The Thrust by Shoshanna Evers Page A

shook through her.
    Trent slammed into her once more. “Karen!” he cried out.
    Karen.
    He was calling out his dead wife’s name when he climaxed.
    Clarissa felt his semen spill into her, felt his body, heavy, panting above her. He collapsed on top of her, burying his face in her hair.
    “You called me Karen,” she whispered.
    Trent rolled next to her and pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m sorry. It slipped out.”
    “Were you thinking of her all the times we’ve made love?” Clarissa asked. She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask.
    Was everything she was starting to feel for Trent completely one-sided?
    Was she only ever going to be a not-good-enough replacement for his late wife?
    “I need to show you something,” Trent said. He stood, pulling his jeans up. He’d never taken them completely off.
    She too was still dressed, she realized. It had all happened so fast, so intensely, that her jeans were simply around her thighs.
    Karen’s jeans. Karen’s sweatshirt.
    Clarissa felt sick to her stomach. What had she done?
    Trent pulled a framed photo out of the top shelf in his closet, where he kept one of his handguns.
    “I put this away after she died because it hurt too much to see her face every day,” Trent said. His voice was thick with emotion.
    Clarissa took the picture from his hands.
    Karen was very pretty. Her shoulder-length brown hair framed her face, her bangs nearly hiding her eyes.
    A very similar haircut to what Clarissa had now.
    “I didn’t know,” Clarissa said. “I wasn’t trying to look like her, I swear.”
    “I know,” Trent said. “But when I saw you there, in our bedroom, wearing Karen’s clothes, her hair . . .” He drifted off, staring at the floor as if he was ashamed of himself.
    “It’s okay,” Clarissa said.
    “I just wanted to feel her one more time,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have used you like that.”
    “It’s okay,” she repeated. “We’ve all lost something. Someone.”
    He put the photo back in the closet, closing the door.
    “Maybe you should change clothes,” Trent said. “Until tomorrow.”
    Clarissa nodded. She waited until he left the room to cry.
Traveling down Interstate 95 to Manhattan
    CLARISSA
    They had a truck. Thank God, they had a working truck. The man from Letliv who donated the vehicle to their cause—a priceless possession in these times—was a saint as far as Clarissa was concerned.
    “A little over a hundred miles left,” Trent said the following morning. “But we shouldn’t drive into the city. We’ll attract too much attention.”
    “I know,” Clarissa said softly. “We can hide the truck and walk when we get to the Bronx, maybe.”
    She could barely stand to look at him now. With his shaved head, the army-issued uniform, and the M16 slung over his shoulder, Trent looked just like one of Colonel Lanche’s men. He had transformed into her worst nightmare.
    As for her, she wore Karen’s drab clothes and hoodie, hoping to avoid recognition. If she was identified, she’d be executed. Without a doubt.
    Trent had half of the pamphlets on him, and she had the other half. In case something happened to one of them
    Please God don’t let anything happen
    then the other would still be able to spread the word.
    “What if we can’t get in from Forty-Seventh Street?” she asked.
    He stared straight ahead, his eyes on the many stalled cars on the highway that he had to maneuver around. “Then we wait for change of shift at one of the side entrances, like Barker said.”
    “Last time we tried that, we missed it. It happens so fast. There’s only a short window of time, and if we miss it, we have to wait four hours.”
    “Then we wait.”
    A long-dead body lay on the side of the road, nearly skeletal now that the rats and birds had picked it clean.
    Clarissa looked away and forced herself to breathe. What happened to Roy’s body? They’d had to leave it on the road after the gunfight with Lanche and his