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

He grinned wider and pressed his face up against Mantis’s until their noses were touching. Still Mantis didn’t flinch; he watched the chimera intently his movements reduced to only the breath inside of his chest.

“I’m half-crazy…
” Sanguine sang in a raspy whisper; his eyes closed, “
All for the love… of you
.”

Then, sensing what was about to happen, Mantis raised his hand, in that same instant Sanguine’s eyes snapped open as did his mouth.

But Mantis was expecting it; he quickly ducked as the chimera tried to bite his neck and moved behind him.

Sanguine snarled and advanced on Mantis, throwing the chair he had been sitting on to the other side of the room where it crashed into a side table.

In a flash the doors flew open, Nero and his partner Ceph ran into the room and grabbed Sanguine. As expected the chimera struggled, and hard; before they could subdue him both Nero and Ceph got bitten on the arms and shoulders.

Mantis watched calmly as Sanguine screamed, kicking his boots and snapping his head right to left, trying to sink his pointed teeth into anything he could find that was warm. Even the brute chimeras were having trouble subduing the stealthy and slippery Sanguine, who seemed to be able to twist and contort himself like a serpent.

When Sanguine’s thrashing started to lessen Mantis walked up to him, the chimera’s chest now heaving and his red eyes glassy but staring. The psychologist stopped only inches away from Sanguine and spoke to him calmly.

“We made a lot of progress during our session, Sanguine. I look forward to our next visit.”

Sanguine’s eyes suddenly shot to Mantis, they were fixed but at the same time Mantis could tell he wasn’t seeing what a normal person would.

This chimera is stuck in a mental nightmare; who can escape the thoughts in their head?

Mantis reached a hand up and gently placed it on Sanguine’s shoulder, but the moment his skin touched Sanguine’s, the boy let out a shrill scream. One so loud Nero jumped, giving the manic chimera the opportunity his psychosis seemed to have been waiting for.

Sanguine ripped his arms free of Nero’s strong hold, and with a terrifying grin, he jumped on top of Mantis. The psychologist went tumbling to the floor, Sanguine on top of him. The chimera’s teeth bared and his eyes bright with a mania Mantis had never seen before.

And it was the last thing he saw.

Will You Be My Friend?

Sami

Age 1 and 5.

Pauly pressed his face into the small gap between the boards and looked around the dark cobwebby underbelly of the Sunshine House.

With a snicker Gabe jumped up onto the sun bleached deck and started stamping his feet; immediately Pauly retracted his face and gave Gabe an angry look.

“Asshole! You’re going to scare him!” Pauly snapped.

Gabe laughed before jumping up as high as he could jump then deliberately slamming his tattered shoes down onto the deck.

Pauly looked in and saw a sheet of dust fall from the porch onto the greywaste ground. His eyes widened as he saw a flicker of movement.

“He is down there! Get me the stick!” Pauly said excited. He looked around for something he could use but a moment later Gabe handed him a long but thin branch.

“Okay… let’s see…” Pauly reached into his pocket and pulled out a lint covered piece of rat jerky; with his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth he affixed the jerky onto the end of the stick and slowly threaded it through the hole in the deck. When it was all the way through he pressed his face back into the gap and waved around the thin stick. “Come on little guy, it’s food! You gotta be hungry.”

Pauly narrowed his eyes; his heart did a small palpitation when he saw a black figure, tucked into the far corners of the porch start to move.

“Okay, be quiet, for serious now…” Pauly whispered. There was a scraping of ground beside him as Gabe kneeled down too and found his own gap to look through.

The boys, only seven, froze in place as the shadow started inching its way towards the stick; it seemed to be crawling on small but sturdy little legs.

“Wow,” Gabe whispered in a voice full of awe. Pauly elbowed him in the chest to keep him quiet but the boy’s only response to that was to elbow him back.

A small slender little hand appeared in a sliver of light, with nimble fingers the hand grabbed the piece of jerky before the shadow settled on the ground. The two boys heard a small high pitch squeak as the shadow put the entire piece of jerky into his mouth before its hands once again steadied its self on the ground.

“Wow, he’s just a baby!” Pauly whispered as the infant’s matted black hair became visible in the crack of light. “Go tell Nana!”

“No, I want to see…” Gabe hissed pushing Pauly before pressing his face further into the boards that surrounded the porch.

The infant paused and both boys held their breath; the baby tilted its head towards them and with that, the light illuminated its face.

The boys screamed.

All at once they both jumped to their feet and ran away screaming; the stick laying forgotten, half sticking out of the boards that surrounded the porch.

