Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (13 page)

He was hilarious, I loved Barry as a boy. I wanted him to be with me forever.

I nodded and looked out the window again so I could see the sky. The overcast was all steely grey but there weren’t any big black clouds or signs that it was going to rain. We didn’t get rain much but for about a month every year it seemed like we had it forever, then after that it only rained sometimes.

“I like that idea… I have my sunglasses so no one will think I’m evil.” My backpack was upstairs but I had just seen my sunglasses the other day so I knew they were there.

“Good, they’ll put nails in your hands again.” Barry looked at me and I saw a flicker in his black eyes. “They’ll burn you like Gill did or maybe pull you in half.” I scowled at Barry and felt my ears go hot as he put his arms out and pretended he was on a plank like I was when Gill nailed me. “Remember how you cried like a baby? You whined for Nan all night.
Naaan! Naaaan
!”

“Shut up!” I snapped. I turned from Barry and flopped on the couch with my book and brandished it threateningly at him. “I’ll throw this right at you.”

“I’m sooorrry,” Barry said with a long drawn-out sigh. He walked over and flopped onto the couch beside me. His fuzzy ears twitching as a loud pop sounded from the warm fireplace. “What are you reading? Read it out loud to me.”

I wouldn’t mind that. I was reading The Pawn of Prophecy and it was about sorcerers and it had magic in it so I was having fun reading it. I read out loud to Barry and that helped me ignore the hunger inside of my stomach.

Though by evening that hunger inside of my tummy was eating my guts. I had spent all day playing with Barry or talking to him and that was making me more tired than usual. I didn’t even get a chance to hunt either because we were playing Hide ‘n Seek and he was a good hider. That took up all my time and once it was dark outside and the bigger radanimals were out there wasn’t really anything I could do hunting-wise. My night bright was really good, especially since there wasn’t any moon outside right now, but the rocks were slippery from the cold and I didn’t want to break an ankle.

When I was bored of reading I played checkers with Barry and I won, then finally I was tired enough to go upstairs and climb into my bed.

“You gotta wind me!” Barry said. He was holding Barry the bear in his hands. He handed it to me with a smile. “I made up a new song though. Wind me up and I’ll sing it but it isn’t finished yet.”

“Okay,” I said with a smile. I picked up Barry the bear and wound his butt and set him down beside the edge of the mattress. It wasn’t too far down if he fell at least only about six inches.

The jingle came on and Barry cleared his throat. He started to sing:

Sanguine, Sanguine,

Give him your heart to eat,

He’s a demon; he’ll bite you with his teeth,

You will never see him coming, and soon you will be running,

He’ll chase you down; onto the greywaste ground.

And he’ll bite you clean in two.

“I am a demon; I don’t mind. I need to be scary to be a greywaster,” I said to Barry. “I might be a bad kid but that just means adults won’t pick on me. I was the one that picked on them… I was doing really well in that town, though Ellis said I was going to get into trouble soon.”

“And like the song says, you have your teeth and you have a knife too… you’re doing just great and even better now that you made friends with Nero and Ellis,” Barry responded.

I clipped my teeth together with a smile, and wound Barry one more time.

Though as he was singing again I realized one of my wiggly teeth was hanging down. I reached my finger inside and pulled on it. A shock of pain went through me but I kept pulling, I didn’t mind pain – I even kinda liked it sometimes.

I pulled out my tooth and tilted my head back so the blood would go down my throat. I didn’t want to waste it since I liked how I tasted. I looked at my last baby tooth and put it on a little table beside my bed.

“No more baby teeth, that’s my last little one,” I told Barry. I gave out a long sigh and because I remembered Nan saying it long ago, I threw my hands up in the air like she had and proclaimed: “I’m getting old, Barry! Getting too old for this shit!”

Barry laughed and I laughed too, then I put my head on the pillow and got comfortable. I held Barry and his music box to my chest and wound him one last time before I closed my eyes and started daydreaming about the time in the city when I saw those creatures. Not about the celldwellers though, but when me and Nero were working together to kill them. That was my favourite thing to daydream about, my other one was about finding a warehouse full of blue cigarettes.

The next morning I woke up and when I went downstairs and Barry was waiting for me. He was looking out the window again with a big smile on his face.

“Are we going to town today? I bet you’re starving, right?” Barry said. He sounded like he was in a good mood, his mouth was wide open in a grin and I could see all of his shark teeth.

