I didn't know how long I'd been sobbing, sitting in the sand, my arms wrapped around my shins, my face pressed against my knees. A new sound broke through the barrier of sorrow I'd enclosed myself in.
Even before I identified the sound, I felt the rain pelting. It was a heavier rain than I'd ever seen at home. The shoreline, just ten yards away, was nearly invisible.
I cried harder, still more miserable, until a more important thought broke through: that's water! Water I can drink!
I looked up and opened my mouth. I put my hands over my eyes — it was raining so hard that it hurt my eyelids. I tilted my head forward just enough to stop the water from streaming into my nose, then I swallowed as quickly as the water filled my mouth.
Soon I felt almost euphoric, my most desperate need fulfilled. I looked around. I needed to get under those trees.
I took a step toward the trees, and stopped. I was able to think again, and a question had been nagging at the back of my mind: what was Andrew getting out of this? He wasn't in the van, and couldn't have been in the boat that had brought me here... I realized now that the swaying I'd felt during the second half of the trip was that of a boat on the water. It took me an entire day to get here. Andrew couldn't have just abandoned his job and Dad in the hospital that long without raising suspicions. He has to have stayed in town, and spent time with Dad. How can he even be sure I'm here now?
I looked all around for what I knew must be there... there! About twenty feet from me, propped almost invisible against a rock. In small steps limited by the hobble chain, I moved to the object, picked it up. I nodded to myself. Satellite phone. Able to work here where a cell phone wouldn't. Its camera aimed directly at the place I had first awakened.
I laughed suddenly. That idiot! He wanted so much to see me wake up here, to see my first reaction when I realized where I was, that he left me a communication device! I can call for help with this!
I didn't want the phone to get any more wet than it already was, so I turned and took a first running step toward the bluff, behind which the trees towered. In mid-step my stride was cut short by the hobble chain and I sprawled on the sand. Getting up again and walking more carefully, I climbed over the three-foot erosion barrier and scuttled under the nearest trees.
It didn't help much. The rain, though slowed by striking against leaves on its way down, still had to reach the ground eventually. Anywhere I stood I was showered by several mini-waterfalls. It was just as wet as out in the open.
Sighing, I examined the phone. It had a normal-looking keypad. I wasn't sufficiently familiar with this type of phone to know whether I could reach an ordinary phone with it, but I needed to talk to someone, somewhere.
I tentatively touched one of the keys, and jerked my finger back. I'd felt a mild shock, more surprising than painful. Seconds later, I smelled a strong stink of burning insulation. No! I thought. NO!!
The power light, illuminated before, was out. The small display screen had gone dead. There was smoke curling out of a small hole in the side of the phone. I tried pressing keys again for several minutes, but it was obvious the thing was wrecked. It had been tricked up to self-destruct if anyone tried to use it.
Furious, I heaved the phone as far as I could, and watched it splash into the surf. Andrew has what he wanted. He has video of me waking up on Purity Island. He can happily fantasize everything that happens after.
I remembered that family dinner well. Dad, in his continuing attempt to establish a homey family life, was hosting the once-a-week ritual in the dining room. I was searching for a topic of conversation to interrupt the bonding going on between Dad and Andrew — boring business talk. I'd launched into my current subject of fascination, the plight of the slaves on Purity Island, and the school report I'd just finished typing about it.
Andrew, showed a rare amount of interest in anything I had to say. I described the naked, chained slaveboys on the island. Andrew seemed to be positively glowing when I related the story of Sean Parton, the college student trapped and abandoned to a lifetime of slavery.
"He probably spent twenty years there, you said?" Andrew's eyes were wide.
I nodded. "Of course, the farmers don't keep records about how long they've kept any one slave, but the sociologists have seen the prey in the places where they're skinned, and they look about forty or so. Same age they'd be snuffed here. It's possible all the hard work might make them look prematurely older."
Andrew laughed. "That is so cool! Not exactly what he expected when he signed up for the trip, was it?"
