by S. J. Lewis
Time passed. Alexa wasn't sure how far she'd walked, or how much time had passed. She paused and scanned what she could see of the sky through the trees. It didn't seem to be getting any lighter, so sunrise was still some time off. She took another sip from her water bottle. It was lighter than a canteen would be, and Will had assured her that she could safely refill it from any of the small streams she might come across. All the same, she'd picked up some water purification tablets, just in case.
She walked some more and did some mental calculations. Sunrise would be somewhere between six and six-thirty. She'd left 'End' sometime after three. Since usable twilight usually lasted for about an hour either before sunrise or after sunset, she could expect things to get lighter about three hours after she'd left the barn back in End. That part was pretty simple. It was one of the things Will had taught her. What he hadn't taught her was how to tell time in the absence of the Sun overhead or any kind of timepiece. She could only guess at how long she'd been walking. She could also only guess at how fast she'd been walking. According to Will, normal walking speed on level ground was anywhere from two-and-a-half to three miles an hour, but that was in daylight. She knew she'd been traveling much slower than that, but not how much slower. There was also the matter of how long it had taken her to pick her way through the woods after laying her false trail to the north. The upshot of it all was that she had no idea what time it was, and no idea how far she'd gone along this trail, which was exactly where she'd been to begin with.
Alexa sighed. If and when she saw Will again she'd have to mention this little interlude to him and ask him if he had any lessons on how to handle it. He probably did. In the meantime, she kept walking, slowly and carefully, looking and listening. The looking wasn't helping much, and the listening was made difficult by the din of frogs and bugs. Will had told her that they made so much noise because they were looking for mates. She wished that they'd all hook up long enough to give her a little peace and quiet. She was a lot better at this outdoors stuff than she'd been last year, but she didn't think she was really cut out for it. She was a city girl at heart.
After a while, she stepped off of the trail into the woods and found a spot to sit down and think. Will had told her that the further out you got from Gordburg proper, the more extreme things became. When she'd asked him what he'd meant by 'extreme', he'd told her that he'd never gone that far out himself and was just mentioning things he'd heard from others, some of whom claimed that they had. This Farm that she was trying to find seemed to be pretty far out, so just how extreme might things be there? She thought back to the scene in the slave barn in End. Those four women had seemed to be willing, but really nervous about whatever it was they might be getting into. The three men who had led them away, well, Alexa herself had never been into the bodybuilder types they'd seemed to be, but she could understand how some women could be attracted to all that male muscle. It could be very easy to submit to someone so much bigger and stronger than you were. It could probably be very exciting, too. It was pretty much the flip side of those girl catchers who hunted down small, slender, young-looking females to cater to men who wanted more petite playmates. Yeah, that all made sense to her. But then Will liked tall women, even when they were noticeably taller than he was. What was up with that? He'd told her that it went back to a very memorable early experience, and no doubt that had something to do with it, but she suspected that he also liked the challenge presented by a taller woman. He always joked that once you laid a female down she was just the right height, but she doubted that he'd be interested in any of the captives of the girl catchers.
Alexa yawned. She wasn't sleepy, exactly, but she was feeling a little tired. She debated getting up and going on for a moment before deciding to wait until it got lighter. In the meantime, she'd just lean back against this little tree and rest for a bit.
Sunlight in her face woke her some time later. She sat very still, looking and listening, as Will had taught her, before she moved. The keening chorus of frogs and bugs was gone, and now there were only bird calls and the sound of a light breeze through the trees to break the quiet. She took a swig from her water bottle and stood up. The sun was still largely obscured by the canopy of leaves overhead, but she guessed it was about an hour to ninety minutes after sunrise. Now that it was light out, she could see that the trail she'd been hiking along was mostly sand, with a few tufts of grass poking through here and there. The ground she was standing on looked like regular dirt, so the sand along the trail probably wasn't natural. That was another thing Will had explained to her: The sand provided a soft surface for bare female feet to walk on.
The light breeze shifted and brought a new sound to Alexa's ears. It was too faint for her to be sure, but it had sounded like a woman crying out, somewhere in the distance. She stood very still and waited to see if it would come again. It did, and this time it sounded very much like a female in distress. It didn't sound angry, as she remembered Lynette sounding last year. For a moment, she just stood there, uncertain what to do next. She didn't hear any more cries, which could have meant anything in this place, up to and including them coming from too far away to hear unless the wind conditions were just right. She started down the trail again, staying close to the fringing woods and underbrush and moving slowly and carefully. There was every chance that this trail was kept under surveillance.
