Garden of Spiders Volume 1: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 3

by Quil Carter

  But he had the smile of someone friendly. “Hey, Perry!” he called. I was surprised at how white his teeth were, compared to the dirt that hid his face, they seemed to almost glow. “This is Elish, is it? He does have quite lovely eyes, doesn’t he?”

  Joel held out his hand to shake mine. It was just as filthy as the rest of him, his fingerless gloves almost looking like real gloves from how his fingers were the same shade, but his demeanor was cheerful and I wasn’t an asshole. I shook Joel’s hand and inclined my head. “Nice to meet you, Joel,” I said. “Perish tells me you’re the scientists’ bodyguard?”

  “Oh, that’s what he said?” Joel said with a laugh. He nodded towards Finn and shook his hand as well, then he turned back to me. “Yes, I’m hired help. I keep the greywasters away from the city and accompany them when the moles emerge from their tunnels. I’m also Perry here’s errand boy, for way too many years I might add.”

  Perish scoffed, then he took his assault rifle from the holster on his back and held it in front of him. “You do what you’re best at, Krueger.” That must be his last name. “Let’s get to the lab. Did you check the security cameras before you came?”

  But Joel wasn’t paying attention. His eyes, hazel from the looks of it, zeroed in on Perish’s gun. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re carrying a damn Russian gun? For shame, Perish.” He walked over, his fingers twiddling over the gun like it was a piece of candy. “It’s beautiful though. AK-107. I haven’t seen one in a long long time.”

  Perish rolled his eyes and handed Joel the gun. “You can carry it for now, and when you take Elish and Finn out for a short tour of the city, you can take it then as well.”

  “A tour, eh? Do I fucking look like the Skipper to you, Per?” The four of us began to walk down the stretch of road. I was curious to see small tufts of green grass mixed in with the debris and rusted cars that surrounded us on all sides. The determined little blades had begun to grow in the splits of concrete on the sidewalk, and wherever the pavement was cracked.

  “I’m paying you, you’ll do whatever I want,” Perish said, grinning. He was in a good mood. It was easy to tell when Perish was content and at-ease, because he spoke better. When Silas was around, or if he was excited over something, his voice rose higher and he spoke faster, as if there wasn’t a comma to be had in his brain. Joel must’ve been a good friend of his, which I was glad for. Perish deserved some happiness after what happened to him.

  All three of us deserved some happiness after what Silas has done to us… not just me and Perish, but Finn too.

  But at least Silas didn’t touch him… I’d kept my sengil safe. I only wished it wasn’t more and more of a challenge with each day that passed.

  While Perish and Joel talked, I glanced over to see what Finn was doing. I sighed internally when I saw that his hands were clasped behind his back, and his eyes were fixed on the ground.

  “You can enjoy the city, Finn,” I said. “You don’t need to pretend you’re miserable because of what happened on the plane. Just don’t act like a giddy idiot, that’s all I ask.”

  Finn’s cheeks reddened. “Thank you, Master,” he said. He looked up and took in the city we were walking through. “There’s more green than I imagined.”

  “That’s just Kreig for you,” Joel said beside us. Perish and Joel were walking on opposite sides of me and Finn, guns in hand and eyes peeled for any danger. “Kreig is one of the wettest cities I’ve ever found, and that, as Perish will tell you, is why Skytech eyed it up for a laboratory. The water is all underground however, leaking from the walls, what remains of the pipes, so you’ll see the grass growing, some good trees and lots of radanimals.”

  “Wow,” Finn said, his head permanently seemed tilted up.

  We eventually came to a building that looked to have once been offices, or something of the sort, and Joel led us down a concrete hallway on an incline, which had at the end of it, a reinforced door with a card key lock. Joel brought out a white card key from inside of his tattered brown jacket, and slid it through the card key’s slot.

  I’d been to the Kreig lab many times before and had always enjoyed my time here. It was larger than Perish’s lab in the basement of the Skytech skyscraper, which meant I could work here uninterrupted. Sometimes I’d only seen my fellow scientists at meals, just how I liked it.

