Escape From Buggery 4

Sharon and Tracey left the teachers the following day, although they had hardly began to recover from either their trudge through Buggery or from their beatings by Tiger Lilly. A dark blue (nearly black) bruise had swollen up around Sharon's eye, and both girls' legs were criss-crossed with scratches and discoloured by more bruises. They could barely stand up as they tottered by the door to the cottage, in the unfamiliar flat plastic sandals they'd been given in exchange for the shoes they'd worn the day before. Despite their looks, the two girls were showered with affectionate kisses from Primrose and Chrysanthemum. Somehow this in no way fully compensated for their treatment from Tiger Lilly. Tracey was almost sure that she would never want sex with anyone ever again, and Sharon certainly didn't feel like it today.

They took with them a cheap printed map of Buggery that Primrose lent them. It was one which she had in stock for her Geography lessons and was an official map of the country. It showed roads, woods, rivers, lakes, towns and villages; but large patches of the map were left suspiciously blank: lacking all colour or contour. No clues were given by the map as to what they were, but nearly one quarter of the map was left like this. Chrysanthemum explained that although it was impossible to be sure, most of these blanked out areas would represent the private lands of the monarchy and the rest of the aristocracy. Though it was possible that they also included areas of military significance and the mysterious breeding centres. Of the parts of the map that was clearly outlined, the most distinct were the capital city and the Tourist spots. However, there weren't many of the latter on the road to Gomorrah.

"Although the boundary line signifying the border with Gomorrah is very clearly marked on the map, I wouldn't really trust it," warned Primrose. "During a war the border is bound to shift as one side makes advances and the other retreats. After all, territorial advantage is what it's all about. However, I don't know for sure, but I believe the border might actually be significantly nearer than the map says. Of course all the official news we get from the front says that Buggery's really doing well, and making significant gains which bring closer the promise of final victory and the settling of the nation's grievances. However, from what few signs we get, and this is only speculation, I don't think things are going that well. The good news is generally unsubstantiated and implausible. There's rather a lot more about Gomorran atrocities than about Buggerian advances. And you may have noticed that there aren't many men about."

"Indeed," corroborated Chrysanthemum with a broad grin. "Almost all them are out on the front, fighting for King and Country; leaving us poor helpless girls to fend for ourselves and to make do with whatever we can."

"I think that your walk to the front will be rather less than the one hundred kilometres on the map," continued Primrose, "but before you get there you'll have to cross a war zone and that'll include some sort of no-man's land where you could very easily get killed. But put it into perspective. Although you might get killed crossing the front, the longer you stay in Buggery the more chance that you'd get killed anyway."

This was scarcely comforting news, but it was this news that the girls took as they walked away from the teachers' cottage. Their advice was to avoid walking along the roads where they could be easily picked off by the police. In fact, the road to Gomorrah took them away from the dry barren plains of the district where the teachers lived to a more hilly landscape where there would be more than enough woodland for the girls to walk out of sight of the main road. Or at least to dodge into if they saw them. It was unlikely, Primrose reasoned, that the disappearance of two tourists from Pederasty would have gone unnoticed for very long. Already everyone who'd seen them would have been interrogated, and possibly tortured, by the police. Tracey shivered slightly thinking of the young courier, Little Pussy, and the young boy they'd had come to their room. However, although the police were brutal, Primrose explained, making sure that Tiger Lilly wasn't within earshot, they were remarkably inefficient at actually doing anything other than intimidate people. As an investigative police agency, they were absolutely hopeless. They had had no impact at all on the smuggling of hard drugs and guns that happened around the country's border. And they had had no capacity to deal with the many deserters that kept away from the towns and villages. The semblance of law and order was only held by the fact that no one who was caught was ever likely to re-offend.

