by Quil Carter
“He wouldn’t…” Jack said in a hushed voice.
“You actually believe that that timid little twink of a cicaro would have the balls to pull this off?” Elish said in a flat tone. “Do you not remember how Sanguine came to us? Who pulled him out of that coffin that pedophile greywaster had him in? Who searched for him when the entire family had given up? Sanguine would not let Nero spend an eternity in that concrete tomb and he has resorted to desperate measures to break him free, desperate measures even if they defy the allegiance I had with him.”
Jack stared at him. “You – why are you telling me this?”
“Because I know Sanguine tells you everything,” Elish replied coldly. “And it will now be up to you to keep an eye on Sanguine. I will not be punishing Sanguine for abandoning me in the greywastes because through him I can secure Nero. You will now be my eyes and ears when dealing with Sanguine. Understand me, Anubis?”
Jack turned his gaze away as soon as Elish looked at him. His own black eyes focused on the grey in front of them. “Why do you think I want this?” he asked simply. “I have everything I want. Juni is immortal and my life is simple and predictable, just how I like it. Why do you think an offer of chaos is one that I want?”
Elish’s eyes hadn’t left Jack’s, even though the silver-haired chimera refused to look back.
“You are still in love with a slave,” Elish replied simply. “I hold the keys to remove the slave from his collar. If you want Sanguine – you need me.”
There was silence between them and in that silence Jack’s head shook back and forth. “What if I don’t want Sanguine as much as you think I do?” he replied back. “It’s been thirty years and I’ve dealt with my feelings towards him. I wish for nothing but a simple life in my tower and that is good enough for me. I’m sorry, Elish. I would never betray you by telling Silas what I know, because I love and respect you, but… like you, I prefer the quiet life.”
Elish turned away from Jack. “I thought I did once as well. Our more bloodthirsty brothers seem to have quite the effect on the quiet ones. My offer stands, I–”
“That’s all you know how to do, isn’t it?” a low voice suddenly sounded to Elish’s left. He looked over and saw Reno standing in the doorway, his half-silver hair falling over a face filled with disgust. “Play your fucking games. You just got Killian and Reaver killed, you got Jade brain-dead, and still you’re playing your fucking games? You disgusting piece of shit.”
Elish rose. “We’ll be continuing now. We’ve rested enough.”
“YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE EVERYTHING!” Reno screamed, his voice breaking as Elish walked away from him. “You’re going to fucking lose everything and all you’ll have to blame is yourself. You disgusting fucking monster! Just stop! JUST STOP THIS!”
Elish kept walking, and he didn’t look back.
“From where we are… it’s going to take us weeks to make it to the nearest town,” Caligula said that night. He was sitting beside the fire they had made with Nico sleeping beside him. Reno was finally sleeping as well, but only after receiving a well-aimed jolt of electricity from Elish when he had worked himself up into another frenzy. Garrett and Jack were resting also. “But I don’t know what we’re supposed to do when we’re there.” Caligula threw his melted remote phone onto the fire and shook his head. “I don’t see a point in even going to a town unless you want to pray we find legionaries there. But even then… we’re so far north and the Legion isn’t as active around this area.”
Elish looked up at the sky, grey clouds were covering all of the stars but the moon was showing its glow through the haze. “We’ll eventually need supplies.”
Caligula was quiet; he stared at the fire with his brow furrowed. “Dad should be looking for me by now. He was out when I left with Nico, and I had told Theo to go to the explosion with Sid and Grant…”
Elish’s lips pressed. And for all I know Kessler’s severed head is burning with Reaver. There was nothing on that gasless quad we passed. However this is information I will not risk sharing with his son.
“Theo might be aligning with Sanguine,” Elish said to him. “You know as well as I do how obsessed Theo is with Sanguine and Jack. They’re not here… which means someone told them not to go.”
