Bane

by Amelia C. Gormley

  “You want me to hold you down, cariño? Cover you and pin you to this blanket and just cut loose?”

  Zach’s cock, which had softened while he was adjusting, gave a fierce jerk and tightened, leaking against his stomach. “Yes!” he gasped, then he cried out as Nico pushed into him with even more force.

  Nico’s hands were slippery with oil as they traveled up Zach’s torso. His fingers combed through Zach’s armpit hair, wrapped around Zach’s arms, and slid all the way up to his wrists. The position stretched Nico out, brought him forward until he hovered over Zach, nearly folding Zach in half. It wasn’t an easy position for Zach’s hips and knees, but it lifted his ass and opened him to Nico even more shamelessly and more vulnerably than before, and that was perfect. Nico’s hands locked around Zach’s wrists like bands as he hauled his hips back and began to drive in deeper. “Like that?”

  “Yes!” Nico’s cock drove the shout from him, a breathless exclamation of pleasure as much as the confirmation Nico sought.

  Nico grinned, the smile fierce under the thick growth of his beard, and pistoned his hips faster, harder, pushing more helpless cries from Zach’s throat. He buried his face in Zach’s armpit and began licking and sucking the sensitive skin there until Zach’s entire body was alive with sensation and taut with pleasure. Nico’s rough stomach rubbed against Zach’s cock with each thrust, and it wasn’t until that became too much that he realized he’d climaxed and hadn’t even noticed.

  Nico must have, though, because he slowed down. He released his grip on Zach’s wrists and laced their fingers, joining them there as intimately as the rest of their bodies were intertwined. He kissed Zach, their tongues tangling and thrusting, as he rocked gently against Zach.

  “Too sensitive?” Nico asked when he came up for air. “Need me to stop?”

  “No!” Zach shook his head emphatically. He didn’t want this ever to end. And judging from the ache in his balls and deep in the pit of his gut, and the fact that he was still hard, his body wasn’t through yet. “Keep going. I want you to come inside me.”

  Nico blinked, then nodded. “Tell me if it becomes too much,” he warned, but that was the end of his restraint. He locked Zach’s wrists down against the blanket once more, plundering Zach’s mouth with lips and teeth as his hips pumped relentlessly. The hollows of his pelvis clapped against Zach’s sweat-dampened flanks, adding to the cacophony of moans and wails and grunts. And God, yes, Zach was going to come again, and this time there was no way he could miss it happening. It was building at the base of his spine like a superstorm rolling in, threatening to unleash all its fury and leave utter devastation behind.

  “That’s it,” Nico hissed, pushing his weight up off Zach. He reared back, grabbed Zach’s hips, and began jerking him to meet each thrust. His eyes were screwed shut with pleasure or concentration, but then he slit them open. “Touch yourself, Zach. Do it. Let me watch you.”

  Oh, those were familiar words. Nico’s favorite pastime, Zach had once called it. The first time had been in a car in the middle of nowhere, while Nico was disoriented with a head injury. He loved watching Zach masturbate, and Zach had long ago learned to let go of any self-consciousness he might have had about it.

  He reached down, wrapped a sweaty hand around himself, and began jerking in time with Nico’s thrusts, which were pounding into him like a pile driver.

  One of them was yelling, and he was pretty sure it was him. Especially when Nico’s hips slammed against him, and Nico went still, shuddering powerfully. Nico’s cock twitched and pumped inside him, and Zach added a twisting motion when his hand encircled the crown of his own cock, piling on just enough friction to loose the torrent of pleasure building up between his balls and spine. It ripped through him, almost painful in its intensity. It zinged up his backbone and left him tingling, nerveless, while lashing hot streams of seed all the way up to his chest. He yanked his hand away from his own cock because, in an instant, even the lightest touch was too much. Nico’s softening shaft inside him started to feel uncomfortable.

  “Enough!” he gasped, squirming, and Nico eased out and dropped to the blanket at his side, seemingly as boneless as Zach. His anus was wet and burned a little, but Zach didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

  He felt euphoric. Exhausted, but over the moon. Would it be inappropriate to thank God for letting him have that experience before he died? Didn’t matter. Zach closed his eyes and thought a short, grateful prayer anyway.

