Pam-Ann (3 page)

In the intense heat and
humidity, Pam was streaming with sweat before they even reached the
big, black steel box at the end of the biggest dome that was the
source of the flickering orange glow she had seen earlier. A
heavily muscled man, stripped to the waist, watched their approach
and Pam shrank from the look he was giving her. White teeth shone
in his grimy face as he grinned and pulled a lever on the huge box.
The orange light flared to yellow and the indistinct figures in its
shadow were instantly illuminated by a fiery glare. Pam would have
turned and fled but for the insistent tug of the Chief’s hand on
her arm. Painfully reluctant, she let herself be led to the group
of nude, brown-skinned girls labouring in the harsh yellow light.
Flames belched from four open doors at the end of the steel box,
licking out until they were almost singeing their gleaming,
sweat-streaked bodies. It was an enormous furnace and the girls
were feeding it, hurling shovelfuls of coal into the dazzling heart
of its fire.

“Oh, my God!” Pam’s words were
lost amid the din of machinery and the furnace’s fearsome roar. She
turned from the flames and saw two men with their faces and naked
torsos blackened by coal dust looking at her with lustful
expressions. The Chief’s grip on her arm turned her back and he
thrust a long-handled shovel into her hands and leaned close.

“Okay, get going.” He pointed to
a big bunker of coal that faced the furnace.

“Are you crazy?” She looked from
his face to the shovel, let the tool fall and shook her head.

The Chief nodded to someone
behind her. A line of searing fire tore across Pam’s shoulder
blades.
She looked around with a cry and saw both
the men behind grinning at her. One of them was coiling a long,
thin lash between his hands. The other held an identical whip.
Shocked, Pam shuddered at the stinging trail the lash had scored
into her skin, and she grabbed the shovel.

“That’s
better,” the Chief yelled above the noise. “
And no slacking
or you’ll get more.” He pointed to the bunker.

Desperately hoping that it was
all a nightmare from which she would soon awaken, Pam dug out a
shovelful of coal and turned to the fiery heat of the furnace.

Chapter Two

Sweat stung Pam’s eyes. It ran
in rivers over her naked body, making irregular patterns in the
coating of coal dust caked to her skin. It dripped from her brow,
the end of her nose, her chin and elbows, the tips of her breasts,
and even from the soaked and matted triangle of hair at the apex of
her thighs.

For the first few minutes she
had thought that she could cope and all the hours spent working out
to her exercise video were going to pay off. Drake plainly thought
she was too weak to keep going. She was determined to prove him
wrong. Her confidence had lasted only until every muscle had begun
to ache and then to burn, when the shovel in her hands and each
load of coal she flung into the furnace had seemed to double in
weight. But the moment she had paused for a breather one of the
overseers had lashed his stinging whip across her back, not as
viciously as the first time but painfully enough to immediately get
her moving again.

Pam had learned the hard way
that the only time she or any of the other stokers were allowed a
pause was when the four steel doors of the furnace were closed. For
perhaps a minute they would stay that way while the man who
controlled them watched the pointer of a dial. The second the
pointer began to fall he would open the doors and Pam and the
African girls with whom she was toiling would begin stoking the
fire again. If any of them were tardy a fiery flick of the whip
quickly set them in motion. Only during those brief rest periods
could they drink from the big water buckets near the bunker. Pam
had had a raging thirst even before she had begun. Whenever the
chance arose she drank, ignoring her blackened hands as she scooped
the water into her dry mouth and washed the clogging coal dust from
her throat.
Her thirst returned the moment she
started shovelling again, the fierce heat and the effort of feeding
the furnace sapping her strength, while her sweat streamed
down.

Still she struggled on, mostly
because to stop was to invite the cruel licking of the whip on
her back or buttocks, but also because she was not
used to failure and hated to admit the hard, physical work was too
much for her. If she had had strength to
spare she would
have marvelled at the Zulu girls’ stamina. She knew little about
the tribe except that it had a reputation for courage and
endurance. Pam could believe it. There were eight girls, two to
each of the furnace doors. They worked twice as fast as she did and
felt the lash on their naked, gleaming bodies just as often, yet
the two labouring beside her still found time to jostle her and
spill the coal from her shovel, and from their broad grins thought
it was a huge joke.

