The Virus

by Steven Spellman

  Members of the feminists federation would’ve had a field day—after all, weren’t filthy minded, degrading, overreaching men, with their overinflated egos and underinflated penises, the very source of pregnancy? They would, were in not for the fact that it was women and their children who were suffering the brunt of The Virus’s destructive prowess. In fact, many more women did, in the wake of all that was taking place, join the ranks of the man-hating feminists who desperately wanted to wear the proverbial pants of the world. To the suddenly swelled ranks of this consortium, the male population was demonized outright. Sperm banks were vandalized, burned, and destroyed, and the filthy males who contributed to them (as well as any other non-blood related male in sight) were all but assaulted, though many were indeed assaulted, and some even killed. The logic of these modestly-numbered but ardently-voiced women, was that if they drove away or at least stayed as far away as possible from men and their semen spewing genitalia they could distance themselves from the horrifying effects of The Virus. These women willingly and, in fact, eagerly turned a blind eye to the fact that they, like every other member of their sex, were already infected by The Virus, as could be clearly deduced by their unnaturally flaking skin and yellowed eyes.

  Perhaps, if they didn’t get pregnant, they wouldn’t suffer gruesome deaths like many of their peers, but they, thanks to The Virus, still bore the potential for their demise irrevocably in their body, and would do so for the remainder of their days on the planet. To help them continue to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to this unsettling fact, many of them tried not only to avoid men, but to also avoid themselves as well. Not unlike their feminist counterparts, they were adamantly discontent with the lot that life (or, in this case, an alien consciousness) had chosen for them without their permission, and took every pain to avoid being reminded of it. Many of them buried themselves in bulky pants, long sleeves, and thick scarves to hide their shedding skin, if from no one else, then from themselves, and often wouldn’t go near anything capable of casting a reflection that would give them full view of their discolored eyes. From many of the males they harassed as if they were the reason for all this carnage, their group earned the name the ‘No More Mirror Movement’ for their reluctance to acknowledge what could not be denied—that they, too, were infected. Whether they blamed men for it or not, they would’ve been laughed at for their childish behavior, except that what was happening to the human race, whether male or female, was no laughing matter.

  How news of The Virus had leaked to the public in the first place was anybody’s guess, but truthfully, not many people were surprised; with the instantaneousness of 21st century’s global communication, there were no true secrets anymore, or if there were, they certainly didn’t stay that way indefinitely. Also somehow leaked, was the rumor that the government had known of the alien life form from which The Virus came, for years. They had known and had done absolutely nothing to stop an impending attack. This added fury to the public’s already bleak and maddening sadness, so much so that after the towns had been completely destroyed by constituents of all kinds, every government building and agency, no matter the purpose, was set upon next and destroyed. As Geoffrey and Delilah looked on now, wide eyed and mouthed, at what had become of the world they had both once known, they saw the destruction of despondent and confused souls but not the carnage-seeking masses themselves. Not a single person was to be seen anywhere as the mirror truck and its accompanying armed patrol vehicles cut their wide swath through the wreckage-cluttered streets and thoroughfares. They were all, nearly every single man, woman, and child not already claimed by The Virus, either in or headed to, the hearts of towns, setting ablaze police stations, armories, social security buildings, and courthouses, anything that reminded them of the government that failed to protect them.

  The savagery was so bad that hostages were taken from some government buildings and tortured mercilessly for a perceived crime with which they had nothing to do. Police, responsible for maintaining safety and peace, were themselves deprived of those very luxuries, as they were pulled from squad cars and beaten to a gory pulp by the insane crowds. Of course, many officers gathered together to wage an offensive, but the public they were facing were not the rational thinking men and women of a former time. These were zombies that only closely resembled living, breathing human beings. In reality, the losses they suffered at the hands of The Virus had rendered them hollow shells, people as bloodthirsty as the undead. When officers were finally forced to open fire with live ammunition, they found that even real bullets were not a deterrent. What was it to a husband of many years to be shot down by an officer’s gun when his wife and twins had just died slow, painful deaths, and right in front of his eyes? The firing barrels of shot guns held no discernible meaning for the son who knew that his pregnant sister, the only family he ever had, would soon face the same fate, also in front of his eyes, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  No, firearms and the injuries they promised meant nothing now. In fact, most people welcomed death these days, and to those who didn’t welcome death, it didn’t matter, it was coming anyway. It was the same everywhere across the country and around the world. Luckily, Delilah and Geoffrey didn’t see the roving crowd wreaking havoc at the heart of it, but they did see the bedlam left behind by that crowd, and it was nearly as ugly. The mirror truck continued on to its eventual destination, passing through the fringes of this town, as well as a nearby one, but everywhere, the scene was virtually the same. The specially-adapted cargo truck could’ve just as well driven around in endless circles and the views of yawning devastation would be no different. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, buildings were destroyed. The larger ones that were yet standing bore an eerie resemblance to decayed human corpses, the structures eaten away at the fringes and every window completely obliterated, giving full views to interiors blackened beyond repair by the once insatiable flames that had consumed them. Only the largest buildings even survived. The smaller ones were mostly leveled to their very foundations. Stop signs, phone booths, traffic lights, everything that once represented order and civilization, now lay helplessly gnarled in the already-destroyed streets and yards. Some of the lights still flickered weakly as if they were crying out the remainder of their electrical energies; the only tears they could produce for what had happened to mankind.