I slapped my fork down on the table. "It is not cool. He had his whole life in front of him and it got taken away from him!"
Andrew laughed again. "Sounds like he had just as long a life there."
I knew my face was red. My fists were clenching. "He was going to be a teacher! He lost everything he was working for!"
Andrew just grinned. "Did they say if he was really cute?"
I stood abruptly, my chair skidding back behind me. "Dad, may I be excused?" Without waiting for a reply, I stalked off to my room.
Andrew must have realized he could never keep me with him in that dungeon. Too dangerous. With everybody out looking for the first-ever stolen Hanging Boy, he had to know they'd figure it out sometime. So he switched to plan B. Another long-time fantasy of his, one that entailed no danger to him but just as much satisfaction. He knows I'm here. He got to see me wake up, got to see my reaction when I realized where I was. Permanently recorded on video he'll watch many times, no doubt. From now on he can just imagine my day-to-day life. He'll go to work in the mornings with a smile on his face, go to bed at night with that same smile.
I wondered for a moment why Andrew hadn't just arranged to hand me over to the first available farmers on the island. But I answered the question for myself. He wants me to go through the terror first. The fretting about how long I can stay free. The fear of what will happen when I finally get caught.
A sudden insight told me why I had those three links of chain hanging down from my collar. I smiled bitterly. An artistic touch, I admitted to myself. It looks like I was secured by the chain and it broke, and that's how I got away. I'm not just an available prey anthro. I've already got the metal cuffs, the collar, the hobble chain. I'm sure they're authentic, from the same company that supplies them to the island. To all appearances, I'm not a newcomer, I'm an escaped slave. I'd read about the punishment for escaping. Or for major insubordination, or any other "crime." Not execution and skinning. Slaveboys are too valuable to throw away before they're used up. Instead, the punishment would involve a lot of pain.
A chill swept through my body; I squatted and folded my arms across my chest, shivering. It was still quite warm despite the rain. The chill was purely internal. I can't possibly get home on my own. There's two hundred miles of water between here and there. Nobody who wants to find me, or even wishes me well, has any idea where I am, and there's no reason they would ever think to look here. The only people here who have the power to affect my fate are going to force me into a lifetime of misery on sight.
And the slave tracker was useless here. Its signal could be picked up by any of the receiving towers around the city — but only if the slave was within fifty miles of one. I was far out of range of any tower in the network.
This is worse than anything I imagined Andrew doing to me. And I don't think he even hates me, not really. It's not about that. It's all just a game to him, to play with my future. A game of wrecking my life. And he's won.
No!! I screamed to myself. Damn it, no! He hasn't won yet. I won't let him!
Wait! I thought suddenly. Traders! From the mainland! They come here! I had no idea how often, but I knew they came to the small towns along the eastern shore. If I could hide out until I saw a trade ship, I could rush out of cover and beg them for help...
No. They'd probably take me as a slave of their own. A shipboard slave. Kept in chains belowdecks, for sex, not work.
But they'd know what a Hanging Boy is! I can identify myself, and even if they haven't heard of me, they'll know I'm more valuable to them than any ordinary slave. They'd know there's a big reward involved in returning me, and I can promise to put on a free, non-fatal show for them after they take me back. A private party, including bedroom service. Yes!! That will work! If they can have the sex and the money too, they'll know they're better off turning me in.
I am on the east side, right?
The roller coaster of my emotions hit a downslope again. Even though taking me to the far side of the island would have required the boat to go dozens of miles out of its way, I was sure Andrew had insisted on that. There would be the entire width of the island, including a small mountain range, between me and help. The sky was overcast; I had no idea where the sun was, had no way to distinguish east from west. But I felt strongly I must be on the west side. The wrong side.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to get off the roller coaster. Worry about that later. First, I have to eat.
The ground beneath my feet was partly bare, partly covered with an ivy-like growth, and mostly covered in puddles and tiny running streamlets. I began walking slowly through the trees parallel to the shoreline. I had to keep my feet high to keep the hobble chain from dragging through the ivy and tripping me, and I stepped across puddles whenever the chain allowed me. Every few steps I paused to listen for intelligent sounds, checked for any signs of a trading town or other settlement.