The bite of the whip that curled
wickedly around her right buttock and the front of her thigh told
Pam she was flagging and she hurried to fling her load of coal into
the fire, struggled to get out of the way of one of the black girls
doing the same and turned back to the bunker. Surely the hour was
long over. She gave a weary but resentful glance at the man who was
re-coiling his lash. His gaze roved over her bare, sweat-run body
and Pam still had the energy to shiver in shame and humiliation.
She looked away from his lustful grin but not quickly enough to
avoid seeing the bulge in the front of his grubby trousers. Her
belly turned over. If it meant nothing to them to treat her as
cruelly as this they would certainly not hesitate to…. Once again
she refused to think the word, but the threat of sexual assault
heightened her fear and further sapped her dwindling strength.

As she stooped and dug her
shovel into the coal, a lash scorched the width of her back and the
whip’s knotted tip curled around and bit hard into the soft swell
of her right breast. Pam gave a cry that no one else heard and
fresh tears sprang into her eyes. Her head was swimming and aching.
Her lungs felt as if they were on fire and every muscle screamed.
It was all she could do to lift the shovel with trembling arms and
hurl its load towards the furnace door. Half fell short and through
the haze before her gritty eyes Pam saw the white flash of teeth as
one of the Zulu girls laughed at her. Too far gone to feel the rage
the mockery would usually have provoked, she staggered as she
turned from the flaring heat. Her knees were close to buckling.

A firm grip on her shoulder
stopped her puny effort to thrust her shovel into the coal heaped
in the bunker. Blinking away sweat and tears she saw the Chief. He
motioned to her, and almost too tired to feel relieved that her
ordeal was finished she tottered after him. How she made it up the
stairs she did not know; perhaps only because Drake was standing at
their head and she wanted to show him she could do it.

* * * * *

She had courage, Drake admitted,
as the girl stumbled into the office ahead of him, and strength and
stamina too. Not many stowaways managed the full hour of
backbreaking toil he had put her through. He took her by the
shoulders and turned her with her back to the wall. She sagged
against it.

“Stand straight,” he told her.
When she did not, he pulled her upright. Blinking sweat from her
eyes, she swayed, managed to lock her knees and stood with
shoulders sagging. Alex Riley handed him a grubby towel and he
wiped the coal dust and the girl’s sweat from his hand.

“Give her her due, she stuck it
out to the end,” the Chief said. “But that was nothing, Ann. My
Zulu girls do six hours at a stretch around the clock, so don’t go
feeling proud of yourself for managing one.”

“I don’t know how you can work
at all in that heat,” Drake said.

“That’s why I’m the chief
engineer and you’re not.”

“And glad of it. I’d better tidy
her up before we go.”

Ann’s half-closed eyes widened
when he rubbed the towel over her breasts, wiping away the worst of
the sweat and grime. She was breathing hard and shaking from
reaction. She was firm-muscled too, and prettily curved and her
pointed nipples felt hard and resilient against his palms. Her gaze
lifted to his and a flicker of what might have been surprise
crossed her dirty face before her head lolled once more.

She was a strange one, but then
they all were
. To some extent he could understand
what drove them to it, but it had to run deeper than their obvious
desire. Some would call it a need. They were usually ready to throw
themselves at the feet of the first man they saw and beg to be
used
, but this one had not, nor shown any of the hysteria
that sometimes quickly replaced the lust when a girl realised
exactly what she had got herself into. Ann groaned as his rubbing
reached her belly and he felt it twitch under his hand. Excitement
or just pain? Her eyelids fluttered briefly when he towelled the
little prominence of her mons and revealed its neat crown of
light-brown hair beneath the coal dust, before moving on to her
thighs. The smell of her sweat was strong and mingled with another
scent, more piquant and stimulating, but maybe that was just the
result of her labours too. Drake stepped back.

