The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (91 page)

I whimpered and closed my eyes, trying to pretend I wasn’t here. That I wasn’t alone in this room with a dying fire, hundreds of miles from Aras, a town that was no longer my home, and a hundred more from my boyfriend.

I picked up Reaver’s gun and ran my finger up and down the barrel, my biggest connection to him.

I glanced over at Jade’s briefcase. The fact that it had been left behind in the closet Jade had been using a testament to how quickly he wanted to get away from Perish. That suitcase was to Jade what Reaver’s gun was to me. A physical reminder of the men we were missing.

Suddenly an ear-piercing scream cut the tranquil night and my solemn mood. I shot up to my feet, quickly belting Reaver’s gun onto my holder and went to run outside.

I almost crashed right into Perish running in.

“Follow me, follow me... come, come you must come now!” Perish was breathless, his hyper voice several octaves higher than usual, and his left hand holding the iron poker we used to bar the slave room. I watched his eyes sweep the room before he quickly grabbed our satchels. “Now. NOW!”

“What’s going on? Where’s Jade?” I demanded, though the energy Perish brought in the room immediately had me grabbing the rest of our stuff. “What was that scream?” It wasn’t Jade’s tone of voice, it sounded like...

“Ravers are coming.” Perish grabbed the belt of my gun holder and pulled me out of the room we had been staying in. “We’re going to the roof. I know an easy way up. Come!”

I followed him, passing Tabbit as he raced through the debris strewn hallway we were sprinting down. He didn’t even look at us.

I glanced behind me. Perish took me into their old public bathrooms and to my surprise I could see a shelf of snow that had collected in the far corner. I looked up and saw snowflakes falling through a gap in the roof.

“Climb!” Perish pushed me forward. He closed the door behind us.

“What about Jade? And Deekoi?” I dug my boots into the mound of snow and started to scale it towards the opening in the roof.

“He has trees and the dog can outrun them easily. Just you, we need to make sure you’re okay. Hurry!” Perish started to climb right behind me. I managed to pull myself through the collapsed concrete and wiggle my body between two thick metal beams. Snowflakes were landing on my face now, immediately melting under my heated skin.

Then another scream broke the night; this one filling me with a new sense of urgency. It was closer, closer than the last one. A high-pitched and manic shriek, one of a radiation-crazed subhuman that was smelling the sweet aroma of human flesh.

I pulled myself onto the roof and took a cautious step back as Perish followed behind me. I drew my gun and started looking around the courtyard and forest.

Immediately I saw the slavers, shouting orders at each other. Chomper and Hopper were running down the winding snow-covered road, and Tabbit and Churro were talking loudly to them as they did. Everyone had their guns out and Churro was holding a lit torch out onto the snowy night.

They looked like villagers from the ancient times, wielding torches and pitchforks to hunt down some great beast. Gathering together for strength in numbers to seek out and destroy the monsters in the woods. Monsters that were shrouded in the heavy snowfall around us; nothing but crazed shadows who only gave away their shapes once it was too late.

To make it rain little red rubies onto the ground, white and red, the grey buried underneath the snow. I wondered in a mind too used to morbid thoughts just what blood-soaked snow we would leave behind for the next traveller.

“Get down,” Perish whispered behind me. He pushed on my shoulders and I fell to my knees. The scientist wrapped an arm around me and pushed Reaver’s gun into my hand. “Do not let them know we’re up here, the roof is too fragile to hold all of them and we’ll come crashing to the lobby.”

I stared at the slavers. Churro was passing around torches. “We need to find Jade.”

But before he could answer back there was another scream and as soon as the last shrill octave got swallowed up into the winter air another one took its place.

And another.

And another.

Then I saw them. A flicker of movement where the road bent out of sight, but no sooner did I focus my eyes on the brown creature did three more appear beside it.

My heart gave a panicked jolt but Perish held me to him. “Shh... not a word.”

Then something happened. I could see the ravers looking behind them in their own desperation. I couldn’t see them well but from their own jerking movements and backwards glances I could tell they were upset over something. They were looking behind them only to start running again. All of them trudging down the almost two feet of snow on bare feet so light they could almost walk on top of it.

Then another scream from the raver in the front of the pack. I saw his mouth open in a gaping yawn and with that he clamped his hands over his ears. He clawed at his ears so hard I could see his blood start to ooze down the side of his head.

I stared at him curiously as he shook his body... then started to run.

And they followed him, all of them.

Fucking dozens of them.

“Hopper!” Tabbit yelled.

“Get into the fucking slave pen. It’s secure... bar the fucking door! NOW!” Hopper’s voice was shrill and broken with unimaginable panic. The slaver looked behind him as the ravers all started to run down the road, screaming and clawing their heads like they were in physical pain. All of them were running as fast as they could, with snow being kicked up around them. They were in a frenzy, driven crazy by a source I didn’t understand.

It was like they were being... were being herded.

“Churro!” Hopper screamed. “Quick!”

My eyes flicked to Hopper. He disappeared into the lobby and I heard a door slam.

Then Chomper’s voice. “This door won’t shut properly, the fire poker’s gone. Hop... we need to make a break for the hotel. I can’t find the... we can’t...”

“They’re right behind us!”

Perish’s hot breath was on the tape of my neck. He was mumbling reassurances to me but all I could do was switch between the manic voices of the slavers and the ravers running down the hill. Getting closer and closer to the lobby clawing their heads, leaving gouges so deep I could see bone. They were ripping their own ears off.

Why?

Then I saw a new shadow.

I shifted away from Perish and rose to my feet; the slavers now all inside of the lobby. I took a step to get a closer look as I saw a silhouette dressed in black walk along the bend in the road. He was walking in such a smooth way it was like he was treading on pavement.

