The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Jake Steiner spit a stream of tobacco juice into his coffee cup. It was either spit or swallow and he didn’t much feel like gagging that shit down. He’d given it up for a while on numerous occasions, but every now and then he just needed a fix.

Since he was on his way to the place that had given him more nightmares than he ever wanted to think about, he was pretty sure this counted as “every now and then.” It was that or pop open a few beers, and he guessed that would go against the three years sober he’d managed so far in AA.

Two damned trees had eaten most of the road, and he slowed down the cruiser and carefully eased between them, cursing under his breath when he scraped up the left rear of his vehicle.

Something big and black jumped from one tree to the other and looked down on him as he passed under its territory. Whatever the hell it was, it made both trees shake.

He picked up the radio handset and called to the other cars behind him. “Got company, boys. Something up in the trees. Keep your wits and turn off your safeties, because we ain’t here to interrogate any of the things living out this way.”

“Amen, chief! Let’s get ready to rumble!” That was Wilcox answering. The boy was enthusiastic about his law enforcement and almost as crazy about his side career as a professional wrestler. Would have worked better for Jake if Wilcox looked like he could wrestle more than a Twinkie.

“Save the battle cries,” Jake said. “You might need ’em before we’re done. Don’t take this shit lightly. We’re here to see if we can stop whatever’s happening.”

Wilcox didn’t answer. He was too busy dying.

The black thing had dropped out of the tree and landed on the third cruiser, the one that carried Wilcox and his partner O’Brien. Jake couldn’t make out too many details but near as he could tell, the thing looked like it was covered in scabs and had too many arms.

He pulled over to the side and called out on the radio for everyone to stop and render aid.

By the time he was done talking, Sheila Hannigan was out of the car. Sheila was his second in command, and more than capable of handling herself in a nasty situation. They didn’t get a lot of murders in Dover’s Point, but they got more than their fair share of drunks on the weekends.

Sheila pulled her .38, sighted carefully, and put a bullet into the thing on top of Wilcox’s car. Whatever the hell it was, it fell down and stayed there.

“What in the name of shit?” Sheila ran over to the squad car and looked at the caved-in roof. Wilcox was dead and so was his partner.

Jake made it back to where she was standing and looked at the mangled bodies. “Poor bastards.” He spit out the tobacco in his mouth in honor of his fallen comrades. Wilcox had a fine little wife at home, along with two boys—the twins—and a baby girl on the way. He might have been a clown, but he was a good cop and a better man.

O’Brien was engaged. No kids. But his folks were long-time friends and now he had to tell them he’d let their only son get himself killed.

He rubbed at the back of his neck and felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the weather, especially since it was still hot as sin and the sun was just going down.

“Guys, I don’t much like saying this, but Tony and Micah here are gonna call an ambulance and wait for it to show up. The rest of us have to go forward.”

The other cops protested, as Jake knew they would. No one liked to leave a fellow cop behind, even if they were already dead. It wasn’t respectful.

Of course, neither was the laughter.

Jake looked around, trying to decide which ex-employee of his had decided that two deaths were funny. All of them were looking around too. No one was laughing.

The first of the things landed on the car directly behind him, cackling away as it hunched down and bared some nasty-looking teeth. It was furry, dark with spots, and it seemed to be hunched over but standing on two feet. Both of the front arms were too long and almost scraped the paint off the black and white.

“What the hell?” That was Sheila again. She moved up next to him and started to aim. The laughing thing jumped into the air. It barely even seemed to flex its legs, just sort of shot skyward like it was on a springboard.

Sheila and Jake both watched it, and then tried to get out of the way. Jake made it, Sheila did not. The powerful hind legs of the thing landed on her chest and drove her backward and into the ground. Before she even finished bouncing, the front paws took two swipes and peeled her neck away.

Jake pissed himself right then and there. There wasn’t much he could do about it, and he didn’t have enough time to feel embarrassed before the thing crouched low and laughed in his face.

Big, golden eyes stared at him with slitted pupils that were as wide as his cat’s at home when it was angry or hunting.

The laughter started up again, coming from in front of him. It was immediately answered from several other locations.

Jake didn’t dare take his eyes off the thing. He’d seen how fast it was.

Teeth grinned at him in the dark furry face and the eyes almost seemed to shimmer. Not far away, he heard a gunshot and Sheila’s leg exploded. The obvious target stayed on her chest and laughed.

“Son of a diseased whore!” That was Peters. He always had the most colorful curse words.

“Goddamn it!” shouted Jake, taking out his revolver. “Be careful where you’re aiming!”

