The mage’s chant was interrupted by a cry of protest.
She thought she heard Rex or Jorund make an exclamation of dismay.
But the pleasure was coursing through her body and she had no time to think about anything other than her responses.
Whilst the climax should have been a joyful, blissful experience, Amy was appalled by the shocking images that accompanied her release. She could see Rex, Jorund, Tobin, Harald and Erik. Each man’s throat had been sliced open. Black and crimson wetness splattered down the bare chests of the ǽdre village council. Their flesh had turned pallid with death.
The mage was close to her—standing at her head and chanting. For the first time she caught a true glimpse inside the cowled hood of his robe. Instead of a face she saw only a grinning skull.
As she pulled away from him, she saw that she must have been mistaken to believe that anything had happened to Rex, Jorund, Tobin, Harald or Erik. The five men stood waiting to take their turn on her again. This time they were accompanied by an army wearing the black and maroon hauberks of the Blackwood clan. The air in the graveyard was scented with fire wine and freshly unearthed soil.
The mage stepped away from her.
One of the undead warriors staggered forward. Moonlight glinted against the helmet he wore. He gave her a gap-toothed smile as he stepped between her spread thighs. “What would you want from us?” he growled.
Amy remembered what the mage had said. She smiled contentedly to herself and lay back down on the plinth. “You’ve tasted fire’s wine this evening,” she told the warrior. “Our council has a war for you to fight tomorrow. So, for tonight, I think you and the rest of your warriors should try to satisfy this willing woman.”
As the first of the undead climbed onto the plinth with her, Amy knew they were all going to try. She knew they wouldn’t be leaving the graveyard until she was totally satisfied. And her smile broadened as she realized she was still a long way from being scared.
UNDER A PERFECT SUN
Zander Vyne
Today
Outside, snow capped the Santa Catalina Mountains. Winter rain fell against the glass walls and ceiling of the Biosphere.
Inside, the cornfield was a controlled seventy degrees under its grow lights. Rain soil testing was not scheduled for another month.
I’d be gone. The corn harvested and studied. I would write up my findings, stressed out by tight deadlines and long hours. This mission would be a memory. I didn’t know if I would sign up for another.
Today, tomorrow felt far away. Ears of corn nodded silk-topped heads above me, casting lacy shadows on Michael’s naked body. I licked a droplet of sweat from his neck, shivering under the fan-generated breeze.
He flipped me over and pulled me to him, digging his fingers into my hips.
On my knees—fingers planted in the dirt between the rows, hidden deep in the field where we’d thrown our blanket down—I bit my tongue to keep from howling with pleasure when he slid into me.
“Jesus Christ! Unless you’re sharing, you need to knock off the love-in-the-wild shit,” Richard said, standing in our row, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
Shit. How long had he been there?
Michael eased me back into the spread of his thighs, dragging our red-plaid blanket over my breasts. His cock was hot and slick against my back. Heat tingled in my cheeks. Reaching back, I found his hand and held it tight.
“Sorry, Doc. We lost track of time. Noon already?” Michael said, his voice dripping with the Louisiana charm that hooked me the first time I heard it.
“Susie’s looking for you. You should’ve been in Receiving fifteen minutes ago,” Richard said.
“Then you better hurry up and go so I can get dressed.” Michael kissed the tip of my nose.
My gaze flickered to Richard.
His eyes dipped to where I clutched the blanket to my chest. “Thanks to you blowing off your kitchen duties, I get to pull my shift without lunch.” He scowled just to be sure I understood that he was pissed at me too.
“I’m sorry. I’ll bring you out something in a little bit.” I did feel guilty he’d missed lunch because of us, but didn’t regret the stolen moments alone with my husband.
He shrugged, still not turning around, still not leaving. “I’m hungry now.”
At my back, Michael’s body was coiled and hard like a spring. “We know we fucked up. Won’t happen again.”
He stood, wrapping his fingers around my arm and pulling me up to face him. He draped the blanket like a wrap around my shoulders and then dragged his thumb over my mouth, still swollen from his kisses. “Better run on back, darlin’. I’ll see you after first shift.” His blue eyes twinkled and made everything all right. Just another lark. Another laugh.
I loved him so much that just looking at him made my heart clench, as if the burden of it might be more than it could survive.
Gaping at Michael’s erection, unabashedly displayed, and still impressive considering the rude interruption, Richard finally turned away. He walked down the row, swatting at stalks, his long white lab coat flapping like wings behind him.
“You can bring me a little lunch too. We’ll be a while unloading that crank shaft, and I’ve worked up a powerful appetite already,” Michael said.
Clutching the blanket to my chest, I rose on tiptoe, slipping my arms around his neck and stealing one last kiss under the perfect, artificial sunlight.
“Love you!” I called back to him as I left, running over warm dirt in my bare feet as the corn swayed overhead.
“You too!”
It was with a light heart my morning ended. Tomorrow had not been on my mind at all.
Tomorrow
I’m writing it all down because that’s what Michael said to do. I don’t know why it’s so hard because I write all the time. It’s what I do. I’m a scientist. But I write facts and figures, and I study results. I don’t journal. I do not have a diary. I don’t even like Facebook.
