Brian Steele - 4POCALYPSE - Four Tales of a Dark Future

Don’t get me wrong; in this age where an attractive woman who is alone and lacks survival skills can barter sex for food or protection, my wife was more than a warm body. She was smarter than I was, for one thing. It was her suggestion that we take over the hotel, seal it off and make it our home. She was the one who took in strays from the street, made sure security patrols roamed the building and watches were posted on the roof, and organized everything from kitchen duties to supply runs. She had worked for the Office of Emergency Services, before everything fell apart. She also loved watching horror movies. That made her the perfect person to be in charge when the apocalypse came.

I wrote children’s books. I think that’s what attracted her to me. Her life was geared toward surviving death and destruction, what if the big one hit, what if there was an environmental disaster, what if there was an outbreak of disease? Her life was all about dealing with the what ifs. The fact that she could lose herself in the novels I wrote for the 7 to 14 crowd, although I did have a small adult fan base, was a comfort to her, an escape. I was no J.K. Rowling, but my Lily Berlin world-hopping adventure series set between the World Wars sold well; well enough to pay the bills, but not so well that I was recognizable or anything remotely resembling a celebrity.

We lived together a few years, and after we got married we found out we couldn’t have kids. She couldn’t have kids. I always said we whenever the subject came up among family or friends because I knew it hurt her deeply, which is why she became mom to so many struggling to survive after the spread of the smiler sickness and the utter collapse of modern civilization.

Jillian also had a healthy appetite for sex. It made her feel good and it helped her relax. These days it can be a struggle to relax for even a few minutes, and that can lead to burnout, carelessness, and an ugly death.

The fact that she still loved me after my face was ruined in the early days of the smiler sickness outbreak only proved how strong her love was for me.

“Come on, Bellemer,” she said, shoving me back against a wall in a shadowed corner of the store room and trapping me there, one hand in my hair and the other on a metal shelf behind me. Most people who saw my name in writing said it wrong until they heard it pronounced. Jillian said my name properly, this time drawing out the belle-merrr in a soft and sexy growl. She had been taking inventory of supplies, everything from dry goods to survival gear, and I had been helping, playing secretary as she called out forty vacuum sealed bags of flour and sixteen Leatherman Multi-Tools, with sheaths. We had been at it for hours now.

“Jilly, what—”

“Let’s fool around.”

I remember sighing, exasperated. There was a look in her eyes, hurt and anger, that was there and gone in a flash. I’ll never forget that, and I’ll always regret it.

A grin had broken into the storeroom the night before. A loading dock side door had been left unlocked and the grin had torn at packages and smashed bottles and jars and made an incredible mess trying to get through a locked door, trying to get to the living, until it was discovered and put down.

We were in the storeroom taking inventory, deciding what was usable and what was not.

The idea that a grin had gotten in here had me as tense as hell. I wasn’t a fighter. I was the guy who went over there when told go over there. Jillian was the fighter. She was the leader, the one who made the decisions, and most of them were tough calls. Now she was confronting her fear and unease and hoping to dispel it with a quick fuck.

Don’t get me wrong; Jillian may have been almost forty, a year younger than me, but she still had a body that was perfect in my eyes. Despite great physical strength and a sharp, commanding mind she was also hot, and usually got me hot and bothered, but not this time. The grin had come too close, stumbling around in the basement until a security patrol discovered it while most of us slept in hotel rooms upstairs, and I was unnerved.

“How about I suck your cock?”

“No,” I said. I was holding a clipboard, my other hand braced against steel shelving.

Jillian leaned forward and breathed on my neck. It was a thing she had always done and it drove me wild. Her lips might graze my skin when she did that, but for the most part it was her breath, soft and hot and immediate.

“Come on, Louis,” she whispered, her voice as soft as her breath on my neck. “Let me get your motor running. Then you can go for a ride.”

The tone of her voice and the look on her face got to me. “Well,” I said, getting as hard as a rock as she gave me her lopsided grin and got down on her knees. “Okay.”

She unzipped my fly, reached into my pants for my cock, and then laughed. I was so hard she couldn’t get me out of my pants, so she loosened my belt and pulled my pants down. I wasn’t wearing any underwear. Underwear was just one more thing to wash, and we had to wash most things by hand since the power went out; the generators were put to more important needs, like heat and light.

“Mmmm,” she said. Her tongue flicked over the head of my cock and I felt that familiar and always-fresh jolt of sexual electricity race across my skin. I nearly dropped the clipboard and grabbed the steel shelf to steady myself.

My left hand slipped in something, and the very last shred of my consciousness that hadn’t been pumped into my prick wondered about the slick substance on my fingers.

I looked down at Jilly, she was right, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck… and I glanced at my hand.

I had a handful of vibrant green snot.

I saw my first grin on the Golden Gate Bridge. How picturesque. Jillian and I had been living in Pacific Heights for 15 years when the outbreak happened. While people were dying in other parts of America and the world at large, my wife and I were taking a Sunday stroll. We’ll never know why the government kept things under wraps for so long. They didn’t get first responders like Jillian involved until there were confirmed outbreaks of the smiler sickness from coast to coast, and by then it was far too late to do anything.

We had taken Friday off, meaning Jillian stayed home from the office and I stayed away from the laptop and my stories. The plan was to enjoy a three-day staycation, a short vacation at home. We didn’t even leave the house until Sunday morning. We ordered in pizza and Chinese food, and watched old movies and bullshit reality TV. She didn’t see or hear any breaking news. Bad shit was part of Jillian’s job, and being on vacation, she wanted to avoid any news. Besides, she had her Blackberry. If anything did happen, the office could reach her. I peeked at the headlines on Google News from time to time, but it was all the same old stuff. We made love, too. Not as much as we did when we were younger, but enough. I’m not telling you that so you’ll think I’m some kind of stud who was banging his wife at every opportunity. I’m mentioning it because it was the last time things were ever the way they were.

While we were enjoying each other’s company, the smiler sickness had come to San Francisco. It spread fast, by grin attacks—primary transmission, accidental contact with body fluids—secondary transmission, and by flies—tertiary transmission. I’ll say more about that later. By the time Jillian and I drove out to the bridge for our late morning walk, the city basking under a summer sun was doomed. We had no idea. Our walk must have taken place during a lull in the violence that is so much a part of the smiler sickness. To us, everything seemed normal.

Jillian loved the bridge. It was a long walk from one side to the other and back again, but the ocean air was always bracing and the views of the Pacific on one side and San Francisco, the bay and Marin County on the other were incredible when they weren’t completely obscured by the fog.