Billy heard the enormous backfire and country music coming from somewhere toward the park's exit as he reached for the BB rifle. Having already pumped it up, he pointed it at the nearly skinless face of the man staggering toward him. The phone's light shined more than enough for him to see the disgusting thing was only seconds away. The barrel of the rifle was hard to hold steady as the boy lay on the ground with his foot still painfully wedged between the old boards. It kept swinging wildly as he tried to aim the rifle.
Grandpa told him last summer the trick to good aiming was to take a deep breath and slowly let it out and when you're almost done breathing out just squeeze the trigger. “Never pull on it. Just squeeze it gently,” he'd said. “Squeeze it slow and easy like you were dancing with a pretty girl.”
Billy had been grossed out at the time by the idea of having anything to do with a girl (let alone dancing with one) but smiled slightly as he squeezed the trigger.
A tiny metal BB pellet exploded out of the barrel, flew straight and true, then punctured its way through the man’s right eye with a soft splat noise. Grayish green slime coupled with dark, nearly black, blood erupted and trickled down his face. As the one eyed man staggered backward reaching up to his face, Billy yanked harder on his stuck foot and heard the boards creaking. He imagined it felt like being trapped in dried cement.
Setting down his rifle, he reached down and grabbed his leg and tried to think of himself as one his favorite superheroes: The Hulk. Tugging on his leg with both hands he yelled loudly, “Hulk smash puny boards!” and felt a sharp pain accompanied by a cracking of wood as he finally pulled his boot free of the rotten boards.
The one eyed man stumbled forward again as Billy rolled off the wood and got shakily back to his feet.
Somewhere nearby in the darkness there was a single loud pained bark
“Boris! Come on get away from there!” The worried boy shouted. (He was much more concerned about the dog than himself)
Boris yelped loudly and ran toward Billy and the man he'd shot in the eye.
As the first ghostly rays of sunlight lit the misty clearing, Billy saw the dog swerve into view from a nearby trailer. It leaped easily over a pile of debris, veered around a scrawny short tree, then sprinted toward him while being chased by yet another man.
Boris barked and leaped over the hanging chain, knocked the one eyed zombie to the boards and landed on top of him. The dog yipped as if it were having a great deal of fun and swiveled its head slightly to the side with a goofy look on his furry face.
If it were a movie and someone hired stunt people to create what happened next it may have taken twenty, maybe thirty, attempts to get that perfect landing with the first rays of morning sunlight landing on Boris' face while perched atop the confused flailing one eyed undead man atop the boards. But the dog made it look like something he did every day.
Billy said, “Good boy. Now come-” he stopped speaking when a quick series of loud cracks and pops came from the wooden well cover as it began to disintegrate.
The boy screamed, “No!” dropped his rifle, and reached for the scrambling dog as the one eyed man fell into the well. A moment later there was a muffled splash and a bewildered series of echoing grunts from below, yet Billy hardly noticed that. Diving onto the dusty ground, he reached out and snagged the dog’s front left leg as the rest of its body disappeared from view. Billy’s eyes watered as more echoing splashes and grunts drifted up from the bottom of the well where several rotten boards and a one eyed monstrosity had landed in the shallow water.
Boris whimpered in terror and confusion as Billy desperately clutched his paw with both hands. The terrified boy held tight to the dog even after the man with half an arm missing fell over the old chain that surrounded the long abandoned well and began crawling toward him.