Caligula let out a hiss through his clenched teeth. “It doesn’t matter. Eventually our family in the Dead Islands will return, even if Silas told them to wait. They’ll find us, it might take a few days but they’ll find us.”
“The greywastes are vast and the northern greywastes all the more,” Elish said bitterly. He looked around the darkness surrounding him. “I’m going to catch my four hours of sleep. Wake Jack up in two hours.”
“Yes, Uncle Elish,” Caligula said, before adding in an encouraging tone. “Dad will find us. Especially with what happened to Tim, he’s been keeping a tight hold on me.”
Elish stared at the fire; he saw Kessler’s head burn in the flames. “Yes,” he managed to say in a level tone, “hopefully you are correct.”
Your father better hope he’s burning with Reaver. Because twenty years of flames will be a mercy compared to what I will do to him for shooting my husband.
Elish laid down by the fire and rested his head on crossed arms. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was back home in his bed with Jade beside him. Though every time he brought up his cicaro’s scent, and the way Jade eventually crawled on top of him during the night to sleep splayed over his stomach, Elish’s mind soon wandered to the darker corners. A place full of ideas on how to punish Kessler for what he did, and the eventual day he saw Silas die. It was those fantasies that eventually lulled him into a troubled sleep with the fire crackling beside him.
Little did Elish know, those same thoughts kept replaying in his mind after he’d drifted off. They grew and transformed and took on a life of their own, infiltrating and corrupting Elish’s dreams and twisting them on their whim. Soon in Elish’s dreams, he found himself in front of Kessler again, holding Jade’s bleeding head in his lap.
“– put a bullet in the pet’s head. Finish him off and make sure Elish sees it.”
Elish’s body suppressed a groan threatening to burst from his lips. His cold countenance forbidding such a naked display of feelings even when under the influence of sleep. Instead his fists clenched and his blood boiled as he was forced to watch the taunting and satisfied look on Kessler’s face.
Elish found himself rising in that very dream, standing tall with Jade beside him. And with Reaver, the half-raver, and the deacondog to his left, they rained bullets on the legionaries around them, leaving their quads abandoned and their bodies for the scavengers, Kessler’s included.
Quads abandoned… Kessler’s headless body left to rot. I took the Falconer with Jade and the others and we never looked back.
Kessler would’ve had a remote phone on his person, and a 4-way radio.
Elish’s eyes opened to the first hints of pink on the horizon.
“You certainly clench your teeth when you sleep,” Jack said in a casual voice. “You used to sleep so soundly beside me too.”
Elish quickly rose and looked around. To the East, the pink above him was turning into a deep but hazy red, the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon before it put on its cloak of ashes. It was early morning, extremely early morning.
“I’m leaving,” Elish said simply as he dusted off his pants. “I can make better time without that greywaster slowing me down.”
“I’m coming too,” Jack said also rising to standing, but Elish put up a hand to stop him.
“I’m going alone,” Elish responded. “You need to stay behind as protection. Caligula and Nico may be more than capable but they’re still mortal. Keep walking southwest and don’t stray off-course. If I find something before you do, I’ll send help.”
“And what if they find us first?” Jack said back.
“In a week I will be dispatching myself with a single bullet to the head,” Elish said, his
body now shrouded in darkness as he walked away from the campfire. “Silas implanted the alert back in my head six months ago so it will go off. If you’re in Skyfall, come get me. If not, I’m still on the road.”
“Elish… I really think we should stick together,” Jack called back to him. Elish could hear him take several steps towards him before stopping. “Elish…”
Elish stopped and turned around. He paused for a second before walking back up to Jack.
The hopeful look that Jack had in his eyes soon vanished when he saw the strange glint in Elish’s own.
“While I’m gone… it will be your job to keep Reno from poisoning the minds of the others,” Elish said in a dropped tone. “I need you right now, Anubis. Report to me all of their conversations and make notes. I know you always carry pen and paper with you.”
