by Tony Urban
“There. See.”
Phillip flashed a weak smile. He ran his hand down her breast, across her concave abdomen where a belly button ring, a fake diamond butterfly, decorated her naval. Then, southbound progress ceased. He glanced at Doc, his eyes flitting away.
“This is of the utmost importance, Phillip. It will raise our experiments to the next phase.”
“Can’t I just jizz into a cup or something? And you could use a turkey baster to shoot it inside?”
Doc bit his lip to stop himself from saying something overly cross, but his ire had been raised. “No. We won’t be performing some bizarre redneck artificial insemination. The odds of conception are greatly increased during coitus. And we can’t delay any longer.”
Doc stared him down and Phillip seemed to shrink before him. “Close your eyes, Phillip.”
Phillip did.
“Now who do you see? Who do you want to be on this table before you? A Playboy bunny, maybe? Perhaps a porn star even?”
“No…”
“Who then? A high school crush. Someone here on the Ark?”
Phillip didn’t respond. Doc had long suspected this.
“Ah, I see. You want this to be Ramey, don’t you?”
Even with his eyes closed, Phillip dipped his head to the floor in shame.
“It’s fine. I’ve seen the way you look at her. The way most of the men here look at her. And I understand. She’s young. Innocent. I’d wager to guess there’s a good chance she’s still a virgin. What’s that term you fellows used - barely legal? If you play your cards right, you could be the one to deflower her. Imagine that, Phillip. You could be her first lover. Her only lover. She’d be an awe of you.”
Phillip’s lips parted and a small gasp escaped.
Doc moved closer to him, examining the young man. The bulge in his underwear hadn’t changed and Doc was growing weary of this. It was time to speed things up.
“Keep your eyes closed, Phillip. Now picture Ramey here before you. Not a speck of clothing on her tight, flawless body. Her breasts pert, perky, practically begging you to touch them. Caress them.”
Doc took Phillip’s hand and placed it on the zombie’s gray, cantaloupe-shaped breast.
“What do you want to do? Squeeze it? Suck it? Taste it? You can do anything your heart desires.”
Phillip pulled his hand back and Doc thought for a moment that he’d lost him. But then Phillip’s palm flashed forward and smacked the breast with an open palm. The sound of it echoed through the small, enclosed room.
“You want it to hurt?” Doc asked.
Phillip nodded, his eyes still closed.
“That’s fine. You can do anything to her. I won’t judge you. And no one will stop you.”
Phillip hit her again. The iron-colored skin flared white.
Doc saw Phillip’s crotch swell. He reached out and placed his gloved fingers into the man’s waistband and slowly pulled them down whispering into Phillip’s ear as he undressed him. “This new world belongs to us. Everyone in it is ours for the taking. No one can stop us. Not anymore.”
Doc grabbed Phillip’s cock. It felt like an uncooked sausage in his fingers. He gave it a light squeeze then pumped his fingers up and down. Up and down.
“Together, we’ve brought down the civilized world, Phillip. Now we’re rebuilding it to be whatever we want. In this new world, we’re Gods.”
Doc’s fingers worked faster as he spoke and Phillip’s uncooked sausage grew and hardened.
“If you want Ramey, she’s yours. If you want to hurt her, you can. I won’t stop you. All that’s standing in your way is Wim. Remove him from the equation and you can do anything you want.”
He steered Phillip forward and guided his hardness toward the zombie’s rotting, seeping vagina. Doc lined up the two and pushed Phillip into her.
“Take her, Phillip. She’s yours. Ramey is all yours.”
Phillips hips thrust like pistons. The wet, smacking sounds filled the room and Doc turned back to his notes and added the date and time.
After a minute or two, the sounds came harder, faster. Doc glanced back and saw the zombie thrashing on the gurney as Phillip pounded away, merciless. Under the hood, she gasped and growled. Her dead flesh jiggled
Soon, Phillip’s buttocks spasmed, clenched, then quivered. He moved to pull out.
