Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series Book 1)

by Quil Carter

  “There’s a big, big hard sun, beaten all of these people, in a big hard world,” Greyson’s voice suddenly sang. I couldn’t help but smile as I continued to play. Greyson leaned up against the concrete block I was sitting on and, caught up in the moment, I started to sing with him.

  My heart swelled in those few minutes, all my troubled thoughts seemed to melt away as I sung with Greyson. I hadn’t felt this happy in a long time. I wondered if Reaver thought we were idiots… maybe he liked it?

  After the song had finished Greyson laughed. To my embarrassment he looked behind me to the shack roof.

  “I saw your lips move, don’t give me that look, you little shit,” he called, then chuckled again. “And he’s gone.” He turned to me and winked. “He won’t go far. Just the heads up, the caravan is approaching. So get out your loot.”

  “For how long?” I asked, jumping off the concrete block. I pushed the guitar so it was resting against my back.

  “They told me they’re leaving the day after tomorrow, in the morning. Leo’s already rounding up some pups and I have Redmond taking last inventory. We just had the caravan a few weeks ago so I don’t think we’ll be stripping them of all their shit, but who’s to know. It depends on what they have.”

  I nodded, and tightened my leather guitar strap. “I’ll be back then.” I walked off and started jogging towards my house. I knew I had the rest of today and tomorrow to buy stuff but I didn’t want the rest of the block to get there before me. People here could be greedy, especially over food.

  My dad had left me some money that I always kept hidden in the top of the closet in my bedroom. I wanted to buy some spices if they had any. I was running low on a few. I hated eating rat just cooked like most of the block did. I never cared for the taste of Aras rat. I guess I had been spoiled back home – my dad usually brought home bosen or convict meat.

  When I got home, I ran up the steps to the second level. I kicked my shoes off and started climbing barefoot up the wall. My bare skin made my feet stick better to the paneling.

  When I was almost a foot up from the door frame I grabbed the brown envelope stuck in a small alcove in the ceiling. I took out some money and a few tokens, and put the rest back before climbing down. Chances were good that a Dek’ko caravan would be with the group, they usually tagged along with the merchants.

  Dek’ko representatives only took Dek’ko tokens – this encouraged people to sell their crops and raw materials to the company. Thankfully my parents had stashed these too. My father had worked for Dek’ko back in the day and their staff were only paid in tokens.

  I walked out the door, slamming it behind me, and started making my way back.

  When I got there the caravan was just pulling into the square. It was a bigger one than usual. I could count at least nine men including, as I suspected, a clean looking Dek’ko salesman.

  The men looked worn like all roamers outside of Aras. They had red dirt stained on their bodies from coming northeast near the canyons. They wore multiple layers of soiled, dusty clothing, a lot of it sewn and patched with leather or strips of cloth. Each man was heavily armed and wearing biker goggles. Probably because of all the dust blowing around in the canyons.

  One of the men pulled his goggles up. The skin underneath his goggles was white, contrasting with the rest of his dirt-stained face. He squinted and held his hands out to meet Greyson's.

  “Welcome back, Menkin,” Greyson said in a friendly tone. Behind him, Reaver stood with Leo, his arms crossed and his face stern, serious, and intimidating. He was wearing his full combat armour now, with his M16 strapped to his back; he must’ve changed while I ran back to my house. He looked every bit a soldier now. I had always liked that look.

  “Thanks, Greyson; it has been a harrowing ride. A group of fucking legionaries decided to toll the road northeast of Gosselin, bunch of fucking retards,” Menkin grumbled. “If it wasn’t for Dek’ko coming along they would have probably charged double.”

  Reaver’s face tensed. I could tell he was probably making a note to kill those soldiers. I had heard his favourite pastime was to snipe any legionary that came close to Aras. I wish I had balls like that.

  “Well, come in. Melpin has the bar fully stocked; we can have a drink,” Greyson said, slapping Menkin on the back, a puff of red dust bursting into the air from the impact.

