Jason tried to work saliva into his dry mouth. His hands shaking in the heat of the Southern California summer night. The crescent moon high in the sky. She should be here. Why didn’t Helga come? Dammit. He looked over the empty field of Long Beach. Except for the distant oil derrick pumping away with a soft mechanical drone sha-shunk sha-shunk, he was alone.
A sudden keen broke the quiet night. To Jason’s left, scrambling from the oil derrick, he caught sight of a bestial form charging towards him. Partially on two legs, then loping like a wolf as it grew closer.
“Shit!” Jason swore, bolting towards the streetlights on Bellflower. Get to the light. It’ll protect me. Get to the light. Only need a minute or two.
Behind him, he heard the thump-thump-thump of bare feet pounding behind him. Don’t look back. Jason’s heart hammered harder and harder in his chest as he ran. Dammit, how did this happen? Fucking ghouls. He was twenty yards from the light, ten yards, five...
“I’m going to eat you, Jason,” a harsh growl coming from behind him. Not a shout. Not a threat. It was a promise. “I’m going to eat you.”
The howl went up, a keening howl that wasn’t human, not something a living human could make. It was louder and closer and closer.
Something slammed into Jason from behind. Jason and whatever struck him pitched forward, skidding into the pool of light from the closest streetlight. Coming to a rest on his side, he lashed out with his legs, kicking blindly.
His heel connected with something, driving it back a few steps, allowing him to twist around and get a foot under him. Turned, he beheld the creature following him. A ghoul.
The wretched creature loomed over Jason for a moment, hissing and glaring at him. Then it howled in pain, burned by the light of the artificial streetlight. Stoop yet muscular shouldered; a jaw far too large for its once living human skull was the first things Jason focused on. The flesh a dark grey hue as though some of the creature’s skin had leeched up the tainted darkness of a corpse without a soul. A ghost made flesh by evil deeds.
“I’m going to eat you, Jason,” the ghoul said again. Ducking fully from the pool of fabricated light, its eyes glinting like an animal in the reflected illumination. Jason recognized the wretched, inhuman voice. Thomas. The ghoul prowled outside the light, his jaws clacking together, reverberating in Jason’s chest.
Fumbling in his pants pocket with the sudden burst of adrenaline. Jason pulled out his revolver, fighting and losing, the shaking of his hands and the clenching of his guts. His lizard brain screaming at him to run. Run!
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“You think that will do anything to me?” Thomas asked, a cackle welling up from the bare, emaciated chest of the
“Salt and iron usually works,” Jason said, raising the revolver. Aiming for the chest, he fired at the ghoul three times. Each round knocking the ghoul back a step. For a moment, Jason felt a small burst of hope, thinking it worked.
The ghoul was driven farther from the pool of yellowish white light.
That hope died when Jason heard Thomas’ cackling laugh. An inhuman coughing laugh making Jason’s blood run cold.
“My turn,” Thomas said, one grime caked bare hand came up revealing long dirty claws, clicking the claws all together. At first, Jason noticed nothing. Then the light of the streetlamp flickered. Thomas smiled, clicking his claws faster, the sound grating on Jason’s ears as the light flickered more and more, taking longer than a heartbeat to come back.
The revolver hung useless at Jason’s side. Biting his lower lip in defeat, he asked, “What happened to you, Thomas?”
“I died.” In a mockery of a human grin, Thomas bared his teeth towards Jason.
“The Order—”
“The Order? What did they ever do for me?”
Jason realized that the sounds of the clicking intensified, chilling him more. The light of his streetlight was flickering more, yet, so did the other streetlights up and down Bellflower as far as he could see.
“The Order...Humanity itself is a disease!” Thomas continued. “We will destroy it.”
“Who are we?”
“My friends and I,” Thomas said, spreading his arms, allowing the maddening clicking to stop for a moment.
In answer, Jason heard several more screeches of more ghouls.
“Fuck it!” Jason fired again and again, sending the three more rounds made by the Order into the darkness towards Thomas. The salt and iron infused rounds stopped Thomas for a moment.
“Really?” Thomas hissed out.
Then the clicking started again, the sound intensified as more claws added to it, growing louder and louder. The streetlamps flickered all around him, then burning out from both ends of the street. Darkness swallowing up more and more of Bellflower.
“Had to try. You know the Order.”
“Don’t struggle. I will do this as a kindness, if you renounce the Order and join me.”
Jason said nothing, only pulling out a silver dagger. He readied himself, staring at Thomas.
“Really, Jason?”
“Until Hell swallows my soul,” Jason intoned.
Thomas grinned wider. “That can happen.”
The sound of clicking intensified tenfold. It throbbed in Jason’s chest like a second heartbeat of bone. Looking to his left, then right, two, then three…five…then finally ten pairs of eyes emerged from the darkness. All reflecting the light from the lone surviving street lamp surrounding the wan pool of light.
Dumbstruck, Jason turned to Thomas. “How?”
“We are many…” Thomas started.
“…For we are Legion,” the chorus rang out around Jason and his singular pool of light and protection. Thomas stopped clicking his claws. A moment later, the street plunged into silence. The streetlight flickered out. For a moment, Jason only heard his own rasping breath in the darkness. A claw then tore into one of Jason’s legs. He swiped outward and down, the dagger sinking into a body before the creature moved away. Another claw hit his exposed side. Jason clenched his jaw against the pain. Then they were atop him. The silver dagger he had stabbed into another ghoul’s side, downing it. Two more took their place, devouring him, bit by fleshy wet bit.