The Ghouls

by Fred Crawley

  They carried on around the building and beneath the railway bridge. On the other side of the road, the carpark was already full and he could see people walking around. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than trying to walk past a dozen police officers.

  Garrett led them towards the lift on the ground floor, but Nathan stopped him. “The stairs,” he said.

  “It’s right at the top,” Garrett said, obviously reluctant to walk so far.

  “I’m the one with the fucked up leg,” Nathan said. “It’s safer, come on.”

  Garrett agreed with a grunt and they dragged Audrey across to the stairs and the three of them squeezed through the little red door without letting go of her.

  “It smells like piss,” Audrey said.

  Nathan and Garrett ignored her.

  The stairs took a lot of his strength but they didn’t pass anyone on the way and Audrey didn’t have the opportunity to ask anyone for help. The echo of their footsteps was soon joined by the echo of their breathing and none of them spoke again until they reached the door at the top.

  Garrett opened the door and peered out. A moment later he retreated and turned to face them.

  “Police?” Nathan whispered.

  Garrett nodded and Nathan put a hand over Audrey’s mouth. She renewed her struggle briefly, but she soon calmed down.

  “How many?” Nathan said.

  Garrett held up one finger. That wasn’t so bad, they obviously hadn’t expected him to try and get in this way, but they still couldn’t afford to be seen. They had to get past the police officer somehow.

  “What do we do?” Nathan said.

  Garrett shrugged.

  The police were waiting for him, but they must have begun to doubt that he would ever try to leave by train. Perhaps doing so had been a mistake but it had been Garrett’s idea and he had been quick to agree to it. It had been nice, for once, to have someone else making the decisions. Nathan suddenly thought that, if he had been the one coming up with the plan, he would have had them walk to a station outside of the city. Even if it took all day, it would have been safer than coming here.

  The police man on the other side of the door was probably bored. Nathan wondered how many days in a row he had been made to stand in front of an infrequently used door just in case someone tried to catch a train. The policeman probably wasn’t expecting anything to happen today or any day.

  Nathan held out Audrey’s arm and Garrett took it. “Make sure she gets on the train,” he said.

  Garrett nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  Nathan shrugged. He wasn’t really sure, but he guessed that he could use the element of surprise. The last thing the policeman would expect would be for him to just walk through the door. It might buy him some time.

  He pushed open the door and felt it hit something solid. Either Garrett had neglected to mention the fact that the policeman was standing right against the door or he had moved.

  The policeman grunted and Nathan walked through.

  The carpark was connected to the station via an old bridge. About fifty metres in front of the little red door there was an unmanned ticket machine and a black glass barrier to stop people getting on a train without purchasing a ticket. It was cold in the little-covered walkway and the police officer was wearing navy blue gloves.

  He looked like he was new to the job. His face still bore the speckled scars of teenage acne. He looked at Nathan, first with annoyance, then wide-eyed surprise as he recognised who he was, then with determination. He fumbled as he reached for his radio.

  Garrett and Audrey were on the other side of the door, waiting for him to get rid of the police officer. Both of them were only there because of him, only at risk because they knew him. He had forced himself into Audrey’s life and if she was killed it was down to him. He couldn’t let that happen.

  “Don’t,” Nathan said.

  The police officer stopped. “You’re Nathan Custer?” he said.

  Nathan nodded.

  “Sir,” he began and continued with the tone of someone who was reading or reciting from a memory that was still not fully formed. “I am arresting you on suspicion of--“

  Nathan hit the police officer. He hadn’t planned to do it and was surprised when the pain of crunched knuckles became his. The young police officer looked more surprised still. He stood there for a moment looking at Nathan and then blood began to trickle out of his nose. Nathan felt a satisfied glow to know that he had finally committed a crime. That finally something he had actually done could be added to the undoubtedly long list of things that he was in trouble for.

  “You hit me...” the police officer said.

  “Sorry,” Nathan said. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen now. He waited to see the police officer’s expression change from surprise to anger. Nathan was sure that police officers didn’t often get punched in the face.

  The door opened behind him and Garrett came flying out. The door smacked the police officer in the back and he fell to his knees.

  “What happened?” Garrett said. “Did he hit you?”

  Garrett dragged Audrey through the door behind him and they joined Nathan looking down at the policeman who was now laying on the floor trying to get up.

  “Get his radio,” Garrett said.

  Nathan bent down and took the radio from the policeman’s belt. “What are we going to do with him?” he said.

  “Did you hit him?” Audrey said. Nathan couldn’t help but notice a small amount of pride in her tone.

  “Bring him through here,” Garrett said, indicating the doors that they had just come through.

  “We don’t have time,” Nathan said. It wasn’t as if the policeman was unconscious. As soon as they were gone he would be back on his feet. It was a small miracle that he hadn’t already stood back up and started slapping handcuffs on them. They would have as long as it took for him to reach the next police officer to get away and get on a train.

  “You’re right,” Garrett said. He looked down at the policeman with disgust. Nathan wondered what Garrett had against the police but thought that now was not the time to find out. Hopefully, they would have a long journey ahead of them.

