The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (56 page)

I shook my head, though in all respects I was curious as to how we tasted. I put the knapsack into my own bag and we carried on.

It was an hour of sprinting between the tall buildings and cracked roads until we were cutting through grey rocky lawns and climbing over burnt debris. The apartment buildings and double roads far behind us, becoming only memories in the low haze that had crept in from a lake I couldn’t see. Ahead of us I saw grey hills and strips of roads that disappeared into the distance, accompanied by sporadic black trees to which they had made friends with. But for the most part everything was concealed with the uneven terrain, cloaked in the grey sun with the thick fog guarding it

With the visibility in front of us there could be a small town fifty miles ahead of us, but from my line of sight it was all a canvas of broken monotone.

Reaver led us to a house with a sunken roof and a wide open door. We took shelter in the covered half of a living room; the other end exposed to the elements and bogged down with ash that had crept through the windows. I took a seat on a rain-warped plastic tote before hearing it rattle as I shifted around on it.

I got up and opened up the tote, only to find it full of human bones. “Who wants to make soup?” No one found that as funny as I did.

Reaver went off to sentry with the dog and I stayed with Killian and Perish to make us all some quick tact sandwiches.

Tact was the staple food in Moros, the base of it was human stock and flour so it tasted like a hard cracker, it was packed full of vitamins, minerals, and all that health shit so the Morosians wouldn’t die from malnutrition. It also came in a sweet variety we called sweet tact, which instead of human stock there was corn syrup. I lived off of this stuff; it was all I got as a kid until I had learned how to steal.

I hadn’t lived a great life in Moros; the woman that Garrett had given me to at birth (I was switched out for a stillborn) was a crazy woman with mental issues and a drug problem. She tried her best though and I still miss her sometimes.

Though the life I had led had prepared me for what I was dealing with now, if I had been born and raised with the family I might not be able to adjust to desolation again, but this was kind of an old hat. Starvation was my friend, cold misery my brother, and the lump of anxiety in the pit of my stomach a disease all Morosians inherited.

I had had it rather good for the past three years though. Elish always kept the apartment toasty warm and Luca had catered to my every need, the food was plentiful and the tea hot.

I missed that skyscraper… and the people in it.

I missed Elish… I wonder if he missed me; it didn’t sound like he had missed me.

My hand brushed over my wedding ring, before with a forlorn sigh I turned to help Killian make some sandwiches.

The kid was just finishing up, rubbing his bare hands together which were pasty white and shivering. Perish was beside him layering some canned Good Boy onto bread, beside a pile of dried flesh which would satiate the dog until he could dig up a radanimal to eat.

I picked up my tact and took a bite out of it. It tasted… interesting. Bosen cheese and canned human meat, it was a mixture of crunch, mushy, weird textures in my mouth that made me miss hamburgers and potato fries.

With an idea popping inside of my head, I put the sandwich in the palm of my hand and put my other palm on top of it. Then with Killian eyeing me like I was out of my mind I brought up my aura abilities and tuned it towards one of the abilities I had absorbed from Elish.

My tongue stuck out of the side of my mouth as I concentrated on my hands, bringing out a burning hot touch that immediately started making the tact smoke. Then with a cackle I closed my hand and watched Killian’s eyes widen.

“Toaster… you’re a cicaro toaster,” Perish chuckled. He reached over and hovered his hand over my own cupped hands before pulling them back. “I love seeing your abilities work; I engineered you perfect. Though not much remember your head can’t handle as much. Use it to warm yourself not toast sandwiches, idiot. It hasn’t started fading yet?”

“It’s starting to but I have another few days.” I took a bite out of my smoking sandwich. “And I might be an idiot, but you’re going to enjoy cold food.”

Killian seemed more interested in my hands than my sandwich. He reached over and brushed the crumbs off of my hands before putting his little icicles into my palm. “You can absorb other chimeras’ abilities right?”

