Fertile Fields
Chapter 11: What You Can’t See
It seemed like forever since Riley Sloane had seen a car pass by, and that one vehicle had nearly run him down. So naturally there was recognition when he came upon it sitting off to one side of the road with one of the doors open. He dropped his bag and ran up to it, checking to see if anyone was hurt. The jeep looked to have spun a little out of control, judging by the dark skid marks on the pavement. The moon was rising quickly in this wooded area and by its light Riley could see that there were no clear signs of injury or distress. The door was hanging open, but other than that, the jeep appeared mostly fine.
Flat tire, he realized, checking the way the vehicle sat. It was blown pretty badly, clearly indicating high speed at the time they punctured it. Riley Sloane had worked his way across the country. A loner like him wasn’t nearly as alone as people liked to think. He knew a thing or two about cars, having worked in a garage several times. This tire was pretty much destroyed.
Checking the back of the jeep, Riley saw why the jeep was still here. No spare, they must’ve been riding on it, he thought. Something caught his eye as he went to shut the open door. There was something catching just a little of the interior light, something partially hidden on the floor, by the driver’s side. Reaching in and grabbing the small reflective shard, Riley Sloane discovered that maybe these two had a little more problems than simply a blown tire. From the looks of this piece of glass, their cell phone must’ve been destroyed during the commotion of trying to control the vehicle. They might easily have been stranded out here.
Shutting the door, Riley looked around. The road was mostly clean, nothing indicating which way they may have gone. He knew they hadn’t walked back his way. He would’ve run into them if that were the case. Maybe they headed the way they were driving.
Looking that direction, Riley caught a glow coming from beyond the trees. There was a clearing and what looked like a turn off not too far up the road. It made sense that the two who nearly had run him over would walk there if they needed to make a call. He needed to make a call too. For the last several hours the one thing on his mind had been that RV and whoever had been inside it.
Riley slung his bag back over his shoulder and began trudging towards whatever lay beyond that tree line, whatever the source of that glow was. He thought about why he’d been led in this direction. It was the way Riley thought, a gift he felt he’d always had.
Even back in his real life, his normal life long ago, Riley would always feel compelled to travel certain routes and those routes always led to someone that he could help. It was something he’d accepted long ago. The very first time he drove a car, he’d felt a need down one lonely street, a need he couldn’t ignore. It was almost blinding to him to even try looking away from that left turn he’d made that day.
The details of that first day still resonated on this evening when the moon was high and the clouds low. As the trees blew in a pleasant breeze, everything came flooding back into his mind. He’d stopped his car in front of a house, having no idea why he felt compelled to do so. For several minutes he sat there, thinking only of the craziness of the situation. Why had he felt motivated to drive there? What was wrong with him for just sitting there and not leaving? He didn’t even recognize the neighborhood and he was going to be late to school. His parents would kill him. Those were the thoughts that flooded his mind that morning. But somehow, he felt needed. He felt he should just be patient and wait. Not five minutes later, he saw the smoke coming up from the eaves of the house.
Riley had opened the door and stood outside his car, parked along the curb of an empty street. He’d stared at this house for about a minute. Smoke was thickening, going from faded gray to thick black menacing trails leading up into the morning sky. The house was on fire. It was as simple as that, and Riley was here for a reason.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think things through. He didn’t stop to concern himself with anything. All Riley did was take off towards the front door. The house had been engulfed in flames on the first floor by the time he kicked in the door. The heat licked at his pants, singed his skin. He called out and tried to cover his mouth and nose. The intensity of being there was so real, it would always be a part of the man Riley Sloane had become.
On that day Riley saved the life of Roscoe Bryant and his old dog Ladie. The elderly man had been alone and asleep when the wiring went bad in his old home. Ladie was a twenty year old retriever and had done all she could to try and wake her owner. The smoke proved too much and she just couldn’t move much by the time Riley burst in the bedroom door. He grabbed the man and wrapped him in the comforter, taking off back down the stairs. The dog feebly tried to keep up but collapsed somewhere on the stairs. After laying the man down and seeing no sign of his pet, Riley took off back inside the home and risked his own safety to carry that dog outside too.
The sirens were already growing closer by the time Riley had revived the old man. Ladie was panting weakly but was alive. He’d done what was needed of him. He’d been where he needed to be. On that day Riley Sloane had discovered this calling he had, this gift or curse however one looked at it. He was able to tell where he was needed.
