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Thursday 17 March 2011

53

Amber flinched at the stench – burning ghoul combined with the cleaning chemicals to make an acrid, sooty smoke that curled out of the broken roof.

They reloaded, keeping careful watch for any other ghouls, but all they could hear was silence.

“Do you think that’s all of them?” Amber asked hopefully.

“It’s got to be most of them, and that changes the odds back into our favour. One of them ambushing us is going to have a tough time. Their paralysis won’t effect you and these shotguns are remarkably effective against them.” Ghost replied. “Still it’s best to be cautious, there may be other groups of them elsewhere or they might be roaming around the place.”

He nodded at the far side of the roof which sloped upwards. “Let’s stay up here for a little longer. It’s a good vantage point.”

Carefully they climbed up the roof. At the top it leveled off into a long flat roof. To one side, part of the building jutted out and up. It was constructed from dark bricks in stark contrast to the pale roof It reminded Amber of a rotted broken bone protruding from flesh. She shivered. The sight of the carnage of ghouls had unsettled her. The roof split into two levels, with a window separating them. Surprisingly this window was intact and untouched.

Amber nodded at it.

Ghost nodded “Looks like they haven’t been up here.” He moved over to the window and looked through it. Below was the hall that had led the room where the bodies of the ghouls lay. There were stairs led upwards and then one side of the hall opened out into what had been the Dining Hall. He motioned to Amber. It was getting to dark for him to be able distinguish much between the shadows.

Amber looked around carefully. Although Ghost had shown her maps and drawings of what the place looked like, she lacked his familiarity with it. It looked like the ghouls had ransacked the Dining Area pretty thoroughly. Along the wall opposite, the metal lockers the students had used were dented and open, their doors hanging limply from mangled hinges. “It looks empty, but there’s a lot of wreckage that ghouls could easily be hiding in. And I can’t see the whole place from this angle either.”

Ghost looked around. The walkways and paths appeared to be empty. All the other windows he could see had been thoroughly smashed. But he couldn’t detect any signs of movement behind them, or see anything moving along the other rooftops.



Saturday 12 March 2011

52

He leveled the shotgun in line with the ghoul’s head and fired. He’d been careful to stand at an angle to the wall so the gore didn’t splatter off it and onto him. The now mostly headless body of the ghoul slumped to the ground, black ichor flowing from it like a macabre garden fountain.

Ghost headed back to the rope and started climbing. He could hear the snarls and growls of approaching ghouls. He was about halfway up the rope when they burst into the room. Amber fired twice into the lead ghouls, hitting one in the chest and one in the leg. The one with the chest wound staggered back into the ghouls behind it, who pushed it forwards and it charged again. The other collapsed to the floor howling, its blood pooling around the doorway.

Ghost fired in the general direction of the ghouls, buying himself another moment to keep climbing. He could hear Amber reloading above him. The ghouls skittered across the broken glass that slashed open their feet, focusing on their prey and oblivious to their surroundings. As the nearest one grabbed a hold of the rope, Ghost hauled himself high enough up so that Amber had a clear shot at the ghoul below him. She fired and the ghoul fell back to the floor with a crash.

“Blood, lots of blood,” Ghost said trying to reload his shotgun while holding onto the rope.

Amber fired into the pack of ghouls and reloaded. They were all trying to climb the rope at once and so for the moment were being remarkably unsuccessful. She knew that if one did get a firm beginning, they would ascend the rope with horrific speed. Ghost smashed more of the remains of the glass roof with the butt of his shotgun, sending shards raining down on the ghouls.

More ghouls had arrived, filling the room with a writhing mass of grey fury and incoherent screams. Amber fired again, well aware at this point she couldn’t hope to kill them all.

Ghost grinned and handed her his shotgun. He reached into a pocket and pulled out some vials of his home-made napalm; this had been made from the cleaning chemicals he’d borrowed from the art store and had shown a lot of promise in his tests. Time to try it for real. He threw the vials down, causing them to splatter their contents as much as possible. As a ghoul climbed up the rope as easily as if it were stairs, he dropped the last one on its head and greeted it with his lighter. As the ghoul burst into flame, Ghost booted it sharply in the head and it fell, seemingly in slow motion, into the frenzy below. Ghost pulled himself up onto the roof as a wave of fire swept through the room below. The now bloody glass-covered floor meant that the ghouls were unable to escape. As they thrashed in the flames, they fell over each other, scrambling and clawing trying to get to Ghost and Amber. Ghost cut the rope and let it fall into the fray.


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Wednesday 9 March 2011

51

Amber tilted her head. They didn’t need to kill it, though it was remarkably close to where they were going. A shotgun would make a lot of noise. They could try and creep in, but it was risky especially with all the broken glass everywhere.

Ghost paused in thought. He knew they were going to have to climb down to get to the corridor and that climbing back up wasn’t going to be something they could do in a hurry if they were being chased by ghouls. This ghoul was blocking one of the ways they could run. He reached into his pack and pulled out the length of rope. Cautiously he tied the end around a part of the roof that jutted out. He found a He tested his weight against it and began gently climbing down through the gap in the broken glass, careful to keep the rope away from the edges.

Amber laid down and aimed her shotgun at the sleeping ghoul. She had chosen a position so that she had a good field of fire covering both doors in case anyone unexpected turned up. Now came the tricky part, focusing on covering Ghost, but staying aware of her surroundings so that she’s notice if anyone tried to sneak upon her on the roof. It was so easy to get tunnel vision looking down the length of a shotgun. She concentrated on her breathing.

As Ghost reached the floor, he shifted through realities until he found the one where he could walk across the glass without disturbing it. He let that reality gently impose itself, leaving him just out of arms reach of the ghoul. He could see two choices before him, but the consequences of them stretched out father than he had the ability to perceive. He could simply shoot the ghoul with his shotgun or he could be more subtle. He dismissed using his knife. The ghoul would die, but it would take time and it’s paralyzing touch meant that he could suffer a lot of damage in that time, not to mention all the attention it would attract. No, if ghouls were going to come, he wanted to be ready for them, not lying frozen under a berkserking creature hellbent on rending him limb from limb.

He looked closely at the ghoul’s face. His night vision wasn’t nearly as good as Amber’s. The ghoul seemed to be asleep. Its breathing wasn’t quite even, a mistake many people made when they feigned sleep. And, Ghost reflected, feigning sleep wasn’t really a ghoul’s approach. He cast one last careful look around the room, thankful that Amber was there with her shotgun.



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Saturday 5 March 2011

50

“A long time ago someone came up with the idea of putting a wire mesh in the glass. It means that even if you smash the glass, the mesh pretty much keeps it there and it still stops people getting in. My guess is all that smashed glass is the ghouls’ handiwork.” He gestured at the concrete ceiling with his shotgun “be careful, the ceilings only a few feet thick and the top is open to the sky and connected to the buildings. Ghouls could be on it.”

“I can’t hear anything,” Amber replied.

“Well we’ve got an option at this point. We can climb up onto it and go across the roofs. They should still be pretty secure, especially the concrete and once we’re on them we shouldn’t be visible from the ground. Or we can go through the building. It’s a corridor into a hall and then one more long corridor,” he explained.

“I’d rather then roofs,” she replied.