  Many things had also been invented inside of these narrow white corridors. Silas had told me that they’d discovered how to implant himself and Perish with the same genetic enhancements that would eventually be injected into every chimera’s genetic code. The scientists had also discovered how to alter our eye colour and I myself had helped discover how to give the Chimera D’s their pointed teeth. It gave me flickers of excitement to think just what we would discover next. We may not have everything that the pre-Fallocaust people have… but our scientific advancements were miraculous.

  “Why don’t you get settled, Elish,” Perish said as we entered the common area. He set his black briefcase down on the coffee table and there was a tandem click as both locks unlatched. “I have a lot of things to check on. You can show Finn around until I’m ready for Joel to give you two your tour.”

  I was confused by this. “Did you… not need me to help you?” I knew that it had been Uncle Perish who’d told me to come on this trip, but Perish as he was had still seemed keen on inviting me along.

  “Oh, a little later you can help me transfer some files I have on my laptop… I had some research on the stealth chimeras that I thought may be of interest. Sky clone stuff as well. New Sky clone stuff that Silas would be most pleased to hear about…” He leaned over his laptop and began clicking several things, then he smiled at me. “Give Finn a tour of the facility. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” The last sentence was said in a quick tone, which was a red flag that Perish was nervous about something.

  I wasn’t an idiot. Something was going on behind those pale blue eyes. So I nodded and said, “Sure, it would be a good chance to start his science education.” I put a hand on Finn’s back and directed him out of the common area.

  Questions flooded my head. For all I knew Perish just wanted me to come along for some company, but I suspected there were other motives. It was obvious to me now that something had gone wrong with Perish’s previous surgery. Silas may have been able to make Perish forget who he was, alter his personality and almost everything that made him Perish, but there was something inside of Perish that was fighting for control.

  The old Perish was in there… and it was possible that even though he’d lost control while we were on the phone, he was able to implant the idea of me coming to Kreig, into New Perish’s head.

  When this had first happened, I’d been too scared to do anything about it. But now… I wasn’t that much of a coward. Call it insanity, I’d call it the positive influences of two boys I’d burn the world to protect.

  I just wasn’t too keen on letting Silas rule me anymore, and that had manifested itself into a renewed thirst to help Perish.

  If there was a way to help Perish.

  “And this last area…” I walked into a large room with white walls and an off-grey linoleum floor. In front of us was a large centrifuge resting on a metal table, a counter top with a sink that took up the entire right wall, and top cabinets with glass beakers and flasks that were up so high they almost touched the ceiling. “Well, it was where baby Lennix lived before he got moved… it looks like the old nursery room has been dismantled.” I walked into the room, now obviously a storage area, and glanced around.

  “You can move the babies?” Finn squeaked in disbelief. He looked around the room, even if it was more boring than some of the other rooms we were in.

  I nodded. “Yes, we have one portable steel mother and the Sky clone babies get implanted into it. Baby Lennix was first created here, then he was moved to the Gosselin lab.” The one that the old Perish had destroyed out of anger. That move would cost him everything. Even being an immortal being there’s still terr
ible things that can happen to you. “If the baby had survived to his third trimester, eventually Silas would’ve moved him to the Skytech lab, or even his own damn bedroom, so he could keep an eye on him personally. Silas goes positively crazy with joy whenever he has a new potential clone.” And then he spirals into a deep, crippling depression once the clone dies.

  Finn was quiet, and I could see that he had something on his mind he was hesitant to give voice to. We walked out of the storage room, and then he seemed to convince himself to give his thoughts a voice.

  But the voice was small, barely above a whisper. “He doesn’t deserve to be happy.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I muttered back. And apparently Perish says he had news that would make Silas happy. I know the saying… If Silas is happy, the family is happy, but right now… I’d rather him be the depressed mess, it would please me to see him suffering. For him to get a taste of what he’d put me through, put Finn through.