“What the fuck is all this yelling!” An older woman with a dark complexion, wearing a red dress covered by a soiled apron, appeared in the door way. When the two boys went screaming up the stairs she raised her hand in a threatening manner. “You scream like that and the ravers will come and take you in your sleep. What is all this yelling about?”

Gabe was crying so her eyes were on Pauly whose face was stricken and pale.

“There’s a monster under the deck!” Paul stammered. “I saw him this morning… I thought he was a new baby but… but he’s a monster, Nan! He had big red eyes and his mouth and face are all bloody!”

Nan smacked Gabe on the side of the head; the boy started wailing holding his ear. “Don’t come here and tell me lies, boy. Every time you lie a raver is born, didn’t I teach you that?”

“It’s true!” Gabe wailed. He turned around and pointed towards the deck of the boys’ rooms. “He’s under there – he’s going to eat us tonight, ain’t he?”

Nan rolled her eyes and walked down the steps of the main area of the Sunshine House, a foster and adoption home she had created to care for the greywaste orphans. Behind her both boys trailed, whimpering and sniffing as they nursed injured ears and hurt feelings.

Nan walked up to the deck and kneeled down. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small flashlight and turned it on.

She swept the small beam under the deck, seeing grey dust and cobwebs, even a few toys that had been small enough to fit through the cracks. She was about to give up when the beam fell onto a little knee.

“Oh… my…” Nan’s breath became trapped in her throat; slowly, so she didn’t blind the infant, she lowered the beam and traced it over thin little legs and a dirty grey jumper full of holes.

Then, like that of a wild animal, the light bounced and reflected off of its eyes. Nan gasped and pulled the flashlight back.

“See!” Pauly said but with a quick glare from Nan his mouth shut.

“Gabe, get Gill here now,” Nan said and looked at Pauly. “Get me some of the jerky. Now, boy; quick like a bunny.”

Both boys nodded before turning and running off in opposite directions. Nan grabbed onto one of the boards surrounding the deck and started pulling it off; her face creased with determination.

She had three boards pulled off when the boys came back. Pauly handed her a large piece of rat jerky which she held clenched between her teeth. With the last board laying against the stack she got down onto her stomach and started crawling under the deck.

When Nan started to come closer to the infant she heard a whimper. She took the jerky out of her mouth and started making soothing noises towards the baby.

“Come here, little baby, do you want some food?” Nan held out the piece of dried meat.

There was another whimper before a little hand reached out; Nan retracted her hand just slightly making the baby start to crawl towards here.

“There we go… a little farther,” Nan whispered. She started crawling backwards out of the hole in the porch, holding her breath as the small shrouded figure started following her. Though she had seen the light reflect in his eyes in all respects the little infant sounded like a human and a young one at that.

She broke off a bit of the jerky and held out her hand, the fingers took it gently before disappearing into the darkness, gumming sounds could be heard which made her smile. She backed herself out some more until she was out from under the porch. There was murmuring of the people behind her, watching the scene unfold, but they were smart enough to remain quiet.

Then Nan held out both hands in front of her, making a motion that all people made when welcoming an infant to be picked up.

A small baby, no more than a year old, crawled out from under the porch, covered in dust, dirt, and dried blood. It squinted in the sunlight and held a small dirt-caked hand up to its eyes before Nan scooped the baby up.

To everyone’s surprise the baby clung to her and whimpered; its lower lip sticking out though the murmurs of surprise were quickly replaced by shocked gasps when the baby opened its crimson red eyes.

Nan patted the baby’s head and gently tilted his gaunt sickly face towards her; when she saw the two red eyes still squinting from the sunlight she held onto him tighter and turned around to face the awestruck crowd.

“That’s a half-raver!” Gill who did the hunting said. He was a man in his forties with a brown but greying beard and eyes just slightly too close together. “It’s best we kill it now, Linda.”

“There is no such thing as half-ravers!” Nan snapped at him. She gently stroked the baby’s matted black hair. “This baby has no raver blood in it. Look at it, does it look vicious? It’s just a baby with red eyes and it’s nothing that can be helped.”

“It’s a monster!” Gabe started to cry again and he only cried harder when Nan reached down and gave him a hard smack on the head.

“It’s not and let me never hear those words again,” Nan snapped. She swept past everyone and took the little infant, still clinging hard to her, into the main house on her small patch of greywaste land.

She set the baby down on a changing table and started taking off its dirty onesie. Then one of her helpers, a little girl named Missy, started getting a bucket ready for a bath.

