Chapter 1

She stood on the deck behind the cabin, looking over the moonlit valley. A cool breeze caught and lifted the bottom of her white silk camisole, revealing her slender waist. She wore only the camisole and white bikini panties, and for the first time in her life, she felt cold. In fact, she had goosebumps — and she loved it.

There had been a lot of firsts the past few days. For the first time in her life, she was not a superheroine. Oh, she still had powers that no other woman on earth could boast of: She could fly, she was incredibly beautiful, and she was immortal. This last gift was one she believed she could not surrender, even if she wanted to.

But the physical strength, the impressive muscular development, the X-ray vision, the blinding speed, even the skintight costume — all were gone. She had given them up happily, and with them the responsibility for saving lives, fighting evil, and always playing the perfect role model to young women all around the planet.

Now, she was taking a well-deserved rest, here in the mountains, far from any city of consequence, alone with the moon and the owl that hooted from the woods in the distance.

She raised herself on her tiptoes, then silently took flight. She flew in a languid spiral, rising above the cabin, and when she was high above its roof, she flew east, along the ridgeline on the south side of the valley, toward Big Pine Park. She flew gracefully, swimming through the air as if she were performing a water ballet. She was at peace with herself and the world around her. She no longer need concern herself with the dirty, gritty struggle in the faraway city, the struggle between greater and lesser evils, between the malcontents and the truly malevolent.

Nothing could mar her serenity as she glided through the cool evening air high above the dark woods of Big Pine Park.

Irv saw her first. She was silhouetted against the moon, a woman-shaped shadow in the sky.

But that was impossible, he thought.

He put his beer down on the picnic table and called out to the others, "Look, it's a fuckin' bitch, up in the sky!" He pointed up at the moon.

The other three, who were perhaps more inebriated, or simply wary of Irv's idea of a joke, sat silently around the table.

"I mean it, look up there," Irv insisted.

Jake, their leader, decided to humor him. He looked up, saw nothing at first except a very clear sky and a very bright moon - and then a shadow making lazy circles above him and a little to the west.

"Shit, look at it," he said, in a low but urgent whisper. "Look, there really is something up there."

Pete and Loopy now saw her too. They started talking excitedly, but Jake told them to hold it down. Whatever it was, he didn't want to draw its attention — or scare it away.

Irv, who had gone to the truck, returned with two rifles. He handed one of them to Jakes "Fuck that," snarled Jake, "You take the .22. Gimme the thirty-ought-six."

Irv's face fell, but he did as he was told. It didn't pay to cross Jake.

The shadow had drifted away and was now over the edge of the picnic area, near where the thick woods began. Jake pulled back the bolt of the .30-06. There was a round in the chamber. Good. No time to waste.

Now the figure was coming back toward them, but higher in the sky. Jake estimated 100 to 150 feet. And Irv had been right. As the shadow passed the moon, he could see for sure that it was a woman.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed. It would take an incredibly lucky shot to bring her down. He was more than a little drunk, and the target was moving.

"Fuck it," he said, more to himself than to his buddies. "No excuses." The sound of the shot jolted them, even though they had anticipated it. For a second, they forgot why Jake had fired.

Then there was a cry of pain and the sound of lumber breaking, and they turned to see that their target, whatever it was, had tumbled out of the sky and crashed into a picnic table 30 yards away.

Pete reached her first, with the others hot on his heels. He shined a flashlight down on the pale figure in the middle of the shattered table. They were very quiet for what seemed a long time. Then Pete said, "We've got to get her to a doctor."

"Yeah, and maybe you'd like to drop me off at the sheriff's office while you're at it," hissed Jake. "Think, you fuckin' idiot. I just shot this bitch out of the sky. If we bring her to a hospital, I'm going to jail. And I'm for damn sure not going to jail again."

"Maybe she's dead," said Irv, trying to be helpful.

But the figure moved slightly, and they heard a low moan.

"She's alive," said Loopy, softly. "Let's fuck her."

"Now, at last someone around here is talking sense," said Jake. And he stepped forward and grabbed the girl by her thick blonde hair.

"Upsy-daisy, sweetheart," he said, as he lifted her onto her feet. Her eyes, which had been closed, opened part way, and her lips moved. She was trying to speak.

Jake didn't give her a chance. Holding her hair with his left hand, he slammed his right fist into her belly.

