Trayrock, A few days after the storm
Lyric muted the alarms that triggered as the 4WD picked it’s way through the fields, finding the tracks worn into the grasses, pausing so one of the men could get out to open the gates. Their arrival was inevitable.
She needed to keep them out of the cottage. The room of monitors would start questions that she didn’t want to answer, and she had a merman in her bathtub.
“Fucking hell,” she opened the draw and took out the handgun within it, checking that it was loaded although she knew that it was, before putting the safety on and hooking it into the back of her jeans.
She grabbed the shotgun by the front door as she stepped out onto the porch, setting it into the bushes near the steps where she could retrieve it if she needed but it wouldn’t be immediately in sight. She began to pick garbage blown in by the storm out of the garden, creating a pile weighted beneath a broken brick, trying to ignore her racing heart.
The sound of the engine broke through the backdrop sounds of river and birds, and she placed the last piece of rubbish under the brick before straightening to stand with one hand shading her eyes as the 4WD pulled up and the two men got out.
It was the militia officer from the checkpoint, she thought grimly. That casual pat on the roof that she’d taken as him indicating that she could pull away had been him adhering a tag. She hadn’t even thought to check. Stupid mistake.
“Hello,” the militia officer exchanged a smirk with his partner as they strolled towards her. “This is a secretive little hideaway that you have.”
“How so?” She replied evasively.
“Off the beaten trail would be an understatement,” the second man commented.
“Are you alone here?” The first man asked.
“What’s it to you?” She replied, frowning at him.
“She’s alone,” the second man was smugly superior. “If she wasn’t, she would answer the question.”
“Does anyone know that you live out here?” The first man looked at the roof of the cottage. “Solar power and a generator, Chris. Rainwater tanks. Greenhouse and an orchard. Pretty self-sufficient here, aren’t you?” He said to her.
“What are you thinking, Lee? Hippy or prepper?” Chris speculated.
“I’m thinking hippy,” Lee decided. “We could check her armpits for hair, and that would answer the question for us.”
“What do you want?” Lyric demanded defensively as they came uncomfortably close. “Why are you here?”
“Our job,” Lee told her reaching out to touch her hair.
“Well, I don’t need the NES,” she pulled her head back, dragging her hair out of his hand. “I have everything here under control. You can go now.”
“She’s not one of them,” Chris held a device in his hand and stuck it back into his pocket.
“So. Safe,” Lee said, and they stepped closer together, pinning her between them. “We thought you might like some company,” he stroked her hair back from her face. “Pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere all alone.”
“Holy fuck,” Chris’ jaw dropped, his eyes on the porch. “She’s not fucking alone.”
“What the fuck?” Lee echoed as he turned and saw the very, very naked, and wet merman standing with one hand braced on the doorframe. “What the actual fuck?”
“Look, man,” Chris stepped back, palms out. “We didn’t know that she wasn’t alone.”
“And that makes it okay?” Lyric snapped at him.
“Is his… hair green?” Lee’s hand went to his weapon. “Test him, Chris. I think he’s one of them! Step away from the house and put your hands up - ” He cried out as Lyric kicked out with the heel of her foot, his knee buckling. She shot Chris in the stomach with Lee’s weapon, a messier shot than Arthur would have approved of, but it was more important to disable him whilst she took care of Lee than to kill him cleanly.
She shot Lee in the head, and he collapsed face forward onto the pile of rubbish in a mess of brain matter.
“Please,” Chris was on his back, his bloodied hands over the wound in his stomach, and his eyes pleading. “Please…”
The bullet made a neat hole between his eyebrows, and his face relaxed, his eyes losing their spark.
She sighed heavily and put the safety onto Lee’s gun. “You should return to the bath,” she told the Merman as she searched the bodies for anything useful. “This is going to take some cleaning up.”
