Her eyebrows went up.
“Really? How intense, say on a scale of 1 to 10?”
“11.”
To his surprise, she reached under the bedding and grabbed his rock-hard cock. She quickly withdrew her hand and returned to making notes on her clipboard, albeit color rising in her cheeks.
“Well?” Tim said. “What’s your assessment … doctor?”
She looked up at him.
“I’d say a 12.”
“Maybe I’m not completely dead.”
“I’d say not.”
“But really, doc, what’s the relevance? We know I’ve returned to mostly human functions. Shouldn’t be a surprise that my dick works. And I will say it sucks having my hands tied down.”
Dr. Linda sat down in the chair next to the bed and sighed.
“There’s no relevance, Tim. No medical reason I should have touched you there. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK.”
“Look Tim, I’m a healthy, 32-year-old woman who hasn’t gotten laid in over a year because of this stupid fucking plague. Oh, unless you count being raped a couple of times in the aftermath by a couple of gallant survivors. Mark is gay, and I wouldn’t touch any of these guards with a ten-foot pole. Although believe me, don’t think they haven’t suggested it a few times. Especially Craig, who follows me around like a puppy dog. So that leaves … you. A married, fucked-up half-zombie dude …”
And then she looked away.
He didn’t know what to say, although his hard-on pushed against the sheets with renewed urgency as he noticed, for the first time, that Dr. Linda was showing just a hint of décolletage beneath her lab coat this morning. Or was it like that every day? He hadn’t really paid much attention to her physical being, but she wasn’t a bad looking woman. Again, none of those thoughts made it past his lips.
Not hearing anything from him, she rose abruptly and opened the cell door.
“I’ll be back later,” she said in a choked voice.
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter 19. Dr. Linda
The next morning, Dr. Linda came in early as usual and did her stuff around Tim without a word. Tim wondered if he’d offended her somehow, but the notion of doing so was something of an abstraction: He didn’t really care. Emotions like empathy, embarrassment or shame were alien to him any more — part of the reason he suspected his memories of his wife, children, family and friends were so spotty, so thin. He might be able to walk and talk like a man, but at his core he was still a Zee.
As he was pondering whether the procedure Mark and he had in mind would result in the return of his emotional memory, he couldn’t help but notice that, having completed her exam, Dr. Linda had dropped her lab coat, flung his sheets off and was climbing, naked, on top of him. She pulled a condom on him and slid herself onto his erection. Tim noticed she was already quite wet and ready to go.
“Oh geez, more tests?” he said. And that was another interesting thing: He still had a sense of humor. That should be gone with the rest of the emotions, shouldn’t it? He made a mental note to discuss it with Mark, although neither of them was any expert in brain matters.
Men are familiar with the phenomenon that the morning-wood erection can often feel devoid of the sexual energy that comes from an erection created in the heat of passion. In his case, the erections were more nuisance than pleasure, and as Linda bounced up and down on top of him, he tried to focus on any sense of pleasure in the act. The best he could say, though, was that it didn’t hurt; nor did he feel like he was going to ejaculate anytime soon.
Linda, on the other hand, was having a fine time of it, appearing to climax half a dozen times in the 15 or so minutes she rode him. She paid him no attention, focusing only on the needs his dick was providing. Wisely, she stayed away from his mouth and did not undo his restraints. She said nothing, eyes closed, breasts swinging wildly (they were nice ones, Tim noted rather clinically, big and round) and making very little noise. Tim found his attention wandering as she kept going. He thought of Marilyn, out there alone; her formerly perfect ass and her tiny breasts, revealed after the fake ones were shot away. He thought of her horrible face, her leering grin after a kill, strips of flesh hanging from her teeth, blood everywhere. And her Snuggie, coated in dried blood and hiding her terribly misused body.
This last thought caused a flicker of a smile to cross his face, and finally Dr. Linda spoke.
“Are you ever going to come?”
