But, as it turned out, that week wasn't a very safe one for them. Not long after they'd gone out the next morning, the first day that Sunni was officially leading the troop, they ran across a party of five hunters--young men, and men who, from all appearances, knew their way around in the forest. Staying on the ridges as always, the girls stopped and watched them, trying to determine which way they were moving. The men, however, were staying under close cover, the girls could rarely see more than one or two of them at a time.

It came as a total shock to them all when they discovered that three of them had split off. They were no longer with the group, and the girls had no idea where they were.

Quickly, they tried to recover, but it was too late. The men had spotted them up on the ridge, and they'd given no sign of it; instead, they'd split up and circled around so that now, they had the whole troop surrounded. Worse, there were clearings scattered all around the base of the ridge they were on, clearing alternating with brush too dense to run through. With desperation in her voice, Sunni told the others that they had no way to go without risking the men's arrows--at close range.

While they dithered over their next move, the hunters called out to them: "Ladies!" one of the men at the bottom of the hill called. "Ladies, listen to us, we want to offer you a deal!"

"Should we answer?" Erin asked.

"No choice," Sunni told her. And it doesn't matter anyhow, they know where we are already." She cupped her hands around her mouth. "What's the deal?" she cried back.

"We want to get laid," the man called back. "You know we have you surrounded. We want five of you to come down here voluntarily. If you do that, we'll only kill one, and you can choose which one. You have my word."

Sunni hesitated. "How do you plan to kill her?"

"We're going to knife her."

"Let me ask my girls," Sunni yelled. She turned to the others. "They have us," she said flatly. "And the way things are, they can probably bring down two of us, maybe more, if we try to run for it. Five's too many to risk, but we can negotiate about that. The point is, one of us is going to have to die to save the rest of us. You all know, no one is ever directly asked to--"

"We understand, Sunni," Cindy said quietly, interrupting her. "I'll do it. I'll volunteer. Tell them they can kill me."

"Cindy!" Melanie cried.

Cindy turned to her and smiled--although she already looked terrified. "Hey, I always did want to be a hero," she said. "This is my big chance."

Sunni stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

"You can't be serious!" Melanie yelled. "We can't just give them one of us to kill!"

Sunni gave her a hard look. "You haven't been here that long," she snapped. "This isn't the first time. Things get desperate around here at times. Sometimes we have to choose, one of us or several of us. That's just the way it is, Melanie!"

Cindy touched Melanie's arm. "It's okay, it really is," she said. "Sunni's right, Melanie. Sometimes it's the only way; it just hasn't happened since you've been here, that's all. But in the past other girls have died to save me. It's my turn now." She smiled softly. "I'll never make it ten years anyway..."

"It's settled then," Sunni said. "Five's too many," she called back to the men. "We'll give you two. One you can kill. Deal?"

"We need at least three," the man called back. "That's my last offer."

Sunni hesitated again. "Done," she called. "You guarantee you'll release the other two?"

"You have our word."

"Okay," Sunni said to the girls. "Who else is going? Make no mistake, it's a risk, they could kill you all."

"I'll go," Melanie said instantly.

"And I'll be the other," Sunni said before anyone else could speak. "Now--"

"No, Sunni," Pi said. The tiny girl stood up. "The troop needs you, you can't take the chance. Let me go. You stay, the girls need your experience." Sunni argued, but in the end it was decided, and, after Cindy had said her good-byes to the other girls--and after a round of tearful hugs--Melanie, Cindy, and Pi walked down the hill toward the two men who'd been calling out to them.

They were, Melanie noted, very good-looking men. "Great!" one of them said as they came into sight. "Fucking fantastic!" He looked them over. "Which one of you is going to take the blade?"

Cindy stepped forward. She looked, at that moment, even younger than she usually did. Her bright blue eyes were wide open. "I am," she said. Her voice trembled and she looked like she was about to burst into tears. "You can kill me, but my friends go free, that's the deal."

"That's the deal," the man agreed. He was strongly built, six feet tall, with curly brown hair. "And we keep our word. My name's Mitch, by the way. You?"

"Cindy," she answered. She stared down at the ground.

"Well, Cindy, let me tell you what we have in mind. Your two friends here are going to fuck and suck my four friends, and while they're doing that I'm going to be doing you. We're gonna put on a show for them. That okay with you?"

