Welcome to Doom Farms

by Karsten Knight

  He fell ten feet to the barn floor, flailing the whole way down.

  20

  “Charlie!” I cried out. He groaned and tried to pick himself up off the floor, then collapsed back to the hay. The fall must have rattled him bad.

  The creature skittered closer to him. Its pincers snapped hungrily, preparing to dissect their dinner.

  I frantically searched around for something I could use to attack it. The loft was empty except for mounds of moldy straw.

  Then my gaze fell on the large hay bale dangling from the ceiling.

  A few weeks ago, when I had walked through the barn with my father, he had pointed up at the bale. “Be careful around that,” he had warned me. “I know hay seems light when you pick up one straw of it, but compacted like that, the bale probably weighs a thousand pounds.”

  “Then how do they get it up there?” I had asked.

  He had shown me how the chain was threaded through a pulley in the rafters. The other end of the chain was secured in place by a winch, a device that let you raise or lower the bale by turning a crank.

  As the creature closed in on Charlie, I followed the bale’s chain with my eyes, until I found the winch. It was attached to one of the loft’s support beams.

  I waited in anticipation until the creature crossed beneath the shadow of the bale.

  Then I released the brake that held the crank in place.

  The bale dropped a few inches, but suddenly stopped. I looked upward in frustration. The chain had snagged on the rusted pulley.

  I only had one more shot at this. The monster would be on Charlie in a matter of moments.

  I took off running across the loft. With a war cry, I pounced onto the dangling hay bale.

  The impact of my body did the trick. The rusted pulley above snapped free from the rafters. My stomach lurched as if I were on a roller coaster as the block of hay beneath me dropped.

  The creature only had a second to squeal as the bale came crashing down on him, flattening him to the floor.

  I climbed down off the mound of hay and gazed upon the aftermath. The creature had disappeared entirely beneath the bale, except for a single claw. For a moment, I watched the pincers open and reach out for me, and I worried that maybe my plan had failed.

  Then the claw stiffened before going limp altogether. It dropped to the floorboards with a heavy thud.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and helped Charlie back to his feet. He still looked dazed, but managed a pained smile. “That was a pretty impressive leap, Kayla Dunn,” he said. “You should think about trying out for the basketball team.”

  A low growl interrupted our celebration. We turned to find another scorpion standing in the broken entryway. At first, I thought the third egg had hatched. Then I noticed the bucket still stuck to the creature’s tail. The first one had finally escaped my trap.

  And it looked angrier than ever.

  21

  As the scorpion advanced, Charlie and I slowly backed away, toward the rear of the barn. “Why does this one have a bucket on its tail?” Charlie stammered.

  I grabbed a rusty shovel off the wall, the only weapon I could find. “Because I tied it to the old well,” I replied.

  Charlie pointed at the frayed end of the rope trailing behind the creature. “That thing has gigantic scissors for hands, and you thought you could tie it up with string?”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I snapped. “The monster-hunting store was fresh out of giant scorpion traps.”

  The creature skittered over the mound of hay that had crushed the other one. It poked at its sibling’s unmoving claw. When it got no response, it let loose a bloodcurdling howl. Its eyes gleamed with vengeance as they focused on me.

  Then it lunged.

  Charlie and I dove in opposite directions as the scorpion sailed through the hair. It collided with the back wall so hard I thought the barn would implode. Dust rained down from the rafters.

  With the two of us on either side of it, the creature had to make a decision. Unfortunately for Charlie, he was the closest. When he tried to dart for the exit, the scorpion swept its tail along the floor, tripping him to the ground. Charlie fell hard for the second time in the last five minutes. I watched the sleek blue tail extend back, ready to skewer him.

  I glanced at the barn doors. If there was a time to run, this was my only shot.

  But I knew I had to intervene.

  I raised the shovel in my hands over my head and brought it down hard like a hammer on the creature’s back. I targeted a spot where the exoskeleton was exposed between the vines.

  Clang. The impact reverberated through my arms. To my alarm, the shovel barely dented the scorpion’s armor plating.

  The monster turned to me. I jabbed at it with the shovel, trying to keep it out of claw’s reach. I heard Charlie’s footsteps treading across the barn floor as he rushed for the doors. Coward, I thought.

  As I thrust the shovel at the scorpion, aiming for its face with all of my might, one of its claws shot forward. The pincers clamped down on the shovel’s wooden shaft. With an effortless squeeze, it sliced my weapon in two. The metal top clattered hopelessly to the floor, leaving me with only a broken stake.

  A low moan escaped my throat as I realized that the creature had me cornered. This was it. My last thought was a prayer that Charlie made it to town to warn the others so my parents could get safely away.

  22

  Suddenly the dark barn filled with light. I heard a deep rumble, and briefly wondered if lightning had struck the field outside. Then the light grew brighter, so intense that I threw up my hands to block it out.

  The creature, too, turned to search for the source of the light.

  It released a panicked squawk as the old tractor blindsided it. The headlights illuminated its surprised eyes for one fleeting moment before it was crushed between the tractor’s front grill and one of the barn’s support beams. The exoskeleton gave a resounding crack and exploded in a mess of blue goo.

