Escape From Buggery 7

"Fuck! They're only girls!" snorted one of the soldiers when the girls had approached near enough in the dusk for them to be properly seen and for them to be within earshot.

"But don't the fucking Buggery lot have fucking women soldiers?" another soldier said to his comrade. "I vote we shoot the fuckers to buggery, sir."

"They're only girls, corporal" repeated the first soldier. "Girls are no fucking good as soldiers. All they're good for is fucking. Leave them. We got work to do."

Tracey and Buttercup were both pleased and a little surprised to see the soldiers mostly ignore them, with only one of them watching them with his gun half-cocked, while his comrades continued loading items onto a jeep and busying themselves with some radio equipment. They walked past the soldiers, still not convinced that they weren't going to be shot, their arms dropped to their side from weariness and perspiring heavily despite the cooling evening air.

They saw what looked like a border guard, who was standing to attention by a chair, his machine-gun by his side, eyeing them suspiciously as they approached. His expression was quite clearly not of the friendliest. Just behind him, on the Gomorran side was another soldier who was smoking a cigarette and staring as much at them as at his comrade.

Buttercup walked up to the guard, who was built quite large with very short hair and a small dark moustache underneath a brutal looking nose. He turned his dark eyes towards Buttercup. "What the fuck do you want?" he asked, raising his machine gun directly at her

Tracey walked behind Buttercup, disloyally wondering how much Buttercup's body might shield her from a hail of bullets. Buttercup smiled, despite her obvious terror. "We're refugees, sir. We want to escape from the horrors of Buggery to the famous refuge of Gomorrah."

The guard lowered his gun, and laughed in a not especially amiable way. "Refugees! Fuck! For Gomorrah! You're not the first bitches to want to enter our democratic republic, but the last ones we dispatched pretty quickly. Fucking whores! Why should we fucking spare you? Is it 'cause you got through the fucking mine-field. If you weren't fucking tarts, you ought to get fucking medals for getting here without your fucking leg blown off!"

Tracey blanched. Mine-field? In her fear and desperation, she'd totally forgotten that it wasn't just bullets she'd had to be mindful of. What fucking slim chance had she had that she'd survived this walk?

Buttercup, however, continued smiling and continued walking towards the soldier. "We can make it worth your while," she said seductively.

"I bet you fucking can, whore!" snorted the guard. "But you're not a bad looking bitch. I could let you through. But what about your scrawny bitch girlfriend. What say we that we blow her to fuck and just let you through."

"It's either both of us or neither of us," Buttercup said firmly.

"In that case," snarled the guard as if challenged, raising his gun and holding it up as if ready to let loose. And then with a bit of a snarl. "Yeah! S'pose we could do with a bit of a fuck. Oi! Jello! What d'you think?"

His comrade threw the stub of his cigarette onto the ground, and stubbed it out with a booted foot. "Yeah, Buzzcock. I ain't had a fuck for days. And the long haired cow is a real motherfucking killer bitch."

"OK, Girls!" grunted Buzzcock. "You're in luck. Come on the Gomorran side of the border." He stood to one side as Buttercup and Tracey strode to the gap in the wire fence, and walked through, a sudden spasm of relief exploding inside Tracey's chest. They weren't going to be killed! "Welcome to fucking democracy. There's no fucking royalty here. And there's none of your fucking Buggery perversions neither."

Jello stopped Buttercup when Tracey was through the gap. "Now, you bitch! It's fucking payback time. Let's see what you've got to offer."

"Not so fast, sonny Jim!" growled Buzzcock. "We can't let them in like this! Not with the scrawny cunt fucking dressed up like some half-arsed nancy boy. You fuckers take your fucking rings out of your cunts, or we'll fucking pull them out. And you, chicken shit!" he addressed Tracey. "You take off that fucking shirt or whatever you call it on your fucking tits. There ain't no clothes allowed for bitches here. Bitches don't have the fucking right. I don't know what your fucking cunt-arse government lets you fuckers get away with: but bitches have got to know their place here. And give me your fucking bag and all!"

"But my passport! My money!"

