Chapter 8, Part 1: Nightmare

Chapter 8: Nightmare

        That night, Tracker again joined Antoinette in her room. Her music always soothed him and subsumed his fears about being with her despite all his conditioning by Colonel Cady and Castile. With her, he felt good about himself. Even when she stopped playing and started touching him, she usually had him so relaxed that he almost didn’t care any more that she aroused him. That is, as long as she didn’t try to take advantage of his arousal. More than once over the last few nights he had stopped her when she wanted to touch him in that so-intimate place; knowing deep down that as long as he didn’t let that happen nobody at the base would fault him. Nobody, that is, except Walter. Still, even he didn’t seem to have anything specific to say about their relationship and tended to avoid Tracker and Antoinette when they were together. The cuddling and touching always felt so good. She held no restrictions on him, inviting him to explore her with every sense. He learned more about the human body than he ever did from his studies. Tracker sighed deeply when they turned out the lights, feeling her pressed so tightly against his back, his tail trapped so tightly between her thighs. It almost felt like the tail ring he’d once worn before defecting from Castile.
        Castile! His eyes shot open as he recalled the attack. How did they find me? How did they know to find me right at that spot at that time? I’ve got to warn Magnum. I think this base would be safe from any frontal assault, but if Castile knows I’m here, that means the base is compromised. Even if they don’t know exactly where the base is, they know I’m working with the Defenders and that we’re in the Chattanooga area. That also means they’re likely to attempt another pickup on me, assuming they haven’t decided to just terminate me to protect themselves.
         He worried on the problem as he tried to sleep, finally deciding to tell Magnum first thing in the morning. Before breakfast. Having decided on a plan of action, he faded into sleep.

* * * * *

        “Mr. Redd,” Colonel Cady asked sharply. “What do you think about women?”
        ”I don’t know,” Jon Redd answered. “What am I supposed to think?”
        ”You’ve read about women in your studies, haven’t you?”
        ”Yes, sir.”
        ”Well?”
        ”I guess they’re much like anyone else, aren’t they, sir?”
        ”Yes, and no,” the colonel replied. “In many ways they are like anyone else. But not quite. They are the female of the human species. They’re cunning, and good organizers. Their main purpose, though, is to bear a man’s children and keep his house. Have you ever seen a woman, Redd?”
        ”Only pictures in my textbooks, sir.”
        ”Would you like to see a woman?”
        ”Not particularly, sir. Is it important?”
        ”Yes. Come with me.” As they walked, the colonel continued, “You see, Mr. Redd, while women can be good organizers, only rarely can they aspire to be as good as a man. They’re weaker, they’re less intelligent, and they’re too emotional. The mere sight of something unusual can send them screaming into the arms of a man.
        ”That’s where you come in, Mr. Redd. Men are very protective of their women. If you expressed an interest in a woman, she would run to her man, and he would probably try to kill you on the spot. Let me show you something.”
        They entered a darkened room, empty except for a row of chairs facing a window, two switches on the wall and a door to the right of the window that led into the area beyond. The colonel gestured for Jon to sit, then flipped a switch. A light went on in the farther room. In the middle of the floor stood a large wooden X anchored to floor and ceiling. On it hung a woman, naked, her wrists and ankles strapped to each of the four arms of the frame. Fair-skinned with shoulder-length blonde hair, Jon gazed at her curiously, noting the patches of hair and her other more noticable features. Looking at her, he guessed she wasn’t much older than himself, maybe eighteen or nineteen if he analyzed her features correctly.
        “Why do you have her displayed like that,” he asked, turning to Colonel Cady.
        “Because I want you to go in there and examine her,” the colonel replied. “I know you’ve seen some of my men in the showers and by that know that you are male as well. Well, where you have that,” he continued, pointing down to Jon’s lap, “They don’t. They’re designed to accept the male within their bodies in order to procreate.
        “She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she, Jon?”
        “I wouldn’t know, sir. The only thing I can compare to are the pictures from the magazines I’ve seen some of the men reading. Based on those she seems rather lacking in some areas and heavy in others. I guess the frame might change how her weight is distributed, though,” he added thoughtfully.
        He glanced at Colonel Cady, then back at the girl, whose slender body and smooth skin was well tanned, showing no tan lines. Long black hair that hung behind her head and halfway to the floor. Her eyes stared at him with a mixture of fear and desire that made no sense to him.
        Jon continued, “She appears to be fairly strong, though, sir. You said they were weak.”
        ”They are, as you will see. I want you to remove your kilt. Go in there and examine her,” the colonel invited. “Touch her. Taste her if you like. See for yourself how the female can accommodate a male. I want you to know her, inside and out.”
        ”Yes, sir.”
        ”One last thing: Don’t speak. Whatever you do, you are not to let her know you can talk.”
        ”Yes, sir,” Jon said again. He wondered at the strange insistency of his human master’s orders as he unfastened the belt of his kilt. Why does he want me to study her if they are as precious to their men as the Colonel says?
        Jon entered the room, naked except for the gold serpentine band around his left arm. The girl’s eyes locked on him in shock, wide with terror. He stepped towards her. She writhed, her blonde hair swinging as she fought to escape her bonds. A long, piercing scream assaulted his ears. He snarled at her and folded his ears back to block some of the sound.
        He reached out and gently kneaded her breast with his fingers as he assessed its mass and texture. Her scream scaled higher and louder as he fondled that mass. He looked up into her face and snarled in an attempt to frighten her into silence. The sight of his needle-sharp fangs so close to her face caused her to lose her voice, ending the high-pitched assault on his ears. Wide-eyed and rigid, she watched as his fingers slid across her other breast and down her belly. His examination of her was unexpectedly pleasant, he observed. A strange excitement began to grow in him, an excitement that caused a physical reaction. He noted how she seemed at a perfect level for him to experiment as the colonel had ordered.
        A loud explosion rang in his ears, causing him to flinch and turn towards the source of the gunshot.”Get away from that woman,” a male voice shouted through the now-open side door into the room. He froze. “I said, get away from her, you animal,” shouted the guard, brandishing a pistol in his direction. “Out!” Jon fled back to the colonel’s side, tail between his legs. The colonel was laughing.
        He looked back through the one-way mirror to see the guard pressed up tight against the black-haired woman, his pants down to his knees. As he watched, she shimmered. A great tiger now hung from the frame. It brought its hind legs up and tore through the man’s stomach, disemboweling him with her razor-sharp claws.
        The tiger dropped to the floor, then leapt straight at him! In panic, he stumbled and fell.
        ”For you to even think of having a woman is wrong!” the tiger rasped in the colonel’s voice.
        ”What we are doing is good,” the black-haired woman astride his hips murmured.
        ”No woman will have you!” the colonel’s voice scoffed.
        ”I want you for my man,” she whispered.
        ”Any relationship between you and a woman is disgusting and perverted!”
        ”It is the most right thing a man and a woman can do with each other.”
        ”You’re an animal! You were bred from an animal and you’ll always be an animal!”
        ”You are not a human man, but you are a man.”
        ”No woman would touch you!”
        ”You feel so good,” she sighed. “Just hold me and lie with me.”
        ”Men will kill you if they catch you with a woman,” the colonel shouted.
        ”If they are really friends, they will not mind that you spent the night with me,” she said confidently. Red’s voice chuckled in the background. “Good taste, as well as fast.”
        He fled, yelping in fear.