Chapter One
Alexa blinked as someone took the heavy black cloth hood off of her head. She looked up
to find out who had done it and saw the tall, black-clad woman who had introduced herself
as Miss Lydia, her guide, a short ATV ride and a long walk ago. She was a dark-haired,
dark-eyed woman. Alexa guessed her age as somewhere between thirty and thirty-five.
“Is it time now?” Alexa asked. She instinctively looked at her left wrist before
realizing that she’d had to leave her watch, along with so many other little things, back
at the hotel in Gordburg.
“No, not quite yet,” the woman smiled down at her. “But it won’t make any difference now
if you can see your surroundings. I wanted to have a short chat with you, and we’re
granted some leeway in following the rules here, so long as we adhere to the spirit of
them.”
“Oh.” Alexa nodded absently. “Is it okay if I stand up now, then?” She looked down.
“This tree stump isn’t very comfortable after a couple of minutes.”
“Of course,” the other woman smiled. “And you can call me ‘Lydia’ for as long as we’re
out here together.”
“Thanks,” Alexa nodded again as she rose. She looked around. They were somewhere out in
the woods. Most of the trees she saw were pines, though there was a sprinkling of
hardwoods. She could see her gear and supplies stacked in a neat pile against one of them.
She wanted to go over and take inventory, but that might be a bit premature. Anyway, it
looked as if it was all there.
“Yes, it’s all there,” Lydia said with a smile. “I do have to ask you, though, why you
insisted on bringing more than you could possibly carry. You do appear to be incredibly
fit, but it took two men to lug it all the way here.”
“Oh, that,” Alexa shrugged. “I figured I’d stash most of it away, hide it someplace, and
come back to it when I started to run low.” She looked at Lydia’s severe style of dress
and just had to ask a question of her own.
“Why are you dressed like that?” She pointed at Lydia’s long, plain black dress, with
its high collar, ankle-length skirt and row of buttons all down the front of it.
“This?” Lydia looked down at herself. “Well, it’s a uniform of sorts in this place.”
“You look like a cross between an old schoolmarm and a widow,” Alexa said, “especially
with your hair done up in that tight bun.”
Lydia laughed. “I suppose I do,” she agreed. “But it’s unmistakable, and anyone who sees
it knows that I’m a proctor.”
“Proctor?”
“Think of me as a referee,” Lydia shrugged. “This place needs someone with the
authority to step in if something is going too far.”
“Oh.” Alexa wondered what could possibly be considered ‘going too far’ in ‘this place’.
She was already wondering if she’d gone a bit too far herself.
“Don’t you think that’s rather risky?” Lydia asked, pointing at the pile of gear. “If
you keep coming back to the same place when your supplies get low, someone is likely to
spot you sooner or later.”
“Oh, I thought I’d scatter stuff around in different places,” Alexa replied easily.
“I see,” Lydia nodded. “Well, it might work out for you. Best of luck with that. Though
I can’t help but think that it’s a little out of keeping with the, shall we say, spirit of
the competition.”
“What do you mean?” Alexa asked.
“You and your friends arranged all this, as I understand, based on what you’d all heard
about a woman who’d come here before and called herself ‘Elf-Girl’.
“Well, yes…sort of,” Alexa agreed…sort of.
“It’s my understanding that ‘Elf-Girl’ actually evaded the hunters for quite some time
with hardly any equipment at all.”
“I heard that too,” Alexa said. “But wasn’t she some kind of super outdoorswoman? I
heard that she was really skilled in survival techniques.”
Lydia threw her head back and laughed uproariously. “Oh, my,” she managed to say once
she was done laughing. “She is a bit of a local legend, but it’s truly amusing to see how
legends can grow until you don’t even recognize them anymore. I actually had an
opportunity to see her in the flesh, and I do mean in the flesh because it was after she
had finally been captured and the man responsible put her on public display, naked, for a
while so that people could satisfy their curiosity. She was a slender little thing with
short blonde hair. She was an archaeologist, I’m told, so I suppose she was used to being
outdoors, but in no way was she any kind of superwoman survivalist. I remember that she
did look more than a little tired when I saw her, and I thought that it was truly
interesting that such a delicate-looking young woman could have raised so much fuss her
very first time here.” She chuckled.
