Black Melt

by Indy McDaniel

  “The garage,” Kari said. And my little cyber-love nest, she thought. At least she’d taken the time to clean up the most embarrassing bits of evidence of her work. Still, she doubted it would be very hard to figure out what she did with the little private space. Fuck it, she thought. This is no time to blush.

  Ellen shook her head. “No, that’s no good,” she said. “They could pry the garage door open and come swarming in. What about upstairs? You got any trees big enough that they could jump from the branches to the roof?”

  Kari shook her head. “I don’t think so. I guess it depends how good they are at jumping.” Another potential idea struck her then. “The attic. There’s no windows up there and the only way up is through the access hatch.”

  “It won’t exactly give us a lot of options if we need to escape. But if we can hold out long enough for backup to arrive, that shouldn’t matter. Let’s move then,” Ellen said, taking the lead as the three of them made their way out of the kitchen and towards the stairs. The pain radiating up from her scorched stump wasn’t getting any better. She felt dizzy and nauseous and was worried she might pass out. “You ever used a gun before?” she asked Kari.

  Kari shook her head. “Not unless one Saturday afternoon of paintballing counts,” she said.

  “Better than nothing, I guess,” Ellen said. “I may need you to take my gun. Adrenaline’s running through me pretty hard at the moment. Probably in traumatic shock. So it might not be the best idea for me to be armed.”

  “Are you going to pass out?” Kari asked, tugging Felicia along behind her. The young girl seemed to be in shock herself. She hadn’t said a word since the bad shit had started to go down. If we make it through this, she’s going to need therapy, Kari thought.

  “Gonna do my best not to,” Ellen said. “But it’s a possibility.”

  As they were passing through the front room, there was a gentle knock at the door. The trio froze, all eyes turning to the front door of the house. After a few moments of silence, the knock came again, this time followed by a bubbling voice. “Let us in, Kari,” it said. “That crazy one-armed bitch in there shot one of us. Killed one of us. Do you really want someone like that in your house? With Felicia? It’ll be so much easier if you just open the door. We can have a grand feast.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Ellen whispered to Kari. “Let’s get in the attic before those things decide to start getting violent.”

  The voice of the infected responded immediately and angrily. “We can hear you in there, you troublesome cunt!” it yelled through the door. “You come out here and let us finish what we started! Barely got a taste, but we can feel your fingers twitching within us, leaving us on the verge of climax. What sort of miserable tease would do that?” The infected on the other side of the door began to bang on it, twisting the handle and trying to get in.

  “Let’s go,” Ellen told Kari, pushing her and Felicia ahead of her. “We can’t stay here. Too exposed.”

  * * *

  Benjamin stood outside the door, fingers still absently scratching at the wood. Breaking in would be easy enough and the maelstrom of chaotic minds coiling around within Benjamin’s mind wanted nothing more than to get into the house and achieve their goal. But the fungus hadn’t survived as long as it had by succumbing to its basest urges. The one-armed bitch was dangerous. She’d already proved that when she’d killed Luke. And with only Benjamin and Anders left to raid the house, the fungus didn’t want to take the risk. Thankfully, the suburb was full of unsuspecting life.

  Benjamin turned to Anders with a grin. “Time to go recruiting,” he hissed.

  * * *

  Laura shuffled out of her bedroom, eyes half-closed. It was sometime in the middle of the night and she'd been awoken from a sound sleep by the unrelenting, quite urgent need to urinate. Shoving the covers away and getting out of bed, she headed for the bathroom wearing only a pair of pink panties and a pair of white socks. Her red hair was completely out of control, sticking up in all directions. She wiped sleep out of her eyes as she moved down the hall towards the bathroom then lifted her arms over her head, stretching and letting out a big yawn.

