Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent (17 page)

Those who Remained

It was clear that Max had felt that researching the cause and potential cure of the zombie virus would be an unbeatable trump card that would get him out of all difficult situations and guarantee him special privileges.

             
“Elsbeth,” he spoke in a wheedling voice, “you understand how important my work is here?”

             
“Yes, of course, you have mentioned it just once or twice.”

“Well it is also highly stressful – responsibility for the survival of the entire human race weighs heavily on my shoulders.”  He rubbed his shoulders to emphasise the point.  “The pressure really builds up, you know?”

             
“OK, I get it,” said Elsbeth, “life sucks after the Apocalypse.”

             
“Yes, but it would be possible for
you
to help relieve some of the tension…”

             
Before he could continue Elsbeth exploded in laughter and ran out.

             
Five minutes later she was telling Jim in a hushed voice about the conversation.

             
“He might not have been trying to have sex with you,”  Jim ventured without conviction.

             
“I almost could have been tempted – it’s been a long time…” intimated Elsbeth in a conspiratorial whisper, “but there’s nothing like a bit of romance…”

             
Jim finished her sentence, “…and that was
nothing like a bit of romance
.”

             
Elsbeth laughed. “Just a
little
romance would go a long way.”

             
Jim found himself looking Elsbeth in the eye.

             
She was around ten years older than him.  Before the Apocalypse she had set up a gym in one of the bedrooms of her house, and had used the gyms in the Bunker more than anyone else.  She was a few pounds overweight, but to Jim’s view it made her pleasantly curvy.  His eyes left hers for a moment to glance at her cleavage.

             
Their eyes locked again, their breathing synchronised, and steadily growing faster.

             
They had both lost their partners in the Apocalypse, and neither of them had ever considered finding anyone again.

             
They moved closer, until their noses were almost touching.

             
“I don’t know what this is,” Elsbeth whispered, her mouth close to Jim’s, “and I don’t want to make any plans about the future, but right now, I want you.”

             
They kissed.

             
Even with his wife whom he had loved, he had never felt this kind of intensity: they kissed so hard it hurt, their mouths mashing together, lips brusing with passion.

             
Elsbeth took half a step back and ripped off Jim’s shirt.  He grabbed her by the shoulders and tore off her blouse, buttons raining on the floor.

             
Elsbeth had read about this sort of passion, and seen it in films, but before the Apocalypse she had always been too reserved, too concerned about destroying good clothes.  Now she welcomed the bite of fabric tearing against her skin in a frantic quest to become naked.

             
Jim forced her to the floor, and awkwardly pulled off her jeans.  Then he gripped her knickers in his fist and tore them.  Her bra was pushed up over her breasts, and his mouth found one nipple then the other.

             
Before long they were both stripped, exploring each other with urgency.  By the time he finally entered her they were delirious with joy.

             
It had been so long, that they were both shaking with pleasure and excitement.

             
Elsbeth had never had sex with anyone who had not been a boyfriend or husband, and a small part of her felt guilty for having sex with a man she had no intention of becoming committed to, but ultimately she felt that this was the most profound sex she had ever experienced.

             
Jim felt himself approach orgasm, slipped out of her, and kissed his way down her body till his tongue reached her most private places.

             
“Oh thank you,” she gasped as she writhed against his face.

             
Max stood in the corridor by the door for the twenty minutes Jim and Elsbeth had taken to sate their lust.  His eyes were wide as he took in the scene of the two lovers moving their bodies in unison.  His anger and frustration at Elsbeth’s refusal to have sex with him, had given way to guilty arousal, so he slipped out his penis and pleasured himself furiously.  He drank in every moment of the performance, storing away in his memory the shape of Elsbeth’s breasts, the colour of her nipples and the luxurious curls of her pubic hair (which came as a shock: all the porn he had ever watched featured shaved or minutely sculpted hair.)  He came quickly, but stayed watching till Jim and Elsbeth had finished.  As they lay naked in each other’s arms, glistening with sweat, Max slipped away.  Simultaneously he felt sick and frustrated, angry and aroused again.  He was younger than Jim, better looking and a lot smarter; he was doing vital work, that could save them all.  Surely his expertise and efforts to save life were enough for Elsbeth to spread her legs for him?

             
Instead she’d let Jim, a no-brained nobody have her. 
Dirty slut.

*   *   *

Max found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his work.  He could live without sex, but he was not sure he could live without the possibility of sex.  He was stuck in a Bunker with, possibly, the last few people alive on the planet.

             
Elsbeth was not interested.  She was allowing Jim to paw her whenever they thought no one was watching.

             
Summer was gorgeous, but under sixteen years old, so with her father in tow he would only go there in fantasy.  He thought that the end of the world and the need to repopulate the planet should change ideas of sexual morality, but he suspected that Jim would not see it that way.

             
No sex, and no one on the same intellectual plane: this truly was hell; no sex, no conversation.

             
He thought about the world that had gone.  He would never again taste French fries.  He could imagine one day making chips, but he had no idea how to make French fries.  There would never be another James Bond film.  Even if the human race recovered he doubted that they would rebuild society sufficiently to make movies in his lifetime.

