The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (24 page)

My ravers walked along the edges of the parking lot, some holding limbs but most only their assault rifles. The bodies of the townspeople piled up against the windows, roasting in the flames, filling the burning air with the delicate aroma of cooked human flesh.

It was transfixing, like I was staring into hell but in this hell I was the king, the chosen one dropped from above to reign my terror down on the innocent. I might’ve woken up as nothing but tonight I felt like I was king of the entire universe.

They all gathered around me, twenty of them left. All staring at me with milky yellow eyes that captured the red and orange of the flames in front of us. They looked at me as my eyes drank in the flames and carnage of our conquest.

“Eat,” I said to them and slung my gun over my back. “Eat, and make yourselves at home.”

I sat comfortably on my throne. A wing chair made out of a dull, blue cloth, one that had the look of something repaired many times. But it was the best and most comfortable chair we had found in Velstoke, so I had decided that this would be my throne.

I had taken up my kingly residents in what had once been a coffee shop. The sign was still hanging on it though the links were rusty and threatening to fall off at any time. Still though, it was intact and almost in the center of town, with lots of windows so I could see everything that was going on.

I’d made myself comfortable here, commanding the ravers to bring me a nice queen size mattress and the most thickest of blankets. With that on top of our continuous supply of fresh meat… well, I was doing rather well for myself.

When I saw Big Shot I rose to greet him. He had presented me yesterday with a crown of finger bones chewed clean. With his intelligence returning to him more and more each day he and a female raver had crisscrossed the bones and held them in place with the thorny vines of a plant found around the town. I wore this crown on top of my head and I wore it proudly.

“Jade.” Big Shot’s voice was still raspy and broken, but he was starting to remember more words. How much of his intelligence would return and how much had been permanently damaged by the radiation, I didn’t know, though I had noticed peculiar things starting to happen to their bodies. The areas where the ravers had chewed their fingers to the bones, or had chunks of their flesh missing, were not healing. I had expected them to since the sestic radiation was the reason these wounds didn’t get infected, but instead of healing they were starting to almost calcify and harden.

“Yes, Big Shot. How are they doing?” I put my hand on Big Shot’s head to welcome him and he did the same for me. Though I still called him the leader in my head, he was, in reality, more of my second-in-command.

“Come.” Big Shot looked behind him with a smile; a chunk that had always been missing from his chin had grown a hard grey callous on it. The rest of his face had started growing facial hair again and his eyes were now starting to turn green. He was, in all respects, the first and most advanced half-raver in the world.

I walked with him into the grey sun outside. One week after we had taken the town and so far no repercussions. We had had several scouts from different towns come in but we had made short work of them. This town’s ammo and gun cache hadn’t been hard to find and we had distributed the firepower and armor evenly through all of the ravers. We had even had a small colony join us and increase our numbers to forty-six. Actively we had three groups finding other colonies to join us. I would need the numbers when we decided to invade the next town.

The grey sun was shining down on us, the threat of snow far away and the promise of a warm spring that was just around the corner. The perfect weather for our conquests.

Big Shot led me down the street, barrels full of fire centered on every block for my people to warm themselves. They didn’t use houses, or beds, they slept on the ground beside the fire and only went inside of buildings to have sex (most of the time anyways) or to stash and eat their food. So to keep them busy I was teaching the smarter ones to board up the buildings, mostly to appease myself. I would eventually reach a hand out to trade with the humans once we established our rights as a town and as people. That might be in the far future, and it depended on what these Geigerchips could do, but I had great plans for my people. This wasn’t just about killing and taking things over.

Big Shot led me to the fast food restaurant which we had been keeping our prisoners. Though I had adamantly said no prisoners while taking over this town, we had found a cache of twenty people, men, women, and children, hiding out in here.

“Are they eating raw flesh yet?” I asked casually. I opened the door and held it for Big Shot, seeing the Beast and several others standing guard with shotguns and revolvers.

“Yes,” Big Shot replied. We crossed the dirty room, ripped up booths with metal tables on either side of us, and behind them windows streaked in mildew and dirt. The ceiling above us was missing most of its push-paneling, leaving wires to spill out like loose intestines, dangling over our heads as they swayed in the darkness.

We went into the kitchen and I opened up the first freezer door, handgun in hand, ready to shoot any of them if they still had their bravery.

