“Shit!” Vivian’s bloody hand slipped for the third time on the platform edge. Not her blood, thankfully. Micky’s. She glanced back at the swaying figures in the gloom. “Double shit!”

She tried again with a run-up, bruising her ribs but succeeding in heaving herself into the abandoned Tube station. Ignoring the stabbing pain developing in her side, she rolled to her feet, thankful she had kept her boots on rather than crotchless fishnet tights alone. Not daring to look back again, she sprinted for the stairs, climbing them three at a time and swinging herself round the corner at the top, stumbling as she arrived at the old storage room her off-grid friend, Sebastian, had been using as a base.

The door hung ajar, the thick Scottish accent of a century-old punk record yelling about a “barmy army”, but no living voices. Cautiously, she looked inside. No sign of her two friends, but to her relief, the next room remained shut. Beside it, Seb’s gear had been knocked off the table, and small yellow discs of B182 lay scattered, some crushed underfoot. Taking Micky’s black trench coat to cover herself, she followed the footprints of the powdered drug to the stairs leading to the street.

Accelerating on hearing voices ahead, she slowed when she realised they did not belong to her friends and stopped at a bend in the stairs, watching the shadows on the wall. Felyx’s cat ears identified their silhouette, and Sebastian’s distinctive beard gave him away, but there was also no mistaking the three armed police.

“What are you two perverts doing down here, eh?” One of the cops kicked the backs of her friends’ legs, making them kneel. “The whole Tube has been off-limits since the Outbreak, no excuses.”

“Sarge!” a different cop called before either could answer. “This freak doesn’t have an Interface!”

“Seriously? Let’s fix that. If you’re not Connected, you don’t exist.”

Vivian stifled her scream as the gunshot rang out and Seb’s silhouette collapsed. Using Felyx’s anguished cries as cover, she escaped back the way she had come and hoped the second shot was a coup de grace, not another execution.

“Fuck!” she whispered, back at the hideout. Then groans echoed from the direction of the platform. “Double fuck!”

With nowhere else to go, she shut the steel door, locked it, and threw all three bolts, trying to calm her rising panic.

“What was your escape plan? You always have an escape plan. That’s how you’ve survived.”

Only he hadn’t, this time.

She scanned the room. The record player, just crackling now that the album had finished. The empty beer bottles. The mattress with drying patches of come on the rumpled sheets. And the little yellow discs on the floor.

“No.”

She stared from them to the door opposite and swallowed. That room had no exit, either.

“Your plan sucks, Seb.”

~oOo~

28 hours earlier

The free half of Vivian’s brain skipped from hidden chatroom to hidden chatroom, scanning them for some clue of Eve’s existence. So much time had elapsed since that fateful night that she knew the search was futile, but it had become an addiction.

Green flashed to indicate a new message, interrupting her downward spiral of despair.

She switched the controllable part of her consciousness back to the physical world to observe the Hub Facilitator through half-closed eyelids. Middle-aged and male, unsurprisingly, but so far not as attentive as others, and he’d yet to clock that her modded Interface supplied less than half her true brain capacity to the Mindchain. Technically, that in itself wasn’t illegal — like all free citizens, she could choose how much she sold to the Network, but the Network itself took a dim view of withholding, and an even dimmer one of piggybacking on your Hub connection for personal use.

Slowly, to avoid triggering any alarms with sudden spikes of unauthorised brain activity, she assessed her fellow “independent contractors”. From the looks of things, this dingy, rundown backstreet Hub was a last resort for the desperate. No one else here was a Modder, just those unable to afford an upgrade to their Interface and so condemned to places like this rather than the sanitised places uptown. No flashily dressed crypto-bros either, though. Vivian would take a bit of mould over listening to another prick bragging about how he’d set up a biocrypto-mine in his pancreas any day.

At least no one here was delusional. The truth was, if your family didn’t own the right shares in 2045, you were damned, even before the Outbreak. Total automation rendered labour-time worthless, leaving most with no option but to hire out the one thing silicon had yet to improve upon — organic brain power. The Horde laying siege to the surviving cities ensured that that remained a rare commodity.

Convinced the Facilitator had no interest in her, she passed the key to decrypt the message. It was from Felyx.

S is back. 

