Ghouls

out there now, tearing this neat little town of yours a new asshole.”

Vicky was shaking her head. “Kurt, don’t be an idiot. There’s something really wrong here. Arrest them both.”

“He saved my life!” Kurt snapped back. “I can’t just bust him and toss him in the can.”

Sanders appeared hard-pressed not to laugh at them both. “What’s to lose just looking into it? Believe me, your man in the mine is dead; he never stood a chance. So what’s the hurry?”

Kurt paused further, trying to rein his anger. He gave Sanders a long, hard stare, then broke, yelling, “You’re both fucking nuts—in fact, you’re nuttier than Willard! Go on, get out of here if that’s what you want! Take your money and your fucking illegal machine gun and leave!” He pushed his hair back, which was now shiny with sweat. Veins beat on his brow. “I’m going to call the county. I will not believe some bullshit tale about ghalas and grave-robbing.”

Sanders slung his rifle and shrugged. “Suit yourself. You wanna dig your own shit-ditch and jump in it, go ahead. Would it help if I told you I was the one who got the larvae for Willard in Saudi Arabia?”

“No!” Kurt began to punch in the county number.

“Look, before you call your precious county, at least take a look in the basement.”

It wasn’t what Sanders had said, it was the indifference with which he’d said it. Kurt teethed his lower lip, sweating. He hung up the phone.

“Now you’re starting to use your head,” Sanders said.

What a gullible jackass I am, Kurt thought, and he could tell by Vicky’s expression that she was thinking along the same lines. Sanders opened the oddly placed door in the corner, then led Willard down at gunpoint. Vicky went next, frowning.

Kurt stepped hesitantly into the doorway. The others’ footsteps clattered up through hollow darkness. A fetid draft blew into his face, and there was a faint, tarry stench. He placed his foot on the first step, the second, the third. As he went down, the stench thickened, and by the time he got to the bottom, it was making him sick. He’d noticed the same odor in the mine.

Directly overhead, fluorescent tubes buzzed gray, then flashed on all at once. Now white, brutalizing light filled a small room much like the latent lab at state police headquarters. There was a sink counter, a Beckman chromatograph, shelves stocked with glassware, chemicals, lab apparatus, and the like. There was also a shiny metal table encrusted with random shapes of what must be blood.

Kurt ground his teeth at thoughts of what Willard must’ve done down here. It was a madman’s playroom, a torture chamber. On the counter, beside a large oil-immersion microscope, he saw bloody pliers and a hypodermic with a needle the size of a masonry nail. A heavy canvas blackout curtain hung at the far end of the room, from ceiling to floor.

“What’s behind there?” Kurt asked.

“The main attraction,” Sanders said. He leveled his rifle on Willard’s belly and reached across for the curtain.

Willard leaned against the counter, arms crossed, composure revived. “I’ll pay each of you thirty thousand dollars to let me go.”

“Shut up,” Kurt said.

“Fifty thousand.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Sanders said. His hand wavered.

“Just open the curtain.”

Sanders hauled the canvas back on its rung, to reveal two cinderblock compartments built against the back wall. The access to each compartment was a hinge frame of steel bars, roughly six feet high and three wide, held shut by padlocks. They looked like crude jail cells.

The right compartment was empty. Through the hinge frame, Kurt could see the hole where the grate had been torn off—the channel which led to the ventilators outside.

Something moved in the left compartment.

Vicky leaned forward, staring vexedly past the bars. Her voice was broken, splintery. “Are those… men?”

Kurt stepped past her to see. This charade had gone on long enough.

“Don’t get too close.” Sanders said. “They have a good reach.”

Kurt stood entrenched, peering in. There were actually two shapes in the pen, one hunched in the corner, the other upright. He thought they must be shadows at first, just odd shadows— they had to be. But slowly details began to form, a semblance of limbs, heads, checked watchful movement, pale aberrations of figures not quite human. He looked at them for a long time, and he felt a sensation like snakes swimming in his gut when he realized they were looking back.

“It’s a trick,” Kurt murmured, but he knew it wasn’t. He knew he was face-to-face with something that couldn’t be. He felt dangerously unstable, like standing on skates; cold rushing numbness flowed through him as he continued to examine the stark horror before him.

Their skin was mottled, viscid-gray, sluglike in its exuding moistness. The first one stood raw and lean in the slanting light, the shadows of the bars thrown crookedly across its corded, sinuous torso. It breathed imperceptibly; its muscles slid, flexing, beneath tight, inhuman skin.

“How many did you say escaped?” Sanders asked.

“Two, my control group,” Willard lamented. “It was about a week ago. They chose the old mine for their lair, which is ideal for them, perhaps even better for them than their natural environs.”

“But why?” Vicky said, aghast. “Why bring those things here?”

Willard leaned forward, puppetlike in deep, reactive wonder. “Why?” he asked. “Why does any man venture a great question? To reveal before the world something unseen, unbelieved until now, to bring to life a thousand- year-old myth… I would have been credited with the discovery of a new bipedal life form.”

“And never mind how many get killed in the process,” Sanders remarked. “We were pawns to you, weren’t we? Mules who broke our backs for your great discovery.”

“Not mules. Pioneers, men of destiny. You should feel honored to have taken part.”

“Tell that to the two Marines.”

“Oh, really, Sergeant, a man of war as yourself must acknowledge the expendability of human life in crucial circumstances.”

“That’s easy for you to say. They were my friends, not yours. And you didn’t have to watch them die.”

The words never reached Kurt. He was still staring into the pen, entranced by revulsion. The faces, he thought. My God, the faces. Like incarnations of a medieval vision of hell, the faces leered back at him. They were narrow, snouted wedges, heinously lacking in detail. The thing forward stepped closer to the bars. Two rimmed holes for a nose quivered, sniffing. The jutting, long jaw lowered just a bit, stretching sleek lips over a razor row of teeth which glittered like tinsel. Worst of all, though, were the eyes, with no signs of pupil or iris—just huge black orbs widely spaced on the foreskull. They shone, unblinking and black as spheres of polished smoke glass.

The thing’s hand shot out between the bars. Shouting a prompt, “Jesus!” Kurt jumped back as the frame slammed loudly against its mortar bolts. A single inch closer and he would’ve been grabbed by the throat.

Before them all, the twisted, three-fingered hand opened and closed, talons clicking.

“I told you they have a good reach,” Sanders reminded, though unmoved by the momentary start. “And once they get hold of you—believe me—they don’t let go.”

The scare made Kurt’s chest want to burst. The thing’s face and shoulder pressed tight against the bars, its hand still reaching vainly out. For a churning, sickening moment, Kurt feared it might actually squeeze through the frame of bars.

“Ultimate killers,” Willard observed in a flat voice. “Perfect in their purpose. Ferocity is instinct for them; they kill without forethought.” A proud hush crept into his words. He pointed to the pen. “Look at them. They’re marvels, patterns of biological excellence. Their physical superiority is incontrovertible. What my research has revealed will split the world of natural science wide open.”

“Now’s your chance to impress us,” Sanders said. “Give us a rundown.”