The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (50 page)

Some of this white was fungus… but there was a lighter shade of white with a strange texture…

What was it?

I put some pressure on my boot. It felt like I was hitting a water-filled sack. I pressed my boot against it harder until it burst.

My eyes widened; a kreiger fetus or lizardling whatever the fuck it was twisted around in its broken womb, squinting its shiny black eyes before it gave a shudder and died.

Because I was, of course, still a huge asshole, I stepped on the rest of the eggs, spilling their writhing contents onto the dirty concrete floor.

I chuckled as I stepped on one’s head, it made an amusing popping noise. I started gleefully stepping on more.

Though my fun was short-lived as I knew it would be. I started to hear the sandpaper sounds around me, and as I scanned the broken cylinders and the grate catwalks around us I started to see them.

My eyes found Perish, clutching his rifle in his hands, looking up at the crawling kreigers with a blanched expression on his face. I walked over and nudged his shoulder to snap him out of his state. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, come on.”

Perish didn’t move, he was still staring up at the lizards, and like I had previously deduced, where I saw one I was quickly seeing three or four. They were all flashing reflective eyes at us, and serrated teeth that matched the colours of the egg pods and fungus that were tucked into every corner and crevice.

The kreigers were still slow but fucking dangerous in numbers, and even if we would come back it would be painful to be eaten alive, and the boys were waiting for us.

“No, they’re behind us now. We were too slow.” Perish glanced behind him before finally he started to move, though it was deeper into the cylinder room not back. “Follow me, don’t ask dumb questions or smash the babies, just follow me, and try to cover me. Use silencer, mine doesn’t have a silencer and the guns will be heard by Caligula, Kessler, and their legionaries. Okay, Reaver?”

I nodded and covered his backside as he started to hop over the rusted pipes, leaving streaks of red from the patina on his grey hoody and pants. I turned around and shot a kreiger slithering over the railing to my left before I followed him on top of the pipe.

He was walking the length of the pipe which stretched across the large, high ceiling room before jutting up, joining three pipes on either side doing the same. I was amazed the pipes were even holding our weight. Everywhere I looked was covered in thick corrosive rust, even dripping down the smaller pipes and the rungs of the catwalk like miniature icicles. It was so broken up and fragile looking I knew if I so much as waved a hand over the rough cancer it would flake off in my fingers.

But it held our weight and I literally had to run with that. With my hands outstretched and my back constantly being watched I practically tiptoed along the thick pipe, only sparing a few moments to pick off the kreigers coming to close to me.

And they were getting closer, and with them came their stale smell, accentuated more by not only their numbers but the claustrophobic aura of this room. It was choking the air around me, making me feel like I was breathing in their own recycled breath; my lungs protested for fresh air.

Perish suddenly swore and took a step back as a kreiger landed on the pipe, and with him several more spilled over. Some hitting the pipe with a satisfying clang before toppling down fifteen feet onto the sewer floor, a tangle of flailing twisted limbs and black blood. Others though hung on with their deformed fingers, clawing through eaten holes in the pipe and gaining a good enough hold to hiss and snap at us.

I aimed my gun and Perish stayed still. I picked them off with a spray of bullets, their blood and brains matching almost perfectly the corrosion they fell upon. Their heads seemed as frail as egg shells; it never took more than one hit to have their brains start to come out of their bald heads.

“Watch their blood, don’t slip,” I called to Perish, looking up and watching the metal catwalk to make sure I didn’t get ambushed; I wouldn’t let that happen again.

I swore as I suddenly felt my boot go through a thin part of the pipe. I raised my arm to balance myself and as I regained my footing I looked down below us.

White, it was as white as if there were snow on the ground, though this snow was churning and hissing at us. No wonder Perish had led us to these fucking pipes, there were hundreds down there. Such a thick stew of writhing bodies, I couldn’t tell where one ended and one began.

It was just like the rat pit in the Slaught House, except those ones were black. I wouldn’t want to fall down there either; they would eat you like a raver, slowly and painfully. I wouldn’t regenerate for fucking half of a year.

There was the sound of metal against rust, I broke my gaze from the almost hypnotic churning of the kreigers and saw Perish start to climb up the pipe, sticking his boots into the raised rivets and pulling himself up with ease. I followed him, watching below me a kreiger attempt to climb the walls to get us, but even with their deformed frog-like hands the walls were too wet.

At the top of the pipes were a set of stairs, though as soon as I stood up I saw two kreigers hugging a narrow ridge that stretched the length of the adjacent walls. Standing almost erect like a human, they pressed their flat bodies against the brick, making their prominent spines jut out, permanently twisted and ridged like a frogs.

They fell, one after another. I lowered my gun to try and get my bearings; Perish already checking the top of the stairs. He gave me the all clear and I followed him.

“How much longer?” Another glance behind my shoulder. I could see the grey masses begin to navigate the pipes we were just on, hoping over each other like leapfrogs, the leader constantly getting replaced by the next one.

“Not long.”

His tone caught my attention, and I hated the timing of it. He was using the same calm and sane tone he had used with me the first time we had been out chasing kreigers. But before I could think of calling him on it he picked up the bag he had been carrying and started walking down what appeared to be a concrete hallway.

“Don’t shoot, as quiet as you can; we’re underneath the reservoir now.” Perish sprinted ahead and I took his flank, wanting nothing more than to keep shooting these abominations as they waddled and swayed closer to us. Mouths open and closing with a continuous thrum of hissing and snapping. The songs of the sewers, I wouldn’t miss this soundtrack.

