Apocalypse, Ch. 11
The next morning, when I woke up, I wasn't in heat anymore. Instead of being wet and horny, I felt completely sexually satisfied. Only my pussy felt a little sore....
And as I looked over at Greg's sleeping frame, I thought about the last few days, and the love I had felt for him. The love that, for some reason, I just wasn't feeling right now. And suddenly I realized with horror what I had just done.
Oh... my... God!, I thought, I had unprotected sex with Greg while I was in heat!
We had made plans to get married! I had told him I wanted to be his wife, and have three kids, and live together!
And I was horrified. I'm... I'm going to have a baby?!, I thought with alarm, putting my hands to my womb. Then my emotions overcame me, and I shut my eyes and started to cry.
I had been in heat, and I had let myself be impregnated. By Greg. I put my head in my hands and wept. Now what was I going to do? I was fucking pregnant!
I couldn't believe I had let my damn female hormones so totally control me!
Greg heard me crying and woke up, looking at me. "Sam?", he asked, "what's wrong?", and he started to lick the tears from my face.
"Oh Greg!", I cried, "you got me pregnant!"
A look of shock came over his face, his ears going flat. "Oh, no...", he managed.
"You bastard!", I yelled at him. "You took advantage of me while I was in heat!"
"Sam", he replied coolly, "you told me you wanted a baby. You told me you loved me!"
"Oh God", I moaned. "What am I going to do now!", as tears streamed from my eyes. I was fucking pregnant with Greg's baby!
His ears twitched. "You... don't really love me?", he asked.
I stared at him for a moment, and then I put my head back in my hands and went on crying. What was I supposed to tell him? That we where just boyfriend and girlfriend? That all I thought of him as was my fuck-toy? I couldn't, I just couldn't. After all, he was the father of my baby....
And I was about to become a mother....
I broke into another round of sobs.
"I... oh God, Greg", I managed, "I don't really want to have a baby!"
He stared at me in shock, thunderstruck. "Oh that's just fucking great!", he exclaimed.
I continued to cry. I just didn't know what to say to him. How could I tell him that I didn't love him?
"And now is a hell of a time to realize that!", he added, exasperated.
I took a deep breath and sniffled.
Then I felt him put an arm around me. He hugged me. "Sam", he said, "I was an unplanned child, too. And my parents loved me anyway...."
I looked up at him, sniffling. Yeah, his parents where going to be shocked....
But not as shocked as I was.
"It's okay", he told me. "I'll take care of you. You'll see."
"Oh, Greg...", I managed, rubbing my eyes. And he would, too, I knew: because Greg wanted to fucking_marry_ me!
Then the phone rang. He picked it up with his other hand. "Hello?", he said, then listened. "Okay, we'll be right in."
He hung up. "That was work", he said. "We need to go in."
Oh, Great: reality was breaking in.
I tried to get ahold of myself, and I nodded, sniffling. "Let me take a shower first, and then I'll make breakfast", I said. Yeah, I needed to wash the dried cum off my groin fur, and get rid of the scent of sex that permeated everything....
So I got up and got in the shower, shampooing my fur. I couldn't believe what had just happened. So, I thought, your pregnant. Now what are you going to do?
I sighed, shaking the water off me, and dried with a towel. Maybe I can get an abortion?, I thought. I just wouldn't tell Greg....
Motherhood, I thought, was something I just wasn't ready for.
I walked out of the shower. Greg had microwaved some leftovers, and was making sandwiches for work. I sat down to eat, and he stepped into the shower.
I ate, then got dressed, and without waiting for Greg I stepped outside and hailed a rick-shaw to take me to work.
And I felt miserable. I really, _really_didn't want to go to work today. But on the other hand, I didn't want to be around Greg right now either. And maybe my job would take my mind off things.
On the way to work, all I could think about was being pregnant. What was going to happen to me? Could I really be going to have a baby? Could I get an abortion?
And what would Greg say if I did? Well, screw him, I thought, it's my decision, not his.
Finally I arrived at the office.
The same crew greeted me at work. There was the pregnant mouse-girl, and the dog-lady with her baby. I sighed: that would be me in nine months - unless I did something about it.
They welcomed me back to work. Jane, the dog-lady, asked me if I had been in heat. I nodded. "How can you tell?", I asked.
"I can still smell it on you", she replied. "So, did you get knocked up?"
I scowled at her angrily. "Just drop it", I growled.
"Oh, it's not as hard as people make it out to be", she told me with a smile. "I love my little bundle of joy, even if I don't who his daddy is...."
