Escape From Buggery 5

Buttercup sat down cross-legged, and the two other girls sat down beside her: Tracey stretched out on the ragged grass and Sharon with her knees pulled up to her chin. "I enjoyed school. I was good at lessons and was always amongst the best girls in the sex lessons. We all looked forward to the day when we'd go to the Royal Court and meet His Royal Highness. Our only dreams were to be fucked by the King and maybe his Queen. We masturbated every day in Regal Studies over his image and believed that he would be the greatest lover in the world.

"When we were fifteen, just two years ago, our school years were over. Most girls (the ones we didn't think were so lucky) were taken out of school to become teachers, actresses or sex hostesses for the tourist industry. We thought we were the blessed ones as we were packed together in luxury carriages in such a frenzy of excitement to head to the world behind the wall."

Buttercup sighed, and then smiled broadly at Tracey. "Oh! It's so good to meet some friendly faces. I've not met anyone since I escaped. I thought I'd never meet anyone. How long have you been in the woods?"

"Too fucking long!" grunted Sharon.

"What was it like behind the wall?" asked Tracey, somehow too shy too use perjoratives as freely as her friend.

"We'd been told what to expect. It would be such a glorious place to be and above all we would have the privilege of serving at the Royal Court. We'd lose our virginity, and then we'd live in a world of luxury several times greater than that we'd been used to.

"At first when we'd arrived behind the wall, it seemed that it was true. The degree of luxury the nobility enjoy is incredible. As we were driven along we saw enormous palaces, gardens, swimming pools, gold statues everywhere. It seemed like we'd died and gone to heaven. The carriage stopped and we were escorted out of the carriage by women wearing clothes. It was the first time in our lives any of us had ever seen clothes. And it was a shock. The entire concept of clothing had just never occurred to us. The idea was so totally foreign. In actual fact, these women weren't wearing that many clothes and what they were was all made of rubber. They certainly didn't cover their groin or breasts, but they were skin-tight. They also wore make-up (which we'd seen on television) but not applied so thickly and unnaturally. Each of us were chaperoned by a single woman who took us away from our friends. I've never seen any of my friends from school ever again.

"The woman who took me was quite rough. She took me into a chamber and started making love to me in a loveless way I'd never had love made to me before. When she'd finished, she washed me with soap and cream in the most solicitous way. Then she announced that I was officially classified as a Beta Plus. 'What does that mean?' I asked. 'It means, my love, that you won't have your virginity taken by the Royal Family. And certainly not by His Magnificent Royal Highness (May He Live Forever)!' At that time there was a different King. He certainly didn't live forever. 'Only Alpha Plus girls get that privilege.' She said. 'But you're still very lucky. You're assigned to the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, His Grandiloquence, The Baron of White Flower.' And indeed that's where I did go. And nobody ever told me that sex could be so horrible!"

Buttercup paused and smiled again. Tracey was sure she was smiling at her, and she felt herself blushing. What was happening to her? She smiled back at Buttercup, feeling her face crack in a newly unaccustomed way. When did she last smile? "What do you mean: he was horrible?"

"He was with me for about two hours with two other girls who'd also just graduated. I was slapped, beaten, buggered, and had my maidenhead taken. And in the most brutal and careless way. Nothing like the pampered sensitive way I'd been told it would be. Afterwards I was covered with bruises! I had raw red marks down my back where he'd beaten me with a stick. But at least I hadn't had a chair broken on my head like one girl who was knocked unconscious and had her nose broken. And I didn't have one of my hands sliced off with a carving knife like the other girl. There was blood everywhere! And while this was all happening, we were watched by an audience of the Baron's court and friends. And they all applauded his most gross actions. The most foul and disgusting, the more they were cheering him. I was so humiliated and bewildered. No one had told me it would be like this!"

Buttercup sighed deeply as she remembered these painful hours. Despite herself, Tracey found a small tear drip out of the corner of her eye. Who could ever treat such a beautiful girl so badly?

"Perhaps it was because I was so violently sick. My vomit was everywhere. And I'd even shat from fright. Would I be the next one to lose an arm? Or worse? Maybe it was because the Baron had had his fill with the other two that I came off relatively lightly.

