The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER SEVEN

At least a dozen people were dead, either pulled out of the tram to become meals for the nightmares outside, or mauled inside what was supposed to be a completely safe vehicle, or, unbelievably, shot by their fellow tourists. All in all, Lee could think of better places to be. Like Thunderdome.

Lee looked out the open door and smelled the mixture of blood and cordite wafting through the air. As much as he hated the idea, there weren’t a whole lot of options left. Stay inside and die, or go outside and die. He was in good shape for a sixty-three-year-old man, but he wasn’t looking forward to having to outrun anything with more than two legs.

He shook his head and shot a withering glare at Eddie, then gingerly stepped through the bloodied remains of several monsters and down the small flight of stairs leading to the outside world.

All my life I’ve been looking for monsters. I wish I’d been a butterfly enthusiast instead. He held his rifle diagonally in front of his body and waited for the next person to get off the tram.

The woods were hardly deserted, but most of the things out there seemed like they weren’t really in a hurry to get close to anything that bit as hard as the driver’s grenade. The ground was littered with pieces of different creatures and a few human remains as well. Most of the pieces were still, but a couple were moving, despite not being attached to their respective bodies any longer.

“You folks better get your butts moving!” Lee announced. “They’re not gonna leave us alone forever!” He eyed the woods warily and tried to at least pretend he was brave. He had four, maybe five bullets left, and he didn’t want to waste them if he didn’t have to.

A teenaged girl and her father came out. The man was sporting another rifle and had a look in his eyes that promised a quick and painful death to anything that came near his little girl. His daughter was wound so tightly around his waist that she could have been a fashion accessory.

A man stumbled on his way out, moving almost like he was drunk as his wife held onto him. His arms both dangled uselessly and his face was so white it almost seemed to glow. His eyes had a glassy glare that made it clear that shock had set in, big time. Right behind them, the poor bastard who’d had his face torn open was stepping away from the vehicle, his shirt caked in blood and a couple of unsightly strips of flesh.

Eddie the tram driver was next. He was sporting a small belt wrapped around one shoulder like a bandolier, but the belt only held two more grenades.

“That’s everything,” Eddie said as he looked around. “No more weapons and no backup clips of ammunition. We’ve got to be careful what we fire at.” He was trying to sound commanding, but like everyone else, all he managed was to sound scared.

“Maybe next time, you dumb asses will remember a tank or two.” That was the man with the little girl. He looked less scared and more pissed off. Of course, judging by the way he carried himself, he’d probably seen a decent amount of time in combat, either as a soldier or a cop. There was an air about him that said he’d managed to handle every ugly situation that had ever come his way.

Several more people poured out of the tram, including a cute little kid whose eyes were currently so wide that Lee feared his eyeballs might roll right out of their sockets. The woman with him kept looking over her shoulder with a deep frown on her face. “Perry? Come on! We have to go!”

Lee turned away from the woman as something moved off to his right. A careful look showed him that something was sliding in closer. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it had large eyes that barely even blinked.

“We really have to go now,” he emphasized.

Next to him, the man with his daughter in tow took careful aim at the eyes in the distance. “Yeah, bud. I’m with you.”

Lee risked a look over his shoulder and saw that a fair-sized crowd had gathered. The redhead with the little boy was looking back at the tram and chewing nervously on her full, lower lip. “Perry? Come on. Seriously. We have to go.”

A man poked his head out from inside the tram and shook it vigorously. “No fucking way! Get your ass back in here, Jeanie. We’re not going out into the woods!”

“Well, we’re not staying here to get eaten!” The boy standing next to Jeanie looked from his mother to his father like an avid fan watching a tennis match.

Eddie grabbed the woman’s arm and shook his head. “Listen. No offense, but we don’t have time for this bullshit. If you’re coming with us—”

“Perry, please!” Her voice cracked as she looked back at the man in the tram’s entrance. He was pushed aside as Barbara the tour guide climbed down, now wearing a small backpack. Lee could see that at least a few more people were still inside.

“Don’t be an idiot, Jeanie! Get back in here.” The man’s voice was soft but urgent, a desperate whisper that didn’t want to draw too much attention.

Lee looked out into the woods and saw it was far too late for that. The monsters were coming back, surrounding the area, and it was only a matter of time before they came forward again.

His thoughts became fact a moment later, when something landed on top of the damaged tram and let out a warbling roar that was almost loud enough to deafen. Before he could bring his weapon around, the tram driver had opened fire. The first bullet bounced off the top of the tram, but the second struck the creature in the chest and sent it sailing backward.

“That’s it. We’re outta here.” Without another word, Eddie started forward, and the twenty-odd people outside of the tram, Lee included, followed him.

The woman with her child hesitated for a moment, and her face made it clear how desperately she wanted her husband with her, but in the end, she turned and moved into the woods as well.

Not far away, the living severed head, larger than the vehicle that hit it, was bleeding out from the wounds it had suffered—collision, gunfire and shrapnel alike—but it looked like it was trying not to laugh.

They’d only made it a hundred yards from the tram car, tops, when the people who’d remained behind began to scream. Two of those who’d stayed behind had weapons, and the report from their rifles was dulled by the ululations of the dying.

The sounds were enough to convince even the stragglers to move a bit faster. Unfortunately, running didn’t seem to be enough.

The shadows, the trees, even the air seemed to vibrate with menace, and all around him, Lee could hear the sounds of larger things moving through the Haunted Forest.

A high-pitched, cackling laugh cut through the air to his left and was answered from high up in a tree. Despite himself, Lee looked up and saw something moving, leaping from the limbs of an ancient-looking (but of course, only four-year-old) pine and into the branches of a tree Lee couldn’t hope to identify.

