Fright Squad

by Flint Maxwell

  “I dropped it!” he shouted back. “Oh God, I think I’m gonna be sick!”

  Well, crap.

  I knew the feeling. The tree lashed us back and forth like a chew toy in a hyper puppy’s mouth. Pretty soon, my brains would turn to mush and leak out of my ears.

  “Here!” Maddie said from the ground.

  Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes. The world was now a spinning mess. I realized I wasn’t moving anymore. My bearings had just been thrown for a loop. I knew this because I felt no wind.

  “I’m gonna toss it!” she yelled.

  It was then I realized that she meant she was going to throw the hatchet.

  I pictured losing one of my hands as I tried to catch it.

  But what other options did I have? The bomb in my back pocket? No.

  Anyway, it turned out that the tree wasn’t a smart creature. This sentient tower of bark couldn’t multitask all that well.

  So as it stomped down, which Maddie avoided as gracefully as she always avoided things, it had lowered me enough to easily make the catch.

  She threw it. The little hatchet pinwheeled, its blade casting off no light on this night, and I snagged it out of the air, wasting no time in cutting myself free.

  Unfortunately, my landing was not as soft as I would’ve liked it. I hit the pile of dirt and all the breath was knocked out of me. As I lied there trying to catch it, the trees massive roots bore down on the very pile I had been on. I rolled out of the way.

  The adrenaline coursed through me like crazy.

  Speaking of crazy, now that I was up, I jumped and grabbed one of the branches, right back into the mouth of the beast I’d just escaped from, and I did it for Zack.

  Poor Zack was slobbering with each shake of the tree. Globs of his spit fell like sickening rain.

  I was nearly thrown off the tree five times, but managed to hang on. Then, when I got close enough, I went full lumberjack and chopped the branches wrapped around Zack away.

  He tumbled to the dirt.

  I jumped off, hit the ground, and somersaulted.

  The tree creaked and groaned like some great, wounded beast and I was pretty sure I was a dead man.

  Behind, cold wind followed us as two of its thickest branches came together in an attempt to crush us into goo.

  They missed.

  I tossed the hatchet to Zack. He caught it and threw something back. It was my sword. I caught it. I was getting better at that.

  Other trees were coming, their scarred trunks looking at us with vacant eyes.

  Maddie had drawn her gun and aimed at a big pine tree. Then, thinking it was probably better to save her bullets, she holstered it.

  “We gotta run!” I said.

  And run we did.

  All around the trees came for us. So many trees.

  “Why is this happening?” Zack shouted.

  I couldn’t answer it. This was another of life’s great mysteries.

  Thud-thud-thud-thud, was the sound of their stomping roots.

  I expected a Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum any second now.

  It never came.

  “Remind me to have the biggest bonfire in the history of bonfires when we get out of this!” Zack shouted.

  We kept running, and then we ran some more until the Slaughterhouse was right there in front of us.

  As usual, things didn’t get any better.

  They got worse.

  From the doors of the Slaughterhouse, the monsters came out, and here we were with killer trees behind us and killer monsters in front of us.

  “Is there a saying for this?” Zack asked as we stopped. “Stuck between a monster, monster trees, and a hard place or something?”

  “Not now,” Maddie said.

  A werewolf stepped forward. He was the Alpha Dog.

  “You’ll be coming with us,” he said. “The Wraith would like to see you now.”

  24

  The Hunchbacked Ghoul

  Maddie raised her pistol with its chambered silver bullets.

  “I wouldn’t be doing that if I were you,” the werewolf said.

  The werewolf’s friends were two vampires, a hunchbacked ghoul with yellow eyes and a dangling, useless left arm, and that same weird creature I had seen back at HQ, the one that looked like a bullfrog mixed with a hellion still on its chained leash like some demented dog.

  Behind us, the earth shook as the trees got closer and closer. I felt the wind of their movement, smelled their mossy stench, which was better than the smell of vamps, ghouls, and werewolves, of course.

  Maddie didn’t listen to the werewolf. I didn’t blame her. Had I had the gun in my hand, I would’ve tried blowing the bastard’s brains out, too.