"When I went to bed after my first night, I just cried and cried. I was assigned a pleasant enough chamber which I shared with the other two girls who'd been with me and the Baron. The girl with the broken nose just lay there with her eyes closed and shivered. I wondered if she'd ever wake up. The other just sat on a chair with her eyes wide open staring at her bandaged bloody stump, shaking backwards and forwards. And backwards and forwards. And from that moment, I swore I'd do whatever possible to escape from that world."

"Do you want to come to Gomorrah with us, then?" Tracey asked.

Buttercup looked deep into Tracey's eyes with a directness and a love which melted her away to her core. Was she falling in love with a woman? She coughed nervously. No woman, however beautiful, could be better than cock. "Can I, please?" Buttercup asked. "I don't want to be a burden."

Tracey could hardly answer. She nodded her head under Buttercup's spell. It was left to Sharon to answer. "The more's the merrier," she said supporting Tracey around the waist. "Of course you fucking can!"

Buttercup knelt in front of the two girls and stretched an arm out onto Tracey's knee. The hand was warm and firm, and Tracey shuddered. "I'd be so grateful!" Buttercup pleaded, her hand stroking up and down Tracey's thigh which burned from the feel of it (or was it from all the scratches and bruises she had?) And then, sensing a lack of resistance, Buttercup leaned further forward and with her other stroked Tracey's arm, while her first hand slid towards the battered and bruised and itching vagina. And then, Tracey didn't know how, Buttercup's fingers were firmly grasping her cunt, while Sharon's arm was around her back, and Buttercup's lips parted slowly and sensuously. And then they were on her mouth, and a warm melting liquid kiss melded itself on her own passionate kisses.

Sharon sniffed as she watched Buttercup make love to her friend, taking her arm off Tracey, as the two girls sank onto the grass. Three, or was it four, days since they'd had sex, suddenly here was Tracey getting all fucking soppy with a girl they'd only just met. It was by no means the first time she'd watched her friend having sex with someone else, even a woman, but she couldn't recall her being so weirdly soppy and awkward about it. But there was no way she could deny how beautiful Buttercup was. She felt strangely hot herself, but she reminded herself it was cock she preferred. She wasn't a fucking dyke. Even when Buttercup's other hand somehow found its way to her own cunt, and she too, despite her tiredness and exhaustion, melted into a sensuous pleasure that no one had given her before. No one at home. No one in Throb. Not even the man on the beach with the ten inch prick with the slight kink in it. Nor the two men at the club who'd fucked her for well over two hours. And none of the women she'd had, even Tracey (in fact especially not Tracey) had made her feel like this before. She gasped and panted as the three girls stroked and licked and grappled with each other in the dappled light of the forest clearing, her cunt burning with a heat that was only matched by the fury of her orgasm as it erupted unprompted from inside her. She choked and coughed and then collapsed onto the ground, watching through her slightly opened eyes as Tracey and Buttercup dry humped each other amongst the bluebells and mossy dew.

Eventually, after the most blissful rest either of the friends had had since Throb, intertwined amongst each other, it was necessary to start walking. Which they did silently and somehow overwhelmed by the change of circumstances. Tracey and Sharon led, following the route indicated so indistinctly on the map, with glimpses of the wall visible in the distance.

It was Buttercup who broke the uneasy silence and asked the two girls all sorts of questions about the holiday experience that they had enjoyed before absconding. "It was fucking magic!" exclaimed Sharon, reminiscing of the men who'd fucked her and their days of luxurious depravity.

"It's a bit like that behind the wall in a way," Buttercup explained, pushing aside a low hanging branch that threatened to scratch her face. "Only there, it's done wholly for the benefit of the aristocracy and favoured ministers. And by all accounts, their tastes are somewhat more depraved than you ever saw on your holiday. It's all very sadomasochistic and violent. The boys are the ones who get the roughest treatment, I think. There's a kind of homosexual bias amongst the inner court. The lifespan for a servant is not very long. And almost everyone who's not related to royalty is a servant. All you've got to do is attract someone's attention by being too attractive, growing old, having an injury, or just being there, and then you'll just somehow disappear. It might be after some sex game or other. Or you might just get sent off to the front. It's the men who get the worst of this, and so there aren't many men behind the wall."

