The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (62 page)

Nico clenched his teeth and looked down at his bloodied leg, Meriko and Kerres’s boots coming closer behind us, with flashlight trails waving across the ceiling of the sewer. He looked up at me and to my surprise he shoved my hand away.

“This isn’t a fucking movie, Reno. Take the kid and run. I have no heroic speeches for you, fuck off and run. Tell Clig... just make up something nice.”

I stared at him blankly for a second before I looked down and saw the bullet hole that had pierced his upper thigh. A wound that could’ve healed, but under the Crimstones... if it rotted, he was fucked.

The bootsteps came closer, as did the splashing and the pinging of bullets. I knew in the milliseconds it took for me to gape at Nico Zhou that any one of them could be hitting me next. I didn’t know how many bullets they had or if they were also packing assault rifles.

Reaver said to never be a hero, to never care, but me having to stand up, take Trig and leave that fucker behind... I knew I’d never forgive myself.

But I did it.

I did it because I was scared, and I did it because I couldn’t go back into that room.

I never said I was a hero, and I never wanted to be a hero. I was some fucking sidekick that was always bailed out at the last minute by his Superman.

Kerres shouted behind me, and another flash of light illuminated the twisting corners of the sewer.

There was a fork, a split in the path. My heart jumped in my throat and beside me I heard a relieved gasp from Trig. I gripped his hand harder and we took a sharp right, before tripping over a raised piece of concrete.

This tunnel didn’t have the rivet filled with water like the main one did, it was different... made out of only brick. I didn’t know if that was a good sign but I took it. Me and the kid climbed onto it and ran into the darkness. My own nose picking up dry must and mould, leaving the damp rat shit behind with Nico.

We ran, blindly but quickly, we ran. No more light beams to be seen streaking across the ceiling and damp brick. There were no noises either; as we ran deeper into the sewer system they faded like the light and became nothing but an echo in my mind.

Only our panting and quickened steps.

“We’re going to die in here,” Trig whimpered beside me. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since we left Nico behind but we were both exhausted, tired from running and tired of relying solely on adrenaline resources. We had barely eaten during this captivity; we had nothing left.

“I’d rather die here than die in front of a camera,” I growled, squeezing the kid’s hand harder. “In the fucking greywastes we never went anywhere outside of Aras without a gun. I swear when I get home if Garrett –”

I let out a yell of shock as I ran right into a brick wall, smashing my nose against it and my forehead. I swore loudly and colourfully, before I laid an enthusiastic punch against the brick wall to show it what it had done. I didn’t care how stupid that was, that fucking hurt.

I turned around to start to grope the walls for a different direction when I slammed up against something else.

This wasn’t solid though. Swallowing the second curse on my lips, I touched the cold metal and hissed my glee. It was a fucking ladder!

I jumped on it like it was a hot blond boy and climbed to the very top. With Trig’s excited breaths below me I felt for the lid and pushed up on it.

My eyes squinted at the cold winter daylight. For some reason I was sure it would be night time, but in the sewer it always seemed to be permanent midnight.

I scraped the manhole cover off to the side and scrambled to the top, before standing and helping Trig up and out of the sewer. It was colder out here or perhaps it was just the daylight making it appear colder.

I closed the lid and looked around for something to drag on top of it, or at least some people that could help us, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Just empty streets, no cars, no rusted twists or metal, no fallen light poles. Everything was standing in desolate greys and blacks, a ruin like the greywastes but in the same way also preserved.

I looked around. “Where are we?”

Trig and I jogged to a small alleyway with a dilapidated chain-link fence blocking off the next road. I saw the young cicaro look around at the monotone buildings that surrounded us.

“Cypress, it’s an abandoned district west of Moros, near the West End,” Trig gasped. He paused for a second to lean against the wall to catch his breath but there wasn’t time for that. I would make this kid run until he collapsed and died.

“Do you know where Moros is?” No one in Moros had remote phones, those were for chimeras, but there had to be a thien there somewhere, someone to radio Ellis.

Trig looked around, his dark eyes going in all directions. I waited to see that light bulb moment when he told me exactly where we were but there wasn’t anything, just his usual petrified look that seemed suited for his soft features.

“Trig?” I looked to my side, trying to ignore just how sick and beaten down this poor little fucker looked. “I at least need a direction...” Why hadn’t I looked at a fucking map of Skyfall? Why hadn’t Garrett taught me something about this stupid place?

“The ocean... we should go towards the ocean,” Trig said quietly. He raised a shaky hand and pointed to a break in some of the taller buildings. I could see white sky and nothing else behind them, whereas behind me it seemed like an expanse of broken ruins and a maze of roads.