“Look, her nipples are hard,”
Chief
Riley said. “Maybe she’s not so different
from the usual sort.”

“She had better not be, for her
sake,” Drake replied. “And it’s no more than you’d expect from one
of That Kind. I hope you’ve decided to be sensible from now on,
girl.”

Ann did not
reply. She almost fell as he grasped her hips with both hands and
turned her. Resting her forehead against the wall, she let
her
arms dangle
, whimpering
occasionally as he rubbed the towel over her wealed back and
buttocks.

“She’s not too badly marked,” he
said. “She must have done a pretty good job.”

“Not bad for a first time,” the
Chief allowed.

“Maybe I should assign her as
one of your regular stokers,” Drake said dryly.

Riley
laughed
. “I’d find better things for her to do than
shovelling coal. I told the boys to go easy on her considering
everything else she’s got coming.”

“You shouldn’t have. She must
have known what to expect. She knew the law and the consequences if
she stowed away, just like the rest of them.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Yet they
still keep coming.”
He met Drake’s eye. “You don’t
have to follow the Company line with me, Rafael. It’s not like we
haven’t talked about this before. I know you don’t like what the
sorry bitches go through any more than I do. It’s a hard
introduction to a hard life, and we both know it.” When Drake did
not reply he glanced at the girl. “I wonder what goes on in their
heads. It’s hard to
figure why they do it, and so many are
the higher class ones with much more to lose than most.”

“Yet they often turn out to be
the best,” Drake said. “I reckon they love it the way a drinker
loves alcohol or an opium smoker the pipe. And in the same way, the
more they get, the more they want.” Was that true of this one too?
She looked to be asleep on her feet, unresponsive to the last dabs
of the towel he gave to the smooth curves of her bottom. The Chief
was right; she did have one hell of an ass, and tits to match, and
there were those deep-blue eyes and full lips
too.
He turned away. “I’ve seen a good few in my time, but never one who
acted quite as crazy as this one. She was babbling some nonsense at
first, and acted like she recognised me, though I’d never seen her
before. She kept calling me ‘Todd’ for some reason. I had to smack
her ass to shut her up.” Drake remembered the pleasant sting on his
palm as he had slapped the girl’s
firm
backside.
“You’re right about her being a beauty
though.”

Riley grinned. “You thinking of
changing your rule about the girls,
then?
There’s nothing in the book says you can’t enjoy them.”

“There’s nothing that says I
have to either.
They have enough to put up with
when they’re on duty. Besides, I like a break when I’m on
board.
It means I savour it more when I’m
not.”

“Are you still hiring them?
Still looking for that perfect girl, eh?”

Drake gave him a wry grin. “You
know there’s no such thing. Not in my case anyway. Hiring’s easier.
I get to have them when I want and I don’t have to house and feed
them when I don’t.
And since I’m paying
for them, I can be sure I’m getting exactly what I
ask for.
There’ve been no more vibrations, I assume?”

“Not a one. Everything okay at
your end?”

“Routine and normal. I guess I’d
better get this one settled. I’m officer of the watch in an hour.
Come on, girl, move your ass.” He smacked her right buttock.
Ann mewed like a kitten
and weakly raised
her head. Her knees buckled and she slumped forwards.

“Damn,” Drake said, and closed
his hands around her waist before she hit the floor. “Give me
another towel, Alex. It looks like I’ll have to carry her.”

* * * * *

No less confused than when she
had first arrived in this madhouse and even more afraid, Pam
plodded along a metal corridor with the woman who had woken her
from her exhausted sleep following close behind.

“Wait.” The order was
accompanied by the woman jamming the short, bamboo stick she
carried between Pam’s bare buttocks. She stopped with a squeak of
outrage, though she was not entirely surprised after the other
humiliations she had suffered. The stick’s pressure eased as the
woman swung open the door in front of them. “Go on.”