The man, Roscoe Bryant, became a very close friend. Riley lost touch with a normal life after that, choosing to focus much of his time instead to Roscoe. The man had been an old hippie, a peaceful guy who just enjoyed talking about his times crossing the country and visiting the world.
Riley Sloane now took that journey himself, crossing the land by hitching or hiking and seeing what was needed of him. Everywhere he went, someone was in need. Someone had a problem. And Riley would always do whatever he could to help. Before ever seeing the sign for Fertile Fields, he’d known something was wrong in this direction. Something needed fixing. He needed to be here. Roscoe Bryant had taught him the ways of the road and the man had lived another ten years after he saved his life that morning. His dog Ladie only lived two more years. Although, he’d changed every goal he had in life that morning, Riley was content now to accept what life dealt him. He lived off the road and met interesting people. He only hoped he could provide the help he felt needed of him now.
The turn off was to a Drive-in theater, an old style locale he only saw handfuls of these days. The parking lot already looked packed when Riley walked past the open gate. The large screen was currently only glowing bright white, lighting up the lot but not showing any features yet. There were several dozen cars lined up at the back of the lot, many of them old models from the mid sixties, early seventies. There was a unique charm to places like this and Riley stepped up near one of the old style cars to take in the scene.
Each vehicle looked to be occupied by couples, which made sense for a place like this. The odd thing was that most of these couples seemed rather mismatched. There were even a couple of cars with three people inside. There wasn’t anything blatant about what seemed wrong about this whole picture. It just seemed wrong somehow. Riley chalked it up to a feeling, an impulse he had. Stepping around to look at the faces of all these people sitting in the cars, Riley noticed even more.
The couples were made up of mostly average looking guys, nothing unexpected there. But the girls or women were all stunning, to say the least. They appeared as though they came right out of some centerfold, having perfect figures and carefully kept hair, make-up, the whole gamut of fashion. In fact, Riley thought, he never once in his life recalled seeing such fine looking women all in one place. And their ages were strange too, at least when compared with the respective ages of their supposed dates.
One car nearby had an older woman, possibly mid forties. In the car on either side of her were two teenage boys. She almost appeared to be their mother, if not for the simple fact she was dressed to draw attention to her as a woman. The skirt she wore was incredibly short, rising up over her thighs and showing plenty of creamy white skin to even the most casual observer. Her top was not just tight, but ridiculously low cut. And however old the woman was, she certainly looked hot for her age. Even Riley could see that.
Another car had a young girl, possibly in the same age range as the two with the woman. Her date or possibly father was in the car next to her. He didn’t exactly look like a dad, but his age was showing, regardless of the younger style clothing he wore. Like the woman in the first car, this girl was wearing nearly indecent attire for being in public. It almost appeared as though she was wearing lingerie in public. The one piece dress or whatever it was barely covering anything and held a sheen that almost revealed a transparency as Riley studied her. The girl clearly wasn’t wearing a bra and seemed completely oblivious to that fact.
That’s where the weirdness really worried Riley. The women all looked oblivious. They seemed completely focused on the white screen ahead of them. The large screen rose up high into the surrounding trees and covered the parking lot with its light. Everywhere Riley Sloane looked, he saw similar sights. Many of the cars weren’t convertibles as those two had been, but it was still obvious the women seemed to be waiting for something. The guys looked eager for something as well, but at least they moved around and didn’t seem frozen or paralyzed or anything.
This wasn’t right and Riley was beginning to get the impression nothing might be right about this town. So far he hadn’t seen one normal sight since entering town. The abandoned RV covered in milk. The gas station with phones that seemed more like props. The jeep broken down with no one anywhere nearby. And now this Drive-in with the strangest assortment of patrons. When Riley turned and looked towards the main building, the place where refreshments were served and the bathrooms were located, he saw something even more strange.
The workers of this Drive-in all had their faces covered with silver masks. Maybe the costume wouldn’t be so unusual if it weren’t for the fact that Riley saw no eye holes or any way those wearing the masks could see what they were doing. They also moved stiffly, walking from car to car and activating the speakers. They looked, for lack of a better word, like robots. But these were clearly women underneath those masks. The uniforms of silver skirts and tight revealing silver tops gave that fact away without any problem. They were also either the most gorgeous Drive-in employees Riley had ever come across, or they’d each seen some of the best plastic surgeons in the country. From what he could see, faces excluded, the girls all had much more going for them than working at a Drive-in would indicate.
