by Noel Merczel
She popped her gum and wrinkled her nose at Daniella shuffling along by the side of the road. To this tween girl, looks were everything. What else was there?
The girl's mom, who was preoccupied with current financial issues, just shrugged and scratched an incredibly large mosquito bite on her forehead.
"Don't be so quick to judge!" she admonished, squinting against the bright sunshine that was pouring through the windshield of their green Ford Freestar minivan.
The woman closed her eyes for one brief moment. When she opened them, she could swear she glimpsed a giant see-through ballerina in the middle of the road doing a plié.
The woman screamed, which made her daughter scream, and then the two of them drove off the highway into a soybean field.
When Daniella reached the strip mall with the Maybelline’s, she shuffled around the back of the buildings; straight into a heavily wooded area. The customers, only into themselves and their purchases, did not seem to notice her.
As soon as she was cloaked in trees and no longer visible to anyone in the parking lot, Daniella collapsed onto the hard ground and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
She slept for hours and hours. When she awoke, it was dark out and she no longer knew who she was. She no longer remembered that she had a daughter and a husband and a cat, and that she was writing a children's book and that she was from New Jersey and she watched The Bachelor and her favorite place in the world was Key West, Florida.
All she knew was that she was hungry.
Ravenous.
She shuffled out to the parking lot... not that she knew the words "parking" or "lot" any more.
There in the parking lot, she saw a young woman who looked so incredibly delicious... not that she knew the words "young," "woman," or "delicious," either.
She just knew that she was hungry.
Hungry for flesh.
Sweet succulent flesh...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nick Carter was horny. But then again, Nick Carter was always horny. He was short, bald (bald on purpose, since he was convinced that made him look "bad ass") and without a girlfriend.
Being without a girlfriend was nothing new to Nick. He had a few girls who were friends, but friends only, and they made that very clear. He would have laid any one of them, truth be known. He wasn't picky.
Just horny.
And when he was horny (which was all the time) it didn't matter if the woman was fat or old or ugly or flat chested. Nick would do her. He'd do her in an instant!
All he had to do was focus on the good things about the woman....and he, Nick Carter, could always find something good about any woman, whether it was her eyes or her hands or her laugh... anything would do.
Take Dominique, for instance. Dominique was Nick's old coworker in the warehouse where he used to work, before he was fired because some asshole jerk ratted on him for taking two fucking boxes of nails.
Dominique was forty eight years old. She weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds and sported three or four chins, depending the position of her head. But when Nick thought about Dominique, he didn’t dwell on her age or her double chins. He thought instead of her dancing brown eyes, her flirty smile, her sashaying walk, her big fat ass bursting out of her tight black polyester pants, and the way those pants cut into her in front, delineating her overly puffy V area.
Nick could fantasize about fucking Dominique in the warehouse, her fat white milky white thighs spread, her vagina so plump he couldn't even see the inner lips... her big breasts flopping around, her twinkling eyes saying, "Fuck me Nick! Fuck me, you hot young stud!"
Of course that never really happened. Nick had a strict "friends only" relationship with the older woman which sometimes included light-hearted sexual teasing, but that was as far as their relationship went.
So yea...Nick could fantasize about any woman he was in contact with...from the six foot tall geeky girl at the UPS store to the pimply faced goth chick with the purple hair behind the Starbucks counter... no matter how skanky and gross and "unfuckable" his male buddies might consider her to be.
Nick even had a thing for his mom's friend Bobby; a fifty-something flirt who wore mile long fake eyelashes and brightly colored capris pants. She had a pretty good ass for a woman her age, Nick always thought.
Oh shit! Nick just sprouted a semi thinking about his mom's friend's ass!
But Nick could just as easily fantasize about the good stuff - like that bitch, Lisa, who lived across the street and modeled for him.
Now Lisa was no skank. That girl was hot!
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. The bitch looked down her nose at him, Nick could tell. She only pretended to be a friend. Unlike Dominique, Lisa wasn't even a real friend. She was just using him for his expensive camera equipment.
These young girls are so deluded, Nick thought. Yea, maybe they are pretty. But pretty young girls are a dime a dozen, and the pretty part doesn't even last. That Lisa, though... WHOOO-EEE. What an ego trip. That girl has convinced herself she’s something special. She truly believes that a pile of photos labeled “modeling portfolio” is her ticket to fame and fortune.
Not that the girl wasn’t good looking, because she was. No doubt about that. That’s why Nick didn't mind taking pictures of her, because she photographed so well. It was virtually impossible to get a bad shot of the bitch.
Yea, Lisa was a great photography subject. In addition, Nick just loved to imagine the girl's plump pink shiny lips wrapped around his dick....the lips on her face, that is....ha-ha. Of course the other lips would do very nicely, as well.