"Are these Barons and Lords and so on really rich?" wondered Sharon who had always been fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous. At home she'd often read magazine articles about the eccentricities and depravities of millionaires and rock stars.

"I got to know a little about them while I was there, from talking to people. And although luxury's all I've ever known really, I'd say that they must be very rich. The nobility have gardens, mansions, palaces and so forth which are truly astonishing. There's so much of it. It's quite easy to get lost in the grounds and never get found. There are rumours of whole communities that do that. They just hide under the very noses of royalty in the depths of their estates. And the luxuries of private cinemas, enormous swimming pools, monstrous cars, private armies, private helicopters and yachts. It's too much!"

Tracey might have been poor at sums at school, but she had a vague idea what the value of money was. "Where'd they get their fucking wealth from? I mean, this is a poor country!"

"Yeah!" agreed Sharon. "In comparison to most people we've seen here we're like fucking millionaires. I mean this country's got nothing. It doesn't make cars. It doesn't sell much food. I've never seen anything back home with 'Made In Buggery' written on it."

Buttercup smiled at the idea of something being labelled 'Made In Buggery'. "Buggery makes its money from sex," she answered.

"Sex?" wondered Tracey, frowning quizzically.

"Yes," agreed Buttercup. "I've only heard about this. But what I've heard is, that Sex Tourism is really big business. That's why there's so much of it in a country where most of it is out of bounds to foreigners and where everything behind the wall is out of bounds to even people from Buggery. Of my friends at school, a lot ended up in Sex Tourism. I don't know what they're doing now, of course. And there are even schools and colleges which specialise in teaching it. The art of sex tourism, I'm told, is to exercise no discretion at all in what sexual relations you have."

"Like prostitution?" suggested Sharon, who'd once seriously considered this as a career option. After all she was always just giving it away. Why not get a bit back from it?

"What's 'prostitution'?" wondered Buttercup. "I don't think I've ever heard that word before."

"Is it just sex tourism that makes money?" wondered Tracey, who decided to rescue her friend from having to provide a complex explanation.

"No," said Buttercup pushing a strand of golden hair out of her face and directing her sparkling eyes at Tracey in a direct way that still unsettled her, even after their last couple of hours of walking together. "It's substantial but not crucial. Buggery is the leading supplier of pornography and sex related entertainment in the world. Apparently (and Buggery is proud of this) it is the premier supplier in terms of quality and explicitness as well as quantity. I don't know the exact statistics, but over 95% of all the world's snuff movies come from Buggery. The film industry produces some 40% of the world's sex films, and some of the biggest porn stars are from Buggery. The country also supplies a substantial proportion of hard core pornographic books and magazines, and so much pornographic television that the country's national television station is just a pornographic propaganda machine."

"Is sex really enough for these people to get so rich?"

"I'm sure there's reinvestment as well. But it's not just the royalty that has to be financed, there's also the war with Gomorrah. It's an expensive war. And it's only sustainable because Buggery tolerates a very high death rate."

"A high death rate?" asked Tracey.

"I don't know more than that," Buttercup admitted. "But behind the wall, it's the main reason why there aren't too many men there. They just go to the front to fight against Gomorrah and never return. Mind you! They're maybe the lucky ones. The ones that got out. At least they're no longer going to be mutilated by the nobility just for their perverted pleasure."

"Like your friends you were telling us about?"

"Yes, that's right," sighed Buttercup. "I was soon the only one left in that room, although other girls joined me later. The girl who'd had her hand cut off had one more session with the baron, who apparently likes amputated stumps stuck up his anus and other places. She didn't survive. The girl with the broken nose was reclassified as an Epsilon, and either left for the sex industry or the war. She would never have appeared on national television with a broken nose. That sort of thing's never allowed, but she might've appeared in a violent sex movie perhaps, where apparently there's a preference for beautiful girls with small defects.

"And I was a survivor. And that's what I've been ever since. I've avoided having sex with the baron, which probably explains some of it. I've been fucked by the baroness a few times and one of their children took a fancy to me when he was just eleven. On the whole, though, I've just been one of many on the Baron's estate who're supposed to have regular sex with each other. It's an ambience he apparently enjoys.

