Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series Book 1)

by Quil Carter

  There used to be rows and rows of houses and buildings on this side of town, but now every other house or building had either collapsed, or been cleared out altogether for farming and firewood. I had laid claim to a few of these spots for farmland, and though I was still learning, had succeeded in growing potatoes, corn, and a few other pre-Fallocaust foods.

  I had gotten a lot better at it as the years passed, though with the sun the way it was, everything grown was half the size it was supposed to be, easily spoiled, and hard as heck to grow even in small batches. I preferred to eat meat myself; it was much less of a hassle to grow. I had better success growing the weeder grass I harvested to make my quil cigarettes; now that was something worth growing.

  I walked down my street, my little piece of territory, and as I passed the tipped over cars, mailboxes, and slabs of broken pavement I was used to strolling past every day, I put a quil into my mouth. The adrenaline was starting to leave my body now; my heartbeat was slowing, and my mind was starting to flood with questions. A bit of opiate-laced grass would take care of that. I needed something to keep my mind distracted before the questions I needed to be answered, were answered.

  I turned up my driveway, and walked past the few plants I had planted in my yard. I didn’t have any of my farm stuff planted around my house, because I didn’t want it to be obvious where I was living. There were a lot of abandoned houses in this town, a thousand maybe, and the more mine blended in the better. I had only allowed myself two weeder plants in the front and a few in the back; the rest of them I had cultivated down by the river a few blocks away to the east.

  I walked right past the front door, towards the back of my house. I wasn’t stupid; unlike a lot of the people in this town, I couldn’t sleep at night knowing all that separated me from the gnashing teeth of the greywastes was a flimsy wooden door. I had stolen some bags of concrete from the workers when I first claimed this house as my own, and had built a concrete barrier in front of the door. It was now one of the strongest parts of my house. The entrance to my house was a guarded secret.

  I looked around to make sure no one following me; though I pretty much knew no one was. They were all dealing with the mercer and the soldiers. I walked towards a sheet metal shed that was right up against my house.

  I got out my set of keys and unlocked the door. I stepped inside the musty shed, closing the door behind me. It was dark in there, but I knew where everything was; an old couch, a work-bench full of tools, and an old metal shelf I had stuffed with old appliances I kept telling myself I would eventually fix.

  In the center of the shed was a metal cover I had originally harvested from the hatch of an old army tank. I had been able to jerry rig it enough that it was the perfect entrance point for my tunnel. It was drilled into the floor for extra safety too and lockable from the outside and the inside.

  I pulled open the tunnel cover with a loud creak; I had made it creak on purpose – the shed was sound-proof but I would be able to hear anyone coming in from inside the house.

  I slid myself inside the homemade tunnel I had made from the shed to my basement. It had taken a good month, and it had been a total bitch to chip away all the concrete in the basement, but it had been worth it. I was able to sleep better at night, and as someone with intense insomnia, every comfort I could get, I took.

  I closed the tunnel door behind me and locked it, dusting myself off. I immediately felt a wave of security as I heard the tunnel door lock. I was in my space now, and if anyone wanted to fuck with me, they would have to do it in my territory.

  I reached behind my back and grabbed my M16 and pulled it off with the holder. The gun holder was a strap made of black leather with small metal prongs on the back that clicked the M16 into place. It was strapped to my back with a single silver buckle.

  I flexed my arms and flopped down on my favourite couch, realizing that I had forgotten to light the quil I still had hanging out of my mouth.

  I lit it, and took the deepest inhale that I could, blowing smoke out of my mouth. I leaned back into the soft fibres of my brown couch and waited for Leo and Greyson.