But as soon as I looked in I knew that wouldn’t be a problem.

In a single week you could already see the effects of the sestic radiation on them. The ten we had in this room were covered in purple sores that sunk into their flesh like craters. Their hair had also fallen out already; it now covered the floor that was already rank and putrid from their own waste.

With hollow, desperate eyes they looked at me. Trying to inject any kind of sympathy into a man they knew was an arian human, but their voices had gone. The radiation had paralyzed their vocal cords so all they could do now was shriek and scream.

“In another week I think they’ll be ready to join us,” I said simply. “We’ll do this from now on. Take out their chips and save them, or give them to the intelligent ones. We’ll leave them without chips until I deem them ready to be implanted again.” This was all experimental, but I had many arians at my disposal. I could experiment as much as I wanted; I knew what my end result was.

I turned to Big Shot as he nodded.

He was my ideal end result.

Big Shot was wearing newer clothes now, though he still carried around the many trophies of our conquest last week, now rotting on his belt and on his head. I myself had my own; my necklace of ears and the hand-belt Big Shot had presented me with. That and the crown on top of my head. Though arians usually shower and keep themselves clean, I had fully embraced the raver inside of me. Our clothing had been replaced by newer articles but we were still ravers through and through – just a bit more advanced.

“Is there anything else?” I asked Big Shot after we had checked on the other freezer full of turning arians. We were walking outside now, passing a fire barrel that was surrounded by four ravers. Their arms outstretched to warm themselves even though the day was rather mild.

He shook his head no. “All good.”

I chuckled at this; it would be amusing if I could ever get him to speak real sentences.

I put my hand over Big Shot’s head and held it there. Then I patted it and gave him a smile in return.

“That’s right, Big Shot. All good,” I said with a smirk. “Everything’s all good.”

Chapter 45

Reaver

I had never been apart from him for this long. Ever since he arrived in Aras I was always near him. Whether it was the distance between my basement and his cul-de-sac house, or the distance between us when I started following him. He had never been far from me and I had never been far from him.

Now he was gone from my line of sight, I had left him with my parting kiss, a sleeper-hold. Grabbing on of the slim chance they wouldn’t find him; that he could go back to the group and be safe.

I know if he was caught by Nero he would probably be dead by now, but my lesser of two evils had turned just as sour. I didn’t know if he was still alive; I just knew I had to keep following the trail.

The last days I had with Killian were spent arguing over that stupid slave.

I sighed, ignoring the aching in my chest. I made a solemn promise in that moment to never fight with him again. Killian could win even if I knew he was wrong, whatever made him happy.

The town called Mantis was far behind us, several days walk. We had left quietly that morning without incident. We had cleared the stretch of highway we had wanted to check out and were now doubling back to inquire in a town one of the Mantis residents had mentioned: Garnertown. There was that town and then Velstoke and we were planning on checking all of them for any signs of the boys.

I looked over at Elish, who had been chain smoking all morning. Admittedly though I wasn’t much better. We had almost run out of cigarettes so we made sure to buy a couple cartons in Mantis. Now we were rarely without a cigarette between our lips, I even got the novelty of seeing Elish light them with just his fingers.

The town we were heading towards was the center of what used to be a larger pre-Fallocaust city. Though all the buildings surrounding the town had been burned or dismantled.

We were walking through a house graveyard right now, just open shells and floor plans still intact surrounding us.

But we still checked every one of them, even though we hadn’t had a solid lead since the shack on the highway. There was nothing, no sure sign that they had even been here.

And no sign of Killian at all, that had been Jade’s bandage. How did I even know they were all still together? It was obvious that Perish had wanted to kill Jade.

I changed out the cigarette for a bottle of whisky and passed it to Elish. I heard his lips seal over the bottle before he passed it back. We had already drunken half of the bottle and he had a good share of it. Though I knew I couldn’t search as well drunk, my nerves were starting to shred my mind like a thousand small paper cuts. I needed the break and Elish did too.

I heard him take another drink of the whisky before the amber bottle came back into my view.

“I’m learning something new,” Elish said in a flat tone.

I took another drink and wiped my mouth. I noticed his purple eyes were just a bit glassy, I think mine were as well. “Oh?”

“I understand why greywasters are either drunk or high all the time.”

I chuckled and took that opportunity to have another drink. While the bottle was to my lips I craned my head to check inside one of the burnt building’s windows.

