After the Pandemic - Smith: The Last Breath (1) (815 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2007-04-17 17:52:27 EDT
The smell of salt was heavy in the air. It was early morning and even old ears and a tired mouth could hear the crash of distant waves against the reefs and taste the sea in the air. He could also hear the splash of the nearby river, and the laughter of small children playing somewhere outside.
In one corner of the room stood a group of youngsters, which to Smith was anyone under fifty, staring at him in awe. He saw Drover, and Aury, and many others whose names he could not recall. He was a legend to all of them, and now that legend was coming to a close.
I'm dying, Smith thought. This is how it ends.
"Fucking hell," he said.
His weak rasp made one of the youngsters standing at the foot of his bed turn and come close.
Smith tried to see through the milky haze over his eyes. After a moment he gave up. "Which one are you," he asked. "Gromeby? Alan? Thlail?"
"I am Caerthus, old father."
Smith wondered who Caerthus was. It seemed the older he got the stranger became the names of the children around him. The youngster looked like Cory, Smith's first-born son, but Cory had perished a decade ago in the Battle of the Galapagos, striking down a legion from the Tenebron, as the Leech Empire was now known.
A fine time to die, Smith thought bitterly. Just when things are getting interesting again. His thoughts were interrupted by a soft voice.
"I am the grandson of your grandson Pelton," the young man said.
"The blacksmith," Smith wheezed. He looked at the youngster and saw a strong and healthy body. He smiled.
"Can I get you anything, old father?"
"Yes," Smith said weakly. "Find God and kick the shi—"
The young man stepped backward in alarm as the old man wheezed and sputtered in his bed. When the coughing fit passed Caerthus wiped spittle away from the old man's chin with a soft cloth.
The young ones were shooed away as the door to Smith's room was thrown wide. The last to leave was Rain, slender and dark-skinned and watchful. Smith liked Rain, even though he could never connect with the youth, who preferred to spend hours alone, reading the last of the islander's books before they rotted away in the damp sea air.
Smith didn't kid himself. He knew Rain's intellect came from Trina.
Through the veil of cataracts Smith recognized the lurching gait of the man who came into the room, his grandson Pelton.
"Grandfather," Pelton said, easing himself onto the edge of the bed and leaning his crutches against one wall. "What do you think of my own grandson, eh? No withered legs like mine, that boy can run like the wind. He's strong... we're all strong, old father."
Pelton should have been a diplomat, Smith thought. What a wonderfully roundabout way of saying 'don't worry about us, old man, we will survive.'
"I am dying, boy." Smith tried to raise a hand but he was too weak. Pelton's hand settled on his.
I had hands like that once, Smith thought. Big and vital.
Pelton leaned close. "And you go off to the sea wi'out ever having pissed yourself in your bed. Lucky old man."
Smith laughed in little gasps. "I do have my dignity," he said. He closed his eyes and opened them again.
"The exploration parties," he asked. "Have they returned with news of the world? Have the leeches withdrawn?"
Pelton said nothing.
Smith looked to the open window, a hazy blue square in a white stucco wall. He had a thought and asked Pelton, "Is Trina here?"
Smith realized what he had just asked and looked away, ashamed. He cursed himself. Demented old man! His wife had been dead a long time. He had outlived most of his children. He had lived too long.
Pelton squeezed Smith's hand, gently, and then leaned forward and kissed his grandfather's brow.
"Rest, old father," Pelton said, as he gathered his crutches and stood on withered legs. "If you should go out to sea before I return, know that we are safe in this world you found, and we shall remain so."
Pelton left the room, and Smith was alone.
He feared that something had happened to the exploration parties sent north, but no one would tell him anything and he found it so damned hard to keep track of time he wasn't sure how long they had been gone.
Smith had also lost track of the sheer size of the population of the Nazca Islands. He remembered when a single sailing ship dropped anchor in New London Harbor and a few dozen people made their way to shore.
Smith closed his eyes for what seemed like just a moment, and when he opened them it was night. He was still alone. It wasn't as is he needed a nursemaid in attendance. There was nothing to be done for him. He was simply old.
The windows were shuttered and a candle burned on a table beside him. He heard a muffled growling and groaning from outside. The domesticated sea bears were grumbling in their pens.
His body seemed to tingle, and he felt light-headed, almost giddy.
The candle flickered wildly and one of the shutters creaked. Smith spoke in a voice as faint as the whisper of silk.
"And so I go."
He exhaled, and closed his eyes.
