The Adventures of Julia Flowery
In Vampire Country

by Deedra Merope
(a.k.a. Jerry Abbott)

First rough draft completed: 24 March 1985.
This version: 24 October 1990.

In her career as a ranger with Girls Undertaking Tasks Suicidally, Captain Julia Flowery had distinguished herself in one principal way. She alone had been to Vampire Country and had lived to tell about it. Her mission for years had been to seek and destroy monsters for the advancement of girlkind. The GUTS Corps had a proud thirty-year tradition of monster hunting. Although the GUTS Corps had yet to kill its first monster, girl technology was improving, and it was commonly believed that Julia Flowery would make the first vampire kill sometime during the coming year. It was a confidence that Captain Flowery did not share.

Her popularity began back in 1980 when she, then a recruit, had come back alone from a vampire-hunting expedition. Julie had explained that she was the sole survivor of a fierce battle between her own hot air balloon and a vampire starship. She had been thrown clear, she had said, by the explosion that destroyed her balloon in midair; fortunately, she had been wearing her parachute at the time. The truth was that Julia Flowery had jumped overboard immediately after the approaching vampire patrol ship was spotted, thereby abandoning the others, her previous captain and the usual assortment of inexperienced recruits, to their deaths. But Julie's account was accepted, and the GUTS commander promptly promoted her to captain.

Julie, practicing what works, adding variants and embellishments where necessary, has finked out of six other missions into Vampire Country, usually by escaping in a detachable balloon pod, leaving the rest of her crew to the legendary—better make that "mythical"—mercy of vampires or witches. In route back to Girl City, Julie fakes reports, forges maps, manufactures artifacts and invents lies for her commander's trusting consumption. So far, no one else has lived to contradict her.

Julie's fourth mission had a close call. She was sent out to capture a live vampire and bring it back for study by girlie scientists. While in the Murder Mountains, an air-to-air antimatter missile blasted her balloon. Julie had sensed the impending destruction, however, and had bailed out in an escape pod. A fat crewmate, seeing her captain's desertion, jumped from the doomed balloon without a parachute, hoping to land on top of Julie in order to kill her for revenge. The pod's balloon popped, and Julie fell the rest of the way to the ground. She was saved only by clutching some remnants of the deflated balloon for aerobraking and by the remarkable coincidence that she landed square upon the burst but still soft body of Fat Marge. Only slightly battered, Captain Flowery came upon a rival company of rangers—the Sisters In Service Saving You—stole their balloon, and headed back to GUTS Headquarters in Girl City, leaving the rightful owners stranded to await a horrible death.

Now, a year later, Julia Flowery was to be sent out on another mission.

"Captain Flowery," said the GUTS commander in formal tones. "Today the Girl Empire calls upon you to undertake an espionage mission into Vampire Country. Yesterday, one of our high-altitude reconnaissance balloons observed some strange goings-on in the Deadly Desert. Just before it was destroyed by a vampire vessel, the captain of our ship dropped the information by message rock, where it was recovered by our girls in the Foothills of Fear. Your mission is to follow up that information and determine exactly what the vampires are doing there. Good luck, Captain!"

The commander and Captain Flowery were standing outside the commander's office in front of the flight line. Just then they were passed by four giggling girls who bounced and hopped and skipped up and down as they approached the giant slingshot that would launch Julie's spy balloon.

"Oh no," groaned Julie. "Those girls aren't—"

"Your crew," the GUTS commander smilingly affirmed.

"Are we really going out with THE Captain Flowery?" asked Ginger, who had heard the same briefing as the others had been given.

"Oh yes," answered Tammy, as she sat next to Ginger buffing her nails. They were sitting in the latest model GS-1000. The GS part of the balloon's designation stood for Girl Ship. The 1000 was a code that indicated that the balloon was a military vehicle designed for slingshot launching.

The launch-control girl, in charge of cutting the cable holding back the giant rubberband, could not resist sniping.

"Why are you so excited about going out with Captain Flowery? Don't you know that nobody who goes out with her ever comes back?"

"Does anybody ever return from Vampire Country no matter who their captain is?" flashed Melinda, another of the crew.

"No," the launch-control girl had to admit. "None except Captain Flowery."

"Well then, we feel that we have a better chance with such an experienced captain."

