Black Melt

by Indy McDaniel

  Anders stepped forward, letting out a laugh. “The look on your face is priceless,” he snarled through a mouthful of black gunk. He turned his head and spat up a thick wad of it onto the pavement. “We can’t wait to see how it tastes.” He pointed a finger at Felicia. “Give us the girl and we’ll make sure that’s the first thing we devour. It’ll hurt, but it’ll be over quick. Keep fucking with us and we’ll melt you slow. Starting with your snatch. You think losing your hand hurt? You can’t possibly imagine how painful feeling your clit burning away is.”

  “Fuck off, Anders,” Murphy shot back. “You always were a scumbag. I’ve got no problem blasting your teeth through the back of your head.”

  “The loss of one vessel is meaningless,” Anders told her. “The rest of us will be on you before this body hits the ground.”

  Murphy didn’t want to admit how right Anders was, but the rising dread in her gut did so for her. Getting to the car was impossible. Making a break for it on foot would only delay the inevitable. She could make sure they caught her before Felicia, but she doubted the girl would be able to outrun them for long. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t keep her promise to Kari. At least, not as originally intended. Given the lack of options, the only thing Murphy could assert her control over was the degree of pain they suffered before they died. She didn’t want her final moments to be filled with the screams of the child she’d failed to protect. It would be better for both of them to die clean.

  Murphy shifted the aim of her weapon away from Anders and towards Felicia. The girl gasped, taking a half-step backwards before freezing in place. Murphy knew it was the right thing to do, the humane thing, but it didn’t make it any easier to process. Everything about looking down her sights to find Felicia’s quivering bottom lip and tear-filled eyes felt wrong. She clenched her jaw and gathered her nerves, needing to go through with it before the infected men grabbed her. She could only hope that the girl understood on some level. It seemed all the more cruel because of everything Felicia had gone through over the course of the night. It ends now, Murphy thought. Before it can get worse.

  The deafening gunshot echoed down the suburban street. Ripping pain exploded through the young woman, drawing a soft whine of shock from her lips. Tears dribbled down her cheeks as she looked down at the blood seeping out of her chest. Her eyes shifted upwards, fixing on the smoking barrel of the gun aimed at her. She looked higher, into the cold eyes of her former partner staring back at her. “Goddammit,” Murphy muttered, stumbling back a step as a wave of weakness washed over her. Her chest was on fire. It was already getting hard to breathe. Without immediate medical attention, she’d be dead in minutes at best. At least I don’t have to shoot myself now, she thought grimly, refocusing her strength and raising her gun to fix on Felicia again.

  Three more shots rang out. Murphy’s body jerked as the bullets ripped through her. The second bullet struck her in the chest, punching a hole through her left breast before shredding her lung and exiting her shoulder blade. The next two entered her gut, one perforating her stomach while the other obliterated her liver. Hot blood sprayed from her back. Her arm slumped to her side as she struggled to stay on her feet. She pressed the stump of her wrist against the stomach wounds, looking down at the blood-soaked mess of her shirt. She offered Anders a frustrated glare before her legs gave out beneath her. She slumped to her knees, fighting for each breath. Murphy winced and coughed, crimson dribbling from her lips. Everything hurt. It was a miracle she wasn’t dead already. She refused to let that miracle go to waste.

  Felicia remained frozen in place. Her ears rang and her pants were soggy from the accident she’d had after the first shot. Her young, terrified mind tried to comprehend what was happening, why Murphy was trying to shoot her. She thought she might know, but the disturbing notion refused to settle into her innocent brain. Watching her guardian being brutally gunned down left her feeling utterly lost. She had no one left to turn to, to rely on. She wished the strange, fast-talking woman she’d met earlier was there. She wished for Aunt Kari. For her father and mother. But as innocent as she was, Felicia was far from stupid. She’d found out wishes didn’t work the day her parents had gotten divorced. She had no reason to believe they’d work this time, but she kept on trying.

