Myra swore under her breath as she cut through a thick tangle of Kudzu. The damn vines were everywhere, and made traveling through the forested hills of the Ozarks a complete nightmare. Her arms ached terribly from the continual effort of swinging her machete, making it feel like it weighed twenty pounds more than it had when she had started her flight through the countryside. ‘At least the weather has cooled down some,’ she ruefully thought, grasping onto anything that might give her some hope.

The summer heat had been oppressive, but now the leaves on the trees were starting to turn various shades of orange and red, signaling that fall was finally here. Myra long ago lost track of the exact date, but felt confident she had at least another month to find shelter before winter came in force.

Resting against a tree to catch her breath, she cringed at the telltale tickle of an insect crawling up her leg. Grimacing in disgust, she pulled the tick off of her skin and crushed it between her fingers. The fucking things were everywhere, and had been a constant irritant since she’d been forced to flee from her home with little more than a machete, her sleeping bag and an antiquated accelerator rifle.

For the first time since the war blasted away civilization, Myra truly began to despair. She was starving for decent food, and felt weak from exhaustion. She was reaching the end of her rope, and desperately needed to find a safe place to hole up and get some rest. If she were really lucky, she might even find some decent food to eat.

‘Lord,’ she thought, ‘I’d do anything to get my hands on a jar of peanut butter right about now.’ A low rumble in her stomach reminded her just how unlikely that would be.

Making matters worse, five years of constant wear had taken its toll on her combat boots, and the leather had split in several places. That was going to be a problem soon. It wouldn’t be easy to find new ones, not until she arrived at one of the abandoned cities. With a sigh, she consoled herself with the knowledge that it wouldn’t be much longer before she got there.

Fortunately for Myra, being brought up in the traditions of her Native American heritage had given her the skills she needed to survive on her own. They were skills she honed to a fine edge in her time with the Army Rangers, leaving her easily able to navigate her way through the wilderness. Now, judging by the lay of the land, she reckoned Springdale was now just a few miles away. Once there, she hoped to find all of the things she needed to survive the coming winter.

If she were lucky, the few locals who might have survived around Springdale would still be terrified enough of the Red Death to avoid the city, despite the food and others supplies that might still be there. The engineered plague had been incredibly virulent, and Myra felt certain that only the most desperate of travelers would willingly expose themselves to such a risk.

‘Well,’ she thought grimly, ‘I’m about as desperate as they get.' Myra smiled at the irony of it all. She managed to survive the horrors of the War when the vast majority of the human race had been annihilated. Considering the overall circumstances, she felt extremely lucky to be alive.

Coming upon a large gap in the forest, she paused warily, her senses primed for any hint that might give away the presence of others in the area.

The gap was at least a mile across and the ground seemed relatively flat and unbroken. Looking up and down the length of it, she tried to see how far the gap ran through the trees, but it seemed to run for miles in both directions.

Open spaces worried her. It would be bad enough for a lone man to be caught in the open by a roving gang of bandits. He would probably be shot from a safe distance, just for whatever gear he possessed. As a woman though, Myra was keenly aware that she had a very special value to such men. It was a value that would make them hesitate in killing her right away. It was a value that, even as desperate as she was, she wasn’t quite ready to cash in just yet. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.

Looking at the sun, she guessed there were only a few more hours till sundown. With a sigh, she decided to wait at the edge of the clearing until nightfall, before beginning the final leg of her journey.

Sitting with her back to a tree, hidden just inside the cover of the overgrowth, she thought about the War five years ago. So much had happened, and she reminded herself again just how fortunate she was to still be alive.

That she had survived even the first few minutes of the attack had been completely the product of luck. She was twenty-three years old at the time, and a member of the Army Rangers. She lived only because she had been on leave, visiting her family, when the attack came.

Myra remembered well how warm that summer evening was. She was sitting on the porch of her parent’s cabin, talking with her father, when she saw the flash on the southern horizon. At first, they were both at a loss to explain what they were witnessing.

Within moments, the eerie form of a glowing mushroom cloud rose in the distance, and the realization sank in that a high yield nuclear device had been detonated. Her father was the first to put two and two together and guess what the target had to be.

“That would be Little Rock...”

They ran into the cabin and turned on the com-net, only to find that it had been burned out during the attack. Scrambling around the house, they finally found an old, military issue, wind-up radio that would turn on. By then, most of the broadcast sites were already down, and they found themselves cut off from the modern world. They tried their electric vehicles, but found that none of them were operable either. Fortunately, their home, like most others in rural areas, ran on solar power. These systems, at least, seemed to be untouched.

Myra and her family spent the rest of that evening in open mouthed horror as broken and incomplete bits of information filtered in through their radio. The attack had been nationwide, and the destruction was incomprehensible in scope.

Myra later surmised that the multitude of exploding weapons had bathed the country in electromagnetic pulses. These pulses must have overloaded and burned out most of the civilian communication transmitters, as well as disabling all but the most basic forms of transportation. Unable to contact her unit, and travel being all but impossible, she was left with no choice but to stay with her parents and brother, huddled inside their secluded home in the forested hills outside of the little town of Boxley.

