When the chains around her neck and wrists clanged loud enough, it was time to feed her, even though she was always hungry. The food would slide down her throat in a lump, travel through her guts, and fall out of a cavity in her abdomen—a gaping cavern the size of a fully grown fetus.

The only time he could safely slide into her pussy was when she ate, so finding fresh food was necessary, because he was horny all the time. He glanced at the man chained up in the corner of the room. Poor Ted. His guts were spilled on the concrete floor like an overturned bucket of pig slop. The ragged stumps of one leg and arm had blackened and dried, white bone protruding like a jagged tooth from rotten gums.

Bill had managed to harvest a fresh arm and leg before Ted finally died. He had immediately sliced Ted’s abdomen, allowing his organs to unfurl from the wound. He shoved the mess of intestines into the zombie woman’s face, trying to get in a quick fuck as she chomped on the guts as they slowly tumbled down her chin.

He walked over to Ted and kicked the stiff leg stump. Bill cursed and looked out the window: The apocalypse had not been kind to the small town. Several homes stood like skeletons with charred insides. Dry, yellowed grass had reclaimed most of the streets, forcing its way through the cracks in the neglected blacktop. Abandoned cars rusted, their tires spiderwebbed to the ground. They got what was coming to them, Bill thought, and spit on the barren earth.

The television had stopped working a long time ago, and his favorite podcaster ceased updating after the internet went out. The last thing he remembered John “The Truth” Wilson spoke about was the falling of satellites into graveyards or some shit. Those satellites, he claimed, were outsourced by some billionaire. Built by immigrants and illegal aliens. DEI bullshit.

In the distance, he saw dust kick up into the air. Something was coming toward him. A vehicle. He smiled and drew the curtains over the windows. He tried to keep the place presentable. Presentable and promising to passing looters and survivors.

“Okay, girl, more food is coming.” A warm feeling spread out from his abdomen, a rush of blood to his dick. It unfolded immediately. The zombie pulled madly at her restraints.

It must be love he felt.

***

After a few days on the road, Tina happened upon a gas station that didn’t look like a total wreck. She gunned the throttle on her small dirt bike. Trash and debris whirled into the air, caught by the motion of her tires. She hunched down and tried to get to her destination faster. She hated driving in all forms.

When the zombie apocalypse happened, her town quickly became overrun. The sick and injured were gathered in churches to be healed by prayer. Reality came down fast when the pastor turned and ripped a follower’s throat out with his bare teeth at the altar.

But Tina escaped.

She remembered the church’s steps and the waterfall of blood cascading down the concrete. Big wooden doors muffled the screams. Blood splattered against the stained-glass windows in bright, sharp arcs.

After the town became washed in blood, she drove and drove. She would fill up when she could. Get food whenever possible, but she lived mostly on the road. She had developed a slight limp from riding for so long.

The dirt bike cut through the streets. The whining of the motor echoed off the stoic facades of abandoned houses. Some of the buildings were gutted by fire. She noticed charred couches and shattered furniture splintered like broken bones. Makeshift weapons. The reflection of broken glass glinted in the evening’s dying sunlight. Remnants of mirrors, picture frames. Family. All she had was her brother’s dirt bike.

A family album sat somewhere underneath her bed, miles and miles away. She was tempted to look behind her, at the life she left behind, but the Bible said something about not looking back. She couldn’t remember the classes, the studies. The monotone voice of the preacher echoing off the high ceilings of the church.

She chose to keep her eyes forward, pushing the small engine long past its limits. Tina didn’t have a plan for when the bike gave up. She squinted against the sun and saw a person sitting in a rocking chair in front of the gas station. Something lay across his lap. She slowed, and the engine coughed in response.

The station was close enough for her to let the bike coast in on momentum alone. The sunset splashed blood in the sky. In a fluid motion, she swung her leg off the bike and landed next to it in a brisk trot. She walked the bike the rest of the way. The building cut through the glare of the sun, and she saw the station proper.

The gas pumps looked clean and maintained. The parking lot was swept, and the windows cast a clear reflection of her: A small girl walking next to a beat-up dirt bike. Sweat plastered her long, dark hair to her forehead, and fatigue pulled her eyes into squinted slits. Her face looked washed in dust. She glanced away from the reflection to the man in the rocking chair, his hand resting over a swollen belly. The rest of his body looked thin, and a collection of gray, wiry hairs suggested a beard.

“You’re pretty good with that thing,” the man called out. Casually. Untroubled. As if the world hadn’t ended. Sweat shone underneath his backward facing baseball cap.

“My brother taught me,” she said, her voice sounding foreign to her ears.

