Chapter 1
11:30 PM, May 17th, 2051, near Sacramento, California, USA
She was on her back, her favorite position, not really looking up, even though her face was open to the starlit sky above. Her eyelids were fluttering too fast for her to focus on the stars. The moon was low in the west and really not much more than a sliver of pale yellowing light.
The paleness of her skin in the almost nonexistent light turned him on, causing his turgid member to remain functional as he pleasured her yet again. It didn’t take much. She loved this sort of sensual interlude, though she would never have admitted it to any other woman.
Her skin suddenly began to goosebump, as though she were being somehow watched in her sensuous activity. It didn’t bother her; in fact, she liked the delicious sensation. She was a bit of an exhibitionist after all.
She was just one of those lucky women who had an easy time reaching orgasm. And this man had pleasured her seven times already this evening.
He wanted to set a new personal best record with her. His previous record was thirteen.
Her orgasms, not his.
But when she clamped down hard during a particularly vehement cumming, she triggered him, causing his own unexpected bliss to cascade out of control. He had then collapsed on top of her heaving plump hillocks.
As her hands languidly caressed his back, her eyes slowly focused, her soft smile of happy satisfaction unseen. They lay in a bit of a hollow, probably carved out by someone who intended to build a house or outbuilding back before the earthquake. She believed the indention in the otherwise flat landscape kept her adequately protected from anyone using a night scope.
Or so she halfway hoped.
Her lust had, at least, secured another few days of rations for both her and her growing six-year-old son. The man breathing deeply on top of her was in charge of handing out the food every day. She found it prudent to keep him within intimate reach. Besides, his penis was delightfully worthy of her carnal attentions.
She loved late evenings like this in warm, late spring weather. She saturated her senses with the soft twinkling of the stars, the moonlight just strong enough to see the critical things, but not strong enough see those things which a woman wishes to remain hidden, the scent of the soft lingering fragrances of wildflowers, which had competed for sunlight all day, combined to bring a satisfied smile to her softly sweet face
As she sighed toward the velvety dome above her, her breathing slowly returning to normal, she suddenly realized that there were no stars twinkling. At first she was sure that the clouds had rolled in from the coastline fifty or sixty miles to the west.
But when she glanced in other directions, she saw that in several locations, the stars were invisible in oddly rectangular shapes. Her ears pricked up. But she heard no sounds other than a few night birds and the softening breaths of her lover.
Her instincts suddenly kicked into her consciousness.
Something was wrong! Sweat broke out on her upper brow. Her hackles prickled her neck. She pushed at the heavy body, relaxed and nearly motionless, resting on her.
He grunted.
“Get off me, honey!” She whispered.
He grunted again.
“Damn it, move!” Her still-soft voice was insistent, almost brash.
He was not used to being talked to in such uncompromising terms. After all, he held the key to the larder in their ever-growing nomadic clan. “Whaaaaat?” He asked irritably.
“Get off me, damn it, something’s wrong! Move your ass!” She shoved hard and rolled, managing to get his bulk off of her.
She got up on her knees.
Her face upturned, studying the stars, or lack thereof. She tried to calm her growing prickle of fear.
She could comprehend them now, the shapes, rectangular areas where the stars were inexplicably not visible. Her mind tried to discount the oddly symmetrical shapes. But they were too perfect. Exact rectangles. Starless rectangles of silent darkness.
When she stared hard at one of the form’s hard edges, she saw that it WAS moving, ever so slowly, across the night sky. Stars were disappearing on one side, and others were reappearing on the other edge of the ominous rectangular forms.
She felt an odd, unexplainable heaviness bearing down on every part of her body.
