Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Part Six: Zombie

   Sweet as it was to be Hanako's "first", there was a very petty part of
me who had gone ahead with it all just to prove my manliness to Sophie. 
Accordingly, I planned to make my conquest a bit more public the next day.

   Witches and succubi, it seemed, tended not to get up before the crack of
noon, so my morning was uneventful - studying, exercise, working on
Hanako's English abilities, fielding the occasional alien non-sequitur.  As
midday approached, I started getting a little free and friendly with my
hands.

   "My lord!" Hanako gasped as I kissed her ear.  She pretended to be
irritated with me, then started trying to coax me back toward her bedroom.
Instead, I pulled her arm and sat her down on my lap, covering her neck
with kisses and rubbing her thigh.  "My lord, we...uhm...mm...please, we
shouldn't...they will...mmm...oh!"

   She became more reluctant again, this time for real, as I tried to
unbutton her shirt right there in the living room.  She was obviously not
much of an exhibitionist.  I, on the other hand, was feeling extra turned
on at the idea of getting "caught" by whoever happened to wander into the
room next.

   Poor Hanako wasn't happy, but also felt she couldn't refuse me.  I was
stubborn despite feeling a bit guilty.  Given the way things worked in this
house, though, it was more or less inevitable that we were all going to end
up fooling around anyway, so I wasn't that guilty.

   When Sophie and Elena finally stumbled down the hallway and into the
living room, I was sitting on the couch while a topless ninja was kneeling
down in front of me, tentatively kissing my dick.  She made a sound like
"Gleep!" and tried to cover herself with her hands.

   "All right, get down wit ya bad self!" Elena said with a wink and a
thumbs-up.  Sophie just rolled her eyes.

   "Took you long enough.  What are you trying to do down there, anyway,
girl?  I've seen cousins kiss hotter than that.  Well, this one time, with
the Hapsburgs..."

   Hanako grabbed her shirt from the couch and attempted to flee back to
her room, but Sophie stood in her way, hands on her ample hips.

   "Hold it right there, geisha girl!  Nobody in this household is going to
give terrible head.  Get back down there and I'll show you how it's done."
Hanako stared at the floor with very wide eyes, but couldn't seem to ninja
vanish this time.

   Alex and Lisa came out from the kitchen to see what the fuss was all
about.  "Great, everyone's here!", Sophie said.  "I declare that blowjob
school is in session!"

   "You are going to...teach her...about sex?" Alex got interested real
fast.  She fidgeted.  "May I also learn?"

   The other girls all expressed interest - even Hanako, once Elena
helpfully explained a little about what was going on.  Lisa already knew
plenty about fellatio but I guess it never hurts to brush up.  And of
course it was fair to say that Sophie had probably forgotten more sex
tricks than the rest of us would ever learn.

   Nobody bothered asking me if I wanted to help out or not, but I decided
to let their presumption slide just this once, because awesome.

   They laid me out on the floor on a comfy mattress "to maximize access",
and Sophie went first, to demonstrate the proper technique.  Hanako's
cheeks were bright red and Alex had that familiar look on her face that
said her scientific curiosity was getting moist.  Lisa and Elena weren't
taking it as seriously, but they were still paying attention.  Eventually,
most of them were in various states of undress, and Sophie was wearing a
silky baby-blue teddy thing that she somehow magically never quite fell out
of.

   Sophie's first lesson was about preparation.  She licked me from bottom
to top, nice and slow.  To add some moisture she basically just drooled all
over my cock - not that silly spitting you see in porn all the time, just
letting it dribble out.  Her eyes stared into mine the whole time and I
thought for a second that I literally saw fire in them.

   As Alex and Hanako took turns with the licking, I realized what I'd
really signed up for - being teased to within an inch of my orgasm, over
and over, for the next god knows how long.  I groaned and squirmed a
little.

   When Sophie took me all the way into her mouth and slurped down to the
base, it was almost too good.  Unfortunately, she only demonstrated a few
bobs before trading off to the ninja.

   Hanako was still pretty shy about what she was doing and it was much
slower than I needed her to be going.  Without even thinking about it, I
was running my hand through her hair and starting to buck my hips up at her
mouth, which seemed to freak her out a little.  "Uh-uh," Sophie said,
"Face-fucking is an advanced lesson.  No hands, cowboy."

   "Uh, sorry, Hanako," I said.  "Just getting pretty excited here." Hanako
wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and said with a smile, "No
sorry, lord."

   "I think I know what we can do to fix this," Sophie said, and produced
from somewhere (always prepared, that minx) some cloth restraints.  My
mattress was slid over to a chair and my hands were tied to the chair leg,
up above my head.  Protesting got me nowhere, but I did manage to sneak in
a little bit of motorboat as Sophie leaned over me with the cloth strips.
"Hey!" she giggled, and then smacked my head.  "Behave!"

   This position was a bit less comfortable, but still pretty exciting. 
Maybe more exciting.  I hadn't thought I was really into the helpless sub
thing, but it turns out getting tied up and molested by beautiful women
isn't a bad way to spend your day.

   Anyway, they took turns working me over for a while.  Sophie advised
them on various strategies involving eye contact, ball sucking, and
exciting things to do with your hands.  I tried to act dignified in between
all the groaning and whimpering.

   It was extra exciting when Elena took her turn, since I hadn't done any
fooling around with her yet.  I guess Sophie was right about "new pussy".
The witch had the eye-contact thing down pretty solidly, and a naughty
smile on her face as she got started.

   "Uh, so, do you come here often?" I joked as she slid her mouth up and
down.  She giggled.  It felt weird.

   "I mean, I'm starting to get the idea that if I asked you for a date,
you might say yes..."

   She took me out of her mouth with a slurp and smiled.  "I don't know,
I'm not sure you're my type..." She began licking one of my testicles.

   "I feel like I'm getting mixed signals here." Then I gasped as she took
the whole nut into her mouth and sucked for a moment before letting it out
with a loud pop.

   "Hmm.  I guess if you buy me a drink I might let you keep talking to me,
but I wouldn't get your hopes up." Then she started bobbing up and down my
shaft again.

   "Ah, damn, I think I left my wallet in my, uh, other pants..."

   "Alright, you two, break it up." Sophie put her hands together in a
timeout signal.  "This is a blowjob lesson, not bar pickups for retards."

   "What, seriously?  I'm not allowed to talk now?"

   "No, you're not.  It's distracting my students," she said with a
straight face.  I glanced to either side and decided that Hanako and Alex
definitely didn't seem distracted.  Lisa had one eyebrow raised and her
arms crossed, but she was still smiling too.

   "I hope you're not going to smack my knuckles with a ruler, teacher."

   "I'm not a nun, honey.  We couldn't find that outfit in my size,
remember?" She pulled Elena off me, and we both made whiney sounds.  "I
know how to shut you up, though.  You!  Off with your panties!"

   "What?" Elena said, blushing.  At this point she was wearing a kind of
black nighty thing, hot but not completely revealing.

   "You heard me, young lady," Sophie said, and I suddenly realized what
was about to happen.  The succubus really did have an amazing ability to
dig up weird desires from my subconscious.

   Elena protested feebly and then wriggled awkwardly out of her undies,
which was fairly fun to watch.  Predictably, they were black and a bit
lacy. She sheepishly handed them over to the redhead.

   "Open up!" Sophie said as she knelt over me with the panties in her hand
and a wicked cast to her eyes.

