The army of Saida the
Lioness, the Great Black Queen, was mustered to her order, ready to embark upon
its mission to unify the scattered survivors of the Catastrophe on the nearby
mainland and organise them as a nation of simple peasant farmers under her
rule.
The former prison
island was an armed camp, its harbour filled with a fleet of fishing boats
turned invasion transports. The plans
that Saida had concerted with the representatives of the Hidden Empire were put
into practice. Recruits had been sought
among both the islanders and those fishing communities formed by survivors on
the mainland coast. In their aerial
voyages of investigation further afield, the fanatic advocates of simplicity
had recruited more volunteers, single male survivors lured by the prospect of
acquiring fertile females for themselves from among the prospective conquests.
A select group of the
recruits had been trained to use the special bug-proof weapons, which had been
supplied with cautious economy by the yellow folk from their headquarters
somewhere beyond the ocean horizon. The
remainder were drilled with spear and shield or crossbow and long handled axe.
With the superior weaponry and intelligence
provided by the representatives of the Hidden Empire and the even more potent
lure of the restoration of fertility to all who submitted to her, the Army of
the Lioness, though small, was more powerful than anything the scattered
survivor communities could muster and which no village’s makeshift defences
could withstand for long.
A trickle of
additional female captives also came from the aerial patrols, trawled by the
yellow men from various sources.
Subjected to the discipline of the Lioness, they were soon forced to
accept their relegation to the role of following the army as porters. Sometimes
they were newly arrived survivors from beyond the tropics, escaped from the ice
and snow; mostly they were those who had sought a comfortable survival on the
ocean and been caught out by the contamination of hydrocarbons and the failure
of plastics. Three of these latecomers,
taken up by the airship patrol from a stranded vessel, had actually come there
by a long and enforced safari from deep within the desolated continent.
In the beginning on a bright blue African
morning, a light cart drawn by a team of goats and escorted by three women had
jolted along a little used road towards an almost abandoned town. The road was partly obscured by thick mud and
dead vegetable matter and the cart followed two wavering wheel ruts in which
the tarmac surface was only occasionally visible. All about them the rolling grassland had long
been a seared brown and seeming dead but the women were aware of welcome signs
of recovery in the vegetation, which now showed as a faint dusting of green
despite the residual smears of salt that glistened in hollows here and
there. The trio wore long gowns of
brightly patterned local cotton and hand-woven cartwheel sun-hats and used the
spears they carried like walking staffs, laughing and chattering casually
together.
Susan, Lucy and Alice had once been an
all-female UN team assisting local tribal people with a scheme for introducing
controlled goat and cattle grazing in an area devastated by a recent civil
war. For that purpose a breeding stock
of goats and a herd of cattle had been accumulated at the research centre under
their charge. Stranded by the
Catastrophe, they had survived by culling the weakened livestock and by
trawling the extensive salt lakes.
Ingeniously they had even saved some of their stock by means of mixing a
large reserve of fodder with scavenged animal protein. As the disastrous salt rains turned to fresh,
the goats’ ability to subsist upon poor grazing allowed them to survive. There was now land enough in plenty for the
limited number of survivors, a mix of locals and refugees, so latterly there
had been little violence, but goats were valuable enough for the women to go
armed, intending to make it clear that they would defend their property from
prospective thieves.
They remarked as they passed how the trees by
the river had recently begun to sprout new shoots. No one was at work amongst the former fields
but that wasn’t a surprise. Few of the
survivors had the confidence to rely upon planted crops. Hunting over the abandoned farmlands and
fishing in the lakes had largely been their means of maintenance. Carrion eaters had prospered exceedingly and
humans in turn had preyed upon the scavengers.
Goats had so far been too valuable to be lightly consumed.
The outskirts of the
little township lay in ruins with broken windows, collapsed roofs and sagging
fences, where anything green had long since been consumed by the voracious
goats. Here the mud lay more thinly,
pockmarked with the footprints of human feet and the cart rolled more
evenly. The three women had ventured the
few miles from the old UN agricultural station in the hope of finding a source
of medicines. There had been a report
that one of the rare refugees who still managed a wandering existence had been
trading medicines scavenged from some abandoned hospital. Though there were now no more than a handful
of inhabitants, the place served as a place of exchange for goods and news.
The small cortege headed towards the former
main street where one of the residents kept a bar of sorts, though it only
provided home-made beer dispensed in scavenged bottles. Its proprietor occupied his plentiful leisure
in blacksmith work mending tools and hunting gear. His fire was glowing in the smithy shed as
they turned the corner, but it was unattended and neither was anyone visible in
the main street. The attention of the
three women was entirely focused further ahead, where on the raised veranda in
front of the bar, they expected to find any gathering of locals. The suddenly flung net that descended upon
them took them completely by surprise.
A howling flood of
weirdly unhuman figures in black and white burst upon them, leaping from walls
and doorways. Alice, caught in the act
of unslinging the crossbow she carried on her back, fired it by accident, the
bolt going skywards and the butt striking her hard under the chin. Lucy tripped and, before she could rise, was
felled again by a heavy spear butt.
