Chapter 6

Sharon and Tracey left the teachers the following day, although they had hardly began to recover from either their trudge through Buggery or from their beatings by Tiger Lilly. A dark blue (nearly black) bruise had swollen up around Sharon's eye, and both girls' legs were criss-crossed with scratches and discoloured by more bruises. They could barely stand up as they tottered by the door to the cottage, in the unfamiliar flat plastic sandals they'd been given in exchange for the shoes they'd worn the day before. Despite their looks, the two girls were showered with affectionate kisses from Primrose and Chrysanthemum. Somehow this in no way fully compensated for their treatment from Tiger Lilly. Tracey was almost sure that she would never want sex with anyone ever again, and Sharon certainly didn't feel like it today.

They took with them a cheap printed map of Buggery that Primrose lent them. It was one which she had in stock for her Geography lessons and was an official map of the country. It showed roads, woods, rivers, lakes, towns and villages; but large patches of the map were left suspiciously blank: lacking all colour or contour. No clues were given by the map as to what they were, but nearly one quarter of the map was left like this. Chrysanthemum explained that although it was impossible to be sure, most of these blanked out areas would represent the private lands of the monarchy and the rest of the aristocracy. Though it was possible that they also included areas of military significance and the mysterious breeding centres. Of the parts of the map that was clearly outlined, the most distinct were the capital city and the Tourist spots. However, there weren't many of the latter on the road to Gomorrah.

"Although the boundary line signifying the border with Gomorrah is very clearly marked on the map, I wouldn't really trust it," warned Primrose. "During a war the border is bound to shift as one side makes advances and the other retreats. After all, territorial advantage is what it's all about. However, I don't know for sure, but I believe the border might actually be significantly nearer than the map says. Of course all the official news we get from the front says that Buggery's really doing well, and making significant gains which bring closer the promise of final victory and the settling of the nation's grievances. However, from what few signs we get, and this is only speculation, I don't think things are going that well. The good news is generally unsubstantiated and implausible. There's rather a lot more about Gomorran atrocities than about Buggerian advances. And you may have noticed that there aren't many men about."

"Indeed," corroborated Chrysanthemum with a broad grin. "Almost all them are out on the front, fighting for King and Country; leaving us poor helpless girls to fend for ourselves and to make do with whatever we can."

"I think that your walk to the front will be rather less than the one hundred kilometres on the map," continued Primrose, "but before you get there you'll have to cross a war zone and that'll include some sort of no-man's land where you could very easily get killed. But put it into perspective. Although you might get killed crossing the front, the longer you stay in Buggery the more chance that you'd get killed anyway."

This was scarcely comforting news, but it was this news that the girls took as they walked away from the teachers' cottage. Their advice was to avoid walking along the roads where they could be easily picked off by the police. In fact, the road to Gomorrah took them away from the dry barren plains of the district where the teachers lived to a more hilly landscape where there would be more than enough woodland for the girls to walk out of sight of the main road. Or at least to dodge into if they saw them. It was unlikely, Primrose reasoned, that the disappearance of two tourists from Pederasty would have gone unnoticed for very long. Already everyone who'd seen them would have been interrogated, and possibly tortured, by the police. Tracey shivered slightly thinking of the young courier, Little Pussy, and the young boy they'd had come to their room. However, although the police were brutal, Primrose explained, making sure that Tiger Lilly wasn't within earshot, they were remarkably inefficient at actually doing anything other than intimidate people. As an investigative police agency, they were absolutely hopeless. They had had no impact at all on the smuggling of hard drugs and guns that happened around the country's border. And they had had no capacity to deal with the many deserters that kept away from the towns and villages. The semblance of law and order was only held by the fact that no one who was caught was ever likely to re-offend.

Their breakfast of fruit and orange juice was really not enough to sustain Sharon and Tracey on their long walk. In fact, being fairly exhausted before they'd even started walking, they were certainly no better after an hour or more of trudge along the featureless dry roads. If they'd seen any police there was nowhere to hide as there were no trees nor even bushes to retreat to. After a while, however, their walk took them up a steep incline and soon they were in the very welcome shade of some woods. The goal which comforted on their despairing walk was the small town of Butterfly Grove which they could see marked on the map, and finally to the delight of their sore feet, they could see in reality.

It was not a very picturesque town, despite its name. Although surrounded by a thick forest of trees, it was a dry unprepossessing place composed mostly of small hut-like houses with a small market in the middle. They walked towards it with the hope of something to eat, or at the least something to drink. They soon found that the Buggery Dinar went considerably further in Buggery than it would have done in Throb, and much further again than it would have done at home. In fact, they found that they were carrying a relative fortune around with them.

It wasn't that easy to find anything edible to buy though. Both of them had mostly subsisted on take-aways and microwaveable dishes at home here, and the only thing on sale they knew what to do with was the battered and unappealing fruit they could see. But they managed to buy some apples, oranges, a packet of tasteless biscuits and a couple of bottles of distilled water on which the King's face was prominently displayed. There was no Coke. Or even Pepsi or Dr Pepper's. There were no hamburgers, pizzas, hot dogs or doner kebabs. Not even a pasty or a bag of chips. But what they had was undeniably food and it certainly filled some of the hole they could feel in their stomachs.

What was even worse, as they discovered to their cost, was that there was nowhere selling any ciggies. Not only were they no decent ciggies like 5^th Avenue or Edinboro's, but not even rollies like Gold Cup or cheap tabs like Old Street Plain. They had half a packet of Windsor & Maidenhead's Silk Tip between them, but it was clearly not going to last them very long. The days were definitely going to stretch ahead now they had to cope with withdrawal symptoms as well as hunger.

