by Addison Cain
“You wanna spray this shit before we eat?” said the man who wasn’t August. Unless there were other enforcers who hadn’t said anything yet, Buckeye had decided there were only the two. How long had they been at it, to collect this many debtors in one place?
“Yeah, we might as well.” This was August now. Fucking two-faced cockstain. “Needs to cycle through once before we get there. And I’m not bettin’ our pay they got no way to tell.”
While Buckeye tried to make sense of why an enforcer would be ‘betting their pay’, a new series of sounds painted an equally confusing picture. Bootsteps on sandy dirt outside. Dull thunking and shifting of objects within the cab, which seemed to come from overhead because of the way they’d crammed the debtors in the container. Fluid sloshing from near the open door, and then the clipped report of someone climbing up into the cargo area, getting to their feet.
A truncated liquid hiss came from somewhere below her tied ankles, a muffled yelp right on its heels. The soles of shoes shuffled, and the other sounds repeated, one body over. Buckeye’s pulse leapt like a rabbit at the undefined new threat.
Spray? What are they spraying? What the fuck is this shit?
By the whimpers coming from all sides of her, the shift of limbs at her front and back, the mail carrier wasn’t the only one chewing on fear. Half a dozen more quick streams of some liquid against what she could now guess was fabric happened before Buckeye felt a boot wedging between her legs and those of the woman in front of her. Another strong spritz had the woman squealing, more in surprise than anything else, it sounded.
Reality set in when the boots shifted. Now there was one both in front of and behind her thighs. A hand gripped the top of her head through the hood and Buckeye squeaked, even knowing something was coming. Fingers and thumb swiveled her face toward the ceiling and ssplt!
Liquid splattered the outside of the hood. When her breath sucked fabric in again, everywhere around her mouth and nose was soaked. The scent of pupil-dilating mint and something acrid she couldn’t put name to overwhelmed, and Buckeye coughed into her gag. Others around her did the same, but the boots were moving on. Another spray behind her and the bound man snorted in protest.
In her new panic, there was no stopping her breath coming quick. Whatever they’d doused her with, Buckeye was inhaling by the deep, rapid lungful. No doubt this had been the plan, but what was her other option? Hold her breath until she passed out and it happened anyway?
She was too lost in her own distress to count how many more sprays before the boots moved back to the door. The grind of a chain signaled the sealing of their box, and darkness fermented collective fear all over again.
At least two or three people were crying. Outside, voices moved around the truck, sounding casual and unconcerned. Her own eyes watered, but this time it was from the sharp odor building inside the hood. The horror stories she’d heard about enforcer raids never mentioned anything like this, but in what couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes, the stories no longer mattered.
It started like a buzz. That warmth, low down, past her navel. Buckeye shifted against the jacket straps, where they ran between her thighs, more noticeable now. Itchy.
The buzz opened up to a tingle. She felt loose. Some of her nerves bled away, and her tongue tried the texture of fabric where it wedged between her teeth like a rope. The woman in front of her made a noise. It was only small, and quiet, but something in it had Buckeye taking note of the curve of an ass spooning into her hips.
Her nipples dragged against canvas.
What did they do?
Behind her, an erection nudged.
What the fuck did they do?
A single, hot trickle beaded past the lips of her pussy. A receding part of her knew terror, but now, first and foremost, Buckeye Wheeler was looking to get fucked.
So was everyone else lying bound in the back of the truck.
When the man at her back pressed his cock to her cheeks, Buckeye found herself pushing to meet him, lending friction. The enforcers had stuffed her into the jacket over top of her clothes. Britches still barred the way, but without the intervening fabric, she knew her hips would’ve been angling to get him inside, to reach where she couldn’t scratch.
Her breath came heavy now, and she could hear the same from lungs all around her. A warm backside pressed heavily into her groin, and Buckeye humped at it, mindless, seeking. The man wriggled closer, grinding and grunting, and all she could think of was cock. Holes stretching. Fluids sluicing.
