The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (13 page)

Rocks sprayed up on either side of me as my right foot pivoted to steady my body. I raised my arms out and slid down the gravel with the two top ravers ahead of me. I landed cleanly and continued to run, my ears picking up the sound of disturbed gravel and more shrieking as the forty behind me leapt off of the ridge. As a last thought I reached into my pants pocket and grabbed the claw rings I had found when I woke. It looked like I was missing one but I slipped the remaining ones onto my fingers and felt the metal clink around in my pockets.

Then I saw them.

We all screamed and picked up our speed as we saw the greywasters in the distance, making camp by a large bonfire. There must have been at least half a dozen of them, all jerking their heads up at us. I could see the whites of their eyes and their mouths drop open in shock. There were men, women, children.

There were meat.

Fresh meat.

What was I letting happen to me?

Bloodthirst rushed through my body like my own brain had caught fire. My mind telling me to stop but it was speaking a language I no longer spoke or needed. Instead of heeding its distant pleas to remember myself...

I am Jade.

... it fell onto ears that had been beaten deaf weeks ago.

The group shouted at each other; a child screamed and a woman ran with it. I clenched my claw rings in my hands and pushed forward; ravers running ahead of me with their arms outstretched anticipating the first bite of living flesh.

We ran down another smaller hill, jumping over a fallen black tree. I could see their cart tracks, one of the wheels was broken. They had been stranded here, that would be their last mistake.

Big Shot got to them first. As the men and women drew their guns, shouting hysterically and stumbling to get their ammo, he jumped onto the cart and used it as a platform. He leapt off of it and landed on a middle-aged woman and pinned her down. Immediately Big Shot clawed her face with the sharpened bone that was his fingers, before sinking his teeth into her flesh.

A lightning crack of gunfire, I ignored it, fearing nothing. I saw a flicker of grey out of the corner of my eye and watched as Deek lunged at an older man holding a gun. The man got one badly aimed bullet off before he fell to the ground.

I jumped on him.

“No... no! Please!” His voice was a high octave of desperation, breaking under the weight my body pressed into his chest. I leaned down and opened my mouth and sank it into his windpipe.

Like Siris in Stadium.

Like Loni...

Shadow Killer.

I paused. I pulled away for a second, wondering who those names belonged to, and whose faces I were seeing. I saw a man in his middle twenties, with short black hair and a square face. He had purple eyes that gleamed with bloodlust... he was... surrounded by cheering –

I gasped from surprise as the man threw me off of him, but a split second later Deek was on him. The dog’s head thrashed back and forth on the man’s neck, opening him up and spilling his blood onto the grey ground.

“Deek, that was mine!” I protested. The dog only gave me a tongue-lolling look before he ate the chunk of skin. Then, forgetting the recall I had just had, I rose and turned towards another gunshot.

Another man was holding his smoking gun, two ravers dead beside him. He was looking around with wild eyes, shouting something I couldn’t understand.

I sprung up like a cat and pounced on him. This time there was no hesitation. I swung my clenched fists and shredded his back with my metal claws, splitting the thin, white skin like an overstuffed sack, spilling more blood onto the greywastes.

The smell was intoxicating. I allowed the bloodlust to overtake me and on its command I jumped onto the man’s back and sunk my teeth into the side of his neck. Then I drew my hand to his neck and opened his throat with a quick slash of my claws.

I became aware of the other ravers around me as he dropped to the ground. One... two... three, they all swarmed around the wounds I had created and started eating him as he thrashed and spasmed. I spit and snapped at a younger raver who was getting too close to my area and proceeded to eat from one of the wounds I had created.

The air was saturated with the smell of blood, blood and the distinct taste of people who had died in agony. I feasted in ecstasy and let myself be taken by the intense, electrified air around me, feeling myself more a part of this hive than I did the world itself.

I consumed the sweet meat, the carcass moving and shifting as the ravers around me devoured it. We were like a pack of lions, our faces bathed in blood and our stomachs full of food that, this morning, had been a part of a human being.

When I had eaten enough I rose and looked around at my comrades. Those who had eaten their fill had started hovering around the bonfire; their bodies coated in a wash of blood. I noticed a few of them had fresh body parts hanging from their belts and wrists now.

I looked down and decided to commemorate my decent into madness. I grabbed onto a still intact ear and pulled it off, then the next one. I held them in my hands and pulled off what remained of the man’s shirt.

I stood beside the bonfire with the others and started to make myself a necklace.

“
Kah!
” Big Shot said, praising me on my choice of jewellery. He was chewing a hole through a hand which I guessed was going to be added to his belt.

I put my hand on his head before wandering towards the cart. I tied my necklace around my neck and began to root through the supplies to see if there was anything I could use.

I found some brightly-coloured kids’ toys; I set those aside for the children or perhaps an offering to Big Shot. Then I spotted some blankets and grabbed those for my nest back in the motel.

The young man with his scalp and ears missing came into the corner of my vision. I offered him a pacifier which he took and started chewing on.

My eyes narrowed as I found a gun. I had wished on many occasions when Deek was pulling me that I had a gun to keep me safe... I might not need one now but I wanted it anyways.

I put the strap over my chest and grabbed a Ziploc of candy. Ravers probably didn’t eat candy so I shovelled that into my already stuffed stomach.

Then I found something interesting.

I unfolded what looked like a hand-drawn map. There was a line scrawled in crayon that seemed to have originated from a town called Mariano. The pink crayon led a trail from Mariano to the highway, but veered off an inch or so into the greywastes.

They must have been keeping track of their travels. I glanced around at the other locations.

