Chapter 2

Tommy awoke to the sensation of something being thrown on him, followed by argumentative babbling.

He sat up, throwing off a layer of partially-folded linens which weren’t there when he went to sleep. As soon as he had pulled away from Holly’s chest, she got out of bed, standing up gloriously naked, and began babbling and gesturing at a newcomer. A Latina maid had entered the room, with new linens and towels. The sheets had been thrown on top of Holly and himself, and from his position on the bed, he could just see the edge of a stack of new towels on the counter in the bathroom.

While he had been clearing his head and trying to figure out the situation, Holly had advanced on the maid and was actively trying to push her out of the room.

“Calm down everyone,” Tommy said, sliding free of the sheets.

He approached the two women and gently took the older Latina woman’s hand. He began leading her out. “I appreciate you trying to do your job, but you shouldn’t try to change the sheets while we’re still in bed. Also, you need to remove the old sheets before you put fresh ones down. For now...” He let go of her once they were in the hallway, then placed a Do Not Disturb sign on the outer door handle.

“Thank you!” he grinned as he closed the door. He turned back to face Tits and said, “Well, that was an unexpected way to wake up, wasn’t it?”

Tits actually seemed to have a smug look of satisfaction on her face at seeing the other woman ejected. Tommy wondered if she was jealous or something.

“Tititi ewdarmarsh bitminkin guon mesh,” she said happily.

“Good enough,” he said agreeably, and he went over to give her a kiss. She returned the kiss, in a clumsy, slobbery, but enthusiastic, way.

Tommy went to the bathroom, washed his face, decided he didn’t need to shave right then, checked his breath, and brushed his teeth when he found his breath wanting.

Once he was finished, he gestured for Tits to join him and handed her the other toothbrush.

“Do you remember what I showed you last night? Want to try it again?”

She took the small brush and inserted the bristled end into her mouth. Tommy wasn’t sure she cleaned her teeth thoroughly, but from the outside, it looked like a good enough effort.

Once they were both done with their morning toiletries and ablutions, Tommy found some hotel stationery and sat down on the edge of the bed with pencil and paper.

“I’m going to use you as a sounding board, okay, sweetie? That way, I’m not just talking out loud to myself.”

“Humpa.”

“Good. Now, I am a Corporal in the Army of the United States of America. I need to check in, cause they think I’m dead, or just as good. Trouble is, I’m on the wrong side of the fence, and I’m pretty damn sure they’d shoot me before I got close to the outer fence to ... y’know ... talk to someone.

“Maybe I could write a letter and pin it to someone else’s shirt and send them through ... but I’d just be getting someone else killed, Infected or not. I could call, but I have no clue how to operate a switchboard, and I doubt an Infected operator could work it right to connect me. And even then, that’s assuming the lines are still up.

“For that matter, I have no clue how long the power will be on ... or how long the water will have pressure. We ... we don’t seem to need food, but that’s ... that’s kind of something I don’t wanna think about right now.

“Anyway, from what we’ve seen, I bet there are Infected workers doing their best to keep on goin with their water and power jobs. Don’t know if they’ll actually be able to keep everything workin though. Definitely put that on the to-do list. I suppose, if worst comes to worst, we could live without power and I could rig up a basic water still for us, to evaporate seawater, but that won’t work for everyone else. Still, putting together some emergency equipment also needs to go on the list.

“We need to see if anyone else is coming to their senses. I’m not sure what the best way to do that is, but I was thinking yesterday I might put up some signs all over. If someone can read the signs, it’d tell them to meet ... somewhere. Should probably work that out before I start painting signs. To-Do list ... find central meeting place, make signs, emergency gear.

“Back to getting a message outside. I guess I could leave a message at the gate ... I bet there are multiple gates around the city. Maybe put a message at each of them? Have to come up with a way to draw attention to them ... add that to the To-Do. Plus, gotta come up with a way for them to tell me where to go to meet up.

