Chapter 1

Tommy was one of dozens of people lying prone, piled up in the back of a ... well, a truck, is what Tommy assumed. Not a cattle car, which Tommy was familiar with, but a ... well a long, rectangular metal box, which was moving. Maybe the carrying compartment of a moving van.

The smell was horrendous, which he quickly determined was because the people around him were filthy. It looked like none of them had changed clothes, let alone bathed, in the past week or more. He quickly put all that information together and determined that he had been loaded into this truck along with dozens of Infected people. He had been stripped of his weapons, and one of his dogtags was missing ... which probably meant the army thought he was Infected, marking him as KIA.

He whispered a few mild curses out loud to himself, just to reassure himself that he was able to speak English, as opposed to babbling.

The next big decision was whether or not to try to kill the rest of the people locked up with him. If they also woke up sane after the creature died, as he had, then he obviously shouldn’t kill them. But if they were still Infected, then his only chance at survival was to kill them now, silently, as they slept.

Unfortunately, it turned out that a few of them were actually conscious, and his quiet, whispered cursing had drawn their attention. Four of them near him sat up and looked around. He hadn’t had time to hide -- ‘hide where?’ was an issue he never had time to address -- but they did no more than glance at him. Briefly, hope flared in Tommy heart, hope that the others were also sane like a normal person. Then they began their babbling. Within a minute, the entire truckload of Infected were awake, and a few tried to stand up, though they soon fell over when the truck turned a corner.

But even as the Corporal cringed away from their inevitable attack, they just plain ignored him. And babbled louder and louder.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Shut up!” he yelled, holding his hands over his ears.

The group immediately fell silent as their eyes curiously focused on him. He was so freaked out, he couldn’t even breathe. Eventually their focus moved away from him, and they began to look around again, but they remained silent, so Tommy just took it as a win and cautiously began to relax a bit, while also backing himself into a corner.

Ten or twenty or thirty minutes later -- it was hard to tell time without a watch while stuck in a windowless van, lit only by a few holes and cracks in the sides and roof, filled with monster humans -- the adrenaline had left and Tommy was physically and mentally crashing. He hadn’t been awake very long, so he honestly couldn’t understand his weariness, but he felt as though he had been doing heavy labor all day and needed to sleep.

He looked around again. Nothing even remotely soft was in sight, except for the people, who had been packed in tightly enough they created maybe one and a half layers of living carpet. By this point, he was fairly certain these ‘people’ weren’t going to hurt him, so ... so ... He was just so exhausted, mentally and physically. He felt like he was going to collapse, but every surface within view seemed to consist primarily of elbows and knees and the occasional clear spots of uncomfortable hard metal. He lay down, cushioned his head with his own hands, and closed his eyes.

That attempt lasted all of ten seconds, if that, as the truck bounced along the road with no shocks at all, apparently.

Rubbing the newly acquired sore spots on his skull, he sat back and up and looked around again. The only soft things in view were ... Hmmm ... If the Infecteds were going to ignore him to begin with, he might as well push his luck.

He crawled around until he found the woman with what was probably the largest chest in the truck and moved over to her. She was a black woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, sitting upright and clad in what used to be a decent blouse and skirt. Her assets weren’t the biggest he had ever seen -- for that matter, he had an overweight aunt that was bigger -- but they were the biggest available nearby that he had found. The light was pretty bad, but her hair and makeup looked like they were in ruins, made worse by the vacant look in her eyes. She smelled a bit sweaty, but everyone else in the truck did too, so he hardly noticed at that point.

He whispered, “Sorry bout this, but...” He reached out and gently pushed her flat on her back, so that her boobage flattened and spread a little bit. She was obviously wearing a bra, so it didn’t spread out too much, but it was enough and it looked soft.

He pushed away the thought of what his mama and gran would do to him if they could see him now as he lay down on his side, placing his head on her left breast, and sliding one hand under her head to hopefully keep her skull from cracking against someone else’s skull or the hard metal floor during the bumpy ride. Speaking quietly, he said, “If there’s any human left in there, I apologize, but I want to rest a bit and you make a good pillow. So ... just hold still for a while? Okay? Good monster ... that’s a good monster.”