Though I felt nervous about going to the town. My stomach was a big black pit and it was growling and grumbling so loudly it was like it had its own voice box.

“I guess…” I said hesitantly. I looked out the window with Barry and saw that the sky was still grey with the sun cloaked behind the haze. No rain to be seen or any other weather besides the usual. “If we’re going we should go early… I don’t know how long it will take me to walk there.”

“You’ll probably get attacked by greywasters and eaten alive.” Barry laughed a high-pitched laugh. “They’ll eat your eyes since they’re demonic and red. Maybe they’ll taste like cherries.”

I ignored Barry and put my boots on. He only laughed more but afterwards he let me start getting everything ready for my big walk. He was quiet when I put everything in my backpack and quiet still when I closed the door of the house and started walking towards the merchant road I had spotted during my scavenging.

It was cold outside but I bundled up good. I had some gloves but they were almost too small for my hands now. I had gotten them from Sunshine House so they were meant to fit my hands at six years old not so much eight, almost nine. They were all I had though so I made due, even though my fingers had broken through the wool and were now sticking out of the ends.

I jammed my hands into my pockets and started walking, my backpack on my back and my jacket zipped up tight. I didn’t have my sunglasses on though, I decided to wait until I saw my first person and then I would. I didn’t like the sunglasses that much because it buggered my night bright, making everything dark and weird.

Ahead of me was just a big stretch of nothing, just rocky ground spotted with trees and dark shadows of cars or old signs. There were also some sparse bushes. In the summer the branches sometimes had little dried shoots or were surrounded by yellow grass but they were bare since it was winter. Even the hoppers had gone quiet and a lot of the bugs had disappeared as well. We still got big flies though who didn’t mind laying their eggs on my friends.

Snappy and Zoom would stay outside with the bugs. I felt bad but not as bad since Barry had decided to come with me.

I found a stick and played sword fights with Barry as I walked, though the ground was all bumpy in this area so I had to watch where I was going. It was early in the morning and I had a lot of energy, though not much as usual since I wasn’t eating.

I eventually just used the stick as a walking stick. I remembered that I should conserve my energy since it would be a long day of walking, and there were some big hills I would have to go up.

In the afternoon I spotted a semi truck that had the front of it burned black. Even though it was slippery with frost I climbed the front of it and got on top of the big part.

It was all dented and had a hole I could fall through so I watched where I stepped. I stood up on top of the large semi and looked around.

My face broke into a smile when I saw smoke in the distance and, not too far from me, the road. I jumped off of the semi without even climbing down and landed on the ground with my boots thunking against the frozen earth. I looked up just to see how far I had jumped without getting hurt at all and felt proud of myself. That was over two me’s tall and I was getting pretty tall. I started walking towards the road with a proud and smug grin on my face.

It wasn’t just being able to jump down from things without getting hurt, my hearing was getting better too. I had always been faster than the other kids and I could see at night but the older I got the more I was seeing how different I was. And not just my eye colour and my teeth. It just reinforced the fact that I wasn’t human and I was a demon or a monster – but I already knew I was a bad person so it didn’t change much.

“You are a really bad person, you should punish yourself…”

I looked at Barry and frowned. I kicked a rock with my boot. “I’m not bad all the time.”

Barry laughed at me. He was climbing on top of an old collapsed bridge, I was walking along the river bed because it had dried out years ago. There was an old shopping cart half-covered in mud with a plastic mud flap beside it.

“You should grab this rock…” Barry said. He was grinning big at me and pointing to a large grey rock. “And bash your hand with it… no, your head! Sami – take this rock… and bash your head with it.”

I walked over to the rock and picked it up. I tossed it in the air and caught it with my hands.

Well, why not? I didn’t hit myself in the head with it but I smacked it against my head just to see how much it would hurt.

And it did hurt. I rubbed my forehead and kept on walking towards the highway road. Barry was quiet after and he let me concentrate on getting to the road. It was up the river bed hill and over a long guard rail that was rusted and twisty and just asking to cut me. So I carefully climbed up the frosty rocks, making double-sure every boot step was secure, and pulled myself up onto the road.