He saw them coming and shook his head, trying to focus on the one in front of him. There had to be fifteen more of the things laughing and giggling as they came closer, like the idea of taking on a group of armed cops was just as funny as all get out. They didn’t move like people. They moved like something between a kangaroo and a mountain lion. Muscles shifted and the damned things hopped a good ten feet closer every time they moved at all. Jake brought his Smith & Wesson up and aimed for the thing still crouched over Sheila.

It moved, vaulting straight at him and laughing louder than ever. A millisecond after it passed him, Jake felt the fire spread up his arm. Five red slices cut through his sleeve and bled across the blue fabric. That part didn’t bother him as much as the same red slices starting at his wrist and moving up to the sleeve on his bicep.

“Oh fu—” He never finished the word. The claws came at him again before he could, and this time they caught his throat, tearing out his larynx in the process.

Jake fell back and gurgled, blood flowing freely from the wound in his neck. He was alive long enough to see the other laughing things attack the rest of the squad. He died before they were finished with the task.

Mark and Hannah could have told him that the Gigglers always liked to play with their food before they ate.

Hannah was taking the giant wyrm chasing them remarkably well. She was screaming obscenities and looking over her shoulder approximately fifteen times a second. Mark felt he was holding up pretty well himself, because he was only looking into the rearview about twice a second.

“That is one big damned wyrm.”

“No shit, Mark! Now could you possibly go a little faster?”

“I’m doing ninety!”

The wyrm lunged forward and Mark swerved hard enough to put the car up on two wheels for a moment. The result was Hannah letting out another scream as they managed to avoid getting swallowed by the freaky thing.

Yes, swallowed. It was that big.

The ground where the car had been obligingly shattered when the wyrm hit it. The car went back on all four wheels and Mark stomped on the gas, almost stalling the car out before it leaped forward.

“We’ve got to lose that thing, Mark!”

“I believe he’s trying,” said Booth from the back seat.

“Well, tell him to try harder, damn it!”

“Tree,” said Booth.

Mark swerved to avoid the enormous tree in the center of the road. The car slid off the pavement and onto the hard soil, spitting plumes of dust into the air. The rearview mirror showed that the oversized leviathan was gaining speed, undeterred by the cloud of arid soil.

Mark looked at the numerous trees ahead of him and the town now off to the right and swerved toward his left, aiming for a spot between two of the monolithic and completely alien plants.

“Mark? What are you doing? There are trees in the way.”

“Yeah, I know.” He urged the car to go a little faster as the segmented body thrust and lurched forward, tearing up the distance between them.

“Mark, I’m sorry for yelling earlier, I didn’t mean a word of it. This is not the best time to consider suicide, okay?”

“Calm down, Hannah, I know what I’m doing.”

“No, you don’t. You really don’t.” Her voice rose with each word as they got closer to the trees.

Mark looked at the two black shapes ahead of him and tried to calculate if he could really squeeze the Saturn between them. No. Probably not.

“I promise not to kill us,” he said, figuring that he wouldn’t get called out on his failure to keep the promise if he was dead.

Mark made one last careful adjustment with the steering wheel and then closed his eyes as they reached the base of the two trees.

The car shot through the gap, losing the paint on both doors as well as the side-view mirrors. The sound almost managed to drown out Hannah’s screams.

Mark looked back at the receding trees and pumped the air with his right hand. “Sweet! We did it!”

The wyrm kept coming, ignoring the trees, and Mark almost wished he had enough time to watch as it smashed itself into a pulp.

Hannah watched for him, giving a blow by blow. “It’s still coming… it’s still coming… it’s almost there… splat!”

Mark risked a look back, as there were no new trees in the immediate vicinity. The wyrm had indeed smashed into the trees, cutting its body along two points and spilling an enormous amount of what passed for its blood, a thick pale mess that painted the bark of both the barriers it faced.

For one brief second, Mark thought that was the end of the wyrm, but then it pushed forward again and uprooted both of the trees with a seemingly casual shrug. The trees flipped into the air, clots of soil falling from their roots.

And sailed in the same direction that Mark was currently driving.

No. Fuckin’. Way.

Mark opened his mouth to say something out loud to that effect, but nothing would come.

The trees were still rising into the air and he couldn’t decide where they were going to fall.

Mark slammed his foot against the gas pedal again, and Hannah pulled into a fetal position and screamed bloody murder. He really wanted to join her, but there just wasn’t time.