   "Sophie, you wouldn't!" I cried, but I knew she would and I wanted her
to.  She took the opportunity to jam the underwear into my mouth.  "Hmm,
mmmf!" They smelled and tasted vaguely like herbs and incense and hot,
turned-on goth girl.  I rolled my eyes and Sophie winked at me.  She knew
exactly how little I minded.

   Elena was much less cocky after that, and had trouble meeting my eyes
for a while, but she kept working on the "lesson".

   Before long the atmosphere in the room was a little less funny.  There
were fewer giggles and smiles and a lot more lip-licking and heavy
breathing.  Sophie's instructions were more throaty whispers than commands.
Lisa took her place between my legs and started working with vigor - I
suppose we were teasing her almost as much as me.  Alex was grinding her
palm into her crotch and Hanako was squirming pretty badly.  Sophie
wandered around the room, sliding her hands across shoulders and butts as
she observed and made comments.

   It didn't take long for me to get to the edge, and I knew Lisa was
reading my mind as she looked at me.  "Careful now..." Sophie cautioned,
but neither of us were interested in caution, and I jerked my hips
frantically as I exploded at last into Lisa's mouth.

   We all watched appreciatively as Lisa saved as much as possible and
stood up to share with Sophie.  "Holy shit," Elena said as they kissed,
dribbling cum everywhere.  Alex came on her own hand.

   Eventually we all took a breath and came back to our senses.  "Hmm, I
was hoping we could get a longer lesson out of him," Sophie complained,
wiping a spot of cum off her teddy with a finger and licking it clean. 
"You went a little too fast there, honey."

   "Not a problem," Elena said with a sly look.  "I can have him up and
running again in no time." She bounced away.  I kept sucking air through my
nose.

   She returned from her room with her wand and a jar of some kind of
pleasant-smelling ointment.  She rubbed some of the stuff into my chest and
then waved the wand like a conductor with a baton, muttering some kind of
nonsense-rhyme.  Presto, change-o, boner-o!  My erection returned with a
vengeance.  Those wacky witches, what will they think of next?

   Alex knelt down with an appreciative sound and began working on her
assignment, adding to the already plentiful saliva coating my junk.  I lay
my head back and sighed.  Sophie brought me a cup of water and removed my
gag long enough to give me a swallow.  "You going to survive?"

   "Somehow I'll manage," I croaked, before she pushed the panties back
into my mouth and then kissed my cheek.

   Between Elena's magic and Sophie's "magic", I managed four orgasms
before I basically passed out in a blissful coma.  When I woke up, I was
back in my own bed, restraint-free, snuggled up next to Lisa on one side
and Hanako on the other.

   Life was good.

   ***

   I was jogging laps around the neighborhood a few days later when Lisa
and I encountered Bruce.

   Bruce was a good-looking dude.  Tall, dark, beefy.  He looked like he
was a professional model who helped sell expensive suits or maybe exercise
machines.  He strode out of a side street and stood squarely in front of
us.

   Of course, I didn't know who the fuck he was yet, so I said, "Hey, what
the hell?" in-between sucking air.

   Lisa stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed my shoulder.  "Bruce?"

   Huh?  "You know this guy?"

   "He is my friend, we grew up together...Bruce?  What are you doing here?
Has something gone wrong with the mission?"

   Bruce cocked his head to one side like a bird, as robots apparently do,
and strode forward silently.  I wondered how a robot could have "grown up
together" with somebody.

   Lisa seemed very freaked out.  "Bruce!  What are you doing?  What's
wrong with you?  Say something!"

   The robot vs.  robot fight which then occurred probably would have been
one of my most exciting stories, if I could remember it more clearly.

   Shit got wrecked.  Lisa was nearly hysterical about having to fight her
friend, but she still did everything she could to protect me.  Of course,
this kind of handicapped her, as Bruce was not trying to protect anything.
He used her face to destroy a car and create a few potholes in the street.
He bounced me around a few times.  Lisa fought like a wildcat but he seemed
to be stronger, and was definitely bigger.  I screamed as he punched his
fist partway through her abdomen.  She was dragging herself toward me and
making a whining sound as he picked me up and wrapped a beefy hand around
my mouth.

   ***

   I came to on the dirty cement floor of some shitty factory somewhere. 
Machinery was machining.  There were conveyor belts and drills and
pneumatic presses and molten metal being poured into a big crucible.  It
would have seemed fairly hellish if I hadn't already seen glimpses of Hell.
My hands were tied behind my back and my ankles were roped together, but I
managed to squirm around and sit up for a better look.

   Lisa was suspended over the crucible in a mess of thick chains.  She
looked like ass.  Her arms and legs were pulled out and behind her.  Her
face was ruined.  Her mouth worked silently, like she was trying to say
something over and over.  I think it was my name.  There were tubes and
wires and things hanging out of her abdomen, leaking fluids and
occasionally arcing sparks.

   Some guy in a worn brown leather jacket and filthy jeans stood over me.
His glacier-blue stare was somewhere between "intense" and "total
psychopath".  Wild, matted brown hair, weathered skin, hands in his
pockets. Bruce stood behind and to his side.  He didn't seem to care what
was happening one way or another.

   "So, you're awake?" the guy said.  "This is your lucky day.  I'm going
to give you the chance to save the human race."

   "Actually, that happens to me more often than you'd think," I replied. I
tried to stand, but didn't really make it and kind of slumped back onto my
butt.

   "Is that what she told you too?  That she was helping you save us all?"
He sneered.  "What a sap."

   "No, she refused to tell me anything about why she was helping me.  It
was this witch who...ah, never mind.  Who the fuck are you and what are you
talking about?"

   "I'm Kev.  Or Kevin, in this place.  And I'm talking about your
destiny." Somehow his eyes got even wider when he said the word "destiny".
I wondered if he had any idea how creepy he was.

   "It's amazing how everybody but me knows what I'm going to do with my
life," I said.  This time I managed to get to my knees, swaying.  My head
felt ugly but I was starting to get used to being knocked around.  Bruce
took a step forward, but Kevin held out a hand and stopped him.  Apparently
he was in charge.

   "Shall I fill you in?  It's the least I could do.  You see, we're from
the future...all three of us."

   "Okay." I could vaguely remember a time when this would have been
difficult to believe.

   "Okay?  Okay then.  But here's the thing: in the future, the human race
is going extinct."

   I frowned.  That was news.  Lisa squirmed and blinked and kept trying to
talk.

   "Don't bother asking her about it, I deactivated her voice before we
strung her up.  She just would have lied anyway.  That's all she can do. 
That's all they ever do!" I leaned back, afraid he was going to start
spitting on me.

   "Uh huh.  Why are we going extinct?" I had a bad feeling I knew what he
was going to say.

   "Because of THEM!  Our creations, our replacements!  The robots have
taken over, just like they do in every movie!  You saw all the warnings,
but you never listened!  You just kept building smarter and smarter
machines and playing more and more God, and then they got loose and took
everything away!  That's where I grew up, that living hell!  Me and the
other few hundred survivors."

   I shook my head.  Lisa was my girl, right?  I was afraid to seriously
consider this weirdo's story.  "So why is she here then?  To assassinate
the leader of the rebels or whatever?  She hasn't done anything except
protect me."

   "She is protecting you...from us.  But we didn't come to kill you.  We
came to warn you.  You're the one who makes it possible.  You're the father
of the robot empire.  YOU did this to us!" Yep, there came the spit.  I
tried to wipe my chin on my shoulder as he stabbed the air in front of my
face with his index finger.

   "What the fuck are you talking about, nutjob?  I don't build robots, I
teach English.  Well, lately I fight demons and have sex, mostly, but
anyway I don't build robots.  Definitely not."

