Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (8 page)

I was taken aback, I had no idea that the mercer was going to draft during the census, they hadn’t mentioned it during the town meeting, or while the mercer was there. I never gave it a thought how General Kessler, the leader of the Legion, recruited soldiers; never really cared.
“Why... me?” I asked quietly, my anger had quickly dissipated, but was now replaced with a lot of curiosity, and just a small twinge of pride. There isn’t a man in the greywastes who wouldn’t feel a little bit proud of being selected like that.
“You’re a good sentry,” Greyson said flatly, “and a good kid. There is no way we’ll ever let you join the Legion. Your home is here.”

“No shit,” I grumbled, wondering why he even felt like he had to say that.
“The last thing the greywaste needs is you as a soldier,” Leo said with an amused smirk. “You would race through the ranks quickly. The greywaste doesn’t need that, we have enough trouble with King Shithead and his chimeras already.”
“You really think so?” I turned to Greyson for clarification, the man gave a slight nod. I let out a breath and shook my head in disbelief. It made sense I guess, considering the enhanced senses I had, but I had trouble believing it, though I had trouble believing the last several hours had even taken place. It all seemed like a complicated blur right now.

“Let’s sit down,” I said, my cheeks puffed out as I let out a breath.

I offered the two of them a couple quils and motioned for them to sit. The living room we were in right now had two overstuffed chairs, a desk, and a large couch all surrounding a marble coffee table. I sat down on the overstuffed floral chair and my guests both sat on the couch opposite of me. The once heated and tense mood in my basement now gone.
“You know.” I lit myself a new quil and skidded my lighter over the coffee table to the two. “I’ve been taught to hate King Silas, blindly,” I said  honestly. “I know some of the shit he’s done, but really, I fucking know nothing of him.”
I took a deep inhale, and blew it out. “Who the fuck is he, and how did he get so much power?”
Greyson sighed, and also took a long drag. Poor guy seemed stressed enough over the mercer incident, and I could tell from his body language that this wasn’t something people liked talking about. I didn’t give a shit though, I wanted to know how this asshole came to rule the greywastes and created Skyfall, and who had trained him to do so. He was too young to have been here during the Fallocaust, it was my understanding that it was passed down from father to son.
At this moment, as I said flat on my back, looking at the overcast, cloudy sky, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. So naive, so... stupid, as compared to the person I am now. I had learned a lot about King Silas over the last couple of years, a lot of which I could have probably done without knowing. There was something though, something eerie and unsettling about knowing that you came so close to being forcibly recruited; so close to being kidnapped from the only home you had ever known. What would have happened if I had been forced into the military I don’t know, I would not have allowed myself to be broken so chances are, I would have been killed.

Greyson and Leo probably knew that.
“You... you do know about the end times?” Greyson asked. I nodded, leaning back in the overstuffed chair, loosely crossing my legs as I balanced an ashtray on my knee.
“Many many years ago, humans were thriving, we had a lot of shit we don’t have now.” I nodded and thought back to my teachings as a child. “But there were too many of us, we ended up fucking over each other and warring with different continents over resources... and we ended up destroying each other.”
“Bombs, biological and chemical warfare, death and carnage everywhere,” Leo said silently, he had started looking rather pale over the past several minutes. “The world was in ruins, the governments all over the world collapsed, one after another. There was anarchy everywhere, much worse than it is now if you could believe it. More people to kill I suppose. And as they destroyed the earth, they destroyed the sky as well with their bombs.”

“Most of the population was wiped out,” Greyson continued, “and those who didn’t die, wished that they had. The rains stopped, the sun dimmed. They had no food, the water was bad, the ground was burnt and dry, everyone was starving and dying of disease.”
Leo nodded. “As the story goes, Silas gathered up the people he chose to live and brought them to an island he named Skyfall. Then he well... he killed everyone else, with a enormous pulse of a type of radiation never seen before. Sestic radiation.”

