Two dingy doors were at the top of the stairs. One was right in front of the last step, the other at the end of a dark hallway. Each had rusty numbers that had once been bronze.
The screaming from the pharmacy had stopped a few minutes before. It didn’t sound like the ending had been pleasant. It took all the willpower I could muster to keep from going over there and doing anything I could to help.
Standing around while people were tortured wasn’t in my nature.
Nami walked in front of me, holding her cell phone out, using the flash on the back as a makeshift flashlight. She continued to ramble on, though I could see the way the light wavered in her hand. She was scared shitless, just like me.
“Who would live in a dump like this?” Nami asked.
“There’s not a lot of money around here.” Grunting, I shifted the sheriff’s weight on my shoulder. I had carried him up the flight of stairs like a fireman and my joint was paying the price. “A place like this probably costs a hundred or two a month. You make do when you don’t have cash.”
“I think I caught syphilis just walking in here.” Nami shined the light down the hall to the other door. “Which one do you want to try?”
“The last one.” I stood at the top of the stairs for a few moments while Nami walked down the hall. “It might have a window we can see the street from.”
My knees shook.
Cramps racked my quads.
Getting Adams up a single flight had done me in.
Nami tried the doorknob, and it twisted open. “Well, that was easy.”
“Not exactly a lot of crime in town. Most people don’t lock their doors around here.”
Light spilled into the hallway from the apartment. At least it wouldn’t be like hiding in a cave in there. Nami manipulated the screen on her phone and shut off the light.
I trudged my way down the hall, grunting and moaning the entire way. Squeezing through the door with an old man on my shoulder took a little finagling, but I managed.
The apartment wasn’t very wide, but it was sufficiently long. The door opened into the living room, which stretched along the side of the building, narrowing into another hall with three doors branching off. An open doorway led to a kitchen on the left.
The living room had a brown couch with tears in the fabric, a coffee table that appeared to be covered in a stained sheet, and an old tube TV sitting against the far wall.
“What a shit hole. You should feel right at home since you hired the same interior designer.” Nami stepped over to the television. “I think dinosaurs roamed the earth when this was made.”
“Move your scrawny ass out of the way so I can put this guy down. He’s killing my shoulder.”
Nami flattened herself against the wall. “Stop being a puss. He’s an old man—how much can he weigh?”
I wanted to keep talking shit, but what little strength I had left couldn’t be diverted to wagging my tongue anymore. Kicking the coffee table out of the way, I bent over in front of the couch, slowly lowering Adams to it.
He sank into the cushions, never moving.
It couldn’t have been a good sign that he’d been unconscious for so long.
My lower back cracked like a machine gun as I straightened out.
Rolled my shoulder.
Wanted to cry.
Gave Nami a manly grimace instead.
Two windows were on either side of the television. Nami stood on her tiptoes in front of one, peering through the filthy glass. “Who did they design these windows for, giants?”
“I don’t know about giants, but they certainly weren’t built for short nerds.” I moved to the other window and looked outside.
The building we were in stood at the corner of an intersection, a side street branching off Main right in front of us. Cars were parked haphazardly on the side road just as they had been in front of the pharmacy.
Bloody streaks and congealing pools dotted the sidewalks and street.
A few people carried dead bodies just as we’d seen a few minutes before. They hauled them in the same direction, moving toward the center of the town. We couldn’t see where the final destination was, and I didn’t think I wanted to know what they were doing with the bodies.
I leaned closer to the window and looked to the left, toward the clogged intersection.
A larger group of people had congregated there, each armed with some sort of weapon. They watched the front of the building intently, waiting for us to appear, no doubt.
“Get away from the windows.” I stepped back so I wouldn’t be visible from the sidewalk below.
My height still allowed me to see the buildings across the street and some of the people on Main. They worked together to accomplish the most grisly of tasks. They moved the dead and gathered severed body parts. Groups searched for what I could only assume were people like Nami and me—those who hadn’t been driven insane.
“What are we going to do, Gigantor? They have to know we aren’t in the pharmacy by now.” Nami glanced back at the sheriff. “What about him? We can’t—”
Someone banged on the door at the bottom of the stairs. It was faint at first, but grew increasingly more violent.
“Check the rooms back the hall for a way out.” I ran for the kitchen.
“What are you going to do?”
“Find a way to slow them down.”
Nami headed back the hall behind me, cursing the entire way. I had to hand it to her; she had a vocabulary of four-letter words that made me jealous. Shocking people with vulgarity, both in words and actions, was a guilty pleasure of mine.
She took it to another level.
The kitchen had the same cramped, simplistic nature as the rest of the apartment. A small bistro table and chairs sat in the corner opposite the door, newspapers covering the top. The appliances and cabinets were off to the left. Laminate peeled from the edges of the counters. Poisonous ant traps surrounded the fridge and oven on the floor.
I grabbed one of the chairs and ran back to the living room. The construction of the front door wasn’t exactly military grade, but I figured it could stand up to a few shoulder thrusts before it broke open.
