I hid in the ruins of Springfield with my pack clutched between my legs. In it was what little food I had, my knife, my hammer, the few precious items I had dug out of the wreckage and guarded as best I could. That pack was my life, my survival. Without it, I would starve.
After many failed attempts, I had learned how to fashion a workable snare to capture small game, rabbits or squirrels or such, and I had learned that even skunk meat was better than nothing if you could manage to catch it and not rupture its scent sac. So many things I had had to teach myself since the Day.
I don't know what happened to my mother or father, they had died before I was old enough to know them well. I only knew that I had been with a couple of older men for some years and had managed to escape when the scavengers had killed them and taken everything we had. I had gotten away, and managed to find the pack and the things I now had, now wore, now lived on. Jake and Frank, they had fought the men while I fled to freedom, died to keep me alive. I had mourned them but not dared to go back to see what had happened. To live, you had to press on. I had been in Springfield for a few weeks, avoiding the scavengers who were everywhere and seemed less thick in Springfield. There had been scraps here and there, a can of beans, some potatoes in a bag (I had lived for a week on those), a box of dried pasta I could soak and eat that way. Here and there, I had managed to live until I learned how to set snares. Now I mostly was keeping hidden from scavengers. The ones I had hidden from went on and I slipped away to continue my journey, checking my snares set the day before.
I should have realized that the scavengers would happen upon my snares sooner or later, that they would lay in wait for me to come pick up the squealing rabbit I had caught and would set upon me.
The four men appeared with evil grins. "All right boy, we'll just take that rabbit, and take that pack you got also," the blond-haired one said.
"And we'll take more if we decide to," the brown-haired one added. Their hair was their only real difference, the others were black-haired and an older man black-and-white haired.
"Just drop the pack and that rabbit for starters," the blond-haired man ordered, he seemed to be in their command.
"Shhhhhhh-shmp!" came the soft sighing sound of a bolt that flew and buried itself in the blond-haired man's breast. He fell over, gurgling.
The other three took a defensive stance, looking about for the shooter.
"Shhhhh-shmp!" the black-and-white haired man fell to a bolt in his face. It was bloody, ugly but I was grateful for whoever it was that was killing these men. I laid flat on my face and prayed he could get the other two.
The other two took off running, but a bolt took out the black-haired man, only the brown-haired man escaped.
I lay where I was, shuddering. Would a bolt take me next?
What I heard was the crunch of dry sticks and then a pair of boot-clad feet standing in front of my face. "Get up!" came the command.
I obeyed, shivering. "I have a r-r-r-rabbit and a pack," I said as steadily as I could in my fear. "I have nothing else you can steal." I didn't dare look at him in the face.
Silence, then, "You're just a kid."
I did look up then, into a face of a man unlike any I had seen before. His body was hugely muscled and strong, his hands were larger than my face and he bore a crossbow, something I had only seen in old books that Jake had favored and pored over in the light of our small fires at night. Jake was the one who had shown me the snare and I had studied that picture, only to find the reality was much harder than it had appeared.
The man wore clean green dungarees of a military man, his face was clean and his wide features stared at me with a feeling of cold ice. "Your family nearby?" he asked.
"No, sir. I'm all alone," I admitted. Sometimes, you found kindness in this world, even if they couldn't let you stay with them.
He nodded, considered, then said, "Follow me," and started walking away.
With nothing better to do, I set off and followed him through the wreckage. I didn't dare ask him anything. Sometimes it was kindness, sometimes they were cannibals. But he didn't make me feel that he planned to eat me.
He led me to an enclosure, the walls were built with sheets of aluminum and other materials, making a serviceable wall, with barbed wire strung across the top. The gate was opened for us and we walked inside.
My impressions were mixed so let me explain where I was. This was "Confidence," a small village of survivors who had banded together to survive as a group. They had several small neat homes inside the walls, and things were clean and neat. I counted fifteen people but probably there were more, and they were all clean and wore decent clothing and were a painfully sharp reminder of the world the way it was before I was born.
"Who did you bring us this time, Wind?" one man asked. "Another mouth to feed?"
"What did you find?" a woman asked him.
Wind (I had a name for him now) said, "We should send a group to Seventh and Garson, I saw a grocery store there. Maybe something left there, maybe not. Killed a scavenger group attacking this boy, brought him back."
"Want to give him a ration like the rest of us?" the man demanded again. "You know how we're doing, Wind, if you keep bringing in strays...."
"I'll share my ration with him," Wind said.
"Fine, he's your responsibility. You deal with him."
"Any boy who's survived as well as him deserves a place here. He can set snares and catch game. Can any of you do that?"