  They ran as quickly as they could towards the ticket machine. Nathan could already hear the young policeman coming along behind them.

  One by one they fed their tickets into the machine and the barrier turned to let them through. By the time they were all on the other side, the policeman was close enough to grab the back of Audrey’s coat. She screamed in surprise and several people turned to look and see what was happening.

  The policeman looked just as surprised and suddenly let go. It might have been a habitual mistake, but Nathan didn’t waste time worrying about that. He grabbed Audrey’s arm and followed Garrett down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 35

  NATHAN HAD NEVER BEEN IN THE NEW TRAIN station before. They had been building it since before the car crash and opened it since. Today was the first time he had needed to go anywhere that he couldn’t walk or catch a bus to.

  The ceiling seemed to be hundreds of feet above. It was dull steel with royal blue support beams. There were stairs and escalators and little shops selling travel goods, magazines and coffee. Compared to its size there were very few enough people to fill it.

  As it didn’t seem to matter which train they caught out of the city, Nathan looked down the stairs to see which one looked as if it was leaving imminently. His limp was more pronounced now, but he didn’t dare slow down in case the police officer caught up with them. It seemed unlikely that he hadn’t done so already. Likewise, when he looked down the stairs to the platforms below, it seemed impossible that there were no trains and no people waiting to board them.

  He led Garrett and Audrey across the bridge towards the entrance. There were fewer people in this part of the station. The vast size of the place seemed to have sucked all the noise out of the air. Nathan felt suffocated.

  “Where is everyone?” Audre
y said. It seemed to Nathan as if this was the first time she had spoken. Her voice sounded small and timid.

  Nathan stopped and turned around. He was sure that he had seen people as they crossed the bridge, but now there was no one there. The three of them were alone in the cavernous station and he had a terrible feeling that he knew why that was.

  “What’s going on?” Audrey said.

  There was a noise like a grunt behind him. He saw Audrey’s eyes open wide. Garrett had let go of her, but she didn’t run away. Nathan turned slowly towards the noise and saw the ghoul standing there. It was the male half of the couple he had first met. It didn’t come towards them.

  “Who is it?” Audrey said, her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Not who,” Nathan said. “What.”

  Audrey took a step towards the ghoul. Nathan didn’t try to stop her. It was time that she saw for herself what they were up against. He didn’t deny that it was a relief to know that she would finally believe him.

  She walked towards the creature and stopped. There were still twenty metres separating them, but he knew it was close enough to see that there was something about its features that were uncomfortably different. It wasn’t a deformed man or a mutated one. It was something else: something that in the core of his being he felt was wrong.

  The creature didn’t come towards Audrey but Nathan knew that it wouldn’t be alone. It was now just the three of them in the station.

  “It’s time to go,” Nathan said. He stepped forwards and took her arm. She didn’t protest this time and he didn’t need to drag her away. She came of her own volition, reluctantly turning her back on the ghoul.

  “Where are we going?” Audrey said.

  Nathan led them away from the creature, not because he thought they would be able to escape, but because he couldn’t stand the sight of it. He thought about Gwen and Dr. Romero and Libby and all the others. It was a monster in more than just appearance.

  At the other end of the bridge there were two more ghouls, the woman that Nathan had seen with the man, now behind them, and an adolescent looking boy. They were dressed in torn tracksuits with pieces of gold protruding from unlikely places. Like the man behind them, they didn’t move.

  “What do we do?” Audrey said.

  Nathan glanced over his shoulder to confirm that the man wasn’t right behind them. He wasn’t. Neither was he where they had left him. He seemed to have disappeared altogether.

  “We need to get down to a platform,” Nathan said. Their only hope seemed to be in getting away from the creatures. On the bridge they were vulnerable, there was nowhere to run or hide. “This way,” he said.

  He ran to the first set of stairs and skidded to a stop once he saw what was at the bottom: a dozen or more bodies. The limbs bloody and twisted so that he didn’t need to get closer to see that they were dead.

  At the next set of stairs, he saw the same thing. Different bodies but the same twisted necks and pools of bloody liquid beneath them. He didn’t understand. There had been nothing there when they had passed for the first time.

  He turned to look at Audrey. She looked terrified. Her already pale face was practically translucent. She was clutching his arm now and he could feel her shaking. He turned to Garrett and he didn’t look so bad, but he was probably just better at hiding it. They had walked into a massacre and the only explanation was that it was a trap.

  They were pressed against a thick glass wall that had been covered with a giant advert for McDonalds. In front of them there was a lift with yellow and black ‘Hazard’ tape stretched across the front and to the right of that a bank of monitors that showed the times of trains arriving and departing.

  The ghouls were still there, two at one end of the bridge and one at the other. There was no sign of the police officer who had chased them which, Nathan thought, meant that he was probably dead. Maybe his body was already down on the platform with all the other people who had been killed.

