Chapter 27

In the years preceding the Civil War, tensions wafted through the southern Appalachians, like the smoky mist that perpetually veils the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains, portending a storm yet to unveil its full fury upon the nation. General Jeremiah Fitzhugh, a shrewd and pragmatic commander in the Confederate Army, sought strategic locations to safeguard supplies and create fallback points for the Southern forces.

Nestled between the Enfield rifle manufacturing facility in Asheville and the rail station in Haynesville lay the secluded Copper Cove. Perceptive of the terrain’s natural advantages, Fitzhugh chose the cove for several strategic reasons. Firstly, its enclosure on three sides by towering ridges offered inherent protection and a natural barricade against Union forces. Secondly, the narrow, but relatively flat vale extending to the valley floor below provided logistical feasibility, enabling the smooth movement of supplies and troops compared to more arduous mountain terrain.

Constructed with resilience in mind, Fort Fitzhugh Depot was built with sturdy granite stone, its walls an impressive two feet thick to withstand both the elements and potential enemy artillery. The two-story structure, supplemented by a vast, easily accessible basement, served as a robust storage facility and a clandestine meeting point for Confederate leaders. A rear entry to the basement acted as a discreet loading dock, facilitating the efficient, concealed transfer of arms and supplies.

Throughout the Civil War, the depot was an unassuming yet potent asset for the Confederate forces. Its geographical position, notably its proximity to vital townships, yet shrouded by natural barriers, enabled it to be a discreet pivot for Confederate movements in the region. Its concealed location served dual purposes: ensuring that supplies and communications remained secret and uninterrupted, while providing a hidden reserve for troops, should they need to fall back from the frontlines.

Additionally, the elevation provided by the surrounding ridges was tactically invaluable. Soldiers stationed atop these high grounds could monitor enemy movements, ensuring the depot was apprised of any impending threats and could prepare accordingly. The vales were used to conceal movement, creating a curtain behind which the Confederate Army could maneuver unseen, allowing them to surprise Union forces on several occasions.

After the Civil War, Fort Fitzhugh Depot was largely forgotten, its sturdy walls bearing silent witness to a healing nation. However, its fate took a turn in the late 1890s when it was discovered by Dr. Elizabeth Leavitt, an educator and philanthropist seeking to establish an inclusive educational institution for girls in the postwar South. Recognizing the structural integrity and historic value of the depot, Dr. Leavitt purchased the building and its surrounding lands, repurposing it into an educational facility. Scirewood Academy.

Renamed Leavitt Hall in honor of its new proprietor, the former military structure transformed into a nurturing, educational environment. Rooms that once housed munitions and strategizing war generals now accommodated eager minds and compassionate educators. The building was altered minimally, maintaining much of its original architecture.

At least, this was the story told to Fulton and the rest of the National Guard troops by faculty members knowledgeable of the academy’s rich history. For Staff Sgt. Pollard, however, the history lesson provided insight and context into what she naturally perceived as the site’s immense defensible potential. In fact, the most notable part of the story to her was that despite numerous attempts by Union forces to take the depot in the war’s later years, it never once fell.

If it’s good enough for a fuckin’ general, it’s good enough for me, she said.

There was only one problem. Given its strategic, secluded location and primary function as a supply depot, Fort Fitzhugh might have had anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred soldiers stationed there to defend it. Pollard had five. Their armaments were certainly formidable and numerous, but without soldiers to fire them, they were of little use.

Three peaks overlooked the cove, and the campus within. Middle Mountain to the south, Bellamy Knob to the east, and the creatively named Fitzhugh Mountain to the north. With so few available troops, there was no possibility of establishing outlooks on all three peaks. Thus, the decision was made to establish a single observation post on the Fitzhugh peak, around a half mile due north of Overton House, and a thousand feet straight up the mountainside.

The location was chosen for several reasons. It had a clear line of sight to the other two peaks, and the ridgelines connecting them. Anyone attempting to observe the school from those locations would be visible to the outpost. The peak also had a vista view of the entire vale, all the way down to the wide ribbon of the interstate, and the town of Morgan Creek beyond. Most importantly, however, a mountain home sat directly atop the peak, partially hidden among a thick stand of trees, and accessible by a road that wound its way down the mountain’s northern slope.

