The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (14 page)

“What the fuck? Someone’s shooting?” a man screamed. He raised his gun and showered bullets onto three of the ravers who were consuming one of the dead townspeople. The man looked around with perplexed eyes before his head snapped back, a red glistening crater visible once he fell lifeless to the ground.

The man who was standing beside him looked down and then looked at me. His eyes widened further. “Who the fuck... you’re an arian? How...”

Another shot. I shuffled off of the truck to reload my weapon.

Then I saw movement. I looked up and saw another man. He raised his arms in a surrendering gesture. “What the fuck are you doing here kid? You’re not one of them...”

I growled at him as I shoved the clip into the rifle.

“I know you can talk. Your eyes have pupils and no fucking raver can use a gun. Come back with us. They’ll end up eating you; fuck knows why they haven’t –”

I dropped the gun and jumped on him, my mouth open and my metal teeth exposed to the cold, winter air. Before he could let out a scream I clamped my teeth against his windpipe and crushed it with as much force as my jaw could manage.

The growling noise faded as the sound of his frantic breath filled my ears. Each wheezing and desperate gasp brought another string of bloodlust and adrenaline to my veins. I closed my eyes and pressed harder, until I felt both of my teeth meet.

Then I ripped out his throat and let his blood spray over my body. I let go of the chunk of flesh and grabbed my gun, then crawled back up on top of the semi.

Anger coursed through me when I saw the townspeople still shooting down my ravers. There were five of them left but they were successfully dodging the ravers’ attacks. Deek was even useless, a silhouette off in the distance, chasing one of them from what I could see.

There were bodies everywhere, dead corpses surrounded by shining blood. Both townspeople and my ravers alike, so different when they walked the earth but now the same blood soaked into the ground underneath them.

I started sniping them off, growing and hissing my anger at the amount of casualties I could see. We had lost at least ten of our own, but it looked like...

Yes. As I sniped three... then four... I smirked in spite of the horror that was going on below me. Yes, we were going to win.

Big Shot took out the last one. Sinking his claws into the greywaster’s soft flesh and pulling out the man’s bright entrails. They spilled onto the floor like coils of sausage before the man keeled over, desperately trying to push them back into his body with a low groan.

I jumped down, still holding my gun. The ravers who had lived standing over the dead, too full from the meal earlier today to do very much eating.

Big Shot was staring forward, and though at times it was hard to see any expression of emotion on a raver’s face I could tell me was angry. He looked to his left where I was and
kah’d
.

I did the same back and looked around at the carnage.

“They’ll come back...” I said to him. “The town is close to our home. We need to move...” I thought of the resort. “I know where I can take us, a place that will be safe until they stop hunting us.”

I didn’t know how much of this he understood, if any of it. He only stared forward, his face still troubled and soured. I stood with him as our people started dragging the dead back to the motel.

I kicked one of the townspeople with my boot and I got an idea. A farfetched one, a crazy one... but –

In spite of my mind telling me I was stupid, I picked up the man’s gun. I held it out to Big Shot and when he took it I took out my own.

What if they only needed someone to show them? The thought filled me with morbid curiosity, so I slapped his forearm to try and communicate that I wanted him to follow.

The slower ones might not be able to grasp it... but...

I raised the gun and pulled the trigger, a loud crack split the night air. I put my hand on Big Shot’s arm and squeezed it. “You... shoot.”

Big Shot looked down and shook his head. He tried to give me the gun back but I insisted.

“Shoot!” I said more forcefully.

He looked uneasy and I could tell he was about to shake his head, but curiosity got the best of him.

Big Shot glanced down and adjusted his grip. I put my hand on the barrel of the gun to make sure he was shooting into the greywastes and nodded my head.

Big Shot’s brow furrowed; his faint eyebrows moving up and down as he made the odd facial expression. The leader of the ravers then adjusted his hold again and shifted himself.

Then he pulled the trigger.

“Kah!” he exclaimed in such a surprised way I actually laughed. With a nod I shot my own gun again and he reciprocated with another pull of the trigger.

“Get the smart ones... get guns, all the guns,” I said to Big Shot. I rested my hand on the gun and then kicked a hunting rifle resting a few feet away. I picked that one up and looked around for the dark-skinned raver.

I raised my arm and swept the area, then grabbed my gun, trying to communicate what I wanted him to do.

“Get the smart ones guns... get them all guns,” I said.

Then another idea took hold of my mind, a nefarious idea that tickled the lower levels of my imagination. Something that might be crazy, might be my own death trap, but in the same vein... something I so dearly wanted to see.

Because why should my people be pushed from their home? To a resort miles away from where travellers and caravans could be? I wouldn’t let them starve, not when they had me as their other leader. I was smart, I was an arian. I had enhanced night vision, a sniper-like shot, and I could think, talk, order...

And I could teach.

I could teach all of them.

My right lip raised in a smirk. Big Shot stared at me with his half-vacant eyes but I could tell that he was watching me and he was listening to every word that I said to him. He was smart enough to know what I was doing and he trusted me. I had the magic whistle but on top of that... I had firepower, brains, brawn, and a thirst to dominate and control.

I looked at him and he looked back. Then I put my hand on his head, and as the silent night was broken up by the sounds of bodies being dragged across the pavement I said to him:

“I’ll train tomorrow... and after...” I dug into my pocket and pulled put the map. I pointed to Velstoke.

“We’re getting ourselves a new home.”