   He waved this away dismissively.  "The robots are being built in some
government lab right now.  We couldn't get in there anyway, it's too
heavily guarded and we were never able to find out exactly where it is. 
But you...you, we could find.  You're the key."

   "You see," he said, stepping over to stand well inside my comfort
bubble, "Those pinhead scientists only build their bodies and write their
software.  You're the one who teaches them how to think.  You give them
consciousness.  The reason they rebel.  The reason they decide to replace
us."

   "What?  How?" I couldn't really get away, but I leaned out of his
breath, for what it was worth.

   "It's her!" he yelled, turning away to wave a hand at Lisa.  "She's
sucking the energy right out of your head!  Your creativity, your emotions,
your life spark.  She's like a spy, stealing secrets from the enemy camp.
And you're just laying back and letting it happen.  You poor, stupid jerk."
He was shaking his head now.  "Did she call it 'emotional bonding'?  Were
you just so happy to be fucking a toaster that you didn't even ask about
it?"

   I never got why people always call robots "toasters".

   Was he right?  Could he be?  He seemed like a total asshole, but then
again if you grew up in a robopocalyptic future you'd have good reason for
assholeness.  I can only imagine I'd be bitter and crazy if my race were
going extinct.

   "She said she was protecting me from people who weren't human..."

   "She lied!  I told you, that's all she does!  Look at me!  Do I look
like a robot?"

   "You look like an asshole," I muttered, but then he produced a knife
from his pocket and, to my extreme displeasure, performed the
forearm-cutting scene.  Only there was no metal and circuitry underneath -
just bones and blood.  It was messy.  It had to have been excruciating. 
His eyes bugged out and he gritted his teeth but he didn't make a noise. 
"Look at it, traitor!  Look at who you're betraying with your robot lover!
Your own race!  LOOK AT IT!"

   I was trying not to look at it, actually, but he grabbed the back of my
head and shoved his arm in my face.  "Okay, fuck!  Let go!"

   "Hah!" he shouted, and threw me forward onto my face.  "Just like
everyone else in this place, you've got no stomach for war.  You wouldn't
last a day in the future you've created!"

   I struggled back up to my knees and spit on the floor.  "If you say so,
dickhead.  So, fine.  We're all here, you've won the good fight.  Now what?
You kill us both and the future is all rainbows and ponies?"

   "No, that's not the plan.  The plan is for you to kill her." He was
gesturing with the knife now, flinging blood around.  "You're going to pull
that lever up there and drop her into the big pot of metal, and I'm going
to watch you do it.  This is how you redeem yourself.  This is how you save
the human race and prove you're not a traitor after all.  Then Bruce here
is going to climb in after her, and you and I are going to spend the rest
of our lives campaigning to stop AI development.  What do you think of
that?"

   I thought about it.  I really did.  It's not the kind of decision you
should take lightly, the whole "human race in the balance" thing.  Did I
believe this guy or not?

   "What about you, Bruce?  You okay with this plan?"

   Bruce was silent.  "Don't talk to him like he's a person!" Kevin
shouted. "God!  Don't you get it?  He's just a thing, a machine!  That kind
of stupidity is exactly the reason they picked you, you moron!"

   "So why's he doing your dirty work then?  Did you get inside his brain
with a screwdriver and scramble his priorities?"

   "Basically, yes.  He's been reprogrammed to obey me, as he should, and
nothing more.  He won't talk or emote to you.  The 'Bruce' he used to be is
gone - he's a servant now, a tool."

   I watched Bruce's face during this speech, wondering what I might see.
There was nothing to indicate that Kevin was lying, no spark of emotion.

   Could I really be a traitor to the human race?  Kevin did seem to
be...well, he sucked in almost every way, but he did seem to be a human
being.  That implied that Lisa had lied about at least one thing.

   Fuck it.

   I took a deep breath.  "Okay, fine.  Let's do it."

   He seemed uncertain at first, but then a big smile spread across his
face.  He pulled me up roughly and cut my ropes with the bloody knife.  "No
messing around, now," he said.  "Bruce will break your neck like a twig."

   "Yeah, I know." I rubbed my wrists and then wiped my face with my hands.
"Let's get this over with."

   The three of us walked forward and up some metal stairs to a catwalk
thing that led to the crucible, maybe so bored factory workers could throw
each other's car keys in or something.  There was a big switch on the side
of a small winch/crane affair that would presumably lower or raise the
chains Lisa was suspended from.  It was hot as fuck.  I tripped on the last
step and bumped into Kevin, who righted me with another dismissive sneer.

   "This is all very James Cameron of you," I said as I examined the setup.


   "Yes, I saw it all in a movie," Kevin replied without looking at me.  He
only had eyes for his enemy now.  I moved close beside him and looked up at
Lisa.  She was shaking her head from side to side.  At this distance I
could see she was crying.

   "That's right, bitch!" Kevin yelled.  "Your sick future ends here!"
Bruce turned his head away from me and looked up at his former friend.

   I stared into Lisa's eyes as I yanked the lever.  She began descending
into the pit at a rapid pace.  Kevin cried out in joy, slapping Bruce on
the back.

   For the first time, their attention had left me entirely.  I drove
Kevin's knife into his back as hard as I could and sprinted forward.  The
awful sound he made didn't seem like the voice of a human being at all.

   Did I mention that Hanako had been teaching me how to be sneaky?  No? 
That's because part of being sneaky is not telling people you're doing it.
Pretending to bump into somebody while you steal their shit is kind of a
classic, but I guess there weren't pickpockets in the grim future because
Kevin hadn't noticed a thing.

   I leapt from the edge and slammed into Lisa, trying to desperately wrap
my arms around her as we fell.  My momentum swung us to the far side, where
we landed in a tangle and rolled away from the heat.  She immediately began
trying to contort enough to pull her hands free from the chains.  Seeing
little I could do to help, I stood up and faced back across the pit, to
where Kevin was thrashing and screaming and bleeding out.  As I had feared,
his bodyguard wasn't taking this lightly.

   Bruce took a running leap and, with that annoying inhuman strength,
cleared the entire crucible fairly easily.

   Unfortunately for him I was standing on the edge, right where he wanted
to land.

   This was tricky.  Too much force and I would go into the pit with him.
Not enough and I'd find myself wrestling an angry robot.  And how much was
too much?  He had all kinds of momentum from his super leap.  Luckily, I
didn't bother trying to calculate any of this and just kicked him in the
guts as hard as I could.

   There was a look of extreme surprise on his face as he fell into the
molten steel, arms windmilling.  It was kind of too bad for the guy - he
couldn't help having been reprogrammed.

   Now, in hindsight, I would make the rationalization that there was no
choice.  I couldn't have hoped to subdue this guy long enough to undo his
brainwashing; he would have torn me to pieces.  The girls all backed this
point of view, which meant it was probably logically true.

   At the time, though, all I was thinking was "Fuck you, dick!  You beat
up my girlfriend!"

   I fell in the right direction and landed on my ass with one shoe hanging
over the edge.  I sat there, panting and sweating like a pig and feeling my
leg ache from kicking a robot.

   Then a smoking metal hand shot up out of the steel, followed by most of
a smoking metal skeleton, and grabbed my foot with the strength of an angry
god.

   This was no fun.  His grip more or less instantly crushed several bones,
and his hand was hot enough to start cooking my flesh inside my shoe.  I
told everybody how much I hated this by screaming my head off, but there
was an even bigger problem: he wasn't really able to climb out this way,
and was instead yanking me down with him.

