Bad Moon Rising

bitches are the scream queens…aren’t you?”

A half-dozen bulky figures crowded the tent’s opening; college football team sweatshirts and pasty faces. They shoved Kramer roughly out of the way. At the table, Officer Golub bent toward the actresses, his white grin stretching wider and wider.

“Let’s hear you scream,” he whispered and then snapped his teeth at them.

(4)

Jim O’Rear wasn’t scheduled to give his demonstration of film stunt techniques until that evening. Knowing that Crow was shorthanded he volunteered to spend the afternoon walking the grounds at the Hayride to make sure all the attractions were in top shape. There were reporters from all the big papers as well as from the major horror magazines—the last thing Crow would need was a shot of tourists stuck at, say, the Cave of the Wolfman with no werewolf, no spooky lighting, no smoke effects.

He had just completed the circuit and was heading to the Haunted House to give BK the thumbs-up when he heard screams coming from the Scream Queen tent which, despite its name, was not scheduled for anything loud until the marathon started, and according to his clipboard that was nearly forty minutes from now. He listened. O’Rear had heard a lot of screams—as an actor and stuntman on movies and on dozens of haunted attractions; he knew the difference between canned screams and real. This sounded way too real. Even for a theme park designed by Malcolm “I-have-no-limits” Crow.

He stared in the direction of the tent. The screams kept going, on and on.

“Shit,” he said, and started running.

(5)

The creature hit BK like a missile and together they crashed backward onto the flatbed’s deck. The thing lunged at him, trying to bite him.

“What the fu—?” BK started to say, but the hands around his throat were like steel bands, instantly cutting off his air. Black poppies started blooming at the edges of his vision.

Though he did not understand what was happening, or even recognize the nature of the person attacking him, BK had been in too many fights to go down this easy. He jammed his left fist under the attacker’s jaw and shoved upward, pushing the teeth away from his throat, then hooked a sharp right-hand hooking palm heel into the creature’s ear. BK was a very big, very strong man and the shot should have taken all the steam out of this guy, even if he was hopped up on crack. The open-handed blow should almost certainly have popped the eardrum, but the snarling thing on top of him shook it off with barely a moment’s loosening of its grip.

BK’s mind was going dark from oxygen starvation. So, his next hit was a killing blow, a two-knuckle rising punch into the attacker’s Adam’s apple. He heard the hyoid bone crunch; instantly the pressure slackened and the attacker reeled back, clutching his throat. BK came off the flatbed and was expecting to see the son of a bitch go down dead. Instead he shook itself like a wet dog and raised its head.

That’s when BK got his first real look at him.

His attacker was a teenage boy, maybe seventeen, with a pimply face and shaggy hair. His eyes were dark, his mouth full of fangs…but suddenly BK realized, with a sick and terrible certainty, that this was not another Halloween costume.

The monster rushed him again.

(6)

Screenwriter Stephen Susco was yelling at the projectionist. The power had gone off barely ten minutes into screening of his film, The Grudge 2. The house lights were out and the emergency lights were next to useless. Now there was some kind of fight going on in the back rows of the theater.

The projectionist never appeared; neither did the ushers. Susco turned to fellow screenwriter-director James Gunn, who was scheduled to screen his flick Slither in a couple of hours and in a low voice said, “This is the sort of shit you’d expect in LA.”

Gunn spread his hands. “Small Town, America. What can I tell you?”

“Hey, I grew up near here. Don’t bust on Bucks County.”

A sound made them look up to see a dark, round object come sailing out through the projectionist’s window, arc over the crowd, and land with a wet thud on the stage. Both screenwriters looked at it, smiling at first because this was Halloween and they thought it was a joke. The object rolled toward them and came to a wobbly stop five feet away. The smiles drained away from both their faces as they recognized the face—and head—of the projectionist.

The back doors of the theater burst open with a crash and a dozen pale-faced strangers filled the doorway. Dixie McVey led the way. He pointed at the men on the stage. “Fetch!” he said. The killers rushed past him and the dying began.

(7)

The woman in the party dress staggered out of the firelit shadows with a ragged bundle in her blood-streaked arms. Her dress was torn, and tears had cut tracks through the soot stains on her face. It had probably been a pretty face once, but not now.

“My baby!” she screamed as she lurched toward the hospital entrance. Flaming fragments from the TV station next door fell all around her. “God! Please help my baby!”

Most of the crowd that had been thronged outside of the ER entrance had bolted and fled when the station blew up. Only three people were left—a nurse, an EMT, and a pizza delivery guy with a bloody rag pressed to his face. They stood in a loose knot watching the rain of flaming debris, but they turned as the woman staggered toward them.

“My baby!” The woman’s voice was shrill with anguish, and the watchers could see that the baby she carried in her arms was horribly limp. She stopped walking and just stood there. “Help my baby!”

The pizza delivery guy took a tentative step toward her. “Lady! Come on! Get in here.” A chunk of steaming pipe crashed down only yards behind the woman, but she was too out of it to even twitch.

The pizza delivery guy looked at the EMT and together they sprinting across the parking lot toward her. The nurse lingered by the door, but screamed for all of them to get inside. She tried not to look at the small, slack limbs that hung from the bundle of bloody rags the woman clutched to her chest.

The two men braced her and each took an arm to hurry her along. A flaming shoe slapped down in front of them. “Christ,” growled the EMT.

“My baby’s hurt!” wept the woman as they hustled her along. The nurse came out to meet them, making shushing noises to soothe her, reaching out for the baby. The woman screamed and huddled over the baby, shielding it from the nurse’s touch.

“Get the door,” ordered the nurse, and the pizza delivery guy ran forward to pull open the heavy door. The emergency power did not extend to the hydraulic doors.

The woman stopped outside, jerking back, her face suddenly frightened and suspicious. “No! You’ll hurt my baby!”

“No, no,” the nurse quickly assured her. “We’re going to help you. We’re going to help your…baby. Come on, sweetheart.”

“That’s right, Miss,” said the EMT, trying to urge her on. Still the woman hesitated, clearly afraid of the yawning doorway.

“My baby?”

“There are doctors in here,” said the nurse. “They’ll take care of your baby. They’ll fix you both up good as new.” The lie burned like acid on her tongue.

The woman turned and looked at the nurse, her eyes almost blank except for haunted shadows. “Doctors?”

“Yes, Sweetheart. Very good doctors. The best. Now come on in so we can help you.”

“Come inside,” the pizza guy called, half watching her and half watching the seemingly endless fall of flaming debris.

Reluctantly, the woman began moving again, letting the driver and the nurse guide her inside. They crossed the threshold and left the danger of the falling debris behind. There were other people milling around in the ER entrance now, including a young resident from Pakistan who was already moving toward them with a look of deep concern on his face. The woman stopped just inside the entrance and slowly lowered her arms. The tattered blanket fell from her hands onto the floor, and a limp form flopped out into the light. The nurse and the driver