Rose rarely spoke, and she followed Montagne around the hotel the same way Clyde followed Randall.
I decided I’d take Jillian’s advice and wait.
Rose was the second woman I failed. The first was Jillian.
“How about I suck your cock?”
“No,” I said. I was holding a clipboard, one hand braced against steel shelving.
A grin had broken into one of the basement storerooms. The Wrecking Crew had found it and killed it. Jillian and I were taking stock of the many supplies that had been gathered and stored in the room. The room was a mess, and the job was dull, but it gave us some time alone, something we had far too little of these days.
Jillian leaned forward and breathed on my neck. It was a thing she had always done and it drove me wild. Her lips might graze my skin when she did that, but for the most part it was her breath, soft and hot and immediate.
“Come on, Louis,” she whispered, her voice as soft as her breath on my neck. “Let me get your motor running, then we can go for a ride.”
The tone of her voice and the look on her face got to me. “Well,” I said, getting as hard as a rock as she gave me her lopsided grin and got down on her knees. “Okay.”
She unzipped my fly, reached into my pants for my cock, and then laughed. I was so hard she couldn’t get me out of my pants, so she loosened my belt and pulled my pants down. I wasn’t wearing any underwear. Underwear was just one more thing to wash, and we had to wash most things by hand since the power went out; the generators were put to more important needs, like heat and light.
“Mmmm,” she said. Her tongue flicked over the head of my cock and I felt that familiar and always-fresh jolt of sexual electricity race across my skin. I nearly dropped the clipboard and grabbed the steel shelf to steady myself.
My left hand slipped in something, and the very last shred of my consciousness that hadn’t been pumped into my prick wondered about the slick substance on my fingers.
I looked down at Jilly, she was right, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck… and I glanced at my hand.
I had a handful of vibrant green snot.
Jilly was taking me into her mouth, working her way along the length of my cock, and that point of contact was now the center of the universe.
Jillian pulled back, stroking my cock and smiling up at me, her smile growing wider, and wider, until it was a horrible rictus.
The smiler sickness was transmitted by body fluids, all fluids, blood, saliva, snot and semen. We didn’t know that at the time, although Dr. Anders was methodically working her way toward that conclusion with the limited resources at hand.
Jilly showed us that we were all at greater risk than we realized. Until then, we had only been concerned about blood, and before Jillian and I went into the storeroom to take inventory, every inch of the space had been checked for blood. When I asked later about the grin that had broken in, the men who had found it and killed it said it had been coughing and sneezing like it had a bad cold, which wasn’t unusual for a grin.
We didn’t know.
We didn’t know then that any liquid medium could sustain the parasites and was as dangerous as a loaded gun. I had a handful of it, which meant there could be more in this space. The snot was only half-congealed; it was almost fresh and most likely came from the grin that had broken into the storeroom.
I was immune, and I had no idea why. Jillian was probably not immune. If I had known one touch of any fluid left behind by the grin could infect her, I would have gotten her out of there.
“No,” I said again. This time the word almost a sob, and the fact that my genitals were right in front of her and were easy targets was the furthest thing from my mind.
“Jilly,” I said.
Her smile had become extreme. I could see her molars and her gums as her lips pulled back in the classic rictus created by the horrific tightening of facial muscles, a clear sign that she had been infected while we had been taking inventory.
I watched everything that was my wife fade from her eyes. Her intelligence, her humor, her deep love, and her immeasurable will. She was gone and a thing was left behind, a hungry thing that was holding on to me, opening its mouth and biting down on my erection, drawing blood, drawing a scream from me.
I was still holding the clipboard. It was one of the old-fashioned metal ones, a steel sheet designed to take a beating. I brought it down on her head. It didn’t hurt her at all, but it startled her enough that she disengaged from my cock and snarled at me.
I punched her in the face and broke her nose, releasing a heavy flow of blood and snot. When the parasites really dig in and start reproducing in a human body a lot of snot and saliva is produced, a healthy medium for the transmission of the parasites from host to host.
I turned to run, and immediately tripped and fell, forgetting that my pants were still around my ankles.
I rolled onto my back as Jillian lunged on top of me, one hand grabbing my prick and one clawing at my face. How many times had she climbed on top of me before, gently touching my face and my cock as she prepared to ride me? It was a position favored by both of us.
I shoved her head back with one hand, avoiding those snapping teeth. I knew I was immune, but she could tear my throat out, or chew off my fingers, and I still had plans for them. With my other hand I slashed at her throat with the steel edge of the clipboard. The edge wasn’t sharp, but her throat was soft. I should know, I kissed it often enough. The clipboard cut her, a small cut.
She lunged again and I slashed at her again, and then I rolled on top of her, my still hard cock pressed between us, how many times had we laid like that before, and then I raised the clipboard, gripped it with both hands, and used it to hack off my lovely Jilly’s head.
I was cold, shivering so violently I could hardly hold the clipboard. I ejaculated as I was beheading my wife. I pulled up my pants, sat beside her, and cried.
Most people would say I killed a thing, a dangerous, mindless thing. In my mind, I had murdered my wife, and that was the moment things changed for me. I was the same after the parasitic outbreak as I was before it began wiping out humanity. I wanted to hide in quiet and comfort. I hid from the world in my stories before the outbreak and afterward I hid in the Palace from the mindless, hungry grins wandering the streets.
When I cut off Jillian’s head, when I murdered her, I changed. I no longer wanted to hide. Now I wanted to fight back, to destroy every one of those smiling grins out there. I wanted a war and I had nothing to lose— except Jillian’s legacy, her kindness, everything she had worked so hard to preserve.
I didn’t want to take charge. It was thrust upon me. People saw Jillian and I as the leaders of our group of survivors, then depended on us for the final word despite a number of committees Jilly had been creating to get feedback from everyone on everything we proposed so our every action was supported by the majority.
But they looked to me to lead them…
What we have learned, firsthand and through radio reports from other survivors is this—
There are three ways one can contract the smiler sickness. Grin attacks are the primary mode of transmission, accidental contact with any body fluids constitute secondary transmission, and tertiary transmission is catching the disease from flies.
The bug, giardia motivus, is a parasite. It isn’t anything made by man or mutated by some freakish whim of nature. It is a living thing that very well may have been around for millions of years before its path crossed with ours.