After the ransack of the rail yard offices she had been sent on again by some quirk of a collapsing bureaucratic system, again in chains as an escaped convict, to the nearest place in need of such labour. She was packed with others into a coal truck on a train guarded by armed soldiers and drawn by a heavily smoking coal-fired engine. The train crossed a wide brown river, crawling slowly across a seemingly endless girder bridge, the sun going down over a waste of red-brown water and a darkening plain ahead. By morning a line of rounded hills had appeared close at hand rising abruptly out of the flat intensely cultivated plain like the bones of the land protruding.
The train had dropped the prisoners at its loading halt near the base of the hills where a bucket conveyor came swooping down to the rail-side tipping chutes. A group of guards bearing heavy clubs were waiting to take the prisoners up to the mine site, climbing a steep track up into a forest of bamboo, warm and damp, rushing cataracts of water spilling into gutters at intervals and the groves of bamboo rustling. Now and then the shadows of the bucket conveyors passed overhead swinging downhill above the tops of the bamboos, or ascending uphill empty. The vegetation thinned out, the bare hillsides closed in around the road, clear felled, then the journey had ended amid a desolation of spoil heaps, rusty corrugated iron buildings and derelict machinery. Two black, brick-arched openings were the entrances to the mine in which Nicola had become a slave labourer.
Now she followed the bobbing lantern reluctantly through the abandoned mine gallery, the chain dangling from her thick leather waist belt swinging heavily between her legs until they came to the lighted doorway which marked the underground living space of her overseer. The overseer was a convict too, condemned to remedial labour for banditry and rape. The pick of the latest female arrivals was his perquisite for so long as her attractions held out.
In her present state, Nicola would not have been a conventional object of desire, but the overseer Meng knew what lay beneath the coal dust. Nicola’s stint at the tubs was her punishment for faltering in his service. The reminder of the brutal labour and the poor food, for which the convicts nevertheless fought with raking nails in their underground prison, had taught her that even the winning of his favour was preferable. He had the power to keep her better fed and better housed. Nicola was terrified of becoming one of the discarded scarecrows he had sent back to the common slave pens. The tally of tubs for each slave was totted up at the end of a week and any who failed to achieve their target were flogged before the rest of the labourers to encourage their efforts. Because of her size, Nicola had been given a man’s target to achieve when she first arrived and had been flogged twice running with the whip that hung at the task-master’s belt, before he had picked her out to be his next concubine.
“Quick!” He made a gesture for speed at his slave girl as he set the lantern on its bracket. She had ducked at the entrance and was now crawling across the floor on hands and knees, boots and kneepads clunking, her chain dragging behind.
“Yes Master!” Nicola grovelled, vividly demonstrating servile obedience. She didn’t want to be given to one of his favourites. She had already been used to reward one or two of the male convicts in that way, and feared even worse if someday she was superseded by a new arrival. All the male criminals had been forcibly sterilised as part of the government’s programme to limit population growth, but the fact only made them more randy, as if to convince themselves that their masculinity was unimpaired. Only the continued favour of the overseer prevented her from being fought over in the underground pens, passed from hand to hand, a juicy newcomer among slaves almost indistinguishable by race or sex.
She began rapidly to undress him, starting with his boots and working up.
“You still have pretty good breasts and a fat bottom.” He bent and patted her here and there proprietarily. Nicola was careful to eat well, conscious of her bodily difference from the starving losers. “A shame to waste you on hauling coal tubs, but you are here to acknowledge your crimes and repay your debt to the people by remedial labour!”
She understood nothing of his words but monitored his tone anxiously while she struggled with his bootlaces. Meng recollected that there was another new one on the alternate shift, an American girl. Idly he wondered if he dared divert the pair of them from haulage to see how they performed together.
