James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

“Goddamn it!” shouted Jake, taking out his revolver. “Be careful where you’re aiming!”

He saw them coming and shook his head, trying to focus on the one in front of him. There had to be fifteen more of the things laughing and giggling as they came closer, like the idea of taking on a group of armed cops was just as funny as all get out. They didn’t move like people. They moved like something between a kangaroo and a mountain lion. Muscles shifted and the damned things hopped a good ten feet closer every time they moved at all. Jake brought his Smith & Wesson up and aimed for the thing still crouched over Sheila.

It moved, vaulting straight at him and laughing louder than ever. A millisecond after it passed him, Jake felt the fire spread up his arm. Five red slices cut through his sleeve and bled across the blue fabric. That part didn’t bother him as much as the same red slices starting at his wrist and moving up to the sleeve on his bicep.

“Oh fu—” He never finished the word. The claws came at him again before he could, and this time they caught his throat, tearing out his larynx in the process.

Jake fell back and gurgled, blood flowing freely from the wound in his neck. He was alive long enough to see the other laughing things attack the rest of the squad. He died before they were finished with the task.

Mark and Hannah could have told him that the Gigglers always liked to play with their food before they ate.

Hannah was taking the giant wyrm chasing them remarkably well. She was screaming obscenities and looking over her shoulder approximately fifteen times a second. Mark felt he was holding up pretty well himself, because he was only looking into the rearview about twice a second.

“That is one big damned wyrm.”

“No shit, Mark! Now could you possibly go a little faster?”

“I’m doing ninety!”

The wyrm lunged forward and Mark swerved hard enough to put the car up on two wheels for a moment. The result was Hannah letting out another scream as they managed to avoid getting swallowed by the freaky thing.

Yes, swallowed . It was that big.

The ground where the car had been obligingly shattered when the wyrm hit it. The car went back on all four wheels and Mark stomped on the gas, almost stalling the car out before it leaped forward.

“We’ve got to lose that thing, Mark!”

“I believe he’s trying,” said Booth from the back seat.

“Well, tell him to try harder, damn it!”

“Tree,” said Booth.

Mark swerved to avoid the enormous tree in the center of the road. The car slid off the pavement and onto the hard soil, spitting plumes of dust into the air. The rearview mirror showed that the oversized leviathan was gaining speed, undeterred by the cloud of arid soil.

Mark looked at the numerous trees ahead of him and the town now off to the right and swerved toward his left, aiming for a spot between two of the monolithic and completely alien plants.

“Mark? What are you doing? There are trees in the way.”

“Yeah, I know.” He urged the car to go a little faster as the segmented body thrust and lurched forward, tearing up the distance between them.

“Mark, I’m sorry for yelling earlier, I didn’t mean a word of it. This is not the best time to consider suicide, okay?”

“Calm down, Hannah, I know what I’m doing.”

“No, you don’t. You really don’t.” Her voice rose with each word as they got closer to the trees.

Mark looked at the two black shapes ahead of him and tried to calculate if he could really squeeze the Saturn between them. No. Probably not.

“I promise not to kill us,” he said, figuring that he wouldn’t get called out on his failure to keep the promise if he was dead.

Mark made one last careful adjustment with the steering wheel and then closed his eyes as they reached the base of the two trees.

The car shot through the gap, losing the paint on both doors as well as the side-view mirrors. The sound almost managed to drown out Hannah’s screams.

Mark looked back at the receding trees and pumped the air with his right hand. “ Sweet! We did it!”

The wyrm kept coming, ignoring the trees, and Mark almost wished he had enough time to watch as it smashed itself into a pulp.

Hannah watched for him, giving a blow by blow. “It’s still coming… it’s still coming… it’s almost there… splat! ”

Mark risked a look back, as there were no new trees in the immediate vicinity. The wyrm had indeed smashed into the trees, cutting its body along two points and spilling an enormous amount of what passed for its blood, a thick pale mess that painted the bark of both the barriers it faced.

For one brief second, Mark thought that was the end of the wyrm, but then it pushed forward again and uprooted both of the trees with a seemingly casual shrug. The trees flipped into the air, clots of soil falling from their roots.

And sailed in the same direction that Mark was currently driving.

No. Fuckin’. Way.

Mark opened his mouth to say something out loud to that effect, but nothing would come.

The trees were still rising into the air and he couldn’t decide where they were going to fall.

Mark slammed his foot against the gas pedal again, and Hannah pulled into a fetal position and screamed bloody murder. He really wanted to join her, but there just wasn’t time.

The first tree landed ten feet to the left with a thunderous crash and snapped in two upon impact. Mark twisted the wheel to the right and kept it turned that way, spinning the vehicle almost a full half circle. The second tree rolled across the ground where they’d been a moment ago, shedding limbs and thick bark as it went.

Mark glanced up at the rearview mirror long enough to see that they had, indeed, avoided death by tree.

Then he looked forward and saw the wyrm recovering from the beating it had given itself. Bloodied and pulped or not, it was moving again, heading directly toward them.

The only good news was that it was moving slower now and looked like it might bleed to death before it could eat them alive.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the wyrm started pushing itself into the ground, the heavy feelers at the front of its mouth slicing the hard-packed earth apart and letting the gigantic beast disappear in a matter of two minutes, tops. During that time, Mark hyperventilated and said his thanks to God above, Hannah slowly recovered from her panic attack, and Booth sat silently in the back seat.

Finally Mark drove back toward the road as another tree started rising behind him, making up for the two that had been dislodged from the ground.

Up ahead, he could see Dover’s Point a little clearer as the sun started to set. He could also see the fires burning at several of the houses.

He drove faster, worried not just for himself and for Hannah, but also for Chloe.

He tried to call again. No answer.

The ground shook and rumbled beneath the car as the wyrm burrowed deeper, but the beast was no longer his concern. Now he had to worry about what he would find when he got home.

The closest military installation was just over thirty miles from the Haunted Forest. The first of the military forces to make it to the area were in helicopters loaded with as many soldiers as they could manage while still carrying emergency medical supplies and firepower.

Four personnel transports landed at Dover’s Point after hearing from the recon helicopter that there was simply no room to actually land at the H.F. Enterprises headquarters. The entire area surrounding the building was engulfed in trees or would be within the next few minutes.

The recon pilot also made a point of calling for more backup, because from what he could see they were flying into a massive clusterfuck.