Chapter 15: Powering Up Pleasure
The quiet of the television station was a different creature altogether. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of the shoreline at dawn, but a held breath, the silence of a tomb where ghosts of laughter and news jingles still vibrated in the dust motes. Zahra’s worklight cast a sharp, white circle on the sprawling schematic laid across the old news desk, its plastic crackling under her fingertips.
“The satellite uplink is toast,” she murmured, tracing a line with a grimy nail. “But the local transmitter arrays on Queen Anne Hill… if the towers are still standing, and if we can route enough clean power…” She looked up, her dark eyes gleaming in the low light. “We could broadcast for fifty miles. Maybe more.”
Ana ran a hand over the curved, brushed metal of the main anchor desk. “Fifty miles.” She said it like a prayer. “Every enclave, every bunker, every scared little group hiding in a supermarket.” She turned, her gaze finding Paxton where he leaned against a dead video monitor. “We show them. Not with bullets. With this.”
She walked toward him, her movements deliberate. The loose tunic she wore did little to hide the ripe curve of her pregnancy, or the confident sway of her hips. She stopped inches from him, the scent of her—warm skin and salt—cutting through the ozone and mildew.
“They need to see,” she said, her voice low. “They need to see that life isn’t about hiding. It’s about this.” Her hands went to the hem of her tunic and she pulled it up and over her head in one smooth motion, letting it fall to the grimy floor. Her body was a magnificent map of change: full, heavy breasts veined in blue, the dark line running down the taut dome of her belly, the thatch of dark hair at the junction of her powerful thighs.
Paxton’s breath hitched. The clinical setting made it more potent, more taboo. This wasn’t a firelit clearing; this was a shrine to dead information, and she was preaching a new gospel.
Wren appeared from the shadows near the control boards, a ghost in the green glow of emergency EXIT signs. She wasn’t hesitant. Her own shirt was already unbuttoned, hanging open. Her practical nature had found a new focus: the documentation of vitality. She came to Ana’s side, her hand not going to Ana’s belly for a check, but sliding around to cup Ana’s ass, pulling their bodies together. Ana’s pregnant swell pressed against Wren’s lean, athletic stomach.
“Show me,” Wren whispered, her voice rough. “Show me how ready you are.” Her other hand slipped between Ana’s legs from behind, fingers seeking and finding the slick, swollen heat there. Ana gasped, her head falling back against Wren’s shoulder.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” Wren breathed, working two fingers inside Ana with a slow, twisting push. “Soaked. Is this for him? Or for the people watching?”
“For everyone,” Ana moaned, her hips rocking back onto Wren’s hand.
Paxton was hard, his jeans straining. Ana saw it. She broke from Wren’s grasp and pushed Paxton backward until his legs hit the anchor desk. “Sit,” she commanded. He obeyed, the cold leather of the news chair shocking against his bare thighs as she yanked his jeans down. His cock sprang free, thick and achingly erect.
Ana didn’t mount him slowly. She turned, presenting him with the breathtaking view of her back, the dimpled small of her back above the dramatic flare of her hips. Then she lowered herself onto him, guiding his cock into her from behind as she faced the desk. She was impossibly tight, her body stretched and accommodating, a hot, clutching velvet vise around him. The position was deep, possessive. Her pregnant belly rested on the cold surface of the news desk as she began to move, a slow, rolling grind that made the desk squeak.
“Rafa!” Ana called out, her voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Now!”
From the producer’s booth, a red light flickered on. Rafa stood behind a camera still mounted on a tripod, its lens focused on the desk. The hum of power, real power, joined the static. He wasn’t just watching; one hand was on the camera’s focus ring, the other was down his pants, stroking himself in time with Ana’s thrusts.
“We’re live in three…” Zahra said from the engineering panel, her voice all business despite the scene in front of her. “…two… one.”
A tiny green ‘ON AIR’ light glowed on the camera. Ana turned her head, looking directly into the lens, her face a mask of sweaty, defiant pleasure.
“You out there,” she panted, her voice amplified, echoing slightly in the dead space. “You listening to static. You eating cold beans in the dark.” She pushed back hard onto Paxton, a gasp breaking her sentence. “This… is the news now. This is the only bulletin that matters.”
