“She can’t see anything behind her at all,” Chuck said quietly to Alexa. “And she doesn’t know you’re here. Anything you’d like to do to pay her back?”
For all the wishing for dire revenge she’d done after Lynette had taken her boots, now that she was presented with an opportunity she couldn’t think what to do.
“Here,” Chuck said as he took down a wide leather strap from a hook and handed it to her. “Don’t you want to whip that ass?”
Well, yes. Yes, she did. “She can’t see me?” she asked in a whisper.
“Not at all,” Chuck replied. “Go ahead, lay one on her.”
Alexa moved a little closer and brought the strap up. She hesitated, savoring the moment, and then brought the strap down as hard as she could across Lynette’s taut, round, right butt cheek. It made a satisfyingly loud noise, followed immediately by a shriek of outrage and pain from Lynette. Grinning wickedly, Alexa brought the strap up again and brought it down on Lynette’s taut, round left butt cheek. Lynette screamed again, struggling uselessly.
“You can keep going,” Chuck said. Alexa took him up on his offer, lashing the backs of Lynette’s thighs, and then her calves. The strap had left wide red marks.
“Go again?” Chuck suggested. Alexa thought for a moment. “No,” she answered. “Now I want her to know it’s me.”
“Go for it,” Chuck shrugged. He gestured for his companions to move away from Lynette. Alexa had one brief moment of wondering what she was doing. Then she moved in, pressing herself up against Lynette and reaching forward to play with Lynette’s breasts. They weren’t quite as big as the skier always tried to make them appear. Alexa pinched the other woman’s nipples and started bumping up against her as if she was fucking her. Lynette squirmed and made complaining noises. It sounded as if the big black bit gag was still wedged between her teeth. Alexa stopped pinching and started caressing. Lynette relaxed a little.
“Isn’t this nice?” Alexa crooned to the other woman. “Mmmm…you have delicious tits, dear.”
Lynette exploded into squirms, struggles and more muffled complaints. Alexa ignored her and kept humping away until she remembered that the three men were watching her. She looked up. They all seemed very interested in what she was doing.
“I really have to be going,” she said. “This was fun, though. Thanks.” She slapped Lynette’s ass as she stepped back.
“Sure you can’t stay a little longer?” Chuck asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Alexa looked at Lynette. “Have fun, girl,” she said, patting Lynette’s rump gently. Lynette still flinched. Well, from the big red marks on her ass and legs she had to be pretty sore. She made a snarling noise.
“It was nice meeting you guys,” Alexa said to the three men. She didn’t wait for a reply. She set out at a trot, heading north, which wouldn’t take her anywhere near her camp. They already knew what direction she’d come from, and she couldn’t do anything about that, but heading off in a different direction might be enough to throw other hunters off her trail if they came across Chuck and his buddies and got to talking. Once she was out of sight of the trading post she turned right, looking for her stream again. It was later in the day than she’d planned on, but she just couldn’t resist rubbing it in with Lynette.
She’d have to move her campsite now. There was no way around that. Word that she was in this area would have to spread. The only question was where could she move to? Right now every place seemed as good as any other place. And she really didn’t know the area all that well.
She came to the stream and stopped to rest for a moment. It was starting to get dark, but she thought she could get back to her camp with a little bit of daylight left. But, she’d have to hurry.
When she saw her camp, she froze. Someone had been here. She always completely covered everything with leaves and pine needles, but now she could see part of her sleeping bag. She faded back into the woods, crouched down, and looked and listened. She didn’t see or hear anything. For a moment she debated gathering up her stuff and getting the hell out of there, but if she did that whoever had been here could come back and know she’d returned. How easy would it be for them to track her? Of course, there was the possibility that her camp had been discovered by someone who didn’t have her on their list, or even just disturbed by some animal, but why take the chance? She still had two caches, and each one had a sleeping bag, and more food. She backed away from her camp slowly and silently, and then set out eastwards.
