Not Enough

They wrap Noah in a shower curtain.

Jose and Garret take the stairs because Grant will not waste the step on a dead man. Mary stands in the six doorway until the body is gone and the tile is just tile again. Cindy sits on the couch in Mary’s shirt, knees together, watching the spot where Noah was like it wasn’t real.

“You don’t have to crawl ever again,” Grant says.

Cindy nods. “Thank you, master.”

Mary does not correct her. Not this morning.

Olivia is upstairs. Priya stayed with her. The web says Olivia is tight and tired and not bleeding. That is the update Grant gets whether he wants it or not.

He opens the five miles.

Nine. Five. Two. The unreadable man, east-northeast. Still sitting. Still alone.

Mary watches his face.

“Please don’t, mas — Grant.” She winces and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I’m looking at the street,” he says, not noticing her struggle. “Holt’s vehicles are still down there.”

Several pickups. The box truck with the folded panel. Dale’s lead truck with the door hanging. Whatever they carried besides people is still inside.

“What weapons do we have?”

“Not enough. Two rifles,” Mary says. “Six pistols. You called three hundred women an army and just handed them bats.”

“I know.”

“Then please say what you are thinking.”

Grant looks at the trucks the way he looked at the courtyard.

“It can’t just be me getting bigger. If a hundred-plus man walks up and I go down, five hundred women with bats will lose. If they’re holding something that puts a hole in a man before he reaches the lobby, I don’t have to be their only chance.”

Mary’s mouth twitches.

“Good. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Say it.”

“You’re…changing. All of us are too. I don’t have a word for it. That’s okay. This is still a defensible building full of people who can pull a trigger. So we arm them. Then you can enjoy yourself for a change.”

He almost smiles. He does not.

“Leanne. Eve. Zoya. We strip the trucks before somebody else does. Jose moves the bus. I want every gun, every box of shells, every knife that isn’t a kitchen knife. Leanne’s floor gets first pick after Eve’s watch.”

Leanne is already in the hall.

“I heard guns,” she says. “May I please come?”

“Yes,” Grant says.

“After you, master,” she bows her head deferentially. He doesn’t notice.

The street smells like sweat and blood.

Holt’s people left the trucks thinking they would come back. They were wrong. Grant pops a tailgate with one hand and the latch screams. Inside: a duffel bag of 9mm ammo, three more pistols, a shotgun wrapped in a towel, two cardboard trays of shells that have rusted a bit, but are still good enough.

Eve finds the rifle under the back seat of Dale’s truck. Then another. Then a crate that makes her swear once, happy.

“That’s six rifles if we count the two we already had,” she says. “Pistols… ten, eleven. Plus the shotgun.”

“Not enough for an army,” Mary says. “A start.”

Zoya pulls a lockbox from the box truck. Grant breaks it open. Two revolvers. A box of .38. A badge that is not Holt’s.

“He robbed a police car,” Zoya says.

“Or just found it,” Grant says. “Doesn’t matter now. We keep the guns. The badge is useless.”

They gather up everything. Garret counts magazines out loud because he needs numbers that are not women. A girl from Holt’s, Bren, finds a hatchet and looks at Grant like she is asking permission.

“Keep it,” he says.

“Thank you, master,” she bows and looks at the ground before taking her new weapon.

Mary hears it and does not flinch this time. She puts a pistol in Bren’s hand after.

“Safety. Finger off until you mean it. You don’t point it at a sister. You point it at a man who isn’t him.” A nod at Grant. “That’s your training until we get more time.”

Bren swallows. “Yes, Mary.”

Grant feels the map open up wide while they load.

South, the hundred-plus has not moved. Across the river, the other hundred-plus has not moved. The triangle of fifties is still there. And three blocks west of campus, inside a shop with a grate half down, he can see metal the map does not name and no evolved man sitting on it. Ordinary hearts, two of them, in the back. Unclaimed women, none.

“Pawn shop,” he says. “West. Two men. Not evolved. Guns if we’re lucky.”

“Today?” Mary.

“Today we finish the street. Tomorrow we take the shop.”

“Good.” She slings a rifle. It looks wrong and yet somehow right on her. “Then please eat instead of standing in the courtyard staring at a point on the map.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. I can feel you leaning.”

