Death by Chess

©2004 by C. Smith

Chapter 1

Werner Richter was a bitter man. He had done his duty: he had presided over the slaughter of the woman he had loved dearly for eighteen years. He had watched them hang her up by the ankles and cut her throat. He had held her hand and kissed her as her blood drained past their lips, just as he had promised he would all those years earlier when they had first become lovers. They had known that the terrible day was coming and he thought he was prepared for it. But he wasn't. It had twisted something in his soul.

Ironically, that was the very year he was named C.E.O. of Musgrave, Inc., but his elevation came three months too late to save his lovely Aprille. She had produced nineteen healthy baby girls for the Company's livestock inventory, all of them Prime Grade beauties, two of them already productive Breeders themselves. But when her reproductive system faltered, Company policy and the law made her fate automatic. Her status was changed from Breeder to Meat and she was slaughtered. Werner had kept his purchase option on her active during all those wonderful years so he was able to buy her and see to it that she died blissfully stoned on O-drugs and riding a huge orgasm. But that did little to salve the pain in his own heart.

It also bothered him that he had refused her last request, even though it was for her own benefit. She had wanted to be live-roasted on a spit. She was way past the age limit for spit roasting but knew that he could afford to have it done privately to bypass the Company's quality assurance rules. That was certainly true, but he could not bear to think of her being cooked live over a roasting pit. She could not convince him that O-drugs made the orgasms grow in direct proportion to the intensity of pain, and that the immensity of the pleasure would overwhelm the underlying agony of her roasting flesh. He had studied the eyes of countless live meat girls as they turned on their spits over the fire, but it was impossible to tell if they were reacting to the pain or the ecstasy. She had sighed and dropped the subject, and they had made spectacular love that one last time. But his denial of her final request left him with an unshakable sense of guilt.

He did follow through on one important promise. He established a weekly ritual in which he cooked a portion of her meat, taken from its shrine in his freezer, and shared it with a Prime Grade girl from the Musgrave livestock in an elegant setting replete with candles, fine wine, his best dinnerware and a profusion of flowers. Aprille's silver and gold urn was lovingly placed as the centerpiece of the table. In accordance with her desire that she be remembered not with sorrow but with sex, love and joy, the evening always ended with an exuberant indulgence of fleshly pleasures.

Once a month the ritual was expanded to a full scale spit roast feast and orgy with several male guests and a matching number of Prime Grade girls. For these occasions, because he did not want to use up his precious supply of Aprille's meat too quickly, he purchased "consecrated" girls. These were Primes who had previously attended one of his weekly dinners and partaken of Aprille's flesh. Aprille herself had suggested it, her logic being that once her own meat was digested by another girl, she became part of that girl's body. The meat from that girl was thus "consecrated" and became the same as her own.

The orgy feasts began at Saturday noon with the ceremonial slaughter of the sacrificial girl. It consisted of a re-enactment of Werner's last moments with Aprille, including hanging her by the ankles, cutting her throat and kissing her while her blood poured past their joined lips. That ritual was followed by the normal evisceration, stuffing and spitting of the carcass. Roasting time for the average size girl was at least six hours, which left plenty of opportunity for high-spirited afternoon play as she cooked, followed by even wilder play after the feast.

Yet none of this effusion of sexual extravagance and playful debauchery relieved his heartache. Indulging his libido in Aprille's honor, even at her behest, did not ease his grief at her loss. His bitterness grew with each passing month, with each new sacrifice to her memory, with each new taste of consecrated blood. His pain was a bomb awaiting a fuse.

It arrived in the form of an M1-P named Kimberlee. From the moment she received an order to report to the C.E.O. as a guest for one of his weekly Aprille Memorial Dinners, Kim had known she was in peril. Meat girls were always vulnerable to activation, of course, but her added status as a Pleasure Girl had given her some protection, or so she had been assured. She certainly had worked hard enough to earn it. Many of her Prime Grade friends who had not managed to add the "P" to their status designation by the age of seventeen had not made it to age eighteen. She had waited on many a table and signed up many a client at banquets where former classmates were roasting on their spits.

But this invitation was a scary turn of events. Everyone knew that Werner Richter chose the prettiest of his weekly dinner dates to be sacrificed at the grand end-of-the-month orgy, and all her friends told her she was unquestionably the most beautiful of this month's choices. Her long dark hair, brilliant green eyes, lush bosom and lithe figure made a sensational combination.

It was only a slight acne problem on her chin that had kept her from being classified as a Breeder, and that condition had nearly cleared up. With makeup it was undetectable. It was too late now, of course, to make Breeder. She had already been sterilized and prepped for live spitting. It was only her ability to turn a profit for Musgrave, Inc. as a Pleasure Girl that kept her out of a roasting pit.)

Until now. Now she was "consecrated." Unless she could think of something, she wouldn't live past the weekend. How could she possibly convince Werner Richter to choose someone else to be his pre-orgy sacrifice? She cried herself to sleep three nights in a row over the irony of being not quite beautiful enough to have made the cut for breeding, but was plenty beautiful enough to have her throat cut in honor of fucking Saint Aprille.

Then an idea came to her. Maybe Richter wouldn't go for it, but what did she have to lose? Her Notice of Activation would arrive Friday evening, giving her time to say goodbye to close friends before reporting Saturday morning for her flush-out enemas. She went to Richter's office Friday morning. Normally, an M class girl, even one with Pleasure Girl status, would not be granted an interview with the C.E.O.; but if he had, in fact, chosen her to be slaughtered for his big weekend orgy, he might well be curious as to why his featured entrée had come to see him.

And she was right. She was ushered into his office by an extremely pregnant B1. She was an older woman, probably in her early thirties, and her body was beginning to show the effects of her many pregnancies, but she was still gorgeous. It was easy to see why she would have been designated a Prime Grade Breeder. At seventeen she must have been a knockout. And no acne.

"Kimberlee! How lovely to see you!" Werner Richter said, rising to welcome her and guide her to a plushly upholstered leather chair in front of a desk as spacious as a bed. "What can I do for you?"

"I have an idea I thought you might be interested in," she said with as much assurance as she could muster, considering her heart was in her throat.

Werner Richter smiled back at her, admiring her exceptional beauty, amused at her ineffective effort to appear nonchalant. She would make a worthy sacrifice to the memory of Aprille.

"Remember," she said, "how you were saying at that Memorial Dinner last week how frustrating it is that the pro leagues and colleges have blocked us from showing our intermural sports on global TV?"

"I do. They don't like the idea of competing against an all-nude female league. They're afraid of losing audience share to us."

"Well, I've thought of a way we can get around that."

"Oh?" Richter smiled encouragement, but his eyes said, I know what you're up to. "Go on."

"What we need is a whole new game, one that will be exciting to watch, but one that the pros and college athletes aren't allowed to play."

Richter had not missed the fact that she'd used the "we" pronoun twice. The little minx was definitely trying to land a deal that would keep her pretty neck unslit for a while longer. He couldn't decide what intrigued him more: watching a lovely girl he would be eating tomorrow try to talk her way out of her destiny, or hearing what kind of cockamamie scheme she had in mind to outwit the pros.

"And what game would that be?" he asked.

"Promise you won't laugh. It doesn't sound like much, but I've got some really good ideas about it."

But he did laugh! It was an absurd conversation. He knew she was only trying to wiggle off her hook and she knew he knew. He could easily read the desperation behind her plucky bravado. He had to admit, though, he really admired this girl. What was her name? Kimberlee? It was too bad, in a way, that he'd never get to know her better. "I make no promises," he said. He bestowed on her what he thought was his warmest smile.

What she saw was a wolfish grin. Her heart was pounding. Her life was hanging on her words. "What I had in mind, Sir, was a chess game."

His smile widened.

She hurried on. "Not just a dull two-person game. This one would have somewhat different rules and have a lot of action with naked girls."

Richter raised both eyebrows. Was he more interested or just laughing silently? Kim clenched her fists so he wouldn't see them tremble.

"Do you play chess, Sir?"

"I do."

"Great! Then picture this. We'd have a field marked off like a chessboard. Both teams would consist of mostly naked young females with just enough costume to identify which team they're on and which piece they are. They'd all be armed with weapons from the middle ages — swords, daggers, maces, axes, spears — like that. We wouldn't have to use the Prime meat stock, either. With makeup and conditioning, the Standards and even the Oven and Chuck grades could be used."

"This game is going to involve bloodshed, then?"

"Absolutely, Sir. That's our edge! Free people can't kill each other legally, but we're livestock."

"I'm listening."

"Two players have to call the moves. You could call them generals or commanders or something. They would be up on a raised platform or tower where they can see the action. We could even bring in real military brass, or celebrities, or we could use our own girls. Using our own would probably be more exciting."

"Why?"

"Because . . . Well, let me explain some of the rules. In ordinary chess when you capture an opponent's piece, you just jump one of yours into its space and take it off the board. But in this game the two pieces would have to actually fight it out. If the attacker kills the defender it would be like a regular chess move, and the dead or wounded girl would be dragged off the field. But if the defending piece kills the attacker, that puts the attacking general into a whole new quandary. She has to plan for both possibilities. And she'd have to do it, make her next move, within a given amount of time or lose her turn. And that time could be as short as half a minute, or even fifteen seconds. So not only do the generals have to play good fast chess, they have to contend with the possibility that their moves will backfire."

"And why would using our own girl generals be better?"

"They could be the Kings. In normal chess you win just by putting the King in a capture situation he can't escape. Checkmate. In our game the King has to be actually killed. We could put each team's King on her own tower on the chessboard. It would be on wheels and motorized so she could move around like the other pieces. She'll have to fight any piece that puts her in checkmate position. If she's killed, the other team wins."

"Sounds promising, but how do you keep the field from turning into chaos with girls chasing each other around with swords? And at the same time keep the action flowing?"

"I'm developing some good ideas on how to do that! I just need a few more days to put it together. May I come back Monday? I'll be able to lay it out in more detail then."

This was the critical moment. Either he would go along with it and she would live through the weekend, or he would reject it and by this time tomorrow she'd be having her guts flushed out. He could even steal the idea and develop it himself after feasting on her at the orgy. She was so tense she was afraid she might pass out.

"Scheherazade," he said.

"What?"

"Have you ever heard of Scheherazade?"

"No."

"She was a beautiful Arabian girl who married a king named Shahryar who was in the habit of marrying virgins and having them beheaded the next day. She kept herself alive by telling him an exciting story, then tease him with a preview of another equally exciting story the next night. So the king would let her live one more day. She did that for one thousand and one nights. By then the king had become so enamored of her that he decided to make an exception in her case and let her go on living."

He let several seconds of awkward silence build up as he smiled knowingly at her. Kim's hopes plummeted and she let her gaze slip to the floor. He'd seen through her and wasn't buying it. Then anger began to boil through her despair. What right did he have to mock her pathetic attempt to save herself by rubbing her nose in her ignorance? How the hell would she know who this Scheherazade was? The only things they taught her here was a thousand and one ways to get a man to cum so you could make yourself useful while waiting to be slaughtered for meat. She looked up at him defiantly.

"All right! I admit it! I don't want to die tomorrow. I think I'll be much more valuable to you if you let me live long enough to work this idea through. I think it can be a big hit and a serious money-maker for Musgrave if you'll just give me a chance. You can always cook me later if my ideas don't work out. All I ask is a chance. Please."

"What makes you think I've chosen you for the Monthly Memorial? Haven't your sources informed you that I choose only the most beautiful consecrated meat for those occasions?"

"Yes they have, Sir," she said, and stared back at him with her chin up.

By God, Richter thought, this girl is something else. She knows she's an incredible beauty. She undoubtedly feels cheated that she didn't make Breeder because of adolescent skin problems. Definitely smarter than your average meat, and not willing to give up her life without a fight. She might even have a decent idea going with this chess thing. He decided to push her a little further, just to see how she'd handle herself.

"And you figure you're the most beautiful of this month's crop?"

"I've only been with you that once, Sir, but you didn't strike me as a cruel man. You knew before I walked into your office that I knew you'd chosen me. And you knew why I was here. If I weren't the one you'd chosen, you would have told me right away. You wouldn't have left me in torment just so I could make a fool of myself."

He snorted. "Not cruel? Inviting girls for dinner and sex only to reward one of them with death: that's not cruel?"

"You obviously loved Aprille a great deal, Sir, and this is your way of honoring her. We're meat, Sir. If you don't kill us and eat us, someone else will. I don't expect to be spared that fate, I just want to postpone it for a while. I love life, like Aprille did. She was lucky because she could have babies, which kept her alive so you and her could have a lot of years together. I'm more like your Scherere . . . whoever it was. I have only my wits. And I think I've come up with an exciting idea. Please, Sir! You won't regret giving me a chance to prove it! And you can always activate me if it doesn't work out. Or for any reason at all, for that matter."

"True, but it will cost me. I'll have to buy an option on you to keep someone else from buying you in the meantime. Why shouldn't I just take your idea and run with it myself?"

"Because you're a honest man and it was my idea. You spend a lot of money to honor Aprille the way you do, buying a girl every week, all of them Prime Grade. I can't believe you'll steal my idea just to save the price of a month's option. Besides, as CEO you get a discount."

He laughed. "Okay. I'll give you extra points for tact. You're right, of course. You are my choice. You are far and away the most beautiful girl I've met since Aprille. And the most interesting."

He paused, pursing his lips and tenting his fingers. He could see Kim's heart thudding under her thin dress. Yet, terrified as she was, she held her head high. "All right, Scheherazade, I'll grant you your stay. The original Scheherazade got a one day reprieve. You have a month to show me that your chess game has real potential. In the meantime, you will be coming to my orgy tomorrow, but only to enjoy the roast and be available for play. And to tell me more about your game."

Kim jumped up and threw her arms around him. "You won't regret it, Sir!" She kissed him vigorously, telling him between gentle bites, "And I'll make it worthwhile for you in other ways, too!"

"I bet you will," he laughed. "I remember your first visit!"

"So do I," she said, and began nibbling her way down his neck as she opened his shirt.

Chapter 2

There was a consequence of Kim's reprieve from death that her Arabian predecessor had not had to bear. Kim was now treated with contempt by her peers because she had broken a basic code among those who live in the shadow of the abattoir: she had escaped activation by talking her buyer into slaughtering another girl in her place. And it wasn't just any girl. Richter had chosen her closest friend, a tall strawberry blond girl named Katie. Was he unconsciously replicating for Kim the same pain he had watched Aprille endure when her best friend, River, was activated during his first visit to Musgrave?

Kim had to learn to ignore the silent treatment from her former friends, and the reproach in their eyes. The one compensating fact that helped her get past their disdain was that while poor Katie was dead and digested, she, Kim, was still very much alive. Besides, Katie wasn't exactly suffering at the end. They'd loaded her up with so much O-drug that the least touch of anything on her body set off waves of orgasms, including the blade slicing through her neck. When Richter gave her that last kiss, his fingers deep in her love slot, she looked like she would hump herself off the hook before she finally went limp and died.

The orgy itself was a blast. Reassurance that she was going to live at least another month went a long way to helping Kim relax and enjoy the evening's bacchanal with her host. He was, after all, amazingly attractive and sexy for an old guy in his forties. The fact that he owned her as girl-meat and was legally free to snuff her whenever he wished was a perversely outrageous turn-on. Or maybe that overload of O-drugs had saturated Katie's meat and Kim had eaten one serving of it too many. Perhaps those incredible orgasms with Werner on the lawn, in his bed, in the tub, against the gate, in the flower garden, in his dungeon, in a hammock and the all other places where their bodies had merged and slithered and spurted their juices had simply been drunken, synthetic ecstacy. Yet long after the sun had risen on the tangled, moaning bodies of the excessively entertained revelers, she wanted more. More of her sweet master Werner.

That's what she called him, now. Werner. She wondered if he felt anything at all toward her like she felt toward him. Or was she just a pretty fuck. The king's one-night-stand, soon-to-be-snuffed, slut bride. She guessed she'd find out in a month.

Another encouraging point: he had not ripped off her idea. He had let her talk about it, make plans, get excited. He cringed at the costs, but he let her organize it, even assigning her an office near his in the administration building. Her, a mere meat-girl! He often dropped in to check on developments. A man of business. But also a man of many hands. All over her. Stroking her hair, brushing her cheeks and lips, cupping her breasts, massaging her tummy, rubbing the valley between her legs. Kissing her. And she reciprocated. Eagerly! Hungry for him. But what did any of it mean? Did he want her as a woman? Or was it to make her eventual sacrifice more poignant for him, more worthy of Aprille's memory?

