Helicopters
by Mark Aster

Mary sat, dazed by tiredness, on one of the salvaged crates,
and let her body relax at last.  Daniel slumped on the ground
beside her, his head against the side of her leg, one arm
behind her ankle.  She put her hand down and touched his
wet hair, ran her fingers over it, feeling the shape of his
head, realizing somewhere in herself that she'd never touched
him before today, that they were barely even friends.  He moved
his arm, and she felt his palm on the back of her foot.

They had spent the day picking over the ruins of the camp,
searching for food and stores not ruined by the mudslide,
looking for some sign of the others, looking and hoping not
to find their bodies.  Isabelle and Juan, Chino and Joseph,
all dead under the mud, or God-willing fled or swept far
down the slope, maybe even now straggling into Achiras and
civilization.  But Achiras was impossibly far away.

"Where do we sleep?" Daniel muttered.  No tent, no shed had
survived the storm and the avalanche of mud that had come after.
The stores shed, with the radiophone and most of their food, had
disappeared entirely.  The kitchen had collapsed, but the food
there was mostly salvagable, enough for a few days.  The
living quarters were buried, as were the carefully-tended
fields of mutant wheat that had once mattered so much.

"Here, I suppose," she said.  Now conscious of her fingers
twining in the boy's hair, she let her hand go limp, caught
among the matted strands.  He was twenty, nearly fifteen years
younger than Mary.  The night before the rain started, they had
talked in the fields among the wheat, found that they were both
from the same part of Idaho, those thousands of miles North, and
their families had friends in common.  Today, struggling and
weeping in the ruins, they had not talked much at all.

"The road is gone."  His voice was quiet, tired, spiritless.
Youth, Mary thought, is not always energy and optimism.

"Helicopters will come."  One tinny battery radio still worked,
and one station was still on the air.  Citizens were advised to
stay in their homes, those cut off in the mountains were told
to expect aid when the weather cleared.

"If the rain stops.  If there isn't another slide tonight.  If
bandits don't get here first."  His voice broke.  Mary realized
he was crying, his cheek against her thigh, his skin warm
through the filthy cotton dress.  She'd worn it for its coolness
the night of the hardest rain; it was all the clothing she had
left.  It was very thin.  She stroked his head again with her
hand, her fingers, her palm.  He put one arm across her lap,
like a child.

The wind died, the twilight was nearly silent.  She was too
tired to move, or to think.  Soon she should find a better place
to sleep.  The air was deliciously cool.  Daniel was quiet,
not crying, perhaps asleep already.  She felt something deep
and peaceful and strange.  This has happened for a purpose,
she told herself.  Have faith.  She leaned back against another
crate behind her, and was almost comfortable.

She awoke from a half-doze a minute or an hour later, feeling
Daniel's hands on her bare calf, stroking gently.

"What I'd really like," he said, his voice a shade stronger,
"is to sleep -- to have sex with you."  It hit her like a blow,
a blade in the heart.  Her skin prickled, feverish.

"Why that, particularly?" she asked it carefully, casually,
filled with uncertainty.

"If we're going to die here..."  His hands stopped moving,
but he rubbed his face against her hip.  She swallowed,
not crying, not screaming.  "We're not going to die."
He didn't reply.

He sighed deeply, and was quiet again.  Now, of course, it
was impossible for her to sleep here, touching him.  She
should get up, find shelter, safety.

The sun woke her an hour after dawn, stiff and aching from
hours sprawled on the crates.  Sometime in the night, he
had moved to the pile of partially-soaked tenting at the
edge of the mud, and was still there, snoring quietly.  She
stretched uncomfortably, and tried to dig out some food
without waking him.  The clouds were still thick, and the
wind was strong again.

Daniel was silent during their cold patchwork breakfast.
His hair was dry now, but very dirty, his work shirt torn
and stained.  A long red scratch ran down one leg from the
cuff of his shorts almost to his knee.  Mary frowned.  They
had found no first-aid kits or medicine.

