The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (34 page)

I didn’t need this… I had to get Killian.

I didn’t need this.

The lights started to fade. I tried one last time to get up but I fell to the ground useless.

The last image I saw was Jade drinking Elish’s blood.

Chapter 49

Killian

Crrrrkkk… crkcrkk… crrrkkk.

I looked down at my hands, stained with ash that seemed baked into my own skin. When it mixed in with the rusty blood it turned my hands red and grey. The lines in my palms acting like road maps, and the sores the free towns and blocks.

I got the whole greywastes, in my hands…

The Geigerchip crackled and snapped inside my collarbone, only Perish’s touch could make it stop. I wasn’t sure how… it was like he had a way to suck the radiation out of me.

Though other times when he touched me, it was like he was purposely filling me with radiation.

I didn’t understand what he was trying to achieve, but he had a look in his eyes while he did it that told me he knew what he was doing.

“Snap him back out of it, hurry up!”

“I’m not going near him… he’s fucking radioactive. What the fuck did you do to him? I fucking see you making that Geigerchip go off in the middle of the night.”

A scuffle and a grunt, then a pull on my arm.

“Walk!”

I stumbled and looked away from my hands. I could see Mr. Fallon glaring at me, stabbing my head with those eyes. So full of hate. I didn’t understand why he hated me so much. And if he hated me, why didn’t he just kill me or leave me behind?

“I’ll chain you to me if you don’t start walking. I want to cover another three miles at least until we rest,” he said pushing me forward. I stumbled but maintained my balance.

In front of us we had seen a small town but it was in bad shape, most of the roofs were caved in and some only blackened skeletons, but we hadn’t seen anything for days. The slaves were getting slower, they were all getting slower.

And sick. And sick.

Edward, Danny, and Teejay all were starting to develop sores on their bodies. What had just started out as a few hot spots on their skin had quickly been shredded by their desperate nails. They were almost purple in colour and risen from their skin, red and inflamed and the bigger ones leaking fluid.

Their hair had also been starting to fall out like mine, but I had pulled out mine too. Now on some parts of my head the air would make it cold. I had a wool hat on most of the time. Perish said I looked ugly enough as it is now.

Reaver wouldn’t want me now. I was too ugly.

Maybe that’s why he hadn’t come yet.

I raised my hand and grabbed another handful of hair. I pulled it out and heard the strands rip away from my scalp. My Geigerchip gave off another low vibration of sound.

Why was that happening?

Because Perish was a born immortal… he could release radiation again.

Maybe he was trying to kill me?

Who knows.

I only knew how to put one foot in front of the other and even that I was getting bad at.

“Reaver read me Cat Wings in Donnely. He even tried to do the voices. He wasn’t the best of readers but he tried and when he couldn’t say a word I helped him.”

Perish hit me and I cried out. My face was inflamed, hot and sore to the touch from Perish’s repeated hits. It hurt to talk and it hurt to swallow. Everything on me ached, and every night when I took my boots off my socks were coated in blood. He was walking us too fast, too far; we could barely keep up anymore.

Where were we going?

The plaguelands.

It had always been…

“I don’t want to hear about Reaver anymore. He isn’t coming. He’s happy with Silas and he’s done with you.”

I stared at the ground. “How did you meet Silas?”

I don’t know why I asked this. And as my mind searched around my head like it was wading through soup, it couldn’t come up with an answer either. Maybe I was just curious? I didn’t know.

Perish looked at me, I looked back before my eyes jutted off into a different direction. I didn’t like making eye contact with him for long. He had the mark of a beast all over him and I had learned long ago not to challenge him.

I wrung my hands and bit on my lower lip. I started to continue walking towards the town.

Then to my surprise… he talked.

“He found us… or maybe we found him? Silas once told me we were drawn to each other, that we would always attract each other, and it was true.” Perish smiled. “But when was the first time I laid eyes on Silas Dekker? He was buying a medium coffee at 7-11 and putting in all these Irish cream packets. I saw he had a duffle bag with him and he was filthy. I went home and he was always in my head. That night the first bomb dropped, but it was far away in Alaska, far away from where we were. I was barely following it, too young, too full of myself.”

“What happened after?”

Perish’s eyes seemed so far away, like he was staring into time itself. “I saw him on the streets and I took him home to clean himself up. Perish was living with me at the time.”

Perish? I stared at Perish and wondered if I should point that error out to him. I didn’t feel like getting hit again so I just let him talk. At least he wasn’t calling me Silas, nothing good happened when he thought I was Silas.

"I learned he was an immortal, the thought fascinated me – I just had to have him; I had to study everything about him.” Perish looked over at Edward, who was stumbling, half-alive, over a loose rock. Like that was a trigger to bring back the crazed mad man who had been tormenting me for the last several weeks, his face darkened. “Hurry up, three more miles. Get moving.”

“Then how did you become an immortal too? Were you born that way?” I asked in a low voice. As if hoping that if I toned down my words it might give me more of a chance of him responding.

“Yes, me and Perish are born immortals,” Perish replied. I kept up to his pace, making sure to not fall behind. “Like Silas always said: we find each other.”

“How can that be though?”

Perish smiled at this, though I knew it wasn’t Perish. “I don’t know; it’s too late to find out now. It might be a mystery forever.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I just kept walking. My feet were starting to get wet, the blisters and sores had started to open up again. We couldn’t get to the gathering of houses quick enough.

“You’re a lot like Silas.”

I glanced up and saw he was staring right at me. “I’m not him though.” I still couldn’t keep his gaze. I felt my ears go hot; I could feel his eyes burrowing into me.

“You will be eventually, when you decide you are tired of men abusing you,” Perish said. “Like you let me so easily abuse you. It pleases me to do it but sometimes I realize you’re not Silas, then I understand why Perish loves you.”

