Female Prey & the Elusive Prey (38 page)

She was going to need new equipment and new clothes. While she could get them easily in any of the mini-towns shown on the map, going to any of them presented its own problems. She had to assume that she was already well-known in the two places she’d already visited. Word about Elf-Girl had probably spread to other mini-towns, and Greg had told her that there were a number of men out looking for her, and her specifically. She smiled and shook her head ruefully. Being a legend, even a very small one, had its very own flip side.

She folded the map back up for now and closed her eyes. She took a long drag on the little cigar, savoring the acrid taste of the smoke. Okay, she was a minor legend now, but she was also stuck out in the woods with hardly any gear and no food at all. She did know how to clean and cook a rabbit, but catching one of them in the first place wasn’t something she thought she could do. Hell, even if she’d caught one, she didn’t think she could actually kill it. Well, maybe she could if she was really, really hungry, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Water shouldn’t be a problem. The map showed several streams running through the area and one of them ought to be nearby. Great. That narrowed her problems down to food, shelter and clothing. She ground the butt of the cigar out against a rock. She’d rest here for a little while and think. Then she’d be on the move again.

It was mid-afternoon when she came across something unexpected. It looked like a big old factory building, long abandoned. It was two stories tall, built of crumbling red brick. The windows were all gone and so was a lot of the roof. Kimberley approached it cautiously. There might be someone hiding in there.

There was a doorway at one end…big enough to drive a truck through and as empty as all the windows. She crept up to it and peeked around a corner. There was nothing inside. The floor was old and cracked concrete, with stray weeds poking through some of the cracks. If there had ever been a second floor in this building, it was long gone. She could see two other, smaller buildings through the ground floor windows, and beyond them a narrow dirt road running off into the woods.

What had this place been? There was no clue whatsoever. It must have been abandoned a long time ago. Kimberley poked around. The first of the small buildings she checked out might have been an office once. It had ancient linoleum covering most of the rotting wooden floor, but it was as empty as the big building had been. She went on to look at the second small building. There didn’t seem to be a door at the near end of it, and someone had bricked up the windows. As she began to walk around to the far side of it, she saw the pile that had been partly hidden by some underbrush. When she saw it, Kimberley stopped dead in her tracks.

It was a pile of women’s clothing…a big pile. She could see shirts, blouses, slacks, skirts, brassieres, panties, shoes and boots, all thrown together against one wall of the second building. The stuff on the top of the pile looked recent. The stuff on the bottom looked as if it had been here for a very long time. It smelled of mildew. Kimberley skirted well around it.

There was a door at the far end of the building, and this one wasn’t empty. The original door was long gone, but someone had replaced it with…well, it looked like a door made out of metal tubing and chain link fencing. Curious, Kimberley crept closer for a better look at the inside.

All of the windows had been bricked up, and while the roof was missing from this building as well, the cement floor was in good shape and relatively clean. This must be some sort of holding pen, she thought. But what was it doing out here? There shouldn’t be anything within a couple of miles of this place. She checked the dirt road and found the imprint of tire tracks. Okay…so women were brought in here by car…or truck…and they were made to strip…or did so voluntarily…and were put into that holding pen…and then what? She poked around some more and found the remnants of some big campfires. She could imagine orgies being held out here, but that didn’t seem to be all there was to it. Wouldn’t the women who’d participated want their clothes back afterwards? Or did they go…or get taken…somewhere else after this, instead of back to Gordburg? And how long ago was this place last used? How long before it was used again? It might not be safe to hang around here for long.

But…if they did have orgies here, they would also have brought something to eat and drink, wouldn’t they? Kimberley was feeling hungry enough now to risk a bit more time searching. Some distance away from the buildings, near the road, she found some large, sturdy wooden bins concealed behind the underbrush. They were raised up on thick wooden legs, had hinged tops, and were padlocked shut.

Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! Kimberley suppressed the urge to curse out loud. She pounded the top of one of the bins with her small fist. There might be food in there, but that did her no good at all. Not without the key. Why would they padlock something ‘way out here?

Wait a minute…if there was food in there, it only made sense to secure it from animals…like raccoons or bears. She hadn’t seen any raccoons or bears so far, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t any. But what were the odds that the keys to these locks were kept somewhere far away from here? She began feeling around underneath the nearest bin.

There it was. She could feel a small metal container fastened to the underside. She pried it open and found a key. It fit the lock perfectly, and she gave it a turn. She breathed a silent prayer as she lifted the lid.

There wasn’t much in the bin, but she was very happy to see it all the same—a couple of cans of corned beef hash, half a dozen cans of sliced peaches, half a case of Spam and one lone can of beer. She didn’t recognize the brand, but that didn’t really matter. She took the hash, two cans of peaches, four cans of Spam and the beer before closing and relocking the bin. She replaced the key where she’d found it. She didn’t think that anybody kept an inventory of what had been left in the bins, so her pilfering probably would never be discovered. Elf-Girl strikes again!

Ah…but how was she going to carry all those cans? They didn’t weigh all that much, but they were going to be awfully awkward to tote around, especially since she had no pack. She thought for a moment and an inspiration struck her. She left the cans on the ground by the bin and went back to that pile of clothing. The smell of mildew still annoyed her, but near the top of the pile she found what she’d been looking for. Some very long-legged woman had left a pair of jeans here. They felt a bit damp, but they didn’t smell of mildew, and even better, the belt was still in the loops! She took the jeans with her back to the bins. She used the belt to cinch the legs of the jeans shut together and slid the cans down inside the pant legs. She slipped the jeans over her head like a sash and stood up. It might not look like much…in fact she was pretty sure it looked silly, but this way she could carry all of her treasure very easily.

Now it might be wise to be elsewhere. She checked her compass and set out heading southeast. She would find a place to camp for the night. She’d worry about tomorrow when it got here.

Chapter Twelve

This was starting to get old. Kimberley felt hungry, tired and dirty. Worse yet, she felt forgotten. She’d been moving around in pretty much the same area for two days now, and in spite of her efforts to draw attention to her presence, she hadn’t seen any sign that anyone was hunting for her at all…not even Greg. Had he decided that she was just too much trouble? Well, if he was the type to give up that easily he wasn’t worthy of capturing her…but still…

She had only six full days left to her stay at or at least in the general vicinity of Gordburg, and she had previously made arrangements to spend her last two days at the hotel as a guest, not as a captive. Last year she’d learned that two days was about the minimum time needed to relax and recover from an adventure as female prey. So, at the outside, she had just four full days of being some determined and adventurous man’s captive sex-toy to look forward to, but only if said hypothetical intrepid male caught her soon. Okay, it had been fun, eluding capture so far, but the thrill had kind of gone away.

She was back up on the hill she’d found earlier, concealed among the brush and boulders, contemplating whether or not to smoke her very last little cigar or not. She had plenty of matches now and caches of food stashed here and there, but no more cigars unless she could get to one of those mini-towns and that seemed to be a bit risky. She might not have seen anyone out looking for her, but she was pretty sure that they were out there. She’d raised too much ruckus over the past few days for it to be otherwise. The problem was that out here she had no way of knowing what was being said about Elf-Girl. If she could get to “civilization” she could find out, but it was very likely that the little towns in the area were all staked out, with rough men waiting for her. Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn’t.

She shrugged, struck a match and lit up that last little cigar. She was beginning to feel grimy and itchy; one way or another she was going to have to get into a town, probably tomorrow, if only for the wonderful pleasures of a hot shower and fresh, clean clothes. For now, she savored the smoke and thought back on the past two days.

