The Libido Virus: Collapse

"There is a constant thrum echoing upward from the bowels of the ship. Every few seconds without fail, another clank resonates through the steel pipes. It keeps the passengers and crew on edge. The men continue to perform their duties, but I can tell they're distracted. No where you can go on this god forsaken boat will escape that noise. I would worry we'd done something wrong, but it's been three days, and the noise has not stopped. That's why I'm writing this now. When we can sleep, we dream of that noise. We all dream about what's behind that door. I'm writing this because eventually...eventually someone will open it.

"We lost track of the exact date in the panic, but today is plus or minus August 3rd. I am Henry Yates, the current captain of the Canoy, a freighter converted into a refugee ship. The real captain, James Garland, didn't make it on board. I don't know what happened to him. He went into the city for his wife a few hours before it started. Never came back.

"The national guard had the idea to convert freighters into refugee boats. No one objected seeing as how all our shipments had been stopped anyway. A few folk saw it as a way to make up their losses. Wasn't the first time someone thought of cramming humanity into shipping crates, but the military thought it would make people feel secure. When the quarantines started going up and people needed places to stay, we opened up the boats. It worked, surprisingly well. Before the panic, anyway.

"New York went dark about four weeks before, I think. Time is funny like that. In those days, every hour was a year long, but looking back it feels like it all happened in less than a day. Once the eastern seaboard fell, the rest of the country got left in the lurch as everything turned to shit. The power grid went down. Communications were broken. Half of what was being said across the radio was nonsense and the other half only sounded like nonsense until it was unavoidably true. More and more, we saw the military taking things into their own hands. So far as we know, D.C. followed pretty quick after New York along with the stretch of every city in between. No one really knew if the government still existed. The generals made promises that the president was safe and working with other world leaders, but what difference did that make? Local commanders started to act without coordinating with any bigger authority. Frankly, that was for the best, but it meant some hard lines had to be taken.

"They made a big show of walling off the 'infected' regions. They told us it was working. They told us some new drug was being fast tracked to cure the virus. They told us it would all be over in a few weeks, maybe even days. I think most of them believed that, too. No one knew exactly what the infected were, but we'd seen the videos on the Internet before everything went down. It seemed hard to believe that the thing we were all hiding from was porn star looking women. People thought it was a joke or some kind of mass hoax. The more dangerous people thought it was a coup. That type didn't last long enough to rouse a rebellion, fortunately.

"The quarantined zones were small, but one of these creatures can rip a steel door off its hinges if the mood strikes. The army guys put all their resources into building those containment walls, and that was ultimately their mistake. They spent so much time focused on the infected that they ignored the problems outside the walls. From what we could piece together afterwards, this is what happened. Some time after dawn on June 7th, a military patrol on the north part of the quarantine zone reported a break in the perimeter. This unfortunately went out over a radio channel that many of the locals had been monitoring. Rumor of the break spread like wildfire through the community, and many people reasonably wanted to put more distance between themselves and the quarantine. Lots of people went out into the street. Next came the main breach on the south wall, the one facing the harbor, the weakest point in the quarantine's control zone with normal deployment. But, as I mentioned, the northern break had caused several groups to be relocated. I don't care what they say, that wasn't a coincidence. The infected planned it. They're not entirely mindless like we were told. They can think and reason and plan. Anyway, the checkpoints were overrun and by 8:30, the military was ordered to pull out, and the city went into a full blown panic.

"Here's the thing that people didn't understand. Why put everyone that close to the quarantine? Why not just move away? They didn't think one step ahead of that. To where? Where could all these people go? Most of them were poor and had no extended family. Travel was restricted between cities by the military checkpoints, the end-of-days lunatics outside military control, and the infected. So, they put everyone somewhere they could manage, and let out near zero. Maybe a few hundred people who did have other family or places to stay got passes out, but the majority were denied. So, like I said, one infected is all it takes. All those people shoved together waiting for on drop of the virus. Within a few hours of the breach, it wasn't a few bimbos, it was a full blown infestation spreading faster than anyone could react.