  We entered the common area and found no one in it but the two of us. It was set up like a living room, and off to the side in its own nook, was a small kitchen that the servants made food in. I decided to sit down on the couch while I waited for Perish and Joel to return.

  It should be soon at least. Perish had left his laptop on the coffee table, and he never went far…

  My thoughts drifted away when my eyes focused on what was on the laptop’s screen. It was genetic text as it was called, a code of numbers that only advanced genetic scientists could read. It was basically a human’s DNA, everything that made someone who they were, translated into numbers. You could do anything you wanted to a future chimera or Sky clone with their genetic text, and Skytech had the machine necessary to transfer that code onto raw clone embryos.

  This code in particular… was for the future clone. Yes, Perish had mentioned wanting to transfer the genetic text to the scientists… some damn advancement that could very well be the solution to Silas’s decades-long problem.

  As I stared at the code, a dangerous… and quite alluring thought came into my mind.

  Wouldn’t it be unfortunate…

  “Finn… check out that painting near the hallway. Find the name of the person who painted it,” I said. I leaned over put my hand on the wireless mouse.

  When Finn only stared at me blankly, I gave him a sharp look. “Now.”

  Finn jumped to his feet and my eyes went back to the laptop. As quick as I could, I clicked on the find and replace tab, and when a small window popped up… I told the program to replace the number 23 with 34, then to replace 49 with 24. I pressed okay, and rose to my feet.

  “It’s by… by someone named… Emily Carr,” Finn said.

  “Fascinating, thank you.” And when Finn turned around, he saw that I was smiling.

  Of course this garnered me a suspicious look, but there was nothing I could do for him. My heart was pounding, adrenaline was ripping up and down my body…

  With those two small changes… I’d basically destroyed the updated code. They would never realize that the code was now botched, they’d continue attempting to create clones with no avail, if it even got to that point since I doubted the machine would even accept the new code. Eventually they’d have no choice but to revert to their previous genetic text. And by that time… who knows how long it would set them back.

  Essentially… I just fucked over Silas in a big way.

  And I felt great.

  When Perish and Joel came back I was all smiles. “Ready to see a little bit of the city, Finn?” Joel said to my sengil. The greywaster bodyguard had made an attempt to make himself look nicer. His face was washed, enough for his eyes and teeth to stop looking so glaring, and his tussled auburn hair was brushed back in a style that I could only describe as a lion’s mane. However, you could tell that the man was quite handsome underneath the grime.

  “Yes, sir,” Finn said politely. It was easy to tell he was doing everything he could to contain himself, inside I bet he was bouncing off of the walls.

  “Take as long as you like,” Perish said. He walked past me and closed his laptop. “I’ll be meeting with the scientists… I’ll be a few hours. Have fun, Elish, okay? You don’t get enough days off; you never take any time to yourself.” When he said the last part, he looked at me and shook his index finger.

  My good mood was demonstrated when I chuckled at this. “I do work a lot,” I said. I picked up the assault rifle, I had always been horrible at remembering their actual names, guns were not my strong suit, and buckled the holster’s belt over my chest. “Is there something you specifically wanted to find, Finn?”

  Finn smiled shyly as the three of us began to walk down the narrow white corridor towards the entrance. “Well, there was something…” he said, and his hands were stuffed into his pockets. He was embarrassed about it. This should be interesting. “Master Silas… as you know he gave me a Game Boy Colour when I was still living in Autumnhome. I really love it, and there’s a video game I wanted for it… a Pokémon one.”

  In front of us, Joel gave a soft laugh. “Pokémon… I’ll never understand why so many people will spill blood over those games.”

  My brothers loved that video game as well. I was always too busy to play video games, and only did when I was hanging out with my siblings. I thought they were a waste of time, and they were, but my mood was in the right place.

  “If Joel knows some areas we could look that aren’t far, we can look for the game.”

  This response gifted me another rabbit squeal from Finn, but when Joel looked over his shoulder and gave Finn a weird look, my sengil melted from embarrassment and hid in my shadow until we were outside.

