Lord Of The Damned Ch 02

Chapter Two: The Vine

The hill sloped steeply away from the guardrail, and as the van slipped down the steep slope it tumbled onto its side, and although Brian was buckled Sam wasn't, and she collided with him as the van topped over. He clung onto her so that she wouldn't smack into anything. The van tumbled down the slope, and he held onto her shoulders. He held tight to her as the van finally flipped upside down and Sam screamed and frantically braced her arms against the roof of the van. Then they came to a stop.

"Are you alright?" asked Brian. She was screaming incoherently. Brian took the special gun and his pack, which were both on the now upside down ceiling.

"Sam," he whispered gently. He shook her shoulder. "Sam!"

"Oh, God!" she moaned.

"Listen," he said. "We will have to move now. We have little time, but we will make it, because I will protect you. Now let's just open up your door," he said, and struggled up until he was at the passenger's door, which was up in the air, and he forced it open and climbed out. He reached down inside to help her out.

He realized how cold it was for her, because she was completely nude with not a scrap of clothing to cover her. He didn't even a jacket or a pair of boots to spare for her. He would call Jordan, an associate of his, and have a car pick him up on a road nearby in maybe five minutes. There was a stretch of woods between the highway they had just "exited" and the nearest road. They could not go back onto the highway. The ghost was there. It was probably licking its lips, peering over the gulf, looking down at the wreckage in the darkness...

He scanned the railing above, which he could see only very vaguely. He aimed his gun up above, but didn't see anything... then there was a flash of yellow. "Fuck!" he cried. He shot out with the gun. A wicked cackle pierced the air, and then the yellow was gone.

"We will move," he said to Sam. He took her wrist and pulled her along, into the trees. With his free hand he took out his cell phone. "Jordan," he said, and it dialed automatically. The phone rang.

"What?" said a man suddenly.

"Pick me up on the nearest road about five minutes northeast of the Interstate. Around exit 5."

"Want to tell me what the fuck is going on?"

"No, I really don't."

"That's cool."

"There's a GPS tracking signal in my pack, so you should know where I am. Get here ASAP or you're a son of a bitch." He hung up.

"I know you're cold," he said to Sam. "We have to walk for just a few minutes. We are going to get picked up, all right?"

The van had been as warm as a sauna, and although it was about 32 Fahrenheit, Sam did not yet feel very cold, except for her feet, which were freezing from the frost. Brian knew that they could not stay out there long or it would be bad for her, even if there was no one following them.

Sam looked like she was traumatized after the car crash, and after everything that had happened. She did not say a word. They plunged into the woods, Brian leading her by the hand.

"Where are we going?" she suddenly said, starting to cry.

"We're not safe by the highway," he said. He looked nervously around. "We're not safe in the forest either, not for long." He had his gun drawn. They followed a stream that was covered with the thinnest layer of ice.

Sam heard a loud moving sound all around. She looked around, alarmedly. The trees were partly silhouetted by distant road lights and traffic lights, but she couldn't see anything moving. It suddenly sounded like dozens of people were walking around through the trees. She was in a state of semi-delirium, and everything was like a dream. She still did not see any movement, and so she did not understand how that massive moving sound could be so close. It sounded like debris on the ground being stepped on, moved over, crushed, by dozens of people, but there were no people there.

"Do you hear that..." she began.

"Yes," said Brian quickly. "Keep moving."

"But what the hell is it..."

"Keep moving." She heard a gun shot, but his pace never slackened and so it only dimly registered in her tired mind that he was shooting at something.

But as he continued to fire, and the noise got louder, and closer, she began to feel a new rush of adrenaline.

Suddenly his hand jerked away from hers, and she turned to a disorienting sight; his left wrist and much of his torso was covered in vines that had wrapped themselves around him. "Fuck!" he cried out. She screamed.

"Run!" he yelled to her. He pulled a long knife out of his belt and slashed away at the thing. A thick sap ran from the hack marks he made as he struggled to free himself. The second he freed himself another vine wrapped itself around his ankle and he tripped. Sam ran. She felt a vine reaching for her but she dodged it. She heard a crackling all around her. There was a vine entwining itself around her right wrist and she screamed again. It pulled her roughly onto her back, like it was a leash, but suddenly the pulling stopped because Brian had hacked off the vine with his knife. He quickly pulled her up. Then he sheathed the knife and pulled out his gun, shooting back into the foliage at things that Sam couldn't see.

"The tranquilizer or the taser should stop it," he said, pulling her along and forcing her to run as he fired into the bushes. "Almost there!" They could hear distant traffic from the road they were trying to reach. They were now running up an embankment, away from the stream. Sam's bare feet were burning from the cold ground, but the adrenaline and fear coursing through her body kept her warm. Suddenly she saw a long, thick vine quickly winding its way up the hill, slithering toward them like a squid's tentacle. She cried out and Brian shot at it, but it moved and slithered so quickly he kept missing.

The grotesque vine, slimy and cold with a wet green moss, quickly attached itself around her ankle and tripped her, and then it wound its way around and around her leg, higher and higher until it was encircling her thigh, and at the same time it was dragging her down the hill so fast that Brian couldn't shoot at it or cut it. "Fuck!" he screamed, running after her.

