by Quil Carter
“It’s me, Killian, it’s me. Quickly, tell me what it was? What scared you?” Reaver said rapidly. He started pulling me towards what I assumed was the entrance. I let out a terrified cry and pulled away, him pulling me roughly into the darkness was terrifying in that moment.
“Killian? You need to tell me now. I need to know what to do. What was it?” Reaver said more harshly. His head was snapping in all directions, I could see the outline of it as I strained my eyes to see any sort of shape or movement.
“It was a giant worm!” I cried. “It was a big worm, eel thing.”
Reaver stopped and I think he was looking at me. “A… worm?”
I nodded and held a hand to my neck, it was sticky with blood. “It was over ten feet long I think. It fucking bit me.”
Reaver continued staring at me–
–and he started to laugh. “A worm? You were making that racket over a fucking overgrown worm? Jesus Christ, Killian.”
Anger replaced my fear so quickly I could hear the sonic boom behind my ears. I held up my hand which I knew was covered in blood and showed him. “It bit me!” I screeched. “It attacked me, you fucking asshole! We have to get out of here. It was after me; it was chasing me!” I was so angry and so terrified, and so fucking pissed off he was laughing right at my fear, that I roughly pushed him.
“Was it at least thick like an anaconda or something? Did it at least have giant shark teeth? Or spikes?” Reaver put a hand on my shoulder and checked out my wound. More rage swept me when he chuckled. “It’s a tiny little hole. I’ve put bigger holes in you in bed. It’s as big as a pencil dot.”
“It’s still after me!” I screamed, and Reaver finally put a hand over my mouth.
“Then stop screaming, dummy,” Reaver said and removed his hand. “I’ll walk you out and go get your cart. I can see the light of the flashlight. I’ll go and see if the worm is still there while you wait outside.”
I whimpered but tried to swallow my fear. He’d understand when he saw it, it was fucking acting like a predator.
Reaver put an arm around me and gently steered me away from the items stacked in the middle of the aisle, and wherever there was something I could trip over. We didn’t talk the entire time, not until I stepped into the bright grey plaguelands. It temporarily blinded me, it was hard to believe there was such thing as daylight when the inside of that store was so dark.
Reaver gently tilted my neck back and shook his head. “I’ll go and check it out.” He put his hand to my belt and pulled out my Magnum. He gave it to me and licked his bloodied fingers. “I’ll be right back. If you see another inch worm just sound the Killi whistle.”
I scowled at him and he flashed me a grin and pecked my lips. Then, with a playful but rather demeaning pat to my cheek, he ducked back inside the Wal-Mart.
I was starting to hope that eel ate him, just so I could be right once he resurrected. I’d shove it in his face at every opportunity, and I’d never let him live it down that I was right about it.
At this thought I stood up a bit straighter and crossed my arms over my chest. That fucking eel had been after me. It was smart enough to know I was there and brave enough to attack and bite me.
My body shuddered when I remembered its odd leathery elastic skin; it was hard and the more its body stretched out the tougher the whip-like skin seemed to get. Maybe it was some kind of leech and that’s why it had bit me? I didn’t know… I just wanted Reaver to come back with the grocery cart so we could go home. I had almost everything I needed and he must too.
Suddenly I heard a scream inside the Wal-Mart. My chest turned to ice and I immediately looked towards the broken window.
Reaver was screaming.
It had gotten him. It had gotten him.
I screamed too and brought out my Magnum as I heard the screaming come closer. He was trying to run outside; I could hear him, he was running fast.
Reaver jumped out of the window; he had something black over his neck. I shrieked, forgetting the gun in my hand, all I could do in my terror was stand there and scream my head off.
Then Reaver stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around and I saw the biggest shiteater grin on his face.
He threw the black thing around his neck at me. I screamed and jumped back, and looked at him in horror as he started laughing at me.
I looked down and saw it was a frayed electrical wire.