  Well done, Murph, the mortally wounded federal agent thought. You’ve managed to terrify a little girl badly enough to piss her pants. Cross that one off the old bucket list, huh? She kept her eyes fixed on Felicia, fighting back the darkness creeping into her vision with everything she had. She noticed Anders advancing on her out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored him. She was good at ignoring him. She’d been doing it since the first day she’d been partnered with the asshole. It had been hard sometimes, when they were alone in the car and there was little else to focus on. This time was easy. She had the most important thing in the world to focus on. Saving Felicia. Her fingers tightened around the grip of her gun and her arm slowly rose, trembling so bad that even if she did manage to raise it high enough she wasn’t sure she could hit the girl at all, let alone somewhere that would kill her fast. “I… I’m sorry…” she forced out, barely a whisper, as she managed to aim more or less at the young girl’s face.

  “Die already, you miserable cunt,” Anders growled as he stopped in front of the woman. He raised his gun with significantly more ease and pulled the trigger without hesitation. She lost her grip on her weapon as the first bullet tore through her forehead. The weapon fell from her twitching fingers by the time the second shot entered her cheek and had very nearly reached the ground as the third shattered its way through her teeth. The woman’s body snapped tense as her brains sprayed from the back of her head, splattering wetly across the garage door. She remained kneeling for a few long moments before flopping backwards into a lifeless heap. Anders stepped over her and fired two more rounds into her head, destroying her nose and right eye in the process. He spat another wad of obsidian-tinged saliva onto what remained of her head before turning to fix his gaze on the trembling little girl. He gave her a wide grin, eyes lighting up with pleasure.

  ***

  The front door of the happy home-turned-nightmare factory opened. Allen stepped outside – his messy, tattered clothing removed and replaced with a fresh outfit – and breathed in a deep breath of air. The duct tape he’d wrapped around his torn open throat dented inwards from the inhalation, but maintained its seal. A content smile filled his mold-covered face, finding a brief moment of calmness within the maelstrom of psyches coalescing within him. He looked to the crowd of infected men gathered in his driveway and front yard, seeing the familiar faces of his neighbors. Before the melt, he’d only properly known a handful of them and barely interacted with them. Now he knew them as well as he knew himself. Petty grievances, general standoffishness, and the business of day to day life were all washed away in the wake of the fungus, replaced by a singularly unique togetherness.

  Anders stood at the front of the group. His gun rested back in its holster. He held Felicia’s hand in his, delicately. The little girl cowered beside the infected man, physically unharmed but mentally scarred. She sniffled and cried as quietly as she could, repulsed by the touch of the man who’d killed Murphy but too scared to pull away from him. Her brow furrowed with confusion as she saw her father leave the house and walk towards her. She looked up at him, knowing it couldn’t really be him, but unable to dispute what she saw. The flaky black crud growing across his face and oozing from his nose gave him a monstrous appearance. Deep down, she knew he was just like the rest of the monsters that had turned her life into a living hell. But she tried to believe that her wishes had somehow been granted. “Daddy?” she whimpered, desperate hope in her voice.

  Allen stopped in front of his child and gave her a warm smile. “Yes,” his voice bubbled. “And no. We are so much more than that, Felicia.” The little girl’s confusion grew and with it came fresh tears. Allen’s body stiffened as Madison’s psyche fought to assert full dominanc
e. “It’s alright, baby,” she told her daughter with her ex-husband’s voice. “It’s mommy. I came back for you.”

  “Mommy?” Felicia sniffled. “You’re dead.”

  “No,” Allen’s voice insisted. “I’m just…” He looked over himself, a flicker of revulsion crossing his face before his smile returned. “I’m just different.” Allen’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I tried, baby. I tried to get back to you. And then I tried to keep you safe. None of it worked. We got out. I know what we’re going to do. I couldn’t let it happen to you. I took control. I had to. It wasn’t easy, but it was the only way to protect you. But I needed help. There are so many other people… other things… in here. I needed your father, Aunt Kari. I needed people who loved you as much as I do. If we work together, we can keep you safe. Keep you from becoming one with us.”

