The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (28 page)

‘If you don’t find food, Killian…’

I wiped my hand on my pants and picked up the flashlight. Without a word I started to look around the cafeteria for more canned food.

Edward was right… if we find enough…

I started to feel sick. I took a moment and leaned up against one of the kitchen counters and closed my eyes, taking in deep breaths. I stayed there, listening to the guys rustle around the kitchen.

I heard an odd noise. I looked over and saw Edward trying to sharpen a knife against a long handheld sharpener. He said something to Teejay before he slipped it into his jacket.

My mind filled with alarm but for reasons I didn’t understand I stayed silent. Maybe I just didn’t want a fight, or maybe deep down I was aware that these were slaves who were constantly being threatened with death and cannibalism just like I was. I didn’t want to ask questions. I was too lost inside of my own head to care what was happening around me.

But he made eye contact with me as he zipped up his jacket. I stared back at him for a moment before my mouth opened and I started to talk.

“Reaver once found a sparkly rock… in a park we were making plant beds in. Well, one of the townhouses,” I whispered to Edward. “I would’ve never noticed but he did. It was normal but inside it was just so pretty… like diamonds inside of it. He gave it to me.”

Edward stared at me for a second before giving me a half-hearted smile. There was no other exchange after that; he went towards the rows of freezers and ovens and left me in my corner.

I remember when I had found out who Reaver was.

I was so scared for him – so scared of what my baby would become.

What was a chimera? Were they really as bad as everyone said? Elish hadn’t been outwardly mean or cruel, he just seemed cold. Even the pet had been nice, even though he was a bit sharp for my taste.

I remember trying to ask Reaver about his father and what he remembered. He tried to get me to have sex with him as a distraction. What a silly boy. Oh, I miss that from him.

I miss that…

Our steps echoed in the stairs as we travelled up them one by one. Still testing each step even though we had come down them only a few hours before.

I remember when I played him songs on my guitar.

There’s bodies in the water

And bodies in the basement

If heaven’s for clean people.

It’s vacant.

We could hear Perish in the distance, whistling to himself but he wasn’t whistling the song that had been playing in my head. I held onto the can I forgot I was holding and started walking towards the noise. I felt like a dog coming towards its master’s call.

With the slaves behind me I walked down the dirty halls, red brick now just barely visible under the many layers of paint, plaster, and pressboard. They were walking behind me, in hurried voices. I didn’t know what they were saying but they were making a point to stay far back from me.

“Perish?” I called weakly. My voice was like the broken plaster around me. Done, dead, and cracked. “We found food.”

The voices continued behind me until as quickly as they came they left. My face scowled to the point where my eyebrow started twitching. It was like they had pressed mute on themselves, suddenly everything had fallen into an eerie silence.

Perish appeared in the doorway. I saw that he was wearing an old lab coat he must’ve found. Though it was dusty and the creases seemed to have bent the fabric from being folded for so long.

The scientist, now my slave owner, looked at me and then the others. “I found several things I was looking for. Well, we’re not spending the night here. We’ll find a house. I have antiseptic and antibiotics to keep you fucks alive for another week.”

“Okay,” I said, still holding the giant can in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I looked around the room Perish was in and absentmindedly started cleaning off the screen of an old computer.

“What did you find? You opened the corn? I should fucking beat you for that,” Perish growled. “Go on… get the –”

Suddenly there was a scuffle. I whirled around and dropped the can onto the ground as I saw a flash of silver reflect against the flashlight. I screamed into my held mouth as I saw Edward raise the knife and stab Perish right in the back.

Perish was silent. His blue eyes filled with an inferno that made me back up until my back hit the wall. I stood there with my hand over my mouth as Perish slowly turned around, the kitchen knife sticking almost halfway out of his back. He glared down Edward as the slave gaped at him; his face tight and stricken, and his hands shaking.

No one but Perish moved. The scientist reached behind him and with one pull, like he was withdrawing Excalibur, he slid the knife out from his back and looked at it.

“Killian,” Perish said plainly.

My feet trembled in my boots. I looked at him and shook my head back and forth feeling my body sink to the ground. I kept shaking my head.

“Killian, come here.”

Killi bee bee bee.

“Killian? I said come here.”

The floor underneath my feet was filthy; I could see the tread from my boots perfectly in the plaster dust. The dust was everywhere, but it wasn’t from the greywastes, just the ceiling above us. I scraped my boots against the dust to watch the treads.

“KILLIAN!”

I gasped from shock as I felt someone grab me. The person with his face twisted in anger pushed a kitchen knife into my hand and grabbed my head. He made me look at the slave named Edward who was down on his knees. His mouth was dripping blood and saliva.

“Kill him.”

There was a man staring back at me in the knife’s reflection. A blond young man with a scraggly beard, with dark blue eyes barely visible under the blackened circles. He was skinny, and his blond hair was long and not brushed. I wondered who this kid was and why he looked so terrified.

“If you don’t do it… I’ll cut his arm off and let him suffer.”

“If you don’t kill him now, Killian.”

“Killhim Killian Killhim Killian.”

“If you don’t kill him, Killian. I will torture him first and then I will kill him. Do you want him to suffer?”

“Do you want him to suffer more, Killian?”

“Killian?”

“KILLIAN!”

A knock upside my head. I turned around in shock and saw the angry man glaring at me, injecting my body with his poison. I stared at him wondering why he had hit me.

I looked down at the knife.

“No,” I whispered and dropped the knife. “Stop using them to control me.”