Their breakfast of fruit and orange juice was really not enough to sustain Sharon and Tracey on their long walk. In fact, being fairly exhausted before they'd even started walking, they were certainly no better after an hour or more of trudge along the featureless dry roads. If they'd seen any police there was nowhere to hide as there were no trees nor even bushes to retreat to. After a while, however, their walk took them up a steep incline and soon they were in the very welcome shade of some woods. The goal which comforted on their despairing walk was the small town of Butterfly Grove which they could see marked on the map, and finally to the delight of their sore feet, they could see in reality.

It was not a very picturesque town, despite its name. Although surrounded by a thick forest of trees, it was a dry unprepossessing place composed mostly of small hut-like houses with a small market in the middle. They walked towards it with the hope of something to eat, or at the least something to drink. They soon found that the Buggery Dinar went considerably further in Buggery than it would have done in Throb, and much further again than it would have done at home. In fact, they found that they were carrying a relative fortune around with them.

It wasn't that easy to find anything edible to buy though. Both of them had mostly subsisted on take-aways and microwaveable dishes at home here, and the only thing on sale they knew what to do with was the battered and unappealing fruit they could see. But they managed to buy some apples, oranges, a packet of tasteless biscuits and a couple of bottles of distilled water on which the King's face was prominently displayed. There was no Coke. Or even Pepsi or Dr Pepper's. There were no hamburgers, pizzas, hot dogs or doner kebabs. Not even a pasty or a bag of chips. But what they had was undeniably food and it certainly filled some of the hole they could feel in their stomachs.

What was even worse, as they discovered to their cost, was that there was nowhere selling any ciggies. Not only were they no decent ciggies like 5th Avenue or Edinboro's, but not even rollies like Gold Cup or cheap tabs like Old Street Plain. They had half a packet of Windsor & Maidenhead's Silk Tip between them, but it was clearly not going to last them very long. The days were definitely going to stretch ahead now they had to cope with withdrawal symptoms as well as hunger.

The townspeople of Butterfly Grove dressed much the same as all the people they'd seen in Buggery. What few clothes they wore were fairly skimpy and did not cover the crotch at all. Despite having got so accustomed to the sight of genitalia in Throb, it still seemed strange to see all these naked crotches and even the occasional dangling penis. It was clear that the men and women generally dressed in exactly the same clothes with very similar hairstyles: but there were so few adult men, it took the girls a while to be sure of this.

"How come there are so few blokes?" Sharon asked the woman at the stall who served them the distilled water.

"Do you have more men in the district where you come from?" wondered the woman, as she gave the girls their change. "I thought it was the same everywhere. It's the war. It's so difficult to find a man that you have to share those you can find."

This didn't sound much fun to Sharon or Tracey, who were already missing the cock they'd got so used to in Throb. This did not sound like a good place to be man-hungry. However, they had a long walk ahead of them, so despite their weariness, they shouldered their bags and returned to the road which thanks to the shade of the thick forestry made their walk somewhat less arduous than when they were exposed to the sun. Nonetheless, they weren't used to any kind of walking, and soon they were stopping to rest for longer than the time they spent walking.

Fortunately every few miles there was another town or village they could stop at to replenish themselves. None of them were any better than Butterfly Grove. Indeed, they were generally rather worse. There seemed to be a pattern that the more picturesque the name, the worse the places were. Leafy Vale was bare of any vegetation at all. Paradise Hill was pretty filthy and was distinguished by the foul smell coming out of the chimneys of an ugly factory. Bluebell Dell was the most miserable tangle of derelict houses they'd ever seen.

Nowhere were there shops as the girls understood them from home: just market stalls. The homes were constructed as square shaped concrete flats or were thrown together from corrugated iron, mud and cardboard. Very few roads were paved, and then only for a few hundred metres at a time.

Sharon and Tracey soon got to recognise the police from a distance. It seemed that the police were everywhere. In every village, in every town and between each of them. Fortunately, however, they didn't seem to pay much notice to the girls, so Primrose's advice as to what to wear had seemed to bear fruit. However, to be on the safe side Sharon and Tracey kept as respectable distance between themselves and any police-woman (or occasionally police-man) as they could. Primrose's warnings had frightened the wits out of them. Although the police wore no more clothes than anyone else, what they wore was aggressive and in leather. They made no attempt to hide their dildo-shaped truncheons, and some of them even carried submachine guns.

