Terror in Tonopah

Thanks to SlaveGirl70 for editing and numerous contributions to the story. She suffered so you don't have to.

This was written for the Nude Day Story Contest 2015. It is horror with some comedic elements. There are many sexual situations with very little actual sex.

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Six months before Sue graduated from the Arizona School of Mining in Tucson, her favorite professor introduced her to a wild-haired codger named Sleepy Mick.

"Sleepy thinks he's going to be rich," said her professor.

"Thinks nothin'!" Sleepy spat on the ground as they entered the bar, which was really more of a pit that sold alcohol. "You do the thinkin' professor. I'm gonna be rich." He wasn't much over five feet tall. He wore heavy boots, durable dungarees and a stiff work shirt. His hair was thoroughly and completely unkempt, and he walked with a hitch in his left leg.

They took their drinks to a table in a dark corner. Sue and the professor each held a beer, Sleepy held a glass of whiskey in each hand. The professor leaned back and waited to be entertained by Sleepy. Sue sat like she was expecting the arrival of the Queen of England.

"I bought the claim to the Coleson Mine." Sleepy didn't waste time with pleasantries.

"The Coleson Mine?' The professor asked, as he tried to dredge up the mine's history from his memory.

"Of course the Coleson Mine. Are ya deaf?"

"Isn't there some story with the Coleson Mine?"

"That's the beauty of it. No one will work her 'cause everyone thinks she's cursed. But I know her and I know the beautiful color of her dirt. I'm gonna lift up her skirt and take her treasure!" He reached out and grabbed at the air with his hand as he spoke.

Sue was unnerved by the way Sleepy talked about mining. His passion for his mine and it's beautiful dirt was in stark contrast to her analytical textbooks that were filled with numbers and equations. She was comfortable with the desolation of numbers and the predictability of equations. They were like an old pair of shoes that were familiar, easy to wear and never caught anyone's eye.

Mick went on to make his pitch. He needed an able assistant, and he was willing to part with 20% of the profit for the right partner. "The professor here says he's too busy, but he thinks you might give it a go."

The professor finally resurrected the memory he was searching his mind for. "Isn't the Coleson mine where you were working when you got the sleeping sickness?"

"Bah, that's neither here nor there!"

"No, but didn't everyone else in that crew die?"

"Don't be a sissy-man! There's gold to be had for them that's bold enough to take it."

The professor let out a deep breath, turned to Sue and asked, "How did you do in mine safety?"

Sue responded with a perplexed shrug. They didn't cover sleeping sickness in mine safety, and he knew it.

The professor was frustrated with Sue. She could solve any problem in the textbook, but she refused to go out into the real world of mining. He knew that there was no future for her in mining without real-world experience. He also knew that Sue's lack of real-world experience pervaded every aspect of her life. She didn't have many friends, didn't have a boyfriend and didn't have a life outside of the classroom. She was attractive and kind, but she was also as shy as anyone he had ever met, and would soon be graduating. He feared this was his last chance to teach her the lesson she most needed to learn, and he knew that if anyone could do the job it was Sleepy Mick.

He said, "Winter break is coming up. You could try it and see what you think."

Normally, she would have turned down the offer without a second thought, but she had another problem that her professor wasn't aware of. She didn't have enough cash to fly home for Christmas, so she was going to be stuck with a bunch of students that had nothing to do but drink and have sex for the better part of a month. Last year she'd spent the break running from a pack of hormonal guys with barely concealed lust. The thought of working with Mick was paradise in comparison to dodging hard-ons, so she accepted.

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The mine was located about eight hours northwest of Tucson. Sue had outfitted herself with dungarees and work shirts that were similar to Sleepy Mick's. She cut her brown hair short to prevent entanglement with moving equipment, and she told her parents not to worry if they didn't hear from her for a few weeks. She was going to be off the grid.

Mick's truck was an antique that had lived a very hard life. It had a hoist mounted into the bed. Around the hoist were cases of water and boxes and bags of supplies and foodstuffs. Nestled in with all the boxes and bags was an antique bathtub.

"What's up with the tub?" she asked.