"People knew about the refugee boats since the start of the quarantine. The good, prudent citizens that they are, or were, worried about crime and disease, things like that. Once the infected cut the city in half, they had no where to go but the harbor. Seemed like a good idea, I'm sure. Hop on one of the ships, sail out of the harbor and dock somewhere safe. They came by the thousands and right behind them, the infected. Once it started, we weren't exactly ready to sail. We'd spent a month converting into a floating hotel. Most of the crew were gone or at least spread out. The captain left me in charge so I started doing my best to get things ready to leave. About half of our residents were sensible enough to start helping. The other half just watched, mouth agape, as the city they called home turned into a ruin.

"People, humans that is, are a herd animal, like cows or sheep. We want to make ourselves sound important so we call them tribes or communal groups, but we're just herds. I used to watch nature documentaries while on long cross continental voyages. Some predators like wolves learned that if they drove a herd of elk toward a cliff, the dumb things would run right off. Clever packs would use this as a main hunting tool. It's a lot less dangerous to make an elk hurt itself and come clean up the mess than it is to try and kill one. Prehistoric humans figured out the same thing. A cornered animal will fight, but a frightened animal will run as long as it doesn't have a wall in front of it. That's all I could think about as I saw people streaming into the harbor. We took on as many as we could. More than we could, really. We didn't have food or water to support that many.

"Soon as I realized these frightened people would doom us, too, I ordered the crew to cast off. We had people jumping from the dock onto the gangplanks. It's a freighter, not a passenger ship. Crew dock is twenty feet below the ship's deck. Short of a grapple, as soon as we detached the plank, getting on board the ship was hopeless. Still they ran up the boards as they fell into the harbor. We moved out into open water, and I saw people trying to swim out to us. The other ships were swarmed. Lucky for us, we broke off in time. Unlucky for us, that meant we slowly sailed away and had to watch what happened to all those people.

"This mass of people, like you'd see at a stadium or a concert, filled up the whole dock. Hundreds of them pushed right up to the edge, shouting into the harbor for the boats to come back. From where we were, you could see the back of the crowd. People would simply vanish. They'd fall and in a few minutes, someone else a few feet forward would be pulled down as well. The further the infected moved into the group, the quieter everything became. The first stage of the infection would render people speechless. Their cries for help would go silent as they turned to watch the abominations behind them.

"Finally, we could start to see them. I didn't understand what was happening for a while. Gorgeous women, like you'd see in a high class strip joint, moved forward through the crowd. They'd find a guy or woman who caught their interest and, in just a few moments, the infected slut would have the guy's dick in her mouth or her hand up the woman's pussy. That person would be absorbed into the massive orgy.

"At first, people thought it was funny or that the ones who got caught were lucky. One dumb bastard kept yelling that he wanted to go back. Then we saw what was really happening. One guy stood up by himself on top of a shipping container, waving out at the ships for help. Best I could tell he was middle aged, with a little too much weight. I don't know what he thought would happen. Even if we somehow came back, we'd have had to fight through hundreds of people to get to him. I guess you have to do something.

"One of the infected managed to climb on top of the container as well. He turned to fend her off, but she walked up to him, and he didn't resist at all. I could see the whole thing through binoculars. Her body glinted in the morning sun, perfect tear drop breasts jutting out in front of her and a big round ass wobbling behind her with each step. She reached him, dropped to her knees, pulled the guy's dick out, and started sucking him off.

"The guy looked like he enjoyed it. His hands went into her hair, and he thrust into her mouth as she sucked him off. I don't know why I watched, but it was something I needed to see. We all needed to understand what was happening. The guy shoved his cock as far in as he could and held it there, presumably while he was shooting a load down this girl's throat. The girl pulled away from him, wiped her mouth, and crawled back down into the writhing, panicked crowd.

