End of Women: Part Six

Under The Table

A four-inch long plastic model of a woman hung with a thin strand of twine around its neck from the rear-view mirror. Her red-lined mouth was open in a rounded "O" shape, her hands splayed out either side of her absurdly wide hips, and a spear stuck through her back and out of her chest. 

The Trooper, clad in navy blue kevlar with a crew cut hairstyle and a brick-like face, noticed Balian eyeing the doll and smirked.

"Don't look much like the real thing, huh?" He chuckled as he switched into a higher gear. The engine made a soft purring noise and returned to virtual silence. 

"No." Balian agreed, turning his eyes away from the doll and back to the thick, jungly bayou swamps they traversed in the all-terrain adaptable vehicle. "But then, I guess your generation doesn't know too well what the real thing looks like."

"That's where you're wrong, huvi." One of the heavies in the back cut in. This one was polishing a pulse rifle with an arm decorated with a sleeve tattoo. "We got plenty of action the day the shutdowns started. Fifty in one day, right Bart?"

Bart was the driver, and he grunted his agreement before turning a sharp corner to slip between two kudzu-covered trees.

"How do you catch so many at once?" Balian inquired.

"The more there are, easier it becomes." Bart replied with an air of complacency in his voice. "Less than ten, you get a scatter. They run in every direction and you're fucked if you want to get them all. More than ten, they huddle. Its like some basic instinct kicks in, every one of them thinks they're safe in numbers. When the huddle, you herd them into a confined space with only one entryway, then pick them out one at a time and arrest. That way only two humans needed to do it. You gotta call in the big carriers to transport them once they're hogtied and on the ground, though, that's the problem."

They crossed over a series of wooden plank bridges, spun tyres for a few seconds in mud, before Bart flicked a switch on the dashboard. Steel grips stick out from the tires and with an uncharacteristically loud roar from the engine, the truck pulled free again.

Balian sat back and thought about Bart's little soliloquy. Certainly it was normal to hear Troopers brag about their famous catches and near-fatal incidents, and not wise to assume everything was factual in what was said. It did, however, appear to be true that up and down the country, humans were still coming across large groups of women who had managed to escape the simple process of being moved from cages in compounds to the incineration line. How it was happening, Balian was not sure. The only way to find out was to back-track to the sources of any recent donations, to humans who continually found females and kept sending them on to the elimination centres for a modest, but reasonable fee.

Balian took out a can of bug spray and doused himself in it. 

"How much do these guys get now?" He asked the two Troopers, keeping his tone light. "For every femmo they bring in, I mean."

"Shit, huvi, you should know better than us." The man with the pulse rifle let out a barking laugh. Bart said nothing, his severe jaw pulsing with muscle. 

Balian said nothing more. He had suspected, though now was certain. It made sense; the Troopers were looking at the long term. Soon enough an entire industry would be redundant. There will be no need for Troopers, Tormentors or Incineration Officers, and when that day comes, each one of them needs to have something to live on. Troopers got nothing but their usual salary for putting women on the incineration line. It was their job, after all. So, Balian supposed, the logical thing to do would be to siphon off some of their catch to amateur catchers and take a cut of whatever those guys managed to earn from selling the females on to the elimination centre. Balian wasn't about to start reporting anyone for this. He did not blame them in the slightest. What concerned him most of all was that the catchers being handed more women than they could handle would inevitably lead to mistakes. Slipped bonds, runaways, and soon enough the caves, crevices and hideaways of old Nova would be filled in again. Underground dealers in old-sex and unregistered fem-breeders would likely pay the catchers more than elimination centres would, as well. How many ordinary humans would resist the temptation to take three hundred dollars for a sexually viable female, when the elimination centre offered them only forty dollars a head, regardless of condition?