  Cars were everywhere in the wreckage. A rare few were unharmed and left unattended in streets and on sidewalks, doors ajar. It was obvious that the occupants had left in a hurry, but most were destroyed, or crumbled together in what had obviously been heinous and epic car wrecks. As Delilah looked on, aghast, at the sights around her, she was startled nearly to the point of wetting her pants, by a harsh thud and subsequent roar coming from the other side of the mirror truck. She turned instinctively, not knowing what to expect, but what she saw was a strange distortion of what looked like thick heat waves fighting to enter the glass. After a few seconds, her initial panic at the abrupt sound receded enough for her to recognize that what she was seeing was not a mirage, but rather torrents of water bathing the outside of the mirror truck. The torrent passed along the side of the cargo area of the truck as it continued to move on and then was gone. The back doors of the truck were of the same heavy glass as the sides, so Delilah saw clearly as the truck moved along, that a fire hydrant had been broken open and its powerfully dense spray was what assaulted the truck and caused her start.

  As if I weren’t scared enough, already! she thought to herself.

  “I know, right. Sure scared the hell out of me too,” answered Geoffrey.

  Delilah turned to him, her face contorted in confusion. “What?” she asked.

  Geoffrey answered quickly—too quickly, “Oh nothing, I was just thinking out loud.” He looked like a young boy who got caught doing something he definitely shouldn’t have been before he could catch it. He turned his face away, hopefully in time, and scanned the horizon. “It’s gotten pretty bad out here, huh?” he aske
d, hoping to change the subject.

  “Yeah…I guess it has.” The brokenness in Delilah’s wavering voice at all the atrocity she saw, was so profound, that, even though Geoffrey was relieved that his little slip up hadn’t caused more damage, the gravity of the surrounding scene seemed to grow in his eyes as well. In the relatively short time that he had known Delilah, he had never seen her take what was happening to the rest of the world so seriously. Dr. Crangler would’ve borne out that conclusion as well. There was that fleeting moment of true realization much earlier, when Delilah heard from Doctor Crangler the awesome death that The Virus was inflicting on pregnant women, but other than that, Delilah had been shielded from the full reality at hand, and that, more than by the thick, steel barriers of the underground facility. Her life, her entire life, had been one of ease. Most people would have no way to properly assess such a world altering event as that which was currently happening, but Delilah even less so. As Geoffrey had already seen, the pathways of her brain had been conditioned to luxury and privilege, and there was no way for it to fully sink in that the entire planet, including the portions of it that she had seen in her reign of opulence, was suffering a blow from which it may well never recover. There was no way for that reality to sink in…not until now.

  A person can imagine a thing, or read a book, or even see a graphic movie about it, but there was simply no rival to experience, cold, hard, one-on-one, physical experience, on which the mind could feed and the consciousness could absorb. For Delilah, this was that experience. Perhaps, this was the culmination of things destined from the beginning to usher her into a reality other than her own, or maybe her brain had finally had enough of mind-numbing excess. Maybe it was neither of those things, and no more than a coincidental fluke. Whatever it was, a change was being effected in her as she continued to look on at what had become of the world she once knew, a world she would never know again. Suddenly, escape didn’t matter, seeing her father again didn’t matter; pedicures, manicures, facials, none of it mattered. In fact, nothing mattered. Everything as far as her eyes could see, her mind could think, and her heart could feel, was only wasting destruction and debris. The world had spun off its axis and was careening wildly into the open recesses of space. Unhampered chaos had taken over.

  She turned to Geoffrey, who had been looking at her with his head slightly cocked as if he was listening to something. His eye brows furrowed as if he was startled by whatever he was listening to. She buried her face in his shoulder, and did something she hadn’t done since she was a very little girl. She cried. Delilah had never been the crying type. Her father would never find her bawling on the floor after a nasty spill, as was the case with most children. Instead, she would look at whatever she had fallen over or into for a while, as if to assess its formidability, then she would likely hit it or throw her hands up as if to ignore it. The sight of her as a toddler striking the floor she had fallen on rather than rolling on it, crying, was something Lenard soon became used to. It was a resilience she had inherited from her mother, and something that, also like her mother, would remain in her very makeup as long as there was warm blood in her veins. At least, that’s what Lenard had thought, but if he could see his little girl now, assuming he was even still alive, he likely wouldn’t have recognized her, sobbing violently and helplessly in the embraces of a relative stranger. However, this was not the same Delilah. Call it maturity, call it shock, but both the world and Delilah had undergone an irrevocable change. As is always the case with any truly irrevocable change, neither would ever be the same again.

