Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Title: Fargrove (Complete)

   by darkmpreg

   (mpreg, pregnant boy, young, fetus, infanticide, rape)
Summary:
The small town of Fargrove, Texas has always been destined to be the
quiet sanctuary of the South.  As the world spirals toward the apocalypse,
Holden - a young man nearing thirty - helps a pregnant homeless boy out of

the cold, which sets them down a path that will change Fargrove forever.

   Chapter 1: The Boy

   Holden burned down the dark highway on the outskirts of town, pinballing
between the dotted lines.  His old pickup truck puttered sixty as his
Nirvana tape spilled out of the windows into the chilly air.  He and the
boys had tore down the city that night, hooping and hollering, enjoying
their last few years before the big Three O hit them.  Lewis had a family
on the way and came around less and less.  Vic was on the edge of something
serious.  Things were changing.  Holden stared down the white lines, tires
eating asphalt.  He wondered why they wanted those things.  He was a
free-range Texan craving anything but a rope to tie him down.

   It was after three and the world was void of people.  The stars were
brilliant and the moon low and full.  He peeled off the highway toward his
family home.  Holden was all that was left of a long southern bloodline
that once owned the land this town was built upon.  Only a crumbling estate
and three-hundred acres remained of the plantation, and the government
wanted some of it back.  Holden had over some through the years and sat on
the funds.  He didn't know what he was saving all of the money for.  Maybe
he'd fix up the house and buy a new truck.  Or maybe he'd just use it to
buy beer.  His nest egg could provide decades of it.

   The Ford pickup rattled down the last street before his turn.  A
streetlight beamed down an orange glow upon the bus stop.  He saw a kid,
maybe fifteen, sitting on the bench.  Alone, he huddled inside of a hoodie,
his breath pluming in the cold.

   Holden pulled over, turning down the screaming metal guitars.  When his
wheels screeched to a stop, he leaned over and stared.  The boy was
shaking. "Hey, what're you doing out here?"

   "Waiting," he said.  His hair was ear-length and straight.  His clothes
were ragged.

   "For what?  The bus?"

   "Yeah."

   "It's 4 AM, kid.  Ain't no bus coming." Holden stared at the boy. 
"Where you going anyway?  Where's your mom?"

   "She's the one dropped me off here."

   "Why'd she go and do that?"

   The boy shrugged.

   He exhaled and shook his head.  Fuck, he whispered.  Why am I doing
this. "Come on kid, get in."

   The teenager shook his head.

   "Get the fuck in the truck, kid.  It's cold and ain't no bus coming."
When the teenager refused once again, Holden threw the truck in park.  "I
will make you get in the goddamn truck, son."

   The teen stood awkwardly, his hands tucked warmly into his oversized
hoodie.  He paused suddenly at the door.  "Where you taking me?"

   "I live up the road," said the man, nodding with his chin at the gate
entry a few blocks away at the end of the street.  `Fargrove Ranch' it
read. "You can stay the night and walk back down here come morning.  Catch
your bus."

   The boy opened the door and fumbled his way into the truck.

   Holden shifted out of park, his large hand working the gears as they had
a thousand times.  "Roll up that window if you'd like," he said, and took a
full cigarette from a half-empty pack, produced a silver flip lighter that
glimmered molten orange from the streetlights outside.  He lit it and blew
a streaming cloud.  He offered one to the kid, and he pulled a stick out
and Holden lit it for him.

   "Like Marlboros?" he asked, cigarette dangling between his lips.

   "They're all right."

   Holden grinned quietly and stuck his elbow out the window and maneuvered
back onto the road.  The cold didn't bother him.  Winter nights made him
frisky.  But the kid rolled up his window almost to the top, blowing smoke
through the crack as he looked out into the darkness.

   "Name's Holden."

   "Terry."

   The fuck kind of name is Terry for a boy?  he thought, but said nothing.

   They stopped before the big gates and Holden slipped out to open them.
The boy watched the man unchain the entry, moving with drunken swagger. 
Terry shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  Holden looked young to the kid,
though not real young.  Certainly older than himself.  He wore a cut off
tee to show off his arms and wore tight wrangler jeans.

   Holden climbed back into the truck and up they went into the dark
woodland hills on an old dirt road full of potholes and wet, cold mud.  The
road curved around and around through the gaping night.  The full moon and
stars could not reach them in the soupy blackness that even the pickup's
high beams could not fully clear.  Terry wondered if Holden could give him
a ride back down to the bus stop in the morning, but thought it would be
rude to ask.

   Holden looked over at the teenager who snuffed the cigarette on the knee
of his pant leg and tossed the bud to the floor.

   "Hey shithead, pick that up."

   He watched as the kid leaned forward, groaning a little as he did.

   "Just kidding, kid," Holden laughed.  "Only fucking with you."

   Terry leaned back in his seat and shook his head sharply.  "Fuck you,
man."

   "Hey, fucker," said Holden.  "I'm giving you a place to sleep tonight,
so you better be real fucking nice to me.  All right?"

   They finally came out of the woods back into the starry night.  An old
southern mansion loomed over them built in bygone days, complete with
antebellum pillars overgrown with vines.  Yet even in the silver moonlight
Terry could see the house's decadence; the erosion of something once
beautiful and pristine turned seemingly unlivable.

   "You live in ...  that?" Terry asked.

   Holden steered the truck around and threw it into park.  "Come on," he
said, hopping out of the truck and heading up the crumbling steps toward
the front door.

   The ground was soft under Terry's feet; the soil rich and damp. 
Something dark and low to the ground moved toward him.  Before Terry could
get back into the truck, the thing was licking his hand.  A beam of light
raced from the front door, illuminating a black pit bull with bright blue
eyes.

   "That's Shadow," said Holden from behind the blinding flashlight. 
"She's a sweetheart.  Get on in here kid, I'll show you where you're
sleeping."

   The inside was less of a wreck than what Terry imagined.  Some of the
lights around the house were broken so Holden used candles or the
fireplaces for illumination.  A huge 65 inch 4k television was set up in
the living room, complete with every Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo
console ever created.  There was a huge wall of games and a couch that
looked like you could sink into it.

   "Wow."

   Holden appeared from the kitchen with a beer in his hand, his cutoff
shirt somewhere else.  He must've worked out a lot, or at least worked
doing heavy-lifting of some sort.  "You a gamer?"

   Terry nodded.

   "Want a beer?"

   "I should go to bed," said the kid.  "I think that bus comes real
early."

   Holden nodded and motioned for him to follow.  He led him down a
creaking hallway to a bedroom with high ceilings lit solely by a candle. 
It smelled musty and unused.  "Ain't got air or heat in the house," said
the man as he picked up several logs in the corner and placed them into the
empty fireplace to begin kindling the wood.  "Makes summers hell, but
winters are all right."

   Terry sat on the edge of the bed, hands rubbing at the quilt beneath him
as he watched Holden make fire with his hands.  The muscles of his back
rippled beneath his skin, and his pants were low.  "You ain't got a wife?"

   Orange flames spread under the logs and Holden stood up, beer back in
hand.  "No," he said through a swig.  "Why?"

   "Nothing," said Terry.  "Just a real big place to live alone."

   The man stared at Terry's face for a long while, hand resting lightly on
his hop bone as he drank his beer.  "Your momma's mad at you, huh."

   He nodded.

   "Yeah," said Holden.  "Mine's a real bitch too." He took the last gulp
of his beer.

   Terry cracked a smile.

   "Got a dad?"

   He shrugged a shoulder and looked toward the candle.

   "Yeah," said Holden, lollygagging for another minute.  "My dad popped me
out and headed for Canada.  Still there, too.  Prison finds assholes no
matter where they go." When the kid didn't respond Holden took his cue.  He
lingered in the doorway.  "Don't be late for your bus, kid," he said, and
vanished through the door, closing it behind him.

   He went to the refrigerator and pulled out two more beers.  They clinked
together as he stretched out onto the couch in the large living room and
clicked on the TV and the Nintendo 64.  The long chord to the remote
controller fed halfway across the room as Super Mario jumped onto the
screen.  The first beer went down quick but the second went slower.  He
could feel the heaviness in his eyes.  His thumbs became weighted.

   Next he knew he awoke to white morning light filtering through the
eastern windows, casting beams across the old rugs.  The light singed the
back of his eyeballs.  He groaned into his pillow and stretched his muscles
awake.  A chill lay over the house, but Holden threw off his blankets and
walked skin and boxers before the toilet and drained the night from his
bladder.  As he urinated, a hazy recollection returned to him.  Of a kid in
a hoodie he offered a bed to.

   Shit , he thought, remembering the kid had a bus to catch.

   He gave it the old shake before stuffing it back in his boxers and
walking down the hall, the balls of his feet thudding through the old
wooden floor.  He opened the door and found the fireplace still giving off
some heat.  Beside it, upon the bed, was the sleeping form of the kid.  His
blanket was mostly on the floor, revealing what the oversized hoodie had
last night concealed: a bulging stomach, rounder and far more taut than an
overweight kid's gut should be.  And a navel the size of a cork.  The kid's
hand rested there at its crest.  His boxers strained low beneath it.

   Holy shit, the kid's got a kid in him.  What was he, five or six months
gone at least?

   The boy's eyes opened and his head turned to look at Holden who stood in
the doorframe, staring.  When he realized the blanket had fallen off of
him, his eyes opened a little wider, but he didn't seem to have the energy
to care.

   "The fuck, kid," said Holden.  "That's why your momma kicked you out?"

   "Yeah," croaked Terry.

   "How old are you?"

   "Almost thirteen."

   "You're fucking twelve ?" said Holden, entering the room as his voice
grew louder.  "I let a fucking pregnant twelve year old into my fucking
house?  What'll people think?  Shit!" He stomped around, pacing.  "I
shoulda left you out there.  I shoulda fucking left you there."

   "I'll leave, asshole" said Terry, swinging his legs off the bed and
struggling to reach his jeans on the floor.  "Don't gotta worry about it."

   "Holy fuck, look at you," said Holden, gesturing with his hands. 
"You're -- god!  You shoulda said something, kid.  Shoulda told me."

   "It's none of your business," said the boy, his voice cracking.

   Holden crossed his arms and stood there shaking his head, disbelieving
his own eyes.  If people knew he picked up a pregnant twelve year old off
the street it would destroy his reputation in town; the town he was born
and raised in; the town where everyone knew everyone.  He could go to jail
if accusations were thrown around.  His eyes were adhered to the kid's
stomach, the mound of flesh the kid had concealed so well the night before.

   "How far along are you?"

   "None of your business!" Terry threw the pillow at Holden, who caught it
and threw it back, hitting the tween in the face.  He used the bed to
correct his stagger.  Terry reached for the hoodie, but Holden snatched it
away from him.  "Give it back."

   "Look, kid," said Holden, his voice calmer now.  "Where ya going when
you get on that bus?"

   Terry crossed his arms awkwardly over his belly.  "I dunno."

   "You can't just get on a bus at twelve years old and hope for the best,"
said Holden.  "There are bad people out there.  Fucked up people.  They see
a pretty face like yours and get all kinds of fucked up shit in their
head."

   "I got nowhere to go," said Terry, and the words, as they spilled out,
summoned a well of emotion from within.  Puberty and pregnancy hormones
surged wildly, clashing like opposing tsunamis.

   "Don't be a pussy, kid," said Holden, looking suddenly very
uncomfortable.  "Fuck it," he said stiffly.  "You can stay here until you
find a place.  All right?"

   He nodded, drying his eyes with his hands.  "All right."

   He tossed the hoodie onto the bed, but the kid wrapped himself in the
blanket instead.

   "I think I'm five months."

   Holden gave the belly another look.  It was grotesque to see it on a kid
so young.  It almost felt wrong to look at it at all.  "That's all right.
Come on, I'll make you breakfast." He set Terry up in the living room with
the Xbox One while Holden worked around the kitchen.  From the stove he
could peer into the living room and see the kid draped in his blanket
peering intently at the screen, controller in hand.  The kid had light
blonde hair like he did, and the two shared a similar nose.  At
twenty-seven Holden was old enough to be his father.  If the kid was going
to stay Holden would at least need to prepare an excuse in case someone
came over unexpectedly.

   A pregnant son who got involved in the wrong circles at school.  A
pregnant son who was the victim of a terrible rape.  A pregnant son who's
visiting from east Texas.  Cover stories filled his mind, and none of them
sounded good when applied to a twelve year old child.

   The bacon sizzled and popped as Holden cracked a beer, staring across
the space at the kid's protruding stomach which looked unnatural on his
boyish body.  Holden's own father squeezed out three babies by the time he
was fourteen.  If the boy was gonna stay, it may as well be for a while. 
Until he can get on his feet.  But how could a twelve year old boy with a
baby ever get back on his feet?

   By the time Holden finished his beer, the bacon and eggs were finished.
He piled them onto a plate, carried it to the living room and held it out
for the kid.  "Ain't got nothing to drink but beer."

   "I'll take one," said Terry, setting down his Xbox One controller and
accepting the plate.

   Holden gave him a look.  He remembered that the boy had smoked the night
before as well.  "You sure?"

   "Yeah," said Terry.  "It's just one."

   "All right," he said.  He brought back two and gave one to Terry, who
cracked the top and drank half of it right off.

   "You like beer?"

   "Since I was eight," said Terry.

   "I started at ten." He looked over at the screen.  Call of Duty.  "You
any good?"

   "I'm okay," said Terry, putting the can in the hole between his
criss-crossed legs.  His stomach bulged outward like some sack of grain. 
He ate a piece of bacon and went back to playing shooting people up.

   "I still prefer the classic games.  Can't beat SEGA Genesis."

   "What's that?"

   Holden frowned.  "Never mind.  Eat that that before it goes cold." He
put a coat on over his naked skin.  "I'll be back in a minute."

   Terry perked up.  "Where you going?"

   "Just down the hill," said Holden.  "Eat up, kid."

   Holden picked up his shotgun leaning against some barrels on the front
porch and started down the hill in his boxers and coat.  Shadow joined him
along the way, trotting happily at her master's side.  The ground was moist
from the dew and the sun was slanting through the trees.  Three-hundred
acres of freedom, Holden thought.  As he came to the end of the road at the
bottom of the hill he wrapped the chain around the gates and pulled a set
of keys from his jacket pocket.  The lock clicked.



   Chapter 2: The Touch

   Later that morning Holden sat on the front porch overlooking the small
town of Fargrove.  His family had built the town, grew the town, and ruled
the town in days past.  They built the saloon first and all else followed,
including traders, miners, and professionals of all kinds.  From a small
plantation town it became a trading hub, and eventually the city it was
today.  Of course the Fargroves were gone, except for Holden.  His convict
father didn't count.  He kicked back in his cushioned patio chair,
cigarette in one hand a beer in the other, and pretended like he was still
the rightful king of this dump heap town.  The sun shone brightly on the
small downtown square in the distance, and the white steeple of Pastor
Daisy's church reached up above all else like a pious erection.  Fargrove
was a religious community run by bible-thumpers and God's appointed
judges-on-Earth.  Dump heap indeed.

   The door opened and out came the kid to sit in an adjacent chair.  It
was cool in the shade of the front porch but the day was warming up, and
Terry wore one of the shirts Holden had given him earlier.  Shirts from his
high school days that had been packed up in the basement.  Just about all
of them had the sleeves cut-off.  It was tight around the stomach area and
rode up a bit, showing some skin.  The fabric clung to his form.

   Holden's eyes were set on the boy and his big belly as he inhaled the
last bit of nicotine from his cigarette.  He tossed the butt down the
cracked steps.  The blue Ford pickup sat in the circular dirt driveway in
front of them.  "Biggest shirts I got besides the ones I wear."

   Terry pulled the snug shirt back down over his belly.

   "You can wear mine until we get you your own clothes."

   "Thanks."

   Holden leaned forward and picked up a brown sack off the floor and
pulled out a small pipe and a bag of weed.  "Know what this is?"

   The boy shook his head.

   "Your mom didn't smoke?"

   "Well, cigarettes."

   Holden chuckled.  "This is some good shit.  Best weed money can buy in
this dumpster town." He opened the baggy and let the kid smell it and
laughed when he recoiled from it.  "Hell of a scent."

   He loaded it into the bowl and lit it up, sinking back into his chair.

   "Stinks real bad," said Terry, waving the smoke from his face.

   "Like skunk, right?" said Holden.  "But in a good way."

   "Can I try it?"

   Holden's eyes went to the kid's pregnant belly.  "Cigarettes, beer, and
you want to add Mary Jane to the list?  The fuck you trying to do to that
kid, kid?"

   Terry grinned and shrugged.  "Don't really care." He reached down and
scratched Shadow's black furry head.  The pit bull groaned and yawned as
she lay at the foot of the chair.

   "You keeping it?"

   "Yeah," he said.  "Mom said it's too late not to."

   "No," said Holden.  "I mean, after you pop it out."

   "Oh," he said.  "Nah, I don't think so."

   Holden held the flame of his silver-plated flip lighter to the bowl and
inhaled long and deep.  The crispy strands within the bowl burned orange
before turning black.  He took it into his lungs, holding it in for a good
long while before expressing it into the late morning air.  "Probably for
the best."

   "Where do I take it once it comes out?"

   "Huh?  Oh." The man shrugged.  "Could drop it off at the hospital in the
city or something.  Leave it on someone's doorstep.  Like in that one
movie, uh ...  shit," he snapped his fingers several times trying to jog
his memory.

   "Harry--"

   "--Potter."

   "Yeah," said Holden, nodding his head sluggishly and laughing.  "That
one."

   Terry looked sidelong at the man.  "You're not like most adults."

   "Why's that, kid?"

   "I dunno," said Terry.  "You just seem more real."

   Holden set the bowl down and rested his hands behind his head.  His
biceps looked like he had rocks stuffed in them.  "I'll let you in on a
little secret," he grinned.  "When kids are in the room, adults get all
cautious and shit, and choose proper words and act responsible.  They
pretend all the beer they've been drinking those past few hours hasn't
fucked them up.  They become everything they preach to their kids; get all
Christianly, you know.  But when the kids go back to their room, they start
saying bad words again, making sexual innuendos and telling dirty jokes."
Holden spat something onto the floor.  "Adulthood is a lie.  But it's a lie
some people get real good at.  The reason you think I'm more real than the
other adults is because I'm shit at it."

   Terry nodded, feeling like he had just been included in something really
deep.  "So is my mom," said Terry, hand drifting to his pregnant bulge. 
"She tries though."

   Smirking, Holden leaned forward and reached out his hand toward Terry.
"Lemme touch that thing."

   Terry pulled up his shirt.  "Ok."

   Over the last couple of days Holden had found himself staring at the
boy's stomach.  It looked so strange on a kid so young.  The skin was so
round and full looking, slightly taut but pliant beneath Holden's big hand.
His bellybutton stood out looked like a nipple.  His mind was hazy and
loaded with THC, making the whole process of creation all too fascinating.
There was a baby beneath his hand.  Inches away.  It blew his mind.

   "Shit, what's that feel like?"

   As Holden moved his hand around on the surface of his stomach, Terry
said, "I dunno, like a huge shit that won't come out.  It moves around
sometimes."

   Holden didn't feeling any movements, just the boy's navel against his
palm.  "You don't know what it is?"

   "Nope," said Terry.

   "Guess we won't until it comes out of there," said Holden.

   Terry's eyebrows knitted together.  "What?  Why not?"

   "Ain't safe," said the man.  "People'd ask questions, especially if you
were with me."

   "What about when it's my time?"

   Holden removed his hand.  "Then you're getting in the tub and I'm
getting towels."

   Terry pulled his shirt down and stood.  "I ain't giving birth in no
tub!"

   He stormed off and Holden called after him.  "Well fuck, you ain't doing
it on the floor!" He listened as Terry's feet thumped away deeper into the
house.  A door slammed.  Sighing, Holden eased back into his chair and
looked up at the outdoor ceiling fan covered in cobwebs.  "I'm way too high
for this shit."

   Late afternoon rolled by and the sun was setting, throwing gold over the
woodland hills.  Holden was grilling burgers out back next to the dried-up
and desecrated gardens which sat upon the house's promontory overlooking
the expansive Fargrove acreage.  The sun's heat still clung to the air as
he grilled in his cut-off shorts, listening to country radio with a beer in
his hand.  He had been drinking all day and smoking pot throughout.  A
cigarette hung from his lips as he flipped the burgers.

   After a while he noticed Terry standing up on the back porch watching
him, his hands on his lower back like a true pregnant person.  Holden
motioned for him to come on over, but the tween went back inside.  "Little
shit," said Holden, finishing the can of light beer and crushing it in his
hand.  He threw it into the gardens with the rest of them.

   When dinner was ready, Terry ate his hamburger hungrily and with lots of
ketchup and mayonnaise and pickles.  The local news interrupted the shit
cartoon Terry was watching.

   "...a possible abduction of Terrance Wallace of Fargrove County, whom
his mother, Terra, said ran away sometime last night while she was asleep.
She says her twelve year old son is at least five months pregnant, the
result of a high school hazing last year.  This is the first time local
authorities have learned of Terrance's hazing and are prepared to launch a
full-scale investigation in the coming days on how this happened and who
was involved.  At this time, however, their top priority is to find
Terrance and bring him safely home.  If you have seen or know where
Terrance is, please contact the authorities..."

   Holden stood frozen behind the couch as Terry's young face appeared on
the 4k screen.  An empty pit opened in his chest and he dropped his paper
plate.  The hamburger bounced and rolled under the couch.  "Oh shit," he
said.  "Oh shit."

   "That's my sixth grade picture," said Terry.  "Why are they using that
one?"

   "Come on, we have to go," said Holden, swinging around the couch and
taking Terry forcefully by the arm.

   "Huh?  Where?"

   "To your mother," said Holden.  "I ain't keeping you here!  Not when
they're looking for you."

   Terry's burger went flying into the air as he pulled his hand from
Holden's grip and kicked both of his legs into the man's stomach, causing
him to the double over.  Terry's small pregnant body streaked from the room
and the bedroom door slammed.  Holden recovered from the kick and shot
after him, only to find the door locked.

   "I'll kick this fucking door down, kid!" screamed Holden.  "You can't
fucking stay here!  They're looking for you.  They'll put me in jail!"

   "No they won't!" screamed Terry's voice through the door.  "You were
only trying to help me!"

   "They won't believe that, you fucking idiot!" he shouted, banging
furiously.  "They'll lock me up forever!  Just like my dad!  I ain't going
to prison!  I sure as fucking hell ain't!  Open the door or I'll tear it
down!"

   He could hear the child's sobs, loud as cicadas during summer.

   With one well-placed kick Holden broke the old door down.  The hinges
snapped as it fell forward, smashing into the floor.  Holden whirled in,
fists clenched and -

   Terry was backed into the corner with Holden's shotgun in his hand,
aimed and cocked.  His face was red, distorted from his sobs.  "I'll
shoot!" he moaned.  "I know how."