"You won't need fucking Buggery dinars in Gomorrah. Their fucking useless. In case you hadn't noticed we're at war with you lot. But your passport's worth more than both your lives put together." Buzzcock grabbed the bag, turned it upside down and poured its contents on the floor. A cascade of lipstick, compacts, notes and knickknacks fell to the floor, including Tracey's precious passport. "Fuck me! Real money! And a real passport! What kind of fucking whore are you to have this kind of stuff on you? Did you steal it?"

"No!" Tracey replied indignantly despite her distress. "It's mine. I took hours queuing up at the passport office for it!"

Buzzcock grunted. "So you're a fucking foreigner even to Buggery. Well, don't expect any help here. Bitches like you won't be allowed within even a mile of a fucking consulate."

Tracey and Buttercup stood together: Tracey feeling more naked than she'd ever felt before with no clothes, no possessions and not even the cunt-ring which despite herself she'd got rather attached to. And what were the soldiers going to do?

Her answer came fairly soon, and in full sight of the other soldiers loading the vehicles. She and Buttercup were dragged onto the ground by their hair, her roots stinging from the rough tugging, and then the two of them were brutally raped. At least, she assumed it was rape, even though Buttercup had, in a very real and genuine sense, asked for it. But this wasn't making love. It wasn't even like the rough sex she'd sometimes had on a bad date. Or like the drunken fucking she'd had when she'd told the bloke she was with to fuck off. This was brutal, violent and animal. They were forcibly penetrated with no preparation at all. First Buzzcock into Buttercup and then Jello into her. She was so dry down there. And it hurt. And she was punched when she struggled. And then it was more cock in her cunt. And cock in her arse. And then a slap round the face. And after more minutes of unpleasant, disgusting forced penetration, sperm squirted into her mouth and eyes.

And then it was over. The soldiers had had enough. They buttoned up their trousers, which they had only lowered to their knees in all the time. "Now fuck off!" commanded Buzzcock.

Tracey and Buttercup picked up their bruised bodies. Tracey left with a small trickle of blood down her thighs that had been drawn from her anus, and a fresh bruise upswelling on her chin. Buttercup had sustained a cut lip and one eye was strangely swollen as a bruise began to form. Her hair was disordered and she seemed even more shocked than Tracey. It occurred to her through her own misery that Buttercup, being the so much more attractive of the two girls, had almost certainly received more attention than she. And that somehow the more attractive a girl was, the more determined the soldiers had been that she should suffer.

Tracey put an arm around Buttercup who was weeping and occasionally coughing, small traces of blood spitting out onto her cheek. They turned around and walked along the road. They hadn't walk any distance however, when Jello jumped in front of them with a snarl.

"Fuck! Don't you fucking Buggery bitches know fucking anything! This is a fucking road. Yeah! A fucking road! And so it's not for the likes of you fucking whores. If you don't want us to fucking shoot you, stay off the fucking road. In case you ignorant cows didn't know, roads are for fucking men only. You bitches stay off the road, if you know what's good for you."

"Where do we go?" sobbed Buttercup, strangely subdued.

"I don't fucking know! You wanted to come to Gomorrah, didn't you. We didn't have to let you through. Anywhere. As long as it's not on a fucking road. Or a fucking town. Or a fucking city. You bitches ain't got no rights."

"Sorry?" asked Tracey, sure that she'd misunderstood something.

"You don't know fuck shit! Let me spell it out for you. You're in the Democratic Fucking Republic of Fucking Gomorrah! You're fucking bitches! That means you've got no fucking constitutional rights. No fucking consti-fucking-tutional rights at all! No fucking women, bitches, whores, girls or dykes have rights. Not to clothes. Not to possessions. Not to fucking anything. Keep your nose clean and keep out of men only areas!"

