Editor's note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.
*****
The effect of Susan's disappearance was shattering: like a nuclear weapon going off at the same time as there was a massive earthquake. If I'd ever had any doubt just how much Charlie and Christine loved her, let alone her children and parents, they were totally wiped away.
It wasn't as if anyone really understood what must have upset her so much. Obviously, her husband making her twin sister pregnant had to be part of it, but both Charlie and Christine assured us all that she had come to terms with it. The knife through the droid's heart, or where it had been had it had one, had to mean that those damn droids were part of it.
"I really miss fucking Susan," Charlie said, "but somehow fucking her robot clone seems to make things worse, rather than better."
Tony, and everyone else agreed with him, so those troublesome droids went straight back to the factory in California.
The police, who we had reluctantly consulted, said that in the absence of any evidence of foul play, they couldn't do anything. So, I got the job with my son Hank, of finding her, on the spurious logic that Susan had found Hank for me, so we could find her.
She had taken almost nothing, leaving even her phone and iPad behind, having wiped them first. She'd taken out as much cash as she could get on several of her cards, then left them behind, so we couldn't even track her through them. The only angle we had was that she had taken her car, but that didn't seem to help for several weeks, even though Tony was using all his hacking skills to try to find any record of it.
"Rosemary, Rosemary! She sold her car. I've just found someone else who's registered it," Tony came in yelling one day. "It's in state, and you should be able to at least get some sort of lead from the dealer."
It helped, but only a bit. The dealer said that Susan had looked stressed, and had basically swapped her car for a three-wheeler Harley-Davidson, without even bothering to haggle about the deal. He'd filled it with gas, and she'd ridden off. That didn't seem to help much. Why on earth would she swap from a car to a motorcycle?
A few more weeks had passed, until one morning I woke up with an idea. Susan had been trying to track down Hank's father, knowing only that he was part of a hippie group I also joined, until he threw me out when he found I was pregnant. Of course, he was a wannabe Hell's Angel, and we all rode around,
Easy Rider
style on hogs. I got Hank to track down Sister Euphemia, the nun who had tormented me, but who had given Susan the initial lead on his whereabouts. She said that she'd found Hank's birth certificate. She'd told Susan his father was Aaron Banks, and she said that she'd found a way to locate him.
She gave us the name of a sheriff, then Hank followed a trail of more local sheriffs, which led to a group of ageing bikers in upstate Vermont, which supposedly was let by an Aaron. That had to be where she had gone, surely? And they must have kidnapped her, or something, else why wouldn't she have come back? Not that that quite explained all her secrecy, but Hank and I set off on the long drive from Montana to Vermont in a giant camper, having loaded ourselves up with pump-action shotguns, some hand guns, and a couple of Kalashnikovs, just in case.
It took a while to find the isolated farm which we were told the bikers owned, and we spent a day checking things out before we drove in the following evening, turning the camper ready for a quick exit. Hank and I got out, and walked to the large farm house, holding shotguns, one of the automatics slung over a shoulder, and handguns tucked wherever we could. We kicked the door open, and walked in.
"Aaron. Aaron Banks. Have you kidnapped my niece, Susan?"
"Huh, Rosemary? Is that really you? And who's the guy with you?"
"That's your son, Aaron. Remember, the one you implanted in me before you threw me out."
"Rosemary, well, well, well. You've got a nerve, coming back." I turned, and saw an overweight woman, her enormous tits flattened under a Hells Angels T-shirt, her grey hair pulled into a pony tail. I recognised her face, but could hardly believe that this was Janice, my arch rival for Aaron's attention when we were young, and whose looks and figure I'd always envied. "Kidnapped her! You must be joking! She came of her own free will, and we'd be glad to get rid of the fucking cunt. You'd think she wanted to be fucked to death, 'coz she never lets up."
"She's right, Bob'd rather fuck her than me, and it's the same for everyone. We've had to keep her drugged up, as even the guys couldn't satisfy her," another grey-haired biker woman said, whose face seemed familiar, but I couldn't put a name to.
Janice went into another one of the rooms, and when she came back, she was dragging a woman wearing only a thin shift, her hair a mess, her eyes rolling, and who was clearly out of her mind on something, and moaning "fuck me," over and over. It was, though it took more than one look, Susan. I grabbed her arm, and pulled her towards me.
"Hey, bitch, not so fast. We hadn't finished with her, 'coz she let us do things to her that our old bitch cunts wouldn't."
Shit, that sent a shudder through me, as my mind struggled to imagine what the hell could they do to her that their own women wouldn't stand, given what Aaron and the other guys did to me all those years ago.
"Put her in the van, Hank -- quick," I said, while I backed out of the door, keeping the old bikers in front of me. "Back off, else I'll let you have lead shot where it hurts you most!"