  As Madison did her best to explain the way things were to her traumatized daughter, Anders and the others turned their attention to Murphy’s corpse. The agent’s consciousness may have been lost, but even dead the body could provide a good deal of nourishment. Anders in particular couldn’t wait to taste his former partner. His urges tickled within the joined psyche, providing an unwelcome distraction to Madison. She didn’t want her daughter to watch the feeding, but she didn’t dare try to resist the primal nature of the alien fungus. So she rested one of Allen’s hands on Felicia’s shoulder to keep the young girl’s back to the disturbing scene.

  “It’s not going to be easy, honey,” Allen’s voice told Felicia. “But we can make it work. This fungal life comes from outer space.” She tried on an encouraging smile. “That’s kind of cool, right? Mommy’s sort of part alien now.” The smile faded. “But the fungus is predacious. It hunts. We hunt. And the things we hunt become a part of us. I can barely understand how old we are. We haven’t been around since the dawn of time, but we might as well have been. I can feel space. I can see so many other worlds, all of them dead now thanks to us, but still living within us. That’s important, baby. It’s important that you understand just how many of us there are in here. Because in order to keep you safe I’m going to have to do something really, really bad. I’m going to have to let the fungus do to this world what it’s done to so many others. I can stay in control if I let us do that. And then we can all be together. We can try to live. Try to be happy. Do you understand, baby? Do you understand what mommy has to do?”

  Felicia nodded numbly, more horrified than ever in the midst of the disturbing family reunion.

  Behind her, the infected ripped their way through Murphy’s clothes. Her shirt came open, revealing her blood-soaked torso. One of the men tugged the cup of her bra down and leaned forward to suckle at the bullet hole puncturing her breast. He wiggled his tongue into the wound, delighting in the coppery flavor of her blood. Two more infected managed to rip through Murphy’s pants. They stretched the waistband of her panties – thoroughly soiled from the voiding of her bladder and bowels in death – until it snapped apart. One of the men hooked two of his fingers into Murphy’s lifeless cunt as he tore away a clump of her pubic hair with his teeth. The bitter taste of her urine brought the infected man to climax, groaning and spewing his blackened load onto the driveway as he slurped at her cooling clitoris.

  Anders pulled away one of Murphy’s boots. He tossed the footwear aside and peeled the woman’s sock off. Gripping Murphy’s ankle, he lifted her leg up and brought his face downwards. With a low gurgle of pleasure, he dragged his tongue across the sole of her foot, lathering it in saliva. He gave her heel a gentle nibble before moving up to suck her big toe into his mouth. Ander’s tongue swirled around the toe, exploring it fully before clenching his jaw. His teeth dug through the skin and crunched through the bone. He jerked his head back to rip the toe away, allowing it to slide to the back of his throat. He retched, drawing up enough digestive bile from his stomach to soften up the toe and allow it to slip down his esophagus. The appetizer only helped to stir his blend of hunger and lust. He brought Murphy’s leg back down, rubbing the bottom of her foot against his throbbing crotch as he hastily unfastened his pants and scooped his erection free of his boxers. His eyes rolled back in ecstasy as he slid himself against Murphy’s foot, cumming almost immediately and leaving her lifeless toes soaked in his tainted seed.

  Resting on his knees, Tim lifted Murphy’s head and scooted his way closer to the corpse. He guided his throbbing cock to the gaping exit wound in the back of the woman’s head, sliding inside to feel the scrambled remnants of Murphy’s brain against his flesh. He grinned down at the woman’s mostly destroyed face, her remaining eye staring back at him blankly as he shifted her head up and down on his member. The infected man let out an insane giggle as he shifted the angle of his cock and watched the tip emerge from Murphy’s bloody eye socket, small chunks of brain tissue clinging to the sticky member. He rose up higher, bending the woman’s head forward so he could thrust into her with greater speed and force. Slamming his full length through Murphy’s head and out her hollowed socket, he grunted and came, shooting messy streaks of jizz across her breasts.