The townspeople of Butterfly Grove dressed much the same as all the people they'd seen in Buggery. What few clothes they wore were fairly skimpy and did not cover the crotch at all. Despite having got so accustomed to the sight of genitalia in Throb, it still seemed strange to see all these naked crotches and even the occasional dangling penis. It was clear that the men and women generally dressed in exactly the same clothes with very similar hairstyles: but there were so few adult men, it took the girls a while to be sure of this.

"How come there are so few blokes?" Sharon asked the woman at the stall who served them the distilled water.

"Do you have more men in the district where you come from?" wondered the woman, as she gave the girls their change. "I thought it was the same everywhere. It's the war. It's so difficult to find a man that you have to share those you can find."

This didn't sound much fun to Sharon or Tracey, who were already missing the cock they'd got so used to in Throb. This did not sound like a good place to be man-hungry. However, they had a long walk ahead of them, so despite their weariness, they shouldered their bags and returned to the road which thanks to the shade of the thick forestry made their walk somewhat less arduous than when they were exposed to the sun. Nonetheless, they weren't used to any kind of walking, and soon they were stopping to rest for longer than the time they spent walking.

Fortunately every few miles there was another town or village they could stop at to replenish themselves. None of them were any better than Butterfly Grove. Indeed, they were generally rather worse. There seemed to be a pattern that the more picturesque the name, the worse the places were. Leafy Vale was bare of any vegetation at all. Paradise Hill was pretty filthy and was distinguished by the foul smell coming out of the chimneys of an ugly factory. Bluebell Dell was the most miserable tangle of derelict houses they'd ever seen.

Nowhere were there shops as the girls understood them from home: just market stalls. The homes were constructed as square shaped concrete flats or were thrown together from corrugated iron, mud and cardboard. Very few roads were paved, and then only for a few hundred metres at a time.

Sharon and Tracey soon got to recognise the police from a distance. It seemed that the police were everywhere. In every village, in every town and between each of them. Fortunately, however, they didn't seem to pay much notice to the girls, so Primrose's advice as to what to wear had seemed to bear fruit. However, to be on the safe side Sharon and Tracey kept as respectable distance between themselves and any police-woman (or occasionally police-man) as they could. Primrose's warnings had frightened the wits out of them. Although the police wore no more clothes than anyone else, what they wore was aggressive and in leather. They made no attempt to hide their dildo-shaped truncheons, and some of them even carried submachine guns.

They soon became aware that they weren't the only ones avoiding them. Almost everyone kept apart from them. People crossed the road, or even turned around and walked the other way whenever the police came into sight. It was early evening, when the girls were even more exhausted and even now wondering where they would sleep the night, they saw two or three police-women marching through the market where they were buying some more snacky groceries. All the other people cleared out of the police's way as they wandered into their midst. As they walked, the police took things from market stalls without bothering to say anything or acknowledge the stall-holders, let alone offer to pay for what they'd taken.

Then one stall-holder must have said or gestured something to which the police-women took exception. From their vantage point several stalls away, they saw the police pile onto the stall-holder. She was punched, kicked and then, when she'd fallen onto the ground, they took turns to bugger her. Her cries were loud and agonised as they roughly forced the dildos which they'd tied around their crotches into her arse and pushed her against the piles of clothes and sandals she'd been selling. Neither Sharon nor Tracey felt like staying around too long to see what ultimately happened to the stall-holder or whether they'd focus their attention onto some other unfortunate.

The two girls took Primrose's advice not to sleep in any of the towns. But as the evening descended, and they got more and more tired, it was difficult to see anywhere that they could sleep. They were looking for a barn or a deserted home outside the towns and villages to sleep in, but although they'd seen a few like that during the day, when they actually needed it, there didn't seem to be any around. They were getting progressively more exhausted and were actually resting more often than they were walking. The night was drawing in, and it was obvious that they needed to stop somewhere. They eventually settled on a broken-down barn some ten metres from the road, and settled on the ragged-looking straw. This was not a pleasant night. They found straw creeping up their bare vaginas and were frightened when some animal sniffed inquisitively outside, but they were so exhausted that they were asleep within minutes, after sharing every small grain of their last W&M's Silk Tip.

Unusually for them, the two girls awoke on the first rays of light, and more from the discomfort of all the straw, they got walking again almost immediately, following the route which led on their map towards Gomorrah. For girls who never went anywhere at home without a taxi or bus, it was not easy getting used to walking quite long distances every day following the winding roads on the map. Their walks gave them an appetite which was not at all satisfied by the fairly basic food provided by the next market they got to. No coffee, no chips, no chicken fritters. Only boiled eggs, fruit and bottles of distilled water.

Their route took them through woods which skirted near an area which was marked as forbidden, but all they could see of it were high brick walls crowned with broken glass and barbed wire. Sharon couldn't help wondering what was on the other side, but the height of the walls, let alone its unwelcoming ornamentation put her off any inclination she might have had of clambering over to investigate. The forbidding walls betrayed no clues as to what there was behind them that put them out of bounds. However, Tracey noted that where there were forbidden areas, there would almost certainly be police nearby, so the girls kept as reasonable a distance between themselves and the walls as they could, while keeping them in sight. Otherwise, they would get totally lost. The paths through the woods were quite narrow and winding, probably marked out by wild animals (of which they only saw the odd deer or rabbit). At times it was hard-going, but they kept on going despite their increasing discomfort, weariness and pain.