End of Women: Part Five

No Exceptions

Robin's mind was still full of the contents of the letter as he re-entered the disposal facility at around five thirty, waving his thanks to the truck driver who had given him a late lift from the half empty Ekpow Compound. Moisture hung in the air and clung to his skin, giving him a chill. He pulled up his windbreaker around his face and walked beneath the temporary overhead struts holding the exterior wall together.

CAUTION: ENTERING ACTIVE FEMALE DISPOSAL ZONE

The sign was hanging above a yellow and black-striped line on the asphalt that separated the donut shaped outer walls and buildings from the massive courtyard in which the watercages operated. Even as the sun was sparkling its last on the horizon the familiar sound of awwwwoooooh coming from the warning siren and the chunk-chunk of gears lowering the cages into the freezing pools of water below continued, along with the wails and screams of women and girls encased inside them. 

Robin watched the squirming mass of female flesh in the watercage nearest to him writhe and wriggle, struggling against each other, those at the edges crying out from the crushing weight of so many bodies around them, some already dead from the pressure. Around Robin were the operators, men in khaki jackets, yellow hard-hats and waterproof pants that folded over the tongues of their thick leathery boots.

"How many so far?" Robin asked the one nearest to him, who shrugged.

"We hit three hundred thousand an hour ago." 

Just as the man said that there was a terrific screeching sound, a belch of acrid black gas from the gears and the watercage ground to a halt, half-way submerged.

The women above the waterline let out a collective shriek of shock, craning their necks around to see what had happened, clawing at or grappling with other women to try to reach the top. Perhaps some of them thought they'd been reprieved.

"God damn it!" The operator shouted as the great lumbering thing broke down. "Jesus. Get 'em out of there boys, we need to fix this."

At his word five operators rushed forward to an elevated platform and opened a side-hatch in the cage. The moment they did so an avalanche of women spilled out onto the hard floor and the doorway was immediately clogged up with bodies, clambering, crawling, pleading pitifully as they were each in turn dragged up, hands forced behind their backs and zip-ties used to bind their wrists.

"Get them down to the burners!" Robin head a supervisor call out, and a chain gang of women began to form, sodden and dripping, shivering from cold and shock, as one man led the line across the courtyard to the provisional store of incinerator chambers laid out at the back.

Like a flock of frightened hens the females began to flow out of the platform steps and along the hard gravel and asphalt, wincing as their bare feet touched the surface, glancing through squinting eyes at the darkening sky above them. Robin pushed his way past the line of women, shoving one with a hand to her face so he could get to the men working the problem. A glut of limp bodies had fallen out of the watercage, all legs and arms and shuttered eyes. 

"Dump this lot outside." One of the operators suggested. Robin took a rod with a sharp pin-head out of his windbreaker pocket, crouched down and jabbed it into the thigh of one of these apparently dead women.

The female immediately yelped in pain and tried to scramble away. 

"Make sure you test each one of them." He told the stunned operators as he went from girl to girl, jabbing them and finding almost every one was very much still alive. "They're sneaky little things. You dump them outside, they make a run for it in the night."

The women moaned and groaned as they were one by one forced to their feet and into line with the rest, the trail to the incinerators now running from the back chambers all the way to the broken-down watercage.

It took a full hour to empty the whole thing, by which time they were dragging up women from the very bottom of the cage. Many of these were dead, either drowned or crushed before the cage hit water. One, however, was pulled up spluttering and gagging, water lopping out of her open mouth as she clutched the arms of the man who pulled her out.

"Should have waited another few minutes." The operator said to Robin with a quirk of his brow. Robin laughed sourly.

The girl had red hair and pale skin with subtly east-asian features. She seemed somewhat familiar to him, from a long time ago. He watched as she spat out the last of the icy water and finally opened her eyes.

"Oh my God..." 

She was looking right at him. Suddenly Robin remembered; he had visited Ekpow about five years back, during his time in the Troopers, and used this girl maybe a dozen times, among a few others. He tutted and folded his arms. "Huh, I think I know this one." 

"It happens!" Said one of the operators. "You know its funny how-"

The girl broke free of the operator and grabbed hold of Robin's windbreaker, eyes locked with his.

"Oh Robin, I can't believe its you! You have to help me out of here. I will do anything, I know you can do it! Find a way to get me out!"

Robin took her cold wrists in his firm hands and pulled them gently away from his jacket. The operators stared at her in faint amazement.

"Come on." 

He guided her down the steps as the last smattering of girls was led down the ramp. They walked on past the line, past hundreds of women all waiting in freezing anticipation of what was to come. The girl stumbled a few times, scanning around the facility, no doubt looking for the exit or escape tunnel Robin would help her find.

"How are you going to get me out?" She whispered quietly as two operators stalked the gangways.

"You never learned how to say Sir, did you?" He patted her wet backside softly.

"Sorry." She scoffed under her breath. "How are you going to get me out, Sir?"

Robin opened a small side-door and led her through an access gantry. The air warmed up rapidly and her shivering slowed down. Holding her in the Trooper lock, wrists laid over each other in one tight fist behind her back, Robin could see her shapely legs and the gentle, sexy sweep of her hips. He remembered that clearly. That was what got him coming back so man times.

"So seriously, where are we going?" She raised her voice to a sharper rasp.

"In here." Robin answered, opening a side-door. 

A plume of dense smoke hit her in the face. She coughed and wretched as the clang and batter of copper on steel rang through the corridor, and the rising whimper and sob of condemned women filled the air again. When she opened her eyes she saw five long lines of naked women trudging one by one slowly towards five shining copper bells the size of outhouses. 

"NO!" She screamed, trying to wrestle her arms out of his grip. "NO, NO!"

He forced her inside even as she dug her heels into the slippery ground, pushed her to the front of the line where the operators grabbed her by the arms and lifted her cleanly off her feet, shoving her into the vacant woman-sized capsule in the belly of the incinerator. She squealed as her feet touched the burning grill at the base of the capsule, spun around and tried to lunge out just as the door slammed shut behind her and the operator pulled the lever. A blast of roaring flame mixed with her screams, and in an instant she was gone.

Robin cracked his neck and took a deep breath. 

"No exceptions." He said with a smile to a girl in the queue beside him.