Field Work Ch. 05

More bulletins from the cutting edge of biology...if you're new to this story, you'd better read the first four chapters or you won't know who's who and what's going on...sorry, but I'm new to this serial stuff...

Two weeks later, Sophie was a fully-fledged member of the research team. She turned out to have an extraordinary fund of arcane botanical knowledge, as well as a vast amount of reading in the folk-history of malevolent plants. She also quickly became Gail and my closest friend; all three of us had had the most intimate experiences with the trees, and this knowledge bonded us together. She spent most evenings having dinner with us, and we even made efforts to hook her up with some of the more eligible guys we knew, but she was always a bit disappointed in them. "They don't know," she would say, smiling at us wistfully over coffee, the day after a date. "They just don't know what we know." Once or twice, late at night, Gail and I had talked about inviting Sophie for a threesome – I did envy Gail for having had such intimate contact with Sophie, even if it had been enforced – but we never had the nerve to ask her. She had a poise and a natural reserve that deterred us.

What was strange was how easy it had been to get Sophie onto the staff. We could only assume that Alison, our Head of Department, had pulled strings; it seemed like only a day went by from Sophie being an obscure primary schoolteacher to her joining one of the most secret and highly-qualified research groups in the country. There was no question about her ability, just about how weirdly quickly the usual red tape seemed to have been cut.

As the days went by, though, research ground to a halt. The tree stopped attacking us, and we were no closer to solving the mysterious dissolution of Matthew. (Matthew's wealthy family were skirting around the college, sending threatening emails, and talking about legal action unless we could produce some proof of where he was.) We had placed the tiny Matthew seed into cold storage, until we worked out what to do with it. Gail wanted to plant it in the greenhouse, like a regular seed; Sophie wanted to grow it in more controlled conditions; I personally wanted to dissect it, but then I was never the most compassionate of us.

Then, one day, Alison called Gail, Sophie and I into her office.

It was a hot Friday afternoon. We sat opposite Alison, all three of us grubby from a morning's work, and waited for her to stop staring out of the window. Eventually she turned to us.

"It's the tree," she said flatly. "I'm worried that research isn't going anywhere."

"If we had more money –" Gail began.

"It's not money," said Alison impatiently. "You have exactly as much funding as won't start people whispering, and no more. I can't give you any more. This is potentially one of the major scientific discoveries of the new century. I wouldn't have put you in charge of it if I didn't think you could find something out about it. The reason I'm saying this is, there's a lot of interest in this project, and you aren't moving forward."

"What sort of interest?" asked Sophie, frowning slightly. Her glasses, broken during her assault by the tree, were still held together with tape.

"You don't need to know that. The point is that I'm not totally happy with the way you're going about this. I have invested considerable time and effort in protecting you, and so far you've produced very little in the way of hard evidence about what this thing wants, and why it does what it does."

"It wants to fuck people," said Gail quietly. "It's able to sexually assault people, and as long as they're reasonably psychically healthy in the first place, they don't experience it as trauma but as acutely intense and satisfying. Trouble is, the side-effects are acute attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea, and when this waste is voided on the ground, new organisms propagate themselves. Surely it's obvious that it needs human DNA to reproduce."

"That doesn't explain what happened between Andy and Matthew," said Alison. I blushed. She had clearly watched the tape of Matthew fucking me.

"This is not an easy subject to test, Alison!" said Gail, getting angry. "Anyone who goes near it tends to get fucked in every available orifice! We can't exactly advertise for test subjects! So far, it's concentrated on Andy and Sophie and me, and we've been able to handle it. But what about Tricia? And Stephen? They're okay now, but they're still seeing counsellors. What about Matthew, for fuck's sake?"

Alison looked at Gail coldly.

"Gail, there's no call for raised voices. I'm merely pointing out that your team has been working on this thing for two months, and so far you haven't even begun to formulate a hypothesis about why it uses humans this way, as a medium for its seed. I have to say, I feel very disappointed."

"Maybe," said Sophie very quietly, "you would feel a little bit different about it, if it had happened to you."

Alison looked at her, and a faint smile passed over her face.

"It's funny you should say that, Sophie. I've noticed that every person it has assaulted has been either male, or a pre-menopausal female."

