Introduction

 

The double whammy of a devastating natural disaster and a deep economic depression nearly ended America in 2032.

Hurricane Carla's meandering path up the East Coast was unprecedented. For three days, she acted like a pin-ball--bumping the land then springing back to sea for more energy and moisture. By the time the storm turned out to sea somewhere off Cape Cod, it had dumped more than eight inches of rain over 15,000 square miles of U.S. territory. The surge was even worse. Many coastal cities experienced a sea rise of 14 to 18 feet. Miami reported 22 feet before communication was lost.

The rising water left thousands dead and sixty million people in the dark...isolated.

Police and fire departments, even the National Guard were totally overwhelmed. The President ordered a full military mobilization (the first time since 1942) then sent in the Army. It was largely for show. The scale of the damage was so widespread and horrific that there was very little that could be done to help. Those thousands that Carla was destined to kill, died; those who were lucky enough to escape, lived.

But the storm was only the beginning. The real problem began with the looters--just ordinary people, desperate for food, water, and shelter, who only took only what they needed to survive. At first the authorities turned a blind eye, but within days it was happening everywhere. People made their own decisions about who had the greater need, which of course led to shocking violence. Within a few weeks, everyone was fighting with their neighbors for a place in the lifeboat.

The police were again overwhelmed. Even the Guard units and the state militias were ineffective. Only the Army seemed to have any lasting effect and this was only after martial law was declared and soldiers began to shoot anyone carrying a weapon in public. Even with these extreme measures, it took months to regain control of the major cities. Government estimates predicted that the Army would be needed for at least a year maybe even two in many places just to keep the peace.

This was the point when the effects of the nation's economic woes began to influence Washington's response to the disaster. There was simply no money to pay for the relief effort or the policing of such a huge territory, never mind the reconstruction. Years of profligate government spending at all levels and the resulting loss of foreign investors had brought on default and runaway inflation. America was broke...something had to give.

That something was Florida.

The state was literally destroyed by Carla with more than 1.5 million homes and almost all of its infrastructure gone. Nearly every highway, road, electric plant, water treatment facility, port, train line, and airport has suffered irreparable damage. The Corp of Engineers estimated, based on statewide flyovers, that the cost to restore conditions to minimal levels would be about equal to the cost of helping all the other Atlantic states combined.

The decision to abandon the state was inevitable--it was too far gone. Floridians were ordered to report to evacuation centers for transportation north. In reality, this was a ruse, an unconscionable sop to public opinion. No more than 100,000 residents out of the state's 25 million were ever resettled. Floridians didn't have any means of traveling to the evacuation centers and even if they had come, the government didn't have any place to put them or the wherewithal to care for them.

The result was wholesale suffering and death. People drowned, starved, and died of thirst by the thousands then by the millions. In desperation, local communities banded together even if only for moral support. Some of these private groups grew large, assuming many of the jobs that the elected government had failed to do and acquiring enormous power.

The stage was now set for a nightmare of Biblical proportions.

 

1 - Florida's First

 

The girl was a mix of steamy sexuality and classic beauty. Most of the sex was in her face, in her bedroom eyes, her flared nose, her full lips. Most of the class was in her body, in her straight blond hair, her golden skin, her hourglass shape, perfect breasts, ass, feet, and her long, long legs that seemed to go on forever. The sharp-eyed rescue crew noticed her right away. Little wonder...she was naked up top like everyone else, using her shirt and bra as insulation against the burning roof tiles.

The boat was returning from another part of the campus and it was full, overfull really.

"We got room for one more, partner?" the front man shouted, pointing. His friend on the tiller looked up then immediately turned towards the girl.

A few trembling students looked numbly up as well, but no one said anything. They were just happy to be alive. The storm had left behind a raging flood twenty-feet high that was racing between the school buildings at fifteen knots. Anyone who went into the water was dead. Hundreds were still clinging to the roof ridges awaiting rescue. It was an incredible scene of death and devastation all playing out under one of the most beautiful sun-and-clear-sky-days Florida had ever seen.

Jessie Beal, the subject of their attention, watched the rubber boat get closer then come around to the leeward side of her roof. She was a sophomore majoring in marine biology at FSU's new School of Oceanic Studies. Like everyone else clinging to the dormitory roof, she was scared out of her wits. Most of them had been attending a hurricane party the night before when the storm had trapped them inside. They had moved higher from one floor to another all night. Now, 18 hours later, there was no place higher to go and the water was still rising.

But drowning wasn't the only horror they faced. The merciless sun had beat down on the roof's dark red tiles all day, making them too hot to touch. Some of the boys had tried to wet their shirts in the nearby flood, but it was a dangerous maneuver. One of them had lost his footing and fallen into the maelstrom. They had watched helplessly as he was sucked into a whirlpool and drowned.

