About two weeks after John and his friends left, Harry came into the village with the news that they were to be given not two, but three days off; for three full days their village would be off-limits to the hunters. For much of two days a party atmosphere prevailed, but most of the girls spent a good bit of the final free day in their hammocks, resting. After that, of course, it was back to the woods, back to hiding, back to running. Still, none of them were being taken.

A situation which ended less than a week later.

It was late morning, and Jane had spotted a group of hunters moving through the woods near the road, not far from the village. The troop, together as a unit, watched them from a vantage point atop a nearby hill. From there, the visibility was poor; to make sure they kept tabs on the men, Jill and Angie climbed some fifty feet up into one of the trees. Hidden among the leaves, they kept a close eye on the men.

And, not long afterwards, the other girls saw them giving frantic signals. Instantly alert, the girls readied themselves to flee, but they did not yet know which direction to go. Understanding their problem, Jill and Angie started their descent; Jill, by far the more agile of the two, reached the ground in a matter of seconds, and in whispered tones warned them that the hunters were on their way up the hill, coming from the southeast. Quickly and quietly the girls began moving off toward the northwest. They'd gone a few hundred yards before Jane, realizing that Angie had not yet caught up with them, stopped them and doubled back.

What they saw when they came within sight of the lookout tree made Melanie's heart jump into her throat. Angie had not been able to get down from the tree; a critical branch had broken when she'd put her weight on it, and it had left her temporarily stranded forty feet up. She had, however, found another way down; it had just taken longer. Following the code the women lived by, she had not called out for help, since that would have alerted the hunters to their presence.

But it was going to be okay, Melanie told herself as she watched the tall teenager jump from a low branch and land lightly on the ground. Smiling at them, Angie started toward them at a fast trot.

She hadn't gotten more than fifty feet when an arrow came flashing out of the forest alongside her and buried itself deep in her side, just above her hip.

Her eyes widened, and she slowed to a stop. After a quick glance at the arrow, she looked back toward the other girls; her wide-eyed and open-mouthed expression said everything needing to be said. Limping now, she moved forward a few more steps, but then there was a sizzling sound and another arrow sprouted from between her ribs in the back.

She staggered and fell to her hands and knees. Lifting her head, she again looked toward her long-time companions, and with her hand made a gesture indicating that they should go on without her. Melanie didn't move, not until Jill grabbed her arm and started dragging her away.

"No!" Melanie whispered. "We have to--!"

"There's nothing we can do now except die with her!" Jill snapped back. "She's been taken, she's as good as dead! We have to go, now!"

The others, Melanie realized, were already gone. Still, she resisted for a moment before allowing herself to be dragged away. She looked back, just in time to see one of the hunters break cover and run up to Angie, who remained, helpless now, on her hands and knees. The man grabbed her strawberry hair in one hand and jerked her violently upright. Angie's eyes burned into Melanie's as the hunter used his knife to slit her throat. Even as the knife bit deeply in and her blood came spurting out she continued to gesture with her hands, waving with the backs of them, silently telling Melanie to go on, to leave her to her fate.

For Melanie, that afternoon dragged terribly. They were never bothered by the hunting party again; Melanie wandered along, sometimes stumbling along, following Jane as she kept the troop on the move. When she was asked to scout ahead or cover a flank, she did so, but she felt stunned. Her eyes and cheeks were constantly wet; she kept seeing Angie as she'd been in the village, always smiling, or the way she'd looked the night they'd danced for John and his friends, how she'd been the first chosen by those men. Over that, superimposed, she kept seeing the image of the teenager with two arrows piercing her, the hunter slitting her throat, and seeing her hands silently telling the others to go on, to save themselves. For her this was a first, the first time one of these girls that had become like a family to her had died at the hands of the hunters, and she was having a hard time dealing with it.