Wren moved. She climbed onto the anchor desk in front of Ana, on her hands and knees, putting her own face inches from the lens, a mirror to Ana’s. Then she turned, lying back, her head hanging off the front of the desk, her wild hair brushing the floor. From this angle, the camera could see it all: Wren’s flushed face, her heaving breasts, and below, the junction where Ana’s body sheathed Paxton’s cock.
“He’s inside her,” Wren narrated, her doctor’s tone corrupted by lust. “Can you see? He’s so deep. She’s so full. This is how we make the future. Not in labs. In cunts.”
She reached down, her fingers spreading Ana’s slick folds wider, exposing where Paxton’s shaft pistoned in and out, gleaming under the studio lights. The obscene, wet sounds of their fucking filled the broadcast.
“That’s it, baby,” Ana grunted, slamming back onto Paxton with renewed force. “Give it to me. Give me everything. Let them see you fill me up.”
Paxton’s hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. The surrealism of it—the dead monitors, the live camera light, the women using his body as a testament—unlocked something feral. He fucked her harder, driving upward, his balls slapping against her. The desk rattled.
“Yes!” Ana screamed, the sound raw and unfiltered in the microphone. “Just like that! Oh god, I can feel you… I can feel you in my guts…”
Wren shifted. She brought her mouth down, not on Ana’s clit, but lower, her tongue lashing at the stretched, shining place where Paxton’s cock buried itself into Ana’s body. She licked the mixture of their juices, then focused on the tight, clutching rim of Ana’s asshole, pressing her tongue against it.
The dual sensation tipped Ana over the edge. Her back arched violently, a scream tearing from her throat that was pure, undiluted triumph. Her cunt clamped down on Paxton in rhythmic, vicious pulses, milking him, demanding his seed.
He couldn’t hold back. With a roar that echoed Ana’s, he came, his release surging deep into her, a hot, endless flood that seemed to pull his soul out through his cock. He shook, his vision graying at the edges, his thrusts becoming jerky, uncontrollable spasms.
Wren pulled her mouth away, her chin glistening. She looked into the camera, breathing hard. “That’s it,” she said, her voice trembling. “That’s the seed. That’s the next generation. Your turn.”
The red light stayed on for another thirty seconds, capturing their collapsed, panting forms on the desk, the intimate, spent truth of it. Then Zahra’s voice, soft: “And we’re clear.”
The green light died. The only sound was their ragged breathing.
Rafa emerged from the booth, his pants still open, his face pale with awe. “It went out,” he said. “The signal was clean. It’s… it’s in the air.”
Ana slowly pushed herself up, Paxton’s softening cock slipping wetly from her. She turned, not bothering to cover herself, and looked at the dark control boards as if she could see the waves radiating outward.
“Good,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Let them see.”
The reaction wasn’t immediate. Days passed. Life at the waterfront settled into a rhythm that was both primal and strangely domestic. The solar panels Zahra had rigged from salvaged hardware provided flickering power for lights and the essential water pumps. The gardens Miya oversaw with K’agwáay’s herbal knowledge began to show green shoots in the salt-poisoned earth.
Paxton found himself on a repaired dock, helping Marlon and Elias splice cables for a new wind turbine. Marlon’s fierce beard couldn’t hide the softness in his eyes when he spoke of Jenna. “She’s… talkin’ about it now,” he said, grunting as he pulled a cable tight. “A baby. Says the world ain’t so scary with all these people.”
“It’s different,” Elias agreed, his surfer’s hands deft with the wires. “Less lonely. You see Cora and Diana? They’re running combat drills and yoga sessions back-to-back. It’s fucking beautiful.”
It was. Paxton saw it everywhere. Rohan leading a group in sun salutations on the beach at dawn, his shredded physique moving with a grace that drew admiring touches from both men and women. Kristine, the would-be physical therapist, working with an older survivor’s atrophied legs, her touch both clinical and tender. Elara, the former finance student, had taken over inventory, her lists now about well-being, not profit: ’Mood enhancers: laughter, touch, orgasm. In good supply.’
