Tempting Trade, page 3
part #1 of Desolate Lands Series
“Chill for fuck’s sake. We’re here. I’ve been gagging the last hour. I need a piss as well. Then a drink, and then a fuck, in that order.”
“Keep your fucking hands off the merchandise in the back,” the deeper voice warned.
Yes please! Please let him keep his hands off us. I knew for a fact that me and the other people in that horrible cramped space were the merchandise.
“Ah, maybe just a quick play with one of them. I like the strawberry blonde.”
“No fucking way.”
“Christ. Why not? I bet half of them aren’t even fucking virgins.”
“We don’t know what they are ‘til the doctor’s inspected them, but if you touch them, Chris will kill you. Or maybe let you live, but cut your balls off.”
“Like Nigel.”
“Yeah, like Nigel.” The guy with the deeper voice exhaled sharply. “That was some fucked up nastiness. I mean, we know Chris has a temper but fuck me. Actually, cutting someone’s balls off with a steak knife.”
And the nausea was back, rushing over me in great big waves, threatening to overwhelm me.
Think! I tried to calm down, so I could focus and figure out what the hell to do. My mind wouldn’t still, though. It flitted about like a demented fly careening around a room. It landed for a brief moment on the thought of Nigel and his balls, then shot off to buzz around again before focusing on the expression on the Peacekeeper Guard’s face as he hit the ground. Then off it would go again, alighting on the fact that I’d been taken and most likely to be sold into slavery.
The vehicle stopped and we were roughly pulled from the floor. I expected to be dragged down so gave a squeak of surprise when I found myself hauled over someone’s shoulder.
“Shut up.” Deep-voice grunted at me, as he swiped my behind hard with his palm.
I bit my lip to keep from crying out and hated the burning shame heating my face.
After a few minutes of being jostled around, I was dumped onto the floor, my arms untied and my blindfold removed. I opened my eyes, then immediately gasped and closed them as light hit me with blinding intensity. After a moment, I tried again, and this time managed to keep them open for a few seconds. I couldn’t really take anything in as my eyes watered like crazy. I swiped at them and opened them once more.
I was in a cage... A cell. It had no door, though, unlike most prison cells, but bars on the front.
A girl sat looking at me, peering through the bars. Perched on a chair, she looked about my age and wore a friendly enough smile. To the left of me, in the filthy cage-room, were three other girls, all of them blinking and looking as shell shocked as I felt. Most likely they were my traveling companions.
I’d no clue who the woman looking down at us was.
“Hi guys,” she said, as if this was a totally normal meeting or something. “I’m Melody. I’m going to help you settle in and get cleaned up. We’ll get some food and drink down your necks, too.”
“I’m not staying here.” One of the girls to my left stood. A tall, willowy brunette with a regal air. “I demand to go home. Right now. You don’t know who my father is, but you do not want to mess with him.”
A huge, brawny guy with a big gut hanging over his low-slung army pants, strolled over. “You are Amanda Dresden. Your father runs the University. He’s a bit of a bigwig by all accounts, but here’s the thing, sweetcheeks. He’s not here. Nor is he a big enough wig to pay us the coin we need. Now, shut up.”
“No one leaves. Your presence here is not optional. We won’t harm you as long as you do as you’re told. In a week or two you’ll be out of here.” The man who spoke the second time was another great big brute. Only, he had a sort of handsomeness to him; if you liked men who looked jaded and corrupt.
“This is Chris. He’s the leader here.” Melody gestured up at Mr. Sordidly-Handsome and giggled, her cheeks staining red. “Do as Chris tells you, and you’ll be okay. We’ll treat you well, feed you, check you out medically, and make sure you’re kept safe until we make the exchange.”
“What exchange?” Amanda spoke up.
“You’re here to earn us some money.” Fat Gut said, leaning into Amanda’s face until she recoiled.
I looked around the room for a means of escape.
“It’s an old prison.” Chris looked at me as he spoke. “We’re up on the moors. Nothing around for ten miles in each direction. We have over thirty men here, a few girls and lots of arms. You’re not getting away,” Chris said, his tone almost gentle. “And even if you did, the Foamers would find you, the moors are covered with them at night, lurching about like the brain-dead freaks they are.”