The projection booth was located above the main building, some stairs leading up and around to it. Inside, Riley could see another of these girls wearing the silver masks as she loaded an old style film reel into place. The feature, it seemed, was about to begin. But something still bothered Riley, something that only seemed to pull at him even more.
Nobody seemed to have noticed him standing there with his large duffle bag. Of course the women seemed in a trance and with them looking the way they did, it wasn’t any wonder the men hadn’t paid him much attention. Still, as the picture came up on the screen and the speakers buzzed to life next to each car, Riley would have thought his presence would make a difference in what happened next.
It began with an ear-piercing burst of static from the speakers which wound down into a steady hum. Then the screen filled with flashing colors. There were bright reds, blues, greens, all the colors of the rainbow. Riley felt it odd to even look at, like an epileptic problem just waiting to happen. He instead looked over at the nearest cars. The women no longer seemed to be out of it, but their behavior still seemed messed up to say the very least.
In the nearest car, the older woman with the two teenagers was doing something no woman of her age should be proud to do in such a public place. She’d slipped her hands down to each of the boys’ laps and was digging her hands in their pants, pulling out very hard cocks. As Riley almost felt wrong even looking, he couldn’t turn away. It was like watching an accident in slow motion. He had to see what happened next.
The woman began jacking their cocks up and down, one in each fist. The teenagers seemed thrilled she was doing it as they grabbed at her tits and tugged and pulled, freeing them in seconds. As the lights flickered on the screen in front of them, the occupants of the car were getting more and more crude in their behavior. The woman was leaning back in her seat, top ripped away, large tits being squeezed and suckled by these two boys who looked young enough to be her sons. Apparently she also was aware of this and enjoyed playing along. She cried out and jerked them off even harder, screaming for them to ‘suck mommy, suck her and make her their dirty whore’.
The entire time these three were getting hotter and heavier than Riley had ever seen before, he simply stared in complete shock. It was like something from a twisted dream, one he might have had back when he was in high school many years prior. It wasn’t the kind of thing most even imagined, much less dreamt about. He looked at the next car over after hearing what sounded like a high pitched giggle.
The girl in the next car was now wiggling her way over the lap of the man who looked old enough to be her dad. He had his pants open and a very hard cock sticking right up at the girl as she swung one leg over so she was straddling him but still facing the screen. With a practiced grace that seemed more fitting of a stripper performing her routine, the girl reached beneath her, grasped the man’s cock and rolled her eyes up in pleasure. Sinking down, they each gasped and the man grabbed the girl around the chest, pulling her sharply down, clearly penetrating the girl deep in one smooth motion. Her skirt hid the connection but the girl’s reaction gave everything away.
“Ohhh... Oh yessss, gimme that cock, gimme all that fucking cock!” The girl screamed. Her voice carried all over the parking lot and surprisingly nobody seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
As the young girl began fucking herself up and down the man’s cock, bouncing the suspension of the car, the man grabbed her dress and pulled it to each side. The space between the buttons got wider and wider until soon one button and then another snapped, popping loose. The girl only cried out in more pleasure as her young flesh was revealed to anyone who might be looking. The man stuck his hands down in her dress and grabbed her tits, pulling them up and out into the open. He crushed them hard with every bounce she gave his lap. Their passion was escalating into an obvious climax.
Meanwhile, Riley looked back and saw the activities in the closer car were heading in the same direction. The woman was now lifted up slightly as one boy shifted in beneath her. The other boy was now forcing her head over to the side, allowing her to suck and lick at his throbbing erection which now bobbed in the passenger seat. She grinned and lowered her face onto his crotch, swallowing the entire length as the other boy pulled her thin waist down on his, driving his cock deep inside her from below.
“Fuck my cunt, come on, fuck it, make mommy a mommy.” The woman cried out, only taking her mouth away from the other boy’s cock for a half second. She was clearly only focused on sexually being used by these two boys.
The girl in the other car was clearly taking her first load but it appeared far from the last load she intended to coax from the man. She was twitching and so was he as he pulled her tits and hugged her to him, breathing in her long dark hair and moaning. Riley Sloane was in a temporary panic of not understanding what he was seeing. He hadn’t moved for over four minutes since the lights on the screen began flickering. Now he noticed the screen was actually showing a picture, and what a picture it was.
The movie was clearly styled to look like an old creature feature but the evil villainous monster looked more like a cheaply made assortment of rubber tentacles all duct-taped together and filmed in limited colors. The action on the screen seemed to mainly be this monster waving his tentacles around and with each of those waves, a similar sound could be heard echoing across the lot.
