Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  It would also be easier still if he didn’t like the way Rhys responded when he leaned on him so hard. Darius liked the nervousness, the almost fear, the distress as Rhys struggled to take his cock. Every bestial urge Darius had never known he had roared to life when Rhys looked at him with trepidation shadowing his eyes. Darius might be too practical to make any claim on being a good man, but he’d never wanted to scare or hurt anyone. He’d always kept a lid on his rougher impulses, aware of his own strength and power. He’d cut loose rarely and then only the smallest bit, even with other Jugs.

  Until Rhys.

  Perhaps he was becoming a monster. Like the people of Charlie Company. Perhaps he just wasn’t a decent enough person to resist the lure of Rhys’s vulnerability and the advantage his own strength gave him over the boy.

  He didn’t want to be that man, but something about Rhys brought it out in him. He’d tried keeping his distance, and it hadn’t helped. He couldn’t give Rhys up, not now. He knew that without a doubt. Watching Toby and Joe going to town on Rhys, he’d had to clench his fists and grit his teeth not to tear them off and drag the boy away to re-stake his claim. He couldn’t hand off Rhys to someone else who might handle him better now.

  But that left the question of just what he was supposed to do with Rhys. Darius knew what he wanted to do, but it probably wasn’t the same thing as what he should do. Regardless, he’d reclaim what belonged to him and deal with the rest later.

  Once behind the bar, Darius grabbed Rhys and shoved him back against it. He belatedly remembered the plug when Rhys groaned, but he still pushed up against Rhys, claiming the boy’s mouth, devouring his moans.

  Perhaps he might have been able to stop himself if Rhys had protested, but instead, Rhys welcomed the kiss with a desperate sound, clutching at him and opening to it. Darius drew back only long enough to remove his own his shirt before diving for another kiss, too hungry for those needy noises Rhys made to figure out how he was going to get their clothes off.

  It was Rhys who pushed him away. Rhys who stripped in an awkward, wriggling effort before he sank to his knees and reached for Darius’s belt. Astonished by the boy’s eagerness, it took Darius a moment to lend his assistance. When Rhys would have rolled to his hands and knees, Darius pushed him onto his back on the blankets and shoved his knees up to his chest to get at his ass.

  If there was anything sweeter than listening to those pain-pleasure moans as he worked into Rhys’s loose, wet hole, it was seeing the need on his face, the strain, the struggle. Too spent from his ordeal over the pool table, Rhys never got more than half-hard as Darius hammered into him, but when he wasn’t pleading for mercy, he begged for more.

  “Please . . . I can’t . . . oh God, yes.”

  He shouldn’t be doing this, Darius thought afterward, as sanity seeped back in and his cock softened. He lay panting and dripping sweat, his weight crushing Rhys against the floor. Remorse gnawed at the edges of Darius’s afterglow, but Rhys clung to him, trembling and whimpering softly.

  Forget the age difference and the fact that he’d been sexually active longer than Rhys had been alive. There were just too many things in Darius’s favor, things that gave him too much power over Rhys, things that skewed all of this in ways that would be far, far too easy to take advantage of.

  Rhys wasn’t mistaken in what he’d said that night in the dorms. It was wrong. Very wrong. Darius could tell himself he was saving Rhys’s life all he wanted, but the fact was, he liked that power differential too much for it to ever be right.

  He should distance himself again. Trying to leverage Rhys’s need for a little dominance to make things more pleasant for everyone had been a stupid idea, no matter what Xolani had said. It wouldn’t be good for Rhys to be dependent on him in that way. The balance of power between him and Rhys was fucked up enough already without throwing that into the mix. Now that Rhys had realized letting other men screw him and enjoying it wasn’t the end of the world, he’d be able to deal with it better next time, without Darius compelling him.

  But Darius couldn’t make himself quit.

  Reluctantly, he rolled off Rhys, unable to decipher whether the sound Rhys made in response was relief or protest. He grabbed another plug, thicker and smoother the one they’d been using, out of his pack. Rhys’s eyes were fixed on Darius, wary and somehow expectant. He wished he knew what Toby—far more experienced with all this than Darius himself—had been trying to say when he’d given Darius that loaded look and told him to take care of Rhys.