There was a loud "whoosh" as her breath rushed out, and her knees buckled. He let her fall face downward to the ground.

"Okay, boys, we're going to give this flying fuck the worst beating she ever Had — and the best group sex."

Jake told Loopy, by far the biggest of the four men, to bring her over to the table by the pickup. Loopy picked her up as if she were a rag doll and tossed her over his shoulder. Her hair and arms swung crazily as he carried her.

"Lay her on her back," Jake instructed. "Let's check her out."

He pulled up her camisole and exposed a lovely set of tits - and a big red welt on her rib cage, just below her left breast. There were no other marks.

"Where's the bullet hole?" asked Irv.

Loopy pulled down her panties just far enough to expose her pubic hair and announced, "I don't care about bullet holes. Here's the hole I want. Let's fuck it."

"Fuck it you shall, Loopy, many times over," said Jake. "But first we've got to figure out what we're dealing with here."

"I know what we're dealing with," said Pete, nervously. "We're dealing with trouble. Look, she was flying. And you shot her, but there's no bullet hole. You know who she is."

"Bullshit," said Irv. "You've been reading too many comic books. Besides, where's her costume with the big 'S'?"

"Irv's right," said Jake. "Where's that tight little costume with the logo? And what's more to the point, if she's who you think she is, Pete, how come she's lying here like a run-over dog in the road, instead of beating the shit out of us?"

Pete had no answer to that. Neither did Loopy or Irv.

"Okay," said Loopy, "let's fuck her."

At this point, SG whimpered and pressed her right hand against the angry bruise on her ribs. She tried to sit up.

"What do we do?" asked Irv, who was closest to her.

"This," said Jake. He pushed Irv aside and punched SG square in the face. Her head snapped back and bounced off the table. Again she tried to sit up, and again Jake punched her, this time in the jaw. She slumped back on the tabletop and didn't move.

"Okay," said Jake, breathing heavy, "turn her over on her belly and let's get this show on the road."

Loopy was the first to do the honors. While the others held her wrists so she wouldn't slide off, he pulled down her panties to expose the loveliest ass any of them had ever seen - and a pussy that seemed to cry out to be fucked.

Loopy unzipped his jeans and pulled out a prick that his friends swore was the biggest in North Carolina. It was ready for action.

He grabbed her hips and slammed his rod into her with no preliminaries. She awoke with a start and tried to struggle, but Irv and Pete held her wrists firmly. And Jake, who had been watching with a strange smile, now stepped forward, grabbed her hair and slammed her face down on the tabletop. The struggling ceased.

Loopy didn't take long. He withdrew his oversized cock, dripping with cum, and said with a satisfied smile, "Now, that's a fuck!"

Irv was next. Loopy had lubricated her, so he slid in easily and pumped long and slow. He was taking his time, enjoying the best piece of ass he was ever likely to have in his lifetime.

Maybe she was enjoying it, too, he thought, because her ass wiggled slightly and she made an unintelligible but sensual sound that might have been an invitation to keep it coming.

Irv ended with a huge sigh and backed off.

"Your turn, Pete," said Jake.

"No way," Pete said. "This is insane."

"Insane?" said Jake, calmly — too calmly. "Insane? I'll show you insane." He walked back to the table where he'd left the rifle and returned with it. He shoved the barrel into her rectum.

"Now, it's too bad she's not awake and a contortionist," he said, "because she could kiss her ass goodbye."

With that he pulled the trigger. Everyone flinched, but there was only a loud click. Angrily, Jake pulled back the bolt and checked the chamber. It was empty.

"Looks like you'll just have to fuck her like regular," said Loopy, philosophically.

"To hell with that," Jake growled. He pulled the gun barrel out of her butt hole, raised the rifled above her and brought the stock down on the back of her head with a sickening thud.

"Jesus," said Pete.

Her body twitched, then went limp.

"Is she dead?" Irv asked.

"What the fuck difference does it make?" asked Jake. "She soon enough will be."

He scooped her up in his arms, carried her over to the pickup truck and dumped her onto the ground. "We'll get rid of her later," he said. "I'm ready for another beer." His voice was oddly cheerful, as if nothing more unusual had happened.

The others knew enough to humor him when he got like this. Irv opened four cans of beer and handed them around. They talked quietly. No one mentioned the woman who lay unconscious, perhaps dead, only a few yards away.

