“Remarkable,” Dr. Kaspar said, lifting his pale, greenish-gray eye from the microscope. He rubbed the back of his neck with slender fingers, and at a loss for words, he repeated, “Remarkable.”
Behind him, Dr. Gamache nodded. A set of thick glasses bobbed on the bridge of his hawkish nose. Gamache couldn’t remember the last time that Kaspar had difficulty finding his tongue. As suited men of their brilliance, both of them had seemingly limitless vocabularies- albeit much of it was scientific gobbledygook.
“It’s worked,” Gamache said through an ear-to-ear grin.
As if to validate this assertion, Kaspar’s right eye went back to the microscope. Through it, he watched the hyperactive cellular activity of their latest specimen of chimp semen.
“You know what this means,” Kaspar said. His hands quivered with barely contained excitement.
“The end of infertility,” Gamache replied, then added, “We’re going to be rich, rich men.”
***
High heels clicked bouncing echoes down the darkened, tiled hallway. Blonde pigtails bobbed, and long legs swished against the fabric of Nancy’s short, white skirt. The ridiculously exaggerated cut of the nurse’s uniform was already making Gamache’s mouth water.
“You’re sure we won’t get caught?” the young lab assistant asked. Her sparkling blue eyes were wide and twinkled with excitement.
Gamache shook his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off Nancy’s tight, round ass long enough to look her in the face when he said, “No, everyone’s gone for the night. Jerry’s girlfriend just flew in from Europe. We won’t see him until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh, good,” Nancy said, her lips dark with red lipstick. They curved into a devilish smile.
“Then we have all night,” she said.
Gamache had lusted after the graduate student all semester, and Nancy Wilkes had proven as useful as she did insanely hot. Her I.Q. was admirable if not on par with his own, and she knew her way around the lab. Of course, she made mistakes now and then, but she was young, and her curves more than made up anything lacking in the intelligence department. Not to mention the deadly pigtails she was sporting at the moment.
The doctor had no idea what she might see in him. He was tall and lanky, not much more than a lab jacket full of pointy elbows and knees, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a thatch of sandy blonde hair on top of an oval-shaped head. Gamache had been told more than once that he looked like a walking scarecrow.
“So is it true?” Nancy asked, whirling towards him and brushing her ample breasts against Dr. Gamache’s chest. He could look right down her shirt and see the pale white skin leading into the lacy fabric of Nancy’s bra.
“Wha… wha… whaat?” Gamache stammered. His mouth felt dry. He felt his erection straining, desperate to be released.
“That you’re hung like a horse?”
And then Nancy’s hands slipped into his pants.
“GAAAAH!” Gamache cried and shivered with pleasure. His glasses rattled off his face and clattered to the floor.
“Oh, yay,” Nancy replied with a coy look. “It’s true.”
“THIS,” Gamache sighed, savoring the feel of his lab assistant’s hands on his throbbing manhood, “is what I call a celebration.”
They stumbled into the laboratory, their hands groping and clawing, squeezing and grasping. A keyboard skidded, dropped, and clanged into a metal trash can as Gamache propped Nancy up on a desk. A gong-like bang resounded through the room as plastic met aluminum. The letter “v” popped off and clattered around the bottom of the bin like a broken tooth.
“You look so good,” Gamache whispered between wet kisses. He hungrily gobbled up Nancy with his eyes. His sight was blurry, and he almost wanted to find his glasses so he could see her more clearly. All the same, he could see enough. The tight, white nurse’s uniform hugged her luscious curves. Gamache was glad he had made her buy it at that costume shop for this occasion. Meanwhile, Nancy’s breasts heaved; her blue eyes burned; her expression was fierce and needy.
“Fuck me, doctor,” she demanded.
“Yes, maam,” Gamache replied and unbuckled his pants. As he began to slide out of his lab jacket, Nancy stopped him with her hands.
“Leave the jacket on,” she said. Gamache complied.
When he finally managed to slide into Nancy, he thought his heart might stop. Nancy wrapped her legs around him, her heels digging into the top of Gamache’s buttocks. Her hands gripped his forearms. Her long nails dug into his skin.
“Yes, doctor, yes!”
Gamache had to squeeze his eyes shut and turn off thought. If he looked at her for another second, if he saw her bright red lips open in a gasping ‘O’ or the movement of her breasts as he pumped into her, he wouldn’t be able to last for another second.
