lepangolin wrote: ↑6 years ago
One of the best story i’ve ever red ! Can’t wait for the next chapter...
Thanks
Well then, I won't keep you waiting!
Part 35.
Andy moved closer to the source of the mysterious sounds, but the further he went the slower he progressed as his eagerness and curiosity began to erode into genuine fright. What had made those awful noises? It sounded like a wounded animal… or perhaps a frightful monster lurking in wait behind a tree; ready to pounce on him and devour him.
Andy stopped and listened. Somewhere ahead of him, he could hear a forlorn moaning sound… but he could not see anything in the thick foliage. Then, steeling up his nerve, he pretended he was Will Robinson. Will Robinson wasn’t afraid of anything, and neither was he…
A frightened bird suddenly made a loud squawking noise, sprang out of a bush and flew less than two feet in front of Andy’s face. Startled, Andy aimed his phaser and fired.
“EEEEYAAAHHHHH!” the horrible sound came from just beyond the bushes dead ahead of him.
“Eeeeyyyiiiiieeeeeeee!” screamed Andy, who dropped his phaser, turned tail and fled – suddenly feeling more like Doctor Zachary Smith than he did Will Robinson.
Andy might have kept right on running all the way back to the house if he hadn’t tripped over a tree root before he ran twenty feet. He fell over in an ungainly sprawl and lay stunned (but not really hurt) for a moment; his small size and the thick underbrush he fell into combining to do nothing worse than knock the breath out of him. Then, as he strove to gather his wits and get his feet back under him to resume his headlong fright, he heard something.
“Help!” the voice cried feebly. “Please… (Moan!) Help me!”
Being very young, Andy quickly forgot his fright – at least, for the moment – and looked carefully at the direction the voice came from. Looking carefully, he could just barely make out someone standing in front of a tree at the edge of his vision. Squinting his eyes, Andy stepped forward a few paces and looked again. Was that a Vulcan in a Starfleet uniform he was looking at? Wow! Maybe he knew Mister Spock!
His fear eased when no monsters sprang out after him, and further overwhelmed by his intense curiosity, Andy hesitantly moved closer to the Vulcan… picking his phaser back up and aiming it ahead of him as he went. If this was some kind of trap being set by some Klingons (or, more likely, Romulans), he’d be ready to defend himself! His wariness was still fairly high, as the Vulcan seemed to be making no effort to meet him halfway. Why was he just standing there in front of that tree? Was he guarding something?
Andy moved closer to the Vulcan. Why, it wasn’t an adult! He was just a kid; smaller and probably younger than his cousin Will was! They didn’t let kids that young into Starfleet, did they? Maybe he was a cadet in Starfleet Academy? Naw, too young even for that!
Andy stopped about a hundred feet away and was just about to call out to the Vulcan when a squirrel abruptly skittered up a tree right behind him. “Aah!” Andy cried in sudden panic as he aimed his phaser and fired at the retreating and inoffensive creature. The squirrel was, of course, completely unfazed by the ‘phaser’.
“EEEYOOOWWWW!” screamed the Vulcan, who clearly was *not* unfazed by it!
Andy squealed and almost ran away again before seeing what made the Vulcan yell like that. However, he was so panicked that instead he simply crouched, aiming his phaser at the Vulcan, and froze. But rather than attack him, the Vulcan was writhing as if in pain – and moving as if unable to step away from the tree.
Was it an alien tree monster in disguise? Was it trying to eat the Vulcan?!
“Don’t worry! I’ll save you!” Andy declared bravely as he stood up and began blazing away at the tree monster with his phaser.
“Aaaagghhh! Nooo! Eeeyooowww! NOOO! Aaaaahhhhhhhh! QUIT IT! Neeeaarrgghh!!! Owwwww! Eeeeeeeeee! Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Eeeeeeee! Pleeeeeasssssssseeeeeee! Eeeee! STOP Eeeeeee Fiiirrrreeeeeeeing THAT THING!!! Aaahhhh!!!! STOP IT! Aaaahhhhh!” John screamed; his words almost incoherent amid his cries of pain and the fact that he couldn’t speak at all loudly without making his agony even worse.
In a panic now, Andy wasn’t listening to John’s cries anyway. Andy thought the Vulcan kid was being eaten alive and tried valiantly to subdue the tree monster. However, the tree monster seemed quite unperturbed by the would-be rescuer’s phaser barrage and simply continued trying to eat the Vulcan. Apparently very leisurely.