Tim opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was an animal there atop him, hair matted and wild, sweat glistening on her brow and between her breasts, breathing labored, chest heaving. She’d been having quite a workout. She did slow down a bit as she awaited his response. Tim tried to focus all his mental energy on his penis: Was it going to ejaculate? It sure didn’t feel like it, but, then, he couldn’t quite recall what it felt like to have an orgasm anyway — to come. But, then, what was the reason for this biological event in the first place — to reproduce. There was no possible evolutionary reason for a Zee to reproduce. They were meant, he figured, to die as soon as possible. They had no future, no history, no reason for being other than to destroy. And, he reckoned, Zees reproduced in a different way: by biting humans. Of course, most of the bitten were promptly eaten, so there was little chance they’d ever get to become Zees. But Mark had told him of numerous cases where humans with bites had escaped, only to die and then undergo the horrific transformation into Zee within as little as 30 seconds.
Some plague!
Dr. Linda’s voice intruded into his thoughts again.
“Tim! Did you hear me? Are you ever going to come?”
“No. No, I don’t think so Linda.”
“Is it the condom? Because I’m not taking it off.”
Tim laughed.
“Really, don’t worry about it. Have your fun, I’m fine.”
“Holy shit, I’m done, are you kidding? I came like 10 times.”
“Good,” Tim said. “Good for you.”
Dr. Linda pulled herself off and scrambled back into her lab coat. She pulled the condom off Tim and regarded his still impressive phallus.
“Look at you: You’re good to go another couple of hours.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s weird, though,” she said, now the doctor again. She took his testicles between her fingers and examined them closely. “Normally you’d have some pretty swollen balls by now, and the skin of the scrotum would be very tight as everything tenses for ejaculation. But your testicles are more like in the at-rest state, scrotal skin loose. But penis still very hard. Makes no sense.”
Tim told her his thoughts on Zee reproduction as she covered him back up.
“Well,” she said, “That makes as much sense as anything in this … this crazy fucked-up world. It could be your testes are no longer producing sperm in the first place, in which case maybe the body has an override command: You know, “no sperm, don’t bother to ejaculate.”
“I think, also, that a guy needs sexual passion to do it,” Tim said. “There has to be that biological imperative, whether you know it or not. And for me, it’s just not there.”
Dr. Linda looked at him, one eyebrow arched.
“So that wasn’t anything for you?”
It was not just a scientific question, and Tim remembered the amount of concern that could be wrapped up in sexual performance. Apart from not ejaculating and with the limitations of not being able to use hands or tongue, he figured his performance was pretty decent. But Dr. Linda did OK, too: She got good and wet, had the stamina to fuck him heartily for a good 15 minutes, and climaxed numerous times. Strictly from the standpoint of a female mammal, she was an all-star fornicator.
“It was interesting, I’d say.”
“Interesting, huh?” She sounded just slightly hurt.
“I mean, uh, no offense doc, you were great and all but … I’m not exactly your typical guy. You can’t expect much beyond what you might get from a really good dildo.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, I’ve got a really good dildo,” she said. “Several of them. You’re much better than that.”
“Well,” he said, “There you go. Can we talk about something else?”
“You’re a real romantic, Timothy Lipton, anyone ever tell you that?”
“Oh, all the time, all the time.”
Tim didn’t tell Mark about the morning’s events, figuring he’d disapprove. For all their conversation and collaboration, Mark was deeply uneasy around Tim. He was careful never to get very close to him, and Tim just figured it had to do with the fact that everyone Mark knew and loved had been murdered and eaten by Zees.
Some things are hard to forget.
But as they waited for Craig to return with news of the Wild Man, he and Mark worked out the details of what they were going to do with the blood of Marilyn once they got their hands on it. If they got their hands on it.