“Look at me,” she said in a low, breathless voice.
“I can’t. I’ll cum,” Gamache said through gritted teeth.
“We have all night.” A soft sigh punctuated the sentence. “Go ahead. I want you to.”
Gamache opened his eyes, and indeed, it proved his undoing. The sight of Nancy, her top pulled open to reveal bouncing breasts, her flushed cheeks, the twinkle of sweat on her smooth skin, brought the sperm boiling from Dr. Gamache’s testicles and gushing through the swollen purple head of his engorged member.
He wasn’t concerned about impregnating the poor girl. He knew he was infertile.
“Good boy,” Nancy said when the last spurt dribbled from Dr. Gamache’s withering penis. She slapped his naked ass with her palm. The sound echoed like a thunder clap through the empty lab.
“Let’s do it again,” she added with a girlish giggle.
“HOW ABOUT YOU FUCKING CLOSE THOSE LEGS, SLUT!” a new and very unhappy voice blasted through the darkness.
Dr. Gamache and Nancy’s heads jerked towards the sounds, their expressions not unlike those of teenagers caught while fooling around by their parents. Gamache’s throat clicked, the words perhaps blocked by the bobbing obstruction of his Adam’s apple.
“Gary?” Nancy squealed.
“You fucking BITCH!” the voice responded, and a barrel-chested, hairless ape stalked out of the shadows. The ape’s face was either blood red with insane fury or the most painful sunburn in the history of mankind. Either way, Dr. Gamache did not look forward to the repercussions.
“Gary, have you been following me?” Nancy said, and her apparent confusion began to morph into angry accusation. Gamache struggled into his pants as Nancy hopped off the desk and padded towards the new man in her bare feet.
“It’s OVER! How many times…” SLAP! Nancy’s words were cut off with a swipe from the ape’s left hand as it collided with her face.
Gamache’s jaw dropped. He’d only ever seen women hit in the movies, and he wasn’t sure how to react. He stood no physical chance against the hairless monstrosity before him, and yet felt he had a moral obligation to respond in some fashion.
“Now… s…see here,” Dr. Gamache stammered, painfully aware of how much like an English fruit he sounded. His vision impaired due to his lost glasses, Gamache didn’t register the fist thrusting into his face until it was about two inches from unavoidable contact. Skin met skin, and Gamache saw stars before dropping like sack of potatoes.
Nancy held the side of her face, knowing that at least she’d have a bruise to show as evidence when she reported Gary to the police. When Gary swiveled towards her, his face set and mushed up the way it did when he got pissed, she prayed to God that she wouldn’t be reporting a rape on top of an assault charge.
“Now you get yours, cunt,” Gary snarled, verifying all of Nancy Wilkes’ worst fears.
Nancy grabbed a microscope off a near table and threw it as hard as she could. The microscope smacked Gary’s substantial forehead with a meaty thud.
“Bitch!” Gary cursed and ran at her. Nancy, more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, attempted to dash away, but the ape caught her with two trunk-like arms. He swept her off the ground. Determined and feral, Nancy would not go easily. Her knee smashed into Gary’s groin, and he coughed air from his lungs with a grunting gasp. Gary swung her into a bank of computers. Nancy cried out, flipped in the air, and crashed to the ground.
Something clicked, and equipment buzzed to life.
Gary, the hulking monster, grabbed a fistful of Nancy’s long, blonde hair and began to pull her across the floor. Nancy uttered a weak groan but did not resist. His eyes caught sight of a long, metal table under a slew of snaking wires in the middle of the lab: the perfect spot to take care of business.
A countdown, unseen by Gary and the near-unconscious Nancy, bleeped backwards on a monitor: two minutes. One minute, fifty nine seconds. One minute, fifty-eight.
The bald pate of Gary’s head gleamed in the glare of red lights flickering to life on the ceiling. He pulled Nancy up and bent her over the metal table.
Forty-six seconds. Forty-five….
Gary unzipped his pants and yanked out his chubby, short penis. Although hard, it wasn’t much larger than his thumb.
Nancy moaned and whispered, “Please, no.”
Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.