To be honest, I half wanted to take my chance with the Foamers more than I wanted to stay in the sordid hell hole I’d landed in.
“We’ve converted the prison, the small church and school that are attached, into places to live and sleep and the hall is where we conduct business.” Fat Gut proclaimed, puffing up his barrel chest until it almost, but not quite, matched his girth. “There’s a village too, deserted after The Collapse. Some men sleep in the houses there. There’s only one road in and we have guards on both ends of it.”
“I think I’ll take my chances,” Amanda jutted her chin and I admired her balls.
Chris shrugged. “You want a bullet between your eyes, be my guest. Where you’re going, you’ll be treated as a prized and precious possession. You get found on those moors by some of the feral men wondering them and they’ll rape you ‘til you’re begging for death. Then they’ll grant your wish and kill you. Or, the Foamers will find you, and then you’ll really know the meaning of hell. Trust me, you’re much better off staying here and being good girls.”
As he finished speaking, he walked over to where Melody sat and ran a hand over her hair. She leaned into him with a happy smile. I swear if she were a cat, she’d have purred. How the fuck could she let a human-trafficking piece of shit like him even touch her?
Two hours later I understood exactly how and why Melody let Chris paw at her. She’d talked with me some while I was in the cage and decided rather suddenly to take me under her wing. Apparently, the men running this hellish place sometimes took women from their raids as companions. They were like their girlfriends. Well, like subservient, replaceable at any moment, girlfriends…but still, as Melody had said, better than being sold as a sex slave.
I wasn’t sure how it was better to be honest. Melody still had to put out for someone she didn’t love, except that, disturbingly, she did seem to have some sort of a schoolgirl crush on her captor.
“He’s so different when we’re alone,” she gushed as she washed my hair in a small room, but thankfully one without bars on the door. She’d got me out of there. Apparently, she was on a mission to make me hot enough to get the attention of one of the men here.
It had all started when she’d sat and talked with us for a while, having ‘girl talk’ as she put it. Most hadn’t bothered to reply to her inane chattering, but I had. I’d wanted to know more and after an hour or so, she’d decided she liked me and asked Chris to let me out so we could have girl time. I shit you not. Girl time, as if we were besties, and I hadn’t been kidnapped by her psycho lover.
Still, he’d let me out of the cage, but he’d taken a big knife and held it to my throat for a long beat and warned me not to do anything to hurt Melody or to try and escape. Then he gestured to the dirty men lounging around and told me they’d all have their way with me if I did.
I’d been good as gold ever since.
I sat in the small tub, in the dingy bathroom, and seethed with disdain and hatred for Melody as she tried to make me hot. Her touch made my skin crawl, but I knew that right outside the door were armed men. I also knew that as the leader’s sort-of-girlfriend, if I laid one finger on her, I’d be dead. Or worse.
For some reason though, Melody had singled me out.
“Do you know what he does?” I asked, voice low.
“What do you mean?” she asked back.
“He’s not a good person, Melody.”
“Who is?” she shot back.
“Plenty of people. There are lots and lots of people who don’t do bad things, who are trying to make this world better.” I thought of my dad and blinked away sudden tears.
“I never met any. I lived outside the Safe Zone in Leeds and life was hell. I’d been raped twice by different gangs before Chris’ men took me. My father had been killed for his watch. My baby brother decided to join a gang and leave me and Mum to fend for ourselves. She killed herself. Gas oven. Fucking only time the gas came on in a month and she used it to kill herself, selfish fucking bitch.”
I winced at the anger and hatred in Melody’s voice.
“So, in comparison, Chris is an angel. He saw me in a group of about fifteen girls and kept his eye on me. Then he asked me to have dinner with him. He asked me,” she repeated with emphasis.
“I was curious, so I said yes. Well, we talked, and he gave me wine, which was delicious. I’d never had it before. Then he told me he’d like to fuck me but wouldn’t unless I said yes. I told him he maybe could, but not right away. I told him about the rapes and the shit I’d been through and so he moved me into his room and didn’t send me away with the other girls. He waited a whole week before he took me.”
