by Quil Carter
“What is it, squeaky?” Reaver called from the other room.
“Soap!” I exclaimed happily. Reaver gave a mock groan. I know he enjoyed pretending he hated the things I liked. Heaven forbid he actually shows he cares. He was such a dink at times.
I quickly stuffed the soap into my satchel and started digging into the box more. There were empty pop bottles which had their uses but I wasn’t going to be carrying them around for the next two days, magazines too far gone to read, something I think might’ve been clothing… nope, nothing more. Well, the soap was good enough.
Suddenly there was a thunk from Reaver’s direction. I shone my flashlight over to where he was and felt my whole body freeze.
Reaver was down on his knees, his hands gripping the side of one of the shelves. His head was bowed.
“Reaver?” I cried. I ran over and kneeled beside him. His eyes were open but dazed and he was breathing heavily. I put my hand on his shoulder and placed the flashlight onto the ground.
“I’m fine, just give me a second.” Reaver’s voice was thin and his breathing laboured. I felt my own string of panic go through myself. Then I remembered…
“Your concussion! But you’ve been okay for days.” I reached over and put my hand gently on the side of his head. To my surprise he let me turn his face to me. I picked up the flashlight and shone it in his eyes.
Reaver squinted. “You don’t need to blind me.”
“I’m sorry, your pupils are the same colour as your eyes unless they’re lit up,” I said. I could see the flecks of dark brown perfectly against his pupils now. Thankfully the pupils were the same size; if they were different sizes we might be in trouble.
Reaver let me hover over him for about ten more seconds before he batted me away and rose to his feet. He was shaky but able to turn himself around and lean against the shelves. “I’m fine.” His tone dared me to say otherwise.
I couldn’t understand it, he had been fine for days then all of a sudden…
“This has been happening since you got back, but you didn’t tell me,” I said accusingly.
Reaver waved a hand dismissively and walked out of the back room. I glowered at him but I didn’t know what else to say. So I sighed and followed him around with the flashlight. I knew I would have to tell Doc.
“It happened once three days ago and once two days before that,” Reaver said. He was looking around on the other shelves. “It’s less frequent, and I’m just fine, thank you.”
Well, I wasn’t convinced. I made a note to follow him around even more closely… if that were possible.
I hovered over him, but continued to look around. I didn’t find anything that interested me besides a couple more cans of mystery food. I didn’t bring them though but I did hide them in some of the more concealed cubbyholes. Who knows when we might be back and in need of them. Hopefully any other scavenger that comes looking won’t find them.
“I’m going to come back for that one day,” Reaver said.
I looked to see what he was referring to. It was a Pepsi sign hanging above the old coolers. It had rusted drips running down it and the top left-hand corner was broken off, but he was looking at it in amazement. “That would look great in my house.”
His house was covered in knickknacks from pre-Fallocaust times. He had signs advertising Chevron gas, cigarettes, and Coca Cola already in his house. Most of them looked like he had tried to restore them, but admittedly he wasn’t much of a restoration artist. I think he had used blood to paint his Marlboro cigarette sign. He would probably try and do the same for this sign once he did get it.
“That’s a pretty red.” I observed. “And the blue too. Did you know in warmer climates down south the water used to be blue?” I had a few tropical pictures I had gotten out of magazines on my walls back home. I couldn’t believe that colour existed in such quantities.
“Probably toxic grey now,” Reaver muttered, shining the flashlight into the cooler. The glass case was covered in a gross black slime. Probably once had milk in it. His flashlight fell onto the Pepsi sign again and he gave a longing sigh.
“We can hide it if you want,” I said. Reaver gave me an amused look. He still looked a little green from passing out.
“No one cares about this shit anymore, they want food and water. I think I’m the only one in the wasteland that likes collecting this pre-radiation shit.” Reaver gave it once last glance before turning around to head down another aisle, but he didn’t get far before he swayed again. He caught himself on the back of a chair, and he would have stayed up right, but the chair was on wheels and it tipped under his weight. He fell back down to his knees with a violent curse.