XII

Sharon's recollection of her rape and that of Sweetness by the Buggery soldiers was confused and painful. She had never known that sex could be so horrible, and she was sure she'd known horrible sex before. Even non-consensual, when the bloke in the car park who she'd been avoiding all night had fucked her in that brutal way. But that was almost fun compared to the horrors of the brutal and seemingly never-ending rape she'd endured on the Buggery battlefield. She knew that her arse and cunt were being violated repeatedly, but it was only pain and humiliation and fear that she was fully aware of. Surely by now they'd had enough, she'd thought as once again her dry and unwilling cunt was penetrated by which prick she didn't know. She could see through the tears that clouded her eyes and the blackness that threatened her consciousness, that Sweetness was being treated no less brutally than herself. How could sex be so bad? She'd always associated it with pleasure, and now all she could do was hope and pray that it would be over soon. But no chance! Yet another of those peculiarly permanently stiff penises pushed through the bruised and ripped lips of her cunt and pushed into her far deeper than she was properly able to take it. And the violence wasn't just restricted to just her arse and cunt. She was forcibly held down and her arms stung from the force of the soldier's grip while she her mouth and nose burrowed into the dry earth. Every time she stirred in any way that could be interpreted as resistance, and resisting was what she couldn't help doing, she was punched or kicked.

She barely registered the world around her. Was it day or was it night? Sweetness was screaming in misery and distress. "Joy! Joy!" she gasped as another man's khaki-coloured buttocks fell on top of her and thrust brutally in and out of her. It was with an extra degree of disgust that she noticed that the soldier's sexual attentions were not limited to the two girls. They would grasp each other's balls, suck each other's dicks, and she was sure she saw two soldiers fucking each other. In fact, she was fucking certain, as one soldier's buttocks descended onto the buttocks of the soldier fucking Sweetness, pushing his prick in with far less resistance than he'd have found in Sharon's cunt and pushed backwards and forwards in a manic fashion gasping orgasmically in the same rhythm as Sweetness' cries of pain.

And then, she didn't recall how, they were dragged along, their knees bleeding from when they staggered and fell, just as did their orifices from their punishment, away from the smoking ruins of the bombed factory for how long Sharon didn't know. But each step was an agony. Each stumble, and its attendant kicks and blows from the soldiers, another even greater agony. She could barely see where they were: the tears in her eyes clouded everything despite the bright sun. She repeated Tracey's name again and again without knowing why, punctuated by every fucking shitting bastard swear word in her vocabulary. Loud enough she was sure to be heard by anyone with an ear to her cut lip, but not to the soldiers. Occasionally, a drop of blood, from her nose or from her cheek, she didn't know, would trail into her mouth and cause her to cough despite the pain this gave to her bruised ribs.

And then, at last, no more walking. Sweetness and she were in a dark tent where only the patches of sun through the black tarpaulin allowed sufficient illumination for her to see where she was. She collapsed from pain and exhaustion, pleased only that the worst agonies were over; and then the darkness that had bubbled in the recesses of her mind overwhelmed her and that was the last she could remember.

When she awoke, she didn't know when, she was able to examine the tent where they had been left. There was very little to it. There were some wooden boxes and crates, and the bare uneven ground on which the tent had been erected. Behind her was a metal post pushed into the ground, and from that came a metal chain which was attached to her left ankle and restricted her to less than a yard in which she could crawl, and was not long enough to permit her to stand. She wasn't alone in the tent. She could see the shadowy figure of Sweetness, similarly chained to a metal post, just outside her reach, and she could hear an incoherent sobbing.

Not wholly incoherent. Occasionally, Sharon could distinguish the name 'Joy', but otherwise there was nothing that made sense. Despite her own pain and misery, Sharon felt an overwhelming emotion of pity for the girl. Being blind, her shock and horror must have been compounded by her helplessness and by her ignorance as to exactly what horrors had been meted on her. Sweetness raised her face and looked in her direction, her eyes registering nothing, a black bruise swelling on her right cheek and eyes, and dried blood and snot on her upper lip. "Joy! Joy! Where are you?" she moaned, and then buried her face into the palms of her hands.

Here they were, somewhere. Alive at least. With nothing. This hadn't worried Sharon before. Her very life had been her chief concern. But now she was sure. Her blouse was removed, thrown aside no doubt in the rape. Her sandals that she'd bought in the high street when she and Tracey were happily planning the holiday: gone forever, trampled into the dusty fields outside. And her bag, with her passport, money and possessions, gone also. Never to be seen again. Along with her last hopes of ever leaving Buggery by the normal process of border control. Would she ever see home again? Would she even survive to see the world beyond the tent? What would become of her?