   Holden lifted his hands out in a gesture of peace.  "Kid, hold up. 
Ain't no need for that, all right?  Okay?"

   He shook his head.  "You ain't taking me back to her.  You can't."

   "I get it, all right?  You're mom's a bitch.  I get it.  But she can't
be bad enough for all this."

   "You don't know!" Terry screeched, his voice shattering like
pre-pubescent glass.  "You don't know what she's done to me.  I ain't going
back!  I won't!"

   Holden's hands remained outward as he crept forward.  "What'd she do to
you, kid?  Tell me what she did."

   "She..." His mouth wobbled and shook.  "She did this to me."

   Understanding a little, Holden said, "That story on the news ...  bout
the hazing.  That true?"

   He shook his head again, his face nearly purple with his fit of tears.
"My mom let some guys in my room at night.  They paid her.  They paid her a
lot."

   "Okay, kid," said Holden.  "I hear you.  I won't take you back to her."

   When Holden was close enough, Terry put the nozzle into the man's face.
"You won't take me anywhere .  I'm staying."

   Holden nodded against the metal, inhaling the metallic scent.  "Fine,
kid.  You can stay ...  long as you want.  Deal?  Just put the gun down."
Holden's hands were over his head.  "Put it down now, all right?"

   He watched Terry think about it, then nod.  The shotgun lowered and
Holden ripped it from Terry's hands before taking the kid by the throat and
slamming him against the wall.  His beer breath choked the boy's delicate
sense of smell, causing a bubbling of vomit to rise in his throat.  He
choked it down with tears.  "Don't you ever fucking point my granddaddy's
gun at me again, you understand me you piece of shit?  Stay long as you
want, but don't ever fucking do this again."

   Terry, wide-eyed and nauseous, nodded his head.

   When Holden stomped over the fallen door and left the room, Terry
breathed again and crawled into his bed beneath the covers and cried until
dreams rose up to comfort him.

   The next few days were spent looking out the windows with a hunting
rifle in hand.  Holden kept the news on when he could and refreshed his
news apps on his phone, constantly waiting for the first sign of trouble.
He listened to the radio scanners and picked up on police channels.  He
knew his capture was inevitable.  It always was.  A small few ever got away
with child abduction.  It ain't abduction , he told himself.  You're doing
the right thing helping him.  But he stood sentry next to the shuttered
windows, peeking out through the blinds, eyes wide and ears open.  Even
Shadow was on alert, watching and waiting for something to happen.

   Holden and Terry hardly spoke a few sentences to each other.  Two weeks
went by and February became March.

   Nothing happened.

   "Don't you gotta work or something?" asked Terry one early night,
breaking his vow of silence as he played Halo on mute as instructed.  The
noise would have increased Holden's growing paranoia.

   "I don't work," said Holden, walking across the room to peek through the
far windows.

   "Don't you gotta make money somehow?  To pay for all this?"

   "I have lots of money," said the man, rifle in hand.  "Now shut up."

   But the boy's question reminded him of his unpaid bills.  He needed to
check the mail, but he needed to go down to the street to do it.  "Stay
here, kid," said Holden.  "And don't you fucking touch my shotgun unless
it's your momma coming through this door, understand me?"

   "Yes, sir," said Terry, a hand on his growing belly.  His favorite shirt
Holden had given him was growing tight, but he kept wearing it anyway.

   Holden got in his truck and whistled for Shadow to hop up in the back.
She jumped up on the tailgate and he closed it shut behind her.  The Ford
engine roared to life and the lights illuminated a raccoon in the tree
ahead.  Holden circled the dirt driveway and went down the rough road
toward the gate, his rifle resting on his lap.  When he neared the end he
turned the lights off and drove the rest of the way in the dark, using only
starlight and his own sense of direction to guide him.

   He got out of the truck, which he left running, and eased up to the
gate. No one was out there, just the old bus stop in the distance down the
street.  He unlocked the gate and Shadow waited patiently where he told her
to stay as he went out real quick, collected an armful of mail, and hurried
back to his truck and dumped it in the cabin.  A car hooked a right onto
the street.  The headlights glared through the distance at him as he
hurriedly closed the gate and locked it tight.  His heart beat faster than
he could ever remember as the car turned off down another road.

   Back up at the house, Holden brought the mail in and spread it on the
couch after locking the front door.

   "Shit," said Terry, only half paying attention as he muted the game
again.  "That's a lot."

   "I've been forgetting to check the mailbox," said Holden.  "Sometimes
criminals get found out like that.  Cause the mailbox starts overflowing
and the mailman notifies the police.  I'm a fucking idiot."

   "You're just paranoid."

   "Thanks to you," said Holden, sharply.

   Terry frowned and silently went on playing his game, though it was
obvious his feelings were hurt.  Pregnant tweens apparently struggle with
keeping it together.

   "Don't worry about it, kid" said Holden to him as he sat down and
started sorting the pile.  "I didn't mean it."

   "Yes you did."

   "Maybe a little," said Holden.  "But I'd rather you be here with me than
you be with your sick-fuck mother."

   After the mail was sorted Holden got his checkbook and started paying
off bills.

   "How did you get lots of money?" asked the kid.

   "I sold some of my family's land.  The government's bought a lot of it
through the years."

   "But why--"

   Bzzt.  Bzzzzzt.  Bzzt.  Bzzzzzt.

   Both of their eyes fell upon Holden's vibrating cellphone, which said
`Lewis' on it.

   "Who's Lewis?"

   "Shut up," said Holden, picking up the phone.  "Don't speak."

   He answered.

   "Hey Lewis," he said, affecting a more upbeat tone.  "Ah, nothing.  Just
shooting the shit.  You?" A pause.  Holden got up and started pacing. 
Terry paused his game and snuggled deeper into the couch, pulling up his
shirt to rub his belly.  The skin was getting itchy and he thought he was
beginning to feel kicks.  "Oh, nice.  Nah, I can't tonight.  Not feeling
well.  No really, my stomach's fucked up from some hot sauce I had.  Yeah,
yeah.  But you fuckers have fun without me.  Hey, how's Sabrina?  Uh huh.
Wow.  How far along is she now?  Damn." Holden continued pacing,
occasionally watching Terry rub his pregnant belly.  "Y'all are doing a
home birth right?  Fuck that, man.  Gonna ruin your carpet."

   He sat on the edge of the couch in front of Terry and continued talking.

   Terry reached outward and put his hand on Holden's naked back.

   "The fuck?" said Holden, shooting up.  He gave Terry a strange look and
started pacing again.  "Oh, nothing.  Just ...  thought I saw something. 
But anyway you were talking about a water birth.  Yeah, yeah." He laughed
awkwardly then.  "Anyway, gonna let you go.  I know y'all probably wanna
take off.  All right.  Yeah, soon, for sure.  See ya."

   Holden threw the phone into the couch next to Terry.  "The fuck was
that? Huh?  Why'd you touch me?"

   If Terry could have shrunk into the couch he would have.  "I don't
know...."

   "You don't know?" said Holden.  "Don't you get all fucking weird on me.
I feed you, clothe you, protect you.  Don't fucking get weird."

   He opened the front door and hurled it shut.  The old house seemed to
shudder.

   Outside, Holden lit himself a bowl.  His paranoia temporarily forgotten.
He smoked until he couldn't feel his face and sat there looking toward
Fargrove on the horizon, alight with a warm orange glow.  His friends were
probably over there now, without him, drinking and hitting on all of the
pretty girls.  Even though Lewis was a married man, he still had his fair
share of blowjobs and quickies in the back.  He could never love the same
woman for very long.  His wife's pregnancy was probably the only thing
keeping him with her.  Vic, on the other hand, was falling for `the one',
yet that never stopped him from double dipping.

   Holden hadn't dated in a couple of years.  He was picky with his women.
Usually his type were the girls that came into the bars in the arms of
another guy.  The last time he had sex was several months ago.  He was and
banging a woman in the truck bed, giving it to her hard and fast, when her
boyfriend came out and joined them.  They took turns at first, and then
while she rode Holden cowboy style, the guy climbed on top and took her in
her ass.  He still remembered that feeling of the other dude's cock rubbing
against him through the membranes and walls of her innards while he plunged
deep into her slit.

   The pleasure confused him.  Fucked him up.  Shifted his perception of
... attraction.

   Holden lit what was left in the bowl and clutched his forehead, trying
not to think of it.

   From the front door emerged the pregnant tween.  The hem of his shirt
struggled to contain the baby he was growing, and the pajamas were low on
his hips, showing skin.

   "What do you want, kid?"

   "Sorry for touching your back," said Terry.

   "Why'd you do it."

   "I don't know," he shrugged.  "Because I've never had a dad."

   "Well I ain't your dad, kid.  Ain't never will I ever be."

   "I know.  I'm sorry."

   "Don't be sorry.  Just go to bed.  It's late."

   Terry went back inside and after a while Holden came back in after
gathering some wood and brought it into Terry's room.  He had fixed the
door the day before and greased the hinges so they wouldn't squeal anymore.
Terry was in his boxers laying in bed watching him light the fire as he did
that first night those weeks ago.  The smell of firewood filled the room as
the gentle light of the fire bathed the kid in orange.  "Thanks, Holden."

   "Yeah, kid," said the man, stopping for a moment in the doorway to give
a slight nod before shutting the door.  Terry listened to him head back to
the kitchen and crack a beer.  He smiled as he snuggled his head into the
softness of his pillow.





   Chapter 3: The Need



   Two weeks went by.  Together, Holden and Terry figured out when the
pregnancy started, which was sometime in late September.  Meaning that in
mid-March, Terry was into his sixth month with a due date of sometime in
June.  The kid had been there for a little over a month total, and already
he was growing at an alarming rate.  With proper home-cooked meals, Terry's
baby was fattening up.  His favorite shirt pulled tightly around his
pregnant gut and left a amount of skin hanging out.  He was carrying all
out front and high on his ribs.  From behind his belly was starting to
bulge to the sides.  The pregnancy was starting to monopolize his body and
quickly becoming a very heavy burden.  And with tween hormones mixing with
pregnancy hormones, Holden was learning that life was lived on eggshells.

   One night when they were watching TV, Terry burst into tears.

   "The fuck's the matter, kid?" said Holden, looking over at the sobbing
tween.

   "I don't know," he said.  "I just feel sad."

   "Why're you sad?"

   "I just am, okay?!"

   The boy leaned over and placed his head on Holden's shoulder.  He could
feel the wet tears staining his arm.  "The fuck you doing?" he asked
calmly. "We talked about this."

   "Why do you have to be a dick all the time?" asked Terry, sitting back
up.  "Don't you see I need someone?"

   "Huh?" asked the man incredulously.  "You really think I'm the hugging
type?  You been smoking my shit again?"

   "Fuck you," said Terry, frowning.  He started the process of heaving his
pregnant boy-body up from the depths of the couch.

   Holden grabbed the boy's arm in his giant hand.  "Sit down." Terry did
so and Holden put his arm across the back of the couch so the boy's head
rested against his forearm.  The kid smiled.  "Yeah, that make you happy?"

   "M-hm," said the twelve year old.

   If he had to admit it, which he never would, Holden felt a tingle of
something inside his soul.  He would have smiled too, if he allowed
himself. Instead he continued drinking his beer, and when Terry reached to
share it, Holden let him.

   "I don't let just anyone share my fucking beer, by the way," he said as
he watched Terry take a few sips.

   "Isn't this the last one?"

   "Yeah," said Holden.  "I'll have to run to the store tomorrow.  We're
running out of shit to eat and drink around here."

   Terry pulled his shirt up suddenly, peering down at the skin.  "The
baby's kicking."

   Holden looked at the belly, watching it closely.  He didn't touch the
kid's stomach much.  Only when he was drunk or really high, like he was
that first time.  But he wasn't drunk enough, nor high enough to do so now.
The big stomach weirded him out a little.  There was life in there, and it
reminded him that some fucked up dudes raped the kid to make it.  But as he
watched it now, lit with the light of the television, he saw it move.  Not
a small kick, but a whopper just above his ribs.  Terry grunted and made a
pained face.

   "Holy fuck," said the man.  "That hurt?"

   "What do you think?"

   "Looked like it fucking hurt."

   The baby kicked again, then seemed to bounce to the side.  "Your whole
stomach is moving.  That's fucked up."

   "No it's not," said Terry, taking Holden's big hand and putting there.

   It shifted under his palm; the clear definitive touch of the unborn upon
the living.

   "That's ...  wow."

   Terry leaned into Holden, resting his head on the man's naked chest.

   "You crying again?" asked Holden, and Terry could hear his voice
reverberating from deep in his chest.

   "No."

   "Good," he said.  "Cause it's fucking awkward when you cry."

   The search for Terrance Wallace continued.  A couple days later, they
watched the news on television when it was discovered that Terra, the boy's
mother, had orchestrated her son's rape.  CPS and local police had launched
a joint task force to investigate Terry's disappearance and the odd
circumstances of his pregnancy.  They discovered evidence of a used condom
beneath Terry's bed, unnoticed by the mother.  DNA on the condom and around
the room linked twenty men in the local government to the boy, including
the mayor himself.  Videos showing Mayor Thompson and several indicted
police officers being led from the city hall in cuffs played again and
again.  It was making national news.

   Terry watched the TV from the safety of Holden's arms as he lay against
his shoulder.

   "We don't have to watch this, kid."

   "It makes me happy."

   "Huh?"

   "Yeah," he said.  "That people know who did it.  That they're going to
jail."

   The local news switched back to national where the story was playing on
Fox.  Holden's hand drifted over to rest on Terry's big belly.  Despite the
size of it, it was still relatively small beneath Holden's manly hands. 
The twelve year old was tiny for his age and the pregnancy was advancing
faster than his body could accommodate.  Holden wondered if the kid's body
would be capable of pushing out a baby.  At this rate, he didn't think so.
But he kept his doubts silent.  The boy was sensitive.  Bringing it up
would be a mistake.

   The baby adjusted beneath his hand, shifting wildly.

   "How do you sleep with it doing that?" he asked, but Terry was already
fast asleep against him.  He might have gave a tiny chuckle.  "Like that, I
guess."

   Holden's paranoia had abated lately, but some part of him was always
alert and prepared for the worst.  The police could at any moment knock
down his door and throw him in a cell for good.  Life was lived on a glass
floor, knowing that the bottom could fall out from underneath them.  He
worried more about what would happen to the kid if Holden should be taken.
He had no mother, no father to speak of.  No family.  Holden was all he
had, and without him he'd be in the hands of foster care; like a lost puppy
in a shelter, hoping to be taken home.

   He was better off here.

   Over a month ago Holden wouldn't have dreamed of taking care of a kid.
But it really wasn't so bad.  They were giving the baby away, somehow,
which meant he wouldn't have to change diapers or listen to its wailing day
in and day out.  His lonely days were over.  The pregnant boy was going
through a lot of shit, and sometimes Holden recognized that his personality
didn't always make things easier for the kid.  His parents hadn't instilled
anything warm or loving into him as a child, which made it hard on his
relationships.  The longest he had ever been with a girl was two years.  It
ended in fire.

   But even during his fits of rage and senseless tantrums, Holden always
found a way to make things up to Terry, who was more forgiving than any
person he'd ever met.  The touching continued to be a problem.  Terry
wanted attention all day every day, and Holden was beginning to wonder if
maybe the hormonal boy was developing an unhealthy attachment.

   The idea soured Holden's stomach.  Put a lump in his throat.  It made
him uneasy.  Made him unsure.

   One night when Holden was actually sleeping in his own bedroom for once
instead of the couch, he woke to Terry in bed with him, his big stomach
pressed against his side.  His hand was roaming Holden's abs, dipping lower
...  and lower into his boxers.

   Holden caught Terry's hand in his grip; his tiny wrist so breakable.  If
it had been anyone else, that's what would've happened: a quick twist and
broken arm.  He could feel Terry's breath against his chest.

   "The fuck you doing, kid?" Holden groaned as he blinked his tired eyes.

   "I ...  need it."

   "Need what?" said Holden, straining his eyes open.  Revelation came. 
"What?  No.  Fuck no." The lump returned to Holden's throat.  He said, but
did nothing to push Terry off of him.  "You're a kid.  You're twelve.  I
ain't no fucking pedo."

   "But I want it," Terry said, his adolescent voice thick with feelings.

   "No you don't," hushed Holden, staring up into the grey darkness of his
ceiling.  "It's one of them psychological things.  It was grown men put
that baby into you.  You only think you want it.  Okay?"

   "Okay," said the boy, getting up to leave.

   Holden couldn't sleep after that.  He stayed up thinking about the boy.

   The next morning they woke in separate beds and the day went on as
usual. They made no mention of it again as the rains came down outside and
all the country seemed covered by it.  They stayed inside and played video
games and Holden made sure to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the
ever-hungry boy and his baby.  There was plenty of beer and lots of
cigarettes, but Terry only drank sometimes and smoked even less.  He leaned
against the stove as he prepared dinner, listening to the rain, watching
the boy through the doorway lounging on the couch with his belly and pretty
face.

   That night Holden's phone rang and he put on his rain boots, shirt, and
baseball cap and took the gun down to the road.  Terry watched Holden's
flashlight disappear in the woods, and after a few minutes he came back up
...  with another person.  A man.

   Terry's heart rushed to his throat, choking him.  He backed away from
the window.  wondering what to do.  He ran up the stairs and up into the
abandoned second floor and hid in a closet which smelled mildewy and old.
Dust clung to his hands as he listened to the two men enter below.

   "Terry?" said Holden.  "Where ya at, kid?  Want you to meet my friend,
Jimmy.  I trust him.  He's going to school to be one of them doctors for
pregnancies.  He wants to help you."

   "It's okay, Terrance," called the voice.  "Holden's told me all about
your situation.  I brought some tools with me.  We're gonna check to make
sure you and the baby are healthy."

   Terry came down the stairs in his boxers, as he usually wore around the
house at night.

   They watched him as he took every step real slow.  His stomach had
become large and heavy, and every step made the baby bounce inside him.

   The man was balding a little, but seemed young, maybe slightly older
than Holden.  His shoulders were wet from the rain, and he held his cap in
his hands.  "Hello, Terrance," he said, offering his hand.  "I'm Jimmy."

   Terry looked at Holden, who nodded reassurance.  The boy shook hands
with the man and looked back at Holden.  "Why didn't you say someone was
coming."

   "`Cause I knew you wouldn't like it," he said.  "But I don't know shit
about pregnancy and I figured Jimmy would understand well enough to keep
our secret."

   Jimmy mustered a sad smile.  "I, too, was abused and taken advantage of
by men at a young age, Terrance," he said.  He pointed at Terry's
pregnancy. "I was once where you are now."

   "You were pregnant at twelve?"

   "Eleven."

   "Oh."

   The TV flickered behind Terry.  The news lady was reporting on some
strange deaths across the sea.

   "It's good Holden came to me," Jimmy said.  "A pre-teen pregnancy is no
joke.  When I saw the news reports of your situation my heart cut itself
into pieces.  Please, sit down on the couch and remove your underpants, if
you please."

   Terry did as told, though however hesitantly.  It wasn't the first time
Holden had seen Terry naked, but things seemed different since last night.
The boy's manhood--if it could be called that--was swallowed by his
pregnancy.  His tiny hips seemed incapable of squeezing a baby through
them.

   "His hips are narrow indeed," said Jimmy as Terry laid upon his back,
his stomach sticking straight up.  The would-be doctor produced a
stethoscope and measuring string.  The cold metal of the listening tool
sent shivers up Terry's spine.  Afterward, he gave a satisfactory nod.  "A
healthy heartbeat.  Let's get measurements." The doctor measured the
circumference to be right at forty-one inches.  "I don't have any way to
verify it, but I'd say he's anywhere from twenty-four to twenty-six weeks,
roughly.  So about six and a half months, like you guessed.  Due probably
in June.  That's about about average for a normal adult pregnancy this far
along, but very large for a young fellow like yourself."

   "What's it mean, Jim?"

   "Typically, the baby will grow at a rate that's adequate for the size of
the man or woman who is pregnant," said Jimmy, putting away the measuring
tape and using both hands to feel around Terry's womb.  The pressure of his
hands send a signal down to his genitals, and the boy grew an erection.

   Holden's eyes enlarged.

   Terry turned red.

   Jimmy only chuckled gently.  "Quite normal, Terrance.  Don't worry about
it.  It truly does happen all the time.  Anyway, our young friend's fetus
here simply doesn't want to account for the father's small size.  He's
growing a big baby, no doubt.  I'm guessing it'll be at least nine pounds."

   "What about his hips?"

   The man folded his hands and stood back up.  "We can only hope the hips
expand before the end.  With a baby this big and hips that narrow ... 
well, you might just wanna call me when he shows signs of labor.  Will you
show me out, Holden?  It's good to see you by the way."

   "You too, buddy," said Holden.  "You might be a city boy but that don't
mean I don't trust you like a brother."

   Jimmy laughed loudly.  "Well, I hope things work out for him.  And for
you.  I still think you should tell the full truth to the police.  The boy
can give a full accounting of what happened, and I can corroborate what
I've seen.  You wouldn't be at fault.  Not in the slightest."

   They walked onto the porch and Terry strained to listen.

   "It's messy," said Holden's muffled voice.  "And I know half of the guys
at the police station.  They're all bible-thumpers from Pastor Daisy's
flock who have it in for me."

   "I know, I know," said Jimmy's trailing voice.  "And Pastor Daisy's
sister is the judge...."

   Terry sat up and pulled on his boxers again before flipping the channel
away from the news reports of some disease spreading through the U.K..  His
stomach rumbled loudly and he waddled over to the kitchen, scratching his
bellybutton, and made some cereal.  He watched through the window as Jimmy
waved farewell and disappeared back down the sloping woods.

   Holden lit himself a cigarette and came in from the cool night.  He
entered the kitchen and came to stand behind the pregnant boy as he
finished pouring milk over the cereal flakes.  Holden's firm hands slid
around his baby gut, circling.  Cigarette smoke spilled around his ears and
face, making him cough.  Something hard pressed against his back.

   Holden's voice left his tongue upon a whisper.  "You still need it?"

   "Yeah," breathed Terry.

   "Just once," whispered Holden.  "And we'll never speak of it again."

   "I swear."

   Holden took the boy by the arm and led him sternly into the master
bedroom, leaving the cereal bowl on the counter.  He pushed Terry roughly
on the bed and tore off his little boxers, which had grown tight under his
pendulous stomach, and Holden abandoned his shirt, sliding it up over his
head and letting it fall to the floor.  Terry's eyes were wide in light
from the fireplace, and his huge stomach rose and fell with his excited
breathing.  The baby rolled, casting moving shadows along the skin.  Holden
unbuttoned his wranglers and pulled them off his legs until he was stark
naked before the boy, his erection tall and proud, his long, lean body
rippling.

   "Say you want this."

   "I want it," he said, grabbing the man-sized dick in his small hands. 
He stroked it like he stroked himself when he was alone in his bed at
night.