Susan jabbed desperately with her spear at one monster. Impeded by the rope mesh she missed and was
swept off her feet by a yank of the enveloping net. In a few seconds all three were disarmed and
helpless in the hands of a hideous band of warriors, whose naked black skins
had been painted from head to foot with stripes and bars of white clay.
Rumour was made
horribly true. They had heard wild tales
of the Destroyers, a horde of displaced people who had taken to cannibalism for
survival and developed it into a nomadic way of life, preying upon their fellow
survivors, appearing suddenly, consuming all and vanishing again like a horde
of locusts. The white markings were
their reported symbol. Some of these men
carried short stabbing spears, some long handled axes; all had vicious
broad-bladed pangas unnervingly like butchery tools, terrifying the captives
with the threat of sharp slashing mutilation.
The only things to be slashed for the moment however were the women’s
garments. Deep-throated masculine
triumph attended the sound of rending fabric as they set about disentangling
and then stripping their prizes.
Only Susan was still
in a position to put into practice what she remembered of long ago instruction
in self-defence. She brought her solidly
shod boot heel down upon the instep of the man who hauled her upright. The brute roared and threw her forcefully
from him so abruptly that she careered head first into a whole group of his
comrades, ramming one of them in the belly.
That man bellowed in turn but more by way of amusement, grabbed Susan by
the neck and hem of her dress. The thin fabric ripped and parted in successive
jerks as she wriggled and twisted, so that she went scrabbling on all fours
between the man’s black legs, stripped to her single undergarment.
She thought she had
got clean away with only the loss of her dress, but horny fingernails swiped
down her back and, hooking the waistband of her pants, brought her abruptly to
a halt. Before she could recover, she
was lifted up off her feet and tipped forward head downwards. She put her hands out at first to stop
herself falling and then, as she was carried away like that, dangling
helplessly from the man’s fist, hard knuckles digging into the cleft of her
behind, she paddled desperately on her hands along the dusty road, her bare
breasts flopping and hair coming down.
A wooden step
appeared ahead of her and she clutched at it desperately as she was carried
upwards, not knowing where she was being taken.
She caught a glimpse out of the corner of one eye of a little huddled
knot of black women and children, probably people she knew, naked, open mouthed
and wailing in terror at this fresh evidence of their captors’ power. Evidently considered less select captives,
they were being herded away by half a dozen young boys with jabbing spears,
slighter, less ornamented, but equally inhuman copies of their elders.
Between the jerk
Susan’s captor gave to dislodge her grip on the stair and her determined
clinging to it, the seams of her knickers, already worn and frail, split apart
and emptied her head over heels back down the steps, ending breathlessly, stark
naked, flat on her back in the roadway.
Terrified by the sight of her captor unslinging his chopping knife, she
tried automatically to curl up in a ball as he loomed over her. But it was only the utilisation of its
leather strap he was after. Wrapping one end of the thick, cured hide about his
fist and swinging its length over her, he barking an order.
Susan understood
nothing of his language but the meaning of his commanding upwards gesture was
obvious, as was what he intended to do with the strap. She easily guessed that prompt obedience was
expected, but unfortunately the realisation of the idea was so far from her
instincts that she reacted too slowly.
Thwackkk! The strap came whistling down. Susan’s mouth flew open in an O, body
convulsing as a swathe of burning pain slashed across belly and thighs. She rolled over, clutching protectively at
her belly but only exposed fresh targets for him to aim at. The brute made the thick strap hiss audibly
through the air. Hard leather fell
smacking across Susan’s rump and thighs again and again as he repeated his
order. Yelling in desperate
propitiation, she rolled over onto her hands and knees and then, when the strap
smacked savagely across her backside from the rear, she scuttled forward upon
all fours towards the steps down which she had just tumbled.
Even in her own
distress Susan had been conscious of the screams of her women friends and,
halfway to the steps, Lucy came past, preceding her up them on her back, towed
by her ankles, naked breasts showing white undersides, long hair dragging in
the dust and head bumping woodenly from step to step.
Their brutally
compelled progression landed Lucy and Susan together on the veranda of the bar,
where already from inside there came the frightening sounds of masculine
bawling, breaking glass and screaming women.
The last of their trio soon followed them. Alice arrived, transported dangling, kicking
feebly, head downwards over the brawny shoulder of her particular captor,
wailing in fear and beating uselessly at his indifferent back.
By the time the swift
tropical dusk descended, the settlement presented a spectacle both debauched
and brutal. Lit by the flames of the
surviving buildings, a mob of black and white painted fiends swaggered and
yelled in the street and went in and out of the still intact bar, most of them
naked, some of them bedecked with scraps of inappropriate finery. Naked or bedecked they were all fully
armed. In the roadway before the bar one
group tested Alice’s crossbow of which they had made a prize, drunkenly firing
bolts along the street to the hazard of their fellows. From time to time the smoke drifting along
the street carried with it the sickly smell of roasting human flesh.
Outside the bar,
along the rail of the raised veranda a row of naked women prisoners had been
fastened, bent over it, legs spread, tied angle to ankle and wrist to wrist,
heads downwards overhanging the street.