  She pulled the trigger. A burst of light lit up the dark graveyard.

  None of the monsters flinched when the gun went off.

  The shot’s sound carried far and wide, but was eventually swallowed up by the darkness as everything around here seemed to be.

  Maddie’s first shot missed. A puff of dust erupted from a hole in the cinderblock of the Slaughterhouse, the bullet whining off of the stone.

  Maddie never missed.

  Well...rarely.

  The reason she had missed was because our lycan friend had decided now was as good a time as any to sprout a tentacle where his right arm should’ve been. It stretched the distance between us and slapped the gun out of Maddie’s hand. She never got a second shot off.

  I was just glad the tentacle didn’t come from the werewolf’s genitals.

  Pretty soon, the hunchbacked ghoul was slobbering and hobbling over, where he picked the gun up with his good arm.

  Unfortunately for us, besides the fact that Maddie’s gun was gone and Zack and I were left with a sword, a hatchet, and a secret bomb in my pocket, the wind blew and the ghoul’s foul scent danced along the air right up in to our nostrils.

  As you may know, ghouls are foul creatures. Despite how they are portrayed in popular culture, the freaks never wore clothes. So when you saw a ghoul, usually in a graveyard such as the one we were in, their grayish, pockmarked backsides were as visible as a full moon on a clear night.

  This ghoul made a show of bending over and picking up the gun, knowing exactly what he was up to. The ghoul’s behind was much scarier than anything he could ever do, in my opinion, which, for the uninitiated was rob graves, dig up dead bodies, and chow down on their findings like they’re at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  “Gross,” Zack mumbled, and I had to turn my head away.

  “Now, friends, drop your other weapons,” the werewolf said. “This battle is lost.”

  Slobber hung from his large fangs. His muzzle was wet with blood. This made my stomach roil as if greasy snakes were squirming around in my guts. Because I wondered who this werewolf had just fed on. Was it Storm? Lola?

  Were we too late?

  I hoped not. I sincerely hoped not.

  Zack tossed his hatchet to the grass. I dropped my sword.

  “Search ‘em,” the werewolf growled.

  “Yes, Rover,” one of the vampires said.

  The two vamps sauntered over, followed closely behind by the naked, hunchbacked ghoul.

  Please let the ghoul search Zack, please don’t let it be me, please—

  Sure enough, the ghoul, his rotten genitals swinging much too close to my personal bubble, smiled crookedly. Moss had grown over his sharp teeth. His tongue was black and swollen.

  “Spread ‘em, pal,” the ghoul said in a slippery voice that reminded me of Igor from the old Frankenstein movies.

  “I’d really rather not,” I said.

  The trees groaned behind me, their leaves shaking as if caught in a thunderstorm.

  I let the cold hands of the ghoul run all over my body. “Should’ve bought him a drink first,” Zack said.

  “The only thing I drink is blood,” the ghoul said.

  Well then, I thought. That had escalated rather quickly.

  The werewolf watche
d this all with amusement in his eyes.

  “Jesus, dude, it was a joke,” Zack said. “No need to get all psycho on us.”

  But saying that to a ghoul was like telling a lion not to chase and kill a gazelle.

  “Ah-ha!” The ghoul’s hand was currently in my back pocket. He grabbed the bomb-ball and pulled it out like he’d just stumbled upon a piece of gold. “Weapons! He lied to us! He lied!”

  “Forgot that was in there,” I said. “Not even sure what it is. Tell you what, how about you run just over that hill right there and hit that middle button, find out for yourself?”

  The ghoul, as stupid as he may have been, didn’t fall for it.

  “Bring it here,” the werewolf said.

  The ghoul did.

  Zack and Maddie weren’t having much luck in the way of hiding weapons, either.

  The vampires had stripped them of their stakes, then had taken their crucifixes from their necks with the sharp ends of said stakes. Each of these vampires were odd-looking, each of them had squirming skin. I wondered if little worms would pop out of their eyeballs like the vamp at Lover’s Pass.