  “Sounds good, the grunts can unpack all of this shit,” Menkin said. He turned with Greyson, and started heading towards the old pub. Leo looked on, watching everyone unpack.

  “We have beds above Melpin’s for you to use,” Leo started to say, before one of the younger grunts waved him off.

  “We know the drill, Merrik. Go have a drink with that drunken hack. We work better undisturbed.”

  Leo laughed. “I don’t need to be told twice.” He walked away, leaving just the other men, and me and Reaver.

  I sat on the fountain in the middle of the square and started to watch them set up the caravans for business, when to my surprise one of the men started walking up to Reaver.

  “Who is this ugly son of a bitch?” he said. He swayed cockily up to Reaver. My throat went dry. Did this guy have a death wish?

  Reaver stared at him without so much of a mouth twitch. “You look like a rat with your face that stained.”

  The man laughed and took his goggles off. He shook his black hair, sending a puff of red dust flying up into the air.

  “Decided to bodyguard the merchants, eh?” Reaver asked with a cough. “Did they pay you well?”

  “Yeah, I saw them coming and thought I might as well see if I could early bird some shit. I need more booze, more food, and more drugs. You got some to sell your ol’ buddy Reno?”

  Oh, it was him. I hadn’t recognized him covered in red dust. He was supposed to be Reaver’s only friend. Though I hadn’t seen much of him. When he was in Aras, Reaver didn’t really follow me as much since they were too busy hanging out.

  He was a field sentry though, that I knew, and he had a cabin in the rocky crags behind the west wall. I had heard him on the radio many times.

  I tried to get a better look at him. He had black hair and a friendly cheerful face with large blue eyes that I could see easily with the backdrop of red. From my guess, he was about Reaver’s age if not a bit older.

  I wondered why Reaver had befriended him and no one else? I looked at him, trying to unpeel his persona to see what was so special about him. I didn’t want to admit it but I think I was looking for hints and pointers. Just in case… you know, I ever became Reaver’s friend. Maybe…

  “I got some Dilaudid pills in the stash of penicillin I found, we can do some of those tonight.” I heard Reaver say.

  I couldn’t help but feel a bit weird. I didn’t know Reaver did drugs besides those weird-smelling cigarettes. I guess he was the type, though he was really good at hiding it. My dad had been a drug user and he had been horrible at hiding it. After seeing how it destroyed him, I felt a bit ill thinking of Reaver taking drugs. But he must have control over it, if even I didn’t pick up on it.

  I guess Reno must’ve liked that plan because, before I knew it, Reaver was walking off with Reno towards the west side of Aras. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but I felt a bit jealous. He usually walked me home before it got dark or walked behind me.

  I couldn’t help but feel a little bit abandoned.

  I shook my head, rather mad at myself. I had no claim over Reaver, just because he followed me didn’t mean he had any loyalty to me or any obligation. He was probably being paid by Greyson. That must’ve been it, and why he was always so distant. He probably couldn’t stand me.

  I watched as the grunts continued to set up the caravans.

  “See anything you like, boy?” a gruff voice said. He was in his forties with dirty blond hair and sharp brown eyes. He made me a bit uneasy but all outsiders did. It wasn’t anything personal.

  “Do you have any spices?” I asked, walking over to the three caravans that wer
e almost fully set up.

  “Aye, a few, let me dig them out,” he said with a friendly nod.

  I looked at each caravan. They were wagons in actuality, built with a metal cover that covered the back which was attached to rollers. The metal cover was fashioned so that one side of it could be rolled off the wagon and lifted up as a sort of shelf. It transformed the top of the caravan to a small little kiosk almost.

  They were all old and worn, like most caravans, except for the Dek’ko one that was being set up on the far left. Those were always clean and well-maintained. This one was spray-painted blue, with Dek’ko’s label painted on every side of the wagon. I guess they wanted to make it stand out so people knew to leave it alone. Messing with a Dek’ko caravan meant death for you and your family.

