Asylum (7 page)

In the back of Jimmy’s mind, the scene from
outside the club earlier kept repeating, but he pushed it away. It
was too gruesome and threatened to send him over the edge again, so
he chose to build a wall around it, blocking it out as best he
could. It wasn’t perfect; there were chinks in the wall, but he
just kept his eyes averted from whatever he might see in the gaps.
The two best ways Jimmy knew to keep his mind off of things he
didn’t want to think about were booze and sex. So he was indulging
in both.

“
I want you to fuck me,”
Jimmy gasped, pulling back so he could unbuckle Lance’s belt,
pulling it through the loops in one fluid practiced motion. Working
like a pro, Jimmy soon had the other man’s pants off and hung over
the back of the sofa. It was dark up here with no candles, but
Jimmy found the other man’s dick with his mouth and tested its
length. An acceptable six and a half inches, a nice mouthful
without causing any mood-breaking gagging. Jimmy worked on it with
his mouth for a few minutes, gobbling it to the root then slowly
sliding back up to the head, teasing the tip with his
tongue.

“
I gotta have that ass,”
Lance said, his voice a snarl, and grabbed Jimmy roughly by the fur
coat, turning him and bending him over the opposite arm. Jimmy
sighed as he felt his pants jerked down over his hips, exposing his
firm round ass to the open air.

That sigh turned into a muffled scream that
he buried in the crook of his arm as Lance penetrated him with two
fingers, all the way up to the second knuckle. The pain was good,
the pain focused him solely on this moment. There were no zombies
outside, there was no accountant that had been torn apart then got
back up with his guts hanging out, there was no possibility of
death hanging over Jimmy’s head. There was just here, there was
just now, there was just the feel of Lance’s hands on his shoulders
as the older man entered from behind, going slow but not stopping
until he was ball’s deep.

Gritting his teeth, Jimmy began to push
back, meeting each thrust with enough force to cause a loud
slapping sound as skin met skin that could probably be heard
downstairs. Lance grabbed a handful of Jimmy’s hair and yanked his
head back, even as he reached around with the other hand and gently
massaged Jimmy’s balls.

Hearing a sound behind them like a squeaking
floorboard, Jimmy turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. At
first he could make out nothing in the blackness, but there was
some flickering candlelight filtering up over the balcony and as
his eyes adjusted, he detected movement. A scuttling at first, but
then the silhouette of Devon rushed forward, pool cue raised in his
hands like a spear.

Jimmy opened his mouth to scream a warning,
but before he could make a sound, Devon brought the stick down
against the back of Lance’s head, the impact making a loud
crack
like a bat connecting with a fastball. The pool cue
broke in two, half going flying, the other half still in Devon’s
hands.

“
God is punishing us for
our sins,” Devon said in the hissing voice of a viper. “We deserve
what we get, all of us. Maybe he’ll spare me if I help him
out.”

Lance had slumped over on top of Jimmy, and
the young man struggled to push the dead weight off of him. He held
up his hands and started to plead with the DJ, but then Devon
thrust the splintered end of the pool cue into Jimmy’s throat.

Diva and Autumn had just come out of the
women’s restroom when they heard the
crack
from upstairs.
“My heavens,” Diva said. “What was that?”

Toby shot Clive a knowing glance and smiled.
“Sounds like Lance and that blonde kid are going at it so hard they
might have broken some furniture.”

Clutching a hand at her throat, the Adam’s
apple cleverly hidden behind a choker with a large oval stone, Diva
shook her head. “I just don’t understand how those boys can be at
it at a time like this.”

“
I always said Lance could
fuck through the end of the world,” Autumn said and laughed, the
sound high-pitched and not entirely stable. “And I guess I was
right.”

Diva put an arm around the girl and kissed
her temple. “It’s not the end of the world, dear.”

“
It’s not?” Autumn jerked
away from Diva. “The dead have come back, haven’t they? That sounds
like classic apocalypse stuff to me.”

Clive raised a finger to his lips and
shushed them. “Keep it down, guys. Gil’s trying to sleep.”

Diva turned and saw Gil slumped over with
his forehead resting on the bar. Reaching out a tentative hand and
touching one of his hands, she said, “Gil, you okay?”

