Chapter 3

I went to Laura's house with no idea of what I was getting into. When I got there I found Amy and Laura both there. I was about to leave again when Laura told me, "Sit down!" She turned to Amy and asked her to wait outside for a while while she talked to me.

"Jon, I'm going to teach you about what the difference is between sex and making love. You should have learned this from your parents. Can you tell me what sex is?"

I blushed and very softly said, "It's when a man and a woman get together and have intercourse."

"How do you define making love?"

"When you're married and having sex?"

"Sex is the entire behavior toward someone to whom you have an erotic interest but without much of an emotional involvement. Making love is where the other person's feelings are as important to you as your own and can be a subtle as a glance at the right time or a choice of positions in a pile of lovers. It's when you take the time to learn what feels good to the other person and care for their happiness in the relationship. If you learn what makes the other person happy but don't invest any effort in meeting their emotional needs then you have just learned the techniques of sex. Now Amy came to see me to ask that I find you another mate as you don't seem satisfied with her. Now if this is the case I will pick someone else, but I think that you two would get along well. I'm going to call Amy in here and leave you two alone. I want you to talk to each other about what each of you wants from a mate. If after that you both want another mate, I'll choose one." With that speech she left the house and sent Amy in.

I sat there willing myself not to run out the back door. When Amy came in I saw that she was almost as nervous as I was maybe even more so. I relaxed a little bit when I saw that. I had thought that Amy was almost a super woman, after she carried out so many ambushes on the New Life Church and the Baron. She had always looked completely in charge and ready for everything. Now she looked as nervous as I was. I patted the couch next to me and turned to her, "I've been told that you want to leave the Taggert clan. I hope I can change your mind. I know that I haven't been the best company and haven't talked to you very much and I apologize for that. I'm really shy when I meet new people, especially women. I don't have much experience with women and I hope you'll help me learn."

Amy glanced at me under her eyebrows, "I have been feeling that you didn't want me around. Every time I tried to talk to you about what I found out from the prisoners, you'd listen then nod and leave. You always looked like you were in charge of everything and didn't need or want anybody else."

I laughed after she said that, "I was too scared to say anything. I thought you were super woman. You always came back with the prisoners and looked like you were in charge."

After that we began to speak to each other about what our life was like before the dying began. I learned she was a freshman in college at Sacramento State and liked hip hop music and jazz. She liked to play video games and had been addicted to IM. She had been at her house that she shared with some other students near the school when she woke up with a splitting headache and then went back to bed instead of going to class. That is what saved her because the house was in a run down area that was being renovated. The houses and businesses around her had already been torn down to make way for a new shopping mall when the fire had burned down most of the city ahile she had been unconscious. She had met Laura soon afterward and they had gathered other people around them to create the first Clan. Laura had chosen the name Salk as a tribute to Jonas Salk the developer of the polio vaccine. She had thought that if she chose a name that no one had, it would be a sign of their commitment to the Clan if they chose to be called by the name of Salk.

I had to admit that I chose the name Taggert from a western I had recently read. I hadn't given it as much thought as Laura had. I just used the first name that came into my mind when they wanted a clan name. Amy laughed while I blushed. After that we began to talk about all sorts of things. I realized that I actually liked Amy as a person she was good people. She also was very attractive as well, when I was able to look at her without being so shy. She stood some 5 foot 6 inches tall, with blond hair and blue eyes. She was not the classical beauty because she had a bit too much muscle on her arms and didn't fit the 34-22-36 figure, but I never really liked women that skinny anyway. She had a pretty face with her best feature being her smile. She had some of the whitest straight teeth I'd ever seen in between two pairs of lush lips that almost screamed, "Kiss Me!".