All too soon a problem loomed that was both inevitable and frightening. She needed more time. This project was going to take more than a month to bring off. There was a prodigious amount of work to be done. Equipment to be purchased and built. Girls to recruit and train. Costumes to make. Broadcast availability. The field to be prepared. A kazillion details. And although Werner was on top of all this through his daily visits to her office and could not help but realize the time line would exceed the one month reprieve, he had said nothing. What was his assumption here? That her deadline would be automatically extended in accordance with reality? Or that she would be sacrificed at the next orgy as scheduled and someone else would take over the chess project? The fear built in her gut until she could no longer hold down her meals.

Finally, four days before the big banquet, three before her month expired, she broke under the strain of not knowing. Werner had come into her office as usual, and was stroking her hair as he looked over her shoulder at the paperwork strewn on her desk. She burst into tears. His hand froze for a moment, nestled in her dark hair. Then he grasped her gently by both arms and lifted her to her feet, turning her to face him. Her eyes were closed and leaking, her body shaking with quiet sobs.

"What's the matter, Kimberlee?"

"You know what's the matter," she said.

He chuckled. "Actually, I do. But I want you to tell me."

"Why?" She batted the tears away with he right hand, furious at herself for showing her fear. "So you can humiliate me by making me beg for my life? All right! I'm begging! I know I can make this game work and I know it will attract a huge audience! But it won't be ready by Saturday and you know it won't. It's not fair that you won't let me finish it! There are lots of other girls."

"Why do you think I won't?"

"Because you haven't said anything! My month is running out and you haven't said anything. What am I supposed to think?"

"Kim . . ."

"Please, Werner, please! I know you loved Aprille and I know these sacrifices are important to you, but please don't do me yet. Please! I know I can make you proud of me, too, if you just give me another month. Please! I'm not afraid to die, I'm really not. It's what I was born for. It's what I was raised to do. But let me do one other thing besides being meat. I'm almost there. Please let me finish. Please give me this one chance before you snuff me. Just one game, then I'll be ready. Please."

"You're an extraordinary girl, Kim."

"Please, just this one thing, just one more month." She felt him slipping away and started weeping again in her frustration. "Please, Werner, please."

He kissed the tears from each eye, which made her cry harder.

"I love you, Kim."

She stopped breathing. Did that mean he wanted to spare her, or that she was good enough to sacrifice to Aprille? She looked into his eyes. They were soft and wistful. But were they wistful for her or for the memory of his first lost love?

"I love you, too, Werner," she whispered. "Surely you know that. And I'll die by your hand and still love you because I know it will make you happy. But our love is impossible. We both know that. I'm only meat. I can't even breed, like Aprille did, so that I can stay alive to have a life with you. All I can do to make you happy is die. That and this one other thing. Let me do it in your honor, my darling Werner. Please let me honor you and Aprille by creating and producing the first Musgrave Chess Battle. I'll even take part in it. I'll be one of the kings, if you like. If my team loses, you get my carcass to cut up for your freezer. If my team wins, you get me live to sacrifice at your next orgy."

"If your teams wins," he said, "I get to keep you for as many games as you keep winning. That's the deal."

Kim was speechless for several moments, trying to decide if she'd heard him right.

"You're going to give me another month?"

"One more month and as long as you keep on winning. If your game is as successful as you say it's going to be, I shouldn't have too much trouble bending the meat girl laws to allow for that. And if you're as good a chess player and as ferocious a fighter as you are a salesman, we might have a number of wonderful years together. And we won't even have to work our sex life around endless pregnancies."

Kim bounded up onto him, wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him and kissed him until he bled. Then they tore off each other's clothes, melted to the floor and fucked industriously until they reached a state of mutually exhausted bliss.

Chapter 3

The first major problem to be solved was how to recruit enthusiastic volunteers. The Company could simply order them to take part, of course, but Kim was adamantly opposed to that. Quailing, cowering girls would not make for exciting action. She needed aggressive, determined girls! So how could she convince a girl that the possibility of being hacked to death on a battlefield was more attractive than the surety of having her throat cut during an orgasm while on O-drugs?

Werner provided the solution. He convinced the Musgrave Board of Directors that it would be in their long term interest to offer girls indefinite immunity from slaughter as long as they were active members of a Chess team, plus extra perks. That meant that as long as they could fight well enough to win, they would continue to live, right up to the maximum age the law allowed for meat girls: thirty-five. That was seventeen years longer than their normal life expectancy and proved to be a powerful incentive. Hundreds of meat class girls of all grades signed up for try-outs. The down side was that in order to ensure that the opposing Kings did not conspire to end the games quickly with a minimal loss of life, the board insisted that the entire losing team at every game be slaughtered for meat in some kind of dramatic fashion. Yet even that prospect failed to dampen enthusiasm among the girls. They knew they would probably be activated and slaughtered within the year anyway, so why not go for greater longevity and more perks?

Kim and Werner spent many hours working out the details of the game, interspersed with at least as many hours exploring ways to satisfy their insatiable craving for each other's bodies. They decided the indoor arena would be the best venue. The noise of a bloodthirsty crowd and the screams of wounded players, all trapped within the walls and dome of the arena, would add to the excitement. It also made possible many technical innovations, including an overhead lighting system that could spot illuminate the affected squares for each move — the attacking piece and her target — and even light up the path she had to follow. That, and the giant arena telescreens showing graphic displays of the team positions and closeup shots of the combatants, would enable the many non-chess-players in the stands and at home to understand the plays.

They also decided that the game would be more interesting if the King on each side called the moves with the help of a touch-sensitive computer screen on her tower. She could touch a piece on the screen and drag it to where she wanted it to go, her move appearing simultaneously on the arena screens.

They agreed that each team should consist of seventeen players: the sixteen regular chess pieces plus an "Harpooner." The Harpooner would be a girl on horseback armed with a harpoon gun connected to her saddle with lengths of strong nylon rope. When a player was defeated in battle, the Harpooner was to gallop in, shoot a harpoon into the dead or dying player and drag her off the field.

Since the Harpooners (or harpies, as they would quickly be dubbed) were not fighters and would not be in mortal danger (in theory, at least), Werner received permission to select them from among the young B1's, the Prime Grade Breeders, who were not pregnant and showing. B1's were the most beautiful of the Musgrave livestock and would look sensational in their revealing finery, their firm, milk-swollen boobs bouncing enticingly as they galloped around the arena on their steeds.

For the training of the actual fighters, the chess pieces who would be doing battle with each other, Werner brought in martial arts experts from all over the world. The girls were taught the art of hand-to-hand combat using a variety of weapons, from wooden poles to broadswords. He and Kim had decided that a mixture of weaponry on the field with its potential for lethal mismatches would add to the challenge of calling the moves and add the spice of additional uncertainty to the game for the armchair quarterbacks and bettors.

Werner was at first concerned about the lack of experienced chess players among their recruits. "How are we going to find girls who can play the game well enough to command a team?" he had worried. "Most of them can't even read their Sex-Ed texts; they just figure it out from the pictures. How are they going to learn a complex game like chess? Checkers, maybe."

"Who cares?" Kim had responded. "Few of our viewers will know anything about chess, either. That's what the game announcer is for. He'll explain things as the game goes along. Hype it up like they do in football. Second guess every move. The Kings are only getting ten seconds to call the next move once a player has moved or been taken off the field. How many good chess players can make brilliant moves at that pace. That's a lot less time than football or baseball teams have between plays. Besides, a real chess player would go nuts if she makes a move which would normally take an opposing piece, only to have her piece killed instead. That possibility changes everything! Believe me, with all those naked girls battling each other, and being dragged around the field, and being tortured on the sidelines, no one will be looking for brilliant intellectual strategy."

He had conceded the point.

"Besides," she said, "I've decided I'm going to be the King for one of the teams. I'll be at least as good as any other girl in the Musgrave inventory because you'll be my teacher. Show me some sneaky moves. But most of the viewers will know shit about chess. Their focus will be on tits and cunts and watching us turn ourselves into meat."

Werner had laughed and pounced on her for another hour of animal frolic. Afterwards, as they had lain in each other's arms, breathing the sweet fragrance of fresh sex, Kim had another idea.

"Speaking of meat, since this is going to be broadcast on a pay-per-show interactive channel, why don't we get the viewers to buy lottery tickets on individual players. If that player gets killed, we'll draw twenty winners from the pool who bought her tickets and send them a share of her flash-frozen meat. We'll run the drawing at the end of the game and scroll the list of winners during the post-game wrap-up. We can even include a nice brochure with the meat with photos of the girl, her name, bio and a clip of her game battles and death. We could have a Food and Drug inspector stamp the meat to verify it actually comes from that specific girl. It'll be like betting on the game, only in reverse. They'll be betting on the losers. And it won't influence the outcome of the games because we'll have their ticket money whether the girl dies or survives. I think Musgrave can make millions more on each game by doing that!"

Werner thought so, too. As did the Board of Directors who became noticeably more supportive of the whole concept, even if it had been dreamed up by a mere Pleasure Girl.

Out of more than seven hundred volunteers, Werner and Kim eventually narrowed the field down to the best forty: thirty-two primary and eight alternates. The alternates would replace any who washed out of the training program. They were divided into two teams for the premier game by drawing names from a container sealed with a split rubber top. As prearranged, Kim took charge of her team as its King. The other team picked their King through a vote. Choosing team names turned out to be a far stickier problem, but after much wrangling, Kim's team settled on calling themselves the Harlots, while their opponents became the Vixens.

From that point, with only two weeks left before the game, the teams trained independently. They were also quartered separately to break up any pre-existing friendships. To survive, each team must now consider every girl on the other team as a mortal enemy and be mentally prepared to kill her when called upon to do so. Kim made it clear that any member of her team who hesitated, who failed to strike hard and fast, would be activated for meat immediately after the game, even if her team won.

By the time the day of the game finally arrived, Kim was so revved up on adrenaline she was hardly aware that she had only managed a few hours of sleep the night before. She might not be able to invent a thousand and one tales and might not live another thousand and one days, but she had tended successfully to a thousand and one production and technical details, and corrected a thousand and one fuckups to make this game happen. She was pretty sure Werner was proud of this mere Pleasure Girl. Now she was determined to win the game so she'd be around to enjoy the expression of his pride.

The arena was packed for the game, it's ten thousand seats filled to capacity with noisy, curious fans. The arena floor had been covered with faux turf in two shades of green to create the necessary checkerboard pattern of sixty-four squares, eight rows and eight files. Each square was ten feet to a side, creating a playing area eighty feet square, with additional space at the north and south ends for the substitutes, plus a row of vertical metal stakes about five feet high where the heads of defeated pieces would be displayed. The sidelines on the east and west sides were equipped with holding stations for the Harpoon Girls on their horses and a crew to handle the pieces they would be dragging in off the chess field. Nearby was a steel table equipped with a radial arm saw for removing the heads of pieces, and a gurney to take the carcass away to be butchered.

The two Kings, Kim and a tall blond sixteen-year-old named Lyra, their elegant royal robes flaring out as they walked, strode to the center of the arena for a coin toss to determine the starting team. The Chief Referee awaited them there. Like the other two refs, he had been chosen from the Company's stable of certified studs for his good looks and was packed into a sleek black spandex uniform that emphasized his overly developed physique. Kim called heads as the coin reached the apex of its trajectory. It landed on the grass with that side showing. Using the traditional terminology of chess, she elected to be "white," meaning her team would take the starting side of the field at Row One and make the first move.

The miked voice of the ref boomed around the field. "Harlots choose white. They will be the attacking team and take their positions at the south end of the arena." He pointed so everyone would know where "south" was. "Vixons are black and will defend from the north end." He pointed at the opposite side. "May the best team win!"

A cheer tinged with alcohol and lewd remarks erupted from the stands as both teams trotted out on to the field through gates at opposite corners. The teams were anything but black and white. Kim had made sure the colors would be as striking as the girls' naked bodies oiled by their own nervous perspiration. She had decked out her own team in hues of red and earth tones — the colors of cherries, apples, strawberries, tangerines and cranberries; shades of burgundy, maroon, bronze, saffron, straw and gold. For the other team she had selected a spectrum of blues and greens — the colors of sky and sea, of tropical leaves and young grass, of lakes and streams; blues ranging from powdery azure to brilliant cobalt; greens from the palest algae to the deepest jade; purples from magenta to violet to indigo; blends of aquamarine, teal, lapis and tourmaline.

Each team was led to its appointed end of the field by the harpies on their mounts, one hand holding exquisitely decorated reins, the other waving a pole from which flowed brilliant polyester streamers emblazoned with the team colors and logo that fluttered and rippled behind them. The horses, too, were handsomely arrayed in flamboyantly colorful bridles, reins, saddles and blankets. The Breeder Girls themselves atop the horses were exceptionally beautiful and naked except for flowing gossamer scarves around their necks, gloved gaunlets and knee-high riding boots. Behind them, jogging to keep up with the high-stepping trot of the horses, came the teams of sixteen chess pieces, each adorned in a costume befitting her rank. The costumes were spectacular, colorful and designed to do a poor job of hiding each girl's sexual endowments.

The first chess piece girls behind the Harpooners were the Pawns. They carried short-handled battleaxes and wore helmets topped with Roman brushes. The helmets were colorful but of little practical value, except to distinguish them from the opposing team. Their weapon was a mean looking instrument with an iron business end consisting of a curved axe blade on one side and a sharp pick on the other. They were also equipped with decorative greaves covering their shins, equally decorative gauntlets on their right arms, small round shields on their left arms, and sandals on their feet. Every part of their costuming, even their finger and toe nails, bore the colors of their team. The shields bore their team logos. For the Harlots it was an H formed by a naked woman with her right arm held out horizontally holding a spear. For the Vixens, a circle containing a large elaborate V with a slash through the right arm (to make an x) connected to a smaller N and S, spelling Vxns.

At the center of each square in the arena chessboard was an open iron cuff anchored to a ring on the playing surface with a few links of chain. As each Pawn trotted into her appointed square, she locked the cuff around her left ankle and stood at attention. When the Pawns had filled their rows on each side of the chessboard, the higher ranking pieces moved in behind them to fill the end rows.

The Rooks took the outside corners. Aside from their principle weapon, which was a six foot wooden pike with a sharp steel tip for spearing, they were identifiable by their headgear and a single sash that went over their right shoulder, threaded between their breasts on the front and their shoulder blades on the back and was anchored to a belt around their left thigh at the crotch. A sheathed dagger was also attached to the belt. Their headgear was a kind of crown, but with a flat, crenelated rim like the battlement of a castle parapet.

Just inside the Rooks stood the Knights. They were the most spectacular pieces with lush plumes sprouting from the tops of their helmets like great manes and trailing halfway down their backs. They wore gauntlets and high-topped boots with pointed toes. Fancy leather straps cris-crossed between their breasts to a leather belt around their hips that held butt plugs in place from which colorful horse tails arched out and swished the back of their legs. They were armed with fearsome double-edged, two-handed broadswords which they planted point down in the turf while they stood at attention in their squares.

Just inside the Knights were the Bishops. Whereas the chess moves of a Knight are awkward L-shaped hops, the Bishops, like the Rooks, can streak through any number of vacant squares to attack another piece. Except that where the Rooks move up, down and across, the Bishops move diagonally. This gives the Bishops and Rooks power second only to the Queens. Kim and Werner had decided to adjust for the discrepancies of mobility among the pieces with the weapons they could use. Thus, the Knight was given the relatively devastating broadsword, while the Rooks got pikes and the Bishop was armed only with a bullwhip and a dagger. Yet during trial battles in training, both the pike and the whip-and-dagger combo proved to be surprisingly deadly when used correctly. The costumes of the Bishops were as distinctive as the Rooks. The headdress was the traditional flame shape of a Bishop's hat, and, as with the headpieces for all the players, was held firmly in place by chin straps and hair clamps. They wore short tunics made of wide-spaced netting that concealed nothing. The tunics were decorated front and back with black crosses placed so that the crossbar underscored their breasts. The costume was finished off with ankle-high pointed boots.

And finally, in the center of the end rows, behind the line of Pawns and bracketed on each side by Bishops, stood the Queens and Kings. Having chosen the "white" end of the board, Kim's Queen stood to the left of her tower in the "white" square — actually, lighter green.

The Queen combines the movements of the Rooks and the Bishops and is therefore the most dangerous and valuable fighter on a team. New players tend to play her timidly for fear of losing her. Advanced players move her aggressively to take advantage of her devastating mobility. To encourage a more forceful and exciting use of her superior abilities to intimidate and attack, Kim and Werner had endowed her with a suitably menacing combination of armaments. She carried a curved Arabian saber and an oval shield. A long dagger hung in a sheath from a waist sash. Her queenly finery began at the top with a silver coronet, the points glittering with jewels in the colors of her team. A three-quarter length cape draped from her shoulders to just above her knees, entirely open at the front for freedom of movement and an enticing view of her body. She wore low dress boots with pointed toes.

