When Claudia came to again her head was pounding. The whole van seemed to shake around her as she wriggled in her bonds, trying to sit up. After a moment, she realized the van was shaking. They'd pulled off the highway and onto the rough, dirt road. Claudia could hear rocks bouncing off the underside of the vehicle, kicked up by the wheels.

While she'd been out, the other women had started to come to. The van was filled with their frightened sobs. Claudia added her to the chorus of muffled moans. Where were they being taken? Turning to the front of the van, she could see the dark shadows of closely packed trees through the front window. They seemed very frightening to the scared young woman.

After they'd been driving down the bumpy road for a few minutes, the van turned suddenly, sending the tightly bound women tumbling to one side. Claudia grunted into her gag, face flushing red as she was pressed immodestly close against one of the other, barely clad women. The captives squirmed, untangling themselves from the human pile as best they could. Meanwhile, the van suddenly drove up a ramp and came to a stop.

The doors at the rear of the van were opened, filling the dim interior with a sudden bright light. Claudia blinked as a number of indistinct figures crowded the opening. Near the rear of the van, one of the girls squealed into her gag in fright as she was picked up and pulled out of the van. Another girl was grabbed. She squirmed, helplessly, as they carried her away.

Claudia whimpered in fright as she felt gloved hands grab her tightly bound arms and legs. She was dragged to the van doors. Blinking, Claudia saw her captors were two large men and a woman. They were dressed, same as the other kidnappers she'd encounters, in black, from neck to feet.

The two men held Claudia's arms in a tight grip, while the women knelt down and, with a knife, quickly cut the rope binding the captive woman's feet together. The burly men lifted the trembling woman up as if she weighed nothing and set her down on her feet on cold concrete. Claudia staggered, struggling to stay upright. Her legs were weak after being bound for so long.

Before she had a chance to recover one of the men roughly shoved Claudia forward. The young woman squealed into her gag. She stumbled forward, trying to stay upright. A couple yards away, another kidnapper grabbed her and dragged Claudia forward. "Don't move!" He growled, shoving Claudia into line, next to one of the other captive women. With that, he turned to grab the next frightened girl stumbling out of the van. She was put into line beside Claudia.

As the men unloaded the rest of the women from the van, Claudia had a chance to look around the place she found herself in. The young woman stood in what looked like a large loading dock. The floor, walls and ceiling were all of hard, bare concrete. Floodlights lit up the space with a harsh glare. Lining one wall were a number of garage doors, shut tight. That must have been where the van came in. Several smaller doors lined the other three walls, leading off deeper into the building. There were no windows Claudia could see.

Around her were a dozen kidnappers, mostly men with a few women here and there. Four of them were busy pulling the captive women from the van and lining them up. The rest prowled around the frightened, crying captives, making sure none of them tried to run to step out of line. They were armed with short leather whips and what looked like cattle prods. Claudia flinched, whimpering into her gag as one of the men passed by, pointing the electric prod at her. She didn't want to find out what it was like to have one of those awful things used on her.

Before long, all ten captives were lined up, side by side, whimpering in fright, watching their captors nervously. Moving with speed that obviously came from experience, two of the men went down the line of women. One went behind them, quickly cutting the rope binding their hands with deft motion. Claudia felt him grab her wrists. A moment later, the pressure circling her hands suddenly slackened as the ropes fell away. She winced, invisible pinpricks of pain stabbing her hands as the circulation returned.

The second kidnappers, meanwhile, strode in front of the line of prisoners, tearing off the tape covering their mouths. "Please!" a woman, one of the richer captives, judging from designer lingerie she was wearing and the expensive jewelry she had on, pleaded, eyes filled with tears. "My husband is rich! I'm sure he'll pay you whatever you want in ranso-aaahh!" she cried out in shocked pain as the man suddenly slapped her across the face. She staggered back, less from the pain and more from the shock of being physically struck.

"Shut up, bitch!" the man growled. "We're not interested in any ransom. We'll get plenty of money selling you bitches as slaves!" He leered at the trembling woman. "Your husband will just have to find himself a new trophy wife to screw."

As he said this, a cry of horror went up along the line as the women realized the awful truth about their captors. They had been kidnapped by human traffickers! Claudia felt her stomach lurch with fear. Her mind thought back to a documentary she'd seen on TV, years ago, about the human trafficking rings; young women and girls, kidnapped by gangs of ruthless criminals, and sold into horrid lives of slavery. It had been horrible.

At the time, Claudia had comforted herself with the thought that such a terrible thing must have been rare. At the very least, it only happened in far off places. It could never happen here. It could never happen to her. Now she found herself a helpless captive in the clutches of one of those slaver groups, about to find out how wrong she'd been the hard way.  

