The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (32 page)

Chapter 48

Reaver

The wind was blowing the smell towards us and it was enough to make you want to vomit in your mouth. I had always been more than used to the smell of death and decay but my nose had gotten used to smelling fresh air and greywaste dust. There weren’t as many people in this area of the greywastes so I hadn’t seen as many corpses.

Besides the ones Elish and I had made of course.

Though the smell was enough to make your nose curl, it was nothing compared to the gory displays of crucified men and women that we were currently weaving through. A sea of figures that, from a distance, I had thought were trees. But as we approached this stretch of greywastes we both saw that they were dozens of dead arians. All of them propped up and rising from the ground, hands outstretched and smiling through skulls just starting to peek through their rotting skin.

Below their bodies the natural process of decay had occurred. Puddles of guts, dried on the outside but squishy and squirming if you stepped in them, formed churning piles below the bodies, some even still connected to their hosts by a shriveled brown piece of intestine.

It seemed that once King Jade had settled him and his people down in Velstoke they had gotten bored. For the entire quarter mile from the main road to the town, there were these human scarecrows on spikes. Green skin with black veins snaking through their bodies like lightning bolts, just starting to form the first blowfly maggots of spring. Before the Fallocaust they had green shoots to tell them spring was near, now we had blowfly maggots, different from the year-round flies, they were bigger and fatter.

I picked at an arm that didn’t look as ripe as the others, just to see if I could eat it, but as I did a beetle crawled out. I poked it one more time and carried on, wiping my finger on my black jacket.

I looked over at Elish; his hands clenched and his head lowered. Every once in a while his heartbeat would speed up. I could almost guarantee that whenever that heart spiked he was imagining strangling Jade with his bare hands.

At least Elish knew where Jade was. I just wanted to go in there and grab the asshole and make him sing for me. He would know what happened to Killian and Perish; he could point us in the right direction.

Like a pissed off bee, my gut gave a nervous flutter, whenever I thought of my boyfriend I felt like I was going to throw up. Drugs had done a fair job numbing my worry but it was always there, eating me alive in a slow manner that told me it was enjoying every bite. Though in a masochistic way I held onto that worry, because focusing on getting Killian back was helping me ignore my other internal issues. It was helping me put Nero behind me, my dads, and the fact that I was being hunted like an escaped rat.

If I could push it all down and pretend none of it ever happened…

Why couldn’t I be strong enough to do that? And strong enough to know for sure that Killian would be okay.

Perhaps I had to have a bit more faith in Killian. In all reality the kid had been taking care of himself and me for months previous. He had gotten us out of Donnely, and fuck, he had even outsmarted and killed Asher when Asher had been fucking with me. Maybe I was selling him short, he really was strong.

Well, not strong… he had a pretty fragile mind still, but he had a hell of a lot of endurance.

I sighed. Elish heard and turned around. “We’ll grab him quickly and be on our way,” he said simply, knowing the origins of that sigh. “If Jade can give us a location we can quickly get a hold of Garrett and get a ride to the area. We can cover a weeks worth of ground in an hour.”

I nodded, walking past two townspeople who had been skewered, ass first, on a stake. I could see the blunt tip poking through the backs of their necks.

I glanced at them, my sadistic mind mentally noting that method for future interrogations, and said back, “That’s if we can get Clig to lend us a plane. Silas probably has them all looking for me right now.”

“I doubt they’re searching this area,” Elish said back. He looked up at the same skewered townspeople and I realized that he was falling into old habits and checking each one to make sure they weren’t Jade. I wasn’t checking them anymore; I’ve had enough of tormenting myself with that. Killian wasn’t here. “Previously Garrett had said Silas was still searching the canyons and the surrounding areas.”

Far away from where we were now.

Soon the crops of corpses started to thin, besides stepping on a pile of guts that had fallen out of some poor fucker’s asshole, we made it out okay. We left the sea of death behind us and made it to the double-lane road that led right through the city.

I got my gun out and so did Elish. I switched it onto automatic and started looking around. From the reports there were about forty ravers living in this town and we had enough ammo to ice all of them if needed be. Admittedly we didn’t have that much time to form a plan, Elish didn’t want to stop and neither did I. We were pretty much planning on Jade calling off his new people and then going with us. He would be shitting himself once he saw his master.

So we just had to… shoot until we found Jade.

Yeah, I know, our plan sucked.

“It looks like they had quite the fire too,” Elish commented. I looked in the same direction he was and indeed saw the remains of a charred building. “Sanguine got my pet interested in the art of pyromania… I am not surprised.”

“Ravers never used fire, besides their bonfires at their dens,” I said back. My hand was tensing around my gun, I had to make sure my finger wasn’t anywhere near the trigger. I wasn’t one to get trigger finger but I was also looking forward to contributing to my raver kill count. “They obviously never used guns either. How the fuck did Jade convince them not to kill him? That I don’t get.”

I watched Elish’s face and saw its subtle change. Though I expected his eyes to grow cold, for the purple oculars to become steeled as he said something icy back, but to my amusement they almost softened. “He grows smarter every year. I’m not sure how he found a way… but he did. Jade found a way to survive certain death.”

I smirked. He looked like a proud husband in that moment. Though we had been getting along well so I knew better than to say it out loud. One day I would.

“I know ravers and their intelligence varies. I’ll be interested in learning just how he…” I stopped and focused my vision on shadow of movement in an alleyway beside a large apartment building. Elish noticed my look and looked as well.

“What is…” I narrowed my eyes and we both stopped, our guns in hand and ready.

It was an animal and a fucking big one. I put my finger on the trigger and we both started walking towards it, though as we did, it looked like it spotted us.

