Love You To Pieces

 

ZOMBIE SEX AHEAD! That’s right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

 

© Copyright 2005 Ally Blue

Mark and Jorge were fucking in the vacant lot behind the 7-Eleven when the zombies came. Mark, flat on his back in the weeds with his legs slung over Jorge’s shoulders, smiled when he heard the low, throaty moan.

“Damn, baby,” he growled. “I like that sound.”

“Huh?” Jorge panted, removing his teeth from Mark’s neck long enough to give him a puzzled look. “What… oh!”

Jorge’s brown eyes rolled back as he came, cock pulsing inside Mark’s ass, nudging the sweet spot and making him come too. Jorge pulled out and collapsed on top of Mark. They lay there for a minute, catching their breath.

“Uuuuhhh.”

The moan was louder that time. Mark laughed. “Caveman.”

Jorge propped himself up on one elbow and frowned down at Mark. “What the fuck you talking about, babe?”

“That moaning sound you keep making.” Mark tweaked one of Jorge’s nipples. “It’s sexy when we’re fucking, but hell, you ought to be verbal again by now.”

An odd expression crossed Jorge’s face. “I thought that was you.”

“Wasn’t me, man.”

“Well, if it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me, then who…?”

“Uuuuhhhh!”

The voice was dry and rattly, and definitely not Mark or Jorge since it came from behind them. They stared at each other for a second, then untangled themselves in record time and leapt to their feet.

Mark barely had time to register the peeling, grayish skin and rotting blue suit before the man’s teeth closed on Jorge’s throat and worried it like a dog with a raw steak. There was a wet tearing sound. Jorge gurgled and fell to the ground. The man rode him right down and kept on munching.

Mark watched, frozen, as a dark puddle spread from under Jorge’s neck. The man in the blue suit crouched over Jorge’s body, grunting and slurping. One bony hand dug into Jorge’s chest. A finger came off with a dusty sort of cracking noise, rolled down Jorge’s ribcage, and landed in the dirt at his side, and suddenly Mark knew what he was dealing with. He’d watched enough movies to know what to do. Running over to the trash pile, he snatched up a piece of two-by-four and ran back.

“Hey!” he shouted.

The zombie raised its head and turned toward him. One shriveled eye dangled onto its skeletal cheek. The other glared reproachfully at him.

“That’s my man you’re eating, zombie.” Mark brandished the two-by-four. “Back the fuck off, right now.”

The zombie shuffled to its feet. “Uuuguuhhhuh,” it insisted. A bit of bloody meat slid from the corner of its mouth and hit the ground with a wet plop.

Mark didn’t let it get any closer. He swung, and the board connected with the side of the zombie’s skull. Its head flew right off, bounced and rolled, coming to rest a few feet away. The smartly dressed body crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Mark edged around the headless body and knelt beside Jorge, his gaze darting between his fallen lover and the thing he’d just decapitated. “Jorge? Baby?”

Jorge didn’t answer. Mark took a closer look, and that was all he needed to know Jorge was dead. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, trying to control the mingled grief and panic inside him. He couldn’t help Jorge any more. He had to save himself. Zombies are like roaches, he reminded himself. Where there’s one, there’s a thousand more.

Big, dead, cannibalistic roaches.

Something moved at his side. His eyes flew open. Jorge was sitting up, reaching for him. Mark felt a split second of relief, which quickly turned to terror as Jorge bit a chunk out of his shoulder. He screamed, shoved Jorge away, and scrambled out of reach.

“What the fuck, Jorge?” he spluttered. “Why’d you bite me?”

Jorge stared, brown eyes perfectly blank. Blood coated his lips and dribbled down his chin. He staggered to his feet and started toward Mark. His nude body was covered in sticky, shiny red. It dripped obscenely from the tip of his penis.

“Hungry,” Jorge whispered. “Need… hungry…” He lunged and made a grab for Mark, who danced out of reach.

Mark shook his head as he realized what had happened. “Jorge. No. Ah, baby, no.”

“Hungry.” Jorge reached for him again. He batted the grasping hand away, turned, and ran.

He made it nearly five blocks before the adrenaline started seeping away and his knees gave out. He sank down to the sidewalk, shaking all over, and put his head in his hands.

“Stupid fucking zombies,” he muttered. “Taking my man away. Dammit!”

The sound of footsteps nearby snapped him out of his shock. He realized, too late, that he was stark naked under a street light outside a leather bar at not quite midnight on a Saturday. Then he realized that he should’ve been surrounded by people by now, or possibly lying cuffed in the back seat of a patrol car, on his way to the drunk tank again. Or maybe the hospital, he reflected when his throbbing shoulder reminded him of his injury.

