Chapter 2

They do say that everything comes to those who wait, but in truth you make your own luck and if you want something then sitting back and waiting for it to come to you is a recipe for a long wait. Jack was out looking one Sunday evening, about a month or so later, driving along a road in a town some distance away. It was late at night and the road was heavily wooded on either side. He was startled when a girl came running out into the road somewhat dishevelled and obviously in some distress. Jack swerved and stopped, and she ran up to the nearside door.

She yanked it open.

“Please mister, help me.”

“Yeah, get in.”

This was somewhat unexpected and he wasn’t really prepared for it. In a couple of minutes she was going to recover sufficiently to ask awkward questions like where was he taking her.

He turned into a deserted lane and she just had time to form the word ‘where’ when he hit her. He hit hard enough to knock her head into the side window and for a few moments she was unconscious, just long enough for him to pull up and get a chloroform soaked pad over her nose and mouth. With her fully unconscious he was able to drive on for another fifteen minutes before he found a suitable place to park and get her into the back of the van where he taped her mouth shut and secured her hands and feet with cable ties. He covered her over with some dust sheets and drove the couple of hours it took to get home.

She was awake and obviously unhappy when he pulled up under the glazed area in front of the garage.

“If you don’t keep quiet I’ll just strangle you now,” he told her.

He picked her up and carried her down into the bunker, keeping her wrapped up so that she couldn’t see where she was going. Putting her into a cell he uncovered her and removed the ties. She glared at him as she reached for the tape over her mouth.

“You only speak to answer my questions. Understand? I ask questions, you answer. Any lip and I’ll make you hurt, your final appearance is irrelevant to me. You are here for one thing only. To produce babies.”

The girl’s expression could only be described as horror.

“Right, are you a virgin?”

The girl looked at him.

“That was a question. You have ten seconds to answer or...”

“I was raped tonight, what do you think?”

“Name?”

“Ginny Gayle”

“When was your last period?”

“What?”

Jack stared her down.

“I finished last Wednesday.” she said with a sob.

“Lie down and go to sleep, and remember, this place is wired for sound, I can hear everything, and I you make a noise, or say things I don’t like you’ll get a beating.”

And with that he left them.

Jack impregnated Ginny on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It did the trick and she missed her next period.

Jack continued to look for girls and finally decided to see if he could pick up a prostitute. With this in mind he drove to a city not too far away that was fairly large and had a well known pick up area. It was dark and drizzly and he thought for a moment that there would be no one about, but he spotted a young woman who was obviously looking for business. He pulled up along side her.

She opened the door. “Blow job’s twenty quid.”

“Get in. Where?”

“The big car park.”

Once the got there the girl wasted no time, took the twenty and stuck it in her bra. Jack had unzipped and pushing her lank greasy hair over her shoulder she got to work. Jack found it simple to grab her hair and pull her head up so that he could apply the chloroformed pad over her nose. She was out in seconds and he lifted her over the front seats and then drove off. He stopped in the country outside the city to tie her and cover her up. He had a bad vibe about this woman, but the die was cast and he drove home and put her in the next cell. She was by this time awake and obviously in distress, but not from her abduction he realised, she was a drug addict. Since the one thing Jack definitely didn’t have, or have any intention of getting, was drugs, not the kind she wanted anyway, she was going to have a bad time. If she was cleaned up she could still perform what, to Jack, was her primary function. He would deal with her the next morning. But first he recovered his twenty pound note.

Now that he had a the means of production, and potentially a product, admittedly not for another few months, Jack turned to the sales side of his business, and that meant the internet, specifically the ‘dark net’. It wasn’t as easy to access things as it was if you used some sort of search engine, but the things you could find were infinitely more interesting. He eventually made contact with someone who would take his product. He wasn’t keen on sharing the profit but he felt safer being at a distance from the potential emotional problems that are created by parents

If references to ‘production’ and ‘product’ seem a little ... unfeeling, uncaring, clinical, or whatever, that is the way Jack thought of it. It was his upbringing, his ostracism, because of his mother’s occupation and his lack of contact with people in the form of friendship that really removed any feelings of humanity.

