She Came In ...

"She Came In Through the Bathroom Window"

She came in through the bathroom window. That's how they got us.

We thought we were doing pretty good up until then, all things considered. We were caught out in the open when it happened, driving down I-35 to visit family in Kansas City. We only made it as far as Des Moines before we hit one of the quarantine barriers. They were such a stupid fucking idea, really. The government knew they couldn't wall off the whole fucking Midwest, so they decided to put in traffic stops. Seriously, traffic stops. As if they bothered using roads.

We managed to get turned around (and that was an ordeal all by itself--one of them clung to the bumper for about a mile) but by that time the highways were getting pretty crowded, and the radio announcers were telling everyone to find someplace safe and hole up until it all blew over. Mal and I, well, we were about six hundred miles south of home and didn't know anybody in Iowa, and the names of the public shelters were just names to us. We didn't know where to go; all we knew was that we needed to get off the road while we still could. We didn't have the right instincts for this. We were both from big cities, Mal from San Diego and me from New York, and to us safety meant bright lights and police. If we'd found some dinky-ass farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, maybe I wouldn't even be writing this right now. Maybe Mallory wouldn't have

Sorry, couldn't finish that sentence. Not yet. She was beautiful, you know that? I mean, really beautiful, not the kind of beautiful that you became after you got infected. She had long chestnut hair that went all the way down to the small of her back and swayed when she moved, and a gorgeous butt that had another sway of its own. It always seemed to move just out of time with her hair, like they were in a syncopated rhythm that always kept me guessing. I fell in love with her during Freshman Orientation, when she led us on a walking tour of campus. If you watched her walk like that for five minutes, you'd have fallen in love with her too, but I was lucky enough that she fell in love back.

We had a good long time together. Nothing can take that away from us, even if the scientists never find a cure and humanity gets overrun and all that's left of Mal and I is a bunch of pictures that nobody ever looks at and this story that nobody knows how to read anymore. We loved good and hard for the time we had each other. That's important. That matters. I keep reminding myself of that, because otherwise I start thinking about how it's all my fault.

Because let's face it, it is. I was driving. I could have gone for one of the farmhouses, but all I could think of was that old black-and-white movie with the people trapped in the farmhouse with the things pounding outside, and even if that didn't happen, I figured we'd probably get shot because everyone was saying on the radio how dangerous it was to go near strangers and I could only imagine what some hick farmer was hearing on Faux News and who knew what he'd do when two good-looking people came to the door?

It still makes me laugh, or it would if I wasn't afraid that I wouldn't be able to stop. The most dangerous virus in the history of civilization, and the most obvious symptom is that you become absolutely gorgeous. Crazy fucking genetic engineering shit, you know? Wouldn't surprise me one damn bit if some big cosmetics company accidentally made it up in their labs.

But anyway, we found a town, not big enough to call it a city but we figured it was better than nothing. We drove around until we found a neighborhood that looked deserted--that happened pretty fast, they said on the radio. (Not "they" they. They don't talk. I don't think they're unintelligent, I think they just don't think the same way we do anymore.) They--"they" they--went through a whole town, spreading from house to house so fast that it was over almost before you knew it had started. One infected became two became four became eight and they spread out and pretty soon, bam! Everyone in town was one of them. Then they started sniffing around for more people to infect. Someone said that they could smell our pheromones from twenty miles away. The look on their face when they catch a scent, it's...terrifying and beautiful, all at the same time. What "awesome" used to mean before the surfers took it away.

We found a house that looked pretty sturdy, we grabbed all that we could carry and we ran inside. After that, we figured it was just a matter of barricading ourselves inside and waiting until somebody found a cure. They talked a lot about cures on the radio a few days ago. Now the broadcasts just pick up moaning and heavy breathing. One time there were squishing noises for about twenty minutes. I think one of them was using the mike as a dildo.