Having Mastered the overseer’s boots, Nicola was starting to undo his belt, her cheeks clenching for an instant as her fingers touched the stiff leather. They had felt that more than once. She slid it from the loops and kissed it dutifully, eyes going automatically to his face for his approval. Lolling back on his wooden bunk edge Meng grinned showing gold teeth. He liked a bitch that knew where her rice came from.
Nicola undid his pants and peeled them down. His cock lolled like a fat yellow sausage upon hairless thighs. Fixing her mind upon the needs of survival, she slid forward and put first her lips to it and then her mouth around it, simulating eagerness. There was no doubt that this was not the sort of remedial labour that had been intended. She had found herself trapped in a system fallen into chaos in which she could be ground to dust. She had to use the chance intervention of human lust. She had to keep up the brute’s sexual interest in her.
“Bath time first!” He thrust her off complacently and pointed. Her dusty hair and dirty face had left black smudges on her Master’s belly and thighs, black finger marks here and there. Not unduly abashed, Nicola bobbed humbly; she knew what came next. She drew out the galvanised tub from under his frowsty bed and set it on the rocky floor where a pipe with a brass tap projected from the wall. Drawn off the waste supply from a pump boiler, the water smelt slightly metallic but it was hot and clean and would take soap.
When it was filled she shed her own boots and leather helmet, then unstrapped knee-pads and belt, the heavy chain dropping with a slithering jangle in a heap on the floor. She was banded with lines of white over hips and thighs and between her legs where the straps had been. Stepping into the tub she crouched and then knelt upon hands and knees. Fishing in the water she found a scrubbing brush and a piece of soap, handing them on to Meng in obedience to an established routine. As naked as she, the overseer soaped the well-worn bristles thoroughly then brought the loaded brush down with a wet splat on the summit of Nicola’s coal dust covered rump.
Black soapy rivulets splashed and ran in all directions over dusky curves and a shining pink patch appeared where the soapy bristles had smacked her. Chuckling, he dashed the laden brush this way and that, soapy runlets going down ribs and thighs. A black rivulet running down her bottom cleft into the grimy bush of hair below her pubis gathered and piddled into the tub. Nicola remained a submissive recipient as his attentions widened, only twitching and grimacing a little when his ruthless vigour scoured recent wheals as it recovered inch by rosy inch of her.
Upon her newly exposed pink rump a pair of Chinese ideographs were revealed in a dark red imprint. The men in her batch of convicts had been branded on the cheek when they arrived. Nicola had made shrill protests while the branding iron was being reheated for her, covering her face with so much horror that irritation gave way to laughter and before she could understand what was intended, she was turned upside down and branded on the bottom.
Long before he had completed the disclosure, Meng had an erection that would have enraptured a donkey. Dropping the scrubber into the bath, he used his soapy hands upon the splendidly gleaming curves of haunch and breast, ignoring the rest.
One of his hands slid between Nicola’s slippery thighs, a finger foraging in the forest of damp curls. She jerked as it slid the length of her soapy labia, then she skilfully converted the movement into an invitation, dipping forward until she rested on her elbows, chin over the rim of the bath, her brand-enhanced bottom in the air and knees as wide apart as they would go, feet tucked up over opposite sides.
From the neck up she remained untouched by soap or water, quite ri
diculously sooty, while the rest of her was scrubbed bright pink. Teeth showed gleaming pearly white, red mouth like a wound in her black face as she gasped for breath.
More than one soapy finger was stroking between her legs, parting the soft lips of her vagina and stroking the pink nub of her clitoris. Her Master considered himself an expert at arousing women and no one had ever dared contradict him. All the fingers of one hand were occupied upon her now, spreading her wider, prodding her anal bud slippery with soap, teasing clitoris and vagina, even more slippery, two fingers making wet sloshing noises deep in the slot.
She was spanked playfully by his free hand and squealed obediently, thrusting her bottom higher, almost submerging herself at the other end so that she spluttered momentarily among soap suds. She was laid totally open to him and hardly needed to fake her reactions after long practise in her responses to his sensuous probing.