  A shaken but triumphant Charlie stepped down from behind the wheel of the tractor. He held out a hand to pull to my feet.

  “You saved my life,” I said.

  He smirked. “Couldn’t let you be the only hero in Orchard Falls.”

  “It’s always a competition with you,” I muttered.

  Smoke rose from the tractor’s engine, which was stuck in the creature’s carcass. It gave a final whine of protest before it died altogether. “Looks like we’re biking into town,” I said. Then I had a chilling realization. I grabbed Charlie’s wrist. “Charlie—there’s still another egg out there.”

  We rushed outside and over to the pumpkin patch. To our relief, the final of the three small eggs had yet to hatch. “Must be a late bloomer,” Charlie said.

  As soon as he said that, the egg quivered, as though the thing inside had heard him. Our eyes widened in unison.

  I pointed to the metal silo, which gleamed under the light of the full moon. “We have to get it in there before it hatches!”

  Charlie looked skeptical, and for a moment, I thought he was going to take off toward town. Finally, he nodded and joined me behind the giant egg.

  Together we began to push. The egg was roundest in the middle, so we would be able to roll it like a wheel if we could tip it over.

  It was even heavier than I thought, more than both our weights combined. We dug our heels into the soil and grunted, pressing our shoulders into the rind. The field sloped downhill between the patch and the silo. If we could just get some momentum …

  We both doubled our efforts and finally the egg tipped up, up, until with a thud, it landed on its round edge.

  A growl of discontent echoed from somewhere inside.

  If the creature hadn’t been ready to emerge yet before, it definitely was now.

  “We don’t have much time!” I shouted to Charlie as we started to roll it toward the silo. My arms burned from the effort. I could see my companion sweating, but it got a little easier as the egg pic
ked up speed.

  We were halfway down the hill when a claw erupted from the shell.

  23

  The pincers burst through the rind where the stem used to be. The claw thrashed about, trying to clamp down on the two of us for daring to disturb its slumber. I jumped just in time as it snapped at my ankles, slicing through a tuft of dried grass like a lawnmower.

  Charlie and I pushed it the last twenty feet to the silo, while chunks of the egg fell away piece by piece. With a final heave, we shoved it hard through the open gate.

  Momentum carried the egg across the silo floor. When it smashed into the metal wall in back, the shell split in two. A slimy newborn scorpion spilled out onto the floor. It spotted us immediately and scampered toward the open entrance.

  Charlie and I slammed the sliding door closed just as the creature plowed into it. We jumped back as its pincers punched the steel, making tiny dents. The door was too thick and strong for it.

  Hopefully, this scorpion wouldn’t be getting free anytime soon.

  “We can figure out what to do with this one later,” I told Charlie between deep breaths. As much as I wanted to collapse to the dirt and catch my breath, there was no time.

  The largest egg waited for us at the Jack-o’-Lantern Festival.

  For all we knew, it could have hatched already. As we spoke, the beast within might be terrorizing the unsuspecting residents of Orchard Falls as they sat down for their potluck supper. I pictured my parents huddled in the corner of the town hall as the scorpion tore off the roof, saliva dripping from its jaws as it loomed over them …

  I only hoped that we weren’t too late.

  24

  We made it back to the festival in record time. Charlie was faster than I was, and I had to push myself to the limit to keep up.

  Night had fully descended by the time we reached the fair, and so had a thick mist. The fog blanketed the orchard so densely that it was hard to see more than twenty feet in front of us.

  Fortunately, the town had lined the pathways between the booths with hundreds of lit jack-o’-lanterns. The firelight tinted the mist with an eerie orange glow.

  Even creepier: the festival was completely deserted. Not a single soul remained behind in the booths.

  We abandoned our bikes outside the fair’s main stage. The open-air theater was dark as we entered, except for what little moonlight filtered through the mist.

  “The spotlight is around here somewhere,” Charlie whispered. I heard him stumbling around in the darkness for a few moments, then the sound of a metal switch flipping. We both winced as light flooded the stage.

  When my eyes adjusted, I let myself relax a little. The massive egg was still intact. It dwarfed the other pumpkins. If it had actually participated in tomorrow’s competition, it probably would have broken the scale when they weighed it.

  “What are we even going to do with this thing?” Charlie asked as we passed down the center aisle between rows of folding chairs.

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I admitted. Hay bales and tractors might have defeated the others, but if the size of the egg indicated the size of the creature, it was probably big enough to eat any tractor we drove at it.

  I climbed onto the stage and hesitantly approached the egg. I couldn’t hear any sounds coming from within, but when I dared to touch the shell, I felt it gently pulsating.

  Like a heartbeat.

  Out in the amphitheater, someone started to clap.

  I shielded my eyes from the spotlight and squinted as I searched for the source of the applause. The seats had all been empty when we entered. Now a tall man occupied a spot in the front row, as though he had materialized out of thin air.

  The man who had given me the seeds—the one who had called himself Abel—grinned up at me.

  25

  Abel had replaced his farmer’s overalls with a white lab coat and pair of amber goggles that concealed his eyes. “Bravo,” he said, still applauding. “I knew you had a fire burning in you, Kayla, but I never expected these eggs to turn out so beautifully.”

