Still grinning, Markus approached one of the closed doors. The floorboards creaked as he crossed the foyer. He held the sledgehammer in one hand and opened the door with the other.
“Wait,” Perry warned. But before he could move, the door swung open, creaking on rusty hinges.
Markus peered inside the room and shrugged. “Ain’t nothing in there.”
“Let me see.” Perry moved past him, motioning at Dookie to follow him with the flashlight. They stepped inside the darkened room, and Dookie shined the flashlight into the corners, sweeping it around in a wide arc. The interior was desolate, just like the foyer. There was no furniture or appliances, just a few scraps of dirty cloth, crumpled pages from an old newspaper, and a crushed soda can. Otherwise, the room was barren. It smelled musty. Dust swirled in the flashlight beam. Perry wrinkled his nose.
“So what now?” Leo asked.
“We look around,” Perry said. “Try to find them. Judging from that blood out there, at least one of them is hurt.”
“We should split up,” Jamal suggested. “That would make things a lot easier.”
“Oh hell, no!” Chris shook his head. “Splitting up is the stupidest thing we can do. I say we go back outside and call the po-po again. Tell them about the blood and shit.”
“We’re not splitting up,” Perry agreed, stepping back into the foyer. “You go on back and call them again if you want. I’m gonna follow this blood trail. Hand me that flashlight, Dookie.”
Dookie clutched the light protectively. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Watkins, I’ll hold on to it. I’ll come with you, though.”
“Okay. Good. Anybody else coming?”
Leo stepped forward, as did Jamal. Markus shrugged and then nodded. Jamal and Chris looked at each other.
“You go ahead if you want,” Jamal told his friend. “I’m staying.”
Chris’s shoulders sagged. “Guess I’m staying, too. I ain’t no punk.”
They started down the hallway. Dookie was in the lead, with Perry just a few steps behind him. Markus and Chris followed them, while Jamal and Leo brought up the rear. Dookie kept his flashlight trained on the floor, and they followed the blood smear through numerous twists and turns. The house’s layout made no sense. To Perry, it seemed like someone had added walls and rooms and passageways at random. Doors opened into walls. Hallways terminated in dead ends. The whole thing was bewildering and disconcerting. Occasionally they called out, hoping for an answer to guide them in the right direction, but the house remained silent.
All six of them jumped when they heard a thunderous crash behind them. The echoes vibrated through the walls. Plaster and dust rained down on them. Perry’s finger jerked. If he’d had it on the trigger, the gun would have gone off. The crowbar slipped from Leo’s hand and clattered on the floor. Chris dropped his flashlight and it rolled away from him, coming to rest in the rust-colored blood slick.
“What the hell was that?” Jamal shouted.
“I think it was that metal door,” Perry said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the front.”
“But what about them kids?” Leo asked.
“Fuck them kids,” Markus said. “This place is a motherfucking death trap.”
For once, Perry agreed with the belligerent teen. He’d seen enough of the house’s interior to know that it was even more dangerous than he’d suspected. It would be too easy for them to lose their way in here, too easy to be injured in an accident—or worse. He grabbed Dookie’s arm and herded him past the others, then turned around and motioned at them to follow. Chris bent over and retrieved his flashlight, grimacing as he wiped the blood on his shirt. Leo picked up the crowbar.
“Come on,” Perry urged. “Let’s go.”
Before they could move, however, they heard footsteps. It was impossible to tell what direction they were coming from. They seemed to issue from everywhere at once. The walls shook with each thudding step, and the makeshift lighting system overhead swung back and forth.
Perry grabbed Dookie’s arm again and led him back the way they’d come. Leo and Chris followed him. Markus and Jamal hesitated. The footsteps grew louder.
“What are you doing?” Markus asked. “They’re coming from that way!”
“No, they’re not,” Perry argued. “They’re coming from down that hall.”
“The hell they are.”
“Listen.” Perry scowled. “We don’t have time for this. Now, let’s go.”
“I’m telling you,” Markus insisted, “they’re coming from that direction. Y’all heard that big crash. Whoever it was, they shut the fucking door on us. Come on, Chris.”