“No one knows what it was, but it fried all of our electronics. It also preserved a lot of things, which is why we can eat this canned shit we scavenge.” Greyson refused Leo’s quil and made a motion encouraging his partner to take more. “King Silas kept our ancestors in Skyfall, and slowly built the island. Then about a hundred or so years ago, the sestic radiation faded to an acceptable level, as long as you were implanted with his special technology: the geigerchip.”
“And he would be this King Silas’s... what would that be? Great great great great great grandfather?” I asked curiously.
Greyson and Leo looked at me like I had just grown five heads. I blinked and furrowed my brow.
“Reaver...” Greyson said slowly like I had just turned into a retard. “King Silas is immortal.”

My mouth dropped open. This I had never heard before, but they were looking at me like it was some vastly common knowledge.

I felt like an idiot. Which was unfair considering I had had all my schooling from them.
“How... can that be?” Was my next question, hoping that that wasn’t common knowledge as well.
“We don’t know, it’s suppose to be a genetic abnormality,” Greyson’s voice dropped like he was expecting Silas to jump out of the closet right now. “What we do know, is that he was the one who took control, he sent out the sestic radiation pulse. Once Skytech was created he advanced genetic engineering which is where his chimeras came from. The men who help him run Skyfall, the Legion and all the other factions. The history of Fallocaust stems from just that one man.
“What happened next is easy to see. Some of the arians left Skyfall and started to settle in the greywastes, or just become rogues. When they came here they found mutated animals, crazed human survivors and the start of the subhuman breed we call rats. Which were further bred for food.” Greyson wiped his face and pursed his eyes with his fingers, he looked like he was getting tired. It had been a taxing day.
“He brought a loose sense of order to the wasteland, but like everything... with a cost,” Leo said, he rested a hand on Greyson’s knee, offering his support to his exhausted partner. “He destroyed all those who defy him, and still does. He continues to run Skyfall and the greywastes with an iron fist. All with the help of his genetically engineered servants he called chimeras. You’ve heard some of their names before: Garrett the leader of Skytech and Kessler the Imperial General of the Legion. He doesn’t trust anyone he hasn’t created.”
“He sounds like a control freak nut job,” I said, my mouth filling with bitter liquid. This history lesson had me hating that dude even more. I certainly had been leading a sheltered life information wise. Though I guess that’s what happens when you don’t talk to anyone outside your small circle of friends. People who had also barely left Aras.
“He is, that and more,” Greyson said quietly. “His chimeras aren’t much better.” He got up and extinguished the rest of the quil in the ashtray. “All we can do is stay out of his eye,  go on with our lives, keep from being noticed.”
Leo rose with his husband. “Stay here tonight Reaver, the mercer is gone, but I want you to lay low just in case, we don’t want you on the walls tonight.”
I nodded, not minding at all the rest of the day off. The adrenaline had gone from my body hours ago, and now I was just as exhausted as Greyson looked. I was heading to bed as soon as they left. Even if I couldn’t sleep I could de-compress, maybe pop some more pills.
“Be safe, keep safe,” Greyson said silently, he patted me on the back and ducked into the tunnel. Leo did the same and gave me a smile.
“You did the right thing,” he said silently, quiet enough that Greyson hadn’t heard him. The corners of my lips rose in a small smile, I mouthed thanks and stood back as he disappeared into the tunnel after Greyson. I heard the hatch clang shut, and another
shink
as one of them locked the hatch behind them.
I let out a deep breath and forced myself not to think as I made my way to my bedroom. If I started thinking now, I knew I would never be able to get to sleep, and what I didn’t need was another reason not to sleep.

I closed my bedroom door and locked it, and without another thought, flopped onto my bed.

Chapter 6

Reaver

Present Day

“What’s up, Reaver?” One of the other sentries asked as I approached the north gate leading out of Aras. It had been a couple weeks since Killian had followed me to the Slaught House. The merchant had come and gone, and my following of Killian was pretty much constant now. I always knew where that kid was now. I felt more comfortable that way.
“Nothing,” I called up to Sadii, she was doing her shift now. I always worked alone, but at all times there was at least four of us walking the concrete barriers at one time; each of us taking a wing. The size of the block was too big for one person to watch properly, or that’s at least what Greyson tells me whenever I voice my displeasure about having to deal with other people.