"We'll need more clean water," he said, standing painfully
and looking up at the sky.  "There must be pools out in the
scrub.  I'll take the basin."  She moved to follow him, but
he shook his head.  She shivered in the wind as he picked his
way across the ruins of the camp.  She would need to find
something to wrap herself in, or a place out of the wind.

He was gone a very long time.  She dug further into the ruins
of the kitchen and found a box of towels, not too wet and
almost clean.  She had stopped expecting him to return at any
moment and was dozing fitfully in the lee of the crates,
nearly warm under a mound of towels, when he stepped into her
view, carefully carrying the big wash-basin almost full of
almost-clean water.  He seemed to be limping.

"Are you OK?" she asked, helping him set it down among the
few things the storm had left them.

"Twisted my ankle a little.  I'll be OK."

But she got them both some food, half a crushed loaf of bread
and some bruised fruit, and she took his ankle in her lap and
checked for swelling, ignoring the shaking in her hands.

"We're not coping very well, are we?" he asked, not smiling.

"The helicopters will come," she said.  He looked away, and
tucked his leg under him on the muddy ground.  A few minutes
later, he rose and went off among the debris without a word.

Toward dark, not having seen Daniel for hours, she crouched
behind a bush to relieve herself, and on rising and turning
found him facing her.  His eyes were bloodshot, his face
drawn and intense.  The wind had lessened again, but the
clouds were thick, and in the dim light his body looked
large and solid.  Mary could smell herself, her sweat and
the sharp tang of her urine still hot on the ground.

She tried to speak, but something heavy and agonizing blocked
her throat.  Daniel stepped closer to her, put one hand on her
leg just above the knee, at the hem of the dress.  She thought
he must be able to feel her heart beating.

He moved his hand up from her knee to her hip, and then to
her waist, lifting the dress up over her thighs.  His breathing
was loud.  She realized her mouth was open.  His hand moved
higher, to her side, her chest.  She moaned softly, no
hope of speech left, and his hand closed into a fist,
crumpling the fabric and pulling the dress still higher.
His eyes were in shadow, his head bent down toward her.
He was taller than Mary, much taller, taller than she
had realized.  She closed her eyes and fought to control
her breathing, not to picture his mouth on hers, the dress
torn off, his body on top of her, the violence of him.  He
could have, now, whatever he wanted of her.  Her knees began
to buckle.

Then with an animal grunt he opened his fist and pushed her away
from him, and turned, and disappeared into the dark.  She
stumbled and fell, and lay on the ground, shaking, breathing,
praying or crying, panting and holding her legs together to
stop the quivering.  Something like sleep took her again,
until later in the darkness she pulled herself off of the
cold ground, and not hearing him near her she found the
pile of towels again and burrowed under them.

Far into the night, she heard him, a moan or a cry from the
other side of the crates.  The clouds had thinned, and a full
moon lit them pearl-grey from behind.  She pulled herself up,
and not knowing why moved toward the sound.  If Daniel was
there, crying or in pain, would she touch him?  Would she put
herself beside him and be warm for him?  If he wanted her, if
he put his hands on her, if he opened her?

But coming silently around the corner of the crates, she saw
him naked and grey in the dim light, lying on the ruined tent
cloth, his muscles tense and his hands touching himself.  For
a long moment, she looked without understanding, seeing him as
a pattern in the dark, shapes touching but disconnected, his
hands between his hips, the blunt curved stick jutting smoothly
from the sweat-matted hair, his fingers in slow ardent motion,
his hips thrusting into the air.  Then she gasped, and ducked
back to her own side of the crates, and buried herself again,
and shook as she heard his long moan of release, and felt
the sympathetic heat between her legs, the deep hunger in
her body.

The next morning the sky was almost clear, and the wind calm.
Just as they began to eat, the helicopters came out of the
sky like heavy brown birds.

Helicopters
by Mark Aster
The End