Tooth and Claw

by Joseph Nassise

  The doorway opened into a waiting area and lobby, with the rest of the floor guarded by a desk-counter that ran the length of the room. But this wasn’t an urban center; no bullet-proof glass or other walls preventing them from being able to look across the length of the room, all the way to the rear wall. In the lobby, chairs were overturned and a potted plant lay on one side, bleeding soil. Past the counter, desks were upright but in disarray from what had surely been orderly rows.

  Bullet holes riddled the walls and ceiling in every direction, blood lay in pools on the floor, and a streak of blood – most likely from a dragged body - went up and over the counter.

  But there wasn’t a body to be found.

  Riley pressed on, with Cade keeping step behind. Riley slipped through the swinging door, which gave readily; if it had a buzz-style locking mechanism, it was either disabled or broken. The gate made little sound as the two soldiers moved through it.

  Now into the main working area of the station, the men saw a row of simple cells on their left, all empty. They reminded Cade of something out of a long-ago Andy Griffith episode, designed for the occasional drunk or a teenager in need of a scared-straight lesson. Gales Ferry was apparently not a hotbed of violent crime.

  A staircase crept up the wall to their right. On the wall beyond where staircase began, a rifle cabinet hung with its glass doors ajar and the windows spiderwebbed with cracks. Upon closer inspection, Cade saw two rifles sprawled carelessly on top of a nearby desk. He paused long enough to check one of the rifles, and found it still had a number of unspent rounds in the mag.

  And still no bodies. Blood and bullet holes, but not a casualty anywhere.

  Then:

  “Movement, white bravo two!”

  Gore’s voice broke in on their earpieces, causing both Cade and Riley to instinctively point their weapons up—white bravo two was the second floor, facing the street, second window from the left.

  Riley moved, and Cade followed behind. The two men took the stairs as silently as possible, barrels poised for contact with whatever enemy might be lurking in the dark waiting for them.

  The second floor turned out to be storage, with dozens of crates, boxes, and filing cabinets stuffed into what was more of a landing than an actual room, with the floor covering only half the length of the building. Cade gave his XO two taps to the shoulder and Riley nodded once. They split up, Cade moving straight along the wall and Riley breaking right to take up a flanking position on the window where Gore had reported movement.

  Cade slid forward carefully, his feet effortlessly finding places where the wooden floor wouldn’t creak. What would have been a two-second walk in any other circumstance became a full minute’s trek as Cade checked between each filing cabinet and around each cardboard box before advancing.

  He came around a stack of cartons cautiously, edging his shoulder and MP5 around its corner an inch at a time. When he saw what had caused the movement Gore reported, Cade touched his mic again.

  “Duncan, second floor, now.”

  “Yessir,” Duncan radioed back immediately. The others would circle the building to be able to cover all four sides with only three pairs of eyes.

  Cade cleared the breadth of the landing quickly, and met Riley at the second window, the XO having finished his sweep as well.

  Riley said it so his boss wouldn’t have to: “Oh, my God.”

  By that point, Cade had already knelt beside the poor man they’d come across. Even as Cade tried to take his vitals, the man’s arms spasmed upward, knocking into the drawstring that dangled off a window shade. His fingers grazed it once or twice, enough to cause the shade to flutter and for Gore to note the motion and report it.

  The guy was a uniformed cop, presuming the damp, pulpy remnants of the uniform on the floor beside him were his. Riley crouched and slipped a pulse oximeter on the officer’s finger, which clicked off a slow, laborious pulse in red digital numbers.

  Riley, who’d flipped up his scope, looked at Cade. “You think Duncan can . . .”

  “No,” Cade admitted. “I doubt it. But he’s got to try.”

  The cop’s upper body seemed frozen somehow, his arms and fingers moving relentlessly for the window shade only because that was as much range of motion as he could manage. The limbs moved jerkily, as if on marionette strings. His face was flat and expressionless, except for his eyes, which were bright and alive and aware. Cade got the distinct impression he was partially paralyzed and was doing his level best to get someone’s attention.