"My instructress explained my duties to me. I wasn't just to stay there in luxury, I was told. Besides unquestioning sex with whoever would so chose, which was fairly frequent, (but I'd been trained for that) I was to work in the garden. My school results showed that I had an inclination towards biology and horticulture. This was true, but I'd never had the ambition of tending flowers and grass all day and every day. But at least I was out in the open air, and in a position much less exposed to the attention of nobility or whoever. I was never to wear clothes. Only certain privileged people like the instructresses and nobility and police have that privilege. I was to remove all bodily hair, and, as a gardener, to look as natural as possible. Not all girls have such favourable conditions. Some had to shave their heads. Some had extensive body piercing. Some had very peculiar things done to their body. All according to their rôles in the Baron's estate.

"My instructress had a very limited part in my life from then on. Her task was to prepare new girls for the Baron's pleasures and then tell them what to do next. I was just a gardener who worked with other girls and one or two men and a couple of eunuchs."

"Eunuchs?" wondered Sharon, thinking about what a waste of cock this would be.

"Yes," sighed Buttercup. "This was another taste of the Baron's. In fact, he liked to conduct the actual castration. Apparently that was a sport he particularly enjoyed." Buttercup glanced towards a patch of wall which could be seen in the distance, and then said with a touch of bitterness: "In comparison to most people, I've spent most of the last two years in relative comfort in amongst the Baron's herbaceous borders."

VIII

Buttercup's skills extended far beyond the sensual as Sharon and Tracey became increasingly aware as they continued their tramp through the woods. It was she who told them how to orientate their progress on the map by reference to the position of the Sun and its height in the sky. This meant that they were able to get further away from the wall, which, as Buttercup reminded them, was probably not very safe when there was almost certainly a hunt being organises for her. "They wouldn't like to encourage others to escape, if they knew they could get away with it," she commented. Despite their desperation, Buttercup's presence somehow lifted both the girls' spirits, although it was clear that she responded positively to Tracey's more unambiguous attraction to her. She took Tracey's hand in hers (something no man or woman had ever done in her all her years of love-making) and squeezed it occasionally in a reassuring way as they walked under the overhanging branches and avoided nettles and bracken. Sharon accepted this reluctantly, but as she reminded herself as she watched her best friend and her new lover gaily swinging their arms from clasped hands, it was cock not cunt she relished. Even when she responded with a faint tingle when Buttercup occasionally touched her arm or kissed her encouragingly on the cheek.

The trek through the woods seemed to go on longer than either Sharon or Tracey had anticipated, but then neither of them had had much experience of, or previous inclination towards, either map-reading or walking. In fact, it was clear that they were actually making faster progress with Buttercup than they were before. They were having fewer rests and they seemed to have gained new energy to stride forward faster and further than previously. As the night drew in, they actually found a deserted cottage which seemed suitable for them to rest the night. This would be luxury compared to where they'd been sleeping the last few nights, even though it was in a very dilapidated state. Half the cottage was totally collapsed and less than half of its roof was in any sense intact. However, it kept the night chill away from the girls' bare flesh: especially Buttercup who didn't even have as much as a blouse to keep her warm. They made space for themselves in the weeds and rubble of what were once rooms and watched the shadows lengthen as day came rather abruptly to a close.

It was now that Buttercup's skills as a gardener came to the fore as she somehow managed to locate some potatoes, carrots, turnips and other vegetables that were still growing in the abandoned ruins of what had once been a vegetable garden. Many of these were vegetables neither Sharon nor Tracey would ever have considered eating before. They looked so bland and not usually found on pizzas or inside burgers, but now they seemed like the most perfect food in the world. Soon all three girls were resting together in the shadows of the trees cast by the half moon, sitting down in front of a fire of twigs and small branches started by Tracey's cigarette lighter in which roasted the vegetables that Buttercup had tugged out of the ground and had prepared with some sharp stones. Sharon sat slightly to one side enjoying the warmth given off by the flames, while Tracey and Buttercup lay together.

