by Quil Carter
Asher let out a laugh and watched the window I had just closed. “Skyfallers are a sensitive bunch. They don’t have to dodge ravers and occets or eat their best friends. They spend all their time in their comfortable houses. Once they come to the greywastes… they become –” Asher nodded his head to the window, obviously at Killian. “You’re a born and raised greywaster, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” I nodded, still deciding to leave out as much information as I could.
“I could tell. Leo wasn’t, was he?”
That stopped me for a moment. I realized that I didn’t know. Leo, like Greyson, had just always been there. He never spoke about himself.
“I don’t know, never asked, never really cared,” I said and I left it at that. Asher seemed to get the hint. Making conversation was all well and fine, but I wasn’t keen on talking about the people I was (or had been) close to. He would have to learn that eventually.
And he did take hints well. The conversation switched to the plans we both had for his place, and by the time we were finished with what we had wanted to get done, the inside of the house had been swept and completely cleaned out. It didn’t look livable yet, but it was coming along.
“Tomorrow we’ll burn these shit carpets and the wallpaper,” I said, my voice echoing in the now empty house. “I would cross into Old Aras and talk to our junk man Chang. He should be able to supply you with some wiring, the rest I’d get from Carson.” Then something occurred to me. “Wait, you don’t have any money do you?”
Asher laughed and started slapping dust away from his pants. “Unfortunately not, but I have supply caches I was going to get once my leg and arm heals.”
“Where at?” It had been a good time since my last trip out, and I was sure this mission wouldn’t be as troublesome as my last one.
“A town near Anvil, abandoned and crawling with ravers. Doesn’t have a name, we just called it Fallon Cache Two,” Asher said.
I offered him a cigarette. He took it with a grateful smile. We started walking towards the square.
“Clever thinking, the ravers will keep the cache safe from scavengers.” I nodded approvingly and lit his cigarette. “I’ll go with you.”
“Thank you.” Asher’s face lit up, he puffed the cigarette and gave me a crooked smile. “Deider has given me credit for the next month, and so has Nevada at the store. I want to start paying my own way as soon as possible.”
I scanned the square just to make sure I wouldn’t see anyone who would bother me, but it was empty save a few people walking around. There was a large black stain on the fountain now from where the wood and coals had burned through, the only physical remains of my short stint in power. I hoped it would be there forever, just to remind them.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll be around the park making the greenhouse, come and get us when you want to work a bit more on your house.” I looked behind me. Still empty.
“Thanks, Reaver.” Asher’s leg wobbled as he walked towards the door. “I appreciate the help.”
I turned to take the shortcut through the square home. On the way past the fountain I took a better look at it. Not only was it burnt from the fires, it had a circular char mark from the barrel too. I scraped my foot against it and smiled as I remembered. I wouldn’t get to do that again ever, unless I eventually did become mayor of Aras – which I certainly did not want.
I was pleased that Asher had witnessed all of it. He sounded like someone with a similar mindset to me. He probably enjoyed every second of it like I had. I wondered if being a raticater had inspired that in him. The ones I had met in Aras had always been tough and just a touch ruthless.
I carried on towards the west end of the square. I gave the area one last sweep when my eyes fell on a familiar figure.
Greyson was leaning up against one of our sheds about fifty feet away. He was watching me leave, his face sullen and his body frozen as if he wanted to hide himself. Hoping I didn’t see him was my guess, though if he really believed I would miss his shadow he didn’t know me too well.
I made eye contact with him for a split second before I looked away and disappeared into an alleyway. Enough eye contact to see the lines around his tired eyes and the droop of his shoulders. He wasn’t doing too well it seemed. Good. I wanted him to suffer all the misery in the world.
Well, that darkened my mood. Leave it to that asshole to still piss me off without even opening his mouth. I decided to run home to try and break the mood, perhaps jumping over a few cars would take my mind off of him.
I got home in record time with my feet barely touching the ground. I opened my shack door but before I went inside my old tunnel I rooted through the shelves of small appliances and other broken things. I freed an old iron waffle maker from underneath a stereo system and pulled out a hot plate that looked in fair condition. I carried on into the house, my dusty treasures in hand.
I put the appliances down on the cluttered kitchen table and looked around for Killian.
He was sitting silently, only the glow of the bluelamp lighting the house. He was strumming a few notes on his guitar, a dog-eared music book propped up on a chair in front of him.
I leaned up against the wall separating the kitchen and the living room, and listened to him play. He strummed the instrument with long graceful fingers, plucking each string as he read the music book in front of him.
His eyes glanced up at me and he blushed. “You’re making me mess up, mister.”
I smiled and turned the generator dial, flooding the whole basement den in light and warmth.
Killian squinted in the light and so did I. We both preferred hiding out in darkness, or he did when I was around at least.
“Did you get a lot of work done?” Killian asked, leaning the guitar against the side of the couch.
“Lots.” I turned off his bluelamp and sat down in front of my desk with the broken hot plate. “I want to spend the next week getting Asher’s place straightened up, and our plant boxes done. We can use his scrap and the townhouse’s scrap as firewood too.”
