End Times, Part 2
By Oblimo, Oblimo@aol.com
"Shut up and climb on. I've got a long way until breakfast, unless I eat you."


Oblimo speaks: "No sex in this section [Aw], but some definite kink 
[Oh, okay]. No content warning is really needed, because you can't 
censor the imagination.

"Yet.

"Oh, PS: For anyone interested enough to read this, there'll be more 
naughtiness in Part 3, I promise [Huh, you'd better]."

***

I awoke before she did, thanks to my nerveweb.

Polarizing the tent-bubble, I spied my latest captor. She lay 
languidly on her side, like a pin-up girl gone horribly wrong. The 
pre-dawn light revealed the dark cream-color of her skin, its 
deceptive, soft curves hiding the whipcord tough muscle of a born 
predator. Her honey-brown hair, with traces of red lightened by the 
summer sun, fanned out in cornrows across the ground like vines.

Still naked from last night, I pushed through the osmotic skin of 
the tent-bubble to the sounds and smells of morning. The buzz of 
cicadas rippled through the trees in deafening waves. Kale's earthy 
musk mixed with the smell of crushed grass. I collapsed the tent and 
packed my gear, expecting the drone of the insects to mask my 
actions. Squatting, I rubbed my body down with a round, gray stone.

Bent over to scrub my back, I felt the ground tremble. A shadow fell 
over me as a question came from high above. "Soapstone? No cleaning 
gizmo?"

I looked up and up into Kale's smiling face. "Only what I can 
carry."

I offered the soapstone, just a pebble in her hand. She scrubbed her 
face, hands, and shoulders. "I half expected you to flee in the 
night," she said, handing back what was left of the soapstone, now 
just a pebble in my hand.

My fatigues flowed back into place with a tap of the wrists. "Even 
if I wanted to," I said, hefting up my backpack. "I still need your 
help."

She tied the bearskin around her waist, leaving nothing to the 
imagination. "I'll need both arms free to work up a run, so I can't 
carry you."

"No problem," I said. "Mind if I piggy-back?"

She knelt. I walked around behind her. "With my pack on I weigh over 
200 pounds."

"Ooh, big man," she laughed, flipping her braids onto her back. 
"Shut up and climb on. I've got a long way until breakfast, unless I 
eat you." Her voice echoed the color hair and the tone of her skin: 
an intoxicating mix of honey, chocolate, and fire.

I wrapped the end of a heavy cornrow around my hand. Again, it 
reminded me of a steel cable somehow as soft and flexible as silk. 
Planting a poly-alloyed boot on the upper slope of her bare bottom, 
I hauled myself up to grab another cornrow with my free hand. 
Straddling her ribs with my legs, I shimmied up her 
back.

"You've done this before," she remarked as I settled in. Swinging my 
legs around her neck, I nestled deep into her fragrant hair, winding 
some cornrows around me for stability. My legs dangled about her 
breasts, so I tucked my feet into her fuzzy brassier.  "I'll help," 
she volunteered. Reaching back, she took handfuls of cornrows and 
worked them into a single massive braid, with me snugly held at its 
top. The fatigues' coloring cycled to match my honey-red 
surroundings. "How's that?" she asked

"It feels fantastic!"

"I mean how stable are you?"

"Oh. Well, stand up and I'll see."

She stood up quickly, the dropping ground making my head rush. I 
swayed a bit, but remained secure. I could almost see over the 
treetops. "Work's great," I said. "Hold on while I get the GPS out." 
I fished out the media slate which fit perfectly between her neck 
and my lap. I tapped it awake, and queried the worldweb. The screen 
lit up with a digitally enhanced view of the clearing from high 
above, centered on the two of us. It chirped the weather, the status 
of available spy-sats, and graphed a course to our target.

"Which way?" she asked impatiently.

"West South-West." I pointed. "That-a-way."

She bent down in a series of long leg-stretches, providing a 
panoramic view of her deep, deer-clad cleavage. "Ready?" she said.

"Um, yeah."

"Let's go!" she shouted, and we did.

When I finally opened my eyes, the GPS, struggling to keep its view 
up-to-date, clocked us at and average of 45 kilometers an hour. When 
a tree loomed in the way, she uprooted it with a smash of a hand or 
shoulder, slowing only for a second or two. I looked behind and 
watched the swath of deforestation grow.

"The terrain gets rougher about 8 clicks ahead!" I shouted over the 
noise. "The hills give way to mountains."

"I know," she huffed, leaping a good 10 feet into the air to sail 
over a huge thicket. "This is the edge of Sigma Theta territory."

A deer sprinted ahead of us, not sure which way to turn to avoid the 
onrushing behemoth.

"Breakfast?" I suggested.

"Not here," came the answer as we overtook the panicked deer, "these 
hills are contaminated."

"There's some old tree growth on the mountain," I said, zooming in 
on the GPS. "Elm, I think."

"That'll make things easier."

"It will?"

"You'll see."

We bumped, bashed, and jumped through the wood. I hugged my self to 
her bouncing hair, glad I did not eat breakfast.

Eventually, she asked "You're from the east?"

I leaned over to her left ear. "What?" I made the mistake of looking 
down at the ground lurching past.

"You said before you came from the east." We jogged through a long, 
open field. "Are there many gullivers in No Man's Country?" she said 
in a classic polite-conversation-to-pass-the-time tone, running a 
bit slower to save energy.

"Not many," I said, feeling queasy. "Free-range, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

I closed my eyes at the memory. "Gulliver farms," I said, the words 
sour in my mouth.

"Farming?" she said, surprised. "What about sorority regs?"