“This shit needs to stop with my fucking head,” Reaver snapped. This time I took a step back, he sounded angry. I didn’t know him enough when he was angry to feel that it was safe to approach him; I just knew that he had broken Matt’s fingers once when he tried to console him.
I stood there a bit awkwardly before I had a good idea. “Want me to get you some drugs? Would they help?”
I saw Reaver bring a hand to his head, and to my surprise he nodded. “Reno always packs us cocaine. Get the bag he gave me.”
I turned and quickly walked towards the open window. I had never done cocaine before, but I had seen people in my old town do it. It sounded like a good idea, it usually made them all wired and hyper. That’s what he needed.
I stepped over a beam that had fallen from the roof and pushed a lump of insulation out of the way. That stuff was everywhere, and it looked comfortable to sleep on but damn… you only make that mistake once.
I stepped over the window and onto the concrete sidewalk, shielding my eyes as the sunlight temporarily blinded me.
Just as the greywastes were starting to come back into view, I heard a noise coming from the other side of the parking lot. My eyes shot towards the quad and I saw what looked like an old lady.
She was dressed in a ragged jacket and a dingy blue dress with jeans underneath. Her hair was a rat’s nest of tangled grey, dirty and unwashed. Her face was weather worn and heavily lined. I could smell her from here even though she was across the parking lot.
She was rooting through our bag. She had my riding goggles in one hand and a bottle of my water in another. It didn’t look like she had a weapon on her but I drew my assault rifle anyway.
“Put it down and step away,” I said cautiously.
She jumped up and looked at me, her rheumy eyes wide. She honestly looked like she didn’t expect anyone to be around. She dropped the water bottle and the goggles and put her hand out.
“You got any food?” she said, her voice small and cracked.
“Do you have weapons on you?” I asked. That was more important than food.
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a rusted kitchen knife. I held the gun up as she put it on the greywaste floor. “Food? Any food, boy? I haven’t eaten in three days. Water? Even radiated?”
“Shoot her,” Reaver’s voice said calmly behind me. I didn’t turn.
“She’s an old lady!” I whispered, taking a step forward, before saying loudly, “Any more weapons?”
“I just showed you my weapons, child. Food? I’ll be on my way… just a can, one? I have a camp near here, but we ate the last scaver. Water?”
“Killian… shoot her.”
“You were going to steal from us, why should we give you food?” I asked. I took another step towards her, even though Reaver growled my name when I did.
The old lady put her hands up higher. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, I’m hungry. I don’t eat flesh.” Well, that’s new, every person I had ever met ate either fresh human or canned. No one really had an option, but maybe it was different for scavengers.
“She’s lying… fucking – shoot – her,” Reaver growled. I didn’t understand why he didn’t just fucking shoot her himself if it was so important. Why did I have to shoot the little old lady?
“If you–” I looked around
and pointed the gun towards the curve in the broken road we had just come by. “Go and stand there, I’ll give you some food but you have to leave after. We’re just leaving too.”
I felt disappointed in myself, but fuck, she was an old lady, just trying to survive like we were.
“Can I get my knife?” she asked. I nodded, and she cautiously grabbed the blade before walking as quickly as she could towards where I had pointed the gun.
As her back was turned, I reached into my satchel and pulled out one of the cans I had dug out. She couldn’t have any water, we had to ration that, but I had just found these cans and once we left she could find more inside.
My disappointment turned into a pit in my stomach as Reaver swore at me. I put the can on the ground and walked towards the quad.
I went to get on but as I did I saw Reaver stalk towards her his gun drawn.
“Reaver, no!!” I yelled. “Please, she’s just an old lady. She didn’t do anything to us.” I ran to him but he turned around and gave me a look that made me stop in my tracks. Then he turned around and pointed his gun at her.
