching me, inside and out. Such beautiful blue eyes. Sweat had sloughed off most of the caked dirt from his face. I wanted to lick the rest off. I hoped he'd let me see him cleaned up before I died from fatigue.

He squatted behind me, pressing me forward slightly. I was helpless in his arms. He began to rub my shoulders, hard, his fingers digging deep into the muscle. I should have dialed down, since I was in no condition to resist him. Instead, I opened my flesh to the touch of his calloused finger tips, the tops of my shoulder blades acutely aware of his ruthless thumbs. My cock was rising up towards my belly, in striking position. When did I take my pants off? How did my rod manage this last gasp of energy?

"Blair!" Mr. Bloom barked from somewhere behind us. Sandburg sidled away, and I fell backwards, closing my eyes. Boom. Out like a snuffed candle.

I woke up in complete blackness, with nothing for my rods and cones to focus on. I searched the cold stone floor for my clothes, but couldn't find my shoes. I opened my ears, my skin, my olfactory nerves, to the silent darkness, and sniffed for landmarks. My fingertips picked up a thin current of cool air entering from my right, just below eye level. I followed its twisting, turning path, right, left, straight ahead. I noticed I was traveling down a slight grade, and the lower I descended, the warmer the earth beneath my bare feet became. I paused, opening my mouth wide, and tasted salt. Some primal memory in the marrow of my still-aching bones led me in the direction of the mineral springs before my ears heard the gentle spill of lapping water. Down a few more feet, and a softly glowing light appeared. The narrow, dark corridor of the underground cave suddenly opened up into a large cavern, glowing with an eerie, beautiful fluorescence. Steaming water washing from one entire side of the cavern dripped steadily into a deep, pool- shaped crevice scooped into the stone floor. The water sloshed over the sides of the naturally formed tub and drained into recesses and pits all along the bottom of the cavern. Within seconds I had stripped off my clothes and settled into the smooth stone pool. Lying with my back propped against its side, the water came just below my chin. I closed my eyes and prayed for death. Then I remembered Sandburg's blue eyes and merciless thumbs and prayed for a different kind of death.

When I woke up I was pulling my cock to the sound of Sandburg moaning with pleasure. I'd never been this erect, this stretched out. My cockhead bobbed on the surface of the water. I wasn't listening on purpose. If anything, I was trying to block out all sensation, sight, sound, feeling, taste. I was striving for oblivion.

His moans were fake. Underneath was a counterpoint of genuine discomfort. His sigh - ‘ohhh' - tailed off into a short gasp of pain. I dialed down; it wasn't any of my business. Nevertheless, I tightened my grip on my rod, and strummed the tip lightly with the ball of my thumb. I tried to go away, tried to sink down into the dark, warm water, syrupy with mineral salts, stroking myself in time to Sandburg's fake orgasm: "...ohhh...unh...ow...OW..."

The sound of Mr. Bloom's rhythmic panting began to intrude, and I let go of my dick, and dialed my hearing as low as I could get it. Sandburg was saying no,no,no,no, then oh, then ow. I sank under the water, and heard Sandburg yell. I couldn't hold my breath long enough. I emerged from the water in time to hear Mr. Bloom's panting reach a crescendo in sync with Sandburg's agonized gasps. I couldn't not listen. Something about the tremble in Sandburg's voice made me want to get out of the water and find them, made me imagine placing my hand over Mr. Bloom's nose and mouth and holding it there until he stopped breathing. I started to lift myself out of the pool. Then it stopped.

I heard him padding in my direction, running. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me, and covered his bare groin with his hands. I would have laughed at his modesty, if not for the expression of pain twisting his beautiful face.

"What are you doing in here?" he hissed. "Please get out, I need to wash." A copious amount of cum was dripping off his naked belly, into the curly hair of his bush.

Obediently, I stepped out of the pool. Even the coolness of the air suddenly hitting my steaming skin couldn't ease my semi-erect state. He ignored me, lowered himself into the water, and sank, disappearing in a steamy cloud. He stayed down for nearly a minute - it was all I could do to keep from grabbing him by the head and pulling him back up. When he finally surfaced, he shook his hair out of the tight bun in which it had been knotted. His hair fell past his shoulders, down his back. He looked at me, looking at his hair, then slipped back under the water. I reached in, took a handful of the hair, swished it back and forth. The water over his face clouded with dirt. I leaned close to the surface of the pool, brought the hank of hair up to my face, and brushed it against my lips. He sat up, pulling his hair out of my grasp.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"Men are such pigs, " he said, but he was laughing, and whatever pain he was in seemed to have subsided. I, on the other hand, was in agony. He fell back into the water. I waited obediently for his return. He finally emerged, and leaned over, drawing his knees up under his chin.

"Where is the light coming from?" I asked. I was curious, but I was also trying to think of a way to keep him above the water line.

"There are elements, minerals, in the stone walls that are naturally luminous. Some chambers are brighter than others. It's pretty dark in here, compared to the other rooms. " "I like it like this."