“A little boy, what am I going to do with a little boy with red eyes?” Nan smiled at the baby who was looking around the room, his mouth still gumming the jerky he had been given. “Where did you come from, red eyes?”

The baby looked at her as she spoke before reaching a hand up as if wanting to touch her face. She laughed and tickled his tummy.

The baby giggled and threw his hands over his face. He coo’d before turning his head towards a red jar full of clean rags. He stopped and stared at it as if transfixed over the colour.

A half an hour later the baby was in the wash tub, not a single tear down his face even though most greywaster babies hated water. He was looking at everything with an awestruck face and the occasional furrowed brow if he saw something he couldn’t make sense of.

“Linda?”

Nan turned around to see Gill at the door; the man was holding a green milk crate.

“The girls found this beside the boys’ dorm, out of the way beside the rope swing. I think the baby was dropped off overnight and he crawled out… there’s a note with him.”

Nan paused; she gave the wash cloth to the baby to distract him and walked over to Gill. She took the note and shook her head. “A note with real words? It’s a rarity to find someone who can read this far from Skyfall…” She unfolded the note and started to read it.

My nam is Lydia. Got tetanus, Im dieing. Please lok aftar my Sami. He was my world. Please don’t hate him for his eyes hes well beehavd.

Lydia.

“Oh dear…” Nan murmured. She folded up the note and glanced behind her shoulder. “Sami is it? His mother must’ve loved him. He’s thin but he seems to be a sharp boy.”

Gill, who couldn’t read, just stood there holding the milk crate. Though when his eyes travelled to the baby, he frowned. Sami was chewing on the washcloth his ruby eyes squinted in happiness.

“He seems like just a baby,” Gill murmured.

Nan gave him a look, placing the folded up piece of paper into her pocket. “Of course he’s just a baby. Look at him. Just like I’m black and you’re white, people look different.”

“I don’t think red eyes occur…”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t see a sign in front of Sunshine House that says normal-eyed babies only. He’s staying. His mother trusted him to us and I’ll be damned if I turn away a helpless infant. We have more than enough help for him. Holly’s out of diapers now, he’ll be our only one.”

Gill’s mouth twisted from one side to the other but he nodded finally. He walked over to the baby and patted his head. In response the baby smiled a gummy smile at him but Gill once again frowned “I wonder if this is just a new mutation we’re going to see now. God knows what long term effects this radiation is going to have; it’s already stunting the number of female live births.”

Nan walked back over to Sami and handed him a wooden spoon he was trying to reach. “If this is the worst mutation we see I’ll gladly take it. I heard from Coldstone Caravan just last week that Skytech is thinking about releasing their abominations in the cities nearby.”

Sami let out a loud squeal; both of them looked down to see the baby wave the spoon in the air his eyes wide with awe.

“Sometimes I wonder why people even bother having children anymore,” Gill muttered with a sigh. “It makes me wonder just what kind of world he’s going to grow up in.”

“That’s not our place to decide; he’s here and as I’ve always said… we’ll do our best,” Nan said with a smile. She reached over and tickled the side of the baby’s cheek making him squawk. “That’s all we can do in the Fallocaust.”

I ran my finger over the ground making a small rivet in the ashy dirt. I traced it around a black ant before making another rivet around it and another. I did it until there were almost a dozen rings around the unsuspecting black ant.

I stared at the ant as the insect tested the gap in the ground with its feelers before it started to climb into it. With its antennas moving around it started to navigate the many circles and grooves around it.

“And now… the end boss,” I whispered. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small grey lizard. With its tail flapping back and forth I placed the lizard on the far end of the rings and started humming battle music. I hummed the Star Trek one where Kurt has to kill Spot, the ears guy.

The lizard blinked before becoming still as the unaware ant started trying to climb over the third ring of the grooves I made. I grabbed onto the lizard’s head gently and turned his face in case he didn’t know where the ant was.

Then with a flash of grey movement the lizard charged forward and gobbled the ant up, the sounds of it crunching the shell of the small insect filling my ears. I hated the crunch noise it was always so loud and it made me want to clench my teeth like
ahhhh!

I smiled and picked up the lizard when he was done chewing.

“You win!” I said, holding the lizard up to my face. I made a goofy face at it and crossed my eyes. The lizard only stared back; I wish they had face expressions.

Suddenly a sharp pain sprung from the back of my head. I yelped and dropped the lizard before holding my hand to my head and turning around. My eyes welled with tears as shithead Pauly and fuckface Gabe started howling with laughter before running away, rocks in both of their hands.