Wow, I thought. What a prince! A whole week.
“So now you’re his…what? Girlfriend?” I might as well learn all I could. Information was power.
“I suppose so. They call us Conki’s.”
“What?”
She spelled it out for me. “You know, like concubines.” She waved her arms in the air and water sprinkled on my shoulders. “They take a girl and keep her. Sometimes for a long time, sometimes not. Chris and his men come from all sorts of backgrounds–police, army, biker gangs, street gangs. Now they’re all on the same side and they stick together. They have rules. No one can touch a girl to be sold unless they want to take her as a Conki. Then they can have her for a price. They have to pay. Chris paid thousands and thousands for me. I wasn’t worth a whole lot more, what with being so soiled.” She sounded ashamed, as if being raped were her own fault and I seethed with hatred anew, but not at her, rather at this horrific new world.
“So how is he any different to the guy you’d have been sold to?” I was genuinely curious, trying to understand where she was coming from.
“I knew him. Knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Not really. And I’d heard really, I mean really, bad things about some of the Russians and Saudis that girls were being sold to.” She shivered. “Come on, get out of the tub and we’ll get that hair dried. It’s so lovely.”
She paused and turned back to me, halfway between the tub and the radiator where the towel was draped. “You know, you’re pretty hot, and that is killer hair. If I were you, I’d try to bag myself a fella. Stop them from sending you off. Not Chris, of course. I’d fucking kill you if you did that. Literally.”
Jesus!
“So, how do you know how long a guy will keep you?” I asked Melody as I dried myself off. I longed for my own bathroom, with my contraband Baby Lotion that smelled lovely, and the perfume me and Mum shared. She might irritate me at times with her relentless drive to marry me off, but right then I missed my mum so much it hurt.
“You don’t. Not unless he makes you his Lady. Once you’re his Lady, that’s it. It’s like being fucking married. But until then, well, you can be replaced. Sometimes Conki’s only last until a new batch of girls comes in.”
“What happens then?”
She inhaled sharply, and for an awful moment I thought she’d hit me.
Teeth gritted she began to tell me. “Some girls are sold off as originally planned, but that’s rare. Most of the time, if a guy enjoyed his time with you, he’ll make sure you’re sold into service in a rich London home. Sometimes, some ex-Conki’s have even managed to get sold in the South Pacific. To be some really rich bird’s personal maid. Imagine…” She got a dreamy look in her eyes, which frankly freaked me out because the thought made me sick.
My name is Milly Anderson and I am going to be a vet. I am not a whore or a servant or a maid or any of those things. My hands balled into fists and I had to lock myself down tight not to scream. My muscles ached, despite the bath. Probably because I was so very tense. My jaw hurt the most from clenching my teeth. My throat felt dry, as if I’d got the world’s worst hangover. Nothing about my body felt right or normal, but then nothing about any of this was right or normal, and I was so very fucking scared.
Melody blow dried my hair in the room she shared with Chris. It was decent size and held a large bed, two wardrobes, a table with two chairs in one corner, and the small en-suite bathroom. When she was done, she gave me a critical once over and reached into one of the drawers in the bedside table. She pulled out a small bag and emptied its contents onto the bed.
My eyes widened. Make-up! Wow. It was stupid in my current predicament to care about such trivialities, but it offered a sort of comfort somehow.
Mum and I shared one old kohl pencil and I had a tiny, stubby lipstick that I used a brush to apply. This bag of goodies, though, it reminded me of watching my Grandma as a little girl. Of a warm house, laughter, feminine rituals, and above all, safety.
From it, she took an eyeliner, mascara, a small brush and compact, and lip gloss.
“You’ve got amazing eyes and lovely lips. Let’s make you look as fuckable as possible and maybe one of these bastards will claim you. If you get to stay, we can be friends. A lot of the women are utter bitches behind my back, just cause I’m with Chris. And he’s the leader here.” She took the eyeliner, and very gently, and rather expertly, lined my eyes with it. I didn’t mind her touching me now so much because I wasn’t naked and being forcibly washed. Her putting the make up on me could have been almost relaxing, but for our circumstances.