Lee had a tattoo on his shoulder. A symbol that she recognized, of a God’s Eye held within the layered letters of a V and H. “Shit,” she whispered. She had seen that symbol many times in Arthur’s research notes. Not just any militia, she corrected herself absently as she searched Chris for the same tattoo, finding it on his hip. The Order of Nexsis militia. Had what Arthur always feared actually come to pass, and were they enacting their plan for domination?
“I will help,” the Merman said, reminding her of his presence.
She glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “You can barely stand,” she pointed out. “Don’t worry. This is not my first time disposing of bodies. I’ll drag them to the midden hole and cover it over. I’ll have to dig a new one, but that’s a problem for another day. We will have to move today.”
There was no other option but to retreat to the bunker and wait for whatever was going to happen, she decided.
“Move?”
“Yes,” she stripped off Lee’s trousers and boots and carried them over to where the merman still stood in the doorway. He was looking better, she thought as she stepped up to him. “See if these fit. You will need clothes and Arthur wasn’t as big as you.”
“Arthur?” He held the clothing pinned against him with one arm, his head tilted to the side.
“Arthur was… Well,” she sighed heavily. “He was my father. He got sick six months ago and died.” He had refused to go see a doctor, dismissing the illness as a bad cold. One morning he had not gotten up, and when she had gone to check on him, he had passed in his sleep during the night.
“I am sorry for your loss,” the Merman said softly.
“Thank you,” she turned away. “Go back to the bath. There isn’t one in the bunker so if it is helping, you might as well soak for as long as possible. I will dispose of the bodies and then begin moving from the cottage. It’s possible that someone will come looking for these guys, and we don’t want to be here if they come this far.”
She really did not want The Order of Nexsis looking too closely at the property. Hopefully, if they came, they would think it was abandoned. She would give it six months or a year in the bunker, before returning to the cottage, and improve the alarms around the property, maybe add a few traps. Arthur had taught her how to make them but had preferred not to use them because they were perilous to the wildlife, and unmistakable if discovered – which would raise the question in the mind of the discoverer as to why the traps had been made and what they protected.
She grabbed Lee by the heels and dragged him around the house and between the trees. Traditionally a midden was a mound of rubbish, but Arthur being Arthur, he had preferred to dig a deep hole and dispose of household waste down it – not that there was ever much wasted, but what there was went into the hole and dirt was added over top to stop scavengers and pests from being attracted to it.
She had dug this midden the month before, and it was still nice and deep. She shoved the half-dressed corpse in before returning for Chris. It took a while to fill in the hole after, and she was sweating and filthy by the time she was done.
She erased the trail of blood and gore by pouring water over it. It wasn’t perfect, but it wouldn’t attract wildlife, and might not be noticed if anyone traced the men to the cottage.
She removed the tag off the roof of her Ute, crushing it to pieces between two stones before considering the problem of the 4WD. She doubted that Mermen could drive, and so wherever she dumped the 4WD it would have to be within walking distance.
She needed to shower, first, she decided, and that meant using the bathroom. “Shit,” she grumbled. The shower was separate from the bath, but it still meant being naked in the same room as the already-naked Merman.
Well, it couldn’t be helped, and she didn’t want to handle the food from the kitchen with blood and brains combined with mud into a paste on her skin. She left her shoes on the porch and padded into the bathroom. The Merman had followed her advice and had returned to the bath.
“I cannot move with you,” he said, opening his eyes as she entered. “I need to trace down the source of the water contamination and understand its nature. I fear for my people what prolonged exposure to the toxins will mean. Although it will dilute in the great seas, we have learned from the many chemicals that humans put within the water that the delicate ecosystems of our waters can suffer extreme damage from even just a little poison.”
“I understand,” she said. “However, you can barely stand, let alone walk. I do not think that you want to return to the river in order to continue swimming upstream, or you’ll end up far worse than you already are. And you probably can’t drive, even were the roads not blocked. So, you don’t really have much choice.”
She turned on the shower water. “Do not look as I wash,” she told him sternly.