For a moment, it almost seemed like she was purring. Or maybe it was growling.

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the bouncing and swaying of the truck. Despite the ridiculous situation, he fell asleep after only a couple minutes.

He awoke to renewed screaming babbles, a tilted floor, and a surge of movement.

The truck had stopped, and the trailer seemed to be parked on an incline, tilting down to the now open exit doors. The Infected people were spewing nonsense at the tops of their lungs while they swarmed and crawled and stumbled to the exit, apparently intent on chasing something or someone. All except for Tommy’s pillow, who was screaming, though she didn’t try to get up until Tommy sat up himself.

He stood and stumbled forward amid the jostling, following the crowd out of the trailer, into an outside area of noisy chaos.

The truck trailer -- not a moving van after all -- was basically dumping the Infected past a tall chainlink fence, having backed down a steep incline and through a gate just barely wide enough to admit it. Soldiers lined the fence, dressed in weird yellow outfits which roomily covered their entire bodies, with large square helmets with clear windows in front, looking like they were extras from a bad Science Fiction film. They were armed with ... well, Tommy wasn’t certain, but given how they were being used, he guessed they were cattle prods.

Fortunately for the soldiers, it looked like the only Infected in the immediate area were the ones from the truck. Still, even that small number could tear down the fence. Not that Infected people coordinated their efforts, but their mob mentality could easily lead them to tear apart or knock down obstacles between the mob and their target. But the mob wasn’t targeting the soldiers for some reason. Maybe the weird suits were why they were being ignored? Or maybe the suits plus something else? Tommy had no clue.

He hurried over to the nearest soldier and tried to speak to him, but the noise from the screaming Infected was almost deafening ... Actually, as soon as he thought about it and listened, it wasn’t just the babbled screams. There was some kind of hissing, electronic, static noise happening too, from ... somewhere nearby. He tried to get closer so one of the soldiers could hear him, but he got too close and, with a jolt of pain, was knocked unconscious when one of the prods touched his chest.

An unknown amount of time later, he regained consciousness ... again.

The first thing he noticed was that his pillow woman from the truck was laying next to him, with her breasts pushing up against his head. She hadn’t had the mental acuity to actually lift his head off the ground, but she had somehow worked out that her tits and his head were supposed to be together.

Upon a moment’s reflection spent looking at her in the sunlight, imagining how she’d look if she was cleaned up a bit, he had no objection to the notion. For that matter, she didn’t even have a ring on her finger, so she was presumably single. Not that he could take her dark-skinned self home to meet his family back down in Georgia, but ... He shook his head to clear his thoughts and sat up.

They were ... maybe on the outskirts of Los Angeles? The guess was confirmed when he noticed a nearby road sign welcoming him to San Bernadino, which he recalled seeing on the Eastern side of a map of the Los Angeles area. Huh. And ... a chain link fence that ran as far as the eye could see, keeping him inside the city. Though he obviously couldn’t see around the city, the fence seemed to stretch out forever in both directions.

Actually ... there was more than one fence. A hundred yards or more past the first fence, was a second one, topped with barbed wire. And the second one was still being worked on. Kind of. The fence was done, but workers were building guard towers. He couldn’t make out the details, but he occasionally caught a bit of reflected sunlight from the completed towers, a glint he remembered from basic training. Sniper rifles and scopes. The intervening distance was mostly clear, and he occasionally saw felled trees. Not a clear line of sight all the way, but the Infected ... prisoners? ... didn’t hide, so the sniper posts would easily be able to track any movement.

The truck and soldiers were gone, though the dirt and grass on the other side of the fence’s gate still showed their recent presence.

A moment’s reflection led him to realize that L.A. was being cut off from the rest of the country. The city, already overrun by a few million insane, Infected humans, was going to be used as a prison. Well, not a prison exactly. A quarantine zone? Concentration camp?

Whatever you wanted to call it, it was surrounded by guards and snipers who would, no doubt, kill anyone attempting to leave the city. He briefly considered climbing the fence and trying to be noticed and heard without getting shot, but no, he’d be dead long before he got within hearing range of a normal person. He needed a plan.

