Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (17 page)

. . .

By the time the eaters outside had disbursed somewhat, it was after eight.  Kerry insisted on cooking them supper, for which Alex was very grateful considering all he’d had since breakfast at the Carlson’s was a raisin and biscuit Yorkie he’d grabbed from the Tesco petrol station on their way past.  Micah had chosen a mint Aero.  Wuss. 

Kerry’s tuna pasta wasn’t gourmet, but it was good enough and Alex had two servings. 

They spent the evening chatting and playing a marathon game of Monopoly while Micah flirted shamelessly with Kerry and Alex gave any chance he’d thought he had up as a lost cause. 

As time went on, something began to niggle at him about their hostess.  Nothing major, she was friendly and pleasant and, well, had a body that made him want to fall to his knees and beg.  Just something felt a little off in the way she called eaters “the infected” and didn’t seem overly bothered by having hundreds of flesh eating monsters on her doorstep.  But he couldn’t put his finger on anything specifically bad and by ten he was too tired to care and ready to just go to bed and forget everything for a few hours. 

Besides, he couldn’t get past the possibility there was a very real chance he was just imagining it because of how well she was getting on with Micah.

He fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, all niggles forgotten.

“Mmm.”

A smile crept across Alex’s face as he stretched and rolled onto his back.  This was his kind of dream.  Wonderfully stimulating sensations were tingling around his crotch and sizzling up his spine.  Warm breath caressed his neck.

A woman’s voice whispered in his ear.  “I give myself to you.  Fill me with your seed.  Let me bear your pale-eyed children.”

His eyes snapped open as he abruptly became aware he wasn’t dreaming.  Kerry was lying next to him, her naked body pressed up against his. 

Her hand was shoved down the front of his boxer shorts.

“What on earth are you
doing
?” he exclaimed.

“Ravish me.  Take me as your concubine. Plunge your raging member deep into my wet sheath.”

After a moment’s hesitation, which he wasn’t proud of, Alex grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away.  He struggled to untangle himself from the covers and scrambled to his feet.

“Would you get out of the bed, please,” he said, his tone noticeably strained. 

Her eyes dropped to stare at the stretching front of his boxers where his raging member was having ideas of its own.  He turned away rapidly.

“But I want to please you,” she said.

Alex glanced back at her.  She was on her knees on the bed, her very sexy body very naked.  He turned away again, looking around for his clothes and spotting them in a crumpled heap on a nearby chair.  He vaguely remembered throwing them there before getting into bed, but his higher brain functions were currently having issues.  He grabbed his jeans and pulled them on, being careful to stay facing away from where Kerry was still on the bed, her eyes boring into his back.

“You can do
anything
you want to me,” she purred.  “I’m very, very flexible.”

His movements slowed as Alex found himself trying to remember when the last time he’d had sex was.  Why exactly was he pushing a beautiful woman out of his bed?

“Together we can reach the pinnacle of sexual ecstasy as you drive your rigid shaft into me over and over and over,” she breathed.

Meir’s outbreak, he said to himself.  Danger everywhere.  Need to focus on...  oh, that feels good.  He shivered as her fingers touched his arm, stroking up to his shoulder and across his bare back.

Kerry’s breath caressed his ear as she whispered, “Together, in the heat of our passion, we will create the perfect child.”

The parts of Alex not already rigid stiffened. 
That
was why he was pushing her out of his bed.  “I am not a sperm donor,” he said, grabbing his t-shirt and pulling it on.

Kerry sighed and Alex heard her climb off the bed, then the rustle of clothing as she dressed.  “In that case, I’m going to have to use less subtle methods,” she said.

“
Less
subtle than climbing naked into my bed...?”

Alex turned around and stopped.  Kerry was pointing a gun at him.  His gun.  He glanced at the bedside cabinet where he’d left it.  Not for the first time, he wondered why men had to turn into gibbering idiots in the presence of a pretty woman.  And complete morons if she took off her clothes.

“You can’t force me to have sex with you,” he said. 

“We’ll see,” she said with a smile, waving the gun towards the door.

