Chapter 21 - It Takes Two, Baby

We have to get to my body!

There’s no time to get you back in your body, we don’t even know how—

Without another moment’s thought-argument, Cam silenced Lucy’s protestations and took control of her body. He didn’t even stop to think about how he did it, he just did it. Sheer force of will, baby. He leapt her onto the table, meaning to continue jumping, using several of Selig’s minions as leap-pads if he had too.

There was his body. Look at that. Huh. He was sprawled on the ground beyond the rotting, grey heads of the zombies.

We don’t know how to get you back in! Lucy was yelling inside their heads.

Fuck getting back in! I just want my goddamn Cleaning Lady! I gotta do something about all these goddamn . . .

. . . zombies.

The zombies . . . his body . . . rotting . . .

“OH SHIT!!!” Cam screamed through Lucy’s throat, and was surprised at the delicate sound that all his force had managed to produce. Fuck, a goddamn cricket might have squeaked.

Lucy realized his fear at once. OH SHIT!!! She screamed inside him. Inside herself. Whatever. This whole fucking situation was so fucked up, and if he didn’t do something real fucking quick, it was about to get worlds worse. But what could he do?

“Fuck no! Fuck no, fuck no, FUCK NO!” Virgil, where the FUCK are you when I need you?!

But as much as Cam believed in his friend, he knew even Virgil wouldn’t be able to come up with something quick enough to stop what was happening. Virgil was in his own tight spot – tighter than a virgin whore’s pussy OR pocketbook. And Cam couldn’t get to him. Even as Cam watched, his own body staggered to it’s feet, like it was drunk. It’s face hung slack like a limp dishrag, saliva dripping like dirty dishwater from his open mouth.

“Awww, shit, FUCK NO! Fucking zombie bacon!”

Stop bitching! Lucy’s voice came tinkling inside his head. Her head. Whatever. We’ve got to get out of this! Selig thinks you’re dead! We can’t let him know you’re in here with me! And then Cam was along for the ride as Lucy sprang into an ultra-aerial somersault and landed on the other side of the zombies, next to the spot where Cam had recently been lying. She fell to the ground and grabbed the Cleaning Lady as the zombies turned to face her.

Lucy aimed the Cleaning Lady. Cam let her hands slide, quickly but sensuously, over The Cleaning Lady’s curves. Cam put his finger on the trigger. Lucy held her breath.

Then they both stopped as they realized what they were about to do.

Zombie Cam was at the head of the pack of undead shuffling toward them.

If there was anything lucky about this moment, and there were very few things that could be considered so, it was that, due to the inexorable yet apallingly slow pace at which the zombies shuffled, Lucy and Cam had an inordinately long time for some cathartic dialogue which would take their bond to an even deeper level, if that can also be considered possible in this moment.

If there is one thing the zombie apocalypse had taught both Lucy and Cam, it was that anything is possible. So, as the zombies lurched toward them, Cam’s finger eased off the trigger. Then tightened again.

No, Lucy thought.

That’s not me over there, Lucy, Cam thought. It’s a fucking undead zombie bastard. I’m still a Queller of Hell. And I’m gonna waste myself.

That’s your body, Lucy thought. Don’t you want it back?

Damn straight I do, but—

I want you to have it back. Not as a zombie. Alive.

There was a moment in which both of their minds experienced a deep, dramatic pause of all thought, which neither of them had ever achieved during their days as individuals. It could have been the first true moment of meditation either of them had known.

And the zombies continued shambling forth.

It’s not me. Cam’s finger tightened again.

We can’t. Cam, listen to me.

How can I not?

You’re doing a pretty good job of it. Listen. This is perfect. Inconvenient and freaky, maybe, but the awesomeness of the perfection is actually kind of . . . wow, the ancients really know what they’re doing!

How is it possible that I hate you more now than before? His finger tightened again. He wouldn’t want to watch his own body, barely even rotten with the zombification, charred by the beloved Lady it had once depended on, but he would do it. He was a goddamn motherfucking Queller of Hell. He would do it.

No! Cam! I know Selig’s grand plan! I know the ins and outs of what he intends to do, and what his strengths and weaknesses are! I can show you everything now – everything. Cam – I said we should join forces. This is better than anything I could have imagined.

There was another of those pauses.

I gotta admit that kinda has some sense to it. You seriously are one fucked up bitch.

I have a feeling you’ll get to know that better than you ever hoped, Lucy thought.

As Zombie Cam closed in on them, Cam removed his finger from The Cleaning Lady’s trigger. Sorry, baby, no fire tonight.

Relief washed through Lucy as her arms obeyed HER will, and strapped The Cleaning Lady to her back.

Cam’s voice came in her head. So what now?