Not that we listened much to the radio right away. We were too busy. Ever actually try to barricade yourself inside a modern house? What am I saying, if you're able to read this you've probably done it. But you know how much work it is. Every picture window, every sliding glass door, every single fucking entrance is a gap in your defenses. And all you have to work with is the furniture. We gave up half the house as indefensible before we even started, focused our attention on bringing the canned food into the bedroom before we forgot about even trying to get to the kitchen anymore. We didn't know how long we had, but we felt like we were on a timer. The house was abandoned, the town was abandoned, but we didn't want to rely on that, you know? Not when it only takes one.

Eventually, we got things set up, though. The two of us managed to move a chest of drawers into the bathroom, slide it up against the outer door good and tight. The bed went up against the door to the master bedroom, and we pulled apart a couch and a couple of chairs, used it to board up the windows. That left us the master bedroom and the bathroom it was connected to. We figured that was as good a setup as we could hope for--a place to sleep, a place to pee, running water, and a food supply that looked like it could last us a week or two. The barricades wouldn't hold off an army or anything, but we were hoping that we wouldn't see one. Unless it was on our side, of course. We were hoping to see one of those pretty badly.

Once we got settled in, we pulled out the laptop and started looking for a network. Took us a while--the signal was really shitty no matter where we moved the laptop. It was a little better in the bathroom, but even there, we wound up having to do some pretty clever shit with our cell phones to get a usable wireless connection. But that's what I went to college for. It's what I'm good at.

Was good at. Gotta start remembering to use that past tense.

Anyhow, we went online and found pretty much the same thing everyone was saying. Don't let yourself get caught in the open; don't try to fight one if you don't have to; don't let them touch you, don't try to touch them; if you think you've been exposed to one, don't have sex or even masturbate; and if you wind up having to fight one, use ranged weapons and aim for the head. The same kind of shit they said in zombie movies, except that even the "fast zombies" in the movies couldn't outrun a horse in short bursts. (So fucking scary the first time I saw one coming up behind my car at thirty miles an hour!)

Other than that, it was all the usual internet bullshit. Lots of speculation on where it came from, plenty of ideas on how to stop it (always from guys who started their posts with, "Now, I'm not a biologist, but it seems to me...") There was even some porn. Rule 34 in action, you know? Someone had a webcam that was still active in a room full of them, and you could watch them going at it. Because that's the thing. They didn't screw to spread the infection, they screwed because they really really really liked to have sex. That's how you could tell them apart from zombies, in the end. Even if you bent all the rules about "fast zombies vs. slow zombies" and "undead vs. infected with a disease" and everything else, the zombies in the movies never ate their own kind. And these things fucked each other like crazy.

We only stayed on the Internet for about twenty minutes, because we didn't know how long the electricity would last and we didn't want to waste our battery. Then we went back in the bedroom and slept for a little while, but it wasn't good sleep. We were both absolutely fried from nerves and exhaustion, but we were also both strung so tight we vibrated. Don't know how many times I woke up out of a nightmare thinking they'd gotten inside, but it was too many. Mal was the same way, I could tell. Normally, she's such a deep sleeper she goes practically boneless, but tonight she was shifting position every five minutes. And she whimpered in her sleep, too. That's one of those things you can't ever explain to someone who's single, the way that you wake up when your girlfriend has bad dreams.

Eventually, we made love. I didn't think we were going to at first; we both kind of felt weird, having sex when that had suddenly become a sign of the End Times. But we needed each other. We needed that intimate contact, that connection you only get when you're touching skin to naked skin. And even more than that, we needed...look, I know this sounds kind of bad, but we needed something to do. We were afraid to turn on the TV or the radio, we didn't want to use the computer, we couldn't sleep...sex felt kind of perverse, but it was better than just sitting there worrying.

We talked to each other the whole time, in low whispers. I'd never been much of a talker during sex, apart from maybe an "Oh God!" or two, but that night I told Mal just how beautiful she was and how much I loved fucking her. She whispered back to me, talking about how much she loved feeling my cock inside of her and how much she loved the way I touched her. It let us know that we were still human, I think. They didn't talk. They couldn't say, "I love you." They just rutted like animals. We were making love.