He raised his head slowly, as if his neck
barely had the strength to bear the weight. He looked awful, the
candlelight revealing pale skin and a glassy stare. It seemed as if
his eyes had packed up everything they owned in a couple of dark
bags and were ready to go on sabbatical. “Just tired,” he said,
coughed, spat on the floor, then lowered his head back to the bar.
“It’s all a bit much, I just need to rest for a while.”

Diva didn’t know what to say, but she was
damn worried. Gil had seemed fine when she’d taken Autumn into the
lady’s room, but now he looked practically on his deathbed. She
hadn’t been gone all that long. She was aware of his HIV status,
and she knew that despite all the modern discoveries and
medications, there was still no cure, and she spent more time than
she liked contemplating the time when Gil would get sick and not
get better. It wasn’t what she wanted to think about, but she
couldn’t deny the truth that Gil harbored an enemy in his blood
that would eventually kill him.

But this was a terribly fast deterioration
to be related to his illness. From healthy to barely able to raise
his head in half an hour or less, it just didn’t make sense.

But he was scratched by those things
,
a voice in her head piped up.
Who knows what kinds of diseases
they could be carrying. Walking corpses, just teeming with
bacteria, and they clawed into his flesh. AIDS might be the least
of his problems now.

Diva shook her head rapidly, the way one
might clear an Etch-a-Sketch. She was letting her imagination run
wild. In the movies, it only killed you if you were bit by one of
the zombies, not scratched, but then again George Romero made
fiction not documentaries. As far as she knew, this was the first
time anything like this had actually happened in real life; who
knew what the rules might be? Might be a good idea to keep a close
watch on Gil, just in case.

“
Want me to get you some
water?” she asked.

Gil mumbled unintelligibly then started to
snore.

Autumn had joined Clive and Toby around the
corner of the bar, and Diva followed, wringing her hands like a
mother whose teenage daughter was late coming home from her first
date. Autumn climbed up on a stool and sat staring at one of the
candle flames, as if the answers to all of life’s questions could
be found in its center. Diva remained standing, fidgeting from one
high-heel clad foot to the other, finding it nearly impossible to
be still for even five minutes. Almost as if she thought she could
keep the tide of the undead at bay if she just kept moving.

“
Any sign of Devon?” she
asked, glancing toward the staircase.

Clive shook his head. “I’m surprised all the
noise Lance and Jimmy are making hasn’t driven him back down.”

“
Maybe he likes it,” Toby
said. “Maybe he joined in.”

“
Toby, please!” Diva
snapped. “This is hardly the time for jokes.”

Toby looked chastised, a bit petulant. “I’m
just trying to keep myself from totally panicking. I figure a
little inappropriate humor is better than me breaking down like
Devon. Would you rather I go back to trying to call 911 every five
minutes and barely keeping myself from pissing my pants?”

Now it was Diva who felt chastised. “I’m
sorry, you’re right. I’m just a bit on edge, I guess we all
are.”

Autumn continued to stare at the flame, and
Toby and Clive clung to one another like children lost in a dark
fairytale forest. She looked at them with such love; they were her
boys, exactly the people she’d wanted to protect and wrap her
mother-hen wings around when she opened Asylum. Not that she was
keeping them particularly safe at the moment.

From upstairs there came another clattering
and some thumps like pool balls hitting the floor. “I think I
better go up and check on those guys.”

“
I’m sure they’re okay,”
Toby said.

“
I’m not so sure about
Devon. Did you guys know he almost became a preacher? It’s true. He
comes from a very religious family, and he started seminary and
everything. Of course, he got kicked out when he was caught in bed
with another male student. But to this day, he harbors a lot of
religious guilt, and this whole situation is really bringing all
that out. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave him alone up
there; he should be down here with us.”

Diva started back around the bar toward the
stairs. Gil’s head was still down but he was no longer snoring. She
considered stopping to check on him, but one crisis at a time.
First she’d deal with Devon, then Gil. As she started up to the
second floor, she heard Autumn say in a hollow voice, “Tell Lance
if he gets another case of crabs, I’m not buying that special
shampoo for him this time.”

