Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Nice game, everyone!” Miss Beiste told the team as they ran off the field. It wasn’t actually that great a game. They’d lost, again. The Titans had been getting a lot better lately, but they still had a long way to go.

“Did Coach Tanaka leave early again?” Mike asked.

“He had to get home in time for Father Knows Best,” Puck answered, and everyone laughed.

Sam didn’t mind that Coach Tanaka was barely around—he was a terrible coach. Miss Beiste was way better, even if she was a woman and obviously couldn’t coach football, at least not officially. Not all the guys were on board with taking orders from the girls’ P.E. teacher, but Sam didn’t mind. She knew more about football than anyone at this school—anyone in the whole town, probably.

She’d been working with him one-on-one some. Spencer had found out and made a big stink about it, but that was just because he wanted to be quarterback, even if it meant trying to cause a scandal by implying that Sam was having an affair with a teacher. It was nothing like that. Sam barely even thought of Miss Beiste as a woman, and she had definitely never acted like she thought of him as anything other than a student and an athlete. Well, except that sometimes they veered more toward friendship than Sam had with any of his other teachers.

Sam showered and changed and then met Miss Beiste in her office. They did this after home games when Coach Tanaka left early (in other words, after home games) to review how the game had gone and what the team could do better next time. It was genuinely helpful, but there was another purpose too: someone had to make sure the boys’ locker room wasn’t a disaster after all the guys went home, and Miss Beiste couldn’t go in there.

Tonight, though, Miss Beiste didn’t talk too much about the game. She was really worried about what was going on with the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Really worried about them—she had a brother in the navy, who said that things were worse than most people knew. Sam had never seen Miss Beiste worried about anything—it kind of scared him. She said, “Listen, Sam, I’m going to tell you a secret. Mrs. Sylvester would kill me if she knew I’m telling you, so keep this to yourself unless there’s a real emergency. Promise?”

Sam leaned forward. Maybe he was going to hear the secret of the mysterious Mr. Sylvester no one had ever met or heard about (though it was hard to guess what he could have to do with a real emergency). “Promise.”

“You know this school has a fallout shelter, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, the one you know about is just the regular shelter. Mrs. Sylvester had a second, better fallout shelter built for herself and the Cheerios. If anything happens while you’re at school, grab as many of your friends as you can and get them down to the good one. There’s not enough room for the whole school, but it’s bigger than just the cheerleaders need.”

“Oh, wow. Do you really think it’ll come to that?”

“I hope not, kid. I really hope not.”

Miss Beiste led Sam down to the basement, past the entrance to the official fallout shelter, and into the boiler room. “Okay, see this valve?”

“The one under the big DANGER sign?”

“Yeah, exactly. You just turn it all the way to the left, and—”

“And that won’t make the boiler explode?”

“No, watch.” Miss Beiste demonstrated. As she slowly turned the wheel, the sound of gears turning was audible above the noise of the boiler. What appeared to be a solid wall behind them parted to reveal a metal staircase. “Just follow that all the way down. And be sure to close the door behind the last person.”

“So no one else can follow us down?”

“No, so fallout can’t follow you down.”

Sam had lots of questions. Miss Beiste promised to answer as many as she could on Monday but said she really needed to go see her mother out of town—she was already sick, and worrying about her son in the navy was just making things worse. Miss Beiste did offer to stay and help Sam lock up, but that wasn’t really a two-person job, and he said he’d be fine.

Almost everyone was gone by the time Sam got back to the locker room. The only one there was Mason, one of the male cheerleaders, standing at one of the sinks combing pomade into his hair. “Hey, Sam,” he called. “Looks like I’m the last one again. Sorry!”

“It’s fine, I still have to shower.”

“Do you mind if me and my sister wait inside until you lock up? Maybe if we wait a little while the rain will let up a little before we have to walk home.” Those two walked home from games most of the time. They weren’t the only Cheerios who didn’t drive, but they were the only ones who didn’t have friends on the team who drove. They didn’t seem to have many friends at all, from what Sam could tell, mostly just each other. Maybe that was why people called them “the incest twins” behind their backs. (Hopefully that was why—hopefully it wasn’t actually true.)

“Sure. Or I could give you a ride.”

“Thanks, we’d really appreciate it!”

Sam showered and dressed and checked over the locker room to make sure everything was in order. Mason and his sister were waiting for him in the hallway, dancing the watusi without any music. “Ready?” he asked, locking the door. “Where do you guys live, by the way?”

“On Haller Street. Near the…” The rest of Mason’s answer was drowned out by a loud siren. He shouted, “Madison, is that the tornado siren?”

Madison shouted back, “It’s not tornado season!”

“Oh no, this is it!” Sam yelled at the twins, “Go to the secret Cheerios shelter! I’ll be there as soon as I see if anyone else is in the building!”

“What secret Cheerios shelter?” Mason asked.

Madison took her brother’s hand. “Follow me, I’ll explain later!” She led him to the basement, while Sam ran up and down every hallway looking for other stragglers. There was no one else—Sam even checked in all the bathrooms, including the girls’. He was pretty winded by the time he made it down to the boiler room, where the siblings were struggling to open the secret door. Madison stepped aside and Sam and Mason turned the wheel together to get it open.

Closing the door from the inside was much easier. They probably should have turned the light on before closing the door, but it didn’t take too much groping along the wall to find the switch. The staircase was narrow, but no one wanted to be the first to find out what was at the bottom of it so they all squeezed close and descended together.

Madison found a light switch at the bottom of the stairs. Flipping it on only revealed another heavy metal door. Sam and Mason got that one open, and Madison found the switch inside it, and then they all just stood and gaped.

“It’s so…modern,” Mason said finally.

It was. It was a huge, open room with a black and white checkered floor, several white, low-profile sofas, white vinyl-covered chairs, chrome lamps everywhere, low kidney-shaped coffee tables, a wall of bookshelves, and a hi-fi system in one corner.

“Yeah, but…what are we supposed to eat?” Sam asked. He was also wondering how they were supposed to go to the bathroom, but he couldn’t say that in front of a girl.

They turned on some of the lamps and quickly saw there were other rooms. A barracks-style “bedroom” with rows and rows of bunk beds; a sort of combination gym/locker room; a large, modern kitchen; and a dining room with seating for dozens. There was also a big room with mechanical stuff—the only things they could identify for sure were a washer and dryer, but it looked like there were generators and pumps and a ventilation system of some sort, among other machines whose functions they couldn’t even guess—and a warehouse-sized pantry stocked with canned and dried foods, drinking water, and soap and cleaning supplies.

“What do you guys think this leads to?” Sam asked, jiggling the handle of a locked door at the back of the pantry.

“Just more supplies, probably,” Mason said.

“Hopefully we won’t be here long enough to need any more than this,” Madison added. The others echoed that hope.

“How did you two even know about this place?” Mason asked.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Sam said. “Miss Beiste told me Mrs. Sylvester had it built for the Cheerios.”

“Just for the girl Cheerios. Sorry, Mason.”

“Madison! I’m your twin!”

“Mrs. Sylvester didn’t trust any boys to be down here with us!”

Mason crossed his arms over his chest and turned his back to his sister.

“I didn’t think we’d ever really need to use this place!” Madison started crying. “I would have brought you along! I promise!” She was really sobbing now.

Mason hated to see his sister cry, but really, she couldn’t have even told him of this place’s existence? Who would he have told? He announced, “I’m going to see what they’re saying on the radio” and went back to the big front room. Even though he was mad, he probably would have stayed to make sure Madison would be all right if Sam weren’t there patting her shoulder consolingly.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s gonna be all right,” Sam told her, trying as hard to convince himself as to convince her.

“You don’t know that!”

“Sure I do,” he lied. “Let’s go listen to the radio with your brother. They’re probably saying right now that it was all just a false alarm.”

But when they found Mason, he was just listening to static. He turned the dial all the way to the left, then all the way to the right, and that was all there was. Every single radio station had stopped broadcasting.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Sam assured them. “Would you excuse me for a minute?” He went into the bathroom, locked himself in a toilet stall, and started sobbing. He knew he had to pull himself together because he was a senior and the twins were only sophomores, but Madison was right—he didn’t know it was going to be all right.

At least Madison had Mason and Mason had her—Sam couldn’t be there for his own brother and sister. They must be terrified right now…if they were even still alive.

Oh god, what if literally everyone was dead but the three of them down here in this bunker?

Sam flushed to cover up the sound of his crying. And then he was still crying, so he flushed again. And then he was still crying, so he…Wait, he had no idea how much water they had or how long it had to last them. When would it be safe to leave? He had no idea, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a good idea to keep flushing unnecessarily. He muffled himself with a wad of toilet paper instead, but he didn’t want to waste that either, and once it got soaked it didn’t do much good. He just had to force himself to act like a goddam man.

By the time he was finally able to face the others again, he found them in the dining room, eating silently. There was a place set for him—a plate with Spam and green beans and a glass of milk, which he could tell after one sip was made from powder. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate everything in front of him, more for something to do than for any other reason.

After dinner they washed the dishes together, and after that they went back to the living room to listen to music. Madison put on one record after another, not bothering to look through the selection to pick out something good—just whatever she happened to grab. The three of them listened to Pat Boone and Brahms and the Shirelles with equal enthusiasm, i.e., none.

Maybe they should have spent the evening planning instead, but for what? How to pass the time until they ran out of food and starved to death?

At midnight, even though time didn’t really have any meaning anymore, Sam suggested that they go to bed. No one was tired, but Mason and Madison shrugged and agreed that they might as well. They found the stuff they needed to get ready for bed in foot lockers by the bunk beds.

The locker room was big enough that they all could have used it at the same time and still had privacy, but Mason and Sam let Madison go first. Then the boys had their turn to brush their teeth and wash their faces and change into nightclothes; they went back to the bedroom in their girls’ pajamas.

Sam climbed into a bottom bunk several beds away from where Madison was already under her covers. Then Mason climbed into…Madison’s bed.

What the…?

“Uh…Mason?” Sam’s voice sounded way too loud, given that they were in bed with the lights out, but he was too far away to just whisper.

“Yeah?”

“Uh…you sure you don’t want a bed to yourself?”

Madison held onto her brother tight. “Don’t go, Masie,” she whispered. It had been a long time since either of them had been scared enough to sleep in the other’s bed, but this was by far the most scared she’d been in a long time.

“I’m right here, Maddie,” he whispered back. To Sam he called back, “No thanks, I’m fine.”

“Oh. Okay.”

If there had been any hope before of Sam sleeping, it was gone now. He didn’t even try to fall asleep, he was intent on listening for any kind of inappropriate noises coming from the incest twins. He had never really believed it before, but what if…?

