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.