More of the same insane laughter came from other areas, sending feverish chills running down his spine. He couldn’t see what made the sounds, but he had no doubt that they were close and in large quantities.

Just as unsettlingly, the sounds of the other monsters had stopped. The only other noises besides the laughter were the harsh breathing of the other people around him and an occasional curse or whimper.

Lee was feeling every last second of his age, with a bonus decade added on top of it. He paused for a moment and looked over his shoulder, puzzled by the fact that none of the younger folks had passed him yet.

And realized for the first time that there was a good reason for that. Somewhere along the way, he’d stepped away from the others.

He was by himself. In the woods. Surrounded by laughing things that he still hadn’t seen.

The creatures surrounding him laughed again as they slowly moved in closer.

“I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die.” A man who was short and pudgy enough to make Christopher feel positively macho was loping along a few feet to his left, speaking the words on everyone’s minds as he moved.

He died ten seconds later, as something with the body of an ape and skin like a snake dropped out of a tree and landed on him, pounding his body into the dirt and forest loam.

Christopher thought about trying to save him for half a second and then remembered that he only had a few bullets left and his mother to look after.

The idea had been to run into the woods, but it seemed like some people were taking that to a new extreme. Most of the people around them were at least being semi-cautious, but a few had decided the best way to handle the matter was to try for the hundred-yard dash.

The monsters didn’t seem to mind at all. As soon as someone ran away from the main group, they descended, pounced, or flat-out attacked.

A middle-aged man with wide, panicked eyes let out one small gasp of surprise before a shambling mountain of ivy reached out and pulled him into its depths. Only a few seconds later, the man’s clothing spat out onto the ground, torn and bloodied.

A woman who looked a little bit like a celebrity Christopher couldn’t remember at the moment (or possibly a porn star from one of the magazines he hoped his mother never found) let out a scream that probably tore her vocal cords when a dark shape crawled over her, literally. One moment the form was merely watching her and the next it fell into what looked like thousands of smaller forms, which began chewing her flesh in an instant. Hundreds of tiny pieces of her body were torn away and devoured as she fell to her hands and knees, unable to take in a second breath and scream again.

Christopher had to sling his rifle over his arm and grab at his mother when she started moving to help the woman on the ground.

“Mom, no!”

“Christopher, I can’t stand by and let them eat her alive!” The face he’d grown up knowing so well was made nearly alien by the pain on her features. She fought back, trying to get away from his hands as he grabbed at her shoulders, but after a moment she realized what he already understood: the woman was ruined, not dead but not alive for much longer. A mercy shot to end her pain might use up a bullet needed to save a life.

Tina and Brad moved as quickly as they could. Brad’s feet seemed to find good placement more by luck than by any deliberate acts on his part. She looked at her husband and saw the sweat streaming down his face. He was in agony, in shock, and mentally he was nowhere near this haunted little forest. He ran, yes, but only because she told him to.

All around them people ran, and a few of them screamed as the nightmares that lived in the woods became part of their waking world. It was one thing to see the creatures behind a thick layer of special glass with a long scientific name; it was another to see them up close, to smell them, to hear them.

Tina no longer had any chance to lie to herself about what she was seeing. Brad had always been a huge fan of monster movies. If he’d had his way, they would have moved to the edge of the forest two days after the place had grown out of the desert floor. She didn’t feel that way at all. She was just fine with the idea of not even knowing that the strange creatures existed. In her perfect world, the closest Tina would ever get to a monster was whatever bad guys existed in the animated movies she’d watched as a child. If it was too tough for Winnie the Pooh, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Up until this trip—paid for by Brad’s parents as part of their five-year anniversary gift—-she’d managed to have her way more often than not.

All she’d wanted to do was let Brad have his monsters for a couple of hours… and now? Now all she wanted to do was somehow survive the experience and get Brad to a hospital.

A new rush of screams came from the tram behind them, and Tina looked back as something almost as big as the armored tram car forced its way past the damaged doors. Through the trees, she could just barely see people struggling inside, trying to find a way out of the tram, and she could make out the mouth of the dark shape that lunged forward and shook the entire car. A thick tongue caught hold of one of the people inside and yanked the struggling form into its gaping maw with ease.

She looked away and ran after Brad after she spotted him again, stumbling along in a semi-daze, half-hidden by the trees and the people around them. He’d managed to clear several yards further than she’d expected in only a few moments, and she had to sprint to catch up with him.

“Brad, be careful, honey!”

Brad gave no sign that he’d heard her.

Tina had heard the term hellhound before, though she couldn’t remember where. That didn’t prepare her for seeing one. The black dog that lunged out from behind a black tree trunk bared its teeth and charged for her husband. Flames boiled from where its eyes should have been, and blasted from its mouth and nostrils as it moved. Powerful legs propelled it forward in large bounds, and the turf under its hind claws was torn asunder with each step it made.

Tina had exactly enough time to scream her husband’s name before the monster dove at him.

As if suddenly snapping out of his daze for an instant, he ducked. The hellhound’s back claws raked against his face, cutting deep. Though the creature could certainly have turned back around and finished off Brad with minimal effort, another man came into view at exactly the wrong time.

Tina wasn’t able to identify the man in the split second before the hellhound bit his head in half. She heard the crunch of his bones shattering, saw his head jerk violently to the side, and watched the hellhound chew the remains of the man’s face into a bloody pulp surrounded by flames that roasted the meat as the monster swallowed.

She was still staring at the bloodied, blackened teeth of the demonic dog when it turned toward her. The man’s body slumped forward and twitched.

Then the hellhound pounced on Brad. He didn’t even scream as it finished him off.