“Also gotta work out what to tell them. That I’m alive, for one thing. Give them a rundown on the situation inside the city ... maybe some more observations too. What the Infected are doing, how they’re trying to return to their old jobs ... or at least, that’s what it looks like. How effective or intelligent they are, whether or not they can learn new skills, things like that. How they don’t eat anymore ... just ... just like me.”

He slumped and turned to face Holly. “I gotta face facts. I’m Infected, too. Maybe I still have my intelligence ... or maybe it’s more like I got it back, cause I’m pretty sure there’s a big gap of time I can’t account for. Maybe I was just unconscious, or maybe I was wandering around like all the others.”

He sat in silence for a minute, thinking, then pulled his companion down next to him, then drew her in for a hug.

“I can’t go back, can I? If I go back, they’ll just use me for experiments for the rest of my life, if they don’t just shoot me straight off or dissect me.”

She said, “Yartwumble ixilit,” then started rubbing her bare breasts against his chest.

“Yeah, at least I have you and your wonderful bosom, huh?”

She rubbed with a bit more force, until he reached down and held a boob in each hand, stopping her motion. He thumbed her nipples for a few strokes, then pulled her closer and kissed her lips.

“I definitely want some more of you later, but I really do need to think some more right now.”

She tried to lick his face, and he laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. You wanna lick something while I’m busy thinkin’ and plannin’, go do it down there,” he said, pushing her off of him, trying to make it a joke.

His intentions notwithstanding, she knelt down and begin licking his penis.

“Oh, unhhhh ... I wasn’t ... I didn’t really mean ... I ... okay.”

Soon, his planning was forgotten, lost in the sensations of a woman bathing his balls and his rapidly hardening cock with her tongue.

“I’ve heard about this. It’s called a blow job, I think. But I’ve never ... I mean ... Here, I think you’re supposed to put it all the way in your mouth, then lick and suck. Just don’t bite down.”

He carefully placed his cock more directly in her mouth, and she began clumsily fellating him. He couldn’t tell if her lack of expertise was due to an Infected’s normal lack of fine coordination or if she had just never done it before. He, having never received one before either, also wasn’t sure what a proper blow job actually felt like. He didn’t even know what it might feel like when it came time for her to blow, let alone when the blowing part actually came. Come to think of it, he didn’t like the idea of anyone blowing air up his pee hole and decided not to mention that part to her. Tommy felt that whatever an ‘official’ blow job was like, he’d just be happy with a ‘lick and suck’ job.

Whatever it might normally feel like, he decided, this felt wonderful, both relaxing and exciting. It felt like she was just trying to clean it, but, whenever her tongue ran across the tip of his cock or right underneath the head, it tingled, throbbed, and jumped under her tongue. She seemed to mostly just alternate between licking it and sucking it into her mouth.

He was having trouble verbalizing any actual directions to improve the experience, but regardless, the newness of it all had him ejaculating into her mouth in less than five minutes. She didn’t stop, so he stayed hard, but the edge had been removed.

“Oh, god,” he wheezed when he had recovered enough mental focus. “You can go ahead and stop for now. I will definitely want to try that again, but later. Go wash your mouth out, and I’ll ... I’ll just stay here for a few minutes.”

He fell back onto the bed until he regained his strength.

Holly went into the bathroom, and came back out a few minutes later with a bit of soapy foam between her lips.

“I didn’t mean ... that must taste horrible. Go get some clean water into your mouth, swish it around and spit it back out into the sink. Do that until the soap has been washed out.”

A few minutes later, she came back, her face wet but clear of soap.

“Come ‘ere, sweetie. Sit down next to me.”

Once she joined him on the edge of the bed, he pulled himself back into a sitting position, then wrapped both arms around her and kissed her cheek.

“Seems really naughty to just sit here together, naked. Pretty nice, too. Y’know, meeting you almost makes getting Infected worth it.”

“Lully wontop.”

“I want you too. But we gotta do some work now.”

Half an hour later, he had finished his To Do list for the moment, then helped Holly get dressed before donning his own clothes. Not his military fatigues, since those needed a dozen or more washings before he’d be willing to put them back on.

