Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series Book 1)

by Quil Carter

  “I want to open up a little kiosk in the square. We have so much extra stuff from scavenging. I wanted to try and sell it for us.”

  I shrugged. I grabbed a piece of liquorice from a bunch Leo had left on the coffee table. “Knock yourself out.”

  “Can you help me run it?”

  “Nope.”

  “But Reaverrr.”

  “But Reaavvehhh,” I mocked, chewing the sugary plastic. “I’m no shopkeep, do it yourself.”

  “You’re not sentrying during the day, you’re only taking half shifts at night… but I’ll be working all day at Doc’s. So what are you going to do? Stay at Leo and Greyson’s staring at a wall? This way you can occupy yourself, make lots of money and… and…” I was tapping at their fish tank, watching the fish swim away. I guess he could tell he was losing me. “If we give it to Carson on consignment he’s going to take twenty percent. You don’t want to give him our money do you?”

  Bah, right where it hurt. Letting people profit or thrive off me.

  “I’ll think about it,” I grumbled.

  He gave a happy squeal. “Thank you!”

  “That doesn’t mean yes,” I said exasperated. I would do it though; it made him happy and we could use the money for fuel. Winter was cold, dark, and long. If we could stockpile the fuel and the food, we would live like kings during the winter months. Most people froze their asses off because they would burn through their fuel subsidies quickly. A majority of the residents hung out in the community hall which Greyson kept heated with wood from the black trees or houses marked to be cleared. That was free, and then even the poorest families could get warm for a while.

  I didn’t mind the cold but something told me Killian would crumple under it. Skyfall had a more tepid climate than where we were inland. I think I remember there was always smoke coming from their chimney during the Masseys’ first winter here.

  “It means yes.” Killian beamed. “I’m going to look for some paints and make us a sign. Where does Leo keep the good paint? He just touched up the door on the Red House yesterday. I think I saw him put it into the closet. Can I look?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. I might as well start getting through the paperwork. “Just put ‘for sale’, don’t put anything stupid on it.”

  Killian skittered off towards the hallway closet and I started leafing through crap. Sparrow’s mercenary request would get denied, or else he would expect it next time, or make up a bullshit excuse. I proposed that he could hire the mercs but that was about it. We were stocking up on ravers right now anyway since we didn’t expect any more caravans until spring.

  I went to the next paper which was coincidentally a request from Fieldy to organize another raver raid. That was approved. I might go with them too; get out some pent-up energy. Having sex with Killian was good for that, but it wasn’t a long term replacement for torture and murder. Request to take ownership of an abandoned house on Jiprock street? Sure, why the fuck not. Tintown wants to trade Geigerchip for ammo? Sounds like a fair trade.

  I did some more drugs to make this more bearable and got comfortable. I was almost through the stack of papers when Killian let out a gasp.

  “Reaver… look!”

  He was holding a few items in his hands. A red ball, a bundle of clothing, and a shut-up-thing you put into babies mouths when they wouldn’t stop bitching.

  “I think these were yours!” he said excitedly. He sat down and unrolled the clothing. It was a little baby long john, white with blue stripes. It was small.

  “I came here when I was two, that’s not mine,” I said glancing up, but something caught my eye. I remembered that red ball. My father used to throw it for me to bring back.

  I took the ball from him and ran my fingers over the surface. The plastic smell brought me right back to one of my earliest memories.

  My father. I only remembered that he had short dark hair, his face was blurred. We were in a place underground, a shelter, a bunker or something. I remember when I had seen the sky for the first time and the sun. I remember asking where the light switch was.

  Then the memories melted into each other and I just remember being in Aras… with Greyson and Leo.

  “Where did you get this stuff?” I asked. I felt a weird emotion come over me, what the emotion was in its entirety I didn’t know, but it boiled down to annoyance.

  “In a box, in the closet, it was labelled… Chance.”

  I gave the ball back to him and said rather coldly, “Put it back where you found it and stop snooping around.”

