The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (17 page)

I screamed from fright when I saw a pair of glowing eyes. I took a step back but once I saw that it was a radrat my greywaster instincts suddenly kicked in. I dropped the flashlight and started chasing it around the basement.

The thing ran quickly but it must have been too surprised and scared that I had found it to know how to get out of the room. As I chased it around it ran to a closed bedroom door and doubled back, before ducking behind a tipped over filing cabinet.

I looked around and grabbed an old phone book. I threw it at the rat and got it on its head, then as it stood there stunned I dashed over, out of breath, and smashed it on the head with my boot.

Crunch… crunch…
ugh, I hated the sounds of bones breaking. The radrat twitched and thrashed, but with one last blow, I finished it off.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and grabbed onto its tail. I sprinted up the stairs and found Perish waiting for me at the top.

He stared down at me coldly; he had been getting more closed off towards me as time went on. New Perish was just… he didn’t seem at all like the Perish I had once known.

Can an O.L.S really change someone that much?

“I killed a radrat… that will feed us all for a day.” I held it up and forced a small smile. I had been trying make it appear that I was warming up to him. It was a slow process, I had to make it believable and I knew this new Perish was smart. He knew my tricks.

The scientist looked at the creature and made a face. “Barely,” he replied. “Give it to Edward to cook. We’ll forget the other houses and keep moving on foot.”

I nodded and saw Edward sitting down on one of the chairs. His missing fingers hadn’t gotten infected but they still caused him a lot of pain. I had been doing my best to take care of him. I felt so guilty for what had happened.

My pride regarding Perish shouldn’t get in the way of keeping my friends safe.

“Hey, Edward, look I found us some fresh meat!” I forced another smile. I forgot when the last time I had actually smiled was.

Edward looked up and took the radrat from me. He had been a cook before he had been sold. He loved to cook anything that walked.

“Thanks, Killian… if I can find a river we can make soup. It’ll fill us up more.” His eyes were dull but they seemed to shine at the prospect of getting food into us. Or maybe it was because the slaves were safe for another day.

If we don’t find food, we’re eating one of them.

If you don’t find food, Killian, it will be your fault.

I wouldn’t let that happen. We would find food… lots of food…

Somewhere.

Our small party left the dilapidated structure behind and soon we were back on the road. The scenery around us was different than it had been in Aras or even the highway. We were in the greywastes again, where all you could see was grey and black, occasionally broken up by a tall tree or a large industrial building or hotel. There were more houses here than I was used to, though most held nothing inside but disappointment.

We made camp once the night started to take the greywastes. Perish decided to branch off to check out different houses which always made me nervous. The slavers also had the same fears I did, that the scientist would forget that we were on an invisible leash and our collars would activate.

So where Perish went, we went. We hovered around the house he was checking out and tried to make small talk with each other. They liked hearing stories about Aras and Tamerlan which I indulged them in, adding more positive things to even the most boring of stories to lift their spirits.

Perish emerged from one of the houses and looked at us with annoyance. I had just finished telling them about when Reaver got Biff, and how I had made him go
Here kitty kitty!
They of course knew my tough boyfriend so they thought it was just great.

“We’re staying in here tonight,” Perish said. “Get a fire and cook the rat.”

We all filed in and I dragged a couch over a scorched tire rim that the last traveler had used for a fire pit. I shook out the two remaining cushions and sat Edward down first. I wanted the slaves to rest; they had less energy than I did.

The rat meat tasted like butter, the grease coated my mouth with a delicious taste. I savored every bit of it but it was gone before I knew it.

Perish put the bones in a pot and emptied one of the bottles into it. Thankfully, we had many rivers that had formed from the melting snow, though the water was extremely irradiated. All of our Geigerchips buzzed whenever we took a drink from the water.

All of the water that fell from earth held amounts of radiation and we usually had Dek’ko filters we installed in whatever rig we had set up for running water. But of course we had no such luxuries here, not even Iodine pills to help counteract it.

Perish boiled the fresh bones and I threw in the spine I had been chewing on, Then to my amusement Perish cracked open the radrat’s skull and started poking at its brain.

“No matter what… you’ll always love your science,” I said with a smile, trying to get another brownie point from him in my slow campaign to win his trust.

Perish had a scalpel in his hand. He slowly cut the rat’s brain down the middle and gently separated it with his fingers.

“Radrat brains are about the size of a second trimester fetus brain. Usually I had a microscope or something on my glasses to help me, but I can still see well,” he murmured, his tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “I have dissected a lot of them, to see why they died. There was one baby before Reaver was successful, the last one before Leo handed off the research to Elish to try. He had curly black hair though so Silas would have never been happy with him. Though as long as he got his clone, I suppose he would’ve kept him.”

Perish’s tongue stuck out more. He lifted up a small piece of brain tissue and smiled at his achievement. “This right here. The root of the brain beside the thalamus is where we resurrect from… though of course it is just normal on the rat.” He showed me before he popped the piece into his mouth and kept digging.

“Reaver is a clone of Silas… but I guess like all the chimeras, Silas can make them look how they want?” I asked curiously.

Perish nodded. “That is what makes Reaver a chimera too. Though his DNA is how Elish wanted it. Silas wanted a Sky replacement so Elish put in strands of Sky’s DNA. Then we added chimera enhancements because, really, it is easier to do them there than surgery when he’s older.”

“I guess Silas wouldn’t want a clone that reminded him of himself, since Silas hates himself so much,” I muttered. I watched as Perish held up another piece of brain.

