Ice Monkeys

  “Thanks. I’ll hold you to it.”

  * * * *

  After breakfast, the men led Donna to the bedroom and pulled her into bed with them.

  Forcing herself not to think this might be one of the last times she was with them, she threw herself completely into it.

  She straddled Victor, kissing him.

  His hands drifted down to her ass and he patted it. “Let me change places, baby.”

  “What?”

  Working together, the men quickly shifted, Victor turning around under her and pulling her pussy down onto his mouth, making her moan.

  “There we go,” Uni said, kneeling behind her as he gave her a gentle shove between her shoulder blades.

  She needed no further encouragement. She swallowed Victor’s cock, his happy moan of pleasure vibrating through her clit, pulling a moan from her in reply.

  “Oh, yeah,” Uni said. He swiped the head of his cock between her legs and quickly sank his shaft inside her pussy.

  They seemed to have that effect on her, able to have her ready for fucking in seconds.

  Something else she’d never had happen to her before. So many firsts with these two men, so many good things.

  Yes, for some pretty damned depressing reasons, but no relationship was perfect.

  She wouldn’t hold it against them.

  Victor clamped his hands around her hips, fingers digging in and holding her firmly in place. Not that she wanted to go anywhere. She was perfectly happy being in the middle of their sandwich and trying to suck a load out of Victor and fucking one out of Uni.

  Uni slowly fucked her as Victor’s tongue flicked her clit. “Come on, baby,” Uni said, the strain evident in his voice. “Quit being stubborn and give us one. You know we’re going to make you come one way or another.”

  Torn between wanting to give her full attention to what she was doing to Victor, and giving her full attention to what Victor and Uni were doing to her, she ended up succumbing to their divide-and-conquer tactics. Between Uni’s cock and Victor’s mouth, she was soon launched into orbit, going deep onto Victor’s cock to muffle her long, loud moan of pleasure.

  “That’s our girl,” Uni said, picking up the pace and starting to fuck her hard and deep.

  Victor chose that moment to suck on her clit, making her come again. Meanwhile, he’d braced his feet on the bed, legs bent, and started fucking his hips up to meet her mouth.

  Donna held on for the ride, no longer in control. That seemed to happen a lot when she was with them, in bed or out of it.

  Happy to turn herself over to them, she closed her eyes and kept her lips and tongue around Victor’s cock while he did his damnedest to try to get number three out of her.

  That happened when Uni’s cock found that magic angle again and managed to perfectly nail her in the sweet spot. Her moans as she climaxed on Victor’s mouth triggered his climax. He flexed his hips again and his juices flowed hot and thick over her tongue.

  Behind her, Uni grabbed her waist and took a couple of last hard thrusts, burying his cock deep inside her pussy and filling her there.

  Catching her breath, she refused to relinquish Victor’s cock. Uni leaned forward, his lips tracing her spine. “Baby, you have no idea what you do to us, do you?”

  “I think about the same thing you two do to me,” she said after finally lifting her head from Victor’s softening cock.

  They ended up snuggled together on the bed. Uni reached over to the bedside table where Scooter sat and picked him up. “So what’s this little guy’s story? He looks old.”

  “He is.” She took the stuffed dog from him. “He’s the one thing I never had to give up. I had to give up my bed, my clothes, my toys. I was always having to give stuff up, pare down, never able to keep what I wanted to keep, except him.”

  “What’s his name?” Victor asked.

  “Scooter.” The men shared a grin. “What?” she asked.

  Victor laughed. “Someone just got their code name.”

  * * * *

  “Good news,” Lima told them when Donna, Uni, and Victor finally emerged from the bedroom around noon. “Mama’s already getting results. They’re running another series of tests, but it looks like we’ll be kicking the CDC portion of festivities into high gear.”

  “Excellent,” Uni said. “When do we get started?”

  “They’re putting together a convoy down south,” Omega said. “Going to bring up several truckloads of supplies and equipment for the satellite safe house. Mama wants access to the CDC facilities as soon as possible now that they’ve got a breakthrough. They’ll be up here Sunday morning.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be here in Atlanta for a while?” Donna asked, trying not to let hope shine through.

  Victor smiled. “Yes. Might not be able to get together as much as we’d like—”

  “But at least we’ll be under the same stars,” she said, trying not to cry.

  He pulled her in for a hug. “We’re always under the same moon, babe, even if the stars look different. Always.”

  * * * *

  After dinner, once the men and Donna retreated to their bedroom, she called Lisa.

  “Still on the couch,” Lisa said when she answered. “Still watching TV. Love you.”

  “Hi!” Ginny called in the background. “Love you.”

  Donna giggled. “Love you guys, too.” It was an old routine of theirs, but she loved it, and them. “Staying warm?”

  “Not as warm as I’m sure you’re staying with your hunk. The weather’s supposed to get crappy again this weekend. If you’re lucky, work will get called off Monday and you can have an extra day with hunky boy.”