“No!” Doc ordered. “Stay with her.”
Phillip laid atop the dead woman, their groins still locked together. Phillip’s entire body rose and fell with each exhausted breath. His face laid against the sack that covered her head and, although beneath it the zombie’s sounds were of rage, Phillip kissed the covering like a man in love.
Doc watched as more black fluid seeped from the woman’s vagina, now intermixed with white opaque semen. Doc believed that, from this new primordial ooze a new species would emerge. That this was the next step up the genetic ladder. He’d destroyed life. Now he was ready to create it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Everyone might have died if it weren’t for Wim.”
Phillip flinched at the fury in her voice. He’d seemed more on edge than usual. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes, keeping his face turned downward. He looked sweaty and paler than normal. Ramey wondered if the recent zombie attack had him behaving and looking this way, or if something else was going on. Maybe he’s getting sick, she thought. If so, what kind of sick was it.
“Well, the way I heard it was that Delphine was the one who saved everyone.”
“Delphine did what you wouldn’t and let him out. Where were you anyway?”
“We had to go for supplies since Wim didn’t bring back half of what we needed the other day.”
“Because he was fighting for his life. Just like yesterday. While you were out there having a circle jerk with your buddies.”
Phillip kicked the wood floor and turned away from her. He clasped his hands together behind his neck, elbows parallel to the floor and paced. He was angry and Ramey enjoyed bringing that out in him.
“Look, I don’t know what you expect me to say. Doc sent us out first thing in the morning. How was I supposed to know all hell was gonna break loose ‘til we got back?”
“How about saying you’re sorry.”
“I am. I never wanted you— “
“Not to me. To Wim.”
Phillip left his arms drop. Now his face wasn’t angry, it was bemused. “For what?”
“For almost killing him!”
“I was doing what I was told.”
“That’s the problem around here. No one thinks for themselves. They just listen to my father like a bunch of brainwashed imbeciles.”
Phillip’s arm darted out fast and before she even realized what was happening he’d grabbed hold of her shirt. He pulled her in close to him, so close that his tuna-scented breath assaulted her nose.
“Don’t you talk bad about Doc!”
She slapped him, her fingernails tearing across his cheek and leaving thin ditches that weren’t quite deep enough to bleed.
Phillip jerked his hand, ripping open her shirt, then lost himself staring at her exposed bra. The distraction was enough for Ramey to slip free, leaving him with just a handful of blue material.
Before she could decide whether to run or to fight back, Doc stepped into the doorway. He looked from Ramey to Phillip, then back. His face emotionless.
“The meeting is ready to start.” He turned and left them without another word.
Phillip took a step toward Ramey who backed away. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re really fucking sorry, Phillip.”
She fled before he could respond but she heard something in the room shatter.
Barely thirty people remained alive on the Ark and almost all of them were at the meeting. Doc stood at the front, but the adulation his followers had shown him days before, when Wim was on his way to being condemned, was missing now. Now most looked at him with apprehension. To Ramey, that was a relief.<
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“Before the bodies were destroyed, we examined them carefully. Only one had not been bit, which makes it clear where the infection originated. The person who first became ill, who first became a zombie, was Hal Dade.”
The crowd murmured amongst one another.
Beside her, Wim held Ramey’s hand. Emory was next in line. Only Mina was missing - too afraid to leave the trailer. Ramey looked at the men and was proud to sit with them. She wouldn’t distance herself from them now and regretted ever doing so. These people were more humane, more brave, than anyone who’d been riding out the apocalypse on the Ark.
“I’m left to deduce that Hal became infected when William Wagner brought the boy to the Ark. Because they hadn’t been properly decontaminated before contact was made, Hal was exposed to the virus and regrettably, succumbed.”
Ramey squeezed Wim’s hand and leaned in closer. “Don’t listen to him.”
