Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series Book 1)

by Quil Carter

  “Stay close, I’m serious. I need to look for the things now – not babysit you, okay?” he said, his voice was low and warning. I gave him a serious nod, feeling my eye twitch. Reaver nodded and turned away, walking up to the shelves. He checked the grey dusted lumps that, under many layers of dust, held things inside. Like little greywaste presents.

  I decided to help. I turned around and started dusting off items with my sleeve, before Reaver tossed me a rag. The first thing I found was makeup, eye shadow to be more specific. Nothing we could use, but I did put some in my bag for Sadii or Jess.

  The next several things I found were also makeup, more chick stuff, and Reaver must’ve noticed too. He clicked me over and we walked to the next aisle. I climbed to the top of one of the metal shelving units and started dusting off the signs that showed what was in each aisle. Reaver saw me.

  “Oh, smart thinking,” he said. I beamed and wiped the rest of the dust away.

  “Hair care, facial care, foot care,” I read. “I’ll dust off the other signs.”

  “I’ll get some foot powder, keep the mushrooms off people’s feet,” Reaver said, checking the shelves carefully. “Don’t go more than one aisle away from me.”

  “I’ll be on the shelves anyway you can see me,” I called as I started climbing the next shelf. The chain on this one was broken, only a single link was holding the aisle sign up. I got out my rag and started cleaning.

  I felt like an archaeologist dusting off the bones of the Fallocaust, uncovering pre-war treasures one swipe of my cloth at a time. Everything was in much better condition compared to other places I’ve scavenged, even the plastic aisle signs were readable, the lettering straight and perfect. The dark blue was beautiful.

  I showed Reaver the sign. “Look how blue it is.”

  Reaver glanced up, holding a bottle of something. “Matches your eyes.” He smiled, which made me blush. He was so sweet at times. “Greeting cards? Those will be long gone by now.” He straightened himself up so he could see the other sign. “Oh-ral hi-gee-eney.”

  “Oral Hygiene.” I laughed, jumping down from the metal shelving. I walked down the aisle but to my dismay only a few dusted boxes remained. The people must’ve taken all of it while they were evacuating, or maybe the Legion could have when they made this a lab city. That was disappointing. I loved collecting toothbrushes and toothpaste. I hoarded as much as I could, which was probably why I still had all my teeth.

  We cleared the rest of the shelves, by this time I was coughing pretty hard into my sleeve. The dust was incredibly thick and rubbing the labels of so many packages and bottles was stirring up the air. I bet the greywaste ash wasn’t just dirt, I bet it was all just compacted dust. This stuff was everywhere there might be good scavenging. Though two hundred plus years would do that.

  “Bingo, get over here, Killian,” Reaver called. He was leaning over a counter. It had the words Pharmacist on top of it. This would be where the good pills were, of course. I felt a pang of excitement as I hopped over the counter.

  Behind us were several cracked leather chairs, and what I think was a blood pressure machine. I had seen them in Doc’s medical books. Behind Reaver was another counter with a piece of plastic glass wrapped around it.

  I walked behind and started dusting off bottles, trying my hardest to remember the kinds that Reaver took. They all had such stupid and annoying names though.

  I started dusting off just the first bottle of each row, settling them aside for Reaver to look at when he had a chance. The bottles were in good condition and the labels cracked though readable. They were lined up in neat little rows, of all shapes and sizes.

  I had never seen so much pre-Fallocaust stuff in one corner, or at least untouched like this. It was hard to believe the last person to touch these lived so long ago. Not expecting that they would sit here for so long. It was a sobering thought…

  Things had changed slowly yet quickly. Civilization had been warring for so long and then apparently King Silas appeared and stopped it.

  Who was he? No one knew. One thing was for sure… he was immortal. God though? No… a demon perhaps. The horned, winged kind I would see in books. That tortured, controlled, destroyed, and corrupted. That was the king and his chimeras.