"Don't you be lookin' at my tub. There's not 'nuf water for you to be bathin'." Sleepy hoped that the tub wouldn't be necessary.

The mine was at the end of a long, rutted dirt road. Sue was apprehensive when she saw the shed that Mick had lashed together from stray lumber and corrugated steel. She didn't mind the idea of sleeping in it, but she worried it was an indication of Mick's approach to mining.

She rattled one of the metal sides and said, "I didn't realize your mine was so prosperous."

"Don't be sassy missy, I put my money where it'll do the most good."

Her apprehension vanished when she saw the actual mine. The walls were secure and the mining equipment was better than what they had at school. The shaft was deep and the color of the dirt was very good. It was almost exactly as he had described.

At first they worked together. When they were in the hole Mick showed her the direction he thought the vein would take and how he wanted to attack it. When they were on top he showed her how to recover gold from the ore. It was all stuff she had been taught in school, but with a real-world flair. After two days of working together, they split up. She would work a couple of hours at the bottom, then they would switch and she would work on the top. Mick always initiated the switch. He would check on her work and then send her on her way. They didn't see each other more than a handful of times a day.

The flamboyance she had seen in Mick at the bar was absent in the mine. Every decision was calculated. If he had to make a guess, he did so after long deliberation. But once they were inside the hut he was as animated as anyone she had seen on television or in the movies. The alcohol flowed almost as freely as his stories. Sue listened and laughed, but never shared stories of her own.

After a hard day in the mine and a few too many drinks he asked, "Missy, what are you doin' in this hole with me? A girl as beautiful as you should be off drivin' the menfolk crazy."

She had no reply.

He stood up, pointed his finger down at her and said, "When I'm through schoolin' you on minin', I'm gonna to give you lessons on livin'."

She smiled and nodded. So many people had told her that she needed to seize the day, she knew it must be true. But she couldn't imagine herself actually doing in.

She was surprised to find that she enjoyed working the mine. Like studying, the work was solitary and there was a cold, calculated aspect to the machinery that was not unlike the algorithms and formulas she was comfortable with.

She paid close attention to all of the safety issues she had learned about in school. She inspected the equipment every morning and made a point of carefully monitoring the air quality throughout the day. Despite her vigilance, on the tenth day she woke with a splitting headache. She took a handful of Advil and did her best to get going, but soon she fell asleep at the bottom of the hole.

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She woke naked, alone and soaking wet in a strange motel room. She didn't recall Mick carrying her up out of the hole, the drive into Tonopah, or the indeterminant amount of time she spent in a bath of cool water. Her dirty mining clothes were stuffed into a drawer, but there was nothing else that belonged to her and there was no indication of Sleepy Mick's presence at all. She took a shower, put on her grubby clothes and went outside. The sun was bright but the air was cool. She was famished. After a quick visual survey of the town she headed for the McDonald's which was only about a hundred yards down the road.

The doors to the restaurant were locked. Was it Christmas? She didn't know how long she had been asleep, so it was possible. And where the hell was Sleepy Mick?

She spotted a market on the way back to the motel. The door was open, but there wasn't a soul around. She went inside, grabbed some lunch meat, cheese and bread and made a sandwich. She ate while sitting on the floor between the aisles with a newspaper between her legs. She scoured the pages for clues about what was going on. She estimated that she had been out for at least a week, but other than bounding the date, the paper didn't clarify her situation.

It wasn't until she got back in the motel room and turned on the TV that her circumstances became clear. The reporter was as serious as a heart attack, "A virulent and highly infectious form of encephalitis has struck Tonopah and Goldfield Nevada. The entire population of these two towns is completely unresponsive, and they are both officially quarantined. Anyone who has traveled to either is required by law to report to the Center for Disease Control." He went on describe the geography and history of the two towns and interview a doctor who was eager to speculate without actually knowing anything about the situation.

Sue used the motel phone to call her mother. She told her she was alright and then called the professor.

"Thank god you're alright."

"What the hell happened to Sleepy Mick? He just abandoned me!"