"That might be true," she grudgingly assented.

The commander and Captain Flowery had reached the launch site, and the crewgirls became silent.

"You know what you are to do," said the commander as she and Julie gave each other a brisk salute.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Julie. She snapped her salute and turned to get into her ship.

"As if there could be any doubt about that," muttered the fat Jo-Anne, the remaining crewgirl. Jo-Anne had a severe case of hero-worship for her captain.

"Shh," whispered Tammy. "She'll hear you."

Julia Flowery's preflight discipline was known throughout the GUTS Corps. She ran a tight ship.

When everyone had strapped in and removed the green GUTS beanies indicating their rank, the commander signaled the launch-control girl to begin the countdown. The hot air module was lighted and loaded aboard. For once, none of the crewgirls declared at this point that she had to go to the bathroom. Julie took this as a good omen.

At zero, the girl swung a heavy axe and cut a thick rope, sending a much heavier guillotine blade from its ten-meter height to cut the slingshot mooring cable. With a snap that could be heard for miles, the GS-1000 was hurled skyward at a forty-five degree angle.

When the rushing wind had abated enough for the rangers to stand, Captain Flowery ordered them into furious activity.

"Quickly girls!" yelled Julie. "Out with the seats and the windshield, and up with the balloon!"

This was a dangerous moment, for if everything were not done just right, and in time, the balloon basket would complete its arc and smash on the ground. This happened to GUTS launches so often that the Girlie Air Force used a safer sixty degree launch angle for their own missions. The rangers tossed overboard all the unnecessary items to reduce the weight the balloon would have to support. That took about three seconds. Then they grabbed the flaccid balloon, which they had been sitting on, and inflated it with hot air provided from a fire enclosed in a wooden box. The box was full of burning coal and wooden chippings. The idea was for this box to be jettisoned before it caught on fire itself. The fact that the balloon basket was made of wood and the balloon, just two feet above the blaze, was made of very burnable fabric didn't bother these girls a bit. A GUTS ranger thinks nothing of playing with fire.

The GS-1000 plummeted toward the ground. Looking nervously over the side, Julie saw the forest rushing up at her. She had never yet abandoned ship at this point, but she was wearing her parachute, just in case. It was regulation anyhow.

The balloon filled quickly, however, and the box, just beginning to smolder on the outside, was tossed away. The rangers put on their beanies and looked around. Rising again from their lowest altitude of about a hundred feet, they saw ahead the Murder Mountains, the border between the Girlie Empire and Vampire Country. Beyond those mountains lay Slime Swamp, the Deadly Desert, and the Grassland of Grabs, all of which held many dangers. On another mission, Julie barely eluded the Swamp Demon by cutting the balloon cables. Hanging on to the ropes, Julie had abandoned the basket and her crew, which were still enmired in the bog.

They rose to a mile above the forest and headed straight for the distant peaks with the rubberband motors in full operation. The balloon was driven by a system of propellers, the main ones being to the rear of the basket. The basket itself resembled a large coffin, about four feet wide, twenty feet long, and three feet tall. A conical wind breaker tipped with a six-foot wooden spear (a weapon against vampires) projected from the basket's front. The cables supporting the basket from the balloon were three feet long, providing ample standing clearance for the crewgirls. The experienced balloonist did not stand, for fear of falling overboard. Julie's crew stood because they were greenhorn recruits set upon demonstrating their bravery. Julie stood to maintain her authority.

After ninety minutes, the hot air had cooled enough that the balloon was sinking slowly. All the ballast bags had been emptied to stay aloft, so Captain Flowery told her crew to prepare for landing.

"Ginger and Jo-Anne will fill the ballast sacks. Tammy and Melinda will help me kindle a fire to replenish the balloon."

"Why do I have to dig with Ginger?" grumbled Jo-Anne, who didn't like Ginger.

"Because I say so!" yelled Captain Flowery in a tone of menace. "Any more complaints could adjust your status from recruit to ballast, Fatso!"

Ginger and Melinda, good friends who shared a dislike for Jo-Anne, snickered and began a chorus:

"Why did you ever dye your hair brown? An ugly shade that makes us all frown. Is that the same stuff on your underwear/That you used when you dyed your hair?"