"YOU," the man in the boat screamed, pointing at Jessie, "GET IN."

Jessie stupidly looked behind as if to confirm that he was speaking to her then her instincts took over. She stood up ignoring the pain in her feet, composed herself, and did a near-perfect swan dive into the boat. The small craft exploded with arms and legs and tits flying everywhere until the front man stepped angrily into the melee.

"Y'all are going to put a hole in this boat," he screamed as he roughly threw people upright by whatever human handle he could find. It was a lie of course; the 14-passenger rubber-and-aluminum Zodiac they were using was built to withstand errant hunting knives and sharp-tipped arrows, it wasn't going to be punctured by students' bare legs.

He turned back to those on the roof. "Y'all hold on, we'll be back in a few minutes. I promise. Your friend here will guide us back in hardly no time," he said pointing at Jessie.

Those on the roof stared at him with an equal measure terror and hope. One or two of them began to stand up, preparing to jump despite his order. The man on the tiller quickly slammed the transmission into reverse and backed away. Jessie glanced up at her friends and waved, holding up her fist and thumb. She would guide the empty boat back here as fast as humanly possible; they were all going to be safe.

Ten minutes later, the crew offloaded everyone but Jessie on the dry crest of a nearby levee. A man was giving out water bottles as people stepped off, another was organizing survivors into a line and gently pushing them towards tents on the higher land. The man with the water glanced at the half-naked girl then threw more bottles into the boat. The front man retrieved them and handed one to Jessie.

"You got a shirt I can wear, Mister?" Jessie called out to the man on the dock, but the Zodiac was already moving backwards, back to the dorm roof. Jessie felt a little silly at her outburst. She had been willing to delay the rescue for the sake of her modesty...how stupid.

"No time for modesty now, dear," the front man confirmed with a smile. "We've got to get back to your friends. Another few minutes on that roof and they'll be downright crispy."

His friend on the tiller guffawed.

Jessie didn't think the comment was funny or appropriate but she kept quiet, holding her hands over her bare breasts, listening to the steady comforting roar of the engine. It will be okay, she told herself, just get through this day and everything will "get better." She repeated the mantra over and over. After a few minutes, she looked up to get her bearings.

This wasn't right!

"Hey! We need to head left," she yelled, pointing excitedly off to the side. "That's the library roof over there; we need to be on the other side of the campus. The sophomore dorm is on the other side. You need to turn..."

"Take it easy, kid," the front man said in a strange tone of voice. "...Too much debris that way. We need to go 'round. Trust me, we been doing this all day. Just sit back, we'll be there soon 'nough."

She knew he was lying again. It wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it. They weren't going back to the dorm roof. She looked out over the turbulent gray water glistening in the afternoon sun. It would be suicide for her to leave the boat...suicide. The water was moving too fast, there was too much debris.

"I don't want to die," she whispered quietly to herself. "No matter what, I want to live."

In a few minutes they pulled up to an elevated roadbed that had been used by the school's commuter railroad. It was dry at the top.

"This is where you get off, honey," the front man said quietly.

She didn't move, just stared open-mouthed at the scene on the tracks. Two girls were standing naked and upright tied to a light pole, their wrists held overhead by ropes. She recognized both of them. FSU was huge, but there were only a few hundred spectacular beauties on campus. They formed a natural circle...an exclusive club.

A third nude girl was tied to the back of a motorcycle, her wrists and ankles had been secured to the backseat's hold-on bar. She turned toward Jessie with a look of sheer terror in her eyes and... and something else. Was it...excitement? Could that be possible, she wondered. ...Tied naked on the back of a motorcycle, she must be scared out of her mind. No one would be...

"Don't fight us," the tiller man said moving towards her a step at a time. "We don't want to hurt you," he whispered as he gently reached down and lifted her arms. Her wrists seemed to come magically together as if they were magnets. Jessie watched numbly, unmoving, as the front man took a long cord from his jeans and wound it around her wrists. She focused on the large amount of lead he had left.

The tiller man put his hands under her bare arms and lifted her to her feet. Slowly, he reached around and unzipped her pants then pushed them off together with her panties. She began to cry...for her friends on the roof but mostly for herself. Their suffering was probably over by now, hers was just beginning.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked in a calm stupor as the man walked her up the bank to the pole.

He didn't answer, just threw her leader rope over the pole's top pipe and pulled. She was lifted to her toes. He tied off the rope end then stepped back to look. Her body, stretched to its full length by the rope, was exquisite. Every muscle was etched into her taut skin. He stepped closer and ran his rough hand down her full length, testing the firmness of her breasts and ass, the hardness of her nipples, the response of her clit, the smooth feel of her unblemished skin.

"You want to know why..." he whispered into her ear, "Because now we can. That's why."

Jessie was one of nearly three hundred FSU beauties who lost their freedom that day. More than 3,000 lost their lives.