Infected, What Are They Really??
Something that I feel I've done a really poor job of explaining in my Growing Pandemic multiverse, is the following question:
"What are the infected...actually?"
This question might sound asinine, because the answer itself should seem an obvious one, Infected are individuals who are affected by with some sort of contagion. Similarly the same could be said for my Afflicted, Infested, and Spored. They are all, in some way, affected by a condition, whatever that condition may be.
While that may work to explain what is happening at the start of an (Infected/Afflicted/Infested/Spored)'s contamination, it doesn't really explain the rest of it. They all go through too extreme a corruption, to label it as a sort of illness, like it can be cured.
No it's better to describe it as more of a mutation, an evolution into something entirely different.
(For the sake of simplification, my explanation will mostly focus on the Infected but please realize it can pretty much apply to the rest of them.)
The infection itself, probably is most similar to what we would call a bio-suit (think Venom from Marvel). As it progresses through the process of corrupting someone, it is coating what is there and eventually replacing that biomass with a version (strain) of itself. On the outside it appears like sudden muscle growth, changes in height, and genitalia growth. There is also the manifestation of infected traits that we've come to know, like multi-limb, tentacles, and other specialized features.
But what of the more monstrous transformations?
We're so used to bone, blood, sinew, muscle, and flesh behaving in a specific and expected way, that when the transformation takes an unexpected twist, suddenly the rules stop working. It's at that point you should begin to realize that what you see with the infected, is somewhat of a façade.
For you see, in the more advanced stages of infection, the rules of what we know about humanoids similar to us stop working.
Let's use an example: Using my coyote character Frank.
Frank, for what we know of him, is Straight (Bi-curious at best), exceptionally lithe (skinny), not particularly strong (a weakling), and overall he is just an average example of a canid-like citizen in the city of Whitespire.
Let's just say, Frank has a run in with an infected with a fat 24in (60cm) cock ready to plow that virgin straight ass.
First off, as an uninfected, Frank wouldn't survive first penetration. To him, his anus is for [Number 2].
In the real world, he'd be split in half and probably bleed out, dead Frank.
So already, the infection needs to change (mutate/evolve) one thing about both him, and his soon to be infected partner, to be able to just simply fit that dick. This is where the rules of what we perceive as the real world, stop applying.
The muscle-bound infected has the much weaker Frank pinned against a wall. Forcing their tongue down the coyotes throat in the most homosexual of deep throat kisses imaginable, and a complete afront to Frank's heterosexuality. Meanwhile, the tip of the infected's penis is squirting infected juices all over the coyote's inner thighs and ass, making a complete and sticky mess of the area.
After a couple moments of this Frank suddenly feels hot and flush, and then much to his own surprise, the infected simply slides right into what should've of been his virgin ass, the penis creating a visible bulge as it works it's way in.What's happening here is the double exposure of infected fluids.
The contaminated saliva and seminal fluids easily absorb through exposed flesh and quickly travels through the blood stream to places that it needs to change in order to facilitate it's spread, in this case to Frank's anus and colon.
Rapidly it will make's Frank's anus and colon incredibly pliable, and the pelvic bone rubbery.
Meanwhile, the infected's penis while appearing rock hard, is actually becoming quite spongy, but still able to maintain it's core tension to enable penetration.
The mixture of these things make the initial penetration possible and the continued supply of infected fluids feeds the rapid coating and then mutation of Frank's colon and large intestine into a anal tract capable of fitting even the largest of infected penises. Even if Frank were to somehow get away, his fate is sealed. The infection would continue to use his own biomass to convert him into an infected eventually.
Returning to the situation at hand, Frank's mind is exploding in orgasmic pleasure, tripping the coyote's average cock to grow rock hard, the infected's penis is pushing deeper and further into Frank. His muscle-bound male partner starts playing with Frank's nipples, a spot that'd never done much for him before, and suddenly finds himself squirming at the sensation of them being pulled and played with. The infected's tongue runs up the length of Frank's neck and his moans out like the girl he fucked last week. What was happening to him?
The infection doesn't take long to start to change how pleasure works to ensure a new host for itself. As simple as rewiring of his anal tract's walls to be filled with pleasure receptors, can be an example of this. Eventually it'll target other things, like Frank's erogenous zones (nipples, neck, ears, underarms, etc.) and pack those places with loads of pleasure receptors, even if he'd never been particularly sensitive there before.
Pleasure is an easy way to make a host pliable for what starts to happen next.
On the outside Frank's penis starts to inflate with size, his testicles growing heavier with each pump of the infected's dick into his ass. It won't take long for his body to start to stretch out, growing in height, and eventually in muscle mass. A dirty look will eventually cross his face as he fully embraces what's happening to him, his brain saturated with the corruption that has filled his body, and then he start to grow more explosively, his pectorals bursting forward in size, thick pulsing veins leading to his biceps flexing into mountainous muscular peaks, his now fat and bloated infected cock slapping against the rock hard muscles of his abdominals as his tapered muscular hips meet the thick muscle of his glutes, and bulging quads. He'd never been so huge and muscular in his life.
It's now very obvious to all on the façade of Frank is now that of an infected, who is now loving every moment of riding his infected partner's dick...
But what happened on the inside to further enable all this?
The infection tends to retain most of the flesh façade, despite not necessarily needing any of it, to maintain the appearance of being humanoid. If an infected appears more human, it is less frightening to deal with, because on some level it still seems safe. This is a clever trap, making it easier for it to target family members of the infected individual. People think they can still reason with the infected, and while you may be able to for a time, the infection and desire to spread always win out in the end.
If they didn't need to maintain the façade, infected in the final stages don't technically need to breath, to eat, to hydrate, to bathe, or to sleep. Being similar to a bio-suit, the infection's biology is capable of absorbing and excreting everything directly through their host's flesh. It will convert any bacteria, viruses, debris, and other foreign matter into itself, and as a result maintains it's host's personal hygiene.
Internally they have tracts and cavities where formerly there were internal organs. The throat tract can lead directly to a stomach-like cavity, or directly to the penis or testicles, and the anal tract acts in a similar way. Veins pump a thick viscous fluid that flow throughout the infected body. The heart is present, but oversized, engorged, and seemingly alien in it's true function, in the same way muscles, sinew, flesh, and bones exist, but does the infected actually even need them?
Sleep is more of a subjective matter, supposedly infected do choose to sleep, but it's more of a form of stasis. Infected do claim to dream, but it's hard to tell what their dreams are exactly. The brain of an infected isn't centralized, it's spread across the entire bio-suit. In fact if you were to open the skull case of an infected, it's just be random biomass there, a façade. On top of that, they are able to access a broader hivemind, or neural network, there is even the possibility they switch bodies with each other on a whim.
All this leads is to the same opinion, infected themselves are bio-suits once fully infected, because they are no different than the infection coating them. -Eshki