Kyra looked out of the front of her pod and wondered if she was fucked.

Wouldn't that be just hilarious? Survive a shipwreck, in space no less, battling actual demons across two moons and Hell itself, and then another shipwreck, just to die because of some bad luck. Less hilarious, more infuriating, she supposed. But also true to life. Little shit going wrong seemed to be the cause of a lot of life's problems. Kyra perked up as she thought she heard gunfire coming from somewhere not too far away, but it was harder to tell from within the pod. She began looking around her pod again, hoping for something new to leap out at her this time. There was the emergency StimPack attached to the interior of the pod, and the pistol and ammo she'd managed to hold onto in all the chaos…

That was it, she surmised, although she'd want to perform one more search after she was actually out of the damned thing. But, all things considered, it wasn't a bad haul. She had her armor, too. Now more than ever was she grateful that she'd gotten that two-day vacation on Luna. She wouldn't pass out, or starve, or dehydrate. She had a new suit of green security armor, and although she wished she'd managed to hold onto her damned rifle, she was grateful for the sidearm. Kyra paused and then grinned: definitely gunshots.

She saw the muzzle flares and suddenly, one of the zombies that was pawing around outside her pod got its brains splattered all over the glass. It dropped. A fiend shrieked and threw a ball of fire somewhere off to the left, then it went down under a barrage of bullets. The rest of the zombies went down and then there was Jack, all done up in green armor as well. He looked in and said something, but it was lost because it wasn't over the shortwave. She imagined he was trying to be reassuring. She couldn't help but smile and as she watched him begin to get the pod door open, Jennifer watching his back, she remembered how badly she'd wanted to fuck earlier.

The urge hadn't exactly left her.

Her eyes drifted to Jennifer. Now really wasn't the time, but if they did find some time...she'd be really interested in making a threesome with the two of them. It was obvious that they were a couple. Maybe they'd both be into her. Or maybe one or the other would be cool sharing. Kyra sighed and shook her head. This definitely wasn't the right time for this. The Earth was aflame, overrun with demons from Hell, and she was thinking about fucking.

Then again, was there a better time to enjoy yourself before it all came to an end?

Finally, Jack got the pod door open. He offered her his hand, and she took it and let him help her out of it. She thought his grasp lingered, just a little.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Fine," Kyra replied. "Watch my back, I need to search this pod. Then we're checking the others."

"Understood."

Well, at least the chain of command was out of the way. Although that might be a problem. Power plays could be hot in fiction, and sometimes in real life, but it was the kind of thing that got complicated. Then again, neither of the two struck her as the type who'd agree to intimacy simply because she outranked them. Which was good, that would admittedly turn her off. Kyra forced all the non-serious thoughts from her head as hard as she could as she searched her pod. Now was the time to fight like hell.

There was nothing else in the pod, as she'd suspected.

Behind her, one of the others opened fire, and a zombie roared as it went down. She sighed and had Taylor send over the map she'd downloaded, looking at the pods. "Okay, Ward, which pod was yours?" she asked.

He paused, thinking. "Four."

"You're sure?" she asked, checking it out.

"Yes."

"Taylor?"

"Three," she replied.

"Okay...did either of you check out any other pods?" she asked, figuring it out.

"Yes, one about halfway between mine and Jennifer's pod," Jack said. "The person was dead."

"Was it Pierce?" she asked.

"No."

She studied the map closely and mentally marked off four of the pods. Luckily, the next two weren't all that far away, and were both northbound. "All right, we're going to search the other two pods, then figure out where the nearest military presence is and go there. I imagine they could use our help, and I've got something crucial to deliver."

"What do you have?" Jack asked.

"Intelligence on the portal technology that I recovered on Io. It needs to get to the brains, because they're going to be crucial to saving our asses," Kyra replied. She set off northward, and they fell in step behind her. "Taylor, stay on the radio for now, see if you can pick anyone up."

"Yes, Staff Sergeant," she replied, and set to work.

Despite everything, Kyra at least had the comfort of two professionals at her back. She'd managed to piece together that both of them had been flushed down the UAC like her, but neither seemed incompetent. If both had gone through even half of what she had and come out the other side intact and sane, then she thought they were solid.

"Morgan," Jack said.

"Yeah?" she replied.

"You mentioned, when we first met on the moon, that you'd faced a giant spider thing. How giant are we talking?" he asked.

"Like, the size of a truck."

"Oh."

She snorted. "Not big enough for you?"

"No, I was just wondering if you'd encountered another one of the titanic ones. I'm guessing the one you fought had like a female torso growing out of it?"

"Yeah. What do you mean by titanic? There's another kind of huge spider thing?"

