The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER SIX

Christopher hadn’t realized that it was possible for the phrase “Oh shit!” to go through his mind so many times in just a few seconds. The sound of the doors locking into place sounded a hell of a lot like the sound of a heavy casket lid dropping closed.

“Welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour,” said a perky prerecorded voice. “Your safety is our primary concern, so please, watch your step as you enter the vehicle.”

“Close the door!” Tina Landry shrieked.

A creature poked its head inside the tram. The head—which consisted of glistening white skin, slanted eyes, and bloody jaws—was attached to a long neck that uncoiled almost ten feet as it slowly moved towards Tina’s face, jaws wide open.

The head exploded in a mess of white slime and flesh pieces as three different people opened fire, though only two hit the mark. Tina screamed as the neck flailed around wildly, scattering chunks all over her and her husband.

“Welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour,” the voice repeated. “Your safety…”

“Cover the door!” Eddie shouted. “I’ll try to get it closed! Everybody get to the back!”

Sheer panic ensued as three dozen tourists desperately tried to get to the rear of the tram. Several of the armed tourists, including Christopher, tried to push to the front of the crowd. His mother grabbed at his arm but he pulled away from her. They were in ocean-deep shit, but they still only had one opening to protect. A bunch of guys with high-powered rifles should be able to keep the monsters out until Eddie got the door closed again.

A monkey-like creature leaped into the tram, and was immediately shredded by gunfire.

“Don’t waste bullets!” Eddie shouted from the driver’s seat. “We don’t have an unlimited supply!”

As another creature—this one resembling a humanoid lizard—burst into the tram, the tourists ignored Eddie’s advice and opened fire repeatedly until the dead creature tumbled out of the open doorway.

“There are lots more monsters coming,” said Tommy Walker, peering out the window. The six-year-old was right. All manner of unpleasant creatures were headed for the tram, including the grinning ogre that had ripped open the other vehicle.

Christopher shouted into the driver’s area. “Eddie! We’d really, really, really appreciate it if you could get that door closed!”

An oversized bat flew into the tram. It bounced against the ceiling and fluttered around, letting out horrible screeching sounds. Christopher took aim, fired, and missed.

A bearded man pointed his own rifle at the bat, then cried out as a shot from one of the other tourists got him in the arm. He dropped his weapon and tried to clutch at the bullet wound, but the bat latched onto the bloody hole before he could get his hand over it.

Another shot rang out, striking the seat next to the bearded man.

“Jesus Christ, be careful!” Barbara shouted. “Don’t shoot at him!”

The bearded man screamed as the bat burrowed into his arm. Within seconds its entire head was buried in his flesh. He smashed his arm against the seat, over and over, screaming the entire time. Lee Burgundy dropped his own rifle and grabbed at the bat with both hands. When he couldn’t get a hold of the bat, he grabbed the bearded man’s arm to make him stop moving it, then dug the fingers of his other hand into the bat’s skin. He wrenched the bat out of the man’s arm, getting a gout of blood in the face in the process, then threw the creature to the ground and stomped on it as hard as he could. Christopher couldn’t see the result, but heard the loud pop as its body burst open.

The bearded man clawed at his gushing arm, insane with panic. A white-headed creature exactly like the one that had been shot to pieces in front of Tina extended its head into the tram and clamped its jaws down on the bearded man’s shoulder. It yanked him toward the doorway—and right into another bullet. Two more bullets pounded into the man before he was pulled out of the tram. At least eight different creatures pounced upon him and brought him to the ground.

Oh my God, we’re going to kill ourselves before the monsters can do it, Christopher thought. Though without the guns, they’d probably be dead already.

So many creatures had now surrounded the tram that there was very little empty window space to see past them. If they all chose to pour into the opening, Christopher figured they’d last a minute, maybe two if the creatures decided to have a more leisurely meal.

He blinked some sweat out of his eyes.

With a loud whirr, the door slowly began to slide shut. The tram jerked forward, knocking several people off balance, and then began to move forward along the track.

Christopher allowed himself a half-second of mental celebration.

Then the doors stopped.

The ogre climbed into the tram.

All of the rifles seemed to fire at once. The ogre let out a cry of pain that rattled the vehicle, and then it smashed its fists against each side of the doorway, knocking the tram door off its track.

The tourists pumped bullet after bullet into the ogre. Through the red mist, Christopher watched it grab a tourist and bite clean through his arm, swallowing both the arm and the rifle it had been holding. The bleeding ogre grabbed the tourist by the neck and tossed him out of the vehicle. The tourist’s single scream ended abruptly.

Christopher fired a shot that, while it was meant for the ogre’s neck, hit its right eye instead. The ogre howled and stood up straight, bashing its head against the ceiling of the tram. More and more bullets pounded into its body. It swiped out with its hand, decapitating one tourist and ripping half the face off another.