"So do I." "Why do you let him hurt you?"

"It's called sex. He wasn't hurting me. Never had sex, huh?"

"Not that kind."

"I wasn't ..anyway, it's none of your fucking business. And how could you hear anything? We're about 100 feet away from here. UNDERground. Christ, I wasn't that loud, was I?"

"You were loud. You were screaming."

"No I wasn't."

"Yes, you were."

He laughed, mirthlessly.

"What do you care? You came to kill us."

"No!"

"You're a sentinel. You can see in the dark, and taste blood in the air. You can hear men fucking a thousand miles away. You're a killer."

"I'm not," I said, but he was underwater again. He shook his head back and forth, loosening the dirt from his hair. Then he was still. I couldn't see his face under the clouded water.

I waited. Thirty seconds. Forty. One minute. More. More. Finally, I reached in and pulled him out, grabbing him roughly under the armpits. He was gasping for air. I squeezed him tight. I know I was hurting him - I was angry.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"We, Mr. Bloom and I, knew you'd find us, eventually." His shoulders were trembling, and his teeth clattered. "We didn't care anymore. Well, I don't, anyway. That's why I'm planting a garden. I'm not going to hide underground anymore. Not in the summer. Do you even know what summer is?"

"Yes."

"The fuck you do!" he cried angrily, and wrenched himself out of my grasp. He climbed out of the pool. I stood there, naked, no longer erect. He turned around. "Well?" he said. I followed him out of the cavern, into a well-lit passageway.

The sight of his dimpled ass inspired my cock back to life. I let it bob in front of me, slapping against my belly as my long legs tried to keep up with the pace of his short, muscular thighs. The tight curls of his hair were starting to unwind into loose ringlets as the water dripped down his back in thin streams. My tongue ached with thirst.

Finally, we entered a small, low-ceilinged chamber. There was plenty of head room for him, but I could barely stand upright. A dim glow emanated from veins in the rough stone walls. Otherwise, the room was dark. Still, there was enough light to see an unkempt bed on the floor, surrounded by towering stacks of books. Should I pretend that I was a man with normal eyes, and stumble about in the darkness? Did it matter?

He turned towards me and grabbed my cock, jerked at it with one hand.

"What are you doing?" I laughed.

"Having sex with you."

I pulled his hand away, brought it to my mouth, and licked the inside of his palm.

"What are YOU doing?" he asked.

"Making love to you," I said.

I touched his cock, pressed it up against his belly. It jumped in my hand, and he stepped back. I pulled him towards me, hugged him close, my hands on his ass. I parted his cheeks with both my hands, and barely touched his cleft with the tips of my index fingers. He pulled away, and gasped with shock, or surprise, or pain.

"Dirty," he said. "Don't..."

So it wasn't going to be easy. I went over to the bed, lay down, and waited for him, but he didn't come. Instead, he walked over to one of the walls and pointed to something painted there.

"Do you know what this is? Don't pretend that you can't see it."

I brought the picture into focus. A crude drawing of some kind of animal.

"That's what you're destroying, when you blow up the caves. Not just the people inside of them, but this...a million years of history."

He grabbed a book from one of the piles and dropped down beside me.

He opened the book on his lap, found what he was looking for and showed me the page. A picture of an animal just like the drawing on the wall...it could have been the very same picture.

He leaned down, close to the page. I think he was weeping. I rubbed my cheek against the top of his head. I could smell the mineral salts in his hair. He turned towards me, lips parted, the tip of his tongue tucked into a corner of his mouth. I moved my face towards his and he leaned back. I grabbed his chin, and put my hand on the back of his head, holding him still. I put my mouth over his, pressing my tongue against the slight resistance of his teeth. He tried to twist his head away but I held him firm, wrapping his hair around my fingers so he couldn't go far.

"God, you're dirty," he said.

"I'm trying to kiss you."

"Feels like you're trying to eat me."

"That too," I laughed. He looked at me as if I were insane, and finally, the hard defiance faded from his eyes, and I saw how afraid he was.

"All these books," I gestured with my free hand, still holding on to his hair. "You wouldn't have a copy of the Kama Sutra, would you? The Joy of Gay Sex?"

"They write books about it?"

I let him go. "What exactly do you and Mr. Bloom do all day long, when you're not planting flowers or dragging giant cement tubes around?"

"What do you do all day long, when you're not marching around in leather boots murdering innocent people?"

"Let me touch you."

"No."

"I can't show you if I can't touch you. Let me touch you...here..."

"No..."

".... and here...."

"No, that's disgusting....don't...."

I got down on my knees, between his legs. My lips circled the very tip of his cock, and I sucked him the way a kitten, already full of milk, would suck his mother's teat: barely. I let him grow in my mouth. If Mr. Bloom had never tasted Sandburg's dick, he was a fool, and deserved to die.

I shouldn't have looked up. The sight of those blue eyes, wide with amazement, and the lips, full, ripe, wet, never been kissed, never been bitten, or licked, or sucked, was enough to make me temporarily abandon his dick, and rise to that mouth with my own.

