Pandemic
Part 1
I put another log onto the fire and then huddled back on the Sofa. Ruth put her arm around me and I let my head sink onto her chest, heaving out a heavy breath as my curly red hair sprawled across her.
“It’s ok sweetie, we’re safe, we’re ok.” She soothed me with her whispers.
“Yeah Diane, we’re ok here. You’re ok.” Craig added from his armchair with a stern voice, as if he was offended he had to say it.
I thanked them both with as much sincerity as I could muster and then went back to watching the television. There was nothing on but news, and it was all about the same thing.
They think the infection started in New York City, it was hard to be certain due to how quickly it spread. Almost every country in the world had been affected in some way or another, even Madagascar. What made it so dangerous was how subtle it had been at first, how disguised.
When the penny dropped around the world I had just arrived home for the Christmas break and was visiting Craig. He was having a reunion of old high school friends who had went different ways to various colleges across the country. Now here we all were, holed up together, watching the world fall apart around us.
Helen and Jeff were in the kitchen cooking us all a meal. Anne was upstairs resting, as she was on first watch tonight. The three of us watching the news would keep everyone else up to date later. For now, we were transfixed on the screen, hypnotized by the events unfolding throughout the world.
The virus didn’t kill, not directly, but it was leading to the most death humanity had ever seen. Drivers who succumbed paid no attention to the road; workers would start to neglect their duties and would instead contribute to the virus’s spread. The economy had crashed over the course of a day when the sheer scale of the pandemic was discovered. The world as we all knew it was literally coming to an end. The news was showing images taken from the international space station. Europe was starting to black out, the power grids failing due to hardly anyone being left to run them. The same thing was starting to happen here, we were running a generator just to watch TV and cook, and there was no indication that grid power would be coming back on anytime soon.
Craig lived in a mansion. His parents were multi-millionaires, and he only had a little bit of arrogance to show for it. Otherwise, he was kind, courageous, and determined to keep us all safe. When the news first broke we were all already here. He locked his doors and convinced us not to leave. We had shouted, we had screamed, but once the dust settled we knew that had we left to go get our families we would be either dead or dying right now. It wasn’t easy to accept but he saved us and gave us shelter. A part of me loved him for this, but another part of me hates him with a fiery passion for keeping me from my parents and my brothers. Sure, he was handsome, with flowing blonde hair, a quarterback worthy build, and a rich kid’s expensive clothing, but I would only ever look and not touch now. Thoughts of sex had become a source of ashamed confusion for me. I was horny all the time now, yet sex had become the apocalypse of the Earth.
The news was mostly repeats of now outdated information. The virus had been slowly mutating as it spread. At first, it was highly infectious via saliva and other bodily fluids without much in the way of visible symptoms. The infected would have an increased sex drive, lowered standards, and the virus went by for weeks unnoticed, as it coincided with the entire western world getting into the holiday spirit. International students returning home from the holidays, families going abroad to spend Christmas in warmer climates, and the usual business travel that packed airports at this time of year all contributed to the global spread of the virus.
It made the news when the sexual arousal became dramatically more pronounced in those who had been infected for a week or more. It was around the same time that the pheromones started cropping up. This was a mutation that happened a certain amount of time after someone had been infected, and it was starting to happen in a shorter and shorter time as the virus was passed on.
This was the most terrifying aspect of the outbreak for me. I couldn’t stop myself thinking about what would have happened had I came across the pheromones on my travels home. I would have been irrepressibly, irrationally, uncontrollably attracted to the person, male or female, if they were 18 or 80. I would have become enthralled by their scent, absorbed in their presence, and with their heightened sex drive they would have welcomed me like the Venus fly trap welcomes the fly.
I would have drooled as they winked at me. I would have felt warm and giddy as they put their arm around me and taken them back to their place. Hell, depending how long they had been infected for, they might have simply bent me over the nearest table and started undressing me. What part of my mind that still had some manner of control might have protested if this was in the middle of a public space, or exposed to the winter chill of this time of year, but the intoxication I would have felt while it happened… I would have been infected within minutes, and according to the news, I would have started experiencing symptoms within four hours. That was days ago when I traveled, when the virus was on the exponential rise and finally exposed. The latest experts say that were I to be infected now, that I would start experiencing uncontrollable horniness and produce my own irresistible pheromones within an hour.
I would have started to fuck anyone and everyone I could. For the first day, I would still have taken breaks to wash, feed myself, rest when it became uncomfortable. After that… I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t stop. I would, like everyone else, prioritize sex over everything. There were reports of some people who happened to succumb to the virus surrounded by plentiful food, water, and shelter, and those people tended to survive, able to meet their basic human needs but devolving into sex crazed animals otherwise. Those who were unlucky to fall under the endgame effects of the virus while in a place that couldn’t support them… They were lost.
I was barely paying attention to the TV anymore, as my mind kept wandering to my own journey home.