Cindy nodded. "Yes, that's okay with me," she replied without looking up. Her voice was very soft.

"Don't kill her," Melanie put in. "Please... you don't have to. We can make this really good for you..."

"That ain't gonna fly, honey, so save your breath," Mitch said, turning to her. "We can get plain sex in the brothels for a whole hell of a lot less money than we paid to be here." Melanie started to speak again, but he held up his hand, silencing her. "We figure we're being generous," he went on. "You can't see it that way? There're five of us. We just have a one-day pass, but still, our bag limit is five. We had you pretty well trapped; the way I figure it we could have gotten at least three or four of you if we'd pushed things. Isn't that right, wasn't that the way you girls saw it?"

Melanie cast her eyes down as well. "Yes," she admitted.

"You gotta know, too, that there isn't one thing preventing us from breaking our word here, either," he added. "We can kill all three of you. Right?"

"Yes."

"But we aren't gonna do that, we're gonna keep our word. We like it better this way anyhow--having one of you give herself up to us." He put his arm around Cindy's shoulders. "So we're only gonna kill little Cindy here. After she's dead, and my buds and I have gotten our rocks off, you two are free to go. I'd say that's a better deal than most of the hunters give you."

Melanie choked back a sob. "It is," she replied. "It's a lot better. It's just that... that... she's my friend and I don't want her killed, I don't want her hurt..." She looked up at him, suddenly wild-eyed. "Do me instead," she cried. "Let her live and do me!"

"No, Melanie!" Cindy protested. "No! This was already decided, up on the hill!"

"She's right," Mitch said. "It's been decided. Cindy's the one who gave herself to us so Cindy's getting the blade, and that's that." As the other four men joined them, he turned back to Cindy. "You," he said, looking her up and down, "look terrific."

"Thank you..." she murmured.

"I know you aren't gonna have a great time here," he went on, "but we'd like it if you could do this without begging and struggling and all that..."

She looked down again. "I can try," she answered. "I will try. I agree with you, you've been fair to us. I'll try to make it as good for you as I can."

"Okay, cool," Mitch said with a boyish grin. "Let's get to it, then. We have a place picked out over here." He led the girls to a clearing surrounded by low shrubs and medium trees. While the other four men began fondling Melanie and Pi, he asked Cindy to lie down on her back on the grass. She did as he instructed, and she also obeyed when he told her to spread her arms and legs. Once she was in position, he took four tent-pegs from his backpack and drove them into the ground, one beside each of her wrists and ankles. Finally, using short pieces of yellow nylon rope, he tied her limbs to them.

By this time, the other four had their pants off. Melanie and Pi knelt before them, each girl sucking one for a while before turning her head and moving to the other. Mitch, meanwhile, was gently caressing Cindy's body, playing with and sucking on her nipples, kissing her lips, teasing her clitoris. At first she was totally passive, but gradually she started to respond in spite of her situation. Once she was thoroughly wet, Mitch called one of his friends over. Leaving Melanie, the man knelt between Cindy's legs and slowly sank his hard cock into her. Rolling her head from side to side, Cindy moaned with evident pleasure.

As the man fucked her, he stroked her smooth flat belly. "You all ready to take a blade for us, baby?" he asked, his face close to hers.

She looked up at him blankly for a moment. Then, turning her head, she looked over at Melanie and Pi. She said nothing, but Melanie could almost hear her thoughts; they'd discussed it many times and they all knew it, the better Cindy made it for the men the safer Melanie and Pi were and the safer the whole troop was.

"Yes," Cindy said at last, turning back to the hunter. "Yes, I am." She wriggled her hips against his and gazed fixedly at his eyes. "I said I would. I volunteered, you know. I said I'd be the one, the one to come down here and take a blade for you, die for you... " The man sighed deeply and kissed her; she kissed him back. After a while he pulled out of her and came back to Melanie; who was startled at the wetness of his cock when she took it back into her mouth. As she did, another of the men went to take his place between Cindy's legs.