But SG wasn't dead, and she was no longer unconscious. Her head ached terribly, and the pain in her ribs flared every time she moved. But move she must, before the men lost interest in drinking and decided on more fun with her.

Quietly, she crawled around the truck, away from their table. After she had made it about fifty feet along the gravel road that led out of the park, she got unsteadily to her feet and staggered forward.

The moon slipped behind a cloud, and in the darkness she didn't see the broken beer bottle. She stepped on it and let out a small cry of pain. A small cry, but not small enough.

It was Irv; again, who spotted her first, a pale form on the road.

"She's getting away," he called.

They all jumped to their feet. But Jake told them to stay where they were. He groped in his jeans pocket, found the keys to the truck, leaped in and cranked it up as he hit the headlights. The truck swerved backward in a short arc, and when SG's slender body appeared in the lights, he rammed the transmission into first gear. The truck bolted forward, spewing a hail of gravel behind it.

She was only a few dozen yards down the road, and she seemed frozen by the oncoming lights. She made no effort to evade the truck.

"Don't," Pete cried, but his plea was lost in the roar of the engine and the loud thump as the pickup smashed into SG and sent her flying. She landed 20 feet in front of the truck, but Jake wasn't finished. The truck rolled over her body with a jolt and continued down the road before skidding to a stop. Irv and Pete and Loopy, who had been watching all this in a mixture of fascination and horror, now ran toward her. It was Pete who saw the truck approaching them in reverse.

"Get off the road," he shouted.

Amazingly, SG was moving, writhing in the gravel, reaching, with her left hand, for some imagined source of succor or help.

The truck crunched over her prone form, skidded to a halt, then jerked forward again, as Jake shifted gears, all the while grinding the girl into the gravel.

At last, he backed up enough so that she lay in the headlights, covered with gravel dust, her eyes open but rolled back, her mouth open and slack-jawed. Jake jumped out of the cab, rushed over to her and pressed two fingers against her throat.

"You're a fuckin' maniac," Irv said, in a tone that suggested admiration as well as revulsion.

"Any pulse?" asked Pete.

"As a matter of fact, Petemeister, there is," said Jake. "Not much, but maybe we can help."

He went back to the cab of the truck, opened a metal case and came back with jumper cables.

"Here, Loopy," he said, "Let's give her a charge."

"You've gotta be kidding," Irv said. Pete turned away in disgust.

"No kidding," said Jake cheerfully. "This'll be just like ER."

Loopy attached the cable to the truck's battery terminals, then handed the other end to Jake, who brushed the clamps together to produce a shower of sparks.

SG lay crumpled and twisted in the road. Jake kicked her arms and legs until she lay spread eagle on her back. Then, straddling her, but with his feet parted widely enough to avoid contact, he reached down and attached the clamps to her nipples.

"Clear!" he shouted, but he barely cleared her himself as she went into wild convulsions.

"She's humpin' like a snake hit by a mower," Irv said.

"Let's turn up the juice," said Jake. He climbed back into the cab and gunned the engine.

"Christ, she's smokin'," called Loopy.

Jake turned off the engine, climbed back out and looked at the twitching body. Smoke was indeed rising from her breasts.

"Better put it out," he said. He unzipped his pants, pulled out his pecker and began to piss on her.

The piss sizzled on the overheated clamps and the smell was sickening, but Jake didn't seem to mind. He smiled contentedly.

"This," he said quietly, "is a hundred times better than sex."

Before they finished with her that night, Loopy had fucked her four more times, and Irv had poked her twice. Pete, who had slunk away, returned sheepishly and asked for a chance to join in. Jake sneered but said, "Go ahead."

For all his earlier concern about her, Pete put his heart into it. And when she seemed to regain consciousness before he was finished, he smashed her in the head with a flashlight. He was one of them, as guilty as Jake. He was filled with self-hatred — and lust.

When the sky began to lighten, Jake said it was time to dump her. They loaded her into the back of the pickup. Loopy climbed in beside her, to make sure she didn't wake up and escape.

Irv drove, Pete and Jake beside him.

"Where to?" asked Irv.

"The dumpster behind the Foundry Apartments," said Jake. "They don't pick up for two days."

They drove past the apartment buildings to the littered cul de sac where the dumpster squatted like an ugly metal toad.

