Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  Later, I swore to myself that I would spend more time in the gym with Dread learning kung fu moves or whatever it is they all did, once this was over. But right then, in that moment, what I really did was jump back and away from the ghoul as it charged, flattening myself against the wall in an attempt to get as far away from it as possible.

  Everybody else did more or less the same thing. People either ran down the hallway away from the ghoul or made a break for their apartment’s door if that was nearby; the problem was, the ghoul had a head start and easily outpaced all of us. In a heartbeat, it leapt into the midst of our little group and tackled the lady who lived across the hallway from me.

  It dragged her down the ground right in front of me, pinning her beneath its weight. That’s when my will to act seemed to re-boot itself; as the ghoul raised its talons to rip into the back of her neck, I jumped in and grabbed its arm before it could strike.

  I didn’t have much of a plan past that. Everyone was running for their lives away from the madness that had suddenly erupted in the middle of their lives, except Donald, who stood there with his eyes wide and staring at the whole thing as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Donald!” I screamed, a little more high-pitched than I’d like to admit. “Donald! Grab its other arm!”

  The ghoul twisted in my grasp, pushing itself off the neighbor lady and turning to face me squarely. The arm that I had a grip on thrashed and squirmed like a giant boa constrictor; I’d forgotten how damn strong these things were. I was barely able to hang on to just the one arm, and now, as the ghoul turned, its other arm was coming around to rip me open from stem to stern.

  Right about then, I felt pretty stupid for trying to step in and be a hero. But as I cringed in anticipation of those claws ripping open some important part of my anatomy, Donald stepped in and grabbed the ghoul’s free arm.

  “What do I do?” he screamed at me. “What do I do?”

  “Hang on to it! Don’t let go!” I shouted back.

  “He’s so strong! Is he on drugs?”

  “It’s not a he, it’s…” I started to say, then gave up on the idea of presenting a detailed explanation of the situation. “Just… just hang on and push it down to the ground!”

  The neighbor lady had gotten out from under the tangle of wrestling bodies, skittering backwards on her hands and feet. I think she was so freaked out, she didn’t even think to get back up to her feet. She kept crawling backwards and away as Donald and I tried to get control of the ghoul who’d almost killed her.

  The ghoul thrashed in our arms like a bucking bronco, and the whole time, we had to not only hang on to its arms to control it, but also avoid the sharp talons waving around at the end of those steely limbs. A weird part of my mind made me think of a few weeks back, when I’d still been staying at Mickey’s place until I could find an apartment of my own.

  She’d asked me to help her get one of her cats into a travel case so that she could take it to the vet. I’d thought at the time that it was strange that she should need my help… I mean, a little kitty cat? Just stick it in the box. No big deal, right?

  Except for the fact that if you’ve ever owned a cat, you know it’s not that simple. They’ll fight you with the desperate strength of a life and death struggle, and the entire time you’re fighting to control their stupid little bodies, you’re also trying to avoid being shredded by its claws and teeth.

  Struggling with this ghoul was like that, except that in life, it had probably been a one hundred and eighty pound man, not a little itty-bitty kitty cat. Donald and I found ourselves in a bizarre dance of trying to wrestle the damn thing to the ground without getting ripped to shreds in the process.

  Finally, though, we managed to force it face down to the floor. The entire time, it continued to thrash and twist and snarl at us.

  “Get your knee on its back!” I said. “Get your weight on it!”

  We both got our knees jammed on top of the struggling ghoul, forcing it down with our combined weight. Finally, I was able to get a look up and around the hallway to try to figure what the hell I was going to do now that we were basically riding the back of a tiger with no way off.

  Donald’s wife was peeking out from their apartment, watching the show through about two inches of open doorway. I had to call out to her three times before she finally opened the door enough to poke her head out.

  “Quick! Get a gun!” I said.

  “We don’t have a gun!” she said.

  “Get anything! Any kind of weapon! But hurry!”

  “What are we going to do?” Donald said.

  I found that an utterly stupid question, but I guess you have to take it from Donald’s perspective. He didn’t know how to tell a ghoul from a regular human being, and my bet is, at that point, he thought we were simply wrestling with a crazy person.

  Before I could try to explain anything to him, his wife came back out into the hallway, holding a tennis racket in one hand and a claw hammer in the other. She held them up to me as if asking me which outfit she should wear.

  “The hammer!” I said. “The hammer! Hit it!”

  “What?” she said. “I’m not going to hit him!”

  I could feel the ghoul starting to work its way out of my grip. There’s only so long that you can fight something big and strong and squirming before your hands get too tired and give out, and this damn thing was about to twist itself out of my grasp.

  “Hit it!” I said again.

  “No!” she said. “That’s murder!”

  “It’s not…” I started to say, then gave up. “Here… give it to me!”

  I guess her moral center didn’t extend to letting other people do her dirty work, because she handed over the hammer without any more debate. She did it at full extended arm’s length, as if she thought that Don and the ghoul and I were all on fire and she didn’t want to get burned.