  My mind did flirt with the idea that they could very well be dead now, that perhaps the mercer had killed one or both of them after finding the brat, but my mind was used to going to dark places. I knew that those two would take care of business, or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  In reality, I knew that if they did die, that it would be my fault. I had decided in that split second not to kill the mercer. I couldn’t fuck over my town and possibly slaughter them all because I had dodged the census. I hated the assholes in this town, a bunch of idiotic fucks, selfish, and stupid, but it was my job to protect them. Funny, thinking back on it now, I had a bit more loyalty to my town then I do now. Now I think I’ve become a bit more jaded when it comes to the town’s residents. I guess it’s just being young and naive. I don’t know if I would’ve done things differently if it had happened now; I would’ve definitely thought about it a bit longer.

  I didn’t know if I did the right thing, not killing the mercer. So many different scenarios played through my head as I waited for the creaking noise of the tunnel’s opening to be heard. I hoped my plan had worked, but knew there were many things that could go wrong. King Silas’s military wasn’t known for being lenient, nor did they spare people. They were disposable in the soldiers’ eyes, and King Silas’s eyes.

  At that time in my life, I was just starting to learn who the hell King Silas even was, which I guess was the fucking point of this story to begin with before I started replaying the whole thing in my head. Before today all I knew of King Silas was that he was the man that ruled the greywastes and that he had a family of helpers to carry out his orders. How he got to be king, I didn’t know, who had succeeded him… I didn’t know.

  I was about to learn though.

  Chapter 5

  Reaver

  Two Years Previous

  I jumped as the tunnel’s opening let out the all-too-familiar creak. I grabbed my M16 just to err on the side of caution but I knew who it was. A good hour and a half had gone by since I had entered my house, and I had already gone through three quils and even a few lines of opiate powder. I had nodded off from the opiates without even realizing it.

  When I saw Leo and Greyson emerge from the tunnel into my basement, I was so relieved I could feel the weight lift off of my shoulders, though I tried hard not show it on my face.

  Greyson and Leo however, didn’t bother hiding their emotions.

  Greyson stalked right up to me and smacked me hard upside the head. I jumped back and yelled in surprise, dropping my gun onto the floor. I was about to clock him back, as a reflex more than anything, when he roughly hugged me.

  I was confused.

  Leo must have registered my confused face and found it amusing because his glare turned into a smirk pretty quickly.

  “Ah, let him be, hun, he’s confused enough as it is,” Leo chuckled. Greyson was still hugging me tightly; he gave me one last squeeze, and promptly started hitting me again.

  “Fuck sakes! Stop it!” I protested angrily. I recoiled, not just from being hit but because I hated being touched by anyone. “You were the fucking one that put me in that position, asshole, don’t take your shitty plan out on me.”

  “Simple instructions!” he hollered. “SIMPLE! Shoot him! What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you realize how close you were to being killed? Or WORSE!?”

  “Back off!” I yelled back. I was starting to get annoyed. “Tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  Greyson threw his hands up into the air and let out an exasperated breath. “Everything got settled, that’s all that matters.” He sounded like he was saying that to himself as much as he was to me.

  Not good enough, I said to myself. I narrowed my eyes and watched as Greyson started to pace the room.

  “Why were you hiding me?” I demanded.

  Greyson and Leo both froze. I was surprised by this r
eaction, but I didn’t show it on my face. I stood there with my arms crossed, standing my ground. They were in my territory now. Leaders or not, I was going to get answers from them.

  Greyson took a few seconds to compose himself, and I knew in those vital seconds he was trying to think of what he was going to say to me next; perhaps trying to decide whether he was going to tell me the truth or not.

  The leader of Aras, a man with dark brown hair, fading at the temples and grey eyes, scratched his prickly stubble to buy him a few more seconds before turning to me, and looking me right in the eye.

  “You know nothing of King Silas,” he said very soberly, his eyes hard, “or how much of a threat he and his legion are."

  “No, I don’t,” I said back. “Enlighten me.” My tone held a probably inappropriate amount of sarcasm, but his strange attitude had made me feel uneasy.

  “Watch the attitude, sentry,” Greyson said in a low tone. I let out a growl in the back of my throat; it was quiet enough that they couldn’t hear it. I didn’t want them to see how much that had offended me. I hated it when they pulled rank on me.

