Out of the Loop

Chapter Twenty-Four

“This is kind of where I come to get away, when the bookstore is too crowded or when my mother is... well, having a bad day.  I’ll take a book or my notebook out here,” Maz said so quietly Derek almost missed it.  “The best part about it is that the tourists that come to the point never find this place. I’ll bet most of the locals don’t know how to get here.”

Derek had opened his mouth to respond, but a loud voice from his right interrupted him.

“Think again, love birds.  This trail was easier to find than if an elephant had come through here.”

Maz jerked upright as Derek leapt to his feet.  Her heart rate sped up into panic mode.  The voice and the click-clack of high heels had clawed their way out of her nightmares.

“What, nothing to say?” Another, unfamiliar female voice chimed in.  

Derek looked around wildly for any way to escape without anyone being attacked again.  Anger bubbled up in his mind as an image of a beaten Maz surfaced.  That will not happen again, he thought.  

The crevice at their back was too deep to jump, and the sloped sides around them had been blocked off by immovable linebackers without either noticing.  Two girls stalked up the incline in front of them. An unstable grin plastered on Shannon’s over-tanned face was frightening, but the calculating gaze of her ebony-haired cohort sent chills across Derek’s skin.

A third figure, the hulking Shawn, dragged a small bundle into the clearing below.  It lifted its head slightly, and Maz gasped.  

The girl’s blackened eyes were nearly obscured by her shock of copper hair, but it was undeniably Kelli.  Gashes that looked suspiciously like heel marks ran up and down her arms.  A spot on her hairline was matted with blood.  Her hands and mouth were bound with duct tape, and her eyes fluttered.  

Seeing Kelli, Derek moved in front of Maz and confronted Shannon.  

“Why are you doing this?” he yelled.  “What possible reason-”

SMACK.

Derek held his ground, but Paige’s slap clearly stung.  She stepped forward, jabbing a manicured finger into his chest.  

“You three have screwed everything up.  My dear captain has been expelled because the freak and the traitor here couldn’t keep their mouths shut.”  She gestured to Maz and Kelli.  

“And you have done nothing but help them, pretty boy, including ratting Shannon to the cops.  So all of you have to be reminded exactly where you stand: Far, far below the rest of us.  Kelli here refuses to listen, but maybe you losers will be easier.”  

Shannon nodded in agreement.  “None of this would have happened if you wastes of air knew your place.”

She advanced towards Maz, but was met by Derek.

“Don’t touch her,” he growled.  If looks had any influence on the world, Shannon and Paige would have been smoking piles of ashes.

Shannon was taken aback for a moment, then threw back her head and let out a cackle.  “You two,” she snapped at a pair of burly jocks.  “Take care of him.’

The two could have been shaved gorillas, and loomed over the rest of the lackeys. They lumbered up the slope surprisingly quickly and seized Derek’s arms.  He attempted to slip out of their grasp, but they just clenched his arms harder.  Paige quickly clamped a vise-like hand around Maz’s arm and yanked her to her feet.  She dragged the hapless girl over to Shannon.  

“Okay, boys.  You know what to do,” the icy ring leader told the two holding Derek.  It was a well-rehearsed phrase, proclaimed just before many a nonconforming victim was taught a lesson.  Paige smiled at her partner in crime, eager for what would come next.  She held Maz off the ground by her hair, her hands quickly taped by a nervous-looking waterboy.  

The hulking pair slammed Derek with fists nearly the size of their victim’s head.  He crumpled to his knees, then the ground.  Feet pummeled his stomach and sides, and his head hit the ground with a sickening crack.  A trickle of crimson ran out of his mouth and dribbled onto the ground. Thing One and Thing Two stepped aside, their work finished.

“We’ll leave him,” Paige said dismissively.  “He probably won’t even remember what happened here, if he wakes up at all.”

Maz had watched the whole episode in shock, unable to look away.  Paige, at an order from Shannon, gleefully gagged her with a strip of metallic tape, and added extra around her wrists for good measure.  “Oh, quit crying, bitch.  The tape won’t stick.”

Tears had fallen out of Maz’s eyes without her even registering them as she continued to stare, devastated, at Derek.  He hadn’t moved at all, although his chest rose and fell slightly every few seconds.  

Kelli had watched the whole spectacle with a blank stare.  Inside her head, however, her mind was churning.  What the hell is wrong with Shannon??  She’s gone off the deep end!  She watched her former captain give orders to her minions.  Her gait was slightly unsteady, maybe due to her heels.  However, her crystal blue eyes, when trained on Kelli or her other prey, were what betrayed her unstable nature.  They were almost too wide, and jumped around the clearing erratically.  A half-smile constantly jumped on and off her face, a mad game of hopscotch.

“All right, let’s go,” Paige barked.  She waved to two goons.  As they approached with pillowcases, Kelli had a thought.  Shannon is obviously insane.  It’s Paige that’s behind all this.  Shannon is just a tool to her, easily manipulated because she’s absolutely bonkers!  The last pieces clicked into place as the pillowcases were roughly shoved over the girls’ heads.  A sickly-sweet smell ushered them into darkness.