Sophie's eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

"And?" she asked.

"So what I propose," Alison went on confidently, "is that I take over from Gail, as head of the research team. I passed menopause three years ago. I am, technically at least, no longer fertile. I would be very surprised if it made any attempt on me. I think I have the necessary distance, both mentally and biologically, to approach this thing and discover some hard facts."

We were all silent. I had a sudden, evil brainwave.

"I think you might be right, Alison," I said, matter-of-factly. Gail rounded on me, and was about to speak, but I gave her the briefest glance and she stopped, watching me keenly. I went on: "It could well be that, because we've had the extraordinary experiences we've had, we lack a certain, as you say, distance. I really think it might be the best thing for the project if you have a go at this thing yourself."

Alison smiled warmly. "I'm glad you see it that way. Gail, how are you about this?"

Gail looked at me, then at Sophie, then back at me, and I caught a faint twinkle of complicity in her eyes. Sophie had the ghost of a smile on her face.

"Maybe Andy is right," Gail admitted, with a superb imitation of somebody giving in to superior reasoning. "Maybe it's better if you try. I think maybe we are too close to the whole thing."

Alison beamed at us, and the meeting was over.

So it was that the four of us gathered, later that day, in the special prep room that had been set up next to the greenhouse. The empty biohazard suits hung on the walls, baggy, all-over bodysuits of thick white plastic, sealed with a strong zipper against the outside world, with a built-in oxygen supply. Gail, Sophie and I arrived first, and we kicked off our shoes and socks, preparatory to putting the suits on. Then, Alison breezed in.

"There'll be a slightly different procedure today," she said, and handed us each a metal tin. "Owing to the nature of this specimen, I've ordered special protection against any kind of pollen-like emission it gives off. Clothes off, please, and cover yourselves in this, then put on the suits. No other clothing." And she took off her jacket and hung it on the door of a locker.

We boggled at each other. "What is this stuff, Alison?" asked Gail. Alison was sitting on a bench, pulling her socks off. She smiled at Gail.

"Just a little something I've been working on. I think it should act as an effective prophylactic. Come on, we're wasting time."

We began to undress. Gail and I, of course, knew each other's bodies, but I was secretly delighted to see Sophie take her clothes off – her body was as tight and rounded as Gail had told me it was. She turned her back on us, shyly, but all it did was give me a guilty chance to glance at her beautiful plump ass. (Gail caught my eye, scowled, and then grinned.)

Alison herself didn't seem the least embarrassed about stripping off. In a few seconds, she was naked, then she straightened up, opened her own tin, and started smearing a translucent gel all over her body. Alison was in her early forties, tall, trim and athletic, with short, cropped reddish-brown hair that was greying slightly; she had the kind of long-nosed, refined face that some people call "handsome"; her breasts were firm and tanned, and so was her strong, muscular ass, suggesting that she either sunbathed nude or went to a tanning salon. Knowing her to be a confirmed health nut, I suspected the former. None of us knew what sort of sex life, if any, Alison had. Gail had more than once remarked that if only somebody could find somebody as pompous and overbearing as Alison attractive, and get her properly laid, then she would personally award them some sort of medal.

Once we were all naked, we slathered ourselves with whatever weird salve Alison had cooked up, and then struggled into our biohazard suits, a process made more difficult than usual by the slippery gel. The opaque plastic restored our modesty, but there was something undeniably erotic about being naked with three other women, even if one was my lover, another had been (however briefly) the object of my lover's desire, and the third was my boss, about whom I had never had an erotic thought in my life. I had to think hard about tax returns to suppress my growing hard-on.

Suited up, we entered the greenhouse. Alison led the way, striding confidently over to the roped-off pathway that led to the tree. Gail glanced at me and rolled her eyes. Without any other clothing, the biohazard suits were very uncomfortable; the gel made them stick to our bare skin.

Alison stepped over the rope and walked up the path. Gail, Sophie and I hung back slightly. None of us were in any sort of the mood to be taken by the tree, and we knew that the suits were not totally protective; a cheerful undergraduate named Tricia had had her suit and the rest of her clothes peeled off her like a sweet wrapper, and only the swift intervention of Gail had managed to get the poor naked girl out of range, before the vines had taken proper hold of her.

