The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Hannah stared at her car with a wide-open mouth. Her little Subaru was currently perched between two very thick branches that creaked and swayed a good twenty feet off of the ground.

“Maybe we better take my car.” Mark started fishing for his keys.

“Oh, you think?” She shot him a withering look.

“That was a joke.”

“Excuse me if I’m not in the mood to laugh.”

Mark stared at her. He certainly couldn’t pretend that he was a completely selfless individual. But to watch people get torn apart—eaten—and then get pissy about her car was cold. Damn cold.

“I’m just thinking it might get us the hell out of here a little faster at this point,” Mark explained.

“I realize that.”

“She doesn’t appreciate the joke,” Booth said.

Mark came this close to telling Booth to mind his own business before he caught himself. H.F. Enterprises wasn’t finished yet. And he needed to be on Booth’s good side as much as possible, in case they decided to find a scapegoat during the inevitable finger-pointing in the weeks to come.

In case? Oh, there would be a scapegoat. No doubt about it. And Mark didn’t want that unlucky bastard to be him.

“Look,” he told Hannah, “if you really want to take your car we can, but I don’t think it’s gonna go well. I’m just sayin’.” Now he was just nervously babbling, stretching out a joke that wasn’t funny in the first place to an unappreciative audience. Time to shut off the mike.

God, he was a lot more freaked out than he’d realized.

He didn’t want to go to jail.

Without further comment, Mark, Hannah, and Booth headed over to his Saturn. “I’ll ride in the back,” Booth offered.

Hannah nodded, opened the passenger-side door, and got in.

“Do you think your car will be safe here?” Mark asked. “For all we know, the building might not even survive, if more trees keep popping up.”

“My limo dropped me off this morning. Very inconvenient.”

“Ah.” Mark opened his own door and got into the car. He fastened his seat belt, then realized that Booth was still standing outside, staring back at the forest.

Mark rolled his window down. “Sir? Are you okay?”

Booth sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to leave.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t supposed to leave the forest. I should’ve shot that asshole, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Sir, you should get in. We’ll get you to safety.”

“I don’t think I can go back now.” Booth looked down at the ground. “I couldn’t shoot him. If I’d shot him, everything would be fine.”

Great. Booth’s cracked. Mark unfastened his seat belt, but Booth sighed once more and got in the back seat, shutting the door.

A moment later they were off, heading for the paved road that led back to the interstate and Dover’s Point.

They drove in silence. Booth stared out the window, blankly. Mark wanted to ask him what he’d seen while in the forest, and more importantly, what the fuck he was doing in the tour tram in the first place, but he left the man to his thoughts. He had to be respectful. Stay on his good side.

Hannah also stared out the window. Under other circumstances, there would’ve been a delightful electricity in the air, with Mark desperately wanting to flirt with the woman of his dreams (second to Chloe, of course) but unable to do so with their boss in the back seat, like teenagers in the same room as their parents. But this time he didn’t even care that the top button of her blouse had popped open.

Okay, he cared a little. Just not as much as he normally would have.

The road started cracking and buckling.

He let out a soft yelp and so did Hannah. He just barely managed to swerve into the other lane and avoid being flipped through the air as the tree came up.

Mark gunned the Saturn’s engine and they broke the speed limit. The sooner they were away from the area, the better chance they had of surviving.

A mile away from the offices, new trees were still growing.

“Is it me, or are they coming up faster?” Hannah’s voice shook a bit.

“Oh, they’re definitely growing faster.” He could see the ground starting to bulge just to the right of the road, and swerved before the asphalt could crack open and spit out a new hyperactive sapling. “Lots faster.”

Mark managed to swing back to his own lane just in time to avoid the oncoming rush of police cars, complete with flashing lights and wailing sirens. They came on fast, and he honked his horn to warn them of the up coming obstacles. If they noticed, they didn’t bother with a thank you.

Hannah’s head was now moving around almost constantly, her eyes seeking any possible dangers. “Oh shit! Look!”

She pointed to the west, where they could finally see the end of the trees.

Well, sort of.

The tree line mostly ended, except for one string of new growth that pointed like an accusatory finger straight toward Dover’s Point.

Mark slowed down as he looked at the town in the distance. He could see the trees punching out of the ground, one after another, and even from here it looked like some of the trees were already in town and doing damage.

“Jesus Christ!” Mark’s hands hit the steering wheel. He’d known that the situation was dire, but getting a couple of miles away from the forest should’ve been the solution. This… this was like the trees were attacking Dover’s Point.

He took out his cell phone and speed-dialed Chloe’s number.

No answer.

Hannah leaned forward for a moment to get a better view of something up ahead, and then leaned back just as the ground shook underneath them. Not a mild tremor like they’d felt previously, but the sort of vibrations that had Mark clutching the wheel and screaming like Speed Racer in an old cartoon. The Saturn skimmed across the surface of the road like an ice cube on a hot skillet and with about as much control. The asphalt disappeared from under them and was replaced by hard-baked soil and a few rocks.

Mark pumped the brakes carefully and fought the bucking wheel under his hands. Booth remained silent and eerily calm in the back seat. Hannah screamed her encouragement regarding the way Mark was handling the situation in the form of ear splitting shrieks and held onto the dashboard and the handle above her door until, finally, Mark managed to stop the car.

Both of them looked slowly back toward the road and the rising swell of dirt and ruptured pavement.

“What now?” Mark’s voice was strained enough that he could barely recognize it.

“Just start the car, Mark. Get us out of here before we find out, please.” Hannah made perfect sense, so he listened to her.

The car moved like it was supposed to, and he headed back for the road a good distance ahead of the swelling area.

They rode over the terrain until they caught the smooth road again and then he accelerated, casting a cautious eye toward the mounded spot behind them.

The road broke open, vomiting earth and gravel along the way. Then the source of the indigestion became apparent as the giant wyrm came out of the ground.

He couldn’t quite justify calling it a worm, but the archaic English word seemed to fit. It moved and pulsed as it rose into the air. The head of the beast was a line of hungry articulated feelers that grabbed the air and sought anything to stuff into the mouth just below them.

Mark sucked in a deep breath and gunned the engine again, forcing himself to look out the windshield as he headed for Dover’s Point.

Sure enough, just as he feared, the wyrm turned in their direction and began to follow, shoving its unholy bulk out onto the road and heaving itself forward with unsettling speed.

Booth finally spoke: “That’s a big one.”