It was Jenna who saw it first. She was on watch rotation at the highest remaining structure—a parking garage with a view of the highways snaking inland. She came running down the switchback ramps, her breath short.
“Cars!” she yelled, skidding to a halt where Ana, Wren, Rafa, and Paxton were reviewing a hand-drawn map. “On I-5. A convoy. Four, five vehicles. Moving slow.”
The ease of the last few days evaporated. Rifles were grabbed from makeshift racks. The community didn’t panic, but it coalesced, a silent, ready organism.
They watched from the barricade as the vehicles—a battered school bus, two SUVs with plywood armor, and a motorcycle—crawled to a stop a hundred yards out. The doors of the bus opened.
Not soldiers. Women. Dozens of them. And men. A handful, pale and thin, led out on ropes.
A single figure detached from the group and walked forward, hands raised. A woman, her hair shorn short, her frame wiry and tough. She stopped within shouting distance.
“We saw your broadcast!” she called, her voice scratchy but clear. “The fuckin’ news broadcast!”
Ana stepped up onto the barricade, unarmed, naked to the waist, her pregnancy a blatant challenge. “And?”
The woman gestured back to the bus. “We’re from the ‘Cedar Point Enclave’
” The woman gestured back to the bus. “We’re from the ‘Cedar Point Enclave’. A nursery up north. We’ve got fruit trees, seedlings, goats.” Her voice cracked. “And we’ve got dying men. We saw what you did. How you live. We’re not here to fight. We’re here to… to join. Please.”
Ana lowered her hands slowly. “Who are you?”
“Nora De Jong.” The woman’s tough facade finally splintered, her eyes glistening. “We’re thirty-seven women. Eight men. Two of the men are… they’re on ropes because they’re scared. They think we’ll eat them or something. One of them, Thaddeus Aboona, he’s got a leg wound. It’s bad. Green and stinking. He used to work satellites for the weather service. He kept saying if we could find a working station, he could bounce a signal off the damn moon.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “He’s burning up. He needs a real doctor. We all do. We’re just… so tired of being afraid.”
Wren was already moving, grabbing her medical kit from where it sat perpetually ready. “Bring him. Now. The rest of you, come through slowly. Keep your hands visible. Rafa, get the fire going for clean water. Zahra, I need your sterilized tools.”
The barricade was pulled aside. The procession that entered was a stark contrast to the vibrant, naked arrival of the islanders. These people were wrapped in layers of patched wool and denim, their faces pinched with cold and suspicion. The men on the ropes shuffled, their eyes wide with terror at the sight of the confident, mostly unclothed community.
Thaddeus was carried on a makeshift stretcher. He was shivering violently, his skin the color of ash. Wren knelt, cutting away the filthy pant leg. The wound on his calf was a horror—a deep gash, swollen and weeping yellow-green pus, the skin around it an angry, mottled purple. The smell hit them, a sweet, rotten odor that made nostrils flare.
“Necrotizing fasciitis,” Wren hissed. “Ana, I need the broad-spectrum antibiotics from the cold storage. Now. Paxton, hold his shoulders. This is going to hurt.”
She didn’t wait. She poured distilled vodka over the wound, the clear liquid foaming angrily in the infected tissue. Thaddeus screamed, a raw, animal sound, his body arching against Paxton’s hold. Wren’s hands were steady as she took a scalpel from Zahra’s sterilized tray.
“I have to debride it,” she said to no one, to everyone. “Cut out the dead flesh.” She pressed the blade into the swollen, discolored edge.
Thaddeus’s scream turned into a choked gurgle. Nora watched, her hand clamped over her mouth, her own toughness utterly dissolved. Wren worked with brutal, precise efficiency, slicing away strips of blackened, putrid tissue. Blood, now clean and red, began to flow. She packed the cavity with honey from their stores and a poultice of crushed garlic and yarrow from K’agwáay’s supplies, then wrapped it tightly.
Ana returned with a small, precious vial. Wren injected the antibiotic directly into his thigh. “It’s a fifty-fifty chance,” she said, wiping her bloody hands on a rag. “The infection’s in his blood. He needs rest, fluids, and more of this every twelve hours. We have very little.”