The nearest one to where we were was called Velstoke. So near...

I glanced up towards the direction I thought the town was.

I walked over to Big Shot, stepping over a half-consumed raver body, one of the fucks who didn’t make it. I showed him the map and pointed to Velstoke.

“Town,” I said to him.

Big Shot stared at me, his yellow clouded eyes more alive than any of the other ravers but still only holding half the intelligence of an arian. He took the map from me and traced his finger over the pink crayon. He breathed out of his nose at it, impressed by the colour was my guess.

“
Kah
,” I said back and folded the map into my pocket. I heard a scraping noise behind me and watched the other ravers start to pick up the deads’ body parts. Swinging the half-chewed torsos, legs, and arms over their shoulders to carry back to camp. I did the same and even made Deek help; he ate more than any of us.

We made a big fire that night, and to celebrate our successful hunting mission we foraged for pointy sticks and made six new spike-heads. We replaced a few of the more green ones and tossed their skulls to some of the younger children to use as balls. They liked to kick them around or use them as bowling balls.

Evening found me finally taking off the soiled and smelly bandage I had wrapped around my head. I threw it into my garbage corner and gingerly ran my hand over the scab. It was a rough and thick clot that was itching like all hell, but I didn’t touch it. It would fall off in time. At least I knew I was out of the woods now. My arm and head were healing and my endurance was quickly advancing to where it had used to be. Or where I had assumed it had been.

I was warming my hands by the fire with the others when Big Shot walked up to me. As he often did he got down on one knee and I put my hand on his head. When he got back up I saw he was holding a belt in his hand; he thrusted it into mine.

I put it on and as I looped it through my jeans he started tying items on it. A severed hand impaled by scratchy, brown rope, a string which held an eye and an ear sewed together, and oddly, what looked like an old McDonalds toy which was bright blue and pink.

When he was finished I thanked him and admired my offering. It was putrid, it was going to smell like high heaven in the next couple days and it was grisly, but I was too deep into this now.

I might only know my name, I might not know who I was or where I had come from... but one thing was for sure.

I was a raver.

King of the Ravers.

Tonight I dreamed of that man again.

The one that always made me wake up feeling anxious and sad.

I didn’t know who he was, or why his face made me stop in my tracks. I just knew whenever I saw him I felt like running towards him like a child runs towards his parent when he had become lost.

But he wasn’t the man I had seen earlier, surrounded by the audience, or the scared one in the alley. This man was like no other. He had long blond hair that shone like the sun before it got its cloak of ashes. And purple eyes that took in every shred of light in the room. He was beautiful, tall, and held an elegance to him that seemed foreign to this world around us. An unworldly anomaly with grandeur unmatched.

This man held in him such beauty I knew he couldn’t be real, and that hurt me most of all. It was like beholding the face of a god and then being told none had ever existed. A tease almost, though you valued just being able to behold this towering personification of perfection.

Though I knew, deep down, he never existed. Because the universe would tear itself apart if such a beautiful figure had to gaze upon the wild, dirty wretch that was me. Such dignity and grace, a perfectly clean, untainted wonder... would never give something like me a second glance.

So why was he in my dreams? Why did he offer me comfort when my feral mind wanted only bloodshed and pain? I didn’t know, but my heart ached every time I saw that cold face.

Then in an instant his face disappeared. I jerked up from my blankets as the first scream forced its way into my dreams. Banishing this white figure and bringing forth the cold, dark reality that was my new home.

I stood up and made a hissing click of my tongue, an inquisitive ‘what the fuck is going on?’ noise I had learned from my ravers. I grabbed my claw rings and exited my room, watching as several ravers ran past me.

I made the noise again and one stopped. His milky eyes were narrow and his half-missing teeth snapping together.

It looked like we had trouble... or did Big Shot find another caravan nearby? Armed and ready I ran with the group as we spilled like insects outside into the parking lot.

I stopped in my tracks.

Torches, dozens of torches lit the greywastes in front of me like a thousand small omens. I hissed and lowered my head, a swell of anger shooting through me. On either side of me ravers started running out of the motel rooms, screaming and thrusting their hands forward.

There was a cracking of gunfire and the young man who I had just talked to fell to the ground with a screaming hiss.

I turned around and narrowed my eyes, before I ran back in and grabbed the gun I had salvaged. I loaded it, tucked several clips into my jacket, and ran out into the parking lot. I reached the overturned tractor trailer, and as the people with the torches started to rain the motel with bullets, I climbed up the front of the trunk and jumped onto the cargo bed. I then flattened my stomach against the cold metal and started picking them off one by one.

I was a good shot... how was I such a good shot? And my night vision. I had, of course, noticed it before, but only now that I was getting perfect head shots did I realize just how unworldly good my vision and aim was.

I was a god, I was a deity... I was their king.

Maybe I was king of the fucking world.

As they came closer and their torches bathed their faces in a bright blue glow I could see they were dressed in greywaster clothing; their hair messy but adequately groomed and their guns polished. They had ammo belts over their chests and no bags or supplies could be seen. These were townspeople and I bet they were from Velstoke.

I peered into the scope and sniped them one by one, there were a lot of them. Shouting orders and dodging my peoples’ attacks with quick movements. They knew their weaknesses, the ravers had trouble with sharp movements, especially zigzag, but whenever I saw one trying to run away or lose the ravers pursuit I sniped them in the head.

The parking lot was alive with the thunderous cracks of gunfire, and the chest-rattling shrieks and screams of the ravers. With the bonfire as a backdrop the battle raged on, soaking the parking lot in red.