Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (10 page)

I scowled at her. “Why do you care? Why do any of you care?”

“Because you were about a week away from an entire mob from Chilko Lake coming and raiding the town. They would’ve killed you and eaten you. You’re damn lucky we found you first, Sanguine.” Ellis glared me down and I looked away from her. I grabbed another chocolate bar and felt Nero put his hand on my head. I wasn’t used to being touched and manhandled so much, it made me squirm. I didn’t mind these two but I wanted to go back to my town where my friends were and the rest of my toys.

“We have gear we can give him… we can make him comfy for now,” Nero said. He moved his hand back and forth on my head making my head wave around.

“Do you do this for all kids you find?” I asked. I looked out the window but everything was just dark, even my night bright wasn’t working properly.

They both paused before Ellis nodded. “Yes, we do for… special kids.”

I was special? This made me skeptical. “How am I special?”

“Little fucker asks a lot of questions, eh?” Nero laughed and urged me to take a drink of the brown stuff that burned my nose. I took a drink and coughed, it was full of little bubbles. I held it up and looked at it in awe. It tasted good though.

“Just watch your words,” Ellis said. I didn’t know what she meant by that. “It doesn’t matter why, boy. Just take it and run with it. We’re taking you to a place near the plaguelands called Little Spring, you’ll be near a town and in a place that doesn’t have that many people.”

“I want to go back to my home; I liked it there,” I said to her. The fact that I was being forced to leave all of my stuff behind was making my fists clench. “I don’t want to go to Little Spring. The greywasters always told me the legionary sell people to factories or make them become soldiers.”

“The greywasters are all radiation-crazed idiots,” Ellis said plainly. “You’ll do fine there, we’ll give you sunglasses to cover your eyes.”

“I already had sunglasses!” I suddenly snapped; my voice started to rise. “And I had my friends there and my toys and my books. I want to go home!”

Ellis shook her head, which made me fume even more. I crossed my arms and kicked my backpack which was resting by my feet.

“You’re both a bunch of fucks.”

Nero chuckled which made me even more mad. I liked him but I didn’t like that he laughed at me. I wasn’t a little kid anymore I was almost eight. Why did these two fucks care where I was going to stay? I wanted my home I had worked hard to get everything working good. Cory was dead anyways so he wouldn’t be able to hurt me.

Cory… I swallowed down my sadness at thinking of him with a mouthful of the bubbly drink. He had tricked me. All adults did was lie to you and trick you to get what they want.

What if they were tricking me too? I felt a shock go through me as I started turning over all the information I had received. They said I was special but I knew I wasn’t. I was a bad kid, an evil demon and a monster. Nero and Ellis had given me candy and chocolate but I had bit Nero so they might’ve been trying to keep me quiet.

They were going to kill me… or make me into a legionary. I think they were lying to me because none of this made sense. I had never met an adult who didn’t lie to me not even Nana. Nana lied to me because she said I could stay at Sunshine House until I was a grown-up and even then she said I could learn to hunt and stay for the rest of my life.

This realization filled my tummy with angry bugs and those bugs seemed to burst out of my stomach and crawl all over my body. I didn’t feel safe here and the more my reality was starting to sink in the more I became anxious to get away.

But Nero was strong and Ellis was quick. If I made a dash and opened the door they would snatch me before my hand even got onto the handle. No, I had to wait… I had to be patient, that’s what adults did when they were doing bad things to me. They waited until I trusted them and then they became mean.

I would do the same, I would beat them at their own game.

So I sat patient and drank my bubbly water which Nero said was called pop. While I ate that, I dug into my pack and got one of the other chocolate bars that Nero had given me. I started eating that one too and was amazed to see that this one had crunchy nuts inside and some other sweet gooey stuff. I ate that one and started going for another.

I listened to their conversations too, including Ellis on the phone. She was talking to one of the first legionary who found me and I think she was told about my friends in my bedroom because she mentioned dead bodies out loud and then she mentioned a boy’s room. I didn’t say anything about it and she didn’t ask me about it so I stayed put and ate. Occasionally Nero asked me questions and I answered politely.

