“I told you, ghoul,” Gail said and followed my gaze toward the movement I’d spotted just inside the tree line. “Yep, that’s it. It usually makes a snack out of the recently dead, but if it catches live prey, it’s not above killing.”
Gail had often played practical jokes on me, but dragging me out in the dead of night for one seemed a little beyond her. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say ghoul. Now, what are we here for?”
“Tonight, we’re hunting ghoul,” Gail whispered back. “They’re not too difficult. They can’t be killed by just gunfire, but removing their head will do the trick. First, we have to incapacitate it. I have the big knife so I’m going to need you to put enough lead into it to take it down until I can finish it. Think you can do that, Jesse Weaver?”
I met Gail’s gaze beneath the bright moon. She displayed tells of seriousness; a direct stare—no flinching away from my gaze—grim mouth, and set jaw. If I hadn’t known better, I’d think she was serious, but that wasn’t possible. A ghoul? Seriously? From all the horror movies and television that I must admit I found a guilty pleasure in watching, I supposed that a ghoul was a pathetic creature. It was a carrion feeder, something not brave enough to kill outright and had to take already dead meals. If it was a ghoul, why did Gail want to kill it? Hell, it must be some kind of gag, an incredibly bad gag to drag me away from my studies, but a gag nonetheless.
“Gail, I’m not going to start shooting somebody just because you say they’re a ghoul. Hell, even ghouls have parents and maybe even kids. I can’t kill him without justification.” Okay, I was talking nonsense, at least to my own ears, but for Christ’s sake, ghouls?
Gail pursed her lips, leaned back away from me, and studied my face for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Okay, hero, you’ve got principles. I can understand that. Stay right here.”
She rose and stepped out from behind the tombstone.
“Where are you going?” I hissed.
“To get you your justification,” Gail answered.
She walked upright toward the figure, which I now realized was digging at a grave about two rows over from where I crouched. Damn, it wasn’t using a shovel; it appeared to be digging with its hands.
I lowered my handgun and stepped to the right to keep Gail out of my line of fire. What was she planning?
Damn it, I knew I should have stayed in my apartment and studied for that final.
She had approached within ten feet when the person digging stopped suddenly and spun toward Gail. He snarled, low and deep like Dad’s old hound dog warning a stray cat. What the hell? Now that my eyes had grown accustomed to the moonlight, I could make out the features of the man at the grave if it were a man. It was the nastiest looking person I’d seen since Afghanistan. It was lean to the point of being emaciated. Its hands were filthy from digging in the fresh earth and its face looked like something from a nightmare. Its clothes were torn, ragged, and filthy. When it snarled, it displayed large ugly looking teeth.
Gail kept walking toward whoever the hell that was. She raised her weapon and fired twice in rapid succession. I flinched. I hadn’t thought she’d actually shoot. The man’s body jerked from double impacts. Rather than going down, he snarled again and leapt toward Gail. Even before her second shot had struck, Gail had started to turn. She was fast, damn fast, and she was running pell-mell back toward me.
“What the fuck!” I said as the man leapt after her. She’d just put two heavy caliber rounds into his chest and all he’d done was flinch at the impact. Now he was pursuing her faster than Gail could run. I brought my gun into a shooter’s grip as Gail ran straight for me. What was she thinking? She was spoiling my sight picture.
My pulse was racing and I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs. I knew adrenaline was pouring into my bloodstream. I took a deep breath to steady my aim.
“Get down!” I yelled.
Five feet from me, Gail dropped into a feet-first slide. From a range of ten feet, I was certain that whatever the thing was, it wasn’t a man. I partially emptied my lungs, then held my breath as I put the front sight in the center of mass and pumped three closely spaced rounds into the thing’s chest.
It staggered under the impact of each round but hardly broke stride.
“Damnit, Jesse, shoot it in the head!” Gail yelled and rolled to the side.
I shifted my aim and fired two more rounds. In the bright light of the full moon and from a distance of not more than five feet, I knew I put each shot into the center of the thing’s face. This time it did more than stagger. It dropped to its knees not two feet from me. Its hands fell to its side and it started to sway. Its face should have been a bloody ruin from my rounds, but there were only a couple of puckered marks where the bullets had impacted.
I started breathing again and as I did, the puckering closed over and its skin was again unbroken.
Gail rose to stand beside me. I noted she’d holstered her handgun and drawn her massive knife from its sheath. “Shoot it again.”
“Huh?”
The thing had one foot under it and it was trying to stand!
“Shit!” I said, ignoring both my breathing and my sight picture, I fired three more rounds directly between its eyes.
“That’s enough,” Gail said. She stepped forward, drew back her knife with both hands, struck a batter’s pose, and then hesitated. She looked at me. “Protect your