I stared at her. "You don't know who the father is?", I asked.
"Just some guy I met at a night club that night", she said. "But you how that is. When your in heat, you'll screw anything."
Yeah, I did know how that was.
"And so you had unprotected sex with him?!", I blurted out before I could stop myself.
"Yeah", she said with a smile. "He told me he loved me, that we where going to get married, and raise a family together...", she said, getting a distant look in her eyes. "Then the next morning he was gone. Skipped town."
I shook my head. At least Greg actually_did_ love me. And I was pretty damn sure he would never leave me....
But I really felt for Jane. Being an unwed mother must be hard on her.
"Oh", I said. "I feel so sorry for you. It must have been terrible being betrayed like that", and I really meant it.
"Don't be", she replied. "Little Brandon is the best thing that ever happened to me."
I looked down at her chest, where Brandon was snuggled against her right tit in the baby harness, nursing. And suddenly I didn't feel so bad about being pregnant. I mean, if Jane could do it, and love it, why couldn't I? I felt a sudden urge to hold her baby in my hands, and asked her if I could. "Sure", she replied, handing him to me.
I took him in my arms, smiling down at him, and he smiled back up at me. I'm going to have one just like you, I thought, then wondered where that thought had come from.
I scowled. My female hormones are really screwing with me, I thought.
In reality, I didn't want to be pregnant at all. I didn't want to have a baby, to get married to Greg, to become a housewife or any of that domestic crap that most women dreamed of. I was a man, dammit, not a woman!
What I really wanted was an abortion. I has absolutely no intention of giving birth to a wolf-baby....
I smiled back up at her and handed her the baby back. She put him back in his sling and smiled back at me, her baby grabbing her breast again and suckling once more.
"Well, good luck", I told her.
"You too", she said with a wink.
And we went back to work.
The rest of the day went on uneventfully, and finally work ended and I headed home.
I got off before Greg did, so the first thing I did was go to the computer and type "Abortion clinic" into the search bar. But there where no listings, just pages on what abortion clinics used to be.
Oh no, I thought, my spirits sinking.
I typed "Abortion law", into the computer, and found a page saying how abortion had been outlawed during Reconstruction after World War Three.
Now, having an abortion, or giving one, carried the same penalty as murder.
I sat back in my chair, stunned. It looked like I really _was_going to have Greg's baby!
I turned the computer off, my thoughts in turmoil. I put my hands over my womb, wondering what I would do next.
I couldn't believe I was about to become a stupid housewife! Angrily, I cursed the day I had volunteered for that damn sleep study! And now I was stuck in the future, in a post-apocalypse America, and a wolf-girl, and pregnant! With Greg's baby!
I sighed. There had to be something I could do....
Maybe I could find an underground clinic on the black market....
The only problem was, I had no idea where to look!
How, I wondered, could I get in touch in with the underground? Was there an underground, in a city full of surveillance cameras? And what about the clairvoyant and telepathic spies I had read about? Wouldn't they just root out all crime?
I got up and started pacing. Then it occurred to me to at least get a pregnancy test done, to be sure. There was, I thought, a slight hope that he hadn't knocked me up after all. So I grabbed my purse and was about to leave, when the door opened.
Greg walked in, smelling of concrete dust from the construction site. He looked at me. "Sam!", he said with a smile, his tail wagging. "I was worried you'd run away!"
I sighed. "Where would I run too, Greg?"
He walked up to me and tried to kiss me, but I turned my face away. Instead, he kissed me on the side of the muzzle.
"You're still upset, aren't you?", he asked.
I turned on him. "You got me pregnant! Of course I'm mad!", I shouted at him angrily.
His ears went flat. "I... got something for you", he said, pulling a small black velvet covered box out of his pocket. He opened it in front of me. In it was a gold necklace, with a big sapphire pendant.
He took it out of the box, and put it around my neck.
"Greg?!", I sputtered.
"For our engagement", he said. "It matches your eyes."
I sighed, my tail drooping. He loved me. I just couldn't stay mad at someone like that.
Then he took my hand and kissed it. "Let's go get something to eat, like a steak dinner or something, to celebrate", he said.
I didn't feel much like celebrating, but I nodded. Maybe it would make me feel better. Besides, it was unfair to take out all my anger on the poor guy. After all, being in the situation I was in was partly my fault....
"Okay", I agreed, "where do you want to go?"
"I heard that Rudolf's Steak House is good. We could go there."
