by Nathan Jay
“Wilson, are you okay?” whispered Dustin. Wilson’s face was pale and sweaty.
“I can’t hold on for much longer,” he said as both his hands shook.
“Put us down in that field next to the road,” instructed Dustin. Wilson opened his eyes and focused on the clearing to the right. He slowly lowered the ball of energy in the clearing and passed out. Just as Wilson did, Dustin started the car and drove onto the road. He knew the police would be coming after them soon and needed to get rid of the vehicle.
Chapter 29: Grand Days
When Wilson regained consciousness, he felt someone pulling him along the grass. He looked up to see his father pulling him by the arm. Wilson looked over and saw Michael lying on a piece of carpet being dragged into the forest by his mother.
“Dad. Let me up,” whispered Wilson. His father looked back at him and stopped. Wilson climbed to his feet.
“Mom!” Wilson whispered. “I’ll pull Mike.”
Julia stopped walking and flopped on the ground.
“Thank God! That boy is freaking heavy!”
The group continued walking until they were half a mile into the forest. Dustin paused briefly and looked back at the road.
“They’re not on to us yet. We just need to keep moving.”
Wilson looked around, trying to figure out where they were.
“How far are we from Grandma Noya’s house?”
“We’re not even in Georgia yet. I think we’re still in North Carolina. Maybe South Carolina.”
Suddenly Julia stopped walking.
“How the hell are we going to get across two states? I’m starving, there are all kinds of weird things trying to kill us, my son is sick, and now the cops are after us.”
“I’m hungry too, Dad. Did you bring food from the car?”
“With what’s going on with Michael, you sure you want to eat from the car?”
Wilson hadn’t checked on Michael’s condition since he woke up. He went over to his little brother and leaned over him. Although he was unconscious, the skin on his face shook as the worms moved beneath his skin.
“We’ve got to get him some help,” whispered Wilson. Dustin agreed.
“I know. I just don’t know where we can go for something like this.”
“AH! What was that?” asked Julia as she pointed into the forest.
“What is it?”
“I saw something moving.”
“Everyone be quiet. Don’t move.”
Dustin stared into the forest.
“I don’t see anything. Wilson, what do you see?”
Wilson tapped his eye and looked straight ahead.
“Nothing’s there.”
“I’m telling you I saw something.”
“I don’t know…”
Wilson froze.
“I saw something too, Dad. A shadow.”
Everyone remained quiet, staring into the darkness.
“Follow me,” a voice said from behind them. Julia jumped and fell to the ground.
“Oh, my God! Aaaaah!”
Standing behind Wilson and his family were a large group of children staring with stoic looks on their faces. Some were no more than four years old, and others were teenagers. Most of them held large guns in their hands.
A tall teenager with long blond hair stepped down from his horse and walked over to Wilson.
“Damn. You people are loud.”
Dustin walked up to the boy.
“Can you get help for my son?”
The boys walked over to Michael as he lay unconscious on the ground. The boy took one look at him and smiled.
“He got touched by one of the creatures. That’s easy to fix.”
Dustin’s eyes widened.
“Really? How?”
The boy turned and yelled into the group of children.
“Jacob!”
A small brown-haired boy walked up to Michael with a small box. He opened it, took out a fat black leach, and placed it on Michael’s cheek. Seconds later, Michael began convulsing, and his body turned black.
“You son of a bitch! What did you do to him?” screamed Julia. Wilson ran to his mother and pulled her away. Wilson and his family stood back and watched as the leech grew before their eyes.
“It’s sucking out the infection!” exclaimed Dustin.
Suddenly Michael opened his eyes.
“Grab his hands!” yelled the teenager. Two children ran to Michael and held him down.
“Aaaah! It burns, mom! It burns!”
“Keep him still,” yelled the teenager. “If he takes it off, the infection will be permanent.”
The leach grew to the size of a baseball as it clung to Michael’s face. Finally, after a few seconds, it fell off.
“Grab your son and run! Deep into the forest!”
All the children took off, running into the forest. Dustin grabbed Michael and ran with Wilson and his mother close behind. When the teenager stopped running, everyone fell to the ground.
“Shhh! Nobody says a word! Keep quiet!”
Wilson fell to his stomach and turned around to look in the direction of the leach. What he saw terrified him. Large demonic creatures with red skin began exploding from the dirt in the ground around the leach. They all screamed and fought one another to eat the animal in the center of their circle.
“Oh, my God! What’s that?” whispered Julia.
“Demons. They’re in the soil. When one of those creatures infects someone, it’s like a signal for them to eat.”
“Why didn’t they get me?”
“The creatures inside your body hadn’t hatched yet. They hadn’t picked up on your scent.”
After a few moments, the creatures seemed to become angry. After growling and biting one another for a few seconds, they dove into the dirt and tunneled underneath the ground.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Michael. “That was so cool!”
