Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) (2 page)

Scaling down the rock slab until I was on the same level as Killian I pressed my back against the jagged mound. I knew that on the other side was my little blond creature.

I silently dusted myself off and looked past the slab of rock, up the trail that I knew led to him. I could see his shadow in the afternoon sun, and from where I was standing I could even see the soda bottle. Exactly what I had been looking for.

I smirked to myself and wetted my dry lips. I watched as Killian’s hand appeared from behind the rock, grasping the bottle. I heard the crinkling sound of the water bottle as Killian took a drink out of it, and then him setting it back down beside him.

It couldn’t have been more perfect, I thought to myself with a smile. I glanced behind myself to make sure nothing would be sneaking up on me while I snuck up on Killian and took a silent step forward.
I lightly tip toed towards the unsuspecting boy, so quiet that I could hear every breath coming from the boy’s lips.

As I got closer he could see more and more of Killian’s body. The back of his head perfectly still like a canyon hawk surveying his land. But Killian wasn’t surveying, or perching, that was more my thing. Killian had his face in a book, his mind off somewhere wonderful probably, distant lands where trees were still green, where animals were covered in fur, where food had colours unseen in this world ... where people were kind and nice.

Some place that didn’t exists anymore, at least not in the greywastes. Skyfall maybe, I’d never been to the king’s island myself, and I never will.
Killian’s blond hair seemed to glisten in the sunlight. Those golden strands fell past his ears and he was forever tucking it behind those ears as he read. His hair was clean, and I could smell the soap he used to clean it from here. I briefly felt annoyed at how different the kid smelled, probably attracting every radanimal from here to Skyfall, but I couldn’t bring myself to think negatively at such an intoxicating aroma.

It enticed me how different he was from everyone else, how he didn’t want to smell like death unlike most of the wasters in our block. I myself had tried to keep myself clean, but I had much better things to do than bathe in my crappy bathtub. My job in the block was as a sentry and sentries had to keep watch and scrubbing the dirt off of your ass took time away from my job.
Or that’s what I told myself at least. No matter how many excuses I made for myself, I still wished at that very moment that I had at least washed the blood off of my hands from feeding the deacons.

Eh, who was I trying to impress though? I couldn’t care less what Killian thought of me, I had never even so much as made eye contact with that kid.

Still though ...
I felt my hand twitch towards Killian’s clean golden hair, wondering briefly what it would feel like between my fingers, but shook it off. I licked my lips as if reminding myself why I was there in the first place, and shifted my gaze towards the water filled plastic soda bottle and smirked.
Killian was indifferent, I wasn’t even two feet behind him and he was still indifferent. This was the thing that was forever annoying me, nose in a book and head in the clouds. Anyone could be sneaking up on him right now to gut him like a carp and eat him faster than a deacon to a rat and he wouldn’t even know what hit him.
I watched as Killian took a bite out of his dried meat and crouched down like I was ready to pounce on him. If I wanted too, I could reach out and touch him right now, all that was separating the two was a several foot high mound of red rock and a clump of wispy yellow grass.

I leaned forward and rested my right hand on top of the slab of rock, and with my free hand, I stretched it towards the soda bottle. At the same moment Killian turned a page in the large textbook he had been reading, I made my move, before the page even touched the opposite end of the book; the soda bottle was gone.

In an instant I was gone too, I didn’t stick around to make sure Killian had not seen or sensed my presence. As soon as I had the bottle in my hand I had slinked back into the shadows, and a few moments later was at my perch again, looming over the canyons of the greywaste.

I brushed my dark hair out of my eyes, and smirked as I watched the unsuspecting boy turn another page. I, very cockily I might add, unscrewed the cap off of the water bottle and took a long congratulatory swig of my spoils and smacked my lips together arrogantly.

Killian jumped a bit at the noise I had made, but didn’t turn around.

“Yeah, now he hears me,” I mumbled to myself as I took another large gulp of the soda bottle.

