“Yep. And bibles and hymnals and probably reams of paper we can staple on the walls for Charlotte.”
“What are we going to sleep on, Mister R?”
“I found a bunch of aluminium army cots and wool blankets back in the utility building,” I answered. “You’ll sleep like a rock on one of those. Probably your back won’t be happy about it but hey, this place ain’t the Hilton.”
Sparks glanced at her watch and exhaled heavily. “Fair enough. Let’s get this place set up for tonight, then later we can think about what we’re going to be eating for supper tonight.”
***
Sparks sat next to me as we watched the flickering bank of CCTV monitors and I was surprised as hell to see that not only had Barbie Ross invested in security cameras, but the cameras themselves were infra-red. Each screen was lit up with a haunting green glow that cast long shadows across the floor of the administration building. Charlotte was sound asleep on a cot not more than fifteen feet away from us and Sparks yawned and stretched as she glanced at her own cot. She was about ready to rack out for a few hours. She’d been running straight out for nearly two days.
“I’ll take the first sentry shift,” she said through a deep yawn. She rubbed her eyes and stretched one more time. “Don’t worry. I won’t start shooting until I kick you in the ribs to get up first.”
I snorted. “I’m a grim reaper. I don’t technically need sleep, but my host does. You look like you’re about to do a face plant on the floor from exhaustion, Sparks. It makes you entirely unattractive to me. You should know that.”
She punched me good and hard in the left arm. Her trademark move. “What did I tell you about gawking at me, Reaper? I’ll admit that your … host isn’t half bad looking for a white guy. But you, great death spirit, been inside me and not in a sexual way. And I think sometimes you left a few bits of yourself behind after that last host burned to a crisp at the bunker.”
I threw her a lazy grin. “And what kinds of bits are we talking about? My immense taste for booze, women, smokes, pizza, fisticuffs and mindless heroism?”
She shook her head. “I used to crave chocolate and lattes at Starbucks. Now I have nicotine cravings and I don’t smoke. I want shitty whisky and I’m a wine girl, plus, I just want to punch people in the face a lot more nowadays than I used to.”
I slapped Sparks on the shoulder. “See? You’re coming along nicely, Sparks. You’re starting to realize that everyone is an asshole who deserves a good fist in the mush. Want a smoke?” I shook my package of Player’s shit ends for dramatic effect.
Sparks made a sour face. “Not on your life, buddy. That stuff will kill you.”
I glanced at the CCTV screens and noticed movement from the screen labelled “lake”.
“Movement on the screen from the lake,” I said easily. “Probably a deer or something. There are lots of deer in these woods. Get some kip, Sparks. I’ll give you a shake in a couple of hours.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Carol. We three have been through hell the last couple of days. Get some rest and I’ll give you a shake in a couple of hours.”
Sparks reluctantly headed to her cot as I poured a cup of instant java from a large vacuum bottle we’d scrounged in the mess hall. It was bitter and tasted like a cross between dishwater and the sludge that forms in the bottom of a coffee pot if you let it sit on the burner too long. I’d managed to strip down my guns and clean them while keeping a close eye on the bank of CCTV monitors. I figured that Sparks and the kid probably had been sleeping for about three hours when a flash movement from the lake caught my eye.
I leaned into the monitor to see if I could make anything out when a face filled the screen. It was there for a split second and then it was gone but in that time I managed to make out that it had burning red coals for a pair of eyes and enormous steak-knife edged incisors protruding from a set of blackened gums set in a mouth that was large enough to swallow a basketball.
There was another flash of movement on the camera marked Girl’s Dorm
“Shit,” I muttered as I hastily reassembled my guns and reloaded my four empty mags. (Because Sparks had been kind enough to bring along ten boxes of nine-millimetre ammo. She’s good that way.)