The hotel was empty as they went downstairs. He had used the elevator to go up, the previous evening, and debated whether or not to take it to go back down, given that the power would probably fail sometime soon. He finally decided that, since the elevator wouldn’t automatically go up or down for him without an operator, he needed to return it to the lobby floor so it could be available for future use. If the power went out while he was using it, he reckoned he could force the doors open and climb out.

They encountered no one until they had exited onto the street. The city, one of the many suburbs of Los Angeles, was active, but the crowds were significantly reduced. Tommy figured that most people had moved on, with everyone returning to their homes or places of business. Given how large the LA area really was and how slowly some of the people walked, it was entirely possible that some Infected had walked all night and were still slowly going home even now.

As Tommy tried to track down a good map of the area, Holly followed along until, in her first bit of really odd behavior for the day, she grabbed the first two women she saw and tried to drag them along behind Tommy. The women, a couple of middle-aged motherly types, seemed confused but were willing to stumble alongside Holly for a few minutes.

Tommy asked her why she wanted them to come along, and was answered with an undecipherable, “Ugga unt. Parsnip preeny gargun tun ta, feesnezle tara dump frappy.” When he asked them to come along, the two seemed willing to acquiesce for a while.

Then Holly shoved one of the two down and grabbed another woman to take her place. When the original woman stood and tried to follow, Holly shoved her away again. Tommy soothed the new and old companions until they behaved agreeably.

Holly kept doing it, over and over, eventually adding a third companion, though she seemed to be continually on the lookout for replacements.

It wasn’t until she selected her fourth traveling companion, fourteenth overall, that Tommy finally realized what was happening.

Holly had selected three white women, one with dark hair, one blonde and one red-head, and now one Oriental woman (from China, if the racially ignorant Tommy’s guess was correct).

“Tits, are you picking out women for a harem? Like I told you about last night?”

Holly smiled broadly and pushed the women at Tommy, one by one. The women had no clue what Holly wanted of them, so they just stood near Tommy, confused.

“That’s ... I mean, you can’t just grab women off the street and ... I mean, I guess you can, but I shouldn’t ... Ummm...”

It struck Tommy that he actually could. These women’s minds were scrambled. Unless someone came up with a miracle cure, then at best they’d just bounce back and forth between familiar places until they grew old and died, never really living their lives again. If they stayed with him, at least he could take care of them to some extent. But it would still be ... it felt wrong ... but it would be just like it was with Tits, and she seemed happy staying with him. Did that make it okay?

“Look, I ... I need to think about it ... Let’s just ... Look, there’s a bank over there. I need to get some cash for my plans anyway, so let’s head inside. I’ll think about it, and ... We’ll see.”

One of the plans Tommy had come up with was to attach envelopes to the fences by the gates -- there had to be more than one gate -- and festoon the envelopes with money to draw attention to them.

So, he headed into the bank, holding the door for the women. Then he grabbed a withdrawal slip and wrote, “Not a real withdrawal request, but I need $5000 in cash.”

The two lines of people didn’t seem like they were moving, so he went to the front of the line and gently pushed the little old lady in front of the teller to the side.

“Hi,” he told the teller. “I need you to give me five thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills...”

Before he had a chance to present the fake withdrawal slip, the teller opened her till and started dumping out bills. Apparently, she wasn’t able to identify the denominations or count, but was readily willing to hand it all over to him, upon request.

Tommy stared for a moment at the withdrawal slip in his hand, a horrible possibility creeping over him. Everyone else had wanted to imitate the normal procedures of social and economic conventions, exchanging ‘money’ for goods and services. But this time, he only had to ask for it. Just like ... just like when he told the truck full of Infected people to be quiet. Just like he hadn’t done at the department store where he had pretended to pay. There he hadn’t given any instructions, but had simply allowed himself to be led to the purchase counter. Had he demanded a room at the hotel or just signed in? He couldn’t remember.

He turned to a man in line behind him. “Jump on one foot.” The man lifted his left leg and began jumping on his right. He fell down after only three jumps, but he stood back up and started over.

Looking at the other bank patrons, he started pointing and giving orders. “Drop and give me twenty push-ups.” “Run around in a circle.” “Stand on your head.”