The next day, rain started to fall and soon it turned to snow. The long envisioned nuclear winter had arrived. They had enough food put away to survive for a time, but the heavily overcast skies starved their solar system, and much of their frozen supplies began to thaw.

Myra and her brother planned to make the long walk into Boxley once the snow stopped falling. Before they could though, reports of a second horror came over their radio, and this time they knew that there would be no help available.

Plague was spreading like wildfire across the countryside.

Rescue workers gathered the refugees together from the areas around the smaller cities and townships that survived the initial attack. Those camps were the perfect breeding ground for the disease, and when the plague hit, they were powerless to stop it. People everywhere began dying in-mass from the effects of the engineered plague that would come to be known as the Red Death. Myra suspected that the hybrid hemorrhagic fever ended up killing more people than even the nuclear attack that preceded it.

Of course, the larger metroplexes like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were spared the slow rot of the disease. These and many others were consumed in the nuclear holocaust that had engulfed the world shortly before the Red Death began to kill in large numbers.

The mass slaughter was the final accumulation of over a century of religious hatred in the Middle East. What began as terrorism in the 1980’s had grown in seething self-righteousness to a jihad of extermination by the year 2135.

The western powers had been oblivious to the threat, even as their enemies constructed vast numbers of nuclear weapons. Worse, they never seriously anticipated that these zealots might be able to design a biological weapon as insidious and deadly as the Red Death.

It had the advantage of being as virulent as the Ebola virus from which it was derived, but with a much longer incubation period. The virus must have been spread around the world before the attack, infecting thousands before any hint of the disease became known.

It seemed insane to Myra that anyone would release such a weapon. Surely they must have known that their own people would have been just as susceptible to it as anyone else. They must have thought that God would protect them from it.

If that’s what they believed though they had been wrong. Once they initiated their missile attack, the U.S. and Europe responded with concentrated nuclear attacks of their own, laying waste to the lands of the Middle East.

Soon, the entire world, from India and Pakistan, to Russia and China, began to feel the effects of the virus. In enraged desperation, they found targets for their own arsenals and thousands of years of human civilization had been destroyed in less than a month.

As with any disease, there were always those who would prove resistant, although this number seemed to hover at about five percent in the case of the Red Death. Others, like Myra, had been able to hide themselves away in small groups, hoping that they would be fortunate enough not to have an infected person with when they left.

Needless to say, these groups became extremely paranoid of strangers. The rest, who could not or would not leave the comfort of their towns and cities, were mercilessly stalked by the Death for several years, until there was simply no one left to infect.

Of course, in such dreadful conditions, other, more mundane but just as deadly diseases became pandemic. Without the benefit of modern medical science, even more lives were lost. All of that, coupled with the starvation and extreme violence that ensued, caused the vast majority of the human race to perished within just a few short years.

It took four years for the Red Death to run its course. In the year since, bands of murders and bandits began moving around the countryside, killing and looting from whatever small groups of survivors that were unlucky enough to be found.

Myra’s own family had been victims of that violence just a few weeks earlier. Raiders found their hideaway and murdered her family. Her father and brother, knowing what they would do if she were captured, insisted that she take her mother and make a run for it. Her mother had already been in ill health though, and the stress of the journey proved to be more than she could take. Myra buried her in the soft earth of a hillside on the third morning of her flight from home.

After that, Myra considered what few options she had left and decided that her only choice would be to find food and supplies somewhere that even the bandits would be afraid to go. She would have to risk one of the plague ravaged towns that became the tombs of the Red Death. She started the long walk to the city of Springdale.

It was noon of the next day as she crested the last hill above the town and gazed down at the ruined city. Memories of what the world had once been raced through her mind. The world before the War. Humanity had reached amazing heights of technology by the year 2135, but all of that was gone now, and only the burned out and abandoned hulks of the buildings remained. ‘This tomb of a town is my last chance. It had better be abandoned or I’m fucking screwed!’

With that rueful thought, Myra began the slow walk into the city

***

Bolo had been on sentry duty for the last ten hours, watching out for any unwanted visitors from the outside. It was a painfully boring, twenty-four hour shift, and he was almost half asleep when he heard the noise. It was a faint sound, and if not for the absolute silence of the evening, he might not have heard it at all.

For a long moment he held his breath, hoping it was just an animal scavenging through the ruins of the abandoned city. Seconds passed, and he had almost decided that it was indeed nothing more than a large rat or coyote when he heard it again. It was the distinct sound of a foot-step crunching on the gravel below his third story position.

He glanced out of the open window at the darkening sky. Twilight was quickly turning into night, and the relieved sentry felt it was a bit late for the androids to be this far from their compound. This sounded much more like a single human moving cautiously through the fallen rubble on the street below.

He held his position for a bit longer as the unseen intruder moved closer to his position. If it had been one of his people they would surely have signaled him by now, so it was likely that whoever it was, wasn’t supposed to be here.

Quietly, he moved down the steps of the burnt out building until he reached the street level. Even though it was almost completely dark, he hesitated before coming out of the building. The androids could see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. Against them, the darkness would be of little use. He flipped down his light enhancement lenses and carefully scanned the area.

