Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (40 page)

“She’s lying... fucking shoot her,” Reaver growled. I didn’t understand why he didn’t just fucking shoot her 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, not taking her eyes off of me, 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. By the time we got to it the old lady was in her spot.

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 like 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 was 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 tare 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 assure I am not.”

She nodded, I could see her shaking.

Reaver walked over to me and grabbed the can of food, his black eyes were blazing. He turned around and tossed it towards her. “Count.” Then he turned to me. “Get on the fucking quad.”

I turned and quickly got onto the quad, 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 it 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, she hadn’t turned 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.

When Reaver slowed the quad down over an hour later I looked to see where we were. We had parked at the end of a long half gone driveway. In front of us was an intact two story house a good half mile from the other houses, all in various stages of collapse. This looked like the best one though. Like the old gas station the roof was intact but unlike it the windows were not boarded up. The windows were either half broken or missing entirely. 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 its 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 hands and stared forward.

I could feel his eyes burn 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, grab the bag.”

“Yes, sir,” I said again, and grabbed the bag and followed him inside.

This house was much different than the gas station we had just come from, but it was still dark, messy with the same lingering fragrance of must and mold.

We entered into the living room area, with a staircase in front. The walls had the remnants of wallpaper, most curled down the walls like bark on a tree. Piles of it were gathered on the stained carpet, layered with dirt and specks of black mold. The wallpaper that hadn’t fallen yet had blackened as soon as it touched the molded 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 was revealed underneath my feet. Shattered pictures, with 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 there had they had been killed off during Silas’s controlled dose of radiation during Donnely’s quarantine.

Everyone knew that King Silas Dekker had caused the radiation over two hundred years ago. He had send a pulse of sestic radiation all over the greywastes which killed off the humans who had been warring against themselves for years. The radiation not only killed off a heck of a lot of people, it made most of the greywastes uninhabitable. No one could scavenge, or survive without dying within days of radiation poisoning or worse becoming ravers or rats. So most of us lived in what he would rename Skyfall Island or just Skyfall or in small islands far away from the worst radiation.

Eventually the radiation thinned and the descendants started to be able to expand into the greywastes. This was helped by Dek’ko’s invention of geiger chips which helped clear the radiation from our bodies and warned us with vibration if the levels increased to hazardous. Every arian was implanted with a chip at birth, and then registered with the ACL afterwards so King Silas could keep track of our numbers.

Only arians were allowed geiger chips, the sub humans, a slow inferior race called rats who had started to appear in the greywastes years after the sestic radiation were not allowed them. We were permitted to eat them instead since food was so scarce or buy them from Dek’ko or Skytech.

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 suppose 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 bee lined for a bookshelf tucked into the far corner of the living room and was happy to find a couple books in readable condition. One was called The Hungry Caterpillar and another children’s novel called Cat Wings.

“Reaver look!” I exclaimed, I ran over to him. 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 them 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, as most kitchens did. The fridge was open and completely covered in mold, it had empty bottles in it and long spoiled packages. The black stains on the back and small black pucks suggested it might at one time have had 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 mold, 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. So I reached in carefully and pulled the drawer out manually. I was happy to see I had found the 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 it’s weight in diamonds in this world, a can opener! I stuffed it in my bag too and also a ladle before turning back to find Reaver.

He was half way up the stairs, he turned and saw me. “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 of the staircase unharmed. He walked ahead and checked out the bedrooms while I waited. I spent that time trying to dust the grime out of the picture, I think I could make out a face but I wasn’t sure, it might have been the arm of a couch.

“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 left it meant they probably took all of their valuables with them.

“A mattress!” I explained happily, I clapped my hands together and ran over to it. I heard Reaver chuckle. I kicked the sides of it, a puff of dust came out of it, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t often you found a not chewed up or soiled mattress. You had to have it stored in the best condition for them to last.

Reaver coughed and tried to wave the dust away from us. He walked over and gave the mattress several good kicks, filling the room with dust. “We have one blanket. I suggest you drape it over the mattress until you get cold enough.”

“You’re not going to sleep tonight?” I asked. “I can take watch too.” He only slept four to five hours every night. I never seemed to wake up to him sleeping, he was awake when I went to sleep and awake when I woke up. Admittedly I kind of liked it, it made me feel safe. Especially with the nightmares I had.

He shook his head. “No, I can go without sleep until we’re back in Aras.” I frowned, it was my job to take care of him too. Especially since my doctor duties were over now since he was healed, but I wasn’t going to argue. There wasn’t much of a point in that.

I walked over to the broken bedroom window and looked out. In front of me I could see the hazy silhouettes of the other houses, and in the distance the buildings of Donnely. The window was facing the back of the house, what used to be a back yard was now littered with tire rims, scrap metal and what looked like the remains of a barbwire fence. Also a broken toilet funny enough.

Reaver appeared behind me, holding a large arm chair. He set it down in front of the window and sat down in it, he reclined himself in it and put his foot up against the side of a book shelf and tested out his new perch.

“Comfy?” I asked. He pushed himself back a bit farther and put his hands behind his head.

“It’ll do,” he said, he adjusted the chair slightly for a better view. “Why don’t you make us some food, Mr. Chef?”

Now there was something I could do. I brought out the blanket and laid it in the middle of the bedroom and started rummaging through the pack Reno had given to us. There wasn’t much. Two more full bottles of water, the meat that Leo had given Reaver before we had left, several pieces of dried rat meat and a can of Good Boy.

“At least he didn’t pack fois ras,” Reaver said from his window perch.

My heart fell into my throat. I had been content not remembering that. Reaver saw my reaction of course. “Sorry...” he said his voice dropped. He was great but damn did he say horrible horrible things at times. Like when he said he would pay double for me...