The Hunter and the Hunted

It was raining like it did every fucking night in the city. The weather people say it's because all the asphalt heats up in the sun and that hot air rises and meets cooler, wet air above the city. That and all the smoke from the fires cause the moisture to condense and come down as rain. The tall buildings make it worse by funneling the heat up and by slowing the flow of cold air around them.

It wasn't a big problem until the city collapsed because there were few fires. Once it did, there was no electricity for heating and cooking, so the residents started burning anything that would burn. On the rare day when it doesn't rain, you can see the columns of smoke from all the fires rising. The smoke particles attract moisture like a hooker sucking a cock, and the result is rain later on.

I was being very careful because not being very careful meant I'd probably end up being very dead. Daylight in the city was dangerous enough, but it was about two AM and the animals were on the prowl. It was one of those animals I was hunting that night.

That's what I do. I'm Rich Anderson, and I'm a hunter.

I learned my trade courtesy of Uncle Sam and a stint in Special Forces. I get plenty of jobs because like kids have always been, there are some who think their parents are too strict and think the city with its lack of rules would be better. Their parents want them back, and they hire me to find them and bring them back. It's sort of like the old Frank Buck movies, except my quarry is an errant son or daughter instead of a lion or leopard. Sometimes I think lions and leopards would be safer and easier.

Chastity Meadows was her name. Her father was an ultra-religious minister who had clamped down on her from the time she was born. It was the religious revival movement of the 2050's I suppose. In 2053, Iran launched nuclear warheads at New York, Chicago, Miami, Denver, and Los Angeles. They were destroyed by the US missile defense system over the Atlantic and Pacific, but it scared the shit out of people.

Preachers and priests and rabbi's across the US blamed the way society had sunk into the depths of sin for the attack. It was going to be like Sodom and Gomorrah if society didn't get back on the correct track. God would not allow any society to continue to exist that wasn't of a pious nature. A lot of people believed them and it seemed like half the goddamned country went from being normal people to being ardent church-goers and trying to live pious lives.

To most of those people, being pious meant treating other people like they would want to be treated and doing their best to be good citizens. To the ultra-religious, piety meant no drugs, no alcohol, no music other than music proponing belief in God, plain non-revealing clothes, sex only to reproduce, and praying for anything, everything, and everyone. Most of their kids didn't know any better and fell in line like they were supposed to.

Most isn't all, though, and a few, like Chastity, didn't like wearing long dresses and listening to religious music all the time. She wanted more freedom and there really aren't any rules in the city. One night about six months before, the nineteen year old slipped out of her house, managed to make it over or through the fence of the gated community where Reverend Meadows lived, and headed into the city. She left a note saying she needed to see what the rest of the world was like and that she'd be back if she didn't like what that was.

The open entrance to the storm sewer was just high enough I could stand up and it had water running a couple inches deep in the bottom, but at least I was out of the rain. That storm sewer was my entry point into the city. It had originally had rebar forming a barrier at the new city limits, but I'd cut that open two years before so I'd fit through. The sewer was apparently never inspected by anybody on either side of the city limit because my hole stayed open, so I had a hidden, if dark, wet, and nasty, way into the hell of the old city.

At the other end was a concrete raceway that led storm water from that sewer in the old city to the river that ran west through the suburbs. The trees along the edge of part of the raceway were where I'd parked my truck. Nobody ever came down to that part of the raceway either, so my truck would be there when I got back.

I lifted the night vision goggles from my eyes and perched them on top of my camouflage rain hat, then took the picture from the inside pocket of the camo jacket under my camo rainsuit and clicked on my little flashlight.

Chastity was the picture of a girl just budding into what would one day become a beautiful and sensuous woman. She was blonde with innocent eyes and a smile that looked impish. The long dress didn't show me much of her figure because it didn't fit tight, but even so, it was obvious she had pretty big tits for so young a girl, and her ass was already the wider ass of a woman.

The description I got from Reverend Meadows and his wife said Chastity was five seven and weighted about one ten. The height jived with the picture. The weight, maybe. It was hard to tell because the dress didn't fit anywhere.

I put the picture back in my pocket, checked the mags and chambers of the two nine mil's on my belt, and then picked up the MK-18 assault rifle I'd leaned against the sewer wall and checked its mag and chamber. I also checked the mag and chamber of M-26 shotgun system attached to the rifle. The mag for the MK-18 only held fifty rounds and the one for the M-26 six, but I had six more mags for the MK-18 and four for the M-26 in my vest.

The rifle and shotgun system are illegal for a civilian to own, but when a US Congressman asked me to bring his son out of the city, I told him I'd probably need some significant firepower if I was to have any chance at all. I said my two nine mils probably wouldn't be enough since there were M16's and AK's all over the place there. Two days later, there was a knock on my front door.

When I opened it, there was nobody there, but the box lying on the step contained the MK and M-26, fifteen mags for the MK, and a thousand rounds of ammo for it, half of which were armor piercing with a tungsten carbide core. The box also contained two hundred 12 gauge buckshot rounds for the M26 and ten mags.