  “Roll over, boy.” Darius cleaned up the semen that had leaked from Rhys’s ass before lubing the new plug and easing it in. Rhys’s moans didn’t sound at all distressed, and Darius wondered what he’d find if he rolled Rhys onto his back again. Would he be hard?

  How would he taste if Darius sucked him off?

  “I want you to keep wearing this, even if you’re doing better at taking a cock without it hurting.” Darius seated the plug, and the muscles in Rhys’s skinny buttocks twitched and flexed as his body worked to try to expel it. Rhys tried to stifle a soft moan, and when Darius turned him over, his lean cock curved up over his stomach.

  The mindless, brutal possessiveness Darius had tamped down howled awake once more as he remembered that Rhys had roused to someone else, responded to someone else. And then his best intentions and resolutions to back off didn’t matter. He shoved Rhys’s thighs open and engulfed Rhys’s cock in his mouth, taking him down deep, all the way to the root in a single lunge. No one else would have this. The first time Rhys came in another man’s hand, it had been Darius. The first time he came with another man fucking him, it had been Darius.

  The first mouth he felt, the first mouth he came in, that would be Darius’s, too.

  So many firsts, and he’d claim them all. Sooner or later, he’d have to let Rhys go. Sooner or later, Rhys wouldn’t need him. But for now, Rhys was his, and Darius would leave his stamp on every experience the boy would ever have.

  He caught Rhys’s wrists and pinned them down when Rhys would have grabbed for his head. He wasn’t sure whether Rhys intended to push him away or try to control him, but neither one was acceptable.

  This was his. His.

  It took Rhys longer than it might have if he hadn’t come earlier. The harder Darius worked—taking Rhys down his throat, pumping up and down Rhys’s cock, sucking, tonguing, devouring those tight, high balls, rolling them in his mouth—the more desperate Rhys’s panting groans and helpless struggles against Darius’s grip on his arms became. He erupted with a shout, pulsing salty and bitter onto Darius’s tongue.

  Darius drank it down.

  His.

  Once Darius settled in his bedroll, Rhys lay staring up at the ceiling, tense and expectant, and Darius didn’t think it boded very well that the boy was thinking again. Why couldn’t he be one of those guys who just drifted blissfully to sleep after sex?

  “What is it?” Darius felt weariness tugging at him.

  Rhys turned his head, his eyes filled with unexpected vulnerability. He hovered on the brink of saying something, need and yearning plain on his face. Then he seemed to shut it down and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  He rolled away, giving Darius his back.

  Darius awoke with a gasp hours later.

  The wisps of the nightmare dissipated, blown apart by consciousness almost immediately. But his pulse hammered in his head and his trigger finger spasmed in its curled position.

  He could still see Rhys with the barrel of Darius’s gun at the bridge of his nose, his hazel eyes pleading for mercy as the rotten-fruit patches of the Beta strain spread corruption across his pale skin. Beyond Rhys, Houtman had stood, smirking.

  “Are you okay?” Rhys’s voice was a groggy mumble beside him. He sounded like his nose was stuffed up, giving Darius cause to suspect he’d cried himself to sleep again.

  “Yeah.” He was too damn tired to play the hard-ass. He sat up and glanced around. In the light of the few lanterns that had been
left burning, he could see that third watch was in place, but it wasn’t light enough outside to be morning yet. He lay back down. “Problem with living in hell, boy. Plenty of nightmares to go around.”

  “You don’t think there’s any hope, either.” His voice was a whisper in the predawn stillness.

  Darius snorted softly. “Don’t let Xolani and the rest of them fool you. They try to be cynical to protect themselves, but as long as there’s people still breathing, there’s hope. Why the hell you think we try so hard?”

  “I guess you’re right.” Rhys rolled to face him, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. “When do you think we’ll all stop being scared?”

  Darius closed his eyes, looking ahead to the years left of his own life. The endless patrol and exile, moving from place to place, securing safety for people who wanted nothing to do with him. One of a dying breed of freaks who never should have come into existence.