She’d found the Farm or, at least, she’d found a farm. After raiding the bins back at the old buildings, she’d headed southeast and came across a narrow road, the dirt deeply rutted from the passage of many vehicles. Out of curiosity, she’d followed it and after a couple of miles, she came to an actual working farm. There was a large cornfield, other fields of low-growing green plants, a pasture with some sheep, another with some cattle, all covering many, many acres. Smack in the middle of it all was an old farmhouse, a barn, and a number of other buildings. There had been no way to get any closer in the daytime without being seen, so she’d faded back into the woods. When she thought she was a safe distance away, she’d built herself a small campfire and heated up one of the cans of hash for supper. She had no tools or utensils other than her knife, which she used to open the can and also to eat with. She felt quite resourceful doing that, but she would really have liked to have a spoon or fork to go along with the knife. She treated herself to a can of peaches for dessert, first drinking off the sweet, thick fluid and then tilting the can up to let the wedges of sliced fruit slide into her waiting mouth. Afterwards she’d carefully flattened and buried the cans, using a stick to dig a hole in the soft, black earth. She decided to see if she could raid the farm after dark. Since there were still a few hours to go before sunset, she found a sheltered spot and settled in for a nap.

She’d awakened well after the sun went down. Her watch had said it was almost midnight. There was just enough moonlight for her to pick her way closer and closer to the buildings. She kept listening for the barking of a dog…or dogs…but this farm didn’t seem to have any. She got all the way up to the farmhouse without being discovered and paused in the shadows, wondering what to do next now that she’d got here. There were certainly spoons and forks and probably a can opener in the farmhouse kitchen. The place was dark and quiet, but she could not bring herself to enter the building. She’d had her hand on the doorknob, but could not work up the nerve to turn it.

In the end, she settled for stealing a blanket off of the clothesline behind the farmhouse. She had still not heard any barking, so she went over to the barn next, hoping to find something useful.

But the barn door had been shut tight and held in place with a big wooden bar. She debated trying to move the bar and decided against it. There seemed to be some other, smaller buildings on the far side of the barn, so she went there next.

The first thing she had seen was a long, low shed. As she approached it, she noted that it had a roof and a back wall, but the other three walls were built out of chain-link fence. As she drew nearer, she could just see that it was broken up into smaller compartments by more fencing. It struck her as odd. Was it some sort of kennel? If it was, there didn’t seem to be any dogs in it. Very, very cautiously, she went closer. There seemed to be five or six compartments. There was something in two of them, huddled against the back wall and very hard to see by moonlight. Each compartment had a gate, and the gates for the two occupied ones were padlocked.

Then it struck her. Barbara’s captors had said something about bringing her to “The Farm”. Was this that farm? Were those women in there? Could one of them be Barbara?

She went looking for a long stick, found one and returned to the kennel-shed. She shoved the stick through the fence and gently prodded the whatever-it-was against the back wall. It stirred, made a noise and was still again. The noise had sounded like a woman’s voice, so she prodded a little harder, but not too hard because she wasn’t quite sure where on this woman she was poking.

“No…” It was definitely a woman’s voice. She sounded tired. “No, not now…please…I need sleep…”

“Wake up,” Kimberley hissed, jabbing with more force. “Wake up, dammit!”

“Wha…?” Whoever she was, she sat up. The blanket she’d been curled up in fell away, and even in the gloom here Kimberley could see pale flesh showing. “Who is that?”

“Call me Elf-Girl,” Kimberley replied in a whisper, “And keep your voice down. Do you want to get out of there? How about your friend?”

“What are you doing here?” the woman asked.

“I’m kinda wondering that myself,” Kimberley answered. “Do you want out or not?”

The woman crawled closer. Her fingers gripped the metal links and her face came into view. “Can you get me…us…out? Will you?” She didn’t sound quite so tired any more.

“I will if you can tell me where the keys are. I’m new here myself.”

“They hang them on a nail on that wall.” The woman nodded towards the barn.

“What did they put you in there for?” Kimberley asked.

“Punishment.” The woman shivered. “I think. I’m not sure.”

“Not having much fun, are you?”

“I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” the woman answered.