Sebastian. The mad bastard had never had an Interface fitted. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, he regularly left the oppressive safety of London on lengthy expeditions. His return would be the most exciting event of the year.

Where?

Near Brick Lane. Meet tomorrow at 1700.

Brick Lane lay right near the Perimeter. Although not technically illegal to be there, it would be suspicious. She’d have to fake a malfunctioning Interface and fry her connection here to cover disconnecting for that long and avoid being tracked. At this rate, she would run out of Hubs that would have her.

Better be worth it. Who else is coming?

Micky. There’s only us and Micky left, Viv.

It took her a moment of staring blankly into space to prevent the shock of that statement from alerting the Facilitator.

I’ll be there.

~oOo~

Neolager tasted like crap — algae-derived, like all food and beverages, since all complex plant life including hops had died out decades ago — but it was cold and alcoholic, so Vivian drank and leaned back, relaxing for the first time in months. Her gaze wandered aimlessly over the gig posters that covered the wall and ceiling of Seb’s underground hideout, dating from as far back as a century ago to just after the Punk Ban. A lump rose in her throat when she saw one for Eve’s final gig.

Dragging her eyes away, the sight of Felyx sitting on their host’s lap comforted her. The latter scratched between the two cat ears Felyx had styled from their pastel pink and baby blue striped hair, the rest having all been shaved off except for their sweeping fringe — just like old times. Even at gigs, they had stood out with their androgynous feline look, so disappearing into bland conformity had been harder on them than most.

Instinctively, she ran her fingers over the bare skin of her scalp between the five ridges of bright red spikes converging in a long ponytail at the back. She glanced over at Micky, the topless one-man mosh pit in the corner with colour-changing luminous Mohican to match the glowing tattoos he’d hidden for two years. That hour the three of them had spent transforming back from respectable citizens into their true selves had been worth it, no matter how tricky reverting would be.

She stretched in a gesture almost as feline as her friend, humming contentedly as her pierced nipples moved braless and free under her tattered but beloved War On Women sleeveless t-shirt, passed down from her grandma.

The song finished and the dancer crashed down on the mattress beside her, breathless.

“You getting old, Micky?” she said, passing him a fresh beer.

“Not compared to this music,” he said, taking a grateful swig. “Don’t you have anything more recent, Seb? My grandad would have called this dad rock.”

“Nope,” the bearded host gently disengaged himself from his pet, who reluctantly slipped off his lap to allow him to stand. He walked to the turntable and selected a new record as he spoke. “The Ban erased all digital copies of punk. Any old CDs I’ve come across are too scratched, and good luck finding a cassette not warped by the heat. Luckily, I unearthed this stash of vinyl in my family home — great-great-grand aunt Kath was a punk. Anyway, has anything from the last hundred years topped this?” The ferocious opening riff of Stiff Little Fingers’ debut silenced complaints for a few minutes as uncontrollable grins possessed all four of their faces.

“This is making me horny,” Felyx said, pawing at Sebastian’s leg. The latter stroked their cheek and crouched down, planting a kiss on their painted cat nose.

“That’s sweet, Kitty, but the past year hasn’t changed the previous thirty-five.”

Felyx nodded reluctantly and slunk over to the mattress, batting their eyelashes at Micky and pouting. The subject of his silent pleading laughed and, hooking a thick forefinger through the loop on his collar, yanked them to him, his stubble grazing the cat’s lips. Vivian sighed, recalling the whisker implants they used to sport, banned along with punk at the beginning of the Outbreak when anything and everything got blamed for the swelling Horde.

They could still put in their tail in private, though. As Felyx rolled their slim body sensuously against the larger man’s sweaty, muscular chest, she couldn’t help reaching over to pat it, following the silky synthetic fur all the way to the hole in their pink cut-off shorts where it joined the butt plug. Her hand drifted down over the cotton encasing pert buttocks to the blue fishnets crisscrossing their smooth, light brown legs and on down to their feet. Gliding her fingers back up to Felyx’s thighs made them writhe in a sensual movement that melted the ice enclosing Vivian’s libido. They broke away from Micky, digging their long, pink-varnished nails into his pecs as they twisted to look at her with almond eyes.

“It’s been a while, Viv.”

“Seven months. I know, sorry. I felt bad for bailing on you both that night.”

