"Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day" (closed)

[Alice2015]

"Enjoy your bath, my love?"

Carla looked to Gregory only briefly. She made no response with word or gesture to his question. He was a pig. He'd taken her hostage, turned her into his sex toy, and then let those other men watch over her when she bathed. He did it to embarrass her. He did it remind the others who was boss. He did it because he could.

Two months earlier, Carla had been living a relatively safe in not entirely content existence in Green Hope. The little one horse town was located at the confluence of Hope Creek and the Green River. It was the reason for the rather poetic name. The town had nearly been wiped out by the plague. Carla and only 6 other residents had survived. Over the months to come, another two dozen survivors arrived and came to call Green Hope their home. The town had always been a progressive, liberal community. After the plague, the residents came together to start a new way of life. Everyone was equal, everyone had a voice, everyone's opinions mattered. There was no longer majority rule. Every decision was a unanimous one. A new society was begun in which each person had just as much power as the next and no one was left behind. No longer did 51% of the people have power and control over the other 49%.

All was going well until the bikers arrived. Sweet Home had fallen into the hands of a group of rough and tough, motorcycle riding thugs who called themselves the of the people feeling With births the Riding Thunder Motorcycle Club. Carla had heard of them before the plague. They'd been in the news often, spoken of as outlaw bikers. The press had claimed they ran drugs, pimped women, robbed homes and businesses, and killed anyone who got in their way. Of course, Carla didn't know whether or not any of that was true. She didn't even know whether or not the current members had been members before the plague. It was only logical that (like the rest of society) the gang had lost upwards of 90% of its members, too. So, where did the current leather wearing thugs come from? She didn't know and she didn't care.

What Carla had known when the Thunder came rolling into Green Hope was that they claimed the town and everything and everyone in it as theirs. They demanded tribute for which they would provide protection to the town. Suddenly Green Hope was facing its first true test. Some wanted to give the bikers what they wanted. Others wanted to fight them. There was no unanimous consensus to be had. The experiment with giving each and every adult the ability to veto an idea or plan was failing.

And while the people of Green Hope were disappointed with themselves and struggling to find an answer, the bikers had an answer of their own. They simply came into the town with three or four trucks and took anything and everything they wanted under the threat of violence. That anything and everything had included Carla. She and three other attractive, young women were taken as hostages. They would eventually become sex servants for the gang's higher ranked officers. (Four strapping, young men would be taken and used as slave labor, too.) Carla resisted at first, of course. But she only found herself being beaten into submission before then being raped.

When she made it clear that Gregory was just going to have to beat her every time, he took a different tact. One day, he unshackled and walked Alice to the window of the home he'd claimed in Sweet Home. He gestured outside. Alice looked out to see four children she knew from Green Hope. They were bound and gagged on the lawn, and one of his men held a pistol to the temple of the eldest child. She was told that one child would be shot every minute if she didn't choose to play nice. Sobbing and begging him not to do it, Carla had stripped off her clothes and very energetically given Gregory what he wanted. After that, he'd sent the children back to Green Hope unharmed. And she'd been a good girl ever since.

As she prepared his lunch, Carla heard him snap his fingers. She knew what was coming next. She hesitated, then turned to find him dropping his pants and boxers.

"C'm'ere baby," he said softly. "I'm lonely for you."

He sat, his cock already beginning to stiffen. Carla said in a soft voice, "I'm preparing your meal, Gregory."

But he wanted what he wanted now. Carla set aside the bowl, wiped her hands on a towel, and made her way over to him. She dropped a throw pillow on the rough, unsanded wood floor for her own comfort. Kneeling, she moved in between Gregory's muscular thighs, hesitating. She'd never liked performing oral sex. And she despised this man obviously. And yet she went to work on his cock with now skilled tongue and lips. She knew exactly what he liked. Gregory had trained her well. She licked up the entire length of his shaft while gently rolling his nuts in her finger tips. She suckled his tip, licked more, suckled some more.

Then with Gregory pressing a hand on the back of her head to indicate it was time, Carla took most of his length into her mouth while grasping the base of his shaft in her free hand. She couldn't deep throat him as he wished. He'd forced her down on him too far in the past. She'd only gagged and nearly thrown up. He'd found just how much she could take in and lived with the disappointment of not shoving his cock all the way into her throat. Even without that, Carla had become good. And it wasn't long before Gregory was moaning with delight at Carla's performance.

At a now familiar sound, Carla knew the worst was coming. She hated Gregory. She hated sucking Gregory's cock. She hated the taste of Gregory's cum filling her mouth. But most of all, she hated how that cum was delivered to her. As he let it be known that he was about to orgasm, Carla tried to stay down on Gregory's cock, to let him cum into the back of her throat for quick disposal of his discharge. But just before he groaned out, he pulled Carla's head up from upon him. A moment later, she felt big globs of cum splashing onto her face: lips, chin, cheeks, nose. It went everywhere. All she could do was pinch her eyes closed and not breath in the hopes that none it went places she didn't want it to go. It was bad enough that it went into her mouth. But all over her face?

When his cock was nearly done twitching, he popped it against Carla's lips. She took it back into her mouth and milked the rest of his discharge with a tightly gripping hand around his shaft. Then, leaning back so that Gregory could watch, she used a finger to wipe each glob off her skin and put it in her mouth. This was the service she provided him to keep those children in Green Hope from having their brain's blown out.

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

Outside, Yuki could hear Gregory groan loud and long. She knew what was happening. Well, she knew he was orgasming. She didn't know what he was doing to Carla because they didn't discuss it. Yuki kept her eyes on her work, not looking around for the reactions of the others. She knew they'd heard it, too.

