Double Team
Chapter 203
“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”
—Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
IT WAS MY OWN FAULT. I was just such hot shit. The President quoted my memes. The National School of the Arts recruited me. I should have known they only wanted Cindy. That’s what I was there for: to give her career a boost. I was stupid to think my musicianship was in demand. I consulted with the Reform Commission, commented on the new drafts. And told them the President needed to do something right fucking now. Yeah. I was really a pain in the ass and now they were getting back at me.
I should just tell the boss to go suck it and let him send me for disciplinary action. But this training, the attitude, the pride my teammates had in what they were doing… It all combined to weaken my resolve. I had no idea where I was or where I could go if I just walked away. It felt like the only thing to do was to keep training and survive.
I’m sure in a year or two they’d be all apologetic about how it was all a computer glitch that routed me to the wrong place. By that time my hands would either be so tough and calloused by the ropes I was handling in training or my fingers would be worn to the nubs by digging in the dirt.
I glanced longingly at my guitar locked in the cage at the back of the cabin. No chance I’d be playing it again but I’d never leave it behind.
I’m here, J. Don’t let go.
The days blurred. My responsibility was improving their endurance and ability to run. I didn’t need to improve their times, but their endurance. Derek’s was to increase our ability in the water. Longer swims. Rougher and colder water. Paul was a team leader. Dana learned emergency trauma care. Beyond stuffing a pill in someone’s mouth. Rick was a rock climber. John was a body builder. Lonnie was a spelunker.
Everybody had a specialty and taught it to the others under the watchful eye of the boss.
Our emergency kits, issued the second day of camp, included five day-rations of 2400 calories each. Each day we were in camp, we resupplied our packs so we always carried five rations. We all got used to stripping and swimming nude, sleeping nude. Sitting around nude on the days we needed to wash our jumpsuits and hang them out to dry. Eventually, even Dana went mostly unnoticed.
“Everything’s fine. He hasn’t got a clue,” a voice said somewhere. I came slowly out of a dream thinking the voice I heard was in my head. It started again, but there was a squeak and a shift in my bed. It had been too hot to sleep inside our bags, so we pretty much all just laid on top of them, stretched out naked. The shift in the bed pressed a warm naked body against mine.
“Hold me a little?” Dana asked. Her soft boobs pressed into my chest and she stretched out on top of me. Over the past ten days, we’d learned to depend on each other. I’d fallen during a rock climb and my partner had held the belay to keep me from plunging down. She was as strong as she was beautiful. I wasn’t about to turn down the request to hold her naked body stretched out on mine. I stroked her muscular back with rough hands. She rubbed her face against my chest. I could feel my cock begin to stiffen between us and for once, I didn’t care. That was part of the agreement I had with my pod. Accepting and giving comfort when we were away was accepted among us. All of the girls had at least one lover while in service. Some, several.
Dana lifted her lush lips to mine and slowly moved her body on me. Our tongues touched and it wasn’t long before I filled my hands with those perfect half-orbs. English be damned. These were orbs, the hard points of her nipples pressing into my hands. The kiss heated up.
“What about all the other guys?” I whispered. I was worried they’d be awake and watching, maybe wanting a go at Dana themselves.
“They can fuck each other,” she whispered in my ear. “I want to fuck you.”
“Yeah. We should still be quiet.”
“Then quietly stick your cock in my panty hamster.”
It didn’t take long for us to work into position so the tip of my cock was touching her wet slit. Panty hamster? What the hell! I pushed and she pressed down on me. For the first time since I last fucked Cindy almost two weeks ago, I felt the hot slick walls of a vagina encase my penis. Add to that the luscious tits that filled both my hands and I was stiff as a board. She kept kissing me as I pinched her nipples and used her tits to guide her speed in pumping up and down on me. She was slick and bare. I was looking forward to the next time already when I would get at least one hand on her bubble butt.
I started pounding up into her and had to move a hand around to the back of her head so she didn’t sit up and bang it on the bunk above. I wrapped my hand in those curls and hauled her mouth back to mine as we both increased our tempo.
“Fill me, Jake. Let me feel your come flooding me. I need this!” I felt her hand wiggle its way between us as she started beating on her clit to get over the edge. The explosion was almost silent for both of us, our mouths locked together to try to keep quiet. As my balls emptied, I just kept hunching at her, her nether lips dragging against my cock to keep it hard. Nor was she finished. She kept diddling her clit until we both climaxed again as I pulled hard on her long nipples.
She collapsed on me, panting, and I finally reached around to hold both of those glorious buns in my hands and squeeze. We rolled to our sides while still connected and went to sleep.
We headed for the pond at first light to wash the evidence off her pussy and legs. Neither of us bothered with clothes, either direction. In shallow water, she bent over and I pounded into her from behind until we both released our morning pressure. The guys coming down to the pond as we walked back to the cabin openly admired her breasts and pussy. She no longer seemed to care.
