CHAPTER 15

The hammer landed hard against the glass sending shards flying into the grass. “Hey! Back here! We’re back here! Come get us, you fuckers!” Everyone but Rachel and Rennay were shouting out the window at the top of their lungs. Rennay stayed back, kept quiet, watched. Rachel trembled with fear, and did not dare move too far from the others.

“Come on! We’re right here, you big bastards!”

It took only a few seconds for the first of the monsters to arrive on the scene. It moved so swiftly it took all of them by surprise when it shot to the ground and inserted its head and one arm through the broken window and started flailing a massive, clawed fist. Sarah was closest to the creature, and lost some meat, one of her breasts torn open and bloody. She cried out and fell backward, knocking Rachel to the ground in the process. Above them, the werewolf growled and spat as it tried desperately to reach its prey. But they were too far away, and the monster was far too big to do anything about it. It had gotten its head and one arm inside, and that was as far as it was going to get without tearing down the wall.

“Now!” the girl cried out. Jason, who had been squatting below the window with pitchfork in hand, thrust the weapon upward with all his strength, piercing the monster’s jaw and exiting through the top of its snout to stick firmly into the wooden beams that made up the ceiling. The beast, its jaw held shut by the metal tongs of the pitchfork, let loose a muffled squeal and struggled to back away, its arm swinging in wild arcs, ripping at the air. Everyone in the room backed up rapidly and watched with gaping mouths as the thing wrestled in pain. Eventually, it was able to pull itself back outside, but not without shredding its face to bits. The astonished survivors watched as the thing jerked back outside through the opening with incredible force, dislodging the pitchfork from the ceiling and leaving a puddle of blood and a few sharp teeth on the floor. Jason dashed to the pitchfork, got a firm grip on the blood-covered wooden stick.

“Be ready, guys…I think we might’ve pissed it off.” No sooner did he speak than the beast dove into the opening and took another swipe at him. He narrowly escaped a fast moving set of claws by dropping to the ground. He stabbed upward with the pitchfork again, this time spearing the beast through its head, causing it to flail so hard that he lost his grip on the weapon. It slammed rapidly against the wall a few times before the handle snapped in half and fell to the floor. Jason snatched the good half and jabbed furiously at the beast, filling its cranium and neck with holes until the thing stopped thrashing and hung limp as an old rag doll.

“Oh my god…are you alright?” asked Rachel as she moved to Jason and drew attention to the deep wounds he had sustained on both of his arms from the werewolf’s razor-sharp claws. In the heat of the moment, his adrenaline had blocked the pain, but upon seeing the open, bloody wounds on his arms it all came crashing in at once.

“Shit. I need to stop the bleeding fast,” said Jason, trying to keep his head on straight in lieu of the blood gathering at his feet. The worst gash was on his upper arm, and it had gone somewhat deep from his right shoulder to down near his elbow. “Somebody get me something…please.” His head went light and black dots swam before his eyes like a swarm of lazy flies. A second later his knees buckled and he was on the floor, a chorus of distraught voices filling the space between his ears.

“Hold this on the wound,” said Rachel, handing her sweatshirt to the girl. “I need to check on Sarah.”

Blood had saturated Sarah’s shredded T-shirt, and she looked pale. “Jesus Christ, Sarah…we need to get you out of here. Are you alright?” It was a stupid question, but she didn’t know what else to say. There were no words.

Sarah nodded, said “I think I’m okay. I’m scared to look.” She squinted hard and ground her teeth as another bolt of pain shot through her chest. “Fuck, this hurts!”

“Let me take a look,” said Rachel in her most maternal voice. Sarah nodded and released her grip on her shirt. Rachel used two fingers and gingerly pealed back the sticky cloth as Sarah sucked air through her teeth to deal with the pain. What Rachel found made her swallow hard. The gash was deeper than she had thought, and blood was still oozing from the wound.

“Oh my God, Sarah…” Rachel cried against her will, and was upset that her own body had betrayed her.

“Is it that bad?” Sarah had a sick, desperate look in her eyes, and her skin was taking on a greenish hue.

“It’s bad. But we’re going to get out of here and get you some help, so you just hold tight a while for me, okay?” Rachel was struggling to maintain her composure. “Be strong for me…you and Jason need to get back together in time for your annual break-up, right?” She forced a smile and Sarah mirrored it. Rachel stepped quickly to the far side of the room where a couple of old grease-rags sat in the mess they’d made when taking the shelves apart. They were filthy, but she didn’t figure it mattered much at this point.

“Here. Hold these against it. Tight.” Sarah did as Rachel asked, shut her eyes and coughed a couple times.

Rachel looked around the room. It was a grisly, morbid sight. Jason sat with his back against the wall wrapping his shirt around the torn meat of his arm. The girl was at his side, a bloody mess with tattered hair and wide, green eyes. In the far corner Rennay sat alone, a look of emptiness about her as though her soul was somewhere beyond fear, leaving nothing but a hollow vessel. A dead monster hung from the busted window, blood draining from its mutilated maw into a river on the dirty floor.

One down, thought Rachel.

The girl answered Rachel’s thought as though she were reading her mind. “No time like the present to start getting ready for the next one.” She spoke with the confidence of a military sergeant.

Jason stood up, his arm locked tightly to his side, and nodded. “What do you have in mind?”

“By my count, there are two or three of them left—all depends on whether or not the cops took one out with them. We could try the same trick again. These things aren’t too bright, and it might just work. If it doesn’t, the only other way to lure one in is through the door.”

“God damn it! That’s insane!” Rachel couldn’t believe what she was hearing and wondered why Jason was so eager to follow this stranger with a death wish. She pointed to the dead beast hanging in the window, said, “That thing managed to almost kill two of us with one arm. What do you think is going to happen if we let one in here? There has to be another way to do this.”

“You have any bright ideas I’m sure we’ll all be glad to hear them,” replied the girl.

“I don’t know! But I do know that we can’t bring one inside. It’s suicide.”

The girl continued on as if Rachel hadn’t spoken. “First let’s try the window again. If it doesn’t work, we take out the first four steps, let that thing fall through and hit it with everything we have when it hits the floor.”

Rachel laughed. “You are a fucking idiot. A complete fucking idiot, you know that?”

“I already told you once; when you come up with one god damned worthwhile idea, I’ll listen to you! Until then, shut your fucking mouth and do what I tell you to!”

Rachel’s mouth opened wide, but no words escaped her lips.

The girl nodded. “Good.”