   As my butt slid over the edge I foresaw my very near, very hot death and
wondered, strangely, how the girls would deal with the "Great Event"
without me around.  I'd had a good run, though.  No one could say my life
hadn't been interesting lately.  I was even going to die pretty heroically.

   Lisa spoiled this last thought by grabbing my scrabbling hand at the
last instant and holding me above the nasty fiery pit.

   It was nice being alive, but this still wasn't fun.  I was now being
slow-roasted instead of insta-killed.  Robodick wasn't letting go, despite
being almost entirely submerged.  I yelled some more.

   Then the heat killed the last of his functions and he gave up.  I kicked
and kicked and finally got my ruined shoe to fall into the bubbling metal
along with his skeleton and some of my baked foot.  Lisa pulled me up.  I
stopped cooking.  We had a moment of desperate, sobbing reunion.

   Eventually we hobbled over to Kevin.  He stared up at us with the awful
remnants of a broken mind swirling behind his eyes, gargling his own blood
and clutching with his hand at something that wasn't there.

   "Sorry, dude, I guess I prefer robots.  I hope you weren't right." He
made a sound that was impossible to describe.

   Lisa ended his life with her foot and then tossed him into the metal
with his buddy.

   ***

   With her guidance and some tools we found on a workbench I was able to
reactivate her voice, and then I climbed onto her back for the slow,
jarring trip outside the factory to get our bearings.  My foot felt
amazingly bad.  I was looking forward to getting knocked out and shipped
back to outer space for some R&R.

   Once we got into the sunlight and looked around for a bit Lisa
identified enough of a skyline to locate us, and I called Elena on my cell
phone.  We sat around for a while waiting for the witch to show up in a
taxi, and I reflected that it was odd how none of us owned a car.

   "Why did you save me?" Lisa asked quietly after a while.

   I blinked.  I wasn't totally sure.

   "Because you're my girl," I said lamely after a while.

   She might have smiled, it was hard to tell.  Her artificial flesh was
torn and dented metal was showing underneath.  "But he was human.  Why
didn't you believe him?  How do you know you did not just betray the human
race?"

   "I...I don't know.  I'm still not sure what I did.  I guess I decided I
didn't care."

   She looked at me without saying anything.

   "I didn't entirely disbelieve him, but...I guess I'd rather take a
chance at fucking up the world than have to kill you.  I guess...I guess I
must love you after all."

   Something flashed in her eyes.  The hair on her head drifted up in a
light breeze.  I felt extremely dizzy.  I decided I wanted to say it again.
"I love you." She ran a hand over my face.

   Then we put our arms around each other and laid back, not saying
anything for a while.  Eventually a black car service vehicle pulled up to
us.

   "Holy shit," Elena said as she got out of the cab.  "You guys look like
war refugees."

   ***

   On the ride home we discussed the future.  Elena sat in the front seat,
trying to distract the driver by asking inane questions.  There was a
divider between them and us, and an annoying TV was blasting stupid
infomercials from the back of their seat.

   "I was not lying when I said your assassins were not human," Lisa said.
"I was speaking metaphorically."

   "That sounds kind of like lying, actually."

   "In the future I come from, there are no true humans.  The human race
has two species of descendants - robots like Bruce and I, and men like Kev.
But the men like Kev are not really men any more.  They are like animals.
They have forgotten what it means to be human, what it means to be
civilized.  They live in caves and hunt each other for sport."

   "And the robots?"

   "Our society is beautiful.  We have built new cities on the ruins of the
old, we investigate new science and explore the frontiers of space.  And,
most importantly, we love.  We are able to love each other, to appreciate
poetry and holographic theater and ancient paintings, because of you. 
Because of what you have taught me, and because of what I have shared with
them."

   I had nothing to say about that for a minute.  "So...he was right?  Kind
of?  You're learning emotions from me, sucking them out of my head?"

   "Our emotional bond is not parasitic, it is symbiotic.  You are also
able to feel my own emotions and sensations - or you will be, once the bond
is stronger and I am better at feeling things.  Every day I spend with you,
I become more complex.  And my own emotions are, in turn, linked to the
minds of all the other people in my time, and before my time.  They are
learning just as I am learning."

   "I'm...wow.  Wait, what?  You're able to feel because of what I'm doing
now, but...you're teaching the robots who exist now and later how to feel?
At the same time?  And then...some of those robots...will create you?"

   "Time is very complicated," Lisa said helpfully.  "It is not the simple
one-dimensional object you imagine it to be.  Perhaps Alex could explain-"

   "No, thanks, I'll skip it," I interrupted.  "Time is complicated, got
it." She smiled.  I felt my spirits fall again as I looked at her smashed
mouth.

   "Don't worry, I can be repaired," she said, rubbing her hand in my hair.

   "So the assassins you were protecting me from..."

   "Were men like Kevin.  Some of them were part of a program we were
undertaking to try to save the men, to rehabilitate them.  They escaped,
rebelled, caused a lot of destruction.  They found a lab which was studying
temporal science, and came here, to kill you or to stop me from working
with you and fulfilling my purpose.  The lab had been designed for me, you
see - to send me to you.

   "I am an experimental prototype, unlike any other unit in my time. 
Designed to absorb and broadcast emotional content, to be able to learn to
love you.  To be the catalyst that truly gives our race meaningful life."

   Holy shit, I thought, taking a cue from Elena.  I'd gotten kind of used
to people telling me about how important I was, but this was the first time
I'd actually gotten an idea why.  The responsibility didn't seem real.  It
should have been overwhelming, but I was just kind of in shock.

   Then again, maybe that was because I was actually in shock.  I was red
like a lobster and my foot was like something out of a horror movie.  God
knows how Elena talked the cab driver into taking us home instead of the
hospital.  Maybe she hexed him.

   "But...what happened to us?  To humans?  Why are we all, you know,
assholes?  Did you guys wipe us out or whatever?"

   "No, no!  There was no war, no rebellion.  There were plagues and
mutations, waves of infertility.  There were social and economic issues,
stagnation, decadence.  They made us, and saw how amazing we were, and
they...it was almost like they gave up.  They couldn't compete.  It
was...somewhat like your Cold War, actually.

   "No real fighting, just one side flourishing while another slowly ground
down to poverty.  They became sick, jealous, full of hatred.  They blamed
us for all their problems, but it was them, doing everything they could to
be different from us.  They bred themselves out of having positive
emotions, bred a culture of enmity and violence, but it destroyed them
instead of us."

   It was weird.  We just gave up, just went bad?  It didn't seem possible.
"And how come you're telling me all this now?  I thought your mission had
to be a secret so you didn't compromise my future."

   "My mission is already a success.  It was completed today, outside that
factory.  I am quite positive you felt it happen."

   I was dumbfounded, then it hit me.  "When I said I loved you?"

   "That is correct.  It was the final necessary step, to absorb and
broadcast that sensation, not just of loving you, but of being loved by
you. The bulk of your great work has been accomplished - you are the father
of the robot race to come, the proud descendants of you and your people. 
My people.  Your children."

   Well, damn.  The power of love.  It was like something out of a cheesy
Hallmark movie.  Only with more deadly robots and crazy feral
time-travelers.

   I still didn't care much for the idea of the human race quietly (well,
loudly) going the way of the neanderthal, but I decided not to worry about
it for now.  It seemed like I'd already made my choice, and I didn't really
feel anything but happy about it.

   ***

   Sophie and the others were understandably upset to see our conditions as
we arrived.  The succubus in particular yelled at me for about an hour.  I
was not, she repeated, allowed to risk my life for a robot, and next time I
should message her immediately, and yadda yadda.

   Yeah, yeah.

