Chapter 3

He woke up shortly after dawn, feeling more refreshed than he should have. Holly was already awake and had turned around during the night so her face was only inches from his. She reacted to seeing him open his eyes by covering his face with kisses and quietly saying, “Aya infuno mamazaran.”

Tommy got a strong impression that it was supposed to mean something along the lines of ‘I love you’ or ‘I missed you and am glad you’re awake.’

“I love you too, baby. Is Biyu awake too?” He gestured with a small head nod to indicate behind him.

From behind him, he heard, “Soyou baminijuice choochoomon.” He felt small hands fondle his ass, then she went on to say, “Fupluy mimimi tarzien chuppy choy.”

“Glad you’re awake too, but I got no idea what you’re sayin’. I’ve love to fool around, but we gotta full day today.”

So saying, Tommy disengaged from the two of them and got up. He relieved himself in the bathroom and noticed he still didn’t need to shave, which seemed odd, but he dismissed the thought for the moment.

After brushing his teeth, he got dressed and got everyone else up. As he probably should have expected, he found Dorothy molesting Red with her hands while she sucked on Red’s titties.

While he sent the rest of them off to brush their teeth and use the toilet, he led the mystery black-haired, bare-pussy woman to the living room, draped Holly’s robe around her shoulders, and sat her down.

“We really need to figure out what to call you.”

“Muffle mattingly.”

“That’s ... okay ... but I need a normal name to use. I’m gonna just start listing off women’s names, and I want you to wave your hands around if I get close and stop me if I get it right. Okay?”

Her head wobbled back and forth a bit while she stared at him.

“Wait, let’s get Red for this too.” He had them together and focused on him a moment later, then gave Red the same instructions.

“Betty. Veronica. Amy. Cindy...”

He listed off every name he could think of for about ten minutes until the black-haired woman tentatively raised a hand after he said, “Patty.”

“Patty? Is that close to your name?”

She kept the hand raised and looked at him.

“Okay, what’s close to Patty? Patsy? Patricia? Ummm ... I knew a girl called Patches back home? Uhhh ... I’m kinda drawin’ a blank here. Pat? Somethin’ fancier? Patrice maybe?”

While her hand and head had wavered a bit while he talked, there hadn’t been any ‘aha!’ type of reactions.

“Can you write it down? I mean, most Infected can’t, but maybe if it’s just your name...”

After a few tries, Patty’s squiggles and attempts to draw pictures didn’t produce anything legible.

“Tell you what. For now, I’ll call you Patty. If I think of any other Pat-type names, I’ll ask ya about them later. All right?”

No reaction. He kept on offering names to Red for another five or ten minutes, coming up with as many as he could, but got no reaction from her at all.

“All right.” He looked around and saw the rest of the women were standing behind him, watching and listening. “Listen up, everybody. For now, we’re going to call her Patty.”

He stood up and turned to face the group. “Just in case anyone has forgotten, this is Dorothy Foster,” he said, pointing at the blonde farmgirl.

“This is Connie,” he said, putting a hand on the former waitresses shoulder.

“Biyu ... sorry, I don’t remember your last name. Started with a C, I think. And this here’s Red, which we’re going to keep on using as her nickname for now til we can figure out something closer to her real name.” Personally, he was worried Red’s brain was too far gone for her to ever remember, but then again, it’s not like he knew what was going to happen to everyone anyway.

“And, of course, this here is my Holly,” he said, hugging his black beauty. “Still not positive that’s her birth name, but she jumped when I suggested it, so that’s what we’re going with for now. And, of course, I’m Tommy.”

He released her and finally realized that he and Holly were the only two that were dressed. He blushed a bit and said, “Now, everyone get dressed. I guess our first stop’s gotta be to go get y’all some more clothes. Fortunately, there’s a shop just down the way.”

It took almost two hours to get everyone a few sets of clothing and a bag to carry everything in.

Tommy realized that keeping everyone together and focused all the time was going to take up way too much time for him to get anything done during the day. He mulled over some ideas before finally realizing he would have to take a risk and leave them behind while he drove around and got stuff done.