“Put me in!”
Nicola recognised at least the import of the words, guided by his actions as he slid on his knees into the bath behind her. She reached back between her spread legs and found him pressed close, crowding her forward, bumping her head on the bath side. The bathwater surged to and fro, slopping onto the floor. Nicola struggled to get her head thrust out over the edge of the bath while keeping her fingers on the slippery penis behind her. She heard Meng’s impatient bark and he slapped her bare flanks with his calloused palms, making noisy wet smacks.
Struggling to stay calm, Nicola hollowed her back and re-captured the rearing unruly penis. She brought it down gripped firmly in her fist until it nudged its blunt head in the tightly elastic slot of her vagina. Her face was half white and half black, soapsuds making a dripping beard on her chin. She gritted her teeth as Meng bellowed triumphantly and, through her obediently guiding fingers, his cock began a slow grinding thrust. Its bloated knob spread her inch by inch, outer labia then the inner, then slowly worked its way into her soapy wet channel.
Nicola knew better than to stint her reactions. The brute would expect her to have a hard time in compliment to his manhood. She began at once to hiss and wriggle, gritting her teeth as if in tribute to the effect he was having upon her.
“Aaah... Ohhh... M-master... Ohhh... !” Nicola let her fingers slip away from his shaft. The hot pulsing solidity surging into her needed no further guidance. She spread her thighs in a V instead, trying to part her flesh wider, clutching the rim of the bath. Of course, trapped as she was between the tin sides, her knees were limited in their splay. Fortunately the soap and water provided lubrication for his blood-engorged thickness, but her squeals were not entirely feigned.
The brute began his fast strokes thrusting like a demon. “Master... Ahhh... M-master... Ohhh... !”
Open-mouthed, Nicola held on with both hands as the relentless back and forth surge of his shaft seemed to pierce right through her and her insides dissolved like molten lava. She had no need to fake an orgasm. The rutting overseer bellowed louder, almost drowning her shrieks. He drove deeper and harder than before. The tin bath clanged and grated on the rocky floor beneath them, soapy water splashing in all directions. Each lunge brought his hard hips ramming solidly into her soft cheeks with an audible smack of wet flesh. His heavy balls bounced off her wet pubic bush and retreated, dripping suds. Both of them were now moving in unison. “Ahhh... ooohhh... Master...” Nicola squealed as he gave a great thrust. There was a rumble that rose to a roar in her ears. She surged forward helplessly in a great swash of water and the lantern toppled from its perch and was extinguished as it fell. Meng shrieked once and fell away from her. The bath had somehow upended and Nicola was left scrabbling alone in the dark on a muddy floor littered with rock fragments with a steady sift of dust coming down upon her from the ceiling.
A distinguishable draught of cold air coming along the floor helped her to keep her head. She scuttled on all fours for the exit tunnel, instinctively following the cold touch on her wet and naked skin. Timbers groaning as if in agony helped speed her pace. From somewhere deep within the mine a red glow cast just enough light ahead of her to see the obstacles she had to crawl through. Coal dust billowed overhead in clouds but near the ground the air swept strongly, leading her on between shattered timbers and slithering through narrow crevices between fallen slabs. She followed the draught like a lifeline in a state of constant terror, until at last she burst from between two loosely hanging corrugated iron sheets into open air.
Darkness, pelting rain and vivid sheets of lightning greeted her. She thought she could hear voices screaming in the darkness but the lightning illuminated only crazy shapes and she couldn’t identify where the surface buildings of the mine should have been. Undoubtedly she had emerged from an old entrance only in use for ventilation. She sat alone in the black night. The mine had dissolved into the darkness like an evil phantasm. The evil Meng had been left behind hopefully crushed like a cockroach. Without much of a plan or feeling the need for one, she rose and began to run again, upright now, through the streaming rain, heading instinctively downhill as the easiest direction away from the mine.