  I had never seen him before not even in pictures, and we didn’t get Skyfall TV in Tamerlan. I had only seen him in drawings or represented as a cougar-scorpion emblem on things like the Legion’s logo.

  Apparently he was extremely attractive though, with golden blond hair, green eyes, and a face of the gods, or so they said. Every person in the higher districts of Skyfall was good looking, or else they were refused breeding rights, something that had to be registered for or your kid got taken away and tossed in the Moros slums. King Silas had to maintain his perfect world and that meant beauty.

  I had seen pictures of some of his chimeras and had seen Elish, all of them either looked like the models you would see in magazines or movie stars. I don’t know how much engineering King Silas had done to make them but it must’ve been a lot.

  I put the bottle back and read the label, still feeling very sombre about all of it. King Silas stopped the world from being completely destroyed, but in turn… he took over the shattered remains. No more video games being made, or movies, or even Ivory soap. Everything had died when the Fallocaust happened, and anything created or born now had Dek’ko or Skytech stamped onto it.

  “Alright I got sutures, needles, bottles of crap. What did you dig up?” Reaver said after an hour had passed. My rag was now black and so were my hands, and probably my face too since I had wiped it a few times. I got up and shook my cramped-up legs.

  “I wiped off the first of every bottle. I don’t know which ones are your drugs.”

  “Hmm, okay, move aside. I’ll take a look.” Reaver handed me the bag and started looking at all the pill bottles. I watched him for a few minutes, as he made a pile of what bottles he wanted until I realized I had the powder bag. So I went to find a quiet corner to do some more coke.

  I sat on one of the leather chairs and took a quick bit of powder. I shuddered like Reaver had done as I felt my mouth and throat go numb. I was really starting to enjoy this stuff.

  The rest of the day I spent scavenging with Reaver. I cleared off the signs and the pill bottles or the packages, and he picked out what we would bring, what we didn’t need, and what we would hide for later.

  Reaver kept watching the windows while we were rummaging around. Soon enough when we were an hour into scavenging an office he decided we were done for the night. I couldn’t have been happier, he confiscated the drugs a few hours ago and I was crashing hard.

  With our arms full of bags we headed back to the quad a few blocks down. The hazy sun had set behind the buildings now, taking the warmth with it and shrouding us in a permanent shadow. Everything had suddenly got quiet and rather eerie. I tried to remind myself it was probably the drugs.

  Our boots echoed as we walked down the street. Reaver, carrying most of the bags, stared forward. His black eyes were fixed but firm in concentration. He was probably thinking of the best place to make shelter, and what he would do during his patrol. I hoped he didn’t patrol tonight, there too many buildings around us. Un-boarded up windows and rusted hinges, rooms and rooms empty but exposed. Anything could be in there…

  I shook away the feeling. No, this place was abandoned. We hadn’t seen a radrat or even a croach. We were the only ones here. Anything else would’ve left their mark in one way or another.

  When we slung the bags on the back of the quad, I saw nervousness in Reaver’s eyes, but as soon as he saw me looking, it disappeared.

  “What is it?” I asked warily.

  Reaver looked up at the sky. “I made a mistake. It gets darker quicker in towns obviously. The buildings block out the sun instead of a horizon thousands of miles away. I thought we had more time to find shelter or even go back to where we were last night. We don’t.” Reaver kicked the brake from the q
uad and rolled it towards an alley. He put it behind a dumpster and grabbed our bag from last night and the blanket. He handed both to me and beckoned me to follow him.

  I was silent as he looked around. I knew he was analyzing everything like his sentry training had taught him. What place would be safest for us to camp out in for the evening. It had to be high enough to avoid anyone seeing us, but low enough that if we did run into trouble we could escape. What places had the most rooms. A better ledge for us to climb, and probably dozens of things I didn’t even consider. It was fascinating, like watching a computer working.