He gathered everyone together in the department store and addressed them, giving them orders to stay in this store until he came to get them later. For entertainment, he pointed out the kids toys section, the rows of televisions (all showing static or placeholder cards), the makeup counter, and the accessories section, all of which they were welcome to play with or shop at. He showed them where the ladies restroom was, along with a water dispenser where they could get drinks. He gave specific instructions to Dorothy, who seemed the most intelligent and aware of all the new women, to be responsible for the rest of the women, to keep them safe and together. He didn’t bother telling her not to molest the other women, as he figured it would be pointless.

Then he took Holly’s hand and led her out of the store, to the station wagon. He was attached enough to Holly that he wasn’t willing to risk losing her by leaving her behind.

He picked up a bunch of paint cans and brushes and drove all over the city, leaving signs in major public places, telling whoever was reading that they should go to the Brown Derby on Wilshire Blvd for a message. Eventually, he got tired of painting long sets of instructions and just wrote, “GO TO BROWN DERBY (WILSHIRE)” over and over. After over twenty such messages, he noticed the sun was getting low in the sky. It just took too long to drive everywhere, given how slowly he had to go to avoid hitting people, that he slowly started back.

There was still some daylight when they got back to the department store. He found all of the women, sitting naked in a circle, while Dorothy walked around behind them, or playing duck, duck goose, or doing ... something. Maybe tickling them? He relaxed, happy that at least they were all still there.

He cleared his throat to draw attention to himself, then Dorothy noticed him and the scene suddenly changed to one of a massive outpouring of emotion. Dorothy ran to him and tried to hug and kiss both Holly and him at the same time. Red started sobbing and crawling towards him. Biyu and Connie stood up and ran to him, hugging him tightly (but unlike Dorothy, the others ignored Holly). Patty started babbling and turning around and around in a circle.

He was, to put it simply, stunned. Something had happened to the women, far more than anything he expected from just collecting them off the streets and cleaning them up.

He spent at least twenty minutes just calming and comforting them.

The best comparison he could make was to when he was babysitting his young cousins one night. They were fairly well behaved and happy all night long, until he mentioned that their parents would probably be back within the next half hour and they should get ready for bed. All of a sudden, the kids were bawling their eyes out, wanting their Mommy and Daddy. They had somehow forgotten about their parents for a few hours and enjoyed the evening. As soon as they were reminded that something was missing, they wanted it back right away.

In a way, he really was playing parent for them, taking care of them and watching out for their well-being. But even so, they barely knew him and he barely knew them in return, despite their intimacy the previous night. All of which meant ... something else was happening? He had no clue what that something might be. He thought about experimenting by ‘adopting’ a few guys too, for comparison ... then he wondered if such guys might try to hug and kiss him too, and he discarded the idea.

When they had finally calmed down enough, he started helping them get dressed, talking constantly, if quietly, to soothe them and let them know he was right there with them.

“ ... and it just took so long to drive around that I think we only got less than a couple dozen signs painted around town. Given how big L.A. is, I figure I’ll need a couple hundred markers all told, but I guess I’ll have to limit myself to just a few each day, depending where I am. Now, tomorrow, I figure I need to go check and see if the Army left me any messages, then we’ll need to go house hunting. We can’t stay at the hotel forever, especially since I figure the power will probably go out any day now. There we go, all dressed, right? Now, let’s go help Connie finish getting dressed, and we’ll be almost ready to go back to the hotel tonight. Doesn’t that sound good? So, I’ve also been thinkin’ about what kind of house we need to be lookin’ for...”

Eventually, they gathered up all of their ‘purchases’ and went out to the station wagon. There was so much stuff that there wasn’t enough room for everyone and everything, but fortunately, they had to travel less than a block. Tommy felt incredibly guilty that he wasn’t one of the ones walking, but he was the only one who could drive, so he drove very slowly and the others followed.

That evening, back in the penthouse, Tommy was afraid of creating any more separation anxiety by making everyone sleep in separate rooms.

