PART FIVE

Copyright 2007 Mike Suchcicki

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 6

Gray paused in her search to look out the large picture window on the west side of the house. The sun was showing off magnificently as it set beneath the hills of Johnson Ridge.

"Why is it so hard to look at beautiful things like this these days?" she wondered aloud.

"Because you realize that between this house and that sunset, throughout those impressive trees and hillsides, all kinds of death is hiding, waiting," said Cornealius. He was sorting through a basket of papers, but finding mostly bills and sales flyers.

"You know, you're almost kind of a poet, C."

"I'll keep my day job, thanks."

Gray started to open yet another drawer in yet another cupboard, but said, "I'm beginning to think this is a pointless search. This woman probably thinks like me. She's not about to keep important details just sitting in a desk drawer or on a tabletop where anyone could find it."

"Well, then, if the two of you think alike, then think about where you would keep this information."

"That's just it, I wouldn't keep it anywhere."

"You'd memorize it?"

"No, not necessarily. I mean, I wouldn't just store it someplace. I'd keep it someplace special."

"OK, so you'd hide it. Where would you hide it?"

"You're not following me, C. That's not what I mean. I'm not saying I would hide it. I'm saying I would keep it someplace special."

"You're right. I'm not following you. What's the difference?"

"I'd have a special place. Someplace that's not necessarily a hiding place, but a place that only I knew about. Someplace where I could go. Someplace safe."

"Another lab?"

"Maybe. I'm thinking she has another place. Another house that only she knows about. I'll bet you that's where she's been all this time. That's where she is right now."

"Another house? That seems hard to do around here. In such a close-knit place as this town, how could she have another house that no one knows about? And how could she get from here to there without anyone knowing about it? If she had another house that was accessible from here, certainly there would be some kind of trail, path, something. I didn't see any signs while we were out there. And why would she feel the need to up and leave here so suddenly to get there?"

"Whoa. Too many questions. Let me think on some of those and I'll get back to you."

Gray happened to glance up and through the picture window again and she gasped.

"C!"

Cornealius dropped the papers and ran over.

Across the clearing, at the edge of the woods, a woman stumbled toward the house, falling forward onto the ground. She quickly pulled herself up and staggered forward. A Ghoo pistol was in one hand and she turned as she ran, firing at a trio of Ghouls quickly approaching from behind her. Bloody and dirt-covered, she was moving quickly despite a heavy limp — one leg was clearly sliced open and was covered in blood — and was surprisingly accurate with her shots considering her condition. With one shot she exploded the Ghoul nearest to her.

Gray and Cornealius snatched their rifles from the table and ran out the back door.

"You get her!" Cornealius yelled as they ran. "I'll take the Ghouls."

Gray quickly met the woman and caught her as she fell forward. Cornealius ran past, firing at the two remaining Ghouls that had made it to the clearing and could now move without impediment.

The woman noticed Cornealius rush past and turned in his direction. "Here! Use my weapon!" She held out her pistol. Gray grabbed it and tossed it to Cornealius. "Here, C!"

Without asking any questions, Cornealius caught the weapon, quickly adjusted it in his hand and fired a shot at the nearest rampaging Ghoul. The glob of Ghoo caught the Ghoul in the throat area and with a mighty pop of wind the creature exploded.

Lucky, was Cornealius' first thought, then he fired a quick shot at the second Ghoul, only a few feet away. It struck the creature's side.

PWOOSH! The creature disintegrated into a rain of Ghoulash.

Cornealius allowed himself a moment to stop and consider the weapon in his hand. It was no different from any other Ghoo pistol he had used before. Then he took a closer look at the liquid in the reservoir. It was more blue than purple, the normal color of Ghoo. Also, the consistency was slightly thinner. That didn't make sense, he thought. A thinner consistency meant less Ghoo was ejected from the weapon per shot. A dangerous setting for a Ghoul weapon, unless …

This was it, he realized. The Super-Ghoo. The perfect weapon. It existed. It worked.

"C, I need your help," Gray called to him. Cornealius snapped from his trance and ran over.

"We need to get a tourniquet on her leg," said Gray. "She's losing blood fast."

Not just her leg, Cornealius thought. Her neck, her forearm, her side, all were sliced open. How she made it this far was anyone's guess. He looked at Gray and shook his head. Gray understood. It was no use.

Gray wiped the blood-soaked hair from the woman's face. She couldn't tell if the woman was 30 or 70; beneath the dirt and the sweat she had one of those sweet, angelic faces that defied the passage of time.

"You must be Hope," Gray said, cradling the woman's head gently.

Hope Hartley reached up and grabbed Gray's collar, pulling her closer.

"I was hiding," the woman said, her voice raspy and garbled from the fluid in her throat. "I saw that he was with you. I went to hide, to wait for a chance to talk to you alone. I came back to warn you. On my way back, the demons came. Too many of them, too quickly. I came to tell you, don't trust him. You shouldn't trust him."

