Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (117 page)

Dad’s strength left him and his head fell back in exhaustion, I lowered him down and as quickly as I could I moved my hand away from his hot, slimy head. I flicked it as I saw the white worms squirming in the fluid now coating my hand. Several of them shot across the room, I wiped the remainder on his already soaked blanket.

I brought a towel to his face and tried to wipe the crust and blood away from his nose so he could breath easier. I think he gave me a weak smile but I wasn’t sure.

“I love you, Dad.” I wiped his forehead. “I’m going to check on Mom.”

I walked down the stairs, holding the rest of the water. I tried to wipe the fluid off of the mug, my dad’s lips had left a brown imprint on the rim.

“Mom?” I whispered as I peeked into the living room.

When I walked into the living room, I walked into quarantine. The quarantine sheds we had in the east of Aras.

It was dark now, the air was so thick with rot I should have gagged but the smell was dull to my senses. My lungs had been filled with the smell of death for so long the fresh air seemed odd to me. Light seemed odd, healthy, normal people seemed odd.

“NO!” I grabbed Greyson as he opened the door into quarantine. Behind him, skulking in the shadows I could see Reaver. “Please, NO!” I screamed.

They’re all I have, they’re all I have. Without them I’m an orphan, without them I don’t have anyone in this world. Please... another day, they’ll get better in another day!

I felt Leo grab me as I screamed, sobbed and pleaded. Greyson slipped into the sheds, and wordlessly like the cold heartless fuck he was, Reaver stepped in too. A cigarette clenched between his teeth. This was casual for him, this was just another fucking night for him.

“NO!” I sobbed, I turned and dove into Leo’s arms. I cried.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Leo said, his voice empty.

I woke up with a sharp gasp, as I inhaled I realized my mouth was open and dry. Like the last tense groan on my lips was nothing but a final crescendo to an evening of restlessness. I was the audience in the stands forced to watch the awful movie in front of me. The screaming and thrashing I so readily did in my nightmares reduced to only low moans once it reached my physical body.

I tried to make my eyes work, but everything was turned off, all I could see was the faint green glow of the heater’s light... it didn’t light up anything around me... The room was dark.

As I licked my parched lips I realized with a cold dread that something had woken me, something other than the nightmare. But there had been no outward signs to cement this discovery, just that faint buzzing in your ears that makes the hairs on your neck prickle.

I raised my hand to turn on the bluelamp.

Ring ring... ring ring.

I froze, my hand partially outstretched. For a moment I was confused as to what it was, but then I realized...

It was Asher’s bell, the one Reaver had rigged so he could signal that he was outside.

Ring ring... ring ring.

Though my mouth was clenched and my cheek bit, I felt a muddled sob escape from my pursed lips. I extended my hand farther, and desperately started to feel for the lamp.

I heard a rattle, a jingling like keys... I was... I moved my wrist and tried to pull it away from the bed. I was handcuffed.

I felt every degree of heat leave my body with the sickening realization I was chained.

Why was I handcuffed.

Why was I trapped?

Ring ring... ring ring... ringring.

The bile bubbled in my throat, I yanked my hand away from the bed frame, feeling my muscles strain under my own strength. I started to hyperventilate as I realized I was trapped.

I was trapped and Asher was outside...

“Reaver?” His name burst from my lips like someone shouting for mercy, but I knew he wasn’t there. I tried to shift onto his side of the bed but my wrist was holding me back.

I pulled my binds with desperate vigor, tears springing to my eyes. The hot wires of panic constricted me in its frenzied grip and contracted around my chest and throat. I felt like an animal caught in a trap.

Ring ring.

I thrashed around and eventually fell off of the bed, my body knocking the night table over with an upset bang. My wrist wrenched backwards behind my back, filling my already frenzied body with even more panic. I twisted around and yanked at the cuff. When my wrist still wouldn’t pull away I gave out my first desperate howl. I grabbed my arm with my free hand and with all my might I pulled.

The first panic attack happened not long after.

Ring ring.

