We weren't going to pass; that's right.
Crime doesn't pay, I guess. Or maybe we'd selected the wrong variety of crime. Still, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't what you'd call a total loss. I'd found out about English teachers, and that was worth it. Though poor Dottie hadn't done nearly as well, but then, that's the way it goes, isn't it?
But in the middle of perspiring preparations for that doomful final exam, something cropped up.
We called him Ali the Assassin, though be never gave his name to anyone as far as we could find out. But whatever his name was, he knew something about us, it seemed.
As I reconstructed things, he'd been seen registering at a local motel, driving a big black car; and later he was here and there around town, sliding around. He was a slim, dark, Oriental-looking type, with dark glasses, and a notebook in one pocket. He kept scribbling in it, according to one source and another, and every so often he would hold whispered conferences with people. They never seemed to want to talk about those conferences either.
Rumors around town held that he was a spy, or an FBI man, or somebody from Internal Revenue; except for the drugstore clerk, who read a lot of science fiction, and who told me that Au the Assassin was off a flying saucer.
"He's not off any flying saucer," I told Dottie. "I wish he was. Didn't you notice the way he keeps watching us every time we happen to go by him?"
"What do you think he is then?"
"An assassin," I said, grimly, and shuddered. "Those Greeks. They were mobsters. Smugglers! They sent him to find out what we did with their hashish-end as soon as he knows… ZZIP." I drew my finger across my throat, and Dottie nearly fainted.
"But we can't give it back!" she wailed. "The stuff was all used up!"
"Exactly," I said. "We're doomed!"
"And we're going to flunk, too."
There wasn't any course of action left, actually, except suicide. Or running away.
"We could go to the city and become models or something," I said, chewing my thumb. "If we're going to flunk, anyway…"
"That assassin might catch us," Dottie said.
"If we stay here, he will," I said. "I'll bet he's only waiting for orders from the top."
So, three days before the finals, we decided to go while the going was good. We packed a small suitcase apiece, wrote notes, and quietly and rapidly left town.
It was about five-thirty, and we were far out on the south highway, several miles away from dear old Sodom. Cars were going by and we stood, thumbs out; with luck, we could make it all the way to the city before it got really dark, we hoped. Or halfway, anyway.
Unfortunately, we looked a little too young and a little too far out in our jeans; drivers seemed to be cautious. It took a long time before a car finally stopped, and we got in.
The driver, a peculiar-looking little man with a bald head, giggled at us in a very odd way, as he started up.
After a while, he introduced himself as Kreef. "Andrew J. Kreef," he said, leering. The car was going pretty fast, too, I noticed.
"I'm a… hee, hee… footwear man," he said. He looked at our feet, in sneakers, and uttered another weird giggle. In fact, he stared at them so long that the car wove around alarmingly before he got his eyes back on the road.
I was getting a little nervous, and I asked, "How long before we get to the city?"
"City?" Kreef said. "Oh… several days, I suppose."
"What? But it's only a hundred miles," Dottie said.
"Not on this road," he told us, with another whinny. "We're on seven now, going west. Didn't you notice?"
And he was right, too, the little rat; he had turned and we were going at right angles to the way we wanted. We were well up in the woods country by now too, and there wouldn't be too much traffic going our way. I was mad, but I concealed it.
"I think we should get out here," I told hint.
"Oh, darn," he said, but stopped the car. He stared greedily at our feet without opening the door.
"Wouldn't you like to stomp on me a little bit?" he said, wheedlingly. "I mean, I just go ape over young girls in smelly sneakers… ooh." He grabbed at my ankles, but I had the door open by now, and was following Dottie out, fast.
As he whizzed away, we stood under the pines, in the darkening twilight, and stared after him.
"Maybe we should have let him do whatever he had in mind," I said, looking around.
"Brr," Dottie said. "He might have some other really funny ideas. I've heard about people like that. No, thanks."
"It's pretty empty around here," I said. "We might be worse off than riding with him."
