Christmas Shopping
Well, I left this a bit late. No time for introductions, I'm hours away from the deadline! PANIC PANIC PANIC
Revesonant
** ** That night, she dreamed of the bomb. That day, almost an entire year ago now, still echoing around her head. Sounds. Voices. Pictures. The city had never been louder. Some things were sharper than others- Screams. Explosions. Blood. She remembered running, running away from the fire that leapt from building to building like a living creature. She had been one of the lucky ones. Perhaps the only lucky one. She had been running on pure instinct, sensing the blast almost before it even happened. No thought. No logic. Just the chase. She ran down the streets, over the backs of cars, pushing past the other people who just stared dumbfounded at the sky. She felt guilty about that sometimes. Would they have survived if she hadn't got in their way? She'd never know. Fire. Screams. Ash. She'd never worked out how she'd done it. From Hanto to Lysoton Street on foot! And apparently it had only taken five minutes for the blast to reach there. Impossible.
Then the dream skipped. She had found her brother standing outside their house. He was just stood there, dumbfounded, watching the explosion growing larger in the distance like some perverse sunrise. People ran past her, but she ignored them. It seemed like everyone around her was panicking, screaming, but she stayed calm. She'd scanned the walls as she ran down the streets, the other wolf clutching desperately at her hand. The walls. No-one had mentioned them. No legends, no dreams, no overheard conversations. But that feeling wouldn't go away. A little, urgent whisper...
_ Watch the walls..._
And when they couldn't run any further, when they could hear the fire getting louder and louder, closer and closer, then she stopped. Something caught her eye. It was nothing. Just a wall, identical to the hundreds she passed every day. A few metres high, made of bland, symmetrical stone blocks. But the little voice said...
_ Yes._
The two of them collapsed onto it, panting. For a while, neither of them said anything. They just leaned against the blank stone, no energy left to waste on banter. She slowly felt the edges of each stone with one hand. There was nothing there. No mysterious cracks, no hidden switch.
"There's... nothing there..."
Her brother's voice floated up from where he was slumped on the floor. He must have noticed what she was doing. She ignored him, continuing to feel the wall for irregularities, hollow sections, buttons, panels. Nothing.
"Give up..."
She could smell the flames now. The fire was roaring up the other end of the street. They couldn't outrun it, not now. It was a strange, unnatural green and where the flames licked the street they left long, charred gashes. She slumped beside her brother, and looked towards the sky. She had never believed in gods. Any of them. But she whispered something as the smoke began to choke her and the tidal wave of fire bore down on them...
"Please..."
For her, those three seconds lasted for hours. The fire, dancing and waving. Her brother's long, slow gasps of breath. The smell of smoke, the acrid burning smell of the bomb. She could feel the heat from the flames now, the first hints of the inferno that had devoured the entire city. That slow, crackling sound as the tongues of fire crept towards their feet. And, a few inches above her head...
A drawn-out, hesitant click.
** ** And then they fell backwards into nothingness.
And then...
And then...
** Wake up, Laura. It's morning.**
The deep, electronic voice was coming from a speaker next to her bed. A backlit clock beside it showed seven o'clock. She groaned and rolled over, curling up deeper into the blankets. She could still hear the humming noise from the computer as it waited for her to get dressed. It was hard to get back to sleep with those robotic eyes on her. Too creepy.
After a minute or two, she gave up and reluctantly slid out from the covers, glancing at the floor. She'd set out all her clothes for the day last night. Laura pulled them over her body, well aware Sai was watching her. She was only fifteen, but she had taken to sleeping naked recently. She was beginning to think it had been a bad idea. Laura knew that Sai was just a machine, but even so... it felt weird to get changed in front of him. She wondered how Sai felt about it.
After she got dressed, she checked herself in the mirror. A grey-furred wolf with blue eyes stared groggily back at her. Her clothes were getting a bit tight, she realised. She'd have to ask Sai to let her get some new ones. She pressed a button on the keyboard by the door.
"I'm up, Sai. What's for breakfast?"
The screen flickered to life.
Good morning, Laura. How about pancakes?
Laura frowned.
"I thought you said we were out of eggs."
I lied. And I found some lemon juice, too.
She gave an exasperated noise.