  “Thank God,” they heard Xolani call out irritably. “Maybe now I can get some sleep. Tomorrow I’m making camp somewhere else, and the four of you are on your own. Jesus. Should have told Joe to bring Titus back this way if he finds him.”

  Hot embarrassment flooded Zach’s cheeks, but Nico caught his eyes, merriment sparkling in his gaze, and the next thing Zach knew, they were both laughing uncontrollably.

  Though Rhys spoke of him and Darius taking some time to go on another walkabout together, Zach noticed that they never specified when. He kept waiting for Rhys to come and let him know he was leaving, but instead Rhys stuck close to camp. When Zach and Nico weren’t slipping off into the woods to make love—which they did far more often than was probably dignified—they spent their days by the lake, talking and warding off the heat by skinny-dipping. Darius, Xolani, and Nico took all the guns one day and walked around the lake to the city, where they liberated several decks of cards from the casinos and fishing equipment from one of the houseboats. After that, evenings by the fire were spent playing poker and gin, and the venison in their diet was mixed up with fish, fresh out of the water.

  It was the perfect, peaceful retreat Zach had hoped it would be, except—

  “Why haven’t you and Darius left yet?” he demanded of Rhys as they were lying in the sun on the edge of the lake.

  “I’m in no hurry,” Rhys said vaguely, and Zach lifted his head.

  “Rhys, you don’t want to be here to watch me die.”

  Rhys sighed and rolled over, cradling his head in his arms with his face turned toward Zach. “No, I really don’t. But—” he shrugged “—I don’t want to leave and come back to find you’re gone, either. Besides, it might be better for Nico if we hang around.”

  “You’ll take him to Seattle with you after, won’t you?” Zach pleaded. “I don’t think he ever had all that many friends in Sierra Company, I’d hate to think of him trying to go back and fit in again.”

  “We won’t even let him try.” Rhys gave a halfhearted smile and closed his eyes. Which, Zach decided, probably meant he’d had enough of facing the reality that he was going to lose someone else he cared about in another week or two.

  Three weeks was about how long it took Beta symptoms to manifest. It could be up to six, but as much as Zach wanted every last moment with Nico that he could get, he was afraid that if the process drew out too long, it would be worse for everyone.

  “Have you thought about how you want to handle things?” Xolani asked when Zach approached her in the third week about his options.

  As if he’d thought of anything but.

  “I considered going for a swim.” He smiled slightly, only half joking. “When the lethargy starts to set in, I could just swim out and wait to go catatonic. The hypothermia would probably help. But then, I suppose Nico might like to be able to burn my remains.”

  Xolani gave him a firm look that in no way diminished her hard-bitten kindness. She reminded him of Chantal, the doctor he’d worked with when he’d first come to the Clean Zone. Minus the backstabbing, of course. “This isn’t about what Nico wants. This is your death. We need to honor your choices.”

  Zach sighed. “What I choose is to take as much pain from this process as I can for Nico. I don’t want anything violent or bloody. No bullets or slit wrists. Do you have a 50 cc syringe? Back before the overthrow, the doctor I worked with preferred an air embolism to the brain when euthanizing the patient was necessary.”

  “I can do that.” She blew out a slo
w breath. “I could also put a plastic bag around your head after you go catatonic.”

  It was so mundane, discussing how he wanted to die the way he might once have discussed what refreshments his father wanted in the green room when he’d done the pundit-vid circuit leading up to his run for office. No life-and-death decisions here, though, because death was already a foregone conclusion. Now everything was just a matter of preference.

  “That might be better,” he said, swallowing thickly. “Then Nico won’t have to watch me stroke out. Thank you.”

  He passed that third week, and into the fourth, with an odd sense of detachment. Not from Nico, no. There was nothing detached about their increasingly desperate lovemaking. And not from Rhys, either. He clung to the friendship they’d formed, and thanked God that he’d had the chance to perhaps undo some of the pain his father and brother had caused Rhys.

