Ghouls night out

November 20th, 2058

Approximately 2330 hours, local Seattle Metroplex time

I was in the shower when it started.  I felt a tingling sensation as one of my detection spells sent me a warning.  This particular spell was one I had woven a permanent mana loop for, making it permanently active.  The spell detected the presence of ghouls out to about three hundred meters.  When it alerted me this time, I sensed that the ghouls were getting closer.  I didn't like that at all.

I climbed out of the shower started to towel off, but then realized that either the ghouls were running or they were in a vehicle because they were getting closer very quickly.   I jumped into jogging pants, shrugged into an armored jacked, and broke into a cold sweat as I realized they were less than fifty meters away.  I grabbed my Viper Sliver gun, thumbed the safety, and chambered a round.

My doss was a dingy third floor apartment.  Two rooms, if you count the bathroom, with irregular power, dirty water I would purify with magic, and several neighboring apartments filled with small families and the odd chip-head.  My spell was telling me there were several ghouls, a dozen or more from the feel of it, when I detected an odor I specifically associate with ghouls.  The scent was alarming, as it was a little twist on the effect I had worked into the spell design.  But it means that a ghouls is within twenty meters of me.  I stuffed a second magazine for my pistol into a front mag loop on the vest, left my apartment and headed down to the second floor.  As I made the landing I heard the front door shaking violently.  The ghouls were coming.

The door shook, rattling and banging in its frame, as I called out into the astral plane for the spirits I had bound to service.  I was badly outnumbered, but I wasn't alone!  The old troll lady in apartment A poked her head out to see what was going on, saw me crouched on the stairs with a gun in my hand, and retreated behind her door.  I heard it lock, then a tick later the ghouls tore the front doors to the little lobby off their hinges.

Most ghouls were once people.  But the HMHVV affects their minds, and even if they do survive the transformation with their mental faculties intact, their new appetites often drive them insane.  My air elemental was still manifesting at the bottom of the stairs when the first ghouls came charging through into the lobby.  I started shooting, aiming for center mass, and blowing huge holes in the first two ghouls.  The mob behind them came bounding in. Where a natural predator would be put off by one of the pack being gunned down, the ghouls just kept coming.  Screaming only excites them, and helps them find you, so I was firing away, in plain view of anyone who cared to look and not saying a word.  {Being invisible isn't much use against ghouls. Most, if not all, of them can see into the astral plane.} A handful of them charged past the stairs and started clawing and pounding at the doors on the first floor.

My elemental finished manifesting, and I sent it a quick mental command.  It moved like the wind (I know its cheesy but its true), charging into the shattered doorway and erupting with lighting.  It was to hold the door and kill any ghouls that tried to get through.  I didn't know if the spirit could handle all those ghouls, but it was my best and only hope.

Two of the ghouls were trying to claw their way into apartment A.  One was clawing through the door and the second was clawing through the wall just to the right of the door frame.  I drew in my breath, held it for a tick, then let it out slowly as I sighted on the one clawing at the wall.  The flechettes from my Viper took the ghoul in the back of the skull and blew a bloody pulped mess across the wall it was rending.  The ghoul at the door didn't seem to notice.  It met the same fate, falling onto the other ghoul's corpse.

I heard the sound of a door being hammered down, and screams, from apartment C.  I jumped down in time to see a ghoul stride through the shattered door into the apartment.  I sprinted down, and shot the monster in the back of it's right knee.   It screamed in agony as it fell.  I put a second round into it's brain pan.  The ork lady in C was holding her baby, and looked terrified.  "Get to the roof!" I screamed.

I check the hall.  Apartment B had it's door open.  I didn't hear any screaming from there, but that could have been due to the gun fire coming from apartment D.  The ghoul at the door to D was blown back across the hall and fell in a heap.  The hall was clear, but I couldn't account for all the ghouls I had seen.  I dashed over to B's door, and saw a trio of ghouls devouring the chip-head who lived there.  The poor dumb fragger was lost in his chip and never knew he was eaten alive.  I put three rounds into the nearest one, splattering it's chest open across the corpse it was eating.  The other two looked up in surprise just in time for each to get shot through the face.  It was a ugly mess.

The sound of fighting stopped suddenly.  The quiet stillness was alarming on an instinctive level, but was interrupted by a single booming shot from the hall.  I darted out to find that the elf who lived in D had blown the ghouls head apart with a close blast from his shotgun.  Not a smart thing to do, but immediately effective.

My spell told me ghouls were scattering in all directions outside.  They were fleeing the area, which was a great relief to me.  My spirit vanished back into astral space and then the only sound I heard was that of the ork lady and her baby, taking the stairs above me at a frenzied pace.

******

November 21st, 2058  0815 local Seattle Metroplex time

The sun does shine in Seattle, even under a gray sky you have illumination from our parent star. The daylight found a stack of dead ghouls, and one dead chip head, laying on the broken fragments of the sidewalk across the street from my building.  A little levitation had moved them out of the building (I don't touch ghouls). Once they were piled up, I called out to my fire elemental.  The spirit engulfed the corpses and burned them down to ash over the next two hours.  The smell was terrible.

 Lone Star doesn't have much of a presence in the Barrens.  They completely ignored the incident, and no police contractors ever showed up to see what had happened. Just another day in Redmond I suppose.

