Alexa awoke and greeted the morning with a smile. By her best rough calculations, she'd actually beaten Elf-Girl's official record sometime late yesterday, but now she had at least a twelve-hour cushion in case she'd miscalculated or missed something. She was glad that it was over. The past couple of days had been dull almost beyond imagining as she'd wandered the areas north and east of End. She didn't go too far east, though, never any further than those abandoned buildings and that far only when she needed to raid the bin for food. The last time she'd done that she'd had the distinct feeling that someone had been watching her, and she hadn't gone back there since. Now she was just about out of food, and it was time to think about getting back to civilization. Last night she'd actually dreamed about that little restaurant in End where she and Mike had sat and talked. More exactly, she'd dreamt about the meal she'd enjoyed there. It would be so nice to eat something that didn't come out of a package or a can. Could she make it all the way back to safety? Maybe. Maybe not. But if she was caught now it wouldn't matter, as she'd done what she'd set out to do and broken that record.
On second thought, it would matter if she was caught, depending on who caught her. Was Mike still hunting for her? Whether he was or not, it would be nice to see him again. Actually, after all this time alone in the wilderness, it would be nice to see anybody. A cold beer would be good, too. She'd tried keeping her spare beer cans at the bottom of a little stream, but that seemed to work much better way up North where Will lived than it did here. Oh, it got cool enough for her to drink it without imagining that she was in England, but it never did get properly chilled.
Most of all, it would be nice to get back to where she could enjoy a long, hot shower. She hadn't found a stream deep enough for her to properly bathe in, and given the temperature of the water she probably wouldn't have tried it even if she'd found one. Still, she'd managed to keep herself and her clothes clean, no small feat out here. She packed up the last of her gear, shouldered her pack, and set off westwards. She was pretty sure that she wouldn't get directly to End that way, but there was some sort of unpaved service road that ran north out of the hamlet and then curved westwards towards Gordburg. If she just kept heading in a general westerly direction she was bound to come across it sooner or later, and with it for a guide she could get to End fairly easily. The only problem was that she wasn't quite sure just how far away that road was. Well, it wasn't as if she had an urgent appointment to keep.
It was a nice day: Neither too warm nor too cool, and from the look of the sky through the treetops there weren't going to be any more of those constant drizzling showers that had made the last two days so miserable. Alexa had a light waterproof hooded poncho for wet weather, but all that did was keep her and her gear dry. It did nothing to keep her spirits up, and rainy days always got her down. Today was sunny, though, and she'd beaten Elf-Girl's record, so she was feeling pretty good.
Time went by as she picked her way along, still careful to look and listen and not make too much noise herself. She wasn't sure how much time had passed when she came across a large clearing, carpeted with lush grass and tiny purple flowers. There didn't seem to be any reason for it to be here. The only other clearings she'd found had been much smaller, with a rotting tree stump or two cluttering them up. This one looked almost artificial, as if someone was tending it as a garden, but that didn't make any sense. As she stood there, just looking at this unlikely spot, she heard the unmistakable sound of footprints off to her left. Without even thinking about it, Alexa crouched down and got close to the nearest tree. As the footsteps came closer, she risked a look.
She didn't see anything, but whoever was making all that noise had to be a complete novice to the woods. There seemed to be only one of them, at least. Alexa began to wonder if her unseen visitor was another woman, wandering the forest, waiting to be captured. She crouched down lower and leaned forward, trying to see. Thanks to a low branch, the first thing she saw was a pair of very long and shapely legs, clad in snug-fitting denim. There were low boots that looked more stylish than practical on the feet at the end of those legs. Alexa got lower, trying to see under the branch. Now she could see an attractive ass, a narrow waist, and the lower part of a dark red shirt. It wasn't the best kind of color to try to hide in the woods in. But the unknown intruder was clearly female, so what was she doing out here, if not looking to be captured quickly?
Alexa shrank back behind the tree and quietly stood up so that she could see over that low-hanging branch. When she peeked out from behind the trunk again, the woman had her back to her. Alexa could see very long dark blonde hair that fell all the way to the woman's waist, gathered up in a ponytail. It looked oddly familiar, and then the woman turned her head as if she'd heard a sound, and Alexa saw her face.