He shrinks the five miles down to the block.

They carry the duffels inside. The second floor becomes an armory because Leanne volunteered it to be. She lays pistols on a dining table like produce. Eve takes a rifle. Zoya takes the shotgun and smiles a little.

Olivia comes down as far as the second-floor landing, sees the guns, and stops. Priya is with her.

Grant goes to the landing.

“You don’t have to be down here.”

“I wanted to see you, so I looked for you—” Olivia’s mouth tries master, tries Grant, lands on nothing. “I wanted to see if the trucks were empty.”

“They’re empty now. Oh, and Noah’s gone. Cindy is with us now.”

“I know. I felt her change. I can sense her now.” She looks at the table of pistols. “Can I have one?”

Leanne looks at Grant.

Grant looks at Olivia’s hands. They are steady enough.

“Yes. Leanne, show her the safety. You don’t sleep with it loaded until she says.”

“Yes, master.”

This time she hears herself. She does not take it back.

Mary, from the table:

“Gra — Master.” She gives in. Fighting it isn’t worth it anymore.

Still holding the door.

He nods at her. The nod is the whole argument for now.

Grant walks away from it.

Not east. Not the pawn shop. He heads up to the penthouse because Mary told him to eat, and because he needs to think.

Piper finds him first.

She was the five-hundredth. She has been in the courtyard in his head since it happened. Dark blonde hair. Full lips on a mouth that still looks surprised to be his. Perfect hourglass figure. Vivid blue eyes. Flawless skin. She is in a tank top that is not hers and shorts that ride up when she walks. She stops in the bedroom doorway like she was sent there on purpose.

“Mary said you were supposed to eat.”

“I ate,” he says as he tries not to be too obvious with his staring.

“Mary said you were supposed to rest.”

“I’m fine.”

Piper’s eyes drop, then come back up. The word is right there. She lets it out.

“Please sit, master.” Her voice has a natural sultry tone.

He sits on the edge of the bed.

She closes the door. She does not ask if he wants company. She pulls the tank top off. No bra. Her breasts are perfect. They are medium, teardrop-shaped, with pinkish-brown nipples that are already hard. A small mole on the left. She pushes her shorts down. Bare. A hairless pussy that is already shiny at the slit. When she turns to kick the shorts away he sees a round ass and the crease where it meets her thighs.

She stands between his knees.

“You can send me downstairs.”

“I’m not going to.”

“Good.” She smiles. “I keep thinking about the courtyard. You walked into us like we were a prize.”

“You were. Especially you.”

She kisses him. Then she gets on her knees on the floor and takes him out of his pants with both hands. She licks the underside of his shaft first, slowly, then takes the head in her mouth and looks up while she does it. Wet. Warm. She goes deeper than she means to and pulls off with a string of spit from her lip to him.

“Sorry master. I don’t know how to deep throat it,” she says.

“You don’t have to.”

He lifts her onto the bed, lays her back, and spreads her legs. Her pussy opens on its own. Her inner lips are a little darker and her clit is swollen. He puts two fingers through the wetness and she jerks. He replaces the fingers with his mouth. She grabs the headboard and forgets to be quiet.

When she comes the first time her thighs shake against his ears and she screams “Master!” like she can’t find another word.

He climbs up and pushes into her in one slide. Tight. Hot. She hooks her ankles and takes it. He fucks her deep and fast, learning how to control his new strength on a body that is more fragile. Her beautiful tits bounce as he thrusts into her like a piston. The wet sound of it is the only thing in the room besides her animalistic moans.

The web tugs.

Zoya is in the hall. Not a spike. A question. She felt Piper. She felt him. The new sense does not come with manners.

Grant does not pull out of Piper, but he stops thrusting. She looks at him confused.

“Door,” he says.

She looks at the bedroom door and then looks at him. She understands.

There is a knock. “Um, sorry to interrupt. Mary sent me to say the armory is ready. I can come back.”

“You can come in.”

Zoya leans the shotgun on the wall, far away from the bed. She shuts the door. Piper is still on her back, Grant still inside her eager pussy, and then Grant thinks of her and he starts moving again.

“Oh that looks nice,” she bites her lip.

