The Battle of Iron Gulch

by R. G. Thomas

  The ghoul stopped halfway to the intersection of the hallways and clawed at its face. The human skin tore away in pieces, revealing a smooth, gray, featureless face beneath. Boils covered the ghoul’s face and wisps of steam rose from the burned flesh. It stood glaring at them, its large dark eyes full of hate and its sharp teeth bared as Kathryn’s hair and scalp still clung to the back of its head.

  “You won’t stop us!” It turned to run toward the gymnasium. Even though he still lay on the floor, Leopold made a sweeping motion with his hand, and the creature’s feet went out from under it.

  Dulindir ran up to the ghoul and killed it with a plunge of his sword.

  Thaddeus looked at Teofil with wide eyes. “I take it that’s the potion Vivienne told me about.”

  “It is,” Teofil replied with a satisfied nod. “And it seems to work.”

  “Do you still believe we should not split up?” Leopold asked as Nathan and Vivienne helped him to his feet.

  “I’m going to help those people,” Thaddeus stated.

  “I’m going with him,” Teofil said, brandishing the sprayer.

  “Dammit, fine,” his father said. “Dulindir and I will go with you. The rest of you try to clear a path out of the building.”

  Thaddeus was already around the corner, but stopped at the sight of the long, dark hallway. He tried to focus his thoughts enough to generate some kind of light, but he was too distracted to do it. A hand on his shoulder made him jump, and he turned to find his father behind him.

  “You okay?” his father asked.

  “Yeah, just trying to give us some light,” Thaddeus replied. “I still can’t seem to do it on command.”

  “It’ll come,” his father said. “Let me.” A white ball of light popped up a foot above them. “Better?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Thaddeus replied.

  “They’re stuck!” Teofil shouted as he pulled the handle on the nearest set of doors.

  “There’s another set of doors farther down the hall,” Nathan said.

  Thaddeus led the way, the light keeping up with them. Shouts from inside the gym sounded like some of the people were organizing to fight back, and it urged Thaddeus on even faster.

  The other set of double doors was shut tight as well, no matter how hard they pulled the handles. His father tried to use magic to pry the doors open, but they didn’t move.

  “It’s no use,” his father said. “They’re magically sealed.”

  Thaddeus took a step back to look up and down the hall. He noticed a single wooden door a short distance away and approached it. BACKSTAGE ACCESS was painted across it, and he tried the knob, surprised when it turned in his hand.

  “Come on,” he called to the others.

  He hurried through the door and the light followed just behind him, revealing a short flight of steps that led up to the backstage area of the gym. The curtains were closed and Thaddeus felt along them for the split, the cries and sounds of battle just beyond pushing him faster.

  Finally he stepped out on the stage and stood transfixed, staring at the devastation revealed by the ball of light overhead. Blood spread thick over the gym floor, and chairs lay overturned under and on top of bodies. Some people knelt alongside bodies, their hands and mouths stained dark with gore as they feasted. In a far corner, a dozen or more people had made a stand, kicking, punching, and swinging chairs at those that had penned them in. A high-pitched buzzing sound started somewhere in the back of his head. It was difficult to draw in a breath. So many people were in danger, he had no idea what to do first.

  “Oh my God,” his father said as he stepped up beside him. “Oh my God.”

  “Help us!” a woman screamed from the back of the gym as she wildly swung a folding chair to keep a man away from her. “They’ve gone mad! Help!”

  Her scream snapped Thaddeus and the rest of them out of their shock and into action.

  Dulindir leaped from the stage and ran into the dark, sword held at the ready. Teofil gripped the tank and stood at the edge of the stage, coating everyone within reach with the potion. Ghouls turned away screaming, releasing their victims, who seemed unaffected by the spray.

  “We need more light,” Thaddeus said.

  His father gestured to the center of the ceiling as he leaped from the stage. The ball of light ascended to just beneath a ceiling fan and brightened even more, able now to reveal the entirety of the gym.