“You’re gonna take this,” Gary said as the countdown reached zero, “and you’re going to love i…”
He was cut off by a blinding flash of white light, and an electrical surge that left his ears ringing. One of the computer monitors exploded, sending yellow sparks sizzling across the room.
Just as quickly, it was over.
“What the fuck?” Gary said as his eyes attempted to readjust after the glare subsided. When a moment passed, and nothing happened, he shrugged and turned back to the more important matter at hand: raping his ex-girlfriend
He felt something move. This would not have been a peculiar circumstance if the feeling hadn’t come from within Gary’s hanging genitals. He looked down at himself, at his knobby cock and the floppy sack dangling underneath it.
“Holy… fucking… shit.”
It was the sack that bothered him. Gary could see something moving underneath the skin, something… writhing? He took a step back and leaned forward, straining to see. He hoped to Christ that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Sudden, shearing pain brought him to his knees, and Gary screamed when his balls exploded.
***
Nancy’s mind was cognizant enough to hear Gary’s high-pitched cries of horror, but it sure as hell didn’t sound like Gary. It sounded like a six-year-old girl having her teeth pulled.
She felt something wet and sticky glide up her legs, but she thankfully lost consciousness before she realized what it was.
***
When Dr. Gamache opened his eyes, the lab was silent. His head throbbed, and the side of his face felt swollen and warm where Nancy’s boyfriend had decked him. Gamache sat up and pulled himself to feet. He wobbled for a moment and then found his balance.
“What a day,” he said, leaning against a desk.
Dr. Gamache scanned the lab, hoping that his eyes wouldn’t discover anything too horrible. The last thing he wanted to see was Nancy’s cold, lifeless body or his life’s work smashed to pieces. Gamache hated to admit he wasn’t sure which would be worse.
When he caught sight of the thing on the floor, he felt his blood freeze.
***
Dr. Jerome Kaspar (known affectionately as “Jerry” or “Dr. J” to his friends) had his tongue out, lapping like a dog in heat, when the cell phone on his dresser “braaang!” to life. If this was not enough of a distraction, the phone had been set to simultaneously vibrate and so rattled against the wood as if possessed by an angry weasel.
“Ignore it,” Rosalind said when Kaspar’s head rose from between her legs. Her face was pink, flushed, and a rosy glow emanated from her cheeks. Strawberry-blonde clumps of hair lie plastered to her forehead with a wet sheen of sweat.
Dr. Kaspar wiped his smeared lips with the back of his wrist, shook his head, and said, “I can’t. It’s Quincy. He wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t an emergency. He knows you just got back from Europe.”
Rosalind frowned. Her elfin face was pinched in an annoyed expression, yet she still looked good enough to eat. In fact, she WAS good enough to eat. She was like sweet honey, Kaspar had discovered. The taste of her lingered on his lips.
“Probably all bonered up about some stupid Star Trek rerun,” she retorted with a whine. Kaspar ignored the remark. He had been dating Rosalind too long to know better than to respond to her complaints about Quincy. Rosalind didn’t like the idea that Kaspar could have a life outside of her. One of the drawbacks to having a knock-out like Rosalind for a girlfriend was the fact that everything had to revolve around her and her interests.
Kaspar didn’t mind. He had worked his entire life to have a girlfriend that looked like Rosalind: reddish-blonde hair, a model’s legs, an athlete’s build, firm breasts, and a face like a movie star. He wasn’t going to do anything to fuck it up now.
Kaspar picked up the phone, flipped it open, and said, “What’s up, Quincy?”
The voice on the other side of the line shook with panic: “Jerry! Something’s happened! Get to the lab quick!”
“Quincy, what’s happened?” Dr. Kaspar said. Rosalind sat up on the bed, perking up with interest at the tone of Kaspar’s voice. Kaspar turned away and spoke with a low whisper. No reason to add fuel to the fire. Rosalind loved good gossip.
“Just get here! Now!” And then the line went dead.
***
Dr. Kaspar walked through the darkened hallways with quick, anxious steps. A thousand horrible possibilities buzzed around his mind, stinging his calm demeanor like coked-up wasps. He composed a mental list. It was entitled, “Possible Things that Could Have Gone Wrong.”
The cooling corpse of Nancy Wilkes’ ex-boyfriend had not topped this list.
