Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (44 page)

My heart seemed permanently clenched. The anxiety in my stomach had turned into a creature of is own, eating me from the inside out. Asking questions I couldn’t answer, and when I didn’t give it the answers it wanted. It made up its own.

I stood and went back to the window. Nothing had changed, everything was still quiet, like it had been quiet for the past couple years when the labs left and two hundred years before hand when... everyone had left.

Had my sentry left too? If I did walk back to Aras, would he be waiting for me with his gun pointed at my head? Would he be on the wall waiting to snipe me before anyone noti...

The quad.

I had to steady myself as a dizziness rushed through me. That would be my answer. If the quad was still here, Reaver was still here... if the quad was gone... he had left me.

Both realities terrified the hell out of me.

I didn’t want to know... I looked at the mattress and was tempted to just curl back up in to it, but I relented. I mustered up all the courage I knew I didn’t have, and walked down the hall and then the stairwell.

When I reached the blown out glass of the lobby windows, my heart was a jackhammer. I felt like I was going to pass out. I took a spoon tip of drugs for courage and walked into the street. Fresh air washing out the smell of must and mold that was all around the building.

“Reaver?” I called, my voice a pathetic cracked whimper. “Reaver?” I yelled again, my own voice once again coming back to me.

I walked down the street, my footsteps echoing like my voice had. Last night it had been both our footsteps... now just mine. A blond kid who had had a panic attack shy of two weeks ago when he ventured outside of the gates of Aras. Now look at me... solitary and alone in a dead decaying town that stretched for miles and miles.

I swung Reno’s and my own bag across my shoulder and dug my hands into my pockets, walking towards the alleyway that Reaver had parked the quad. With every step the monster in my stomach continued to gnaw at me. Would I see it? Would I see it?

I put the bags down when I got near the alley and tried to take in a breath but my chest was too clenched. I pushed through the dizziness, the fear and the foreboding and walked into the dark alley towards the dumpster.

Right behind the dumpster, untouched and brimming with supplies, was Reno’s quad.

My reaction surprised even me. Every bit of doubt that Reaver might have abandoned me turned into hatred for myself for thinking that of him. Every bit of  belief I had that he had fallen asleep vanished with the fact that hours and hours had already gone by. He had never left, he had never come back, he had been gone for hours and I had been in the fucking apartment thinking he had left me to die. Not checking the quad because I was too chicken shit, or too stupid to think about doing it.

The mind numbing fear hit me like a ton of bricks. I fell to my knees and started screaming for him.

Reaver was gone, Reaver was hurt, Reaver was dead, Reaver was missing... where was he? Who got him? Someone got him, he would never fall,  he would never get himself killed. Oh fuck, where was he? What happened to him?
“REAVER?”

I grabbed my bags and just started running. I ran down the street, looking in every store we had scavenged. I didn’t care if someone heard me, if someone else was here it meant they probably had Reaver. Let them hear me, I’ll kill all of them. I just wanted to find him.

My feet hit the pavement hard, I weaved in-between cars, even jumping over the hoods of some of them to get down the congested street. I didn’t know where I was heading, or what direction I should be going. I just screamed and ran. If I slowed down, my reality would catch up to me. The reality that told me that Reaver was the toughest guy I knew, and it would have had to be something major to keep him from coming back to me. To keep him from killing it with one well aimed shot.

Nothing could bring Reaver down... he was untouchable. Oh god, where was he?

When my legs were too exhausted to support me. I fell to my knees and cried, right in the middle of the street. I didn’t know where I was by now, or what time it was. It was just quiet, cold and scared.

I threw up, though nothing came up but sour bile and stomach fluid. I heaved and gagged until stars sprang to my vision and I had to just sit there and try not to puke again.

There was no sign of him. No boot prints in the dirt that had blown in from the wastes, no cigarette tips... there was nothing.

I wandered around like the lost dog I was. In the forgotten ghost town. Donnely all looked the same, it was just a grey, broken maze. The same shops, same apartment buildings, the same street signs, long dead telephone and electric polls. Every street was the same as the next, each building had been painted with the black streaks of mold and mildew. Each window had been blown out, broken or missing all together. The cars lined up, or smashed into each other strewing their rusted innards around the road like a disembowelled rat.

