Infection

Chapter Three

Diagnosis

Jarod made it to Marie's door. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

"Marie! It's me, Jarod. Can I come in?"

There was no answer. He listened and thought he heard someone crying. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Cracking it, he definitely heard crying. Jarod went in, closing the door behind him and found Marie dressed in some loose fitting sweat clothes, huddled on her recliner, crying. All thoughts of what had just happened faded from his mind.

"Marie, what happened?"

She looked up. "Jarod. Please, just go away. I can't fight it."

"Marie, what are you talking about? You can't fight what?"

"It's horrible, I'm horrible. I'm an evil slut!"

"Marie, please. Talk to me. Let me try to help."

"Can you fuck me five or six times a day, every day? Anything less than that won't do any good!"

Jarod looked at her in shock. He had never heard her swear like that, except for the one time in bed. Then the nature of what she said hit him.

"Marie, are you experiencing near constant arousal and strong attractions to everyone you meet?"

"How... How did you know?"

"It's happening to me too." In fact, Jarod noticed that his cock was getting hard again. It wasn't uncomfortable yet, but it was beginning.

"You think this is normal? Jarod, You not my first, not quite. This is not normal."

"No, I didn't think it was. I think it's far worse. Oh my God! Mrs. Sikes. She may be... Marie, who did you have sex with? It's important."

She started crying uncontrollably, shame overwhelming her. "Kevin... Sikes... I... practically... raped... him. I just couldn't fight the need, the burning need any more."

"I had the same thing happen with Mrs. Sikes. And every woman I've seen today has been so desirable."

Marie looked up, her eyes clearing a little. "The same with me and the guys. Every one seems to be a hunk that I've got to have sex with. Jarod, what's going on?"

"I'm not certain, but we've got to find out. We need to get back to the lab."

He walked forward to grab her hand and two things happened. First, they both noted a foul stench. Then, when he took her hand, they both felt an intense burning sensation where their hands touched.

"What the hell?"

"Jarod, that burned. Look!" She held her hand out, showing the red impression on her wrist where he grabbed her. Looking at his own hand, he saw that his palm had what looked like a first degree burn as well.

"This is bad, very bed. Do you smell that?"

"Yes, like three day old road kill. Back up for a moment."

Jarod did and the smell faded. "It gets stronger when we're close. This is too weird. How does it know? Why?"

"Jarod, you're scaring the woman you lost your virginity with. An explanation would be good about now." A tinge of panic was in her voice.

"The meteorite. It had a growth on it, remember?" She nodded, and he continued. "The growths were carriers of bacterial spores. Two different types. When they combined, they became a bacteria like life form, one that is definitely alien."

"So, what does that have to do with the two of us being compelled to have sex with total strangers?"

"I scraped my samples before we had sex. The spore clouds have a significant range. By last night, I may have been infected. We have to check our blood."

Marie looked stunned for a minute. Then, inexplicably, she began to laugh! It started as a chuckle and quickly passed through titter, chorkle and into full belly laugh. After a cople of minutes, she regained control. Jarod was staring at her, mouth open, confusion evident.

"What is so funny about an alien infection against which none of us has any resistance?"

"Don't you get it. I may be the first person in history to catch a sexually transmitted disease from a virgin. I didn't use a condom because I knew you'd be healthy. I'm sorry, that is just plain funny."

"Yeah, I can see how it might be laughable. But, seriously. We need to be sure, and if we are infected, we need to warn the Sikes. Mrs. Sikes use a condom, so she might be safe. Did you use one with Kevin?"

"No. I wasn't even thinking about it. It might be like normal STDs and is harder to transmit from female to male?"

"We can't count on it. We really need to get to the lab."

"How do we get there without attacking others on the way. You know how powerful the need is, you've felt it. Can we resist it that long?"

"We could satiate it just before we leave. I mean have sex."

"Red is not my color, at least not all over my skin. Plus, it hurts to touch you. Why is that?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense, almost like we are allergic to each other. I want to try an experiment. I'm going to touch your arm with one finger and see what happens when I maintain contact. Is that okay?"

"I guess. What are you trying to prove?"

"I want to see how bad the pain gets."