The Kings atop their wheeled towers wore imperial crowns encrusted with jewels and a full length cape that ended above their ankles. They wore armored grieves and gauntlets. Next to them a barrel-shaped cage bristled with the entire arsenal of weapons: pike, battleaxe, broadsword, saber, dagger and bullwhip. A shield hung from a rack on the other side. But they were only allowed to move one square per turn and could come down from their towers to fight an enemy piece only if that enemy piece had not threatened them first, putting them in check. Once a King was in check, she could escape by moving to a safe adjacent square (if any) or interjecting another team member to block the attack (if possible). Failing those two options, she would be in checkmate. Game over. The defeated King would be taken down from her tower and slaughtered with the rest of her team.

To assure compliance with the rules, every member of both teams had tasers inserted in their vaginas, with the vulvas sewn shut to hold them in place. They could be activated by the Chief Referee if a rule was breached. Each girl had been given a sample jolt to let her experience the extremity of pain it produced. Kim had wanted the girls to be given a strong dose of O-drugs to make their deaths more pleasant, but that would defeat the purpose of the tasers, so they were all going into battle without the usual expectation that any pain would be converted into orgasms.

When all the pieces were in place, it was a spectacular sight — colorful and expectant, the stands roaring with growing excitement and teased lust. The booth announcer rattled off the names of the sixteen players on each team and they raised their weapons as they heard their names. Already in the stands spectators were waiving money at the circulating clerks, demanding tickets for the meat raffle, inspired by the sight of the actual livestock in the flesh, betting on who would not survive. From her tower perch about seven feet off the ground, Kim had a view of all the squares and could see that the girls on both sides were getting nervous. Kim had played enough chess with Werner at this point to realize that most of these girls would probably be dead within the next few hours; surely most of them had also figured that out.

A whistle blew. One of the refs was in mid field between the opposing teams. He pointed at Kim and swept his hand in an overhead arc toward the defending team. It was the signal to attack.

Chapter 4

Kim knew only two opening moves. She and Werner had started all their practice games with one or the other. She put her index finger on the computer screen in her tower console, touching the square in front of hers and dragging the Pawn two squares forward. The giant screens at the corners of the chess field instantly showed her move and the voice of the booth announcer boomed it out.

"Kim, the Harlot King, has made the standard opening, ordering the Pawn Samantha to move ahead two squares."

There was an audible clank as Samantha's ankle cuff snapped open. She stepped out of it and walked two squares forward to stand in the hot light of an overhead spot. She was alone now in midfield. The moment she clamped the waiting iron cuff around her ankle the ref blew his whistle again and Lyra, Kim's opponent King, had ten seconds to call the next move. Her response was also standard. She mirrored Kim's move. Half a minute later her own Pawn was standing face to face with Samantha. The two girls glowered at each other. But it was only for team spirit because Pawns could not attack any piece directly in front of them, so these two would never have to fight each other.

Now it was Kim's turn again. She ordered her King's Bishop's Pawn, a girl named Paris, to move up beside Samantha, a direct threat to Lyra's Pawn. Paris had no sooner locked on her cuff, when Lyra ordered her threatened Pawn to attack Paris. The girl's cuff snapped open and she rushed at Paris with her battleaxe held overhead. It was a fatal error that she should have remembered from her training. Paris simply waited for her to swing down, blocked it with her shield and swung her own axe sidearm, catching her attacker in the ribs. The girl screamed, grabbed her side and dropped to her knees. Paris, who had never fully understood the kind of damage her weapon could inflict, gasped in horror at the sight of what she had done. The other girl looked up at her with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. Paris broke into tears and pulled as far back as the cuff on her left ankle would allow. The wounded girl dropped her axe and began to sway, blood gushing through her fingers from the terrible wound. Paris watched in guilty fascination as the referee signaled to the Harlots' harpoon girl. Kicking her horse into action, the blonde rider — a tall beauty named Michelle who was two months pregnant — cantered in and fired a harpoon into the doubled over Vixen Pawn, hitting her in the small of the back. The harpies were trained to aim for the belly or the lower back, whichever side was available, to avoid damage to the valuable breast meat. The harpoon plunged through the girl's kidney and out her navel, the expansion flanges popping open so it could not be yanked out. The horse galloped past, the rope snapped taut and the dying girl was jerked briefly into the air, then dragged backwards to the sideline, screaming and trailing a loop of entrails.

Paris looked as though she might throw up, but Kim had no time to waste worrying about a squeamish Pawn. Her ten seconds had begun the instant the body crossed the sideline and the countdown clock on the arena screens was quickly approaching zero. If she missed the window, she'd lose the turn. Trouble was, she hadn't expected Paris to win. Attacking players had the advantage of being free to strike from any angle. Defending players were pinned to the center of the square by that ankle cuff. With just one second left, she touched her screen, dragging her Bishop diagonally from the square on her right to the fourth row, two squares to the left of Samantha. She heard the cuff clank open and her Bishop, a sturdy but shapely redhead named Glee, gave a startled glance at the arena screen to see a huge closeup of her own face. As the announcer explained the move to the crowd, she gathered her wits and trotted over to her new square, relieved that it was unoccupied and would not require a fight. She slipped the new cuff around her ankle and locked it.

Lyra, somewhat shaken by the loss of her Pawn, dispatched another Pawn, the one in front of her Queen, two squares forward to a position that gave her a choice of attacking Kim's Bishop, Glee, on her diagonal right, or Pawn Samantha on her diagonal left. Of course, that also meant that either Glee or Samantha could attack the Pawn.

For Kim the choice was easy. She ordered Glee to take her down. Lyra must have been coaching her Pawn through her earpiece, because she simply did what Paris had done, waited for the blow with her shield at the ready. But Kim was also coaching Glee. "You have twenty seconds. Take your time. Circle her, start overhand and when her shield comes up, cut the axe around to the side. Then when her hands come down to defend, strike her in the face. GO!" Glee moved in a blur, faking her opponent into raising her shield, slashing under it as it went up and over it as it came down again. With a look of astonishment, the girl toppled backwards on to her ass. A band of blood blossomed across her face and abdomen. Her arms, with the shield and axe, dropped limply by her side. The referee signaled to Michelle. The blonde Harpy galloped to the scene, launched a harpoon into the moaning girl's belly and dragged her off the field of play, leaving a second bloody trail.

During this momentary clearing action, the attention of most of the girls was drawn to the sidelines where the first casualty of the game had been stripped naked except for her helmet. She was still alive and grimacing in pain as she was laid on the steel table with her neck over the track of the radial arm saw. As two crew members held her down, a third grabbed the handle of the saw and in a single smooth motion drew the whirling blade through the girl's neck, neatly severing her head. One of the crew picked up the head and carried it over to the row of stakes on the Harlot's end of the field, impaling it on the first stake. A murmur of approval swept through the crowd as the headless body was trundled out on the gurney to be butchered.

Lyra, shocked by the loss of two Pawns in quick succession and distracted by the closeups on the screens of the head being mounted on the pole, waited one second too long to decide on her next move. A klaxon sounded just as she touched her screen and the PA voice announced that she had lost her turn.

Kim immediately made a modest defensive play, moving her Queen's Pawn up a square to protect Samantha.

Lyra moved still another Pawn to mid board, baffling both Kim and the booth announcers who wondered aloud if she was simply determined to break her run of bad Pawn luck. This time it was her King's Bishop's Pawn who got the call and was now face to face with Paris and theoretically threatening Samantha to her diagonal right.

At this point Kim realized this was nothing like a real chess match. It boiled down to a series of gladiatorial duels carried out within the limitations of chess moves. Lyra clearly was not playing anything vaguely resembling chess strategy. She was simply trying to kill off Kim's team. Well, Kim could do that, too. It was time to get her biggest gun into action. She ordered her Queen, Christie, to make a diagonal run from her starting place in the first row to the east side of the board just beyond midfield. There she was an immediate threat to two Pawns and Lyra herself, who was now in check.

Lyra had to get out of check in her next move or she would be checkmated and her entire team would be slaughtered for meat. As if to emphasize the point, the saw blade sliced through the neck of her second defeated Pawn and the head was picked up for mounting beside the first trophy. The most obvious way out of check was to block Christie's path. With little time to think things through, Lyra dispatched yet another Pawn, a small girl named Eadie, to move up a square and stand in Christie's path. Eadie tried to look brave and menacing, but Christie, at five foot ten and 150 pounds, towered over her by eight inches and outweighed her by forty pounds.

Kim decided to ignore that confrontation for the moment and get more of her forces into the action. She hopped her Queen's Knight to a second row square where it covered both Samantha and Glee, in case either of them were attacked and defeated.

Lyra really wanted to order Pawn Eadie to attack Christie and eliminate the threat from the powerful Queen for good. But if Eadie were defeated, Christie would have her in checkmate again. So instead, she decided to emulate Kim and make a bold move with her own Queen, a feisty, dark-haired girl named Chance with a strong, athletic build. She sent Chance straight forward from her home in Row 8 down to Row 3 to attack the Harlot's Pawn there. Chance, sixteen years old and eager for action, ran down the lighted file, waving her saber over her right shoulder. Kim's Pawn, a girl named Jenna, also sixteen, watched the onrushing Queen with growing terror, trying to guess where the blow would be aimed so she could block it with her shield. But it was hopeless. The saber had a longer reach than the axe and the force of its blow knocked Jenna off balance. She swung with her axe but missed as Chance danced just out of range. The next swing of the sword caught Jenna's upper arm just outside the shield and nearly severed it. She staggered, made one last attempt to swipe at Chance with her axe, but hit only air. A moment later the sharp blade of the saber sliced her left breast in half and she fell backwards, blood geysering from her split chest. Chance straddled the girl's prone body and followed up with a saber thrust into her heart. Jenna gasped, shuddered, and lay still as Chance stepped away. The Vixen harpy charged on to the field astride a handsome black stallion, galloped up to Jenna's corpse, fired a harpoon into it and dragged it away.

Kim knew this Queen was bad news and had to be destroyed or the game was over. Two Harlot pieces were in a position to attack: Bishop Glee and a Pawn named Autumn. Glee had a whip and a dagger; Autumn had a battleaxe and a shield. Neither seemed a match for Chance's deadly saber. With only three seconds left, she decided she had to use Glee because losing Autumn's Pawn position would open an easier avenue for Chance to put her in checkmate.

The instant Glee's ankle was released she lunged forward cracking the whip in Chance's face. But Chance dodged it, parrying with the sword in an effort to sever it. The whip merely glanced off the edge of the sword. Glee was not close enough to use her dagger, so she backed out of range of Chance's sword and prepared to attack again. This time she began a series of whip snaps at different levels as she slowly closed in. If any one of them struck Chance it would open a wound. Hopefully the pain would distract her long enough for Glee to step in with a dagger thrust. But the Queen also had a shield and used it to block the vicious snaps of the whip. Glee knew her only hope to use the dagger would be to get in very close. That would also neutralize the effect of the long saber. She began to vary the cracks of the whip high then low then high, getting into a pattern, hoping to vary it suddenly and catch the Queen by surprise. A gash opened up on Chance's knee, and another on her right shoulder, making her yip. But instead of getting sucked into a defensive pattern, Chance squatted as though taking a pee. Now, protected by her helmet, shield and boots, she was nearly impossible to hit. Glee circled quickly, striking constantly with the whip, but causing no damage. Chance simply turned on the axil of her leg cuff to keep facing the onslaught.

Suddenly Glee yelled "OW! OW! OW!" and hopped around clutching her crotch. The announcer clarified the situation. "The Harlots' Bishop has received a strong and very painful shock in her vagina for failing to attack with a lethal weapon within twenty seconds. She has another ten seconds to do so or will receive a far worse shock."

Glee stopped hopping abruptly as the implanted taser was switched off. Tears ran down her face as she took a new grip on the whip and dagger. She tried to wrap the end of the bullwhip around Chance's throat to pull her off balance, but in doing so she came within the reach of the Queen's saber and with a single horizontal slash both her breasts were split open at the nipples. Screaming with pain and outrage, Glee lunged in with her dagger, plunging it in under Chance's right rib cage. Chance grunted, pushed her away and slashed again, this time catching Glee in the neck. Glee, horrified by the gush of blood pouring down her body, froze long enough for Chance to stab the saber deep into her chest. Dropping her own weapons, Glee wrapped her fingers around the steel blade protruding from her body as though to hold it in place, and sank to her knees. She remained there staring at it, coming to grips with death as the referee signaled the black horse and its blonde rider to come collect her. Chance yanked her saber out of Glee's chest, slicing off two of the girl's fingers in the process. She stepped out of the way just as the harpoon smashed into the dying Bishop's belly.

Despite the savagery of her wounds, Glee was still alive as her naked body was laid on the steel table and decapitated. Her head with its Bishop's hat joined Pawn Jenna's on the trophy stakes at the Vixen's end of the field.

Reveling in this crucial triumph, Lyra immediately ordered her Queen to attack Holly, the Harlot Knight, who was directly in front of her and standing right next to Kim. Killing Holly would force a showdown with Kim for a quick, relatively bloodless (for her team) victory.

A Knight, however, was a distinctly more dangerous opponent than a Bishop. Knights carried two-handed broadswords which could cleave a girl nearly in two with a single swipe. They could easily take off a limb or a head. But Chance was buoyed by her victory over Glee and attacked the moment her ankle cuff clicked open. Holly was no pushover, however. She was a husky girl who, at five foot eleven, was two inches taller than Chance and had taken her training seriously. She was attractive, but because of her size (175 pounds) and a face that the inspectors found "too masculine," had only made Grade 4, chuck grade. She was sixteen which meant she would be activated and slaughtered for ground meat the day she turned seventeen. This game was her chance to survive longer. Kim had chosen her to be one of the two Knights on the Harlot team because her size and strength enabled her to wield the heavy two-handed sword with ease.

Chance came at her with a roundhouse slash of the saber which Holly flicked away with the broadsword, knocking the smaller weapon out of Chance's hand. Chance dropped to the ground and rolled away from Holly's return slash, springing to her feet and out of range to review her options. She seriously doubted that her shield would offer much protection from the broadsword. Even a glancing blow off the shield could take off her arm! But her twenty seconds were ticking away and she had to attack again. She decided her only hope was to trick Holly with a feint and move in before she could recover. Trying to look confident, she picked up her saber and lurched toward Holly with the start of a back-handed slash. As she had expected, Holly positioned her sword to block it. But it never arrived at Holly's sword. Instead, she wheeled it overhead past Holly's sword and in a fast underhand windup whipped it up into Holly's crotch. The sharp blade hit directly between the labia and severed the stitches holding the taser in her vagina. It also ripped through much of the surrounding flesh, greatly lengthening her slit. Holly screamed and doubled over, giving Chance just enough time to hack at her neck and back, opening frightful gashes and unleashing a tidal flow of blood. Holly realized she was mortally wounded and tried to strike back at her killer out of sheer fury, but only succeeded in taking a slice out of Chance's upper right arm. Infuriated by the pain, Chance returned the blow fivefold with her lighter weapon, opening bloody gashes in the Knights face, breasts, belly and thighs. She stopped, gasping for breath, only when Holly fell heavily to the ground, scrabbling at her wounds and keening in pain. A few moments later a harpoon drove into her lower back and she was dragged away in the slick of her own blood.

Panting, her arm drenched in blood, her abdominal wound on fire and bleeding heavily, Chance glared up at Kim on her tower. She knew full well that Kim had only one choice. She was in check and her only available move was to attack Chance with her last Bishop, a girl named Sara. Sara was five nine, the same height as Chance, though not as muscular. Chance had already demonstrated the superiority of her saber over a Bishop's whip and a dagger. On the other hand, her right hand was growing weak and the pain from the gash further up the arm made every movement intensely agonizing. It was bleeding even more than the stab wound. She held the sword up so the blood wouldn't get on the haft and make it slippery, but it was running in a stream off her elbow.

Kim was mentally kicking herself as she made the play on her computer screen. How could she have let herself get trapped like this? All that stood between her and disaster was Sara's courage and skill with that foolish bullwhip and dagger. If only she could fight Chance herself! But Chance had her in check and the rules forbade it.

Sara felt her ankle cuff snap open and braced herself for a contest she had to win. She reminded herself that she had chosen this course in preference to going meekly to the abattoir. A glance at the heads of her late companions on poles at the enemy's end of the field helped harden her resolve. She had three factors in her favor. First, she was fresh where Chance had just finished two battles. Second, Chance was wounded and her sword arm looked to be in bad shape. Third, Chance was once again chained to the ground whereas Sara could move around freely.

