Chapter b Aster

The little girl was hiding behind the black leather couch in the living room, watching him from over the ledge. Her baby eyes were large and round. Her forehead was bulbous. Her messy dark blonde hair was cut short around her pudgy cheeks. Her proportions were unique. A head that seemed too large to fit on her tiny neck. An itsy little jaw. She looked so soft, like a flower petal. So young. Her trembling lips and tiny voice stuttered, "Da… Daddy?"

While Andy seized under him from the blood loss, Iggy stood frozen with his eyes locked on the little girl. The seconds slowed, and with each shallow breath that they took, the moment moved away from the brutality and more into the magic of the experience. He was stuck on what to do with her. He hadn't seen anyone significantly younger than himself. It was the first time that he had ever seen a child. She was probably about three years old, and there was absolutely nothing that she could have possibly done during her short life to warrant her a justified murder. She was the embodiment of something so good and natural that he couldn't kill her.

Her horrified stare was all the judgment that he could handle. As he gazed across the room into her big dilated eyes and watched her face slowly construe into a dimpled mess, he realized that he was already punishing her. Her father was gasping from agony as his body died. Her mother was seizing in the bathroom. Thudding resounded from there. How could he make this right?

He stepped off of her dad, intending to go to her, but then the front door was kicked open. He leapt for cover to an opposing wall and the little girl ducked down behind the sofa. The front door swung back and forth, creaking, and a low wave of laughter traveled through the threshold. The person was relaxed, with a lot of heavy breathing that had a masculine sound. Footsteps tapped the floor, one set, and then another. There was a loud inhale, or rather a big sniff, and then, "ahhhh."

"Oh buddy," a man's voice said. "Look at this! Oh! I could lick it right off the wall!"

A woman's voice groaned. "Don't be stupid," she said. She had a slight accent, not from speaking another language, but perhaps a reflection of where she was from. "Hello? Anyone else here?"

Iggy pressed against the wall harder, flatter, and waiting to see them emerge from around the corner.

"Do you hear that?" the male voice asked, bringing attention to the thumping and gurgling noises from the bathroom. "Sounds like it's still going down. Let's go." Their steps traveled closer.

The woman came into the living room first. Iggy struggled to see her face, however, he could make out a few aging lines around the corners of her eyes. She was tall for a woman, probably about six feet, and she had very large breasts in proportion to her body build. Even so, she carried a lot of weight on her backside. Her jeans squeezed tight under her buttocks to accentuate her already curvy rear end. Her hair was light blonde and her skin was glistening white and although it had rained all day and was still wet outside, she had high heels strapped up her ankles. She halted before the pool of blood, knelt down, and dabbed the fluid with her fingertips. She twirled them, chuckled, and then licked the blood off with her tongue.

Her partner approached her side. He was short and girthy. He wore a white sleeveless shirt, his shoulders bulged from the small holes, and his heavily worn jeans were ripped at his brown knees. He was very dark in comparison to his female partner. Along the left side of his stubby neck there was a faint outline of a woman's face surrounded by what must have been flowers. It was all that was left of his tattoo. His cheekbones were small, and they added only a little construction to his oval face. His long chin rounded like a bent elbow and his lips seemed to be too thin for the bottom half of his face. His eyes were set deep in his head, they were small, and dark chocolate brown.

"If we hadn't just fed, I'd be crazy in the red by now!" he laughed. "Happy anniversary, babe."

The young girl peeked over the corner of the couch. Her frizzy hair was like a moving bouquet of feathers, drawing their attention. The man was first to take action. He stepped through the puddle of blood, and inched his finger toward himself as if he were attempting to leer the little girl out of hiding.

As she ducked down, he lunged at the sofa, and reached his short arm behind it. Snatching her by the upper arm, he howled in a horrendous laughter, "gotcha!" He threw her onto the couch and pried his fingers into her tiny chest to hold her still. He looked back at his partner. "Will you do the honors, Aster?"

Even as his finger poked into the girl's pudgy cheek tilting her head to the side and opening up her throat, the woman showed very little interest. She stood up, folded her arms across her chest, put all of her weight onto one leg, and slanted her body away from the scene. "No, Lot." She exhaled. "We aren't feeding twice tonight. We aren't gluttons."

He shrugged his buff shoulders. "We already entered the crime scene, we might as well."

Her voice became stern. "No."

His back arched away from the little girl. "Well, let's take her home then." He wrapped the tips of his fingers around her pajamas and peeled her off of her back. Dangling, she kicked and cried, but she was nothing more than a weak mouse caught in a tiger's paw. The woman, Aster, shook her head and looked back down at the pool of blood. "Come on!" he proceeded. "We need a new house slave. Becca is dead inside. We can take this one and finally get rid of that bitch."

Aster dipped her finger in the blood, again. As she peered up at her eager friend, Lot, she licked her finger clean. Her mouth made a pop sound when she pulled her finger out. "You know… I am so tired of your games. We've got fuck movies that need to go out, and you've dragged me here? You don't take the business seriously enough!"

Lot frowned and his arms lowered a little and he seemed to be genuinely unhappy about what Aster had said to him. His eyes squinted defiantly, and he lowered the girl so that her fluffy feet touched the floor again. The little girl's screams quieted into a frantic sob. His frown shifted into a smirk. "Fuck it." He pushed on the side of her head to expose her neck, he opened his mouth and tilted his face down to bite her. The woman didn't move a hair to stop him.

If there had been a reasonable time to hide out in the shadows and watch, this wasn't it. Iggy leapt out of the darkness, dirty, bloody, and pissed. He bolted across the room and ripped the little girl out of the man's grasp and he shoved her behind himself.

Lot's face elongated. He flashed his palms and stepped back. "Easy! Easy!-" he stepped back another step "-I ain't gonna do anything!"

Aster straightened up in one swift movement and her eyes locked onto Iggy. Her light gray eyes were placid like cold water, lacking vibrancy. Her cheekbones were thick and high on her face, and her eyebrows were solid bold lines even as blonde as they were. Her lips were round with a downward slant. She was exceptionally beautiful, as if she belonged in a film or in a magazine, but her beauty had nothing to do with the virus. She had been beautiful before she was infected. Her voice was quiet, yet surprised, "you did this?" Her teeth were shorter and she only had two pairs on the top, not the usual three.