"Since when were you allowed to lie to me, Sai?"
** Special Event Programming. Merry Christmas, Laura!**
Laura stared at the computer screen.
"Seriously? It's Christmas?"
The screen flickered to a calendar. The date was underlined several times. The 25th of December.
Well... yes. You mean you didn't remember?
** **"I had other things to concentrate on, Sai. Why didn't you tell me? I could have got something ready."
*What, and spoil the surprise? *
She gave up. Sometimes it was better just to let Sai have his way.
"Is Mark still asleep? Should I go and wake him up?"
The computer whirred.
** Yes. That would be helpful.**
The door swished open, and Laura walked the short distance to her brother's room. The door was identical to hers on the outside, and she softly opened it.The younger wolf was still asleep as she walked in. His room was a lot like hers- same wallpaper, same furniture, same bedsheets. On the other hand, it was very sparse. There was nothing fragile in the room, nothing that could be knocked over by a careless swing of the arm.
She tiptoed up to his bed and leant down to his ear.
"Merry Christmas," she whispered, stroking his fur lightly. He rolled over a bit to face her. His eyes blinked open. They had been blue once, too, but the bomb had changed that. The iris and pupil of each eye had become a pale, unseeing white.
"Thanks, Laura..."
His voice was hoarse and uneven. He rolled out of the bed, landing unsteadily on his feet. The older wolf took his hand and led him out of the room. Mark kept close to her side as they walked to the centre of their new home. He still found it hard to navigate the corridors on his own. The fact that he was a wolf made it slightly easier- his senses of smell and hearing helped make up for the lack of sight. He could make out his sister only as a scent and the little noises as she moved; a heartbeat, the rustle of clothes, footsteps...
They made it to the main room of the complex- a large, circular space with a few sofas and a table. It was one of the few rooms in the building that actually had a window, a large round one in the ceiling. Laura sat her brother down and walked over to the dispenser built into the wall. Sai had been telling the truth about the pancakes; there were seven stacked on a plate in the indent in the device. She picked them up, awkwardly. Laura was never sure whether she should thank the computer. Sometimes she thought of Sai as a machine, a servant; but then he'd do something like this, and suddenly... she wasn't so sure. She called out to her brother, lazing on the sofa.
"Mark! Sai's made pancakes!"
The cub's ears pricked up.
"I thought we didn't have the right ingredients for that?"
"He says he lied. Apparently he can do that now. Come and have some before they go cold!"
Mark eagerly climbed into one of the chairs. They ate in silence for a few minutes.
"Laura?"
She swallowed.
"Yes?"
"Can we... go out and get some stuff? You know? For Christmas?"
She contemplated this.
"You mean... Christmas shopping?"
He nodded.
"Well, I suppose this is a special occasion... will you be okay walking, though?"
"I think so. I'll bring the stick, if you want."
Laura sighed and stood up. Mark frowned.
"Where are you going?"
"No time like the present. It's getting dark early, and I want to be back in by nightfall. Sai?"
Mark shrugged. He could barely tell when it was night-time anymore anyway.
** Yes, Miss Laura?**
"You heard. We're going out."
** Is that wise?**
"Who cares? Just get everything ready, okay?"
The computer made a barely audible "harrumph" noise.
Very well. I shall... prepare the suits.
** **"You think we'll need them? What's the radiation level?"
Sai thought about this.
Moderate. Higher than normal. Unhealthy.
** **"Is that "unhealthy" as in, say, eating a cheeseburger, or "unhealthy" as in rotting the flesh off our bones?"
" Unhealthy" as in prolonged exposure may result in genetic decay!
Laura growled.
"Okay then. Suits. But they'd better not be the floppy ones. I swear I'd sooner take the cancer than another couple of hours in them." ** **
** * * ***
** ** Ten minutes later, the two of them walked out into the city. The hidden door snapped shut behind them.Laura made sure to make a note of where they'd arrived from. The city was a maze, a repeating pattern of streets and roads. Almost every house and building looked the same, with only a tiny sign or number distinguishing it from the rest.