   Holden had to push past his insecurities about what was happening and
accept what he was doing.  This was always going to happen.  Since the
moment he picked the kid up from the bus stop over a month ago, this is
what he wanted no matter how much he was afraid to admit it.  All along,
somewhere buried inside, this was it.  The feeling of the kid's soft, small
hands upon him made breathing difficult.  His lungs heaved in sharp gasps.
He pushed the boy back onto the bed and looked down at his tiny cock
standing at full attention.  He touched it and the boy jerked and cummed
everywhere.

   The man grinned, snuffed his cigarette on the bed and tossed the bud
into the darkness.

   Terry lifted his legs into the air.  Holden thought it was sad he
already knew to do that so young, but he lubed up with an old bottle of KY
jelly and stuck his shroom at the entrance of the pregnant kid's tunnel. 
Even with just the head in, Terry grunted in pain.  Tears stung his eyes.

   "Don't you fucking cry."

   "It feels huge."

   "Well, you got a big baby gonna bust its way through here soon enough,"
said Holden, reminded once more that inside that massive orb was a real
living child.  "So you better find a way to get over it."

   Terry stroked his baby belly as Holden continued to slowly tunnel inside
him.  The baby was kicking and Terry was trying his best to calm it down.
Holden tried not to be weirded out by the baby's movements that pulsated
beneath Terry's thin skin, but his eyes were drawn to it anyway as his cock
burrowed further in, closing the gap with the cervix.  Tighter than
anything he'd ever felt.  Prime flesh.  Wet and welcoming.

   And then he was there, crammed against some inner wall.  Barely six
inches in, and he still had another four.  In fact, when the baby shifted
again he could feel it stirring through the thin membranes of the cervix.

   "This ain't right," he said aloud, pulling out.

   "What do you mean?" said Terry.

   "It means I ain't gonna fuck you kid," said Holden, free from the twelve
year old's boy cunt.  "It just ain't right!"

   Terry struggled into a sitting position so his big baby bump sat on his
lap.  "But I want it."

   "Well only spoiled little shits get what they want all the time," said
Holden.  "So too fucking bad."

   The boy unexpectedly grabbed Holden's cock and stuffed it into his
mouth.

   Before Holden could protest, his eyes rolled back into his head and his
knees went weak.  The flavored lubricant tasted like candy and Terry
devoured it eagerly, holding his belly as his head went to work.  The man's
hands wrapped around the boy's fine blonde hair which had grown unruly in
the past weeks.  Firelight made their shadows quiver on the wall.

   After several minutes just when Terry started to tire, Holden's hand
latched onto the back of the boy's head and forced him deep onto his cock,
down the boy's throat.  The boy started to gag.  "If you throw up on me I
swear I'll fucking beat you."

   The kid took it deeper, concentrating with all of his willpower not to
vomit.  The thing was too big down his young throat, making it difficult to
breathe.

   Suddenly Holden pulled out and forced Terry back on the bed, crawling
atop him so his veiny erection rested atop his mountainous stomach,
pressing against his navel.  He bit the kid's ear, breathing into his hair
as he humped his pregnant tummy.  His cock drooled pre-cum over the rounded
surface where the baby stirred beneath.

   For uncountable minutes Holden continued his belly-fucking until at last
he crawled off the pinned adolescent and maneuvered off the bed so that his
cock was aligned with Terry's hole.  Terry held his stomach, anticipating
the pain of Holden's initial thrust.  None of the other men Terry's mother
made him have sex with had penises as large as Holden's.  The sheer size of
it paired with Holden's temperament made it a weapon.

   Without a word of warning, Holden entered and was once again ramming the
kid's inner wall.

   "There ain't no goddamn room in there," said Holden aloud.

   He started pulling out, then pressing in over and over, causing Terry to
buckle.  His stomach heaved as his body jolted and jerked beneath the man.
Holden finally had to steady Terry by grabbing the bulbous sides of his
belly so he could thrust efficiently, but in doing so, he felt the twists
and turns of the baby.  Every thrust that shook Terry's body caused the
baby to lurch up and down.  But soon the unborn child quieted as if lulled
by the rocking.

   Once that happened, Holden felt less burdened and didn't hold back.  The
poor kid screamed as Holden took him deep and hard, his belly bouncing like
a giant tit.  He had to be careful not to use his full length.  Six inches
was all he could fit in there, and anything more could damage him.  The
fetus moved gently, its head protruding outward to the left, safe beneath
Holden's palm.

   Terry giggled.  "I think we're giving him good dreams."

   "Don't talk about the baby," said Holden, grunting, as he leaned over
Terry's stomach and thrust deeper.  His flat abs slapped noisily against
his fleshy globe.

   The kid orgasmed three times in fifteen minutes, and each time juices
erupted from his tiny cock and from deep within his womb, lubricating
Holden's efforts.  But the last time, as Terry screamed with pleasure and
pain, Holden bottomed out deep inside Terry and geysered all that he had
within him.  When he pulled out and collapsed next to the kid, a white
stream dribbled from his tunnel.

   They laid together for a long time, eyes half open, panting.

   Terry rubbed his belly where the baby's head was sticking out.  "You
sure that was the last time we're doing that?"

   "Yes." His eyes went to the kid's pregnant stomach, watching as the head
sunk back in and legs appeared on the other side.  He got out of bed and
slid his boxers up his legs.  Sweat ran down his chest and his hair was
damp.

   "Where you going?"

   "For a walk," he said, and went to the kitchen for a beer.  He grabbed
his rifle and went out the front door where Shadow joined him.  The stars
were high, bright as tiny speckled moons, and the night cooled his skin. 
He went around back to the dead gardens where all the weeds grew and sat
out on a lawn chair, gun laid on his lap, thinking of the boy.



   Chapter 4: The Fall

   Sounds of clanking and hammering drew Terry from bed and out into the
warm Spring morning.  He wore one of Holden's hand-me-down cut-off shorts
low on his naked waist with a rubber band looped through the hole and
strained around the button to keep it from falling down.  His pregnancy
jutted outward as he waddled into the sunshine across the driveway and
toward the barn, bare feet leading the way.

   He stood in the huge barn door watching Holden work on his motorcycle.
It had been a new project since that night together a few weeks ago.  All
day, every day, Holden would get out of bed and work on his bike.  They
hardly spoke much.  No more than a few sentences a day.  It was clear
Holden regretted what happened between them, and he spent all his extra
time working on that bike.

   Terry put a cold, unopened light beer on a stool next to the motorcycle
and waited to see if Holden would drink it.  The man didn't acknowledge
him, just kept working.  He stuck his hand into the bike's metal guts.  Oil
and grease coated his arms and chest, his hat backwards; wranglers dirty at
the knees.  Terry could smell the fresh sweat even from a few paces away,
where he lingered at one of the benches, tossing a wrench up and down in
his hands.

   After some time, Holden stood up and cracked open the beer, drinking
deep while his eyes watched the kid.

   "Looks like the bike's coming along," said Terry, not knowing what to
say.

   Holden took off his hat, wiping the sweat from his forehead and running
his fingers through his hair.  "Need to go down to O'Reilly's and get some
parts."

   "Where'd you get the bike from?"

   "`Was my Aunt Tessa's."

   "Your aunt?"

   "Yeah," said Holden.  "She was tough.  Liked her cigars and her
motorcycles."

   Terry went over to it, gliding his fingers over the worn leather seat.
The kickstand held it sturdy in the dirt-bottomed barn.  With some effort,
he swung his legs over the bike and sat tall upon the seat.  He leaned
forward despite his belly and grasped the handlebars.

   To Terry's surprise, Holden let out a soft chuckle.  He set down his
beer.  "You look funny."

   "Why's that?"

   "Just do," said Holden, eyes taking in the comedy of a pregnant boy in
cut-offs straddled around a motorcycle.

   Terry grinned.  "When you get it running, will you take me for a ride?"

   "Maybe," he said, crunching the empty beer can in his fist and tossing
it aside.  He leaned in next to the boy so their shoulders touched.  "This
is the ignition, see?" he said, pointing.  "And on this handlebar is the
gas, other one is the breaks." He touched the boy's right leg.  "That pedal
there is emergency breaks, see it?"

   "M-hm."

   Terry stole Holden's hat and put it on his head.  It was slightly too
big and made his ears sag.

   Holden stared at the boy oddly for a moment before standing up straight.
"Gotta go," he said, and started putting away his tools.  "Don't touch
nothing in here." He wiped off his hands with a dirty towel.  "I'll be back
in a couple."

   "Okay."

   "Want anything from the grocery store?"

   "Fruit roll-ups."

   "What else?"

   "Nothin," said the boy.  "That's all."

   Terry remained on the bike, watching him head off toward his blue truck.
His muscled back slicked with sweat, gleaming in the sun.  He climbed up
inside the Ford and cranked it, his arm hanging out the window.  With one
last nebulous look toward the boy, he peeled away in the dirt.  Terry
turned Holden's hat backward on his head and looked down at the ignition.
His fingers pinched the key and turned it, but nothing happened.

   He slid off and waddled back toward the house.  Shadow was stretched out
on the front steps of the large house, and she wagged her tail as he
approached.  He sat beside her, easing his body down onto the warm
concrete. The cracked antebellum pillars rose behind him, upholding the
whole front of the house.  Sometimes Terry wondered how long before those
pillars came down.  He rubbed his belly anxiously.



   That night the boys fell asleep on the couch watching the news.  Terry's
head was nestled on Holden's lap, and the man was snoring quietly in a
sitting position, his head lulled to the side.  He had drank too much again
and was passed out.  The news continued its report on some virus killing
millions overseas, and had begun to spread along the east coast.  By the
time morning came, CNN was static.  The world had gone to shit, but
Fargrove kept on sleeping.



   Terry was up first.  He picked his head off of Holden's legs and
stretched his pregnant body.  The baby seemed to stretch inside him as well
before getting stuck on the right side of Terry's belly, making it lopsided
and awkward on his organs.  He went to the restroom first, relieving his
cramped bladder, before grabbing a fruit roll-up and going outside to sit
on the porch.  It felt like spring and smelled like it too.  Green was
starting to come back to the woodlands around Holden's house and everything
seemed alive.  Even Shadow was happy as she rolled around in the dirt,
snorting.

   He ate his apple in his rocking chair, contently rocking to and fro. 
The baby stopped moving so much inside him, content too.  Shadow came up to
his side and licked his sticky, fruity hands.

   After half an hour there was some commotion through the trees.  A black
car rolled along the dirt driveway, rocks popping under the tires.  Shadow
began growling.  The windows were heavily tinted and Terry stood up in his
boxers, intently watching the car approach.  He thought maybe it was Jimmy,
Holden's doctor friend, but two men in police uniforms got out of the car
instead.  Terry could see the pistols on their belts.

   "HOLDEN!" he shouted.

   Something hit the floor inside.  He heard footsteps along the
floorboards.

   Shadow growled and barked like a mad dog, but remained at Terry's side.

   Terry began to back away into the house, but bumped into Holden who
stood in his shorts with his granddaddy's shotgun in his hand.  A freshly
lit cigarette smoldered between his lips.  The cops stared at the
half-naked pregnant boy.

   As Holden appeared, the two police officers unholstered their pistols.
One officer with sunglasses on and a moustache said, "Mr.  Fargrove, we're
gonna ask you to put down that shotgun."

   "Got a right to bare arms," said Holden, mumbling through his cigarette.
He looked half-asleep still, his hair all a mess.  "And to protect my
property from trespassers.  You boys got a warrant to be here?"

   "Holden," said one of the officers, who was tall and muscly and
red-haired.  "We go way back.  We were just stopping in for a friendly
visit.  Wanted to ask some questions." The redhead officer took a step
forward, looking at the kid.  "A boy disappeared around here while back,
and that boy right there fits the description.  Are you Terrance Wallace,
son?"

   "Sure ain't him," said Holden.  "That's my son, Bobby."

   "You ain't got a son," said the redhead cop.

   "Says who?" Holden cocked his shotgun.  The redhead stopped where he
was. "Go in the house, Bobby."

   Terry did as he was told, but when he was inside he peaked his head
around the doorway.

   "I know that man," whispered Terry, loud enough for Holden to hear.

   "Which one?  The redhead?"

   "No, the one with sunglasses," said Terry.  "He was one of them who paid
my mom."

   "Get inside," said Holden.  "Upstairs.  Get on now." The boy disappeared
up the steps as Holden spat out his cigarette and stomped it with his bare
foot.  "Don't care how long I known you, Coop.  You boys cut the lock off
my gate, only way you got in here with that." He nodded toward the car. 
"Time for you boys to get off my property now."

   "We know that's Terry," said the moustache man with sunglasses.  "Time
for you to give him back, Fargrove."

   "Who're you?" Holden called out, then looked toward Coop.  "Coop, who's
your friend?"

   "That's Lucky," said Coop.  "My partner."

   "Partner, huh," said Holden, smirking.  "Didn't know you was gay now. 
That's cute."

   Coop twisted his lips.  "Didn't know you fucked little boys either."

   Holden's skin turned hot all over and he readjusted his grip on his
shotgun.  "Yeah, well maybe you should ask your partner about that."

   "Fuck you, Fargrove," said Lucky, raising his pistol.

   But Holden already had his shotgun raised and leveled at the two of
them. "Even from this range I can fill the two of y'all's brains with
scatter." Coop didn't raise his gun, but Lucky kept his aimed.  "Is that
why they call you `Lucky'?  Cause your buddies went to jail for raping a
little boy and you didn't?"

   "The fuck's he talking about, Luck?" said Coop.

   "Nothing," said Lucky, his eyes mysterious behind his sunglasses.  "It's
all bullshit."

   "Been taking care of the kid for a while now," said Holden.  "He's told
me everything about you, Lucky.  Might've been you put that baby in him. 
You might be a daddy soon.  You must be proud."

   "The fuck, Lucky," said Coop, turning on his partner.  "That true, man?
You fucked that kid?  You sick ..."

   A shot rang out.

   Coop sagged against the hood of the car, a hole through his head.

   Holden fired his shotgun but Lucky was already moving, using the vehicle
for cover.  Holden dove for cover as bullets plugged the house.  He hit the
ground and saw through his slanted eyes Shadow mutilating the officer's
leg. Another shot and Shadow's black furry mass collapsed into the dirt
with a horrifying squeal.  Lucky slammed the door of his car shut and
gassed it, throwing Coop's dead body to the ground, running over it, while
Holden regained his footing and peppered the hood again and again.  The
thundering blasts were swallowed by the woods, but Holden's ears were
already ringing.  The car's front window shattered and he thought he could
hear Lucky yelp as he wheeled around the driveway, around Holden's truck,
and floored it down the trail.

   Holden was running to his dog, red-faced and frantic.  He threw himself
on his hands and knees before Shadow as blood spilled from her back thigh.
"Hang on girl," he yelled, checking the wound through the river of blood
that was gushing.

   Terry was there in an instant.

   "Grab a towel, son," he said.  "Go, fucking get a towel right now!"

   The boy moved as fast as he could inside and came back.  Holden took the
linen and did his best to staunch the wound.  "We gotta get her to the
barn," he said, scooping up the large dog in his arms.

   "Let me help," said Terry.

   "Get outta my way," he said, groaning as he hoisted the dog up on his
shoulder and ran to the barn.

   Terry couldn't watch as Holden pulled the bullet out of Shadow's thigh
with a pair of pliers.  The boy brought a bucket of well water over and a
bottle of whiskey like Holden asked, and when it was all done and Shadow's
wound was wrapped up tight.  Holden sat on the stool next to his motorcycle
covered in blood, stroking his dog's head.  She whimpered, eyes sad and
pained.

   It was all Terry could do to not cry.  "What do we do now?"

   Holden seemed to finally catch a breath.  "I dunno," he said, grabbing
his head and shutting his eyes tightly.  "I don't fucking know.  It's his
story against mine.  He'll paint me as Satan.  They'll come with the entire
police force.  They'll shoot me dead and take you away."

   The boy felt tears bubbling to the surface.  "I don't want you to die. I
don't want to be taken away."

   Holden frowned.  "Help me carry Shadow inside," he said, and the two of
them carried her up the front steps and into the house and laid her on a
pallet of towels in the living room.

   The news channel on the TV remained static.  "The fuck's wrong with the
TV?"

   "Dunno," said the scared kid.  "But what do we do now?"

   "Lock the doors," said the man, setting his shotgun and rifle on the
island in the kitchen.  He brought all of his ammunition and began
reloading his shotgun.  "Close and latch all the windows and shades.  Turn
off all the lights."

   "Do I get a gun?"

   Holden stopped what he was doing and stared at the kid.  "I won't let
you kill for me."

   "You'd kill for me," said Terry.

   Holden grabbed Terry's cheek sternly with his hand.  "You ain't killing
nobody."

   For the next hour, Holden laid with his rifle on the front balcony with
the driveway centered in his scope, waiting.  Terry sat with Shadow on the
floor, stroking her head while she slept her pain away.  It all seemed to
be ending, he thought.  It's all over.  But another hour went, and then two
more.

   Noon came and over the treetops black smoke hung over the townscape of
Fargrove, rising from one of the old buildings.  A high wind blew it north
toward Holden's house and Terry recognized the burning smell.  He got up
quick and ran upstairs and joined Holden on the balcony.  He was standing
now, his scope pointed toward the town center.

   "The grocery mart is on fire."

   "What happened?"

   "I ain't fucking Gandalf, kid," he said.  "All I know is ain't no cops
showed up yet.  Something else happened.  Somebody started that fire." He
lowered his gun and looked at the boy.  "Go look on the news.

   "Cable ain't working."

   "The fuck's wrong with it?"

   "Dunno."

   "Bring me the radio, then."

   They listened for a long time in silence: at the reports of looting; of
gun violence in Fargrove; of wounded officers braving riots; of sick people
dying in the streets; of people vomiting blood out of their eyes.  It was
happening in this town and all over.  Austin went dark.

   They listened in silence until the radio itself went static, and night
came, and the townscape on the horizon was orange with fire, belching black
smoke into the sky to cover the stars.



   Chapter 5: The Seeds

   Life became suddenly uncertain.  The last precious commodities of the
world choked their last when the cellphone towers died and the empires of
Verizon and AT&T crumbled.  For days Holden went on pretending things were
fine.  "The virus won't come up here," he told the worried kid.  "Long as
we stay away from everyone else we'll be fine.  Like the radio said." But
Terry wondered how they'd make it.

   Despite his reassurances, Holden kept his gun close wherever he went. 
Shadow limped by his side, ready for the next fight.  Terry wasn't sure
there would be one.  As far as he knew, the world out there was dead. 
Maybe they were the only ones left alive.  Anywhere.  He thought of his
mother.  He told Holden that he hoped she died miserably.  He squeezed his
shoulder.  "She did, son," he said.  "Count on it."

   They cleaned out the spoiled stuff in the fridge, sad to see the butter
and the milk and all the good stuff go.  Holden spent several days weeding
the garden out back and enlisted Terry's help.  He lumbered his pregnant
self out into the spring sun, put on a pair of oversized gardening gloves,
and uprooted weed after weed.  They dumped the piles on the edge of the
woods and Holden knew that he'd have to venture into town to buy seeds.

   Buy , he thought, and shook his head.

   "I'll be back."

   Terry begged him not to go but Holden put on an old gas mask from the
barn and took off down the driveway, leaving Terry standing on the porch,
sobbing.  He was sure that was the last time he'd ever see Holden again. 
He curled up with Shadow on the floor, easing his pregnant belly against
the cool wood.  The pit bull licked his tears away.  Everything had come
nebulous and twelve-year old Terry thought it was the end for them, just
like it was the end for everyone else.

   Fargrove was the site of warfare.  Dead bodies were piled everywhere,
massacred from within by their own bodies.  Empty faces stared up into the
unknown, dried blood staining their cheeks and chins and ears and privates.
It had seeped through their clothes and adhered to their decaying bodies.
Holden was covered head to toe by thick clothes and breathed through his
gas mask, sucking air through its filter.  His pickup truck weaved and
bobbed around the bodies on the streets.  The highway was shut down. 
Thousands of dead people died in the seats of their cars.  All the air was
filled with rotten smells and the metallic scent of blood.

   At some point on his way downtown the bodies were piled so thick he had
to stop his truck and walk.  Nearly all of historic downtown Fargrove was a
blackened, charred mess.  There were no signs of the living, only the
oppression of corpses.  With his shotgun in hand, he stepped over the
bodies toward the shops that still stood, all the while waiting for
symptoms of infection which the radio said manifested physically within
minutes by way of bloody nose.  But the minutes went and he seemed fine.

   The old tractor and feed store run by Mr.  Gilbert was intact.  Bodies
littered the dark interior and Holden took his flashlight in his hand and
collected all the seeds he could carry in the bag he brought, and all the
money from the open cash register.  Not even Holden could escape the lure
of free money, no matter how worthless it had become.  Somewhere across the
store came the sounds of chicks chirping.  He went over and saw dozens of
them trapped in their cages.  He scooped them up one at a time and stuffed
them in his bag, careful to leave an opening for air.  He grabbed chicken
feed and threw it over one shoulder.

   He took everything back to the truck, nearly tripping over the dead. 
And when it was loaded, he went over to the half-burned grocery store and
loaded up all the beer and cigarettes he could into a shopping cart.  He
wheeled it to his truck bed and loaded it cautiously, eyes scanning his
surroundings, but there was no one.  The gun store was close and Holden
went to give it a look, but the door was chained shut.  He wondered if Mr.
Yeller was inside, held up with his gun cache.

   Holden banged on the door.  "Mr.  Yeller?  You alive in there?  It's
Holden.  Holden Fargrove."

   No answer.

   He gave it a few more tries and waited a few minutes, but nothing.  Just
then he heard a distant voice, not coming from inside, but from somewhere
down Main Street.  He ducked and backed into an alleyway, looking around
the corner as several men appeared from the Town Hall.  One of them was
limping, his sunglasses and mustaches distinguishing him from the others.

   Luck.  His leg was still mangled, thanks to Shadow.

   The other men looked familiar; some of them old acquaintances of
Holden's from high school.  All of them cops.  All of them supposed to be
in jail for raping the kid back home.  Some of them were out of uniform,
wearing regular tees and jeans, but all of them were carrying.  None of
them wore masks.  They were completely vulnerable to the virus, Holden
thought.  But how did that make any sense?  How did so many of them
survive?

   Their voices echoed through the dead emptiness.  "...Old geezer's
sitting on all the good shit.  Antiques, too.  Pretty soon it'll be like
the Old West out here.  Just like in them John Wayne movies."

   "You think his grandson's in there with him?" asked one of them.

   "Without a doubt," said Lucky.  "Sure have missed that boy."

   "How old is he again?"

   "Just turned ten," said Lucky.  Their voices were getting closer and
Holden retreated further back into the alley, hands coiled around his
shotgun.  He slowed his breathing and froze.  "Should pop in a month or so.
Same as the other kid."

   "The one with that piece of shit Fargrove?"

   "Yeah."

   "Think they're still alive?"