And even if it really wasn’t true before when other kids were making jokes about it, the jokes must have been based on something. There were other twins at the school—mostly boy-boy or girl-girl, but at least one other boy-girl set Sam could think of—and none of them had those rumors about them. So even if Mason and Madison hadn’t actually done anything like that before, maybe they had wanted to…and what was to stop them now?

Maybe it was none of Sam’s business. It was an actual nuclear apocalypse—didn’t the twins deserve to be as happy as they could be? And who was even there to care?

Except Sam did care. Mostly it just bothered him for reasons that might not matter, given their current circumstances, but there was one really good, valid reason for the siblings not to fuck: the prospect of them repopulating the earth with incest babies. There was no way that could be good.

Sam’s most important job now was to prevent that from happening.

.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Madison called, looking up from her manual at Sam stumbling groggily into the “living room,” as she’d decided to call the main room with all the couches and stuff. He had slept really late; she had been starting to get worried about him. And he was still in those flowery pajamas. They were…surprisingly cute on him. She had to look back down at her book so she wouldn’t stare.

“Morning,” Sam mumbled. He had apparently fallen asleep eventually after all. “Um…I hope you guys have been finding appropriate ways to stay entertained.”

“Entertained?” Great, was Madison going to have to find ways to keep not just her brother occupied but Sam as well? Mason had been nervous and restless all morning, and while it was understandable, it was also extremely distracting. Luckily she’d found some sports equipment and sent him off to hopefully wear himself out. “No, I’ve been busy. Mrs. Sylvester wrote up a manual for anyone who’d have to live down here. An inventory of supplies, how to use all the equipment and tools, that kind of thing. I’ve just been familiarizing myself with it.”

“Oh, good idea. Still nothing on the radio?”

“No.” Madison frowned. Mason had spent a good hour this morning trying to get a station to come in, even though it was obviously hopeless. “Would you like some eggs?”

“There are eggs?”

“Powdered, naturally.”

“Oh. No thanks, I’m not really hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

“Mm-hmm.” Sam knew that, of course, but there was very little that appealed to him less at the moment than reconstituted eggs.

Madison sighed in exasperation. “Mason’s in the gym. Maybe you two can find something to do.”

Mason was exhausted from jumping rope—he’d been doing it pretty much all morning. But every time he tried to take a break, all these thoughts would come flooding in and he’d be on the brink of tears. And, sure, Madison had seen him cry before, but what if Sam saw?

Sam. How in the world was he going to deal with being stuck in a bunker with Sam for…god, how long would it be, even?

Mason knew there were kids at McKinley who thought he was queer just because he was a male cheerleader. Madison always told him to ignore them. It made sense for him to be a cheerleader, she said: they’d always been close and done everything together, and it wasn’t like she could join the football team. Besides, some of the other male cheerleaders liked to get grabby with the girls, and she needed her brother there to protect her. And those things were both true, but Mason knew—and he was pretty sure Madison knew—that the people who called him queer were probably onto something anyway. Suffice it to say that he didn’t have any trouble keeping his hands off the girl cheerleaders. The football players, though...Obviously he wouldn’t risk his life by trying to grab any of them, but it was hard to resist looking.

And if there was one football player who he especially couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of during games, it was Sam Evans. And not only was Sam incredibly handsome and talented, but he was always nice to them. Offering him a ride home last night, for example. Making sure they got down here to the shelter when…when the bombs…He sped up his jump roping to keep from following that train of thought.

“Hi, Mason.”

Oh, great, speak of the-…think of the devil? “Hi, Sam.”

“Where did you get the sweatpants?”

“Same place as the pajamas. Just had to dig a little farther.”

“Thank god. I feel like an idiot in these.”

“Mm.” Sam did look kind of silly in the flowery pajamas. Silly but also disturbingly appealing, in that the top was very snug on him and showed off his chest and arm muscles quite a lot.

“So…sorry I slept so long. What, uh…what did I miss?”

Mason could barely keep jumping anyway; if Sam was going to insist on talking, he had to stop. He sat on a bench, caught his breath, and said, “Pretty much just this.”

“Ah, okay. Good. I mean…I’m glad you two weren’t having too much fun without me. Ha ha.”

“I’m pretty sure too much fun won’t be an issue down here. Though there are all those books. And Madison did find some playing cards.”

“That does sound fun,” Sam said in a way that left Mason wondering whether it was supposed to be sarcastic. He was about to ask, but Sam spoke again first, to ask, “Can we talk? I mean, we’re talking now, but I meant…man-to-man?”

Mason had a terrible feeling that Sam had noticed how he looked at him and was about to warn him not to try anything. At least it didn’t seem like he was going to beat him up—Sam wouldn’t have prefaced that with a request to talk. Right? “Sure,” he said, hoping the answer sounded more casual to Sam than it did to himself.

Sam sat next to him on the bench. “We don’t know if there are any other survivors. Even if there are, we don’t know how far away or even when it will be safe for us to leave here. Right?” He waited for Mason to nod. “So we should assume it’s going to be just the three of us for…well, forever. Maybe it won’t be—hopefully it won’t be—but we should be prepared for the possibility that it might. Don’t you think?”

Mason really didn’t want to think in those terms, but Sam was probably right that it was best to be prepared for the worst. He nodded again. He would have tried to answer out loud, but he was afraid of his voice cracking.

“And…you know, I don’t want to say anything in front of your sister, but…you and I know that men have urges. It’s just our nature.”

Mason was pretty sure where Sam was going with this: Natural urges were one thing, but unnatural ones couldn’t be tolerated. Mason should probably deny having any unnatural ones, but all he could do was nod again.

“And I know it’ll be really hard on you, since the only girl here is your sister. I just think it would be really, really bad for you to act on any ‘urges’—with your sister. I mean, any baby that might be born—”

“What!?” Mason knew the jokes people sometimes made about him and Madison, but no one believed them, did they? God, Sam didn’t believe them, did he?

“I know it’s not probably realistic to expect you to be celibate for the rest of your life. And I’m willing to help. But I really need you to promise me that, when you get urges, you’ll come to me for help instead of going to your sister.”

“Help me how? Throwing me in a cold shower?”

“Um.” Of course Sam would do that if it was all Mason ever needed, but Sam doubted that would be enough, long-term. “I was thinking more like…hands-on help.”

“Oh.” Mason had no idea what else to say, except, “Okay.”

“Good.” Sam shook his hand, then added, “Wait, that was a promise, right?”

Mason knew Sam almost certainly wasn’t proposing what it sounded like he was. But he couldn’t ask to clarify—what would Sam think when he realized what Mason thought it sounded like? It didn’t matter, he guessed. If Sam wanted him to promise not to have sex with his sister, he could easily promise that. “Right.”

.

Sam didn’t leave Madison and Mason alone together all day. It was weird and very frustrating—Mason was Madison’s best friend, and she didn’t want someone else around all the time when she wanted to talk to him.

When Madison announced she was going to go make dinner, Mason said he was going to try the radio again. Madison walked into the kitchen, waited a minute, and then tiptoed back out to see if Sam was still glued to Mason’s side. He wasn’t. Madison approached her brother quietly and whispered, “I’m really starting to think he doesn’t want us talking for some reason.”

Mason coughed. “That’s not what he doesn’t want us doing.”

“What—”

“Oh hey, Madison!” Sam called from across the room. He literally ran over and said, “Do you need some help in the kitchen? I can help.”

“Yeah, why don’t you go pick out a vegetable? I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sam looked from brother to sister and back again.

Mason said, “Sam, I promised, and I meant it.”

Sam shook Mason’s hand for some reason and then went into the kitchen.

Madison waited until she was sure he wasn’t going to run right back out before asking, “Mason, what in the…?”

Mason blushed, which was very weird. The twins didn’t get embarrassed around each other. “He’s worried that we…that you and I are going to…become overwhelmed with lust for each other.”

Madison snorted with indignation. “The very idea!”

“I don’t think he thinks we normally lust after each other,” Mason clarified. “But…well, you are the last woman left on earth, as far as we know.”

“First of all, that’s extremely unlikely. Second of all, you don’t even like girls that way!”

Mason stared at her in stunned silence for several beats, before saying quietly, “So you did know.”

Madison pulled him into a hug. “Of course I knew, Masie. And I’ll never tell anyone. I’d almost say that if it might get Sam to stop worrying about us committing incest”—she shuddered just saying it—“but then Sam might be afraid to be alone with you, so…”

“I think I can convince him not to worry about you and me,” Mason said. “I’ll talk to him after dinner.”

After dinner, Mason asked for Sam’s help washing the dishes. As they waited for the sink to fill up, he said, “You really don’t have to worry about me and Madison.”

“Yeah, you promised, and I appreciate it. And I do trust you. It’s just that…no one thinks they’re going to want to do it with their sister, until…”

“But listen.” Mason turned the water off and picked up a dish rag. “I don’t find Madison attractive in the least.”

“You don’t? She’s really pretty.”

“Yeah, I know she is, but I know it the way…like, is your dad handsome?”

Sam had been trying really hard not to dwell on thoughts about his family, but now he wondered what his dad looked like now. The best he could realistically hope was that he just looked dead, like sleeping or something. But probably not, probably his face had been blown off or something, and oh god, what if his mom had to see it happen before her face was blown off too? What if his little brother and sister had to!?

“Hey. It’s okay, Sam.” Mason was pulling him into a hug all of a sudden, and it wasn’t until then that Sam realized he was crying. It was so messed up for a sophomore to have to comfort him, but once he started sobbing into Mason’s shoulder he couldn’t stop.

Mason’s embrace was warm and tight. He started stroking Sam’s hair and the back of his neck, which was actually really soothing. Soothing and…something else.

When Sam made his promise to help Mason out in a “hands-on” way, he really was only thinking of keeping the twins from doing anything terrible with each other. Really, it was the only thing he had in mind. But ever since their conversation, he’d been thinking about what it would be like when Mason came to him for help. He found it…not unpleasant to think about. It probably said something awful about him, but…well, it would be for the greater good. And so, if he could manage to find it enjoyable, what would the harm be?

Mason had just said he didn’t find his sister at all attractive. That was good, Sam knew, but he realized he was a little disappointed, actually, that Mason probably wouldn’t be needing his help any time soon. Mason was holding him close and touching him gently, and Sam’s body was reacting in a certain way, and he sort of wished Mason needed his help right now.

Mason tried not to enjoy holding Sam. The poor guy was crying—Mason didn’t know what was wrong with him. Well, he knew what was wrong with him in general, but to be feeling this way at this very moment was just extra inappropriate.