They soon became aware that they weren't the only ones avoiding them. Almost everyone kept apart from them. People crossed the road, or even turned around and walked the other way whenever the police came into sight. It was early evening, when the girls were even more exhausted and even now wondering where they would sleep the night, they saw two or three police-women marching through the market where they were buying some more snacky groceries. All the other people cleared out of the police's way as they wandered into their midst. As they walked, the police took things from market stalls without bothering to say anything or acknowledge the stall-holders, let alone offer to pay for what they'd taken.

Then one stall-holder must have said or gestured something to which the police-women took exception. From their vantage point several stalls away, they saw the police pile onto the stall-holder. She was punched, kicked and then, when she'd fallen onto the ground, they took turns to bugger her. Her cries were loud and agonised as they roughly forced the dildos which they'd tied around their crotches into her arse and pushed her against the piles of clothes and sandals she'd been selling. Neither Sharon nor Tracey felt like staying around too long to see what ultimately happened to the stall-holder or whether they'd focus their attention onto some other unfortunate.

The two girls took Primrose's advice not to sleep in any of the towns. But as the evening descended, and they got more and more tired, it was difficult to see anywhere that they could sleep. They were looking for a barn or a deserted home outside the towns and villages to sleep in, but although they'd seen a few like that during the day, when they actually needed it, there didn't seem to be any around. They were getting progressively more exhausted and were actually resting more often than they were walking. The night was drawing in, and it was obvious that they needed to stop somewhere. They eventually settled on a broken-down barn some ten metres from the road, and settled on the ragged-looking straw. This was not a pleasant night. They found straw creeping up their bare vaginas and were frightened when some animal sniffed inquisitively outside, but they were so exhausted that they were asleep within minutes, after sharing every small grain of their last W&M's Silk Tip.

Unusually for them, the two girls awoke on the first rays of light, and more from the discomfort of all the straw, they got walking again almost immediately, following the route which led on their map towards Gomorrah. For girls who never went anywhere at home without a taxi or bus, it was not easy getting used to walking quite long distances every day following the winding roads on the map. Their walks gave them an appetite which was not at all satisfied by the fairly basic food provided by the next market they got to. No coffee, no chips, no chicken fritters. Only boiled eggs, fruit and bottles of distilled water.

Their route took them through woods which skirted near an area which was marked as forbidden, but all they could see of it were high brick walls crowned with broken glass and barbed wire. Sharon couldn't help wondering what was on the other side, but the height of the walls, let alone its unwelcoming ornamentation put her off any inclination she might have had of clambering over to investigate. The forbidding walls betrayed no clues as to what there was behind them that put them out of bounds. However, Tracey noted that where there were forbidden areas, there would almost certainly be police nearby, so the girls kept as reasonable a distance between themselves and the walls as they could, while keeping them in sight. Otherwise, they would get totally lost. The paths through the woods were quite narrow and winding, probably marked out by wild animals (of which they only saw the odd deer or rabbit). At times it was hard-going, but they kept on going despite their increasing discomfort, weariness and pain.

There were not many people to be seen wandering about the woods or along the road when they rejoined it. The woods were empty of any sign of continued habitation, although they saw the odd derelict cottage or out-building. Even along the road, they passed very few other people. Most of these seemed to be going to work in the fields or going to school.

The only real travellers they passed that day were what they judged from Primrose's account to be Sodomite Pilgrims. They were travelling in a group of less than a dozen individuals, and the girls found them to be a very distressing sight. It was possible that underneath the scars, bondage and tattoos, some of the Sodomite Pilgrims might have been quite pretty. As Sharon and Tracey approached, the Pilgrims stop walking, and stood by so the two friends had more than enough opportunity to appraise them. Some of the Sodomites turned round and bowed to the girls with their bottoms facing upward. It was an extremely disturbing sight. The female sodomites had their vaginas threaded together very crudely with leather or metal stitches. The men had their genitals removed and wore them strung around their necks. It might have been true that all the Sodomite Pilgrims had had their tongues torn out (although there was no way of being sure without a closer look) but quite a few had had their hands amputated. Sharon winced at the sight of these stumps.