With that, he closed the distance between them, the stench getting noticeable again. He pressed his finger against her arm and they both felt the burning sensation. It intensified for several seconds and then just stayed constant. Redness had spread along Marie's arm about a quarter inch from where Jarod's finger was touching. He pulled his finger back and stepped back again.

Marie was looking extremely distracted. Her breath was short and she had trouble sitting still. Jarod noticed a wet stain on the chair where she was sitting that had spread to significant size. She had almost not reacted to the pain from the touch, the red mark from which, was already fading, no permanent damage having resulted.

"Marie, what's wrong?"

"God Jarod. It's getting really bad. I need sex, now, or I'll go nuts. I don't care how much it will hurt. I've just got to screw someone. I'll never last outside and in a short while, I'll go find someone."

Jarod went back up to her and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. She gasped as the air hit her upper body, brushing across nipples that were painfully erect. He grabbed her pants and pulled them off. Marie groaned, almost oblivious to her surroundings, aware only that there was a man here and the smell wasn't enough to keep her away from him. She tried to stand up to reach him, but was so shaky that she fell to her knees. From there, she undid his pants, pulling them down to his feet. Is cock, even though it had been less than an hour since he had fucked Jessica was already partially erect.

Marie growled from deep in her throat and spun Jarod around so she could topple him onto the recliner. He moaned at her touch, equal parts pain form the contact and arousal at the sight of her. She was so worked up that she dispensed with any thought of foreplay and, not even noticing the red, painful marks that she was receiving and causing, climbed up onto Jarod and slammed her body down onto his, impaling herself on his cock. They both cried out as waves of pleasure rolled over them. Curiously, there was no pain in their genitals.

Instinctively avoiding the pain that was there, though not always noticed, Marie did not bend towards Jarod to kiss him, nor did she fondle him anywhere. What she did do was ride his cock. She twisted her hips and thrust herself up and down. Her hyper-sensitive cunt was subject to even more sensations. The emptiness was filled, and her lips were thrust from aching tingling to stinging pain that was an intense pleasure.

Jarod, while not starting as overwhelmingly aroused as Marie, was responding with similar speed. His entire sense of touch seemed to be locked into his cock. Every twist Marie did sent an agonizing burning feeling through him, like he had just cum and every touch on his tip was sheer pain. He and Marie rocketed to their climax in a matter of minutes. She came first, her pussy clenching spasmodically around his cock, that added sensation pushing him over the edge, emptying a load of cum into her.

As they came down from their orgasms, the stench hit them, forcing them to move off of and away from each other. After Marie had moved five feet away, the odor faded. She collapsed onto a chair, gasping as she tried to recover from the oxygen shortage the intense activity had caused. Jarod, breathing just as heavily, looked at Marie, wishing that the sex had been because they wanted it, not because they needed it.

"Marie, are you okay?"

"No. Jarod, I wanted it to be because we liked, maybe eventually loved, each other. Not because there is something making our bodies addicted to sex."

She looked to be on the verge of tears.

"Marie, the fist time, it was because we wanted it. That will never change."

"But, you were already..."

"I know, I was already infected, if we actually are. But, I'm pretty sure that, while it made me horny, it didn't make me want you. That was me. It just opened my eyes."

"Jarod, you're so sweet and kind. That's why I've wanted you for so long. We need to go. I'm not horny now, but I will be soon. I don't want to be near anyone else when it becomes uncontrollable. Do you mind going without cleaning up?"

"No, not at all. If we shower, we might not have time to get alone again."

They dressed again and left for the environmental lab. In the car, they both had to deal with the stench that seemed to arise every time they got within five feet of one another.

"Jarod, why the stench? Why make us horny as hell and then make us not want to get close? I mean, that seems to be why we hurt when we touch too."

"I don't know. I'm not even sure they are related. We need to learn more about it."

At the lab, Jarod prepared two slides with their blood, one from each of them. Looking at the samples, fully aware of his inexperience at this kind of investigation, he crossed his fingers (knowledge does not supercede superstition). There in the viewer was not what he feared, but not what he hoped either. There was a bacteria there, but it wasn't the same bacteria that he saw from the spores. There were similarities, but significant differences as well.

