Chapter Seven
Resolution
By four in the afternoon Harold was feeling incredibly horny again. At first, he had been thrilled by his new found sexual stamina. Now, however, it was becoming a little tiring. Even in his younger days, he had never had this much raw need for sex. His cock was rigid again, a mere four hours after fucking Becky. And that was a mere seven hours after his night with Liz. He was just concluding that he needed to close down and hit the bars again when a customer pulled in.
Shelly had just been turned away by the National guard. She was pissed and aching with arousal. Her cousin was going to be so unhappy. She still had his Xbox and now she couldn't return it. She parked at the pump and stomped to the ladies' room. She found it locked and went to the counter to ask Harold for the key. The stench hit her like a blast furnace.
Her nose wrinkling in disgust, she gasped, "Oh my God! You too?"
Harold, noticing the stink himself for the first time, gagged. "Damn, Shelly. What the hell did you go walking through?"
"Harold!" Everyone in Humbol knew Harold. "You've been infected. My God, this is spreading out of control."
"Infected, what do you mean, infected? With what? And how in the hell would you know?"
"The smell. Everyone who's infected stinks to other infected people. It's some new type of STD."
"I've got the clap? Fucking hell! Wait a minute. Diseases don't make people stink. What kind of shit you trying to pull, young lady?"
"No, really. It's some sort of weird new disease from space... "
"Space? Girl, I watch the Discovery Channel. Diseases don't come from space."
"Forget it, just forget it. Can I have the bathroom key please?"
"Here," he said, handing it over.
She went into the bathroom and leaned against the door. She dropped her pants and stroked her clit. It was already sticking out form under its hood and coated with her own juice. The first touch of her fingers caused her to cry out loud. The blast of pleasure was so intense that her knees buckled and she had to grab the sink with one hand to keep from falling. She continued stroking herself, angling so that she was stroking her entire cunt from clit to lowest fold. Biting her lip, she increased speed and pressure until she exploded in a massive orgasm that had her wailing at the top of her lungs.
When she opened her eyes again, she found that she was halfway down to sitting on the floor, her knees splayed wide. Pulling herself up, she pulled her pants back up and washed her hand off. Shelly tried to wash off below, though she figured that washing her pussy was pointless, since she would be soaked again in a matter of hours. She went back inside and gave Harold the key.
"Enjoy yourself?" Harold asked with a leer.
"Oh yes, very. Another thing about this disease, it makes you have to have sex every 6 to 8 hours. When's the last time you got some Harold?" When his mouth dropped open, she smiled with not a little sadism. "Better go whack off big guy. Wouldn't want to dose anyone else now, would we?" She reached over and patted his arm as she said it, the look of pain, shock and fear on his face worth the pain of touching him.
While Shelly wasn't the genius that Jarod and Marie were, she could put two and two together. If the National Guard was cutting off the town and there was some new disease running loose, the health department would be involved. "Maybe they have some treatment," she thought to herself. She drove around town, slowly, looking for anything that looked like some sort of makeshift health center. There was no county health office in Humbol, just an urgent care center. After about half an hour, she spotted several tents behind the Envirolabs building. "This looks promising," she said to herself. Parking, she went around to the back.
Justin's team had not been idle these last few hours. Knowing that the infected stank to each other, they reasoned that there must be some sort of airborne component that was detectable to olfactory senses. If they could program an electronic nose (first developed by perfume companies) to recognize that scent, they could detect the infected at short range. Given the range of detection seemed to be five feet, and that physical contact also produced a reaction, they took skin swabs of the three victims they had so far and looked for similarities.
The obvious one was the presence of dead bacterial remains on the skin. Air samples from near Kevin confirmed that they were sloughed off much like dead skin cells. They had just programmed a sniffer to recognize that material when Shelly was brought to the main tent by a guardsman.
"Doctor, this lady says she is infected with some kind of disease."
Justin looked up in surprise. "You've been infected? Why did you come here?"
Shelly, looking nervously at the armed man who had stopped her and then escorted her back here, replied, "Uh, Kevin Sikes said he got some alien space bug from Marie and he passed it on to me. The symptoms match what he said they would be. It's so weird that I figure if the town has been shut off, the health department must be looking into it. I was hoping you had a treatment."
"What symptoms have you been experiencing?" Justin wanted to make sure she had the disease in question.
"Uh, this is embarrassing. I get horny a lot and need sex. Some people stink. Kevin said it was other infected people. And it hurts to touch the ones who stink."
"Well, I can confirm that you seem to have the disease."
"Do you have a cure or treatment?"
"I'm afraid not. We have only been here a few hours. Private, could you move away from her please? I want to see if this thing's going to work."
"What's that?" Shelly asked with trepidation.
"It's an electronic nose. It can smell and recognize odors. We're hoping it can detect the same odor that you smell when you are near another infected."
"Oh. So you can find all of us."
"Right. Now, just hold still for a second."
Justin moved close to her slowly and at four feet, the thing went off. He backed up and it went quiet.
"Can you walk past me, that way?" he inquired, pointing.
"Sure." Shelly walked past him, never coming closer than 2 feet away. At seven feet, the thing went off again. "Why is it going off so far away. I have to be within five feet."
"It's supposed to be more sensitive than the human nose, even more sensitive than a bloodhound's, though I suspect it isn't." He was only partly talking to Shelly. He was turning to his assistants. "Have a dozen of these flown in right away. We should be able to find all the infected and isolate them within 24 hours."
"I can help you there." interrupted Shelley
Turning to her, Justin asked, "What do you mean?"
"Well, I know six other people who are infected."
"Good. Who are they?"
"Well, there's Jarod, Marie, Kevin, Kevin's mom, Brent and Harold."
"Good, we know of four of those and have three of them."
Justin got the rest of the information about Brent and Harold, then had the soldier and a nurse take Shelly to the isolation tent. The sight that greeted her made her step back and gasp in horror. Jarod and Marie were unconscious, their arms and feet in restraints. Kevin was a worse sight. He was restrained as well, but he was awake and struggling. His cock was visibly erect. He was moaning. A moaning that Shelly recognized as sexual need.
"What in the hell is happening here?" she screamed.
"Calm down. No one is dead, or dying. This seems to be the normal progression of the disease."
"This is normal? Agony and unconsciousness? Aren't you trying to find a cure?"
"We are doing what we can. We've only known about this for a day. It takes time. At least no one is dying from it."
'But, this," she said, pointing at the three people on the tables, "this is horrible."
"I've seen worse. Really. As diseases go, this is not that bad. Jarod and Marie are in no pain and we will give Kevin relief before he comes to any permanent harm. We can't treat what we don't understand. So we have to, unfortunately, observe the progression in someone who is sick."
"That's so sick. How long are you going to make him suffer?"