I sniffed him. "Take a shower first, and change", I said. So Greg hopped into the shower, and I turned on the TV. It was still tuned to porn. I switched it until I found what seemed to be a news channel, something called 'Central News Authority'.
On it was a story about a terrorist attack on a military outpost. It seemed a group of heavily armed humans and some uplifted animal "sympathizers" had stormed it, and slaughtered everyone inside, making away with a considerable cache of weapons.
My ears perked up. So there is_an underground!_ I thought. I wonder how I can get in contact with them?
Camera crews showed footage of the devastation: shattered buildings, ruined robots and smoldering corpses of Inheritors and uplifted animals. The news presenter, a perfect blond whom I assumed was an Inheritor, was talking about a reward leading to their arrest and capture, urging anyone with information to contact Homeland Security.
That was another big surprise; there was still a Homeland Security? My political science teachers back in college had been right: bureaucracies never do go away....
Greg came out of the shower in his towel, and starting putting on some clean clothes. By now, the news had switched to the weather - the only thing that was different was that there where no satellite photographs of the weather. I wondered why, then remembered what I had learned from the history book: Earth's orbit was a cascading debris field. There where no satellites any more.
Greg walked up to me and kissed me on the cheek. "Let's go get dinner", he said, and I nodded.
So we went out to the street and hailed a rick-shaw. A forlorn looking human pulled up, and asked us where we wanted to go. We got in and told him, and he started off at a run.
On the way, I saw a Walgreens, and got a sudden idea. "Stop here!", I told him, and he pulled over. I paid him, and we got out. Greg asked me what I was doing, and I told him: I wanted to buy a pregnancy test kit.
He nodded, and we went in. The greeter was an old human in a Walgreens uniform. I asked him where the pregnancy test kits where, and he told "aisle 18", and smiled.
So we went to aisle 18 and we searched until I found one. It was a blue paper strip that you dipped in your urine, and it turned pink if you where pregnant. I paid for it, and we went outside to the same rick-shaw and got back in.
The rick-shaw took us a fine restaurant that looked like an old colonial mansion. The smell of steak and baked potatoes wafted from it. We walked in and where met by a mouse-guy in a suit, who led us to a table and left us with menu's.
We gestured a waitress over and ordered steak, potatoes and red wine, and waited in silence, the only sound being the music coming from the overhead speakers. Greg seemed like he was on the verge of telling me something, but they brought us our food and we ate.
At least the food was good, and it did a little to lift my mood.
After we ate, we hailed a rick-shaw and headed back to our apartment. I needed to pee, and went right away to the bathroom to use the pregnancy test. I peed in the toilet, dipped the paper strip in, and sure enough it came up pink.
I sighed. There went my last hope. There was no denying it now: I really was pregnant.
Greg was waiting for me when I came out. "So what's the news?", he asked.
"You're going to be a father", I told him.
He smiled and kissed me, and said "I love you Sam, never forget that."
I couldn't help but smile back. "I know you do Greg", I replied, and went and sat down on the bed, turning on the TV. Greg joined me, and we found an action film about World War Four to watch.
Hours passed, and finally we took off our clothes and got ready for bed. Greg asked me if I wanted to make love, and I told him I was still a little sore from being in heat. "I know what you mean", he said. "My balls feel like raisins."
I had to laugh and that, and he kissed me on the nose. "Come on, let's cuddle", he said, and so we cuddled up and slept.
The next morning, I had an idea: I asked Greg if he knew how to get in touch with the black market. "No", he said, "I'm new to the big city. But a human would know. Why?"
Bingo. "I need to find a decryption device", I said, giving him a half truth. I still wanted to find out what was on those encrypted files back at the lab I had woken up in. "How safe do you think it would be to ask one of the rick-shaw drivers?", I asked.
"Well", he replied, "we can only ask."
So that morning on my way to work, I asked a rick-shaw driver how hard it would be to find something on the black market. He told me that for five hundred dollars he could take me to a human bar where I could get "anything I wanted."
I told him to be at my apartment at six-thirty, and he agreed.
So that evening after work, Greg and I waited for the rick-shaw driver to appear. He was right on time. I handed him his money, and he took us into the slums on the outskirts of the city, into the shadow of the giant defensive wall that surrounded D.C.
That's when I noticed something strange about the wall: it was facing inward, not outward, the gun turrets and search lights pointing down into the slums.
That was a real shock. I asked the rick-shaw driver why, and he was a little surprised at my question: it seemed no human could leave D.C. without permission. They where all prisoners.