Something, he thought, is definitely wrong with this picture.

He pulled himself to a standing position, using the light pole for support since his knees were still knocking together, and took a good look around. Not a soul in sight. Techno music pounded from the open door of the bar, but there was no trace of the usual stream of people entering and exiting the place.

Mark turned in a nervous circle, half expecting to see tumbleweeds. Cars still lined the street, and some had stopped at odd angles in the road, but not one person did he see. Whoever he’d heard walking toward him before must’ve thought better of it and headed the other way. He found that something of a relief.

Suddenly his neck prickled. He whirled around, and came face to face with his tenth grade History teacher. Before he could react, her liver-spotted hands clamped with surprising strength onto the back of his neck and pulled. He let out a high-pitched squeak as her wrinkled lips opened and her mouth fastened onto his throat. He squirmed frantically, expecting at any moment to have his jugular torn open the way Jorge’s had been. It took him a moment to notice it wasn’t happening. Wild laughter bubbled up and spilled over when he realized she didn’t have her dentures in.

“Yeah, let’s see you gum me to death, you old bag!” He shoved her as hard as he could, bursting into fresh peals of laughter when she fell right on her bony rear. “Bitch! Stupid zombie bitch! Ha!”

Feet shuffled on the concrete behind him. Something cold touched his bare back, and he froze, the laughter drying up in his throat.

“Hungry,” an unfamiliar voice wheezed. A chorus of voices echoed it.

Mark closed his eyes. “Oh, fuck.”

He wondered if he imagined the smirk on the old lady’s face when the zombies pulled him to the ground and started ripping his guts out.

*****

When Mark opened his eyes, he thought he must be dreaming. Jorge leaned over him, one brown hand stroking his face. He sat up, trying to shake the odd fuzzy feeling out from between his ears. “Jorge? What the fuck happened?”

“Don’t know. It ain’t good though.”

Jorge’s voice sounded wrong, all raw and gurgly. Mark frowned, trying to remember. They were in the vacant lot, Jorge was fucking him, that crazy guy showed up, and then…

It all came back suddenly. Jorge dying, then sitting up again and biting him. His old teacher attacking him.

The zombies all over him. Eating him alive.

“Oh, shit.” Mark struggled to his feet. A small crowd of people, some in rotting funereal finery, others in blood-soaked street clothes, stood in a circle around him and Jorge. They stared around rather blankly, not moving.

Jorge stood up. He was still naked, and covered in drying blood. His skin had lost its normal burnished bronze color and become the shade of drying mud. The deep brown eyes Mark loved had gone cloudy. A ragged hole gaped in the side of his neck, dangling strips of raw flesh.

Mark wrinkled his nose. “Jorge, man, you look gross.”

Jorge crossed his arms and frowned. “Thanks a lot, pretty boy,” he rasped. “Checked out your six-pack lately?”

Mark looked down. The torn ends of his intestines hung out of a hole in his belly that looked like it had been gnawed by rats. He gave a high-pitched little yip. “Christ! You goddamn zombies ate my insides out! Fuck!”

Mark poked the edges of the horrific wound with an experimental finger. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even bleed.

That’s when it hit him.

“Fuck, I’m fucking dead!” he screamed. He turned wide, panicky eyes to Jorge. “Jorge, we’re dead! Do something!”

Jorge came to him and held him, patting his back. “It’s okay, baby. It’ll be okay.”

Mark laughed, sounding more than a little hysterical. “Oh sure, that seems real fucking likely. You got a way to make us not dead anymore or something?”

“Um…”

Suddenly a terrible thought struck Mark. His mouth opened to ask before his brain was sure it wanted to know. “Hey, you didn’t eat me too, did you?”

Silence. Mark pulled back, mouth hanging open. “Jorge! Goddamit, I don’t believe it. You bastard!”

Jorge nudged a dead bug with one bare toe. “I didn’t recognize you, babe. Sorry.”

“What the fuck do you mean, you didn’t recognize me? You been fucking me for two fucking years, you moron, how the fuck do you not recognize me?”

“It’s not his fault,” a feminine voice shrilled.

Mark whirled around and glared at the girl. “You stay out of this, you fucking Goth zombie,” he snarled.

She glared right back with the one black-lined eye she had left. “We can’t recognize live people, dumb-ass.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. She did seem to have the facts on her side. “What do you mean?”

She scratched at the crack in her skull, scraping off flakes of dried blood. “Live people just look… I dunno. Blank, I guess. I ate my best friend and didn’t even know it ‘til she died.”