  I looked around the first two caravans. A few things caught my eye including a metal ladle. Mine was plastic and I had always wanted a metal one. There was a small TV set, though it probably too expensive for me, some CDs I had never seen before, and various cans of food.

  I walked over to the Dek’ko caravan. Sure enough, the Dek’ko representative was already changed into his suit. He was a straight cut man with a large moustache and droopy blue eyes. He was wearing a stained black suit with the Dek’ko logo on the chest. He also wore a patched bowler hat. I always thought the Dek’ko representatives looked foolish but apparently King Silas made them wear the suits. Dad had said it was to create a sense of uniformity.

  “Any canned meat?” I asked, hoping for anything that wasn’t Aras rat.

  The man nodded and pointed towards a row of Dek’ko cans. The labels were dark blue and the letters white. Various cartoons of what was inside the can graced every label. I could see chicken, rat, bosen, fois ras, and Dek’ko’s special brand called Good Boy. It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to know what was inside that can. It was a bit crude, since it was frowned upon out in the greywastes to eat arian, but the president of Dek’ko, a chimera named Apollo, had proclaimed that all Good Boy meat was from men that died of natural causes or were convicts. That was a good enough explanation for me. Arian tasted so much better than rat.

  I picked up a few cans and moved several more off to the side to look for different types I might have missed. I was a bit disappointed there wasn’t any pork but I was happy to see fois ras. It was a delicacy for wastelanders though the process in which it was made was a bit grisly. Rats got tubes shoved down their throats into their stomachs, pumping them full of a greasy slop that made their livers grow to horrible sizes. Then their livers were harvested and turned into fois ras. It tasted great but the way it was produced made me cringe.

  I bought a few cans of Good Boy, some fois ras, and several cans of the other meats. I also purchased some water filters, flour, and some salt from the caravan beside it. The flour was the most expensive; it was real, not the alternative shit Dek’ko sold. I only knew of a couple of farms that had been able to yield real wheat around here. The rest had to come straight from Skyfall.

  The man was kind enough to give me a bag to carry my food. I walked slowly back over to the other caravan, eyeing up the ladle, when the man I had seen earlier came up to me.

  “I found pepper, oregano, and –” The man stared at the plastic package. “– paper-ikee.”

  “Paprika?” I said holding out my hands. The man placed the small plastic wrapped packages in my hand. The labels were faded but I could still read them.

  “How much?” I asked, excited. I knew I shouldn’t show my excitement but I couldn’t help it.

  “Five dollars for the three, more than fair,” the man said. I nodded. I wasn’t in the mood for haggling. I paid him the money and put the spices into the bag.

  After thanking him, I started walking back to my house. I could see other people from around the block start to trickle in. I looked into my bag, admiring all my purchases. I was excited about making something good with the fois ras and finally having some real arian meat as well.

  I wondered what Reaver was doing. I looked around at the abandoned houses as I made my way up the street. I knew there were lots of times he wasn’t following me but I never could be sure when those times were. I didn’t know when he worked or what area, and I knew he spent time at Leo and Greyson’s too and at Reno’s cabin. But I was never sure, so I always had the sense that he could be watching out for me and that was enough in my head.

  I guess I was just used to it. It was his damn fault for making me so used to having him around. I guess Greyson got his money’s worth.

  My shoulders slumped and I sighed, suddenly feeling very alone in this world. I tried not to feel sorry for myself but it wasn’t working. I felt like I was biding my time until eventually something killed me out here. And who was I kidding? It would happen. Everyone seemed to die and die quickly in this world.

  I thought back to all the books and magazines I had read, about what it had been like before the Fallocaust. People used to live to be over a hundred, now if they made it to sixty they were ancient. Most of us would die before we hit thirty-five, younger if we became Silas’s legionaries.

  I loved learning about life before the Fallocaust. How happy everyone seemed, how easy their lives were. Everything seemed so much brighter.

  The colours that existed in those pieces of paper were not seen here anymore. Everything outside was grey now, the very sun was grey. The only time I saw red was in the pieces of meat I got for rations, or the fountain of blood pouring out of a rat’s gaping wound.

