Chris flinched, then shook his head. “We need to get the gas first. I told you…he ain’t human. Gotta burn the whole place down.”
His dad didn’t doubt him anymore, he could tell. Whatever he had seen inside of that police station was enough to make him believe, and just knowing he had his dad on his side now, Chris felt better about their chances.
They pulled up to the 7-11, their bodies rocking forward as the car screeched to a halt next to the gas pump. Chris peered into the glass front of the store, but he didn’t see the clerk. He figured the man was probably with the other adults. Playing the game. Either that or he was dead in the street somewhere.
“I’ll run inside and get some gas cans,” Chris said.
His dad reached out and gripped his arm. “No, let me go. Stay here with your friend.”
“No, you need to get the pump ready. Slide a credit card or something…I don’t know how to turn the pumps on. I’ll be right back.” And before there could be any more arguing about it, Chris was out of the car and sprinting toward the store.
That same foreign-sounding music played from behind the counter, but the clerk was nowhere to be seen. The air inside of the convenient store was cold, pulled Chris’s gooseflesh out, and there was a foul stench floating in the air, like shit and vomit with a hint of cooked beef. As he raced across the store, he found where the smell emanated from.
A Hispanic girl, chubby with pigtails and braces, lay on her back in the candy isle. Chris thought he recognized her from the bingo hall, one of the girls that hung around with Sasha and her clique. Her body had been torn apart, a ragged tear that started at her bottom lip and ended between her legs, as if she had been ripped in half. The cave of her stomach looked scooped out and her spinal cord shone in the fluorescent light. Open bags lay all around her. Bright multi-colored candy was scattered all over the place like neon beetles feasting on her blood.
Chris turned his head and emptied his stomach onto the floor, then forced himself to the next isle where the automotive supplies were kept. He grabbed all of the gas containers they had and a box of long matches, then ran back out of the store without looking at the mutilated girl again.
“You okay?” his dad asked. “What happened?”
“N-nothing. Here.” He handed the containers over, wiped away the bile that coated his lips.
After his dad filled one, he handed it to Chris, who put it in the trunk. Oscar still sat in the rear seat, talking to himself, wiping tears and mucus from his face. Once they had all the gas they could carry, they were off toward Big Time Bingo. And the energy in the car was mixed with determination and doom.
Mr. Big’s voice exploded from the speakers on the outside of the bingo building. “I 19!”
Just the sound of that monster’s voice made Chris want to turn back, run home and hide under his bed. The images of Mr. Big’s body bulging and growing as the bingo balls protruded from his skin like inflamed zits, chiseled at his sanity. He clutched his dad’s forearm as they stared at the bingo hall, still sitting in the idling car, none of them speaking.
“O 61!”
“You think they all in there?” Oscar leaned forward so he was between Chris and his dad.
“I know they are. No question,” Chris said.
“Now what?” Oscar said.
His dad turned to the boys and pulled his pistol back out. He spoke through his bared teeth. “I tell you now what. I go in there and put a stop to this shit right now. You boys stay out of danger, stay in the car.”
He started to get out, but Chris tightened his grip on his dad’s arm, reached out with his other hand. “No…no, don’t go. You can’t! We can just…we can light the place on fire from the outside.”
“Boy, your mama’s in there. I gotta go get her.”
Chris tried to pull on his arm, but the man was too strong. “No, please! He’ll get you…you can’t go in there! He’ll kill you!”
“Look…we came here to stop him. That’s what I’m gonna do.” He popped the trunk, yanked out one of the red, plastic gas cans. “I’ll take this with me.”
And then the man was stalking across the parking lot, his head lowered and his muscles flexed.
Chris jumped out of the car. Oscar protested, but his voice was only muffled static in the background.
“Dad! Stop. Don’t go in there!” He ran toward him, but before he could stop him, his dad swung the front entrance open and disappeared inside. The man was right, they had come to stop the monster, but Chris had a bad feeling he would never see his dad again.
Chris stopped about ten feet from the entrance, couldn’t make himself enter that place again. Oscar came trotting up behind him.