As he slowly looked up and down the road he saw nothing, but just as he was about to move into the street, he made out a slender figure dart past a large piece of debris and into a building not far away. ‘I'll be damned,’ he thought, ‘it’s a woman!’ His excitement began to grow instantly upon seeing her.

Bolo couldn’t believe his luck. It was dangerous enough for a man to try to go it alone, but for a woman to travel without an escort was simply unheard of. Every man she came across would surely try to take her. It was so unlikely, in fact, that he became sure that she must have someone else around to watch her back. He settled into the doorway with his night vision and waited.

Waiting and observing were things he excelled at. He had good eyes and his hearing was even better. He was as patient as the moon when he needed to be and could sit unmoving for hours. This ability was highly regarded in his clan and he had been awarded with a nickname that suited his abilities. Born with the name Bo Roberts, his uncanny ability to spot intruders before they spotted him earned him the name Bolo, like the police term from another lifetime that once meant Be On the Look Out.

Sitting there, unmoving, for over an hour, he waited for her companion to arrive. Night settled in and darkness engulfed the dead city. In time, he became convinced that if she did have a companion, he must already be in the empty store front with her.

There had been no movement or light coming from the place, so he figured she must have fallen asleep by then. It would have been wiser to wait another hour or two. The later it got, the less likely it was that anyone inside would awaken when he made his move.

He sat still, thinking of all the things he wanted to do to her. It had been so long since he had been with a woman. Most of the females in his clan were claimed by the leaders, and guys like him were left to do without. Once he had her though, she would be his to keep or trade for whatever he wanted. He licked his lips in anticipation as he considered the possibilities. While he might trade her eventually, he intended to get his full use out of her first. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘this is gonna be a night to remember!’ 

Checking the charge in his blaster rifle, Bolo began working his way slowly toward the convenience store she had holed up in.

His clan controlled this area for several blocks and had already cleaned the buildings out of any food or useful supplies. He had been in that store many times, and he figured that she would be hiding in the storage room in the back where she would be best able to defend herself. He noticed that she hadn’t closed the outer door. He gave her credit for that bit of forethought. Any changes to the outer appearance of the place would have tipped off any locals like himself who might have passed by.

***

For the first time in weeks, Myra found a roof over her head and walls between her and the outside world. She was safe from the elements, and from the larger predators that were becoming more numerous as the human population plummeted. There were still the rats of course, but if she were bothered by any of those, she would at least be treated to a free breakfast.

All in all, this ruin was about the nicest of accommodations she could have hoped to expect. Only after she had found the storage room had she dared to use her flashlight. Unrolling her sleeping bag, she striped down to her tee-shirt and panties. Within seconds, she was in the first deep sleep she had allowed herself in weeks.

***

When Bolo got to the storefront, he was careful not to silhouette himself in the dim light of the night sky. It may have been dark outside, but anyone paying attention from inside would surely see him if he just stood in the doorway.

From the side, he peered in with his light enhancement lenses. They would enhance even the tiniest bit of light to a level that was easy to see by. Pausing there for several minutes, he listened for any small sound that might give his prey away. Hearing nothing, he crept in slowly until he approached the door to the storage room.

If it were him, he would have locked or otherwise found some way to block this inner door against just this sort of intrusion. Moving slowly, he gently tried the doorknob, but it refused to turn.

‘Yep, she’s locked herself inside.’ 

It would have made this a lot easier if she hadn’t, but he wasn’t surprised. So far, she’d proven to be very careful. ‘Hell,’ he conceded, ‘I never would have even known she was here if she hadn’t walked right past me.’

He stood back a few steps and waited. He couldn’t be sure he hadn’t alerted her to his presence, and he listened carefully for any sign of movement on the other side of the door. Several minutes went by as he waited for any sound to come through, until he eventually decided that his silence had been rewarded.

While he waited, he considered his option for the door. The easiest approach would have been to just slag the lock with his blaster, but that would have been loud enough to be heard outside. Besides, it carried the possibility that he might injure or kill the girl, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. At least for the moment anyway. ‘Well, fuck it,' he thought. 'Sometimes the direct approach is best.’

Raising his foot, he kicked the door hard. Not having been designed for security purposes, it shuddered and gave way with a loud, crunching thump.

Myra was startled out of her slumber, and had just managed to sit up when he stepped over her and hit her in the forehead with the butt of his rifle, knocking her back to the ground.

“C'mon, git outta that sleeping bag now!” the man roared, his southern accent dripping with threat.

Myra, still exhausted, and her head reeling from the blow, hesitated only to feel him grab her by the thin top. The man was strong, and she grunted as she was thrown harshly against the wall. She had very little time to think, and all she could see was the bright intensity of the flashlight being aimed at her, and the ominous barrel of a blaster rifle just below it.

Shaking off her shock, she dropped to one knee and held her hands high, warding off any other blow that might come her way. “Please don’t shoot!" she pleaded. "You don’t need to kill me. I’m not a threat, okay. I’m not fighting you!”