“True,” a girl in the back chimed in, one ripped cheek flapping as she nodded.

Mark turned back to Jorge. “So, you really didn’t know it was me?”

Jorge shook his head. “I’d never have done it if I knew it was you, Mark. You know I’d never hurt you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Mark smiled, took Jorge’s hand, and pulled him close. “Love you, babe. Even if you are a fucking zombie.”

“Love you too. C’mere.”

Jorge’s arms around him felt like heaven, even if his skin was a little rubbery and colder than normal. Those plump lips still felt soft when they latched onto Mark’s, but Jorge’s tongue was rough and dry as sandpaper. Mark decided not to care, since his was in no better shape.

Life as a zombie, he figured, was going to be interesting.

*****

How they came up with the idea of raiding the porn shop, Mark wasn’t quite sure. At first, they’d just wanted to get away from the other zombies. Mark discovered pretty fast that he hated most people’s company just as much dead as alive. Jorge, agreeable as ever, had just smiled and let Mark have his way.

They’d gone to the mall first, but it had turned out to be full of live people, none of whom were happy to see them. An angry wave of the living descended on them with guns and baseball bats after they caught and partially ate a middle-aged woman. They stumbled awkwardly back out into the night, chased by curses and gunshots. A few minutes later, Mark broke the lock on the porno shop and in they went.

“Stupid fuckers,” Mark grumbled as they melted into the darkness between the shelves in back. “Who the fuck they think they are, shooting at us?”

“We’d do the same if it was us,” Jorge pointed out. He picked up a cat o’ nine tails and flicked it experimentally at his own leg. “Hell, I didn’t even feel that. Freaks me out that nothing hurts now.”

“Discrimination, that’s what it is,” Mark continued, undeterred. “They’re discriminating against us just ‘cause we’re dead. That’s just fucking wrong.”

“Bet you weren’t saying that when that dude killed me.” Jorge tore a frighteningly large black dildo out of its package and examined it with interest. “Damn, this thing’s fucking huge. Check it out.” He held it out to Mark.

“Discrimination!” Mark insisted, taking the toy from Jorge and whacking it against the shelf for emphasis. “We didn’t ask to be dead, dammit. We can’t help it if we have to eat people.”

Jorge came to Mark and pulled him close, stroking his back soothingly. “Calm down, babe. I know we can’t help it, but neither can they. We’re just gonna have to figure this thing out, that’s all.”

Mark laughed. “Oh, sure, figure it out. Figure what out, huh? What the fuck happened? Why are there zombies running around all of a sudden in the first place? Why are we zombies? What the fucking fuck is happening, Jorge?”

Mark could hear the hysteria creeping into his voice, and was profoundly grateful when Jorge grabbed him by the hair and kissed him hard. It was Jorge’s way of shutting Mark up when he started on one of his frequent rants. It nearly always worked, too. By the time Jorge pulled back, grinning smugly, Mark had temporarily ceased to wonder about the whys and wherefores of the situation and had started to wonder if they could just fuck now.

“Let’s fuck,” Mark suggested.

“Now that’s an idea I could go for.” Jorge sighed and leaned his forehead against Mark’s. “But I don’t think I can get it up.”

Mark frowned. “Hey, I know I’ve looked better, but you’re not exactly a centerfold yourself right now.”

“I mean,” Jorge said patiently, “I don’t think it’s physically possible anymore. Us being dead and all. No blood pressure.” He reached between Mark’s legs and gave his cock a light tug. “See? You’re not hard either, and I know you want it.”

“Oh.” Mark glanced frantically around, looking for something to shove up his ass. Luckily, the porn shop was full of things made for exactly that purpose. “Okay, toys. Me first. Help me find the lube.”

Jorge reached for a shelf to his right and picked up a big jar with a picture of a man’s clenched fist on the lid. “How about that giant dildo you got in your hand? You want that up your ass, babe?”

Mark lifted his hand, and was surprised to discover that he still held the black dildo. He examined it with a critical eye. A foot long if it was an inch, and probably a good three inches around. Ouch, he thought gleefully.

Mark grinned. “Fuck, yeah.”

*****

Thirty minutes later, Mark lay on his back on the check-out counter, knees drawn up to his chest, with Jorge’s arm buried to the elbow in his ass. Mark had been upset at first when he discovered that being dead meant a distinct lack of anal muscle tone. How, he complained, was he supposed to enjoy getting fucked without the sweet burn of having his asshole stretched? Then Jorge had pointed out the inherent possibilities of a permanently loose hole. Mark had cheered right up, and they’d enthusiastically set out to see what all would fit in Mark’s butt.

