The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (23 page)

My claw rings clicked together as I ran silently with my faction, weaving in and out of the trees until we hit a stretch of bare greywaste dirt. We ducked our heads and held our arms to our sides as we steadied ourselves, hugging the grey boarded-up buildings and watching the bare, car-less street come closer and closer.

I turned to Big Shot and put my hand on his head. “No bang… right? Just teeth. Quiet. No bang.”

Big Shot nodded at me. His milky yellow eyes were starting to clear; I could see the hints of black pupil start to form. Underneath his scalp headdress he had a narrow triangle-shaped face and I think, long ago, dark brown hair just starting to grow thick again.

I saw three cloaked figures talking to each other, not even aware of what was behind them. I clenched my fists, feeling my claw rings clink together and started to run towards them.

Suddenly there was an eruption of gunfire.

I swore and looked to my side. Big Shot was grinning from ear to ear, fire and sparks coming from his gun as he rained the officers in bullets.

My hands raised and I grabbed Big Shot by the shoulder. He stumbled and stopped firing, then looked at me with a wide, shit-eater grin.

“BANG!” Big Shot exclaimed.

I stared, before, in spite of the danger we were all in, I erupted into laughter. His voice was a dry, broken rasp but it was words, actual human words.

“Yeah, BANG!” I grabbed my gun and whistled to Deek. “Big Bang, Big Shot. Hey, Deek?” I said with a shout.

The dog perked up and looked at the four of us.

“Sing for me.” I grinned.

As the sounds of guns clicking from their holders filled the night air, the deacon dog looked at the moon in the sky and howled a long, drawn-out howl.

Then shrieking. Lots of shrieking.

In the darkness, I closed my eyes for a brief moment. Hearing the sounds sweep over my body like a cold blanket, sounds that once terrified me but now they were the songs of home. The songs of my people, following my orders to the letter. In that brief pause I took them in, feeling myself more present, and more in reality, than I had since my lucidity had come back to me.

When my eyes opened I realized my hands were shaking. In front of me I could see people starting to run down the street holding bluelamps and torches, running towards the thatch of trees.

“Sing, Deek,” I whispered.

Tonight was our night.

Big Shot, Scout, and the Beast ran ahead of me. I stayed watching them, and slowly walked down the dark, shadowed road. My chest was rising up and down in anticipation; my mouth could already taste the blood.

Taste the blood.

I spat on the pavement and did a double take as I realized it was red. As I stared, it was followed by several droplets, crimson liquid that shone like small crystals in the moonlight.

I wiped my nose and mouth and looked down at my jacket sleeve.

Blood… lots of blood.

They were screaming, raver shrieks in the distance and suddenly gunfire. I took a step to start running towards them when my left leg suddenly gave out in front of me.

I gasped and fell to my hands and knees. My eyes, blurry and unfocused, stared at the pavement as more shining, purple spots appeared.

Blood.

Then images in my mind, memories.

I was in a backdrop of hundreds of abandoned structures. Ones with alleyways in between their burnt-out frames.

I dragged the bodies to my lair, and tied them up like slaughtered livestock. I made them sway back and forth in the darkness. In the darkness, in an underground house full of dying, gaunt faces. Needles and trash. I was in a dark room, feeling a sorrow I had never experienced. Again and again I wished for death.

Then a man in white with hair that had stolen the yellow of the sun. He picked me up with caring hands and held me to his chest.

Mint and nutmeg.

An ear-shredding scream ripped through the vivid hallucination taking reign in my head. I looked up and saw Big Shot and the Beast tearing a man limb from limb. Behind him, more ravers; jumping on the backs of residents as they mangled and dismembered whoever they caught in their grasp. Blood ran like water down the streets, even the dog was picking off whoever he could reach before the ravers.

Madness. Pure madness.

I pushed past the weakness my body had temporarily succumbed to, and I ran towards my people. I saw Big Shot, stooped over the man he had just killed, eagerly eating his stomach, spilling organs onto the street that steamed in the cold.

When he saw me he stood up. “Kah!”

I put my hand on his head and said to him, “We eat when they’re all dead. Kill all of them. All of them. Tell everyone that. Kill now, eat later.”

Big Shot turned around and made a series of hiss like shouts. I saw each raver pop their head up from the kills they were devouring, their faces soaked in blood. Obediently they rose and took their guns into their hands; the sounds of gunfire singing through the cold air in the distance.

Then we ran to the other side of the town. Me, Big Shot, and the Beast in front, and Deek taking our flanks. We sped towards the gunfire and came upon the most grisly of scenes.

The officers and over twenty residents were in an old parking lot, a large mall behind them which had been quickly boarded shut, a bluelamp glow visible through hastily erected boards. The men and women who had remained were holding guns in their hands, shooting and dodging ravers as they relentlessly chased their warm prey. I could see the panic and horror in the whites of their eyes, made only brighter in the moonlight. The smell of fear was thick on them, so thick it washed over my senses like a potent drug.

Without barking orders, without sending my men first, I charged. My mouth already salivating at the prospect of feeling their own blood pump into my mouth. I had to kill, I had to taste their flesh slip down my throat, feel their life drain from their bodies in the most savage and grisly of ways.

Shadow Killer.

I lunged with a snarl just as a man turned, gun in hand. The gun went off with a crack as he stumbled under my weight, falling to the pavement with a thud. He put his hand to my face and shouted from fear.

My claws dug into his shirt, piercing his flesh. I raked them and snarled like the raver I knew I was.

The man closed his eyes and screamed, his hands on my face temporarily weakening. I took this chance and clamped my mouth over his throat, snapping them down and breaking his windpipe.