The hallway was dry with many metal doors to each side. There were also spray-painted signs I didn’t understand, and broken emergency lights dead and forgotten. None of this mattered to me; I needed to be out in the greywastes, not trapped inside these catacombs.

“Not this way, not this way…” Perish suddenly turned around. He grabbed my jacket and pulled me backwards.

The reason for this quick change in plans was apparent. Behind Perish I saw a kreiger leap through an open door, landing on the ground on all fours. He eyed us with a snarling hiss. Not a second later another one emerged and another one, until, like the ones on the pipes, they were all climbing over top of each other.

“Well, fucking where!” I snapped, too full of adrenaline to realize that we were getting trapped and quickly. I started opening doors but every one just led to a room, and I didn’t trust the strength of the door to hold off an attack if they had the smarts to try and bash their way through.

Perish kept his hand on my jacket; he swore under his breath before taking a second hallway, halfway back to the pipe room we had just been in.

“Look, you need to tell me what we’re doing or I’m going to just shoot them until they make their own path, Perish,” I said angrily. Not only did I hate not having complete control of this situation, I hated that I was even
in
this fucking situation.

“That would be incredibly stupid, brother,” Perish said calmly, but in his eyes I saw the fear he wasn’t allowing to show on his face. His pale eyes looked behind him, and I knew he was seeing more. Every time I looked back there were more.

The sandpaper sounds had turned from a quiet scratching to the equivalent of a motor engine turned on inside a vacant garage, their screams the unoiled belt. I started looking up at the wire-strung ceiling hoping I would see a manhole cover but it was concrete and brick, nothing else.

“Oh, there we go…” Perish let out a loud sigh. My head snapped towards him and I saw our savior, a ladder leading up to a cover and not only that: a rusted metal door.

We sprinted towards it, away from the stale stench and damp rusted underground, and to the fresh irradiated air.

Perish wasted no time. He threw the bag down and climbed up, sliding the cover off before peeking a look at the outside world.

“It smells like it’s getting dark; let’s get the fuck out of there.” Perish climbed up and disappeared into the city, the large reservoir to his left. I tried to close the door but to my inner frustration it didn’t latch.

No time to bitch about it, within several seconds I was outside with him, shutting the cover and running through the gravely ground to where the road was. It wasn’t until we found an alleyway that we took a moment to catch our breath.

A short-lived rest, it was going to be dark soon.

My chest gave a nervous start, a small ball of anxious electricity I tried to shove into the void, suddenly Kessler and the Legion were a small blemish in my main goal right now. Get the boys and get the fuck out. I had heard the General saying they were staying until after dark; I could only hope the kreigers got distracted eating them and left the four of us alone.

And with that, we started sprinting back towards the library.

Chapter 18

Reaver

We had to creep past three legionaries on our way to the library, but they were blocks away and heading further from our destination. All three of them were walking dead, the plane was a mile into the city and I knew three legion-trained idiots wouldn’t be able to fend of the invasion.

And they were coming… the air was already changing. I had to admit with a boulder blocking my throat that we wouldn’t be able to get out of the library before they started to swarm. From what I remembered it was about an hour or so before sunset when the first kreiger had been spotted and I didn’t want to delude myself into believing we could make it out of the city.

And even if we did make it out of the city, there wasn’t some invisible barrier that prevented them from perusing us into the greywastes. They were not smart creatures; even if they died under the daylight they would follow food.

Tonight we would be spending the night in the library. I had already concluded that.

At least, if we were lucky, we might have a front row view of some legionary getting killed. That might be fun.

To Jade’s credit the metal slab he had unwedged from the brick didn’t seem tampered with from the view from the sidewalk. I managed to hold it open for Perish before slipping in myself.

“Killi?” I said in a hushed voice, taking in the overwhelming sight of shelves upon shelves of dusty books, further on I saw many tables and chairs, stacked up to make some sort of half-hearted barricade.

Both of us walked between the book shelves, our boots crunching against loose paper and shards of plastic from the broken light covers above us. Every area was completely covered in debris, from books to garbage, wall plaster and wires. This place was a pit.

I noticed as we walked past the dusty wooden shelves that there were prints on some of the books. It looked like the boys had been here. Though I would’ve preferred they stay put I
had
told them to find atlases.

Perish coughed behind me and reached a hand up to wipe a sign that had been stuck to one of the shelves. “Oh, Psychology… that’s why Killian was here, he took some books. Let’s find maps, where maps are they’ll be.” He was back to being normal Perish, his switches seemed to disappear as quickly as they came.

“I’ll keep wiping down signs,” Perish suggested. We walked into the next room, almost the same as the first but the tables and chairs seemed to be, for the most part anyways, untouched, just stacks of dust-covered books and material from the ceiling.

I gave him a quiet nod and looked to the floor for any tracks. I wasn’t a bounty hunter though but I could see some shifting of debris. I was more focused on finding missing books, that screamed ‘Killian was here’ more than a footprint ever could.

“Killi?” I whispered again, and paused to listen, my ears picking up Perish wiping one of the signs.

“We’re over here.” My chest gave a cold shudder, relief flooding me from my head to my toes. I walked towards the voice, weaving inbetween tight isles of books until I came across a small barricade they had set up. Four tall bookshelves placed into a diamond, both of the boys inside with the laptop turned on.

As soon as Killian saw me he leapt into my arms. “Are you okay?” I didn’t have time to answer though; he spotted Perish and I felt his chest rise and fall with relief. “Perry, did anyone see you? Are you okay?”