It wasn’t that bad though, the nature of our job made us solitary anyways, talking to each other was out of the question unless there was something out there to talk about.

We all stuck to our own stretch of concrete in our designated cardinal direction and that was that. It was a quiet, lonely, and most of the time tranquil. Tranquil isn’t a word that most often comes to mind when talking about the greywastes, but when you’re sitting on a cold slab of rock, hearing nothing but the breath of the deacon and the chirping of hoppers and other bugs, it is tranquil. Though as much as I love sitting and contemplating shit in the night, I must add that it’s just as fun shooting the head off of a wild dog from fifty feet away.
“Are you on now? I thought it was Matt and Owen tonight,” Sadii said as I climbed up the pull ramp. She lowered the night vision goggles that had been resting on her head, over her eyes. I heard a high pitch mechanical whine as she turned them on.
“No, but I’m taking the west anyways,” I said in a tone that left little room for discussion. I stepped onto the broken cobblestone road. I didn’t have anything better to do tonight, Killian was in his house for the evening and I didn’t want to go home yet. Anyways, Reno had tipped me off on potentially another merchant caravan coming. I wanted to see if I could spot any sign of it.

“Matt’s not going to be happy about that,” she called back to me.
“Matt can go fuck a dog,” I called back and heard her burst into laughing. I rolled my eyes, we had grown up in the same block, so she knew that I wasn’t being funny; but she seemed to prefer to laugh off socially awkward responses rather then accept I was an asshole.
In all respects I was being honest, Matt really could go fuck a dog. Matt was another sentry, and an idiot at that. The merchants could be robbing us blind and disembowelling the kids and he would still be trying to bang any unfortunate woman that was traveling with the caravan, even though he was married.

I stuck into my left cargo pants pocket and dug out a few rolled up quils and popped one into my mouth.

I took the long walk to the west side of the wall. Taking a moment to spit on a few deacons heads while I was at it. I don’t know when I started doing that, but it eventually became a game. It was a good day when I successfully spat on every one I walked past. I had gotten better over the years.
“They’ll rip your throat out one day,” a voice laughed from below me. I looked down to see the block’s doctor, chuckling away. He was a dark haired man with glasses and a kind face. I hadn’t minded him, he seemed to know his shit. The good ol Doc had been sewing my ass up since I was a tot, he had a sick sense of humor and was comfortable enough around me to freely jab. He was like the uncle I never wanted.
“They’re too stupid,” I remarked, before hocking some spit on a big black one. It didn’t even flinch.
I heard him chuckle. “Aye, probably, but it wont make my dreams of it happening any less sweeter.”

I started laughing before I could stop myself. Had to give the fucker credit for that one.

“I got a visit from Jeff Massey’s boy Killian, he wants to apprentice for me,” Doc said very nonchalantly.

“Really?” I said, this information turned my interest. Killian had never sought out being trained for  a job. He just paid his taxes from money his dad left behind and that was that. I guess he was getting bored of reading all day, or maybe he wanted to put that book knowledge to use.
“Yep, smart kid too. He’s read more medical books than I have. I think I’ll start him dissecting some carcasses, see if he has the stomach for medicine.”
I snorted, I couldn’t see Killian being able to handle gore like that but who knows, he has been surprising me. He hadn’t puked once when he had seen the pit in all its glory.
“I thought I would save you the hassle and just tell you. I have him coming over Monday to Friday, noon until three and emergencies.”
I stared at him. It seemed like everyone knew about me following Killian, I guess it was obvious when we both kept leaving Aras together. Still, I wish they wouldn’t bring attention to it.
Doc was apparently having the time of his life.  “He mentioned you, you know,” he said with a sardonic smirk.
I kept staring, every bit of myself wanted to start walking back towards the west wall, but my curiosity had snared me in its clutches. I had to press on.
“Oh?” I said dropping my voice, hoping the doctor would get the hint too and drop his. No such luck, he was relishing this too much.
“He asked me where you lived, told him I didn’t know. No one fucking knows except Reno, Greyson and Leo.”
“I sleep better that way,” I mumbled trying to sound disinterested, but my mind had exploded with questions. Why did he want to know where I lived?