When Quincy Gamache led him to the body, Kaspar felt like his brain had been thrown off a cliff. For a moment, he couldn’t think at all, and then the ground rose up to meet him with overwhelming, crushing, splattering force. Kaspar put is hand over his mouth and kept steady by leaning back against the desk behind him.
“What the hell is that on him?” he said in a shivery whisper.
“Sperm,” Gamache said.
“What.” Not a question. A statement of disbelief without inflection or emotion.
“Somehow, they set it off. They set off the fertilization machine, and… well, I guess… his semen reacted in a totally unforeseen, unexpected way,” Gamache replied.
“You’re saying,” Kaspar said and pointed at the ragged flaps of flesh where the body’s testicles should have been, “that this man’s sperm exploded from his testes. Then attacked him.”
Gamache looked strained, as if his skin had been stretched tight against his skull. His Adam’s apple appeared more prominent than ever, bobbing like a tennis ball caught in his windpipe. He kept squinting, near blind without his glasses. In short, the tall, lanky doctor looked more like a twitching scarecrow than ever.
All the same, Gamache stuck to his guns and said, “Direct exposure to the fertilization machine could result in side effects we’ve not even begun to consider. Maybe… hell, who knows? The sperm could’ve attempted to fertilize Nancy’s boyfriend. When it could not, it destroyed him in the process of trying to find an egg where there was none to find.”
Kaspar grimaced.
“That is such bullshit, Quincy.”
“Jerry, a man is dead. And he was covered in his own semen. You should have seen it; it was… was… horrible. It was moving all over him as if…” Gamache paused.
Dr. Kaspar leaned over the body and sniffed. It certainly smelled like semen.
“Moving all over him, huh?” Kaspar said, raising an eyebrow.
“As if it was alive,” Gamache finished with such dead seriousness, Kaspar could not help but feel a chill kiss his spine.
“So where is this living sperm now?” Kaspar said. He put his hands on his hips. He’d have to call the police, report a murder, maybe even have to bail out Gamache. No doubt he’d top the list of suspects. Either him or Nancy. This reminded him, they’d have to try and find Nancy as well. Who knew how many questions the cops would ask? Who knew how long they’d keep him? Shit, Rosalind was going to be royally pissed.
“It’s gone,” Gamache said, the tennis ball quivering in his neck.
***
In an alley behind the university hospital, the whore gritted her teeth in disgust. She was used to being sticky but not like this. The asshole- a gum-chewing, half-assed security guard named “Chet”- pumped into her like some kind of hydraulic machine. He must have broken his condom because she could literally feel the ooze running down her leg and shit, there was a ton of it.
Funny thing though: it felt like it was running UP her leg, not down it.
“Hey, cool it back there. I think you busted your rubb…” she said and twisted her head. The rest of the sentence died on her tongue.
The john was covered in a layer of pulsating, white goo. It reached out to her, and a long line of slime dripped from its arm and splattered into the arch of her back. The whore stumbled, the panties around her ankles betraying her hopes of flight. The goo-covered thing grabbed her wrists and yanked her to her feet.
She screamed, and it screamed, and a spray of hot, slimy cum sprayed into her face. The whore’s screams increased as she felt the sperm wriggling like worms on her skin, desperate to find purchase in any and every cavity of her body.
When it started going up her nose, in her mouth, in her ears, and ironically, worst of all, into her vagina, she felt her sanity shatter into an infinity of wriggling, hot, wet tadpoles.
***
Dr Kaspar sighed. The decision was clear but not easy. He turned to look at his partner. Quincy, the poor guy, had finally lost it now that he had transferred the responsibility of taking care of this mess to Kaspar. Gamache sat, quietly sobbing. He held his shaking head in his hands. His entire wiry frame trembled and quivered like a twig in a wintry breeze.
“We have to get rid of the body,” Kaspar said.
Gamache raised his head from his hands. His cheeks were pale and wet with tears. His expression was one of uncertain disbelief.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying this guy is a piece of shit. He tried to rape Nancy, and he got what he deserved. I will not let this asshole ruin our life’s work. We get rid of the body. Can you do that? Can you do that for me? For us? For Nancy?” Kaspar said, and he put a reassuring hand on Gamache’s shoulder and squeezed. Gamache sniffed, and after a hesitation, he nodded.
“We get rid of the body,” Dr. Gamache said, and something in the tone of his voice told Kaspar that they were really going to do this. They were going to get rid of the body, and they were going to get away with it.