Then again... that was before the bomb. Now, there were different landmarks to remember. The sides of the buildings were scorched and charred- here and there, there were huge holes or dents in the walls where the fire had found something volatile. Looking around, Laura saw that this entrance to the shelter was hidden beside a small shop. It was difficult to work out what the shop had once sold. The signs had all melted from the heat, and the inside of the shop was equally ambiguous. One large pile of ash and wreckage could have been the counter. And, worse yet, there was a silhouette of a man plastered against the back wall. She glanced towards her little brother, who was walking along, whistling. Oblivious to the wreckage and ash. Sometimes, she was almost glad that he didn't have to see what she saw every time she came outside.
They were wearing what they normally wore on the rare occasions they went outside; a couple of Sai's less ridiculous radiation suits were stretched over their normal clothes. According to the computer's sensors, the radiation levels had been decreasing steadily over the last few months. As such, he had finally decided to let them use the lightweight versions that were concealed in one of the storerooms. Technically, they were hardly suits at all; they were merely a set of gloves, masks and a few long, heavy coats with hoods to cover the wearer's bare skin. They weren't quite as effective as the more traditional, lead-lined hazard suits, but they would confer enough protection to maintain the wearer's health. provided they were worn correctly.
As soon as she was outside of Sai's line of sight, she undid her coat and let it flap around her. Sai's overprotectiveness had been getting on her nerves.
They walked towards the outskirts of the city. While most of the shops had been closer to the city centre, that was where the bomb had hit; as such, very few of the buildings were still in one piece. Instead, Laura lead them to a large shopping centre just outside the city. She had been there a few times before, on shopping trips with her parents or when she was out with friends. She forced those memories back as soon as they came to her. Not now. Not today.
More recently, she had been there a few times for supplies. Sai had been stockpiled with some food by whoever had made him, but there wasn't really much in the way of... well, food. Sai had a couple of hundred year's supply of porridge, corn flakes and frozen, nutritious mush. However, he only had enough sugar and bread for about ten. The clothes were nearly as bad. No children's clothes, just a dozen business-like jackets, shirts and overlarge pants. Grey underwear. Grey socks. Grey ties. Laura got the impression whoever had planned to live in Sai was a deeply boring man.
They walked through the car park, ignoring the signs to look both ways and stick to the paths. That didn't really matter now. None of the cars had moved in months. About halfway across, Laura began to feel sick. Every one of them had belonged to someone. Another person. Another family. She tried not to look through the windows, but sometimes she couldn't help it. Here was a portable games console, discarded on a seat; there, a stuffed bear, whose owner had taken care to strap in with the seatbelt. It was looking at her. Like it was... sneering. Like it was her fault.
The worst shock came near the doors. The store was towards the edges of the city, so the inhabitants had had slightly more time to prepare than those caught in the middle. The fire had weakened a lot by the time it reached here, too. Just enough that they had enough time to feel it burning their flesh and melting their bones. Or else enough time to escape it but be submitted to such doses of radiation that they only had a few hours left to live. In the seat of one of the cars was a girl. Probably a fox. It was hard to tell, but her height suggested she was about ten. The door next to her hung open, swinging on its hinges with each gust of wind. The girl's head had rolled back, settling in a grotesque position facing the two of them. Her form was emaciated. Skeletal, to the extent that she looked like she was grinning.
"What's wrong?"
Laura glanced down. They had stopped walking. Mark was staring up at her with a worried expression. For a moment, she could only think; His eyes are as dead as the girl's. She hesitated.
"Nothing," she whispered. She turned and marched towards the main doors, which parted to let her through. She didn't look behind her until she heard them close behind her. She didn't need to. That face had burnt itself into her brain. Laura had thought she had come to terms with what had happened, but this... this was too much. A flood of emotions hit her. Fear, guilt, despair...
Mark hugged her.
"You don't like coming outside, do you?" he whispered. When she didn't answer, he sighed. "Thanks for coming with me."
For a moment, Laura did nothing. Just stood there, back to the door. She pulled herself together. What had happened wasn't important. What was important was keeping him safe. Keeping him happy. That's what her parents would have wanted.
"Okay," she muttered, stroking his head softly. "Let's go look around."