“Michael!” Julia yelled. “That’s so cool? You almost died! Stop being an idiot!”
Dustin grabbed Michael’s hair.
“You said it burned, but I don’t see any marks on your face.”
The teenaged boy stood up.
“That’s because it didn’t hurt him. They make you feel like you’re on fire because the creatures are fighting to stay in your body.”
The boys turned and walked back to the other children. Dustin chased the boy.
“Hey! We’re trying to get to Georgia. Can you help us find a car?”
“Sure. There are a lot of cars. Not much road, though. The military shut that shit down.”
“What can we do?”
“Camp out with us until morning. There are some horses on a farm a mile back. You can steal them and cut through the forests.”
Julia sucked her teeth.
“Ride a horse until Georgia? Through a forest filled with demonic creatures?”
The boy stopped and turned to Julia.
“Well, you’re welcome to get a taxi if you can find one.”
The group of children started laughing at Julia. She frowned in protest and turned to look at her sons. They both tried to hide their laughter from her.
As the children continued walking through the forest, Dustin started asking questions.
“Where are your parents? Why are so many of you alone?”
A small child spoke up from behind them.
“I was fishing with my parents when something came out of the water and pulled them in.”
Dustin looked at the child in horror. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old.
“That’s horrible. Did your parents survive?”
“No.”
“My brother got eaten by ladybugs,” exclaimed a little girl with dreadlocks. “We were out playing in the field when they all rose from the ground and started attacking us. I got away, but the bugs ate the rest of my family.”
Another child spoke up.
“I saw a snake eat my grandmother. It grabbed her leg and pul
led her down the well. When my granddad tried to pull her up, thousands of ghosts grabbed him and pulled him into the well.”
Dustin turned to the teenager.
“So many horror stories. How did you survive?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“The leader of all of this? It’s a little girl.”
Chapter 30: Hell’s Campfire
“Hey man, what happened to your eye?” asked the child with a large bushy afro. Michael jumped in front of Wilson.
“Nothing. What’s wrong with your ugly face?”
The child backed away.
“We don’t talk to each other like that. Watch your step,” said the teenager as he pulled the black child back.
“Settle down, Michael. He was just asking,” whispered Dustin. Michael sat down next to Wilson in front of the roaring campfire.
“It’s a birth defect that runs in my family.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Julia grumbled under her breath.
Dustin extended his hand to the teenager.
“How are you doing? My name’s Dustin. These are my sons Wilson and Michael. That’s my wife, Julia, the polite one.”
“My name’s Paul, and that’s the gang. Say hi, gang.”
The kids looked at the family with the same blank looks on their faces.
“You said the leader of all this is a child. How do you know?”
“Little JoJo saw her.”
Dustin searched the faces of the children. Finally, his eye fell on the child sitting away from the fire with his gun pointed out into the darkness.
“That’s Jojo?”
“Yeah. Jojo doesn’t talk much. Ever since he saw the red dogs, he’s quiet.”
“He saw this child?”
“I did too. JoJo’s my kid brother.”
“What happened?”
“We were headed to Atlanta to see my cousin. My Dad always liked getting an early start on driving. You know, because of the traffic. Anyway, we’re all driving along the road, and it’s pretty dark. There was a lot of fog, and my father couldn’t see well. Suddenly, we heard this explosion.”
“Yeah, we heard it too.”
“It was so loud that our windows cracked. Both our ears started bleeding, and everyone in the car started vomiting. The car started swerving, and large pieces of the road just dropped away. Our car fell in. Jojo and I crawled out of the open window to the street. Our parents were unconscious and still in the car. Anyway, we climbed up, and that’s when we saw it.”
Paul was quiet.
Wilson was impatient.
“What? What did you see?”
“We saw a white wave of smoke approaching us so fast that we didn’t have time to react. It knocked us all down. When we stood up, there were spiders all over us. We had them in our hair, clothes, and faces. After clearing away the spiders, I looked up, and there she was. The girl was naked with cockroaches all over her body.
“Shit!”
“That’s when the road caved in on our parents and crushed them to death. Meanwhile, the kid just stood there. But she never touched us.”
“She didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“A couple of cars stopped on the road. People got out and tried to help our parents.”
“What did she do?”
“She ran to the first guy and ate the flesh off his face,” said Paul.
“My God!” whispered Julia.
“She ripped off the head of the man’s wife and started drinking her blood. When the girl finished, there was nothing but a pile of flesh and bones on the ground.”
”Holy crap!”
Michael’s eyes were sparkling with excitement, and he could hardly contain himself. Dustin patted his son gently on the arm.
“Calm down,” he whispered before continuing his questions. “How did you guys manage to escape?”
“The dogs,” whispered a tiny voice. The family turned around and looked at the little child sitting away from the group. Paul continued speaking.
