The Master Serum

The Choice

Dusk fell over the forest and trees flitted past as we stumbled through the near darkness.

Somewhere to my left Samantha cursed and I glanced sideways to check that she was still moving, shoving my once-flowing brunette hair out of my eyes. I wished, not for the first time, for a hair tie to keep it back in a ponytail. It almost made me laugh. Hair ties were the kind of thing everyone used to take for granted before the Sickness.

Behind us, the low growling of the Walkers was a constant motivation to keep moving. No matter how hard or fast we ran, the Walker would keep after us. They were slow, of course, but the sickness that had rotted their brains and stopped their hearts had made their muscles tireless. They never stopped, never rested and were never distracted from their one objective: to feed.

"Where the hell are we?" Joanna shouted, vaulting over a log to my right. Her exhaustion made her clumsy, and her foot snagged, almost bringing her down.

"Keep moving! We're close!" That was the voice of our guide, Riley. The tall, thin man had the body of a runner and seemed as tireless as our pursuers. He had showed up unannounced at the perimeter of our makeshift camp two days ago and told us — four women just trying to survive the zombie apocalypse — that he was a scout for a nearby settlement, sent out to search for survivors. With no better alternative, we'd followed him into the forest.

There was no sound for the next fifteen minutes except the distant growls of the Walkers, the rustle of our feet hitting the leaf-covered forest floor and the pounding of my heart in my chest. Then, we hit a dirt path — the first thing I'd seen in two weeks that resembled a road.

"Almost there!" Riley yelled, speeding up as his feet hit the hard-packed soil.

My three friends and I followed, a last desperate burst of adrenaline that pushed us through the last mile and out into a giant clearing. There was a massive stockade waiting for us, a huge concrete barrier with tall guard towers and the vague shapes of sentries watching from top of the wall.

Then, the sound of automatic weapons fire

cracked

through the air. I saw muzzle flashes from the parapet and I spun, watching the tree-line. A rough line of Walkers was appearing, shuffling determinedly forward. They were closer than even I would have guessed. Bullets whistled through the air, smacking into dead flesh.

One of the Walkers spun, twiggy arm snapped off at the elbow, then fell as another hail of bullets struck the line and a round passed straight through its head. There was no blood, just a red dust that exploded into the night air and dispersed. Taking out the head was really the only way anyone knew how to deal with those things, aside from turning the entire body into kindling. I guess it must be something about how even a dead body needs a brain to tell its muscles what to do.

They weren't intelligent, but the Walkers' basic instincts for self-preservation were still there to some degree. Soundlessly, the swarm of zombies turned and melted into the shadowy trees.

Gone, but hardly for good.

Vivian padded up beside me, her athletic body barely visible in the dark. I saw her teeth flash as she grinned at me. "Well then," she gasped through a broad smile. "I guess that means we made it."

* * *

My palm stung delightfully as I spanked a delicious handful of grade-A 18-year-old ass.

"Yes, sir!" The barely-legal girl moaned beneath me, her round bubble butt still rippling from the impact. "Let out all of that stress. Use my ass as your own personal stress ball." She was still young enough that her body had bounce and jiggle in all the right places, but months of hard living had gotten rid of any baby fat that had once existed in the wrong ones. She ground back against my raging hard-on, teasing me.

I gripped her hips and held her in place.

Looking over her shoulder at me, she bit her lip and grinned. "Something you want,

Daddy

?" she emphasized the word, knowing she was pushing the button on one of my more suppressed fantasies.

I growled, staring into her eyes, then rammed inside of her. I wasn't gentle, and my cock was large enough to stretch her to the limit.

Her mouth opened wide in an O of shock before she came, hard. Her body shook beneath my hands as I pounded her from behind, her head dropping forward as she focused her energy on pushing back against my every thrust, the only sounds my grunts of exertion and her mewls of pleasure each time I plunged inside of her.

The door opened but I didn't even glance over. It wasn't like this was something my second-in-command hadn't seen before.

Marcus coughed politely, and I threw him a look, never slowing. He stood there grinning in a tactical vest strapped with enough grenades and clips of ammunition to assault a heavily armored terrorist camp. Marcus had been in American special forces back when America had been a thing. Back when things like terrorism and national security had still mattered.

