Suddenly they heard growls made by mangled vocal chords as three ghouls leapt from a second story roof. Amber had time to fire her shotgun at one and rolled off to one side. Ghost held his hands one on top of the other. The area above them blurred in a roughly sword-like shape and he cut through the other two ghouls with it. The human body is a strange thing. Twinges and headaches happen seemingly at random. Moments of dizziness, pulled muscles and aching lower backs. Ghost’s sword affected those realities and pulled them into existence. The ghouls' bodies went into spasm; as they hit the ground, ankles twisted and broke, spines were wrenched and their heads struck the ground which such force that their necks shattered. Amber reloaded and fired her shotgun into each of the bodies. You couldn’t be too careful when it came to ghouls.
They looked around, half expecting another attack.
Silence.
There comes a point when you realise that continuing to wait is useless.
Together they started to walk again. The reached the pathway they’d come through earlier. The Assembly Hall to their right was remarkably big. Ghost paused, reached into his longcoat and pulled out his own shotgun. As they walked through the pathway he blurred slightly, randomly aiming in various directions. Nothing stirred. Eventually they crossed the courtyard and reached the gates.
As they closed the gate behind them, they felt a degree of safety. Ghouls were like animals, they stayed in their own territory. Once you left it, they might snarl at you and but they wouldn’t follow; probably.
Where to park the car had been a difficult choice. Had they parked in the school car park they would now be in the van and away. But it would have meant leaving their only vehicle venerable while they were exploring. So now they walked and headed away from the school.
There were a lot of different strategies on the best way to travel through dangerous areas. Some people maintained that stealth was the best solution, others preferred to travel as fast as possible. In this case, Ghost and Amber agreed that the best way was calmly and confidently. People talked about predator and prey, but the truth was more complicated than that. Only the predators at the very top of the food chain were really predators. Everyone else was someone else's predator or someone else's prey. Each choice you made about who was going to be your next “victim” had to be made with the awareness of the possible repercussions to you. Get hurt too badly by an “easy” target and you dropped down the ladder, becoming potential prey; and some predators sneaky enough to wait for those opportunities to get revenge for past injuries. So, basically, it doesn’t matter how high you are on the food chain if you are only passing through, as long as you look confident enough to make the predators take enough pause for you to pass by.
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