I broke the bottle away from my mouth. “And that was normal life, not even the shit we’re having to deal with now. I told you I was smart to buy all this whisky and rum.” And he had told me I was an idiot too.

“Well, I’m not one to indulge myself to excess.” There was a creak as Elish lifted up the board that had been put over a shattered window. “But quite frankly, I know they’re not here. The deacon dog wouldn’t be hiding from you, and I’m confident they’re travelling with him.”

I could see Perish getting him to stay so they wouldn’t draw attention in the town; the dog was getting pretty huge. But Elish was right, Deek wouldn’t be hiding from me. That dumb dog flipped shit when he saw me after I had been gone for an hour; he would piss himself if he heard me now.

“Every day you’re out here I see you become more normal,” I suddenly remarked, the drink starting to make my ears warm. “It’s not a bad thing.”

“I have more important things to concern myself with,” Elish replied simply. “What little transformation you may have seen just comes with the environment. It’s human and chimera nature alike. We all transform and adjust ourselves according to what is around us. You yourself have changed.”

I snorted.

“You’re not the wet-eared, arrogant shit I saw over a year ago,” Elish said with a smirk. “Perhaps love has tamed that beast?”

My brow furrowed at that. I remembered a conversation Killian and I had had, our last night together in Mariano.

“Did you send Killian to Aras on purpose? To catch my eye?”

Elish was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

My eyes widened. So Killian had been right… “Why?”

“Because I knew you two would be a match and that it would be a mutual benefit for you and Lycos,” Elish replied, tipping the amber liquid back and forth in the whisky bottle. “You needed someone to calm you down, teach you patience and control, and Lycos and Greyson needed to see that you weren’t a lost cause. They needed to see that this dark chimera could still show empathy and compassion… even if it was solely isolated to just a single person.”

I was their ‘lost cause’ because they kept trying to make me into a human instead of a chimera. I wish they hadn’t been so naïve.

Then another question popped into my head. “Why Killian though?”

Elish drained the bottle and threw it into the shell of a small shop we had been passing. “In time.”

That wasn’t that great of an answer, but the heat from the liquor was spreading from my ears to my face. I shrugged it off and cracked open another bottle. We were both starting to slip past tipsy. Though the greywastes might be dangerous, it was empty now, and even if we did see something… we were both fucking immortal.

And I needed it. I was out of pills, out of quils, and long out of heroin, liquor was all I had.

I took another drink, my taste buds fried and raw from so much whisky. “Your king used to get me drunk and drugged, then try to fuck me. Did you know that?”

“One of his many perks.”

We skidded down a steep incline, hitting the backyards of a row of houses at the bottom. I stumbled a bit but I managed to make the whisky not drop. I think I saw Elish stumble a bit too.

“What way do you want to kill him?” I asked.

Elish threw his cigarette butt down onto the ground and walked into a half-standing rancher. I followed him in and quickly walked the area to check for any signs.

“I’ll burn him alive,” Elish replied. He opened up an old closet, and didn’t even flinch when a dry, mummified corpse was visible in the darkness. It looked like it was hanging by the neck from a belt. I almost laughed as Elish checked his pockets before closing the door. “Or perhaps roast him, not burn. A slow heat so the pain will last.”

I checked out the kitchen and saw that the dust that covered the countertops and shelves hadn’t been disturbed. Killian, anyone really, would check the kitchen first.

I pocketed a couple of cans and we both walked out of the house.

“I once tortured a man for two weeks. This time it will be four. One week for what he did to Killian, then one for what he did to Leo, then Greyson, then me,” I replied. “The fact that he’ll return after is just perfect. I can do it all again.”

“Yes, until the final blow.”

“But… with Perish getting his mind back… does that mean he knows how to kill King Silas?” I asked. I dropped the whisky bottle onto the ground but thankfully it didn’t shatter. I picked it up and swayed a bit. This stuff was really starting to hit me.

“I believe so. Though now that I will not be able to monitor him… I’m unsure just how we are going to get this information from him. I was not born yet when Sky and Perish’s O.L.S’s were created. I don’t know what kind of person Perish was. I fear he is taking Killian and Jade to the nearest base to turn them in… but that being said, he could have an entirely different agenda. My pet has talents of his mind that, with training, could rival Silas’s. Though on the same hand… that could be why Perish wanted him dead.”