Jack looked at him strangely. “Elish, this isn’t the time to affirm allegiances. We just need to get home and–”
Elish shook his head back and forth, a little too quickly for the usually collected and calm chimera. “No, I need you now. I think…” Elish took a step back and nodded to himself. “Yes. Once I get home and to my laptop, I can look over those hard drives. I can pick through everything and see if there is a way. There has to be a way. There has to be a way.” Elish took another step backwards, he was still nodding to himself.
Jack stared, and as he stared at his brother an uneasy feeling started crawling up his throat like a cockroach.
“Elish, brother,” Jack said slowly. “I… I think it’s over. Whatever you had planned… I think perhaps… you should just focus on Jade and your life at home.”
“NO!” Elish said sharply, his eyes turning to rock. “This wasn’t in vain. They got the hard drives, they succeeded. I can figure it out. I can figure out the puzzle. There is still… there is still one more out there I can use.”
“One more…?” Jack let that drag, though the insect in his throat was quickly breeding and multiplying. Something was inherently wrong with Elish; Jack had never seen him this… unstable.
“This wasn’t a waste, this wasn’t in vain,” Elish said. “I need you right now, Anubis. Understand me? Watch them… do not let them stray. Okay? Do you understand me?” Elish’s eyes pierced Jack’s own and he found himself held by them, unable to move or look away. It was like those two violet diamonds were holding him for ransom, and the demand was only one simple word.
“Do you?” Elish snapped.
“Okay,” Jack whispered. There was nothing else to say, Elish would take no other response from him. “I will keep an eye on them for you.”
Elish nodded and turned around. He walked into the cold morning towards the direction he knew the Legion massacre occurred, trying to calculate how long of a walk it was going to be before he found the area. He knew it would be two weeks at least but there was a pit in his stomach that told him the family he was leaving behind were going to be wandering around for longer than that.
I will walk fast. I will make it home.
I will fix this.
The six stranded Skyfallers were but miniscule ants in a backyard of grey rock and pounded down ash. Small specks that blended in with the areas around them that stood as desolate and lost as their chances of rescue.
But there was a chance, Elish had his chance. It would be impossible for Kessler’s ground zero to stay abandoned for long and if it was… the remote phone in Kessler’s pocket would be Elish’s saving grace and the quads his backup plan.
It wasn’t much… but it was something.
Eight hundred miles from you.
I’m coming home, Jade. My parvulus maritus. And I will fix this.
Chapter 3
Reaver
I looked around the dusty store, walking up and down each of the aisles. My eyes were going in all directions but I was too close now to give up. It may be here, it may not be here, but really it was a fucking supermarket there was no way it wouldn’t be here.
I glanced up and shot a dirty look to the equally dirty signs above me, hanging down on rusted chains like acrobats who had lost the momentum to deliver their charges to the safety of the platform. It looked like several of them had all-out failed, dropping the little victims and dooming them to spend their eternity getting covered in dust and debris.
I’d have to bring Killian back here to wipe off these damn signs, but for now it was just me alone with a blue basket filled with baking ingredients.
Laughter spilled from my lips at the audacity of it, but it’s not like I fucking cared. No one was around to watch me make an absolute fool out of myself, running up and down aisles looking for cake mix.
Yeah, fucking cake mix.
I kicked a few boxes down and picked one up. I wiped it with my sleeve and tried to read the faded writing that was written on the box.
Cream of wheat… no, that wasn’t cake mix at all, but I put it into my basket anyway because that would make good breakfast crap, then I carried on with my mission.
I couldn’t believe what a sight this place was when I first entered it. Never in my life would I have ever thought I’d find an untouched store like this. It still had everything on the shelves just waiting for customers that would never come. A layer of thick dust now covered everything, but even the dust was different than the greywastes ash miles and miles from here. It was soft almost, and although it still stuck to everything, it fell looser and made for easy wiping. The shit that was preserved here was amazing, and even though I had been in about a dozen of these types of shops during the past several days, I still couldn’t help but look around like a gobsmacked idiot.
