I didn’t like leaving the huntress, but I did like taking the big bag of concrete away in the wheelbarrow along with a shovel. She said I could borrow them, but she wanted the tools back. I was fine with that. It felt good to use my enhanced body to do something so normal as throwing a heavy bag of concrete into a wheelbarrow and pushing it away.


    Moving through the rainforest, I came across Holly and immediately knew something was wrong.


    Holly turned, eyes wide. She lifted a finger.


    What had she seen?


    I caught up to the professor, who moved aside a fern. There, in a clearing, were a herd of triceratops. They were enormous, the size of cars, with the classic three horns on their heads. They were munching along, though one of the big males was keeping an eye out for predators. I would imagine that Jack and Reggie would just love to come and eat one of the three-horned beasts.


    I have to admit. The babies were cute.


    This was my life now. Those dinosaurs must’ve wandered over from the swamps, right down I-70 and past our old home. They let out different sounds, a bellow here, a sneeze there, but mostly, it was the sound of them ripping ferns from the dirt and chewing, so much chewing, as well as a fair amount of grunting.


    “I never thought…” Holly said in a hushed voice. She was clearly moved by the sight of the extinct animals.


    To make it even more strange, the sky was a jumble of moons. I was glad it wasn’t raining for once, otherwise, the big bag of concrete in the wheelbarrow would’ve been ruined.


    “Yeah,” I whispered. “I know what you mean. I would’ve thought they would be like rhinoceroses, but no, these are so much bigger. And more alien.”


    The triceratops were more colorful than I would’ve thought, ranging from a dark green to some cases, a dark purple, though that might’ve been the trick of the light on their armored skin.


    Holly had her rifle, but the herd looked so peaceful, and they were so big that a lot of the meat we’d get would go to waste. We needed to figure out our preservation problem, and that would come, in time, once I finished our home.


    The professor looked me in the face for several long moments and then glanced away. She spoke but she couldn’t look me in the eye. “Sid, we have to talk about what happened. I crossed a line. And good gravy, she was a stranger, a complete stranger. How can I ever talk to her again after that?”


    “We don’t need to talk about it, we’re—”


    Holly cut me off. “We have to deal with the situation, Sid. Everything has changed.”


    I had to chuckle. “Oh, like when we were taken from our planet and brought here? Is that the change you’re talking about? Then, yeah, I agree.”


    It might’ve been the wrong thing to say.


    Holly finally found the courage—or the anger—to look me in the eye. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about. First, you and I kissed, and that was a mistake, because then you and Billie…I think about seeing you, up in the tree, with her on top, kissing you.”


    She closed her eyes. “Dammit. Thinking about that is getting me all excited again. And I just came like three times. This place, this literal fucking place, is driving me crazy. Maybe that’s why it exists. To drive people insane!”


    The male triceratops on watch bellowed, and the sound echoed through the forest. Those big crows took flight, flapping away. The Swarm Toads hadn’t eaten all of the birds after all.


    The herd of dinosaurs charged away, the males surrounding the females and their babies as they thundered away. The big watchful bruiser took up the rear, and he kept throwing glances back at us. In seconds, the clearing was empty except for huge footprints and a whole bunch of Triceratops poop.


    Holly and I stood silently as we watched them go.


    The professor turned to me. “So, in short, Mr. Marshall, I—”


    This time I cut her off. “We don’t know why this place exists, Holly. And we don’t know if we’re ever going to go home. All of that is true. But we do know that we have to survive, get shelter, make sure we have food and clean water, and do all the rest of that. The huntress can help us. As far as the sex? We’re not in middle school. We’re all horny all the time. There’s bound to be things we do that we normally wouldn’t. It’s fine. I don’t think any less of you.”


    Holly sighed. “I lost control. At first, I was so scared. You came back and said you were chasing after Khanna without us talking about it. We should’ve talked about.”


    I wasn’t going to let her derail our conversation. “That’s a separate issue. We’re talking about what happened at the Twankie strip mall.”


    I didn’t think I’d ever get used to saying the word “Twankie.”


    “I was scared, Sid, and so I left Billie alone to chase after you. You know she’s going to be a basket case when we get back to her. Then, in the strip mall, when I saw you and Khanna kissing, it was hot, especially as she got naked. I couldn’t…I shouldn’t have…we can’t…” There was no way she was going to be able to finish those sentences.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I leaned forward over the wheelbarrow and stared into her eyes as I finished the sentences for her. “You couldn’t stop yourself. You shouldn’t have watched us. We can’t repeat what happened. How am I doing?”


    “That’s right,” she said. At the same time, she licked her lips as her cheeks flushed.


    I felt the pull to kiss her, to unzip her suit, and then finally get to feel those huge boobs with her big brown nipples that faded away to pink.


    I knew she was feeling the same.


    “But right now, you want to kiss me, don’t you, Professor?”


    Helplessly, she nodded. “But I can’t. You’re my student.”


    “Not here. I keep telling you that. Here, everything is different. I have alien technology infiltrating every part of me. We just saw living, breathing Triceratopses, who were oddly purple.”


    The professor snorted. “I didn’t see that coming.”


    “Neither did I.”


    Holly looked helpless. “Please, help me with this, Sid. Help me stay strong. It’s like I have this opportunity to live out all my fantasies, with you, with Khanna, with Billie.” She blushed. “I shouldn’t have said that. No. We have to focus on survival. We can’t let our base natures take over. It would never work, and if we got in too big of a fight, one of us might leave and never come back. We are stronger together. Let’s call this morning a lapse in judgement, shall we?”