“Did she ever come back again?” Alexa asked. She was starting to feel better about her
chances now.
“Not yet,” Lydia said with a shake of her head. “I think she came here looking for
something very specific and very special and was lucky enough to find it. I really don’t
know anything about where she is now, or what she’s doing.”
“Specific?” Alexa asked. “Special? What do you mean?”
“Why, the man who tracked her down, of course,” Lydia responded. “I saw him, too. He was
good-looking, but not especially so, but he wanted her, and her alone, so badly that he
almost ran himself into the ground hunting her.” She sighed. “It’s quite romantic, isn’t
it?”
Alexa couldn’t answer right away. Yes, it did seem romantic, in a very bizarre way, but
the public display part sounded distinctly off-putting. She realized that she might also
be put on display and rejected the notion. She couldn’t be put on display if she was never
caught, and she had absolutely no intention of being caught. That wouldn’t be the only way
that she could win this competition, but it was the only way she wanted to win. She
thought that she had a pretty good shot at it. And if she somehow got caught after
all…well, they had all agreed to literally put their shapely asses on the line for this.
But she wasn’t going to get caught. No way.
She heard something buzz and instinctively looked around for whatever monster bug was
flying near her head.
“Ah, it’s going to begin soon,” Lydia said. “That was the ten-minute warning.”
“That was you?” Alexa asked.
“I carry some communication equipment,” Lydia answered. She didn’t elaborate. “Now, do
you feel ready to start this competition?”
“Yes,” Alexa nodded.
“You know what can happen to you if you get caught?”
“Uh…yes.” This time, Alexa didn’t nod.
“They took you on a tour of the old part of Gordburg?”
“If you mean, did they show me the slave market, yes they did,” Alexa replied. “They
even took us all to one of the slave auctions. When it was over, they brought us all up on
the stage, introduced us all, and let the men there leer at us for a while.” It had been a
disturbing experience, but not impossibly so. What had really bothered her was how Martina
had showed up in cutoff jeans that showed off her long legs and a tight, sheer tank top
with no bra that showed off the fact that her big, round tits had perky, poky nipples.
Most of the leering had been directed at her, with her long, dark-blonde hair and…
“Alexa?” Lydia peered at her intently.
“Huh? Sorry, what?”
“You just kind of drifted off there for a moment. Are you feeling all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” Alexa shook her head. “I just started thinking.”
“It’s perfectly normal to start having second thoughts,” Lydia smiled, “especially since
you’ve never done anything like this before. You haven’t, have you?”
“Not even remotely,” Alexa replied.
“So it’s all feeling a bit scary now? You can still back out.”
“No,” Alexa set her jaw. “I’m not backing out. I’m going to finally beat those
bitches.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh.” Alexa laughed nervously. “Just psyching myself up before the big game.”
“I see,” Lydia said. She didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Well, it will be starting
soon, so let me quickly cover the main points of this competition.”
“Yes, please.”
“Very well. All four of you are being released north of the main road, in different
locations. This area isn’t as built up as the lands south of the road, so there aren’t as
many people here. It will pretty much just be you, your friends, and the parties hunting
for you. So if you see a man, or men, you can be sure that they’re after you.”
“I understand,” Alexa said.
“Now, there are a few places up this way that you can go to for supplies, or temporary
shelter, or medical attention…”
“Medical attention?” Alexa interrupted.
“Well, yes,” Lydia nodded. “We take all the reasonable precautions we can, but this is
still a wilderness setting, and accidents can happen.”