Or of Sweetness? Did she even know that Joy had been blown to pieces? Or that the factory where she'd lived was now nothing but rubble and smoke? She gazed at the young girl sadly. So thin. So helpless. And she must have led such a sad life. Fucking for a living. And a living that had been a dank hole in the ground, in a Kingdom where her very blindness was as good as a death sentence. Whose situation was worse? Sharon who'd had at least some good times in the smoky night-clubs and damp car parks of home? And even had the best fucks of her life not so many days ago? Or Sweetness who'd known nothing but misery and despair ever since her sightless emergence into the world? Strangely, contemplating Sweetness' dire straits made her own seem the more bearable and in a curious way a source of some guilty comfort.

Sharon pulled her naked bruised body over the earth and leaned out a hand in Sweetness' direction. She couldn't quite reach the girl, but Sweetness heard her movements. Her face lit up and her sightless eyes looked in her direction with a disconcerting vacuousness. "Joy! Is that you?" she gasped.

"It's me. Sharon."

"Sharon? The tourist. Where's Joy?"

"Joy's dead. There's no more Joy."

"Dead. No Joy!" Sweetness weeped, but she'd clearly already half-reconciled herself to this possibility, not erupting into the hysteria of tears that Sharon had feared. "How did she die? What happened? Where am I?"

Sharon explained to Sweetness as best she could what had happened and where they were. And rehearsed as much to herself as for Sweetness' benefit the horrors they had been through. She talked and she talked, disjointedly, ramblingly, punctuated with questions of how Sweetness was, less from a need to know and more from a need to hear Sweetness reply through the globules of tears, mucus and blood in her mouth. Every now and then, Sweetness would interject with "Joy. Joy's dead. She's dead." She was evidently trying to comprehend the enormity of her situation.

The flaps of the tent briefly parted, letting in a flood of daylight, and the tall slim figure of a young man entered. He seemed peculiarly delicate and somehow awkward. He was clearly a soldier, and like the soldiers who'd raped the two girls he was naked and his entire skin was dyed khaki. He differed only in that he carried a holster around his left shoulder and had several stripes tattooed onto his right shoulder. He was also had a normal flaccid penis. He walked over to the girls and crouched in front of them.

"I'm Sergeant Moss. I'm the commander of this camp since the colonel was killed yesterday. How are you? Not feeling too bad I hope?"

Sharon stared at him, barely able to hide the hostility from her gaze. "What do you fucking think? I feel fucking awful. And when are you gonna let us go, you bastard?"

The young man sighed. "I'm afraid that's not possible. You're spoils of war, I'm afraid. Escape is just not possible. The soldiers need some R&R, you know. And you're unfortunate enough to have to provide it for them. I'm deeply sorry for you. It wasn't my choice. But war is war. And you are victims of it."

"You fucking shit! Fucking let us free. I don't fucking care about what your fucking soldiers want. And anyway haven't they fucking done enough?"

"I can't apologise enough for the violence and brutality of my men. What they did to you was inexcusable. Rape is one of the worst crimes there is. Short of murder, of course. But this is war. We've sustained a colossal amount of injury in the last day. The colonel's gamble just didn't pay off. The Gomorrans gave us far more of a drubbing than we'd expected. At least a thousand men died yesterday and last night, and most of our supplies were destroyed by the bombing raids. But I don't expect you to sympathise with my men. All I can offer as comfort is the observation that at least my men didn't kill you."

"Didn't what they do to us … wasn't that fucking enough?"

"Rape is normal in war. My men haven't had sex with a woman for years. Many of them have never fucked a woman before. But like it or not my men probably saved your lives. The Gomorran soldiers are not known for their mercy. They would also have raped you - just as they would have raped any of my soldiers - but it's unlikely they'd have let you live. And you were in the heart of a battle field. Gunfire, mines, bombs. Your chances of survival were very low. I doubt whether very many others in that settlement of yours managed to wake up this morning…"

"Tracey…" mused Sharon. Her best friend was probably also dead. And all they'd wanted was a holiday in the sun. Her eyes exploded in tears. "You bastards! You bastards! You fucking fucking bastards!"