“Why did you?”

“It was Eve’s thirtieth birthday. And I’d forgotten until halfway out the door. I couldn’t— I had to be alone.”

Felyx saved her from falling down that spiral again by covering her mouth with theirs. Once the surprise wore off, she kissed back, pushing her tongue in urgently to find the comforting familiarity of their bar piercing. She pulled herself onto her knees using their tank top and their partner’s broad shoulder as handles, pressing her body into both but keeping her lips locked to Felyx’s, only breaking away when a rough hand slid in the side slit of her top to squeeze her breast.

“Dirty bastard,” she said to Micky.

“Don’t lie and say you don’t like it.”

“I only lie to cops,” she replied, grinning before pressing her lips to his. The kiss, as always between them, was all lust and no tenderness, so she felt no guilt in cutting it short to turn back to Felyx.

With the catpunk grinding against the bulge in the crotch of his jeans, Micky was content to let the pair tongue-wrestle while he groped Felyx’s arse and Vivian’s tits. To liven things up, he grasped the root of the tail tickling his knuckles and rotated it so that the bulb inside rolled against his bedmate’s prostate. Satisfied with the moans this generated, his fingers located the chain linking Vivian’s nipple rings and pulled just hard enough to make her look his way. Leaving his shoulder, her hand headed under her plaid mini-skirt, giving him a glimpse of hairy, pantyless pussy, so he pulled again, building a rhythm syncopated with the movement of his other hand.

“Take your tops off,” he growled, pushing them apart.

Felyx obeyed immediately, purring when Micky ran his fingers over their toned, flat chest, but Vivian hesitated. Sebastian sat in his armchair, sipping herbal tea and watching her, bemused.

“Do you want us to go next door, Seb? I know this isn’t your thing.”

“No, stay now you’ve started. I might not have any interest in participating, but I can still appreciate the show, just as I never had any desire to pick up an instrument or throw myself into the circle pit but attended every punk gig I could. I’ll enjoy you enjoying yourselves and keep the music going.”

Reassured that they were not imposing on their asexual host, she turned back to her other two friends, locked together at the mouth once again. She decided she’d better catch up, so she pulled off her skirt as well as her top. When they continued to ignore her, she stepped closer, planting her fishnet-clad legs apart and tracing around the hole torn from the crotch. Even that failed to get their attention, so she grabbed Felyx’s collar and Micky’s Mohican.

“Hey, what does a girl have to do to get her cunt eaten around here?”

“You could say, ‘Please,’” Micky suggested, seizing her wrists. Though she struggled, she was no match for him, and he pulled her off balance, controlling her fall so that she ended up with her hands planted on the wall above him, his palms slapping into her buttocks, and his breath on her labia. “But, since you’re my friend—”

His sentence ended with his tongue plunging into her needy sex with the same lack of finesse as his kisses, but she moaned anyway. Unseen by her, Felyx’s lips followed the tattooed trails on Micky’s torso to his nipples, licking and sucking at first and then biting — hard. He jerked into her, scratching her clit with his stubble and making her hiss but not pull away. Releasing one of her cheeks, he clamped the pink and blue catpunk to his chest, slurping and lapping more urgently with the pain until her legs shook and months of denial flooded out of her onto his face and filled the room with her cries.

As her climax faded, she tried to step away, but Micky seized her with both hands again. She looked down, ready to demand he release her, but reconsidered when she saw the wordless dare in his eyes. Between ragged breaths, she nodded, whimpering as he resumed aggressively lapping at her hypersensitive pussy.

Freed from Micky’s grip, Felyx licked up the trails of liquid that had run down his lover’s neck to their source. Vivian gasped as their nose tip pressed against her star and their tongue slithered inside her, swirling far more languidly than Micky’s furious thrusting. A second pair of hands held her thighs, trapping her completely. Her mind gradually disintegrated until the searing guitars disappeared, and there was only the tongue fucking her cunt and the tongue sliding inexorably over her perineum to circle her puckered hole until her knees began to tremble again.

Whether by prior arrangement, secret signal, or telepathy, she didn’t know, but Micky suddenly switched to sucking on her engorged clit the moment that his partner penetrated her arse, and she lost it, coming even harder than before. So hard, she blacked out, returning to full consciousness wrapped in Felyx’s arms.