Little I knew, as they say.
Doom arrived fifteen minutes or so later, just as we had about decided to start walking. It was a simply gigantic Harley, with an engine that sounded like a truck, and it varoomed past us in a cloud of dust. A second later, three more of them shot by, and then another two. Each one had a rider-a bearded, leather-clad, weirdly dressed character bent low; two had equally weird females clinging behind them.
"Motorcycle crazies," I started to say, and just then, I heard that varoom sound again; they had U-turned, and were coming back. I had a funny apprehensive feeling, but it was too late to do anything about it.
They came zooming up, and screamed to a stop ahead of us. The leading cyclist sat, staring at us through his goggles, his bushy red beard sticking out like a mop.
"Uh," he grunted. "Hey, you broads. Wanna ride?"
"Ah… thanks, but we'd rather walk," I said, a little shakily.
There was a rumble of hideous laughter, and the leader growled, "She wantsa walk. Yuh. Oke. I dig blondies; I'll grunch this one. Hey, Scars, you take the other."
In seconds, we had been scooped up and deposited on the rear saddles; and we were hurtling along the road like rockets, hanging on tight.
It looked pretty scary, but I clutched the monster ahead of me, who seemed to be named King Kong. He had a certain resemblance to an ape, all right.
Then, the herd swung off onto a narrow road, and varoomed frighteningly around curves, through pines, and finally into an open glen, where they came to a stop. The two girls, both muscular-looking, blonde and silent, got to work with a small fire, and food appeared out of saddlebags. It was a picnic, of sorts.
"We're th' Purples," King Kong told me, as we sat leaning against his bike. He held a bottle of beer in one hand, and an enormous sandwich in the other; He broke off half for me and I ate it nervously.
"Hey, she's cute." It was one of the blonde riders. She stood, spraddle-legged, staring at me, and grinning. "Hey, honey, my name's Lila. Maybe we'll get together later, hah?"
"Listen, Lila, ain't I told yuh?" King Kong asked in a pained voice. "Perversions ain't allowed in this group. Whatcha want people to think-we're some kinda Hell's Angels?"
"So since when is a chick making it with a chick a perversion?" Lila demanded.
"Sure, it's a perversion," King Kong said. "We do it all straight, ya hear? None of that funny stuff. It ain't American to do funny stuff."
The other blonde approached, and stood listening.
"Gangbangs ain't a perversion?" she demanded.
"No, Sugar, of course they ain't," King Kong said. "I mean, when we done it to you, it was only one place, right? Not inna mouth, or the ear, or the armpit, just inna right place. So, that's the right way. It's the way we do it. Like, it's the American way." He stretched, and offered me his beer. "Want a little bellywash, sweetie? Before we start in?"
This could be awful, I thought. I mean, I like sex just fine, but I wasn't feeling too turned on by this mob. They'd take a lot of getting used to; and I didn't really think I wanted to try. I caught Dottie's eye.
"Well, gee, thanks for the sandwich and the ride…" I said, getting up. "I guess we'll just walk along… " And I started off for the dark woods, fast. Running, in fact, and I heard Dottie sprinting along just behind me.
But it seemed it wasn't going to be that easy. King Kong tackled me just as I made it to the edge of the fire lit area, and I thumped down on the grass on my face; he had my ankles, which he held up in the air as I wriggled like a fish.
"Hey, you're a real wild chick," he said, admiringly, and one huge hand grabbed at my waistband, and peeled my jeans off with an ominous ripping sound. "Wow, what an ass. Hey, I think you could be my old lady, maybe, hah?"
I was really annoyed about those jeans. I twisted around, and told him what I thought about him but he just looked down, laughing crudely. He dropped his leather pants, and snatched off my remaining clothes, all in one swift series of grabs.
"Hey, ol' King Kong gonna bang the blonde!" someone called. "Hey, King, look at this one. Ol' Snake and ol' Scars gonna do her, yeah."