  The look Killian gave me made it seem like his soul was being crushed. “But it’s your past, Reaver. These things are the only things you have left of your parents. Maybe we can find more information on them. I saw more in there.”

  I picked up the baby jumper and shoved it into his hands. “I don’t care about that, Killian, I never have. Put it back where you found it.” I wondered if Leo and Greyson had been keeping this shit all these years wondering if I would ever ask for it. It was something long in the past, years ago, I didn’t have a curiosity about it. They were dead and I wasn’t. I just… I don’t know, I wasn’t that sentimental.

  I swallowed a lump forming in my throat, the annoyance growing.

  “You don’t care where you came from? What their names were?”

  “No.”

  “Your last name?”

  “No.”

  “I care.”

  I lost my patience with him. I pointed to the closet. “Put that shit back, NOW!”

  Killian got up. He looked pissed off; he grabbed the items and stalked back to the hallway closet.

  “You can be mad at me all you want, it’s a nice break from crying.” As soon as the words left my mouth I hated myself. Why did I say these things?

  “You’re a real asshole, Reaver,” Killian shouted back to me. “You’re only being a jerk because you do want to know, but you don’t want to admit it.”

  Wonderful, his psychology shit. “As much as you wish for it, I’m not as complicated as you think.”

  I got up too and started up the stairs to the second level, where my room used to be. I walked into my old bedroom and climbed out the window. I would do the rest of my work undisturbed on the roof.

  I was up there for several hours. Though the paperwork only took half that time, I wanted to enjoy the silence and the seclusion. I wasn’t going to get much time to myself for the next couple of days. Especially if I had to play storekeeper. Which I now knew I needed to do since I cussed out Killian.

  His fault for being a snoopy little bastard. If the box is labelled ‘Chance’ odds are it didn’t contain any paint. Curiosity killed the cat.

  Killed the Killi Cat. Hah, I did have my clever moments.

  My solitude was interrupted by the front door shutting. I got up and walked over to the side of the house and saw Killian looking up at me.

  “Warden Hollis just radioed. There is a domestic situation on Green Street. Some woman’s husband is drunk and being violent. He needs you over there to help take him to the holding cell.”

  This part of the job I wouldn’t mind doing. Hopefully I could get a good couple hits in.

  Aras didn’t have a jail, because we executed everyone if they were found guilty. We only had holding cells until they had their day in what Greyson had convinced himself was a court. The wonderful democracy of Aras. Though instead of a prison sentence you hanged or at the very best, were exiled.

  Killian didn’t argue when I told him to stay at the house. I grabbed my M16 and a knife and made my way towards Green Street. I only hoped the drunk would give me a good reason to kill him.

  I heard the idiot before I saw him. Like most drunks he was loud and obnoxious, cussing out Warden Hollis. The warden was there with two other law enforcers. This town had five of them. I had taken a year of training to be an officer but Greyson had moved me to sentry. I wasn’t compassionate enough or some bullshit. Apparently you had to like people, not just beat them with
nightsticks.

  The three officers were trying to talk down the man, whose name I didn’t care to learn, as he brandished a knife at them. He had his back pressed up against the house, waving the knife around as he hollered.

  I took my gun out. “Put the fucking knife down or I’ll shoot you,” I said. No one else had their guns out, I wasn’t sure why.

  “Fugs off!” he slurred. I think he was trying to say fuck off.

  The warden looked at me and nodded me over. “No need for the gun, Reaver. We know him well, he won’t hurt anyone. He’s been sober for a year now but he just relapsed a few months ago.”

  “He’s an arian with a weapon, I don’t give a damn what his personal drama is.” I walked past Hollis and raised my gun. “Put the knife down,” I said loudly.

  The drunk looked a bit bewildered, surprised I wasn’t holding his hand and asking him to talk to me about it. He regained his drunken balls though and sneered at me. “You… you go watch the wall’sh, semtry. You ain’t no mayor.”