He nodded. “Yes, Silas really does hate people who remind him of him, especially who he was before the Fallocaust.” He leaned over and showed me the new piece. “This piece right here is where the memories are, long-term anyways. This is what Greg took from our heads… how he was able to just find those memories…” Perish’s brow furrowed. “He was a mad scientist that one and a troublemaker. I’m glad he’s long dead.”

As was custom apparently, Perish ate that piece of the brain too, and continued to dig.

“Perry, why are we going to the plaguelands? You know the radiation is going to start overloading our Geigerchips right?” I said. Perish seemed at ease, I wanted to take advantage of that.

“Born immortals have an immunity to sestic radiation,” Perish said casually, scraping his small knife over the rat’s open brain.

“So you don’t care that this is going to kill me?” I said soberly.

Perish paused, my words seemed to scald him because all he did was glare at the rat brain he was dissecting.

Oddly he was silent, but his eyes remained two focused blue pits. I wondered if I was going to be punished for drawing light on this reality. Though if he was in denial about my eventual fate maybe I did need to remind him.

“Months ago, I got through to Reaver… I told him that he only had a limited time with you and he should treasure you, protect you,” Perish began slowly. His movements were still frozen like he needed all of his concentration to say these words. “He put you in danger anyways. My Killian, my precious boy. My sweety, who did such a kind yet horrible thing for me in Donnely.”

I stared at him. “You want to hurt Reaver by killing me now? Through radiation exposure?”

“Someone has to protect you, Killian. Someone has to protect –”

Perish suddenly stopped, his voice stopped, his movements stopped, it was like time froze around us.

“I have the right formula… he found it for me on the laptop,” Perish murmured. He held up a hand before resting it on my arm. Oddly it went warm but not the warmth that Jade’s thermal touch had, it was different.

Then, just a fleeting moment later, I felt my Geigerchip hum.

Perish’s face got dark. His eyes shot up to me, and as he stared me down, they narrowed.

“Stop asking stupid fucking questions,” the scientist, or whoever he was suddenly snapped. “Go to bed. I’m tired of looking at you. I’m tired of hearing you.”

And that was the end of that – whatever that was.

That night with the slaves asleep in the other room, I laid next to Perish as was my duty as slave. This had been something that I had been forced to do since the night he had bludgeoned Danny and I had stopped protesting. Perish liked to spoon me or make me lay my head in the crook of his arm. It was… it was awkward for me and I hated it. Mostly because in the middle of the night, when the night terrors took me, I woke up thinking he was Reaver.

But it wasn’t, though Perish soothed me all the same. It was only in the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere with a thousand terrors in the darkness that I let him comfort me. Though no longer the hyper voice, no longer the rapid-speed consoling. Now he held me close to him and shushed me, telling me it was all in my head and that I was okay.

No, I wasn’t okay… as soon as I heard his voice I no longer cried from the nightmares in my head, but because I was once again far away from Reaver.

That night I woke up with a start and asked for him to turn the flashlight on so I could make sure no one was here. Something I had done many times in a half-lucid state back in Aras.

“I haven’t fallen asleep yet,” Perish said quietly. “No one’s here.”

I sighed and took in a deep breath. “It’s late, why haven’t you slept?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I like to watch you sleep… I missed it when we were separated.”

When we were separated…
like we were two people who should have never been apart in the first place. That wasn’t true and it had never been true.

“Well, I’m right here,” I whispered. He always seemed so much kinder in the middle of the night, during the day he turned back into a cold, prickly jerk. “Go to sleep.”

I closed my eyes and tried to force the fear from my mind, but a moment later the fear was replaced by horror when his lips press against my forehead.

He kissed me again and I felt his hand slowly stroke my stomach. “You know what else I have been thinking of?”

No, no no, not tonight… not tonight. Don’t let tonight be the night.

I was frozen solid, my body so coiled in on itself my muscles hurt. Unable to hold it back I let out a scared whimper.

“Shh… come on, I’m not going to rape you, Killian,” Perish whispered. His hand slipped underneath my shirt and I felt it start to rub against my right nipple. His hands were rough from being out in the elements, not the soft, delicate hands he had in Donnely. “I would never do that to you.”

“Then what are you doing?” I refused to open my eyes; I only squeezed them shut tighter as he twisted the nipple between his fingers. “I don’t –” No, I can’t make him mad; he’ll beat or possibly kill the slaves if I do.

“Take your pants off, I won’t have sex with you,” Perish said. I saw a burst of light through my closed eyelids.

I opened my eyes and saw he had turned the flashlight on. I swallowed and made eye contact with him. “Promise?”

He nodded, but to my unease he started taking his pants off too.

I didn’t trust him, but he had never expected me to trust him. Perish only expected me to obey and what promises I got could be taken away as quickly as they were given.

With my heart pounding and the silence deafening around me I removed my pants and underwear. Seeing Perish’s hard penis pop out of his own underwear as they were slid off of his body.

I was soft and untrimmed, and the cold air wasn’t doing me any favours. I looked at the small space between our still laying bodies and tried to force my mind to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here, just like when Asher, or Silas, raped me with the dildo and made me do those horrible things to him. I had to close my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else. Let him do what he needed to do to his body to get his release, I would be his visual stimulation if I had to be.

“Your body is so perfect… I remember that body. I remember you.” Perish’s voice caught. He took a ragged breath. I glanced up and saw his hand between his legs, slowly rubbing himself. “I missed you, Silas.”

Silas? I blinked and stared at him.

“I’m… I’m not Silas,” I said to him slowly.