Chapter 17

Neither Tracey nor Buttercup went to work in the factory the following day: the excuse being that they needed to exchange the proceeds of their day's labour for more immediately edible items. Neither of them could live on chicken alone. They sought out Theta Seven Six Seven Five.

She was very impressed by the wealth of returns the girls had got from their single day there. In fact, she seemed very envious. "I've never done as well as this!" she exclaimed. "The men obviously took quite a shine to you!"

Buttercup nodded modestly, but she clearly took no pride in what all this had cost her. The girls exchanged a particularly juicy chicken breast for some potatoes, a small knife and a small sauce pan. Then Theta took them to the impromptu market place near the centre of the settlement, which was lined by naked women whose wares were laid out on the ground in front of them. It wasn't that the wares for sale were especially appetising: raw vegetables, bottles of beer, thawing bags of frozen vegetables, cans of soup and beans, and other wares either gained from labour on the fields, or, like the girls, from working in a factory. The girls eventually walked away with a can-opener, a large box of kitchen matches, a selection of not especially exciting canned food, a meat loaf and some fresh greens. Tracey treated herself to a cigarette which she greedily smoked as they sat down in their small hovel, examining their purchases. She didn't really enjoy it very much: it didn't taste nearly as pleasant as her nicotine withdrawal promised and it made her feel queasy. Neither girl had felt very keen on actually eating any of the chicken pieces they'd earned, so one thing definitely not on the menu was fowl.

They cooked the food on a pile of dry sticks and twigs, eating the tinned food directly from the cans in which they came, and although it was a meal of convenience, it was, for Tracey, the best meal she'd had since Throb. And a meal enjoyed the more for sharing it with Buttercup whose body she later chewed and nibbled with at least as much enthusiasm as for the baked beans and meat loaf she'd eaten early: the trickle of tomato sauce on her chin replaced by the much more satisfying taste of Buttercup's vaginal juices.

As the two girls lay on the floor, their arms and legs entwined and the sweat of their passion sticking their bodies even closer to each other as they dried out in the morning heat, Buttercup suddenly gave Tracey a very firm hug. "I love you, Tracey," she exclaimed. "I love you so much!"

Tracey gasped. "You what?"

"I've never had a proper relationship before. Sure, I had relationships with the other girls and boys behind the wall, but this is different. It's free. We're not prisoners like I was before. Sure the sex was good. Very good. But with you, it's different. It's better. It's real love!"

Tracey sighed. She kissed Buttercup full on the mouth and soon again they were writhing and caressing together in the discomfort of the grass and straw which composed their mattress, but however much she was sure her tongue was giving Buttercup pleasure, she somehow didn't feel worthy of her lover. How could someone like her, someone who was used to being called a slut, whose cunt had taken in every prick it could, be worthy of someone so absurdly beautiful and so ridiculously perfect as Buttercup? She had the sort of body most women would die for, and here she was, laid open to Tracey's attention as if... as if she were someone better than the girl she was. She just didn't deserve such good fortune.

After the girls had recovered from their passion and ecstasy, they ventured into the settlement as a whole. Despite its obvious poverty, it was very well organised, and Tracey was impressed by how much trust all these naked women displayed. None of them seemed to fear theft of any kind. Food and other possessions were laid out so easy to steal, and no one took advantage of it. Back home, Tracey would have conformed to the law of taking what she could, but despite her avarice, even she couldn't see herself claiming as her own the many things left lying around carelessly around and inside the tents and small makeshift shelters. But she still found it very strange surrounded by all these naked, hirsute women and not a man in sight. Young girls were running about unselfconsciously in their naked state. Older women were sitting around idly or working at whatever task that occupied them. And many more hovels were empty than occupied, as most women were out elsewhere, perhaps working in factories like the one Tracey and Buttercup had the previous day.

