Chapter 4
"Bedtime, boys. March!" Richard fell into step with the other naked conscripts
as they all emerged from the shower block, shivering as their wet bodies met the
chill evening air. Without being told they formed a neat double line and moved
off toward the dormitory tent under the watchful eyes of their officers. They
were expected to march everywhere like this now, and falling out of step would
almost invariably be punished with the lash if one of the officers noticed. It
was amazing how fast they were learning under that kind of iron discipline.
As usual, Richard had ended up beside Carl Jacobs, the only other conscript he
had managed to become well acquainted with. He remembered four or five of the
others from his school days, but that had been a few years ago and he hadn't
seen much of them since. Only one of Richard's close friends was the right age
to have ended up at Camp Thatcher, and he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps his
crazy plan for evading the whole thing had actually succeeded.
Theoretically the conscripts were all supposed to remain silent except when
responding to direct questions from the officers, but they had learned that a
little whispering was sometimes tolerated, or at worst punished with a slap, a
blow of the whip, or a few push ups. Of course, Richard had seen two or three
men handcuffed and hauled off to the punishment cages for breaking silence, but
it seemed to be a rare occurrence.
"I think something's up," he murmured to Carl.
"So you've noticed too. The bitches have another nasty surprise for us, I'm sure
of it. They get these sort of conspiratorial grins when they think we're not
looking."
"What do you think it is? Not another bedtime body search?" Even the memory of
the humiliating moment - bent over in front of the dormitory tent, spreading his
own buttocks while Officer Dowling's cool gloved finger probed his rectum, his
cock erect and throbbing from her intimate handling - was enough to make him
blush a little.
"Doubt it," Carl replied. "I don't think they want to make that a regular event
- then we could anticipate it and make sure we weren't caught with anything. My
guess -"
"Shh!" hissed Richard, a moment too late. Officer Flagg, a wiry woman with more
grey than brown in her hair, slashed her whip across Carl's buttocks. "Shut up,
Jacobs!" It was a tribute to the toughening effect of four days at Camp Thatcher
that he only gasped instead of yelling in pain. Flagg stayed close to them until
they arrived at the tent, and they both kept their mouths shut and their eyes
down, like good conscripts. Oh, yes, they were learning.
"Form up!" Sergeant Hallee called as they reached their destination. "Single
line!" This was unusual - normally they went straight in to their cots. But you
didn't question orders. Richard lined up with the other men and came to
attention almost automatically. Hallee approached with the thin, slightly amused
smile that usually meant she was about to do something unpleasant. She grabbed
one of the conscripts by the arm. "Reilly, step forward. Hands behind your
back." He obeyed instantly, an uncertain look on his lightly tanned face. She
snapped her handcuffs around his wrists and began to lead him away toward the
middle of the camp. Richard and Carl exchanged puzzled glances, but the other
officers were moving in, each of them pulling a man from the line. Richard
cursed inwardly as Officer Desalle stepped up to him and put her fleshy hand on
his shoulder. She was probably the strictest of them all, except maybe for the
Sergeant herself, and she seemed to have a particular antipathy toward Conscript
Richard Tipper. She jerked his arms roughly behind his back - she was
surprisingly strong under all that flab - and cuffed him, his palms turned
uncomfortably outwards. Instead of taking him by the arm she looped her whip
around his neck and led him off with the other officers and their own captives,
like a dog on a leash. He wanted very badly to ask her where they were going,
but he knew it would only invite punishment. He glanced back over his shoulder
and saw the other men, the ones who hadn't been chosen, being rounded up and
taken into the tent by the dormitory officers.
It was a long walk to the cluster of ugly concrete buildings that formed the
heart of Camp Thatcher. Richard had been in the area twice before, once to work
in the laundry and once to help tidy the officers' quarters, but the building
they seemed to be headed toward was new to him. It was one of the smaller ones,
squat and windowless. Richard caught sight of the lettering on the grey steel
doors - "Special Training Facility" - and wished he hadn't. Training at Camp
Thatcher usually meant sweat, tears and intense abuse from the officers, and
Richard was already exhausted after a long day of drill, chores and exercise,
which seemed to be the three main components of conscript life so far. He
followed Desalle and the others into the building with trepidation.