I shook my head and sniffed. I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I love Reaver,” I said quietly. “Though I loved Perish as a dear friend.”

My hand travelled up to my head and I started pulling on my hair again. I tugged until I heard the familiar twang as the hair slowly ripped out strand by strand. When my hand snapped away I looked at the fistful of hair, stained strawberry-blond from the blood of previous acts of anxiety.

I let it fall to the ground. I had nice hair once, now it was just greasy locks caked with blood and dirt.

“You’re fucking ugly,” Perish suddenly snipped. His mood once again shifted. “You used to be so cute too.”

“I know.”

“Would you stop it?” another voice said sharply.

I saw Danny’s boots, walking towards Perish. I started kneading my hands together knowing what was going to happen.

“He’s fucking gone. What kind of cruel fuck tortures a kid like this?”

“Danny… stop,” I said, each hand wringing the other. I tried to look at him but I couldn’t maintain eye contact. I didn’t want to, bad things happen when I looked at them, when I looked at Perish. “Please.”

“I don’t remember asking you a fucking thing,” Perish snapped.

I heard a smack. I continued walking feeling my eyes start to burn.

“How about instead of fucking him, I fuck you again? I heard you. You think I didn’t hear you liking it?” Perish said.

“Whatever, fuck you,” Danny spat, his voice rising with every word. “If it wasn’t for this collar, I’d –”

“No! NO!” I ran over and started pushing the slave away; he was almost nose-to-nose with Perish. “Don’t yell; don’t yell… he’ll hurt you.”

“I don’t fucking care!” Danny put his hands on my shoulders and stepped past me. “I can’t sit back and watch him do this to us. Go ahead, Perish, or whoever the fuck you think you are. Kill me, go ahead. Kill me. I’d love for you to leave me behind so you can’t eat me when you deem it the right time.”

“NO!” I burst into tears, my teeth suddenly started to chatter together. I pushed on Danny’s chest and started to cry. “Don’t make him mad. Please, don’t make him mad.”

“Look at him!” Danny raised his voice higher. “Is that the kind of person you are? I bet you feel like a big man now, huh? Tormenting a fucking kid who’s lost his mind.”

I felt my knees go weak. I tried to clench my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering but I had to open them, I couldn’t breath properly, my chest was too tight. Instead I grabbed onto Danny’s jacket and pulled on it. I dragged him to the ground with me as he tried to hold me up.

“Don’t make him angry, don’t make him angry,” I pleaded in a weak voice. I took a gasping breath, my fleeting embrace with sanity leaving me as quickly as it had come. Like an old friend only here for a cup of coffee, my mind had packed up and left me alone once again. I had no friends left, each now locked in their own personal battle. Though my fight had always been intangible and impossible to win.

How do you win a war with madness?

Before I knew it, or could react, Danny pushed me away from him again, harder than before. I fell onto the ground and watched in horror as the slave snapped. With a clench of his fists and a string of curse words he swung at Perish and caught him in the side of the head.

I backed away from the scene until my back hit a gathering of rocks. I put my hands up under my wool hat and started to pull, scrape and pull.

Bodies in the water, bodies in the basement

If heaven’s for clean people.

It’s vacant.

There was a muffled grunt. I looked at my hands and tried to count the strands of hair. Singing the song I hadn’t listened to in months again and again as I heard them, heard them fighting, swearing, and screaming.

The sounds of their fists pounding flesh echoed inside of my head. It felt like madness was knocking against my brain, begging for me to let it in.

I let you in a long time ago, you already have the key. What were you waiting for, crazy, a gilded invitation?

My eyes travelled through each crease in my hands. Something fell several feet from me but I didn’t look. I was tired of seeing them get beaten. I was tired of –

A burst of light and a hard blow that knocked the back of my head against the tree I had been laying against. I fell to my side and gave a sob; automatically I held my hands up to my face.

Perish grabbed me and smacked me again. He rose me to my feet only to kick me in the stomach.

I didn’t do anything.

I didn’t do anything, Perish.

Sky… are you Sky now since you’re beating on me? Am I Silas again?

“I didn’t do anything!” I suddenly screamed. An incomprehensible panic coursed through me. I cowered and put my hands over my head in anticipation of getting hit again. My eyes stung and I shook my head back and forth, pulling and pulling. It was all coming out in tuffs, so much greasy, bloody hair. I used to be blond. I was blond once. “Don’t fucking hit me I didn’t do anything, Sky! STOP!”

Perish grabbed my head and wrenched it up. His hand pressed on my jaw and he squeezed it hard.

“Got anything else to say? You seem pretty fucking comfortable with him. How would you like me to kill him, huh?” Perish screamed at them. His voice was loud, it dug into my brain and pulled out every lucid thought I had like he was disemboweling my own mind. I took a gasped breath and tried to pull away from him but my legs were rubber.

“We’ll get you… mark my fucking words.” That was Teejay. “You just remember what I said, Perish. Hide behind Killian all you want, and hide behind us when he pisses you off. Eventually we’ll have a collar around your neck.”

“It’s four against one, and it won’t be long.” That was Danny. “We’ll get you.”

“No…” I managed to say. Where was my voice? Where was anything. “Don’t piss him off… he’ll… he’ll use you to get to me. He’ll use me to…” I looked up, seeing the three slaves staring us down. All men older than me, some in their thirties and one Reno’s age. Scraggly and skinny, covered in purple sores and holding faces that told me they were edging insanity themselves. We were all crazy in the greywastes, in pre-Fallocaust terms. We were all insane here. How can this grey world hold anything with a sound mind? Every single one of us was fucked the moment we took our first breath of radiation.