Killian scratched his blond hair and let out a small sigh, without looking up from his textbook he reached his hand to his now vacant water bottle and felt around for it. He paused and looked up from his textbook, he arched his back to look past his spot where the rocks had started to slope downwards but slumped back down when he couldn’t spot it.

He closed his textbook, and sat there perfectly still, as if trying to process this new mystery.

I grinned, and in spite of myself let out a snicker. Killian heard this, turned around and looked up at me. I quickly averted my gaze just slightly and started paying a lot of attention to the valley below.

From the corner of my eye I could see Killian scowl, obviously not as impressed at my thievery as I was myself. He looked like he was about to say something when he stopped. I was about to throw him the soda bottle back down when I heard a soft crunching noise.
I froze and strained my ears. Killian had heard it too, he shot a scared look down the path way I had just been on and jumped to his feet. I dropped to the ground and pressed my stomach flat against the rock I had been perching on. In one fluid fast motion I got out my M16 and positioned it. My heartbeat started to race, as I became very soberly aware of how far away from Killian I really was.
I knew without even thinking that whatever was coming up that path, I wouldn’t be able to reach it before it could reach Killian. I also knew that it was too far to jump from my spot to Killian’s, and would result in broken bones at best. I uttered every single curse word I could think of as I aimed my rifle towards the edge of the rock, where I knew the intruder would emerge from.

Whatever it was, I would have to snipe it and hope that Killian was smart enough to get out of my way and give me a clear shot.

The crunching stopped and I held my breath. I knew the only reason it had stopped was for the fact that whatever was down there was now stepping onto the canyon rock that Killian had been resting on. I swore and belly crawled to the very edge of where I had been sitting, until I was almost hanging off of the cliff edge. I narrowed my eyes and adjusted my hold on my gun, waiting for whatever was down there to step out from behind the rock, and come into shooting range.
“I bet he’s aiming at me right now, isn’t he?” a familiar voice suddenly echoed from behind the rock.
I let out a huge sigh of relief, I could feel the tightness in my chest immediately unclench. I rose to my feet.
“You’re right about that,” another male voice chuckled and stepped into my line of sight. The block leader and the closest thing I had to a parent, shielded his eyes from the sunlight and looked up at me.
“Yeah, I see you, asshole.” Greyson laughed, his light haired partner Leo stepped into view too, both of them looking up at me with the greatest amount of amusement.
“Where you find the
unschuldig
, you’ll find the
teufel
.” The corners of Leo’s eyes creased as he grinned. “And just the devil I was looking for. Reaver, we’ve had reports that there is a merchant’s caravan coming this way, early tomorrow morning. Tis the season with the water levels dropping in the Typhus. Both of you pack it in, we’re locking everything down ahead of time; in case it’s a trojan.”

I grunted loudly and scratched my temple with the end of the rifle. A caravan was always a welcome rarity, but it came with its own set of risks; but nothing I wouldn’t be able to handle. Still though, with Killian being close by I would rather err on the side of caution and get him into the safety of the block.

There was always dangers when a merchant’s caravan came; trojans as they had been called. Ravers or just asshole wasters disguised as harmless merchants, usually there to kidnap our people for ransom, or rob us of money or supplies. It hadn’t happened in a long time, but the moment you let your guard down is the moment you get your whole block massacred and eaten.
“We haven’t had a caravan here in since early winter,” I said. I was glad they were coming early this year though, I was running low on a few things myself.

I clicked my rifle into my holder and turned around, making my way down the jagged rocks to the path I had snuck through just a few moments ago. I quickly covered the distance in a matter of moments, my feet barely touching the ground as I made my way to the path. I landed in front of the three with a soft thunk and started walking down the path, not giving them a second glance.
“Well, I hope whoever is leading this caravan is stocked, we need more medical supplies. Doc is starting to bitch,” Greyson said from behind me. I shrugged, stopping momentarily in front of a large ten foot drop off, before jumping down from rock to rock with ease, and landing at the bottom with another soundless
thunk.

I turned around and crossed my arms impatiently watching as the three carefully navigated over the same steep decent I had just jump down from, but much slower and with much more care.

