Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  “Got it,” said Vockler as he and Shepard scribbled down another note. “Spinal injuries are effective. Finish off every infected with a shot to the head.”

  “And as a side note, they do not heal,” Indika mused almost to himself, “wounds do not heal, bones do not knit back together, their skin does not heal and scar.”

  “They don’t scar,” blurted out Taylor delightedly before clamping his mouth tightly shut as if struggling to regain control of himself.

  Indika gave him a hard-eyed look before turning back to his laptop and moving on to the next slide. Really, I have no idea what is wrong with the man. Taylor had always been a little bit weird to start with, but of late his work had become more and more sloppy, and recently other staff members had been making some disturbing complaints about him. If it was not for the impossibility of hiring new staff who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut about what went on in the IDRC, he would have fired him a long time ago.

  Taylor ignored the looks of exasperation from his boss and the two government thugs on the other side of the table. He was long used to being an object of disgust and ridicule, and harsh looks had about as much effect on him as they did on the infected. Taylor had just come to a momentous realization, and although virtually certain of his suspicions, he was desperate to find the evidence he would need to confirm his theory and prove it to Indika.

  He quickly became lost in his own thoughts and immediately zoned out for the rest of Indika’s boring briefing. Taylor was shivering he realized, looking at his fingers as he typed on his laptop, logged into the laboratory intranet and brought up photos of the infected specimens in the lab below. The infected do not bruise, he thought wildly, fighting down the rising urge to start giggling. They do not scar.

  Shepard looked up from his notepad at a sudden movement from Taylor. The short, fat scientist was visibly stifling laughter as he looked at something on his laptop. Taylor reached up and smeared back a lank, greasy lock of hair from his forehead and caught sight of Shepard looking at him. He beamed a huge grin at the Lazarus commander, displaying an unwelcome insight into his poor dental hygiene, and went back to typing manically on his keyboard.

  As he browsed through the files on the specimens in the infected holding cages in the laboratory below, Taylor’s smile grew wider and wider until it felt as if his face would split in half. At least half of his jollity was aimed at himself. What an idiot he had been! The evidence had been right in front of him the entire time, but it was not until just now that he had realized the significance of what he had been seeing. In fact, Taylor thought to himself, he had literally been living with the evidence for four months.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bad Girlfriend

  It had been a typical Christmas day, Taylor remembered. After wolfing down two microwaved pizzas for lunch, he had been relaxing naked in bed, browsing through porn on his laptop. He had just started to pull his belly up to one side with one hand so that he could tug on his flaccid member with the other, when all of a sudden some lunatic started hammering on his front door and he jerked upright in a panic.

  “Simon! Simon, are you in there! For God’s sake, wake up! Are you there?”

  “Wait a minute, I’m just coming,” with a guilty start Taylor fumbled his laptop closed and cursed as he scrabbled around looking for some underwear and pants. And a T-shirt that was not too stained. It was Mr. Pham from downstairs. What the hell does he want on Christmas day? The ugly, pot-bellied Vietnamese man rented the apartment underneath him, on the ground floor of the duplex that had been split into two flats. Both he and his bitch wife always treated Taylor like shit and avoided contact whenever possible, so he found it a little odd that the man was knocking on his door. Something must really be wrong.

  Taylor cursed as his bottle of lubricant fell off the bed and rolled underneath to a spot far behind his growing collection of empty pizza boxes. Finally he found a shirt, although it showed clear evidence of the previous night’s calzone, smudged down the seam at the bottom of it. It would do, he decided. It’s not as if I’m going for a job interview.

  “What is it?” Taylor opened the door grumpily.

  “You work at the IDRC right, Simon? Please come quickly, I need your help, something is wrong with Lan.” Pham’s usual disdainful sneer was absent. The man looked genuinely terrified.

  “What’s wrong,” Taylor said sulkily, “why do you think I can help?” As if I give a shit about your bitch wife. Pham had met Lan when she was working in a sleazy massage parlor that offered very few massages and a great many extra services. The two, second-generation Vietnamese-Americans had hit it off and had married after only three months. After leaving the massage parlor Lan had spent six weeks completing a free online course in media studies from Harvard and now tried to convince everyone that she had a degree from Harvard Business School. Since then she had become insufferably arrogant to everyone she came into contact with; especially Taylor.