It was Martina, the pro beach volleyball player and Alexa's chief rival from the contest last year! She was the last person Alexa had ever even speculated about meeting again in Gordburg, and yet there she was, practically close enough to reach out and touch. For a moment, Alexa thought about calling out to her, but then she thought that Martina might still be a bit sore about not just losing the contest but having Alexa roger her with that devilish vibrating strap-on in front of an appreciative male audience while Martina was locked into wooden stocks, stark naked, on display, vulnerable, and unable to prevent it.
But what was Martina doing here now? Alexa could think of a number of reasons. One might be that the woman had come to enjoy being a captive sex slave last year, and come back for another round of it. That seemed to be the most likely explanation, and by now Alexa was so hungry for any sort of human contact that she accepted it as the right explanation.
“Hey! Martina! Hi there!” Alexa called out as she stepped into view, smiling. Martina whirled to face her. She appeared stunned, and didn't smile back for a moment. Then when she did smile, it was more predatory and gloating than friendly.
“Hello, Alexa,” she almost purred. She took a step towards Alexa, and Alexa, suddenly wary, took a matching step back. She noticed that Martina wasn't carrying any kind of backpack, and that seemed somehow suspicious. “Fancy meeting you here! What have you been up to?” She took another step forward. Alexa took another step back. She was fairly sure that Martina could beat her in a sprint, given those long legs and superb athletic conditioning, but how good would she be at scampering through the woods, dodging around trees and bushes? That wasn't something that Alexa wanted to find out the hard way.
“Uh... what are you up to?” Alexa asked. Martina laughed harshly.
“I heard that you'd come back, and what you were trying to do,” she replied. “I thought I'd come and have a closer look. I heard that you beat that record that you were trying to beat. Congratulations!”
Martina being nice was unsettling, given the contempt she'd treated Alexa with before. Alexa looked around quickly to see if anyone was trying to sneak up on her. She'd heard about women who hunted other women out here, and she didn't really want to get captured by any of them.
“Thanks,” she said.
“So now what, Alexa?” Martina asked. “I suppose it doesn't matter if you get caught now or not, does it? You know, I've heard that there are a lot of men looking for you.” She stood with her hands on her hips, smiling.
“There probably are,” Alexa admitted.
“Would it surprise you to know that I've met some of them?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I have!” Martina said. “Do you remember running into the Anderson brothers? They certainly remember you.”
“I'm not their type,” Alexa said, a bit nervously. 'They're girl catchers.”
“Yes, but you kind of embarrassed them a while ago,” Martina's smile turned into a smirk. “They're looking for a little payback. And you know what?”
“What?”
“So am I!” Martina exclaimed. She raised her voice to a piercing yell. “I found her!” she practically screamed. “She's over here!” With that, she lunged towards Alexa, but Alexa was already moving, dashing back into the cover of the woods, taking a twisting, erratic course. She could hear Martina right behind her, gaining in spite of her frantic twists and turns, and for a moment it looked bad. But then Alexa caught sight of some sort of thicket up ahead, not too wide or too hard to get through. She threw up her arms to protect her face and crashed right into it. Thin branches whipped at her, and it felt like thorns raked at her legs, but in a moment she was through it and running at full tilt again. She heard Martina try to follow and then a sudden screech of frustration and pain. It sounded as if Martina's hair had gotten tangled in the thicket, just as Alexa had hoped, but rather than take the time to look back, Alexa just kept on going. She didn't want to be captured by the Anderson brothers, especially if they thought they had some kind of grudge against her. Martina's shrieks and curses faded as Alexa kept putting distance between them. It wasn't until sometime after she couldn't hear them anymore that Alexa let herself stop sprinting. Even then, she kept going at a brisk jog, her heart pounding and her lungs burning. She wondered how good those Andersons were at tracking. Once she felt comfortable with how far away she'd gotten she'd have to take steps to cover her trail. Fortunately, Will had taught her some tricks along those lines.