A moment later he drew a breath, lying flat on his back and looking at the ceiling.
Damn it, he thought, this better not go on all night.
The shutter creaked again and the candle flame leaped and twisted upon the wick.
"Enough, already," he said, speaking with more strength and volume than he had mustered in weeks.
He closed his eyes again and felt a dark void opening somewhere beneath him. He was about to let himself drop into it when a delicate, cool hand gripped his throat.
"Not yet, old horror," a voice as sweet cane syrup said.
Smith opened his eyes and saw a naked beauty leaning over his bed. Her pale skin was still speckled with drops of seawater that glimmered like jewels in the light of the candle, and her red hair lay upon her shoulders in wet strands like tendrils of dark blood.
She straddled him, and that was something Smith had not experienced in a long time. His genitals may have been dormant but he could still feel firm thighs against his sides and rounded buttocks settling down upon his groin.
The redhead bent over him, still holding his throat with one hand and tipping his head back into his pillow with the other. Her body lurched as if she were suffering a convulsion.
Smith felt a heavy breast press against his diaphragm, and then he saw a flash of white and red and green as the woman lowered her head, red lips parting over white teeth, emerald green eyes watching him.
Her gaze dropped to his throat and while Smith raged in his mind his struggle against the female leech was almost laughable.
Smith felt a single tooth against the flesh of his throat, like a needle carved from ice. The leech convulsed again and the tooth danced away. The bed rocked under both of them.
Any moment now someone will come through the door, Smith thought. I will find the strength to fight back. The island will explode underneath us. I will survive. I always have. I always will.
The leech let out a girlish laugh and came close, opening her mouth wide.
Smith gagged on the raw stench of her breath and he saw that her pupils were filled with blood, and that blood was now spilling into the iris of each eye. Something is very wrong here, Smith thought, and then he winced as he experienced what so many millions had suffered before him, the thing he had always escaped in the nick of time.
Two elongated canines pressed against his throat, the pain growing and then abating as the sharp fangs punctured Smith's flaccid old flesh. The leech snorted a breath and rubbed her groin against Smith. She worked her teeth free of him and pressed her lips against his neck. Smith's heart raced with fear, not arousal, and as his lifeblood began to surge out of his carotid artery the leech sucked on him, her blood-filled eyes rolling up as if she were a feeding shark.
The leech reared back and Smith's blood sprayed across her breasts. Clamping a firm hand upon the twin punctures in Smith's neck she raised a hand to her throat and tore her own pale skin, dropping down on the old man and pressing his quivering mouth against her gushing wound.
Her strength began to fade, and Smith reflexively swallowed as he fought to avoid choking to death on the leech's blood.
"So safe," she said. "So safe down here, away from the wars."
Smith swallowed again, angered and confused by the fact that the blood filling his mouth tasted... good.
"We were nearly destroyed," the female leech said. "Thankfully, many Variant C's survived... but even they were hurt terribly by the 'sun bombs.' It took us decades to regain our numbers."
She slumped sideways and Smith grabbed her and steadied her. He felt like a puppet being manipulated as his mouth eagerly sucked at the diminishing flow of blood from the female leech.
"My people were different afterward," she said softly. She was growing weak. "They could still create more of us, but they could not pass on that thing which made them special."
Smith felt his heart pounding in his chest. He was suddenly, fiercely hungry.
"The beings you called 'Variant C' begat only leeches now," she whispered. "Something has changed. The virus that lives in all of us has mutated again."
Smith licked her shoulder, tasting salt.
"And now, for what you did to us," the leech said, lying heavily on him and slurring her words as if she were delirious, "You shall become the monster. The myth."
As the female leech settled lifelessly on him and her hands fell away, Smith felt a growing strength he had not felt in a long time. He drew a deep and satisfying breath and realized his prick was as hard as stone.
Smith let out one last breath, and with it went his humanity.
He looked to the window and the gap in the shutters. Dawn was still many hours away.
The leech had been drained, but she was still fulsome and ripe. And he was hungry. When he felt strong enough, Smith rolled on top of her. He sniffed at her and tasted her with his flickering tongue. He bit into her and began to chew.
Oh, he thought, oh, the taste!
When he finished with the leech Smith stood and looked at what he had done. There was nothing left of her but cracked-open bones, spatters of bile, rended fleshy pipes and bloody scraps of skin. He was still hungry, and growing stronger.
