Tim Lane - Uninfected

Tim Lane ran through the sweltering heat of the jungle night as fast as his legs could carry him. His heart beat like a jackhammer, not only from the exertion, but from fear. It had found him, found him in the darkness beneath the canopy. Found him where only scant beams of moonlight, shining bright in the oily blackness, could find the soil. He hadn't seen more than a glimpse in his panic, the slick, snake-like body passing quickly through a moonbeam. The terror pushed him on, deep, primal, and weakening him every step. The young man scrambled over the tangled roots of trees, but he could feel his legs shaking from exhaustion.

Tim finally broke out of the foliage into a moonlit clearing. He had gone as far as he could, and his legs buckled, leaving him a sweaty, panting mass on the grass below. A rustling behind him announced the arrival of his hunter, and he turned to face his fate. It was somehow worse than he had imagined. An enormous snake would have been bad enough, but he didn't even have such a relatively prosaic destiny. An immense human penis emerged from the permanent dark beyond the tree line, a throbbing, fist-sized head capping the bulging shaft that stretched back farther than the man could see. It might have been funny, given his circumstance, but the mounting dread wouldn't let him see it that way. All he could see was the way it moved, a kind of predatory grace, that laid bare it's intent. The oozing tip reared back to strike with an ophidian swaying.

Before the fateful blow, time seemed to stretch farther, slower. Noise built up in his ears, the sound of an approaching car. A car, deep in the trackless jungle. Tim's head turned back towards the growling engine, and to his puzzled eyes, the sight of headlights spilling through the trees met him.

Tim Lane awoke from the bizarre nightmare with a gasp. The blanket he slept on was damp with sweat, and the room was hot and humid. The room usually was after he slept, but it was a condition he had learned to live with in the near week he had been here. He was sleeping in a bathtub, in a bathroom, in the small apartment above a bakery. The building was older than he was, but the bakery had been here for a little less time than himself. Tim could even remember going with his mom to pick the cake for his 9th birthday right out of the shop below him. He shook out of his tired reminiscing.

The noisy car wasn't just in his dreams; it was real. It was also bad news. The past couple of days had been much quieter than those before, and Tim had hoped that the chaos had died down enough for a dash out of town. Even in the middle of town, right on main street as he was, the town of Hagan's Creek was, by no reckoning, a large one. After the screams, gunshots, moans, and that one giant orgy he had seen in the street died down, he was going to be free from the rampaging horde of sex zombies and big-breasted, horsecock-wielding, -happy mutants. Tim rose to peer through the small window, letting a little fresh air into his linoleum-tiled fortress.

The young man peered through the small opening the window would allow. 'Where's the asshole that's pissing on the hornet's nest?' Tim thought to himself. He could hear the vehicle approaching, and the crashing of it striking the occasional obstacle, but it wasn't visible. What was visible in the near-darkness of the early twilight was a figure, some person creeping quietly down the street, clearly searching for something. "What the fuck?" Tim muttered to himself quietly, "Do those freaks sneak?" Just then, the droning engine noise grew louder, as an old sedan screeched on to the street.

The car lurched haphazardly down the road, sideswiping abandoned vehicles and swerving drunkenly. Tim muscles tensed up with anxiety; that clown was going to lead half the town his way with that racket. He glanced back at the survivor on the street. Incredibly, they seemed oblivious to the din that was rapidly approaching.

"Oh, Shit!" Tim exclaimed to himself, "I need to..."