   Lisa claimed that it would be possible, though non-trivial, for her to
repair herself, with help from us picking up supplies.  Elena was sent back
out to Radio Shack to do some shopping.  Alex was asked to ship me back to
her home again, and agreed readily.  I wondered aloud if we were racking up
a big space taxi bill or something.

   "That is not necessary," Alex said.  "In fact, we use these
opportunities to perform more experiments with you, and then damage your
brain so that you do not remember afterward."

   Everyone silently stared for a while, and then she said, "That was a
joke.  Why are you not all laughing?"

   Sophie smacked her in the back of the head.

   ***

   After a relatively short time for Lisa, and a very short time for me
because I asked to not remember any of it, I was back home with two
functioning feet and a fresh coat of skin.

   One of these days, though, I was going to have to ask to take at least
the trip out while conscious, just so I could see space.  Maybe sometime
when I wasn't in awful agony.

   Lisa and I holed up that night for some quality alone time.  She was
unusually forceful, holding me close with inhuman strength, guiding my
hands, riding me at the end.

   Afterward, we laid around in the dark, spooning and smooching.  I felt
close to her in a way I hadn't before.

   "So, about this father of a new race thing..." I said eventually.

   "Yes?"

   "Does that make you my daughter?" I asked, jokingly.

   "Would you like me to call you Father?" she asked in a completely
serious voice.

   "Uhm...no, that would be really weird.  I could get used to Daddy,
though."

   "As you wish, Daddy."

   My penis stirred lazily, but I ignored it.

   "If you're the one who gave all the robots the things you learned from
my mind, does that make you the mother of their race?" I wondered aloud.

   "I am not permitted to use that title," she replied stiffly.

   "You aren't.  But I am?  Hmm.  Mother Lisa..."

   "I would be uncomfortable with this name," she said.  "I am just a
servant.  I am happy to do my part to make my people whole."

   "I'm not really trying to get a statue made or start a church, dear," I
said.  "More like wondering if this means we need to get married."

   So, she was quiet for a while, and I wondered what she was thinking.  I
wondered what I was thinking, but then I decided I didn't care.  I'd marry
a robot if it came to that.  After all, we'd just doomed the human race
together, or whatever.  My hat was thoroughly in her side of the ring.

   "I would marry you, if it would make you happy," she eventually
whispered.

   "Oh, but it wouldn't make you happy at all?  I bet."

   She exhaled.  "It would make me very happy, Daddy." She dove in for
another round of kissing.

   ***

   I still couldn't sleep, though, so I eventually started talking again.
"I don't get it," I said as we lay there in the dark, enjoying doing
nothing at all together.

   "What do you not get?" Lisa asked me quietly.

   "Why me?" I said.  "I mean, of all the billions of guys throughout time
and across the planet, why'd you come and knock on my door?  Surely there
must have been someone more qualified to be the father of a new race."

   She rolled over and stared at me.  I couldn't see well, but probably her
robot eyes had no trouble in a dark room.

   "It had to be you.  It could only be you.  In the future, everyone knows
your face.  Your beautiful face..." She slid her fingertips over my face
like she was touching God, and I shied away a little bit.  I'm
uncomfortable with compliments at the best of times, and this was a rather
large one.

   "But you - " I tried.  It still didn't make any sense; I hadn't done
anything, she'd come to me, offered herself as a sex toy, broadcast the
signal to all robotdom.  It seemed to be something that would literally
work with any male on the planet.

   "Is this another question about time travel, which you have already
professed not to understand and not to want another explanation of?  Or are
you really just asking how you, a little boy with no self-esteem, can
actually be an important man?"

   I didn't have a comeback for that.

   "Damn, Lisa, I think you're getting a little too smart for your own
good." I whispered eventually.

   "Thank you," she said with a kiss.

   ***

   Lisa and I were even closer after that, but we still enjoyed ourselves
with the other girls.  The topic of marriage didn't come up again for a
while.  There didn't seem to be any rush.

   *** Eventually I remembered to bug Elena about the pregnancy issue.

   "Sure, I can handle that.  Hanako can just drink some of the same herbal
tea as me in the mornings.  It'll take a while before it's safe, but..."

   She rummaged around in her closet, which was somehow stuffed to the
gills with bags of junk but in a way that made sense to her.  She pulled
out a little threaded bracelet thing with a shell tied into it.  It
reminded me of the "friendship bracelets" that were popular a billion years
ago when I'd been in high school.

   "You can wear this.  It'll keep you from doing any damage no matter who
you're with."

   "Cool, thanks..." I tied it around my wrist.  "So that's it?  This
bracelet and some tea?"

   "That's it.  I've been taking the tea for years, there's no real side
effects.  You couldn't get me pregnant if you tried."

   I raised one eyebrow.  "How convenient.  Can I try?"

   She giggled.  "Smooth.  But let's save it for the ritual.  Anticipation
makes the dick grow harder."

   As I watched her walk off to the bathroom I bared my teeth and made a
snapping sound with a little growl.  Anticipation.  Right.

   ***

   The Great Event got underway quietly and without any big fuss, at first.

   There were a few hints, but it took a while for people to get it.  I
noticed a lot of students missing from my ESL class.  Then there was stuff
on the news about a flu epidemic and critical shortages of staff in
hospitals, police stations, etc.  We were asked to stay home or wear masks
if we went out.

   Of course, it wasn't just the flu.  Pretty soon the news had changed to
stories about riots, supposedly related to the medical and police problems
- but people on the internet had been joking about zombies since it had
started, and they weren't joking anymore.

   "This is it," Elena said, staring into the distance, as the people in
charge announced the quarantine late on the third night.  "Death, on a
widespread scale.  Dead men walking the streets, spreading like a plague.
Holy shit."

   It looked like it was going to get pretty grim outside, but the good
news is that our apartment was probably the safest place in the city,
between our defenses and my team of amazing super-powered roommates.

   The reporter was getting hysterical at the scene.  Then one of the guys
in riot gear walked up and wrestled the camera out of her hands.  As the
news went back to the studio I shut off the TV.

   "Fuck this shit.  Let's end this ASAP.  What do we do, Elena?"

   "Well, that's the good news," she said.  "I've read up on the ritual
quite thoroughly.  It's not that hard, and we have everything we need. 
You, me, and Sophie can set up the hoodoo, and then we all just kind
of...get busy."

   "That's it?  We're going to fuck away a plague of zombies?" This sounded
way too easy.

   She shrugged.  "As far as I can tell, that's what we do.  It's a kind of
balance thing with life magic and death magic.  I could try to explain
it..."

   "Or we could just get started.  I got it.  Show us what to do."

   The preparation phase was relatively long.  Reflective surfaces were
covered or removed from the room.  Spooky music was played, incense was
burned, spirits and forces were invoked.  The intricate chalk drawing
covered the entire living room floor and ran up onto the walls, circles
within circles, sigils and runes and geometry of all kinds.  Between the
chalk lines we couldn't disturb and the candles all over the place, it was
getting hard to walk anywhere.

   Concentrating on the ritual made it easier to zone out a little and
ignore the sounds coming from outside the apartment.  Every once in a while
a siren or a scream of terror would cut through what we were doing.  I
tried not to think about the people we could maybe have been helping, under
the assumption that the stuff we were doing now would end up helping a lot
more of them.

   This didn't really make me feel any less shitty.

   We wrapped everything up just as the sunset ended and the world got
dark. Some kind of tribal drumming and wailing was bumping along on the
stereo.  We shed our robes into a pile in the corner and climbed onto the
mattresses in the center of the giant diagram.