"We need water," the man who was yet to unload his cock told Yuki. She shoved a bucket at her, telling her, "River water. Go get it."

She looked over her shoulder at the hand pump well. Meekly she asked, "Can't I just get water from--"

"River water," he repeated. "I'll go with you. Make sure you don't get happy feet and forget to come back."

Yuki knew what that meant of course. The man whose day with her was supposed to have been today didn't care that she still had cum from his partner up inside her. She reluctantly took the bucket and headed for the stream. The man walked ten feet or so behind her. They descended the slight slope at the bank and fell out of view of the others.

"Right here's fine, you little whore," the man growled, setting his rifle aside and already beginning to unfasten his pants. "Take your clothes off."

Yuki was hesitant but she did as she was told. When she was naked, the man whipped her around, pushed her to the ground, and grasped her hips. He forced himself into Yuki forcefully, causing her to cry out in pain. He was just beginning to gain a rhythm when he flinched at a sound behind him. He turned just in time to have the barrel of the pistol press against his forehead.

Crack!

 

[RobbieRand]

Crack.

Gregory looked up from the meal Carla had just set down before him at the sound. This far from the stream and with the stream bank between him and the source of the sound, the volume of the gunshot wasn't much. But Gregory knew the sound of a 9mm pistol even at this distance.

He stood, came around the table, and grasped Carla's wrist tightly. He dragged her toward the shackle mounted on the wall, ignoring her protestations. He locked the cuff around her wrist, unlocked the case of firearms, and withdrew an AR-15 and a box of shells for both it and the Glock 9mm he was carrying in a shoulder harness. He checked that all were fully loaded with a round in the chamber.

Gregory looked out a window to find the others all looking off toward the creek. He stepped out cautiously, and when his underling looked to him asked, "Where's Howie? And the Jap girl? Yuki?"

The other man only gestured off toward the creek. Gregory moved toward the others demanding, "Cage! Now!"

The cage was exactly what it sounded like. It had once been a kennel for the two Labradors that had belonged to the then-teenaged Paul, even though Gregory couldn't know that. It was chain link fencing on top, bottom and sides to prevent them from digging out or jumping over. It measured 8 feet across and 20 feet long. It had had a nice little dog house near one end that could be heated during the worst of the winter snow and below freezing temperatures. The house had been removed years before, after the second of the elderly dogs had finally passed away.

Gregory had been using it as a cell for the slaves. He'd given them plywood sheets and plastic tarps to create walls and a roof over most of it, and for heat he'd let them cut firewood and build a rock fireplace. It was habitable but not at all comfortable. Gregory didn't always make the lot of them sleep in there. He'd made it clear that if even one of them fled, the others would be punished relentlessly until the runaway returned. The threat had worked; after several months of living here, all were still present and accounted for.

After locking the prisoners up, Gregory turned to his underling and commanded, "Go see what the fuck's going on."

The man was hesitant, but after a glare from Gregory he did as he was told. He half jogged, half walked toward the creek, slowing down as he neared the drop off. Crouching for the last couple of dozen slow steps, he lifted his head to look down to the bank.

Howie was half in, half out of a shallow section of slow moving water. He was face down with the back of his head blown out. The water passing under and around him had a light tint of red.

 

[Alice2015]

Minutes earlier:

Yuki heard the pistol fire but didn't immediately realize what was happening. She'd had her eyes closed. She always closed them when she was being raped. She heard the explosion of the gun and then felt Howie fall against her backside. She only opened her eyes when her rapist fell on the ground next to her. She looked to find a small round hole in his forehead bleeding down into his eye socket, onto his cheek, off to the ground.

It finally clicked. The sound had been a gun, and Howie had been shot. Yuki turned to look over her other shoulder in time for a woman with a gun slap her hand over her mouth.

"Don't scream!," Alice demanded, holding the woman tightly around her head. "Don't scream. I'm not going to hurt you."

Yuki struggled in panic. She didn't fully understand what was happening. She was frightened. And there was a dead man next to her. But eventually she came to realize that this woman wasn't trying to hurt her. She stopped struggling.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Alice repeated, now unnecessarily. She smiled as she slowly lifted her hand Yuki's mouth and said with a bit of humor, "I'm trying to be a hero."

Yuki asked confused, "What?"

"Inside joke," Alice told her, "never mind."

She gathered Yuki's clothes and told her to get dressed. She asked for her name, asked how many men were holding her and the others, and (though she was certain she already knew) how many others there were. Yuki told her there were three men, not two, which was good to know. Alice crawled up closer to the top of the bank, then slid quickly down again.

"Someone's coming, a man," Alice hissed to Yuki as she was finishing with her clothes. "He's armed, so, he's not with you, right?"

"No, no!" Yuki said. "Biker. Only bikers have guns."

Alice gestured Yuki, and the younger woman (all hunched over) crept away from the bathing area down the creek bed a couple of dozen yards. Alice herself found a spot to hide and waited not far from where the dead man laid. The second man's shadow came over the bank. Alice watched it for almost a minute. It was obvious by his movements that the man was looking for whoever was responsible for his associate's killing. The shadow soon put the man on the bank right over where Alice was hiding under a rocky outcrop. She surged out, spun around, and crack!