“I fucking hate you!” I screamed through tears. Reaver started howling with laughter, and as I stalked up to him, he fell to his knees with tears streaming down his face. He was laughing so hard he had to take in gasping breaths.
“I hope you fucking choke and die!” I wailed. I couldn’t believe he would betray me like that. He knew very well how scared I was, and he thought it would be funny to scare the shit out of me?
Reaver flopped over onto his back, his hand up to his face as he struggled to laugh and breathe at the same time. I was so angry at him, I walked up to him and kicked him in the ribs.
“I should’ve shot you in the face, you’re such an asshole!” I cried. “I was terrified. You… fuck you, it’s not that funny!”
I turned away and started stalking back to the quad.
“Killi…” Reaver called after me in between laughs. “Come on. I couldn’t help it! Come back here. I’m sorry.” He laughed while saying he was sorry. He wasn’t sorry for shit.
“Killibee… come on, you have to be my best friend and my partner now. I don’t have Reno to abuse, you’re my only entertainment,” he said through chuckles. I heard his footsteps, and when I felt a hand on my shoulder, the rage seething and boiling inside of me blew.
“Ede faecam!” I whirled around and yelled. Then I pushed him back and walked to the quad. I sniffed and wiped my nose and got in the back with the boxes he’d carried back. I waited there and he came with the shopping cart, and I stayed sitting as he surrounded me with boxes and cans. I think he knew I wasn’t going to be riding up front with him.
At least he’d stopped laughing.
When he was done I felt the quad shift and the sound of gasoline sloshing in the tank when he leaned against it. I heard a flick of a lighter and then a blue-embered cigarette entered my vision.
I took it and started heavily smoking it. It was an opium one, I blew out silver smoke.
“Can you… forgive me for just a second and answer a question for me?”
I looked up when I noticed Reaver’s tone was more serious than I expected. That brought with it a sense of apprehension, but I still answered him back with a short snip. “Yeah.”
“I want you to answer me honestly and if you don’t know, say it.”
“… okay.”
“Tell me what ede faecam means.”
I paused. It had just slipped out. I had been learning some Latin before when we had spent all those weeks in Elish’s secret apartment in the greyrifts. I assumed it was that. But I didn’t know what it meant.
“I don’t know,” I admitted bitterly. “Oh tell me wise Latin-implanted chimera, what dumb gibberish did I say to you?”
Reaver was silent, and I realized he might be upset I was using his family’s other language on him.
Then I swallowed, and it had all started with Asher’s pet names for us. He called me cicaro which made sense; he called Reaver bona mea, his property, and other love words.
“You… told me to eat shit. You said it the exact way I can see it in my head. That’s just… weird. You’ve said Latin a few times when I was… you know, doing things to you, and… can you… not?”
His words made a burning come to the back of my neck. I nodded stiffly, feeling embarrassed and guilty. I hadn’t really realized that I’d been doing it. I had been around a lot of chimeras this past year, so I guess that justified it.
“Yeah,” I said simply.
“Thanks…” Reaver’s voice trailed, before he added. “You can go back to being pissed now.”
“So happy you gave me permission, fuckhead,
” I said.
Reaver laughed. “I love you too, Killi Cat.” I heard the flick of a lighter again and a whiff of a quil cigarette, and he got onto the quad.
Then all fell quiet. I leaned back against some pillows Reaver had brought out for us and waited for him to start the quad.
“Stop moving,” Reaver suddenly hissed in a dropped voice. “I think I hear something. Quickly get off of the quad and put your hand over your chest I can’t hear anything with your heartbeat.”
I scrambled off of the quad and did as he asked. I started scanning the horizon and the abandoned parking lot around us. There were tall buildings, in almost all directions except west where there were only black trees and mountains.
Reaver got off the quad and looked behind him, right as he turned back and motioned for me to follow him back to the quad, I saw what he’d heard… a plane in the distance.