I was lost, but I didn’t care. I knew he wasn’t coming back to the apartment, he would have been back by now. No... I had to find him, and bring him home... like he brought me home.

I had to be brave.

I slunk down, watching my dust stained boots walk one in front of the other. I wasn’t brave. I was many things, including as good as dead, but I wasn’t brave.

“Reaver?” I called again.

Reaver... Reaver... Reaver...
my echo said back to me.

I reached into my bag to get the cocaine out. I needed more energy to look for him. I dug around for the bag, when my hand hit something hard.

I tossed the canvas flap off to the side to see what it was, and pulled up Cat Wings.

He had been reading it last, he read to me... he read to me and one of the first things in my brain was that he had abandoned me to die. He’s out here somewhere, hurt, or dead and all I could think about was me.

I burst into tears again and tossed the book and my bag. I inhaled a sob, hot tears and snot streaming down my face, when my breathing started to become laboured. I knew what was coming, and I hated myself for it. A few minutes later I was in a full blown panic attack.

I couldn’t breath properly, every time I tried my chest would block it. In desperation I fumbled through Reno’s bag until I found the blue pills Reaver had shoved into his own stash. He had told me these were for my panic attacks. I shoved three in my mouth and chewed.

They tasted disgusting, but I kept chewing. My dehydrated mouth dry and chalky but I managed to swallow all of them.

I crawled to the side of a building and tucked myself up by a rusted mail box. I curled up as tight as I could, gasping for breath like a dying rat. I was still gasping when my mind started to go numb, and then go dark.

I woke up feeling drunk and disconnected. The anxiety, fear and worry for my boyfriend was still there, but it was buried in a sea of just... I don’t know, but I was gone. I felt gone, I felt... gone.

I grabbed my bag and stumbled on. Calling for Reaver, calling and calling even though my throat was sore and raw. I told myself I needed to find the quad and drive back to Aras. I had to get Leo and Greyson, I had to get Reno. The three faces that seemed almost farther away than Reaver’s. Aras seemed like a world I used to know, now behind me like my factory town. A place I would never see again, with voices of friends I would never hear.

If  I left it would be with Reaver, and Reaver was gone. Gone, gone Reaver was gone. The key to the quad was gone too I think. Maybe it was in the bag?
I looked at the bag, blinking slowly. I then turned my gaze towards the street I was walking down. It all looked the same, all the streets.

My blurry eyes tried to read the street sign, but whatever it said I didn’t remember... I had never felt this fucked up in my life.

“Reaver? Reaver?” I called, I took another step but stumbled. I tried to get my balance but I ended up falling down onto the pavement. I turned onto my back and looked to see a twist of metal by my feet. From a car I think. I told myself I didn’t know out loud and got back up. I carried on walking. I think I was drooling.

I wiped my face, yeah I was drooling.

Greyson would eventually come, and Leo. They would help me find him. Maybe he got locked somewhere? I tried to shut up to see if I could hear him but I still heard nothing.

“Reaver?” I whimpered, my eyes never stayed focused in one area. They darted around from one building to the next, from window to window, doorway to doorway. Expecting to see his face, his beautiful perfect face looking down at me. His black eyes, with the tiniest dark brown flecks, and his perfect hair, also so dark of a brown it seemed black. Long in the front so it fell over his eyes, but cut short in the back. Perfect to kiss and stroke.

His perfect eyebrows, shaped with just a small arch to them, and his little ears... one of which had just been knitted back together. And that body, I had seen him in just his shorts when he had made a bath for us in the loader bucket. Pale, firm and flawless. The coldness of his chest, I could feel it warming under my touch.

My heart hurt, I was so worried about him. I would give my own life just to have him be okay. He couldn’t be dead, no, no one could kill him he was invincible. He was trapped or... or something.

We had just started our life together... he couldn’t be gone now. I just got him.

I slept in a clinic that night. By the time the darkness had come to Donnely, I was exhausted, still high and drunk on the blue pills and so terrified my mind had seemed to shut its self down. I crawled my worthless body onto a patient’s table and slept with my assault rifle beside me. I dosed myself with more pill powder and more of the blue pills so I would be able to sleep until morning. I didn’t care if someone found me, like I had concluded before... they would bring me to Reaver. One way or another.