I nodded and started to quicken my walk, when a searing pain shot up from my gut. It filled my vision with a white heat and I felt myself sinking to my knees.

I grabbed my stomach before lifting my stained shirt up. I swore as I saw a red swelling around my stomach, where my old bullet wound had been. Something had torn inside of me when Meirko had kicked me.

I looked around and tried to size up the double and triple-storey buildings we were walking past. From the white orb in the sky I wagered it to be around three, it would be getting dark in a couple hours.

But we had no blankets or anything and it was fucking winter.

“STOP!”

With my hopes and dreams of being in Garrett’s arms before the sun rose falling to dust and ashes in front of me, I stopped with Trig and turned around.

I expected to see an unstoppable force of assault rifle wearing people in camo, but instead it was only Kerres.

The red-haired man did have an assault rifle though, and a crazed glint in his eye I saw the day Reaver came back from Donnely; the one that screamed ‘stay the fuck away!’ The gun was raised to his face and his movements were like he had bricks on his feet. He was stalking towards us, a wet trail of boot prints matching our own.

“Kerres... come on...” I raised my hands, one with a cuff still dangling off of it, and talked to him in a soothing voice, like Killian had Reaver. “It’s over... let us go, man.”

Kerres’s gun shook, his eyes were almost bugging out of his head; he was fucking crazy. “No! Fuck you, no. I’ll get Jade back. Garrett would exchange Jade for you. He’ll betray Elish, he will!”

Oh, this isn’t going to end well... fuck, fuck, fuck. Jade wasn’t even in Skyfall right now, not that Garrett would ever do that. He loved Biter and his pissy little attitude problem.

“Maybe... maybe he will. Why –” Umm... fuck. “– why don’t we call Garrett and... and find out? Got a radio?”

That was all I could come up with?

“I’m not stupid, Otter!” Kerres screamed, my pet name echoing off of the high buildings. “Just...” He dug into his pocket, one hand still pointing the assault rifle at me, and tossed two pairs of handcuffs at us. They skidded along the cracked grey pavement and came to a stop right by my feet. “Put them on, PROPERLY! You fucking greywaster. You make one wrong move I swear I will kill Trig. I will fucking kill him in front of you!”

I stared at him; I wasn’t going to do that. That was the last thing I was going to do. I wasn’t going back down there. I couldn’t go back down there, not when we were both so close.

“DO IT!” Kerres screamed at the top of his lungs, and I saw tears, the desperate tears of a maniac, stream down his face.

Then behind Kerres I saw a black silhouette, and a voice I had never wanted to hear again.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Meirko boomed. “I said get them and fucking shoot them. Your screaming is going to alert every fucking radanimal out here!”

The Crimstone leader looked pissed off; Kerres was still giving everything ahead of him the death glare.

“Look at me, soldier! You might’ve been Milos’s little protégé but you will –”

In a second Kerres turned around, and before the last words spilled from Meirko’s mouth the front of his skull blew off, spraying a slurry of bone and flesh onto the empty street behind him. He fell back with a sickening thunk, a large piece of skull becoming detached and rolling to a nearby curb.

I stared, stunned and welded into place, seeing the crazed Kerres’s shoulders heave up and down as we all watched the blood start to run towards the gutter.

“Put – on – the – CUFFS!” Kerres whirled around and shrieked.

Without hesitation this time, I leaned down and picked up the handcuffs, pushing one pair into Trig’s trembling hand. Now both of ours were trembling. I could barely get the fucking cuffs over my wrists with how hard they were shaking. This kid was fucked in the head, he had lost his mind... and I knew I had no other option than to do what he said.

Then Kerres walked towards us. I put up the cuffs to show him I had done what he asked but he only poked the tip of the assault rifle into my side. “March, walk, go!”

“Where are we going?” I asked, turning around and letting him lead us. Well, this was a step up from the sewers. I assumed since he just murdered Meirko I no longer had to worry about us going back to the Crimstones.

“Outskirts of town, in the greycoast, out of this fucking town... several of those cunts are still alive down there!” Kerres yelled. He didn’t seem to be able to control his voice anymore. It was fluctuating from normal tones and then to shrieking yells like he was a radio with a busted knob.

“The fucking greycoast? Out of Skyfall?” The rest of the large island Skyfall was on was a desolate wasteland and entirely abandoned. No one was allowed to settle there, Silas’s orders.

I tried to look behind my shoulder at Kerres, if only to attempt to make a human connection with him, but he jabbed me again with the gun.

“You should be fucking thanking me, Reno,” Kerres continued to babble on. “Meirko wanted to kill you... they were going to kill you three down there. You’re too dangerous. They had been searching Moros and the north end of Cypress, but no... they haven’t checked here yet.”