“The white apartment buildings.” Reaver pointed as he jumped back onto the quad. I got behind him “It’s southeast but it’s a Fisherking. They have heat sensors and we need to be inside and hidden before nightfall.” He revved the motor and turned the quad towards the white buildings, they were standing on the other side of the street but there was still an entire Wal-Mart parking lot between us.
“They can’t see us, we’re too far away,” Reaver reassured over the rumbling engine. He started driving down the parking lot, dodging rusted cars and trucks. I thought he was going to take us to the apartment buildings but he turned a hard left. I realized he was bringing us to the back where a bunch of semi-trucks were, some of them still upright but several had fallen down. Their trailers were blue with streaks of rust dripped down like tears, and there were dissolved boxes with their contents peeking out like disturbed coffins. But why was he taking us towards them? I didn’t know what Reaver was doing until he turned the quad towards the back of one of the tipped over trailers and drove the quad and our little trailer in.
Reaver killed the engine and hopped off. He grabbed my hand and quietly we ran out of the metal container, past another askew semi, and towards the white apartment building.
My chest was burning when we got to the front. Reaver eyed the plane and swore to himself then kicked the bottom half of one of the two glass doors entrances of the apartment building. Without him telling me to I went first, knowing that’s what he wanted, and he ducked in after me.
Reaver let out a breath and the string of expletives continued to flow out of his mouth. I turned and saw that we were in a simple lobby, furnished with a radrat-chewed couch and tipped over vases, some broken and lying in piles of faded dirt. Further on was an elevator and beside it a red metal door with a forever dead EXIT sign above it, and a simpler sign, almost completely covered in dust, saying Stairwell.
Reaver took my hand again and led me towards the stairwell. He opened it and we both started walking up the creaking but solid stairs.
“Third floor.” The shock of hearing Reaver’s voice after so much silence made me jump, but I nodded and followed him to the third floor hallway; the gyprock ceiling completely collapsed and raining down insulation like pink cotton snow. It was in bad condition, this must’ve been low income housing, but it would add a benefit – we’d be able to hear things coming.
Unless that worm found us.
I shuddered and the anxiety inside of me resurrected with vengeance. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night here. I hope Reaver wasn’t going to say we were–
“We’re spending the night here.”
It took everything to hide the panic on my face, but I did. I followed Reaver into the farthest apartment from the stairwell, and watched with a lump in my throat as he tried the door. It was open so he peeked inside and motioned me to follow him.
Well it looked like we got two for the price of one. This apartment must’ve been built by a one-handed carpenter because the floor of the living room was sunken in and in the center it had completely collapsed, giving us a view of the room below us. I wanted to ask Reaver why, but before I could he pointed up, and I saw there was a leak in the ceiling. It had a hole in it the size of a dinner plate and there were shreds of insulation, and wires spilling down like it had been disembowelled.
“Are we going to try somewhere else?” I asked, eyeing that hole in the ceiling with mistrust. My mouth even opened to tell Reaver that the eel-worm could get in through there, but then I remembered how he almost killed himself from laughing too hard so I decided against it.
Reaver shook his head as he tried out the floor around us. I could see his boot sinking in and in a couple places the wood whined and creaked. “No. This just means we have a lot of escape routes,” he said. “If we have to, I can jump down and catch you when you jumped.”
“Three-storeys?” I said nervously.
Reaver shrugged at this and smirked. “The broken leg you might get will take like a day to heal. You keep forgetting you have nothing to worry about, ever. We’ll be fine here tonight, the biggest threat we have is the chimera in that plane finding us.”
My throat made a nervous noise but I nodded. “It’s still quite a few hours until night… can’t we just go home after it’s been clear for a few hours?” Reaver walked into a bedroom and I followed him.
“I’d rather not,” Reaver said back.
I cringed when I saw two dried up bodies in the bed, but then my heart gave a flicker of empathy when I saw these two people were holding each other. That was so sweet.