“Wait a second.” I stopped in my tracks. “You have a piece of Sky right? Why the fuck is he dead then? That’s not dead…”

Elish shook his head no. “An O.L.S is an electronic device we place the piece in, it keeps it alive. Once out of it the tissue would die. That piece was removed before Sky killed himself, so it is nothing but a piece of brain. Silas has coveted it and kept it safe since his boyfriend died, in hopes of resurrecting him one day. Perish’s was removed by Dr. Greg Lenard after the fact and hidden far from Silas, by the twins’ own request. Sky’s has never left his skyscraper.”

“And Leo got a hold of Perish’s O.L.S somehow and implanted Perish?” I started stabbing the can with my pen knife. I smelled it when I got a good hole in it and was thrilled in my drunken state to find it was cherry pie filling. “Well, if Perish won’t tell us we can just make a Sky clone, infuse him with the Sky O.L.S, and ask him.” I shrugged. “Wouldn’t that work?”

“Yes… I believe it would.” I watched his eyes narrow before he looked over at me. I was busy trying to suck cherries out of a small pen hole. I handed him the can and he took it.

“Why wouldn’t Silas just make a Sky clone instead of a Silas clone?” I asked. “Since apparently he hates himself and all of that shit.”

“He tried, but the children were never successful and the cloned matter we had left, the matter not in the O.L.S, had run out. Silas did not want to use the O.L.S material since we had no guarantee it would produce a clone.”

“So then you made me?”

“Eventually, yes. After I perfected it and knew it would work, I used some of Sky’s O.L.S material with Silas’s to make you.”

I may be almost drunk but I was sober enough in the head to catch the subtle omission in his words. “You perfected it? Before you made me? So where is that kid?”

“In time.”

I rolled my eyes. He was saying that to me just as much as his ‘indeed’ word he loved so much. “So you know how to now though? Just you?”

Elish stared forward, even though he was just as bordering on drunk as me his face remained the same. “Yes, I told Silas to scrap the project and that it was impossible. When in reality… I had figured it out and had great success. I know the formula now and I can make as many Silas and Sky’s as I please.”

“As many born immortals?”

He looked proud of himself. “Only I know how it’s done. Not Lycos, nor Perish or Sidonius. I alone cracked the code.”

“So you can make like a dozen me’s if you wanted to?”

“I would never punish the world so.”

I snorted but it turned into a laugh. Elish smiled.

But both of our smiles faded when we emerged from behind an old grocery store. Immediately we both froze in place and ducked back into the shadows.

Though it was more an automatic response. Elish and I glanced out from the back alley of the grocery store and saw what looked like a merchant and a bodyguard travelling alone. An old brown bosen in front of them pulling a cart full of supplies.

“It’s just a merchant’s caravan,” Elish commented before walking out into the front parking lot. Half of the concrete was missing and the bare greywastes had started to take over the rest of the flat surface.

The merchant looked surprised to see us, the bodyguard looked ticked. They both drew their guns at us, but Elish raised a hand. “No need for guns, we’re only looking for information.”

The merchant’s eyes hardened. “I have no information for you, Skyfaller.”

Oh great, this was going to be a fun experience. I stepped in front of Elish and since I no longer had death to fear and I was half cut I said to him acerbically, “I am not a Skyfaller, shithead. I am a greywaster and we’re looking for three people.”

The merchant, with greasy blond hair and a sour look on his face, pointed his gun up higher. “And I have no information for you. So unless you want to make an issue out of it, carry on your way. I don’t talk to Skyfallers or elites. Purple fucking eyes don’t occur naturally and I don’t give a shit who you personally are. Now fuck off.”

I glared him down and took a step towards him, until he was pointing his shotgun right into my chest. My drunken mind filling with a thousand creative ideas on how to murder them.

A smile crept to my lips and I moved to threaten him some more when something caught my eye.

The merchant had a ring on his finger.

A single claw ring.

“Elish… his hand.” I felt my throat tighten around my voice box.

In a flash Elish was there and as time slowed down, several things happened at once.

I moved my chest away from the shotgun as the merchant pulled on the trigger; the heat of the bullet grazing my side. I spun around and grabbed his hot gun barrel with my gloved hand and raised it, then got behind him. I ripped the gun out of his grasp and pressed the barrel against his throat, hearing an agonizing scream spill from his lips.