Wow, so many cars… they were lined up almost all the way to where the town and the smoke was. Small little brown pellets placed one after the other until they spread out into the greywastes like a half unzipped zipper. I guess those cars had tried to flee once they realized they couldn’t get into the town or maybe they had been pushed afterwards to make way for the bosen carts. Either way it looked neat and made me excited to check some of the cars for canned food or something I could eat.

But as I walked along the highway I saw almost right away I was shit outta luck, everything was picked clean there wasn’t even any padding or anything inside of the vehicles. It had all been ripped out and they were nothing but skeletons of their former selves. I gave up thinking I would find food and drank some water.

Then I lit a cigarette as my reward for walking so long and not stopping to play. I was a pro now and inhaled the smoke. I held it in as long as I could and tried to blow smoke rings.

I still couldn’t do it properly but one day I would get it. If I had my own big supply of cigarettes I could smoke every day but I had to ration Nero’s cigarettes like I had to ration food.

I could pick up cigarettes at the town though! This made me excited and I started to walk faster.

There was no one on the road but me, maybe it was because it was winter? I wasn’t sure how it worked with merchants but I think we only got a couple of them at Sunshine House when winter was on us. I really wasn’t paying attention it just seemed like they were there sometimes and sometimes they weren’t.

That just meant it was safer for me.

“You’re not safe anywhere,” Barry said behind me. I kept on walking since he was using his mean voice or as my thesaurus said: patronizing.

“Eventually your luck will run out, Sami. Or maybe one day you’ll realize you don’t even deserve to live… you’re a bad person and bad people always die at the end of the stories.”

My shoulders slumped but I didn’t have anything to say back to him. How could I defend myself when I believed what he was saying to me? I knew I was no good and I knew I was the bad guy in the books.

Without realizing it I started clawing my sides with my fingernails. I dug them in hard until the pain was too much but even then I still scratched and dug into my skin. I kept walking towards the wood smoke I could see in the distance, a long row of skeletonized cars behind me.

Sami age 8

“Where are your parents?” The guard had the same skeptical narrow-eyed look that everyone adopted when they saw me all alone out here. A part of me was tempted to say I ate them but I knew that would be a bad idea.

I lowered my head so he couldn’t see my teeth. He was standing in front of a big wall made from stacked cars and chain-link fencing, the town and the smoke safely on the other side.

“I don’t have parents but I can take good care of myself.”

“We don’t tolerate beggars.”

I scowled at the ground; I wanted to glare at him but I had my sunglasses on. “I have money that’s why I’m here, stupid.” I knew it wasn’t a good idea to call a stranger and an adult stupid but I had been on my own for a long time now and I was tired of people saying I couldn’t take care of myself. “I need supplies and a place to stay for a few nights.”

I dug into my pockets and picked up one of the fifty dollar bills Nero had given me and waved it around. “See? And I’m armed too so don’t try nothin’ funny.”

The man, an older man with a big grey beard and slanty eyes gave me a look before saying slowly, “I’d paddle my grandkids for speaking like that but I guess if you are an orphan you would need to have a mouth on you. Alright, kid, go on in but I’d watch yourself… we have merchants staying the winter here and as any town we have our shady residents. You’ll be looking for the Holi Inn down Read Street. Now Melchai is spread out as you can see. It was founded on a town, the further north you go the less occupied the structures are… it just gets worse further back until it’s back into the greywastes. We don’t have guards there because it backs the plaguelands… now you know about the plaguelands right?”

I shook my head. I had heard of them mentioned with other areas in the greywastes: the greyrifts, blacksands, borderlands and all of that, but that was about it.

“The plaguelands are where the radiation is too strong for anyone to survive in and no one would even try because of the monsters there. You’ll see near the north, if you’re ever there, signs that read
Keep out by order of Skytech
. That’s not the Legion being assholes, you mind those signs or you’ll get radiation poisoning and there won’t be enough radjuice to take it out of you. Understand my words, boy?”

“I understand,” I said. I had no intentions of ever going that far north, I had no reason to go there. “Can I go in now?”

He nodded again and turned around to open the gate. It was a flimsy gate being kept shut with just a padlock but it was better than what I had in my house. The man opened the gate and I walked inside with a smile on my face, though I kept my mouth closed while I smiled.