Soon she stumbled amid rocks and scrub with failing limbs as the first euphoria wore off. Behind her she heard a metallic clanking and whirring sound. She turned wildly in alarm, seeking to locate the overtaking presence. A black square shape swept towards her out of the darkness. She dimly recognised the hooked extension above even as she put her hands out to ward it off. Swept off her feet she clutched at rusty metal and found herself carried inexorably onward hanging by her hands and dangling helplessly in midair. Before her grip gave out, her wildly scrabbling toes found a rough metal rim and she clung more securely in the darkness, trying to work it all out.
A lightning flash illuminated the object that she had involuntarily boarded. Of course it was one of the buckets on the aerial ropeway that carried the production of the mine down to the railway. She was clinging to a crossbar on the front of the tub her toes on the thick riveted strip round the bottom edge. In the lightning flash she had caught a brief dizzying glimpse of wind lashed treetops below, much too far below. Scrabbling for grip wherever she could find foot or handhold she scaled the swaying tub and hauled herself out on top of the coal just in time, for a tremendous shock rocking the bucket nearly threw her off again. For an instant the framework of a pylon loomed up alongside her and then slid away again into the darkness.
Nicola lay shuddering on top of the coal, shuddering with relief at her narrow escape. The tub picked up speed again, swooped down and then up again, slowing as it banged past another pylon then away again, swooping and rising in the pelting rain and darkness. After a while she ceased to think about the speed. She found a piece of gritty canvas half buried among the coal and curled under it, waiting fatalistically for the wild ride to come to whatever end it pleased.
The sound of roaring water gradually prevailed even over the racket of the conveyor and the rumble of thunder though the lightning still flickered spasmodically illuminating the suspension mechanism and the thick double line of black cable it swung from. The roar of water shook Nicola from her daze. Peering over the side of the bucket, she saw in a sudden flash more vivid than the others nothing but a waste of foaming water below her. The pylon the bucket was now approaching was standing isolated, apparently deep in the flood. Alarmed and frightened, she rose to her knees clutching the tarpaulin, steadying herself precariously on the loose coal as the bucket cleared the pylon with the usual roll and bang of the suspension. It started its next downward swoop but at a terrifying angle. The wind filled the tarpaulin in Nicola’s arms with a crack and before she could disengage herself the great bucket had dropped out from under her and she was tumbling into the dark void like a disabled parachutist.
She hit the water a few seconds before the heavily loaded bucket. From somewhere up ahead came a tremendous Whump, followed by a wall of water that almost overwhelmed her. She surfaced, threshing in the dark and felt herself swe
pt against something metallic. She clung to it, gasping. A tracery of metal struts surrounded her were faintly visible, the structure of the cable pylon. She could feel the current tugging insistently at her body, so painfully she dragged herself upwards and, climbing from girder to girder in the darkness, found herself a safe niche out of reach of the water.
Morning dawned upon a waste of water. Nicola was perched naked on one of the pylons that had carried the aerial ropeway down to the railway. It now stood alone amid the flood and the line down which the coal tub had roared, a wire cable as thick as her arm hung down in a sagging curve that disappeared into the water on both sides. There was no sign of the station buildings and the loading gear. The next pylon to the rear over which she and the tub must have passed seemed to have been swept away entirely, leaving only a few twisted struts above the surface. There was no sign of the laden tub. It too had sunk without trace somewhere beneath the floodwater.
Although it was now daylight, the sun was invisible behind heavy sagging brown clouds. The air was windless and muggy and a thin haze hung over the surface of the water. It was slow to clear, but as the morning wore on more and more of the vastness of the flood was revealed. Where there had been a well cultivated plain there now extended a waste of brown water, a sea without islands but flecked as far as the eye could see with floating debris of every size and form. As she watched hour by hour, it moved slowly in one direction following some inexorable impulse.
Chinese Justice Page 8
