by Jeff Strand
Tina charged, swinging the rifle like a baseball bat. Either she realized that she would likely hurt Mindy if she fired, or she just didn't think to point and shoot. Either way, it worked well enough for Barbara.
The rifle slammed into George W. Bush's face and frame and shattered both before it broke open the back of Brad's skull. More of the darker gray matter splattered away from the wound, moving with a consistency not unlike moldy chocolate pudding. She was almost certain she could see things slithering around inside the brackish goo.
Brad let out a grunt, but otherwise made no effort to stop his endeavors to eat Mindy's face.
Tommy crawled away, grunting and whining as he scrambled for cover.
Tina looked at the gaping wound in her husband's head and stepped back, horrified with what she'd done, even if she'd done it to a mold-covered, attempted-face-eating monster.
Mindy screamed once more, and that seemed to catalyze Tina a second time. She swung her makeshift club again, this time hitting Brad in his knee. His leg buckled and, despite his desire to stand still and keep on trying to feast, gravity got the better of him and he dropped to the ground. The tentacles that were wrapped around Mindy's face pulled back as he collapsed and the older woman fell to the ground next to him, panting, shivering, her face covered with red welts where he'd touched her.
Jean charged in, swinging with one tennis-shoe-clad foot and kicking Brad in the groin. Just as with the back of his head, the area she kicked collapsed in on itself. More of the foul slop from inside him splattered across her leg and the lower half of her body.
It hadn't been a mistake; there were definitely things moving in the black filth. Whatever they were, they perfectly matched the wriggling shapes that had filled his mouth, and as they landed on Jean, they immediately began burrowing under her skin.
Jean shrieked, not in fear, but in pain as the worm-things dug in deeper. She slapped frantically at them, but only managed to spread them across her hands where they once again began eating.
Brad tried to stand again, but Tina was on him, swinging the rifle up and down in a frenzy, driving the barrel into his soft gray skin and punching hole after hole through him.
Barbara kept the light on Brad, not because she was being brave but because she couldn't make herself look away, couldn't manage to move to help. She was too horrified. The writhing shapes that escaped from Brad's ruined form turned away from the light, trying to hide, and Barbara caught on quickly. She moved in closer, aiming the light at the creatures that had probably lived in darkness for as long as they had existed. Maybe, she thought, they'll burn if I hit them with the light.
The worms did not combust. They just tried to hide. Unfortunately, they tried to hide inside flesh and the closest available source was Tina. The newly widowed woman spun on one heel and then jumped up onto the desk to get away from them. It might have worked, too, but the things Barbara had originally thought were teeth seemed merely to be larger versions of the same creatures. They were thick and pink and wriggly and they could stretch, just like earthworms, but these were nowhere near as attractive. Earthworms at least had a certain symmetry, whereas these worms seemed almost more liquid, as if they were not yet completely formed.
Whatever they were, it was obvious that they liked to dine. Jean had stopped screaming and was now lying on the ground and shuddering violently. Barbara didn't dare keep the light on her for too long, for fear that the worms might find new hosts.
Tina had retreated to the center of the desk and was stomping savagely on any of them that got too close to her. She moved her feet so fast and hard that it almost looked like she'd taken up tap-dancing lessons. Back on the floor, the slimy creatures curled into the edges of what was left of Brad, hiding in the moist, dark environment he provided.
Lee stomped a particularly juicy worm. "We have to get the hell out of here," he said, realizing that it was a rather obvious announcement but not caring. "This place isn't shelter anymore."
Barbara nodded and started moving; she slipped past the desk with Tina on it and found Tommy trying to curl himself into a ball. There wasn't time to be kind and nurturing, so she grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. He responded automatically and settled on his legs. Mindy was up and moving with Lee, careful to dodge around the remains of Brad on the ground. Tina jumped from the desk without actually managing to kill herself in the near darkness, and moved for the door.
Jean wasn't coming with them. Whatever the worms were doing to her seemed to have paralyzed her body, and Barbara wasn't feeling quite bold enough to drag her from the room.
Lee held the door for her and then slammed it shut as Barbara and Tommy vacated their temporary haven.
Lee led the way, carefully looking out for whatever might be on the walls, the floor or even the ceiling before they moved on. Inside of three minutes they were back outside of the reclamation center, huddled together on the small exterior stairwell and looking out at the Haunted Forest.
Barbara turned off the flashlight and shivered. No reason to waste the battery before the sun set. They might need it later, if there was, in fact, a later to come. A small sob escaped her mouth before she bit it off.
Not three feet away from her, Tina was on her knees, sobbing as quietly as she could for the loss of her husband.
Not only did she lose him, she had to kill him, Barbara thought. There was nothing left of Brad when Tina delivered the fatal blow, but still, Barbara wouldn't want to be in Tina's emotional space right now.
Tommy had now lost his aunt for good.
Mindy had lost her son.
Barbara felt guilty. The closest person she'd lost was a sleazy co-worker, and he was probably bringing help back at this very moment.
Or Eddie was dead. He could've died ten seconds after he and Tina parted ways.
