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He said "he" with the kind of reverence that could only mean Roland, my father

"He believes that you may hesitate to kill me because of our shared experiences," Ghastek continued "Which makes me uniquely qualified to lead the People in your territory"

Showing how freaked out I was about having a territory would severely tarnish my City Guardian cred

"I’m supposed to cooperate with you So, in the spirit of cooperation, I’roup of ghoulstoward the city"

Ghouls were bad news They followed the saeneral pattern of infection, incubation, and transformation as vaure out what actually turned thehouls They were smart, supernaturally fast, and vicious, and they fed on huhouls retained some of their forured out that the best way to get human carrion was to butcher a few people and leave the corpses to rot until they decoh to be consumed They traveled around in packs of three to five e is the group?"

"Thirty plus," Ghastek said

That wasn’t a group That was a dae

"Which way are they cohway You have about half an hour before they enter Northlake Best of luck"

The vao, Northlake would have been only a few minutes away Now a labyrinth of ruins lay between ic waves They began without warning a few decades ago in a ic flooded our world, it took no prisoners It smothered electricity, dropped planes out of the sky, and toppled tall buildings It eroded asphalt off the roads and birthed ain and all of our gadgets and guns once again worked

The city had shrunk post-Shift, after the first ht safety in nuhway stood abandoned There were so there knehat to expect froic-fueled wilderness and it would be difficult for a pack of ghouls to take them down Why bother, when less than five e of the city? It was a densely populated area, filled with suburban houses and bordered by a featchtowers along a ten-foot fence topped with razor wire The guards could handle a few ghouls, but with thirty cohouls would scale the fence in seconds, slaughter the tower guards, and turn the place into a bloodbath

There would be no assistance fro phone and convinced the Paranorhouls six ti toward Atlanta, Northlake would be an all-you-can-devour ghoul buffet