So even though Nick knew Lisa was using him, he didn’t mind. He didn't even charge her for his time. That's because he was simply biding his time. He'd get her to come around.
If nothing else, he'd get her to slowly shed her clothes and pose for him in the nude. He was working on it...slowly but surely, convincing her that she needed all kinds of photos for her modeling portfolio. Even the X-rated kind.
He was getting even more turned on, just thinking about ordering the bitch around - getting her to obey his every command. That was almost as much of a turn-on as her hot young body!
Nick stood up from the scotch plaid couch in his parent's basement and ambled over to his photography studio in the next room. He sat down at the computer and retrieved the SD card from inside the desk. He slipped the card in and opened the file that said, Lisa BackYard.
Nick clicked open the file, and there she was, in all her fucking holier-than-thou glory.
If only Lisa knew what Nick did with her "modeling pictures" when she wasn't around! Serves her right...acting like she's so much better than him...
Nick smirked as he stood up and shucked his jeans shorts and underwear. His mom was working the night shift at Whole Foods. He had hours and hours, all to himself.
He clicked through the pictures, eventually choosing a shot of Lisa in a short blue and white sundress. She was kneeling on the grass in his backyard, her long graceful neck arched, her head thrown back as she offered her pretty face to the sun.
For a brief moment, Nick congratulated himself on his superb photography skills.
The play of light and dark on the girl's perfect features; the deep lush green of the grass; the glorious shiny fountain of black hair tumbling back - even though he suspected half of that glorious tumbling hair was fake.
Then the moment was over and Nick focused on one thing and one thing only; the girl's pink pantied crotch, exposed to his hungry horny eyes.
While he was shooting this picture, Nick had instructed Lisa to lift her dress up, just a little. She had resisted. At first.
"Nicky!" she had whined, in a somewhat playful way.
The nickname annoyed Nick, but he let it go.
"It won't be dirty, I promise!" he had insisted, already feeling his dick harden at the prospect of viewing the girl's panties. "Remember...you have to do what the photographer tells you. Number one rule of modeling, sweetie.
You can't risk getting the reputation of a diva. You watch Top Model, right? You should know that. Besides, we're just friends. I promise I won't get turned on."
Promise already broken, he had thought.
"I don't know..." she said, trying to sound all cute and innocent.
Lisa's virginal act was starting to get on Nick's nerves. He just wanted to see crotch and ass, damn it! What the hell did it take?
He could practically view her sweet little box already, the damn dress was so short. Then he thought of something...
"Unless you have on granny panties...." Nick had teased, with a sly chuckle. "Is that the problem?"
"NO!" she had shouted, clearly insulted.
Inwardly, Nick grinned. He had won!
It was so easy. Just play on the girl's vanity. He tried to adjust his legs so she wouldn't notice his hard-on, which was growing bigger by the second.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the girl grabbed the corner of the blue and white cotton dress and lifted it up... and (to Nick's delight!) up, and up and up.
Soon, he was treated to the sight of light pink panties with lacy trim... probably Victoria's Secret, he guessed... the snooty girl's neat young crotch split slightly in half by the seam of the expensive looking underwear.
Nick's hard-on was really raging, by this point. But he'd gotten a ton of really good shots, and since he told Lisa to look up towards the sun and close her eyes, she hadn't noticed how out of control his dick was.
He had taken many shots, circling around the girl like a lion circling its prey. He also got some superb ass shots... the flimsy pink material straining against Lisa's somewhat larger than average butt. But this particular crotch shot was Nick's favorite.
Nick slowly stroked himself, making loud animal sounds as he enjoyed Lisa's picture. Those panties.....next time, he'd get her to lower them....just a bit.....maybe he'd glimpse a tantalizing slice of teenage pussy.....
Since she was so snooty and superior acting, the panty shot was even more of a sweet reward. It made her look so helpless and hapless...was hapless a word? What the hell did it mean? Well anyway, it sounded good.....
WHOMP!
Suddenly, something hit against the basement window.
WHAT THE FUCK?
Oh shit. Someone was gonna report him!
That was enough to deflate Nick's erection as he clumsily jammed on his underwear and jeans.
This was fucking embarrassing! Who the hell was it? Some sort of perverted peeping Tom who gets his rocks off watching other people get their rocks off?
Nick strode purposely over to the window.
"What the hell?" he grumbled.
Someone was indeed peeking in. But this wasn't a normal person.
Was it even a person at all?
Well, it was sort of human.
It appeared to be an ancient old man with milky white eyes, and a garish pink rash running all over his face. The face was grinning demonically, making it look like a Halloween mask.
