Escape From Buggery Ch. 09

IX

The girls had been in woods for many days now and had become rather accustomed to their remoteness from the civilised world. Sharon commented that at home they'd have been bound to meet someone walking in the woods, but as Buttercup pointed out from the map there were just no places near them where people would be likely to be coming from. As she elaborated, people in Buggery didn't have the leisure time to be walking in the woods for no purpose.

However, they did at last come across someone else, as they emerged out of thick wood into a clearing. It was a woman gathering dried wood. Typically for this country, she was naked with a shaved head. As they had seen no one for so many days, it seemed sensible just to girls stay quiet and still in the hope that they wouldn't be noticed while she was working.

"You don't have to hide you know," the woman called out to them. "I know you're there." She picked up her bundle of twigs and branches and walked towards where they were.

Sharon, Tracey and Buttercup emerged nervously from the shadows and stood in the speckled sunlight. The woman stared at them with a quizzical expression, passing her eyes from one girl to another and back again. She had probably been very attractive once, and she was probably not much older than thirty. Most of her teeth were missing. Her nose was broken and slightly twisted. A jagged scar disfigured one of her breasts. "My! You're a funny crowd! Are you on the run?"

Tracey nodded her head. "We're on our way to Gomorrah."

"Gomorrah!" exclaimed the woman with an amused smile. "Well, you've got to have somewhere to run to if you're running away I suppose." She dropped her bundle to her feet and hobbled towards them with the faltering step of a much older person. "You'll be pleased to know that it's not far to go now. The war zone's really close to here. It used to be a lot further away. Many kilometres away. But it's been getting steadily closer as the war's gone on. Bit like the tide coming in, I guess."

The girls felt strangely awe-struck by the disfigured woman. She was so skinny, with the outline of her ribs and hips showing clearly through her tanned bare skin. Her feet were flattened and rough. Her toe- and finger-nails were crooked and broken. Many of her teeth were missing, particularly at the front. Back home, Sharon and Tracey had never seen anyone in such a bad way, except after a good scrap in the pub car park.

And then it'd be mostly patched up when the hospital had got them to them.

"You're a strange lot. I've never seen anyone like you before. We get a lot of runaways round here. Mostly to seek a better life in Gomorrah. Or anywhere really. But you're the strangest yet.

I suppose you're worried about being caught and sent back. And that's why you're wandering in the woods."

"There's a lot of police about!" Sharon said.

"Well, that may be so. But there's no reason here why they'd be bothered about you lot in particular. Law and order sort of starts to disintegrate round here. No one can be bothered to enforce His Majesty's Justice when you spend all your time dodging bullets and things. And that's why I live here."

"Why? Because there's no law and order?" wondered Buttercup.

The woman didn't really answer. She looked at Buttercup's beautiful naked figure with a horrible lascivious leer. "My! You're a pretty one!" she exclaimed. "You're the prettiest one I've ever seen! I'd love to have you suck my cunt!" The woman scratched her chin contemplatively with a hand from which two fingers were missing.

The woman walked right up to Buttercup and stood right in front of her. Tracey had become sufficiently sensitive to her new lover to notice her flinch ever so slightly as the woman approached. She answered Buttercup's question. "No, sweetheart. Where there's no law and order, then you can survive. It's the law which kills people. In most of Buggery you can't live at all when you lose your looks. Or like me get brutally and violently raped by the police. You don't stand a chance in most of Buggery. You last as long as you can, and that's only so long as the police don't take an interest in you for one reason or another. Or you don't get called up for fighting against the Gomorrans.

Round here no one gives a fuck. There's no eugenic policy - official or otherwise."

The woman raised her other hand, which still had a full set of fingers, and without ceremony or introduction stroked Buttercup's breasts. "You'll want some food, won't you? Something to eat. You can't buy it round here. You can only grow it, steal it or sell your body for it."

"Can't you buy anything at the villages?" wondered Tracey.

"Villages!" sniffed the woman. "You're only five kilometres from the front. Villages can't survive here. They get bombed to pieces. You have to live in a bunker to survive round here.

There are no villages anywhere around her! The nearest you have to a village must be Tranquillity. That's a real hovel which supplies sex to the soldiers before they head off to fight in the war. And probably die. You could buy sex there, but not any food. You can buy sex here if you want.