I woke up cold, in the dark, musty room that was once a doctor’s office. I woke up alone, and in silence. The silence was starting to drive me mad.

I dug into some drawers before I left and found a couple scalpels and a few pens. I would give them to Doc, I decided in my burnt out mind. I put them into my bag and left my temporary shelter behind.

Reaver had now been gone a day.

I wasn’t hungry, but even if I was, the food was gone. I had left Reaver’s can of Good Boy in the apartment. All I had was a half a bottle of water. I drank a few mouthfuls as I walked down the street. Trying to call for Reaver but my voice was hoarse and sore from all the screaming I had done yesterday.

What was the use? Reaver was gone.

I did more drugs. I didn’t know what else to do. Every time my nose would clear up to an acceptable level, I snorted more. Until everything in front of me was a muddled haze of minimally interesting things. I couldn’t feel anything anymore, and that’s what I needed to survive.

So I walked, sometimes I cried, sometimes I fell, sometimes I just sat on a bench and stared at the buildings across the street. I was lost in the city that seemed to get bigger and bigger with every street I walked down. I was deep inside of it. Where it had been obvious no one had been in decades. I hadn’t seen anything close to the outskirts since Reaver and I had come into it.

I had no plan, I had no idea of what I was suppose to do. I was a coward from Skyfall, with barely enough survival skills to keep me alive in Aras. I had no food, barely any water and a quad that might have well of been on the moon. If it had keys in it.

I missed Reaver, even full of drugs my heart burned when I thought of him. All I could do to not break down was not think of where he was in that moment. Whenever I did I felt my chest tighten and my breathing shorten. I missed him so badly it physically hurt, I was so worried about him I couldn’t stand it. He was my world, he was everything to me. I had to find him, I had to save him.

I stopped in front of a restaurant and sat down on a overturned payphone stall. I took my last mouthful of water and tossed the bottle into the middle of the streets. It gave a clink and bounced a few feet, before resting up against a fallen motorbike. Covered in cancerous rust, and worn down to the point where it was barely recognisable.

I wish I had my guitar in a way, just to make some noise. My voice was raspy and broken, if Reaver was looking for me all he would be able to hear is my foot steps and my heartbeat.

I got up off of the bench on sore legs and kept walking. I looked up to see where I was, the sign said Lawrence St. It could have said Shittown for all I cared, I didn’t know what any of it meant. I didn’t know where the hell I was.

I took more drugs... I had been taking a lot of them. My father had injected them, but Reaver snorted them... I snorted them like Reaver. I was more and more like him everyday.

Don’t be mad I’m taking so many... I walked and walked, my nose and mouth full of sour dilaudid tastes. Stumbling and slurring like a drunk. There were others I could take but I stuck with what I knew for now.

Where was my Reaver? The streets blurred into each other, I felt like a robot. The mechanical humans I had read about since I was a kid. My movements felt robotic and automatic. Walk, walk, drugs, walk... one foot in front of the other. Passing the remains of pre-Fallocaust civilization. McDonalds, Starbucks, Fields, Leichle Bros Butchers, small coffee shops, sandwich shops, apartments, parks. I didn’t go into the parks I passed. Nothing there, I could see that from just looking. Just dead grass, twists of metal, and shallow ponds dried out or full of toxic water not fit for any consumption.

They all went past me slowly, as I walked on, my heart just slightly elevating with every corner I turned. Hoping I would see him. My Reaver. Oh I would yell at him, I’d hit him, I would sob and make him kiss me. I would tell him I loved him to pieces...

Reaver Merrik, Chance Merrik, Reaver Massey, Killian Merrik... so many cute combinations. I started shouting them, and I think I was throwing things at one point, but it might have all been in my head. The town was tilting around me.

I didn’t bother finding an office or anything to take shelter in when it got dark. I chewed some blue pills and slept behind a trash can in the back yard of a townhouse. Only an iron wrung fence partially sheltering me. I think I wanted something to find and kill me that night.