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.

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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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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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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