The Beginning by Mark Lansing

CHAPTER 1
    MARTIN swung the baseball bat and connected with the back of the kneeling man’s skull, fragments of bone splintered with a sickening crack. The man fell sideways and revealed what h e had been bent over. Or what was left of it.
    The fur around its collar was matted with blood and vital organs oozed out of a deep gouge in the stomach. Martin dropped the bat and fell to his knees as he tried to understand what exactly was happening. The Great Dane’s breathing was laboured and the only sign of life was from the flicker in her eyes. Martin’s hands hovered cautiously over the dog’s wound, his mind raced frantically for something to do, anything but to just watch.
    The puddle of blood widene d and Martin felt the warm touch of it on his knees as his jeans soaked it up. Shocking him into action, Martin began to push organs back into the wound, thrusting them back in desperately. His hands clawed at the ground around him trying to find anything he could. He grabbed the cord of the intestine and started to shove it back inside, then it pulled back out.
    Martin’s eyes slowly followed the trail of intestine from the wound, along the ground and into the man’s blood splattered mouth. His teeth were gn awing viciously with an animalistic hunger, tearing and ripping wildly.
    As Martin stood up and began to back away, the man seemed to notice him for the first time. His red eyes locked onto Martin’s eyes, his mouth drooled with intestine, his face covered in a mixture of his own blood and the Great Danes.
    Turning quickly, Martin began to sprint across the long lawn, not daring to look over his shoulder. The sun gleamed off the rooster-shaped weathervane fixed onto the top of a red-wood barn, this was Martin ’s beacon of hope.
    Martin couldn’t see the man, but he knew he was close behind. He could feel hot breath on the back of his neck. He could hear the thud of its limbs on the sun-baked ground.
    He skid to a halt outside the barn door and, hoping it wasn’t locked, flung it open. He jumping inside without looking back and slammed the door behind him. It was pitch black inside. Martin leant back on the barn door, swallowed hard and slowly slipped down the door.
    What the hell is going on?
    His eyes were getting adjusted to the darkness when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the smell of freshly laid down paint. Strange he thought, Dad hasn’t been in this barn for decades. The next thing to catch his attention was in the corner of the barn where Martin could make out a flashing white light. Through squinted eyes, Martin could see it was a thin line of light on the floor.
    Martin closed his eyes and allowed his head to drop backwards till it touched the barn door, he exhaled deeply. He needed to get back to the house, he had to warn his parents about this madman. Then the door Martin was leaning on shuddered with the vibrations of a heavy impact.
    Sprawling forward in a reflexive action, Martin was soon on his feet. But no more impacts came. Only the sound of a loud breathy inhale from the other side of the door. Then silence.
    With an air of caution and sickening curiosity, a nose with flared nostrils appeared in the gap between the barn door and the floor. It inhaled deeply. Then withdrew, makin g room for two hands, the fingers already missing nails and horribly broken. They began to claw at the ground, dragging dirt back onto the other side. Quickly, a hole began to emerge.
    Surrounded by blackness, Martin stumbled around conscious of the increa sing amount of light which was creeping in from the expanding hole under the door. Martin was simply putting distance between himself and the door, but soon he found himself in the corner of the barn, standing next to a square with flashing edges.
    Martin turned and glanced at the door. The hole was now big enough for the man to get his arm up to the elbow in. Martin instinctively took a step back and his heel caught on a raised edge.
    He swiftly bent down and ran