   "Up on that secluded hill?  For damn sure," said Lucky.

   "Pastor Daisy says that the Fargrove estate would be a good place to set
up his new church after the chapel burnt down." Holden thought he
recognized the voice belonging to a guy named Daniel.  "Says the Lord hears
people better when they're up on hills, or something like that."

   "Shut up," said Lucky as they stopped in front of Mr.  Yeller's gun
shop. He slammed his fist on the door several times.  "Mr.  Yeller, if you
don't open the door for us we're gonna make it real painful for you.  Give
us your guns, your ammunition, and your grandson and the mayor and Pastor
Daisy says they'll let you live.  They gave their word."

   Silence.

   "Last chance, Mr.  Yeller."

   There was a sudden loud shot and the sound of breaking glass.  The men
were yelling now as more gunshots rang out from inside.  More glass
shattering and sounds of a struggle came from within.  When it was over,
Holden heard Lucky yelling: "Man down!"

   Mr.  Yeller's voice was hard to hear, but Holden heard something about
"sickos" and "molesters".

   Another gunshot and a young voice started screaming.

   "Holy fuck, look at the whelp on him," Holden heard.  "Who's fucking
baby is that?  He needs a pat on the back."

   "Probably Lucky," said Daniel.  "It's always him that makes the big
ones."

   "Let's get him back to the mayor and Pastor Daisy," said Lucky.  "I know
the Pastor wants to inspect this one personally, make sure he's baptized
properly.  The rest of y'all grab every gun you can get your hands on and
all the ammo you can carry.  We'll bring a vehicle over here for the rest
once Arnie brings the bulldozers and clears the bodies off the road."

   "Yes, sir," said one.

   "Mmm, so big," Lucky said.  "Can't wait to fuck you nice and hard, Kyle.
I've missed you.  Has the baby missed me too?"

   But Kyle only screamed and cried as he was led away, and eventually his
squawking trailed off.

   Sickened, Holden used the alleyway to cut around the buildings toward
his truck.  He cranked the engine and hightailed it out of there, the
chicks still chirping from inside the bag.



   It was noon when Holden got back.  Terry heard his pick-up truck roaring
up the woodland driveway and waddled as fast as he could outside and down
the steps.  Holden's mask was off as he stepped out of the truck.  Terry
was there instantly, wrapping his arms around him; belly pushing hard
against Holden's front.  Holden wrapped a loose arm around the kid's head;
his own small gesture of affection.  He flicked the cigarette from his
mouth into the dirt.  Shadow hobbled over and wagged her tail.

   "I thought you was a goner," said Terry.  "You infected?"

   "Shoulda asked me that before you hugged me," said Holden.  "But no, I
ain't.  Help me get this shit out of the back." He unlatched the hitch
where all the goodies were.

   "Wow," said the kid, listening to the chirping.  "You got baby
chickens?"

   "We'll need the eggs soon enough," said Holden, handing the bag to the
boy.  "Take them to the coop in the barn.  Make sure Shadow don't eat `em."

   They worked on the garden together a few hours later, planting the seeds
in freshly tilled dirt.  By harvest Holden hoped they would have all the
vegetables they would need.  His aunt used to garden and Holden was only
taught the basics.  He hoped it was enough.  When they were hot and sweaty
and Terry's back was killing him, Holden used well water to soak the
garden. He filled up a giant washtub that his great-grandmother and
grandfather used to bathe in as kids, before there were proper showers.

   Terry stripped naked and Holden took in the sight of the growing
pregnant boy's boyish body, and the belly that continued its domination of
his body.  His small boy cock dangled beneath it, hairless and nubile, as
he sank into the cool water.

   "Feels good," said the kid, dunking his head in and laughing.  "Ain't
you coming in?"

   The twenty-seven year old man didn't say anything as he went up the
steps and into the back of the house.

   Terry frowned and let his body float in the water, thankful for the
relief on his back.  He didn't know why Holden had been acting so distant.
Ever since that night together he had been wrestling his demons and Terry
felt unwanted.  He felt maybe he messed up somehow.  But as his doubts
threatened to drown him, Holden appeared at the back door, naked, with two
beers in his hand.

   He handed a beer over to the boy and kept one for himself as he sank
into the water.  He brought out a bar of soap too, and they shared it as
they cleaned themselves and drank.  Terry's big belly started doing flips
and Holden decided it would be all right to touch it again.  It was nearing
late April now and he was seven months gone.  The kid was a marvel to look
at; his stomach simply didn't look real on his young, twelve year old body.
It was horribly swollen like an overripe watermelon and Holden could feel
how tight the skin was stretched over the baby.  Yet despite all the
stretching he was completely free of stretch marks.  He was already a
growing boy so it seemed his skin accommodated the pregnancy just fine.

   With the soap in his hand Holden glided it around Terry's stomach which
stuck out of the water like an island in the sea, and up his small pecs and
around his tiny pink nipples.  He wondered how a baby would drink from
them, being so small.

   Holden frowned.

   "What is it?" the boy asked.

   "With the virus and all, might be hard to find a home for your kid," he
said.

   "There ain't no hospitals no more?"

   Holden shrugged a shoulder while he continued to wash the boy.  "Could
be, but I got a feeling the virus hit the hospitals first.  "

   The baby wriggled inside its dark room and stuck a foot out.

   "You saying we're gonna keep the baby?"

   "I sure as hell hope not," said the man.  "I don't need a baby around
here.  It'll be hard enough keeping just the two of us fed now the world's
gone upside down."

   Terry bit his lip.  "Okay."

   Holden gave Terry's belly a pat.  "Don't worry, kid.  We'll find a home
for it, somehow."

   The boy stood, water dripping down his body, and Holden saw his
erection, small as a standing pencil.  Holden didn't say a word as the
pregnant tween straddled him and sat on his lap, his bulging middle pressed
firmly against his torso, arms wrapping around his neck.  Holden was at
full attention and he set aside his beer and reached in the water,
adjusting his cock and lifting the boy's ass so that it aligned properly.
Terry sat down on him, gently, and the man held him steady with a hand on
his hip and the other on his lopsided belly.  He was once again reminded of
how tight Terry was, and how six inches in he hit bottom despite having
four inches left.

   "You okay?" he asked, and the kid nodded breathlessly despite looking
somewhat pained.  "You sure?"

   "Just is so big," he said, but lifted his ass a little and dropped it
down on his dick again.  The water rippled around them, splashing with the
motion as the boy fucked himself on the man's stick, belly gyrating against
him.  Every time he dropped it on Holden, he felt his cock head bump
against the kid's cervix and the kid jerked in pain.

   "Don't come down on it so hard if it hurts," said Holden, helping the
kid steady his swollen body.

   "I want it harder," he panted.  "Like the first time you did me."

   "We have to ease into it, kid," he said, feeling the wetness building
inside the boy.  "Your body ain't used to me yet."

   The baby moved against Holden's chest as he used both hands to lift the
boy slightly off his lap and began doing most of the work.  He thrust his
hips in rapid succession, penetrating the boy's hole as the water rushed
and splashed all around them.  Shadow got up from her place beside to pool,
fleeing the flying water and Terry's loud moans.  The boy bucked wildly on
Holden and his baby-filled stomach bounced like a water balloon.  A breeze
swept through and cooled their wet skin as Holden grunted and plunged into
Terry one last time and released his load deep in his ass.

   Terry shrieked, clutching his baby belly as his own tiny dick sprayed
Holden's chest.

   Holden sagged backward and Terry leaned against him, resting his wet
head on the man's muscled shoulder.  The baby snuggled between them.

   "Okay, kid?" asked the man, his hand patting the boy awkwardly on his
back.

   "M-hm," he sighed, trying to catch his breath.  His lungs struggled with
the baby pressed against them.

   "Well, probably should get up now," he said.  "Got to figure out what
we're having for dinner."

   With some help from Holden, Terry eased off him and stood.  Cum dribbled
down his legs.  For a minute they both stood facing each other in the wash
basin, the tall muscular man with golden skin and the short pale boy with a
pregnant belly pressing against Holden's semi-hard cock.

   "Are you mad we had sex again?" asked Terry.

   Holden thought the boy looked handsome with his wet hair a mess and his
big eyes staring worriedly up at him.  He gave the kid's shoulder an
affectionate pat.  "We're good, kid," he said, stepping out of the tall
basin and turning to help the boy do the same.  "I'll get towels."

   The boy watched Holden's naked ass climb the steps up to the house,
feeling his cock grow hard again.  When Holden returned, he wound up a
towel real tight, grinning, and started popping Terry's butt with it.  The
kid laughed and began waddle-running away while Holden trailed after him,
popping him ruthlessly again and again until his ass was red and they were
breathless from laughter.

   Holden wound up the towel one last time and Terry dodged out of the way
as fast as his belly would let him, but his foot caught on a rock and the
ground jumped up to meet him.  He threw his hands out to catch his fall.

   But Holden caught the naked falling boy and scooped him up in his
bulging arms, holding him like a baby.  "Who's my widdle guy, huh?" he
cooed, mockingly, tickling his back as he carried him around the yard in
circles.  "Who's my sweet widdle baby?"

   For a minute Terry thought he'd split his sides from laughing so hard.
He had never seen Holden like this; so happy, so ...  alive.  Holden placed
Terry on the ground, his back pressing into the grass as the man tickled
him under his arms and around his neck and belly.  He flailed his arms and
legs wildly and soon Holden was in stitches.

   "You look like a damn turtle!" he crowed, falling on the ground as he
pointed at Terry's stomach.  They laughed even harder when terry couldn't
get back up.

   After a while when the laughter abated, they sat together next to the
tilled garden in all their nakedness watching the sun go down over the
woodland hills of Fargrove.  Holden wrapped his arm around the kid,
bringing him close against him.

   "What's made you so happy all of a sudden?" asked Terry.

   Holden shrugged and gestured out across the red-orange horizon.  "It's
all gone.  Society, rules, everything." He thought back to Main Street, and
to Lucky and those men.  And that ten year old boy they had their claws on.
They'll need to be dealt with , he thought.  Before they deal with us. 
They were the only thing standing between Fargrove and freedom.



   Chapter 6: The Footsteps

   Holden still had his walls up, built tall and strong.  Sometimes he
allowed the boy to share his bed or cuddle with him on the couch but most
of the time he continued being distant.  He wasn't interested in feeling
the baby kick, nor really about anything.  The momentary burst of happiness
he had several days ago never returned.  He went back to the barn and
finished working on his motorcycle in silence, always keeping his
granddaddy's shotgun close.  They spoke occasionally throughout the day and
rarely Terry would make him smile about something, but it never lasted.  He
seemed real angry and would snap at the littlest things.  Terry found
himself tiptoeing around Holden, trying not to incur his wrath.

   One day, Terry finally found the courage to address it.  They were
tending the garden together, swatting away flies that seemed to have come
out of nowhere, when Holden was being particularly brooding.  The pregnant
boy stood up, his hands supporting his back as the sun beat down on him.

   "What's eating you, Hold?" he asked with an edge of worry in his voice.
"You just ain't been the same lately."

   The man looked up at him for a minute as he uprooted more weeds from the
south end of the plot.  It was the last area of the garden that still
needed to be cleared.  "Running out of cigarettes," he said.  "And we'll
run out of beer in a few days.  And food after that." He sat back on his
knees and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.  He was
slightly sunburned.  "Just worried is all."

   Terry frowned.  "Well, why don't you go back to town and get more? 
Ain't there lots of that stuff left down there?  Who else is around to take
it?"

   "No one," he said, tensing up and avoiding the kid's eyes.  He took off
his gloves and climbed onto his feet.  "I ain't going back down there."

   "Why not?"

   "Cause I ain't," he snapped, taking up the shotgun that rested against
the wheelbarrow.

   Holden hadn't told him about Lucky, the mayor, Pastor Daisy or the rogue
officers that occupied the town, and he made it a point not to tell him
about the ten year old boy.  He didn't want the boy looking over his
shoulder, worried and fearful for the rest of his days.  Holden was working
on a plan for getting rid of the Mayor and his religious, hypocritical,
child-molesting ex-officers.  But until then, the boy deserved some peace.

   What really bothered him was the bodies.  The blood.  The smell.  It had
been several days since last he went down the hill and he could only
imagine what it must smell like; what it must look like seeing all those
people slowly decaying.  Their bloody faces appeared like apparitions in
his dreams and sometimes he woke up in a cold sweat despite the warm Texas
nights.  He heard that ten year old boy's screams echoing in his head. 
Kyle , he told himself.  His name is Kyle.

   He strode up the back porch and sank into one of the patio chairs with
weathered floral cushions, struck a match and lit one of his last handful
of Marlboros.  He watched Terry filling up the wash basin with well water,
bucket by bucket, as his boy-muscles were offset by his heavy middle. 
Holden shook his head, unwilling to believe just how big Terry was getting.
Day by day he grew a little more, and day by day he grew a little more
encumbered.  It worried him how fast his belly grew.  And that his hips had
still yet to widen.

   By the time Holden finished his cigarette Terry had settled into the tub
and sat by himself in the cool water, rubbing his baby bump, looking up at
him with hopeful eyes.  He flicked his cigarette and brought a towel out
for the kid.  The boy wanted his affection, but Holden couldn't give him
what he wanted.

   "Start washing clothes when you're done," he said, handing him the
towel. They had been washing clothes the old fashioned way, and it made him
pine for his old washer and dryer.  "Hang them up tight this time, kid. 
Don't need our clothes flying away in the wind."

   "All right," said Terry, his belly bobbing out of the water.

   Holden paused at the sight of the wet, bulbous skin crowned with a
thumb-sized bellybutton.  He placed his big hand on it and looked at the
boy.  "You okay?"

   "I'm okay," he said, frowning.  "Are you?"

   "Just fine," he said.

   He got up and headed toward the barn to feed the chickens.



   A few days later marked the beginning of May and Terry already missed
the air conditioning.  He woke up in his damp bed with the covers thrown
off him and the baby elbowing his insides painfully.  He grabbed at his
ribs and pressed down, trying to get the baby off of them, but the unborn
child wouldn't give him the relief he craved.  He laid in bed for a long
time stroking his belly and watching the baby jump and do cartwheels inside
him, wincing all the while.  There wasn't much room in him now and his
stomach had grown real tight, but the baby didn't seem to mind.

   Flies buzzed through the house as he walked out onto the back porch in
his brown boxers, which were really Holden's.  The old hand-me-downs Holden
had given him a while back no longer fit, nor did any of those clothes from
Holden's high school years, so he went on borrowing clothes from the man's
current wardrobe.  But Holden was a skinny guy, all lean and sinewy, and
his shirts failed to contain his shifting, lopsided stomach.  Sometimes he
wore his wife-beaters, which were stretchy and comfy and form-fitting.  It
was a rare day he wore shorts, mostly cause they hardly fit anymore.

   He watched the sunlight spreading over the misty hills as he scratched
his belly and tried to soothe his squirming child.  Shadow was chasing
something around the garden, trampling some of the seeds.

   Terry started hollering at the dog, hobbling down the steps toward the
garden.  "Shadow!  Shadow you stop that!" He waved his arms at the dog. 
"Get outta the garden!  Get!"

   It was only when he was closer that he saw what she was chasing: a tiny
little golden chick.  Terry stopped and looked back toward the barn.  There
were a few yellow birds scattered across the property between him and
there, dead.  His whole body went hot as realization spread: he forgot to
close the chicken pen last night.

   Holden's gonna kill me!  he thought, closing in on Shadow and grabbing
her by her collar.  The chick ran full-speed back toward the barn, chirping
like Terry had never heard.

   "Bad dog!" he shouted at Shadow, smacking her head.  "You killed those
chicks, Shadow!  Why'd you do that!  Now I'm gonna get in trouble."

   Shadow whined, shrinking a little bit under Terry's hand.

   He let the dog go when he was convinced she wouldn't go chasing after
the chicks again and Shadow trotted away to lay beneath an oak tree, her
ears back in a sad kind of way.  "That's right, you know you did bad,"
Terry said to her.  He looked between the trampled garden and the dead
chicks and wondered what he should do.  He started for the barn, picking up
four of the dead birds along the way, swatting flies as he went.  The rest
of them were inside the barn, huddled in their coop in an effort to hide
from the big bad monster that just slaughtered a few members of their
family.  He picked up a fifth dead bird, closed the gate, and threw them
into the garbage can.

   The garden proved to be harder work.  He knelt on his knees, his
pendulous stomach hanging beneath him, as he tried his best to fix the
soil.

   A voice from the house startled him.

   "The hell's the commotion out here?" shouted Holden, half-naked and
half-asleep with his shotgun in hand.  His blonde hair was everywhere.

   "Shadow trampled the garden," he yelled back and stood to his feet,
putting both hands on the small of his back.

   The sun shone red across the house.  Holden came down and surveyed the
damage.  He knelt and examined the tracks in the soil and frowned.  "This
is a chicken print," he said, looking suddenly toward the barn.  "You close
the chicken pen last night, son?"

   "Yes," he lied, fearful to tell the truth.

   Holden's eyes squinted at him for half a second before he started off in
that direction.  Terry waddled after him, full of panic.

   "I swear I did."

   Inside the barn he stopped and scrutinized more footprints, including
those of an adolescent boy.  Holden put all the details together and knew
Terry was lying.  Not only was the kid acting suspicious, but the boy's
tracks were fresh.  He followed them to the garbage can, opened the lid,
and looked inside.

   He stood there for a few seconds in absolute silence before kicking over
the garbage can and whirling on the kid, who flinched away.  "You fucking
lied to me," he said, his face red and full of venom.  The muscles in his
body tightened and he stood over the twelve year old like a tree.  "Why the
fuck did you lie to me, huh?" he screamed, pushing the kid's shoulder,
causing Terry to almost fall.

   "I'm sorry," Terry said through his tears.

   "We needed those fucking chickens, son!" he shouted, stepping slowly
toward the boy.  "And we need that garden if we wanna live, you
understanding me?  You wanna die?  You wanna starve, huh?  Answer my
fucking question."

   "No," Terry wailed, backing up against the barn door, hugging himself.

   "No what?!"

   "No I don't wanna starve!"

   Holden grabbed the kid by his long hair, clenched it in his fist, and
with his other hand held a finger to Terry's face.  "Then don't fucking
leave the pen open." Terry stared at the finger through his tears and felt
his heart ripping out.  "Go to your room.  I don't wanna see your fucking
face all day, you understand?"

   The kid started waddling toward the house as fast as he could, holding
his belly as his bare feet carried him across the Texas dirt.

   "And quit crying like a pussy," he shouted after him.  "You're twelve
fucking years old, for fuck's sake!"



   Holden spent the rest of the day angrily repairing the garden and
replanting the seeds that Shadow had demolished.  His frustration lasted
until he lit up some reefer on the back porch at noon.  He kicked back,
sweaty and smelly, and blew smoke into the breeze.  He listened to the
sound of the trees swaying and the songs of the summer birds.  For a minute
it seemed like any old regular day, and it was only when he thought about
it that he remembered everyone was dead.

   The boy hadn't made a peep all day.  Sometimes he thought he heard
sniffling or faint, muffled sobs and Holden thought he had been a little
too rough on him that morning.  He was pregnant and hormonal and scared. 
He had lost control of his anger and he blamed it on running out of
cigarettes.  The smoked the last pack two days ago and all that was left
was his addiction.  He thought of going back down to Fargrove and braving a
confrontation with those men but thought better of it.  If he showed up
down there and they caught him it would surely mean his death, and if he
died there would be no one left to protect the boy.

   But now there was another problem: their food supply was almost
exhausted.  They had another couple of days at best.  Something had to be
done ...  and fast.

   Come evening, Holden went to Terry's room to check on him, bringing his
shotgun with him.  He found him fast asleep with his arms cradled around
his bump.  He knelt at his bedside, repentant, as moonlight came in through
the window and the candle on the nightstand flickered orange.  His
quivering shadow seemed like a giant on the wall.  Gently, he put his hand
on the boy's face, and Terry opened his soft eyes to look at him.

   "Hey, kid," whispered the man.  "You okay?"

   "I'm okay."

   Holden smiled at him.  His face had become scruffy lately.  "I'm going
hunting early in the morning," he said, leaning the shotgun against the
nightstand.  "Keep this with you until I get back."

   The boy picked his head up slightly, his mouth turning downward.  "How
long will you be gone?"

   "Dunno," he said.  "Half the day, maybe more."

   "Don't go," he said.  "I need you."

   "I know." He stood up and left the shotgun where it was.  "Keep it with
you at all times, all right?"

   "Okay."

   He closed the door behind him and went to his room.  He got into his bed
naked and stared out of the window for a while as the moonlit trees swayed
darkly outside.  A few hours later when it was good and late, he heard
Terry padding into his room and felt him climb into bed with him.  He
pressed his great big stomach against the man and laid his head down on his
chest.  Holden listened to the boy breathe for a while, and felt the baby
moving against his side.

   "I'm sorry," said Terry after a long stretch of minutes.

   "Don't be sorry, kid," he said.

   Terry let his hand wander down the man's waist and soon the dark room
was filled with the sounds of pleasure.  There was no position the boy
couldn't get into, even despite his pregnancy.  His flexible young body did
whatever Holden wanted and Terry eagerly complied.  The summer crickets
chirped in unison outside, rubbing their legs together to make a song.  The
boys made a different kind of music; the music of flesh on flesh and the
cries of love.  He came deep inside the kid, his arms wrapped around his
bulging stomach, and for the minutia of a second he thought maybe it would
be all right to have a baby in the house.  But the second passed quickly
and he remembered that there was nothing in this world that he wanted less.

   They separated from each other, allowing their bodies to breathe in the
heat, and soon morning came and when Terry opened his eyes Holden was gone.
He got up, sore from the night's passion, and collected the shotgun from
his room.  Holden had taken the truck and Terry saw the ruts in the ground
leading off into the back toward the woodlands.

   The day dragged on and noon came.  Terry worked on the garden some and
when he got hungry he finished what was left of the rice crispy treats,
rubbing his belly in wide circles as he and Shadow sat on the porch.  He
wondered why Shadow didn't go with Holden, but he guessed maybe she wasn't
much of a hunting dog.  Or maybe he left her there so she could protect
him. He patted her on the head, comforted by the thought.  When his snack
was eaten, the pregnant twelve year old waddled into the dark barn and fed
the chicks.  He watched them peck at the feed, his arms crossed over his
belly.

   He missed the egg sandwiches Holden used to make for him, full of cheese
and bacon.  He missed cereal.  Ice cream.  He missed milk.  We need a cow ,
he thought and figured it wouldn't be too hard to find one.  It was Texas,
after all.  But thinking about food made him hungrier and ignited a hundred
different cravings at once.

   While the boy leaned against one of the posts inside the barn scratching
his belly and talking to the chicks, an eerie, unsettling feeling started
in his tail bone and coiled up his spine.  His breath caught in his lungs
as he twisted around, expecting to find someone there.

   But there wasn't.