As I walked, I felt the weight of my cuffs and collar and heard the clinking of my chains and padlocks. That's good, I decided tentatively. It keeps reminding me. I don't want to forget the situation and let my guard down.
Perhaps half an hour into my walk, I heard the sound of rushing water, different from the noise of the waves. Looking ahead through the trees, I saw a river across my path.
My shoulders slumped. I can't cross that. The river was about thirty feet wide. There was no way to tell how deep it was, but probably anything more than knee deep would sweep me out into the ocean. I wasn't sure I could swim with all that hardware.
I hated the idea of turning back, and knew I'd soon run across another river either way.
The sky was lightening over the ocean. I sighed. At least maybe I'll be out of this rain before long.
Then I realized. I'm not on the mainland, , I'm on a small island! Continental rivers might be hundreds, even thousands of miles long, carrying the water from all of the many storms constantly dumping water into their drainage valleys. But no river here could possibly be longer than about ten miles. As soon as it stops raining on the island, the river will drain out within hours!
I was hungry and reluctant to wait out the storm. But I couldn't see any other choice.
I took the opportunity to pee. At least I didn't have to lie in it for hours afterward, like in that box. I peed on the ground. I hope I don't get so much into this habit that I just spontaneously pee wherever I'm standing when I get back home.
I moved a few paces away from the puddle of urine, and sat on the soggy ground, my back against a tree.
I felt a stone underneath me and moved a few inches over. I picked it up and looked idly at it. I gasped as I saw I'd misidentified it. It was a nutshell! About an inch and a half in diameter, with an equatorial ridge, looking a lot like a walnut. There were dozens on the ground around me, and more hanging from the tree above. I've probably been ignoring hundreds of these as I walked.
I tried cracking the shell with my thumbs, then my teeth. I set it on a stone and smacked it with my wrist cuff. No luck. Then I grabbed a fist-sized rock and pounded the shell with it. Success. I fumbled with the gnarled nut and slapped it into my mouth as I reached out for another nut with my other hand.
I lost count of how many I ate, and ended up sitting back at last with a sigh in a litter of cracked shells. I can eat here! There would also be peaches somewhere, one of the island's main exports, but those would be nearer to habitations. But these nuts, they're probably everywhere.
The rain had stopped while I was eating, and patches of blue sky showed through puffy, gray-white clouds over the ocean. The river was still rushing by in front of me, but it wouldn't block me much longer.
The air was quickly warming again, and sweat was beginning to mix with rainwater on my skin. At last the sun shone through a break in the cloud cover. I bit my lip, trying to decide what its position was telling me. I decided it was now late morning, the sun nearly overhead. I'd have to wait longer to determine which way it was going.
An idea occurred to me, I reached out and grabbed a nearby stick, and thrust it upright into the dirt. I scraped away the ivy over the stick's abbreviated shadow, and scraped a mark in the mud at the end of the stick's shadow.
Minutes later, the shadow end had moved toward me, away from the ocean. I closed my eyes, sighed, and gritted my teeth. I knew it, I moaned. I'm on the west side of the island. I might as well have just assumed that to start with. Andrew wanted the whole width of the island, and more to the point, the whole dangerous population of the island, between me and even a small chance of escape.
I stood and looked inland. There was nothing to be seen other than trees. No way to tell how far away the island's central ridge was. My memory said about eight miles away. Normally I might have walked there in a couple of hours, but travelling, in small, careful steps like this, it would take more like twelve hours. Not something I could finish today. I'd have to spend the night in the middle of this forest.
And all that time was just to get to the halfway point. Under the best of circumstances, I'd need two days, maybe three, to get across to the eastern shore.
And there are a lot more people in the eastern half. I need to be even more careful when I get there.
I looked back at the ocean, feeling an odd reluctance to leave the shoreline, though there was nothing there that could help me. Maybe I don't want to leave the food. Stupid, I told myself. These nuts will be everywhere. And peaches, when I find them.