Clearing the cobwebs from her mind, she tried to get a grip on her predicament as she spoke. She only heard the one voice so far and it seemed that he was alone. She knew if she kept her cool, she might still be able to salvage the situation.

“Now, you just stand up and face the wall!” he yelled, seemingly unimpressed with her pleas.

The man’s voice had steel in it and Myra complied without question. She might have considered resisting him, but there was a nervousness underneath his harsh tone that told her he didn't really want to seriously harm her. From that, she reckoned that as long as she played along, she would have some options. If she were to put up a fight now, the die would be cast. No, for the moment at least, she knew it would be better to just do what she was told.

He pressed the emitter of his rifle against the back of her neck and shined his light up and down her body.

Myra heard his breath quicken and could almost feel his eyes moving over her along with the light. In the back of her mind she had known all along that if she were going to join a new group of survivors she would probably have to attach herself to a man.

Resigned to the inevitable, Myra took a deep breath to calm her nerves as the moment she'd been dreading arrived. ‘This is it,’ she thought with chilling resignation. ‘It's time to cash in my value as a woman.’ 

Adjusting her pose slightly, she spread her legs a bit and arched her back just enough so that her ass was displayed in a more inviting way.

“Look mister, I've been alone for a long time. I'm so tired of having to look over my shoulder and I don't want to be alone anymore. I'll do anything you want, anything okay? Just promise to take me with you. I'll make it worth your while.”

She made sure that she sounded plaintive and fearful. Being underestimated was a huge advantage, and she had every intention of protecting it as long as possible.

Bolo looked around the small room and saw that hers was the only sleeping bag present. Everything he had observed indicated that she was telling the truth.

Myra took his silence as a possible rejection and decided to play her last card.

“I swear I'm not trying to trick you. Look in my sleeping bag and you'll find my machete. That’s the last weapon I have. Please, just give me a chance. You won’t be sorry.”

He kicked at the bag and felt something heavy within it. Reaching down, he found the weapon and tossed it into the corner, next to her rifle.

“You're lucky you told me about that, if you'd tried to pull it on me I'd have had to blow your head off. Now, I'm putting my rifle down, but remember if you cross me I'll break your neck. Understand me, woman?”

Myra held her pose against the wall while he spoke, being as submissive as possible. When she spoke, she was careful to sound as submissive as she appeared. “I understand. No tricks. I'll be your woman if you'll have me.”

She had no problem with fucking him if that's what it took to get him on her side. She was a student of history and knew that women had used sex as a means of capturing the allegiance of men throughout the ages. She was certain that if he proved to be a problem later, she would be able to deal with him at a time of her own choosing.

Her planning was interrupted by her captor as he ran his hand down her side and over her panty-clad ass. Her heart beat harder in her chest and goose bumps instantly formed on her skin as the long forgotten promise of sexual release suddenly registered on her body.

He simply caressed her gently at first, exploring her slender figure with his hands as if he hadn’t touched a woman in ages. Once she thought about it, Myra felt that it was likely that he hadn’t. Single men had been the first to bolt from the cities before the Red Death took hold, and they seemed to make up the majority of the survivors. It was possible the man had not been with a girl for years. She smiled inwardly at the realization. His desire for her gave her a weapon to use against him, and she intended to use it for whatever advantage it would give her.

For his part, Bolo was completely taken aback at the girl’s willingness. He had expected to have to take her by force, and was immensely pleased by her voluntary submission to him. As he let his touch slide over her skin he began to understand her apparent desperation.

She had the filth from weeks of non-stop travel covering what was otherwise a very fit and healthy body. In a more civilized time, her condition might have turned him off, but that time was long gone, and he understood that anyone surviving alone in the wilderness would be unable to keep proper hygiene. Once he got her back to the militia's command center, he would get her cleaned up properly, but for now, she seemed irresistible.

His hunger for her grew stronger as his touch slid over the warmth of her exposed skin. He wanted her badly, but her willingness to be had made him want her to enjoy it as well. She had offered to be his, so he felt he needed to treat her with at least some respect. He stepped back a step and composed himself.

“Okay, girl, you can turn around” he said with measured softness, allowing the earlier threat in his tone to drop away.

Myra was relieved at the change in his demeanor and turned to face him. In the dim light cast by his flashlight she saw a rugged looking man, strong and confident but not overly aggressive. His brown hair was cut short and his face was clean shaven. This Myra found very appealing, it spoke volumes about what kind of man he was as well as the conditions he lived in.

'If he’s able to keep himself clean and fed, he must be living someplace safe.' The thought appealed to her. Having such luxury’s meant he had access to the very things she had been seeking. Maybe, she thought, sticking with him might not be such a bad idea.

She looked into his dark eyes. Myra had always believed that they were indeed the windows to the soul. He lacked the predatory wildness that the men in the roving gangs seemed to have developed. His gaze upon her was as intense as it was commanding, but she sensed no direct threat from him any longer.

He stepped up to her and gently caressed her face. “What’s your name?” he asked curiously, even politely.

“Myra,” she answered, keeping her tone purposely demure, and still playing the part of the submissive captive.