The man backhanded me, then grabbed my neck and hit me again. With a hard push he shoved me back into the corner of the room and I fell down, face first, into a hospital machine.

I crawled further into the corner, hearing a sudden burst of screaming from Edward and the other two slaves. One was in agony, the other two begging.

I tucked my legs up to my knees and watched, trembling in place, as the man raised his knife.

I could see the terrified whites of the other slaves’ eyes. They stared in shock and horror but I also saw obedience.

I saw obedience because they were holding Edward’s arms out like he was on a crucifix.

Mr. Fallon grabbed onto the forearm of Edward and gripped it hard, so hard I could see Edward’s skin turn white where Perish’s hands were clenching. He gripped it, and with his free hand, the one holding his knife, he started to cut through the slave’s flesh.

The skin split open, red and grey, always that red and grey. The only white I could see was the bone when Perish stabbed his knife into it and pried it away from its socket. But even that would turn red soon from the blood rushing out of the stump.

Perish twisted the limb away but my ears couldn’t hear the snapping or cracking. Even their screams didn’t add torment to this living nightmare. Because all I could hear was a deep hammering inside of my ears, and that song playing over and over in my head.

Bodies in the water. Bodies in the basement.

Edward’s mouth was open. His eyes were closed, and his sweaty face tensed in a pain I couldn’t imagine. Beside him Perish loomed, holding the severed arm in his hand.

I thought he was going to kill him or cut the other arm off, but instead Perish kneeled down and held his hands out to Edward’s shredded stump.

A sizzle and a billow of smoke erupted from his hands. Edward groaned but didn’t scream, only when the heat radiating off of Perish’s palm gave a flare did he make a wheezing noise.

Several seconds later Perish removed his hand, bits of flesh still sticking to his palm. Edward’s face tensed and he cried out; his cauterized stump still steaming and smoking.

Perish turned around and threw the severed arm at me. It landed beside me and disturbed my boot prints, making a puff of dust flying up into the air.

“Take it, we’re cooking that tonight. We can have it with the corn you opened.”

I got up and picked up the arm, staring at the still warm limb. It was heavier than I thought it would be.

“Answer me.”

“Killian.”

“Do you want me to cut off another fucking arm, Killian. Really?”

“No.” I found my voice.

“Then do it, go.”

“Okay,” I whispered, my mind choosing to ignore the groans and cries coming from the group of slaves. I could smell the hot blood and burnt skin; it tasted odd mixed in with the stale smell of age. Though I think this had been the aroma most smelled after the Fallocaust.

Without looking, my mind continuing to jam on itself, I walked out of the room and down the hallway to the hospital.

“You’re going to have to die, Perish.”

“Not tonight and not in this town. You seem stupid enough to try and make a break with the slaves. You remember your collar will kill you if you stray, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

I poked the last hook through Perish’s upper back, wondering just how he was able to still stand and how he wasn’t screaming in pain right now. The scientist was staring forward, glaring at the slaves sitting down in front of an old dresser. All of them stared back but Edward, who was weak and the colour of curdled milk.

Edward’s severed stump was wrapped in a bloody lab coat we had found on a metal shelf. Red had now stained the white and over the last several hours had turned into a dark brown. He was still moving though, I didn’t know how.

We were inside a house, one of the last houses before the town ended. Behind us, miles of structures and the hospital, now a looming omen in the distance. In front of us… just landscapes, a thousand shades of blacks and greys. I could see some structures, broken up smears of different textures but for the most part we had nothing to look forward to but wasteland.

“PAY ATTENTION!” Perish suddenly snapped, jerking his back away. He whirled around to hit me when he paused.

I was just looking out the window; it was only when I glanced down did I realize I had stuck the hook through a piece of his skin an entire inch away from his stab wound.

“Anyone home?” Perish patted my cheek. “You’re really slipping, I see.”

I winced as he stroked my cheek gently. “It looks like you need to relax,” he murmured. “Want me to relax you,
bona mea
?”

Relax me? I knew what that meant. I knew what that meant.

I shook my head and put the last stitch into his back.

But I knew he was going to die; the knife wound was deep and it had nicked one of his bones, his ribs I think.

I was still holding the bloody wire in my hands when Perish turned around. He took it from me and brushed my hair back over my forehead. “Want me to hold you? Protect you? You know during the day I miss your cock, Silas.”

Oh, I was Silas again.

Okay.

I didn’t answer and when he realized I wouldn’t, he took the hook and wire from my grasp, before turning around to address the slaves. “Get a fire going and skewer that arm. I want it roasted and ready for when we come back.”

I didn’t want to go anywhere with him but I didn’t have a choice. Perish grabbed my hand and led me upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Or what had once been a bedroom. It had cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other and a mattress on a bed frame in the corner. The ceiling was intact but barely, like most ceilings in the wasteland its contents had spilled to the floor.

“Is this where you’re going to fuck me?” I rasped. My voice was gone, it had been gone for a while.

Too much screaming.

“No,” Perish said. He walked over to the mattress and kicked it, sending a plume of dust up into the air. “I want
you
to fuck
me
.”

My eyes widened before they rose to look at Perish. He was staring back at me, his shirt and jacket already off of his body. His chest was blanched, sickly, and still holding smudges of blood from his stabbed back.

I shook my head no.

“You don’t want to punish me for what I did to you? Punish me for breaking that fragile mind of yours? Come on, Silas.” Perish walked up to me and grabbed the crotch of my jeans, I looked away. “Punish me. Fuck me until you kill me. You have my permission.”