Captain Flowery glared at them and said, "That will be enough from you also. Prepare for landing, or do you girls have the impression that we are out on a picnic?"

"Yes, ma'am!" came the ambiguous reply.

The balloon settled beneath the trees of the Foothills of Fear. This hilly region was a sort of no-girl's land between the Girl Empire and Vampire Country. Girls caught in the open here were still subject to being bitten, zapped or eaten by whatever monsters happened to come along, but those were not as common here as in the indisputably vampire-controlled Murder Mountains and beyond.

Melinda, Tammy and Captain Flowery each grabbed one of the rubber sacks they used to contain the hot air until it was released into the main balloon bag. They set out in search of firewood, while the antagonistic Jo-Anne and Ginger went off in separate ways to fill their bags with sand. The entire operation took an hour. Tammy's sack caught on fire and had to be stamped out, since burning rubber makes a thick column of black smoke that can be seen for many miles. A high-flying vampire bat or a witch on broomstick could have seen it. The fire caused some delay while everyone jumped up and down on it, threw sand on it, and otherwise helped to extinguish the burning bag. Captain Flowery's eloquent summary of Tammy's lack of intelligence caused another delay of about five minutes.

Nonetheless, in an hour the balloon was again in the air, slowly gaining altitude, and headed toward the Murder Mountains. The ship's routine was unbroken during the next hour. Jo-Anne had to wind the rubberband motor only twice, since the wind was with them. Ginger and Melinda, who hadn't availed themselves of the opportunity to pee on the burning rubber sack, took turns using the bombay. Tammy and Jo-Anne began fighting over the character implications of excessive bodily fat, until Captain Flowery ended the philosophical exercise by cracking their heads together and threatening to toss them over the side. Finally, the little hot-air balloon floated among the peaks of the Murder Mountains.

It is said, among the girls, that the Murder Mountains have, despite their danger, a wild untamed beauty. They are right. His name is Oscar.

Oscar is a giant ogre. He is covered with hair, each strand of which is as thick as a girl's arm, and each of his razor-sharp teeth is longer than a girl is tall. Oscar's broad scalp is a thousand feet from his big toes, and each of those weighs over three hundred tonnes. Julie discovered Oscar the hard way, escaping him only by sending her balloon into a climb so steep that one of her crewgirls had fallen out. It is possible that she had been pushed. Oscar is always looking for a meal, and his favorite repasts are girlie balloons and dragons.

Echoes carried easily from one shear solid rock wall to the next in this range, so Captain Flowery told her crewgirls to shut up, advising them of Oscar. Not believing her, the girls all demanded proof. Jo-Anne leaned over the side yelling loudly for Oscar to show himself.

"Oscar! Oh, Oscar...tee hee. Here, Oscar! Oscar..."

Jo-Anne was leaning so precariously that Ginger could not resist. She pushed her over. Jo-Anne's screams resounded from the cliffsides as she fell more than a mile, out of sight, to the cold and rocky bottom of the mountain abyss.

"Splat." Melinda giggled.

"Now you've done it!" thundered Captain Flowery. "Why did you do that?"

"She was making too much noise!" protested Ginger. "It was her or us, and she wouldn't stop yelling, and Oscar could show up any second."

Off in the distance, regular thumps suggesting giant footsteps could be heard. They were rapidly becoming louder.

"You were right," said Captain Flowery.

"It's Oscar the Ogre!" screamed Tammy.

"Now you believe me!" stormed the captain.

"I'll never doubt you again, Captain."

Julie assessed the situation.

"We've got to get away from the mountainside," she said, looking at the nearby cliff. "We are up higher than Oscar can reach, but he will climb to get at us."

"Captain, I'm scared!" quavered Melinda.

"You poor dear. Ginger, take over Jo-Anne's position as helmsgirl and turn us away from the cliff."

"Yes, ma'am!" It was a promotion.

Just then Oscar rounded the mountain. The four remaining girls saw him clearly though he was easily five miles away. Oscar approached swiftly, sniffing and glancing from side to side. He raised his tremendous head and gazed skyward. He spotted the tiny balloon almost three-quarters of a mile above him.

"RAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" Oscar's roar was thunder that started avalanches and split boulders.

"EEK! He's seen us!" wailed Ginger.

