Chapter 16: Like the Hot Cheerleader Banging Her Nerdy Tutor

"Lounge chairs!" I exclaimed. "This is probably a worse idea than that throne crap."

"I didn't hear you complaining when Elizabeth and Sophie were putting suntan lotion on you." Brian smiled and looked behind us.

Elizabeth and Sophie lay on chairs behind me, sunning themselves. I was pretty sure I'd never seen a smaller bikini than the white one Sophie had on.

"I thought they were only going to wear white," I said. Elizabeth had nothing on that I could see.

"Marina set the trend with the ribbon around the waist thing," Brian told me. "I think that girl likes to be naked, even more now that you've improved on what God gave her. If you're wondering, Liz tied her hair back with a white scrunchie."

"That counts?"

"Are you complaining?" he asked me.

"They're going a little too far. Those two guys attacked Joey."

"Yeah! She cleaned their clocks and Bianca kicked them to curb." Brian said dismissively. "All before you tried to make your very own tin man doll so the white thing is now a warning about who belongs to whom."

"Tin man?"

"If I only had a heart..." he sang.

"You're fucking sick!" I said. (And yes, I laughed!) "What about the kids? That's a lot of nudity."

"So is that my role?" he asked.

"What are you talking about?"

"I figure the Professor is the reasonable voice, sort of like the angel on your shoulder." Brian sat up in his chair and spun towards me. "I'm supposed to be the devil that's going to say ... It's okay, Boss, nail Kellie! Nail Kellie! Then put Brandi on her knees and make her stuck-up little ass lick your cock clean."

"That's not happening!" I told him.

"Why not?" he said. "They want it."

I looked at the surrounding streets. Bianca wanted to scout the Bus Terminal before moving the group. We'd taken a few people and driven out of town from the north end, run across the back road running parallel to Hohokus, and come down the South Bridge, which was closer to the Terminal. There had been a few zombies on the Terminal grounds. Bianca, John-John, and the Professor were walking through the warehouse, opening any containers, and planning how to utilize the space. From the stories I'd heard about the Terminal, they were going to be awhile.

"Do you think they're going to find bodies?" I asked Brian. "I mean with the lawsuit and everything, this would have been the safest place to store them."

A few years before Zombie-Day, an overzealous cop lied to get a warrant. The litigation had been ongoing, even with the city trying to settle, because it basically made the Terminal off-limits to the city authorities. There was a conspiracy theory that the mob paid the cop to cross the line.

"Mr. Valence said only the normal stuff is going to be found," the Right Tower told me. The Towers and Kellie were walking the roofline, keeping an eye out for anybody who saw us and might decide to investigate.

"Are you making them bigger?" Brian asked, studying the Towers. "You didn't do that to the girls."

"I like the idea of having walking 'Back The Fuck Off!' signs," I admitted to him.

"They're taller too!" he said. "Dude, you don't have to make them that much bigger! They were already huge!"

I shrugged, "I never played with boys."

"Come to the man side!" Brian whispered in a dark voice.

I tilted my head and sighed.

"If you're going to lounge around naked, you can't blame me for trying to play with the most beautiful cock I've ever seen," he told me.

"Stop it!"

"He says the words but the tone of voice says he likes the compliments." Brian smiled widely. "I'm breaking you down! I'm breaking you down! Pretty soon, you're going to be thinking 'As long as nobody knows, what's the harm in letting the poor guy suck it.' I'm breaking you down! I'm breaking you down!"

"It's not going to happen," I said.

"Like not fucking Kellie or Brandi?" he asked.

"It's different," I told him. "Brandi might come around and ... It's not Kellie, it's me."

"Kellie and Joey told us how bad it was for you," he said. "That brother of yours sounds like a beast."

"Foster brother! I wouldn't even call him brother! I was a check to them and not a big one."

"Robert sounds like a shithead," Brian said. "I understand though."

"No, you don't." I tried to convey with my tone of voice that the subject should be closed.

"I was out of the closet in high school," he said. "I do know what it's like, Miguel."

