2
The train was no high-speed express, it rumbled on, grunting and jolting, swaying drunkenly over points, frequently grinding to long halts, stopping occasionally at stations or depots where bright searchlights temporarily shone through the ventilators, showing up the deep-shadowed, pallid faces of my companions like ghosts, already dead – which, in the eyes of the MSC, we formally were.
At one, quite prolonged stop, there was a good deal of shouting and banging, sounds as if the whole train was being searched. The door of our cattle-hold was noisily unbolted and briefly slid open, a couple of uniformed men peered in, one of them shining a fiercely bright lamp into our frightened eyes. He muttered to his colleague, the door slammed shut, the lock clunked closed.
There was pale dawn light when we reached our destination. The train stopped, doors slammed, footsteps outside, but we remained chained in our prison. The hum of the power system stopped, there was an eerie silence. We glanced at one another anxiously, no-one dared to speak, I – and I'm sure all my fellows – felt suddenly cold and cruelly hungry, this cessation of all sound and movement made us acutely aware of our shivering bodies, our fear and our feelings.
At last the door was opened. A burly man in uniform snapped at the two slave girls, they hastily jumped out and knelt on the platform. Next he beckoned the dark-haired girl sat at the end of the compartment, she was the only one of us not chained to the sidebars. She crawled across our legs. As she passed me, she turned her head and looked closely in my face. "Eulalia!" she whispered, then "Lucia!", and scuttled on.
The Guard had seen her risky misdemeanour, he grabbed her by her long, rich curls and hauled her out roughly, punching her face as he swung her round and through her onto the platform, where he kicked her viciously. "Cunt! You keep your mouth shut, whore-shit, or we'll make things even worse for you than they're going to be already!"
Lucia! Of course, her face flashed into my memory, bright, playful Lucia, my very best friend at school. I'd thought of her from time to time during the long, long ordeal at the IPCG, had she managed to keep out of the clutches of the MSP? Had she got away abroad? But no, whatever she'd done, wherever she'd gone, the tentacles of the MSP had found her, had caught her – they seem to have been obsessively dedicated to seeking out every single girl who'd been contaminated by any contact with me, Eulalia Merida!
Now pairs of Cadets began unlocking our wrists from the bar, girl by girl, then we were dragged out and made to kneel – not just down on our knees, full 'submission', faces right down on the filthy black concrete. They were in savage mode, condemned girls on our way to execution can only expect the roughest treatment. Much shouting, bullying, hair-tugging, punching and kicking. One of the toughs attending to me finished by stamping on my head, crushing my face against the platform, reviving the pain in my jaw from the teeth Ioannides had tortured more than six months before.
I heard a truck pull up, and next we were fitted with yokes, like the ones we'd worn when paraded through the streets as Killhope Girls, though these ones were heavier and clumsier, solid chunky wooden beams across our shoulders, our arms stretched out, wrist-irons locked to rings at either end, clamps screwed against our throats to hold them firmly.
Staggering to our feet, we were fitted with slave-belts, again familiar, the kind buckled tight at our backs, with a pair of chains hanging down from rings in front. These were threaded through our groins, crossed over, and locked to the belt-rings of the girl behind, so we were once again linked into two slave-chains.
Our Guards had whips and goads, some of them had electric cattle-prods. A jab of one of these in my bum sent a sharp pang of fire up my spine and down my leg. All my companions were set in motion at the same time, we began our last walk.
Down a long ramp, through a dark tunnel, out through gates into a bare, bleak street. Still early morning, little traffic about, most of the buildings in darkness, a few neon-lit. It was a town, a big one, but not one I recognised.
As we plodded, whip-driven, progressively closer to what was evidently the centre, there were more signs of life, though it still seemed eerily quiet. Much of the traffic was Military, most pedestrians were in uniforms too, and carrying arms. Some of them paused to ogle us as we were herded past, but the few civilians seemed to avoid looking, hurrying by with heads bowed, as if anxious, afraid.
We reached a grand square surrounded by imposing, though rather grim, grey-granite buildings. Three trailers were parked along three sides, like there'd been when we were paraded in Evroga. I guessed rightly we'd once again be made to stand, exposed – this time stark naked – for the delectation of the public and our own humiliation. We were disconnected from each other and driven up steps to our positions on the trailers, I was at the centre of one, still between Carina and Dagmar.
