Denzel stared at the canteen in disbelief. “You’re right,” he said, shouting to make himself heard over the din. “This is worse.”
The canteen looked like … well, like pretty much any other canteen. There were forty or more long folding tables, each with room for eight people to sit and eat. From what Denzel could gather, the room was pretty much split in two, with Oberons over on the left, and Vulterons on the right.
The Vulteron side was filled with people zooming around on Segways, clanking about on exoskeleton feet, or generally just strutting around like they owned the place. Most of the hundred and fifty or so people in that half of the room wore the standard blue and silver camo, but a few were dressed in all-blue boiler suits that zipped up at the front.
Pacing through the throngs of Vulterons were at least two robots. They were roughly human shape and size, and carried trays in their perfectly balanced hands. Denzel had no idea if they were delivering food to someone, or planning to eat it themselves, and as the other Vulterons crossed from the queue to the tables, the robots were lost in the crowd.
Over on the other side of the dining hall, the Oberons were using magic. At least, Denzel guessed they were, as he could think of no other explanation for all the trays that floated around the place before landing on the tables in front of the waiting diners.
Some of the tables were floating, too. In fact, the Oberon side of the room looked far more spacious, as at least a third of the tables were hovering in the air several metres above the others, creating a sort of double-decker dining effect.
Everyone seemed to be talking at the same time. The Vulterons were barking at each other, like they were locked in some sort of who’s-got-the-gruffest-voice competition. The Oberons below were calling to those above, while those above were shouting down for someone to chuck them up the salt.
“It’s massive,” said Denzel. “There’s so many of them. Of you, I mean.”
“Yeah, this branch is the base for most of northern Europe,” Samara said. “There’s a little outpost up in the north of Scotland, and a couple dotted around France and Spain, but this is the biggest outside the United States.”
“The United States?” said Denzel. “Of America?”
“Yeah, unless there’s another United States no one’s told me about. It’s a worldwide organisation. You can find us pretty much everywhere, if you know where to look.”
“Right. Wow,” said Denzel, because he couldn’t really think of anything more interesting to add.
“Come on, let’s go and get something to eat,” said Samara, guiding him along by the sleeve. They dodged their way through the throngs towards the Oberon queue. It was far shorter than the line of Vulterons on the other side of the hall, largely because everyone was just magically summoning their trays to their tables, rather than lining up in an orderly fashion.
Denzel ducked to avoid a bowl of rice pudding that came whooshing past him like a flying saucer, then joined Samara at the serving counter. It was set out pretty much exactly like a school canteen, with a glass cabinet protecting six metal tubs, all containing different types of food.
“OK, so we’ve got chicken curry, vegetarian chilli, pizza, but that looks a bit dry, so I’d probably avoid that, and some sort of pasta thing with broccoli in it,” said Samara, handing him a tray. “Oh, and there’s always baked potatoes, too. You can have any filling you want, as long as it’s cheese or tuna. Anything take your fancy?”
“Is that it?” Denzel asked, then he realised it had come out wrong. “I mean, this all looks great, but I thought…”
“Thought what?” asked Samara.
“Just that it’d be, you know, like … weirder,” Denzel said. “Like there’d be, I don’t know, dragon or something.”
“Dragon?” Samara snorted.
“Yeah. Or something.”
“Nah. Dragon’s on Tuesdays,” Samara said, and the way she smiled meant Denzel couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Now, hurry up and choose something. I’m starving!”
Before Denzel could pick anything, Boyle appeared. “Samara,” he grunted. “We’re up.”
“What? But I thought…” Samara glanced back at Denzel. “What about his training?”
“The director wants us to bring him,” Boyle said. He didn’t look happy about that at all, but closed his mouth before he could say any more.
“I’ll probably just have pizza,” Denzel announced, but then Boyle yanked the tray from his hand and deposited it back in the pile.
“No. You won’t,” said Boyle. “We’ve got a call.”
Denzel looked between Boyle and Samara, not quite sure what Boyle was getting at. “Like … a phone call?”