The next several minutes I couldn’t recall. It was a mad flurry of screaming, panic, crying and thrashing. The handcuff was trapping my body, but my mind was trapping me. Inside the ringing was deafening me, plugging up every outlet I had from my own crazed mind, now inside was flooded with delirious fear and an un-satiatable need to run.

When the bell stopped ringing, and my mind finally grasped the fleeting wings of reality I was on the floor and I was free of the handcuff.

I looked down in a daze, and saw my shredded wrist, seeping blood. I saw it on my fingers, in painted streaks from when the cuff had finally slipped off. I think own blood had been the lubricant to finally shift the steel ring.

I held out my hand and leaned against the bed, examining the pearly flesh of my hands. The bluelamp was on now, I didn’t remember turning it on. It dyed the darkness in its cold blue glow, but it did nothing to make my reality any less terrifying.

Ring ring... ring ring.

“You’re not alive!” I screamed, I grabbed the bluelamps and stalked towards the tank hatch. I opened it.“YOU’RE NOT ALIVE!” I screamed it so hard my eyes felt like they would pop out of my head.

Ring ring.

I ran over and grabbed the bell, a few inches above Reaver’s tallest book shelf. I ripped the string out of the wall and tossed it across the room. It slammed against the concrete, giving off one more desperate ring before it broke into pieces.

I started to choke on the sob stuck in my throat. I clenched my hands to my hair and walked towards the tunnel.

I climbed into the home made passageway and pushed open the hatch leading to the shed. I walked out into the cold, bare feet and all, and went along the side of the house.

There would be none one there! They were dead! They had to be dead... I killed them, I killed both of them!

I opened the back door and crept inside, I held up the bluelamp but to my dismay I realized I had grabbed one of my sneakers instead. I put it on and walked through the main area’s kitchen to the living room that doubled as storage.

Nothing! Nothing! See nothing!
I clenched my teeth, hating myself. Hating myself. Hating myself. I had killed them there was nothing there, there was nothing there.

I spun around as I heard something outside, voices. I could hear voices... no... no they weren’t speaking. I ran outside, lopsided with only one shoe on and stood in the gravelly backyard. What was that? I craned my ears and started trying to follow the noise. That person must have been ringing the bell, who was it? Reno? Maybe it was...

It was sucking... it was the sound of... licking, moaning...

My moaning.

I heard a snap, and then another recording.

“I want you.”
It was my voice... it was Asher’s voice recorder. The one he had taken from Reaver’s cargo pants.

“NO!” I screamed, I ran through Reaver’s backyard, stepping over a fallen down chain link fence and a strip of clumped yellow bushes. It was coming from the ruins of the house next door. I wasn’t imagining it, I wasn’t... oh god what’s going on with my head.

The recording continued, I could hear kissing, making out. His lips sucking on my mouth as his hands traced my stomach. I remember every moment of it.

I ran into the house, hearing the recording get louder as I got closer.

When I walked into the living room, the black voice recorder was sitting on a water damaged coffee table. I grabbed it and threw it up against the wall with a sob.

As the voice recorder fell, a button was pressed. I could hear raspy breathing, ragged, dying breathes.

“A body reveals its most shocking of secrets, after the last breath is drawn
.” His voice was a gasping wheeze.

“You’re dead!” I sobbed, I grabbed a lose brick from the fireplace and started to smash it. With all my strength I made sure no one would ever listen to his voice again. He was dead! HE WAS DEAD!

Then who put the voice recorder there? Who rang the fucking bell!?

Oh god, I was crazy... I was crazy. I needed more heroin, I needed more drugs. I was going to go crazy if I didn’t get help.

He’s fucking with you, Killian. He’s fucking with you, Killian.

“Very clever... cicaro. How did you do it?”
I could still hear that voice, gasping for air as his lungs compressed on themselves. Those thin breaking strands, no longer smooth, no longer crystal clear and flawless. He was dying, I had watched him die. When I buried him he was cold.

Would he still be there?

I grabbed the voice recorder and ran out of the abandoned house. My one shoe slapping against the pavement, then crunching on gravel as I cut across the several diagonal streets. I knew the way, I knew the way there.

I’d have to climb in the middle of the night, but the moon was still out. The silver stain of the moonlight would at least hint to me where to step. I was agile, I could do it.