Perry stepped toward them. “Goddamn it, you get back here. I’m responsible for you!”
“Yo,” Dookie whispered, “do y’all smell that all of the sudden? It’s like something died up in here.”
“You ain’t responsible for shit,” Markus told Perry, turning away from the others and ignoring Dookie’s comment.
Perry started to respond, but he paused. Dookie was right. There was an ammoniacal stench in the air—shit, sulfur, sweat, and worse. Then he noticed that the footsteps had stopped, replaced by the sound of harsh, heavy breathing.
Oblivious to the noise or the stench, Markus and Chris started down the hall. Chris glanced back over his shoulder once. His eyes were haunted and pleading. Then he wrinkled his nose. He turned around, and Perry saw a massive, looming shadow fall over them both. As Perry and the others watched, Chris raised his flashlight. Reflected in the beam was the biggest man Perry had ever seen—if indeed it
was
a man. He had to be over seven feet tall; his bald, misshapen head brushed against the ceiling as he stood there staring at them. His shoulders and chest were bigger than any professional wrestler Perry had ever watched on television—easily the width of several men. He was almost naked, except for some garbage bags tied together with silver duct tape. His pale skin, while covered with sores and growths, rippled with slabs of thick muscle. Most disturbing was the creature’s genitals, which were obviously swollen and suppurated with some type of infection. Pus dripped from the tip of its penis like water from a leaky spigot.
He’s so big,
Perry thought.
How could someone so goddamned big just appear out of nowhere like that? I mean, sure, we heard his footsteps, but how did he just pop out of the darkness like this?
Markus leaped back in alarm. Chris had time to stutter in surprise, and then the giant figure raised some sort of crude weapon—a boulder tied onto an iron pipe. The stone was crusted with blood. Without a word, the hulk swung the makeshift club up over his shoulders and down onto the top of Chris’s head. The sound it made was like nothing Perry had ever heard. It sort of reminded him of when he was a kid. He and his friends had dropped a watermelon out the third-story window of an apartment building in North Philly. The sound the melon had made as it splattered across the sidewalk was similar to the sound Chris’s head made as the club smashed through it—but this was wetter. The explosion coated Markus and the walls with blood and brain matter. Bits of Chris’s skull flew across the corridor and were embedded into the wall. The mallet reached his neck and pounded what was left down into his chest. Amazingly, his body remained standing, clutching the flashlight in one jittering hand. The boy’s sphincter and bladder both released, adding to the noxious stench in the passageway.
Perry cried out in horror. Jamal did the same, screaming his friend’s name. Dookie trembled next to Perry, clinging to his arm and babbling nonsensical words. Incredibly, Leo charged forward, shrieking with rage, the crowbar held above his head like a spear. Perry’s senses returned as he saw the boy charge forward. Shoving Dookie behind him, he brought the handgun up and tried to aim. Jamal’s and Dookie’s flashlights were shaking too badly to be of much use, and although Chris’s standing corpse still held his, it was pointed at the floor. Perry did his best to draw a bead despite the bad lighting, but Leo got in his way.
“Leo,” he hollered. “Get the hell out of there!”
If Leo heard him, he didn’t react. Cursing, Perry took a few steps toward them, trying to get a clearer shot. As he did, Markus wiped the blood out of his eyes and stared upward, just as the looming monstrosity swung at him. Markus had enough reflexes to raise the sledgehammer.
The two weapons clashed against each other. The beast grunted in surprise or amusement—Perry couldn’t tell which. Then it shoved Markus off his feet. The boy landed on his back with a jarring thud but managed to hold on to his hammer. The creature stepped over him and faced down Leo.
“Get the hell off him, motherfucker!”
Leo slashed at it with the crowbar. The tool glanced off the hulk’s massive bicep, digging a shallow furrow in the flesh. If the thing felt pain, it gave no indication. It pivoted, swiping at Leo with the hammer, but he danced out of range, narrowly avoiding the bone-crushing strike.
