Dark Passions

by Jeff Gelb

  “This isn’t sex! This is ... sick. It’s not right what we do.”

  “You like it. I know you do.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Don’t tell me I don’t know want I’m saying, dammit! I’m telling you—”

  Then Ron slapped me hard. Twice.

  I screamed and cursed him. “Get out! I want you out of here now!”

  “You’ll change your mind,” he said with a confident smirk.

  “Fuck you!”

  His eyes focused on me then with an animal rage. Suddenly he came at me, pinning me down on the floor so I couldn’t move. His hand grasped my throat and squeezed tight. This wasn’t fun and games. This wasn’t sex now. I was having trouble breathing.

  My God, he was going to kill me!

  I became frantic, and from somewhere, somehow, I gathered the energy to push him off me. He fell over to my left, and I bolted to my right and fell into his gym bag. I remembered the hammer I’d seen him put inside it and frantically pulled it out. When Ron came at me again, I hit him full on the forehead with the ball-peen hammer, and he dropped down like a felled ox, unconscious or dead. I didn’t care which at that point.

  I got up shaking, angry, infuriated with a rage I had never felt before, but surging through my body was another feeling I knew well but had never realized I could feel from such an incident—the release of incredible sexual energy.

  I quickly looked at the other things inside Ron’s gym bag. There I found my missing crime-scene photos. And others from the crime scene, Polaroids not from the department, but his own personal photos of his crimes. Ron was the killer! My mind reeled at the knowledge. Then I saw a vial of blood with a label marked with my name on it, along with a syringe. It was all clear now.

  I looked down at Ron; he was moaning softly but apparently unable to move. He was so helpless. The memory of my previous outburst of violence had turned me on like nothing else ever had. Now, seeing Ron helpless on the floor only stimulated my sexual desires even more. I touched my nakedness. My most intimate area was moist, soon dripping wet. My nipples were hard and sore, hypersensitive and burning to the touch. I was on fire. Now I was anticipating doing something with Ron that we had never done before.

  I picked up the ball-peen hammer and hit Ron once on the head. The dull thud caused him to moan loudly. As he did so, I moaned louder in my sexual frenzy, hitting him again and again and again, faster, faster, faster—screaming in an orgy of sexual release, culminating in a bloody orgasm of sheer violence.

  I looked at the members of the task force and concluded my report. “This latest victim, a male, Ron Jackson, was a dump job. He was killed somewhere else and then left at the edge of the park. Blood spatter indicates blunt-force trauma. I’d surmise a hammer of some kind.” I smiled slightly. “Probably a ball-peen hammer.”

  The Bonfires of Humanity

  Jeff Gelb

  When the zombies came, it was nothing like the movies. It was much, much worse.

  I was driving home from work when my wife, Alissa, called my cell.

  “Hi, honey,” I said innocently. “How’s the love of my life today? The 405 is a nightmare, but I should be home in—”

  “Jack,” she interrupted breathlessly, “something’s wrong with Derek.”

  My heart skipped a few beats. “What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

  “They called from his school and said he was sick, and needed to be picked up. In fact, most of the school was sick, and most of the kids went home.”

  Now I was getting really distracted. I was a chemical engineer, so my brain started considering the options. “Something in the water, I’ll bet. The school’s water system ... those old, lead-lined pipes ... I’ve warned them they should be replaced.”

  “Jack, just shut up,” she screeched, “and meet me at Torrance Memorial!”

  I nearly slid into an SUV being driven next to my Camry. “Derek’s in a hospital? What ... ?”

  “He’s in the ICU, Jack! He’s on fucking life support!” Alissa shrieked.

  My synapses were not capable of absorbing this much negative input in so short a time. My darling wife was screaming obscenities into my ear. Worse, our amazingly bright and handsome eight-year-old son was in some hospital, tubes running up his nose and down his throat?

  I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and moved to the side of the road. I slid the Camry into Park to catch my breath and let my brain try and absorb the last two minutes’ conversation. “Did they ... where is ...”