Cindy started talking to him immediately. She was smiling now, and her brilliant blue eyes looked excited. "Come on, get it inside me," she urged as he knelt down between her legs. "I want it in me... Mmm..." She sighed deeply and closed her eyes as his cock sank into her soaked cunt. "Yes, get it deep inside me, I like it in deep..." She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Touch me, touch my belly, touch my tits... touch me where you want to see the knife going in me... it's going to happen, oh god I know it's going to hurt but it doesn't matter, I want that blade deep inside me too, I want to turn you on like you've never been turned on before..." She sounded enthusiastic enough that Melanie, busy with her two men again, could not really be sure if she was acting or not. She kept it up, too, while the other three men--Mitch was the last one--took turns fucking her. When Mitch started to pull out of her she asked him, in an almost frantic voice, to stay for a moment. He did, and seconds later she erupted in a shattering orgasm, her whole body trembling.

Mitch pulled his still rock-hard cock slowly out of her. He caressed her face, then ran his hand down over her body. Keeping one hand on her belly, he reached for his pack with the other and drew out a small double-edged dagger.

"It's time," he said, "that we got down to business here." Hearing this, the other four men quickly rearranged themselves so they'd have a good view. Melanie and Pi both had one man's cock in her vagina and one in her mouth as Mitch knelt down beside Cindy.

Cindy stared up at him, her fear more than obvious in her eyes now. "Oh, Mitch, couldn't we...?"

Mitch shook his head. "No. This is going to happen." He stroked her body lightly with the knife, running it over her belly and breasts and down each thigh. "We have a deal, remember?"

"I remember." She stared up at the sky and choked back a sob. "I'm scared..."

Mitch frowned. "Cindy, I--"

She looked at his face; her own was a study in wide-eyed innocence. "No. You're right. We had a deal." She stared at the knife for a moment. "Kiss me," she demanded. "Kiss me, then go ahead and do it."

Without saying anything else, Mitch leaned over, lifted her head with his left hand, and pressed his lips to hers. She responded avidly--almost desperately. While he continued to kiss her, he raised the knife high. He hesitated for a second or two, but finally he plunged it down hard. It struck her belly beside her navel and it went all the way in.

Cindy gave a choked cry from behind the kiss; her arms and legs went rigid, pulling hard at the ropes, threatening to dislodge the tent pegs, but she kept kissing Mitch, even harder than before. The curly-haired man snatched the knife up and out of her; as bright blood came welling out of the hole it left, he stabbed it down into her abdomen again, on the other side of her navel and somewhat lower, again burying the blade in her body.

Without pulling out the knife, he broke the kiss. Cindy's body shook as she cried freely. "Oh, god, ohgodohgod," she wept. "I'm trying, oh please help me, I'm trying..." She squeezed her eyes tightly closed for a moment, then opened them and stared up at Mitch's face. "Can't you..." She stopped, groaned, and arched her body upwards. "Oh godddd... oh, god, I do want to make it good for you but..."

Mitch grabbed her chin and turned her head so she was looking at him again. "I'm going to do you again," he told her. Her face twisted, and fresh tears ran from her eyes. "No, you don't understand. It'll help. You'll start to go into shock and it won't hurt as much."

She nodded vigorously. "Please, please do it quick..."

He nodded too, and he jerked the knife out of her belly. Her eyes flashed wide open, but she hardly had time to experience that pain before he'd stabbed her again, through her right breast, just under her nipple, plunging the blade far down into her chest. She grunted loudly, her eyes fell closed, and her head strained backwards.

It was too much for the man who was fucking Melanie. With a loud groan, he slammed his hips into hers, driving her head into the man she was trying to suck, and sprayed his semen inside her. The one Pi was sucking followed suit just an instant later, filling her mouth with thick white liquid, so much she could not hold it all; it spilled over her lips and dripped on the ground.

Cindy, meanwhile, had quieted down quite a bit. She looked down at the knife sticking in her chest, at the blood that was seeping out around the blade. She swallowed hard, opened her mouth as if to speak, choked, coughed, looked pained again, and sprayed a fine mist of blood into the air.

Then she was quiet again. "I'm dying..." she murmured. "It's really happening, I'm dying..." She looked up at Mitch. "You were right... I think... it doesn't hurt as much... I feel funny..."

Much more slowly, Mitch started pulling the blade up and out of her chest. She frowned and winced, but she didn't protest. Frothy blood spouted from the wound as it came free, surging every time she took a breath. Melanie, with a cock still in her mouth, heard another groan and saw Pi's other partner climaxing into her. She started sucking her man with a new vigor, wanting this to be over.

