The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“I could try again,” Christopher offered.

Lee frowned at him. “Don’t bother.”

“You think Tina made it?” asked Barbara, adjusting Tommy’s position on her back. He was getting heavier with every passing second.

“Do you want my honest answer or the answer meant to be comforting in our final moments?”

“Comfort.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” said Lee. “She’s on that helicopter relaxing with a glass of champagne and a personal masseuse.”

“Good for her.”

“Is she really?” Christopher asked.

Lee and Barbara stared at him.

“I was kidding,” said Christopher. “I’m not that far gone. So does anybody know any good death songs? We could sing our way to the grave.”

“Are we going to die?” Tommy asked, his voice so small and scared that Barbara’s heart immediately broke.

“No,” she told him. “We’re not. We’re going to get out of here, and then people are going to come in and kill all of the bad monsters.”

“Good.”

There was a loud explosion coming from the direction of the water reclamation plant.

“What do you think?” Lee asked. “Good explosion or bad explosion?”

Barbara smiled. “Sounds like an Eddie explosion.”

Another explosion followed. Some of the glowing eyes and shadows scurried away.

Moments later, gunfire. Lots of it.

Moments after that, Lee could see the flashes of gunfire as well as hear them.

“Heads up, kids!” Eddie said through the megaphone. “Cover your ears!”

The third explosion knocked Christopher off his feet, although that was not a particularly difficult task. Creatures of all sizes and shapes fled all around them.

Eddie came into view, lowering the megaphone. “Hi. Did you guys think I was going to leave you to die?”

“I did,” said Barbara.

“Me too,” said Christopher.

“The idea did occur to me,” Lee agreed.

“Well, I’ve got guns, grenades, a helicopter, and a friend of yours. Let’s get the fuck out of this shithole, shall we?”

“That is a wonderful idea,” said Barbara, hurrying forward.

“You wouldn’t happen to have the human host, would you?” Christopher asked.

Eddie frowned. “Say what?”

“Just wondering. You missed it, but there’s a demon involved here. Spells and stuff.”

“But what do you mean by human host?”

“Dunno, to be honest.”

“Would this human host be protected? I mean, would the things living in the forest not want him to come to harm?”

“What are you talking about?” Lee asked.

“Let’s chat while we walk,” said Eddie, pulling revolvers out of his belt and handing them to everybody. He shot another hellhound and started walking back toward the water reclamation plant. “I got out of the forest because monsters weren’t trying to eat the owner of this place.”

“You mean Pestilence?” asked Christopher.

“No, Booth. Martin Booth. Owner of H.F. Enterprises.”

“He sounds human.”

“He is. He was in the other tram, and he didn’t want to leave. Weird as hell.”

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Lee. “But that sounds like human host behavior to me. Do you know where he is?”

“I know who has him. Why?”

“I think we can use him to stop this.”

“How? Kill him?”

Lee shook his head and fired at something he couldn’t quite see. Since the trigger finger on his right hand was missing the piece that would actually pull a trigger, he had to use his left hand, and his aim was bad. Barbara made up for it. He actually questioned the wisdom of giving Christopher a firearm in his current condition, but didn’t say anything.

“Killing him won’t work. We need to mix up the spell. The demon got his tram full of sacrifices. He also got his willing sacrifice.”

“Who the hell was that?” Eddie asked.

“Mindy.”

“Mindy…?”

“My mom,” said Christopher.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Now he just needs his human host. But if we fuck up the ritual, cross-wire it, if you will, I think we can stop this.”

“And how exactly do you know this?”

“I don’t know it exactly. But there was this, this—”

“Vulcan mind-meld?” Christopher asked.

“It wasn’t a Vulcan mind-meld. I’m not sure what it was. But Pestilence isn’t in complete control of his powers out here, and when he read my mind, it… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, but I got a flash inside his mind right before he murdered Mindy. I think we can mix up the ritual. That’s all I know.”

Eddie held up a hand. “Hold that thought.” He pulled a pin from another grenade and threw it out in front of them. They all ducked and covered their ears as the explosion cleared out the monsters ahead. “So how do we mix up the ritual?”

“Make the host sacrifice himself. But it has to be a willing sacrifice.”

“Oh. Well, that’s easy. We’ll show him flash cards of the people who died and make him feel bad. C’mon, that’s no solution. The guy is obviously a moral black hole. If he’s willing to cause the deaths of all these people, how on Earth would you get him to sacrifice himself?”

Christopher gestured to his chest. “Do you all see what the demon did to me?”

“Hard to miss.”

“A willing sacrifice doesn’t have to be selfless. If the host wants the pain to go away badly enough, maybe he’ll kill himself.”

