Garden of Spiders Volume 1: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 3

by Quil Carter

“They’re right, bro. You’re too neurotic and tense. You worry way too much.” Nero swallowed another bite of gummy worm, then he began brushing his fingers over the cans he was passing. Only a small amount of the dirt shed off though, a lot of it was hardened onto the cans. This dust had not only settled; it’d practically baked onto everything. “You got this permanent look of worry on your face. Silas talks about it when you’re not around and Cristo and him fight about you all the time. Constantly.” Like on cue, we heard Cristo call our names, but Nero didn’t say anything and neither did I.

  “You know Silas is going to kill him when he finds him, right?” Nero said matter-of-factly.

  I froze in the middle of the aisle. This possibility had always been in the back of my head but there had just been so much more to worry about…

  “He – he can’t,” I stammered. Cristo called us again, and purely because of Nero’s words, I felt like running to him and giving him a hug. Even though I didn’t like hugs at all. “Cristo was just protecting us.”

  “He kidnapped us.” Nero turned from me and kept walking. In front of us was an open area with dusty shelves and walls with signs that told us this was the meat section. There would be nothing for us here so we turned a left and walked along the wall of the Walmart towards where more aisles could be found.

  “He thought he was doing what was right and…” My eyes began to burn and fear replaced the blood being pumped into my heart.

  Nero held up both of his hands. “Yeah, you’re right. He thought he was helping, bro. If we tell Silas that… he’ll understand and he won’t hurt Cristo.”

  I stopped walking and stared at him. In that moment, I hated myself for the reliance I felt towards his words, the need to believe him. The thought that Silas would kill Cristo was terrifying. An entirely new level of emotions had been thrust upon me during this excursion and I didn’t know how to sort through them. I couldn’t handle the thought of Silas killing Cristo, so I decided to not think about it.

  I exercised the control I prided myself on having over my emotions, and pushed that thought away. I nodded to my brother and we continued walking, the strobe light-like beams of the flashlight lighting up the rest of the Walmart behind us, but nowhere near where we were.

  Nero eventually found a shopping cart that was functional, one that had a grey dusty skeleton beside it with hair still clinging to its scalp. After that we walked through the aisles that had the food we wanted, stopping first at the candy, and then the canned goods which would still be edible.

  “The warehouse is behind those doors, it’s where they keep their stock,” Nero said. He was standing in front of two swinging doors with round plastic windows. Without care, Nero pushed the doors open and looked inside.

  I heard him whistle. “Lots of boxes and shit, and I see some Lucky Charms stacked and wrapped in plastic. Let’s go check it…” Nero stopped mid-sentence and for a moment he just stood there, with his head peeking through the door.

  Strangely, he closed the door gently and stood there for a moment. I was confused when he only stared at the door, a blank look on his face. He wasn’t moving or speaking… why?

  Then Nero turned around, and when he made eye contact with me, I saw something strange.

  Fear.

  “Let’s go outside,” Nero said, his voice strange. “Let’s go outside, right now.” He walked to me and grabbed my jacket sleeve and began walking towards the front of the store. At this point in time, my heartbeat began to speed up. “Now, Elish.”

  I looked over my shoulder, the dust drying out my eyes with how wide they were. “W-why?” I asked alarmed. Nero shadowed Zhou in the greywastes, if he was scared…

  Behind me I heard crying.

  Crying?

  “Nero…?” I said nervously.

  And that was when I heard voices, strange voices I didn’t recognize and I didn’t believe were speaking english.

  Also… Cristo’s flashlight had been turned off.

  They’d heard the same thing.

  Nero put his finger to his lips and he held out his hand. I took his in mine and he squeezed it tight and said as quietly as he could, “Walk really carefully. Try and walk quiet. We’re going to an emergency exit I saw.”

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  Behind us, the crying person gave off a loud scream. Nero bared his teeth from stress and motioned with his head to the left.

  Then he said under his breath, “Ravers.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Ravers?