The Staff Sergeant gave orders to “acquire” the house using any means necessary. Thankfully, it was abandoned when Fulton and Ibarra arrived, after a forty minute hike up the mountainside, where they followed one of the two small tributary streams that fed the pond behind Overton House. They could have driven to the house in less than half the time, but that would have required them to travel two miles down the hill to the interstate, two miles north to the next exit, then two and half miles up twisting mountain roads. Six and a half miles of driving to reach a house less than nine-hundred yards from the school. If they could get their hands on a pair of quad bikes, however, they could make the trip in five minutes.

“We’re not the first ones to make it here,” Fulton noted as he browsed through empty cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. “Place has been picked clean.”

Ibarra peered over the railing off the back deck, which overhung the sloping mountainside.

“Whoever was here would have had a clear view of the school, Sarge.”

Fulton joined him outside. Even with his boonie hat and Oakleys on, he still shielded his eyes from the intense sunlight. Through gaps between the trees, the two men could just about see the entire campus. Overton House directly below, at the bottom of the slope, with the pond behind it, Leavitt Hall further beyond, and the principal’s house at their two o’clock.

Across the cove, Fulton identified the two other peaks in the vicinity. He lifted the binoculars and scanned the ridgeline from peak to peak, then looked down the vale, toward the highway. Despite the heavy tree cover, the view from where they stood was fantastic.

“Yeah,” Fulton said, “this’ll do.” He lowered the binos. “Let’s get set up.”

As the sun slowly descended in the southwestern sky, Michelle sat inside the Chevy Express shuttle bus and turned the key in the ignition to the accessory position. The static-filled radio came to life, and the speakers hissed loudly. She turned it off, then plugged the car adapter into the twelve volt socket. On the dashboard, her laptop’s keyboard illuminated, and the graphical representation of a battery with a thin red line at the end appeared onscreen. It was charging!

Michelle had already done the math by hand on graph paper. During the charette, Mr. Messina explained that because the bus was so big, and had power-operated doors and lifts, its battery needed to be big too. He estimated the battery’s capacity to be one hundred amp-hours. Times twelve volts, that was twelve-hundred watt-hours of energy.

Her laptop had a fifty-eight watt-hour battery, which theoretically meant she should be able to get twenty full charges before depleting the battery, but the charger was rated at sixty-one watts, which meant the battery would only be able to power the charger continuously for around nineteen and a half hours.

Taking into account various inefficiencies, she estimated the charger was more likely closer to fifty-two watts. If she kept the laptop turned off while charging, she estimated it would take around seventy minutes to fully recharge it from zero.

That meant, at best, she could recharge her laptop seventeen times from the bus’s battery. In the real world, however, it would be less. The bus itself drew a small amount of power just by being turned on, so she reduced her estimate to thirteen full charges.

From experience, she knew that the battery inside her thirteen-inch MacBook Pro would last between ten to twenty hours, depending on what she was doing. She used fifteen hours as a reasonable average.

All combined, that one bus battery alone could potentially provide her with nearly two-hundred hours of glorious laptop usage. She looked down the line at the other two buses. Make that six-hundred hours.

The seventy minutes it took to recharge her laptop felt like seventy days, and she needed all her willpower to resist the temptation to power it on, but at long last the battery reached one hundred percent. She sprinted up the steps to the fourth floor two at a time, and dove onto her sturdy new bed, as the other seven girls of the Robotics Club gathered around. The sun had set, and it would soon be lights out.

As Michelle gasped to catch her breath, she pushed the power button with a shaky finger, then tucked her hair behind her ear as she waited for the laptop to boot up. Within a minute, she saw the familiar macOS desktop appear.

“Oh god, I fucking love you,” she whispered to her laptop in a husky voice, and kissed the screen. Then she snapped the lid shut to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, Ms. Rosen popped her head into the doorway and did a quick head count.

“Lights out, girls. Good night,” she said, pulling the door closed behind her.

“Lock it!” Michelle hissed.

Chloe locked the bunk room door, then joined the other girls on one of the two beds that had been turned sideways and pushed next to Michelle’s, forming a contiguous, t-shaped platform against the interior wall.

“Just give me one ... second,” Michelle muttered, setting the laptop at the foot of her bed.

She navigated to the operating system’s disk utility application and searched the list of available storage devices and containers until she found the grayed out icon she was looking for. She clicked on it, then clicked “mount”. A dialog popped up, and she entered the administrator password.

Working side by side with Mr. Messina to build their beds had reawakened a latent sexual desire in the eight teenage girls. One that had laid dormant for the past week and a half, while they struggled to adapt and survive in a post-Asterius world.