  Donna felt her face heat. “Maybe.” She’d have to call work tomorrow and tell them when she was coming back.

  And hopefully not embellish too much.

  And make sure her parents never met anyone she worked with.

  “You go have fun,” Lisa said. “Power’s never even gone out. Some idiot tried to drive out of here earlier today and wiped out three cars and blocked the entrance. Car’s still there. Might not be able to move it until tomorrow when the ice on the street thaws. Wherever you are, stay there and stay warm and safe.”

  “Thanks. Love you guys.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Donna ended the call and reached across Victor to set the phone on the bedside table.

  “They all right?” Uni asked as Donna snuggled against him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to call your parents?”

  “Not really, no.” She’d had a brief call with her mom the evening before while in the car, although Donna’s attention had been more on making sure they weren’t being followed than on what her mom said.

  But if she called her mom, it was bound to lead to more see, I told you so kinds of comments about the winter, leaving Atlanta, and all of that.

  Frankly, she didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now.

  “If anyone is prepared for this kind of stuff, it’s probably my uncle,” she said. “My family might not be very good with getting ahead, but they have a tenacious stick-to-itness about basic survival, at least.”

  “That’s good, right?” Victor asked.

  “Yeah, maybe it is,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Silo had just returned to his private quarters late Thursday afternoon when the burner cell phone rang. His “consultant” from Indianapolis.

  “Give me good news,” Silo said when he answered.

  “I have a name.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out again. “Please tell me you have more than that.”

  “I’m working on the rest. Shouldn’t take me long. Still sorting through data, and she doesn’t have any property registered in her name. I have a cell phone number but I’m still working on hacking into the carrier’s system to get her info.”

  “Just give me what you have now and update me when you have more.”

&n
bsp; Silo wrote the information down, unable to contain his grin. This was good. This was a step in the right direction. As soon as he got off the phone with the guy, he immediately called the team on the ground in Atlanta.

  “See what you can find out with this,” Hannibal said after reading it to the guy heading up the mercenary team.

  “We’ll do our best, but everything’s ground-stopped right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seen the news? It’s a fucking ice storm. Ain’t nothing moving in and around Atlanta. We’ll do what we can, but we’re stuck right now, too. Can’t drive in this shit.”

  Silo groaned in frustration. “I want action on this as soon as you can.”

  “Well, we need to find her, first. A name is great, but an address would be better. Did you try calling her?”

  “Oh, sure. I can see that call going well. ‘Listen, you’re helping my wife hide and slander me. Can we chat?’ No. Find her, and bring her to me. Alive. I don’t care who has to suffer in the process, either.”

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  “Keep suggesting.” Silo hung up on him.

  Maybe not the wisest move, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t paying the man for a comedy act, he was paying him for results. When he got off the phone with him, he thought for a moment and placed another call.

  It was time he started thinking about his other strongholds.

  Like the one outside of Houston.

  He’d strategically placed all of the strongholds not just for their locale.

  In the case of Houston, it was to help bolster the secret Kite drug lab they had there, the proximity of the shipyards allowing them to easily sneak supplies in.

  It was also because Hannibal had a secret cabal that even Jerald wasn’t privy to, a consortium of three different oil company CEOs who wanted nothing more than to get their hands on a Kite vaccine first to keep their black gold flowing throughout the US.

  Men who would pay handsomely to keep their businesses running.

  Silo had also helped them launder billions of dollars in personal income via the church’s overseas accounts.

  Jerald didn’t know about that part because Hannibal had used a contact in Africa with whom he worked directly, giving him a generous kick-back in return for doing it and keeping it silent from Jerald.

  Unfortunately, those same three men had suspiciously kept their distance from Hannibal ever since Mary’s disappearance. The way the money laundering had been set up couldn’t be traced directly back to them or him, so it wasn’t like he could use it to blackmail them with, unfortunately.

  It was time to apply a cattle prod to their asses and bring them back into the fold.

  The Houston facility didn’t have the virus, just the drug. It was where they’d done a lot of their Kite drug manufacturing before shipping it out to other parts of the country. Before now, he’d never authorized distribution from the Houston location. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to the lab, afraid it might create problems. It was supposed to be their vaccine factory, once they had a vaccine.

  If the Drunk Monkeys were too busy tracking down a red herring maybe he could get Mary under his thumb again and finally start putting some of his plans into play by taking the heat off of himself personally.

  He called Jerald. “I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I want to ramp up production in the Houston facility.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because we need a diversion. What better way to draw the Drunk Monkeys than to create a problem for them to solve?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “I want to increase our Kite production. Most of it not spiked, but maybe some of it spiked. Let them figure it out.”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? It’ll get the Drunk Monkeys out of Atlanta.”

  “Why do you think they’re in Atlanta?”

  Silo silently cursed himself. He’d have to be more careful. “I tried contacting some people at the CDC, who aren’t there any longer. A little bird told me there is something going on.”

  “A little bird?”