Barbara would stick with the "probably bringing help back at this very moment" theory for now. She liked that one a lot better.
She'd thought they'd be safe for the night in their stone shelter. Turned out they hadn't even made it to nightfall. And that meant the nocturnal creatures were only just getting ready to wake up.
She almost asked out loud how much worse it could get, but in the end she stopped herself. She didn't want to know.
Let's hear it for blissful ignorance.
But she figured they'd find out, whether they liked it or not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Eddie had two choices, both of which sucked. But the idea of facing the lunatic with the gun sucked a lot less than the idea of facing the monsters outside, so he rushed back into the wrecked tram.
"I said, get out of here!" shouted the man.
"Look outside! There are things all over the place! If I go out there I'm dead!"
"Not my problem."
"It will be your problem after they eat me! You think I'm enough of a meal to satisfy all of those monsters out there? You're next, buddy. Trust me."
The man didn't lower his gun.
"Screw it," said Eddie. "I don't have time to argue. I'm here to save your ass. Shoot me if you want to kiss it goodbye."
Eddie walked past the man, trying to demonstrate a carefree attitude while inwardly cringing and expecting the man to fire a bullet into his skull. Though he'd like to believe that he was at least safe from his fellow human beings under these circumstances, the man was clearly insane, unpredictable, and quite possibly capable of making good on his threat.
Fortunately, Eddie made it to the back of the tram without getting shot. In the second-to-last seat, a rifle rested on the lap of somebody who had nothing left of their body but a lap. He picked up the weapon and faced the front of the tram again.
The first creature entered the wrecked vehicle. It looked very much like a werewolf, with glowing red eyes. It rushed down the aisle toward Eddie. He fired. The werewolf let out a squeal as its furry forehead burst open, and it dropped dead.
A giant beetle entered. It scurried across the wall, passing the man. The beetle l
eapt at Eddie, and he blew it away in mid-air.
Another creature entered the tram, this one a...well, Eddie didn't know what the hell it was. It sort of looked like a giant slug, except that it had legs. It moved past the man and headed straight for Eddie. He shot it in the chest, or what he thought was its chest, and ooze sprayed out as if being pumped from a fire hose. Another shot and the slug popped like a water balloon.
As the man wiped ooze out of his eyes, Eddie hurried to the front of the tram and pressed the barrel of his rifle against the back of the man's head.
"What are you doing?" the man cried.
Eddie scooted into the seat behind him. "I'll kill you!" Eddie shouted. "I swear it!"
Several more creatures gathered at the tram door, but none of them came inside.
"How come none of those things tried to kill you?" Eddie demanded. "Those fuckers try to kill everybody. Why not you?"
"I don't know!"
"Bullshit! What, have you got some kind of repellant or something?"
"No!"
"I'll kill you!" Eddie shouted again, more for the benefit of the creatures outside than to threaten the man. Though he doubted that the Haunted Forest residents spoke English, they seemed to get the idea. None of them moved toward him, though those with visible eyes seemed to watch him, warily.
"Explain," Eddie said.
"There's nothing to explain."
"Explain," Eddie repeated, rapping the man on the back of the head with his gun.
"If you want to kill me, go ahead," said the man. "If you want to revert to savagery and become no better than that werewolf you just killed, be my guest. But I will not allow myself to be bullied by a common thug like yourself."
"Common thug? I'm trying to get answers, not steal your wallet!"
"I have no answers to give."
"Fine. I'll accept that. Either way, the monsters don't want you dead, and we're gonna use that to get us out of here. Stand up."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes, actually, you are. Think of this as a hostage situation. Stand up."
"I already said that I'm not—"
Eddie stood up, grabbed the man by the back of his shirt collar, and yanked him to his feet. "I've been fighting these creepy bastards all day, so no offense, but I'm not worried about handling a little dipshit like you."
"You're making a terrible mistake."
"I'm sure I am. Walk. Slowly."
"My name is Martin Booth. I own H.F. Enterprises."
Eddie hesitated. He'd seen a picture of the guy in the company newsletter, but had never met him in person. "Did you shave your beard?"
"Yes. Quite some time ago."
"It looked good on you."
"It itched. And you are?"
"Eddie Turner, tram driver."
"Here's the deal, Edward—"
"Eddie."
"Here's the deal, Eddie. If I leave this tram, more people will die than you can possibly imagine. I'm talking about horror on an apocalyptic scale. There will be oceans of blood on your hands if you interfere with this. I encourage you not to interfere."
Eddie stared at him for a long moment.
"Bullshit."
"It's the truth."
"I disagree.” Eddie shoved him forward, still keeping his hand on Booth's collar. “Let's go."
* * *
The trees kept on coming, rising from the desert floor in a growing tide that blotted out the previous boundaries of the Haunted Forest. Mullins kept them abreast of how things were going elsewhere along the perimeter, though unfortunately they were going about the same, complete with trees rising through the highway extension that led to the offices. The good news was that there were two side roads that would let them get around the new growth. Other good news seemed to be in short supply.