I wrapped my arms around my chest and lowered my head. The aching of my wrist appeared in my mind as the hysteria started to allow me some basic feelings. Not many though, I still didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel the pain of my feet continuing to roll under the uneven gravel and debris. I think my mind wanted me to get to the cemetery. My mind wanted me to know for sure that Asher was rotting in his grave, I needed the reality that everything was a hallucination. My mind fucking with me, Asher fucking with me.

I climbed over the remains of houses and their refuse. The electric polls, the endless bones of rusted rebar, the open fridges, and the wood and nails, lots of those. I avoided them as much as I could, but I could feel the wetness between my bare toes. I was leaving crescent rings of red where ever my feet stepped, bread crumbs for Reaver to eventually find me.

It was easier to climb, it hadn’t rained today, everything was dry. I could grip the pavement, the twists of metal bar, I could climb like Reaver said I could. My agility... he said to use it to my advantage and I was. I was strong... deep down, I was.

Asher and Perish were both waiting for me in front of the blown out house.

Perish was in the shadows, the lab coat crisp against the backdrop of shadowed gravel and pavement. His hands wringing nervously kneading one another in an anxious circle.

The Skylander Asher was holding a rusty shovel in his hand; his black lips were raised in a smirk. I could see dead veins in his neck, large and black under his translucent grey skin.

He was dressed in the clothes I had buried him in, dark patches of dirt on the corners of the fabric and his blotched black skin visible through the thin mesh of his shirt. The black veins so thick in his neck and arms creeped up to his face like split rivers on a map. Dead blood that hadn’t pooled, stagnant in the veins it had rotted in.

“Ill met by moonlight,
cicaro?”
He smiled at me, the shreds of bag still tied around his neck like a kerchief. I could see the bits of blue plastic stuck in his teeth.

I reached my hand out and he handed me the shovel. Without a word exchanged I smiled back before walking into the house, past the living room and into the cemetery.

I slammed the shovel into the ground and swept my eyes over my darkened oasis, mentally picking out every grave I had buried. All of my friends, all of my friends were here. In their graves, waiting for me to visit. Waiting so they could watch me dig up Perish. Never to rest in peace, only to be desecrated again and again.

I took in a cold breath, it soothed my aching throat. Sore and raw from my weeks and weeks of screaming. The wintery air seemed to weaken the smoldering flames behind my tongue.

The cemetery was beautiful tonight, the moon always lit it up in a way that made me think it was enchanted. Or some sort of magical place. I loved how the silky light made the yellow grass seem like strands of silver, how the dead trees rose up defiantly into the air. They were corpses too, corpses that had burst out of the ground gasping for breath, nestled inside thick bark and heavy roots. Ready to snag anyone who came too close in their long, claw like branches. They fed off of bodies, they brought themselves back to life by luring people here to eat alive.

I wondered if my friends would do that as well.

I felt a drop of rain on my neck, I took that as my sign and picked the shovel back up. I walked over to Perish’s grave. The dirt now the same faded colour as the rest of the wasteland, and dug it in.

Four feet... or was it more? I pressed my sneaker against the end of the shovel and started digging up Perish and Asher. The rain started falling heavier around me. The sound was beautiful mixed in with the stillness of the night. A tranquil, peaceful milieu, undisturbed by the churning madness in the pits of my mind.

As I got deeper I could smell the rot, though my nose was so fatigued from the over abundance of decay I had been inhaling I could easily ignore it. I dove the shovel in again and flung the dirt behind me.

Each mound of black soil brought me closer, closer to Perish, my Perry... closer to Asher, the psychopathic raticater. Each shovel... each shovel...

I remember when I buried my mom and dad.

I had been crying then, but I wasn’t crying now. I wouldn’t cry, I would be happy. The confirmation he was dead, he was... he wasn’t behind me, he wasn’t ringing the bell, he was dead. I had killed him.

I drove the shovel in, and stamped on it with my sneaker. I pushed all my weight into it and threw it over me again. Sweat was beading down my forehead, it was getting bigger, wider... deeper. The sweat became icy drops as soon as the cold air hit it. I started to shiver.