  I lowered my M16 and pulled the trigger, shooting the ground in front of him.

  A spray of dirt shot up a few inches from his toes as the bullets shot into the ground. The drunk jumped and did a flailing dance, dropping the knife. He shielded his eyes from the spray of dirt and ash, and hollered.

  I clicked my gun onto its holster and grabbed him, before pushing him onto the ground. I put my foot on his back as he moaned and howled, and pressed down on it. Warden Hollis and the other two were looking at me in shock.

  “Cuffs.” I held out my hand and a moment later I felt the cold metal. I cuffed the drunk and yanked him to his feet. He swayed and groaned, spitting out both dirt and curse words.

  “There, put him into the holding tank.” I pushed the slobbering drunk towards Hollis. As the warden took him a lady appeared in the doorway. She was crying, a noticeable bruise on her eye.

  “Please don’t take him,” she begged. “He didn’t mean it. He’s a good person.”

  “Oh? And he punched you in the eye, that’s how good a person he is, huh?” I turned to Hollis. “How often have you been called out to deal with this idiot?”

  The warden didn’t look like he wanted to tell me. “Three times this week.”

  “And what’s his job here?”

  “He keeps the main streets clear of ash and garbage, the square too.”

  “So he’s easily replaceable, is he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great,” I said. I turned to the lady. “He’s being arrested for violence towards you, and brandishing a deadly weapon towards the law enforcement and the mayor of Aras. Which he will, of course, be found guilty of.” The lady and the drunk started shrieking but I carried on.

  “I will send a councillor over when a trial date has been set.”

  Once we were out of sight, Hollis nodded me towards him. He was in his late thirties, with greying blond hair and brown eyes. He was a calm man, and a serious, no nonsense one, though I had always seen him as a bit of a push-over. It was rare that he lost his temper, even when dealing with the locals.

  “Reaver, I didn’t want to mention it until we were alone, but perhaps you should reconsider the charges against Harold,” he said to me quietly. “He has fallen on hard times, him and his wife. Their kids both died, he hit the bottle rather hard… he’s a good person just not when he’s drunk. Greyson was planning on forbidding him from buying alcohol again.”

  “Again? So it didn’t work the first time.”

  “Well, it did, but he made his own we suspect.”

  “So he’s sneaky, and disobeys rules set out for him?”

  The warden’s mouth pursed. I could tell this wasn’t going as he had planned.

  “Warden Hollis… we as civil servants ask so little of our residents. We only have a few laws, a few requests of our people to keep things running smoothly. It’s not much to ask, no?”

  Hollis was quiet. I went on.

  “Everyone chips in, everyone helps out and in return…” I waved my hand towards the buildings around us. “Paradise, an oasis in the savagery of the greywastes. A veritable haven for those willing to chip in, help out, and make our block run smoothly.”

  Hollis nodded, so I continued. “You start giving these weasels a line and they will cross it. We pardon Mr. Harold again, and soon everyone will think that’s an acceptable way to act. Use him as an example, keep the locals in line.”

  He didn’t look convinced but he gave me a nod. “We… we have been having a lot of trouble recently. I have noticed a trend… Mayor Greyson has well… been busy with other things lately.”

  Undoubtedly.

  “Well, let’s make things a bit easier on Mayor Greyson.” I gave the warden a smile. The man looked surprised; they weren’t used to seeing me smile. “And for you, Warden.”

  Hollis’s heartbeat rose. I knew I had him in my pocket now. He was all mine. This was an easy man to manipulate.

  “You’re…” he said slowly and dared himself a small chuckle, “… very different from Greyson.”

  And they were about to find out just how different.

  Chapter 30

  Greyson

  The entire bedroom smelled like bleach and other cleaning chemicals, which was a far cry from the stench of rotting blood that had infiltrated their nostrils upon opening the door.

  Greyson could only hope that by the time Nero or any of Perish’s chimera brothers came back to the lab the smell would be gone.

