Chapter 14

The tears were gathering again so thickly in Irina’s eyes that she could barely see as she made her panicked and wretched way back home. She had been out searching desperately for Warren for over half an hour, calling his name, going up and down the sidewalk, and asking anyone she met if they had seen him. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t run into the two women who had, in fact, seen him, and so, after thirty minutes had passed, she began to realize that her search, at least in its current form, was in vain.

“He really did run away,” she whispered to herself, blinking her eyes as the heavy tears fell to the ground. “I completely…freaked him out. I went too far! And now, god only knows where he is…and he doesn’t have his medicine!”

Irina’s warm, gentle, and erotic life with Warren had suddenly turned into a horror movie, at least as far as she was concerned. Having her sweet little man out loose in the world, running away from her, was just about the worst thing she could possibly imagine. The Whipple Virus world was utterly different from anything like what it had used to be, and even though Irina spent most of her time in the du Pont mansion, she had more than enough of an idea what awaited rogue little men who were found wandering the streets without a partner. By now it was common knowledge that a substantial minority of women kept what could only be called “male harems,” and such harems, while initially frowned upon, were becoming much more accepted by the general population of fast-burgeoning women. As they all got bigger, and their men got smaller, there had been a gradual, collective evolution of opinion among women. In the early stages of the pandemic, only the licentious, libertine, and countercultural girls were amassing shrunken male concubines. Now, it was increasingly common to see perfectly respectable middle and upper-class women — professors, lawyers, doctors, and even the wives of formally-famous men — who were unapologetically open about collecting little men for themselves.

No single man was safe; it was now illegal for a man not to have a female “guardian,” as the law put it. As Warren had discovered, any man found wandering the streets was considered “fair game” to the first woman who found him. This single fact alone was worrying Irina more than anything else as she stumbled back up the stairs of the mansion. Surely Warren had already been seen by somebody! And he was such a little cutie, with his little crop of hair and his big, pretty eyes — they would’ve snapped him up in a jiffy! But what was Irina to do!? If he HAD been taken, how on earth was she supposed to find him??

‘I’ll make signs!’ she thought suddenly. In its panicked elasticity, her mind had stretched all the way back to some point in the past, to when she was a girl…and she had seen a “missing dog” sign on a lamp post. That was it! She would make signs and post them up all over the neighborhood. It was the only way that she could convey the desperation of her situation, and invoke the help of the community at the same time.

‘Let’s see…I’ll get some markers and…and I’ll go buy some poster board,’ she thought, grabbing her things as she made to rush out to the car. ‘Oh! But first I’ll need to get a good picture of him…the one I took of him the other day should do, with him in bed…gives a nice clear view of his face…yes…yes this is ok…it’s ok….this is going to work. Some woman nabbed him off the street, but then she’ll see the signs and she’ll…she’ll give him back.’

Irina had managed to talk herself into a kind of strange, feverish stasis, and she even felt like maybe she had overreacted, and that all of this would be happily cleared up in the next few hours, once she made the posters with Warren’s face and covered the neighborhood with them. Surely whoever had found him wouldn’t be so cruel and heartless as to keep him, even after they had seen the “Missing” sign! Her stomach churned sickeningly as she resolved not to think about such a ghastly possibility….or about the possibility that he hadn’t been found, and that he was somehow still out there, cold and scared, hiding from her.

But just as she got in the car, and was about to start it, Irina stopped. Warren had run away from her. Even when she managed to get him back, the terrible problem of his choosing to leave still hung over everything. The more Irina thought about it, the more wrenchingly it tore at her. What had she done wrong!? She loved him with all her heart; she loved caring for him, and protecting him, and snuggling him, and making him feel like he didn’t need to worry about anything. She loved babying him, and teasing him, and watching his adorable little face twitch as it blushed crimson, his pretty eyes glancing down and away from him in embarrassment. She knew that he loved it all. She just knew it! So why had he run away from her!?

