The Pub at Crokers Crossing by Kris Ashton
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Step inside for a story. Stay because you might never leave.
Retired couple Mike and Jan are on a caravanning trip with their friends Tom and Jenny. They camp overnight outside the remote town of Old Junction. When a huge rainstorm makes the road south impassable, they visit the local tourism office and ask for ideas to fill in the time while the water subsides. They decide to visit a flyspeck town to the north, Crokers Crossing, which they find on a complimentary road map.
While traversing the dirt access road, Tom’s Lexus nosedives into a huge pit (which they later discover was covered up with a tarpaulin and soil). They emerge from the vehicle unhurt but an hour’s drive from Old Junction and three kilometres from Crokers Crossing. No one has phone service, so Tom volunteers to walk into town. When an hour later he hasn’t returned, Mike, Jan and Jenny head into Crokers Crossing as well.
They discover a town in almost total disrepair, although the pub is still operating. Inside the pub, they ask after Tom, and the barman and his two inebriated patrons say they haven’t seen him. The barman pours them glasses of water while Mike visits the gents. When he’s at the urinal, the barman enters and tries to attack him with a proboscis protruding from his mouth. Mike grabs the proboscis, but it rips open his hand. The taste of blood intoxicates the barman, and it gives Mike the instant he needs to shove the barman away and flee. On his way out, he sees Tom’s desiccated corpse lying in the shadows beneath the sinks.
Mike bursts from the toilet and shouts a warning to Jan and Jenny, but Jan has already fallen victim to one of the patrons, his proboscis protruding from her throat. Mike and Jenny escape the pub and, with no other recourse, start walking back to Old Junction. It is dusk before two grey nomads pick them up and run them the rest of the way into town.
The next day they confront the lady at the tourism office who supplied the map, and she confesses the barman and his clientele are aliens gone rogue. For them, human blood has narcotic properties, and the pub is akin to a flop house or opium den. The authorities and Old Junction townsfolk have agreed to keep the aliens secret for fear of a full-scale invasion.
Furious at this cowardice, Mike and Jenny drive to a bigger town so they’ll have better internet service. While in a roadside diner, Mike selects a photo of a beautiful waterfall from another trip and posts it on his popular Instagram page, encouraging road trippers to visit it at Crokers Crossing. The post is liked by Tourism Queensland, exposing it to another half a million users.
Jenny returns to their booth with muffins, but just looking at one nauseates Tom. He is instead staring at the veins in Jenny’s arms, imagining the coppery taste of the blood rushing through them. He looks at the gash on his hand and decides he’d better tell her.