  Thaddeus jumped from the stage and picked up a folding chair. He slammed it against the back of a man’s skull as he leaned over a younger man. The ghoul collapsed and Thaddeus gasped as he saw the flap of skin peeled away from the younger man’s cheek. The room spun around him, and he put the legs of the chair down to support himself as he drew in deep breaths.

  “Thaddeus! Help!”

  The sound of his name snapped him back into the moment. He looked around and saw Aisha kneeling on the floor with a folding chair held in front of her. A man was heading toward her, crouched low.

  “No!” Thaddeus shouted and reached out. He could feel the clamminess of the man’s arm in his hand as if he had physically grabbed him. Thaddeus swung his arm to the left and the man flew backward, away from Aisha.

  “Wizards!” a woman shouted. “They’ve gotten inside! Get the wizards!”

  “Look out!” his father shouted.

  A moment later his father stood beside Thaddeus, pulling him backward as ghouls surged toward them. They climbed onto the stage and pulled their feet away from edge just as a dozen people pressed up against it, all straining to reach them. A few climbed onto the stage, and Thaddeus and his father used magic to knock them backward off the edge.

  Teofil stepped up behind the group of ghouls and doused them all with the potion. They screamed and scattered. Most of the surviving human townspeople had clustered together in a back corner of the gym. Dulindir stood with his back to them, slashing and stabbing at any ghouls that approached. Some of the ghouls turned away from his blade with the skin of their faces hanging loose. The people behind him watched with wide, terrified eyes as the true faces of the ghouls were revealed beneath those of their friends and neighbors.

  “What’s happening?” a woman screamed.

  Nathan and Thaddeus swung their hands back and forth, scattering several of the ghouls, but many returned and clambered up on the stage. Teofil climbed up at the other end of the stage from the ghouls. He used up the last of his potion and started swinging the empty tank as a weapon, knocking several of the ghouls off the stage. One ghoul tore the tank from his grip and threw it aside. Teofil pulled a knife from his belt and jumped to the floor, slashing and stabbing as he made his way across the gym.

  Thaddeus watched Teofil go. He needed to be with him, fighting beside him. He turned and ran to the other side of the stage where a narrow opening in the wall held a short flight of stairs to the floor of the gym. His father had had the same idea and was a few steps ahead of him. Thaddeus had no idea what he was going to do once he got onto the floor. He just knew he needed to be with Teofil.

  Ghouls crowded into the small doorway just as they started down. Those ghouls still on the stage were coming up fast behind them.

  “We’re trapped!” his father shouted, standing back to back with Thaddeus.

  “Get down and cover your ears!” Thaddeus shouted.

  “What are you going to do?” his father asked, even as he dropped into a crouch on the steps.

  “Something new,” Thaddeus replied. “It might knock us out.”

  Thaddeus held his hands out and looked down at his open palms, away from the faces of the ghouls closing in on them. Two flickering balls of flame appeared above each hand. He pressed his back against the wall of the stairway, closed his eyes, and then clapped his hands together with as much force as possible. The concussion from the blast pressed him hard against the wall and stole his breath, but he opened his eyes and discovered it had done the trick. The shockwave had sent the ghouls tumbling backward in both directions.


  “Come on, Dad!” he shouted, and stepped over the fallen ghouls and out into the gym. He didn’t hear a response.

  His father lay sprawled out on the steps, blood oozing from a cut above his left eye. In the shadows just behind him, Thaddeus could see the ghouls stirring. He heard more of them awakening all around him and turned to face the opposite side of the gym, looking for Teofil and Dulindir. Teofil was helping two women off into the corner with the rest of the townspeople, and Dulindir was slashing and stabbing at a particularly vicious ghoul.

  “Teofil, help!” Thaddeus shouted.

  Teofil turned, knife held up and ready.

  Just as Thaddeus was about to turn back toward his father, he saw a woman rush at Teofil from the shadows at the side of the gym. The skin of her face flapped where it had peeled away, and her hands were stretched out toward Teofil. Before Thaddeus could shout a warning, the woman had tackled Teofil, and they landed hard amid the folding chairs and bodies.