Riley watched the girl and woman orgasm at almost the same time. Looking around the parking lot, he stared as everyone seemed to be doing the same thing. Every car was filled with couples or trios, all fucking like bunnies and being rather loud and obvious about it. This entire place was seriously messed up, he thought.
Just then, one of the workers with the silver masks came close enough to where Riley stood. She was walking around, checking the speaker boxes, making some sort of adjustments. Whatever was wrong with everyone else here, Riley decided he had to ask someone. She seemed like the best option considering the sexual perversions filling all the cars. He walked over and stood beside where she was working.
“Excuse me, what’s going on here?” Riley asked. He realized how weak the question was. After all, anyone could tell what was going on. But he had to start somewhere.
The girl continued working, never even hesitating. Her hair was difficult to see clearly in the flickering light and with her silver mask on. It seemed long, either dark brown or red. Her body was incredible. Never before had Riley seen tits as massive as this girl carried, nor as skimpily covered as hers were. She had great legs and a curvy figure that could probably stop an ordinary guy in his tracks, no matter what was on his mind. But Riley intended to get some answers.
“Excuse me, Miss, I’m talking to you!” Riley shouted, over the passionate cries once again emanating from the nearby cars.
Still the girl continued making some sort of adjustments and ignoring him completely. He reached up and grabbed at her shoulders, spinning her around to face him. “I said, excuse me. Just what the fuck is going on around here.”
The girl seemed frozen like a doll, her head now facing him, but the silver mask blocking any possible sign of actually even being aware he was there. She simply seemed confused if anything, trying to move her arms as though still making the adjustments to the speaker box.
Riley Sloane loosened his grip and looked down at the speaker box she’d been adjusting. There were very modern controls there, much more modern than the outer box and post indicated. Again, he was reminded of the phones he’d seen. They looked like props. These boxes seemed to have been disguised as well. They were old looking on the outside but modern inside. And the adjustments she’d been making seemed just as strange. The knobs and switches had labels for everything from intensity, style, submission, down to age, method, and outcome. While he wasn’t sure what those words meant, he knew it wasn’t normal for an outdoor theater.
Shaking the girl a little, Riley asked her again. “What the fuck is going on here?”
He noticed the jiggle of her tits inside the barely there top she wore as he shook her. Even he was aroused at seeing such full tits on such a youthful looking girl in such an oddly erotic outfit. But he knew now why he’d felt needed in this direction. Something was wrong in Fertile Fields and he might be the solution.
The girl refused to answer, still acting as though some connection wasn’t being made, as though she never even heard the man as he shouted at her. Riley lifted her silver mask and saw the black look in her eyes. It was as if nobody was inside, no consciousness. The girl seemed a shell of a normal human being. And that disturbed Riley even more than the fact he recognized the girl.
“Danabot Error, Danabot Error.” She repeated over and over, as soon as he pulled her mask up.
This was the face he’d seen flying past in that jeep not that many hours before. He could tell then she was headed towards something dark, but never did he guess it was anything like this. What had happened to her? Her body wasn’t anything like this, even from his glance at her passing by in a moving vehicle. She wasn’t some big tittied slut like this girl appeared to be. She’d seemed bright and innocent. And why was she repeating herself like some machine with a program glitch?
Riley was just about to say more when a man caught his eye. This man was looking around the parking lot and saw her standing there. He quickly approached and Riley felt threatened just looking at the guy. He was big, large like a linebacker and easily just as tough looking. Riley released the girl’s mask and allowed it to fall back into place. Stepping back, he prepared to be confronted.
“Who are you talking to Danabot?” The man asked, looking right at Riley.
Danabot shook her head, turned and looked at the newcomer. “Danabot error, error recovered.”
Riley couldn’t understand this. The girl was acting like some programmed toy, showing little if any functional capacity as a person. This man said something next which confused him even more.
“Well get back to work slut. There’s nobody else around.”
What the fuck did that mean, Riley thought. He was standing right here. The man had to see him, he had to have seen him holding the girl. And yet, somehow the man never gave him a second look. In fact, whenever his eyes seemed to pass over where Riley stood, he appeared to be looking right through him.
“You know Danabot, you’re one fucking hot little drone. Lemme feel up them titties.” The man said.
