James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Now the panther seemed to be just as angry as it was hungry. As it crawled up the tree after him, Christopher realized that there was simply no way he was going to outrun it. He also probably wasn’t going to defeat it in one-on-one combat. His only option was to hope that Eddie was able to quickly reload his rifle and then shoot with improved aim.

Or… kick.

He kicked the panther in the face so hard that he thought something in his foot might have snapped. The beast seemed unphased. His second kick got it right in its open mouth, knocking out some teeth. The panther slashed with its front paw, creating a two-foot-long gash in Christopher’s pants, as well as his leg. A third kick connected directly with its skull, and the panther fell out of the tree and landed on its side on the ground below.

It immediately got up, shook itself off, and climbed back up the tree. This was a very resilient panther.

“Jump to the next tree!” Tina shouted.

The closest tree was about four feet away. Not that much of a jump, unless your leg had recently been savaged by a panther’s claws.

The panther was moving fast. Christopher decided that Tina’s advice was sound and leapt toward the next tree. Several branches scraped him all over, and the pain in his leg exploded as he made the leap, a sensation that was only slightly less intense than the pain when he landed on the other tree.

His foot struck the intersection between two branches, and he lost his balance. Though he kept from plummeting to the ground below, thanks to lots of very sharp branches that blocked his fall, he found himself lying on his side, frantically struggling to get back to a standing position.

Tina leaped onto the tree, landing above him with a hell of a lot more grace than he’d managed. Some pine needles rained onto his face as she hit.

The panther climbed up to Christopher’s level and looked over at him, as if trying to decide whether to make the jump. Christopher was pretty sure it was going to. He pulled on some branches to lift himself up, but his foot was tightly wedged.

Oh no. No way. I can not be stuck in this frickin’ tree. My life can not be a comedy of errors like this.

He yanked as hard as he could, confirming that his foot was indeed stuck. Tina hurriedly climbed down toward him. “What’s wrong?”

“My foot’s stuck!”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

The panther leaped onto their tree, landing right beneath Christopher.

“Go!” he shouted at Tina. “Get out of here!” No sense both of them getting ripped to shreds just because he was an incompetent klutz.

Tina ignored him. She dropped down onto the large branch that was supporting most of his weight and snapped off one of the smaller branches.

The panther lunged upward.

Tina slammed the branch into its eye.

The panther let out a howl of such extreme agony that Christopher couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for it. Not too sorry, though. It dropped off the tree and struck the ground a second time, landing on the branch and driving it into its skull. This time, the panther didn’t get back up.

Eddie shot it.

“Oh, that was real helpful!” Christopher shouted at him.

“Screw you.”

“You shot me, you penis!”

“Your arm got in my way!”

“You were supposed to be protecting us!”

“Screw you.”

“Um, how about we focus on your foot before another one of those things shows up?” asked Tina.

Christopher nodded. Tina grabbed onto one of the intersecting branches with both hands and pulled. Christopher popped his foot free.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Do you want to head back down?”

“No, no, we still need to figure out where we are.”

“I can do it.”

“Nah, we should still watch each other’s back.” That was only part of the reason. Christopher didn’t relish the idea of returning to the others with a report about how he’d nearly gotten killed, forced Tina to risk her life, and then failed to accomplish anything worthwhile. He was completely willing to admit to himself that he suffered from macho pride, and going back in disgrace would hurt much more than his leg and arm would as he climbed to the top.

That said, the actual climb threatened to prove him wrong. Every step was like a rusty fishhook jabbing into his body. Fortunately, though, there were no other wild animal attacks, and even the ladybugs stayed away.

They reached the very top of the tree, which swayed in a rather unnerving manner, and gazed out at the thick forest. There were a few clearings and a narrow winding path, but it was impossible to see what lurked beneath the trees.

“That path is where the tram goes, right?” Tina asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

She sighed. “Then we ran in the wrong direction after the accident. We went deeper into the forest.”

“Yeah, but still, if we just go that way,” Christopher said, pointing to the nearest edge of the forest, “we can be home free in just… what, two miles?”

“Two long miles.”

“At least we have a direction now. That’s a start.”

Swish swish swish…

Christopher spun around. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. What is that?”

Swish swish swish…

“Let’s climb back down before we find out,” Christopher suggested.

“Good idea.”

An instant later, a bird flew above the trees, less than twenty feet from them. A huge bird, at least the size of a car, with black feathers and red eyes.

It flew at them, claws outstretched.

Christopher had just enough time to say “Shi—!” as the bird snatched him out of the tree and flew away, its talons digging deep into his chest.

Mark Harper had gone nearly an hour without flirting with Hannah, and it was starting to bug him. He hoped to get in several more clever bits of subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo before the day ended a few hours from now. Then he could head home and take his three kids out trick-or-treating. Later he could have sex with Chloe, since of course his wife was the only woman he would have sex with.

And of course, Hannah was not the only reason he lived for working on the Haunted Forest Tour. It wasn’t often that a cryptozoologist got such a high-profile, well-paying position. He thoroughly enjoyed cataloguing the new life forms they discovered inside the forest, and Hannah’s presence was a mere bonus.

God, he wanted to do her. It could be in a tender romantic manner or a rough animalistic manner, quietly or noisily, but he wanted to do her.

But as she stepped into their shared office, all thoughts of bending her over his desk and pounding away vanished. She looked more stressed out than he’d ever seen her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, standing up.

“The shit has hit a million different fans. Main control room. Now.”

He followed her out of the office. “Seriously, what happened?”

“Two of the cars haven’t returned. One lost power completely and the other one went out of control.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She turned around and glared at him. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“Whoa, calm down. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“We have eighty-four people unaccounted for. All we know is that the trams collided. After that, we lost contact with the second vehicle as well.”

“How is that possible?” Mark demanded. “Those things don’t just lose power. They’ve got backup generators, redundant communication systems, fail-safes out the ass… unless a nuclear missile plowed into one of them, there should be no way to completely lose track of them. There are military tanks that are less secure than our tram cars.”