What did she miss the most?
“Well, besides my family, I miss eating real food,” she said. “I loved to eat. It’s why I have such a big butt.”
“Oh, your butt ain’t that big.”
“Thanks. You’re lying, but thanks. I loved to eat. Especially sweets. Ice cream, fresh cookies, and -- oh, God! – chocolate! You said we can still eat regular food, but does it taste good? Does chocolate still taste like chocolate?”
“No,” Perry said. “It all tastes like cardboard. Meat is the only thing that still has any flavor for us.”
Soma sighed, mourning her lifelong love affair with chocolate.
Perry finally ran out of things to say, or decided he had talked enough, and fell silent. She lay beside him, listening to him breathe in the darkness. His respiration was very slow and soft, comforting, and then it, too, fell silent. She waited for the next breath to come, but it never did, and she began to grow alarmed.
“Perry,” she whispered, turning and touching his chest in the dark.
“Huh? What?” he said, startled.
“You stopped breathing!”
He chuckled. “Soma, we don’t have to breathe anymore. We’re dead.”
“Oh.”
She knew that… but just for a moment, she’d forgotten.
“It’s just a habit. An affectation. When we fall asleep, we stop.”
She lay back, feeling silly. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, shifting on the bed. “You’re still new to this. You’ll get used to it. Eventually.”
“Okay.”
“Try to get some rest.”
“Okay.”
She listened to his breaths again, staring at the ceiling, thinking of her family. She had suffered intermittently with insomnia when she was alive, a hazard of her high stress job as an emergency room nurse. Some nights it seemed her brain would never shut off. It just kept ticking and ticking, like a clock that had been wound too tight. It was like that tonight. She could not stop thinking about her family, where they were, what had happened to them, and the dangers that might be lying in wait for her and Perry in the territories between here and home. Her cares circled in her skull like vultures until she feared she might never sleep, but eventually they did drift away and she felt herself slipping into that trance-like state that passed for sleep for the undead.
She saw patterns in her mind’s eye, motes of light and color, and her ruminations took on substance, as if slipping on more substantial dress.
She was in a brightly lit bedroom, a vast white-walled chamber with French doors opening onto a fecund garden. A gentle breeze billowed the gauzy curtains that spanned the door, making them undulate like restless spirits. She could hear birdsong and a low buzz of human activity, a distant hum, like bees in a hive. She lay on a large four poster bed with a canopy, skin bare beneath white satin sheets, and sleeping beside her was Perry, only he was alive instead of dead, his flesh ruddy and plump, chest rising and falling rhythmically, and raising her hand before her eyes, she saw that she was alive again, too.
Just a dream, she said to herself, and then she thought, Wiggle your fingers, and her fingers wiggled, and she laughed in delight that it all seemed so real.
Then she remembered: time passes quickly for the dead when they dream. In just a few minutes, she would wake, and this whole beautiful illusion would turn to steam like fire doused in water.
Quickly, before the dream faded, before she could second-guess herself, she turned and placed her clever fingers on Perry’s chest. She wanted to touch the living man, and why not? It was just a dream. None of it was real.
His chest was firm with muscle and lightly haired, his nipples like tiny pink pebbles.
He woke at her touch and looked around in confusion, half-rising from his pillow.
“Soma? Where?”
“Shhh, be quiet,” she said to the Dream Perry. “Don’t break the trance.”
“But what are you--?”
She commanded her hand to slide down his body, and that was what it did, taking the covers with it until it encountered his manhood, hot and stiff and curving up from a thatch of coarse pubic hair. She curled her fingers around it, delighting in its stiffness, its smooth softness. It was like a bar of iron wrapped in silk.
“Soma!” Perry hissed, his face contorting with pleasure, and then he surrendered to her as she worked her hand up and down the length of his sex. He fell back on the pillow with a sigh, eyes closed.
“Just relax,” she commanded.
She wanted to show him her gratitude -- for saving her, for taking her in, for taking her to find her family -- but more than that she wanted to have him. And why should she not? A dream was not cheating. She and Nandi had indulged their fantasies when they were married, sharing them with one another to stoke the fire of their passion. They had even acted them out for one another from time to time, just to keep things interesting, a bit of harmless roleplaying.
She slid down the bed and moved between his legs, admiring his lanky muscularity, amused by the profusion of freckles and moles on his torso. Yet it was his manhood that most intrigued her. It was not what she expected. It was shorter but thicker than she had imagined it would be, uncircumcised and with a distinct upwards curve. And so pale! Nandi’s penis was long but comparatively thin, and very, very dark.
She moved the skin of the shaft up and down, admiring its suppleness, and the way it curled inwards to envelope the shiny red glans on the upstroke.
And then she took it in her mouth.
Perry groaned loudly and grasped the sheet in his fists, his entire body tense and trembling.
Smiling at his pleasure, she moved her lips down on him until his entire length was ensconced within her mouth, enjoying the taste of him, the feel of him inside her, all the way to the back of her throat, even the musky smell of him. She withdrew to take a breath and then did it again, and then withdrew and used her hand to circle the moist head of it against her lips.