  My head filled with a roaring noise, like my blood had become a rushing river in the middle of the rainy season. It submerged the inside of my head and then pushed out, creating a pressure that made lights shine along the corners of my eyes. “W-what?” I stammered as I carefully, but quickly, walked where Nero was leading me. “The irradiated hu-”

  Suddenly there was a horrible shriek, and next I heard Dylan scream and a crashing noise. My head snapped towards the direction but the aisles were too tall. We couldn’t see anything! All I knew was that it was coming from the entrance to the mall, and whoever it was… had found Dylan.

  Then gunshots. Nero gave up on being quiet and began pulling me. I stared in the direction of the noise for several more moments, until my brain snapped me out of my stunned stupor and I started running with Nero.

  The gunshots echoed off of the high ceilings, and when they dissipated, I heard desperate voices and the screaming we’d left behind in the back storage room. I didn’t know who that was and I didn’t care. We had to get the hell out of here. Why the fuck were we even here?

  We ran along the wall, past the meat section we’d just been in. There were grocery carts all around us, some with ghostly white boxes of food inside, and lumps of grey on the ground which I knew were dust-covered bones. All together these things made up a fucked up obstacle course, and even though Nero and I tried to dodge everything as we ran, we were both tripping and stumbling through the store.

  I tried to stifle the coughs that kept coming from the dust we were kicking up, our legs caring for no one as we ran and ran. It was pitch black, if we weren’t chimeras we’d be screwed, and we were luckier still that the grey dust glowed light blue with our night vision.

  We turned as soon as we hit the front of the Walmart, which was their bakery section, and made a left. In front of us were even more shopping carts and lumps that had once been people, but there were also wire cages in the center holding items, and places with ceiling tiles and debris stacked three feet high. There also wasn’t a clear exit to the outside, but in the distance, I saw light, bright white light.

  Nero wasted no time. We began running towards that blinding light, and as our boots pounded against the debris, we heard more gunshots and the desperate shouting that echoed off of the walls.

  Then a dark figure with brilliant white eyes burst out of one of the aisles right in front of us. I gasped, and Nero did too, as it ran full speed past us. It then skidded to a stop, dust flying up around him like smoke.

  When I saw it, I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared.

  It was a human… but its eyes had no pupils and they gleamed like two flashlight beams. Its head was glowing light blue as well. I was confused as to why, until I realized its scalp was ripped off… I was seeing its skull.

  The creature, a male, was hunched over, glaring at us with his teeth bared and his chest heaving. He was covered in scars and unhealed wounds, and was wearing nothing but a pair of tattered pants.

  A slow growl sounded from his throat and he snarled at us. He had no lips, just glowing teeth that snapped and clipped at us, as if anticipating what he was going to do when he caught us.

  And then he charged.

  Nero pushed me out of the way and I was thrown into a collection of cans put on display at the end of the aisle. They tumbled from their century-old resting place and fell around me, several smacking my head making a dizziness flood my senses. I pushed away the dizziness and the pain and looked up t
o see the raver tackle Nero.

  The raver went for Nero’s neck but my brother’s hand flew up to stop him. The raver sunk his teeth into Nero’s arm making him yell, and I saw black blood leak out from the raver’s mouth.

  I jumped to my feet. Thinking quickly, I grabbed two heavy cans and charged at the raver. I wasn’t scared in that moment, the moment I saw the raver attack my little brother, all fear left me.

  I swung my arm down with all of my force and smashed the can against the raver’s exposed skull. There was a satisfying crack and I immediately swung the other can, this one breaking the raver’s skull and exposing brain.

  The raver collapsed on top of Nero, dead. I pushed him off of my brother and pulled Nero to his feet, the smell of coppery blood now mixing in with the smell of old building and floating dust.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Nero.

  He nodded, his eyes going in every direction. He then opened his mouth to speak when we both heard heavy steps approaching.

  The two of us spun around and I held the cans of food firmly in my grasp. I almost cried out with relief when I saw it was Cristo and Dylan. But the relief wasn’t for them, it was for their guns.

  And Nero had the same thought.

