Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (41 page)

I had tasted fois ras before, I can’t believe that’s what I would have tasted like. There was something humbling about being reminded that the flesh you ate every day tasted the same as the flesh that rested underneath your skin.

As I got out a knife and started cutting up pieces of the raw rat meat, my mind started to wander a bit. I tried to stop it, but the memories were trickling back.

When the hood was ripped off of my head, and I realized where I was, I remember I just cried. I sobbed like a baby, I had never been so scared in my life. In Skyfall, though the thiens wasn’t good per say, they never bothered you unless you bothered them or broke the rules, and same with the Dek’ko workers. Heck my father was a part of Dek’ko.

Two workers took the rest of my clothes off and examined me. They pinched me, commented on my muscles (or lack of), my body size, my age. They told me I was premium grade for fois ras, because I was young and my liver would be able to withstand the stress of the force feeding.

After I was pushed into a holding room with several others. All of them were arians but they couldn’t talk. Their tongues had been cut out to make way for the tubes, and they had had their eyes removed. I tried not to look at them but I could see their eyelids had been stitched shut, dried blood was clinging to their faces, running down to their mouths. They just wandered around the room, bumping into each other. Making horrible wailing noises and reaching out to feel the walls. I kept dodging them, when they would run into me they would touch me and wail. Grabbing at me and shaking me as they cried. It was like they knew I still had my eyes and they were turning to me to help them.

Then they took us into the room with all the capsules. A female worker got angry at another because I still had my tongue and my eyes. I begged her to scan my blood, but she didn’t even look at me. She didn’t even acknowledge I was talking, that I was an arian. I kept saying over and over, I had been kidnapped... I was arian. I was Killian Massey from Aras. They would pay to get me back.

Reaver would pay to get me back.

It was noisy in there, mechanical noises, beeping, the water running under the grates. A worker grabbed me and injected me with something and I was paralyzed. Then the tubes came.

I gagged, and wanted to throw up when they shoved the first one down, but my gag reflex was gone. The other wouldn’t fit down my throat so they pushed and pushed. I could feel my lips split apart to make room for the tubes, the taste of my blood in my mouth, in my throat.

Then the greasy thick of the sludge they pumped into my stomach. I couldn’t move... I couldn’t move.

They taped my eyes shut and then everything went dark, my ears pounded and ached from the sounds of the machines around me. Inside I kept screaming, I kept trying to move, I was condemned to a slow death. To my stomach expanding, to my liver swelling until I was butchered and canned.

“Killi?”

I looked down at the rat meat, my fingers were bloody from the pink, fat rippled flesh. I started to feel sick.

“Yeah?” I asked looking up, I wiped my fingers on the blanket I had laid out on the floor.

“Why don’t you read me some Cat Wings?”

He must have seen that my mind was some where else, he always seemed to notice when my mind was elsewhere, like I had been able to notice when his was.

“After I make us some food...”
“Food can wait, it’s better raw anyways, come sit.” Reaver shifted back on the chair, so there was room for me in the middle. I picked out the book from my satchel and put some of the meat back onto the paper wrapping. He took it from me and popped a couple pieces into his mouth.

I sat down and cracked the worn musty book open. “Mrs. Jane Tabby could not explain why all four of her children had wings.” I began to read.

“She was fucking around with the neighbour bird,” Reaver said behind me. To my surprise and delight he put his arms around me and pulled me closer. I leaned back, propping my feet against the back of the bookshelf. I gave him a playful hush.

“’I suppose their father was a fly-by-night,’ a neighbour said laughing unpleasantly, sneaking around a dumpster.”

“What a bitch.” Was my boyfriend’s remark. I shushed him again and kept reading.

“Maybe they have wings because I dreamed before they were born, that I could fly away from this neighbourhood,’ said Mrs. Jane Tabby.” I read. “Well that’s sad.”

“If they lived here, they could fly wherever they wanted but it would still be a shit hole,” Reaver said bitterly. “Imagine if every stray cat in Aras had wings. Oh let us fly! Where too? The factory so they can make us into cat steaks! Or perhaps a raver’s den where we will get eaten alive, or maybe...” Reaver paused and suddenly he started laughing very very hard.