"What did I tell you about yelling? Just concentrate on keeping us on course. Tammy, you help her with band rewinding. Full throttle. Melinda, you and I will start the side engines. We are still too close to that cliff. Oscar has a reach of over four hundred feet."

After Julie started her side engine, she set to work positioning the auxiliary pod below the main basket. She was getting her escape route ready under the pretext of using the pod's engine, while still attached to the main balloon, for extra thrust. The smaller vessel could be reached through the bombay, and was intended to be lowered on ropes while its own balloon was inflated. In emergencies the pod could simply be cut free and the balloon hoisted immediately afterward.

Oscar was indeed climbing the mountain to get them. His movements were so fast that parts of him kept breaking the sound barrier, sending shock waves past the rangers ears. Tammy fell to the basket floor raving hysterically. Ginger, steering, sat on her.

Oscar was level with the fleeing GS-1000. He lashed out with a mighty clawed hand, leaning outward, holding on to the mountain with the other paw. The grab missed by only thirty feet, and the wind of the blow nearly tore the balloon from its moorings.

"Climb, helmsgirl!" cried Captain Flowery. "Up at forty-five degrees, same heading!"

"What does that mean?" asked Ginger. "I'm only a recruit!"

"Nevermind, I'll do it myself from down here."

The mountain tapered toward the top as all mountains do, so Julie angled the balloon so that Oscar would have to climb again to take another swipe. Also, in a climbing attitude, the balloon would take less shear from the shock wave. Oscar was plainly trying to knock them out of the air by the force of his blows.

There were several more swipes. Each of them brought a rush of sound and wind. Miraculously, the balloon stayed intact. Oscar, with a final roar, retreated down the mountainside in search of something else to eat.

"He's going away, Captain!" shouted Tammy, who had crawled out from under Ginger. Julie looked up through the bombay. She had been about to cut the pod free.

"Fine," said Captain Flowery. She climbed back through the bombay into the basket.

The GS-1000 flew on several miles, again hugging the sides of the mountains. Oscar's roars would not have gone unnoticed by the vampires, but Julie hoped that they would think he was chasing a dragon. Julie knew that girlie balloons more quickly attracted unwanted attention if they stayed out in the open air.

Melinda suddenly caught the captain's arm. She pointed away from the mountain and slightly downward. Looking in the indicated direction, Julie saw another balloon a half-mile away. It was climbing toward a tall, thin peak that was shrouded at its top by unusually thick clouds.

"Another GUTS expedition, Captain?" asked Ginger.

"No, dummy," said Melinda. "They're not even military. See, their balloon is the wrong type."

"Turn toward them and go to maximum speed," commanded Captain Flowery. "We'll check them out."

The GS-1000 overtook the slower girl ship a mile from the apex of the spike-shaped peak. When they were finally side by side, Julie could see that the other balloon was inhabited by a Girl Scout troop, and their balloon was loaded down with boxes of their cookies.

"Ahoy there, Girl Scouts!" Captain Flowery shouted. "What brings you to the Murder Mountains?"

The scouts conferred with each other in low tones, and all the rangers could hear was "GUTS rangers" and "maybe they would like some."

After their conference, the troop leader picked up one of the cookie boxes and said, "Good afternoon, rangers! Would y'all like some cookies?"

"What are they doing out here selling cookies?" Ginger asked the captain, as if she would know.

"What are you doing out here selling cookies?" Julie asked. "Don't you know this is Vampire Country?"

"Sure we know," came the reply. "We talked with some vampires about an hour ago."

"That was just before we saw them," whispered Tammy. "They might still be around."

"What did the vampires tell you?" asked Julie.

"They said we could sell all the cookies we could carry to some hungry munchkins who live in the cloud at the top of that skinny mountain."

"Could be a trap, Captain," whispered Tammy again.

"Of course it's a trap," Julie whispered back. "I'll warn these girls."

"Hey you girls," she shouted. "We think the vampires have led you astray. It is our opinion that the munchkins in the cloud don't like cookies."

There was another discussion in the Girl Scout balloon. Several of the girl scouts were mad. Soon all of them were mad. The troop leader faced the rangers and said, "We think you rangers are trying to stop us from getting a fair market price on our cookies. We think you are all against free enterprise, and we are going to sell our cookies to the munchkins anyhow."

Melinda smirked.