The man jerked and grasped at his chest just below his neck. But he still raised the assault rifle in his hands with one hand, trying to fight back. Alice fired again, crack, crack, crack! At least two of the shots hit. A moment later the man fell forward and tumbled down the bank to stop near the water's edge. Alice moved to him, pistol aimed at his chest. But he was dead. She turned and crawled up the bank to look for the third man. She couldn't find him.

Crawling back down, she was shocked to find Yuki at the dead man's body removing his slung assault rifle. The girl skillfully popped the weapon's clip out, checked its full load, popped the clip back in, and checked to see if the chamber was loaded. It was. She looked at Alice and without expression said, "I got this."

Alice would find out later that Yuki had grown up around firearms and not entirely in a good way. Yuki had been born in El Salvador to a Japanese-American couple who had moved there years earlier to work with local farmers on sustainability issues. At least that's what she'd grown up believing. In reality, both of her parents had been CIA operatives working with anti-socialist militias in an effort to permanently eliminate the pro-Russian, pro-Cuban socialist tendencies of the Salvadorian government. Things went bad for the couple when Yuki was barely in her teens. And although the CIA recalled them, the couple (and now their daughter) refused to leave the country. Their official work with rebels had come to an end, but their cover work of helping local farmers continued. Yuki had learned to use firearms of all types during her upbringing. She'd even shot at intruders on three occasions though she would never learn whether they had been common thieves of pro-Government militia.

Yuki's father would be killed and she would finally come back to the United States (her first time home) when she was 17. Just in time for the plague and the end of the world. She'd been living with her mother and her maternal grandmother outside Sweet Home. They fled to the forest, then to Green Hope. She'd been one of the women taking by the Thunder when the commune couldn't decide on how to pay tribute to the bikers.

Yuki slung the AR-15 over her shoulder and went to collect the same type of weapon from Howie. She collected the spare magazine each man carried per instructions from Gregory. Back with Alice she asked, "Do you know how to use one of these?"

Alice didn't, not proficiently anyway. Yuki explained the gun's operation to her. Then the younger woman asked the older one with a serious expression, "So, what's the plan?"

 

[RobbieRand]

From near the porch of the cabin, Gregory watched the man near the stream bank, crouch, and proceed slowly. Gregory could see that the man was searching for someone or something. Then crack! Gregory instinctively raised the AR-15 in his hands, aiming it toward really nothing in particular.

Crack, crack, crack!

His man jerked about, then fell forward and disappeared beyond the bank. Gregory backed into the cabin initially, watching for an attack. But when it didn't come and he heard no more shots, and when he presumed correctly that the shots had been from a single gun in the hands of a single shooter, Gregory took a different approach to the situation.

With his assault rifle over his shoulder, he headed quickly out to the cage with his own handgun drawn. He unlocked and opened the door, snatched up the youngest of the children -- who immediately began screaming in terror -- and backed out, his gun leveled at the others with threats of putting them down like dogs, which seemed appropriate in the former kennel.

Outside the cage, he locked it again, then turned and hollered toward the creek, "I'll put a bullet in this fucking kid's head if you don't get your ass up where I can see you, right now!"

He hesitated, waiting for an answer, then hollered again, "Yuki, you fucking slant eyed Jap whore! Get up here where I can see you! Now!"

 

[Alice2015]

Alice was watching over the bank again. At the house she saw movement, a man hurrying about. Looking behind her, she found Yuki searching the pockets of the dead men, one after another. Not realizing the younger woman's goal, she growled back at her, "What are you doing? Get up here. Tell me what's happening. Who's that guy?"

Suddenly that guy hollered out, "I'll put a bullet in this fucking kid's head if you don't get your ass up where I can see you, right now!"

"That guy would be Gregory," Yuki said without slowing her quest. She suddenly looked up delighted. As if she wasn't near two dead mean, she playfully dangled a set of keys before here saying, "Ta da! Keys for the cage and the gun locker.[/I]"

As Yuki hurried over to join Alice, Gregory called out again, "Yuki, you fucking slant eyed Jap whore! Get up here where I can see you! Now!"

Alice looked to the younger woman and said with a bit of a smirk, "I assume you're Yuki."

"Yuki Tanata," she said offering her hand. She picked the AR-15 back up and looked toward the cabin. "That's Gregory something-or-other. He's the leader. He's a bigwig in the biker gang that runs Sweet Home and Green Hope and God knows how many other little towns that he terrorizes."

She looked past the man to the cage. "That's Kenny in the cage. The big guy up front. He's in shackles."

Yuki jingled the keys again with a smile. "Big Bert is the old guy. I don't see him but that's 'cause he's old and he's probably sitting down. Peter's the little guy at the chain link. And Polly, she's the one that fuck head is holding in his arms. I don't see Carla. She must be chained up inside the house."

Gregory called out another threat. Alice asked, "Will he do that, Yuki. Will he kill that little girl?"

Yuki turned and slid a bit down the slope. She checked the ammunition in the second AR-15, again skillfully. She eventually answered, "Yes he will. But, only if we don't kill him first."

She kicked the clip out of the gun she'd just ensured was loaded. She inquired, "Did I ask if you knew how to shoot a rifle?"

"Yes, I can shoot," Alice answered simply.

Yuki handed her the extra clip, looked down the bank, then back to Alice. "You do that way about a hundred yards and there's a bit of a gully that leads up close to the cabin. I'll distract Gregory. You get up behind him. And you put a bullet through his skull. A bullet or two or all of them. Feel free to make it hurt a bit before he dies if you please. He doesn't need to die right away, so long as the others are safe."

