The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mark shook his head as he watched the four Security Detail trucks drive single file into the Haunted Forest. He wanted to see what was about to happen. Part of him wanted to know that the good guys were winning the battle. Another part of him—a part that did not make him proud—wanted desperately to see some of the Haunted Forest’s denizens in action. Seeing a creature, marking its height, probable weight, and body structure and listing large conjectures on what it might be capable of doing, that was all good and well, but to actually have visual documentation of the damned things in action… that he wanted to see.

Not that he’d get to. Along with the complete communication failure, none of the cameras in the Haunted Forest were working. It was as if the equipment, trams, and people inside had simply ceased to exist.

The trucks would have to stay near the tram track, since that was the only area cleared out enough for a vehicle to drive through. Hopefully the tourists were just sitting patiently in their trams, awaiting assistance.

“Absolutely bizarre, isn’t it?” asked Steve, who Mark hadn’t even realized was standing behind him. “How the hell did something take out power to the entire line of cameras?”

“Should’ve been impossible,” said Mark, turning around to face the man who, until Booth returned, was responsible for the whole operation and did not look happy about it. “They’re on different feed lines.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, near as we can figure, either we had a catastrophic computer failure, which we didn’t, or something out there destroyed a lot of cameras all at once.”

“There’s over a hundred camera feeds out there. There’s no way one thing could have done that.”

Steve looked him in the eyes and nodded again. “I know. That means it was a lot of things working together.”

Working together? In all of the time since Mark had taken the job and started observing and making notes on the different creatures in the Haunted Forest, he’d never run across a case where any of the different creatures out in the woods worked in unison. Well, okay, there were packs of gigglers working together, because that was how they hunted, but none of the creatures he’d ever seen in the woods worked with other life forms to do anything.

“That’s crazy,” said Hannah. She’d been standing there the whole time, and not once had Mark thought about her breasts. This was a bad, bad situation.

Steve shook his head. “No, that’s scary.”

Several of the people at the windows let out a unified gasp, and Mark, Hannah, and Steve all turned as one and moved over to see what was happening.

The entrance to the Haunted Forest was monitored constantly by the now-defunct cameras, but it was also easily seen from the control center. The heavy armored bay windows—the entire facility was built to withstand unexpected visits, even though nothing had ever visited—showed a clear view of the forest and both the entrance for the tram cars and the exit a hundred yards away. Aside from the rails that ran into the woods and the carousels where the trams were stored and turned to be sent back into the forest, there was nothing to see on most days but the almost impenetrable wall of trees that stood taller than should have been possible.

Fifty feet into the thick woods, the tracks vanished into shadows. Beyond that, they’d always depended on the cameras.

Something was different this time. There were flickers of light coming from the depths of the forest. They couldn’t hear anything, because the heavy windows were virtually soundproof, but they could see the flashes of activity that made it quite obvious that the security team in their armored vehicles had encountered something already.

Mark pressed himself up against the window and blocked out the lights behind him with his hands, the better to make out the details of what might be going on down there. Hannah did the same thing next to him, her body pressing against his as the crush of people increased.

Something enormous came into view a moment later.

Mark couldn’t see the creature clearly, but it was, what, fifteen feet tall? It looked like it weighed as much as one of the trams. It was the biggest thing Mark had ever seen inside the Haunted Forest… and it looked like it was coming out.

Nothing anywhere close to this big had ever been seen this close to the edge of the forest. Even the smaller creatures never actually came out of the forest. Not ever.

More flashes of light and the creature backed up, its impossibly large mouth open in a wide scream of rage. Then it stepped forward and lashed out at the source of the light. Bright, tacky outfits or no, the security guard was barely visible in the heavy darkness. Only the flash from his weapon’s muzzle gave him away.

A half-mile worth of open dirt and sand separated the forest from the offices; a tempered piece of nearly indestructible translucent acrylic almost a full foot thick was an added barrier. Mark would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he heard the soldier scream when the creature tore him limb from limb. But consciously, he knew that the only thing he heard as the soldier’s blood painted the monster was the sound of people around him squealing in panic. Not that he could exactly blame them, as he was seriously considering a good solid shriekfest of his own.

The creature walked closer, and Mark finally got a good look. He recognized it immediately: an ogre. But an ogre that was a hell of a lot bigger than the one he’d sliced up on his autopsy table.

This was bad.

It got worse when the second ogre came into view. And then the third. And the fourth.

The security detail had armor and weapons. The ogres had their own bodies and their teeth. Mark hoped it would be an unfair fight, advantage going to technology over nature, but there was so much pure rage on the hideous faces of the ogres that they looked like they might take a direct missile hit and keep coming just out of malice.

The security team was good. And they should have been well prepared. But it seemed like for every bullet that landed, another soldier got pounded into the ground. One ogre fell. The other three—that he could see—remained standing and angry.