She moved in close enough to Chance to start flicking her whip at the Queen's arm wound. Chance quickly turned sideways to keep her left side and shield toward Sara, her damaged arm as far from the bite of the whip as possible. But that made her slashes with the saber far less effective, both because of the bad angle and the increasing difficulty of making her sword arm function. Sara kept an eye on the countdown clock; she had to make a credible strike with the dagger before these first twenty seconds expired or she'd start getting zapped as Glee had, which, aside from the pain, would impact her effectiveness as a fighter. Dropping back to the appropriate distance, she curled the whip around Chance's back so that the tip snapped into the wound. Chance screamed and involuntarily twisted away from the whip and toward Sara who was instantly upon her, plunging the dagger into her belly. She stabbed the surprised Queen three more times before the hilt of Chance's saber smashed into her face, knocking her away. Chance kicked her hard in the crotch to distract her from a second attack and then used both hands to bring the edge of the saber down hard into her neck. Sara staggered, but as Chance wound up for another stroke, Sara, slashed upward with the dagger, ripping the Queen's right forearm open from elbow to wrist, exposing a bone. Suddenly Chance was unable to grip the saber and it fell to the artificial turf. As she gazed in horror at the fountain of blood spurting from her arm, Sara drove the dagger into her heart. Chance twisted to the ground, her eyes glazing over as the ref signaled the Vixen Harpy.

Sara knelt down and removed the open cuff from the dead Queen's ankle and snapped it on her own. She tried to look up and high-five Kim in the adjacent square but discovered she couldn't turn her head. She also took notice for the first time of the copious flow of blood washing down over her left breast and arm. She felt cold and her body was beginning to shake as she tried to stand up. She realized she was about to pass out. She realized, in fact, that she was dying. The Queen's parting blow had opened her own arteries and she was watching her life flow into the ground. Oh well , she thought, they'd have cut my throat anyway in the abattoir. This was more fun.

While Kim struggled with the mixture of relief that she had escaped the trap she'd so stupidly fallen into, and guilt that she had purchased it with the death of her friend Sara, Lyra, at the other end of the field, was furious. It had been a perfect trap! How could her goddamned wimp of a Queen have failed? Now she faced a similar threat from Kim's Queen, Christie. At the moment Pawn Eadie was blocking the check, and she could certainly have Eadie attack Christie. But what were the chances with that? The Queen with her long, swift saber should easily be able to deal with a clumsy battleaxe; then, with Eadie dead, Lyra would be right back in check and on the run. With time running out, she decided to jump her King's Knight to the square directly in front of her as a backup for Eadie because the next jump would land the Knight on Eadie's square. If Queen Christie attacked and killed Eadie, the Knight would pounce on Christie with the advantage of an attacker's mobility.

But Kim did not attack the Pawn with her Queen. Not yet. First she castled. The Rook on her left moved to her side through the now empty back row squares and she moved around to the opposite side of the Rook. This left the Rook facing an empty file that ended on the square next to Lyra. Lyra would no longer be able to move in that direction because that would be moving into check by the Rook, which was illegal. She was also penned in by the Bishop on her left and the Knight now directly in front of her. There was only one other square she could move into: the one between her and Eadie. The trap was three-quarters closed.

Lyra decided to give herself another layer of protection from the threat of Kim's Queen. She moved the Rook on her left from her corner position to the neighboring square recently vacated by the Knight. Now Eadie was backed up by a Pawn, a Knight and a Rook. That should keep the fucking Harlot bitch Queen busy! Surely one of those three would kill her.

For the first time since being nearly trapped herself, Kim could smile. She ignored Eadie and, instead, ordered Christie to attack the backup Pawn who stood directly in front of the corner square from which Lyra had just pulled her Rook.

The Pawn did not look at all thrilled so see Christie trotting toward her, saber in hand. Her name was Kellie, a seventeen-year-old M3 with eyes almost as black as her hair. She had the sumptuous figure Musgrave meat girls were known for, but her legs were too short and her nose too long for Prime or Standard grade. With her birthday only days away and activation as Oven meat practically assured, she had jumped on the chance not only to extend her life but add some of the perks the Prime girls enjoyed. As with most girls bred for meat, she wasn't afraid to die, but she was afraid of pain. She planted herself and waited to block the first saber cut with her shield, holding the axe out to the side ready for a quick follow through, as she had been trained.

Christie fooled her. Instead of attacking with a slash or thrust of the saber, she crashed into Kellie's axe hand with her shield. Before Kellie could recover her balance and fighting posture, the saber blade had wacked into her throat, cutting her windpipe and jugular vein. Christie danced back and simply watched as the stunned Pawn gazed down at the blood cascading over her abundant breasts, over her flat belly and into the crevasse of her sex. She looked up into the sympathetic eyes of her killer. That didn't hurt so bad , she thought as her vision tunneled to a pinpoint. Nor did she feel the impact of her body on the ground as she crumpled to earth, her battleaxe still clenched in her hand.

Lyra's first reaction to the move had been astonishment that Kim passed up an attack on Eadie in order to take out the Pawn guarding her flank. Her next reaction was incredulity that Christie had killed Kellie so swiftly. Her third reaction was horror! She was about to be checkmated by Kim's Rook! If that Rook were to slide into the empty square on her right hand side, she'd have nowhere to go; she was still penned in by her Knight and Bishop, and now by Kim's Queen as well. Damn the rule that she couldn't fight her own way out of a check! She understood the reason for it: to keep the game from boiling down to a matter of the biggest, strongest King. But at this point it seemed grossly unjust, just as it had to Kim several moves earlier.

In a panic, with only a second left on the clock, she moved the electronic Knight on her computer screen to the middle of the empty file to block the Rook. The human Knight, Sheila, was a twenty-two-year-old ex-Pleasure Girl, a black haired, blue eyed beauty who had put on too much weight and been demoted to M2 — Standard Grade meat. She had saved herself from activation by signing up for the game. She figured she was tall enough and brawny enough at five-ten and 163 pounds to take on the toughest competition. She'd provided plenty of rough sex for some very burly customers during her six years of pleasure duties and loved it. Now she was looking forward to the ultimate sexual excitement of mortal combat. She had been watching the butchers on the sidelines decapitating the casualties of the game. It generated a pleasant tingling in the center of her sex. Sheila was highly competitive and looked forward to slaying this Rook, but the idea of being held down, helpless, while her head was sliced off was a rush in itself. A win-win situation for Lyra's Knight.

The Rook, Melody, was Sheila's diametrical opposite. She was a lovely ash blonde with soft gray eyes, a sweet face, pale clear complexion and a small perfectly proportioned body. Unfortunately she carried a defective gene that would give her offspring a 50% chance of having cerebral palsy. With the prospect of having to destroy so many of her babies, the Company determined that she did not meet minimum production potential for Breeders and was classified as M1. She, too, was put in service as a Pleasure Girl, but two years of licking, sucking and fucking crude oafs who treated her like a slab of liver were more than enough. At eighteen she had decided to volunteer for activation and go out in a tidal wave of orgasms as a live roaster. But when offered the chance to be a chess gladiator instead, she jumped at it. How much sweeter it would be to be killed by other girls in honest combat, rather than by some dumbfuck chef basting her over a fire pit — even though it meant foregoing the orgasms.

Kim hesitated through fifteen of her twenty seconds, afraid that big Sheila would make mincemeat of little Melody. On the other hand, she had been consistently impressed by Melody's amazing coolness and confidence during training. Besides, if Melody managed to survive, this game could be put away quickly with most of her team intact. She made the move on the computer screen and the arena announcer immediately went into a paroxysm of speculations over the David and Goliath matchup.

Sheila smiled as Melody advanced up the file toward her. This girl couldn't be more than five foot three and couldn't weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Sheila hefted her broadsword, raising it in front of her, saluting her brave little victim. She thought she might toy with her a while to please the crowd, then cut her in two with a mighty swing. Or perhaps lop off her pretty little head. That would be fun. Not that Sheila had anything against her. She was probably no worse than any of the other snotty, pampered, bitch Primes with their perfect fucking bodies. Let's see how her perfect little head would look on a pole!

Melody stopped just short of Sheila's sword range. Her pike, its steel tip glinting under the overhead lights, was nearly twice as tall as she was. Now she lowered it to horizontal, holding it above and slightly outside her right shoulder, her hands well spread on its thick wooden shaft to give her maximum control. Sheila waited, both hands on her broadsword. She was under no pressure to strike and could wait patiently for the little Rook to make the first move. She could see that Melody's twenty seconds were nearly up. Melody made a soft thrust at the tall Knight, but corkscrewed the pike so that Sheila's powerful parrying swipe missed it entirely. Before Sheila could bring the sword up again for the next parry, it was too late. Melody had driven it hard into Sheila's right shoulder. Both girls twisted away from each other, Sheila gasping in pain as blood poured down her side from the nasty gash. Furious, she made a few futile swings of the sword but couldn't connect with the wiry little Rook. The second swing, however, left her just enough off balance that she could do nothing about the point of the pike as it drove into her abdomen. She dropped her sword and grabbed the pike, reflexively trying to pull it out, but the damned little Rook was leaning on it. Sheila reached out to grab her and pull her off it, but she was too far back on the long shaft. The Knight stumbled backwards, the pain beginning to blur her ability to think. What was the fucking bitch Rook doing? She was twisting the pike, drilling it deeper into her belly, chewing her inner organs into a bloody mass of incredible agony! Suddenly it was yanked out, right through Sheila's hands. Then it was back, plunging into her right breast, right under the nipple! Sheila knew she was finished. Blood bubbled into her mouth with her next breath and ran down her chin. With a terrible searing pain the pike was once again torn out of her body. A gush of blood followed its exit. Sheila was strangling. She tried to inhale but could only cough a spray of bloody foam. She watched helplessly as the diminutive Rook reached back and hurled the pike one more time. It drove all the way through her left side, just below the rib cage. I'll be damned , she thought, and looked to the end of the field where Kellie's head was just being mounted on a pole. Mine will be right next to hers. The image blossomed in her mind, along with a vision of her headless body being carved up for steaks, as she folded over, collapsing into a puddle of her own blood. The crowd watched her twitching, unaware that it was not from pain but from the tumultuous rush of her final orgasm, as the harpy charged in taking aim with her harpoon gun.

Melody calmly removed the ankle cuff from the dying Knight and clamped it on her own ankle.

Lyra was pinned. Christie, the Harlot Queen, controlled the row in front of her so she couldn't move forward. Melody, the Harlot Rook controlled the file on her right and her own Bishop blocked her on her left. Her only hope was to have Melody killed. That job fell to the Bishop. She sent her forward three diagonal squares to block and confront the Rook. Melody would have to knock off the Bishop to re-establish control of that file. Even then, there was a Pawn on the Bishop's flank who would attack her again. Hopefully, Lyra was thinking, one of them, the Bishop or the Pawn, would kill this damned pint-sized Rook.

But Kim wasn't buying into Lyra's plan. She ordered her Queen, Christie, to attack Lyra's Rook instead.

This Rook, still standing in the home square of the now deceased knight, was much more physically imposing than Melody. The name the Company had given her at birth was July, but, as these things go, it had transmogrified into "Julie" within a week. She was five-eight, a solid 145 pounds, well shaped and equipped with an eye-popping veranda. But she was, by anyone's standards, plain of face. Therefore she had been graded M3 — Oven Grade meat. Not attractive enough for spit roasting but abounding in firm, flavorful breast and rump meat. She would have been in the abattoir on her seventeenth birthday for slaughter, but had signed up to take her chances in the game instead. Now she was facing her first — and possibly only — fight.

To everyone watching, this was obviously a very different matchup from the previous contest. Christie was far more competent than Sheila had been, and was better equipped. Julie was almost as tall as Christie and weighed only a few pounds less, but she was entirely lacking in the cool demeanor Melody had shown. Furthermore, Melody, as the attacker, had had the advantage of free movement, whereas Julie, as the defender, was chained to the middle of her square. When Melody had attacked Kellie, she had held her pike over her shoulder where she could either thrust it or throw it. Julie was holding hers at her side, her eyes fixed on Christie's deadly saber.

Christie, ever aware of the twenty-second clock, moved into Julie's square. The keyed-up Rook jabbed her pike twice at the oncoming Queen, but it was easily parried away by the saber. Julie swung it back for a third thrust, but not quickly enough. Christie had caught her rhythm and moved inside the third thrust to flick the tip of her saber across the frightened Rook's throat. A red line appeared, opening into a gaping wound. Julie was still trying to get her pike back into play, but Christie had grabbed it. Julie made a desperate attempt to snatch her dagger out of its sheath, but Christie rammed her sword deep into the terrified girl's stomach. Julie grunted and froze, her eyes wide. Christie yanked the saber free, grabbed Julie's right shoulder to steady her and plunged the blade into her left breast, splitting her heart in two. The focus drained from Julie's eyes and she sank to her knees, shivered once and fell over sideways at Christie's feet. Christie pulled her sword out of the dead girl's body and stepped back to let the harpy gallop in and tend to her grisly chore.

Lyra was now in check by Christie! Instinctively Lyra moved into the square behind her impotent Bishop. She knew it was hopeless, but she could not bring herself to resign. She wanted desperately to live!

Christie could hardly wait for her next order from Kim. It came without hesitation. Kim moved her to the white square diagonally behind the Vixen King. It was over. In regular chess Lyra could simply have captured the Queen. But these rules were fatally different.

The voice of the Chief Referee sealed it. "The Vixen King is checkmated! The victory goes to the Harlots!

Chapter 5

The shackles holding the Harlots in their squares all popped open at the same time. The freed warriors leaped upon each other in jubilation, fired up both by what they had won and by what they had avoided. Their screams of joy were inundated by the cheers of the crowd reverberating in the closed dome of the arena. They danced and jumped and saluted the spectators with their weapons. They ran about the arena, weaving among the vanquished Vixens still locked glumly in place. Kim ran to the Vixen's end where the heads of her four dead teammates remained atop their poles. One by one she moved down the row, standing on tiptoes to kiss each cold mouth — Jenna, Glee, Holly and Sara — in a farewell tribute that brought the crowd to a stormy crescendo.

As the tumult of the crowd, the blare of victory music from the sound system and the grandiose special effects on the arena screens reached their peak of delirium, the twelve surviving Harlots formed a procession behind Michelle, their Harpoon Girl on her sleek white stallion. She waved a long red and yellow polyester banner in figure eights over their heads as they marched triumphantly out of the arena.

When the noise level had dropped to a sustained buzz, the music was replaced by the solemn voice of the Chief Referee ordering the ten defeated Vixen players still locked in place to toss their weapons to a corner of their squares where they could be safely collected by a sextet of stunning young women, B1's (between pregnancies) in white silk costumes. The arena cameras followed them closely as they threaded their way among the doomed players, capturing for the arena screens and home monitors erotic peeks at their lovely faces and long slim limbs, at their milk-laden breasts with hard nipples itching to fill the hungry mouths waiting in the nursery. Millions of men, watching these incredibly beautiful women load their arms with the discarded weapons, pictured themselves as certified studs with the enviable task of helping to draw off some of the milky largess swelling those magnificent globes.

While these women in white were collecting arms, another group — also B1's and equally lovely, but dressed in red versions of the same silken material — began politely cuffing the Vixen's hands behind their backs and clipping one end of a four foot length of silver chain to a ring that decorated each player's labia. Once all the weapons had been cleared, the girls in red began herding the vanquished chess pieces into a line, draping the silver chains between their legs to connect them vulva to vulva. The chain of doomed girls began with the Queen's Rook, Knight and Bishop along with their three Pawns, all still standing on their original squares. Lyra, who had pinned herself between them and her own Bishop, was next. Then the Bishop, then Edie and finally another Pawn who stood a few squares away on her left. That Pawn, whose name was Pebble, became the lead member of the chain as they were led around the arena past the stands.

Pebble was tall with thick, sandy hair that billowed around her shoulders. Her sad brown eyes, thin lips and long face gave her a patrician air. Delicately slender down to her waist with the taut, voluptuous breasts typical of Musgrave livestock, below the waist her hips were a little too wide and her legs a little too thick. That imperfection made her unsuitable for spit roasting. Her value as meat following the post-game event would be primarily in her thigh and rump cuts for broiling or oven roasting. Pebble, pulled along on her own chain by one of the red-frocked attendants, grabbed the segment of chain that passed between her legs to Eadie behind her, so as to absorb as much tugging on her labia ring as possible.

Eadie and the others quickly adopted the same technique; except for the Rook at the end of the line who, with her hands restrained behind her and the chain in front, could not reach it. Her only insurance against having the ring yanked painfully was to stay close to the girl ahead of her. They were marched in a circle around the circumference of the arena so the spectators could view them from all angles. The announcer named them one by one and pointed out their individual qualities, both for the upcoming final event and the lucky winners of their meat. The Breeder in red then led them in a straight line from one corner of the chessboard to the diagonally opposite corner and brought them to a halt.

