by Quil Carter
We walked through a large steel double door, and, by the horrible stink that hit our noses, I knew we were entering the pit.
I smirked as I heard Killian gag. I could sympathize, I had been in the same position when I first entered the pit, but it still made me laugh inside. The pit smelled like hell. The rats were not clean people, that’s why we called them rats. They were worse than ravers; heck, they were worse than most of the wild animals we had in the greywastes. Nothing but smelly, loud, crazed beasts, only good for food.
The other thing that I knew hit Killian just as much as the smell was the noise. As soon as we walked across the steel grating, the loud screams and cries of the rats could be heard.
Killian, who was a few paces ahead of me, stopped for a moment to look down from the railing to the pit below. I looked too, just so I could see it through Killian’s eyes.
I heard him whisper wow. The pit wasn’t lit very well, which was never a problem for me; I was gifted with good night vision and could make out the mass of moving figures perfectly.
How many were down there? I wasn’t sure. They were dark-skinned from the radiation so they mixed in with the darkness below. Probably hundreds though, and those were the ones that were ready for slaughter. On another floor the breeding ones were kept separate, and it was the same with the ones in quarantine. Disease prevention was always a top priority in the Slaught House; it had to be or we would all go the way of Killian’s parents, and countless others before them.
I glanced at Killian from the corner of my eye. He was still looking at the moving mass. It wasn’t often I was this close to Killian, when I watched over him I kept my distance. I liked it though, I don’t know why, but I did.
What he was doing here was another question. Last I had seen he was walking back to his house, and I thought that was where he was going to stay. I guess it was no surprise that he decided to do the complete opposite, just like he was always sneaking out of the block to read those stupid books. Keeping an eye on him was like trying to pin a fly in midair.
“Hey, come on you two,” Greyson called. Killian jumped slightly, then immediately started to walk quickly towards the end of the grate walkway. I followed behind him, still trying to figure out this odd behaviour.
It was almost like he was following me this time.
I shook it off and pressed on, walking through another set of doors to where several men and women were standing with two rats, both of whom were hog tied and whimpering in large plastic boxes. Beside them, in another plastic container, the night’s meat rations were wrapped in brown paper, waiting to be distributed throughout the community. The deacons were fed live food; it saved on the time it took to butcher them since they didn’t give a shit anyway. Our block residents, though, were given a ration of butchered meat every week for their families.
“Looks good, did everyone in the building secure their rations?” Greyson asked. He motioned me over and I started dragging one of the boxes over to the loading ramp.
“Yes, and we already punched their ration cards as well,” one of the women said with a nod.
Gary started helping me push the plastic container over to the ramp, and behind him I could hear Greyson and Killian start to push the other one. We had a special trolley we were supposed to use for loading, but with an extra set of hands here to help us; it was just as easy dragging everything to the truck.
The truck rumbled to life; it backfired and grumbled, worn out from many years of service and shoddy repairs. It was as old as the end times itself, and had survived where many trucks and cars had not. I had heard that this truck, plus all the other ones we were able to use, were under cover when the Fallocaust happened, shielded from the elements and from the war ravaged people before the sestic radiation killed them. I suppose that’s all that saved them from becoming rusted wrecks like the ones outside.
As soon as we got the container into the truck bed, I gave it a shove with my foot and watched it skid to the back, making sure my mouth was closed so I didn’t have to inhale too much of the rat’s dirty, piss-smelling body. Even hosed-off and disinfected they still stank. I then jumped onto the roof of the truck and sat there, watching as Greyson and Killian hauled up the other container, and a couple of the butchers followed by with the last box of meat.
Killian stayed on the truck bed after the others had jumped off, and sat down on the raised wheel as Greyson slammed the tailgate, saying goodbye to Gary and the others. Killian said a very polite thank you to Gary and I nodded respectfully towards the group. A few moments later the truck gave a jerk, and started rumbling towards the north gate.
I felt a bit more comfortable now that I was sitting on top of the roof of the truck. Killian was below me, watching the block go by as we drove on. I wondered to myself if this had been the first time he had ever been in a truck before. He did have a white knuckle grip on the side of the truck so it very well could have been.
He looked calm enough, though I could barely see his face from the angle he was at. All I could see was the back of his head, his blond hair blowing in the breeze, and his skin pale white as the cold wind blasted it.
He must have tossed his books and jacket off to the side of the road when he decided to follow us, I thought to myself. What a dummy.
I smiled as I thought it though; I was intrigued that this boy has decided to follow me; it made me wonder if he liked it when I followed him. Although, perhaps he was just indifferent to the fact that I was always trailing him. I knew one day I had to make the step and actually talk to him, but not today.
The truck screeched to a halt, and as Greyson turned off the engine, I quickly jumped down from the roof onto the cobblestoned street. Greyson circled to the back of the truck, and waited as Leo appeared behind us, dragging the ramp with him.
