Ghouls'n Guns

by Jared Mandani

  Zeke put away his small revolver and unslung his rifle, holding it ready with both hands. “You go ahead, I’ll find a safe spot and cover you,” he told Davidoff.

  They both rushed through the doors and separated. Lab benches were scattered everywhere and a few containers of chemicals were broken apart, spilling their contents and letting off an acrid stench. Zeke found a safe spot in the corner at which to set his watch whilst Davidoff took in the scene.

  Five men and women in lab coats were dead, splayed across the room. The nearest one, a blond man seemingly somewhere in his forties, was sprawled over a length of tabletop on the ground. His back was broken against it so that he lay at an unnatural angle, and his stomach was slashed open. The smell of entrails and offal was overbearing, smothering the chemical stench of the spilled liquids.

  Up ahead, two men in lab coats were at the end of the room. Both were in their late fifties by the looks of them, and they were backing away from a group of five ghouls. One of the men held a handgun, letting off shots which missed wildly, blowing chunks out of the floor and furniture, making Davidoff flinch as the ricochets tore around the whole lab. The other man had an improvised flamethrower in his hands—it was a gas bottle with a long, rubber hose and a hand attachment, clearly all cannibalized from lab equipment. He let out gouts of blue and red flames, keeping the ghouls at bay, while his colleague fired his pistol in blind panic.

  As Davidoff watched, unable to move forwards as a cinematic scene took over before the fighting began, the ghouls spread out in a semi-circle. One of them caught a bullet, but shrugged it off, suffering only a little. Each of them was large and broad, though fleshless and lean. They had improvised weapons in their hands: shards of glass used as knives, lengths of pipe, even the heavy leg of one of the fallen lab technicians.

  One of the ghouls took a gushing blast of flame to the face and cowered back, dropping its weapon and clawing at its eyes. However, as the scientist with the flamethrower was distracted, another ghoul jumped in towards the scientist with the gun. The ghoul grabbed him by the throat, ripping out his esophagus, and then doubled over as the final bullet caught it in the chest. However, it leapt backwards with its prize—the dead scientist—and began to chew on his flesh, regaining some of its lost health in an act of awful depravity.

  The sounds and smells were so realistic that they made Davidoff feel sick.

  The cinematic scene came to an end soon enough and some information flickered before his eyes: the sole surviving chemist was Dr. Finkelstein and, though he was weak—clearly no use at all in a fight—and defenseless, he was yet still on full health. Well, then, Davidoff thought, let’s get him out of here and complete the damn mission.

  As soon as the cinematic sequence and information died down, Davidoff rushed forwards, getting himself close enough that he could use his luger as a melee weapon, increasing his accuracy. As he moved, a roaring bolt shot through the nearest ghoul, catching it in the back, courtesy of Heavy Zeke. It fell forwards, its health drained. Each one had around HP 500 when they started and were all little diminished from fighting the scientists. The one taking the shot from Zeke was only on HP 230 after the bolt, and as Davidoff ran in he managed to kill it with a couple of bullets and a jab with his knife.

  He barged through the remaining ghouls, straight into Dr. Finkelstein who had lowered his makeshift flamethrower upon realizing that Davidoff and Zeke were there. Davidoff pushed the doctor down, against the wall, and turned his back to him, facing the remaining four ghouls.

  Two of the ghouls were stalking around him, wary but coming closer, as the other two turned and ran for the far corner to deal with Zeke. The two facing Davidoff were odd creatures. Each had a fierce intelligence in their eyes that he had not met in the previous ghouls, and each one’s skin was tainted with a sickly emerald tint. Their veins stood up green as well and their gums and tongues were dark green. They had horns, one with a crown poking from its cranium and the other with a bare head but with razor like ridges growing from the bones of her limbs. The one with the crown held a length of pipe in both hands whilst the other looked like she was using the ridges on her arms as weapons.

  The woman lunged in first, swinging her left forearm, complete with three sharp spurs. Davidoff ducked the worst of the blow, but it still managed to cuff him around the head. He blinked blood from his eyes as he danced around the ghoul. She had clearly opened a wound across his scalp.