Irv backed up to it, then Jake jumped out to help Loopy. He lifted the heavy metal dumpster lid, while Loopy picked SG up and tossed her naked body into the dark, foul-smelling steel box.

"Is she's still alive?" Jake asked.

"That's highly unlikely," Loopy drawled. "Since I twisted her fuckin' head 180 degrees while we were driving here. And I heard her neck crack."

"You're a good man, Loopy," Jake said. "You're my kind of man."

They drove away, as the first rays of the sun lit the thin high clouds. The apartment complex would be stirring in another hour, but for now all was quiet.

Well, not completely quiet. If anyone had been standing beside the dumpster, they would have heard an occasional rustle and scraping inside. Perhaps it was the sound of scavenging rats. Or maybe simply the trash bags and debris settling.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was our heroine, super no more, struggling to hang onto life--or, given the pain and humiliation she had endured that night, perhaps she was struggling to shake off her immortality and embrace the comforts of the grave.

Stick drove slowly down Ironmongers Lane, peering into the semi-darkness to avoid parked cars. The headlights of his battered van were turned off. No sense advertising his presence. Somewhere near here, if he remembered correctly, there was a right turn that led to the dumpster. He'd used it several times before, driving the eight miles from town with special packages, rather than trusting them to city sanitation crews.

He almost passed up the turn, pulled a hard right then followed the short street to the cul de sac.

The dumpster loomed in front of him, with something pale, packing material perhaps, hanging from its rim.

He got out quietly, slid back the door and lifted his package from the floor. It was wrapped in black plastic garbage bags and tied with rope. When he reached the dumpster, he could see what was hanging from it more clearly.

It was a body, a young woman's body. She was bent over the rim, her head and arms and upper body dangling outside, the rest of her - assuming there was a rest of her - still inside.

He carefully laid his package on the ground, leaned forward and touched the body. It was still warm. He knelt, grabbed a handful of blonde hair and lifted her head. He was gazing into the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Her eyes, which had been closed, opened partially, and her lips tried to form a word, but only a soft moan emerged.

He gently released her hair, then, using a fragment of a concrete block that was lying next to the dumpster, propped the lid open enough and began to pull her out. It wasn't easy, and she cried out as her hips and legs cleared the rim.

He lost his balance, and she landed on top of him. He lay there a moment, trying to resist the urge to unzip his pants and fuck her right there, next to the dumpster — hell, in the dumpster, anywhere. His dick was as hard as concrete.

But this was crazy. He had to get her out of here. He picked her up and placed her gently on the floor of the van. He pulled a blanket from under the driver's seat and wrapped it around her. It was then that he noticed a foul smell. Maybe it was from her being dumped in with all the garbage. Or maybe she had pissed herself, poor thing.

No matter, he'd get her back to the apartment in town and wash her up. He'd get her a cup of tea and turn on the gas heater in the living room.

Then he'd fuck her and fuck her and fuck her. They didn't call him Stick because he was tall and thin. In fact, he was short and wiry. They called him Stick, and he called himself Stick, because of his nearly perpetual erection — an erection that masturbation a dozen times a day and occasional long weekends with women could not tame.

When SG regained consciousness — regained it enough to remember who she was, and who she had been — she was lying in a hot bath, amid mounds of bubbles. A man with a square face and dark hair was caressing her with a sponge. His expression was one of concern and gentleness. It seemed a long, long time since she had experienced gentleness.

He slid the sponge over her breasts, down her belly and between her legs. She sighed and closed her eyes. Then she felt his lips on her eyelids. He was kissing her, even as the sponge caressed her pussy under the warm water. After the bath, as Stick had hoped and planned, they made love beside the gas heater, on a pile of thick bath towels. Unbidden, she took his cock into her mouth and softly sucked it. She stroked his scrotum. Then she spread her legs and invited him in. He had never been hotter, and she - well, she had never had an experience like this before.

Or had she? She tried to remember the previous night. Had it been a bad dream, those cruel and contemptuous men beating her and sticking their dicks in her? She shuddered beneath Stick's humping body as the memory of the pickup truck and the jumper cables washed over her.

Stick mistook her shudder for passion and redoubled his efforts.

SG awakened to the sound of Stick's voice. He was telling her about his roommate, someone named Stars. He seemed worried. SG smiled and caressed his cock. He placed his hand on her shoulder, then leaned down to kiss her on the mouth.