“Are we all in danger now?” A man with long, black hair that framed his face like a china doll, shouted.
That raised the decibel level of the other murmurs.
“The short answer is, I don’t know. After the meeting, everyone will receive medicine and vitamins to boost your immune systems. But if the disease has evolved… become more virulent, as I suspect it has, then we may need to take extra precautions.”
“Like what,” a woman shouted out as if on cue.
“Starting immediately, no one will be allowed outside the walls of the Ark. We will be instituting a ration system to get us through the winter. Details on that plan will be forthcoming.”
The murmurs reached an almost frenzied pitch. This isn’t going over well for him, Ramey thought.
“I understand this will be a challenge for us all. And if there were any way to avoid it, we would. But after today’s tragedy, we must take every precaution to ensure our safety and survival. Not to be grandiose, but the future of mankind may depend on us.”
“Oh, Heavens, if that’s true I pity future generations,” Emory said. Ramey couldn’t suppress a smirk. He had a point.
“It’s now more important than ever that everyone cooperate and obey.” Doc folded up a paper from which he’d been reading. “Now are there any questions?”
There were dozens but Ramey and her friends didn’t stick around to listen to all of them. Emory went back to the trailer and Ramey was invited along but she wanted to talk to Wim first.
She told Wim about the experience with her father in the cabin, about how she’d realized he wasn’t the man she’d built him up to be. All through the conversation, Wim kept himself at arm’s length and the longer it went, the more frustrated she grew. It was like she didn’t understand anyone anymore. Finally, she’d had enough.
“Wim, all I want is to be with you. But since we’ve been here, it seems like you don’t even want to be alone with me. I don’t know what I did wrong but I want to fix it.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then what is it?” She didn’t give him an excuse now. She pulled him in close and pressed her body against his. “Why won’t you touch me? Why won’t you be with me?”
Wim pulled his hands free and Ramey thought he might push her away.
“Tell me, Wim. Please.”
“I… I don’t know how to say it.”
“Just spit it out. Whatever it is, I can take it.” Even though she knew that wasn’t true. If he had something bad to say, to tell her he’d changed his mind and didn’t love her any more, she didn’t know how she’d react but it wouldn’t be well.
He risked a glance toward her and Ramey thought she saw something new in his face, something she hadn’t ever seen in him before. Fear.
“It’s nothing you’ve done. I want to be with you so bad that sometimes I feel clear sick about it. But it isn’t right.”
“Why?”
“When I’m with you, heck even when I’m not, I feel like I found a piece of my puzzle that’s been missing all my life even though I thought it was whole. I didn’t think I needed anything more than what I had. But now I know better. And at the same time, I feel like I’m too dumb and too old and that, when you get out of your teens and experience more of life you’ll realize that too.”
“I’ll never— “
“You don’t know. You can’t know. It could happen. And I don’t want to be someone you regret.”
Ramey grabbed his coat and leaned into him. She thought his eyes looked wet and she wanted to kiss him so bad it hurt but she could tell he still had words to say.
“I haven’t been to church since about the time my mama died. But I got enough of it growing up that I know right from wrong. And I know it wouldn’t be right for me to be with you, the way a husband and wife are meant to be together. Not until you know you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”
She felt a tear hit her cheek and thought it was Wim’s until she rubbed her face and realized she was the one crying. “You won’t sleep with me because you think we should be married first?”
Wim nodded. She thought she could feel his heart beating even through multiple layers of clothing.
“Then marry me, Wim.”
He cast quick glances down at her, like he was trying to get a peek at an eclipse, then stopped and finally looked her in the eyes. She didn’t realize she could love him even more but in that moment, it was so strong that she felt like a bomb was going off inside her.
“What?” He asked.
“I don’t need a ring or a church or a piece of paper. I need you. So, marry me.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to just say it.”
“I want to be with you forever. I’m as sure of that as I am my own name. Marry me.”
“But, how can we?”
