Part Six

Terri stood before her husband in her slinkiest evening gown, a black, backless Halston with a deep V-line neck that revealed more than it concealed. With a garter, black hose, a thong and two-inch heels, she felt every bit like a high-priced call girl. Yet Ted only commented that her apparel might look a bit conservative, and could she do something to give her a little bit more cleavage? Conservative! Terri wondered again about the party they were about to attend, and the kind of people that would be there. It was to be a formal affair commemorating the appointment of a new regional FEMA director, and the first chance for the employees and their wives to toast their new leader. Though Ted, of course, had daily contact with all those people, Terri was limited to talking with the FEMA spouses who lived in the Enclave. What she heard didn't assuage her concerns. Evidently, the workplace had become very male oriented, with sexual harassment being the norm rather than the exception. Women at FEMA were very much second-class citizens, and many were employed merely for their looks and sexual prowess. In fact, no woman held a position of authority over any man. And that policy was said to be the doing of the very man they'd be honoring.

Boarding the transport bus, Terri looked in awe at the vast array of protection that would be escorting them. Several military transports, complete with machine guns, covered the front and rear of the convoy. Of course, a bus filled with FEMA executives would be a prime kidnapping target, even though the agency was adamantly opposed to dealing with any kidnappers. So far as she knew, FEMA had never delivered a single morsel of food to free any captive employees. But that didn't stop the bandits from trying.

Most importantly, the soldiers' eyes never strayed to ogle their precious cargo, though many of the women were wearing enough furs, jewelry and seductive clothing to tempt a monk. Complete professionals, they kept their eyes and minds on their jobs, and Terri felt safe enough to allow her mind to wander on the journey.

It had been a week since she'd found Kim kneeling between her husband's knees, and she suspected that in that time he'd provided private instruction several times, and might've even climbed between her legs. His own daughter! In fact, that very night he'd insisted on doing it with the girls sitting on the bed, so they could better observe the intricacies of their sexual congress. In that week, Ted had taken her several times in a variety of positions in front of the girls, spraying her with cum every time. She could feel the girls' opinion of her changing with every minute. Even Kathryn, her baby, was beginning to act like Ted ruled the roost. Terri knew that they'd be on a slippery slope if she allowed him to begin sexual instruction, and now she felt as if they were heading downhill at breakneck speed.

To make matters worse, Ted's attitude towards her had become increasingly demanding. He never asked whether they should do something. He just told her to do it, and brooked no opposition. That very morning, after she'd served breakfast to Ted and the girls, he'd ordered her to strip naked and crawl under the table to suck his dick. When she paused, he simply cleared his throat and nodded to the girls, as though they all couldn't believe that she would protest such a simple request. Kneeling naked under the table, she could feel her daughters' eyes raking her body, from the lips that were pleasing their father back to the lips that they knew would later be spreading for him.

Terri looked around at the rest of the women on the bus, wondering what their home situations were like. None looked as confused as she felt. But then, maybe none had been as independent as she. Her first priority was to find out more about everyone's home life.

As they rolled through the gate at the FEMA complex, Terri could tell that the whole place was on alert. Hard-eyed guards stood watch over the vast warehouses of stockpiled food, while patrols with dogs randomly searched the entire yard. They were heading for a new building, which had been specially constructed for this affair. Once inside the opulent hall, Terri could tell that they'd spared no expense. Dozens of round tables surrounded a sumptuous buffet, piled high with more food than she'd seen in a long time. And amazingly, there seemed to be an open bar, though alcohol was now more valuable than diamonds.

After she shed her coat, Terri saw that Ted hadn't been kidding when he called her attire conservative. Most women wore dresses so revealing they'd best be described as lingerie. And with material so gauzy, she could clearly see their bare nipples and thong panties. In a few cases, the women weren't wearing any underwear at all, their smartly-trimmed pubic hair clearly visible to all. More ominously, at least a dozen women wore collars around their necks, with leather or silk leashes attached. Some of the collars were plain leather, some studded with diamonds or jewels. But all communicated that the woman was the property of the man holding the leash.

While most of the women were elaborately made up, the men were, for the most part, boring, plain and a little piggish. A stranger looking around the room would easily guess that most of the men here were accountants or administrators. Even Ted, whom she'd thought had a little bit of manliness to him, appeared to be in his element here. The meek had inherited the earth, and they were making every woman pay for every slight they'd ever experienced, real or imagined.