Some time and distance later, Alexa heard a female crying out again, much more clearly, as if it came from much closer. She melted into the woods immediately. There were still so many things she didn't know about Gordburg. Was it even allowed to sneak up on a place like The Farm? And if it wasn't, and she was caught, what kind of penalties or punishments might be imposed? She'd already noticed that women seemed to be allowed more latitude in what they could or could not do than the men here were, so maybe all they would do to her if they caught her was keep her there for a while. But then, The Farm was supposed to be where some really rough stuff went on, and she wasn't at all sure what that might entail. Well, if she never got caught, it would all be moot, wouldn't it? She pushed on, feeling a nervous thrill at her daring. But now, she made her way along through the woods, using all the tricks Will had taught her to move silently.
She heard The Farm before she saw it. More exactly, she heard another one of those female cries of distress. It sounded so close that Alexa jumped and ducked behind a tree, her heart pounding and her mouth suddenly dry. The cry came again. It sounded like a strange mix of discomfort and frustration, possibly mixed with a little pain. She peered carefully around the tree trunk, keeping low so as not to be seen herself. The underbrush blocked her view, so she slowly inched her way upwards until she could see something. It took her a moment to realize that she was looking at the edge of a cornfield. And the cornfield had a scarecrow, a naked female scarecrow, standing on a small wooden platform and lashed to the T-shaped frame that sprouted from it, her wrists bound to the crossbar, her ankles bound together to the upright. She had straight dark brown hair that didn't quite reach her shoulders and she kept trying to look around behind her, as if she was expecting someone to come along and free her. After a moment, she cried out again, her mouth wide, her eyes shut tight.
Alexa hunkered back down behind her tree. Was this some kind of training, or punishment, or what? The female didn't look at all comfortable, and while the day wasn't too warm if she was left out in the sun like that for too long she could end up severely sunburned. Should she try to free this female? Probably not. That would let everybody know that there was someone running loose nearby, even if the female didn't run back and tell everyone the moment that she was freed, which seemed like a real possibility. No, better to just let whatever was going on run its course. Alexa took a sip of water and started moving quietly through the woods, trying to find the end of the cornfield. It took her a while, and she heard two more loud cries from the female scarecrow before she found it. The cornfield ended abruptly, with a narrow rutted track between it and another field
of some kind of low-growing leafy green stuff. It wasn't lettuce and it wasn't cabbage, and that was all that Alexa really knew about it. At least she could see over it easily. It seemed to be a big field to her, but she had no idea what a farmer would think of its size. Off beyond it, she could see a line of weather-beaten sheds, and beyond that a larger building that could only be a barn. This field of leafy green stuff was about knee high and sat between two cornfields. There was no way to sneak across it unobserved, at least not in daylight, so Alexa kept going.
The second cornfield had no scarecrow, female or otherwise. Creeping through it offered a way to get closer to those buildings, so after a careful look and listen, Alexa quickly crossed the narrow track between it and the woods and went into it. The corn was already higher than her head, which offered concealment, and the long, straight rows had long, straight lanes between them that made the going easy. Well, up to a point. The upper parts of the plants were spread out into the open area between them, which meant that she made most of her journey in a half-crouch in order to avoid giving away her position. Still, that afforded her some extra cover, so that no one passing by the particular rows she was between was likely to spot her. As for what she'd do once she reached the other side, well, she'd figure that out once she got there.
The far end of the cornfield was bordered by another narrow track, with a lot of low-growing shrubbery on the other side. It looked as if it had started out as a hedge, but left untended so that now it was a tangle of different plants, all fighting for a place in the sun. She didn't see any way through it, and she was reluctant to leave the cover of the cornfield and walk along the track to try to find one. She could hear voices coming from the far side of the overgrown hedge now, male voices, but she couldn't make out any words. Above the hedge she could see the roofs of the sheds and the upper part of the barn. Off to her left she could also make out the upper floor of a two-story house with white clapboard walls, curtained windows, and a metal roof painted a rusty red. Then she heard a female's voice, raised in protest and deep male laughs. Her curiosity got the better of her, and Alexa crept up to the hedge. She found a spot where she could at least partly conceal herself from anyone looking along the track and carefully pulled some of the obscuring shrubbery aside so that she could see what was going on.
Just past the hedge there was an open, grassy space maybe forty or fifty feet across, and then the line of sheds. They were all open on the side facing towards the hedge, and Alexa could see three large wire pet cages in each one, twelve cages in all. Most of the cages seemed to hold one female. There were two men at one of the cages, which was opened, and they were trying to get the female in that cage out. She didn't seem to want to come out, but the men were much bigger and stronger than she was, and were probably experienced in dealing with reluctant females. It didn't take them long. One simply reached into the cage and grabbed her by her hair, then pulled her out on her hands and knees. He held her in place while his companion reached down and hooked something to the collar that the female wore. It didn't look at all like a leash to Alexa. It was too short, and it was straight and inflexible. It looked more like a stick, wrapped in something black, with a clip at one end and a handle at the other. Alexa wondered why they were using it until the female, complaining loudly, tried to rise to her feet. The man holding the stick managed to keep her from doing that with very little effort. Alexa could see that the female had long, dark hair and a medium build, with very nice legs and full, round breasts.
