Prologue

"The troubles" hit two years ago.

Only my niece Jennie and I survived. As far as we knew we were the only people left in the whole world. The disease or miasmas or whatever the fuck it was had infected virtually everyone, and those who weren't infected were quickly killed by the infected victims' insatiable appetite for living flesh. The screams of the living the first couple of nights will haunt us forever, but pretty soon there weren't any of them left to scream.

A few months later we discovered that we weren't the only people left alive, and in a couple more months we had a rag-tag bunch of survivors. Between scraping out a living and keeping ourselves safe from the "lurchers," we would occasionally go hunting for more survivors. That's where this story begins.

Patrol Boat

The girl was looking up at me, her big wide brown eyes making her look like a little street urchin, like a kid on a poster for Les Miserables. Her hair was a matted mess, a real rat's nest, in the dim light it appeared to be dark brown but I suspected that it would be more of an auburn once she'd been cleaned up. Her cheeks were covered in grime but I could tell that underneath, her skin was soft and pale.

I'd underestimated her age when I first saw her; initially I thought she was maybe eight or nine, but now that I look at her up-close I think eleven or twelve is more accurate. And at first I thought she was a boy, but now I'm pretty sure she's a girl. Hard to tell at this age but I'm pretty sure she's a girl.

At least I hope she's a girl, since the first thing the kid did when she jumped onto the boat was to sink onto her knees in front of me. I had no idea what she was doing but her intentions quickly became clear as she unzipped my pants, fished my cock out, and started sucking. I suppose I should have told her to stop but at first I was so surprised I couldn't really react, and then it felt so damn good that the last thing I was going to do was make her stop.

The girl knew how to blow, that's for sure. She took me deep, at least three inches of my shaft in her mouth, my head burrowing into her throat; then back, my cockhead out with just her lips around it, then back down into her throat, over and over. Her mouth was warm and womanly, spit flowing down my shaft. I love a good blowjob and the ladies in my life don't give them to me, so this was particularly special.

In no more than a couple minutes the girl got me off, expertly massaging my cock to orgasm, and she took it all in her mouth, most of it down her throat.

When I'd finished I stepped back. "Shit, girl, what was that all about?"

She sat there on her knees looking up at me, confused, maybe a little concerned. Did she think I was angry? Did she even understand what I was saying?

"Not that I'm complaining mind you," I added, "but why'd you do it? You don't even know me."

She just looked at me with that same concerned, confused look, her eyes wide. Very pretty eyes, I noticed.

"Well, whatever. Are you hungry? You want some food?" I asked her as I stuffed my dick back in my pants.

She didn't respond but I could tell from her reaction that she understood what I was saying and that she most definitely was hungry.

"Here, we've got some sandwiches." I opened up the cooler and took out a couple of chicken sandwiches. I handed one to her and she stuffed half of it in her mouth. "Hey, slow down there." The other half went in, and I handed her another sandwich. She took her time with this one, three bites instead of two. The girl must have been starving.

"You want some water?" I asked. She nodded. I grabbed a bottle of water and another sandwich.

"So, look, I've got to get this boat unmoored before more lurchers show up, so you just eat that sandwich and I'll be right over here, OK?" I set about untying boat and then eased us out into the middle of the river.

"So what's your name?"

"Catherine... Kate," she said. Her voice was surprising: low, and pleasant to the ear.

"Pretty name."

She looked at me like that was a strange thing for me to say.

"I'm John," I said. I reached my hand out and she lifted her hand, a small and very dirty hand, and we shook.

"Kate, you want a bath? We've got tub below, it's not much but it'll clean you up."

She nodded.

"Com'on then," I said, offering her a hand to help her stand up. She was still on her knees. She looked strangely at my hand, then took hold of it and stood up.

We went down into the darkness below deck. "Sarah," I said in a loud whisper.

"Huh?" a sleepy voice responded from the darkness.

"Got someone here I want you to meet."

"Huh?"

I turned on the light and Sarah stood up out of bed. "Well, hello!" she said when she saw Kate, giving her a nice smile.

Kate's eyes got even wider when she saw Sarah and she started backing up; she got to the stairs and she started running. "Hey!" I yelled, then chased after her. She was literally about to jump off the damn boat when I caught up to her. "What the fuck, Kate?" She looked at me with a wild, angry look. For a split second I thought she was going to lunge at me and scratch my eyeballs out. But then she directed her angry glare over my shoulder to where Sarah had just come up the stairs.

"I'll man the con," Sarah said. "You take her downstairs."

"Yeah, maybe that's a good idea," I said.

"Get the poor child a bath," Sarah said.