I keep going back to that moment, even knowing I shouldn't. I don't know if I'm just trying to lose myself in the memory of the last perfect time we had together, or if maybe this is a sign that I'm starting to lose it, but oh god she was beautiful. Her skin was so warm, and her nipples felt stiff and tight against my tongue where I licked them. When she went down on me, it felt so soft and slick and wet that I almost lost it right there. Even then, when she couldn't talk because her mouth was full of my dick, I could see the gleam in her eyes that told me she knew exactly what she was doing and exactly how much I fucking loved it. One of them could never look at you like that. One of them could never tease you with lips and tongue and fingers like that. And when she slid her pussy onto mine, whispering, "oh, fuck yes, you're right on my clit..." I knew I wanted to make her come. I reached down and pressed right at the spot where the base of my cock was sliding in and out of her hot, wet pussy and I rubbed in little circles, and then her sentences broke down into random words like "fuck oh yes feels so fucking touch me oh good feels fuck can't I oh fuck!" and she let out this little baby squeal like she wanted to scream but she remembered she was trying to be quiet even when she came. And when I heard that, I couldn't hold back either and I felt my balls tighten and my hips strain and I came inside her harder than I knew I even could.

Sorry if I'm embarrassing you with this, by the way, but fuck it. The world's fucking ending, right? Either they're going to find a cure and I'm going to be way too happy to be alive to care if anyone knows that my girlfriend and I fucked each other's brains out, or they're not and it won't matter anymore. We had mad crazy beautiful passionate sex and if it was the last time we're ever going to get to fuck as normal human beings, it was at least a really fucking wonderful time. I know that matters. Even if there's nobody around to read it, the words are there.

After the epic sex, we slept. It was better sleep. We held each other and basked in each other and drifted off into dreamless sleep where the nightmares couldn't get at us for a long while. But when we woke up, we heard the noises from the bathroom. It was like we woke up into all the bad dreams we'd escaped when we slept.

It wasn't that we'd forgotten about the bathroom window. We did our best with it. But it was one of those weird little ventilation windows high up on the wall, the kind that open at the bottom like a door instead of sliding up and down. And it opened outwards. We couldn't really nail it shut like we did the bedroom windows. So we'd done the best we could, putting a board across it and hammering the nails into the frame and the window both. We'd hoped that it was too high up and too small of an opening to need to do any more.

We were wrong. The noises that woke us up came from one of them, hanging from the bathroom window and yanking on it until the nails came out. The squeaking noises were the nails pulling free, the thumps were her losing her footing or her grip and hitting the wall or the ground, and the last terrible slithery thump that we heard just as our brains were coming unfogged from sleep and we were realizing what kind of shit we were in? That was her pulling herself up and over and squirming through the window and falling into the bathtub.

Wasn't enough to kill her, of course. They're tougher than we are, they heal faster, and judging from some of the videos I saw of people fighting them, I think they actually like pain. Maybe it's just another kind of stimulation for them, I don't know. But I know that Mal opened the door just in time to see her get up, smile that "come fuck me" smile they all have, and make for the bedroom like greased lightning.

It was so surreal, what happened next. She came charging through the door, and it was like time was doing strange things. On the one hand, it felt like I was thinking in fast motion. I noticed all the little things about her that the videos and the descriptions couldn't catch, like the way her skin was so smooth and flawless that it almost looked wrong--like seeing an actor who'd had all their wrinkles digitally removed, only in real life. I saw her eyes; I don't know if they were really larger than a human's, or if they were just open so wide that they seemed larger. But the irises were definitely silver, I remember that. And the hair, such a bright red that it looked like she'd gotten a dye job. On her head, that was. All the body hair was gone. And I noticed her breasts, too. I couldn't not notice them--she was running at full speed with no bra, and her tits had to be double-d cups. It was like staring at a caricature of a human being, drawn by someone who'd only ever seen us in porn films. I remember thinking that very distinctly.

