The BIG Horror Pack 2

by Iain Rob Wright

  Something seized Pendle’s foot and dragged him backwards through the mud. He screamed and reached out for Gretchen, but within a second he had disappeared into the trees.

  Colin grabbed Gretchen by the arm and turned her around. “Come on, we have to get out of here now.”

  The two of them made it out of the trees and up the embankment. As soon as they hit the road they dodged behind cars and tried to mix up their escape route. The bellowing growls continued from within the woods.

  The other survivors were still waiting in the hotel car par, and when they saw only two of the four explorers coming back, they began to panic and shout.

  “Where the hell is Pritchett and Pendle?” David demanded. “Did you up and leave em?”

  “There’s something out there in those woods,” said Colin, almost weeping. “We have to get inside.”

  Everybody panicked and the entire group of survivors began sprinting across the tarmac, heading for the hotel. Gretchen glanced behind at the woods across the road. Nothing seemed to be following them, but the glowing green light she had seen earlier had grown and now bathed the entire area in a putrid glow.

  This is not going to work out well at all.

  I think we may have just been attacked by aliens.

  ***

  Inside the hotel’s bar lounge, everyone stood around nervously, glancing out of the windows and jumping at every sound.

  “We all need to just chill the fuck out,” said David.

  “Chill out?” said Colin. “Something abducted two of our members like something out of Close Encounters. We should all be in a very un-chilled out mood. In fact we should all be in quite a flap about things.”

  David smirked. “Perhaps I’m all ‘flapped’ out after what we’ve been through. Everyone here is a survivor. The whole world has ended but we’re still here. I’m not about to panic now after surviving so much.”

  “We haven’t survived whatever is out in those woods.”

  “Look,” said Gretchen, raising a hand and gaining the floor. “Panic or no panic, I am telling you that something pretty damn dangerous is lurking in those woods and I’m pretty sure it came from whatever fell out of the sky. This isn’t an infection or looters; this is something else.”

  “You’re quite right,” said a voice at the back of the room. It was the physics teacher, Logan.

  Gretchen looked at the man. He was holding what looked like a triple scotch in his hand. “What do you know about it? Have you seen something?”

  “Many things, my dear,” replied Logan in a slurry mumble.

  “Then stop being so fucking cryptic and speak,” said David. “It’s about time you did something useful around here.”

  Logan ignored David and kept his drunken focus on Gretchen. “We have visitors. Visitors whom made an appointment many many years ago.”

  “Visitors?”

  Logan nodded. “You think that this is all a coin…coin…coincidence.” The man belched. “There’s hardly any of us left – probably less than one percent of the population. And believe me that it’s this bad everywhere; every country. Every scrap of land.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I kept tabs, my dear. Ever since I stopped working for the Government and started teaching snot-nosed little kids about Hooke’s law, I kept my eyes and ears open. The Peeling hit everywhere and there was no stopping it. The entire world was affected the same as us. We are the last of our kind – the last remnants of the human race.”

  “You’re talking shit,” said David. “There’s still enough of us to get things going again. We’ll have babies and repopulate. Sooner the better if you ask me.”

  “You said that you worked for the Government,” said Gretchen. “In what capacity?”

  “I was a researcher – part of the space program.”

  “Did we even have one? I thought space had become more the realm of private industry.”

  Logan nodded forlornly. “Unfortunately the times of putting boots on the moon were long behind us, but there were still many secrets to learn about the universe. We never stopped tracking the skies with our telescopes or sending up probes.”

  “So what are you saying? What do you know?”

  “I know about the baby.”

  David snickered. “This guy has had a shit-tonne to drink.”

  Logan sneered at the lad, but continued. “Decades ago, a mysterious baby was found abandoned in the freezing cold hills of Wales. Everyone who came into contact with the child died. Guess how.”

  Gretchen narrowed her eyes. “The Peeling?”

  “Indeed. Their skin rotted off in days, leaving them raving lunatics before their deaths. The child was isolated and kept that way until he was a grown man.”

  “Are you saying that this child was infected with The Peeling but lived like some kind of Typhoid Mary?”

  Logan shook his head. “The child was a weapon – a dirty bomb.

  One thing a human being can’t resist is a baby. They knew that, which is why they used one as their dispersal method. What they didn’t count on was the child being quarantined so effectively. Through a stroke of luck, the child was found by the Army who immediately took it back to base. The infection stayed within the rural outpost and stopped there. Their plan failed.”

  Gretchen shook her head. “Whose plan?”

  “The aliens.”

  Gretchen laughed at that moment, but something about the seriousness in Logan’s eyes – despite his drunkenness – told her to take him seriously.

  “We’d picked up signs of life a few times. On our telescopes we spotted great blinking green lights that would disappear before we could pin them down. We would pick up strange radio chatter and radiation signatures that made no sense. We knew something was out there; we just didn’t know what.

  But when that baby arrived, we knew exactly what it was: a way to wipe us out.”

  Gretchen sighed. She went and poured herself a vodka from the optics. She wasn’t usually a drinker, but right now she needed one.

  “Why wipe us out?” asked Colin. “What would that achieve?”

