James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Hannah looked his way with wide eyes and shook her head. “What now?”

“I’m not sure I want to know.” It took a hell of a lot more than a gentle breeze to rattle this building. The foundation was made with four feet of solid concrete and extra layers of rebar, just in case any new trees ever tried to sprout.

The miniature earthquake stopped for the moment and both of them moved faster, heading for their shared office. They had to get this done as quickly as they could. If something was coming that could damage the building they needed to have all of the data and be on their way to whatever safety they could find.

Neither of them said what was on their minds, which was that anything down there big enough to cause a tremor in this very well-fortified building was larger than anything they’d ever encountered.

There was no time to lose if they wanted to get their research to safety, because even the backed-up information was kept in the facility. No data ever left H.F. Enterprises. And if the threat was as serious as they suspected, there would be no second chances to get what they needed and get the hell out of Dodge.

Mindy looked at Tina, and any pretense of cheer slowly fell from her face as she mulled over what the younger woman had said.

Just to make sure she’d heard correctly, she repeated Tina’s statement in the form of a question. “A big bird swooped down and snatched Christopher from the tree?”

She realized that she must have been staring bloody murder at Tina just then, because Tina flinched and nodded silently.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I want to make one hundred percent sure I heard you right, Tina.” Mindy was trying to discuss things in a logical and sane manner, but her ears were ringing and she was feeling a bit dizzy and she wasn’t really sure if she was doing a good job being logical or sane. “A big black bird zoomed down out of the sky and snatched my baby boy like an owl grabbing a mouse. All this after Eddie accidentally shot him. Is that right?”

Tina nodded her head and did her best to hide behind something while standing perfectly still. Mindy closed her eyes and tried to imagine her son being stolen away by a gigantic bird with blazing red eyes. Despite everything that had happened, it wasn’t as easy to do as she would have expected. Not because she had any trouble dealing with the idea of a giant black bird, but because it was impossible to imagine her world without Christopher in it.

He was more than just her son; he was her best friend and the one person she could always depend on. When her husband Thomas died, it was Christopher who took care of the funeral arrangements and stood by her side and gave her strength. She could remember seeing him in his suit, looking like a little boy playing dress-up for all the sorrow that he was drowning in, but he still managed to handle all of the details and arrange for the viewing and the wake. Christopher was stronger than he knew and, damn it, the idea of a world without him for moral support was a bleak one.

In a much smaller voice, Mindy asked the question she dreaded the most: “Is he dead?” She kept her eyes closed, because if she opened them the tears would start. She didn’t want to cry in front of these people. They were strangers, really. The man on the ground, the boy now once again sitting in front of the computer and drawing on the desk, and the woman who’d just witnessed her son being ripped away from her life, her world.

Tina shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her voice came in hitches, and Mindy opened her eyes to see the woman cover her face to hide the tears.

Mindy nodded her head and rose from where she’d been sitting near Tina’s husband. Brad seemed to have recovered a bit from his earlier troubles, and though he wasn’t speaking, at least he didn’t seem to be suffering quite as much. Good for him. Good for Tina. Peachy, really. But at this moment Mindy couldn’t stand the idea of being around either of them. Call it sour grapes, call it whatever the hell they wanted, but she needed to get some space.

Mindy brushed past Tina and walked as calmly as she could out of the office and toward the entrance to the reclamation building. She needed fresh air in the worst possible way, and the scent of mold and mildew was so thick that she couldn’t even remember what fresh air smelled like.

The door was closed, but she had no trouble opening it. The forest greeted her with heavy shadows and not nearly enough actual light to help warm her from the chill she’d developed. Somewhere out there, Christopher was probably dying or—more likely—already dead. She’d seen enough people torn apart since the day started to know that his chances were almost nonexistent.

Still, she didn’t want to think about her son being dead. There was an old saying of her grandmother’s that stuck deep inside of her and echoed up to her conscious thoughts: “No parent should survive their children.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Of course, Gramma was still very much alive, and after today might very well have survived her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Mindy sat on the highest stair and stared out into the gloom, fully aware that there might be any number of creatures staring back at her. Then she cried. Soft, quiet tears of desperation, and she prayed as hard as she could to whatever gods might listen, begging for her son’s safety.

Lee walked along the corridor as carefully as he could, and told himself that the tightness in his chest was just simple anxiety, nothing more. If he could convince himself that his ticker was just fine, it might do him a little good. On the other hand, in a worst-case scenario, he could always go for the nitro tablets in his pants pocket.

He thought about his next book. This one was going to be very different. A cautionary tale. Don’t Go on Tours into Haunted Forests, Dammit . Solid advice for the new generation.

Thinking about his next written endeavor was a great distraction to keep him from screaming like a little girl or putting one of his remaining bullets in his own head. Two bullets were left in the rifle, and Barbara had told him she only had one shell left for her pistol. If he thought about the sheer volume of nasty things lurking inside and outside of their shelter, he wasn’t completely sure he could keep moving. His childish glee from before was officially history. So instead he thought about what he could write when the nightmare was over. How exactly would he describe that giant head on the tracks?

His musings helped, but not a lot.

Barbara looked his way again and tried to smile. It wasn’t very effective. She was a pretty little thing, but the stress she was under stretched her smile into an entirely different, somewhat ghoulish expression.

“Are we ready for this?” He tried on a smile of his own as he asked the question, but it felt wrong so he got rid of it.

Barbara looked at the door to the room where they’d left the others and chewed on her lower lip. It might have been a fetching gesture under different circumstances. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

Lee opened the door carefully as Barbara held her pistol at the ready. They were prepared for trouble, but they didn’t get any. Instead, they saw Tommy writing on the dust that covered the desk and Tina sitting Indian-style on the floor next to Brad, her hand stroking his forehead as she looked in their direction.

“Did you find anything?” Tina’s tone held a slight warble of desperation, as if they might have somehow run across a fully functioning emergency ward and a staff of doctors to help her husband.

Lee shook his head solemnly. “No, I’m afraid not. There’s not much beyond this room that I’d feel comfortable calling safe.”