As they sat around after lights out the previous evening, sharing several highly graphic, Messina-based sexual fantasies, Michelle mentioned offhand that she still had a few of the videos on her laptop. When the others heard that bit of news, a scavenger hunt for a car adapter began. They hit paydirt that morning with Jasmine Howard, who had one she used for car trips tucked away inside her laptop bag.

“Why do you even want this?” Jasmine asked when she laid it into Olivia’s shaking hand.

“No reason!”

The icon for the hidden volume appeared on Michelle’s desktop. She opened it, and there inside were the precious files. The three Artificer videos she’d downloaded months ago from the Bondagecore Extreme website. The one’s she used to compare against the pictures she’d taken of Mr. Messina’s tattoo.

“Are we really doing this?” Lizzy quietly asked.

She sat up on her haunches with her hands resting on top of her slender thighs, watching as the other girls propped pillows against the wall and lined up side by side. Michelle cued up one of the videos, then took her spot in the middle, leaning her back against the wall and drawing her knees up.

“You do whatever the fuck you want,” Olivia said, sliding her sweat shorts down over her large, round ass, “but I’m getting myself off tonight.”

During sexy story time the other night, they grilled Endora about her experience with Mr. Messina in the basement, and she held nothing back. She described in exacting detail everything she’d done to him, while they all stared at her in wide-eyed wonder with their mouths hanging open.

Michelle couldn’t believe how much Endora had changed. She was no longer the shy, quiet, brooding loner she once was. She had an intensity about her now that Michelle found intimidating. When Endora looked at someone, it felt like she was trying to crawl into their brain through their eye sockets. She said exactly what she thought, with none of the hesitation, insecurity, or self-doubt that previously defined her personality. She even wore a piece of sexy lingerie to bed every night, instead of a t-shirt and sweats.

It was also Endora who suggested that they “Messina and chill”.

“What the hell is that?” Mia asked.

“It’s where we all watch the videos together and masturbate,” Endora said with almost deadpan seriousness.

Unsurprisingly, the others had difficulty wrapping their minds around such a taboo and scandalous suggestion.

“Ew, that’s fucking gross!” Madison cried. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. Why?”

“Because it’s fucking weird,” Olivia said, although she hadn’t reacted quite as strongly as the others. In fact, she seemed almost intrigued. “Isn’t it?”

“Not to me,” Endora said. “I stole a dildo from Linda’s house. I use it every day.”

“Excuse me, you did what now?” Michelle asked.

“I found it in her nightstand.”

“No way!” Lizzy said, astonished. “A real dildo?”

“There’s a lot more going on over there than you know,” Endora said.

“Really? Like what?” Sophia asked.

“It doesn’t matter. My point is, I used to get so embarrassed when I touched myself, and worried that someone might see me, but I just don’t care anymore.”

“Really?” Olivia asked.

Endora shrugged. “Why should I?”

None of them had an answer. The conversation continued that way for hours into the night, until one by one, the eight girls joined the pact to “Messina and chill” as soon as they figured out how to recharge Michelle’s laptop.

“Which one is it?” Chloe asked, as she slid down her panties from beneath an oversized t-shirt, then draped a blanket over her lap.

“Sixteen,” Michelle said after starting the video, squeezing in between Olivia and Mia.

Michelle did as Chloe had, removing her panties and covering herself with the blanket. In fact, they all covered themselves with blankets. All but Endora, who pulled off her negligee, and scooted naked between Olivia and Sophia, with the dildo and Astroglide held in her hands.

Olivia gawked at her. “Come on. Really?”

Endora ignored her. She lubricated the dildo, then pulled her feet back and spread her legs, resting her knees against the girls on either side. She used the dildo’s large, rubbery head to tease her clit. Her eyelids fell shut and she sighed.

Olivia and Sophia looked at each other, and Olivia mouthed, “What the fuck?” Sophia could only shake her head and shrug.

“It’s too loud,” Lizzy whispered, finally settling into place next to Mia at the very end. “Turn it down!”

Olivia quickly leaned forward until she was on her hands and knees, and reached for the laptop. Endora palmed one of her bare ass cheeks and gave it a little rub, and Olivia spun her head around.

“Leave it,” Endora said, pulling her hand back. “Who cares if they hear us? Do you?”

Olivia stared at her, as did the others, then slowly leaned back into her spot against the wall. Just as she was about to pull the blanket back over her lap, Endora inserted the dildo and moaned. Olivia froze and watched with wide, shocked eyes as the dildo slowly disappeared into Endora’s pussy.