Most everybody else at H.F. Enterprises had left. Mark thought that was a fine idea, but Steve had insisted that he and Hannah stay for the time being. "You two know what's out there, and we may need your expertise."
Mark's expertise at this moment was pretty much limited to the knowledge that they needed lots of big guns to kill monsters with, but he didn't protest.
Outside, another twisted, gnarled tree broke through the dirt and rose into the air. Mark watched for a moment until something caught his attention. From the corner of his eye he saw something sweep between the trees, close to the same height as the window he looked through. He only saw it for a moment, but it was enough to capture his full attention.
Mark had spent four years studying the denizens of the Haunted Forest for a living. He'd never seen anything like this. Never imagined that anything like this could exist in the forest. How could it possibly have been living in the forest for four years without offering up any evidence of its existence?
His heart pounded in his chest as he scrambled for his cell phone. The shape disappeared between two trees for a moment and he held his breath, praying it would show itself again.
He got lucky and the dark shape swooped up toward the sky just long enough for him to capture its silhouette on his cell phone's camera. The picture wasn't perfect, but it was clear enough to make his skin crawl and his testicles try to find a safe place to hide themselves. As he looked out the window, the thing that caused his amazement dropped down below the tree line and vanished from sight.
"Hannah! Hannah, we have a new one! A big one!" He ran toward their office and had to force himself to breathe. He tried swallowing a few times but there was no saliva left in his mouth.
There was little by way of a point of reference in the shot, just a couple of trees, but he hoped they would be enough.
On one hand, he was ecstatic: a find like this was the sort of thing that had started him down the long and often penniless path to being a cryptozoologist in the first place. On the other hand, he was terrified: a creature like the one he'd just seen could potentially change everything that they understood about the Haunted Forest, and had the potential to do a lot more damage than the ogres.
"Mark? What is it?" Hannah was frowning at him and her eyes were just a little wet. He realized that she'd probably been crying, and as much as he might have liked to comfort her, this was far more important.
"Hannah, just...just look at this, okay? Please tell me you still have your computer hooked up and then look at this."
"I do." She pointed to the monitor, and without another word he dropped down his knees in search of the USB port that would allow him to download the single image he'd managed to capture.
Hannah waited as patiently as she could and dabbed at her eyes until they were dry. He tactfully ignored the slight run of mascara at the corner of her left eye and then showed her the new image.
Hannah looked at the silhouette on the screen for several seconds in complete silence and then started fiddling with the keyboard, trying to clarify what she was looking at. She finally managed to zoom in enough to show a partial of the creature's head.
"Oh shit." Her voice was as weak as his knees.
"Yeah."
"You saw that outside?"
"Yeah."
"That's...okay, I've said that enough things aren't possible for one day, but give me one more: That's not possible."
"I know. But we've got a dragon."
* * *
Emery Mullins lived for flying his helicopter. Technically he didn't own the machine, but he thought of it as his own, and since he had no children, the 'copter functioned as a perfectly good surrogate. Better, actually, because Duchess never gave him any backtalk or attitude. Fill her up with fuel when she needed it, perform regularly scheduled maintenance, and their relationship was pure bliss.
He banked around what had been the edge of the forest and looked at the unsettling amount of new growth. He didn't like what he was seeing. The growth seemed to come in waves, and they weren't getting smaller, they were getting stronger. At a guess, the new trees had expanded the forest by close to a quarter mile in a few places. He also knew that the forest was
almost perfectly circular, which meant that the ragged growth spikes going on right now would probably fill themselves in before it was all done. If it was ever all done.
That was a scary notion. He didn't know if much could stop a forest like this from growing if it wanted to. You could gather the world's lumberjacks en masse and put 'em to work, but if fully grown trees were sprouting faster than the most aggressive weeds known to man, a whole army of chainsaw-wielding laborers wasn't going to be able to stop them.
He'd had plenty of discussions with his buds at Ricky's Bar about whether the forest should be destroyed. He always stood on the side of keeping it, but only because he depended on the damned place for a living.
Still, he'd thought of different ways that the forest could be destroyed. Bulldozers might be able to do it, but again, there'd have to be tanks or something bigger to help. As for fires, well, he'd seen the footage of the fire pit. The trees around the area should have gone up in smoke a long time ago, but they hadn't. Far as Emery knew, trees didn't take well to lava, but none of the ones in the area had suffered even a little heat damage according to the people at the home office. So he had to doubt fire would work. What did that leave? Toxic chemicals? Napalm? His Aunt Helen, who'd killed a plant a day for twenty years?
Just thinking about it gave him a headache.
Below him another tree started rising toward the sky. This one was all by its lonesome so far, and further out than any of the others he'd seen, almost half a mile from the edge of the forest. He envisioned the entire planet completely engulfed by trees. The hippies would be ecstatic.
Far below him he spotted Duchess' shadow racing along the ground, made tiny by his range. He reached for the radio to call Steve and let him know about the new tree and the potential problems it signaled, but before he could speak, he saw a second shadow closing in fast on the 'copter.