He nodded. He opened the door fully so that it rested against one of the walls and slung his shotgun over his shoulder. With one hand he grabbed the top of the door and using the door handle as a makeshift step, lifted himself up onto the wall. He stayed low in a defensive crouch, trusting in the shadows to conceal him and his longcoat to break up his silhouette. Slowly, hugging the building he partially stood up and looked onto the concrete overhang, before easing himself up onto it, this time, ending up lying down on it. He unslung his shotgun and took a few moments to check the surrounding area, both below and above him.

Amber followed him and eased the door closed behind her. “So far, so good,” she said hopefully. They stayed low and made their way across to the next set of buildings, using each other silhouette to break up their own.

When they reached the next building, Amber realised that there were more glass windows above the concrete. She nudged Ghost.

“To let light in during the day. Same thing with the hall we would have gone through,” he gestured to the right and climbed up onto the roof.

Amber followed him and could now clearly see that a large section of the roof had indeed been made from glass. No-one had considered investing in wire mesh this time though and looking down through the jagged edges she could see shards of smashed glass lying forlornly on the wooden floor below her. “I’m glad we came this way,” she said.

Ghost nodded. Fighting ghouls was bad enough but having to fight surrounded by broken glass when someone could paralyse you with their touch and would happily try to drive you into the ground was not an experience he wanted. He started to move, but then stopped as he felt Amber’s warning hand on his arm. He followed her gaze, but at first could see nothing but shadows among the glass. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he was barely able to make out the feral figure of a ghoul. It appeared to be hunched up in sleep. Its dirty torn rags and grey faded skin camouflaged its form in the twilight.




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49

Amber looked over them curiously. They were the old push buttons that stayed in when you pushed them. You hardly saw them any more, not to mention the analogue dials complete with needles to show the output.

“We need to go backstage, but staying at this level, so we have quite a height advantage. I’ve no idea what’s still back there though,” he admitted.

She nodded and took the lead, listening intently. The backstage was different to the one they’d recently inherited. It seemed much more like someone had decided that the stage should be a stage as an after-thought and that it should probably have some kind of backing to it. Quite what else they had envisaged Amber wasn’t sure, unless perhaps they’d intended the stage to go back much further and then changed their minds for some reason. Even so there wasn’t much back here. A few chairs and a makeshift wooden podium, presumably intended to give the user some appearance of respect. Looking at it now, covered in a layer of dust, she didn’t think it would succeed.

Ghost paused her with a gentle touch of his hand. “Everything’s covered with dust?”

She nodded, to her elven eyes the room was as bright as day.

“Has it been disturbed anywhere?” he asked softly.

She looked around, then shook her head.

“Good, here’s the door we want,” he nodded to her right.

The lock was on the inside and opened easily. The design outdoors also seemed to have been done by the same architect. There was a set of concrete stairs running past and underneath the door, which continued up to a set of wooden doors with a considerable amount of glass that despite having been smashed repeatedly was still intact. Overhead was a concrete ceiling supported by a few random plinths. A few low brick walls and hedges added some cover to parts of the areas, but the air seemed to sweep through it more strongly than it should.

Amber looked at Ghost questioningly.

“It was built at different times. We want the wooden doors ahead of us. The hedges to the left actually hide a path to another section of the school. And behind them is yet another section. It’s not that difficult to push your way through them,” he explained. “Some of the walls and hedges were added to make the place look more aesthetic, they briefly tried planting flowers, but people kept walking over them; eventually they found it was easier just to make sure parents were never shown this part.”

“What’s with the glass?” she asked.

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48

It was empty, both of ghouls and practically everything else. Someone had decided they wanted the furniture and appliances, probably long ago. Ghost shook his head again, he doubted they’d been returned to the students who’d actually bought them. Amber carefully closed the door behind her and titled her head to one side wanting to know where next?

He led her to the back of the room. Again she listened at the door but couldn’t hear anything. He eased the door open and she peered in. It was much darker in there, and she noticed that the room was much more predominantly wood.

“They used to use the hall downstairs for plays,” he explained. “Even when they converted that part of the loft to a proper room, they still had to leave access routes so that people could set up sounds, lighting and so on. We should be able to get a good look of the hall from safely up here.”

Amber carefully led him to the back of the room, testing her footing in case the flooring had rotted over the years. It creaked a bit, but seemed firm enough for now. Dust stirred up at their passing and they were careful to take shallow breaths not wanting to sneeze. At the end the corridow opened out into a gallery. There covered with dustsheets was a control board of some kind. Peeking over it they could look down into the Assembly Hall.

“It looks empty,” Amber said softly.

“Makes sense, there’s not really much here to destroy, so ghouls would get bored quickly and go elsewhere,” he replied.

“But…?” Amber sensed something else in his tone.

“Well I’m not entirely convinced that there’s only ghoul’s here. This would be a good place to be if you weren’t. It’d be a good place for us.”

“What else are you expecting to find? Did Gideon say something?” she asked.

“No, just being cautious. It’d be dangerous to try and stay here for any length of time. I know this place from my youth, but I doubt there’s many left who still do and certainly not as well as me. People came here to learn or play or because they were told they had to. But you know me, always curious, always looking at what other people don’t see or think is hidden,” he smiled.

“Do you know what all these buttons do?” she asked.

“Vaguely. If we do stay here, it’d be worth figuring them out and bringing some power up. It’s fairly straight-forward, especially with trail and error.” He looked at the buttons. The marking were faded with age and some still had pieces of paper stuck to them, though they two had aged yellow and the ink had run. He laughed. “Of course I doubt we’d have been able to read James’ handwriting at the time.”

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47

This time they were more cautious, keeping their back to the brick walls and staying hidden in the lengthening shadows as much as possible, moving as silently as the breeze. Again, Amber’s sensitive ears could just hear the sounds of destruction coming from the old music rooms.

Ghost paused. There were a number of routes he could take. When he’d been here as a student he’d learnt of quite a hidden ways that only a few of the staff were aware of. Patience, awareness and a certain amount of stealth had slowly revealed those secrets to him and he reflected, the ghouls were unlikely to have found them. On the other hand if he took those paths they’d be easily trapped. He paused for a moment, then gestured to Amber to follow him. Once more they crept through the passage between the elderly buildings, shotguns out and ready.

This time at the end he followed the wall around to the left rather than continue straight on as he’d done before. There was a tall, black, iron wrought staircase mottled with rust that ran up the side of the building. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have risked it; they’d be far too exposed to gunfire. But ghouls were a more up close and personal type of crazy. Even if they had guns, they’d just use them as clubs and more than likely throw them away to enjoy the feel of destruction in their hands. Even so, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as they climbed up.

The room at the top had changed hands quite a few times. Initially it was just a loft and part-time storage room above the Assembly Hall. Then it had been given to the Sixth Formers for a Common room. Unfortunately they managed to make it rather more comfortable than the Staff-Room and so the teachers took it over. Ghost shook his head. He particularly remembered the room as a sixth form; it was a welcoming place that quite often let some of the younger years take shelter there whether from bullies or the cold, and there always seemed to be an endless supply of delicious hot chocolate. But when the teachers took over it became cold and distant. The feeling of “what are you doing here?” and the expectation that you’d wait outside, often in the cold and wet while they finished their tea and deigned to talk to you.

