Folsom (The End of Men Book 1) Read online

  FOLSOM

  Fisher & Aster

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Cover Design by Hang Le

  Formatted by Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing

  Proofread by Erica Russikoff and Christine Estevez

  Copyright © 2018 Fisher & Aster

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1719341127

  ISBN-10: 1719341125

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Thank You

  Authors

  ONE

  FOLSOM

  The clock in the lobby reads 7:20 a.m. I already have a hard-on, one that will last for most of my day. I’m surprisingly awake, considering my late night. I smell of aftershave and coffee, tangy like a hopeful morning. I grin at the people who stare at me and ride the elevator to the top floor. Apartment 922 is unlocked, as it’s supposed to be. I open the door and I’m greeted by Silica: long-legged, thin as a rail, hair a deep amber. She’s wearing nothing underneath an open robe. Typical.

  “Hi.” Her walk is catlike, rolling shoulders and nimble legs. She laces her hands behind my neck and stares up at me expectantly.

  “Hi,” I say. I’m waiting for my cue. Cues are important for accuracy.

  “I missed you,” she says. She burrows her nose into my neck, breathing me in. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  Ah. There it is. Keyword: home. I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her against me. She feels that I’m hard and her head lolls back as she grinds her pelvis against me. A cat in heat. Biting onto her bottom lip, she makes eye contact.

  “I made dinner,” she says. She releases me reluctantly, her eyes on my dick. “I hate it when you work late.”

  I follow her into the kitchen where a table is set with a candle and two place settings. Nothing like a romantic dinner at 7:30 in the morning. I stretch before sliding into my seat and then I loosen my tie. That’s always a nice touch—tired husband loosening his tie after a long day. She smiles and then moves to the kitchen where there’s a mess of pots and pans scattered across the sticky counters. I look out the window as she bangs around, the silverware drawer sliding open and closed, a clatter of metal as she grabs a fork. The traffic on the street below thickens every ten minutes. I’m glad I left early to get here. She returns with only one plate, piled high with food.

  “Aren’t you eating?” I ask.

  She makes a show of placing it on the table, reaching around me so that a breast brushes my arm. She wants to think she’s seducing me, but my body is ready. It’s always forced to be ready.

  “I ate,” she admits. “Don’t be mad.”

  “How could I be with this spread?” I glance down at my fish, the shrimp, a loaded baked potato leaking butter and sour cream. This is not what she ate. If I lifted the lid to her trash can there would be a half-eaten container of yogurt—I’d bet my life on it. She slides into the chair next to me, leaning her head on a hand. Still full from my own breakfast, I cut into the potato eagerly. Silica watches, her leg jiggling under the table. I close my eyes for effect when I swallow the first bite.

  She wriggles in her seat, pleased. I force down a few more bites, feeling sick, before setting my fork down and pushing my chair back.

  “You’re not hungry?” She pouts.

  “I’d rather eat you,” I say. That does the trick. She’s in my lap, moaning, spreading her thighs and wrapping her legs around my waist.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she says coyly, “that we should start a family.”

  I jerk back, looking at her in surprise. She looks vulnerable, soft brown eyes blinking slowly.

  “Really?”

  She nods. I kiss her neck and she tilts her head up to give me better access.

  “I want that too,” I say. “Let’s go put a baby in you.” I carry her to what I hope is the bedroom and breathe a sigh of relief when it is. A husband should always know where his bedroom is. Then I fuck her senseless.

  In my old life, I was a patriot. That was before, when there was a country to defend, and when there were men to defend it.

  Now I’m this.

  I kiss my “wife” goodbye for both the first and last time as she leans against the doorframe in her nightgown. My driver is waiting downstairs with the car door open.

  “We have twenty minutes,” she says.

  Robin is in the car where I left her. My handler. We have a precarious friendship. She doesn’t look up when I get in.

  “How’d it go?”

  “We decided that we want to start a family...”

  She lifts her eyes to my face then promptly looks back at her Silverbook. “I love it when they want to play house. Only time I wish I was a fly on the wall.”

  “Where to?”

  “The suburbs,” she says. “Take your pill…”

  I am Folsom Donohue. The other men call me Foley, the women…they call me many things. I was the first man in the Society of Regrowth. The first they recruited, the oldest of the twelve at thirty-four. The other men respect me and see me as a figure of leadership. I have impregnated two hundred and three women over the course of sixteen years. Five of those pregnancies have resulted in male children. I fuck my way through high society; the women who can afford to pay to have me come inside of them, their daughters, their sisters. Twelve men. We are the last hope; our dicks are worshipped.