  I froze. Somehow, this man now seemed far more terrifying than the giant scorpions. “What do you want, Abel?” I asked. “Or whoever you really are.”

  He rose from his chair, drawing himself up to his full towering height. “My name,” he said slowly, “is Dr. Umbra. And I just came to thank you for doing my handiwork for me.” His face glowed with pride as he gazed up at the gigantic egg, like a father holding his newborn for the first time.

  Charlie moved beside me. “Kayla, who is this creep?” he whispered. His body had gone rigid, as though he were expecting a fight. He could sense this man was dangerous.

  “I’m not a creep, Charles,” Dr. Umbra corrected him. “I’m a visionary.”

  Every time he took a step closer to the stage, I backed up. This man’s not-so-little pets had nearly killed me not once but four times tonight. “Why me?” I asked. “Why not grow these freaks yourself, in your twisted little greenhouse?”

  “Because I’m a busy man,” Dr. Umbra replied. “The scorpikins are just one of many projects that require my attention. So as an experiment I thought: what if I could just get others to grow my children for me? But first, I needed a test run—you—to make sure that my babies would grow here.”

  Something about the way he said the last word unsettled me. “What do you mean by here? Orchard Falls?”

  Dr. Umbra reached up and pulled off his googles, revealing his eyes. They glowed tangerine like two simmering coals. What he said next chilled me to the bone:

  “Here on Earth.”

  26

  I shuddered. Here on Earth?

  The day we had met, Dr. Umbra hadn’t been kidding when he said he wasn’t from around here.

  Charlie took a brave step forward, even though I’m not sure he understood what was going on quite yet. “Well, you’ve failed,” he said. “We’ve already defeated the others. This egg is next.”

  Dr. Umbra sighed deeply. “It is a real pity that you murdered my drones before they even had a chance to grow to their full potential.”

  I exchanged a look with Charlie. Those scorpions were supposed to get even bigger?

  “No matter,” the doctor continued. “All that truly matters now is the queen.”

  On cue, the egg next to us quivered.

  Dr. Umbra drew a silver object from his lab coat pocket—a bell the size of an apple. “She seems reluctant to hatch. Perhaps she’s experiencing a little stage fright. Let’s speed up the process and encourage her to make her grand debut, shall we?”

  With a swing of his hand, he rang the bell. A crisp note sounded through the amphitheater. When it chimed again, I felt it reverberate deep in my bones.

  A low rumble echoed through the hall. It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from inside the egg.

  It was not a happy noise.

  The third time Dr. Umbra rang the bell, a crack ruptured through the shell. Charlie and I instinctively jumped back. The line zigzagged through the veiny rind, from top to bottom.

  On the fourth chime, the top half of the egg erupted like a volcano. A tidal wave of goo gushed over us, soaking our clothes and nearly washing us right off the stage. The stench was unimaginable.

  What remained of the egg split open in two halves.

  The creature that emerged made the smaller ones look like they belonged in a petting zoo.

  Thorns longer than my arms formed spiky rows across the queen’s hulking exoskeleton. Her claws looked large and sharp enough to shear through a tree trunk in a single snip. A vine-like tongue darted out of her open jaws, flicking pungent drool at us.

  Dr. Umbra gazed up at his creation. Tears of joy welled in his eyes. “You are so much more beautiful than I ever could have dreamed,” he whispered.

  Charlie and I snapped out of the hypnotic spell of the hatching and jumped off the stage. As we dashed down the center aisle, Dr. Umbra didn’t try to stop us. He just gave the bell one final ring.
The scorpion queen tilted her head back and let loose a nightmarish wail.

  It was the kind of noise that made me feel like I would never be safe again.

  “Do you hear that?” Dr. Umbra called after us. “That is the sound of your doom.”

  27

  Charlie and I sprinted out into the orchard and climbed back onto our bikes. The queen’s chilling howls echoed from the amphitheater. I knew it was only a matter of time before she decided we would make a great appetizer.

  As we raced down a row of festival booths, the sounds of that monstrosity faded into the distance. Charlie glanced back at the narrow lane behind us. “At least it’s too big to squeeze down these paths,” he said.

  Directly to our right, the scorpion queen suddenly exploded through the Dunn Farms Jams booth. Her gargantuan body obliterated my mother’s hard work like a wrecking ball. All that remained was a tangled ruin of broken wood and shredded fabric. Jam jars rained down around us, leaving smears of red and purple on the road as they smashed one by one.

  There was no time to mourn the destruction of my mom’s booth. Before the dust had even settled, the queen turned her eight hungry eyes toward us.

  As she pursued us through the festival, she flattened everything in her path. Her tail whipped back and forth, batting objects in our direction. Without warning, a popcorn cart tumbled through the space between our bikes, then crashed in front of us. Glass and popcorn kernels scattered over the road.

  “We can’t outrun this thing forever!” Charlie shouted breathlessly.

  He was right. She was gradually gaining on us. Charlie’s face had grown red and sweaty, and I was in no better shape—we couldn’t maintain this pace for much longer.