Chapter 19

Interlude: At another Mall, that same evening.

For such a large and fearsome looking man, Mandy thought, the guy could be surprisingly gentle at times, and she allowed him to lift her leg without protest. She was lying on her side in his enormous bed, her eyes closed, her unaroused vulva completely exposed. She imagined his eyes inspecting her and she shuddered a bit, and then worked to keep herself under control.

It was the same as last night. He started playing with her with the back of his hand, brushing lightly against her closed labia and petting her pubic fur. His fingers began to play around with her clitoris, nothing painful, modest pushes and probes, quick nipping pinches. Mandy thought the guy might actually be trying to get her aroused.

And then the hand moved away for a moment. Mandy heard the click of a container being opened. And then the hand returned, firmly pushing the folds of her labia open and aside. Mandy sucked in a deep breath as the cold KY jelly was stroked into her slit, and then gasped again as another generous dollop was smeared across her anus. “It’s just like last night,” she thought firmly. “The lube on my butthole is just a tease. He doesn’t mean it.”

The man was curling up behind her now, kissing the back of her neck, stroking her breasts, fitting his body to hers. A thick and eager cock began sliding between the top insides of her thighs, picking up the slick moisture of the jelly from her labia. Mandy took several deep breaths and tried to relax.

The man stroked his cock between her legs with increasing tempo, petting and pinching and pulling on her breasts until the nipples hardened. The man pulled back to give his cock a new upward angle and then returned to thrusting, this time letting his member ride and slide between Mandy’s butt cheeks. The extra generous amount of lube at her anus soon turned her crack into a slick channel.

And then the man turned again, a third angle for his cock, this time straight towards Mandy, so that when he pumped again his penis head pushed between the soft ass cheeks and nailed her at her sphincter. Mandy gulped at the pressure on her anus and she lifted her leg immediately, signaling and pleading with her body for vaginal penetration instead. The man complied without hesitation. The pressure on her butt disappeared and the cock returned to sliding along her labia.

But the sliding was different now. Mandy could feel the man’s eagerness for her. His desire was almost desperate in its intensity. She kept her leg raised high, and heard the man gasp in pleasure at the feel of his cockhead cupping into the vaginal entrance. He was more gentle than last night, lots of little humps and pullbacks, allowing the ample lubrication to work itself up into her vagina along with his cock.

Mandy’s mind drifted as the man fucked her. The thrusting was energetic but not deep or sadistically fast, and Mandy knew from the length of the cock and the power of the man’s hips, he could make it be both if he desired. More petting on her breasts, her stomach, and then the hand pressed down on her pubis as the cock slid in and butted against her cervix. And Mandy could feel the hot breaths and hear the grunts of the man’s arousal. He had a firm grip on her pubis and with his hand he could feel himself sliding into her pelvic cavity on each thrust of his hips.

He withdrew and pushed Mandy onto her back, kneeling between her thighs and lifting her legs at the back of her knees. The man recoupled and then lay on her, surprisingly light. Mandy was startled to realize he was again allowing her to breathe easily by supporting his upper weight with his elbows.

Her pelvis was the receptacle of a long series of eager shoves. And there were kisses, lots of kisses and small licks on her face, her cheeks, her lips, her nose. The licks on her nose were disconcerting, so when the lips returned to brush against hers, Mandy tried to give a few kisses back. The man cheerfully accepted everything she gave, and Mandy noticed he was giving her small breaks in the fucking to adjust her position and try to get more comfortable.

And then his hot eagerness for her returned. The penis lengthened within her vagina and the man pumped fast for a short time and then reduced his tempo, slow rocking thrusts against her cervix, with the penis remaining fully sheathed, an eager, squirming, slippery animal inside her, pulsing and quivering. Mandy knew his cock was seconds from exploding with his load.

“Oh, please, please,” Mandy thought silently, and then she whispered. “Please, cum outside me, like before ... Please?”

“Lock me?” the man whispered.

Mandy nodded, hiding her surprise that he made it sound so much like a question. Last night it was more like a command. But she knew what he liked. She crossed her legs behind his muscular butt and pushed down with her heels, pushing and holding the man to her. Her arms came up and gripped him across his back, holding him down and pressing him against her breasts.

The man grunted his approval and returned to more slow rocking. Mandy held still during the strokes, and then felt the penis lengthen and thin even more. He started to groan and slide down the chute of his orgasm. Mandy grimaced at the thought of the splashes she thought were coming inside her. The man was so high and tight, his semen would be smeared all over her cervix. But then there was a sharp pull breaking the lock of her legs and a grunting man unloading on her belly. The first spurt was so energetic, it shot between their two sweaty bodies and splashed against the underside of her breast.

Mandy lay there motionless. The man had bothered to bring some damp washcloths into the room earlier, and now he cleaned her as she lay, cool damp cloth cleaning her belly and breasts, and then another clean cloth washing her pubis. Such a strange experience, Mandy thought.

The man curled up and petted her for a while, nothing awful, simple gentle strokes of her head and shoulders, an occasional pat of her hip. Still, Mandy would have preferred not to have the contact. She turned and tried to distract him from touching her. “Want a backrub?”

“Oh wow, really? Sure!”

He stretched out flat. Mandy sat and massaged his impressive muscles in the quiet bedroom, and the man started to drift in the pleasure she was giving him. “Butt too?” he asked dreamily, and he wriggled his rear end in anticipation.