  The sleepy young woman didn't notice the open door to the guest room, which was always closed. She walked past without even a glance and as she moved away, a large figure emerged. Travelling up behind her at a quick pace, Anders could hardly contain his excited anticipation. He closed the distance with Laura and quickly slid an arm around her neck, bringing it up against her throat hard. The redhead let out a shriek of surprised terror that was quickly choked off as she was lifted into the air by the large man. The sudden shock of being attacked proved too much for her filled bladder. Her panties quickly soaked with her urine before it traveled down her kicking legs. Anders held Laura up and carried her down the hall, leaving a dripping trail of her piss along the way.

  The young woman could feel her attacker's erection pressing against her ass. In the matter of moments the attack had taken, her sleepiness had disappeared completely. She flailed wildly, trying to bring her hands back to hit the man. As he carried her into the living room of her small, one-story home, her pee was still leaking out of her. If her face hadn't already started to go red from the strangle hold Anders had on her, it would have flushed with embarrassment. She was carried over to the counter of her kitchen area and the man dropped her forward onto it, her bare breasts smacking against the cool surface of the tile. His body pressed up against her harder, his stiffness against her rear impossible to ignore.

  Anders kept the pressure on her neck constant as he retched, drawing forth the bubbling digestive fluids sloshing around in his gut. The fungus coursing through his system told him to stop. The intent was to infect, not to consume, but the close encounter with Murphy in the car had left Anders with a powerful urge to feed. He’d felt a flicker of how magnificent the feeding process was as Luke had consumed most of Murphy’s arm, but that had hardly been sufficient to satisfy him. With the squirming redhead trapped beneath him, he couldn’t resist the succulent energy trapped within her. Ignoring the insistent demand of the fungus, he spewed forth a stream of blackness onto the back of Laura’s head, making even more of a mess of her already disheveled hair.

  Laura’s eyes bugged out. She struggled as the warm stickiness crept through her hair and tingled against her scalp, but the weight of the man against her made it difficult. She brought her arms up around behind her, trying to knock the man away as the tingling transformed into an intense burning. Anders ground his hips forward against Laura’s squirming rear end as he felt the beginning of his first proper feeding. His eyes rolled back as the pleasure of her melting skin flowed into him. It was like the perfect blend of the greatest meal ever made combined with the most intense sexual experience of his life. The crotch of his pants dampened with blackened jizz as his erection jerked.

  Laura's mouth opened and closed wildly, making choking noises as the man thrust against her. Her body bucked in desperation. Her face was turning dark red and drool slobbered down her chin to drip on the counter. Her eyes rolled back and she let out an even louder choking sound as Anders pushed his fingers through her sick-drenched hair and into the softened bone of her skull. Blinding pain streaked through the young woman as her attacker carefully peeled her skull open, slapping the sizzling bone bits against his mold-covered chest. The bone clung to his body and added further delight to his feeding as he slowly absorbed the organic material into himself.

  Laura's struggles became livelier as Anders puked another stream of digestive gunk into the hole he’d made in the back of her skull. She flailed her arms and kicked her legs back against the man's shins, but he seemed to take no notice. The pressure in her head from his throat-crushing arm was building and things grew dim through her eyes as her brain melted away. Her tongue pushed out of her mouth and she shook her head, as if trying to deny that any of this was actually happening. Gritting his teeth, the man slammed his fist through the back of Laura’s head and into
her skull. His fingers dug through her soft brain tissue, clutching a fistful of it and yanking it free as he pulled back harder with the arm wrapped around her throat.

  Something in Laura's neck snapped and her eyes widened a bit more. Suddenly, all the pain was gone. Her struggles were reduced to twitches as death stole her suffering away. Anders let out a bellow as he felt the energy of her life slide out of her jerking corpse and flow into him. He let his arm slip free from around the young woman’s neck and Laura's head smacked down against the counter, eyes staring blankly down at the tile. Pulling his hand free of her skull, he watched as the ruined remnants of her brain melted into a liquid-like sludge. He pulled the young woman’s corpse up from the counter and forced her head back. It moved with ease thanks to her broken neck and he bent it back far further than would have been capable if she’d still been alive. Placing his mouth against the jagged hole in her skull, Anders poured Laura’s liquefied brains into his mouth and swallowed them down.

