The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (40 page)

Reaver stared at him. “Fucking – tell – me.”

My master was quiet; I could see the debate going on in his head.

“It is a risky thing to do, Reaver. And I am in no way saying this is what he is doing or that it will work. But I believe that Perish is trying to make Killian immune to sestic radiation through something called prolonged concentrated exposure. As with Big Shot, and any raver, you can see the preservation effects prolonged doses of the radiation do to a human. When dosing a human with a concentrated amount at certain times for a short period… if done right, you can make them immune to sestic radiation. That might be Perish’s way of protecting Killian while they’re in the plaguelands, but as I said… I am not sure it will work and I am not sure this is what he is doing.”

“Is Killian going to die if he does it wrong?” Reaver asked darkly.

“As Jade has said, and we all know, Perish treasures that boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t risk it if Killian starts showing signs of radiation poisoning,” Elish replied. “We need to move swiftly either way.”

The dark chimera started walking again. “This would be a great time for you to reveal to me that Killian is a chimera and that this radiation won’t affect him.”

Killian a chimera? That would be one horrible chimera. Discount bin quality.

Elish shook his head. I was wondering if he was thinking the same thing as me. “No, though that would have made things easier – a lot easier.”

Though it almost killed me I managed to keep pace with the group. By the time Elish insisted we take a couple hours of rest my body was weak and my legs buckling with every step.

Reaver went off towards several still standing structures and Big Shot curled up by the fire with the dog. Though I was tired and I just wanted to sleep Elish was sitting on a rock beside the fire and I was in front of him with the back of my head facing him. My master was carefully tweezing and cleaning the gash on the back of my head with a razor beside him to shave my beard off after.

I winced as he picked off a piece of my wool hat which had fused with the remains of the scab. To show his sympathies he turned his touch to cold to soothe the pain.

“How has Reaver been?” I asked quietly, glancing around to make sure the dark chimera wasn’t in earshot, chimera earshot.

I felt cold antiseptic wet the back of my head before the softness of a bandage.

“Reaver has been having mood swings every ten to twelve hours where he flies off the handle. He was getting better but I suspect with this new information he will now get worse,” my master replied. “He has a lot on his shoulders right now, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. An easy life in the greywastes has not prepared him for the psychological repercussions that being involved in this family brings. It has been slow-going but he listens to me and trusts me, which is the best I could hope for.”

I scowled at the fire as he put my wool hat back on, before turning around to face him and the knife he was going to shave me with. “Mood swings? But… when you rescued him from the Legion, you two didn’t know what had happened at the resort. Why would Reaver be acting like that?”

Elish started lathering up a mini bar of soap, before applying it to my dark facial hair. “Reaver endured a lot during his month being captive, and no, Cicaro, you will not ask what.”

I stared back at my master, my mind turning over all the possibilities but what Elish was implying was lost on me. Certainly they didn’t…

As my eyes widened Elish shook his head, as if warning me not to even voice it out loud. But that, in turn, gave me the confirmation I needed. The confirmation of just what type of abuse Reaver had endured.

“So King Silas got…”

“Cicaro.”

“But that’s important, did Silas have him?”

Elish shook his head. “No. Silas doesn’t know Nero had him or what Nero did to him.”

“
He
had him prisoner? NER-” Elish clamped his hand over my mouth. His purple eyes, two comets that had fallen from the sky, burned me with a white hot anger.

“Yes, Cicaro, and if you dare speak such information out loud, I swear I will…”

My lower lip tightened, I hadn’t even been back for a day and he was already threatening me.

To my own surprise Elish sighed, and moved the hand covering my mouth to my cheek. “Now, now, I am not angry with you. You must understand that Reaver has no tools to cope with what happened to him, that is obviously seen when comparing you and him. Your mention in passing of Perish’s abuse of you shows just how different you and Reaver are.”

I let him tilt my chin up, and smiled as he tenderly brushed my lips with his thumb.

He continued, “Reaver is at the end of his mental rope right now, if you speak aloud what happened that rope will snap. I cannot have him breaking off from the group right now. I need that boy near me. I need to watch him.”

I nodded and I did understand. Elish had told me many times before that we needed him to be in Reaver’s good books. Reaver didn’t have many friends and it was essential for the future of the world that those two get along.

The future king of Skyfall and the future king of the greywastes.

“I’ll behave,” I said, tilting my chin as he started lightly shaving the scraggly hair. “I learned a few things with the time I spent with him. I think I know how much that would fuck him up – especially if it was…
that
chimera. That on top of Killian being gone… I’m surprised he hasn’t started another Fallocaust.”

Elish’s eyes seemed to darken at that comment; he withdrew the knife and flicked the hair and soap onto the fire. “Yes, so far I haven’t felt any radiation coming off of him which is surprising, but I will take no chances. Tomorrow I will get you to try out that dog. We need to move swiftly and you are in a horrendous state.”

I glanced over at Deek, lying on his back with his stomach exposed and his head tilted back so his teeth were showing, he looked like a doofus. “I guess riding a giant dog would be cool. Reaver will cut my throat if I fall behind. I can sense a lot of bad things in him.”

“Speaking of sensing things….” Elish put the blade back to my chin before he continued to shave off the hair. “Anything with Perish?”

“I learned the obvious thing, that he and Sky were twins but you already knew that, huh?” I said.

Elish nodded. “Yes, that was known by the first generation and some of the second.”

