The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (48 page)

Like animals the two of them gave up on the sharp rocks and started to bite down on Deadward’s arm and the soft skin of his side. I watched, unable to look away, or just too sick in the head to, as they devoured him like ravers. Desperately trying to get as much flesh into their mouths as they could, though they didn’t swallow it. With the sense that only a starving greywaster could have they ripped off chunks of the dead slave and pocketed them in their shirt and jeans; red seeped through the cloth and denim.

“That will be you next.” I jumped as Perish hissed this into my ear, before laying a kiss on my neck. I cringed and he chuckled before kissing me again. “What are you going to do to defend yourself? Nothing? They’re going to eat you, Killian, they already have it all planned out. They’re starving and desperate and you are such a delicious little thing.”

“I know,” I whispered dully back. Danny’s face jerked up and in his mouth I saw Deadward’s cheek. He picked it out of his mouth and stuffed it into his bulging pockets.

“I’ve seen it happen; I’ve seen ravers eat people, a lot of people…” I said. I turned and stared in the direction we were walking.

A single road leading though mounds of hardened metal, some sticking out a storey into the air. They rose up from the ash like the living dead rose out of graves, no longer the thing they once were, just a monster unrecognisable under the weight of both time and the death.

This had been a city once, but just once. I looked past the wavy, creased metal and spotted a scorched concrete barrier, holding nothing back now but more dirt and metal.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

“Mica Creek,” Perish replied beside me. “Further north is a place that was once called Jasper. If we kept walking in this direction we would reach Edmonton. We never renamed it since, like the rest of the world, it is uninhabitable. One day the radiation will make it livable, in about four hundred years unless another Fallocaust happens and the slaves don’t kill you.”

I shifted around uncomfortable; I clutched the assault rifle to my chest and tried not to whimper. I might not have tears left, the air seemed to suck all the liquid from my body, but I felt no urge to cry anymore. I think I was done with the crying; I was done feeling weak and helpless.

“I won’t let them hurt me,” I said quietly just as Danny was removing Deadward’s eyes, pinching each ocular between his fingers before he popped them into his mouth. Immediately Teejay went for the other one but Danny was quicker.

“Hey!” Teejay said loudly. “Leave it for me!”

Danny didn’t answer; he put the eye in his mouth and I heard a pop as he bit down on it. Teejay swore at him and gave him a rough push. I looked to Perish to see if he was going to do anything but he only watched. Firm in stance and poise, the scientist didn’t move an inch.

Danny pushed him back with an angry bellow before the two of them went tumbling to the ground; the dead, chewed on body underneath them. Then they started hitting each other with weak punches.

Perish finally let out an annoyed breath and stalked over to them. He leaned down and picked up Teejay who was on top of Danny and yanked him back. Danny jumped to his feet.

Then something happened, something I didn’t see coming. In an instant Danny picked up a rock beside him and slammed it into the side of Perish’s head. Teejay quickly grabbed Perish’s arms and held them back.

“Killian, shoot him!” Teejay suddenly screamed. I stared at the two of them in shock, my mouth open and my body welded to the ground. I couldn’t move.

Perish’s eyes were glazed over, a strip of red running down the side of his head. He couldn’t keep his weight; he couldn’t move and made no effort to move.

“Killian, SHOOT HIM!” Danny yelled, his voice breaking under the desperation. “Fuck kid, shoot him! SHOOT HIM!”

Shoot him? I looked down at the assault rifle Perish had given me and back to Danny. I was holding a gun in my hands. This meant something, this meant I could kill the people who’ve been hurting me.

The person who… who had been hurting me?

“KILLIAN!”

“I know you… you’re sick, but trust me. Shoot him, Killian.”

“Killian, SHOOT HIM!”

I had the gun. I had the power. I had a way of protecting myself. Finally I could be in control; I could make the rules… I had the gun, I had the gun.

A low thunder resonated through my brain. A roaring that took with it all the abilities I had inside of myself to sort through my own reasonings. It was like an earthquake, a concussion of energy that took no survivors and cared little for who was innocent and who wasn’t. All this roaring wanted was for me to take that control back, to stop being someone else’s victim.

To stop letting other men hurt me; I was so tired of being hurt, of being bullied, terrorized.

I was tired of being threatened with cannibalism, rape, and murder.

I-I think I was just tired.

Of everything.

That was the only way I could justify what I did next.

Danny, tired of my hesitation or maybe he saw that Perish was starting to thrash, got up and started advancing on me. His arm was outstretched to take my gun away; outstretched to snatch away the only control I had.

I saw him and my mind jammed, immediately my instincts kicked in and I saw him as nothing but another man sent to hurt me, sent to manipulate and control me. I saw him as just like the others, another asshole to beat me down for his own amusement.

I pulled the trigger.

Danny got knocked backwards, a plume of ash bursting from his jacket. He was thrown off of his feet as the crack of the gun ripped through the irradiated air and, with a hard thunk, he landed on the ground.

Before he could finish his scream I shot Teejay too, and like his friend he fell dead to the ground.

I stared at the now three dead and dying slaves. Perish on his knees with his hand on the side of his head. I didn’t know what to do, or what I had just done. All that my damaged brain was letting me do was stare dumbfounded at the scene in front of me.

Pockets full of slave meat. Danny’s chest sending a light fountain of blood up in the air as his heart started to die. I had shot him in the heart.

How had I shot Teejay?

I walked over and poked him with my gun. I saw I had gotten him in the chest right below his neck.

“You saved us,” Perish said, before coughing into his hand. He looked up at me, his blue eyes looked like they could smile. “Good job, Killian. Okay, give me the gun now.”