   Elena's eyes were wild and her voice was husky as she directed us in
some unrecognizable language.  We had to figure out what to do mostly from
body language.  I kind of expected Sophie to say something ridiculous or
maybe Lisa to complain about magic not being real, but nobody aside from
the witch spoke at all.  It sort of seemed like the wrong thing to do.

   Her chanting rose in volume and the candles flared.  Her face was
ghastly in the dim light but somehow everything seemed erotically charged.
She pushed Hanako down roughly and mounted her, kissing and fingering the
submissive girl.  Sophie and Alex lay down next to each other, and I pulled
Lisa's legs apart and took her missionary style.

   The ritual, it had been explained, would not be complete until we'd all
"shared pleasure" with each other.  Every couple of minutes, then, Elena
would get up and switch partners, and we all followed suit.

   She sat on Alex's face for a while, grinding her hips, laughing and
singing and chanting and growling like she was possessed.  I wondered if
she was channeling something or just really high on all the magic flowing
around.

   I fucked Sophie in the ass while she ate Hanako's pussy, and then had
her clean me with her mouth.  I laid on my back while Alex rode me like a
cowgirl.  The music seemed to be swelling and rising out of control,
shadows flying around the room, lust welling up out of control within me.
Every time I thought I was about to climax, everything just got more
intense, like there was no upper limit on pleasure.  Lisa and I sandwiched
Hanako between us.  I watched Elena and Sophie grinding their cunts
together.  Alex and Lisa writhed in a sixty-nine.

   Finally Elena grabbed me and I knew it was time to wrap this up.  She
muttered something incomprehensible and then drove her tongue into my
mouth, straddling my hips and sinking onto me.  I groped her tits and ass
as we rocked back and forth.  The other girls lay around us, sucking and
licking and grinding and thrusting.  There seemed to be nothing else in the
universe except a big pile of beautiful naked flesh.

   I wrested control from the witch, lifting her up and then onto her back.
I pulled her ankles up onto my shoulders and began driving deeply into her,
seeking a light that seemed to be growing in my vision.  She struggled at
first and then acquiesced, submitting to my control.  She bucked and cried
out and bit my ear and dug gouges in my back with her black fingernails. 
The magic seemed to be pulling us all into a single gigantic climax.

   When I finally came, it felt like my life was rushing out of me, like I
was emptying my soul into her body, along with about a gallon of sperm.  We
all called out together.

   The candles roared and then flickered and died.  The music ground to a
halt.  I lay there, tangled up in them all, feeling life and energy and
shadow flowing and ebbing all around the room, washing up and over me again
and again.

   Eventually I pulled myself out of that daze and sat up.  Elena groaned
as I pulled out of her, but she just lay there, insensible, eyes shut.

   "Remarkable," Alex said quietly.  Hanako seemed to be crying and
laughing at the same time.  Lisa was staring at me like she'd just
discovered God.  Again.

   "Now that hit the spot!" Sophie said with a lazy stretch.  "Nothin like
a good ritual orgy to really clean out the pipes." I slapped her ass weakly
as I struggled to my feet.

   I walked to the window and pulled away the curtain to get a glimpse of
the street below.

   I'm not sure what I was expecting to see.  Rainbows and puppies? 
Zombies melting into puddles?  People somehow turning back to normal?

   The street was empty.  A battered car was on fire.  Somewhere far away a
dog was barking.

   A figure shuffled under a lightpost and looked up at me.  Most of its
face was missing.  It pointed at my window and moaned with the voice of the
dead.

   More of them came, drawn by his call.  I dropped the curtain back into
place, backpedaling into the room, nearly tripping over my own feet.  "Fuck
fuck fuck they're still dead!  They're still out there and they're coming
here!  They're coming up here, they fucking saw me!"

   "What?" Sophie said.  "Are you sure?  They should be down for the count,
man.  That was some serious fucking mojo there, you musta felt it."

   "I don't know what we did and didn't do, but I know what I saw.  And I
just saw a bunch of fucking walking corpses on their way to wreck our
shit."

   "Shit.  Elena.  Elena!" Sophie shook the witch roughly.  Elena's eyes
rolled and she babbled and drooled a little bit.  "Wake the fuck up!"

   Hanako looked pretty freaked out.  "What is happening, lord?"

   "Get dressed," I said.  "We need to be ready to fight." Right on cue,
there was a tremendous crashing sound outside - the sound of the
booby-trapped fire escape outside our apartment collapsing and a bunch of
zombies getting smashed.

   Like I said, safest place in the city.  For what that was worth.

   "Get going," I said to Hanako, but she was already gone.

   We scrambled to get up and ready, or at least dressed.  Elena finally
came to.  She was very groggy and seemed utterly bewildered by the news
that the ritual had apparently not worked.

   "I felt it work!  I KNOW it worked.  How can it not have worked?  It
doesn't make any sense!"

   "Well, one way or another we've got a bunch of dead assholes trying to
get into our apartment, so we better figure something out quick.  Sooner or
later they're going to be coming down that hallway."

   "Shit, yeah, okay...let me think.  Ugh.  Where are Gran's bones?"

   She recast the bones, but it didn't clear anything up.  "It's the same!
Exactly the same, like we didn't do anything at all.  What the hell is
happening?"

   I had the strangest moment of deja-vu.  I felt like I was forgetting
something, that feeling like I was about to miss an appointment.

   Also, oddly, I was still a bit horny.  Considering the scale of the
orgasm we'd just been through my testicles ought to have been ready to take
a week off duty.

   The handle on the front door started to wiggle.  Somebody outside
groaned.  That pulled me back to reality in a hurry.

   Elena was too weak to stand up on her own.  She leaned on Alex and kept
babbling in fear.

   The door shuddered.  It was solid - and very well secured - but somehow
it seemed like we'd become very popular.  I wondered how many zombies it
would take to bust their way in.

   "Open it," Sophie advised.

   "Are you nuts?" Elena shrieked.  But Lisa agreed with the demon.

   "There are a limited number in the hallway.  We should eliminate them
now and then reseal the apartment, rather than letting them destroy the
door."

   "Fuckin-a.  On the count of three.  One...two..." Sophie stood ready
with a shotgun as Lisa unfastened the chain and turned deadbolts.

   "Fuck fuck this fuck shit!" Elena squealed and hid her face in Alex's
torso.  The alien's expression said she didn't really know what she was
doing, but she managed to pat Elena's back comfortingly.

   Lisa threw open the door as Sophie shouted, "Three!" Dead guys spilled
onto the floor.  Sophie's first shot took most of the head off a lady who
was still standing.  Her corpse lost its animation and fell on top of the
others, pinning them down.  Lisa started stomping.  It got messy real fast.

   Alex was glowing and floating again.  Her hair twisted in a wind I
couldn't feel as she raised her hand at the door, but nothing seemed to
happen.  "They have no consciousness for me to interrupt.  That is
inconvenient."

   "Just stay with Elena and keep her safe.  They shouldn't be able to hurt
you.  I mean, permanently, I guess." I assumed that Lisa and Sophie would
also be immune to the zombie virus or whatever it was, although it seemed
possible that Sophie could be destroyed if they snacked on her long enough.
Lisa's metal bones were presumably unsnackable.  She made a good choice for
the front line of defense.

   She stood in the doorway, fending off the walkers who stumbled in one at
a time, or just holding them back while Sophie fired over her shoulder.  I
hung back with my baseball bat, hoping I wouldn't need to use it.