Someone needed to fuck her, and right this goddamn minute.
The dark space was humid with groans. Writhing, restrained bodies. Buckeye saw pink and red and purple behind sticky eyelids. Sweat pooled and fear escalated, along with the need for anyone, anything to ravage her swollen cunt and just get her off already.
It went on, maddening, never enough friction. Not even from her pants, no matter how she tried to rub the seam along her clit. She came to a place of pure delirium, endless tears begging for release that wouldn’t come for who knew how long.
Somewhere in the midst of it, the door rolled up again. Buckeye didn’t care. None of them did. She worked her hips, bearing down on the woman in front of her. The man at her back jerked and hissed through his gag, rutting the heat of his bulge into her crack as though if clothing weren’t in the way, he would’ve had her pregnant already.
Not-August whistled. “Damn, son. Stuff gets right to work.”
Why is this idiot talking? He needs to get in here and help!
“You think they could tell if we, uh … pulled one or two of ‘em out? You know, for ‘personal use’?”
Buckeye groaned the instant she took his meaning and started hollering for his attention around the gag.
Yes. YES. Personal use. Use me. Fuck me, oh god ohgod!
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” said August. “We take ‘em, we get paid, then you can find something to stick your dick in.”
No! Now! Dick, NOW!
The other man grumbled something, but she could only hear August negating him. “Yeah, well I’m gonna need you to keep it together and ride back here anyway. We’re close enough and they’re expecting one driver.”
More muttered complaints, but the door clattered shut. A minute later, the truck rumbled back to life. They were moving. To where, it didn’t matter. No one around her had paused in their striving for relief, and neither had Buckeye. The bounce of wheels over rough terrain made the only difference.
After a time, there was a new struggle of sounds. Somewhere over the general chorus of moaning and teeming flesh, she heard a hurried song of profanity. No gag muffled this tongue, and there was slapping. Flesh on flesh. Dull cries of satisfaction came from under a hood.
Not-August had ignored the other man’s instructions just as soon as he thought the boss was looking the other way. A spike of envy, fueled by mystery drugs, had Buckeye wishing it was her getting pounded, getting the itch scratched.
The only way out was exhaustion, and by the time it came, the smallest chunk of her humanity had gone missing. She didn’t have the presence of mind, there in the humid black cargo box of a truck bound for god-knew-where, to wonder if she’d ever able to get it back.
With a boom and a lurch, Buckeye came gasping out of a ragged sleep. Similar cries went up from the bodies around her. Not-August swore, his voice moving toward the cab.
Her britches were clammy up under the jacket straps and the burn in her bladder was gone. At some point, she’d lost control, but that was the least of her problems.
Two more loud cracks, from outside, closer.
Gunfire?
“The fuck is going on?” the enforcer hollered.
Her eyes popped open when August’s voice came back, raised over engine noise. “Pirates. Pretty sure,” he said. “Probably think we got fuel.”
“Sshhit!”
Other people were coming? Buckeye wriggled, testing the bonds at her ankles. Deals could be m
ade with thieves. If they took out the enforcers.
“I need you up top,” August yelled. “Keep ‘em off our ass. We’re fucking close already, they’ll turn back.”
“Christ.” The other man sounded about as sour as could be on that idea.
“Wayland! Get the fuck up there!”
What in The Vice would make pirates turn away?
More swearing and now grunting as the no-longer-anonymous Wayland either ascended through some opening in the top of the cargo box, or climbed through a window into the cab. She’d never seen more than a darkened square cave in the middle of the night; her assumptions were all she had.
In seconds, another series of cracks assaulted the air. The last two snapped loud and metallic, from the sound of it punching through the roll-up door.
Yes! Yes! Fucking take ‘em down!
August seemed to be aiming for every huge rock and fissure in the ground. The truck canted to one side, and Buckeye’s stomach dropped at the idea of flipping on their side, momentum throwing all those bodies against metal, against each other. No limbs free to brace for impact.