  “I don’t want us too many storeys above ground,” Reaver decided. “I want us near enough to the quad. I don’t know this city at all and if we’re running from shit we’ll both get lost.”

  I didn’t like this idea but I humoured him. “Where then?”

  “The apartment buildings we walked past earlier,” Reaver said. They weren’t far, only half a block. “We’ll get a room in there, with a window I can scout from, second-storey. We can both jump if we need to.”

  My anxiety returned. Reaver sensed it. He fell back and walked right beside me as we made our way to the apartments. He didn’t leave me outside this time though; we both cautiously walked into the apartment building, our guns drawn and ready to fire.

  I brought out my flashlight and looked in every corner that I could, but everything was blanketed in grey, with only our footsteps disturbing the perfectly preserved lobby.

  Everything looked even more spooky with the oncoming darkness. The peeling paint and deformed wood made the lobby and stairwell look ominous and haunting. I quickly and closely followed Reaver up the stairs. He wasn’t testing them like he had done in the house we had slept in the previous night.

  “It’s not that big of a deal, Killi. Don’t be so scared,” he said to me when we reached the top. I watched him walk confidently down the hallway, his gun in his hand. He carefully pulled each door knob to see if they would open.

  He didn’t look scared, he looked just fine. Reaver had this nonchalant way of dealing with these situations that I wished I could pick up from him. I got paranoid and anxious while he remained calm and collected.

  He had been calm when he found me… I remembered him saying my name. I remembered being shocked he was saying my name. He had never so much as looked at me before he saved me. His ear was partially blown off, his back was raw and burnt from shielding me from the blast. Even with a brain injury that he still feels the effects of he still drove us home.

  This made me square my shoulders and stand up a bit straighter. I forced my worries down. I would strive to be more like him. I would be confident, fearless and brave. I would need to be if I wanted to keep being his partner. I couldn’t be a scared little bitch hiding out in Aras; who would want to be with that? No one would, especially someone as amazing as Reaver.

  He called me into his chosen room and we set up a quick camp. The mattress here was also in good condition and it even had blankets over it. I shook out the blankets in the hallway and made us a nice little bed. I knew he wouldn’t sleep but he could still lie with me for a while and rest his eyes.

  Since we would be heading back tomorrow morning, we drank half a bottle of water each, leaving half a bottle between the two of us for tomorrow. We could drink our fill when we got to Aras.

  Reaver made himself a drug area on the wooden kitchen table and I busied myself scavenging some more things from the apartment. It had also been cleaned out of food, and anything worth taking with us, save a couple books.

  “I’d love to check out a few more of the apartments tomorrow,” I said to Reaver as I was thumbing through some magazines. “There has to be at least one where they died rather than left on their own.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Reaver said. There was a tap tap tap coming from him as he cut his drugs into lines. “If these were government-issued evacuations everyone would’ve had to leave. I think this apartment building was one of them.”

  I guess he was right. I hadn’t seen any skeletons in this building. I actually hadn’t seen any skeletons inside any of the buildings.

  “But we still found a lot of valuable things in the stores,” I said confused. “Why wouldn’t they be gone too, then?” I grabbed some books and sat down on the bed with them.

  “They would’ve just been stores back then, maybe they thought they would come back? Or the government was shooting anyone who tried to loot them. Not sure.” Reaver held up the straw to his nose and snorted. I didn’t dare ask for any, or I would be buzzing all around the apartment. He had mentioned wanting to patrol a bit earlier, so he would need them for that.

  “Once you figure out the history of the town, it’s easier to know what you can find and what you can’t,” Reaver explained, sniffing and rubbing his nose. “Gosselin, for example, has been ransacked. You won’t find much there in the shops or houses, but if you have the way to carry it home you can find neat things like pinball machines and arcade games.”

  “Like the one in Greyson and Leo’s house?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did they teach you all of these things?”

  Reaver nodded, he inhaled another line of drugs before he picked up my assault rifle. He broke it apart and started cleaning it with a stained rag. “Taught me a lot of what I know.”