Sarah moved as far from the stairs as possible and I took the girl's hand and led her back downstairs. I took her into the bathroom and started filling the little jury-rigged tub we'd put in. When I turned around, the girl had taken every stitch of clothing off. I tried not to stare at her naked body but couldn't help noticing a couple of things right off the bat: First, she was skinny as a rail. Looked like she'd been on a starvation diet. Second, it looked like my estimate of her age was about right; she had little breasts that had just began to bud, and a small bit of pubic hair, nothing more than a dusting on her labia. I turned away from her nakedness and got the tub full, then grabbed her a towel. I went in the other room and grabbed one of my shirts and a pair of my shorts and put them in the bathroom, then ran on deck.

"Well, that was weird," I said to Sarah when I got up top. "Why do you think she was so scared of you?"

"I don't know," Sarah said. "God only knows what that poor child has been through. I'm just glad she seems to be OK around you. So, what happened, anyway?"

I started hauling up the anchor. "I was just getting ready to unmoor, it was getting dark and all, you know, and I see this movement out there. I'm thinking, it's either a dog or a lurcher, right? But it's not likely to be a dog, you hardly see them anymore, and it was moving too quick to be a lurcher. So I grab the binoculars and I look and then next thing you know I see this little kid's face poking up from the crates and I'm like, 'Shit!'

"I wave, and I don't want to yell you know but I say as loud as I dare, 'Hey, kid, com'on!' and the face disappears. So I look and look and then I decide I need to go up on shore and look so I grab my gun and a flashlight and I get up on the dock, you know, and I see a fucking lurcher. Shit. So I lift my gun but he turned around and I didn't know where the kid was so I didn't shoot. But now I know I can't go looking for the kid, you know? I've got to get the damn boat unmoored and get the fuck away from the dock, right?

"So I go back and I start untying the boat and all the sudden I see the kid running at full speed and she jumps into the boat!"

"Good for her," Sarah said.

"She ate three chicken sandwiches." I skipped the part about the blowjob. Sarah wouldn't approve, she's overly protective of the girls from her school and I think she suspects that I fancy them younger than is entirely proper. "Devoured them in like two bites each."

"The poor kid is probably staving."

"Definitely."

"You should go check on her."

I went below again and there was Kate, wearing my shirt and shorts and curled up in a ball on the floor. There were two beds, but she was curled up on the floor. I went back upstairs. "She's asleep," I said to Sarah. "I'll take this watch, you go down and get some sleep."

In the darkness, I piloted the patrol boat really slow down the Thames, leaving London--the world's greatest city, now a no man's land--behind in the shadows. It was very quiet, and very dark. After a while the moon rose and I could see a little better, but there didn't seem to be much of anything going on. Even the lurchers were quiet this evening. After a while I fell into a sort of trance, just staring at the banks of the river, moving the boat very slowly.

"Eight bells," I heard Sarah say. "Time for you to get some sleep."

"'s Kate still on the floor?"

"Yeah, I didn't want to disturb her. She looks so peaceful. Probably the first good night's sleep she's had in two years."

"Yeah."

I climbed into my bunk and went to sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by something very strange. The first thing I noticed was someone fishing my dick out of my boxer shorts. My sleeping mind's first thought was that my wife was with me, going to make her sweet love to me, even though she died--or maybe worse--two years ago when "the troubles" hit.

Then whoever it was climbed on top of me. My mind was clearing out the cobwebs and I was returning to the present. "Sarah?" I said. It was too dark to see a thing. The person on top of me reached down and lifted my cock, which had involuntarily grown erect, and slipped him into her vagina, then started rocking back and forth, sliding hot slippery lips up and down, taking him deeper with each downstroke until he was in all the way.

No, definitely not Sarah. She's a good fuck in her own right but she's nowhere this tight; besides, she never, ever, takes the initiative. And this person is much smaller, really small in fact. And she smells sweet...

Suddenly I remembered our new passenger. "Kate?" I whispered to the face I couldn't see in the darkness. She didn't respond, just kept working on my cock, sliding back and forth in a nice steady rhythm, warm and wet and getting wetter. I knew the girl gave a good blowjob, but she was even better at fucking.

"Kate, you don't have to do this, you know," I whispered into the darkness.

She didn't say a word, didn't make a noise other than the low-pitched, steady breathing, rhythmic, in time with her downstrokes on my cock. I could feel my balls getting wet as girl-come flowed out of her with each downstroke.

I just lay there in the darkness and let her do her work and it was several minutes before she finally brought me to orgasm. "Oh my god," I whispered. She didn't miss a beat, just kept the exact same rhythm, sliding back and forth, wet and tight and hot. "Oh, fuck," I whispered again as my come barreled down my cock. The little girl just kept riding me, letting me unload my semen inside her, shot after glorious shot in her tight, hot, preteen cunt.