When later, they passed some other Sodomite Pilgrims in the next village, they found that even the native people from Buggery found them a disturbing sight. They were making diversions around these pilgrims rather than experience the discomfort of having to see them more clearly. At this village, there was a shrine which the Sodomite Pilgrims were prostrating themselves in front of. This was marked only by some very crude scratches on some scattered rocks.

After this, they soon spotted other similar shrines which seemed to be scattered fairly randomly about the Buggery countryside. After their small unappetising snack in the village, they passed another shrine in the wood, where they also found two Sodomite Pilgrims whipping each other with barbed wire whips which was raising blood on their welted backs. This annoyed them because the shrine was by a deserted cottage that Sharon and Tracey had spotted from a distance and had been so hoping to rest at. The sight of these two Sodomites, definitely persuaded them to change their mind. It would not be at all pleasant to sleep or rest near girls as deformed as these. One Pilgrim's leg was missing from the thigh and there was a hole in the eye-socket where the eye should have been.

Another shrine they saw surrounded by Sodomite Pilgrims prostrated or beating each other was probably of significance to the citizens of Buggery. This commemorated a battle fought against the Sodomites in a war some two or three centuries earlier. There was an extremely partisan inscription on the plinth which described in detail the atrocities the Sodomites had committed. On top of this was the statue at the top was of a naked man with long hair buggering a bald man whilst also taking the opportunity to slice off his genitals with a sword. The sculptor had seen fit to sculpt very realistic globules of blood in the marble.

Most of the many monuments in Buggery the girls saw, however, were of a generally more contemporary nature and by far the majority featured the King. He was a grand, moustachioed, undeniably handsome, man with the most gorgeous raiments and long hair flowing over his shoulders; always in a classic heroic pose. His features could be seen on billboards, statues or just portraits in prominent positions in shops or above the doorways of the homes. There was often text associated with such images which praised the King for his heroism in fighting the Gomorran barbarians, his sagacity in his dealings with the outside world, his generosity and kindness towards his citizens, his love of justice, his lust for knowledge and, in one peculiar place, his sexual prowess.

Later in the afternoon, Sharon and Tracey were in a larger town. This was the largest town they'd seen since Throb, but in comparison it was relatively small. While shopping in the market for more food (which was of a greater variety than they'd seen for a while), they couldn't help noticing a slightly nervous air in the village market. At first, they thought it was to do with themselves, but it soon became that they were not the only visitor to the town. A dignitary was also passing through the village. This was announced by a shrill scream of sirens and then, through a cloud of dust, the sudden emergence of a thundercloud of motorbikes driven by police, who showed no concern that anyone might be in the way. In the middle of this cavalcade was a stretch limousine with darkened windows. And then, as soon as it had arrived, the visitor was gone without a pause or any evidence of noticing the village and its banners and flags which had been put up to welcome the dignitary's visit. There was, in fact, an air of relief from the townspeople as they now started to remove these spurned items from around the town.

The two girls wandered back into the woods just beyond the town which according to their map promised to be the shortest route to Gomorrah. The map was rather unhelpful at this stage, showing wood but also large areas which were left totally blank. At first Sharon thought it was some reservoir or lake, but, no, the area was coloured by purple rather than blue. More forbidden territory.

They found this wood somewhat harder to get through than the woodland they had been through earlier, because the clearly marked path was obstructed by trees that had recently fallen and had been left to rot. So they decided to make a slight detour into the thick of the wood. It was after only a few hundred metres of walking as parallel to what they judged to be the right route when they heard a low moaning sound.

"Ignore it," said Sharon nervously. "It's probably some Buggery animal. A bird or something."