"Marie, how much do you know about biology, especially one celled biology?"

"Not a lot I'm afraid. Just the basics from high school biology."

"Take a look at these. What's wrong with them?"

Marie looked at the microscope, ignoring the increasing arousal and horniness for now. As she looked at the cells, her memory, honed by years of navigating mazes in Dungeons and Dragons games, began to return. She could spot the nucleus of the cell, the cell membrane and the cytoplasm. There should have been some other features, but they were missing, and there were some that should not have been there.

"This is definitely not normal. I can't remember the names, but several parts of the cell are missing. There are also some that don't seem to belong there. No idea what they do. This is in our blood?"

"Yes. I have another idea. Can you put some of your vaginal secretions on this slide?"

Marie could not help herself, she blushed, horribly. Yet, she knew what Jarod was getting at. If this was sexually transmitted, it would be there.

"You'll need to check your semen too."

"I know. It will take a little more work for me."

Fortunately, Jarod was already horny again and it was easy to produce more semen to put on a slide. As they examined the two slides, they found even more bacteria in these samples than in the blood. Furthermore, the bacteria was more clumped, almost in little packages. While he was looking at them, Marie was looking at the blood slides again.

"Jarod, look at this. They're dying."

"Dying? Why would they be dying?"

He looked at the blood slides again and saw that she was more than right. The bacteria was not just dying, they were deteriorating fast. In a matter of minutes, the alien life form was dying.

"It's like they have no ability to survive outside our body. That would mean that they can only be spread by direct body fluid transfer. Let's try saliva."

They prepared slides of their saliva. They saw that there was almost no bacteria in their mouths and what was there was dying already.

"What have we got?" Jarod asked rhetorically. "An alien bacteria that can't survive outside the body."

"It's concentrated in sexual fluids."

"We're infected and are suffering from incredibly strong sexual urges."

"Yet, our presence to each other is rank on the noses and physically painful with touch."

"You know Marie, it almost sounds like this bacteria is actively trying to keep us apart. But, it should want to spread, if it was intelligent. God! Listen to me. Smart bacteria. That's science fiction."

"Jarod. Science fiction can predict. Travel to the moon. Computers. Why not an intelligent bacteria? It does explain things. An intelligent bacteria would not want to spread to somewhere it already was. It would want to discourage two infected hosts from wasting resources."

"Possibly. But, this bacteria is not what the spores produced. Here, I'll show you."

Jarod created more spores and combined them on a slide to create the bacteria.

"See, this is different."

"Mutation?"

"It's not reproducing fast enough to produce a good mutation rate. Remember, most mutations are fatal. To produce a useful mutation, they would need to reproduce at hundreds of times this rate."

"It's a mystery. One thing is nice, it's made you healthier."

"Huh."

"You haven't had to use your inhaler for a few days. Haven't you noticed?"

"Inhaler..." Jarod was caught up in a memory. He remembered using his inhaler shortly after taking the growth samples. "Inhaler! Marie, you're a genius."

He took his inhaler and sprayed a burst on the spore produced bacteria and lookoed at it again under the microscope. The bacteria were reproducing at an accelerated rate.

"That's it. I was infected with the original, had an asthma attack, used my inhaler and something in the medicine jump started their growth. The enhanced growth led to faster mutations, resulting in a stable, beneficial mutation. Now the question is, what do we do?"

"Jarod, this is a disease that makes you crave sex and be repulsed by anyone you've had sex with once before. And we've potentially infected the town slut and a teenager. I can't think of two people better suited to spread this thing."

Several miles away, one of the two was doing just that. Kevin Sikes had been infected shortly before 7 PM. BY 8, he was at work at the Gas-n-Go store. The bacteria took no note of his activities, but spread throughout his body with maddening efficiency, their responses already programmed by the experience of having taken over Marie's systems. He was fully infected by 11Pm and started feeling the increase of arousal and desire in short order. If there was any group of people on the planet who would not notice the increase in sexual tension in their own bodies, it was teenage boys. Kevin simply chalked it up to the memory of Marie coming onto him so strongly.