She finally stopped to rest in the cover of a patch of pines that looks a lot like oversized Christmas trees. They grew very close together, and none of them had grown particularly tall. The ground under them was thickly carpeted with pine needles that muffled sound. Alexa crawled under some low-hanging boughs and stretched out on the ground to rest all over while she caught her breath. She could also see quite a ways into the woods from that vantage point, and as long as she stayed where she was it would be difficult for anyone to see her.
Damn, but that Martina was a bitch! Hooking up with the Anderson brothers so that she could get some payback of her own while helping them get theirs? Wasn't she being just a teensy bit obsessive about her losing the contest last year? Alexa forced herself to concentrate on her breathing and relaxing all of her muscles, but she was too worked up to do either with much success. Martina wasn't as much of an unknown quantity as the Andersons were. From what she remembered there were three of them, and they specialized in running down smaller and more slender women, then giving them some training before selling them off at slave auctions. She must have ticked them off more than she'd realized if they had decided to make her a special project. She wondered how long they'd been looking for her, and if they'd teamed up with anybody else besides Martina. Well, she'd set out to get herself noticed. It looked as if she'd overdone it.
As her breathing slowly returned to normal, disturbing thoughts began to creep into her mind. She hadn't really considered the ramifications of being caught by a team of two or more men, and while after her times with Will her fantasies had much more of an edge to them, they never included gangbangs, or being fucked by two men at once. But... there were three Anderson brothers, weren't there? What if they all wanted to fuck her at once? Alexa shuddered. She'd never really gotten into anal sex. She supposed that she could always use the 'bailout' phrase if things just got to be too much for her, just like Lynette had last year, but after all the self-promotion she'd been doing wouldn't that make her nothing more than a tease, at least in the eyes of absolutely everybody in Gordburg?
Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN! If she stayed out here she was fairly sure that sooner or later the Andersons would catch her. So what were her options? If she struck out northwards she ought to hit the main road that ran from Gordburg all the way to that little state highway Will had told her about. From there she could try to beat the Andersons to Gordburg, but it would take a while. Or, she could try to get back to the sanctuary of End. But the Andersons were between her and there, as was Martina. Alexa didn't like those odds at all. But maybe, if she stayed hidden here, her pursuers might pass her by. Then she could try to get back to End. But the more she thought about that possibility the less hopeful it seemed. So, for the time being, she kept very still and watched and listened. For what seemed like a very long time all that she heard were birds: Crows and bluejays and something that kept changing its song. From what Will had told her, it was likely either a catbird or a mockingbird. The only movement she saw was a rabbit that hopped and paused, hopped and paused its way across her field of vision. At each pause it seemed to nibble at something on the ground. Its apparent unconcern gave Alexa some peace of mind, and she began to miss it shortly after it had gone. Then it came dashing back in the other direction, zig-zagging furiously as if trying to throw off a predator, and Alexa felt her chest tighten. There weren't supposed to be any predators in these woods, aside from people. She looked in the direction that the rabbit had come from, but she couldn't see anything, and as intently as she listened she couldn't hear anything either.
She had to resist a sudden urge to get up and run. Instead, she looked around intently, including behind her, and what she saw chilled her. Not twenty feet away, she saw a pair of boots. From the size of them, they had to belong to a man. Whoever he was, he was facing away from her, but if he stooped down to look under the low-hanging pine boughs he was bound to spot her.
Alexa got up onto her hands and knees as quietly and as carefully as she could, keeping an eye on those boots the whole time. She felt relief as they began to move away, but then they stopped and paused for just a moment before turning back towards her.
Had she somehow given herself away? Alexa dithered in a state just this side of panic, remembering all of the things she'd seen and heard in the past several days. She tried to tell herself that she'd done what she'd set out to do and set a new record, but that was small comfort just now. She saw whoever was behind her begin to kneel, probably to get a good look under the trees and she didn't wait to get a look at his face. She scrabbled forward on all fours until she could stand up and then broke into a desperate run. She heard a man's voice call out somewhere off to her right, and then an answering cry from somewhere off to her left, so she went straight ahead as fast as she could. Then Martina came out from behind a tree, all six feet and some-odd inches of her, grinning nastily. She made a grab for her. Alexa just brought her shoulder down and rammed it into Martina's midsection as hard as she could without breaking stride. Martina doubled over with a pained grunt and fell, her hands grabbing at Alexa's ankles. Alexa kicked free and kept running. She heard Martina screech in frustration and heard the men pursuing her call out to each other. She wondered how far away the sanctuary of End was, and if she could possibly make it there.