"You all know your room numbers, ladies?" asked Hallee from the front. There was
a chorus of "Yes, ma'am," from the other officers.
"Good. I think we're all on the second floor. Just take the boys back to the
tent when you're done with them - and have fun. Come on, Reilly."
Have fun? Richard felt himself break out in a nervous sweat as Desalle led him
up a narrow stairwell, jerking impatiently on the whip looped round his neck as
his footsteps began to drag. Upstairs was a corridor lined with numbered metal
doors, toward one of which each man was briskly herded by the officer escorting
him. Richard swallowed hard as he stumbled after Desalle into Room 207, but once
inside it looked surprisingly ordinary. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting
- some exotic torture machine, perhaps - but in fact it was just a small room
with bare concrete walls, empty except for a toilet, a metal locker and a bed
that looked even more comfortable than the bunks in the officers' quarters.
Richard had always imagined that a cell in a prison would look more or less like
this. More confused than ever, he waited as Desalle pushed the door closed and
bolted it, then turned to him with a smile of undisguised anticipation. She
reached out and slapped him hard across the face. "Ow!" he yelped, taken off
guard.
"Just getting your attention, Richard." That was ominous - the officers never
used their first names. "Stand straight with your chin up and your legs apart.
Mm, that's right."
He blushed and fidgeted a little as her gaze slowly travelled up and down his
naked body. Without warning she reached out and touched his cheek, almost a
caress, and then felt and prodded her way over his chest and shoulders. He
squirmed uncomfortably as her strong hands squeezed and kneaded his muscles.
"Please, ma'am, may I ask-" This time she backhanded him across the mouth.
"Shut up, Richard," she said curtly. "And for fuck's sake stop squirming." She
played with his nipples, prodded his stomach, then moved behind him. He gasped
as her open hand cracked across his bottom and then began to pinch and stroke
the soft flesh. The officers were always casually touching them - rubbing,
prodding, slapping, or whatever, and sometimes in rather intimate places - but
this was definitely something a little more deliberate. In a moment she moved
back in front of him, looked him in the eye, and grabbed his penis.
Officer Desalle wasn't a pretty woman - maybe thirty pounds overweight, with a
heavy build and a fleshy face framed by black curly hair - and her severe grey
uniform and habitual stern expression wouldn't earn her many points in a beauty
contest either. But she was also a long way from repulsive, and as her fingers
began to move on his cock he felt it spring to attention with the same alacrity
he tried to display on the parade ground. God, if only she wouldn't stop. She
stepped closer; he smelled spicy perfume mingled with the sweat of a long day's
work.
"Four days," she said softly. "Four days we don't let you boys touch your hungry
little pricks, and look what happens. What's going on here, Richard? You want to
fuck me?"
"No, ma'am," he whispered, blushing. It must have been the wrong answer. Her
fingers shifted to his balls and clamped down hard.
"Why the hell not? Are you saying I'm ugly?"
"Of course not, ma'am," he almost whimpered. Her grip was getting tighter and
tighter. "But you're an officer - it wouldn't be respectful - please, ma'am, it
hurts!"
"I'll bet it does. So you do want to fuck me?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"You're right, that is pretty damn disrespectful." She twisted viciously.
"Ow! Please, ma'am! I'm sorry!" Tears were welling up in his eyes. He struggled
frantically, but of course uselessly, against the handcuffs that prevented him
from defending himself.
"You should be, you dirty little bastard." Mercifully, she released him. "Show
me you're sorry. Down on your knees and lick my boots."
"Ma'am?"