  Grey and red… that was the greywastes; that was King Silas’s dream.

  Sometimes I would put my earphones on and listen to my CDs. Eddie Vedder, Eric Clapton, Matthew Good Band. Sometimes I would just close my eyes and imagine I was back in the old world. Imagine I was in a new house that was white with bright greens and blues, with flowers, fruits and vegetables, with my mom and my dad, even Reaver.

  We were happy; a family sitting around the dinner table. Mom with a checkered apron on, Dad smoking a pipe. Mom serving a roast. Everyone smiling…

  Just like in the pictures.

  My heart hurt. I’d had that life, or almost, back in Tamerlan. We had been happy there before Dad got fired. Then… then we had to go to Aras. Nothing was the same after Elish had come to visit us and nothing had been the same since.

  I blinked away a tear and walked up the steps to my dry, rotten porch. I closed the door behind me and put my bag down. I wiped my nose.

  I was so fucking lonely.

  I walked over to the kitchen table. Mom’s jacket was still slung up against her seat. It had been a long time but I still couldn’t move it. I reached into the pocket and pulled out a small Polaroid photo. It had cost a lot of money to have it taken. I had only been five or so when it was shot. We looked so happy… it was long before we had to leave. I was smiling, my blond hair lighter and longer back then. Mom and Dad looked so healthy. Blond hair just like me and blue eyes. They always said I had a smile that could light up the world.

  I didn’t smile very much nowadays. I wondered if anyone else would ever say that to me again.

  I leaned down and kissed my mom and my dad in the photo and gently placed it in a zippered pocket inside the satchel bag I carried around. I felt like having it close to me for a few days.

  With a sigh, feeling forlorn and lonely, I sat down at the kitchen table and buried my face in my hands.

  I cried for a long time.

  When I was too tired to cry anymore, I took a deep breath and started to put my food away. I felt even worse imagining how much fun Reaver was probably having with Reno, probably doing lots of drugs and having lots of sex. That thought made a lump forming my throat.

  I wished I had a friend… the closest friend I had was Reaver and that was pretty sad considering he refused to even make eye contact with me.

  Everyone else besides Leo and Greyson tended to ignore the fact that I existed, though that was probably my fault.

  I didn’t feel hungry anymore, or n
early as excited for my new merchandise as I had been before. I wished I at least knew where Reaver lived so maybe I could sit and watch him for a while, but no one besides Leo and Greyson knew where he slept.

  I turned on my bluelamp as it started to get dark and walked up my stairs. I decided to skip dinner and just read until it was time to sleep. I hadn’t eaten anything all day but I didn’t care, I wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t rare for me to just not eat for a day; I didn’t have much of an appetite when I wasn’t feeling great.

  I grabbed a few of my textbooks and walked into my bedroom, with a tightness in my throat. I knew it was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 8

  Killian

  I felt a bit better when I woke up, but by then the thoughts in my head were fuzzy and distant. I knew I had slept in though; last night had been rough just as I had predicted.

  I had been having terrible nightmares since we left my factory town near Skyfall, even more so since my parents had died. Sometimes I would just lie awake unable to move, other times I was too scared. Lately they had been a bit better though. I don’t know what snapped in my brain but somehow I would feel my dad in the middle of the nightmares. He talked to me too occasionally, but mostly I just felt him near. It didn’t make the nightmares any better, but it did give me a false sense of security. Something I needed during those manic times. It helped, even if I knew he wasn’t there.

  Last night had been no different. I had a dream that the boards had been ripped off the two-storey house adjacent to my window and there were dozens of glowing eyes watching me. In my nightmare I knew they had eaten the residents of Aras and wanted me next. I was just waiting, unable to move, for them to find their way inside and walk up the stairs. I could hear their footsteps and their murmuring. When they eventually came into the room I realized that they were my parents and other people I had seen die. They wanted me; they wanted to eat me alive. Slowly, painfully, with their dull human teeth.