Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (24 page)

“How did Preacher Campbell create Campbell’s Pond, and why.”

“He didn’t create it lady, he was one of God’s preachers, not God himself.” Baugh smiled at his wit, and continued, “There’s a creek that feeds it, Oro-fino Creek. Campbell diverted it into the valley where the pond is now, then spent the last few months of his life damming the other end up with dead fallen trees, rocks, and dirt. The department of lands dumped their own load of rock on it about ten years ago when they built the road to the campground over it. It leaks a little, but stays full with the creek still feeding it.

“Why,” he said with a far off look that wanted to be thoughtful but came across as dimwitted. “God only knows.”

The camera paned back to Mona, looking out of her element in her crisp KLUTV wardrobe. “It was at Campbell’s Pond Camping Ground where little Timothy Walker was last seen. Timmy Walker, seven years old last January, was last seen around the shore of Campbell’s Pond and is presumed drowned.” She wore her solemn face like a mask, could exchange it with any of her many camera faces without an effort. She was convincing. “Mr. Baugh, could you detail the search for Timmy Walker.”

The camera paned back to Baugh, who seconds before was fixated on Mona’s breasts. He looked up just before the camera can catch his drooling stare. “Well, me and some other fellows from town,” he poked a thumb back in the direction of Pierce, “we searched the woods all around here. We searched the old church house and fished around the shores of the pond.”

“Why didn’t the Search and Rescue search the pond more thoroughly? Campbell’s Pond isn’t large, or deep.”

Baugh’s stance became defensive at that question, as if she had called him a coward. “Lady, only a fool would go out in that water. There are almost two hundred years of rotten trees, pondweed, and lilies at the bottom of that puddle. The waters so muddy a man would be stuck fast down there before he knew it.” Then, like an afterthought, “I’ve fished here since I was a kid, bit I’ve never like that pond.”

The cameraman panned back to Mona on cue. “You mean you’ve come here all these years and never once went into the water.”

Again, Baugh’s wide face filed the screen. He paused, seemed to be in deep thought. Probably for dramatic effect, then concluded. “Lady, not on a dare.”

* * *

Mona stopped the tape and grinned, satisfied. The station gave her shit stories and she turned them into gold.

“Kiss my ass, Susan,” she said, sliding the news van’s side door open and stepping out into the quiet campground. She knew that it would be full again by Saturday, drowning or no drowning these locales loved their fishing, but on that Wednesday afternoon, it was deserted. Her only company was a lone moose, as big as a horse and with a monstrous spread of antlers. It trod lazily in the shallow water at the far end of the pond, eating strings of slimy weed and lilies from the surface.

She decided to wander around for a bit, take in the scenery and find some good angles for filler footage while the cameraman was back in town with her car picking up food and picnic supplies. Since there were no campers out today, and no crackling campfires to take pictures of, she decided they would create their own. Roast a few hotdogs and marshmallows like campers do. Mike, the cameraman, was pretty good looking and not too dumb, so maybe when they got back to the station she’d talk him into buying her a drink or two. She’d thought of trying him out while they were up here all alone, but she wanted to get promoted, not fired.

The campground consisted of several interconnected clearings, some pond side and others farther away. Each boasted a picnic table, fire pit, and concrete barriers to mark a parking spot. There were a handful of public restrooms, little more than glorified port-a-potties which Mona didn’t care to explore, and three fishing docks that reached into the pond’s muddy waters like slimy wooden fingers. It was all too quaint, too typical. Your average Idaho mountain campground. She wanted something more distinct, a memorable parting shot for her story.

Mona walked to a camp spot on the perimeter of the campground, farthest from the road out to the highway, spotted a trail into the forest beyond, and followed it. She didn’t know where Preacher Campbell’s old church house was, or even if it still existed as Baugh claimed, but if it was out there she meant to get footage of it.

Much of the wood out here was dead. She didn’t know who owned the land, but whoever it was had chosen not to log or thin the area. The last few years had been dry ones, so all it would take is a touch of lightning, or a carelessly flung cigarette but to burn this wilderness up. As she got deeper into the woods the trail forked and branched.

