Chapter 1
For three weeks, Carla Wright suspected someone was watching her.
The feeling occurred infrequently, and she'd not spotted anything untoward.
She had no idea who the person was, or if more than one person was involved. She became convinced the watcher was human and not an aged and arthritic horse released into the Badlands to end its life naturally.
The questions were, why was she being watched and by whom?
Initially, the hardened 28-year-old hoped the watcher was planning to free her. But gradually with no action, that hope faded.
Eventually she concluded that probably the watcher was a recluse and had no intention of doing anything for her apart from watching her impassively.
Male or female?
Carla decided the watcher could be a male hermit watching her out of loneliness and was too timid of too feeble to rescue her from to see her being mistreated by the three men she lived with.
It was four years since her mother succumbed to cancer.
Feeling more comfortable about this new sub-development in her severely restricted life confined at the edge of the Badlands, she decided to connect with the watcher. That might activate him or her into coming in closer to converse and hear her pleas to notify the authorities of her near-imprisonment by her family.
"Huh?" she laughed, or rather sniggered, a little surprised that she could still express mirth after spending four years in servitude to the family retards with whom she lived with.
Carla went to her bedroom, the only tidy room in the house, scratched around in the bottom drawer of the dresser that had the only mirror in the house, and also retrieved three long unused tubes of lipstick and placed them in the top left-hand drawer after using one to colour her lips.
Rick, an ugly and fat bastard, youngest of her older stepbrothers, squinted.
"You're wearing lipstick," exclaimed the retard.
Oldest brother Nash, slid off his chair where he'd been reading the 4-day old newspaper and walked over to Carla and Rick.
"Yeah, and you've brushed your hair, too. Expecting a gentleman caller?"
Those two brothers clutched each other to stop falling over in their unstrained laughter.
Nash's smile vanished and his face darkened.
Carla had to endure his foul breath and watch his disgustingly neglected yellow teeth moving as he, holding up her head with his meaty right fist jammed under her chin snarled, "You're not preparing to run out on us, are you?"
"No Boss," Carla said to the senior dominant male, who instated on the family addressing him as 'Boss'.
They heard a motor start up and a vehicle drive off and Rick said, "That will be Gavin's whore returning to town to get her husband his breakfast."
Laughing, Nash jerked his fist under Carla's jaw and before releasing her jeered, "Remember you sly bitch, attempt to leave this place again and we'll come after you and you'll die."
"Yes Boss," she said submissively, eyes lowered.
Gavin came in looking a little exhausted and he said in surprise, "Bitch, you're all made-up. Is Boss taking you to town?"
Nash smiled and drawled, "You know she doesn't leave this place as she's needed for constant cooking and other home duties."
Carla said recklessly, "I saw how attractive your whore looked Gavin, and found some old lipstick to tidy myself up."
The guys laughed when Gavin snorted and said, "Off you go bitch and make late breakfast for me and for Dad who'll be in shortly from checking the in-calf cattle. And don't call Lydia a whore. For all you know. she might be a clergyman's wife or daughter."
That drew huge laughter from the brotherhood.
Carla walked to the kitchen, face impassive, wishing she had the courage to kill the scumbags. Her mother had been their father Raymond's second wife.
* * *
Self-employed geologist Rhett Orange, tethered his long-term hired horse below his vantage point overlooking the Wright Family Farm Trust farmhouse bordering the Badlands.
Motorised vehicles were prohibited from the 361,709-acre volcanic Highland Tableland known locally as the Badlands, and was a reserve under the nation's Natural Environment Protection Act.
That prohibition applied to him even though he was sixteen months into a confidential 11-month Government contract to identify areas of possible significant deposit of natural resources within the area, such as iron ore, and also to find evidence of precious metals including gold, silver and even platinum.
Ordinarily, a huge team would be engaged in such geological exploration. The mapping option of involving just one specialist was the chosen to keep the operation 'hush hush' to avoid alarming the powerful lobbies of environmentalist unable to comprehend that it was the duty of governments internationally to know precisely in detail what their country's resources were.
The entire area had been generally prospected by aerial surveying. Rhett was ground prospecting areas designated from that surveying with 'clearly promising potential'.