“Your dad’ll take care of this, fool.”
“No,” Chris said. “We gotta help him…but we’re goin’ in through the back.”
The first thing Maurice noticed was the smell. It made it hard to breathe, stung his eyes: cooking meat and grease and rot and shit. To his left were all the kids, or what used to be kids. They looked bloated, inflated, and they gorged themselves on steamy slop that was being tossed onto the wooden tables by the palest motherfuckers he’d ever seen. They smiled as they poured the soupy, meaty mess out of their buckets.
Maurice gagged, had to look away from them, but what sat across the hall was no better. A mutilated corpse lay in the aisle, blood pooling around the torn flesh. The woman’s eyes were pointed at the ceiling, a twisted grin splitting her head in two. The other people sat in their seats, daubing their bingo cards, ignoring the corpse just beside them.
“O 52!”
The creature sitting on the stage was what Maurice figured had to be the Mr. Big Chris had been talking about. The thing spoke, had a voice like a man, but it was anything but. Its smile stretched its face wide, pulled the glistening, pink flesh taut. The eyes were like egg yolks swimming in pink chicken blood, and they turned and landed on Maurice. The red flesh under the eyelids showed as the smile widened even further.
“B 13!”
Its bulbous body swelled, pink and wet like squid flesh. Mr. Big pulled the bingo balls directly from his body, dug them out as they protruded through his skin, some of the balls breaking free and plopping down on the floor. Strings of mucus connected the balls to his skin as he read the numbers, then tossed them off the stage.
Maurice took another step forward, glanced at all the concentrating faces of the people around him. There weren’t as many as he’d expected, then realized most of them were probably dead in the streets. These people had murdered their competition to better their chances of winning, and when he saw Brenda frantically tapping her pink dauber to her numerous bingo cards spread wide in front of her, he wondered how many she had killed herself.
“Brenda! Brenda, look at me!” But she didn’t. Her brow furrowed, but she never looked up, just kept sliding her gaze over the cards.
“N 38!”
Maurice dropped the gas can, pointed the gun at Mr. Big. “Stop this shit, stop it now! I swear to God I’ll empty this motherfuckin’ gun in your ass!”
“Shut the fuck up!” somebody screamed from behind him.
“Quiet!”
“Somebody shut that nigger up!”
Maurice turned, saw that half the people now had their attention on him, their eyes as sharp as razors. He clenched his teeth, turned back to Mr. Big. “I said stop. Stop the game or you die.”
“Get the fuck outta here ’fore you get hurt, motherfucker!” Maurice didn’t have to look to know that was Brenda’s voice. “I’ll cut your fuckin’ dick off!”
Maurice fought his way through the seated players to get to his wife, a maze of insults, threats and shoving hands. She shot him an ugly look, then quickly scanned her cards, stamped them accordingly. He reached down and grabbed her wrist, yanked her to her feet. “Let’s go. We need to get the fuck outta here…now! Don�
�t you see—”
Her head darted forward and cracked him in the nose. He stumbled backward and his eyes teared up as he collided with another woman behind him. Brenda spat at him, then took her seat, dauber at the ready.
“G 46!”
“Get your black ass off me!” the woman said, then snapped at him with her teeth, caught a piece of his cheek and bit it off.
“Ahhh!” Maurice stumbled away, wiped the blood from his face that continued to pour out from the ragged opening on his cheek. Fuck this. He stomped his way back to the aisle, faced the stage and put four bullets into the blubbery chest of Mr. Big.
Chris and Oscar both held two gas cans each, the box of matches in Chris’s pocket. When he heard the gunshots, he nearly dropped the gasoline. He wondered if Mr. Big was dead, if his dad had just killed the monster, but he doubted it. Which meant his dad was in trouble.
They circled the building and went straight for the back door, the same one they’d seen Mr. Big walk through only a few nights ago. Chris set one of the gas cans down, tried the knob—unlocked. “You ready?”
“Hell no. You heard the shots, right? Maybe it’s over, maybe your dad killed him.”