Sam’s crying slowed down and finally stopped. That meant Mason should let go of him. And he was about to—really—but then Sam kissed him! Sam’s face was wet with tears and his lips tasted salty and Mason just wanted to taste them more. But Sam stopped abruptly and said, “I’m sorry! I don’t know what I…”

“It’s okay!”

“But you don’t even need me to…”

“I do. I do need you to, Sam, please.”

Sam didn’t really believe that Mason needed him to do anything, but he did believe that he wanted him to. And if the end of the world was making them both go crazy and want stuff they wouldn’t normally want, well, so what? The only thing he was worried about was… “I don’t want Madison to see us.”

Yeah, Mason agreed that would be awkward. “Pantry?”

They went way to the back of the pantry, between a stack of shelves of cleaning supplies and one of bottled water. Sam kissed him again, pressing against him, walking him backward until he was against the wall.

Making out with Mason was way different from making out with girls. It didn’t surprise Sam that it was different, but there was one particular way it was different that he wouldn’t have thought of and that was actually better: When he got hard while making out with a girl, he always had to shift or twist or sometimes even stop so she wouldn’t feel it and get scared that he was going to pressure her or something. But with Mason…well, Mason was hard too. Sam could feel Mason’s hard-on pressed right up against his own; Mason had to be able to feel his too, and he didn’t even seem to mind.

Sam had this overwhelming desire not just to press against Mason’s hard bulge, but to rub against it. And so he did, tentatively, ready to spring back and apologize profusely in case he had misinterpreted what Mason wanted.

Mason whimpered right into Sam’s mouth when he felt the drag of their dicks against each other. The only thing keeping it from feeling perfect was that they didn’t rub against each other hard enough. He instinctively grabbed Sam’s ass and pulled him closer.

As soon as Mason squeezed his butt, Sam stopped being tentative. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have thought it was weird just how much he liked having a guy’s hands on his ass, but he didn’t stop to think—he just ground as fast as his hips would go while he kissed as hard as he could around all the moaning.

Mason came first; his orgasm hit him without any warning. It was a few seconds of total ecstasy, followed by total humiliation at the thought of what Sam must think of him.

Sam didn’t back away in disgust. He went rigid and dug his fingers into Mason’s shoulders and gasped against his mouth. Mason wondered if it was possible that he was coming too.

Oh god, Sam couldn’t believe he’d just come in his pants…from making out with a guy. He’d never come in his pants from making out with a girl! Well, no girl had ever let him grind against her. That is, he’d never asked, much less tried it. And of course it was the end of the world basically, so that excused almost anything…

Wait, Mason was apologizing. He wasn’t making a lot of sense, at least not to Sam’s addled brain, and it took a while to piece together what he was apologizing for, exactly, but after probably a full minute of Mason going on, Sam thought he got it. “Are you saying you came while we were…doing that?”

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“It’s okay.” Sam was just so relieved it hadn’t just been him. “I didn’t mean to either, but…these things happen.”

“Right,” Mason said, trying to convince himself. It helped that that thing really had happened to Sam too, apparently. “Right.”

Sam stepped back and examined the front of his sweatpants and the front of Mason’s. The fabric was thick enough that no ejaculate seemed to have soaked through. Still, it was pretty uncomfortable. “We should go change,” he suggested.

“And wash these before Madison does,” Mason added.

They walked as casually as they could back to the bedroom, not standing too close to each other, and looked in a couple of the foot lockers for more sweatpants to change into. There were none. They checked every single locker—not a single pair of sweatpants.

“What the hell!” Sam said. “There can’t be a sweatpants thief! Why would there only be two pairs?”

“We can just put our regular pants back on. I think I left mine on the bed over here...”

They looked everywhere and couldn’t find their own pants either. They looked in every foot locker—there were absolutely no pants in the entire room, not even pajama pants. The tops were gone too; the only clothes were underwear (women’s, naturally), socks, skirts, and nightgowns.

Sam was aware he could leave the sweatpants he was wearing on, but they were just getting more and more uncomfortable. And the longer he felt his own drying cum against his skin, the weirder he felt about what he and Mason had just done. He was getting out of them even if it meant putting on a skirt.

Madison, meanwhile, was in what she was calling the “laundry room.” True, there were a bunch of other machines in there, but considering it just a laundry room made their current accommodations seem slightly closer to normal.

She had gathered all the clothes the boys might consider wearing and brought them here to sort. A lot of the things would be too small for either of them to wear, so she’d just put those somewhere out of the way. Everything else she was going to wash, because she didn’t like the idea of her brother (or Sam, she guessed) wearing things of dubious cleanliness. True, they didn’t look like they’d been worn before, but they had been stored in a subbasement of the high school for god knew how long.

She had refolded all the too-small items and was sorting the rest by color when Sam entered the laundry room…wearing one of the red cheerleader skirts. It was probably comical. She probably should have found it comical. But she did not feel like laughing.

“Oh. Hi, Madison. I just…” He held up two pairs of the gray sweatpants.

Madison gathered that he meant he was there to wash them. “Oh, neat, I guess we had the same idea.” She realized she was staring. Well, of course she was staring—it was a cute boy wearing a skirt. And looking somehow even more cute in it than in regular clothes. What the hell, why did she even think that? Obviously that wasn’t why he was wearing it. He had to be wearing it because…”Oh! It was really smart of you to put a skirt on until everything else is clean! Less unwashed fabric touching your…uh, skin.”

“Right!” Sam agreed. “Plus, we couldn’t find our own clothes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m just sorting things in here, so I thought I’d put your clothes in your pile and Mason’s in his.”

“Oh, okay.” That made sense, Sam guessed. Madison was looking at him weirdly. She couldn’t know…could she? “Well…”

“Oh, why don’t you give me those and I’ll throw them in with the others! I was going to do whites first, but I guess it makes more sense—”

“I’ll put them in!” Sam said. “I don’t want you to have to touch the clothes we’ve…already worn.”

Madison wouldn’t have mind touching the worn clothes—in fact, she’d already washed the stuff they’d all worn yesterday, including underwear. But Sam seemed so insistent that she let him put the pants in the machine, and she made a mental note not to touch his dirty clothes again since it seemed to really bother him.

Sam felt very self-conscious about the way Madison was staring at him. He probably should have just left after he put the clothes in the machine, but he felt the need to say, “I feel really silly in this skirt.”

“You don’t look silly in it,” Madison said. She immediately covered her mouth as soon as she’d said it, even though Sam probably didn’t know she’d been thinking about the fact that he probably wasn’t wearing any underwear under it. Or that she really liked knowing that he probably wasn’t wearing any underwear under it, that if she wanted to she could just reach under the skirt and…

She wasn’t used to thinking about boys’ genitalia this way. It wasn’t that she’d never thought about them at all. She grew up with a twin brother, after all. The fact that he had a penis and she didn’t had been very interesting to her when they were little. But it had been many years since she’d given Mason’s penis any thought. And as for other boys’…she knew the basics, mostly from the aunt who’d given her “the talk” and from stray comments other girls made about their boyfriends, and she’d seen pictures in a couple magazines that Mason thought he’d hidden better than he actually had. But she didn’t just spontaneously think about boys’ genitals.

It wasn’t that she didn’t spontaneously think about boys themselves. She’d never had a boyfriend or really even dated, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to. She’d thought about kissing certain boys—sometimes she’d even thought about more than that. Dancing really close to them, for example.

She’d thought about kissing Sam, or dancing really close to him, even before getting locked in this bunker with him. She wasn’t the only one—most of the girls on the cheerleading team talked about how cute he was. Several of them had dated him, in fact. She had been jealous without explicitly thinking about any of them encountering his penis up close. Now suddenly she couldn’t think about anything else.

Brittany Pierce had probably had sex with him. They hadn’t gone out for that long, but everyone knew Brittany was loose. Madison wished Brittany were here with them so she could ask what it was like. Except, no, she didn’t wish Brittany were here, because if she were, then Sam would be spending all his time with her, and Madison wouldn’t have a chance. “Why did you and Brittany break up?” she blurted out, not really sure what answer she expected, much less what answer she wanted.

“Oh!” It wasn’t a question Sam had expected. He would have felt better about having a conversation with Madison if he’d had pants on, but he didn’t know exactly where she’d put them, and for some reason he felt weird about asking. “I think there was someone else she liked more.”

“Bitch!” Madison muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing! So…how long do you think we’ll be down here?”

“I don’t know. Till it’s safe to go outside, I guess. Did it say anything about that in that stuff you were reading?”

“You’d think so, but no. At least, I haven’t been able to find it. There are lots of books I haven’t looked at yet.”

“Well, no rush, probably. I’d guess it’ll be at least ten or twenty years.”

“Twenty years!”

“Or maybe only ten or so!” Sam added quickly.

But at that moment, Madison wasn’t thinking that twenty years in a bunker with Sam would be a completely bad thing. Not that she was happy about it, exactly, but there were no other girls here for her to compete with. Sam would pretty much have to…

She still wasn’t really thinking about going all the way with him. She was barely able to admit even to herself that she was thinking about his penis at all. But she was more than able to admit to herself that she was thinking about doing something with him. “Do you want to dance? While the clothes are washing?”

Sam said sure, and Madison took him by the hand and led him to the living room. It wasn’t necessary, of course—he knew the way there—but she kind of couldn’t wait until they were dancing to touch him. Sam didn’t hold her hand tight, but she could tell his hand was strong. She imagined what it might feel like on her skin, somewhere other than her own hand.

Mason was sitting in the living room, trying to read a mystery novel, but he wasn’t really able to concentrate—he kept wondering what was taking Sam so long and where Madison was. And then he got his answer to both questions when they came in, holding hands! “What’s going on?” he asked, trying to sound casual and not enraged.

“Oh, we’re just going to dance,” Sam said. “Want to join us?”

Before Mason could answer, Madison found a record that would be impossible for three people to dance to and put it on.

Mason gave his sister a death glare as “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” started playing. “You’re gonna slow dance with Sam while he’s wearing a skirt?”

As if Sam didn’t feel self-conscious enough about his attire! “You’re wearing a skirt too!” he pointed out.

“I just thought it might make you look like two lesbians.”

“Really, Mason? You’re accusing me of being a homosexual?”

That was really low. Mason wished he and Madison were still young enough that he didn’t have any concept of not being able to hit her because she was a girl. He still could have thrown something—though not at her—but he had just enough presence of mind to realize that letting Sam see him react too strongly to the comment might not be a great idea. “Well, I can’t read in here if you’re going to be playing music. I guess I’ll be banished to the bedroom then.”