I nodded and made my palms warm; as soon as he felt the fluxuation in temperature he smiled and let me cup his hands. “Can Reaver do things like this?”

Why was he asking me? I looked over at Perish, assuming he would be the one to know but he just shrugged. “Elish and Lycos was in control of Chimera X, I only assisted them on physical traits and faulty gene removal. All them.”

I put my half-eaten sandwich on my lap and cupped Killian’s ice cold fingers into my hands and warmed them up for him. “I don’t think he can, it seems only Silas, Elish, Sanguine, and maybe two or three of the others have that gene. I only can because I’m an empath and apparently it kills me a little bit every time I do it.”

Killian’s blue eyes were still bright though. He smiled and I felt him wiggle his warming fingers. “But he’s Silas’s clone! So he can.”

The scientist looked amused but I couldn’t see why, in all respects what the kid was saying made sense.

“No silly. King Silas isn’t a chimera, he’s a born immortal. Most of Silas’s enhancements came from science, same splicing we used in our chimera babies. He’d kill himself and we’d do surgery on his healing brain. After he mastered these abilities he got the idea to make the chimera babies, so we started on that.” Perish scowled and I knew why. Perish had realized as we did he had once again confirmed to himself his real age. “Now Silas has them all but I am not sure if they gave all of them to Reaver.”

The scientist then paused and pointed a finger at me. “They are dangerous; you need to stop doing tricks. Didn’t your master tell you to stop?”

Elish told me to stop but he also told me I had to unravel Perish’s mind.

“He also did surgery on me to force it to stop.” I shrugged and absentmindedly touched the scars I could still feel on my head, I had many of them. “Did your surgery have a time limit on them then?” Perish and Sid, two chimera doctors had been the ones to cut my head open.

Perish nodded, then glanced up as we all heard a crack of rotting floorboards; Reaver must be coming in from his scouting. Killian jumped up with Reaver’s two sandwiches.

“I did, and no it doesn’t. He must’ve shorted the implant himself; all it would take was an electric pulse in the right areas. He probably did it himself so you can fuck around in my head.” Perish said the last part with a certain level of bite; he was still sore towards me for what I had uncovered inside of his brain.

“Oh no don’t get up, I’d hate to tear you away from holding Jade’s hands…” Reaver said with a mouthful of food. He sat down on a pile of compacted dirt and gripped Killian’s left hand in his before squeezing it.

“More useful of a talent than his aura trick.” Then Reaver looked over at me and Perish. “There is a small town about ten miles from here, I’d rather us find a basement or something there to hide in for a couple days. Once we’re there we can contact Elish and tell him where he can find us, if he didn’t go with Jack on his recovery mission.”

I nodded, though the thought that Elish was near both filled me with joy and fear. He sounded really pissed that Tim had been killed. I hoped he didn’t take it out on me.

The more I thought of it though the more I realized Tim dying by Reaver’s hand was kind of a good thing.

Tim was a necessary casualty and Kessler had his heir anyways. Reaver had almost left with Killian and killing the boy had solidified him staying with us. Giving Reaver a chimera to kill, letting him express some of that inner transgressive behavior, was both a strategic move and a forced move on my part. Once Tim’s panicked screaming had hit Reaver’s ears I knew it was done. The kid was toast. Chimeras had killed Leo and Greyson, and Kessler’s Legion had been harassing Aras for years.

Still, those were two different worlds that had interfered into each other’s territories. Greywaster world and the Skyfall world and though Elish and myself were on Reaver’s side, we still lived in the Skyfall world where Kessler was a wildcard, not an enemy.

If Kessler ever found out it was Reaver who had killed Tim… we would lose that ally forever, no question. When Elish ruled Skyfall and Reaver the greywastes, we would need the Legion to keep the public in order. The last thing we needed was a war with our own army.

How have I been doing so far?
So badly I wanted to ask Elish this, but even if he was beside me, dressed in the greywaster clothing we had worn to Aras, I knew he wouldn’t tell me. His praise was rarer than sunbeams but just as warm, warm enough to make you crave it during cold times like this.