The various Infected he pointed to as he spoke began following his orders as best they could as Tommy stared, dumbfounded.

“Okay, everyone can stop.” Which they did.

He looked over at Holly.

“Are you doing all these things for me just because I told you to?”

She looked back at him, confused and responded with a long “Tifflemugarbulous.”

He sat down on the floor and leaned back against the counter, stunned with his own obtuseness.

Somehow he had been given control over all of these people. Former people, kind of. And he had accidentally claimed full control over Holly, turning her into his love slave ... all because he wanted a soft place to put his head.

He felt something soft and opened his eyes to see a worried-looking Holly, kneeling next to him and pushing her breasts against the side of his head. She was doing what he had inadvertently taught her to do when he was tired or upset.

He caught her wrists and pulled her a bit lower, to face him directly.

“Do you actually want to be with me at all? Of your own free will?”

Still confused, she leaned in to kiss him. He leaned back and kept a grip on her wrists.

“Okay, how about this. I order to you to do what you want to do. If you want to leave, then leave. If you want to stay with me, you can stay.”

She looked confused, but leaned in a bit lower and tried to push her head up under his chin. He released her wrists, and she clung to him and started licking his throat.

He laughed and bent down to kiss the top of her head.

“All right, all right, you’ve made your decision. And I still don’t know if you have any real free will.”

He stood up, pulling her up with him.

“So, either you have free will and are choosing to stay with me, or you don’t, and telling you to do what you want is pointless.” He paused, trying to think of any other conclusion. “And if you don’t, then you might as well stay with me anyway, since I can take better care of you than if you were on your own.”

He looked over at the women Holly had collected.

“If any of you don’t want to be here, with me, then you can leave and go home to your husbands and families.”

None of them moved.

“That’s ... that’s a definite mark for the ‘no free will’ idea. Give me a few minutes to think things through. I wish I was smarter.”

He turned back to the counter to find a pile of cash had collected. He sorted through it, finding a four bundles of hundred dollar bills. He pocketed them, saying, “It’s not like money is really worth anything around here anymore, is it? Even I’m basically just planning to use bills as decorations to attract attention.”

Looking at Tits, still clinging to his torso, lightly rubbing her chest against him, he asked, “What about you? Do you want some decorations? We could stop by a jewelry store, maybe get you a ... ring...”

He stopped talking, another horrible realization dawning, then turned to face the women Holly had collected.

“Hold up your hands,” he ordered.

Two of the women -- the blonde and the brunette -- had wedding rings. He pointed at them and said, “You and you. Go home to your husbands and any children you have. Take care of them as best you can.” The two women turned and left the bank with purposeful strides.

Looking at the redhead and Chinese lady, he said, “And you two don’t have husbands to go home to? Is that right?”

The Chinese woman said, “Chuppy wa.”

“Thank you, that’s very helpful. So, how old are you two? You look like you might be in your twenties or thirties, but ... hand over your purses for a bit.”

Unlike Tits, these two were still carrying their purses, and he quickly rifled through the contents. The redhead’s purse had a large hole in it, apparently chewed through by a rodent of some kind. The only thing she had inside was a collection of facial tissues and some leaves for some reason. He handed hers back to her. The Chinese woman still had some makeup and a wallet in her purse, which included a Green Card, identifying her as Biyu Chang, nineteen years old, college student and native of Singapore, a city which had fared badly from one of the monsters, almost as bad as L.A., according to a newspaper article he had read before he met Target Bravo in person.

He handed her purse back and looked at her more closely. Her makeup was thick and sloppily applied, which might explain her slightly older appearance. Looking over at the redhead, the same problem was entirely possible with her too, though dirt was more prevalent than makeup.

“Everyone, this young lady’s name is Biyu.” Turning to the redhead, he asked, “I don’t suppose you can tell me your name?”

Her head bounced around a bit and her mouth opened and closed, but she made no sound.

“Ah, well. For now, I’ll keep things simple and just call you Red. You two might as well tag along with us for now, or ... No, you shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t want to accidentally enslave you or anything. You should ... you should ... dammit, I really don’t know what anyone should do. Why did this happen to me?”

