Free The Slab by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

camp stove and several coolers on the counters. Certainly there would be no indoor plumbing, but she hadn’t seen an outhouse, so that was still a mystery.
    The curly guy had taken a beer from one of the coolers and sat in the most comfortable-looking of the various old chairs. Lucy’s escorts led her to one of the couches and shoved her down onto it. Springs stabbed at her butt, which was still an improvement over the past few hours. She rolled her head from side to side, trying to work out the kinks in her neck and shoulders.
    Now she could see the last two guys. At first glance she’d thought they were all Anglos, though a couple were deeply tanned. But now she saw that one of them was black. He was extremely short, not much more than five-five, she guessed, but heavily muscled. His hair was cut short, in an almost military trim, and his small brown eyes bored into her like an oilman’s drill into the earth. He wore a dark blue T-shirt and dark shorts, like gym shorts, with expensive athletic shoes. The last man was the heaviest one of the bunch, with a big gut and a big build overall. She figured he must have topped two hundred pounds, probably more, and he wasn’t more than six feet tall. His hair was bright red and unkempt, as if he didn’t own a brush or a comb. His T-shirt, white except for the stains and a couple of torn places where pasty skin showed through, had to be an XXXL, and still when he sat down it rose up over the rolls of his belly. Like the guayabera guy, this one wore glasses, but in contrast to the older man’s heavy black plastic, this guy’s frames were wire. He looked like a computer programmer, Lucy thought, who had accidentally found himself far from his keyboard.
    When they were all settled and those who wanted beer had some—except Lucy, who would have given anything for any liquid at that point—the curly-haired man, who sat with his bottle and examined her dispassionately, like a man looking at a used car, finally spoke. She’d guessed it would be him.
    “Why do women have tits?” he asked, without preamble. Without waiting for an answer—not that any was forthcoming, certainly not from Lucy, who wouldn’t have dignified the question with a response even if she hadn’t been gagged—he went on. “So men will talk to them.” A couple of the other guys chuckled, mostly nervous laughter. It sounded like they’d heard the joke before. The speaker unfolded a long buck knife and began using it to pare his fingernails as he spoke, flicking them into the cold fireplace as he finished each one. “You belong to us now. We’ll take good care of you.”
    Lucy shrugged, tried to indicate her bound arms by shaking her head at them. He seemed to understand.
    “For tonight, your hands will stay tied. We’ll take the gag off to let you drink in a few minutes, but then it goes back on, and stays there. By tomorrow you’ll understand how far we are from any living soul, and how little good it would do you to scream or make a fuss of any kind.
    “Today and tonight, no one will touch you. We’ll take the cuffs off your ankles so you can stand, walk around in the cabin, stretch a little. If you need to use the facilities, let one of us know and we’ll take you to the head.
    “In the morning, you’ll be given more to drink and a little to eat. Then you’ll be untied, and allowed to go.
    “You’ll have a twenty-minute head start. Then we’ll come after you. If you get away, get back to civilization, whatever, then you’re free. If we catch you, then you’re really ours and we’ll do whatever we want with you.
    “Let me emphasize that last part. Whatever we want. No rules, no laws, no boundaries.”
    He closed his eyes for a moment, as if enjoying some inner vision, and then took a swig of beer.
    “I suppose I should tell you that no Dove has ever gotten away from us. And some of them genuinely came to enjoy our attentions. Maybe they were women who like that kind of thing anyway,