Several people staring out the window moved away to be sick. For every person that left, someone else was more than willing to come over to get a better view of the carnage. Mark didn’t move. Part of him wanted to, but the professional cryptozoologist in him refused to budge. Hannah was the same way. His inner chauvinist felt the need to protect the pretty girl from the horrors they were watching, but he managed to control the impulses to gently usher her away.

At least fifteen soldiers came running out of the forest, hauling ass with all of their energy, and Mark followed them with his eyes until he saw why they were moving so fast. Two additional ogres hurled one of their trucks after them. The truck was on fire, and barely recognizable as an American-made automobile.

The flaming truck bounced awkwardly and then rolled after the soldiers, who scattered before it could finally land. Not that it did them much good, because the gas tank exploded on impact and sent a fireball and debris sailing everywhere. Mark couldn’t tell who was merely stunned by the impact and who actually took shrapnel.

And then the ogres emerged from the forest in hot pursuit.

Mark’s stomach felt like it had become one giant ulcer. Was it just these particular creatures that were defying four years of “no creatures leave the forest” tradition, or were the camera and communication problems related to some sort of horrifying free-for-all?

More people moved away from the window as the ogres got serious about their carnage. Mark kept watching, wondering how many of the tourists had suffered the same fate. He had no doubt that he would be looking for a new job in the very near future, because all the insurance in the world wouldn’t save the company when the lawsuits started coming in.

He made a mental note to start copying all of his files and smuggling them home. Somebody should have all of the information that the courts would probably demand be locked away or handed over to national security for the purpose of wiping out the forest. Also, he’d been meaning to write a few articles for a while now, and if the company couldn’t defend itself from the lawsuits, he’d need all the money he could get. The Weekly World News would pay a fortune, he was sure.

“Jesus, those bastards from CNN are recording all of this.” Steve’s voice was asthmatically weak.

“Oh yeah, we’re boned.” Hannah had suddenly developed a tendency for stating the obvious.

Mark looked out the window.

“Why the hell are some of those reporters still out on the field? Get them out of there!” He couldn’t believe how stupid some people were.

Steve laughed bitterly. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“No, seriously, Steve. How much more added litigation can we handle?”

“Shit.” Their acting-boss jumped toward the closest phone, but it was already too late. A cameraman below was actually walking toward a pair of the ogres. The results were exactly what Mark expected, and when they were done wishboning the bravest little moron on the planet, two of the ogres charged the remaining news people.

Fortunately, not all of the security team had headed into the forest. There were still a few posted discretely in bunkers around the perimeter. Mark had to give H.F. Enterprises credit. They’d understood just how bad it could get if anything from the woods ever came out to investigate. The cement and steel bunkers were never without at least a few heavily armed guards. The combination of firepower from the bunker guards and the remaining security team members on the field felled the two ogres before they could reach the news crews, though it was close enough that the second ogre nearly fell on top of them.

The reporters were apparently not suicidal. They ran like hell for the safety of the building. They made it. One more ogre died in a hailstorm of literally hundreds of bullets, but the rest proved that they had some survival instincts and took off for the forest.

Down below, he could see the reporters enter the building, or at least reach the overhang that stopped him from seeing the front doors. For all he knew they were locked out and the people inside were making faces from the other side of the glass.

Hannah tapped Mark on the arm and leaned in close, so that no one else could hear her. “So,” her voice was as soft as a lover’s first tentative caress, “when are we going to duplicate all of the files? And where are we going to hide them?”

Mark gave her a grim smile. “I think there might be time right now, actually.” Neither of them planned on doing anything with the files as long as H.F. Enterprises was in business, but if it went under, that was a different story. There’s a difference between loyalty and stupidity.

Besides, someone needed to know what they’d been doing, needed to understand the wealth of information they’d accrued. Also, it was about the best hope either of them had for getting another job that paid as well.

Mark and Hannah looked at each other and headed for their offices. They’d made it out of the control room before the first tremors shook the building. The vibrations weren’t epic, but they could be felt. The ground beneath their feet shivered slightly and every window in the building rattled. Being much stronger than the average panes of glass, none of the windows broke, but the rattling noise was enough to catch everyone’s attention.

Hannah looked his way with wide eyes and shook her head. “What now?”

“I’m not sure I want to know.” It took a hell of a lot more than a gentle breeze to rattle this building. The foundation was made with four feet of solid concrete and extra layers of rebar, just in case any new trees ever tried to sprout.

The miniature earthquake stopped for the moment and both of them moved faster, heading for their shared office. They had to get this done as quickly as they could. If something was coming that could damage the building they needed to have all of the data and be on their way to whatever safety they could find.

Neither of them said what was on their minds, which was that anything down there big enough to cause a tremor in this very well-fortified building was larger than anything they’d ever encountered.

There was no time to lose if they wanted to get their research to safety, because even the backed-up information was kept in the facility. No data ever left H.F. Enterprises. And if the threat was as serious as they suspected, there would be no second chances to get what they needed and get the hell out of Dodge.