“This might seem a bit silly, but why don’t we have a camp out in the big TV room, huh? We can just push the sofa and chairs back and put all the pillows and cushions in the middle ... or even better, we could use the chairs to prop up some sheets to make a tent or something ... anyway, does that sound like fun?”

So, they set to work. Holly and Connie surprised him by dragging in the mattress from the master bedroom, but he saw the potential, and soon they had all three mattresses lined up together to make one huge bed in the middle of the floor. They pulled the cushions off both couches and raided the supply closet down the hall for extra pillows and sheets. By turning the chairs around so their backs faced their makeshift bed, they were able to hold the extra sheets up, creating a somewhat iffy tent.

Tommy didn’t realize they were done with the construction until he turned back from securing a tent corner to find that Holly, Biyu and Dorothy were all naked and helping Connie, Patty and Red to strip down. Then all six of them were converging on him, and he was naked too.

The sex that night should have been just a writhing pile of naked bodies, but people seemed to wait their turns in a surprisingly organized fashion. While there was only one cock in that pile, no one seemed to complain. Compared to the previous night, they all just waited for their turn with him. Even Dorothy didn’t do anything more than fondle the other women a bit. They just cuddled up together, close to him, and watched until it was their turn.

Tommy, for his part, was surprised at his own stamina. Sure, he was young, horny and physically fit, but six women, two nights in a row? There was no way he could have managed it before he was Infected.

He idly wondered if it was the same for the rest of the Infected men. Did they go home to their Infected wives and stay up all night fucking? What if their wives were among the dead or hadn’t been able to find their way home? What if their wives were gone but the men still had ... here, Tommy’s train of thought jumped the track. What if they had daughters? Was he going to have to visit every house, every family, in Los Angeles and make sure no kids were in danger? That would be a lifetime of work, just by itself. Returning to a thought from earlier, what if he interacted with other men too much and they got attached to him?

He felt his hard-on in danger of wilting, so he turned his attention back to Patty, stretched out underneath him. She was giving a little whimper every time he thrust. The lack of a pubic bush still weirded him out a little, but she was so obviously a fully adult woman in other ways that he was starting to be a little turned on by the difference. Plus, she had nice boobs that moved back and forth as they fucked. The squeaky noises she made were pretty neat too. It was nice to think she was really enjoying it too.

Back in the army barracks, some of the guys had joked about how nice wives just lay on the bed and took it, but now that he’d experienced it firsthand, Tommy couldn’t understand why anyone would want that. Having your woman enjoy it and have fun with you was way better. Even the whores he had slept with had moved with him and made happy noises. Well, having seen the real thing, he was now certain they had been faking it, just acting the part to make their clients happy. In fact, having now fucked women who really did enjoy it, he didn’t think he could really enjoy whores much anymore. Or were there whores who actually did enjoy fucking?

He shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts. Looking back down at Patty, he refocused on her again. He leaned down to kiss her, and she lifted her head to meet his, kissing him eagerly.

They were still kissing when she came again a few seconds later. Her body arched up, and she screamed into his mouth for what seemed forever, then she collapsed.

He kept thrusting for another half a minute, but she still wasn’t reacting anymore.

Tommy pulled out of her and moved on to the next woman, Dorothy, as it turned out.

Dorothy spread herself wide to receive him, and as soon as Tommy had fully entered her pussy, she reached out and grabbed onto Holly. Dorothy pulled her over until Holly was basically sitting on her face. Holly’s body was blocking Tommy’s view, but from the way Holly started dancing her hips forward and backward, it was apparent that Dorothy was licking her cootchie.

He didn’t realize he had stopped thrusting to watch until Dorothy released her grip on Holly to grab at his hips, trying to make him start up again. He started fucking her again, but kept his eyes more on his beloved Holly than the woman he was actually fucking. Holly looked back over her shoulder at him many times, and she seemed pleased to note that Tommy was watching her.

After Tommy had come again, and Dorothy had come two or three times, he pulled out, grabbed onto Holly’s hips, and pulled her to him. With the black woman’s luscious body dropping onto her hands and knees above Dorothy, he easily slid into her, barely even needing to look to align himself with her slit. He began fucking her enthusiastically, loving the familiar feeling of her insides squeezing his cock.