“Oh, look at you, decided to learn how to feed the mutts?” Leo said to Killian. Killian smiled sheepishly, and started helping Greyson to unload the containers.
“Yeah,” he said quietly with a small timid shrug of his shoulders. “Didn’t have anything better to do.”
Leo laughed. “Sure, that’s the reason,” he said and winked at Killian. I immediately felt my face go a bit hot, knowing exactly what he meant by that. I quickly helped unload the rats and did my best to avoid any eye-contact with either Killian or Leo.
After a bit of moving and swearing, we loaded the containers onto the trolley and moved them up the steep ramp leading to the top of the deacon pen. By this time the rats had started panicking, and though they were muffled, they still screamed and cried as we dumped them out of their containers.
Leo had stayed behind to distribute the meat from this week’s rations, and was nice enough to set some aside for me and Killian. The three of us were now on top of the concrete area of the gate, looking down at the deacons.
The beasts’ heads would come up to your chest in height if you actually got a chance to compare their size to yours. They were mostly grey in colour, though a few of them were lighter, and a few black, all with sporadic patches of hair on their bodies. All the radiated animals had trouble keeping their fur; they were mostly covered in scabs and thick scars from scratching their irritated and irradiated skin. I had never seen any animal besides the block’s cats and the crossbred deacdogs that didn’t have this problem; the radiation was fucking horrible for all the surviving creatures,
“Well, Killian,” Greyson said with an encouraging smile. “I’ll open the gate to let the deacons into the feeding pen; your job is to remove the wooden barrier and kick the rats into the pen. Reaver can watch you.”
“Seems… simple enough,” the boy said slowly but he sounded unsure. I smiled. I liked hearing how motivated he was to learn shit around here finally – I had thought he was going to be a useless book-head forever.
I watched carefully as Killian removed the wooden plank that blocked off the gaping hole in the concrete barrier. There was a four foot high barrier of medians and pavement slabs that topped off all the co
ncrete walls of Aras. It kept the brats from falling into the deacons’ territory and it made a perfect rest for when you had to snipe someone. It also made a good shield.
Killian grabbed one of the binds of the first rat and shoved him towards the hole. The rat started screaming of course, jabbering in his gibberish language. He was blindfolded, gagged, and bound, but his ears still worked and I knew he could hear the dogs below him.
Killian dropped him right by the hole in the wall, and started to savagely shove him through the hole with his foot. He wasn’t doing a half-bad job of it either.
We were all used to dealing with the sub-humans, but some people had more trouble feeding the deacons than others. The rats still resembled us in some ways, and it did make some people uncomfortable.
I watched as the rat dropped to the ground with a sickening thunk, and as he moaned and twisted around I could hear the rusty screech of the gate open.
As the deacons charged towards the rat, the other one, a female, dropped on top of him.
The deacons made short work of them. They barely had time enough to piss themselves before the whole pack descended like flies on honey.
In a flash the rats were dismembered and each dog that had gotten a limb had run out of the feeding pen back into their main territory. The others that remained were chewing on the rest of the carcasses, snarling and snapping at each other.
I heard Killian shudder. From the corner of my eye I could see him looking away from the carnage. I kept watching; I found it entertaining for some reason. Yes, I know I’m sick in the head, but I had seen countless people and animals being torn apart and it didn’t bother me like it did some people. I don’t remember a time when it did. I’m sure Greyson and Leo probably have memories of me being a blood-soaked two-year-old laughing at the rats’ throats being ripped out.
I still laugh at that.
“Thanks for the help, Reaver,” Greyson said behind me.
I looked up from the feeding pen and started following him down the ramp to the main road. By this time the people of Aras had started to gather around the truck, waiting to get their meat handouts. I didn’t like being around a lot of people so I grabbed my ration of meat and started heading down the road to my house.
Once again, my senses honed on Killian. A part of me wanted to run up to him and ask him what he thought of his first time feeding the deacons, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I just watched him from a distance, like I had been doing for quite a while now.
My thoughts travelled though, and I started thinking about the merchants that would be coming into Aras sometime tomorrow. I didn’t know exactly from which direction they would be coming, but it would either have to be from the south or the west. I couldn’t see it being the south though; most of the time only mercenaries dared to venture down the south road. It was the road that led directly through the factories and labs that everyone stayed away from like it was a plague.
As I walked on, trailing behind Killian, I noticed that I was scowling. Funny how the thoughts in your head can so easily translate themselves into your physical self. I was scowling because the factories and labs in the south greywastes reminded me of what went on in those places. Although many saw the factories as evil, I didn’t share that opinion. They fed us, and saved a lot of people the mess of having to butcher for themselves. Especially smaller groups, ones too small to have their own stock.
In my block we butchered rats ourselves, but in other areas of the greywastes the factories processed the rats for the consumer. They processed and canned the meat through the king’s brand Dek’ko, a company which distributed a lot of greywaste conveniences. They processed, bred, and captured rats, and had many different products, ranging from regular meat, to soups, all the way to a delicacy called fois ras, which tasted good, but the process used in making it would make a normal man’s stomach turn.