"Other spectators cheered, but I kept my eyes on the man. He fell to his knees and started tearing at his clothes. I didn't understand until his shirt tore open. Back to the nature documentaries, they have those time lapses of things like mushrooms popping up and growing to full height in seconds. This man's chest morphed and changed in front of my eyes. Muscle turned to fatty tissue as breasts swelled up on his chest. Watching his face was like seeing someone age in reverse. Everything about it changed, and a new face formed, that of a bombshell porn star. His bald head sprouted platinum blonde hair. His pants dropped to his ankles as his dick shriveled up and went inside of him. Before I knew it, the middle aged man had changed into a woman any sane guy would gnaw off his arm to sleep with. I knew that to be true because my own dick got hard watching it happen.

"So that's it. That's the big secret about the infected. The virus can change a middle aged man into a twenty year old sex kitten in about fifteen minutes. Once we knew what to look for we saw it happening everywhere. Before long, the whole dock was filled with hundreds of big breasted beauties sucking and fucking one another and whoever was left human. It was a sight to behold, but it was more sinister than that.

"My attention turned to a tanker about two hundred yards off our port side -- two hundred yards closer to the infected herd. A single man and woman were on the deck, fucking like rabbits. Others on that ship had turned their attention to them. The boat was covered with people, but they didn't panic or run or anything, really. They stood and watched this couple fuck, entranced while the dock kept roiling with the churn of human flesh. I scanned the ship's crowd and saw it was worse. Men were jacking off either watching the pair on the boat or squinting to see the spectacle on the shore. Soon, women were on their knees, grabbing the closest cock and shoving it in their mouths. None of these people had been directly affected by the virus, but they were showing the hysterical symptoms. Pretty soon, the rutting pair on the deck had changed into two of the harlots. That seemed to wake up some of the spectators, but it was too late.

"I scanned my own ship, and sure enough, three men were watching and stroking their cocks. Several women had their hands down their pants, probably knuckle deep in their pussies. I knew what I had to do. I ordered the ones showing symptoms to be thrown overboard. I didn't have to explain. We threw thirteen into the bay. I never saw any of them surface, but I saw plenty of those things, their tits bobbing lewdly in the water.

"We put the throttle to full and put as much sea between us and those things as we could. That was six weeks ago. At original count, we had four hundred and seven souls on board. Today, we have ninety-two. One hundred and fifty-eight of the survivors went ashore on the fourth week. They simply wanted to chance it on dry land. Can't say I blame them. When the world's ending you want to be on your feet somewhere. I have sea legs, those folks didn't. We wished them luck. We lost the other one-fifty-seven to the things you lose people to in the apocalypse. Like I said, we didn't have enough food. People were injured, some were sick. We did our best. The wolves drove us off a cliff, after all.

"This brings us to three days ago. We need food. Fishing has sort of worked, but this boat isn't equipped for it. Our supply can't meet the demand. We need medicine, too. Despair is as much an enemy now as the virus. Saving one life might save a dozen. So I sent seven of my men to shore. I sent the ones with family on board to make sure they brought back the life boat. We're doing our best, but I'm not a fool. Initially, it seemed like a total success. They came back laden with food, medicine, and a shopping list of stuff that people had asked for. We got everything on board, but the waves were choppy. The fellow left manning the boat was Dan Gleeson, an insurance salesman who didn't know the first thing about boats. Wave tipped the boat as he scrambled up the rope ladder. With no way of getting it back, we had to watch the current take it off, leaving us with only two. The supplies survived at least, and I helped take it down to the lower compartments where we could store it. While we're doing an inventory, Sam, one of the scavengers, goes rigid and starts shaking. I'd seen it happen in the panic. I made an executive decision and abandoned that storage room, sealed it off, and hoped I was wrong.

"About four hours after we sealed the door, the banging started. We called out to Sam to see if he was still himself, but he wouldn't answer. Just the incessant bang of metal against the door. After twenty-four hours, we knew whatever was in there wasn't human any more. Even after everything we'd been through, people still panicked. We only had the one boat left and some folks made a run for it. I haven't done a count since then, but the few left the many behind.

