‘If I wanted to kill an animal, could you supply the poison’, Tony had said it now, put his trust in the doctor, there was no going back, if the doctor was going to turn him in then Tony would have to end the doctors life, he somehow thought the doctor wouldn’t worry to much about that’, it certainly wasn’t the question the doctor was expecting, but it didn’t matter, he knew the answer and his response was quick.

‘I have nothing to cure people, but enough to kill them in a 100 different way’s, now who are we killing?’

The “we” threw tony a little,

‘An animal’ was the simple response, then Tony took him in complete confidence and told him about the idea that he had run by Peter Ford, the doctor listened intensively, taking in every word that Tony spoke,

‘So if we take out the thing that feeds them, it’s curtains for those three’ Tony finished.

‘How do we know what’s in the woods and if we can kill it’ asked the doctor,

‘We won’t until we try’

‘What if we do take them out, how do we get back to the real world?’

Tony got up from his chair and paced the doctor’s office, he looked pensive, but the doctor could see the look of hope in his eyes, he turned sharp to face the doctor, he spoke enthusiastically, he wasn’t going to tell him of his theory, not yet.

‘Even if we can’t get out, having those dead at least we can stop all the madness, but don’t forget doc, Peter and his family got in, there has to be a way out’,

‘I’ll get you the poison you need ‘said the doctor, he was never not going to.

Tony thanked him and left the doctors, he took a slow walk towards the old army huts and when he reached the converted maternity unit, he stopped and looked at it, he thought of all the young kids been brought there to have the children they didn’t want, he prayed for all the male babies who had been taken to the woods, he looked up to the skies, hoped his wife was looking down on him,

‘They’ll be no more fucking babies’ he told her.

Chapter 12

It was 1976, it was June and the summer was gloriously hot, one of the hottest summers for decades and today was carnival day, one of the biggest days of the calendar year at Underwood Estate.

The estate had been completed, the biggest steelworks in the world, just out of sight behind the trees up and running, plumes of smoke drifting into the sky, sometimes obscuring the sun, sometimes dirtying the washing that hung on clothes lines, but the 3 mile long works kept turning out the iron, making the steel and Underwood, the council estate built in the middle of nowhere, with one road in and the same road out was thriving, the beer pumps in the social club were forever being pulled, the supermarket and the butchers tills were always ringing, the post office and the paper shop churning out sweets for the kids and cashing in the family allowance, and the best stocked chemist for tens of miles were always there to take care of peoples ills, and if you didn’t fancy cooking, then there was always the chip shop, and the hairdressers always made sure you looked good for that special night out, everyone knew everyone and if you didn’t work at the steelworks, you had a family member or friend who did, it was a council estate success, one of the very few.

The red and white flags were hung from almost every house, some displaying the welsh dragon as people watched in the streets at the procession of lorry’s that went past, some full of ancient warriors, some full of fairies and angels, Disney characters and comic villains, all cheered on by proud parents, hoping this year that it will be their daughter that will be announced as carnival queen.

The field next to the centre was awash with activities and games to play for the children, while some parents chose to rest and drink in the centre bar, some had already made it to the social club where the festivities would go on well into the night, when the fairy’s and warriors would be sleeping and the newly crowned beauty queen getting her deserved beauty sleep, yes nearly everyone was there, it was felt that more than likely those who weren’t attending were the ones whose shift it was at the steel works, perhaps it would be they who could explain what happened.

By the time Underwood changed nearly everyone was merry or asleep, the teenagers were at the old army huts, playing in the huts and the dens that they had made, the pretty girls of underwood sharing a kiss with the boy of their dreams, the sun was almost setting on this warm night, if it had set completely then perhaps no one would have noticed it happen.

As the orange cloud drifted from the steel works over the town of Underwood, no one thought much of it, other than it being just another dirty cloud created by the steelworks, only this one didn’t float over it hovered above the town,

People will recall it coming down slowly and purposely, blocking out the fading sunlight, some would say it was a UFO, those who survived would never be able to speak of it again.

Those who walked the streets or those in bed who may not have seen it, felt it first, for the noise would have surely woken them as the trees around Underwood started to turn, slowly at first, as if they were just swaying in the wind, but then they seem to come alive as the orange dust empowered them, and as people watched and screamed at the spinning trees, the ground beneath them shook and those still down at the centre fields and those near the woods edge were sucked into the vacuum as the trees spun and gathered momentum taking the bodies of those closest and tossing them into the air, where there bodies would spin with the trees until it was laid fractured on the ground, hundreds and hundreds of them.

The power was shut off, the phone lines were out of order, those from inside the club and those at home came running out into the streets, some being sucked into the air straight away, for others it would take longer, some survived the ordeal but not many, those in the centre of the town were the best protected, those who stayed indoors were the sensible ones, as long as their windows were closed, but the night was warm and sticky and many perished being sucked up through the open windows, into the void, as they watched or died the new Underwood was being born.

No one could understand it, at first they thought the steelworks had blown up and created a suction and those who survived will say that’s what happened and it somehow threw the town Of Underwood off the planet, no one really believed it, but it’s what they wanted to believe as they could think of no other logical explanation, because trees don’t move, do they? Not as if there was any logic in the one they had.

As the people of Underwood took to the streets and the screams and shouts were in abundance, the teenagers In the army huts stood in fear, just like every other part of underwood the trees were spinning, but as the teenagers run out from their dens, something else was happening in the army huts, for  they stood and watched frozen in fear as the ground in front of them opened up, at first they would swear they saw human souls being released from the hole that had appeared in the ground, whatever happened in that steelworks, the finest steel in the world made, today it had unearthed something that had laid dormant since the second world war.

Stronger than any Iron or Steel it had produced.

17 teenagers died that day in the army huts alone, by the hands of the monster that came from the ground as the Wolfe like animal fed on their bodies, they had tried to run, but with the woods spinning, there was nowhere to run to as the landscape changed continually, throwing their minds into utter confusion and throwing their bodies into the thing that devoured them, and as the awoken animal licked his lips at the first meal he had eaten for almost 40 years, he thought of the last three people he had seen, he would call on them to help him create the new underwood, for it was those who destroyed the last.