The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (12 page)

So I pushed Jesse again opened my mouth to give him more hell... when to my grim surprise the kitchen cooks appeared.

“Get inside, Jesse,” a tough looking darker-skinned one snapped.

“This doesn’t involve you.” I turned to him and gave him a push as well. The anger, ripping up my body like lightning, was filling me with a need to fight. He reciprocated and soon three more were behind him.

And though I was a greywaster, whose time with the Crimstones had toughened me up even more, I was still no match for four greywasters. I got a couple good swings in but by the time they had left me a crumpled heap in the alley, I was spitting out tooth fragments.

Feeling lower than dirt I staggered back to the hotel, thankfully Grandpa didn’t give a shit or hadn’t heard the news that I was a pariah. He didn’t even look up from his god damn television set.

All my fleeing hopes that I might have someone to keep me company disappeared like the shredded wisdom tooth now a sharp jagged shard in the back of my mouth. I was alone once again and judging that I was now in the Saint James family’s bad books I would probably have to leave town.

I ran my tongue over my tooth and made plans to buy some pliers tomorrow. Then I gingerly dressed the injuries I had on my face and body.

I glanced at my remote phone and wished I could call Elish to tell him I was fucking done healing now, but I knew he had more important shit to do. Instead I curled back up in my bed wishing I were dead. Confused, shunned and more lonely than I had been in the bunker.

I hated my life, I really did.

Chapter 40

Jade

This place... the smell alone was enough to make you want to vomit in your mouth. Though after a while your nose just committed suicide and you smelled nothing but your own slowly decaying body. That was what it was like here; it smelled bad and it was dark. Though to my surprise they were smart enough to know how to start a fire. Not even by matches or lighters either, they could make fire by the tree limbs if they needed to. That perplexed me most of all.

I was in the back of their den, or what they called a den, in reality this place had once been a motel. With a gas station on the other side of a parking lot and an old vitamin store behind it. It had been called Cobbleton Motel, I had seen it as they were helping me walk inside.

Yeah... helping me...

I glanced up as the leader, who I called Big Shot in my head, leaned down and offered me a large chunk of calve to eat. Raw. Even though they had fire they ate everything raw. I didn’t complain... I had been eating raw meat for a long time now.

To say thank you, they bowed their heads and made a coughing, hissing noise like
kah!
I had learned that the first day I was here. So to be the polite person I was I said thank you. As custom he put a hand on my head to show he recognised my gesture, then walked back into the conference room that was his own personal quarters and left me to eat in peace.

I was weak and every time my mind started to succumb to sleep I fully expected not to wake up. Sometimes I was disappointed when I did, but I was starting to get used to being here. It was an improvement to where I had been I guess. Though the ravers’ health plan wasn’t that great the back of my head had been healing and hadn’t gotten infected. My arm was rather nasty as well but by some stroke of luck it remained infection-free as well.

Though ravers still got injured like a normal human, they didn’t feel pain, they also healed slowly, if at all. Infection as well was not a problem for them, the radiation had soaked so much into their bodies it killed the infection causing bacteria.

Though I wasn’t a raver, and I could see the raised pink scar of my Geigerchip. I could get infections but that hadn’t happened, I was healing, and as they brought me offerings of raw meat I was slowly gaining my strength. No matter how dangerous these creatures were, they had saved my life.

I started eating my chunk of meat, no longer caring for any manners I may or may not have had in my previous life. I chewed and thrashed my head back and forth like an animal to rip and devour every sweet bit of flesh, savouring the fact that I was finally eating decent meat.

While I was eating I heard the floor boards creak and bend. I looked up and saw a younger woman, her stringy hair matted against her radiation-browned skin, beside her was a boy probably her kid. He was holding a red and yellow toy car in his hand.

It was strange to not be scared of them, but I had learned their movements and ways of communicating quickly. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she stood with her kid in the doorway, their ragged, tight breaths filling the silent room I now called my own. I knew I wasn’t to address her or acknowledge her or the kid’s presence until she made herself known.

Sometimes it took half an hour, I think it was their mental capacities that made them slow to do certain things. Running and eating things alive were instincts, and something they did fast and quickly, but communicating was different. It took some of the slower ones a long time to do things.

And she seemed to be one of the slower ones, Big Shot was the smartest which made sense considering he was the leader. Or one of the leaders. I think they thought I was a Big Shot too now.

I guess I was the smartest? Or at least the one with the magic whistle.

Sure enough, almost a half an hour later the female
ksst
at her son. The boy took the red and yellow truck and placed it beside my crossed legs. I lowered my head and
kah’d
at him and as was custom he put his hand on my head and walked back up to his mother.

Then they both left the room. I picked up my offering and examined it. It had a few teeth marks on it but what attracted them most was the bright colours. They were enamored with things that were colourful, I was getting a pretty high honor receiving this truck.

I put it beside me and continued eating, filling my queasy stomach up with meat. After I was finished I laid my head on a dirty, chewed on pillow with the synthetic stuffing half missing and went to take a nap. I slept a lot.

Sometime the next morning I was woken up by another agonizing headache. I buried my head into the fetid-smelling pillow and screamed my pain into it. The pounding and all-consuming pain always seemed centered right behind my left eye, and without meaning to, I always found myself pressing down on the eyeball and hitting it to try and quell the pressure.

Screaming and thrashing was nothing new to the ravers so they left me alone, though usually by the time the mind-shattering pain was done a bunch of them were watching me through the doorway. I could hear their quickening, rasping breaths, like they were wheezing rather than breathing.