"I can see you're unhappy," mused the sergeant. "And I can't promise you the security or the freedom you want. And we don't have any medical supplies to do anything about your cuts and bruises. But they do look superficial, so I don't think you're likely to die from them. Much as I'd like to, I can't free you. It would be my death sentence. Morale is low enough as it is, and any small thing I can do to assist my men is about all there is left for me to do until, or if, reinforcements ever arrive. I'll leave you now. But I'm sorry to have to inform you that, from now on, you will be expected to provide sexual favours for my men, and that some of them are not going to be that gentle with you. But I can promise you that I will do my best to ameliorate the agony. It won't be much, but I do have a modicum of authority even if I don't believe I have quite the respect my rank should have."

With that, he left the two girls huddled on the dry ground, once again to immerse themselves in their misery. Eventually, Sharon managed to fall asleep again, her consciousness sinking in clouds of despair and Sweetness' muttered moans and cries as she mourned the death of her companion. "No Joy!" she moaned again and again. "No more Joy. No more Joy again. Ever!"

The sergeant soon became the most frequent visitor to the tent as the days and nights merged into a hazy horror of misery, discomfort and despair. After a while, Sharon almost looked forward to the visits as they were the only thing which interrupted the tedium and bleakness which did not necessarily involve sexual penetration. When he wasn't there, which was most of the time, Sharon and Sweetness lay near each other slumped on the hard dusty earth. The only physical comfort Sharon could give Sweetness was to hold her hand as they stretched out towards each other, while Sweetness rambled on about her worries and woes. Generally, their conversations were disjointed, and returned repeatedly to their worries about their current situation and their recent losses. Sweetness was genuinely inconsolable about the death of Joy who had been her protector, keeper and lover for two or more years. Her life before that had been even less pleasant than living in the ruined factory. She had been kept in hiding from the police from birth by sympathetic peasants. The war reached where they lived, and in the chaos of the destruction which befell the village and her guardians, Sweetness found herself helpless and alone in the world, not knowing where she was and where to go. It was Joy who'd found her and saved her life, but she would forever blame herself that she'd not been able in some way to prevent Joy from losing her life. Her sightless eyes were red and raw from the tears which memories of her darling Joy inevitably provoked in her.

When the flaps of the tent opened and the sergeant returned, Sharon was always filled with dread if he came in with anyone else. And usually there were three or four others. Because this invariably meant more rest and recreation for the soldiers who accompanied him and several hours of pain and humiliation for the two girls. With little introduction and sooner than Sharon ever feared, she and Sweetness would be fucked: in the arse and in the cunt, and no opportunity to protest. After her initial rape, Sharon vowed she'd never be penetrated again, but what use were her vows where she was: tethered to a pole and thoroughly incapable of putting up any struggle at all if she didn't want a gun butt slammed into her face.

The soldiers who raped her, - and it couldn't really be called anything else, - were mostly quite young, were frighteningly unimaginative and insensitive in their love-making, and invariably left her lower regions battered, bruised and torn. They all were blessed with the phenomenal erections which seemed to be a permanent feature of them. The only times Sharon ever saw a penis that wasn't red and raw with a throbbing glans and veins was after the soldiers had at long last relieved their sperm either into or onto them. The sergeant was the only one privileged to have a penis that wasn't mostly erect.

The fucking was intense, amateurish, and seemed to go on forever. And she wasn't fucked nearly as much as Sweetness who, because of her youth and vitality, was more thoroughly fucked than she was. She was becoming accustomed to pricks up her arse, shoved into her mouth and plunged (least painfully of all) up her cunt. And at the same time, she could see Sweetness through her tears of rage and disgust engulfed by a mob of khaki-coloured figures who were fucking her as best they could. When they weren't fucking each other. Which they did frequently, during, before and after fucking either or both of the girls.

The sergeant, despite his protestations of decency, was no less of a fucker than the others. His long thin prick, when aroused, as it very soon was, joined the others in painful penetrating her, Sweetness and of course the arse of all, or many, of the other soldiers. And when they left, Sharon and Sweetness would be nursing their fresh wounds and humiliations slumped on a ground which never got more comfortable and dampened by semen, shit and piss. Even this respite which they'd been hoping and praying for all the time they'd been raped, offered little comfort and even less hope. And as the small pile of their shit and piss grew in the shadow of the tent, it really did not smell very reassuring either.