"And now," the announcer boomed, "it is our distinct pleasure to welcome Mr. Trent Bartholomew, Executive Director of the Federal Meat Commission and a member of President-for-Life Osama Bormann's National Governing Council, to draw the names of our ten lucky Audience Participants. The stubs in this barrel . . ." the arena screens showed a glass tub slowly rotating, square bits of paper tumbling off the paddles on its inside walls, ". . . were torn from the tickets of our audience today; that is, all of those who chose to enter the drawing. Which was most of you, I'm pleased to say. As our winners are announced, will they please stand up, wave their stub at the center bank of cameras and proceed directly to our beautiful Breeder Girls in white stationed at the bottom of each aisle. Each winner is asked to bring along one friend to share in his or her good luck and take part in the upcoming hunts. Mr. Bartholomew will now reach in and pull out our first winner."

The rotund representative of the official government bureaucracy did so, first brandishing it flamboyantly over his head, then reading off the name and number printed on it. The announcer repeated them as they were plastered in fat, sans-serif letters on the arena screens. The screens zeroed in on an excited man midway up the west side of the stands. He rapped on the shoulder of a man sitting next to him and they both began scurrying down the aisle toward a shapely girl in white. This ritual was repeated nine more times until the ten winners had been named and assembled, along with one friend each, on the arena floor. Eighteen men and two women altogether.

"The next step," the announcer intoned, "is to match up our lucky pairs with one of our ten vanquished chess pieces. I ask our winners to please take note of the lovely Breeder Girl in red who is approaching you now. You will see that she is holding a fanned out set of ten cards. Please form a circle around her. We want each pair of winners to select one card as she offers them to you."

They did. As this was going on, a line of ten Prime Breeders in alternating red and white dresses trooped up beside the ten chained team members. Each was holding up a round blank electronic paddle, about the size of a tennis racket.

"Now," the announcer continued, "please note that ten more of our gorgeous Breeder Girls have stationed themselves beside our pretty 'prisoners of war.' I can't help but say," he chuckled as an aside (as though it weren't on the script), "that it's no wonder Musgrave has an unequalled reputation for delivering quality roasts with Breeders as sublimely beautiful as these! Quality breeds quality, right? Anyway, starting at the front of the line with Pawn Pebble, each Breeder in turn will turn on her number screen and the winning pair holding that number will go and claim their prize. Ready? Go!"

The girl next to Pebble pushed a button on the handle of her paddle. The number "3" materialized in fourteen inch letters on both sides. She held it aloft for the spectators and the cameras. The man holding the three card waved it triumphantly over his head. He and his partner jogged excitedly up to the tall, sandy-haired Pawn. He was exactly her height, about five-ten, and rather beefy, his partner a bit taller. The Breeder at Pebble's side glanced at his card to confirm the number, detached Eadie's chain from Pebble's cunt ring and handed Pebble's chain to the beefy man, shouting directions to him over the din of the crowd. He led her by the chain to the doorway the B1 had indicated, his partner following.

The same routine was repeated until all ten losing warriors had been led out of the arena in humiliation at the end of a chain leash. The announcer resumed his script.

"We're going to take a twenty minute break now, so we can prepare for our closing Hunts and give our pairs of lucky winners a chance to get more intimately acquainted with their quarry." He managed to insert a sufficiently lecherous tone into the words so that all but the dimmest bulbs would catch his meaning, without actually spelling it out. It was never wise to offend parents whose young children might be watching. Witnessing deadly violence was normal family entertainment; but watching people having sex was unfit for impressionable young minds.

"Take a look at your programs during the break. Match up the hunts with the pairings listed on the betting kiosk monitors and test your skill at predicting which of our defeated fighters-turned-quarry will outlast her hunters. It's a lot of fun and you could bring home a ton of winnings! Take twenty, then see ya back here for the final show!"

As the crowd in the stands surged about stretching their legs, looking for refreshments and lining up at the kiosks to place their bets, another type of activity was taking place in the undercroft beneath them. The ten "prisoners" were being stripped of their chess piece costumes, including the elaborate headdresses, and strapped down to a row of padded tables lined up side-by-side along one wall.

Krystal, former Rook and the last prisoner to be led off the field, had actually looked forward to a fight to the death. At twenty-three she had been in service as a Pleasure Girl for seven years and was fed up with it. The normal dosage of O-drugs they gave her at the brothel had granted her minimal orgasms to accompany the pounding penises of her customers, but it was no longer enough to override her sense of ignominy. Every day she felt less a human being and more a farm animal. Seven years of contemptuous treatment by men who were restrained from causing her serious damage only by the expense of having to purchase her carcass ("break it and it's yours!") had soured her on life. She was an M1, prepped those seven years ago for live spitting and a glorious orgasmic sendoff with a massive O overdose. But year upon year in that sex mill had ground away most of her youthful beauty. Another few years, another several thousand brutish customers, and she'd be lucky to end up an M2. They'd just cut her throat. She'd get a little O, a small climax, and death. Better to die whacking away with a sword, she'd thought. But shit! Now she'd been deprived of even that much dignity. She'd never even moved off her fucking square! Dumb-cunt Lyra had let herself get sucked into a checkmate with half her team still in the starting gate!

Krystal noted that the Breeder Girl tending to her preparation kept her in handcuffs until both her feet were strapped into the stirrups at the foot of the table. These pretty-faced baby-machines were too damned precious to risk being attacked by well-trained P- Girls-turned-gladiators. As if Krystal would try to make a break for it, especially with that fucking taser in her cunt.

"Lie back, dear," the B1 told her in maddeningly gentle tones, "then reach down and grab the table legs with your hands."

The dainty little wimp had a voice as soft as her tits were huge. Goddamned if the massive jugs weren't even oozing milk, staining her dress! Krystal looked away, ground her teeth and did as she was told. She held on to the table legs while the woman strapped both wrists to them with the same banding gun she had used on her ankles, the type used to bind up large packages.

Krystal laid on the table and stared up at the ceiling as the cold steel of a pair of scissors slipped between her pussy lips and snipped the suture. Rough, calloused fingers pried the lips apart and felt around inside for the taser, finally pulling it out. Krystal was greatly relieved by its departure. They hadn't used it on her because she'd never given them cause, but she remembered the quick demonstration they gave everyone during training and would be happy to die without another one, thank you. Whatever they had planned for her in the arena could not be as bad as that!

The next thing she felt inside her was warm, hard and extremely familiar. Thousands of them had been in there before. This one belonged to the man who had won her, who was also the owner of the rough fingers that had extracted the taser. He was a broad, thick-necked man with curly black hair and hard brown eyes. He seized both her boobs and crushed them painfully in his fingers as he pumped away with an instrument surprisingly small for such a sizeable body. For that she was thankful because her pussy lips were sore, probably infected as a result of the crudely installed suture. From long practice, she simply grit her teeth and bore the pain silently.

She turned her head to the side and saw that similar activity was taking place at most of the other tables. The winners from the stands were enjoying the first perk of their success. Or, looking at it another way, the losers were getting fucked once again. And not just once. The partners selected by the winners all had their turns, too. For Krystal this meant bearing up under the assault of a far larger weapon sprouting from a tall, older man whose hairline was in rapid retreat but whose sexual vigor was unabated. He preferred to kneed her small waist as he rammed himself tirelessly into her for what seemed like hours, saving her tits to suck on later. Fortunately, the copious semen from her previous visitor had lubricated the channel he was ploughing and by the time he had added his own load, Krystal had actually enjoyed a small orgasm. Nothing like the ones boosted by the O drugs during her P-career, of course. Still, if she had to be fucked by yet another self-gratifying jerk, even a little rush helped her get by the fact that she was no more to him than a sheep in girl's skin.

A bell rang. Apparently it was the signal that intermission (and prisoner fucking) had come to an end because the Breeders, with help now from the winners and their partners, began releasing their quarry from the tables. Their hands were cuffed behind them once again, and the leashes reconnected to their pussy rings. Once again they were lined up, but this time in a different order with Krystal next to last. Another bell rang and they were led back out into the arena. With no regalia to display their former rank as chess pieces, they were simply a forlorn parade of naked, shackled young women facing one last test, then death.

Two long platforms had been set up at the edge of the marked chessboard area on opposite sides of the arena, one on the east and one on the west. Both were seven steps up off the arena floor. The east side platform contained a row of ten two-inch iron pipes no more than a foot and a half high screwed into flanges on the platform. Each had an iron chain of the same length welded to the top and hanging down the side. It was to this platform that Krystal was led, pulled along on her humiliating pussy chain by the tall balding man whose jizz was still dribbling down the inside of her thighs. When they reached the pipe associated with her place in line, the black-haired man disconnected the little silver chain from her vulva and replaced it with a padlock connecting her to the iron chain welded there. The only thing between her and freedom, she thought wryly, was the easily torn tissue of her pussy. That and the dozen cheerless guards with taser guns stationed around the arena floor and beside every closed and locked exit.

The platform on the west sideline contained eight slaughtering frames — essentially tall, rectangular, steel frames with cuffs dangling from pulleys at the top corners. Krystal certainly knew what those were for. Soon eight girls would be hanging upside down by their ankles, bleeding out before being spitted or butchered. Indeed, a glance at the north end of the arena told her where their second stop would be. It was arrayed with six butchering tables and two spitting tables.

Eight girls. But wait! There were ten girls. What about the other two? Krystal looked at the north end of the arena and her heart sank. It had been set up to accommodate two live spittings. Only M1's like herself were eligible for live roasting, having been implanted with a special tube for it at fifteen. She happened to know that Bishop Wednesday, the piece Lyra had tried to hide behind, was also an M1, and it was Wednesday who was now right behind her, bringing up the end of the line. Normally M1's did not fear their fate, even though they would have preferred to live, because they knew the O drugs would turn the agony of live roasting into cataclysmic orgasms. But this was different. Everyone had been told from the beginning that the losing team would be slaughtered without the O drugs. Somehow she had assumed that meant she would be slaughtered like the M2 girls. Clean and quick with minimal pain. Now she felt the beginning of terror.

Krystal looked to her right at Wednesday. She, too, was staring at the two sets of roasting paraphernalia and fire pits at the north end of the arena. A large refrigeration unit had been rolled in, as well, which no doubt contained the preassembled stuffing that would go into their cleaned out body cavities. Wednesday was a slender blonde girl with a tiny waist and the disproportionately full breasts the Company favored for roasters because they looked so luscious as they turned on the spit. Blue eyes radiated raw fright. She chewed nervously on her lip, an animal trapped by her predators, a delicate morsel soon to be ripped apart and swallowed.

"Those are for us, I guess," Krystal said to her.

"I guess," she answered, her voice as pale as her face.

"So how did you get here?" This was a question they all asked each other, eventually. Until now, for some reason, Krystal had never really conversed with Wednesday.

"I was a Pleasure Girl," Wednesday replied simply. "Three years of whoring for Musgrave was enough. I was depressed and had tried to volunteer for activation several times, but my manager wouldn't let me. He did let me volunteer for the chess game, though. And I don't mind dying. But Jesus Christ! Over the fire with no drugs? I thought they would just slit our throats."

"Me, too. I guess we should have read the fine print."

"Or paid attention to it. Or believed it."

"You worked three years? So you're, what, nineteen?"

"Yeah. How about you?"

"I was a P-Girl, too. For seven years. I'm twenty-three."

"My God! Seven years! How did you stand it?"

"I learned how to shut off my mind. I told myself, what's the difference whether you're plate-meat or fuck-meat? I didn't mind the work, except for the gross stuff — licking shit off dicks and assholes, or drinking some guy's beery piss. The fucking was okay; or when guys wanted to suck on my tits or eat me out, that was okay, too. With the drugs I could sometimes get a decent orgasm. It was the nasty stuff and the physical beatings and verbal shit that I hated most."

"And feeling like something that has to be scraped off a shoe?"

"That, too."

"God, I'm scared," Wednesday whispered, staring at the north end crew arranging skewers and viscera tubs.

"Yeah."

"And we never even got to fight."

"Yeah. All that training, then shit-for-brains Lyra never even puts us into play. She almost had their King, too, and she fucked it up."

"Then fell into the same damn trap! But she's only an M2. One quick slash and it's all over for her. Just about painless. We, on the other hand, are left to cook to death slowly on a spit. Where's the fucking justice in that?"

Music that had been belching from the loudspeakers suddenly faded under the return of the announcer's voice.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to our closing games as the losers of today's chess match taste the bitter fruit of their failure. Please note that the names of those who have won a share of meat from today's defeated team will continue to scroll on the arena and home screens between the Hunts, together with the name of the girl whose flash frozen meat they will be receiving.

"Before the action begins, I want to make an important announcement. As most of you know, Musgrave, Inc., adheres strictly to CoHump — the FDA's Code for Human Meat Processing — as well as the International Accord for the Humane Treatment of Female Livestock for all our slaughtering and live-roasting procedures. Every member of our inventory looks forward to the day when she will be processed for meat because we spare no effort to make the experience pleasurable. That means, if you are head of a household and the parent, guardian or custodian of a young female whom you would like to enroll in the National Meat Program, and if you feel she can meet our high standards of quality, you will not find a better placement opportunity than Musgrave, Inc. We pay top dollar for qualified females. Equally important, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have put her in the best of hands. That's because we believe that the best meat comes from happy livestock. Her experience from beginning to end will be top notch — best living conditions, best accommodations, best nutritional program, and best euthanasia. So if you have one or more female assets to market, give us a call. We'll be happy to give you a free appraisal. Remember, you haven't had your best offer until you've heard OUR offer!

"And by the way, the girls who participated in today's games are all farm-grown livestock, bred and raised right here at this Musgrave facility. They signed up voluntarily and enthusiastically, with the full understanding that the game involved mortal combat and that the losing team would be publically snuffed without the special drugs we normally use that makes the process enjoyable. The winning team, on the other hand, will be enjoying many special privileges that will make the remainder of their time here at Musgrave even more delightful.

"Please understand that what our girls are willing to do to each other for their pleasure and our entertainment is one thing. What others do to them is another. So in keeping with our commitment to their humane treatment, we're not going to let you big brutes down there (chuckle) cause them any serious damage before they're snuffed. Besides, you wouldn't want to bring home bruised meat, now, would you? (More chuckling.) So keep in mind that any unnecessary damage to your quarry during the following series of hunts will be grounds for disqualification. Which means you won't get a share of the meat. Okay guys?

"Folks, as you've seen in your programs, each and every hunt will be a race against the clock. Each pair of hunters will have five minutes from the starting bell to catch their quarry, tie her hands behind her, get her up on the snuffing platform and hang her up by the ankles. If she's not strung up within that first five minute round, two more standby winners from the lottery will join you to help out for a second five minute round. Of course that means splitting your portion of her meat with them. If she's still not swinging in the breeze by the end of that round, we'll add two more hunters. If six strong men can't take down one poor tired meat girl in a third five minute round, we'll transfer her to the winners team and the six of you will go home hungry and embarrassed.

"Of course, to make the hunt more fun, we give the quarry incentives, too. If she eludes the first pair of hunters in Round One, she gets a normal dose of O drug for her snuff. If she's still free at the end of Round Two, she gets a double dose. She'll orgasm at the touch of a butterfly! And if the final group of hunters fail to hang her up by the end of Round Three, she gets to walk away from the hunt and join the winners."

Krystal and Wednesday exchanged glances.

"If I can just hold out for a double dose," Wednesday said, "they can go ahead and snuff me."

"Same here," Krystal agreed, "although it would be nice to live long enough to enjoy some extra perks."

"It would be sweet just to outlive fucking Lyra," added Wednesday.

"Your program," said the loudspeaker voice, "was printed before we knew who our losers would be, and how many, so it contains only a generic description of the hunts. For the identity of the quarry, her hunters and the weapons they will be allotted, please refer to the arena screens."

Krystal and Wednesday looked up in unison to see, "Quarry: PEBBLE, King's Rook's Pawn, 16, M3, 5'9", 147 lbs, 38D-21-39. Hunters: Charles Davenport and Henry Presnell; Omaha, Nebraska.

"The first prey is Pebble," he went on. "She was a Pawn for the Vixens but did not get a chance to show us her pluck during the match. Her hunters are Charlie Davenport and Hank Presnell. They hail from Omaha, Nebraska. Charlie has been armed with a taser dart gun and Hank has the rope to tie her up. Now that's not the kind of taser voltage that will knock down a 250-pound perp, but it will sure knock pretty Pebble on her sweet ass if he lands one. Probably take her a few seconds to get back on her feet, too. So . . . let's see how our mighty hunters fare against a determined meat girl!"

Krystal watched one of the white-gowned Breeders remove Pebble's handcuffs while a red-gowned Breeder unlocked the padlock holding her to the vertical pipe. One on each side, they took her hands and led her down the steps to the arena floor where each kissed her on a cheek and whispered something in her ear. Pebble smiled at them, and took off running to the center of the floor.

