by Jeff Strand
"I think you're right, going inside sounds good. How many bullets do you have left?"
"Just two."
"Yeah. Inside then. Let's go." Mindy stood up.
The bushes trembled and something burst forth from them, moving fast and panting.
Lee added pressure to the trigger and reminded himself to breathe in nice, shallow breaths. He almost pulled the trigger completely before he recognized that the shape was human.
"Stop right there. I've got a loaded rifle aimed at you."
"Don't shoot! Oh God! Don't shoot!" He recognized her as she stepped closer. A cute redhead with a body that spoke of many, many hours in a gym, and clothes that cost far too much for her to be running around in the forest.
"You're Tommy's mother, aren't you?"
"Oh God, is he here?"
"Yes, he's inside."
"Oh thank God! His mom would kill me."
"You're not his mom?" He frowned. Tommy and the woman even looked a little alike, give or take the gender and age differences.
"No, I'm his aunt." She moved closer, heading toward them at high speed. "I need to see him, make sure he's okay."
Mindy stood up to let her get past, and Lee lowered the rifle again. Who would have thought anyone could survive out there without a weapon? That thought got him frowning.
"Wait a second. How are you still okay? I mean, there are things out there eating people left and right, and you're fine?" He blocked the door as he spoke, and Mindy frowned for a second before understanding came to her eyes.
Jean looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "I've been trying to follow you guys. I saw the direction you went. Thanks for coming back when I called for you, assholes."
"We never heard you." Lee looked her over from head to toe, and she took his eyes on her as a personal affront, judging by the way she put her hands on her hips.
Her clothes were filthy, and she was drenched with perspiration. No blood, though. But it wasn't like monsters were popping up every ten seconds. Maybe somebody could quietly sneak through the woods by themselves without any weapons.
"Okay, let's all go inside."
"If you're done ogling me—"
Lee shook his head. "I'm trying to make sure that you're exactly who you say you are."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we're in a forest filled with monsters, and for all I know you could be a shape-changing thingy."
"Oh, give me a break! I've been alone in the woods all this time and my husband is probably dead, but you don't see me accusing people of being shape-changing thingies. Are you some kind of fucking idiot?"
"Just being careful," Lee said, admitting to himself that it did sound kind of silly and paranoid. Her tone was annoying him, but Lee did his best to ignore it. The tensions were high enough without his adding to them. He knew better, that was the saddest part. He knew not to piss people off in stressful situations. Another survivor was a good thing. A miracle.
"Who died and made you the general around here anyway, mister?"
Mindy stepped between them. "Let's just all calm down and see what we can do about getting you back together with your son, okay?"
"He's not my son."
"Good for him." Mindy turned and headed inside. Jean followed her a second later, and Lee headed for the entrance himself when he saw movement at the edge of the forest.
His hands twitched, and he almost dropped the rifle but managed to recapture it before it could fall.
The shape coming toward him was familiar enough. He'd studied it earlier when it looked him eye to eye outside of the tram car.
The Proof Demon moved closer as the door closed next to Lee. It moved quickly, and he wasn't sure he could aim the rifle before it was upon him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Eddie wrenched his head away from the alien's open mouth. It let out a shrill cry that ripped through his ears. As the alien thrust its head toward him for a second bite, Eddie slammed the grenade into its mouth, shattering several of its teeth.
Eddie wanted to quickly roll over, but the other aliens had him pinned down. He settled for holding up his hand as a semi-shield.
The alien's head exploded, spraying yellow chunks and slime all over the place, though mostly on Eddie. It wouldn't be biting anybody else's face any time soon. The alien was motionless for a moment, as if coming to terms with its lack of a cranium, and then it collapsed.
One down, a shitload more to go.
The head of another alien exploded. Eddie hadn't anticipated this one and thus hadn't protected his face or mouth. Then another one burst, followed immediately by a third. One after the other, the aliens' heads exploded in a voluminous shower of yellow goo, completely drenching Eddie.
About thirty seconds later, Eddie lay in a small pond of alien remains. The smell was not pleasant.
He sat up. His ears were filled with gook, but he had nothing slime-free available to use to wipe off his fingers so he could get it out. Instead he got to his feet and trudged through the yellow pond until he reached a tree. He wiped his fingers on the trunk and then went to work trying to get the slime out of his ears.
So what was up with the mass explosion? All of those aliens had pretty much come out of nowhere. Maybe they were all part of one creature that split itself into multiple parts that all shared the same consciousness and receptiveness to head-exploding or some science fiction bullshit like that.
Then why hadn't they all died when he shot a couple of them in the head?
Maybe it was some sort of psychic connection between them all, and the mental stress of having its head completely explode impacted the others as well, thus causing their own heads to explode.
Fuck it. They were dead. He'd ask somebody about it when he got back.
He stepped forward. Something wrapped around his ankle and yanked him upside down. Eddie found himself dangling from a tree branch, his head swaying three feet above the ground.
Great.
Who the hell had set up a booby trap out here?