I had made it on one of the last interstate buses before all public transport was shut down. On the bus I kept staring at a girl across the row from me. She had been listening to music through big headphones the whole way, her eyes closed and her face scrunched up in apparent distress, but what I realized with hindsight was barely contained arousal. She had clearly been in the early stages of infection, and had begun letting off weak pheromones while fighting the sexual urges starting to run rampant in her body. I had fantasized about her for the entire two hours I was sitting near her, but I was in control of myself to not get closer than I was. Instead, I had masturbated to the memory over and over once I got home to my parents house. Now I know that she was infected, the thought of her only turns me on more. The clearest memory I have of her though was when she got off the bus, one stop before me, just at the other end of town. So I know that outside the mansion that we were hiding out in, the infection was spreading, and the town was probably already lost.
With public transportation now shut down, the highways are full of cars trying to escape the growing chaos of the cities. We all know it’s so much worse there than in a small country town like ours, but we still know that we’re not fully safe here, and we’ve been lucky so far.
Ruth had a similar story to my own, except she told everyone how close she came to being infected. There was a couple making out almost the entire way home on her coast to coast flight. They had also disappeared into the bathroom three times over the course of that time. Every time they had been in view, Ruth wasn’t able to take her eyes off them. She only just managed to resist going over to talk to them because so many other people were. People were going up to them complimenting them on how cute a couple they were, and they were being ever so friendly in return when their lips weren’t locked. They were laughing and joking with everyone around them, daring each other to kiss the strangers that stared at them lustfully. At one point, they had an irate stewardess knock on the bathroom door to tell them off for their clear mile high club hat-trick, but when they had opened the door, the stewardess seemed to melt at their apology, and the next minute had joined them inside for a very cramped yet sweaty threesome.
Ruth was among the dozens who had watched all of this unfold with a mixture of shock and arousal, and she had felt her head clear only once she had disembarked. It was only when she reached Craig’s mansion that they all watched the news together and it had suddenly dawned on her how close she had come to spreading the virus to all of her friends.
Craig’s parents had left two nights previously, and were now in London visiting his grandmother who would usually have flown to them but couldn’t this year. It had been the plan for Craig to follow a couple of days’ time, but all flights had now been canceled in a hopeless attempt to curb the spread of the infection.
Quarantine zones kept failing as the virus had already permeated faster than anyone could have known, and the country was in a state of emergency that advised everyone to stay indoors and hold out as long as they could.
My thoughts returned to the room as Helen and Jeff emerged from the kitchen, carrying a large pan of spaghetti and bowels for everyone. We ate in silence as the Newscaster continued to lambast how all the news networks had written off the infection as “trivial” in the first few days it had made the news, giving it nicknames like the “Love Bug” and “Sexy Time Disease”. When Jeff audibly sighed and changed the channel to another news station that was still running the line that the virus was mostly a hoax and nothing serious.
“Here at Channel 14 News, we are not propagating the spread of panic and upheaval that this seasonal virus is anywhere near as bad as our shameless competitors are having us believe. We have and intend to broadcast in a few moments proof that this so called “Love Bug” is just a temporary state of heightened attraction, that not only can be avoided and resisted, but should be by any decent God fearing American. It is a flimsy excuse to engage in sinful acts, and to prove it, we have some of our staff here getting a handful of volunteers who are apparently “infected” (the male newscaster of the male female duo actually finger quoted the air at this point” to come on and give us the real low down on this latest cultural craze.”
“No fucking way!” Jeff exclaimed.
“Turn it off!” Ruth gasped, “We all know what’s going to happen.”
“Fuck yeah we know what’s going to happen, and I wanna see it.” Jeff remarked. Jeff had been the one trying to crack jokes and make light of the whole situation since it had started. The rest of us hadn’t been in the mood to laugh at the fact to those who died were “dying happy” as he put it. Jeff really did care, but humor was his coping mechanism. I didn’t feel like judging him too much, my coping mechanism was a mixture of panic and being ashamed at my own arousal as I masturbated in the bathroom at thoughts of losing control and jumping on top of my friends in lust.
“Put it to a vote.” Craig said, trying to hide his own interest in what was about to go down in the newsroom. “This is a live demonstration of how serious this virus is, so I vote we watch it.”
“I vote no.” Ruth immediately followed, glaring at Jeff and Craig in turn before turning to Helen. “Come on, Hel.”
“Yeah, let’s just change it.” Helen said, although I could tell it was somewhat reluctantly.
“Two for, two against.” Jeff said eagerly. “Your vote, Diane.”
Everyone was staring at me. I was sure my checks were bright red from the arousal I was feeling from the mere idea of seeing an infection happen before my eyes. Jeff was staring intently, urging me with his eyes. Craig looked keen, but was trying to stay cool. Ruth was starting at the fire furiously, and Helen had a strange shimmer in her eyes. Was it curiosity, fear? Could she be like me, aroused but trying to hide it?”
“I’m sorry Ruth.” I mumbled sheepishly.
“Yeeeees! Front row seats to the sex zombie show.” Grinned Jeff.
Ruth said nothing, then after a few moments, stormed out of the room, her meal only half finished.
“You are one smooth dude.” Craig scoffed at Jeff, who looked hurt at Ruth’s reaction. He ran his hands down his face in frustration and walked after her, reluctance in his every step.
Helen stayed silent the entire time, turning her full attention to the screen. Craig and I shared a glance of ‘Wonder what that was about?’ before also turning back to the TV.
In the newsroom of Channel 14 News, the first infected person was brought in…