It was strange he reflected, it wasn’t that the teachers had been particularly callous, it’s just somewhere along the line it became about “them and us”. He shook his head. Things rarely went well in his experience once people started thinking like that.

Amber nudged him from his reverie, anxious to be off the stairs and in a safer less vulnerable place. She listened carefully at the door and then shook her head, unable to hear anything. Uncharacteristically, Ghost put his shoulder against the door and forced it open. They swept in, shotguns moving in fluid arcs around the room.

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Thursday 3 March 2011

46

Ghost knew from experience that was all Gideon was going to tell him for now. He nodded goodbye and headed back to the graveyard with Amber.

“Home sweet home,” he smiled as they entered. The place was freezing. Despite his best attempts at insulating it, once the cold got it, it froze the very bricks, making the place a nightmare to warm up again.

“Brrr, are we staying?” Amber shivered. She knew they could get by with heating up one room and huddling under a small mountain of blankets, but it wasn’t her favourite past-time. The tips of her ears tended to gradually get colder and colder throughout the night.

Ghost shook his head. “No you’re right it’s too cold. Is there anything you want from here?”

When Amber shook her head he nodded his agreement and they headed back out again, locking the door behind them.

“Might as well head out now then,” he suggested and they started walking towards the school.

Even though the snow had turned to a muddy slush, the roads were deserted. It was still cold enough that if you didn’t have to travel, then it was better not too. It took time, but soon they eventually made their way to outside the school gates. The sun was setting and long shadows settled over the old buildings.

They noticed that the front gates were slightly ajar this time. They looked at the slush, but although there were vague tracks melted into it, they could distinguish anything that seemed recent. The ghouls seemed to be staying within the school, unwilling to stray too far from their territory.

“So where to now?” Amber asked softly.

“There’s an old connecting tunnel. Gave me the shivers when I was here and it was perfectly safe then,” Ghost replied. He pushed gently against the gate but it didn’t move. Warily he looked around it and the realised that the hinges were covered in ice. He pushed more firmly against it, until the ice gave way and the gate swung open. He caught it before it travelled too far, careful not to let it crash open and alert anyone or anything that might be listening.

The school looked different in the half-light. It had an eerie feel. There had no real reason to be here at this time. Sure he’d come by late at night sometimes when he was younger, but it was a way off the main road. You wouldn’t come here unless you were taking a short cut through the twisting country backroads.

The trees seemed to shiver in the chill wind as they crept through the gates, careful of their footing. The shadows made it harder to see than it would have been at nighttime. Colours and edges blurred slightly. But then the same thing could work to their advantage too. Ghost knew that ghouls were cunning, but it was raw and animalistic. He wasn’t worried about complex traps, just vicious ones.



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Monday 28 February 2011

45

Ghost recognized the slight look of awe in Amber’s eyes as she tried to picture the places in her mind. He smiled to himself. They really were amazing places. The trick was keeping your wits about and not looking like a gawping tourist when you were there. Tourist, now that was a word he hadn’t used in a long time. The idea of just visiting a place for no other reason than to see it. He shook his head.

“So I figure we wait until the snow’s melted a bit. Then head back. I need to make some enquiries about getting you a passable id and that’s going to take some time anyway,” he suggested.

Amber nodded her agreement.

***

A few week’s later and they set out. The snow still fell in occasional flurries, but underfoot it was turning into icy slush. They were still careful as they walked, but it was much easier than trudging through several feet of snow. There had been no word or sign of the Necromancer. Ghost wasn’t surprised. If they’d continued to explore the Mall, then they probably would have run into each other again, or been able to determine if he actually was dead this time. Ghost doubted it.

He’d sent the Harlequins to Chorus and the Capital to make discrete enquiries. Now he found himself looking forward to seeing Gideon again. He liked the warmth and comfort of the Theatre and in his heart, their place at the graveyard wasn’t really home. But it was familiar and in a changing world, that meant a lot.

It was mid afternoon when they finally walked into the old Church. As Ghost had expected, Gideon was standing off to one side, quietly adjusting some flowers in a vase. As Ghost and Amber walked over to him, he turned and greeted them, speaking softly.

“Welcome back. It’s good to see you both.”

“Hi Gideon,” Amber smiled.

Ghost shook his hand warmly and looked around the church. There were a few people kneeling quietly in the old pews, lost in prayer. The faint smell of incense lingered in the air. “All is well here?” he asked.

Gideon smiled, “Always. He looked up reverently at the wooden cross suspended from the middle of the ceiling.”

Ghost carefully didn’t follow his gaze. He’d seen to much death in his time and the carefully sculpted image of a man dying a painful death was not something he found any peace in. Instead he looked at the flowers Gideon had been arranging.

“So is there anything I can help you with?” Gideon asked.

“We’re heading back out to the old school again. Any thoughts?” Ghost asked simply.

“Sounds like a good idea. I haven’t heard anything unusual going on in the wastelands.” Gideon replied. “As to the place itself, my advice is just use it to get clearer recollections of memories further back in time. At least for now.”


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Saturday 26 February 2011

44

“And the Capital?” she prompted

“It’s huge, deceptively so. You look at a map of the place and think it’s not so big. But then when you get there…” he paused.

“Yes?” she nudged him from his reverie

“Well it’s not really one place. It’s like several places all occupying the same space. What you see depends a lot on what you expect to see and what you’re looking for. So there’s everything you see at street view. But then there’s this whole underground Labyrinthe beneath it all. You hear strange stories from there.” He smiled “I used to think they made them up to keep people away, but nowadays I’m not so sure any more. Then there’s the Above. Years ago people started experimenting with climbing up buildings without ropes; a lot of it was inspired by kung-fu movies and old ninja legends. But people discovered there was a surprising amount you could actually do.”

“Climbing buildings? For real?” Amber looked at him incredulously.

“Climbing them, jumping off them, rooftop to rooftop, classic movie stuff. Indeed quite a few movies ended up adding it in. I remember the French government got in quite a state about the whole thing. Anyway in the Capital, they first worked out ways of climbing everything and getting around way up in the rooftops. And then it occurred to someone who’s going to notice if you carve the odd handhold 13 stories up? Or build in a small ledge. And so gradually the Above grew. Some people have gotten quite inventive, in some places you need an electronic key to cause something to temporarily move so you can either use it to keep going, or stop it from blocking you. And then there’s the Dead Ends. They’re real trouble.”

“Literally?” she asked.

“Can be. They’re routes that take to a place where you realised too late you can’t get back from, usually due to gravity. Then you need to get someone to come and get you before you get too tired to hang on.”

“Oh.”

“Yup, some people object to them climbing all over the place, even 13 stories up. There’s a constant battle going on over the routes in some places. In some parts they’re in constant flux. In others nobody cares and they stay the same. A lot of people have no idea they’re even there. Like I said, what you see depends a lot on what you expect to see.” He paused “Although people refer to it as one place, in a lot of ways it’s like a lot of little places stuck together. Most wouldn’t admit it, but it’s pretty tribal. Course some of those tribes wear suits and ties.”




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Tuesday 22 February 2011

43

“Thanks,” Ghost shook Daniel’s hand warmly. Now assuming there isn’t an angry horde outside, we’ll head for home I think.”