The sound of shattering glass cut through the silence of the night like a car smashing into a power pole and Sparks was out of her cot covering Charlotte in a firing position aimed straight at the door. The little girl stirred a couple of times and kept on sleeping. She wouldn’t be sleeping for very much longer. Flashes of movement came from all the screens now; split-second views of what was coming for us. I didn’t need another close-up of what was out there because I’d run into only one of them before and that time, I nearly lost my host. It was what led me that fateful early morning into Dave Exner’s Brisk Mart.
Ghouls.
16
It made perfect sense for ghouls to be coming after Charlotte. Protective wards have very little effect on the monsters because of their hunger for human flesh trumps any pain or injury they might sustain by stepping on a magical landmine. Some people believe that ghouls are a kind of evil, man-eating Djinn. I was never one to cling to the notion that ghouls are just flesh-eating genies gone bad because the one time I duked it out with a ghoul, there was nothing magic about the creature. It was a spindly, shape-shifting monster that could twist its torso a full 360 degrees all the while conducting a melee attack with razor sharp claws that could easily slice and dice the Hulk.
In truth, ghouls are just a subspecies of demon that has resided in the human world since the very beginning. As carrion scavengers, they will do anything to get access to decaying flesh and it doesn’t always have to be human. Ever hear about cattle mutilation in the news? The default position of the media is that it’s always poachers and the hot gospellers always say it’s devil worship. They’re both wrong. Mutilated livestock is a ghoul’s calling card, but humanity doesn’t want to consider it. The greasy monsters will do anything for the promise of a big fleshy payday. You want some enemies eradicated? Want ‘em literally scoured from the surface of the earth? Get yourself in contact with some ghouls and offer them access to a dozen head of live cattle or horses or sheep and you’ll have a company’s worth of savage killing machines at your disposal.
I raced to the door and peered out through the blind. I counted six ghouls outside scrambling around trying to pick up Charlotte’s scent. Each was hunched over like Gollum. Each was partially clad in human clothing; three with torn shirts and nothing else, three with ripped up trousers and no shoes and one who was completely naked. Not that ghouls have boy or girl parts to hide. I spotted multiple creatures in the trees; branches shook as more and more of the monsters appeared bathed in moonlight.
“Sparks, we’ve got company!” I said, trying not to sound like was seriously contemplating crapping in my pants. “And they’re not human.”
She scrambled out of her cot, her Glock at the ready. She lifted the blind with the barrel of her gun and gazed out into the darkness. I spotted more flashes of movement when a ghoul suddenly appeared at the window. Sparks reacted with immediate effect. She fired two rounds into the creature and it dropped like a sack of wet laundry.
“What the hell did I just shoot, Reaper?” she choked as another ghoul swung its body in through the broken window. I fired a round from my Beretta that took the top of the creature’s head off. It fell to the floor and twitched a few times.
“Ghouls,” I barked as Charlotte raced up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “They’re huge assholes!”
She fired another three rounds and shouted, “Anything else I need to know about them?”
I fired a round straight into the face of another ghoul as it dove at the window. “Yeah, they’re savage and they’ll show us no mercy. We have to kill every last one of them because they won’t stop!”
I counted another dozen or more ghouls emerge from the tree line. Each was wearing a tanned overcoat with a hood folded
back behind their heads. I looked closer to see that hoods were tanned human faces still attached to the skin of their entire upper bodies. One of the ghouls pulled a hood over its head and it looked like a human grotesquery; an overcoat made of human flesh. A hood made from a human face; the hair all brittle and grey. The ghoul motioned for a group of monsters to follow and they immediately went for the broken window. Behind me, I could hear ghouls pounding on the locked metal door. I didn’t know how long it would hold until they broke through.
Sparks emptied her gun at the infantry squad-sized cluster of ghouls who raced at the window. I joined in; each of the bullets from our guns tore into the monsters ripping large chunks of flesh from their bodies. To our horror, a trio of ghouls immediately threw themselves at the freshly dead bodies of the ghoul’s Sparks and I had just ended and started ripping handfuls of bright red meat from the dead ghoul’s bodies. They stuffed their faces; gore and bits of flesh fell from their chins and onto their bellies.
“Maybe if we hit enough of them the rest will want to dine out!” Sparks shouted.