Alison turned and looked at us. "What are you waiting for?" she called, the suit muffling her voice. "Look, it's dormant!" Sure enough, the tree was still and silent. It had grown another foot in the last two weeks, and was now some eleven feet tall. Its vines were lying, slack, around the base of its trunk. It was completely still.

Sophie shrugged, and took a step forward. Alison took a tape measure from the utility belt around her waist, and started measuring the trunk's dimensions. Gail and I followed Sophie, carefully edging around the limit of the tree's reach.

"Be careful, Alison," said Sophie.

"I told you, Sophie," said Alison, bending over and running her hand over a slack vine, "it won't try anything on me. It can tell I'm infertile. You stay back if you want, I'll carry on here."

Sophie opened her mouth to speak, when suddenly the vine in Alison's hands sprang into life, coiled around Alison's ankles, and yanked her feet from under her. She crashed to the ground on her stomach and lay for a moment, winded and gasping for breath.

In that moment, she looked up at us, and all three of us saw the sudden fear and dawning realisation cross Alison's face; none of us were immune.

Then, the vines were swarming up her legs and her lower body, and she started to struggle. Sophie ran forward to help her, and a flailing vine smacked her away, sending her flying into a bush, where she landed on her tailbone and yelped with pain. The vines were already tugging at Alison's biohazard suit, and she was desperately trying to get free from them.

"Get them off me!" she cried in horror, and I too ran forward to try and help, but a vine crashed into the side of my head and I was thrown sideways.

"Alison!" Gail shouted. "Don't struggle! It just makes it worse! You have to let it happen!"

"Noo!" Alison cried, as the vines curled over her shoulders and trapped her arms. "I...I can't! Don't let it do this to me!" Gail looked around desperately for some sort of weapon. I was blinking the blood out of my eyes; nearby, Sophie was fighting back the tears of pain and rubbing her bruised tailbone. The questing tips of the vine finally located the fastening of Alison's biohazard suit, and pulled it down, unzipping her suit and dragging it down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts. "NOOO!" Alison screamed, as the suit was steadily hauled down her squirming torso, revealing more and more of her. She looked at us pleadingly. "Pleease! You have to make it stop!"

I staggered to my feet, dazed, and hunted for a weapon of some sort. The vines were pressing Alison to the floor, methodically stripping her naked, and by the time I had managed to find a large pair of secateurs, the suit had been pulled down over her bare ass and was sliding down her legs, bunching around her ankles. And, sure enough, the glistening, bulbous, thick-headed vines were swarming underneath Alison's crotch and pressing hard between the tight cheeks of her bottom. "Oh NO! NO! PLEEASE! OH GOD!" she screamed, and then her face contorted and she let out a gut-wrenching moan, as the vines penetrated her in front and behind.

I looked at Gail, who was clearly thinking hard. She looked at me, and shouted through her mask, "It's not doing what it normally does! It hasn't covered her head, it hasn't tied her to itself...what's it doing?"

"I think it's testing her," said Sophie, who had limped up to us. "It's not sure if she is a suitable carrier! We need to ask her what it's doing!"

Alison was squirming and letting out loud moans of protest as the tree fucked her. She was quite naked now, her arms held down, her hips and legs wrapped tightly in the vines, but her head was still free. Gail shouted "ALISON!" Alison opened her eyes and her wet eyes focused on Gail. Her body was shaking with each thrust from the tree.

"We need to know what it's doing to you, Alison!" said Gail. We saw Alison trying to collect herself, and we knew how unbelievably humiliating and undignified this was for her. She bit her lip, and closed her eyes again.

"It's fucking me," she said thickly. "It's in my vagina and my anus. Oh God, it's so...it's reaching around inside my womb...uuuUUNHHH!" She grimaced, and then whimpered, and this time it was hard to tell whether it was pain or ecstasy that she was feeling. "It's feeling inside me," she gasped. "It's like it's looking for something...oh, oh...oh wait...the one in my anus...oh my God, it's swelling...oh Jesus! I feel like I have to...aaaaAAAAAAHHHHH!!! Oooooh! Oh JeeeEESUS!"