  But outside those two crucial connections, Zach unplugged from everything else. Hunger didn’t matter. If he wanted to stay at the edge of the lake and watch the sunset instead of eat dinner, it was all the same. He had nothing to fear in starving. He could swim longer, past the point where the cold water made him ache and shiver, because what did it matter if he froze? He could perch on the most precarious ledges when he and Nico went for a walk, because the worst that could happen was that he might fall and break his neck. It was bizarre and liberating, and he both missed the presence of fear of his own mortality and reveled in his freedom from it.

  The rash began so subtly that Zach cursed himself when he finally noticed it. He might have lost some critical detail of his final hours, missed some opportunity to assure Nico of his love, or something, because he hadn’t been paying attention, had been unaware that the end was finally here. Suddenly, there wasn’t enough time to say everything he needed to say and do everything he needed to do, to make sure there wasn’t a doubt in Nico’s mind that every breath in Zach’s lungs belonged to him.

  Should he have accepted the Alpha strain? How could he have cheated them of the life they should have had together?

  Lord, please, place Your hand on my heart and give me the peace of knowing that I’ve done Your will!

  Nico, who had been napping beside him in the afternoon heat, woke with a start, his eyes flying to Zach’s face. Zach didn’t know what his expression conveyed, but it was enough. He saw the tragedy of loss begin to fill Nico’s eyes and grief contort his features.

  “No!” Zach placed a hand over Nico’s mouth before he could say anything. “No. Just make love to me and hold me until I’m resting, then get Xolani. She’ll know what to do.”

  Tears spilled from Nico’s eyes, but he nodded and took Zach in his arms.

  Rhys felt the first frisson of unease as the quiet from Zach and Nico’s end of camp stretched through the whole afternoon and into the evening. Occasionally, he heard murmurs—and even moans—but they didn’t respond to calls to come eat supper or join the rest of them for cards or conversation at the fire that night after the sun sank.

  The next morning, he awoke at dawn to Nico sobbing. It roused them all. Rhys quickly dressed and joined Xolani by the fire, where she waited with her med kit in her hands, watching Nico approach from down along the lakeshore. His face was drawn and wet with tears.

  “I think he’s catatonic now,” he said without preamble when he reached Xolani, swaying on his feet. “Or mostly so. He reacts when I try to wake him, but—”

  His voice cracked, and Rhys’s own eyes overflowed.

  “I’m going to go say good-bye,” he murmured and squeezed Nico’s shoulder once, a pathetic gesture of reassurance, as he passed.

  Zach lay naked on his bedroll, and he smelled like sex and looked like he was just sleeping off a long night of passion. But Rhys could see the angry rash across his chest and creeping up his neck and jaw. Patches of it were appearing on his belly and arms, and, Rhys assumed, other parts hidden by the blanket. Within a couple of hours, that rash would start to darken into bruise-like lesions.

  He knelt and took Zach’s hand, making no effort not to cry. For so long he’d refused to let anyone see his tears. They were a weakness Father Maurice and Jacob had taken far too much enjoyment in exploiting. But he let them spill for Zach, as he had for Gabe, two years ago.

  If anyone had told him two months ago that he’d feel this sort of pain at the prospect of losing Jacob’s brother, of all people, he would never have believed it.

  “Thanks for being my friend,” he whispered, unable to think of anything more profound to say.

  Zach stirred but didn’t respond.

  After a while, Xolani joined him, with Nico behind her. By then the sun was up over the trees to the east and nearly blinding them. Xolani knelt beside Rhys, her face carefully neutral.

  “When did the rash appear?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Um, yesterday afternoon, I guess?” Nico said hollowly. “Zach noticed it before I did. He knew what it meant so we . . . just waited.”

  Xolani muttered under her breath, “This isn’t right. He should be showing lesions by now. And he’s not catatonic, he’s just asleep.”

  “What does that mean?” Nico demanded, his eyes snapping behind the sheen of tears. “Zach said you knew what to do!”

  “I do, but—”

  “Then do it!” Nico’s voice broke, and he dropped to his knees, tears spilling down his face. His shoulders jerked with the force of his sobs. “Please. I can’t— Don’t drag this out. He wouldn’t want that.”

