The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER EIGHT

No. Absolutely not. It’s not true. I won’t let it be true.

Tina watched Brad’s legs shudder in their death throes, refusing to accept that her husband was dead that quickly. Brad wasn’t the most powerful man physically, but he could hold his own. He was smart. He made good money at his job, and he encouraged her to finish her college degree because he knew she wanted to. He was protective but not too jealous. He had such a wonderful, amazing face, and his smile made her weak in the knees after three years of dating and five years of marriage. He was the perfect man for her.

So, really, he couldn’t possibly be dead. It was too stupid, too random. He couldn’t be dead because they were getting ready to finally have a baby. They’d discussed it for a long time, and at the first of the next year she’d be off the birth control and ready for a new addition to their family. It was time. They’d been patient. They deserved to be happy. So he could not be dead.

All of those thoughts flashed through her head along with a thousand others, even as the hellhound shook its bloody muzzle and started coming for her.

Tina wanted to move. Part of her understood that the monster was going to rip her apart if she stayed where she was, but the bigger part was still trying to deal with the fact that Brad wasn’t just playing possum. He was still in the same spot, and his blood was blackening the already dark earth.

She wanted to move so desperately that she could hear a high keening whine coming from her throat as the monstrous thing walked closer.

Her feet wouldn’t lift from the ground. Her arms refused to budge. She couldn’t even get her stupid mouth to close.

The hellhound jumped at her.

The bullets that tore holes through its side made it shudder and threw it off course, even as flames blasted from its open wounds. The hellhound fell short of actually hitting Tina, but the flames from its mouth licked across her shins. The flames quickly died, and the hellhound stopped moving.

A man and a girl came toward her. The man reached for Tina’s arm. “Move! We have to get out of this area!” The young teenager wrapped around his waist was looking at the dead hound with shocked fascination.

“I—Brad’s dead.” She tried to explain herself, but the words didn’t want to come out right.

“And that sucks, now go!” He stepped in closer and slapped her lightly on the face. Not hard enough to knock her down, but enough to make her focus on the here and now instead of what would never be.

The not-quite-dead hellhound reared up and sank its massive teeth into his left thigh and his crotch, biting down almost hard enough to sever his leg.

The little girl with him staggered back and shrieked as her father’s blood spilled over her lower body. Tina didn’t even think about what she was doing, she merely reached for the girl and pulled her away from the dying man and dying monster.

The man dropped his rifle on the ground and followed it a second later, his eyes bulging and his mouth working uselessly.

She turned to the girl, her thoughts of Brad momentarily pushed aside by the newest horror, and as she turned she saw the hopping thing coming their way.

It almost looked human, with tattered clothing on its emaciated body. The face was skeletal and the body was as thin as that of an anorexic supermodel. Whatever it was, it seemed incapable of standing still. The thick mane of black hair that ran from its head cracked in the air every time it moved, jumping in leaps that would have made a cricket jealous. Jump, and it was five feet closer. Jump, and it was only seven feet away. Jump, and it was next to the body of the man who’d saved her and the beast that killed him. Jump, and the little girl was screaming again as the dead-thing caught her in its bony arms and carried her away, still screaming. Jump, and it was on a tree above her head, its mouth opening impossibly wide and then sinking into the girl’s neck.

The little girl stopped screaming as the thing that had her tore away a thick strand of bloodied meat and swallowed greedily, the skeletal face seeming to grin at Tina even as it sank its teeth into the girl again.

Tina looked around, once again lost in shock, and her eyes found the spot where Brad had fallen. She couldn’t see him under the things that were feasting on his remains. Or were they? She only saw the hellhound and its first victim.

What on earth—?

An older woman with tears running down her face caught Tina’s left hand and pulled. The man beside her looked her way for only an instant before bringing his rifle up and scouting around them again. When one of the things feeding on the victim who wasn’t Brad looked up and hissed through a mouth full of bloodstained teeth, the man shot it in the head.

“Mom, where are we going?” Christopher looked at his mother, who was still holding Tina by the wrist.

Mindy shook her head and spoke in a strained voice. “Anywhere away from the monsters!”

Eddie and Barbara were catching up fast. Christopher looked at the tram’s driver and gritted his teeth. He wanted to make a sarcastic comment about their situation not having seen notable improvement after leaving the tram, but it was hardly a good time for that. The creatures were everywhere and they all seemed to think human meat was well worth killing for.

Eddie looked his way and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Hit the dirt!”

And then Eddie pulled another grenade.

Brad honestly wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. He was concentrating on running, not knowing or caring where he was going. He closed his eyes a few times and then opened them again when he ran into a tree hard enough to rattle his already numbed senses. His arms were screaming obscenities at him and seemed to have no desire to stop any time soon. Tina, whose voice had been his sole beacon for the last few minutes, suddenly wasn’t speaking to him anymore.

He hurt in lots of places, but wasn’t sure where they were.

When the lack of her cried warnings finally sank in, Brad stopped and looked around. There was nothing to see but trees and more trees.

“Oh brother.” He wasn’t entirely sure that he’d actually said Oh brother, and it certainly didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d say in this situation, but that was his best guess regarding the words he’d panted out. He carefully spun himself in a full circle. “Tina?” He’d definitely said that. He said it again. “Tina?”

Nothing. The closest thing he got to an answer was the sound of laughter up ahead. Brad—that was his name, right? Brad?—moved toward the high-pitched cackling, hoping someone up ahead would tell him where he was and what was so gosh-darn funny.

Also, maybe a doctor would be useful.