  “What are you going to…” Donald said, and I interrupted him by smacking the ghoul in the back of the head with the hammer.

  The ghoul flopped once and some of the fight went out of it, which was good, because Don immediately let go of it and shrank away from me. He said something like “Jesus!” as he retreated towards his wife; I’m not really sure, because I was busy whacking that damn ghoul with the hammer as fast and as hard as I could.

  I must’ve really gotten into it, because by the time I was done, I was out of breath and the ghoul’s head was… well, it was real mess, there’s no other way to put it. Only after I was sure that the goddamn thing was going to stay down did I finally relent, panting, looking around the hallway to discover all my neighbors were staring in horror through the cracked open doorways of their apartments, flashlight beams playing over me and the body of the dead ghoul.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, everybody,” I said. “I’m with the FBI.”

  Donald’s wife peeked around his shoulders. “You’re an FBI agent?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yes. Yes I am.”

  Okay, technically, that wasn’t true. While I had been deputized under federal jurisdiction, I wasn’t an actual FBI agent. After all, I was a convicted felon. Sure, they’d ended my sentence early, and really, what I got locked up for in the first place was total bullshit anyway, but they don’t hand out badges to former felons.

  Mickey and Shifty didn’t have any criminal record, so they were more official-type agents, but the rest of us were more like deputized consultants who probably did more stuff than we were supposed to do, from a legal perspective, that is. But if there was a ghoul running around, that meant something had gone seriously sideways in the world and I needed these people to listen to me if I was going to prevent a disaster.

  “You killed that man!” one of my neighbors said through their barely-opened door.

  “No, no, that wasn’t a man,” I said. “Not anymore. That was a ghoul.”

  “What, like a ghoul ghoul?” Donald’s wife said. “That’s not even… they’re not even a real thing.”
r />   “Yes, they are, Lydia,” the first neighbor said. “Don’t you remember that crazy thing that happened at the prison? The news said that was done by ghouls. Some death mage went nuts and turned a bunch of people into ghouls.”

  “And you believe them?” Lydia said. “You would, Patty, you’d believe anything you read on your stupid phone.”

  And just like that, the dead ghoul pinned under my knees in the hallway seemed to be forgotten, and Donald’s wife Lydia and her nemesis across the hallway, Patty, started laying into each other with insults over long-simmering feuds and debates of the past.

  “People! People!” I shouted. “Everyone just… listen to me for a second, okay?”

  To my surprise, they actually did. There was a second or two in which I was mostly surprised that everyone was paying attention to me, actually looking to me for answers, and I that’s when I realized… I didn’t have any.

  I’m not a leader. I never have been. Truth be told, I never much liked leaders. Nobody should go around telling other people what to do. It’s arrogant. I always went my own way, did my own thing, and expected the same from others.

  But now, I could see that a little leadership was exactly what the situation demanded. Trouble was obviously afoot; serious trouble, the kind you’d better not try to take on solo if you expected to survive.

  Cass was always going on and on about teamwork and how a team is always stronger than even the strongest individual, and mostly I tuned her out, but now all that talk was really making sense. If Donald hadn’t helped me out with that ghoul, I’d have been done for.

  So. Teamwork. My neighbors and I needed to stick together if we were going to get through this. The problem was, like I just mentioned, a lifetime of going my own way had left me with zero leadership skills.

  Sometimes, when you’re completely out of your depth, you can think of someone who would be a good fit for the situation, and try to channel acting exactly like them in order to muddle your way through. Cass always seemed to know the right thing to say or do when the shit hit the fan, so I tried to channel her and think of what she would say at a time like this.

  “Okay, for starters,” I said, mostly to be saying something, “this wasn’t a man.”

  They were really staring at me sideways, and I realized that I was talking to them while kneeling on top of a mangled corpse and gesturing dramatically with a gory, blood-soaked claw hammer.

  I really was shit at this.

  I struggled off of the corpse and did my best to keep the hammer out of sight behind my leg before I continued.

  “This was a ghoul. Take a look at the claws on his hands. There was blood all over him before he ran at us. He’d already been killed, and brought back by death magic.”

  “How do you know?” Donald asked.

  “Because. I’ve seen it before. At the prison.”

  “I told you, Lydia,” Patty said from her doorway.

  “Screw you, Patty,” Lydia shot back, and I had to yell to keep things from derailing immediately.

  “Hey! Knock it off! Now listen. Yes, I was at the incident at the prison a few months back, and there were lots of ghouls…”

  “Wait,” Lydia interrupted me. “Why were you in prison if you’re with the FBI?”

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “That’s a really good question. I’m glad you asked that question.”

  Fucking Lydia. I’d been on a roll there, and now she had me stalling, my mind whirling for a quick explanation that would get these people on my side. Ghouls don’t travel solo, and if one had made its way into our building, more trouble was bound to be coming. These folks needed to get on board with the Jolly Program immediately or things would go to hell in a handbasket in no time flat.

  “I was… all right. None of you are supposed to know this, because, you know, you don’t have, uh, the proper clearance and all that. I was in prison… because… I was undercover.”