After pulling the night vision goggles back down, I picked up the MK-18 and started toward a run-down house ten blocks from the storm sewer. There didn't seem to be anybody walking around, but I still kept in the shadows of the buildings.

The city hadn't just collapsed over night. It took a lot of years to turn a once-thriving center of finance and industry into the fucked up shit hole it is today. There are a lot of theories as to why that happened, but they're all just the bullshit ramblings of educated idiots who make a living by publishing that bullshit without having to do anything about it.

The real reason was politics. The liberal politicians proclaimed it was society's duty to take care of the poor of the inner city, and promised them pretty much a free ride through life. That was to get them the votes they needed to stay in power in the city.

The conservative politicians also needed votes so they were agreeable to all of those promises except they wanted the people to work or get an education and eventually get off the dole. That let them keep control of the suburbs.

Both sides were worse than the philosophizing fools who write about the causes. They stood on their platforms every election year and spouted off their policies, but once elected did nothing except increase their fortunes and buy posh houses in exclusive communities outside their districts. The result was a population of city residents who didn't work, didn't have many of the things the suburban residents had, and turned to crime to get what they wanted.

Crime rose, then rose again. While the politicians were promising to end crime -- the liberals by paying the people to be good citizens and the conservatives by putting the offenders in jail -- the city began to change.

Industry left first and along with the jobs, took the tax money they'd been paying into the city coffers. Finance left next, transferring their corporate headquarters to new buildings in the suburbs and taking their tax money with them too. When industry and finance left, so did their employees.

Those employees moved further away from the city and just to be safe, changed the suburban areas into gated communities with fences and armed guards. As those areas grew, they became a new city with fences and guards that effectively kept it isolated from the old. In only about fifty years, the old city became an entity walled off from the rest of the state.

As the tax money ran out, the old city was forced to reduce the size of the police force. It didn't take long before the city residents figured out their chances of being caught robbing a store or selling drugs ranged from slim to none. They also figured out that killing the victim reduced those chances even more. As crime increased again, those stores closed up and moved outside to the gated communities. The drug trade flourished as well, fueled by dealers who supplied the drugs and by people frantic to escape what life had become.

Within twenty-five years, the city was basically run by the gangs of drug dealers. The politicians had fretted and fussed and made more promises. The gangs took a more practical approach. They knew they could have complete control if they played their cards right and those cards were the election system. In one election, the mayor and most other elected officials of the city were removed from office and replaced by candidates controlled by the drug dealers. There were rumors of a fixed election, but nobody would come forward and testify, so the election results stood. The few remaining relatively honest politicians resigned and retreated to their nice homes outside the city.

After that, the city became more of a third-world country than a city. The fences around the city had been intended to keep people in the city and out of the suburbs. They also served to keep anybody who wanted to change the new order out of the city. The new mayor formed his own police department and stationed them around the periphery of the city to keep out people the new government didn't want interfering in their affairs. The state responded by cutting off the electric power and natural gas that fed the city.

When that didn't change anything, the state essentially gave up and turned the city over to the residents. I suppose the state politicians thought the residents would eventually repent and beg for support from the state. Maybe they thought the residents would quickly kill each other off and the state could regain control. I don't know which it was, but the city turned into a hell of gangs, drugs, whores, and the murders that usually go hand and hand with those ills of society.

In spite of all the crime, the city actually had something resembling an economy and that economy was environmentally friendly, well, except for the whores and drug dealers. It was based on salvage of anything in the city that could be removed and put on one of the cargo planes from South America that landed at the old airport on a weekly basis. You'd think the Federal Government would have stopped them, but doing so would have meant shooting them down. That would have probably killed some innocent people, and letting those planes fly into the city didn't hurt anybody, so they didn't try.

The plane would unload a supply of food, booze, clothes, guns, ammo, and of course, an assortment of drugs. These were taken to the city exchange run by the drug dealers. You took your copper wire or toilets or marble or auto parts or whatever to the exchange and were given something the drug dealers deemed of equal value. Food was the highest sought, with weapons second and clothing third. If you already had what you needed, you asked for drugs. They were the currency of the old city. Those salvaged items were then taken to the plane. It dropped them off at recycling centers in South America on its return trip.

Just my take on what really happened. I should know. I grew up in that hell before realizing I'd probably not live to see thirty. My dad had been killed by a rival gang when I was fifteen, and my mother had OD'd two years later. The night of my eighteenth birthday, I took my birth certificate out from under one of the boards in my closet and cut my way through one of the fences. The next morning, I enlisted in the US Army so I'd have a place to live and food to eat. I suppose listing the city as my place of birth when I enlisted in the Army was how the Congressman found out about my past.

My Army training told him I had the skills required. All he needed was to convince me to go back once I got out of the Army. He had money and I didn't, so that was pretty convincing. After I brought his son back to him, I started getting more requests.

Anyway, I was heading to that house because of what I'd learned on a trip into the city a couple days before. I have a few semi-trusted informants in the city, and I wanted to talk to a couple of them. I say they're semi-trusted because they'd sell me out to anybody if they had half a chance and the price was right, like maybe a quick hand job or a warm bottle of beer. They're willing to cooperate with me only because they know I'd cut their balls off if I thought they were even thinking about that. The two bottles of bourbon I brought along were just my way of asking politely.