He closed his eyes again, and she waited a moment to make sure he would not peek before beginning to undress. “Something is happening that is very dangerous,” she continued. “There is a religious order whose goal is to control the world and convert everyone to their religion. The two men who came here are members of that order. My father always feared that this day would come. He spent my entire life preparing me for it.”
She stepped under the spray and closed her eyes as the water flowed over her. She had become skeptical, she admitted to herself. She had begun to wonder if Arthur had been wrong. Well, he had been vindicated by the tattoos on the two soldiers, and she would do as he had always directed her and go to the bunker.
The merman would have to come with her. If The Order of Nexsis came to the cottage in search of their missing men and found him there, they would kill him. “There is a dam just outside of Havermouth which burst during the flood,” she raised her voice over the hiss of the spray. “It’s very likely that the contamination originated from there. But you cannot walk the distance as sick as you are. Come to the bunker with me. I will show you how to drive. You can take the 4WD that the men brought here. It might get you past any checkpoints.”
“I cannot wait.”
She gasped at the closeness of his voice and opened her eyes to find that he had left the bath and entered the shower with her, standing looking down at her. “You…” She covered herself with her hands. “You should not be in here!”
“I cannot wait,” he repeated ignoring her modest outrage. “I must leave today for this Havermouth. You will need to help me.”
Trayrock, A few days after the storm“Oh my god, don’t your people have any sense of modesty?” She complained edging past him and reaching for the towel. Their skin slid against each other, and she smothered a gasp. Fuck Lyric, she scolded herself as she wrapped the towel around herself. This was the wrong time and definitely the wrong man to get stupid over.“Here,” she shoved a towel his way without looking at him. “If you’re done with your bath, cover it up.”“Please,” he said quietly.She chewed her bottom lip. “We can’t do anything tonight,” she said avoiding the issue. “And we can’t stay here. Get back into the bath. I’ll finish relocating to the bunker, and then come back for you. We’ll stay there tonight and discuss this further then.”He stepped past her, his tanned skin plastered with green hair catching the corner of her vision before the splash of water told her that he had returned to the bath. She picked up his discarded towel, hanging on the rack, before hurrying out of
Trayrock, A few days after the storm“It is a tomb,” the merman announced as they entered the bunker.It wasn’t too far from the truth, Lyric admitted to herself. And her fear that it would, indeed, become a tomb was one of the reasons that she would be leaving with him in the morning. The main reason, she told herself, firmly. It was the main reason.“It is safe,” she told him. “Hidden, protected, and has everything that a person needs to survive for some time.”“You knew,” he frowned at her. “To have a place like this, you knew to prepare for whatever disaster has happened to the water.”“My father believed that something was going to happen, and he made the bunker because of that,” she told him.“This… religious group,” he nodded slowly. “Continuing the old wars.”“The old wars?” She put water to boil on the stovetop. “I’m not much of a cook,” she told him. “And I’m not sure what you eat.”He sat on one of the bar stools on the other side of the table. “This food does not look fami
Trayrock, A few days after the stormLyric kept herself busy in the greenhouse and vegetable garden, preparing it to be left unattended, harvesting what she could. Some things, like root vegetables, would last for months in the bunker and be fine to eat. Other things, like tomatoes, it was better to just take them with her and eat them on the journey.She wondered what Niarthen would make of tomato.As night fell, it was unavoidable not to go back. She knew that she was a coward, but there was a siren’s call to Niarthen that was both exciting and alarming. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do about how attractive she found him. She didn’t think having sex was a good solution to the problem. Arthur had always said that sex complicated things.She’d never had this sort of reaction to someone before. Perhaps it was because he had spent so much time naked, but from the moment she had pulled him from the water, she’d been obsessing over him. “Get it out of your head,” she scolded herself st