She continued on the straightest path, noticing how it became rougher and less hospitable the farther she walked. Deadwood littered the stony, uneven path. Wild shrub, thistle, and what looked like nightshade crowded in. Low hanging limbs, which were trimmed away from the trail farther back, became an increasing annoyance, and she had to duck and twist around them every few feet. Mona knew she was working on assumption, but right now assumption was all she had to work with. It made sense that if the locals who frequented the campground left the old church house alone, the trail there would not be maintained. Finally the trail ended, swallowed up by the woods, a dead end. She cursed her luck, and the wasted time, when a sound in the distance caught her ears. Probably a dear or something, breaking through the brush as it fled her presence. She didn’t see it, but when she looked she did see an old weather worn building, brooding in the darkness of a tightly packed clearing.

If the trail had been neglected, then the old wood plank structure had been blighted. The walls were a warped mess, the windows, which might have once held glass, were ugly moss lined sockets. There was no front door, just an old flap of burlap nailed over the entrance, caked with moss and filth. Someone had spray painted the legend
God Damned This Place
on it in bright hunter orange letters. Even the bit of rural graffiti was old, dull. That the place still stood was a wonder of the ages, or at least the past two centuries. Standing, somewhat crookedly, atop the square, two-story structure was a bell tower, minus the bell.

Mona approached the building with some trepidation. She wasn’t bothered by the morbid legend painted on the rotting cloth door, or even the utter decrepitude of the place, but by the thought that some large, perhaps dangerous animal might have a den in the deserted church. She knew that these woods supported bears and mountain lions, maybe even a few wolves, and though most simply ran at the sight of a human, that hungry or hurt animals were very likely to attack a lone traveler.

She stepped to the door, almost screaming as her foot struck something small and furry. A large squirrel, laying on its side, staring up at her with eyes the pale color of curdled milk. It was quite dead, its matted fir crawling with flies and not a few maggots. The tail twitched slightly, the work of undead nerves, or maybe an imperceptible breeze. She watched it closely for a few moments, but it remained dead. The tail did not move.

She stepped around the small corpse and grabbed the edge of the rotting burlap and pulled it slowly to the side. No animals were in evidence, what she could see in the darkness within were a few old wooden chairs, rotting in neat rows, and a primitive looking pulpit, the sign on the cross was carved into its graying wood.

A dry rustle, the sound of breaking limbs and disturbed brush, made her jump, dropping the cloth back into place. She breathed deeply, cursed herself for being so damned spooked, but could not bring herself to open up the burlap flap again. Maybe later, with Mike at her side and the camera rolling, but not now.

She stepped away, not yet daring to turn her back on the place, and shrieked aloud as she bumped into something else. She turned around in time to see a small boy running down the path back to Campbell’s Pond. She couldn’t see his face, just the back of his head, his dirty short-cropped hair, but his clothes fit the description of Timothy Walker, the missing boy.

Slowly, her heart settled and her breathing eased, and a smile spread across her face.

Local KLUTV reporter Mona Hobbs turns hero, rescuing a lost child from the wilderness of northern Idaho. Story tonight at seven.

She saw this all perfectly in her minds eye, the same way she saw her own stories, shot by shot and word by word before they were even started. It was why she was good at her job, her power of visualization.

“
Timothy, wait!”

He ran without looking back, likely scared by her scream. He was probably weak though, lost for days in the woods without food, so she knew she could catch him.

She decided as she gave chase down the rough trail, that she would ask the Susan Potter, the bitch, to do her interview.

* * *

The boy, not as weak as Mona figured, put on a good chase, but she kept him in sight. He turned sharply on several forks in the long trail, leading her into unexplored territory. She was afraid he would get her lost as well. Then she saw the end of the trail, it opened up into a camp spot beside the pond. The boy ran through the camp, to the edge of the pond, and onto one of the fishing docks, not stopping until he reached the end. She slowed as he turned to face her, not wanting to spook him again, and stepped onto the dock. It tilted slightly, moving under her feet, making her a little sea sick.