From overhead, a sizzle.
BOOM.
The truck careened.
“Fucking drive! Go! Go!” Wayland’s muffled call came from above the cab.
“I am going! Pay attention!”
What kind of goddamn firepower did they have on this thing? Every one of her muscles clenched tight. Teeth bit into her gag. If she hadn’t already pissed herself in her sleep, it would have happened right then anyway. This shit was why people didn’t drive off into the unpopulated parts of the VT. Where the fuck were they going?
Another rattle of bullets. At least four more struck the cargo box. For the first time, Buckeye was grateful to be lying on the floor.
Then a crash.
Outside, behind them. A rending screech of metal. No more shots.
“Keep going!” Wayland’s voice was closer, but not in the back with the debtors. In the cab again then?
“Who hit ‘em?” August said.
“Fucking vores, man.”
“Fffuuck.”
“Better them than us.”
Buckeye shuddered in the dark. There were reasons she stayed near what counted as civilization in the The Vice. Crossing into those barren stretches of no water, no food … People were made out of meat, too. Just ask the vores.
“One driver,” said August. “I’m still gonna need you in the back.”
“Yeah, let’s just get there already. Fucking alive.”
She could hear Wayland climbing through what she was now positive was some hatch between cab and cargo area. Then the sound of it sliding shut.
Her limbs were rubbery, aching. A knot formed in her throat.
Pirates. Vores. Nothing had stopped the enforcers. Wherever they were taking her, whatever they had in mind, there was no way out.
All she’d wanted to do was go into The Rose for a drink.
The mayhem left Buckeye wide awake to feel the truck rolling to a stop some time later. Thirty minutes? An hour? She was losing her grip on reality, immobilized in the dark like this.
There were voices outside again, but since Wayland had retreated to the cargo box, August must have been talking to someone else, but it was just a garble of tones through layers of metal. A brief exchange before the engine shook itself back to life.
One axle after another, after another, the wheels hit a bump that jolted her already sore right arm and hip against the floor. It felt like the truck was aiming downward, as though driving down a hill, but then it leveled out. And a few minutes later … uphill?
Buckeye searched mental maps of The Vice trying to figure out where they were. Not being able to see daylight the whole time had fucked with her sense of direction.
A final time, the truck made it onto level ground and kept rolling. In the end, it wasn’t any further disturbance that made Buckeye’s fine hairs stand on end. It was the lack.
There was no crunching of rocks under tires. No bouncing floorboards. No low-gear struggle over terrain. They drove, slowed for more stops here and there. Made a few turns. It was the smoothest ride she’d ever felt, and that included some of the highways that were still in fair shape in what was left of Austin. Or Phoenix.
Where in the fuck are we?
Another stop. More downhill. A turn. Down. Turn. Down.
What is this, the seventh circle of hell? Come on!
This time when the wheels stopped, so did the motor. There was quiet. A weird, echoing quiet. Her skin might have crawled right off her bones if it wasn’t for her clothes being in the way. The cab door slammed shut. A few breaths later, someone was working the latch to the roll-up door.
Dim light came through the hood. Buckeye’s pulse sped.
As the door rose, something subtle changed in the air. Even through her britches, she could feel it. August’s voice broke into her welling panic.
“All right, time to listen,” he said, projecting to fill the space. “You’re about to move out of this truck, and we need you to walk down the ramp and go where you’re told without trippin’ and killin’ yourself.”
Rummaging noises clunked near the open end of the box, something Wayland was doing, she guessed. Sweat popped out on her lower back, under her pits.
“We’re gonna come around,” August went on, “and cut you loose at the ankles. Take off those hoods.” Muffled sounds of reaction came from a few of the captives.
“You will cooperate,” he said, words shifting forward and up, probably climbing in to help Wayland. “Or there will be consequences.”
The two men made more small noises. Shuffling of boots. Buckeye existed in a state of static agitation: vibrating in place, her thoughts unable to latch onto any one worry or question.
