It was just after sunrise. Alexa trudged along through the woods, heading west, back towards civilization. She felt unusually tired, and knew it was from the extremely irregular hours she'd been keeping. Back home, she liked to keep to a regular schedule, and she was way off of anything that might be called regular now. What she wanted to do was lay down for a nice, long sleep, but that wouldn't help her reset her internal clock and would just lead to more problems down the road. No, better if she just pushed herself to stay awake until sometime after nightfall and then went to sleep. She had enough food for two more days, her water bottle was full, and there ought to be another little stream up ahead where she could refill it if she needed to. All she had to do for now was avoid any prowling males, and she was pretty sure that she could do that. But then, after two days, or maybe three, she'd have to stock up on food again, which meant she'd have to go into one of those little towns. She wasn't sure if doing that would not affect her time, or be deducted from her time, or reset it all the way back to zero. Will hadn't been able to tell her about that. She didn't want to have to start all over again, but she wasn't sure if she could raid someone's camp and take what she needed without being caught either.
At least she was off to a good start. Men, and women, too, all along the road running from Gordburg to End knew her name, what she looked like, and what she was trying to do. She ran a hand over her short, short hair. No one was likely to mistake her for anybody else, or anybody else for her. She paused by a tree and looked around, listening for any noises that didn't belong. There weren't any, so she started walking again. She didn't have any particular destination in mind, which was just as well because she wasn't sure where she was anyway. All she knew was that she was somewhere between The Farm and End, and if she kept heading west sooner or later she was bound to find something. After a little while, though, she just had to sit down and rest.
She thought back to all the things she'd seen at The Farm. It was clearly a hard and brutal place, and yet some females apparently chose to go there and endure the abuse and torture. Why would they do that? Wasn't an orgasm an orgasm, no matter how you got it? Well, maybe not. Maybe there was more to it than just getting off. Last year she'd discovered that she had an unsuspected exhibitionist streak, one that had been easy to indulge in while she was being kept naked in a cage with strangers lining up to have a look at her. Will had introduced her to bondage and submission, and she'd found that she liked it, so long as it was a strong and determined man dominating her. She'd known that some women went in for more extreme activities. It was almost impossible to go online and not stumble across some of those, but until last night she'd never actually watched anything along those lines occur in real time. She was still pretty sure that that stuff wasn't for her, but it had been awfully interesting to watch.
She caught herself starting to doze off and forced herself back to wakefulness. She didn't have any hot coffee, or even any coffee at all in her backpack, but she did have some pricey energy drinks in very small bottles. She got one out of her pack and downed it in one gulp. A little while afterwards, the feeling of lassitude that had been creeping up on her was gone, and she felt more awake and alert. She'd have to be careful not to drink too many of those things, or she might find it hard to get to sleep when she wanted to. She'd known people who practically mainlined the drinks, and after a while they all got jittery and disoriented. Everything had a cost associated with it, and only a fool thought that it didn't.
The day wore on. For a while Alexa was able to keep heading westerly by keeping the sun behind her, but as it got towards noon that trick stopped working, so she picked a sheltered spot and stopped for lunch. It wasn't the best lunch she'd ever had, but by then she was hungry enough that it still tasted pretty good. She downed another energy drink to keep from falling asleep while she waited for the sun to pass far enough to the west for her to follow it. She still had no clear idea where she was, and when she started walking again she felt physically tired.
After a while, she came to a cluster of ruined buildings. All of them were missing their roofs, and any glass that had once been in their windows was long gone, along with the doors. Some of the buildings had small trees growing inside of them. The biggest building was two stories high, with crumbling brick walls. It looked as if it had been a small factory a long time ago. Alexa began poking around, mostly for the sake of something to do. She found an old and rutted dirt road leading off to the northwest and wondered where it led to. She also found two large wooden structures that looked something like dumpsters, except that they sat on stubby legs. They'd been painted drab brown, and their hinged tops were padlocked shut. The padlocks weren't rusted at all. In fact, they looked almost new, and this piqued her curiosity. What could possibly be in those bins that warranted locking them up? And why were they out here? She poked around some more, and behind one of the decrepit buildings she came across something she hadn't been expecting at all. Piled up against the old cinderblock wall, like a deep snowdrift, was a huge pile of women's clothing. She saw everything from jeans to skirts to shirts to blouses, and even a scattering of underwear, bras and panties in every shade from white to pastels to black. Around the edges of the pile she could see the odd shoe, usually something cheap and expendable, and she snickered. Apparently the women who came here gave up their clothes but couldn't bear to part with their shoes. She pictured naked females strutting around out here in heels. It was almost a funny enough picture to laugh at, but it was just possible enough to be true, which somehow made it less funny. She could walk in heels, but didn't wear them as a rule, even when she was out on the town. Heels would be the last sort of footgear she'd want to be wearing in the woods.
She looked at the pile again. It was impressive. Some of the clothing looked as if it had been out here for a while. Whatever was at the bottom of the pile had to be pretty moldy. So why had this been done, anyway? Was it part of some strange Gordburg subculture?
Poking around the rest of the site turned up half a dozen old firepits, a long, tall pile of split logs under a drab green tarp and one empty crushed beer can wedged between some tree roots. There were cleared areas around the fire pits, the ground trampled flat and packed hard. One of the roofless old buildings had had its empty windows bricked up. The floor inside of it was smooth cement, cleaner than any of the floors in any of the other buildings. Okay, this was now officially interesting. Something apparently went on out here, something that women came to and became females for by shedding their clothes, but not all of them their shoes. And then what? Men probably came here too, but what for, aside from the females? Alexa frowned. Did kinky group orgies occur out here? It wouldn't surprise her if they did. From the fire pits, she guessed that they took place at night, but how often? Will had never mentioned anything like this. If he really didn't know anything about it, these were probably private parties of some sort. And if he did know about it and hadn't told her it was probably because he didn't think she'd find out about it.