“You’re back?” they asked, stroking her cheek. The power of speech failing her, she nodded and pulled them in for a soft kiss.

The sounds of a belt unbuckling, fly unzipping, and, finally, jeans hitting the bed interrupted the tender moment.

“If Viv’s safely back on planet Earth,” Micky said, “the rest of us have needs, too. Well, except Seb over there.”

Had she not seen his enhanced cock before, Vivian might have baulked at the spectacle of those rotating subcutaneous rings of balls on his thick shaft. Instead, she grinned at the fond memories they triggered while Felyx scrambled to wrap their tongue around the tip.

Still shaking off her post-orgasmic haze, Vivian looked at Seb, who waved the cover of a record at her. She shook her head. Something told her an album called Penis Envy would not suit an orgy. He shrugged and held up an alternative. This one made her giggle, so Love Bites by Buzzcocks blasted out as the soundtrack for round two, and she knelt up to join in.

~oOo~

The final track of the album finished, and the three fucked-out punks collapsed on the bed. Micky fumbled weakly to switch off the spinning ridges of his cock, groaning as the sensations squeezed the last drops of come from him. His main load leaked from both Felyx’s and Vivian’s twitching arseholes where he had just deposited it. In the latter case, the catpunk’s jizz also oozed from her quivering cunt to chase the trickle between her buttocks. It tickled, but she was too exhausted to do anything but stare at the ceiling.

“Beautiful!” Seb gave them a standing ovation. “That was wonderful to behold.”

“Shut up and get me beer,” Vivian managed to gasp.

Three hisses of escaping gas woke them from their stupor when their host returned and passed them each a cold bottle.

“Seriously, that was epic. And Micky, your cock! The only one I’ve seen more impressive was Colin’s ‘Sex Pistol’.”

“That mad bastard!” Micky grinned smugly. “An M134 Minigun for a prosthetic dick! What a way to go! How long ago was that, anyway?”

“Two years, four months, exactly.” Vivian downed her drink, her expression impassive. “A lot of punks died that day who weren’t so willing. Or as high. I’d never let Eve play with him if I’d known he was into 182. I hate that shit. But whatever. He didn’t shoot her. A cop did, right in the thigh, just as we reached the exit. I couldn’t even say goodbye.”

Sebastian cleared his throat to break the uneasy silence.

“Want to see what I’ve brought back this time?”

“Sure.” Vivian jumped up with brittle brightness. “Find the cause of the Outbreak?”

“Does it matter?” he asked in return, leading them across the room. “Knowing won’t help avoid inevitable extinction. I found something that gives us a choice, though, then the time comes.”

“Cyanide capsules?” she asked sarcastically.

“Nope.” He opened a black box, revealing rows of small, pale-yellow discs. Vivian recoiled.

“You have got to be joking! B one-eight-fucking-two?”

“Hey, I don’t even drink caffeine. You think I’d touch this stuff for fun? But I’ve read research papers, watched hundreds of videos. And then I tried it in the field. 182 hides you from them!”

“From who?” Micky was not the fastest thinker.

“The Horde.”

“Bullshit!” Vivian crossed her arms.

“It’s true! The lab I found that in was surrounded. Absolutely no way out — they could smell my blood a hundred metres away. I swallowed one dose — just one! — and as long as I remained at arm’s length, they barely looked at me.”

“So how come our scene got hit so hard at the beginning? The bastards flooded us with it. According to you, we should have been immune, not the public face of the Horde.”

“Probably adulterated crap, but it did work a bit. Now, I haven’t tested this yet, but from the footage, I believe it. Although B182 makes you less attractive to them, if you’re too close, you’re still alive enough to be worth a bite — but only one or two.”

“Isn’t that all it takes?” Felyx asked.

“To be infected, yes. But they don’t try to eat your brain!”

“Oh great!” Vivian couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “So, the ‘choice’ you’re offering is between being eaten by zombies or becoming zombies?”

“Isn’t that better than death or death?”

“But it is death!”

“Hold that thought.” With a smug grin, he pulled out a key and unlocked the next room. “I have something else to show you. Especially you, Viv.”