"You think so?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Let me ask you a question. It's an algebra problem," I said. "I heard the gay thing is one in ten. One in ten men are either gay, have tendencies or thoughts, or are agnostic about the thing, like it isn't gay if you're pitching!"

"One in ten, okay," he said. "Not necessarily gay but in the range to play."

"So if there were seven billion people on earth and roughly one out of two were male and one in ten survived Zombie night and one in ten males are or have gay tendencies, how many survivors are like me?"

He'd been leaning forward; his head went back at the end.

"Hell, how about we simplify it," I told him. "When it was seven billion, how many people were like me?"

Brian rubbed his upper lip with a finger before nodding.

"Miguel, from what I can tell, you're doing pretty good right now." Brian looked at the girls behind us and at Kellie on the other side of the roof.

"Yes, every woman is happy to do whatever it takes to live." I shrugged.

"Give them enough respect not to think you're raping them," Brian told me. "If you're going to try to fly that Ashley isn't willing, the plane will not make it off the runway. Or Jewel. Or Joey. Or Bianca. Or Elizabeth. Or any woman who bounces on your bed."

"I've already expressed my opinions about people's choices," I said. "Are they really willing when the options aren't pretty?"

"Don't bullshit me, dude," Brian said with a laugh. "I'm the devil on your shoulder, remember? You made sure the sergeant didn't have a choice except to leave!"

I lay back and stared at the sky.

"Elizabeth with Annabelle," Brian continued. "Hell, Matt isn't Lorena's kid, and she killed for you. She's also banged you twelve ways to Sunday and not just on her community service day. Everybody knows the 'wives' spent last night in your bed. We even know Brandi was there but didn't participate. Susan Sterns would have walked away from her cop brother if you'd waved your dick in her face and told her that a blowjob would put her kids on your Must-Survive List. The truth, Miguel, and some of us know it, is that you could have made the cop asshole back the fuck down! You could have broken him, but you didn't. You let him walk out the door!"

I turned my head to stare at Brian.

"We are not going to ask why but don't think we're stupid," Brian said to me. "You voted him off the island for a reason!"

I nodded slowly.

"Was it worth her kids?" he asked. "If they die, I mean!"

There wasn't much I could say to it, but maybe he and the others who had committed themselves to my choices deserved an answer.

"You're right," I said. "I didn't wave my dick in his sister's face because she would have stayed. The sergeant wouldn't have left her behind so he would have stayed too. He's strong enough to get me the answers to a couple of questions. I ... WE need those answers!"

"And?" he asked.

"In two days, they made it out of town," I told him. "Not as far as I expected, but they're not dead either. He's very careful!"

"You can track them?"

"Most of their group let me heal them during Lorena's first day of community service," I said. "I didn't change anything so I can't get as good a lock as with the girls or the Towers. It's easier with them still being a group."

"Jesus! What the fuck else can you do?"

"It doesn't have a long range yet." I looked south where the sergeant's group had gone. "Short enough that being here instead of the apartment building gives me a better feel for them. It also drains my power, but not nearly as much as Pushing or Healing."

He nodded. "So what's the verdict?"

"They haven't moved in a while," I said, preparing to Push, which gave me a bearing on the sergeant's group.

Brian looked south with me. "Is that bad or good?"

Releasing my power, I shook my head. "I wish I knew!"

"You need to know why they aren't moving," he said, snapping his fingers.

I stared at him.

"Again, we're not stupid!" He pushed my leg with his foot. "We could send a scouting party to find out what's going on with them, not directly approach them but put on eyes on them."

"It's not worth it," I replied. "I'm going to lose them anyway by the time we get moved in here. The Wholesale Club bullshit is going to delay us!"

"Oh shut up! It's a good idea," he told me. "Bianca and John-John checked out the place. It's non-residential and only has major roads leading into it, so a very limited zombie presence. Don't I sound so butch-military? A heavy enemy presence is unlikely, Sir. Yes, Sir! There's the Wholesale Club, a few other big stores like Target, and the Marlboro Mall. With one big raid and making sure that even the fat man carries his weight to take everything we can, we'll be set until you tell us what you want to do next. Not to mention, those white bitches of yours need some va-ri-e-ty!"

"There's not much variety when they only wear one color," I said.