"Fucking funny bird," commented Tracey. "I'm sure I heard it say something. A word of some kind."

"What word?"

"I don't fucking know!" Tracey said walking towards it.

"It's probably some Sodomite praying or something," commented Sharon. She nervously paused by a large elm, but seeing her friend's determination she then reluctantly followed Tracey, who had clearly found someone or something in a clearing in the wood ahead of them.

The girl they found sobbing softly in the shade of the trees wasn't a Sodomite, but she was still in a wretched state. She wore no clothes. Her hair was totally shaved. Her face was covered in bruises, and there was a nasty cut on her forehead above the eye. There was a large bruise on her thigh and another one just under her breast. A thin trail of blood was dripping from a badly split lip, and a few of her teeth were missing. Judging from the blood on her cheek, this may well have happened quite recently. There was also a slight smell about her which Sharon and Tracey guessed from the slight gleam on her skin was because she'd been pissed on, and by probably quite a few people. There was a patch on her buttock which might have been mud: but on such a dry day was more probably shit. She sat with her head down and her legs open pulling at her pubic hair and they could see that amongst the hair was rather brown stuff and dried blood which must have resulted from some quite brutal penetration.

"Are you all right, love?" asked Tracey sympathetically, bending down and placing a hand on the girl's bare shoulder.

The girl looked up at them with the frightened gaze of a wild animal. She was about fourteen or fifteen years old, with perky young breasts and a very slender, ill-fed body. Her slim legs were just a little too bony to be attractive. Nor did her broken nose enhance her looks in any way. She shrunk back at the sight of the girls. "Are you going to beat me, too?" she asked in a resigned voice.

"No, of course not love," Sharon commented, feeling a curious sense of mutual sympathy and even warmth towards this victim of abuse. "Why should we do that?"

"Everyone else does."

"And why do they do that?"

"Because I'm Z grade," sobbed the girl. "They're always picking on me. Buggering me. Shitting on me. Kicking me. Pissing on me. Pulling out my teeth. Sticking things into the back of my throat and long things up my arse. Punching me. All the time."

"Who do?" wondered Tracey.

"All the girls at school. All the A grades and B grades and C grades and all the other grades. And not just them, but lots of other people. It's to punish me for not being good at school. Because I don't do well at sports. Because I don't do well at lessons. It's not fair. I don't get the chance. The teachers only give me jobs like licking the messy girls' arses clean, or drinking their piss, or carrying shit in my hands to the fields for fertiliser. I'm always the one who gets given the whip during the festivals. I've had two of my teeth torn out by pliers by the headmaster on one of those. And I get buggered at least three or four times a day. And if there's a speck of shit on their pricks, I have to do duty in licking it off. God! I hate the taste of shit. Dry or wet, it's all disgusting. But sometimes it's all I get to eat all day."

"How did you get to be Z grade?" wondered Sharon, who like Tracey had never been remotely near the top of their classes when they were children. They may even have been at the bottom of their class for all they knew, but they never really bothered to attend school to find out for sure. School was just a place for meeting boys and something to do on wet days.

"I haven't always been Z grade! Once I was C grade. OK. Not A or B, but C's pretty good. I had long hair halfway down my back, I wore these wonderful red trousers with really nice seams and I had a little plastic bracelet (that was really expensive). I didn't have a broken nose, and I'd hardly ever tasted shit." She sniffed sadly at these memories. "And then, I don't know, things seemed to slip. It wasn't that one day, I was C and the next I was Z. No. Things weren't like that. I'd even thought I stood a chance of graduating to B! I had quite a good body and a lot of teachers said my oral was really good. It still is ..." She looked up at Sharon with a sad smile. "Do you want some oral?"

Sharon shook her head firmly and sadly.