* * *
The shopping centre was huge, one of those with hundreds of shops bordering the walls; several floors, connected by elevators and escalators. Of course, none of those should have been working now. After the bomb, the mixture of physical damage and electromagnetic radiation had deactivated the majority of the electrical supplies in the city. Sai, of course, had been shielded from the worst effects; and, within a few hours of the explosion, had gained access to the city's electricity grid. Invisible to the naked eye, Sai slowly took control of every building in the city that was still of any use. Among the first priorities was to ensure a supply of food- as such, this department store was supplied with electricity throughout the day. It seemed bizarre, really. The outside world was dead and silent, but the lights all flickered to life as Laura and Mark walked through the doors. And the freezers in the food aisles kept buzzing as incessantly as they had since they were first installed.
Laura pulled out a pizza and eyed it critically. The best before date had passed a couple of months ago, but it had spent all that time wrapped up and in deep freeze. Should be okay once they cooked it. After all, the radiation would probably have sterilised all the food in the shop a few times over. She shrugged and flung it into the trolley. Mark was pushing it along enthusiastically, whistling to himself. They had looted the trolley from one of the first shops they had found, and it was already piled high with a strange mixture of goods. Carefully arranged at the bottom were a set of electronics they had found in a hardware store; a laptop, a CD player, an mp3 player, a couple of games consoles and a mismatched bundle of games and CDs. On top of that was a far more disorganised mountain of junk food. That was the thing with chocolates and sweets. Long sell-by dates. Mark was happily eating his way through a packet of biscuits right now.
"Is that enough, do you think?" Laura asked. "Anything else you want?"
Mark shook his head, mouth full. He swallowed.
"No, I think that's everything. How about you?"
She glanced around at the shops. One on the floor above caught her eye.
"I could do with some new clothes. Will you be okay down here?"
He nodded.
* * *
Laura bundled what she'd found in her arms and looked around for a changing room. She could see one on the other side of the store, and she walked to it. She kicked at the door. It didn't open.
"Oh, come on..."
She put her clothes down and rattled the doorknob a few times. The door continued to resist her attempts to find some privacy. Laura groaned. She'd left the crowbar in the trolley, too. Then a thought struck her, and she froze. If the door was locked, that meant...
She peered through the crack and moaned. Yes. It was occupied. A figure was slumped on the floor, unmoving. Now that she was concentrating, there had been a bad smell hanging over that half of the shop... She repressed her urge to vomit and walked back out into the corridor, unbreathing. Oh, well. The changing room was a bit pointless, anyway. After all, who was going to see her? Instead, she slipped into a small, dark neighbouring shop. She assumed no-one would be in there now, alive or dead.
The shop was... well, just another shop. It sold things. But this one had caught her eye on the few occasions that she'd been out looting for Sai. If the smooth black curtains it had instead of a door weren't a big enough hint as to what kind of shop it was, the window display was also quite... enlightening. Laura tried not to stare at the mannequins as she shuffled into the room. The interior was, if anything, even worse. There were several aisles full of... stuff... carefully categorised and arranged. Mainly by size. There was a full-length mirror in here, too, but Laura was at a loss as to who would want to try on the things they bought in the middle of the shop. Not here, in what the signs proclaimed to be "Madam D'Amore's Emporium".
For the first few years of her life, Laura had been fairly sheltered. She was aware of most of this, but she'd never thought of entire shops dedicated to it. A friend or two had told her stories, but she had never really believed or understood them. But since the bomb, she'd had to spend a lot of time inside. Alone. She'd read a few of the more... exotic books that Sai's creator had decided to save, and she'd had a lot of time to... explore herself, as some of those books might have put it. As such, she was beginning to develop an understanding of why this kind of shop existed.
She stripped off in the aisle, awkwardly. She started with the mask, coat and gloves, carefully removing them and putting them down on the floor. Sai wouldn't like the fact that she was going around without them, but how would he know? She'd just put them on again over the top of her new clothes. Then she began to slip out of her jeans and t-shirt, sliding them over her fur. She dropped them in a heap, kicking them out of the way.
On a whim, she decided to get some new underwear, too. There was certainly no shortage of them for her to wear. She slid her panties down her legs and undid her bra, reaching behind her to undo the fastenings. She let them fall to the floor and stepped out of them. Laura glanced across the shelves and racks for something half-way respectable. About a hundred pieces of skimpy lingerie stared back at her. She walked down the aisle, examining each of them with increasing bewilderment. Most were just a bit too thin or patchy for her to contemplate. Others were clearly built for someone a little more... mature than her.