Inside Melchai was lots of decaying buildings but ones that had been repaired too. They coexisted with each other standing side by side, some with roofs sinking in like they had become quicksand and others with patch jobs of shingles and sun bleached boards. The structures were spaced out far apart though, like someone had looked down on a big city and decided to cookie cutter Melchai out of it. I could see now why the old man had said further back wasn’t as repaired. I could see the buildings in the distance and a lot of them were broken and missing material. I bet the missing material is what had been used to repair this occupied south area.

I walked down a double-lane road and saw there were a lot of people wandering around. A lot of them had guns on their backs but also a lot were just walking casually. They were everywhere, talking and carrying on, going about their day.

For some reason seeing everyone all close together sparked some nervousness inside of my gut. I found myself giving everyone a wide berth and staying out of peoples’ line of sight so they wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t like so many greywasters being close to me, I almost wanted to go back home so I could be alone again.

That was weird… before I had wanted badly for someone to talk to but now that I was surrounded by many people to talk to me… it was the last thing I wanted.

Maybe I wasn’t used to being around so many of them – I jammed my hands into my pockets and lowered my head. I kept walking and only looked up when I passed a building. All of the ones that sold things had signs on the fronts at least, all the other ones were either abandoned or had families living inside of them.

This town smelled like smoke and sweat, it smelled lived-in. At one point I thought maybe I could stay here but now that I saw how many people were around I changed my mind. Barry was enough of a friend for me… though maybe I would meet a friend here.

I followed the main road and finally I saw a big building that had its own court yard, but the grass was long dead and it was just rocky ground now. It did have a big turnaround driveway though with a concrete raised bed in the middle. That raised bed now had garden gnomes in it, all with their faces re-painted to make them smile wider. They were lined up in a circle all facing what looked like a pile of old bones.

That was kinda weird.

I walked past the gnomes and crossed the driveway. It was obvious that it was the Holi Inn because it said Holiday Inn with a big yellow sign but the day part had fallen off so only the outline could be seen.

The building itself was in bad condition but it looked like a part of it had been repaired at least a little. The windows were intact and not broken at all. They also had bluelamps in a few of them, but the siding had fallen off in some places and you could see the naked brick behind it. The brick had no more mortar inside of it just brick on brick with yellow grass sticking out of some places. I guess that was to keep out the draft but I wasn’t sure.

The glass doors that most hotels had were all gone and had been boarded up with plywood that looked all swollen and worn out. There was a door though and I opened it and stepped inside.

In front of me was a big lobby with carpet that was clean from the usual gyprock and ash but was still stained and worn down to the mat in some places. There were no people inside of this lobby but I saw some potted plants and a couple couches which faced a television set on a brass cart.

Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a young lady standing behind a desk. She was watching something on a little electronic thing and was smoking a cigarette.

“Hi,” I said quietly. I don’t think she heard me coming in; her electronic was playing music.

The lady looked up at me and smiled. “Hello, what can I do for you, little man?”

She seemed nice like Nan but her skin was white not dark brown and she wasn’t wearing a red dress. I walked up to her feeling more comfortable that it was just her here and not dozens of people like outside. I put my hands behind my back and looked at the ground.

“I’d like a place to stay for two days,” I said, and decided to add. “I have money. I’m not a beggar.”

She smiled and glanced behind me; I knew she was looking for my parents.

“I don’t have any.” I decided to save her the question. “I’m just here by myself.”

“Really?” The lady didn’t seem to like hearing this but she said nothing else to me about it. She just walked to a rack behind her that had little key hooks that held small silver keys. She picked up one and put it on the wooden desk she was sitting behind.

“Okay, well it’s two bucks a night so that will be four dollars plus one dollar if you want to use our rain barrel to get clean. Do you want to take a bath?” the lady asked.

“Nah.” I shook my head. I was an adult now so I didn’t have to take baths if I didn’t want to. I hated baths and I hated even more getting wet. I reached into my pocket and looked for a five dollar bill but I only had twenties so I slid that one to her.

She gave me change and I checked to make sure the change was real. Nan showed me how. All the money that was real money here had to be cycled through Skyfall and it got a special stamp that was so hot it melted the outside of the money. The stamp was of a half-cougar half-scorpion creature called a carracat. Though only the second generation looked scorpionish the carracats we had here just had six legs.

The lady chucked. I looked up at her to see what she was laughing about.

“You’re like… a dwarf, I swear,” she laughed. “How old are you? What’s your name?”

