Ghost and Amber took their time. Their primary escape route was still clear and they had several others planned. If necessary, sheer firepower would get them out of here. But once they entered the buildings things would change and not for the better. Amber knew that the noise meant something was here and anything making what was fast becoming a racket was not something she wanted to meet at night.
Ghost concentrated for a moment on the door and found the reality where it had been left unlocked. He opened the door and went in, Amber followed him.
Carefully they walked down the corridor to the old Physics Classroom. The door was slightly ajar. Ghost walked in calmly, the moonlight spilled through the windows lighting the room well enough for him to see. For Amber's elven eyes it may as well be daylight. She closed the classroom door behind her and nestled into the corner, covering the room. Ghost walked slowly between the desks, running his hand absently along the scarred wood. He remembered the time Claire and Nicole had set one desk on fire and a faint smile danced across his face. And here if you looked closely you could see where David had patiently burned his name into the wood with a magnifying glass. It was strange how schools always felt slightly too small when you went back to them. He opened a few of the cupboards looking for anything of value. People didn’t use real money so much anymore. You could live your whole life and never handle a coin or a note; for most money had become digital and abstract, noughts and ones.
He turned towards the back of the class where the door to the lab technicians’ room was. As he did so he looked at the blackboard. It was one of the last blackboards. Hundreds of thousands of words and numbers had been written and rubbed out on it.
Memories were strange things. They shaped who you were; gave you strength or scars. Yet memories weren’t fixed. Sometimes you remembered things differently from the way they happened. Sometimes you didn’t know the whole story; the act you regretted may well have caused something wonderful you never knew about. For now though, Ghost was following Gideon’s advice. He was finding the place where his memories were strongest.
As Ghost moved toward the door, it sprang open. Something that had once been human jumped out and lunged at him. He blurred slightly and then wasn’t there as Amber’s shotgun fired into the creature’s back. It convulsed and then lay still. Ghost re-appeared next to Amber, choosing the reality where he’d walked back to her rather to the door. They walked over to the corpse. Amber put the shotgun to its head and pulled the trigger again.
“Ghouls,” she said simply.
If you weren’t unhinged before you became a ghoul, you certainly were afterwards. Whatever happened to a ghoul’s brain left cunning and anger but not much else. People didn’t talk about killing ghouls. You put them down. Trying to reason with them was like trying to reason with a rabid dog. The mutation they possessed transformed their muscles and tendons, making them incredibly fast and resilient. To make matters worse, their touch scrambled the synapses. It was like banging your elbow and feeling your arm go numb. A ghoul would attack you as fast as possible; the part of its brain that should register pain had atrophied away, it just wanted to keep hitting you until you couldn’t move. What they did then didn’t bear thinking about.
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