“Goddamn it, Leo,” Perry yelled. “Move aside!”
This time, he did as Perry asked, dropping flat to the floor. The thing in the hallway bellowed laughter and glared at Perry, Dookie, and Jamal, with round black eyes, as if it had just noticed their presence. Grinning, the creature stuck its tongue out at them. The organ looked like a pale, wriggling worm. Its smile grew wider, revealing broken, blackened teeth. Worse was the obscenely large penis dangling between its legs. As they watched, the swollen, infected organ began to dance and bob, spraying more pink and yellow pus. Perry was grateful for the dim lighting. He didn’t think he could take seeing things any more clearly than he already was. The stench wafting from between the man-thing’s legs was nauseating.
The monstrosity laughed again, and Perry pulled the trigger. He hadn’t planned on it, wasn’t even aware that he’d done it until the gun leaped in his hands and the boom filled the room. The brass jacket flew out of the side of the gun and clattered onto the floor. The echo continued, deafening Perry to everything around him. The vibration ran up his forearms. Not waiting to see if he’d hit the giant, he squeezed the trigger again, this time making a conscious effort to aim for the bastard’s chest. His opponent jerked and staggered, but then stood back up as if shrugging it off and raised its hammer high. Blood ran from a dime-sized hole in its chest.
“Jamal? Dookie? You still back there. If so, get those lights on it.”
Perry couldn’t hear whether they responded. His ears were still ringing from the gunshots. But a second later, two jittering flashlight beams crisscrossed the beast. It squinted at the light.
How the hell can it still be standing?
Perry’s eyes grew wide as he saw Markus clambering to his feet behind it. The boy hefted the sledgehammer, eyeing his attacker coldly.
“Yo, turn your bad-cheese-smelling ass around, you skinhead motherfucker.”
“Markus, no!” Perry lowered the gun in frustration as the ringing in his ears faded. “I can’t shoot if you’re behind it.”
The giant spun around and swung its hammer again. Markus raised his to meet the attack. Once more, the two weapons smashed into each other with a loud crash. The head broke off Markus’s hammer and crashed to the floor, narrowly missing his foot. Although Markus had deflected the killing blow, the force once again knocked him to the floor. His attacker’s hammer glanced off the wall, shearing and gouging through plaster and studs. Markus dropped his weapon and scrambled backward across the floor. The giant raised a foot and stomped on his chest. Perry heard a sound like twigs snapping, and then realized it was Markus’s ribs. Blood flew from the hapless boy’s mouth. He made a choking, gagging sound. Perry tried once again to get a clear shot at the madman, but Leo darted between them and struck Markus’s foe on the back of the head with the crowbar. Grunting, the hulk slapped him aside with one free hand. Although Perry could see the blood welling up on its bald scalp, the thing seemed unfazed by Leo’s blow.
“The hell with this.” Perry glanced back at Jamal and Dookie. “Get your asses out of here now! Go back the way we came. Get to the door and see if you can escape.”
Without waiting to see if they’d listen to him, Perry turned around and ran down the hallway toward the battle. Leo was crawling to his feet and searching for his crowbar. He seemed dazed. Markus whimpered in terror and agony as the giant grabbed one of his arms and lifted him off the floor. It let go of the hammer, and the heavy weapon crashed to the floor, stirring up dust and sending vibrations through the boards. Then the bruiser grabbed Markus’s other arm and began to pull them in different directions. Markus shrieked. Still pulling, the creature slammed him into the wall again and again. There was a horrible popping and tearing sound, and then Markus sagged in its grip as one of his arms ripped free. The giant flung him to the floor and then turned to face Perry and Leo. It grinned.
Without pausing to aim, Perry shot it in the face, sheering away part of its chin and cheek. Squealing, the attacker swiped at Perry with Markus’s severed arm, splattering him with the teen’s blood. Perry fired again. The bullet tore through the giant’s shoulder. It paused, swaying back and forth on its tree-trunk legs. Then it surged toward them again. Perry realized that he could see its teeth and tongue through the bullet wound.