In the men’s room, Curtis was sitting on the
sink counter, Jarvis standing in front of him. The stripper had
discarded the jacket, and Curtis had likewise lost his shirt, his
white skin looking even paler next to Jarvis’s dark pigmentation.
They had been kissing for at least fifteen minutes, and Curtis’s
lips and tongue felt on fire, but it was a pleasant sensation. When
Jarvis’s mouth made a trail down Curtis’s throat and chest before
finally latching onto an erect pink nipple, Curtis thought he was
going to explode in his pants right there.

“
Do you want me to stop?”
Jarvis asked, panting as if he’d just come up for air after a deep
sea dive.

“
Why would you ask that?
Have you heard any complaints from me?”

“
Well, no, it’s just
that…I mean, I know that you’ve
never
.”

Curtis felt a blush creep into his cheeks.
“Oh god, that obvious, huh?”

“
A little bit,” Jarvis
said with a smile. “But it’s okay. We don’t have to do anything you
don’t want to.”

“
I want this, I really do.
After all, this may be my last chance, my last night—”

Jarvis put a finger against Curtis’s lips,
silencing him. “Don’t talk like that. We’re going to make it
through this, I feel it.”

“
Jesus, could you be
anymore
Titanic
?”

Jarvis playfully pinched one of Curtis’s
nipples, both of them giggling. “I’m serious. Things are bad, I’m
not saying they’re not, but I truly believe that somehow—”

Curtis put a stop to Jarvis’s false
assurances with another kiss. He ran his hands along the stripper’s
smooth chest, his flat stomach, finally cupping the banana barely
contained in that hammock. “Make love to me,” he said into Jarvis’s
ear. “I want you to make love to me.”

Without a word, Jarvis grabbed Curtis around
the waist and lifted him off the sink counter. Rather gently, he
laid Curtis on his back on the floor. The single candle stuck to
the top of a paper towel dispenser shed a golden glow on them as
Jarvis tugged Curtis’s pants and underwear off, tossing them
casually into the corner. Jarvis’s thong soon followed, revealing a
slender eight inch dick with balls that hung low like ripe fruit.
Breathing heavily, Curtis reached out and stroked Jarvis, liking
the way the skin moved silkily beneath his fingers.

“
Wait,” Jarvis said,
scuttling to his feet and across the room. By the door was a free
condom dispenser, a sign above it reading, “TAKE ONE OR TWO OR TEN,
BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY MEN.” Jarvis hit the button, a foil-wrapped
rubber popping out like candy from a gumball machine.

Curtis propped himself up on his elbows.
“You don’t need that.”

“
It’s not that I don’t
trust you—I mean, if anyone’s going to be clean, it’s you—but you
should always use protection. There’s a lot of stuff out
there.”

Curtis laughed, but there was no humor in
the sound. “Who are you kidding? We’re not getting out of here
alive. So a condom is sort of a moot point, don’t you think? Now
come make love to me, and say my name when you go inside. I want to
hear you say my name with that beautiful accent.”

Jarvis hesitated a moment, staring from the
condom in his hand to Curtis on the floor. In the end, he ripped
open the packet and slipped the condom over his dick.

When Diva came up onto the second floor
landing, she heard whispering somewhere in the far right corner, on
the other side of the pool tables. She wished she had brought a
candle with her because she could see almost nothing. Holding her
hands out like some cheesy horror movie mummy, she worked her way
past the pool tables as if through a labyrinth, using the sound of
the whispering to guide her. She assumed it had to be Devon,
because it certainly didn’t sound like the noises of passion. But
in that case, where were Lance and Jimmy?

When she reached the wall, she crouched down
and reached out toward the corner. She touched a face, the bushy
mustache confirming that it was in fact Devon. But there was
something else on his face, something wet and sticky. “Devon,
honey, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer, seemed to try to push
himself further into the corner to get away from Diva’s touch. She
held her fingers up to her nose and sniffed. She’d broken up enough
bar fights to know the scent of blood when she smelled it. “Devon,”
she said again, trying to make her voice as calm and reassuring as
she could, “what happened? Did you hurt yourself?”