Periodically, the 32-year-old took his collected rock samples by two or three packhorses to a remote spot on the boundary of the Badlands (the Highlands Tablelands Nature Reserve), to be collected overnight by an armed Army crew in a military truck from the Rough Terrain Assault Division. The reason for the secure carriage of rock samples for forensic analysist was in accordance of its status, a 'hush-hush' operation status.
* * *
Rhett removed the protective waterproof sheet covering a light field telescope that was focused on the farmhouse two miles away. The end of the scope was hooded to avoid sunlight being reflected to anyone in the distance.
He'd had the occupants of the property under surveillance periodically over three weeks, since viewing the property with binoculars when witnessing a burly guy carry a female from the house by the belt of her jeans and the back of her stockman's heavy checked shirt and throw her face-down on to the grass under a clothes line. He then returned with a basket of washing and emptied it over the by then young sitting woman wiping natural ground litter from her face.
The assailant was mouthing probable abuse watched by two other guys laughing away from the doorway of the house.
Rhett was furious at the unnecessary violence, but there was little he could to without exposing his presence as the only human resident of the remote Badlands that were patrolled occasionally by park rangers in a helicopter and occasionally frequented by deer shooters, possums (cat-sized marsupials trapped for their fur) and trout fishermen.
Late afternoon back at his campsite in a gully to help conceal his presence, Rhett finished labelling the rock samples that he'd deliver that evening to the pick-up point for collection by the Army unit.
He kept his hired packhorses hobbled when not being used, to avoid them being lured off by wild horses that had roamed the tableland for generations. His packhorses were probably descendants of the wild horses.
Rhett kept a hired veteran Jeep, a vehicle brand common in the area, hidden in trees on the boundary of the tableland that he used to go into Selwyn Village for supplies.
While in the village, he'd researched by computer in the village library and learned the identities of the five occupants at Wright Farm: Raymond (72), widower, and his sons Nash (51), Gavin (44), Rick (33) and their stepsister Carla (28).
ID photos of the guys showed two things in common, they had missed out in good looks and all appeared unwashed with beer bellies. On the other hand, Carla was lithe, not overly pretty and had a great chest.
Rhett wondered why Carla kept on living with that unruly lot on a large farm of marginal land adjacent to the Badlands. Probably she had no money to support herself if she did leave.
On the ride back to feed his horse, dog and the three packhorses tethered at his base campsite, Rhett had a sudden thought.
What if Carla was being kept at the farmhouse against her will, being used as an unpaid housekeeper and possibly a communal fuck-bag? He knew he had to do something.
Rhett bristled, but felt useless.
Next morning two hours after eating his breakfast, two cold bacon sandwiches made the previous evening when preparing his camp-style dinner, Rhett eyed the farmhouse again through the telescope. There was no sign of the men but Carla was sighted at the top of a hillock (knoll) hanging out washing.
"Gosh, great boobs," he marvelled stupidly, watching her reaching up when pegging a shirt and then noticed her lipstick and tidy hair. Previously she had been without any facial make-up and looked untidy.
When finished, Carla began acting strangely. Turning slowly, she waved a towel at the landscape that was peppered with distinctive cinder cones from ancient volcanic eruptions.
As the rotating waving began working toward his location, Rhett suddenly guessed what she was doing.
"Christ, she senses she's under surveillance."
He grabbed his backpack and extracted a small mirror from his emergency kit.
Angling it to align to sunlight rays to reflect it to Carla's position, he wriggled the mirror slightly, hoping she'd see the mirrored flashing.
That drew no response.
Initially disappointed, Rhett was heartened to see her begin another 360 deg turning of waving.
This time success with his mirror flashing.
She stopped her rotation abruptly, looked back at the farmhouse as if checking to find she was not under observation, and then turning back, waved vigorously in Rhett's direction.
Rhett mirrored two quick flashes and then ceased communication in case anyone else detected the flashing.
He was intrigued, stood and waved and then cut short his stay hoping to find if she were in virtual captivity with nowhere else to go, or perhaps she was mentally unsound. He left knowing it was best to give her another 24-hour to digest the fact that she'd been discovered and to prepare for the possibility of going forward for closer contact to allow voice communication.