  Logan shrugged. “I never stayed at the project long enough to find out. When we learned about the child’s make-up – how it was genetically infused with the deadliest virus in existence, I decided I’d seen enough. It was clear that humanity’s days were drawing to an end. I wasn’t about to waste what life I had left in a lab.”

  “So you what? Thought you’d waste time teaching kids stuff that they probably wouldn’t live long enough to use.”

  Logan shrugged again. “Pay was okay and there was lots of holiday time.”

  Gretchen downed her vodka. “So what happened? You said the child was quarantined for decades.”

  “He was indeed. Then he escaped about six months ago. I know because an old colleague of mine died during his escape. I could tell by the way the Government were trying to cover it up, blocking any attempts at investigation, that the child – now a man – had escaped. I also knew what else that meant. That the End had arrived.”

  “But it didn’t. We’re still alive, and so are you.”

  “For now, yes. But the infection was only put on this earth to thin our numbers. For whatever reason, something wants our planet. For terraforming or mining, who knows? But they have thinned our number sufficiently, and now they are here to take their prize.”

  Gretchen hated to admit it, but it kind of made sense. If aliens ever arrived, it would make no sense to attack us with ships and guns. They would, by their very nature, be more advanced than humans. They would have far better means to destroy the planet’s inhabitants – biological means. Humans didn’t fight cockroaches with guns, they used gas; contaminated the very air they breathed.

  “So what do we do?” asked Colin.

  Logan laughed and took a sip from his whisky. “We wait to die, my friend. We wait to die.”

  ***

  Nobody dared to leave the building, or even go off alo
ne to their rooms. The bellowing growls continued out in the woods and they all knew it would only be a matter of time before whatever was making them came closer.

  Bryan, the carpenter, had assembled a team that was checking the existing barricades and trying to construct new ones. The chairs and tables from the lounge had been cannibalised for that purpose. By the time they were done, several hours later, dawn had arrived and the growling had stopped.

  “Do you hear that?” asked Gretchen.

  Colin shook his head. “No.”

  “Exactly. The growling has stopped.”

  “You think they’re gone away.”

  Gretchen shook her head slowly. “Not at all, but perhaps we just discovered that they’re nocturnal. Maybe on their planet it’s always dark.”

  “How does that help us?” asked Bryan, hammer in hand.

  Colin nodded and smiled, catching Gretchen’s drift. “Because they would have evolved to suit their planet. They won’t be anything like us – the odds are far too astronomical. If their planet is dark, then their eyes will be underdeveloped. We might be able to use light to our advantage.”

  Bryan sniffed. “I’ll make sure we have fires ready to burn at a moment’s notice.” He walked off.

  “You think we can fight back?” asked Colin. “If we really are facing something from another world.”

  Gretchen shook her head. “I think we’re screwed. Something evolved enough to travel the universe and engineer a planet-killing virus will have no problem taking out a few stragglers.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m going to just lie down and take it, though. It’s in our nature as human beings to fight, so that’s just what we’re going to do.”

  “You’re damn right we are,” said David, approaching with a pool cue in his hands. “Anything tries to zap me with a ray gun will get a cue full of chalk dust up their arses.”

  Colin giggled. “I’d like to see that.”

  David patted Colin on the back. “Let’s find you a pool cue of your own and we can play doubles on their butt cracks.”

  Gretchen rubbed at her eyes. Since awakening last night, nobody had slept. It was beginning to take its toll and the back of her eyelids felt fuzzy and her mind kept spacing out for brief seconds. If they were about to be attacked by an alien clean-up crew, she felt in no fit state to fight them – but the situation was out of her control. As she looked around, she could see that everyone else was on the edge of their own sanity thresholds. Rather than strengthen them as human beings, the stress and hardships of the last few months had in fact weakened them to the point of emotional collapse. None of them could endure much more.

  Perhaps the visitors know that. Maybe they’ve been hanging in the air waiting for just the right time to descend and finish us off.

  She caught Groves, the resident chef, as he went to walk past. “Hey, Jamie. Can you go and get as much food as you can from the restaurant; I think we could all do with a big feast this afternoon.”

  Groves huffed. “You mean a last meal? Anyway, I’m not stepping outside with those things out there.”

  “It will be alright. We won’t see them until dark.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “I can’t, but if they are going to get us at daylight then we’re screwed anyway as we’re all standing around in a huddle waiting to be picked off.”

  Groves cleared his throat. “Okay, fine. I’ll get what I can, but one sound I don’t like and I’m straight back in here.”

  Gretchen smiled. “Of course. No one’s asking you to endanger yourself.”

  “Yeah right.” The man walked away, heading for the lobby and car park.

  It was then that Gretchen realised that since Pritchett had died, no one had taken up watch on top of the ambulance. She knew that nobody would volunteer to go outside.

  Guess it will have to be me then.

  She checked in with a few more of the survivors and informed them that she was going to take watch. They all told her she was crazy, but they also seemed a little glad to have somebody out there keeping guard.

  Not that I can do anything other than yell that we’re all about to die.

