Chapter 9

The girls had been in woods for many days now and had become rather accustomed to their remoteness from the civilised world. Sharon commented that at home they'd have been bound to meet someone walking in the woods, but as Buttercup pointed out from the map there were just no places near them where people would be likely to be coming from. As she elaborated, people in Buggery didn't have the leisure time to be walking in the woods for no purpose.

However, they did at last come across someone else, as they emerged out of thick wood into a clearing. It was a woman gathering dried wood. Typically for this country, she was naked with a shaved head. As they had seen no one for so many days, it seemed sensible just to girls stay quiet and still in the hope that they wouldn't be noticed while she was working.

"You don't have to hide you know," the woman called out to them. "I know you're there." She picked up her bundle of twigs and branches and walked towards where they were.

Sharon, Tracey and Buttercup emerged nervously from the shadows and stood in the speckled sunlight. The woman stared at them with a quizzical expression, passing her eyes from one girl to another and back again. She had probably been very attractive once, and she was probably not much older than thirty. Most of her teeth were missing. Her nose was broken and slightly twisted. A jagged scar disfigured one of her breasts. "My! You're a funny crowd! Are you on the run?"

Tracey nodded her head. "We're on our way to Gomorrah."

"Gomorrah!" exclaimed the woman with an amused smile. "Well, you've got to have somewhere to run to if you're running away I suppose." She dropped her bundle to her feet and hobbled towards them with the faltering step of a much older person. "You'll be pleased to know that it's not far to go now. The war zone's really close to here. It used to be a lot further away. Many kilometres away. But it's been getting steadily closer as the war's gone on. Bit like the tide coming in, I guess."

The girls felt strangely awe-struck by the disfigured woman. She was so skinny, with the outline of her ribs and hips showing clearly through her tanned bare skin. Her feet were flattened and rough. Her toe- and finger-nails were crooked and broken. Many of her teeth were missing, particularly at the front. Back home, Sharon and Tracey had never seen anyone in such a bad way, except after a good scrap in the pub car park. And then it'd be mostly patched up when the hospital had got them to them.

"You're a strange lot. I've never seen anyone like you before. We get a lot of runaways round here. Mostly to seek a better life in Gomorrah. Or anywhere really. But you're the strangest yet. I suppose you're worried about being caught and sent back. And that's why you're wandering in the woods."

"There's a lot of police about!" Sharon said.

"Well, that may be so. But there's no reason here why they'd be bothered about you lot in particular. Law and order sort of starts to disintegrate round here. No one can be bothered to enforce His Majesty's Justice when you spend all your time dodging bullets and things. And that's why I live here."

"Why? Because there's no law and order?" wondered Buttercup.

The woman didn't really answer. She looked at Buttercup's beautiful naked figure with a horrible lascivious leer. "My! You're a pretty one!" she exclaimed. "You're the prettiest one I've ever seen! I'd love to have you suck my cunt!" The woman scratched her chin contemplatively with a hand from which two fingers were missing.

The woman walked right up to Buttercup and stood right in front of her. Tracey had become sufficiently sensitive to her new lover to notice her flinch ever so slightly as the woman approached. She answered Buttercup's question. "No, sweetheart. Where there's no law and order, then you can survive. It's the law which kills people. In most of Buggery you can't live at all when you lose your looks. Or like me get brutally and violently raped by the police. You don't stand a chance in most of Buggery. You last as long as you can, and that's only so long as the police don't take an interest in you for one reason or another. Or you don't get called up for fighting against the Gomorrans. Round here no one gives a fuck. There's no eugenic policy - official or otherwise."

The woman raised her other hand, which still had a full set of fingers, and without ceremony or introduction stroked Buttercup's breasts. "You'll want some food, won't you? Something to eat. You can't buy it round here. You can only grow it, steal it or sell your body for it."

"Can't you buy anything at the villages?" wondered Tracey.

"Villages!" sniffed the woman. "You're only five kilometres from the front. Villages can't survive here. They get bombed to pieces. You have to live in a bunker to survive round here. There are no villages anywhere around her! The nearest you have to a village must be Tranquillity. That's a real hovel which supplies sex to the soldiers before they head off to fight in the war. And probably die. You could buy sex there, but not any food. You can buy sex here if you want. And you can sell it too. It's a lot less precious than food, I can tell you! If you want food you're going to have to follow me. And you're going to have to pay for it! But not with money! What could I do with money round here?"

The woman looked at the girls. "Well! Are you coming with me or you going to stay in the fucking woods forever? And is any one of you going to help me carry these fucking twigs?"

Sharon nodded and reluctantly stepped forward. "Yeah! We'll come. At least you're not police!"

The woman smiled grimly. "And you can call me Joy by the way. That's what I'm called, but that doesn't necessarily describe me."

She picked up the bundle that lay on the ground, which was tied together by more flexible branches, and lunged it over to Sharon. She gasped as she took the weight off Joy. Fuck! They were heavy! She swang them over her shoulder, feeling the rough branches against her skin through the blouse, and followed Joy as she hobbled ahead of them through the woods. Fortunately, Tracey and Buttercup took turns in helping her carry the bundle, so it wasn't so bad. But even five minutes at a time was more weight than she'd ever carried before. They walked in single line through a tortuous route that seemed to follow no obvious paths, stepping over fallen logs and ducking under tangled bracken. Now that Tracey was carrying the bundle and cursing every fucking twig while she did so, Sharon now noticed for the first time that Joy had a bit of a limp, and that half of one of her buttocks was missing.

Also for the first time, as they stumbled along, the girls began to appreciate just how close they must be to the war zone. They passed the rotting hull of a crashed aeroplane, parts of which were still hanging from the branches of the trees. And they passed a few holes that Tracey at first thought had been dug, but which Buttercup pointed out were more likely to be craters caused by falling bombs.

And then, for the first time in days, they were out of the woods and found themselves on a road which stretched away from the wood across open fields into the distance. The three girls paused in the unfamiliar, open space. They could see more than several yards ahead. And the bright rays of the sun in the open air was overwhelming after the speckled light and dark shadows they'd become accustomed to.

Joy did not appreciate their pause. "Fuck's sake!" She yelled. "It's fucking dangerous here. You don't want to get shot, do you? And don't wander around randomly. There are mines, unexploded bombs and all things round here. So just follow where I go and don't even think of making a fucking detour." She turned round with a grimace, and hobbled on as the unforgiving sun beat down on her and on the girls. Sharon's skin burnt in the bright light and the sharp pain of the heat became indistinguishable form the sharp pain of the branches she was carrying. But, from the advice she had been given, she was able to see the landscape in a new light. The many holes which dotted the uncultivated fields had definitely not been dug. They were too shallow and too strangely smooth. And the rusted hulks she could see in the distance were almost certainly not the tractors and cars like you'd expect to see in the country back home. They almost certainly served some military purpose.