The roofs were intact, all of them, even the light fixtures still hung from their wires. Sure the thin chains that held up the signs telling you which aisle was which had failed in a few places, but that was miniscule in the ways of destruction when it came to this place as a whole.
We could spend the rest of our fucking lives in the plaguelands. That thought alone made my heart shudder and a smile come to lips that I never thought would ever smile again.
I sprinted down the produce section which, of course, even the plaguelands couldn’t save, and went down the next aisle. I stifled a victory cheer when I saw old bags of flour, grey and dripping dust onto the sandy floor, and started paying closer attention to finding my cake mix.
I picked up another box and wiped it off. I ended up sneezing on it and sprinkling the yellow box with my snot and spittle. Thankfully that was not cake mix but it was pretty fucking close: brownie mix! That would do, but I fucking wanted cake. Well, the closest thing I could make to cake with no milk and no eggs and old-as-fuck icing, but whatever, the little shithead wasn’t going to be picky.
To keep myself entertained I started whistling as I looked, my ears always on guard but over the past few days they had become complacent. I hadn’t seen anything in the plaguelands besides this weird deer-type creature that looked like something out of Killi’s nightmares. I had been eyeing them up like Biff to a moth though, and had great plans for killing them and roasting them on the fire. Now that would be great, fresh meat. It had been way too long since I’d gotten to taste something bloody and fresh. At least we were skulking the borders of the plaguelands, I could still sneak into Melchai or one of the other bordering towns and take some flesh for myself. What were they going to do about it? Go ahead, fucking follow me into the plaguelands, bitch, see what happens!
I laughed again and grabbed all of the boxes of cake mix in case I fucked up the first couple of them, and after reading the instructions I started hunting for oil too. I wasn’t sure if that shit would still be good but ten minutes later I had an odd browny-gold bottle of canola oil in my blue basket and I think I was set.
At least if my post-apocalyptic cake poisoned and killed me and Killian we’d come back.
I sprinted to the front of the store where I could see the dirt and dust-stained windows leaking sun into the Save-On-Foods I had been rummaging around in. There wasn’t much ligh
t which was good, any more and it would’ve fucked up my night vision which I needed to find all of this crap.
I walked past the checkouts with their dusted tills and conveyor belts, grey but still holding the forms of what they used to be. The ash was like snow in a lot of ways, but this ash would kill anyone who didn’t have immunity to the sestic radiation that was still at lethal levels around me.
Not like I had to fucking worry, or Killian for that matter.
“I’m back, baby!” I shielded my eyes from the grey sun above us as it temporarily dazzled my senses. When my eyes adjusted, I looked around until I saw my beautiful boy sitting in the shopping cart I had put him in.
I walked up to Killian and put the blue basket on his lap, taking care not to put too much pressure on the red fissures in his skin that were all that remained of what had once been an open and gaping wound.
I smiled at him and petted back what little hair he had left, his lifeless eyes staring half-open into nothing and his mouth slightly slacked. His lips had already healed back to a bright shade of pink and what blackened, charred flesh he’d had for an arm had shedded off days ago and was now growing back his porcelain skin.
I leaned down and kissed Killian’s lips, leaving the smallest glisten of wetness on them, and with a smile, I started wheeling him back to my quad. Killian, of course, didn’t say anything back but he didn’t have to; his heart beating inside of my ears was the best answer he could give me.
This morning I had woken up to his heart beating. Every evening I would lay my head on it and listen for those small rhythmic beats, and at two hours before sunrise this morning, I heard them.
And so maybe I decided to celebrate a bit.
“I bet you’re going to wake up tonight, Killibee,” I said happily to him, thankful once again that no one could see me because I knew I looked like a fucking lunatic in that moment. “And when you do, we’ll eat some birthday cake cause you’re eighteen now!” I shook my head with a smirk. “I can’t believe how old you are. I’m going to have to exchange you for a younger model soon.”