When the food was ready, it tasted better to the girls than the most delicious fried chicken or doner kebab had ever done before. Better even than a chicken chow mein with sweet and sour sauce, or a chicken vindaloo. It was also probably the plainest food they'd ever eaten. No ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise or even salt. But after such a poor diet to which they'd become accustomed, Sharon and Tracey felt somehow invigorated and energised. And it was clear from the bright sparkle in Tracey's eyes that this new vigour and energy was to be directed towards one particular object.

Buttercup, as always, needed no prompting. After allowing sufficient time for the food to sink into their system, she crawled on her hands and knees towards Tracey, who was grinning in a curiously stupid fashion, and gently pinched the folds of her vagina with the forefingers of her right hand. Tracey moaned in a strangely full-throated way, and gracefully parted her legs so that Buttercup could swivel round and engage more fingers and her tongue on the scarred and embattled terrain of her cunt. She sank back onto her elbows, her head back, staring up at the half moon through the tangled shadows of the overhanging trees, while Buttercup expertly massaged, licked and caressed her sensitive and, oh so tender!, erogenous zones towards further gasps of unrestrainable pleasure and near ecstasy.

Sharon sat cross-legged watching her best friend make love to someone else. Not for the first time, of course, but usually it had been some hairy-arsed, winnets-blessed man, with saliva dripping from his lower lip and a prick that usually either came to soon or never got really stiff enough. Sharon was aware that she was beginning to get jealous of the growing friendship between her closest friend and this beautiful naked girl, but there was no denying that Buttercup's presence was undoubtedly a good thing. She was helping the two friends navigate through the woods, keeping up their otherwise dejected spirits and was decidedly more practical-minded than either of them were.

Sharon watched as Tracey responded to Buttercup's advances and returned them by crawling underneath her body and taking the lips of Buttercup's vagina in her teeth. Tracey had never experimented with this sexual position of mutual oral sex before. Blow jobs usually just led to fucking. No blokes, until she'd come to Buggery, had ever shown any interest in putting their tongues to her cunt. Perhaps it was the smell of fish and piss that put them off, she wondered. But now this wonderful woman with a supermodel body was tonguing her liked she'd never been tongued before, and as she climaxed urgently, passionately, and loudly, she knew that her own reciprocation had really been clumsy and awkward. She definitely needed more practise. She collapsed in exhaustion. All the passion had exhausted her small reservoir of energy, and she huddled in Buttercup's comforting sun-tanned arms.

Sharon smiled at the two of them, too tired and disorientated to resent Tracey's sexual selfishness. And anyway Tracey had been gagging for it all day. Sharon was still a little uneasy about making love to a woman. Where was the cock in that? Buttercup smiled back at Sharon and ran her tongue over her lips, clearly advertising her continued availability. Sharon was just not interested, which was unusual for her.

Somehow or other, conversation began about Tracey and Sharon's life before they'd come to Buggery. Buttercup listened to their account of life back home, and seemed to find it tremendously exotic and even bizarre. The very concept of night-clubs and pubs took some explaining. The girls' accounts of their sexual exploits didn't impress her at all, however. Buttercup didn't find anything very adventurous or exciting in their tales about making love to several men at the same time, having both anal and vaginal intercourse simultaneously, losing your knickers on the train or being found by your parents with a boy's prick in your mouth.

Indeed, some of her comments rather shocked the girls, like: "Didn't you ask your parents to join in?" or "Why didn't you make love with girls more often?" or "Is it true that you're not supposed to show your vagina in public?"

"Don't you ever get to find out about anything in the world outside of Buggery?" wondered Sharon getting a little exasperated by Buttercup's show of ignorance.

"You've seen our television stations, haven't you?" Buttercup responded sweetly. "When I was at school I genuinely believed that the real world was like that."

"But since then… When you were behind the wall... Didn't you find out more?"

"A little more. But not much. They've got another television station which is relayed by cable behind the wall, which is a bit different to what you can see at the tourist resorts. But it's no better for finding out what's beyond Buggery's borders."

"What's that station like?" wondered Sharon. "Does it have sex in it? Or is it a normal television station?"

"It's more normal than what you've seen, in that people wear clothes (or some clothes) on it. But it's no better for information. And it's horribly cruel and violent. And that's because it suits the depraved tastes of the Buggery aristocracy."

