It was 2025 when the viral outbreak happened. No one knows how it started, but everyone soon learned the effects. The virus spread like rabies, infecting those bitten by someone who was already infected. It travelled through saliva or blood and once it was in you it would consume you until there was nothing left. People turned into mindless savages operating only on their most basic of instincts- the need to feed.
The term 'zombie apocalypse' was thrown around but no one took really took it seriously, especially since the virus was only effecting small third-world countries. By the time the virus had reached the shores of Japan, however, people were calling them "the infected" for emphasis. We only had ourselves to blame, really. Over the course of many years we'd gone overboard with the zombie theme in movies, video games, and even in seemingly harmless jokes. How could we have guessed how real the threat was? In our ignorance we missed our chance to prevent the infection from spreading.
When they first arrived on our shores we didn't shoot them down. We stopped and stood still with our phones so that we could record the surreal experience. It looked like a bad horror flick. It was only when people were getting ripped into that others grasped the new reality and ran for their lives.
It's now 2029, four years since the outbreak began, and three years since they reached our shores. I live in the top floor of an apartment building in Kanagawa; the city was our only haven as far as I knew. I hadn't gone below floor seven in three years. I'd been living off the tinned food I'd found throughout the building, but that food was beginning to run out.
If I was going to survive this I would need a fresh supply- which meant I needed to go outside.
I was sure that the infected hadn't breached the inner city, but the streets were littered with bandits and people driven insane by the loss they'd faced. Any form of military or law enforcement was constantly patrolling the perimeter of the city, leaving those of us in the core defenceless against each other. People were being murdered for chocolate. I was lucky to be so high up and away from it all. There were others in the building, too, but they seldom came out and when they did they didn't want to make conversation.
I prepared myself with a torch tied to my belt and a metal pole I'd broken off the back of a fridge. I could feel my heart pounding away in my chest as I saw the number seven written on the wall of the staircase. I'd not gone this far in so long, but I had to keep going. If I could just find and pack up a few dozen cans I could last another year.
I just wanted to survive, I didn't want to starve, I didn't want to turn and I didn't want to end my own life. I just wanted to live.
As I walked further and further down the steps, travelling further and further away from safety, I began to hear groans echo throughout the staircase, noises that were strongly associated with the infected. I looked over the bannister through the gap between the stairs and saw someone's shadow moving, getting closer with every second that passed.
It was just one, I could handle one of them. I held my metal pole tightly. It would give me enough distance- I could smash it into someone's head without getting blood all over me. There'd be no chance of infection, a clean kill: the only way to survive.
The groans grew louder, stronger and more violent. It was around the corner. I could see a head, a bloody hand on the railing, a face-
"I'm not infected!" he cried out as he dropped to his hands and knees in front of me, halfway between floors five and six.
Another groan came screeching up the hall. This time it was followed by the sounds of someone running and the crazed call of the infected.
"But he is!" the man cried.
He was being chased by one of them- how the fuck did they get into the building?
I couldn't leave him, not unless I had to in order to survive. I grabbed the injured man and together we started to crawl back up towards the top floor of the building. He was much taller and heavier than me, and muscular from head to toe. I could see his abs through his bloody, ripped t-shirt and his biceps bulging through the fabric. He'd be a great help if he weren't so exhausted.
The sound grew louder and stronger until I was certain I could feel the icy breath of the dead on my neck. I turned around, dropping my new companion and took a baseball swing at whatever was behind me.
My eyes were tightly shut as I felt the impact of the metal pole against the flesh of a former person. There was nothing but a thud and then silence.
As I opened my eyes I looked down the stairs at the twitching body. It was bloody, oozing, disgusting and vile. I looked at the splatter on my arm- did I get infected? I frantically started to scratch and spit on my skin, rubbing it as much as I could until it was burning with pain.
"You're okay." The man held onto the railing and pulled himself to his feet. He screamed at me several times before his words began to settle in.
"You're okay!" He grabbed me and shook me until I realized myself. "You're not infected, you'll live."
I suddenly felt overwhelmed, my entire body feeling light for a few seconds before becoming heavy. My vision was clear but the corners of my eyes saw blackness and I found it hard to catch my breath.
"What's your name?" He asked as I began to give in to the exhaustion.
"Rukawa," I spat, before everything went dark.
As I came out of my post-zombie-slaying nap, I recognized the familiar bedside cabinet and photos on the wall. I was back in my bedroom and back at the top of the apartment building. I could hear noise coming from the living room.