We didn’t screw every night. We were just too tired most nights. We still slept together most nights unless it just didn’t cool down enough during the evening that we could stand to touch each other.
It was one of those nights, hot and sticky, when I was having trouble sleeping. I heard the voice again. This time, I was positive it wasn’t part of my dream. I slipped out of bed and went to the door. The screen door let fresh air in and kept bugs out, but once I was close to it, I could hear the voice clearly and spotted the boss a few yards away, leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, and talking on his cellphone.
Cellphone? He told us there was no signal up here. But of course, none of us had actually been able to check our phones.
“He’s bought it hook, line, and sinker,” the boss said. “Totally believes he’s in a new branch of service. They all do. And the whore is doing great. We’ll get evidence soon and then you can run the photo with a nice headline. Like ‘President’s Poster Boy Dodges National Service to Run Off with Black Whore.’ He won’t be able to affect the election even if they forgive him and let him back in.”
I shrank back away from the door and returned silently to my bunk. I paused and looked at Dana in the top bunk, stretched out sound asleep on her back with her tits pointing skyward. In that moment, I was filled with such rage that all I wanted was to reach out and break her pretty neck. I wanted to fuck her dead corpse and spray come all over her tits. I wanted to piss on her. Shit on her. Got my back? She was just the boss’s whore, there to discredit me. My hand was reaching for her throat when I jerked myself away and shrank from my own vile thoughts.
I lay in bed wide awake the rest of the night, staring at the underside of the bunk that held the sleeping whore.
I wondered how many of the others were in on this little ruse. Paul? Our acknowledged leader? He had been the one to give me help in the bathroom—get me stripped out of my clothes and into a jumpsuit. Give me a drink. What would they have done if I hadn’t been sick? Drug me? Maybe they had drugged me. I didn’t remember anything from that whole day I signed my papers.
My papers. Were they even legit? They said they checked my papers and saw the bus number. The boss knew a lot about my background, but never mentioned that I was a musician. Had the service had anything to do with my assignment at all?
And now that I knew… I knew they had set me up. My wives would have no idea what happened to me and wouldn’t hear a thing until they saw a photo of me with Dana that said I’d run off. What would they think? What could I do?
If I suddenly started acting differently, they’d know I was clued in. I needed to act the same. Even make love to Dana. I needed to watch for my opportunity and be prepared at any moment to escape. To run to my family and set things right.
Fuckers!
We wore our emergency packs everywhere we went now, as if they were an extension of our bodies. If we ran, we ran with the thirty-pound red and yellow pack. If we climbed, we climbed with the pack. When we stripped to swim, the pack was with our clothes. The pack was our lifeline. It had our food and water, emergency blanket, Swiss Army Knife, trauma aid kit, waterproof poncho, toothbrush, razor, hand warmers, a tube tent, duct tape, nylon rope, zip ties, work gloves and spare socks. Our green jumpsuits were lightweight but rugged. It had taken a while for us to get into the routine of washing them when we swam and then sitting around naked while they dried.
For all that I hated the boss and my team, I had to admit I was learning a lot about emergency relief and rescue missions. And my upper body was changing, muscling out like never before. I just needed to get free and to a place where my hands didn’t hurt all the time.
We’d been out over three weeks. The day when basic camps got their cellphones back to make calls home came and went without notice. But then so did weekends. We were on duty 24/7. Dana had crawled into bed with me a couple of times since I overheard the boss’s conversation. I fucked her a little harder than I had before, but she seemed to like that.
“This is the tough one,” the boss said when he called us out for the day. “You’re on a three-day survival mission. We’ll hike out close to twenty miles. You’ll be assigned a campsite and will have a twenty-foot radius in which to survive for three days. You’ll be near running water and have nothing but your survival pack. Everything you need will be within reach if you can identify it. Check your packs one last time and let’s get moving.”
This was it. Under guise of checking my pack, I set my watch. No one had recognized the runner’s watch as anything more than a fancy watch with a timer on it. I knew, though, that it included the ability to record my route. Once it was recorded, I could run back and intersect the route at any time, keeping track of distance and boundaries. It wasn’t like it had a lot of maps and terrain information, but it showed the direction to our starting point—the cabin.
The boss led us out at a brisk pace. The last stop would be twenty miles or more up the trail and he wanted us ‘tucked in’ by nightfall. It was a long fast hike. Periodically, he would call a halt and lead one of the team off the trail. A few minutes later he would return and we’d hike again.
I could see the setup taking shape. The boss led. Dana and I brought up the rear. The other team members were dropped off ahead of us. I was following Dana and glanced at my watch when it was down to the two of us. We’d gone eighteen miles. Pretty soon the boss halted us and led Dana into the woods. It was only four o’clock but it seemed he took longer getting Dana settled than the other guys. When he returned to the trail, he started to jog and I fell in step behind him.