They were all fairly drunk by now, and I caught a glimpse of poor Dottie, her long legs spread wide as one of the bearded beasts plumped himself down on her and began to shove and heave. King Kong himself stood before me, his erection up and ready, grinning down at me.
"Kinda nice one, ain't it?" he said, glancing down at himself admiringly. "Look at that; I got all my old ladies' names tattooed on it, see?"
"I've seen better," I told him, and let's face it, I had. It wasn't really impressive at all. Just adequate. But he seemed pretty sensitive about the subject.
"Arrgh!" he grunted, and flung himself at me. No style at all, really. He simply grabbed my knees, spread my thighs, and rammed. But it wasn't bad, actually. There are times when a girl might like that sort of direct action thing, I think. But I was pretty mad at him, too, though I could hardly help enjoying it.
"Uff, grr, oof!" he was saying, grabbing and grunting, bouncing away; the beer wasn't helping him much, I suspected, and neither was I. I let him keep it up awhile, until he started uttering happy noises; then, before he had time to resist, I managed to roll him over on his back I was still more or less impaled on him, you might say, but I had a couple of notions about what to do with him. With him on his back, looking slightly amazed, I rode on him, gripping tight, and banging on his chest with my fists.
"Go, go, GO!" I squealed at him, twisting my bottom and bouncing so hard that he gasped. "CHICKEN!" I insulted him, and he indignantly tried his best. In fact, he tried so hard that within minutes he lay, a completely inert lump; I had burned out his bearings, more or less.
I disentangled myself and stood up and there was Dottie, unlatching herself from the two who had been climbing all over her. Both of them were in the same destroyed condition as their leader. Another, unable to wait his turn like a gentleman, was rolling about in the long grass with one of the two blondes, and still another lay on his back in a beer stupor.
"If that's the best they can do, I'm almost sorry for them," I said, looking over the stricken field. "Gee, Dottie, you really did for those two, didn't you."
She giggled. "Shucks, 'tweren't nothing." Then, she sobered. "Oh, gee, look at our clothes."
That wasn't easy, because we hadn't any. Our biggest remaining hunk of cloth wouldn't have made a neck-tie; we had been undressed by a kind of tear-off method.
"We'd better get out of here, before there's any more of this," I said. "Clothes or no clothes. Come on; it's warm enough. Run."
So we ran. Into the dark woods road, and off, as quickly as a couple of naked chicks can Dottie was out-distancing me, and I suddenly remembered seeing a pair of boots in her hand; she had evidently swiped them from one of our late friends, and gotten them on in a hurry. They helped, all right; I kept hitting stones, while Dottie ran merrily ahead, a dim pale figure in the darkness.
"Wait – a minute!" I cried out, finally. "Whoa!"
I limped up to where she had stopped. "Can't run… any more," I wheezed.
"Where are we going anyway?"
"Golly, I don't know," she said.
"We'd better get some clothes, anyway," I pointed out "At least shoes for me."
"I don't even know where we are," she said in a slightly-panicky voice.
I sat down on a tree stump and caught my breath, staring around in the starlit dark. There was an especially bright star, low on the horizon… only it wasn't a star. It was a yellow light.
"I'll bet that's a house," I said thoughtfully.
"What'll they think?" Dottie asked. "I mean, a couple of nakeds walk up and say, hey, we were gang banged by motorcycle crazies, wow, can we borrow some pants?"
"Don't be a dope," I said. "They might have their washing on a line. We could steal something."
"You," Dottie said. "First you got me into balling your dopy brother, and then the next thing you know I was getting fooled around with by that awful Lesbian, and now you want to be a BURGLAR."
"Corruption," I said, "Oh, come ON."
We walked toward the light, along a narrow path; it was a lot further off than I'd thought, and we were really footsore by the time we made out anything about it. Also, we had run into several thorny, spots, and nudism just didn't seem so much fun anymore.
The light was a single bulb on a pole outside a big low-roofed frame building; behind it there was a shadowy outline of one or two more similar buildings Barely visible, we made out a sign.