I walked over as Reaver rummaged through their things and looked down at the dead couple. The blanket covering them had been flattened against their bodies from the dust and powdered gyprock, but I could still see patterns on it. I brushed it away with my hand and let out a long breath. They had entered this bedroom thinking today would just be another day and then… and then Sky and Silas happened.
Or maybe they went to bed wondering if more bombs would be dropped on them. Or if they were going to get drafted to fight this Cold War that no one wanted. A part of me wished I had asked Sky more questions when he’d been inside of Perish, but I just hadn’t been mentally able to do that.
And now he was gone, just like these people and everyone else was gone. The billions of people in this world had been reduced to the population of Skyfall and the greywastes. All because of two men who had convinced themselves the radiation they both harnessed could stop the missiles.
Silas hadn’t ended the world to show it his hurt – he’d thought he was saving it.
I shook my head and dismissed the empathy those words had left behind. Even if Silas had originally thought he’d been doing good, he still was a tyrant. He was fixed on getting Sky back to the point where he went insane.
I’d wanted Silas to think it was Sky’s O.L.S, when it had really been Perish’s empty one, but I ended up dropping it somewhere during the escape. I’d never tell Reaver that. I’m sure he thought more highly of me knowing that I had destroyed the last part of Sky in front of Silas; with his twin brother dead behind him and only the born immortal Reaver to carry on any strains of his DNA.
I turned and watched Reaver as he picked up an old pack of gum and smelled it. He shrugged and put it in his pocket. When he spotted me looking at him his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said with a half-smile. “I’ll find us some food to eat and some books to entertain you.”
“Comics,” Reaver called after me when I walked into the hallway. He always had to have his superhero comics. I wonder if he ever imagined himself as a superhero… but this being Reaver I suspected he was the villain.
Actually since the Legion called him the Raven, maybe in his head he was the hero? He was my hero, even if he was a tad nuts.
I found him some comics, and though it was slim pickings since we didn’t have water or anything like that, I did find us a can of corn and a can of mixed vegetables.
Reaver looked at the cans and sniffed. “I’m not eating this crap when we have an entire case of ravioli on the quad’
s trailer. I’m going to run back there and get us some food.”
“This was a bounty in the greywastes; you’re such a picky ass nowadays,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“Could be worse. Just imagine how spoiled Man on the Hill and that Angel Adi must be with their real food,” Reaver said as he sat down on a chair he’d positioned in front of a window in the living room. His sentry station of course. “Fuck. Remember how much fruit those Blood Crow nuts had? I’m so pissed you made us miss out on the feast after.” He groaned and stretched. “You know their sacrifice festival party is coming up.” He raised his watch which also had a small section for the date. “We could still go to it.”
He chuckled at the expression on my face, then shrugged. “It might be nice to see a Blood Crow get sacrificed. Remember they said two of them get chosen a year? I’d like to see it. I kind of miss…” He paused then shrugged a second time. I saw a pull on his lips. I thought he was going to say more but he only turned back to the view in front of us.
I walked to him until I was standing behind the chair he was sitting on. The Wal-Mart was in front of us, its flat grey roof empty except for air vents and what looked like a cooling system. Around it was the parking lot, full of rusty cars and semis, and the staple of all store parking lots: shopping carts. They were thrown everywhere, some of them with objects that were just piles of mush from being rained on and then dried out again and again.
And past that parking lot there was a street with telephone poles, streetlights, and traffic lights, and the usual grey buildings standing empty and desolate with their black windows looking right back at me. Unlike in the greywastes, almost everything was solid and still standing; it was the closest we would ever get to seeing the world how it was. Even Skyfall looked different than these places; it had its own culture now, its own architecture.
“Here, baby,” I said handing him a comic.
He took it and blew the ash off of the cover. “Oh, Conan. Awesome. Did you know he used to have a late night talk show?”