“Like a call-out,” said Samara. “A mission. We’re being sent to deal with a situation.”
Denzel swallowed. “A ghost situation?”
“It’ll be fine, don’t worry about it,” said Samara. “Just think of it as some on-the-job training.”
Her eyes flicked to her partner. “Besides, it’s not like Quinn would let us take you out on anything major, right?” She watched Boyle’s expression closely. “Right?”
“Well,” said Boyle. “It’s funny you should ask…”
Denzel screamed and threw himself to the ground, just as something fast, white and very, very angry hurtled past him.
It was a ghost. Not a litter-monster, not a smoky octopus – a proper, old-fashioned eyeholes-in-a-sheet type ghost!
And, to Denzel’s dismay, it was not alone. There were dozens of the things, screeching and flailing around as they swooped, dived at – and passed straight through – the shelves of the supermarket Denzel was cowering in.
Chains rattled somewhere along the aisle. Denzel looked up to see a semi-transparent skeleton stalking past the baby food and nappies, dragging a set of ghostly shackles behind him.
Above the skeleton’s head, something that could feasibly have been a net curtain with a face drawn on let out an unearthly moan, then knocked over a carefully balanced display of baby wipes as it went flying past.
A crackle of magic or gunfire or something else dangerous-sounding echoed from the next aisle over. The breakfast cereal section, Denzel guessed, judging by the snap, crackle and pop that followed the blast.
A decaying ghostly hand appeared through the floor beside Denzel, its withered fingers grabbing at him. Denzel heard himself scream again, then kicked forwards, using the shelving to heave himself to his feet.
He clattered down the aisle, the screeching and rattling sounding as if it were right behind him. At the bottom, he skidded around the corner and came face-to-snarl with Knightley. She snapped up her rifle and he had to throw his hands up to stop her shooting.
“Wait, not a ghost, not a ghost!”
“Well, get out of my way,” Knightley hissed, then she fired a blast of searing white energy over his head at something big and almost certainly terrifying that had been right behind him. Denzel felt his head get hot and smelled his hair singe. He ducked and ran, then threw himself over a grocery conveyor belt, and landed, upside down, behind a checkout.
Something white flew at his face and he screamed again. A full three seconds passed before he realised it was just a carrier bag.
With some effort, Denzel managed to turn himself right way up. He kept low, peeking just the very top of his head above the checkout. A dozen or more shapeless white apparitions floated up near the ceiling. From four different aisles, four different energy blasts screamed towards them, courtesy of Boyle, Samara, Knightley and Knightley’s partner, Rasmus.
Denzel had been introduced to Rasmus, a tall, spotty-faced Oberon, at the mission briefing. Rasmus had immediately made his dislike of Denzel abundantly clear, and warned him not to get in his way.
Denzel had promised he wouldn’t, then accidentally stood on Rasmus’s robe almost at once, tripping him up. Samara had laughed about it, but no one else seemed to see the funny side, Rasmus in particular.
The actual br
iefing was a bit of a blur. Quinn had mentioned something about a supermarket extension disturbing an old burial ground, but there’d be a lot of talk of Free-Floating this and Class Two that, and Denzel hadn’t paid too much attention. As far as he knew, he was tagging along to watch, and he hadn’t expected to be caught in the middle of a full-scale ghost battle.
A beam of fizzing purple power struck one of the sheet-like ghosts right in the flappy parts. The ghost clawed at the air for a moment, then was yanked sharply down behind some shelving.
“Got one!” called Boyle.
A hail of short, pulsing energy bolts erupted from the next aisle over. Two ghosts spun as they were hit, then dropped to the floor like wounded birds.
“Nailed two,” Knightley shouted. “Rasmus, gem them up!”
“On it!”
“Try not to make a mess of it, Rasmus.” That was Samara’s voice. “Just shout if you need help.”
“Oh, shut up,” Rasmus spat.
