Chapter 21
“They tell me you haven’t gone home since I was rolled into the ER,” Jasmine said as she took Tank’s hand. “I hear you’ve been dabbing my forehead and feeding me ice the entire time I was under… I also heard it was you who picked out my uniform, especially my jacket, which is bullet proof… well… almost bullet proof.”
Tank blushed. He didn’t know what to say, but even if he did know what to say, his shyness would have stopped him.
“It stopped deep penetration but you’ll have to work on that—” she coughed. “The bullet barely broke the skin but it went in; and, I’m here to tell you, big guy, that knocked everything out of me. It may not have penetrated, but damned well hurt.”
“I’ll have to work on that,” Tank said, blushing. “I thought for sure the material would hold.”
“Did you test it?” He nodded. “Next time try testing it with a bigger gun.” She pulled on his hand. “Come here.”
Tank got out of the chair and sat on the edge of the bed, and when he did, Jasmine grabbed his shirt and pulled him down and kissed him. “Angela tells me you said I had a tight ass—” Tank started to move. “Thank you,” Jasmine continued, smiling. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t know.” She kissed him again, and then she hugged him.
“Careful,” Tank mumbled. “That has to be painful.”
“It’s worth it,” Jasmine groaned through the pain and the elation, and then kissed him again.
“Do you need anything,” Tank asked so softly she barely heard him.
“As a matter of fact I do,” Jasmine answered. “I need you to ask me out to dinner.” She winked and then smiled. “And maybe stay for breakfast.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John J. Smith lives in Dallas, TX. He has won several awards for his novels and screenplays. Look for his current novels Delayed Flight and Finding Katie. He is currently working on his novel, “Anopheles”.
SMILE
by
Jack X. McCallum
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must give thanks once again to my Dark Red Press colleagues for their artistic and formatting talents, without which this book would not be possible. All I do is sit on my ass and write. Brian, CL and John are the ones who get the tale from me to you.
I’d also like to thank Bob Udell for looking over this tale with a keen eye and helping make me appear for more brilliant that I ever could be alone. Any errors in the final draft are mine, not his.
The end of the world came with widespread disease, rampant bloodshed, and smiles. The smiles were the worst of it.
I survived by being exposed to the same insidious parasite that killed so many, and for me it began with a steel hook sinking into my left cheek and tearing my flesh from ear to mouth, leaving a terrible wound that looked like… a smile
There are important lessons to be learned in this story because it is more than the story of how the world changed; it is a cautionary tale and a guide to survival. If I start with dry facts about the smiling sickness I’m quite sure your attention will wander, so let me begin this tale with a blowjob, and the admission that I murdered my wife.
I responded with, “No,” when my wife pushed me up against a wall and said, “How about I suck your cock?” If that doesn’t illustrate how cataclysmically fucked up the world is these days, nothing will.
Don’t get me wrong; in this age where an attractive woman who is alone and lacks survival skills can barter sex for food or protection, my wife was more than a warm body. She was smarter than I was, for one thing. It was her suggestion that we take over the hotel, seal it off and make it our home. She was the one who took in strays from the street, made sure security patrols roamed the building and watches were posted on the roof, and organized everything from kitchen duties to supply runs. She had worked for the Office of Emergency Services, before everything fell apart. She also loved watching horror movies. That made her the perfect person to be in charge when the apocalypse came.
I wrote children’s books. I think that’s what attracted her to me. Her life was geared toward surviving death and destruction, what if the big one hit, what if there was an environmental disaster, what if there was an outbreak of disease? Her life was all about dealing with the what ifs. The fact that she could lose herself in the novels I wrote for the 7 to 14 crowd, although I did have a small adult fan base, was a comfort to her, an escape. I was no J.K. Rowling, but my Lily Berlin world-hopping adventure series set between the World Wars sold well; well enough to pay the bills, but not so well that I was recognizable or anything remotely resembling a celebrity.
We lived together a few years, and after we got married we found out we couldn’t have kids. She couldn’t have kids. I always said we whenever the subject came up among family or friends because I knew it hurt her deeply, which is why she became mom to so many struggling to survive after the spread of the smiler sickness and the utter collapse of modern civilization.
Jillian also had a healthy appetite for sex. It made her feel good and it helped her relax. These days it can be a struggle to relax for even a few minutes, and that can lead to burnout, carelessness, and an ugly death.
The fact that she still loved me after my face was ruined in the early days of the smiler sickness outbreak only proved how strong her love was for me.
“Come on, Bellemer,” she said, shoving me back against a wall in a shadowed corner of the store room and trapping me there, one hand in my hair and the other on a metal shelf behind me. Most people who saw my name in writing said it wrong until they heard it pronounced. Jillian said my name properly, this time drawing out the belle-merrr in a soft and sexy growl. She had been taking inventory of supplies, everything from dry goods to survival gear, and I had been helping, playing secretary as she called out forty vacuum sealed bags of flour and sixteen Leatherman Multi-Tools, with sheaths. We had been at it for hours now.
“Jilly, what—”
“Let’s fool around.”
I remember sighing, exasperated. There was a look in her eyes, hurt and anger, that was there and gone in a flash. I’ll never forget that, and I’ll always regret it.
A grin had broken into the storeroom the night before. A loading dock side door had been left unlocked and the grin had torn at packages and smashed bottles and jars and made an incredible mess trying to get through a locked door, trying to get to the living, until it was discovered and put down.
We were in the storeroom taking inventory, deciding what was usable and what was not.
The idea that a grin had gotten in here had me as tense as hell. I wasn’t a fighter. I was the guy who went over there when told go over there. Jillian was the fighter. She was the leader, the one who made the decisions, and most of them were tough calls. Now she was confronting her fear and unease and hoping to dispel it with a quick fuck.
Don’t get me wrong; Jillian may have been almost forty, a year younger than me, but she still had a body that was perfect in my eyes. Despite great physical strength and a sharp, commanding mind she was also hot, and usually got me hot and bothered, but not this time. The grin had come too close, stumbling around in the basement until a security patrol discovered it while most of us slept in hotel rooms upstairs, and I was unnerved.