It is not their choice to make

The speaker on behalf of the crowd did not respond to the priest’s offer, nor did anyone else raise his or her voice above the murmur which had broken out following the priest’s offer, the members of the crowd hesitantly beginning to discuss the merits of what the priest had offered them in ways of compensation.

The hooded figure from whom the offer had come was not interested in listening to the men and women, and so now simply turned around and began walking away, the soldiers soon following behind him.
Will was the only one of the soldiers who took a look at a distressed and shocked Druuna before chasing after the priest.
No one spoke to Druuna, not even the stocky man who stepped up and grabbed the rope dangling from her throat.

With spits and curses having been cast at the now out of sight priest and his soldiers, the crowd of armed and angered citizens set off in the opposite direction, heading back to where they had come from.
Druuna found herself being dragged along through a maze of narrowing streets, being **** to skip over trash and rubble while the throng of people squeezed itself closer.
With people crowding around her, Druuna could do nothing to stop them from pawing her body, hands grabbing her tits and ass or cupping her pussy as the stocky man strumming her along did nothing to stop it.

“Where are you taking me?” Druuna finally asked one of the people close by, the young woman having mustered enough courage to break her silence.
Druuna received no response, other than the burly man pulling the rope round her neck which such **** that the soles of her feet lifted from the ground and she stumbled forwards, her bound arms flailing behind her back as she struggled to keep her balance.

At last, the crowd reached a large opened area surrounded by concrete-faced building which all looked lived in, save for a few which had partly or completely collapsed.

The short, wide-shouldered man in front of her stopped not far from a heap of rubble and junk which reached ten feet up into the air, fingers clinched around the rope, and Druuna could hear a debate begin, the purpose of which seemed to be to determine what they were to do with her. The widowed woman to whom Druuna had been given as compensation was led into one of the nearby buildings, still sobbing softly as she disappeared from Druuna’s view.

As the men and women argued what do with Druuna, the naked young woman standing prone with the burly man holding the rope running round her neck tightly in his hand as he partook in the increasingly heated discussion, an elderly man appeared from a nearby building and approached the crowd. His appearance struck Druuna as odd, the unkempt state of his silvery beard, his heavy work boots and the khaki pants which were little more than a patchwork of multicoloured repairs clashing with his pinstriped suit jacket and the neat bowler hat on his head.

Growing silent at the arrival of the old man, the men and women watched as he made his way up the heap of junk and placed an old metal-framed lawn chair at its top.

Seating himself so that the back of his patchwork khakis made contact with the lively fabric of the chair, the old man first leered at Druuna before turning to face the gazes of the gathered crowd.
“Tell me,” the man spoke to the gathering, “what has happened.”

The respect being shown to the elderly man as he was informed of the previous proceedings made Druuna suspicions that he was the unofficial leader of this small area strengthen.

The man, who was referred to by the crowd as Hogue, listened intently to the others’ tale, from the point where John had been **** by the soldiers up to the priest’s offering of compensation, scratching the blackened nails of his right hand against a piece of leopard-print cloth which made up much of the top section of his right pant leg.

“So,” the man who had previously conversed with the priest, and who had now retold much of the previous events, asked Hogue, “what should we do with her?”

“Hmmm,” Hogue made a grin which showed off the dozen chipped teeth remaining in his mouth, now scratching his beard rather than his leg as he thought about it.

“John, as nice a fellow as he was and all that,” Hogue began, “was still pretty damn useless. He shirked from doing his bit at scrounging and he was rubbish at farming, not to mention that he didn’t even have enough man in him to get his wife pregnant.”
“Sadly,” Hogue grinned lecherously as he looked at Druuna once again, “I don’t think that this pretty little dove will fare much better at that.”

“What should we do with her?” A woman among the crowd asked Hogue, too impatient to allow him wander off in his speech.

“Simple,” Hogue leaned back in his filthy chair, “Mrs. Jones needs compensation for her lost man, and what she’s gotten ain’t of much use to her. So, one of us who would have more use of this full-bodied young slut will buy her.”

To her horror, Druuna could see that much of the crowd was now nodding their heads in agreement with what Hogue was proposing.
Her horror hadn’t subsided when just a few minutes later she found herself in the midst of the bidding for her.
Despite having been through a lot in her days, this was the first time that Druuna found herself being treated as a piece of property.