  They all started to nod and nudge each other, as if to say see, I told you so, and I started to nod along with them.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So listen up, because I learned a lot of shit in the joint that you all have no idea even exists, you got me?”

  That didn’t seem to go over as well.

  “Look, ghouls don’t just happen all by themselves, you know? If there’s one running around, there’s probably a lot of bad ju-ju going on around here. Power’s out, cell phones are out, so I can’t call my people for back-up.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We rescue ourselves,” I said, fully aware that I was now straight-up borrowing directly from the Cass Wheeler Playbook.

  “What does that mean?” Donald asked.

  “We’re going to work together, and protect ourselves from whatever comes after us,” I said. “All of us. I don’t want to hear any more arguing amongst ourselves… I’m looking at you, Patty and Lydia. We’ve got to be a team.”

  “Yeah, but how are we supposed to fight… that?” my neighbor from across the hall said, pointing at the ghoul.

  “Does anybody have any guns?”

  Nobody said anything. Unbelievable. It was probably the first time in history ten Americans were gathered in one place and not one of them owned a gun.

  I sighed. “Fine. Fine. We’ll do this like we did in the joint. Get… anything that looks like a weapon. Kitchen knives. Hammers like this one. And duct tape. And phone books.”

  “Phone books?” somebody said. “Who has a phone book these days?”

  “Regular books, then,” I said. “Magazines. Even thick newspapers.”

  It may sound like I was talking crazy, but these are the basic ingredients if you want to bootstrap an army in prison. You don’t have access to proper weapons or body armor, so you make it out of whatever you can.

  You’d be shocked at how much a phone book can protect you. They’re nearly impossible to stab through. Even a thick magazine will stop most everything. So you duct tape that stuff all over anyplace you want to keep from getting carved up.

  Other stuff might surprise you, too. Roll up a towel and hang it around your neck, and that will stop must cuts or stabs that would otherwise have ended you.

  So this is what I had them do. We used Donald’s apartment as our base, and everybody came in with their cutlery and tools and whatever else they could press into service as a weapon, and I showed them how to duct-tape books and magazines around their torsos and forearms and whatnot as homemade armor.

  They seemed a little hesitant, so I had to go first, strapping a coffee table book to my chest and some magazines onto my arms and soon I was practically covered in the stuff. They all still looked at me as if I was crazy.

  “Look, I know it looks stupid, but if it’s stupid and it keeps you alive, it isn’t stupid,” I said.

  That seemed to get them on board, and they all dived in, helping each other deck themselves out with my homemade armor. Right about then, Patty’s husband Robert showed up with an honest-to-God medieval sword, and as weird as things already were, I still had to ask him about it.

  “I was at a Renaissance Faire,” he said. “You know how they put the ale tent right next to the tent where they sell the weapons?”

  I’d never been to a Renaissance Faire. “No.”

  “Well, they do. And maybe I had a few too many ales, and then I ended up wandering over to the weapon tent, and I was like, wow, how do I not own a sword, you know?”

  I didn’t know, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it.

  “It was expensive, too,” he said. “Patty was furious.”

  “Well, Robert,” I said, “it looks like that sword turned out to be a wise purchase, after all. The rest of us are going to have to make do with whatever we can put together.”

  Right about then, I heard some knocking on my door from out in the hallway. Well, kicking at my door, is more like it. I stuck my head out with a flashlight and saw Lysette, carrying Mickey in her arms like a baby and thumping her foot against my d
oor.

  I felt the little thrill I always feel when I see my Hotness up close and personal, but then I became acutely aware of the ridiculous amount of reading material and duct tape I had strapped all over myself. Didn’t that figure.

  The hottest woman in the universe, who I’d been trying to get next to for the better part of four months, and she’s got to show up while I’m dressed like Mad Max came to life in the middle of a library. Life just ain’t fair.

  ***

  “Lys?”

  Lysette frowned, looking at the door she’d just kicked lightly with her foot. “Isn’t this one your apartment?”

  Jolly nodded. “Yeah, but we had to hole up over here… why are you carrying Mickey?”

  “Because I’m dying!” Mickey said, flailing her arms as dramatically as possible.

  “She’s not dying,” Lysette said. “She did take too many Oxys and is high as a kite.”

  “You’re high as a kite!” Mickey said.

  “See?”

  “Why is Mickey high on Oxy?” Jolly asked. “What the hell is going on around here?”

  “Why are you decked out like a third grade version of Sir Lancelot?”

  “It’s… you first.”

  “All right,” Lysette said, carrying Mickey into Donald’s apartment. “Kel attacked the hospital to take Oswald. She broke some of Mickey’s ribs.”

  “She broke me!” Mickey cried. “Why? Whyyyyy?”

  Lysette rolled her eyes. “Do you have something that can detox her, before I have to smother her for the sake of all of our sanity?”

  “A Detox Trick? Yeah, yeah, I can definitely do that once her ribs are fixed. She’s not going to like it, though.”

  “After being stuck in the car with her wailing for this long, I’m not exactly sympathetic,” Lysette said.