Jan Springer - In Her Bed

“Toilet’s fucked, and so is the water. Meaning we don’t have any. Must be one hell of a power failure.”

Oh crap. She snuggled beneath the sheets and watched as he strolled to the window and lifted the shade. Sunshine washed into the room, the brightness hurting her eyes.

“What the fuck?” Durango said as he looked out the window. Something in his voice, maybe fear, or surprise, or both, sent creepy shivers of dread up her spine.

“Come here, Doc. Take a look at this.”

She joined him, grabbing a sheet from the bed and covering herself. Gazing out the upstairs bedroom window, Liz could still feel how hard and fast the disbelief had shifted through her like an evil snake.

Everything looked the same, but it looked different, too. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but the sky seemed to have changed to a deeper blue, and the air was breezy and cold. But just this morning she’d listened to the weather forecast, and they’d been predicting hot, humid, and hazy weather for at least another week with no relief in sight beyond that.

She hugged the sheet tighter around her and shivered at the cold onslaught. “Obviously the weather guys fucked up again,” she complained.

“Forget the weather, what the fuck is going on down on the street?”

Liz’s gaze dropped to the street which, usually teeming with people strolling toward the park down the road, was totally empty. Not only that, she noticed a couple of cars parked precariously on people’s lawns. One car was even parked in front of their neighbor’s house on the lawn directly across the street from them. The car had climbed the curb and come to rest in Carol’s flower bed and snapped their treasured Austrian pine tree right in half.

“Carol’s gonna be pissed,” Liz commented.

“I’m gonna call Bill and see what happened.”

Durango lifted the receiver and slammed it down. He grinned at her, obviously trying to play it cool, and her heart flip flopped all over the place. Such a sexy smile. She wanted to tell him to screw the phones and get back to fucking her, but he was already reaching for his jeans on the floor.

“No dial tone. Good thing we have cell phones.”

She glanced back outside and noticed a ribbon of black smoke around a mile to the north. The airport was up that way. In the distance she noticed a couple more spirals of dark smoke. Weird.

“Something’s on fire out there. And it’s way too quiet, too. Where are all the people?”

“My cell phone is totally dead. So is yours,” Durango said as he joined her at the window and peered out.

“Yeah, looks like something is on fire in a few places. I want you to stay here while I go over to Bob and Carol’s. Better check on what’s going on with that car running up their tree, too. Maybe they know what’s happened.”

“Something’s not right,” she whispered as icy shivers began crawling up her spine again.

A frown dropped onto his face again, and she silently willed him to smile. He didn’t.

“It’s okay. Just stay here, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” Truth was, she’d kind of gotten the creeps and preferred to stay here where it felt…normal.

He grabbed his shirt, and a couple of minutes later, she watched from the window as he strolled across the street to the car that sat on Bob and Carol’s lawn. He peered in the vehicle’s windows. Something must have alarmed him because he’d quickly looked up at her and waved his hand signaling to her to stay put. She’d watched as he knocked on Bob and Carol’s front door and waited. He knocked a couple of more times, and then surprisingly he’d opened the door and disappeared inside the building.

Her gaze drifted to the increasing number of plumes of black smoke. She darted a look up and down the street. No traffic. No people. What the fuck was going on?

She reached for the clock radio on the bedside table and flicked it on. Silence. Shit! She’d forgotten the electricity had gone out.

Okay, so this was not good. Not good at all. She snapped through her memory trying to figure out where she’d put her watch. She found it on the dresser. It had died, too. What the fuck?

A few moments later, Durango had returned and their nightmare had begun…

Liz awoke with a jolt, her heart hammering and cold perspiration clinging to her clammy skin. She bit her bottom lip and forced herself to steady her breathing.

Just a nightmare. She wasn’t back in Calgary. She wasn’t reliving the Catastrophe. She was here, safe and sound, in this little century-old stone house. Durango was here and Landon and Tyrell. Everything was fine.

She burrowed deeper against her pillows and clutched the comforters tighter over her chilled body. Ignoring the gentle throbbing in her butt and pussy, she smiled. Yeah, she’d liked what had happened last night. Liked it a lot.

“When the time comes for us to leave, I’m staying,” Landon said. He was perfectly prepared to fight Tyrell and Durango on this matter, and he was surprised when Tyrell nodded his head and Durango didn’t so much as say a word of protest as he broke breakfast eggs and set them onto the frying pan of the woodstove Liz had in the kitchen.

“I’m not leaving her either,” Tyrell said from his perch where he stood on a kitchen stool, frantically searching the upper cabinet for some pepper. Tyrell loved his eggs sunny-side up and doused in pepper. Unfortunately these days pepper was virtually impossible to buy.

Eggs, on the other hand, were plentiful, since everyone and their mother seemed to pay Liz for her doctoring services with eggs instead of money.

“No one’s going anywhere. It’s not safe for Liz to be here alone any longer,” Durango said as he sprinkled salt onto the eggs.

Durango’s words diffused the pent-up anger Landon had been harboring ever since he’d awoken this morning. The three of them had roused around the same time and left Liz still fast asleep, despite the fact all of them wanted to take her again.

The woman was just perfect, Landon thought as he remembered how she’d eagerly kissed him and allowed Durango to guide her over his erection, effectively impaling her on him.

Man, she’d been so tight. Her kisses so hot and passionate, and her sweet body convulsing all over the place every time she’d orgasmed.

He knew he loved her from the moment Durango had brought him here. Knew he would die protecting her if and when the time came.

“What about the gang? Aren’t they going to be pissed?” Tyrell asked as he stumbled off the stool and headed for the pantry.

“I’ve already sent word through Logan,” Durango replied. “Told him yesterday when I was helping them. He volunteered to take a ride up and tell the guys. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Geez, first there were nine of us in the gang, and now only three left.” Landon laughed, but then blades of seriousness flowed through him as he focused his attention on Durango. “Are you going to be able to handle the boredom of surviving day by day, Durango? It ate you up the last time, to the point where you were snapping Liz’s and my heads off.”

There was a glint of excitement Landon had never seen in Durango’s eyes before as the man smiled. “That’s before I realized we can survive without the use of stores and cities, gentlemen. Despite this cold weather we are going to go into the farm business. We are going to become self-sufficient. If our neighbors Teyla and Logan and the guys can do it via a greenhouse, then we can, too. With animals.” Durango smiled at the two of them, and Landon could literally feel the man’s excitement zipping through him as well.

Durango continued. “And when we become self-sufficient, we’re going to become self-employed. How’s that sound? No more bosses. No more robberies. No more posses. Just us running everything ourselves and keeping prices reasonable so we can stay in business, but so we can also help out the people who most need it. Since every son of a bitch is out there charging so much for everything, we’ll undercut them and put them right out of business, compliments of their greediness.”