One didn't know anything about a blonde or about anybody named Chastity. The other looked at the picture for a couple minutes before saying, "Yeah. I seen her last week. She's shacked up with Lady Madison in her whorehouse over on Elm. Didn't talk to her 'cause Lady Madison don't like men talking with her bitches, but I heard her call the blonde Chastity. Nice tits on that girl. I like more ass on a woman, but she had really nice tits."

I knew about Lady Madison because I'd grown up about ten blocks from her whorehouse. She was the lesbian madam of the business known as "Madison Spa and Massage". She'd managed to not only stay alive in the city but also to start a business that kept her fixed pretty well. She'd managed that by being more ruthless than anyone who tried to take her down.

Lady Madison's real name is Sharon Morgan, and she started whoring at the age of eighteen. Sharon liked girls, but she didn't like men at all. She only did it to survive, and if the story I heard is correct, never fucked even one man. She only sucked cocks.

She had higher aspirations than just giving guys blow jobs, and started hiding part of her take from her pimp. I take it he was pretty pissed when he found out so he tried to beat the hell out of her. He made a big mistake in trying that, because Sharon was ready for him. He was starting toward her with his fist raised when she pulled a small pistol from her bra and shot him in the belly. He was still alive, or so I'm told, when she took a knife and cut off his ears and nose.

After she had four of the girls drag his body out to the street, Sharon took control of the whore house and started calling herself "Lady Madison". Word spread fast that you didn't fuck around with Lady Madison, and she earned the respect of the drug dealers in the area. They left her alone and paid to use her girls. She didn't suck cocks any more, but she had a few girlfriends who would suck her clit for her.

With any luck, Chastity was one of those girlfriends, and that made me feel a little better. I wasn't sure what Reverend Meadows would do if I brought him back a daughter who'd been fucked by a couple hundred guys. If she was one of Lady Madison's girlfriends, she'd have been spared that. Lady Madison doesn't like to share.

Madison Spa and Massage had light in most of the windows when I stepped between the two piles of garbage in the alley behind it. The light was from candles placed in each room, so it was pretty dim, but the night vision goggles let me see what there was to see. I had time to look because it was only a little after two. The johns would still be coming for a while yet. After that, things would settle down and I could start looking for Chastity. I had a fair idea of where she would be. There was a room on the first floor in back with the curtains open, and the inside was definitely not a whore's room like the rest. The rest, at least the ones I could see inside were pretty sparse.

All I could see in them was a bed and a chair, and the few sessions I watched showed me why both were there. The bed...well, it's obvious why it was there. The chair served to hold the john's clothes while he did his thing. The girl usually wasn't wearing much more than panties and a bra. She just pulled the bra down under her tits and the panties off one leg, so she didn't need a place to put them.

That other room wasn't really a typical woman's bedroom, but it was a far cry from the whore's rooms. The bed was there, of course, but so were a couple of fancy chairs and an ornate wardrobe. The wardrobe was on the wall I could see, and there were a couple large pictures of nude women hanging beside it.

I didn't see anybody go in there either. That probably meant the room was Lady Madison's bedroom. As soon as the last john left, she'd probably go there for the night. She'd probably take a girlfriend or two with her. With any luck, one of them would be Chastity. If not, I'd have to look through the house until I found her or go home and come back another night. I knew Lady Madison employed several armed guards, so rummaging through her house wasn't very appealing.

Nobody bothered me while I waited except for a couple rats almost as big as housecats, but I hadn't expected anybody to come down the alley. Before, when there were cops on patrol, most bad guys used the alleys so they wouldn't be seen. Now, with no cops, they used the streets. Alleys were just a place to pile up garbage and other stuff and let it rot. The "other stuff" was the result of when the electricity was shut off; the water plant stopped supplying water so the toilets wouldn't work. That made a stinking mess and that was another reason nobody used the alleys.

Along about three, I started seeing the light in most of the rooms go out, and by three-thirty, only that one bedroom was still lit. As I watched, a woman with short hair and dressed in a satin gown walked by the window. She stopped beside the bed, and stood there until two other women walked up beside her, a red-head and a blonde. The red-head untied the robe and the blonde slipped it off Lady Madison's shoulders and then walked away from the window.

Chastity might have dyed her hair but the red-head looked too tall for Chastity. When she took off her top, I was sure she wasn't Chastity. Her tits were barely there, and the only reason they showed much at all was her bra. Once she took that off, well, I'd seen men in the army with bigger tits. Her ass was too wide as well unless Chastity had put on quite a bit of weight.

The blonde walked back in front of the window then. She was naked and when she turned to look out the window, I knew I had Chastity. Her eyes didn't look quite so innocent, but her nose and mouth were the same, and judging by how far up the window frame her head came, she was the right height unless she was wearing really high heels. She also had really big, really soft looking tits.

Lady Madison sat down on the bed, then rolled over on her back and spread her legs. The redhead crawled on the bed and started playing with Lady Madison's tits. The blonde climbed up between Lady Madison's legs and knelt down. She was barefoot and I hadn't seen her stop to take off her shoes. It had to be Chastity.