  “No!” Thaddeus turned and pushed his arms toward the ghouls on the stage, his palms facing out. The entire group of them flew off their feet away from his father and through the curtain to disappear from sight.

  Turning toward the gym, he made the same pushing motion and those approaching ghouls tumbled aside. With his father safe for the moment, Thaddeus set off at a run, panic freezing his thoughts.

  He felt as if he moved in slow motion. His feet slipped across the blood splattered floor. As he ran, he kept his gaze on Teofil who lay very still as if he’d been stunned by the fall. The ghoul sat up beside Teofil and raised her hands. She gripped Teofil’s knife in both fists and turned her head to smile at Thaddeus. He reached out toward her, wanting to fling her back away from Teofil, wanting to pry the knife from her hands and send her flying across the gym. But he couldn’t form the image fast enough, and she plunged the knife into Teofil’s chest.

  “No!”

  It felt as if the blade pierced his chest, and an ice cold fear stopped his breath. He managed to get his feet moving and ran forward, pushing people and ghouls out of the way, his gaze fixed on the woman kneeling beside Teofil. His only thought was a single word. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  The ghoul sat back, a satisfied smile on her face as she looked at Thaddeus and raised the knife again. Thaddeus’s foot landed on a folding chair that went out from under him, and he fell to the floor. He struggled to get up, to get to Teofil, to stop the thing from stabbing him again, but the blood on the floor was slick and his hands kept sliding apart. He tried to get his feet under him, but he couldn’t find his footing on the slippery floor.

  Then Dulindir stepped up behind the woman and decapitated her with a clean swing of his blade. Her head bounced off into the darkness. For a moment her body swayed above Teofil’s prone form before toppling to the side.

  Thaddeus finally got to his feet and rushed to Teofil’s side. Dulindir knelt across from him as Thaddeus stared at the garish red stain spreading across the front of Teofil’s shirt.

  “Thaddeus…,” Dulindir said.

  “I know.” Thaddeus put a hand beneath Teofil’s head and gently raised it.

  “Teofil?” he whispered, tears blurring his vision. He grasped Teofil’s hand and was shocked at how cold it felt. “No, Teofil. Not like this. It’s too soon. Stay with me. Stay here with me.” Thaddeus choked back a sob. “No, you can’t die. No.”

  Teofil drew in a breath, and his eyes fluttered open. He winced and then gasped, and when he opened his mouth a trickle of blood dribbled out of the corner and down his cheek.

  “Hold on,” Thaddeus said. “Hold on. Stay strong. I’m here.”

  “Thaddeus?” Teofil’s eyes moved back and forth, unfocused.

  “I’m right here with you.”

  Teofil’s eyes rolled slowly toward him. When he found Thaddeus’s face, Teofil’s gaze sharpened and he smiled. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Thaddeus said, and managed a smile even as tears poured down his face. “Stay with me, okay? We’ll get you help.”

  Teofil’s smile faded, and his expression crumpled into pain.

  Thaddeus’s gut ached in empathy.

  “My chest hurts,” Teofil said.

  “I know it does,” Thaddeus whispered. “I’m sorry. But you’ll be okay. Just keep still and quiet.”

  “Thaddeus, he needs help,” Dulindir said.

  “I know that!” Thaddeus shouted, and glared at Dulindir, hating that he could see his own fear and the terrible truth he already knew shining in Dulindir’s eyes.

  “No,” Thaddeus said, and gently lowered Teofil’s head to the floor. “No.”

  The lights clicked on overhead. The small knot of survivors in the back corner cried out at the sudden illumination. Teofil closed his eyes against the glare, and Thaddeus squeezed his hand.

  A man from the group of surviving townspeople ran to the far set of doors and shouted with relief when they opened. He waved for the rest of the group, and they fled into the hallway, their sobbing and questions echoing after they’d left. Many of them were injured and assisted by others.

  A shiver went through Thaddeus as he realized some of them could be ghouls who had missed being touched by Teofil’s spray, collecting victims to be skinned alive and slowly consumed later. With no more potion left, there was no way to tell the humans apart from the creatures.