She spent the night huddled in some underbrush, feeling very uncomfortable. She thought she was somewhere near one of her caches, but she’d have to wait until daylight to go looking for it. The weather was still on the warm side, so she didn’t feel chilled. What she did feel, besides her discomfort, was hunger and thirst. The hot meal she’d had at Smith’s had been filling, but that had been many hours ago. The memory of those plump, tasty sausages, perfect over-easy eggs and delicious home fries was all she had left, and all it was doing was sharpening the hunger pains she was having now.
She sloshed the last few swallows of water around in her canteen before deciding to take just one swig. She’d really have to take more time to think about what she was doing before she went and did it. Having someone discovers her camp, if that was what had actually happened, was a stroke of bad luck, but it was one she should have allowed for. Well, she could recover from that once it was daylight and she could find one of her hidden caches. But she’d have to be more careful
She thought back to what she’d done to Lynette, and that brought a smile to her face…even the part where she humped the skier and fondled her tits. She’d never done anything like that before, but it had felt good. She wondered what Lynette was doing, or having done to her, right now.
With Lynette down, that left only Martina and Naomi to beat. Martina had to be on lots of lists, so the odds of her being run down had to be pretty good. That would leave just Naomi to beat.
Of course, it could all go wrong and she could be captured. She didn’t like thinking about that. If she was, her only hope of winning would be to stick it out and hope that the other girls would bail. It kept coming back to that. And every time it did, it made her all the more determined not to get caught in the first place. She wondered how many lists she was on.
She tried to make herself comfortable, and finally found that the only comfortable position there was sitting with her back against the tree. She drifted off to sleep.
She came awake suddenly and completely. It was early morning, with the sun’s rays streaming in sideways through the trees. She sat still and listened. She heard nothing. Okay, so then what had awakened her? Could it be her mind’s own paranoia? Or was it just that she’d had all the sleep she needed and it wasn’t comfortable enough to go for another five minutes?
Whatever. She got up and looked around. She was hungry and thirsty and those problems could only be solved by finding the cache that had to be around here somewhere. She started searching in a spiral pattern, working her way out from the tree she’d slept against. After an hour, she began to doubt that she was in the right place after all. She rested for a little while and resumed the search. Twenty minutes later, she found what she was looking for. This whole outdoor survival thing was pretty difficult, but the rush you got from getting something right, even a small thing, was incredible. She quickly rummaged through her stuff, pulling out her extra socks and clean underwear. Then she pulled out one of the survival meal packs. It was supposed to heat up on its own if you followed the instructions, so she read the instructions, followed them, and set the plastic package aside for the moment.
She stripped down. Being naked outdoors wasn’t quite as disturbing to her now as it had been previously. She put on her fresh underwear and, after a minute debating the issue, put her shirt and shorts back on over it. She pulled on a fresh pair of socks and then put on her boots. They felt more comfortable with her only wearing one sock per foot.
When she went to check her meal pack, she found it almost too hot to touch. She was hungry enough to hold onto it anyway and tear it open. Hot steam rose from the opened bag, and she smelled chicken and potatoes. When she peered into the bag, she saw that it was more like a stew than anything else. She went to her cache and found a spoon, then settled down to eat. It was surprisingly good, but that might have been due to her being so hungry in the first place. She finished it all off quickly, then topped it off with a long drink from one of the water bottles.
Feeling much better now, Alexa considered what to do next. She now wished she’d taken the time to find out if Smith had any books to sell or lend, but the episode with Lynette had driven it out of her mind. Well, she could tend to her camp chores and then do some more thinking. She retrieved the folding shovel from the cache and set to work. Once the trash and certain other things were buried, she carefully concealed everything else and started hiking. She’d have to learn the lay of the land here, maybe find another stream in case she needed water later, and keep on the move, at least during daylight.
She spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon making a leisurely exploration of the area. There really wasn’t much to see, and so much of it looked like so much else of it that she gave up on trying to memorize anything. She supposed she could develop her own mental map of the place if she had weeks to do so, but even if she was never taken she wouldn’t be here anywhere near that long.