However, when the sergeant entered unaccompanied there was no question of sex and he was all kindness. Even if Sharon remembered distinctly the times he'd fucked her (and no more expertly or sensitively than his soldiers), these were visits which she rather welcomed and which offered Sweetness and she almost the only respite from their misery.

He explained that he'd never wanted to be a soldier. In fact, his ambition had always to be a poet, a talent for which he had shown great promise whilst at school. But the Kingdom of Buggery had no demand for poets and a much greater appetite for cannon fodder. Despite his delight and skill at verse, he'd also proven himself to be a brave and capable soldier for which he earned his promotion to sergeant. For this he earned more stripes, the tattooing of which was almost as painful as his initial tattoo into military colours. This was mandatory for all soldiers, and ensured that they would have no chance of any other career for the rest of their generally rather short lives.

He was very lucky to have survived the battle which had killed Joy and separated Sharon from Tracey. The carnage had been indiscriminate and widespread. At least fifty, and maybe a hundred, soldiers had actually been machine-gunned down by forces of the Buggery Army who were under instructions to fire on any retreating soldiers. The press of soldiers attempting to escape the bloodshed behind them into the guns of the army's rear guard would have been greater if the Gomorran jet planes hadn't been so thorough in their carpet bombing of the Buggery army encampment. Had the Gomorrans been less efficient, it was unlikely that the sergeant would still be alive.

Buggery military life was harsh and unremitting, and, true to the general policies of the Kingdom, as humiliating and brutal for the soldiers as it was for the citizenry they were defending. Once in military tattoos, clothes were banned, and as a result of injections, pills and masturbation (sometimes mutual), soldiers were expected to maintain an erection at most times. Particularly during battle and inspections. The thinking was that a sexually aroused soldier was necessarily an effective one. The sergeant was uncertain as to the truth of this, but he knew that his own prick was at its greatest state of arousal during combat. Slaying, fucking, being fucked: all were part of the excitement of war. And he could vouch that it certainly scared the fuck out of the Gomorrans to be faced by massed erections, occasionally squirting out semen as they made the kill.

Women were rarely pressed into military service, and those few rarely survived very days, even if they were never caught up in combat. However, sex was such an integral part of life in Buggery that soldiers were expected to have sex with each other. Anal intercourse was encouraged and even enforced. However, rank had to be respected. Higher ranks could fuck anyone of lower rank: and did so with appetite and arbitrariness. Lower ranks could only fuck those of the same rank as themselves or lower. A colonel could fuck a corporal, but a corporal could never stick his prick up a colonel's anus however much he wanted to (or the colonel might actually like it). Life in the army was a man's life, but not a life for a man who was choosy about his sexual partners.

When the sergeant left, Sweetness and Sharon would be left alone in the shadows of the tent: sometimes left very much in the dark when it was nightfall. Although Sharon insisted to Sweetness that she was no fucking dyke, (something which she wasn't sure Sweetness really understood), she sought out Sweetness' hand to clasp and didn't complain too much as she stroked her ankle or arm or whatever little of her that she could reach. Besides, Sweetness was still grieving the loss of Joy. It was difficult for Sharon to understand how a girl like her, who might even be quite attractive had she the chance of gaining weight on her emaciated body, could ever find much pleasure in the crippled disfigured body of her deceased lover. Sometimes Sharon's mind cast back to the days before she and Tracey arrived in Buggery. Squalid though their life had been, it was paradise compared to her the dilemma of her current confinement.

XIII

Tracey and Buttercup wandered along in the dark Gomorran landscape, their shadows cast forward by the light of the nearly full moon, able to see that on this side of the border as on the other there was evidence of the detritus of war. They were both very tired and both felt thoroughly abused. Buttercup was finding the pain between her legs a particular agony for which she was grateful for Tracey's devoted love, as she grasped her lover's hand. Tracey herself tried to keep out of her mind both her feeling of relief that she hadn't been blown to pieces by mines on the Buggery side of the border and her apprehension that it might still happen on the Gomorran side. She didn't know what she'd expected on arrival in Gomorrah, but she knew it hadn't been yet more of this anxious loneliness and fear, and this feeling that she had left one hell only to arrive in another which so far promised no better than that which they'd left. The pain in her own vagina and arse, though less than that of the more absolutely abused Buttercup, still made her feel weak and helpless.

