ZA Chapter 26: Hell's Treadmill

As Lucy leaned close to Blanchett Galadriel, relishing the moment of intimacy in the midst of the chaotic destruction in the high-school-turned-zombie den, Cam could not believe his good luck. A high-school full of zombies to kill, AND the best threesome he’d ever been part of in his life? Fuck yeah!

“Fuck yeah!” he yelled aloud as Lucy leaned into the shimmering vision of the ancient before her.

Blanchett Galadriel grimaced and drew back. “Nice," she said.

“Sorry!” Lucy said. Then she whispered, "Shut up, Cam!"

Cam did.

“Now, where were we?” Blanchett Galadriel leaned in again, fluttering her eyelashes -- for a moment Cam stopped. Was that glitter? Heh, stupid ancient.

Lucy leaned in. Blanchett Galadriel leaned in. Cam leaned in. Blanchett Galadriel’s skin glittered like stars and smelled of the summer wind. Lucy took a deep breath. Cam salivated. They all continued leaning in. They leaned very, very close . . . and Cam and Lucy fell on their face.

“What the--?” Cam spluttered. He looked up from the floor where Blanchett Galadriel stood above them, like an otherworldly smug high-school cheerleader, her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist doing that. You flesh-wads are such suckers, you can’t make out with an ancient! We’re incorporeal! Ha, ha, it was pretty funny, though. You can have my shirt, if you like. Once I cast something away from myself it becomes corporeal.”

Cam didn’t know what corporeal meant. Was it like a corporal? But he kept his mouth shut because Blanchett Galadriel was pulling her gossamer shirt up over her head, revealing breasts more pale and glorious than the moon, with tips like pink roses. The shirt, however, got stuck on her elaborate hair and Lucy and Cam had to help her get it off, which was difficult because Blanchett Galadriel was still incorporeal, as was her shirt, so the most Lucy and Cam could do was stand by and give her helpful advice and encouragement – well, Lucy tried to give helpful advice and encouragement, using the small bits of attention she had left over from what Cam spent trying to touch the ancient-yet-youthful incorporeal breasts. Finally the shirt was freed from the ancient incorporeal bobby pins, and Blanchett Galadriel tossed it at Lucy.

The shirt was softer and more transparent than any Lucy had ever owned. “There you are, my chosen one,” Blanchett Galadriel said in her most ancientest and enticing of voices. “This shirt, though it may appear delicate, is made of the strongest material in the universe. Nothing can destroy it. Not fire, not blades, not the strength of lust trying to rip it from your body. It will keep you warm in winter, cool in summer, and yet will satisfy all who desire to look upon your youthful flesh and bounteous breasts. So you will never have to take it off for any reason whatsoever imaginable.”

Neither Lucy nor Cam knew quite what to say to that.

"What if I want to?" Lucy said.

"If you want to, you can take it off. But you can only take it off and put it back on three times. After that it will either dissolve to ether on your skin, or shrink until it breaks all your ribs, collapses your lungs, and compacts your torso into a tiny torso-shaped brick. I'm not sure which. I kinda just grabbed a shirt on my way out so I'm not sure which one this is. You’d better wake up now. The bars of the cage are nearly crushing you both. They have bent in such a way that you will be able to slip through – once I take care of the zombies obstructing your path. Also, you have about one deep breath of oxygen left.”

“How will you—“Lucy began.

WAKE UP!” Blanchett Galadriel snapped her fingers, and Lucy and Cam awoke in the rank, fetid press of the cage, the bars collapsed so much they were practically pinning Lucy and Cam in place. They couldn’t breath. They were sloshing in some chunky kind of sewage dripping from the top of the cage, puddling in the bottom.

“Sick . . .” Cam growled.

“Take a deep breath and close your eyes!” an incorporeal, tinkling voice demanded.

Lucy and Cam obeyed. No sooner had their eyes closed than the dripping liquid overhead turned to a sudden deluge, crashing down as though a dam had burst above them. Lucy’s first reaction was to freak out – but Cam quickly put a stop to that. He remembered what the hot, half-naked elven chick had said. He hardly ever remembered what naked chicks said. The act of talking while naked didn’t really make sense to Cam – if you were naked you were either sleeping, showering, or fucking – why talk? But when a naked chick was talking about zombies, Cam remembered. The bars would be bent open, for them to get through. He felt around for an opening, ignoring the slime and chunks of not-quite-liquefied bone and glop, and found a big gap between the iron bars. Pinching Lucy’s nipple again to bring her back to her senses, he pushed off the bottom of the cage with all the force his sexy-yet-not-too-strong legs could muster. Then they swam. They forced their body upward with all of Lucy’s physical strength.

Cam! I can’t take it! This stuff is—

Don’t think about it, Lucy!

Ew, sick, that was a leg, I think—

I said don’t think about it!

Oh god oh god oh god oh Cam oh I can’t do this oh my fucking god--!

Lucy! Lucy goddamn it, don’t you lose it on me! Just move for the surface!

She did. When it felt like their lungs were about to burst, they finally crested the surface, and took the deepest, slowest, most audible breath of either of their lives.

There was no getting around opening their eyes, though Cam tried to keep them shut as long as possible -- more to spare Lucy whatever sight awaited them than himself. But opening their eyes was the next awful step on Hell's treadmill. That's what this whole goddamn zombie apocalypse was. Hell's treadmill. It might not get you anywhere, and every step was more horrifying than the last, but you had to keep walking because if you didn't, you'd fall off. That meant the zombies won. YOU couldn't win. But you could lose. Fuck, could you ever lose. So Cam let their eyes open.