Slapping my butt to get myself going, I set off into the forest, upstream near the riverbank.
As I walked, I tried to decide whether I'd overlooked anything that might spell early rescue. There is at least one person to whom the police will talk who does know where I am — Andrew.
I admitted to myself that that really wasn't much help. There was no physical evidence that proved he had anything to do with my abduction. They'll search his dungeon and won't find me. He'll be cooperative up to a point, then coldly tell them he'll sue if they continue harassing him without cause.
I thought that the absence of my tracking signal might, by itself, point to this island as a possible location, so conveniently out of range of the tracking system. But I thought further, and realized that was no help. Everybody looking for me will have their minds set on dungeons, the perfect signal-blockers. After they find I'm not in Andrew's, they'll still assume I must be in one somewhere. They'll go through records of recently-built dungeons, maybe search some, will check to see if any of them have a connection with Andrew. There are so many places I could be hidden away underground. The idea I could be on Purity Island won't occur to anyone. The only people who would know any reason why I might be abandoned here are me, Andrew, and maybe Dad. I can't tell anybody. Andrew won't. Dad probably won't remember that school paper or the dinner.
I groaned as I suddenly remembered how close I had come to leaving behind a connection between me and Purity Island. That day in the caf, when Julius came in thinking there were Purity peaches available. I almost launched into the whole story of where Purity peaches come from and why they're called that. And about the horrible lives slaveboys live here. I might even have told him about Andrew's reaction to the subject. But even if I didn't mention that, there would have been that link. Julius would have a Wynn/Purity Island connection in his head. When he heard that Wynn had disappeared from electronic tracking, Julius might have thought of Purity Island and asked, "Say, have they checked there?"
Not at all likely, I decided. But impossible now. I never had that conversation with Julius. There wasn't time. Damn!
When they follow Andrew around and he never leads them to me, they'll have growing doubt that my kidnapping has anything to do with him. They'll start looking for other leads.
After a few weeks of dead ends, they'll probably suspend the search. Pending new information.
There!! I thought excitedly. I found some!
I restrained myself from grabbing the nearest peach, the Purity peach for which the island was mainly known. The color doesn't look quite right, not like the ones I'd seen in the grocery. But there, that one! I reached for it, barely touching it before it fell into my hand. I bit into it eagerly, closed my eyes and sighed. The peach's sweetness and juiciness made my mouth tingle. A feeling of pleasure nearly orgasmic in intensity washed over me.
I ate three of them, then knelt by the river to chase the fruit down with a long drink of water.
There was no sign of any farm around, so apparently the things did grow wild. Obviously I can survive here as long as it takes, if I can just avoid getting caught. I've got the nuts, peaches, water...
My train of thought was interrupted: I'd known a bowel movement was going to be required eventually. My body now insisted on it.
My first thought was to shit in the river, but I remembered: it's my drinking supply. Instead, I left it at the base of a tree, and used a handful of ivy leaves to wipe myself. Okay, I've gone through the entire cycle of life now. Let's move on.
LATE AFTERNOON
I trembled, my heart pounding, as I breathed rapidly in and out with my mouth wide open, for quiet. I'd nearly walked right into it.
I heard the sound and froze between one step and the next. I dropped to the ground, and lay on my stomach between two peach trees and behind a small bush. I couldn't move from here without risking exposure. Anywhere else I would have heard it sooner, but there was some type of cricket. It made the interior parts of the island almost as noisy as the pounding surf by the beach.
I guess I'm still lucky for all that noise. Without it, they probably could have heard me coming.
I was on the outskirts of a farm, probably one of the outlying parcels forming part of a co-op.
In front of me, two slaveboys toiled in an open field, preparing the field for planting. Each was working with something like a scythe, dragging it along the ground to make a single furrow in the soil. It's going to take them days just to finish this one field, I thought.