“What!” I turned around, I was surprised to see he was laughing so hard his eyes were welling. Surely cats getting eaten alive wasn’t that funny.

“Biff...” he managed to croak.

The mental image of my fat white spotted cat came to mind. Flying on miniature bird wings, around the square popped into my mind. I started laughing too. After we had laughed so hard the still healing corners of my mouth hurt I tried to keep reading. After I was a couple chapters in, Reaver took over and I tried to finish cutting us up some pieces of meat to eat.

Admittedly Reaver wasn’t a good reader I had to help him with some words, but I didn’t mind, that was just another thing I could help him with once we’re back in Aras.

With the sky darkening we sat together and ate. I really didn’t care for the taste of raw flesh, but Reaver ate it up like it was candy. He certainly did have a thing for well... the more grisly side of food. I let him eat most of the meat and started to open one of the mystery cans of food I had snagged from the gas station.

A rotting smell hit my nostrils, I gagged and so did Reaver. “Put it outside the door, don’t throw it outside.” He choked waving it away. “Must be fish.” Though the sestic radiation pulse had preserved a lot of pre-Fallocaust food, fish wasn’t one of them. It rotted in the can.

I got up and put the can in a drawer in one of the other bedrooms and closed the door. “Gross, well I’m glad I didn’t carry that around for long.”

I rubbed some of the soap I had scavenged onto my hands with some spit for lather and wiped it off onto my pant leg.

“I’ll bury it later, I don’t want that crap attracting any radanimals,” Reaver said, taking some of the soap too.

My face fell as something occurred to me, I sighed and sat down on the mattress.

“What is it?” Reaver asked curiously, he was putting some of his pill powder onto a small teaspoon for himself.

I knew he was going to be mad at me for this... but I said it anyways. “The food I gave the little old lady, it was the same type of can. I gave her rotten food.”

I expected him to laugh at me, but he didn’t. The light had dimmed around us, and the only thing illuminating the room was my flash light. He had made me put it underneath the blanket to dim the light since it would be so noticeable from the  greywastes. From what I could see of his face though, he was scowling.

“Forget about her, she’s lucky to be alive,” Reaver said slowly, it sounded like he wanted to say something else. I wondered what it was. “You don’t owe her anything.”

“Do you... understand why I feel bad for her?” I asked meekly, I braced myself to be chastised.

“You’re soft and sheltered.”

I busied myself with cleaning up our meal. “Don’t you wish someone helped me when I was being led to the factory? Or someone helped me... when they sold me illegally?”

“I helped you.”

I picked up the used toothbrush I had and a bottle of water, I started brushing the food from my teeth. More to keep busying myself then anything. “She doesn’t have anyone to help her, she doesn’t have a Reaver. I know it’s all cut throat and everything out there... but before the Fallocaust. People helped each other. Like Reno helps you, like Greyson helps wasters who want to settle down in Aras. People are kind to each other... she’ll survive because someone was kind to her.”

Reaver was silent. His eyes were nothing but black pits in his pale face, hidden from the darkness but just as powerful and strong. I could see every bit of what King Silas had made humanity in those slabs of coal.

I sighed, and gave up talking to him. Reaver would be Reaver, that I could always depend on.

I closed my eyes, and felt my body relax under his embrace, I fell asleep to his breathing feeling more safe in this abandoned ruin of a house then I ever had in Aras.

When Reaver shook me awake it was daylight outside. I sat up and stretched hearing my bones pop and snap as I did. Reaver was packing all of our stuff back into Reno’s bag and my bag. I gave me a short look as I started folding up the blanket.

“Let’s get out of here, I let you sleep for too long,” he said giving me a glance. “Your hair is sticking up like you just got electrocuted.”

I started trying to flatten it down, looking around for a mirror but of course there wasn’t any in the bedroom. “Why did you let me sleep for so long?”

“I was enjoying the silence.”

I scowled at him, he looked behind his shoulder and grinned before we started walking down the stairs. He had such a twisted sense of humor, who would have thought my cold cruel sentry would have a funny side to him. I thanked Reno for that, I think he had had a good influence on Reaver growing up.