The tourist with the shredded face fired his rifle several times in a panic. But the ogre’s attack had spun him around, and his shots went into the crowd of tourists instead. Christopher’s heart jolted as he heard a wail from behind him that sounded like it belonged to his mother.

The ogre’s head exploded.

The beast flopped forward onto the first couple of rows of seats, landing on Neal’s obese corpse and revealing Eddie standing behind it. He held a smoking gun with a huge barrel. He quickly glanced over at the doorway and let out a cry of frustration. “He screwed up the door! It’s not gonna close again!”

Christopher pushed through the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of his mother. A young woman in a leather jacket sobbed while the man next to her pressed his hands against her chest where she’d been shot.

After pushing somebody out of the way a little harder than he’d intended, he saw his mother. She looked terrified but uninjured, thank God.

“Can’t you make this thing go any faster?” somebody shouted.

“We’re lucky it’s moving at all!” Eddie replied. He looked through the front windshield. “Dammit!”

Christopher turned his attention away from his mother to see what Eddie was talking about. It was hard to see through the throng of people, but he could tell that something was on the track ahead of them.

Something big.

“Seat belts!” Barbara screamed. “Everybody sit down, now!”

Despite the small thinning of the herd, there weren’t that many more seats in the tram than there were tourists, and several of them in the front were covered by a dead ogre. So Barbara’s command was met with instant chaos, as the passengers frantically tried to find seats.

Christopher nearly doubled over as the man next to him accidentally smacked him in the gut with the barrel of his rifle. Christopher squeezed his eyes and jaws shut and tried not to vomit.

“C’mon, we have to sit down,” said his mother, tugging on his arm. Christopher forced himself to stand upright again. Now that many of the tourists had found their seats, he could see what was on the track in front of them.

Or at least its head.

Actually, as far as Christopher could tell, it was nothing but a head. A giant severed human head that was bigger than the tram. It was lying on its side, allowing them to see the immense bloody stump of its neck. Its black hair was mussed and blood trickled from the corners of its eyes.

“Nobody said anything about giant severed heads!” Christopher shouted. “The commercials promised weird, scary stuff, but there was nothing about giant severed heads lying in the middle of the tracks! This is bullshit!”

The head smiled, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth.

Christopher sat down across from his mother and fastened his seat belt. They weren’t moving very quickly, so the impact wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as the earlier crash, but he still wasn’t looking forward to it.

The giant head licked its lips.

The tram smashed into it, jolting all of the passengers forward in their seats. A few people who hadn’t been lucky enough to find seats tumbled to the floor. At least a dozen different creatures fell past the windows, obviously having been dislodged from their perches on top of the roof.

“Guns!” Eddie shouted.

Creatures began to pour into the tram at a much faster rate than before. Christopher quickly unbuckled his seat belt, stood up, and helped open fire. A scaly red thing with glowing eyes hopped into the tram, bounced over the first few rows of seats, and slashed its claws back and forth across the face of an elderly woman who was still strapped into her seat. It slashed up two more people before a shot to the chest finally took it down.

An oversized brown spider scurried across the ceiling, then leapt down upon a teenaged girl.

Eddie blew away something with a pistol before it could get onboard. “There are too many of them!” he shouted to the passengers. “We’ll run out of ammo! We have to ditch the tram!”

“Are you insane?” Lee shouted. “They’ll rip us apart out there!”

“They’ll rip us apart in here!” Eddie insisted. He paused to shoot a giant millipede. “They know we’re in the tram, and they’ll just keep pouring in here until we don’t have a single bullet left.”

“We’re still better off in here… at least we have some protection!”

“We don’t have shit in here once the guns are empty! If we can get out of here, maybe split up, they won’t be able to find us as easily. We just have to run like hell for the edge of the forest.”

“We won’t last three seconds!” said Lee.

“He’s right,” said Christopher. “There’s no way we’d survive out there. Look how many of them there are!”

“I’m making the decision,” said Eddie. “And since you only have a few seconds to figure out if you want to join me or die, you’d better think fast.”

He held up his other hand, revealing a grenade. He pulled out the ring with his teeth and spat it to the floor.

Oh, this could turn out bad, thought Christopher. This could turn out real bad.

Eddie hurled the grenade out of the doorway. “Everybody cover your ears!” he shouted.

Christopher dropped the rifle and slammed his hands over his ears. There was a couple of seconds of silence, and then an explosion that shook the tram and illuminated up the entire forest with a bright white light.

As the roar of the explosion died down, it was replaced by the shrieks of the Haunted Forest creatures as they quickly scurried away from the tram. Christopher couldn’t believe how many there were—hundreds of them!

The light began to fade.

“Let’s go!” Eddie shouted. “Everybody run!”