“Of course,” Daniel smiled. “You’re welcome here. And I trust we help each other in the future.”

Ghost smiled and after checking that the coast was clear, left with Amber and headed back to the Park. The mood changed as they entered the Park. Despite the deep snow, small animals still skittered and flew about. Birds chirped. They relaxed, feeling the safety of the place as they trudged along the old pathways.

“So what now?” Amber linked her arm through his as they walked, keeping a wary eye out for patches of ice.

“Well, despite the snow, I’d like to go back to the school. Maybe see Gideon first, see if he has any more cryptic ideas for us.”

Amber rolled her eyes. “It would be easier if he just came out and told you. Do you think he actually knows, or is he just guessing?”

“Hard to say. I trust him and I think he trusts me, but well these are difficult times. I’m not either of us is really certain what the effects of my developing my skills further would be, though I suspect he has a better idea of the bigger picture than I do,” Ghost mused.

“You’ve thought about this a lot haven’t you?” Amber replied

“Ah, you know me. Always thinking. It’s just the way I am,” he smiled. “We should probably consider a trip into one of the Conclaves too, especially as you now have some decent clothes to wear.”

Amber looked up at him with surprise in her eyes. “A Conclave? Really?”

Ghost could see the possibilities glittering in her head like a child on Christmas Eve considering what the next day might bring.

“We could use some more supplies,” he said “and the way things are going possibly some more specialized hardware. It depends a lot on what happens at the school. I’d quite like some more information too, but I think the Harlequins and maybe the Librarians could be a better way to go. I don’t want to leave trails for people to follow us.”

“Which Conclave were you thinking of?” Amber asked.

“Probably either Chorus, the Evangelist Conclave, or possibly the Capital. Pros and cons to both,” he replied. “You’ve never been to either have you?”

She shook her head.

“Hmm, an id for you is going to be an issue then.”

Her face fell slightly.

“Oh don’t worry, I can sort something out,” he smiled reassuringly. “They’re both very different places. Chorus is much smaller, and crowded. There’s a surprisingly large black market scattered around it that everyone turns a blind eye to. The overwhelming thing is the noise. People talking, shouting, singing, arguing everywhere,” he paused “and the smells. So many smells. “ He looked around at the snow laden Park and sniffed the crisp air. “Very different to this, takes some getting used to.”




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Saturday 19 February 2011

42

Amber had to almost crawl up the stairs. She cautiously popped her head up at the top, her shotgun still pointing mainly at the ceiling. The store appeared to be deserted. In fact, she realised that really it was just a medium sized room with a lot of shelves in the middle. She climbed the rest of the stairs and quickly checked that no-one was lurking behind any of the shelves. Ghost joined her and when she nodded, he called for the monks to come up.

He looked around the store carefully as they made their way up. It was had a good range of artists supplies. That was useful to know. He looked behind the till and quickly found the keys to unlock the front door. The windows were covered with frost so he accepted they’d just have to go and hope for the best. He unlocked the door and they flooded out of the cramped shop back into the deep snow of the main street. He could hear the zombies yells in the distance as he relocked the door and pocketed the keys, but nothing seemed to be nearby.

Daniel led the monks back the Library while Ghost locked up the shop. Amber stood pensively next to him, her shotgun sweeping the area. Ghost looked at the tracks the monks had left. Pulling out a knife, he prised open the crate of cleaning alcohol and took out one of the bottles. Walking backwards through the jumbled tracks the monks had left he liberally sprinkled it on them and the surrounding snow. After he’d used three bottles he took out his lighter and held the one the remaining bottles over it until finally the vapour caught alight. He threw into the tracks and watched in satisfaction as the tracks melted enough to confuse someone as it what had actually happened. With a nod to Amber, they headed after the monks to the Library.

Once in the Library, they joined the monks in stamping the snow of their boots. The monks headed off in different directions, presumably to catalogue their haul of books.

“Well that was successful,” Daniel beamed at them.

Ghost nodded and put the crate down.

Daniel beckoned to a monk who handed him a small electronic device.

“A list of what we have. Anything in blue is actually here. Anything in green is on loan to someone but will eventually come back here. Anything in red is elsewhere, but we can make arrangements to get it,” Gideon said with distinct pride.

Ghost switched the device on and tried a few terms in its search engine. It was fairly rudimentary, but the number of listings was extraordinary. Ghost wisely chose not to hide his surprise, before turning the device off and putting it into an inside pocket.

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Wednesday 16 February 2011

41

“The snow. There’s tracks of us coming here but not leaving. The fire will have melted them around the first entrance, but it’s not going to be too hard for him to figure out where we are. We need to get out of here quickly.”

“But how, they’re still out there?” one of the monks asked.

Ghost nodded to the darkness outside the lantern’s light. “We need to go up through the shops and out that way while they’re still focused on the outside. Then we can come back cause a little chaos from a safe distance and he’ll think we managed to make it. He won’t go looking for footprints if he thinks he knows what happened. And the zombies crashing around in the snow will do a good job of covering up our tracks too.”

He walked over to the lantern and pulled out the leaflet of the Mall. “We just have to decide which shop is easiest to get out of.” After a few moments consideration he pointed to a small art store. “It’s the shortest distance from there to the library.” He paused, “I’d rather not turn the lights on and then have to leave the lights on behind us.”

In reply various lanterns were switched on creating a much larger pool of light around them. They headed into the darkness until they reached the far wall. After a few minutes searching they found the stairs that led to the art store.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about picking locks?” Ghost asked.

When no-one replied he walked over to the lock and sorted through the realities until he found one where it was both unlocked and no-one had thought to leave any kind of alarm or trap either. The door opened smoothly in his hand. Amber went up first, shotgun ready, her keen elven vision easily piercing the darkness. Ghost followed her, not wanting any of the monks to accidentally shoot her if there was any trouble waiting for them. Amber listened intently are she climbed the stairs. He could hear the whispering of the monks robes against the floor and the skittering of a mouse somewhere above, but nothing else.

At the top of the stairs was a stock room. The monk’s lanterns lit it up easily. Ghost paused and looked around. He picked up a case of cleaning alcohol. Only a fool would drink it, but it was highly flammable and in a pinch, a source of fuel. The stairs leading up to the store itself were small and cramped and seemed almost to have been an afterthought, as if the architect had suddenly realised that the store owner might occasionally like to re-stock his store after all.

Next


Monday 14 February 2011

40

He slung the shotgun back over his shoulder and reached into one of the pockets of his coat, searching for the reality where he’d put a cigarette lighter and a flask of napalm in there. Finding them he pulled them out, dowsed the nearby fallen zombies with the napalm and retreated back to Amber. As more rampaging zombies crashed their way over the makeshift pyre, he lit the flask and threw it at them. The napalm caught instantly sending fire dancing crazily throughout the bodies. Ghost turned towards the shutters and ran with Amber to them. The smell of burning bodies wasn’t something he wanted lingering on his clothes or his mind.

The monks were already inside the loading bay when they got there. He cast a quick look around. Sure enough, he could see zombies beginning to fill up the end of the street. The headed in.

“Close it,” he said.