Below him, Holly’s tits swung back and forth, and Dorothy took her own smaller breasts in hand, pushing them together and arched her back upwards a little so that Holly’s nipples rubbed against her own with every swing. She tried to pull Holly’s face down for a kiss, but this time, Holly resisted. Dorothy ended up pulling herself up to Holly’s level, and even though Holly didn’t engage in the kissing Dorothy apparently wanted, she still peppered her face all over with kisses and licks. Eventually, she abandoned the kissing attempts and instead worked her way down to Holly’s tits, eagerly sucking and licking them while one hand masturbated her cunt.

When Holly came, screaming out “Tumba too mumbly! Tumba too fubly!”, Dorothy came too, crying out wordlessly into Holly’s tits. Tommy just kept going, fucking Holly through at least three orgasms, until she collapsed onto Dorothy.

He slowed to a stop and leaned forward a little, stroking Holly’s hair and back while he kept his cock inside her. As her breathing calmed, he slowly withdrew, continuing to stroke her bare flesh for a minute longer.

Finally, he knee-walked to the side, found Biyu close by, and pulled her into a kiss. For some reason, he kept expecting her to taste or smell different, with her Oriental heritage, but she was just the same as everyone else. He briefly hoped he was just inexperienced and ignorant instead of just stupid, but it was only a passing worry. His attention was quickly refocused on her naked body and how much he wanted to be inside of her. And a moment later, he was.

She was just as hot and wet and tight as the others, and her body was beautiful, stretched out beneath him. He started thrusting into her, and realized he was coming to love the sight of her small breasts -- any woman’s breasts, really -- as they bounced up and down, and back and forth on her chest as he fucked her.

Connie surprised him by kneeling next to him and stroking his neck and back. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, then her lips as she moved to meet him. When the kiss ended, he glanced down at Biyu and decided to do a little test with Connie.

He took her hand and guided it down to Biyu’s titties, adjusting Connie’s fingers so she stroked the other woman’s nipples as they moved. Connie apparently understood what he wanted and moved above Biyu’s head, leaning over to hold and caress the prone woman’s breasts.

From Biyu’s other side, he heard someone say, “Karmatatta bluies!” He looked over to see Dorothy stretched languidly out on her side, watching closely, one hand stroking her own tits. Beyond Dorothy, he could see Holly curled up, eyes closed, appearing unconscious and sated.

His attention returned to Biyu when he felt her surge and hold him tighter, squealing with pleasure for a moment. He gripped her hips and kept going. Tommy had more women to work his way through that evening, and he was interested to see how many others he could knock unconscious with pleasure.

The next morning started with Tommy looking for a better vehicle. (Well, technically, it started out by herding the women into the shower to wash off the dried sweat, then squeezing the oranges to provide orange juice for breakfast. But after that.) They loaded up into the station wagon and started cruising for vans. There were delivery vans that were plenty big, and he kept them in mind, but he wanted something with seats for everyone, or at least something with more comfort than a bare metal floor.

About twenty minutes into their search, he came across a hotel van, which seemed to be set up to take customers back and forth to the airport. More of a small bus, really, but it was easily big enough and even had room for everyone’s luggage. The keys weren’t inside, but a search of the concierge area in the hotel turned up a key box. A few minutes of experimenting with various keys, and they were good to go. He topped off the fuel at a local gas station, and then headed to the general area where he had dropped off Bradley and Kim for the Army to rescue.

He stopped half a mile from the gate and ordered everyone to stay inside the bus. Then he cautiously approached the gate, trying to stay hidden from spotters. He doubted they’d shoot him on sight, but he had no clue what the army’s reaction might be.

A small red flag had been wired to a post near the gate, so, giving up his cover, he walked over to it. An extra large envelope had been duct taped to the pole with the flag. It contained a rolled up green flag, a thick sheaf of papers and a pen. Rolling up the papers, he used the pen to write on the envelope.

