I leaned into my low lung stretch, right foot forward, hands in the air, and my upper body leaning backward while trying to get a full hip flexor stretch. Exhaling, I saw my breath in the cold pre-dawn air. Despite the cold, I wore capri pants, a long-sleeved undershirt, and a down sweater vest, all dark brown. My shoes and knee-high socks were both crimson. My entire goal was to try and avoid being seen in the Vermont woods, where the gold and crimson leaves covered the ground.
Looking over to my left, my friend Sara was stretching her quads with a nervous look on her face. "Hey, calm down; it will be okay," I said in the most reassuring voice I could.
The five-foot-five, one-hundred-and-twenty-pound Asian mother of six looked back at me. "No, Dani, it's not going to be okay; they are going to catch me again." She said, already resigned to her fate.
"No, sweety. You've been training, and you're so much faster than last time. They only have one hour to catch you; you can avoid being caught for one hour," I said, but my words clearly didn't reach her. I wondered if Sara would try to run again or just stand at the starting line, allowing herself to be taken by the first man who reached her, which was an all-too-common occurrence in this game.
"Wives to the starting line, wives to the starting line," the man with the bullhorn said. I finished up my last stretch and walked over to the starting line with the other thirty-some-odd women, all of us married, all of us participating to keep our husbands in 'The Club.'
As I approached the starting line, the man with the bullhorn made a second announcement: "Husbands to the pursuit line, Husbands to the pursuit line." I snorted, thinking about the term he had just used, "Husbands." Ya, they were all someone's husband, but not any of ours. 'The Club' was running ten of these races today, an annual tradition. To stay a member, husbands and wives had to participate once every three years. They just couldn't participate in the same race, so while I was here in Vermont, they sent my dear husband Mark to New Mexico for his race.
I felt the nerves of the women around me. Most of them had never escaped before; they had always been caught by one of the men. Others were participating for the first time, but not me. This would be my seventh race, and last mandatory race. I had managed to escape three of my first six times. Poor Sara was also running her seventh race but she had never escaped.
"Runners get ready." The man with the bullhorn said. There was a collective inhale as over thirty women held their breath...BOOM, the starting gun sounded, and I ran at a full sprint to the wood line as fast as I could, along with most of the women. We had a five-minute and one-hundred-yard head start on the men, so I wanted to be lost in the trees before the gun sounded for them to go.
I spared a quick glance to my side and noticed Sara wasn't there. Daring to look back, I saw that she had not moved from the starting line, along with four or five other women. Instead of trying to raise her husband's rank in the club and avoid another pregnancy, Sara had given up. She would be taken by whatever man happened to reach her first. My forty-two-year-old friend was sure to have child number seven, none of them her husband's.
As I reached the woodline, I thought of how cruel 'The Club' was to make us play this game. If the husband catches a wife, he gets to fuck her all week long and advances his position in the 'The Club' by one rank. If the wife escapes, she also advances her husband's position in 'The Club' by one rank. But if she doesn't escape, she is almost certain to have her captor's child with all the fertility drugs they pump into both the men and women in preparation for the race.
I refocused on my goal as I got to the wood line. I already knew the land's layout from Google Maps photos. There was a small river I planned to cross, then lose any pursuer by traveling across the rocky ground to hide my path.
BOOM... the second gun sounded; the men were now running to try and catch us. I increased my speed through the woods. At the age of forty-one, I'd given my husband four wonderful children that were his, and I was so proud of that, but I'd also given him three wonderful children that weren't his, and despite my love for all my children, I didn't want my husband to be a cuckold a fourth time. So, I kept running, looking back only once to see six emergency flairs shoot into the sky, each one signaling a man having captured and already fucked his prize at the starting line. One of those flairs was for Sara.
Ten minutes after the men's gun sounded, I reached the river I sought. Carefully stepping over the rocks, I kept my feet dry, so I wouldn't leave any watermarks on the other side. Right as I finished crossing, in the distance I heard the first shrieks of women being captured. Some of the faster men had already caught up to the slower wives, and I knew their marriage vows would be again broken in only a matter of moments.
Putting out of my mind the women I left behind, I saw Tiffany, a twenty-three-year-old slender Latina newlywed, following me across the river. I'd met her at the Newcomers Gala over the summer. She was clearly deeply in love with her husband and would do anything to advance his career. So they joined the club.
"Tiffany, don't get wet. You'll let them spot our tacks," I cautioned her as she started across the river. I didn't wait for a response as I started running across the rocky ground to put as much distance as possible from the crossing point before any of the men were there to see it.
It didn't take long for Tiffany to catch me. She was a track athlete in college and much faster than I was. Instead of doing the smart thing and running ahead of me, she stuck by me for comfort as more red flairs shot into the sky behind us.
It was only another ten minutes before I made her pay for that mistake. As we were about to reach the area of the rocks I had planned to turn off and head back into the woods, I heard a voice shout, "I SEE YOU!"
Turning to look at the noise, I saw Ronald, a six-foot-five former professional tennis player, running across on the other side of the river. I grabbed Tiffany by the hand and shouted, "This way!" pulling her up the hill we were running along.
Tiffany followed my lead as I frantically led us away from Ronald, who we heard jump into the water to cross over and get to us. We reached the tree line at the same time we heard Ronald come up onto the near side bank when I finally saw my escape route.
Leading Tiffany down a small game trail, I took an extra-long stride, stepping over a ditch I could tell was hidden by the fallen leaves. I knew Tiffany wouldn't see it. I let go of the newlywed's hand at the same time her foot got caught in the ditch, instantly spraining her ankle and causing her to fall to the ground.
With both hands available, I ran as fast as I could away from the young woman crying out for help and took a twisted sense of joy when I heard her scream as Ronald pounced on top of her, knowing his child was going to be in her womb by tonight.
I kept my flat-out sprint up for another minute before settling down to a slow jog as I thought of my next move. Not sensing anyone was chasing me, I slowed my jog and started running, circling and doubling back to throw off any potential trackers. It was only five or six minutes after using Tiffany as a sacrifice that I saw Ronald's flair shoot into the sky, signaling that Tiffany was bred and letting 'The Club' know he was ready for pickup.
With only ten minutes left on the clock, I found a tucked-away ditch to hide in to wait out the clock. It only took three minutes to regret my decision. With seven minutes on the clock, I heard footsteps approaching me, maybe a hundred yards away. The man was jogging slowly but clearly able to follow my tracks in the woods.
I readied myself to run again, not wanting to move too soon. I hoped I had laid a confusing enough path to buy me the rest of the time I needed. So I listened to the man jog in a circle repeatedly, coming closer to me each time.