But on the other hand, my body was moving as slow as my mind was fast. I stumbled to my feet, thinking that I had to get between her and Mal so that I could shove it back into the bathroom and--but "and" never materialized, she was on top of Mal too fast. She pounced on Mal, tackling her to the floor and letting the motion carry her right into a deep, passionate, soulful kiss full on my girlfriend's lips. Mal pushed and shoved and tried to knock her away, but the other girl...she was so determined. So single-minded. Everywhere Mal wasn't pushing away, she was pressing and rubbing and moaning the whole time like it was the best sex she'd ever had.

I was hard in seconds. I keep trying not to feel guilty about that; I know they're supposed to have some kind of weird pheromone thing that primes your body for sex, I keep telling myself that I couldn't have avoided an erection any more than Mal could avoid getting wet between her legs. But the thing of it is, the worst thing of it is, I know I'm lying to myself. It was hot. It was terrible and terrifying and it ended my girlfriend's existence as a sentient being just as surely as if the other girl had shot her in the head, but it was also unbelievably hot. This thing that used to be a woman was making love to my girlfriend with a devotion more intense than anything I'd ever imagined, and even though Mal was terrified and desperate and panicky, she was also losing her fucking mind with arousal. The girl was kissing and licking and rubbing and grinding everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and I was watching it all as Mal's eyes started to unfocus the way they always did when she was paying more attention to her clit than to the outside world. Her struggles got weaker, less co-ordinated, and even though she was still wriggling around a lot, it wasn't to try to push the other girl away anymore. It was just mindless motion.

I don't know how long I just watched them. Like I said, time seemed to be playing games. I know I got my head together eventually, grabbed the comforter off the bed and used it like a net to tackle the girl off of Mal. She struggled, but I sat on her chest and grabbed her head and smacked it against the floor until she stopped moving. Then I went over to check on Mal. I heard myself whispering, "please say she didn't come, please say she didn't come, please say she didn't come..."

But she had. Her eyes had that dreamy, post-coital glow to them, and they were already turning silver. I mean, it wouldn't have mattered in the long run. Once you get their...virus, or chemical, or whatever the hell it is inside you, it's just a matter of time, right? You think you're okay, you think you're handling your shit, but you can't stop getting horny and telling yourself that orgasm equals death doesn't convince your erection to go down or your clit to stop throbbing and pretty soon all you can think about is how good it would feel to come. And then I guess you don't think at all anymore. Or maybe you do, just not the way normal humans do. Guess I'll find out, soon.

Because Mal kissed me. She was still sluggish...I mean, relatively sluggish. She wasn't as fast as the thing that took her. But she got her tongue in my mouth while I was still crying over losing her, and even though I managed to push her away and get into the bathroom and lock the door, I've still got the taste of her in my mouth. And I know what that means.

So do you, if you're reading this. I'm posting it everywhere I can find, but I'm getting more and more 404 errors every time I look. I don't know who'll read it, and I don't know how long it'll be readable, but I'm going to post it anyway. The words matter, even if nobody ever sees them. Our time matters, even once it's over.

And once I'm done posting it from my cell phone, I'm going to open the door. I can hear them in the bedroom having sex--I guess I didn't hit her hard enough to kill her. That actually makes me feel good. If they ever do find a cure, it means I'm not a murderer. And if they don't, I guess I finally get to have that threesome every guy dreams about, right?

They're getting harder to ignore. I just spent five minutes listening to them moan. Guess that means I have to wrap this up, before I get so horny and distracted I forget how to post. I want to think that I'll make love to Mal one last time, remembering the way she whispered last night as I literally come my brains out. But I kind of suspect that I'll be thinking about the way she looked when her resistance collapsed and she gave in to the relentless pleasure and let herself be fucked into oblivion. Either way, though, I'll be thinking about her.

If you're reading this...stay safe. Find a cure. And try to remember that there's someone in Iowa who could use it, ok?

Signing off now.

THE END