Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series Book 1)

by Quil Carter

  There was the smallest shuffling of paper as he turned the page, before grabbing something that I guess he’d had in his boxer pants pockets. He took out a green marker and started writing in the book. I wondered what he was writing, maybe I would check later.

  I let out a sharp intake of breath, annoyed at myself. I didn’t know what was happening to me, first following him, now watching him before he sleeps? Contemplating breaking into his house? I didn’t know what I was feeling, but whatever it was I hadn’t ever felt it before.

  As the blue light clicked off, I could see Killian set the book down. He stretched and curled up on his side. I watched as he closed his eyes, his body now bathed in the blue of my night vision.

  I still didn’t move.

  I watched him. I watched him throughout the night. I watched his breathing start to slow. I watched him start to snore lightly. I watched him toss and turn a few times.

  The moon passed over us; it glowed against his face. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I couldn’t go home even though I knew I should. I just wanted to be close to him, make sure he was doing okay. I never realized how much I just wanted him to stop being sad. I missed seeing those teeth when he smiled.

  As I watched, I found myself imagining myself beside him. I wondered what he would feel like, what his hair would feel like between my fingers. I wondered what his heartbeat sounded like.

  I let out a sigh and leaned my head back against the tree trunk. I exhaled hard. What was happening to me?

  I looked up at the moon in the sky and closed my eyes. I tried to focus my mind again and push the kid out of it. I tried to imagine torturing legionaries instead. I wanted to try cutting one’s heart out and eat some of it before it stopped beating. I had never tried it before. I bet it would be more tender than it would be after it had been sitting for a while. Maybe there would be blood inside that would spurt out when I bit into it, like some greywaste Gusher.

  I would have to start killing legionaries again; now I wanted to try it even more.

  Suddenly a loud scream pierced the cold night air, ripping my reverie out of my skull with ferocity, making me jump a mile high.

  It coming from Killian’s bedroom. My heart jumped into my throat.

  Was I really that intuitive? That the one time someone did come to cut his throat I was there?

  I stood up on a tree branch and looked inside to see Killian on his side, grabbing the back of his neck, his legs twisting and writhing in bed. He screamed again, a long agonizing scream that made my guts wrench. I had heard that scream the night his parents had died.

  No, it wasn’t someone in the room, something was wrong with him…

  Before I could convince myself not to, I jumped off the tree branch and grabbed onto his window frame. I pushed up on one of the wooden window lattices with my left hand, raising the window. I then hoisted myself up and climbed onto his bedroom floor.

  Killian wrapped his arms around himself and dug his fingertips into his shoulders; he screamed again. I could hear him sob between screams.

  My whole chest was tight, my heart threatening to rip out of my rib cage. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I kneeled down on the bed and hovered my hand over Killian’s shoulder. I wanted to take him into my arms, I wanted to hold him, console him, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch him.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered. Killian rolled onto his back, his eyes snapped open. In that second I wanted to run, but one look at his glassy, tear-filled eyes and I relaxed. He wasn’t awake. His eyes rolled and stared up at the ceiling, incoherent and unfocused. I could see sweat glisten on his temples.

  “Dad? Dad?” Killian murmured.

  I froze, not knowing what to say. Killian started to mutter incoherently, staring dazed up at the ceiling. He looked completely out of it.

  “Let me go, let me see them, please just let me see them. Leo, please.”

  My throat restricted. He must be having night terrors. Some of our ex-soldiers had them. Though I had only heard about them, I had never seen them myself.

  Poor kid was completely delirious.

  “The maggots hatched, they’re eating her. Her skin is falling off. Mom won’t die, why won’t Mom die?”

  I just stared like an idiot, a statue in the room looming over him. I wonder if Killian knew I was the one that killed his parents.

  His mom had looked like a rotting corpse when I had shot her. I heard most of their meat was inedible. I hadn’t seen any maggots that night, but the room was dark and I didn’t waste enough time to look. Sounds like it really fucked the kid up though. I didn’t know what it was like to lose parents; mine died before I could remember much of them, so I really hadn’t cared.

  I felt a tooth dig into my bottom lip, hating myself for not having the balls to touch him, to comfort him. I was a useless guardian. I could protect him from dangers on the outside but I didn’t know how to fight the demons in his head. I was bad at emotional things.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, my brain calling me every name it could think of, from coward to creep, to gutless stalker.

  The blond-haired boy closed his eyes, and I heard a small whimper break through his lips. I could see tears wetting his pale cheeks. He curled himself up tight and rolled over onto his side, my hand now right by his face. I could feel his warm breath against it. My heart contracted in my chest.

  I felt a chill twist up my spine like a cold snake. I couldn’t breathe. This was the closest I had ever been to him.

  And he probably wouldn’t remember a thing.

  As I watched him, my heart burned and ached. This was the first time in a long time that I had felt empathy and even then it was only for Reno after he had gotten raped a few years back. The emotion was foreign to me to the point where sometimes I didn’t know if I was really feeling it.

  But… I actually felt bad for Killian, I truly did. I was used to being alone, but after his parents died that probably was the first time he had ever been by himself. And he was all alone now in this fucked up world.