Now his angry voice filled my head... telling me I was an idiot for not remembering that Jack would be coming for Tim.

We ate together, me and Killian listening to Perish and Reaver planning the easiest route to the small town Reaver had spotted during his scouting. We were going to go off-road near a small grove of trees where we could break up our silhouettes if we saw anyone above us or on the ground.

A small search brought up nothing but some pieces of silverware Killian tucked into his bag. All the plates were broken and the fabric chewed through. Five or ten more years of rain and this house would fall into itself like the others. Decay came slowly to the greywastes, from both lack of rain and the radiation, but even with the short rainy season decay still rotted the bones of houses. Soon they would fall, and like an injured animal as soon as they fell the greywastes would take them.

The ash was so dry underneath my feet it had its own unique crunch to it. I adjusted the duffle bag slung over my back and wished once again for the warm apartment in Skyfall. If I had known my times of comfort were fleeting I would’ve enjoyed it more.

Reaver kept branching off into different directions, climbing small crags or scaling to the top of tipped over busses or semis. It wasn’t a rare sight to see him shielding his eyes and surveying where we had been and where we were going, the deacdog not far behind, loyal to his master.

There was nothing to see though, the greywastes stretched on, or were we still in the greyrifts? I didn’t know; through eyes that had only seen the dark windowless buildings of Moros or the bright rebuilt skyscrapers of Skyland, everything seemed to look the same. Grey tones without colour, broken up only occasionally by a leaning house or an acreage too far into what had once been a field for us to explore. It was grey and it was quiet, so quiet I could hear all of our heartbeats and could now recognise each person’s individual tone.

How long until Falkland? It was impossible to tell from the atlas we had found, but Killian had ripped out the page and now it sat snugly in one of Reaver’s many cargo pants pockets. He had said it would take us over a month to walk there with flat road and good weather, and neither of those things were ever promised.

Too far for us to go on our own, but then again, I knew we couldn’t be near Kreig anymore. Maybe we were safer being on the road, I knew Reaver wouldn’t be able to cope with being a sitting duck for long.

And what would we find in Falkvalley? A small town, a block with a name we would all recognise? Or perhaps nothing but an O.L.S unit tucked into a dilapidated dresser. All of these doubts made my shoulders slump just a little bit more and I wished once again for Elish to be here.

I missed those protective arms, I missed sitting on his lap and falling asleep, even if he would tease me that I was too old for that now.

I was almost eighteen, just one more month; my teenager years were as fleeting as my mortality.

“A plane is landing...”

Like Reaver’s words were audible nightmares, my inner daydreams shot from me. All of us jerked our heads up to the sentry standing on top of a stone bluff, his stance solid but his hands twitching towards his M16.

I turned to the shadows of Kreig behind us, and saw with Perish the small dot circling the city, like a fly hovering around fruit it moved around several taller buildings before we watched it hover in place.

It was late afternoon now and we had been walking since the grey dawn had broken the east, more than enough time for Kessler and Caligula to go to Skyfall or Cardinalhall and report what had happened.

“Keep our speed up... if we hurry we’ll be in the town within the hour,” Reaver said, before jumping down off of the bluff. Immediately he took the bag Killian was carrying, though his eyes were still fixed on the shrouded city. “Nothing we can do now but move, let’s go.”

Killian’s face had already gone three shades paler; he stuffed his hands into his pockets, unable to tear his gaze from the distant city we had left behind. “What if they come here?”

Reaver had already turned around, his pace a brisk walk. Perish wasn’t too far behind.

“I’ll tell you if it happens, come on, we’re exposed out here with nothing to hide ourselves in.”

I walked beside Killian, with Perish lagging behind as he usually did; always covering Killian’s flank as Reaver pushed ahead. Guarding the mortal non-chimera like everyone seemed to want to do.