Seeing that the phaser wasn’t working, Andy suddenly dropped it, grabbed the largest stick he could find (and swing), and charged forward with the most bloodthirsty war cry he could manage. “EEEYAARRRHHHH!!!” With the energy and impetuosity of extreme youth, he began beating at the tree trunk as hard and as fast as he could to make it release its prey.
“OW! HEY! WATCH IT!” John cried out as a fair percentage of those whacks were actually hitting him rather than the tree trunk. “OWW! What are you doing? YEOW! Stop that! OWW! OWW! Quit hitting me, you little brat!” Though the cries were fairly loud and rather undignified for a Vulcan (even a merely teenaged one), the words were spoken barely louder than a whisper; making it difficult for Andy to understand them.
It slowly filtered into Andy’s awareness that the tree wasn’t a monster with tentacles gripping its prey but an ordinary tree, and that a set of handcuffs and leg-irons were the reason why the Vulcan teenager was unable to move very much. He stopped flailing out with the branch and instead poked at John’s bonds with it.
“What happened?” Andy asked with a tone of voice that implied mere curiosity rather than real concern. “Who left you here like that? Was it the Klingons? Or the Romulans?”
John was too busy trying to catch his breath (and get over the lingering pain from the ordeal of the last few minutes) to answer for a moment. “Yeah, it was the Romulans!” John answered hastily. “Look! Don’t use that thing over there anymore, all right?” he continued, indicating the remote with his head. “That’s not a weapon like you seem to think it is. It’s a torture device. All it does is make this collar I’m wearing zap me with electricity, okay?”
“It is? Gee, I’m sorry,” Andy apologized. “Gee, I wonder what Will was doing with it.”
At that moment, just as John was about to ask Andy to go for help, he noticed the key ring that the boy was wearing around his neck. Andy had tucked it under his shirt when he’d first taken it, and had kept it out of sight most of the time since. But his recent exertions had caused it to slip around his neck and tumble into sight over his shirt.
Changing mental gears, John suddenly said, “Look, you can help me. See that key you have around your neck? It fits this collar. Use it to take the thing off of me, will you?”
Andy was willing to try, but there was a problem. He was too short to reach the collar while John remained standing, and the lock was trapped between the tree trunk and the back of John’s neck. John was unable to kneel, squat, or sit to get the collar within Andy’s reach because of the tightness of his handcuffs and leg manacles and the ropes that still held them fastened to the tree trunk. And Andy didn’t have the keys for those.
However, John was not tied to the tree directly by his handcuffs and leg-cuffs; both of these had ropes looped around them and around the tree, and it was this that kept him trapped against the tree and unable to move. “Try untying those ropes instead,” he pleaded with Andy in a much quieter voice; which had now gotten somewhat hoarse and phlegmy. Between his numerous shocks, his outcries, and the fact that he hadn’t had much water lately, his throat was very sore and dry.
Andy tackled the job with more enthusiasm than skill. The ropes had simple knots on them but they’d been tied tightly and with considerable skill. It took Andy over half an hour to untie the two remaining ropes that bound John to the tree. Had Will not untied the rest of the ropes earlier, Andy would never have succeeded in freeing John at all.
A second later, John fell sprawling on his face with a startled outcry. His weight had been supported against the tree more by his arms and shoulder than by his increasingly numb legs for quite a long time now without his knowing it. When this support was suddenly removed, his numbed legs could not hold him up at all. With his hands still cuffed behind him and his ankles still hobbled together, he was also unable to catch himself.
“UMPH!” John exclaimed as he hit the ground and began writhing in moderate pain. Then he began to swear in a most un-Vulcan-like way.
An alarmed Andy knelt down to help John sit up. “I’ll be all right,” the older boy said in a hoarse whisper. “Here, please try taking this collar off me now. It’s that little golden key you’re wearing. I’m sure of it.”
Andy obligingly grasped the key and, after about thirty seconds of fumbling with the relatively complex lock, managed to open the collar and pull it off of John’s neck.
“Ahhhh… that feels so much better,” John exclaimed, though his voice was still hoarse and raspy. Even without a gag, he could barely talk above a whisper anymore. Even so, and even with his hands still cuffed behind him and his feet hobbled, he felt better than he had in days. Finally, he was on the verge of freedom!
Andy examined the collar with intense curiosity. “Can I keep this?” he asked suddenly.
“Be my guest!” John replied with a smile. “I never want to see that thing ever again! Don’t forget the remote. Take ‘em both and hide them where no one will ever find them again!” He was especially thinking of Will when he said that last part.
“Gee, thanks,” Andy said eagerly as he scooped up the shock collar remote with his free hand.
“Aaaaann-deee!” a woman’s voice called from far away, in the direction of Will’s house.
“Uh oh! That’s my mom!” Andy exclaimed. “I’ve got to go! See you later, Vulcan kid!” And before John could react, he was running back toward the mansion as fast as his small legs would carry him.
“Wait! WAIT!” John cried out after the retreating youngster as he strove feebly to get up. But his bonds made this difficult, and he was so weakened by hunger and thirst and from being tied so tightly for so long that he was little more able to move at the moment than he’d been before Andy untied him from the tree. “Come back!”
Andy paused and looked back for a moment, but at that precise moment came another call from the same voice. “Aaannnn-deeeee! Where ARE you?!”
“I’m sorry. I gotta go!” Andy said to John as he resumed running. “Mom wants me.”
“Tell your mom about me, will you?!” John called after him as loud as he could manage. Even though the shock collar was off now, the soreness and dryness of his throat made it difficult to talk any more loudly than the shock collar had allowed without jolting him.
“Okay!” Andy called back agreeably but without pausing in his retreat this time. He was out of sight just as another call from his mother came to John’s ears.
John moaned quietly, gathered up his waning strength, and sought to get on his feet. This was even more difficult to do while hobbled and with his hands cuffed behind him than he’d expected; he was weaker from his recent ordeal than he’d thought. But after managing to get his back up against a tree, he finally managed to painfully get himself to a standing position.
“Aaaannnn-deeee!” called the woman’s voice again.
Naturally it occurred to John that whoever Andy’s mother was, she’d probably help him the moment she saw him. Surely she wouldn’t refuse to help a boy who was handcuffed and hobbled and in obvious distress, would she? Of course not! If he could just find get to her before Will got to *him*, he’d be home free!
On somewhat wobbly legs, and impeded by the weight and limited length of the hobble, John took a tentative step toward the sound of the woman’s vice. Then another… and then another. Slowly at first, lurching along like an armless zombie or a young toddler, but gradually becoming faster and more sure-footed, John staggered along after Andy.
*****
A hundred feet away from Will, Nancy was continuing to call her wayward young son. “Annnn-deeee!” Her voice was taking an increasingly worried tone.
Will was bothered by this. It was definitely preferable to the tone his mother was taking with him at the moment however.
“You were *supposed* to keep an eye on him!” Will’s mother told her son angrily. “How could you leave him to go wandering off into the woods like that?”
“Take it easy, mom!” Will exclaimed self-defensively; wishing that his mother hadn’t seen him emerging from the woods just as she and her sister had come outside looking for him; it certainly had looked incriminating! “He can’t get *too* far! The whole area’s fenced in! So nothing can get in to hurt him, either! We’ll find him before long! He’s probably coming right now! Look, I’ll go out there myself right now and look for him, okay? Don’t worry!”
“Wait! Betty, there he is!” Nancy suddenly exclaimed to Will’s mother. Betty and Will both turned to look, and saw Nancy running toward her young son, who now appeared at the edge of the woods along the same trail Will had used to go to John earlier. He was carrying something in each hand.
Will suddenly felt himself grow cold all over when he recognized what Andy was carrying.
“Andy! Where have you been?!” his mother asked him in concern as she reached down, grabbed him by his waist, and hugged him like a teddy bear. “I was so worried.”
“What’s that he’s got?” Will’s father asked suddenly from behind Will. Will suddenly felt himself get even colder, and he began to fervently wish the ground would simply open up and swallow him alive. “That looks like the collar and remote I’ve been looking for all afternoon. And look; he even has the key for them around his neck.”
“Andy, where did you get those?” Nancy asked as she set her small son back down on his feet and looked at the strange electronic items in his hands. “What have you been doing?”
“I met a Vulcan kid out in the woods,” Andy replied eagerly. “He was being attacked by a monster tree, and I saved him! So he gave me these!”
Everyone else stared quietly at Andy. Then they exchanged puzzled glances at each other; all that is but Will - who was too scared to look anyone in the eye but simply stared blankly ahead at Andy. No one else here knew about the Starfleet uniforms he’d special-ordered online and had delivered last Saturday when his folks were already away. But surely Will’s fondness for Star Trek was too well known for his parents to not make an immediate connection between Andy’s fantastic story and him…
“Andy, what did I tell you about making up more of these wild stories?!” Nancy asked her son in a stern warning tone of voice.
“But it’s true, mom,” Andy replied heedlessly. “He wore a Starfleet uniform! The Romulans had trapped him there and…”
“ANDY!” his mom shouted, cutting him off. “I’ve heard enough! Last week, didn’t you tell me you’d met an elf who gave you a silver dollar you said you found?”
“It was a leprechaun…” Andy began in a much more subdued tone of voice.
“And the week before, wasn’t it a genie you freed from an old broken bottle who gave you that candy bar you had hidden inside your room?” Nancy continued relentlessly.
“But there really *was* a…”
“And before that, didn’t you tell me that Superman flew you to Metropolis to introduce you to Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen and Perry White and show you around the Daily Planet to explain why you wandered out of the yard?” Nancy pressed. “No, wait… that was the month before. What was it? Oh yes, it was Will Robinson wanting to show you around the Jupiter 2, and he took you to the Grand Canyon on Mars!”
Andy fell silent and bashfully scuffed the ground around his right foot with his left one. He was looking down at the ground now rather than meeting anyone’s eyes. “But there really was a Vulcan kid in a Starfleet uniform in the woods!” he insisted in a subdued voice. “I saw him! Honest, mom!”
Nancy wasn’t buying it however. She angrily plucked the remote and collar from Andy’s unresisting fingers, pulled off the key chain around Andy’s neck, and handed them all over to Will’s father. “I’m so sorry, Roy!” she said to him with quiet dignity. “I’m afraid Andy has a tendency to make up wild stories, wander off when I’m not watching his every move, and… well… to take things that don’t belong to him. I hope he hasn’t damaged anything.”
“It’s all right, Nancy,” Roy replied with an understanding voice; scarcely looking at the items he’d just spent hours diligently looking for. “I know it can’t be easy raising a nine year old all by yourself. Will there was a real handful too when he was Andy’s age. He used to be quite a mischief-maker, you’ll recall. But he’s grown out of it now and he’s becoming quite a responsible young man.”
Will looked at his father with wide eyes, to see if Roy was ribbing him; but the fond smile on his father’s face seemed genuine. Could it be that this mess wasn’t going to be the total disaster he’d been bracing himself for? He didn’t feel the remotest qualm about letting Andy take all the heat for possessing the missing shock collar, remote, and the key. All his worries were over…
But then… where was John?
“Andy will grow out of it too if you just continue to be patient with him and raise him with love like you have been,” Roy told his younger sister-in-law. “Anyway, no harm’s been done. What do you say the five of us go out to eat then? I’ll show you the lab like we planned, and then we can have a fine meal at the Chateau Briand.”
“But we’ve already arranged to have Tasha come in at six to make supper,” Betty pointed out. “It’s too late to cancel that now. There won’t be anyone here to explain…”
“That’s okay mom,” Will suddenly chimed in. “I think I’d rather stay home anyway, if that’s okay. Corey’s planning to visit me anyway, so Tasha can cook for the two of us, and we’ll save you guys the leftovers.”
“Well, okay… if you prefer, son,” Betty conceded graciously.
“Glad you found the collar and remote okay, dad,” Will told his father with a sly grin that put Roy slightly ill at ease.
“Umm… look son, about before,” Roy said quietly. “I’m sorry I thought that you had…”
“Aw, it’s fine, dad,” Will assured Roy. “I’m just glad you realize how responsible I am now,” he added with a sly grin and a wink.
Roy smiled (a trifle uncertainly perhaps) and turned to the others. “Well, now that I found what I needed, let’s take it to the lab. We still have just enough time to get it there as scheduled. Then we’ll celebrate at the Chateau Briand.” he told the others.
Roy, Betty, and Nancy walked with laughter toward the car, slowly followed by a snuffling and unhappy Andy straggling behind. “But there *was* a Vulcan,” he muttered quietly to himself.
“Hey, Andy? Will called quietly to him so that the others wouldn’t overhear. “You sure it was a Vulcan you saw?” he asked gently.
Andy nodded unhappily. “*You* believe me, don’t you Will?” he asked plaintively.
“Sure, little cousin. I believe you,” Will replied reassuringly. “So, where is he now? What was he doing when you saw him? What did he say?”
“Oh, some big old tree out back there some place,” Andy replied less unhappily now that at least someone knew he wasn’t a liar. “He was tied to a tree, but I got him loose. But he had handcuffs on his wrists and legs. He couldn’t keep up with me when mom called. Say, you’ll go look for him, won’t you? Make sure he’s all right?”
“I sure will,” Will assured his little cousin with un-doubtable sincerity. “I promise you I’ll look for your Vulcan friend the moment you leave! I won’t rest until I make sure he’s well taken of! But meanwhile, you’d better not say anything more about him to the others. They’ll only get mad! Okay? Okay, you’d better go! The others are waiting for you. Don’t give them any more reason to scold you!”
Andy smiled, hugged Will, and ran after the others, who were already inside the car. Roy started up the motor while his mother sat in the back seat, the door on his side open. “Come on, slow poke! Let’s go!” she urged him, but with a more good-natured tone of voice than before.
“Sure you don’t want to come along, Will?” Roy asked him as he prepared to back the car out into the main driveway.
“I’m sure, dad,” Will told him. “I just want to relax for a while anyway. Maybe talk a little walk in the woods.”
“All right, son,” his father replied casually as he put the car into gear. “Don’t worry about closing the gate after us. I’ll just use the car’s remote control to close it after we leave. We’ll be back sometime around eight o’clock.”
Will waved to the others as the car began to drive off, and all four waved back to him… but his mind was on someone else altogether as he turned around, faced the woods, and began walking toward them. It was time to find John and…
“Wait!” a familiar voice called out hoarsely from a considerable distance behind him.
Will turned around in alarm. John was on the far side of the lawn, considerably closer to the front gate than Will was, and running after the departing car as fast as his hobbles would allow him. “Wait! Stop!” John called out frantically. “Help meee!”
Will ran as quickly as he could toward John, but the fugitive was well ahead of him. It would take him several seconds to overtake his escaping captive. If anyone inside the car looked backward and saw John…
John had hurried toward the house as fast as he could, and tried his best to follow the same trail Andy had used. But he was not familiar with the wood trail, and had strayed onto the wrong path which ended near the main gate but took longer to traverse. By the time the driveway came into sight, the car Will’s father was driving had already gone past him. Seeing his chance for rescue passing right in front of him, John exerted himself to extreme effort; practically bounding like a kangaroo as he sought to attract the attention of the car’s occupants before they had gone out of sight.
Seated in back, Andy looked back and saw him. He waved back at John. “Look, Mom! There’s the Vulcan kid I mentioned!” he said to Nancy, grabbing her sleeve and pointing backward. “He’s following us!”
Bored, Nancy decided to humor her son and looked back.
But by the time she did, the car cleared the gate and all she saw was the wall from the other side. She saw no one.
However, Nancy merely sighed patiently and shook her head at Andy while giving him a stern look.
Being a smart child, Andy kept his mouth shut.
Seeing the car drive on without stopping almost took the heart out of John, but he kept going. The gate was wide open and only a hundred feet in front of him. He could escape through it. The departing car was totally out of sight now but - if he were lucky – he could attract the attention of a passing motorist. He could…
A surge of terror stabbed through John as he saw the gate slowly begin to slide closed. At the same time, he heard Will’s voice from somewhere behind him, shouting sternly, “John! STOP!”
Gibbering in incoherent fear, John hopped and ran as fast as he could toward the closing gate. It moved so slowly. If he could pass through it, it would close before John could reach him. It would cut off John’s pursuit. He could get away… hide… find help.
But the hobbles slowed him down so much, and he was so tired, and the gate was so far away! Seventy feet! The gate was sliding slowly but inexorably shut! It was one quarter closed. Sixty feet! Halfway closed! Fifty feet!
“John! STOP!” Will shouted from all too close behind him… and getting closer!
“Nooo!” John screamed as, with a surge of adrenaline, he recklessly surged forward as fast as he could; heedless of the possibility of self-injury.
The gate was forty feet away… thirty… it was three quarter closed. Twenty feet! Ten!
John was tackled from behind!
“NOOOO!” he screamed, and watched with horror as the gate – so close and yet so far away – slid the rest of the way along its track and reached the other end. With a loud, metallic click, it locked itself shut.
“Nooooo… nooooo… noooo,” John cried like a small child as the larger, heavier Will straddled his back, removed his own shirt, quickly wrung it with a few quick motions of his hands and arms, and gagged a still struggling John with it. John would have been no match for Will even had his arms and legs been free. Even though the situation was hopeless, he struggled valiantly anyway. Futilely, but valiantly.
“You’ve been a bad boy, John!” Will said to his captive gleefully; ignoring John’s tears as he tied the two ends of the gag tightly together at the back of John’s neck. “I’ll have to punish you for that!”
Will stood up, and contemplated dragging John by his hobbles back across the lawn. No, that might ruin the Starfleet uniform John was still wearing. Also, the smell of his now soiled diaper was starting to disgust him; dragging him might grind the stench in and ruin the outfit forever!
Shaking his head with a half-smile and a patient sigh, Will pulled the smaller boy to his feet and frog-marched him back toward the house.