However, the next day, it was up early and off with Zeta over the dry-baked fields to the same chicken factory as before. This time they knew what to expect and the day didn't seem quite as long, though this time they were on a part of the production line where they had to slice the freshly plucked chickens into the pieces which later in the line other women were sealing in cellophane as they had the last time they worked there. Buttercup was no more adept in using the sharp knife she gripped in her plastic-gloved hand than she was in wrapping the same cold, pink flesh in clear plastic, but in truth her ability at cutting and slicing was not what determined her reward at the end of the day.

At first, Tracey thought when Frank grabbed her from behind that Buttercup might use the knife she held in her hand to stab it into the scrawny man in his battered grey suit. But despite her obvious annoyance, she meekly followed him up the concrete stairs to wherever he did whatever he did to her. It was ages until Buttercup returned, looking miserable and humiliated, a small trail of blood winding down the inside of her thigh, escorted by a male supervisor with the soggy end of a rolled-up cigarette held in p[ace by moist saliva to his lower lip.

And that wasn't the only such departure from the production line Buttercup endured. Clearly word had gone round the male workers that there was a girl on the shop floor of far better than average appearance, and Buttercup was dragged away on three other occasions. This included the manager who had obviously not had enough of her after the earlier occasion. After each excursion, she seemed weaker and more ashamed than the time before, and her hands were visibly trembling as her knife viciously sliced through the tendons which held the legs or wings onto the chickens' breasts, and gutted the offal out of its clammy cold interior.

On only one occasion was Tracey similarly dragged away, and this was during one of those agonisingly long periods when Buttercup had been taken away. This was by Jack, an unshaven supervisor with a disproportionately large gut for a man of otherwise unremarkable girth, who dragged her into a small dark room at the back of the factory where a smelly damp mattress had been laid down on the floor for this exact purpose. He apparently had a thing for sluts with short hair, but even so his attentions were concentrated entirely in fucking her and requiring her to give his short fat cabbage-smelling cock a sucking beforehand. Tracey hardly felt him as he pushed his prick back and forth in her cunt, taking a fuck of a long time to even become stiff long before his interminable thrusting released any sperm which he did right inside her.

As it spurted out of her fanny onto the short curling hairs of her vagina, Tracey reflected on the inconvenience of having hair so short that it marked her out from the other girls. It wasn't that short now, and her mousey-brown natural colour was beginning to overcome the bleach which made her hair look so unnaturally pale. She hoped it would grow long soon, and fast. She'd rather do without a bonus than attract the attention of every man who had a thing for short hair. Back home, that wouldn't have bothered her. In fact, anything which got her a good fuck or two on a night out was welcome. But here, the fucking was even more mechanical and careless, so that those fucks in the alleyways seemed almost tender and loving by comparison.

When Jack took her back to the production line, she was pleased to see Buttercup in her place, struggling with the wings of a chicken and stabbing it viciously with her knife: perhaps taking out on the dead fowl the anger that she felt towards her most recent fucker. Tracey was almost glad that she'd had to endure a fucking as well as her. Somehow, it slightly evened up the girls' relative misery.

The rewards of the day's work was even greater for Buttercup than before and both Zeta and Tracey had to help Buttercup carry her rewards home. Buttercup, however, seemed to even hate her bonus and had almost refused to take it when it was handed to her, but Tracey ensured she took away as much as she was given.

The next few days continued in much the same fashion. A day at work alternating with a day of exchanging at the market-place whatever collection of chicken pieces, beer, canned food or chocolate bars Tracey and especially Buttercup had earned from a day of tedious factory work and non-consensual sex. The day at work was too long and too arduous for either girl to do anything else but get to and from work, and endure whatever it had to offer. Principally these sufferings were cold hands, the odd nip from the knives they sometimes had to use, and the pain of anal and vaginal intercourse, peppered with the foul taste of an unprepossessing set of penises and their sour-tasting semen. And, as Buttercup confessed, on one occasion from the manager pissing straight into her mouth while she was being fucked up the arse by a senior supervisor.

The days off were the days the girls enjoyed. They never seemed long enough and there was so much to do in organising their home and preparing food. But they got to know the other women in the settlement better. Theta and Zeta became especially close friends, but more because they saw in the two girls the fact that they were also a committed couple like themselves.