The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (63 page)

This kid didn’t need to be on the road, especially in the middle of winter where we were all freezing our asses off. He needed a warm basement and someone to make sure he stayed healthy.

Now look at us.

I looked down as Killian slipped his little icicle hands in mine. I squeezed them, wishing I had the thermal touch that Jade had so I could at least warm them properly.

There was a shifting of blankets and I saw Jade lying on his stomach with Elish’s laptop in front of him. He was clicking away with the screen bathing his yellow eyes. Behind him was Perish giving unheeded advice on how to make the remote phone give them the Skyfall Network.

They were trying to contact Elish through the network, trying to find a proper signal that the remote phone wasn’t giving us. I knew nothing of computers, they were hard to fix and a pain in the ass to carry home. All of my old computers just ended up being piled in the first floor of my house.

I rubbed Killian’s hands and he smiled at me. “I swear you just make them colder, Mr. Fridge.”

“Well... if we can find a town or a block or something, we can buy you some better winter gloves. These Skyfall ones are shit once they get wet.” I raised his hands to my mouth and blew some warm air onto them.

“Stop fucking touching the screen!” Jade snapped. I looked up and saw Perish poking something on the screen of the laptop before the pet batted his hand away.

“I wasn’t, I know computers more than you,” Perish snipped removing his hand and sitting back down on the wooden chair he had found in the basement. “Where is this signal? You said he called once, so why isn’t it going through now?”

“I don’t know, it’s just not finding the signal; it’s all these fucking mountains around us,” Jade muttered. “What if he is out there looking for me?”

“He isn’t; he’s in Skyfall pretending you don’t exist.”

I was quickly growing to hate their constant bickering; they acted like brothers those two. It really made me nauseas to know Elish was going to make Jade immortal. It meant I literally had eternity to listen to those two bitch and snip at each other. Perhaps once we figured out how I was supposed to kill immortals, I could do a bit of spring cleaning.

That thought alone put a smile to my lips.

“Hey, Skyfallers!”

Everyone looked up and towards the barred shut door, though it only brought annoyance not terror. It was Hopper, I recognised his nutfuck voice. He had left us alone all day yesterday, though we could hear his slavers squawk whenever they got whipped. I was hoping they would’ve left by now.

I got up and heard the sound of my M16 being picked up but I put up a hand as Perish handed it to me. “He’s not dangerous, he’s just an idiot. He knows better than to try and enslave us. I’ll see what he wants.”

I lifted the large two-by-four we had barred against the door and opened it up, immediately seeing Hopper several feet away clutching a bottle of vodka in his hands.

“I thought I said I would shoot you –”

“– If I stepped foot in your house, yeah, I heard you, and I’m not. I thought of inviting you to our campfire but you’re a suspicious little bitch so I assumed you would say no.”

Well, he was right about that.

“So I decided to come here and offer you fuckers some real flesh. You just gotta tuck with me and my partner.”

“No.”

Hopper tilted his head back in an animated manner before looking to his side. I looked too and saw a young boy hiding in the shadows. I assumed that was his partner or perhaps just a slave he had come to fancy.

“Hear that, Churro? They don’t want to drink with us.” Hopper raised the bottle back to his lips.

The kid stayed in the shadows and said back to him, “I wouldn’t want to drink with us either.”

“But we don’t have guns or knives or anything on us...” Hopper picked up a green bag I saw was sitting on top of a fallen fence and picked up a wrapped bloodstained package. It was obviously meat.

My stomach growled. We had finished off the liver that morning (fucking delicious) and now we were back down to tact and canned shit. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of arian meat.

“That’s too bad, since I’m drunk and bored and our other slavers are too busy looking after our slaves. I guess we’ll just give the meat to the dog who has been sleeping by our fire pit for the last two hours.”

I really hated that deacdog sometimes.

Killian appeared beside me. He popped his head out and gave Hopper a smile. “You look half-cut.”

