Chapter 8

Day 17 - Wednesday, May 4, 2005

We spent the night in the B & B again and went over to the restaurant for an early breakfast. When we left, we took off in a southwesterly direction. By noon, any worries I'd had about Cassie being able to keep up were gone. I think she could have walked Sam and me both into the ground.

The area we were hiking through in Vermont ranged from hilly to mountainous. We tried to keep to lower ground as much as possible and we still made good time. We managed to find several areas where there were groomed trails that were going in our direction and we picked up a lot of time in those areas.

We stopped for lunch in a little glade that Sam said she bet that no one had been in for a hundred years. We boiled water to re-hydrate our food, then boiled another pot for making all of us some hot chocolate. Even though it was warmer than it had been, the hot chocolate felt very good going down.

We didn't tarry long after we had eaten, but got on the road again. Not long after lunch, we started to see clouds rolling in. We watched with some trepidation all afternoon, and by around four o'clock, I told the girls we should set up camp for the night. Neither of them gave me any argument.

I gathered some wood for our camp stove while the girls set up our tent and sleeping bags. We made a hurried dinner, then just sat and watched the darkening sky.

By five, I told the girls we should get inside the tent. We shuffled inside and brought everything we had inside with us. By now, we could hear the thunder rolling off to the west of us. If I hadn't loved storms so much, it might have been frightening. Sam seemed okay with everything, but Cassie looked a little jittery, so Sam and I sat on either side of her and put our arms around her.

The rain started a little later and as always, it was a comforting thing to me to hear it hitting our tent. After a while, Sam said she thought we should get in our sleeping bags. She stripped down and climbed in, then she motioned for me to do the same. I stripped down to my shorts and got in the bag with her.

Cassie was just sitting there looking scared, so Sam said, "I think there's room for one more in here."

Cassie was naked and wiggling her way between us in a heartbeat. I could feel her body trembling, so I laid on my right side and put my left arm around her. Sam put an arm around her as well. In a few minutes, I could feel her start to calm down.

"I'm usually not afraid of storms," Cassie said. "There's something about this one that is ominous though. It just feels like something is going to happen."

"If it does happen, it'll happen to all of us at once," I said as I squeezed her.

"Nothing's going to happen, love," Sam said.

The flashes of lightning and the claps of thunder kept getting closer together as we laid there watching and listening. They were also getting louder and brighter. Strangely enough, Cassie seemed to be calming down. Her trembling had all but stopped.

Now, I was getting that ominous feeling Cassie had described. I looked over at Sam and her eyes were wide. Cassie looked at Sam and said, "Don't worry, Sam. Sometimes I get these feelings that something is going to happen. I never know what it's going to be, just that something is going to happen. This time I feel like it's not going to be something that's bad."

"Thank you, Cassie," Sam said. "You know, I'm very glad we found you or you found us."

"So am I," Cassie said. "I've only known you guys for a couple of days, but I love you both already."

"We love you too, Cassie," I said. The thunder was getting so loud we had to give up talking. I was thinking of Rip van Winkle as the lightening lighted up the sky for over a minute without a letup. The thunder was coming closer than one a second, when a particularly bright flash turned our world into high noon on Mercury. That's the last I remember.

Day 18

I awoke to the sound of birds chirping. The sun was shining, and from it's position in the sky, it appeared to be noon or later. Sam and Cassie were still sleeping beside me.

"Hey, ladies," I said. "It appears we've overslept."

Both girls groaned and I watched as their eyelids fluttered open. After they were awake, both of them smiled at me. "I see we survived the storm," Sam said as she stretched.

"Yeah, but we seem to have slept until after noon."

"That's not possible, Ed. I'll swear I didn't sleep more than three or four hours," Sam said.

"Three or four hours seems about right for me too, Ed," Cassie said.

I looked at my watch and it was totally dead. It was a digital chronometer with stopwatch and alarm built in. "My watch is dead," I said. "The charge from the lightning strikes must have zapped the battery."