I don’t know where these headaches were coming from, all I knew was that they were getting worse. When I raised my head this time blood was pouring from my nose and mouth, leaving it glistening against the cotton stuffing of the pillow.

I needed some fresh air. I got up and stretched my legs, relieved that I was getting the strength back in them.

The ravers cleared to the side as I stepped out of the doorway, and bowed their heads saying the
kah
sound as if pleased I was doing something other than sleeping, eating their food, and screaming. I zipped up my jacket and stuffed my chapped and raw hands into my pocket and walked outside.

I was greeted by severed heads put on sharpened sticks and pieces of rusty rebar. There were over two dozen of them, all in various states of decay. Some of them nothing but brown and green skulls, infested with black flies and their writhing larva.

These were greywaster skulls, since I don’t think ravers killed each other unless they were sick or mortally wounded.

I walked past the rows of skewered skulls, my boots scraping against bare ground. The snow had almost entirely melted now. Though where the snow had once been greasy, brown-streaked bones took its place, and various shreds of clothes or personal items.

Big Shot saw me and bowed his head, I put my hand on his head and walked past him towards the fire. I sat down on a plastic patio chair and tried to warm my hands, taking big inhales of cold, winter air.

When they had first brought me here I was too sick to look at where I was, but really there wasn’t much to see. I was in the greywastes, with rocky hills and black trees around us, the highway no longer in sight. There was only a double-lane road behind the gas station and past that was just more trees and greywastes. I really had no idea where I was.

Though even if there was a big map with a sticker saying YOU ARE HERE! I still wouldn’t know where the fuck I was.

Or
who
the fuck I was.

Several ravers were around the fire, all of them dressed in shabby winter clothing. Ravers never changed their outfits, they just put on different articles of clothing until they were warm. And once the clothes fell off of them, from rotting away or ripping off, they just added more. They also loved their body part trophies, scalp headdresses, severed ear necklaces; if you could cut it off and make it into something to put on your body, you did it.

I watched Big Shot walk out of the camp and as my eyes travelled to see what he was doing I saw that he was walking towards another raver. I had seen this one, an actual dark-skinned one, not just dark-skinned from the radiation. He had a necklace made out of human teeth and his earrings looked like shrivelled, old eyeballs. That raver was a hard ass, that you could tell from looks alone.

The black-skinned raver tapped his hand on Big Shot’s shoulder and pointed. Then he grinned, showing off teeth that looked like they had been chiselled down. Behind him two more ravers appeared, a female with her lips and cheeks ripped off, making her look like a walking skeleton, and a young male that was missing his scalp and ears.

Big Shot spoke with all of them before he nodded; one of the only human ways of communicating they seemed to have. He turned away from the small party and suddenly let out a blood curdling scream.

I jumped a mile high and almost screamed myself. I put my hand against my heart and took a deep breath. Though I had been used to hearing their screaming now, this one was different.

This was the one I heard when they had found fresh human prey.

Sure enough, ravers starting spilling out of the motel room. I could hear doors slamming and the heavy pounding of footsteps. Around me the ravers of all ages and genders started running towards Big Shot.

My chest stirred as I saw the mob, and inside of me I felt the first spurts of adrenaline. Before I could stop myself I rose, the inner feral that I think had always been a part of me winning the fight against my rational mind.

I ran with the ravers and soon I was side by side with Big Shot. He acknowledged my joining him with a
kah!
And I returned the gesture. Together the two leaders ran ahead of the group of ravers they controlled, sprinting past the dilapidated gas station and into the greywastes in front of them.

Big Shot screamed his blood curdling scream and, not able to help myself, I screamed too. Fully aware that I was slowly losing myself to the nature of a raver, but in truth I had lost myself weeks ago. I didn’t know who I was, where I was from, or why I looked different from the humans I had eaten or dreamed of. My eyes were yellow, my teeth half metal and sharp, and my endurance strong. Perhaps I was a raver, or maybe I was their leader and I had just found my way home.

Either way, I think at this point I embraced it. Because I had nothing else in the world, my only other ally was the dog who had made friends easily with the ravers. These mad men accepted who I was, fed me and gave me warmth. So I think now I was their king. The King of the Ravers...

Why not.

The greywastes became a blur around me, and the wind blasted against my face as I ran with the group, screaming and howling as I kept pace with these irradiated humans.

I glanced behind my shoulder once and felt a swell of adrenaline as I saw over forty of them behind me. This was a large raver group and I was in control of them, all of them.

The black-skinned one sprinted ahead of us before glancing at Big Shot. He threw both of his arms ahead of him and screamed. A signal that we were close.

The horde behind me became alive with activity, like a thousand tightly woven wires now frayed and alive. To my surprise I could see the electricity surrounding them, swirling around the group like ribbons, radiating off of them like heat waves on a hot roof. Some of them had colours but most of held nothing but monotone madness.

I was pleased to see Deek running pace with me, his red tongue lolling out in excitement and his amber eyes fixed forward. He made friends with whoever I was comfortable with and I was glad. I didn’t want him to kill my people and I didn’t want them to hurt him either.

A steep incline was ahead of us. I watched as Big Shot and the dark-skinned one leapt off of the ridge without care as to what was below them. Dismissing all reason and instincts of self-preservation I jumped off of the ridge too, landing on my feet onto a gravel embankment which I skidded down.