  Chapter 26

  Delilah had been crying into the Geoffrey’s chest so long that a well-defined portion of his shirt from shoulder to pants was now clinging to him, saturated. It didn’t appear as if she was ready to finish any time soon. It was as if all the tears her inherited hardiness had not allowed her to shed over the years were finally being released in one long gush. Even though he was being all but drowned in that warm, torrential gush, Geoffrey made no effort to push Delilah away. In fact, he held her tighter as her body shook from uncontrollable sobs. He knew that this was a first for her, and with it, there came a first for him. For the first time since he had managed to scale the initial shock of his telepathic abilities, he tried not to hear the secret thoughts of others. In this case, ‘others’ meant Delilah. Listening to her thoughts while she was enduring such a genuine and profound upheaval just felt wrong to Geoffrey in a way that had never struck him before. He didn’t need to listen in on her private thoughts to know that a once in a lifetime paradigm shift was taking place inside her, turning her and everything she held as truth, inside out, upside down, and every other contrary way possible. He felt that to be in her head now without her knowledge, was a violation, and especially at this very complicated and difficult junction in both of their lives, he wanted to leave her private thoughts her own.

  As he held her torso against his own, her full breasts pressing against his chest, and being likewise soaked in a flood of tears, an erotic warmth pervaded his body. As he had already stipulated to Dr. Crangler, it had been an incredibly long time since he had seen, not to mention, held, a woman. All that time without interaction with the opposite sex made this experience now all the more potent. Strangely enough, though, another sense accompanied the natural arousal that Geoffrey was feeling, a purer, less sexually oriented sense that lay just beneath the surface. He had been rubbing Delilah’s neck and upper back, but now, he took to stroking her thick, shimmering black curls with a gentle caress that was beyond that of simple eroticism. If he was indeed giving vent to something more than merely a year’s worth of pent up sexual frustration, then Delilah certainly had more base things in mind, as was apparent when she finally stopped crying and, hesitantly, but nevertheless, resolutely, turned her tear-streaked face up to his. She had a sultry look in her eyes, and an inviting—no, demanding—pursing, was on her lips. With Delilah’s makeup streaking dull colors beneath her reddened eyes, over her slightly swollen cheeks, and across her upturned chin, she may’ve not been completely fit to have a picture taken for one of the many fashion magazines that she had often sought for her daily dose of celebrity gossip, but as far as Geoffrey was concerned, she was as irresistible as he had ever seen her.

  Prolonged confinement, especially in a place as devoid of excitement as the secret facility was, can have a profound effect on a person. Just as the cold, steel bars and concrete barriers of a prison facility can change a person in a way that nothing else can, so Delilah’s imprisonment had changed her. She was much more receptive to Geoffrey than she had ever been with anyone else in her entire adult life, and though a large part of that cooperation had been inspired by his special abilities, much of it was from just a good old fashioned need for affection and friendship. Like Geoffrey, Delilah craved interaction with someone other than one of her captors, so when this young fellow captive showed up and was more than willing to supply her with all the attention and care she had so desperately missed, it was only natural for her to lower her guard. Still, it wasn’t hard for Geoffrey to see the truth in Dr. Crangler’s assertion that this young woman was the most difficult patient he had ever dealt with, by a large margin. In fact, just from her secret thoughts and open conversations, Geoffrey could tell that, as far as spoiled went, Delilah was the real thing. A luminary in her own right, and with an insanely wealthy father, Geoffrey could tell that this girl was not the type to take any shit from anyone, and had enough money that she didn’t have to offer anything else to get whatever she wanted.

  Now, she was offering her most important commodity—herself—and all of herself at that. She was like unspoiled waters to a man who had been roaming the deserts for days, ready at any moment to collapse from exhaustion and thirst. Geoffrey was that roamer, but now that he had found those crystal clear waters, it would seem that they were so awe inspiring that it was improper to just throw his entire head into the stream and dirty it with his lustful lapping as he had planned to do. Inste
ad, and quite to his confusion, he wanted to cradle those waters securely in his outstretched hands and imbibe himself with the relief they promised in something closer to love and further from lust. These were the thoughts that unexpectedly flooded and filled Geoffrey’s mind as he gazed down at Delilah’s sumptuous lips. They were soft, longing lips, that promised great pleasures to the one granted the opportunity to handle them properly. It was as if her lips were the first pair Geoffrey had ever set eyes on, but for the life of him, Geoffrey could not ravish those lips with his own, as he would’ve done without a moment’s hesitation an hour ago.

  Instead, he stared into Delilah’s gorgeous face, completely oblivious to the time and space around him, until she finally opened her eyes, wondering why in the world she hadn’t been kissed passionately by now. The look on her face as she righted herself in her seat, was what ushered him back into reality. Her brow was knitted, not so much in discontent, as much as in confusion. She knew that, even without the aid of her normally routine beauty treatments, she was still a very attractive women, and she also knew (women just seemed to have an intuition about these things. Perhaps telepathy wasn’t so new to the globe after all) that Geoffrey wanted her. Since their very first introduction, she knew that he wanted her, and that to have her was his primary motivation for all he did for her afterward. Not that she was complaining. As with many attractive women, she was used to the dirty desires of men and the benefits that flooded in with just the coy batting of an eyelash or the seductive flourishing of a hip, as a result of those desires.