And you can sell it too. It's a lot less precious than food, I can tell you! If you want food you're going to have to follow me.

And you're going to have to pay for it! But not with money! What could I do with money round here?"

The woman looked at the girls. "Well! Are you coming with me or you going to stay in the fucking woods forever? And is any one of you going to help me carry these fucking twigs?"

Sharon nodded and reluctantly stepped forward.

"Yeah! We'll come. At least you're not police!"

The woman smiled grimly. "And you can call me Joy by the way. That's what I'm called, but that doesn't necessarily describe me."

She picked up the bundle that lay on the ground, which was tied together by more flexible branches, and lunged it over to Sharon. She gasped as she took the weight off Joy. Fuck! They were heavy! She swang them over her shoulder, feeling the rough branches against her skin through the blouse, and followed Joy as she hobbled ahead of them through the woods. Fortunately, Tracey and Buttercup took turns in helping her carry the bundle, so it wasn't so bad. But even five minutes at a time was more weight than she'd ever carried before. They walked in single line through a tortuous route that seemed to follow no obvious paths, stepping over fallen logs and ducking under tangled bracken. Now that Tracey was carrying the bundle and cursing every fucking twig while she did so, Sharon now noticed for the first time that Joy had a bit of a limp, and that half of one of her buttocks was missing.

Also for the first time, as they stumbled along, the girls began to appreciate just how close they must be to the war zone. They passed the rotting hull of a crashed aeroplane, parts of which were still hanging from the branches of the trees. And they passed a few holes that Tracey at first thought had been dug, but which Buttercup pointed out were more likely to be craters caused by falling bombs.

And then, for the first time in days, they were out of the woods and found themselves on a road which stretched away from the wood across open fields into the distance. The three girls paused in the unfamiliar, open space. They could see more than several yards ahead. And the bright rays of the sun in the open air was overwhelming after the speckled light and dark shadows they'd become accustomed to.

Joy did not appreciate their pause. "Fuck's sake!" She yelled. "It's fucking dangerous here. You don't want to get shot, do you? And don't wander around randomly. There are mines, unexploded bombs and all things round here. So just follow where I go and don't even think of making a fucking detour." She turned round with a grimace, and hobbled on as the unforgiving sun beat down on her and on the girls. Sharon's skin burnt in the bright light and the sharp pain of the heat became indistinguishable form the sharp pain of the branches she was carrying. But, from the advice she had been given, she was able to see the landscape in a new light. The many holes which dotted the uncultivated fields had definitely not been dug. They were too shallow and too strangely smooth. And the rusted hulks she could see in the distance were almost certainly not the tractors and cars like you'd expect to see in the country back home. They almost certainly served some military purpose.

After a mile or so of trudging through the desolate fields, Joy led them to what looked like some kind of a settlement. It was in fact the bombed remains of a tinned fruit factory, with a large commercial sign pointing to the foreman's office and industrial machinery scattered about.

As they approached, they were able to see the other inhabitants of this place. Like Joy, they were all naked with shaved heads. Some were even young children: which was something Tracey and Sharon hadn't seen before in Buggery. But the vast majority of the people were other women. Very few were men. Nobody seemed to pay them any attention as they approached. Everyone seemed busy in their own affairs amongst the ruins of the factory, which still had inappropriate signs scattered about the place, pointing towards places like Reception, Head Office and Exit.

Joy stopped by a sign reading Technical Services. "This used to be the main agricultural district of Buggery," she commented.

"During the war with Sodom, this area was very prosperous, as all trade that didn't go by sea had to go via Gomorrah. So, a lot of people came to live round here. Nowadays nobody lives here except old people like me or people with more to fear from Law and Order than from living off all this shit."

"What sort of people?" wondered Sharon.

"Men, for instance," Joy continued. "Not many men in Buggery. They all get sent off to the war if they can't be used in the sex and tourism industry. People with physical disabilities - like that girl there." She pointed at a very pretty girl who certainly didn't appear disabled. "She's deaf.

She'd be dead as well anywhere but here. Deafness isn't tolerated. It's a wonder she didn't have her womb torn out like I did. But she's had a couple of little children. And they're not deaf."

