The teenage boy at the end of the corridor beckoned to us.
“Here! You’d best scarper! There’s a bunch of ’em heading this way. Come with me. I know a way through.”
By way of reply Jack sprayed him with plasm from the ghostgun, and the boy gave a thin howl as he disappeared.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“The word ‘scarper’,” said Jack. “No one’s used it since the 1970s. He was obviously an S-ghost out to lifesteal.”
I shuddered. One touch and Super-Ghosts could possess your body and live the life left in it—and you’d be the bodiless phantasm, floating and wandering and not much else. You wouldn’t even be an S-ghost after that, but a mere pale, powerless thing.
“You’re amazing,” I said to Jack. He was, too. He’d killed more S-ghosts than anyone else, and it didn’t hurt that he was also tall, strong and handsome.
“Thanks, Shelley,” he said and tried to pat me on the head, which was annoying. I ducked away from his touch.
“I’m not a kid. I’m thirteen,” I muttered, and he held his hands up, palms out, in apology.
Soon we made our way back to the centre. It was getting bigger day by day as more human refugees—other survivors of the First Ghost War—found us, and as people fought their way outwards, securing more territory.
It was a dynamic military operation, apart from Jack’s actions, that is. He couldn’t take orders and couldn’t be patient and methodical, but as a maverick loner he was tolerated because of his massive hit rate. It was largely thanks to him that the S-ghosts were starting to recede.
He taught me so many things, especially ways to spot the enemy. Jack could always tell a human from a ghost by the smell and when their mouths watered hungrily.
“That’s another giveaway,” explained Jack. “Look for appetite in the eyes and salivating or swallowing.”
“I’ve learned so much from you,” I said softly to Jack at the end of my training period. “You’ll never know how grateful I am.”
I grasped his hand in mine and sucked him right out of his body. Oh, it felt good, felt strong to have muscles, to have legs, to breathe.
Jack made his last human sound, a scream that suddenly cut off as he became a standard powerless ghost, with no hope of getting a body back. He drifted away, helpless to do anything at all.
I ran west of the centre, using Jack’s easy lope. I was sure to find more S-ghosts on the road, to whom I could pass on all the things that had given our dead comrades away. My knowledge would gain us thousands of lives, and we would finally beat the vicious humans.
They might call me a maverick back at the ghost camp, but they can’t argue with my results.
Cathy Bryant worked as a life model, civil servant and childminder before becoming a professional writer. She has won fourteen literary awards, including the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize, and her work has appeared in over 200 publications including The Huffington Post. Cathy has had two poetry collections published by small presses, and Cathy’s latest book is the Jane Austen-themed murder mystery novel Pride and Regicide, published by Crooked Cat. See more at www.cathybryant.co.uk, and see Cathy’s monthly listings for financially-challenged writers at www.compsandcalls.com. She lives in Cheshire, UK.