Back at the village that evening, Jill stayed close to Melanie. "Believe me," she said as she watched Melanie picking disinterestedly at her food, "I know how much it hurts, especially the first one. Angie was the--damn, I don't even know the number--but a long way from the first of the friends I've made here I've seen taken. It isn't a lot easier, it doesn't get easier. But you can't let it get to you. If you do you'll be a step slow and you'll be taken too."

"I'm not sure," Melanie said, "that it wouldn't be easier, better for me..." She suddenly burst into tears. "It's so damn unfair, Jill!" she wept. "I didn't do anything to deserve being here!"

Jill put a protective arm around her shoulders. "I know, honey, I know. I didn't either. But here we are, and we have to try to make it through. One way or another."

"Neither one of you," a male voice from behind them said, "deserves to be here."

Melanie and Jill turned at the same time. "Harry?" Melanie asked. "What are you doing here?"

He shrugged. "I come down here sometimes at night. Keeps my night rangers on their toes and out of your huts, for one thing--I need them watching the gates, not screwing the villagers. Keeps me up on what's going on for another." He sat down beside them. "I'm sorry about Angie," he told them.

"I don't even know," Melanie said, "what she was in here for, what she was supposed to have done..."

"Nothing," Harry said. He was watching her, and he seemed to be looking at something inside her head. "Nothing at all. She was good-looking, she was athletic, she wasn't rich, she had no political connections, and that's all it takes."

Melanie frowned. "I don't understand... what are you talking about?"

"The system," Harry said. "The system." He gave Melanie a hard look. "You were busted for prostitution without a license. If you'd had a chance to talk to Angie you would've found that that's what she was in for, too. So's Nadine, and Cindy, and Diane. It's a common one. Jill here is in for possession. So's Jane, Sunni, Juana, Erin, and Lila. The other most common one."

"Harry, what're you saying?" Melanie demanded.

"Something you need to hear," Jill advised.

"You're all innocent," he said flatly. "Every girl here is innocent, in this village, right now, not one single girl--that's my opinion, anyhow--actually committed the crime she was condemned for. It's the system. That man you slept with, Melanie--he was a federal agent. You were targeted and set up. It happens all the time. They need a steady flow of Class B's to stock this place. If justice takes its natural course there may be some, but there aren't nearly enough." He shrugged. "Ain't nearly enough Class A's for the TV shows and the setup pieces, either, so the same thing gets done with them."

"In my case," Jill said calmly, "there were a couple of men coming into the club where I worked trying to get me to sleep with them. Harry thinks they were agents, too. I didn't do it, I had a policy, never go out with the customers. So they planted drugs on me. Same result, here I am."

"Exactly," Harry said.

"And everyone knows about this!?" Melanie almost yelled.

"Everyone in law enforcement, yes. It's common practice. Prostitution without a license, possession, larceny. It's pretty easy to plant marked cash or jewelry on a girl, too."

"And that's what got me here," Audra said, joining them. "I'm not guilty either, though."

Melanie, letting this information sink in, clenched her fists tightly and closed her eyes. Their lives, their suffering, to finance the government. While she did, some of the other girls had gathered around.

She felt someone touch her knee. "Harry has been saying everyone here is innocent, hasn't he?" Melanie looked up, the speaker was Allison, a perhaps overly-slender girl with dark eyes and curly dark brown hair. "He's wrong. I'm not. I killed my husband, I'm in for murder."

Harry laughed. "You are so full of shit, Allison," he said.

"No, I deserve--"

"No, you don't. I've read your case, I read all the cases. You were beaten and abused by your husband for five years. He died when you managed to grab the gun he was planning to shoot you with, you fought over it, it went off, and he got shot. That ain't hardly murder, Allison. Not by any stretch."

"But he's dead..."

"Yes, he's dead. But it wasn't your fault. When the police came, they knew you were a good Class B, and they get big bonuses from the feds when they bring in a Class A or a Class B on anything like a legit charge. That's you. I've told you that before."

Allison fell silent. "I can't believe this," Melanie muttered. "I guess it's obvious. I just can't believe people are that... cruel."

