hopefully empty, though thankfully closed. There were also chests, unidentifiable things, and various-sized cardboard boxes.
The dearly departed residents of his storage unit didn’t bother Ollie at all as he squirmed his way to the back. We didn’t need to tell him to hurry. The inside of Ollie’s storage room wasn’t the only thing that resembled a tomb. It was entirely too quiet out here, too. A mausoleum kind of quiet. Just like Yasha had never been to Siberia, I’d never been in a mausoleum, but I instinctively knew what one felt like. The creeps were the least of what I felt.
The sound of intense rummaging came from behind Ollie’s mummies.
“Got it,” he announced.
Have you ever noticed that when one big thing went right, everything else went straight to hell in a take-out box?
There was a heavy thump on the roof directly above our heads, immediately followed by more thumps farther back toward the elevator. Someone was on the roof, several someones, actually.
I froze. “Our guys?”
Ian’s gun in his hand told me otherwise. Shotgun blasts from the front of the building where Yasha was confirmed it. The big Russian was good, and a werewolf, but there was only one of him.
Ian ran down the hall to cover the stairs and elevator. “Move it!” he shouted back at us.
My survival instincts had kicked in, and they sure as hell weren’t telling me to run toward gunfire, but the way we’d come in was the only way out.
Before Ian could reach the end of the hall, both the elevator and stairway doors opened and three white camo-clad and armed men stormed through.
Not men.
Ghouls.
They’d look like men to Ian and Ollie, but my seer vision screamed—
“Ghouls!”
My brain did a quick flashback to SPI orientation. Ghouls ate human flesh, preferably while it was still alive; but in a pinch, corpses would do.
But either the pictures in the company manual hadn’t done these things justice, or proximity magnified fear. Ghouls looked more or less like humans, but the resemblance ended there. Their eyes were solid black, but would roll over white like a shark when they fed. Their jaws were longer and their mouths wider to make room for jagged teeth. Their skin was a pasty whitish gray. But a more applicable problem in our case, they were next to impossible to kill. We’d had a ghoul from time to time back home, but I’d never run into a whole passel of the things.
Ian opened fire. The pair that’d come up in the elevator were hit and went down, one of the bodies trapped between the closing elevator door. Half a second later, both ghouls were trying to get up. Ian put another bullet between the eyes of the third ghoul that’d come up the stairs. He went down twitching, but the twitching didn’t stop. Still twitching equaled not dead, or in his case, not dead again. More ghouls were coming through the stairway door.
Ollie was pushing his way out of the occult junk pile between the two upright mummies and was clutching what looked like a big gym bag. I reached in to grab him and the bag and pull them both out when one of the mummies fell out of the unit—and on top of me, knocking me to the concrete floor.
That mummy saved my life.
The unit’s steel door slammed down, missing me by inches, and severing the mummy’s legs at the knees. Ollie screamed from inside. I jumped up and grabbed the door handle, desperately trying to pull it up. It didn’t budge. I panicked. The door must have locked.
“What’s the code?” I yelled over Ollie’s screams.
I jerked on the door again. Though if the door had been locked, it still would have had some give. This thing was anchored to the floor. I wasn’t a weakling; something was keeping that door down.
Drowning out Ollie was the scream of metal being torn back as dust fell from the ceiling.
The roof.
Above Ollie’s storage unit.
I pulled on that door with every bit of strength I had. What seemed to be fused to the concrete floor a second before now flew
The dearly departed residents of his storage unit didn’t bother Ollie at all as he squirmed his way to the back. We didn’t need to tell him to hurry. The inside of Ollie’s storage room wasn’t the only thing that resembled a tomb. It was entirely too quiet out here, too. A mausoleum kind of quiet. Just like Yasha had never been to Siberia, I’d never been in a mausoleum, but I instinctively knew what one felt like. The creeps were the least of what I felt.
The sound of intense rummaging came from behind Ollie’s mummies.
“Got it,” he announced.
Have you ever noticed that when one big thing went right, everything else went straight to hell in a take-out box?
There was a heavy thump on the roof directly above our heads, immediately followed by more thumps farther back toward the elevator. Someone was on the roof, several someones, actually.
I froze. “Our guys?”
Ian’s gun in his hand told me otherwise. Shotgun blasts from the front of the building where Yasha was confirmed it. The big Russian was good, and a werewolf, but there was only one of him.
Ian ran down the hall to cover the stairs and elevator. “Move it!” he shouted back at us.
My survival instincts had kicked in, and they sure as hell weren’t telling me to run toward gunfire, but the way we’d come in was the only way out.
Before Ian could reach the end of the hall, both the elevator and stairway doors opened and three white camo-clad and armed men stormed through.
Not men.
Ghouls.
They’d look like men to Ian and Ollie, but my seer vision screamed—
“Ghouls!”
My brain did a quick flashback to SPI orientation. Ghouls ate human flesh, preferably while it was still alive; but in a pinch, corpses would do.
But either the pictures in the company manual hadn’t done these things justice, or proximity magnified fear. Ghouls looked more or less like humans, but the resemblance ended there. Their eyes were solid black, but would roll over white like a shark when they fed. Their jaws were longer and their mouths wider to make room for jagged teeth. Their skin was a pasty whitish gray. But a more applicable problem in our case, they were next to impossible to kill. We’d had a ghoul from time to time back home, but I’d never run into a whole passel of the things.
Ian opened fire. The pair that’d come up in the elevator were hit and went down, one of the bodies trapped between the closing elevator door. Half a second later, both ghouls were trying to get up. Ian put another bullet between the eyes of the third ghoul that’d come up the stairs. He went down twitching, but the twitching didn’t stop. Still twitching equaled not dead, or in his case, not dead again. More ghouls were coming through the stairway door.
Ollie was pushing his way out of the occult junk pile between the two upright mummies and was clutching what looked like a big gym bag. I reached in to grab him and the bag and pull them both out when one of the mummies fell out of the unit—and on top of me, knocking me to the concrete floor.
That mummy saved my life.
The unit’s steel door slammed down, missing me by inches, and severing the mummy’s legs at the knees. Ollie screamed from inside. I jumped up and grabbed the door handle, desperately trying to pull it up. It didn’t budge. I panicked. The door must have locked.
“What’s the code?” I yelled over Ollie’s screams.
I jerked on the door again. Though if the door had been locked, it still would have had some give. This thing was anchored to the floor. I wasn’t a weakling; something was keeping that door down.
Drowning out Ollie was the scream of metal being torn back as dust fell from the ceiling.
The roof.
Above Ollie’s storage unit.
I pulled on that door with every bit of strength I had. What seemed to be fused to the concrete floor a second before now flew
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