Sam hadn’t meant for Mason to have to leave. He almost said that, but he didn’t want Madison to get suspicious. “You know, I’m not a homo—”

“Oh, I know that!” Madison did feel bad enough about almost betraying her brother that she didn’t tell Sam what she’d actually meant. “Just like Mason knows I’m not.” She pulled Sam close and started dancing with him.

“I do kind of look like a girl in this.” Sam laughed nervously.

“You really don’t. I’ve never seen a girl with arms like yours,” Madison said, stroking them. “Or a chest like yours.” She wanted to reach under the sweatshirt and touch it but settled for running her fingers along his collarbone.

Sam assumed Madison didn’t understand the effect her touching him so much would have on him. He got that she didn’t want him to think she was a homosexual, but he didn’t actually think that anyway. And if he’d been worried, after what had happened with Mason, that maybe he was one—his body’s reaction to having a girl pressed up against him was making that less of a concern. He really needed to back away from her a little, in fact. He was just about to when Paul Anka sang “Put your head on my shoulder” again and Madison did just that. Sam didn’t want to be rude by pulling away or anything; he just hoped Madison wouldn’t notice what was going on with him.

Madison felt Sam’s penis stiffen against her. Not only did it not bother her, it kind of made her want to reach under the skirt he was wearing, slide her fingers up the inside of his thigh, and hold it in her hand. Except not really kind of. “Is that why guys like girls to wear skirts?” she wondered.

“Is what why guys like girls wearing skirts?”

Madison hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud! She certainly couldn’t tell Sam what she’d just been thinking, but she also couldn’t just ignore the way she felt, and she ended up kissing him. It wasn’t even remotely how she had expected her first kiss to be. She had always expected something shy and tentative. Sometimes she had thought maybe the boy would try to go too far…she had never dreamed that it might be herself she’d have to worry about.

She maneuvered Sam and herself onto a couch; it took all her willpower to sit next to him and not in his lap. Sam had one hand on the small of her back. If he had tried to lower it onto her butt she would have let him, or if he had tried to slide it under her sweater. He didn’t, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t because he wasn’t interested in her like that—he was kissing her back enthusiastically and even moaning a little, plus there was that erection she’d felt earlier. She wished she could feel it still—it was so close, heating up the hand she had between his thighs…

Oh god, she had actually reached up under the skirt! What the hell was wrong with her!? She pulled her hand back and jumped up off the couch. “I have to go check on the clothes!” she announced, and she all but ran back to the laundry room.

Sam sat back, dazed. What in the world had just happened? Maybe the apocalypse had triggered some instinct in Madison to repopulate the earth? Sam’s own instincts had been decidedly baser. His dick had practically leapt at the expectation that she might actually touch it. But then she didn’t, and now…

He had to go…it crossed his mind to find Mason and ask him for help. But, no, he was supposed to be there to help Mason, not the other way around. He would just have to go jerk off in the shower.

Madison moved the wet clothes into the dryer, trying not to think about what she’d just almost done. But how could she not think about it? She was mortified. But…almost more than that, part of her wished she hadn’t stopped herself.

Listening to the hum of the dryer, Madison had a sudden memory of something she hadn’t thought of in a long time. One time when she was doing laundry at age thirteen or so, she decided for a reason she could no longer remember to sit on top of the washing machine while it ran. And it felt really good. Really good. She didn’t understand why, but she started sitting up there pretty much every time she had to do laundry, at least whenever her parents were out (which they almost always were) and Mason was busy with something else (which was hit or miss).

It wasn’t that much longer that she’d figured out how to masturbate for real, which was so much better. The washing machine thing, while good, was always frustrating because it never led to a climax.

That was what she needed right now. It usually took her a while to get to that point, but right now it would probably take no time at all. Right now she probably could get there just from sitting on the dryer.

What were the odds that Mason would burst in her? Next to zero—he was still mad at her, for one thing, and it would never occur to him to try to wash his own clothes, for another. Sam probably wouldn’t burst in either—though the idea that he might just made her want to do it more. She hopped on up.

This machine didn’t exactly shake like the one at her house used to—more of a steady but gentle vibration. It still felt amazing, but Madison couldn’t just sit there and wait for it to work its magic, she needed to help things along. She spread her legs and reached up under her skirt.

Her panties were soaked through. She examined her fingers with something like awe—she hadn’t even put them under the panties, and already they glistened with her fluids. She was almost overcome with the desire to find Sam and show him what he’d done to her. Maybe she would, later. Maybe he’d want to touch her there and get some on his own fingers…not just from the wet cotton, but from the source of the wetness. She slid two fingers under the panties, imagining they were Sam’s instead of her own. She hardly even had to rub before was coming.

Sam, meanwhile, went straight to the locker room, not stopping in the bedroom first for clean clothes. There were still no pants in there, so he’d just be trading one skirt for another. More importantly, he couldn’t face Mason. Mason might ask why he needed a shower, and Sam couldn’t very well admit, “I got a hard-on from dancing with your sister.”

He tried not to think about Madison as he stroked himself, how her boobs had felt pressed against him, how her hand had felt between his legs. He was able to not think about her—but only by thinking about Mason instead, how his dick had felt pressed against him, how his hand would probably feel. Thinking about a guy’s hand there should have made him lose his erection, but it didn’t. Kind of the opposite, in fact…or maybe it was just a coincidence that he came at the exact moment he was imagining Mason’s hand on his cock.

.

In the morning, Madison made pancakes from a mix and put canned peach slices on top. It was a peace offering of sorts—the closest thing she could get to the homemade blueberry pancakes that were Mason’s favorite. He was still mad at her—he had slept in the farthest bed from hers and hadn’t spoken to her at all since storming out of the living room last night.

The peace offering worked, at least enough that he would speak to her again, and she apologized profusely for almost giving away his secret. He accepted the apology but said, “That wasn’t really the main problem.”

The comment took Madison by complete surprise. “I don’t even see what other problem there was!”

“Maybe the fact that you were throwing yourself at Sam like a common—”

“Morning.” Sam came in, wearing his own clothes this morning. “Ooh, pancakes!”

Madison snatched Mason’s plate away from him and put it in front of Sam instead. Mason really had a lot of nerve to almost call her what he had been about to call her! So what if the only thing keeping her from throwing herself at Sam right now was the fact that he was wearing pants? (Not that she didn’t still kind of want to anyway.)

“Hey!” Mason objected.

“There’s more Bisquick in the pantry if you want some.”

“I don’t want to take your breakfast.” Sam tried to hand the plate back to Mason.

“No, keep it if you want to take your chances. I should warn you that Madison’s pancakes are always kind of iffy.”

Sam sniffed them. “They smell fine.”

“They are fine!” Madison said. “Mason is just being an immature brat.”

“Ah, I see,” Sam said, and he did. He never got between Stevie and Stacey when they were arguing over something stupid, and he wasn’t going to get involved now, not even to ask any questions. “Well, thanks, Madison. I obviously interrupted something, so I’ll just take these out to the dining room.”

Madison clearly wasn’t really sorry for the way she’d been acting, so Mason would just have to resume giving her the silent treatment. Without a word, without even looking in her direction, he stalked off to the pantry in search of something to eat.

The only problem was that he didn’t know how to cook. It probably wasn’t that hard, he knew, since Madison had been doing it for years. Just in case he wouldn’t get the hang of it right away, though, he wasn’t willing to make his first attempt with Madison there in the kitchen to mock him if he messed up. He found some peanuts and some pineapple and ate them out of the cans, right there in the pantry. It was a bad enough breakfast to make him almost willing to make up with his sister.

Madison was still in the kitchen when he finished, washing dishes with her back to him. He knew she heard him enter the kitchen, but she didn’t turn or say anything, and he didn’t say anything either. Sam wasn’t in the dining room anymore, but there weren’t that many places he could have gone. Mason soon found him in the gym.

“Everything okay now?” Sam asked.

“Hmm?” Mason was distracted by the sight of Sam, shirtless and lifting weights. “Oh, yeah. Just, you know, sibling stuff.”

“Yeah, I know. You want a turn with these?”

“Um, I kind of wanted to talk to you…whenever you’re done. Don’t hurry on my account.”

“Are you sure? This can wait. We’ve got pretty much nothing but time.”

“Yeah, exactly. That’s why I can wait.” Mason was actually a little worried of Madison interrupting them if he waited, but Sam just looked really good doing what he was doing.

It didn’t take Sam too long to get tired of lifting weights. Not tired as in tired, but tired as in bored—the weights down here were too light to give him much of a workout. He set them down and asked, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well…” He waited until Sam sat down next to him on the bench. “Remember when you said you’d help me if I had ‘urges’?”

“And you’re having them?” Sam asked, trying not to sound too hopeful at the prospect.

“No! I mean…maybe? But I actually wanted to talk.”

“I don’t think anything of you because of what happened yesterday, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Sam assured him. “Just like you don’t think anything of me. Right?”

“Right! Right, I don’t! Because what else are we going to do while we’re trapped down here. Right?”

“Right.”

“And so…I still wouldn’t think anything of you…nothing bad, I mean…if…What I’m saying is that if you have urges, I would help you too. Even though Madison isn’t your sister…I mean, it would be bad for any babies to be born down here. Don’t you think?”

“Oh.” Sam thought about how Madison had been acting last night and wondered if Mason knew…knew and blamed him. “I promise I would never try to seduce your sister. And I definitely wouldn’t try to force her! But don’t you think, eventually…I mean, what if we’re the only people alive? Should we just let mankind die out?”

“Yes!” Mason said emphatically. “Yes, exactly! There are no bottles down here to feed a baby. No cribs, no diapers...”

“Right, of course. But…they didn’t have that stuff in the olden days, and people still had babies.”

Oh god, did Sam really want to have a baby with Madison!? No, no way! “Okay, but then what? When the baby grows up, who’s he going to have babies with? His sister? His mom?”

“Oh.” Sam felt sick at the thought. How had that not occurred to him? “Yeah, you’re right. I guess it really would be better to let mankind end.” That thought made him really sad, but it was probably better than the alternative.

“Yeah, it would. Maybe it’ll turn out we’re not the only survivors. But until we find more…I think you should come to me when you have urges. Just like I’ll go to you.”

Sam nodded. Even though he really liked Madison and had really liked making out with her, he had to admit he shouldn’t do that anymore.

But it wasn’t all bad. He had also, surprisingly, really liked making out with Mason. And if he had even more of an excuse now…”We should try not to get any…anything on our clothes next time.”