Quite a lot, as it turned out. The big black dildo went right in, along with an equally large flesh colored one with fake veins all over it and a slender, rippled probe in blinding neon pink. Jorge held up a mirror so Mark could see his own hole stuffed full of toys. They both agreed that it was really hot, in a bizarre sort of way.

Mark suggested Jorge’s hand once he got bored with the various sex toys. Jorge readily agreed, which surprised Mark not at all. Jorge had been dying to fist fuck him for ages, but Mark had always been too chicken before.

There were definite advantages to being dead.

“You like that, baby?” Jorge twisted his greased arm deeper into Mark’s guts. “You like my arm up your ass?”

“Shit, yeah,” Mark panted, watching in fascination as the mangled lump of intestines jiggled inside the ragged hole in his belly. “Feels good.”

“Tell me what it feels like.”

Mark stared into Jorge’s eyes. “Feels… I don’t know. Oughta feel tight, I know, but it doesn’t. It just… I can just feel you, right? Inside me. All the way.”

Mark trailed off, at a loss for words. He didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the quiet waves of pleasure that rolled through him when Jorge’s fist moved inside him. It was a faint shade of what he figured he’d be feeling if he were still alive. But he liked it that way. It was soothing, almost, and it brought him a measure of comfort to know that even after death, he could still have Jorge in him. He didn’t know what he’d do if they found they’d lost that intimacy forever. He needed that closeness, that connection that went so far beyond words.

“I know,” Jorge whispered. He slipped two fingers of his other hand in beside his arm, unerringly finding the sweet spot. Mark gasped, and Jorge smiled. “That’s it, baby. That’s it. Come on.”

Mark arched his back and let out a harsh, croaking cry. It seemed strange to come without any physical evidence, but there was no mistaking that feeling. His brain was having one fierce orgasm, even if his body didn’t know it. If he’d been alive, he figured, his semen would’ve hit the ceiling.

Jorge carefully pulled his arm out, helped Mark to his feet, and kissed him. Mark clung to his lover, still reeling from the aftershocks of a completely mental release. He laid his head on Jorge’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He didn’t even mind the way the torn bits of skin hanging from Jorge’s throat tickled his cheek.

“That,” he said when he got his voice back, “was fucking awesome.”

“Sure was.”

“Want me to do you now?”

“Maybe later. Right now, it’s enough that I got to make you come.”

Mark smiled against Jorge’s neck. It always tickled him how Jorge could get off just on watching him come.

Outside the shop window, a live person ran shrieking down the sidewalk, pursued by a crowd of the dead. Mark recognized his old teacher, still plugging away in spite of having no teeth. The sight caused his happy glow to fade a little.

“Hey, Jorge?”

“Hm?”

“What’s gonna happen to us, you think?”

Jorge was silent for a moment. Mark waited, much more patiently than he would have in life. “I don’t know,” Jorge answered finally.

Another long stretch of silence. They held each other, cold fingers stroking cold skin.

“Jorge?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared.”

Jorge’s arms tightened around Mark’s waist. “Me too, baby. Me too.”

*****

The sky outside had begun to lighten by the time they stirred again. A strange drowsiness crept over Mark’s mind. He felt sluggish and heavy, and nothing much seemed to matter anymore.

“I feel weird, Jorge.”

“So do I.”

“You think we’re gonna die for real now?”

“I figure so, yeah.”

“I don’t mind anymore. I don’t like being like this.”

“Me neither. I’m ready to go.” Jorge stroked the tangled hair out of Mark’s eyes, smiling sadly. “You and me, we were good, huh?”

“The best.” Mark cupped Jorge’s beloved face between his hands. “I love you, Jorge. Always did, you know.”

“I know. I love you too.”

They kissed, clumsily but with as much love as ever. Mark could barely feel Jorge’s lips against his.

Jorge pulled back, a strange expression in his dull eyes. “Promise me something?”

“Anything, baby.”

“Promise me that if we make it to the next life, we’ll still be together.”

“I promise.” Mark managed a smile in spite of the stiffness of his face. “Let’s go to the park, huh? We can watch the sun come up.”

“Yeah. Our last sunrise.” Jorge took Mark’s hand and squeezed it. “Come on.”

They shuffled out the door hand in hand and crossed the street to the tiny, run-down public park in which they’d spent so many blissful nights, and watched so many sunrises together. They found their favorite bench, heaved a pile of body parts off it and sat down, facing east.

As the darkness gave way to an eerily silent dawn, Mark and Jorge cuddled together to watch the day break for the last time.