Without even pausing to contemplate the sudden idea that had popped into her head, Irina had already picked up her phone and was scrolling down her contacts. She'd call Sarah. Sarah could help her understand. And in the meantime, Irina would be driving around, getting materials for the posters. The phone dial rang out in her ear as she turned on the car and started backing out of the driveway. After three rings, Irina was surprised to hear not the deep, feminine voice of Sarah on the other end, but rather the light and high-pitched voice of an unfamiliar male.

“Hello Ms. Stojkovic,” the voice said, pronouncing her name perfectly, “Sarah will be with you in just a moment.”

“…Oh! Well…thank you,” replied Irina, blinking in puzzled curiosity as she put the car in “drive” and sped on down the road. Did Sarah have some kind of…secretary, or something? It certainly sounded like it, from the official, professional way the man had answered the phone. However, even though he had done his best to sound business-like, Irina could tell that the man sounded rather weak and feeble. A vague image of the enormous nurse looming over a tiny, 2-foot-tall, skinny little man suddenly flashed through Irina’s mind. But she brushed the image off as she focused on the road; she was driving faster than usual, and needed to keep her goal in mind: she was going out to buy supplies for the posters to get Warren back.

“Irina! Hello!” Sarah's voice on the other end flowed into Sarah’s ear. The contrast between the wan, faint male voice and Sarah’s full-bodied, deep feminine voice couldn’t have been more dramatic, and even though Irina couldn’t see the nurse on the other end, she could tell from the depth and power of the voice that Sarah had gotten bigger…much bigger.

“H-hi! Hi Sarah!” exclaimed Irina, once again having to shake her head a little to herself as she recovered her wits. It was so strange — talking to Sarah always made her feel a little frazzled and nervous, almost like she was speaking to an older authority figure. Somehow it didn’t matter that Sarah was a good deal younger than her.

“Look, I…I’m sorry to have to…to call you like this,” continued Irina, her eyes on the road, “But…but something terrible’s just happened, and I — I don’t know where else to turn!”

“How long has it been since he ran away?” came Sarah’s calm question.

“Wh—…how did you…?” Irina began incredulously, but Sarah was already talking again.

“I can hear the hurt in your voice Irina,” Sarah said simply. “You feel like it’s your fault, and that he’s rejected your care.”

“Y-yeah…yeah I…that’s true!” replied Irina, her own voice now rising to a bit of a higher pitch. She could feel the top part of her cheeks starting to twitch uncontrollably again, as her stomach clenched up.

“So it as what…a few hours ago?” asked Sarah’s patient voice.

“A…couple hours ago, yes,” sniffled Irina, brushing the fresh tears out of her eyes.

“And from the du Pont mansion…hmmm, he couldn’t have gotten far,” mused Sarah.

“No, but…but Sarah I was out looking for him for a while and I couldn’t find him and…oh god, I’m just so, so worried for him! He’s probably been taken by some other woman, and he’s stuck in her house now, all scared and at her mercy.”

“Maybe…” murmured Sarah. A couple of seconds passed by. “Are you driving, Irina?”

“Yeah, I’m…going to get poster board so I can make “missing” signs for him, and I’m gonna cover the neighborhood with them so that whoever picked him up can —”

“How about you hold off on that,” suggested Sarah. From the sudden emphasis in her voice, however, it didn’t really sound like a suggestion. “I’ll find him.”

“You…you’ll find him!?” asked Irina, not believing her ears. “But…how??”

“I have my ways,” answered Sarah mildly, and from somewhere in the background, Irina thought she heard two sharp clicks, followed by a scampering sound. It was like Sarah had just snapped her fingers and set something in motion.

“You turn around and go on home now,” Sarah continued soothingly, “And try not to worry too much.”

Irina was pulling her car over to the side of the road; the tears were streaming down her face now, to the point where they impeded her vision. She wished that she didn’t feel so helpless, but there wasn’t any way around it — she was positively distraught.