  “If the Drunk Monkeys are ramping up to get their scientists to Atlanta, which it looks like they are, what better way to split their resources than to distract them? You know Arliss will send his pet team after the source of the drug.”

  “Excuse me, but I’m not following why that’s a good thing. You do realize Arliss has at least nine other SOTIF teams, any or all of whom he can send to Houston, right?”

  Silo didn’t like it when Jerald questioned him. He liked it even less when Jerald poked holes in his logic. “We have a lot of investors—donors from Houston. Wealthy people who want to see results. People who have a guaranteed place in the Houston stronghold. We need to show them results. That we’re weeding out the dregs of society. They don’t want competition on the backside of the apocalypse.”

  That was close enough to the truth. At least close enough for Jerald to know.

  * * * *

  Jerald rubbed at his forehead. “You aren’t making the slightest bit of sense, Hannibal. You want to increase Kite production in Houston to attract the attention of General Arliss and his SOTIF teams, to…what? That’s not going to impress our donors there. That’s going to piss them off that attention’s getting paid to what’s going on. They’re not people who like their business being poked into.”

  He was beginning to think Hannibal had gone around the bend and finally lost it.

  “We start with just the drug. Get a lot of people hooked to it. That’ll also bring us some income.”

  “Kite is a loss-leader, and you know it.”

  “Let me finish. We boost the problem in the area and drive our rich cattle into the stronghold. We mention an apocalypse is really expensive, and if they want their safety maintained, it might get costly. They’ll bend over backward to keep themselves safe.”

  Jerald tried to untangle all of that. “So you want to create a perceived threat in order to make our donors pay up and ensure their loyalty?”

  “Exactly!”

  “How does attracting General Arliss’ attention play into that?”

  “Because if there’s Kite the virus in the area, it’ll scare our donors into donating more to ensure their places in the stronghold.”

  “That’s a risky game, Hannibal. We have no guarantees the military won’t just destroy Houston.”

  “They can’t. Tank farms and oil refineries.”

  “How about we increase production of the drug but without the virus? Some fear, some deaths, but not an uncontrollable spread of the virus? We can always cut off production and that will kill a ton of people from the withdrawals.”

  It sounded like Hannibal wanted to argue with him, but finally, he acquiesced. “Okay, fine. How long?”

  “I’ll give the order today. It’ll take a few weeks for them to start getting batches out to the street.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Hannibal hung up without so much as a good-bye.

  Jerald studied his phone. The Houston lab wasn’t inside the stronghold. Staffed by four technicians beholden to the church for some past transgressions that could put them in jail for life if they were exposed, they’d put it in place more to help quickly produce vaccine doses once one was formulated, but it had provided a handy drug lab as well.

  Feeling ill at ease, Jerald called the head of the Houston lab.

  “This is unexpected,” the man said.

  “I need your help.” After explaining what was going on, Jerald knew he had the guy on his side…and a sizable deposit into the man’s account would guarantee that loyalty, as well as get him additional information if Silo tried to override his instructions.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” he told Jerald.

  “Thanks.”

  Jerald ended the call and leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. Something was going on. He knew Hannibal was plotting something. The
fact that he’d slipped and revealed something about Atlanta proved it. This crazy nonsense about wanting to produce more of Kite the drug was further proof.

  Hannibal didn’t know Jerald knew all about the Houston money laundering. Jerald had monitored Hannibal’s computer and tracked down the scheme, which was a pretty smart scheme, but a risky venture in some ways. Still, Jerald had let it continue more to allow Hannibal to feel he was getting one over on him.

  He would humor the man—to a certain extent.

  Now he just had to figure out what exactly this new plan was and stop Hannibal before he went too damn far and got them both thrown in jail.

  Or worse.

  * * * *

  On a secure laptop provided by Lima, Ax went online to see if he could make contact with Mary or Tank. He didn’t hold out much hope to hear from Mary today, due to the ice storm. He’d drilled it into her head not to contact him from home to help protect her location.

  And if Tank was on the move, he expected it might not be very likely he’d hear from her, either.

  But he was pleasantly surprised to find her online at the bulletin board when he logged on. He was able to draw her into an IM conversation.

  Ax: Have you moved yet?

  Tank: No. We were going to, but the weather deteriorated. You ok? I saw the weather in Atlanta sux.

  Ax: I’m safe with friends. You make it to this area let me know.

  Tank: Thinking about trying to get to Canada. K hates cold. Spreads slow.

  He wished he could tell her the latest update, but he didn’t want to risk the mission or her safety.

  Or Mary.

  Kali.

  Ax: Sounds like a plan.

  Tank: You should get out of Atlanta when the weather clears. Large cities aren’t safe to be near. K spreads fast.

  Ax: I plan on leaving eventually.

  Which was the truth, because he was going to stay with the Drunk Monkeys for as long as they’d let him. They were the world’s best shot.

  Frankly, he knew he—or Donna—would probably be dead by now had the other team grabbed either of them first. He had no doubts they were hired by Hannibal Silo to find him, ultimately.