all the people gone? It was another question whose answer would probably be forthcoming in time. But despite any misgivings Ryan had about staying in the old hotel, it was getting dark out and the friends needed to find a place to bed down for the night. “All right, let’s take a look inside and find a place to sleep.”
The friends stepped through the broken glass that had once been the hotel’s front door and entered the lobby with blasters in hand. While there didn’t seem to be anyone living in the ville, a few of the hungry muties could still be crawling around looking for a meal. But even that seemed unlikely, since there was even less food in the ville than there was in all the surrounding rad-chilled farmland.
As they moved through the lobby, Doc walked behind the front desk to have a look around. “Well, I’m honored to be one of the first guests here since 2001,” he said, wetting the tip of a pencil on his tongue and signing the guest book on behalf of the friends.
The hotel was laid out in a pair of long corridors that stretched out in opposite directions from the lobby. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but they could probably establish a defensible position somewhere in the hotel, allowing them all the good night’s sleep they so desperately needed.
Just then a door opened at the end of the ground-floor hallway. The friends immediately had their blasters raised and ready to fire, but it turned out to be Jak returning from his recce of the hotel’s upper floors.
“Long halls, many rooms,” the albino teenager reported. “Second floor best. One way up, many ways out.”
Ryan nodded. Since the elevators wouldn’t be working, the only way up would be by the stairs. But a building like this had to have at least two stairways, maybe even more in case of fire. “Only one stairway?” Ryan asked.
“Locked others. Now let out, not in.”
“Are the stairs the only way out?”
Jak shook his head. “Windows. Twenty-four each side, not far to ground.”
A ten-foot jump out a second-story window wasn’t Ryan’s favorite way of escaping a firefight, but with forty-eight windows and a few stairways to choose from, not to mention the possibility of going up, the one-eyed man was satisfied they’d be able to escape in the event of a mutie attack, or worse. Besides that, he was too tired to go any farther. If they didn’t stop here for the night, Ryan wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on. “Second floor it is, then.” He looked at the friends to see who was freshest and could take the first watch. “Jak, you take first watch, hour-and-a-half shifts.”
The teenager nodded.
The friends went to the end of the hallway and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
RYAN AND KRYSTY TOOK a room on the east side of the building at the far end of the hallway near one of the locked doors that led to the stairs. The windows on that side of the hotel were mostly whole, looking out over a back alley, which was just as deserted as the rest of the ville.
There were two large beds in the room, both covered with dusty sheets. Krysty took them off the bed and shook them out in a room across the hall, then replaced them on the bed. It had been a while since Ryan had slept in a bed with sheets, and he was looking forward to it.
But before he did, there was something else he’d been looking forward to even more. As he lay back on the bed, Ryan set his SIG-Sauer and panga on the nightstand next to him, then hid his Steyr SSG-70 under the bed. Then, in total comfort, he bit into another of the delicious pears they’d traded for, and watched Krysty slowly getting undressed. Seeing her shed her clothing like this always gave him a little thrill that stirred a desire deep within him. The first hint of her beauty was her gorgeous mane of fiery red hair and her strikingly brilliant emerald-green eyes. Even though she looked tired herself and her hair was hanging almost straight down from her head, she was still breathtakingly beautiful. That beauty was further evidenced as she stood at the end of the bed, slipping off her boots and then her jumpsuit and bra and panties, revealing her full breasts, long, muscular legs and firm buttocks.
Ryan took the opportunity to get out of his own clothes, taking off his jacket and shirt in one smooth motion, and then kicking off his boots and sliding out of his pants.
He was ready for her.
Krysty acknowledged that fact with a smile. “If you’re done with that pear,” she said, “you might want to try some cherry-tipped golden apples.”
Ryan stopped himself from taking another bite and put the pear down on the nightstand.
“I thought you might,” Krysty said. She crawled onto the bed and moved toward Ryan on all fours. As she straddled his legs, she bent down and kissed his hardness once, then flicked her head and dragged her long red hair across his body.
Passion flowed through Ryan, and Krysty seemed to have discovered some newfound energy as her hair was now curling slightly around her shoulders. He reached out for her, pulled her forward and, when she was in position, entered her.
They were lost in the throes of passion for a long, long time.
“DID YOU GO on a honeymoon, Doc?” Dean asked as he prepared his bed in the room he was going to share with the old man.
“Oh, I did indeed,” Doc answered, smiling.
“What was it like?”
“It was gloriously wonderful,” Doc said, looking out the window at the falls. “My dear sweet Emily and I went on a riverboat ride down the mighty Mississippi. While I knew that she was a lovely woman, I had no idea regarding the depths of her charms. She was warm, vibrant and loving, and even though the word hadn’t been in common usage, if people knew about my Emily, the word sexy might have been in common parlance long before the turn of century.”
“You mean 1900?”
“That’s the year.”
“So men and women spend a lot of time having sex on their honeymoon?”
“Well, now, yes they do.” Doc had turned away from the window and was a little unsure if it was his place to talk about such things with Dean.
“Why is that?”
“It is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years.” Doc pulled up a chair next to the bed Dean was stretched out on and sat. He stared out the window again and continued talking. “Honeymoon comes from the term ‘honey month.’ You see, even though people had always gotten married, they weren’t always faithful to each other. So, when a man and a woman married, they went off for their honey month, in which they drank an alcoholic beverage called mead, a sort of beerlike drink that was made partly from honey. The alcohol helped them…well, have sex, and it lasted a month because it allowed the woman to complete an entire reproductive cycle. This insured that the woman’s first child was undoubtedly the offspring of her husband, since no other man could have had an opportunity to mate with his wife during the honey month.
“Over time the ritual became unnecessary as there was less and less likelihood of a woman’s infidelity. However, the honeymoon still served as an opportunity for a newly wed man and woman to become intimate with each other, so it was maintained as a symbolic bonding period between two soul mates.”
Doc looked over at Dean and saw that the boy was already sound asleep. He pulled a sheet over him, then went to the other bed to lie down.
“Honey month, honeymoon,” he muttered under his breath as he prepared his bed and made himself comfortable on it. “Honey month, honeymoon.”
Minutes later Doc was asleep, dreaming of Emily and the Mississippi nights in which he’d thought he’d found a little piece of heaven on earth.
MILDRED WAS in the bathroom of the room she would be sharing with J.B. She’d taken a clean washcloth from the pile of clean towels she’d found in the bathroom and with a few splashes of water from her canteen, she was now giving herself a quick freshening up before bed.
“How long has it been, John?” she asked, looking at