"Honey, there's wearing only white and there's stylin' in all white! Right now, I prefer the naked and mostly naked look. Keep in mind, I'm gay so it's the horror at those outfits rather than how silky smooth and flawless you've made their skin!"

"So ... let's get back to this tracking thing." He tried to make his voice sound innocent. "You can track anybody."

I shrugged. There was no point in continuing to be evasive with some of the group, at least about what I could do.

"I'm not tracking them," I said. "I'm aware of them."

"Only the people you healed?"

"Not exactly," I said. "If I heal someone, they're different for a little while."

"Different how?"

"The best I can describe it is brighter in my awareness," I said. "Think of everyone around me like light bulbs. When I heal you, you burn brighter for awhile."

"So if you've healed someone, they're like Christmas lights instead of regular lights?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "If I healed them, they're brighter lights! The people I've changed are the Christmas lights. The first gang that captured us--I couldn't lock on Ashley or Jewel because I hadn't done anything to them. They were just females! I also didn't hold my power past the Push. It's different now that I'm having sex more often. I'm also getting more practice keeping track of people."

He looked at me while he thought about it. "So that's why you said you'd lose them, their bodies go back to normal. They're not burning as cleanly!"

I nodded. "I should have offered to heal them one last time before they left. Maybe make a little change to them! Kellie, Ashley, Joey and the others never go back to normal."

"Is that why you took out Jewel's fake boobs?" he asked. "Did they make her less bright or something?"

"Okay," I said slowly. "This is harder than I thought because you kind of can't get it. Think of me as having two extra senses, one for each power."

"Sight, Sound, Feel, Taste, Smell. We have those! How are your extra two different?"

"Before I Push, it almost like I'm taking hold of my power. I say 'preparing to Push', without the pregnant jokes!"

"I think holding your power makes sense." He looked at my dick.

"I could stop!"

"No," he said, raising hands. "Just kidding!"

"So when I prepare to Push or hold my power, I become aware of everything around me."

"Everything?"

"Objects, people, animals, everything!" I said. "If you think about it, it's necessary since I 'push' things around. I have to know where those things are to push them, right?"

"Oh! Damn!"

"Exactly!"

"How detailed does it get? I mean, molecules?" Brian's eyes were very wide.

"There lies insanity," I said. "It's too much to process so I have to focus on the big picture."

"So you could get down to every atom?"

"Yes, but I won't! It's even dangerous for me to hold my power a long time because of the added awareness. I could get lost in 'everything'. It's easier when I have something specific to do." I said in a hard voice. "It's almost a completely different state of mind. You're an object, not a person to me. I can tell there's a human male in that location but not who it is unless I healed you or changed you. It uses power, but it's like idling. Does that use a lot of gas in a car? Like standby on a monitor!"

"So if you were holding your power, those guys wouldn't have gotten to you with a knife?" he asked.

"No, they would have been dead the instant the knife came out," I told him. "Now, my Healing is different. I don't have to hold my power or prepare to Heal, which would make me glow unless I clamp down."

"Touching someone is enough," he said excitedly.

"Yes," I said with a nod. "I can't turn it off! When I touch you, it's vibration, rhythm, beat and flow. I had to take the silicone out of Jewel because their vibration or lack of vibration ruins the feel of her 'sound'."

"I think I would have been better off not asking," he said after a few seconds. "I'm more confused than before you tried to explain."

Brian looked up at the Majestic Apartment Building. The building had been built on the road leading to the South Bridge. Like the University Tower, it rested on top of a cliff wall separating Hohokus from the next town over.

"Let's forget the healing thing," Brian said. "With your Push-Sense, do you know how many people are in the Majestic?"

"Twelve."

"That's fucking scary!" he told me. "So you'd know if they were about to shoot us or something."

"No," I said. "I can't read their minds; I'm only aware of them. Two of them are on the roof, looking in this direction. They're probably watching us but I couldn't say for sure. They don't have guns."

"But if they were going to shoot us..."