  It looked clean. They had even washed the bloodstained blanket and sheets in the washer. He, Leo, and Doc couldn’t resist throwing their clothes in as well. It had been years since they’d had a working clothes washer, they were a bugger to fix. The last one they’d had to sell for food during a bad winter.

  “How are the books?” Leo asked, wiping his face with a towel. He had been neurotic the entire day they had been there. Nothing could have a trace of Perish’s blood on it. Leo knew more about this sort of thing, so Greyson hadn’t argued. If he said spotless, it would be spotless. They couldn’t put Reaver at risk over a drop of blood.

  “A few droplets. Why don’t we just take those ones for Killian?” Greyson said. He put his finger on the top of a book and pulled it forward to read it. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Good enough, it could be his birthday present. He looked at the other two blood-splattered ones. Greek Myths and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Those would be Christmas presents.

  Greyson started to whistle to himself as he looked through the dressers. Nothing but clothing, more books, old porn magazines, and sex toys.

  Greyson wiped his hand on the side of his pants. “Since we’re pretty much finished here, I want to start looking around the second level.”

  Leo stood up and gave the room a once over. It looked good, clean but lived in, they had done a good job. Greyson watched as his partner’s hazel eyes inspected every corner; it was a solid minute before he nodded to himself. “We have everything we need from the first floor?”

  “Everything we could find.” Leo had made a specific list about what would happen while they were there, and on what day. The first thing he had needed the three of them to do was disable all of the cameras and isolate where the video feeds had been saved. Don, or Doc as everyone had called him, had been able to help Leo do that. The cameras in the city and in the lab were now off, and the tapes Greyson wanted to review were waiting queued in Perish’s office.

  The next phase was to clean up the blood and secure the food they were taking and also Perish’s personal items. That way if anyone came unexpectedly they could take off undetected and the ‘Perish just got up and left’ plan would still be in motion.

  “I’ll go with you. I might as well get started trying to copy those files,” Leo said. The two of them started walking down the white hallway, stepping over the blood smears in the middle of their path. There had already been an argument as to whether they should clean that one up yet. They had decided to review the recordings first and make the
ir decision based on that.

  Doc appeared in front of them, coming back from another trip to the surface, no doubt. He had been helping load the truck.

  Leo had been adamant that only the three of them know the location of the lab. They both trusted Doc fully; he had been the keeper of many secrets for them and had never betrayed their trust once.

  “Alright, we’re secure. If we need to haul ass we’re set,” Doc said. He scratched his head and nodded towards where Perish had kept Reaver. “Are we keeping that clean? It’s a bit obvious someone was kept in there. It might raise suspicion.”

  “Or it could give him more of a reason to leave, what do you think?” Greyson glanced at Leo; all three of them started walking down the stairs to the second level.

  “I’m afraid if we start touching everything here they will know the surroundings had been tampered with,” Leo said, a hint of nervousness in his voice. He knew how thorough the chimeras were. “I think we should just clean up what Killian did and leave everything how it was. It will tell its own story.”

  “And if Perish was keeping someone captive here, it would add to why the recordings got destroyed,” Greyson pointed out. “There is no way he would leave evidence like that behind.”

  Leo seemed happy with that. He brought out the faded keycard from his jeans and swiped it. Greyson prepared himself for the smell. They had come down here quickly after Killian had killed Perish and it was a graveyard. Now it was a graveyard of corpses that had been rotting for over a week.

  Sure enough, a wave of decaying flesh and rotten blood hit them like a wall. Leo pulled a surgical mask over his head and handed Greyson and Doc one each. As Greyson slipped it over his mouth, his eyes started to water.

  As he took his first cautious breath he was relieved that the mask had been soaked in mint extract. So now instead of rotten meat and organs it was minty rotten meat and organs.

  “Next time spray it with ether.” Doc gagged, taking a step in front of the two of them. “Where is the scientist’s office? Let’s get this over with.”