“Will read tonight. Will post response tomorrow or day after. Top need for Infected civilians inside is ongoing water flow. Electricity is next highest. How/Where to keep it working? Food not needed so far. Cpl Tommy Byrd.” He followed that with his service number.

Then he reattached the emptied envelope and pulled down the flag. He removed the red flag, rolled it up, pulled the envelope free again, inserted the red flag into the envelope, reattached the envelope to the pole, attached the green flag to the pole and raised the flag pole again.

By the time he was done and walking back, he could see a small line of dust heading his way, probably a jeep heading out to pick up the flag and envelope.

He made it safely back to the mini-bus and began leafing through the papers.

Included was a copy of Time magazine with lots of monster/Infected news stories, including a timeline and general information about the monsters and Infected humans. There were two pages of handwritten notes and instructions, ten pages of type-written orders, and twenty or thirty pages of forms that someone in the Army bureaucracy thought needed to be filled out.

He bundled the magazine and papers all together and put them in his bag, then stored it behind the driver’s seat.

Then they went house hunting.

He wanted to find a large house, so he tried to remember where movie stars and rich people were supposed to live. He drove west-southwest, through Pasadena and Glendale, driving slowly through likely neighborhoods. He stopped at two nice-looking homes which were pretty large, but not the mansions he was imagining. He tried to memorize where one of them was, to keep it in mind as a back-up, but the other one had three rotting corpses inside -- looked like murder-suicide to Tommy’s inexperienced eyes.

Eventually, they reached an area with a bunch of neighborhoods full of pretty big houses. They checked out a few different homes, and as a side note, Holly found an Indian woman with a red dot on her forehead wandering aimlessly in front of the open gate for the second house they visited. Unfortunately, she was wearing a wedding ring, so Tommy told her to go home, and she started walking away from them with an apparent goal in mind.

The fourth mansion they actually went inside turned out to be The One, at least for now. Although there were two corpses, both male (though their flesh was too picked over by birds and animals to guess at their ages), the bodies were outside. They were just below an open window on the third floor, so Tommy guessed they had jumped out for some reason. Regardless, the point was, they weren’t stinking up the inside and could be easily buried.

There was plenty of room inside, with the house consisting of three floors, plus an attic and basement. A pool, half indoors, half outside, was in the back, and they even had a small movie theater. (Tommy thought he could probably eventually figure out how to run the projector.)

The basement was what really sold him, though. There was a room stocked floor to ceiling with canned goods and other emergency supplies, including a few hundred gallons of water. Tommy was still worried that they would eventually start needing to eat, and if that ever happened, he liked the idea that they’d be ready. Another basement room had an actual generator, with a 500 gallon underground fuel tank, showing somewhere around 480 gallons full, according to the gauge.

Even better, the mansion grounds were surrounded by stone walls tall enough that none of the women could accidentally wander off, as long he remembered to close the front and back gates.

There were an additional four surprises: Two maids were wandering the house with feather dusters, randomly dusting things. Plus, on the second floor, he found two women -- one adult woman, and one college-age woman -- trapped in a bathroom by a heavy dresser someone had pushed in front of the door. The non-maid women looked similar enough to be family, an idea supported by family photos found later. One odd note was that the maids were definitely much dirtier than the women who had been shut in the bathroom; Tommy speculated that meant the maids had left the mansion, then returned later.

A third floor bathroom was also locked, though the key to the door was on the carpet, just in front of the door. It turned out that this was the room with the open window. It seemed like the men had locked themselves in the room and pushed the key under the door, then later jumped out the window. Tommy figured the men had maybe trapped the women in the second floor bathroom before locking themselves in.

Tommy knew some people had done weird things when they heard one of the monsters was approaching. In this case, apparently a father and son had figured they’d be better off locking themselves up.

One potential conflict had arisen when Holly saw that one of the maids was a Latina. When she tried to chase the maid away, Tommy intervened and reassured Holly that it would be all right. She kept looking at the young woman suspiciously, but at least she stopped trying to shove her out the front door.

Both maids were fairly young, and the other maid was a light-skinned black woman ... his granny would call her a mulatto.