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  Rhys didn’t answer, but after a moment Darius felt a hand, trembling and tentative, settle softly on his shoulder, offering comfort.

  Without thinking, without questioning whether it was a wise idea for either of them to become attached to the other, he curled his arm around Rhys and drew him against his body.

  Rhys tensed for a moment, and then he shifted. Settled. He laid his head on Darius’s chest and let his arm slip across his waist. He was so thin. Soft. Fragile. So unlike anyone Darius had touched in the last fifteen years. That softness softened something within Darius in turn. Made him feel like something other than a Jug for a while.

  Made him feel human.

  “Go to sleep, boy,” Darius muttered, weariness beginning to draw him under once more.

  After a moment, Rhys’s eyes closed, and he obeyed.

  “You haven’t done much traveling, have you?” Toby asked Rhys as they trudged along an empty street, working their way through the outlying towns toward what had once been the state capital. As his third week among the Jugs began, they were starting to ask him questions like this, trying to get to know him.

  By now he’d learned to keep to the middle of the formation, especially in urban areas, where revenants seemed to be more common. Somewhere in the distance, Jamie and Titus were cruising each block on the motorcycles with the solar-charged batteries, looking for heat signatures or other signs that someone or something living was nearby.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I was twelve when we moved from Montana to the monastery. We were in a bunker for a while before that, but our supplies ran out. Until you guys found us, I’d never been anywhere else.”

  “What sort of education did you get?” Darius glanced back over his shoulder again. “Most schools closed when the plague was declared pandemic. You remember how to read and write?”

  Rhys nodded. “Yeah. My mom was a teacher. She homeschooled us and made sure to bring plenty of books and paper when we went into the bunker. Even stuff that wasn’t appropriate for kids. She said we wouldn’t have a chance to absorb the inappropriate stuff from the rest of the world the way we normally would, so she’d have to make sure we saw some of it however we could because she didn’t want us to be . . . unprepared for reality, I guess?”

  Kaleo smirked. “So were you? Prepared?”

  To everyone’s amusement, Rhys blushed and shook his head in rapid denial. After a moment, he began to smile as well.

  Darius’s dark eyes were intent upon him. “But you didn’t have those inappropriate books at the monastery when you were old enough to need ’em.”

  “No.” Rhys grew quiet. For a while, Gabe had been the one he’d gone to when puberty had left him a mass of confusion and conflicting impulses. But soon it had been Gabe who had been the inspiration for most of his confusion, making it harder to talk freely with him. “I didn’t.”

  The others fell silent as though they were considering the implications of what Rhys had revealed, of just how sheltered and ignorant he’d been when they’d found him.

  “Shit,” Kaleo murmured finally.

  Rhys offered him a wan smile. “I’m . . . trying to catch up.”

  Another beat of silence passed, and then they all burst into laughter.

  Kaleo clapped Rhys on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be okay, Cooper.” He grinned, and Rhys grinned back.

  It felt good to laugh, to be accepted. He met Darius’s satisfied smile and began to understand just what he’d meant when he’d spoken of the good things that could come of embracing his situation. As he began to be receptive to the Jugs, they started to receive him as well.

  His enthusiasm for the new camaraderie waned, though, whenever he felt Jacob’s eyes upon him. The previous day, he’d been gathering supplies in a pharmacy when he’d overheard Jacob approach Darius about the fact that none of the Jugs were trying to infect him anymore. He’d complained about Rhys receiving preferential treatment, and he’d all but propositioned Darius to infect him if he wouldn’t order any of the other Jugs to do it.

  “My men make their own choices,” Darius had said. “And so do I.”

  Jacob had sniffed. “And what do you choose to do about me?”

  “You’ll know when I decide.” Darius had walked away then, shutting down any further argument. Jacob’s glares at Rhys had been particularly murderous for the rest of the day.

  From the first day they’d met, Jacob had hated him for reasons Rhys couldn’t begin to understand, but it seemed the longer they were with the Jugs, the more virulent that hatred became. It wore an edge of madness, his eyes burning the way Father Maurice’s had in those last years. The farther south they traveled, the more convinced Rhys became that Jacob might actually harm him, if he could find the opportunity.