“Okay.” Mandy’s hands descended and massaged and petted his ass. The man sighed deeply again and again, eventually stretching out and parting his legs. He seemed half asleep, and on a whim of curiosity at what would happen, Mandy let her hands drop and cup his sac. She let her fingers penetrate a bit, separating the two testes and letting them fall to either side of her stiff supporting fingers. She stared at the vulnerable orbs, thinking how their loads of semen had pooled in her navel and not her cervix.

The man jerked awake and moved with lightning speed away from Mandy to the far side of the bed, staring at her.

Mandy blurted out, “I was just ... I don’t know, just playing I guess, curious. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I really wasn’t.”

He surprised her greatly by blushing a deep red and almost apologizing for not trusting her. It was so strange. They wound up curling and cuddling again, just two sleepy and tired people. Mandy had no worry that he wanted more sex. She started to fall asleep.

Lazy circles of petting on her body, his hands asking nothing, just petting her, starting and stopping as the time passed. They finally came to rest holding her waist. Mandy was almost asleep when she felt the man shake and sit up behind her. “What the hell am I doing?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ve got to put you back in the barn.” And then Mandy blinked as he added, “Sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Mandy answered, in her sleepiness indulging in a rare moment of complete honesty. “That’s where I want to be.”

Time: The next morning, Tuesday, January 8, 2019 10:00 AM

Their first surface expedition consisted of Fatima, Mark, Madison, and of course Emily who would provide vital control for unlocking doors. The other four members of the group would stay at home and act as a reserve if a rescue attempt were needed.

Fatima paced back and forth in the glass vertex just south of the Red Mall lounge. She was very eager to get going.

“Nervous?” asked Madison.

“Anxious,” replied Fatima. “So many of my friends walked through this door eighteen days ago.” She paused for a moment. “Mark, is this light enough to get started?”

Mark studied the southeastern sky. The sun was taking remarkably low tracks across the sky this past week. It was like a thief, hugging the horizon and eager to disappear again. In other week the sun’s appearance would be so brief, expeditions would be impossible.

But the shallow angle of the sun with the horizon did have the benefit of extended twilight periods. Visibility was decent now. “Yeah, I think so,” he said replying to Fatima’s question. “Emily, take us out of here.”

Their understanding of the topside environment was incredibly limited. They knew that the six corridors of their home hexagon had courtesy lights on both floors, while the next line segments did not. They knew the hexagon directly to their east appeared to contain an apple orchard, while the hexagon due west was a grove of pecan trees. For no reason Emily could verbalize, she chose the east northeast path, with the plan of working her way south as soon as they cleared the soccer area. South was the logical direction for the original group to take as they tried to get back to their cars.

After traveling just two line segments, they came to an interesting decision. They were at a three way junction, with the option of heading due south or cutting back to the east northeast again. Emily would have automatically taken the southern route, but there were also stairs leading down to the first level. “What do you think Mark? It’s approaching three o’clock on December 21^st. You’re trying to get to your car and you think maybe it’ll take you a half hour to get here. Do you go downstairs or stay on this level?”

Mark pondered for a moment. “They had no knowledge of how bizarre this place is. They were still thinking in terms of buildings, not mazes. Maybe we should head down.”

Emily nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking too. Their assumption would be they might have more choices for direction on the ground floor. They’d have the option of leaving the buildings. Let’s head down.”

The door at the ground level exiting the stairwell turned out to be a one-way door. It could only be opened from inside the well. This early in their journey to their cars, Mark thought the original group received their first evidence they would not be able to return to the lounge. Would they have cared, he wondered. Probably not. At this time, they would have no inkling that they would ever want to come back.

Emily tested her command authority by going through the one-way door and then returning without the assistance of the group still in the stairwell. A moment later they left the hexagonal path system and entered the southern end of the apple orchard. Madison walked up and inspected a few of the trees. The trees had already shed their leaves and were neatly bedded down with a layer of rich mulch with a sprinkling of hay for their winter slumber. “They seem extremely healthy,” commented Madison. “Look how many buds they have.”

“I was trained in how the trees are maintained,” said Emily. “Do you see all the hatches around the perimeter? They’re for the servo mechanisms that maintain the orchard. Not for harvesting. We’ll have to do the picking if we want the apples. But the orchard will be well tended. We won’t have to care for it, not unless I order the servos to shut down.”

“Do you think they’ll do well here?” asked Fatima. “To suddenly switch to a 168-day cycle when its genes are geared for a 365-day cycle, that must cause a tremendous amount of stress in the plant.”

“And yet,” said Mark. “I agree with Maddy. These trees appear to be in great shape. Surely if they couldn’t handle the new cycle, they wouldn’t look like this.”

Madison nodded while she stared long and hard at the trees. “Everybody, are you seeing what I’m seeing? These are mature trees, not all of them but a lot of them anyway. This orchard was years in the making.”

Fatima shook her head. “Maddy, we can’t assume that.”

“Huh? Why not? Look at the trees.”

“We don’t know the abilities of the ... of the entities who build this place and grew these trees.”

“You think they could grow trees ultra fast?”

Fatima nodded. “From what else I’ve seen, maybe. Think of our food storage cabinets. The food doesn’t seem to age. Once you assume that ability, why not assume the reverse? And...” She paused for a moment. “It’s hard to explain why exactly, but my sense of the party invitations was that they were done in great haste, perhaps even frantic haste.”

Madison frowned. “But building the malls below!” She turned to Emily. “Emily, that would take years, right?”

Emily gave a quick laugh. “Well, for mortals, sure. Somehow I agree with Fatima on this one. That’s my hope anyway. The party invitations were done in haste. Perhaps that added to the bizarre nature of how they were done.”