The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER FIVE

The tram-on-tram collision worked out poorly for all concerned.

The first vehicle, stationary and powerless, moved forward fifteen feet despite the fact that the brakes were down and in a locked position. The rear end of the vehicle rose completely off the ground during the crash. Neal Whistler, who had made countless foolish decisions during the course of his life and whose final decision to stand up instead of strapping himself into his seat continued that trend, was catapulted through the air.

His immense weight meant nothing at all to the kinetic force that smashed him first into the ceiling of the tram and then bounced him across the left side of the car and then down the main aisle.

Neal did not scream as he ricocheted through the interior, but several of the people around him did. Tina Landry let out a particularly hair-raising one as Neal rammed into the back of her husband’s seat and cracked the plastic. Brad Landry didn’t even see the man coming. He was forced forward as his seat belt tried to hold him in place. The security belt was designed to resist up to 750 pounds of pull before it gave out, and it did the manufacturer proud. Instead of snapping, it held firmly and in the process held Landry’s body where it was while his arms flew forward. He nearly blacked out as both shoulders dislocated.

Neal, the airborne human wrecking ball, continued on his trek, slamming into the hard surface of the center aisle and flailing through his path of destruction until he struck the front window. Fortunately, the window was shatterproof. Unfortunately, Neal was not.

The people who were strapped into their seats had a slightly better time of the impact. Those in the back of the tram had the unsettling sensation of being weightless for a moment and then took a blow to their backsides as the car came crashing down. It landed on the front of the tram that hit them, and then pushed forward until it bounced onto the track again. The passengers were all violently shaken as if driving a speeding truck down a mountain of jagged boulders.

Christopher was very grateful for the deep cushioning of the headrests, which he was sure was the main reason a few dozen skulls didn’t get cracked wide open and spill their contents onto the tram floor. Aside from Brad’s dislocated shoulders and everybody else’s countless bruises, most of the people on the tram—save for Neal—were not badly hurt.

The front end of the second tram held up remarkably well to the impact. The windshield spider-webbed but did not explode when the rear of the first tram lifted and then dropped back down on top of it.

For several seconds Christopher sat in a daze, barely able to believe that he and his mother were still alive. The Haunted Forest Tour had sturdy trams, no doubt about it. That would be the one good score on the comment card. He could hear himself asking his mother if she was okay, but it felt like somebody else was speaking through a cell phone with lousy reception.

All around them people were talking at once, with plenty of moans, sobs, screams, and expletives mixed in.

Barbara stood up and shook her head like a heavyweight contender who’d taken three too many shots to the chops. “Is everyone all right?” she asked, turning around to face the passengers. She glanced down at Neal’s mangled body and slammed her hand over her mouth.

Brad Landry let out a low, soft groan, causing his wife to immediately begin screaming his name: “Brad? Brad! Brad! Are you okay?” Her voice scrolled up through the octaves as she shook him. Brad turned paler and paler until the man in the seat behind Tina grabbed her hand and told her to kindly stop trying to kill him. Whether the man was referring to himself or Brad was unclear.

Christopher unfastened his seatbelt and looked over his shoulder toward the other tram. “Do you think anyone got hurt?”

His mother had already unfastened her belt and joined him. “Honey, I don’t see how they could not have.”

The front end of the other tram looked better than Christopher would have expected—at least in terms of damage to the vehicle. There were huge dents, and the heavy wheels at the bottom of the car had been forced outward at an angle. Some smoke billowed from the bottom. Still, as far as he could see, the passengers were protected inside.

There was no sign of a body where the driver should have been, but a thick spray of crimson had splashed across the windshield.

“Everybody please be quiet!” Barbara shouted. “It’s very important for everybody to remain calm!”

Miraculously, the tram went almost silent. Eddie staggered out of the driver’s area, a heavy trickle of blood running down the side of his face. “Is everybody okay?” He immediately realized the irony of his question and crouched down next to Neal’s body.

“Is he breathing?” Barbara asked. The far-from-natural angle of Neal’s neck made the answer perfectly obvious, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

Eddie pressed his fingers against Neal’s flabby wrist and held them there for a few seconds. “No pulse. He’s history.”

There were several loud gasps from the tourists, even though it was unlikely that any of them had expected Neal to survive the impact.

The little girl who’d been sitting with her father and screaming a while earlier stared out the window. “What happens when the monsters come back?” she asked.

They didn’t have long to wait to get the answer. The dark shapes began moving in again, slithering, crawling, or merely charging. They all focused on the second tram.

“They’ll be fine… they’ll be fine…” Christopher whispered to himself. The tram was badly dented, but the creatures still couldn’t get inside. All they had to do was try not to lose their sanity while they waited for help to arrive.

The first true assailant was a humanoid beast that looked almost exactly the way Christopher had always envisioned an ogre. Admittedly, he’d never devoted much time to envisioning ogres, but this thing definitely fit the mental picture. The head was too small for the body, and the arms were as thick around as Neal Whistler’s waistline. It pounded on the roof of the second tram with both fists.