What Lucy saw stretching in every direction was a vast sea of putrescence. The goo was basically gray, with brown and black and green streaks and patches and THINGS. Slime covered her face and her hair. The sky was a similar shade as the liquid. Fuck the whole world had gone zombie.

"Now I guess we swim, huh?" she said.

"Unless one of your hot ancient aunts can get us wings or a boat or something."

They treaded goo for a moment. When no boats or giant birds appeared to rescue them, they began to swim, Lucy working her arm and leg, Cam working his. For several moments they just splashed about awkwardly, and then Lucy began to direct them.

"Right, left, right, left -"

"Hang on, Barbie." The left side of their body stopped moving.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, what now?"

"I ain't taking marching orders from a chick."

Lucy sighed. She was all but naked in a sea of liquefied zombie without a shore in sight, half her body was possessed by a rocking hot dude with a rock hard bod and a rock for a brain, and she was about to start her period. She'd had enough. "Yes, you are," she said. "So shut up, suck it up, and deal, Rambo. Right! Left! Right! Left!"

Cam would have continued to protest but he was pretty turned on right now. He concentrated his half a brain on getting them to something solid so he could masturbate her to another hellacious rocking orgasm.

They swam for a length of time that is indefinable, because any length of time spent in a sea of liquid zombie is indefinable. (Especially when some of the not-quite-liquid bits kept twitching and trying to bite.) After this time, though, they spotted something up ahead.

"It's a shore," Lucy said, squinting her eye.

"It's a ship," Cam said, squinting his.

Then they argued for the next two miles about whether the solidness up ahead was a shore-like solidness or a ship-like solidness. Lucy's argument consisted of the questions, "What the fuck would a ship be doing on this necromantic sea?" "Where would it have come from?" and "Who would even be on it?" Also, "You are such a dumb piece of shit." Cam's argument consisted of Cam's belief that everything in the world had turned into zombie versions of itself, and they were simply in what had once been the ocean.

It turned out to be a ship. With big white sails.

"Ha, suck it, Barbie," Cam said.

"Suck what?" Lucy taunted.

As they drew nearer, a voice called down from the ship and interrupted their arguing. "Halt!"

"What?" Lucy and Cam yelled back.

"I said, HALT! Declare yourself!"

"I'm --" Lucy started. "-- Awww, fuck," Cam finished. Just his fucking luck. This sack of horse shit was still alive? Hell's treadmill had just gotten a little more pointless. Cam forced their throat into silence. He was not declaring shit.
But wouldn't you know it - the fuck had binoculars. Of course he did. Standard issue Queller of Hell gear. He saw sweet young Lucy through the binoculars and threw down a rope ladder.

Lucy and Cam climbed the rope ladder, arguing about whether Dar, Captain was "kinda cute" or "a big fucking jackass." They swung themselves over the obscurely old-fashioned wooden railing and were immediately buried under a towel and siezed by the shoulders. "It's okay!" Dar, Captain, was yelling. "It's okay, ma'am, everything's going to be okay! You're safe now!"

"Fuck, okay, I get it!" Lucy squirmed. "Get off me!"

"You are safe now!"

"I told you he was a big fucking jackass," Cam said.

Cam grabbed Dar, Captain's wrist through the towel, and through sheer force of pissed-off-ness, held it still. It had to be pissed-off-ness. Lucy wasn't that strong. She had bird arms. While Cam held Dar, Captain at bay, Lucy toweled the chunks of zombie off herself. The shirt from Blanchett Galadriel was pristine, as was Lucy's body beneath it, so Lucy concentrated on her legs, and Cam focused on cleaning her crotch as thoroughly as possible.

"That's uh . . . that's a lovely garment," Dar, Captain said. Lucy and Cam sneered. "Ma'am, how did you come to be--"

"Listen, dude," Lucy said. "I don't feel like reliving my life story for your benefit, okay? It's past and gone and not very interesting."

"Well, I fail to see how such a lovely young woman in such unwelcome circumstances could have a life story that is dull in any--"

"I just need you to take me somewhere."

Whoa. Cam was impressed. He was starting to get turned on again, actually. His lust went a little slack, though, when Dar, Captain spoke. "Anywhere," Dar, Captain said, smiling cheesily. Shit, is this what guys looked like when they thought they were charming? Cam was glad he had never been charming. Dar, Captain said, "At this point my agenda is virtually . . . well, liquefied. So I'm very open."

Cam sighed and rolled his eyes. Dar, Captain's cheesy smile faltered. "Sorry," he said. "So . . . where to, ma'am?"

"Can it with the ma'am crap," Lucy said. "I just swam an indefinable distance in a necromantic sea of undeath. Could you gimme a minute before you go all sparkly-smiles?" She strode to the bow to collect herself. And have a conversation with her other half.

"So, where to?"

"We gotta get a match."

"A match?"

"Or a lighter. A flare. Something."

"Why?"

"Because the whole world's gone zombie, and that sea is bombie, which means gasoline! I'm making a zombie world pyre!"

"You are such a dumb piece of shit. Will you do me a favor and forget destroying the world for now? We have to get to your body."

"No, we have to get to Virgil," Cam said. Virgil probably wasn't a zombie. V had such crappy luck, he was probably the only other living thing in Zombie World.

"What we should really do is get to Selig . . . Hey, didn't Selig say he was going to see Virgil before he left us?"

"Fuck if I know."

"He did! And if Selig is with Virgil, and if your body is with Selig, then Selig, Virgil, and your body are all in the same place!”

“Kinda narrows down our destinations, don’t it?”