An Excerpt from Barbara Karmazin's The Zone: Hot Zone Tarina stood in the initiates’ line and maintained a vacant stare. Goosebumps roughened her skin and turned her nipples into stiff dime-sized nubs. They’d taken everything from her, her clothes, money, ID cards and Dragos. Of course, Dragos had morphed into the streamlined case of a rich girl’s silver-embossed softech personal computer/cell phone, its database filled with mindless ring tones and the latest fad gaming systems. Later, after she’d been assigned a place to sleep and they put the lights out for the night, he’d escape from the storage bin and sneak inside to see her and update her on his progress. The line inched its way down a long yellow corridor into the next room. Billows of wet steam flowed from the open doorway. A hatchet-faced woman wearing a plain white shirt and pants stood beside the door with a databoard in her hand. Tarina shuffled forward. She was entering a new life, free from worldly considerations. Pure bullshit. That geek who had fallen in the docking bay looked promising. Maybe she could seduce him and convince him to help her escape. So what if he was clumsy and blushed like a teenager when his eyes met hers. Of all the guys here, he was the only one who saw her as a person instead of two naked breasts and a wide-open cunt. Plus, he had a pretty decent build under his tan coveralls. Hatchet Face stood at the doorway with sneering eyes. She passed out douche and enema bags. “Master Orion requires every woman to be as clean and pure in her body as she is in her thoughts when she enters his divine presence.” Did everyone here believe this crap? Tarina accepted her allotted cleansing devices without comment. She stepped over the threshold into the slippery white-tiled floor of the communal shower. A line of naked females waited by the toilets. Black thorn tattoos adorned their backs, arms, legs and bellies. Another profusion of naked females soaped their tattooed bodies within the steaming showers. Was she the only sane woman in this lousy excuse for a sixth-rate porno movie set? At least the water was hot. She hated cold showers. © Barbara Karmazin, January 2007 All Rights Reserved