“He could use new boots too…” Nero said. He reached down and flicked my boots I wore. “Where did you get those ones?”

“I bought them in Chilko Lake before I got chased out,” I said. “I traded my old boots for them.”

Then I grimaced and put a hand on my stomach. I had eaten five chocolate bars and drank two bottles of pop in the time I had been in the truck and my stomach was starting…

I lurched and felt hot ooze erupt from my mouth. In an instant Ellis yelled at the driver to stop and just seconds later Nero pulled me out of the big truck and into the summer night. My stomach gave another churn inside of me and I keeled over and started throwing up all the chocolate.

I threw up stream after stream of brown goo and watched it splash against a slab of pavement. I wiped my mouth and looked around and was fascinated to see that we were driving through a big city.

“Nero, since we’re already stopped, take him into one of the alleyways to pee. We should re-fuel the truck anyways.” Ellis’s voice sounded behind me. I looked up and around and saw giant buildings towering over us. So much bigger than my little town’s buildings, these ones were massive. They were all intact with barely any crumbling on them at all, though I could see a lot of windows missing but some were still unbroken. Everything was grey and streaked with black and in some places the grey brick had fallen away to show a lighter colour. I wasn’t sure what the colour was but in my night bright it was a pale shade of blue.

The city transfixed me and I realized as Nero started walking me towards an alleyway that this place was probably full of things to scavenge. It was an entire city – I could live here like a king.

I think I would like to live here.

Sami age 7

I looked around the city and felt my heart fill with those same insects but this time they weren’t bad insects but good ones. They were excited and each way of escape I saw made them buzz around even more. I behaved though and walked down a spooky alleyway with trash bins and went pee.

I could run out of the alleyway and climb up one of the big buildings and hide… but Nero was fast. So I turned around and crossed my arms as Nero lit himself a cigarette.

“I gotta go to the bathroom.”

Nero stared at me, his eyes brightening up as he took an inhale of the cigarette. It was a blue-embered one. I hadn’t had those in years and I missed them so much but I had to keep focused.

“You just went,” he said in a voice that suggested he was talking to a moron.

“No, the other one.”

Nero blinked at me and shrugged. “Go nuts.”

“I need something to wipe with. My backpack has stuff, get that.”

“Jesus fucking christ… okay, wait there.” Nero shook his head and turned around. He started walking down the alleyway before calling to Ellis. “The kid needs to take a shit, you handle it, Momma. Kid wants his backpack, maybe that’s what he was using those books for.”

And I was gone. I turned around and ran as quietly as I could down the alleyway, leaving the headlights and the running vehicle behind me. I ran into the darkness and as the motors in the distance became muffled behind the buildings I felt like I was back in my element.

My night bright illuminated a street in front of me. With tall buildings that framed it and smaller shops that were attached to each other. All of the light poles and electric poles were standing as well but their lights and the electricity had been long dead.

Even the cars didn’t look that bad. The cars parked on the side of the road still had bits of paint on them and some even had windows. All places I could duck and hide into if…

“NERO!” I heard Ellis yell. My heart jumped into my throat and I ran across the street into an abandoned park. Then I saw a concrete flight of stairs with a blue railing that led to a half-open door. I looked up as my heartbeat got faster and faster and saw this was a big building that went high up in the air. I sprinted towards it, ran up the stairs and went inside, closing the door behind me.

There was a flight of stairs going up and a grey door with a metal lever to push. I decided to go up the stairs as high as I could possibly go.

The stairs were covered in rubber and I was able to climb up each flight with barely any noise. Every time I hit a new floor I just kept on climbing, ignoring the metal doors around me that could possibly lead to something cool. I would have years to explore this building but I won’t get the chance if the legion people found me.

Up and up I went. The higher I went the more I felt safe, this place looked like it hadn’t been touched by anyone in a billion years. It smelled like old clothes and how my books smelled when I first opened them to read. I could see lots of stains on the walls too and flakey paint that fell from the walls and crunched under my boots.

Finally I climbed up five flights of stairs. I stopped at another push door and this time I pushed it open. It squeaked on rusty hinges which made me scared that Ellis or Nero would hear but when I stopped and listened and didn’t hear anything I let it shut quiet behind me and walked down a hallway.