Next time! “Yeah,” Mason agreed. He glanced around and said, as if noticing for the first time, “There are showers right here. I mean, not that we have to right now…”

Right, they didn’t have to, Sam knew. “But we are right here,” he said. “And I need a shower anyway.” He hadn’t really worked up a sweat, but he didn’t feel like that was important to mention.

Mason peeled off his shirt and dropped it on the bench. Sam just looked at him, which made him extremely self-conscious—in part because he wasn’t as muscular as Sam, but even more because he was terrified that he’d misunderstood what they were about to do. But it was only for a second or two, and then Sam was kissing him again.

Somehow they both lost their pants and shoes and socks and underwear before stumbling into the nearest shower stall together. The light wasn’t great in there, which Mason was kind of glad for—it meant Sam couldn’t see his many imperfections. Sam didn’t have any imperfections, Mason was sure; he looked as perfect in dim light as he must in bright. He didn’t get to look long before Sam’s tongue was in his mouth again.

Sam let his hands roam over Mason’s flat, solid chest. He didn’t mind the lack of boobs, and he actually kind of liked the little bit of chest hair. He wasn’t going to worry about what that said about him. If he worried about that, then he’d have to really worry about the fact that he kind of wanted to touch Mason’s cock. Kind of really wanted to touch it. They were standing close enough that Sam could tell it was hard, but he wasn’t quite in contact with it.

Mason groaned as Sam’s hands bypassed his dick once again. He kept thinking Sam was going to touch it, but then at the last second they’d glide over his hips or thighs instead. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. If Sam didn’t want to touch his, then at least he could touch Sam’s. Maybe he shouldn’t have just grabbed it, but…well, he sort of just grabbed it. He didn’t think he was grabbing it hard, he certainly didn’t mean to grab it hard, but Sam let out a kind of yelp. “God, I’m sorry!” Mason immediately let go. “I don’t know what I—”

“No, it was good!” Sam had just been surprised, but instead of trying to convince Mason that he really didn’t mind, he took his hand and brought it back. Mason took the hint, he held it firmly in his hand and started to jerk him slowly.

Mason was going to make Sam come again! And this time would way better than yesterday because it would be on purpose. It would be way better because he’d see it and feel it, with no clothing between them. He’d get Sam’s jism on his hand, maybe even bring a little bit to his mouth afterward and taste it.

Taste it. Why should Mason wait until afterward, why not taste Sam now, why not make him come with his mouth? Maybe that would be going too far, maybe Sam would object, but he could at least try.

He backed Sam against the wall of the shower stall, echoing the move Sam had done the first time they made out. But he didn’t kiss the same way Sam had, he kissed lower and lower, down Sam’s chest, until he had to get on his knees to continue his descent. The stall was already small for two guys, and kneeling just made it even more cramped, but that was the least of Mason’s worries. His biggest worry—no, his only worry—was that Sam was going to tell him to stop.

Sam didn’t really know what was going on. “Mason, what…”

Damn it! Mason looked up at Sam while continuing to lightly stroke him. “Do you want me to stop?”

Mason’s mouth was really, really close to Sam’s dick, and it looked a lot like he was about to bring it even closer. It would be incredible if he did, but Sam wouldn’t ask that of him. “You…can stop if you want.”

“But…if I don’t want to stop?”

Sam didn’t want to assume that Mason was saying what it sounded like he was saying, but just in case, he subtly shifted his crotch closer to Mason’s face. Nothing happened for a second, and Sam couldn’t believe that he had even considered…but then Mason’s lips were on his dick, and then his tongue! It was by far the best thing Sam had ever felt, until a minute later when his dick was actually inside Mason’s mouth, and Mason was sucking on it, and dear god.

Mason didn’t really know what he was doing. He’d seen some pictures, which he loved a lot, but they didn’t really give him any idea what you were supposed to do once you had the thing in your mouth. Listening to guys talk in the locker room about the girls who supposedly gave blowjobs was even less helpful—all he learned from that was that guys loved getting them but girls didn’t like giving them, even the slutty ones.

Apparently this meant he was worse than even the sluttiest of girls, because he loved sucking Sam’s dick. It smelled good and it tasted good and it felt good, even when Sam pushed forward and it went into his throat. And Sam was moaning so much that Mason knew he was doing an okay job. He just hoped he was doing a good enough job to get Sam to come.

Sam’s brain was so overloaded that he really wasn’t thinking about what Mason was doing to him or how he was reacting to it. He just went with it, not even aware, really, of the noises coming out of his mouth or the increasingly forceful thrusting of his hips. Mason’s mouth was wetter and warmer and just a thousand times better than Sam’s own hand, and he was almost afraid that if he questioned this in any way it would all stop. It didn’t even occur to him to try not to come. It didn’t occur to him that he was about to come—and he just pumped into Mason’s mouth until he unloaded down his throat.

It was only when the last of his cum was spurting out much less forcefully that it dawned on him what he’d just done. He felt content all over—physically content—but his brain was switching on again enough to feel the beginnings of regret. “Mason, I’m…God, that was…but I shouldn’t…”

Mason was only vaguely aware that Sam was talking. His mouth was full of warm, tangy cum, and blood was pounding in his ears from how overwhelming this all was. He had set out to make Sam come and he’d done it and it seemed like his greatest accomplishment, and now he needed to come too. With his face pressed against Sam’s crotch, he rolled the jism around in his mouth as he jerked himself furiously. He gasped involuntarily when he came, letting some of Sam’s cum spill out onto his chin while his own spilled out onto the shower floor, and a little on Sam’s left shin.

He kind of wanted to stay just how he was, maybe take a little nap with his head resting against Sam’s hip bone. True, he was kind of uncomfortable, physically, but he felt like standing up and facing Sam would be even more uncomfortable, emotionally. Still, he knew he had to.

Sam wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say when Mason stood up. Apologize again, maybe, but…Mason hadn’t actually seemed to mind. Though Sam wasn’t sure how he could have not. “Was that…?”

“Yeah, it was…” Mason was pretty sure he’d scare Sam off if he admitted just how much he had loved that. “It was fine, I didn’t mind.” Then, in case that sounded too lukewarm, he added, “We can do it again some time if you want. I mean, I can do that again. If you want. I mean, any time, really.”

Yes, Sam would like Mason to do that again some time, because it was the best thing he’d ever felt. Maybe next time he should do it for Mason too…

No, he wasn’t going to think about that right now. “We should probably…” He was growing more and more aware of the slimy feeling of cum on his leg; Mason probably had some on him somewhere too. “We should probably wash off.”

After finishing the dishes, Madison tried to read a book on “hydroponic” gardening that Mrs. Sylvester had put next to some seeds and chemicals and other gardening stuff in the pantry. It was only the third day, and she was already getting tired of canned fruits and vegetables. The book was dense and scientific, though, and it wasn’t that Madison was stupid or anything, but she couldn’t concentrate on it at the moment, she was still so mad at Mason!

She gave up on the book and decided to take the advice she had given to that rat of a brother of hers when he was restless: she would go burn off some energy in the gym, then take a shower, then try again with the gardening book.

Because the gym and locker room were one big room, she opened the door and called out, “Hello?” before she went in so she wouldn’t accidentally walk in on Mason changing. (She guessed she shouldn’t walk in on Sam changing either. She wouldn’t have minded, but it would probably be rude and creepy.) No one answered so she went in.

One of the showers was running. She should have realized that whoever was in there wouldn’t be able to hear over the water. It was okay, though—she hadn’t seen anything…except Mason’s clothes on the floor, and goddamn it, Mason! That was it, he could do his on laundry from now on!

Sam’s clothes were on the floor too, but she didn’t find that nearly as infuriating. It was weird, though, that Sam’s clothes and Mason’s clothes were in one big pile rather than two little piles. And only one shower stall had the curtain closed. She wondered if she’d be able to tell by their feet which of them was in there, and she looked, and…there were two sets of feet.

She tried to think of some other explanation than that Sam and Mason were sharing a shower stall. And when she had to admit to herself that there was no other possible explanation, she tried to think of a reason they could be sharing a shower stall, other than that they were…

Maybe they were just trying to conserve water? But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself of that explanation, she just couldn’t.

Goddamn it, Mason!!

.

Madison was no less furious with Mason by dinner time, but she had composed herself by then. Mason had finally deigned to speak to her again mid-afternoon, and she didn’t see what purpose being uncivil would serve. They all ate together and had a normal if somewhat strained conversation. When they’d finished up their Jell-o, Madison asked Sam to help her with the dishes.

“Sam and I can do it,” Mason said, voice just dripping saccharine. “You should relax.”

“I don’t mind,” Madison countered.

“I insist.”

Madison walked around the table to pick up Mason’s bowl. With her back to Sam she leaned down and whispered in Mason’s ear, through clenched teeth, “Fuck off or I’ll arm wrestle you in front of Sam.”

Mason looked like he wanted to spit in her face, but what could he do? He had never beaten Madison at arm wrestling in his life, and he obviously didn’t want Sam to see him lose to a girl. “On second thought I have a headache. I think I’ll go lay down.”

Sam carried the rest of the dishes into the kitchen; Madison stopped him before he filled up the sink with water. “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure.”

Madison hopped up on the counter and took a deep breath, reminding herself that she wasn’t mad at Sam. She was mad at Mason for basically calling her a whore and for not doing his share of the work around here, but not necessarily for whatever he was doing with Sam in the shower earlier. Maybe Sam was also a homosexual. He didn’t look like one, and he played football, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, at least if the pictures in that magazine of Mason’s were to be believed. But if Mason had tricked him or coerced him somehow, then she wanted to know. And if Mason hadn’t tricked him or coerced him, then maybe Sam wasn’t actually interested in her at all and maybe she really had thrown herself at him. She would stop if that were the case.

“Do you remember last night? When we…you know?”

Sam pursed his lips and nodded, mad at himself for not apologizing without forcing Madison to bring it up first. “I’m sorry that I got fresh with you. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“What? No, that’s not what I’m…I was too forward with you. If you didn’t like that then I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“Of course I liked it. But I do respect you, and—”

“You can just tell me if you didn’t like it.”

Sam studied her for a minute. “You’re very pretty, Madison. Why would you think I didn’t like it?”

She wondered if she should just tell him what she knew, but she didn’t want to embarrass him. “So…would you like to do it again?”

“Well. I would. But…”

“So you didn’t like it.”

“Please stop saying that. I just respect you too much.”

“You stop saying that!” Madison hadn’t meant to snap at him, but honestly! Consciously steadying her voice, she went on, “I think we can all agree that the normal rules of society don’t apply down here.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the thing. There’s no rules because there’s no society and no other people, even, and so if you had a baby, then when the baby grew up—”

“Wait, a baby? I do not want to get pregnant.”