"Do me again," Cindy was whispering hoarsely. "Again, again, do me again." The words themselves pushed Melanie's partner over the edge, and jets of hot semen struck the back of her throat. By then, Pi, whose partners were lying on the ground as if dazed by the intensity of their orgasms, was making her way to Mitch.

"Give me your cock," she begged when she reached him. "Give me your cock, let me suck it, let me suck you off while you're killing her." He didn't argue; she laid down across his thigh and drew his cock into her mouth. As soon as her man was completely finished with his orgasm, Melanie went to him too, stroking his chest, rubbing his back, pushing her breasts against his shoulder.

"This'll be the last one, Cindy," Mitch said. "This'll do it." He pressed the point of his knife into her solar plexus.

Cindy stared at his face. "I'm ready," she whispered. "I'm ready to die.." Her voice was very weak, almost inaudible, but her features were smooth, she looked very calm.

He pressed in hard, and the knife broke through her skin. She pushed her head back and her mouth twisted into a rictus as the blade started sliding in. While she quivered, he forced it on in, going straight down. When about half the blade was buried, he suddenly went rigid himself and erupted into Pi's mouth. With a loud cry, he plunged the blade deep, even as he was coming, slamming the hilt hard against Cindy's body. Her body as tight as a piano string, she stared at him with a look of something like confusion--and then she suddenly and totally relaxed. Melanie watched her let out her last breath, watched her clenched fingers slowly uncurl, watched the pupils of her eyes rapidly expand as her life slipped away.

Mitch almost fell over on the ground. Pi stayed with him, taking the last spurts of his come and swallowing them. Once he was through, she rose to her knees, looked down at Cindy's corpse, and burst into agonized tears. Melanie, who was already sobbing quietly, embraced her.

"Can we go now?" Melanie asked Mitch after a moment.

He looked up at her with glazed eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure. Go. Whatever." The two girls did not give him, or the other men, a chance to change their minds. Like two deer they were off, running though the woods and weeping at the same time, hurrying to find the rest of their shrinking troop.

They could not know, then, that it would be less that a week before they'd lose Pi, the little Thai girl who'd sold herself to be here.

That day, the situation they'd found themselves in didn't, at first, seem all that bad. The group was being stalked by a solitary hunter, a young man they'd felt was probably very skillful. Even so, none of them felt they'd have much of a problem evading him, though he steadily and unerringly managed to follow their trail over a couple of miles of forest. Noting this, Sunni had ordered that the group break in two; he could not, obviously, follow both.

But he could follow one, and the group Melanie was in was obligated to split up again. The girls tried everything to shake him off--backtracking their steps, crossing the water--but nothing seemed to work. It was as if the man had a sixth sense that was leading him unerringly toward them. They split again, and now the group he tracked consisted of just Sunni, Pi, and Melanie.

He was also setting a very fast pace, a pace that was tiring to the girls in spite of their excellent physical condition. By late afternoon Melanie and Pi were almost staggering, although the more experienced Sunni seemed able to push on.

"Okay," Sunni said when they stopped for a brief rest. "This isn't going to work, he keeps gaining on us, a little at a time. You two take cover and rest for a while. I'll leave an obvious trail and circle back to you. All we have to do is delay until the siren sounds, maybe an hour and a half." Melanie and Pi were too tired to argue. At that time they were in a lush glen with slopes on both sides and a sort of a path--actually the course of a shallow intermittent waterway--down the center. Pi took cover near the bottom, among the exposed roots of a giant tree that was gradually being undermined by erosion. Melanie went up the hill a hundred feet above the tree, where she found a dense thicket to hide in. Sunni fled straight down the center of the glen, leaving obvious footprints and deliberately breaking small twigs to attract the hunter's notice.

After a short while, the hunter appeared on the path, following Sunni's trail, as they'd expected him to. Looking down at the ground most of the time, he walked right on by their hiding places, and Melanie breathed a sigh of relief. This was, she told herself, going to work out for them. The hunter was good, but he was going to run out of time.

Then her breath caught in her throat as she saw him doubling back, along the hillside now, headed straight for the tree where Pi was hiding. The tiny Thai girl wasn't facing him, she was watching the glen. The hunter, his bow at the ready, crept slowly closer. There wasn't a doubt that he spotted her.