"I've had the S.O.S. going since it happened. We've been searching for other ships since the panic. No one is coming. No one is out there. Even if they found us, they wouldn't help us. We could be infected. We are infected. The Canoy is out of fuel. We weren't ready to ship out when it all went to shit and the initial burn took three quarters of what we had. We've since burned the rest trying to get to a port, but without GPS well... I have sixty or seventy people stranded on a ship with an infected locked up down below. We have lifeboats for fifty if we overload each by ten, and it's a thirty mile swim to shore at this point. I don't see a good way out of this one. That's what I explained to everyone. We took a vote.

"You see -- and it's important that whoever finds this understands -- the infected don't get sick. I'm not sure anything can hurt them, actually. They all seem so happy. Since we fled the city, we've been followed by nothing but strife. We did everything to escape becoming one of those brainless bimbos, and all we accomplished was starvation and madness. All of us fought until we can't fight any more. I'm certain other pockets of survivors are out there. Maybe Europe is safe or maybe they were able to stop it at the Mississippi. But we're not in those places. We're here, on this boat, with Sam.

"It had to be unanimous, and it was. Didn't even take long for everyone to agree. The food was locked up with Sam anyway. One supply run had already doomed us, another might just make things worse. I started this by saying someone would open that door. I reckon it should be me. God forgive us." -- Henry Yates, Captain of the Canoy.

***

Yates closed his journal. Not knowing what else to do with the book, he left it on his desk. He looked at himself in the mirror, knowing his identity would soon be gone. As he looked at himself, he realized it had already gone. Gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes stared back at him, a grim specter of the once hardy man. He managed a weak smile.

On the deck, he passed others who had the same signs of fatigue and hunger about them. They watched him silently, knowing he was going to seal their fate. As he passed, he tried to think of what to say, but nothing sufficiently appropriate came to mind. Again he smiled, at the end of it all, everything seemed funny.

His steps clanged in rhythm with the constant banging as he descended to the lower decks. He passed more of his passengers who watched him silently. All of them waited, patiently and implacably, for the inevitable. A few smiled back, and one woman grabbed his hand. She was older, late sixties, one of the original refugees from the quarantine zone. Yates wondered what she was thinking. He wondered if she was excited about the prospect of being young again or terrified by the idea of losing herself entirely. All of them had seen the transformed, but none of them knew how much of the original person remained.

The corridor leading to Sam's confinement was vacant. Yates reached the locked door, and the banging finally came to a halt. Without a doubt in his mind, he knew one of the gorgeous big tittied sluts waited on the other side. In the weeks since they set sail, he had jerked off in his bunk every single night, recalling the massive orgy on the shore as they escaped. At least, if he were to become a mindless slut, he would get the pleasure of fucking one before he lost himself. He took a deep breath and turned the lock.

The door opened and Yates stepped inside. "What the fuck?"

Sam stood a few feet inside the door, but it wasn't a porn starlet version of his old crewmate. Sam had become hulking mass of muscle and between his legs hung a fat, thick cock with balls the size of grapefruit. The creature stroked his cock, gushing cum out of its head like a gurgling faucet. Yates tried to run, but Sam quickly grabbed him. The behemoth looked at the smaller man with a curious tilt of the head. Sam moved his free hand down to his cock and grabbed some of thick cream from his last orgasm. The captain watched with horror as Sam brought up his cum and rubbed it on Yates skin.

Yates knew he should be revolted. The thought of any man's cum being applied liberally to his skin should cause him to retch, but this was different. The virus, Yates realized. The places where Sam's cum touched skin began to tingle, and the urge to run evaporated. In its place grew an overwhelming need to get more of the transforming spunk from the Alpha.

Cautiously, Sam released his grip. Yates collapsed to the ground. He could hear the monster grunting above him, and he could sense the thick cock only a few inches away. The strange sensation spread to his chest, and he knew it wouldn't be much longer. Yates pulled his shirt off, still somewhat shocked as most of his chest hair came with it. He also noticed his unshaven face had grown smooth. Fatty tissue bubbled up on his chest. His nipples grew rounder and larger as they pushed outward by the expanding flesh. Yates brought his hands up to touch his new breasts as they grew larger and more supple. He squeezed them, sending pleasurable shocks throughout his body as new nerve endings developed. His lips parted, and a small gasp escaped.