“Right. Because like Mason said—”

“I don’t need Mason to tell me that trying to have a baby is a bad idea when there’s no one to deliver it but two teenage boys and no medical supplies beyond a first-aid kit.”

“Oh, right. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

Madison wondered what he had been thinking of then, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m not saying we should have intercourse.”

Oh wow, Sam wasn’t expecting her to come right out and mention sex so…so explicitly like that. “Right. That’s what I’ve been—”

“But there are other…I mean, last night we didn’t have intercourse.”

Sam was pretty sure he was blushing, which was embarrassing, which made him blush more. “Of course not! But when we kissed and stuff last night, it left me…I mean, sometimes guys have certain reactions…I mean their bodies do, they can’t even help it, and…” He looked at the floor and ran his fingers through his hair a few times as he tried to think of how he could say this. “I took care of it, my reaction, by myself later. But sometimes if a guy can’t take care of something like that, it can be very frustrating.”

“I know.” Now Madison felt like she was blushing and not just, or even mostly, from embarrassment. Mostly it was a “reaction” caused by the mental image of Sam taking care of his own reaction last night. That and the knowledge that she had caused that reaction.

“Oh right, you have a twin brother so of course you know about that stuff.”

“I don’t know about it from Mason,” she clarified. She knew from her aunt’s talk, but also: “Girls have reactions too. I had to take care of my reaction by myself too.”

Now Sam looked up. “They do? You did!?” After half a second of eye contact he looked away again, blushing harder still.

In case Sam’s blushing wasn’t just from embarrassment either, Madison decided to keep talking. “Yeah, well, it was kind of because of that skirt you were wearing. I know you thought you looked silly, but I didn’t think so. I didn’t think it made you look like a girl or anything; in fact, it just made me think about the fact that if I wanted to I could just reach under it and touch your…” As bold as she was feeling, she somehow couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“Really? Because of the skirt?”

“Not just because of the skirt. The skirt just sort of made me think about it. Like how I’m thinking about it now.”

Sam was around 90 percent sure that by it Madison meant his dick! He had never really thought that was the kind of thing a nice girl like her would want to think about, but then he remembered the situation they were in and that this was probably her instinct to repopulate the earth kicking in. And, as they’d established, that would be a terrible idea. He should remind her of that, he told himself, in case she’d momentarily forgotten too, but all he managed to say was, “Really?”

Madison made the cross-my-heart motion over her chest, which just made Sam notice her boobs. He had to force himself to stop thinking about her boobs and put a stop to this conversation. “But we can’t,” he managed. “Because of…you know, the no doctors and everything.” He wasn’t about to mention the eventual incest dilemma.

“Right, nothing that could get me pregnant.” Madison wasn’t sure if Sam was just using that as an excuse or if he was actually just kind of dumb. “And if you don’t want to do anything—for whatever reason, and you don’t even have to tell me—then it’s fine. But if it’s not that you don’t want to, we could…” This was stupid, why couldn’t she just come out and say heavy petting? Maybe because it was the kind of thing teenagers let happen but not that they explicitly suggested. “I mean I could take care of yours however you did it yourself, and you could…”

“Oh my god, really?” Sam looked at the hand that still rested on her chest, so now he was thinking about her boobs and about what her hand would look like with his cum on it. “Could we kiss again first? Because I really liked that part.”

Thank god! “I liked that part too.” She extended her arm for Sam to take her hand and pulled him closer when he did.

Sam put the hand that wasn’t holding Madison’s on her shoulder and kissed her softly. He wanted to kiss her hard, and he hoped to, but there was just one thing. “What if Mason comes back?”

Damn it, Sam was right—Mason probably would come back into the kitchen to bug them. She slid off the counter and wordlessly led Sam by the hand to the laundry room.

There wasn’t much in the way of furniture in there, but there was a high, sturdy table that Madison had used to sort and fold clothes on. She spread out some sheets and blankets that she’d washed earlier, and she and Sam jumped onto it. Sitting next to each other with their legs dangling over the edge, they kissed. They started out slow, sort of by necessity—it was hard to get really carried away in this side-by-side position.

But they wanted to get carried away, and Madison soon found herself on her back with Sam partially on top of her. He was kissing her more forcefully, tongue inside her mouth, one hand on her thigh. He started out just touching it over the skirt, which was nice enough. Eventually it slipped under the skirt, and feeling it directly on her skin made her moan right into Sam’s mouth. “Is that okay?” he asked into hers. She answered by placing her hand over his and nudging it up higher.

That was when Sam finally got it that Madison was not just going to let him touch her there, but she really, truly wanted him to. It was so hot between her legs, it was like a little furnace under her skirt. No wonder she had sweated through the crotch of her panties.

Oh god, he was touching the crotch of her panties!

The pressure of Sam’s fingers let up slightly and Madison panicked, thinking he was going to stop. She grabbed his hand and held it firmly in place right over her clitoris. Her hips started moving of their own accord, and soon she was furiously humping his hand. She felt like if he were just touching her directly without the fabric in between she would come for sure, but at the same time she didn’t want him to move his hand away for even a second.

It didn’t matter, she came anyway, even with the layer of cotton in the way. Her legs trembled and her back arched and the only way she could keep from screaming in poor Sam’s face was by literally biting her own lip.

It just about killed Sam how Madison just kept getting hotter and wetter. She had his hand in a death grip, so he wasn’t even doing anything other than kiss her. When she stopped kissing back, when she squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, her face got all red and he almost thought she had stopped breathing or something. He worried a little, honestly, but she was making little “mmm mmm mmm” noises, and something told him she was all right. Something told him she was a lot more than all right.

She started breathing again, heavily at first and then closer to normal. “Was that…Did you just…”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding very content.

It kind of blew Sam’s mind. He had heard that women could have orgasms, but he’d also heard that was a myth. Even though Madison had hinted earlier that they weren’t myths, he didn’t really believe they could happen without even having sex. “Is it always so…” He wasn’t sure what aspect to ask about, and he settled on, “Is it always so wet?”

Madison laughed. She let go of his hand, and while he massaged his wrist—which, not that he was complaining, but kind of hurt—she slipped off her panties and dropped them on the floor. She took his hand back and gently guided it back to where it had been, but farther this time—in between her warm, slippery folds, until two fingers were partially up inside. It was so much wetter here, but he never would have confused this wetness for sweat. It was thick and sticky, not all that different from cum. “Oh my god,” he muttered.

“Can I help you now?”

“Yeah, that sounds…yes.” Sam had made Madison come (if you could use that word for when girls did it) through the clothes, and he didn’t want to be unfair or anything, but…”Do you mind if I…it’s just that this is my only pair of underwear.”

Madison nodded. “Yeah, you should take them off. Or…let me?”

“Oh! Yeah, if you want to…be my guest.” Sam realized that sounded very stupid as soon as he’d said it—he just hoped Madison didn’t think he was trying to be sarcastic or something.

Madison sat up, then knelt on the table next to Sam. She unbuckled his belt quickly but unzipped his fly slowly, wanting to gradually uncover the organ she’d been obsessed with for the last twenty-some hours. She was thrilled to notice how it strained against his jeans, how he sharply sucked in a breath when her hand rubbed against it as she worked the zipper. With Sam’s pants pushed down to his hips it looked even better, the shape of his bulge clearly visible through his underwear.

She was surprised to feel that the fabric over the tip was damp. He couldn’t have already come, right? And if he had, there’d be more of it, and he wouldn’t be hard anymore? She realized that her aunt really hadn’t told her everything she needed to know. “Is…yours always wet?”

Sam wasn’t sure at first what Madison was talking about, until he brushed his fingers over where hers had just been. “Oh, uh, not always. Just when it thinks something good is about to happen.”

“Oh.” That didn’t actually explain much, but at least it reassured Madison that it was normal. She couldn’t help but tease Sam a little over his choice of words: “Your penis thinks?”

Something about hearing Madison say the word penis left Sam unable to answer with anything more than a groan as the organ in question throbbed a little harder. It definitely thought something good was about to happen now.

Madison pulled the underwear down and was rendered absolutely speechless. Sam’s cock—she was thinking of it now using words she usually shied away from—was everything she’d built it up to be in her head and so much more that it overwhelmed her. It wasn’t just that it was bigger than she’d pictured—though it was. It wasn’t just that it was redder—though it was that too. There wasn’t a particular physical quality that she could have pointed to to explain her overwhelmment, it was more the reaction it provoked in her—the emotional reaction and the physical one. She just felt so…animalistic.

She felt an overwhelming, animalistic desire to have his dick inside her…her cunt. She felt an overwhelming desire to be fucked with it.

She did still remember why that would be bad, and she wasn’t going to propose it, but…well, Sam might have been on to something with his word choice, because her cunt seemed to think something very good was going to happen. She felt it throbbing under her heel, she felt a new rush of fluids. She was almost torn between needing to finger herself to another orgasm and wanting to make Sam come first.

But, of course, there really wasn’t anything that was going to get in the way of her making Sam come.

It felt like Madison was just looking at his cock for a really long time. Just when Sam was really starting to worry that she’d lost her nerve and looking was all she was going to do, she finally touched it. Just lightly at first, but it was such a huge relief.

On some level, Madison knew that, of all the things that had happened over the last few days, it made no sense that the one that struck her as most surreal was touching a boy’s penis. But she really just couldn’t comprehend that that was what she was actually doing, right now. She stroked it all over with her fingertips—the base and the tip and the shaft and the balls—not really aware of how long she was doing it or what effect it was having on Sam until he made a sort of desperate-sounding little whine.

“Is that…” She was about to ask if it was good, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t. It wouldn’t have been good for her if he’d barely touched her the way she was suddenly aware she was doing to him. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do with it.”

Sam was happy to help! He was honestly sort of tempted to just do it himself at that point, but the last thing he waned to do was discourage Madison. He took her hand in his—then had to switch to his other hand because he’d forgotten about the left-right thing being reversed for her—and wrapped her fingers firmly around his shaft. “Then just…” He demonstrated by moving her hand until she got the hang of it and was doing it on her own.

“Like this?”

“Yeah, just like…” A finger swiped over the slit, and Sam had no idea whether she’d done it on purpose, but it was perfect. “God, just like that!”

Madison wasn’t sure what exactly she’d done that Sam was so enthusiastic about; she experimented a little until she got another God! out of him, after which she started repeating the movement that had elicited the response. When she noticed Sam stroking his balls, she joined him down there with her free hand.