"What could be more depraved than what we've already seen!" snorted Sharon. "This whole country is just one bunch of pervie bastards. There's nothing sane or normal here!"

"Well! There's a lot of violence. And a lot of sex. There's a lot of sports and game shows: and they're not the nice sports like you told me you see on tourist television. There are a lot of gladiatorial sports. There's one sport which is basically where two men armed with knives have to fight to castrate the other. The winner is the one who (by whatever means) manages to slice off his opponent's testicles and to hold them aloft. That's pretty disgusting. And often, of course, one or both of them die. There are others which are just fights to the death, where the loser survives at least long enough to see that he or she has lost. And when it involves disembowelling and live organ removal, just how they lost in gruesome detail.

"There is wrestling: but the only kind of wrestling you see is where the aim of the exercise is to anally fuck the opponent. It looks really odd as two men who have to keep their penises as erect as they can (so they're always masturbating themselves as they fight) have to try and get their opponent into a position that they can force their prick into the other's arsehole. There are team sports too: but many of those also involve death, castration and sodomy.

"Another game is where a person has to run away from others, including dogs, whose task is to rape him or her. This might take place in a maze, where the victim has no idea who or what might be around the next bend or corner. In this case the victim has to be able to both run quite fast and to be able to fight off the attackers. The victim is considered to have won when he or she has reached wherever the end point is and to have escaped anal intercourse. And, for a woman, vaginal intercourse as well. It's quite possible for a victim to win because she's only been fucked but not been buggered."

"It can't all be sport on television?" wondered Tracey who'd never really followed sport much at home, although she liked watching wrestling for the pleasure of watching the men's bodies.

"There are films as well. These must be made for export in most cases and some are very well-made. But they're very violent too. And I'm sure the violence is real. When characters are slowly mutilated to death, or repeatedly beaten, or have parts of their body removed then you can be sure it's the real thing. And there's usually some rape involved in it. It seems that it's impossible to kill or harm someone without having sex with them. Often the victims are restrained by ropes or manacles. Sometimes they are just beaten into compliance."

"The actors can't have a long career can they?" wondered Tracey.

"Not if they are deemed to be villains or if they are one of those to be attacked early in the films. But even those who are considered the heroes or heroines are not that nice. They seem not to care if they gouge out the eyes of their victims, or castrate them, or slice off their limbs, or disembowel them. Even if they are supposed to be acting on behalf of goodness and decency. And they are just as likely to rape their victims. The main difference is that the good characters will always survive. However, there was one character whose descent towards her final death started off with her being considered a heroine. But in the process of that film she had both of her arms severed just below the shoulders. Her suffering was grotesque and genuine, as near the start of the film her arms were cut off with a knife while being raped. She spent the rest of the film having to adapt to her new physical deficiency. Something which was treated relatively sympathetically. She was a very beautiful girl. Somehow or other she managed with the assistance of others in bringing her attackers to their own gross and disturbing deaths, inevitably including their own mutilation. Then I saw her in another film where this time she had her legs cut off with an axe just below the hips and spent the rest of the film hobbling about as just a torso. Not surprising the last film I saw her in she was repeatedly gang-raped and then tortured until her death. This film had very little pretence of a plot. And I can't imagine she could have enjoyed even the smallest part of it."

Sharon didn't enjoy the idea of Buggery television very much. "Can't we change the subject," she suggested. "Look at the sky!"

She pointed up at the half moon through the lattice of branches in the wood. Overhead there was a faint roar of an aeroplane going by. The two friends watched the aeroplane's tail lights sadly.

"That's where we ought to be!" Tracey said.

"I'd do anything to be watching a normal game show on television," Sharon mused. "To go in a pub and get a pint of lager. Get really pissed, and get fucked by some fat greasy slob with spew down his tee-shirt."

Buttercup sighed. "I'm sure we'll get there. I see on your map that we can't be too far from the front with Buggery."

"It's still fucking thirty miles. And it's not all fucking woods," Sharon elaborated.

"Two days!" mused Tracey leaning her head wearily on Buttercup's shoulder, long hair brushing against her face. "At fifteen miles a day, we'll do it in two days!"

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.

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