Message-ID: <20794eli$9903270429@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: MichaelD38@aol.com Subject: NEW {MichaelD} "Going to Bakersfield" (nc, viol, political/racial issues) (1/2) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: IMPORTANT LEGAL INFORMATION If you have received this work in your e-mail box and do not know why, it is because your Internet service provider is forwarding posts from Usenet newsgroups to your account. It has *NOT* been e-mailed to you by the author. You must contact your ISP for help. This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons is unintentional and strictly coincidental. This work contains explicit descriptions of sexual activity, and anyone offended by such things should read no further. If reception of this work is illegal due to your age or other repressive local regulations, liability for downloading it is your problem, not mine. This work is intended solely for the quiet and private enjoyment of adults, and any other use is a violation of the copyright. This work is Copyright 1999 by MichaelD38@aol.com and is protected by United States and other international copyright law. Reposting and archiving is permitted, except where a fee of any sort is required or earned for access, provided this disclaimer and note remain attached to the story. All other rights, specifically rights of commercial use, are reserved. Commercial use here is defined to include posting on membership web sites, banner-funded web sites, and those protected by fee-based age validation methods (such as Adultcheck and Adultsights). However, exception is specifically made for web sites (such as DejaNews) that provide archiving and access to all Usenet posts in a particular group without editing or selection for content. No modifications may be made to this story without express permission from the author. Any questions regarding use of this work can be directed to the address above. Failure to contact the author prior to use is presumptive evidence of bad faith and may expose you to significant criminal and civil liability. AUTHOR'S NOTE I have always been fascinated by "alternate reality" fiction. Done properly, it can throw otherwise subtle elements of a society into sharp relief. It's what I tried to do with "Virginity is Curable," and it's what I'm trying to do here. I got the idea for this story from thinking about the decade-long unrest in the Balkans. I'm not really sure how to code this thing properly, but certain elements of it, taken out of context, may be very offensive to some people. Before you flame me about this, I ask that you read the entire story and look at the work as a whole. The narrator is a dramatic construction--he's not me, and he's not intended to be taken that way. The sex in this work is more implied and referenced than really described. If you're looking for a stroke story, this is probably not your thing. Feedback, good or bad, is encouraged. Intelligent comments and criticisms will receive appropriate responses. Flames and juvenile slobbering go straight to the recycling bin. * * * GOING TO BAKERSFIELD Copyright 1999 by MichaelD38@aol.com I. I stepped out of my hummer and followed Private Richards across the parking lot. The fight was only recently over, and I had to step over the bodies of a few L.A.P.D. troops in riot gear. My men were already stripping them of useful equipment; I didn't have to order them to do it. The trucks the cops had arrived in were both burning. One was on its side, having been knocked out by a rocket grenade. As I approached the school, I could hear bursts of machinegun fire from around the side of it. The teachers were all being shot, but we still had to inspect the students. Normally we would have shot the blacks and Hispanics amongst them too, but I doubted we would need to today. This had been a largely white neighborhood to begin with, and it was close enough to the front that the non-whites had already fled south. I paused for a second, hearing artillery fire a few miles away. The 15th was probably shelling the Burbank airport again. I reached for the binoculars Richards was carrying and held them up to my eyes. I could see the airport now. A C-130 was burning on the runway, and the Marines around the terminal were already returning fire. I looked back toward the mountains, seeing a shell explode against the hillside just as I looked. I knew where the 15th was today, and the Marine guns were off target by about a mile--so far. I hoped my mates in the 15th had enough sense to stop shelling and move before they got hit. "Sir, we don't have a lot of time." I nodded, handing the binoculars back to Richards. We had to complete this raid and get back into the hills before the California Guard troops camped down the hill figured out what was going on and came after us. We reached the football field a moment later, and I saw that my men had already separated the students. The boys were off at the far end, and those who were white enough were being offered recruitment into our unit. The girls were being segregated also, but for a different reason. A group of about fifteen blondes and redheads were standing nearby. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zipcords. I walked down the row of girls, inspecting them. I stopped in front of one brown-eyed blonde, looking more closely. I grabbed her hair, pulling it apart to inspect the roots. Dark brown. I shoved her back toward the other students and turned to glare at the sergeant who had gathered up the girls. "O'Connor, what is this shit? That girl is about as blonde as Michael Jordan." He squirmed. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't look closely enough." I continued down the line, stopping a few girls down in front of another blonde. This one was a different story--blue eyes, pale blonde hair clean down to the roots, fair skin and gray freckles. About five- seven, nice breasts despite an otherwise slim build, and very cute. She wore only bell-bottom jeans and a tight spaghetti-strap T-shirt. "What's your name?" "Chelsea," she said softly. "How old are you?" "Sixteen." "Gather up the rest," I said to O'Connor. "Stick this one in my truck. And let's get out of here ASAP." We walked rapidly back out front, with Richards dragging Chelsea along by her arm. I saw my other men running to our vehicles. O'Connor and several others came up the rear, leading the girls we were taking with us. Just as we were ready to go, two more men came running out of the school. They jumped into the last truck. "Go! Go!" We swung out of the lot just as a series of explosions ripped through the school building. The APC's took the lead, toward the fire road we had come down. I stood up in my seat, looking behind us for any pursuit. I could see a couple of Marine AH-1 Cobras in the air about a couple of miles away, but nothing else. Even if the helicopters saw us, they would be taking a big risk coming after us with antiaircraft units we had in the foothills nearby. This time, at least, we had gotten away clean. II. We were back up into the Angeles National Forest in about ten minutes, passing the booby-trapped checkpoint a few miles into the woods. I regrouped with my staff when we returned to the camp. "What did we get?" Lt. Barnes checked his notepad. "Six M-16's and flak jackets off the cops, along with four Berettas. The flak jackets are a little shot up, but not too badly. Twenty-seven kids, thirteen boys and fourteen girls. I think we might have a few possibilities among the boys, but no more than that. Most of them are pretty upset and scared." "Give them a few days." He nodded. "The girls are already being prepared for the trip north. Three of them are staying, so we've got eleven to send to Bakersfield." "Three?" He nodded again. "They volunteered. I got the impression they were more scared of going north than staying here." "Fine. What else?" "We lost Charles and Finley. We've got three more walking wounded, but that's it. All in all, a pretty good raid." "Okay. Good work, Jack." He grinned. "Thank you, sir." I thumped him on the shoulder and went to my tent. Private Richards was waiting for me, and I saw Chelsea sitting in a chair in the corner. Richards had cut her hands free, and she had them tight in her lap. She was still crying, head down. Richards handed me two sheets of paper, both communications from HQ in Bakersfield. I scanned them for a few seconds. Nothing particularly urgent. "Do you need anything else, sir?" I noticed Karin peering out from the back, a concerned look on her face. "No. That's it for now." "I'll be outside, sir." "Thank you, Private." Richards left, and Karin brought me a cup of coffee. She was eighteen, blonde, about five-nine, with breasts much too big for her athletic frame. She had been a cheerleader at Glendale High before we'd snatched her (along with a bunch of other kids) about two months ago, and she had been with me ever since. "Thank you, Karin." I saw her glance at Chelsea and realized what she was upset about. "You're not going anywhere, Karin, don't worry. She's going to Bakersfield in a few days." I saw Chelsea's head jerk up, a look of horror on her face. Karin nodded shyly. "Okay," she said. "Um," Chelsea gulped. Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths. "Yes?" "You're sending me to Bakersfield?" "You have something to say?" "Please." "What?" "Please don't send me to Bakersfield. I'll do anything." I glanced at Karin, who was suddenly tense again. "I already have a girl here." "Oh, God, please. Please don't send me there. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do." I took in the despair in her face, then looked at Karin. "It's up to Karin." Karin gave me a searching look, then stared at Chelsea for a few seconds. She was concealing her nervousness well, but I could sense it just the same. "I would still be first, right? Number one? If she stays?" "Of course." She thought for another moment or two. "Then I guess it's all right." Chelsea let out a sob of relief, falling forward into her hands and beginning to cry again. Karin glanced at me once and went to her, putting her arm over Chelsea's shoulder. "It's okay." The emotions of this scene suddenly got to me, and I decided to leave the two of them alone. I left the tent and went for a walk around the camp. We were going to have to move again in a few days; we were simply too close to the city. The California Guard had been making probing raids the last few weeks, and they would find us here before long if we stayed. Christ, I was getting sick of this. This guerilla shit was getting old; I wanted to get back to the regular units and do some real fighting. Unfortunately, this project in Bakersfield was sucking up more and more resources that should have gone to the troops in the field. The war had been going on for over two years, when it should have been over in six months. We held most of the western United States now, except for scattered portions of