  He had no time to think about it, however. The other ghoul lunged in, slow but incredibly strong and with a purposefulness that was as scary as anything Davidoff had seen that day. Davidoff dropped to the floor and rolled, getting out of their way and lining them both up so that one would be behind the other. It was one of his favorite techniques. A sure fire way to reduce the risk of being crowded out. When he did all this, a couple of hefty shots rang out, followed as he stood by some lighter sounding bullets. Zeke must have dropped his rifle and begun to use his revolver.

  As he stood up, dancing backwards once more as the ghoul with the razor limbs came in for him, Davidoff brought up a vicious uppercut. It caught the ghoul fully in the jaw with his knuckle dusters, pushing her to the side in a daze. He took a quick shot at the other ghoul, catching it in the chest, before grabbing the first. He braced himself and then threw her bodily into the other ghoul, even as she clung to the weeping wound in her chest.

  Davidoff let loose a couple more shots, catching them both and bringing them down to HP 232 and HP 287, respectively. Then his luger began to click impotently. The magazine was empty and he had no time to reload. Instead, he holstered it, pulled out his kukri and jumped in towards the two ghouls, slashing with both hands. They bled as he cut them, but the one with the crown of horns ignored the attack and swung back, catching Davidoff across the back with a devastating blow as he tried to dance around them.

  His ribs felt like they had splintered anew, only worse this time, and he went flying against the wall to slide down next to Dr. Finkelstein. Stars clouded his vision as he looked up and saw both the ghouls limping towards him. They were injured, they were hurting, but Davidoff could not move for the moment. They would tear him to shreds as soon as they reached him.

  “Can I borrow this, doc?” he asked Dr. Finkelstein, grabbing the flamethrower as the older man sputtered, unable to answer properly in his fear.

  Davidoff took the end of the hose, squeezed the trigger and sent flames roaring up into the ghouls’ faces. The one with the crown of horns was closest and took the worst, falling backwards, stumbling and crashing to the floor, dead. Its corpse continued to smolder as the one with the razor blade limbs fell back, hissing.

  Davidoff squeezed the trigger again, pointing it towards the last one, but nothing happened this time. Typical. There had only been enough fuel for one shot. However, his daze was over and he managed to climb to his feet, bloody and hurting but able to fight.

  He had HP 284 left and the ghoul had HP 267. “Come on then,” he growled at her.

  Behind her, he saw Zeke laying about himself with his hand axe, cutting chunks out of the last ghoul over there as the ghoul slashed at him in turn with wicked-looking talons.

  Davidoff’s ghoul leaped in, swinging her right fist forwards, intent on slashing him with her right forearm. However, as Davidoff made to dodge her strike, he realized that she was feinting. She changed her footwork at the last second and sliced upwards with her left knee, catching him in the groin.

  He buckled over, bent double with the wind knocked out of him. She pummeled him with a couple of punches, picked him up and used her elbow to slice a great tear across his upper abdomen. All in all, she succeeded in bringing him down to a mere HP 196. Then she moved to slice his throat open, a critical hit that would see him bleed out in seconds.

  He fought back; he dropped his knives and grabbed her arm with both of his hands, slowing her, keeping that sharp edge just a few inches from his windpipe…

  Then, securing his stance
as they pushed and grappled, he managed to bring a knee up to her groin, mimicking her own attack. It wasn’t much—it only did Damage 6—but it was enough to distract her. He bent, grabbed his kukri, and rolled away, coming up ready to go. There was a heavy crash behind him from Zeke but he could not look, he could not take his eyes off this final fight.

  The ghoul lunged in again, trying to feint once more, but this time he was ready for it. He saw her trying to shift her weight to her right side to attack from that direction and he jumped to her left, swinging as he did so. He landed a blow to her ribs with his kukri, opening another gash. Then he pressed his advantage, advancing and swinging, not letting himself stop. Each shot caused Damage 40 to 50, even in his weakened state. Five landed, bringing her down to HP 13.