He swayed back and forth a bit, slime dripping off his body onto the ground.
Hopefully this was a trap set by humans to catch a monster, and not a trap set by monsters to catch a human. The situation was messed up enough without these things being able to use tools and set traps.
He tried to pull himself up, but he had no energy left. He'd just have to dangle here for a while and get his strength back.
Some slime oozed down into his nostril. He frantically pinched his nose to squeeze it out.
Shit.
Double shit.
Triple shit to the twelfth power.
The rope around his ankle tightened.
He looked at it more closely and realized that it was not, technically, a rope, in the sense that the standard definition of "rope" did not include eyes, teeth, or any degree of writhing. The thing that held his foot wasn't exactly a serpent, but it was close enough.
Eddie yelped and kicked at the snake-thing with his free foot. Its grip on his ankle tightened.
"Let me go, bitch!" he shouted at it, now grinding his foot against its head. It tightened around his ankle even more, so that it was starting to hurt. He kicked and kicked at it, but the serpent wasn't letting go. So Eddie switched tactics and tried to grind his shoe against its neck as hard as he could, hoping its head would explode just like one of those aliens.
Its grip loosened.
Eddie's foot popped free and he fell to the ground. Though he cushioned his landing with his outstretched arms, it was still quite a jolt, and he lay there, dazed.
The snake-thing dropped onto his face.
He yelped again and grabbed at the serpent as it slithered underneath his neck. He got a good grip on it and tried to pull it away, but the damn thing was too strong, and before he even realized what was happening it was double-coiled around his neck.
"Oh, no, you are not going all boa constrictor on me!" he told it, although his current lack of breathing ability made the words
sound much more similar to an incoherent groan. As it squeezed his neck, he squeezed its body, trying to dig his fingers into its skin and rip it apart.
Its tail slapped against his cheek, as if trying to add insult to injury.
Eddie sat up. Now he truly couldn't breathe, and he was pretty sure that passing out was in the near future for him. He got to his feet and stumbled against the tree, waiting for the inevitable crack of his neck as the serpent's grip continued to tighten.
He noticed something on the ground.
An alien's jaw.
He reached down and picked it up. He slammed its teeth against the snake-thing and moved the jaw back and forth in a rapid sawing motion.
He couldn't see what was coming out, but his fingers were getting wet.
The serpent tightened and tightened as he sawed and sawed.
Then, all of a sudden, it released its grip and dropped to the ground.
It tried to slither away, the front half of its body dragging the partially detached bottom half. Eddie slammed his foot down on it, missing the head but crushing the tail.
The snake's head slipped underneath the right leg of his pants. Eddie hurriedly lifted his foot to try and shake it out, which he immediately realized was a very big mistake because it freed the creature and allowed it to slip completely into his pants.
"Shitshitshit!" he screamed, frantically punching at the creature as it made its way up his leg. His blows didn't seem to be doing any damage, and the snake slid past his waist into his shirt, giving his testicles a swat with its tail as it passed.
Eddie desperately tried to get a grip on the snake as it darted up toward his neck, but it slipped effortlessly through his hands as he grabbed at it through the fabric.
It popped its head out of his collar, and suddenly the snake was around Eddie's neck again. It tightened around him, and Eddie's breath stopped in mid-gasp.
He clawed helplessly at the creature, then bent down and scrambled to find the alien jaw again.
The snake bit his chin.
Eddie cried out and tried to pry its fangs loose. The snake's head wouldn't budge. He poked at its eye and missed.
It hurt so badly that he couldn't even say "shit" again.
Eddie slid his fingers along the portion of the serpent that was wrapped around his neck, stopping when he reached the half-severed portion. He crushed it in his fist.
The snake dug its fangs deeper into his chin.
Eddie squeezed harder. Something spurted.
Then he ripped the snake away from his neck. Its fangs took a generous piece of his chin with them as they pulled free.
Eddie whacked the snake against the tree.
It continued to writhe in his hand.
He whacked it again and again.
It didn't stop moving.
Eddie whacked it against the tree trunk repeatedly, counting each blow. Ten...eleven...twelve...
The snake was almost in two pieces, but it was still alive and struggling.
Eighteen...nineteen...twenty...
The damn thing just wouldn't die!
Twenty-six...twenty-seven...
Now pieces of snake were flying into the air with each hit,
Thirty-three...thirty-four...
It wasn't struggling quite so much anymore.
Forty...forty-one...
It had stopped moving.
Forty-seven...forty-eight...
By the fiftieth hit, Eddie was certain that the snake was dead. He kept whacking it against the tree until he'd counted to seventy-five.
He let the pulpy mass drop to the ground, then he stomped on it ten times.
Then—fuck it, nobody was around to see—he sat down against the tree and cried.
* * *
Eddie's chin hurt like hell, but there was nothing to indicate that he'd been injected with venom. Not that Haunted Forest snake venom would necessarily follow the standard poison rules, but as far as he could tell, the only damage came from the deep twin holes.