"Yes. It looks less like a spider than that one does, but it's huge. Like the size of a small house, easily four times the size of the other one."

"What!?" she snapped. "That much bigger!?"

"Yes. And it had a chaingun. Like the kind you'd mount on the end of a fucking plane."

"And you killed it?! How?!"

"A lot of effort and one big fucking gun."

"Well, damn. I wouldn't mind seeing your big fucking gun," she replied. He shot her a surprised look, and she immediately returned her attention to the way ahead. Shit, had she actually just said that out loud?

She really must be starting to lose it.

"Uh...you'd have to talk with Jennifer about that," he murmured finally.

Kyra didn't say anything, now too embarrassed to speak. Hopefully Jennifer didn't try to kick her ass for that comment. Some women were fiercely protective of their men, in her experience. Fuck, she had been a few times. Although over the past decade she'd gotten a lot more comfortable with the idea of sharing. Her mind went back to that comment he'd made, about the spider thing the size of a fucking house. What exactly had they done and seen that she hadn't? And, that begged the further question of: what was yet to come?

What new horrors awaited them on this apocalypse-stricken Earth?

Kyra smelled smoke, a lot of it, and sure enough, she could see a pall of dark smoke rising into the air somewhere ahead of them. They moved between large fields of corn, in a natural road created between them, presumably towards the nearest farmhouse. Up ahead, almost in the path, was the first of the two remaining pods. It had struck just inside one of the cornfields.

"Watch my back," Kyra said, and Taylor broke off her radio litany for the moment.

Kyra made her way to the pod, checking for hostiles, but the area seemed vacant for the moment. The fact that the pod wasn't opened worried her, though she knew it could easily be a malfunction, just like her own pod. As she approached it and looked in through the glass, however, she cursed softly. It was the crewman she'd helped earlier. The woman looked dead inside there, her neck hanging at an unnatural angle. Just to be sure, she opened the pod and checked her pulse. Yep, dead. With a heavy sigh, she searched the woman and the pod, but there wasn't anything useful. Unsure of what else to do, she sealed the pod back up.

"Come on," she muttered, and began making for the final pod. It had to be Pierce's. She'd gotten the stubborn asshole to a pod and had just barely managed to get to one herself after that. The ship had really been coming apart at the end there. As they approached the pod, which seemed to be beyond the end of the pathway they were walking, off to the left, she heard gunshots, and then a scream. The trio immediately broke into a sprint, dashing the rest of the way between the swaying fields of corn. More screaming, more gunfire.

Then just screaming.

Kyra rounded the corner of the field first, burst onto the scene just in time.

Just in time to see a fiend tear Pierce's throat out in a horrendous spray of blood.

"NO!" Kyra heard herself scream as she immediately opened fire. She aimed at the fiend and blew chunks out of its strangely-shaped head, screaming all the while. Jack and Jennifer blasted away to either side of her, putting down a handful of zombies that were still lurking. She emptied her magazine into that fucking bastard, then surged forward and stomped on what was left of its head three times, crushing its remains.

"Kyra," Jack said, and it occurred to her that he'd said her name a few times before she'd actually heard.

"What?" she asked, panting.

"You have to keep it together," he said. She twisted around to look at him and saw both of them regarding her with worried, and sympathetic, eyes. She wanted to snarl and snap at them, suddenly so full of blind, venomous rage that she could taste it. But he was right. This was no time to lose her cool. She looked back down at Pierce, took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out slowly. She could do this.

"Goddamnit," she muttered, then crouched by him. "Search the zombies."

Jack and Jennifer got to work in silence. Kyra got her mind sorted as she searched the dead man. She didn't even know him, didn't know any more than his name and rank. Maybe she was just still so fucking pissed about losing everyone she'd worked with over the past several months. Angry that demons were real and Hell was an actual place. Furious that Earth was being invaded. Mad that she couldn't seem to save anyone.

Pierce only had his pistol on him, and it was empty. She salvaged it anyway, then turned to his pod and did another quick search. The thing was in sorry shape. Neither comms nor navigation worked. She took the StimPack and stored it in her armor, then looked at the others. It was just the three of them now. They were finished gathering whatever there was to be gathered.

"Anything?" she asked.

"Just a few magazines of pistol ammo," Jack replied, and handed her one.

"Thanks," she muttered, pocketing it. She turned and surveyed the immediate area. As it turned out, it was the barn that had burned down, and it was mostly done burning. The farmhouse itself was still intact. "Come on, maybe we can get a call out somehow," she said.

They set off for the farmhouse.

An hour passed.

They first secured the area and the farmhouse, killing a handful of zombies that were still around, and then they searched it for survivors or supplies. Although there wasn't anything particularly useful for combating zombies, there were other useful things there. Bathrooms. Food. Water. No reliable means of communications, unfortunately.