“There must be hundreds of men who would jump at the chance to shag you and wouldn’t care how many kids they produced,” he said as he moved.  “Why me?”

“None of them are worthy,” she said.  “Only a Survivor can give me the child I want, strong, fast, powerful.  Our children will rule the world.”

His sluggish brain finally caught up, managing to think about something other than Kerry’s naked body.  “You’re a Meirite.  Or is Meirling the correct term nowadays?” 

They were a small but significant faction, Meir’s fetishists.  Alex had met a few before, been propositioned by some.  He knew some Survivors did indulge, but he never had, finding the whole thing incredibly creepy.  Although there had been times, when he was alone at night, when he did wonder if it would really be so bad.

They ranged from those who just had a weird thing for Survivors to a deep underground few who wanted to have full on sex with an eater.  Just the idea made Alex want to gag.  It was also illegal. 

They were part of the reason the police were so concerned with picking up new eaters as quickly as possible, especially the females.  Male eaters couldn’t get erections, but that wasn’t an issue with the females.  Although superhuman strength and a raging desire to eat anyone within biting distance was.  Alex wasn’t sure if any men had succeeded in raping a female eater, but he’d heard the gory stories of a few who had tried.  And failed badly.

He walked out into the hallway ahead of Kerry.  She was obviously insane, but he attempted logic anyway.  “My DNA is no different from anyone else’s,” he said.  “Any kids I have will be totally normal.”

“That is a lie,” she said.  “When our child is born, you will understand.”

She guided him into a room they hadn’t been into the previous evening.  As soon as Alex walked in, he understood Kerry’s apparent obsession with strong smelling air freshener. 

The entire end of the room, spanning the wall, was a metal barred cage split into two sections.  In one section was a male eater, an original by the odour which, now he was out of the floral fug in the rest of the flat, Alex could smell.  It was agitated and moaning, trying to reach through the bars separating it from the other half of the cage. 

Pressed against the wall in that section, as far away from the eater’s grasping hands as possible, was...

“
Micah?
”

“Just do whatever she says,” he said, eyeing the eater warily.  He was wearing a t-shirt and briefs, as if he’d just got out of bed.

Kerry stroked her hand down Alex’s bicep.  He shrugged her away. 

“The door between them is set on a timer,” she said.  “If before,” she glanced at a clock on the wall, “half an hour or so I don’t key in the code to stop it, it will open and my gorgeous friend there gets a fresh meal.  George will be very pleased.  It’s been so long since he’s eaten live meat.  He misses it so.” 

She walked up to the cage and the eater turned its attention to her, reaching through the bars.  Keeping out of its grasp, she stroked its arm with something approaching affection.

“How on earth did she get you in there?” Alex said, scanning for some way to get Micah out.

Micah looked awkward, not answering.

“Oh, he wasn’t as resistant to my wiles as you are,” Kerry said.  “It wasn’t difficult to lure him in here.”

Alex threw Micah a deprecating look.  “Seriously?”

“She was
naked
.  What was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know, think with your brain instead of your dick?”

“And how did she get a gun on you?”

“She took me by surprise.”

“Yeah, right, and how much clothing was she wearing when she surprised you?”

“That had nothing to do with anything...”

Kerry sighed loudly.  “Alex, the timer is running down.  If you want your friend to live, you will give me what I want.”

“No,” he said.

Micah gaped at him.  “I’m about to be eaten in here!  Give the crazy woman what she wants.”  He looked at Kerry.  “What
do
you want?”

Kerry looked at Alex.  “I want to bear his child.”

There were several long seconds of silence.  It was Micah who spoke first.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“She wants me to impregnate her,” Alex said.  “Which I’m not going to do.”

George moaned.

“Look,” Micah said, “while I can appreciate your reluctance, under the circumstances could you not put aside your morals,” his voice suddenly rose to a shriek, “
and just bang the loony chick so I don’t die in here!
”  The eater became excited at the shouting and Micah jabbed his finger at it.  “And you can just shut up,” he yelled, sounding mildly hysterical.

Alex was studying the cage.  While the door between the two sections was on a timer, its control panel mounted on the wall behind Kerry, the doors leading out into the rest of the room were key operated.  She didn’t appear to have the keys on her, but he knew they must be close.  Maybe if he could lull her into a false sense of security, he could get the gun away from her and find them.

