Rippers

The pounding went on, hour after hour of thudding impacts rocking the dimly-lit underground shelter and sending dust drifting down between the wooden beams and onto the people huddled below. At this point, a full three years since the arrival of the Rippers, the survivors were the quiet ones. Dirty, haunted men with hollow eyes above their scraggly beards leaned against the walls, sometimes with a tired-looking woman curled up beside them. A few of the adults clutched silent children with wide eyes peering from dirty faces, but none of the little ones were crying.

A single tired soldier crouched at the foot of the battered concrete staircase, patiently watching the stainless steel door that sealed the entrance to the shelter. His M-16 rested across his knees, loaded, charged and with the safety off. The carefully-maintained rifle and patched fatigue trousers were all that remained of his U.S. Army uniform; it had been over two years since he or any of the other soldiers in his company had seen pay and nearly six months since any of them had seen an officer, unless you counted orders crackling from an encrypted radio. Of course, you didn't need many officers to run a company that was down to seven men.

Henry had been guarding shelter doors during bombardments like this one for a long time now but he had only actually seen Rippers twice. Both times were early on, right after the cities had been smashed by hurtling rocks flung from deep space. Back then nobody had really understood what was going on or what the Rippers were; large groups of survivors were packed into noisy underground shelters that did little to keep their sounds and smells from being detected aboveground. They learned the hard way that with their keen senses Rippers could hear, smell, almost taste nearby prey and once they found it they could not be driven off - only killed.

He silently watched the door, eyes scanning the thick black rubber seal that prevented Rippers from picking up any trace of the huddled survivors in the shelter. But he only half-saw the door; inside he was reliving that horrific first time that he had seen Rippers firsthand. Teeth and claws flashed, rifles and machine guns fired until their barrels warped from the heat or ammunition gave out. By the time it was done his two hundred and fourteen-man rifle Company was down to eighty-five men. Over a thousand terrified refugees were winnowed down to about three hundred blood-soaked survivors. They moved to another hiding place but within days Rippers found them again. This time casualties brought the Company down to fifty-seven men and just one hundred and ninety-two of the civilians were alive.

After that survivors were always split into small groups with just one or two soldiers for protection, scattered among several dozen shelters constructed by a handful of engineers and civilian volunteers dispatched from Battalion. Henry heard later that the engineers never made it back to HQ. Not long after that, Battalion went silent. All that was left was a few NCOs who passed on the orders that were radioed in every few weeks. The Company was reduced to rounding up the few survivors who popped out of cellars and ruins now and then, slowly sending a trickle of them on to the next shelter. Sometimes those same refugees rotated back through, carefully sneaking from place to place, guarded by one of the remaining soldiers. The number of survivors and soldiers slowly dwindled, but still they kept on, trying to shelter any people they could find, keeping them moving from place to place.

A light touch at his shoulder startled Henry and he turned to find one of the refugee women kneeling beside him, holding a steaming MRE bag. The scent of spaghetti sauce wafted from the MRE. He realized the he must have been half-asleep not to have heard her approach or smelled the food. "Thanks" said Henry softly as he carefully leaned his rifle against the wall and accepted the food.

None of the shelters was in any danger of running out of supplies; cases of MREs and plastic 50-gallon drums of water had been placed in the shelters in the government's last gasp of organized effort. Whoever decided how on the supplies that would be needed must have overestimated the number of survivors there would be; odds were that a lot of the MREs would go bad before anyone ever got around to eating them. There were cases of 5.56mm ammunition too, probably more than the remaining soldiers could go through.

"Mind if I sit with you?" whispered the woman. She eased around to sit on the bottom step without waiting for his answer, slowly lowering her weight to the cold concrete, being careful not to make unnecessary noise.

Henry forked spaghetti into his mouth, glancing up and noticing that the top few buttons of the her flannel shirt were open. As she leaned forward at the waist, cautiously lowering herself to sit, he looked straight down the front of her shirt and saw her pale, braless tits hanging free. Feeling a sudden rush of embarrassment, he hastily turned back to his food and shoveled down another bite, hoping that she hadn't caught him peeking down her shirt.

"Just like mom used to make, right?" she quietly joked.

Henry looked up, and took a good look at her smiling face. She must have been thirty or so, but she looked a little older; her face was clean but without any makeup and Henry thought she looked good. She had dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, hazel eyes and a prominent nose. Her womanly figure was mostly hidden by an oversized flannel shirt; her jeans had a small hole in one knee and she wore a man's belt with extra holes punched in it to make it fit around her slender waist.

She tilted her head and looked him over in turn "Are you okay?"

Sudden, crushing fatigue swept through Henry as he struggled to come up with something to say. He didn't even know what tumbled out of his mouth until a few seconds after he said it. "Seventeen".

She leaned closer and whispered back "Seventeen? What does that mean?"