Like almost everyone else in the city, all of the women needed a thorough cleaning. It normally wouldn’t have been a priority, but some of them smelled pretty rank.

So, he started assigning tasks. He took Biyu and Dorothy outside, found a couple shovels in a garden shed, marked out a couple rectangles in the grass, and had the women start digging a couple graves for the window-jumpers. He had Holly start unloading the bus, and told her to pick out her favorite bedroom when she was done. (He figured she seemed mentally capable of picking out her favorite rooms, since she was also capable of picking out her favorite women for Tommy’s harem.) He had Patty and Connie take the maids to one of the bathrooms, giving them instructions to strip and clean the maids. He kept Red with himself, because of all the women, Red was definitely the least capable of following complex instructions or caring for herself.

He and Red gathered up the mother and daughter and went to a different bathroom. He found some toothbrushes and toothpaste and instructed the two of them on how to brush their teeth. Then they were stripped, bathed, dried and eventually redressed. It took some time to find their bedrooms and pick out clothes for them.

The mother was a brunette with long hair and medium-to-large breasts, definitely smaller than Holly’s, but they might be larger than his other women. She was still very pretty, even though she was old ... maybe even in her forties, twenty-two year old Tommy guessed.

The daughter might still be in her late teens, he figured. She was previously wearing a UC Berkeley blouse, which is why he thought she was probably a college student. She had dirty blonde hair and boobs that still had a lot of growing to do. She was very slim, so much so that he was a little worried about her health, but she also had some muscles, so maybe she was a cheerleader or gymnast or something.

When those women had finally been taken care of, he sought out Patty and Connie and the maids. All four women were clean, and Tommy discovered that Patty’s definition of clean also included shaving their pubic areas. Connie’s brown pubic hair was untouched, but both maids were now shaved bare down there, the same as Patty’s. (Unless they were already shaved down there for some reason.)

He laughed and shook his head. It still looked wrong, but he could deal with it. Besides which, he had enough actual problems to deal with. Pretty or not, he wasn’t actually planning to invite them to his bed any time soon.

“Okay, I saw what I’m pretty sure are the maids quarters upstairs. Patty, Connie, take them up the stairs one level. I think their bedrooms are at the end of the hall, that way,” he said pointing. Help them find some clothes and get dressed, then everyone should go downstairs, and we’ll decide what to do then. Okay?”

Connie and Patty both babbled at him agreeably, and the black maid quietly said, “Fummen a jalie eee eee eeetu.”

“Glad to have you joining the conversation,” Tommy replied, smiling at her. “You two go upstairs with Patty and Connie. Go to your rooms and they’ll help you get dressed.”

Heading downstairs, he saw Holly waiting in the large entry hall, surrounded by luggage. Upon seeing him, Holly rushed to meet him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him back upstairs. At the top of the first flight of stairs, to the left, was a large bedroom, with a very large bed, even larger than the one in the hotel penthouse. The bedroom had its own bathroom and two walk-in closets. It was obviously the master bedroom, and he knew from the clothes searches that it was the mother’s bedroom.

“Good choice!” he said enthusiastically, and leaned over to give her a kiss. “Go bring my luggage and your luggage up to this room, then meet me downstairs.”

He watched Holly practically skipped away, then his gaze fell on the lady of the house wearing some of her daughter’s clothes going downstairs, and his mood fell.

Tommy felt vaguely guilty, taking over someone else’s bedroom, but he was still going to do it. Until and unless she was cured of being Infected ... or until whatever recovery had happened with him happened to the others ... she was going to be dependent on him ... since he had invaded and taken over her home. He covered his face with one hand for a moment. From one perspective, he was ... a criminal? ... definitely a thief ... maybe a rapist? Depended on how much free will they had, if they really could consent ... well, they HAD all seemed pretty eager to join in. On the other hand, if they weren’t capable of consent, then did that make it rape or something else? They were all adults, but with their minds messed up ... He just didn’t know. And now he was planning to steal someone’s home and keep them prisoner in it, even taking the woman of the house’s bedroom. That really sounded bad, come to think of it. Maybe if he...