There were two locks on the door: one on the knob and a sliding chain above it. After I worked both. I jammed the chair under the knob. I kicked at the legs, digging them into the laminate floor as best I could.
Chairs weren’t the best barricades, but it would give us just a little more time.
The door at the bottom of the stairs cracked. Voices poured into the hallway.
They were on us already.
My hip slammed into the television as I ran passed it, sending a bolt of pain into my leg. I forgot how heavy those old things were. “They’re coming up the stairs now.”
All three of the doors were open. The first led to a small, dingy bathroom that hadn’t seen a cleaning since the Reagan administration.
The back two were bedrooms.
Nami stood at a window in the far one, waving for me to hurry. “We’ve got a fire escape here!”
I wanted to jump in the air and click my heels together. The odds of finding a fire escape in a building like that were astronomically low. It was our first stroke of luck all morning. Through the window, I could see that the street behind the apartment didn’t have any crazy people milling about.
A few parked cars sat by the curb, but none had anyone behind the wheel.
“Get going.” I pulled the pistol from my waistband and handed it to her. “The sheriff and I will catch up in a minute. Don’t shoot unless you have no other choice. The sound will attract the whole town.”
Gunshots cracked from a few streets over.
Nami said, “I’m not sure anyone would notice.”
I spun on my heels and started toward the living room to grab Adams.
Nami shouted after me. “Dude, you can’t carry him down the fire escape. You’re going to get all of us killed by—”
“You’d want me to carry your ass, wouldn’t you? If I leave him on the couch, those people will—”
Thuds against the door to the apartment shook the floor. The hammering blows were much too powerful to be coming from any of the people I’d seen coming down the alley for us. It sounded like they had a battering ram.
The door exploded inward as I reached the end of the hall and stepped into the living room. Two of the legs on the chair blew apart. The wood in the door split down the middle, sending half of it flying into the far wall. The other half dangled from the top hinge.
My shoes skidded on the floor as I stopped beside the old television.
One of the biggest men I’d ever seen ducked through the door and lumbered into the room. He had corded arms and a neck built for hauling horse buggies around. A deep, permanent tan darkened his skin. Dirt highlighted the crow’s feet around his eyes.
He wore heavy, canvas pants with dirt stains on the knees and smudges covering the thighs. A flannel shirt covered his torso, despite the heat that was descending upon the morning.
Most of his hair had split town a long time ago.
It was a rare occurrence that I actually had to look up to someone, but Paul Bunyan had at least half a foot on me.
A man’s hands were a good indication of his lifestyle.
Powerlifters and athletes had big hands from slinging around a lot of iron.
Farmers had the same meat hooks at the ends of their arms, but they also had thick knuckles and leathery fingers. They were built for power and gritty endurance.
The monster in front of me looked like he was wearing catcher’s mitts on each hand. He could have folded me up like a paper airplane and tossed me to the other side of the state.
And then I saw what he was dragging along behind him.
The end of a handle jutted from one hand, running down to the massive head of a hammer that scraped along the floor. It dug deep grooves in the peel-and-stick laminate. The handle was as thick as a baseball bat, the head the size of a cinder block.
The massive size made it look almost cartoonish.
Blood and hair and gore covered the business end.
That was no cartoon.
The man saw me standing in the living room and turned toward me, a humorless grin spreading across his lined face. “Howdy.” The man had a voice so deep that I had to look out the window to make sure it wasn’t thundering and lightning outside.
He swung the hammer in front of him, his free hand grabbing the other end of the handle, just below the head. He held it in front of his waist like it weighed little more than a bag of groceries.
I couldn’t even figure out what someone would do with a tool like that.
Drive telephone poles through the crust of the Earth maybe.
“I would have appreciated it if you’d knocked first.” I wanted to kick my own ass for giving Nami the pistol. “The landlord is going to be really pissed off about the door.”
“Where’s the girl?”
Two more people appeared in the doorway behind him.
A middle-aged woman cradled a cleaver in front of her chest. The blood covering it hinted at the atrocities she’d committed that morning. Her silver hair had gone astray, standing at odd angles.
Behind her stood a man of maybe twenty. He had a double-barrel shotgun held by his waist. Both of them looked at me like I was a turd stuck on the bottom of their shoes.
“What girl?” I turned my attention back to the Jolly Green Giant.
“Tell me where she is or I’ll pull your arms off.” The man raised the hammer above his palm and let it pat back down. The strength it must have taken to the lift the hammer with just a flick of his wrist astounded me.
I didn’t doubt that he could tear my arms off and beat me to death with them.
The sheriff hadn’t moved an inch on the couch. His breathing had slowed to a point of serious concern. Getting him to a doctor in time didn’t look all that likely considering the mental state of the people outside.
And that wasn’t counting King Kong with a hammer standing between the door and us.