He found a bench at the side of the lobby and sat sideways on the end of the bench, his head in his hands. A few seconds later, he could feel Tits put her hands on his shoulders as she began to lean over and rub her chest against his back. Without thinking about it consciously, he gently took one of her hands in his, held it, then kissed it before releasing he was doing so.

“What should I do, Tits? I don’t want to force anyone to do anything.” He sighed and remained silent for almost a full minute. “I suppose that’s not entirely true. Maybe I could go around and tell everyone not to attack uninfected humans any more. Think that would work?”

He looked up at the people around him. Everyone in the bank was staring at him, their activities abandoned.

“Don’t attack humans anymore. Other than that, go back to what you were doing before.”

They kept staring.

“Super. So ... maybe instead I just live the rest of my life without talking out loud to anyone else? Honestly, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to do that. Heck, I know I can’t have a two-way conversation with you, and I still talk to you all the time.”

Tits still wore a concerned expression, and she tried a new tactic. Grabbing onto Red and Biyu with one hand each, she led them to stand next to her beloved, then carefully directed Biyu’s face to bend down next to Tommy’s. As if trying to teach by example, she gave Tommy a gentle kiss on the cheek, then pulled Biyu in closer until she also began kissing Tommy.

Tommy was fascinated and kept silent, letting Holly put her plans into action. Holly took Red and repeated the instructions on his other cheek. Red seemed slightly more enthusiastic as she also used one of her hands to run her fingers through Tommy’s hair. Satisfied, Holly knelt before Tommy and began kissing the crotch of his pants.

“Whoa, there, let’s not do that in public, all right?”

He lifted Tit’s head up until he could kiss her lips.

After a moment or two of making out, he gently pushed the other two away and lay back on the bench. Tits took the opportunity to sit on his knees.

“Bringing them with us makes me feel kinda like I’m just forcin’ ‘em to ... to ... I dunno. I really don’t wanna wake up a month from now and realize I’ve been raping hypnotized women. And that’s true with you too, Tits.”

He gave her a smile, which prompted her to lie down with her head against his chest.

“I suppose you, at least, seem happy with ... with me ... with things as they are. I guess, if you can be happy with me, and if you’re consciously working to ... what... ‘select’? ‘invite’? ‘recruit’? Whatever the best word is, you’re gettin’ other women to join us ... if you’re doin’ that without me tellin’ you to -- I’m pretty sure I never told you do go around grabbin’ other women for me -- so, if you started doing stuff like that on your own, I guess maybe I can’t second-guess what the other women might want to do? I just ... I really don’t know what’s in everyone else’s head right now.” He laughed at himself. “Just like normal. Still, I gotta ... gotta what? I can’t just sit around mopin’ and askin’ what to do.”

He looked at Red and Biyu, then carefully stood up, being certain he wouldn’t knock Holly to the floor. “At the very least, I should be able to take care of you better than if you stayed on your own. We’re running errands today, then tomorrow I’m going to write some letters and stick them on some fences. Come along, but only if you want to.”

He pried Holly’s arms loose, then led them out of the bank. “Holly, if you still want to find me a harem -- and I’m not sayin’ you should -- only choose women who aren’t married. Women who aren’t wearing wedding rings, okay? Just maybe take it a little slower for now?”

He took a couple steps, then stopped, remembering how he had awakened that morning. “That’s why you chased off the maid this morning. Not because you were jealous or protecting me, but because she was Mexican. Sorry, just realized that. Huh. Well, let’s leave that and get going for now. Actually, how about if we find ourselves something to drink? Something nonalcoholic. I need a clear head right now. Hmmm ... I wonder if we can even still get drunk? A question for another day, I think.”

They found a drugstore less than a block away and Tommy led them inside. An old man stood behind the pharmacy counter, doing nothing except for swaying slightly, and a classic teenage soda jerk stood behind a drinks counter. The only customers were four teenage girls sitting on the stools near the teenager behind the counter. Two of the girls were drinking something, one just looked blankly at the wall and one held an empty glass which she occasionally tried to drink from.