That was even more evident by the wait staff, which consisted entirely of big-breasted women. Obviously recruited from the outside, and probably working for food, each wore only a black fishnet halter top, a black leather skirt, black stockings and black heels. The halter tops did nothing but keep the women's' breasts in check, especially since the webbing was wide enough to allow their nipples to protrude. The only man at work appeared to be in charge of the waitresses, though the only task he attended to was squeezing the women's' boobs and pinching their butts.

Never the social butterflies, she and Ted hadn't attended a formal affair in several years, save for a few weddings before the Plague had hit. Even so, Terri immediately noticed that things had changed a great deal. Here, the women only spoke when spoken to. And only after their husbands had introduced them. The other wives spent much of their time fetching drinks and appetizers for their husbands, and every wife was firmly attached to her husband's arm, with none of the little groups of women that used to congregate at parties. Ted had asked her to keep her ears open for the kind of gossip that might help him in the office. But she was often distracted by the way the men were treating their wives, right in front of their co-workers. While speaking with one couple, Terri had been shocked to see the man push his hand up from her waist and into her dress, where he thumbed her nipple while continuing his conversation. Another man had his wife pull the top of her gown down, so he could show off his wife's surgery-enhanced breasts. And when the man invited Ted to test the heft of them, he had!

With her head swimming, Terri was relieved when the dinner bell rang. As the crowd quieted, an obese, balding and beady-eyed little man waddled onto the dais, accompanied by two beautiful and provocatively-dressed women. Terri immediately guessed one to be his wife. And by the looks of it, the other would be his daughter, who Ted had said was about 21 years old. After a round of applause, the man, Walter Kratz, introduced himself as the new regional director. For several minutes he outlined his plans for making the region a model of efficiency, making it clear that the FEMA offices and the employees would be setting both the food distribution and moral agendas. After another round of applause, Ted stood up and offered a perfectly-worded toast to the new director, adding that there would be no one better to set the standards of society than the man before them. It was a perfectly-delivered toast, mostly because Ted had spent all week polishing and practicing it. A few of other executives, not to be outdone, also rose to toast the new leader. When it became apparent that none of the others had prepared their statements, the new director waved off the rest, saying "Thank you, all of you, for showing such great support. I know that in the coming days, we'll all be working side-by-side to help bring this great country of ours back to its former glory. Before we eat, I'd also like to thank my wife Marise, and my daughter Tina, for helping me work off some of the tension of this job. As I'm sure you all know, this business can be very stressful, and it's great to have two beautiful, sexy and willing women to go home to." With that he pulled his wife from her seat and gave her a short kiss on the lips, and then pulled his daughter from her seat and gave her a hot, passionate kiss, to the delighted whoops and yells of the men in the audience. Standing between the two, with his hands intimately caressing their waists, he invited his audience to begin their meal.

With so many shocks to her system, Terri was having a hard time keeping up. It was now obvious where Ted's new-found assertiveness was coming from. From everything she'd seen, it was very possible that Ted was the only one not fucking every female in his household. And while she still abhorred the concept, it was also obvious that their home life would be an important consideration in her husband's advancement within the organization. Advancement that would have a whole lot of perks.

Terri dug into her meal with relish. With Ted's extra ration of food now going to the Enclave, she and the girls had been feeling the pinch of hunger a bit more often. Ted, of course, ate at FEMA's well-stocked cafeteria for lunch, and so hadn't noticed a single change. Terri often wondered if the other FEMA workers ever smuggled food home for their families. Ted wouldn't do that, no matter how hungry they got. So the only way they could get a bit more food would be for Ted to move up. Or for the girls, or herself, to catch the favor of one of the soldiers.

Though they'd randomly chosen a table, Terri found herself seated next to Harold Stoddard. A nerdish-looking young man, Terri had met him once before and immediately pegged him as sharp-tongued and cruel. Looking up from his meal, he motioned to one of the serving girls, then spoke up to catch Ted's attention. After the girl had refilled his water, Harold suddenly lifted her skirt and pressed his fingers into the bare slit underneath.

"Hmmm. I guess it's true. Women really do get wet serving men." After giving her pussy a rather cruel jerk, he dropped her skirt and sent her away.

Terri felt as though she were Alice falling down the rabbit hole. To her right, Ted snickered at the joke. To her left, Harold daintily sniffed his fingers before licking the woman's juices off. And to the left of him, Harold's companion shifted her chest to give it more prominence before declaring, "You make me so hot." She was learning a lot. More than she wanted to know.

After dinner and dessert, the women were somewhat abruptly dismissed to an anteroom, presumably so the men could discuss official plans and business. To her relief, the now mostly-topless waitresses were also ushered from the room. She could easily imagine an orgy breaking out if they'd stayed.