Washington, Utah (we had had the Mormons under siege in Salt Lake now for almost a year), eastern Colorado, and coastal California. The Eastern Front ran more or less south from Idaho to the Arizona-New Mexico border. California was the last remaining prize. The big offensive this spring had cut the state in two, but our advance had stalled since then. Our units in the north were fighting the 7th Mountain Division from Fort Ord; down here, we were up against the 1st Marine Division from Camp Pendleton. The problem, at least from my perspective, was that most of the Marines were up in Ventura and San Luis Obispo, where the real fighting was. Down here, we faced mostly California Guard troops and the remnants of the L.A.P.D. The Federals knew we were up in the mountains above LA, but they couldn't spare the troops to come down and root us out. Neither, however, could the Covenant spare the forces for an encircling drive around the mountains into Riverside and Orange County (where we had more than a few sympathizers). I had been a Marine once myself, and I was getting sick of fighting cops and weekend warriors instead of real soldiers. We'd been successful in one respect; we'd managed to do in six months what the INS hadn't been able to do in forty years: get the Mexicans out of California. After a month of ethnic cleansing raids down into the basin, most of them had packed up and fled home as fast as their feet would take them. The Mexican Army had barricaded the border against other refugees, but the Hispanics they let past. Close to half a million blacks and Asians were piled up in San Diego, but the whites had stayed put. With the war in the north, Arizona and the desert to the east, and Mexico to the south, they had nowhere to go anyway. Thus it had gone up until two months ago, when that first bizarre order had arrived from HQ in Bakersfield. "You will identify and occupy a local high school, separating the pure white students from the rest of the student body. Females with appropriate racial characteristics are to be gathered up and sent to HQ Bakersfield as soon as resources are available to do so." Up to then, all we had done was terrorize the non-whites we encountered; the rest we left alone beyond hectoring them about race- mixing. What in God's name did they mean to do with these girls? The Bakersfield Project was supposed to be secret, but it hadn't taken very long for word of it to filter down. My commanding officer, Brigadier General Martin, had filled me in about two weeks ago. Their objective made sense, from a certain twisted perspective, but the means turned my stomach. These were decent white girls they were using. There had to be some other way to do this. I was sick to death of being called a Nazi, because I knew deep down that wasn't what we were about. But this project made that argument harder and harder to believe. Whispers of what was going on had recently begun to drift into the Federal-occupied areas in southern California. This was the second raid in which some of the girls had volunteered to stay in our camp rather than go north. They couldn't know much about it, but clearly the idea of "going to Bakersfield" had become some kind of horror. I wasn't prepared to disagree. III. I always felt better once night fell. We were safer then, or at least it seemed that way. The Guard troops were largely clueless, and the L.A.P.D. was even worse out here in the woods, but there were a lot more of them than there were of us. Now and then, the Marines would send a Force Recon unit up into the hills, and whomever they found would be in deep shit. By and large though, the Marines who remained down here had to stay in the basin to guard the major targets like the airports. I stood outside my tent, listening to distant gunfire and an occasional explosion. According to Richards, the 15th was battling a unit of Guard troops about five miles away. They hadn't yet asked for our help and likely would not. Absent that, we were under standing orders to stay put. Behind me, I could hear Karin and Chelsea talking quietly. "What's going to happen . . . tonight?" "He'll probably want us to have sex. He usually does when he brings in another girl." Chelsea sobbed. "Oh, God." "It's not so bad, once you get used to it. It can be nice if you don't think about it too much." "But I thought . . . I thought the Covenant was against gays and lezzies. I thought they were killing them." "I guess it's different out here. And Major Harris isn't that bad. He's been nice to me." I though about that for a moment. Hypocrisy is what it's called, at least it had been before the war. It hadn't been the gay rights issue that made me join up, but a lot of Covenant high-ups who railed against "sodomites" were not so strict about it in private. There were increasing whispers about a certain general in the High Command in Phoenix who was not the he-man he pretended to be. Chelsea had gone back to crying. I could hear Karin trying to comfort her. "You're a virgin, aren't you?" Chelsea must have nodded, because I heard nothing but more crying. "I'm sorry. But it's not so bad out here once you get settled in." "I want to go home." "There's nowhere to go. You'd never make it back. I'm not even sure where we are. If you tried to sneak out, you might get shot. It's happened before." I didn't hear anything for a minute or so. "What's in Bakersfield?" "I'm not sure. They've sent a lot of girls there. I really don't know. But I'm guessing it's not good. You're