  The numerous voices chattering in Anders’ head were displeased with him for acting against their wishes for reinforcements, but the pleasure he felt from consuming his first proper meal more than made up for it.

  * * *

  Benjamin let out a conflicted growl as he felt Anders feeding. While the feeding sent tingles of pleasure running through his body even from a distance, it hadn’t been what Anders was supposed to do. They needed greater physical numbers, not mental ones. Benjamin’s fungus-filled mind was already a nonstop chattering of voices, both of the carriers and the meals. There was even a touch of Murphy lingering around in the back of his head, from the small bit of her they’d consumed. But the growth of mental consciousness did them no good at the moment. They needed physical force, not the memories of a girl whose proudest moment had been the day she’d received an email from a porn website that her nude photos had been accepted for publication.

  If Anders can’t be controlled, he’ll have to be removed from the fold, the fungus hissed in Benjamin’s head. Don’t disappoint us now, Benjamin. We’ll do the same to you. Cut you off and let you melt away.

  The notion of being cut off from the cacophony of minds he’d become connected to since his infection terrified Benjamin. Although he could remember, not so long ago, that his situation had left him feeling helpless and scared, he could no longer recall exactly why that was. There was safety in the fold. And even the horrible things the fungus made him do weren’t all that horrible now that he’d gained a deeper understanding of its nature. The fungus’s violent and disgusting methods were really quite beautiful once you looked at them from the inside. A merging of all minds and life forces into a single, supreme entity. He could feel each person the fungus had infected or consumed, good and bad. The human voices were loudest and most strong in his head, but underneath that, if he focused, he could detect the faint rumblings of something else. Something older and very much inhuman.

  Benjamin closed his eyes and allowed those rumblings to consume his mind just as the fungus had consumed his body. An unnatural chill filled him as he was mentally sucked backwards through countless centuries. He found himself in a void of nothingness. Distant specks of light surrounded him, so faint that it was impossible for him to determine what they were or even how far they were from his point. Visually, it appeared as if he was remaining motionless, but he distinctly felt his body travelling through the void at an alarming rate of speed.

  As his eyes snapped back open, the feeling of movement ceased and Benjamin felt a brief moment of dizziness. He got his bearings and gave the young couple before him a wide, black-toothed grin. They didn’t return his smile. The woman was too busy screaming questions at him while the man yelled out as many idle threats as he could think of. He’d subdued them both with little trouble and bound them to the headboard of their bed with the shredded strips of their nightclothes. He looked over each of their nude forms in turn, feeling arousal for each of them. Before the fungus, Benjamin had been utterly confident in his heterosexuality.

  Now, as his eyes fixed on the man’s flaccid cock lying against his thigh, Benjamin could see the appeal. A number of the voices fluttering around in his head very much liked what they saw and wanted to have a taste of it. No, the strongest voice said – although it had been one of the ones admiring the man’s penis. This isn’t about tasting. It’s about expansion. We can have some fun bringing them in, but remember our goal. The voice went silent for a moment before adding one final bit of advice. And remember that time is a factor here.

  Benjamin needed no further encouragement. He climbed onto the bed and crawled his way between the trussed up man and woman. The woman twisted to turn away from him, sobbing harder. The man did the opposite, turning towards Benjamin as he did his best to lash out at his captor. Benjamin giggled at their antics, seeing just how petty and pointless it was from the perspective of a life form millions of years old. He snuggled up between the pair, enjoying their perfect counter display of fight and flight and how the fabric tied tightly around their wrists aborted their attempts before they could even begin.

  “Well, then,” Benjamin said as he slid an arm around both the man and the woman, giving them each a sloppy grin. “Shall we begin?” The woman sobbed harder and the man told Benjamin to go fuck himself. Given the number of people crawling around up here, he thought. That would make for quite the orgy. “Don’t worry,” Benjamin told the man, unable to resist reaching down to give his limp cock a few gentle strokes. “You’ll be in on that party soon enough.”