Disposed this way for the convenience of their captors’ use, the
flickering of the flames lent an appearance of liveliness to their hapless
posture. The orange-red firelight
reflecting from their naked curves picked out in particular the three with pale
skins and long hair.
Taken inside, the
three hapless white women had joined a collection of other female captives
whose only glimmer of hope had been that as long as they were being fucked,
they were not being eaten. They had been
put immediately to such use, every man who could claim a part in their capture
taking his share. Then the initial
novelty of their availability having passed, the victorious looters had seen no
reason for haste. No organised force now
existed that might intervene. The used
prizes had been dumped outside in this convenient fashion, kept handy where
they might be available for diversion during any lull in the serious business
of consuming the remaining stock of home brewed beer.
Within the bar now a
drunken group of men squatted on the floor in the flickering light, singing
with deep melancholy savagery in slurred bass voices. Another group, scuffling and arguing, spilled
out into the roadway, developing the argument briefly into a fight with knives
before returning in sudden drunken reconciliation to the bar.
The field was thus
left clear for the youthful auxiliaries who had accompanied the Destroyer band
acting as servants, carriers of loot and herders of captives. Aspirants to
eventual warrior status, they had gathered, giggling and scuffling, in the
fire-lit street, eyeing the pinioned females.
Aged from puberty upwards, they were eager to assert their budding
manhood. Egging one another on in
bravado, the boys finally mounted unchecked to the veranda where a row of well
lubricated female pussies, anonymous other than by colour, were presented to
all comers.
Female groans and
whimpers finally alerted the men within to the activity of the juvenile
experimenters. Roaring angrily at such
impudence, the warriors reclaimed their booty.
Preparing to settle themselves for a sustained drinking session, they
cleared a space in the middle of the floor and made the women pile themselves
one on top of the other, white and black together. It made one mass of black and white bodies
and sprawled limbs from which squirming heap a man might single out a
convenient orifice from time to time.
Even though generally only one woman was being fucked at any time, all
were forced to share somewhat, being interlocked into one mass. Clutching at each other, they echoed one
another’s disheartened squeals so that it was almost impossible to tell which
of them was actually being penetrated.
The warming sun
eventually broke over a ravaged and still smoking township. Beyond the last ruined houses a few morose
warriors, hollow eyed and with war paint smeared and soiled, stirred themselves
about a makeshift corral where the captures of the previous day, humans and
goats, were being assembled by the young herd boys.
The golden oblong
cast by the open door upon the dark interior of the bar-room lengthened along
the stained and dirty floor until it illuminated an out-flung hand, the curve
of a buttock, eventually the pile of still living female flesh, light and dark
intermixed in the centre of the floor.
Having served their purpose, the women had been left where they had been
deposited, exhausted and only half conscious, to await whatever further use
would be made of them.
Presently the
satiated orgiasts of the previous night began to stir themselves, moving
stiffly amid the wreckage of furnishings broken glass and spilled beer
bottles. From outside came a long call
repeated by youthful voices. Inside, the
warriors argued briefly among themselves until one, yawning, lurched over to
the female sprawl and kicked here and there with casual and brutal accuracy. Whimpering women were forced to disentangle
themselves, struggling to pull stiffened limbs together, to raise bruised
bodies and struggle apart, resolved into individual figures.
One by one, Susan,
Lucy and Alice were forced by brutal kicks to open fogged eyes, to crawl out
onto the veranda and to stumble down into the roadway, followed by the rest of
those who had been the night’s entertainment.
Too stiff to walk more than a few steps, however, they sank down
exhausted in the road despite all their captors’ kicks. At last one of the Destroyers picked Susan up
in his arms, carrying her with ease crushed to his hard flat chest, the strung
human teeth of his necklace digging hard into her soft flesh, her head and legs
dangling. Laughing, another seized Alice
by one ankle and swung her body with windmilling limbs, to land dangling head
downwards on his back, both ankles gripped and knees crooked over his
shoulders, her long hair sweeping loose below his narrow buttocks.
Grunting men fell
upon the remaining women and together joined the exodus from the town, hefting
their burdens in whatever fashion struck their fancy like so many
carcasses. Carrying their living loot
like hunters with captured prey, the Destroyers left the township by the same
road the three white women had used to reach it. Striding rapidly in single file, by noon they
had crossed the river and approached the old agricultural station, which Susan,
Alice and Lucy had left the day before, their home since the Catastrophe.
The station was in
ashes.
The Destroyers who
had captured the town had been only one of many bands. Their hordes travelled
in small parties, pressing ahead of any warning and covering a wide swathe of
country, coming together only where more than usual opposition was encountered
or a larger quantity of loot in prospect.
While the buildings of the station were now gaunt skeletons or heaps of
ash and rubble, the fenced kraals were still intact and one was full of
bleating goats. Cooking fires were being
lit and files of tall, near-naked warriors were still marching in from all
directions. The assembly now far
outnumbered those who had attacked the town, and trailing after them, followed
strings of burdened women and children.
The Destroyer horde by now had lost some of its earlier all-consuming
ferocity and was turning into a peculiarly savage tribe.