Behind her, she could hear heavy footsteps pounding along in pursuit. She ran as fast as she could, but with all of the trees and bushes in the way she wasn't running in a straight line at all and it sounded as if her pursuers were gaining on her. She remembered what a close-run thing it had been in her first encounter with the Andersons.
“Stop!” she heard a deep male voice call out. She ignored it and kept running. She felt a sudden sharp pain in her ankle as she stumbled across some exposed tree roots, but kept going all the same. As she kept running, the pain slowly faded away, or maybe all the adrenaline coursing through her body just made it seem that way. Adrenaline will only keep you going so far, though, and after a while she realized that her breathing was becoming ragged. But she could still hear those footsteps behind her, coming closer and closer. How long could her pursuers keep up this pace? She began to fear that they could do it for longer than she could.
A man came into her field of view off to her right. Alexa veered to the left to get away from him, and the next thing she knew she could see another man coming up on her left, so she veered to her right. This happened a couple of times before she realized that they were herding her along as much as they were chasing her, and her heart sank. If they were able to do that while they were chasing her, she was finished. Maybe not right this moment, but soon. She clung to the hope that End was just up ahead for as long as she could, but as she kept running through the woods without ever catching sight of any trace of civilization, that hope withered away and died. She was never going to escape from these determined men. In spite of her own superb physical condition she was almost at the point of collapse, and all she could do now was either give herself up or wait until they pulled her down. All of a sudden she didn't want to drag this out any longer. She wobbled to a halt, shed her backpack, and wearily turned to face her pursuers, raising her hands in surrender.
They approached her slowly, warily, alertly, as if they expected her to make one last attempt to get away. She recognized two of them from before. The third Anderson brother was taller and a bit older, but he had the same build and general appearance. They were dressed almost identically in faded khaki. There was no sign of Martina, who must have been left far behind. Alexa dropped to her knees as the men closed in. She had to. Now that she'd given up, her body was reacting and she felt suddenly tired and weak and her legs just couldn't keep her upright any longer. She made no resistance as the elder Anderson pushed her down onto her stomach on the forest floor. She heard a faint beep near her ear as her capture was duly registered wherever the Hell they registered such things in Gordburg, and then they began binding her wrists tightly behind her with what felt like tough rope. She still couldn't have fought them even if she'd wanted to. For now, it was enough that the grueling chase was over.
“You surely did make us work for it, Missy,” she heard one of her captors say. “Too bad for you.”
They let her lie there unmolested for a little while, and now she could hear how hard they were breathing themselves as they sat down around her.
“This is really her, hey?” The voice was gravelly. Alexa guessed it came from the elder brother. “Too bad she's not our type. We could have a lot of fun with a female with as much stamina as this one's got.”
“We can still have some fun,” one of the other brothers puffed. “Just gimme a minute to catch my breath.”
“Did you get her? Did you get her? Where is she?”
Alexa heard Martina's voice, coming in wheezy gasps, and stifled a groan. She worried about what the men might do to her, but she dreaded whatever Martina might dream up.
“She's right there,” the gravelly-voiced older brother replied. “Come on, boys, let's get her up and find a place to make camp for the night.”
They got Alexa to her feet. She still couldn't quite stand on her own, so the two Andersons she'd embarrassed earlier each took her by an arm to keep her up and move her along. Martina stayed close, taunting Alexa every step of the way with insults, sneers and threats that sounded all too possible for Alexa's peace of mind. It seemed to take forever before they came to a place to camp, a small clearing with a tiny stream flowing nearby. Here they forced Alexa to lie down again. They pulled off her boots and socks before they untied her wrists.