Hopper waved a hand at him and chuckled. “Your boyfriend is refusing good arian meat, boy. He seems to be the anti-social type, eh?”

Killian’s pulse gave a jolt and I knew he wanted that food as much as I did. We were greywasters, we had a taste for human flesh.

I sighed and walked onto the porch before my boots hit greywaste dirt. “Let me see that meat. I want to make sure you didn’t put any fucking roofies in it.”

Hopper laughed again and unwrapped four hack-jobbed arian steaks. They looked fresh enough and smelled fine. “You can get your metal-mouthed pet to take a chew, or I can bite it myself and you can wait half an hour. Though if you think I’m dumb enough to enslave Skyfallers you’re nuts. Half o’ you look down right fucking insane.”

At least he was smart. I picked up one of the steaks and took a bite of it. It tasted normal enough.

There was no harm in it; his small slaver group had only five members holding about two dozen collared slaves. We could overpower them and their cracked and rusted guns. I wanted to give Killian a few good meals anyways.

“Alright, just you and the kid, but you keep your hands where I can see them.” I took the meat and stood back as Churro walked into the dim bluelamp light. I realized as he came closer that, though he looked like a young kid, in all actuality he was just short, probably in his late twenties with a thin beard and narrow eyes. I could snap him in half with just a poke of my finger from the looks of him.

Hopper and Churro walked into our house to Jade and Perish’s surprise. The two immediately started eyeing our rifles which we had piled by the door. Without asking Perish pulled his chair up to the door to guard the rifles while I gave the meat to Killian to start cooking.

“Want me to just cut strips and we can fry them? We found those coat hangers, we can wrap the handles in leather so they don’t burn our hands,” Killian suggested. He immediately gave up his chair to Hopper and pulled up a chewed up wing chair for Churro. Always the hospitable host, I still hadn’t taught him to be rude.

“Sure, that would be easiest. Mikey, help him.” I grabbed the bottle from Hopper, mostly just to see if he would let me take it, and took a drink. I handed it back and shuddered as the fire water burned my throat.

“I... I might as well. I still can’t...” Jade paused, catching himself before I had to interrupt him. “I still can’t get this thing to work.” He sighed and closed the lid before helping Killian with our dinner.

Hopper whistled and nudged his boyfriend with his toe. “Why the fuck don’t you make me shit?”

The kid, or not-a-kid rather, the short guy, looked at him with a look of disinterest. “Because you can make your own fucking food?”

Hopper smiled and rubbed the short guy’s brown hair. “I’m going to beat the snot out of you once we get back to the house.”

Churro shook his head in a way that suggested this threat had been made many times before. I kept my eye on the both of them but their heartbeats told me they were relaxed.

I still didn’t let my guard down and I wouldn’t either. I had learned many times over not to be taken in by nonchalant, at ease strangers. Perish had taught me that one.

I glanced to my side and saw the scientist sitting on the chair by the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t watching the two slavers though; his eyes were on Killian and what he was doing.

My boyfriend eventually came out with a plastic margarine bucket we had found full of meat strips and a dump of salt on the side for us to dip it in. This was five star food for us. We dug in and started roasting them over the fire.

“So when are you guys heading out?” Killian asked. He was leaning against me wearing my leather gloves with the fingers missing; he had kept burning himself on the coat hanger.

Hopper, who was passing a cigarette between him and Churro, chuckled at the question. I was already disliking that dry laugh, not for any other reason than the fact that I didn’t like any of them.

“Tomorrow. We’re taking the slaves up the highway,” Hopper said with a shrug. “What about you?”

Before I could tell Killian to shut up he piped, “We’re looking for a place called Falkland.”

Hopper’s eyes widened. He glanced over at Churro before letting out a laugh. “Falkland? Like Falkvalley? Buddy, we’re heading to a town that hugs that place. Melchai. Fuck, we stop there after Melchai to load up on booze after we get our payday.”

I stared at him and narrowed my eyes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper I had ripped out of the atlas and handed it to him.

I pointed at Kreig and then Falkland many miles away. “Is this where it is?”