When the twisted old man saw Nick he became frantic, beating on the glass of the basement window with his pink spotted claw, a fountain of diseased spittle running down his gross chin.
Oh my ....MAN...it's happening! Nick thought. It's really happening!
Nick knew it would. He figured it was just a matter of time.
After all, he watched Dead Heads religiously.... tuning in since its inception and never missing a single episode or lengthy marathon. He owned all of the DVDs, along with calendars and character bobble-heads, collector comics and a great big poster of Tasha with her bangin boobs practically hanging out the bottom of her short pink top.....
THE ZOMBIES HAD ARRIVED!
"It's the fucking apocalypse!" Nick said, chuckling. "And I'm here whacking my meat!"
This twisted old dude in his window...it was a zombie. It had to be!
Nick looked at the old man banging on his window. There was no way he was strong enough to break it.
The old man had a dead lifeless appearance to his eyes, and that weird out of place smile....hell, that smile was the creepiest thing of all!
Nick felt like he was gazing into the face of pure evil.
Even though Nick considered himself to be a professional photographer, he wasn't above taking pictures with his Smartphone. The Smartphone was fast and easy, after all. And the picture quality wasn't bad....
Nick snapped a bunch of pictures of the old dude, then he tried
9-1-1.
Nothing! Just a busy signal!
He ran up the multi-colored carpeted stairs and turned on the TV. Just as he suspected. Reports of a mysterious virus....appetite for human flesh.....CDC......Hazmat suits...
He'd heard enough.
Despite the frantic reports to STAY INDOORS, Nick was ready to do battle.
He'd been waiting for this day... the day when he could be the hero!
Now the chicks would flock to him. And not just ugly old fat chicks, he thought, throwing his old friend Dominique under the bus. Hot young chicks! Even that bitch, Lisa! She would hang on him, begging him to protect her.
Nick grabbed some supplies from around the house and tossed them into his survival backpack. He had a few MREs purchased at an army navy shop in Chicago...Chicken Tetrazzini and beef stew...even a dehydrated ice-cream sandwich.
Nick liked to think of himself as a survivalist.
He also had some Steel Bar protein bars (his favorite brand), a few water bottles, a package of tablets that were supposed to make water safe to drink, a lighter, first aid kit, his cell phone and charger (it could work for a while, before all the electricity went out).
And of course, a weapon.
Nick chose a hammer, fashioned after his favorite character, Lionelle, on Dead Heads.
Before he left, Nick quickly fed his African Cichlid fish and scribbled out a note for his mom explaining that the apocalypse had begun and he was going out to fight the war.
He warned his mom to lock all the doors and suggested she team up with Mr. and Mrs. Francis down the street who owned guns.
Don't open the door for anyone, even if you think you know them, Nick warned. Then he told his mom he loved her, and that he would be back.
Shit. His photography equipment, which included a Nikon D3X camera...that baby costs over eight thousand bucks!
Plus he had all his lenses and his tripod....Nick had no choice. He had to leave it all behind. If he tried to bring the expensive equipment with him, it would just weigh him down.
Nick ripped off another piece of paper from the memo pad with the fat cat that said WEIGHTY THOUGHTS and wrote an addendum to his mom.
Hey mom! Please lock up my photog. equip. in the safe. I'll be back for it when I can. Thanx...your ever grateful son.
There. That should do it.
Nick was well aware that leaving the safety of his home was not the ideal choice to make in a zombie apocalypse. He should be "bugging in" as opposed to "bugging out," by boarding up windows and turning the house into an impenetrable fortress. Maybe even setting up a place where he could "sniper" out intruders.
However, his adrenaline was soaring. He couldn't stay put. He had to be a part of it. A hero.
Backpack on... hammer in hand... Nick opened his front door and headed out into the apocalypse.
"Bring it on!" Nick declared, looking all around.
He heard gun shots in the distance, along with the sound of the tornado siren usually reserved for Tuesday morning tests. To top off the scene, there was even thunder rumbling.
Cool!
This was his world... like a comic book come to life.
Nick the Hero of the Zombie Apocalypse had arrived!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gina knew she couldn't stay in the shed forever. She had to plan her next move. But it felt so safe inside; like her own little house.
An oasis in the storm.
Maybe she could just stay there until m
orning. Maybe by morning the police would come and make everything safe again.
Everything seemed less scary in the light of day.
But what about her parents? What happened to them?
Did they get away? Were they also crouching, right now, inside someone's shed?
Gina didn't think her dad's bad knees could crouch very well, but she sure hoped her parents were safe, where ever they were. Maybe they were in someone else's shed - or on top of a sliding board somewhere.