"Regulations are a bit different back east. Women are smaller in No 
Man's Country, so things are run a bit tighter."

We plunged into forest again, a steep incline hinting at the 
mountain just beyond view. "You're kidding!"

"True," I explained, glad to be free of the memory of the chains and 
pumps of the farms, "The average height is only about 9 feet. On 
both coasts. Women get bigger the closer you get."

"Closer to what?" she asked, really curious now.

I whispered a curse and bit my lip. Idiot. "I meant further. Further 
inland," I recovered half-heartedly. "Weaker sororities are driven 
out to where the coastal byways allow for greater trade and 
interdependence."

"Oh," she said, pretending that was that.

"Wow," I said, pointing, "now that's a tree."

Kale skipped to a halt by the huge elm tree. "I can barely fit my 
arms around it, and it's easily 80 feet tall," she breathed. "How 
did something this old survive?"

"I don't know, but I see many more up ahead."

Kale grabbed the tree with both arms, pressing a foot against the 
weathered, gray bark. "Well, I've never done it with trees this big, 
but that should make it easier."

"Make what easier?" I asked, but she was already loping upward, hand 
over hand, arms fully extended, like climbing a coconut tree. 

She swung out to perch on a high branch. I saw the mountain, squat 
and squared, 
mostly lined with trees, but beige and bald on the upper northern 
face.

"I've never been this high!" Kale cried. She barked out an delighted 
yawp, listening to it echo. "That looks like a good start," she 
said, pointing to another elm some twenty feet away.

She rocked back and forth, testing her balance. I grabbed extra 
handfuls of cornrows.

I managed a "Oh, shit," just before she jumped.

A moment of horizontal free fall, and we slammed into a high knot of 
nettling branches and leaves. The tree underneath groaned and rocked 
forward. Kale swung with it, bending it even farther, and right when 
it was about to snap back, she jumped again.

"Look how high we are!" she sang proudly a few trees later, rocking 
a branch back and forth to get up more momentum for another jump.

I sank further into her mane in reply.

Several jumps later, she stopped abruptly, swinging by her arms from 
a branch bending slowly but inevitably to its breaking point.

"Do you smell that?" she asked as the branch descended, cracked.

"Smell what?" I ask with exaggerated nonchalance.

"Fresh water." She wrapped her legs around the tree trunk, and 
scuttled down. 

Although I could not smell a thing, Kale followed her nose through 
the tangle of roots and parasitic vines.

"I hear it now," I said, listening to something gurgle and burble.

A narrow stream, hidden by vibrantly healthy patches of undergrowth, 
cut a trough in the soft earth.

Kale heaved gulps of air, arms at her hips, bent over. "It smells 
very fresh. The poison fields are all down in the outlying hills to 
the north. This is just run-off from the mountain. Can you tell if 
it's safe?" She reached up and loosened the braid behind me. I 
hopped down.

I produced a specimen vial from my backpack. First morphing on pair 
of silvery gloves out of the fatigues, I pushed a bramble to one 
side, and took a sample of the water.

"How does it look?" Kale huffed.

I held it up to the light, watching the readout play on the glass. 
"Biologically, nothing that a ceramic filter can't handle. I'll 
check for tech, just in case." I looked up. "Are you alright?"

Secured in her hair, I had been clueless to the strain of the run. 
Now, I could see rivulets perspiration and trembling muscles.

"Yeah," she whooshed, standing up, puckering her lips and blowing. 
"I'll be fine. Just thirsty."

I pushed a cataplastic stopper onto the vial, and shook it. The 
stopper turned purple. I hurled it away, flinching. "It's crawling 
with nanoforms. We'll have to avoid any contact with the local 
fauna."

"Does that mean the waterhole's contaminated?" Kale asked.

"I doubt it," I answered, straightening the straps of the backpack. 
"But nanoscopics, a waterhole, and old growth, all in one place? 
Something strange went down here in the End. Don't worry, the 
waterhole will be stocked."

"Yesterday morning," Kale said, shaking her head, "I was counting on 
your flesh for meat, your blood for drink."

"Well, if I'm wrong about the waterhole, you have my permission to 
eat me. Raw. Alive." She started to giggle. "With a braindump to 
keep me conscious."

"I'll think about it," she said, "but let's find your waterhole. 
We'll climb back up, and you can work your gnome wizardry with that 
retro-tech..." she reached back, "that's still stuck in my hair. 
Hey!" She tossed the media slate down.

"Christ!" I yelped, leaping. I balled my body around the slate and 
let gravity do the rest.

"Didn't know a gulliver could jump so high," Kale said as I lay 
prone on the ground, inspecting the slate. "You'd think I dropped a 
pox-mine."

"Something like that," I said quietly.

She scampered up the nearest tree. Her voice floated down. "Come on, 
I'm thirsty."

I carefully placed the slate back into the pack, and climbed after 
her, morphing tree-spikes from my boots.

I found her sitting in the nook of the trunk, high above the ground. 
I wedged myself in next to her, squashed up against her tall belly, 
and played with the media slate again.

"Where is it?" she asked.

A red cross-hair highlighted our target on the slate's display. 
"Right at the top of the tree line, almost in the middle of the 
bare, rocky area. Can you see it?" I asked, strapping on a pair of 
binoculars. Through the goggles, something glinted in the trees near 
the top.

"No. Wait." She bobbed and squinted. "Yes. There it is. Can you get 
on my back from there?"

After a bit of squirming, I whispered into a saucer-sized ear, 
"Yes."

"Right," she said, tiptoeing out onto a limb. "Let's go."

***