I fired off another quick round that hit a ghoul in the chest with enough force that it spun around like a top.
I could feel Charlotte trembling against my waist. “There’s so many of them, Mister R!” she cried out.
Behind us, the sound of smashing glass. I pivoted and fired a pair of rounds into the throat of a ghoul that was no more than three feet away from Charlotte. She screamed as it clawed at its neck; blood poured from its mouth and dripped onto the floor. It fell back, still clawing and scratching at its throat and a fired another round that split its head wide open like a melon.
“Keep your eyes closed tight, kid,” I ordered as I snatched Charlotte under one arm and fired a round at a ghoul that was just about to dig into Sparks. “We need to move, Sparks!”
She blasted away at another pair of the monsters as they crashed through the roof of the administration building. They fell hard onto the top of a desk; one on top of the other. Sparks fired two more rounds straight into their heads and the creatures stopped twitching.
“What are those things?” Charlotte cried out.
“More bad guys, kid,” I grumbled as I cracked open the front door and peered out into the darkness. The grounds surrounding the dorms and the mess hall were swarming with ghouls; each one as lethal as the next. Sparks’ SUV wasn’t more than fifty feet away from where I was standing. We’d have to shoot our way to her vehicle and drive like hell out of the camp because there were now too many ghouls scrambling around to count.
Sparks glanced through the crack in the door. “We’re going to have to fight our way out of here, Reaper,” she said grimly. “Unless you can do something like you did at the beach.”
I threw her a pained look. “Might be worth a try. Maybe. There’s so damned many of them – I counted at least forty not including the ones that we shot.”
“Don’t go out there, Mister R,” Charlotte said with a sharp edge of panic to her voice.
“We don’t have a hell of a lot of options here, kid,” I muttered as I let her down. “We can try to shoot our way to Sparks’ car but there’s no guarantee we’ll make it. Ghouls are lightning quick.”
She threw her arms against my waist and sobbed. “I don’t want you to die, Mister R. Too many people have died because of me.”
If I’d been sitting on the fence about stepping outside into the night and facing the creatures, that last statement from Charlotte made the decision to risk everything easy. I grabbed her by the waist and placed Charlotte in front of me as I knelt and looked her straight in the eye. “I won’t die, Charlotte. This body might, but I won’t die. I’m like Doctor Who. Do you ever watch that show on TV?”
She blinked. “You mean the one about that crazy scientist in the blue box?”
I nodded. “That’s the one. See, he’s a Time Lord. An alien species, right? And whenever a Time Lord’s body gets too damaged they regenerate into a new and healthy body. You know that I’m not entirely human, kid. If those ghouls destroy this body, I always come back with a new body. That’s how it works with me.”
Sparks fired a round through the crack in the door. “They’re circling, Reaper. We need to make our move ASAP or we’re all dead.”
Charlotte’s eyes were filled with tears and I felt my throat tighten a little bit. I knew that when I stepped out that door, there was about a 95% chance that Scott Richter’s body would wind up as a buffet item for the ghouls. And there was also the matter of their being demons with their own dark power that rivalled that of angels or even higher placed demons like Abraxas. There was a real risk the creatures could destroy the ancient power that fueled my existence. I’d barely survived a battle with the angel Sariel. Ghouls weren’t angels, but they were still supernatural beings. I could possibly wind up erased entirely.
“I’m going out there, Charlotte,” I said, placing both hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to run like hell to the wood line and draw as many of those ghouls away from you. As soon as Sparks sees that it’s clear, I want you guys to make a break for her SUV and drive like hell out of here. If my essence isn’t destroyed, I’ll find you both. I promise.”
“Don’t go!” Charlotte pleaded as she hugged me tightly. I pulled the little girl close and whispered in her ear.
“I got this, Charlotte.”
Sparks leaned over and picked the girl up. Charlotte cried into the detective’s shoulder as I quickly checked to see that all my remaining magazines of nine millimeter were full.
“I’d better see you again, Reaper,” said Sparks as she stepped back from the door. I grabbed the handle and gave it a sharp turn.
