Biohazard

11

We left Des Moines and drove for a few hours until we spotted a little roadside park with a historical marker. A river ran through it and there was a waterfall back along the trail. We were dirty and we needed to clean up. So we took turns bathing and it felt wonderful. Janie and Mickey went first. Then Price and Texas and Carl. I made Morse go alone. I figured nobody wanted him clicking shots of them in the raw even if there was no film in the camera.

I went last. The water was chilly, but refreshing and I could have stayed in there all day.

I needed to think.

We were right on the outer edge of something and I knew it. Some great abyss was opening before us and it had everything to do with Nebraska, where The Shape wanted us to go. The endgame was coming soon. Destiny was just over the state line and I knew it. I felt it right down into my marrow.

As I stood under the cascading water, I thought about all that I had lost. I thought about Specs. I thought about Sean. But mostly I thought about my wife. I thought about Shelly and it seemed she’d been dead a hundred years. Her image was still in my mind. But it was no longer clear, no longer fresh, almost like an old photograph that was slowly fading.

And that scared me. It really did.

I remembered Shelly dying and I started to cry. I was happy that she had not died alone and unloved like so many others. I was glad that I held her hand as she passed. She was out of it by then and probably didn’t even know I was there, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that at all. I think she was aware. I think she died knowing I loved her.

You would have been such a good mother, I thought. Remember how we talked about kids, Shelly? Remember that? Oh, our children would have been so lucky to have you as a mother. You would have been so perfect. You were an angel in every way and I’m glad I told you so and I only wish that we’d have had kids so I could be telling them now how wonderful of a woman their mother was.

These were the things I was thinking.

I couldn’t seem to think much else. I stood there in a daze and somewhere during the process, I realized I was not alone. Mickey was standing there at the edge of the river, up to her ankles in the water.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked.

Well, I wanted to tell her to go away and leave me brood, but I didn’t and I honestly didn’t want to. “Sure. Come on in.”

Mickey stepped out of her shorts and her T-shirt and she was amazingly beautiful. Just long-legged, high breasted, her skin bronzed by the sun, long dark hair sweeping down one shoulder. I don’t think I’d ever wanted anyone as badly as I’d wanted her at that moment and she damn well knew it. She’d been orchestrating this since she joined us and I hated her for it. Almost as much as I hated myself for giving into it.

“Come here,” I told her and it was not a request.

I swept her into my arms and her flesh was cool from the water, but I could feel the heat blazing between her legs. I took hold of her roughly and she did not fight. Her tongue was hot in my mouth. We fondled and kissed like that for a moment and then I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her down, slid my cock in her mouth. I forced her head up and down on it and made her gag. When I was hard, I grabbed her by the hips, digging my fingers into the cheeks of her ass and she wrapped her legs around me.

There was nothing tender about it.

I brought her over to a waist-high shelf of rock and put her down. I spread her legs apart and slid into her. She was a fantasy fuck, there was no doubt about it. I took her like I hated her. I slammed into her and made her cry out. And when I came, I shoved her away from me. There was no love involved. It was brutal, violent.

And that’s exactly what she wanted.

By the time I was done and I stepped out of the water with her trailing behind, I knew one thing for sure: Janie had been watching us.