"You heard me, Richard. Get down!" She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and
forced him to his knees. Immediately he bent forward and began to kiss and lick
the stiff leather, still a little dirty from all that marching around on the
muddy parade ground. He tried to swallow his disgust. It was degrading,
humiliating, but if it was really what she wanted... Suddenly her whip stung his
buttocks and he squealed and jerked his head up.
"Did I tell you to stop?" she snapped. He sighed and returned to his task,
continuing even as the occasional blow descended across his arse or his
shoulders, or caught the outside of his thigh. The welts stung, the cuffs were
biting into his wrists, the concrete floor hurt his knees, and the taste of
Desalle's mud-encrusted boots made him feel even more helpless and downtrodden
than when he'd first been stripped and chained in the Intake Centre. Desalle
chuckled as he trembled with the first of his sobs.
"Want your mother, boy? Think she'd give you a nice kiss and protect you from
the mean, nasty Conscription Officer? Too bad she's not here. Right now I'm the
only woman who can see that you're suffering, and the more you cry the more I
like it. Poor baby." She hit him once more with the whip, almost an
afterthought, and then shooed him away with her foot. "All right, kneel up."
She studied him. "You've gone a bit soft, Richard. Rub against my boot." It
seemed only a small additional humiliation, and soon he was fully, pathetically
stiff again. She sat down on the edge of the bed and nudged his genitals with
her toe.
"Poor little Richard. So desperate, so helpless. So when did you last have sex?
Or haven't you ever done it?"
"Last weekend," he replied, sniffling. Her bulky form was a blur, seen through
blinding tears. "Saturday night."
"Tell me about it."
"I wanted one last fling with my mates before the start of conscription. My
parents obligingly left for the weekend, and a few of us got together and just
partied - vodka, beer, pot, the whole bit. Claire - my girlfriend - was there,
and after the others had gone home we - we went upstairs to my bedroom."
"And?"
"And fucked!" he replied almost angrily. "What the hell do you think?" She
sighed and raised her whip. "She knew two years of conscription wasn't going to
be easy," he went on in a somewhat more moderate tone, "so she was really nice
to me. She did everything just the way I wanted, even put my cock in her mouth.
She never did that before."
Officer Desalle grinned and, to Richard's amazement, started to unbutton her
shirt. "Well, Richard, now you're going to do everything just the way I want.
You're going to be licking a hell of a lot more than my boots, and I'm going to
hurt you a little bit while you're doing it. If you don't satisfy me, or if you
get all reluctant, I'm going to hurt you more. You're going to see me naked, and
you're going to touch me all over, but you're not going to get to cum. You're
going to go to bed frustrated, humiliated and in pain, and the more you fuss
about it the worse it's going to be. You can cry all you want, but you'd better
do as you're told. Understood?" Fat or not, she had magnificent breasts, soft
and enormous and barely constrained by her white little bra. The view contrasted
so sharply with her harsh words. He swallowed and nodded, more desperately
aroused than ever.
"Right, then. I want you to understand that this is for your own good, like
everything else that happens to you at Camp Thatcher. It'll help your obedience
and self-control, and you'll learn a lot about pleasing a woman. In two years
you'll be able to make Claire very happy - unless she's found herself another
bloke by then, of course." She unclasped her bra and went over to rummage in the
locker, her plump body blocking Richard's view of its contents. When she turned
back to him she was holding a brown leather collar on a steel chain, and she
gave him a tight approving smile when he lifted his chin so that she could
buckle it tightly around his neck. She lay back on the bed and drew him to her
with the leash.
"Get over here, Richard. No, climb right up here with me. Good boy." She pulled
his lips to hers. It wasn't like Claire's shy, chaste kisses; Desalle kissed him
hungrily and possessively, raping his mouth with her tongue and grinding his
lips painfully back against his teeth. He was lying half on top of her, bare
chest to bare chest, his erection pressed against the rough cloth of her uniform
trousers. One of her hands played with his buttocks; the other hooked around the
collar and dragged his head down toward her breasts.
