The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) (5 page)

Beside it Deek was wagging his tail at my sudden emergence. The snow flattened all around the animal, I guess he had decided to sleep beside his kill.

I mumbled him praise before sinking to my knees. I looked down and saw my arm. It had two lacerations starting at the elbow and ending several inches from my wrist. Deep gouges that split right through the yellow layer of fat, opening up my muscle like a filleted fish.

I squeezed my eyes tight as my head gave an angry throb. I groaned and swore, hating where I was and hating that I didn’t know how much farther I could go.

My name was Jade, that was all I knew. Where I had come from I didn’t know, and where I was going also a mystery to me, but as the days went by one thing came clear –

– I was probably going to die in these mountains.

I looked up at the sky though as soon as I did I felt a wave of vertigo, of dizziness that filled my head with cotton balls. So I didn’t look up, I stared forward watching the road stretch out in front of me, wrapping around the snow-dusted mountain as we slowly found our way to level ground.

With my last remaining strength I had done the unthinkable, something so clever, so intelligent it probably had saved my life.

I had made it half a mile, a full day after the carracat had attacked me until I had found it... well, there were a lot of them, but it was a half mile until I found a trunk hood I could pull off. Then I had taken the sheet of metal and had looped a piece of rope around the key hole. I tied the rope to the dog’s harness jacket and there it was...

I had made myself a dog sled.

See... I could be a mountain man if I tried hard enough.

Though in all respects it was the fact that the dog was pulling me that was saving my life right now. My energy was gone and my will to carry on was quickly leaving me too. Not only had the carracat destroyed my arm and freshly bruised my body, my headaches were becoming uncontrollable.

I coughed and watched a spray of spittle fly out of my mouth and onto the frozen ground. The rain we had had a couple days ago had frozen under the cold, and though it made the sled skate effortlessly along the ice, it had also fucked my lungs even worse.

All in all... Jade wasn’t doing too hot.

But to my credit the dog seemed to know where to go. Deek hadn’t minded at all being hooked up to my trunk hood sled. I don’t know if he had been trained to pull things or what but he happily trotted along the highway. The deacon dog seemingly in his element, he even walked like he had somewhere to be.

When he eventually stopped after darkness took the two of us again, I unhooked him from his sled and let him be free. I didn’t move out of my blankets, I only chewed on snow and a few more remaining gummy worms. I wasn’t that hungry anymore and I was out of flesh anyways. The carracat that had broken into the ranger shed had taken my last big chunks of meat and the soup I had made was gone.

Light snow fell around me but my energy had dissipated to where I couldn’t even shift myself under a vehicle or one of the trees on the side of the road. To shield my body from the elements I threw the blankets over my head and breathed in my own breath inside my stuffy cave.

Whoever I was, I was alone now. Any friends I may have had were dead, days and days back in that resort town. Perhaps I should have stayed there, there had been enough dead bodies to last me months. But there were ravers around, and though up here it was cold and frozen... the mad subhumans seemed to be long gone.

The next morning I was woken by the sensation of being yanked again and again, and on top of that, and odd pinging noise. I opened my eyes but found they were covered in sticky goop. I managed to pull them off of my eyelashes to see what was going on.

Deek was in front of me, his teeth clipping and nipping the corner of the trunk hood. He was trying to pull it with just his mouth.

“Sorry, Deek,” I rasped. Then, as my lungs filled with the icy winter air, I coughed and rubbed my fluid-crusted face. He looked at me and wagged his tail, his tongue hanging out in happiness that I had woken up.

With shaking, weak hands I clipped the leads back onto his jacket and, showing off the advanced intelligence I was only beginning to realize he had, he started to pull me once again.

A while later I was jarred out of my half-conscious state by the metal underneath me bumping and scraping along. I pulled the blankets off of my face and saw the highway behind me with thick trees on either side. The trunk cover leaving a unique imprint as it bumped and slid over the unbroken ground.

I poked my head underneath the dog’s legs to get a view of where he was taking me, but all that filled my vision was the same as what was behind: huge black trees with many spindly branches, rough brush, and the highway. All of this framed by the slight dusting of snow that fell lightly around us.

I sighed at this and resigned myself to my fate. It wasn’t like I could tell the dog where to take me; I didn’t know where to go...

The world around me was too far away for me to care; I didn’t even feel the cold anymore. My entire body was a single entity of throbbing pain, most of it centered around my head and the large gash that seemed to be the root of all of my problems. There was no use being upset, or trying to remedy the error in the dog’s thinking – I was at his mercy and where he was bringing me would be where I ended up.

And where I died perhaps.

I wondered if I would be missed, or if all of my friends had died in that resort. Maybe it was stupid not to have died with them. Though I knew it wasn’t in my nature to quit, if that had been the person I was before – I wouldn’t have made it this far.

Absentmindedly I wiped my nose and flicked the string of red and snot onto the white ground. I squinted hard as white dots appeared in my vision and closed my eyes as the vertigo took me again. Feeling a jolt of nausea start to swell in my gut I groaned, hearing the sled scraping against the snow. Though as the hours went on the sounds of the world around me faded, and all I heard was the blood roaring through my ears.

Time dissolved around me into a muddled pool, sights and sounds mixed and stirred into one another becoming nothing more than background noise. I don’t know how long or even how many days I stayed in that trunk cover. I just knew sometimes the dog stopped and sometimes he didn’t. Oddly I was aware of times when I was in the trunk lid and he wasn’t there, I think I unhitched him sometimes or maybe he could do it himself now. The rope I had recovered had once been a hitch on the caravan back in the resort, it was just a thin rope with a metal hook on each end.