"Anyway, I didn't do too well on this test on ancient history. I thought I'd answered it well enough, but I always confuse our past kings, and apparently I'd said that one king was a good king when he had really been a bad king. And also I'd mixed up Our Blessed and Magnificent King's mother with his disgraced Aunt: the mother of the past deposed Most Despicable and Damned King. Then it all started a decline. My hair was cut shorter and shorter. I wasn't allowed to shave my pubic hair. My bracelet was taken from me and given to another girl: a grade A (and I bet she's never tasted any shit in all her life!) When I got down to Q grade, my blouse was removed and I was forbidden to wear clothes ever again. When I got down to W grade, I was told never to appear in public without having all my hair shaved off. And now I'm in the lowest grade of all. And I don't think I'll be allowed to stay there long."

"How long have you been Z grade?" wondered Tracey.

"Two weeks. Maybe three. It's been so horrible, I just can't say. I'm not even allowed to do sex rota for even M grades, let alone A grades. I have to stand in all my lessons. I'm not allowed to sit. And I have to do stocks on Friday, where you get things thrown at you."

"Stocks?"

"Well, someone's got to do it. That's how my nose got broken last week. It's not just shit and semen that gets thrown at you. Someone, probably an X grade or a W (they're the worst), threw something heavy at me. But they didn't take me down even with all the blood gushing out and the pain. It was horrible. And I got beaten up this evening too."

"We can see," said Sharon sympathetically.

"It was four or five H grades. Two of them boys. It was horrible. I can't even remember what they shoved up me. I just know it really hurt. And all the shit and piss! I couldn't see through my eyes. They were so caked up for so long! And I bet they did me permanent damage. Hell! I wish I was dead!"

"It sounds horrible."

"And I'm going to get beaten up and buggered and shat on when I get home to punish me for having got into this state. And when I get to school tomorrow, I'll be beaten up for the bruises and having lost another tooth. And I'll fail shit inspection because there'll be blood in my stools."

"This can't really be happening to you," said Sharon sadly.

The girl stood up beside Sharon and Tracey, revealing a scar along the side of one breast and gazed at the two girls through the black and blue swelling around her left eye. This contrasted badly with her other eye which was merely red with tears. "It is," she said philosophically. "I won't see my sixteenth birthday at this rate. Either I'll be sent to the Gomorran front with the mine clearance corps where I'll be dead in a week or I'll be dead like the X grade girl who was found impaled on a pole through her arse with a dead rabbit stuck in her mouth. She'd been accused of trimming her pubic hair." She looked at the two girls, gulped slowly. "You've been very kind to me. I promise I won't report you for not beating me up and for listening to me. I must go, or I'll be beaten up for lateness."

She then turned away and hobbled away on her bruised legs with a limp that had probably been caused by her beatings. Her back was covered with scars which covered her to her skinny buttocks which themselves were also latticed with fine scars. Sharon and Tracey watched with a certain degree of disgusted fascination as she disappeared out of sight amongst the darkening shadows of the trees.

"If I'd been born in this fucking country, I'd have fucking given everything to avoid an education in it!" commented Tracey.

VII

The woods seemed to go on and on, broken only by the odd deserted cottage and broken stonework which must have represented some old temple or other. The two friends found very little to eat, but resourcefulness was a new skill they'd learnt: they'd actually prepared for this long walk by buying more food with them than they could eat in a single sitting. And fucking heavy it was too. As they plodded along, they wondered whether there might not be some wild animals in the wood, but the fiercest animals they saw were feral dogs who seemed as frightened of them as the girls were of the dogs.

Their route ran parallel to a tall wall, some twenty feet high, which delineated the purple area on the map. They walked close by the wall for a few hours, as it was a sure way of ensuring they didn't lose where they were on the map; but then they caught sight of some police marching along the edge of the wall in the distance. They were striding aggressively forward in leathers, carrying sub-machine guns and wearing dildos strapped around their waists. They were making no effort to avoid being seen, but even so Sharon and Tracey thought it would be unwise to encounter them. They'd learnt enough from Tiger Lilly what police attention might entail.