“Alright,” he said to Kerry.  “Let’s go back to your bedroom and I’ll do what you want.”

“No,” she said, “in here.”

Alex and Micah spoke at the same time.  “What?”

“I want to keep an eye on him,” she said, indicating Micah, “and besides, George always likes to watch.  It’s very arousing.”  She smirked.

“I think I may vomit,” Micah said.

Alex suppressed a shudder.

She backed away from Alex to a sideboard beneath the timer panel and opened a drawer, rummaging inside.  “Take off your jeans and put these on behind you.” 

She tossed him a pair of handcuffs.  He caught them out of the air and looked at them.  Once he had them on, there was no way he’d be able to overpower her while she had the gun.  They didn’t look like the special reinforced eater cuffs the police used, so he’d probably be able to break them, but not before she realised what he was doing.

If he was going to try anything, he had to do it now.

Taking hold of the edges of his t-shirt, he pulled it off over his head, taking a couple of steps towards her as he did so.  Her eyes travelled down his bare torso and she licked her lips.

“Oh crap, I do not want to see this,” Micah muttered, turning away.

Keeping his eyes on Kerry, Alex dropped his hands to the waistband of his jeans and unfastened the button slowly, taking another step forward.  Her eyes fixed on his crotch.  The pistol wavered slightly.

Alex sprang forward, grabbing for the gun.  Kerry yelped in surprise, jerking her hand up out of the way.  The end of the barrel hit the control panel for the cage.  With a barely audible beep, a green light went on.

“
Alex
!”

He glanced at Micah at the sound of his panicked voice in time to see the door separating him from George the hungry eater begin to slide open. 

Then his world exploded in pain. 

He staggered back, clutching at his crotch as Kerry lowered her knee.  He would have felt stupid if he wasn’t busy feeling like his testicles were being incinerated from the inside.  Stars flashed on the periphery of his vision.

“Hurry,” Micah yelled.

The bars were still sliding open.  The eater hadn’t yet noticed that the gap was wide enough to get through, but it wouldn’t be long.

Kerry raised the pistol again.  Trying to ignore the agony, Alex lunged at her, grabbing the gun before she could aim.  But she wasn’t letting go. 

“All I wanted was your sperm,” she spat out, “but you men are so afraid of commitment.”

She tried to knee him in the groin again, but he shuffled back out of the way, his eyes still watering with the pain from the first time.  He tried to pull the weapon from her grasp.

The gun went off.  Alex heard a metallic ricochet somewhere. 

Micah yelled. 

Alex glanced over to see him crouched and ready as the eater lurched through into his section.  There was a bullet hole in the wall near to his head.

With a shriek, Kerry kicked at Alex’s leg, connecting with his knee.  Pain exploded in his kneecap.  Ignoring it, he yanked the gun from her grasp with his right hand, drew back his left, and punched her squarely in the face.

She dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Micah grunted and Alex turned to see him plant a jump kick into the eater’s chest as it lunged at him.  It staggered backwards, but rapidly regained its balance and came at him again. 

“Do something,” Micah growled as he dodged away from the eater’s grasping hands.

Alex yanked open the drawer from where Kerry had pulled the cuffs, frantically searching for the keys to the cage.  When he didn’t find them, he pulled open the two remaining drawers, with no luck.

“I can’t find the keys,” he said.

“Then shoot it,” Micah replied, landing two rapid punches into the eaters ribs followed by a roundhouse kick.

“You’re too close,” Alex said, “you’ll be infected.”  He limped up to the bars and banged on them, trying to attract George’s attention.  It didn’t work.

Micah was trying to avoid its grasp, but with barely any room to manoeuvre it wasn’t working well.  The eater lunged at him and he was suddenly backed into the corner, grabbing its wrists.  He grimaced, groaning with exertion as the eater pushed towards him.

“I can’t hold it,” he wheezed.

Alex pointed the pistol through the bars.  “Go under its arms and get to the other end of the cage as fast as you can.  Then cover your head.”