  “Give me a handgun,” Nero demanded. He ran up to them; I followed and observed grimly that Dylan had a horrible wound on his neck and several more on his arms, blood was now dripping down his skin, black against light blue, and there seemed to be a lot of it.

  Cristo raised the hand that was holding the gun so Nero wouldn’t be able to reach it. “I’m keeping the gun. Come on, we need to go–” Nero gave an angry snarl, then he wound back his arm and punched Cristo in the stomach. Cristo recoiled with an oof, and while he tried to steady himself, Nero snatched the gun. Then he grabbed the gun hanging loosely in Dylan’s grasp and turned around.

  He walked to me and handed me the gun, his face stormy. “They’re useless,” Nero said angrily. He wasn’t showing pain even though there was a chunk taken out of his arm. “We’re going to have to defend ourselves.”

  I looked past Nero to where Cristo was. Our sengil was staring at Nero with his eyes wide and his face carved in fear, but though his eyes were full of expression, none of those feelings were spoken, he just stared.

  I realized then that not all adults knew what they were doing. And that Cristo was an idiot.

  “Let’s go.” Nero took my hand and pulled it, then the two of us ran towards the bright entrance. Dylan and Cristo followed behind us, tripping several times and falling, but we didn’t turn around to see if they were okay.

  “We’re leaving tonight,” Nero whispered to me. And I nodded. I had to get as far away from this place as I possibly could. I’d never experienced anything so terrifying.

  And it was just going to get worse.

  I saw the shifting of movement near the bright light we’d been running to, but my fool’s hope had me thinking it was nothing but a phantom, or the light playing tricks on my eyes.

  But it wasn’t.

  Nero and I pivoted our feet and stopped as quickly as we could when we saw him, and behind us, Cristo and Dylan both screamed.

  It was a raver, a huge one, it was a fucking giant. He was tall, he must’ve been over nine-feet, and he was thick and burly with scarred muscles on his forearms, bigger than my waist.

  The raver’s square head held strings of a black beard, and brittle hair that fell over squinting white eyes and a sharp pointed nose. He had no ears, just puffy pink scars, and his lips had been chewed away giving him a permanent teeth-baring snarl.

  And he wasn’t alone. The beast of a raver was carrying a chain, and attached to the end of that chain was a filthy naked female raver, disfigured by scars and chunks missing from her skin, and wearing nothing but a ripped blue dress. The female was choking and holding her throat, but the horrible scars and chafes on her neck suggested she’d been his slave for quite a long time.

  For a moment, we all stared at this gigantic raver, only the sounds of the chain scraping against the ground reaching our strained and taxed ears. We were all in shock, and that shock only increased when it was realized that this beast had a necklace of human skulls, and a belt across ripped too-small jeans of preserved severed hands.

  Nero was the first to move. My brother raised the gun and pulled the trigger, the gunshot deafened me but my eyes were on the beast, hoping beyond hope for a fatal hit that I knew wasn’t coming.

  And it didn’t. The bullet flew past the beast’s head, so close it made his string-like hair fly up.

  “Run,” Nero whispered. “To the mall. NOW!” Nero took my hand, and just as the beast raver let out a snarling scream, the two of us darted down the nearest aisle, and back towards the mall.

  My heart leapt into my throat when I heard thundering footsteps behind us. I wanted to look behind me but I couldn’t; I knew if I did he’d be right there and I didn’t want to freeze up.

  “He can’t see. Remember, he can’t see us in the dark, and his hearing must be bad,” Nero said hastily to me. He turned on a dime, me almost crashing into him, and we sped through the dusty clothing section and towards where I could see the dark opening that would lead us to the rest of the mall.

  “Where do we go?” I cried. Behind me, Cristo shouted something to Nero, something about having to turn on the flashlight, but the words were lost in the thumping of the beast raver’s boots, and the sound of dragging.

  Dragging?

  Suddenly something slammed into us. Nero and I were both thrown off of our feet and smashed into a display. The display fell with us and we rolled over it and onto the cold ground.