"They have a monopoly on the cookie business. Why do they call it free enterprise?"

"Hey, they can't talk about us rangers that way!" Ginger told the captain. "Let's attack them!"

"No, helmsgirl," replied Julie. "We can't afford the time for an air battle. I'll wager those vampires are still around watching us. Or maybe they are hiding in that cloud up there, waiting for the girls. Speaking of the cloud, we are only about half a mile from it now.

"Turn us about! Point us that way, toward the Deadly Desert."

The rangers had not gone a mile when, looking back, Melinda cried out:

"Look! The Girl Scout balloon!"

They turned to see a wisp of cloud reach out like an amoeba and surround the scouts' balloon. The wisp seemed to shrink and thicken as its coils tightened around them. Captain Flowery and her crewgirls were too far away to make out the details, but soon the scouts became invisible within the thick, viscous gas. The limb rapidly shortened as it pulled the Girl Scout balloon into the main body of the cloud.

"Too bad," murmured Ginger sadly. "They're digesting."

As they watched, the GUTS rangers saw the cloud part, and out of the split came a spray of tiny white dots.

"There go the cookies," said Melinda. "Even the monster cloud couldn't eat them and keep them down."

The rangers flew on a mile or so, and then they noticed that their balloon was once again sinking as their balloon's hot air cooled. Captain Flowery had been thoughtful enough to store firewood beneath the rubber hot air bags in the floor of her vessel. A preliminary search, however, failed to turn it up.

"Where are those sticks I put down there for our next hot air stop?" she asked.

"Oh, those," answered Tammy. "I thought they were ballast, so I dumped them over the side about twenty minutes ago."

"Excuse me?" said the captain, who knew that timber could not be found in the Murder Mountains. "I thought you just said that you dumped our firewood over the side."

"Yes, ma'am. I did. All of it."

This time, Captain Flowery's language was far more invective than when Tammy's carelessness had cost them a gas bag. She used words that were seldom spoken by even the traditionally bawdy GUTS recruit trainers. The hot air generated by her swearing might have kept the balloon aloft five additional minutes, and, when her monologue was over, Tammy's hair was singed, and the smoldering remains of it lay straight back from the captain's mouth.

"All hands brace for emergency landing!" she ordered. "I'll bring up the pod's firebox, and with any luck we'll be able to make it to that mesa without crashing too hard."

Quick to score points, Ginger offered: "Shall I push her over too, Captain?"

"No, you little twerp. If there is any pushing to be done from now on, then I'll be the one to do it. Is that clear, Miss Ginger?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

The balloon came to rest on a high mesa at about three thousand feet elevation. The ground around the ship was covered with snow to a depth of about two feet. Despite their warm clothing, the rangers shivered violently in the cold mountains winds. After a futile search for anything burnable, and after deciding that burning Tammy's clothes wouldn't provide the necessary heat, the rangers departed their vessel, already numb, and set out across the mesa.

"Are we turning back, Captain?" asked a timid Melinda. So far, Melinda had done nothing to incur the captain's wrath.

"No, we are proceeding with our mission. It's important to the Girl Empire that we find out what the vampires are doing in the Deadly Desert, and that's exactly what we are going to do."

"It's all Tammy's fault!" declared Melinda, casting an evil glance at her former friend. "If it weren't for her we wouldn't be walking." Melinda hated to walk, especially with melted snow squishing around inside her boots.

"Well I didn't know what the wood was for! I'm only a recruit!"

"Shut up, all of you," snapped Captain Flowery. "We have enough problems without you attracting the attention of more monsters like Oscar."

In silence, the rangers crossed the mesa and began the cautious decent down the side facing the Deadly Desert. Ginger twice saw covens of witches on patrol, and once Julie spotted a dragon. Each time, the rangers hid in the snow-filled crannies of the mountainside, getting wet from melt and so more miserable in the cold air.

Julie, the only one to remember to bring her parachute, contemplated jumping down the mountain, letting her crew catch up with her afoot. She decided against it, realizing that she might need the parachute later. The rangers were halfway down the mesa when they saw the Abominable Snowman.