“Oh, that,” Alexa said. “I’ve broken my leg once, and an arm. You don’t mean anything
worse than that, do you?”
“No. Truth be told, we have more incidents at the pools than we do in the woods. We have
excellent medical staffs here, in any case.”
“Okay,” Alexa nodded. “Now, what about these places?”
“South of the road we actually have a string of small towns,” Lydia continued. “North of
the road, we only have what you might call a few trading posts. They’re usually no more
than a building or two. It’s possible for you to stay overnight at one of them if the
weather turns too bad, but you absolutely must leave the following morning.”
“Kind of like a bed and breakfast with no breakfast,” Alexa said.
“Actually, you can get a hot meal at any one of them, but the quality varies depending
on the skills of whoever’s running the place. At the worst, you can expect a warmed-up can
of hash or chili.”
“Do I have to pay for that stuff?”
“Well, of course, but all you have to do is let them pass a scanner over the tiny chip
in your ear and it will automatically be charged to your account. You don’t have to carry
any cash.”
“Yeah.” Alexa scratched at her right earlobe. The chip had been implanted there
yesterday, and while the procedure hadn’t hurt at all, the site had itched for several
hours afterwards. It seemed okay now, but just hearing the chip mentioned prompted her to
scratch. It occurred to her that her ear was now some sort of ATM card. She’d have to be
careful not to misplace it.
“Now, I can’t tell you exactly where any of those places are,” Lydia went on. “But there
is at least one within easy walking distance of you right now.” She cast an eye at the
pile of supplies. “I don’t think you’ll be needing to go there any time soon. But you can
get just about anything you want there, should the need arise. Additionally, as long as
you’re on the grounds of one of the trading posts, you’re safe from capture.”
“What are the chances that somebody’ll be hanging around one of those places, waiting
for me or one of my friends?”
“Not very high the first couple of days,” Lydia answered. “But after that, it can become
very risky to approach them.”
“Why is that?”
“The men who will be hunting you have all done this before,” Lydia told her. “Some of
them have become quite skilled at hunting women. They know that the more time passes the
more likely one of you will need to get something. So be careful.”
“Oh. So they know the ground here too?”
“Some of them might,” Lydia agreed. “Many of them might have been in this area in the
past. The question then is how much do they remember, especially if they’ve only been in
this part once or twice? Rest assured you’ve all got a fair chance. And so do all the
men.”
“I see,” Alexa said. They seemed to be very well organized here. She wondered how long
this peculiar resort town had been involved in this strange business, and how Martina had
ever heard of it.
“Now, if you’re taken and things become just too much for you, all you have to do is use
your escape word, and it will all stop immediately. Of course, that will also mean that
you’re bailing out of the competition.”
“Yes. I understand that,” Alexa said. “But, uh, just how bad might things actually
get?”
“You must understand that we have a very, very selective screening process here,” Lydia
replied. “The men have some very strict rules that they must follow. If they don’t,
they’re banned for life.”
“Has that ever happened?”
“Once or twice,” Lydia admitted. “It’s very rare. If you were a man who’d gone through
the long process of being approved to come here, wouldn’t you be very, very careful not to
do anything to get yourself thrown out?”
“I suppose,” Alexa shrugged. “But about what could happen?”
“Oh,” Lydia smiled. “Well, obviously, if you’re captured by a group of men all of them
will want to make use of you.”
“In what ways?” Alexa pressed.
“Straight, oral and anal,” Lydia replied clinically. “You’re free to try to resist, of
course, but many women find that once they’ve been taken captive that submitting comes
fairly easily. Some of them resist anyway, chiefly so that the men have to ‘force’ them.
There are all sorts of sexual fantasies.”
“Um…yeah, sure,” Alexa said. “But wouldn’t some of that hurt?”
“Some women also enjoy the pain,” Lydia answered. “And the men have all been given
extensive training to avoid doing any serious damage.”
“And you just…act as a referee for all of this?”
