INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER - When the Hawkins family find out that their disappearance is front page national news across Australia, they become even more paranoid in their attempts to avoid the supernatural and alien forces pursuing them. The authoritarian father Alistair becomes particularly deranged as the pressure mounts, this not helped by Cornelius's great idea for the family to avoid being identified. But what will happen when the magic pills wear off? And will all of them survive the ordeal?
Read Chapter 7 of this story series to find out. Please note that like previous chapters it contains very strong violence and horror themes which might not be to every readers' taste. All characters and events are fictional, with similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional. Please enjoy and rate and comment.
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Another night in an eerie and spooky forest sleeping in a car was not something Erica Hawkins liked, but as she awoke to take her shift at keeping watch at 2 am at least things had been quiet unlike when they had to deal with cannibal pygmies in the Blue Mountains, or yowies and wolves while UFOs flew overhead in the Belanglo Forest the night before.
Erica sat in the back seat of her parents' car listening to the crickets chirping and other nocturnal noises when she heard a bird call that she had never heard before. A loud screeching, menacing and ominous. Erica nervously wound down her window and looked skywards, noting that the Northern Hemisphere sky had reverted to the Southern Hemisphere one and the Southern Cross was once again visible.
However high above the cars, by the intermittent light of the gibbous moon as clouds streaked across the night sky circled six enormous birds, way bigger than eagles or pelicans. They looked like rooks from England, but their eyes glowed blood red. Feeling terrified, Erica shook her sleeping parents in the front seat. "Mum, Dad, wake up!" she urged.
Alistair and Faye Hawkins were awake within seconds, and observed the menacing birds that clearly were not of this world. "We need to go," said Alistair, starting the engine and beeping his horn to awaken the occupants of the other car.
Fortunately Danielle who was keeping watch in the back of her car had also seen and heard the demonic birds, and woke her husband and Gavin, Cornelius immediately starting the engine and following his father's four wheel drive down the track.
The birds emitting their unworldly screeching followed the cars and swooped down like magpies defending their nests. In the back of her car Danielle got the rifle, opened the window and leaned out, firing three shots skywards, this having no effect upon the birds save for making them angrier.
Danielle went to re-load the rifle but was forced to close the window -- and fast -- when a new threat attacked the Hawkins family at ground level. Hundreds of spiders -- deadly and aggressive Sydney funnel-web spiders -- emerged from the vegetation and launched an assault, their fangs bared and dripping with lethal venom.
In the back of her parents' car, Erica put her fingers in her mouth and closed her eyes as in addition to the funnel-web spiders a second type of arachnid -- deadly scorpions -- joined in the chase, and in the headlights huge and aggressive Asian murder hornets could be seen hovering on the road ahead.
Alistair and Cornelius floored it through the dark forest trying to avoid the aggressive arthropods and persistent birds. Erica opened her eyes and wished she hadn't as another strange creature came at them from a trail. Over 30 feet long, it was comprised of numerous body segments and charged the cars, hissing aggressively. It was joined by a second creature very similar in size, although Gavin noted the first monster had one set of legs per body segment and the second had two sets of legs per body segment, so obviously the first was a giant centipede, the second a giant millipede.
Both chased the cars for some way but the Hawkins family seemed to be getting away from the creatures attacking them from the air and at ground level. The birds dropped off their pursuit, and everyone noticed that at the side of the road on which they were now travelling were many cane toads.
The pests introduced to Queensland in the 1930s should not have been this far south, and not about the size of ponies but these cane toads were. Fortunately for the Hawkins family the enormous cane toads didn't seem interested in them, passively watching the cars pass by, flicking out their tongues in and out to catch mosquitos the size of model aeroplanes and making amphibian 'ribbit, ribbit' noises.
Too on edge to sleep again after this latest ambush the Hawkins family drove northwards through the night from the South Coast region headed for the Illawarra region. It was a long, long drive up the coast on the Princes Highway, and both cars were running low on fuel when they reached the town of Nowra and found a 24 hour petrol station to re-fuel, and also food and drink to minimize stops during the day that could be used to trace them.
Apart from a short delay which involved all six family members hiding in their cars when the lights of a UFO could be seen, this went relatively smoothly. Then it was back onto the Princes Highway, and dawn found the Hawkins family at Shellharbour Beach in the southern suburbs of Wollongong, having again re-filled the cars and now trying to get some fresh air and feel less tired after the long night drive after getting chased out of the forest near Bateman's Bay.