His latest acquisition was, frankly, a pain in the arse. The withdrawal symptoms made her completely uncomunicative and he hadn’t even worked out her name yet, so he simply referred to her as ‘whore’. She did, however, have a period after about a week and after a further ten days or so Jack hauled her out of her misery and stuck her in the shower. After dowsing with freezing water she decided that some sort of cooperation would be better and she looked at least ... clean afterwards, so Jack set about impregnating her. It took a couple of months for him to be successful.

In the meantime he thought about increasing his stock.

Jack was still doing small building works and handyman stuff, and one particular job needed some special bricks. There was only one place he could get them and that was from the manufacturer who was situated in a midland city. Jack decided that he would collect them from the manufacturer which would ensure that the order was correct. He drove up during the night and collected from the works as soon as they opened at seven in the morning.

It was as he was driving back through the city on his return home that he spotted a nurse walking along the pavement. He stopped alongside her and leaned over to wind the window down. As she turned to face him he could see that she had a black eye and a cut lip.

“I was looking for the hospital,” he said.

She smiled, “I’m going there, if you give me a lift I’ll direct you.”

She got in and Jack drove off. As they approached a big road junction with all the usual direction signs including one for the hospital which was a right turn.

“Turn right here.”

Jack turned to the left and accelerated away.

“The hospital is the other way,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jack his instincts telling him that this woman would do as she was told.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“No. If you do as you’re told you won’t be hurt.”

“Okay.”

“You’re a nurse?”

“Midwife.”

“What’s your name?”

“Helen.”

“Do you have children, Helen?” Jack was a bit worried about this, it could be a complication.

“No.”

They drove on in silence.

“My life has been pretty dreadful,” she suddenly started talking. “My father beat me, and when I got married my husband beat me, I can’t have children because of the beatings, if you’re not going to hurt me then I don’t care what I have to do.”

“You do what I want and I’ll promise not to hurt you.”

Jack was tempted to blindfold her but decided that there wasn’t much point, she might actually prove to be a useful ally. When they got home he took her down into the bunker and showed her where she would sleep in a small room away from the others. She showed no emotion about the other girls.

“I can see why you need a midwife,” was her only comment.

Over the next week Helen looked after the other girls and got them cleaned up, she even got a name out of the one Jack called whore. She turned out to be Lizzie. Jack took her into the house so that she could take over the cooking and feeding of the girls. She realised that Jack knew nothing of love and decided that it could be to her advantage to try to get to know him better. Not that she wanted to escape, as far as she was concerned this was better than she had had, at least she didn’t get beaten up. So she set about winning more trust.

“Do you want more girls?” she asked him one morning. “You’ve space for them.”

“Yes, I am hoping to get more, but it isn’t that easy, I’ve been lucky so far.”

“I could get you my sister in law, she’s sixteen and a nasty little bitch, used to egg my husband on to beat me some more. I’d really like to see her in there, pregnant.”

“Okay,” said Jack, and they set too planning how to achieve abducting the girl that Helen told him was called Becky.

It turned out to be a simple operation. Every Friday night the girl went to a dance class, returning home at ten o’clock. They parked the van a street away from her house outside some abandoned workshops where there were only some lockup shops opposite. As the girl approach Helen got out of the van and confronted the girl, who, eyes wide in surprise, didn’t realise anything was amiss until a chloroformed pad went over her face. Helen slid the side door open and Jack bundled her in, Helen following. Climbing over the front seat Jack started the van and drove off carefully so as not to attract attention.

By a remarkable turn of fate it was that evening that Wendy Brown flagged them down. Wendy was already distressed having fallen out with her supposed friends who had decided to teach her a lesson in not interfering. Unfortunately this had gone beyond what she, and indeed most people, would have considered reasonable and she had left with minimal clothing vowing to contact the police. The local police were investigating a firearm offence for which they were convinced Wendy was responsible. So one way or another she was in trouble, and meeting Jack and Helen wasn’t the least of it.