I yawned and rested my forehead against his back as he drove the quad towards Donnely. I didn’t know how he managed on such little sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to stifle a second yawn.

“Take some of that white powder in Reno’s bag, that will wake you up,” Reaver said after half an hour of travel. We were slowly making our way up a rocky hill. We were going slower as we dodged the ruins of several trucks and medians. The closer we got to the town the more congested traffic seemed to be. All of it heading away from the city, I wondered what they were fleeing from.

“Is it the cocaine?” I asked nervously. I dug into the bag as Reaver pulled off to the side. I found a zip lock bag full of white powder. As he stopped I opened it.

“Yeah, leave the bag out, you’ll be needing more before we get to Donnely or you’ll crash. Put some on a spoon for me too when you’re done,” he instructed.

“You’re such a bad influence, my mom would have been horrified at all the things you’re making me do.” I shook my head dipping the spoon in. And she would have been too. Now I do drugs, go out scavenging miles and miles from Aras. I never leave Reaver’s side, I let him kiss me. Oh she would have been so disappointed in me.

That made me feel a bit sad, but it disappeared quickly when I inhaled the a bit of powder in each of my nostrils.

“Oh god that burns worse than the pills!” I exclaimed, my eyes started to water. The whole back of my throat started to go numb.

I handed Reaver a spoon of some too, and heard him snort it before passing it back. He shook his head and arms before pushing down on the throttle of the car.

And then I woke up.

I started bouncing up and down on the back of the quad. A wave of energy rushed through me. Ahead of us I could see the tall buildings of Donnely come closer and closer into view. I could probably run to them faster if I wanted to, and I kind of wanted to. I felt like getting off but that wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead I talked.

“Do you think we’ll find many pharmacies? I hope so, where is the list Leo gave to Reno? I should check the list, I can mark off what stores we should be able to find them in. I learned about the stores in the teaching textbook. Did you know King Silas issues one to every child in and around Skyfall? It’s called the King’s Tome. He teaches the history of Skyfall and the greywastes I wonder how much of it is true though? Dad always said even if it wasn’t true then, under King Silas it is true because he said its true but I would be-”

Reaver groaned, I saw his head bow. “What have I done?”

I busied myself checking the list out, chatting happily with Reaver as I did. Or whatever chatting us called when only one person is talking.

Polysporin, bandages of any kind, antiseptic, sutures, pills any kind. That was on our list. Oh and maybe some more videos for Reno. Oh and I would just love some more kitchen items, or food items and maybe I could find toys for Biff! But he might be too fat to play with toys but then if he played with the toys he might get skinnier but if he got skinnier would Reaver kick him out? No I don’t think so...

I looked around in all directions as we entered the town, fumbling with the bag of cocaine so I could get another hit in before we stopped. On either side of me were tall office type buildings. Patchy from missing paint and siding, and streaked with black mildew and mold. Donnely was a complete ghost town. Garbage and debris was everywhere like Aras, but unlike Aras it hadn’t been cleaned up at all. The cars had been left to rot where they had been abandoned. Some crushed into each other in a desperate attempt to flee the city.

As soon as Reaver turned the quad around and shut it off I jumped onto the pavement. In surprisingly good condition. The second wave of radiation from the labs must have killed off any plant life that might have tried to grow after the sestic radiation. The pavement had stencils of browny grey from the rust of the cars but it remained intact, not chopped up, raised and cracked like the greywaste roads.

“Look Reaver, no spray paint, no Dek’ko garbage...  no ones been here I think!” I said excited, I started wandering towards one of the office buildings. The door was streaked with rust and it was still closed. Nothing seemed boarded up.

“Not in this area, at least.” I heard Reaver mumble, I could hear him checking his M16 to make sure it was loaded.

I tried the door handle of the building but it was locked. There was a door on the side though, I ran over to try it. I had so much energy I didn’t know what to do with it. So I just ran.

“Hey! Get back here you nut case!” Reaver hissed, in a flash he was right beside me. He grabbed my arm and led me back to the street. Damn I wanted to see if it was open.