“You take the feet, I’ll take the heads?” Wayland said.
The only response after a few seconds was a dull clicking sound. A rasp of fabric. A grunt from a gagged mouth.
“All right, get up,” said August.
Quiet.
“I said, get up.”
An oof of wind from lungs and Buckeye heard limbs rearranging themselves. A new set of unsteady footsteps. August addressed them all a second time.
“When I say ‘get up’, I mean get up. Do not make me ask you twice.”
Ask. Pff.
The next few debtors got up, mostly by stumbling, but they managed. It was only minutes before the enforcers started work on the man at her back, various limbs and joints bumping her as he struggled to his feet.
When it was her turn, it took all she had not to buck and flail. To cause even some superficial amount of trouble or pain for these assholes. Her breath hissed through the gag as she felt jostling at her ankles. Eyes had to squint tight as the hood jerked past her ears, over the top of her head.
“Up,” August said.
They’d never mentioned anything about the straight jacket. She was going to have to do this without arms.
Buckeye wanted to just lie there. To get used to the light. To stretch, to let feeling come back into her shoulder. But there were ‘consequences’. Whatever was coming next, she needed the least number of additional handicaps while facing it.
She flopped onto her back, then to her left side. Bent her knees up. Staggered her feet apart like a newborn colt, lurching to get them under her and sit up without hands to brace herself. It happened, but with the opposite of finesse.
The open roll-up door was a blinding rectangle. She widened her stance for balance, eyes watering against the glare, but a hand in her lower back was already herding her toward the edge. Toward a ramp.
When her pupils contracted enough for her to begin making out shapes, absorbing surroundings, the first thing she saw was wrong. And the second thing. And the third.
All wrong.
At the head of the ramp leading down from the truck, another man stood with a hand out, ready to guide. To prod her along like livestock. He wore some uniform of solid
grey, crisp and immaculate, a silver cross patched onto the upper sleeve.
At his hip was a weapon. Odd-looking. Not quite a baton, something more complicated. Something with a business end she had no interest in meeting.
No one dressed like this. No one had clothes this nice. Or clean.
She pitched toward the ramp, legs still trying to remember what sturdy was. A woman lumped down ahead of her, and behind her she could hear more faltering steps. The uniformed man swept her past with a distracted hand, his focus on the cargo area behind her.
A strong smell of unwashed body, of failed bladder, hit her the moment she left the truck proper. Or rather, the violent sterility of the air outside made the contrast bitter and sharp.
Four more men—guards?—in the same grey uniform blocked out an area to the side of the ramp where the unfortunates were accumulating. As she’d guessed, everyone stumbling out of the truck had done so in a jacket like hers. Some of them looked ill. Others had wild eyes. A few looked like the dead, standing.
Buckeye joined them, too lost for anything else. She turned to watch the rest come down the ramp, but found herself scanning their surroundings, instead.
Almost everything was grey here. Walls, ceiling, floor: all concrete, but in far better shape than the mail carrier had seen in any part of The Vice. Banks of lights marched away along the ceiling, which wasn’t much higher than the top of the truck. Other vehicles sat parked at a distance, glossy under the lights like malicious insects. Entirely free of rust.
It was neither hot nor cold in this place.
It was wrong.
She might have called it a parking garage, but again … way too clean. And no one appeared to be living here.
A loud squawk came through a gag, and Buckeye’s attention ripped from sterile concrete. On the way down the ramp, a dark-haired woman put her foot at an odd angle on the lip at the edge. Ankle turned, limbs twisted, and she fell, shoulder hitting the ground to knock out a grunt of pain.
The guard at the top of the ramp jumped down, bending and reaching to help. Buckeye saw the fire flash in the woman’s eyes and cringed for what would come next.
The woman hauled a knee to her chest and kicked out with whatever was left of her strength, her foot landing square on the guard’s shin. Flipped to her belly with some last reserve of dexterity and tried to get her feet while the man clutched his smarting leg.
