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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