“Not just,” Lydia said. “Look.” She began unbuttoning the high collar of her dress. She
pulled the material away so that Alexa could see that under it she wore a thin black
leather collar with a big, silvery metal ring dangling from it.
“What’s that for?” Alexa asked.
“Another part of the uniform,” Lydia smiled as she buttoned back up. “It never shows,
but anyone who’s been here before knows it’s there, under the dress.”
“Why?” Now Alexa felt confused.
Lydia’s smile widened. “Because sometimes I get to play too,” she said. “And some men
really, really like the idea of bagging a proctor. Here’s this woman with absolute
authority over them, and if they can just find a way to get her out of her dress she’s
theirs to play with however they want…for a while, anyway. As I said, there are all sorts
of sexual fantasies.” She buttoned back up. “This is a unique place where many of them can
be acted out.” She tilted her head and looked at Alexa. “Do you have any that you’d like
to act out?”
“Not really,” Alexa replied.
“Then why are you here?”
“For the competition,” Alexa said. “I don’t want to talk about my fantasies, or lack of
them, any more.”
“All right.” Lydia seemed disappointed. “Usually the women who come here are looking for
adventure. But if you made it past all the psych evaluations they must have figured that
you could hack it here. I won’t pry any further.”
Alexa had been thinking about asking Lydia for more details about what had been done to
her in the past, but realized that if she wasn’t going to share anything with the woman
there was no reason for Lydia to be forthcoming herself. And even if Lydia chose to speak
freely, that just opened up opportunities for her to ask questions of her own, and Alexa
didn’t want to answer any of them. She was still a bit queasy over the possibility of anal
sex. It was something she’d never even considered in the past.
“Uh…I have a question,” she said to Lydia.
“Of course,” Lydia responded. “What is it?”
“Is there any way…any way I could get a man to stop doing something without having to
use that word and bail out of it all entirely?”
Lydia chuckled. “I suppose you could always say ‘please’,” she said. “But I rather doubt
that it will work. What were you thinking of?”
“Uh…anal sex,” Alexa replied. “I’ve never done it, I’ve never wanted to do it, and just
the thought of it makes me feel filthy.” She shivered.
“Oh.” Lydia nodded. “That’s a fairly common reaction among first-timers, which is why we
don’t usually let them in here. But really, Alexa, if you get taken and a man wants your
ass, there’s not a lot you can do to stop him, especially if he has friends along. Are you
at all sure that you even belong out here?”
“I’m not as certain as I was yesterday,” Alexa shrugged. “But I’m here now, so I guess
I’ll stick it out.”
“Well, that’s not the most positive thing I’ve ever heard a woman in your position say,”
Lydia commented.
Alexa had no answer to that, so for a while the two of them were silent. Then, after a
while, Alexa heard that buzzing sound again.
“It’s begun,” Lydia announced. “I have to go now. Best of luck to you.”
“Thanks,” Alexa replied as she made a beeline to her stacked gear. She didn’t know how
much time she might have before hunters began sweeping through this area, but she didn’t
want to waste any of it. The first thing she checked was her backpack, making sure that it
held everything she’d stored away in it last night. It did, so she shrugged it on. When
she straightened up to ask Lydia one last question the other woman was nowhere to be seen.
For a moment she just stood there, feeling a bit overwhelmed at the knowledge that she was
completely on her own now. Then she went back to work.
Her extra supplies were all food and water, packed in three waterproof bags made of
heavy, camouflaged cloth. She hefted one of them by its thick handle of webbing. It seemed
heavier than she remembered. There was no chance she’d be able to lug it very far, but if
she could find a good hiding spot for it she wouldn’t have to. She began to search around.