  He certainly had Cade’s attention, because the old vet hadn’t seen anything quite like this before—that notorious phrase that very few Templars could say with honesty.

  Only bone remained of both the cop’s legs. Except for the stray bits of meat still clinging to the femur and tibia. His legs—with intact feet still shod in short black boots—were as skeletal as a classroom model. The loss of flesh went halfway up the cop’s hips. There was no sign of the muscle and sinew. Combined with the enhanced sound they’d heard on the 911 call, Cade had a pretty good idea where all the flesh had gone.

  Duncan’s footsteps sounded on the staircase. Cade called to him, guiding Duncan to their position.

  Duncan came around the same corner that Cade had, but stopped cold as he took in what remained of the policeman. He uttered an uncharacteristic curse, then ran to his teammates.

  “Found him like this,” Cade said. “Can you do anything for him?”

  Duncan stared at the grisly aftermath of whatever had gotten to the cop, then shook his head. “No, no way. Sorry, sir. There’s just . . . no.”

  Duncan’s position as team medic had not been a random choice on Cade’s part. Duncan possessed a divine ability to heal human flesh, though the miracle came with certain limitations. He was unable to heal Cade’s eye, for the wound was too old. In the case of this police officer, the damage was simply too extensive. A single gunshot or stab wound, perhaps even multiples of each, Duncan could likely handle.

  This? This cannibalistic butchery? No.

  Mercifully, the cop died a moment later with one long wheeze issuing from his throat. In the silence that followed, Cade allowed himself a moment to study the cop’s face in the relative darkness, and saw he was perhaps half Cade’s age. Practically a child.

  “What does this to a man?” Duncan whispered. “Commander?”

  Cade, distantly, was pleased to note that while Duncan had a pallor to his face, his voice was strong. He was getting used to the horrors of serving in the field, for better or worse.

  As to Duncan’s question, Cade had no response. What, indeed? Certainly he had encountered a number of supernatural entities capable of stripping flesh from bone, but this seemed deliberate, not the wanton rending of human flesh that most demons favored.

  There was one way to find out.

  Cade pulled the glove off his right hand. “Let's find out.”

  Duncan sighed audibly but said nothing.

  Riley knelt beside Cade and set his weapon on the ground. “Ready when you are, boss.”

  Cade laid the bare skin of his palm against the officer’s still-warm cheek, and activated his Gift.

  4

  Flash…

  He stared out through the window of the police station at the setting sun, admiring the way the red-gold light spread out across the sky like a smear of paint across a canvas. Behind him, he could hear Jones dealing with the latest prowler call, this time from Mrs. Fitzgerald over on Williams street. It was the fourth call in the last half hour alone.

  Kids, he thought absently. Just a bunch of kids playing pranks. Nothing exciting every happens in Gales Ferry. Everyone knows that.

  Flash…

  Movement at the far end of the street caught his attention. He stepped closer to the window, his eyes narrowing. Figures were slipping out of the shadows in front of the library, a few here and there, then a half dozen more.

  Wait…were they…no, they can't be…

  He held up
a hand to shield his eyes from the light, squinting against the glare.

  Yep, they certainly were. Naked as the day they were born! What the heck? And what was with that weird blue paint they smeared all over their skin…?

  One of the figures stepped beneath the light of a streetlamp just as it came one, giving him a momentary glimpse of long fingers tipped with claws, large dark eyes, and a mouth filled with shark-like triangular teeth before it quickly jumped out of the glow of the illumination above.

  What the fuck?

  What the hell were these things?

  As if it had heard his very thoughts, one of the figures chose that moment to look up, its penetrating gaze shifting about and then seeming to find his own.

  He stumbled back from the window, convinced he'd been seen.