    I moved around the wheelbarrow to get closer to her. “Do you know what I really think?”


    She nodded, and I saw the pain on her face. She really was being torn apart by her emotions.


    “I think we’ll all feel better once we have shelter, real shelter, and we solve some of the problems we’re facing. Like meat preservation as well as getting Billie a cozy blanket. If we could get into a routine, I think things would go more smoothly. But—and really listen to me—


    at some point we’re going to have another moment like we had this morning. You said you needed me to help you stay strong, and I’ll try, but I want you as much as you want me.”


    The professor turned away. “I have to think about this, about you and me. And Billie. God, what are we going to tell Billie? We should tell her the truth, but then what would she do?”


    I knew, but I didn’t say a word. After I kissed the professor, Billie had wanted a turn, and I figured it would be the same deal.


    “We can just go on,” I said. “Business as usual. Let’s not create a bunch of unneeded drama.”


    I was staring at her back, but even then, I couldn’t help but stare at her shapely ass.


    If I hadn’t had Khanna to help me with my own lust, there was no way I would be able to keep my hands off the professor. At the same time, I had to respect her boundaries. She said she felt bad about being sexual with me. Well, then, fine. But it wasn’t my job to regulate her behavior. She was a grown woman.


    Finally, the professor turned to me. “You’re right. We’ll say we talked with Khanna, we got the concrete, and from what I gathered, the huntress is considering your offer to join us. Is that basically what you two talked about?”


    “Very basically.”


    The professor gave me a little smile. “Next time, Sid, I’ll try to be stronger. I really would rather keep our relationship friendly, but not romantic…for various reasons. Do you understand that?”


    “For now, yes.”


    “Only for now?” She tilted her head, that little smile not disappearing.


    I nodded. “That’s right. At this point, I think we all think we can find a way back to Earth, but from what I saw of the huntress’s home, I think she’s been here quite a while. You and I can be friends, but in a month, six months, a year? No, Holly, we’ll given in eventually. And once we start, I don’t think we’ll ever stop.”


    She let out a shaky breath. “I like that idea, and I think you’re right. But let’s focus on the day. We’re going to go back to Billie, we’re going to work more on the house, how that we have concrete.”


    “Yes. I want to use the concrete for both the fireplace and a foundation as well.” I wanted her to take that in more ways than one. We were building all kinds of foundations.


    “Khanna would really be a big help to us,” the professor said. “She would be another pair of hands, she could help us forage for food, and she could make us a bow and arrows. Eventually, I think we’ll find Sector X and possibly recharge our plasma weapons, but in the meantime, a bow would help us.”


    “I agree. The Foiros Waystation is our best bet for survival. I haven’t forgotten.”


    And yet, I couldn’t help but think finding a specific place in K’Shaul might be impossible, since the landscape could change in a heartbeat. We might get a strange alternate Manhattan Island thrown in between it and us.


    It seemed we had come to a kind of truce. We wouldn’t tell Billie about the encounter, nor about Holly’s desires and regrets, but we would see what Billie thought about the huntress joining us.


    As it turned out, when we reached Privacy Rock, Billie was there, in the overhang, with the rifle across her lap, looking freshly bathed and happy. “Hey guys! Just enjoying my time off. You’ve been working me to death!”


    We made our way to her.


    Billie looked at the wheelbarrow. “Wow. Does the huntress live in a hardware store?”


    “Twankie strip mall,” I replied.


    Billie laughed. “That explains the donuts.”


    Holly leaned forward a little. “You’re not mad we were gone for so long? We talked with the huntress. We saw a herd of Triceratops. I feel bad for being away.”


    Yeah, Holly was feeling bad about all sorts of things. I wasn’t. I liked what we’d done and wanted to do it again. I knew I’d never forget the sight of the professor naked, on that chair, and jilling herself off to three orgasms.


    Billie only smiled. “I’m feeling better…about this place, about us, about what’s going on. This shit is fucking crazy, but so far, with Sid around, we haven’t gone hungry, and our house is safe and beautiful. It’ll be even better when we get our roof on. And we have concrete for our chimney! This is awesome. It really, really is.”


    I think Billie feeling better made Holly feel worse.


    The professor hid it well, though, it did make me wonder about Holly’s past. There seemed to be something there that made her so conflicted, especially around sex. Then again, when it comes to sex, we all have our issues.


    That day, we worked on getting our corner posts built. I used logs to build the corners of our wall, just a few logs tall, so the corner post had some support. My homemade nails were working well, though I still created joints in the logs for the support. Giving it a rustic log cabin look was only an added bonus.


    We had roasted seagull for dinner, and that night, we spent another peaceful night on Lonetree Ridge. It was the next morning that things took a turn.


    Khanna never showed up at Privacy Rock.


    I waited for her, but nothing, and then, while Billie and Holly were taking their turns, I went looking for her.


    The trail was empty, and her strip mall was empty, and I called out for her.


    Nothing answered, except in the distance, I heard the shriek of the giant marshland eagles. Khanna had said the eagles were a problem, but she also said something about ants. Could she have been carried off my giant ants?


    Her homemade door lay in pieces all around. Her room in the strip mall had been ripped part, all of her sweet-smelling flowers had shredded, her chairs broken, and her bed ripped apart. Her spear had been broken in half and her arrows lay scattered around. I found her quiver and threw in as many arrows as I could. I didn’t have a bow, but I had one last slot in the multitool available.


    Tearing out of there, I searched the ground. There were tracks—long claws, reptilian in nature, with a long line trailing them. That long line had to be from their tail.


    The Sleezenaks had finally come south.