Her stomach growled. It was time to eat something, but there was nothing in her pack that particularly appealed to her. She had a fistful of granola bars, a couple of military-style meal packs and some chocolate. Normally she liked chocolate, but not when it was room temperature... or outdoors temperature. The meal packs were both chicken a la king according to their labels, and she was in no hurry to find out what they tasted like. She settled for a couple of granola bars. She could find out about the meal packs later when she had one for supper. The beef stew ones had been pretty good.
Sitting for too long made her start to feel sleepy again, but rather than take another energy drink she stood up, took off her pack, and did some exercises. After a few minutes of vigorous activity to get her blood pumping she switched over to bending and stretching. When she finished she felt more awake and alert. Maybe it was time to look for a nice, safe spot to bed down for the night.
The sound of an engine filtered through the woods. It had to be coming along that narrow, rutted road she'd found. For a moment, Alexa dithered between getting out of here and finding a good place to see what was happening. In the end, her curiosity won out. She found some cover behind a blackberry thicket and hunkered down to watch. Shortly afterwards, a battered old pickup truck lurched into view with two older men sitting in the cab. They came to a stop near the big wooden bins and got out. While the driver went to the back of the truck and threw back a tarp, the passenger went over to one of the bins and began groping underneath it for something. As Alexa watched, he pulled out a key from under the bin and used it to unlock the padlock. He swung the lid up so easily that Alexa thought that it had to be on springs. The driver came over carrying two cases of beer and put them into the bin while the passenger went to the back of the truck to unload more cargo. Both men were dressed in the sorta-cowboy outfits that marked them as Gordburg employees.
“This beer'll be warm by the time they get here,” the passenger observed as he put his load into the opened bin.
“It's up to them to bring the ice,” the driver said. “If they forget, they can drink the stuff warm.”
Alexa watched as the two men loaded first one bin and then the other with cases of beer, bags of salty, crunchy snacks, more cases of what appeared to be canned goods and other things she couldn't quite make out. When they were done, they closed and locked the bins, stashing the keys somewhere underneath them. She waited until they got back into the truck and drove away, then waited for a little bit longer before she came out from behind her cover and approached the bins. She reached under the first one as she'd seen the men do and soon found a small metal box with a sliding lid attached to the underside. There was a key in the box. She looked around quickly to see if anyone was around before she unlocked the bin and opened it. The first thing she did was reach out to feel one of the beer cans. It was cold. Not as cold as if it had just come out of a refrigerator, but still pretty cold. It would take it a while to get warm, but there was always a chance that someone would come here early, so she moved quickly, taking one six-pack of Tecumseh and a couple of bags of chips. She wanted to see what was in the sealed cardboard cases, but while a missing six-pack might be shrugged off as the deliverymen taking it for themselves and the bags of chips never missed, a torn-open cardboard box might raise too many questions. She closed the bin, locked it, and returned the key to its hiding place. Carrying her loot, she faded back into the woods, found a sheltered spot behind a fallen tree, and popped open one of the beer cans. The longer she waited to treat herself the warmer it would get, so why put it off? As she enjoyed the beer, she thought about what to do next. There were too many possibilities, and they each had their own appeal. She could finish her beer, or carry it with her, and hike on past this peculiar place, putting it a safe distance behind her before settling in for the night. Or, she could stay here and wait until whatever was going to happen here later started to happen and then watch the festivities. As curious as she was about that, it would throw off her plan to get a good night's sleep, even if she could stay awake. Or she could stay here, find a good place to sleep where she was unlikely to be stumbled upon by amorous couples – or triples, or quadruples – and sleep through it all. Then some time tomorrow, after all of the partygoers had left, she could sneak back and raid the bins for whatever was left behind. That might solve her food problem for a while, or it might not, if nothing was left, but it was at least worth considering. She took another gulp from the can of beer. It was really good beer.
The sounds of celebration woke her. She looked around quickly, but didn't see anyone nearby. She could hear lots of people though. The sounds were coming from the direction of the abandoned buildings. Over the babble she could hear wild and excited female laughter.
It was almost nighttime. The last thing she could remember was finishing off the beer and maybe opening another can before it got too warm. She must have fallen asleep in spite of her determination not to until later. From the looks of things, she'd only been asleep for a couple of hours. From how she felt, she knew she'd have to get more sleep later if she didn't want to crash and burn. For now, though, she very much wanted to see what was going on over there, and since she was already awake...
It wasn't that hard to sneak up on the site. No one there was paying attention to much outside of the glow of the fires. Alexa gave up trying to count how many people were there after only a few minutes. They kept moving around and the flickering firelight made it too difficult to keep track. There seemed to be a roughly equal mix of men and women. She could hear a sound system somewhere pumping out some repetitive tune, and many of the people were dancing to it. For some of them, the dancing appeared to be a form of foreplay. Every so often, Alexa caught sight of a black-clad proctor moving through the crowd. She thought that there might be three of them.
She settled down next to a big old tree and peered around the trunk. Aside from the proctors, everyone seemed to be dressed for casual clubbing, and they all seemed to be in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Alexa had some experience with club-hopping back in the city, and the crowd looked as if they would all fit in with that scene. So what were they doing out here in the woods? Didn't Gordburg have some place that they could go in town? Well, not in the older part of the town, certainly, but wouldn't the newer part have one? The more she thought about it the less sense it made. She saw some couples begin to drift away from the bonfires, heading in the general direction of the pile of clothes she'd seen earlier. In every case, the man had a grip on the woman's hair, and none of the women seemed to be objecting at all. This had to be some kind of strange subculture.