“That’s…” Sam could barely speak now, but he really didn’t want Madison to get discouraged now, not when he was so close. “…so good…”

“I really want to see you come.”

God, she’d just said come and that’s exactly what he did.

Sam’s dick jumped in her hand and semen just started shooting out of it, far more explosively than Madison would have guessed it would. It was almost violent, it looked almost painful. Sam gasped when he came, and that almost sounded like a pain gasp, but at the same time it sounded like the exact opposite. And the look on his face—there was no chance of mistaking that for pain.

Once it was over, Sam worried that Madison might be filled with regret. When she said he wanted to see him come—now that she had, would she wish she hadn’t? He carefully opened one eye to gauge her reaction. She was looking down at him with her eyes and mouth wide open—it didn’t look like disapproval. “You got it all over your shirt,” she said—and it didn’t sound like disapproval either.

Just in case he was misreading the tone on account of feeling really good at the moment, Sam said, “It comes out. You don’t have to wash it, I will.”

“Believe me, I’m not worried about laundry right now.” Madison lay down next to him and kissed him.

Sam kissed her back softly. He expected that to be it, he expected them to get up and fix their clothes and go back to the kitchen before Mason came looking for them. But Madison wasn’t kissing him softly, and she wasn’t stopping.

Madison couldn’t keep her hands off Sam’s chest while she kissed him. She wanted to feel the ejaculate before it all soaked into his shirt. It was warm, of course, and stickier than she would have guessed, but it wasn’t the physical sensation of it that got to her, it was knowing what it was, knowing that she had made it happen.

It was good that she had made Sam come the way she did and not inside her. Obviously. But…she couldn’t get it out of her head how much she would have liked to feel him inside her, how much she would still like to. It was lucky for her that Sam’s dick wasn’t hard anymore; she didn’t dare touch it now and risk getting it hard again. She had to touch skin, though, and she reached under his shirt to stroke his bare chest.

Sam didn’t mind Madison groping his chest. In truth he kind of liked it. It did feel just a little unfair, though, because he hadn’t gotten to touch hers, and she actually had something there to touch. He didn’t dare just grope her under the shirt like she was doing to him, but he did let one hand slowly inch up, over the shirt, toward her breast.

Madison didn’t consciously decide to wrap her legs around Sam’s thigh and writhe, she just found herself writhing with her legs wrapped around Sam’s thigh. It felt very good even if it wasn’t what she really wanted, namely to have Sam inside her.

She could have him inside her, though, she realized! Not his cock, but something. She grabbed his hand and moved it off her chest.

“I’m sorry!” Sam said.

Madison didn’t know or care what he was apologizing for. “Can you…can I…?” She guided his hand to the aching spot between her legs.

“Oh!” Sam should have realized that Madison wanted to come again. It seemed really soon to him, but he wasn’t about to complain. He held his fingers the way she’d had him do it before…but not really like the time before, because there was no cotton in the way this time, and she was so wet and slippery.

Madison squirmed, and when that didn’t work she had to just ask, “Please put them inside.”

Sam did. She was even wetter inside, even slipperier…and so tight. He almost wished she hadn’t asked him to put his fingers in her pussy because it just made him wish it could be his dick in there.

Madison squeezed around the two fingers inside her, writhing harder and more purposefully than before. She was going to come, she was so close, and she needed it so bad.

Sam was starting to feel like he should be doing something when Madison suddenly clamped down extra hard around his fingers and started to scream. She was so loud, and Sam was worried Mason would hear from wherever he was at the moment, but he didn’t want her to stop. And she didn’t stop…not for a long time.

Mason was pacing around the living room when he heard it. He might have been worried, hearing his sister scream, but he knew, he just knew it wasn’t because she was hurt. That slut, that absolute whore! How could she!? Now Sam wouldn’t need him at all.

He couldn’t listen anymore. He had to get out of here, in fact. He knew it was probably hopeless, but just on the off chance there was someone alive out there, he tried the radio again. But he was right, it was hopeless, and Madison was still fucking screaming. So he put on a record instead, hoping to at least drown her out.

Meanwhile, Madison’s orgasm eventually ran its course. Sam was on the verge of getting hard again, and he would have liked to keep messing around, but now he was really worried about Mason walking in on them. So as soon as he could get Madison to shake off her post-orgasm lethargy, they both got dressed and left the laundry room.

They found Mason in the living room listening to music. Specifically, they found him singing along loudly to Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the World.” “Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above?” he sang/shouted. “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love.”

“What was Mrs. Sylvester thinking, putting a copy of ‘The End of the World’ down here?” Madison asked.

“Hey, Mason, are you all right?” Sam asked. Because it sounded like…yeah, when he sang the next line it was clear he was crying.

“Oh, Masie!” Madison ran over and hugged her brother.

Mason shook her off. “Fuck off. Go hug Sam or something.”

“Mason?” Sam tentatively reached out to touch his shoulder, only to have Mason collapse crying in his arms. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He rubbed Mason’s back. “It’s not the end of the world. We’re still alive, and we’re going to get out of here someday.”

Mason didn’t try to tell Sam what the problem really was, because what would the point be? He just tried to let himself be comforted by Sam holding him, even though Sam was only doing it because he misunderstood.

.

Unlike Sam, Madison knew Mason wasn’t sad about the actual end of the world (or not just about that) but about what she had done with Sam. And she was still mad too, but she was also sorry for hurting him. So she didn’t exactly avoid Sam the next day, but she did avoid being alone with him. Maybe Mason wasn’t going to avoid being alone with Sam—probably he wasn’t—but at least Madison wasn’t too worried that Sam would choose a boy over her.

And anyway, she had things to do. A thing to do, and she wouldn’t rest until it was done. She was going to open that locked door at the back of the pantry and find out what was behind it.

She spent all morning searching the pantry for the key, including opening every container that wasn’t factory-sealed. It wasn’t there.

After lunch, she searched the laundry room. She couldn’t find it there either. She sat down for a minute on her and Sam’s table to rest before moving on to the locker room. But just thinking of locker rooms made her think of Mrs. Sylvester and the keychain she carried with a thousand keys that opened a thousand locks throughout the school, and she realized the key probably wasn’t down here—Mrs. Sylvester probably kept it on her at all times.

It was a discouraging realization, but she wasn’t about to give up. There were all kinds of tools down here—she would force the goddamn door open.

She’d been trying for a solid hour when Mason found her, near tears. “Hey, Maddie,” he said, more gently than he’d spoken to her in days. “What are you doing with that hammer?”

“Hammering!” she snapped. Honestly, what did it look like she was doing?

“Are you trying to break that door down?”

“I need to know what’s back there!”

“Okay.” Mason took the hammer from her hand, and she was too exhausted to fight him. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll get Sam and we’ll try.” She let him lead her out to the living room and lay her down on one of the couches.

She actually fell asleep there; she woke to Sam gently shaking her shoulder. “We got it open,” he said. “You’re not gonna believe what’s back there.”

She walked back there with Sam to find that the boys had completely destroyed the door and the frame too. She was going to ask how they did it but forgot to when she saw what was on the other side. “It’s…wait, how are all the Cheerios’ trophies down here? They’re in Mrs. Sylvester’s office.”

“Yeah, but lift one.”

Madison tried to pick one up with one hand, but she needed two. “I didn’t realize they were so heavy.”

“I think the ones up in her office are fake,” Mason said. “I think she had copies made and brought the real ones down here where they’d be safe.” That did sound like something Mrs. Sylvester would do.

Sam stood in front of another door. “Come on, the trophy room isn’t even the most interesting room back here.”

There was a whole separate apartment: a sitting room with a gas fireplace, a large bathroom, a bedroom with a huge four-poster bed. A fully stocked bar.

Sam poured some gin into three glasses. None of them had ever had gin before—it tasted terrible and burned like hell going down. Mason and Sam dealt with this by just drinking it really fast, but Madison had to dilute hers with club soda and sweeten it with grenadine. Even then she had to drink really fast or she couldn’t get it down.

Mrs. Sylvester had put a hi-fi in her private sitting room, but all the records she had selected for herself were terrible: The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, Kate Smith…plus a lot of others the kids had never even heard of. Sam was sent to the main living room to get some good records; he returned a few minutes later loaded down with Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and…well, and Johnny Cash, but the twins would allow that since they had learned that Sam grew up in Nashville.

They put Chuck Berry on first and drank and danced and danced and drank. It was tremendously fun until Mason and Madison drunkenly attempted some sort of lift during “Sweet Little Sixteen” that ended with them on the floor. Madison thought that was hilarious and had an uncontrollable laughing fit lying there on the floor.

At some point she noticed that Mason wasn’t laughing and that Sam was crouched down next to them and not laughing either. “Come on, you guys! It’s funny!”

“I think Mason’s hurt,” Sam said.

Oh yeah, that face he was making was kind of a grimace. “Is it bad, Masie? Should I get the first aid kit?”

“It’s my ankle. I think it’s just twisted.”

The three of them examined Mason’s ankle. None of them had any medical training, but they agreed it didn’t seem broken—which was good, because if it had been broken, they wouldn’t have been able to do much about it. That realization spooked them enough to make them decide that more drunk dancing probably wasn’t a good idea.

Sam helped Mason to the bedroom and laid him down on the bed. “Don’t leave me here by myself!” Mason asked, so Sam lay down next to him.

Mason rested his head on Sam’s shoulder and put his hand on his chest. And Sam liked that, but he didn’t think they should be doing anything like that right now. “Your sister is right outside,” he pointed out quietly. “We didn’t even close the door.”

“I’m not gonna do anything! I know you don’t...I know you’re not…”

“Huh?” Sam brushed some of the hair off Mason’s face. “I’m not what?”

“I know you don’t need me anymore now that you’re fucking Madison! Even though you said you wouldn’t, even though the baby…well, that’s your problem, I guess! You and your slut!”

“Shh!” Sam hissed.

Mason found that really funny, actually, because he was pretty sure he wasn’t even being loud, and also so what if he was? “Madison knows she’s a slut!”

“She’s not and I’m not!”

“I never said you were a slut.”

“I’m not fucking her,” Sam whispered. “I told you I wouldn’t and I didn’t.”

“Yeah, I know what you told me, but I also could hear you two last night!”

“We did some stuff,” Sam admitted, “but we didn’t go all the way.”

Mason really wanted to believe Sam, not that it was that much better even if true. Unless…”I would go all the way,” he offered.

“You promised me you don’t even want to do it with your sister!”

“Ew, no! With you! I would go all the way with you!”

Sam was silent while he tried to process what Mason was suggesting. He couldn’t, though, and he had to ask, “How would that even work?”

