The Suicide King Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 3)

by Quil Carter

  And weirdly, as Killian had described… it seemed to be able to bunch itself up, then make itself long. As it slithered past me, its body coiled into itself until it was as fat as my arm, and then it would start moving again and become so thin I swear it was the width of a string Twizzler. What an amazingly fucked up little worm-thing.

  I shook my head and debated shooting it. But it was just cruising along without a fuck to give about anything, and I didn’t want to shoot my gun for no good reason, even if I was tempted to get a better look at it.

  Ah, whatever, it was just a stupid worm.

  I made the motion to get up, but stopped when I saw another shifting of movement. I sat back down and raised my eyebrows when I saw two more cruising down the street. They were side by side just slithering along…

  When I saw three more behind those two, I started to feel more uneasy than fascinated. I decided to remain perfectly still as they glided down the street, remembering what Killian had said about the one he’d seen. What had been a hilarious example of Killian’s overactive imagination was now turning into a rather unsettling reality.

  I craned my neck towards the north to see if there were any more to look out for – and it was then that my jaw hit the floor.

  Immediately, as quietly but as fucking quickly as I could, I dropped to the rough patio floor and flattened myself against it.

  I didn’t know what the fuck it was but it was huge and it was making its way down the street.

  This is what I get for calling this place boring, isn’t it?

  More of the worm-snakes slithered down the street; the amount of them making their way past me in the dozens now, and thickening by the minute.

  Then I saw a bigger object, not the massive thing but still huge. I focused all of my senses to my eyesight and saw the figure start to get the blue sheen of my night vision.

  It was one of the raddeer, the same type of deer I’d been hunting but something was wrong with it. It was walking crooked and its movements were jagged and uneven. It was like someone had it on puppet strings and was making it walk. There was no fluid movement with it; it was just roughly walking down the street with the black worms slithering around it and in between its feet.

  And then another one… this wasn’t a deer though, this was… what the fuck was it?

  It looked like a raver but it was bigger. Holy fuck was it ever bigger. It had brown skin and long, disproportionately long, limbs. It was at least ten feet tall and it had its mouth open in a permanent yawn.

  Its features were human but it had no hair, its eyes were black and lifeless, and like the raddeer, it was roughly raising its five-feet-long legs high in the air before taking leaping steps… like you’d expect a fucking spider or an insect to walk. This creature was walking not five feet from the deer, both abominations paying no attention to one another.

  My heart was racing, the blood was pooling in my brain and making my ears succumb to a low roar. There was something extremely fucked up happening, and I had no fucking idea what it was.

  But it was only going to get worse… the giant mass, the one two-storeys high, was coming closer. It had no shape to it from what I could see, it just seemed like a blob. It was the biggest living thing I had ever seen, and not only was it tall but its mass took up both lanes of the street.

  I swallowed hard and was thankful Killian was sleeping through this, because he would be terrified.

  My body flattened further, and I attempted to slow my breathing. I glanced down and saw another jaggedly walking animal, a centipod from the looks of it, then my eyes deflected to the left where the first portion of the massive creature entered my vision.

  Words escaped me when I started to get a good look at it, because nothing could explain or rationalize what was in front of me. My mind only allowed me to stare with a blanked expression on my face as the thing slowly moved, just forty feet in front of me, down the street.

  It wasn’t just one animal.

  It was a collective mass of hundreds. Hundreds of animals pressed into each other by some weird force. Every one of them dead and preserved from the radiation and squished up against other dead animals. An assortment of multiple shades of fur, jutting out limbs, and the occasional dead, staring eye. It smelled too; fuck did it ever smell… like rotting mouldy leather and pungent decay.

  I tried to make out any shapes I could, and recognized a deacon, an extremely irradiated version of one anyway. It looked like one of the freshest ones; it still had blood dripping down its nose. It was stuck and pressed against a leathery carcass of a large cat, possibly a plaguelands version of a carracat, and another humanoid-type thing with its white skull shining under the moonlight.

  It was hard to pick out where one animal ended and another began, it was just a moving mass of death.

  But something inside of it had to be alive…

  I looked down to see if I could see feet or something, but it just lumbered on; a few of the bottom carcasses showing road rash and wear, but that was it.

  This was the most bizarre fucking thing… what were they?

  My attention turned when I heard a shriek; it was one of the irradiated deer. I looked to where I’d heard it, the Wal-Mart parking lot, and watched in absolute perplexity as I saw the deer dash out from behind one of the blue cargo containers. It sprinted across the parking lot, and in direct pursuit were dozens of the worms.

  The deer didn’t have a chance. Like what Killian had said, the worms chased after it, their bodies long and whip-like and moving faster than I’d ever expected. They pursued this deer like a pack of wolves, chasing it towards a row of rusted shopping carts to my far right.

  Behind those shopping carts were more worms. Jesus fucking fuck, they were smart enough to lure it towards the awaiting worms.

  And those worms didn’t miss the opportunity. Five of them shot to the deer like leeches, and I watched in morbid fascination as they wrapped themselves around its body.

  How were they going to kill it? And eat it? Like a snake, or what? I found myself enthralled and curious as I watched this all go down.