“Does that feel good?” she asked playfully.
“Yes!” he gasped.
And then he lunged up at her, frightening her a little. He took her by the shoulders and pushed her onto her back. “I’ve got to have you now,” he said gutturally, moving upon her, and her legs parted for him as if of their own accord, and she felt her own moist heat, her desire for him, and she cried, “Yes. Yes, take it!”
He sleeved himself inside of her, and she tossed her head with a moan -- that sweet pang of pleasure as she stretched to accommodate him! -- and then she reached down and cupped his buttocks and pulled him even deeper.
“All of it,” she gasped. “I want all of it.”
His lips closed on a breast as he thrust urgently inside of her, and she moved her hands to his head and curled her fingers in his hair. He was so hard, so big, and yet it felt like silk. “Oh, baby, I’m going to come,” he groaned around her nipple. “I can’t hold it.” And she gasped, “Yes, do it! Let it go!” She could feel herself tensing around him, the pleasure escalating, condensing, growing brighter and hotter. Her pleasure was a great red star in her belly, collapsing under its own gravity, preparing to go supernova and spill itself across the universe.
She cried out his name.
24
She woke with a lurch, gasping, and saw that Perry had twitched awake as well. Instinctively, she clutched her breasts and pubis, covering herself, but she was still clothed underneath the sheet and blanket. Steely light haloed the curtains. She saw Perry sit up in the grainy half-light, head turning toward her, eyes wide.
“Did we--? Did you--?” he stammered. He lifted the sheets and looked down at himself.
“I don’t know,” Soma gasped, but her body was still throbbing with orgasm. Her thoughts wobbled like a top spinning down.
“I think we shared a dream,” Perry said, putting the sheets back down. “Like Jake was talking about the day before.”
“White room, canopy bed?” Soma said breathlessly.
“Yes.”
She leapt from the bed with an anguished cry, dragging the sheets with her. As Perry fumbled to light the candle, she wrapped herself in them, pacing around the room. She noticed the door was open and closed it quickly. Amber light filled the room, nodding unsteadily.
“Soma,” Perry called to her. He placed the candle on the bedside table.
“I’ve never cheated on my husband,” she said. “Not once in all the years we’ve been married.”
“And you still haven’t,” Perry said. “It was just a dream.”
“Yes, but it seemed real and that’s all that matters,” she said.
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not sorry that it happened, but I’m sorry it’s upset you so much. I would have stopped you if I knew.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No! I’ve never done that before!”
She looked at him, saw the misery on his face and relented a little. She returned to the bed and sat. “It’s not your fault,” she sighed. “I did it. At least, I think I did it. I’m not sure how it works.”
“I don’t know either,” he said. “I was dreaming I was helping my dad. We were working on the engine of his old Plymouth, like we used to when I was a kid. And then I was in a white room with fluttering curtains, and you were—“
“I know what I was doing!”
“But I thought I was still dreaming, so I let you do what you were doing. It felt so real, and it’s been so long, and then I—“
“Yes, I know.”
Perry said earnestly: “Soma, please don’t let this ruin our friendship. We didn’t know what we were doing. It was an accident. It never has to happen again.” He paused for a beat. “Well, not unless you want it to…?”
She turned and smacked him on the thigh, but she smiled when she did it. Even dead women like to be flirted with.
“Never ever?” Perry said, grinning.
“Men! You’re all alike!”
Perry raised his hands. “Hey, I was just minding my own business!”
“I know,” she said, looking down at her hands. They were the hands of a dead woman again: bony, wrinkled, fingers tipped with blackened nails. She was quiet for a moment, thinking, and then said, “It’s obvious we both have some… affection for one another. I admit it, and you’ve never hidden it. And maybe… if we can’t find my family, or I can’t be with them…” She couldn’t finish the thought. It felt too much like betrayal.
“I understand,” Perry said.
They sat in silence, each tending to their own thoughts. Presently, they heard someone shuffling around in one of the other rooms.
“Sounds like Jake is up,” Perry said. He rose, headed for the door. “Guess we ought to get going.”
Soma rose decisively. “Yes.”
Jake looked up as they entered the living room, said good morning. He was sitting in Perry’s recliner, fully dressed, reading. Tracy twisted around in her wheelchair to greet them.
“How’d you sleep?” the boy asked, his voice overly casual.
“Good,” Perry said.
“Pleasant dreams?” Jake smirked, looking at them over the top of his book. He laughed at their guilt-stricken expressions. “I told you so,” he said, setting his book aside. “It’s really amazing, isn’t it? It’s like a Vulcan mind-meld or something.”
Soma was nerdy enough to be familiar with the term. “How is it possible?” she said, walking into the room and sitting on the couch across from him.
Jake shrugged. “I have a few theories, and we’ve been experimenting with it a little, Tracy and I, but who knows? We’ve lost our technology. We’ve been returned to the Dark Ages. We’ll probably never know how it works. Might as well say magic now.”
“We haven’t been returned to the Dark Ages,” Perry said dismissively, sitting beside Soma.