“Where are you from?” Reaver demanded.
The old lady turned around, her eyes scared. She cowered down as if she expected Reaver to shoot her. “I have a camp a mile south, just me and my daughter, she’s only got one leg,” the lady said, her voice pleading. “We’re scavengers like you. I don’t have any weapons on me.” She quickly dropped the knife again.
Reaver raised his M16’s scope to his eye. I cried his name again but stayed put. I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I let out a choke. “Please, please, Reaver. She’s old and scared.”
He lowered the gun. “Turn around, count to a hundred. If you look I’ll blow your fucking brains out. Find your daughter and sell her to the Legion. Do you understand, old lady?” Reaver’s voice was hard and intimidating, I even found myself scared. “The only reason I don’t kill you now is because my boyfriend is too fucking soft to do it. Rest assured I am not.”
She nodded. I could see her shaking.
Reaver walked over to me and grabbed the can of food, his black eyes blazing. He tossed it towards her. “Count.” Then he turned to me. “Get on the fucking quad.”
I turned and quickly got on, stumbling as I did, the old lady counting in the background, sounding just as scared as I felt.
Reaver got on in front of me and turned the quad on, before throwing the bag onto my lap. He turned the key and without pause pressed down on the throttle. I turned around just to make sure she was still counting, but she hadn’t moved, and when we went over the next rise she was still in place.
I held onto the metal grate of the quad behind me as Reaver drove towards the string of houses near Donnely. I knew he probably didn’t want me touching him and, truth be told, I was okay with that.
Though I knew I was a moron and an idiot I still felt bad for the little old lady. Reaver had only been out scavenging, he hadn’t seen how bad it was for wasters outside of blocks. The lady obviously didn’t have a block or a town to go to. Chances are she would eventually get murdered by ravers; why was it such a bad thing to give her a bit of food? It wasn’t Reaver’s, it was the food I just found. I didn’t even know what was inside of it.
I hated how my brain went back and forth, between my morals and Reaver’s lacking of them. I knew who Reaver was; well, I knew who other people said Reaver was. He was tough, hardened, merciless… I knew this. So why was I so upset with how he acted? It’s not like he kept himself a mystery from me.
An hour later, we were parked at the end of a long, half-gone driveway. In front of us was an intact two-storey house a good half mile from the other houses, all of which were in various stages of collapse. This looked like the best one. The roof was intact and the windows weren’t boarded up, though they were either half-broken or missing entirely, and were all clinging onto warped and bare wooden frames.
I jumped off, but as soon as I did I got another death glare from Reaver. “Sit in front of the door and stay there. If you see anyone shoot them. I don’t care if it’s a toddler, shoot them. Understand? Can you handle that?”
I knew better than to argue, but that didn’t mean I was going to obey him like a dog. “Yes, sir,” I said in the same tone he had given Greyson a few days ago. Then I walked up onto the porch and sat down on a rusted car rim. I folded my arms and stared forward.
I could feel his eyes burning me alive but he didn’t respond. I heard him walk into the house; his gun drawn.
He returned about five minutes later. “Alright it’s safe, get the bag.”
“Yes, sir,” I said again, and grabbed the bag and followed him inside.
This house was dark and messy with a lingering fragrance of must and mould.
The walls had the remnants of wallpaper, most curled down like bark on a tree. Piles of it were gathered on the stained carpet, layered with dirt and specks of black mould. The wallpaper that hadn’t fallen yet had blackened as soon as it touched the moulded ceiling, spreading the spores across the surfaces like infection.
I walked into the living room and put my hand out to the brittle wallpaper. There were patches of it that were lighter than the rest of the walls, why that was the case was revealed underneath my feet. The walls were hung with shattered pictures, the glass broken into shards, ground into the carpet. Pictures of times long forgotten, or paintings of things now extinct.
I reached down and picked one up. I tried to dust it off with my sleeve. I could see faded green and even orange. I held onto it as I continued to look around.