She screamed out of fear and pain as she was tugged down the hill by the barbarous tentacle. Her bare skin burned as it was dragged mercilessly down the icy muddy slope, and she screeched as her tender nipples, too tender to even touch without excruciating pain, were relentlessly crushed and dragged against the ground. It felt as if knives were piercing her breast flesh. And at the same time, since only one of her legs was being pulled and the other was being dragged along, her legs had spread into a wide V, with all the frost and mud sliding straight into the intersection onto her exposed pussy and ass crack. And even as she was being dragged along, the vine worked its way higher and higher up her thigh, finally encircling her waist a few times and then doubling up and sliding down into the delicate nook between her ass cheeks and then sandwiching itself between her pussy lips, lodging against her most intimate nether regions like some sort of grotesque thong, before continuing its path toward the valley between her ravaged nipples.

"No!" Brian screamed as it pulled her right to the bottom of the hill, because the vine had come from under the stream, and it was now pulling her there, toward a hole in the thin ice. He was running towards her, but before he could reach her her naked body had fallen through the ice and was pulled completely under the nearly freezing water. He couldn't even see her in the murky water, and he didn't know exactly how deep it was.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he screamed, frantically pacing along the side of the stream. He was afraid not only for her safety, although he doubted she would be killed. Because he knew that the monster was there for one thing only; to capture her and deliver her to the Lord of the Damned. He had three messengers, he knew that much. And he would do anything to keep her alive before capturing her.

And he couldn't let that happen.

Suddenly he heard a loud crackling sound farther down the stream, about fifty feet from where she had been pulled in, closer to the highway. He realized that the thing must be pulling her along the length of the stream until it reached the open drainage hole right along side the highway ravine, where it could surface. But for some reason the ice was cracking. A tentacle popped up from a crack in the ice. Maybe it was having trouble moving because he had shot it so much.

Suddenly the ice tore open and he saw a horrifying sight; Sam was there, gasping for air, because the vine had shoved her body through the ice and was holding her up. She struggled in vain with the thick vine wrapped around her ass and crotch and winding all the way to her neck where it wrapped again around her throat in a tight chokehold; then there were two more vines wrapped around her wrists and two around her ankles, displaying her in a grotesque tableau of suffering. She frantically gasped for air.

He shot frantically at the thickest vine, even as more little vines were slowly wrapping their way around her body in an attempt to drag her back under. It loosened its hold around her neck and groin and slithered back in, but more took its place, wrapping around her neck, slithering over her breasts, her stomach, and probing every inch of her naked body for a hold. She screamed as the icy tentacles probed and slid over her vagina lips and along her ass cheeks and tightened around her upper thighs, but her screams were suddenly drowned out because her head was pulled back under water, with the vines trying to pull the rest of her body under, so that all he could see were bubbles churning where her face should have been and her hips gyrating and grinding against the water in an effort to get free. He was shooting at the disgusting vines as they slithered around, carefully avoiding her body. Finally he came to the break in the ice and he reached out to her and held onto her hand which was protruding from the frigid water. He held up the gun to the vines and shot them point blank, until they started slithering away. Her face suddenly shot out off the water, and she gasped, sucking in air, her eyes wide with shock. But her body was being dragged back underwater, and it was jerking around violently as the vines stubbornly tried to bring her back under.

Suddenly there was a deafening noise as the clearing was filled with a stream of fire, and Brian looked to see Jordan standing right beside them, firing away into the ice farther down to the left of him with an enormous chain gun, tearing into it as if it were paper. The vines immediately slackened their hold on Sam and Brian pulled her out immediately to safety on the bank.

"Eat this, motherfucker!" Jordan screamed through the cigar in his mouth as he poured round after round into the ice. "Run!" he cried again to Brian and Sam. Brian knew that swimmers could withstand water of that temperature for a limited amount of time, and so he was not surprised when Sam had the energy to willingly run with him as fast as she could through the forest, with Jordan following them shortly.

"That is one mother-loving plant specimen you found there, Brian!" he exclaimed as they finally emerged onto the road. Then he hurried to the trunk of his car and hastily pulled out a large emergency blanket, which he immediately wrapped around Sam. Brian picked her up and put her into the car. Then they both got in and sped down the road, toward the safe house.

"Sam," said Brian, who had gotten into the back seat with her. He looked at her shocked face. It was unbelievable what she had been through in this one night. She sat there with her eyes gazing out the window, nearly paralyzed with fear. Her skin was an almost deathly white. "We are going to the safe house," he said. She sobbed as he put his arms around her and she hugged him tightly, not caring that the blanket had fallen to her waist and her naked torso was pressed up against him or that her nipples burned in pain.

"Why did that thing attack me?" she moaned. "You said I was safe!"

"You are safe," said Brian. "You are in great danger, but I will protect you from being killed, or from being kidnapped. You were just attacked but I saved you, and I will protect you for as long as is necessary. I am afraid it is time for you to be strong, or at least as strong as you feel you can be, even if you feel like you are weak and you cannot possibly hold on. If you can hold on until tomorrow night, for just less than two days, then I can promise you that you will be completely safe afterwards.

"That creature was sent to capture you, not to kill you or even to hurt you, although what happened to you was truly horrible." Suddenly they stopped, and Sam noticed two metal gates and a guard house in front of them. The road they had traveled was in the middle of a forest, and all Sam could see beyond the gates was a road that wound away into more trees. But the gate swung open and they passed through.

"If you can hold on for just a little longer," said Brian, "Then you are about to learn something that will blow your mind."