Maybe they were keeping everyone penned up for easy processing once someone found a cure? Or maybe, with the monsters dead, the Infected insanity would wear off, like it apparently had with him? Maybe there were other Infected who had recovered, same as him. Together, they could work out a plan, if he could find them.

He stood up and offered a hand to help his buxom friend up. She ignored the hand, but stood anyway.

“Well, come on, Tits. Let’s go see what we can find out. And let’s hope all the rest of y’all are still ignoring me. Or, maybe some others are waking up sane like me too.”

She said, “Umflarg netin. Umpf.”

“Exactly.” He started walking towards the city. “Hey, you got a boyfriend?”

“Tharuw em.”

“Good to hear. Maybe we can find some food, too. I’ll buy ya dinner.”

Her head bounced a bit, which he decided meant ‘yes’.

The next few hours were among the most surreal of his life.

First and most fortunately, the Infected continued to ignore him. He could walk among them without even a single one screaming and charging at him, trying to kill him.

Well, at one point, he climbed to a building roof and yelled as loud as he could, trying to locate anyone else who might have retained or regained their mental faculties. When he yelled like that, every single Infected as far as he could see stopped and turned to stare at him. Once he had been silent for a minute, they slowly returned to what they were doing before.

And that was the weirdest thing: They were trying to return to their previous lives.

For example, he led Tits into a grocery store to investigate some activity. Inside, a few women were pushing grocery carts around and putting seemingly random things into the carts. Mostly food items, but one woman had put a probably-not-for-sale decorative potted plant into her cart, and another had taken a cardboard display stand. A couple stockers were filling the shelves with food and other items taken from the rear of the store. While the items were astonishingly carefully lined up in neat little rows of products, they were putting things on random shelves, with cans of dogfood next to boxes of cereal. The check-out clerks would pick up customers’ items one at a time, look at them, then mash the cash register buttons randomly. The customers would hand over random things to the clerks, things which were only occasionally actual money, and the bag boys would try to put everything in bags. (Tommy found it hilarious when one extra-large customer pulled off her panties -- size XXXXXL if Tommy was any judge -- and handed them to the clerk, who carefully folded the undergarment and put it in her cash drawer. The clerk then slowly considered his checkout drawer, then carefully handed the woman two pennies in change.)

Cars were also in motion, so Tommy was very careful walking about. Oddly, though fender benders were common, he had yet to see any car or truck hit an actual person, possibly because none of the cars were driving faster than 15 or 20 mph. On the other hand, they walked past three fatal motorcycle accidents that afternoon, so apparently the finesse required to reliably balance a two-wheeled vehicle was beyond them.

He passed office buildings where a few men sat at desks, stabbing and scratching papers with pencils and pens. Waitresses served plates of food, though most of it was uncooked. He saw a gas station attendant make three failed attempts to gas up a car before successfully inserting the nozzle into the fuel tank. The attendant was even able to stop the flow and remove the nozzle after overflowing the tank only by a few gallons.

Most of this was observed in passing, as he and Tits and most of the Infected population walked further into the city. Slowly walked, that is. Meandered, really. And it probably wasn’t actually properly Los Angeles. Having only passed through the city one time before, Tommy had forgotten how spread out LA and its suburbs actually were; plus it really wasn’t designed for people to walk across town.

Of course, he wasn’t walking anywhere in particular. He wasn’t a local, after all, and didn’t really have anywhere special to go. And despite repeated inquiries, Tits still refused to tell him where she lived. Or even what her actual name was, or any details about her life.

Well, technically, that might not be true. She might be trying to tell him all about herself, but it only came across as babbles.

When the sun began approaching the horizon, Tommy began thinking about food. He actually wasn’t hungry. At all. Which was really freaking weird, since he was certain it had been days since his last meal. There was no way that fence had been put up in a single day.

Thirsty? Sure. He had stopped more than once to drink from a water fountain -- he and Tits ignored the ‘colored/whites only’ signs and no one nearby objected -- and he had noticed that Tits and all the other Infecteds still drank regularly. Unfortunately, a minority of them had forgotten what bathrooms were for, but even with those, the clothes were only stained in the front. No shit stains in back.