“It is! Soooo nice,” Piper says as she climaxes around Grant’s throbbing erection.

Zoya watches for one second. Then she pulls her shirt off. Small athletic breasts, dark nipples. She shoves her pants down. Between her legs she is bare too, a neat slit, already wet from the web and the room. She climbs onto the bed at Piper’s head, knees on the pillows, and looks at Grant.

“Where do you want me, master?”

He pulls out of Piper. Piper makes a noise. Grant puts his mouth on Zoya’s cunt instead, from below, while his hand stays on Piper. Zoya tastes like salt and the street. She holds the headboard and rides his mouth with no apology. When she comes she bites down on a pillow and her thighs clamp his head.

He sits back, pulls Piper’s hips to the edge, and slams back into her. Zoya leans down and kisses Grant because she wants him more than anything. He fucks Piper while making out with Zoya, then he pulls out, grabs Zoya by the waist, and puts her on her hands and knees facing the window. He pushes into Zoya from behind in one thrust. Tighter. She drops to her elbows. Piper slides under them and puts her mouth on Grant’s balls while he fucks her.

It is messy. It is loud.

Zoya comes first, shaking, pushing back onto him. Grant lasts until Piper’s finger finds his butthole and Zoya says, “In me. Please cum inside my pussy, Master,” and then he pushes deeper and comes hard, filling her, his hand on the back of her neck.

He pulls out. Cum runs down Zoya’s thigh. Piper licks it off her like it is her favorite job. She then licks Grant’s cock clean of all their combined juices.

Grant sits on the floor feeling amazing.

The five miles tries to open. He doesn’t let it all the way. He lets in the table on two, the roof, Cindy on five sleeping, Olivia on the landing with a pistol she has not loaded.

Piper’s head is on the mattress, looking at him upside down.

“Was that relaxing, master?”

“No, but it was incredible.”

Zoya picks the shotgun back up like a coat.

“Armory’s ready. We have enough to make a stand if someone comes for us. Not enough to start a war.”

“Tomorrow we take a pawn shop,” Grant says.

“Yes, master.”

She does not smile when she says it. She bows and then leaves.

Piper stays long enough to find her shirt.

“Mary’s going to smell this.”

“Probably will,” he shrugs.

Piper nods, says “master” one more time like a fact, and goes.

That evening is all about a table of guns and a list.

Leanne: “Eleven pistols. Six rifles. One shotgun. Shells for maybe two ugly afternoons if we don’t miss a lot.”

Eve: “Roof now has a rifle and a person who can use it.”

Mary: “Second floor has a door that shoots. Lobby has two. We don’t arm people who will shoot the ceiling.”

Grant: “West pawn shop tomorrow. Two normal men. If there are more guns, we take them. If there is an evolved man who reads high on the map, we leave.”

“And the unreadable one?” Mary asks.

“Still not moving.”

“Then not tonight,” she nods.

“Not tonight.”

Noor writes it down like it is a rule.

Cindy appears in the kitchen doorway in the shirt and borrowed shorts. She looks at Grant, not at the floor.

“Do I get a job, master, or do you want to use my body?”

“You get a room,” Grant shakes his head. “And a job when Mary says you are ready.”

“I’m ready, master.”

Leanne looks at her, then at Grant, then nods once.

He sighs. “Tomorrow. After the pawn shop. I’m not putting a pistol in a hand that was crawling on the floor this morning.”

Cindy accepts that like it was obviously the best choice because he said it. “Yes master.”

The building holds five hundred thirty-two points and finally a table of weapons, but it is not even close to a real army yet.

Grant climbs the stairs again.

He could step to the roof. He could step east if he had a girl that far. He doesn’t.

Mary is in the penthouse with two plates. She sets one in front of him.

“You armed them,” she says. “You also spent the afternoon having fun without me. I’m not mad. I’m telling you I know. Don't let it happen again.” She smirks as always when teasing him.

“I won’t.” He smiles weakly.

“Master.”

“Mary.”

They both start eating. The unreadable man sits at the edge of five miles and does not move.

The pawn shop is tomorrow.

The triangle of fifties is still a potential threat.

And for the first time since this all began, the building has teeth.