  And they were not gentle. The heavier vampire standing in front of Maddie made a red line down her neck with the stake’s point. Maddie stayed tough, didn’t flinch or crack wise. I admired her.

  “Silver bullets,” the werewolf suddenly said. He opened the cylinder and let the bullets fall into the grass, where they landed with a muffled thump-thump-thump. “BEAST, huh? They think they know how to take down a werewolf and a bunch of vampires, eh? Well, they’re wrong. We’re not your average monsters. We’re different.”

  “All monsters say that,” Zack mumbled. If the werewolf heard him, which he probably did because, you know, canine hearing and all, he didn’t make it known.

  “The Wraith—Doctor Blood—he has preformed a miracle, my friends. One even silver bullets or wooden stakes or cheap crucifixes can't destroy,” the werewolf said.

  I thought of Buddy Wolverton and Rip and the vamp at Lover’s Pass. Were they just trial runs? Were these vamps the real deal?

  The vampires and the ghoul, now crowding around the werewolf and the odd-frog creature he held on a leash, began laughing. I mean, straight-up cackling. I felt like I was in a James Bond film, where the villain has Bond right where he wants him, and they think they’ve won already so they start laughing their heads off.

  But one thing always happened, didn’t it?

  Bond got the best of them.

  Just like I planned on doing.

  Or at least hoped to do.

  Then, of course, the laughter stopped and the werewolf clocked me upside my head. All I remembered after that was falling and hitting the grass.

  Hard.

  25

  God Bless You, Mr. Werewolf

  When I woke up, I was inside of the Slaughterhouse.

  The floor was made of dirt. A dehydrated dirt that felt gritty beneath my feet, almost like sand. There were no windows so no light came in from the outside world, even though there wasn’t much light out there anyway. Torches on the walls radiated low flames. That was about the extent of it.

  Oddly enough, the place didn’t smell like a slaughterhouse at all. It just smelled old, like rot and mold and mildew. It reminded me of my great aunt Becky’s basement. In the summers, Mom would send me out there for a week, where I was basically not there to visit but to clean. The basement was the big project. Every year. And every year it got worse and worse. I was convinced my great aunt Becky was using the place to murder people, but I never said anything. She died eventually and we cleaned her house out. Never found any bodies.

  Suffice to say this place could’ve been a lot better. I’d rather have been held in the dirty bathroom of a KFC.

  I tried moving. My arms didn’t get very far.

  “Shackled,” Zack said from my right.

  “I see that,” I said.

  “We’re in for it now,” Zack said.

  I shrugged as far as the shackles around my wrists would let me. Zack and Maddie were shackled, too. From the wall hung chains and from the chains hung my wrists. They were about a foot in length, so if I had to scratch anywhere below my midsection I’d be out of luck. Our feet weren’t shackled, though, and I guess that was good—if it mattered at all, which I’m pretty sure it didn’t.

  I also wasn’t surprised to see the congealed blood around the wrist cuffs. It looked old, almost rustic. Across the way, on the opposite wall, were empty shackles. No blood that I could see on those. That was good, I thought. Maybe Lola and Storm were still okay.

  Unless of course the monsters just ate them up whole, my mind warned me.

  I shook my head to clear this thought.

  I opened my mouth to point this out when the wall to our right started humming. A greenish-blue glow emanated from the bricks, leaking through the cracks, and it lit up our faces with a squeamish color.

  “Whoa!” Zack said.

  Next to the wall directly opposite of us was a door, the frame made of crooked and rotting wood around the stone. I saw, in the brightness, that spiders—big spiders—crawled out of a crack and marched toward the light.

  I hated spiders, but who didn’t?

  “Ah, the show is about to begin,” said a voice. From the shadows of the other room came the towering figure of the werewolf. It always made me nervous to see a giant canine walking around on two legs. Just wasn’t right. He wore a belt and on his belt was a key ring with about four or so large black and silver skeleton keys. I figured that was my ticket out of here, but how was I supposed to get it?

  Behind him, came the frisky, hunchbacked ghoul. He was dragging something.