“Myra is it? That’s a nice name. Well, I’m Bo. You asked me to take you and I will, but you gotta understand that from now on, you belong to me, okay? You do what I tell you when I tell you, got that? From now on, you're mine.”

Reaching out to her, he cupped her breast in his hand and rubbed his palm over her hardening nipple. She could feel a tremble in his touch and quickly realized she was trembling as well. His touch was clumsy and rough, but his growing need was clear, and she felt her own arousal quickly following his.

Excitement quickly began pulsing through her as he fondled the supple breasts, and she raised her arms up over her head, inviting him to remove her top. As he did so, he lowered his mouth to her sensitized nipple, sucking hard on her distended bud.

"Ohh, yeah..." Myra moaned as she surrendered to his touch, hissing softly as the delicious sensation of arousal began to course through her. When his hand slid down her belly, she spread her legs slightly, shocked by how much she craved his touch on her womanhood.

Myra had lived through years of horror and death, and her mind had completely shut off the possibility of ever feeling pleasure again. Now, Bo’s insistent touch began to reawaken her body and mind to the existence of joyful pleasure, and she embraced it with a hunger that she never experienced before.

When morning came she knew that she might have to kill this man, or die trying. Until, then she simply surrendered to the moment and reveled in the pleasures of the flesh that had been denied her for far too long.

With an eagerness that seemed to surprise the man, Myra lifted his shirt from his chest and began kissing her way down his stomach. Dropping to her knees, she hurriedly unbuckled his belt. The snap of his trousers sounded loud in her ears as she popped it open, and her mouth went dry as she lowered his pants to the ground. Her heart pounded in her chest as she gingerly took his hardening cock in her smallish hands.

She could smell his scent now. It was a strong aroma that filled her senses, fueling her desire into a burning warmth that permeated her flesh. It was a distinctly male scent that alerted her body to his lustful presence. A delicious wetness appeared in her sex as her body reacted to the scent.

Without hesitation, she took his still flaccid cock into the warmth of her mouth and swirled her tongue around it. She could feel him begin to lengthen and become harder and harder as she sucked on him. It was a heady feeling, knowing that he was reacting so quickly to her. It was a kind of affirmation to her, and it was deeply satisfying. ‘After everything that’s happened, I’m still a woman! I’m still desirable!’ The thought warmed and excited her as her arousal grew in her body.

Myra was becoming lost in the lewdness of her actions. There was a time when she would never have allowed herself to be used in such a way, but now all of that had changed. There was no one left to judge her, no one who cared what she did or why. It was an amazing realization and she let herself go completely.

The man, he had said his name was Bo, she remembered, grunted softly and began rocking his hips toward her, trying to force his cock more deeply into her mouth. He took her hair in his strong hands and pressed forward hard, gagging her on his thickness.

“Oh yeah!" he said with a heavy breath. “Suck on it. Suck on my cock, woman!”

His course words and forceful treatment of her did nothing to dampen her desire. She worked her mouth over his cock, sucking him as deeply as she could. Her eyes watered and she struggled to breathe around him as he slid in and out of her raw throat. It was the most animalistic feeling she had ever known.

The exertion was almost too much to bear. Her thighs began to cramp and her jaw ached from the unfamiliar act of sucking cock. More insistent to her though was the fire that was burning around her clit. Her pussy was screaming to be penetrated by his rampant erection and she couldn’t ignore the need any longer.

Despite his grip on her hair, she managed to pull her mouth off his cock. “Please, fuck me now! I need you inside me!” She begged with her words and her eyes, pleading for him to grant her release from her own enflamed passions.

He quickly stepped out of his pants and kicked them away. While he did so, Myra hurriedly straightened out her sleeping bag and lay down upon it. As soon as she was on her back, Bo dropped down between her legs and cupped his hand against her mound, pressing the thin fabric of her wet panties into her even wetter flesh.

“Ah, Christ! Look how wet you are, It makes me want to fuck you so hard I can’t stand it!”

When he took hold of the waistband of her panties Myra raised her ass slightly, allowing him to pull them off of her body. With nothing more between them, she watched excitedly as Bo slid himself into the saddle of her thighs. Her eyes were fixated on the purplish head of his cock as he centered it on her wet opening, and she found herself holding her breath as he thrust forward and drove his entire length deeply into her.

‘Oh shit, he’s thick!’ she thought, and groaned from the pleasurable pain she felt as he forced the walls of her pussy apart with his savage thrust. She wasn't a virgin, but she hadn’t had many lovers in her life, and none of them had ever fucked her as hard or as deeply as the man named Bo was doing to her now. She could only be glad that she had been so very wet when he slid into her.

He laid the full weight of his body on hers, pinning her down and then wrapped his arms under her shoulders so that she was held against him as he pounded into her. She found herself luxuriating in the warmth and strength of his masculinity. It was raw sex on its most basic level, lustful and passionate with no promise of love or emotional attachment connected to it. He was fucking her solely for his own pleasure. She could easily feel that within him, and she was letting him fuck her for her own personal release.