  Rhys looked up as Darius appeared behind Nico, reaching down to grip his shoulder firmly. “Steady, son. We’ve got you. What’s the problem here, Xolani?”

  “I’ve seen this rash before.” She tugged hard at her braid. “I don’t know where, but— Shit.”

  “Are you saying he might not have the Rot?” Rhys asked plaintively.

  “I can’t— I don’t—” She gave Nico a helpless look. “I don’t want to give anyone false hope or disrespect Zach’s final wishes, but I’m not comfortable going through with this until we know for sure that this is what we think it is.”

  “What else could it be?” Nico moaned, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “I’m not—” Her head shot up, and she stared at Nico with her mouth agape. “You were never in Russia!”

  It came out almost as an accusation, and Nico jumped as though she’d charged him with doing something horrific. “No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t deployed with the 1st Juggernaut Battalion. I was a civilian. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I know, and I’m a fucking idiot for not realizing this before.” Xolani sprang to her feet, kicking up sand as she paced. “It was always speculated that something environmental in Russia, where Alpha was first deployed, triggered the lethal mutation.”

  Rhys nodded in tandem with Nico; Xolani had told Rhys this the first day they met, when she explained the virus to him.

  “I think I vaguely remember McClosky mentioning that,” Nico said.

  Xolani’s own nod was jerky and distracted. “But you were never there. You carry a version of Bane that was never exposed to whatever turned the Beta strain into the Rot and enabled the Gamma mutation that made the revenants.” She swept a hand out, gesturing to Zach. “If I’m right, this is Beta. I mean, the real Beta, what Beta was supposed to be. Call it, I don’t know, Beta-Prime, or something. A nonlethal rash and a couple months of debilitating exhaustion and malaise.”

  “He’s not dying?” Oh, the hope on Nico’s face made Rhys begin to cry all over again. He squeezed Zach’s slightly feverish hand, letting himself begin to hope as well.

  Xolani shook her head, her expression conflicted. “I don’t know. It’s too soon to say. God, Nico, I’m sorry. I know this must be hell for you. I could be wrong, but—” Her shoulders slumped helplessly. “I think we should wait. But I also think you should be prepared. In case I am wrong.”

  “If you’re wrong, we’ll have gone against Zach’s express wishes,” he murmured. Some of the hop
eful joy had faded from his features, and he just seemed resigned. “What about if you’re right?”

  “I’ve never actually dealt with this particular strain. I saw pictures—or computer models of it, rather—at the briefing they gave the medics after we were infected with Alpha.” She returned to Zach’s side, reaching down to lay a hand on his brow. “He’s going to feel like hell for a while, and we’ll have to be careful to keep him fed and well hydrated, but unless something unforeseen happens, he’ll live. If I’m right. Which I may not be,” she tacked on emphatically. “Please. You need to understand that.”

  Another tear tracked down Nico’s salt-crusted cheeks and disappeared into his beard. “How long until we know for certain?”

  “Another day or two, maybe?” Xolani shrugged. “If we don’t see any lesions by then, and if he can still be roused, we can proceed as though we are actually dealing with Beta-Prime. At least until we find out otherwise. We can’t ask him, so it’s up to you,” she said gently. “Do you think he would prefer to err on the side of hope or the side of not drawing this out any longer than necessary?”

  Nico lifted Zach’s hand and pressed a tender kiss to it. “Hope. Always hope.” He swallowed, never taking his eyes off Zach’s face. “Two days. We’ll give it two days.”

  Rhys, Nico, and Xolani all sat vigil beside Zach throughout the day, while Darius hunted and tended to camp. Toward the evening, Zach stirred. His eyes had sunken into exhausted hollows by then, but they opened, and he blinked groggily at the three of them. “Waz goin’ on?”

  Xolani laughed, looking younger and less burdened than Rhys had ever seen her except when she was high in the canteen at Fort Vancouver. This was what they’d been waiting for. If Zach truly were succumbing to the Rot, he wouldn’t rouse once he’d slipped away.

  “I’ll let you explain,” she said to Nico, patting his shoulder as she jumped to her feet and rushed off to report to Darius and no doubt start laying plans to get what they’d require for Zach’s convalescence.