  Leo gave out a loud grunt and pushed Greyson off to the side. “Calm down,” he said to him, then turned to me. “Reaver, you disobeyed orders, and it almost got you killed.”

  I scoffed loudly and pointed an accusing finger at Greyson. “He almost got the whole fucking block killed, and you two seem to be dancing around the reason why.”

  That was when Greyson lost it.

  “Because Carter would have fucking taken you, that’s why!” Greyson exploded, his steely grey eyes aflame. I saw his chest heave up and down before he took a second to compose himself. “He’s always drafting soldiers.” Leo spoke for him. “He took five of our men before he left, and I didn’t want him to take you.”

  I was taken aback. I had no idea that the mercer was going to draft during the census. It hadn’t been mentioned during the town meeting, or while the mercer was there. I never gave a thought to how General Kessler, the leader of the Legion, recruited soldiers, had never really cared.

  “Why me?” I asked quietly. My anger had quickly dissipated, but it was now replaced with a lot of curiosity, and just a small twinge of pride. There wasn’t a man in the greywastes who wouldn’t feel a little bit proud of being selected like that.

  “You’re a good sentry,” Greyson said flatly, “and a good kid. There is no way we’ll ever let you join the Legion. Your home is here.”

  “No shit,” I grumbled, wondering why he even felt like he had to say that.

  “The last thing the greywastes needs is you as a soldier,” Leo said with an amused smirk. “You would race through the ranks quickly. The greywastes don’t need that, we have enough trouble with King Shithead and his chimeras already.”

  “You really think so?” I turned to Greyson for clarification.

  The man gave a slight nod. I let out a breath and shook my head in disbelief. It made sense I guess, considering the enhanced senses I had, but I had trouble believing it, though I had trouble believing the last several hours had even taken place. It all seemed like a complicated blur right now.

  “Let’s sit down,” I said. My cheeks puffed out as I let out a breath.

  I offered the two of them a couple of quils and motioned for them to sit. The living room had two overstuffed chairs, a desk, and a large couch all surrounding a marble coffee table. I sat down on the overstuffed floral chair and my guests both sat on the couch opposite me. The heated and tense mood had gone.

  “You know –” I lit myself a new quil and skidded my lighter over the coffee table to the two. “– I’ve been taught to hate King Silas blindly. I know some of the shit he’s done, but really, I fucking know nothing of him.”

  I took a deep inhale, and blew it out. “Who the fuck is he, and how did he get so much power?”

  Greyson sighed, and also took a long drag. Poor guy seemed stressed enough over the mercer incident, and I could tell from his body language that this wasn’t something people liked talking about. I didn’t give a shit though. I wanted to know how this asshole came to rule the greywastes and create Skyfall, and who had trained him to do so. He was too young to have been here during the Fallocaust. It was my understanding that the title of King was passed down from father to son.

  At this moment, as I laid flat on my back, looking at the overcast, cloudy sky, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. So naive, so… stupid, compared to the person I was now. I had learned a lot about King Silas over the last couple of years, a lot of which I could’ve probably done without knowing. There was something though, something eerie and unsettling, about knowing that you came so close to being forcibly recruited, so close to being kidnapped from the only home you had ever known. What would have happened if I had been forced into the military I don’t know. I would not have allowed myself to be broken, so chances are I would have been killed.

  Greyson and Leo probably knew that.

  “You… you do know about the end times?” Greyson asked. I nodded, leaning back in the overstuffed chair, loosely crossing my legs as I balanced an ashtray on my knee.

  “Many, many years ago, humans were thriving. We had a lot of shit we don’t have now,” I said and thought back to my teachings as a child. “But there were too many of us, we ended up fucking over each other and warring with different continents over resources… and we ended up destroying each other.”