There were plenty of other beach-goers at this early hour, but only the Hawkins family noticed something amiss out to sea. First noticed by youngest member of the group Erica, the family watched in amazement as the aliens and demons gave the Hawkins family another demonstration of their amazing powers, and that the family were still very much in their sights for abduction by a spaceship.
Ploughing through the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean was the Titanic again, although unlike on Friday in Sydney Harbour this time it was joined on each side by two other ships very similar. The Hawkins family looked through binoculars at the name plate of the ship that looked very close to the Titanic's port side, and the name-plate read 'Olympic', the Titanic's first sister ship that had been scrapped in the mid-1930s. Further out to sea and on the Titanic's starboard side steamed the third liner, this one in the white, red and green paintwork of a hospital ship, its nameplate reading 'Britannic'.
Behind these liners came two more ships with four funnels although different in size and design. Through their binoculars the Hawkins family read the name-plates, Lusitania and Mauretania, ships sunk in 1915 and scrapped in the 1930s respectively.
The Hindenburg had been visible when they had seen the Titanic on Friday morning, and the Zeppelin flew into sight again, although this time it was joined by a second airship, the R101 which had suffered the same fate several years before the Hindenburg.
These were not the only out of place aircraft in the area, the Hawkins family observing a squadron of five Avenger bombers, a Martin Mariner flying boat and two De Havilland Comet airliners high in the sky.
On the water the bizarre regatta of lost ships continued. A Navy ship -- the name reading HMAS Sydney and lost off the coast off Western Australia during World War II steamed by, accompanied by the SS Waratah, an Australian steamer missing off South Africa for some 90 years.
"What's that ship, Gavin?" Erica asked, pointing at a truly bizarre vessel which had a raised bridge like it was on stilts and gantries up and down its considerable length.
"USS Cyclops," Gavin read. "If I remember, that ship vanished in World War I in the Bermuda Triangle. It's been missing a long time now."
After watching the enormous SS Great Eastern go by, smoke pouring from its stacks and the paddle wheel in rotation, the next two vessels were craft that had all existed in the lifetimes of the Hawkins family. One was a large luxury yacht, and one look at its nameplate -- Patanella -- immediately told everyone it was the vessel that vanished from within Sydney Heads back in 1988. The other was a large car ferry typically seen in Europe -- and it was soon clear that this was the Estonia, lost in the Baltic Sea in 1994.
Behind these came a number of tall ships, two of which bore the nameplates 'Endeavour' and 'Bounty'. On others the Hawkins family could observe convicts, blue-coated officers and red-coated soldiers, as well as some deck crew.
Pirates were evident on a pirate ship that sailed by with the Jolly Roger flag in full glory and there were obviously Vikings to be seen in the Viking ship that also passed by, but nobody at all could be seen on a clipper from the late 1800s with sails set that could also be observed further out to sea, Danielle managing to just make out its name on the side -- 'Marie Celeste'.
Behind the ships the choppy blue waters bubbled, and the Hawkins family watched in amazement -- and increasing fear -- at the creatures that surfaced, all larger than blue whales.
First was a giant squid with ten tentacles, the squid obviously having a break from its home in the deepest darkest depths of the Pacific Ocean. Next was a giant octopus, its yellow-brown body with bright blue rings indicating it was a deadly blue-ringed octopus that the aliens had grown from its usual tiny form to a tremendous size. Third was an enormous box jellyfish, a deadly creature found mainly in the tropical waters off Northern Australia, and like the blue ringed octopus not normally anywhere nearly as big.
Erica's eyes went wide and she pointed at the beach. "Look!"
The others did look, and immediately saw a line of cloven hoofed footprints appearing on the sand. There was no sight of the creature making them, but presumably it was demonic, and the footprints were coming straight for them!
"Run!" yelled Alistair, he, Faye. Gavin and Erica jumping into the four wheel drive, and Cornelius and Danielle into her car and driving away. Erica looked out the back of her father's car as it sped away, and noted that none of the other people at the beach were disturbed by the presence of ships and aircraft from many years earlier, nor giant squids, octopuses or jellyfish in the sea, or even cloven hoof footprints in the sand by some invisible demon. Were they blind?
Alistair followed by Danielle made haste through Wollongong's southern suburbs, and Gavin looked out the window at the Port Kembla Steelworks, Wollongong along with Novocastrian Danielle's home city of Newcastle being the two steel cities of New South Wales.
"So Gavin, you still have relatives in Wollongong, right?" Alistair asked him.
Gavin nodded. "Yes, a set of grandparents, an aunt and uncle and three cousins."
