Then something weird happened.
He crouched over her, his spikes mere inches from her skin, and then he stopped. He stopped stock still, his chest not even heaving for breath. He was so still he might have been no more than a pile of badly decomposed meat, or perhaps a picture of a dead thing. Sarah looked up and saw the others, the other ghouls, had all stopped still too. They were facing her, a crowd of them facing her and not moving. Sarah could hear water running somewhere, and she could hear the leaves of the trees rolling in a gust of wind, but that was all. Nobody moved a muscle.
'They join us may if so wish.' The voice came out of the ghoul on top of her. It sounded mostly like a human voice, with a touch of a Russian accent. There was a whistling sound underneath it, though, as if breath were leaking out of punctured lungs even as the ghoul tried to talk. 'The ones on island. You, as well, join us if you wish. Only death otherwise. I spare you for this, to make choice. Is good to have choices. You be herald, take good news to island peoples. Take news of choice.'
'You belong to the Tsarevich,' Sarah said, so frightened she thought she might urinate in her pants. She could still talk. It was pretty much all she could do. 'I've heard he recruits the living.'
'I work not for our Lord,' the ghoul said. It didn't shake its head or use any gestures. Its arms remained around her, ready to impale her, but it just spoke to her in that flat tone. 'I belong to his Lady.'
One of the trees in the square rolled over. No, not a tree. Something huge and plant-like though, something vaguely humanoid in shape but enormous, dark, covered in patches of filamentous mold and club-like fungi. A walking compost heap. It moved a yard or two closer and Sarah felt an odd prickling between her toes, in the places where her shirt bunched up against her side. Something tickled her throat and she coughed.
'Is not by intention, but only is because she is near. You die in seconds, if don't choose right,' the ghoul told her. 'Our Lady's touch is bad thing for living. So you say... what?'
'I... I say,' Sarah said, and coughed again, coughed and coughed, a long, asthmatic series of coughs that brought up dark mucus. 'I say...'
A bright flash of light swooped up the sidewalk and smashed in the ghoul's face with one bandaged fist. The dead man's maxilla shattered and dried brains flew from his ruined head. The ghoul's body fell away and Sarah was free. Ptolemy's painted face turned to look at her.
'Thanks,' she said, picking her Makarov up off the weed-cracked sidewalk. Then she realized he wanted more. He wanted direction. 'Let's get out of here,' she said, and then she ran, with the mulch demon right behind.
Monster Planet
Chapter Thirteen
Ayaan had at first believed that the giant truck was just one more example of the Tsarevich's personal style but she quickly saw there was a method to his madness. The roads leading away from Asbury Park had been engineering marvels, once, a web of immaculately paved highways that connected every part of America to everywhere else.