by J. D. Bishop
Patricia opened her mouth, shocked that such a thing could come out of April's mouth.
April giggled. “I'm about to die, so I don't have to be polite anymore. Like I said, he groped me and he made me grab his meat that one time, then he played it off because we were both half-drunk. I was polite for years. I’ll save the kind words for you. If I could have been anyone . . . I wanted to be you. I wanted to be like you.”
A gunshot went off, causing them both to jump, startled.
Her face slowly filled with fear, and April said, “I hope I don't feel any pain when it's my turn.”
Smiling through her tears, Pat assured the makeup artist, "You won't feel a thing.”
Pop. Another infected was dead.
April stared off into the distance. “You know, there's so much I wanted to do. Find a husband. Have children. Maybe be in your seat one day. Now, that will never happen.”
Pop.
Patricia didn't know what to say. Everything April said was true. Pat wouldn't demean her life by telling her some empty-headed platitude. Life had always been like this—a bitch, and then you die. Except this time, when you died, you came back.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Silence settled over the area as the last infected walked into the room with Elijah. Patricia froze as an unnatural chill entered her bones. April had gone totally still—frozen.
Staring into the woman's face, Patricia's heart began hammering in her chest. Something wasn’t right. She reached out and felt April's flesh. It was icy to the touch.
Pop.
Elijah came out of the room with a haunted look in his eyes, dropping down against the wall and holding his head in abject misery. He might have found steel, but even steel can get worn down, and he was trembling on the edge himself. The young journalist seemed so traumatized by what he’d had to do to the infected that he forgot all about April.
April's eyes were turning completely white. Slowly, Patricia began backing away, her heart pounding like mad in her chest. She wanted desperately to call for Elijah, but her mouth felt like it was weighed down with iron. Then, her heart filled with horror, and she watched as April blinked once and a slow, terrible moan escaped her lips. That's when April's eyes focused on Pat, sending a terrible chill up her spine, and without warning, she lunged at the newswoman, clawing and biting the air like a crazed animal.
Pat turned, tripped, and fell, her high heels becoming dislodged from her feet in her haste to get away. Frantically, she began kicking her feet while she tried to crawl away, feeling April's hands grasping for her flesh.
“Patricia,” Elijah yelled as he came rushing toward them, gun drawn. He let out a vile curse after he assessed the struggling forms. He couldn't get a clear shot.
It was the end then. Pat's life flashed before her eyes. She was going to get bitten, and she would turn into one of those things. She wondered if Elijah would have it in him to kill her when it happened.
The sound of gunfire tore through the room.
April jerked back once before she would have gotten to bite Pat. Elijah's shot had just missed her head, but it bought Pat a moment of respite. A moment she desperately needed.
Pat was surprised at her window of opportunity, thinking she had been doomed moments before. In desperation, she grabbed one of her high heels just as April fell on top of her, snarling and biting at her face. Then with a cry of desperate rage, she jammed the heel through April's eye. April immediately went still, her snarling and thrashing silenced for once and for all, and she fell onto Patricia.
Pat knew she should have worn those heels today.
Too weak and too glad she had survived to care about the body on top of her, Patricia began sobbing uncontrollably at how close she had come to being infected for the second time that day. Elijah was there a moment later, pulling April's weight from her body and tossing her into the middle of the aisle. Then he pulled Pat lovingly into his arms and soothed and rocked her back and forth, gently stroking her hair.
“I've wanted to tell you something for a while now,” Elijah gently whispered in her ear. “I've never really gotten the opportunity, and I guess now is as good a time as ever.”
Through her sobs and tears, Patricia asked, “What?”
Elijah brought her face close to his and kissed her deeply. “I love you.”
CHAPTER 17
“Damn, I feel so good. It’s just floaty, you know?”
Wes and Christy lay in the hospital bed together, watching the smoke go across the sky. They had turned the hospital bed the long way, facing the window, so they could look out at the burning city. They had given up on being rescued.
The morphine coursing through their bodies relaxed them enough to where they had forgotten about most of the horrors they witnessed. The rest of the pain was gone, and there was just a feeling of calm that they didn’t want to go away, ever. They had decided that when nightfall came, they were going to take an overdose of morphine. Looking at the madness below had convinced them there was no hope. Wes still refused to believe the people who were eating other people were zombies though.
“You know, being close to death makes one braver,” Wesley said. He chuckled. “I guess I’m feeling pretty brave right now.”
Christy was tucked in the nook of his arm. She had to admit to herself that it was a nice feeling. Most boys clung to her, or they were giants who tried to macho themselves around on her. Wes just held her and made her feel feminine without being forced into a tiny role. It was a good way to die, but his words piqued her curiosity. “How so?”
“You know, like, admitting stuff you would never have admitted if you knew you were going to live.”
Christy giggled, raising her head from Wes’s chest to look into his face. “Am I sensing some sort of confession here?”
Wes gently played with Christy's hair. “You know, I always thought you were the hottest thing since sliced bread, tall and voluptuous.” Wes made delicious smacking noises as if he was eating something tasty. “Yummiest thing in all of school.”