She seemed nice so I guess she could be my friend. “I’m Sami and I’m…” I paused and decided to lie. “I’m fifteen.”

My face fell as she laughed again; I knew she didn’t buy my fib. I should’ve made it a bit more convincing.

“Okay, Sami, the fifteen-year-old. Your room is on the first floor, the floors above you aren’t renovated so don’t go wandering anywhere else in this building, alright? I’ll charge you extra if you do,” the lady said with a smile on her face. She had blond hair like the lady I had killed back in my first town. I wonder how much she would struggle if I tied her up like I did that lady. “There are a few pubs here you can get some food from. Don’t have any loud parties now.”

I shook my head. “No, I just am here for food and stuff…” I glanced at her electronic and saw it had a screen on it. I pointed to it but I made sure not to touch it. “What’s that?”

The blond-haired lady turned it towards me and pressed a button. My eyes widened as the pictures moved like on a television. I hadn’t watched TV in years. Our TV at Sunshine House was always breaking but sometimes the merchants that visited let us watch movies on TVs they were trying to sell. They used to set it up for the kids in the main house and put on cartoons.

I watched transfixed and managed to utter, “How much?”

“Sorry kiddo, it’s a portable DVD player. It isn’t for sale but if it was it would run you a good hundred bucks. Terry runs our general store and he has some TV sets though and there is one in your room.”

My mouth dropped open. “For real?” A TV for me to watch for two whole days?

The lady leaned her elbows on the counter and nodded. “Sure, and we have a library of videos you can watch too. Movies and recordings taped from Skyfall TV.” She pointed and I looked behind me to see several rows of what I thought were bookshelves full of books. I ran over to them and drooled over all the colourful covers.

I picked out five cartoons and after the lady showed me my room.

My room wasn’t as big as my house but it was bigger than my bedroom. It had a double bed and two milk crates that acted as nightstands, each one had a stained table cloth over it. It also had a metal dresser that I think used to be used for tools and a bathroom but it just had a bucket in it with a plastic lid. I had an outhouse at my house right now so I didn’t mind that at all, there were lots of rags for toilet paper. I might steal some just for my own use because I was running out of rags back home. Usually greywasters washed their dirty rags after but that was gross I used mine for fire starter.

There was also a nice carpet in here but there were water stains on it and those places were crusty to step on. It was nice though and had a pretty pattern on it that matched the bedspread, both green and red crosshatches.

When I was settled in I decided to go out for food. With my sunglasses on and my mouth closed tight I went outside and started walking down the main street to find a pub.

It didn’t take me long to find one, it was where the most people were. This made me nervous again.

“You’ll be okay just don’t let them see your eyes or teeth,” Barry said. He was walking beside me and I think he was with me because he knew I was scared of being around all these people. “Just get some food and some cigarettes and you can go back to your room and watch The Lion King.”

I wanted to do that more than anything. The Lion King was a great movie I watched it once when I was five. I wish I was a prince that had a big giant kingdom but what are you going to do.

“Too bad you’re just an evil demon that deserves to die,” Barry said nonchalantly. I didn’t answer him and walked past the greywasters gathering around the pub.

I walked in and immediately felt a surge of anxiety, enough anxiousness inside of me to really debate turning and going back to my quiet room. The energy was overwhelming and noisy and the voices hurt my ears. The sound was just a low roar of voices broken up by the occasional high octave laugh from a female.

It was dark inside too but my sunglasses made my night bright malfunction. This made me uneasy too because I liked being able to see everything, though now I was just surrounded by darkness and people.

I didn’t like it… but I was an adult now and I had to be brave.

So I took a deep breath of stale, smoky air and walked in. There were two gumball machines in front of me full of faded candy and past that a wall which split into two doors. One had people eating and another had people just sitting and drinking. I went to the eating area and found a bar man sitting behind a bar with a bunch of bottles behind him.

I could feel a few people staring at me but I ignored them. I walked past a serving lady and past a dog tied up to a jukebox and put my hands on the counter.

“Can I buy some food?” I asked him.

The greywaster had a cigarette in his mouth, he talked through it. “What do you want?”

I stared at him. I didn’t care at this point. “I don’t know… what you have. I’m new; I don’t live here.”

He took his cigarette out of his mouth and gave me the usual skeptical look. He opened his mouth to say what I knew he was going to say so once again I saved him the trouble.