Next, she loaded my lashes up with mascara. I’d never worn mascara and the difference it made to my face was startling. My eyes looked weird, freakishly large in my face. They dominated it. Until Melody wielded her lip gloss. Then my mouth vied for attention with my eyes. It was a thick, sugary pink, loaded with sparkle. My mouth looked bigger, kind of…sexy. She then went at me with her small brush and the compact, which housed a pinkish-bronze powder and the name on the front was one I recognized as being upmarket. The sort of brand Mum would have worn before the world went to hell.
“Shit.” Melody’s face fell. “You really are the bomb. A real fox. You’d better not mess with Chris.”
I tried not to smile at her use of such an old-fashioned expression. The two TV channels mostly showed news programs, propaganda for the new government, or old fifties and sixties American comedies like I love Lucy and I Dream of Jeannie. Old Doris Day movies were popular, too. Nothing with any sex or violence, which suited most people because our lives were a daily exercise in quiet terror. It meant that some people spoke with a weird mix of vulgar language, and cutesy expressions from days gone by.
My dad managed to get black market DVD’s from a guy at the University library and last month we’d all watched The Terminator and then Robocop, both of which seemed too close to the bone for me, but which Simon loved.
Melody was fluffing and draping my hair, until it hung around my shoulders in clouds of gold.
“You need some sexy clothes.” She ran her tongue over her lip, then grinned. “I know just the thing.”
She dug around in the smaller of the two wardrobes and pulled out a top, a pair of shorts, and high heels.
I gasped when she threw the top at me. It was too revealing by far.
Individual threads of gold and brown and purple, all wove together to make a gorgeous pattern. It was a halter neck, with a low cut back and a zip up the side. I started to pull my bra on, but Melody stopped me.
“Oh no you don’t. Not with baps like that. Just put the top on.”
I did as she said and then pulled my knickers on quickly, before she could stop me, followed by the black silky shorts and finally the shoes.
“Now look.” She opened the wardrobe door and pointed at the full-length mirror on the inside with her arms, like a magician’s assistant.
I looked and looked some more. The top fit like a glove. It flattered me to no end. My breasts looked bigger than they were, weightier. My waist nipped in, a trick of the chevron pattern and the way it drew the eye. The black shorts slimmed my hips and my legs were already in good shape. I looked kind of hot, which in my current position, was as much of a curse as it was a good thing.
“I hate you,” Melody said, sounding as if she only half joked. “Come on. Time for you to make your entrance.” She took my upper arm and pulled me after her. “Normally a girl wouldn’t be allowed to wander around out of the cages, but I have privileges and I’m claiming you as my friend.” Her grip on my arm tightened to the point of pain. I gasped and looked down at where her nails marked my skin. “You make one wrong move, try to get away, or hurt anyone, and you’ll be taken down by the guys out there. Then, they get to take turns on you if they want, before you’re put out of your misery, so don’t show me up.”
At this point I had firmly decided my new bestie was a psychopath. I swallowed hard. “I won’t do anything, I promise.”
As she dragged me along, my heart pounded. One thing in particular about what Melody was doing kept bugging me. “Why are you doing this for me?” I asked.
She smiled at me, her fingers relaxing some. “I want a friend, and I can tell you’re a good person. A nice person. I am, too. Deep down. I just had to wise up to survive in this world. You will, too, and then you’ll stop looking at me like I’m some psycho. You’ll understand. But, if you get to stay here, and we’re friends, I’ll have your back. So long as you don’t get Chris after you, we’ll be good, and I’ll help you out. The other girls will hate you because you’re so pretty, and they hate me because I’m with Chris, so we can have each other’s backs.”
We rounded a corner and went through two open doors, into what reminded me of a school refectory. Sure enough, there were pass-through hatches at the back, and some food steaming in silver trays. This must have been the prison dining room, and these guys still used it as such. A couple of older women were serving food to anyone who came up. They looked tired, worn out…worn down.