I used a handy spell I know to sterilize the blood and gore the ghouls had left behind. Then I went back to my little apartment.  I pulled my couch in front of the door behind me, and got back in my shower.  I scrubbed myself clean and vowed, once again, to move to a place with hot running water.
I climbed into my form fitting body armor. Put on a pair of good jeans, pulled on a thick gray sweater, then pulled on the familiar weight of my armored trench coat.  I pulled on my rescue rated combat boots, then reloaded my slivergun.

At noon I was in Renton buying two more magazines for my trusty pistol as well as three boxes of ammunition.  I took a trip over to Fat Tony's for some linguine and the dark ambiance, ate, and was back in my dingy little apartment by four.  I loaded my new magazines, and went down to the first floor.  I knocked at apartment D and heard "Frag off!".

"Its the guy from the last night.  You got a tick?"  I made a point to sound as non-threatening as possible.  The elf opened his door with his shotgun in hand.  "I'm not here for any trouble chummer, I just wanted to let you know that I think they might come back."

The elf looked pale.  Sweat was beading on his forehead, and his hands were trembling.  "You the real thing, neh?  You got 'de magic.  I think I got 'de flu, can you help a neighbor out?"

I looked at him and nodded, "Sure thing chummer.  You coming out or am I coming in?"  He opened the door and backed away.  I came in and shut the door behind me.  I could smell vomit, and the doss had that stuffy sickly air to it.  He sat down on his couch, resting his shotgun on its shock pad, the barrel pointing toward the ceiling.  The place was surprisingly clean.

"Lights don't work" he said.

"Null sheen chummer," I lied.  "I'm an elf too you know."  I looked him over and felt a bit sick to my stomach.  His eyes were turning pale, his gums were bleeding, and a few of his fingernails had fallen out.  "I have a spell I want to use to see if its the flu, or just food poisoning. You chill with that?"

"Yeah, thanks" he said.  He seemed to relax a bit.

I produced a thin wand from my trench coat pocket.  It was a focus I used sometimes for spells dealing with health and wellness.  I rested the tip of it on his knee, focused my will, and let the spell flow out and over the elf.  I opened myself to view the astral, and watched as the spell brushed over and around his aura.  I could see some disconcerting dark spots that seemed to be spreading throughout his body.  I held the wand there, studying him, until I confirmed my suspicion.

"Oi, you've got the flu chummer.  I can do something for that if you like, or you can go down and get  that pill they sell at the Stuffer Shacks." I said.

"I don' feel like making the trip.  What you got?" he asked.

"A spell chummer.  It'll take a few minutes to work up, but I can get you up and feeling better in two shakes." I was casual.

"Chill chummer, yeah, I'll buy you a beer once I'm up and running.  Sound good?" he asked.

"Chill!  Yeah, let me get to work." I turned and pulled his little table over to the corner, and rolled up a rug he had on the bare floor.  I took a piece of chalk from a box in my pocket and drew out a circle on the floor.  I wrote out a phrase in Latin around the outer edge of the circle, then stepped back to admire my handiwork.  It looked pretty good, if I say so myself.  The whole process took about twenty minutes.  "Okay chummer, sit down in the circle, but don't smear the chalk" I told him.

He rose up off the couch, took a pair of feeble steps, and sat down in the middle of the circle I drew.  He didn't smear a bit of it.  "Hows 'at?" he asked.

"Really chill chummer.  I'm going to start the spell to fix you up. I'm going to walk the circle once speaking the spell, then I'll walk it a second time and chant it again, then on the third time around I need you to repeat it with me.  So desu?" He nodded as he took my instruction.  I walked around him, a low chant coming from my lips "Ohwa, tae goo siam." I chanted.  My second circuit around him, I saw him shiver, and I intoned more deeply "Ohwa, tae goo siam." As I started my third time around I heard him repeat me "Ohwa, tae goo..." I was behind him, my viper in hand.  He didn't get to the final part of my fake incantation as I blew his brains across the floor.  He never knew what hit him.  He never had to live through the rest of his transformation into a ghoul.

*****

The ghouls came back that night, but everyone was gone.  I watched as twenty ghouls stormed into the empty apartment building, and heard them scream in frustration.  I had bound a fire elemental to service weeks prior, and its term of service was about to end. I gave it a final order and watched.

The elemental manifested in the small lobby and erupted with fiery wrath.  None of the ghouls were on the first floor, so the elemental had time to rage and burn.  The building caught fire all across the first floor, with flames licking the brick exterior and devouring the interior of the structure.  None of those ghouls ever left the building.

*****

Midnight found me in the Brick Yard, drinking a lemonade and deep in thought.  Sandy brought me a plate of Solomon's famous boneless jerk chicken strips.  She gave me a soft smile, "anything else?"

"Yeah, I need to speak to Sheila.  Thanks Sandy." I said.

"I'll see if she will speak to you.  She's been busy though." Sandy turned and walked away.

Thirty minutes, two lemonades, and an order of nachos later (hey, I was hungry), Sandy tapped me on the shoulder and nodded to the back. I paid my tab, with a nice tip on top for Sandy, and made my way to Sheila's booth.

"Tommy, what can I do for you?" Sheila asked. "Have a spell you want, or a focus you need?"

I looked at Sheila for a long minute, then shook my head.  "No, I need to hire some shadowrunners"

*****

I'll tell the rest of this story later.
Right now, I think I am going to take a little trip to Bellevue for the best Tai food in Seattle.
You coming?

_______________________________________________________________________________

From the author:   Thanks for checking out my fan fiction.  These stories are derived from game play, and are fictionalized from memory.  If you enjoy them please do share them with other Shadowrun fans.  As I mention above, I do not own Shadowrun.




Thank you!  I hope you enjoyed it!