“What?” one of the monks replied

“Close it, now, quickly. Amber can see in the dark. Right now, we need to get the shutters closed before the zombies get here and certainly before anything more intelligent gets here,” Ghost said simply.

Reluctantly one of the monks pressed a button and the shutters began to close. The light dwindled as they steel came down until there was nothing but darkness and the muted howling of the zombies.

The mind plays strange tricks sometimes. Ghost knew the loading bay was huge, and yet the darkness felt claustrophobic. He paused. On the one hand Amber could see perfectly well in the darkness and she’d tell him if there was a problem. If it was just the two of them, he’d be content to just wait patiently. He wasn’t so sure what the monks would do if left to their own devices in the pitch black and as they still had guns, he eventually decided light would be a good idea.

“Can you see any way of getting light?” he asked her.

“There do seem to be light switches,” she replied after a moment.

Ghost frowned “Anything else? I don’t want to alert anyone that we’re down here.”

“Well there’s probably quite a few things we could burn,” she replied.

There was a click and then light spilled out from a lantern from one of the nearby monks.

“I’d prefer if we didn’t burn anything until these books are safely back in the library,” Daniel remarked with a gentle smile. “How long do you think we need to wait?”

“People get bored easily,” Ghost replied, “Especially people in charge. My guess is he’ll keep watch for an hour or so and then decide that we must have managed to get away….” He paused “Oh dear.”

“What?” Amber asked urgently.



Next


Wednesday 9 February 2011

39

Ghost helped Amber stand and they ran to the side of the entrance and back around the corner. Looking back they could see the zombies tearing into each other. It wasn’t anything that could be described as martial arts or even fighting. It was pure unthinking violence. A meaningless orgy of destruction.

Unfortunately the monks seemed to be of the belief that shooting a zombie would kill it. The book they’d read must have missed out the part that where you shot something was rather important too. The zombies were literally ripping each other apart. Being shot in the arm was a fairly minor wound by comparison.

Ghost looked for the Necromancer in the confusion of bodies, but couldn’t see anything. There was no way to tell whether he had been trampled to the ground beneath the heaving sea of blood and bodies of if he’d managed to retreat. What Ghost did know was that the zombies were beginning to turn their attention to what little remained of the doors and the monks.

Cautiously Ghost started going up behind the monks and shaking them. They almost seemed to be in a haze, caught up in their gunfire. Slowly, one-by-one he brought those nearest to him back to reality.

“We need to get out of here,” he told Daniel.

Daniel nodded and called at the monks to retreat. Something in his voice seemed to pierce through their haze and although they continued firing at the zombies, they started to retreat.

“We’ve got a problem,” Amber appeared at his side.

“I know,” he nodded.

“No, I mean we’ve got another problem,” she turned in the direction of the front of the mall. “someone’s opened the doors down there, they’re coming and they’re going to cut us off.”

Ghost weighed up his options quickly. It was tempting to try to make a run for it. The zombies were slow and the snow would help. However the snow would also slow the monks down a lot and if they got surrounded he didn’t think they had anywhere near enough bullets to deal with the zombies, let alone the skill to use them.

“Back to the loading bay,” he said softly to Daniel.

He didn’t like it, but right now it was better than any of the alternatives he could think of.

“Cover me,” he said to Amber as the monks headed back towards the steel shutters. He hefted the fire axe and strode towards the nearest zombies. He swung it low, tearing apart the creature’s knee and sending it sprawling to the ground. He stepped back out of the reach of it’s arms and swung again at another zombie’s legs again bringing it crashing down. He heard Amber’s shotgun fire twice behind him and the heads of two more zombie’s exploded. He brought his own shotgun to bear one-handed and fired into the legs of two more zombies. The surrounding snow was becoming slick with blood and gore.



Next


Thursday 3 February 2011

38

It took far too long to get all the books out in Ghost’s opinion, but finally they were ready to leave. They did so in much the same manner that they’d gotten to the crates and by the time they reached the relative safety of the exit Ghost had decided that either the loading bay actually was completely empty or that anyone who was in it wasn’t interested in seeing if they could survive a random hail of fire long enough to kill them.

Cautiously they stepped out into the sunlight, blinking to re-adjust. Ghost looked to Amber, but she shook her head, the nearby area was quiet even to her elven hearing. They closed and relocked the steel shutters and started to head back to the library. As they walked passed the glass doors with the milling zombies, Ghost did a double-take. Staring at them was a hooded figure who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Necromancer, including the staff he was holding. The hood didn’t bode well. Ghost wasn’t sure what being hit on the head with falling masonry had done to the Necromancer or indeed what on earth he’d attempted to try and fix the damage. The one thing he was sure of though was that he wasn’t going to thank them for it.

There was a moment of stillness. Ghost couldn’t see the eye under the hood, but he could almost feel their malice.

Amber turned, tracking Ghost’s gaze. “Him!” she shouted.

A chain reaction spread through the monks. Those who were facing in the right direction opened fire, followed by the other monks who first fired in the direction they happened to be facing and then tracked around to fire in the right direction. Ghost blurred, sifting through realities, pushing monks aside, moving their weapons high and low and even tripping a few of them up so that they didn’t hit each other. He snapped back to reality, face first in the snow, holding Amber protectively under his right arm.

The glass doors were a mess of bullet-holes and crazy cobwebbed fractures. Although a few pieces had fallen out it was now remarkably hard to see through them. The zombies had erupted into violence, but from what Ghost could tell, so far it was random violence against each other. So far there was no sound of the Necromancer’s staff summoning the rest of the undead. Some of the more enthusiastic monks were advancing towards the remains of the glass doors.

“No, retreat, let’s get out of here!” Ghost shouted at them, but to no avail.

Booted feet and the butts of rifles smashed apart the remains of the doors. Glass fell like rain, splashing apart on the floor.



Next


Monday 31 January 2011

37

As the shutter fully opened they saw that the loading bay was actually designed more like a car park. Presumably delivery vans dropped off good directly below the various stores. Several librarians pulled out torches and lanterns and switched them on. Ghost would have been happier letting Amber guide him with her elven vision, but he accepted it was impractical with this many people. Better to risk having light and go quickly and quietly. He noticed that the librarians had drawn their guns and rifles and were proceeding in a sort of alternating convoy. One group would advance, then pause and watch the area, while the other group would then advance past them and so on.

Amber looked at him and rolled her eyes. Whatever book the librarians had read clearly hadn’t explained the concepts of cover, concealment and rather importantly fields of fire. Ghost sincerely hoped they didn’t meet anyone down here as the likelihood of the Librarians shooting each other in their crossfire was becoming remarkably high. He nodded to Amber and they jogged on ahead of the two groups.

Even when they were ahead of the Librarians, Ghost still found that they were making the place feel remarkably eerie. Their lights bounced around and shone in random direction making the shadows dance around the scattered ramps and concrete support columns, while their footsteps echoed around the cavernous underground complex. He shivered and gripped the axe more tightly.

Amber on the other hand was noticing that there were in fact rather a lot of crates down here. Her acute vision easily pierced the gloom and she wondered what else might be down here and whether the Librarians would let her borrow that box? She grinned, confident that between them she and Ghost could get back in here again with or without the box.