Several women broke out in sobs. Others cried out, begging the slavers for mercy or promising huge ransoms for their release. Two of the women panicked. They turned and bolted for the doors, running for all they were worth. Claudia wondered where they were planning on going. The garage doors were shut firmly; the other doors could only lead deeper into the slaver's base. She wondered if they had any idea where they were going and weren't just running in blind panic.

Wherever they planned to go, neither of them got very far. One woman was grabbed almost immediately, before she'd made it more than a dozen yards. The other girl, by luck or skill, managed to dodge one of the guards. Turning, she bolted for one of the doors, two more slavers hard on her heels. Before she'd made it halfway, one of the men brought her down.

Kicking and screaming, the captives were dragged back into line. Punishment was swift and fierce. The guards laid into the poor women with their leather flogs, whipping their backsides until the struggling captives howled in pain. It was over in minutes, the sobbing girls were forced back into line. The rest of the women were silent, staring in shocked horror at what they'd just seen. Claudia trembled in fear, realizing the slavers could just as easily do that to her as well and there was nothing she could do to stop them.

"I hope you've all learned a lesson, ladies! That was just a friendly little warning. We can easily make it a hundred times worse!" The lead slaver called out, pacing down the line of weeping prisoners. "You're slaves now! The only things that matters from now on is that you obey! Failure to obey and any attempt at resisting or trying to escape will be severely punished. And the first order, I want all of you to strip naked! Everything off!"

As he said this, a few of the women began to protest but a glare from the slaver silenced them. Only a few seconds ago, they'd had a graphic demonstration of what happened to slaves who refused to obey. None of them wanted that horror to be visited on them. Slowly, sullenly, the captives began stripping off their underwear.

One of the slavers went down the line with a bag, collecting the women's jewelry. A few women meekly protested the confiscation of a wedding ring or a precious family heirloom, but they had no choice in the matter. Claudia meekly surrendered her earrings and necklace when he passed by her.

Glumly, Claudia unhooked her bra and let it slid off her arms. She reached down and pulled her panties down, trying her best to ignore the leering gazes of the slavers, watching the show. Her face quickly turned bright crimson with embarrassment.

Before long, all of the women stood, shivering, partly from fear, partly from the cold, trying their best to cover themselves with their hands, a futile effort. Claudia whimpered as she saw one of the slavers looking at her. She cringed in shame as his eyes ran over her naked body, a lustful look on his face.

Two of the slavers walked up to the line of captives. One was carrying a cardboard box, which proved to be filled with manacles. "Slaves, hands behind your backs!" The second man ordered. The women hurried to obey. Claudia heard him going down the line, listened to the rattle of metal shackles as each girl was secured. Then she felt gloved hands roughly grab her hands. She winced, grunting in pain as the metal rings of the cuffs suddenly dug, painfully tight into the bare skin of her wrists.

A second group of slavers followed the first. They knelt to lock a pair of leg irons on all the women. When they reached the end of the line, the slavers went back down it a second time. One group roughly forced a large rubber ballgag between each girl's teeth. Claudia struggled back the urge to wretch as the taste of rubber filled her mouth. She moaned in discomfort as the leather strap was tightened, forcing the large rubber plug deeper into her mouth. The straps cut into the sides of her mouth, forcing them back painfully.

Meanwhile, the second group of slavers went down the line with a box of collars. They slipped them around each girl's neck, locking them on with a small padlock. Claudia whimpered through her gag in fear as she felt the stiff leather pressing against her windpipe, threatening to choke the young woman. There was a jingle of metal as a long chain was run through a ring in the front of her collar. It was attached to the collars of the women on either side of her, linking them in a loose coffle.  

"Face right, slaves!" the lead guard barked. Along with the other sobbing women, Claudia shuffled, turning in place. "Forward march!" Glumly, the women at the front of the coffle began to shuffle forward. The girl in front of Claudia started walking. The chain between the two captives suddenly went taut, jerking Claudia forward.

Struggling to keep from being jerked off her feet, Claudia hurried forward, forgetting the shackles on her feet. She stumbled as the leg irons suddenly halted her stride. She had to step quickly to avoid toppling over. She wasn't the only woman to have the problem. A few of the girls tumbled, dragging the other women, bound to them at the neck by the chain, down with them. Claudia went down on one knee, as the girl in front of her tripped.

The guards had no sympathy for their captive's plight. Curses and blows rained down on the slaves, as they struggled to stand back up, despite their chains. Claudia winced as the girl in front of her was struck, her cry of pain muffled by the cruel gag in her mouth.

After a moment, the slave coffle began to move again. After a few steps, Claudia began to get a feel for moving with the leg irons on, taking short, awkward steps, shuffling along; the chain between her feet jingling loudly on the cold concrete floor.

Guided by barked orders from the guards, the new prisoners were marched across the loading dock to one of the doors. A guard walked over and opened it. Moaning in fear, Claudia and the other woman passed through the door and were led deeper into the slavers dungeon…