Eventually, after several hours of directionless wandering away from the border, the two girls had to succumb to their exhaustion. They moved out of the open air, where at least they could see where they were, into the forbidding shadows of a copse, where a crater and the remains of a fire-bombed jeep reminded them that war was still not that far behind them. They rested together, relying on each other for warmth and comfort, each being a pillow for the other's weary head, too exhausted for Tracey to make love to Buttercup: an ambition which had so often surfaced in her thoughts as she admired her lover. And soon they were asleep, too exhausted to care anymore. Occasionally, Tracey thought of Sharon. Was her friend even alive? She wondered. Or had she been brutally raped and murdered by the Gomorran soldiers as she'd witnessed them treat the Buggery soldier?

Tracey was awoken by Buttercup, who was gently stroking her hair. She lifted herself up on her elbow and looked around her in the bright sunlight at the desolate, parched countryside, initially convinced that she was still in Buggery, and that her memories of the day before had been nothing but an unpleasant nightmare. Buttercup kissed her sadly, but lovingly. Despite her anxiety, Tracey smiled. "At least we're still alive."

Buttercup returned the smile, on a face whose beauty was badly marred by a growing bruise on her cheek and a cut just above her eye. She glanced down at her crotch, where Tracey could see a small trickle of blood that had emerged from her vagina. "Not just alive," Buttercup said with a sadness,. "but together!"

She sat up, and grasped her knees between her arms, slightly shuddering from a despair that Tracey recognised in herself. "Now, we've got to make a new life together in Gomorrah. And first we've got to find some other people. And just hope that they aren't as brutal as the border guards."

Despite their weariness and hunger, the two girls lifted themselves up, and walked out into the open. Behind them they could see the line of the border defences and, beyond, the battered landscape of Buggery. Ahead was just more desolate, broken ground, broken by the odd copse and decaying tree, and no evidence of human settlement. But they walked on, their feet aching on the harsh uneven ground, their skin burning in the morning heat, and their hands clasped desperately together.

It was only after several hours of wandering, broken occasionally by rests on the odd boulder, where Tracey felt acutely her lack of cigarettes, that they came to anything that resembled habitation. And a sorry squalid landscape it was too. A kind of shanty town of tents and buildings of cardboard and corrugated iron. And amongst it they could see the odd figure wandering naked amongst the buildings. As they got closer, they realised that all the figures they could see were women, all of them naked and all looking a little scruffy even in their nudity.

Buttercup bravely approached one woman, letting go of Tracey's hand, who reluctantly relinquished her grip. The woman had long poorly combed hair to her waist, a very hairy vagina which stood out as a broad triangle of fur between her legs, and had shaved neither her legs nor under her arms. She made the two girls seem peculiarly even more naked than she, with the short stubble of hair on their own vaginas, and the slowly growing hair on the rest of their body.

"Greetings," said Buttercup. "We're refugees from Buggery. We're looking for somewhere to live."

The woman looked at them without surprise, and not especially welcomingly. "I guessed as much. You're not the first refugees to come this way. And I guess you've also been made suitably welcome by the border guards." She brushed her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a small smudge on her nose. "Heaven knows why you should come here. To Gomorrah. There are women from Gomorrah who are so desperate to leave, that they become refugees in Buggery. But at least you're alive. And you've still got all your limbs, I see. You don't know how lucky you are. Many refugees who come here, came off much worse for wear than you have."

"Can you help us? Do you know anyone who can give us food and shelter?" persisted Buttercup, despite this rather unencouraging introduction.

"Yeah. Sure. I know how to help. But don't think I can help that much! I don't know what you foreigners expected, but you're not gonna find much luxury here."