Kaspar wondered if this was something that would haunt him in the future, plague his dreams, or eat away at his conscience. He thought about what Gamache had said, thought about this dead man slapping Nancy and then slugging Quincy.
Kaspar didn’t think this would haunt him at all.
“We’ll wheel it down to the incinerator. Go find a gurney,” he said.
***
Megan Walters, thirty-three, happily married and mother of two, sat on the toilet and flipped through the latest issue of “People.” She had finished with the reason she’d come into the bathroom, but she was into the article (Paris Hilton’s latest scandal). It was so hard to find quiet, quality reading time these days.
Something bubbled in the toilet under her.
Megan scooted back and spread her legs just enough to look into the tainted water below her prone “lady-parts.” Something that looked like a swirl of liquid mayonnaise clouded the basin. Something had backed up the pipe, maybe?
She closed her legs and went back to the article. She’d flush, but she didn’t want to clue anyone in on the fact that she had finished. Harold would have to get along without her for five minutes. One of these days, he’d have to learn how to handle the kids, and she wouldn’t always…
Something shot from the water, splattered on her legs, and slide its way up into her.
Megan squealed, flapped her arms like a penguin, and fell from the toilet. Her head cracked like a nut as it crashed against the side of the marble sink counter. Megan went down in a pool of blood and semen.
***
Dr. Gamache felt like each footstep was a clamoring, crashing explosion of sound that would clue everyone in earshot that an intruder was in the building. Not that Gamache was really an intruder, or that anyone would go so far as to question his presence in the building. If anyone was going to be there at this time of night, it was most likely to be him or Kaspar.
Still, Gamache assumed it was in his best interest to remain unseen.
He squinted down a hallway and licked his lips. Why had Kaspar sent him on this errand? He could barely see two feet ahead of him, especially in the dark. As if fate had read his mind, Gamache tripped over an overturned gurney and smacked against the hard, cold tile of the corridor floor.
He’d tried to stop his fall with his hands, and now his wrists throbbed with a burning pain. His palms felt hot and red. Gamache groaned, pulled himself up to a sitting position and flexed his hands. At least, he’d found a gurney.
“Goodness, goodness,” Gamache whimpered, hating the way his voice sounded as it echoed through the halls.
“Quincy?”
Gamache froze, every cell in his body petrified with fear. His ears perked like a curious dog’s after hearing the familiar chirp of a bird or the twitter of a squirrel. Gamache listened with every frightened fiber of his being.
“Quincy?” the voice called again, and this time, Gamache recognized the voice. His fear melted away to concern.
“Nancy?” he said.
A shadow appeared at the opening of a door. The white nurse’s uniform was tainted gray by the darkness. The rest of Nancy was obscured by the absence of color. The dark draped her in veils of black.
“Darling, thank God,” Nancy said. “I got lost. I… I… feel so…. horrrny.”
She stepped from the shadows, and Gamache felt the horror rise in his chest and catch in his throat. He opened his mouth, but no sound came.
Nancy’s eyes were milky-white, and tears of creamy goop dripped from their corners. Her skin looked bluish-gray, the skin of something that had been dead for some time. Something like milk gurgled from her lips.
Gamache gawked, his mouth dropping open, his lips forming unspoken prayers, as the dribbling liquid from her eyes and mouth squirmed as if alive.
“Fuck me, doctor, fuck me!” the Nancy-thing cried, and she staggered out of the room with open arms, a child hungry for attention.
Gamache shrieked and crabbed away on his hands and feet. Gaining momentum, he pushed himself up and sprinted away with form that would put Michael Johnson to shame, golden shoes and all.
***
Rosalind found an empty space in the parking garage and pulled in the Jaguar. It had been her anniversary present from Kaspar last year. How he planned on topping that if they ever managed to get married, Rosalind had no clue, but she looked forward to the attempt.
The garage was eerily quiet as Rosalind exited the vehicle, the dim lighting not helping the unease that began to work its way into her unconscious mind. Shadows and cars and empty space, devoid of all human life but her. She smoothed her skirt with her hands and began to make her way to the elevators.