He walked through the forest, still dripping yellow alien slime. He wondered if the others were faring any better. Christopher in particular had seemed like a pretty decent guy, and Eddie hoped that he'd somehow survived his encounter with the giant bird.
He doubted it, but, hey, nothing wrong with hoping.
Eddie walked as quickly as he could while still paying close attention to where he stepped. He didn't think he could handle another encounter with one of those snakes. Actually, the way he felt at the moment, an ambitious hamster might be too much for him to handle.
And then, finally, he saw the tram up ahead. Not the one he'd been driving, but the one that had been ripped open.
He'd hoped to see an additional tram with a rescue team waiting inside, smiling and waving and bearing Starbucks, so he was disappointed by the lack of reinforcements. At the same time, he'd feared that he might see a couple of extra wrecked trams littered with corpses, so it could've been worse.
He reached the tracks. The tram was silent.
Okay, best-case scenario, a rescue tram was on the way at this very moment. Somewhat less than best-case scenario, the rescue tram had been ambushed before it reached this point, preventing anybody else from getting through on the tracks.
He had to assume that waiting around for help wasn't going to get him saved, and just make his way along the tracks by foot. If reinforcements showed up, fantastic, if not, he'd just have to get out of the forest without their help.
He walked over to the wrecked tram. He didn't expect to find any survivors, and quite frankly didn't need anybody slowing him down, but there might be some useful stuff in there.
He stood outside the tram for a moment and listened. Nothing seemed to be stirring.
He stepped inside.
A man, seated in the second seat back, pointed a rifle at him.
Eddie put his hands in the air. "Whoa, hold on, I'm here to help."
The man looked at him closely. The stress of the situation made everybody look older than they were, but Eddie pegged him to be in his forties or so. He had short hair, which was sticking up in the back, and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He was wearing a black jacket, and though Eddie's fashion knowledge didn't extend past Levi's, it looked damn expensive.
"You're the other driver, aren't you?" the man asked.
"Yeah."
"We crashed into you."
"I know."
"You shouldn't have stopped."
"Yeah, well, they weren't perfect driving conditions." Eddie lowered his hands.
"Get them back up!" the man said.
"Are you kidding me?"
"I'll shoot you. I swear I will."
Eddie sighed and raised his hands in the air again. "I'm not here to hurt you. I don't want anything from you. Okay, that's not true, I'd kind of like the gun, but I'm just here to find something to defend myself with while I try to get out of the forest."
"You can't have any of this."
"You're just going to let me die out here?"
The man shrugged. "What's one more?"
"What's your name?"
"None of your business."
"I'm Eddie. Pleased to meet you."
"Don't try to make friends with me," the man said. "I'm serious. Turn around and leave this tram, or I'll kill you."
"Listen," said Eddie. "I understand that none of us are having a very good day. I'm not here to cramp your style or steal your seat. I'd just like a weapon."
"Get one from someplace else."
"Your best chance of survival is if I get out of here. If another tram was coming, it would be here by now. So help ain't on the way, buddy. If I can get out of the forest, I can tell the cops, military, coast guard, and everybody else exactly where to find you and the other survivors."
"There are other survivors?"
"Yeah. Not many, but a few."
"Where are they?"
"At a water reclamation plant. And one guy got carried off by a giant bird, but he's pro
bably dead."
"Interesting."
"Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. So why not be a pal and let me borrow a gun? It doesn't have to be the one you've got pointed at me."
The man shook his head. "Get out."
"You know you're committing suicide, right?"
"Get out!"
"Whatever." Eddie turned and stepped out of the tram. Great. Just when things could work out in his favor, he had to meet some whacko with a—
Lots of creatures were staring at him.
Dozens of them, no two of the same species. Things with fangs, things with claws, things with spikes, things with horns, and even a fuckin' thing with a giant mouth on its stomach.
Where the hell had they all come from so quickly? Even when the trams first collided, all of the creatures hadn't arrived this fast.
There was something very, very wrong here.
Moving as one, the creatures rushed forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"How do you know my name?" Christopher asked.
The scaly blue creature smiled. "It's written on your underwear."
"What?"
"I'm kidding."
"What?"
"Let me introduce myself before you get too confused to speak properly." The creature let go of Christopher's neck and shook his hand. "My true name is very long, difficult to pronounce, and rhymes with one of my native language synonyms for 'penis,' so I prefer not to use it. Instead, you can call me Pestilence. That's a suitably disturbing name, isn't it?"
Christopher just stared at the creature.
"If you continue to look at me that way, I shall be forced to pluck out your eyeballs and encourage you to eat them," said Pestilence. "I won't cook them or disguise the flavor with any spices or sauces to make it more palatable. It will be two raw eyeballs, straight up, and you won't enjoy it. Do you understand?"
Christopher nodded.
"Please do more than nod."
"Yes, I understand."
"Good. So, we've now established that you're Christopher and I'm Pestilence. We should also establish that you're a weak, puny human, and I am an extremely powerful demon. Do I look powerful to you?"
