The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (27 page)

“Right?”

“Don’t you, Killibee?”

“Killi bee bee bee.”

“Come on, Killian, you wanted to find a hospital…” Perish’s voice broke through my living nightmare. He was holding his assault rifle in his hand and his blue bag in the other. “Or are you going to stay outside the building and hope I don’t get too far away from you?”

“Killian?”

“KILLIAN?”

I screamed from shock as Perish grabbed my shoulder and shook it. I stared at him, suddenly feeling the cold, eerie quiet of the greywastes around me. I looked around, barely remembering where I was, and tried to suppress the scared noise on my lips.

“You’re so fucking…” Perish muttered, “… weak.”

“I want to see… see Reaver…” I murmured back.

“Yeah, well… Reaver’s in Skyfall fucking Silas, now all you have is me,” Perish snapped. He pushed me towards the entrance of the hospital. A row of glass, several panes still intact but most of it broken, crunching below our boots. “Come on, assholes, keep it up or none of you shit fucks get any medication.”

I looked behind me and saw the three slaves, all of them giving me worried, sad looks. When they noticed I was staring back they dropped their gaze and obediently followed Perish into the hospital. All of them getting weaker by the day. It had taken us a week of travelling through the towns to find where the hospital was for the area.

But… but we found it.

It had been a week right? Maybe it had been a month, I didn’t know.

“Killian!” Perish snarled. I looked up and realized he was already twenty feet from me, the three slaves travelling obediently behind.

I looked around at the walls on either side of me, all with strips of their siding peeled away like burnt skin. Though instead of pink, inflamed flesh, underneath these walls held the paints and panelings of the distant past. Greens and yellows, soothing colours that were supposed to calm their patients down.

Now this was a greywastes’ fun house. Derelict to the point where the building itself looked mad. Whatever the modern humans had done to this place had started coming undone from its walls and ceilings, raining its failures down onto the floor to collect dust and garbage. Drop ceiling tile so easily disturbed, gyprock siding and rotten corkboard. Easy fixes for understaffed hospitals though the Fallocaust held no mercy for structural shortcomings.

This building was scarred and broken. The floors rotten and the roof just waiting for the next rainy season.

We shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t a good place.

No place was a good place.

I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder, but Edward’s voice soothed me. “It’s alright, come on… let’s start walking.”

We were passing a door, through that door I could see a circle of hospital beds, all of their mattresses perfectly formed only holding a few water stains. The beds were metal frame and looked corroded but they were intact.

I took a step towards one of the beds. I wanted to lie down on it but Edward directed me away.

“We could rest there,” I murmured, rubbing and tensing my hands together. “Do you think...?” I took a fleeting look at an old machine, covered in dust and standing vacant in the middle of the room. “That might be a heart monitor… we could see if it works.”

Edward led me away and I let him. My heart clenched when I saw the look Perish was giving me. A look as cold as his ice blue eyes, eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness around us.

He handed me a flashlight. “Snap out of it already. I’m really getting sick of this way you’re acting.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Want me to suck your dick and make you feel better ab-”

The slaves caught me after Perish hit me across the face. And as if taking advantage of the fact they were holding me up and I was still in his reach, he hit me again.

“Drop him,” Perish snapped.

“He’s losing his fucking mind, just let him be!” Danny suddenly shouted. I felt them lift me up and steady me to my feet. “How fucking manly are you to get off hurting this poor fucking kid? His mind is fucking gone.”

No, no, Danny, don’t… please don’t make him mad. He hurts you to control me. He hurts you to control me.

Perish hurts you to control me.

I screamed when Perish hit Danny. The young greywaster dropped me as he fell and we both spilled to the ground.

Then Perish started kicking me. Me? Don’t kick me.

A second scream burst from my lips and I covered my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. I tried to shield myself as Perish delivered a hard kick to my side.

“You like him, huh? He’s your little fucking buddy too, eh? How about you three shits find food or else we’ll fucking eat him? Would you like that, you fucking worthless shit?” Perish snarled and I felt Danny’s body give a heave as Perish kicked him.

“Fine! We’re going…” Teejay shouted. I felt someone grab the back of my jacket and pull me up. “Just calm down, no one here has to get eaten. We have food for the night. It’s alright, we’ll check the cafeteria.”

I was staring at the floor but my eyes travelled up to Perish. His face was red and his jaw locked. He was mad, or was he stressed out? Maybe I should suck him off to calm him down. I couldn’t let him get angry; he’s scary when he hits that state.

I saw Perish nod, his jaw still set. My eyes then travelled past him and I realized behind him was a large pane of glass, more hospital beds and machines covered in dust and dirt. But more than just that, everything that had been above the ceiling, above the push paneling, had come down. You couldn’t even see the floor anymore or what colour it had used to be.

“Are you coming, Killian?”

It was all just plaster and insulation, blanketing everything and covering it in a smell of raw, souring wood and dry must.

Someone grabbed my hand and led me away from Perish. I could hear murmuring but there weren’t any more raised voices so I was alright.

We went down the hallway and Edward spotted a sign for the elevator. Beside it we found the stairs and carefully walked over to them, testing the floorboards for any weakness but this floor seemed stable. In some of the rooms though I could see dips and craters from where heavier machinery had fallen through, including a reception’s desk that was half-sunk into the rotting boards.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I whispered as we passed it. I walked over and looked down. I could see checkered linoleum barely visible through the ash and plaster. I ran my fingers along the desk and looked at the three slaves. “Really… we need to leave now.”

“Jesus… he’s broken this kid, bad,” Danny whispered. I looked up and saw ribbons of peeling paint curling from the ceiling. It made me nervous, nervous than all the other ruined sections around me. Something about the curls of paint being clustered together like this set me on edge, it made me anxious.