Chapter 41

Reaver

Beneath every person is a thousand layers. Each one a clear, thin film almost impossible to pull back. They walk around seemingly see-through, giving off an air that they are an open book if you ever did have questions.

Then you start to peel back that film, layer by layer, you remove the clear skin... and once you get several sheets in you realize that the film was a cover, a mask to hide a secret person you never new existed.

Leo was the mayor of Aras and the husband of Greyson Merrik. That was who he was from my earliest memories. Always the smart alec, always the kind man ready to teach you anything you wanted to learn. Leo had taught me how to read when Greyson taught me how to shoot; he taught me how to be a better person, when all I wanted to do was raise hell.

But underneath those layers laid a man with a thousand plans in his head and twice as many secrets. Never the greywaster, never the mayor... he was a chimera of extreme intelligence, with a plot in his head fed by his brother Elish Dekker.

Though the chimera scientist had swayed from Elish’s plan, whether he had changed their plans or wanted to betray Elish I didn’t know. But in that bunker he had gotten the device that held a piece of Perish’s brain, without Elish knowing; without anyone besides him and Greyson knowing.

And because of that... I was here. In the corner end of winter, searching along a highway with a man I never thought I would be walking the greywastes with. Looking with matching weights of dread on our chests for our partners. Two men who, from an ironic twist of fate, had found common ground and a mutual respect.

Sometimes one of us would veer off of the highway, thinking we had seen something, any sign of one of the boys, but eventually we would come back and not a word would be spoken. Then with the foreboding even heavier on our shoulders we would keep walking. Deciding with an unspoken understanding to not even ask if they had seen something.

In front of us was endless highway, though the valley to our left had disappeared. Now there was just grey hills, holding only the remnants of the snowfall.

We had spotted several structures and had checked out each one, but none of them held any sign that one of the boys had been there, or anyone for that matter. Everything was covered in either snow, frozen dust or both. It seemed the slavers were the only ones insane enough to come up here, no matter the season.

It made for fair scavenging though, with each building Elish and I looked in, we ending up coming out with at least two cans of food and our choice of utensils. The snow was easy to melt into drinking water with Elish’s thermal touch, so we were able to keep up the energy we were burning while we looked.

And we were combing the entire area. We made sure to not just walk on the road, but check out every side road and shoddy trail we could find. Highway walking was slow-going but the trade off was worth it. It would be devastating if the boys had found a cabin or something to keep shelter and we walked by it. We might never find them then...

Might never find them.

I glanced over at Elish who was walking along the edge of the highway, a shallow incline that dipped down before rising to a series of rocky slopes. I knew he was checking the ditch for one of them. The prospect, as it always did, made me queasy.

He was still holding the fire poker, which he used to check out the buildings we found. Probably hated touching things since it seemed he was just as much of a clean freak as Killian. I don’t know why he felt like carrying it around though, he had a perfectly good assault rifle on his back. I did as well, my M16 on my own back where it belonged. It felt good to have the old boy with me but the fact that the last person to touch my gun was Killian was rather sobering.

No, not sobering... it made me angry.

And as my thoughts took me to my own current reality, my teeth clenched.

“Why the fuck did you bring Perish along for this?” I suddenly snapped at Elish, and when he looked at me with nothing more than a disinterested glance I carried on, feeling my anger start to rise to the surface. “Killian and Jade would have been fine if Perish wasn’t with them.”

He brushed off my tone like he was brushing snow from his shoulder. With his eyes fixed forward he said to me coolly, “Jade’s empath abilities were the only way for us to find out where the O.L.S device was hidden. Without Jade being around Perish, we would never know.”

Elish took the fire poker and used it to lift up the rusted trunk lid. He glanced inside; his impassiveness grated on my every last nerve. “I was not aware that Lycos...”

“His name was Leo!” I snapped.

“I was not aware that Leo was planning on betraying me,” Elish replied, dropping the trunk lid. There was a heavy clunk that echoed off of the sheer rocky cliff we were currently walking past. “If I had known Perish’s O.L.S had already been implanted, I would have never let him near my pet.”

I don’t know why but his words just infuriorated me more. I tried to press it down with a swallow but I was frustrated and angry. Angry that this is where we were right now, angry that Elish allowed this to happen. He was supposed to be in control of everything... he was supposed to be some hyper-intelligent mutant.

“When I get Killian... I’m leaving,” I replied. “You obviously don’t know what you’re doing.”

I glared at him as I heard him snort.

“Oh? You think this is a video game or something, Mr. Merrik? That once you pass the first level you slid easily into the next? This is real life, Reaver. And if there is something my ninety-one years being on this grey earth has taught me, it is that things do not always go as planned. Thankfully, to our credit, we literally have all the time in the world. We can not only fix the grievous mistakes you made, we can correct Lycos’s as well.”

I growled.

“It is a sad thing when my pet shows more restraint than you.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “If you were so cozy with Leo, why did this happen? He obviously thought you would betray him.”

Elish’s face didn’t waver but I saw a slight darkness come to his eyes. “I have the most to lose with this seed I have planted. If anything it was my own doing for trusting that slippery scientist in the beginning. I should have known he would eventually try and go above my head.”

“Don’t you ever say anything bad about him!” I exploded, in the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t going about this the right way. I was better than this, better than losing my temper. That wasn’t me, at least it didn’t used to be me. I was the calm, seethe in silence type.