   Only the feeling didn't go away.  He looked around for the shotgun and
realized he left it on the porch.  His spine tingled all the more as he
quietly made his way toward the barn's exit.  And as he moved, footsteps
crunched in the dirt behind him.



   By mid-afternoon, Holden's truck climbed up the hill toward the back of
the house, puttering loudly as it went.  He got out of the truck and called
Terry's name as he unlatched the tailgate where a nice big pregnant doe lay
dead, shot clean through the heart with his rifle.  He hadn't been hunting
for a good long while and the hunt had given him some of his old
personality back.  He was excited to smoke some venison by the fire
tonight; just him and the boy and the wide empty world.  They might have
been running out of beer, but he had a bottle of whiskey stashed away.  He
wondered if the kid liked whiskey.

   "Terry!" he called again.  "Come help me a minute!"

   He looked up the steps of the house toward the front door, waiting for
the pregnant boy to appear.

   But he never did.



   Chapter 7: The Cell

   The church had burned in the fires with most of Fargrove's small,
historic downtown; old brick buildings and shops old people once
frequented; that only the dead now inhabited.  The steeple, once opulent
and tall, now lay in the thick of the wreckage, charred black and melted.
The Downtown Deli, once the bastion for delicious sub-sandwiches, was a
heap of rock, as was the Cafe, Darling's Steakhouse and the Loyalty Bank.
Mayor Thompson surveyed the rubble with a satisfactory grin from his office
in the Town Hall, as he had done every morning since the collapse of the
world.  He and his staff once worked tirelessly in this building to manage
Fargrove's affairs.  It was much easier now that everyone was dead.

   The mayor leaned back in his chair in his hot, muggy office, unbuttoned
his shirt a little more and remembered the humiliation he had only recently
endured.  Public scorn; the national outcry for justice.  Terra Wallace,
that boy's mother, was a liability from day one.  He had known it and given
into his particular need regardless, pushing wads of cash into her shaking
palm.  The woman was an addict and might have been a good lay once, but he
hadn't paid to tickle her used-up clam; he paid to tickle him.  That kind,
blonde, handsome boy with such a gentle laugh and smile.  He had heart and
spirit -- unlike that younger boy, Kyle, who was a mewling mess.  Kyle
received his death sentence nearly nine months ago; there was no way that
boy's tiny hips could ever birth that child.

   Kyle's grandfather, Mr.  Yeller, had been bought generously and
intimated fiercely, and it proved enough to keep his pregnant nine year old
grandson hidden from the public eye.  Such a sight would have caused an
uproar within the community and questions would have been asked.  Of
course, the mayor had it all rigged for the grandfather to take the fall
for the grandson's pregnancy despite the mayor's involvement -- and even
bribed the physician who would have administered the paternity test.  But
all that never came to be.  The big fat child occupying Kyle's tiny womb
was undoubtedly his, and in just a short while he would become a father
again.

   If the boy lived.

   He was finished with Kyle anyway.  He had been far too much trouble
since that first night nine months ago.  Nine year olds aren't supposed to
be capable of getting pregnant.  The whole thing was a nightmare to conceal
from the public -- not that the public was something to worry about
anymore.

   It was Terrance's mother who ended up being the wildcard.  Her and her
meth-eaten brain had died with the rest of the afflicted, but it was such
luck that the boy was alive after all, in the hands of Fargrove's very own
Fargrove, no less; that last drop of blood from a defunct historical
lineage.  `Pregnant 12 Year Old Boy Missing', `Abduction of Pregnant Boy
Shakes Fargrove'.  Oh, how those headlines had torn the Mayor to pieces ...
and scared him more than he could ever admit.  And then his fears proved
right when an old condom was found in Terrance's bedroom.  And then
scandal. And then jail.

   But he had not expected that; for Holden Fargrove to be a boy-lover like
himself.  They had more in common than he first realized.

   He smiled pleasantly and drank his bourbon, knowing soon the boy would
be delivered back to him, where he belonged.  Young boys were such precious
commodities these days.  Hard to come by now that most of them were dead.
Soon, the men and the women left to this world would have to start breeding
to replenish the supply; to prepare for the future.  Already there were
some pregnancies just beginning among the remnant, especially in regard to
the men who couldn't seem to control themselves.  Lucky, in particular,
seemed to be well-apt in spreading his seed amongst officers and the
civilian survivors as well.  There must be rules, the mayor thought as he
sipped the bourbon and looked out the window where the flies swarmed.  He
swatted a few from his glass.  Rules.  It wouldn't do to have my entire
police force pregnant all at once.  He knew they were rutting like wild
animals, empowered by newfound anarchical freedom.  There must be rules, he
repeated in his mind.  Order, control.  He decided he would need to have a
talking to the men.  They needed structure and discipline.

   They were the rare ones, those who lived.  When the virus was ravaging
Fargrove, Mayor Thompson and his other nineteen colleagues facing charges
were sealed tight in the old bunker below the Town Hall where the jail was.
The sheriff's office shared space with the mayor's office, and beneath it
was the infamous Fargrove jail; a bunker built by a paranoid mayor from the
60s who feared a commie invasion.  It was converted into a jail in the 90s,
and as the mayor sat in his chair now, free and alive, he wondered if he
should be thankful to that tweaked-out whore for exposing his perversions.
The bunker had saved his life and the lives of those who were down there
with him.  They didn't even know the world was ending until Lucky, being
lucky enough to have immunity from the virus, came down, unlocked their
cells, and gave them a `get out of jail free' card.

   The virus seemed to be short-lived.  It came, it conquered, and died
with the bodies...for the most part.  It had taken weeks to figure it out.
The town was now on the mend.  There were twenty-nine survivors total,
including he and the officers, and they banded together under his and
Pastor Daisy's leadership.  Already, the mayor had plans for the future of
this little town.  If America truly had fallen, then it was up to him to
come up with something new and better for his community.  America was going
down the tubes anyway, he thought as he swirled his glass of amber liquid.
It's time for a new era, with new rules.

   Terry would soon be back in his care.  He was more excited than he could
say at the prospect of seeing that handsome face again, to hold him in his
arms as he did those months ago, and cradle his head against his chest. 
The baby was of no consequence, although imperative for the future of
Fargrove and indeed the human race; but he only cared for the boy, and to
feel release inside him once more.

   By afternoon, the mayor saw Lucky's truck coming down Main Street and he
felt his heart soar.  The survivors had made great progress clearing the
streets of bodies and abandoned cars, but there were always more to clean
up.  But even so, the truck roared down the street and already the mayor
could see the boy inside, nestled between two men.  Thompson strode from
his office and down the stairs of the Town Hall's gilded reception room,
lit now only by natural lighting from high windows.  The room was warm and
muggy, thick with Texas heat.  Lucky and two other officers escorted the
boy through the doors.

   "Here he is, Mr.  Mayor," said Lucky, pushing the boy toward him a
little.  The mayor picked up on the police captain's mocking tone, but said
nothing.  Soon, his luck will run out .

   Terry had grown since last he saw him -- in more ways than one.  He was
wearing only boxer shorts, the waistband stretched low on his enormous baby
bump.  The mayor wondered how the poor child could even walk with that
thing hanging off his waist.  The bellybutton was too large, the stomach
too tight, too ...  out there .  His thin, young body seemed nearly ruined.
Yet, all was not lost.  He was skinny everywhere else.  His face had even
hollowed out some, and his thin arms had grown a little tougher.  He had
even sprouted a few inches.

   "My, my," said the mayor, approaching the boy.  "Aren't you becoming a
little man?" He reached to pat Terry's head but the boy dodged out of the
way, taking a step backward.  "Now, now, Terrance.  None of that."

   Lucky pushed him from behind.

   "It's quite all right, Captain," said the mayor, returning to stare at
the pregnant adolescent.  "That is no way to treat the boy carrying my
child, is it?"

   The officer bristled.  The mayor was aware that Lucky had been claiming
paternity over both Terry and Kyle's babies to the other men, yet the mayor
had tasted both of the boys first.  They were his, he was sure of it.

   Light came in through the high windows, filling the powerless building
with golden beams.  The mayor could hardly contain himself seeing Terry lit
so beautifully, so handsomely as he stood before him.  He must have him. 
He must have him now .

   But business first, he reminded himself.  He tore his eyes away from the
boy and addressed his officers.  "Where's Fargrove?"

   Lucky ran his hands through Terry's thick blonde hair as he spoke.  "His
truck was gone.  Probably scavenging for supplies."

   "Made it real easy," said the other officer, Daniel, who was slightly
fat around the middle.  The buttons of his old uniform were already
straining.  Probably pregnant.

   The mayor's lip curled with displeasure.  "I want him rotting in one of
the cells.  Find him.  Today.  "

   "Understood, sir," said Lucky, turning to his henchmen.  "You heard the
mayor.  Hop to it."

   The officers went back out through the squeaking doors, leaving Terry
alone with the two men.  "He's ripe, ain't he?" said Lucky, circling around
to get a good look at the boy's oblong body.  "A baby that big's gotta be
mine, boss."

   Mayor Thompson suppressed an eye-roll.  "You seen Pastor Daisy?"

   Lucky shook his head.  "Last I heard he was leading some kind of prayer
at his house."

   "Leave us, Captain," he said.

   Lucky lingered a moment longer to rub Terry's belly with his calloused
hand and make a kissy noise before limping out the doors.  The mayor's eyes
followed the hobbling police captain until he was gone.

   "Sorry about him, truly," said the mayor, putting his arm around the
boy's naked shoulders and leading him toward the steps.  "He's a monster.
I'm sure you remember."

   Terry said nothing.

   "I know you're scared, but you'll be fine with me," he said.  "I
promise." The mayor helped the pregnant boy up the stairs, one at a time.
"You've grown so large, Terrance.  I never thought such a young body could
carry so much weight.  But that's all right, at least the rest of you is
still much like I remember." When they were up the stairs, the mayor led
the way through a few corridors and into an office that had been converted
into his own personal bedroom.  There were flies everywhere and it stank of
alcohol and sweat.  The heat was outrageous, but opening the windows would
let even more of the swarm of flies inside.  The nasty buggers had bred
themselves into millions and were feasting on the corpses.  It was becoming
a problem.

   The mayor sat down in a chair and made Terry stand in front of him.  His
belly was right in his face.  "My goodness, so big," he said, placing both
of his hands on either side of the fleshy globe.  He could feel the baby
through the skin; an arm and a leg here, a knee there, the head down there.
"Head-down already, that's good.  Let's see, when are you due again?"

   "June," said Terry sheepishly.

   "Next month, hm?" said the mayor, still feeling around Terry's stomach.
"Well, we might find a way to induce you early.  Judging by your size
you'll probably need an induction as soon as possible.  I'm really not sure
how I can enjoy you with this having grown so large, but I'll make do." The
man felt the baby move to one side, making Terry's belly lopsided.  The
mayor made a sound of disgust and removed his hands.  "Take off your
underwear."

   Terry stood unmoving with a look of worry on his face.  The mayor
thought he might burst into tears, but the boy seemed to be swallowing
them. Good, he thought.  I hate when they cry .

   "Do as I say, Terrance," said the mayor.

   Slowly, the boy slid his boxers down his legs and let them pile under
his feet.

   "Wonderful," said the oogling man, turning Terry around with his hands
to get a good look.  From behind, it was obvious the boy was pregnant; his
sides jutted left and right, especially on one side where the baby was. 
But his derrière was still the same, though maybe firmer.  Carrying around
all that baby took a lot of strength.  "Wonderful," he repeated.  "Now
crawl onto the bed for me and get on your hands and knees."

   The boy bit his lip.  "I don't want to."

   The mayor slapped his face so hard his cheek turned bright red and his
eyes started to water.

   Terry screamed and fled toward the door.

   But the mayor caught him by his arms, swung him around, and threw him
onto the bed.  The adolescent bounced on the mattress, his big belly
crashing into the pillows.  He felt his insides cramp and he sat against
the headboard, holding his stomach, watching the silver-streaked mayor
unbutton his shirt and unbuckle his pants.  He had some muscle on his chest
and arms and back, though his gut was a little flabby.  Everything sagged.
"I said you would be fine," said the mayor, his pants hitting the floor and
his cock springing out.  A fly buzzed around and landed on it.  "And you
will be.  Have I ever hurt you before?"

   "Just now," said Terry, taking a pillow and hiding behind it.

   Thompson crawled toward him on the bed, grinning, and when he drew close
he took the pillow and ripped it from the boy's arms, exposing his pregnant
flesh.

   "Stop!" the boy said.  "Don't touch me!"

   "No one will rescue you, Terrance," said the man, grabbing his ankles
and pulling him away from the headboard.  The child latched onto the edge
of the bed with his hands as he was dragged belly-down along the dirty
sheets.  "Your man, Holden, will soon be rotting in a cell.  And if you
scream, my compatriots might come and join in on the fun.  They do love
fucking little boys, especially ripe ones, I've learned.  It does wonders
for moral, letting them fuck Kyle.  Now there's two little boys to fuck. 
They'll be so pleased."

   The mayor forced Terry's butt into the air so that his grotesquely fat
pregnant belly hung out of sight beneath him.  Terry screamed when the
older man pressed himself against his wet hole and drove it in.  He had
been forcing Kyle into doggy style lately.  He couldn't stand the sight of
a bouncing belly jutting up between them, especially when the baby was
moving.

   "How's that feel?" he panted, forcing himself further into Terry's
tunnel.  He couldn't go very deep, but that was normal for a developing
child.  At least Terry's hole wasn't as shallow as Kyle's.

   The boy didn't reply, only screamed a little and grunted in pain.

   The mayor had been waiting for this for so long.  The reports of him
missing back in February had broken his heart, and when Lucky found him at
Fargrove's Ranch he thought maybe there really was a God.  And now as he
rutted Terry's pregnant ass, he found God once more.  He felt Terry's
young, tight walls squeezing him.  I'm in Heaven.

   Soon, the boy's moans and groans brought Lucky back up the stairs.  He
watched from the doorway, silently, as the old mayor thrust into the
pregnant tween.  The mayor's back was facing him allowing Lucky to
eavesdrop.  There wasn't much to see, unfortunately.  The mayor was
ridiculously and laughably awful at sex.  He might have been their de facto
leader, being the last politician in the region, but he was an utter
failure between the sheets.  The mayor unleashed a big sigh and collapsed
onto the bed next to the pregnant boy.  Lucky stepped back outside and
quietly listened from the corridor.

   Terry rolled over on his side away from the mayor, who spooned his aged
body against the boy, wrapping an arm around his bulging stomach.  "Lovely,
so lovely," said the mayor.  "You're wetter than I remember, and far better
at it.  I'm sure Fargrove has been teaching you all manner of sexual
perversions."

   The boy stared out of the window, wondering how he could escape back to
Holden.  His belly was still cramping though not as much as before, and the
baby had quieted inside him.  The old man's hands roamed his body, around
his chest -- which had grown sensitive lately -- and around his little
cock. No matter how much the mayor touched him there, it would not spring
to life.  Terry's revulsion for the man was too much.

   "Have you missed me, Terrance?" His voice was a whisper of wind against
the back of his neck.  He began kissing at his neck and ear, nibbling them
like a rat.

   Terry watched the flies swarming outside.  "No."

   He felt the mayor tense.  His hand stopped roaming his stretched skin.
"What did you say?"

   At that moment, Lucky appeared into the doorframe.  "How's it going,
boss?"

   "Take this ungrateful boy to a cell," said the mayor, sitting up on the
bed.  His face had grown cherry red and his fists were balled.  "You and
the others teach him a lesson!"

   "You got it, Mr.  Mayor," said Lucky, entering the room and heaving the
naked pregnant Terry onto his feet.

   Down the hallway, Lucky popped Terry's ass with a firm hand, causing him
to yip.  He struggled against the man's forceful hands.  "You ain't gonna
escape me, little boy." He led him down a long flight of stairs and through
a door leading into the darkness.  "I've been waiting for this for a long
time."

   The heavy iron door swung open into darkness and Lucky guided the
adolescent through it and into the cold, quiet bunker beneath the Town
Hall.

   "Stand there," said Lucky.

   The man's footsteps faded away and terror came up through the blackness
to surround Terry as he whipped his head around, eyes wide, searching for
light.  Distantly, he heard the echoes of clicking and clacking, and the
sudden whirr of an engine.  One by one lights flickered on.  The
subterranean jail was illuminated, revealing a vast low-ceiling square
space filled with over forty cells.  Steel bars gouged the ceiling and
floor creating rectangular cells.

   Only one was occupied.

   Lucky returned and gripped Terry's arm, pulling him along past the rows
of metal bars.  Through them, Terry's eyes found a boy younger than he was
whose belly was even bigger than his own.  The boy sat up at the sound of
approaching footsteps and fear shot like lasers out of his eyes.  As they
drew nearer, the twelve year old could see how sickly the other child
looked; drained, pale, gaunt except for the ridiculously large belly
resting like an oversized 8-ball in his lap.  There was a cot on the
concrete floor in one corner of the cell and a smelly bucket in the other

   The limping man opened the cell adjacent the pregnant ten year old and
shoved Terry into it.  Terry fled to the corner of the confined space,
pressing his back against the bars, his eyes following Lucky as closed the
cell door.

   "I want you to watch something, Terry," he said.

   There was a cruel look on his face; a coiled smile that made his cheeks
fold.  He unlocked Kyle's cell door, entered, and closed it behind him. 
Kyle, naked and hugely pregnant, hugged himself and started whimpering,
shaking.  Lucky unzipped his pants.  The shirt came off, and in the
flickering lowlights of the bunker Terry could see jagged tattoos on his
muscular chest and upper arms.  Terry remembered the tattoos from those
long nights in his bedroom when his mouth was muffled and his arms and legs
were tied; when his screams could not leave his throat as the men kept
coming.  Yes, he remembered those hands, calloused and hateful, greedy and
strong.

   The generator growled endlessly across the space.

   Lucky was quick; his hands latched out like striking snakes and grabbed
Kyle's wrists and wrenched them apart.  The pregnant ten year old struggled
wildly at first but was quickly defeated by the man's size and strength,
and Lucky forced him down on the long, squeaky cot.

   "Kyle hasn't learned to stop struggling," said the naked police captain
as his hard-on swayed at his waist.  He knelt over the boy, joining him on
the cot, pressing his weight down on his wrists that were held near his
head.  Kyle was kicking his legs like an overturned turtle, so Lucky
dead-legged the boy with his fists, unleashing a wail from the boy.  The
officer pinned Kyle against the cot with one of the child's legs in the air
and turned him slightly to the side, so his pendulous stomach rested
against the cot's mesh, which groaned beneath their weight.  Lucky rubbed
Kyle's pregnancy, giving it a firm grab.

   "Are you watching, Terry?" he asked.  "I want you to watch as he screams
and cries and struggles." Lucky's red and veiny cock began its foray into
the ten year old's pregnant ass.  The young boy immediately began squirming
and bucking and trying to escape, but the officer punched him in the face
and slapped him hard on the belly.  "I want you to watch and learn, Terry!"
Lucky roared, his voice echoing across the bunker, as he began to ride Kyle
faster.  "Learn that struggling ..." He slapped Kyle's red belly again. 
"...gets you in trouble."

   Lucky, the mayor, several of the officers and others in the mayor's
staff had all formed a club a few years ago.  They all shared an interest
in fucking young boys, and Lucky in particular had an interest in
impregnating them.  He'd impregnated a handful through the years before the
mayor started the club, all around the ages of twelve to fourteen.  His
seed made them grow monstrously big, and he would spend all nine months
with the boys fucking them, rubbing their bellies, jizzing down their
throats.  Nearly all of his meager salary went to funding his little
escapades and he had been rewarded with a handful of sons and daughters
whom he had very little to do with.  But when he joined the mayor's club,
the fun multiplied.  They had their way with over a dozen young boys, some
younger than Kyle.  But it had been Kyle whom he had the most fun with.

   Seeing a nine year old (now ten) grow fat with his child had taken him
far over the edge.  His tiny body was decimated by his overgrown belly
which looked like it could hardly contain the whelp inside.  His
bellybutton had been shallow before, but now it stuck out like a third
nipple.

   He fucked Kyle now as hard as was possible, bottoming out deeper than he
should against his cervix.  In his lust, Lucky squeezed the boy's belly in
his large hand, feeling the fetus bouncing like a pinball.  He relished the
sight of it, the sounds of it; the screaming, wailing cries of pain and
anguish and helplessness.  The young boy's face was crawling with pain.

   And then it was over with.

   The final thrust.

   The fluids.

   Blood.

   "Well," said Lucky, pulling out.  His dick was slimy and wet, and from
the ten year old's ass spilled thick mucus laced with pearly white cum. 
Kyle was whimpering and holding his gigantic stomach.  "His due date was a
few days ago anyway." Lucky shot a grin at Terry.  "Were you watching?  Did
you learn anything?"

   Terry nodded.

   "That's damn good," he said.  "Because we're gonna throw a birthday
party for young Kyle's baby, and you'll be next."



   Chapter 8: The Fire



   The pastor sat in a chair facing Terry's bed with one hand on his
pregnant belly and the other hand perched at his asshole, fingers searching
the wetness therein.  The boy's nutsack, hairless and pink, hung down on
the old man's hand.  His penis was flaccid, pleasureless, despite the man's
probing.  Pastor Daisy's rubbed the child's advanced pregnancy in great,
round circles.



   Kyle's horrific screams were too much for Terry's conscience to bear
knowing that it would be his turn soon.  Even with his hands clamped over
his ears he could hear all of it: the guttural caterwauling like tiny
chainsaws scraping his brain.  His eyes clenched shut until he saw stars
bursting against the back of his eyelids.



   He did not have to look to see the twenty or so men gathered 360 degrees
all around the outside of Kyle's jail cell as one man each took his turn
inside.  It was live porn, better than they'd ever seen.  If the world
still stood proper, it would have been illegal.  If the world still stood
proper, those same men would still be here within this underground bunker,
jailed and facing justice for heinous crimes against children.



   He did not have to look to see Daniel, ex-cop, with a fresh-planted baby
growing in his belly, plowing his lengthy cock fully into ten year old
Kyle. The man, probably in his late twenties, was smashing his own belly
against Kyle's who had his thin legs splayed open and into the air.  It had
been four hours since Lucky broke his waters, and Kyle's howling went on
unabated.  All the men were there including Mayor Thompson and Pastor
Daisy. They played games with him -- adult games -- fucking, slapping,
fingering, fisting.  A few of the ex-officers had some medical training and
assisted in a handful of road-side births through the years.  They knew
what not to do someone in labor.



   And did them anyways.



   Terry could not stop his ears from the sounds of lubricated flesh
clapping together, or the men laughing and moaning.  Or the pastor
murmuring to him as he stroked his curved stomach, saying: "Don't worry,
son.  We've been helping young Kyle stretch his ass since he came back in
our care.  We'll help you do the same, that way it don't hurt so bad."