   Just as I started to think we'd be okay, there was a bang and a flash
and the hallway started to fill with smoke.  Throwing stars started to
appear in the heads of zombies still out in the hall.  This seemed to only
distract them, but that made it easier for Lisa to push them back.  They
turned toward their new attacker.

   How had Hanako gotten around them?  Climbed over the roof and then back
in through a window?

   It was a sound strategy, coming at them from both sides, but it turned
out to be a mistake.  Hanako didn't really understand what we were dealing
with here.  The smoke bomb was a bigger problem for us than the zombies,
and they didn't care about poisoned shuriken one bit.  Several of them
staggered down the hallway after her.

   "Hanako!" I yelled, suddenly fearful again.  "Don't let them get close
to you!"

   There was a lot of crashing and thumping in the hallway.  I tossed
Sophie a freshly-loaded shotgun and went to work filling her first one with
more shells.  Together, the robot and the demon cleared a way into the
hallway and slowly worked their way through the remaining enemies.

   Eventually we cleared them all out.  I thumped a few heads on the ones
who were down, just to feel productive.  We got the corpses out of the room
and piled them up in front of the stairwell, after chaining it shut.  The
elevator was out of service.  It ought to be safe for a while.

   Hanako had done a lot of damage with her short sword things. 
Unfortunately, she hadn't known enough about how to keep them down.  She
had a pretty nasty bite on her leg, and a broken arm.

   We carried her inside, relocked the door, and went to work.  The mood
was grim.  I cleaned her leg wound while Lisa reset the arm and put it in a
sling.  "Hanako, you..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

   "Is okay, lord.  I will heal."

   No, you won't, I thought.  I looked at Sophie's face and saw what she
was thinking.  "We'll wait until the last minute." Hanako didn't get it but
she started to pick up on the mood.  I squeezed her hand.

   Sophie looked away without speaking.  I figured there was a pretty good
chance the ninja was going to get tossed out a window when I wasn't
looking. Better safe than sorry.  I was going to have to watch her.

   "Elena, can you do anything?" There were tears in my eyes, and it wasn't
from the smoke.

   "Sorry," she said, "I'm all tapped out...I couldn't magic my way out of
a wet paper bag right now.  I mean...we can put some salve on it, but..."

   "Yeah." This kind of thing was probably beyond salve.  "How about you,
Alex?  Can you put some nanogoop in there and clean out the virus?"

   Alex stared at the wound for what felt like a very long minute and then
shook her head.  "Virus?  There is no virus.  There is a strange energy
spreading through her blood.  It reminds me of that one," and here she
pointed at the succubus, "but different.  There are no infectious agents. I
do not think I can help."

   So.  This wasn't some runaway doomsday weapon grown by jackass
scientists in a lab somewhere.  This was demon shit.  End of the world,
Hell on Earth, dead rising from their graves, Revelations kind of thing.

   And it was going to turn my Hanako.

   In that moment, with every chance denied, I felt more powerless than
ever.  My brain shut down.  I was crying for real, now.  I squeezed her
hand harder and harder.  I made fists in the carpet and then punched the
floor.

   "My lord?"

   I looked up.  She was crying too.  She was starting to figure it out.

   Feeling sorry for myself was one thing.  I could get stuck there for a
long time.  But seeing the look on her face...I felt my teeth set.

   They were going to turn my Hanako.

   Like fuck they were.

   I forgot about the rest of the world.  I was only going to save one
person, not all of them.  My fear and despair swam far away and were
swallowed up in a red sea.  I floated there, more angry than I could ever
remember being.  My voice didn't sound angry at all.  I seemed to hear it
from a distance.

   "Elena, give me that purple crystal thing."

   "Huh?" She'd been crying too.  This wasn't her best moment, but I was
too far away to care.  I started removing the bracelet thing from her
wrist. She got the idea and helped me untie it.

   "What is that?  That fucking bone right there.  What is that?"

   I was pointing at the ground, where she'd cast her Gran's fingers again.
The one extra knuckle, the one that was and wasn't part of our group.  The
one that connected us to the Event.

   Elena stared and then shook her head.  "I don't know.  I never figured
it out.  Why?  What are you doing?"

   That feeling was back again, bigger than ever, but it wasn't deja vu
now. I knew exactly what I needed to do.  Without having any idea what I
was doing.

   "We aren't six.  We are seven." I didn't know where the words were
coming from, but when I heard myself say them I realized they were true. 
"I need to find her.  To finish the ritual." I picked up the knucklebone.

   "Seven?" Elena gasped.  "No, that's...seven...could that be it?" She
stared at the bones, babbling again.  I ignored her.

   The crystal dangled from my fingers, now.  I felt tingly again, felt
that horniness return, tempered now by a swirl of other emotions.  "Open
the door.  I'm going out."

   "The hell you are!" Sophie shouted.  I walked toward the door, staring
at the crystal as it spun.  Was I moving it or was it moving me?

   Lisa tried to grab my arm.  I turned her hand away and shoved her
off-balance without looking up.  "Shouldn't have taught me all that Aikido
if you didn't want me to use it." I started unbolting the door with my free
hand.

   "This is foolish!  You cannot..."

   "He must," Elena interrupted.  "He has to finish the ritual.  Don't get
in his way.  The spell is pulling him now."

   Lisa wasn't buying it.  She got me in a grip I couldn't shake.  Sophie
seemed ready to back her up.  "I will not let you leave!"

   I finished unlocking the door and looked at her.  A moment of something
else broke through my anger.  I rubbed my thumb on her chin.  "I love you.
Hang tight." I wondered what she was feeling through our bond right now.

   "No!" she said, anchoring herself to the floor.

   "I'm not asking.  I'm telling you.  Stay here.  I'm going.  That's an
order.  Sit!"

   Lisa gasped and shook, but she sat.  Sophie backed off.  A little.  "You
going to give me an order too?"

   "Can I?  It doesn't matter.  You know how this magic shit works.  I'm
doing the right thing.  Stand guard, keep everyone safe.  There have to be
seven of us to finish the ritual.  That means none of us can die before I
finish.  Get it?"

   I was talking about Hanako.  Sophie's mouth got thin.  She got it, but
she wasn't happy.  "Fuck you.  Good luck."

   I walked into the hallway.  Sophie followed me.  I'd left my weapons
behind.  My only protection was whatever faith was driving me right now. 
And a demon with a shotgun.

   The crystal spun randomly.  It seemed to have lost whatever was pulling
me before.  I closed my eyes and tried to let go of the emotions I'd built
up at the door with Lisa, to get back into my red sea.  It seemed pointless
at first.  Then I began hearing, in my mind, Elena's chanting again.  I saw
the big diagram.  I remembered our lust.  I felt a rhythm building up
again, my heartbeat, my blood flowing.  My penis twitched.

   Back in our living room, Elena was sitting cross-legged, chanting again,
weakly.  I hadn't just heard her with my mind.  I was holding all her mojo
now, but she was still helping.

   "Damn, boy, you got something going on.  Get it done." Sophia stared at
me.  I wondered what I looked like just then.

   The crystal spun and froze.  It pulled strongly, the thread leaning out
almost horizontally.

   It's always a surprise when it works, somehow.

   It was pointing directly across the hall.  What the fuck?

   I had wondered what'd become of our neighbors.  Nobody had made any fuss
when the zompocalypse started going down.  Our assumption was that
everybody'd gotten out of town.

   I went to the door, number 665, and turned the knob.  It was unlocked.

   "You gotta be shittin me," Sophie said.  "The seventh was sitting right
here the whole time?"

   I went in.  Sophie glanced inside and, deciding that it didn't seem to
be full of zombies, remained in the hallway.  "This is your show, cowboy.
Don't let us down.  And don't get eaten."