"Trust who, Hope?" Gray asked.

"I saw him talking to Heston Wynn," Hope said. "Wynn came here once. I saw them talking, and I knew then he could not be trusted. Don't let him fool you."

"Who are you talking about, Hope?"

It was getting more difficult for Hope to speak. "He's bringing the others here. More of Wynn's men. Coming for me. Coming for you."

Gray and Cornealius looked at each other, realizing what that meant.

"Ask her about the formula," Cornealius said.

"C … I can't … "

"We don't have much time. Ask her where she's put it. It has to be somewhere."

Gray looked down at the woman, who was grimacing against the pain.

"Hope, where do you keep your formula for the super-mixture?"

Fighting her own spasms of pain, the woman struggled to raise one arm, as if to point, but she couldn't. She coughed up a mouthful of fluid, clearing her throat, and then she said, "Demons can't k …"

And then she relaxed into death.

Cornealius wasted no time for mourning. "Sheriff Sealy," he said. "Sealy went back to town to call Wynn's men. They're probably on their way back right now. We've got to get out of here. Now."

"But we have no car."

Cornealius looked back at the clearing's edge, at the point from which Hope had emerged. "But we have Hope's other place, wherever that is. We just need to find it."

"So we're going to run blindly into the Ghoul-infested woods looking for a house that we're not even sure exists?"

As they spoke, they scooped up Hope's body and carried it to the back porch of the house, laying it upon a wicker bench.

"Well, we kind of have an idea of what we're looking for," Cornealius said.

"We do?"

"Sure. A hidden house. She built herself someplace secluded, perhaps tucked within a thick stand of trees or even dug into a hill. Now that we know we're looking for someplace that's not out in the open, we're ahead of the game."

"What was that she was trying to say at the end? 'Demons can't …' what? Something with a K. Can't kill? Can't keep a secret? Can't kick the door down?"

"She probably didn't even know what she was saying," Cornealius said, heading back into the house.

"Where are you going?"

"First I'm going to try to call Lake. Cell phones won't work out here, and I left the satellite unit in the car. So I'll use Hope's land line to call the hotel. Then, I'm going to look to see if Hope keeps more weapons around the house."

"Why? We've got all the weapons we can handle."

"Not Ghoul weapons. Human weapons. The bullet kind."

Gray was covering Hope's body with a comforter when Cornealius reemerged from the house. He was carrying a shotgun.

"Lake wasn't at the hotel," he said. "Probably at the festival. He's probably safer in a crowd, anyway. The Sheriff's Department didn't know where Sealy was, either."

"I see you found something."

"Let's hope it works. Looks like it hasn't been used or cleaned in years." Keeping his Ghoo rifle slung over his shoulder and his own sidearm in its holster, he took the shotgun in one hand and Hope's super-formula pistol in the other. "Ready?"

Gray looked out at the twilight sky. The sun had disappeared but some light still remained.

"C, I give us a good half hour of visibility. If we don't find this hidden house of yours by then, we're searching in the dark."

"Understood. My guess is, the three Ghouls that were after Hope left a path that we can follow back." He paused. "Also, there will be a blood trail."

Gray hefted her rifle and headed for the porch door. "Lucky for us, I guess. Let's go."

The trail was, indeed, easy to follow. Three massive Ghouls moving through tall grass, brush and vines produces much the same impact as heavy machinery. Then there was, of course, the blood.

Cornealius said, "Keep your eyes open, but I have a feeling Hope already activated all the Ghouls between her house and her hiding place."

"Here's what I don't understand," Gray said. "If Hope had her super-formula with her, how were the Ghouls able to get the drop on her like that?"

"She might have had trouble getting out of her hiding place. Also, we only saw three Ghouls. She might have activated five or six or more, too many even for her special formula."

"Still, I can't help thinking there's something we're missing. Something about what she said. 'Demons can't …' something."

"We'll find out soon enough."

The swath of Ghoul destruction came to an end in the thick of the forest. No clearing, no path, no hills, no gullies. There was, however, plenty of Ghoulash about; the dull green patches glinted even in the low light of the nighttime sky.

"Yes, there were certainly more than three Ghouls," Cornealius said. "At least two more from what I can tell." He looked around anxiously. "But I can't see anywhere she would have hidden an entrance. The trees are too close for her to have dug down." He ran his hand along a tree trunk. "A secret hideaway inside the tree, perhaps?"

Almost casually, Gray said, "Of course."

"Of course, what?"

She looked at Cornealius and pointed up. "Demons can't climb."

Cornealius looked up. Dangling from the highest reaches of the tall tree was a rope ladder. About twelve feet up, however, it was tangled in a massive knot, leaving the end of the ladder at least eight feet from the ground.