  “I think the best bet will be to find ourselves a pawn shop,” Joel said. His eyes were everywhere, checking out the city for any and all threats. I did the same. “We’re lucky that we’re deep in Kreig, the outer areas are more inclined to be picked clean, but the inside areas, well Skytech has their warning signs to keep the greywasters out and our cameras alert us to anyone who doesn’t feel like heeding warning signs.”

  “Do you kill the ones who trespass?” Finn asked.

  Joel nodded. “In a different area of the lab, we have whipdogs. Ever heard of a whipdog, Finn?” When Finn shook his head, the corner of Joel’s lip tugged in a smirk. “They’re mutated dogs, something that Perish created. Vicious creatures, milky white eyes, sharp teeth just perfect for shredding, long and lithe bodies… we dress them in armour too to protect them. If we see a single soul inside the boundary area, we press a button and it releases the entire pack of twenty. They run out there, make short work of the greywaster, or greywasters, and once they’re done, they return home happy as can be.”

  Finn gaped at him. “Wow,” he whispered. “Perish… made those?”

  “Perish has created many animals,” I told him. “Both his own creations which he calls splices, and extinct animals that he has DNA of. It’s because of Perish that we have cougars, and from splicing cougars with other animals, he was able to make the creature that is both the family’s emblem and the Legion’s: the carracat.”

  “Perish is quite the genius,” Joel said. His eyes looked ahead, and I could tell he was seeing something else in front of him. “It’s a pity what happened to him…”

  Before I could respond, Joel glanced up, then waved me and Finn to an area in between two buildings. Without checking to even make sure we were following, he sprinted to the area, framed by a brick building and one made from sun bleached wood, and didn’t stop until we were in an entirely new section.

  “There’s a pawn shop near by…” Joel said. He pointed ahead, the three of us now standing in the middle of a double-lane street with several fallen light poles ahead of us and a handful of rusted vehicles. I looked in the direction he was pointing, but there were several boarded up shops on the strip of road that could’ve been the pawn stop. I suppose this was good, boarded up meant no one else had been in there, or at least not for a while.

  We follow
ed Joel, now several paces ahead of us. Finn was jittering in his spot, and when we made eye contact, I gave him a nod and he began branching off from me to explore the shops, the rusted cars, and whatever else he could find. There was even what looked like a strip mall up ahead, a small one surrounded by a huge parking lot, but I didn’t believe Finn would get a chance to see it.

  “Master Elish… bones!” Finn whispered. When I looked over, I saw Finn was indeed pointing at what had once been a human. The person was only a gathering of dusty dry cloths, with brown leathery limbs that protruded at off angles and a skull with hollow eyes and green teeth that grinned at me like a macabre Jack-o’-lantern. It appeared that time had mummified the person, the only thing recognizable were the blue sneakers that jutted out from the remains.

  “The world is covered in those bones, young sengil,” Joel said. I noticed that he had Perish’s AK-107 in his hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sweet-talked Perish into giving it to him. “It’s too bad you’ll never see the plaguelands. It’s so dry and irradiated there that the remains have mummified, not unlike that skeleton over there.” His hazel eyes scanned the tall buildings again. “They stay, to this day, where they were when they died. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “Wow,” Finn said, awe woven tightly around each word. “And since everyone died… there would be no one to scavenge, everything is right where it was!”

  Joel nodded. “That’s right.” He stopped in front of a boarded up shop. I looked at the sign, faded and worn, and saw: Golden Source Pawn in barely visible writing. “There you go.” He motioned to my belt and holstered his gun. “I’ll take a dip in and check around… reckon you two should stay out here until I know it’s safe.” I took out my handgun, and hid the amused smile while Finn did the same. I could only imagine what would happen if he tried to fire that gun, he was light as a feather and would probably fly backwards.

  I helped Joel pry off one of the boards, stained grey from ash and age, and the greywaster slipped in with Perish’s gun still in his hand. Finn and I were quiet as we heard him searching through the abandoned shop, and in that silence I could truly hear just how dead quiet the city was.