Nora sank to her knees beside the stretcher. “Thank you,” she whispered, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. “You have no idea… the things we’ve seen. Groups that hoard men like gold, or… or kill them out of spite. We heard your broadcast. We heard her.” She looked at Ana, awe in her eyes. “Talking while… it was the most sane thing I’d heard in years.”
That night, the Cedar Point group was fed. They ate in silence at first, then with growing desperation, shoveling the spiced fish stew into their mouths. They watched, bewildered, as Rohan led a group through evening stretches, as a woman from Fiji laughed and casually cupped the balls of the man she was kissing. The eight Cedar Point men, now untied but clustering together, stared like prisoners witnessing a strange new religion.
Paxton found Wren by the water’s edge, scrubbing her hands raw with coarse sand. The moon painted a silver path on the dark water. “You saved him,” Paxton said.
“Maybe,” she replied, her voice flat with exhaustion. “If the drugs work. If the sepsis hasn’t already won.” She looked at him, her eyes haunted. “We used our last vial of Cipro, Paxton. The next serious infection, we’re back to leeches and prayers.”
He pulled her to him. She resisted for a second, then collapsed against his chest, her body trembling. It wasn’t passion; it was a need for anchor. He held her, smelling the antiseptic and sickness on her skin.
“Nora says Thaddeus knows satellites,” he murmured into her hair. “He could boost the broadcast. Reach thousands. Not just fifty miles.”
Wren pulled back, her fierce determination returning. “Then we keep him alive. We need that signal. We need to pull every surviving group out of the dark ages before they all die of infected scratches or turn into fucking warlords.” Her hand slipped down, palming him through his pants, a gesture that was more claim than seduction. “We need to show them everything. Not just the fucking. The healing, too.”
Later, in the loft space above the packing floor, the community’s energy turned inwards, seeking comfort and connection. The Cedar Point women watched, huddled together, as bodies intertwined. Jenna led Marlon to a clear space, slowly undressing him, then herself. They made love with a tender, reverent slowness that was a different kind of raw, their foreheads touching, their whispers lost in the general murmur.
It was a catalyst.
One of the Cedar Point men, a lean guy in his twenties with haunted eyes, broke from his group. He walked straight to Elara, who was oiling her skin by a heater. “Is it true?” he asked, his voice trembling. “You just… ask?”
Elara smiled, taking his hand and placing it on her bare breast. His breath hitched. “You ask,” she said gently, guiding his fingers. “Or you just understand. Do you want this?”
He nodded, a sob catching in his throat. He’d been a teacher, he mumbled as she led him away. He missed human connection so much it felt like a bone broken inside him.
Paxton and Wren were in their corner, a nest of blankets and furs. Wren pushed Paxton onto his back, her exhaustion replaced by a deep, urgent hunger. She stripped, her body a pale arc in the dim light, then straddled his face, lowering her dripping cunt onto his mouth. “Clean me,” she commanded, her voice dark. “Get the smell of death off me.”
He obeyed, his tongue spearing into her, licking the tangy, musky flavor of her arousal, trying to erase the memory of gangrene. She ground against his mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair, riding his face with a desperate, sobbing intensity. “Yes, fuck, just like that,” she moaned. “Make me feel alive. Make me forget his leg.”
When she came, it was with a silent, shuddering convulsion, her juices flooding his mouth. She slid down his body, impaling herself on his cock in one savage stroke. She fucked him with a frantic, driving rhythm, her nails raking his chest. “This is the antidote,” she panted, sweat flying from her brow. “This is the only thing that fucking works.”
He gripped her hips, meeting her thrust for thrust, the raw physicality of it a bulwark against the day’s decay. They came together, a fierce, silent explosion, clinging to each other as if the world outside the blankets was a cold sea threatening to swallow them.
In the quiet aftermath, Nora approached their nest. She had shed her outer layers, standing in a simple tank top and shorts, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked at their tangled, sweaty bodies, not with judgment, but with a profound, weary longing.
“Thaddeus is cooler,” she said. “The fever broke. He’s sleeping.” She paused. “He was mumbling about geosynchronous orbits. About a satellite called GOES-18 that might still have power.” She looked at Paxton, then at Wren. “He says if we can get to the right dish, he can make your message echo across the whole fucking continent.”