I hope this is a story of survival. Of beginnings, not endings. I hope you find something you need in it.
Yesterday
“Thanks for showing up, fucker,” Susie said when Michael rounded the corner into the receiving garage. She’d already opened the door and stood smoking a cigarette on the concrete ramp.
He took the cigarette from her fingers. Tucking it between his lips, he inhaled deeply then passed it back to her. “They said Susie and crank shaft, and I came a-runnin’.”
“Just in time, looks like.” Susie finished the smoke and crushed it beneath her heavy work boot, tucking the rule-breaking butt into her pocket.
A white cargo van pulled up at the top of the long delivery ramp and stopped.
“What’s he doing?” Susie frowned into the sun, shielding her eyes with her hand slanted over her forehead. “Something wrong with the van?”
“Hell if I know.”
The driver’s-side door of the van opened.
“What’s up, dude? You don’t expect us to carry that shaft down from there?” Michael shouted.
A low growl filled the air. Michael thought of the mountain lions he’d heard in California, howling at night, the sound like a woman’s terrified screams. Prickles stung the back of his neck.
Starting up the ramp, he stopped as the driver appeared— ejected from the van with such force that someone must have pushed him, or thrown him. He landed on his face, and skidded over the concrete, making a sickening, wet noise as he went. Ssssslllllpppphhhhss.
“What the fuck, dude?” Michael headed toward him.
The driver jumped up as if drawn by strings. He lurched forward, making that freaky cat screeching sound. One of his arms lay crooked, his palm facing the wrong way. None of this seemed to affect him; he was coming faster. Bloody teeth gnashed in the tattered black hole that had once been his mouth.
“Something’s wrong with him. Run!” Michael yelled to Susie as he started back down the driveway. “Shut the door! Shut the fuckin’
door!”
The driver tripped, fell, and rolled down the slide-like ramp.
Susie screamed, frozen, ten feet from the gaping garage door. The driver crashed into her and sent her backward. She landed on her ass. Her head slammed into the pavement. The driver crawled, like a creature from a nightmare, over her. She moaned, trying to sit up, but he pushed her back down, growling louder.
Michael grabbed his blue Biosphere jumpsuit and pulled him off.
The driver yanked away. His flailing hands slammed into Susie’s outstretched arm. His fingers closed on her hand. He brought it to his lips, hauling her to her feet as he bit into the meaty part of her palm.
She screamed. The sound echoed off the walls of the narrow driveway. “Get him off me! Get him off me!”
Michael’s fist shot out, clipping the driver’s chin and coming back again with a second punch that landed squarely on his nose. He howled and jerked backward. Susie shot to her feet and grabbed Michael’s hand. They ran. Just inside the gaping opening at the bottom, he hit the button that started the giant garage door downward.
Up the ramp, the driver turned and shuffled toward them.
“Come on! Come on!” Susie said as the door came down. “Faster!”
The driver moved with plodding steps toward them, but he wove his way as if blind, bumping into one wall and heading the other way like a human pinball.
“He’s sick or something. Look at him.”
“I don’t want to look at him! Let’s go!” Susie tugged Michael’s arm.
“I’m not leavin’ until I know he’s locked out. Something’s wrong with that dude in a bad way.” Michael made a circuit of the garage. He found a large pipe wrench propped against a wall and, hefting it to his shoulder, brought it back to the closing door.
Three feet to go. The driver was four feet away, but he veered off to the left.
“If he gets in, you’ll bash him in the head with a wrench?” Susie’s eyes were bright with fear, shiny and glassy. She held her wounded hand close to her chest, wrapped in the hem of her bloodstained shirt.
“He fuckin’ bit your hand like a goddamned zombie! Hell yes. If he gets in, I’m taking him out!”
The door crashed closed.
They grinned, coming together, wrapping their arms around each other. “We’re okay!” Susie said. “He didn’t get in!”
“Thank Christ! Let’s get you fixed up,” Michael said, easing out of Susie’s embrace, ignoring the hurt and sullen set of her expression.
He left the large wrench next to the garage door.
From Michael’s Notes
The doc did all he could do for us. I want to make that plain. No one could have seen it coming. I was there, and I didn’t believe it until it was too late.
You might read some things in my journal, but it was all testosterone talking. That and twelve weeks locked up with one other man and five women. The doc wasn’t that bad. None of them was.
They did all the right things. Called Security. Went into lock-down. Tended Susie. Doc even gave us Valium after he investigated and saw the driver for himself. “He’s just walking into the door, over and over again. His face—” He didn’t have to finish. I’d seen it too.
I was happy to take the pill and hang out with Susie while the rest took care of everything and waited for Security to show up. No one’s doing but mine, what happened next.
We joked about zombies. Crazy talk, we agreed, laughing it off. There would be a logical explanation. Maybe a bug, combined with the shock from his injury acting like a drug, making him crazy.
It happened so fast. One minute, Susie was joking around, and the next, she was on me.
I killed her, or at least I think I did. She didn’t go down easy. I should let them know. They don’t stop until their brain does.
