Nervous Scramble

Nervous Scramble

*****

For a moment, they all stood there watching Zack and Brandon run off to the forest while a far-off boat seemed to head towards them over the lake. “Um, guys,” Gavin said nervously, “Maybe we should tie up the guys in there and take their guns?”

“Oh Shit! He’s right!” Peter says, his eyes opening wide as he realized that their would-be kidnappers might already be recovering and going for their guns. He was afraid it might already be too late as he rushed back inside carrying a rake. Trent ran after him, and Gavin followed a little behind them as the girls cried out, some worried for the boys, others, terrified of the idea of falling back into their captors' hands.

Gavin was still a bit nervous, almost fearful, of following Peter and Trent, but he also didn’t want to let them down. Rushing down the hallway, he watched Peter and Tent once again enter the bedroom and heard more than one dull metal thud followed by a painful grunt. As he reaches the doorway, a groan of pain catches his attention. Glancing the other way, he saw Kurt lying on the floor, grabbing his leg as blood flowed through his fingers.

“You fucking piece of shit!” Kurt half-groans, half-growls at a scared, pale-faced Tommy.

“I’m Sorry! I’m Sorry!” Tommy blathered again and again. He seemed torn between reaching out to help Kurt and keeping his distance and not getting banged with the rake again.

“You shot me!” Kurt accused the scared teenager who still held the gun in his hands. “Give me that gun so I can shoot you!”

“I… I didn’t mean to shoot!” Tommy stammered as he looked down at he gun in his trembling hands.

Gavin didn’t know if what he did next was the adrenaline running through him, the fear of being a coward, the terrified look he had seen in the girls, or plain stupidity. Gavin took a quiet step forward and calmly took the gun out of Tommy’s shaky hands.

“Get some rope or zip-ties!” Peter called out from the bedroom, where he threatened someone with his shovel. “I think there are some in the tool shed!”

“I’ll get them!” Taylor said as she and Hannah ran back to the tool shed where the boys had armed themselves with rakes, shovels, and garden hoes.

Has they waited for the two girls to return, the rest crowded around the doorways watching the three boys keep their kidnappers at bay.

“What happened!” Victoria said her eyes went wide open when she saw the blood in Kurt’s hands. Victoria went to kneel next to him and almost reached out to his bloody hands before pulling back. Her heart clenched seeing the blood in his hands, not because she still loved him, she told herself, but because no matter how much he'd hurt her, she'd never wanted to see someone actually hurt.

“The fucking piece of shit shot me! That’s what happened!” Kurt winced at the burning pain in his leg.

“Get a towel and get Taylor!” Madison snapped at her friends as she took charge of the girls. Ashley ran off to get a towel from her bedroom while Vicky went to get Taylor. “Let’s go keep an eye out for Zack and Chloe!” she said looking at Meagan as the two ran to door and stared at where Zack, Chloe and Brandon had chased after their attackers.

Hannah and Taylor soon returned, and Hannah helped Peter and Trent tie up Tommy Licht, Arthur Cooban, Miguel Russo, and Johnathan Pierce. Once they had zip-tied the four of them, Hannah started tying them back to back with a rope.

“Where did you learn to tie those knots?” Peter asked Hannah. When he saw the mischievous glint in her eyes, he added, “Never mind! Don’t tell me. I should have guessed.”

In the master bedroom, Hannah pulls out one of Peter’s leather belts from a drawer and snaps it across his knee, making him yelp in surprise. She looked at it thoughtfully. It wasn’t a whip, but it would do. She snapped it again against another boy’s legs as she saw him flinch. “I’ve heard you’ve all been bad boys here!” she said as she saunters around them, waving the belt like a whip, belittling them with a few choice words about what it takes to be a man and have a big cock while using both Peter and Trent as examples they should live up to. “Of course, none of you will ever have wonderful cocks like these two have, no matter how manly you become from now on! But I do sincerely hope you find really big ones in prison!”

Peter eyed his ex-girlfriend with concern. He knew she could be petty sometimes, but he had never seen something so dark in her. “Hannah,” he said softly as he took a step forward.

Hannah loudly smacked the belt against her thigh, “WHAT! They deserve this and more!” she said, the anger in her voice clear as daylight. But Peter also caught the amused glint in her eye, the way she half winked at him. He understood this was all an act meant to intimidate the would-be kidnappers into submission.

He decided to play along with her. “Well,” he said, pretending to be bored, “don’t leave any marks this time. Remember what happened last time.”

“Yes, dear,” Hannah said sweetly and blew him a kiss before she went back to berating and humiliating the would-be kidnapper.

Out in the hallway, Taylor knelt next to Kurt and pulled open the first aid kit she had brought when she heard he was hurt. She cut his pants off just above the wound and started cleaning it with a bandage and antiseptic as she examined the wound.

“Is this what a guy has to do for you to take his pants off?” Kurt tries to tease Taylor, remembering how she had looked after Peter when Zack dragged him into the cabin the other day after drinking himself drunk the night before.

Taylor pretended to ignore the tease until she remembered how Chloe had come crying to her after what he had done. He hesitated for a moment before sploshing a generous amount of rubbing **** on the wound. Kurt cried out in pain as the **** burned into his wound. “OUCH!” That hurt!”

