Spankings in Zombieland - Chapter 3

 Grease-Monkey

A sunbeam pours through a moth-hole in the tent, landing a teardrop of light just below her chin. As the sun rises, the ray moves up her face, tracing the delicate curve of her jaw, and finally reaching her eye. Her eyelid twitches, and then snaps open. GM is awake. The beam of sunlight responsible is subjected to a torrent of curses, some of which are so vile and unmentionable as to defy imagining.

In spite of her outburst, GM’s tent-mate, Juno, remains fast asleep. 

GM turns to her and can’t help but laugh. Juno is contorted with her face pressed into the pillow and her still-sore bottom lifted in the air. She’s unzipped the mouth of the bedroll so her hindquarters can poke out, but she’s drawn her knees to her chest and put her shoulders to the ground so as to cover as much of herself as she can while still allowing a cool draught to waft over her hot tushy. It’s not a very dignified position, and GM can see perhaps more of Juno than she wanted to this early in the morning. She reminds GM of cherry lip gloss, lying as she is with her dark red bottom poking out of the blue tube of her sleeping bag. GM leans forward silently and can hear Juno’s breathing. There’s a glistening rope of drool connecting Juno’s open mouth to the pillow. 

GM wonders what’s going in her dreams.

As usual, GM is the first one awake. She unzips the tent flap without much concern that the others will here: yesterday was a long day, and for Juno at least, it was a long night. Everyone will probably be asleep for a little while longer, since they don’t have to move many miles today. The sun has just crested over the distant line of evergreens, and the world is silent and wet with dew. 

She rubs sleep from her eyes as she steps into the cool morning light, past the small two-man tent where Homer and Rudolph are sleeping soundly. She can see them through the worn polyester of the tent’s walls: despite his protestations, Rudolph always winds up being the little spoon. 

She smirks and takes a seat at the folding card table they call “Home Base.” It’s littered with cooking supplies, granola bar wrappers, and self-made maps. She sets up the campstove and starts making herself coffee.

There was once a time when GM (also known as Grease-Monkey, a nickname she earned for her affinity towards all things mechanical) would have been the last one awake on a morning like this. Before the Collapse, before the Golden State became Zombieland, she was a gamer – an addict, to be more precise. She can’t even remember how many times she opened her blinds to realize the sun had come up while she was in the middle of a campaign. She would crash until noon, sleeping through police sirens and other city noise, then have breakfast for dinner and do it all again. Those were the days.

Nowadays, she could never sleep that soundly. The slightest rustle in the trees sends her into a full on panic. 

There’s good reason for that…

Still. It sucks to be the first one up all the time. Everyone expects that you made them coffee, and you never get to see the endings of your dreams. GM used to hate it, but now she doesn’t mind. There’s a lot of weird stuff that happens before 9am, she thinks, pouring her coffee into a plastic mug. If you sleep in, you miss it.

Then, as though the universe were agreeing with her, GM sees something from the corner of her eye that makes her double take. At first glance, she thought it was a plastic bag, blowing along in the wind like a tumbleweed.

Looking again, she realizes it’s a girl. A stranger.

Strangers in Zombieland are never good news.

GM sets her coffee down on the table and looks again, screwing up her eyes against the light. It’s not…what is she…what is she WEARING?

The girl – or maybe a young-looking woman – has jet black hair that falls past her shoulders. She’s petit and barefoot, and she walks with the swaying steps of someone walking out of a wreckage. Perhaps most startling of all is the way she’s dressed: a diaphanous veil is crookedly covering her hair, blowing gently in the wind. Her legs are bare, and her dress – if you can call it that – hugs her body tightly, such that each time she moves, little is left to the imagination. The dress is snow-white and lacey at the breast and the hem: it looks like a modified wedding dress, the train cut off and the frills torn away. GM can see everything from the hardness of her nipples through the fabric, and each step brings the hem of her dress that much closer to scandal.

GM can’t help but let out a snort of amazement. She looks around, as though wondering if anyone else can see what she’s looking at. Then, her eyes narrowing as though she were trying to discern a mirage, she peers closer at the strange girl, who by this point has entered their camp.