Dumbly, I showed them my rabbit.
No more arguments, and I was led by Wind to his home, it was a smallish house behind a bigger one which had been damaged badly by the Day, so nobody lived there, but he had a garden and enough room for one man. Or a man and a boy. "This looks nice." I said.
"You hungry?"
"Uh-huh." I said and handed him the rabbit. "I have a bit more food in my pack." I said.
He nodded approvingly. "Know why I brought you here?"
I shook my head.
"You're the first person I've found who's adapting to the world as it is," he said simply. "Everyone else is hiding from the truth, one way or another. You, though, you see it and are working with it." He regarded me steadily. "You're the first one I've seen who's like me."
I had to smile at that. "You're a lot bigger than me."
He smiled at that, and I found myself liking him a lot. "Let's clean that rabbit, we can have it for the meat."
We ate a meal of corn bread and the rabbit and some green beans that seemed to have been home-canned. I liked seeing that, this group was trying to rebuild the world. By the time we finished, and I finished bathing myself at his command, using a basin of water and a cloth, it was getting dark. It was too warm to need a fire, Wind buried the coals so we could restart the fire in the morning.
I yawned, feeling safe for the first time in I don't remember when, and looked around. "Where can I sleep?" I asked him.
"With me," Wind said simply. He had a full mattress so I didn't see anything dangerous in this from him. Plenty of room for two on that mattress. And I was already naked.
I got into the bed as I watched him strip to make his own bath, and I saw his body large and golden in the light of the small lamp he had lit. His body moved as he plied the rag over his muscles, making them shine like arcs of sunbeams. His whole body looked golden.... I slept.
I awoke some time later to find I had snuggled up to him in the night. His body was as bare as mine, I could feel it. I could barely see him in the night, he had doused the light. But he was large and warm, and near and I felt such a well of gratitude to him, I had to do something.
He was like me, he had said. I felt a pride in that. I could trust him. Trust him utterly.
I reached down and found his cock lying across his lower leg (he was sleeping on his side) and I gripped it and gently stroked it to rigid firmness. My mouth watered as I felt the strength and length of this man's proud prick and I slid under the covers.
I don't know if he was awake or simply moved at that moment in his sleep but he went over onto his back and I was able to sidle down beside him and engulf his thick dick in my lips. I slowly slid down the shaft until the glans touched the back of my mouth, then drew upwards, pulling the cockskin with my lips as I rose back up to only hold the head in my mouth.
You might wonder at my skill at what we did, I had survived at times in my seven winters of this world by doing what I had to do with men who would feed me in exchange for my favors. But those had been their idea, my own innocent obedience was a transaction. This was a favor born of gratitude.
So I moved my mouth down and up and down and up again, moistening the shaft as I did. Wind let loose a soft moaning sound and his hand came down and found my head, he gently threaded his fingers into my shoulder-length hair and I wondered if he would do as others had done, force my head to obey his will, but he only kept it there, let me work at my own speed.
I sighed and increased my speed, I knew he was awake and accepting my gift of joy, and I strove to drive his body to the maximum of enjoyment, he sighed and moaned but all his noises were soft, as if even here, in the safety of these walls, he abhorred noise, and I understood that well myself, for a noisy child was a danger to all around him, and most of all to himself, for some cannibals had a particular relish for the flesh of children.
So in the soft, warm silence of his home, I sucked Wind's cock and he gasped and sighed and grunted and writhed and as his moment grew near, he whispered, "I am near my joy, I shall tap your head when I reach it."
"Mmh," I acknowledged without pausing and he began to breathe heavy, his chest heaving but his sound still suppressed and with a series of soft, rapid gasps, he tapped my head and I didn't falter but kept up my pace and he exploded into my mouth with only a slight, shuddering sighing sound to his rapture as his rich flavorful seed expended itself into my throat.
"Ahhh-ahhhh-ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!" he finished and I carefully dried his slimy shaft with my lips and when I had ferreted out all of his spunk, I crawled back up to lie again by his side.
"You did not have to do that," he whispered huskily to me, still breathing hard.
"There is need and there is want," I answered. "I wanted to do it."
He gave a single slight chuckle and said, "There is much I want to teach you in the days ahead."
Wind was as good as his word. He fashioned for me a small bow and some arrows and I practiced under his knowledgeable eyes for as many hours as we could manage. The small village was struggling as all of Mankind was among the ashes of our ancestor's homes and businesses, scraping from the past for the needs of the present. Wind's place in this community was to reconnoiter among the ruins to watch for gangs of scavengers and when he found them, kill or drive them off, strive to convince all scavengers to search among other ruins further away.