"Mine's dead too," Sam said. "What about the GPS. Doesn't it have a clock built in?"

I rummaged around until I found the GPS. It's clock said it was 11:12 PM. Obviously that wasn't right. The sun was shining brightly. The GPS also told me it couldn't find a positioning satellite. Since it could normally pick up several of them, I figured it must have been zapped too.

"Well, guys, whatever the time, I think we should get up and get some breakfast," I said.

Sam and Cassie both groaned, but crawled out of the sleeping bag. "Come on, guys, shake a tail feather," I said as I pulled on my pants.

Cassie wiggled her cute butt at me and said, "I don't have any feathers on my tail, Ed."

Sam started giggling and I had to smile. I had dragged enough wood into the tent last night to make us a lunch and a hot drink. We fired up the camp stove and Sam made three packages of freeze dried gunk while I went to do my morning business.

"That sun really is on it's way down," Sam said. "Do you think it's worthwhile even breaking camp?"

"I was just thinking about that. No, I don't think we'd get that far before sundown and I'll have to admit I don't feel like I had a full night's sleep either."

We ended up lazing around the camp the rest of the day, Sam and Cassie told stories about when they were living on the streets. Each of them was trying to top the other one. I think Sam won the contest when she told about watching two guys butt fuck each other.

"That is so sick," I said. "It actually makes me nauseous to think about it."

"Why is it that two guys going at it makes us all a little queasy, but the thought of two women going at it doesn't bother us at all?" Sam asked.

"Oh, I'm just like any other man," I said. "The thought of two women going at it bothers me a lot. It makes me as horny as hell."

Sam and Cassie both giggled. "Would it turn you on if I was with another woman?" Sam asked.

"That I don't know. I guess it would depend on who it was. The thought of it is exciting, but I wonder how I'd feel afterwards. Would I feel like it was cheating? Would I be afraid you were going to abandon me for her? Maybe. I just don't know."

"What if it was a three way marriage and you were married to both of us?"

"That's another good question. In that case, I don't think I could keep from joining in."

"Is there any place where someone can be married to two people?" Cassie asked.

"There have been many societies that allowed or encouraged polygamy and polyandry. The reasons are usually because of there being more women than men or more men than women. I guess I really don't have anything against either system, as long as it works for the people involved and no one is forced into the relationship. Some of the Arab countries still practice polygamy. There's no place in the US where plural marriages are legal."

"You said where it is legal. Do you know of anyone who is doing it illegally?"

"Yes, I do. I know of two groups where there are one man and two women. One of the groups are good friends of mine. They just recently added a third wife. That looks like it's going to work out well."

"Interesting," Sam said. "This is one of the few times I miss a computer and the Internet. It'd be nice to be able to do some research on that."

"Yeah, you might find a lot if you could get past all of the porn."

We spent a very enjoyable afternoon, getting to know Cassie better. We did a little exploring around the area, but didn't go too far from the tent. When darkness fell, we were all tired and retired to our sleeping bags.

Day 19

We got up and fixed breakfast after Sam and I cuddled for a while. The sun had just come up when we awoke, and somehow that felt right. Breakfast consisted of a couple of power bars each and coffee.

"I know we can use a compass, but I've never used one," Sam said. "With the GPS, we knew where we were every minute of the day. How do we do it with a compass?"

"Well, I was a Boy Scout for a while, so I learned a few things. We were traveling southwest using the GPS, so we'll do the same with the compass. What we do is we look for something to the southwest of us that is easily seen, then we try to keep it in sight as we walk toward it. Estimating distance isn't as easy."

"Will we get a new GPS when we get to a town?" Cassie asked.

"Yes, but that may take a while. The first place we hit is Hyde Park, Vermont. It's about ten miles out, but it only has a population of a few hundred. The first place we come to that has a chance of having a GPS is Huntington, Vermont. I think it's close to thirty miles from here."