  The deer screamed and thrashed. It tried to jump away, but with a strangled bellow, it fell to the ground, whips of black snapping in the moonlit air as they consumed it. And because of that very moon, I could see the most fucked up shadow I’d ever witnessed: it looked like the deer had become Medusa with how the worms bodies wiggled around.

  But they weren’t eating it… I looked curiously and narrowed my eyes, wondering just what I was seeing. The deer was now dead, I think, and the worms were just thrashing and shifting and…

  No they weren’t. They were wiggling into its body.

  The worms were getting inside of it.

  Then it hit me.

  They weren’t worms – they were fucking parasites.

  This fact was confirmed when I saw the dead deer’s body give a hard jerk. Its stick-thin legs kicked and its head snapped back and forth. I could see a reflection against its eyes as it moved, it wasn’t dead like I had thought, or not yet anyway.

  The deer rose on unsteady legs, no more worms could be seen, all five of them were inside of the deer now, with only shining blots of blood to show that they were ever there.

  And as the deer gave a jerking walk in the direction that the other worms had been heading, it was confirmed with an eerie terror that the parasites were now controlling it.

  The long-limbed leather-skinned humanoid, the centipod, even the giant moving carcass… I think I understood what I was seeing. These parasites buried themselves into their hosts and controlled them, even after the host died… I guess they could still make their bodies move, or they added them to the mass of what I now suspected was being entirely controlled by these worms.

  Okay, Big Shot, you win. This place is fucking insane. I didn’t want to be here anymore. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.

  I glanced around and saw that the trail of snakes was getting thinner. There were only a few of them now, and the gian
t one was lumbering ahead somewhere. I waited until fifteen minutes went by without me seeing one, then I slid off of the patio and braced my legs and body as I dropped three-storeys onto the ground. I landed easily but loudly, my boots smacking against the pavement and echoing throughout the buildings. Without wasting a second, I ran to the Wal-Mart semi, my eyes never leaving the street and hyper focused to pick up any movement. There was none though, and soon I found myself inside the blue semi.

  I wasn’t fucking around with this. I unhooked the trailer, thankful now more than ever that I had backed in for an easy escape if needed be, and turned on the engine. I was hoping Killian would hear the motor and go and see what I was doing, or take the hint that we had to fuck off. If I was lucky he would be…

  When I exited the cargo trailer and looked to the white apartment building, a jolt of horror went through me; six black snakes were testing out the walls of the house. I revved the engine and sped towards the building, now seeing motion in front of it.

  The big one was just a shadow in the darkness, too far away to hear what was going on, but it had left its friends behind – and they could smell us.

  “KILLIAN!” I yelled loudly. I couldn’t stop swearing inside of my head. They must be able to sense heat or life or something. Fuck, I didn’t know, all I knew was that kid better know how to fly.

  “KILLIAN!” I screamed. I rode over a raised concrete bed, and for a moment the quad became airborne. It slammed onto the ground and almost bounced me out of my seat, but I held on.

  The parasites knew he was in there. As I crossed onto the sidewalk and jumped over the parking lot barriers, I could see them raising their pointed heads and wave themselves around in the air; their bodies getting thinner and thinner. When they got to the size of a narrow whip they started crawling up the apartment, one even testing the edges of the patio’s railing.

  Killian opened the sliding glass door, his satchel under his arms and my own bag in his other one. He ran to the edge of the patio, and I stopped the bike and jumped off.

  “Jump! JUMP!” I yelled. “NOW”

  Killian stared at me in horror and confusion but he was smart enough to trust me. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for broken bones and looked up to catch him.

  We both fell to the ground, Killian right on top of me. Killian jumped off and I shot up, but as I stepped back to the quad my foot buckled and I fell.

  I looked down and saw blood, and I saw white. My leg was broken.

  Then I felt a stinging pain in my neck and Killian’s shrill scream. The boy lunged at what I knew was a parasite and pulled it back, only to have it wrap around his arm and sink the tip of its head into his neck. I jumped up, leaning on my not broken leg, and ripped the parasite out of his neck; then, with all my strength, I tore it in half and tossed it.

  I pushed Killian onto the bike, blood running down his neck, and we both got on.

  Killian yelled again, and I felt the strange hardened leather of the parasite on my back. I put my trust in him and gunned the quad. I felt Killian start to rip and claw at my back, and then him shouting that there were two more.

  But there would be more and more if I didn’t get us the fuck out of here, so I rode towards the Wal-Mart parking lot, hoping I could circle and cut the giant parasite off since it had been heading south, the same direction we would be going back in.

  I swore and grabbed my neck when I felt a sharp sting. I barked at Killian to pull it out but a second one was trying to burrow itself into my side.

  There was a ripping sound that seemed to resonate inside of my head, followed by a great amount of pain in my neck. I tried to steady the quad while I attempted to pull the parasite from my side, but the roaring behind my eyes was scrambling my thoughts.

  But I was with it enough to know that I had to turn the headlight off. The headlight would only give me a partial view of my world but my night vision would illuminate everything. I knew Killian hated the dark, especially plaguelands dark with dead animals infected with parasites, but he’d just have to fucking hold…

  “Reaver…” Killian’s calm voice said in my ear. My eyes widened at his tone, he didn’t sound scared at all. “Pull over, right now.”