  My two o’clock is obsessed with cats. I’m led to her bed and told to undress. She rides me with her eyes closed and her tongue caught between her teeth. She looks feral as she hisses instead of moans. I’ve been instructed not to touch her, so I prop my arms behind my head and count her cats. Six total. One lounges on a pillow above my head, another watches from the dresser nearby. At one point I feel a furry body lay across one of my feet. When we’re done, she tosses my clothes at me, picks up a cat, and retreats to the bathroom.

  “You can leave!” she calls before shutting the door.

  My life is fucking weird.

  Women are not stupid. That’s why they outlasted us. While men destroyed each other with hydrogen bombs and wars, Mother Nature took care of the rest, sterilizing what was left of the already dwindling male population. The women who had to bury husbands, and fathers, and sons were already rebuilding, looking for solutions. Already superior in their physical design, their bodies bu
ild life with two key ingredients. One they need from us, but give them time and I’m sure they’ll find another way. I live in their world now: the age of women.

  TWO

  FOLSOM

  I get ready to leave the End Men compound, a place they keep us before we’re moved on to a new Region, new women, new pussy. The only other man here is Jackal, and he leaves tomorrow for the west side, an area known as the Green Region—what used to be the Pacific Northwest.

  “You out?” he asks, eyeing the duffel at my feet. He’s standing in front of the full-length mirror, holding his dick up while using a razor to shave his balls.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You’re going to nick your shit one of these days and bleed to death.”

  “Always so negative,” he says without looking at me. “I like to fuck, smooth.”

  Jackal is one of the guys who likes this job. Probably the best-looking of the twelve of us, he’s known to hold orgies instead of the one-on-ones most of us prefer. He once got three women pregnant in one night—all female births—he’s yet to father a boy, which despite his looks makes him less in demand than some of us. He suddenly puts down his razor and turns to look at me, an unusually serious expression on his face.

  “You’re going to the Red Region?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  He nods, still holding his dick, but he looks less cocky now. “Be careful there, man. That place is…” He shakes his head while he searches for the word. “The women are different there.”

  My curiosity piques. I haven’t been to Red in seven years. As the oldest of the End Men I consider myself an expert on women, and so far I’ve yet to visit a Region where I’d call them “different.” Most of the women are the same: grateful, horny, accommodating…

  “In what way?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, man.” He runs his hand through his hair, making it stand up. He won’t look me in the eyes.

  “It was my first Region. Maybe I was just too new to know better. They’re cunning there. It’s not just about…sex.”

  I zip up my bag and throw it over my shoulder. “What’s it about?”

  “Control.”

  Our eyes meet for a second before I put on my sunglasses. We are already controlled, it doesn’t matter which Region we go to. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I say. “Good luck.”

  He watches me go; I can feel his eyes on my back as I make my way to the elevator. Jackal is a drama queen. We consider it part of his charm.

  “Lobby,” I say once the doors are closed. The walls of the elevator are glass, and I watch the ground approach as I run my fingers across the stubble on my cheeks. They keep us high up, the thirty-sixth floor of a skyscraper; we have more security than the President—who is a woman.

  “Morning.” Robin meets me in the lobby, Silverbook in hand. We’ve worked together for the last year, though I know very little about her. I suppose she could say the same about me. She’s allowed a government job now that she’s post-menopause. She told me once that there could be a million men in the Regions and she’d still rather fuck a woman. I like that she’s not trying to fuck me. I also like that she keeps her grey hair short when every other woman on the continent has it long. She touches the screen and we look over my schedule together as it hangs in the air in front of us.

  “This is the time you should arrive,” she says. “They have a parade to greet you. Do me a favor this time and try to look grateful for it.”

  I grunt.

  “Tomorrow you have your first two appointments, then a party at the Region’s capital building hosted by the governor, where you will have to select your first two lottery winners.” She pauses to make sure I’m taking all of this in.

  “Appointments,” I say, glancing at her. “I wish you’d stop calling them that. I fuck women in their bedrooms.”

  She smiles briefly. “Right, well whatever you want to call them—your copulations start at 8 a.m. sharp. You have your pills?”

  I pat my bag and my giant bottle of pills rattles.

  “I have a supply of them too,” she says. “If you run out, let me know, we can’t have you going limp on the job.” I grimace and she pats me sympathetically on the back. “Ready?”

  A car takes us to the airstrip where I board my private jet. My crew is waiting on board: a doctor, a stylist, a massage therapist, a nutritionist, personal security, and Robin. We are given things like private jets and a full staff. The Statehouse is very accommodating for the last virile men on the planet. My jet is black—since I was the first, I got to choose. The other guys are bitter about it; two of them have said they’re waiting for me to die so they can have my color.