"I think you know what to do," she murmured throatily as he began to lick and
kiss her soft white flesh. He heard her sigh as she moved his mouth to her right
nipple, but a moment later her free hand dropped to his scrotum and clamped down
until he whimpered in pain. "Damn it, Richard. Slow down. And use your tongue
more. Try to roll it around my nipple... mm... that's it. Good lad. A little
faster now." He obeyed every instruction as best he could, and when his
performance was inadequate she was always ready to correct him with a
strategically placed slap or pinch. Mostly she kept his mouth on her nipples,
but she also had him kiss between her breasts, nuzzle at her neck, even lick her
armpits. He balked at that for a moment, but when she twisted his nipples
savagely he meekly began tonguing the sweat from her coarse stubble. Finally she
kicked off her boots, slipped out of her trousers, and pulled his head down to
her crotch.
"Get my panties off, Richard."
"Ma'am?" He wriggled his fingers, emphasising the helplessness of his cuffed
hands.
"With your teeth, stupid," she said roughly. "Hurry up, I want your tongue
inside me." Her dark bush was thick, and already moist with the fluids of her
arousal. With a growl of impatience she grabbed the collar again and almost
smashed his face into her groin, pressing him into her folds so hard he wondered
if she was hurting herself a little. "Lick, damn it!" she hissed, and he obeyed
at once. The taste was musky, but he didn't find it exactly unpleasant, and soon
his tongue was buried deep between her thighs. Her fingernails dug painfully
into his neck and scalp as she bucked and squirmed beneath him. It was a relief
when she relaxed her grip momentarily, but she allowed him only a quick gulp of
air before forcing him back to his task. She began to slap his head, his
shoulders, anything she could reach - urging him on, or maybe just amusing
herself. Either way, it hurt like hell as her heavy hand descended over and
over. When she reached her climax it was with a loud groan of pleasure - so
different, again, from Claire's demure sighs and gasps - and a final blow that
made him yell with frustration as much as with pain. It seemed so unfair; his
cock was stiff and practically dripping with desire, and she hadn't paid the
least attention to it since they'd gotten into bed. If he hadn't been for those
damn cuffs, he would have tried to pin her down and thrust into her until she
was moaning in pain instead of pleasure, officer or not.
"So how do you like being my little bitch, Richard?" she asked almost
affectionately. "You're not doing badly so far. Just one more orifice for you to
attend to. I want you on your back for this one - let me get at your cuffs."
"Ma'am? You don't mean..."
But from the way she was grinning at him he knew she did. "Mean what, Richard?
You'll have to speak up, dear."
"I'm not going to kiss your arsehole, ma'am."
"No?" Her voice was suddenly very hard. "You think I can't make you, you sack of
shit?" She unlocked one handcuff. "Down on your back, Richard, and we'll see
about what you're not going to do." Just the thought of it revolted him. His
nose buried between those pendulous buttocks, his lips tasting... Jesus. And he
didn't doubt that she was really going to try to make him do it. He felt the
same inner swelling of mingled defiance, anger and panic that had come over him
on his second day, when Desalle had tried to make him piss on the men in the
latrine trench. He knew there would be consequences, but somehow he couldn't
help himself. As though watching another person he saw Richard Tipper start to
roll over and reach up above his head as though preparing to be shackled to the
bedframe, then suddenly change direction and surge to his feet, swinging the
open handcuff against the side of Officer Desalle's head as he did so. He saw
Desalle fall back with a bellow of pain, saw Richard lunge for the door - but
where on Earth did he think he could go? - and fumble with the bolt. He didn't
see Desalle get to her feet behind him just as he got the bolt open, but he
certainly felt her strong arm go around his neck, choking off his air as she
drove her left fist into his side. At the second blow he sagged in her arms, and
she threw him hard to the ground, face down. She dragged him over to the bed and
cuffed his wrists around one of its sturdy steel legs.