“Yeah. The dogs. Hundreds of red dogs came from nowhere. It’s like the little girl called them or something. They swarmed around her, but none of them touched her. I tell you, I’ve never seen dogs so vicious. They were huge with heads the size of truck tires and pitch-black eyes. Before long, another car arrived, and the dogs started smashing their heads against the car. The man and woman locked themselves in the car and refused to come out. That didn’t make a difference because those dogs went through the glass to get them. They pulled that couple out and ate them, bones and all. They even ate their clothes. That’s when I grabbed JoJo and took off.”
“And she let you get away?” asked Michael.
“I wouldn’t say she let us. More people showed up, and the place turned into a buffet for those things. We just got out of there.”
Wilson looked at the boy suspiciously. Something about his story didn’t sit well with him. Pieces were missing.
Suddenly, two boys walked up, pulling a medium-sized animal.
“What’s that?” asked Michael.
Paul smiled.
“Dinner.”
Paul removed a large knife from his hip and sliced it into the creature’s flesh. The other children took out knives and started helping in the slaughter. Paul began laughing as Michael and Wilson looked on in disgust.
“Don’t worry. We clean and cook the meat.”
“Look!” exclaimed a little girl. “I got its heart!”
The little girl held up the animal’s heart with blood streaming down her small arms.
“I got its balls!” yelled a boy while holding up the testicles of the animals for all to see. All the children giggled and continued stabbing at the creature.
Wilson became panicked. There was something very wrong with what they were seeing. The brutality at which the children attacked the animal seemed – evil.
“Dad, I have to go to the bathroom.”
Dustin looked around and spotted a tree close to the campfire.
“Go behind that tree. I’ll be watching you.”
“No, Dad. I need all of you to come with me.”
Dustin frowned.
“All of us?”
“Yeah. You, mom, and Michael.”
“What’s going on, son? Is…”
The look on Wilson’s face made his father pause. He looked at the group of children attacking the animal and shook his head.
“Okay,” said Dustin as he turned to his wife. “Honey, Michael. Come on, guys. We’re all going to make a bathroom trip.”
“Out here at night? I’m not going out there.”
“Come on, Julia. I don’t have time for this.”
Suddenly all the children stopped hacking at the animal and stared at the family.
“Where are you going?” asked Paul. The boy repulsed Wilson. Blood was all over his face and hands.
“We’re going to the bathroom,” responded Dustin.
“Bathroom?”
“Yeah. We’re all going to pee and then crash around the campfire.”
Paul looked around.
“Why don’t you just go behind that tree over there?”
Michael interrupted.
“I don’t want nobody seeing me pee. Especially a bunch of kids I don’t know.”
Paul stared at Michael for a few seconds. Finally, he shrugged and stuck his knife in the deer.
“Suit yourself.”
Wilson grabbed his mother’s hand and pulled her away as Dustin and Michael followed. After they were a few steps from the group, Julia turned to Wilson.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve only been seeing these creatures for a few days. Those kids are out here surviving like they were in the forest before this whole thing started.”
Julia looked back at the campfire as they walked further away.
“Yeah. Now that you mention it, it was off.”
Michael interrupted.
“Yeah, it was weird. A bunch of kids with knives? Where did they get those? They’re out here chopping up animals like it’s no different than brushing their teeth. I could barely stomach the whole thing. I almost threw up.”
Wilson turned to Michael.
“You still have the triangle?”
“In my pocket.”
“Good. We might need it. Come on, guys.”
Wilson jogged in front of the family as they moved swiftly through the dark forest. Suddenly he stopped. Paul was standing a few feet in front of them.
“Hey. Where are you going? You don’t like our hospitality?”
One by one, each of the children stepped from behind the trees to reveal themselves. Dustin nervously spoke up.
“No, it’s nothing like that. We just remembered that we need to see about my mother. She’s living alone.”
This time JoJo stepped from behind a tree and spoke up.
“They’re lying. These people don’t like us.”
Michael moved towards JoJo, but his mother pulled him back.
“Fuck you, runt! Who cares if we don’t like kids with knives? If we want to leave, we’ll leave.”
Paul took a step towards Michael.
“You mean knives like this?”
Paul pulled an enormous knife from the small of his back and held it up. After showing the knife for a few moments, he dropped it on the ground.
“We don’t need this.”
Paul snapped his fingers, and his whole body ignited in flame. His clothes melted away, revealing reddish skin with tiny reflective bubbles all over it. Suddenly a large horn tore a hole in his face where his nose was, making him gag and laugh at once.
“We don’t need silly weapons,” he continued in a gargled voice. “We take what we want.”
A few of the children screamed and started running away from the group. At that moment, it became apparent to Wilson that some of the children went along with Paul by force.
“There is no escape from hell!” Paul yelled. Suddenly, dozens of demonic birds flew from the trees and attacked the children. Some of the children fought for their lives. They turned and swung at the birds, but there were too many of the creatures. Like a blanket, the birds enveloped the children and feasted on their flesh until their bones were clean.