   The old man's five fingers were inside him and he felt the joints
circling the wet walls of his birthing chute.  Holden had a big cock, long
and wide, but even it didn't compare to Pastor Daisy's big hands.  He was a
large man and his fingers were fat, and his dirty nails hadn't been
trimmed. When they scraped at his insides his body would jump involuntarily
with jolts of pain.



   "My fist is about as big as a baby's head," Pastor was saying as Terry's
unborn child pushed both its feet out above the bellybutton beneath the
man's bloated hand.  His other hand worked inward until his knuckles
threatened to go in.  "I'll work on you long as I can, make it less painful
for you when your blessed time comes."



   The knuckles popped in and Terry bucked his body in an effort to get
away from the probing, but the pastor pushed down on his belly and pinned
him on the cot beneath him.  "Burns, don't it, son?" said Pastor Daisy,
chuckling.  "That's the Lord's fire working on you."



   In the adjacent cell it was Mayor Thompson's turn again.  He towered
over the small, giant-bellied ten year old with his cock out.  Kyle's
banshee-wailing was endless as contractions clenched his gut in effort to
move the baby into the birth canal.  The boy's hips just weren't wide
enough for progress to be made efficiently.  They all knew ten year old
boys just weren't made to have babies.  Even Terry, who was almost
thirteen, was at great risk.  The mayor sighed.  "I wish someone would shut
this idiot boy's mouth," he said.  "Lucky, where's that gag at?"



   "Daniel, you fat fuck," said Lucky, turning to the pregnant man who was
wiping sweat from his face with a towel.  "What'd you do with that gag I
used on you?"



   "It's in your bedroom."



   "Well fucking go get it," he said, smacking Daniel's pregnant ass with
his hand before he left.



   Thompson bent over Kyle and grabbed him beneath his arms to turn him on
his belly.  The boy's body was in a perpetual state of torment, and the
adrenaline pumping through his body made him fight ferociously against the
mayor's grip.  The mayor punched the child in the face and again in the
stomach, winding him.  As the boy choked for air, Thompson flipped the boy
over so that his overdue pregnancy pressed into the cot's meshing.  The
pressure caused more fluid to gush from Kyle's upturned and puckered
asshole and the mayor's hard-on turned from iron to steel.



   "The only good part of pregnancy is when it ends," he said to the others
who watched and stroked themselves.



   Some agreed, but Lucky said, "Speak for yourself, Mr.  Mayor.  Ain't
nothing like a pregnant boy with a belly full of baby to get my dick nice
and hard."



   "Quit talking," said the mayor sharply, kneeling slightly behind the boy
and prodding the opening with his pecker.  Some birth fluids tinged with
white cum from the other men leaked out around his shroom, lubricating his
way inside.  The boy started screaming again.  The mayor raised his
eyebrows.  "My, my, sure feels different in here.  Like pressure inside a
bottle."



   Daniel returned, his boxer briefs snug under his five month pregnancy.
He and Lucky had been fucking before the virus came, long enough to squirt
a baby into the man.  Another notch under my belt, thought Lucky as he
turned his eyes from the pregnant man and back to the mayor's pathetic
attempt at sex.  Daniel came into the cell and secured the tennis-ball gag
into Kyle's mouth and strapped it around his head.  The screaming was
muffled against the ball and several of the men, including the mayor,
thanked God for the silence.



   But Terry kept his hands cupped tightly over his ears, for what good it
did him.



   And just like that the mayor sagged backward using the metal bars to
steady himself.  "Ohh, what a boy!" said the old man, exhausted from his
two minute long fuck.  "Pastor Daisy, don't you want a turn?"



   Daisy smiled, his fingers still knuckle-deep inside Terry.  "The Lord
needs me to help this boy, especially if you plan to induce him today."



   Sighing, the mayor said, "Don't know if I can handle much more fun
today." He wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief he carried in
his shirt pocket.



   "Too bad for you," said Lucky, stroking himself.  "We're only four hours
in and the boy'll probably be in labor long into the evening.  Might even
be morning till he pops unless we speed things along." Lucky's eyes turned
toward Terry who still had his eyes clenched shut.  "Maybe we could induce
the Wallace boy now, have two of them trying to push their babies out at
the same time."



   Daniel's face lit up.  "Let's do it and take bets on who will pop
first."



   Thompson seemed exhausted by the idea.  "Save Terry for tomorrow," he
said, zipping back up and heading for the stairs.  "Inform me when Kyle is
closer."



   Mayor Thompson scaled the stairs and out of the bunker, turned through
the corridors and up into the gilded reception area.  There were no windows
in this room except for the ones that encircled the rotunda at the crest of
the majestic building.  The sun slanted horizontally through them, denoting
the sunset hour.  The old man unbuttoned the last of his shirt buttons in a
desperate attempt to cool off.  He needed a nap, or maybe he would turn in
early tonight.  A long sleep sounds lovely, the old mayor thought. 
Tomorrow he would have to inspect the crops the civilians were tending out
back in the park, and he preferably wanted to do it in the morning before
the Texas heat turned him to ash.



   He wearily took another flight of stairs to the second floor and turned
right and then left back toward his office.  His hand twisted around the
nob and he entered into a smoke-filled room.  Sunlight shot through the
western windows and burned against the paintings on the eastern wall.  The
old man coughed once, then twice, waving the smoke from his face.  His eyes
watered.  He opened a window, forgetting about the fly problem.  Two dozen
of them spilled in like a black wispy cloud.



   "Christ!" cursed the mayor, shutting the window again and swatting the
flies from his face.



   The scent of the smoke was familiar.  Black-peppered cigars; his
favorite.



   He paused, and saw, or maybe sensed, something looming in the periphery
of the room.  He wheeled around to face it and saw him sitting in a chair
made of supple leather and hickory wood a young man with a couple month's
growth on his face, dirt-blonde hair hanging out from beneath a baseball
cap, shotgun sat casually on his lap, double-barrels turned at him.  He had
one hand on the trigger and the other wrapped around the cigar.



   Thick smoke swirled between them.



   "Fargrove," said the mayor after a minute passed between them.  He
chuckled lightly, though his eyes gave away his fear.  "Been a long time.
Still alive and kicking, I see."



   Holden gave one nod, blowing a smoke ring into the placid air.  "And
smoking your cigars."



   "I see that," said the mayor, chuckling stiffly.  His body seemed frozen
in place.  Holden watched the man swallow a lump.  "You're welcome to them,
of course.  As many as you'd like.  I'll even let you take a carton home
with you."



   Holden raised an eyebrow, stood slowly with his shotgun, and went to the
greying man.  The mayor drew in a breath and held it as Holden prodded the
double-barrels against his crotch.



   "Where's the kid?"



   Thompson's lip trembled.  "Which one?"



   <<>>



   Pastor Daisy had moved on from stretching Terry's ass to stroking
Terry's small cock with his fat hand, coaxing it unwillingly to life. 
Tears spilled down the boy's face, though not tears of sadness or anguish
or pain, but of hopelessness.  At the bottom of the well of despair, he
looked up and saw no light or chance of escape.  He was still a small child
ruled by big men.  Same was true before the world changed, same was true
now.  As the men continued their mistreatment of Kyle, some were drawn to
Terry, most of all Lucky.



   "There we go, my child," said the man of God.  "Find your release. 
Baptize yourself first, and then it will be our turn." Inside his heaving
belly, Terry's unborn child turned and pressed outward.  A big lumpy mass
appeared beneath his navel, like a whale emerging beneath a ship.  The
pastor masturbated Terry harder.  "Ah, praise God.  Pregnancy truly is a
miracle, ain't it boys?"



   "Sure is, Pastor," said one of the men who watched with a hand down his
own pants.



   Within minutes Terry was cumming boy-sperm all over his navel.  Pastor
Daisy relinquished the boy's cock and scooped up Terry's seed from his
stomach, brushed his hair from his forehead, and spread the seed there, on
his cheeks and on his chin.  "In name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, you are hereby baptized, Terry Wallace.  Amen."



   "Amen," echoed the other men -- even the guy mid-fuck inside Kyle.



   "Amen," said Lucky, entering the cell with his hand cradling his
stone-hard cock.  "Now as the father of the baby, I get to baptize him
next. Isn't that what the new doctrine commands, Pastor?"



   "Indeed so, my child," said the pastor.  "In my writings, it is stated
that the father must baptize the boy and the baby with his--"



   "Yes, Pastor, thank you," said Lucky, shoving past the old fat man and
lifting Terry's legs over his shoulders.  His calloused hands wrapped
firmly around Terry's bulging baby bag.  The unborn child was still in an
awkward position just below the navel, and Lucky poked and pushed at it,
trying to figure out if it was the butt or the legs.  They already knew the
fetus was head down and ready to come out.  "Now to bust the bags." Slowly,
Lucky wormed his erection inward and Terry gasped as the nerve-endings
inside sent pulses of pleasure to his brain.  "For the record, fellas,"
Lucky called out loudly so that his voice echoed around the bunker.  "I'm
putting all bets on this one."



   "But Kyle's got four hours head start," said one guy.



   "Yeah, but Terry's older," said Lucky.  "The baby will pop out of a
twelve year old easier than a ten year old."



   The guy who was slamming Kyle on his dick looked over as sweat poured
down his face.  "I dunno, man," he said, gripping Kyle's bouncing belly. 
"It's getting real weird up in here.  I think it's opening up.  I feel
something when I push in all the way."



   Lucky turned back to Terry who was staring up at him with his big watery
eyes.  "Guess I'm gonna have to give you a jump start."



   Lucky was enjoying this.  He had two pregnant kids in a race to birth
his progeny.  He would become a father again twice in one night, and the
prospect of it made him bottom out hard inside Terry.  He pulled out all
the way and then dove back in, using the power of his sculpted hips and the
force of gravity to help him.



   It was Terry's turn to scream.



   Pleasure dissolved to anguish.



   His hands flew to his stomach which began to cramp horribly as the
cervix that separated Lucky's cock from the baby was assaulted.  He tried
to squirm away, to maneuver his ass off of the ramming rod, but Lucky
wrapped a coarse hand around his throat and pinned him down on the cot. 
Terry's hands gripped the man's wrist as he tried to free his throat, but
it was his boyish strength against a grown man's.  Lucky pillaged is
innards again, thrusting hard against the tough membranes that shielded his
unborn child.  Terry croaked a scream.



   In the cell half a dozen feet away, the gagged pregnant ten year old was
forced to ride reverse cowboy style on the next Johnson so that his
stretched navel pointed toward the ceiling as the man's cock surged upward
into his ass.  The man had a lengthy cock and so far only managed to stuff
three or four inches in with another five to go.



   "Can't go no further in," he complained as the pregnant boy bounced on
his cock.



   Lucky glanced over.  Terry's body shook beneath him as gave another deep
thrust.  "Just let gravity do the work, Charles," he said.  "Grab his hips
and force him down on you."



   The man, Charles, nodded and on the next thrust forced Kyle down hard on
his steely dick.



   Kyle's eyes nearly popped from his head and his whole body began to
spasm.  If the gag hadn't been in his mouth he would have unleashed a
blood-curdling scream.



   Charles let out a panicked yelp as he bottomed out and cummed all at
once.



   "What?" said Lucky, easing his impaling of Terry.  "What is it?"



   "I ...  I did as you told," said the young ex-police officer who was in
his mid-twenties.  He had a little gut on his muscular body; another
recipient of Lucky's seed.  He was still fully erect and entirely hilted
inside Kyle, whose body continued to spasm.  "I think I ...  broke
something in there."



   "Good," said Lucky.



   "No, Captain ...  I ...  the baby's head.  I think I ..."



   "Just fucking say it."



   "I bumped it ...  real hard."



   Lucky looked toward the pastor.  "Pastor, go deal with that.  Make sure
that fucking idiot didn't just kill my baby."



   "Lord have mercy," said the pastor, making the sign of the cross as he
got up and went over to the next cell.



   "If you fucking killed my baby I swear to God I'll--"



   A voice came down from the stairwell.  It was one of the civilian women;
Heather, a survivor from down the road.  "Pastor Daisy!  Mr.  Mayor!!" she
yelled, her footsteps clanking down the concrete stairs.  "There's a ..."
Her eyes swept over the ordeal: the shocking sight of over twenty men in
various stages of undress, and the two naked boys with big bulging bellies.
"Fire."



   She began screaming at the top of her lungs.



   Lucky turned calmly to Daniel.  "Help Heather see the Light." His cock
was still buried inside Terry who was breathing heavily after Lucky removed
his hand from his throat.  "Dwayne, Jason, anyone, go check out what she's
talking about."



   Daniel, shirtless and muscled (except for his protruding middle), went
to Heather and comforted her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and
drawing her close to his chest.  "This is the Lord's work, Heather ..." he
cooed into her ear.  "You know Pastor Daisy.  You know the good work he's
been doing in service of God.  This is the way to our salvation ..."



   The woman didn't seem to be listening; her eyes seemed frozen on the
very young pregnant boy who was being helped off of Charle's massive bloody
erection.  Blood spilled like lava out of Kyle's ass.  She couldn't believe
what she was seeing.  The shock of it turned her legs to jelly and Daniel
had to use his strength to keep her standing.



   "Well?" shouted Lucky, pulling out of Terry.  "Is the baby alive?"



   It looked bad.  Blood was everywhere.



   The pastor examined the boy, sticking his hand deep inside the boy who
now lay on his back upon the cot.  Kyle's baby wasn't moving like it
normally was.  A contraction came but Kyle seemed too weak to push.



   "We need to get this child out of him," said the pastor.  "And I'm
talking right now."



   "He was only three centimeters dilated last we checked," said Lucky.



   "Not anymore he ain't," said Daisy.  "Charles opened him wide."



   Terry exhaled in relief when Lucky left his cell.



   The ex-police captain grabbed Charles by the balls and slammed him hard
against the metal bars.  Charles' tiny baby belly stuck out between them.
"I will kill you if you killed my baby," hissed Lucky into his face,
spittle flying against the other man's cheeks.  He squeezed the man's
nutsack harder until the Charles turned red.  "You understand?"



   "I just ...  did what you told me, boss."



   Lucky let the man go and entered Kyle's cell, shoving the pastor out of
the way.  "Tell me what I need to do, Pastor."



   "During the next contraction, you need to reach in and pull the babe
from the womb," said the holy man.  "Carefully, and slowly, but you can't
waste no time."



   "By the head?"



   Daisy nodded.  "By the head."



   Lucky took a deep breath and stuck his hand into Kyle's widened ass and
worked his way in, lubricated by the bodily secretions of both his fellow
men and of Kyle's own making, until he felt his fingers touch something
hard.  He didn't have to reach very far in to feel the baby's soft head.



   "I feel it."



   "Good, my son," said the pastor.  "Now you need to open your fingers
wide enough to grab it."



   From Lucky's vantage, he couldn't see Kyle's face; only a towering mound
of flesh, but Kyle's eyelids were trembling as he moaned weakly into the
ball-gag still strapped in his mouth.  The police captain's arm was
half-buried inside the ten year old, and his fingers were able to widen
around the baby's head.  Everything inside was compressed and Lucky had to
use every muscle in his hand to get his fingers wrapped around it so that
his palm covered the little hairs of his unborn child.



   "Got it."



   As if on cue, a contraction started and his globular pregnancy vice
gripped around Lucky's arm.



   "Now pull, slowly," cautioned the pastor.  "But we need to make progress
here.  I'll press downward on the top of his belly."



   "No," said Lucky.  He continued pulling the baby further down into the
birth canal, causing Kyle to start writhing again.  "I'll do it." With his
hand still coiled around the baby's head, he reached forward with his left
arm, hooked it around Kyle's hardened belly, and pushed down.  The muscles
in his arm flexed with his efforts and he felt the baby's descent quicken.



   Footsteps followed by voices came back down the stairwell as Dwayne and
Jason re-emerged.  Smoke followed them down, billowing into the bunker. 
Their faces were frantic.



   "The building's on fire boss!" yelled Dwayne.  "The walls are coming
down."



   "We gotta get out of here!" shouted Jason.



   Lucky thought for a minute.  All the men were looking at him for orders.



   "Not until this fucker gives me my baby," shouted Lucky.



   "Cap ...  we should really go," said one of the panicked men.



   "Fuck this," said another, bolting for the stairs.  Several other men
joined him, but Charles, Daniel, and some of the others stayed.



   Lucky would have executed them then and there were he not womb-deep
inside Kyle, and if he had his gun.  The contraction stopped and Kyle,
sweating and exhausted, took a few minutes to breathe before the next one
started.  Lucky went back to pushing on his belly, feeling the baby's feet
with his hands through the skin as the head descended, aided by the
strength of his right arm as it tugged and tugged.  But he felt something
odd with his left hand; while the baby was mostly in the birth canal now,
there was another mass still inside the belly.



   "Pastor," said Lucky.  "I think there's another baby in there."



   "Twins?" said the pastor, coming around to feel up Kyle's huge stomach.
"By God, there is."



   "Boss, that's real exciting and all," said Daniel who let Heather flee
up the stairs.  "But we really gotta go."



   Loud, sharp booms were coming from above.  It sounded like a mix of
gunfire and wooden beams snapping.



   "We gotta go now!"



   "Shit," said Lucky.  The baby's head wouldn't descend any further.  It
seemed caught.  "Won't budge no more, Pastor...."



   "It's them hips," said the devout man.  "They ain't wide enough.  Let's
get him outside.  Those babies can wait until we're good and safe, you
hear?"



   "All right," said Lucky.  "Charles, you carry Kyle.  You done this to
him, and this is how you'll make it right."



   "Yes, sir."



   "I'll get Terry."



   Lucky tried to pick up Terry but he forgot about his mangled foot and
nearly fell.  Three other men appeared and steadied him and helped carry
Terry out of the cell and toward the stairwell.  Charles carried Kyle as
blood continued to spill out of the boy.  The baby was lodged in there
tight, but Charles made sure to carry him so that his arm draped around his
ass to keep the baby from falling out ...  just in case.



   They filed up the long flight of stairs and out into the smoky corridors
beyond.  Some of the men used their shirts to cover their mouths as black
smoke curled around them.  They stumbled their way through the haze toward
the reception room.  The circular rotunda above was gone, vanished in the
smoke.  The heat pressed against them as Lucky attempted to lead the way
out.  His eyes stung.  Sounds of snapping wood caused them all to duck as
flames suddenly burst outward from walls, eating everything.  There were
bodies everywhere; mostly of the men who had fled from the bunker moments
ago.  Their bodies were riddled with gunshots, but no one noticed.



   Fear threatened to overwhelm Terry.  The hopelessness returned.  Once
again, he was powerless to do anything as he was carried through the void.



   From somewhere ahead there were curses and shouts.  "The front door is
blocked!  Swing around toward the back exit!  Go, go!"



   Part of the balcony leading to the second floor caved inward with a
groan, unleashing sparks of flame toward them.  One of the men caught fire;
his skin ignited red.



   In the roar of the flames and the snapping-hisses of wood came another
sound: the crack of a gunshot.



   Someone was blown backward by the blast.  His body was gone, devoured by
the smoke and fire.  All that was left of him was a leg which plopped over
on the floor.



   Another gunshot.



   A man flew against the wall, half his face turned to meaty mush.



   Another gunshot.



   A man's head disappeared and his body fell forward, causing two others
to trip and fall.



   Flames and smoke churned around them.



   Terry's skin grew so hot he thought his skin might combust as his eyes
searched the dark smoke for the shooter.



   Another gunshot.



   Charles' tumbled forward, dead before he hit the ground, and the
pregnant boy, still gagged, couldn't even scream as he fell hard on his
pregnant belly, and like a water balloon, popped: the baby lodged in his
hips squirted out of his ass and onto the floor, trailing the umbilical
cord.



   Terry struggled in the arms of the man who held him.  He wanted to help
Kyle; to save his baby; to save them both.  But the man carried him onward
and through a corridor, following the vague silhouette of the guy in front
of them.



   Another gunshot.



   The man carrying Terry went down and the boy somehow landed on his own
feet, but the weight in his belly and the cramps that wracked his body
forced him against the hot wall.  He recoiled from the heat and sagged to
his knees.



   Someone came up behind him and hauled him to his feet and stuffed a
shirt in his face.



   "Breathe through this, kid.  Come on!"



   Terry coughed into the shirt as he followed Holden.  His head spun.  Was
any of this real?  The heat pressed against his naked back, telling him it
was.  He felt incomprehensible relief seeing Holden again; but the relief
was swallowed by the thought of Kyle and his baby.  He tried to scream at
Holden, to tell him to turn around and help the other kid.



   But there was a splintering crack as the hallway came down inches behind
Terry's heels.  He turned around and screamed into the shirt, thinking of
Kyle and his babies....



   Big arms encircled him and dragged him along.



   An exit appeared as a man stumbled out into the blue twilight.



   Scatter from granddaddy's shotgun missed the man's leg by inches.



   Holden and Terry spilled out of the building into the hot summer night,
which may as well felt like winter after the oppressive heat from within.
Terry's lungs ached heavily as he tried to expel the smoke from his chest.



   A fist from nowhere clocked Holden's jaw, causing him to lose his
footing and fall sideways, taking Terry with him.  The grass cushioned
their fall and the shotgun clattered next to them as Lucky descended on
Holden, his fists driving the man's face into the ground.  The officer was
bare-chested from earlier, and Terry realized he had Holden's shirt in his
hands.  The two men, half-naked and covered in soot, brawled in the lawn as
Holden blocked Lucky's next punch and drove his knee hard into the other
man's ribs.



   Lucky groaned, momentarily stunned, and Holden capitalized on the moment
and shoved Lucky off of him, driving his elbow into his nose.  Blood
sprayed into the air.



   Terry tried to yell for them to stop, but his lungs failed to supply the
breath to do so.  He clutched at his neck as he struggled to breathe.  The
boy, unable to draw breath, began to panic and his legs shot out
involuntarily in his desperate quest for oxygen.  He writhed in the grass
as his lungs wheezed and whined.



   The men didn't notice.



   Lucky was bigger and stronger than Holden, who was lighter and
scrappier, and used his brute strength to slug the slighter man in the gut.
Holden doubled over as Lucky scrambled to his feet and rushed toward the
shotgun which laid by Terry.  Lucky either didn't care or didn't notice the
boy's suffering as he picked up the shotgun, swung it around, and aimed it
at Holden who had barely risen to his feet.



   "Fuck you, Fargrove!" shouted Lucky as the building continued to burn
behind them.  A nearby tree caught flame and a falling limb dropped into
the dry, summer grass, igniting it.  Embers crawled toward the three of
them.  "Should've stayed up on your hill."



   He looked down at the pregnant boy, laughed, and set his boot on top of
his heaving pregnant belly with the shotgun still aimed at Holden.



   "Don't," said Holden over the roaring flames.



   The fire continued to crawl toward them along the grass, pushed by the
wind.