  Gretchen headed outside into the cold and this time welcome the crisp weather. It snapped her senses back into focus and stopped her mind from feeling so fuzzy. If there was a chance she might die soon, she wanted to take in every breath and enjoy it.

  To her surprise, Logan came out after her, shouting for her to wait up. She turned to face him and was confused as to his presence.

  He swished a bottle of Bell’s whiskey about in his hand and then swigged directly from the bottle. “Need company?” he asked.

  “From you? No thank you.”

  “Well, tough. I’m coming. I want to see the thing responsible for our deaths before one bites my head off. I’d rather face it head on.”

  “Seems like the only thing you like to face head on is a bottle of scotch.”

  Logan looked at the bottle and nodded. He threw it to the ground where it rolled beneath a parked car. “Guess I could use a break. Heavy thoughts make a heavy drinker, you know?”

  Gretchen shook her head and carried on walking, tired of arguing. “I’m not surprised you’re a drunk. You knew about this and told no one.”

  “Who would have believed me? The government would have shot me dead as soon as I made the mistake of walking down a dark alleyway. Just because I had the knowledge, didn’t mean I could do anything with it.”

  “When this whole thing started people would have listened to you.”

  “By then it was already too late. The virus is unstoppable once it gets into the population. The only thing that saved any of us is that there seems to be some random percentage of immunity. I was as staggered as anyone to be included in that small percentage. I guess part of me hoped that the virus would be all there was too it, but deep down I knew there was more. Guess the drinking made it easier to kid myself.”

  Gretchen climbed the ladder set up against the ambulance and took to the roof. Logan followed.

  “What were you doing before you came upon us, Logan? Where had you been for the weeks before?”

  Logan shrugged. “Just wandering, really. I had a sister but she caught the Peeling. I had nobody else; not even a home I was proud of. Walking the roads seemed like the best thing to do. Keep moving, keep surviving. We’re just like the nomadic tribes that made up the dawn of mankind now. All of our fineries are gone and all that’s left is the animal underneath. The things I saw, Gretchen, on the road.” He shook his head in disgust. “Maybe it’s better if we’re extinguished. Maybe that’s the reason why. Our violent nature.”

  Gretchen chewed at her lip, watched the treeline across the road and saw birds. “Maybe you’re right. The Peeling didn’t affect any other species. Maybe whoever dumped the virus on us just want to restore the balance.”

  “Then that gives me a little hope; that at least the earth will go on, even without us.”

  Gretchen nodded. “Me too. But you know, it will only take two to survive. If this alien clean-up crew misses just one man and one woman, then the human race has as much chance as it ever did.”

  “From small acorns grow mighty oaks. That brings me hope to. Maybe somebody will make it – a new Adam and Eve.”

  “Let’s just hope they do a better job of it than the last pair.”

  “Amen to that.”

  ***

  The sun receded behind the horizon and the moon rose to take its place. Logan still shared the top of the ambulance with Gretchen but the old man had been sleeping for the last two hours. During that time, Gretchen had kept her eyes focused on the treeline. There had been no movement, no sound.

  About an hour ago, Bryan came out to let her know that they were going to cook dinner and have the feast she had suggested. She had declined her invitation; she didn’t feel like eating.

  Now she sat silently, watching the sun disappear and knowing that sh
e might never see it again.

  The glowing green light appeared inside the forest again, illuminating the gloom of the canopy. Minutes later the bellowing growls resumed.

  This time the growling seemed to be on the move. It was coming their way.

  “Logan, wake up. Logan, wake the hell up.”

  Logan spluttered, opened his eyes. “W-what is it?”

  “Shake off your hangover. I think they’re coming.”

  Logan stared at her blearily for a second, before cottoning on to what she meant – and who they were. He shot bolt upright. “Where are they?”

  Gretchen pointed. “Don’t you hear them? They’re coming through the woods.”

  Logan stared across the road at the trees. After a moment he took a big swallow and nodded. “Oh shit.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Come on, we have to get to the others.”

  Logan stood up, but made no attempt to leave the roof of the ambulance.

  “Will you come on,” Gretchen urged.

  “I have to see them. I want to know what it is that’s been watching us for so long.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Don’t you understand? For millennia man has wondered if we are alone. We are about to set eyes upon a mystery that has kept humanity awake for its entire history. We are about to witness beings far superior to ourselves. We are about to transcend.”

  “You transcend all you want. I’m getting off this fucking ambulance.”

  Gretchen threw herself down the ladder and beat a hasty retreat towards the hotel. The growling from the woods continued getting louder. The moon rose higher in the sky.

  The other survivors were all assembled in the lobby when Gretchen flew through the entrance doors. They had obviously heard the ominous growling and had been waiting to see what night would bring.

  Colin shook his head, his eyes bloodshot. “They’re coming, aren’t they?”

  Gretchen said nothing, just nodded.

  Bryan, the carpenter, took the floor. “Everyone grab their weapons. We’re safe inside this hotel, but let’s be ready to defend ourselves against any unwanted attention. We’ve survived this long, no need for anyone to give up now.”

  Gretchen nodded at Bryan, a silent ‘thank you’ for keeping everybody focused.