“Great, now she chooses the moment to tell me that she’s fallen in love with me,” I griped. Sparks rolled her eyes.
And so, I went outside. The last thing I heard as I closed the door behind me was the sound of Charlotte sobbing.
17
I immediately began blasting the moment I set foot outside of the administration building. I had ten mags in my pockets and one in each of my Berettas. One hundred and eighty bullets in total. There had to be more than forty ghouls lining up to face me at the edge of the tree line. If I were able to understand mathematics as well as Charlotte, I’d calculate the probability of killing enough for Sparks and Charlotte to make a getaway before the creatures finally ripped me into bloody, pulpy ribbons.
Five of the monsters leapt into the air; their razor-sharp claws ready to tear into me. I blasted each of them and they fell out of the air landing hard on the ground no more than ten feet away from me. I stood with my feet digging into the slightly frost-covered grass and kept on firing. Ghoul after ghoul fell as each nine-millimetre parabellum round tore into their slick grey bodies. A lifeless grey. They’re called ghouls for a reason.
A sharp pain thrashed across my back and I spun around to fire a trio of rounds into the face of a ghoul with blood dripping from its six-inch claws. At its feet were strips of leather from my new trench coat.
I glanced down to see a small pool of blood forming between my feet and I could feel the warm trickle of blood running down the back of each leg. I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach as another ghoul took a bite out of my right forearm. I roared in pain as I pivoted and threw a round into its neck. The ghoul fell backwards, clawing chunks of its own meat from its neck.
I was certain I wouldn’t survive a third attack. I figured my odds of surviving were about the same as my surviving a lethal injection in an Arkansas prison. Scott Richter’s flesh would be a happy hour special and I’d become an intangible mass of spectral energy in search of a new host. This was the biggest crap shoot I’d ever taken, so I decided that I would take as many of these fuckers down with me to save Charlotte. Maybe I could buy them enough time.
“Please, God,” I whispered, speaking to the Supreme Being for the first time in my existence. “Please … Lord, save that little girl. Please.”
I fell onto the ground and dug my fin
gers into the partially frozen turf. I reached out, grating my teeth together in hope of latching onto the living energy that could heal me and save Scott Richter’s body to keep on fighting.
Except there was nothing.
I felt no familiar earthly pulse from which to draw upon. The ground was cold, still, lifeless. And then I realized why. It was late autumn— well past the first frost. The land was asleep and would remain dormant until spring.
A pair of ghouls tore into me and I blasted one in the mouth taking off most of the right side of its face. The claws from the second ghoul wrapped around my neck like a clammy wet towel. I fired wildly but I couldn’t see as blood was dripping into my eyes from a deep gash on my forehead.
“You’ll be my snack,” the monster hissed. Its face was less than an inch away from mine and I thought for certain it was going to start with my head. “Then I will take that little girl.”
“Leave her alone!” I spat. I saw enough to see a huge gob of spit mixed with blood hit the ghoul in the eye.
The ghoul swiped the claws of its right paw across my face and I screamed. It felt like someone had poured battery acid through the gashes. I was just about to pass out from loss of blood when behind me came an almighty explosion of force. I could see splinters of wood and ghoul body parts flying through the air. The one on top of me looked up and I managed to get the barrel of my Beretta underneath its pointed chin. I squeezed the trigger and its head snapped back. Dead weight fell on me as I struggled to get out from underneath the now deceased carrion-eating piece of shit that had just shredded my face.
The air filled with the sound of gunshots as I struggled to get back to my feet. I caught a glimpse of Sparks blasting away at the ghouls and if I thought that I was a good shot, I had absolutely nothing on Carol Sparks. Round after round tore into one ghoul after another as Sparks took up a defensive stance in front of me. Beside her was Charlotte; her hands glowing with emerald energy. The little girl raised both hands overhead and shouted something in a language older than that of reapers. A wall of flame shot up from the ground lighting up the darkness.
The Girl On Victoria Road: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 15