I was happy to see there was a couch and several chairs, all in fairly good condition. No scavers or radrats had made it here since the radiation made this area a death trap. Or if they had, they had been killed off during Skytech’s controlled dose of radiation during Donnely’s quarantine.
Skytech was another huge part of King Silas’s reign. They ran the labs, led by their president Garrett Dekker. They set up these labs all around the greywastes and inside Skyfall too. Performing experiments on humans and animals, and furthering medical and science advancements.
The chimeras Silas had created were supposed to be genetically engineered humans, each created for their specific job. I had met one of them, Elish, the purple-eyed chimera who fired my father. He had once been in charge of Skytech’s school many years ago, and had helped Garrett and some of the other scientists perform their experiments in the greywaste labs. Though now he was a councillor and Silas’s right-hand man.
After the labs had been used and scheduled for shut down, Garrett would usually blow them up or fill them with an insane level of radiation so no one could steal his technology. Then to warn the wasters he would cover the trees with blue tape and put up legion guards for the first several months.
Donnely had only been cleared off for a few years Greyson said, and from the looks of this house the vermin hadn’t found these places yet, or well… found and lived to tell about it. Sometimes the lab radiation was a blessing in disguise, it increased the chance of us finding valuable things while scavenging.
I made a beeline for a bookshelf tucked into the far corner of the living room and was happy to find a couple of children’s books in readable condition. One was called The Hungry Caterpillar and a novel called Cat Wings.
“Reaver, look!” I exclaimed. He was testing the stairs, there were a few collapsed stairs and some iffy-looking ones, but they looked safe.
Reaver turned around and I showed him the book. “Cat Wings?” he mumbled. He held up the book and looked at the cover. It was a drawing of four cats with bird-like wings.
“We have those in Skyfall, though their wings are more bat-like than bird-like,” I said. “I don’t think they had them before the Fallocaust; I’ve never read about them before.”
“It’s probably a pretend book.” Reaver put some weight on the stair and pressed down, the whole staircase creaked under the pressure and I could hear the wood strain.
>
“Maybe that’s where Silas got the idea?” I said, thumbing through the pages. I slipped the books into my satchel and made my way to the kitchen. Behind me I could hear Reaver slowly climb up the stairs.
The kitchen looked horrible. The fridge was open and completely covered in mould; it contained empty bottles and long-spoiled packages. The black stains on the back and small black pucks suggested it might at one time have held fruit or vegetables, but, of course, they were long gone.
I started rummaging through the kitchen cabinets but it looked like it had been wiped clean. I did find some dried pasta but it was blackened with the mould, and a can, but it was bulging and rusted. The radiation pulse might have killed most of the bacteria but botulism was still a danger. I moved to the drawers of the kitchen and pulled on the first one. The cover came off in my hand, leaving a plume of dust and decayed wood in its path. I reached in carefully and pulled the drawer out manually. It was a silverware drawer. We had lots of spoons and forks and all that so I didn’t bother with those, but I found something even better, worth its weight in diamonds in this world: a can opener! I stuffed it in my bag along with a ladle before turning back to find Reaver.
He was halfway up the stairs. “Stick to the left, that’s safest,” he said, gingerly stepping on the staircase again. “Don’t trust the railing.”
I did as he asked and both of us made it up to the top unharmed. He walked ahead and checked out the bedrooms while I waited.
“No skeletons, I guess they made it out alive.” Reaver dusted himself off and motioned me over to the bigger bedroom. That sounded like a good thing but it wasn’t. If the people here before us had left, it meant they probably took all of their valuables with them.
“A mattress!” I exclaimed happily. I clapped my hands together and ran over to it. I heard Reaver chuckle. I kicked the sides, sending up a puff of dust, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t often you found a mattress that had not been chewed up or soiled. You had to have the mattresses stored in the best condition for them to last.