I saw his fingers lightly drum the top of the guitar now resting beside him. He took in a small breath like he was contemplating saying something, but he stopped.
Well, I had avoided it for as long as I could. If we were going to fight about Perish it was obviously inevitable. Though I knew, and I hope he knew too, that it wouldn’t solve anything. “You might as well say it.” I glanced up from unscrewing the bottom hinges. I waved some dust away from my face.
“I think he’s from Skyfall.”
So this wasn’t about Perish?
Killian paused like he was expecting some grand reaction. I shrugged and lifted the top of the white plastic plate. I was relieved this wouldn’t be a fight about Perish. At least if we were going to fight it would be a new topic. “So? So are you.”
“No, I’m from the outskirts of Skyfall. From one of Dek’ko’s factory towns. They’re worlds apart.”
“You were born in Skyfall though weren’t you?”
“Well… yes… we’re all born in hospitals so they can register us.”
“Well, then get the hell out of my town, Skyfaller.” I reached over and pushed his head playfully. “What’s the big deal about him being from Skyfall? Didn’t all the Fallocaust survivors come from Skyfall? That’s how King Silas kept them from being killed by the sestic radiation pulse.”
Killian was silent for longer than usual, he looked a little green. “The… they are… I just don’t…”
I sighed and picked up my screwdriver. I gave him a flat look. “You’re jealous.”
Killian bristled, but he didn’t return my gaze. “I don’t like the way he talks that’s all. He’s not just any guy from Skyfall – he’s a Skylander, an elite class. Skylanders are… they’re very smart Reaver and sneaky, that’s why they’re upper class. You above everyone else need to be careful of them.”
“I don’t follow.”
Killian put his hand over mine and
made me put down the screwdriver. I groaned, preparing myself for a lecture. “It’s a class type. Silas calls the elites Skylanders and they live in the heart of Skyfall. Am I the only one who noticed Asher is very, very good looking? His body proportions are perfect, his face is chiselled like Apollo and his voice flows like he’s fucking reading poetry. Skylanders need to register for breeding rights; there really aren’t many ugly ones.”
He was right about that, but why was that a problem? It just meant he wasn’t an uneducated moron like most wasters. That made more sense to me, not less. It explained why I enjoyed his company, the same reason I had enjoyed Killian’s. He was different and smart.
“You’re the same, aren’t you? You’re beautiful and you talk well. Why are we supposed to hate him for being from a few miles from where you were raised? Why does it make a big difference?”
Killian opened his mouth but paused for a moment. He seemed to struggle with the next words.
“I don’t think he’s a raticater.”
The conversation was doing a number on his heart and breathing. He didn’t like this new kid. Did he really believe Asher was lying about his origins, or was this just a cover up to hide his growing jealousy? I could see where he was coming from, but it was unfounded. He should know me better than that. Cheating just wasn’t me.
I wouldn’t bring it up though, it was a sensitive issue and only time would prove he was wrong. “He has a grisly side to him you haven’t seen. Or perhaps you did and that’s why you left when we were in his house. He’s a raticater; he likes killing as much as I do.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
I sighed, tired of this conversation already. “Killian, lots of people get sick of being in Skyfall and they leave. Raticater is a good job for newcomers. It’s not as dangerous as slaving and it puts food on the table.”
Killian went green again. What I’d give to poke a hole in that head just to look inside it.
“Keep an eye on him, please?”
“I already am,” I said, picking up the screwdriver again. “You really think I’m only spending time with him because he’s my new best friend?”
“No,” he said, then sighed, defeated. “I just don’t trust him, that’s all.”
I pinched out the last screw and got up. I walked towards one of my credenza-type desks and started picking out parts I suspected I would need for my now fully dismantled hot plate. “Good, you shouldn’t trust him. I don’t. Don’t trust anyone in Aras but me.”
“I think he likes you.”
I gave a light chuckle and tossed the screwdriver up in the air before catching it mid spin. I pointed it at him. “And now we get to the real reason you don’t like him. Like I said, jealousy.”
Oh, I got a glare that could melt steel. I had touched a nerve. Sure enough, when he spoke his voice was strained and full of emotion. “It took you months to say hi to me, and you walk with him the entire night?”
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his insecurities, so I ended it as quickly as I could. “If you can’t see the difference between what I felt for you, and what I feel for some kid I just met, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Like I had suspected it did indeed shut him up. Killian picked up his guitar again and started strumming out a few cords before turning a page in his music book. I hoped that would be the end of the conversation.
“Play me something.”
There was a rustling of the music book. I glanced over and watched him put it away. He thought for a second and started playing a song on his old acoustic.
“Say hello, remain, close to me.” Killian started to sing quietly. “No goodbye suicide, mystery.”
I smiled at his sweet tenor voice, soft but still masculine, and went back to my hot plate. As I listened to him sing and play his guitar, I stripped a broken wire and started twisting it with its partner. I turned the knob on the hot plate and made a quiet noise of victory under my breath. If there was one thing I was good at, it was fixing shitty two hundred-year-old electronics.
I put the appliance down and leaned back in my chair to listen to Killian.