"Oh, god!" I whispered when I'd finished orgasming. The girl climbed off me, and off the bed. It took me a minute to realize that she'd just gone right back into the corner to sleep on the floor.

"Kate," I whispered into the darkness, "don't sleep on the floor. Come sleep with me, in my bed, OK? Or if you want I'll sleep on the floor." Silence. "Come on, please?"

I heard a rustling and then the girl climbed into the bed. I kissed her on the top of her head, in the darkness it was too hard to find her face, let alone her mouth, but I wanted to thank her for the wonderful fuck she'd just given me. Then we dropped off to sleep together.

I was awoken the next morning by sunlight shining through the hatch. I jumped out of bed--I was supposed to relieve Sarah from her watch at four AM--and ran up the stairs.

"Oh, man, I'm sorry, Sarah, I overslept!"

She was standing at the con and gave me a big smile. "I'll say! You two looked so sweet sleeping down there that I just couldn't bring myself to wake you up."

"Well, I'm up now. You should go down and get some sleep, or make yourself some breakfast."

"I don't think it would be a great idea for the girl to wake up and find me in the room."

"Yeah, that's right." I'd forgotten about Kate's weird reaction to Sarah the night before.

"In fact, it might not be a good idea for her to wake up alone, either. Why don't you go down and just be with her for now? I'm fine."

"You're awfully nice."

"I know what it's like, with all those lurchers around. We can't even begin to imagine what her life has been for the last two years. Get on down there now, so she doesn't wake up scared and alone."

I went below and started reading a book, waiting for Kate to wake up. After a couple hours, I saw her stir, then I saw her eyes open just slightly. Then she sat up bolt-upright, eyes wide, the look of a cornered cat on her face.

"Good morning," I said. She sat back, eyeing me suspiciously but no longer overtly hostile. "You hungry? I can make you a couple boiled eggs."

She nodded.

She devoured the eggs, and some toast, like she devoured the sandwiches the day before.

"So what's your story, anyway, Kate?" I asked her as I started a couple more eggs boiling.

She just stared at me.

"Com'on, I'm making you breakfast, the least you could do is tell me your story."

"What do you want to know?" Her voice surprised me again, a resonating alto. Seems weird that such a sonorous sound can come from so small a girl.

"How did you survive, alone with all those lurchers around, for two years?"

"I wasn't alone," she said.

"Really? Is there somebody still back there?"

"No. He died. He was drunk, and the zombies got him."

"Oh. Sorry to hear that."

"No big deal, he deserved it. He was drunk a lot, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did."

"He deserved it?"

"He was a bastard, especially when he was drunk. Even sober he could be a nightmare sometimes. But when he was drunk... It was really bad when he was drunk."

"What did he do?"

She looked at me silently for a moment, like she was deciding what exactly to say. "I didn't actually mind having sex with him, usually. He was old and smelly and gross but I didn't have any choice and he fed me and shit, so what the fuck, you know? I put up with it. But I hated it when he got mad. And he was always mad when he was drunk."

"Did he beat you up?"

"He did whatever he wanted to do."

"Sounds awful."

"It wasn't that bad." She had a cold, stoic look on her face. "So that girl, Sarah, is she your wife?"

"No, my wife died in, you know, 'the troubles.'"

This information did not seem to faze her. "Do you have sex with her?"

"With Sarah?" My first instinct was to tell her it was none of her business, but then I figured maybe it was her business, given that I just shot my load in her last night. "Well, it's complicated, but, yeah, we have sex sometimes."

"Just 'sometimes?'"

"Can you tell me why you were so scared of her last night?"

"Every woman I've met wants to kill me."

"Really? Why?"

She looked at me like I was stupid. Then she gave a sigh and stood up, walked over to me, and sank down on her knees. She unzipped my pants and fished my dick out.

"You don't have to do this, Kate."

"Does Sarah do this to you? Is she as good as me?" She wrapped her mouth around my limp cock.

"Look, Kate, you don't have to do this."

"Sure, fine," she said, taking my cock out of her mouth, "but I want to."

"OK, but not now. Sarah might come down and..."

"And she'd be pissed because I'm sucking her boyfriend."

"Not exactly. She'd be pissed, though."

"Like I said, every woman I've met wants to kill me. You don't understand, you're a guy, guys are morons."

"She'd want to kill somebody," I said as I stuffed my cock back in my pants, "but it wouldn't be you. Besides I'm not a moron."

"Maybe not. But I can tell you don't understand what it's like."

"Look, Kate, I think it's different with us than it is out there," I gestured to the banks of the river.