  He was so naive, so innocent. After the Masseys died he was a lost creature wandering around with nowhere to be, with the bloody claws of the wasteland slowly closing around him. He was like a stray dog lost in the greywastes, and no stray lasted long as night fell. Not without someone there to watch over him.

  That’s when I had noticed him, that’s when I started following him. Because I knew if I didn’t he would die.

  This had gone so much farther though… I had started following him for his own safety, but now I knew I was following him because I wanted to. Because I couldn’t get him out of my head and I didn’t know why. Maybe that was empathy? I didn’t know and I didn’t know how to ask Greyson or Leo without feeling soft and vulnerable. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that; I had a reputation to uphold.

  I had to go, before he woke up and found me. I didn’t even want to fathom what would happen if he saw me in his bedroom. With my luck he would scream and call me a rapist.

  Wordlessly I got up and turned around, and walked out of the room.

  My heart was still beating hard as I quickly jogged back to my house, refusing myself a backwards glance.

  There was so much to think about as I ran down the dark empty road. But all I could think about was how soft his hair looked, how warm and smooth his skin looked too. I could’ve touched him, just for a second… but I couldn’t. Not like that.

  I closed my eyes, calling myself every name in the book, coward mostly. I didn’t know what all these building feelings meant, and I pushed them away as much as I could.

  Killian wouldn’t want to be around me. I was the most hated, cold-hearted prick on the block. We were complete opposites. He probably hated me for following his ass anyway, probably thought I was a creeper. And I was! I just came from his fucking bedroom.

  I cursed at myself before angrily tossing my cigarette butt into a pile of snarled wire. Feeling like the biggest idiot who ever was, I continued the walk
home, the dark cloud of my thoughts not far behind.

  Chapter 7

  Killian

  No matter how many times I told myself not to look, I was always more than tempted.

  Was he there? Of course he was… he was always there. He was always just in the corner of my eye. I wanted to look… I wanted to look so badly, but I couldn’t.

  Whenever I had mustered up the stones to try and make eye contact with him, he would look away. Staring off in the distance, his cold and perfect face hard and emotionless. Like I all of a sudden ceased to exist. He didn’t want to look at me, I didn’t know why.

  Reaver’s countenance was always a perfect mixture of ice and confidence. Every time I was close I couldn’t help but stare at his eyes. Like bits of coal. I always tried to look for brown but I’d only seen it once when the light was on him in the Slaught House. I could see the coffee brown flecks in his hair too, but only in bright lights. When he wasn’t in light, his hair and eyes looked onyx black, though his skin always seemed so pale. I liked the contrast. I found myself specifically paying attention to what the lighting was around us, just to see how he would look.

  I was so silly…

  But he was so handsome, so perfect. His hair was long in the front, but cut short in the back. His bangs fell over his eyes, ending at his nose. He was always brushing them away, tucking them behind his ear. Though I liked it when they fell over his eyes.

  I had tried to memorize his facial features when I had come along for the meat pickup. That was the first time I had ever been close to him, the first time I could get more than a glance without him noticing. At every other time, before and since, he was just in the corners of my vision. I just wanted to know who he was; he was so mysterious. I could see why he was called the Raven by the Legion. He was always a black figure.

  Granted, I did know some things about Reaver but not much. My mother had forbidden me from becoming his friend; she didn’t understand I couldn’t have become his friend if I wanted to. She had assumed since I was quiet and he was quiet we would hit it off. Except I was quiet because I would rather read or play my guitar – Reaver was quiet because he hated everyone.

  Reaver hates everyone. I had been told that time and time again. Even asking garnered me weird looks. Reaver was Reaver apparently, why would I be asking about him? He was a dick, though a loyal one. He only liked Leo, Greyson, and the guy who lived in the shack on the hill. Stay away from him.

  Everyone else stayed away from him.

  From what I had heard though, he was an orphan, raised by the town leaders. He was described as cold-hearted, unemotional, cruel, and ruthless. He had even gotten the per diem job as executioner because of his nature. Mom told me he liked killing people so much, Greyson thought he might as well kill the diseased or condemned while he was at it. Mom said she heard him laugh once as he shot a baby, but I don’t think that was true.

  Mom had really hated him.

  I plucked a few notes on my guitar, a special one I had made for myself after my parents had died. It was still in tune though I usually had to tune it after every session. I had built it pretty well but the knobs always seemed to loosen easily.

  Today found me sitting on a concrete block in the town square. Reaver was behind me on one of his favourite spots on top of a large shed. He was sitting on a pile of crates, probably watching me.

  I was used to it now, and deep down I felt kind of special that he had decided to follow me, even if I knew it should have scared me. At first I was sure Greyson had paid him to keep an eye on me after my parents died. And maybe he had, but I had heard Greyson make quips about him doing it. So I knew he wasn’t paying Reaver anymore, unless they were trying to throw me off.

  I knew if I was ever to find out why Reaver had started and continued to follow me, I would hear it from Leo or Greyson, but they never said enough for me to work it out. Greyson and Leo were the only ones who seemed allowed to talk to Reaver like that. Everyone else was too afraid.