Hopper leaned towards the fire to get a better look at the small text on the map. He nodded as he blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth before handing the piece of paper back to me.

“Yep, that’s the place,” Hopper said. “Shitty map though, it’s not accurate at all for the Fallocaust. Are you heading that way too?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Hopper shook his head and spoke with the cigarette still between his lips. “It might get a bit awkward when we say goodbye and start heading in the same direction, buddy. Because you would be smart to take the Coquihalla Highway to cross the mountains. Though I’ll have a good laugh when the ravers and the carracats pick you off one by one. You ever been up this way? You do know what’s out there, eh Skyfaller? Or how to get there?”

My face darkened, and as Hopper saw the expression on my face his clown-fuck smile faded like the smoke coming from his mouth.

“If you call me a Skyfaller again, your meat will be the next on that coat hanger. I am not a Skyfaller; I am a greywaster from a greywaster block. Understand me, slaver?” I said lowly and quietly.

Everyone else around me was silent, even Killian was tense in his place. I didn’t think there was a single heartbeat in the room that hadn’t sped up the moment they heard the tone in my voice.

Hopper looked at me before he decided to play it casual. He was smart, any attitude from him and the slaver company would need a new leader. “Alright, you win, greywaster. I suppose a Skyfall boy wouldn’t have made it this far. But you can’t tell me that yellow-eyed little fucker is a greywaster. Those eyes don’t happen naturally.”

“He had an eye infection when he was younger,” Perish suddenly spoke. “He’s my younger brother. Mikey contracted acute melotonitus, which affected his iris pigment, so his green eyes turned yellow.”

The slaver stared at him like the scientist had just spoken in tongues. I was confused at first too until I realized Perish was deliberately tossing around confusing words.

“Oh alright, well, fair enough,” Hopper said with a perplexed look. “So... you four have some pretty big ass guns on you... would you be interested in –”

“No,” I said flatly.

“We lost a few of our guard to ravers, and a few more to legion back near Marble. If you are heading towards Falkvalley anyways, what about we hire you two as guard and the young guys could be cooks?”

“Nope.”

The slaver stared at me but not being able to handle awkward exchanges Killian tugged on my sleeve. Though to his credit he didn’t question my decision in front of the slaver but I knew he was considering the idea.

I had never liked slavers, arian slaving was illegal in the greywastes and any men he lost to the legionary were his own fault. Raticating was legal because it was mostly just bolt gunning ravers, but capturing arians was just plain illegal in King Silas’s eyes.

Now I never gave a shit about the shoddy laws of the greywastes but it still made you look twice at the fucks.

Hopper seemed to take the hint, or he realized I was pretty close to kicking him and his boyfriend out of our house. So he switched the conversation to casual bullshit and laid off the request for hiring armed guards.

Instead he told us stories I didn’t care to listen to, and bantered with his boyfriend which I found grating and annoying. I would’ve loved nothing more than to sit on the roof and watch the greywastes but I didn’t trust him alone with the boys. Even with Perish and his assault rifle and Jade and his dragon teeth, there was just no risking it in the greywastes with these people.

The icing on the cake was when Killian brought the Cilo guitar out and started playing a song that Hopper recognised. He gave his cigarette to Churro and started singing along which was... which was just great.

By midnight I was smoking my tenth cigarette with Killian leaning on my shoulder as we watched Perish slowly fall asleep. He had switched places with Jade a few hours ago and now the cicaro was on the porch with his own AK 101, making sure the town stayed clear.

“Well, we should be heading back.” Hopper rose and stretched, flicking the last cigarette butt into the red coals of the fire. “Keep in mind what I said, about being guards. In a way we would both be getting free escorts, and I would toss a few coins towards the little ones for their chef work. I get it, yeah, don’t give me that look, evil one.” I didn’t know what look he was talking about, because I hadn’t stopped giving him this look the entire evening. “Just stick the bug in your bonnet while we both make our way through the Coquihalla Highway.”