To my left, two more slaves were digging with shovels at the base of a tree. A shrew was cutting through the trunk of another tree with a saw. They're expanding the field, I realized. All of the farms had probably started in small natural clearings, made bigger over the years by removing trees from the periphery.
As I'd written in my report, the settlers didn't have much interest in labor-saving devices. There was no hurry to life on the island, no motivation to speed things up, and the farms could be operated with labor-intensive methods because the farmers had all the labor they needed. And the slaveboys didn't have a say in how things were done.
Two more slaveboys were picking peaches, in the very same copse where I lay hidden. Each peach picked was dropped into a wide basket. As I watched, one of the slaves lifted his now-full basket by its handles, with an effort, and staggered across the field with it.
Luckily, it wasn't long before sundown. At the rate the peach-pickers were going, they weren't going to reach where I was before sunset. Assuming they continued at the same speed.
All of the slaves in view were naked, each wearing the same cuffs, same collars, same hobble chains as me. Their bodies were shiny with sweat, streaming down their stomachs, backs, legs, dripping from faces. There was one horse pulling a wagon with a water barrel through the fields. The other slaveboys drank from it when it came by.
Not surprisingly, all of the slaves had fit, strong-looking bodies, their muscles well-defined. Like mine. I shuddered. One more way that I look like an escaped slave.
I saw one thing I hadn't expected. All of the slaves had their hair cropped very short, barely an inch long — and a little haphazardly, shorter in some patches at random, as if it were done very quickly with scissors by someone not especially skilled at it. Okay. my hair won't look right to them. But that could easily be explained by the theory that I'd been running loose for several months.
Near the slaves cutting down the trees was the source of the sound I'd heard — my good luck: without the noise, I might have blundered right into the middle of the field. Nearby was an open-sided shed — really just wooden roof supported by poles at its corners. Inside was the first predator I'd seen on Purity Island. He was dressed in a sleeveless vest and shorts, a floppy hat, and shoes, all made of prey-leather.
The settler was cutting logs from felled trees into two-by-fours, with a very loud circular saw. Three slaveboys on stationary bicycles, facing almost directly toward me, were pumping the pedals to power the saw. They worked without a break for all the time I'd been watching. Two of the three were veterans, judging from their well-muscled legs. They worked with blank expressions, their job something that simply had to be done to get through the day. The third, a nutria, looked younger and newer. His legs weren't developed in the same way as the others. He looked hardly older than eighteen, very likely pressed into slavery after a very recent release from the breeding farm pen in which he'd spent his childhood. He would have been very pretty at rest, but not now; he looked exhausted and as though he were trying to fight off tears.
All of the slaves I could see had paddle marks on their buttocks, in most cases old and mostly faded. The young nutria's marks were much fresher and redder. As I watched, the nutria seemed to slow his pedaling; the woodworker picked up a paddle and gave him a couple of quick swats with it. The young nutria cried out and began pedaling faster.
I choked back a cry as a movement across the clearing startled me. There were two dogboys trotting vigilantly around the periphery of the field, each on his four shortened limbs. They weren't easily seen at first; it was dark in the forest. That same dimness had protected me from being seen. The dogboys wore something like leather booties covering the ends of their four legs. I suspected the booties had to be replaced fairly often. The dogboys were watching each group of work slaves intently. All the slaves were working busily, so the dogboys were not aggressive.
Watching the dogboys, I had to blink to believe what I was seeing. I had seen puppyboys before; there'd been one particularly cheerful one, with long blonde curls, who had licked my hand while I waited in line at the mall for movie tickets. The puppyboy had wagged his surgically modified tail and grinned up at me. The dogboy's mistress had given him a tug on his leash and a light swat on his behind, and reminded him not to get fresh with strangers. I'd told the femme I didn't mind, and received a friendly smile in reply.
But these dogboys... in the context they were in, with the job they were doing, somehow one expected them to be actual dogs. It was disconcerting to see their modified bodies, anthros with normal people faces and chests, and see their genuinely boyish faces as they patrolled the field.