"He's been trying to reach you, but the CDC locked him up. As far as anyone knows, he's the only person to have survived this disease, so they're studying him." The professor explained that according to the news the disease was a fungal encephalitis that had not been seen before. He speculated that it was like Valley Fever that was spread by spores that were dormant in the soil until breathed in with dust. "I bet the source is inside the mine and that's why you got it first. Mick had it before, so he's probably immune."

Sue extracted everything she could from the professor, then called the CDC. The operator didn't believe that Sue was calling from Tonopah. Sue didn't feel like arguing and didn't want to be held captive, so she hung up. The CDC already had Sleepy Mick, so what good would it do to have her too?

She ventured out into the town to see if anyone needed help. The streets were empty, so she started looking for unlocked houses. She found one occupied by a man and woman. They both had extremely high fevers. Sue did what Sleepy had done for her; she stripped them down and tried to cool them off. Reducing the fever had worked for her, so it was probably important for a healthy recovery. She put the woman in a cool bath, carefully blocking her head so she wouldn't drown. There was only one tub, so she wrapped the man in a wet sheet.

She couldn't help but notice the man's erect penis. She'd seen pictures of penises in textbooks, but had never seen one in the flesh. In the textbook they were always flaccid. This one was hard. It looked painfully hard. She gave it a flick with her finger and watched it vibrate. Then she wrapped her hand around it to feel it's hardness. She was strangely aroused by the sensation of her hand on his smooth, hard cock. She knew she was out of line, so she quickly wrapped him in the wet sheet and left.

The next house was occupied by a man in his sixties, again with a sky-high fever. He had a big gut, so she had to struggle to undress him. As she wrestled with him she noticed that his penis was erect too. She'd heard that erections got softer with age, but this old man's cock was every bit as hard as the young man's next door. She couldn't stop herself from feeling its hardness. She slid her hand up and down his shaft, and she jumped when he let out a moan. She was a little creeped out by her own actions, so she put him in a tub of cool water and went on to the next house.

Through the course of the day and well into the night she did her best to cool and comfort the denizens of Tonopah. Everyone she encountered had a high fever, they were all practically comatose, and in every case the men had hard-ons. In the interest of science, she played with one particularly attractive man's cock until he ejaculated; she wanted to see if his cock would soften, but it didn't. It was as hard as when she'd begun. As far as she could tell the women were not aroused, but she didn't bother with any scientific experiments.

That night she thought about the cute guy and the handjob she'd given him. What she'd done was undoubtedly wrong, but who would care? He sure didn't seem to mind.

The most disturbing part was how much she'd enjoyed it.

The next day started off pretty much as the previous day had ended. Sue revisited the houses she had been to and cooled off the occupants as much as she could. At around noon she spotted some motion from the corner of her eye. She initially assumed that someone had come to help, but soon realized that it was the guy with the big gut, walking wherever his erection pointed.

He walked slowly, so Sue easily caught up with him. "Are you alright?" she asked.

He did little more than grunt. His eyes were only half open and drool was dripping from the corner of his mouth. He slowly looked in her direction, then turned towards her.

She took a step back and then started to walk quickly away from him. She found it easy to outrun him, but his gait was relentless. He took long slow strides as he pursued her. His erect penis bobbed up and down with each step.

She escaped by ducking into the house of the married couple. The husband's wet sheet was on the floor, and the husband and wife were both in the bathtub. He was on top of her, arching his back in a desperate attempt to penetrate her. The bathroom walls, the shape of the tub and her braced position combined to thwart his effort. But that didn't stop him from trying again and again and again. He made no attempt to change his approach or learn from his mistakes. He simply repeated his failed attack over and over.

What the hell was going on with these men? Encephalitis explained the fever and degraded brain function, but what caused the unbridled horniness and why was it only happening to the men?

She carefully checked to make sure the street was clear and quietly stepped out of the house. Her plan was to head back to the market, get enough food to last a few days, then hole up in her motel room while she thought about what to do.

There were now a half dozen fully-erect, naked men staggering down the middle of US 95. They didn't notice her if she kept her distance and she moved slowly. She gave the exits of buildings a wide berth and arrived at the market unmolested. She collected enough food for a couple of days and was on her way out when she spotted a book that chronicled the recent history of the local gold mines. It was one of those vanity press books with a stapled spine. She tossed it in a bag with the food.