He stopped at the next diner they came across and went inside. The handful of patrons were getting random food orders from the kitchen -- at this particular diner, over half the plates had actual cooked food -- but they weren’t actually eating. They just sat there for a while, babbling, then got up and left.

He picked up a burger from a table occupied by a father, mother, and two children, and took a bite. It ... well, it was food. Not particularly good food, but it was cooked and tasted burger-like. He swallowed the bite and ... nothing. Still not hungry, but still able to eat. The food didn’t make him feel sick, or full, or hungry, or anything at all.

Upon thinking a nasty thought, he checked himself for a pulse. Yup, heart still beating. Tits had a normal pulse, too.

He handed her a fry, but she just held it, looking slightly more confused than normal. He put it in her mouth, where it stayed between her lips, unchewed, until the next time she babbled something and it fell out.

He found an unopened bottle of Coke, popped the cap off, and drank some. Tasted pretty good. He offered the bottle to Tits, and she drank it down eagerly and even smiled when it was gone.

He smiled back at her, and fetched a couple more bottles, which they both drained. With nothing else to do in the diner, he led her back outside.

Down the street was a nice looking hotel, next to a department store, which gave him another idea.

He found the store’s Ladies section and said, “Go buy yourself a new wardrobe” and gestured her toward the clothes racks. At some level, THIS she understood. She actually clumsily tried to clap her hands together, then went shopping. It took a while, but she somehow found a dozen outfits that fit her. She had lost whatever color sense she might have previously had, picking out a few truly horrible color combinations, but Tommy didn’t care much about that sort of thing anyway. He grabbed an airline stewardess-style suitcase, with the wheels on the bottom, and folded and packed her selections into the case.

After he finished with her clothes, he left her and wandered off to the Men’s section and quickly picked up things for himself -- slacks, jeans, shorts, shirts, underwear, socks, and a couple pairs of comfortable walking shoes. He kept his uniform, though it probably need a dozen washings to be wearable again.

He returned to the women’s section to find Tits completely nude, carrying clothes to and from the dressing room, though she wasn’t staying in there long enough to actually try anything on.

His first instinct was to rush over and cover her up, but then he thought, Why bother? He’d only seen a single clerk in the whole store and no customers aside from the two of them.

Her bare breasts were the biggest he had ever seen in person -- specifically meaning of the bare sort; he had seen many clothed boobs that were bigger -- and a quick examination of her old bra identified them as 36DD. (Later on, he figured that 36DD was pretty tight for the cup size, so he guessed that maybe it should’ve been a little bigger, but maybe she couldn’t find bigger sizes easily? Or the bra was an old one? Or she had grown in certain specific ways since become Infected?)

He had helped her put on a robe, then started to usher her out the front door, only to be stopped by the store’s single clerk.

The babbling clerk led them to a checkout counter. He examined but didn’t open the two pieces of luggage and babbled at Tommy. Remembering what he had witnessed in the grocery store, Tommy, finding nothing in his pockets, took a facial tissue from behind the checkout counter and offered it to the clerk. The clerk babbled something, carefully folded up the tissue and put it in the cashier’s drawer. Then he pulled a hundred dollar bill from the drawer and gave it to Tommy. The clerk smiled and waved as Tommy led Tits outside, pulling both suitcases behind him.

It felt perverted to have her walk around in public, just wearing a robe, but it was getting dark and no one paid them any attention. Plus he had seen more than one person walking around with their tits or dick on display to the world.

The hotel had an actual clerk behind the front desk, so Tommy walked over to him, pointed at the rack of room keys on the wall, and asked, “What do we need to do to get a room for the night?”

After being presented with a sign-in sheet, the clerk presented them with a dozen room keys.

When Tommy looked behind the counter for a bag or box or something to carry all the keys, he found and stole two toiletry kits, one marked male, one female.

Twenty minutes or so later, Tommy found that one of the keys was to a pretty damn nice suite. Might not be the penthouse, but it was nicer than anywhere he had stayed before.

He ushered Tits into the bathroom, pulled off her robe, handed her a small bar of hotel soap, and instructed her to take a shower. Leaving her to it, he left the bathroom and turned on the TV. Nothing but static and a couple emergency evacuation placards on different channels. Come to think of it, it was probably a miracle they still had power at all.