  Anders finished slurping his cum away from Murphy’s foot before puking over it. The skin peeled back and the muscle sizzled away. He dragged his bloated tongue through the melting slop, licking it up and swallowing it down. A spray of sick erupted from Tim’s lips, splattering across Murphy’s head. His clenching hands came away with clumps of the woman’s scalp, hair dissolving away before he could force the flaps of skin into his mouth. His cock throbbed with eager excitement as Murphy’s head dissolved around it. A third infected man lifted her partially dissolved arm and picked up where Benjamin had left off while another melted her right arm off at the shoulder so he could pull the limb away and work the woman’s dead fingers into his asshole while he dined on the melting flesh and fat of one of her breasts. Two more infected worked together, hooking their fingers into the bullet wounds blemishing her belly and ripping the skin further open until her steaming innards were revealed. Twin streams of bile poured into the gaping wound, rapidly transforming Murphy’s guts into a chunky soup which the infected men were all too eager to slurp up.

  Seeing – and feeling – just how graphic Murphy’s melting was getting, Madison guided Felicia further away from the scene. “Come on, honey,” she said, trying to make Allen’s voice sound as soothing as possible. “Let’s go get you into some clean clothes.” It killed her to see Felicia so scared. She hoped that, in time, the girl would grow to understand the sacrifices she’d made. She fought back the encroaching group consciousness. Separation was a strange feeling to the fungus and the psyches dwelling within it. Madison would do her best to keep Allen’s body singled out for her own usage, but she couldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be times when she lost control. She’d have to come up with some kind of emergency protocol for Felicia if things ever got bad, but she could worry about that later. For now, she was just thankful that her family had been made whole again.

  Felicia’s tears dried on her cheeks. The thing holding her hand looked like her father but wasn’t. The words echoing in her head had come from her mother but not really. Felicia missed her mother terribly, but whatever the thing holding her hand was, it wasn’t her. Maybe it had been once, but Felicia was certain that her mother would never kill the world. As they neared the door to her house, her thoughts turned to Murphy. The federal agent had done everything she could to keep her safe, but it hadn’t been enough. My turn, Felicia thought, yanking her hand away from Allen’s and turning to run away. Her half-formed plan of escape solidified as she spotted Murphy’s gun lying in the driveway.

  Scooping the weapon up, Felicia turned back to the grotesque caricature of her father. The gun felt awkward and heavy in her small hands. She’d never even held a toy gun before, but between what she’d seen in movies and the graphic example Anders had given her only a few minutes earlier, she had all the information she needed. She slipped her fingers around the handle and worked her fingers into the trigger gua
rd. The hammer was already pulled back, ready to fire, just as Murphy had left it. Felicia’s breath quickened, adrenaline and sadness eating away at her as she locked eyes with her father. Allen stood frozen on the front stoop, staring back with shocked disbelief. Even the infected men in the midst of consuming Murphy’s corpse stopped, their attention fixed on Felicia as the agent’s body melted around them.

  “I love you, mommy,” Felicia said, fresh tears breaking free from her worried eyes as she brought the gun up, pressing the barrel underneath her chin. She clenched her fingers around the trigger. The weapon bucked in her small hands. The girl’s body collapsed backwards, blood and brains spilling from the top of her head as she stared blindly into the night sky.

  A shriek of torment ripped its way up what remained of Allen’s throat. His long legs carried him from the stoop to Felicia in moments, skidding to his knees and scooping her limp form into his arms and hugging her to his chest. Madison’s grief reverberated through the rest of the infected, obliterating all thoughts of feeding. The shriek still pouring out of Allen was joined by another – this one coming from Anders – and then a third. It wasn’t long until all of the infected were screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  Point of Ignition

  “Not good, Stark.”

  “I know,” Stark shot back as he tried to find the most direct path through the thick traffic ahead. “C’mon!” he yelled, laying on the horn. It didn’t have any effect. Considering he had the sirens and flashers going already, he didn’t honestly expect the horn to lend much aid, but his frustration was strong enough that he felt like doing something – anything – to try and clear a path in the lines of cars.