I was tempted but couldn't get up enough courage to take that last step. Finally she sat back and looked at me, "What do I have to do to get a kiss from you?" I blushed and while I was blushing, she took my face and kissed me on the lips. I had been kissed before, but never by a pretty woman. I wasn't sure how to react to her kiss so she took charge of the situation. In short order we were undressed and in a bedroom. She showed me how to hold her and what touches to use. I had studied ways of making love from books and had heard the stories from other men of course, so I had some idea of what went where. For the first time I had an actual person who could tell me what it felt like when I did something. It was like nothing I had ever imagined before. By the time the morning came around I knew the difference between sex and making love. And Amy decided to give me and the Taggert clan a second chance.

When the raiding party gathered for the trip to Dunsmuir, I really looked at the people who had been given to me as mates for the first time. Mark was an Oriental male about 6 feet tall with black hair and black eyes. He had a slender build and knew a lot about cars. Sue was as black as the ace of spades and stood about 5 feet tall. She was a petite girl who weighed about 100 pounds and had a figure that you would have to call voluptuous. She was a good organizer and had put everything we needed in order before we left for Sacramento. Ken was a white male about 5 feet 8 inches with a solid build that looked as if he should have been on a football field. He was another one who knew a lot about cars and weapons as well. He had made sure that all of the weapons were serviced before we left and that we had enough ammo for any conceivable situation. Ann, short for Annette, was a Hispanic beauty who stood an amazing 5 foot 7 inches tall and had a rather stocky figure that was very curvy in all the right places. Her expertise was cooking and she had made several excellent meals from rather pedestrian supplies.

I realized that I had never really looked at any of them before. I determined that I would make the effort to learn more about each of them and how they related to me and to each other. I decided that if I was going to be a clan leader, then I was going to be the best one I could be. I called all of them together and with Amy by my side I apologized to them all for not being a better leader and mate. I asked for their forgiveness and promised to talk with them about things that would affect the clan. All of them looked relieved after we talked and appeared a lot happier when they returned to their vehicles.

After we got to Dunsmuir, I took the raiding party to the storage area where they would be staying. I was going to show the leaders of the raiding party the storage caves when Amy pulled me to the side, "They don't need to know everything about the stronghold. Let them see one cave but make sure they don't see everything. If they know exactly what you need, they will bargain for the best deal for their clan. After all that is where their primary allegiance is."

I took her advice and showed the raiding party the cave we had kept the prisoner in as well as the cattle. It had been cleaned and didn't smell too bad. I offered them bedding from the furniture store in Dunsmuir I had looted from and everyone had their own mattress at least. The raiding party was surprised that we still had power. Apparently most of the valley had lost power when the fires took out the substations. We were a lot closer to the generators and had never suffered the intense fires of the valley. I had never thought about the fact that we depended on a supply of a energy that could fail at any moment. I decided that I would have to look for an alternative to replace the electricity if it failed.

That night when everyone had gotten settled and fed, we held a council of war about the way we were going to attack the groups. We went over the intelligence we had received from the prisoners Amy had captured. Amy had counted 7 men who were on guard at all times around the Baron's keep, and at least 10 men around the New Life Church area. She put the numbers at about the same as I had gotten from the original prisoner and wasn't too impressed with the abilities of the New Life Church guards. The Baron's men were something else entirely. She thought that someone in the group had had training in the military as they had well sited guard posts and a man who went around at random times to check on the guards. She had heard the man one day when he found the guard not paying attention. He had made her ears burn from listening to the chewing out he had given the unfortunate guard.

The Reynolds war leader, Joshua, was a black man who had been a master sergeant in the Marines before the die off. He had been the only one in his company to survive and found that none of his family had lived when he awoke from the unconsciousness and fever that seemed to be a common factor among the survivors. He had joined the Reynolds clan when they formed and had been responsible for driving the Baron and the New Life Church from Sacramento. He decided that before we attacked we needed more intelligence from the Baron's area. He picked out three men and I outfitted them with radios I had taken from the Highway Patrol office. I gave them a frequency that they could contact us on and Joshua gave them a code book with dire warnings about what would happen if they lost it.