The seeing was mutual, and with a roar from Abominable the chase was on. The rangers were lucky to have seen him at all, considering that his white fur made him almost invisible against a snowy background. His teeth were long and sharp, and four of them, two above and two below, curved over his rubbery lips. The Abominable Snowman stands about eight feet tall, stocky for his height, but he is uncannily sure-footed on the treacherous mountain slopes. He quickly closed the original thirty feet between himself and the hindmost Melinda.

None of the other rangers turned to look, or even slowed down, as a strong hairy paw closed on Melinda's left shoulder, and five-inch fangs sank into her other shoulder near her neck, and her last scream echoed from the canyon walls. For all their loose camaraderie, GUTS rangers are basically "every girl for herself," to which phrase was later added "and Abominable take the hindmost." The captain and the other rangers got away while the Abominable Snowman made a bloody meal of Melinda.

"Should have been you," Ginger told Tammy.

"Quiet!" hissed the captain. "Now do you see why we mustn't make any noise?"

Julie and her crew reached the canyon floor without further incident. They wound their way through the valley, staying low and out of the wind whenever possible. The three rangers ate some of the provisions from the balloon. That evening, they found a cave that seemed to offer temporary shelter from a gathering snowstorm. The rangers entered the cave and began discussing a plan of action. When night fell, the storm began, and the blizzard made further travel impossible. They decided to spend the night in the cave, and Captain Flowery gave Ginger and Tammy a piece of chalk and a box of matches and told them to explore its tunnels, which seemed to go far back into the mountain. The girls' subdued whispers were soon lost to Julie, who began nodding sleepily.

"I could leave them here, and try to get back to Girl City on my own," she thought to herself. "But there's always the chance that they might also survive and expose me for a liar."

Julie had to be certain that her crew was all dead before she dared return to headquarters. To the last, she had to give the impression that she was a stout-hearted GUTS ranger captain, to be respected and feared. She had worries enough without a mutiny, which would surely result if the others knew how big a coward she really was. Julie fell asleep.

Deep in the heart of the mountain Tammy and Ginger were exploring lived the Mangy Mangler. This monster lived all alone in the dark, cold corridors making up the caverns running the length of the Murder Mountain Range. Always hungry, the Mangy Mangler could smell the blood of his victims for miles in the chilly, clear air of his underground lair. He had dug many of these tunnels himself with his strong blunt claws, and energetically built new ones as the need arose. He could dig three miles per hour through what girls would call solid rock. Cave echoes didn't fool him; he knew exactly where Tammy and Ginger were.

The two exploring rangers were lost. Tammy had forgotten to mark the last three turns with her piece of chalk. On discovering this, Ginger grabbed Tammy by the throat and began squeezing.

"You did it again, you airhead! Now I'm going to kill you!"

"Ack—" was all Tammy could reply as Ginger choked her.

Just then they heard a sound like an angry chainsaw, quickly becoming louder. Ginger forgot all about killing Tammy as she ran blindly down the corridor. Tammy, almost fainting, gasped for breath and walked the other way. Ginger began to scream, and although Tammy did not know why Ginger screamed, she felt it was best to be as quiet as possible.

Ginger's screaming stopped.

Julie woke up, hearing Ginger's screams as if from a vast distance, sounding thinly from the tunnels. She waited nervously at the mouth of the cave. Judging from the height of the full moon, she had slept for about two hours. The snow had stopped falling. Again, she contemplated leaving for home, when something grabbed her from behind. She yelped.

"A monster got Ginger!" said Tammy. "She tried to kill me, but when the monster attacked she ran away. Even so, I tried to save her from it, and only ran when she got killed."

Julie saw the lie immediately, but she said nothing. She had used too many similar stories on her own superiors to condemn Tammy for telling her own version of Ginger's demise.

"We had better get out of here," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," agreed Tammy, and the two rangers set off into the cold moonlit night.

Together, Captain Flowery and the one remaining member of her crew crossed the width of the Murder Mountains without encountering more killers. They emerged on the Far Foothills just after noon the next day and dropped into an exhausted slumber in the scrub bushes that dotted these lower hills. They slept until early morning of the next day in their ranger cloaks.

That morning was windy and overcast. They breakfasted on the last of the candybars and bubblegum from the balloon. They walked under the cloudy sky, and after a few hours the rangers left the Far Foothills and began crossing sandy terrain. This was the outskirts of the Deadly Desert of Doom. The sun emerged from the clouds and began punishing them. They had nothing to carry water in, and the last they had drank was melted snow in the mountains. Julie and Tammy were very thirsty.