“Haven’t we?” Jake asked. “How long do you think our gadgets are going to run before they break down completely? What happens when your truck blows a gasket? You know how to fix cars, but what if it’s a part you can’t scavenge off another vehicle? What are you going to do when a resistor burns out in your radio? Or we run out of gas? Is anyone making more gas? Pumping oil out of the earth? Running the refineries?”
Perry and Soma looked at one another nervously.
“We are living on the rotting carcass of mankind’s technological apex, like maggots on a dead woodchuck, and when it’s gone it’s gone. Twenty years from now, we’ll be riding horses, if we can keep ourselves from eating them, hauling our wares to the market in oxcarts. We’ll be fighting with spears and bows.”
“Surely someone…” Soma started to say.
“Technology is not a product of modern man’s superior intellect,” Jake said. “We’re no more intelligent than our Stone Age ancestors. Technology is a product of population. It’s dependent on specialization and organization. A minority of men and women with highly specialized skills, employed by corporate or government entities to manufacture magic for the use and entertainment of the masses. The Phage ended all that. I bet there’s not more than one or two humans left alive who know how to turn crude oil into gasoline or how to operate a microchip production line.”
“Oh, God,” Soma moaned as it all sank in.
“It’s all over now but the crying,” Jake said with smug satisfaction.
“Damn,” Perry muttered, scrubbing his mouth.
“I suspect that our dream sharing is some form of low grade telepathy, something very close to what Carl Jung had in mind when he spoke of the collective unconscious,” Jake opined. “It seems to have unlimited range, but it’s highly dependent on our emotional state. It seems to work best when our minds are right on the verge of dreaming, when our conscious mind isn’t analyzing everything that passes through our skulls. And it seems to be stronger between people who have an emotional tie to one another. I started dream sharing with Tracy while she was still living in town. It’s what brought us together. We were dreaming each other every night.”
“Tell them why,” Tracy prompted him.
“Because I’ve been in love with her since sixth grade,” Jake recited, cocking his head toward her.
“Aww, I love you too, baby,” Tracy trilled.
“But we’ll never be able to study it,” Jake continued. “We’ll never know for sure what it is. If it is telepathy or something else, something the Phage caused. The instruments we might use to study it still exist, but not the specialists who know how to use those machines, or interpret the data those devices spit out.”
“Seems to me those specialists would be the first people the government took into protective custody,” Perry said. “I bet the government’s got all kinds of underground bunkers full of scientists and technicians and whatnot, just waiting for the dust to settle.”
“If the Phage spread like in the zombie movies, I’d say you were right. But it didn’t. You didn’t have to be bitten to get infected. It was airborne, like the flu. It was worldwide before anyone even knew what was happening.”
“Maybe they’ll wake up, like we did,” Soma suggested.
“Population is still the problem,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Even if, say, a chemist who knew how to turn crude oil into gasoline reawakened, like we did, you still need people to pump the oil out of the ground, people to transport it to the refineries, people to run the refineries, people to distribute the finished product. Specialists. And a lot of them.”
“So basically you’re saying we’re screwed,” Perry said. “That we’re all going to be wearing furs and fighting with clubs in a hundred years.”
“We don’t even know if we’ll be around that long,” Jake replied. “We’re dead. We don’t know how long our reanimated bodies will last. Barring accidents and violence, we might be functionally immortal. Then again, we might not. But we can’t reproduce. Once we’re gone, we’re gone. What we need to be doing is protecting the last living human beings. We need to destroy all the brain-dead and
make the world safe for those who can reproduce. But that isn’t going to happen, for obvious reasons.”
“Which is?” Perry asked.
“Self-interest,” Jake said simply. “The original sin.”
“Self-interest?”
“Our kind, Resurrects, are more worried about keeping our bellies full than rebuilding the world. It’s just human nature, I guess. We’d rather divide ourselves into tribes and fight over resources than cooperate with one another.”
“Like cave men,” Soma said.
Jake nodded. He seemed to derive great satisfaction from doom saying.
Perry slapped his thighs as he stood. “Well, now that we know our existence is futile, I guess we ought to load the truck and head out. We’re burning daylight.”
Soma rose with him.
“Last chance to change your minds,” Jake said cheerfully. “You know the odds of you two finding Soma’s family are slim at best.”
She looked questioningly at Perry.
Perry scowled and shook his head.
The daylight they were burning was slim as well. The sky had grown overcast during the night, the heavens thick and lowering, painting the dawn in the cerulean colors of dusk. Tracy watched from the back porch as Jake, Perry and Soma loaded the truck. Jake did not try to dissuade them from their quest again, which was good because Soma was having enough second thoughts without the constant barrage of his smug negativity. He merely helped Perry carry their supplies to the vehicle, putting them into the narrow space behind the seat so they did not get wet. All he said was, “Looks like a storm’s a-brewin’.” Soma paused to look up at the gunmetal clouds. Thunder growled distantly as moist gusts of wind swept across the yard, smattering her cheeks with cold spicules of rain. Not, she thought, a good omen.
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