  He could only pray he’d become a Jug and have the ability to defend himself before that day arrived.

  It was astonishing the way the vegetation had taken over, Rhys observed during the endless hours on the road. Grass and weeds took root in thick layers of moss on the roofs of houses. Endless patches of ivy climbed trees and the slumping, splintering skeletons of telephone poles, and it carved lines in the rotting wood siding of houses. In some places, it had even managed to work its way inside the buildings, as though nature were trying to reclaim the space within, as well.

  Leaves and debris had long since clogged all the gutters and drains, allowing the rains to cut runnels through the asphalt, hastening the crumbling of the roads. Wind and ice storms had brought down trees and large branches and even entire hillsides in landslides they had to pick their way across.

  Block by block, the Jugs systematically canvassed one neighborhood after another, looking for signs of human habitation. The motorcycle patrol periodically circled back to report in. A few packs of wild dogs had to be convinced with gunshots that no one in the squad would be easy prey.

  Mostly, though, if they weren’t making camp, they just walked. Questions passed back and forth were about the only way to break up the tedium.

  “Why the capitol?” Rhys asked once they had reached Salem proper. He was chewing on a piece of jerky and sharing a water bottle with Toby while they chatted. “We’re heading straight there. Why?”

  “Because survivors head for places that can be barricaded or might have plenty of nonperishable food supplies,” Toby explained, tearing into his own rations. “Basements. Fallout shelters. Cafeterias. It was no accident we found that colony on a college campus: dormitories are popular. So are prisons. Thinning out the revs is just a happy consequence of first sweep. The primary objective is recovering civvies. It won’t do us a damn bit of good to kill the revs if they’ve already killed the survivors we failed to extract. So we hit the most likely shelters first, then we divide the area into sectors and begin clearing it one sector at a time.”

  Rhys nodded and looked down at the crumbling map. “All right. So, um, after the capitol, we’ll head . . . here?”

  He tapped the Willamette University campus with his index finger, and Toby grinned.

&nbs
p; “Exactly.”

  Patrolling urban areas was far more exhausting than the country had been. Rhys’s arms ached with the strain of carrying a gun at the ready across his chest, because despite the advantage the scanners afforded them in seeing ahead around blind corners, they still proceeded as if danger might leap out from behind the next wall. Stops for meals were brief and conversation terse before they continued on, everyone sober and alert despite the silence and apparent calm.

  He nearly dropped the damn rifle when Joe’s scanner chimed.

  “Signature?” Darius murmured, and Joe nodded once.

  “Two o’clock. Five heat sources. Definitely human.”

  “Get ready, people. Someone’s just signed our dance card.”

  Sweat had begun to trickle down Rhys’s forehead long before they reached the street where Joe had detected the heat signatures. Though he should have been used to it by now, he still jumped when Darius shouted.

  “Attention! This is Sergeant First Class Darius Murrell, formerly of the United States Army. We’re here on search and rescue, looking for plague survivors on behalf of the civilian interim government. None of us are infected with the Rot. You will be safe in our presence. Repeat: we are not infected. If you are human, put down any weapons you’re carrying and acknowledge. We are fully armed. If you do not acknowledge within five seconds of visual contact, or if you make any hostile move, we will open fire!”

  He hadn’t finished speaking when a low, savage growl echoed down the silent street.

  The revs moved inhumanly fast. How did he always forget how fast they moved? Rhys hit the ground beside Jacob at Darius’s barked order, only to be deafened a moment later by the rapid explosions of assault rifles firing. He cringed for a moment, then got his weapon out from underneath him and scanned the perimeter formed by the Jugs to see if anything had gotten past them.

  Nothing had. In a moment, the gunfire ceased, and five bloody bodies lay dying.

  Like the revs that had attacked him in the monastery, they were nude, or clothed only in the rags they hadn’t managed to shred or discard in the months or years since they’d been infected. They looked small and pathetic, broken in the street as the Jugs approached and systematically shot them in the head, one after the other. By now, Rhys knew to stay down until Darius gave the all clear.