She led them through a maze of tightly packed huts and make-shift dwellings to a rather larger wooden shack near the centre of the settlement. They walked past small dogs, innumerable chickens and several cows and goats; along paths worn down by feet; past other women similarly naked and unshaven. This was a village in desperate need of a hairdresser, Tracey reflected. She was also aware that there were no shops or even market stalls. What sort of dump was this? The woman left the two girls outside the shack while she went in. "I won't be long," she promised.

A few minutes later she emerged with another woman who was probably in her early forties, and who, like all the other women they'd seen, was naked, hairy and unkempt. She had a proud bush of hair obscuring her crotch which crept onto her thighs and half the way to her navel. Her dark brown hair was long and bushy, and showed no evidence of having seen a brush or comb. She smiled at the two girls with rather more warmth than the woman they'd first met.

"Hello. Glad to meet you. I'm Delta Seven Oh Nine Three, but you can call me Delta. I've been elected Welfare Officer for our village. I guess you're refugees here. Come inside out of the sun. Please."

Buttercup and Tracey followed Delta, lowering their heads as they passed through the rather low door. The room inside was very sparsely decorated, with just a wooden frame bed and a few cushions scattered about on the floor. Delta sat on the edge of the bed and signalled to the girls that they should recline on the cushions.

"So?" Asked Delta after the formalities of introduction were over. "What brings you to Gomorrah?"

Delta did not appear at all surprised at Buttercup's account of why she had escaped from Buggery, but was quite startled when she discovered that Tracey had been a tourist. She needed a little explanation as to what a tourist was. It was clearly neither a word nor a concept familiar to her.

"So people from your country regularly travel to other countries and then leave after only a week or two. And you visit places like Buggery. I don't think we have any 'tourists' in Gomorrah. In fact, we don't have many visitors at all. Gomorrah's a kind of international pariah. I don't believe it has very many foreign friends at all."

"Why's that? Is it a horrible regime like Buggery?" wondered Tracey.

"Well, in fact it's a democracy. And quite a free democracy. But women aren't allowed to vote, and whichever government comes in seems to compete with each other to maintain the state of sexual apartheid which distinguishes this country."

"Sexual apartheid?" queried Tracey who'd never heard of the word before. "What's that mean? Is it some kind of kinky perversion?"

Delta frowned. "You seriously don't know what it means? But that's why no one in the world recognises the Gomorran Republic. It's when women don't have any rights, and men have all the rights they care to elect for themselves."

"Rights?" wondered Buttercup who was having quite different difficulties in understanding what Delta was going on about.

"You know: the right to own property; the right to vote in state or local elections; the right to education; the right to roam freely without help or hindrance; the right to travel on men only public transport or to enter men only zones; the right to bear and bring up your own children; the right to protection by the law from abuse and harassment; the right to be treated the same as a man."

"You mean you have to rights for all that?" wondered Tracey whose knowledge of politics was limited to knowing who the prime minister was, and even then she wasn't always sure. "I thought that was just natural."

"It obviously is where you come from. And it's because women in Gomorrah don't have rights that all the other governments in the world won't ever talk to the Gomorran government or even recognise its right to exist. We don't have the rights to possess anything: not clothes, not land, not anything. They just about tolerate us living in villages like this, because otherwise all the women would die from exposure and starvation. And then the men wouldn't be able to have sex, bear children or have cheap labour. And even then there are some who'd begrudge us even this much."

"So, how do you live?"

"Well. We can live off the common land, which is all the crap land that the men don't want. We can sell our bodies. And we can work in the factories and as servants doing all the chores which men think are beneath them. But we have to be careful where we go and what we say. And we mustn't ever complain. That's about it. Anything else we do is strictly speaking illegal."

"What sort of things are they?"

"There are unofficial schools which we've set up to educate the girls as soon as they're dumped on us. Which is from birth, where they just get left on the ground for us to find and look after. The boys, of course, are immediately looked after by the state. No one knows who their real mothers and fathers are. Once a woman's given birth, she's turfed out of the state hospital and expected to fend for herself. There are unofficial committees which look after our own welfare, and make sure women aren't left to die when they're ill or disabled. There are unofficial hospitals, unofficial local governments and unofficial housing committees. We women look after ourselves. After all, if the men won't do it for us, who else is there for us to turn to except ourselves?"

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