It was Jade.

In the white backdrop I could see his face perfectly. Jade’s yellow eyes reflecting like a beast’s in the full moon above us. He was walking down the road, a demonic grin on his face and blood running down his nose and eyes.

“Jade!” I screamed. Perish grabbed me and pushed me back into his arms. I struggled, a new, fresh panic coursing through me like lightning. “Jade! He’s... he’s controlling the ravers. How?” I demanded.

Perish clutched me close to him. “The whistle we know, maybe? Or maybe he’s tapping into some new tricks he has. He’s luring them towards us. Jade’s trying to kill us, Killian. I told you. I warned you.”

Another shadowed figure appeared beside Jade, it was my dog; a plume of vapor rising from his mouth as he breathed in and out. He stood beside Jade, their matching yellow eyes watching the group of ravers run down the final bend of the road; only the parking lot and courtyard now separating them and us.

Jade looked down at the deacdog. The Shadow Killer mouthed something to Deek and the dog took off running. Closing the distance between the ravers and him. Then to drive the radiation-crazed creatures into further frenzy the dog started to snap and growl at them, luring them closer and closer to the lobby.

Then the first gunshot of the night rang. I saw a raver, climbing over the concrete fence that surrounded the fountain; fall to the ground in a mosaic of blood. Soon a second one followed, and a third.

Jade then ran, as he ran down the road I could see his lips slightly pursed as he made the high-pitched noise that only chimera hearing could pick up. He sped, still stepping lightly on top of the snow, down the ridge, before branching off to the left to help heard the ravers.

I wanted to see, I wanted to fucking help the slavers, but whenever I jerked my body away from Perish he held me tight to him, unwilling to even give me an inch.

I watched as Jade ran out of sight, the crazed ravers screaming and running in front of him.

Then the ravers reached the slavers.

I muffled a cry of despair as I heard Tabbit scream. He was shouting at the slaves to get back. Why weren’t they in the slaves’ quarters? Why couldn’t they bar the door? Every evening they used a fire poker to slip between the two...

I looked down-

- and saw the metal rod I had seen Perish bring up with him. It wasn’t a metal bar at all. It was the fire poker.

What... what was going on?

A desperate scream.... a hysterical scream. I closed my eyes and clamped my teeth down on my lip as the sensory scrambling shrieks of dozens of ravers and terrified slavers filled the winter air, breaking through the peaceful milieu that a snowy night brought.

Then gunshots, so many gunshots.

Unable to stand it anymore I broke away from Perish’s grasp and crawled my way over to the edge of the roof, near where the hole Perish had found had been. I held the M16 to my chest and shifted over to see if I could help.

“Killian!” Perish said angrily. He tried to grab me but I kicked him. He might not care but Hopper and the others had been nice to us. If I could help shoot the ravers I would. I wasn’t a coward and I would prove it.

The screams were constant, the panic lighting flares of electricity that clung to the atmosphere. I got to the hole in the roof and looked down. “Hopper! Hopper up here. Up –”

I gasped in surprise as Perish grabbed me again, this time more forceful. I screamed and tried to bite down on his hand as he dragged me back to the center of the roof. His grip was hard and the anger clear by his forceful movements.

“Killian? The boy’s on the roof!” Hopper was outside... another several gunshots sang in the air, followed by the screeching of injured ravers. In my line of sight I saw three of the crazed subhumans, one of them dragging a dead Tabbit by the leg as the other two ripped large chunks of flesh away from the soft areas of his stomach.

I froze; the sight temporarily robbing me of my senses. I gaped, my mouth dropping open in shock as they pulled out his entrails. Chewing on them as their necks jerked back and forth like they were rubber bands, digging fingers into his stomach and widening the hole.

Like Cholt the mercenary.

Transfixed I stared. Every sound around me becoming lost in my own stunned stupor, my eyes only saw the carnage that being in the center of the roof had saved me from.

There was movement in the gap in the roof behind me and once Perish saw it he temporarily let me go.

I rose to my feet and walked to the edge of the roof.

Tabbit’s blood had saturated the now slushy snow around him, sinking his body down into his own white and red coffin. Surrounding him were pieces of his flesh and his clothing, stuck to the white or hanging on spindly branches like flags of surrender. He was his own art project; a collage of red organs, tainted snow, and four brown worms, head down, that vibrated from excitement as they consumed his flesh.

A slave ran out, its shackles gone but the slave collar remaining. He sprinted out and into the woods; a raver followed him hunched over with a snarl rimming his lips. As the raver ran to claim him another slave sprung forth and made a break for the road. Two ravers closed in on that one.

They went down quickly and with the maddening shriek, the desperate tenor that only showed itself during the most grisly and painful of deaths. I saw the blood start to dye the snow.

Then the black figure, distorted from the falling flakes. Still frozen in shock I watched Jade casually walk past the ravers who had just taken down the slave. His walk an assured saunter like he was on a Sunday stroll.

Jade brought a cigarette up to his lips and kept it in there as he inhaled before he started sprinting towards the lobby. Deek behind him, the dog’s hackles raised and his muzzle drenched in blood.

The shadow moved like a cat. With a stealth unheard of, especially in two feet of snow, he grabbed onto the trunk of a black tree and started clawing his way up. His claw rings on his fingers and the canine teeth he had implanted glinting in the moonlight.

I could hear Perish behind me but I didn’t move; my eyes were focused on Jade.

The chimera cicaro climbed up until he was even level with the lobby roof. Then, without effort or even a glance to see where he was going, he jumped and drew himself onto the roof and stood.

Immediately he turned his back to me and gazed out onto the madness he had created. Gazed out and beheld the bodies that littered the snowy forest, the red stains like blemishes on porcelain skin, and the infected subhumans he could now control.