So, while the police were still several hundred metres away and loudly talking to each other, the two girls took the diversion of a lesser path through the woods that was clearly enough marked, and from which could still be seen the shadow of the wall. They hid behind a tree as the police marched by, trembling slightly at the thought of being discovered. It was only when they were sure the police had gone, they emerged and continued their scrambling, stumbling walk through the shadows of the forest; all the while being able to glimpse the unwelcoming grey and granite brickwork of the wall through the snatches of light through the trees.

The two girls continued their walk through the forest for all the rest of the day, often regretting the comfort of the ciggies they'd finished and missing the familiar taste of chips and burgers. It was a dispiriting day's walk. The woods went on and on, with only the occasional gap in the trees where they could rest in the sun on the slightly damp moss, amongst weeds and the occasional small flower. Their legs attracted stings and scratches which left unhealthy bluish colours amongst a lattice of small reddish lines and the occasional reddish or even yellowish blemish. At least it wasn't so hot, but they still didn't risk putting on any more clothes than the small blouses Primrose had lent them. They worried about the midges and other small insects that nestled in the growing hair of their vaginas, but the odd sting between the thighs was as nothing compared to the constant ache of their legs and the far more unpleasant stings that their bare ankles seemed to especially attract.

As they walked, the only evidence of their not being lost was the wall, and the only recognisable land-mark on their map; so whatever they did they didn't stray too far from it. But the penalty of walking through the woods were even more scratches from the odd brambles, bruises, stings; and now they were getting awful red marks on their shoulders as a result of the weight of the food pulling down on the shoulder straps of their bags. Sharon had a nasty scratch from a tree that trailed across one of her breasts. Tracey had a bruise just above her eye where she had hit a branch which was beginning to swell up and was starting to challenge the prominence of the one Tiger Lilly had bestowed on Sharon's eye.

They had an uncomfortable night's sleep in the shadow of the trees, heartily tired of the food they had brought to eat, gasping for ciggies, as nicotine withdrawal began to really kick in, and finding it impossible to find a patch of ground where there were no insects, mulch or brambles. They had seen no one during the day except the brief sight of the police, and no evidence that anyone lived anywhere near where they were. On the map, the purple patch delineated by the wall stretched on for dozens of kilometres, whilst in the other direction, the green which marked the forest they were in seemed to stretch even further in all directions. But eventually, the map showed both forest and purple enclosure coming to an abrupt end by an area of light blue, which must be a lake or reservoir or something.

The following day was no less dispiriting, as Tracey and Sharon continued their bare-arsed walk through the woods. They were no less tired, and irritable, and found even the smallest conversation more and more difficult. Sharon comforted herself by swearing constantly, while Tracey found that she was somehow unable to stop herself from a miserable kind of sobbing. Whenever it was necessary to talk to each other, it was in monosyllabic grunts relating to practical things that had to be done. Both of them feared the consequences of vocalising the increasing desperation they were feeling. They were lonely, hungry, tired, aching and anxious.

Despair was steadily growing at the sight of yet more imposing trees and the monotony of green, with no human company. And then they came to a clearing in the woods lit by a golden beam from the sun which burst through the shadows of the trees and illuminated some blue and yellow flowers that flourished in the glow. And there, like a dream or an illustration in a fairy tale, was probably the most beautiful girl that either Sharon or Tracey had ever seen.

She was walking about uncertainly, and seemed as glad as Sharon and Tracey to be in such a relatively beautiful part of the forest. She had golden hair which cascaded to her waist. She had a beautiful slender figure. Her breasts reflected in the sun with contours normally only seen in classical sculptures. She wore no clothes at all; and the lightly tanned flesh of her skin radiated a faintly golden glow. Neither Sharon nor Tracey had spoken to anyone for nearly two days, but they were both struck by a sudden shyness. Was it reluctance in meeting a stranger. Or perhaps it was the feeling of being utterly outclassed by a stranger.