In a very short while she found a big, hollowed-out log that might suit her purposes. The
bag proved to be a very tight fit, but she managed to stuff it far enough back in the log
that no one would see it unless they got down on their knees to look in. That done, she
went back and got one of the two remaining bags. A hasty sweep of the area turned up no
ideal hiding places, so she resorted to stashing it inside a blackberry thicket and
throwing some leaves over it until she thought it was as concealed as it was ever going to
get.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the competition had started. It would
have been nice to have her watch, or even her cell phone, since it had a time function.
There was so much she didn’t know. She’d seen maps of the area ‘north of the main road’,
but hadn’t been allowed to carry one. She’d tried very hard to memorize it, but even if
she had a photographic memory it wouldn’t have done her any good at the moment since she
had no idea where she was. For a moment she simply stood still, feeling very much alone
and very much on her own. She shrugged the feeling off and picked up her last bag. It was
just as heavy as the others had been, but she decided to carry it with her until she found
some landmark she could recognize easily and stash it somewhere near there. She hoped
she’d be able to find the other two later. The hollow log and the blackberry thicket would
be easy enough to spot once she got near them, but she thought that she might have a
little trouble getting near them. The forest here looked entirely unremarkable. She
shrugged and kept walking. There wasn’t anything she could do about that now.
The bag was heavy enough that she had to make frequent stops and put it down on the
ground for a while. She was moving slowly anyway, trying to stay in cover and not make any
unnecessary noise while at the same time straining her ears for any hint that other people
were nearby. She saw no one, she heard no one, and later in the day she came to a small
stream that trickled its way through the woods. She laid the bag aside and sat down on a
mossy rock to rest.
She was feeling pretty good right now. The weather was warm and mild, and she’d had just
enough exercise to feel pleasantly pumped, as if she’d just completed her warming-up
exercises. She looked up to see where the sun was, and noticed that it was to her left,
and lower than it had been when Lydia had taken the bag off of her head. Okay, that meant
that she was heading north. Good. That was the way she wanted to be going. It was away
from the main road, and so, probably, away from the men who would be hunting for her and
her friends. She wondered where those friends were now, and if she would run into any of
them. She hoped not. Until this contest was over she hoped that she wouldn’t run into
anybody at all.
As long as she was moving, she didn’t have to think. But she had to rest from time to
time, and when she did she couldn’t help thinking. Thinking made her uneasy. There was
more than just her shapely white ass riding on this competition. Martina had talked
everyone into putting up money on a bet. Whoever won the competition would get the money.
It was a considerable sum, and coming up with her share of it had strained Alexa’s
resources to their limits. If she didn’t win, it would take her a long time to pay off the
debt she had run up. The thought only reinforced her grim determination to win. She had to
win. She wanted the money, to be sure, but even more than that she wanted to finally beat
those arrogant, beautiful, well-toned bitches at something.
She had always been the ‘also-ran’ in their loose-knit group, never placing higher than
third in any athletic competition she entered and usually coming in lower than that. She
was in superb shape, and she worked very hard to keep herself that way, but it seemed that
no matter how hard she tried there was always some woman faster, stronger, more skilled or
more ruthless than she was who came in first. Well, in getting as far as she had she’d
beaten four of the bunch already. That left just three to go: Martina, Lynette, and Naomi.
Since she wasn’t competing with any of them directly, she thought that she had a pretty
good chance. In any case, none of them, herself included, had any experience in this kind
of contest, so they should all be starting out more or less even. Actually, she might even
have the edge now. She’d spent a lot of time learning all she could about hiking, camping
and wilderness survival, keeping her efforts secret from the others. Nothing had quite
prepared her, though, for how very alone and vulnerable she felt right now.
Resting was necessary, but resting meant thinking, and thinking led to doubts and fears.
Alexa stood and picked up the bag again. There was a pile of rocks on the other side of
the stream that might be a good hiding place for it. Once she had stashed it away she
could keep moving without having to stop so often. The next thing she’d have to do would
be find some safe place to sleep tonight. Would the hunters be active at night? They
weren’t supposed to have any special equipment, so maybe not.
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