I looked to my right, expecting... yes, there he was, a third dogboy in the peach orchard, near the slaveboys picking peaches. These slaves were close to the boundaries of the farm; they would need to be watched closely. One dogboy gave a low growl as one of the slaves stepped away from the tree farther than he needed to. I started trembling again, a trickle of urine emerging between my legs. That dogboy might come this way even if the slaveboys don't. He wasn't more than forty feet away from me right now. Or if the other two came to join him, they might pass too near for my cover to be effective. I was petrified. I feared that the dogboy might catch my scent if the wind blew that way: a real dog would.
I had stumbled onto the farm in late afternoon, and I could now see sunset in the western sky. There was a whistle; all of the slaves stopped their work and began converging on another shed, at the far end of the field. The dogboys trotted behind them. The youngest slave from the woodcutting shed was staggering on exhausted legs. One of the dogboys barked at him. The slave let out a sob and moved a little faster, tripping over his hobble chain but immediately scrambling back to his feet.
It was too far away for me to make out exactly what was going on, but it looked as though a meal was in progress. My mouth watered — I could smell meat cooking.
As the slaves completed their meal, two settlers walked among them, rounding the slaves up and securing them around the upright poles supporting the shed. One of the settlers was the woodcutter. The other appeared older, heavier — likely the father of the younger one. The two of them were putting the slaves away for the night, and I realized that the shed was the only home the slaves had. Like the woodcutting shed, it was open at the sides. At least they have a roof, I thought. They won't be rained on in their sleep. I wished I could say that about myself.
As darkness fell, I saw lights through the trees, and I could make out the outlines of what appeared to be a cabin — probably where the owners live.
When it was dark, I crawled out of the bush and away from the farm on two knees and one hand. I had to reach back and hold my hobble chain off the ground with one hand so it wouldn't make noise. I blundered into several trees in the dark, but was moving slowly, so it didn't hurt. I crawled at least half an hour before I stopped.
I looked up at the sky in astonishment. I'd been a city boy all my life, and I'd never seen the stars so clearly. I gawked at them many minutes, then felt around for a reasonably soft spot, lay down and curled up on my side. I soon fell asleep, in spite of the tumult of thoughts and images cascading through my head.
I dreamed I was taking a long, warm shower with Maverick, soaping his cock, licking his bellyfur. I sighed in contentment, feeling the familiar tingling between my legs in anticipation of a long session of lovemaking...
I was suddenly hit by a coughing fit, and sat up in total darkness. Sat up? In the shower? I croaked out between coughs, "Honey, turn the water off."
My other hand felt rough ground beneath two inches of water. There was water flowing along my legs and arms. From above, the stream from the shower continued striking my head and shoulders. I swept my right arm around in front of me. "Maverick? The lights went out. Honey? You there?"
Memories reassembled themselves slowly. Shit. Shit. Shit. Maverick's not here. Maverick is dead. I'm on the island. It's raining again.
The water level around me continued rising, pushing harder against me. I'm in a streambed! I've got to get out of here!
The blackness was complete. Rainclouds had covered up the stars and the moon if any.
I quickly rolled to my hands and knees, my heart pounding. Which way?
The water was flowing away from me now, my ankles and calves under the water; it, was splashing up to the backs of my knees. I flipped a mental coin, and shuffled sideways a few feet. Not that way! The water was halfway up my thigh now. I quickly scrambled the other way, and the water gradually ran more shallow. At last I crawled onto... not dry land, but at least land that wasn't underwater.
I still didn't feel safe, so I felt ahead to see whether the ground continued rising. It seemed to, so I continued crawling that direction, one hand held in front of me to feel for trees.
I stopped between trees; the water would rarely rise this high. Leaning back against one tree, I drew my knees up and hugged them, my shoulders shaking as I sobbed. I felt a stronger sense of utter aloneness than at any time on the island so far, sitting naked in the blackness, no light switch to flip on, in a shower I couldn't turn off, on an island hundreds of miles from home, where the entire population wanted to enslave me and the elements wanted to kill me.