James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

“You’re right! Drop the ladder! Drop the ladder!” shouted the reporter.

Eddie kicked the rope ladder over the side. It fell to the ground and the lady, Tina, quickly rushed over to it and started to climb.

Something flew out of the woods and made a beeline for her.

It was a giant bat. These days, Eddie was not impressed by a giant bat. He took careful aim with the semi-automatic rifle and opened fire. It took a few shots, but he struck the bat’s wing and sent it spiraling down to the ground.

Several dozen bats emerged from the woods to take its place.

“Oh yeah. This ain’t good,” Lee noted. He stopped walking, as did the others.

“They probably smell blood,” said Christopher.

Lee held up his bloody half-finger. “Probably.”

“Maybe… maybe I could distract them.” Christopher bit his lip. “If I run the opposite direction, wave my arms and make a lot of noise and stuff, they might all go after me.”

“And then they’ll kill you,” Barbara said.

“I’m not saying the plan is in my best interest. But my mom’s sacrifice was for nothing. Mine wouldn’t be. Unless you all got eaten seconds after me. You wouldn’t, right?”

“Can’t go for that idea, sorry,” said Lee. “No more sacrifices.”

“Not your call.”

Christopher raised his hands over his head and turned to run. Then a wave of dizziness struck him and he promptly pitched forward, landing on his face.

Tina tried to climb faster as she saw the swarm of bats coming right at her. Above, Eddie was shooting at them, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be wiping out a whole swarm of bats before they got her.

Which was going to be in three… two… one…

The bats struck her like baseballs. They weren’t even trying to bite her; the damn things were just bashing into her at full speed. Her left hand slipped off the ladder. She was about halfway up, meaning she had a nice hundred-foot fall to look forward to if she lost her grip.

She slammed her left hand back on the rope and tried to pull herself up another rung, as the bats slammed into her again and again. Several of them struck her burnt flesh, sending almost unbearable bolts of pain through her body.

As she screamed, a bat pushed into her open mouth.

Christopher was in a wonderful dreamland, where elves danced and fairies flew and leprechauns spoke in charming accents about their pots of gold, and where old men nudged him very hard with their foot against his bloody—

He looked up.

“Get up!” Lee said, extending a hand.

Christopher couldn’t possibly have been out of it for more than a second or two, but the glowing eyes and shadows were definitely getting closer.

“Up! Up! Up!” Eddie shouted.

“Why?”

“The bats may not follow us up! Go higher! Hurry!” He set down the gun and picked up the megaphone. “ Hold on! ”

Tina crushed her teeth down on the bat’s head.

She spat it out as the helicopter did such an abrupt rise that she nearly lost her grip with both hands. But she held on. She vomited over the front of her shirt, a reaction sparked by both the sudden upward acceleration and the whole “biting off the head of a bat” incident from a couple of seconds ago.

More bats bashed into her. But fewer than before.

She resumed climbing as quickly as she could as the helicopter continued rising. A couple more bats hit her, but she could handle that, no problem.

Eddie reached down for her. Tina grabbed his hand and let him pull her up into the helicopter, letting out one last yelp from the pain in her burnt fingers.

“Anybody else alive down there?” Eddie asked, shoving her into a seat.

Tina nodded frantically.

“Bring her down,” Eddie told the pilot, as he began to pull up the rope ladder.

“Why are you doing that?” Tina asked.

Eddie grinned. “I’m no longer out of grenades. I don’t want to damage the ladder when I damage the bats.”

Despite everything she’d been through, Tina managed to grin as well.

“I could try again,” Christopher offered.

Lee frowned at him. “Don’t bother.”

“You think Tina made it?” asked Barbara, adjusting Tommy’s position on her back. He was getting heavier with every passing second.

“Do you want my honest answer or the answer meant to be comforting in our final moments?”

“Comfort.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” said Lee. “She’s on that helicopter relaxing with a glass of champagne and a personal masseuse.”

“Good for her.”

“Is she really?” Christopher asked.

Lee and Barbara stared at him.

“I was kidding,” said Christopher. “I’m not that far gone. So does anybody know any good death songs? We could sing our way to the grave.”

“Are we going to die?” Tommy asked, his voice so small and scared that Barbara’s heart immediately broke.

“No,” she told him. “We’re not. We’re going to get out of here, and then people are going to come in and kill all of the bad monsters.”

“Good.”

There was a loud explosion coming from the direction of the water reclamation plant.

“What do you think?” Lee asked. “Good explosion or bad explosion?”

Barbara smiled. “Sounds like an Eddie explosion.”

Another explosion followed. Some of the glowing eyes and shadows scurried away.

Moments later, gunfire. Lots of it.

Moments after that, Lee could see the flashes of gunfire as well as hear them.

“ Heads up, kids !” Eddie said through the megaphone. “ Cover your ears !”

The third explosion knocked Christopher off his feet, although that was not a particularly difficult task. Creatures of all sizes and shapes fled all around them.

Eddie came into view, lowering the megaphone. “Hi. Did you guys think I was going to leave you to die?”

“I did,” said Barbara.

“Me too,” said Christopher.

“The idea did occur to me,” Lee agreed.

“Well, I’ve got guns, grenades, a helicopter, and a friend of yours. Let’s get the fuck out of this shithole, shall we?”

“That is a wonderful idea,” said Barbara, hurrying forward.

“You wouldn’t happen to have the human host, would you?” Christopher asked.

Eddie frowned. “Say what?”

“Just wondering. You missed it, but there’s a demon involved here. Spells and stuff.”

“But what do you mean by human host?”

“Dunno, to be honest.”

“Would this human host be protected? I mean, would the things living in the forest not want him to come to harm?”

“What are you talking about?” Lee asked.

“Let’s chat while we walk,” said Eddie, pulling revolvers out of his belt and handing them to everybody. He shot another hellhound and started walking back toward the water reclamation plant. “I got out of the forest because monsters weren’t trying to eat the owner of this place.”

“You mean Pestilence?” asked Christopher.

“No, Booth. Martin Booth. Owner of H.F. Enterprises.”

“He sounds human.”

“He is. He was in the other tram, and he didn’t want to leave. Weird as hell.”

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Lee. “But that sounds like human host behavior to me. Do you know where he is?”

“I know who has him. Why?”

“I think we can use him to stop this.”

“How? Kill him?”

Lee shook his head and fired at something he couldn’t quite see. Since the trigger finger on his right hand was missing the piece that would actually pull a trigger, he had to use his left hand, and his aim was bad. Barbara made up for it. He actually questioned the wisdom of giving Christopher a firearm in his current condition, but didn’t say anything.