Excerpt

PROLOGUE

"Y

ou ready?"

"Almost…"

"Hurry up, would ya?" Billy grumbled as he stood and stretched. "I wanna get back to town."

You want to get back and bang a couple fangirls, Tony thought as he tightened the screws on the selfie stick mount for one of their many cameras. Satisfied, he powered up and scanned the clearing behind him. He was met with a familiar sight. "Clean up the beer cans, Billy… and the wrappers. And get that smoldering cigarette butt—unless you want to film a forest fire."

Billy waddled over to their little off-camera zone and grabbed a trash bag. As he picked up his leavings, he was pleased to find a forgotten bag of Gummy Fish. "There y'are… was wonderin' where you got to." He stuffed a technicolor handful into his mouth and finished tidying up their "workspace."

Tony watched his roly-poly partner stuff his bearded face. Billy wasn't the brightest bulb, but they'd needed at least one authentic backwoods hick for their reality show, and Billy was as "good ol' boy" as they came. Tony, on the other hand, was from New Jersey. The show's speech coach had done wonders for Tony, helping him mask his pronounced Jersey accent with the twang of the South. Ironically, after he'd spent days working with the coach, the show's name, Haunted Hillbillies, had been deemed mildly offensive and the network execs had changed it to Spook Stalkers. Tony had decided he liked his newfound redneck accent better than his own and decided to keep it. Since it meant not having to reshoot the pilot, the network execs were perfectly happy to support his decision.

Billy wandered over, chomping busily on a rainbow of gelatinous goo. "Oh man, it is nice and spooky out here." He raised his camera. "Them pine trees are gonna look great… uh… hmm…"

"Lens cap."

"Oh, yeah… there we go." Billy panned across the tree line, the night vision filters making the closest trees stand out in stark relief to the blackness beyond. "Sweet. That's a creepy buncha trees! Okay, now… which one of us is the scared one in this shot?"

"Pretty sure it's you." Tony pulled out a folded shot sheet. "Yeah, you. I calm you down at the end of the scene."

Tony thought this was going to be a pretty good episode. They had planned to shoot at a Shoshone burial ground. Indian spirits, curses… maybe find a way to work some peyote hallucinations into the story. But then two things had happened. First, they couldn't find the burial ground, and second, one of the show runners heard a rumor that some other show was going to do a Bigfoot shoot nearby. Tony didn't believe in Bigfoot; he didn't believe in ghosts either. Ratings, though… that was something you could see, right there in a graph. And ratings brought money, another thing Tony heartily believed in. No Indian burial ground? No problem. They would start the show as planned but before they could reach the nonexistent burial ground, they would run into… a Sasquatch! Or rather, they'd hear noises in the woods and act scared, and then that drunk narrator with the deep voice would talk about all the Bigfoot sightings in the area. And not being able to find the burial ground would give them ample opportunities to get mad and yell at each other, which was what most viewers really wanted. It was brilliant.

"Let's get this show on the road!" Billy pointed the camera at his own face and hit the record button. "Action!" Billy put on what he called his "fraidy face" and looked fitfully from side to side. "Randy? You sure we're in the right place?"

As Billy lowered his camera, Tony raised his selfie stick camera for a two-shot. They both assumed tense postures, looking like a pair of coiled springs. Had to keep the tension levels high or their viewers might flip channels to some other crap. Conjuring his speech training, Tony slid into a hick accent that would've been cut from Deliverance for being too over the top.

"Ah'm purty sure, Billy. That Injun boneyard oughta be up ahead through them thar trees." He dropped character and set the selfie stick camera on the ground, raising his smaller handheld. He scanned the trees ahead, then signaled Billy, who began looking for a rock or stick. "Boy, it's mighty spooky out there," Hick-Tony continued. "I don't know 'bout you, but I feel like we're being watched…"

Off-camera, Billy hurled a rock into the trees, aiming for a pine a few yards back. When he heard the thunk, Tony went into shaky-cam mode, looking frantically from tree to tree. "What the fuck was that?" he hissed. Had to be sure to throw in a lot of curse words. If there wasn't a bleep every thirty seconds, they weren't doing their job. "Billy… you hear that?"

He pointed the lens at his own face as Billy did the same with his camera. The two of them ad-libbed a batch of frightened gibberish liberally sprinkled with expletives. Later the editors would pick the best bits. Critics complained it never made much sense that these shows spent more time with the camera pointed away from the phenomenon they were searching for, but Tony knew it made all the sense in the world. Since there were no ghosts or monsters, you had to fill your time with close-ups of frightened faces and lots of yelling and cursing.

Tony was just having this thought when he heard what sounded like a branch snapping. Lowering the camera, he peered into the gloom. "What the fuck was that?" said Jersey-Tony.

Putting his fraidy face on hold, Billy said, "You already said that bit. Thought it was a good take, too. Besides, ya lost yer accent on that one."

"No, I'm serious… I actually heard something." Another faint rustle. Tony raised the camera, using the night vision to try to see the source of the sound. Problem was, while the greenish image looked cool, it didn't have much range. More sounds now, this time from the left.

"I hear it now," Billy said softly. "Probably a couple deer."

"At night? Might be a bear… you got the spray?"

Billy dug in a cargo pocket and found the little canister. "Yep… but it don't sound too bearlike."

There! A shape moved into view amongst the trees. It was a man. Wearing a windbreaker and cap, he looked like a hiker and seemed to be having trouble keeping upright as he stumbled toward the clearing.

"Whoa, he don't look too good," Billy said softly. "Keep your camera rolling. A rescue in the woods'll make for good TV." He stepped forward to the tree line and raised his voice. "Hey, man… you OK? Come on over here, you're safe now."

At the sound of Billy's voice, the figure stopped suddenly, appearing to listen intently. After a moment he staggered forward again.

"What's yer name, fella?" Billy called out.

The man responded with a long, raspy intake of breath. Tony did not like that sound. A chill rolled up his spine. "Hey, Billy," he hissed, "back up a bit."

Billy remained where he was. "Sounds like the poor bastard's been without water for days… probably picked up a little pneumonia, too." He started forward. "Hey, man, lemme give you a hand."

Suddenly the lurching figure let out a hideous shriek and rushed at Billy. Acting on instinct, he raised the bear spray and let loose an acrid stream at the oncoming hiker, hitting him squarely in the face. The twisted, rotting, slavering face kept advancing, and Billy had no time to react as the thing crashed into him and drove him backward onto the ground, its jaws gaping at him. He reached up to push its head back and was rewarded with a searing pain as its teeth clamped onto his fingers, tearing through the skin. The pepper spray coating its mouth didn't help the sensation. "Tony! Jeezus, Tony, get it offa meeeeee!"

Tony had been staring into his camera's viewscreen this entire time, momentarily captivated by some of the best footage he'd ever seen. Billy's terrified screams snapped him back to reality, and he was about to toss the camera and come to his aid when another ruined voice snarled behind him. He spun the camera and another face, perhaps female at one time, filled the viewscreen. Though his mind quickly boiled over with fear and an urge to flee, his first thought, lasting only a microsecond, was: Too close… out of focus. Then it bit his face.