He sung quietly to himself and to me, a song I knew I would request again. ‘Apparitions’ he would later tell me it was called.
When the last string was strummed on his guitar, and his voice faded with the music, the basement around us fell to a still silence.
“Just be careful, okay?” he whispered.
The nervousness in his eyes had no justification in my mind but I still didn’t wish him to suffer over something I knew he wasn’t old enough to control. Jealousy was an emotion for women and teenagers. He would grow out of it, or perhaps I would prove my loyalty to him in time.
Until then, I would say the words he wanted to hear.
“I will be.”
Chapter 36
Killian
Two weeks later Reaver was pulling me towards my old home in the cul-de-sac. I debated whether to become dead weight in protest but I decided to be a man and just get it over with, though I had to swallow a painful lump in the back of my throat.
“You said we were going to do this tomorrow,” I sighed. I was holding Reaver’s toolkit. Reaver was carrying heavy boards. We probably were a stupid sight. He was gliding gracefully with the boards on his back, I was struggling with the clunky took box, my sore wrist pulsing with pain.
“Then you would make up an excuse to put it off,” Reaver said. “It’s already rained and it’s getting cold. We have to board it up. You’ll be fine.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat; it seemed to stick halfway down.
Reaver stopped and waited for me to catch up. He turned and watched me with his jet-coloured eyes, patient with my weaknesses as always.
With my house behind him he looked like a screenshot from a horror movie. The pale and beautiful serial killer with the ominous shrouded two-storey murder house in the background, stretching up to the metallic sky, gaping and open. He was luring his victim inside to rape him, butcher him alive, and make him into a pot roast.
I saw Reaver in my head cackling with blood spraying on his face, raising a bloodied axe and swinging it onto the corpse below. The sickening sound echoing off the bare gyprock walls. Shunk, shunk, shunk.
If only he had been carrying an axe instead of a stack of plywood.
“I brought Xanax just in case.” I wondered if Reaver had noticed that my head was off in another world, or perhaps it was just a normal exchange of conversation. Either way I shot him a dirty look.
“You don’t need to drug me all the time. I’m not that bad.”
Reaver snorted. Apparently I was that bad.
I hoisted up the toolkit and tried to get a better grasp of it. Reaver was watching me as I fumbled and struggled with it, probably laughing in his head that I couldn’t even carry a thirty pound box with a handle. Reaver was strong, hard, and lanky. I was a scrawny mess.
There was a rattle as the toolbox slipped. I had to catch it with my injured arm, which didn’t go so well.
After a sharp pain shot through my wrist I dropped the toolbox, it fell onto the pavement.
It stayed shut but the clank made every single cat around us shoot into the debris and houses.
“I’m sorry!” I cried, feeling the back of my throat burn.
Reaver only gave me a smile. He reached down and took his belt off. “It’s not your fault, your wrist is still buggered. I told you I would carry it.” Reaver drew the belt through the toolbox and lifted it. He swung it over his shoulder before helping me stand.
I gripped his hand and rose back to my feet. “Please, let me carry it.”
Reaver shook his head. He kissed my lips. “I know it’s too much weight for you. I don’t mind. When your wrist heals and you get a bit older you’ll be able to carry it no problem.”
My face was flushed with embarrassment. What an even worse sight we were now. He was carrying everything to board up my house, and I was walking useless beside him.
He was still watching me, with eyes that I always felt stripped me bare, but I didn’t return his gaze. I knew why I was feeling so incompetent and low right now.
Asher Fallon.
He was a festering boil in my brain that throbbed with every mental touch. A pretty, auburn-haired blister that putrefied and rotted, spreading its infectious doubt through my already insecure mind. Every mention of him by Reaver drew in more and more bacteria, making the infection grow and spread.
At first the wound was small, but over the past two weeks Reaver had been feeding it unknowingly. Now it threatened to burst with every mention of Asher’s name.
My old faded sneakers stepped one in front of the other. Asher would have been able to carry the toolbox and the boards. He would’ve kept up with Reaver. Even now, two weeks after his arrival, he was almost walking normally. His gait was already more graceful than mine, his movements charismatic and swaying. With every day… and every night that Reaver came home from his patrols, I grew more and more distrustful of the raticater.
What was I compared to him? I was young, weak, naive, and a coward. I had been sheltered in Tamerlan. I had been fed well my whole life and taught nothing of the greywastes. My mind was vulnerable, my movements clumsy and… and…
He was perfect.
Asher was beautiful, graceful, powerful, even dangerous. I had heard the conversations he and Reaver had had. About the ravers they would kill when they went to get his caches. His mind was a twist of sadism like my Reaver’s. What was worse was that he was charismatic and friendly and Reaver responded to that. That’s why they had become friends.
To everyone, Reaver was a cobra. Someone to tread lightly beside, someone to steer clear of. If you so much as looked at him he might bite you. I had learned this quickly. I had been scared of him before my parents had died. I respected his isolation and I kept my distance.
Asher hadn’t. He strolled right up to the viper and walked with him in the darkness.
We were at the stairs. Reaver was still looking at me. If he asked what was wrong, I would lie. My insecurities had been no secret to him, bringing them up might cause a fight.
