Who Let The Ghosts Out?

Chapter 10 - Making Waves

"We need to get to the beach." I swing around, scanning the loading bay for an exit.

To judge by the roaring and the rising wind that eddies around bodies, tossing our hair like so much seaweed, there has to be a breach in the barb-wired wall.

A few steps bring me closer. It's nice when one's hunches are spot on: Not only is there a gate, but it stands open, and behind it a tarmacked road leads to the ocean.

For once, there's no debate. Amelie and Candice run after me, as I first shuffle, then walk, then run over the pot-holed tarmac.

The shore isn't far at all. Nor are the ghosts. Like a translucent froth, they are lined up on the beach, shivering, shimmying in a macabre dance. Ectoplasm stolen during centuries of séances, spreads from the spectres like thin strands of wire and where it reaches the sea, the water is receding, leaving behind a vast expanse of muddy beach and stranded sea-critters.

One could say the tide is out; only it is so much more than that.

My chest is on fire, forcing me to stop. Some form of fitness is a must for a ghost buster, but this has been a rotter of a night, and ending up as a zombie hasn't helped.

"What are they doing?" Candice asks. Then, her eyes widen, and she slaps her mouth with her hand.

"Scat in a bucket. They're creating a tsunami."

"Yes," I say.

Amelie puffs up, beetroot-red in the face. This is actually good news. It means she got some circulation going in her body.

"Tell me I misheard. Tell me they're not creating a tsunami. For that would be super-bad news. There's the new nuclear fusion centre close by. If that gets hit..."

"Yes," I say.

"Well, it's supposed to be proofed against storm surges," Candice says.

"Come on," Amelie and I chorus.

"Seriously," she says. "Do you believe a word these corporate types are telling you? I mean, seriously? Somebody will have cut corners, another one has skimped on the material, and hey, bingo, one mother of a problem."

"Tsunamis are rare in this part of the world," Candice says.

No need to say anything. We all watch the ghosts as they keep pushing at the water, shoving it toward the horizon. Despite the eerie light on the landscape, I can't work out what is going on over there. I just hope the fishing fleet didn't go out tonight. Not that they do it a lot these days, not much left to catch.

"What I find amazing—nobody seems to be bothered about this," I say. "I mean, what about the coastguard? Satellites? The army?"

"Tanks are no good against these buggers." Amelie raises her chin at our ephemeral enemies. "I'd bet you my last mars bar our scientists have sussed out what is going on, but they do not know how to stop the buggers."

"One would hope the remaining ghost busters would be willing to come to the rescue. If the price is right, I'm sure they would give it their best shot."

That's when a funny burnt stink registers. It comes from a heap of things that I took to be firewood and discarded as irrelevant. But when I look closer, reality hits home.

Bodies upon bodies, piled in an untidy heap, together with discarded blasters, power packs, fourth dimension scanners—every gadget known to the trade lies scattered on the ground.

My stomach lurches.

Our colleagues did come. But like the rest of us, they stood no chance.

"Oh, crap, crap, crap. Can we raise them somehow?" Amelie asks. "Create an army of zombies?"