  “I wish they were my dads. My dad was a junkie and an angry one at that,” I said, leaning back on a flat, musty-smelling pillow. “You’re lucky.”

  There was a pause. I looked up from my magazine to see Reaver giving me a hard look. “They’re not my real dads though.”

  I gave an exasperated sigh and rolled my eyes, and he said I had mental issues. “I’m not even going to point out how–”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Reaver!” I complained. “You should be happy to have two parents. Why do you care if they’re your real dads or not?”

  “I don’t call them dad do I?”

  I was surprised at that tone. Maybe they never wanted him to call them dad? Greyson did seem to treat him a lot like a soldier, perhaps that’s what he had wanted instead of a son.

  Though the thought of pointing that out sent a shiver through my very soul. He would kill me!

  “I wish I knew more about you,” I said. I put my magazine down and just watched him. He was so mysterious, a human from an unknown land with an unknown history. I wished he was registered just so I could know who he was.

  “Why? It wouldn’t make any difference,” Reaver said. He leaned back in his chair, wiping his nose again. I could tell the drugs were starting to hit him. It was like watching a spring slowly uncoil. You could see his shoulders relax and his eyes get softer. I loved watching it happen.

  “Because… I like you, I want to know everything about you,” I said honestly. “I don’t even know your last name.”

  “You don’t know my given name either.”

  “What!” I said loudly, he looked like he regretted saying that. “Reaver isn’t your name? What’s your name!?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Reaver hissed. He wiped his face with his hands and muttered something about the drugs being to blame. He looked out the window, and all fell silent for a few minutes.

  “I don’t remember my mom at all, but I remember my dad a little. I remember he had black hair, and he was very young. Not any older than I am now,” Reaver explained.

  I held my breath. I was afraid that if I said anything to him he would stop talking and shut himself down.

  The light from the flashlight partially illuminated his face. It looked stone-cold again, not soft at all, or whimsical. It was steeled, emotionless. I guess the drugs could only do so much. “I remember him throwing a ball for me, and I would run and bring it back. He would do it all the time to try and wear me out… we were… in a closed off area I had never been outside before.

  “Then he was gone and I was with Greyson and Leo. I asked where Dad was and Greyson said he had to go away… eve
rything after that was just normal living. I was in Aras and I well… just survived.”

  “They changed your name?”

  Reaver shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe my dad had done that before he met Leo and Greyson. I think he called me Reaver before I came to Aras.”

  “Greyson and Leo never said?”

  “I never asked.”

  That was maddening. I wondered if he would get mad if I asked for him? I tried to tell myself no, that if Reaver wanted to ask he could and it wasn’t my place, but curiosity was driving me crazy.

  There was silence again. Then the flicker of a lighter as Reaver lit a cigarette. I watched as the cherry ember brightened with his inhale.

  He looked so handsome in that moment, and I don’t think I had ever seen him so encapsulated in himself. A cigarette in one hand, and his other resting on the table beside his drugs, his blackened eyes looking out the window like was in his nature as a sentry. Cold, silent, unbroken, and unemotional. Was he just an expert at hiding his emotions on subjects anyone would be emotional over? Or did he just truly not care? Reaver lived in the present, he never seemed to dwell about the past, or the future. He didn’t seem to care that much for his origins, his names, his adopted fathers, or anything but what was going on in this moment.

  The white smoke swirled around his pale face, the ember lighting and darkening as he smoked. The silence continued to drive me crazy, but I knew with him it couldn’t have been more natural.

  I watched him for hours, my magazine forgotten. I watched as he smoked, cleaned our guns, and every once in a while bent over to do more drugs. It was when my eyes started to become heavy, and my mind heavier that I decided to ask the question that had been burning the most.

  “What did he call you, Reaver?”

  There was a long pause.

  “He called me Chance.”

  “Come lay with me, Chance.”