Henry took another bite of food slowly chewing and swallowing it down, then gestured tiredly with his plastic fork towards the handful of survivors curled up together in the shelter. "Seventeen people... sorry, I don't know why I said that." He paused for a moment and then tucked the half-eaten MRE under one arm and offered her his hand. "I'm Henry."

Her hand felt cool and soft in his as they shook. "I'm Claire".

Claire looked carefully at his face, sitting on the edge of the step and leaning forward to speak. "You look really tired Henry, do you want to try to sleep? I can keep watch for a little while."

He thought for a moment and looked down at his food. It had been at least 48 hours since he had been able to sleep for more than just a few minutes. "Would you get me some water please?" He fumbled for the plastic canteen clipped to his belt and held it out to her, hand trembling slightly.

"Of course" she said, smiling and taking the canteen from Henry, carefully rising to her feet and picking her way towards the drum of water at the far end of the shelter.

Henry watched as Claire walked away; her jeans looked like they used to be tight but she had lost weight. She still had a very nice backside and for a moment Henry imagined that Claire was putting a little extra sway in her walk for his benefit.

He rested his face in his hands for a moment and closed his eyes. Unbelievably, Henry felt the stirrings of a hard-on begin as he thought about that tantalizing peek down Claire's shirt and the way her rear looked as she walked away.

For some reason he found the situation funny and he took his face out of his hands and smiled wryly, then quietly laughed. His exhausted chuckles were just winding down when Claire returned with his full canteen.

She smile warily at his tired laughter, moving to stand in front of him and offering the canteen.

He gratefully accepted it and took a couple deep swallows of the cold, clean water, then lowered the canteen to look up at her. "That's good, thank you".

Claire bent at the waist to bring her face down close to his, quietly replying "Glad to be of help".

He glanced down from her face for just a moment and realized that the front of Claire's shirt was hanging open again and this time it wasn't just a brief glance. The white softness of her breasts hung just a few inches away he could see the profile of one small, dark nipple peeking from the shadows inside her shirt.

Henry swallowed hard and glanced up to see Claire smiling warmly, a faint hint of color rising in her cheeks. "You really need to sleep Henry, even if it is just for an hour" she whispered.

Almost at that moment the regular thudding of the bombardment sputtered to a stop and Henry felt his heart skip a beat. One or two relieved whispers from the people scattered around the shelter reached his ears as the exhausted survivors gratefully curled up against one another to try to snatch their first real sleep in two days.

Claire reached down and took Henry's hand in hers, tugging him to his feet. He rose, swaying slightly with exhaustion and looked down at her face. Her smile was gone, replaced with slightly-parted lips and a smoky look.

Henry plucked his rifle from where it rested against the wall and followed Claire as she padded up a few of the concrete steps, then turned and sat. He slid quietly down beside her, clicking on the safety of his M-16 and laying it flat on the step above the one they were sitting on.

The was really no chance of privacy in the shelter, but sitting there at the top of the steps they were partially concealed in the shadows cast by the dim chemical lights hanging in the corner. One or two of the people curled up on the floor could have been watching from underneath half-closed eyes, but Henry and Claire soon forgot that anyone else was there.

Claire leaned in close and rested her head on Henry's shoulder, smiling as she felt him put an arm around her. She tilted her head up and found him waiting for her; their lips brushed gently, then he pressed his mouth firmly over hers and pulled her tight against him as they kissed.

In the dim light, their eyes met and Claire brought her lips under Henry's stubbled jaw, lightly kissing and nibbling his neck and up towards his ear.

While his left arm held her close, Henry slowly ran his right hand from Claire's knee up to her thigh. She moaned softly in approval as his hand drifted up to cup one full breast through her flannel shirt, feeling her hard nipple pressing against his palm through the heavy fabric.

As Henry's strong hand squeezed one breast and then the other, Claire nuzzled his neck, tasting and smelling him. She let one hand slip down to his lap and moved until she found the bulge of his growing erection pressing against his fatigue trousers. She squeezed him through his pants and he turned and brought his mouth back to hers.

As their tongues played, Claire worked at the button closure and zipper of his trousers, finally opening them and reaching inside to wrap her fingers around him.

"Shhhhhh" she said, pulling Henry's erect cock up and out of his pants as he barely suppressed a loud groan.

Claire wrapped her small fingers tightly around the hairy base of Henry's thick erection, slowly stroking him up and down. She ran her thumb over the swollen head, feeling a slippery drop of warm precum oozing from his slit. Henry leaned his head back, groaning quietly again and still squeezing one soft breast through her shirt.

Henry watched Claire through a haze of lust as she slowly stroked his engorged member up and down, taking her hand away once and moistening her fingers in her mouth, then rubbing the slickness of her spit all over his purple head.