As luck (the bad kind, that is) would have it, his girlfriend, 19 year old Shelly Whinsy, picked him up after work at midnight. They were already planning to go to her apartment for sex. Shelly had not even put the car into gear when Kevin reached over and began to stroke her upper thigh, edging near the unclad pussy that was barely covered by her short skirt.

"Kevin! You keep that up, you'll make me have an accident."

"I've been hard as a rock for over an hour and I can't stop thinking about the most beautiful girl in the world."

"Flattery will get you far, hot stuff. Seriously, though, it's hard to concentrate with you stoking me up like this. We've got all night. Now back that hand off. You can wait for fifteen minutes."

Kevin didn't pull his hand back, but he did ease it a ways from her cunt, letting her drive. They arrived at her house in the promised time frame. Shelly rented an upstairs flat from the Robinsons, an older couple that owned the house itself. She found the three rooms (not counting a small bathroom with only a shower) quite enough for her needs right now. Most important to her was that the Robinsons went to sleep early and could not be woken up by anything short of a thermonuclear device, or so it seemed. Perfect for fucking boyfriends.

Kevin was feeling a level of desperation he had never experienced before, well except for that one week when both hands had been bandaged from burns (gauze chafes!). They had just made it to the bottom of the stairs leading to her loft when Kevin pulled her to him and kissed her with a wet, sloppy kiss, his hands groping at her ass, pulling her up against his cock.

"My, you are in a bad way. I've never felt you that hard before." She reached her own hand down, feeling the steel rigidity of him. She squeezed a little and was rewarded by a groan from Kevin. While she has never been a fan of his kissing technique, she loved the attention he paid to her ass. As he kneaded her cheeks, she started breathing heavily and felt little traces of moisture beginning to form between her lags.

"Fuck, Shelly, it's almost painful. Can I get a blow tonight? I just know I'll be up for more soon."

Shelly made a, "Mmmmm," noise as she enjoyed the attention he was giving her. She just knew he was good for two, if not more, sets tonight, and, if he came soon, he'd take more time with her. "Sure, tiger. But we'll need to get upstairs. And remember, not in the mouth."

"I know, I know. I'll tell you in time."

They unclenched enough to stagger up the stairs to her rooms. Inside, they made tracks for her bed, a king size that left only two feet of clearance with the wall on two sides. It's a good thing that all she ever did in the room is sleep and fuck. She backed into the room and sat herself on the bed so she could reach his crotch easily. Undoing his pants, she let them drop and took his cock in her hands, stroking it to milk the precum from it, wiping it on the side of the sheet.

Cleared of the fluid she didn't like very much, she took a lick at the underside, watching his cock jerk at the sensation. She loved watching that, seeing the effect she could have on him. Kevin, groaning, fell back against the wall, thrusting his hips towards Shelly. She licked at it again, holding with one hand while the other fumbled with the buttons of her shirt. As she got the last button opened, letting her breasts peek out, barely contained in a half cup bra, she sank her mouth over his shaft. She used her mouth like a pussy, gripping his cock with warm moist lips, while she pulled her shirt and bra all the way off.

Kevin began to instinctively hump against her face, responding to the fire-like feelings coming from his cock. Little spasms were beginning to shake his body as he soared higher in arousal than he ever had before. He felt the swell start and barely got out, "Fuck! Fast! Cum!" before he jerked and exploded.

Shelly just got him out of her mouth and pointed down a little when the first jets of milky white semen splattered against her chest and neck. She had never seen him cum so hard and in such quantity before. Her stroked him through five full pulses of cum and was able to milk several more smaller amounts before he stopped producing. As Kevin sank back against the wall, Shelly rubbed the slick fluid over her chest and belly. She loved the way it felt, sliding over her skin, pulling at her skin like a tease as it dried slowly.

Her chest was cooling as the liquid portion of the mess on her dried. She reached up and pulled Kevin onto the bed next to her, entangling his head and arms in his shirt as she pulled it off over his head. As the t-shirt finally popped over his head, she smiled at the feel of his not fully flaccid cock against her leg. They grasped each other again, their mouths returning to one another. Kevin's hand slid down her side, catching her skirt and pulling it down to her knees. On it's way back up, it brushed against her pussy, dampening itself in her juices. He was rewarded by a long, deep moan.