  “I think she might have that Lyssavirus thing,” stammered Pham.

  “What?” Taylor’s obstinate pose suddenly crumbled and he felt weak at the knees. An infected? Right here in his building! She was just underneath his feet, and with the super-charged muscles of an infected she could be up those stairs in mere seconds. Fear paralyzed his suddenly heavy limbs. He started thinking about how he could escape out of his back window and wondered whether he would break an ankle if he hung on to the sill and dropped down. Or maybe I would just be safer sitting tight, barricading the door, and calling for help?

  Some of his feelings must have shown on his face because Pham flapped his hands frantically as if he could somehow wave away all the bad thoughts that Taylor was clearly having.

  “No, no, no,” he blustered reassuringly, “she’s um, ah you know…”

  “She’s what? Infected?” Taylor’s voice came out as a high-pitched squeal. Even just saying the word triggered a fresh upsurge of panic deep within his quivering belly.

  “She’s tied up,” the other man said, “really secure, nothing to worry about. Totally secure. But fuck that bitch, it’s me I’m worried about.” Whatever romance had blossomed between the two had quickly evaporated many years ago, as evidenced by the almost daily arguments and shouting that kept Taylor awake most nights. Lan in particular had a shrill screech that could cut through steel, let alone the thin drywall of their apartment block.

  Pham pulled up his sleeve and showed Taylor a crude bandage wrapped around his wrist.

  “She fucking bit me, can you believe it? Lan fucking went crazy and bit me! Does that mean I’m gonna catch this disease too?”

  Taylor nearly emptied his bowels on the spot. He felt faint and nauseous. There was a fucking infected right in front of him, close enough to touch. But the sweating, tubby Vietnamese man kept on babbling and some of what he was saying sank through the layers of funk into Taylor’s forebrain.

  “She was just out to the corner to get some milk this morning, you know, and there was some drama with the cops or something outside the shop and this crazy boy bit her on the hand. It was nothing, just a scratch.”

  “That was hours ago. I remember, I heard the sirens.” Taylor heard himself saying, as if from a great distance away. Inside though, his terror-stricken brain was screaming silently to itself and searching fruitlessly for some way to get out of this situation.

  “That’s right, it was hours, like two or three hours, and Lan she said she was feeling a bit feverish afterwards, so I um, secured her, you know, really securely. But then she bit my goddamn arm. Just now. Two minutes ago. So, I figure if it took her so long to get sick, like half a day, then maybe if you had some medicine or you could call your work, they could quickly get me some antidote or something?”

  Taylor straightened bolt upright as an idea struck him. An available course of action was suddenly crystal clear. Of course!

  “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Pham,” Taylor held up one finger, “I have the antidote in the emergency bag in my
car. Let me just get my keys.”

  He whirled quickly and grabbed his keys off the table next to the door and strode purposefully past Pham towards the stairwell. Then the fear suddenly hit him again as he realized he would have to walk past the front door of the apartment below.

  “It’s okay,” the other man saw the hesitation and correctly guessed the reason why. “I promise you Lan is well tied up. She is not getting loose, no way.” Pham smiled evilly.

  Taylor gave him a look and almost said something, but instead shook himself slightly and hurried down the steps.

  “Follow me,” he hissed quietly, and very carefully did not look at the closed door of the ground floor apartment as he crept past it on his way out. Taylor gently cracked open the front door of the building and tip-toed across to his car which was parked just outside. He opened up the boot of his car and pointed inside.

  “Can you lift out that black bag? My back’s kind of injured, yeah that’s right, the big one,” he stepped aside as Pham reached in and grunted with effort as he lifted up the black duffle bag.

  “What’s in here?” the Vietnamese man looked puzzled.

