by Jeff Strand
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.
CHAPTER NINE
Tommy felt like his heart was going to explode inside his chest. His sides ached, and it was almost impossible to catch a breath.
He'd lost his Aunt Jean, and then he'd lost everyone else around him. They were all gone and he was alone in the woods, with monsters moving between the trees and sniffing around for more people to eat.
He wanted his mommy.
He knew the other people were nearby, but he was too scared to scream. What if the monsters heard him first? There were a lot more monsters than there were people.
Tommy stopped running, trying to keep the sounds of his ragged breaths as soft as he could. His legs shook and his hands trembled. Just to make sure he didn't fall over, he leaned against the rough bark of a black tree that had enough leaves to make everything under it seem as dark as bedtime.
For the first time in a very long while, the world around him was quiet, save for the pulse of his own beating heart. The air was sticky and just warm enough to keep him sweating.
Something moved on the other side of the tree. He didn't hear it, but he felt it: a delicate tapping that vibrated through the heavy wood and made his back tingle where it touched the bark.
Tommy took a deep breath and let it out in a trembling gust. He didn't know what was causing that vibration, but he knew it would be bad. Ever
ything around him was bad.
"Aunt Jean?" His voice refused to go over a whisper, and maybe that was a good thing.
"Little boy? What are you doing all by yourself?" He looked over to the voice that came from his right and saw six people he'd spotted on the tram car earlier. They were all looking as frightened as he felt, but the one closest to him was a tall woman who was as big as his Uncle Perry, with dark red hair pulled into little pigtails on the sides of her head like puppy ears. She stared at him for a second while he tried to remember how to make his voice work, and then she came toward him, taking mincing steps, as if the ground beneath her feet might be thin ice over a very cold river.
"Come over to me, okay? My name is Becca and I won't hurt you, but you need to get away from that tree."
The people behind her—two more women and three men, most of them already injured and bloodied in the attacks from the bad things—took a step back. Tommy knew that if he turned around and looked at what was behind him, he'd start screaming and never stop. The looks on the faces in front of him said that whatever was there had to be worse than the Boogey Man himself.
Becca came a step closer, her skin as white as a glass of milk.
"Come on, hon. You come over to Becca, okay?" Her voice shook as she spoke and her hand rattled in the air.
Tommy's heart beat faster than ever before, and he resisted the urge to look at the monster he knew was behind him. His daddy always said you should face your fears, but he thought Daddy was wrong this time. You only faced them when they couldn't hurt you in real life and this, whatever it was, it could do more than hurt him.
Though the forest was gloomy and filled with shadows, the large shadow behind him blocked out all of the others, spreading over him like a black pool as the thing moved closer.
Tommy ran, pumping his short legs for all they were worth, and Becca crouched to pick him up. One of the men standing behind Becca aimed his rifle and pulled the trigger. One bullet left the weapon and whizzed past Tommy's head. He never saw if the bullet hit its target. He closed his eyes instead, as Becca turned and the thing that had been behind the tree came into view for one split second as the wood and bark he'd leaned against splintered and broke with a sound like thunder.
The massive tree toppled, falling in what seemed like slow motion before bouncing off another trunk and rolling to the side, instead of crushing them all into the ground.
Before Tommy could worry about how close he came to dying—the tree had missed him by less than three feet—the thing that had knocked the tree aside seared itself into his mind.
Every nightmare he had ever had was moving behind that tree. The shape was massive, so big that his mind wouldn't allow him to see it completely. The skin of the thing was mottled in shades of gray and black, with pale splotches that wanted to draw his eyes, because they moved and there appeared to be screaming faces within them. There was too much skin on the nightmare monster, it moved in ways that made no sense, and parts of it stretched toward him, hungering and shrieking in high, piping voices. Did he see eyes? Yes, oh yes, far too many. Did he see mouths? Yes, more than he could count, each filled with teeth that wanted to tear his flesh away from his bones and chew him into tiny pieces. Were there limbs? He thought so, but none of them looked like anything he'd seen before.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Becca ran, her breaths blowing past him, her legs lifting and falling without any rhythm or comforting pattern. She screamed each time she exhaled and her hands, clutched at his back, hooked into claws as if she were afraid she would drop him if she didn't sink her nails into his tender skin. He felt her nails cutting but didn't dare protest. She might drop him if he did, and then he would be dead.
His face was pointed at the nightmare, but his eyes remained closed. He heard the wet, meaty sound of the others dying but did not see it. Tommy knew deep in his heart that if he dared look, he would never, ever be able to forget what he saw.
Becca let out a scream. Not the high, whiny sounds she'd made before, but a yowl of pain, and Tommy couldn't help but open his eyes again.
