"Before Dawn"

Chatper 30: Death Bringer

Dawn enters through the hole in the busted-up cargo door. She's on the move with her .45s, barrels traversing left-and-right as she moves forward, only pausing to check her six. Her night vision is adjusting quickly, and the brilliant flashes of lightning coming in through the large, industrial windows illuminate the carnage left behind by Mortifer. Debris and ghoul blood, flesh, and limbs litter the factory floor. The walls are painted in ghoul-matter, too, looking like some perverse abstract of mayhem and violence.

Dawn's senses are heightened as her the familiarity of adrenaline flows and her desperation to get to Wesley push her forward. The air is saturated with death, rain, and hellhound smoke, and the scent tickles Dawn's olfactory glands. Her night-vision is fully in-sync now, and she see's movement on her right. A ghoul dashes from the shadows with a machete in its hand. Dawn drops to a knee and blasts away at the charging ghoul with her pistols. Muzzle flashes flare from the barrels. Her bullets hit the ghoul center-mass and then the head, and he—or she—falls face first to the dirty floor, unmoving—not living.

Dawn continues her route of travel. This floor alone is a lot of real estate to cover, and is discouraging. She sees several staircases leading upward, and some downward. Even from a distance, she can see Mortifer's trail of death-bringing—more dead ghouls and ghoul-matter—leading her toward an access door in particular leading to a downward staircase. As she nears the door, she can hear guttural-Mortifer as he tears through wailing ghouls.

Wesley!

She senses a presence on her left. A female ghoul covered in blood with disheveled hair is lunging at her, her gold eyes frightened and angry. Dawn pops off two shots at her face. Her forehead explodes sending hair adrift and brains out of the back of her head. She hits the floor face—what's left of it—first.

Dawn gets to the door. She's desperate but careful. She checks her six once more, and then opens the access door fully with her foot. She steps onto the metal landing on the other side of the door where flashes of lightning can't reach. She has a fleeting thought.

Should have brought those night vision goggle-thingies.

A malodorous odor wafts up from below and Dawn dry heaves something-fierce. She hears screeching ghouls and can only imagine the torment that Mortifer is inflicting on them. She peers down at the wide, spiraling staircase and sees a pulsating glow down below. She makes her way down the steel staircase—spiraling down...down...down—into the bowels of the factory. She steps on something squishy from time-to-time as she negotiates the steps. Ghoul flesh for sure. She doesn't think of it until now, but it looks like the ghouls were trying to escape Mortifer by running down into the lower level of the factory. As Dawn nears the end of her descent, the violent disturbance grows louder.

Finally, her boots touch down on the bottom floor, where a door is hanging off of its hinges. Dawn takes a deep breath, and crouches past it. She sees utter chaos and mayhem illuminated by a multitude of candles. Yellow irises are aglow, moving like fire-flies on crack behind ghoulish-silhouettes. The ghouls—what's left of them—are launching a vicious attack against Mortifer with knives, poles, and bats, but they can do nothing to blunt his onslaught.

Mortifer is covered in slick goo. Fiery darts strike the ghouls as he whips them from his tail. He's using his huge head as a battering ram to bowl them over, and stomping them onto the hard floor when they fall. No ghoul within close proximity of him is safe from his fire-paws or teeth for that matter—not even Wesley Price.

Wesley bangs Mortifer on his flank with a heavy pole. Offended, Mortifer turns toward Wesley, sneering. He lunges at him, tearing through ghouls to get to him.