"You think you can fight me, you little bastard? Or do you just like making
things hard on yourself? Is that it, Richard? Do you like being hurt?" Her whip
cut cruelly across his back, as hard a blow as he'd ever felt. "Do you like
screaming and begging for mercy? I hope so, because you're going to scream now."
And she whipped him. So far he'd only felt the lash as a casual disciplinary
measure, which meant no more than two or three blows at a time. But this was
real punishment, and it went on and on. Around the sixth or seventh blow he
burst into tears again, and after a dozen he was screaming himself hoarse, just
as Desalle had promised. He hadn't imagined anything could hurt so much, and it
kept getting worse and worse as her whip tore new furrows into his flesh or
revisited old ones. It was as though she'd poured petrol all over the back side
of his body and set it alight. He shrieked, he writhed in agony, and soon he
began to mix incoherent pleas in with his screams of pain. "Please, ma'am,
please stop. I didn't mean to disobey! I'll kiss your arse, I'll do anything you
want if you'll just stop hurting me. I'll be your bitch, I'll drink your piss,
anything. Anything!"
Finally she tossed the whip aside and knelt on his back to undo the handcuffs.
He sobbed and gasped under her weight.
"All right, Richard. I'm going to give you one chance. You lie down on the bed,
on your back, and do my arse-hole with your tongue just as nicely as you did my
cunt. If you don't do it well enough, I'll hurt you. If your cock doesn't stay
stiff while you're doing it, I'll hurt you. You can rub yourself if you want,
but don't you dare cum, or I'll REALLY hurt you. Now get in position." Her tone
was deadly serious, and he scrambled to obey, defiance forgotten. The bedding
felt terribly rough on his welted back and bottom. He began to stroke and pull
at his penis, trying desperately to get hard again, as he watched her straddle
his torso and lower her sizeable bottom toward his face. Tentatively,
hesitantly, he put out his tongue to lick the sweaty crack between her cheeks,
then began to gently probe her anus. Her fist drove hard into his belly and he
wailed in pain.
"Harder! Get right inside me." Trying not to gag, he obeyed, and thrust his
tongue into this much tighter opening. At least his penis was now stiffening -
for once, he was glad of his four days of enforced chastity. He began to lick
her almost desperately, and trembled in relief when she rewarded him with a sigh
of satisfaction. Two or three minutes later she moved away and stretched herself
out beside him, as though she didn't find the arse-kissing terribly enjoyable
but had simply wanted to torture him with it. She slapped his hands away from
his penis and began to fondle it herself.
"Poor little Richard," she said almost gently. "That was hard for you, wasn't
it?"
"It was horrible, ma'am," he replied honestly.
"You still want to fuck me?"
"Yes ma'am."
"But you can't. Does that make you upset?"
"Of course it does, ma'am. Please, can't you just let me get off? Even if you
just stroke me, or make me do it myself. It's not like I'll tell anyone."
"You really are desperate, aren't you? What if I made you come on my boots and
then lick it off? Would you still want it?"
"Yes ma'am."
She laughed. "Poor baby. It's going to be a long, lonely, hungry night for you
in the dormitory tent, then. And sadistic old Officer Desalle is going to make
it even worse. Lie still." She leaned over and took his penis in her mouth. God!
Claire had been good, but Desalle's evidently more experienced tongue worked
magic. In moments he was literally whimpering with desire and straining wildly
against the firm grip she had on his hips. All too soon, of course, she got up
and began to put on her uniform.
"Bedtime at last. I think you'll probably want to sleep on your front tonight. I
really marked you up this time." She sounded pleased with herself. "You'll try
to behave yourself from now on, won't you?"
"Yes, ma'am." But he knew it was a lie.