The younger woman noticed that Alice was giving her a rather peculiar expression. When Yuki asked her about it, Alice said, "You surprise me. I watched two different men rape you in under twenty minutes, and you're acting like a female Rambo on a heavy flow day."

"I'm not the weak, timid little girl they took me for when they kidnapped me," Yuki said. "They have no idea who they're fucking with. I would have acted sooner if I'd had the advantage. Thanks to you, I do. Now, go!"

Alice smiled in delight at the young woman. She took one last look at the men she'd killed, then headed off for the gully. As she was moving, crouched over, she heard Yuki begin calling back to Gregory. She asked how she could trust him not to kill the others if she gave up. When Gregory asked about his two men, Yuki took credit for killing them both. After that, Alice couldn't make out the entirety of the conversation. But it was obvious that the young woman was delaying her surrender to give Alice time to get into position.

A full three minutes had passed by the time Alice was looking at Gregory from the opposite side of the kennel. She crouched lower and crept forward slowly. Then she saw Yuki, up on the flat land surrounding the cabin. She was walking toward Gregory slowly, still talking to him about the little girl, the others, and why she'd shot his two men.

"Put Polly down, and you can do whatever you want to me," Yuki demanded. "She's just a little girl, Gregory. She didn't kill those two fucks. I did."

Suddenly, as she peeked up to check her position, Gregory literally dropped the little girl from his grip. She hit the ground awkwardly, crying out in pain and shock. As she did, Gregory took a firing stance aiming at Yuki. Yuki reached to the small of her back for the 9mm Alice had given her. Both of them began firing, the shots so close together that they almost sounded like the firing of a full auto machine pistol.

Alice had ducked at first, but then rose up. Yuki was no where to be seen. Alice stood taller and found her on the ground writhing. Anger exploded within Alice. She jumped forward to lay flat on the slight incline of the gully, aimed, and began firing methodically at Gregory. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

She didn't know exactly which rounds missed and which rounds hit. But Gregory stumbled as he spun around to look for the ambushing shooter. He tried to unsling his own assault rifle but the sniper was still shooting at him. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

 

[RobbieRand]

Gregory should have been dead. After dropping the crying little brat, he took a sturdy, steady, two handed shooting stance with his 9mm and put a bullet right through Yuki's shoulder. And yet somehow, the bullet had barely even affected the woman. She teetered a bit, taking an unsteady step back, then -- as Gregory resumed firing -- pulled the 9mm that Alice had given her, which had originally belonged to Paul, and began shooting back.

The exchange was short; 18 rounds shot in a matter or 6 seconds. And when it was over, Yuki was on the ground with fatal holes to her neck and chest and Gregory was, essentially, unharmed. Oh, Yuki had hit him twice with Alice's remaining 4 bullets. But the bullet proof vest he'd taken off a dead cop during the height of the plague had stopped both.

Gregory thought the shootout was over, but he wouldn't have been more wrong. He felt an impact at his back that was far more forceful and painful than Yuki little pistol bullets. He stumbled a bit as he heard the boom and realized there was a second shooter.

As the shots continued, he spun and tried to get his own assault rifle off his shoulder. He was hit again, then again, but each hit him in the highly protective vest. Whoever this was, wherever he was, the shooter was damn good with that rifle. He went down to a knee, stunned and disoriented. Eight shots exploded from beyond the kennel by the time it was Gregory's turn.

He lifted his own AR-15 up toward the face he finally located on the edge of the gully and pulled the trigger. His weapon didn't just put out one shot at a time, though. It had been fitted with one of the long-outlawed Bump Stocks that rose to infamy after the 2017 Las Vegas concert shootings, and in less than 4 seconds he emptied the weapon's magazine in that direction. Grass, dirt, and rock filled the air as the slugs hit all around the shooter.

Gregory may have had the firepower advantage but he was exposed and vulnerable. And now, he was all alone. How many more of these ambush snipers might be closing in on him? He headed for the cabin as he kicked out the empty magazine and inserted the one he'd removed from the oversized pocket of his military surplus trousers. As he neared the porch his assault rifle began spitting out bullets toward the gully again. When the last round was expended and the bolt clicked back, he went through the still open cabin door and headed directly for the foot locker filled with ammunition and other weapons.

"Fucking bitch, Yuki," he was mumbling in fury as he put another magazine into the rifle. "Fucking slant eyed Jap whore."

He didn't explain more than that, and if Carla -- chained to the wall -- made inquiries, he ignored her. He set the rifle down and donned a vest with pockets that he filled with additional magazines for the gun. He stuck yet a 9mm in the small of his back and yet another one in the now-empty holster on his hip. He was cursing the whole time, first about Yuki and then about this other shooter who he only now realized had likely been another woman.

He hurried to the window to look out upon the yard to see what was happening.

 

[Alice2015]

Alice had been feeling very confident about the situation. She was sure she'd hit the man, even if he hadn't gone down any farther than a knee. She was about to pop off more shots when the world before her simply exploded. The man had an automatic machine gun. Or at least, that was what it sounded like. The ground before her began spitting up into the air and all around her as a couple of dozen or more bullets mostly hit before her. She ducked and then slid down into the gully. She was about to rise up again but then remembered what Yuki had told her about the gun she was using. She found the clip ejection lever, kicked the clip out onto the ground, and pushed the fully loaded one back in. Then she turned to poke her head up again.

And again, the world around her exploded. The shots ceased again. This time she was more careful about poking her head up. The man, this Gregory, was gone from sight. A little more survey showed that the cabin door was now closed. He'd gone inside. Where there was more ammunition and guns! She lifted her head higher looking for Yuki. Her stomach turned when she saw the young woman motionless and the little girl standing over her crying out in horror.