Christy burst out laughing, slapping him on the arm. “Stop it!” Then after a moment, she looked up at him slyly and said, “Continue.”
“I often jacked off thinking about you—the way you looked playing sports in your shorts—instead of watching porn!” Wes said it quickly like if he hadn't done so, he wouldn't have been able to.
Christy's face turned red. “Really?”
“Totally.” Wes couldn’t believe he was saying it this way. He’d had a thousand ways in his head that he’d thought of telling Christy that he wanted her, and none of them included saying he’d jacked off to thinking about her in her school uniform.
Christy sat thinking for many moments before saying shyly, softly, "And when you jacked off thinking about me, how much did you come?"
“Buckets.”
Christy could see Wes's erection rising through his hospital gown. It was quite large at full mast. Christy was impressed. She brushed a hand gently across the tip, the flimsy hospital gown doing little to hide the firmness beneath. Wes shivered.
“We'll just have to test how much you could do in person.” Christy walked her hand down the chest of his gown like a spider until it came upon the impressive tent Wes had made. She grabbed it firmly, squeezing it. Wes's whole body was shaking now.
Flipping his gown up and exposing his thin body, Christy had to suppress a giggle. Wes looked like a skinny stick figure with a thick pole attached to its body. Christy sank down into the bed between Wes's thighs, kissing up his hairless, skinny legs as he shivered with excitement.
As Christy took Wes into her mouth, Wes was thinking that even close to death, one could find heaven.
CHAPTER 18
“A re you ready?” Elijah asked Patricia from behind the camera. He’d messed around with it at first, but it wasn’t hard. They only had two shots to do, and the camera was already preset with the focus for the news desk.
Patricia sat behind the desk in her traditional chair, exhausted by the day's events. She had prepared a speech in her mind as to what she was going to say to the public. The public that was still alive, that was. She was hoping that the broadcast got out beyond Louisiana, but she honestly didn’t know. Her mind was exhausted, and she just hung on by her fingernails to the idea that maybe she could do this one last thing, and that maybe a miracle would bring her back to Natalie. Unfortunately, with hell on earth happening right outside the doors of the station, Patricia wasn’t sure how many miracles were left.
Pat and Elijah had decided this whole ordeal was somehow a planned attack against American citizens by its own government. It was the only thing that made sense. There was no way that no one else in the world had heard what was going on down here, what with the internet, social media, satellites, cellphones, and the various other means of communication modern technology had brought with it.
Elijah had discovered that all cellphone and internet communication in the entire city had been cut. There was no way to know if it extended beyond the state, but Patricia was sure people had gotten messages out to other people across the U.S. before the cell towers had been decommissioned. Maybe just rumors, maybe incomplete reports, but something had to have gotten out.
No radio station broadcasts were functioning . . . even their ability to broadcast their news channel was not working. Elijah, after doing much digging, found that they could still broadcast via satellite on one of the older hookups. Someone had forgotten to do their job on that one. With satellite broadcasting, Patricia could reach a broader audience and send out a damning message about the American government in doing so.
Patricia looked in the handheld mirror. She looked a hot mess. She had done the best job she could with her hair and makeup, but she certainly wasn't an April when it came to applying color. Combine that with too many hours of terror and exhaustion, and she doubted she’d be winning any beauty contests with this one.
She tried to avoid looking at April's corpse that lay sprawled out in the middle of the floor between the aisles. It was the thing that hurt the most, the way the sweet girl had turned into the savage monster. Once she’d recovered, Patricia had knelt next to the body and had prayed for her. She didn’t know if anyone was listening, and she wasn’t the best church-goer, but April was a soul that deserved every chance of heaven.
“I sure wish Archie were here,” Pat said, watching Elijah handle the camera. Thankfully, Archie was one of those who’d left uninfected. Maybe the wiseass was still alive somewhere.
A wounded expression came over Elijah's face. “Hey! What's that supposed to mean?”
Pat smirked and shook her head. “No offense ‘Lijah, but he knew how to shoot to make me look good even when I looked bad. He could make me look less fat.”
Elijah, whose kiss still burned on her lips, rolled his eyes. “You're not fat at all. You're quite sexy.”
“Tell that to Matt.”
Patricia felt quite sick at mentioning Matt. It was hard to think that just hours earlier, she had been sitting next to him and putting up with his nasty insults, and now he was gone, nothing left of him but a few slabs of flesh. Her boss had been very hungry and had eaten so much that nothing else had gotten up.
“Well, look where insulting you got Matt.” Elijah cocked his head over to where Tim still raged against the heavy glass of his office. “TV News, a dog eat dog world.”
Pat let out a giggle that she immediately felt guilty about. There was too much ugliness and too much of a thread of insanity in the sound. “Okay,” she said, sobering quickly and looking directly into the camera. “Let's do this.”
Elijah nodded, getting behind the camera. “On the count of three . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .1 . . . and go!”