Instead of directions or instructions, Brad got the sound of something screaming bloody murder. There was the brief pop of a weapon going off and then a shriek that cut through his shock. Something fell out of a tree not fifteen feet away from him, yelping in pain all the way down. When it hit the ground he caught a glimpse of a vulpine face distorted by agony. The thing looked like a mix between a man and a wolf with grossly exaggerated features. The blood jetting from its shoulder told him it wasn’t long for this world.

Good. It didn’t belong in this world.

Before it could even try to stand up, seven more things that looked just like it swarmed out of the woods and attacked it, cackling amongst themselves even as they tore it apart. The laughter and the screams mingled together until only the laughter was left.

An old man looked his way from behind a tree, a horrified expression making him look even older than Brad remembered from when he’d spotted him on the tram.

The old man walked toward him, and when one of the feasting monsters noticed the movement, the old man calmly aimed and fired, blasting a section of the thing’s face away. Without hesitation, the other things surrounded the newly wounded one and pounced again.

“Son, we’re both lost. Do you remember where you came from?” The old man sounded like he could have used a few hours of rest and maybe a couple of heart pills.

Brad turned his head and nodded over his right shoulder. “That way.”

“Then we better get going. It’s bad over here.”

Brad turned as carefully as he could because his arms were starting to hurt a lot more now that he was coming out of his shock. He followed the old man, focusing on the narrow back and the baggy pants in front of him as if they were a life beacon.

When the old man started jogging faster, Brad did his best to keep up, despite the jarring pains that each step sent through his body. He grunted as his feet moved over a thick root and made him stumble. His arms felt like someone was pumping hot lead through his veins, and the sudden shaking of trying to catch his balance was enough to make the world fade to a dark gray.

The old man looked back toward him, his features pinched with fear. Brad could imagine what was going through his head. Brad was dizzy and barely coherent and close to passing out, true, but he was far from stupid: the man was considering whether it was worth risking his life for a mangled loser with two worthless arms.

He was a better man than Brad, who had to admit that he would’ve left his own ass behind to die. He turned around and came back. “Come on, son. We don’t have time to fall down.” The old man put an arm around Brad’s waist and started moving again, as quickly as he could with a rifle in one hand and a barely-conscious stranger in his other.

Behind them the sound of laughter faded. Ahead of them, the screams of other people grew louder.

The explosion shook the trees and stunned most of the people around them for a few heartbeats. No one was prepared for the impact of the grenade going off, even with the warning that Eddie called out. The tree closest to the impact spot had a small crater blown through the coarse bark and bled a thick red sap.

Christopher’s ears were ringing and he’d caught enough of the flare from the detonation to leave him blinking spots out of his eyes. Still, it had worked. There were much fewer of the monsters around them now; most had bolted as soon as the grenade was airborne and the few that hadn’t had a chance to get away were now bloodied confetti on the ground.

Barbara pointed and yelled. He could almost make out the words through the ringing in his ears, but he got the obvious gist of it: they had to go the way she pointed. His mom nodded her head and started running, pulling along the woman she’d already grabbed.

Something moved. Christopher didn’t know what it was and he didn’t care anymore. His nerves were shot. He swung the rifle around and aimed even as he pulled the trigger.

The rifle made a clicking noise that he barely even heard. “Aw, crap.” Just to make sure he was as screwed as he thought he was, Christopher pulled the trigger seven more times, with the exact same result each time.

“Oh, that’s… that’s not fair!” He looked at his mother, who was running hard, to see if she agreed. As she was currently dragging another woman behind her and, well, running like an intelligent person would in this situation, she had no words for him.

The big thing that came out of the woods made Christopher really wish that he had not just run out of bullets. It charged in his direction on two reptilian legs, snorting heavily as it ran his way, all four of its eyes looking directly at him.

Christopher stared long and hard as the monstrosity flapped vestigial wings and lowered its head coming for him, the long neck that held the head in place weaving slightly like a snake’s.

He pulled the trigger a few more times, just in case he’d been mistaken about having no ammunition left. He hadn’t.

As the thing moved closer still, picking up speed along the way, Christopher tossed the rifle into the air and called on old instincts to save his ass. The barrel of the weapon shifted by one hundred and fifty degrees, until it was almost pointing at him. His hands caught it in a death grip, leaving the heavier stock pointing at his impending doom. It had been a long time since he’d played Little League baseball, but some lessons were hard to forget. Christopher had always sucked at catching a baseball, and his pitching skills left a lot to be desired, but when it came to hitting, he was pretty damned good.

He cocked the rifle over his shoulder as he crouched. The monster opened its slobbering jaws wide and lunged forward, the neck first coiling and then releasing at high velocity.

Christopher got a home run for the first time in over two decades. The hardwood stock of the rifle cracked with a loud snapping noise, as did the skull of the thing that was trying to eat him. That did not stop the six-hundred-pound creature from slamming into him at high speed and knocking him completely off his feet. Christopher let out a loud yelp as the lizard-thing landed on top of him, its body shuddering and spasming. The beast’s skin was hot and dry, like having sun-baked stones set on him to pin him in place.

He pushed against the flesh and felt his palms stinging from the heat, his muscles quivering with exertion. The damn thing weighed too much! He couldn’t get out from under it.

Christopher grunted as the weight slowly increased, pushing him lower and lower, back into the thick loam of the forest floor. He tried to catch enough of a breath to call out for help, but the pressure kept increasing across his body and the thing was still suffering death throes.

More and more, it looked like he was going to meet his doom crushed under the thing that had been ready to eat him only a few seconds earlier.