And Dr. Linda made morning-wood fuck sessions a regular part of her rounds. For three days, she arrived in his cell and ravaged him. Satiating herself over and over, she then became determined to try to make Tim’s very hard but very bored penis do what it was supposed to do. She slathered K-Y Jelly on it and gave him a hand job until she thought her arm was going to fall off. She inserted one of her dildos up his ass while she fucked him, and then put his dick in her ass and fucked him briefly (“Not my favorite thing,” she’d said, “And you’re kinda big.”) She put a cock ring around his balls and fucked him for an hour straight. She sucked him mightily, but acknowledged it wasn’t “the full effect” since she still refused to take off the condom.
And on the fourth day, she took off his restraints.
“C’mon Tim,” she said, wiggling her breasts at him. “Grab them, squeeze them, touch me, get involved.”
She started moving up and down again on his sore shaft, and he reached up for her breasts. He brought a large, hard nipple into his mouth and could feel the blood pulsing underneath. There was no way he couldn’t …
She started to scream as he tore away the top of her right breast, but he quickly silenced her with the deadly Zee bite to the artery. As her arterial blood gushed into his mouth, finally he felt himself ejaculate, and he lay there spent, the dead woman atop him pumping the remains of her life into his awful maw.
Hearing no sounds of running feet, Tim finished his draught from Dr. Linda’s neck and pushed the corpse off of him onto the floor. He wiped off his face and chest with a bed sheet, pulled on some clothes and looked down at Linda, his friend and lover.
Or was she? He tried to conjure up some guilt or sadness over what had just transpired, but he felt no more remorse than he might for a fish he’d just eaten. This was what he was, and she was a fool for thinking otherwise.
Even so, he resisted the temptation to feast on her and left her where she lay, her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure if he had enough of the plague virus left in him to cause her to reanimate as a Zee, but as he closed and locked the cell door behind her, he knew the guards would take care of her if and when she did.
And then they’d finally get to see her naked.
Chapter 20. Back in the Wasteland
Thrumming with the energy that came from Dr. Linda’s blood, Tim was out of the prison and into one of the patrol trucks in minutes. He took care of the unsuspecting front-gate guard with the shotgun he found in the truck, hit the button to open the gate and was out, back in the Wasteland for the next fucked-up chapter of what now passed for his life.
Tim didn’t know how long he had before they came after him, so he pushed the truck as fast as he dared. He was heading toward the woods on the outskirts of the city where he’d first met the Wild Man, and he could only hope he didn’t run into any gaggles of Zees or put-down squads out for a morning shoot.
If Tim was on the fence before, he was even more so now — at least for the Zees, who would view him without question as a viable target. Meridian folks aside, he could pass for human with ease, which meant feeding should be easy for him. As for what he would mean to Marilyn … would she even remember him? Would she lunge for his balls without a second thought, or pause and give him some kind of deep, meaningful look before … before she lunged for his balls?
What did it matter? The chances of him finding her again out there were ridiculously long. And now the goal of capturing her and using her blood to create a cure was dashed as well, with the Meridian gang no doubt ready to kill him on sight. Or would Mark try to stay their hands, knowing as he did that the fusion of Tim and Marilyn’s blood represented the best chance for any kind of future for this world?
“You’ll have to do some fast talking, Mark,” Tim said aloud to the windshield. He was on the highway now, weaving slowly through the usual collection of overturned cars, burned-out semis and kill sites.
There was something oddly appealing about the notion of finding Marilyn and revealing himself as more or less cured — a twisted take on the old “Honey, I’m home!” scenario. He wondered if she’d still have that execrable Snuggie on, or if she’d been shot any more times. He’d been at Meridian for two or three weeks — long enough for her to be long dead. Or was he flattering himself that she couldn’t “survive” without him?
Craig had told them the Wild Man lived in a place called Huntington Barrens, and it took Tim the better part of the day to find the place. There was a shitty little playground on one end, which he vaguely remembered from a few weeks ago. The Barrens themselves represented a thinly wooded pine forest that looked as if it might be recovering from a fire in the not-too-distant past. There was a road of sorts running through the middle, and according to the map in the truck the place was only a few miles wide. Even so, by the time the sun was setting, Tim was no closer to seeing anything that resembled the area where he’d first met Stacey, so he found a nook between a couple of slightly larger trees and parked for the night.