  What…?

  “I’m not fucking pulling over,” I said back to him. “There’s a really fucking big one. I’ll explain it when we get home. We need to ride until we get home. We need to get back home.”

  We had to get home as quickly as possible – and I think we needed to find the bigger parasite as well.

  “Reaver… please listen to me,” Killian said again; the eerie level tone was making my stomach turn with unease. “Pull over.”

  A chill went up my spine and centered in my heart… I think one of them had gotten Killian. Was this what happened when one of them got into a human? How would it even know what to do? No humans came here.

  I would be pulling over, but it wouldn’t be to get infected by more parasites…

  … it would be to kill Killian.

  I had to kill Killian. I had to kill Killian; he was infected.

  I stopped the quad and stared forward. I saw Killian’s glowing blue hand turn on the headlights and, just like that, my night vision disappeared; only the light-bathed road and the floating dust specks could be seen.

  Then, with a deep breath, I grabbed my knife, turned and lunged at him.

  To my shock he wasn’t where I’d last seen him. He was quick, the parasite was quick.

  I had to kill Killian and find the host.

  My body whirled around and I saw Killian now in the headlights. I clenched my teeth, my knife in hand, and ran towards him.

  The kid had moves, I’d give him that. Killian jumped out of my way again and into the darkness where I couldn’t see him. That sneaky bastard was using my night vision against me; it was smart and it already knew what I could do.

  Turn the headlights off.

  I nodded and turned around. I reached out to turn the small metal switch, when I heard a scrape of a boot and a stabbing pain in the back of my neck. I bellowed with rage and started to thrash, trying to get him away from my neck. Then I felt another stab.

  “Stay still!” Killian yelled. “Stay still, I almost have it.”

  Have what? HAVE WHAT!?

  KILL KILLIAN

  FIND HOST

  I snarled and threw myself onto the ground, pinning him underneath me, but when I tried to rise I realized something was keeping me down. That odd sensation was followed by a sickening pulling, not just in the back of my neck but… it fucking felt like it was inside of my brain.

  Then lights started flashing in my vision, followed by rapidly talking voices, or a buzzing, clicking almost, all sorts of fucked up colours, sounds, smells flooded me and fried my senses.

  But as quickly as they came, they went. I heard a cry and Killian’s body beside me. I looked over to my side and saw a long black thing, sheening with blood, in his hand, then a combat knife rise and slice it in half.

  Killian looked right at me as my mind swam and twisted around itself. His blue eyes were bright and wide, and his forehead glistening with sweat. He got up and grabbed my arm, then started pulling me towards where the light was and all the noise.

  ‘Up! Reaver… get up! UP!’ I struggled to my feet and I saw the outline of the quad. Somehow in my confusion and jumbled thoughts I got onto the quad and Killian got in front of me. He said something, and in response I wrapped my arms around his waist, and he started speeding away.

  Everything inside of my brain seemed shattered. It was a window that had a brick thrown through it. My thoughts were fractured, mixed up and separated, nothing was where it was supposed to be. I just felt grabbed by the brain stem and shaken.

  My eyes closed but a shoulder shrug by Killian kept me conscious. ‘Stay awake. Stay awake. Twenty more miles.’

  ‘Ten more miles, Reaver. Stay awake. Five more miles, I think. I remember that sign.’

  ‘Reaver… stay awake.’
/>   ‘Reaver, we’re home. Okay… you can die, baby. Go ahead.’

  ‘It’s okay. I got us home.’

  When I woke up, my mind was back… but everything was different. I woke to complete darkness and realized we were inside of the basement of our house.

  I looked around and saw Killian sleeping by the door to the upstairs. He had my M16 in his arms and a turned off flashlight beside his satchel. I crawled over to him.

  “Killian?” I said. The boy jumped and scrambled for the flashlight. He turned it on and it shone right in my face. I squinted and he deflected the light, and gave out a relieved breath. He lunged into my arms and hugged me.

  “I’ve been living down here since I got home… I didn’t want to be somewhere so open in case they followed us,” Killian whimpered.

  I squeezed him to me and kissed his cheek. “So you haven’t seen any near here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said back. “I parked the quad, and after I dragged you down I barred us inside with food and water. I haven’t been up to the surface since. You’ve been out for almost a full day. You broke your leg really bad, and I had to gouge a huge hole in your neck, but I sewed you up as well as I could. “

  I stood up and Killian handed me my M16 and then my combat knife. I opened the door and looked up the flight of stairs. It was dark and if I’d been out for a full day that meant it would be around one in the morning, or later depending on how long it took Killian to get us home. Either way, not a good time. But I wasn’t sure if the parasites were nocturnal, so every time could be a bad time.

  I walked up the stairs cautiously. The house was warm and dark; it was brighter outside than inside with the moon full. It was a clear night too, so everything was coated in a silver glow.

  I looked out the window, then walked to the door. I opened it and stepped outside, as the warm night air hit me I heard a squeak of the stairs behind me, and I knew Killian was going to be my backup.