I showed other children how to fashion snares such as I had used and this let them contribute to the needs of the town and I tried to make myself useful on those times that Wind was out of the walls, waiting as patiently as I could for his return. As I did, I noted that the town was not as successful as it had first seemed. They survived mostly on the contents of a few early raids which had been gathered in their storerooms and which were vanishing quickly as the people used them and there was little or nothing to replace it.
So many of the people of Confidence were lost in the past, of little or no value to the group except as memories of what once were. The town tolerated them and fed them but Wind spoke of them so deprecatingly that I gave them little heed.
I continued nightly to give Wind pleasure and he returned my attentions with his own lips so that we would lie head-to-toe and suckle each other's tools until he squirted his spunk and I shook in my own childish joy. But Wind had greater ambitions for our lovemaking.
With my consent and participation, he obtained a small portion of oil used in cooking and used it to slowly coax my asshole to yield to his attentions. He always started with his tongue actively plying over my sphincter which was so ecstatically marvelous that I well believed his claim that I would enjoy his sturdy prong in my anus much, much more.
He was gentle and not in a hurry, and after two weeks of his tolerance, patient work, he and I agreed that I was ready. He used the last of the grease to lubricate his own cock and said, "We shall have to find more before we can do this again."
"I am not sure I shall need more next time," I assured him. "Enter me, Wind, and let me feel your strength and your kindness."
"I shall and I will." Wind took me by my ankles and dragged me on my back up to his own kneeling body and further, raising me up onto my shoulders so that his manhood could throb at the lower entrance of my body. Thus positioned well, he slid us both down so that I was lying full on my back again and he was still in place to push into me.
I sighed as his warm staff slid into me, the thick throbbing manhood driving into my depths, and the joy of the glan's flare brushing my prostate, made me groan in the complete rapture of my soul and body both exulting in this union of our flesh.
Wind moaned as well, and then his body began to move in a motion that was as old as Mankind and more, and he made it shine for me as bright and new as the sunrise in the morning. I clung to his massive body as he thrust into me, gasping and groaning in the so-soft sounds that were our lovemaking's hallmark. We shared our joy in the darkness and the silence, and he drove my body to the height of rapturous bliss at the same time he rose to the summit of climax. As he struck his goal and sprayed into my bowels, I shook and gasped in my glory and so together we shared the magical moment and sank from it, exhausted and content. We slept in the soft bliss of after-lovemaking relaxation.
We awoke in the earliest dawn to the clamor of the town's alarm bells clanging urgently. We had scavengers at our walls. Dressing rapidly, he took up his crossbow and its quiver of bolts, and I grabbed my bow and quiver of arrows, and we both ran to man the walls of Confidence.
Others held various weapons from the past days of Mankind, and I knew that the ammunition for them was sparse enough that they would be so many metal clubs soon. I had twenty arrows in my quiver, and I notched my first one in my bow and held it at the ready.
My heart sank at the numbers that were facing us. Among their bands a leader must have emerged, a man who sought to reunite the land not under a decent leadership but his own tyranny. Those had been the greatest threats, Frank had solemnly warned me in my younger days, to the future rise of Mankind.
I told Wind this and he nodded gravely, "We shall either carry this day and the battle, or we will fall to their weapons."
I looked them over. "None seem to have bolts such as you or I."
"You noted that, too." Wind nodded. "Let us be prudent in the time that follows."
A horn blew and the scavengers, some bearing ladders, swarmed toward the walls. Others seemed to be there only because they were rash and foolish, they stood beneath us and hammered at the material of our walls, and Wind and I concentrated on keeping the men on the ladders from scaling the walls. The Confidence men were foolishly wasting their ammunition on the men hammering at the wooden planks and sheets that made parts of the wall and I realized suddenly the invader's plans.
"They're making us use up all our ammunition!" I called to Wind. "If we run out, they can charge us at their will."
"How many arrows have you left?" Wind asked.
I knew without looking. "Seven."
"I have ten." Wind said and paused only a moment. "Come, let us go!"
I followed him away from the walls and we paused only to gather a few needs from the house we had shared since my arrival. The invaders were only attacking the northern wall and Wind and I slid down the southern wall to the ground and trod softly away. Behind us, the houses of Confidence were burning and the screams of dying men and women enduring worse fates sounded behind us.
Our act may have seemed callous but the fate of the town was clear and we could not have made a difference. Wind and I now travel the world afresh, together we watch over each other and help each other and strive to find, somewhere in this world, a place where the Men are both free and decent.
When we find it, Wind and I shall try again to guide the small group to climb again to the glories of the past Man had once known.
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