They filed in behind him and then flattened themselves against the wall, swearing, when they saw the room’s occupant. Regarding them with hungry, bloodshot eyes sat a naked female of the Horde, tied to a chair but straining to escape. Micky and Felyx took several moments to process the dark brown skin and snake tattoo running from her right calf to her left breast, but despite the muzzle hiding her face and new scars marring her body, Vivian recognised her instantly.

Eve.

After the shock wore off, she tore her gaze from her undead lover to stare at Seb, who smiled expectantly. She slapped him and ran out.

~oOo~

The stench of piss was strong where Sebastian’s temporary lights ended. Vivian didn’t care. Behind her, boots crunched on the rubble where tracks used to lie, but she continued staring into the pitch black ahead.

“For a smart bloke, Seb can be an idiot,” Micky said.

“A total psycho, you mean.” She kicked a rock into the darkness. “Showing me my dead girlfriend like he’s doing me a favour!”

“Like I said, idiot. He should have explained first: she’s still alive.”

“What?” She rounded on him.

“That’s what he said after you left. She’s sedated and, with us there, is all, ‘Brains! Brains!’ But her heart is still beating — super slow, but beating, and he claims if he’s on 182 and hangs back, she recognises him. That’s why he brought her back.”

“Oh.” She turned away. Anger still raged inside her but without a target. It rang true. Seb did that sort of thing, the daft, lovable prick. Not knowing what else to do, she screamed into the void.

“Did that help?”

“Not much.”

“You could try punching me; Felyx finds that relaxing.”

“Never found violence satisfying.” Spinning on her heel, she looked him up and down. He was still naked except for his boots, and she raised an eyebrow at his lower half. “You’re keen, though.”

“Huh?” He followed her gaze to his rigid member. “No, that’s just this stupid cock-mod. They messed up somehow, so I only get about half an hour before it’s like this again. Docs say it will shorten my life by twenty years. That used to piss me off, but I don’t reckon it’s such a bad deal anymore.”

“Live hard, die young. I’ll put it on your tombstone.” Vivian bit her lip. “Might be what I need right now.”

“What?”

She grabbed his cock, the bumps digging into her palm. “Fuck me.”

“Here?”

“Right here. Raw and nasty. No slow, gentle lovemaking like before. You’re far too manly for my tastes for that.”

“And you’re too girly for me. You’re sure?”

“Yes. Fuck the rage out of me while it’s still hot.”

He grasped her ponytail, the lights of his Mohican and tatts reflecting in her pupils. “Once I start, it’s almost impossible to stop until I come. Reckon you can take that?”

“Double-dare ya.”

She yelped as he spun her around by her hair and shoved her forward, her nipple rings clinking when they connected with the tunnel wall. After running an exploratory finger through her slick pussy lips to check she was ready, he unceremoniously shoved his hardness in. Buried deep inside her, he raised the speed of his spinning beads to maximum, relishing how her heavy breathing became a whimper and her cunt spasmed around his length.

Then he began pounding her. Their grunts, yells, and slapping flesh echoed back at them until the force of their fucking sent them tumbling to the uneven floor.

“Get back in me, you bastard,” Vivian gasped, barely noticing her grazed knees over the absence of dick.

After a couple of misses, the undulating bumps on his shaft sliding over her clit driving her wilder, he hit his target, and a climax ripped through her. Ignoring her, he kept thrusting, bringing on another and another, until, with a roar, he erupted and released her. She flopped forward onto the cool gravel, vaguely conscious of the warm slime joining the dried come from earlier that matted her pubes.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. “I needed— What the fuck, are you peeing on me?”

She rolled away from the spray of hot liquid and then scrambled back, covering her mouth. It wasn’t urine. It was blood from Micky’s neck, pierced by the zombie who held him. Paralysed with fear, she met her friend’s eyes.

“Run,” he gurgled, more blood than sound coming out.

She ran.

~oOo~

Now

Still grimacing at the powdery texture of B182 on her tongue, Vivian locked and bolted the second door. Beyond, the cops’ shouts outside the first door came through muffled. Refusing to face the centre of the room, she reached for the light switch and searched for somewhere to connect the antique equipment she’d dragged in. That done, she flicked through the handful of records she’d carried in.

“X-Ray Spex,” she read, dropping the rest. “I wish I had some now. Side A can wait until my next life, though.”