             
His favourite authors were all dead.

             
He knew how to use computers to achieve amazing results.  He could analyse data and calculate its meaning, but he could not repair hardware, nor write software.  He was intelligent, the most intelligent person he knew (this was true even
before
the Apocalypse; he was now the most intelligent
by a long way
).

             
But there was so much he didn’t know.  He could work out how to make bread.  He remembered a science-fiction story he had read as a youth: the last surviving member of the human race had set up home on another planet. Despite his education and life-long learning on earth all he could bring to another civilisation was how to make sandwiches.

             
Apart from amazingly high-powered biology Max was not qualified or skilled to do very much.  If he found a cure to the zombie virus he would struggle of find a place in any Brave New World he would have created.  On the other hand, if he saved the world he would not have to find a role: he would be too busy being fellated by every surviving female overwhelmed with gratitude.

The Return

When they had been planning this trip they had thought their biggest challenge would be to set up the solar panels.  They would have minutes, perhaps seconds before the undead caught up with them.

             
There would not have the time to place them precisely; they would have to set them down or prop them up on the aerials, and feed the wires through the pipe that led down to the Communications Room below.

             
Jim had unearthed the plans of the Bunker and there was a steel hatch over a small pipe that led from the surface into the Plant Room below.  It could be used to take samples of the air, or to send up a primitive remote-controlled arm to fix the aerials.  The arm would need considerable attention to be restored to working order.  It was controlled by wires, and the rubber seals and some of the mechanism had perished in the years since it had been built.

             
However the pipe could be used to run power cables from the solar panels to the Bunker.  They would not give as much power as the petrol generator, but they would hopefully be able to provide enough for the daylight bulbs and the computers for research.

             
All their plans had focussed on this challenge, but now they had an even greater (though glorious) problem: they had a whole truck load of food, enough to sustain them for years.  In the normal world this would take hours to unload, and they realized that the more time they took the longer they could last below ground.  Without having to risk more trips out foraging, they would have more time to organise and practice how to sustain a home-grown food system, powered by artificial lights.

             
They would need a big, loud and irresistible distraction to lure the zombies away from the Bunker, and keep at bay.

             
“I’ll be the distraction,” offered Neil.

             
“You a good driver, son?”  Asked Will, “Because I am, and I think it should be my job.”

             
“It’s not my driving skills that qualify me,” countered Neil, rolling up his trouser leg to reveal a bandaged and weeping wound.

             
“You’re infected?” Asked Siobhan.  Suddenly the atmosphere in the cab changed dramatically.

             
“I’m not sure,” he replied solemnly, “my wound
is
infected; but I’m not sure if it’s the sort of infection that turns you into one of those things!  But either way, it makes me the most dispensable of us all.”

             
“That’s not right, Neil, none of us are dispensable,” said Misha.

             
However, they agreed that someone had to risk it and Neil was nominated.  He would find the biggest vehicle they could hotwire and with hazard lights flashing and horn blaring, lure every possible zombie away from the Bunker door.  Under cover of darkness they would drive the truck without lights, to the main door of the Bunker, and unload as much as they could until they were noticed.

             
Once everyone except Neil was inside the Bunker, he would circle the installation to attract any remaining zombies, then slowly drive five miles away, with as many of the monsters as possible in tow.  Next he would switch off the lights, race back to the now hopefully deserted area around the Bunker and hop in the back door.

             
Obviously Neil would be alone, with zombies close at hand, and outside longer than everyone else.  The plan hinged on him.  He was delighted to be useful again, having spent the last few weeks in the service station feeling as though he was simply a problem.  However, his delight was mixed with cold terror: his job was the hardest, and he felt doubtful that he could manage it.  The pain in his leg would make driving difficult, and he also felt light-headed from time to time.

             
Isolated garages had become very familiar to the survivors, and Will had honed his skills at hotwiring cars at speed.  He could also remove petrol caps and siphon out the petrol in record time.

             
They found a large, battered, old 4X4 for Neil to drive.  He was delighted to discover that it had an ancient audio tape deck and a collection of homemade heavy metal compilation tapes in the glove compartment.  His distraction would involve some Black Sabbath and Rainbow at full volume.

             
Even the undead could not fail to be moved by the riff that starts
Paranoid
.

*   *   *

The first tape Neil tried to play as they were driving through country roads on the way to the Bunker was Led Zeppelin.  He was in the mood for
Stairway to Heaven
but the tape jammed in the player.

             
He cursed and punched the eject button until the cassette came out followed by an unravelling mess of tape that stuck in the machine.

             
He drove along trying to avoid hitting the cars that were scattered across the roads, where they had been abandoned or attacked; he also did his best to avoid the zombies which would spring out into the headlights.  He tried to miss the monsters, but had to confess to a shiver of pleasure when hitting one was unavoidable and he sent it crunching under his wheels.  In the middle of these tricky manoeuvers he was using one hand to pull tape from the machine, which gathered around the floor of the car in a tangle of shiny, dark brown ribbon.