  “Momma!”

  Thaddeus looked up. Aisha was chasing after a man who carried a woman’s limp form toward the other set of doors by the stage.

  “Stop!” Aisha shouted. “That’s my momma! Leave her be!”

  As the man left the gym, Ruby stepped inside and grabbed Aisha’s arms, holding her tight. Ruby looked around the gym, and her gaze fell on Thaddeus. She smiled. Her gaudy lipstick looked like a bloody smear across her pale face, and gore stained her pink blazer. She gave a single nod and turned away, dragging Aisha out of the gym, her screams echoing back to them.

  Teofil coughed and then cried out at the pain it caused him.

  “No,” Thaddeus said again.

  He got to his feet. Two shaky backward steps put him a safe distance from Teofil. All around him, people were crying and running or being carried out of the gym.

  His father approached holding the side of his head, a line of blood running from the cut above his eye. “Are you hurt?”

  “Stand back, Dad,” Thaddeus said.

  “What are you doing?” his father looked down at Teofil and his face went pale. “No. Oh, Thaddeus, not Teofil.”

  “I have no other choice,” Thaddeus said, more to himself than anyone else. “I have no other choice.”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He shunted aside all the sounds around him and narrowed his attention to the Iron Gulch Inn. He thought about the room he shared with his father. He thought about the closet across from the foot of his bed. He remembered just a short time ago how the closet door had been open a few inches, wide enough for him to see the canteen on the top shelf.

  He curled the fingers of his right hand slightly, just enough to be able to grip the canteen. He recalled how it had felt to hold it, the weight of it, the feel of the canvas cover, the water sloshing back and forth inside.

  Thaddeus extended his arm and willed it to come to him.

  He had no choice. He could not lose Teofil. They would have to figure out another way to turn his mother.

  Someone out in the hallway cried out in surprise. A moment later, the canteen smacked into Thaddeus’s hand. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Gripping the canteen tight, he knelt once more beside Teofil.

  “Thaddeus, that’s the last of the water,” Dulindir said. “We can never go back and get more.”

  “I won’t lose him,” Thaddeus said.

  He opened the canteen and lifted Teofil’s head.

  “Drink,” Thaddeus said. “Carefully.”

  Teofil was barely able to get the water down. Some of it spilled out the sides of his mouth and ran in bloody streams
to the floor, wasted. Thaddeus forced himself not to think about it, focusing instead on the color coming back into Teofil’s face. He heard the wet, gurgling sound of Teofil’s breathing ease, and felt the chill leave his body.

  When Teofil opened his eyes and looked up at him in confusion, Thaddeus smiled through his tears. “You’re safe now.”

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  THADDEUS HELPED Teofil to his feet. When he swayed a bit, he put an arm around his waist to steady him. In his free hand, Thaddeus gripped the canteen. There wasn’t much water left inside. Maybe not enough to turn his mother back. But they had to find her, first. For now, he had Teofil back, and he was extremely grateful for that.

  His father stood before them. “You’re not hurt, are you Thaddeus?”

  “No, I’m not,” Thaddeus replied. Teofil felt good and solid and alive leaning against him. Thaddeus curled his fingers tight around his side, pulling him even closer. “We have to go after the ghouls. They took Aisha and her mom and other people that are still alive. We need to follow them.”

  His father looked around the gym at the dead and wounded. “There are a lot of injured people in here.”

  “I’m sure someone who escaped called for help,” Teofil suggested. He rubbed the spot where he’d been stabbed and made a face. “My chest hurts.”

  Thaddeus exchanged a look with his father, then released Teofil and stood in front of him. “You were stabbed by one of the ghouls. I gave you some of the water to heal you.”

  Teofil’s eyes went wide. “The well water? But… that was supposed to be for your mom.”

  “There’s some left, it’ll have to be enough.” Thaddeus grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the gym doors, saying over his shoulder, “We have to find out where the ghouls are taking everyone.”

  Astrid met them at the doors, panting and holding on to her slingshot loaded with a stone. “The ghouls have gone!”