Nora’s words hung in the loft’s close air, a promise that felt both impossibly vast and terrifyingly fragile. Wren extracted herself from Paxton’s arms, the sweat on her skin cooling. “Then we keep him alive,” she said again, this time the statement a covenant. The next seven days were a grinding testament to that vow. Wren changed Thaddeus’s poultice every six hours, the wound gradually fading from necrotic black to an angry, but clean, red. She rationed their last precious antibiotics, watching as the fever’s grip loosened and his eyes cleared from glassy terror to sharp, intelligent awareness.
When he could sit, they carried him to the station. His hands, shaking with weakness, traced the outlines of the gutted uplink consoles. He spoke in a raspy whisper of low-earth orbit and signal buffers. Zahra bent beside him, her schematics making sudden, profound sense under his explanations. “The power isn’t the problem,” he murmured, tapping a specific component. “The problem is the handshake. The satellite thinks it’s talking to Goddard. We have to make it think we’re Goddard.”
It took three more days of scavenging silicon boards and soldering components under Zahra’s direction. Thaddeus’s strength returned slowly, fed by broths and the quiet, steadfast care of Nora, who rarely left his side. The first time he stood on his own, leaning heavily on her, a silent cheer went through the tech-heavy corner of the station. Finally, under a ceiling of flickering fluorescent lights, Thaddeus powered up the patched-together array. A screech of static erupted, then dissolved into a clean, piercing digital tone. Lines of green data cascaded down a salvaged monitor.
“Holy shit,” Zahra breathed.
Thaddeus’s fingers flew over a keyboard, commands blinking into the void. A topographic map of the continent resolved on the screen. And across it, like pulsing stars waking from sleep, were dozens of tiny, steady green lights. “GOES-18. GOES-17. Hell, some commercial comsats too,” he said, his voice choked. “They’re in standby. Solar arrays still feeding them. They’re… waiting.” He looked up, his eyes wide with a hope so fierce it looked like pain. “We can talk to everyone. The whole fucking world.”
The silence in the control room was absolute, broken only by the hum of the machines. Then Ana laughed, a rich, full-throated sound that echoed off the dead monitors. “Then we get to work.” There was no discussion. The next broadcast wouldn’t be from a desk. It would be a manifesto in motion. They would show their life, their truth, in the bones of the dead city.
Three weeks later, Ana stood at the edge of the compound, a portable camera unit powered by a humming battery pack at her feet. Rafa adjusted the lens, his focus tight on her face. She was enormous now, her belly a proud, taut sphere under a simple draped linen. The morning sun caught the sheen of sweat on her skin. Wren watched from a few feet away, her medical bag slung across her body, a constant, quiet sentinel.
“We’re live in thirty seconds,” Rafa said, his finger hovering over the switch that would send their signal hurtling into the satellites and down across a shattered hemisphere. “You remember the route?”
“I remember,” Ana said, her voice calm. She placed a hand low on her belly, a private gesture. “Alright, you beautiful bastards out there in the dark. Let’s go for a walk.”
The red light glowed. Ana smiled directly into the lens, a real, tired, powerful smile. “My name is Ana Garcia. This is Seattle. Or what’s left of it.” She turned and began walking, the camera following her as she moved past the thriving garden plots where Miya and K’agwáay waved. “We grow food here. We share it.” She walked past the repair bay where Marlon and Elias, both shirtless, were teaching a group of Cedar Point survivors how to rebuild a carburetor, their hands guiding others with patient touches. “We rebuild.”
She led the camera down a cleared street, skeletal buildings looming on either side. “We don’t hide. We live.” As if on cue, they passed an open warehouse door. Inside, in a pool of sunlight, the teacher from Cedar Point was on his back, Elara astride him. She rode him with a slow, undulating rhythm, her head thrown back. A few feet away, Rohan was bent over a massage table, Kristine working the knots from his shoulders while another woman traced the lines of his spine with her tongue. The sounds were soft, genuine. Ana didn’t flinch; she angled the camera for a brief, unflinching look. “We touch. We feel. We connect. This is how we fight the silence.”