“You could fuck me. In the butt. I don’t even mind.”

Madison stifled a yelp. She’d been eavesdropping ever since she heard Mason call her a slut, but this really surprised her. It wasn’t even that Mason wouldn’t mind letting Sam do that to him that surprised her that much, shocking as it was—it was that he would play so dirty to keep Sam to himself.

She grabbed the gin bottle, took a swig, and found she didn’t really mind drinking it straight anymore. The she joined the boys in the bedroom, lying down on the other side of Sam and handing him the bottle. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing!” Sam said defensively, right before he drank a big swallow from the bottle. “Hey, you know what’s funny?”

“Mason’s hair without his precious pomade?” Madison laughed—his hair really did look ridiculous.

“Ha ha,” Mason responded.

“No, it’s funny that we haven’t really talked that much. Like I don’t really know anything about you two. Tell me what your family’s like…or was like, I guess…wait, maybe this wasn’t a good idea, maybe it’s too sad to think about.”

It wasn’t, though, not really. “It was kind of just the two of us already,” Madison said. “Our parents are gone a lot, so…”

“Yeah, we hadn’t seen them for…what was it, Maddie, a week or two?”

“About that.”

“Yeah, and the last time we did see them they were only home for a night, pretty much just to do laundry before taking off again.”

“Oh. And that’s not sad?”

“We’re used to it,” Madison said. Though since Sam was asking, it did make her a little sad, and she put her head on Sam’s shoulder.

“Where do they go?”

“D.C. this time I think?” Mason ventured.

“Yeah, D.C. So, obviously if Lima, Ohio, got bombed, there’s no way they survived there.”

Sam wrapped one arm around Madison and one around Mason. “I don’t know!” he said, trying to be reassuring. “Sure, it’s more of a target, but there must also be a lot more shelters there. They’re probably fine!”

Madison and Mason responded with almost identical noncommittal mmm noises.

Madison started, “What about your—”

“How did you get named what you did?” Sam cut her off. Mostly he just didn’t want to talk about his own family because he knew it would make him cry, but he’d also been curious about their names for a long time. “I guess I get Mason, but Madison is just…” He got the giggles and couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, Madison!” he spit out when he had enough breath to talk again. Then he was off giggling again, and it was several minutes later before he managed to go on, “It’s not your fault or anything, it's just a really funny name for a girl!”

Madison started laughing too, even though lots of people had commented on her weird name before and she didn’t actually find it funny. It was Sam laughing so uncontrollably that was hilarious. Then Mason started too, and they all kept going until they were gasping for air and completely red in the face.

Madison was the first one to gain control of herself again. She composed herself and deadpanned, “Madison is going to be an incredibly popular girls’ name in about fifty years. Just watch.” This set them all off even harder.

“Sure,” Sam agreed. “Especially if we’re the only survivors! Then one hundred percent of females in fifty years will be named Madison!”

“Stop it, you’re gonna make me pee myself!” Mason protested.

“Don’t you dare pee in this bed we’re all in!” Madison gestured toward the bathroom. “Right over there, I’m sure you can hobble over.”

Mason got up reluctantly, and since he hardly even limped, Madison gathered that the reason he didn’t want to go had nothing to do with his ankle. As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, she kissed Sam.

Sam kissed her back, but only very briefly. “Your brother’s going to be right back.”

“I know,” Madison said, resting her forehead against his. “Just checking that you still like that.”

“Of course I do! But—”

“No, I know.” She rolled partway on top of Sam, but only to reach for the bottle. She was just finishing it off when Mason returned.

“Leave me any?” he asked.

“Nope! There’s a whole bar full of more bottles out there!”

Mason flopped back down next to Sam without getting another bottle. “I wish Mrs. Sylvester had thought to put a TV down here,” he commented.

“How would that even work?” Madison asked. “If radio isn’t being broadcast anymore then TV isn’t either.”

“Oh yeah. I guess I’m kinda drunk.”

“I guess so!”

“And kinda tired,” Mason added. He waited for someone to comment on that, and when no one did he went on, “Maybe I’ll just take a tiny nap.”

“Good idea,” Sam said.

Mason hoped that meant Sam was going to take a nap with him…and that Madison would leave them alone. It was too much to expect, but he still hoped. Sure enough, Madison didn’t make any move to leave. Mason curled up against Sam’s side anyway.

Sam absent-mindedly rubbed Mason’s back. He didn’t mean anything by it—he really wasn’t about to start anything with Madison right there on his other side. Mason, however, didn’t seem to take it as meaning nothing—he maneuvered Sam’s hand onto his ass, as if to remind him of the offer he had made before Madison joined them! Sam should have moved his hand away immediately, but…he was thinking about that offer now! And he told himself that Madison probably couldn’t see what was going on anyway.

Madison very much could see what was going on, and she knew exactly why Mason was doing it. Worse, it seemed to be working. Mason had just placed Sam’s hand there, he wasn’t moving it around. Sam was rubbing Mason’s butt all on his own.

If she really thought Sam had no interest in her, she would have been willing to give up, but she actually believed him when he said he was interested. But what could she do? She couldn’t let Sam fuck her, at least not the normal way. And she really didn’t want to let him fuck her in the butt.

There was only one thing she could offer Sam that Mason couldn’t.

Madison took Sam’s free hand in hers, and it was nice, even though it made Sam feel guilty about where his other hand was at the moment. But Madison wasn’t just holding his hand, she was moving it…up under her sweater…and—oh god!—under her bra! Oh god, he was actually touching her nipple…at the same time he was touching her brother’s ass!

“Punkin’?”

Oh, okay. Phew. He knew Miss Beiste wasn’t in the bunker, therefore he knew he was just passed out and dreaming. As long as this wasn’t really happening, he could squeeze a little.

“What in the Sam Hill is going on in here!?”

Oooh…that really looked like Miss Beiste staring down at them from the doorway. Sam looked at the hand under Madison’s sweater. He looked at the hand on Mason’s ass. He looked at Madison’s wide-eyed, open-mouthed face, then at Mason’s. “Do you guys see her too?” he whispered.

.

Miss Beiste settled the three kids in three chairs as far apart from each other as she could arrange them in her office and gave each of them a big mug full of coffee. “Drink this. Not a word out of anyone while I’m on the phone with your parents,” she warned.

Sam was drunk but not too drunk to not realize he shouldn’t mess with Miss Beiste when she got that tone. He stared into the black liquid in his cup and listened in a daze. “Mrs. Evans, good news! Yeah, I found him. He was with a couple friends from the team…Yes, ma’am, I did tell him how worried you were not to know where he’d got to….Yes, they went in another boy’s car, that’s why his was still in the school parking lot…Yes, well it seems these geniuses all got drunker’n a boiled beatnik and forgot today was a school day…”

“Wait, why didn’t the radio work if the world didn’t end?” Mason asked.

Miss Beiste shot a look at Madison, who stumbled over to her brother and covered his mouth with her hand. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll have him home just as soon as I can get him halfway presentable.” She hung up and nodded at Madison that she could drop her hand.

“Was she crying?” Sam asked. He was pretty sure he’d heard his mother crying on the phone.

“Of course she was crying! This time it was from relief, I think. Just be glad you didn’t have to hear her frantic crying when she called me earlier.”

“Think she’s relieved enough that I won’t be in too big of trouble?”

“Look, punkin’. You shouldn’t be in trouble at all, it’s not your fault you thought…after I’d just told you about the shelter, and then the county decided to use the tornado siren for just a regular thunderstorm for whatever reason…I wish I could tell your parents what really happened. But if word got out and Mrs. Sylvester knew I’d told you about her secret bunker, we’d all be deader’n a—”

“Boiled beatnik?” Mason asked.

“Something like that.” Miss Beiste waited for Mason to stop laughing before announcing, “I’m going to call your parents too.”

“They’re not home,” Madison said. “I’m sure they have no idea we were even missing.”

“Why didn’t the radio work?” Mason repeated.

“Probably because we were in a subbasement surrounded by thick concrete, goofus,” Madison said. She couldn’t believe none of them had thought of that when they were down there trying to get a signal.

“I’m just going to call your house to check,” Miss Beiste said. She dialed and let the phone at the McCarthy house ring around twenty times before she gave up. “All right. You two are bunking at my place tonight.” The twins protested, but Miss Beiste cut them off. “You’re both way too drunk to be unsupervised.” She turned back to Sam. “All right, we’ll wait till morning to go over what we’re telling anyone at school. But you and me are gonna practice what you’re telling your parents tonight before I take you to them.”

“So for real everyone’s fine?”

“Everyone’s fine. You just got into your friends’ parents’ liquor cabinet…”

“Miss Beiste? Can Mason and I wait outside? I need some fresh air.”

“You wait just outside the gym door. Anyone walks by, not a peep. That goes for your brother too; you’re in charge of keeping him quiet.”

Outside, Mason sat on the damp ground. “Look. Grass. Never thought we’d see that again.”

“I knew we would eventually.”

Mason leaned his head back against the building and started to cry.

“You’re not moved to tears by seeing grass again, are you?” Madison guessed.

“It’s Sam,” Mason admitted.

Madison sat down next to him and stroked his hair. “He’s not gonna think—”

“What, that I’m queer? Except I actually am! And I really liked him, and now…”

“Shh, I know.” Madison just let Mason cry while she tried to think of how to say what she wanted to say. She was afraid it was going to come out all wrong since she was still drunk, but she decided not to wait. “He seemed to really like you too.”

“Then why were you trying to steal him from me?” he whined.

“I happen to think he really liked me too!” Madison snapped. “And what was I supposed to do? Be the only one who had no one?”

“It’s just so unfair! I wish it wasn’t just a false alarm, I wish the world really did end!”

Madison didn’t at all wish the apocalypse had been real, but she did agree with Mason about it being unfair that he couldn’t just date someone he liked in the nonapocalyptic world. “Look, I won’t try to steal him from you. If he does like you liked he seemed to, and if you guys want to…whatever…I’ll stay out of it.” She really liked Sam too, but she knew she’d have an easier time finding another boyfriend than Mason would.

Mason sniffled. “Really?”

“Unless you call me a slut again. You call me a slut again and I will be seducing the living daylights out of that guy.”

Mason laughed. “You know I didn’t mean it, Maddie.”

“Lucky for you I do know that.”

Mason sighed and rested his head on Madison’s shoulder. “How can I tell if he really likes me, though?”

“I think after what we’ve been through together you can just ask him. You guys’ll need something to talk about this weekend when Miss Beiste takes you back to the bunker to fix that door.”