Alice rose quickly and ran a wide circular path out around the kennel toward Yuki. As she passed the cage, she found the younger, shackled male on his knees holding the now deceased body of the elderly man. He'd been hit by gunfire, hopefully (Alice immediately prayed) from Gregory and not either herself of Yuki. She arrived at the dead woman's body and reassured the little girl that she herself was here to help. Her stomach almost turned over at the sight of the young Japanese-American. Her upper torso was red with blood. Her eyes stared blankly up into the blue sky.

"Take these, honey!" Alice told the girl as she handed her the keys Yuki had been so happy to find. "Take these to your friends. Hurry."

Alice probably should have taken the little girl into her hands and ran for the cage herself. But instead, she dropped flat to the dirt and aimed the AR-15 at the cabin. She peeked over at the rushing girl and then back at the cabin. Then Alice began popping off a shot every few seconds at places where she thought Gregory might be hiding.

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

Moments earlier:

From the moment Gregory went outside to discover what was happening, Carla had begun her attempts to escape from the shackle around her wrist. But to no avail. It wasn't the first time her Master had chained her up like this. After she'd escaped twice before, he'd shortened the chain to that she could barely move and cleared away anything that she could possible used to free herself. At least he'd given her a pad to sleep on during those nights when she didn't warm him in his bed.

When the gunfire erupted, her first thought was for the children. She couldn't see the action from here. When Gregory rushed back inside, she immediately began peppering him with questions. Again, to no avail. All he did was rant in his racist way about Yuki shooting at him. And then about a second person shooting at him. A woman. The man moved to the windows and scanned for a minute or two. He continued to ignore Carla's questions about what was happening. Was Yuki okay? Was she dead? Are the others okay? She even asked about his two men as a feigned sign of concern for his biker brethren. Nothing.

Then bullets began hitting the cabin. It wasn't a log cabin. It was made of cut lumber. So many of them were penetrating the siding and hitting things inside. Oh, it wasn't as dramatic as Hollywood made such scenes. Each bullet didn't explode a glass bottle or plate or can of beans. But Carla still fell to the floor fearful that one would explode through her. Wood fragments and splinter hit her as a bullet went through the 4x4 to which she which she was chained. Seeing an opportunity, Carla began jerking at the chain. It hurt her wrist, but she persisted, and the screw ring in the wall broke free.

She checked Gregory and found him occupied. She backed up to behind the old cast iron stove for protection. She lifted enough to see through a window that now had only remnants of shattered glass in it. Carla couldn't see the shooter. But she could see the cage. She could see the door swinging open. Kenny (now without shackles) snatched up Peter in one arm and Polly in the other. He circled around to the other side of the kennel. The tarps Gregory had given them to make walls hid them from view. Big Bert was nowhere to be seen. Had he gotten out first? Or was he dead?

Another bullet penetrated the thin wall near Carla's head. She dropped behind the stove instinctively. After a moment, she went into action just as she'd rehearsed so many times. She snatched up an old wood chair from near the kitchen table as she ran for the window in the back of the cabin. Lifting it with its legs before her, she very effectively knocked all of the glass out in one clean shove. She tried to use the seat to quickly snap off some of the sharp glass. It was a good plan. And it would have worked. Except she'd forgotten about the chain still attached to her ankle. As she was jumping head first out the window, the wall hook at the end caught on something. Carla cleared the window only to find herself hanging against the wall like a deer about to be slaughtered.

And knowing Gregory, she just might be.

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

Out front:

Alice continued to pop off a round every couple of seconds toward the cabin. She'd totally forgotten that there might be another hostage inside. The fire fight with Gregory and her concern for those in the cage were the only things on her mind. Oh, and killing Gregory, as Yuki had made her promise to do. Hurt him first. But when she pulled the trigger and nothing happened, Alice knew that that goal had come to an end. She took one last look at Yuki and snatched up Paul's 9mm laying next to her. She stood and ran off after the escapees.

She caught up with them after a couple of minutes. The little girl, looking over the tall man's shoulder began hollering, "That's her! That's her! Stop! That's her!"

Kenny stopped, turned, looked, and set the children down. Alice caught up with them, leaning over to catch her breath. When she rose up again she looked around them and said, "I thought there were more of you."

 

[RobbieRand]

Gregory flinched and ducked when the bullets began hitting the cabin. Some didn't penetrate, but most did. He found the shooter and -- after ducking a few more shots -- poked the full-auto adapted rifle out the now broken glass, took aim, and prepared to end this here and now.

"Fuck!" he hollered as just the second fired round jammed. He snatched up a second assault rifle, this one an M16A1. It was of a different caliber than the AR-15, and Gregory cursed as he shed the vest with all the extra magazines and returned to the window. He began popping shots back at the woman with the semi-auto firing rifle, but every time he tried to take careful aim another one of her shots hit too uncomfortably near him.

Gregory moved to another window, took a shot, got shot at, moved again, shot, got shot at, and moved back to where he'd started. Again, despite being inside the cabin, Gregory was once again exposed. Oh sure, the woman shooting at him was out in the open. But there was tall grass, wood piles, rose shrubs, and more between here and there, as well as a slight rise about halfway out. He could barely see the shooter let alone put a bead on her. And although she hadn't, Gregory was sure that she'd moved her position as well.