The first tree landed ten feet to the left with a thunderous crash and snapped in two upon impact. Mark twisted the wheel to the right and kept it turned that way, spinning the vehicle almost a full half circle. The second tree rolled across the ground where they’d been a moment ago, shedding limbs and thick bark as it went.

Mark glanced up at the rearview mirror long enough to see that they had, indeed, avoided death by tree.

Then he looked forward and saw the wyrm recovering from the beating it had given itself. Bloodied and pulped or not, it was moving again, heading directly toward them.

The only good news was that it was moving slower now and looked like it might bleed to death before it could eat them alive.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the wyrm started pushing itself into the ground, the heavy feelers at the front of its mouth slicing the hard-packed earth apart and letting the gigantic beast disappear in a matter of two minutes, tops. During that time, Mark hyperventilated and said his thanks to God above, Hannah slowly recovered from her panic attack, and Booth sat silently in the back seat.

Finally Mark drove back toward the road as another tree started rising behind him, making up for the two that had been dislodged from the ground.

Up ahead, he could see Dover’s Point a little clearer as the sun started to set. He could also see the fires burning at several of the houses.

He drove faster, worried not just for himself and for Hannah, but also for Chloe.

He tried to call again. No answer.

The ground shook and rumbled beneath the car as the wyrm burrowed deeper, but the beast was no longer his concern. Now he had to worry about what he would find when he got home.

The closest military installation was just over thirty miles from the Haunted Forest. The first of the military forces to make it to the area were in helicopters loaded with as many soldiers as they could manage while still carrying emergency medical supplies and firepower.

Four personnel transports landed at Dover’s Point after hearing from the recon helicopter that there was simply no room to actually land at the H.F. Enterprises headquarters. The entire area surrounding the building was engulfed in trees or would be within the next few minutes.

The recon pilot also made a point of calling for more backup, because from what he could see they were flying into a massive clusterfuck.

Dover’s Point was under siege, there was no other way to put it. The trees were rising from people’s yards, from the street, and through most of the structures in the small town, including the Baptist church and what had been the town hall.

Colonel William Tyson did not like what he saw. What was happening made about as much sense as a barbed-wire raft and looked almost as painful.

They didn’t try to set up a proper command post, because they couldn’t guarantee that any part of the ground would be safe from another tree coming up.

Tyson assessed the situation and called for more troops. He was promised that they were on the way.

In the meantime, he found out who owned the construction site at the edge of Whittaker Street and immediately got their people to start moving the bulldozers, forklifts of varying sizes, and the excavator on hand for serious digging. After a very brief argument about local regulations regarding the dispersal of explosives, Tyson had his men break down the door to the explosives shed and confiscate all of the dynamite.

The battle for Dover’s Point was loud, to be sure. Trees rose up and fell down almost as quickly, but like weeds, more rose to take their places. Still, the soldiers made slow progress toward removing the worst of the invading plant life.

Then things took a turn for the worse. With the sun lowering on the western horizon and most of its light blocked by the unexpected plant life, the soldiers didn’t see their attackers at first. They were looking at trees, and somehow the idea of searching the sky never crossed anyone’s mind.

That changed quickly enough when the flying creature dropped out of the sky and attacked, sinking powerful talons into Private Hugo Lee’s back as it captured him. Lee screamed for all he was worth but dropped his weapon.

The sleek, feathered beast lifted Lee high into the air and began feasting on him even as he struggled. It dropped the soldier around the same time that the bullets tore it and its meal nearly in half.

But there were other creatures in the air. Plenty of them.

The soldiers gave up trying to take out the trees when the black oak came out of the ground and crushed Colonel Tyson against the side of the Huey he was using as a mobile command. It kept pinning him until his chest caved in and smeared across the protesting metal side of the helicopter. A moment later, the whole machine slid sideways and toppled onto its side. The tree kept growing, not the least bit concerned about the colonel or the five-million-dollar flying machine it turned into scrap metal.

After the colonel died, the soldiers concentrated on rounding up the remaining citizens and getting them on their way to a safer place. Flying creatures plucked residents of Dover’s End off the ground as if they were choosing treats from a box of chocolates.

The trees kept coming, and by the time most of the locals had been pulled from their homes, the road leading into and out of town had been overgrown.

Countless beasts leapt from the trees, seeking prey. There was prey galore at first. But the food supply dwindled quickly and new trees brought new mouths to feed.

Chloe Harper dragged herself across the floor of her kitchen, which was difficult to do with only one arm. Three different animals tore chunks of flesh out of her legs as she frantically tried to get to the phone.

Her final thoughts were of her husband.