Then the creature let out a hair-raising howl. I laughed and in my joy of confirming who it was I smacked Elish’s shoulder. “That’s fucking Deek!”

But my happiness was short-lived. As soon as the last octaves of the howl left my ears another sound was heard, a deep-throated growl that filled my chest with a vibrating percussion. Then in the same instance the deacon dog started charging towards us, his head lowered and his hackles raised.

A kick of dirt went up behind him as my own dog started to charge us. In an instant he had covered half the ground that had separated us, leaving a plume of ash behind him as he pounded his huge paws into the dirt. He was fucking huge and had grown like a weed since I had last seen him. I could feel the ground vibrating under my boots as he came closer and closer.

A jolt of annoyance and anger pricked my brain. My own fucking dog was acting this way towards his master? Fuck that!

I found myself putting my gun back on its holder and stalking towards the snarling deacon dog as he covered the last twenty feet of ground. I could see his vivid yellow eyes open and fixed on us, his white teeth bared.

“GET DOWN!” I roared at him, pointing to the ground. “You fucking think you can scare me, asshole? GET DOWN. BAD!”

I watched as the dog’s eyes suddenly widened with shock. Immediately more dirt got kicked up around him as he skidded to a stop and tucked his tail between his legs.

He looked up at me, finally realizing who I was – and relieved his bladder onto the wasteland ground.

I stalked up to him and gave him a hard, but satisfying, smack on the nose. “You think you’re some sort of big fucking badass? BAD DOG! You don’t fucking charge at me. What’s wrong with you?”

Deek cowered down, his tail trying to nervously wag itself as it stayed tucked between his legs. I saw he still had his canvas jacket on him but it was covered in dried brown blood.

I narrowed my eyes but I knew he hadn’t recognised me from that distance. So I relented and gave him a pat. “Alright, you’re forgiven. Good boy.” His tongue popped out at that.

Elish shook his head beside me. “He reminds me of Drake… a lot.” He looked down at the dog.

“He’s big enough now I could fucking ride him,” I said. And was tempted to do just that, his head almost came up to my chest now.

“Yes, it’s usually the opposite when with Drake,” Elish replied casually. “Deek,
find Jade
. Where is Jade?”

Deek seemed excited at this command. He bounded forward towards the town before he stopped and turned back to us. We started following him, my gun back in my hand.

“Well, that confirms it… Jade’s here. Let’s get this over with,” I said, patting my jacket and the bag I was carrying to make sure we had more than enough ammo, but at least we had the dog to –

Suddenly I chuckled.

Elish looked at me.

“I just got it.
It’s usually the opposite when with Drake
. Because Drake is the one riding you. You can be funny sometimes.”

Elish shook his head and continued walking. I was learning one thing about Elish: the longer I was with him the more of a person I could see under that sculpted granite. It didn’t show itself often but if you paid attention you could catch the small moments when he let his guard down.

I didn’t get any more time to muse at this though. No sooner had we touched the fractured pavement did we hear our first shriek. Immediately the dog glanced back at us and then forward. I realized that he probably didn’t know what to do. I’m assuming since Jade had made friends with the ravers, he had too.

Well, they weren’t his friends anymore. I called Deek back to me.

“Stay here, you need to lead us to Jade,” I reminded him.

My teeth gritted as the stupid dog started trotting off towards the ravers, now clustering around the buildings like a disturbed hive of bees.

I started sprinting towards him, gun in hand.

The dog walked over to the ravers and started smelling them, ignoring me completely. The ravers seemed used to him, but the fact Deek was there seemed to frenzy them. I think they could smell us on his fur.

Sure enough, one raised its head. I was mildly amused to see it was wearing actual clothing.

I raised my M16 and shot him right between the eyes. He flew backwards and in an instant over a dozen milky, yellow eyes shot towards us.

“And here they come,” I murmured, pressing down on the trigger again. I picked off a young one near the front, then two other ones tripped over it and fell to the ground. I heard a crack beside me and saw an older one with stringy grey hair fall down dead.

The dog stayed behind, hanging near the apartment he had emerged from like he expected us to magically bypass the crazed subhumans to follow him. I cursed him internally and started shooting the other ones, falling back to give myself some more room as I razed the ravers with bullets. No longer caring for head shots, just as many fatal wounds as I could manage.

Then, oddly, they all stopped in their places. I shot down several more before I lowered my gun. Elish did the same and we watched the quickly shrinking first line of defense.

The ravers turned around and I looked past them to see a tall raver with a thin shadow of new hair on his head. He was dressed head to toe in clothing, a faded members only jacket and a pair of blue jeans. Though he also had an assault rifle strapped to his back. My fingers itched for the trigger.

“Stop!” the raver suddenly rasped. “Stop. Bang.”

Did a raver just fucking talk?

Elish and I exchanged glances before we both turned our attention back to the raver.

The more I looked at him the more I noticed other oddities. He had pupils, green eyes and black pupils. “Elish… that one’s calling the others. Look at him, that’s not a real raver. What the fuck is that thing?”

The leader raver continued to call the others in a fast voice, like he didn’t want them to be killed by us. It was like he knew we were different. Did he see that the dog wasn’t ripping us apart and that tipped him off? I didn’t know.

Elish swept the group with his gaze before his eyes fell on the talking one.

“I think Jade’s been Geigerchipping them,” he said.

My head shot back towards the odd raver. I looked at him and realized that was exactly what I was seeing. It looked like he had been slowly healing, even his skin was lighter than most of the others.

I needed to get to the bottom of this.

“You? Do you speak?”