“You can’t kick me out,” she said as she waved her hands. “It is really dangerous out there. Those green feathered monsters keep trying to eat us. I won’t last an hour--”
“Then you need to stop demanding shit, start answering my questions, and then do what I tell you to do,” I interrupted her as I slid my sweat-stained T-shirt over my head. I was sure my clothes smelled awful, but I’d gotten used to living in my own sweat, so I couldn’t even tell anymore.
Bathtubs or a shower. One more thing for the too long of a list of shit we needed to build.
“Uhhh,” Kacerie’s mouth hung open, and she glanced over at Galmine to see if I was joking.
“Victor is really nice. It was his plan to build this fort. He is also a really great lover. You should let him penetrate you tonig--”
“Ahhhh that’s okay!” I interrupted Galmine and felt my cheeks turn red. “We don’t need to talk about it.” I sighed and then looked at the two women on the walls.
“Alright gang, group meeting!” I shouted. “It’s time to figure out what we are going to do next.”
Chapter 2
“First, things first,” I said after the four women had gathered around me. “How are we on food and water?”
“We need more water,” Sheela said. “Our jugs are almost empty.”
“Alright,” I said. “We can get that quickly.
“We have killed many of the orange birds,” Galmine said. “But they will spoil soon. We are also running low on berries.”
“So we don’t need to eat these raptors?” I said as I gestured the two corpses we stood beside.
“Ewww, you would eat those?” Kacerie asked with disgust.
“We do what we need to survive,” Sheela stated.
“I won’t eat it,” Kacerie said.
“You need to get with the program,” Trel growled as she tapped her legs on the ground. “If I can deal with this food, you can too.”
“Oh? Here we go again; you think you are better than me. Sorry spider-girl, just because you are some sort of princess or--”
“Duchess,” Trel corrected as she raised a clawed finger, “and yes. If you would like to go there, I am better than you. I’m more beautiful, smarter, stronger; and did I mention I was a duchess? What did you do on your world again? Cut hair? You are just a peasant.”
“No one on my world speaks to each other as you have just spoken to me, or they get Lanced. So you better watch your tongue in a week.”
“You said Lance?” I asked. “That’s the beam that comes out of your hands?”
“Yes,” Kacerie answered. “While you were fucking the gray woman, these two explained this Eye-Q stuff.”
“Her name is Galmine,” I growled.
“Galmine, sorry.” Kacerie shrugged.
“You are a hairdresser?” I asked.
“Yes.” Kacerie crossed her arms. “One of the best in my city. I could definitely do something about this.” She pointed to Trel’s head. The spider-woman’s hair was a long lustrous obsidian color, but it was obviously tangled from all the work.
“My hair is--”
“Perfect,” I interrupted Trel. “Kacerie, tell us about your ability. The one your Eye-Q says.”
“Lance? Everyone on my world can do it. Once a week per hand. We can destroy another life if we choose.”
“That’s crazy,” I said as I glanced at her crossed arms.
“It’s crazy you all can’t do it,” the pink-haired woman said. “How did you maintain law and order on your homeworlds? Seems like idiots would just take advantage of people.”
“There was plenty of that on my world, but we are getting a bit off topic.” I gestured to her arms. “It takes you a week to recharge?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Until then, I am defenseless, and so alone here.”
“You aren’t alone,” I said.
“I will be if you kick me out,” she sighed. “You just said you would.”
“We all need to work together to help each other,” I said as I rubbed my forehead. “If you don’t help, then you can get the fuck out.”
“Victor is right,” Trel said. “We don’t want any freeloaders. It’s incredibly rude to just sit around and let others do all the work.”
Sheela and I glanced at each other, but I decided not to point out the irony to the black-haired woman. She’d spent most of the last month letting us do all the work around the camp.
“I don’t know how to do anything around here,” Kacerie said. “They showed me how to make those little stone knives, but I--”
“We’ll show you what to do,” I said. “We’ll also need your ideas to improve the camp.”
“I don’t know anything about surviving!” Kacerie shouted. “I’ll cut your hair or something. That’s the only thing I know how to do, but I can’t hunt those things or build walls, or dig ditches to poop in. It’s gross.”
“Look,” I sighed. “We all want to go home, but our number one priority is surviving. We need to get water and food every day. We also need to ensure the camp is stronger so that the dinosaurs can’t get inside. If we can live through the next few months, we’ll probably be able to have a pretty efficient system. We’ll also rescue more people. You can’t just sit around here. We need your help.”
My mind was spinning with all the different tasks ahead of us, and I started to feel a bit annoyed with myself for relaxing with Galmine. Yeah, the lovemaking had been wonderful, and I felt way more “manly” after being with such a gorgeous woman, but we had a lot of shit to do, and I needed to be the one directing everyone.
“Fine,” Kacerie moaned as she rolled her eyes. “I’ll help. Or do whatever. If you are going to throw me out if I don’t do it. I guess I have little choice. I’m defenseless until my Lance recharges, anyway. You’ll probably try to rape me or something.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.
“Galmine just said I had to let you penetrate me tonight. What happens when I tell you no? Will you just do it anyway or throw me out of the camp?”
“Wow, you are an idiot,” Trel said with a sarcastic tone. “Victor just spent the night with Galmine, and tonight he will be inseminating my womb so that I bear children. Why would he bother with you when he could have either of us?”
“Because I’m--”
“Stop,” I said as I raised my hand to interrupt Kacerie. “I’m not going to force myself on you. I just spent the last month with these three, and I didn’t touch them. I’m not some sort of crazy monster. I’m done talking about your hang-ups. Let’s all discuss what we need to do then come up with a plan to do it.”
Trel, Sheela, and Galmine all nodded, but Kacerie just frowned.
“Let’s talk about water some more,” I said.
“Yes,” Sheela agreed.
“We are getting the water runs done quickly with Hope,” I started, “but I’d like to get it to the point where we only do one run a day. Heck, I’d like to get it to where we don’t even need to go get water.”
“How would we do that, Victor?” Galmine asked with interest.
“Check those clouds over there,” I said as I pointed up and to the distance. “They look like storm clouds. We’ve only had a few days of rain in the last month, but each of those days dumped enough water to last us a few months. We just have to figure out how to capture and hold it.”
“We will need a tank,” Trel said as she tapped one of her black claw-fingers against her lip.
“Yeah,” I said. “It sounds like a complicated endeavor right now, but we need to start thinking about making way more pots and methods of capturing rainwater.”