Soon she found the right bay and indeed there were two large wooden crates. Resting there. She ran her finger over one of them, checking that the layer of dust had been undisturbed in a long time. They paused and waited for the Librarians to finish making their way over to them, at which point they spread out in a perfect semi circle, weapons and lights aiming into the surrounding darkness. The entrance which they had come in was now just a small rectangle of light in the distance.

“This is what you wanted?” Ghost asked.

Daniel shone a torch on the manifest that was still attached to the nearest crate. He brushed off the dust and then nodded to a monk carrying a crowbar who proceeded to methodically open the crates with the ease of someone who had done this many times before. As expected the crates were filled with books, still wrapped up in protective plastic. Cautiously, the other monks started taking them out with a mixture of care at handling the books and caution at trying to point their guns into the darkness at the same time.

Ghost quietly prayed to anyone who might be listening that no-one lurking in the darkness would chose this moment to attack. The monks would accidentally kill each other, him and Amber with remarkable efficiency. He gradually edged over, trying to get himself and Amber into a slightly safe place should things go wrong.

Next


Friday 28 January 2011

36

“Not exactly,” Ghost replied “by the way do you have an axe I could borrow, maybe a fire axe, that kind of thing?”

Daniel nodded and walked them over to the Fire Axe that was hanging from a nearby wall. He took it down and gave it to Ghost.

Ghost looked the edge on the blade, tested the balance with few careful swings and nodded. “I want to do this quietly. Shotguns make a lot of noise. This is better as a starting point.”

He unrolled his plans on a nearby table “I believe there’s a loading dock here that we can get into. That does leave the problem that there’s no way Amber and I can possibly move crates of books on our own, let alone in all this snow.”

“You’ll need our help,” Daniel stated looking over the drawings.

“Yes. I was thinking weight of numbers. A large group so you can cart the books out in a number of sacks of whatever else you’ve got that would work?”

Daniel nodded “that sounds like the best idea.”

The monks returned with various books and newspapers carefully bookmarked. They looked through them and added a few small details to the drawings.

“Shall we go now then?” Ghost asked.

“You don’t want to wait until dark?” Daniel asked.

“No. From what you say these books have been left unattended for a long time now. That means that anyone who’s set up any security that overlaps the area has grown complacent. We get in, we get out ideally before they know, but failing that before they can react.” Ghost looked around “I know some of them have guns, do they know how to use them?”

“We have quite a good selection of books in both the Military and Sports sections, so we know a lot of theory. Mainly we’re good at hitting stationary or slow moving targets with rifles,” Daniel admitted.

“Fair enough,” Ghost replied, “I don’t want to have lots of shooting going on anyway.”

Daniel organized a few Librarians to stay behind and the rest gathered up guns, rifles and sacks plus a few other things. Ghost noticed that they remained in their robes rather than changing into something more practical.

The group headed out of the library, but this time instead of turning left and going down the main street, they continued forwards into the back alley behind the parade of shops. The snow was still deep and it was slow going. At the end of the alley they turned left and made there way along the service road. Neither Ghost nor Amber could detect any signs of being watched or that there was anyone else around.

As they followed the service road they passed by another of the Mall’s entrances. Through the glass doors they could see the zombies milling around aimlessly. They kept going.

The loading bay was protected by thick steel shutters. Ghost paused. He hadn’t quite figured out how to get past them yet. One of the monks reached into a backpack and pulled out a small metal box with a plastic card attached. He inserted the card into the security card reader and waited. The shutters began to rise.

Daniel smiled, “It’s amazing what we have books on.”

Next


Wednesday 26 January 2011

35

The next morning Ghost got up and looked at the snow. It was still too deep for them to travel far. He decided to draw up some plans for getting the books back. After a while Amber wandered into the lobby where he was working, with some tea and a sandwich. She knew from experience he tended to forget about things like eating when he was thinking.

“So what have you got?” she asked.

He looked up and took the tea gratefully. “Well the books didn’t just appear in the store, especially in crates. There has to be a back entrance for deliveries. And as people don’t want to have to move crates of books any real distance, it’s got to be accessible by road. I’m guessing some heavy machinery and possibly a lift are involved.

She grinned “So we could just sneak in the back way, get the crates and sneak out again without having to deal with zombies and so forth?”

“In theory”, he replied taking a sip of his tea. “We’ve no way of knowing if any zombies have wandered back there, if anyone else is there or have set traps, alarms etc.”

She nodded “sounds like a good option though. Do we take the Librarians with us, or do we scout it out first?”

“I’ve been wondering about that myself. Although scouting seems like a good idea, I think in this case all it does is increase the risk that someone sees us. I’d rather keep the window that we do this in as small as possible. I really don’t want to scout it, tip someone off, and then have them waiting in ambush for us when we come back.” He paused. “Still on the bright side I’ve looked at the list of Vendors and there’s no-one anywhere near the bookshop so that improves the odds a bit.”

“Do you want to go now?” she asked.

He picked up the sandwich with a smile and replied “lunch first.”

She nodded and looked over the plans he’d drawn. They were a combination of how he remembered the place and the layout in the leaflet.

When lunch was finished, they got ready, rolled up the plans and headed over to the Library. This time a robed aesthetic opened the door for them as they approached and let them make their own way upstairs.

“Well I must say that was much quicker than I had expected,” Daniel said with a smile in his voice.

Ghost smiled. “I have a plan, but I was wondering, do you have anything here about either the Mall or the shops near the Book Shop. Articles, maps, photos, that kind of thing. The more information we have at the outset, the better.”

“Good to see such thinking,” Daniel replied. He beckoned to several of the monks and gave them quick precise directions of the information Ghost had asked for and where best to find it. He noticed that they weren’t particularly heavily armed “you’re not favouring an all guns blazing approach then?”

Next


Monday 24 January 2011

34

“Books?” Amber asked.

“Well more crates,” he replied and then when she arched a delicate eyebrow continued “of books.”

“Well obviously we can’t move crates of books,” Ghost replied, “but you know that and you wouldn’t have asked unless you had something in mind?”

“Quite true, very perceptive of you. We have devised a way to keep the zombies tranquil in the short term. Long enough for a group of us to get in, get the books and get out. We have some very effective equipment for moving crates around. But as precious as those books are, I won’t risk lives for them. And unfortunately that blame fool has a way of setting of the zombies.”

“The Necromancer?” Ghost asked.

“Ah, yes. You’ve met him?”

“Yes and if he’s still alive, I don’t think he’ll think too kindly towards us.”

“I take it your first meeting with him didn’t go quite as well as this one? Yes that’s to be expected. We were hoping to remove him from the equation; or more precisely that you could remove him from it.”

Ghost paused. He’d accepted that sometimes killing was necessary but he never set out to deliberately do it. And as much as possible he tried to keep Amber from going down a path that he knew led to a very dark place.

“He’s the Guardian there?” Ghost asked. That would be another big problem, he could have some formidable resources available.

Daniel laughed. “Him? No, not hardly. But the Guardian of that place has a rather, shall way say neutral point of view, so she lets him remain.”

“We’re not assassins,” Ghost said simply.