I growled in response. "What?" I had worked for America too — in a lab. Doing highly illegal things in the name of that same national security.

"Morning, John," Marcus told me, pushing back some of his choppy black hair as he stood at casual attention. "One of the runners is back," Riley. Brought in four survivors."

I nodded. I'd thought I'd heard machine-gun fire earlier. "Men? Or..." I focused for a moment on reigning in the tension that was building up in my core. "... women?"

"All four women," Marcus replied. "Haven't gotten around to meeting them yet, but Riley says they're all total babes."

I rolled my eyes, pulling out of my teenage fucktoy. "Riley is

not

the man whose judgement I'd use as a measuring stick for attractiveness. He was on a community college

cross country team

, for Christ's sake. He was probably a virgin before he came here."

The young woman beneath me flipped over onto her back and wrapped her heels behind my hips, pulling me closer. "More, Sir..." she whimpered. Her eyes were wide and innocent, but burning with desire.

I let my hands rest lightly on her breasts and she arched her back, pressing them up into my hands. "Take me, Sir," she begged.

"I was planning on giving them tonight to clean up and rest," Marcus told me, ignoring my barb at our scout. "Then tomorrow...?" he raised an eyebrow at me in unspoken question.

I nodded, turning away from him and sliding my hands down my teenage sexdoll's flat stomach before resting them on her hips. "We make the offer." I slid inside of her again as Marcus closed the door.

* * *

Samantha and Joanna in one bunk, Vivan and me in the other. As I sat up and stretched, I was glad they hadn't separated us. We'd been through a lot, and I wouldn't have felt safe worrying about my girls. We'd showered and eaten in relative silence the previous night, our survival instincts still not turned off even now that we'd reached civilization. Then, we'd collapsed into beds and been out like four snuffed candles.

I looked around, habitually going through the mental countdown. Four. Samantha was on the bottom bunk, stretched out on her back with one tanned arm thrown across her face. Her bleached blonde hair was clean for the first time in weeks and shone in the weak sunlight filtering through our tiny window. Three. All I could see was the back of Joanna's darker brunette head in the top bunk as she lay facing the wall. Two. A lock of Vivian's dark red hair had fallen over the edge of her mattress at the top of our bunkbed and confirmed her presence. One. I walked to the mirror by the door and looked myself up and down.

I still looked tired, but felt less exhausted than I had in some time. Surprisingly, as I looked myself up and down I felt a surge of pride. I looked

good

. Weeks on the run with nothing but the bare essentials had hardened my muscles and stripped away the fifteen or twenty pounds of excess fat I'd been hauling around on my hips and tummy. I looked like one of those fitness models I used to admire on Instagram — the ones who did Spartan Races or Crossfit athletics.

Even in the simple tee shirt and leggings I'd been given...

"Damn, girl!" Vivian's voice came down from the top bunk behind me and she whistled softly. "I didn't realize you were so hot beneath all that grime."

I turned with a grin. The true Victoria's Secret model of the group clambered down from her perch and gave me a long hug.

"We made it," she murmured, and I grinned crazily into her hair.

"We fucking made it," I said back, holding her at arms length.

We woke the others. Someone had been watching us, because there was a knock at the door within five minutes of us waking Joanna from her hibernation. It was Riley, looking clean and rested in a similar uniform of grey tee and dark pants, similar to what we were all wearing.

"Come with me," he said, his face strangely focused — as though he was trying hard not to reveal any facial expression whatsoever.

"Where are we going?" I asked. I was never sure how I'd been chosen, but I was always the unofficial spokeswoman of our group.

"To meet the Council," Riley said, turning and walking down the hallway. "They'll decide if you're allowed to stay."

"Allowed to —" I cut Vivian off with a shake of my head and we followed Riley down the concrete tunnel. "This is their house," I murmured to her as she caught up to me in the hallway. "Their rules. So we play nice."

The gorgeous redhead shook her head in disbelief but kept her mouth shut.