She found it slightly surreal once she reached a section full of costumes. There was a schoolgirl uniform suspiciously like her own, nurse and policewoman outfits... she almost laughed at some of them. Then came a whole armoury of sex toys. She took a few of them off the shelves to examine further. There were so many variations of the same thing, cheerfully labelled in an over-enthusiastic font... Vibrating! King-size! Strawberry-flavour! Double-ended!
Laura finally found a couple of things she liked the look of, and she cautiously put them on. A black lace bra and frilled panties. She walked around in them, testing them, feeling them. Satisfied, she leaned down to pick up her other clothes... and froze, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She grinned. Sitting in front of her was a teenage wolf, half-naked and knelt down, showing off her cleavage. She crawled over to the mirror, watching her reflection as it moved. The other Laura crawled towards her on all fours, swaying from side to side with each step. Her tail, sticking out of the top of her new underwear, was playfully swishing to and fro. She watched the other Laura reach the mirror, instinctively raising her hips receptively. The wolf raised her paws to touch the glass, raising herself up onto her knees. She leaned in towards the other Laura's face and breathed out onto the glass, wiping the moisture off with her arm and gazing at her body. The new lingerie made her look... seductive. Confident. She leant back and felt herself down, running her hands through her fur.
"Ahhhh..."
Laura reached out behind her and undid her new underclothes. She took it off, but slowly, concealing her breasts, teasing the imaginary watcher. Then she flung them to one side, affording herself a small glimpse of her own body before covering herself again with her arms. Then her hands slid down her body again, settling around her waist. She spread her legs, stretching the material around her crotch and slipping her hand down between her legs. She had done this several times before, when she was alone in her room. Now, she caressed herself, licking her finger and running it along her slit in a practised motion. She moaned alluringly, pushing the finger deeper and deeper into her pussy with each sweep, her body thrusting outwards to meet it. She continued for over five minutes, gradually working herself into a state of arousal. Then, just as she thought she was getting close, she stopped and pulled it out, sticking it into her lout hand tasting her own juices.
She turned her back to the mirror, looking over her shoulder at her reflection as she pulled down her new underwear to reveal a well-rounded ass. She flashed a glimpse of her pussy at the mirror, before lowering her tail and covering herself. She rubbed herself again and leaned down on all fours, thrusting her hindquarters in the air. Laura growled playfully and rolled onto her back, completely naked. She spread her legs wide and played with herself a while longer, never quite letting herself orgasm. Her left hand fondled her erect nipples, while her right stroked her clit and slowly stretched her vagina around her fingers.
To finish off, she reached out into one of the shelves without looking and pulled out a medium-sized vibrator, about five inches long and made of a smooth, pale green plastic. Laura ripped it out of its packet and sucked it for a moment, slipping it into her mouth and licking it up and down. Then she slowly transferred it to her aching pussy, feeding it in, inch by inch. The girl gritted her teeth as she forced it in-between her folds. She was well-lubricated by now, but this was still the first time she had been penetrated and it was an unusual sensation. After a moment of getting used to the feeling of it inside her, she got up onto her elbows to look at herself. A young wolf looked back at her from the mirror, practically a schoolgirl, lying lewdly on the floor with a dildo thrust deep inside her. She watched herself reach for the switch, then fall back in ecstasy as the thing began to vibrate inside her, driving her to the strongest orgasm she'd ever had...
* * *
The two of them walked through the doors again, Mark pushing the trolley. Laura was wearing a new grey hoodie and blue jeans; and, unbeknownst to him, black lacy, slightly moist underwear. Her old clothes were stuffed into her backpack, with a green vibrator concealed beneath them.
"Are you feeling okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine," she replied, curiously. "Why?"
"You smell different, for some reason," Mark said, matter-of-factly. "Kinda... sweaty."
Laura shrugged, guardedly.
"Probably just all those stairs."
Mark shivered.
"Ugh. What was that?"
"What?"
He started patting himself, distractedly.
"I felt something on my back..."
Laura looked up, past her brother. The sky was darkening overhead. She squinted, and something landed on her nose. She laughed and pulled up her hood.
"Oh, what the hell. It's snowing."