She held him close, not really having any other choice. His powerful chest was crushing her breast flat against her body and his face was buried in her neck. She could feel his hot breath against her skin as his breathing became deeper and more ragged. She found herself murmuring to him as he built his rhythm into a grinding friction that set off sensations within her that she had long forgotten. Dirty, nasty thoughts escaped her lips and before she realized it she was even speaking out loud. “Oh shit, Bo! Do it! Do it to me hard! You feel so good inside me, your cock feels so good!"

Her words spurred him on and his movements took on a frantic, frenzied feel. She felt moisten beads of perspiration appear on his back and chest, and she realized then that she too was becoming wet from the gloss of sweat lubricating her skin.

His body began sliding easily over hers and he began pulling his cock almost completely out of her before each long, glorious plunge back into her depths. Never in her life had Myra managed to cum purely from being fucked, but now, with her pussy being so thoroughly abused, she felt herself moving toward the bliss of orgasmic release.

She hung at the edge of her moment for several long, almost agonizing seconds, not quite able to reach her peak. Anticipation quickly turned to frustration, and Myra began begging in her mind to be able to let go and fully experience the pleasures that were just beyond her grasp.

‘Please God, let me cum, let me cum…!’ Pleading in her mind for that glorious release, she managed to work her hand down between their wet bodies and began rubbing her clit in time with his hurried motions. “Oh yes, that’s it… that’s it… you’re gonna make me cum, make me cum so hard…”

Bo seemed to feed on her mounting passion and his fevered excitement continued to drive her toward her peak. The touch of her delicate fingers on her own tingling flesh added electricity to the fire his thick cock was stoking within her. Soon, she felt a tightening in her abdomen as powerful bolts of liquid pleasure flowed outward from her pussy and into the rest of her body. She trembled violently in his tight embrace as her orgasm exploded within her with cataclysmic force.

Bo paused with his hard cock wedged inside her as she climaxed. Watching her cum was an incredible turn on and he reveled in his mastery over the prone female. She was his now, and he wanted her to have no doubt about that in her mind.

“Oh fuck yeah, girl. You are one hot piece of ass! I’m gonna fuck you like this every chance I get! You're mine now, hear me? Don’t ever forget that!”

Myra found that she couldn’t respond to his claim of ownership. For the moment at least, he was right, and she tried to find solace in his intention to take her with him. ‘That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?’ she mused as the man's lust grew with his dominance over her.

As he started to have his way with her again, the glorious feeling of being taken began to pulse through her once more. She looked deeply into his face as he slammed himself into her quivering body. What she saw in his eyes frightened and dismayed her.

There was no caring for her. She was an object for his pleasure and he was using her totally for his own lust. Even so, Myra found herself willingly giving in to him. She realized suddenly that it was his male dominance over her that she found so enticing. His strength and confidence screamed Alpha Male to her feminine mind, and she knew that part of her desired to belong to him. It was a feeling that she would never have guessed she would be able to accept.

His face contorted with the raw animalistic passion of a male in rut, and she knew that he wouldn’t stop until he had emptied himself into her womb. That thought ran cold down into her belly. ‘Shit, I’m not on any kind of birth control!’

She couldn’t believe this hadn’t occurred to her. If she got pregnant, there wouldn’t be any doctors or hospitals to help her deliver a child. Any kind of complication could be deadly. Panic seized her, and she tried to push him off. “Please stop. Don’t cum inside me, I can’t get pregnant now! You’ve got to stop!”

Bo grabbed her arms and forced them down over her head. He fully intended to keep her now, but wasn’t foolish enough to believe she would stay long if he didn’t have some leverage over her. It occurred to him that if he knocked her up it wouldn’t be just her own life she would need to protect, but that of her child as well. He fully intended to fuck her at every opportunity until he was certain that she was with child.

Myra pleaded with him uselessly as he neared his orgasm. She realized through her tears that he wasn’t going to stop despite her cries. When she felt his cock swell and his body stiffen over her, she sobbed with resignation as his seed pumped hotly into her fertile body.

Bo held her still as his cock began to soften inside her. Only after he had deposited his entire load into her did he loosen his grip and slide off of her limp form. “You're gonna have my kid. Once you do, y'all will both be mine forever.”

Myra felt his cum oozing inside her raw sex and despaired over what he was doing to her. She wasn’t sure yet if she wanted to be with this man, but now realized that soon she would have no choice. If she wasn’t pregnant now she soon would be, and then she truly would be fucked.

The turmoil in her mind kept her awake for a time. She considered slipping away from him as he slept, but that would have meant being on her own again and she wouldn’t get another chance at his offer to take her in. Reluctantly she allowed herself to relax against his warm, naked body and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

***

Myra woke the next morning to find Bo fully dressed.

“Good morning Myra. I’ve got some breakfast for you if you’re hungry.” He sliced a piece of meat off of a small block and handed it to her. She took it and smelled the once familiar aroma of spam. She ate it quickly, savoring the taste. After weeks of lean rodents, the fat and salt tasted wonderfully exotic to her.

Bo watched her eat it and cut off another slice. “Go slowly, it’s very rich and I don’t want you to get sick.”