It had been dark last night, but even in the daylight it was clear we hadn't missed much. The settlement seemed to have been built like a bunker. Or maybe it had been a bunker, once upon a time. When we finally arrived where we'd been headed, it was what had once probably been a mess hall. The giant open space had been cleared and now was just a vast open space of concrete, reminiscent of a school auditorium or an empty airplane hanger. Across the space on a sort of raised dais sat a small group who must have made up "the Council."

They were all six of them men, I realized as we walked towards them. Most of them in their late thirties or early forties, probably — anybody older than that had had trouble escaping the Sickness when it originally spread.

We stood before the group in single file, Vivian was on the far right and I was on the far left. It was several moments before any spoke, and I took a moment to examine them.

There was one man standing a little behind the others in what looked like a loose military attention. He was good-looking, with dark, choppy hair and enough weaponry hanging off his body to fend off a small army. Another sat a little to my right, a black man with a shaven head, beaky nose and the lanky body of a marathon runner. If I had to guess, he would be in charge of their scouts.

The true power though, I could tell, was in the man who sat in the center. There was something about his posture, the way he held his head, that suggested he was used to ruling without question. He was dressed simply, in a white lab coat and pants that made him look like some kind of doctor or scientist. His hair was cropped close to his skull in a military style, which made him look older, but he couldn't have been beyond his mid-thirties. It was this man who eventually broke the silence.

"Survivors," he said, sweeping his gaze down the line. "That's what you are. And you can survive here, with us, if you choose to. All you have to do is make a choice..." He trailed off. Gazing at each of us intently.

"What is it?" I asked. "What's the choice?"

The scientist's eyes pierced into mine keenly. Then, reaching into the pocket of his lab coat, he produced several vials of clear liquid. "You will drink this." He sat the vials in a row on the arm of his chair and stared back at me, daring me to ask the next question.

"What's in the vials?" I realized, in that moment, that we had yet to see a single woman in all our time here. For some reason, that worried me.

He smiled broadly, and for a moment I almost relaxed. But if there was one thing I'd learned in this new world it was never, ever to relax. "I could tell you it was an inoculant," he replied. "I could say it was a vaccine intended to prevent you from contracting the Sickness, that it was for your protection and ours." He paused. "But it isn't. It's serum I developed while working for the US government," he responded. "And that I perfected after the outbreak of the Sickness."

"What does it—?"

"Do?" He cut me off, his tone cold and calm — clinical. "It stimulates the centers in your brain associated with pleasure, obedience and submission. Anyone who takes it will find themselves completely subservient to the next man who causes them to orgasm, imprinting on him and finding him and his commands irresistible in every sense of the word."

All of us took a step back, mouths dropping open with horror.

"The alternative," the black man put in mildly from his chair, "is most likely death in the forest. The Walkers are always hungry..."

"Actually," the leader spoke again, and our horrified gazes swung over to him, "I told a little bit of a mistruth..." His grin was predatory now. "The serum doesn't always work. And any woman who makes the choice to stay but manages to resist the serum's effect will have our blessing to enjoy our hospitality indefinitely and unmolested."

My eyes turned from the man on the dais to my little troop of survivors. Joanna. Samantha. Vivian. They all turned to look at me for guidance, but I had nothing to say. How could I make a decision like this?

* * *

"Alright, Riley," I said as the serum began to take effect. I could see it in each woman's eyes as they struggled to resist the creeping warmth that was coming over their bodies and fogging their minds. "Now it's your turn to make a choice."

The women had chosen to take my serum. Of course they had. They always did. The small ray of hope I gave them, that they could resist the serum's effects, was enough to make them choose to stay with us rather than venture back out into the wilderness with the zombie horde.

Riley grinned. As the scout who had brought them in, he was given first dibs among the new recruits. It was a generosity I felt willing to indulge in, given the already-expansive size of my personal harem. The scout walked down the line, examining each woman with a careful eye. I, too, watched the four survivors, but for a more academic purpose. Was it possible, I wondered, that one of these women would be among the few to resist my chemical cocktail?

The redhead's body, tight and athletic, was trembling with effort as she focused all her energy on

not

letting the warm, relaxing sensation spread. The bleached blonde was already succumbing, her eyes opening wide, her mouth relaxing into a smile. The brunette seemed stoic enough, but... No, she gasped as a small orgasm shook her body, a sure sign of defeat.