He didn’t like it. The truck would attract attention from both Zees and humans — although the latter generally didn’t travel much at night. The alternative of trying to find a house was even less appealing, since the Barrens were a good ways away from the larger housing areas, and he had no interest in trying to navigate the Wasteland in the dark.
Fortunately, the Meridian guards were no strangers to being stuck in the Wasteland. The truck’s covered rear area had a cot, some food and enough weaponry to fend off a substantial Zee incursion. Tim found several boxes of shells for the shotgun as well as a brace of pistols and a hunting rifle. There was also a box with some smoke grenades, flares and a few other items he couldn’t identify.
Turning off the lights, Tim lay in the dark in the back of the truck and thought about Marilyn, then about Dr. Linda. For a man who could feel little, he couldn’t help but reflect that the moment where he killed her and climaxed simultaneously was really quite incredible — enjoyable, even. It was unlikely he’d ever have that opportunity again, so he tried to savor it: the feeling, the sounds and smells as she moved atop him, then the rush of blood into his mouth as ejaculate rushed out. Amazing. And all without any modicum of guilt. Perhaps he really was a monster, even more so now since he could pass for human.
But he couldn’t savor the memory for long. Marilyn’s ghoulish visage would crowd back in, her shark-like eyes peering at him from recent memory and her hapless and comic ways reminding him of the time they’d spent together. And here was a woman (of sorts) he could neither fuck nor kill and eat, compared to the amazingly tasty and sexually athletic Dr. Linda. Why would he focus on Marilyn?
If not entirely alive, he reckoned, she was still a potentially viable partner, whereas Dr. Linda was (probably) dead. He tried to imagine the scene when Mark or one of the guards came across her body in the blood-spattered cell. They’d know immediately what had happened, and the trail would quickly lead to the missing truck and the dead guard at the gate. A search party would be dispatched, led by Craig, whose fury at the death of Dr. Linda would be potent and unbridled. A hard-ass guy with the
mannerisms of a Hun, Craig had a soft spot for the zaftig doctor, and she’d told Tim she’d had to rebuff his advances on many occasions.
“He’s not a bad guy,” she’d told him. “Just too testosterone-y for me. Plus, he’s one of those guys who loves whacking Zees more than anything, and I find that a little disturbing.”
What, Tim wondered, were the chances that they’d conclude Tim was heading back to where they’d found him? That was pretty much the plan all along, and in retrospect it was pretty fucking stupid of him to have come here. Craig might be along any minute — maybe even out there now, watching and waiting. Or, more likely, he’d arrived here hours ago as Tim flailed around looking for the place, and they were slowly patrolling the place, looking for their missing truck. Tim had kept the CB radio in the truck on, trying different channels, but they were being smart and staying quiet. If and when they did find him, he wouldn’t stand much chance in a shoot-out with these guys. Tim knew how to shoot a gun from a couple of hunting trips with his father as a teenager, but he was no great shot — especially with the handguns.
Who would find him first, he wondered? Zees or Craig and his gang?
He didn’t have to wait long for the answer. The first thud against the truck occurred about an hour after sundown, as Tim lay there thinking, unhelpfully, about what it would feel like to get shot in the head. Probably just a quick “Oh, shit!” he figured, followed quickly by blackness rushing in. Or would you even get in that “Oh, shit!”? But all the way dead might actually better than where he was now, in between …
Thud
The sound of two palms against the truck topper’s window. The guards had tacked up some sheets as makeshift curtains, and Tim peered carefully out to have a look at his visitor. It was a large, muscular black man, covered in tattoos, wearing only a pair of baggy swim trunks … and missing half his face. After his initial slap at the truck, he’d backed off a few yards, as if to see what effect his effort had. He looked emaciated, as if he hadn’t fed in weeks, and Tim wondered how he’d made it this far.
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