  The process of bringing another physical entity into the fold was not unlike the process of consuming them entirely. It was merely the bodily fluids that differed. Instead of bile and digestive enzymes, infection required blood, spit, and other tasty secretions. Simple skin to infected skin contact worked, too, but it would take much longer for the fungus to take hold. So that meant Benjamin had to get messy. And so did the young couple he was lying in bed with currently. Rolling onto his side so he could face the man, Benjamin grabbed hold of his head and pinned him down, straddling his chest and leaning forward to press his lips against the man’s.

  The man opened his mouth to Benjamin’s kiss, but only so he could clamp his teeth down around the infected man’s lips. Benjamin was sure the man’s intent was to cause enough pain to get him to stop the kiss, but he only savored the pain and leaned into it. A moan rolled up the back of Benjamin’s throat as the man’s teeth punctured his skin, allowing black and red blood to gush out and pour into the man’s mouth. Benjamin yanked his head back while the man’s teeth were still clamped down around his lips. A wet ripping filled the air and when Benjamin rose from the man, he could do nothing but grin with the majority of his lips now torn away. The man gagged on tainted blood and flesh, desperately trying to spit it out but Benjamin knew that the man must have already swallowed down more than enough of his blood to start the infection.

  The man seemed horrified by what had just happened. His beautiful bride doubly so. All Benjamin knew was that he doubted his cock had ever been so hard. Even the time when Gloria Fairbanks went down on him in the back row of the movie theatre paled in comparison. And that had been a blowjob of magnificently talented proportions. He remembered how he’d had to struggle to keep from screaming out as he’d emptied his balls down the back of Gloria’s clenching throat. Benjamin was so caught up in the memory that it took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t his own. It belonged to one of the many other voices and personalities squirming around inside his brain now, but he could remember it just as vividly as if it had been his throbbing erection Gloria had been suckling on so sweetly.

  Benjamin shook his head, returning to the present. The man was still hacking up obsidian-tinged blood while the woman looked as if she was about to pass out. He leaned over and gave her a hard slap across the face. “Stay with us, dearie,” he purred down at her. “It won’t be any fun eating you if you’re not awake to share in the experience.”

  The slap dislodged the gag
filling the woman’s mouth. She used her tongue to push it further from her mouth, turning her sobbing face back to Benjamin. “Why?” she asked through her tears. “Why are you doing this?”

  The smile on Benjamin’s face faltered. His hand moved back to the woman’s face and she flinched as he stroked his fingertips across her damp cheek with a strange gentleness. “We’re making you better,” he replied, feeling the fungus creeping through his head, offering him the answers to questions he’d never even thought to ask. “Everything is so simplistically complex. The cost of your admission to the fold is sweet for us and pain for you.” He gave the woman’s nose a poke. “You have what we need to survive.” He slid a hand along her exposed chest and over her belly down to her crotch, cupping her there. “The females are the mothers. The fountains of our everlasting life. We consume you and you preserve us so we can carry forth your gloriousness to others.” He reached over, giving her husband’s crotch a gentle stroking. Benjamin could feel the man’s member stiffening as the infection took hold. “We will all be as one and as many. Together even when we’re apart.”

  Benjamin looked over at the husband – his name was Tom – and smiled as he stroked the man’s throbbing member. Tom smiled back, black staining the whites of his eyes. “You won’t have to worry about your hubby leaving you for that cute intern he’s been fucking at work.” He turned back to the woman – her name was Alyson – and gave her a reassuring nod. “Time for us to feed.”

  Tom ripped through the bindings keeping him pinned to the bed with ease and joined Benjamin, crouching beside his wife. The two men retched and vomited their digestive gunk over the screaming woman as they reached out to stroke one another’s throbbing members.

  Chapter Eight