“Good evening. I'm Patricia Oakley from Channel 9 news, New Orleans, Louisiana. I come to you with the most disturbing news that most of you will find difficult, if not impossible, to believe. However, I will show you proof of my claims after I tell you what is going on in our state.
“Less than twenty-four hours ago, my brother, Gregory Oakley, his girlfriend, and two other friends found themselves in a terrible situation. They were attacked by a crazed man who clung to their hood for no apparent reason at the time, and as a result, suffered a horrible car accident in which another man was killed.
“There was something strange about this man. You see, it took many rounds by the U.S. military to put this man down. It was only after he was shot in the head that this man died.
“The report raises several questions. First, why was the military involved in shooting the man? Why did it take so much firepower to kill a man, you ask? Because this man was far, far from ordinary.
“Minutes before this very incident, the man was reported to be very ill with sickness. He had some sort of virus. My brother's friend, Jeffrey Walker, watched this very man succumb to this illness, only to witness the same man attacking them on the hood of my car. How is that possible?
“The very next day, half the city seemed to be coming down with this same illness. Symptoms were coughing, sneezing, fevers, chills, and vomiting blood. As the sickness progresses, the people start looking like they are deathly ill—white skin, blue lips, and deathly cold to the touch. Shortly after that, they die. Sound like some sort of plague? Think again. Shortly after they die, they turn into this.”
Patricia nodded at Elijah, who turned the camera on Tim, who was raging inside the glass office. He made sure to zoom in and out so people could see the death and decay on Tim's face.
“Whatever you may be feeling right now, I'd like to assure you all that this is not a joke, despite whatever you may hear after this to the contrary. This is not special effects or makeup or anything like that. This man, my former boss, was alive several hours ago and is now a walking corpse who just ate a co-worker of mine not too long ago. Sound incredibly gruesome? It is. These things eat people. If you encounter one, run for your life, or if you are the brave type, destroy its brain. It is the only known way to kill these abominations.”
Elijah turned the camera back on Patricia, who took on an impassioned look.
“The virus is not airborne, so you can only get infected if blood from an infected gets in your system, you get bitten, or if you drink water. Whatever you do, do not drink the water. Water is the source of the virus that is being transmitted. This brings me to the last thing I will say.
“This virus was no accident. It is my belief that the United States Military or Government is behind this outbreak for reasons unknown to the common man. Do not trust whatever news you may hear if you are in a place not affected by the events taking place here, as it will most likely be a lie. Abraham Lincoln concluded his Gettysburg Address by saying that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people should not perish from this Earth. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln is right. But a government who can do this to their own people is no government at all.
“Martial Law is currently taking place in New Orleans, and it could happen to you next, so grab your guns and your food, and protect your children and your own. This is a fight for survival, and only the strong will survive in this time of trial and tribulation. God bless you, and may God damn the Government of the United States!”
CHAPTER 19
“T hat was so good.” Wesley moaned, shivering. He’d heard about blowjobs that were so good that they shook you until your toes curled, but he’d never heard of one that left you feeling spasms afterward. And that’s what he was feeling, spasms.
She’d been devilish and playful, the perfect blend of slut and innocent. She teased him to the point of coming three times before he was left moaning, begging her to let him release before she had, and Wes came so hard that he swore his balls were going to shoot out of his cock. “That was the best.”
“No shit.” Christy had to grab a towel to wipe her face, which had been covered from hairline to chin. Wesley had made a mess everywhere. The boy wasn’t lying.
He really could fill a bucket, or at least a coffee cup. Christy had always taken pride in her blowjobs, but she thought that she’d given Wes the best she’d ever done.
"I can only imagine how the rest will be," Wes said, a dreamy smile on his face.
Christy wanted to soap up a towel to wipe her face. It smelled awful. Wes might come buckets, but his wasn’t the cleanest smelling she’d ever had. In fact, she was glad that she hadn’t tried to swallow him. He’d have either drowned her or grossed her out. Her mouth was dry too, especially after working it on Wesley's long one like that.
She looked around the room again, thinking that maybe something in the cabinet could help her clean up, but the bags of IV fluid had been drunk an hour or more ago. She could feel his come starting to gum up her eyebrows, and she knew she had to hurry or else she’d be feeling sick. Looking around again, she didn’t see any sort of normal sink, but over in the corner was one of those eyewash stations that public pools had. Well, it was weird, but it looked enough like a water fountain, and she could rinse her eyes out at the same time.
Going over, Christy stepped on the foot pedal. The twin arcs of water hit each other and splashed, and she decided to rise her mouth out afterward. She had gotten at least a spurt of Wes in her mouth, and it was yucky. Weed did not make good come.
She bent over, the silvery clear arcs nearing closer and closer. Two inches, an inch . . .
“Hey, it's time.”
She paused, her eyes an unknowing half-inch from a horrible undeath, and let go of the foot pedal, turning around.
“What?”
Wes was up at the cabinet, filling the syringes. “You know. What we said we would do when it got dark?”
