James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Eddie and the others scrambled out of the helicopter, only to be greeted by the sight of the dragon hurtling down directly toward them. The pilot screamed and covered his face, while Eddie fired a couple of useless shots into the air.

The dragon slammed into the ground next to them and disappeared, leaving an enormous hole.

“What the hell…?” Eddie asked, as the trees around him began to sink.

Mark watched the tree in front of him sink into the ground, bringing Hannah down with it. The Giggler took one last bite out of her neck before it disappeared with the tree.

Hannah’s corpse did not disappear.

Mark crawled over to her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

He’d saved the world, maybe. But right now, he didn’t give a shit.

Pestilence roared as his foot sank into the forest floor. Most of the trees were already gone, but the demon yanked frantically as his other foot began to sink as well.

Christopher walked toward him. For a moment he thought he was going to lose his balance, but he managed to keep going.

“You know who this is for,” he said, punching the demon so hard that the bones in his hand broke with an audible snap . Christopher didn’t care. What was one more injury?

The demon sunk to his waist and grabbed for Christopher’s leg. Christopher stepped back out of the way, and this time he did lose his balance. He fell, and then watched the shrieking demon disappear from sight.

Christopher hurt everywhere, but he felt good.

And even more quickly than it had sprouted, the Haunted Forest disappeared.

Christopher walked down the hallway, ignoring the stares.

Under his clothes, he was covered in gauze from his neck down to his feet, making it look like he’d gone on an eating binge and put on a shitload of weight.

The process of cleaning out the cuts sucked almost as much as receiving them in the first place, but they’d heal. His body would be Scar City, but they’d heal.

Lee wasn’t going to get out of the hospital anytime soon. He talked excitedly about the new book he was going to write, and had even asked Christopher to proofread the first few pages. Christopher suggested that he wait to write the book until he was no longer on morphine. Lee promised to consider that advice.

Barbara was doing fine. Milking the publicity. She’d probably become an actress or a model after all this. He was pretty sure that “tour guide” was off her list of career aspirations.

Eddie was milking it even more than Barbara. Christopher was genuinely grateful to the ex tram driver for saving his life and stuff, but he was also a bit sick of seeing him on every freakin’ channel. There was word that he was in talks to endorse the same brand of grenade that had saved their lives. Christopher didn’t even know that grenade brands had endorsements. Still, he couldn’t begrudge the guy his fifteen minutes of fame.

Tina… well, she’d thanked him for coming to Brad’s funeral, and she cried when he told her how proud Brad would’ve been of the way she handled herself, and they never really spoke after that.

Tommy was with his parents. Christopher had talked to the little boy on the phone, and Tommy had told him all about the new Transformers action figure they’d bought him. His mother confided that Tommy screamed in his sleep, and he didn’t much like his counselor because she “smelled funny,” and he clearly wasn’t the same little boy they’d sent on a fun tour with his aunt and uncle, but he’d be okay. They hoped.

H.F. Enterprises was in complete disaster-recovery mode. The last Christopher heard, they were trying to blame the entire thing on an employee named Mark Harper. He’d apparently tortured and shot Martin Booth, the owner of H.F. Enterprises, and also shot his co-worker Hannah Chambers. Nobody had found him yet.

Christopher had told the authorities, the government, and everybody else who questioned him the entire story, leaving nothing out. He didn’t know what would happen to Mark if they did catch him, but he’d stated everything he knew about Pestilence for the record. If things had really happened the way Christopher suspected they did, the man was a hero, even if he’d achieved it in a rather stomach-churning fashion.

They’d recovered his mother’s body and buried it next to his father. Her tombstone said “Happy Halloween.”

Christopher knocked.

“Come in,” said Mr. Tylerson.

Christopher stepped into his boss’s office. Mr. Tylerson looked surprised to see him. “Christopher! I didn’t expect to see you anytime soon!”

“Sorry I missed our Monday meeting. I’ve been kind of busy for the last week.”

Mr. Tylerson didn’t seem quite sure how to respond to that, so he merely fidgeted with his tie.

Christopher leaned across the desk and spoke very clearly. “Mr. Tylerson, thank you for allowing me to slave away at Novellon for all these years, but as of now, I quit. Oh, and fuck you.”

He walked out of the office, feeling good.

Damned good.

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