  “Bombs, biological and chemical warfare, death and carnage everywhere,” Leo said quietly. He had started looking rather pale over the past several minutes. “The world was in ruins, the governments all over the world collapsed, one after another. There was anarchy everywhere, much worse than it is now if you can believe it. More people to kill I suppose. And as they destroyed the earth, they destroyed the sky as well with their bombs.”

  “Most of the population was wiped out,” Greyson continued, “and those who didn’t die, wished that they had. The rains stopped, the sun dimmed. They had no food, the water was bad, the ground was burnt and dry, and everyone was starving and dying of disease.”

  Leo nodded. “As the story goes, Silas gathered up the people he chose to live and brought them to an island he named Skyfall. Then he, well… he killed everyone else, with an enormous pulse of a type of radiation never seen before. Sestic radiation.”

  “No one knows what it was, but it fried all of our electronics. It also preserved a lot of things, which is why we can eat this canned shit we scavenge.” Greyson refused Leo’s quil and made a motion encouraging his partner to take more. “King Silas kept our ancestors in Skyfall, and slowly built the island. Then about a hundred or so years ago, the sestic radiation faded to an acceptable level, as long as you were implanted with his special technology: the Geigerchip.”

  “And he would be this King Silas’s… what would that be? Great, great, great, great, great grandfather?” I asked curiously.

  Greyson and Leo looked at me like I had just grown five heads. I blinked and furrowed my brow.

  “Reaver…” Greyson said slowly like I had just turned into a retard. “King Silas is immortal.”

  My mouth dropped open. This I had never heard before, but they were looking at me like it was common knowledge.

  I felt like an idiot. Which was unfair considering I’d had all my schooling from them.

  “How can that be?” was my next question, hoping that that wasn’t common knowledge as well.

  “We don’t know. It’s supposed to be a genetic abnormality.” Greyson’s voice dropped like he was expecting Silas to jump out of the closet right now. “What we do know, is that he was the one who took control, he sent out the sestic radiation pulse. Once Skytech was created, he advanced genetic engineering, which is where his chimeras came from. The men who help him run Skyfall, the Legion and all the other factions. The history of the Fallocaust stems from just that one man.

  “What happened next is easy to see. Some of the arians left Skyfall and started to settle in the g
reywastes, or just became rogues. When they came here they found mutated animals, crazed human survivors, and the start of the sub-human breed we call rats. Which were further bred for food.” Greyson wiped his face and pressed his eyes with his fingers. He looked like he was getting tired. It had been a taxing day.

  “He brought a loose sense of order to the wasteland, but like everything… with a cost,” Leo said. He rested a hand on Greyson’s knee, offering his support to his exhausted partner. “He destroyed all those who defy him, and still does. He continues to run Skyfall and the greywastes with an iron fist. All with the help of the genetically engineered servants he called chimeras. You’ve heard some of their names before: Garrett the president of Skytech and Kessler the Imperial General of the Legion. He doesn’t trust anyone he hasn’t created.”

  “He sounds like a control freak nut job,” I said, my mouth filling with bitter liquid. This history lesson had me hating that dude even more. I certainly had been leading sheltered life information-wise. Though I guess that’s what happens when you don’t talk to anyone outside your small circle of friends. People who had also barely left Aras.

  “He is, that and more,” Greyson said quietly. “His chimeras aren’t much better.” He got up and extinguished the rest of the quil in the ashtray. “All we can do is stay out of his eyesight, go on with our lives, keep from being noticed.”

  Leo rose with his husband. “Stay here tonight, Reaver. The mercer is gone, but I want you to lay low just in case. We don’t want you on the walls tonight.”

  I nodded, not minding at all having the rest of the day off. The adrenaline had gone from my body long ago, and now I was just as exhausted as Greyson looked. I was heading to bed as soon as they left. Even if I couldn’t sleep I could decompress, maybe pop some more pills.

  “Be safe, keep safe,” Greyson said in a low tone. He patted me on the back and ducked into the tunnel. Leo did the same and gave me a smile.