Chapter 7: Seven Little Girls...

“Do you like K pop?” Jennie shyly asked. “I have a lot on my phone and a CD of my favorite, TWICE’s Page Two. Can we play it?” She was riding in the Whale, again being driven by Scarlett, and receiving a nod, she passed the disc forward to Honey. Fully fueled, fridge loaded with produce from the university’s green house, the Whale departed with Jennie happily teaching her new family to sing in Korean.

It only took a few days, but soon the Whale became ‘home’, the Sienna morphed into ‘the Minnow’, and the drones became ‘Gnats’. Places with electrical power were rare, so hot showers, air-conditioned sleep, decent cooking, and other such routine expectations of civilized life traveled with them. Emptying the gray water holding tank had never been a big deal, and as the journey grew longer, even dumping the sewage lessened to ‘minor onerous’ instead of ‘hugely odious’.

There was a ‘but.’ Seven women living in the Whale stressed capacity. Sleeping in the King was fine - they were short enough to turn sideways. They loved cuddling and the original six were already accustomed to each other’s foibles. Alternating showers were another matter. When possible, showers were stretched to every other or even every third day. Whenever possible, external toilets had priority.

Days after leaving Chatham, while passing a large high school, Jennie wondered aloud, “I wonder if the school used gas or electricity for heat?”

A half block away, Rose yelled, “Stop! Go back.” As they made U-turns, she explained, “If the school used gas, and there is still water pressure, I can rig the portable generator and get the boilers going. Then we’ll have long, hot, gang showers - almost anytime we find a school using gas.”

They wandered generally northerly and east, avoiding the Interstate system, huge cities, and their immediate suburbs. Both vehicles played all types of music, introducing hitherto unknown genres, including Traveler’s favorites. Audio books were another source of entertainment. History, fiction - especially fiction - science, whatever struck a fancy. There was plenty of time. Heinlein, Bujold, Cherryh, and Moon became family favorites.

In the evenings, Scrabble, Monopoly, chess, Yahtzee, poker, and Boggle supplemented reading and movies. They adopted a rule that one hour of each evening had to involve social interaction, and one hour a day had to be used to learn something new. Boredom was seldom part of their days.

Several times they needed detours around long freight trains blocking intersections, and once they passed a crashed airliner. Jennie speculated, “It must have run out of fuel, because there’s little evidence of fire.” Burned down houses were not common, but when they encountered one in a town, one or more blocks were usually blackened ruin.

Thinking them likely to be optimum resources, they tried to stop at colleges and universities - just in case ... They found typically depressing scenes and nothing encouraging. They saw little unique in human interactions. Scenarios were repeated over and over - dead babies in their cribs or in mothers’ arms, lovers dead in the act of sex or curled together asleep.

It was rare but not unusual to find a clear suicide - a presumed father beside his dead family, a young man standing in the yard of a middleclass home, a woman sitting in a park. Hatred for the evil perpetrators grew until one night ending a dreadful day, Scarlett told them, “We can’t be consumed by this. We didn’t cause it, and we can’t undo it, but if we can, we will avenge. I swear we will have justice and vengeance!”

She wiped away tears and stood. Then she went to each of her family, including Mouse and the dogs. Hugging them one by one, she stated, “For now, we need to shake this depression and concentrate on our family.” When she reached Jin Ae, she told her, “We should call you ‘Hope’. Finding you that first day really did give us all hope. For better or worse, we all love each other, and we’ll have friends to return to when this search is over.”

There was lots of comforting that evening, some sex, but mostly cuddling and kissing. Independently, the young women sought out another that wasn’t their usual sleeping partner. Reinforcing commitment to the family as a whole was that night’s priority.

As usual, Loki and Boner remained kenneled for the night. If left free, no matter how innocent they might start, before morning they would have morphed into obnoxious bed hogs. Again, as usual, Mouse claimed his rightful position curled around Jennie’s head - apparently no longer caring that Beryl was spooned to the young woman’s back.

As the journey continued, each family member fell into a role that was comfortable for her, and the family began to see Jin Ae as their chief knowledge base. Hardly a subject arose on which the polymath wasn’t able to contribute meaningfully. At first slowly and shyly, then as she realized these really smart people weren’t at all defensive, she felt welcome and shared more.