“I saw his aura start to knit itself back together, in hindsight I guess it was the O.L.S making those connections,” I went on. “Reaver commented that he saw Perish act normal when they were being attacked by those Kreig lizards. I was able to look into his head a few times but every time I did he flipped out and either attacked me or tried to attack me. Like he didn’t want me to see what was going on in his brain.”

“And when he raped you? You tell me he was asking for information regarding the sestic radiation?”

I flinched as he mentioned the rape between me and Perish. The heart started gathering to my face, and, sure enough, Elish noticed.

He stopped shaving my face and stared down at me. “What is it?”

When he removed the knife from my skin I shook my head, the sick nausea bubbling in me again. He also sensed this and narrowed his eyes.

“He didn’t fuck me. I… he, ah, kind of… got on top of me,” I stammered. “He thought I was drugged. I switched out the scopa for water so I went with it, hoping I could get a look inside of his head.”

Elish didn’t look happy. “Well, I did give you permission to do what needed to be done. This news sits better with me than the thought that he violated you.”

Then we both heard a crunch of gravel and saw Reaver returning, a severed leg being carried over his shoulder.

Elish and I both stared at Reaver as he laid the leg over the fire, balancing it on a large piece of tree branch we had been burning through. The leg still had a dirty sock on it and what looked like an old tattoo of an orca whale.

Reaver stared at us back. “What?”

“Where did you find that leg?” Elish asked, trying to hide his perplexity.

Reaver shrugged. “Found two people camping, decided I was hungry and sick of your shitty tact and energy bars. I have their bodies hanging a warehouse a mile back. We can’t carry all of it but the dog will probably eat the remainders.”

Well, Reaver will certainly always be Reaver.

Chapter 52

Killian

             
My fingernails scraped over the red patch on my arm, again and again until the skin broke and started to bleed. I had sores on my body and on my face. Hot sores that stung to the touch; sores that seemed to have emerged over night.

Even my fingernails; they had turned black. I checked the dirt-caked fingers of the slaves and, sure enough, the same thing was happening with them. Though it wasn’t dirt that was being forced into the soft undersides of my nails, they were black from being filled with blood. I had torn one of them while scratching my arms only to have it bleed all over me. Another effect of the radiation? I was too defeated and tired to ask; right now I was just waiting to die.

Waiting for death to take me and give me the mental peace my life had failed to sustain.

Death for the mortal, a boy who, at one point in his life, had wanted to live so badly.

Perish was walking ahead of us, his black duster now grey from ash and the bowler hat on his head marbled with all the colours of the greywastes, mostly the greys and reds. The red painted on the canvas in spots and smears, a side effect from beating on the slaves as he most often did.

Behind me, falling behind, were my friends the slaves. Teejay stumbling ahead with Danny trying to keep up. Edward was growing weaker by the day, and though his stumped arm wasn’t infected, it wasn’t healing either.

His eyes were starting to cloud over too, and he wasn’t talking as much as he used to.

“Killian? Come walk with me,” Perish called suddenly. His voice was still strong and powerful, ours had become raspy and thin. The radiation it seemed were slowly eating our vocal cords, it was hard for me to talk.

I tried to speed up but Perish ended up slowing down his own pace. I approached him with my head hung low, my fingernails dripping blood from where I had torn them against my skin.

Perish lifted an arm and pointed. I looked in the direction and saw something yellow, a sign posted on a wooden beam.

As I looked I saw that these signs were everywhere. I hadn’t even noticed them but they surrounded me like sentinels on watch. All of them the same, yellow triangles holding words on them too far away to read.

“
Radiation, stay out, by order of Skytech
,” Perish read them for me. “We’re in the plaguelands now, Killian. We’re near where Sky died.”

I turned my head to him and said in a dry rasp, “Sky killed himself here?”

Did Sky tell you this?
I was too tired and sick to ask him that.

Perish slowly nodded, staring ahead. I looked to where he was looking and saw what had once been a highway in front of us, though the ash had been blown over most of it. Only half-exposed medians gave insight as to what this place looked like before the Fallocaust.

“Yes, his lab. Sky’s lab… my lab,” Perish said slowly. He slipped so often into thinking he was Sky I didn’t even think twice about it now. “We’ll be approaching it soon, where it will be warm, dry. Where you can shower.”

I nodded slowly and felt Perish’s hand brush my face. “Those radiation burns will heal. I had to give you a strong last dose but your body is working it out of your system as we speak.”

Then the scientist glanced behind him and I saw his face darken. “If you live long enough to see it. I don’t think you’re going to survive, or me. I think they’ll kill both of us first.”

“Who?” I asked looking towards one of the radiation signs; it had a blue ribbon still wrapped around it. “Did Sky make…”

Perish grabbed my shoulder as I started walking towards the ribbon and clenched it. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten? The slaves want us dead, Killian.”

I stopped, the grey world around me getting smaller as I narrowed my eyes trying to make sense of what he was saying. “No, not them… they –”

Perish
shh’d
me, which was odd. He slipped his hand, still resting on my shoulder, over to my side until he was half-embracing me.

The scientist pulled me close and whispered in my ear. “Killian, you forgot? Danny tried to rape you just a few days ago; he put his fingers inside of you. I managed to fight him off. You don’t remember? You don’t remember, Killian? How could you forget something like that?”

I took the blue ribbon and stared at it. I held it up to show Perish. “Look how blue this is, does it match my eyes?”

Perish smiled at me and put a hand to my cheek. I didn’t flinch away as he stroked it; I had learned. “Killian… what do you remember from when Danny put his fingers inside of you?”