"Here's what Blair Sandburg tastes like," I said. "Not dirty. Good."

His mouth was wide open, whether with alarm or ecstasy, I didn't care. I pressed my lips against his, and fell inside of him, all the way down. I stretched out on my back, and pulled him on top of me. I was the first. Me. No one had ever done this to him before. I found his cleft again, and pulled him open. I rubbed the tip of my finger along the circular pucker of his asshole, gentle but firm, parting it wide, pushing my finger in by tiny increments with each circuit until I was all the way in, my knuckles flush against his cleft. Clearly, Mr. Bloom had never been here before. The passage was tight, moist but not slimy. I'm not sure what I had expected. Did I want to know what Mr. Bloom had been doing to Sandburg to make him cry with such pain? Maybe Mr. Bloom would tell me, before he died.

I used my finger to push Sandburg's belly into my belly, while the muscles in the small of his back elevated his ass, meeting the resistance of my fisted knuckles. The fingers of my free hand wove into the tangled, wet hair at the back of his head, and pressed his face into mine. I would swallow him whole, if I could, but kissing would have to do. I pulled my finger out of him, and sucked it, scraping his essence between my teeth. Then, flipping him over onto his back, I covered his mouth with mine, working up the saliva from the back of my throat, mixing it up with the chyme of his asshole, and shared with him something else he had never tasted before. He gagged, and tried to escape - I held his face still between my hands, and finally he stopped, and let me excavate him. I grabbed his wrists and held them over his head, and nudged his thighs open with my knees. Something was wrong. I lifted myself up and looked at him. Beautiful. God. So beautiful.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice tiny. "I don't know what to do."

I kissed his throat, sucked at the pulse beating wildly between the deep indentation of his clavicle. I moved lower, my tongue lapping at a part of his skin that was unpleasantly bristly. I moved my palm gently across his chest...stubble.

"Mr. Bloom," he explained in response to my look of puzzlement. "He doesn't like my...he makes me shave my chest."

I don't know why that made me stop. I sat up. He lay still for a while, and finally turned onto his side, facing the wall. I started at his ankle, then moved my hand up his leg, along the inside of his thigh, towards familiar territory. Pushing him onto his belly, I pressed my face against his ass, parting his cheeks wide with my hands, the tip of my tongue slipping determinedly into the tight pucker of his asshole. I mustered enough saliva to ease any resistance I might encounter. I fucked him with my tongue, moving my hands underneath his pelvis, searching for his cock. He wasn't helping. He just lay there. But I was patient, and relentless, and soon he was moaning, and his back arched upward. I repositioned myself behind him, and rubbed the tip of my cock gently against his loosening entrance. He rewarded my persistence by pressing himself against my cockhead, experimenting, then pulled away, and came back again, developing a maddeningly exciting rhythm as he impaled himself further onto my cock. Not all the way. But enough. Enough for now. I reached around his belly and massaged him, and fucked him, and kissed his spine where I could reach it without plunging all the way inside. I pushed the hair off the back of his neck, searching for any part of him I had yet to taste. It was then I finally noticed the marks on his shoulders. There were so many of them - thick welted scars, healing scabs, and fresh wounds, some of them recently opened. Fingernails. The impressions Mr. Bloom's fingernails made digging into Sandburg's back.

I pulled out of him, covered his back with kisses, then turned him around and kissed him from the tips of his toes to his forehead. I sucked his cock into my mouth and made him come...his orgasmic moans were real this time, he screamed in ecstasy, not pain. I smeared his cum on my face, down my chest, rubbed it into my belly. I licked it off my fingers. I put my mouth on his and shared with him the most exquisite taste in the world.

I still remember it. Sweat, tears, the salty water of the mineral baths, his cum, his shit, his saliva. It's inside me now, cataloged and permanent.

I staggered out of the underground hideaway, dizzy with purpose, and momentarily forgot where I'd stashed my gear. When I found it, I scratched the quadrants into my forearm with a sharpened stone, using a code only I would understand. Then I entered fake quadrants into the locater, and hit the send button. I hoped TeamMembers one and three would arrive separately. Regardless, it was just as easy to blast them both as it would be one at a time. Better in fact: no warning. It was more merciful that way.

I know that I am only one man, and that alone I will never bring down the Commanders and Generals. Alone, I can not stop the bombing of the caves, and the destruction of the millions of years of history inside of them, and the slaughter of the LeftBehinds who use the caves for shelter.

But I remember one of the books I read a long time ago: "The Hidden Empires of the Serengeti". All about termite mounds in Africa. Millions of termites, a powerful, destructive, seemingly unstoppable collective force in and of itself. But a force that CAN be stopped - by finding, and eliminating, the queen.

I can stop the President. I know now what she's done, what she's allowed the Commanders and Generals to do. When she's eliminated, and the termites are scattering about wondering what to do next, I will come back for Sandburg.

It's the one thing I know, and it's enough.

end