Our yokes were attached to upright poles along the side of the trailer, on which were placards, each of which bore a poster with a picture of the girl alongside, her name, number, a list of her crimes and the announcement of when, where and how she was going to be executed. I could only see mine out of the corner of my eye, couldn't read it clearly, but it was enough to send a cold shudder through my guts.
There were posters around the square too, with collective portraits of us, all nude, doubtless ID photos from the IPCG, and the words PUBLIC EXECUTION in large capitals above more detailed information. The insignia of the MSC and MSP were prominent at the heads of the posters, and on several other hoardings and fixtures.
And there were clues to where we were. The flag of Elclud drooped from a flagpole in the middle of the square, there was little wind this murky, stuffy morning. But as we approached it, a brief gust lifted it and I noticed a change, the centre of its saltire was now covered by the black broken cross of the MSC. We were in Moro, capital of Elclud. But what are the MSC doing here, why has the flag changed? Two tanks parked threateningly at either side of the square gave me my answer, we were in the capital of a conquered land, here to serve as a dreadful warning to anyone who might contemplate resistance.
The city slowly came to life. A lot of soldiers, Military Police, armoured vehicles. Civilians looking cowed and cautious, some tousled youngsters in shorts or short skirts, their legs crimson-branded – slaves. There'd never been slavery in Elclud, there is now. And as the day brightened, there were more people in smarter clothes, looking more pleased with themselves. Some may have been part of the occupying forces or their families, but of course there'd be people in Elclud who stood to gain from the régime-change, or at least were making the best of it. Arrogant looking men and scornful women paused to look at us, filthy, emaciated, stinking, covered in scars and bruises, they tutted and shook their heads in disgust.
There was less spontaneous muck-throwing than we'd had in Evroga, but a group of MSC Cadets organised a gang of street-urchins and idlers to hurl garbage from the markets, restaurants and slaughterhouses. Locked in our yokes, we could do little to avoid the barrage of rotten food and excrement, our faces were soon coated. But our tormentors were instructed to aim lower, hurling more solid items – bones, bottles, even stones. Repeated hits on my lower abdomen winded me, I was retching from my empty stomach, and my vain efforts to skip and twist to dodge the missiles gave them the pleasure of a lively dance.
Mid-morning the scourging began. They started with Marie. I had my back to the flagpole where she was chained up, didn't have to watch, and was glad, I couldn't have done anything to help her. I didn't know if she'd been whipped on a post or scaffold before, but she took it pretty well, shrieked and yelled of course, but kept up a vigorous struggle as they swung around forty lashes of a grown-up's nine-tail scourge a cross her fragile-seeming shoulders, bum and thighs. Then I heard them make her turn and face them while they delivered twenty more full frontally. Her shrieking became more desperate, in the end she was gasping and gagging for breath. They unchained her and threw her down the steps, to lie their while they dragged up the next victim, Laura.
Laura was experienced, I knew. I remembered her saying, before she was tortured by Ioannides, that she'd been recognised by the secret police while she was being whipped at the post somewhere as a vagrant. And of course she'd been flogged alongside me on the scaffold at the IPCG. She too had a residue of strength that belied her small size and traumatised mind, her groans had the sound of resigned acceptance, their was no fight left in her, but she was able to bear the relentless lashing.
They scourged Afra and Gejo too. Afra put up quite a fight, twisting and struggling, spitting and trying to bite, as they dragged her from the trailer to the whipping-post. It did her no good, she was thrashed with vicious fury and made to scream like a banshee. She attracted quite a crowd into the square. Whatever their politics, the sight of a naked girl being made to dance to the whip is an irresistible attraction to most males and quite a few women too!
Gejo gave them good value too, she was more co-operative as she was prepared for her flogging, but her wide repertoire of yelps and grunts expressed her torment vividly, and I could hear the thuds as her body and legs swung about against he creaking wood of the flagpole.
Why only the youngsters? There was some muttering in the crowd, some demands for us bigger girls to have our turns under the scourge, I saw some pointing at me and yelling to a Military Police officer, "Flog this slag!" He climbed up onto the trailer and signalled for quiet. "We won't scourge the ones who are going up on crosses," he explained, "We want them to keep all their energy for when they're dangling from the nails – but don't you worry, we'll make sure they suffer, you'll see!" That raised a cheer.