End of Women: Part Six

No Prisoners

"How do you think she knows this place is safe for her?" 

Jay scanned the house from their elevated viewing position, a small hillock just inside the property boundary. They lay flat on their stomachs overlooking the Eastway house, a cool wind flowing over their backs. The windows had been boarded up, painted to obscurity, the doors all nailed shut. It looked absolutely deserted for sure. Lee had a point, though - there was no guarantee the girl could have known this place was safe for her, just by looking.

Ever since the compound shutdown had begun, there had been many an opportunist and profiteer who saw the writing on the wall for women, and at the same time understood how scarcity could make something valuable. Even though mankind had pretty much moved on from women by now, there would still be a niche market for them here and there, perhaps as sex dolls, torture toys, snuff entertainment, whatever those niche interest men might be into. Some of the holding facilities for girls they had managed to keep out of the incinerators in order to sell them had the outward appearance of abandoned, disused homes and buildings. This place could have been one just like that.

"You think she's smart enough to know that?" Lee replied when Jay voiced this to him.

"Probably not by herself, but I'm also pretty sure she wouldn't run straight here like she did without good reason." Jay turned up his collar against the wind. "I'm guessing the hideout we've been looking for is right inside there."

Lee nodded, and reached into his backpack. A moment later Jay did a double-take; Lee had brought a revolver, a real gun, out of his pack.

"What the fuck?!" Jay hissed at him.

"Its alright, its for our protection." Lee insisted. "I had a feeling we might run into more girls than we can lay hands on, and so if they get, you know... fighty, we can deal with them easily."

"We have no idea how to take down more than three girls at once!" Jay shook his head. "We need a real plan, something we can work with. Just shooting every girl in there isn't a plan, and it goes against the whole idea of the Girl-Hunters. We never shoot on sight if we can avoid it!"

"I've got these too." Lee added almost apologetically, producing two stun-guns with fresh loaded chambers. Jay sighed and took one of them himself.

"Alright." He gritted his teeth. "We'll just go in and see what's up. If its too much for us, we back out and go get help. Understood?" 

Lee gave a fervent bob of his head, his eyes wide either with trepidation or palpable excitement.

Together they drew out from behind the hillock and made their way down the path to the house. They walked in the open, daylight streaming down upon them, Jay with a stun-gun held down at the ground in front of him, Lee with his pistol hovering around shoulder height, scanning like something out of star-trek. Jay stepped to one side to examine a rusting husk of an old tractor, whose tires had been slashed up and strips of rubber pulled away clumsily.

"Hey Lee, who d'you think did this?"

Lee did not answer.

"Lee, who do you-"

Jay had turned around, and seen why Lee was not answering. He had his gun trained on the front door. The door was longer appearing nailed shut, but swung open on its hinges, and from inside came a kind of four-legged creature. It took Jay a second to realise it was two girls, one of them the same he and Lee had just released in order to track. She was being held with an arm around her chest and a knife to her throat by another female, an older one, with a blazing look in her eyes. She had auburn, flowing hair and wore a sash of bright purple, but little else. Behind her, lurking around in the darkness of the house, were more girls, more female faces than Jay could count, but it looked like a lot.