"If you're shifting around do you think you need backup Jessica? I ain't got the brute force, nor the fancy gadgets to help much out here, and I don't mind a bit of risk if I happen to go missing."
Sara smiles at the girl, even if she wielded a flaming sword she seemed a little young for all this.
Jessica shakes her head. "I don't think I need to, not yet, anyway. If the Captain is calling in a medic, then we don't need to take the risk. Since I've got the insulin, I should stay. But if the girl needs a hospital fast, you can come."
Kavax looked back and forth at the discussion. "If he can't walk to the hospital, I could just carry him. Doesn't look that heavy. And if they're in the tunnels, then big nasty under the house here may have already moved on. But we should keep watch out for him anyway."
Captain peeked inside, before turning her icy glare towards the conversation, her tone taking of one training new recruits, "No if, on route means the medical team is on their way, and even if the attackers have left, this confirmed site has to be secured to start finishing the threat and prevent more ending up like him and his family. The job needs to be done and there is no point having it take longer than it needs to and leaving more at risk with this dithering. Let's not disrespect this gentleman by using what he's going through as a shield to hide fears about getting in there and finishing what we started. If you're so concerned, give him a weapon and get a fire under yourself to get this done faster so we can get him a normal direct route back to his family."
Raising her weapon again, she enters the building without so much as a backward glance to see if anyone had any opinions or was following. On task, she moved in to see if she could find any threats or any routes the threats could take...
...though the state of the place wasn't making it easy. It was so much nicer just shooting rather than playing hide and seek.
Captain's interesting background and training meant that she was able to ascertain quickly enough that the ground and upper floors of the building were clear. She didn't find anything in the wreckage but a single ham radio, hanging from its wires but bravely receiving all the same.
Carlos listens in to the conversation and tears himself away from the man once the Captain starts talking. He hated himself for her rational thought, but then again it was that thought that kept them alive back in the desert. He knew full well that if he did everything according to his heart he would have been dead at least ten times over by now, and none of them pretty.
"She's right. We need to move and fast. I have no way to transport myself, so I'll be staying right here and helping out in the best way I know how." Carlos checks his juju bag and weighs it in his own hand, still full, but then again that was to be expected with magic involved.
He walks up to Jessica, "You'll do the right thing with that insulin, even if it seems like the bad choice in the heat of the moment right?" Carlos wasn't referring to this moment, but the crease in his face explained enough. If we don't make it out for whatever reason, no need to die here and let a girl suffer too.
Reloading his shotgun he gives a nod to the others, "I'm ready. Colin, this won't be long."
Cheshire silently follows the others, just a little black cat following the humans...
Slumping down outside the door, wincing as he lowered himself. "Don't rush on my account." The unspoken and less than subtle hint about who you do need to rush for hung in the air.
Jessica narrows her eyes as she summons her sword. "I know what to do."
"We all just gonna leave that thing hanging there?" Sara checks the radio isn't transmitting their conversation to who know's where and listens at it for a moment. There seemed to be someone on it a while ago.
Cheshire spends a moment sniffing around inside the house while waiting for the others to decide what to do.
Kavax grunted. "Well, fine, if we're going in there now there's no point in beating around the bush. I'll just barge on downstairs as soon as everyone else is ready. Better if I'm in front; means there's nobody flammable in front of me."
As Cheshire examines the wreckage, the story starts to unfold. The attack didn't come from outside but started in the master bedroom. The father or mother was hurt - blood on the sheets - by one of the Ghouls. They were independent, didn't want to call an ambulance or a doctor. Maybe they planned to see how they were. The victim didn't make it through the night before they turned. Splashes of blood and broken furniture in the guest room. Same in the older kids room. Bathroom door was shredded to get at someone. The younger kids room had a stain in each bed. No fighting or wanton destruction there.
Someone had come back in the morning. They'd been armed, or had found a gun fast. Put up a hell of a fight until they got to the kitchen. Something had come from the basement, behind them.
After that it was mindless damage, things carelessly knocked or smashed because they were in the way.
Cheshire notes all of this, then saunters over to the others.
"We'd best track this thing down quickly. It looks like it's in the habit of making more ghouls," he comments.
After having checked the site was clear, Captain went straight to the basement entrance. At Cheshire's comment, she nodded to show she heard, understood, and agreed while checking the entrance for threats as well as possible ways to temporarily seal it behind them to prevent recontaminating this site.
"The infection does spread it seems, I can't say I'm not nervous." He hops in place for a moment to pump himself up and pulls out the shotgun, ready to drop it for the knife if the close combat becomes deadly.
There doesn't seem to be much you can do to seal the door at the top - the doors inside the house don't seem to have offered much by way of resistance to these things - but there might be a way to block things up through the basement entrance.
The Cellar was dark, the light switch turning on a single bare bulb and revealing a well-made storeroom. Preserves, some of the jars now broken, line one wall and a heavy workbench covered in tools lines the other.
Through the door to one side is the room the creatures were nesting in, along with the tunnel Carlos wasn't able to see. It's less of a tunnel and more of a small hole that seems to lead into a disused tunnel. Of the largest creature seen, there is no sign, although the tunnel certainly suggests where it went.
"I should be able to move up if you need, so I'll watch the back," Jessica says as her flaming sword fills the cellar with a red glow.
Captain nodded to Jessica while looking at the workbench and other items in the basement for things to block up that hole to the tunnel, to prevent the largest or any other attackers from coming through, "Some of this should prevent them being able to return.
Kavax starts hefting large pieces of furniture and jamming them into (or on top of) the hole.
"Of course, if we really wanted to make sure it couldn't get back through, we'd just have to collapse the tunnel somehow. Or bring down the whole structure on it or something."