The girl looked in their direction with no fear and no similar shyness. "Hello there," announced the girl, smiling broadly and welcomingly. Her teeth shone in the dappled sunlight with a whiteness the girls had only ever seen before on toothpaste commercials. "My name's Buttercup. What are yours?"

"Tracey," announced Tracey, dropping her bag and feeling a strange burning warmth creep up from her breast to her forehead.

"And I'm Sharon," said her friend, approached the girl and taking note of just how different from all the people in Buggery they'd seen since they'd left Throb. Just like the people they'd seen on Buggery television, she was totally naked with no hint of any tan-lines or clothing. Similarly like everyone on television, all her pubic and other bodily hair was shaved off, although a trace of stubble betrayed a couple of days of neglect. And there was the ubiquitous small ring dangling from the lips of her vagina.

"Where am I? Am I near a town?" Buttercup asked innocently.

"No fucking way," said Sharon. She pulled the map out of her bag and opened it up on the ground. Buttercup knelt down and looked at it with a quizzical air. She frowned as if trying to comprehend what she was looking at. "It's a long fucking way to the nearest town, I'm afraid," Sharon continued circling a finger over the approximate area that they were. "How come you don't know? Don't you live round here?"

Buttercup looked at Tracey and Sharon with a frown, as if she were only just beginning to realise that the girls were not themselves local. She examined their faces and smiled broadly at Tracey, who still stood several metres back, perhaps aware of the curious affect she was having on the girl. "Can't you guess?" she asked. "Isn't it obvious? Don't you know who, or what, I am."

"No," Sharon answered bluntly, looking up from the map. After showing the map, she was more concerned by the fact that although she knew that on the map they were in the green bit around the purple bit, they had no idea how much of the green bit they still had to walk through. She hoped it wasn't too much more.

"We don't come from this country," offered Tracey as a sort of explanation. "We're tourists."

"Really! I can't believe it! Are you really?" asked Buttercup, looking at Tracey's friend for confirmation. Sharon nodded. "I suppose it must be true if you say so. But what you doing so far from the tourist resorts? At least, I didn't think there were any tourist resorts near here."

Tracey spoke and was surprised by how cracked her voice was and how thick it was with an emotion she didn't really understand. "We were on holiday in Throb. And we couldn't pay our bill. So we done a bunk. And we've been walking to Gomorrah."

"Even though there's a war?"

"Apparently, we stand a much better chance than by going via the normal channels. And anyway there's only the sea or Sodom to choose between otherwise."

"No choice at all," admitted Buttercup. "Unless you're very good swimmers."

"We've had a fucking awful time since we left Throb," Sharon elaborated. "It's been so fucking hard. We got beat up by a fucking teacher. And we've had nothing decent to eat. And we ain't even had any fucking ciggies. Buggery's a fucking awful country. No fucking disrespect meant. It being your fucking country and all. But it's one fucking shitty, pissing awful place. There's been fucking nothing to recommend it to fucking anyone."

"So you're fugitives," smiled Buttercup warmly as Tracey nervously walked towards her. "I'm a fugitive too, you know. From the Royal Court. Well, not quite the Royal Court: but from behind the Big Wall. I've just escaped."

"How did you manage that?"

"It wasn't easy. But I used to make love with one of the guards quite often and I managed to steal her keys. I had to kill her, though. It wasn't pleasant and it certainly wasn't easy, but when you've been behind the wall that's not so difficult. There was so much blood though. She took so long to die! But she'd have been killed anyway when they'd found I'd escaped. And I've been free for two days now. No food. No people. Nothing. But free!"

"Was it so fucking awful behind the wall?" wondered Sharon. "It's been so shitty on this side of the wall, we just couldn't imagine it being worse on the other side."

"It is hell! You just can't believe! And you foreigners probably can't believe it anyway. I'd never believed it possible. Like all my classmates I'd been brought up to believe in a much more pleasant world than this. Like all the other girls in my school, we'd been prepared as sacrificial virgins. We were taught how to love, and never even knew that clothes ever existed. We watched Buggery television: and as far as we knew that's what real life was really like."

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