There it was… yes.

In ecstasy, my eyes shut as the warm blood sprayed from his neck and into my mouth. A thrill ravaging my body that bordered on sexual. I half-groaned, half-growled as I let it cover me, counting each weakening heartbeat as he died in the jaws of the beast.

Then a blow to my back that had me flying off of him, a piece of his throat still in my mouth.

I twisted my body and held out my hands. I managed to press them against the concrete and steady myself, doing a partial back flip that landed me back on my feet. I whirled around with an angry shriek and charged at the person who had hit me.

A young man stared at me with his eyes wide. He turned to run, but before he could make it two steps I pounced on his back. I reached in front of him and opened his throat with a slash of my claw rings before I leapt off, landing behind another one.

My heart was a hammer inside of my chest, not a single ounce of pain being felt in a body relying solely on adrenaline. I didn’t even notice the blood still streaming from my nose and mouth as I whirled around for more victims.

The hall.

I stared at it, ignoring the gunshots and screaming behind me. My bloodied face split into a grin as I reached down and picked up a fallen torch, still holding a brilliant flame. I started crossing the parking lot with a low chuckle.

“Bang!”

I turned around, torch in hand, and saw Big Shot holding in his hand his assault rifle, the same shit-eater grin on his face. I looked past him at the activity and saw that every single fighting townsperson had been killed. Their bodies lying both splayed and crumpled, some left dead in the cold, others shaking and twitching as the shadow-cloaked ravers devoured them alive.

“Burn them.” I looked behind me and held up the torch.

“BURN THE HALL!” I screamed. “KILL THEM ALL!”

Big Shot stared at me for a moment before he bent down and picked up a snuffed torch. He slowly walked towards me and lit his torch against mine.

“Burn?” The torch made a low roaring sound as he waved it in front of the large, looming structure, the flames only temporarily turning the scene yellow before it went back to the black and silver-blue.

Big Shot looked back at me for confirmation; his eyes holding the small rubies of the flames inside of them.

I nodded. “Kill every single one. We don’t take prisoners.”

The raver leader nodded to me and held his torch up in the air. “BURN!” he said and let out a long, piercing shriek. Every raver in that vicinity rose and started screaming with him.

I turned and ran towards the hall. I grabbed onto the loosely erected boards with my free hand and started pulling them off of the windows. Inside I started to hear scared screaming and then the cracking of gunfire.

The bullet whizzed past my face; I could feel the wind and the heat against my cheek. I ignored it and pried the board down, before I flung my torch into the hall of people.

Beside me the sounds of wood scraping against metal could be heard. The ravers were all pulling the boards off of the windows. The barriers fell and were quickly followed by a blinding flash of light as they threw their torches inside. Once their hands were empty, they ran back to the parking lot to retrieve more.

They all ran back and forth like ants retrieving food for their nests. Each one ran and got a torch, and if they couldn’t find torches they started trying to burn the wooden boards we had just pried off. Anything that could catch a flame they took and threw into the windows as the screaming drowned in the night air.

Then the door to outside started to shake and rattle. I looked and realized that it was chained from the outside, a thick, rusted lock and chain that was unlatched.

Because ravers had never been smart enough to unlock or open doors. A closed door puzzled them and only if they saw you run in did they know to look for you there.

But not
my
ravers.

I walked to the door, pulsing with their desperation, pushing out and then back in like the building was trying to take its own desperate breaths. Then, as it heaved, I saw the first trickles of smoke start to spill from its cracks.

“Shoot whoever comes through that window,” I shouted to Big Shot and the Beast, they were several feet in front of me holding torches in their hands. Their faces were calm, but my own bloodlust was ravaging me alive. I kept looking in all directions to see if I could spot anyone alive, I wanted to kill. I wanted all of them dead.

Why? They hadn’t done anything to me.

I didn’t have an answer to that. I just knew my drive was stronger than what morals I may or may not have had in my previous life.

I stood with my people and watched the smoke start to spill from the open windows. Ravers around me branching off to watch the other covered windows, some running and shrieking but my smarter ones had been able to hold their calm, emotionless demeanor. A trait I suspected had never been seen in ravers before, but one I found most fascinating.

When the smoke started to spill out of every crack in the building, the people inside got desperate. Unable to find a suitable escape or perhaps what was awaiting them outside was less scary than inside. Either way, the first desperate woman started to crawl out of the window.

When she looked out and saw all of us watching her, her face went pale before dissolving into tears. She put her hands up to beg as her foot touched the ground.

Then behind her I heard a bellow and a man shouting. He pushed the woman out and made her fall to the concrete with a heavy thud. He himself started climbing out. I could see smoke coming off of his clothes.

Then more. The fire had reached them. I picked up my assault rifle and started picking off each one that tried to escape the death trap I had made for them inside. Each time a face appeared, usually red with burns and later on, black, I picked them off with a bullet to the head. I did this until no more men or women could spill from their prisoners… because their bodies were blocking the exit.

I stepped back and looked up at the hall; the smoke was now spilling in thick, black billows from the roof, rising up in the air like they were the ghosts of the newly dead.

I walked backwards from the parking lot, and as I did, I saw the first flickers of orange peek out from the tarmac roof.

Fire.

The pub back in Moros.

Sanguine loves fire.

This memory made my body temporarily freeze, but my brain was too fixated on the inferno in front of me to delve too deep inside my own mind. Instead, with my gun in hand, I continued to walk backwards. The heat getting stronger against my face and the night sky above me getting more red by the passing minute.