I was starting to get a real bad feeling about going into this bar, but I was determined. The place we pulled up in front of was simply called "Harold's", and it looked like a real dump. But we got out, thanked the driver, and walked in. Inside, it was a real dive, but a live band was playing, and people where dancing. And the clientele was all human.
We got a few odd looks, but we sat down at a table and ordered drinks. Sure enough, in a minute, a dark haired human with brown eyes sat down across from us. "Are you looking something?", he asked.
"Yeah", I said. "We need a decryption device."
What I really wanted was a back alley doctor willing to perform an abortion, but that would have to wait. Finding someone willing to face a murder rap sounded difficult. I would have to build contacts first, I was sure....
"Sorry", he said, "I only deal illegal drugs. But I know a hardware man. For a thousand dollars, I'll hook you up with him."
I took out my purse, pulled out a paper and pen, and wrote down my address. "Bring him here, and I'll pay you when he get's there", I said.
"Fair enough", he replied, taking my paper. "I'll see you tomorrow, about noon."
Tomorrow was Saturday, so we had the day off. I nodded, and he got up and left.
We headed back to the street, and hailed another rick-shaw to take us home.
"This sounds dangerous", Greg said. "What if we get caught?"
"Cops can't be everywhere", I told him, "or there would be no crime. Relax", and I kissed him.
It was an old line I'd learned in civics class. But nevertheless, it was true then, and was probably just as true now.
It was past nine when we got back home. We made a late dinner, and then undressed for bed. Greg asked me again if I wanted to make love. Why not, I thought, I can't get any worse.
So we got into bed, and he gave me oral until I was bucking and squirming and begging him to fuck me, then he turned on the vibrator and masturbated me until I came. The he climbed atop me, and fucked me until I came a second time....
God, sex with Greg never got old.
I just didn't want to marry the guy....
The next afternoon, we where eating and watching TV, when there came a knock at the door: it was the man we had met at Harold's, and tall blond stranger with green eyes. We let them in.
The stranger introduced himself as Albert, shook our hands, and produced a small sim-stick. "This has a decryption program on it called 'crxe'. It's hidden among the twenty-thousand or so other files, between the porn and the games. You can find it with a directory search. I want ten thousand dollars for it", he said.
I nodded. "Do you take gold?", I asked.
"My preferred method of payment", he said with a smile. So I paid him with nearly the last of our gold, and he thanked us for our business, telling us to come back "if we needed any guns or anything", and the two of them left.
I could only hope it was real. Also, I had no idea how modern computers really worked. It looked like I was going to have to hit the library and find a book on computers for dummies or something.
So I put the sim-stick in the dresser, and told Greg I wanted to go to the library. He told me he had some clothes shopping to do, so we kissed and parted ways.
The library was a huge red-brick building, full of computers and lots of book shelves. I asked a librarian for a book on computers for beginners, and she got me a 3D illustrated one. They wouldn't take my old Solarville library card, so I got a new one printed up, and checked the book out. Then I headed back home to read.
It turned out that neither Apple nor Microsoft had survived World War Three, so all computers where based on open-source Linux operating systems. But Linux had become an entirely visual operating system, which made it much easier to learn. So I began to practice on the apartment computer.
Greg got home with his new clothes, and we had dinner. Then he watched TV while I messed around with the computer until darkness fell, and then we went to bed and made love before drifting off to sleep.
And so, the next few days passed until the paperwork came for our bubble car. It was being held in Central Impound, so that evening we had a discussion as to what to do next.
Greg wanted to fly back to Riverside and get married. I sighed: Greg still wanted to get married. I shook my head, uncertain as to what to tell him. I couldn't tell him no, that would break his heart. But I didn't want to be a domestic housewife either! I just couldn't imagine myself as a married woman, taking care of our squalling wolf-kids, nursing them from my breast, changing their diapers, rearing them, taking them school every day....
What I wanted was to go back to the lab and decrypt those computer files. And that meant traveling back to Riverside. So what if I got married along the way? It wasn't as if it meant anything to me - at least not as much as it meant to Greg. So I nodded and agreed, and he picked me up by the waist, spun me around, and kissed me, overcome with joy. "You wont regret this Sam. I'm going to make you the happiest woman in the world", he told me.
Well, I'm sure he would try. I still wanted to have an abortion, though....
So in the end, we decided to put off selling the car until our business in Riverside was done.
I had finished reading the book by then, so we went back to the library and turned the book in, then went to Central Impound. I showed the Gerald clone our paperwork, and he led us to the car. We got in, set the destination to Riverside, Indiana, and headed back to where everything had begun.