The rasp of saxophone, drums, and piercing female vocals filled the small space. Taking a deep breath, she turned.

“Hello, Eve.”

The bound woman before her watched her calmly as she circled, not struggling in mindless hunger as before. Vivian took her time, letting the tingling sensation of the drug course through her and enhance her senses. The snake tattoo stood out and writhed on her lover’s black skin until she blinked. Bullet wounds peppering her torso glowed briefly and then faded. The music vibrated right into her bones. And she was suddenly, very, very horny.

“Okay, I think I get 182 now,” she admitted, shrugging off Micky’s coat. “It helps you to not give a fuck. Just fuck.”

Throwing her arms around Eve’s neck, she sat on her lap. The zombie didn’t flinch. Their eyes met, Vivian leaning closer until her forehead pressed against Eve’s.

“Is it really you in there?”

One hand slid down to press between dark breasts, thumb absently tracing the ridge of a bullet wound as she waited. Then it came. A heartbeat. Ten seconds elapsed before she felt another.

After that, the texture of Eve’s cool skin entranced her too much to count them, and she began exploring her body, at once familiar and alien. When she pinched the two stiff nipples, she finally got a low moan in response. Rocking her crotch against the hard abs before her left a trail of her juices but only inflamed her further. Her fingers brushed over the shaved side of Eve’s head and combed through the long tresses hanging behind her until they touched the rope binding the undead woman’s wrists.

“Objectively, this is a terrible idea, but I can’t stop.”

In a few deft tugs, she freed Eve’s right hand and brought it to her lips, kissing each fingertip before sucking them into her mouth. Bringing the palm to her windpipe, she wrapped the fingers around her neck and stared into the dark eyes in front of her.

“Do it.”

The grip tightened, but only long enough to scare her before easing off, and she exhaled.

“Very funny.” Vivian pulled her from her throat and lifted herself up, holding Eve’s fingers together to rub them between her nether lips. “Since I’m going to die today anyway, I guess there’s no point asking if you washed your nails recently. At least you’re not literally freezing like that ice dildo we tried. Damn, that burned!”

She thrust her hips forwards, and all four digits slid in past the first joint, making her wince from the temperature. Rolling her hips, she worked them in further, their owner merely holding them still, her arousal providing plenty of lubrication. The knuckles squeezing past her entrance elicited a cry of satisfaction that drowned out the door bursting open in the adjacent room.

Her eyes snapped open again when a cold thumb tickled the edge of her labia. Breathing hard, she pushed down as Eve tucked her thumb in, inching her way inside. Once the final joint passed her stretched entrance, Vivian sagged, supporting herself on her lover’s shoulders.

“I love being your glove. Nothing and no one feels as good as you.”

Even as she spoke, those frigid fingertips reached her cervix and started twisting back and forth, massaging her sweet spots as nothing had since their forced separation. When they stopped at the end of the song, her moan was so pathetic she laughed. She had barely caught her breath before the singer’s announcement of the next song, Oh Bondage! Up Yours! triggered a giggling fit, abruptly cut off by the resumption of movement inside her. Inspired by the lyrics, she fumbled with the buckle of the muzzle and dropped it to the floor, ignoring the battering on the door in her eagerness for the kiss she had dreamed of every day and night. The mouth her tongue encountered tasted earthy, but she didn’t care. She had Eve again.

Tears she’d held back all evening streamed down her cheeks as relief merged with the heat building from the slow hand-fucking. Surrendering, she dissolved into the orgasm that rolled through her. Cold lips wandered down over her jugular as Eve’s left arm broke free, wrapping around her back and pulling her closer to lick her nipple. Licks became a bite, increasing in pressure until her teeth broke the skin and the toxin entered her bloodstream. Pain poured into Vivian’s climax, intensifying it beyond anything she could imagine, and she braced for oblivion.

It never came.

Instead, colours inverted. Everything appeared clearer, sharper — including her orgasm.

I found you.

Eve’s voice in her head. Looking down, she saw her glowing faintly and smiling, the blemishes of the past two years gone.

While she searched for the right words, the door crashed open, and a stinging sensation spread up her back. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw two figures holding flashing sticks that she vaguely recalled were “guns”, but what drew her focus was the irresistible purple light pulsing in their skulls.

How sweet, Eve said. You ordered dinner.