I slowly crept out of bed and made my way to the slightly open doorframe. Peering out into the next room I saw the man from the stairs helping himself to what little food I had.
"Slow down with that," I yelled as I burst out of my bedroom, gasping for air and holding onto my side, which felt like it'd been hit with a hammer. I guess I was still in shock.
"Don't sweat it. I brought enough to last a while. You won't need to do a run for a few months."
Who was this guy?
"Why would you share your food with me?" In the new fend-for-yourself world it was unusual to be kind to strangers.
"You saved my life, remember?"
He was right. I guess I was unusual then.
We both stared at each other in silence, trying to figure out what the other was thinking or going to say next. It was like making eye contact with someone you think you know but can't quite place. We wanted to say something nice but we couldn't quite get there.
"Tell you what, you let me crash here and I'll do the food runs from now on."
A compromise? I supposed it could work.
I nodded my head and slowy slumped over to the sofa in the centre of the room. It used to face a television before all the stations turned to static nonsense, but now it faced a wall of photos: old friends, family members and pets. Everything I'd lost since this began.
"What's your name?" I lay down across the old, falling-to-bits, brown sofa and looked at him upside-down.
"Sendoh. I used to be in law enforcement until this started. Probably why I've lasted so long. You're Rukawa, right?"
He suddenly took his blood-soaked t-shirt off and threw it to the ground; the dim light of the sun shining into the apartment graced his smooth torso and illuminated his perfectly shaped body. He'd somehow managed to find a gym in the midst of the apocalypse.
"Yeah," I answered. "I was a coach for basketball before this happened. I only made it to my second year at the university before the invasion, or whatever you want to call it."
I couldn't help but bite my bottom lip as Sendoh's, more masculine figure stood tall above me. It'd been a long time since I'd spoken to anyone, since I'd been with anyone, and if the world was going to shit then maybe I should seize every opportunity I could.
Our conversation turned into a game of who had lost more. It turned out we were both quite close to winning. I didn't know what happened to my family, I didn't know if they were roaming the streets looking for their next bite to eat. I didn't know what happened to my best friend Sakuragi, who stayed late at the gym the night before the outbreak happened. I didn't know what I had left or what I'd lost, but I knew that not knowing was a loss in itself.
Sendoh was different. He'd seen the reality of his loss, he'd seen the brutality of the new world we lived in, and yet he hung on to hope.
"But now we have each other, so that's something." He mumbled the words.
We'd just met but I could tell it wasn't an empty notion. We were in this together now- he had the brawn and I had the place for us to survive in.
Over the next few days Sendoh tried to fill me in on three years of missed information and trivia. It turned out Kanagawa wasn't so safe anymore. The walls that had been erected had been breached a while ago and the streets were filled with the infected.
I'd not noticed or even looked out of my window the entire time. My whole apartment was in a state of do-it-yourself soundproofing on the chance that predators might hear me up here and come after me. There was barely any light, just the sun's rays that shone through the gaps in the black masking tape I'd used around two thirds of the windows. I might have been a scared, scrawny guy who was hiding away, but at least it'd kept me alive.
Sendoh, on the other hand, had been everywhere. When he was a police officer he worked further up north before the infected chased him out of his hometown and pushed him toward the supposed safety of Kanagawa. He'd been moving from town house to town house here and scavenging food from empty stores for the last couple of years. We both had our own ways of surviving and so far they'd worked for us. I was just glad to have some company in the midst of the apocalypse.
We'd both been deprived of human contact. Our conversations grew longer with each passing day, and we found ourselves passing out on the living room floor facing one another and then immediately continuing our discussion when we woke. Was the bond we began to feel real, or was it the result of us being alone for so long? I didn't care either way; I liked having Sendoh and his exposed, sweaty, perfectly-formed abs around.
Finally the day came when our food supply was running low once more. I awoke to the sound of Sendoh squeezing into one of my t-shirts, his muscles bulging out of them and his biceps tearing at the sleeves. It was a tight fit but it looked good on him.
Why did he have to go? We could last a few more days without food. Would he come back to me? Would he move on to the next place?
"I should be back by tomorrow. All the major supermarkets in the area would've been wiped clean so I might need to go down a lot of back-streets and look for tiny stores." He spoke with such confidence, completely sure of himself and certain he'd survive the day. I wished I was as brave as him.