Finally, she pulled free of him and stood, quickly unbuckling her belt and unzipping her jeans. She pushed the jeans down to her knees, taking her white panties with them and quietly shuffled around to stand in front of Henry.

He spread his knees wide, watching the perfect white roundness of Claire's ass as she leaned forward in front of him, exposing damp brown curls that hid the moist pinkness between her pale thighs. The she reached back between her legs, wrapping her small fingers around the root of Henry's cock and slowly eased herself down until the throbbing tip brushed her hairy outer lips.

Henry groaned deep in his chest and Claire gave a little mewling gasp as she let her weight slowly push her down against his trembling cock, gently moving him back and forth with her hand until the hard tip came to rest against the slick inner opening of her wet pussy. Claire sat down onto his erect tool, feeling the swollen head inch up into her clinging folds, slowly working up into her until all six inches of the rigid shaft was clutched deep inside.

Claire felt Henry's hands take her hips in a tight grip and she rested her hands on his, letting her tender pussy become used to the thick erection that she was sitting on. After a moment, she leaned forward a little, raising herself off Henry's lap and letting a couple inches of his rock-hard dick slip out of her drenched pussy. Then she eased back down onto him, feeling the top of his shaft scrape with delicious friction against a tender place inside her dripping channel.

Slowly she worked up and down on Henry's cock, relishing the feel of his hardness piercing the wet softness of her snatch. The skin at the base of his trembling cock grabbed a little at the outer lips of Claire's pussy, tugging gently at her when she pulled off of his cock and forcing her swollen pussy lips aside when she pushed her wet pussy back down around him. All the while that beautiful rubbing and pressing inside her kept happening at the bottom of each stroke, as the crown of his cock forced it's way past a sensitive, swollen spot deep inside.

Suddenly Henry leaned forward, pressing his face against the back of her flannel shirt as he began to thrust with his hips, lifting himself from the concrete step with each stroke. Claire's ponytail brushed Henry's face as she grabbed his hands and guided them under her shirt, letting him seize a soft breast in each hand. Then she just held on to Henry's arms, her legs trembling a little as she struggled to hold herself in place for him. She kept her tight pussy hovering right over Henry's lap, letting him drive himself up into her grasping wetness as hard and fast as he wanted.

Henry thrust steadily into Claire's willing body, pulling her tightly against him and squeezing her tits hard as he felt numbness beginning to spread from his balls up to the root of his cock. Sensing that he was close, Claire reached one hand down between her thighs, pressing two fingers over her clit and slowly dragging them down to where Henry's cock was sliding in and out of her dripping snatch. She pulled the damp fingers back up and over her clit and began rubbing up and down in time to his thrusts.

Claire heard Henry's breathing begin to turn ragged and he let off a small, gasping moan as he started to shorten his strokes, rapidly slipping the last few inches of his hard dick in and out of her slippery snatch. Without the wonderful pressure of his cock pressing against that soft, tender place inside her, Claire felt her orgasm begin to slip away, but she began to rub her sensitive clit faster hoping that she might make it anyway.

Suddenly, she felt a rush of slickness inside her as Henry's trembling cock began shooting thick strings of cum into her pussy. He made a last few ragged strokes, crushing Claire in a tight grip as he filled her slippery cleft with semen. She smiled as Henry gave a soft gasp of pleasure and loosened his arms around her, relaxing his grip on her sore breasts. Henry lowered his hips and sat back onto the step, allowing the tip of his still-hard cock to slip free of her drenched pussy.

Claire felt a mixture of his semen and her juices dripping out of her and she slipped her fingers down to capture the slippery drippings and rub them over her taut clitoris. It felt good, but she didn't think she could come. With a little sigh, but a happy smile on her face, she braced her hands on Henry's thighs and stood, bending to grab her jeans and panties and tug them back up.

As she quickly zipped her jeans, Claire began to feel a deep ache in her thighs from squatting over Henry the way she had, plus her boobs felt a little bruised. She wished she had been able to climax, but she knew that Henry would feel better and hopefully he would be able to sleep a little bit.

Henry sat back, floating in a post-orgasmic afterglow as Claire rose from his lap, shadows playing across the pale skin of her ass. He caught a brief glimpse of pink wetness as she bent to pull her jeans up; Claire's soft brown pubic hair was tangled and slicked with a mixture of Henry's thick white semen and her own juices. For a moment her felt his erection start to stir, but he sleepily dismissed the urge.

Claire sat back down beside Henry on the step as he fumbled to tuck his wet, half-erect penis back into his fatigue trousers and button up. Finally he was able to settle in a little bit and put one arm around her as she rested her head on his shoulder.

For just a moment, Henry forgot about Rippers, steel doors and survivors. Exhaustion, coupled with the buzz of post-coital hormones and the warmth of the woman pressed against his side pushed him into sleep and darkness settled over him like a blanket.

In the dimness of the shelter, eighteen survivors slept.

The End