Suddenly behind him, Gregory heard a crashing of glass. He turned to see Carly breaking out the back window in the middle of the cabin and diving outward. He ran for her but took another bullet in the back of his vest. It knocked him off balance, and he fell forward to his face cursing the fucking sniper bitch.

When he rose, he hurried to the window expecting to find Carla running for the woods. Instead he found her dangling and jerking about like a fish on a stringer slung over the side of the boat. The chain around her ankle had caught in a narrow crevice between two pieces of wood. Gregory laughed at her and comically told her, "Why don't you just hang there for a moment, honey, while I go back and kill this bitch who's fucking up my life."

Gregory returned to gun locker, snatched up another magazine, and returned to the front of the cabin more determined than ever to kill Alice. But when he looked, he neither saw nor heard anything from her. He looked to the cage, partially hidden by a sheet flapping in the wind on a clothes line. The cage was empty, the hostages were gone, and that gun happy cunt was gone as well.

"Fuck," Gregory mumbled to himself as he went to work preparing for a quick departure. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"

He donned the vest with the AR-15's ammo again, snatched that weapon up -- knowing he could unjam it later -- and slung it over his shoulder, then slung two more rifles around himself. He shoved another pair of semi-auto pistols into his belt; he was so loaded now that it was hard to twist and turn his body. There were still more weapons to be had, but Gregory had always believed in the A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush principle. And if he stayed here and got picked off sometime in the next few hours after that bitch organized the escapees and returned, well, wanting to stick around for two in the bush was only going to get him killed.

He picked up a two gallon plastic gas container that was partially full and set it on top of the still burning wood stove. Then, filling his hands with metal boxes filled with bullets, he headed out the front door and around to the back of the building. He looked to Carla as she fought unsuccessfully to free the chain from its crevice.

"Give it up, honey," he said. "You aren't going anywhere but back to Sweet Home with me."

He filled the saddle bags of his motorcycle with ammo and handguns, then slung the rifles anywhere that he could. Suddenly, an explosion sent flames out the windows and blew some of the old, decrepit boards right off the walls. Gregory ducked instinctively, then laughed.

"I didn't expect that so soon," he told Carla. He crossed over to her as the flames spread inside and began sending thick smoke out every orifice. He knelt down and held the second key to her shackles out for her to see. "You can stay here and burn to death. Or you can go with me to Sweet Home, and we'll take up right where we were. Your choice."

----------------------​

(OOC: Pic out of context. I'm sure you won't mind.)

"That's her! That's her! Stop! That's her!"

Kenny stopped at Polly's calls and turned to see the stranger who'd saved them running along the creek bank toward them. He set the children down and waited, catching his breath. He was fit and strong, but he'd been denied adequate nutrition for weeks now and he'd just run over uneven ground for 150 yards with 100 pounds of children in his arms.

When she stopped before them, the woman said, "I thought there were more of you."

Kenny responded immediately, "There had been, once upon a time."

He turned and took the children by the hand. "We have to go. Gregory's going to be coming for us. Kenny didn't know where they would go, but he knew they couldn't stay here. Assuming Gregory was still alive and could get back to Sweet Home, the Motorcycle Club would send a dozen or more heavily armed men up here to corral them all up before sundown.

It wasn't as if Kenny and the children were that valuable to them, of course. It was more a matter of principle. If the residents of Sweet Home or Green Hope or any of a number of small communities over which the Thunder ruled found out that their Vice President had lost several of his hostages -- particular to a pair of girls -- then revolution would prevail and people would die on both sides. Kenny had no doubt at all that he and his ilk would be back to kill them all off. Leave no witnesses.

 

[Alice2015]

Carla

She was dangling against the cabin, her shoulders and upper back on the ground but the rest of her up off it when Gregory came around and told her, "Give it up, honey. You aren't going anywhere but back to Sweet Home with me."

"Fuck you, you son of a bitch," Alice snapped at him. "You may as well just shoot me now. You killed Yuki, didn't you? I saw her out in the grass. She's dead isn't she?"

She was struggling as he transferred weapons and shell boxes to his bike. Suddenly, the cabin exploded. Not all of it. But enough to scare the shit out of Carla. She'd had a life long fear of burning up in a house fire. She'd been caught in two of them in the past. She'd lost family and friends both to fire.

"You can stay here and burn to death," he told her, "Or you can go with me to Sweet Home, and we'll take up right where we were. Your choice."

"I'll go, I'll go!" Alice answered quickly. There was panic in her voice. "Please, unlock me. Gregory, please baby. I'll go with you."

He unlocked her ankle. Despite hating him as intensely as that fire was burning, she clutched her arms around him in a desperate embrace. "Get me away from this, please, baby."

He lifted Carla to her feet, grasped her by the wrist, and took her to the bike. He put her on the front where he could keep an eye on her. It wasn't uncommon. When ever they rode alone, which hadn't been often, she was always on front. He fired the bike up with the press of a button. A moment later, they were shooting off down the dirt road. Dust rose up behind them. As Alice looked back, the cabin was fulling enveloped in flames. Looking off a bit more forward, she swore she caught sight of Kenny and maybe the woman Gregory had been bitching about.

<<<<<< >>>>>>​

"There had been, once upon a time," Kenny said about there only being three escapees from the kennel.

Alice didn't know exactly what to say. She felt responsible for the loss of Yuki and the elderly man. She could have just taken Paul's cache and left the others to the bikers. The little girl, who announced her name as Polly, thanked Alice for rescuing them. Alice smiled and touched her fingers softly to the girl's face. "I didn't save you. Your friend Yuki did. She's your hero."