***
Richard lay in his little cot that night with an aching hard-on. The dormitory
officers knew exactly where he'd been, and one of them - a young black girl,
prettier than most - had petted and fondled him mercilessly when Desalle brought
him in. The more desperate the conscripts became, the more the officers seemed
to enjoy teasing them. And Richard was definitely desperate. There was a little
wet spot on the sheet beneath him, and his mind was full of images he was
powerless to dispel. Claire's soft red hair spilling over his thighs as her warm
little mouth settled over his penis, the blond and beautiful Officer Horton
stretching out her firm, toned body atop his as they lay together in the privacy
of his own bedroom, even Desalle grinding his face into her cunt. Desalle and
Horton - why not - guiding an apprehensive but obviously excited Claire into a
special training room and gently but firmly stripping her of her clothing. "Do
you like women, Claire?" Horton asked coldly. "We certainly do." Why on Earth
couldn't they have conscription for girls, anyway? They'd be kept naked, their
firm young breasts bouncing as they sweated and strained for their tough and
unsympathetic male officers. Perhaps that was the job for Richard Tipper. He'd
drive them hard, he'd humiliate them, he'd hurt them, and he'd find himself a
plump little bitch who reminded him of Desalle for one of those sessions in the
Special Training Facility. His hand was moving on his penis, furtively under the
sheets, but for God's sake he couldn't stop himself. He wasn't going to finish,
just stroke a little and think of those nude female bodies obedient to his every
harsh command...
Suddenly his sheets were flung back and the black officer who'd been teasing him
was standing over him with a wide, unpleasant grin on her dark face. "Well,
well, what have we here? On your feet, Tipper. Move!"
"Please, ma'am, I was just-"
"Just wanking off. You know that's not allowed. Shut up and put your hands
behind you." For the second time that night he felt cold steel close around his
wrists. She grabbed his stiff cock and used it to lead him out into the cold
darkness, toward the ominous line of punishment cages. The woman standing guard
came forward.
"What's this? Another wanker, I suppose? We've got plenty of room for him. Bring
him over here." The black woman pushed him forward, into the spotlight that
illuminated the row of cages.
"Why, it's Richard Tipper!" the guard exclaimed. "Fancy meeting you here." At
the same moment he recognised her. They'd been in school together, with her a
year ahead, and afterwards she'd worked at one of the local fish and chip shops,
of all places. Amanda, that was her name. She'd put on some muscle and cut her
brown hair short, but there was no mistaking her. He wanted to die of
embarrassment.
"All right, Richard," she said briskly. "Thought you'd have a little more
self-control, but I guess one never knows." She opened a cage for him. "Sit down
and back in."
"You're not going to uncuff me?"
"No, I'm not. You seem to have trouble keeping your hands where they belong. And
you address me properly, conscript Tipper." She took his arm and forced him to
the ground, then guided him back into the little cage. "Come on, get your feet
right in. I know it isn't comfortable - it isn't meant to be." She pushed the
door shut and snapped the padlock into place, leaving him with his knees drawn
up to his chest and his head bowed.
"Haven't seen you in a while," she remarked, studying him through the bars. Her
tone seemed friendly enough. "How's conscription suiting you, aside from the
chastity problems?"
"I hate it, ma'am," he replied irritably. "Every bloody minute. How do you like
being an officer?"
"Oh, it's great fun. I feel a bit sorry for some of the lads sometimes - the
soft ones who spend all their time blubbering, I'm sure you know the type - but
I don't feel at all bad about getting tough with brash fellows like you. Spare
the lash and spoil the conscript, as the Major likes to say. And it's nice
having men almost my age do everything I tell them instead of expecting it to be
the other way around."
"I'm sure it is, ma'am."
"Come on, don't be petulant. You've probably heard this a dozen times by now,
but you'll be grateful for this when it's all over. And so will your girl - are
you still seeing Clea Nesbitt, by the way?"
"Claire," Richard corrected. "Yes, I'm still seeing her. Or I was."