“I j-just…his fever spiked last night,” she sobbed, “And I was….oh god I was just taking care of him, and his mouth was s-so close to my breast and I could feel like this churning and…and Sarah, I don’t even know why I did it but it all seemed so right in the moment and I — I breastfed him…I breastfed him Sarah, and he just…his little lips just latched right on and he just…I mean, for hours…I don’t think he really knew what he was doing, but it was all so perfect, and I — we just fell asleep like that and then I wake up the next morning and he’s gone. It’s…it IS my fault, Sarah! I made him leave!”

There was a long silence on the other end, so long that for a moment Irina thought that Sarah had hung up. But the sudden sound of things bumping around in the background let her know the nurse was still on.

“Like I said, Sarah,” said Sarah patiently, “Try not to worry. This isn’t your fault. Go home and try and distract yourself, ok? And do not put up any “missing” posters with Warren’s picture on them.”

“O-ok, I won’t,” sniffed Irina, blowing her nose, “But why not? Is it dangerous or someth—”

But the phone clicked on the other end, informing Irina that Sarah had ended the call. She sat in the car for a few moments, staring down indistinctly at the steering wheel, trying to make sense of the strange conversation. She didn’t understand…she didn’t understand any of it. But somehow, even though she was still terribly distressed, Sarah’s voice had calmed her a bit. Irina had no idea what Sarah was going to do, but at this point she felt like she simply had to trust her. A minute later she had turned her car around and was headed back to the mansion.

A few miles away, hidden deep in the dank, dingy basement, Warren’s head was spinning. He had finally managed to catch his breath, and was listening to earnest and fervent words of the apparent leader of the group of little men he had stumbled upon.

“So wait…hold on a second,” said Warren, closing his eyes tightly, rubbing them, and then opening them again, “You’re all…part of an organized group?”

“Loosely organized, anyway,” replied the man, who went by the name “Anderson.” “We’ve managed to make contact with a few other pockets like ourselves around the city, and hopefully we can manage to hold out for the long haul until a cure is found.”

“A cure…for the Whipple Virus?” asked Warren. For some reason the thought hadn’t occurred to him recently. The “ New Order” of things, so ubiquitous across the entire spectrum of the media, had convinced him that there was no going back to the way things had been before. He squinted through the gloom around him at each of the little men. Even at 3’8, he was one of the largest ones there. Anderson only reached as high as his shoulders, and the rest looked to be between two and three feet tall. A few of them, lying on makeshift mattresses of cardboard in the corner, were so tiny and weak that Warren thought they couldn’t be bigger than a foot-and-a-half. He shuddered inwardly at the squalor around him. He knew he was a shrimp himself, but next to this lot, he actually felt rather big. They all looked quite sick; their movements were slow and lethargic, and whenever they spoke, the high-pitched raspiness of the sound flitted and fluttered weakly through the air.

“Yes, of course!” exclaimed Anderson in a hushed voice, his eyes going slightly wide as he gestured around to the rest of the group. “There’s an underground resistance of men like us…men who won’t stand to be a part of this so-called “New Order.” I can assume you are one of us, Warren? A man who won’t stand to be treated like nothing more than a pet…than an animal?”

Anderson’s question was pointed, and even though Warren did not feel physically intimidated by this group, he certainly didn’t want any trouble. And besides, Anderson’s talk of a potential cure had pricked up his ears. A substantial part of his brain was still screaming at him that he was crazy, and that he needed to get back to Irina’s big, soft, warm, loving embrace…nestled in between those big…heavy…tits of hers…churning and churning day and night to make more warm, creamy milk for him to —

He shut his eyes again and shook his head, trying to clear it. It was just the virus…just the virus talking! He didn’t really want any of that! He was a man! But as he opened his eyes and saw the confused look on Anderson’s face, he remembered that he had been asked a question.

“No…I mean — yes. Yes! I’m definitely one of you!” he declared, shuddering at the remembrance of Irina’s huge breast next to his face, its fat pink nipple speckled with milk. He felt himself starting to get hard, but he fought against the urge to lean into it. “I…I ran away from…from someone who was trying to…uhhh…trying to…”

“You don’t have to tell us, Warren,” said Anderson, shaking his head as he held up his hand. “Even though you’re still pretty big, I’m sure it was just awful…awful. It’s a terrible disease, to be sure, but there are hidden cells of men, in this city and others — scientists, Warren — who have hidden themselves from the women and are hard at work for the cure.”