Myra ate the second piece more slowly as he suggested. As good as it was, she wished he had made a fire so she could fry some of it up, but for now it hit the spot nicely.

“Thanks Bo, I can’t remember the last time I had real food.”

“Well don’t worry about that, we have lots more back at the compound. We’ve spent the last year going through the old stores in the area. We got quite a stockpile of canned goods now. We supplement it with wild game when we can. There are quite a few deer around here these days.”

“I know, I’ve seen them around, I just didn’t want attract attention by using my rifle to bring them down.” Myra was glad to hear that though. It was a relief to know that she was with a group that wasn’t hurting for food.

Once she was done eating, she stood and started putting her clothes on. Bo took note of her nakedness and she half thought he would want her again, but he made no move toward her. Once she was dressed, he came up to her and told her to hold her hands out in front of her.

Myra saw the rope in his hands and took a step back. “What’s that for? You don’t need to tie me up.”

“Probably not” he shrugged. “But I’m expecting to be relieved of sentry duty soon, and you’ll be easier to explain if I have you secured." ‘Besides,’ he thought, ‘I ain't going to let you back out now!’

Myra was unsure about this, but decided that if the situation got worse she would still be able to find a way out. He was grossly underestimating her abilities and that was to her advantage. She held out her arms as he requested and sighed. “This is no way to start a relationship, you know.”

He tied her arms tightly in front of her and then looped the rope around her neck. From there it trailed away into a leash with which he would be able to control her movements.

“Maybe it ain't, but I’m not taking any chances with you. Once were back at the compound I’ll untie you and you can get a hot bath, okay?”

She had to admit she would be looking forward to that.

From outside the building they heard a voice calling out.

“Hey Bolo! Where the hell are you, man?”

Hearing the voice, Bolo picked up Myra’s rifle and slung it over his back. He then inserted her sheathed machete into his belt and picked up his own blaster rifle. Finally he wrapped the end of Myra’s makeshift leash around his hand. “That’s Walker, my relief. It’s time to go.”

Bolo led Myra to the exit of the store and stopped on the sidewalk in front of it. Myra saw Walker about twenty yards down the road looking up at the upper floors of a ruined building across the street.

Bo whistled loudly at him.

“It’s about time you got here. We were getting bored waiting for your lazy ass!”

“Who’s 'we' you crazy…”

The man’s voice trailed off as his eyes came to rest on Myra.

“You lucky son of a bitch! Where in the hell did you find her?!”

Bo laughed at the question. “She just walked right by me, if you can believe that.”

Walker started moving toward them and Myra self-consciously took a step back. She might be willing to tie herself to one man but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be used by his whole clan. She looked around for a weapon or some means of defending herself, but tied up as she was, she knew that trying to fight off both of them would be next to impossible.

As he approached, Myra could see the lustful glint in his eye.

“So what the hell, Bo. You gonna share her with your old pal or what?”

“Get real, asshole. You can find your own piece...”

Bo and Myra saw a bright red light appear on Walker’s chest, and for a half-second, struggled to figure out what it meant. Realization dawned on both of them a moment later and Bo called out to his friend.

“Walker, get down, there’s a…!”

His warning was cut short by an incandescent flash of red light that burned clean through his friend. Flesh sizzled and burned under its intensity and the moisture inside the wound converted instantly to superheated steam, blowing a gaping hole in the man’s chest. He hit the ground hard, his body convulsing violently as his life faded away.

Myra looked down the road in the direction that the laser pulse came from. Four figures, still almost a hundred yards away, were walking toward them. Myra watched as one of them stopped, and raising his laser rifle, took aim down the street. She glanced at Bo who was still stunned by the suddenness of the attack. A red dot appeared on his back, just as it had done to Walker before he had been killed.

Without thinking, Myra threw herself at him, knocking him to the ground just as the high pitched whine of the pulse laser firing reached her ears.

Myra was familiar with laser weapons. By placing light pressure on the firing stud, a harmless targeting laser was emitted. Once the target was acquired, the user only had to depress the stud down and a pulse of laser energy would instantly heat the target to ten thousand degrees centigrade. As it fired with no ballistic arc and had almost unlimited range, it was a deadly weapon to face in an open field.

As she struggled to get Bo to his feet again she expected to get fried at any moment. “Get up Bo! We need to move! Run to that doorway now!”

Myra did her best to pull him with her as she ran across the street into the office building that Walker had been looking at when she had first seen him. She figured their best chance against their attackers would be to dig in and fight them at close quarters, but she had to get him to snap out of his shock first.

She was actually surprised as they reached the safety of the building. Whoever their attackers were, they were either completely overconfident or totally lacking in experience in combat. If it had been she who had gotten the drop on them, she would have killed all four within just a few seconds.

Myra led Bo to the staircase and turned to face him, holding out her bound arms. “Quick, untie me!”

Bo hesitated for a moment. He was still reeling from watching his friend be cut down in the middle of the street and couldn’t decide if releasing her was a good idea. He was still trying to decide when she grabbed his shirt with both her hands and shoved him hard against the wall.