  No one said anything, but they all must have known what was going to happen. They had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. More ghouls rose to the bridge. For a moment, Nathan thought that they were flying but then he realised that the escalators must still be working. He counted more than a dozen of them and felt Audrey press herself as close to him as she could.

  CHAPTER 36

  NATHAN TURNED FROM AUDREY TO GARRETT. HE LOOKED scared, but in a different way. He looked as if he was trying to psych himself up and that had to be a good thing. Nathan didn’t think that Audrey would be much good when it came down to fighting for their lives, but Garrett looked as if he was going to take the lead. It was true, the situation was desperate, but maybe they stood a chance if they were together.

  Or maybe that was just what he needed to tell himself because they couldn’t stay where they were forever. The glass wall offered them no protection from the ghoul’s who were still coming. If they didn’t do something, then they would be killed and their bodies dumped down below with all the others.

  Nathan couldn’t bring himself to think too much about the bodies beneath them because he knew that one of them was Gwen and another was Dr Romero. More people than he wanted to think about had died and, although it wasn’t his fault directly, hadn’t Courtney told him that the ghouls just wanted to be left alone? If he had just handed himself over in the first place, maybe no one else would have been killed.

  There was less than twenty metres separating them from the ghoul leading the pack. Nathan looked left and right in the hope that a way out of the situation would suddenly materialise, but there was nothing there. He couldn’t see a way out.

  He felt Garrett move but didn’t turn away from the ghouls to see why. He watched the lumpy creatures, their foreheads seemed to hang over their eyes, stop as Garrett moved towards them.

  “I’ve done what you wanted,” Garrett said.

  Nathan felt the blood drain out of his body. He felt cold and numb and tried not to understand what Garrett was doing. It wasn’t what it looked like, he told himself, Garrett must have a plan.

  Garrett stopped, his hands in the air as if he was surrendering. “You’re going to let me go, right?”

  The ghouls looked at each other and then at Garrett. Nathan wondered if they understood what he was saying. He had only ever met one ghoul who spoke English, the rest of them seemed to communicate entirely through grunts and gestures.

  “Where’s the old lady?” Garrett said. He kept his back to Nathan and Audrey.

  The ghouls turned back to look at him. Nathan saw that they were each holding primitive looking stone knives and Garrett seemed to see it as well.

  “Hey,” he said. “Point those somewhere else. We had a deal, remember?”

  Nathan turned to Audrey. She was watching Garrett. “Come on,” he said.

  Audrey let go of his arm and took his hand. Nathan moved back along the wall towards the stairs. He didn’t want to go down there amongst all the dead bodies, but he didn’t think they had a choice. Down was the only way they stood a chance of getting out.

  “You don’t want to do this,” Garrett said. His voice was no longer loud or confident. He sounded scared, but Nathan didn’t have it in him to feel sorry for the traitorous bastard. It was clear now that it had been a trap and Garrett had led them straight into it. He deserved whatever he got.

  With one hand on the cold metal railing and the other holding onto Audrey, he climbed down while watching the final moments of Garrett’s life.

  “I’ve done what you said haven’t I?” Garrett said. His voice had now taken on the unmistakable tone of pleading. “He’s here isn’t he?”

  The ghouls didn’t even grunt in response.

  “I’ve done what you told me to do now let me go,” Garrett said.

  “They’re going to kill him,” Audrey said.

  Nathan nodded, but he didn’t turn away from Garrett to look at her.

  “Aren’t you going to help him?” Audrey said.

  “What for?”
Nathan said, still not turning to look at her. “The rat bastard sold me out. He was going to let them kill me and you.”

  Audrey didn’t say anything.

  Nathan turned to look at her and saw that on top of her fear she now wore a look of sadness or disappointment. This was the first time that she had seen the ghouls kill, but Nathan knew what they were capable of. Maybe if he thought he stood a chance he would have tried to help Garrett but only so he could kill him himself. Given the current situation, it seemed better to let the ghouls do his dirty work for him.

  “Come on,” Nathan said. He turned around so that he was facing down the stairs. The dead bodies on the platform were piled up like discarded jumble, more than a metre high in places. From above it had looked as if there were dozens of them, but up close he realised that it was more like hundreds.

  Audrey turned so that she was beside him. She clamped her free hand to her mouth and as she did so they heard the first scream from above.

  “Stop it!” Garrett shouted. His voice was pain and anguish. It sounded as if his vocal chords were about to snap. “Please don’t.”

  Nathan wanted to cover his ears so that he didn’t have to hear what was going on, but they couldn’t afford to waste time while the ghouls were occupied. They might not get another chance to escape.

  “Quickly,” Nathan said. It was just the two of them now and she couldn’t be relied upon to come up with a plan. This was all new to her and the shock was still setting in. He took Audrey’s hand again and led her down the stairs into the pile of corpses.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE BODIES WERE PACKED SO CLOSELY TOGETHER THAT it was impossible to move between them without touching them. Some were old and so decayed that pieces of flesh peeled away as they were moved. Nathan saw Audrey cover her mouth to stifle a scream of disgust or perhaps just to keep out the smell.