It was joined by a ghost, a constantly shifting spectre that was almost as large as the ogre itself. It changed forms almost too quickly to identify them, but Christopher caught flashes of a pirate, a knight, a demon, a shrieking victim, and a seductress.

The ghost passed through the roof of the tram.

Christopher’s mother grabbed his arm. Hard.

The tram suddenly seemed to be covered with a thick layer of frost where the ghost passed through. The ogre slammed its fist once more, and this time the roof cracked. It hooked massively thick fingers into the ruptured hull. With a grunt that could be heard from within the undamaged car, it pulled. The scream of tortured metal sent shivers through the onlookers. The monster tore the metal, opening the roof of the tram as if pulling the lid from a particularly stubborn can of sardines, and then reached inside and grabbed two screaming tourists from inside.

Christopher jumped and his mother left out a moan of despair as the ogre turned back to them and stared into the undamaged car. With eyes locked on the interior where they sought shelter, the ogre opened its too-wide mouth and showed them broad, flat teeth that looked like blades on a shovel. A man who appeared to be in his late fifties was the first victim. The man let out a faint scream and struggled violently until the ogre’s teeth clamped down and tore his left leg away, chomping and crunching a bloody froth.

The creatures surrounding the ogre—and Lee recognized the Proof Demon as the creature closest to the mountain of flesh—moved forward, surging into the ruined car as the people inside tried their best to hide.

The ogre finished his meal with five additional bites, saving the head for last. Through the entire process, a portly woman that it held in its other hand struggled and screamed. The monster did not eat her. Instead, still looking into the tram with malignant intelligence, the ogre smiled, winked (had it actually winked?), and then slammed the woman against a tree. It repeated this several more times, never taking its eyes off the first tram, and then casually discarded her pulped corpse by tossing it over its shoulder.

Beyond the ogre, things were even worse. Numerous creatures of all sorts crawled into the tram. Most of them emerged with live prey.

One man was stuck in a four-way tug-of-war that ended with all of the players feasting on his remains. Most of the victims were devoured—not always quickly—but others were clearly playthings to be mangled.

Christopher was almost willing to rip out his own eyes to spare him the ghastly sight, but he couldn’t look away. His mother’s grip on his arm was so tight that he thought she might have drawn blood.

It was a toss-up as to who screamed louder, the victims or the witnesses of their demise.

It took Christopher a moment to realize that Eddie was thrusting a rifle at him. “Take this, goddamn it!” Eddie shouted, finally getting Christopher’s attention. Christopher heard himself offering up an awkward, “Thank you,” and then Eddie pushed past him to distribute more weapons.

Within minutes the worst was over. The screams from outside dwindled and died, replaced by gluttonous roars and the sloppy sounds of feasting.

Barbara stepped over Neal’s corpse, then turned around to address the passengers. Eddie stood next to her. “Okay,” she said, her voice trembling but coherent, “they don’t seem to be paying much attention to us, so we may be able to wait until help arrives. But just in case we aren’t so lucky, let’s do a quick weapons lesson.”

Eddie spoke up. “For those of you with guns, you each have ten rounds, nine within a clip and one in the chamber. The bullets are armor-piercing nine millimeter shells. They should fuck up whatever you shoot with them.” He held up his own rifle. “Here’s the safety. Do not take it off unless it’s absolutely necessary. We’ve got enough shit going down without shooting each other. Everybody understand?”

Those who were able to speak indicated that yes, they understood.

Then they waited.

Five minutes passed as the creatures outside began to take a much greater interest in the tram that still contained live prey. Some of them circled the old wagon like restless Indians. Others seemed to take special pleasure in painting the windows with bloodied tongues and even stranger extremities.

Five minutes for each and every person on the tour to reflect on just how unpleasant their lives had recently become. Three hundred seconds of last minute prayers to various deities and promises to be a better person if He/She/It could just, please, let them get out of this alive.

Christopher quite frankly didn’t care if he had a job waiting for him when he returned home. In fact, if he didn’t get fired, he vowed to march into Mr. Tylerson’s office, tender his immediate resignation, and tell Mr. Tylerson that he could go cheerfully fuck himself.

The lights flickered for a moment.

Everybody stared up at the ceiling. Christopher’s mother whispered, “Please, please, please, please…” as they waited with communal baited breath.

The lights came back to life, half-blinding every person on the tram and sending several of the things in the forest slinking away. The motor began to whirr.

“Oh, thank God,” said Christopher, letting out a deep sigh of relief. Several of the passengers applauded, although it was the numb applause of people who’d just seen forty of their fellow tourists brutally murdered.

Eddie turned back toward the front of the vehicle. “All right, everybody, I’m gonna get us the hell out of here.”

And then the pneumatic doors slid open and locked into position.