“He’s not here with you?” The man made an exaggerated gesture at the empty road behind Tina.

“No.” She parked the bike next to one of the gas pumps and flicked the kickstand down.

“You’re traveling alone?”

His words weren’t dripping with concern. He almost sounded hopeful. Did he know what was going on out there? Did he think everything stopped outside of his bumfuck hometown?

She nodded at the gas pump, “Is there any gas?”

He stood. A shotgun slid from his lap, and he caught it with two hands. “Sure is. Go ahead inside and we’ll get the pump started up.”

Regret folded her stomach into knots. A cold sensation washed over her limbs. She reached for the bike, but the metal clack of a shotgun cocking stopped her.

“Like I said, go ahead inside and we’ll get you all sorted out.”

Her legs jerked as if they wanted to run, but they were inexplicitly cemented to the ground. Gravel crunched as the man stepped toward her with the shotgun aimed at her chest. For months, they were told to shoot everything in the head, so they wouldn’t return. Why not aim for her head?

“Come on now girly, behave.”

Tina willed herself to move toward the gas station entrance. She dragged her feet and lowered her eyes to the ground. She felt like one of those things out there, a zombie. The image of the church doors appeared in her head again.

The parishioners slammed open hands against the trembling door. Hollow thumps. Then the blood flowed from beneath it as if the church itself beat as the town’s heart. Why were the doors closed? The screams echoed, not much different from the fever of the singing. Speaking in tongues. The vision carried her to the entrance of the station. Tina opened the door, and the scent of rot belched from the open portal, the stench of several dead animals baking in the sun. Bile rolled up her throat. She clamped a hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t barf. The entire world smelled similar; the scent lingered and tickled her nose.

The malodor from the gas station seemed concentrated and otherworldly. Like a combination of a corpse, bile, shit, piss and something else. Another thick scent lingered heavy in the air, musty, sweaty and tangible like a fog.

“What is that smell?” She staggered back, but the man shoved her forward.

“You’ll see.”

She stumbled into the station. Something hit her on the back of the head. The ground rushed up to meet her.

***

She woke to the sound of wet hands clapping. The steady rhythm disturbed her sleep, and she opened her eyes, but the world refused to come into focus. With the barrier of sleep removed, pain flooded up from her leg, arresting all of her senses. A groan escaped her lips and echoed off the concrete walls of the small room.

The clapping continued.

She lifted her head toward sound, but her eyes only reported the vague shapes of something shifting rapidly back and forth. Instead, she turned her attention to the pain, her leg. She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears broke from the corners of her eyes, leaving wet trails down her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a belt. It had been wrapped tightly around her thigh, which she thought had been the source of the pain, but quickly realized it was meant to stop the flow of blood from the stump right below it.

The lower part of her leg had been severed, and the wound cauterized, charred and black. The sharp scent of burnt flesh lingered. That was the other smell from before. Sweat. Exertion.

Wet hands clapping. Someone grunting, a woman growling.

She looked up and toward the noise to see a zombie with a dismembered leg in its skeletal hands, digging into the tender flesh with a mouth full of rotten, jumbled teeth. The zombie, its body clothed with a tattered dress, jerked back and forth.

Her captor, the hillbilly, was behind the zombie, fucking it. He grunted, his hands hooked on her thighs, threatening to rend the already paled, rotten flesh. He shoved himself into her rotten cunt with a steady rhythm, sweat beading and running down his filthy face. His eyes were fixated on the zombie’s ass, watching his cock go in and out of the zombie pussy.

It took a few seconds for Tina to realize that the zombie was eating her leg. The hillbilly had fed it to the zombie and was fucking her while it ate. She groaned again.

“Shut the fuck up,” the man mumbled under his breath. “Almost there.” His pace quickened. He shut his eyes, and a savage growl rattled up from his throat. He jabbed his dick into her a few more times before pulling out. A load of semen smacked to the floor. He jumped to the side and skirted away before the zombie dropped the leg and turned toward him. Her lipless grimace clicked loudly as she tried to bite him.

“Sorry, needed to concentrate. I didn’t want your fucking voice making my dick go soft.” He smiled and stepped in front of Tina. His dick was still hard and slick with zombie juices. The flesh was slightly discolored. Green. “Damn things,” he said as he picked a maggot from the base, just in front of his balls, munching on the green dick cheese festering there. He tossed the bug in Tina’s face and chuckled. His dick twitched as he laughed, and it started to lose some of its hardness. A hacksaw, rusty and bloodied, lay next to his foot. “Ever since we started our little courtship here, my dick’s been changing color. I don’t feel it as much as I used to,” he mused, more to himself than to Tina, it seemed. “I don’t know if my dick is turning into a zombie dick, or if it’s just because of her juices. I don’t know.” He stared at his dick and flicked it.

