James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

He died ten seconds later, as something with the body of an ape and skin like a snake dropped out of a tree and landed on him, pounding his body into the dirt and forest loam.

Christopher thought about trying to save him for half a second and then remembered that he only had a few bullets left and his mother to look after.

The idea had been to run into the woods, but it seemed like some people were taking that to a new extreme. Most of the people around them were at least being semi-cautious, but a few had decided the best way to handle the matter was to try for the hundred-yard dash.

The monsters didn’t seem to mind at all. As soon as someone ran away from the main group, they descended, pounced, or flat-out attacked.

A middle-aged man with wide, panicked eyes let out one small gasp of surprise before a shambling mountain of ivy reached out and pulled him into its depths. Only a few seconds later, the man’s clothing spat out onto the ground, torn and bloodied.

A woman who looked a little bit like a celebrity Christopher couldn’t remember at the moment (or possibly a porn star from one of the magazines he hoped his mother never found) let out a scream that probably tore her vocal cords when a dark shape crawled over her, literally. One moment the form was merely watching her and the next it fell into what looked like thousands of smaller forms, which began chewing her flesh in an instant. Hundreds of tiny pieces of her body were torn away and devoured as she fell to her hands and knees, unable to take in a second breath and scream again.

Christopher had to sling his rifle over his arm and grab at his mother when she started moving to help the woman on the ground.

“Mom, no!”

“Christopher, I can’t stand by and let them eat her alive!” The face he’d grown up knowing so well was made nearly alien by the pain on her features. She fought back, trying to get away from his hands as he grabbed at her shoulders, but after a moment she realized what he already understood: the woman was ruined, not dead but not alive for much longer. A mercy shot to end her pain might use up a bullet needed to save a life.

Tina and Brad moved as quickly as they could. Brad’s feet seemed to find good placement more by luck than by any deliberate acts on his part. She looked at her husband and saw the sweat streaming down his face. He was in agony, in shock, and mentally he was nowhere near this haunted little forest. He ran, yes, but only because she told him to.

All around them people ran, and a few of them screamed as the nightmares that lived in the woods became part of their waking world. It was one thing to see the creatures behind a thick layer of special glass with a long scientific name; it was another to see them up close, to smell them, to hear them.

Tina no longer had any chance to lie to herself about what she was seeing. Brad had always been a huge fan of monster movies. If he’d had his way, they would have moved to the edge of the forest two days after the place had grown out of the desert floor. She didn’t feel that way at all. She was just fine with the idea of not even knowing that the strange creatures existed. In her perfect world, the closest Tina would ever get to a monster was whatever bad guys existed in the animated movies she’d watched as a child. If it was too tough for Winnie the Pooh, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Up until this trip—paid for by Brad’s parents as part of their five-year anniversary gift—-she’d managed to have her way more often than not.

All she’d wanted to do was let Brad have his monsters for a couple of hours… and now? Now all she wanted to do was somehow survive the experience and get Brad to a hospital.

A new rush of screams came from the tram behind them, and Tina looked back as something almost as big as the armored tram car forced its way past the damaged doors. Through the trees, she could just barely see people struggling inside, trying to find a way out of the tram, and she could make out the mouth of the dark shape that lunged forward and shook the entire car. A thick tongue caught hold of one of the people inside and yanked the struggling form into its gaping maw with ease.

She looked away and ran after Brad after she spotted him again, stumbling along in a semi-daze, half-hidden by the trees and the people around them. He’d managed to clear several yards further than she’d expected in only a few moments, and she had to sprint to catch up with him.

“Brad, be careful, honey!”

Brad gave no sign that he’d heard her.

Tina had heard the term hellhound before, though she couldn’t remember where. That didn’t prepare her for seeing one. The black dog that lunged out from behind a black tree trunk bared its teeth and charged for her husband. Flames boiled from where its eyes should have been, and blasted from its mouth and nostrils as it moved. Powerful legs propelled it forward in large bounds, and the turf under its hind claws was torn asunder with each step it made.

Tina had exactly enough time to scream her husband’s name before the monster dove at him.

As if suddenly snapping out of his daze for an instant, he ducked. The hellhound’s back claws raked against his face, cutting deep. Though the creature could certainly have turned back around and finished off Brad with minimal effort, another man came into view at exactly the wrong time.

Tina wasn’t able to identify the man in the split second before the hellhound bit his head in half. She heard the crunch of his bones shattering, saw his head jerk violently to the side, and watched the hellhound chew the remains of the man’s face into a bloody pulp surrounded by flames that roasted the meat as the monster swallowed.

She was still staring at the bloodied, blackened teeth of the demonic dog when it turned toward her. The man’s body slumped forward and twitched.

Then the hellhound pounced on Brad. He didn’t even scream as it finished him off.

No. Absolutely not. It’s not true. I won’t let it be true.

Tina watched Brad’s legs shudder in their death throes, refusing to accept that her husband was dead that quickly. Brad wasn’t the most powerful man physically, but he could hold his own. He was smart. He made good money at his job, and he encouraged her to finish her college degree because he knew she wanted to. He was protective but not too jealous. He had such a wonderful, amazing face, and his smile made her weak in the knees after three years of dating and five years of marriage. He was the perfect man for her.

So, really, he couldn’t possibly be dead. It was too stupid, too random. He couldn’t be dead because they were getting ready to finally have a baby. They’d discussed it for a long time, and at the first of the next year she’d be off the birth control and ready for a new addition to their family. It was time. They’d been patient. They deserved to be happy. So he could not be dead.

All of those thoughts flashed through her head along with a thousand others, even as the hellhound shook its bloody muzzle and started coming for her.

Tina wanted to move. Part of her understood that the monster was going to rip her apart if she stayed where she was, but the bigger part was still trying to deal with the fact that Brad wasn’t just playing possum. He was still in the same spot, and his blood was blackening the already dark earth.

She wanted to move so desperately that she could hear a high keening whine coming from her throat as the monstrous thing walked closer.

Her feet wouldn’t lift from the ground. Her arms refused to budge. She couldn’t even get her stupid mouth to close.

The hellhound jumped at her.

The bullets that tore holes through its side made it shudder and threw it off course, even as flames blasted from its open wounds. The hellhound fell short of actually hitting Tina, but the flames from its mouth licked across her shins. The flames quickly died, and the hellhound stopped moving.