A bell clanged and a gate slid open on the south side of the arena. Two men lumbered out, the black haired man holding a gawky handgun, the taller man gripping a folded length of rope. Charlie and Hank. They ambled toward Pebble, now standing in the center of the playing field, feet apart, eyes blazing with determination to outwit these fuckers and go for the O.

They slowly separated as they drew closer, and, just as slowly, Charlie raised the taser gun to where he could sight along the barrel. He squeezed off a dart, but somehow his target wasn't there any more. The dart thudded harmlessly into the dirt at the far end of the arena. Pebble had dropped to the ground, rolled back to her feet and was zig-zagging toward the platform of chained girls. Charlie fired off two more darts. None hit their target. Pebble swung in behind one of the platform legs, waiting to bolt right or left. She watched Charlie's fingers. She had keen eyes and could see them move on the grip of the gun as he squeezed the trigger. She saw the tell-tale twitch and dove to her right, sprinting to a spot equidistant from the sides of the field and within a couple of squares of the south end. Charlie and Hank trudged relentlessly toward her. She had no idea how many darts Charlie had, but she had to assume they were endless.

This time when she sprang to the right to avoid a dart, both her pursuers charged hard to cut her off. Hank, for all his gray receding hair, was much faster than she'd guessed and nearly caught her. She had to change direction quickly, cutting to the left, but her bare feet slipped on the fake grass and she landed on her knees. As she struggled to her feet, a dart landed in her left breast. Fiery pain blasted through her torso and she screamed, falling heavily on her left arm. Before she could recover her senses and scramble to her feet, another explosion of pain ripped through her belly taking away her breath. Her wrists were yanked behind her and quickly bound before she could breathe properly again, much less think. The two men were hustling her toward the platform with the slaughter frames. As they were hauling her up the stairs, she started to kick at them, desperate to delay the inevitable. But another searing pain exploded in her right thigh and blasted away her resistance. Her senses began to reassemble as her feet were pulled upwards and apart. A bell rang somewhere just as she thought she was about to be split in two. She heard the amplified voice of the announcer as she swung to and fro upside down inside the frame.

"Two minutes and twenty five seconds! We have one-hundred-fifty-seven winners here in the stadium and in our cyberspace audience who came within five seconds of that time. Congratulations to our two hunters and the other winners. Watch your screens for the payouts."

"Poor Pebble," mourned Wednesday. "She was such a sweet girl. I hope it doesn't hurt too much when you don't have the O."

"It's pretty quick, I think," Krystal said, in a lame attempt to sound upbeat. "Just a slash with a scalpel. Better than we can hope for."

Wednesday said nothing. Krystal bit her tongue. Why had she added that last bit?

The announcer was already introducing the next event. It was Eadie. Her pair of hunters was to be given a paintball gun and a rope. Less painful for the quarry, but more colorful for the spectators. Eadie was able to recover from several painful hits with the paintballs, and was nimble enough at dodging and sprinting that it took four minutes and forty-three seconds for the two men to capture her, tie her arms behind her, drag her to the slaughter frames and hang her up. No O for Eadie, either.

The next event was more exciting. Salli, the Bishop Lyra had tried to hide behind, was beset by one hunter on horseback and another on foot. The man who had actually won her was atop the black stallion formerly ridden by the Vixen harpy. He was an experienced horseman and wasted a minute or so cantering in slow circles, cutting back and forth, getting the feel of the magnificent animal under him. Salli, a lovely black haired girl with a heart-shaped face and exquisite figure knew she didn't stand a chance. When he finally turned the horse in her direction and charged, she was terrified. The heavy thudding of its hooves, the saliva spewing left and right from its bit, the crazed gleam in its eyes — and above horse and rider a great billowing net, ready to gobble her up! Her bowels loosened! She felt hot pee flowing down her legs! She didn't know which way to dodge! They were almost on her! In a blind panic she dove left, but the rider had seen her push off on her right leg and caught her neatly like a flying fish. He dismounted in a flash and quickly wrapped the netting around his squirming catch. As he and his partner carried her up the platform steps in the net, she kicked out furiously. But there were two of them to one of her and she was thoroughly tangled in the net. They carried her like a seal in a wraparound hammock and in seconds she was upside down in the frame. They cut away the net and tied her arms together as she hung there. She wept out of shame and frustration. Her thighs were wet with the evidence of her fear, and she had not even come close to avoiding slaughter without benefit of O.

Lyra was next. How humiliating for her. She should have been first. Or last. Not in the middle between a Bishop and three Pawns. The only salve for her pride was that they would be using both horses to hunt her down. That must indicate some kind of special status! The down side was that there was no way she could escape two horsemen. But she would try!

Like the others, she had run to center field to await her pursuers. They had trotted out on the handsome black and white stallions of the harpies. But wait! The man on the white horse was not posting smoothly like his partner. He was bumping along in obvious discomfort looking far less in control. He had a paintball gun. His obviously more horse-savvy partner had a net. Lyra had seen the effectiveness of the net on the previous girl and decided her only chance would be to challenge the clumsy paintballer instead.

They were coming directly toward her, now, so she made a sudden dash toward the white horse, thinking she could grab the man's leg and pull him out of his saddle. Maybe climbing on it herself. She had no experience with paintballs or might have been more leery of the muzzle pointed in the general direction of her face. Fired at point-blank range as she hurled herself toward his leg, the impact when the ball smashed into the bridge of her nose snapped her head back in a blinding flash of red paint. She caromed off the side of the horse and landed painfully on her right shoulder. Stunned, lying on the fake grass, hooves pounding around her head, she tried to shake and blink the paint out of her eyes. In spite of pain searing her right arm and shoulder, she stumbled to her feet, only to feel the soft nylon net settle over her and whip her off her feet again. She was dragged screaming to the foot of the steps. When she started to put up a fight, the paintball partner wrapped a powerful arm around her neck from behind and stuck the barrel of his gun in her mouth. "Shall I pull the trigger?" he asked calmly. She went limp for the rest of the journey to the steel frame and was hauled up by the ankles in a record one minute and sixteen seconds. Screeching with pain as they pulled her arms behind her to tie them up, she knew her shoulder was broken. She, too, would die without an orgasm for comfort, but at least death would end her agony.

"Now , for a change of pace, we will hunt down our pretty quarry in pairs!" the announcer declared.

The next two nude girls were released from their stanchions and scurried to the center of the playing area. The screens silently bellowed out their identities. "CLOUD, 16, M3, 5'5", 130 lbs, 36C-24-36. RAVEN, 17, M2, 5'7", 138 lbs, 37D-26-36."

"The first of our pairs, a couple of pawns, look like a couple of frightened deer when stripped of their trappings, don't they? The four hunters who will pursue them, including our two lady winners, will have to chase them down on foot. But . . . they're armed with some pretty mean weapons. Cattle prods! Trust me: once you've been touched by a cattle prod, you do not want to repeat the experience. Cloud is the pale girl with the gorgeous blond hair that goes all the way down to her firm little ass. Her tawny friend with the short black hair and scrumptious tits is Raven. Let's see how much of a fight they can muster."

The two girls were huddled in midfield, trying to come up with a reasonable defense against the two men and two women advancing toward them.

"We have to split up now!" urged the blonde.

"No! If we stay together until they're close, we can run in opposite directions and they'll all be stuck here in the middle!"

"So? They'll just split and come after us in pairs!"

"And they won't if we split now?"

"Oh God! Let's just surrender! Those things hurt so much!"

"Jesus! You're such a fucking wimp! You stay here and surrender!"

Then there was no more time for strategizing. The hunters were only twenty feet away and had broken into a sprint. Both girls squealed and bolted in opposite diagonal directions. The hunters split as well, the two men following Raven, the two woman in hot pursuit of Cloud.

Cloud was covering ground fast, but soon realized she was running into a corner. She cut to the left, hoping to find a more promising direction, but it was too late. Her hunters had anticipated her belated attempt to avoid entrapment. There was no way she could run around or between them without being tagged by one of those dreaded cattle prods. As she slid to a stop, her hunters stopped running and began closing in at a leisurely walk. Cloud backed up, her mind racing, trying to figure a way out of the corner without being tagged by one of the cattle prods.

Cloud assumed these two women were lovers. There were many such pairings among the thousands of female teenagers at Musgrave. With only a few years to enjoy the pleasures of sex in their short lives and very few males available to provide it, they appeased their hormonal demands mostly with each other. Cloud had developed a loving relationship with a girl named Moxie when they were both fourteen. But Moxie had been purchased and spitted two weeks after her seventeenth birthday. Cloud, whose seventeenth was still five months away, had been devastated and had signed up for the chess game the next day as a quick way to escape her grief. She had planned to offer her exposed neck to her first opponent. Suicide by combat. Peace with the swipe of a sword. Perversely, while strapped to the table under the stands, her will to live had been revived by the gentle touches and sweet kisses of the woman who had won her. With her eyes closed, it was as though Moxie were there again, thrilling her back to life with her soft, wet tongue and delicate, exploring fingers.

Now those same fingers clutched a diabolical device whose double-pronged tip

Cloud feared far more than death. All the chess players who failed to work hard enough during training had been given a bite of that prod on at least one occasion. She remembered that touch of unimaginable pain very clearly and could not bring herself to suffer another. Her two protagonists were fit, sleekly muscled and nothing in their faces suggested mercy. They had positioned themselves to equalize the width of her escape routes around or between them. There was no way she could get by them now. It was hopeless. She threw up her hands like a mime pressing against an invisible wall.

"Please!" she wailed. "Don't use those! Please, I'll go with you. I won't resist. Please!"

"Oh, really?" said one. "Prove it. On your knees. Now!"

Cloud crouched, reluctant to drop to her knees and make herself totally vulnerable. "You promise you won't use those on me? Please?" The two women were only an arm's length away, now. Cloud hugged herself, shivering in her fear. "Please!" she keened.

"Last chance," the woman said. Both she and her partner spread their arms, nearly encompassing her, prods ready to stab her with their painful kiss.

Cloud tipped forward on to her knees. "Please! I'll do anything you say. Please!"

And she did. She held her arms behind her back so they could bind them quickly together. She let them haul her to her feet and trot her between them to the platform and up the seven stairs. She let them snap the cuffs on her ankles and hoist her feet to the upper corners of the steel frame. The bell sounded. The announcer quoted their time. The crowd cheered.

Then they smiled and reached slowly toward her with the prods.

"No!" she screamed. "You promised me!"

"Promised you? Heather, did you hear me promise this craven piece of meat anything?"

"Not a word."

"It's very naughty of her to attribute to us promises we never made, don't you agree?"

"Absolutely. She needs to be punished."

"I agree. One last lesson in manners towards her betters before we take her home in freezer bags."

"I hope she tastes better than she fights."

"I'll stick mine in her cunt. You put yours on one of her pink nipples. Let's go together at the count of three. Ready?"

"Ready? One . . . two . . ."

Cloud burst into tears. "Please don't! You promised! I did everything you wanted! Pl . . . ."

She screamed and twisted violently as pain ripped through her from both cattle prods at once. She was still twitching and weeping as the two women left the platform waving to the noisy crowd.

In the meantime, Raven's situation was quite different. She had let her hunters chase her to the north wall of the arena where she turned to face them, one foot and both hands against the wall. As they closed in, she pushed off and dove at the ground midway between them and rolled away, out of reach of their prods. Instantly she was on her feet and running back to the center. Raven had taken her training far more seriously than Cloud. She was on no suicide mission. She had planned on her team winning. She had wanted to extend her life as long as possible. That was still distantly possible and she intended to go for it.

This time she waited until the two men were nearly on her, then sprinted to her right. The man on that side held the prod in his right hand, so couldn't reach her with it as she flew by on his left. She stopped and faced them again, then repeated the same maneuver with the same results. Now the men smartened up. The man on the left switched the prod to his left hand. But this time she dove between them again as they spread out to trap her. The prods were in their outside hands and again they couldn't reach her with them.

Now they were becoming angry. The women hunters were already stringing up their half of the quarry and here they were being made fools of by an ignorant piece of Goddamned meat! They conferred together while Raven caught her breath and psyched herself up for the next round. This time instead of running, the hunters walked slowly toward her, waiting for her to make the first move. When she did, only one of the men chased directly behind her; the other followed in his wake and when she cut to the right just as the first man lunged at her, he veered to the right to take up the pursuit. She didn't want to get trapped against the wall, so she slowed to let him catch up and, as he did, stopped and threw herself at his feet. He fell over her, but managed to drag the prongs of the cattle prod across her back as he did so. Raven screamed, but got to her feet and staggered away, trying to ignore the terrible pain.

In a few seconds she had recovered control of herself. Both men ran at her again, forgetting their more successful tactic, and she eluded them again by plunging at the ground between them and rolling to her feet. She kept this up until a klaxon sounded. She had survived the first round and had earned a dose of O drug for her slaughter. She steeled herself to last another five minutes for the double dose.

The two women were now added to the hunting team arrayed against her. She tried the same trick: luring them to the wall and diving between two of the hunters; but the women were on to her. They had seen how she had shaken off the effect of the cattle prod and told the men actually to tackle her, knock her down, then use the prod to incapacitate her. It worked. A few minutes later she was hanging in one of the two remaining unoccupied frames. A girl in white came to her as she hung inverted, and injected her with the coveted pink substance that would turn death into rapture. The girls in the other frames looked on in envy.

"Our next hunt," the announcer was saying, "brings our beautiful black and white stallions back to the field. It happens that Al Fresco and Bob Morris, two of our hunters, are expert horsemen. This will be fun to watch because they will be armed with snares. They look like old fashioned buggy whips, but the long leather thongs are tipped with little steel balls that will wrap the thongs around the quarries neck, waist or ankle if she's not nimble enough to evade it.

"The quarry, as you can see on the screens, consists of an ex-Knight named Boston and an ex-Pawn named Francesca. Francesca's the cute little thing with the dark brown hair, big boobs and tiny waist. Boston's the taller, more substantial girl with the body to die for. Only, most likely, she'll be doing the dying before the day is out and Al and Bob will be feasting on those magnificent hooters. But maybe not. She's quite a fighter, I'm told. They're both 16, strong and ready to fight! Let's watch and see how this plays out. Here come our intrepid hunters!"

The gate to the hunters' waiting area slid open and the two horses thundered out. Al and Bob rode them in opposite directions around the perimeter of the arena waving ostentatiously at the crowd as the two hunters on foot strode toward the two girls in the center. The two on foot were carrying ropes. Al and Bob twirled the long leather whips with the ball weights at the end in a circle over their heads. The four hunters had worked out a plan during their long wait based on what they had seen worked best for their predecessors. They had noticed that the girls seemed to be easily intimidated by large horses galloping straight at them. Who wouldn't be? They had decided to single out one girl at a time. Al and Bob, coming from opposite directions, would force her to jump one way or the other; then the horseman on that side should be able to snare her with the whip. The men with the ropes would bind her up while Al and Bob went after the other girl. Of the two girls, Boston was obviously the strongest and most athletic; she had a defiant look in her eyes and was already talking furiously in Francesca's ear, apparently taking the leadership role. "When she's put down," Al had assured Bob and the other two hunters, "her little friend will go meekly, just like that last blonde."

The horsemen queued up facing each other from the north and south sides of the arena as planned, then charged toward the taller girl. She feinted one way, then started running in the other, but the two horses easily cut to the new direction and sandwiched her. The speed and abruptness of the move, however, caused a collision. The two horses bounced off each other, crushing the girl between them. Boston was spun around by the double impact and collapsed on the turf, her head bouncing off the artificial grass. Dazed, by the time she was back on her feet and able to take stock of the situation, the horsemen had circled back and easily sandwiched her again. This time both whips lashed out and encircled her, Al's around her neck, Bob's around her calves. As the horses cantered past she was yanked off her feet and landed painfully on her back. Al released his whip so as not to break her neck (the officials had warned him about that), but Bob held on and dragged the hapless girl to the two men with ropes who flipped her on her stomach. One tied her arms behind her while the other unwrapped the whips and handed them back to the horsemen.

They turned toward Francesca. This time it was no contest. The terrified girl sank to her heels, tucked herself into a ball and covered her head with her hands. Al dismounted with a jump, grabbed the girl by both arms and marched her ahead of him to the hanging platform, right behind Boston.

No O for them.

"Well," said the disembodied voice after announcing the time of the capture, "There's only one pair of vanquished Vixens left. This shouldn't take long."

Chapter 6

We've saved these next two girls for last," the announcer told the audience, "because they're both Prime Grade meat and have been tubed for live roasting. For those of you who don't know, our grade ratings here at Musgrave have nothing to do with the quality and flavor of the meat. The meat from all our girls cooks up tender and succulent. We guarantee your satisfaction! No, the gradings are based strictly on physical appearance. We insist on selling only the most beautiful roasts for your parties. You and your guests will never be disappointed with a Musgrave roaster."