“So do you think…I mean…how close are they?” asked Warren, as he joined the circle of men around the kerosene lamp. Next to these men, he actually felt…more like a man than he had felt in a long, long time. His agoraphobia seemed to have vanished. Perhaps it was merely due to his stature, and the fact that, for the first time in months, he had actually done something for himself for a change. Something dramatic. He had run away. He was taking his life back. And it turned out that there might actually be some real hope on the horizon.

“They’re closer than we had ever dared to imagine!” said Anderson excitedly, nodding around at the other men. “They’ve actually managed to sequence the virus, even without their usual resources, and now they’re putting a vaccine through trials!”

“Oh my god, already?!” exclaimed Warren, astounded at the hidden progress that was being made. “That’s…I can’t…wow! That’s just amazing!”

“Just goes to show what us men can do, when we put our heads to it, right gents?” chuckled Anderson. The men around the lamp uttered feeble hums of assent, nodding their heads.

“We’re not really doing much to help,” continued Anderson sadly, turning back to Warren, “But the women have control of our finances now, so we can’t buy up the essential items for vaccine distribution, like glass vials, covert freezers and such, to beef up the supply chains. But some of us in other cities still have control of their accounts, and they’re using the dark web to help funnel funds to purchase the —”

“I still have control of my account,” cut in Warren suddenly. He looked up and around at the other men. A sudden and fierce excitement had flamed up inside him. Anderson looked at him with mild curiosity, raising his eyebrows a bit and nodding his head, in a show of good-natured encouragement.

“Oh nice!” smiled Anderson. “Maybe we can get Eddie over there to drop anything you want to give into the cyberspace jar. Anything helps, of course!”

He gestured over to the corner, where the smallest man there, apparently named Eddie, weakly rose his head from the cardboard he was lying on and gave a little “thumb’s up” signal. Warren blinked and looked back at Anderson.

“No wait, you don’t understand,” Warren said in as measured a voice as he could muster, “I’m Warren du Pont…I live in the big house on the corner of Champlain and Broad.”

The men all looked at each other and then back at him. His name drop was enough to stir them all up, but even still, they weren’t reacting with the kind of enthusiasm that he had expected. Maybe their slowness or lassitude was yet another Whipple symptom, but Warren didn’t have time to bother with all that. He was really getting excited now.

“I have sixty million dollars.”

That certainly did it — Anderson’s mouth dropped open and the other men started whispering amongst themselves.

“You’re…you actually still have access…to ALL of that!?” cried Anderson. One of the other men shushed him, since his high-pitched and raspy voice had carried a bit more than usual in his excitement, but Anderson waved him off.

“I’m sorry, but…I mean, we GOTTA be excited now, guys!” he laughed, making a bit of an effort to quiet his voice down. “We’ve got a du Pont fighting for us now! Haha…uh, I mean…not to assume that you would make your, uhm, fortune available for…?”

“Of course I would!” whispered Warren, who, like a few of the other men, felt a little uneasy with Anderson talking so loud. “All of it! I mean…if it’ll help.”

“Help!?” burst out Anderson in an earnest whisper, looking around at the other men, who were starting to laugh in hushed tones, “Help?? Are you crazy, Warren?? That kind of money will more than cover the syringes, glass vials, freezers, everything! Once the cure comes through, hopefully in just another month or so, then we can send it straight out, all over the state…hell, all over the country!”

“That’s…wow, that’s just amazing!” exhaled Warren, hardly daring to believe that all of this was happening. His mind was moving so fast he could barely keep it all straight — there was actually a way out of this nightmare…there was a resistance group of men all over…there were actually people fighting this…and he, Warren, might actually be able to help…might able to actually be a deciding factor in getting a vaccine distributed! Was it all a mirage!? But there he was, with all these other little men, who looked like they had heard their first dose of good news in quite some time. Their little voices seemed to crawl slowly over each other:

“This moves us months ahead!”