Denzel’s heart, which had been thudding like a jackhammer, began to slow. Things seemed to be in hand. The ghosts were dropping, the Spectre Collectors were still standing, and it looked like everything was going to be OK.
Besides, no one had seen him ducking behind the checkout. He was hidden down there. Hidden and safe.
THWANG!
The drawer of the checkout’s till sprung open, smacking Denzel on the forehead. “Ow!” he grimaced, then he watched in horror as two ghostly hands crept out of the cash drawer, the fingers wrapping like insectlegs around the edges.
“Boo!” cackled a hollow-eyed head as it popped out of the drawer, scattering notes and coins all over the floor. A gust of cold air rolled over Denzel as he jumped to his feet and half-climbed, half-fell out from behind the checkout desk.
“B-back off,” Denzel stammered. He held his fingers in front of him in the shape of a cross, even though he was pretty sure that only worked on vampires, and even then, only in movies. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll… I’ll….”
He would what? Scream? Run away? Wet himself? All those things were possible, certainly, but the sight of the ghost emerging from behind the checkout and fluttering towards him had turned his legs and brain to jelly, and he couldn’t decide what his next course of action should be.
Denzel had just decided to try all three of those tactics at the same time when a black circle, about the size of a large car tyre, appeared in the air above the ghost. The spook looked up just as a hand reached down through the hole and grabbed hold of it.
“Not so fast, sunshine!” said a voice Denzel recognised as Samara’s. The ghost’s empty eyes widened as it was yanked up into the darkness.
A moment later, Samara leaned down through the hole and shot Denzel a smile. “You all right?”
“Uh… Uh… Uh…” was all Denzel managed to say.
“Good stuff. Won’t be long. Shout if you need us,” said Samara. She gave him a thumbs-up, then winced as a tin of soup dropped out of the hole and thonked her on the back of the head. “Oi, watch it!” she warned, before withdrawing back into the hole, which promptly sealed itself shut.
Cautiously, Denzel approached the spot where the hole had been, and swished his arms around. Nothing. It was as if it had never been there.
Samara shouted something to Boyle, but her voice was far away, already at the other end of the hangar-sized supermarket.
“This is crazy,” Denzel whispered, shuffling around in a circle as he watched for trouble.
There were no ghosts lurking nearby – or none he could see, at least. The battle was still sparking and whooshing and flashing like an indoor fireworks display. Every few seconds Denzel’s skin would tingle or his stomach would flip or his hair would stand on end in time with one of the blasts, as he felt its effects all the way at the other end of the supermarket.
After one particularly acrobatic flip, his stomach rumbled hungrily. There was a stack of chocolate bars next to the nearest till. Denzel thought about wolfing one down, but he didn’t have any money to pay for it.
Of course, considering a large area of the supermarket was in the process of being blasted to pieces by ghost-hunting equipment and magic, one missing Twix was unlikely to be a big issue.
But it would still be wrong.
And yet he was absolutely starving, now that he thought about it.
And now that he’d thought about it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He was trying to navigate his way through this moral maze when he heard a voice.
“Help!”
It was soft and quiet, and belonged to an old woman. Denzel knew it belonged to an old woman because it had that certain distinctive tremble to it that you only ever found in the voices of old women.
Also, there was an old woman half-crouching behind the newspaper stand, waving to him.
Denzel waved back. Then he realised she probably wasn’t being friendly, and was trying to get his attention.
Sure enough. “Please! H-help!”
Glancing over his shoulder, Denzel hoped he’d seen someone more qualified who could go and see what the lady wanted, but there was nothing there but the display of chocolate bars and – far beyond it – the ongoing ghost battle.
“Please!”
“All right, all right, hold your horses,” Denzel muttered. He ducked as low as he could without actually collapsing to the floor and ran in short bursts towards the newspaper stand.
It took him a little longer than expected to get there, because every few steps or so he got paranoid a ghost was about to jump on his back, and he was forced to keep stopping and spinning on the spot to check.