I closed one eye and sighted on the Majestic. "I would know they have a gun aimed at us, but I would only be guessing at whether or not they were going to shoot. Until the bullet comes towards us! It would be also be a bad idea for them. Your new wife Crystal is very impressed by flying trucks. I bet she would be more impressed by a flying building! Lots of good suckee-suckee for me!"

He stared at me for a long time.

"Let's change the subject before I lose my mind," he told me. "Kellie--it's not her, it's you?"

"I think I'd rather talk about shit I REALLY don't want to talk about than Kellie," I said laying back.

"You want her, right?"

"Dude, I'd be surprised if YOU didn't want her," I said. "Can a guy be so gay that he wouldn't want to have sex with Kellie Connolly?"

"Yes, and that's an offensive thing to say to a gay guy. I can appreciate Kellie's looks," he said. "She wants you. Miguel. She wants you to be her first! What's the problem?"

"She was one of them," I said. "Not all the time like Robert; she wasn't even like Tara who only bothered to do shit to me when she had an audience."

"But Kellie did, on occasion, dig her claws into you," he finished for me.

"Like I said, not as bad as everybody or as often, but she did it."

"And?"

"I want to fucking hurt her!" I admitted. "I'm not talking a spanking either. I want payback, and she's the one available."

"But you let them do it! You could have stopped them at any time."

"So? It was still wrong and I still want to kill her!" I told him.

"You don't really mean kill her, right?"

"No," I said. "How about I want hurt her so bad she'll wish she was dead?"

Brian lay back and stared at the sky. His fingers danced as if he were counting with them.

He smiled suddenly. "You're so cute!"

"Huh?" It wasn't the reaction I expected.

"You don't get that you've won, do you?" He told me. "Why is that?"

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Brian."

"It's because you're not scared, isn't it?" he asked me.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. "Maybe you need some water."

"You even act like the girls aren't willing!" Brian wasn't actually talking to me. "Miguel, let's take a step back."

"Okay?"

"You're right and you're wrong."

"I don't think I want to keep going," I told him. "Let's just stop here!"

He shook his head. "For everything you've said about us letting go of the old world, you haven't done it."

"Huh?"

"It makes sense that you wouldn't--nothing changed for you," he said thoughtfully. "You weren't scared back then, and you're not scared now. The rules are still the same for you. Actually, the rules are more favorable to you here! You told us--this is your world."

"But it is," I said. "I can survive here much easier than the rest of you."

"Yes, baby doll," he said with a big smile. "That's why you're right and wrong. Miguel, we're fucking scared!"

"I know that, Brian. You people keep telling me!"

"No, baby doll. You don't know!" He said. "Nine out of ten people are dead, probably more now. Gay, straight, blonde, brunette, blue-eyed, brown-eyed, shit-stains in their underwear, snot-nosed, brainiac or stupid! It didn't fucking matter, nine out of ten dead overnight! Six point three BILLION people gone! And here's a wonderful stat, there was only one of you and you're still standing. In fact, everybody near you is still standing!"

I tilted my head.

"You can't understand that the girls are really willing," he said, "because you're still the kid everybody picked on. The kid who let everybody pick on him because he had secrets to keep! You were never scared of your foster brother or anybody! There was a part of you that probably wanted people to find out so you could clean their clocks. You were pissed off, not scared!"

"Yeah, and I'm going to take it out on Kellie."

"Miguel, there's no point!" he told me.

"I don't understand."

"Remember those stats, one out of ten guys have tendencies?" He smiled at me. "Here are some other stats! There were three thousand kids in Hohokus High School. It means three hundred to three fifty survived Zombie-Night. We've seen seven of you. SEVEN! Your foster brother is dead. Stephen and Danny, dead! Tara, dead! You're alive and doing quite fucking well for yourself! The hottest girl in your school wants her virgin blood on your cock. There's two girls from that life downstairs who will be happy to bear witness to it and what it means ... THAT YOU WON!"

I nodded slowly.

"But it can be better, a complete victory over all those assholes who thought they were pushing you around," he said.

"How?"

"You don't hurt Kellie, baby-doll!" He put his hands under his head. "You've won and it's your right to give her back the shit they poured on you OR you can make her happy-happy-joy-joy that she waited for the right guy. You can ensure Kellie only has two thoughts from now on: unsheathing that massive sword to defend your body and sheathing your massive sword in her body."