Trayrock, A few days after the stormNiarthen stepped her into the narrow passage between the bunk beds and locker, before turning, folding his big body down into the bottom bunk, and drawing her down with him so that her back was against him, and his arm was beneath her cheek. It was a tight fit, and the bunk was not long enough for him, but his bent knees parted hers, and he smoothed his hand down her sternum, over her stomach, before lifting her topmost leg over his.His cheek rested on hers, and his hair tumbled over them both. He pressed little butterflies of kisses against her skin in between almost panted breaths as his hand stroked up to cup her breast, taking the weight of it as his thumb explored her nipple.She arched against him, pressing her breast into his hold, her hand reaching back to grip his hip, pulling his body tighter to hers, feeling his cock against her arse and rubbing against it wantonly. He stroked his hand down over her rib cage, over her stomach, and prove
Trayrock, A few days after the stormLyric parked the black 4WD before the entrance to the bunker and hopped out to find Niarthen ready with one of the crates. “You should rest,” she told him as she opened the rear of the 4WD for him. “You are still not recovered from the water illness.”“I am well enough,” he assured her calmly stroking his hand over the curve of her skull and leaning down to rub his cheek against hers. “The worst is behind me.”She closed her eyes leaning into the caress. “Don’t be an idiot and overdo it.”He laughed under his breath and turned to return to the bunker for the next crate. It was quicker done with his help, Lyric admitted to herself as they loaded the 4WD with everything that she anticipated they would need for the journey from food that would not last in the bunker through to bedding for the nights…The nights… She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and slid Niarthen a glance under her eyelashes as he pulled on a t-shirt of Arthur’s that she had
Trayrock, A few days after the stormThe car exploded with fine white powder as the airbags activated, pressing Lyric back into the chair.“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” as the powder sifted down, Lyric’s eyes fixed onto the slow slide of blood across the windscreen. There was a tooth stuck to a gob of flesh making its way down to the wipers. She managed to turn her head to look at Niarthen. “Are you okay?”He crushed the already deflating airbag. “I am fine, but you are bleeding,” he said as he reached out and touched her forehead. She flinched, reaching up to touch it herself, her fingers coming away sticky. She could feel the throb of pain as the shock passed.There was a smear of blood on the airbag. “I must have hit my head on the window just before the airbags went off,” she said as Niarthen freed her from it. She reached out for the door handle. “It’s not that bad. Airbags can break bones and even blind you.”“These cars of yours,” he said through his teeth as he opened his
Trayrock, A few days after the stormThe farmhouses were beginning to press in on the road, which was a sign that they were nearing Havermouth. The closer to a town or city, the nearer the houses were built to each other and the road. The further out, the houses moved back from the road, up long driveways that could stretch for kilometers.Lyric pulled off down a dirt road.“We’re going to have to abandon the car,” she decided. “We’ll park it somewhere, walk until we find another, steal it, and then come back here to transfer our supplies over. We are nearing Havermouth, but the town center is on the other side of the river. The dam is on this one. So, we’ll drive up to the dam, and check it out, before risking the town.”“You think that the religious people are here too,” he stated.“I think something is going on and until I know that they’re not here, I’m going to assume that they… Ah, over there. That should do it,” she headed towards a dilapidated hay shed and reversed in. “You co
“Shit,” Lyric muttered under her breath as she turned to face the farmer. She was off her game, she thought, so focused on the inside of the kitchen and her task that she had not heard the tractor engine stop.She glanced automatically towards the field and saw the glint of sunlight reflecting in the windscreen off the tractor’s cab. The farmer’s rotation had turned him to face the house at just the right time to see her dash across to it. There was no way she could play off her loitering as anything other than what it was.She did not look towards the Ute, and instead met the farmer’s eyes and scooped back her jacket slowly so that he could see the guns. He sucked in a breath through his nose, his eyes widening, and going to the kitchen door.“Look,” he said softly. “We don’t want any trouble. Just… go back to where you came from.”“We will be taking your Ute,” she told him firmly. “I am just after the keys.”He glanced over his shoulder at the Ute, just as Niarthen stepped out. Lyri