Melanie held her breath as she saw him close in on her. She started to stand up, she had about half-decided to cry out a warning when she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, and looked around to see Sunni crouching behind her. Sunni shook her head warningly.

"You can't," she mouthed silently. "She's on her own now. It can't be helped, it's just the way it is."

Melanie turned back and, chewing her lip, watched. Silently, she tried to will Pi to turn her head, to look to her right. Eventually, she did--but by the time she did, the hunter was close, far too close. With an involuntary cry, Pi shot out from among the roots. To get out, she had to move toward the hunter, but once she was clear of the tangle she immediately started to turn.

But it was too late, the hunter had already released his arrow. Even at the distance, Melanie and Sunni could hear the solid "thump!" as it struck Pi's abdomen, right at her waistline and well around to the right side. As if she wasn't quite aware of it yet, Pi continued to run for twenty-five yards or so.

But then she slowed, staggered, and finally stopped. With an expression of confusion on her face, she looked down at the arrow sticking in her side. As if she'd forgotten about the hunter completely, she grabbed the shaft as if she meant to try to pull it out.

She didn't get the chance to try. From behind her, another arrow whistled through the air. With another heavy "thunk!" it pierced her back to the left of her spine and tore completely through her small body. She was already looking down; she had to see the shaft and the sharp steel three-bladed arrowhead rip out through her belly. Skin and gore stuck to the blades. She staggered forward a step, then fell to her knees. Blood was now pouring from both wounds and dribbling out of her open mouth. She looked up at the place where Melanie and Sunni were hiding and their eyes met, but the little Thai girl gave no indication whatever of their presence. The young man slowly walked up to her; she could do nothing, she turned her head and watched him come.

He knelt in front of her. For several seconds they just stared into each others' eyes as if they were lovers, the tiny girl clutching at her painfully pierced belly, one small hand clutching at each arrow. Laying aside his bow, the young man smiled as he drew his hunting knife from its scabbard at his waist. She glanced at it but she said nothing, she offered no resistance. He moved to her side slightly and put his arm around her shoulders gently. Wide-eyed, she gazed at his face and waited. Melanie was sure she could see something like relief, relief that her time here was done, on Pi's face.

Then the hunter drove the knife in between her breasts, just to the left of her sternum, burying the blade in her heart.

The small girl's eyes widened; she didn't look down at the blade buried deep between her small breasts, she just kept staring at the young hunter's face. Her body spasmed; blood gushed from around the deeply-buried blade. She choked and regurgitated a huge mouthful of blood. Her eyes rolled backwards; her face and her body relaxed at the same time. Blood continue to drip from her open mouth and her eyes, still open, stared into nothingness. Her sphincter muscles relaxed and her bowels and bladder emptied noisily onto the ground. The young man cleaned her off with some water from a canteen, then arranged her body carefully on its back, spreading her legs far apart. Unaware that he was being watched, he took out his hard cock and shoved it into the dead girl's vagina. When he came, the semen drooled out of her since her vaginal muscles no longer closed the opening. After pausing for a cigarette, he hung Pi's body from a tree branch, cut her throat, and pinned on an ID tag. Then he left.

Melanie, staring at the hanging corpse, sighed deeply, a sigh that broke into a sob at the end. Sunni, hearing her, laid a hand on her arm. "No, he was good to her," the Asian woman said. "He killed her quickly, he didn't make her suffer."

Melanie looked around at her. Sunni's eyes were wet, and tears streaked her cheeks; Pi was her closest friend in the troop, and Melanie knew it. "Yes, he did," she agreed. "If I have to get taken, I hope it's by somebody like him."

"The necrophilia doesn't bother you?"

"No. I don't care what happens to me after I'm dead."

"I don't either. But a lot of girls hate the idea of being taken by a necro. And there are a lot of them."

"I don't care. He seemed like an okay guy--for a hunter."

Sunni's eyes narrowed. "You'd best be careful about your attitudes, Melanie," she warned. "If you keep taking the attitude that some of these guys are 'okay,' one day you'll trust the wrong one and you'll be taken."

Melanie shrugged. "Maybe. But that would mean that I'd be taken by an okay guy. There are worse things that can happen. Right?"

Sunni sighed and slipped her arm around the other woman's shoulders. "Right," she agreed.