better off here." "She is," I said. I heard two gasps behind me. They hadn't known I was outside. "Sir?" Karin asked a moment later. "What, Karin?" "What is in Bakersfield?" I sighed. "Insanity." Although I had planned it when I saw Chelsea that afternoon, I had lost my desire to watch the two of them have sex by that night. They slept together anyway, huddled in Karin's sleeping bag. Just after two a.m., someone shook me awake. It was Richards. "Sir?" "What?" "It's the 15th. It's worse than we thought. The Guard hit their camp with a full battalion. They just radioed us that they're pulling out and coming toward us with what they have left." "Shit. Wake everyone up. Pack up the camp. We're going to meet up with them and move as soon as we're together." "Yes, sir." I jumped out of bed, kicking the girls awake gently. "Get up. Get packed. We're moving out ASAP." I pulled on my pants and boots and staggered out of my tent. The troops were already running around, frantically packing up their gear. Lt. Barnes ran up to me. "Sir, what about the kids we got yesterday?" I glanced over to where the twenty or so teenagers were massed in a cold, fearful clump. They sat next to the truck that would take the girls to Bakersfield in the morning. "Leave them. We need that truck to get out of here." He stared at me a second. "Sir?" The standing order in this case was to kill them rather than leave them behind, and Barnes knew it. But I suddenly couldn't bring myself to do it. "You heard me. Go." "Yes, sir." The sounds of the fighting were growing closer. I hoped that what was left of the 15th had enough of a lead not to bring the Guard right down on top of us. "Richards!" He ran up me. "Sir?" "Where's your radio? First squad was on ambush tonight, right? Where are they?" He handed it to me. "They're coming in, sir. We already radioed them." "How far?" "Five minutes, tops." I thumbed on the radio. "Eagle 15 this is eagle 12, come in." The response was immediate, and loud gunfire came over the air. "Eagle 12, we read you." "What is your ETA our location?" "ETA is ten minutes, max. We're moving as fast as we can, Steve." "What have you got left?" "Two hummers and about ten men. We lost everything else. They got the G5s. We didn't have time to hitch them up." "Shit. All right, get your butts in here." "Roger that. Eagle 15 out." I left Richards and stalked around the camp to see how close we were to getting out. The men were still running around in every direction. "Let's move it! We're going to have a Guard battalion on our heads in less than ten minutes, and if we're not out of here by then, I'll kill you all myself!" The hummers were packed up in a few minutes. I heard engine noises coming down the road, and a few seconds later, First Squad came screeching into the camp. I ran over and grabbed Lt. Rettig. "The 15th will be in here in less than five. Set yourselves up about a hundred yards back up the road and wait for them. Stay on the radio and let me know as soon as you see anything." "Yes, sir." They turned around and went back up the road. I went back into the camp, finding Lt. Barnes getting the last of the gear into my truck. Karin and Chelsea were sitting together in the back seat. Karin was holding Chelsea, who was shaking in her arms. I turned back to Barnes. "We ready?" "Yes, sir." "Get the vehicles out on the road. First Squad is up waiting for them. As soon as they're here, we're taking off." "Got it." I turned on the radio again. "Eagle 12 one, this is eagle 12." Rettig answered me immediately. "Eagle 12, we read you." "Did you bring the mines and the claymores with you when you pulled out?" "Yes, sir." "Rig them up across the road. Set the trip wires as soon as the 15th gets past. Let's see if we can slow those Guard pukes down a little." "Roger that, sir, I'll get on it." I watched as our caravan lined up, with one APC in front and the other waiting for the remnants of the 15th to pull in the rear. Then the radio crackled again. "Eagle 12, this eagle 12 one. I think I hear them coming." "Roger that. Be careful you don't shoot each other up." Then, a few seconds later: "It's them, sir. We're pulling out." "Roger." I turned to the line of trucks. "They're here! Let's move it!" The engines revved up, and the vehicles began to move. A few moments later, I saw the two hummers of the 15th swing into sight. Major Shepherd hung off the side of one of them, looking like he had taken a round across his arm. "Tom! Is this it?" "Yeah, Steve. We got it pretty bad." "All right. Keep going, I'm going to come up the rear in the LAV." He nodded, and his driver pulled them into the rear of the caravan. First Squad came up behind them a moment later. "Did you get the mines set up?" "Yes, sir," Rettig shouted. "They're in the shit if they follow us." The APC moved in behind First Squad, and I grabbed the side ladder as it passed, swinging myself up on the top. I dropped down into the hatch after giving one last look at the camp. The kids we were leaving behind were sobbing in relief. I didn't blame them. Two minutes later, several explosions lit up the night behind us. Jesus God, those Guardsmen were stupid. But at least they were off our asses now. ************************************************* Going to Bakersfield Copyright 1999 by MichaelD38@aol.com Free redistribution permitted; no commerical use without authorization. ************************************************* -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----