  Flash…

  He fumbled with the keys to the gun cabinet, his fingers thick and heavy. Behind him came the sound of glass breaking and then, right on its heels, the shouts and screams of his fellow officers as the things from the street were suddenly right there in the station with them. He shut them out, focusing on making his fingers work, fighting to get them to grab the Benelli out of the cabinet, jam some shells into the magazine tube, and rack the slide.

  He fired a few quick shots in the direction of the melee, too scared to take the time to aim, and then pounded up the stairs, unaware that he was screaming all the way. He made it to the far windows and considered throwing himself right through them, anything to get away from the frenzy happening on the floor below.

  And then it was over.

  From behind him, a cold iciness spread across his body, so black and complete his mind froze with it. The creatures fell upon him, tearing his clothes to get at his naked flesh while he lay there frozen, feeling every gnaw and tear but unable to scream, unable to fight. Eaten alive, and aware of every moment—

  5

  Cade fell onto his back and could not breathe. In a half-second he realized this was because the full weight of Riley was astride his chest.

  “I got you, boss,” Riley said calmly. “It’s all good, you’re back.”

  Cade let his arms fall, realizing only then that he’d been buffeting his XO with crazed fists. He nodded, and Riley climbed off him.

  Cade sat up and quickly pulled on his glove before wiping a slick of sweat from his forehead. Revulsion knitted the skin on his arm into unseen crepe, the same sensation most people feel upon discovering a roach on the bedroom wall.

  “What was it?” Duncan asked.

  Cade inhaled to give his answer but their earpieces crackled. “Boss, this is Moro. You should see what we got here. We’re at the high school. Over.”

  “Copy,” Cade said. “We’re on our way. And Moro, if you see any unfriendlies…”

  He paused unsure how much information to convey.

  “Sir?”

  Cade touched his mic. “Don’t let them touch you.”

  6

  Cade and his team double-timed it to the high school, no longer focused on stealth. They ran straight through the town streets, keeping in a tight formation in the middle of the road on his command; if anything was going to come at them, he wanted to see them coming with as much warning as possible.

  One of Moro’s men stood waiting for them on the red brick steps leading into the small central building of the high school complex. He nodded to Cade and opened the door. The knight commander marched inside, flanked by Duncan and Riley.

  Moro stood tall in the center of his team, with several of the men kneeling and looking at the floor. As Cade approached, he saw why: They were staring into a gaping hole.

  The lobby of the school was tastefully decorated in a semi-Colonial manner, showing off the town’s wealth and stature. The furniture was in what appeared to be its rightful place, and other than the hole, nothing seemed amiss in the room.

  “We tried the three nearest churches, found nothing,” Moro reported. “Then we came here and saw this.”

  Cade flashed a red-lens flashlight into the darkness. “Anyone go down there yet?”

  “No, sir. Wanted orders first.”

  Cade glanced around at the floor surrounding the hole. Men knelt or stood on dust and chunks of wood and tile.

  “Looks like this was made from something coming up from underneath,” Cade said.

  “That was my take as well, sir.”

  Cade gave the room another once-over, then turned to face Moro again. “Okay. We’re going to take thirty minutes, squads of two, do a house-to-house sweep starting from the northwest corner of the street. Stay in contact, report anything out of the ordinary. If you find any more holes, stay out of them for now.”

  The men nodded. Cade made eye contact with each of his soldiers in turn.

  “We’re dealing with ghouls.”

  He paused, and as he’d suspected, most of the men either remained expressionless or else wore questioning looks. Only Moro, Riley, and Duncan gave any indication of knowing what the Commander’s announcement meant.

  “They’re flesh eaters,” Cade went on. “Ghouls are hunters and serve only themselves. They’re created by arcane magicks and unleashed like a weaponized virus, with no manner of controlling them once they’ve been released.”

  The men shifted in their positions as the gravity of the situation took hold.

  “It’s why most of the opposition don’t mess around with them,” the commander said. “They’re too unpredictable. Whoever set these things loose, they were either insane or set on creating maximum casualties. Maybe both. In any event, the creator is likely nowhere in the vicinity, if he’s smart. It would be like dropping a few metric tons of plague on a town and sticking around to see who gets sick first. It would be suicide. So the first order of business is to see if we have any survivors. Then we attack the nest.”

