The two of them came to the west side of the racquetball courts, because the screams sounded a bit louder over there. They were nearly at the edge of the school grounds now, a fact that made Christine a bit antsy. She had her cell phone out and was mulling over whom she might dial. But she decided instead to investigate further and put the cell phone back in her pocket.
There was a sizable gap between the west edge of the racquetball courts and the chain-link fence bounding the school. The fence itself was hidden from view by a line of tall bushes, as was the arroyo that lay just beyond the fence, outside the school boundary. Anything might be going on out there unseen, beyond the fence.
Alan and Christine made it close enough to the fence to look to the south, all the way down the corridor alongside the racquetball courts, almost to the southwest corner of the school property. They expected to see just a twelve-foot-wide access corridor for maintenance and emergency vehicles, with a shed for grounds maintenance equipment at the far end and a tall, bushy thuja tree (also known as arborvita) along the fence near the shed.
They both stopped and stared in shock. There, beyond the tree, stood an enormous man with a beard. He was raising his fist up high and then swinging it down, although they couldn't tell who or what he was hitting, since he was at the other end of the corridor and whatever he was doing was mostly hidden by the tree.
The other thing they noticed immediately was that the sound of female screaming, which had become much louder once they'd passed the corner of the racquetball courts, was coming from near the man. The obvious conclusion was that the man was assaulting some woman.
This seemed so obvious that neither Alan nor Christine felt the need to point it out to the other. They both realized that the man was a stranger: not only did they not recognize him, but he didn't even look to be of high school age. Even though he was a good ways off, they could tell that he was big, as big as their football team's linemen, maybe bigger, and his thick black beard showed that he wasn't anyone from their school, since no-one there, staff or student, had a beard like that.
They guessed that he had climbed over the fence to enter the school grounds, perhaps found a high school girl wandering around, and then dragged her to just about the most remote spot in the school to rape her.
Neither Alan nor Christine considered that this might have anything to do with the football players; they assumed that they'd just happened to stumble across what was obviously an extremely serious situation. It was clear that they had no time to waste - every second counted for the poor girl.
The giant was only pretending to beat a woman, knowing that the bushes would conceal from Alan and Christine that he was just striking air. His name was Aaron, and he was Ryan's ace in the hole: a teenager who attended Rock's new high school, but was freakishly large for a high school student. He was six feet six and 300 pounds, with a full beard, all of which made him look much older. He was also a bully and known to take money in order to beat people up.
Earlier that morning, when Ryan had scrambled to come up with a plot that they could pull off that same day, he liked the idea of surprising Alan during the football game the best. He knew that Rock was so keen on getting revenge on Alan that Rock would be eager to pay Aaron to guarantee their success.
The attackers' objective was simple: beat Alan to a pulp and intimidate him and Christine into silence with the threat of another, more vicious, attack on Alan if they told people what had happened. All of them but Ryan had arranged alibis so that, even if Christine and Alan did squawk, it would be their word, as known friends, against the football players and their friends. They thought the difficult part would be in arranging the ambush, with the actual fighting just requiring the trouncing of a "nerd" and a "girl."
The plan was simply to scare the bejesus out of Christine rather than actually hurt her in any way. If she were badly beaten, then she and Alan could go to the authorities and her wounds would back up their accounts; if she were uninjured, then it would be a simple case of "he said, she said," and, since it was known that she was a close friend of Alan's, her claims would hold little weight. The fact she and Alan had already cried wolf over Amy a few days earlier would make their word even more suspect.
The tree that partially hid the giant extended about five feet from the fence, not far from a maintenance equipment shed. The shed itself, which was at the extreme corner of the school property, was beyond the giant; it extended across the full width of the corridor down which they were running, and then some. The giant was somewhere between the obscuring tree and bushes and that shed, perhaps a little more distant than the end of the racquetball courts, but from where Alan and Christine were they could not see the ground near him or tell what he was doing.
Ivan and Rock were hiding behind that same tree, across from the southwest corner of the racquetball courts, close to Aaron but out of sight. Ivan had the task of watching through the bushes near the tree for Alan's approach, to cue Rock on when to have Aaron charge at Alan.
Ryan had hidden in the bushes along the fence at the other end of the corridor, behind where Alan and Christine had been standing when they'd first caught sight of Aaron, so that he could cut them off if they didn't take the bait. He waited until they had moved into the narrow corridor before starting quietly after them, staying close to the bushes to make his pursuit less obvious. He was still wearing his football pads, though not his helmet. If they decided to turn around before reaching Aaron and the others, he was there to intercept and hold them so that they couldn't escape.
Ryan's gang had emptied the shed of much of its maintenance equipment in an attempt to set up a barricade that would block the eastern exit from that area along the south wall of the courts. It wasn't much of a barricade, but it would slow down anyone who attempted to run away, permitting them to be attacked from behind.
Alan and Christine saw the giant look up at them. He grinned and straightened up, pretending to drag something.
Alan took a quick look at Christine, saw the horror in her eyes, and started to run down the corridor towards the giant. He had no idea what he could do when he got there, but he intended to do whatever he could.
Christine was also about to break into a run. There was no time to make a call on her cell phone, so she briefly turned towards the stands and screamed at the top of her lungs. She wanted to do more to alert their friends back at the game, but hoped that her scream would be better than nothing.
This was the same piercing scream that Susan and Suzanne and others heard as they were already leaving the stands to search for Alan.
Alan looked back, understood what she was trying to do with the scream, and kept running.
After her scream, she also started to run. She really didn't like the fact that Alan was in front of her, but there was nothing she could do about it now except run as fast as she could and try to pass him.
Ryan and his gang also heard the scream but misinterpreted it. They took it for a sign that Christine was scared shitless, causing them to disregard her as a factor even more than before.
Their opinions would have been a pleasant surprise to Christine, who was confident that she could stop the giant cold, and rescue the girl if she wasn't already mortally injured or dead.
[Christine Image]
Christine was a tremendous athlete. Even though Alan had gotten a head start while she had paused to scream, she soon passed to his left and kept pulling away from him.
She was very unhappy at charging headlong into danger, but felt like she had no choice since there was no way she could get Alan to slow down without risking hurting him. Besides, she thought there was an innocent girl in danger, so even a few seconds delay might make a difference in her fate.
Alan marveled at Christine as she went by. But then he returned his focus to the giant, who was looming larger and larger in his field of vision, and got a very bad feeling.
He thought, Shit! Look at that guy! He's just standing there, grinning! And he's huge! HUGE!
Alan's pulse rate and blood pressure spiked as his brain released more adrenaline. He'd been pushed around and punched at in recent weeks, but this would be his first-ever real fight. He thought he was being brave trying to help a rape victim against such a formidable giant of a man. But with Christine by his side, with her martial arts training, he figured they'd be able to at least stop the rape. His vision narrowed as he focused on the threat and turned his run into a charge.
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