This was an office building, not an apartment building which meant there wouldn’t be any good food I bet, but I could find a store. I walked down the hallway, which had lights hanging from their wires, and found a big room with a bunch of dividers that had computers and desks in each one. None of the computers would work so I left that alone and crossed the grey carpeted floor to where the windows were.

The windows were mostly intact but one was broken so I looked out of it and onto the street below me.

I laughed as I saw two black figures in the alleyway I had come out of. I could tell it was Nero and Ellis from how they were dressed. I bet they were angry at me but I was so small and it was so dark I knew they wouldn’t be able to see where I was and no way they could find me.

I was so smart. I could outsmart greywaster adults and now legionary adults! Even one super strong like Nero and all stern like Ellis.

I bet I could outsmart anyone I find, I was just that good. I was just that –

Behind me I heard a crunch. My brow furrowed and I turned around to see what that noise was.

There were more than a dozen people in the corner of the room.

No… not people…

Ravers.

As my heart scrunched inside of my chest. I jumped and started running towards the door I had come from. At my quick movements, or maybe the horror welling in my chest, the ravers gave out a low and long drawn-out moan and I heard their feet start to crunch against the dirty carpet.

I ran down the hallway towards the stairs. I had to blindly trust there weren’t any in the stairwell because I didn’t know where else to go.

Shock was coursing through me like a lightning bolt had turned my muscles into electricity. With hands that were shaking and feet that felt like jelly I ran down the stairs. In no time their groaning and moaning came closer and soon they were bouncing off of the high walls of the stairwell, pounding against my skull and laying claim to every sense my brain was still able to comprehend.

I was sure my heart was going to burst, explode in my chest like a bomb going off. My mind kept freezing then going super fast but all it was telling me was to run, run, run.

So I ran down the stairs hearing the ravers thumping behind me and their moaning starting to get louder and louder like they were getting frenzied. Soon as I reached the second flight of stairs I started hearing crashing sounds and I realized they were tripping over each other down the stairs.

I turned on the landing of the second to last flight and felt another wave of horror wash over me as I heard loud banging, so loud it make my ears hurt. I turned towards the metal door on the landing and realized it was pulsing – it being thumped on by the ravers. They were trying to get through, could they smell me?

But… I don't think they were normal greywaster ravers. I turned around and looked at the flight of stairs I had just gone down and saw a long, leathery hand sliding down the white wall. Then the hand seemed to stretch too far for its body because suddenly it fell and stumbled forward.

It was… all dried out and gross-looking. Its eyes were sunken black pits and its teeth shone against my night bright…

I didn’t know what the fuck they were –

– and I wasn’t staying to find out.

I jumped on the railing leading down the last flight of stairs and slid down to the hallway. With the weird ravers crashing and screaming behind me, filling up the area with their terrifying noise, I ran to the entrance I had ducked into and jumped right off of the concrete stairs.

“NERO!” I screamed. I know I had just ran from them but now there were no other people I wanted to see more. “NERO!?”

I landed on the ground with a thunk and immediately started running towards the road with the cars lined on the ends. I glanced behind me once and screamed when I saw a bunch of them spilling out of the door and jumping down the stairs like I had. They were skinny, with leathery brown skin and their spines were sticking out of their backs like rusted rebar. Their limbs were all longer than a human’s should be, like stretched out pieces of jerky. They were so long they almost touched the ground and would have but their legs were big and skinny like tree branches. These monsters looked to be at least four of me tall.

I ran down the sidewalk until I got to the middle of the road. Everything was dark and I couldn’t find the alleyway. I looked around desperately and realized with a sink of my heart that I was lost. The headlights and the vehicles were down one of these alleys… I was sure of it.

My body was light, like I had turned into the stuff they put in flying balloons, the stuff was telling me to run and I was running but where was I running to?

I looked behind me again and before I could stop it I let out a scream. I saw three of them hunched over; their dried-out arms hanging down and their legs carrying them towards me in long strides. Their bodies remained still as they walked, just arms hanging loosely down as they reached out a giant leg to step further. The way they walked reminded me of a daddy longlegs spider, one leg up high and down, then another up high and down.