Some part of that hideous, mottled thing had reached Becca and touched her. Where it touched, her skin was distorted, pushed out of place as more of the gray thing pushed forward and deeper into her skin. Her eyes rolled almost blindly, and her face twisted into the ugliest mask he had ever seen, purple and red and filling with blood like the blister he got once when he pinched his skin in a door hinge.
Still, Becca saved him. She bent forward and lowered him almost to the ground, even as he tried to catch her hands in his because he knew what was going to happen.
Becca straightened up and threw Tommy as hard as she could. Tommy's fingers lost their grip, and the nails in his back let loose of him, sending him arcing away from her.
Tommy saw Becca's body torn apart. Whatever was within her sloughed away her skin and drew in the muscles and blood and bone that had been inside of her. Even as he saw her die, his body rolled over the top of the sprawled tree that had been his shelter only a few minutes before. He hit the heavy bark and rolled across the top of it, scraping his legs and hands and face in the process, and then he was over the side and falling, trying to grab with his hands, trying not to fall too fast.
The ground punched him hard, stole his breath away, and bloodied his lips.
Tommy gasped on the floor of the Haunted Forest, his mouth tasting of blood and dirt and dead leaves, and then he started to cry.
On the other side of the fallen tree, something screamed with a thousand voices. At least one of those voices sounded like Becca's.
CHAPTER TEN
Lee moved quietly and slowly, fully aware of the man staggering along beside him. He didn't know his name and didn't want to take the time to ask it in case there might be something listening for human voices.
Not far away, he heard the deep groan of a tree falling. The impact was enough to shake the ground under his feet.
He should have been petrified, and certainly he was very scared, but he was also remarkably calm, all things considered. Despite the death and violence, he still felt exhilarated. Every few minutes he would pause to reassess where they were, and every time he did so the thrill came back into him. A lifetime of skepticism had been dispelled in a minute, and the wonders around him, deadly as they obviously were, still made him punch drunk.
Or, maybe he'd just gone mad.
The man behind him groaned again and stumbled. Lee caught him by the chest and eased him to the ground as best he could.
"Can you keep walking?" he whispered, hoping that the other sounds around him would keep anything from actually hearing him.
Brad nodded his head. "Brad. My name is Brad. Yeah, I think so, just give me a minute."
"Well, Brad, I'm Lee." He looked Brad over and shook his head. "Listen, your arms are dislocated, and I think I can get them back where they belong. I might need to, because if we have to climb over any obstacles, I'm just not strong enough to carry you. Do you understand?"
Brad's eyes rolled in his head for a moment and then closed. Lee thought the man might have passed out, but finally he nodded his head and opened his eyes again.
"Yeah. I understand."
"Okay, now for the tough part. This is going to hurt, probably a lot. And I need you to be quiet and suck it up. Can you do that?"
Brad worried his bottom lip and shrugged. "Is there something I can bite down on?"
Lee thought about it for a few seconds and then pulled his wallet from his right rear pocket. "It's leather," he explained. "Soft enough that you won't break your teeth."
He helped Brad wedge the old, battered billfold in between his teeth, and then considered the best way to proceed. After a moment's debate with himself, he moved over to Brad's right side and gently worked his fingers around the gap between the man's heavy arm and his shoulder. He moved Brad's arm and heard the man groan.
There had been a time, when he was much younger, that Lee had managed to do simi
lar damage to his left arm. A medic in Vietnam had placed his shoulder back into its socket by pulling on the arm and wiggling it around until the joint reconnected itself. Lee had let out several loud screams before the pain made him pass out. He couldn't afford screams right now.
Not far off, something let out a wail that would have shamed an air raid siren, and Lee took advantage of the noise, roughly pulling Brad's arm with as much strength as he could manage and twisting the limb at the same time. Brad bit down hard enough on the wallet that his teeth suddenly seemed to vanish within the leather, and howled in agony. His body thrashed as he tried to get away from the pain. The sound was muted but still loud. Fortunately, the thing in the distance was much louder.
A moment later, Brad's fits calmed down and left the poor bastard whimpering around the spittle-drenched wallet in his mouth.
Lee ran his hands delicately around the swollen joint and felt the lack of a gap between the bones. It was the best he could do for Brad, and it was definitely better than nothing.
Before the man could recover enough to protest, Lee went to work on his other shoulder, once again wrenching the arm around until it finally slipped back into its socket with a meaty popping noise. Brad let out one high-pitched grunt and then slumped back loosely, unconscious.
"Damn!" Lee looked around and shook his head. The last thing he could afford to do right now was watch over an unconscious man. The best thing he could do to keep his sorry ass alive would be to leave the man where he was and head on his way.
He sighed and settled down next to Brad, because he didn't have it in him to leave the stranger defenseless in a forest filled with monsters.
Shit.
* * *
Mindy looked around for her son and failed to see him. That put an immediate end to the idea of following everyone else. The woman with her, Tina, had no intention of going anywhere without her, so they both doubled back to see if they could find Christopher.