She’d decided at the apartment that she was not going to wait on Jerry any longer. She wanted to drive to the medical university, walk up to Quincy Gamache, and tell him to lay off her boyfriend for one goddamned night because she needed to get laid, goddammit! Of course, she might not use those words exactly, but more or less, that would be the gist of it.
As she ran over the potential argument in her mind, she didn’t see the panicked man approaching her. She pushed the elevator call button, still lost to everything but her own thoughts. Rosalind looked up just to see the wild man as he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Get away!” the man cried. “They’re turning! Everywhere! They’re turning the women into fucking zombies!”
Rosalind managed to get the Mace out of her purse and sprayed the asshole right in the face. He went flailing backwards and bashed into a large, concrete pillar.
The elevator door slid open, and Rosalind dashed inside of it, hitting the door-close buttons with manic intensity. As the doors reversed, sliding mercifully closed, Rosalind’s cell phone chimed her favorite whiny Emo-song.
“Yes?” Rosalind said, flipping the cell phone open on her ear.
“Rosie, it’s Ben!”
“Ben? What’s wrong?” Rosalind didn’t like the tremor in her brother-in-law’s voice.
“Caroline, something’s wrong with Caroline!”
Rosalind said nothing. She knew that her sister had been fooling around at work every day for the last month with the new intern. Ben must have found out and was pissed. Well, he had every right to be, but she’d back up Caroline. Sisters had to stick together, right?
“She came home,” Ben barked into the phone. “She was raving about how the new guy at work had been covered in something, she said, well, hell, she said he had come out of the bathroom all covered in cum and he attacked her and… fuck, Rosie, she’s all fucked up!”
***
Dr. Gamache cut a sharp corner and thrust his way into a doorway, slamming the door shut behind him. His breaths came in ragged, harsh gasps. He closed his eyes and focused on slowing his racing heart. He drew in long breaths, held them for a moment, and then blew them out with a low, hushing sound.
“I knew you’d find me, baby,” the thing said as it stepped from the darkness of the room and closed a hand over Gamache’s crotch. Gamache opened his eyes and looked straight into the lusty glare of the thing that had once been Nancy Wilkes.
Dr. Quincy Gamache whimpered and pissed his pants.
Her mouth closed over his, and Gamache squirmed as he tasted the salty bitterness of her lips. The thing’s hand worked its way into his moist pants, and despite himself, Gamache found to his horror that the expert manipulation of the Nancy-thing’s hand was hardening his penis. Something in his mind broke. Electric synapses sparked, sputtered, misfired.
Nancy’s breasts brushed against his chest. Her tongue writhed against his. If Gamache closed his eyes, it was her. It was Nancy, not the thing. Nancy had never died; she couldn’t be dead. The dead didn’t walk and lust and stroke your cock.
God, it felt so good.
Gamache found himself kissing Nancy back.
He pushed her down to the floor and tore open her shirt and licked her nipples. Nancy moaned with pleasure and rubbed her pelvis against his crotch. Gamache felt sore and hard and wanted to impale her here, on the floor, right now.
Gamache pulled down his trousers and felt her legs wrap around him, welcoming him, her kisses hard and desperate, Gamache’s cock the same, and then he thrust forward and entered her.
It felt like prodding a bowl of oatmeal, but Gamache’s mind was so gone, he didn’t even hear the Nancy-thing say, “Yes, yes, fertilize me with your seed.”
***
“Something very fucked up is going on,” Rosalind said.
The weird part was the fact that she didn’t seem to be referring to the body at Dr. Kaspar’s feet. Kaspar ran his hands through his hair, resisting the urge to pull it out by the roots. He felt the world whirl and threaten to come crashing down on him, on his work, and on civilization as he knew it.
“Ben said that the guy, the guy Caroline’s been fooling around with, got all covered with… semen. And then he attacked her, and now she’s sick. Very sick,” Rosalind said, and she didn’t seem to be pulling his leg or playing a prank.
Dr. Kaspar thought about what Quincy had said, particularly the part about Nancy’s ex-boyfriend being covered with the living, squirming semen. The semen that had disappeared sometime between the time that Quincy had seen it and the time he had taken to call Kaspar to the hospital. The two stories seemed to fit all too well.
“Ok, ok,” Dr. Kaspar said. “The first thing we need to do is find Quincy. Then we’re going to incinerate this body. Then we’ll go check on Caroline and Ben.”