  “Nest, sir?” Olsen asked.

  Cade nodded. “It’ll be someplace cool and damp. Like a tomb. We know the local graveyard doesn’t house catacombs, so the next best bet is something underground. We’ll take a look, but first we hit those houses, get an idea if anyone’s left.”

  “Are you expecting any survivors, Commander?” Kirkland asked. The team joker’s face was stoic and humorless. Laughter had its place, and this was not it.

  “No. That’s why we’re not searching the whole town, not yet. This is a cursory check, just to check it off the list. Then we rendezvous back here and drop down into that hole.”

  The men offered their affirmatives.

  “One more thing,” Cade said as everyone stood and got their gear. “Cover up. Ghouls paralyze by touch. And I mean any touch. They so much as graze your skin with a claw, you’re gonna drop and stay dropped till they’re done eating you. Understood?”

  More affirmatives sounded, but with less enthusiasm.

  “Buddy up,” Cade ordered. “Riley, you’re with me. Thirty minutes, gentlemen.”

  The squad marched out of the school and broke into teams of two, headed for the northwest corner of the adjacent street. With cool efficiency, each two-man team began entering the houses along each side of the road.

  “Ghouls, huh?” Riley said to his boss as they approached a small two-story home with weatherproof white siding. The bigger man shuddered. “That’s some not-okay shit right there.”

  “Agreed.”

  They climbed the porch, weapons raised.

  “How many you reckon?” Riley said.

  “Hard to say. More than us.”

  “Call for backup?”

  “You heard Johannson, everyone’s spoken for at the moment,” Cade said as they took positions on either side of the front door. “And we’re still down a few hundred after the Council attacks. We’re on our own right now.”

  Riley nodded. Cade counted down from three, and then kicked the door open.

  The two Templars scanned the foyer. Empty. Cade took point, leading the way into the house, this time with his night vision scope engaged. The door opened to a lovely room, with pegge
d hardwood floors and a fireplace set into the right wall. A classically designed kitchen with all the modern features lay off to the left, followed by a dining area staged with antique wood and pewter decoratives.

  “Is that ham I smell?” Riley asked, only half-joking.

  As they moved slowly into the interior of the house, Cade silently agreed: the odor of a cooked honey ham lingered. Approaching the dining area, it was easy to see why: food still sat on two plates, only half-eaten. Glasses sat with water still in them, and a quarter stick of butter sat softly on a porcelain dish.

  “Boss,” Riley said from Cade’s right.

  Cade turned. Riley had his weapon trained on a hole in the floor in the next room, a living area decorated with more antiques as well as a massive flat screen television. Planks of the floor lay strewn about, smashed to bits.

  He stepped to the hole and peered down with his scope. The ghouls had dug up under the floor in an area devoid of pipes. They’d torn through the concrete foundation. Cade saw the thick concrete slab like a sedimentary layer beneath the flooring.

  The strength it would take to do that, Cade thought. The single-minded determination.

  “Why not just bust in the door?” Riley whispered, giving voice to Cade’s own next thought.

  “It’s like they wanted to surprise the vics as best they could, keep the attack quiet until everyone behind closed doors was taken out,” Cade said. “They were definitely visible in the streets at some point, because the cop saw them. I think by then most of the town was already taken out.”

  “That’s not how ghouls operate,” Riley said. “With that kind of forethought.”

  “Nope.” Cade flipped his scope up, so Riley followed suit. “We gotta call this in. Get the boys back, I know what they’re going to report. Let’s meet back at the school.”

  “Yessir.”

  Cade sat down at the dining table and moved some dishes out of the way with the vague sense of disturbing a grave. The house, the whole town, felt like a new Roanoke, a mass disappearance. Except the Templars had solved the Roanoke mystery in a not-bloodless mission ages ago, and its solution hadn’t been organized ghouls.