  She fell to her knees, unable to go on, and he braced himself. Moving from the hips as every good boxer should do, he punched her full in the face with his knuckle dusters, killing her as her head snapped backwards.

  He looked around. Zeke was in a pretty bad way. There was blood everywhere and he had several large cuts to his face, arms and chest. His axe was broken on the floor and he was trading blows with the ghoul, causing just a few points of Damage each time as the ghoul slashed and cut, doing a great deal more.

  Exhausted and bloody, Davidoff nevertheless could not stand idle. He picked up his other knife, equipping one in each hand, and rushed in to save his friend. Between them, they made short work of the final ghoul, plastering the lab with yet more watery, sickly-looking blood.

  “Buddy, that was brutal,” Zeke said.

  “That was nothing,” a voice said from the corner.

  Dr. Finkelstein had got up, shaken and white. He stared at them with wide, terrified eyes, and another cinematic sequence began as he walked towards them.

  ***

  “That was just a taste of what is to come,” the doctor said. He stood before them with his arms folded protectively over his chest, his hands clenching his upper arms in an effort to control his shaking. “They are growing more numerous and more powerful every day. Every day, we are seeing more and more varieties of monster…”

  “What are they?” Davidoff asked. “The ghouls. Where do they come from?”

  Dr. Finkelstein shrugged. “We do not know for sure. However, we have theories. Do you know anything about the legends of ghouls?”

  Davidoff nodded and Zeke spoke. “They feed on human flesh and turn to monsters… ever hungrier, ever wilder,” he said.

  “Yes, indeed,” the doctor said. “When the first cases of… undeath… were recorded, we thought it was some kind of fluke. A quirk of science, perhaps a freak accident or an unknown disease. But then the air began to change. You must have seen it yourself, pockets of vile sorcery hanging in the air, leeching all that is good and replacing it with its own, chaotic taint.”

  “Yes, we have seen it,” Davidoff said. “That’s what created the ghouls?”

  “Most likely it drove pockets of humans mad,” the doctor replied. “They resisted the zombie’s taint for the most part. They keep their minds, they stay alive, in a fashion… but they still get the hunger. They feast on the flesh of the living and the dead alike, raiding crypts and running people down in the street. What some are calling the sorcery that exists now in this world has changed them, maddened them, given them that craving for human flesh. So too does it curse them with these mutations, turning them into living weapons.”

  “What can we do against such monsters?” Davidoff asked.

  Dr. Finkelstein turned and began to root around one of the desks, picking up a few heavily bound notebooks alongside a rack of vials, all with various colored liquids in them. He recovered a laptop from the mess and placed it all on the bench. “This is most of what I need,” he said then, turning back to face them. “All the data I have so far.

  “We were all working on the same project, here,” he said, shuddering as he glanced around the room at his broken, bloody comrades. “This is my lab. We used to research pharmaceuticals in this factory. So when I saw what was happening out there, I tasked the whole team with coming up with something, anything… we got as much data as we could from various samples, we infected some animals with zombie and ghoul blood and conducted experiments. Everything we could think of.”

  “And?” Zeke asked.

  “We are nearly there. We have a formula that works after a fashion, though it is unreliable and volatile,’ the scientist said. “That is why the ghouls were here: they wanted to find out what we knew and who else was in the know. They wanted to destroy our work.”

  “What does it do?” Davidoff asked.

  “It is meant to be a cure. One day it might be. For now, it is hideous. It just burns the zombies, the ghouls. And the warlocks.”

  “The… what?” Zeke asked.

  “I see that you are new indeed to this world,” Dr. Finkelstein nodded. “The warlocks. Zombies are the unquiet dead, cursed by the infection of this damned force, this biomancy, to remain animate, walking the world and spreading their affliction. Ghouls are humans equally cursed, flesh-eaters who have lost all hope and with whom the evil magics seem to be having their fun. The warlocks are different, however. They are a group of people, small but very powerful, who consider themselves blessed by the evil magic. They say they are gifted, that great powers have been given to them.