“Years!”

“It’s like divine providence!”

“Just fell into our lap!”

“See?” came Anderson’s voice, rising up a little above the others, “We just needed to trust that somehow, some way, we’d get a miracle. And Warren, my man, you are that miracle that we’ve all been praying for!”

“Aha, uhhh…I just wanna do what I can to help!” chuckled Warren, already feeling uncomfortable with the attention, even as he took a little bit to drink it in and enjoy it. He was so distracted, as were the other men, that he didn’t notice the shadow that had fallen across the small grimy window, which faced the street, that had been partially boarded-up.

“So let’s see,” said Anderson quickly, rubbing his hands together, “I think we need to get you all sorted with Eddie over there…he’s our computer guy, even though he can’t press down the keys anymore…if you’re ok to talk right now, Eddie?”

The tiny man in the corner lifted his head a little, his whole body seeming to shake from the effort, and he rasped out, barely audibly, “I can do…anything…if it means I’m one step closer…to never having another breastmilk dream.”

The men all laughed, in various stages of strange, high-pitched, croaking mirth, and Warren felt himself sinking slightly. He felt terribly sorry for all these men, especially since, even though he had never had such dreams himself, he could feel them coming. And now he had new purpose in life, new hope for reclaiming his agency, his meaning, his whole existence itself.

But he never got the chance. Just as he began walking over to Eddie, a great bang split the air. The basement door was kicked in, flying straight off its hinges and into the opposite wall. A small, collective whoop of fear and shock rippled through the men, but their pittering exclamations were instantly drowned out by something much more powerful: the sound of huge women talking. Warren had turned and saw a huge, black-booted leg, still raised in implication of attack, blocking the open doorway. His heart froze.

“Any in there?” came the strong, deep sound of a feminine voice.

“Ohhhhh yeah!” answered another, obviously coming from above the huge, curvaceous leg in the doorway. “A whole gaggle of em’!”

“Out through the back door!!” hissed Anderson in a panic, his eyes as big as saucers, pointing frantically to the other door at the far end of the wall.

“Ahh, I can hear em’ scurrying around in there,” said a third female voice, and just then, a quarter of the doorway was blocked by the huge head of a young woman with short-cropped, bright red hair. Her lips and eyebrows were lined with heavy piercings, and her whole face was done up in dark, alluring make-up. She looked deathly beautiful, but positively vampiric.

“Aww Chelsea they’re getting away,” the woman smirked. “Can’t let that happen!”

Suddenly, Warren and the other men were all yelling and screaming and falling to the ground, putting their hands over their ears, because the women had grabbed the doorway and were literally tearing the walls apart with their bare hands. In a matter of seconds, they had reduced the entire street-facing wall to rubble. There was nothing the men could do now. Warren was one of the first to open his eyes and look up from his helpless crouch. Three women, each of them at least 7-and-a-half feet tall, were standing there, looking down with delighted grins on their faces, as their dark eyes sparkled. They wore studded leather jackets that showed off their prodigious mammary assets, while at the same time displaying their huge, tattooed arms. Their heavy black boots were positively terrifying, and looked like they could have easily crushed two or three of the little men at a time. Their hairdos, along with their numerous piercings in their faces and ears, were as intimidating as their outfits. In addition to the short-cropped redhead, there was a blonde with a buzz cut, and, at a towering 8 feet tall, the tallest and biggest of the three, a fierce-looking woman with a turquoise-dyed mohawk. Most chilling of all, however, were the huge, handheld nets all three of them had slung over their shoulders.

“Oh my god LOOK at them all!” cried the blonde. “Chelsea, how’d we split THEM up now, huh?”

The tallest one, whose name was evidently Chelsea, shot a knowing grin down at the terrified, cowering men.

“We’ll figure that out,” came her deep, intimidating voice, the whoosh of her net suddenly swinging away from her huge shoulder, “After we catch em’ all!”