"Are you coming back to me? You can be honest." I looked at him as he opened the door of my apartment. I tried to take in his face, his mouth, eyes, nose and all the rest, praying it wouldn't be the last memory I had of him.
Sendoh walked up to me, placed both hands on my shoulders and looked me right in the eyes, just like the time he told me I wasn't infected.
"Of course I'm coming back to you," he said, pulling me in for a hug, the stiffness of his denim jeans pressing against the softness of my cotton pyjama pants.
With that, he went out into the city, a city I hadn't seen in three years, a city crawling with killers and zombies. All I could do was sit back and wait, hoping I wouldn't starve to death and praying Sendoh would come back to me. I wondered if he cared about me the way I'd begun to care about him. I didn't know if that was the situation, but being near him gave me hope of a better life.
I paced my apartment all day, watching the moon slowly rise up over the city in tha gaps at the edges of the tape that covered my windows, willing Sendoh to turn up at the door holding bags of food with a smile on his face.
It hadn't been long but I was already forgetting the isolation I'd been through for three years. I'd had everyone in my life ripped away from me at just twenty years old. Now I found myself turning twenty-five, and in that gap between birthdays my only friends had been the photographs I kept hanging on the walls. I'd hoped that if I reminded myself of a better time I'd stay sane enough to survive. It seemed to be working.
When Sendoh didn't come back that night I could barely sleep, worried he'd either abandoned me or been slaughtered. The next morning I grabbed my trusty metal pole, now stained red along a third of its length, and headed for the staircase where I'd met him. I was hoping I'd see him come flying in once more being chased by something that was easy to knock down the stairs and then we'd go back up and eat together.
"Rukawa!" It was right on time, the call of a man who needed my help just as much as I needed his.
Sendoh came rushing up the stairs; I could hear the groans of a horde rushing up every floor behind him. As Sendoh's face appeared at the bottom of floor six, I saw a fear in his eyes that told me I couldn't handle whatever was coming after him. I turned and ran back up, looking behind me only once at every corner to make sure Sendoh hadn't fallen too far behind.
I could feel the fear sinking in- I was going to die. If a crowd of them gathered then more would come, they'd either get us in my apartment or lock us in and we'd starve.
I just wanted to survive, why was this happening?
"Rukawa, wait!" Was he crazy? I wasn't on a suicide mission.
As I turned to face Sendoh, somewhere between floors ten and eleven, I noticed that the thing following him wasn't the groaning of the dead- in fact, it was only the groaning of the dead. Sendoh had wires wrapped around his left foot with some recording equipment being dragged along at the end. That fear in his eyes was about the noise and the attraction it could cause, not the fear of us being eaten alive.
I collapsed, shaking, laughing, and mumbling "I'm such a coward" to myself. I liked Sendoh, needed Sendoh, and yet I had run ahead trying to save myself first. What if it had been a horde of zombies and they'd gotten Sendoh but not me- would my life have been worth living? Going back into isolation, eating beans from the bottom of cans and cold soup just so I could live to see the walls of my apartment for another day?
Sendoh picked me up after he'd stopped the gear from making those horrible noises. He led me up the stairs and back to my apartment where I hid my face in shame and refused to look him in the eyes.
"Rukawa." He kept trying to make me look at him but I couldn't do it. "Rukawa, it's okay."
It wasn't okay. I was a coward.
"I'd never let anything happen to you," he told me. "I want you to know that."
Those words made my eyebrows raise but his hand on my chin finished the job, and I saw him staring at me with his big, beautiful, dark blue eyes and a smirk on his face.
"Nothing will hurt you whilst I'm around. I'll protect you." His words made my stomach turn, my heart flutter and my face glow with the redness of embarrassment.
Was it his kindness, his smirk, or the musky and manly smell that seeped from his hot, dripping muscles? I wasn't sure, but knowing that Sendoh would protect me made me want to give something back.
I leaped at him, pushing him back onto my carpet, and locked my lips on his. His hands pressed against my torso and rolled me off him before I could taste the warmth of his mouth.
"Rukawa, I don't want anything from you-" He looked panicked and shaken, like a horde of zombies had broken in.
The room fell silent; it was deader than the city outside.
"I'm sorry." It was all I could say.
As I started to get up, Sendoh grabbed my arm and pulled me back down beside him.
"Don't be, I get it- we're alone, we only have each other and every day is a gamble on life. You're bound to get feelings that wouldn't exist in regular situations."
He thought that my feelings were some phase? I did the only thing I could to show him that wasn't the case.