Thoughts passed through my mind, driven in a black car with tinted windows. They were nefarious and dark thoughts, thoughts that included everything from rape to torture, cannibalism and murder. I stared at Perish as he slowly rose to his feet, the gun still in my hands.

I could do a lot to him. I had the gun, I had the power.

Perish kept smiling and held out his hand. I took a small step back and in my mind I saw him dead. I saw my hand with the knife, cutting through his windpipe, sawing through his tendons and finally his spine, until his head came off of his body. The thick coppery smell of blood sinking into the room like the radiation sunk into my bones.

I had killed him before. I had overpowered him once.

“The lab isn’t far… let’s get warm, have some good food, and I’ll read you Cat Wings. Remember Cat Wings, sweety? I saw you throw that book on the street so long ago.” Perish’s voice jumped an octave.

In a slow movement he reached into his bag. I craned my head, remembering briefly that book from a time I could no longer recall.

Cat Wings… someone had read that to me but his image was lost. I knew he was important but my brain was destroyed. What had once been a tightly knitted organization of wires had been clipped and snipped by pliers. Everything was all frayed now.

“Want to see? The colours are so nice; I bet the colours match your eyes.” I leaned forward some more to see the book. Maybe I would remember more things if –

Suddenly Perish grabbed me and yanked the assault rifle out of my hands. I screamed at him and tried to take it back.

“No, Killian!” Perish barked putting the assault rifle on the holder behind his back. “You’re too unstable; you’ll hurt yourself. Sweety, calm down, it’s okay. The slaves are dead and they won’t hurt you anymore.”

“No!” I cried. Perish grabbed my hands and held them as I struggled. I had no strength left in me so I stopped. “I need something. P-people, everyone, everyone wants to hurt me.”

Perish stared at me and I saw sympathy on his face. He shook his head and squeezed my hands before letting them go. “We’re almost at the lab, love. It’s almost all over, and you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

“No, no, no,” I said even though I made no move to get the gun back from him. “Everyone wants something from me, even if it’s just to see me suffer.”

Oddly Perish paused for a moment. His icy blue eyes, still soft, looked at me, and a sad smile appeared on his face.

“I understand…” he said slowly and put a hand on my back. He started walking me in the direction we had been heading. “I do, sweety, and it’s okay. It will all be over soon. I promise, I’m sorry this has been so hard on you but I had to do it. Sky… Sky and I had to do it.”

“Why?” I croaked. I looked behind me, seeing the three dead slavers start to get enveloped in the haze of the plaguelands.

I heard a jingle of keys and a shifting of the collar I had around my neck. A moment later I heard a click and the collar fall to the ground, something that had caused me so much anxiety now no longer a part of my life. Just like the slaves they come out as quickly as they had come in.

“Because you saw how much I was suffering once, and you loved me enough to put me out of my misery. I’m going to show you the same love, Killian. I am going to make it so you never have to worry again, you never have to be scared of men mistreating you,” Perish whispered. I felt his lips press against my cheek. “I will never hurt you again either. Sky isn’t going to hurt you anymore. His memories got what they wanted.”

Sky? He called me Silas at night...

There was no live wire in my brain sending off alarm signals; the alarms had been silenced. I had nothing left inside of me, just that fleeting moment of power I had tasted when I held that assault rifle. The taste felt bitter in my mouth now, like it had purposely come forth just to tease me.

I had always been the victim and it looked like I was always going to be the victim. That was who I was born to be. Though that fact rested awkwardly inside of me, and when I tried to swallow it down it got stuck like it was covered in barbs. Perhaps even though my mind had resolved itself to such, there was a piece of me that was still fighting.

I didn’t know why I would bother fighting. Look at the world around us; look at the scorched terrain, the grey ash and the endless sea of blood and tears. The human race had stopped fighting a long time ago, like me they were just walking dead, waiting for the inevitable. The hard facts of living in the Fallocaust were that, chances are, the most useful you would ever be was giving someone else a good meal.

Or a good fuck.

Or maybe just a laugh.

In the end we all wound up the same. Dead like the slaves behind me, free arian men who made the mistake of either breaking the law or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Can I go home, Perry?” I whispered quietly. I wrapped my arms around my jacket and looked around. “I won’t live long here, the radiation is going… is going to kill me.”

Perish took my hand and held it, together we kept walking down the scorched road.

“I told you, love, you don’t have to worry about that. See that hill?” I looked as Perish pointed towards a tall mount of grey ash, the remnants of melted beams sticking up out of it like ribs. All of these twisted sculptures were around us, each one making its own design that, in a clearer state of mind, I would have found beautiful.

They were… everywhere now. The metal made the grey ash rise like bulges. The only tell-tale sign that something bigger stirred underneath was when the ash blew away to show their distorted shapes. This must have been a big city or at least one with a lot of metal.

“We made a door in that hill,” Perish said, his voice had an air of almost child-like excitement in it. It was an odd thing to hear given the heavy situation we had been in for what seemed like months now. “We’re almost there.”

My head shot towards the hill and I paused for a moment. “We’re… here?” I looked behind me, the slaves now disappeared. They were just a memory now, one I might forget soon given my mental state.

He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’m… I’m not even nervous but Sky, Sky’s nervous and he’s getting quieter. He got what he wanted and in exchange I was able to get into that laptop. Okay, Killian, let’s go.” Perish took my hand and started pulling me off of the road towards the bulge in the ground. Not a single blade of yellowed grass, or a black tree to be seen, it was all just charred earth and ash.

“Laptop?” I asked quietly.

Perish kept pulling me. “The research I needed, yes. He owned Elish’s laptop before Elish did. Sky knew how to get through all of Elish’s security; he had installed them himself. I found out how to make you immune to radiation but in exchange... his memories wanted their own things. It was worth it though. I know you don’t think so but it was.”