Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“We are.” He nodded at himself and the other Oompa-Loompas who surrounded the cart. “Though we never bring forth life, we will never truly die. For we live all our lives in tribute to the Shining Star.”
“Um, okay…” Penny murmured, not knowing what else to say. Was this some kind of a cult? The way he was talking made her think it had to be.
The cart was past the barrier now. The green energy field sizzled back into place and she realized that she had lost her only chance to get away. But if the Oompa-Loompa who had called himself a “NeverBreeder” was telling the truth, she would have been dead the minute she hit the jungle.
Penny wondered if death might not be better than whatever awaited her and the next minute her fears seemed to come true. Because the cart rounded a curve and came to stop beside a long, low, white building.
“Attention!” the head Oompa-Loompa shouted, “Now all must strip!”
Twenty
“What the hell are they talking about?” Shurla muttered to Penny. “I’m not taking off my clothes for nobody!”
But all around them, the other women were reluctantly removing their clothing. Even worse, the Oompa-Loompas were taking their silver jumpsuits off as well.
They probably want to rape us, Penny thought, feeling sick. They kidnapped us and brought us all this way and now they have us behind a barrier where nobody can help us and they can do whatever they want!
But the next minute, her assumptions were blown out of the water. As the NeverBreeder who had been telling her about the deadly yellow flower shucked down his silver jumpsuit and stepped out of it, Penny saw that the place between his legs was completely smooth.
He doesn’t even have a bulge like a Ken doll, she thought, unable to tear her eyes away from the smooth, hairless patch of orange skin between his legs. There’s nothing there at all—not a damn thing.
So maybe rape wasn’t on the menu after all. But then why were they being told to get naked?
“All must be cleansed of the dirt of the outside world,” the head NeverBreeder said, as though answering her question. “Come, we will go into the showers and rinse the sinful grime from our skin together.”
Though she didn’t like it at all, Penny was forced to take off her warm-skin and boots and leave them in a pile in the cart. They unfastened her hands to make this possible but the minute she was naked, her arms were cuffed behind her back again and she and Shurla and the other women were led into the long, low, white building which turned out to be a communal shower.
They could put way more people in here if they wanted to, Penny thought, looking down the long line of showerheads which stretched through the whole building. The eight women and the seven NeverBreeders who were guarding them only took up about a fourth of the room in the showers. How many people were in this “Compound of the Glorious Cause?” And for that matter, what was their “Glorious Cause?”
Penny had a bad feeling she was going to find out.
What came out of the shower nozzles wasn’t water. It was some thin, purple liquid with an astringent reek like an industrial cleaner. After smelling it, Penny expected it to sting her skin and it did.
As the other captives yelped and screamed, trying to get away from the purple spray, the guards pushed them into it. The NeverBreeders had all suddenly produced menacing-looking pain prods and they threatened to shock their prisoners unless they got thoroughly drenched in the showers.
“In, get in and be cleansed!” the head NeverBreeder kept shouting, brandishing his prod with its sizzling arch of electricity at the end. “You must be purged of all outside filth before you may enter the purity of the Compound!”
Penny squeezed her eyes shut to keep out the stinging purple cleanser and squeezed her bound hands into fists. She kept her head down, trying not to breath in the noxious fumes from the spray, trying to endure. It wasn’t until she was soaking wet with her hair hanging limp around her shoulders and dripping purple fluid down her back that she was allowed to finally get out of the showers.
After the prisoners had been thoroughly “cleansed” the guards got into the showers voluntarily. Either their orange skins were tougher than most people’s or they were all a bunch of masochists, but whichever the case, they didn’t seem to mind the stinging purple astringent at all.
When they came out, the guards dried off with towels they produced from a chest in the cart. The prisoners, however, were given nothing to dry or cover themselves with. Nor were they allowed to get dressed again. Their clothes were confiscated and they were forced onto the cart again, naked and shivering.