Alice recalled two things almost simultaneously: where she'd come from and why she was here. She told Kenny, "The man who used to live in this cabin hid food and stuff, a cache he called it, just up the creek from here. That's why I'm here, to collect that cache. I live in a little community a couple of days hike from here. We need to get that cache. Carry as much as we can, and get the hell out of here. Go back to my home, where you'll all be safe."

 

[RobbieRand]

"I'll go, I'll go!" Alice answered quickly. There was panic in her voice. "Please, unlock me. Gregory, please baby. I'll go with you."

Gregory was surprised by Carly's plea to go with him. He didn't know about her fear of fire, although most people did and rightly should have had such a fear. Gregory himself was no stranger to fire. He'd been through Fire School during his Navy days; after than he'd been a Volunteer Fireman in his hometown. He had scars on his arms and belly from a rescue he'd made during an automobile explosion during a wreck on the freeway a decade earlier.

This was, of course, all before his days with the Thunder. Actually, he'd still been with the department during his first years with the MC. But several drug, weapons, and violence charges incurred by members of the Club and the furor of his association with these men had gotten him booted from public service.

It had probably been for the best, actually. Gregory had never been a hardened criminal or anything like that prior to the plague. But his decade with the club prior to the end of the world had prepared him for what the club was to become afterwards.

With her on the bike before him, he shot them away from the cabin as the conflagration spread. Behind them, bullets were exploding in the growing heat, not that he could hear it over the classic and well known sound of the Harley Davidson's modified exhaust system. Gregory hated the idea of having left the guns, ammo, and other valuables behind. But he would have hated letting the escapees and that gun toting cunt get them more.

They rode hard and fast for about six miles before Gregory slowed down at a narrow bridge over a narrow but deep chasm. A dump truck was situated across the road, and as Gregory brought the bike to a stop before it, two men in leather stepped out from beyond it to great him with smiles and waves.

"Where you been, Veep," one of the men asked of the MC's Vice President. "Liv's been looking for you for more than a week."

Liv was Walter Livingston, the club's President. Liv and Gregory -- G-Dog to the MC -- were the two most senior of 46 original Rolling Thunder members to have survived the plague and come to Sweet Home, where the MC had originated more than 70 years earlier. That might have sounded like a large number of surviving brethren until you remembered that the Thunder had had more than 1,000 members in clubs from British Columbia to Baja, Seattle to Boise, LA to Las Vegas.

As the plague swept across the country, continent, and world, the surviving bikers all came here to where the club had originated. And they'd wasted no time taking control of the area. They'd had access to weapons before the plague, but after it, they'd used what they had to get even more. Soon, they were the undisputed Masters of the Valley Region, with small arms, small artillery, mortars, RPGs, and more.

They even had a trio of 10 foot diameter drones with broadband cameras that functioned off a tower the MC controlled and maintained on a hill right above Sweet Home. With the vehicles charged by a solar panel array atop the town's public buildings, the Thunder had eyes on the area out for almost 20 miles in any direction. If it happened with their sphere of influence, they could see it and, if necessary, stop it.

"I've been busy," Gregory snapped. He didn't answer to these men, and they knew it, so they let it go. "Where's Liv now?"

One of the men turned pressed the activation button of the radio that had once belonged to the local Sheriff's department and asked for Livingston's location. The voice at the other end of the communication answered, "Library."

"Tell them I'm coming through," Gregory ordered.

He fired up the bike and shot through the narrow gap between the truck and the bridge's guard rail. Another six miles later they passed through another check point without stopping, and another two after that they passed through the barrier that now protected Sweet Home via the South Gate.

This gate -- like the West and East Gates -- were nothing more than intermodal shipping containers placed right in the middle of bridges that passed over rivers, streams, or gullies that accessed the town. They performed as Gate Houses, like in the Medieval castles of Europe. The MC rarely had to move anything larger than the open end of a container through the gate, and if they did they had a truck that could load the container up and move it out of the way.

The barrier was a combination of natural barriers and manmade things -- fences, buses, trucks, walls, and more containers -- that had been positioned to prevent people from moving in and out of Sweet Home. It didn't stop all movement in and out, but it limited it enough that bikers occasionally hidden near the porous spots could more easily catch people and, as necessary, punish them accordingly.

Gregory navigated the bike through town to the library. Once there, he removed Carla from the bike and ordered one of his men to take her to his house. "Watch her. She thinks no one's depending on her to play nice anymore, so she might try to run. If she does, remind her that if she does run, I'm going to take a ride over to Green Hope, rape the first three females I see regardless of whether they've even started growing hair in their snatch, then cut their tits off and feed them to my dog."

With that, Gregory headed inside to talk to Liv about what had just happened at the cabin.

(OOC: I left the description of the house to you as requested. And I don't have time to post for Kenny, so later.)

 

[Alice2015]

Carla

Outside the library, Gregory made his threat to keep Carla in line. She ignored him. She believed him that he would do some harm. Would he cut some woman's tits off and feed them to his dogs? Probably not. But to punish Carla, he would beat, rape, and maybe even murder some innocent woman or girl. It was the way the MC kept their subjects in line. The biker assigned to watch over her gestured Alice to his bike. She gestured to the house just two blocks away, saying, "I can fucking walk."

She headed off with the biker a few paces behind her. Carla glanced about herself at the historic town of Sweet Home. It was old, established 30 years before statehood. Its populace had worked hard to maintain its historic beauty. The old had been preserved when possible. One third of the structures on the State's Historical Registry could be found in or within 10 miles of Sweet Home.