  Nothing was making sense or coming out right. I suddenly felt like I might be getting whatever sickness had overtaken my son.

  “Jack, honey, just meet me at the hospital. Please hurry!” She hung up, and I stared at the cell phone as if it might provide some answers to this sudden insanity. Finally I pulled back into traffic and headed toward the hospital.

  The waiting room of the ICU at Torrance Memorial was like open house at Derek’s elementary school—half the parents were there. The place was a zoo, with people shrieking and crying, demanding to see their sons and daughters. The hospital staff could barely keep things under control. I noticed numerous obviously nervous cops at each elevator bank and at the nurses’ station.

  Finally I found my wife. “Oh Jack, thank God you’re here!” She ran into my arms and smothered me with kisses, which made me feel that all was right with the world again—at least for that second.

  But then I noticed that her tears had ruined her eye makeup. She looked like she was wearing Alice Cooper’s stage makeup. It was a ghoulish sight, especially on her pretty face. “Honey, please ... What can you tell me? How’s Derek? Where is he?”

  She held my arms in a viselike grip. “They won’t let us see him. They won’t let anyone see their kids. Jack, the cops are keeping people in the waiting rooms until the doctors know more. They think it’s highly contagious.” She started bawling in my arms, and I was too stunned to respond emotionally.

  Finally her tears subsided, and she pulled away a bit. “Why aren’t you crying?” she asked accusingly.

  “I ... I need some answers,” I said as I let her go and headed to the nurses’ station. A cop beat me to my destination. He was big and burly, wearing a surgical mask over his nose and mouth. The overall effect would have been comical except for the circumstances. “Please step away from the station, sir.”

  “I want some answers,” I said in my most authoritative voice, which sounded so phony to me. I heard others behind me agreeing, encouraging me, taunting the cop. He blinked away the abusive words.

  “I understand,” he said, literally holding me at arm’s length.

  “Don’t touch me,” I warned him, brushing off his hands. He held them up, acknowledging my anger.

  “The nurses and doctors are doing everything they can,” he attempted to explain. “And as soon as they know whether this is contagious, they’ll make a determination about visitation rights.”

  “Rights!” I shouted. “My son is in there.” I pointed down the hall. “For all I know, he may be dying, or ...” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “I want to see him right now!” I started to move around the cop.

  “Sir!” I saw the cop’s hand reach for his holstered gun. “Step back into the waiting room, or I will have to arrest you. Now!”

  Reluctantly, I retreated, the sting of defeat reddening my face. Others around me sighed and went back to their conversations. I heard a lot of crying. My wife ran to my side and pulled me back into the cacophonous room. I knew these parents from my son’s soccer and basketball games, from their kids’ birthday parties. Everyone was nearly hysterical. I felt like I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

  Alissa had wiped her eye makeup on the sleeve of her flower-print blouse, but her eyes were so red from crying she still looked like she was wearing some sort of macabre makeup. I just wanted things to look and be normal again. “Alissa, what
have you been told?”

  She shook her head. “Just that most of the school had to be sent home midway through fourth period. And halfway home, Derek was panting and throwing up so bad, I knew I should bring him to Emergency. When I got here, half the school was already in the parking lot. Jack, I’m so scared ... Our family has always been so close. What if ...”

  I looked around. “This is bad,” I muttered. “Real bad.” My brain tried desperately to figure out some reason for this nightmare. We were good, religious people. Why was this happening to us?

  Just then a doctor came rushing out of the ICU, looking worse than any of the parents. He started coughing, and a rush of blood spit out of his mouth as he threw up on the shoes of the cop guarding the nurses’ station.