“Jerry! This is my SISTER!” Rosalind cried through gnashed teeth. A vein in her neck pulsated under the skin. She was losing it. Kaspar wished Rosalind would lose it more like Gamache, quietly and pitifully. But attractive women were more used to getting their way, he supposed.
“We have to take care of this first. Then we can help your sister,” he said. “So help me, so I can help you.”
Rosalind caved. Her mental state, between the man in the garage and the news about her sister, was too weak to work up a stronger argument.
“Fine,” she said, but Kaspar could tell she was not happy with the decision. She’d have to get over it. For one time in his life, Kaspar resisted giving in to Rosalind. After all, he couldn’t fuck her if he ended up in jail.
They made their way into the deserted hall, looking left and right into empty doors and down empty halls. Kaspar walked a step behind Rosalind, unable but to sneak a peek at the way her bottom moved beneath the fabric of her skirt. She had worn it to urge him back to the apartment, he knew, and in any other circumstance, it would have worked. All the same, it was doing its job- he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
A familiar reek began to work its way into Kaspar’s nostrils, the same ammonia-smell that had wafted off the corpse in the laboratory. Kaspar put a hand on Rosalind’s shoulder, stopping her. She turned to look at him.
“We’re close,” he said.
“How do you know?”
Kaspar shrugged and said, “Follow your nose.”
They followed the scent, and Kaspar began to hear squishy, smacking noises echoing through the darkness. It sounded like someone jumping in a mud pit. He stopped Rosalind with his hand, placing a palm on her sternum, and shook his head. He didn’t know what he’d see, but he knew he didn’t want Rosalind following and seeing whatever the hell it was.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” he said and treaded towards the sounds. The sounds increased in volume as he approached, and Kaspar felt his resolve begin to crumble. He stopped, closed his eyes, and steeled himself. He opened his eyes and flexed his hands.
Then he turned to the doorway from which the sounds seemed to emanate. He stretched his neck, craning his head past the frame and into the depths of the room.
Kaspar’s eyes went wide, and his hand went to cover his mouth, stifling a sharp cry.
Gamache, covered in wriggling, squirming sperm, convulsed on top of what must have been Nancy Wilkes. He looked like an oozing, broken condom. He moaned, and sperm bubbled from his mouth and splashed on Nancy’s bare stomach. The living sperm squiggled away, snaking down into Nancy’s belly button, her open mouth, into the corners of her eyes.
The gooey, dripping form of Gamache turned towards the door, and something inside of it must have recognized its friend because it gurgled, “Help… me.”
Horribly, each word was punctuated with drools of sperm from the thing’s mouth.
“Jesus,” Kaspar whispered, wishing in vain he had been a man of faith. Maybe then he could pray for help.
The sperm must have heard him… impossible, sperm didn’t have ears… or maybe it sensed him because white, whipping lines of slime began to slide across the floor towards Dr. Kaspar.
He didn’t wait to see what would happen next. Jerome Kaspar turned and ran. He almost steamrolled over Rosalind, but instead, he swerved around her, grabbed her wrist and yanked her after him.
“Don’t look! Run!” he ordered, and their legs became blurs as they raced down the halls.
“JERRY!” Rosalind screamed and pointed down the hall. Something staggered out of a stairwell and collapsed to its knees. The thing- it looked like a female O.R. surgeon- caught sight of them and vomited a splatter of sperm.
The sperm bubbled. Then it writhed down the tile floor towards them.
“It’s fucking everywhere!”
Kaspar spun into the laboratory, dragging Rosalind behind him. He pushed her farther into the room and then slammed the door shut. He swung around, his head twisting from side-to-side.
“Find something to close the cracks with,” he said in a breathless voice. Rosalind reached into her purse, pulled out a roll of duct tape and tossed it to him.
“Here!” she cried.
Kaspar paused. “You keep this in your purse?”
“Just tape that shit shut!” Rosalind shrieked. Kaspar wheeled around and ran the duct tape along the floor, taping the gape between the bottom of the door and floor closed. Then he taped up the sides, just in case the sperm could ooze up the walls.
“Are we safe?” Rosalind asked. Hot tears streaked the sides of her face, but she seemed to have it together. Kaspar was proud of her. Most people, whether male or female, would have probably lost their composure as soon as they saw that…. thing… barf up living splooge all over the place. Kaspar decided to play it honest.