“How did you?” Her voice petered out before finishing the question. She leaned her head back on the concrete wall and realized that she was handcuffed. The cuffs were attached to a metal bar protruding from the wall.

“Dr. Hanson still had some anesthetic left in his office. After a few failed experiments, I figured out how to make it work.”

The statement sent Tina’s mind reeling. Her brain refused the data the situation fed her. “Why fuck a...”

“I don’t know. I just felt bad about Ma dying, so I kept her chained up here. One thing led to another. You know, I was just horny.” He crouched down in front of Tina and smiled a yellowed grin. “Did you want some too? Were you hoping I’d lay some pipe on you?”

He reached down to her crotch and squeezed. He felt her shame there. The thing that didn’t belong.

Tina squirmed as best as she could, sending a renewed wave of pain rushing up her thigh. He squeezed harder. The phantom leg kicked wildly, sending thick bars of pain shooting up her stump. He squeezed her dick harder.

“Oh. So you want to be a woman, huh? Not quite there, I guess. I can still treat you like one.” Tina saw his member was fully engorged again. He produced a pocketknife from his jeans pocket. It flicked open with a click. He brought it to her pants, running it up the good leg and slicing the rest of the garment off, leaving Tina nude from the waist down.

The man’s rancid breath rolled over her face in a warm wave. She tried to choke back more bile but let it fall from her mouth instead. The warm liquid soaked her shirt.

“This is how we treat ‘em.” He reached down and worked his dick into her crack. He spat on the tip. The member suddenly popped into her ass. It slid in and out. The pain wracked her entire body. He kept the knife in his hand as he fucked her, the blade’s tip played into her side, drawing droplets of blood. Maggots crawled around his pubic hair. She felt their soft, slimy bodies.

She imagined closed doors.

Blood pooling.

Rushing down the steps.

People screaming.

Her family screaming.

The zombie woman frantically screamed, pulling on her chains. The metal rattled, sharp clattering that assaulted Tina’s senses. The restraints crunched against the wall behind the zombie.

Embarrassed. The knife continued to prod Tina intermittently, and she kept her eye on it. His grip loosened. His eyes fluttered open and closed.

“It feels good,” Tina heard her voice say, clawing up her throat. “Something warm. My brother thought so too. He wanted me to feel like a woman.” The man just groaned in response. “I had to learn my place.” Jabs of pain followed every breath. Every thought.

He pumped harder, one hand braced against the wall above her head.

She worked her hard-on. Committing to the moment. The pleasure pushed away the pain slightly. She kept looking at the knife. The promise of an orgasm felt like a shot of adrenaline. She bit her lower lip. Drawing blood.

A groan bubbled up the hillbilly’s throat, and he came, filling her ass with hot jizz. Another smell she should have recognized when she stepped into the station. The orgasm shuddered throughout his entire body, and his eyes roved behind the lids. He puffed a few more breaths of rotten air into her face before slowly pulling out. His hand steadied against the wall behind her trembled.

As soon as his dick cleared her asshole, Tina grabbed the hillbilly’s member with one hand and the knife, loosely held in his shaking grasp, with her other hand. Before post-ejaculate reality dawned on him, she jammed the blade straight through the base of his penis. In two quick sawing motions, his dick was off.

The hillbilly fell back, blood spurting from the wound. It splattered over her face and painted the wall behind her in a dramatic arc. He put pressure on the wound, rolling on the ground, grunts of pain punctuating each spurt of blood.

Tina tossed the penis at the zombie woman. It landed at her feet. The zombie fell to her knees and shoved the mangled flesh into her mouth, chewing greedily. The wet mashing sounds echoed off the walls and made Tina smile. “There you go, Ma.”

The hacksaw chewed through the handcuff’s chains slowly, but eventually it ate all the way through. Tina dragged her body over the puddle of blood. Ma lunged at her as she scooted toward the door.

“Bye Ma,” she said, using the station door to pull herself up into a standing position. The shotgun was propped up on the wall. She used it as a crutch. As she hobbled toward her bike, the station doors slammed closed.

The church doors didn’t open, she thought as her mind revisited the scene. The doors violently shook on their hinges. The sun’s dying light glared off the polished wood. A metal bar slipped through the door’s handles, barred the exit, trapping the churchgoers inside with the zombies. As Tina put distance between herself and the station, she imagined walking away from the church again.

A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

About the Author:
James Patrick Riser’s fiction has appeared in Necrotic Tissue and Blood from the Underground. He lives in California with his wife and daughter.