  Everyone looked at him with horror, and I heard someone scream, “He’s gotta be contagious! Get him out of here!” In fact, it was obvious the doctor was in terrible pain. He was on the floor, writhing in his own vomit and blood, body spasming, screaming in a high-pitched squeal. It was shatteringly frightening. Half the parents ran screaming out of the waiting room, some toward the elevators and others past the stunned cops, toward the ICU. I saw one cop raise his gun threateningly, pointing it at a shrieking mother, and then lower his hand to let her pass. Some even went along with the parents. Hell, some of the cops probably had kids back there.

  Suddenly the doctor stopped screaming, and I could see a puddle of urine form under his trousers. I knew, even from halfway across the room, that he was dead.

  I grabbed my wife’s arm. “We’ve got to get out of here, or we may get what he has ... had.”

  Alissa looked at me in stunned surprise. “Jack, we can’t leave. Derek’s in there. We have to get him, we have to bring him home with us ... .”

  I shook my head. “Something’s beyond wrong here. Something really terrible is happening. We can’t help Derek. And if we don’t leave now, we won’t be able to help him or ourselves.”

  Just then I heard a horrible scream. I turned to see one of the fathers walking out of the ICU with what must have been his young daughter in his arms. I recognized both of them as neighbors on our block. “She’s dead,” he shrieked. “Liana’s dead! They’re all dead back there. They’re all dead!”

  The room turned into utter pandemonium as parents ran around like the proverbial headless chickens. Alissa started bawling, and I knew she’d totally lost it. Somehow I hadn’t—yet. I slapped her hard across the cheek and grabbed her and went running for the stairs. “We have to leave—now!” I commanded, and she obeyed, obviously in total shock.

  Somehow we made it back to our car, only to see the parking lot transformed into a fun-house version of an amusement-park bumper-car ride. Cars were plowing into each other right and left as panicked parents tried desperately to distance themselves from the horror hospital. Smashed cars already blocked in my Toyota Camry. It was obviously going to be impossible to get out of there by car. I took my wife’s hand, and we made our way out of the parking lot as cop cars, sirens shrieking, zoomed past us toward the scene of carnage. I watched cops with riot gear jump out of vans and head toward the hospital’s main entrance, their rifles raised.

  We weren’t more than a mile from home, but even that mile added to the nightmare as we saw dozens of accidents. I heard snippets of newscasts on car radios telling of similar scenes playing out through LA, and the entire country. Something had gone wrong, horribly so, and now everyone was in a panic. The cops were totally incapable of stopping the wholesale lawbreaking as people ran red lights, went down one-way streets in the wrong direction, drove down sidewalks, did anything to get away from the city or to get home.

  But why assume our homes were safe? If it was something in the water ... None of this made any sense, of course. But why should it? Who said that the world had to go from day to day the way it had the days before? Who said that nature, or terrorists, or Lord knows what, might not change life forever in an instant, the way those meteors had killed the dinosaurs virtually overnight millions of years ago? Who said life was always going to be fair or just? Who knew what justice really was anymore?

  But in the end there was nowhere else to go, so we went home. Our street was almost deserted, as we’d seen most of our neighbors at the hospital. Walking turned out to be the fastest way home that day, some three months ago, when everything changed.

  Our son died, of course. Or so we were told by the medical authorities, who would not let us see him, or even pick up his body, once he had succumbed to the effects of the horrible mystery disease. In fact, about a third of the population of the entire world had died over the next ninety days or so, and the staggering numbers were showing no signs of slowing down. The scientific community was at a loss as to whether it was an airborne virus or a water-bred one. Nor did anyone seem to know whether it was a terrorist plot gone awry—or perhaps a highly successful one. Despite claims of credit from dozens of terrorist cells, there was no proof that anyone human had engineered this ultimate nightmare. There seemed to be no cure for the horrible disease that had spread globally in a matter of days. All we knew for sure was that the world had been decimated in the most horrible way imaginable; billions had already died.

  And then come back to life.

  Usually they returned to some semblance of life within hours of dying. But not as flesh-eating ghouls, not as somnambulant walkers, but just as apparently braindead vegetables whose hearts somehow still pumped poisoned blood even while their bodies continued to rot. Limbs literally decayed and fell off as the zombies watched in numb fascination. It was not uncommon to see errant flaps of skin floating in the summer breeze.