“Wipe that smug look off of your face you agile piece of shit, we aren’t all young and reckless you know,” Greyson grunted, he had just turned forty and though he was hard as nails, he wasn’t as dexterous as me.

No one is
, I thought smugly to myself, I had been scaling these rocks since I was big enough to sneak out of the block and climbing over them was second nature to me.

I watched as Greyson and Leo in unison jumped down from the last slab of rock and onto level ground. The dark haired Greyson wiped the sweat off of his forehead with a rag and passed it onto his light haired partner. It was warmer today, even though within the hour I knew night would be on us.
I looked away from the dingy grey sky and back to the slope, and found my body automatically jerking towards Killian.

He was a pathetic sight indeed. His heavy backpack, stuffed with textbooks, was slung over his back and I could see he was having a difficult time making it down the steep slope. My body had jerked to help him down, but I stopped myself. I was one thing to keep an eye on him while he was off in the greywastes unarmed, but I wasn’t about to become his personal escort. Falling flat on his face wouldn’t kill him, and maybe it would teach him to not carry so much shit around.
He didn’t fall though, and deep down I struggled with myself. Secretly I wanted him to fall flat on his face, but an equal part of me wanted him to remain unhurt; it was pretty even between the two. An odd thing for me, since usually I take copious amounts of joy in seeing those around me suffer.
He did take longer getting down this rock slope then I would have liked though, by the time he had made it to the bottom. Leo and Greyson were twenty or so feet ahead of us. It’s unwise to stray so far away from your group, but I, nor the other two were the type of men to wait for stragglers. Stragglers get eaten, and it’s the stragglers that will slow down the predator from coming after you.
Killian let out a deep breath and adjusted the backpack. I took a step back as he started to walk forward and looked past him towards the steep canyon slopes as he passed by and started behind Greyson and Leo.

From the corner of my eye I could see him looking at me as he passed, only a few feet away (he still smelled nice). I could see that he was trying to make eye contact with me, but I didn’t turn towards him. I didn’t speak a word to him, I didn’t even acknowledge his presence.

No, I don’t know why, it was just my thing and he seemed to take hints pretty well.
When Killian was a few steps ahead of me I started to follow behind, checking my back to make sure nothing was stalking us. Rather it be me taking a hit if something was going to attack us, at least I was armed and experienced.
As I checked behind me, my thoughts travelled to what Leo had told us earlier, a caravan apparently, on its way here. That was a rare thing, and probably one of the many reasons Aras was a safe place to live.
The run of the mill caravans wouldn’t be caught dead in that area, even mercenaries demanded a substantial amount of money to have them even consider coming out here; mostly because of the canyons surrounding the area. It sheltered us from the wild rats and ravers, but isolated us from merchants and any news coming from the greywastes that wasn’t on the radio.

The canyons bred danger and harboured it, the steep plentiful rocks hid the crazed wild men that were the ravers, and the deep caves were perfect for escaped rats to try and scrape out a miserable living. Though those sub humans were nothing compared to the radiated animals that scoured the rocks devouring anything that had meat stuck to their bones.
The overwhelmingly huge slabs made the whole canyon a giant maze that stretched for miles and miles in every direction north of Aras. At the very bottom of the canyon after a steep and treacherous dissent, stained red boulders and rocks casted a permanent shadow over the vast valley below. The Typhus River was said to eventually flow down there as well, leading to the lakes of Typhus, a few hundred miles from Aras. But no one had ever survived the surveying long enough to confirm that.

The south wasn’t as bad as the north geographically, but was a horror fest in its self.

The south or the blacksands as we called it were the same greywastes that surrounded all of us, but was littered with abandoned cities, and the real icing on the cake: the factories and laboratories. The horror came from the rumours we were constantly hearing from the  mercenaries who would travel around those areas. Rumours of horrible experiments that went on in those labs, and the mutated, radiation crazed abominations that roamed the cities and towns. All thanks to Skytech, King Silas’s science program.

I looked up as I heard the gate screech open, a few paces ahead of me, Greyson, Leo and Killian were walking inside to the safety of the community.