  Taylor did not answer. Instead he stepped up close behind Pham with the taser he had picked up along with his car keys, jammed it into the nape of the smaller man’s neck and pressed the trigger, pushing in hard to maintain contact as Pham shuddered under the onslaught of thousands of volts and went down into a crumpled heap. Taylor heaved a sigh of relief as he kicked the semi-conscious man on to his back and grabbed the bag. He had only been mostly sure that the taser would work. Once an infected became fully transformed, tasers had no effect at all. Pham was therefore still human, but Taylor did not know for how long.

  The bag held no antidote, nor did it contain any emergency medical supplies. Inside were body bags and standard restraint kits for use on the infected. With seldom practiced and awkward movements, Taylor kneeled on Pham’s stomach and fumbled the anti-bite hood down over the goggling eyes and feebly gaping mouth of the panicked but paralyzed man underneath him. Then he rolled the smaller man on to his front, tazed him again just to be safe and firmly buckled on the heavy-duty wrist, elbow, knee and ankle restraints. Panting with effort he relaxed slightly, now the worst of the danger was over, then linked all of the restraints with a short but strong canvas strap at the back, which he ratcheted tight until Pham’s ankles touched his wrists.

  Taylor wiped his brow. He was sweating profusely and the small food stains on his t-shirt were invisible now that his shirt was completely drenched. I really need to get into shape, Taylor thought to himself. I’m about to have a fucking heart attack. Fortunately, Pham, although tubby, was small, and it only took a few minutes of cursing and heaving to lever him up over the bumper and into the boot of the car. Taylor looked around. It was Christmas Day and the street was deserted. There was nobody to see what had happened. Everyone is probably eating lunch. He shuddered a little as he thought of how close he had come to being infected himself. Jesus Christ. In my own goddamn building. He could hardly believe it.

  Pham was shouting something but it was muffled by the hood over his head.

  “Shaddup!” Taylor snarled. He reached into the boot, deliberately grabbed a handful of testicles and cruelly squeezed as hard as he could. Pham howled and writhed around.

  “I said. Shut. Up.” Taylor said clearly, squeezing again. He was rewarded by a muffled shriek, and then silence. Finally. He would get two thousand dollars for bringing Pham in once he had transformed. He had no idea how bounty hunters like Qureshi did this for a living. This physical stuff was way too stressful. Taylor took out a second bundle of restraints, threw the bag back in on top of Pham and slammed the boot down, cutting off the faint whimper of pain and misery. Now it was time to deal with Lan.

  Maybe.

  From what Pham was saying she was fully transformed and thus exponentially more dangerous. Taylor looked down at the keys he had taken from Pham’s pants pocket. Just the thought of entering the ground floor apartment to look for an infected was enough to make his jowls quiver, and his guts twist with terror. A lifelong coward, Taylor was normally totally unequipped to even consider such a course of action, but he was conflicted by the thought of another easy bounty just lying there, waiting to be picked up. Pham had said she was securely tied up. If all he needed to do was put a hood on her, then that was another easy two grand just sitting there. Maybe there’s some cash lying around their place too?

  Greed, another of his dominant character traits, won out over his natural cowardice. Taylor decided to go have a look and assess the situation before making his mind up. If Lan looked as if she would be too much trouble, he would just lock the flat up again and call 911.

  After three minutes of tense tip-toeing through the Pham’s apartment, Taylor stopped, incredulous, in the doorway of their bedroom and his jaw dropped open in astonishment. His heart stopped giving him palpitations and his fear was replaced by a sense of incredulity.

  Half of the bedroom was unremarkable and mundane, with a chair, two dressers and a mirrored dressing table whose worn top was crowded with the dozens of mysterious bottles and tubes that women seemed to find indispensable for their daily beauty regimen. The other half however, was outfitted like the set for a full-on porn film, with a shelf piled with items of bondage equipment that Taylor did not even have names for. In the middle, clearly positioned as the centerpiece of the spectacle, was the bed, and in the middle of the bed was Lan.