  The zombies all had to be incarcerated, of course. Their rotting bodies were full of diseases that even the still-healthy could die from. So at first the various worldwide governments had filled up prisons, then schools, then army barracks and airport hangars, until it became obvious that the legions of the living dead would have to be destroyed. They simply could not be cared for without fatal risk to the caretakers, and besides, we were running out of room and food (not that they ate much). So ultimately the United Nations, or what was left of it, had voted to kill them all. They were first shot with narcotics that numbed them to the pain to come, or so we hoped, anyway. Then they were herded to open fields where they were burned alive, in huge pyres whose pillars of smoke could be seen from anywhere you looked, and whose ashes turned the skies permanently gray.

  We’d never seen our son again, and that had driven poor Alissa around the bend. She was living in the guest bedroom at our home, and I was taking care of her. I used my engineering skills to rig up an air-filtration system in our house that was second to none, so that no air from outside could reach her room. I modified our water-filtration system in many subtle ways to do everything possible to keep any waterborne spores from affecting us.

  But it was all a giant crapshoot. No one knew what had turned the planet Earth into a giant bonfire of human souls virtually overnight. We were forced to confront our mortality and our faith in the worst ways imaginable. Many of faith felt that the Lord was finally repaying us for screwing up His greatest gift—life itself—for so long. Others used their faith to somehow maintain a semblance of sanity in the midst of the carnage. Still others, like Alissa, simply went mercifully crazy. I guess the only thing that kept me sane was my desperate search for a chemical or biological solution, something that would keep the crisis from killing off every living human on the planet. It was suddenly the only goal worth living for.

  Plants and animals had not seemingly been affected, for some unknown reason, so we could all still eat, at least. But the worldwide economy had ground to a halt, as the only viable remaining task was a search for answers and solutions. I was part of a Los Angeles task force assigned to experiment on tissue of living-dead subjects who had been donated to our facility by surviving family members. We were never in the same room as the zombies, of course, but we pumped altered air into their rooms and altered
water and chemicals into their bodies and then watched how they responded, hoping against hope for some sign that they might stop dying on us.

  But nothing worked. The world was dying, the numbers beyond staggering as city after city fell to the bonfires of humanity.

  I awoke to my wife’s screams. I jumped out of bed and ran to her room and unlocked the door. Weeks back, I’d decided I would have to lock her in the guest bedroom to keep her from going into the kitchen, grabbing a steak knife, and killing herself, which she had tried on more than one occasion.

  The darkened room stank of sweat and shit. She’d probably lost control of her bodily functions sometime that night, and it wasn’t the first time.

  I ran to her side and reached for her. Her body was drenched in sweat, her eyes wild, breath rank, panting like a woman about to give birth.

  “He was here—right next to the bed! I saw him! I touched his face!”

  It was a familiar monologue. In fact, it was the only time she ever spoke anymore—when she would tell me about her recurring nightmare.

  I brushed sopping strands of hair off her forehead. “Who, Alissa?”

  She looked at me like I was the one who was crazy. “You know who—Derek! He came again. He comes every night. He’s looking for us. Crying. Asking why we didn’t rescue him. Why we let him die in the fires ... .” She broke down completely in my arms, and now I did too. My emotional resolve had long-since crumbled, and I spent what seemed like hours every day crying into my beakers and microscope.

  She cried. “His face ... Oh Lord, his face. Derek’s face was burned to a crisp. I could barely recognize him. He only had one eye ... .”

  The dream was getting worse by the night. “Don’t, honey. Don’t torture yourself. It was just a dream ... .”

  “Then kill me,” she shrieked. “Kill me so I never have to have that dream again!” Her cries were screams of soul-pain, and I pondered her request for a more than a moment. Perhaps the only humane thing to do would be to give her a lethal injection. And then turn the needle on myself.