“Well you don’t necessarily have to kill him. But as long as he’s alive, he knows how to make those drugs and sadly he won’t have much trouble finding somewhere else to set up.” Daniel saw the fire in Ambers eyes. “Aye, lass I know the feeling. ‘Tis a terrible thing to destroy a person’s mind and he’s destroyed far too many.” He looked back at Ghost “still if you could either subdue him for a while, or at least destroy that staff of his, that would be enough for our needs.”

“How soon would you need this done?” Ghost asked.

“Well obviously the sooner the better, but as I say I’d rather it was done properly and carefully so if there’s preparations you need to make first, I understand.”

Ghost nodded and offered his hand “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you. We’d best be going.”

“Of course, of course,” Daniel replied, warmly shaking both Ghost’s hand then Amber’s.

Ghost and Amber turned and walked back down the stairs and headed back to the Park.

When they were safely back in the Park, Amber asked “So what do you think?”

“Well, if we’re going to keep walking past their front door I’d rather they saw us in a friendly light,” Ghost reflected “but right now I want to get back to the school again. I’ve had enough excitement for one day though. Let’s get warm and have some food and rest. We can head off tomorrow.”


Next


Thursday 20 January 2011

33

Amber nodded. Warmth and food seemed very appealing right now and she was curious what was on the leaflet they’d just got. They headed back towards the Park. As they turned into the final pathway, they noticed a figure standing outside the Library. It was wearing brown, heavy monastic robes and had the cowl pulled up over its head. Ghost considered the practicalities of taking another way to a different entrance to the Park. The figure beckoned them and then headed into the Library.

Amber looked at Ghost “Or maybe not.”

Silver hadn’t really mentioned the Librarians much to Ghost and he hadn’t pried. Now he was beginning to regret that decision. They prized knowledge and had guns. He wasn’t convinced it was the best mix, though if they were going to be neighbours he supposed some kind of meeting was inevitable. He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and followed the monk in. Amber trusted his instincts and did the same.

They stamped on the doormat, dislodging as much snow as they could so as not to track it inside. It was an unusual design for a library. There was a small foyer and then you immediately had to go upstairs to get to the Library itself. Ghost noticed that the electric lights were working. It made sense, if you prized books, the last thing you wanted was fire. The figure continued walking up the stairs and they followed him. At the top of the stairs Ghost saw that the Librarians hadn’t made many changes to the place. It had one main level and then a second level that was missing a centre, allowing easy visibility between the two. More figures wandered around the place dong whatever it is that Librarians actually do. The figure that had been leading them turned and headed off towards a row of shelves.

“Greetings and well met,” they turned to face a smiling man. He defied the stereotype of a librarian and instead seemed more like the type who in a few years time would make an excellent Santa. He held out his hand.

Ghost shook it warmly and noticed that it was a firm grip without any of that macho nonsense that irritated him. Amber shook his hand too.

“I’m Daniel and you are both most welcome here, though I must say you have been busy.”

Ghost shrugged and smiled “I’m Ghost,”

“And I’m Amber.”

“Excellent. Now we’ve all been introduced, a good start don’t you think? Tell me, what do you think of the shopping mall?” he looked at them intently.

“Well the zombies are a bit of an issue,” Ghost began

“True, true.” Daniel replied. “Still how would you feel about going in there and getting a few things for us. Well I say a few things…”

Ghost noticed that several of the monks seemed to have drifted over to working nearby, though whether they were just listening to the conversation or acting as protection he wasn’t sure. Their robes were sufficiently loose that they could easily hide a multitude of sins.

Next


Tuesday 18 January 2011

32

It was hard to hear much over the sound of the horn baying and the zombies fighting and so Ghost was taken slightly by surprise as he saw zombies from inside the store heading towards him. He hadn’t expected them to close on them that fast. Amber shook her head trying to clear it as Ghost fired his shotgun into the nearest zombie’s knees, its momentum sending it crashing face first into the floor. Now wasn’t the time for subtlety.

Amber climbed up onto the shelving getting a better field of fire. She aimed for the heads of two zombies, hit one and blew most of the shoulder off the second. Ghost fired at the second one, finishing it off. He could see more zombies coming down the escalators. This was not going well. There was one more zombie immediately ahead of him and he didn’t’ have enough time to reload. He shifted his grip of the shotgun, getting ready to use it as a melee weapon. The zombie lunged towards him, but as it did so Amber’s whip wrapped around its neck snapping it’s head back as she pulled. Ghost bought the shotgun sharply up under its chin, smashing bone and cartilage to pieces. A second strike to its face stilled its movement and blood and gore began dribbling down its face. With a flick of her wrist, Amber released the whip and readied it again.

Ghost risked a look behind them. The rioting zombies were beginning to spill into the back of the tore, but so far they didn’t seem to have any specific direction. The three zombies approaching them from the front of the store were another matter.

“The mannequins!” Ghost shouted to her.

Amber’s whip snaked out again, catching a mannequin by the head. She pulled sharply and the head came off and flew across the room. She tried again, this time aiming for the torso. She pulled and it fell forward into the path of the zombies who immediately began tearing it apart.

“Great let’s go,” Ghost said. They ran towards the front of the store, knocking over mannequins behind them. The distraction worked well; in their rage the zombies just attacked any thing that looked reasonably human, especially if it was moving. Ghost and Amber dashed outside, closed the door and pulled down the shutters.

They could see a trail in the snow that the hunched figure had left. It continued along the street and didn’t seem to have come back.

“Want to head back?” Ghost asked.

Next


Friday 14 January 2011

31

“You did this to them?!” Amber retorted.

Mentally Ghost swore. At this stage he’d prefer to leave in peace and come back later with a better plan. Talking was always dangerous. To often it gave the other person time to do something you really didn’t want them to. And experience told him Amber was about to do something he’d really rather she didn’t.

“But of course,” the self-styled Necromancer replied. The zombies continued to wander around him.

As Amber raised her shotgun, he took a step back, letting the zombies step between them, blocking her shot.

“Oh well, that’s done it,” Ghost muttered to himself, “time to think outside of the box.” The Necromancer’s moves were too polished, too practiced and that meant there was more coming that wasn’t going to go well for them. Ghost raised his shotgun, but aimed over the man’s head at the ceiling and fired twice. Several chunks of masonry fell down. Ghost couldn’t quite tell what they hit, but he heard some particularly unhealthy sounds. Amber copied him, bringing down even more debris. They ran back to the shop entrance and took cover, reloading as quickly as they could.

“We should go up there and finish him off!” she insisted.

There was a sound from the upper gallery of a horn blowing. Only it had been distorted. It was odd to think of a sound as being evil, but this came close. It resonated throughout the mall.

“Oh dear,” Ghost said simply.

As they watched, all of the zombies reacted to the sound. The faraway look vanished from their eyes and was replaced by an animalistic look of pure rage. Ghost reached into one of his pockets and took out two grenades. They were hard to come by these days. Replacing them would mean visiting one of the Conclaves and getting out again unnoticed. On the other hand they weren’t going to be much use to him if he was dead.