   "He's done for anyway," laughed Lucky as Terry choked.  He pressed his
boot down a little harder on Terry's stomach.  The boy could feel his baby
squirming against the boot.  "You started that fire, didn't you?  You
started it.  This is on you.  A boy in there was about to birth my twins.
Now they're all dead.  That's on you!  YOU!" He lifted his boot and
gestured with the shotgun to the burning grass behind Holden.  "That fire's
creeping on you, Fargrove.  I wonder who dies first?  You as you burn to
death, or him, as he suffocates.  Or, if you'd like, I can shoot you and
end it right here."



   "Stop," said Holden, his body pouring sweat.  "Let me help him!"



   "You burned my buddies and filled them with holes." Anger kindled in
Lucky's eyes, dancing and mingling in a fiery reflection.  "Might be I'll
do the same to you."



   Holden's eyes were drawn to movement behind Lucky.



   Something dark and low to the ground moved toward them.  Holden and
Lucky joined eyes one last time before the shadow leapt like a hound out of
hell, tackling Lucky to the ground.



   As Lucky fell, his finger squeezed the trigger, and Holden felt the
racing wind of scatter pass inches from his face.  He rushed forward and
grabbed the shotgun from his hands and planted the double-barrels against
the ex-officer's head while Shadow tore boot and muscle off the
already-mangled foot.



   Lucky hollered into the grass as his eyes stared ahead into the oncoming
flames.  He screamed as Shadow's teeth clamped around the bones of his
ankle.  "I'm gonna ...  aghh!! ...  come back ...  and haunt you, Fargrove.
Me ...  and the Devil ...  will come for you.  Know why?" When Holden
didn't answer, he said: "`Cause ...  you like ...  little boys ...  same as
me."



   Holden's finger pulled the trigger, filling the earth with the insides
of Lucky's brain.



   When it was done, he knelt beside Terry's naked body which lay unmoving
on the ground.  His pregnant belly rose high above him, empty of air, and
his chest remained motionless.



   "No," he panted, his hands caressing the boy's face.  "No, no,
no-no-no-NO!"



   Terry's eyes stared upward into the black-smoke sky while Holden leaned
over his face, pressed his lips against the boy's mouth and pinched his
nose, breathing air into his blackened lungs.  For five minutes he
performed the ritual of CPR, compressing his chest and breathing through
his mouth.



   But the kid was dead.



   Deep, deep inside Holden, just below the sternum where his heart
pounded, Holden felt a pain so real and so raw.  The tethers that bound his
soul together snapped and frayed.  He was suddenly disembodied, staring
down at himself kneeling in the grass with his face pressed against the
kid's chest, sobbing.  He had never seen himself like that; so fragile, so
defeated, so ...  hurt.  He realized that he had never known what love felt
like until now.  Now he knew, and with it came the feeling of losing it. 
Like a flower turning to ash in your hand.



   Holden watched himself from above and at the fire growing closer,
belching smoke.  It seemed all of Fargrove was burning.



   Shadow whined, her black fur illuminated orange in the onset of flames.



   Everything led here.  This was the end.  Holden choked on his own tears
as he tried to find words.  He wouldn't have known what to say anyway. 
There wouldn't have been anyone there to hear it, except for Shadow.  He
leaned forward and laid a kiss on the kid's forehead, deciding that a kiss
would be enough to say the words that would not come.



   "I failed you," he whispered, finding that his own lungs and throat
burned with the effort.  He planted his forehead against Terry's chest one
last time as the fires descended upon them.  "I'm sorry, kid.  I'm sorry."



   Terry's chest trembled and a breath of air answered:



   "Don't ...  be ...  sorry."

   <<>>

   Holden burned down the dark highway on empty, his old pickup truck
puttering as fast as he could make it go.  The kid's head was on his lap.
Shadow was in the truck bed, leaning over the side with her face in the
wind.  There were no streetlights to light the world with, no red lights to
stop for.  They passed the bus stop where it seemed like ages ago Holden
rescued the boy from the cold.  The world had become darkness, lit only by
Holden's headlights.



   The Town Hall burned to the ground that night, taking the pastor, the
mayor, and nearly all the officers with it.  A wind blew into the morning,
spreading the flames into the southern horizon away from Holden's hill. 
Fargrove indeed was gone, consumed along with several thousand acres. 
There were no firetrucks to fight it with, no planes or helicopters to
water-bomb it; the world was at the mercy of Mother Nature now, and she was
wiping her hands clean of humanity.  Dark smoke spread like a wall through
the sky, blotting out the stars and the moon, and the next morning Holden
watched from his porch as faces appeared in the smoke.  Faces like demons
with dark swirling eyes and open, wailing mouths.  He stared at them in
sober silence, remembering all the people he killed the night before,
justifying their deaths to himself again and again in his head.



   Terry hobbled out later that morning in a fresh pair of Holden's boxers
and together they watched the demons dancing in the billowing smolder.  He
sat on the man's lap with his arm wrapped around his neck, and Holden's
hand protectively guarding the boy's pregnant belly.  They hadn't bathed
yet, and they both smelled like fire, smoke, and sweat.



   His granddaddy's shotgun was propped against the chair, and Shadow
chomped on her bone.



   He remembered what Lucky said to him before he squeezed the trigger.  He
could hear the dead man whispering it in his ear.



   "What's wrong?" muttered Terry, his voice raw and fragile.



   Holden shook his head, pulling the boy close against him.  "Ain't
nothing wrong," he said, smiling ever so little.  He gave the belly a soft
pat.  "Just that you're getting heavy, kid."





   Chapter 9: The Baby

   The fires burned off into the horizon for weeks until the rains came. 
Holden's hill rose above it all, free from fire and water, a refuge on high
from the trouble below.  But most of Fargrove was gone, taking all the
buildings and scavenge with it.  Holden knew he would have to plunder
neighboring towns if he wanted more cigarettes or beer.  And medicine.

   But leaving Terry alone again was not an option, and taking the
close-to-popping boy on a trip wasn't either.  They'd have to make do.

   Holden thumbed the lighter, fire springing upward to set his cigarette
ablaze.  Before he set the town on fire he had found a few packs in the
mayor's office and pocketed them.  He also pocketed a couple of cigars, but
they didn't survive the wrestling match that followed.

   He leaned against one of the posts on the back porch, watching Terry
toiling in the soil.  Shadow sat at his feet, her stub tail wagging back
and forth.  The garden had grown these last few weeks but there were months
of growth left before the crops yielded anything edible.  The kid, however,
would yield his bundle any day now.  What seed had been sewn all those
months ago would soon bear fruit in the last days of June.  It was obvious,
too.

   Terry scrabbled in the dirt, pulling weeds by the root.  His stomach had
been big before and now it was monstrous.  His adolescent body bore a heavy
load.  His skeletal thinness gave way before the swollen, taut expanse of
his navel-pointed belly.  It was a preposterous sight.  He was half-naked
in the biggest pair of boxers Holden had -- which weren't that big to begin
with -- with his pendulous skin slicked with sweat.  He was the color of
sunbaked dirt; a skin tone like that of a bronze statue.  Holden was much
the same shade.  Their days of working in the garden had turned them into
burnished gods; the rulers of a crispy town.  Fargrove Hill may as well be
Olympus.

   If anyone was a god, it was Terry.  Holden wiped summer sweat from his
brow, smoked his cigarette, and admired the boy's beauty.  His hair had
grown longer and had turned a brilliant shade of blonde.  Even Holden's
sunny head could not compare.  The boy stood up with great effort, rising
from the soil with both of his hands on his lower back.  He was glowing. 
His hips pushed forward guiding his ridiculously large belly with it.  The
poor kid measured at fifty inches around.  Holden had taken him to the barn
and measured him with a measuring string.  Fifty inches around on a kid as
small as him shouldn't have been possible, at least not to Holden's
reckoning.  But damn was the boy a feast for his eyes.  A cruel side of him
wished the pregnancy would never end.  That he'd keep growing and growing,
threatening to split open, immobile under the heavy weight of his bastard
baby.

   The things Holden would do to him...

   Had done to him.

   In the days after the fire, Terry had been an emotional wreck.  He
hadn't told Holden what had happened in there with the pastor and the
mayor's cronies, nor had Holden asked.  He didn't want to know.  Didn't
want to add to his guilt for ever leaving the boy alone.  Even now, when
Holden went to hunt, he made Terry hide in the closet with the shotgun
until he came back.  Who knows if any of those molesters escaped the fire,
or how many had not been there to burn with the rest.  It was a good
possibility the mayor had sent his henchmen out on scavenge runs.  If so,
they's be returning to an empty town.  The danger was still very real.

   The goods news was that the bulk of them were gone; bodies of ash and
cinder.

   Days went by and Terry dried his tears and turned to Holden for comfort.
His frail frame fell into his arms one night after several days of
emotional distress.  Until then, Holden had kept his distance from the boy,
giving him the space he needed.  That night, the kid snuggled against his
chest and slept against him despite the sticky heat of the
air-condition-less home.  Holden didn't sleep a wink.  It was too hot to
even close his eyes, but Terry had never slept harder; so content, so at
ease in his arms.  The baby wriggle against him, alive and still in place.

   Terry didn't tell him about Lucky trying to induce him, or of the severe
pains that plagued him for days afterward.  Eventually, the pains stopped
and the pregnancy continued, spiraling toward the due date.  Days turned to
weeks.  Then came the night when Terry lay in bed with Holden and slid his
slender hand down the man's hard abdomen towards his penis and curled it
softly around the length.

   "Are you sure?" asked Fargrove.

   Holden was hesitant with the boy's trauma in mind.  At first he refused.
But Terry begged him.  He was reminded again of their first night together
and how new and exciting it felt to fuck a pregnant kid.  And like that
night months ago, Terry pleaded as if his life depended on it.

   "Please," he had said after pulling Holden's engorged cock out of his
mouth.  "Fuck me with it." His lips plunged forward and Holden felt the
back of his the boy's throat, and then the dripping saliva as he pulled it
out again.  "I need it."

   "No," said Holden, hands gripping the boy's head and forcing himself
deeper into his throat.

   "Please," cried the boy, surfacing for air like a whale from the ocean.
He was as big as a whale, too, Holden thought.

   It wasn't until minutes later that Holden cummed in the boy's mouth on
accident, releasing his load earlier than intended.  The kid was a champ
and swallowed it all, rubbing his heaving belly as he did.  The kid was
panting hard and Holden was panting harder.  In the moonlight spilling in
from the open windows, Holden saw the baby press hungrily outward beneath
the tight skin.

   That night had begun a series of nights and days of endless touching.

   Terry claimed it was his pregnancy hormones.  Holden told him it was his
pubescent hormones, too.  He would turn thirteen soon on July fifteenth. 
Officially a teenager.

   Holden returned to the present, smoking his cigarette, eying Terry's
sweaty belly as he stretched his back amid the garden.  Terry turned his
eyes toward him and threw up his hands.

   "Ain't you gonna help?"

   Holden's mouth lifted on one side.

   He finished the cigarette and stomped it with his foot then went down
the steps and crossed into the hot sun toward the gardens.  "Did some good
work, kid," he said, hands on his hips, surveying the pile of weeds. 
Terry's chin dripped a droplet of sweat.  His wet blonde hair was pulled
back over his head.  "Tired yet?"

   The boy nodded exhaustedly.

   "Well," said Holden, looking toward the barn.  "The chicken coop needs
cleaning.  Then you can rest."

   "Ugh!" sighed the Terry, his shoulders drooping as if they carried the
weight of the world.  In a way, the weight he carried might have been equal
to that of earth's.  His eyes glared up at him.  "What have you done today,
anyway?"

   "Watch your ass bending over in the dirt," grinned Holden.  "That's
what."

   But Terry was not amused.  "Fuck you."

   Holden's eyebrows lifted.  He still wore his grin.  "I hunt for you. 
Feed you." He was about to add `protect you' to that list, but he already
proved himself a failure in that regard.  Regardless, he stiffened his
lips. "You really wanna talk to me like that?"

   The pre-teen's glare faltered a little.  "Yeah, but ...  I'm nine months
pregnant.  Look at me!"

   "Back in the day, slave men and women worked the fields for their
masters and gave birth beneath the hot sun, in the dirt, by themselves. 
And when the baby plopped in the soil they'd hand it over to their masters
and keep working."

   "I ain't your slave."

   Holden reached over and wiped a droplet of sweat from Terry's upper lip
with his forefinger and put it in his mouth.

   The boy wrinkled his nose.

   That was when Holden forced Terry down into the soil between the plants.
His belly rose between them like an overripe pumpkin, but that didn't stop
Holden from pressing his naked torso against it while his lips found
Terry's.  The baby wiggled against Holden's stomach and he wondered if that
was what it like to feel a human being kicking inside him.  It felt weird.
He was glad that it was Terry who was pregnant and not himself.

   The sun's heat pressed down on them but he continued his kisses,
traversing the avenues of his face; nose, eyes, forehead, chin.  And then
around to the ears where he nibbled and feasted like some cannibal.  Terry
moaned beneath him; vulnerable.  Whatever Holden wanted to do to him, he
would allow.  He was his.  And then down the kisses went, following the
tendons in his neck, tracing both collarbones, and then to his tiny pink
nipples.

   He sucked on them, taking them between his teeth and against his tongue.

   And was rewarded for his efforts.

   A bittersweet, tangy liquid filled his mouth.  At first Holden drew his
head back, surprised.  The kid had never produced milk before.  The
colostrum was unlooked for, but suddenly desired.  His mouth returned to
the left nipple, his chin resting on the upward slope of Terry's overfull
womb.  Soon, the baby would be feasting here, nourishing itself on its
father's liquid.

   Holden grew jealous at the thought.  He didn't want to share Terry's
body with someone else.  Terry was his, and he was Terry's.  There wasn't
room for another.  The baby stirred beneath his form and Holden pressed
down harder on Terry's womb, squishing the child.

   Holden sucked harder.  He filled his belly with it, high on it, alive on
it.  When his left nipple ran out, he switched to the right.  The boy was
moaning and bucking his hips as he struggled out of his over-taxed boxers.
Holden, with one hand, maneuvered his own down his legs.  Two pairs of
underwear lay in the fertile soil as the man drank and drank until his abs
bulged outward.

   Deliriously full, milk-high and drunk on it, Holden didn't realize Terry
was whimpering for him to stop.

   "It hurts," he cried.  "Please..."

   Holden drew back like some vampire who had feasted too greedily on his
prey.  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and saw that Terry's
nipples were red and puffy.  The man's cock was throbbing and he slapped it
a few times against the boy's tightly-packed stomach, preparing it for what
came next.  Terry's baby had run out of room weeks ago and, as a result,
his stomach was oddly-shaped.  It bulged here and there in great big lumps.
The head wasn't downward yet, so its clear shape protruded off toward the
right of the corked navel, and its feet were more toward the spine, unseen.
But the baby's arms were constantly at work off toward the sides, thumping
and reaching outward.  As Holden knocked on the belly with his cock, the
baby moved beneath it.  Its massive head slowly migrated beneath the navel
and settled to the left of the bellybutton, opposite of where it had been.

   It sickened Holden to think that that was the child of his enemies; the
men he had burned to death.  He once again became jealous.  It should be
mine , he thought furiously.  It should be mine.

   Locked behind mental barrier after mental barrier, he wished the baby
would be stillborn.  It didn't matter if the child belonged to the mayor or
Lucky because, either way, those bloodlines didn't deserve to be continued.
They were child molesters.  Child rapists.  Pedophiles.

   But then what does that make me?

   He pushed the uncomfortable thought away and returned to the present
where he was cervix-deep inside the kid.  His masculine hands spread along
the pregnant planet where beneath the thin skin the unborn bastard pulsated
like a living hunk of trapped flesh.  It wouldn't take anything for Holden
to end this.  To end it .  A good, deep, brutal fuck and a little pressure
on the womb and that unholy bloodline would end.  An inch more and the
waters would burst.  He could do it now.

   "More," the boy panted.  "Harder."

   Holden snapped to his senses.  "What?"

   "Harder."

   Instead, Holden only used what inches he could fit fully into the boy
and took his pleasure.  He pulled out, cummed on the baby bump, and got up
and wiped the soil from his knees.  As good as it was, something held back
the full pleasure of his release.  His thoughts had gotten to him.  His
eyes lingered on the kid whose gigantic middle held him pinned into the
earth.

   He reached down and pulled the pregnant boy up to his feet.  Cum slid
down the curve of his stomach, down his navel past the baby's protruding
head and toward his crotch.  With a hand, Holden caught the river of cum
and smeared it over Terry's stomach, especially over the lump where the
baby's head was.

   A dog may as well raised its leg and marked its territory.

   "Now go clean the chicken coop," he said while Terry brushed the soil
off of the back of his head.  "I'm going hunting.  When you're done, you
know what to do." He went back inside, naked, and gathered his hunting
supplies.  He came back out dressed in camo and trudged into the woodlands
on foot.  He would have taken his truck but he knew he had to conserve that
last bit of gas for when he really needed it.

   When Terry was finished with the coop he was utterly spent.  He wanted a
bath but he knew he would have to take the shotgun and hide in the closet
until Holden got back.  Feeling somehow neglected, he decided to take a
bath anyways.

   He grabbed the shotgun and propped it against the tub and began filling
the bath with the spigot.  When the cool water was deep enough to float in,
Terry climbed in and felt the immediate relief of weightlessness.  His
narrow hips ached painfully.  He wondered if they were finally expanding
for the birth.  His rotundity rose above the surface, trailing water down
the sides.  He rubbed it for a while, feeling the oblong shape of the baby
as it moved and turned inside its limited space.

   He thought of Lucky and the first time the man had visited him in his
room back when he lived with his mother.  He remembered Lucky opening the
door, stepping in, and locking it behind him.  Twelve years old, unsure of
what was happening, and powerless to stop it.

   He almost had forgotten.  His brain had tried to block the memory out of
self-preservation.  But now he remembered: Lucky was the first.

   <>

   On the eve of Terry's birthday, July 14th, Terry was still pregnant.  By
his reckoning, Terry was at least two weeks and some days overdue.  His
hips had widened slightly, his stomach was even larger, fuller, thicker. 
The baby's head had slowly descended visibly over the last few weeks until
it had last come to rest painfully against his cervix at the bottom of his
pelvis.  If he had lived in civil times, they would have induced him a
month ago because of his age and the size of the baby, but these were not
civil times.  These were the new dark ages.

   Still, Holden made him work the garden, clean the chicken coop, and
gather eggs.  He was starting to resent Holden for making him work in the
heat in his condition, but the truth was that there was a lot of work that
needed to be done and Holden required the help.  As the last few days of
his pregnancy came, Terry simply wasn't able to help as much as Holden
wanted.  He was too over-encumbered and the contractions had begun, though
they were far and few in between.  And he was always sore from the hard
fuckings he was receiving two, three, sometimes four times a day.  Terry
never once complained.  If he had his way, he would have been fucked all
day long.  His hormones were simply too much for one boy to bear alone.

   The boy ate ravenously on anything with meat that Holden hunted from the
woodland surround.  He may as well been a baby bird chirping hungrily in
his nest, waiting for daddy to fly home with a worm to stick down his
gizzard.

   Terry ate well and Holden drank well.  Holden had been sucking him dry
almost everyday since discovering the colostrum hidden inside Terry's flat
chest and the results turned the man into Superman.  Holden had always been
a tall, lanky muscular guy, but the milk may as well have been some sort of
muscle formula.  His chest widened slightly into steel plates, and his
biceps had almost doubled in size.  His six-pack became an eight-pack. 
Terry loved that his own milk had done that to him.

   It also increased the man's libido.  Made him feral.

   The sex in the last few days of Terry's pregnancy were some of the best
they ever had.  Fast.  Furious.  A mutual pleasure unlike anything they had
ever felt.  In the bed.  In the garden.  In the bath.  In the chicken coop.
On the couch.  On the porch.  Terry's body would writhe against Holden's
muscles as his biceps cradled him and he drank from his chest, cock
pressing in, in, inward.  Holden would bathe the boy with his cum.  Face,
chest, stomach, or deep inside him where the bastard baby's head pressed
firmly against the cervix.  And Terry was developing real cum himself, no
longer just adolescent goo.  He would gush pearly-white liquid as
temperature-hot as a grown man's.  Holden hadn't expected to take a wad of
cum to the face when he was mid-thrust into the pregnant boy.  Terry
orgasmed, his hands clutching his belly, as his cock shot the liquid upward
and onto Holden's forehead.

   The kid had hit the height of puberty at the height of his pregnancy,
and Holden knew he had to be careful.  The last thing he wanted in this
entire, desecrated world was to become pregnant.

   And so Holden dared not touch it, but instead, made Terry rub it into
his tight skin and eat it.

   The night before Terry turned thirteen, the pair sat out under the stars
grilling venison and listening to the quiet world.  Out by the grill there
was an old swinging bench hanging from the branches of two oak trees
overlooking the garden and the bright, moonlit horizon.  The white orb
hanging low in the sky was about as pregnant as the kid whom swung gently
on the creaking bench, observing the night.  There was a calm serenity
about him.  The past few months had aged Terry; he looked slightly older,
no longer little kid he was at the bus stop on that cold dark night.

   Holden took a gulp from the bottle of whiskey as the meat sizzled on the
grill.  The moon was so bright that there was little need for any other
light sources, only the dull illumination from the grill and a pale glow
that shimmered in the air.  He passed the bottle to the kid, who gingerly
took it and drank deep.

   In a way, Holden mourned the ending of Terry's childhood.  He had
endured a lot in his short life thus far, and the road ahead in a lawless,
godless world would be steeped with challenges -- especially with a baby.
Not only that, but Terry was beautiful in his nubility, unmarred by teenage
pimples and awkward growth.  With the onset of puberty came the death of
innocence.  He was already growing taller and less boyish.  Holden wished
the kid would stay a kid forever.

   "You're staring at me again," he said as he lounged in the creaking
swing, his hands spreading under the oblong planet that was his belly. 
Moonlight glittered through the trees, sprinkling him in dappled glory.  He
was smiling.  "You want to fuck me again."

   "Sure do," said Holden through a grin as he turned back to the grill and
tended to the thick slabs of meat.  His stomach growled.  It seemed like
they were always hungry these days.  His cock was always hungry too.

   Woodsmoke lifted through the trees, scented and delicious.  "Come sit
with me," said the pregnant boy, rubbing his naked belly which was as
oblong as it usually was; contorted in a weird shape around the cramped
baby.

   Holden was finishing up the venison.  "You sure there's room for the two
of us on that bench?"

   "I ain't that big."

   Even in the moonbeams Terry could see Holden raise an eyebrow.  "Sure
about that?"

   Terry did feel pretty ungainly, especially now that the baby was in his
pelvis.  Walking was harder now despite his limberness and youthful energy
-- which was just about depleted.  He had enough energy to fuck and to eat
and that was it.  Terry felt bad that Holden had to pick up his slack
around the property.  The man was working overtime to keep up with the
chores while at the same time trying to keep up with the boy's libido.

   Holden took the meat up to the porch when it was done and they ate
together at one of the outdoor tables.  The whiskey was good with the
venison and soon they were leaning back in their chairs, full and buzzed.