“You really believe that?”
Oscar lowered his gaze. “Nah…I guess not.”
Chris went in first, his heart about to burst from his ribcage. The gas cans grew slippery in his grip, but he held tight, tried not to let the gas slosh around and make too much noise.
The scent thickening the air was almost unbearable—that meaty smell—and Chris did his best to hold his breath. Wet chopping sounds came from the left, along with sizzling and metal scraping. He figured it must be the kitchen, so he crept forward, turned his head and motioned for Oscar to follow.
“What the fuck is that smell?”
Chris didn’t answer, and as they reached two double swinging doors, he put his finger to his lips, lightly set the plastic containers on the floor. Through the crack in the doors, he peered into the room.
The pale workers hustled around the kitchen, each of them smiling, but not saying a word to each other. Their resemblance to Mr. Big was eerie: the same color skin and teeth, the same facial features. A loud series of chops grabbed Chris’s attention, and his eyes darted around the kitchen to see where they came from.
He gasped when he saw it. He reached behind his back and grabbed Oscar’s shirt and pulled him forward. They stared together, both of them trembling.
Two of the workers had another on the table, chopping away chunks of meat from the twitching limbs, which were tossed into a silver bowl. Another of the workers took that bowl and emptied the meat onto a large griddle where he and other cooks scooted the cooking meat around with spatulas. Another set of workers held buckets, and the cooks plopped the charred meat into it. Those holding the buckets dumped in nacho cheese, ketchup, hotdog and hamburger buns, and any other concession food to compliment the meat. Stirred it up with a big metal spoon, then waddled out toward the tables to feed the pigs.
The worker being chopped to pieces only smiled at his cleaver-wielding brethren as they slammed their blades into his body and slid the misshapen pieces into the bowl. Chris and Oscar could only watch, both breathing in ragged gasps as the gleaming metal collided with flesh over and over: Thwack! Scraaape.
The choppers worked at the body quickly, never seeming to tire, until only the head was left. Still smiling. They didn’t hesitate to chop that just as they did the rest, and when there was nothing left, another worker strolled over from out of Chris’s vision, climbed onto the table and laid himself out. Thwack! Scraaape.
Footsteps.
“Oh shit.” Chris grabbed his gas can with a shaking hand, started dumping it on the floor at the bottom of the double doors. He slid the can sideways through the doors, propping them slightly open, and let the pungent liquid pour across the kitchen floor.
Oscar didn’t move, just clutched at Chris’s shoulder. “S-someone’s comin’, man. What the fuck are we—”
The group of workers, naked and slimy, came trotting around the corner. They looked lost, confused, but when their eyes locked on the boys, those sickening grins filled their heads. And they ran at them.
Mr. Big barely flinched as the bullets entered his body, a custardy liquid oozing from the bullet holes. The crack of the gunshots echoed through the bingo hall. Maurice stood in front of the stage with the gun shaking in his hand.
“B 3!”
What the fuck?
“Bingo!”
Maurice turned toward the shouting voice as the old woman continued to scream with joy.
“Bingo, bingo, bingo!” The elderly Hispanic woman held a bingo card in one hand and a dirt-caked skull in the other. As she hopped with glee, dirt and flesh-bits rained down.
The blob on stage licked its teeth. “Congratulations! Come and claim your prize!” Its voice was wet, like someone with a severe cold talking through phlegm. More bingo balls rose on the surface of its flesh, and Maurice saw that the discarded balls on the floor flattened and sizzled like cooking eggs. The puddle widened and something clawed its way out as if emerging from the floor. A face pushed through, then hands and arms. It pulled itself up and out of the floor, dripping with clear fluid, its facial features forming and solidifying as its torso and legs were pulled up and out. A man, or what resembled a man, with flesh like wet soap, stood there, used its fingertips to gouge out eyeholes in its face. Then tore open a mouth. Yellow teeth protruded from milky gums. The thing grinned as more of its kind emerged from the liquefied bingo balls.