  And everyone told me I should be scared of him too…

  To be honest, I had been more mad at first than scared. The first time I noticed he was following me was when I had left the block. I had to convince Sadii I had a weapon on me, which I didn’t. She knew how dangerous it was outside the walls but at that point I didn’t care. My parents had died a week previously, and this was one of the first times I had left my house.

  It wasn’t because I needed quiet though – I had wanted to die that day.

  I had nothing on but a tattered t-shirt, jeans, and a few books. I had decided that day that I couldn’t take it anymore.

  My hands were red and raw from scrubbing the house top to bottom. The bleach I had used had eaten away a lot of my skin. I had gone crazy in there, thinking back. My mom and dad had been so ravaged by disease before they were taken to quarantine that they had left imprints of blood and bodily fluids; the smell had been horrible.

  In our house, the house we had fixed up and made a home.

  I stayed outside their quarantined shacks and I refused to move. I didn’t leave until Leo forced me to take a walk with him. I remember seeing Reaver skulk in the shadows, not realizing he was their executioner. I broke down when I heard the gunshots.

  When I came back to our house, the smell was unimaginable. The flies were everywhere and hundreds of maggots had infested their blood and fluid-stained beds and any place they had laid while they were sick. Their bodies seemed to have secreted this vile fluid from their pores and wherever they had sat, I could see maggots wiggling around in the stains. Little grains of rice that seemed stationary, until you looked closer and could see hundreds of writhing bodies.

  I stayed up for days scrubbing. All I would do was clean, cry, clean, scream. The cleaning kept my mind off my reality: my parents were dead and I was alone in the greywastes. Alone in this fucked up, madhouse of a world King Silas had created for us. Far away from Tamerlan, my factory town outside of Skyfall, far away from any hope of safety.

  I wouldn’t last long, and I would probably die in the worst possible way. I had seen the ravers, I had seen them eating people alive. One of the mercenaries that had accompanied us to Aras was the one that haunted me the most. His shrieks woke me up at night, his begging eyes haunting me. The crazed, radiated ravers had disembowelled him and had eaten his organs while he was alive.

  Humans were never meant to eat like lions, our teeth were too dull… it took us too long to eat them raw, they were alive for so long after.

  My parents’ screams joined his, and in my head every single traumatizing memory twisted together into an unbreakable braid. I knew I was going to die soon, and if I didn’t die, I knew my mind would eventually snap and I would go crazy. I wondered if Reaver would be the one to put me out of my misery. If he did, there would be no one around to cry for me. Everyone I loved was dead.

  I closed my eyes, clenching my guitar. I started to strum out a song I had learned, a more melancholy one to go with my mood.

  The greywastes were a basin overflowing with insanity, the very earth underneath me was only surviving because it was too mad to know it had died. I had seen what was beyond these gates, in the brief months Mom and Dad had had us on the road. If it wasn’t for the many mercenaries we had hired I would have been beaten, fucked, and eaten alive.

  And now I was alone in this world, anyone could have me now. I was a moving target. Not to mention a desirable one. I had been told that a few times on the road and before we had left. Young, small, clean, white, and hot. I had been told I would taste good more times than I could count.

  With that thought my mind travelled back to the first time I had seen Reaver out of the corner of my eye. I felt ashamed of it now, but I thought he was going to rape me.

  My body had turned to ice with adrenaline when I realized who it was. For a second my instincts kicked in, and I found myself looking around for a rock to protect myself with. My brain taunted me with images of him pinning me down, mercilessly forcing himself
inside me. He was smiling, an evil smile I could only imagine in my head. My heart skipped as my brain manifested the pain and shock.

  That had passed though and I remembered sighing, sitting down on the ledge of one of the red canyons. I felt defeat when I realized I didn’t care. If he rapes me, he will probably kill me after since he wouldn’t want anyone to find out.

  Let him do it, let him fuck me, I didn’t care as long as I could die after. He can have my virginity; at least I would know what sex was like before I died. He can have his fun and I could make him happy before I died. Even if he didn’t want to kill me after, he was armed; I could probably grab a gun or something while he was doing it and blow my brains out. He’s a sick fuck apparently; he would probably get off on it.

  I shuddered. I felt bad for thinking about Reaver that way back then. There were many things Reaver was but he wasn’t a rapist. According to Leo he had never even been in a relationship, he was a lone wolf.

  So why was he following me?

  I started strumming again and soon found myself playing one of my favourite songs. I had bought the CD back where we used to live, a guy who was alive before the Fallocaust named Eddie Vedder. I was starting to have a nice collection of CDs and tapes. I even had two CD players before I accidently dropped one down the canyon. I swear I heard Reaver snicker at me, but I wasn’t sure; I was swearing rather loudly.

  I also had some sheet music for guitar and some piano, though the piano we had bought from Carson was out of tune. I could still play it but I missed the one back home. Most of my playing ability came from listening to CDs and tapes over and over again then figuring them out on my instruments. I had gotten rather good at the new one I had learned.

  I started to play the song on my guitar, thankfully still tuned and sounding pretty nice. I had sung this song a few times when I was alone in my house but never had the nerve to do it in public, especially not with Reaver around.