He directed us down one of the main highways, further on it turned into a bridge over another highway, then sloped down until I could only see hazy grey blurs in the distance.

Skyscrapers.

If I could run to the border... or a port or something... thiens and legionary guard the port and regulate the merchants. They are always heading back and forth from the factory towns.

For once I wanted to see a legionary, my old archenemies. I never thought that could be possible.

You are in a better position, Reno. At least instead of knowing you’re going to die, you have a tiny tiny chance that you can sway Kerres.

When we were halfway over the bridge, Kerres still muttering things under his breath every once in a while, I decided to try and play nice.

“Kerres, you know if you turn us in to Garrett... and tell them it was you who shot Meirko. He won’t kill you... he’ll just be happy to have us back.”

“I don’t care about me, I want Jade. I want Jade away from that sadistic fuck,” Kerres snapped back, using this opportunity to shove the end of the gun into my back again. Beside me the staggering and whimpering Trig gave a jolt forward; I assumed Kerres had jabbed him too.

“But... Jade isn’t even in Skyfall, he’s somewhere in the greywastes,” I said calmly. I opened my mouth next to tell him that perhaps he should let Jade go, but then I realized I was fucking retarded. So I pulled a card out even I didn’t know was hidden.

“The guy I loved ended up hooking up with some little blond pixie kid – they’re like madly in love now.”

“Reaver?” Kerres’s tone dropped down to normal.

I nodded. “I fucking love that guy with every ounce of me. We grew up together, and I know him better than anyone else. I knew him enough to believe he wasn’t capable of loving anyone, even if I was so in love with him.” I sighed, wishing all of this was just manipulation, but I had never been able to say it out loud. “Then this new kid comes to town, and the next thing you know Reaver goes all weird and starts to follow him.”

I looked around and saw the city start to thin out, buildings more spaced apart and more areas that seemed to be old parking lots or houses that had been torn down a long time ago. “And the next thing I knew... they were in love, and good ol’ Reno was left being the third wheel.”

Kerres was silent for a moment, and our footsteps and exhausted breathing were the only things audible around me. I tried to count my steps, just as something to distract my mind from having a gun in my back.

“I took care of Jade since he was nine. We were inseparable. That is until he tried to rob a chimera mansion,” Kerres responded, before telling me to turn right at an empty intersection.

“Elish rescued him apparently, and got Jade in his sights. Jade was gone and when I got him back... he wasn’t the same, Elish had already brainwashed him.”

Brainwashed him? Jade didn’t seem brainwashed or robotic at all, quite the opposite. I wonder if this guy was as in denial as he was crazy.

“Looks like we both got burned by our chimera lovers, eh? They’re a different type of breed those ones. Even Trig is like us right?” I nudged the kid, trying to get him to say something so he could form his own bond with Kerres. It could end up saving our lives.

“Ares will come for me,” the boy responded quietly.

“HE – IS – NOT – COMING – FOR – YOU!”

I jumped a mile high as Kerres screamed at the top of his lungs, before he struck the kid in the back with the tip of his gun. Trig cried out and grabbed his back. I steadied him with my hand.

“No... no, no one’s coming for us,” I said quickly and calmly. “Whatever you... want to do, you can do.” I squeezed Trigs shoulder to try and keep him quiet. I didn’t trust this kid to know what he should be saying to this whack job. He could connect with him in a different way.

“No, Jade will come... Elish will bring Jade,” Kerres said quickly. “I’ll be able to see him, and not just on the TV. If he sees me... he’ll remember how great it used to be between us.”

“Kerres...” I said slowly. “If you let me call Gar-”

Trig screamed as a crack of gunfire exploded just a foot away from my ears. I screamed too out of instinct, and whirled around to see what he had hit,
who
he had hit.

I looked down.

Blood... lots of blood, coming from my upper leg. I stumbled back and with that it gave out and spilled me onto the pavement.

Then the pain came rushing to me, ripping up my leg and spine and pooling in my head like an exploded volcano. I clenched my leg and screamed, blood spilling through my fingers. Trig beside me, screaming.

Always blood, always screaming.

Chapter 22

Reaver

We stayed around the small fire we lit in the living room, warming our hands as the winter air chilled our backs. Day two of hiding inside of this shanty town, seeing the helicopters and planes hover around Kreig.

But they had not come here yet, we were lucky in that sense. In all directions there were small ruins of towns where we could’ve been hiding. So hopefully they had a lot of places to look before their eyes turned to this location.

I stayed close to Killian, making sure there was always a spread of red coals near him so he could get the most heat. Out of all of us he was the thinnest, especially since Perish had died and come back. He looked almost normal now.