“Don’t be such a baby! The bullet just grazed your leg. It should just sting for a few days.” Taylor said dismissively as she tapped a bandage to his leg. “I thought you men were supposed to bear pain better than this.”

Kurt just gritted his teeth as Taylor splashed another generous measure of **** to disinfect and clean the area around the wound. She could have just used warm water and a clean cloth, but after what Kurt did to Chloe, well, she didn’t really care.

From the doorway overlooking the lake, Madison poked her head back into he cabin and yelled, “Hey! There’s someone coming in a boat!”

The teens gather around the doorway, their eyes straining to see who is on the boat slowly approaching the short pier that the cabin had. Peter and Trent had taken the two guns that Tommy and Shawn had been holding before. Gavin was wrapping duct tape around his sgian dubh, joining it with a broomstick to form a makeshift spear. They were all nervous but determined to protect the girls and not show any fear.

They saw three people slowly get off the boat and carefully tie it to the pier. The teens wondered if they were Shawn’s accomplices, coming to take them away to some dark hole for ransom or something worse. But as they took in the unhurried gait, they recognized that they were one man and two women, and they began to feel hope. Maybe they were some friends coming to visit or someone to rescue them.

****

In the forest, Zack, Chloe, and Brandon chased after Shawn, Dylan, Matt, and Kendra as they fled while Matt carried a kicking and screaming Heather over his shoulder. It was relatively easy for Zack to get a general idea of where they were thanks to Heather’s string of profanity.

A rustle of leaves and broken twigs let him know that someone was following. Without knowing how, he knew it was Chloe even before he saw her flying red hair. “What are you doing here!” Zack almost castigated her for following him.

“I..” Chloe almost fumbled to find the words to express herself, “I’m your mate, and I’m not leaving you!”

“Chloe! You have to go back!” Zack said angrily, pointing back at the cabin. “It’s too dangerous!”

“You can have your lover spat later!” Brandon said, coming up the trail. “Let's go get Heather!”

For a moment, Zack and Chloe locked eyes with each other, their blue eyes seemed to reflect endlessly into each other, reading their hearts as one. They didn’t even notice Brandon’s exasperated glance back at them or his voice urging them to follow him. Their blue eyes seemed to silently argue back and forth until they reached the same conclusion. With a slight nod, they both turned and raced up the trail to rescue Heather.

They soon caught up with their quarry in a clearing. There were tents, dirty laundry, and motorbikes scattered around, proof that they had been here for some time, waiting for the right moment. Shawn and Kendra were already mounted on a quad bike while Matt finished gagging a tied up Heather and hoisting her behind Dylan on his bike.

The three of them screamed out a war-cry as they charged the campsite, shovels held high like some medieval mob. Shawn quickly gunned the engine of his bike and tore off, the wheels throwing a shower of soft earth behind them while Matt did the same on his dirt bike. Dylan struggled to keep his quad straight as Heather jostled behind him till Brandon smacked him on the side of the helmet, knocking him over.

As Shawn, Kendra, and Matt sped away, the three teenagers gathered around the fallen Dylan with raised shovels. Chloe pulled the gag off of Heather and used Zack’s sgian dubh to cut the ropes. Dylan moaned on the floor as he painfully pulled his helmet off. Brandon’s blow had almost cracked it, and Dylan was now feeling a pounding headache from his concussion.

Once Chloe freed Heather, the cheerleader heiress stomped over and wound up a powerful kick into Dylan’s butt. “That’s for grabbing my ass,” she kicked him again, “That’s for scarring my friends,” she kicked him again, “that’s for being a fucking asshole,”

She wound up to kick him again, but Brandon stopped her. “Let me go! I’m going to kill the bastard!”

“That’s why you got to stop!” Brandon said, “Can’t have you going to jail. Ashley would kill me if I didn’t stop you.”

“Let me kick him in the nuts!” Heather struggled in Brandon’s arms, her arms and legs flailing and kicking in the air.

“Heather, we got him-” Chloe began saying.

“-But we have to get Shawn before he gets away!” Zack finished the sentence.

“-Heather! Stop!-”

“-We have to get-”

“-Shawn!”

Heather finally calmed down enough for Brandon to risk letting her on her feet, but he didn’t let go of her. While she had been struggling, Zack and Chloe had tied up Dylan with the same rope they had used with Heather, and Chloe now held the end of the rope like a dog leash.

Zack looked at Chloe. “Take him back with Heather! We’re going after Shawn!” Zack ordered, his voice clear, his tone firm, and this time Chloe just nodded in agreement.

Chloe and Heather started slowly walking back to the cabin with Dylan, his steps wobbly from his concussion, while Zack and Brandon got on the quad bike and started down the same game trail after Shawn.

****

“It’s Grace!” Victoria cried out when she recognized her cousin among the three people on the boat.

“Is that Bonnie?” Meagan asked, seeing the unusually tall girl who looked just like the goalie on their soccer team.

“Logan!” Victoria shouted, recognizing the man as Heather’s cousin. “We’re saved!” she shouted as she jumped for joy.