I looked away and left the room and started to walk towards the stairs, trying to push away the realization that the same curled paint was above me and around me on the sections of painted walls.

Musty, sour smells… I started to walk down the steps even though the flashlight barely lit my way. Down the stairs, down the stairs… I shone the flashlight in all directions, taking in the plaster so fragile even my footsteps were making it fall from the walls.

I coughed as the plaster tickled my nose, before sneezing into my jacket. I got to a landing and shone the flashlight outside, seeing nothing out of the window stained grey and black from age.

The slaves walked behind me, making more dust fall from the walls. I started wiping off a large sign and was thankful to see it had directions on it.

Danny read them out loud; he was the only one besides me who could read. “Cafeteria is another two flights down. Let’s go. I want to eat as much as I can before we bring any to that shithead upstairs.”

I shone the flashlight down the stairs, seeing an old Exit sign dangling from the ceiling, only being held up by several wires. We ignored the door it was pointing to and kept walking down the stairs, covered in a plastic no-slip covering that gave our boots good traction.

“When are we going to do it?” I heard Edward whisper behind me. I kept walking; shining the flashlight up ahead as much as I could to make sure nothing was going to ambush us. It was all just building though, crumbling, broken… dark building.

“We’ll find knives in the cafeteria,” Teejay whispered back. “We can make it quick.”

I reached the bottom of the stairs and coughed again. Taking the lead, I cautiously walked through the door and looked around.

Dozens of chairs surrounding tables, plastic and perfectly intact like they were still waiting for the doctors and visiting family to fill them. The chairs were red and so were the tables, the brilliant colour only broken up by the dust and paneling that had fallen from the ceiling above.

My flashlight checked the ceiling but I couldn’t see nests or signs of anything. Just more lights hanging like noosed convicts, and abyss-like darkness that swallowed up my light without care. At this sign I crossed the cafeteria, my boots and our breathing the only noise we could hear.

I gently touched the red plastic table.

“It’s so red,” I whispered and felt a smile come to my lips. “Reaver… loved the colour red. He used to… take home signs, especially Coca Cola signs, and repair them.” I looked behind me, my mind deciding to ignore the grave and concerned look coming from Edward. The other two were off in the kitchen. I could hear rattling around. “Ever notice in the end… it’s all just grey and red?”

Edward let out a long drawn-out breath. He looked like he was going to say something else but instead he smiled and started directing me towards the kitchens. “Come on, we’re going to find some food for us. Eat a shit load before we bring any back to that fuck.”

I wanted to look at the benches some more but I went with him. We would have an extra flashlight that way.

“Why don’t you tell me a story about Reaver again? What else did that crazy shit do that was funny?” Edward asked encouragingly. Danny and Teejay came into view, opening and closing metal doors, sending dust and the occasional loose panel onto the floor. The entire kitchen was filthy but the roof hadn’t rained its remains down on it as much as the other ones. All the filth came from food that had been left out and stacks of pots and pans, even large racks. The food that had sat in those places were long gone of course, but they had still left a deep black stain that time hadn’t erased.

They left in a hurry. They were running.

“Reaver…” Even saying his name out loud brought me close to the fringes of sanity, though in the same turn it filled my heart with sorrow. “Reaver used to pretend to hate our cat, but he loved him a lot. Once I got up to use the bathroom while I was sleeping. Reaver never needs much sleep, he’s always awake it seems. Well, anyways…” I absentmindedly picked up a huge commercial size can and tried to dust it off. “I got up and saw he was sitting on the very edge of his chair making quils, like very edge so he was practically falling off. Do you know why?” I looked at Teejay who was right beside me and smiled at him. “Because Biff was asleep on that chair and he didn’t want to disturb him. If I was awake, Reaver would’ve just…” Tears started to well in my eyes. “He would’ve just kicked him off to maintain his air of… his air of just being Reaver. But when no ones looking… he’s so sweet to him.”

“I wouldn’t believe you if I didn’t trust you,” Edward said with a weak laugh. His hands came into my view and he slid the can I had found towards him. I saw he had found a can opener. That was something we would be taking with us, those were very valuable. “Reaver just seemed like well…”

“A bit of an asshole?”

All three of them chuckled.

“Yeah, but we saw what he did for that little one, the mute kid. You’re right, when you’re around he did seem different,” Edward said.

Chally… are you still alive? I’m sorry Chally but if you did die… at least a quick death is better than what Perish is putting us through. I knew Perish would’ve brought you with us. I would’ve never let him hurt you.

My brow furrowed and I nodded; the sound of Edward opening up the can filled the room. “He once said I was his only tie to morality…” I paused and pursed my lips together. “He also said, no matter what happens…he would find me.”

“Do you think he will?”

I nodded. “Nothing can keep us apart. We’re meant to be together.” I said that with a forcefulness to my voice. Maybe because I was used to saying it in the same tone inside of my head. Nothing will keep us apart. He told this to me. Reaver loved me and he would find me.

All four of us cheered in spite of my madness and their starvation. It was canned corn! We all took ourselves a handful and started shoveling it into our mouths.

Food, real food. The taste was so sweet, the texture made my mouth water. I started gorging myself on it, feeling tears well in my eyes just from relief that we had some food.

“We should stop eating…” Teejay said but his hand was reaching back for more. “We’ll throw up; this is too much sugar. There is a lot here. We’ll leave the can here and keep looking and slowly pick at it until Perish starts to hound us.”

Edward let out a groan but nodded. He put the lid over it and I finished off the half-handful I had. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, let’s keep looking. We aren’t weak enough that we can’t carry what we find. Then we can all stop worrying about becoming Perish’s next meal.”