SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

97

As he continued to watch, the female ghoul raised her other hand. In it, she held the decapitated zombie head that her predecessor carried. Though blackened by the flames, it had otherwise escaped the detonation unharmed.

Carl pondered her ghastly prize. The ghouls were treating it like some kind of royal scepter, seemingly ready to accept any of their kind who grabbed it first as their leader. He thought back to their earlier encounter with the ghouls at the mansion, trying to remember if Camilla's corpse had touted a similar badge of supremacy. Nothing came to mind.

The alpha female raised the disfigured symbol of her authority high in the air, dangling it from its crooked spine like a blade of wheat. She howled again. This time, several ghouls bowed around her in subservience.

"Graves, let me see," Tommy whined.

Carl scowled. "Hold your water, kid."

Something about the scene rubbed him wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on what. He'd encountered these things three times before now, and not once did they carry on like this. He was used to seeing them act like a pack of wolves, but now they appeared more like a cult following their deity. The level of devotion they displayed towards one of their own felt grossly out of place.

Then it struck him. They weren't responding to the woman. They were following the bodiless ghoul she carried.

All of the pieces snapped into place with this realization. Their undead, beheaded "god" was the real commander of the ghoul legions. So long as he whispered his commands into the ears of his subjects, the most dangerous threat to everyone's safety would persist.

"We were wrong..." he muttered.

"What? What's that?" Tommy asked. "We were wrong about what?"

Carl lowered his binoculars, taking in the entire horde responding to the female ghoul's shriek. "The big zombie wasn't the alpha. Neither is she. It's the head. The one they carry. That's the voice in charge."

Tommy grimaced. He grabbed the binoculars and yanked them from Carl's grip. "Let me see."

Graves didn't bother wrestling him for a closer look. He'd seen more than enough already.

The "alpha" female bellowed, drawing more ghouls around her. Her undead generals pushed through the ranks of their mindless army, flocking to her with unquestioning loyalty.

"That face..." Tommy gasped.

"You recognize the woman?" Graves inquired.

"I recognize the head. That's Manconi's assassin. The one who shot dad."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." Tommy lowered the binoculars and gawped at him. "I killed him myself."

"Not well enough, apparently."

Graves gazed across the field of walking corpses at the fire-lit summit happening hundreds of feet away. He'd seen this sort of behavior before from these things, during their first encounter in Mr. DiMarco's basement. The alpha was calling them back to issue new orders, changing up their strategy. That was never a good sign for anyone standing against them.

Resting on the shoulder of its new emissary, he could almost picture the horde's true leader whispering its commands into her ear. A moment later, she trumpeted them in the form of a hoarse war cry. The other ghouls in the army echoed her call, until their collective roar threatened to shake Castle's walls to rubble.

"Shit."

"What are they—?" Tommy whined.

Hundreds of ashen eyes turned to the fort. Howling with a unified wail of bloodlust and fury, ghouls and zombies alike surged forward to take on the stronghold directly. A black flood of bodies moved as one, threatening to drown every shivering soul huddled inside. The sight of the creeping death shroud rolling their way filled every man and woman on the wall with an impending sense of doom.