“I might know someone. You let me take care of it.”
She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. The rough stubble from almost a week of not shaving scratched at her face like sandpaper but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind at all.
Chapter Thirty
Mina stared out the kitchen window as she washed dishes in lukewarm water. She hadn’t stepped foot outside the Airstream since the zombie outbreak. Maybe it was a glorified tin can but she was safe there.
“You ain’t safe in here either, Birdie. You ain’t safe nowhere,” her daddy’s voice said. And she knew he was right. She wasn’t safe inside. She wasn’t safe outside. She wasn’t safe on the Ark. She wasn’t safe anywhere. She understood that now. And what made that even worse was that Mina also knew she’d never be safe again.
Why’d you leave me alone, Bundy? You could have blown the both of us up in that ambulance and saved me all this misery.
He thought he was saving her, but in the process cursed her to a life alone with nothing but her fear and her father’s voice to occupy her mind.
Outside the trailer a man stumbled past the window. Mina immediately knew his gait to be that of a zombie. She’d seen it too often to mistake it. He lurched along the dirty pathway that was half snow, half mud.
Mina backed away from the window.
Don’t see me.
But she bumped into the table, knocking a cup to the floor. It exploded.
“Way to go, Birdie. You can’t do nothin right.”
The man’s head slowly turned in her direction. Mina dove to the floor, landing on the broken glass. A thick shard of it buried itself in her knee, hitting bone. Mina ignored the pain. She needed a weapon because she knew the zombie was coming.
She crawled on her knees, the glass grinding itself into more pieces as she moved. She pulled open a cabinet filled with pots and pans. They banged and clattered as she rummaged through them and she heard the zombie at the door. Hitting the door. Trying to get in.
Mina took the handle of a heavy cast iron skillet and turned toward the entrance. She gripped it in both hands like she was holding a ping pong paddle. It wasn’t much as far as weapons went, but she’d killed her own father with a bedpan so she suspected
she could make do.
The door handle clicked and slowly came open. Mina squeezed the skillet’s handle so tight her black knuckles turned white.
“Get away from here!”
The movement stopped.
“Mina?”
Holy shit, it knows my name!
“I said get away!”
A shadow fell into the doorway and then the zombie moved into the frame. Only it wasn’t a zombie. It was Nestor Campagna, a man who was assigned to keep watch at the gate during the last meeting.
“Everything okay in there, Mina?”
She realized what a spectacle she must be. Skillet raised, ready to strike, blood pouring from her knee. If everyone here didn’t already think she was a crazy black woman, just wait until this story worked its way around camp.
“Nestor?”
“I heard a noise. Sounded like something broke.”
Mina set the pan aside. She went to stand but the glass in her knee made her rethink that. “I dropped a mug. It broke.”
“I see that. What’s with the skillet?”
Nestor stepped into the trailer but remained in the door way. His big, dark eyes were wide.
“He’s scared of you, Birdie. He can tell you’re crazy as a June bug.”
“I was…” She couldn’t come up with a lie quick enough and decided to go with the truth. “I thought you were a zombie. Saw you walking by looking funny.”
Nestor offered a guilty smile and raised up his foot. “The sole came off my boot. Kept filling up with snow and I kept trying to kick it out.” He took another look at her bloodied knee. “I’m really sorry I gave you such a scare.”
“It’s not you. I’m half crazy.”
“No. After last week, everyone’s nerves are shot.” He grabbed a dishcloth off the counter and handed it to her. “That looks like its gonna need stitches. Why don’t you let me help you up to the clinic? Get it disinfected and cleaned out good. Last thing you need’s an infection.”
The clinic. Doc’s clinic. He was about the last person Mina wanted to see. She took a look down at her knee and saw the mangled mess of flesh plus the glass extruding from it. The wound would certainly require stitches but Mina could sew in a pinch and thought she’d prefer doing the job herself to letting Doc anywhere near her.