"A treehouse?" he said.

"Why not?" Gray said. If you live surrounded by forest, what better place is there to hide from Ghouls? The branches of a tree are less conducive to spore settlement and 'plasm growth; the shape's all wrong. Spore likes flatness. Whatever shelter you build for yourself is easily 'plasm-proofed. And, like Hope said, Ghouls can't climb."

"She probably slipped trying to untangle the ladder. Either that or she just jumped and came down on a 'plasm nest." He tucked the shotgun into his bandoliers. "Can you boost me up?"

"Are you going to try to climb with that shotgun?"

"I'm not leaving it behind."

"Just please try not to shoot me accidentally." She reached down and linked her hands into a stirrup. "Come on. Alley-oop."

Gray lifted Cornealius high enough to reach the ladder bottom. He pulled himself up and held on with one hand while he untwisted the tangle. The ladder fell the rest of the way and Gray climbed after the Ghoul hunter.

The treehouse was a simple construction, merely a square wooden box tall enough for standing and wide enough to hold at least four people comfortably. The hatch through the floor was sealed with thick weather-stripping. The walls held small, single-pane windows that did not open. On the ceiling was a plastic ventilator vent.

"Spore-proof ventilation," Cornealius said, indicating the vent. "Probably battery-operated."

"She really Ghoul-proofed this whole place," Gray said, stepping over to one of the windows. "Hey, look, you can see Hope's house from here. Man, we're high up."

Suddenly Cornealius said, "Shh! Quiet. Do you hear that?"

Gray listened. "There are people down there."

Cornealius lifted the hatch and looked down. Whoever it was was yelling loudly back and forth. "Hunters."

"Pull up the ladder, just in case."

Cornealius quickly coiled the ladder and set it aside.

The only furniture in the room was a small desk and a single chair. Atop the table was a battery-powered lamp and a stack of cloth-bound ledger books. Gray clicked on the lamp and began flipping through the top book in the stack.

"It's Hope's notes, all right. This one's the most recent according to the dates."

"Let's take them all."

"How? Neither one of us has a backpack."

Cornealius grabbed one of the notebooks, spun Gray around and tucked it down into the back of her jeans. He then spun her again and tugged at her front waistband. She knocked his hand away.

"I'll get this side, thanks," she said, tucking another book in. "We're going to kill ourselves climbing down out of this thing."

Cornealius tucked the remaining books into his waistband, front and back. "Then you should climb down first so you don't fall on me."

He reopened the hatch and waited for the sounds of the hunting party to subside. "Now's our chance," he said, dropping the ladder back through the opening. "After you, ma'am."

Moving slowly because of the payload in her waistbands and trying to keep her rifle from snagging on anything, Gray carefully lowered herself through the hatch and began the climb down. Cornealius followed.

As they climbed down, they could hear the distant calls of hunting groups all over the hills. They also could hear the "thup, thup" of Ghoo weapons as they fired, sometimes followed by the sudden wind blasts of exploding Ghouls, which, of course, were then followed by raucous cheering and whooping.

They also heard the occasional screams.

Gray said, "I'll never get used to a culture where they actually go out and invite Ghoul activity."

"That's what our sweeper teams do back home," Cornealius replied.

"That's different. Sweepers have a job to do, like firemen. Folks around here are like firemen who start their own fires."

They reached the ground and both instinctively reached for their Ghoo weapons.

Gray asked, "Do you think it's safe to go back the way we came, or should we try to sneak back another way?"

A different voice replied, "I don't think it's safe either way."

They looked up. Cornealius reached up with his free arm to withdraw the shotgun.

Ferrell Coggins stepped from behind a tree and raised a gun — the bullet kind — toward them. "Don't do it," he said. "Just slowly pull out the shotgun and drop it. And by the way, I'm not alone."

Four other gunmen stepped from hiding, all holding automatic weapons in their hands and with Ghoo rifles strapped to their backs.

Cornealius dropped the shotgun.

"A lot of good it would have done, anyway," Coggins said. "It was only birdshot."

"Cog, what are you doing?" asked Gray. "What's going on?"

"What I am doing is taking those notebooks from you," Coggins said. "And what's going is, I'm finally gaining the wealth I should have had years ago."

"What are you talking about?"

"Kiddo, I should have been filthy rich a long time ago, and I would have been had it not been for you and your mother. I was this close to getting her to give me her Ghoo formula, but she went and distributed it for free. Heston Wynn would have made me a millionaire, probably even a billionaire."

"Heston Wynn would have had you killed, just as he had my mother killed. Or, did you have a hand in that?"

Coggins twisted his mouth as he pondered the proper answer. "Actually, no, I was not entirely innocent in that. I helped to make sure your mother was where she was supposed to be, just as I helped to make sure you were where you were supposed to be today. I knew Hope was up to something, but I couldn't get her to give me the answer. Fortunately she had the bright idea to turn her findings over to you, which helped me to kill two birds with one stone, pardon the pun."