That wasn’t the reason for my scowling though. The reason I could feel my hands clench was because of the laboratories, and the laboratories reminded me of the king.
What I knew of King Silas was only what I had been told. I had never seen him, heck, I’d never so much as seen a picture of the asshole, but I knew what he was about, I knew he ran the greywastes.
He controlled the greywastes economically, because he was the only person with the means of mass production, and he also controlled the wasteland by sheer force. He had a large army under his belt, and countless thousands of loyal legion soldiers.
The greywastes and beyond were vast though. I didn’t know how big, mostly because I didn’t care, but what I did know was that it was huge. He kept us segregated in three groups. Rats, who were dark-skinned from the radiation, dirty sub-humans that we farmed as food. Ravers, who looked more like us, but had never been chipped or, if they had been, had lost them, so the radiation had driven them crazy to the point where they were dangerous and usually shot on sight. Then there was the arians, the normal human race.
Arians were well, all of us, the sane ones. We were the ones that King Silas had decided to leave alive when he took over the greywastes. We were supposedly his people, and his property. When an arian baby was born, he or she was implanted with a small tube-like thing called a Geigerchip. It contained a substance that filtered out the radiation; more advanced versions even gave you vitamin supplements.
In order to keep track of us, every few years the king sent out mercers to take the census. They came in the south direction, because, of course, they didn’t have to worry about the labs because they were probably buddies with the Skytech scientists operating them.
The mercer came heavily guarded by scum-sucking legion soldiers, briefcases in tow, checking up on every cluster of arians they could find. The last time they came, a couple years ago, was before Killian and his parents had come here. It was the first time I was present during one of these things; usually Greyson and Leo made me leave for a few days. They didn’t like me around the Legion, for obvious reasons, mostly because I enjoyed sniping them for fun.
It was my first encounter with anyone close to King Silas, and it was the day I realized that there was some authority in this vast greywastes and that it did indeed affect my life. I guess before the mercer came I had been pretty well shielded from that sort of thing. I had always known the king existed – we liked blaming him for things and I had heard stories about him from Skyfall refugees. But I had never had anyone under his influence in my life, or my territory besides seeing the occasional soldier.
I followed Killian from a distance as he made his way to the house he now lived alone in. He was half a block up from me, on a quiet cul-de-sac about five minutes away. It was a big three bedroom two-storey house that was much too big for him to stay in alone, but he seemed to want to remain there. Memories and all that, I guess. Though Leo had told me the place had been a horror house before his parents had been taken to quarantine. Maggots and body fluid everywhere. The kid had been trying to take care of them himself. We were all shocked he hadn’t ended up dead with them.
I watched as he went inside, and listened to make sure he locked the door behind him. My mind started to wander, like it most often did. As I sat myself down on top of an abandoned car a few feet from Killian’s house, I remembered back to that day two years ago. The day I first encountered the mercer. The day of the census.
It’s a long story, but it was an important moment in my life. Part of me wished I could be inside telling the story to Killian over a beer or something, but I shrugged off that idea as quickly as it popped into my head. One day maybe, but for now… I was comfortable lurking in the shadows.
I leaned back against the top of the abandoned car, and lit myself another quil. I inhaled deeply, and as I looked up at the clouded sky, night was starting to fall, but I felt compelled to stay outside of Killian’s house for a little while longer.
I inhaled again, and with the warmth of the opiates seeping into my veins, I slipped into my own head.
Chapter 3
Reav
er
Two Years Previous
The ever present background music that played throughout most of the populated parts of Aras cut out with a crackle and was replaced with static. I had been napping against a stack of supply crates on top of a shed when the disruptive pop jolted me out of my light sleep. I opened my eyes for a few moments to gauge my surroundings, and once I judged that there was no imminent harm to myself, closed my eyes again, just as Greyson’s voice crackled in the speakers.
“Block meeting, attendance mandatory.” Greyson’s deep voice could be heard. “Five minutes to gather. Once again. Block meeting, attendance mandatory, five minutes. That is all.”
I stretched a bit and decided that it was pointless to try and get back to sleep. The square was going to be full of residents in a few moments and I had enough trouble sleeping under normal circumstances.
I opened my eyes and stretched with a yawn, feeling my bones crack and pop. When I was limbered up I rose and shifted a few crates around to make myself a crate throne, before I sat on top and waited for the people to gather.
The square was nothing special. It was a cleared area in the center of town, with shops and alleyways surrounding it. The shops looked like they might have had some beauty at one point, but now had boarded up windows and doors. The paint had long since peeled away and the exposed brick was cracked and crumbling with the mortar almost completely gone.
All the brick houses and shops were like this, but they were still one of the more favourable shelters. The brick may have been ugly but it was durable, and kept the weather from coming indoors. Most of the residents lived in brick houses, or communally in a modified, solid metal factory, or in one of the two livable apartment buildings we had in Aras.