Eddie gaped at him. “You mean torture him until he commits suicide?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“He’s right, though,” said Lee. “Cross-wire the ritual. Kill the host, and things will keep on going the way they are. Turn the host into a sacrifice, and the spell collapses upon itself.”

“You’re sure?” asked Eddie.

“No.”

“Good enough for me.” He patted his pocket. “I’ve got the phone number of the host’s babysitter. Now let’s get into the air so I can make a call and… aw, shit!”

As they stepped into the clearing outside of the water reclamation plant, they looked into the air and saw that the helicopter was gone.

“Where are you going?” Tina demanded.

“I’m done with this,” said the pilot. “Dragons. There are dragons out here. I don’t mess with dragons.”

“You can’t just leave them!”

“Turn around,” said the reporter. “There are innocent people on the ground.”

“Do you know how to fly a helicopter? No? I do. Are we in a helicopter right now? Yes. That puts me in charge. And I say, we get the hell out of here.”

“Turn this fucking helicopter around!” Tina shouted. “If you don’t go right the fuck back to where the fuck we left my fucking friends I’ll rip your fucking throat out and drink your fucking blood!”

The pilot looked back at her.

“Okay,” he said.

The helicopter came back into view, returning to its original hovering spot. The rope ladder dropped in front of Eddie. He reached for Barbara.

“Here, sweetie, I’ll take the kid.”

“I hate when you call me sweetie,” Barbara told him, lowering Tommy to the ground.

“I’ll keep doing it then. C’mon, kiddo, climb on to your Uncle Eddie.”

Barbara thought it seemed like a cruel thing to say, since Tommy had lost his aunt and uncle today, but Tommy didn’t react. He just climbed onto Eddie’s back.

“Watch out!” Lee shouted, pointing to a double-sized wolf as it rushed out from the trees. Lee, Eddie, Christopher, and Barbara opened fire, bringing the wolf down several feet before it could maul them to death.

“I’ll save the kid first,” said Eddie. “The rest of you follow close, okay? Watch out for the bats. They suck.”

Eddie grunted at the strain of his new passenger, but quickly began to scale the rope ladder. Up above, Tina waved her encouragement.

Barbara followed right behind him.

“You first,” Lee told Christopher. “You’re bleeding more.”

Christopher grabbed the first rung. “Thanks.”

Eddie was making excellent time, even with Tommy on his back. The bats made him their first target, bashing into him again and again, but he kept climbing.

Christopher’s dizziness had faded, replaced by the excitement of finally being saved. Every single cut on his body felt like it was splitting even wider as he frantically climbed the ladder, but that was okay. Chicks loved scars.

Barbara cried out as a bat bashed against her kidneys, and for one horrifying second Christopher thought she was going to lose her grip. Though her ass would be a pleasant final sight as it plummeted toward him, he preferred that she not fall.

As he made it halfway up the ladder, he glanced down to check on Lee. The old man wasn’t doing very well. He’d only made it a quarter of the way up the ladder, and had stopped for breath.

“Come on, Lee!” Christopher shouted down at him. “Rest inside the helicopter!”

Lee looked up as if he wanted to say something but merely nodded and reached for the next rung.

Christopher heard a whoop of joy up ahead as Eddie made it to the helicopter. Moments later, Barbara joined him.

Three saved. Two to go.

“Aw, crap,” Christopher whispered as an entire flurry of bats zoomed at him. The creatures bashed into him, reminding him of all of the dodgeball horrors he’d endured in elementary school.

His right hand, slick with blood, popped free of the rope ladder.

A bat struck him right in the ear. The dizziness returned.

“Come on, Christopher!” Barbara shouted above him. “You’re almost there!”

He wasn’t. He was only halfway. But her encouragement was appreciated. He grabbed the ladder again with both hands and pulled himself up one more rung.

A hundred more feet. No big deal. Then he could take a bath in hydrogen peroxide so that he didn’t become an infected, pus-dripping freak from all of these exposed wounds.

He climbed another rung, gritting his teeth as more bats struck him. At least they weren’t vampire bats trying to suck his blood at the same time. Thank God for little favors.

He glanced back down at Lee, who was now having similar bat problems. He was still at the fifty-foot mark and no longer climbing.

“Keep going!” Christopher shouted.

Three bats struck the old man at once. He lost his grip on the ladder, waved his arms frantically in mid-air for a split second, and then fell to the ground.

He didn’t make a sound as he hit.

Before Christopher could even react, the helicopter rose into the air. In seconds, Christopher was dangling over the tops of the trees, holding on for dear life.

“No!” he shouted. “We can’t leave yet!”

What the hell were they doing? Hadn’t they seen what happened to Lee? Lee had steadfastly refused to leave anybody behind, and now they were going to leave him behind?

Something was flying toward the helicopter.

Something huge.

Something that was breathing fire.