She broke for a quick lunch of a power snack bar and some water. Back in civilization she was used to having some sort of a salad with lunch, and she was already missing the taste of fresh greens. Maybe some of the plants around here were edible, but she wouldn’t know which ones. There had been a book about edible wild plants, and she’d almost added it to her studies, but after leafing through it she decided that it just wasn’t practical. For one thing, the book advertised itself as ‘Edible Wild Plants of North America’. That covered a lot more territory than she really thought would be useful.
She kept exploring, heading generally southwards, and shortly before she planned to turn back for the day she came across the trail. At first she was pleased with the discovery, but almost immediately afterwards it disturbed her. She faded back into the brush and took quick looks to the right and left, up and down the path. There didn’t seem to be anyone in sight. A closer inspection made her think that it was probably a game trail. It was well defined, but narrow, and in places it was overhung by delicate ferns that would have been bent or broken by anyone walking along that way. Given that, it seemed likely that the biggest thing ever to come along this way was a rabbit.
This was as good a place as any to stop and turn back. It was also as good a place as any to take a break for a little while. Alexa found a nice spot that offered a bit of cover along with some shade and sat down. It was almost unbearably peaceful out here. She could hear birds singing in the distance, the faint ruffle of a breeze through the trees, and nothing else. She wasn’t used to so much quiet. Back at home, no matter how ‘quiet’ it got there was always that constant background noise of traffic in the streets. It was always there, even at three in the morning, and you got so used to it that you didn’t even notice it. It seemed now that she could only notice it when it wasn’t there anymore.
And then there was something else there. She heard the sound of footsteps, but couldn’t tell at first what direction they were coming from. Huddling close beside her tree, she waited. She had an almost overpowering urge to run, but until she knew what she was running from, and which way she should go, it seemed wisest to remain still.
“Sure she went this way?” she heard a male voice ask.
“Not anymore,” another man replied. “Even if she was headed in this direction, I don’t think she’d’ve come this far.”
“Damn. So now what?”
The voices were coming from the other side of the tree. Alexa kept very still, listening, trying to control her breathing. Were they talking about her?
“Guess we go back and try and figure out which way she really went. Lemme have a look at the map over here.”
The two men stepped into view barely ten feet away. They were both dressed in rough clothes, both sporting a few days’ growth of beard, both wearing backpacks. They had their backs to Alexa, who slowly, slowly, slowly crept further back behind the tree even as she kept a wary eye on them. One of the men pulled a folded map from his backpack and opened it. His companion moved alongside him so that both of them could read it.
“There’s no doubt she was here at Jackson’s yesterday.” One of the men pointed to a spot on the map. “And Jackson was definite about which way she went.”
Alexa felt a tiny bit of relief. She didn’t even know where ‘Jackson’s’ was, so they couldn’t be after her.
“Yeah,” his companion nodded. “Looks like she was headed this way, but there’s really nothin’ out this way until you get to the main road, and nobody’s allowed to cross that. So she must’ve changed direction somewhere between there and here, but what would make her do that?”
“Maybe she saw somethin’, heard somethin’. I dunno. Maybe she just lost direction. I think we passed her somehow.”
“Wanna go back and try to pick up her trail again?”
“Might as well. But that area’s been walked over so much that pickin’ up a trail ain’t the problem. Pickin’ up the right trail is.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Hold on a minute. I gotta take a leak. Fold this back up, would’ja?”
Peering warily around the tree, Alexa saw one of the men hand the map over to the other and then shrug off his backpack. She had one brief moment of near panic when he started carrying it over towards her tree, but all he did was prop it up against the trunk and then move away to relieve himself. As close as he’d come to her, he’d never even suspected that she was right there, close enough to reach out and touch. She was about to let out a silent sigh of relief when the other man abruptly stuffed the map into the backpack, right in front of her. All she ever saw were his hands, but she saw them closely enough to see the dirt under his nails. He hadn’t folded the map very well, so most of it was sticking out of the pack.