  “Your coffee.” Robin hands me a cup as I buckle in. I click and sip at the same time. It’s just the way I like it. I’m so bored with that. What does a man have to do to get a bad cup of coffee? Everything is perfect, my whole life orchestrated, spoiled, controlled. I am not this man they’re forcing me to be. In my dreams, I own a cabin in the woods. I fish, and hunt, and everyone leaves me the fuck alone. I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at their faces, expectant, waiting for their next instruction. I fall asleep before we take off.

  The Red Region swallows up Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina—all shadows of their former selves, a quivering collection of reformed territory. We land among the solid red flags, which are whipping angrily in the wind. I remember what Jackal said before I left. He was paranoid. Probably overthinking everything since it was his first Region. There is a fleet of cars waiting when I walk down the gangplank and onto the tarmac—all black with dark windows. The Red Region representatives greet me, five women with long grey hair, their clothes the same deep crimson as the flags. They grasp my hands like they’re truly grateful to have me here. Once a woman is past her childbearing age, she is forced to wear her hair grey, and those with white hair must dye it. It signifies a stage in life when their service to repopulate is over, and their service to the government begins. These women may have a career, and in general, seem much more relaxed than their younger counterparts, who are conditioned to want only one thing from the moment they first bleed. After the introductions, I’m led to an armored car, where my driver nods politely before she opens the door and I slide into silence.

  My ride is a peaceful one, even Robin is taken to another car, and I am able to study the landscape without her monotone briefing. I relax, stretching my legs out in front of me. The houses all bear the same red tile roofs, and the colors of their doors vary depending on what branch of service they work in. This is the same for all of the Regions: yellow doors for anyone who works in medicine, blue for the politicians, green for the service workers, white for the elite. We drive down Governor Street in the heart of the city where the people stand crammed on the sidewalk to welcome me and watch the parade. The parade floats—both in front of my car and behind—are phallic in nature, one so tall that five women are suspended from its shaft, wearing nude leotards and waving into the crowd. They throw something at the people, but I can’t tell what. I hear a loud boom and red smoke erupts from the tip of the penis. The people go wild with applause while I flinch in the backseat, a disturbing piece of imagery for any man. The music starts up and I roll my window down so they can see me. Protocol is the same everywhere I go. Let them see you, let them celebrate. Dancers join the parade, flanking both sides of the car. They are naked except for the body paint. When the parade is over, we drive to the End Men compound, a smaller version of what I left this morning. The car pulls up to a security station and the driver shows the guard my papers. She motions for her to roll down the back window and eyes me accordingly, her cheeks turning a bright pink when I stare back. No doubt she wanted to catch a glimpse of me to tell her people later. We are waved through the gate, and the car stops outside of a building with marble arches. My home for the next year.

  “Welcome to the Red Region, Folsom.” The governor greets me as I step out of the car. Her name is Pandora Petite, thou
gh she is anything but. She is as tall as me, and her shoulders are broad, stretching out the suit she’s wearing. Her grey hair is arranged in an impressive series of arches that rise above her head and look like a crown. I take her outstretched hand and shake, clutching her dry lizard skin against mine.

  “Always dry,” she apologizes. “I have a rare skin disorder. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.”

  I hadn’t assumed it was. Her excitement as she leads me into the compound is palatable, my staff trailing behind. I give male children; therefore, I am desired, good for a Region. I can see the hope in her eyes, possibly the greed as well. The Regions who produce the most male children are given priority by the Statehouse: more food, more resources, more money. The Red Region is rich in resources and low in luck in producing males from its pregnancies.

  A line of women stand behind her smiling politely, clutching their Silverbooks like good worker bees. I ignore them, focusing my attention on Governor Petite.

  “We’re excited to have you, Folsom. Your reputation precedes you…” She pauses a moment to take me in, her eyes traveling the distance of my body. Most governors call on me after my sexual duty to the Region is done. It is a running joke among the men that you can’t leave a Region without fucking the governor first: political pussy. Governor Petite will ask for it from behind; she’ll want it hard and fast and will moan like a cow giving birth. I feel myself getting hard as I follow her into the building. Good, that’s good. I need to be ready to fuck. This is a job, one that I’m good at. I touch myself through my pants, running a palm across my erection. My parlor tricks—part of the facade of Folsom is to be enamored with my own fucking dick. They love it. The women we pass look on in fascination. Most of them are of the working class; they’ll never be with a man. Unless they win the lottery. For every week I spend in a Region, two lottery winners are randomly chosen. Two years ago in the Yellow Region, a lottery winner got pregnant from our night together and gave birth to a boy. She is a celebrity now, the face of hope among the common. Governor Petite leads me through a courtyard lined with brightly blooming cherry trees. An elaborate fountain sprays water in the center of the courtyard. When I peer through the spray, I see a man and woman entangled in an embrace, his hand in her hair and her face tilted up toward him. They’re naked. Surprise, surprise. She sees me looking and smirks.