Have I lost my mind?
Either way, I locked myself in the storage cage, kept the key. I hope I’m wrong, and they don’t need these notes or the notebooks I piled up outside for them, about the mechanics of the Biosphere, and what to do in case of an emergency. How to keep things going. I hope I’m here to wait it out with them. They don’t have a chance in hell without someone who knows how to keep the power on.
I hope they understand why I killed Susie.
I want to make love with my wife in the cornfield again. I hope she’s okay and knows how much I love her.
Three Years Later
The power went out today.
We’d followed Michael’s instructions, dropping to emergency power only, shifting all resources to the Biosphere 1’s apartment wing and the farm dome. We operated days with no lights, and used as little power as we could get away with at night. Clutching Michael’s notebooks like bibles, we’d capped off and rerouted plumbing and electrical, reducing our loads to minimums, conserving everything to stretch out life for as long as possible. We planted seeds, sprouted legumes and kept the water-collection systems humming throughout the Biosphere. The doors were always locked, and we never, ever went outside.
Michael had managed to get most of it down until he could hold a pen no longer. We filled in the gaps. We survived. We waited.
When it happened, I was in the basement, walking through one of the long, connecting hallways lined with piping. I’d come from Michael, who’d eaten his share of veggies as ravenously and mindlessly as always, clawing at the bars when the food was gone, his once-vibrant blue eyes dimmed and distant.
He was clean. He was fed. He was still Michael. He was not Michael at all. I loved him so much it hurt.
Tears blurred my eyes as I walked away from him. Just like every day, I asked if I was doing the right thing, keeping him alive, but not truly living. The others had no choice. We’d agreed right away that all decisions would have to be made jointly, and I was not prepared to let Michael go. I didn’t know if I ever would be.
The lights went out with a pop of electricity, plunging the basement hallway into darkness. I thought that this was it for one crazy moment. The end had come. The aching in my heart told me that I was still alive. I am ashamed now to admit my disappointment when I realized we’d only lost our power.
It took us a week to get it back. Plenty of time to think about what my life had become. What might happen next. What was lost forever. Plenty of time to understand the fragile nature of my new life.
Later
“I won’t do it.”
“I realize it’s difficult,” Richard said.
“Difficult? As a concept, it’s difficult. In reality, it’s a fucking horror movie.”
“No pun intended, right?” His goofy smile did little to change my mood.
“You’ve been elected to convince me?”
“Pretty much.”
It didn’t surprise me. The other women still seemed eager to put someone in charge, someone who would figure things out, make things happen, change things back to the way they used to be.
“They can’t force me to do it.”
“They’d like you to consider letting one of them do it if you won’t.”
“Let me guess. Christina wants to be first in line?” She’d always had the hots for Michael.
“No one wants to do it. We’ve tried everything else. You know that. I just keep asking myself what’s the point of surviving if it all ends with us.”
“We don’t know that it will end. Maybe we’re not the only ones left.”
“We’ve had no contact with anyone else. Ever.”
We’d tried everything while things were still working. Someone always survived in the movies. Surely there were people who’d holed up somewhere, waiting for the day when the world snapped back to normal. We’d even spent time mapping out this new world as we imagined it, targeting the most likely candidates for survival with our communication efforts. The list was depressing, and our efforts had been wasted.
Richard sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a long, thin finger. His eyes were tired when he looked at me again. “Just think about it, okay?”<
br />
I nodded. Sure thing. Just think about having sex with my half-dead husband, and letting the other women do it too, to produce babies who would carry on the race, just in case others had survived who’d started their own breeding program and we managed to connect with them.
No fucking way.
Five Years later
Tesla died today.
I said before that no one ever went out, and that’s almost true. I went out once. I’ll never do it again.
The Others—that’s what we called the people like the driver, and Michael now—had taken down the people who came to the Biosphere. I guess everyone in Tucson knew about the place. They came in droves at first, and we watched through the heavy-duty glass of the dome as they were taken down, eaten, turned into Others.
After the people stopped coming, the Others hunted javelina, mice and stray dogs and cats.
The cat had wedged herself against one of the outer doors. I saw her from the cornfield, a ball of red fur jumping onto an electrical cable attached to the outside of the building. The Others saw her too. They’d turned from the path above the dome, and a pack had started down the steps.
The door was a few feet away. The Others at least thirty feet from the cat. I couldn’t watch. Not again. I had the cold bar of the bolt lock under my fingers before I could think it through. Yanking open the heavy steel door, I lurched to the side, scooped up the cat, all teeth and claws then. She shot out of my arms. I went after her. At the corner, she stopped, cowering against the concrete, her back arched and her hair standing on end.
“Here, Puss, Puss. Come on, baby. It’s okay.”
The Others were ten feet away. Tears blinded me. I would have no choice soon but to leave the cat and save myself, and my friends—I’d left the door wide open.
I lunged into the corner and grabbed for its fur. Catching it at the neck, I yanked it up and away from me. It hissed, and the Others moved faster as the sounds of something alive and struggling reached them.
Love, Lust, and Zombies Page 19