Riley watched him grab hold of the girl’s breasts and massage them, moving them up so her nipples popped out into view. He pinched and pulled at those as Riley slowly moved closer. Waving his hand in front of the man’s face, Riley realized the truth. He’d always thought of himself as invisible, a man of the land, a drifter not to be paid much mind to. Well now, it seemed, he’d become just that. For some reason, nobody seemed aware of his presence. As strange as it was, it explained a lot. The jeep almost hitting him, the occupants of the cars not even seeing him standing beside them, this Danabot girl not paying any attention to his questions.
Why was this happening? How could this be happening? Looking around at the fucking couples and especially the two cars he stood closest to, Riley questioned how any of this could be happening. Not only was this outside of what seemed possible, it was outside of what seemed imaginable, even in nightmares.
Riley turned to the man who was now yanking on the girl’s tits like he was playing with a cheap toy. She seemed completely content to allow herself to be handled so roughly and openly. In a rage that even he knew had been building underneath his ordinarily calm persona, Riley Sloane grabbed his duffle bag and swung it sharply at the man’s skull. It slammed into the side of his head with a loud crunch and the man swayed, his eyes growing heavy, and collapsed to the ground.
Riley stood there looking at the man. He was out cold, laying there at the feet of the now topless girl he had called a drone. She seemed momentarily confused, looking around. Then she began repeating two words over and over again. “Billy Error, Billy Error, Billy Error.”
Looking around at the depravity in all the cars and up to the screen overhead, Riley realized what he had to do. He dropped the duffle bag and took off running towards the main projection booth above the small building. He climbed the back stairs two at a time and crashed through the door. The one lone girl inside seemed confused but far too slow to react in preventing what Riley did next.
He tackled the projector and instantly snapped it from where it was mounted, the reel falling to the floor and the film tearing in several places. Grabbing it, he began kicking and pulling, bending and crushing the pieces and parts until the projector was a mess nobody would be able to repair easily.
The walls of this small room were covered with high tech equipment. There were rows of blinking lights and controls for some sort of essential equipment. Something was going on beyond the surface of this town and Riley intended to put a stop to that. He grabbed a nearby metal rod and began swinging away like an old pro, batting the delicate equipment until sparks could be seen not only shooting from the inside of the booth but also spraying from all the speaker boxes across the lot. The large screen flickered and went dead, the main parking lights coming back on.
As the silver drone girl wandered the destroyed booth in confusion, Riley Sloane emerged and walked back down the stairs. He’d known he had to stop it, almost from the moment the lights first appeared on the screen. It was something he saw just like he’d once seen a house in a neighborhood he’d never been to.
Sometimes, Riley was once told, it wasn’t what you saw that made the difference. It was what you can’t see that really affected the world. The man that told him that was Roscoe Bryant, an old hippie and his best friend for years. Now he lived that message in everything he did.
Riley knew why he was here. He knew that something was wrong with this place. Why he was invisible, he had no idea, but he would use that ability just like he’d used every other one in his life. He had to help get this town back from the brink of whatever madness had set in over it. But that wasn’t going to be easy, he thought, looking at the two cars he’d left his bag near.
The older man and teenage girl were not humping like rabbits anymore, but there was still an unnatural lust that seemed to be displayed in their eyes as they looked at each other. The man still freely reached over and grabbed the girl’s tits as she returned to her side of the car. The woman had pulled herself away from the boy who was fucking her and looked over at the one she’d been sucking off. Her eyes were not necessarily angry, just a bit confused. She grinned and turned the key in the ignition.
“Let’s get you boys home. Your father probably wonders what’s keeping us.”
That one sentence disturbed Riley a little more. Either the woman was in a relationship with the boys’ father, or she was in fact their mother. Either way, her actions had been far from normal in even a stretched perverted definition of the word.
He looked back at the girl and older man. Were they related? Could he be her actual father? What was wrong with this town? Was everyone insane? He had little to go on and felt very lost in this particular need he was led to.
Grabbing his duffle bag and stepping over next to the fallen Billy and the still confused Danabot, Riley watched as everyone simply started up their cars and began proceeding to the exits as though nothing major had happened. None of those leaving seemed too upset to have been doing what they were doing. The town wasn’t fixed by this one act of vandalism, crashing the projection booth. Clearly, it was going to take planning and some more insight into just what was happening in Fertile Fields.
Riley walked off from the fallen man and the confused silver masked workers. He left the entrance gate to the Drive-in behind. He looked down the road where most cars were going. That must be the direction of downtown, he thought. Maybe there he’d find the answers he needed. But for now, he needed sleep. He needed time to wrap his head around what was going on. Most of all, he needed a bit of perspective on why he was here.