"There is water in the cactus," remarked Julie, observing the tall, spiny growth about half a mile ahead.

"Water!" shouted Tammy. "Oh wow! Me first!" And off she ran to the cactus.

"I shouldn't have opened my mouth," Julie said to herself disgustedly. "She'll probably drink the cactus dry, and I don't see another." She trailed after Tammy.

Julie was about four hundred feet away when Tammy reached the cactus. Tammy, she saw, wasted no time in taking out her wooden GUTS ranger regulation knife and letter-opener. But as Tammy drew back to take her first slash at the water-bearing plant, the cactus flew into a blur of motion. The outthrusting limbs bent forward like pincers and clamped upon the ranger, impaling her in dozens of places with iron-stiff spines.

Tammy was not killed instantly, since the thorns were only two or three inches long, but the cactus arms lifted her bodily, and Julie could see blood dripping from Tammy's struggling form to the sand. The cactus was not only alive, it was carnivorous. It placed Tammy above its central stalk, and then it lowered her headfirst, a bit at a time, into the waiting mouth at its top.

"No water for me, I guess," remarked Julie.

Julie scanned the horizon, preparing for the long walk back to Girl City. She saw a brilliant flash of light in the shimmering ground haze. Then she heard the rumble of distant rocket engines. Something was coming her way fast.

"A vampire ship!" she gasped. Julie started burying herself in sand.

But Julie was wrong. It wasn't a vampire ship; it was a whoopee house, a huge flying building where rapists lived and worked. Its rockets thundered against the ground, raising clouds of dust in its wake. Whoopee houses rarely flew very high, unless one was after a high-flying squadron of girlie balloons. As fortune would have it, this whoopee house settled to the ground about a thousand feet from where Julie was hiding.

The ever-practical Julie instantly realized that this was her ticket home. She might get raped, but rapists never killed a girl if they could avoid it. Their purpose was to ensure a steady supply of girls for the vampires to bite, the monsters to eat, and the mad scientists to do experiments on. They were part of the killer order on Girl Planet.

Julie jumped out of the sand and ran toward the grounded whoopee house. Monsters were worse than rapists. She would try to stow away.

When she reached the blasted sand around the building, none of the rapists was in evidence. Julie wondered why they had set down in the middle of the Deadly Desert, but could not account for it. She pulled open the main door in the front and peered inside. She saw nobody, but she heard voices coming from behind the many partitions that divided the makeshift bedrooms.

"Is it that hydrostatic modulator again?" came a voice.

"Looks like it, Rudy," said another.

"Damn! Von Bite swore to me he'd had it fixed."

"Well, now it's unfixed..."

Julie cautiously slipped inside and shut the door. She looked around hastily. On the outside, the whoopee house was a square building about a hundred feet on a side. It seemed to be five stories tall while in the air, but only four showed above the ground after it had landed. Julie knew that the bottom level was actually the rocket engine housing, which was presently sunk into the sand by the building's tremendous weight. It was the basement, containing the fuel and motors that kept the house flying. The first real floor was this one, where the rapists did their briskest business. This whole floor was given to an entrance foyer, and behind the first partition began the series of little beds, each one secluded for privacy. These rapists were evidently either very sensitive or very considerate. Julie didn't try to decide which.

"Have we got a replacement?"

"Sorry, boss. Von Bite seemed so sure of himself that we didn't think one was necessary this trip."

The first voice did some swearing.

"Well work on it as best you can. We're already behind schedule."

To either side, along the walls, ran stairways leading to the second floor. Julie ascended one of them. At the top, she saw a wide hall that stretched the length of the building, with minor hallways branching at regular intervals. On this floor, Julie knew, the rapists had their private apartments for sleeping and occasionally for entertaining the favorites among their victims for more leisurely sessions.

From the top of the stairs, Julie could still hear the voices.

"Hey, Polaski. You think we can cross-connect the feed from the rest of the input-stabilizers?"

"Sure thing, boss, but I won't guarantee our stability in high winds."

"Just long enough to finish this job and go cuss out Von Bite."

Rare is the rapist without an engineering degree.

