War Fever

Chapter 7

Us humans were told to line up together before we were led single file through the doorway and into a massive room. We were brought behind a stage where I could vaguely see dozens, maybe even over a hundred anthros on the other side. It felt like my life was collapsing, and I hadn't even been brought onto the stage yet. The humans around me looked at each other nervously, some pleaded with the soldiers guarding us to be let go.

This of course failed.

An auctioneer, the same leopard from earlier, walked up the stage behind a podium that was up there. He adjusted a microphone before saying, "Hello all you beautiful people, I hope you all are ready for an amazing auction."

The crowd of anthros cheered, their toxic positivity freaking me out.

"And humans, I hope you are all ready to be sent to some amazing jobs or homes."

All of us humans were quiet. We just remained quiet as we were all obscured behind the stage.

"Today, we have a mixed batch of humans, some of the usual ones, some more rare ones. We have a lot to get through today, so would the first human please come to the stage?"

A guard grabbed a random human and dragged them up the stairs and onto the stage for all to see. The leopard examined the human and looked over this document before saying, "This male human, age 23, was once part of one of the many resistance groups. He was deemed to be an organized human who had been responsible for refilling empty bullets for his group to use. The bid for him starts at $1250."

I shook my head at that price. I couldn't believe we could be valued that lowly.

After a few moments, an anthro in the crowd shouted, "I got $1250 here!"

"Anyone willing to challenge this offer?" The crowd was silent before the auctioneer shouted, "Sold to the head of technical work."

A soldier grabbed the human and dragged him off stage and into the crowd, disappearing from sight. Another human was grabbed to be brought up on stage, and the same thing happened.

"This male human, age 20, was some lone survivor rescued from the dangerous world. He was a hunter who is used to manual labour. The bid for him starts at $500." The leopard offered.

Again, I was awestruck by how fucked the low pricing for humans could get.

"$500 here!" Someone in the crowd shouted.

"$600 for him here!" Another voice shouted.

"Are you really paying $600 for him? Save your money." A new voice shouted, disagreeing with the purchase.

The leopard waited before saying, "Sold to the head of construction."

This cycle repeated for a while. Humans helplessly being led onto the stage only to be sold off to whoever was bidding. Some humans were sold into the heads of different kinds of work, basically being forced to do jobs based on skills. Only a couple humans were sold to individual anthros, typically the younger and better looking ones, whereas most humans, female or male, were sold into normal work.

There were the odd few sold into the line of sex work. One particular moment that disgusted me the most was when this human, one of the really young ones, was on the stage for the bid. He was valued at just $750, but there was a short bidding war rocketing that price to almost $3000 before he was sold to an individual anthro.

His age was only around 17.

Johnny was scared and constantly told me about how he wasn't going to be sold to an individual. I was questioning my life, my failures, everything I could've done better to have avoided this moment.