It was during one of those half-aware times when I was dying and alone that I heard a noise I knew all too well. A noise that came to my ears only; the dog had been unhitched, to hunt perhaps since I could no longer feed him.

It was the familiar sounds of humans screaming, high pitch, manic screeching that ripped its way into your ears and clawed at your mind’s membrane. Shredding and ripping your bravery leaving you nothing but a cowering shell.

And I was no different. My crusted eyes opened, the bright snow searing my eyeballs so used to being in darkness. I squinted and shifted myself. It looked like I had been placed near several stacks of car tires. I was out in the open, exposed to the elements and to what horrors the greywastes delivered.

And I knew one of those deliveries were at my door.

Sure enough, my weak heart swelled with anxiety. I looked up from my trunk lid eyrie and saw five ravers skidding down a rough embankment. All of them dressed in soiled clothes, missing chunks of skin and fingers. Some of them wearing headdresses of scalps or wearing severed hands and feet on their leather belts. They had their yellowed, clouded eyes fixed on me and their broken teeth bared and snapping as if anticipating my flesh.

Immediately I struggled to raise myself only to fall back onto my ass from not only weakness but my badly injured arm. I swore loudly and scrambled backwards until my back hit the stack of tires. I desperately looked around for a knife.

Another manic scream, the one leading jumped onto a median and crouched down as if anticipating pouncing on me. But to my surprise he stayed crouched, the other four rallying behind him, their teeth snapping and clicking. I think he was their leader.

My heart was racing. I looked around with my teeth grinding around, wondering where that fucking dog was. I gave the ravers one last glance before I tried to get to my feet.

But I fell again, I grinded my teeth and did the only thing I could think of.

I pursed my lips and tried to make the unique sound, the sound I knew in the back of my mind would summon the dog.

Then a shock ripped through me and all I could do was stand there, paralysed. Because the moment I made that whistle... the ravers screamed.

I jerked my head back towards them and my mouth dropped open.

The raver... the leader, his hands were raised in an... in an almost pleading way. His yellowed eyes were wide and his head slowly shaking back and forth.

I stopped whistling and stared at him. Backing away like a wounded animal as he stepped towards me, letting his heavily scarred hands drop to his sides.

Then the leader looked behind him, then back to me.

And dropped down to one knee.

Chapter 37

Reaver

Once when I was younger, I walked in on Greyson hunched over himself, sitting on the couch. I was only five but I remember it as clear as day. I had found my left sneaker which I had once again lost and I had ran inside to tell him he didn’t have to be cross with me anymore.

I remember stopping like I had just hit a concrete barrier and just watching in shock. Feeling my insides turn to ice as I witnessed this hard-as-iron man with his face red and his eyes shedding tears, staring down at the kerchief he was holding, crumpled in his hand.

It had jarred me, I felt uncomfortable, almost shy in a way, feeling that I was watching something I shouldn’t. I wanted to run because I felt so awkward being in the same room as him.

Greyson had been my hard ass dad; the mayor of Aras and someone who took everything standing tall. He was like the soldiers in the old army magazines they would read me.

I’d point to them and say, “Grey?”

“Yeah,” Leo would chuckle. “It does kind of look like him, huh? Always the bad boy.”

Greyson had seen me in the doorway and immediately he tried to hide his face. He turned away and wiped his nose. “What is it, Reaver?”

I looked at my bare feet, black from dirt. I pivoted one and twisted it around the ground.

“Why...” I stopped. I shouldn’t ask that of him, even back then I shyed away from any conversation that might lead to uncomfortable emotions. Instead I put the shoe down that I had found and ran back outside. So I didn’t have to see such an uncomfortable sight, from a man I held so much respect for.

Even mayors... even big badass dads have emotions...

Elish wasn’t Greyson, but without realizing it I had started to see him as a figure of strength, endurance, and stoicism. He put it forth without effort and I had gravitated to it. I trusted him, without realizing it or knowing when it had happened, I trusted him with my life and that of my boyfriend.

So when I walked up behind him and we stood side by side, I got the same coy feeling that I had gotten when I was a child. The feeling that I was witnessing this man, seemingly carved from the ice flows of hell, show the small hints of vulnerability.

A state that would only ever be brought forth by the fear that his pet, his young husband, was in mortal danger.

Danger I had put him in, Killian too.

Elish’s eyes scanned the black trees and grey rocks below and around us. His jaw tight and his movements stiff, dressed in greywaster attire with an assault rifle on his back. I hadn’t seen him like this in years and now that I knew who ‘James’ really was I looked at this chimera in a whole different light.

I glanced behind him and when I saw Caligula, Nico, and Reno out of earshot I turned to Elish.

“I’ll find him, I promise. I’ll fix it, alright?”

Elish didn’t move, only his jaw tightened more but he didn’t speak. I knew he wouldn’t, and in truth, just saying those words had made my ears go hot. I was feeling... not just guilty for possibly putting the boys in danger, I was feeling like I failed the most important task, at least in Elish’s eyes, that he had given me.

I lost the damn cicaro.

This filled me with frustration and rage. I had never been the self-loathing type, or at least I never saw myself as that. But this heavy burden of emotion on my shoulders was crippling me. I was the Scourge of the Greywastes, the Raven, and the Reaper. Now I just felt like a fucking dirty piece of shit, not just a failure who couldn’t even keep Killian and Jade safe, but a beaten down victim of Nero Dekker. Some fucking idiot who let all of this happen because he didn’t think.

I didn’t fucking think.

I killed Timothy because I didn’t think of the repercussions.