"You need to learn better," Harry advised her. "You haven't seen the sort of cruelty that can happen here, not yet. You've seen two kills and they were both clean. They aren't all like that."

"I don't want to see anything worse than what happened to Angie today," Melanie muttered. She turned to Harry. "Harry, why do you work here? You seem like such a--a--an odd man to be working here."

Coming up behind him, Jane laid both hands on Harry's shoulders. "Because he has no choice," she said. "You mind if I tell her, Harry?"

"Would it matter?" he asked. He reached up and patted her hand with obvious affection. "You'd tell her anyway, when I wasn't around."

Jane laughed. "Probably." She looked back at Melanie. "Harry comes here at night a lot," Jane told her. "As I guess you can imagine, he's had more than one invitation to share a hammock. Unlike the gate guards, he could accept one if he wanted to. He never has. Harry has a wife at home, a wife and a little six-year-old daughter. He really loves them."

"Okay," Melanie said "So--?"

"Five years ago," Harry said, picking up the story, "I was a ranger at Yellowstone Park. I was happy there. Then the Feds came to me and offered me a job as senior ranger here. Lots more money, so on. But I didn't want any part of this, and I turned them down flat."

"And they changed your mind somehow."

He laughed bitterly. "They sure did. My wife, Rachel, is an absolutely classic Class-B. A ballet dancer and marathon swimmer. They set her up on a drug-possession charge. Arrested her and threw her in jail in Montana. Then they called me in and told me what choices I had: stay at Yellowstone and she'd be sent here as an inmate. Or play ball, come here and do what they wanted me to do, and they'd suspend the charges."

Melanie sighed deeply. "So you played ball," she said, shaking her head. "I can't blame you, what real choice did you have? I'm sorry that happened to you, Harry..."

"Don't be," he said quickly. "I'm not, not now. If I had known then what I know now, they wouldn't have had to have gone to the trouble of framing Rachel. Sometimes, in some ways, I can help. I can make life a little easier for you, I can make it a little more likely that you survive another day. It ain't much but I do what I can. I'm hoping that all of you make the ten years and walk out of here."

"Harry," Jane said, "is way too modest. What he does is much more than a little. I can almost guarantee you that the warden only wanted to give us one day off for that testimony we gave. Is that right, Harry?"

He didn't answer for a moment. "Yeah," he said finally. "It is."

"And Harry bought us two more. He helps us much more than 'a little.'" She squeezed his shoulders hard. "And he has a price he has to pay for it, too."

"Price?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Yeah. What Janie means is, sometimes I have to kill one of you myself. I don't like that, I don't like that at all."

Melanie frowned. "Kill one of us?"

"Rogues," Jane explained. "Renegades. Girls that attack the hunters. It does happen. When it does, Harry has to hunt the girl down. He has no choice, it's his job." She ran her hand across his hair. "And, I'll tell you this: if it comes to that, there's no one better."

Harry shook his head. "Not something I like being good at," he noted.

Harry stayed a while, talked to the girls a while longer; during that time, he dropped several broad hints about the parties of hunters that would be coming in during the next few days, what he knew of their habits and practices. It was information that would be invaluable to the girls' planning during these hunts; Melanie, in the end, was glad that Harry was there--even if she felt a sense of injustice about how he'd come to be there. As always, several of the girls offered Harry sexual favors that night; as always he politely declined.

The next morning Harry left, and the hunts resumed. Forearmed with information about the hunting parties, their schedules, and their practices, the girls enjoyed almost a whole week of ease; not once in that time did any of them even have so much as a close call.

But the week came to an end. Harry, of course, was back on the day schedule; when he saw the girls he usually had some tidbit of useful information for them, but that wasn't even daily. They all understood he could do no more; senior ranger he might have been, but he was not the only ranger and he wasn't the warden, he was under the warden's command. Having heard his story about how the government had blackmailed him into taking this job, Melanie had a bad feeling about what might happen if it were to be discovered that he'd been aiding the girls in evading the hunters.