Scarlett continued as the team leader; Sugar continued as her voice; and Jennie was their go-to resource, if not for an actual solution, then for a pointer towards one. At night, Scarlett and Sugar welded her into a sexual triangle that left them all sated and frequently exhausted. The dreams of the ‘others’ came more frequently, and sometimes, they were left with impressions that they were in the dreams of these mysterious others as well.

One morning, after weeks on the road, they were poking along on US 30 enroute to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There, they planned to break their pattern of avoiding huge cities and head directly for the nation’s capital. Scarlett looked around at Jennie and told her, “You’ve been unusually quiet since breakfast. You haven’t even put on music. Are you okay?”

“I’ve got an itch that I can’t scratch,” Jennie told her.

Scarlett laughed and responded, “Don’t we all - don’t we all.”

“No really,” Jennie countered, “I had another of ‘those’ dreams, and I can’t figure out what it was or what it meant.”

“So spill it,” Sugar turned around and told her. “Three more heads are better than one, even if the one belongs to a super genius polymath.”

“Sooo, it was another of those dreams,” Jennie began again, “only it wasn’t. Wasn’t sexy, either - at least not to me.”

“There was this redheaded girl, maybe my age, maybe younger - hard to tell ‘cuz I never saw her face or whole body clearly. She was sitting on the side of a bed with a hand-mirror, and she was using it to look at her pussy,” Jennie giggled and continued. “It looked like she was counting her pubic hairs, and she was pulling and twisting her lips like she was trying to find more. She had five. Five curly red hairs...”

She thought for a minute, then continued, “I have more than that, so maybe that means I’m older.”

“What’s with this fascination with pubic hair?” Sugar giggled. “I’ve counted yours with my tongue. You have thirteen, and they’re black and straight. Fine like silk, they are. And, I like the sauce that comes with!”

“Yeah, you count really well. I’ll open my legs for you just about any time, but that’s not really what’s causing my itch,” Jennie told her. “If it was, I’d have you sniffing my panties right now. Nope, there’s something else.”

They were quiet for several moments, then Jennie asked, “So, Scarlett. Do you know anything about school mascots?”

“Well, I sorta remember some of the Big 12, but since Mizzou joined, mostly I know the Southeastern Conference. Why?”

“Well, there was a stuffed animal, looked like a bulldog, wearing a red ball cap, and a sweater, or something like a sweater,” Jennie told her.

“Dammit,” Scarlett yelled, “there’s lots of bulldog mascots. The SEC even has two, and both Georgia and Mississippi State have red or maroon as one of their colors.”

“I think the color was more red than maroon,” Jennie said, “and there was a squashed G in a squashed circle.” Clearly, sports logos were one of the few things not in her knowledge base.

“Oh hell,” Scarlett slowed the Whale to a stop and turned to stare at Jin Ae. “Where were you born, girlfriend?”

“Right where you found me,” Jennie answered. “Actually, in Springfield. Why?”

“How about your mom?” Scarlett continued.

“Halmoni was in school at the University of Georgia in Athens,” Jennie replied. “So in a hospital there.”

“So close, we were so close but missed the key question,” Scarlett told them. “We connected hair and eye color, and birthdays, but with your being second generation, we missed the connection of birthplace. We’ve been heading north when we should be driving south.” She paused; then she muttered, “But red hair?”

They continued on to Fort Wayne, and once there, they made perfunctory visits to two of the larger University’s campuses - campii? Finding nothing new or encouraging, they abandoned the idea of visiting the Nation’s Capital and headed south towards Cincinnati to cross the Ohio River. There, they again made token visits to two of the larger schools, but there were too many stalled cars and vans to work around, so they moved back out of town, again to secondary roads.

The Whale continued to be a blessing. Electricity was now a rarely encountered luxury, and warm showers in larger facilities non-existent, at least without extensive hassle, and often futile, searches. Leaving the city limits, they found a bridge over the Ohio and crossed. They entered an unlocked, anonymous motel, used the toilets, and let the dogs run. Even Mouse had a leisurely stroll to take care of business and returned with them to the Whale for sleep. Before dawn, they had breakfasted and were on the road again.