Now? . . . Now we let them take us. I wonder what it’ll be this time . . . Selig doesn’t have his dick anymore, so you don’t have to worry about rape. I really don’t think you could handle zombie sex, Cam.

Now the zombies surrounded them, but, as Lucy had expected, they did not attack. Instead they parted, and Selig Retsuc stepped through to stand at Lucy’s feet where she still lay.

“Well, young Lucy. You have some thing that belongs to me, I believe.”

Keep quiet, let me handle this! “I don’t have anything that belongs to you,” she said.

“We shall see,” Selig Retsuc said, “about that.” He got to his knees at her feet and, in a move weirdly fast for a zombie – but then, he never was one of the flock – grabbed her ankles. “Anyway, you had better hope you have something that belongs to me.” Another one of those quick moves and he wrenched her legs apart. “If you don’t, you are in for a much less pleasant experience with me than we shared last time.”

Zombie Cam held her right ankle while Selig reached between her legs and pulled the crotch of her panties aside. His thick, wormy sausage finger pushed up inside her and felt . . . nothing.

She wished she could say his face fell.

“Ahh,” he gargled. “This is going to be fun.” He stood up and waited. Lucy felt him send some command out into the ranks, and she pushed the feelings of degradation aside, waiting to see what she would have to face.

No. What she and Cam would have to face.

Several of the zombies dragged forth the same cage she had been suspended in at the school. “You remember your old nest, little bird?” Selig gargled. “I am sure you will find it as comfortable as your last stay.”

She found it exactly as comfortable as her last stay.

Now, as the zombies dragged her cage to wherever they were dragging her cage to, the degradation returned. It was as if Selig had her again, just the way he wanted, and even though she had the satisfaction of detaching his dick, and even though she knew she was going where she was most needed, and even though she had Rambo deeper inside her now, his power joined more completely to hers than she had ever imagined, it did not make her feel better. She felt horrible.

So did Cam.

Shit, Cam’d never known what being violated felt like. Now that he did, he didn’t much like it. No wonder this bitch was such a freakshow. Being inside her – funny how that still turned him on – he knew that she was just doing her part. Her part was more fucked up and grossed out than any part he’d ever played, but she was doing it and she was doing her best, too. It wasn’t her fault that she was hot. She was just strong enough to bear being that hot.

Was he feeling . . . sympathy?

Cam . . . Cam, I need you. She was calling to him with her mind. Her raw, naked need called to him. This lust was more powerful than the lust to kill zombies, more than any lust he’d ever known.

I can’t, I have to get to Virgil, he thought. He oughtta be able to find some ancient spell or something to cure my body.

There’s no way out of this. Trust me, I’ve been here before. And we can’t leave your zombie body behind . . . Cam, everything has changed. Cam . . . I need you. Haven’t you ever thought about what it’s like for a woman?

Cam never had thought about that, actually. Now that he was thinking about it, he thought it had to be hot. Okay. This would be weird, but it also just might be the hottest thing he’d ever experienced in his life, including The Cleaning Lady. Fuck yeah. He used her hands. Lucy lay back against the cool iron grid of the back of the cage, and let go of all control. There was nothing she could do, but she could still feel. They could take her free will. The ancients could have her soul. M could have her mind. Selig could have her body – so could Cam. But no one could take her ability to feel. It was like her hands were not even hers, like it was someone else entirely touching her body, sliding her own hands over her naked breasts (since her blouse was not only dirty with zombie goo, and not only ripped to shreds, but also very far behind them on the floor of the café. And since it always seemed that Lucy spent an inordinate amount of time naked, and since zombies were not sentient, she was not self-conscious about touching herself in front of them.) Her delicate fingers pinched the tips harder than she would have done herself, and she gasped. Her nails raked over her smooth belly, leaving raised red marks, then rubbed gently over the ravaged skin. She moaned with longing. After she was aching with the lust, after her body was sensitized and swollen, her hands finally slid down her belly to the soft, warm, sopping cleft between her legs.

“Yes . . .” she said aloud. The cage lurched steadily along. The zombies with their stink surrounded her, and she cried out with pleasure. “Oh, GOD YES!” Never had her own fingers moved with such fierce demand, seeking the most sensitive spots, and when the pleasure became too much they did not let up but forced it in deeper. She was shaking and whimpering, and when the orgasm rocked her she realized with horrified excitement that it was not going to stop – he was not going to stop. “Cam,” she whimpered, falling back and surrendering to it again, “everything I have is yours. Listen . . . listen while you love me.”

Taking her time about it, finding solace and safety in Cam’s continued presence and touch, Lucy thought over every moment of her time with Selig Retsuc. Each touch, each shiver, each truth revealed in the dank stink of undeath’s dark embrace, brought Cam closer to grasping the full scale of Selig’s grand plan.