I put my hands under my head and stared at the sky.

"And you get to hurt her anyway," he said. "In the most delicious way the kid everybody picked on in school could ever hurt a cheerleader. By taking her virginity! With your powers, you'll get to relive it any time you want, especially if she loves it--Kellie Connolly joyfully spreading her legs for you to make her a woman!"

He laughed. "You won, Miguel. Let it fucking go!"

The part where I told someone more than they absolutely needed to know about my powers was FUCKING STUPID! As it turns out, my lack of family and friends left me fundamentally incapable of understanding the lengths people will go to if there is the thinnest hope their loved ones are alive. My Push-Sense gave them the hope that if someone was out there, I could find them.

Zombie-Night made toast of anybody too old, too young, or too infirm to get around without help. Locating our groups' families became a two-day ordeal, with only three successes to show for the effort. The last success buoyed everyone though; the fat man's ex-wife was a piece of work! She rescued ten kids from her neighborhood and had killed three survivor-gang members by the time we found her.

The first time meeting the woman went off-kilter for me. I blame it on the women!

It was farther than we'd ranged from our building. I'd only agreed to it because the sergeant and his sister were out of my range. The house that the fat man had to give up in the divorce was in the direction I thought the sergeant might have taken his people. We rolled in on SUVs and turned them towards the house. A nice thing about a post-apocalypse world is that nobody complains about double parking.

"You can stop right there!" a woman yelled out a window.

"She's alive!" the fat man said from the backseat of my SUV. He didn't exactly sound happy about it!

"I've already killed three of you assholes!" the woman shouted. "I don't have a problem killing a few more. I got teenagers in here and as far as I'm concerned if they're old enough to fuck then they're old enough to shoot. They've been fucking since the world turned to shit so I gave them guns!"

"If you want to talk to her, you're going to have to come out," Ashley told the fat man.

"She might shoot me!" He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Really? I couldn't have guessed the divorce got ugly," Ashley said. I stepped out of the truck. Ashley, Kellie, and Joey followed me. Bianca and John-John eased out of their vehicles.

"Put the guns away," I told them and the others who were aiming weapons at the house. "It's just her and a bunch of kids!"

"You're a little young to die!" the woman yelled. She sounded more frightened than at the beginning. We weren't behaving like the other gangs and everyone around me was calm.

The fat man got the house as an inheritance from an estranged uncle. The thing was huge for the neighborhood; the land alone might have been worth over two million in the non-zombie economy. The house had one of the best views of Metro City available from our side of the river!

"You didn't have ten kids with the fat man," I shouted up to the window she was looking down at us from. "Where'd you get them?"

We heard the shotgun being jacked.

"Shit!" I whispered.

I took two running steps forward and vaulted up using the fence as a bounce point. The woman's shot went underneath me! I Pushed the glass out of the upper window a second before I went through. I landed in a roll and came up to my feet. The jump had been the distraction the girls needed; they'd come in behind me. Joey ripped the shotgun out of the woman's hands and pinned her to the wall. Kellie and Ashley ambushed two teenagers as they ran into the room to rescue their protector.

"That was impossible!" the woman said.

I preferred her statement to the ones being made by the teenagers, which mostly equated us with anal orifices.

"You should have heard the discussion between Miguel and the Professor about something to do with uncertainty and Miguel's 'awareness' of things around him," Ashley told the woman. "It was close there between the Professor having an orgasm, going foaming-mouth insane, or fainting."

"Please, if you're going to do something, do it me," the woman begged. "Leave the girls out of it!"

"Oh, that's going to happen," Kellie said, looking the woman up and down. "But not today or tonight since he's popping my cherry!"

"You really like saying it that way!" Joey gave Kellie a 'look', while she held the woman completely off the ground.

"The guys at school used to," I said.

"They had a betting pool going," Kellie said with gritted teeth.

"You knew?" I asked her.

"If you knew, how could you think I didn't know?" she snorted.

"I lived with Robert." I reminded her. "It was his idea."