As the announcer talked, Krystal and Wednesday were being led on their labia leashes by two white-clad Breeders down the steps of the platform to the center of the arena. There they were placed back to back while one Breeder joined the chains of their handcuffs together with a padlock and the other wrapped binding tape around their legs to render them immobile.

"Take a good look at our two lovely Prime Roasters right here. These girls are typical of the quality live meat Musgrave delivers to its customers, whether it be for a private party or an official business function. Picture these beauties turning on a spit at your next company banquet or for a family get-together! In fact, we're going to start roasting them this afternoon, right after their hunters catch them and haul them over to the spitting tables. That should be a good contest, by the way, because these girls will be real motivated. They really want that shot of O drugs before they go over the fire! The taller girl, the one with that great mane of mahogany colored hair and those big brown soulful eyes, was one of the two Vixen Rooks — the one who got to keep her head. Take a look at those long, shapely legs, that amazingly narrow waist, those yummy boobs with their alert little nipples! Her name's Krystal, a 23 year old with one-hundred-twenty-five pounds of delicious girl-meat on a gorgeous five-foot-six frame. She's 36D-22-36. And she's pretty well tied up right now with her little blonde cohort. That's Wednesday. She's a dainty little thing, isn't she? Only five-two, about a hundred and five, soaking wet. She's nineteen and measures 34C-23-35. Look at that sweet little round face and cute little nose. She was a Bishop. Now she's waiting her turn to help feed the good folks who have purchased tickets to the Grand Banquet tonight at the Bormann Dining Hall. If you haven't purchased your ticket yet, by the way, there's still time!

"Now . . . while the crew is preparing the horses and equipment for our final hunt, let's get started with the current harvest. I'm sure the girls are tired of hanging upside down and would like to get on with it."

While the voice rambled on, the scene on the arena floor began to bustle with activity. Large motorized carts were driven in, one to each platform. A couple of brawny men and a posse of female Breeders dressed in work boots, gloves and coveralls began dismantling the empty platform where the ten girls had been chained. The coveralls consisted of low-cut front and back panels tied loosely at the sides to reveal that there was actually nothing underneath to cover up, except bras supporting heavy breasts. Those bras, however, featured nursing cutouts that exposed the nipples and let them poke against the silk lining of the front panel, or peek out over the top of the panel whenever their owner bent over. A third bulge below the spectacular bosoms revealed that a few of these women were more than a little pregnant.

As that crew took the platform swiftly apart and stacked the pieces in the cart, the twenty hunters were assembling on the opposite platform where the eight doubly defeated girls waited to meet the fate for which they had been born. The cart parked at the foot of the steps to that platform was actually a rolling body rack. Eight six-foot steel trays stacked in pairs, four deep, awaited filling. Four beautiful Breeders in white and red were at work preparing the hanging girls.

The PA system explained their activity to the crowd and viewers. "See how they're binding the hair on six of our captives? You'll see in a minute they'll begin to cut it all off. We cultivate long hair on all our young livestock for use in wigs and hairpieces. Musgrave wigs and hairpieces are renowned the world over for their ultra fine quality. We never permit the use of artificial color or other harsh hair treatment. Each girl's crop is harvested twice: first at age nine and again at her snuff."

The Breeders were now using cordless clippers to shave off the hair close to the scalp.

"You'll notice two of the girls are not being shaved. Francesca and Salli are Grade 2 meat girls and will be roasted. See how their hair is being twisted into a bun and covered by a foil shield? That will keep it from burning up over the fire. Both of those lovelies are sixteen. Aren't they pretty hanging there? Wait till you see them on their spits! Normally, by the way, the law stipulates that human livestock can't be harvested for meat until age seventeen, but the all the girls taking part in these games have been given special dispensation by the National Meat Program that allows them to volunteer at age sixteen."

The breeders were bringing shallow plastic tubs from the cart up to the platform and placing them under each girl's head.

"Ladies and gentlemen hunters: are you ready to snuff your quarry?"

Eager fists shot up into the air.

"Good! The Breeder in red with the grease pen will place two marks on each girl's neck, then hand one partner the box cutter. The second partner must hold the quarry firmly so she doesn't move while the first partner inserts the blade at one mark and slices all the way around to the other mark. Please make sure the blade goes all the way in to the hilt as you slice so the veins and arteries are neatly severed. You may proceed."

One by one the Breeder made her marks on each girl, handed a hunter the box cutter and watched carefully as he slit her throat. Blood gushed from the wounds, ran down the faces of the cringing girls and filled the tubs. One by one their faces relaxed and their breathing became more ragged. Pebble died first, then Lyra, then Eadie. Cloud wept and squeezed her eyes shut as the blade approached her throat; but as the warm blood streamed down her cheeks, she sighed and became calm, her fear draining away with her life. Boston thrashed and resisted up to the moment the blade slid into her neck, then shuddered and waited grudgingly for death. Only Raven smiled as her executioner drew the razor-sharp edge of the box cutter around her neck. She was high on O and the sting of the blade instantly triggered a raging orgasm that made her squirm like an eel in her ankle restraints, quieting gradually as darkness consumed the buzz.

When the flow of blood from each girl had diminished to a drip and finally stopped, the Breeders coached the hunters through the process of lowering the carcass, removing the ankle cuffs and carrying it to the waiting cart. The moment all eight had been stacked in the trays and the cart rolled away, the crew that had just finished disassembling the first platform began to do the same with the snuffing platform.

Meanwhile the announcer kept up a constant patter to keep the crowd engaged for the final duels.

"If you've been following the news, folks, you undoubtedly know that this industry has been fighting for major changes in livestock regulations to help bring down the cost of meat. Well, it looks like our hard work is finally paying off. Our sources in the Administration tell us that President-for-life Osama Bormann is about to sign the new international accord lowering the minimum age for harvesting human females from seventeen to fifteen! That's great news to consumers! Getting the girls to market two years earlier will make a huge difference in overhead costs. The Musgrave organization alone, including all our worldwide subsidiaries, carries over a million and a half head of livestock just in that two-year age bracket. But you independent sellers will reap big benefits, too, because your youngest female assets will now reach their optimum sale value at age fourteen. Of course, there will always be a lucrative market for your older, more voluptuous females, too. Don't you worry about that! So, (chuckle) keep your wives and girl friends pregnant, guys, and remember to use those gender filters! And don't forget, if you register your assets with Musgrave before their first birthday, you'll not only get a nice tax break, but you'll be guaranteed the highest going rate for her age and grade when you're ready to cash her in.

"Well, it looks like our Breeding beauties have taken away the last of the platforms, which leaves us a clear field to hunt down those two foxes currently bound up at midfield. And by the way, if any of you guys thinks he'd make a good stud for our Breeder Girls, give us a call for a screening. We have thousands of gorgeous gals just as stunning as the ones you see here. They're all horny as hell and looking for qualified studs to help them make babies. At Musgrave we don't believe in artificial insemination. We do things the natural way here, because we believe firmly that happy breeders enjoying great sex make happy babies, and happy babies grow up to make delicious meat!

"Hey! It's time for the Grand Finale. We'll leave our quarry tied up for a minute or two longer while we bring out the hunters so the girls can see what they'll be up against."

The gate slid open again and out stormed a gilded chariot pulled by the black and white stallions. The handsome stallions were now teamed side by side and driven by the thick-necked man who had won Krystal in the lottery and had been the first to fuck her under the stands. On his right, beside a vertical cylinder bristling with feathered sticks, stood his taller partner. Emerging right behind them was another chariot, trimmed in silver and pulled by a team of enormous bay Clydesdales. It was driven by Wednesday's hunters. They seemed less sure of themselves, clinging to the sides of the rumbling, open-backed vehicle as it bumped along. Nevertheless, they followed the gold chariot at a barely controlled gallop three times around the arena as they struggled to adapt themselves to the rigors of a charioteer.

"O my God!" mumbled Wednesday. Those beasts are fucking gigantic! If they run over us, we won't have to worry about cooking over a fire."

"There's that," agreed Krystal.

"But on the other hand, I don't think those guys are all that sharp at driving a chariot. My two look like they might fall out any minute. Jesus! You know, they never did tell me their fucking names."

Both girls looked up at the screens which were still proclaiming the identities of all involved. She had been reduced to, WEDNESDAY, 19, M1-P, 5'1", 110 lbs., 34D-22-35, and her hunters were Kyle Cranston of Portland, Oregon and Gary Webster of Houston, Texas. Good to know who's killing you, she thought. Her death mate was also up there. KRYSTAL, 23, M1-P, 5'7", 125 lbs, 36C-24-36. The man who had won the right to inseminate her under the stands and send her to her death in the arena turned out to be one George Bettincourt from Selma, Alabama. His tall partner was Emil Lacoste of Elmira, New York. She wondered how in hell those two had become buddies.

"What are we gonna do?" Her tone clearly implied hopelessness.

"What we ain't gonna do is just give up," Krystal said. "I don't know about you, but I'm scared shitless of roasting over an open fire with no O drugs to make it good. That's like burning to death. Slowly! I'll throw myself under the feet of those fucking giant horses if that's what it takes to stay outta that scenario."

"Yeah," Wednesday answered without enthusiasm.

"But maybe we can fuck with these guys long enough to earn the O."

"Yeah?" A spark of hope?

"Yeah. I think they don't know what the fuck they're doing with those horses. I think . . ."

The announcer's voice cut her off. "Ladies and gentlemen! For our final chase, we have put our intrepid hunters in Roman-style chariots and have equipped them with a rather interesting weapon. That quiver in the right corner of each chariot contains a couple of dozen long darts. They're about a foot in length with feathers on one end and a barb at the other, like a porcupine quill. Believe me, once one of those babies sinks in, it doesn't come out easily or painlessly. They also release, on impact, a serum that feels something like a hornet's sting, only ten times worse. And the longer the dart stays in, the more painful it gets. As you can see, however, our hunters are not accustomed to operating a chariot behind a couple of magnificent steeds, so that helps even the odds. And to make sure they stay even, the chariot driver is not allowed to leave the chariot and the dart thrower may leave it only after he's landed a dart in the quarry. Now I'm going to ask you gentlemen to bring your teams to a halt so we can send our Breeder Girls safely into the arena to release your prey."

It took a while, but eventually both chariots came to a stop, more or less, and two white-frocked Breeders, glancing nervously at the snorting animals, jogged out to the two girls.

Krystal watched the woman with scorn as she hurriedly unlocked the handcuffs. "What'sa matter? Afraid the big bad horsies will trample you and ruin your nail job?"

"I'm sorry," the woman said. "I know this is horrible for you, but I don't have any choice about this, either. None of us do. Some day soon they'll kill me, too, if that's any comfort to you. Good luck, sweetheart."

Krystal felt the bands around her legs drop off and both Breeder women took off for the sidelines. Now, overlapping her fear was a feeling of shame. She had no business taunting the woman. What did she know of the emotional torments the Breeders had to live with, bearing child after child, nursing an endless stream of infants, watching them grow just old enough to be slaughtered? But it was too late to apologize.

"What are we gonna do?" Wednesday was shouting at her.

"We're gonna give those fuckers as many headaches as we can. I think we should spread out and let them come at us separately. You can do what you want, but I'm gonna stand my ground and let them throw their fucking darts at me. They've probably been told not to run us over and ruin our bodies for roasting. We are the main course for their feast tonight, after all."

"Just stand and let them fill us with darts? Geez, Krystal, I'd hoped you'd come up with a better plan than that."

"Well, I was kinda hoping for some kind of brilliant ideas from you, too. I'm all ears. Whadda ya have in mind?"

Wednesday gave a kind of noncommital whimper as the two chariots suddenly broke from their static situation. Both teams of horses burst into a dead run. Krystal pushed Wednesday away and ran to an open position west of midfield. Wednesday, her eyes like saucers, seemed frozen in place as the Clydesdales barreled toward her, froth flicking from their mouths as they galloped headlong. She dropped to her knees and hunched over into as small a ball as she could as the chariot rumbled by. A dart thudded harmlessly into the turf next to her.

Krystal, on the other hand, stood stolidly defiant as George Bettincourt aimed his chariot (as best he could) in her general direction. The chariot blew by on her right at a fair distance, but Emil was a better marksman than George was a chariot driver. A dart landed in her right breast which instantly exploded into a volcano of fiery pain. Krystal screamed and spun around, clutching her wounded breast. The pain grew worse by the second. Panting she grabbed the twelve inch shaft of the dart and pulled. The pain redoubled and she dropped to her knees screaming. She had to get it out! She gave a mighty pull and ripped it free, but nearly passed out from the pain. Blood trickled from the place where the dart had imbedded itself.

She looked up. The chariot was coming back!

Standing up would not do! Bravery didn't count; only success! She had to outwit Emil and George. As the chariot sped toward her, she could see it was shading to her right. She waited until she saw Emil's throwing arm move, then dove to her left. Chariot and dart sailed safely past.

She jumped to her feet to see how Wednesday had fared. Wednesday was thrashing about on the ground, a dart protruding from her back. She was trying to reach it to pull it out, but it was too high up for her to reach from below and too far down for her to reach from over her shoulder. Krystal sprinted over to her and plucked it out. Wednesday screamed, then sobbed a "Thank you," just as George and Emil veered over to Krystal's new location. Unhappily for the drivers, Kyle and Gary had also been heading for the same spot. The horses for the two teams collided, the chariots tilted and Emil, who was winding up for a shot at Krystal, tumbled out the open back.

Krystal yanked Wednesday to her feet, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek to crank up her courage and dashed back to her own chosen spot to await George's next attack. It took George more than a minute to circle back to where Emil, his wind knocked out, was struggling to his hands and knees. With difficulty he brought the black and white stallions to a stop. Emil, gasping for air, climbed reluctantly back into the three-sided conveyance and hung on as George got the team moving again. Another minute and a half slipped by before Emil was reorganized and ready to throw more darts. They made another pass at Krystal from the south as Kyle and Gary where charging Wednesday from the north. Both girls ducked and rolled away untouched. The chariots circled around and tried it again with the same results. They were winding up for a fifth pass when a klaxon sounded. The first five minutes were up.

Krystal was ecstatic! She and Wednesday had won back the dose of O drugs that would convert the agony of live roasting to an ecstasy of welcome pain! If she could outlast fucking George and Emil for a second round, they'd double the dose! Whenever she thought back on the dose she had been given for her tubing, it started a fierce craving. But a double dose? Holy shit! The orgasms alone would kill her! Whatever it took, she was going to win this next five minutes, too!

Chagrined by their ineptitude, the hunters drew their chariots up at the south end of the arena for a reconsideration of their tactics. The announcer rubbed it in.

"Seems our hunters with all their horses, chariots and firepower have been outwitted by their prey. The girls have earned themselves a dose of O to ease their transition into meat. Guess we'd better send in some foot soldiers to help the boys bring home the bacon."

Four men emerged from the briefly opened gates. Krystal studied them warily, noting they had no weapons, only rope. The chariots had started to move again as the bell rang for the second round, weaving somewhat erratically toward the group of new arrivals. As the growing crowd of hunters conferred, Krystal decided three things. One: the horsepower hitched to those oversized ice-cream scoops on wheels was serious overkill. Two: the occupants of the ice-cream scoops were less than competent, both as teamsters and dart throwers. Three: the arena was far too small for the modicum of control they exercised over their teams and the speeds they were generating. Those three factors suggested several means of defense. It was the added menace of the men on foot that now complicated the issue. This, she decided, was exactly what the planners of this event had in mind. She and Wednesday had been given a decent chance to survive the first round and win back their drugs, but they'd been dealt only the slimmest of chances to evade the coming onslaught and death this afternoon on a spit. Her eyes wandered to the north end of the arena where the crew had already gutted Boston and Francesca and were starting to insert skewers into the openings nature had intended for propagation of the species.

When she looked back to the south end, the quartet of foot-soldiers had fanned out to about six feet apart and were advancing on Wednesday in a concave arc. The two chariots, moving at a slow trot now, had moved up the sidelines. When they were roughly opposite her on either side, they began to turn inward on a course that would take them behind her. They slowed to a walk. Oh, oh, Krystal thought. They're going to work us one at a time. Right now they're looking to surround Wednesday.