With so many women unknown to her, Terri immediately sought out her neighbors from the Enclave. Here, without their husbands around, the women talked more freely. She found out that Kim and Kath were both well-liked at school, and many people speculated that they would soon be the favorites of some soldiers. She discovered that discipline among the Enclave soldiers was a little lax, and sometimes a man would show up at the school and pull a girl right from the classroom for a suck and a fuck. It was happening so often, in fact, that the principal had converted a storage closet into a bedroom. One time, a girl had failed to please a soldier, and he'd taken all her clothes and dragged her back to the classroom naked, forbidding anyone to allow her to dress. She'd sat there, nude and embarrassed, all day long, and then was forced to run home that way at the end of the day.

From another mother, Terri learned how fierce the competition for the soldiers' attention had become. One woman, the mother of three daughters, was now inviting a single man to come and enjoy the sexual attention of all four of them at once. Several had their daughters engaging in lesbian acts for the men's pleasure. Another neighborhood man had turned his basement into a working dungeon, offering his wife, daughter and son as slaves for any BDSM activities. With the sudden success of this, many more men were throwing their wives and daughters into bondage. It wasn't enough, evidently, to say that your wife or daughter would do anything. You had to provide all the tools and the right setting, too.

Struggling to digest all this, Terri pushed her way to the small bar in the corner of the room. Waiting in line, she found herself face-to-face with one of the collared women she'd noted earlier. Despite the collar and chain, she seemed quite beautiful and vivacious. About five-foot-nine, she wore her long red hair in a bun. Her ample breasts threatened to burst out of the gauzy gown, and Terri could plainly see her dark nipples and pubic hair, which was trimmed in the shape of a heart. She seemed to be about Terri's age, and she smiled back warmly at Terri's questioning gaze.

"You're wondering about the collar, aren't you?" she asked, extending her hand. "I'm Rachel."

"Terri Donovan."

"Yes, the one who made the toast. Smart move, that. I'm sure that caught Kratz's attention. Or at least his ego's attention. I saw you with Margaret before. Do you live around her?"

"Yes, we just moved into the Enclave. We haven't even been there long enough for my Presentation."

"Oh, I remember the Presentation. Honey, consider yourself lucky to live there. We used to live there. And it was much better than the Enclave we live in now. Much better."

Her husband, it turned out, had been on the fast-track at FEMA when he'd aligned with the wrong group of bosses. He'd been demoted, lost some of his income, and they'd been forced to find a more affordable place to live. They'd ended up in the Meadows Enclave, in a nice but smaller three-bedroom ranch. What set the two apart was the protection. Because the Meadows couldn't afford to keep a full complement of professional soldiers, the men in the neighborhood took turns providing secondary security. And because they were doing more, the men believed that they deserved more.

According to Rachel, all the women in the Meadows Enclave were public property. That meant any man, 15 and above, soldier or civilian, could take any woman, 15 and above, and make her have sex with him. The only rules that applied were that the women belonged exclusively to the man of the house between midnight and eight in the morning. That meant that any man could walk into her house during the day, order her to strip, spread her legs and plunge his cock inside her, with no warning at all. By common consent, six to eight p.m. was dinner time, and you didn't want to interrupt her serving dinner. Also, it was frowned upon to fuck out in public, though hot tubs and swimming pools were excluded.

Rachel's nemesis, she confided, was the 16-year-old boy living next door. Because he supplied her husband with cigarettes, the boy had access to their house 24 hours a day. At least twice a week he would let himself in, sometimes skipping school during the day, and have her commit some type of lewd and lascivious act with him. Sometimes he'd catch her just as she was stepping into the shower, and he'd bend her over and fuck her pussy or ass as the water cascaded over them. Her husband had even mounted hand grips to the tile so that the two of them would have better purchase. At least once a month, he and a friend would visit after school, and she would suck and fuck them while her daughter watched. In exchange for cheap cigarettes, her husband had even allowed him to summon her during off-limit hours. So it was not uncommon for him to pull her from bed in the middle of the night and take her downstairs for a quick fuck.

In fact, wearing the collar was the only time she had any protection. It signified that her husband and master was declaring his autonomy over her, and that no other man had a right to her. Only he had a key to the collar, and only he could take it off or put it on. Not even the head of the garrison could touch her while she was wearing the collar. So even though it really didn't go with her outfit, she was glad to be wearing it.

On the bus trip back to the Enclave, Terri spent much of her time trying to assimilate everything she'd learned. Rachel's information that she'd shared about the Presentation figured significantly in her thoughts. It had been the first time any woman had confided in her about that very important event. There was much to do to get ready for that.