"They probably dug the tunnel, so even if we block or collapse things, they might, I don't know, just dig more?" Cheshire snarks. "Now, then, if you're all done shoving things around, we should get on the hunt again."
He does not, however, make any move to take point.
The way back was as blocked as it was getting without explosives or time, and that left only way to go - the tunnels.
Despite Cheshire's fears, it becomes clear that the creatures are only partially responsible for the network of tunnels, connecting pre-existing chambers and passages. Most of it seemed to be the water tunnels to the old town, now bone dry for the most part. A few sections seemed to be old cellars, the houses above long gone.
Still, the passages were somewhat...maze like, and finding a way through might be difficult.
Carlos tries to look around and see what happens, though the doublevision from his earlier scrying makes him nearly wretch. The images nearly phased on top of each other and triggered a sort of mystical vertigo.
"No need for the snark, cat." Carlos tries to compose himself and leans on a pillar for a second before shaking his head and drawing the shotgun again.
The tunnels were winding and he had no clue where to go next, but focused himself on the party in front of him and Jessica's glinting armor.
Jennifer is able to find the most well-trod path through the tunnels, mostly by the claw marks.
At the opposite end is another hole, torn into another cellar. This one is ancient, your light sources revealing cobwebs and dust coating everything.
"This place is so gross," Jessica whispers, staying alert. "It's like that movie where the guy had to run from the giant boulder."
"More permanent methods will be used later, by us or the clean-up team. This kind of threat will break through weak areas, but they don't really dig or any kind of work extensively. More a creature of least resistance for any reward, easily deterred if there is an easier path. " which reminded Captain of a few kinds of animals.
She followed Jessica into the cellar, wondering if anything else might have drawn this threat other than the wide tunnels and weak walls. Not that they needed more, but any other issue would need to be considered.
"Personally, I don't mind it down here. Kind of homey."
Kavax approaches the hole and looks through, eyes open for any sight of ghouls.
It didn't take long to find a set of wooden stairs up, with a hatch to the upper floors. They didn't seem to be locked. Or, of course, dusty - it was clear something had been this way.
Cheshire sniffs haughtily at the replies to his comment. No one ever appreciated his advice.
"Seems like a perfect place for an ambush. I don't suppose you'll be going first, Kavax?"
Kavax looks around and sniffs the air.
But he doesn't detect anything, so he heads for the stairs.
"Yeah, I'll take point."
Cheshire is clearly on edge, much as he tries to hide it. His ears are erect, and his head turns back and forth at the slightest sounds as the group advances, searching for signs of an ambush.
Cheshire doesn't hear anything from above, thankfully, and Kavox opens the door into what appears to the rear of a bar...circa a hundred years ago, and before a lot of looting and random destruction and graffiti.
The wood that made up the wall was partially missing, leaving the heavy wooden bar and the main room beyond sat pitch black. The door and windows were completely boarded up.
Carlos saw boarded up and immediately thought back to the other times he was hunting, and they almost never meant good things.
Unfortunately he shrugged it off, it was just his imagination acting up like when he watched too many old VHS tapes.
Captain looked to see if there was any signs of recent disturbance...
...making a quick near the entrance and pausing to see if anyone else had spotted anything worth delaying moving along.
Jessica keeps her sword up, casting a dancing reddish light in the place as she looks around.
Jessica's breath catches as she suddenly becomes aware of the danger they're in. And almost immediately afterward, her youthful persona sloughs off and her eyes glow with an otherworldly, terrifying light.
"They're here," she hisses as she takes a two-handed grip on her sword. "We've walked into their trap."
She thrusts upward through the ceiling where she senses one is prowling.
There was a thin shrieking wail of one of the Ghouls as it was suddenly impaled by a sword wreathed in holy might from below. Several other shrieks answered it, and with a crunch the floor collapsed - either weakened by the sword through the rotting wood, or the monster above it - and the feral thing managed to slash Jennifer as it landed.
"Oh. Well, I suppose we might as well do something about that then."
Kavax'Kaotl didn't feel particularly subtle, and figured quick action may serve better anyway. So he unceremoniously pulverized the boarded-up door...
And then promptly exhaled a breath of Balefire into whichever ghoul had been lurking nearest to it.
The door exploded outwards in flaming chunks, a pair of Ghouls flinching backwards from both the light and the flame with a snarl.
Cheshire, still in cat form, slips behind the ghoul in the building, then suddenly shifts form, trying to shove the creature off-balance as he does.
Carlos sees the attack happen a bit too late and covers his head from the crashing wood from Kavax and Jessica. Seeing an opening from Cheshire, Carlos fires a blast from the shotgun hoping to keep it down.
A shotgun is not a precision weapon and in such an enclosed space it should be difficult to miss. What makes it harder to aim is the two Ghouls at the entrance diving inside and savaging Carlos and Cheshire.
Androleteira shifts to a two-handed grip on her sword and swings it in a wide sweep at the advancing ghouls.
The monster attacking Cheshire cried out - a high pitched shriek, devoid of anything animal or human. Sadly this left Jessica vunerable to the one that had come through the ceiling, and it struck her again, clamping its jaws around her leg.
A deeper roar from somewhere outside the building made the ancient wood vibrate for a moment.
Not wanting to breathe fire inside a wooden structure full of friendlies, Kavax drew his zhanmadao and took aim at the uninjured ghoul's neck.
He then made a point of standing in the remains of the door, so that if Big Ugly decided to come along his thick scales would be between it and the squishy folks inside.
Injured from the attack, Carlos staggers back and drops the shotgun, No time to reload it in this melee.
He takes a quick look around and draws the blade at his side in case something else gets closer.