"Sure." She definitely didn't sound like she believed me.

"Com'on, let's go up top, if you promise to treat Sarah nice."

She gave me a long, piercing look. "OK."

We climbed up the stairs. "Well good morning!" Sarah said in her usual cheerful manner. Kate just sneered at her and walked over to the other side of the boat.

"Well, it's an improvement I guess," she said quietly to me with a little smile.

"Why don't you go below and get some sleep? You were up all night."

"I'll be all right, if you'll take the helm."

I took the helm and Sarah walked over to where Kate was checking out the gun mounted on the aft deck.

"Are you interested in guns?"

Kate looked at her with an instinctively angry look, but her eyes quickly softened. "Yeah, I guess. I've never seen one this big, we didn't have anything like this."

"It's an L7. Fires 7.62 millimeter bullets, can shoot ten a second if you want."

"Wow," Kate said.

"We'll pull up to shore in a couple of hours," I said over my shoulder, "so that we can put a few lurchers out of their misery. You can shoot a few rounds if you want."

"Yeah!" Kate said.

"Let me give you some training before then," Sarah said. "You ever shoot a gun?"

"Duh," Kate said. "I mean, sorry, yeah, me and Henry had a bunch of rifles, including a couple of AK47s, and some pistols and stuff."

"Oh, then this'll be old hat for you. Who's Henry?"

"The guy that took care of me," was all Kate said as an answer, "until the zombies got him."

"Damn," Sarah said.

"Yeah, well, that's life in the zombie apocalypse, right?"

Sarah looked at the girl, a bit bewildered.

A few hours later I steered us into Sheerness; we shot off a few flares and made some noise and sure enough, the lurchers came, like Pavlov's dogs, looking for fresh meat and thinking in their unthinking brains that anything that makes noise must be meat. There was a crowd of about twenty; if it had been later, evening-time, there would have been two hundred or more. But twenty was good target practice for our new gunner and Kate lit off a few rounds. Lurchers fell like rag dolls.

"Awesome," she said, a big grin on her face.

Sarah smiled, too, but then added, "You have to remember that the lurchers are people, or at least they used to be. We have to put the poor bastards out of their misery, but it isn't supposed to be fun."

Kate gave her a bit of a sarcastic look. "Sure, they didn't like kill my parents and almost kill me and shit."

"I know, but still. Get good at killing them, but for your safety, and for their mercy, but not because you like it. Trust me, it'll be better for you in the long run."

After we'd finished target practice I piloted the boat back out to the sea and we set the sail, a jury-rigged operation that we'd installed to save on gas. With this rigging, it'd be a couple days before we got home, but as long as the weather held it promised to be a nice little cruise.

That evening I took the first watch; but Sarah, who had wound up sleeping through much of the day, wasn't tired so she hung out with me until midnight when she took over the watch and I went below. Kate had gone to bed a couple hours earlier, and I took off my clothes and climbed into bed with her. I already had a raging hard-on; I knew what I wanted and I was going to get it.

In the darkness I had to fumble a bit to find her shorts, but I managed to pull them off and I climbed on top of her. I couldn't see her, but as I pushed my cockhead into her dry vagina, she wrapped her arms around me and whispered, "I thought you said I didn't have to do this."

"Well you do now," I whispered back.

"Yeah? What, I don't have a choice? You gonna rape me?"

I fucked her tight cunt dry for a few strokes, until she started getting a little lubricated and I could slide in a bit deeper. "Yeah, I'm gonna rape you," I said as I started giving her a good hard fucking, her tight, slick lips sliding up and down my cock.

"I could scream, then Sarah would come and save me," she said. "What would you do if I screamed? Would you hit me?"

"Is that what you want?" My cock was plunging in and out of her hot pussy now. "You want me to hit you?"

She lifted her legs in the air. "You can do whatever you want," she said softly in her beautiful alto.

Instead of hitting her, I grabbed two full handfuls of her beautiful soft hair, holding myself above her with my fists, pulling hard. "I want to come inside you."

She leaned her head back, she had no choice, and she wrapped her skinny legs around me. "Go for it, fill me up. Make me your dirty little girl with your come."

I was really fucking her hard now. Her little pre-teen cunt was hot and tight, but wide open and sopping wet and there was no resistance at all, I could really jackhammer the little bitch. "Is that what you are? You're a dirty girl?"

Her breath was labored now, a hard exhale each time I slammed into her. "I'm the dirtiest girl you've ever met," she whispered in my ear. "I'll let you do anything you want to me, anything at all."

And with that I orgasmed, my come rifling down my cock and into her skinny little body, shot after hot, thick, wonderful shot.

To be continued...