Tears started to fall down my face; every time I looked behind me they were coming closer and closer. They were slower than me but their legs were so long they were easily gaining no matter how fast I went,
“Nero?” I cried. What if they left me behind? What if they gave up on me already and didn’t even bother looking for me?

A scream pierced the air but not from me. I turned around and looked as a legionary person came running from behind a building. I was about to shout at him that I was here but as I saw two of the creatures closing in on him from opposite sides my tongue glued itself to the roof of my mouth.

The air around me became frozen, enveloping my body in an icy sheet. I watched, paralyzed, as the man turned his head away from the alley only to run straight into one of the brown skeleton men. I heard the dry sound of sandpaper as he face planted into its chest before falling to the ground.

He looked up and a scream rolled from his mouth. I started taking steps back as one of the tall creatures wrapped its long boney fingers around the legionary’s legs and started dragging him down the sidewalk. I could hear the legionary’s clothing and body scraping against the pavement.

Then the creatures he had originally been running from reached down and each grabbed onto one side of his shoulders. For a moment they pulled him towards them but the one with the legionary’s legs pulled him back with an angry moan. Its small, skull-like head shaking back and forth.

The night air broke with the sounds of moaning and the legionary screaming. I kept taking hurried steps back as I watched them raise the legionary off of the ground and started a tug of war with his body. Two on his shoulders, their long fingers wrapped around his underarms and chest like spider webs, and the other one tugging with its hands on his legs.

Then suddenly the screaming from the legionary shifted to a higher pitch. I watched, stunned, as a red lesion appeared on his torso for just a brief moment before I watched them pull him in half.

Intestines spilled from the gaping holes and I saw his spine twist up and down like a piece of stiff rope, all with a sound like ripping wet cloth. Finally after a tight twist the rest of his spine was pulled from his lower half. Blood spilled onto the ground with the ribbons of guts all falling out of the legionary like a burst pouch of jam.

The creatures started chewing on the man, their white teeth sinking in and gnawing his limbs, tearing out chunks of flesh. I continued to watch in transfixed horror before I heard another bellowing moan behind me.

Snapping out of my fixed vision I turned around and gasped as I saw more closing in on me. I left the legionary to his fate and started running down the most wide open street I could see.

Eventually the darkness ahead of me started to open up and I saw an interaction with two cars tipped over like they were a barrier, behind it in the distance I could see a large store that had a sign that read
Wal-Mart
shrouded in haze and to my right a highway with over four lanes and a divider in the middle. All of this looked wrong, the street we had been on only had two lanes and light poles.

Everything was open, there weren’t any good places to hide… they were going to tear me apart like they did that legionary.

I fixed my eyes on the shopping center and tried to make a decision whether I wanted to try to go there. But that was dashed a moment later when I saw what I thought was a car move and shift. I pivoted on my foot and froze for a moment as I watched the black figure start to grow. It became taller and taller until I saw two long arms stretch out followed by two spindled legs.

Tears were welling in my eyes, I looked behind me and saw five of the tall creatures. Their ghostly silhouettes getting closer to me, one long stride at a time.

“Ner-”

“YOU LITTLE FUCKING SHIT!”

I shrieked and almost burst into scared tears as the voice blasted against my ear. I looked over and saw Nero running out from behind an old restaurant and beeline towards me. I was so scared I let him pick me up off of the ground.

“I am going to beat you fucking bloody, you stupid, retarded, fucking cocksucker!” Nero screamed. “Get on my back, NOW!”

I didn’t argue. Nero lifted me over his shoulder and I grabbed onto the back of his cape and felt his combat armour underneath. I dug my fingers into the edges of it and held onto him for dear life.

I heard clicking and saw Nero had an assault rifle in his hands. He raised it and shot it down the street. The noise ripped through my ears and made them explode in pain but I had to hold on, I couldn’t cover my ears.

I saw one of the creatures fall down before Nero ran across the big road I had seen to my left, I looked and saw the ones I had been running from start to fade into the darkness. I clung on to Nero and crawled onto his shoulders. When I was balanced, my legs on either side of his neck, I got out my own handgun and held it to me.