He climbed out the window and pulled himself onto the roof of his home. He was wearing only a cotton sleeping gown but the morning chill didn't bother him. The sun was rising over the fields of corn and wheat in the Eastern Veld and creeping up the dark slopes of Big Mountain, the dormant volcano that rose up over Sanctuary, the biggest of the six Nazca Islands.
Smith felt the sun warm his flesh and stretched as if awakening from a long sleep. The old man's ache in his joints was fading, and his senses were sharpening as he stood in the brisk morning air. He pulled off his gown and threw it away.
His gums were bleeding. New teeth would soon replace the few remaining old ones. Both of his legs were steady and strong, without the metal brace he had worn since setting foot on the island. His erection was still there, jutting like a weapon. He thought of how the female leech had convulsed, and remembered her bleeding pupils. He wondered what had been done to her so she could do this to him.
And he wondered what he would do about his growing hunger.
Smith leaped from the roof of his home and hit the ground running.
--
After the Pandemic
Intro
http://www.ubersite.com/m/61238
Background
-Corrigan http://www.ubersite.com/m/61296
-Variant C http://www.ubersite.com/m/61350
Smith tales
-Archangels 1 http://www.ubersite.com/m/61513
-Archangels 2 http://www.ubersite.com/m/61755
-Archangels 3 http://www.ubersite.com/m/61985
-Archangels 4 http://www.ubersite.com/m/62289
-Archangels 5 http://www.ubersite.com/m/62570
-Smith in D.C. http://www.ubersite.com/m/64167
-Smith at Sea http://www.ubersite.com/m/64857
-Smith: The End of the World (1) http://www.ubersite.com/m/66658
-Smith: The End of the World (2) http://www.ubersite.com/m/68176
-Smith: The End of the World (3) http://www.ubersite.com/m/69626
-Smith: The End of the World (4) http://www.ubersite.com/m/69714
-Smith: The End of the World (5) http://www.ubersite.com/m/69802
-Smith: The End of the World (6) http://www.ubersite.com/m/71864
-Smith: The End of the World (7) http://www.ubersite.com/m/72036
-Smith: The End of the World (8) http://www.ubersite.com/m/73371
-Smith: The End of the World (9) http://www.ubersite.com/m/73934
-Smith: The End of the World (10) http://www.ubersite.com/m/74386
-Smith: Yearend http://www.ubersite.com/m/81473
User Reviews
Submitted by ShermanTankBuddhaBalls (user info) at 2007-05-09 16:49:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-04-19 00:15:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jack Attack
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-04-18 23:31:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by mitchmarron (user info) at 2007-04-18 12:38:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-04-17 22:44:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i hoped you were dead.
--
Douchebaggery: it's the new black.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2007-04-18 23:10:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
don't stop.
Submitted by mitchmarron (user info) at 2007-04-18 12:38:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-04-17 22:44:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i hoped you were dead.
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-04-18 11:28:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2007-04-18 00:43:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
After the Pandemic, auto +2
Are you going to go further with this or were you just revisiting for the hell of it?
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2007-04-18 04:04:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-04-18 01:53:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2007-04-18 00:43:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
After the Pandemic, auto +2
Are you going to go further with this or were you just revisiting for the hell of it?
Submitted by pandora (user info) at 2007-04-18 00:13:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent!
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-04-17 22:44:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i hoped you were dead.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2007-04-17 22:17:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
didn't see that one coming. sweet twist.
I like to think i convinced you to continue the smith tails the first time, and i convinced you to re-start it this time. i did, right?
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-04-17 21:52:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The awesomeness of this is found in the judicious use of words. Never an extra word, never too few. Just the proper amount of seasoning makes the stew perfect....
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-04-17 21:47:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"which to Smith was anyone under fifty"
My name doan be Smif....
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-04-17 19:47:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
poor Smith, even death comes too late
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-04-17 19:12:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good, but no way I'm following all those links.
Nice set up for a sequel, btw.
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2007-04-17 18:54:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-04-17 18:32:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Some rainy night when the family is away I'm going to buy a bottle of brandy (to sip periodically) and read all of these. Doesn't hardly rain here. You know what I mean.
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-04-17 18:28:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yes! So good.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-04-17 18:12:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I love it when I find fuckups after ten proofreads.
Motherfucking Christ.
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2007-04-17 18:00:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Did you finally run out of Lotrimin®AF ?
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-04-17 17:58:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i wondered where your fucking faggoty, small dicked self had gotten off to.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-04-17 17:57:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Don't care.
McCallum = AUTO +2
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2007-04-17 17:55:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2007-04-17 17:55:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL!