"Where in the hell is he?!" remarked Alden. It was now late in the afternoon. Several hours had passed since Alden and Stephen were attacked by four trackers. The three trackers who tangled with Alden had fled, but Stephen and the other one were still missing. About ten people from the cross country team had formed a search party. They combed the woods, looking under rocks, up skirts, but with no luck.
"How long has it been since you lost him?" asked Mr. Einboden, the leader of the search party, with arms crossed. "If he's hurt, then it will be my ass that gets sued. I can barely afford Gatorade awards, a law suit would ruin me!"
"Should we call some kind of proffesional search party?" asked Joe. "If I lost Stephen...I-I-would..." Joe trailed off as he collasped into Mr. Einboden's arms sobbing.
"Pull yourself together man," said Mr. Einboden. "He can't be to far from here..."
"I'm right behind you!" called a voice from behind. They reeled around to see Stephen climbing clumsily over the edge of the gorge. Stephen seemed to be unhurt, but he would say very little about what he had seen or done.
"What happened to that other tracker?" asked Alden.
"Oh, he ah, ran away," said Stephen while quickly glancing over his shoulder as if some one were watching him. "Say, you know what? I'm really thirsty. Let's go get a drink." Thus the search party disbanded and all seemed well...for the moment.
The next day at lunch, the comrades quickly filled up the table. There was a heated Star Wars debate between Joe, Alden, and Bill. Alden and Bill were trying to get the point across that Chewbaka would make his first apperance in Episode II, but Joe disagreed strongly. In a fit of rage, Alden slammed his fist on the table and stormed out of the cafetirea. Bill followed close behind. Joe looked aways down and across the table and saw Stephen silently folding a sheet of aluminum foil. Joe slid down on the bench until he was directly across from Steve.
"Hey Stephen buddy," began Joe. "Tell me, what did you see yesterday in the woods? You seemed pretty secretive about it."
Stephen looked around to make sure no one was eaves dropping and then whispered: "I saw him. No, I met him, talked to him."
"Who?!" asked Joe, some what annoyed.
"The Hermit."
"Kermit?! Kermit the Frog?"
"No, the Hermit."
"You meen the phsychotic cannibal?"
"Actually he's pretty nice. He lives in this homely little cave down in that wooded gorge. The bad thing is he neglects to clean up his little 'messes'...doh!" said Stephen as he slapped his forehead. "I've said to much. I promised him I wouldn't tell any one where he lives."
"Will you take me there after practice?" asked Joe eagerly.
"Okay," replied Stephen.
That day the cross country team had to do some repetively laborious 320s in the Lacrosse Field. Once Stephen finally completed his last lap, the whole team was finished. After a quick five minute cooldown, the team formed a semi-circle on the grass to do stretches. Joe, who was leading the stretches, did them very half-fastly so as to get them over with as soon as possible.
"Alright, which way to this cave you saw?" asked Joe to Stephen after every one else had gone inside for water.
"Follow me," whispered Stephen.
"What are you guys whispering about?" called a voice from above. Joe and Steve strained there necks to see Aaron perched in The Tree above them. He quickly scurried down and stood before them.
"Follow me," whispered Stephen for the second time. The three walked around the corner of Paschal, headed towards the parking lot. It was there that they found Alden sitting down cast on the hood of his car.
"What's the matter?" asked Joe.
"I locked my keys inside the car," said Alden. "Where are you guys going?"
"Follow me," whispered Stephen for the third time. The four comrades walked through the girl's soccer field and entered the gap in the fence. But instead of turning right on the path, Stephen made a sharp left turn down into the thickly wooded gorge. They stumbled down the sheer hillside, scratching and gashing themselves on thorns and sharp sticks. At last they reached the bottom.
"I think it's right over..." began Stephen.
"Get aloud of all this crap!" interupted Joe. He had already discovered the junk yard that covered hillside they had just climed down, but further to the right. The other three followed Joe's lead and started rumaging through the ruinous junk yard. They set themselves to gathering thrown away school chairs, lacrosse balls, glass bottles, bathtubs, sewage pipes, and much more. They had completely forgotten about the search for the hermit.
"I can pick off any one of you from this range," said a strange voice from behind and above. The four comrades spun around and looked up to see a midget man perched up in a tree. He already had an arrow notched on a bowstring. He aimed his arrow at each of them in turn.
"Pippin!" exclaimed Stephen in a shaky voice. "I've brought some of my friends."
"You promised not to bring anyone here," said the midget sternly. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fill you up like a pin cushion?"
"My mom will sue your ass!" said Aaron.
"Wait a minute," said the midget. "I know you. You're Aaron... Wither...Aaron Wither...fork?"
"Spoon," corrected Aaron.
"Well answer me this," said the midget to everyone. "Are you friends or foes of those tracker bastards that tresspass in my woods."
"Foe!" said Joe.
"Why didn't you say so?!" said the midget in sudden friendliness as he hopped out of the tree. "I've been a horrible host, haven't I? Come, it is hot out here. Would you like to go to my cave for tea and crumpets?"
"What are crumpets?" asked Alden.
"You'll find out more than you want to know," said the midget.
He led the four comrades up a narrow ravine until they came to a shallow cave cut into the hillside, opposite of the one they had come down. On the back wall of the cave was a small round wooden door. The midget walked right in but the other four had to squeez head-first through the door like a baby coming out of a womb. It was surprisinly cool inside once they entered. They were in a small dark furrow with earthen walls. Across the middle of the floor flowed a small stream that emptied out under the threshold of the door. The only light was that which came from the embers of a small clay fire place against the wall. In a corner there was a small bed of dried grass and animal skins. Next to that was a smelly chamber pot.
The four runners sat down on the rocky floor as the midget removed a kettle from the fire place and poured four cups of an odd smelling tea. He then rummaged through a box and produced a tray of homemade crumpets.
"Now, let me tell you my tale of woe," said the midget as the four dug into there tea and crumpets. "I am the hermit, the strange boy who dissappered two years ago. All those rumors you've heard about me are true."
"Even the cannibalism?" asked Alden.
"Indeed," replied the hermit with a grin. "But I'm not hungry at the moment. I call myself Pippin, because of my hobbit like size. But my real name was David Raley."
"I remember him!" exclaimed Aaron. "The guy who espired to be a monk. But he was taller and thinner than you. What are you, some kind of mutant?"
"Thus we come to the next part of my story," said Pippin. "Almost two years ago, on a cold October day, I, as David Raley fell into Breton Bay. I was badly shocked at the freezing water. I tried to swim but my clothes weighed me down. I could tell that there was some other element in the water, that harshly stung my skin.
"I eventually washed up on shore a ways down from the pier. I layed there for what seemed like hours in a cold, painful agony. When I finally gathered enough stregnth to get up, I noticed several large canisters lying 'round me. Each of these were lidless and leeking out a green ooze into the bay. The canisters bore nuclear power plant insignia. Some bastardly plant had dumped its wastes right on the shores of Breton Bay."
"I never heard of any nuclear waste spill around here," said Alden suspiciously.
"Whoever did it did a good job of covering it up," said Joe.
"Back to my story," continued Pippin. "After gathering some stregnth, I started crawling at a snails pace. All that night I crawled until I was out of the woods. Brother Lloyd found me the next morning, lying on his doorstep. He took me inside and tried to help me, but when I looked in a mirror and saw the mutation that had come over me, I fled. The waste had shrunken me to about three and a half feet. A strange thick fur had grown from the tops of my feet. I soon realized that my senses of hearing and vision were greatly increased. Stranger yet was that I seemed to be able to communicate with birds.
"Once I found this cave, I burrowed into it. For the last two years its been my home. At first I was lonely, but now I have plenty of birds as friends. If I ever tried to live in society again, I would be a circus freak."
"Remarkable," said Alden. "But why are you so wary of tresspassers?"
"I don't mind the runners too much. It's those damn trackers that come into my woods," said Pippin. "If they dropped there cigaretts, they could burn down my whole woods. None have ever come into the gorge, until recently. I slew him with an arrow. Stephen can tell you more about that."
"You don't seem very religious," said Aaron.
"Screw religion!" exclaimed Pippin. "Out here it's Survival of the Fittest. There's no time for all those well meaning rules that never work out in real life.
"It's gettin late," said Joe. "Maybe we should go."
"It was nice talking to all of you," said Pippin as the four runners got up. "Comeback soon, but don't tell any one else about me."
But as Aaron, Alden, Stephen, and Joe scaled up the cave side of the gorge towards the track, a lone tracker spy watched them leave the cave from his look out post behind the chain link fence. "Now that would be a nice place for an orgy," the tracker chuckled to himself.
The next day at lunch, Aaron told the whole table about the hermit. Rick and Edward were the most interested, for they had know David, or "Pippin" well in eighth grade. After cross country practice, Aaron, Joe, Alden, Stephen, Edward, and Rick skipped practice to see the hermit. To be more secretive, they chose the path entrance behind the tenis courts. They walked down the trail for a number of yards and then turned right and followed the great crack. They rounded a sharp turn in the crack and stopped: lying face- downward in the dried up stream bed was the body of Pippin.
"Pippin!" exclaimed Aaron as he knelt down by Pippin's side. "Are you alive?!"
For a moment it seemed that Pippin was surely dead. But then he lifted his head up and groaned. He bore many harsh bruises. "Too many of them," he mumbled meekly.
"Too many what?" asked Alden.
"The trackers!" said Pippin with an effort. "Must have been twenty of 'em. They came to my cave and kicked the shit out of me. I ran away but I didn't have the energy to make it past here."
"Where are they?" asked Rick. "I'll settle their hashes."
"We can't let them treat our little comrade like that," said Alden. "But he said there were a lot of them, more than us."
"But we've got better lungs," said Joe.
"Avenge me!" said Pippin jumping up to his feet. "I will summon what help I can. You know the way, after them!" With these words the six took off running towards the cave. Pippin dissaperead into the woods with a look of determination.
The six were charging madly towards the cave, ready to fight, when they came into view of the trackers: Pippin had underestimated; there were close to forty trackers from many different schools, in the gorge around the cave. The reek of all kinds of smokes was inpenitrible. Wild people were hanging from trees, stripping, having drinking bowts, downing huge kegs of beer, and all other sorts of madness. Several tracker prostitues were in Pippin's Furrow, allowing five minutes for each customer. The whole group stopped what they were doing and looked at the six coldly. One of the large males stepped forward.
"What the hell do you want?" he asked crassly. "If you wana narc us out, we'sa gonna get medival on yo ass."
The six blushed terribly with embarassment, awkwardness, and fear. "You hurt a friend of ours," said Alden.
"I know that scrub!" said one of the trackers looking at Alden. "He jumped me the other day in tha woods."
The trackers surrounded the six comrades who stood back to back. Quite a few of them heedlessly dropped their cigaretts on the dry brush. The trackers stood silent for several moments. "Die!" screamed the large male as all 40 some trackers lunged forward.
Alden picked a heavy lead pipe out of the junk yard and savagely whacked the trackers with it. Aaron tried to do some amauter karate manuevers. Edward and Rick pulled some fancy wrestling moves while Stephen hurled his body at the trackers. Joe fought by violently pinching the tracker's buttoxes and pulling hair.
The comrades were valiant, but whenever a tracker fell, many more replaced him. Five trackers jumped on Alden and dragged him to the ground. A large male tracker came at Joe from behind and raped him. Stephen dove at a tracker who dodged aside, allowing Stephen to fly head first into a tree. A tracker wench distracted Edward by flashing him, and then finished Ed off by kicking him in the nads. Rick was defeated by a tracker who punched him in his schnoze with brass knuckles. A tracker was about to stab Aaron with a switch blade when an arrow whizzed by and found its target through the tracker's cheeks.
Aaron looked up to see Pippin standing triumphantly on the roof of the cave. He seemed to be unaware of a small fire blazing behind him. Pippin put a great horn to his lips and blew into it. It let out a thunderous wail that echoed far and wide. The trackers stood aghast for a moment and then resumed beating up the comrades.
"I would take cover if I were you, Aaron," said Pippin as he blew into the horn again. Aaron looked up into the sky and saw that huge black clouds were floating towards the Ryken campus. As the clouds drew nearer, Aaron saw that they weren't clouds at all, rather flocks of millions of birds. Aaron quickly ran towards the cave as the trackers looked up in terror at the birds descending upon them.
Pippin stood fearless on the caves roof, repeatively blowing the horn as the birds swirled about him. "Attack!!!" he screamed. Swallows, crows, hawks, sparrows, an eagle or two, turkey buzzards, finches, sea gulls; birds of all shapes and sizes attacked the trackers with indeafinent squaking. The birds pecked at eyes with there beaks, scratched faces with talons, bombed feices, and worse. The only thing that saved the five beaten up comrades was lying still on the ground.
After a several minutes, few trackers had any skin left. Pippin blew the horn again, a different note, and the birds suddenly quit there pecking and flocked quickly away. Only eight trackers remained alive, and they were badly maimed. Pippin let out an animal like cry and charged down the hill towards them brandishing a stick.
"The Bird Lord dude is coming after us!" screamed a tracker as he and the others got up and ran away. But as they were passing the junk yard, a huge tree above the cave that was completely aflame tumbled over forming a bridge across the gorge. It landed on the junk yard, sparking a huge avalanche. The eight remaining trackers froze in horror as the entire junk yard tumbled towards them. The trackers were crushed beneath several tons of scrap metal with a great crash.
At this noise Stephen got up and looked about him. "Pippin!" he screamed. "The woods is on fire!"
"What?!" said Pippin as he turned around. "Nooooooo!!!" he screamed in terror. The entire cave side of the gorge was burning. Atthis sight Pippin fainted.
The fire and police departments arrived shortly. The forest fire had spread until all of the gorge was scorched. Fire trucks lined up along the woods as planes flew over spraying water. It was the most commotion Ryken had ever seen. Pippin and the six comrades sat out infront of Paschal avoiding all the commotion.
"So, what are you gonna do now, Pippin...or should I say David?" asked Aaron.
"How about DR?" said the hermit.
"Are you going to go back to your parents?" asked Rick.
"No," said DR. "It has been to long. I couldn't face them."
"Your woods is destroyed," said Joe. "Where are you going to go? Join the circus?"
"It's time I did some repenting," said DR. "I'm going to do what I was originally planning on doing."
"What's that?" asked Alden.
"I'm going to be a monk!" proclaimed the hermit.
THE
END
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