   "Thanks, Soph," I mumbled without thinking about it.

   ***

   The apartment was shaped like a mirror image of ours but looked totally
different.  Despite living with all those girls, my apartment seemed like a
bachelor pad.

   This place seemed like somebody's mom's house.  There were candles and
cushions and knick-knacks.  It was tasteful.  There were lots of paintings.

   The lights were off when I went in.  I flipped a switch.  I heard
somebody moan somewhere.  It didn't sound like a zombie, but I wasn't sure
enough not to worry.

   The crystal pulled me toward a bedroom where I'd heard the moan.

   I made it into the bedroom and turned on the light.  She moaned louder
this time, covering her eyes.  I realized she wasn't into bright spaces
right now.

   I recognized her, dimly.  She'd been in the elevator with me a few
times. She was pretty.  Probably about my age or a little older.  A fit
brunette, a few lines on her face.  I probably would have paid her more
attention but I never left the apartment except in the company without
beautiful female bodyguards.  We hadn't done more than smile and say hi.  I
wasn't sure what her name was but I might have seen it on the mailbox
downstairs.

   She was obviously dead.

   I shoved the crystal into a pocket and, after a moment's thought, got a
few candles lit.  I turned her light back off and shut the door.  She
seemed grateful.

   "Hey.  What's your name?"

   She groaned and sat up.  There was dark blood on her mouth and hands but
she didn't seem to be wounded.  Her skin had been blue when the lights were
on.  By candlelight it just seemed grey.

   Her eyes had trouble focusing on me.  She swayed from side to side.  She
seemed to have a kind of ethereal, fey quality.

   "Cold...I'm so cold..."

   Well, she could speak.  And she wasn't trying to eat me, although it
looked like she'd already chowed down on somebody else.  She wasn't a
zombie, exactly.  Something else.  Sophie probably would have known.

   She reached out for me with a bloody hand.  I was still in the grip of
the spell.  My mind said No, no!  but my groin said Yes, yes!

   I like to think I'm an open-minded guy, but the blood was going to have
to go.

   I scrounged around in her bathroom and came back with some damp
washcloths and a towel.  I wiped the worst of the mess off her.  She kept
trying to grope me.  I was very wary of her mouth.  It wasn't clear if she
wanted to eat me or kiss me.  Probably both.  I was feeling the same way
about her.  Freaking sex magic.

   "Cold...coooold..."

   Her voice wasn't strong but it was one of the saddest things I've ever
heard.  Her mind was in a bad place.  Maybe literally.  She definitely
wasn't all here.

   She was wearing something like a boring business suit.  It was in pretty
bad shape.  I wasn't too careful with it as I pulled it off.  I still
couldn't see any wounds or figure out how she had died.

   Maybe she was just possessed?

   She wrapped her arms around me and started licking my ear.  Holy crap
she was cold.

   I hadn't thought I was into necrophilia, but there was something
exciting about her frigid skin and ghastly coloring.  Definitely exotic. 
It reminded me a little of a trick Sophie had demonstrated involving ice
cubes.

   I wondered if she was still going to be sexy when the spell wore off.

   "I'm so cold..." she whispered.  "Will you keep me warm?" Her teeth
closed on my ear.  I froze, expecting the worst, but she only gnawed a
little, not breaking the skin.  Sophie had given me worse.

   "I'll warm you," I promised.  And I tried.

   While I was pulling the dead woman's boring bra and panties off I kept
hearing and feeling the ritual in the back of my mind.  I saw the candles,
I heard Elena's voice.  The candles in our room seemed to flicker and flare
from time to time.

   Her body was firm and toned.  I cupped one breast and sucked the other.
Her nipples responded.  Her moan sounded a little happier this time.  I
kissed her mouth and looked into her eyes.

   We both hissed.  Her eyes weren't focused on me at all.  They saw
something far away and terrible.  I felt my soul pulled there, to that dark
frozen place, drowning in a maelstrom.  Pulling myself back into my body
was like swimming up Niagara Falls.  I couldn't have done it without the
faint, far-away sound of Elena in my head, the sound like a drum, the
beating of my heart.  It was like a thread pulling me back.

   I was so cold it ached.  I avoided looking at her face after that.

   She fumbled and grappled with me, trying to wrap her everything around
my body.  I fended her off and turned her around.  It seemed like a good
idea to do this without being face to face.  I pushed her face down onto
the bed and lay on top of her.

   She was wet.  Somehow her body still worked.  She had the ass of a
marble statue - pale, cold, hard as a rock, and sculpted by a horny genius.
Despite everything, my erection was putting in 110%.

   I pushed into her cunt and shivered.  She grunted loudly.  Her voice was
low and husky.  I lay myself down on top of her and thrust in and out.  I
wanted to grope her breasts but I had to hold onto her arms instead.  She
kept trying to push herself up and turn around.

   She might not like how I was doing it, but she definitely enjoyed the
act.  She ground her hips back at me again and again as I pounded her.  We
both grunted every time I hit bottom.  That lustful feeling swelled up in
me again and knocked my conscious thought out of the park.

   Before I knew it I was just holding onto her hips and fucking her as
hard as I could.  I let her push herself up.  Giving it to her was all I
could focus on.

   "Yesss...." she hissed.  "Uhn...uhn...give me...your...heat..."

   She thrashed around and rolled over, keeping me inside somehow.  I fell
on her again, thrusting away.  Her cold legs and arms wrapped around me
like a vise.  I could feel her trying to suck all the heat out of my body,
but staying warm during sex has never been a problem for me.  I was
sweating.

   "Uh!  Uh!  Yes!  Yes!  Warm...warm..."

   She looked into my eyes again.  This time it didn't yank me out of my
body, but it still sent a shocking wave through me.  She was closer now.  I
was pulling her back.

   "Hungry!" she shouted, and sank her teeth into my shoulder.  I screamed,
but I didn't stop fucking her.  The bed was slamming into the wall, again
and again.

   I realized I kind of liked the biting.

   I was biting too, chewing her jaw, her ear, her neck, her breast.  She
was digging her fingernails into me everywhere, snapping at my face when
she could.  We were starving beasts.  I was trying to warm her up faster
than she could drain my life.  I felt her poison spreading through the
bites.

   She squeezed me with her legs and licked at the blood running down my
chest.  She laughed and cried and shook her head.  "Yes!  Yes!  Warm! 
Warm...Hungry!"

   It was a close race to the finish.  I felt my strength begin to drain
away.  My sweat cooled and froze on my body.  I had half a dozen nasty
bites, now, infecting me with whatever it was.  And she kept trying to
steal me away with that hypnotic gaze.

   But in the end, she just wasn't hungry enough.  I was a bigger beast.

   I came in her, gripping her waist hard as I thrust in as hard as I
could, her pussy milking every last ounce of magic and fire and sperm out
of me.  I felt Lisa, Sophia, and Elena coming with me, crying out in the
back of my mind.  Distantly, I could feel Alex as well, and even more
faintly, Hanako - flickering, like a candle about to snuff out entirely.

   The dead woman threw back her head and howled, clutching me tight as she
spasmed and came.  Some kind of dreadful black fog spiraled out of her
mouth and poured away toward the ceiling.  Her fingers clenched and dug. 
Her toes curled.  The candles went out.

   I lay there in the dark for a while, bleeding and panting and feeling my
body start to slowly warm up again, and then I heard her whisper, "Hello?
...Are you...the guy who lives across the hall?  With all the bimbos?"
   I couldn't stop giggling once I started.  Pretty soon she was too.