"Now what?" Jack asked.

Kyra stood in the living room, staring out windows that gave on the cornfields they'd escaped from. She didn't see anything out there, and daylight was rapidly draining from the sky now. It would be dark within the hour.

"I want to keep pushing, I saw a vehicle out there, but...it might be foolish. We've been through a lot, and I imagine the worst is yet to come. We should hole up here for the night, eat, shower, sleep while we can. Because I doubt we're going to get many opportunities for the next several days, or weeks even," she said.

"Agreed," Jack said.

"Why don't you two grab a shower and I'll see what I can put together for food?" she suggested.

They glanced at each other, and an excited look passed between them. "We will. Shout if you need anything," Jack said.

She just snorted and shook her head. "I'll do that."

They hurried upstairs. Should she even bother asking? They were obviously very much in love. She wasn't looking for love, just...fun. But hey, they were Marines, and after everything they'd been through, she thought maybe they'd be up for fun. From the way he looked at her and his reaction to her previous comment, it seemed obvious that Jack was at least into her. Kyra went into the kitchen and pulled off her armor. It felt stupid, but she wanted at least some time out of it again, and it seemed like they'd cleared the area for now.

She managed to find a lot of bacon and eggs and hashbrowns, and even a few steaks, and promptly set to work frying it all up. As she made dinner, she listened to Jack and Jennifer overhead. Either they had no discretion and had no idea how loud they were, performing those activities in the shower, or they just didn't care. Either seemed likely. She felt a frustration creeping into her. Her desire to get laid more than almost anything hadn't been an idle thought, or a throwaway one. She loved sex. By the time she was done making food and they were done showering, she'd made up her mind. Or, really, her libido had made it up for her.

The two of them came downstairs out of their armor, wearing their uniforms and looking good. Damn good, actually. She had yet to see them out of their armor before this moment.

"Hey," Jack said, "that smells amazing."

"It does," Jennifer agreed, "and I'm fucking starving. Would you like any help?"

"I'm basically done," Kyra replied. "Help me move it to the table."

"Thank you for this," Jack said as they came over and began helping her shift the food to the table.

"Not a problem. I'm fucking starved as it is," Kyra said.

They sat down and dug in, and that meal was one of the strangest she had ever eaten in her entire life. Here she sat at the table of an abandoned farmhouse, somewhere in the Midwest, eating dinner with two relative strangers, while the whole world burned around her. Part of her felt a burning desire to get to work, get back to killing demons, but another part of her knew that her contributions weren't likely to be a linchpin to salvation.

Then again, she did have that information.

But it would have to wait. It wouldn't do for her to go off half-cocked in the middle of the night and get herself killed.

They talked as they ate, and for a good two hours after that. Mainly they swapped stories. She had to admit, Jack and Jennifer's tale was more impressive than her own, but they seemed equally impressed with her. She supposed they had a point when they pointed out that she had endured basically all of her hell in isolation. They almost always had someone else, and each other. Eventually, the food ran out, and then the words ran out, and all of them were looking dead on their feet. Kyra was getting antsy, and horny.

Jennifer seemed to sense it.

"Why don't you head upstairs and get the bed ready?" she asked, looking at Jack.

He hesitated, glancing at her, then over at Kyra, then back to Jennifer. Finally, he just shrugged and said, "Okay." And then he kissed her, said goodnight to Kyra, and left.

A few moments of silence passed as the two women looked at each other.

"So..." Kyra said, unsure of how to actually approach this problem. Normally she just asked directly, but normally the people she asked weren't couples, they were single. Also, normally she wasn't intimidated by the people she was asking. She was used to being the intimidating one. But Jennifer was a legit badass, so was Jack.

So was she, she reminded herself.

Jennifer just looked at her, her eyes gleaming with curiosity, and maybe some guile. She wasn't going to offer any help.

Kyra decided she needed to go for it. "Would it be...terrible...of me to, um...proposition you for a threesome?" she asked.

Jennifer snorted. "No, it wouldn't be terrible. Given everything that's happened...yeah, I'd be down for it. I know Jack would. But, I just want to be clear." She leaned forward. "He is mine, and while I have no problem sharing him physically with you, I have no intention of sharing anything else."

"Absolutely not a problem," Kyra said. "I'm totally down for purely physical. I don't want to fuck your relationship up, you two seem like a great couple."

Jennifer laughed. "Thanks. I appreciate that." She grinned and stood suddenly. "Come on, let's go tell him. He's going to be over the goddamned moon."

"He'd better be," Kyra said as she got up.

They headed upstairs.