"Because he thought he would be the one to nail me," Kellie said to the woman. "Robert was Miguel's foster brother."

"I still argue the word brother does not apply," I said. "I only lived with them."

"You're not here to hurt us, are you?" the woman asked. "Can you put me down? Jesus, you don't look that strong!"

"Are you going to be good?" Joey asked. "If you try to hurt Miguel again, I'm throwing you out the window."

"I bet you could," the woman said after Joey set her down.

"How'd you end up with the fat man?" I asked. "You're kind of hot!"

Amazonian would have been an accurate description: long black hair, blue eyes, tall, not lacking in the hips or ass or breast department, and fairly muscular without being a bodybuilder. Athletic!

"His name is Charles," she said. "Is he why you're here?"

I certainly didn't want to accept the credit if she ended up coming with us so I nodded. "I needed to do something up this way; he asked that we check on you."

"He's outside," Ashley said. "He told us you might shoot him if you got the chance."

"I would have thought about it," the woman admitted.

Ashley turned to me. "Another one with blue eyes."

"Yes," I said. "I don't see the connection since the pig family had blue eyes, but the Professor seems to have it right. A good number of survivors have them. It's probably connected to a trait I know saved people, but I haven't connected it to the blue eyes yet."

"Maybe it's because you really like blue eyes," Joey said.

I chose to ignore the implication. By my view, Joey's grip on reality was slipping more and more daily. She wasn't clinically insane, just fucking crazy! Unfortunately, nobody but me seemed to think her new view on my place in the order of all existence was a bit out there.

"So is this Professor your leader?" the woman asked.

"Yes," I said quickly.

The girls shook their heads. I'm sure the looks on their faces told the woman something more in the female language.

"No," I said when she eyed me. "Would you like to be the leader?"

The female language appeared to be more compressed and informative than English since she knew better. "No, I'm sure someone is..."

"Bianca is in charge," I said with a sigh. "And speak of the devil!"

Bianca walked into the room. The Towers were at her back.

"Diapers," Bianca said to herself. "We have to pick up diapers at the Wholesale Club."

"Lot of diapers, Boss," the Right Tower said to me. "Lots and lots of diapers!"

The Left Tower grunted.

"He's right," the Right Tower said. "Scented diapers!"

The woman's eyes opened wide as she took in the Towers' size.

"I know, right?" I said proudly. Stretching my arms out to the ceiling, I posed and spoke in my best mad scientist voice. "They are my biggest creations 'cause I don't have to change them that much to make them wider, taller, and stronger. Muhahahaha! It's so much easier to work on them than the girls."

I had the Towers up to six foot six and in the three hundred pound range. The Towers wielded weight bars that they used as clubs. The Right Tower had told me the bars weighed forty-five pounds; the boys threw them around like cheerleading batons.

Bianca ignored me and walked up to the teenage girl that Ashley had pinned to the floor. "Honey, I need you to go take care of the babies. Diana will be okay and so will your boyfriend. The worst thing that can happen here is Miguel makes me leave you kids behind."

The girl nodded. We watched her walk out of the room.

"Diana? Really?" Ashley asked the woman. "It's not like you wouldn't already have made out like a bandit in a strip club with your looks and a Wonder Woman costume."

"It's my grandmother's name," Diana said. She met each woman's eyes and then looked at me. "So..."

"Only if you want to," Bianca said dismissively.

"But I would find a Wonder Woman costume," Ashley told Diana. "I think there's one at the strip joint in this town. I only worked there a few nights a month so I could be wrong. It's worth finding one!"

I kind of didn't want to say anything since a taller, buffer, and lighter skinned version of Joey wasn't a bad thing!

"First thing is first." Bianca held her hand up to stop Diana from talking. "Did you find them, Miguel?"

"They were only out of my range by a fucking block," I said. "I could have taken a walk and reacquired instead of coming down here."

"Did they get captured?" Bianca asked.

"No, they're in a supermarket," I replied. "I'm done with this shit! They can go wherever now; it didn't work. Fucking douchebag!"

Everyone in the room was looking at me.

Diana raised her hand and waited for me to nod at her before speaking. "You can do more than the jump?"