  To my relief, I saw it was the unconscious bodies of Storm and Lola.

  “Are they dead?” Zack whispered.

  “No,” I whispered back out of the side of my mouth.

  While Storm was pretty bloodied and Lola had swollen, red lips, I could see and hear their ragged breathing. Good. There was hope yet.

  Then the ghoul cuffed the two of them to the opposite wall, and that all but confirmed it. What would be the point of cuffing dead bodies?

  “Thank God,” Maddie said.

  The werewolf turned, his ears pricking up like a dog that hears the mailman’s steps outside, and grinned.

  “You let them go,” I said. “Now.”

  Which was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t stop myself before the words escaped. It only would’ve been worse if I said Or else at the end of it.

  His arm changed into a tentacle and slapped me in the face. It was wet and gooey and wholly unpleasant.

  “You won’t be talking much longer,” the werewolf named Rover said to me.

  I let my eyes wander to his key ring. He saw this and came closer. Then he started wiggling his hips like one of those Hawaiian ladies you put on your car’s dashboard.

  “You looking at my keys?” he asked.

  Zack said, “Wow, Abe, those hips don’t lie!”

  “Oh, my God,” Maddie moaned, shaking her head.

  “Good luck, my friends!” the werewolf said.

  Finally I got control of myself.

  “When that void opens, you’ll be screaming.” Rover now motioned his snout in the direction of where the green and blue lights shined.

  “Kill him now, Rover,” the ghoul said.

  Then another voice joined the conversation. It came from nowhere and everywhere as if broadcasted though a PA system.

  “There will be no killing…yet,” the voice said. It was a sinister voice, but it was also almost cartoonish. It reminded me of Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

  I knew who the voice belonged to, of course, because I had heard it at HQ, but I didn’t see Doctor Blood anywhere.

  At the sound of his voice, across the way, Storm and Lola moaned and shook their heads.

  “Guys!” I shouted, ignoring Doctor Blood. You want to piss off a villain, just ignore him. Zack had taught m
e that one, not the Academy.

  “Huh?” Lola said. Her eyes fluttered open. “Abe?”

  “Quiet!” Doctor Blood’s voice hissed from that supernatural PA system. Or it may just have been a PA system, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think this rundown place had electricity.

  “Don’t worry. I’m getting you out of here,” I said to Lola. “Both of you.”

  Storm opened his eyes.

  Zack said, “Storm!”

  “Ya crazy sons-of-bitches,” Storm replied. He smiled and blood lined his teeth.

  “Enough talking!” Rover said. He snapped his fingers which created a spark from where his nails clicked together. The ghoul nodded and walked over in a very ape-like fashion. He hit Storm a good one in the face. Storm turned with the force of the hit but didn’t give the ghoul the satisfaction of making a sound. I respected the old man. He was tough. But seeing him get hit just pissed me off all the more.

  When the ghoul went back toward the glowing wall with Rover, as if awaiting for something, Lola whispered to me: “How are you gonna save us? You all look pretty bad yourselves. Not to mention, you’re kinda, you know, handcuffed.”

  “That’s a good question,” Maddie said. “How are we going to save them?”

  “And us,” Zack added. “Don’t forget about us?”

  I said, “Working on it. Working on it.” What idea I had was pretty much next to nothing.

  Then the Slaughterhouse started rumbling. Thick dust cascaded down from the ceiling. The ghoul cheered, while the werewolf broke out into a sneezing fit. From somewhere on his hairy body, he pulled out a handkerchief—from where, I don’t know nor did I really want to know—and he dabbed at his running nose.

  “Damn dust,” he mumbled through the sneezes. “Sorry, boss!”

  A burst of lightning erupted in the room, momentarily blinding us. In that flash, I saw our weapons piled up on a table through the doorway opposite us—my sword and Zack’s hatchet, a handful of stakes. Then the light died and there stood a tall, rail-thin man. He wore a cape, black on the outside, red on the inside, a black suit, white undershirt, and a blood-red bowtie and cummerbund of the same color. All he was missing was a top hat and a magic wand.