Rubberwerks 2 - Part 15

A dozen others gathered around, one offering a bottle of water, the others reaching to help the girl. She was pretty, a little thin, but even through her visible terror, Rask could see the pretty young thing beneath.

Jenny drank deeply of the water bottle and panted.

"You're safe, now. Did you see something, dear?" Rask asked in as benevolent voice as she could muster.

She needed information. What was going on beyond the doors was still inscrutable to her, and Rask could not allow that to stand. She had seen some of the strange black figures, but that didn't mean she understood what they were.

"Tatum," the girl panted. "It got him."

"What did?" Rask prompted.

"I don't know. Something black. Like sticky rubber or something. He was inside it. A cocoon. And when he came out he was different."

Rask wrinkled her nose. It sounded farfetched, but the others said much the same thing. Their loved ones changed somehow, trying to seduce them into the same fate.

"They can't get in here," Rask assured her. "We're safe. And there are cameras everywhere. They'll come for us. Don't you worry about that. Someone will come to help."

Guards were deployed around the dome as Fordham observed. Each team was supplied with a flamethrower. if it came to it, they would burn the whole place down.

Fordham hoped it would not come to that. From the cameras placed strategically through the town, she was given a front-row seat to the assimilation of an entire population. It spread at a geometric rate. One infect another who infected another and each infected another and so on and so on. That much Fordham expected. What had taken her by surprise was the was in which the entity adapted. When some of the infected could not complete a transformation, it utilized one of the first infected to serve as a sort of booster shot for the infection, a black and glossy cow with engorged udders, feeding those who were not fully transformed.

The only ones left were the humans in the bank with the old woman. They wouldn't last long. Not that Fordham was placing her thumb on the scale or anything, but she knew that the windows were impossible to lock. As soon as the infected townspeople decided to, they could be inside in moments. And then there would be no more humans at all.

The Janice drone climaxed each time a new drone was completed. And the line was steady to feed from her. With each quivering orgasm, Janice's identity was further erased. She no longer remembered her name or understood that there was a life outside service to Mind. Her devotion was rewarded with greater pleasure, which, in turn, erased more of her until only Mind remained and therefore pleasured itself through Janice's body. It was a cycle that, once achieved, never ceased.

Shaon was given a different purpose, and emerged from the pod as a drone to join the others in rounding up the remaining humans who barricaded themselves in apartments and small homes. There were too many serving Mind now for resistance to be more than cursory and quickly corrected. She did not think of Janice, as Mind had not instructed her to. The Sharon-thing had not quite reached the level of emptiness her lover had, but would in time. They all would.