“No!” the female yelled. “No! No!” Then the man who had dragged her out by her hair pulled something from a loop on his belt and gave the protesting female several hard and painful swats on her ass with it. Alexa winced at the sounds of impact, and the female shrieked.
“No...please...” she moaned.
Alexa kept watching. In Gordburg, 'no' didn't mean 'no'. Ever. There was a safety word available, but it wasn't 'no'. She knew what the right word was. Last year, she'd even heard Lynette use it before Alexa had been able to use that garish vibrating strap-on on her while she was trapped in the stocks.
The two men hauled the female, uncooperative and still protesting, into the middle of the grassy area. There was what looked like an old tree stump there, cut very low to the ground. They positioned the female over it, and then, while the one holding the stick-leash kept her in place, the other crouched down behind her and made her spread her legs. Then it looked as if he was tying her ankles to something on the ground. When he rose, the female tried to close her legs again, but couldn't. Alexa guessed that there were stakes or something driven into the ground and that's what the female's ankles were tied to, but she couldn't really see to be sure. The man then tied her wrists together and tied them to what had to be another stake driven into the ground, so that she was on her knees and elbows. Her hips and belly now rested on the tree stump. She was perfectly positioned now to be taken from behind, in full view of the other females still in their cages. Some of them appeared to be very interested in the proceedings.
Alexa took a quick look back, up and down the trail, to see if there was anyone there. The trail was clear. No one was sneaking up on her. She turned her attentions back to the staked-out female. Her handlers were just finishing up forcing a thick bit gag into her mouth and buckling it tightly into place. She was still protesting, but weakly, as if she'd resigned herself to her fate, whatever it was going to be, but still wasn't happy about it.
“Okay. Bring 'em out!” the man holding the stick-leash called out. He had a deep, booming voice that suited his size and build. Alexa took a deep breath. The female tried to look around behind her, but a sharp slap on her ass stopped her. She lowered her head and seemed to brace herself.
Four men came into view from around the line of sheds. One of them looked like a clone of the female's handlers, only bald. He appeared to be leading the others, who kept looking around, often at the caged females. Those three were all older, somewhere in their forties, Alexa guessed, and not exactly dressed for The Farm. They wore slacks, shirts and shoes more suited to Gordburg town. When they spotted the staked-out female, they stopped looking around. Alexa saw one of her handlers squirt something from a small bottle onto the female's ass and start spreading it around. The female made a complaining noise, moving her hips as if to shake off his attentions, but she was staked out so securely that she couldn't do much. Still, the motions seemed to fascinate the three older men.
“You want ass, we got ass,” the bald-headed man said to them. “Fuck 'er as hard and as deep as you want.” He stepped aside to let his charges get a closer look at the female, who tried to raise her head and look around again only to have one of her handlers grip her hair and hold her head down. She squirmed and complained around the bit gag. Alexa knew about that kind of gag. The female was probably drooling.
“Do we have to use condoms?” one of the older men asked. “I don't want to use a condom.”
“It's ass,” the bald man shrugged. “Talk to your buddies, though. They might not like sloppy seconds.”
The three men moved aside and spoke quietly amongst themselves for a moment. Finally, they turned back to the bald man. “I'll just go last,” said the man who didn't want to use a condom.
“Is this really okay?” one of the other visitors asked. “I mean, she's really okay with this?” He pointed at the female, who was struggling vigorously and completely ineffectively now, making angry complaining noises all the while.
“You got your fantasies,” the bale man replied. “Females got theirs. You all wanted to fuck an anonymous slave up her cute round ass, here's your chance.” He folded his massive arms and said nothing more. The three men edged closer to the female, looking her over. They were clearly very interested.
“Can I fuck both holes?” asked the third visitor.
“Only if you start with her pussy and finish up with her ass,” the bald man replied. “Come on, we're wastin' time here.”
The female screeched in protest and
began struggling even harder. All that got her were a couple of stinging smacks across her ass with what looked like a riding crop until she settled down, trembling and moaning. The man who'd asked about using both holes came over and knelt down behind her, running his hands over the backs of her thighs and her just-flogged ass. The female twitched and whined and moaned.
The bald man moved, blocking much of Alexa's view. He stood with those big arms still folded, apparently observing the caged females. With him there, Alexa could see the front half of the staked-out female and a little bit of the back of the man kneeling behind her. She heard the female moan loudly, but couldn't see what caused it. Then she saw the female's body being jolted forward in rhythmic intervals, accompanied by grunts from the man fucking her and moans from the female. When the jolting stopped, the female tried to look around again, but the man who was still holding her by her hair kept her from doing it.