The only thing going for me at that moment was the fact that the man with the hammer filled the space in front of the door. The other two sadistic bastards couldn’t get around him.
I raised my hands up, palms out. “We got off on the wrong foot. Let me introduce myself. My name is Ash, and I have a package for you.”
With my cat-like speed and reflexes, I shot forward and landed an Asher Benson Special Delivery right to his boys. It didn’t matter who you were fighting, a kick to the ol’ crown jewels would put any man down.
Or so I thought.
The big man grunted.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
He glowered down at me.
I stared back at him in utter disbelief. Either the man was a eunuch or he had balls of steel. Judging by the way his shoulders bulged, and the ache in my foot, I went with the steel theory.
Moving with a speed that caught me off guard, he jabbed me in the chest with the hammer.
The air exploded from my lungs as I flew backward like a mule had kicked me. The back of my head cracked off the far rear wall of the living room.
I crumpled to the floor, one hand on my bleeding scalp, the other on my chest. My lungs decided to stop cooperating, so I couldn’t even get a sip of air in.
Stars twinkled in my vision.
The room swirled.
I blinked hard.
He’d beat the hell out of me with one blow.
And he hadn’t even taken a swing. He hit me with a simple jab like we were fencing.
A wisp of air made it down my throat, and my eyesight cleared.
I wished it hadn’t.
As I pushed myself to a seated position, the monster clogging up half the living room swung his hammer over his shoulder. The arc of the weapon was short and tight, the low ceiling keeping the man from taking a full swing.
The head of the hammer hit Sheriff Adams dead center in the chest.
The din of shattering ribs filled the room like firecrackers.
Blood splattered my face and chest, splashing against the furniture and walls.
The legs of the couch broke under the power of the blow.
Adams never woke up. He didn’t scream, blubber, or gurgle on his blood.
He simply lay there, dead.
And that was a good thing. His chest had flattened, unspeakable solids and liquids leaking from the hole punched in the center. A single blow had turned his innards to pudding.
The woman giggled in the doorway.
“You fuck!” My words came out as little more than a whisper. My breathing had begun to return, but I still couldn’t speak normally.
The giant straightened out and tried to lift the hammer from Adams’ chest. The sheriff’s body lifted several inches from the couch before the hammer’s head slid free with a slurping sound.
Goo dripped from the tool.
I got to my feet, my chest aching as I continued sipping in air.
Rage consumed my mind, my thoughts venomous and incoherent. That big bastard had just killed an unconscious man for the joy of it.
I didn’t know what was going on in Arthur’s Creek and, in that moment, I didn’t care.
“My turn,” the young man in the doorway said. He shoved the middle-aged woman out of his way and lifted the shotgun.
Seeing the double barrel snapped me out of my murderous wrath.
I wanted revenge, sure, but that would be hard to accomplish with my brains splattered all over the floor.
“Out of the way, Butch!” The kid moved inside the apartment and shoved his shoulder against the giant’s side. “Let me in.”
Butch, I thought. Should have expected a name like that for a man the size of a mountain.
The kid squeezed into the living room, jutting the stock of the shotgun against his shoulder.
I spun around and sprinted down the hallway, the agony in my chest forgotten.
The shotgun boomed behind me as I passed through the doorway of the back bedroom.
Pain stabbed into my left shoulder. It felt like someone shoved me forward and my balance skewed, my feet fighting to stay under me.
The window Nami had escaped through was open just a few feet ahead.
“You winged him,” Butch thundered behind me. He roared laughter. “Where’d you learn to aim, boy?”
I dove headfirst through the window. There was no time to worry about what waited for me outside—a shotgun and a gigantic hammer were coming for me inside.
My eyes didn’t adjust to the blinding light of the early morning before I crashed headfirst into the metal railing of the fire escape. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears as the rest of my body slammed into the rusted iron.
The force of my lunge yanked the fire escape from the exterior of the building.
I looked at the grated floor and saw bolts breaking free of the brick. The metal struts holding the fire escape in place slowly moved away from the wall.
“Oh shit.” I tried to scramble to my feet, but the way the floor tilted under me made it impossible. My back slammed against the railing as I fell back again, accelerating the free fall I found myself in.
My gut constricted under the feeling of weightlessness that grabbed hold of me.
The fire escape tore completely free of the wall as I watched, helpless to arrest the fall.
The young man appeared in the window as I tumbled from the second story.
More agony spiked into my back and shoulders as the fire escape crashed into the street. The railing dug into my muscles and skin, hitting pressure points and smashing into bone. My left arm went numb.
Metal screeched.
Sparks flew.
I bled.
My limbs splayed out as I slapped down on the pavement. I could have made blood angels if moving any part of my body felt even remotely possible.
Nami shouted something from the other side of the street, but I couldn’t make out what she said. The clatter from the fire escape hitting the road still rang in my ears, drowning everything else out.
It didn’t matter anyway.
In the window above me, the twenty-something smiled and aimed his shotgun at my face.