“Get your clothes off now, Missy,” the elder Anderson ordered as his brothers set about making a campfire. “You won't like it if we have to strip you.”
“I'll do it!” Martina volunteered eagerly.
“Shut up, woman. You'll have your fun.”
Alexa struggled up onto her knees and then got to her feet. Her bare feet, now. She remembered how painful it had been last year, trying to walk in the woods after Lynette had stolen her boots. Slowly, wearily, resignedly, she undressed, and soon she stood naked in front of her captors. The elder Anderson looked her over minutely, walking slowly around her.
“She ain't what I was expecting,” he commented. “From what you said about her being a personal trainer I was kinda expecting something more muscular. She looks damned good, though.” He reached out and squeezed one of Alexa's breasts, not gently, but not too hard. “Nice tits,” he smiled down at Alexa. “Barry, Simon, get her strung up for us. It'll be getting dark soon, but I think we can keep this party going all night.”
They stood Alexa up between two small, straight trees and wrapped cloth around her wrists before wrapping ropes around them, stretching her arms out, and tying her to the trees. While the cloth wrappings made her bindings easier to bear, Alexa wished that they hadn't cut her shirt up to make them. They wrapped her ankles with more of her cut-up clothing before binding them. She tried to resist as they pulled her legs well apart before tying off her ankles to those trees, but it was pointless. Now she was stretched out and vulnerable, and more than a little scared, But every time she thought about using the bailout phrase, Alexa would catch sight of Martina's gloating face. She would not chicken out in front of that woman, no matter what might be done to her.
“Open wide, Missy,” the elder Anderson ordered. Alexa obeyed. He thrust a thick stick, cleaned of dirt and bark, back between her teeth and tied it in place with the last rags cut from her shirt. Martina came forward, wielding Alexa's belt like a whip.
“Now?” she asked eagerly.
“Go ahead, woman,” the elder Anderson replied. “She can't bite her tongue now, but she can still beg for mercy if she wants.”
Martina went behind Alexa, and Alexa fought the urge to try to turn her head and see what the other woman was doing. She had no doubts about what was coming, and no desire to see Martina's face while she did it.
The first hard blow struck her across her ass, and it stung! Alexa went up on her toes from the sudden shock and pain, but the only sound she made was a grunt. The second blow had the same effect, and then there was a pause that was almost as hard to bear as the stinging pains. The third blow fell across the backs of Alexa's thighs, and it hurt enough for her to cry out. Apparently pleased with that result, Martina whipped Alexa across the backs of her thighs again, then across her calves before returning her attentions to Alexa's ass. Alexa bit down hard on the stick in her mouth, but after the fifth or sixth or seventh blow the pain was too much. She threw back her head and screamed up at the sky. Martina struck her again.
“That's enough, woman,” the elder Anderson said gruffly.
“No, it isn't!” Martina protested. “I told you what she did to me! She's earned a lot more payback than she's gotten so far!”
“I said, that's enough! Now get back over by the fire. You can watch for a while.”
“All right,” Martina said grumpily, sounding like a surly child. Alexa's relief at being spared any further flogging lasted for only a moment as the elder Anderson pressed himself against her, running his hands slowly, possessively, up and down her flanks before he reached around to grip her ass tightly with his hands. They were hard, rough hands, and they felt even harder and rougher against the welts Martina had surely raised.
“Mmmm,” the elder Anderson said with a smile. “Nice, tight body all over.” He thrust his hips against Alexa with a wicked grin. Alexa could only look up at him. He had a predator's expression. “You know, I think I'd really like to tap that nice, tight ass of yours first, Missy,” he told her.
Alexa whimpered. She couldn't stop him if he wanted to do that. No, she really could stop him if she wanted to, but she wasn't going to do that with Martina watching. All she could do was hope that the Andersons had brought some sort of lubricant along.
“Oh, you don't want to do that,” someone called out from the surrounding woods. Everyone turned to see who had spoken, Alexa included. She knew that voice. And then she saw Will emerge from the woods. He was unshaven and a little dusty, but he had never looked better to her.