“Don’t be afraid, Timmy,” she said in the most soothing voice she could muster “You’re found now. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to get you out of here and back with your parents.

He watched her intensely as she approached slowly, not saying a word. If the run had tired him as it had her he didn’t show it. Where she was huffing for breath, her heart pounding under her blouse, he seemed to barely breath at all. He looked sick, skin pail, eyes sunken and sallow, mouth drooping at the corners. As she closed in on him his eyes narrowed slightly. Only the whites showed, and he simply fell over backward into the water.

“No!” She ran the last few steps to the edge, but when she looked down into the water he was gone, the only sign of his passing a growing wave of ripples that moved the dock ever so slightly. If he was close to the dock she couldn’t see him, the water around the dock was suddenly muddier than the rest of the pond, as if stirred up at the bottom. A dead, bloated fish floated only feet away, its eyes the same curdled milk color as the squirrel’s had been. It’s swollen belly a floating restraint for flies.

Then the flies scattered, and the fish rolled over in the water. With a splash of its yellowing tail it slipped into the muddy water and vanished

“What the hell?” She was no outdoorswoman, but that fish had been dead.
Dead!
A floating maggot buffet one second, and swimming off the next.

She was still watching the rippling wake of the fish when she heard the loud, menacing grunt behind her. It echoed across the green-brown waters of Campbell’s Pond, not the grunt of a harassed animal, but something else entirely. It was guttural, a moaning, gurgling sound, like something coughing through a mouthful of mud, and the voice itself was almost human. Almost.

She turned and saw the moose she’d spied earlier watching her from the shore. Muddy fir hung in dark clumps from it’s strangely elongated face; its massive antlers were pitted like sheets of twisted, rusty metal. It looked thinner than before, gaunt. When it opened its mouth, too wide it seemed to Mona, and bellowed at her again in its strange, slightly human voice, the smell of rotten meat washed over her, making her feel nauseous.

It stepped forward, head down and waving back and forth, then stopped, placing a pitted and misshapen hoof on the edge of the dock.

Mona stood perfectly still, arms out like a circus wirewalker, trying to keep her balance. The heels of her feet hung just over the edge of the wood, above the water.

The moose snorted again, and stomped its hoof against the edge of the dock with a loud crack that echoed like a gunshot. The dock rocked violently. Mona fought desperately for balance.

The moose raised its hoof again, brought it down with another loud report, and the plank beneath it splintered. Then it did it a third time, and a fourth. Mona lost her fight for balance, and fell face forward onto the shaking dock, her scream cut short by a grunt of pain. She felt water splash her ankles, which hung in the air over the water, and a pair of cold, wrinkly hands closed around them. She dug madly for purchase as they slowly drug her over the edge.

The moose raised its antlered head to the sky and howled laughter.

“No!” She dug at the splintered wood, screaming as one of her nails tore free, then finally found the crack between two boards and held fast. The fingers dug savagely into her flesh, tugging insistently, but she held.

“
Let go
,” she screamed, and began thrashing her feet. She felt her heel connect with something soft. The hands loosened. She kicked again with all her strength, and broke free, scrambling back onto the dock.

The moose snorted, it’s milky eyes glowering at her, and began stomping again.

She held firmly to the dock.
“Go away!”
she cried. “
Please, go away!”

Instead, the moose advanced, and the narrow dock began to sink under its weight. Water washed around her, splashed into her mouth, up her nose. It tasted like a combination of piss and death. She felt the cold hands fumble for her feet again as the dock went under. The moose toppled over with a grunt as the dock turned sideways beneath it, and slid sideways into the water. The dock popped from the surface of the water like a cork. Mona was bucked off into the water.

For a second all was dark as the muddy waters washed over her, and she felt something old, rotten, and evil digging at her head. It was like being mind raped. Her feet found the soft bottom and she broke the surface of the water. As she struggled to the shore through grasping weeds and mud that sucked the shoes from her feet, the raping presence fell away. She heaved herself ashore, then stood and ran, barefoot and shrieking in the direction of her van.