   He almost asked Terry if he felt any different now that he was a
teenager since midnight had finally come, but he always hated when people
asked him that when he was younger.  So instead he said, "Happy birthday,
kid."

   Terry groaned as a contraction came.  He hunched his back as his belly
compressed into another weird shape.  Holden could see the muscles
clenching.  The contractions had been coming for weeks now but labor had
yet to come with them.  Even still, they made Holden nervous.  Each one was
a reminder that the baby was bound to come out of there any day now, and
that whether Holden liked it or not he was going to have an infant to help
care for.

   "You all right?"

   The contraction lasted around thirty seconds and was gone.  Terry sagged
back into his chair rubbing at his belly.  The baby seemed even lower than
it had been just a few hours ago.  A droplet of sweat slid down the kid's
sideburn.

   "Yeah," he said, finally.  He looked tired and overheated.  "It's just
so hot."

   "Ain't much breeze."

   "I think I'll sleep out here on the futon tonight," he said, mustering
the energy to stand to his feet.  Holden would have helped but in a weird
sort of way he liked watching the kid struggle.  He may be thirteen now but
he was still small and his belly sexily huge, more so now with it hanging
low like some ripe fruit ready to split open.  He put both palms to his
arching lower back to ease the weight he carried.  "I can't stand the
thought of sleeping in that stuffy room no more."

   "I'll get the futon ready," said Holden, rubbing his own full belly and
taking another swig of whiskey.  He grabbed his erect manhood that bulged
through his cutoffs.  "Then I'll give you a little birthday gift."

   Terry shook his head.  "I don't think I can tonight, Hold." His face was
pained and he was rubbing the underside of his teardrop-shaped stomach. 
"The baby's so low it hurts."

   Holden moved behind Terry and wrapped one arm above his belly and the
other beneath it.  The kid might be huge with child, but Terry himself
still seemed so tiny compared to the man.  The top of his head barely
reached his chest so that Holden had to bend down a little.  His erection
pressed hard into the child's back.

   "I'll make it feel better," he said, craning his neck to nibble at the
thirteen year old's ear.  The baby pushed out beneath his left hand which
cupped Terry's lower womb.  "Even the little bastard agrees."

   Terry meagerly attempted to escape Holden's tight grip but he was too
strong.  His biceps were curled resolutely around him as he gyrated his
crotch against Terry's ass.  "Stop it, Holden, I ain't in the mood."

   "Yes you are," Holden insisted, his whiskey breath strong and heavy
against Terry's neck.

   "No, I ain't."

   The man's left hand sank into the kid's boxers and clutched Terry's
small balls in his palm, holding them like eggs.  He had yet to grow hair
down there.  "It's your birthday," said Holden, massaging Terry's sack
until his boy cock grew into a semi hard on.  "I won't take no for an
answer."

   Then Holden let go and went to prepare the futon, folding it out so the
two of them could share it.  He left the blankets inside knowing they
wouldn't need them.  When it was all done and ready, Holden sat naked on
the edge of the futon as the cicadas chirped endlessly.  He made Terry
strip in front of him, and Terry slid his overstretched boxers down his
slightly-widened hips to reveal a puffy, swollen cocklet and balls.  His
swollen tummy hung so low as to almost cover them entirely.

   The last thing Terry wanted right now was to have sex.  His body felt
tired.  His mind was scattered.  His belly ached.  His pelvic bones were
sore.  He could care less that it was his birthday.  All he wanted was
sleep.  His cock, on the other hand, was semi hard.  It truly did have a
brain of its own, with its own wants and desires separate from Terry's.

   "Come here," said Holden.  Terry drew closer so that Holden sat eye
level with his tremendous gut.  He kissed it, his scruffy beard tickling
the stretched skin.  He licked at his navel once as if it were ice cream
and gave it another kiss, then sucked it while his hands roamed about the
unborn child's room.  The baby swam around lethargically.  Holden could
tell it was asleep.

   Excited but unwilling, Terry sighed.  "I really ain't in the mood,
Holden.  Please.  Just wanna go to bed."

   "Too bad," he breathed, lifting Terry's sagging gut upward a little so
that he could reach his head around beneath it.  His lips found Terry's
boy-sized cock and engulfed it with his mouth.  It wasn't very often that
he sucked Terry off, but it was his birthday and it was almost obligatory
to do so.  Plus, he thought it might make him feel better.

   The kid gasped but the pleasure was eclipsed by his aching back. 
"Holden," he complained, trying once again to escape, but the man had his
arms wrapped around his waist and wouldn't let go.  A long, manly middle
finger dipped into his hole and Terry cried out.  "Stop it!  Holden, stop
it right now!" He tried to wriggle free, tried to pull out from the man's
mouth, tried to buck his hips away from the finger which only served to
thrust into Holden's throat.  He squealed with frustration.  "STOP IT!"

   Holden's finger dove into the depths of his birth canal, swirling and
jabbing at the inner walls.  It was tight in there, warm, and wet.  He
heard the kid's protest but he didn't care.  He knew Terry was enjoying it
on some level, as he always did.

   Terry's pregnant belly seized in on itself as another contraction came
and caused his erection to swell in Holden's mouth.  Holden's encroaching
finger was squeezed from within.  "Aghh!" Terry moaned, throwing his head
back as he orgasmed involuntarily into Holden's mouth.

   "The fuck!" Holden said, pulling his mouth away as the goo swirled on
his tongue and dribbled down his chin and into his beard.  He spat out the
pearly essence onto Terry's stomach like a loogie.  The gob slid down the
exaggerated curve of his contracting belly.  "I told you to warn me before
you shoot in my mouth!" He wiped his beard clean as he realized Terry was
having another contraction.  They weren't usually this close together.

   Another moan escaped the birthday boy's lips.  "Fuuuuuu!"

   "Lay down here before you fall over, kid," said Holden, helping Terry
gently down on his back.  The moon watched from a distance, painting them
with a silver glow.  The boy's clenched stomach looked tighter than knotted
rope.

   Then it was over and Terry began panting.  Sweat poured from his
forehead.

   "You done?" said Holden.

   "Think so," Terry moaned, his right hand glued to the cleft of his gut.

   This had happened a few times before when they had sex.  Usually, after
it was done, they'd get right back to it.  Holden didn't think this time
was any different.  He climbed up onto the futon sans briefs and hiked
Terry's legs over his shoulders.

   "What are you doing?!" shouted Terry.  "No!"

   "Quit fucking screaming at me," Holden snapped at him.  "You scream at
me one more time I swear I will fucking paddle your ass red, you
understand?" The man cringed at how much he sounded like his mother.

   "You ain't my dad!" cried Terry.

   "Sure as hell right about that," said Holden, mounting Terry and forcing
his cock head into the boy's wet hole.

   "Please, Holden," whimpered the kid.  "Something don't feel right.  The
baby's too low and it hurts."

   He was right again; something was definitely different.  He felt around
in there with his cock.  For one, he was only a few inches in before he hit
the cervix, and the cervix wasn't as squishy as it normally was but hard
and firm as though something was pushing against it.  Secondly, it was
sopping wet with thick juices that normally weren't there.  And lastly, it
was loose as hell.  Still fuckable, but loose .

   His cock bumped the cervix a couple of times, causing Terry to buck his
heavy body in sharp jolts as if his entire nervous system was tied up
within the membranes that divided the womb from the birth canal.

   Tears streamed down Terry's face and into his sideburns.  "Please, stop
...  please, it hurts so bad...."

   "You're being a little bitch tonight," said Holden frustratedly, his
hardened dick inert inside the boy.  "I planned this entire evening for us
and you're just bitching and moaning."

   Terry continued to cry.  "I can't help it...."

   Holden softened his tone, letting the anger go.  "We only got a little
more time together before the baby comes," he said, clutching Terry's
pregnancy with both hands and rubbing it in gentle circles.  The unborn
child still had yet to awaken from its slumber.  "Can't we just fuck and
enjoy the evening.  Look--" he gestured toward the full moon "--this night
was made for you and me.  And you're beautiful.  And I wanna make love to
you and show you how much I care about you.  That's all I want."

   The tears dried up and Terry nodded.  "I'm sorry," he said quietly.  "I
didn't mean to yell.  It just hurts and I really don't want to have sex
right now.  My body just feels off, is all."

   "I'll make it feel better," Holden insisted soothingly, grinding his
dick against Terry's cervix, softly at first, then a little faster.

   Terry whimpered again, his hands clutching the sheets beneath him.  The
bottom line was that Holden got what he wanted, always, and there was no
changing that.  He tried to make it clear that he didn't want sex, but that
didn't matter to the man, so Terry was left to endure the agonizing,
painful electricity of Holden's cock bumping his cervix.  He cried out,
yelled, hissed and groaned as his body reacted to the jolts of Holden's
painful lovemaking.  The only reason he tolerated it was because there was
no choice in the matter.  And because Terry loved him.  He was all he had
left in this world.

   Soon, Holden was pounding Terry so hard and so fast that Terry began to
orgasm again.  His tiny cocklet was dominated by his overhanging belly and
his cum sprayed the bottom of it, rope after rope.  Holden spread the juice
over the stretched skin like butter over bread as he rode the teenager into
the futon's thick mattress.  The chorus of of the spring boards rose up to
join the choir of cicadas.  So forceful were Holden's thrusts that the
unborn child woke fitfully, thrashing against the walls of its prison.  An
intense pressure built behind the cervix and Holden wondered if the baby's
head was moving behind it.

   Lucky's baby.

   The thought of Lucky's bastard inside the boy made him suddenly violent.

   He fucked the cervix hatefully until the ramming triggered a third
contraction and Terry started to scream, causing a chain reaction within
the boy's body that caused the waters to shed from his womb in what he
thought might be gallons.  The liquid rushed around his cock and spilled
down his nutsack.  He pulled out as the boy wet the sheets with thick
mucous.  Holden cummed in what he thought might be gallons, too.  The first
shot sprayed Terry's face and then sprayed his belly, marking Holden's
territory once again.

   Terry squealed and held his baby gut as he, himself, cummed again.  The
bed beneath them was soaked.

   "Think your water broke," said Holden, stating the obvious as he leaned
back from the boy, panting.  His muscled torso was slicked with sweat.  He
could hardly believe what just happened and he felt slightly guilty -- and
oddly turned on.

   Even still, Holden's hard-on did not abate.  He rubbed his cum into the
bloated skin of the pregnant thirteen year old, feeling the baby kick
unsurely inside.  It had begun.  The boy was in labor and his cock had done
the trick.

   Terry, however, began to cry.

   Holden was getting real tired of the boy crying all the time.  He was
worse than a baby.  "What now?"

   It was a sobering moment between the two of them.  Terry squeezed the
inner parts of his eyes as the tears came.

   "I don't want it to come out."

   The man remembered his earlier thoughts of Terry never giving birth; of
growing and growing.  But with every pregnancy came the inevitability of
birth.  "You can't help that," he told him.  "It can't stay in there
forever."

   The futon was ruined, stained and saturated by birthing fluids.  Holden
collected towels and prepared Terry for what came next -- whatever that
was. Neither of the boys had ever done this before.  They didn't know what
to do.  They were like two blind boys fumbling a football.  Holden's best
reference was what happened in the movies: you get towels, you hold his
hand, and you catch the baby when it pops out.

   When Holden spread Terry's legs, he couldn't help but be aroused.

   The sight of that gushing, quivering, contracting asshole was the
ultimate temptation.  He opened it some, then stuck a couple of fingers in
to `check' Terry's condition, but, really, he had no idea what he was
doing. He just felt like he was fingering the kid.  It didn't help that
Terry moaned.

   Terry remembered when Pastor Daisy stuck his hand inside of him.  It
hurt then, but now that is exactly what he wanted.  He went from wanting
nothing to do with sex, to all of a sudden wanting it more than ever.

   "Stick your hand in," he said, nearly breathless from another
contraction.  Fargrove watched Terry's abdominal muscles tighten and lift
upward toward his ribs.  His navel popped further out -- how that was
possible, Holden would never know.

   "What?" said the panicked man.  "Why?"

   "Just DO it," Terry snapped.

   Holden slowly, carefully crept his hand into Terry's hole.  The knuckles
went in, stretching the hole to its maximum, and then the wrist and upper
forearm.  The contraction squeezed him like a vice and Holden wondered what
that would feel like around his cock.  "Now what?"

   "Fist me," said the young boy.

   Shaking his head, not understanding why the boy wanted this, he
complied. His fist entered and didn't make it very far as his knuckles
collided against an obstruction.  The boy's body shivered and jerked and he
screamed aloud as if he were dying.

   "Again!" he bellowed.

   Holden's cock was rock hard.  He brought his fist back out and shoved it
back in again, punching the cervix.  The tight, contracting birth tunnel
kept him from using his full strength, but even still, he slugged the
membrane separating his fist and the baby.  The baby lurched in the womb
with his efforts.  Terry's baby hadn't moved much lately because of limited
room, but now his entire belly became alive.  Arms, elbows, knees, and feet
protruded here, there, everywhere.  In that locked-up, secret part of his
psyche, Holden gloated.

   Terry's hands pushed Holden's naked shoulders from him and Holden pulled
his fist out.  Blood came with it, pooling onto the bed.

   Contractions came quicker now.  Most expecting parents timed them and
reveled in keeping track of each passing minute, but Holden and Terry were
country boys who didn't care about such things.

   Hours went by and Terry pushed and heaved.  Shadow watched for a little
while before growing tired and curling up on the far end of the porch where
things were less noisy.  His own child-like hands clamped down on his upper
belly and pushed down on his womb.  He was sweating more and more.  Fluids
continued to gush sporadically from his ass.  Holden massaged the boy's
shoulders, kissed his forehead, kneaded his belly and felt through the
skin, little by little, as the baby's head entered the birth canal.

   They passed the whiskey between them and Terry guzzled it down, his head
spinning uncontrollably.

   After a particularly brutal contraction, Terry mewled like a baby.  He
was drunk.  His sweaty, cum-stained belly protruded low, low, low on his
waist.  The baby would crown soon, no doubt, Holden thought.  Holden rubbed
Terry's gut in serene circles.  He looked so sexy laying there in pain,
struggling, and his belly never looked so appetizing.  It was the perfect
shape, especially when it was contracting and the navel stood outward like
a nipple.

   He leaned in and kissed it causing Terry to shiver as his beard tickled
his skin.  Holden could taste the salty cum and salty sweat on his lips,
indistinguishable from each other.  He left a trail of kisses up the
tightly-packed stomach and toward the right nipple.

   Terry moaned for him to stop, but he didn't.  He drank and drank until
there was nothing left, then maneuvered over Terry's stomach to the other
nipple and imbibed the father's milk to his heart's content.  His naked
torso pressed hard on Terry's bulging belly; tight abs pressing down like a
cutting board.

   "You're ...  hurting me," panted the boy as Holden took his fill,
filling his own belly with milk.  "Leave some for ...  the baby."

   "No."

   Terry opened his eyes.  "What?"

   "I said no," said Holden firmly, suckling at the boy's tiny nipple.  He
was in a drunken haze.  The alcohol Terry had saturated himself with had
turned his milk into an whiskey-milk concoction.  Holden, in that moment,
made a decision.

   "We're not keeping the baby."

   Terry froze.  "What ...  what do you mean?" He was drunk too, and found
it hard to process the information Holden had given him.

   "We're gonna have our own baby," he stated, feeling the unborn straining
beneath his abs.  A contraction started back up and Terry moaned in intense
pain as Holden continued to talk and suck and talk some more, oblivious to
Terry's suffering.  "This baby will remind you, every day, of what's
happened to you.  You don't want it neither.  You've fooled yourself into
wanting this one when what you really want is a baby I've given you."

   Terry's lips quivered, his teeth clenching, as more tears came.  He
didn't know whether he agreed.

   When the boy's milk dried up, Holden pushed his fingers deeper inside
and Terry moaned and hollered, stroking his belly.  "I think it's time to
push," said the man, feeling the cervix which had widened tremendously over
the last few hours.

   Holden's own hands joined the boy's on his stomach.  Terry pressed hard
on his womb and Holden helped him.  Something like feet could be felt
through the stretched skin.  It was obvious there was a lot of fluid left.

   The pressure increased as another contraction started.  That bulging,
ripe belly squeezed together and Holden drank in the sight of a thirteen
year old boy who was very, very pregnant giving birth.  A foot rippled
beneath the skin and Holden's cock throbbed achingly.

   "You don't want this baby, Terry," said Holden.  "It's a rape baby.  You
deserve better than that."

   Then, Terry grabbed Holden's arm firmly.  He lifted his head from the
pillow and glared at Holden.  "You're right," he said, though he wasn't
sure that he meant it.  "What are we gonna do then?"

   The look in Terry's eyes was that of a broken child who had endured in
the last year more hardships than most people do in their entire lives. 
This is what he wanted, and it was his birthday.  Holden looked him in the
eye and took in the kid's scent of birth and sweat and then positioned
himself once more at Terry's contracting hole.

   "Don't worry, kid," said Holden.  "I'm gonna make it better, all right?"

   Terry nodded.

   Like a mole tunneling beneath the earth, Holden entered and noticed at
once that Terry's innards had changed even more.  Everything was tighter
and somehow looser.  The contractions were moving the baby down and soon
his cock found the baby's head.  He remembered cumming on Terry's stomach
in the garden, watering the child's head as if it were just another seed.
He had sprayed it, marking his territory.

   This seemed no different, except it was the real thing now.

   Holden pummeled Lucky's offspring.  Over, and over, and over again.  It
was sick.  Barbaric.  Nothing held him back.  He remembered sticking his
shotgun against Lucky's head and pulling the trigger.  Fucking that baby's
head felt like the ultimate `fuck you'.  There would be no living heritage
to remember them by.  It was a primal feeling, a feeling of incredible
power.  With every thrust he would erase Lucky forever.

   Soon, there was no room inside.  The baby's head slowly pushed his cock
out as it crowned, and Holden masturbated furiously until he cummed all
over it in thick, hot spurts.  Fluids gushed out around the neck as Terry
panted with relief, but the hardest part was next.  Holden massaged Terry's
stretched asshole soothingly and continued to knead his big fat gut which
had lost some of its tightness.  If the size of the head was any
indication, the baby was huge.

   "I can't do this," said Terry, panicking not for the first time.  "I
can't.  I can't!"

   "You better," said Holden, leaning forward to kiss his watermelon-sized
baby bump.  He found that tears were forming in his own eyes.  "I love you,
Terry.  You can do this.  Once its out, we can wipe our hands and move on.
Just you and me, forever."

   With the next two contractions, Terry heaved and pushed and screamed and
gyrated his hips.  He had gone mad with pain.  He thrashed side to side on
the bed.  Holden was sure that his screaming could be heard for miles.

   The baby was stuck.  After half an hour of strenuous pushing, the baby's
shoulders wouldn't budge.  His juvenile hips were still too narrow.  They
tried everything, from pushing hard on the belly until Holden was sure he
bruised the skin, to different birthing positions.  At one point Holden
helped Terry onto the wooden floor while the baby's head hung out of his
ass cheeks, and made him squat like he was taking a dump -- but nothing
seemed to be working and the baby's face was turning purple.

   Perhaps Holden's wish for a stillbirth would come true, but at what
cost? If the baby didn't come out soon Terry's life would be at risk.

   Time was ticking.  The baby had to come out.  Now.

   He eased Terry onto his back along the floor -- which was not easy with
a giant head sticking out of his ass.  Fluids dripped from inside him and
oozed between the wooden beams.  When Terry was flat on his back with his
legs splayed out around him, Holden squatted over Terry's belly as if he
were about to ride him reverse cowboy style and then sat on his stomach. 
His only concern was getting that bastard out of there so that Terry would
survive the birth.  Suddenly, he put all his weight down on Terry's womb.
He could feel the baby's legs inside the womb with his muscled ass.  The
kid grunted and then began to scream.

   When that didn't work, he began to bounce on Terry's stomach as if it
were one of those bouncing balls young kids played with during gym class. A
contraction hardened the boy's belly and Holden felt the baby's head
sliding further out.  He peered down and watched as the shoulders finally
dislodged and grounded his ass harder against Terry's womb.

   The baby shot outward like a bullet, amniotic fluids gushing like a
waterfall.  Lucky's baby skidded along the wooden boards.

   It was a boy.

   Holden picked the gooey baby up in his arms.  It was a huge baby, easily
ten pounds.  It was still alive, but barely.  He cut the umbilical chord
with one of his hunting knives and left the newborn lying on the bed as he
knelt down beside Terry.

   "You all right, kid?" he asked.  "It's over."

   Terry nodded weakly.  His belly was deflated now but still slightly
enlarged by the placenta, which popped out with a grunt and a moan.  It was
nasty looking; a meat sack of blood and goo.  Holden kneaded the boy's
empty stomach and more fluid spilled out until there was nothing left. 
Terry laid where he was, struggling for breath.

   "I'm okay," he said.  "I need water."

   Holden, naked as the wind, collected well water and brought it back and
helped the kid drink.

   "I'll be back," he said, stroking a wet strand of hair from Terry's
forehead.

   He picked up Lucky's baby and took it out towards the woods, grabbing
the shovel along the way.  In the moonlight, he examined the child's face
and was reminded of the man whose seed this was.  It looked nothing like
Terry.  It had that fucker's nose and eyes and everything.



   The infant was no longer active as it was in the womb.  It was purple
and motionless, and soon it lay in the earth at the feet of a dead oak.

   <>

   The next day, Holden and Terry were quiet.  Holden took a day off from
gardening and chicken-wrangling to look after his teenager.  He helped
Terry hobble to the front porch and together, along with Shadow, observed
the ruins of Fargrove as they usually did.  The end of the world had come
with a heavy price.

   Despite their newfound liberty, Holden felt as though a piece of his
soul had gone missing.  He felt terribly hungover and he was unsure of
whether or not it was from the whiskey or what he had done.

   <>

   Months later, the garden yielded its first fruit: a red, juicy, ripe
tomato.  Terry ran inside with it cradled in his hands.  His stomach had
shrunken so much you wouldn't even realize he was once tremendously
pregnant.  Holden was in the kitchen cutting freshly grilled meat for
lunch. Shadow eagerly awaited the first scrap of meat to hit the floor.  A
cigarette hung from his lips, filling the kitchen with the aromas of smoke
and barbecue.  They had scavenged the closest town and had a hoard of
goods, including alcohol and endless amounts of cigarettes.

   "Looky here," said Terry, holding out the flushed tomato.

   Holden took the tomato and assessed it.  "Nice and ripe."

   "Yup."

   "Maybe you'll be next, kid," he said, smacking Terry's ass.

   Terry gave him a look.  "What do you mean?"

   The man hefted the teenager onto the counter beside the fresh meat and
kissed him on his flat belly.  They had abstained from sex all this time,
but now that Terry was feeling better....

   Terry understood, and then smiled eagerly.

   "I'm ready."



   ~ THE END...?  ~