When he finally made it to the rack, the old woman almost burst into tears. “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice even more wobbly up close. “What’s happening?” She stared up at him from where she sat on the floor, her eyes wide, imploring, searching for hope.
Denzel opened his mouth to say, “It’s a load of ghosts,” then decided the shock of that might kill her. Instead, he said, “Mice.”
If he were honest, he hadn’t been expecting to say “mice”, and he had to hurriedly rearrange his expression to stop the woman noticing his surprise.
“Mice?”
“Yep,” said Denzel, sounding pretty squeaky himself. “There are mice. In the shop.”
“Grenade!” shouted Knightley. At the far end of the store, something exploded.
“Big ones. Very aggressive,” Denzel added. He looked behind him to the supermarket’s front door, then back to the trembling pensioner. “We were told everyone had been evacuated. How come you’re still here?”
“I was in the toilet,” the old woman began, then she launched into a short but detailed description of her bowel movements, which Denzel managed to tune out by focusing on the sounds of gunfire and ghost howls. He tuned in again in time to hear, “…And after I’d finally got it to flush, I came out to find all this going on.”
“OK, OK, that’s all … very vivid, thanks,” said Denzel. “Can you run to the door?”
“I’ve got two plastic hips,” the woman said.
“Right. Can you walk to the door?”
The woman’s eyes shone with tears. “I don’t… I’m not… Will you help me?”
Denzel peeked up over the newspaper rack to make sure nothing horrible was approaching, then smiled at the woman. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I will. Come on.”
With some difficulty, a lot of awkwardness, and several “up you get”s, Denzel managed to haul the old lady to her feet. She clung to his arm, letting him take some of her weight. She wasn’t much taller than he was, and the fingers around his arm felt mostly bone, so there wasn’t a lot of weight to take. As they shuffled slowly towards the exit he was almost tempted just to throw her over his shoulder and make a run for it.
Eventually, they reached the supermarket’s door. It slid open at their approach, and Denzel guided the woman towards the opening. “Almost there,” he said. “Easy does it. Just a few mo
re—”
THUD!
An invisible barrier blocked the doorway. “What’s the matter, love?” the old woman asked, as Denzel reached up and pressed his hand against the wall of solid air. The street was right there, right on the other side, but the barrier prevented them leaving the shop.
“They’ve blocked it,” Denzel groaned. “They’ve blocked us in here with magic.”
“Who has?” asked the woman.
Denzel turned to her, realised he’d been speaking out loud, and tried a hasty cover-up. “Er, the mice,” he said.
“The mice have blocked us in with magic?”
“Yes. They’re more cunning than people realise,” Denzel said. He was about to turn away and look for somewhere to take cover, when something about the street caught his attention.
In fact, that wasn’t quite true. Something about it had caught his attention before then, but it was at that moment that he realised what that something was. It was deserted. The street – the entire city centre street – was empty. Not a pedestrian. Not a car. Not even a bird in the sky. Empty pavements, empty roads, just empty, full stop.
“Huh, that’s weird,” Denzel said, then he shuffled around with the old woman and almost screamed again when he saw a figure in black standing in the middle of the supermarket foyer.
“Hello, Denzel,” said Director Quinn.
Denzel started to reply, but Quinn held up a hand and motioned for silence. “I’ll explain later. For now, please step away from the old lady.”
The woman’s grip tightened on Denzel’s arm. “Who’s she? Where did she come from?” the woman asked.
“She’s fine, she’s… Don’t panic, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Denzel. Step away,” Quinn said, and Denzel noticed the director had one hand tucked behind her back, out of sight. A faint shimmer of blue light fizzled along the fingertips of her other hand.
“Um…” Denzel swallowed. “Is she…?”
Quinn nodded.
“Right,” said Denzel. “Because she doesn’t look like…”
“No. But she is,” said Quinn.
“Don’t look like what?” asked the old lady. Her grip tightened further on Denzel’s arm until he felt like her bony fingers were going to dig into his flesh. The skin felt cold, even through his clothes. “What don’t I look like?”
Too Ghoul For School Page 7