“Close your eyes and put you hands over your ears,” he warned her. When she had he threw one grenade to the left and one to the right. He closed his eyes and covered his ears. Even with those precautions through his closed eyes lids he saw the flash of light and the stunning bang rocked him for a moment. He grabbed Amber who was more dazed, her enhanced senses having made her more vulnerable to the effects, and helped her to her feet. He then ran back into the shop. The grenades had the effect he’d hoped for. The zombies’ senses were dulled enough that the grenades wouldn’t knock them out, but they caused them considerable confusion and confused rage tended to be directed to whatever was closest. Fortunately that was no longer them. He made one last look in Cindy’s direction and saw her rolling her eyes, but otherwise seeming perfectly calm in the midst of utter chaos as waves of zombies crashed into each other and their surroundings.

Next


Tuesday 11 January 2011

30

“Certainly, did you have something specific in mind?” she handed him a leaflet.

Ghost remembered the original leaflet; it had been designed by someone who had felt the need to use every possible gizmo in their graphics programme, and felt that this would surely make up for the fact that it was completely useless at conveying any actual information. He opened it and glanced at it before putting it in a pocket. It seemed that they’d got a better designer this time. There weren’t too many names in listed, certainly nothing like the hundreds of store names there had been in the past. But right now wasn’t the time to split his concentration. A zombie brushed passed him, but carried on down the corridor.

It was darker than it should have been. Amber looked up and saw that the glass roof had a thick layer of snow covering it. She shivered and stepped out of the way of another aimless zombie.

“No, just curious. Thanks,” he replied.

“Well there are a number of excellent services available here. In fact if you’d like to advertise your own, we charge very reasonable rates,” Cindy smiled pleasantly at him.

It was at then that Ghost noticed that none of the zombies ever touched the information desk. Even though they seemed to move in a random Brownian motion, somehow they never quite seemed to bump into or even take an interest in it. However given that one had bumped into him, that rather unfortunately meant that whatever was protecting Cindy wasn’t protecting them.

“Good to know, thanks” he turned to face Amber then saw the look of concern on her face. He followed her gaze up to the gallery on the next floor.

A man dressed in black stood there, leaning nonchalantly against the railing. He was completely bald making it hard to judge his age, though Ghost felt he was probably younger than he looked, maybe only in his late 20s. Blood red whirls were tattooed across his face and he held an ornate staff that seemed to have been topped with the remains of some unfortunate animal. Zombies wandered around behind him, but like the desk, they didn’t touch him.

“Welcome to my humble kingdom,” he declared in an accent that sounded like someone thought a Russian accent should sound like.

Ghost instinctively started looking for the tell-tale bulges of concealed weapons. He could see various pouches and bone jewelry, but nothing that looked like an actual weapon.

“I am the Necromancer!”

There was a pause, evidently he was expecting a reaction.

Amber looked at him blankly.

Ghost however, remembered that word. “Master of the Undead? That kind of thing?”

The man smiled a rictus grin. Ghost quietly wondered if he practiced it in a mirror.

“Ah, excellent. So nice to meet learned folk. So have you come to join my,” he swept his hand “minions?”

“Why would we want to? How would we? Why?” Amber replied.

“Ah, I see not quite so eloquent after all. Nevermind. People who come here are tired of living. It is a rather complicated and stressful business after all, is it not? And so I cure them of their condition. Consider me a philanthropist, helping the needy,” the grin remained.

Next


Friday 7 January 2011

29

Two minutes passed and a small figure shuffled past the windows. It was difficult to tell exactly what it was. It was about 5 feet tall, but it was so hunched over it could have been much taller. Tattered black rags were wrapped around it making it impossible to distinguish any detail or even if it was male or female. Seemingly oblivious to its surrounding, the figure carried on until it passed out of their sight. Once she was confident it wasn’t coming back, Amber looked at Ghost and shrugged. He shook his head. Whatever that had been, he didn’t know anything about it. They turned their attention back to the inside of the store.

Daylight from outside was enough to illuminate up the front of the store. The mall itself had a glass roof and so daylight spilled through that illuminating the back of the store. That left a rather dark, shadowy middle, at least from ghost’s perspective. To Amber’s keen elven eyes it was all as bright as day. Cautiously they moved between the rows of shelving. Amber pointed over to a shadowy corner, where she could see a zombie staring aimlessly at cobwebs on the wall. They continued, carefully navigating around several other zombies who all, at least for now seemed caught up in their own worlds.

When they reached the back of the store, they peeked carefully out of the doors and saw that there was indeed someone at the information desk. There was also a rather large number of zombies milling around. Ghost was tempted to leave Amber where she was and go on his own, but that risked them getting separated, so with a nod they exited the store and walked over to the desk. Behind it was a fairly young attendant. She had long blonde hair tied back in a pony-tail. She wore the uniform of the shopping mall, even down to the plastic badge that with “Cindy” written on it next to the motif of several trees. She smiled as they approached.

“Good afternoon. How can I be of service?”

Amber began to wonder if she was still asleep and just having some weird kind of dream. Who in their right mind would man a information desk surrounded by zombies in a disused mall? Her right hand drifted to the handle of her whip.

“I was told that you could tell me about various people who offer services in this area?” Ghost replied smoothly. He wasn’t sure what the deal was, but something was keeping Cindy safe; he hoped it extended to them too.



Next


Tuesday 4 January 2011

28

“Glad to have been of service sir. And you have a good day too miss.” With that the old man went back to sorting out forms behind the counter.

Warily they headed back downstairs and out into the street, the cold and brightness again took them a moment to get used to.

“Strange old guy,” Amber remarked “you know what he meant about the information desk?”

“I think so,” Ghost replied “there used to be one in the mall. The questions are how do we get to it and how is it managing to stay open with all those zombies?”

“You want to go find out?” she raised an eyebrow.

He paused. “Well we could explore out here some more, but if there’s actual skilled people set up around here it’d be easier to know where they are. I don’t want to keep pushing our luck; some of them are bound to be more security conscious than he was and that could be rather painful for us if we’re not careful.”

Amber nodded. “So which way in?”

“Same options as last time really. It’s down the same end of the mall, just another few hundred yards further in. We can either cut through that shop,” he gestured across the street “or we can go back in the main entrance like we did last time.”

“What’s the shop like inside?”

“Bigger than that one, maybe twice the size. It was mainly food and clothes so there’s a lot less cover in most of it. It has connecting doors to the inside of the mall that are maybe twenty feet from the desk, assuming it hasn’t been moved.”

“I think I prefer that,” Amber said “after all that shop wasn’t too bad.”

Ghost nodded his agreement and they walked through the snow to the shop. It had big glass display windows seperated by two sets of doors, securely separated by several shutters. He looked closely at them. The ice covered dirt and moss had been there a long time. It looked like no-one was using this at the moment. Amber pressed her ear against the nearest shutter and yelped, the icy cold taking her by surprise. They looked around cautiously to see if anyone had taken any notice. The wind blew in several gusts, sending small spirals of frozen flakes dancing along the snow. But otherwise it remained quiet.

Ghost looked at the lock. Another automatic lock so it would have been securely fastened. But there were a lot of things that the weather could inflict on a lock; and between rusting and freezing it wouldn’t take much for a fragile mechanism to break in just the right way. He concentrated on the lock sifting through the realities and until he found the one where hitting the lock with the butt of his shotgun, just so, caused it to spill open. Together they went to work breaking off the ice that was keeping the shutter jammed shut. They took their time, preferring to do it quietly.


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