Holly immediately walked over and latched onto two of the girls, one blonde, one brunette. Tommy chased after her and gently pulled her away as she was examining their hands for rings.

“Too young,” he said. “They’re good choices and very pretty, but too young. If I were just five years younger, they’d be perfect for me, but as things are right now, they need to be a couple years older. All right?”

He used a finger to push her chin around so they faced each other. “Okay?”

“Trumbley.” Holly leaned forward to kiss him, and he dodged her lips to give her a quick peck on the cheek.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm while you’re thinking about me. But at the same time, if this ever gets out, I’ll be in enough trouble as it is without adding underage girls to the mix. How about we get you a soda, huh? You like chocolate? Everyone likes chocolate, right?”

Turning to the soda jerk, he ordered, “I want you to make us four chocolate sodas. Make them in clean glasses and be careful to get the ingredients right.”

“Ba ni nuey,” the boy said, nodding his head before turning to get to work.

He didn’t work fast, but he did work carefully. In less than ten minutes, he presented four nice-looking chocolate sodas.

Tommy and his three woman entourage took possession of the glasses and slowly drank them all down.

He talked to Red and Biyu between sips, explaining the situation to them and that while he would care for them, he expected them to learn (or relearn) needed basic skills, including maintaining basic hygiene.

“We’re also going to need to move someplace larger. Tonight, we’ll see if the hotel has a penthouse. Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll start house hunting.

Once they finished off the sodas, he grabbed a small shopping cart and led them to the feminine products aisles.

“I need each of you to pick out the makeup you normally use. Get yourselves a couple toothbrushes and deodorant sticks and whatever you would normally buy at a store like this. All right?”

Holly was still easily the most focused of the three, and she was able to pick out her basic toiletries. The other two tried their best, and probably got at least most of their selections correct.

Meanwhile, Tommy picked out his needed supplies, including additional shaving equipment and some extra supplies such as more toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste.

When he looked over Holly’s items, he was a bit surprised by the feminine pads. Tommy was completely without a clue when it came to female sanitary pads, being only vaguely aware that women bled out of their private parts once a month for some reason, on top of which, he had no idea whether or not being Infected had affected that bit of ickiness or not. Then he noticed a lack of pads for the other two. He refused to even touch the damn boxes, instead ordering them to get what they needed, pointing at a shelf of the things.

They bagged up the selections themselves and headed out, after Tommy had a brief talk with the old man behind the counter.

Tommy quickly visited a hardware store and used the tools he acquired to break into a nice-looking sedan. Tommy had done enough work on cars and trucks back home that he was able to hotwire the ignition fairly easily. He briefly returned to the hardware store to grab a couple crowbars, deciding they could be very useful.

He slowly drove across town, occasionally grabbing onto Holly to keep her from lunging out of the moving vehicle, apparently intent on grabbing nearby pedestrians to add to his harem.

He stopped when they came across a large crowd of Infected surrounding a building with a restaurant/bar on the street level. He ordered Holly to stay inside the car until he had checked the situation out.

Dan hadn’t seen such a large, concentrated grouping of Infecteds since he had been dumped out of the Army truck by the fence. He got out and climbed up to stand on the roof of the car. Then remembered something and climbed back down.

Sticking his head back inside the car through his open driver-side window, he said, “I am about to tell the rest of these people to leave, but you three need to stay in the car. I will tell you when it is okay to leave the car. Understand?”

He thought he caught a glimmer of understanding in Holly’s eyes as she tried to crawl over to kiss him, which seemed to be her default reaction for now. The other two stared at him but made no other movements.

He again climbed on top of the sedan, then yelled, “Hey everybody! Listen up! I want you to disperse. Go to your homes or places of business. Now!”

He jumped down to the ground to make sure the three inside the car were staying put. The redhead was pawing at the door handle, but the other two were staying put.

“Hey, Red! Stay put.” He couldn’t reach her from where he was, so he ran around to the other side and opened the door to grab the redhead before she could get out. “Stay inside the car for now. Understand?”