Tales of Virusgeddon: Charles Abigail Romanov Part III

Charles Abigail Romanov Part III
Part of the Virusgeddon series of stories

While this whole journey into empathy was happening, the four of us searched for a place for them to live. When dealing with people in this day and age you either wanted to live alone and go crazy by yourself or you wanted four or more, with two watching at all times to make sure the other one watching didn’t go crazy and eat everyone’s faces in their sleep. Reason why I, along with most people, chose the single route. While it’s nice having other people around, watching somebody turn into one of those manimals is not too fun, especially when it’s somebody you love. Finding a place for these people wasn’t hard. there are empty apartments everywhere and picking locks has become second nature to most these days. It was finding them a roommate in a world where the friendliest greeting you’re likely to get most of the time is a “go away”, often followed by a gun barrel. Not to say there aren’t good people, mind you, but 95 percent of them will still turn you away.

You would think that there would be hundreds of sane, lonely people looking to share in some company. The lonely part was right, just not the sane. The worst one we encountered actually seemed relatively normal at first. Wore a T-shirt and jeans, looked relatively clean (as clean as one can get in a city without running water), had a nice place. He even shared Jack and I’s interest in cars. While the three of us debated the merits of Japanese versus American brands, the kids got bored and decided to do a little bit of exploring. It was when I was nailing the coffin on the inferiority of japanese brands when we all heard the screams. Almost out of reflex I pulled out my pistol and pointed it at the man while Jack whipped out his and ran into the room with the kids.

“Chuck, you better get in here.” Jack yelled, sounding like he was going to be sick. I motioned for the man to lead us into the room they were in. When we did, I felt my gorge rising as well. Tied up in one of the bedroom closets, naked except for a diaper and a ball-gag, was a wild-eyed woman who had obviously gone manimal a long time ago. While she was sleeping when we came over, the screams of the kids had woken her up and she was struggling against her bindings for all her worth, screaming around her ball-gag. The reason he kept her around like this was abundantly clear.

“Jack, please take the kids into the other room, they don’t need to see this.” I said, trying to keep my cool. When they were out of sight, I closed the door. “Now tell me, was this your wife or just some girl off the street?” I said in a dangerous whisper.
He looked at me defiantly
“My wife, we’d only been married a couple of months when she got infected. What’s it matter anyways? There’s nothing there anymore. It’s like fucking any other kind of animal. It’s a woman’s job to give her man pleasure, no matter what. Pussy’s pussy man!” This wasn’t the first time I had heard of this kind of thing happening.Every once in a while when I was at “The Market” I would hear a story or two of somebody keeping a manimal for pleasure like that. This was the first time I had ever seen it in person though.

“I ever see you again, you’re dead.” I hiss between clenched teeth. Then, before he could react, I put two bullet’s into the manimal’s head and one between his legs. As he lay writhing on the ground, I walked out of the door and motioned Jack and the kids to follow. Jack knew not to ask and I really didn’t feel like telling. The kids had obviously been told not to ask about it as well. It would come out eventually, just not now.
The one that made us give up completely didn’t seem so bad at first either. I had talked to him a few times at the market and he seemed lonely.When he opened the door to his apartment, however, I saw the hungry look he gave the kids and we promptly left. After that pervert, I just decided to let them stay at my place permanently. Nothing was really said, or needed to be said for that matter. I just stopped insisting that we needed to find them a new place and they liked where they were.It was nice having somebody to talk to after all those months of loneliness and isolation, to have somebody watching your back. Hunter and his sister were good kids and Sober Jack was much easier to deal with than Junkie Jack. I knew that one of us would eventually show signs of decay, but in a world like ours, you take what you can get and try to enjoy it.