At the same time, the new or even the appearance of the new had been prevented as best as possible. Dozens of building codes restricted new construction in the central area of town to 19th century styles. Drive through fast food franchises had been prevented within city limits by two precedent setting ordinances. The first prohibited drive through windows or curb side pickup of meals. The second restricted ownership of franchise businesses to individuals who had been Sweet Home residents for a minimum of 10 years. The result was that the people went out for lunch and dinner and celebrated after school games and events at such places as Pop's Pizza, Luther's Burger House, The Sweet Home Sweet Spot, and other establishments owned and operated by their own beloved neighbors.

The house Gregory had taken for his own was on the Registry, too. The Martin House had been built in 1888 by a store keeper. He'd made his fortune off selling supplies to the gold miners panning in the area's creeks and rivers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He'd made far more money off them than they'd made off Mother Earth. The home had been in that merchant's family right up to last year. The only Martin to have survived the plague had protested the MC's takeover of the town. He'd been thanked by the club's President with a bullet through the forehead

Carla entered the typically unlocked door and made her way straight through to the bathroom. She stripped and showered. She was desperate to get the stench of Gregory off her flesh. She cried, too. For herself but mostly for Yuki. The young woman hadn't deserved her fate. Carla didn't know the circumstances behind Yuki's death yet. She didn't know that the girl from Green Hope had given her life saving Kenny and the children. She might learn it one day, but that would likely only make her cry again.

Carla dried and donned a dress she knew Gregory would like. Tragically, he would likely also want to hike it up off her hips to fuck her over the nearest horizontal space when he arrived home. She didn't dress for him out of choice. She did it because she wanted to survive. Because she knew that fighting Gregory would only lead to him hurting others. She went to the kitchen and began preparing dinner. Gregory wouldn't be long behind her. She needed him to be happy. The happier he was, the quicker and less violent her next rape would be.

 

[RobbieRand]

(OOC: Picking up where this group left off, out in the creek bed as they were fleeing from the shoot out in which Yuki and others were killed.)

You wrote:

Alice recalled two things almost simultaneously: where she'd come from and why she was here. She told Kenny, "The man who used to live in this cabin hid food and stuff, a cache he called it, just up the creek from here. That's why I'm here, to collect that cache. I live in a little community a couple of days hike from here. We need to get that cache. Carry as much as we can, and get the hell out of here. Go back to my home, where you'll all be safe."

Kenny didn't argue. He trusted that this woman was not here to harm either him or -- more importantly -- the children. He told her, "Lead the way."

They turned back and headed up the creek rather than down. As they did, they passed by two bodies, Gregory's two biker brethren. He said as he went to one of them, "Wait."

At Howie's body, Kenny ripped open the man's shirt. Around his neck hung a gold pendant. Kenny unhooked the latch, took the chain off, and pocketed it. He explained with Alice looked at him, "Something he took from someone a cared about."

The headed off again. Just five minutes later they were at the base of the rotting trunk of an ancient tree that had been killed and then broken in half by the double whammy of, first, a fire in the early 1900s and a wind storm shortly after World War II. Behind it, hidden under a sheet of plywood, which itself was buried under dirt, leaves, and branches were a half dozen 12 gallon Rubbermaid containers.

They were all sealed shut with duct tape, which Kenny and Alice removed. They dug through the food and other items and filled the two packs Alice had brought with her as well as the empty, folded packs that Paul had told her she would find amongst the items.

"Is it too heavy?" Kenny asked Peter after he'd put the smallest pack available over the boy's shoulders and began filling it with the lightest weight items. Kenny hadn't planned on the children carrying anything other than their own selves, but both Peter and Polly insisted. He did the same for the girl, asked about weight, then told them both, "I'm proud of you for helping."

Soon enough, he and Alice were laden down with as much as they could carry. They found a first aid kit with anti-biotics and other drugs that might be useful for this Paul guy about whom Alice had spoken. Hiding the cache again, they headed for the trail again, with Alice out front, followed by the children and then Kenny.

It would prove to be too much for the children, and the two adults would ultimately -- but not surprisingly -- have to take the lightweight packs from the youngsters. They made good time considering the younger hikers, stopping often for water and rest. They made it to the nearest of the two lean-tos Paul had identified for Alice before sunset.

As Alice prepared some beds and a meal for the little ones, Kenny backtracked to see if anyone was following them. He'd told his female savior he would wait out there an hour and did. By the time he got back, the children had eaten and were passed out inside the little shelter.

"Thank you again," Kenny told Alice after having already told her such down at the cache. "You save us. I can't thank you enough for that."

Kenny was only thinking about the three here who had survived. Those who had been lost -- including Carla, possibly, as Kenny wasn't sure -- had been living in slavery, beaten and mistreated and, in the case of the young women, raped nearly every day. Whether or not they were in a better place, as the religious might say, was a topic of debate. But Kenny put no blame on Alice for what had happened to them.

"Tell me about this little community of yours, Alice," Kenny said as he sipped at the coffee she'd brewed in a tiny metal pot while he'd been away. "I mean, if you don't mind. You don't know me, so, only if you feel like it."

He listened to what she had to say or didn't have to say, asking a couple of supplemental questions as she went on. When she finished, Kenny asked, "And this Paul guy. He's not from your, what did you call it, your Family? How did he come into the picture?"

 

[Alice2015]

Sorry, I should have left posting the demise of this thread to my partner, who actually began this role play.

 

[RobbieRand]

(OOC: As Alice said above -- and then deleted -- we have decided to abandon this role play.)