"Claire, that's right," Amanda mused. "You know," she said with a mischievous
smile, "I think I've still got her telephone number in my little book. I'll have
to ring her up before dinner tomorrow and tell her I had to lock you in a cage
because you were masturbating in the dormitory. I hope it was her you were
thinking about, at least."
"Come on, Amanda. Please don't tell her." To his amazement she reached through
the widely spaced bars and pinched his nipple painfully between her fingernails.
"That's 'Come on, ma'am'. I already warned you once. And of course I'm going to
tell her, so no more whining." She rose to her feet and stretched. "You've got
less than five hours till morning exercises. Try to get some sleep. And no more
talking, or I'll gag you. Good night, Tipper." She moved away down the line of
cages, checking on her other captives. Richard, cramped and shivering, closed
his eyes and tried to rest.
***
To Richard's surprise, the next few days weren't so bad. The officers worked
them hard, as always, but he was beginning to find it easier and easier to keep
up with the relentless pace they set. The morning exercises were still bloody
murder, and the military-style parades always involved a lot of yelling and
punishment as the manoeuvres they were expected to carry out became increasingly
complex, but the rest of their training seemed almost comfortable by comparison.
They had plenty of chores to do around the camp, but it was mostly fairly light
work - hauling rubbish, doing laundry, cooking and serving the officers' meals
and tidying their quarters, unloading the food supplies that were shipped in
every morning. There was vocational training for their future work, ranging from
bricklaying to paving a mock roadway (later used, with characteristic
efficiency, to practice hauling rickshaws) to those damn sewing machines. Carl,
who had managed to learn a little bit about the system before conscription, said
that most conscripts were going to be rotated constantly from job to job and
from location to location, partly to prevent them from getting to comfortable
but also to broaden their horizons a bit. It seemed that the whole thing really
had been meticulously designed to do them some good, as well as to punish them -
or at least, as Carl liked to point out, to give them what the arrogant bitches
in charge of the Civil Society Party's increasingly confident government thought
young British males needed. There were also brief medical and psychiatric
interviews with prim lady doctors, to make sure they were all sane and healthy
despite their ordeal and to determine what jobs they would be best suited for.
Of course, it still wasn't like a vacation. Richard went to bed with fresh welts
every night, like most of the other men, and woke up each morning to harsh
shouting and a raging erection that he didn't dare touch - that privilege was
reserved for the officers, who seldom missed an opportunity for a little casual
tickling and teasing. The public had also discovered Camp Thatcher, and around
dawn a few curious spectators would always show up outside the camp with a
terrifying array of photographic equipment that made Richard feel like some poor
zoo animal on display. Women over 18 and men over 21 (apparently conscription
was supposed to be more or less mysterious to all males who had yet to
experience it) were allowed to come right up to the outer fence and watch the
lads being put through their paces, though not everyone wanted to get that close
to the dogs and the watchtowers and all the rest of it. A local news crew had
even been inside the camp, filming everything from communal showers to morning
exercises to men being forced kicking and screaming into the punishment cages.
Rumour had it that five of the eighty or so training camps around the country
(all named after famous Englishwomen, such as the Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher he remembered from history class; apparently there was even a Camp
Godiva) had been chosen as "display sites" with 24 hour video coverage on the
internet, but Richard found that hard to believe. It was clear, though, that the
Ministry of Social Order didn't feel they had anything to hide in their
conscription training camps.
Every day brought him a little closer to freedom. He was going to survive this;
he was going to work hard, learn a lot and go home to a proud mother and a
lustful Claire in 2007. He'd obey the bitches while he had to, but he wasn't
going to let them break him. Carl and some of the other lads were beginning to
make noises about rebellion, one desperate try at creating chaos and proving
that the whole system was unworkable before they got shipped off to their work
assignments, but Richard stayed clear of it. He was resigned to the situation,
if not exactly cheerful, and he thought he was in most of the officers' good
books. Even Desalle had been less than usually brutal to him since that night in
the Special Training Facility. He was well into his second week of conscription
when things went disastrously wrong.