When you run into people you don’t know in Zombieland, there are typically two possibilities: (1) that they will try to kill you and take your stuff, or (2) that they are partially Zombie-fied, and when they become either a Hopper or a Shrieker or a Grumbler or whatever, and when the virus fully takes over, they will try to kill you and take your stuff. This is why the protocol for the Doomsbury Squad (and just about every other Squad as well) is to treat strangers with extreme prejudice, especially ones that are wandering around on their own. In any event, friendly encounters are increasingly rare, and fight-or-flight reigns supreme.

That’s certainly how it played out when she and Bobbi-Ross met Froggy for the first time. GM can still remember seeing her giant silhouette in the parking lot, looking like an angry mamma bear. It was their turn for “flight” that time, although it didn’t do them much good. Under different circumstances, Bobbie-Ross and GM may have been dumped off the top of the parking garage. Luckily, even though Froggy may have thought she was acting with extreme prejudice, GM and Bobbi-Ross were more…compliant than another, less receptive party may have been. How could Froggy have known that GM would love to be wedgied, to feel her little body lifted completely in the air, to be helplessly suspended by the seat of her none-too-stretchable undies? GM hardly knew herself. If Froggy had chosen a weapon other than a firm hand, who knows where they’d be now.

But there are a few reasons that GM doesn’t go running for a weapon right now. First of all, the poor girl looks completely helpless – not in the way that partially Zombie-fied people do, either. No, this girl looks more like she’s doing a Walk of Shame from a frathouse the morning after a theme party – GM suspects that she might fall over if you talked too loud at her. Secondly, apart from looking non-threatening, everything about this situation is just unbelievably strange. Where on earth did she get that dress? And how is it not covered with dirt and dust and mud, like everything else is these days? Why does it look as though the Collapse caught her in the middle of her wedding? Is she some sort of run-away bride? Are people still having weddings?

All of these questions are swirling through GMs head still when the girl finally staggers past the fire pit, just ten feet away from where GM is standing, and stops. She straightens her back like a herald about to announce a message, and GM looks at her in silence.

Seconds pass. The girl is standing straight, but wobbling slightly in the wind. GM can hear her own pulse in her ears. She can hear her breath. What the hell is she waiting for? The girl closes her eyes slowly and takes a deep breath.

At last, the girl opens her opens, looks right at GM, and says: 

“I will suck your dick for some of that coffee.”

GM blinks. The thoughts scurry away from her brain like crabs under a lifted rock. Mind blank, she turns to her default tone: sarcasm.

“I don’t have one of those.”

“Then I will lick your pussy for some of that coffee.”

“I’m not into girls.”

“Then I will eat your ass for some of that coffee.”

GM raises a pale eyebrow. “How would that be different?”

“It’d be from behind,” the girl says flatly, her expression unchanging. “You could pretend I was a guy.”

“Do you have anything to offer besides sexual favors?”

The girl appears to think about this for a moment. Then, at last: “Are you- are you saying no?”

“Who are you?”

The girl sighs and grips the bridge of her nose, clenching her eyes against the sunlight. For a moment, GM thinks she’s going to answer, but when the girl opens her eyes again she only says, “Offer still stands.”

“Where are you coming from? What are you doing here?”

“I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

GM shakes her head and repeats her question: “No, seriously. Who are you?”

The girl sighs again, but raises her eyes to meet GMs. “I’m just a girl, looking for a cup of coffee.” She lifts up her thin arms and does a spin. (GM can’t help but notice that her butt cheeks just barely peaking out from under the hem). “I’ve got no weapons,” she says, finishing her spin, “and I mean no harm. I’m just looking for some coffee. And, you know…maybe a place to sit.”

Now GM pauses, considering. She has a choice to make. She looks down at her black coffee, then up at the girl: her pearl-white cocktail dress notwithstanding, she does look a mess. The morning air is cool and bright, now that the sun is finally over the trees, and the girl’s dark hair is illuminated by sunlight. So GM sighs. She ponders her tongue for a moment before turning back to the table and gesturing towards one of the folding chairs. She might wind up paying for this later, one Froggy or Homer wake up. But for now, she doesn’t think about that.

“Come on, have a seat. There’s enough coffee for us both.”