And suddenly, Alison seemed to be overcome, as the vine that was pushed up into her ass began to fuck her with incredible vigour. Her firm, tanned ass cheeks quivered under the assault, and her hips were raised off the floor with the force of her buggery. Her head lolled, and she made only repeated groans of pain and lust: "AAUNNH! AAUUNNH! AAUUNH!" More vines wrapped themselves around our unfortunate administrator, and then, to our amazement, she was lifted bodily off the ground, high in the air, still being energetically sodomised by the tree. Her head was sagging, her face red and dripping sweat, and she could only moan incoherently with desire.

Gail, Sophie and I instinctively ran forward, and immediately regretted our mistake when dozens of vines suddenly burst out of the soil and grabbed us. We struggled for help, but the vines took only seconds to rip open our biohazard suits and swarm over our naked bodies. I saw Gail's face contort with pain as a vine pushed into her ass, and then I screamed with the force of the vine that penetrated my own anus. More vines coiled around my cock, pulling on me, and my arms were lashed to my sides. I was pushed up against Gail, who was struggling to stay conscious, still trying to observe what happened, and then Sophie's naked body crashed into ours as all three of us were lashed together. Sophie was cursing and writhing, sweat beading on her forehead as she tried to fight off the insistent pressure of being fucked in her pussy and ass, but then the tree grabbed our heads and pulled them back, so that we looked up.

Alison was being held, naked, twitching and upside-down, over the top of the tree-trunk, which was opening into what looked from below like a huge mouth. She opened her eyes slightly, then they widened and her face froze, then she started struggling wildly, and screamed in terror. "NO! PLEASE! GOD! NOOO! DOON'T!" The tree was lowering her, head-first, inexorably into the mouth. Alison fought desperately, whimpering, her naked body straining against the vines, but she came closer and closer to the mouth. Her head disappeared behind the "lips", and then her screams turned to muffled, liquid gurgling and choking, then there was just the sound of bubbles as she was lowered head-first up to her shoulders, then her chest, then her waist, then her naked ass, the vine still pushed between them, sodomising her - her legs still feebly kicking, then at last the vines let go of her, and her feet sank into the mouth, and the mouth closed over them with a satisfied smack.

Sophie and Gail and I were appalled. Had Alison been killed? We yelled and struggled to get out, but the vines swarmed up and covered us completely, blindfolding us, pushing into our mouths, and we could only give in as we were quickly, roughly, brutally fucked in every orifice. Our orgasms tore through us, and then just as we had each come with tortured, muffled whimpers, the vines fell away from us and we were dumped onto the greenhouse path.

We checked that each of us were okay, then we turned and looked at the tree. Sophie's face was wet with tears, and I didn't blame her; if Alison was dead, we were going to have our revenge. But then, the tree seemed to bulge in the middle, it creaked, and quivered. We started to scramble away, but not quick enough – it suddenly split down its length, and a four-foot orifice opened up, spilling dozens of gallons of thick, viscous white sap all over us, followed by a warm human body, completely coated with the tree's seminal fluid.

Alison landed on me, and at last I knew what I must have looked like when Matthew had messily spent himself all over my own naked body. She was a featureless, white, sticky, humanoid form. We dragged her out of the tree's range, and then she coughed, and a hole appeared where her mouth was. We quickly cleared her breathing passages, and she took a huge gulp of air, then whispered "Thank you." Gail carefully wiped the muck out of Alison's eyes, and our shell-shocked administrator gazed up at us, her green eyes shining with something. She looked almost newborn.

"Are you okay, Alison?" asked Sophie. The three of us were bruised, sore and bleeding, but we were intensely relieved that Alison was alive.

"I think so," she breathed. "Oh my God...it was horrible, but it was also so...so..."

"Don't try to talk too much," I said. "Do you feel sick at all?"

"No," she said, "not at all...listen, I...I'm sorry. I didn't understand before. I think I get it now. God. It was so...so incredible." And she managed a weak smile.

We helped Alison to her feet, and then, with Gail, Sophie and I supporting her, the four of us staggered out of the greenhouse. That was enough "research" for one day.