Joy led the three girls down what had once been a corridor, but now without a roof over their heads seemed like just the gap between two buildings. She arrived at a hatch on the floor which she crouched over, lifted up with some effort with both hands and revealed a flight of metal steps descending into the dark. "Down here. But be careful! A lot of rungs are missing."

This was true, and Buttercup complained at the sharpness of the edges of the rungs on her bare feet. It was also very dark, so the three girls were quite frightened as they descended.

Before they got to the bottom, however, the shaft was lit up by a light from below as Joy lit a candle with some matches. They now got a view of where they were. It was in fact a room that had once been a food store. All about the place was scattered an untidy miscellany of rugs and rubbish, which betrayed no sense of order, even to Tracey and Sharon who were used to relative disorder.

In the corner of the room, there was a ragged mattress on which lay another woman, whose appearance was not nearly as decrepit as the first woman.

"This is Sweetness, my lover," announced Joy.

"Sweetness is blind, so the only use she has to the world is to make love.

Isn't that so, darling."

"I fuck all the time. To whoever's willing to pay us food for it," Sweetness explained. "Are you going to give us food for sex? I'm about ready for a fuck." Sweetness was a slim, in fact emaciated girl, with long, terribly matted, black hair which reached to her waist. Like everyone else though she was totally naked.

"Not tonight, Sweetness," Joy explained. "It's these girls who are going to give me pleasure today."

In fact it was more Buttercup than Sharon or Tracey who provided that honour. The two girls were deeply depressed by their environment, horrified by the physical appearance of their host, but nonetheless ravenously hungry. Buttercup, however, seemed to have no discriminatory faculties and more than satisfied Joy's lust, while Sweetness sat silently and disconsolately to one side. Tracey felt a mixture of disgust and jealousy as she watched Buttercup indulge in wild and passionate love of the kind with apparently just as much pleasure as she'd ever shown to her. But although Buttercup might have the energy, she reflected, somehow all the energy seemed to have sapped out of her. The relative calm and peace that had fallen upon her these last couple of days since they'd met Buttercup was being angrily consumed with the heat and rush of jealousy and hatred, as she watched Buttercup lick Joy's half-buttock and allowed Joy's tongue to push through the gaps in her teeth into the beauty of her vagina. Tracey could imagine every caress and every thrust and every nibble as if it was happening to her. As, of course, it had not so long before.

And Joy's appetite for sex was ravenous and ugly. She probed every orifice in Buttercup's body: her nostrils, her ears, her mouth and arse. She demanded that Buttercup push her tongue down her throat, into her anus, and to pay particular attention to the ripped and jagged edges of her torn labia. Every scar had to be licked, every wound and every part of her had to be treated as if it were a source of pleasure.

Only after Joy was fully satisfied, after several hours of fumbling, groping, penetration and nibbling in the candle-light, was the food at last prepared. And it really was not very pleasant. It was just a tasteless meat and vegetable stew on white rice.

But nevertheless the friends launched into it with an appetite. As they ate greedily and voraciously, Sharon began to see more the advantages of having Buttercup in their company. Unlike Tracey, she had been able to watch Buttercup and Joy without too much jealousy. And, even, after having watched Tracey and Buttercup together, with a guilty feeling of having gained a kind of revenge. Sharon wouldn't have chosen to make love to such a disgusting (and smelly!) wreck of an individual like Joy. Nor was she too excited by the sullen, skeletal appearance of Sweetness. And now that Tracey had seen what a promiscuous slut Buttercup was, despite her obvious physical beauty, maybe she would lose her so obvious dykish obsession with the girl.

However, when the candle was about to be extinguished, Sharon found that there was actually a shortage of mattresses and that the two mattresses there were both in a filthy and sordid state.

Tracey and Sharon shared the mattress with Sweetness who clung to them with a tenacity that had nothing do with any sexual passion and more to do with a desperation for their bodies' warmth. Sweetness occasionally stroked and caressed the two girls' bodies seemingly unconcerned by their unresponsiveness. This was almost comforting in the discomfort and bleakness of their sleeping arrangements. Sharon had never slept so tightly against Tracey's body before, and she was dreading not only Sweetness' dyke intentions, but those that her best friend might be developing. Joy and Buttercup slept on the other mattress where they very soon resumed making love together as the night hours stretched ahead in the total blackness of the abandoned store-room.