  “They are right, at least partially so,” the doctor said. “They would appear as sorcerers and tricksters to most people. They each have a different set of abilities, seemingly random, which they think exults them above the rest of the world. They have various encampments, and from these they terrorize the few remaining pockets of unaffected people, raping, killing, stealing… as gods, they reckon.

  “But mark my word, they will pay dearly before the end,’ Dr. Finkelstein growled. “I am sure of it.”

  “And you have a weapon to fight these people?” Zeke asked.

  “A chemical formula. But it is incomplete, and I have no way to synthesize it,” Dr. Finkelstein said.

  “How can we help?” Davidoff found himself asking, the game setting them up for their next mission, should they choose it.

  “There are labs all over the country, some nearby, that are doing the work same as we are… or rather as we were,” the doctor said. “I will need to contact them and take my findings over there. No doubt someone will have a way to produce the drug. Then we should be able to kill or cure most of them. But I need one more ingredient to analyze, one more strand. The DNA of a warlock. So far it has proven impossible to obtain such a sample.”

  “We can get it for you,” Zeke said.

  “It will be hard,” the doctor replied. “They are dangerous, powerful people.”

  “We can manage,” Davidoff told him.

  “Well, then. There is an encampment on the city’s north side. About two dozen warlocks live there, I have heard. It is a small cell, so you might manage to break in,” Dr. Finkelstein said. Then he handed them each a clean vial. “Get a sample of blood from one of them. There will be a genetic anomaly in their DNA and I need to know how it works.” He turned and beckoned them to the lab’s far end, where a door led to a fire escape. “Come with me,” he said. “We kept a small but well-armed security force here. The lock-up in which they stored their gear is on the bottom floor. I’ll take you there, now that we are free of those ghouls. You can help yourself to whatever you think might help.”

  The lock-up turned out to be a treasure trove of armaments. Zeke took a telescopic baton for melee, a little more versatile and sophisticated than his hand axe. He also managed to find a box of bolts for his rifle and grabbed enough for several fights. He picked up some bullets for his revolver and then raided the security force’s toolkits, replacing his own with better quality tools.

  Davidoff himself snatched a couple of boxes of ammo alongside an extra sidearm: a decent-looking handgun which paired nicely with his luger. Although he knew that using a gun in
each hand wasn’t usually the best way to fight, his character was designed specifically for that kind of combat style. It will work to great effect, he thought to himself.

  They found some smoke grenades, presumably useful in the event of any kind of riot. Then, buried beneath these, they discovered a box of real, explosive grenades. “These guys were serious- hard core,” Zeke muttered, looking through it all. Davidoff clipped a couple of grenades to his belt and Zeke put a few more in a satchel which he threw over himself, its strap crossing with his rifle’s strap. “We’ll kick some ass with this lot,” he said, smiling broadly.

  “Good, but we could do with these as well,” Davidoff replied, pulling a couple of med-kits from a shelf. He handed one to Zeke, who disinterestedly stuffed it into the satchel, and put the other in the pocket of his overcoat.

  Chapter Four

  Davidoff and Zeke tramped off down a couple of streets leading from the lab’s compound towards the center of town, from where their map told them they would be able to take the main high road northwards. They passed a couple of clusters of zombies on their way, but each group was too far off to pose a threat—they usually sniffed at the pair, started towards them and then lost interest as they fell behind.

  The two friends passed through a town square which looked like it had once been a busy, social area. Cafes and restaurants lined the streets around it; an old coffee stall was in pieces on the ground and benches lay scattered everywhere. A patch of grass in the square’s middle should have been green and verdant. Now, however, it was blistered in parts, overgrown and wild in others. Everything had a fine layer of ashy dust on it—every surface, every discarded remnant of the world that was.

  In the square’s farthest corner, directly away from them as they looked the place over, stood the mouth of an alleyway. The same sinister, greenish light was emanating from it, casting a sickly glow through the night’s darkness. The stonework was cracked all around the alleyway’s entrance and scorch marks lay before it, pointing away from the light source as though it could erupt from time to time.