  She was bent over a black leather bolster, totally naked, face on the bed and skinny ass pointed up at the ceiling, securely bound to a sturdy frame under the bolster by thick, no-nonsense leather straps fastened around her waist, and at the wrists, elbows and ankles. Her head whipped around to glare at him, giving him a sudden fright, which quickly disappeared again as he saw that her neck was also pinned to the frame by another thick leather strap. A solid rubber ball was wedged in her mouth with another piece of leather fastening the gag around the back of her head.

  Wow. Taylor shook his head in awe. It’s true what they say. I guess you really don’t know what people get up to behind closed doors. He never would have dreamed that that stuck-up bitch was secretly into all of this BDSM shit. They must have been getting ready for a Christmas morning session just as she succumbed to the infection. And it was a fortuitous stroke of luck for Taylor that Pham had finished tying her up before he got bitten himself.

  Alien eyes filled with a dreadful hunger followed Taylor as he circled slowly and warily around the bed, keeping a safe distance away, looking at her from all angles. Pham had not lied. Muscles stood out like rigid cords under her white skin as Lan strained to get at him but strapped down as she was, there was absolutely no movement possible. The ball-gag was an opportune bonus, Taylor realized. Pham had probably been bitten as he put it into her mouth, but now that it was securely fastened, Lan was virtually harmless. Still, no point in taking any chances. Taylor attached the anti-bite hood to the specially designed clip at the end of his Protectrex pole, carefully slipped the hood over Lan’s head and then pulled the lanyard tight around her throat.

  Taylor giggled with nervous reaction as his last vestiges of fear faded away to be replaced with a delicious glee. He had done it! Two live infected captured in the space of ten minutes. That was four thousand dollars cash, straight into his pocket; an unexpected Christmas present indeed.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Taylor giggled and in a sudden fit of daring, leaned over and slapped Lan on the ass. Her slim back arched, and muscles strained under her white skin as her pale, round buttocks wiggled in vain, high up in the air. He stopped smiling and his breathing suddenly became heavier, as another emotion overtook his jubilant greed. Lust.

  At the age of thirty-eight Taylor was still a virgin. He had never before been alone in a room with a naked woman. His hands trembled slightly as he reached out more deliberately this time, and pinched one of her nipples, hard.

  Lan writhed frantically and the globes of her w
hite buttocks wiggled hypnotically in front of Taylor’s glistening face. At that moment it occurred to him that maybe he did not have to hand Lan into the IDRC after all. No wonder you were so popular with the customers back in your old job, he thought to himself as he watched her pale body bucking against the restraints.

  Taylor turned Pham over to the IDRC and collected his bounty. Lan however, he had decided to keep as his personal sex doll. After carefully restraining her, he had unstrapped her from the bed and laboriously hauled her up the stairs to his own apartment. The following four months had passed in a blur of sex for Taylor. The female zombie, strapped into a new frame, now took up pride of place in the center of his flat. When he was not at work he folded his former neighbor into every position he could think of and spent hours panting and grunting on top of her, as he watched porn on the Pham’s 52-inch flat screen, which he had also dragged upstairs and installed in his bedroom. In fact, with all of the unaccustomed physical exertion, Taylor had actually lost several pounds.

  It had also turned out that Pham’s Rolex watch fitted Taylor perfectly, and with the two-thousand-dollar bounty, plus the money he had gained from selling off most of the Phams’ belongings online, Taylor had exchanged his shitty Honda for a nearly new Camaro. It had been the best Christmas he could ever remember.

  The only fly in the ointment was that on Valentine’s Day Taylor had tried his hand at boosting Lan’s breast size from being completely flat to a DD cup with some second-hand implants he had bought off the Internet. Unfortunately, Taylor’s amateur surgery had left her chest lopsided and horrifically butchered, with big, ugly stitches and gaping wounds that had dripped fluid and undead blood until he had sealed them with silicon shower sealant. The seals kept opening up and leaking all over the bed though, and Taylor was constantly searching for a new infected to replace his current girlfriend. The problem was that Qureshi was the only regular bounty hunter bringing in live infected, and he only ever brought in male specimens. And in a flash of insight Taylor thought he knew why.