Apparently Wednesday figured it out, too, because she suddenly bolted to her right toward the east sideline and behind George and Emil's chariot. The entire arc of walking men broke into a run and swung over to cut her off. George ignored her, but Kyle and Gary in the other chariot — already headed in that direction — broke into a faster trot to come in behind her and cut off any attempt to reverse direction. But with the four men converging from the south and west, she had no other choice. She spun around to sprint up the east side only to find a huge pair of Clydesdales closing in. She screeched, stopped and tried to dive behind the chariot as it rumbled by, but a terrible pain in her left thigh made her stumble and fall. She grabbed at the shaft of the dart to pull it out when another burst of pain hit her in the lower back, and a third in the neck. She crawled in frantic circles on her hands and knees screaming and banging her head on the ground. When rough hands seized her arms she could only yell, "Take them out! Take them out!" in an hysterical mantra until, mercifully, someone did. She crumbled to the turf face down, sobbing, offering no resistence as her wrists were bound together behind her. She was too shaken to walk, so two of the men carried her to the waiting preparation table at the south end of the arena.

Krystal's heart sank. It was possible she could hold off two chariots and the remaining two men long enough to win this round, but any hope of leaving the arena alive was wishful thinking. In the next round still more men would be arrayed against her. Hell, they could park the damned chariots and have no trouble surrounding and subduing her. Well, why did she care? What was another month of life? Or even a year? They'd either send her back to the brothel or sell her for an office party. Or both. There was no way to escape her destiny. Or rather, her destination. She was bred to be roasted alive, and her spit was waiting for her. She considered simply walking down there and climbing up on the table. But no. She'd at least try for the double dose. It was the loftiest ambition a meat girl could expect. And she deserved it.

They were all closing in on her, the two men from the south side, the chariots trotting in from the east and west. She stood her ground. Her plan was to dive between the men on foot at the last second before they grabbed her. But they stopped about eight feet away, waiting for the chariots to seal off the rear. Or fill her with disabling darts! Waiting for a back-full of darts was not an appealing option. She darted to her right and, waving her hands wildly in the air and screaming, threw herself in front of the black and white stallions. Startled, they shied, collided with each other, reared and lunged to the side away from her, throwing both George and Emil off balance in the chariot. Emil, who had just drawn his arm back for a toss, was thrown into his own dart. It sank into his neck with the same painful results he had planned for Krystal. He screamed and twisted around, his mind entirely occupied with pulling it out as the pain intensified. The horses, frightened by the commotion, dug in for a fast departure, jerking George off his feet and tumbling the frenzied Emil out on to the fake grass where he bellowed and flopped around until both men on the ground foot came to his rescue and removed the dart.

To save the situation for the hunters, Kyle slapped the reins on his team to put them into a gallop and aimed them at Krystal. But what worked against the handsome black and white stallions was equally effective against the huge bay Clydesdales. Krystal screamed, waved her arms up and down and ran toward them, teeth bared. Unnerved by the berserk antics of this mad carnivore covered only in skin, the two horses chose an alternative route to bypass her, dragging the chariot load of surprised hunters with them. Gary, desperately trying to avoid ejection, managed to toss the dart he was holding toward Krystal. The dart plunged into a breast. There was a scream. A man's scream. It had hit the wrong breast. One of the two foot soldiers was dancing in a circle clawing at the fiery barb imbedded just above his heart. Taking advantage of the confusion, Krystal ran to an open area where she could watch for the next attack. But before the footmen and horsemen and horses could sort themselves out to mount it, the klaxon sounded again.

She had done it! She'd earned a silver-lined, gold-plated, diamond-encrusted exit from life. The action had stopped for a minute so more hunters could be added for the kill. She had time to think. Time to reconsider her earlier decision that this was as far as she needed to go. Was it? Should she try to parlay her success to the ultimate level? Did she want to? Did it matter whether she was cooked this afternoon or some later afternoon? Was an almost hopeless battle for life worthwhile when the best she could hope for was a brief delay of death? Come on! She had known from childhood that the whole purpose of her being born was to become food. Most of her friends had already harkened to that calling by age seventeen. Had those additional seven years of life as a rental sex toy unraveled her image of herself as meat awaiting processing? Why did she still long for life?

The announcer was beside himself with glee. "Well! Our little Rook turns out to be quite an amazing little piece! Kinda makes you wish she'd had the chance to do battle for her team, doesn't it? Might have changed the results. At the very least, she's won for herself a gargantuan dose of O. She'll be one happy roaster turning on her spit this afternoon. Or will she? Think she has what it takes to go the whole way?"

Someone had managed to extract the dart from its unintended target. He alternatedly clutched and pounded at the bleeding wound, trying to make the pain go away.

"Ouch!" said the announcer. "Looks like our wounded hunter has been relieved of his dart. But that chest wound is gonna hurt like a sonofabitch for about an hour. Gives you some idea of what our feisty little quarry is suffering, right? For those of you who don't know, the serum in those darts is not actually a toxin. It's a blend of concentrated hot pepper extract and various herbs which, although frightfully painful in living flesh, actually enhances the flavor of cooked meat. The heat of the fire causes the circulatory system to speed up and by the time our lovely Krystal has finished the live portion of her roasting — perhaps an hour or two — the pepper-herbal blend will have spread through her entire body, giving her meat a delicate hint of rosemary and garlic."

The gate opened and four more volunteers were admitted to the arena. The wounded hunter slipped out behind them, still massaging his chest. Eleven men and two chariots were now assembled to subdue the one remaining female slated for tonight's feast.

"Well," laughed the announcer, "things look pretty bleak for little Krystal, don't they? But don't count her out yet. That's one plucky little piece of meat! If anyone can escape this army of hunters, I'd put my money on her. Let's see how she does."

Krystal's inclination to surrender and spare herself the pain of more dart landings evaporated with those words. By God, she would do it! She'd go for a total victory against all odds. It no longer had anything to do with extending her miserable life. It had everything to do with embarrassing these fuckers!

The bell rang for the start of the final round, but the eleven hunters were embroiled in a heated dispute over the best strategy to bring down their elusive quarry. Krystal kept her mind off the fierce ache in her breast, where the dart had left its taste-enhancing herbs, by trying to anticipate the various attack plans they might come up with, and how to deal with them. At the same time she kept an eye on the countdown clock and every life-giving second that ticked by. By the time they let out a rallying cry and broke from their huddle, they had only two minutes and forty seconds left to round her up.

Their plan of attack turned out to be a straight line with two men on foot at the outside ends, then the chariots — the black and white on Krystal's left and the Clydesdales on her right — with the remaining three foot soldiers holding the center of the line. That line, she thought, would be relatively easy to breach, except that they had distributed the dreaded darts among all the hunters. Wherever she attempted to break through would be like challenging a pissed off porcupine.

She knew she had only three realistic options. She could launch herself at the driver's side of the black and white team, spook the horses a bit and dive past the chariot wheel on that side. That would at least force Emil to try to throw his dart from the opposite side of a jerking chariot; she'd only need to worry about the hunter on her right. The second option would be to try for an end run at either the east or west walls. But could she get over there and past them fast enough to keep from becoming a pin cushion? The third option was to drop to her knees and surrender. But they could just as well pop all their darts into her anyway out of spite for the earlier humiliations. No rule against that. The choice was obvious.

She sidled slowly to her left, turning just enough to make them think she would break for the end run. She hoped. But they had smartened up. As they drew closer, they approached at different speeds so that the outsides of the line curved in toward her, closing a tightening trap. She had no doubt that a plunge toward either end of the line would trigger a move for that half of the line to entrap her against the wall, with the other half closing in behind them.

When the line, now an arc, was about fifteen feet away, Emil in the chariot and three of the nearest footmen wound up to heave their darts. Krystal flew at the stallions, who, predictably, shied away. Emil's dart sailed harmlessly past her shoulder, but the nearest hunter on foot landed his square in her belly. She had cleared the end of the chariot when the pain exploded through her body. Still running she grabbed the shaft with both hands to pull it out when two more fiery explosions in her upper and lower back staggered her. Another dart slammed into her right thigh and another in her left buttock. She fell to the ground, thrashing and screaming in an agony she'd never dreamed possible. The hunters gathered around, their remaining darts poised, but they were apparently reluctant to add to the girl's obvious torment. Not so, Emil. The angry charioteer jumped to the ground, pushed through the others and drove another dart into her right breast and still another into her left.

In her agony, Krystal was beyond the ability to speak or control any part of her body. Urine gushed from between her legs. Her body bucked in continuous spasms, head flailing about, eyes rolled up, mouth open and drooling.

Taking pity on her, the men pulled Emil away before he could stick any more darts into her and lifted her to her feet. She was unable to walk so they carried her by the arms to the waiting table at the south end of the arena, the seven dart shafts hanging painfully on and flopping about, eliciting a constant stream of tortured screams.

The prep crew quickly plucked out the darts, then instructed the hunters to lay her down on the short table, face up, her head dangling off one end and her legs off the other. They bound her arms to the table legs, as had been done under the stands for the pre-game fuck. But this time they folded her legs, binding her calves to her thighs, and spread them wide with ropes from their knees to the table legs.

As they did this, two Breeder Girls came up to the table, one on each side. Each carried a syringe loaded with the pink O drug. They slipped the needles into both arms at once and slowly pushed the plungers. Almost immediately the writhing, crying girl on the table stopped moving, her wails reduced to a blubbering whimper. Moments later she relaxed and the whimpers became soft moans. The Breeders washed off the parts of her body they could reach, cleaning the blood from the dart wounds, wiping the dirt and tears from her face, cleansing the dried piss from her pussy and the insides of her thighs.

Wednesday was laid out on the table next to Krystal, but unlike her more valiant teammate's new expression of dreamy pleasure as the pain of the dart serum unleashed an intensifying wave of orgasms, her own face was a flickering mix of drugged contentment and residual fear. The chef's crew had waited for Krystal's arrival to begin the spitting procedure on Wednesday, so they could both be done at the same time. That gave Wednesday plenty of time to fret about it, and contemplate her death.

"Our two Roasters are now ready for cleaning out," the announcer told the audience as the chefs moved up to the sides of the tables and began cutting open the girls' bellies. "With a pre-snuffed carcass the chefs simply cut out all the viscera and dump it. With live specimens, however, they must cauterized the internal wounds as they go, so the girls don't bleed to death on us. Takes a bit longer. But these guys have had lots of practice and will move things right along."

It took about five minutes to remove the intestines, stomach, spleen, kidneys, liver and various other internal parts. It took another seven minutes to rinse out the empty cavities with a hose and fill them with tubs of stuffing as the announcer described the ingredients and extolled the skill of the chefs in creating the perfect combination of meat and stuffing flavors.

"Our two Roasters are now ready to receive their spits," he said as the chefs stapled up the bellies. "They were prepped for this at the age of sixteen with a tube that will guide the skewer through their body without damaging the remaining organs. They'll need those to survive the first few hours of roasting. After the new accord is signed, of course, we'll be tubing our Prime girls at fourteen so they'll be ready by fifteen. As you can see, our kitchen crew has inserted the sharp end of the steel rod into each girl's vagina and is pushing and twisting it into her. This is, of course, extremely painful — as I'm sure the ladies in our audience can imagine — but our two Roasters don't mind it a bit, no more than they minded being eviscerated, because the greater the pain, the harder they orgasm. Especially our brave little Krystal. Just look at her trying to hump that spit!

"The skewers are about halfway through, now. The tube will lead the point safely past the lungs and the heart, then force it to puncture the esophagus and come out the mouth. Watch how the crew tending to that end help it do that, just as they did with the slaughtered Roasters. The difference is that this time they will cut a hole into the windpipe and insert a steel breathing tube. Otherwise the spit will shut off the air supply to the girls and they'd asphyxiate. Watch, now. Here it comes!"

The crew held the girls' heads down over the end of the tables and the steel point of the spit, smeared now with blood, emerged through their open mouths. A quick slice with a scalpel and deft insertion of a short hollow cylinder enabled the girls to keep breathing.

"There we are," cooed the announcer. "You'll notice our two lovelies have stopped moaning. That's because their vocal chords were ruptured by the spit and no longer work. But then, with that thick steel rod in their mouths they wouldn't be able to say much, anyway, right? Now the crew is bolting the cross bars to the spits and as soon as the legs are unfolded they'll be stretched out along the spits with the knees wired to the cross beam so the bodies will turn with the spit.

"You'll also notice," he was saying, "that the nearby fire pits have been ignited and the coals above the gas jets are turning cherry red. One of the secrets of an excellent live spit roast is getting the starting temperature correct. We want to start the girl's meat cooking without killing her too soon. Ideally she should last about two hours; then we can turn up the heat under the carcass to full roasting temp.

"Well, now the Roasters have been stuffed, their bellies stapled shut and their ankles wired to the spit. What the crew is doing now is transferring the spit to the basting trestles. They'll flip the girls face down, wire their arms together behind their backs and secure them to their torsos so they don't flop around as the spit turns. Here come the Breeder Girls to encase the hair in foil so it doesn't burn. Any other body or pubic hair would be singed off, but, as you've seen, our girls don't have any. After the chefs give the Roasters a final wash, they'll baste them with our own buttery secret sauce and they'll be ready to go over the fire. Don't they look yummy!"

Chapter 7, Epilogue

Kim nestled in Werner's arms as they watched the monitor.

"They sure don't look like they're suffering," she ventured.

"I've never been able to tell whether a woman is grimacing because she's in pain or having an orgasm," he admitted.

"Just look at Krystal's face when it comes around again. If she were just in pain, it would be wrenched up, frozen in a silent scream. But her face is in constant flux, her lips curling, her eyes rolling, grinding her teeth, twisting her body — as much as she can on the spit, at least. Take it from me: she's in orgasmic overdrive!"

"Wednesday seems downright serene."

"For her the pain is merely offset. For Krystal . . . I can't even imagine it. A single dose of O turns pain into bliss. But a double dose!"

"And yet they feel the pain?"

"God, yes! The pain of cooking over a fire must be excruciating, but it would make the orgasms so mind-blowing you'd want it to go on and on, part of you in agony, part of you in extreme ecstasy."

"You would know better than I."

"Why don't you try it, sometime?"

"Doesn't work for men. Fortunately. If it did, the species would end. All the males would throw themselves into fires."

"But the women don't."

"They probably would, if they could get it. It's the most tightly controlled substance on earth and only meat producers like Musgrave have it. Anyone else coming within a mile of it is a candidate for immediate execution."

"Well, I don't think I'll mind being roasted alive if I can have a double dose of it."

"Good, because you're scheduled for next month's April Memorial."

The words took Kim by surprise, but she managed to conceal her panic. "You've put me back on the schedule already? Even though my team won?"

"I know. I'll miss you, sweetheart. But you've already used up a few months of your reprieve with all the planning and preparations for the chess match. It's only fair for the other girls on the list of consecrated meat that you take your turn. Besides, you are by far the most worthy sacrifice to April's memory that I could possibly offer."

Her instinctive reaction was to scream at him, to remind him that he'd promised to let her live as long as her team kept winning! But something in his eyes stopped her. Something in his smile. Maybe he was toying with her, seeing if he could make her whine. Werner was not moved by whiners. He had always admired her pluck, her courage. And surely after so many delicious hours, night after night, day after day, immersed in each other's bodies and feelings, he could not deny the bond that had grown between them, merged them into a condition that they had both once acknowledged as love. She had escaped death only an hour ago through sheer tenacity; she was not about to give up now. Ignoring the pounding of her heart, she dug down deep for the cool that had enabled her to survive in the arena, and to win this chance at life and love in the first place. She kept her voice soft, straining to relax.

"Oh," she purred, "I understand, darling. But it's too bad, in a way. I had some really exciting ideas for the next event. I've figured out what the weaknesses were in this game and just how to fix them. I even have some ideas for involving the cyber audience in the game in ways that should triple our paying viewers, or better."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Like what? You want to know my ideas now?"

"Yes! Absolutely!"

"Is that how Scheherazade would have handled this? Would she have written down all her stories and handed them over to King what's-his-face right up front?"

Werner smiled and drew her closer. "So that's how it gonna be."

"That's how it's gonna be," she agreed, squirming up to his face and pushing her tongue down his throat.

"I thought so," he said around her tongue. "Okay. One more month, or so, until you deliver your next miracle. But what then? Think you can keep this up indefinitely, until the law says it's time for you to turn into meat?"

"I'm sure gonna try. Besides, didn't King what's-his-face eventually decide it would be more fun to keep this Scheherazade chick around than to snuff her?" she asked, sucking his earlobe and teasing the rising tent in his pants with her thigh.

"I do believe he eventually came to that conclusion," he said, kissing her neck.

"And as to the law," she went on, unzipping the gate to his manhood, "if the Law can cut two years off the lives of teenage meat girls so giant corporations like Musgrave can make higher profits, maybe it can also grant extra years to Pleasure Girls for service above and beyond. Especially winning Pleasure Girls."

"There's always that possibility," he gasped, as she settled her warm, wet sleeve over his staff of office and slid downwards on it until it was deep in her belly. "Oh yes! No doubt about it. There's always that possibility."