“This is your site,” he said. He pulled a yellow spike out of his pack and drove it into the ground. He tied a length of rope to it, measured out twenty feet, and tied the end to my ankle. “That defines your space. Set up your camp and settle in. I’ll see you in three days.” He spun and took off back down the trail at a slow run. The guy was in awesome condition. There wasn’t anything he’d asked us to do in four weeks that he hadn’t done himself. I wondered if he’d be camping on the trail somewhere and creeping around to check on us.
Stupid. Of course he will. That was the object of this session. I expected it wouldn’t be full dark before Dana came up the trail, expecting to spend the night with me. Maybe the whole three days. That’s when the boss would get his ‘evidence’ that I’d deserted the National Service to run off with a whore. I no longer knew if Dana was truly in on the plan or if she was as much a dupe as I was. It didn’t make a difference.
I moved to the edge of my circle and popped open my tube tent. I moved a rock inside the tent, untied the rope from my ankle, and tied it to the rock. I checked the directions on my watch as I finished my ration for the day. I peeked out of the tent to see if I could spot anything. I’d positioned the tent so that I could slip out of it and directly behind a tree, moving from there into the woods and circling around in a wide arc until I intersected the trail again a couple hundred yards farther along. The route showed that we’d been bending in a long arc but trails weren’t identified on the rudimentary maps. I suspected the latest game trail we’d followed connected with our normal running trail in about ten miles if it went through. From there I could run back to the cabin. As soon as I was on a wide section of trail again, I began to run. Hiking twenty miles and then running into the night was probably the stupidest thing I’d ever done but I was going to grab my guitar and wallet and bug out after I broke the lock on the cage. The worst part of this nightmare would be that I’d have twelve trained search and rescue people on my trail by morning.
I’d run a good two miles by the time the sun was getting low. I’d need to commit to the trail or find a campsite before long. If Dana was headed to my camp, she’d get there soon and the boss wouldn’t be far behind her.
Turn left, J. Now!
I looked for the voice, knowing at once it was in my head. What I saw was a deer trail cutting down the slope. Looking at my watch, I could see the general direction was a more direct path to the cabin. I retraced my steps a few feet and carefully stepped off the trail, trying not to disturb any leaves or twigs where it went into the woods. I couldn’t really run on this trail but I made my way as quickly as I could without stumbling. An hour later it was dark enough that I couldn’t safely move forward. I no longer felt pressed. Any pursuit mounted at this time would surely miss the path I took in the dark. If they even attempted it at night. My best bet was to use my headlamp and keep moving. It would be slow, but the more miles I put between myself and the rest of them, the better. I stopped and drank a pouch of water. I had enough water, but it wouldn’t do to go through it all too quickly. I needed to make it last several more hours. I counted and my rationing had still gone through eight of the four-and-a-half-ounce water packets during the day.
As soon as I had my bearings and lit my headlamp, I started out again.
It took the rest of the night. The game trail had crossed a stream where I had to wait back in the shadows as a bear and two cubs fished. I’d only been thinking about human obstacles and forgot entirely about wildlife who were normally more active at night and kept out of sight during the day. I shut off my lamp and waited, leaning against a tree. I searched around and found a sturdy club. Should have done that before I took off. I nodded off to sleep, setting a timer on my watch to buzz against my wrist in an hour. When it woke me, I could no longer detect any sign of the bears and moved on down to the creek.
The trail seemed to fade out on the other side of the creek and it took me nearly another hour to find a path that led on the direction I wanted to go.
The sky was beginning to lighten toward dawn about four-thirty in the morning. A long way from sunrise yet, but I was soon able to turn off the lamp for good. Another hour and I met the trail we’d gone up the day before. I wasn’t sure what I might meet on the trail. It was a guess as to whether the boss would have alerted the team and sent someone back along the trail or if they were all still in their campsites. I moved quickly and as quietly as possible down the trail.
As I got close to the clearing, I slowed down and approached, looking all around. I didn’t see anything and crept cautiously to the door of the cabin. Nothing. All was quiet. I looked around and chose a good-sized rock. I’d need to smash the padlock on the cage. I slipped inside with my chosen tools and went immediately to the cage. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to just hammer on the lock with the rock. I positioned my club against the top of the lock case and pounded down with the rock. That wouldn’t work as the end of the club splintered. I looked frantically for another tool. The screen door slammed behind me.
“So, the little bird returned to the nest,” the boss said. I saw him approaching as I looked over my shoulder and didn’t think any further. I spun toward him swinging the club at his face. He must not have seen the club because he was way late in dodging and I hit him solidly in the jaw. The boss fell in a heap on the floor.
“Jacob? What’s going on?” The woman’s voice startled me so much that I swung the club up in the air and spun toward it without thinking. Then I let the club fall from my hands.
“Nanette?”
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