“I don’t know.”
Rosalind’s upper lip quivered. Kaspar wondered if he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should have just said “yes” and been done with it. But Rosalind nodded, swept her hair into a stern ponytail and tied it, then crossed her arms over her chest. Kaspar recognized her expression- all business.
Dr. Kaspar made his way to the bank of computers lined up at one side of the laboratory. They looked back at him, the stupid stare of blank screens. Kaspar ran his fingers across one of the keyboards. He licked his lips. His mind raced.
Something started banging against the door.
“Give me your fertile seed!” a gurgling voice cried.
“That’s MY seed, so back the fuck off!” Rosalind yelled in reply.
Kaspar powered up the computers. An electric hum rumbled through the lab as if the room, itself, had come to life, a sleeping giant starting to wake. Rosalind turned from the banging on the door, her attention captured by Kaspar’s lightening-quick typing on the keyboards. She crossed the room with quick, quiet steps on the tips of her feet.
“You’ve thought of something,” she said at his arm.
Dr. Kaspar kept his gaze on the computer screens and said, “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“But?”
“But making sperm infertile is much easier than making it fertile. If we can take our hyperactive super-sperm and reverse its characteristics, so it’s super-LAZY-sperm then maybe we can stop it,” Dr. Kaspar said, his fingers working the keyboards as if they had minds of their own. They tap-danced orders into the computer at a pace that Rosalind could not coherently follow.
“There’s so much of that stuff. How can we stop it all?” Rosalind said.
“This machine could theoretically eat up the entire power of two blocks if not for the safeguards. I’ll just shut down the safeguards. Let’s just hope it hasn’t spread much farther than a block or two from the hospital,” Kaspar said.
The door of the laboratory splintered. The thing behind it bellowed its frustration.
“This won’t kill us, will it?” Rosalind said.
“No, there just won’t be a generation on babies for anyone located on this block in about ten minutes.”
The door shuttered, and a lightening-bolt crack snaked through the wood.
“Make it five minutes,” Rosalind muttered. Sperm began to ooze through the crack. Rosalind tugged at Kaspar’s sleeve, pointed, and groaned. Kaspar nodded at a fire extinguisher under the adjacent desk.
“Freeze the fucker,” he said. He didn’t stop typing.
Rosalind popped the extinguisher out of its placement and sprinted towards the growing pool of white ooze at the lab door. She pointed the hose, and let it spray.
The sperm shuddered backwards. In her mind, Rosalind imagined it screaming. Some of it receded through the crack, but more of it came on towards her. Rosalind stepped back, but didn’t let up on the spray. The sperm slowed, twitched, and froze to the floor.
“Please, fuck me,” the thing behind the door moaned.
“Yeah, fuck YOU!” Rosalind shouted. Her face was flushed, and she felt almost as high as she did during sex, adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Kaspar stopped typing and asked, “You ok?”
“Never been better.”
“Well, here’s going nothing,” Dr. Kaspar said and flipped the switch above the computers.
“Let’s hope it’s something,” Rosalind whispered, and then the world turned into a blaze of white light.
***
They walked out of the university hospital into the glowing orange light of the morning sun. Dr. Jerome Kaspar put his hand on his brow, shielding his eyes from the glare. The building at their backs, they looked down the intersection at the bodies littering the streets. Dead men and dead women. The bodies rose from the asphalt, human hills of cold dead flesh.
“What have I done?” Kaspar said. His knees felt wobbly, weak.
“It’s not your fault,” Rosalind said, wrapping an arm around his waist. She put her head on his shoulder, snuggling up against him, offering her support. Her strawberry-blonde hair glimmered like orange-red fire.
“You saved us,” she said. “You saved everyone.”
Kaspar’s eyes roved across the bodies again, and something about them bothered him. Something snagged his unconscious.
“Maybe not,” he croaked. Rosalind looked up at him, her eyebrows raised.
“The women,” he said.
Rosalind turned and searched the bodies with her eyes, sweeping her gaze over the bodies of the women on the street. They didn’t appear odd, just motionless, just dead, and then she noticed… noticed the round, swollen bellies of the sperm-infested bodies, and as she watched, Rosalind saw something in one of the stomachs move.
“They’re all pregnant.”
~the end~