He pointed with the pistol to indicate the super-formula weapon in Cornealius' gun belt. "I'll take that little item first," Coggins said. "Slowly."

Cornealius drew the weapon and handed it to Coggins, who held it up in the moonlight and rocked it slowly back and forth, watching the formula slosh within the reservoir. "So, this is the miracle formula? This is the stuff that some backwoods homemaker could develop in her kitchen while thousands of highly educated scientists toiled away in their million-dollar laboratories."

From somewhere in the trees, Lake said, "Well, I sure hope it works, because there's a Ghoul forming right behind you."

It all happened at once: Coggins spun and saw that a Ghoul was, indeed, rising behind him. The gunmen turned toward the sound of Lake's voice and began blasting with their automatic weapons. Cornealius quickly dropped to one knee, scooped up the shotgun, aimed it at the nearest thug and fired. The blast of birdshot hit the henchman in his left shoulder blade. He screamed, dropped his weapon and fell to his knees in pain.

Coggins raised the super-formula weapon and fired. The blast hit the Ghoul dead center.

Nothing happened. The liquid merely dripped down the Ghoul's torso. The creature didn't even flinch as it rushed forward. Coggins fired again and again, furiously aiming at different areas, but none of the shots had any effect. In his final seconds he realized the truth: The miracle formula had deteriorated into useless liquid. The scientist screamed as the Ghoul's claws pierced his chest and sides, ripping away flesh. Its teeth sunk into his face, silencing him forever.

Gray watched, stunned, as the man she once considered a dear friend, now revealed to have been one of her mother's murderers, had his life torn away. She regained her focus as Cornealius ran by, grabbing her by her arm.

"Come on! This way!" he yelled, leading Gray into the woods.

The gunmen began to follow, but the Ghoul, having finished with Coggins, turned its attention to them. Other Ghouls began to rise, activated by all the movement.

Cornealius began to hear automatic weapons fire, as well as screams of terror, and allowed himself a glance back. He knew the gunmen would react as they did, firing at the Ghouls with useless traditional weapons instead of using their Ghoo rifles. He also knew that would be the last mistake any of them made. Sure enough, the gunfire — and the screams — soon stopped.

He and Gray stumbled through the woods, dodging branches and glancing around frantically for Ghouls.

"Where are we going?" Gray asked.

"Toward the hunters," Cornealius said. "If Wynn sent any other men, we'll be safest around other people."

"What about Lake? I heard him back there."

"I'm over here!" Lake said from somewhere nearby. "Trying to keep up with you guys."

The two parties converged. Gray looked at Nattie and turned to Lake. She said, "You brought a date?"

Lake said, "Guys, this is Nattie Collier."

Gray gasped. "THE Nattie Collier?"

Lake held up his hand to stop any further conversation. "Long story. We'll fill you in later. Right now we've got to get over to Granger Hill. The Bransons brought Hallie out to hunt Ghouls, and I don't want to lose a six-year-old tonight. We've got to stop them. Nattie knows the way. Come on."

Still panting, Gray said, "Fine. After all, there's no need to worry about C and me. We managed to elude certain death at the hands of five evil gunmen, and there might be more of them out there looking for us, so we're good to go, right, C?"

Lake said, "Great, if you're good to go, then let's go." He and Nattie ran off.

Cornealius looked up at Gray. "At least we'll be with other people. Come on."

Gray took one step, then froze.

Cornealius asked, "What's the matter?"

Gray's jaw dropped as she reached around her. "The notebook fell out! I dropped it somewhere!" She started to run back. "Come on, we've got to find it!"

Cornealius grabbed her arm, stopping her.

"Don't be crazy! There's no way we can find it in these woods this time of night! There's no guarantee we can even retrace our steps exactly. Besides, we don't know if Wynn sent other guns after us. We've got to get to where people are!"

"But without that notebook … "

"We still have the others!"

"But the one that fell was the most recent book! It probably had the super-formula recipe!"

"Look, we can come back when it's light."

"By that time, someone else might have found it! You know these woods are crawling with hunters. And what if Wynn does have men after us? What if they find it first?"

"We'll have to take that chance. It's too dangerous to go looking now."

"Look, you go help Lake. I'll go search for the book. I can keep myself safe until morning."

He continued to grip her arm. "Not without someone to watch your back!"

Gray looked back in the direction of the treehouse. Then she turned and looked toward Granger Hill, where Lake had run. She reached up and took Cornealius' hand from her arm and squeezed it tightly.

"OK, here's the deal," she said. "We hang out with these hunters until dawn, then we come back and search for the book."

"You know it."

She started off after Lake. "OK, then let's go find this kid and send her home."

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Continue to Part 6