  I looked up, ignoring the horrible pain sweeping my body, and my mouth dropped open.

  The flashlight was on the ground and it was shining right on the raver, giving me a coloured view of the monster who’d been chasing us.

  The beast was holding the long chain in his hand, and on the ground, twitching and gurgling, was the woman with a trickle of red coming from her nose. A few feet from her were Cristo and Dylan, both scrambling to stand. I watched, stunned, as the beast dragged the chain towards him and tightened it up so there was no slack.

  But he kept lifting it until the woman was off of the ground and dangling in the air.

  Then he thrusted his entire half to the side, like he was winding himself up, then used the momentum to throw the woman like she was the spikey end of a mace.

  Cristo and Dylan ducked just in time. The woman, now screaming, slammed into a wire rack full of old bouncy balls. The balls went flying and the woman skidded away, the chain now let go from the raver’s grasp and trailing behind her like a dog’s leash.

  Dylan grabbed the flashlight and shone it at us.

  “Get that out of our fucking eyes. We can’t see that way!” Nero roared, just as Dylan screamed at us to run. I looked up towards Dylan as he lowered the beam, and saw the raver charge towards him.

  The raver grabbed Dylan, just as Cristo ran towards us, his eyes wide. He grabbed my jacket and Nero’s too, and yelled at us something that my roaring ears couldn’t hear.

  We began to run towards the entrance to the rest of the mall, and behind me I heard a horrible scream. It was a scream I would never, ever forget.

  And that scream drove me to make a mistake that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

  I looked behind me.

  The giant raver had Dylan in his arms. Dylan who’d been our sengil since the day we were brought to our childhood home. The raver had one hand on his head, and one on his leg, and… and he was smiling. A horrible smile that had his teeth glowing white and his eyes brilliant lanterns.

  Then Dylan looked at me, directly at me, and we made eye contact. I saw a fear in those eyes that I couldn’t put into words, an unrestricted terror that knew no bounds but was concentrated to just that horror-filled gaze.

  Then the raver’s teeth clenched, his face became strained and Dylan screamed.

  The raver then
began pulling Dylan’s head from his body.

  He screamed one last time, a scream that embedded itself permanently into my long term memory. I then saw, for a brief moment, a red line appear on Dylan’s neck, before his skin split, spilling blood and meat; his spine then came out of his back with a series of snaps and cracks as his ribs broke off.

  Someone was pulling my arm, but I couldn’t move. I watched the raver bring the shredded mess of flesh and bones that was Dylan’s head to his mouth, and he began to chew on the dangling meat.

  All while doing this, those eyes stared at me.

  I then was picked up, and was soon being carried through the shopping mall, the beast raver feasting upon the flesh of my caretaker.

  He was dead. Dylan was dead.

  And we were going to die too. We were going to die in here, and Master Silas would never know what happened to us. I’d never see Ellis or Garrett again. I may even see him eat Nero and Cristo.

  No… no. I was a chimera. I was a genetically engineered human, built to survive.

  I wasn’t built to be carried. I wasn’t built to be taken care of.

  I was a chimera.

  And I needed to act like it.

  “Let me down,” I cried to Cristo.

  Cristo, out of breath, put me on the ground. He had the flashlight in his hand, shining on the maze-like mall in front of us like a spotlight looking for fugitives. There were open stores everywhere, dark and crumbling on the inside, but all of these stores seemed too open to be safe.

  “There has to be an exit to outside somewhere,” I said hastily to Nero. He looked over his shoulder and nodded. “We’ll go down that hall–” Nero’s eyes widened and I looked to see what he was staring at… just as I felt the ground rumble underneath my feet.

  I didn’t want to, every part of my mind told me not to turn around, but I did.

  Directly behind us, and gaining on us quickly, was the beast raver. In one hand was Dylan’s head, and in the other, the rest of his brutalized body which dangled around like a doll’s.

  Almost the rest of his body. The raver had the lower part of Dylan’s arm hanging out of his mouth. He was looking at us with his squinty eyes glaring, and his teeth, long because of his missing lips, clenched tight.