“You mean it actually tastes like something?” Mildred asked. “The label on the cans I’m eating claimed that it was tender chunks of pan-fried boneless chicken, tenderized for my dining pleasure, in a flavorsome sauce with handpicked herbs and spices. With smoked beans on the side.”
“And?”
She smiled at Doc. “And it tastes like different sorts of shit.”
“My can said it was a lobster bisque with assorted spring vegetables.” Krysty took another hesitant mouthful, blowing to try to cool it, running it around her mouth, shaking her head. “I can taste plenty of chemical additives. Salt. Lot of sugar. Not much lobster.”
“I’ll finish what you don’t want,” offered Dean, who had polished off his bowl of food and was sitting back, watching the others.
“Go open another can for yourself,” J.B. said. “My beef stew’s better than a lot of things I’ve eaten. Things like dead rat and road-killed toad.”
“I confess that my soup is passingly adequate.” Doc slurped another mouthful, a thread of the orange liquid running over his stubbled chin.
“How about you, lover?” Krysty asked, glancing sideways at Ryan. “What wonderful blue-ribbon delicacy did you pick off the shelves?”
Ryan stirred the bowl with his spoon, peering down at the speckled liquid, picking up a lump of something green and staring at it. “I think this is a pea. The strands of yellow are probably cheese.”
“Cheesy peas,” Doc said, smiling toothily. “Or is it peasy cheese? Greasy and freezy. Easy on the palate with a hint of teasy.”
“Yeah, we get the idea, Doc,” Mildred told him, dabbing at her lips with one of the paper napkins she’d discovered in a drawer in the kitchen.
“My apologies. That tendentious old habit of mine of thoughtlessly engaging my mouth before I have allowed my poor, tired brain to operate.”
They carried on eating in silence, broken only by Jak’s slurping and the rattle of spoons on dishes. The albino teenager went out into the kitchen and after several minutes reappeared with a fresh bowl of food.
“Gaia! What is that?”
“Chicken rice ginger lemon-grass. Want some? Big can. Plenty left.”
She shook her head. “Thanks a lot, Jak, but no thanks. Think what I’ve eaten should charge up the battery for a day or so.” Krysty yawned, laying down her spoon. “Right now I think I might head for bed.”
Everyone seemed to feel the same, and in a minute Jak was left alone at the Formica-topped table, busily finishing off his Thai chicken.
RYAN AND KRYSTY took one of the rooms, pushing a pair of beds together and overlaying some of the blankets. The dormitory, like the rest of the redoubt, was kept at a constant seventy degrees, the air dry and slightly dusty. The faint scent of pines seemed to have disappeared. J.B. and Mildred took the second of the rooms, leaving Doc, Dean and Jak to share a third. The old man was complaining loudly that his stomach felt a little disturbed, blaming it on the curried king-crab gumbo. “Best fasten up your seat belt, dear boy,” he said to Dean. “I fear that we are all in for a somewhat bumpy evening.”
IT WAS RELATIVELY RARE for them to be able to spend a night feeling completely safe and relaxed. The outer doors of the redoubt were undeniably closed and sec locked, and Ryan had personally slipped the double bolts that sealed off the JA 33 section of the complex.
Ryan and Krysty went to bed naked, which was unusual. Her Smith & Wesson Model 640 double-action blaster, with the snub-nose barrel, was tucked under the pillow. Ryan had laid his long blaster— the 7.62 mm SSG-70 Steyr bolt-action rifle—on the floor on his side of the makeshift double bed. The SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol was beside it.
He worked the dimmer switch, reducing the room to near darkness before padding across to climb in next to Krysty, feeling the warmth of her body.
“Hi, lover,” she whispered, reaching out to him, allowing her fingers to trail down across the scarred chest, over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach, lower, finding him instantly hard, ready for her. They teased and touched each other with the tender, sure knowledge of longtime lovers.