The old woman set her skull on the table, leaned over and kissed it on the mouth. She slid her lips and tongue across the teeth, then strode toward the stage.
She didn’t make it far.
Maurice, with the gun still in his hand, was able to catch Brenda by the waist and hold her tight against his body, but he was helpless to stop the others as they piled onto the woman. Mr. Big pulled an envelope out of his torso, slick with mucus, and tossed it toward her. She was just able to reach out and catch it before she was slammed to the ground and pummeled.
Brenda growled, thrashed her arms and legs and fought with everything she had. Desperate to join in on the massacre. Maurice grunted as her heels collided with his shins, but held as tight as he could as he made his way toward the exit. He knew this shit had to stop, that Mr. Big, whatever he was, had to die, but the only thing he could think about at that moment was getting him and his wife out of there.
“No! No, let me go!”
He stuffed the pistol back into his waistline, then used both arms to restrain Brenda, moved as fast as he could toward the door. The gurgling, high-pitched scream cut through the cussing and screaming of the adults. It came from the concession area, where the kids continued to stuff themselves with whatever it was they were eating.
Two boys and a girl writhed on the floor while the others ate above them. The skin of their bellies thrashed, bulged as if something were inside trying to escape. One of the boys kicked his legs as he screamed and clawed at his stomach. Maurice’s jaw dropped as he watched the boy’s mouth stretch wide and his throat bulge. Watched as something long and white pushed itself out. The back of the boy’s jeans tore and another wiggling appendage pushed from the backside, giving the boy a thick, white tail. The kid’s body continued to flop, his eyes wide and crying blood, and then in an instant, he tore in half, right down the middle, splashing blood and globs of fat on the floor. What looked like a huge maggot rolled in the gore and whipped its body left and right. Its pale flesh was lined with hooked barbs. The boy’s mutilated corpse was still stuck to the thing’s back, and it swung back and forth as the monster thrashed. Two more of the hellish maggots exploded out from the other two kids, all still wearing the corpses of the bodies they had emerged from.
“Let me go, motherfucker!” Brenda broke free as Maurice gawked at the gory bi
rths, and without hesitation she sprinted toward the old woman who was now reduced to a broken corpse at the feet of her attackers. Blood-soaked money was clutched in everyone’s hands as they stomped and punched. Some had weapons, and they bludgeoned and cut and chopped the woman’s body.
Mr. Big cackled, his body growing even bigger as the violence continued. His bulk nearly filled the stage.
When Maurice turned back to the creatures, he saw that more kids had hit the floor, whimpering and raking fingernails across their stomachs. Two of the behemoth maggots slithered their way toward the crowd, picking off people from the outside of the horde and slowly chewing on their bodies as the victim screamed and writhed.
A wet slobbery screech brought Maurice’s attention back to his left. He screamed, yanked his gun back out and aimed it at the approaching maggot as it slithered toward him.
Chris pulled out the box of matches, but his trembling hands fumbled it until it slipped out and spilled its contents to the floor. The workers, though still grinning, screeched as they stumbled toward the boys. Their bare feet splashed through the widening puddle of gasoline.
“Help me!” Chris dropped to his knees to retrieve a match, and Oscar shrieked as he threw his gas can at the approaching white men. The can hit one in the chest, crashed to the floor and exploded open. The stinging aroma of gas filled the air. Chris finally grabbed hold of a match, swiped the box, and stood to face the men.
As Chris was about to strike one and let it fly, Oscar roared and ran past him. He collided with the workers with knuckles and bared teeth. “You motherfuckers!”
“Oscar, no!” Chris couldn’t throw a match now, not with his friend in the way, but he was frozen, could only watch as Oscar swung his fists.
But when the boy’s fist collided with the first pale man, his arm penetrated through the chest like it was made of wet bread. The worker leaned over and smiled, grabbed Oscar by the throat and lifted him into the air as if he were weightless. Oscar struggled, but his arm was stuck, and as he kicked his legs, one of his feet struck the worker’s stomach and stuck there too.
The Bingo Hall Page 9