“Listen Bo, We’ve only got a few seconds before they get here. You need my help. Now fucking untie me so I can save your miserable life!”

“Yeah, okay. You're right!” Bo pulled a knife from his boot and deftly cut the cord that bound her wrists. He was finally snapping out of his shock and realized that their only chance would be to work together. Once she had pulled the loop from around her neck he handed the accelerator rifle to her.

Myra took her weapon and activated the power cell. A warm, reassuring hum softly emanated from the weapon, telling her it was ready to fire. “Okay. Up the stairs we go!”

She led Bo up to the second floor and then lay prone at the top of the stair case. She pointed to the corner of the hallway.

“Take cover over there and don’t you dare fucking shoot until I say. I’ll take the first one through the door. The second one is yours.”

“Gotcha.” Bo took the position she indicated and pointed his blaster rifle down towards the bottom of the staircase.

Bo found himself taking her orders without complaint. Her quick thinking impressed him, and the trap she set seemed like it would work perfectly. The enemy would be coming into the dark building from outside, and it was unlikely that they would be able to see him, or Myra until it was too late.

As they waited, Myra wondered who the hell was attacking them. “Do you know who these guys are?”

Before he could answer, a figure appeared in the doorway of the building. Bo said nothing, knowing that the slightest sound would draw their attention.

Myra could make out the shadow of the first intruder but waited to fire. She wanted to get them to come as close to the stairway as she could before she sprang her trap. The first figure walked into her kill zone and Myra readied her weapon. She couldn’t make out any detail in the shadowed darkness of the building, but was pleased that he made no attempt to find cover. ‘Christ,’ she thought, ‘this guy's a complete idiot!’

She waited anxiously, hoping that another of the four would expose himself before she fired, but she knew that if he started up the staircase alone she wouldn’t be able to wait. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she held her breath, waiting for the right moment.

The enemy below seemed unhindered by the darkness. His head turned as he scanned the lower floor, and then to Myra’s shock, he gazed up the stairs and looked directly at her.

In the darkness, with his eyes fixated on her, she made out the eerie green glow that emanated from behind its lifeless eyes. ‘That’s impossible,’ she thought and her heart skipped a beat as she realized what she was looking at. ‘Holy shit! It’s an android!’

She watched in disbelief as it raised its weapon, taking aim at her. Red light filled her eyes as the targeting laser flicked on, and with a scream, Myra pulled the trigger on her rifle.

A dozen three-millimeter iron pellets rolled, one after another, into the rifles magnetic coils and were instantly accelerated to speeds in excess of mach five. They tore into the synthetic frame of the android, ripping its internal components to shreds.

The automaton staggered back from the force of the impacts and fell to its knees. Myra targeted its head with her next volley and its plastic skull disintegrated as the burst blasted it apart.

Two more of the artificial creatures moved in position to fire, but the high pitched whine of Bo’s blaster sounded and one of these was blown completely in half by the bolt of charged particles that slammed into it.

Myra was about to take out the third when it turned about and moved out of her line of fire. “I think they’re bugging out!”

Myra thought about pursuing them, but following them into the street would expose them to the same kind of trap that she had just sprung.

“Maybe we should just let them go.”

Bo grinned widely at her. “Not on your life. Follow me. We can take them out from the windows!”

“Right, lead the way!”

Bo knew this building well and led her down the hall and into an abandoned office. The windows had long ago been broken out and he pointed to the second one.

“Take that position! We’ll fire at the same time!”

“Roger that.” Being careful to keep her head inside, she looked down the street and was surprised to see the two remaining androids moving quickly down the middle of the road.

“They’re not even trying to find cover. A.I.s never were very bright! Okay Bo, I got the one on the left, whenever you’re ready!”

“Okay then. Fire!”

Both of the targets were torn apart in the hail of incoming fire and as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

Myra sat on the floor, suddenly feeling as exhausted as she had the night before. Powering down her accelerator rifle, she looked over at her new companion. “Where in the fuck did those things come from?”

He shrugged his shoulders, understanding her surprise. The EMP from the war should have fried their electronic brains, and even if they had survived, they should have just shut down until someone gave them direction. No artificial intelligence was truly sentient. They were just designed to follow orders. Such things had never been meant for combat.

“There was some kind of automated facility on the west side of town. Part of the EPA’s plan to reforest the area after all the logging from the last century. It was dark when we got here, but about six months ago someone reactivated it. We’ve seen these things here and there since then, going through the city, collecting whatever bits of machinery or technology that they could find. Apparently, whoever is controlling them has programmed them to kill. We’ve lost six people to them so far, including Walker.”

Bo’s face turned ashen at the thought of losing yet another friend. There had just been far too much death, and it seemed as if it would never stop. He spit in disgust and brought his thoughts back to the problem at hand.

“We should pick up the laser rifles and head back to base. Command’s going to want to know about this.”

“Sure, but don’t even think of trying to tie me up again,”

He looked at her as she slung the rifle over her shoulder, realizing for the first time how good she was with that thing. “No, I don’t suppose you’d let me do that again, would you?”

“Not on your life, big guy, not on your life.”