She walked on, her breath becoming slightly heavier as they climbed a gentle slope. The camera panned to show the vibrant, messy, living encampment below, the solar panels glittering, the smoke from cookfires weaving into the sky. “We have doctors,” she said, glancing at Wren. “We have engineers. We have farmers and artists and children growing.” She stopped, bracing a hand against a rusted lamppost, catching her breath. The lens moved in close on her face, on the droplets of sweat at her temples. “The old world is dead. Its fears are dead. This isn’t anarchy. This is… a different agreement.”
She pushed off the lamppost, continuing down a side street littered with the dusty fossils of cars. “The agreement is simple. You contribute. You care. You get to belong. You get to…” She let out a sharp, surprised gasp. The camera wobbled as Rafa stepped closer.
Ana had frozen mid-stride. A strange, arrested look on her face. Then, a warm, sudden gush soaked the inside of her thighs, the clear fluid drenching the linen and dripping onto the asphalt with a soft patter. The sound was shockingly intimate through the sensitive microphone.
“Oh,” Ana said, the syllable soft, utterly unlike her broadcast voice. She looked down at the pooling liquid, then up at the lens, her fierce eyes wide with a sudden, profound vulnerability. “Well. That’s happening.”
Wren was at her side in an instant, her professional demeanor snapping into place. She crouched, checking the fluid, then looked up at Ana’s face. “Contractions?”
“Not yet,” Ana breathed, but even as she said it, her body stiffened. Her hand clamped onto Wren’s shoulder, knuckles white. A low groan escaped her clenched teeth. The camera caught it all: the raw strain on her face, the protective, steadying grip of Wren’s hand on her arm.
“Okay,” Wren said, her voice calm and clear, meant for Ana and the thousands possibly watching. “First one. We’re close. Rafa, we need to get her back. Now.”
Ana shook her head, panting as the contraction ebbed. “No,” she gritted out. “We keep going. We show them this, too.” Another look, wild and defiant, at the camera. “You see? Even this. We do this together. In the open.”
She took a wobbling step. Another. The camera followed, a relentless, witnessing eye. They were six blocks from the compound’s medical tent. The next contraction hit her two minutes later, bending her double against the hood of a car, a raw, guttural sound tearing from her throat that was nothing like the cries of pleasure they’d broadcast before. This was deeper, a seismic tear from the core.
Wren supported her weight, eyes scanning the street. “Paxton!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the empty building facades. “We need a cart, a stretcher, anything!”
But Ana was moving again, driven by a feral, stubborn energy. “Walk it off,” she muttered to herself, a mantra. “Walk the baby down.” She marched forward, a goddess in extremis, each step a victory and a torment. The broadcast was now entirely this: the brutal, beautiful struggle of creation on a broken street. Her breaths came in ragged sobs between the waves of pain. Wren timed them, her voice a steady counterpoint. “Thirty seconds. Good. Breathe through it. You’re doing perfectly.”
They turned a corner, the compound gate in sight two hundred yards away. A small crowd had gathered, drawn by the commotion. Nora stood at the front, her hand clamped over her mouth. Ana saw them, and something in her face shifted, the defiance melting into a desperate need for sanctuary.
The next contraction didn’t wait. It slammed into her with the force of a truck, dropping her to her knees on the cracked pavement. She screamed, a long, uninterrupted sound of pure, unmediated effort. “I can’t—!” she cried.
Wren was on the ground with her, hands on Ana’s belly, feeling the rock-hard tighten. “You are. You are. It’s coming, Ana. The head is right there. I can feel it.” She looked up, her gaze finding Rafa and the camera. Her next words were a command to him, and to the invisible world watching. “We need blankets. Clean water. Now!”
The world telescoped down to a square of pavement, a kneeling, roaring woman, and the doctor between her legs as the fabric of the linen was pulled aside. The camera didn’t look away. It couldn’t. This was the raw, bloody, miraculous heart of the message. Ana bore down, her scream shredding the air, and a glimpse of something dark and wet crowned between her thighs.
Wren’s hands were there, ready, her voice fierce with encouragement. “With the next one, Ana. Push your baby into the world. Push!”