I got back on top of Sendoh, my knees on either side of his stomach and my face leaning into his, my lips so close to his mouth that I could feel his warm, hot breath caressing my cheeks as he exhaled.
"If I'd met you before this, I'd have wanted you. In fact, seeing you in the police uniform might've made me want you some more."
Soon Sendoh's uncertainty shattered as his hands made their way down my back and grabbed my behind tightly, digging his nails into my soft, tender skin and causing a little shock of pleasure to travel up my spine, around my throat and come out in the form of a whimper.
I had to keep him, keep him interested, keep him here with me and keep him safe from the horrors of the world. I didn't know if it was love but it was definitely a need we both felt in the moment- it was the only good thing to come out of this disaster.
It was the first time both of us had a smile that lasted longer than five minutes. Sendoh flipped me so that I was on the floor and he took the lead as he lifted my shirt and spread my body out. I moaned and whimpered as his lips gently sucked and nibbled on my sensitive flesh, travelling all over my body and leaving no part of me without that tingling sensation.
I could feel the bulge that was growing in his jeans, pressing down hard against my body and making me anxious to get to the good part. I might have been afraid to go out into the world but I definitely wasn't afraid when it came to giving myself to Sendoh.
I pulled him up, his knees on either side of my body and his crotch in front of my face. He laughed at my eagerness and undid his button, pulling the zip down and letting his manhood fall right out.
My cop was going commando.
For two people who should've been terrified of mouths, we were certainly willing to trade saliva. Sendoh was pushing himself into my face, eagerly and forcefully. He'd done this before and many times by the looks of things, not that I minded- I wasn't exactly innocent myself.
"Do it," he groaned, grabbing his shaft with one hand and the back of my head with the other.
As he pushed himself deep inside my mouth I felt little droplets of spit falling from the corners. His juicy shaft was ripe with the taste of excitement and his hips were thrusting instantly. He wanted me so badly and he couldn't wait any longer.
I felt the same; I took him in with wide eyes and couldn't wait for more. Every inch of him made its way into me until I could feel his large, filled sack bouncing off the tip of my chin between thrusts.
I could feel my eyes watering as Sendoh's moans got louder and louder. His hands had dug deep into my hair and he wasn't slowing down. My own rock-hard member was aching to be touched now and I had to force myself away from Sendoh's eager grasp to catch my breath.
The moment he looked down at my watering eyes he knew I'd taken as much as I could this way. He smirked and apologized before swiftly getting me onto all fours and pulling my pants down just enough so that my behind was bare in the air.
I expected this kind of brutality from a man who used to tackle people to the ground on a daily basis and I admitted to myself just how much I enjoyed it. I could feel his big, masculine hands running over my cheeks, spreading them apart so that his smooth, warm tongue could ready me for his stiff shaft. I cried out as he gently lubricated me with his mouth and left saliva dripping from between my cheeks.
I knew I had to take him now, all of him.
I bit my bottom lip as I prepared myself for the well-endowed Sendoh and all the pain and pleasure he'd bring me in the next few moments. As Sendoh began to ease himself into me he suddenly thrust forward and rammed the entire length all the way inside of me so that his sack smacked the back of my legs and began making a sound that echoed throughout the apartment.
He was relentless and full of stamina, repeatedly driving me into the ground, grabbing the back of my neck and holding me down as his entire length screwed me over and over. He was crying out, telling me how good it felt to be inside someone this tight, telling me how much he liked my behind and the way I whimpered with every thrust. He told me how much he'd wanted this since we met, how much he'd wanted to drive his shaft so deep into me it made me almost climax every time.
I couldn't hold on like he could. I was barely touching myself but I could feel it about to burst. I cried out as my entire body went weak and felt the strings of white fluid shoot out below me.
Half of my body collapsed into the ground, leaving only my behind held up in place by Sendoh's hands digging into my flesh. He thrust and thrust and moaned and moaned, crying out about how good I was at taking his shaft and how he wanted to do this to me every single night.
He told me he was close and went faster and faster before a single, long, deep thrust accompanied by a cry of joy left my insides filled with his creamy, hot seed.
As he pulled away, satisfied and with a smile on his face, I could feel his juice flowing down the back of my legs. I turned to face him, sweaty and exhausted, and almost instantly he jumped back on me, kissing me, telling me how happy he was to have me and telling me how amazing that felt.
Through all the loss and tragedy and bullshit we'd been through, Sendoh and I had each another now- at least we could spend the end of the world together.
END