As she slipped through the front door of the motel she saw two erect, naked men in the casino off the lobby. The first was humping a slot machine and the second was trying to hump the first. Their actions were as awkward as they were ineffective. She snuck past them and breathed a sigh of relief when she finally closed the door of her room.

She tried to call the professor, but the lines were dead. The television news did little more than repeat what had been said the day before. The chief of the CDC said that he would not send medical assistance to the area until the aid worker's safety could be assured. Sue realized that she was on her own, at least for the foreseeable future.

She read through The Chronicle of the Recent Mining history of Goldfield and Tonopah while she ate. It had a short paragraph about the Coleson mine. Few details of the actual disaster were given but it did mention that the lone survivor was named Hoff Sund, who was known as Sleepy McBater after the incident.

She pondered what she knew about Sleepy Mick. Like her, he had survived the sleeping sickness, and, if he was like the rest of the men, he had gone through this uncontrollable erection phase. So, while the uncontrollable zombie erection phase was dangerous and offensive, it wasn't necessarily fatal. She had to figure out a way to get through this without anyone getting hurt.

The next day, Sue slowly opened the door looked both ways down the corridor. One naked man was at the end of the hall, but the path to the lobby was unobstructed. She slowly walked down the center of the hallway into the lobby. There were now a half dozen men in the casino. They had that dazed gaze that one expected in a casino, only their nakedness was unusual.

Through the motel's glass doors she could see that nearly every man in town was erect, naked and plodding aimlessly around. There must have been ten in the motel parking lot and a couple dozen more ambling down the middle of US 95.

Before heading out, she slipped her spare room key into a concealed gap in the front desk, then she slowly opened the door. The December air was cool. Sue speculated that nude men in the outdoor breeze were losing almost as much heat as if they were in a bathtub. Hopefully it was enough to keep them alive.

She was able to slip undetected into the first house. The wife was still in the bathtub, but the husband was nowhere to be seen. She drew a new bath for the woman and put a cold compress on her head. Once she was situated, Sue moved on to the next house. By the late afternoon she had covered about half the town.

In a moment of exhaustion she let her guard down and walked right into a man, who grabbed her by the coat. He pulled her close and humped her through her pants. She struggled, but doing so only attracted the attention of more men. She broke free, but ran right into the arms of a second man.

The second man immediately started humping her. Soon there were a dozen men. Big men, small men, skinny men and fat men all reaching and grabbing and clawing at her. If their penis touched her they would begin to hump against her. Thank goodness for her dungarees, they were sturdy enough to stop even the most rigid penis.

Though safe from penile penetration, she could still fall and be trampled to death. She imagined the headline: "Virgin Crushed in Stampede of Aroused Naked Zombies". How would her sister explain that to her nephew? "Sorry Bobby, Aunt Sue wouldn't put out, so the zombies poked her to death."

She stumbled, but saved herself by reflexively grabbing a handy cock. She pulled herself up to face the cock's owner, whose expression hinted at impending ecstasy. She gave his cock a couple of quick pulls before he shuddered and fell back out of her way. She might have been able to get away if it wasn't for the men holding onto her coat. She unzipped her coat, grabbed another cock and stroked it while slipping out of the coat. It worked but only got her to the next layer of men. She repeated the process with her shirt and managed to slip out of the group's grasp with her bra intact.

She took a few unfettered steps before she looked up to see a throng of dazed, erect, naked men approaching from all sides. She ducked down a side street and into the nearest house. No sooner did the door close before men started to pound on it.

She washed the grime of the fawning men off of herself in the kitchen sink. She knew that they were just normal guys who happened to suffer from a very strange illness. She didn't want to hurt them, but at the moment she didn't see how that was possible. She surveyed the kitchen in a quest for inspiration. The knives were too violent. Even the pots and pans would cause more damage than necessary. She opened the cupboards and inventoried their contents: cold cereal, crackers, rice, flour, cooking oil...cooking oil, that would probably work. She took off all of her clothes and doused her body, head, arms and legs in cooking oil.