I was most intrigued, however, by the second blonde woman. The one who had spoken for the group. What had Riley said her name was? Ah! Stella... I stared into her eyes as she gritted her teeth and fought against my potion, her features locked in an expression of focused anger. Her anger, I could tell, was directed at me. As though it was my fault she had been put in this situation. Which, after honest reflection, I supposed it was.

I found, to my surprise, that even as her angry gaze burned into mine I was almost wishing she would succeed. How long had it been since I'd had a conversation with a woman who wasn't completely under my power? Months, at least. Maybe more than a year.

"This one," Riley said from down the line. It was the first blonde woman, as I'd predicted. Riley shamelessly groped her breast, her body dissolving back against his as she ground back against his obvious erection.

I smiled magnanimously even as Marcus laughed. "You're so easy to please," the ex-special forces fighter commented from behind me. "Just give her blonde hair and nice tits and you already came in your pants."

"Take it easy on the boy," said Orrin, our dark-skinned Master of Scouts, in his slow, relaxed voice. "Riley still has plenty of time to let his taste mature." I could tell without looking, though, that he was grinning as well.

Riley blushed at their teasing, but grabbed the woman by her hand and led her away to complete the ritual. She followed, her walk already more of a sashay as the serum did its work of turning her into a total sexpot.

All eyes now swung to me. Second choice, if there was one, always went to me — the developer of the serum, a king among men in the eyes of my friends and followers. I, however, couldn't keep my eyes off of Stella. "Her," I rasped, jerking my chin in her direction and realizing my throat was dry with anticipation. She just might be able to pull through. My eyes were still locked on Stella's and I couldn't tear them away.

My subordinates eyed me curiously but took the redhead and the brunette away, leaving me to step down from my dais and approach her. "Follow me." I offered her my hand — not an order, a request.

The athletic blonde hesitated, then took my hand. I felt the warmth of her skin and it made me flush uncharacteristically. I led her out of the council room, down the twisting turns of the concrete bunker to my personal suite of rooms. My companion was silent, and I knew it was the internal battle raging against the serum keeping all of her thoughts occupied.

I offered her a seat on my bed and sat across from her at my desk, our eyes meeting once again. I leaned forward. I wasn't sure how much longer her mind would hold out, and I felt like I needed to say something. Suddenly, I was no longer the man I always portrayed myself to be — strong, stoic, in control. I just wanted to open up to someone. Unfortunately, the only someone I seemed to want to open up to was staring across at me venomously from my atop my mattress.

"I..." I started, then stopped, staring at my hands. "I'm sorry."

Her brows were still furrowed with concentration when I looked back up, but was there a softening around her mouth and eyes?

"I never wanted any of this to happen," I told her. "The Sickness... Using my research for... the purposes I have. It all just kind of happened. The only way I could stay alive... "

Stella really did have lovely eyes, I realized as I gazed into them. They were a bright blue with specks of starlight. I devoured the rest of her body with my gaze — her long, lithe legs, her body firm from weeks on the run, the swell of her breasts... Then, suddenly, something snapped inside of me and I couldn't stay away any longer. I felt as though I were the one helpless to resist as I was swept up in a tidal wave of emotions I thought I had given up on years ago, when the Sickness had begun.

My mouth met hers like a lightning strike, an electric shock as physically jolting as a plunge into an icy river. My hands fumbled at her shirt as hers fumbled at my belt. I pulled her shirt over her head and the next moment my belt was thrown across the room with a clatter. Her fingers undid my zipper and slid beneath, reaching for my already aching hardness.

I stared into her eyes and registered the fact that she was still in control, her mind resisting the serum even as she pulled my length free and began to stroke me eagerly. "Take me," she murmured, the first time she'd spoken. Her voice was dripping with suppressed lust, sending a rush of heat through me.

I rolled her over onto her back, my fingers tweaking her nipples, hard as diamonds as they protruded through the thin cloth of her bra. Then, my hands were sliding down her sides, pulling her leggings off her hips and taking her panties with them.