In the past, agents of the Girl Empire had penetrated the secrets of whoopee house layout by posing as victims. Julie was, therefore, aware that the third floor probably contained a mechanical shop, a library and study areas, storage compartments, a chow hall, and some type of sports area, such as a racquetball court. The third floor almost certainly also held a cinema where SEX-rated films were shown regularly. Many whoopee-house rapists held starring roles in these movies, which were considered educational. Rapists, priding themselves on being state-of-the-art, needed a chance to observe the latest techniques in their trade. The movies provided the medium by which they kept abreast of new, pioneering developments.

The fourth floor housed machinery used for plucking girlie balloons out of the air without harming the occupants. Mechanical hands on long metal arms grabbed a balloon basket firmly and hauled it inside through an opening in the roof, which was kept closed in inclement weather. Command, control and communication facilities were also up there.

"Okay, boss. I'll go get the tools, and—say, do you smell girl?"

Julie ran to one of the rooms and darted inside. The last she heard was:

"Somebody probably didn't do his laundry. We're in the middle of a desert."

She hid in a small closet in the room she had chosen. As she sat on the floor, her hand met a tray full of assorted mechanical devices and tools. Julie gasped, grabbed the tray, opened the closet door, and put the tools on the floor by the bed. Then she scooted back into the closet and slid the door shut, just as the rapist entered the room in search of his tools.

"That's funny," said the puzzled rapist. "I guess I didn't put them up from the last time the house broke down."

Julie breathed a sigh of relief as he left. Soon somebody did the right thing, and Julie felt a lurch and heard the roar of the rocket engines as the whoopee house took to the air once more. Captain Flowery was on her way home.

The trip back took less than an hour. The whoopee house was soon in the territory of the Girl Empire. Julie knew that girlie fighter balloons would be streaking—well, whirring anyhow—from the nearest Girlie Air Base to attack the hovering whoopee house. Most of those crews would return on foot to their base, pregnant. Then the whoopee house would land and turn on the candy and bubblegum advertisements. This would begin a stampede of girls from the surrounding countryside, all eager to get their fair share of the goodies before supplies ran out.

Well aware of the rapists' insidious tactics, Julie kept still until the house was busy engaging the Girlie Air Force's finest. Then she crept out of the closet, left the room, and fled down the stairs to the main front corridor. She slid the door aside, and just as the first girlie pilots were being herded from upstairs into the giant whoopee room, she jumped.

Julie had been wearing her parachute all this time, and as soon as she was clear of the building she pulled the ripcord. The blast of the house's jets blew her out and away. Fortunately, the house was hovering, or she would have been fried as it passed over her. When she touched ground, she wriggled out of the harness and took off at a dead run. She commandeered a civilian's pull-cart and had the pull-girls tow her to the nearest GUTS outpost.

She flew from there to Girl City and checked in at headquarters. She knocked on the commander's door.

"Come in," said the commander.

Julie walked in regulation cadence, paused exactly the regulation distance from the front of the commander's desk, and gave the regulation salute, perhaps a bit more snappy than was required.

"Julia Flowery, ma'am, reporting successful completion of the espionage mission."

The commander sprang up and grabbed Julie by both shoulders.

"Julie! You were gone so long that we'd all assumed you had been killed by the enemy. Welcome back! Tell you what, it's dinner time, so give me your report over a hot meal—what do you say?"

"A hot meal," said Captain Flowery hungrily, "would be most welcome."

Over dinner Julie told the commander her own account of her harrowing experiences, based on what actually happened, but with her own bravery considerably magnified and, where necessary, invented. The commander told Julie that she would be awarded another Medal of Merit, and again the story of her heroism would be the talk of the Empire. One day, perhaps, she would be promoted to GUTS commander. Julie hoped so. If she ever got that promotion, she wouldn't ever have to go into Vampire Country again, but sit at home where it was safe and send somebody else.

"Julie, this is amazing. The information you have provided us concerning the vampire military installation in the Deadly Desert will prove invaluable for furthering girlie interests. We cannot thank you enough."

"Thank you, ma'am. It was my pleasure. Have some more wine?"

"I'm afraid not," said the commander. "I'm pregnant."

At the vampire playground in the Deadly Desert, Count Ludwig Von Bite was conducting Grand Opening Ceremonies.

Jerry's Aryan Battle Page