by Quil Carter
Gage’s expression turned sorrowful. “His mind was fractured. I saw it for myself until I was forced out. I can understand why now. Why did he mutilate himself? He seemed normal for the few seconds I saw him when he’d broken me out.”
“I’m guessing it’s from the stress from being back there. Masochism kind of runs in the family.” I went through a time of hurting myself to get Elish’s attention. “We’re self-destructive. We have a lot of issues but we’re a close family. Silas is systematically trying to destroy us but my master has a plan to fix that.”
In front of us, the road we were on joined onto a highway. The highway was four lanes wide, separated by medians, and on the other side of it there was a ledge that led down to piles of rusted cars.
I jumped up onto the median and started walking on top of it. I looked ahead, hoping to see Mantis already, but there were rolling hills in front of us. Eventually though, the highway wound around it, so there was nothing to see but grey and more dismantled houses. On the hill at least, I could see black trees, ones that hadn’t been harvested yet.
“They don’t like this place but they don’t fully know why,” Gage said after we’d been walking for an hour. “They’re beginning to suggest I go back to Skyfall.”
Shit. I was losing him already. I wanted to bring him to Elish. This kid was just too powerful to let slip through our fingers. Not to mention that even after healing me I was still having seizures whenever something hit my head. I kind of wouldn’t mind him around just to heal me when I needed it.
“We won’t be here long,” I lied. I really had no idea how long Elish would want to be here for. “And, like I said, Sanguine will be resurrecting anyway. Less chance of Silas catching you.”
“I suppose…” Gage said slowly. His face scowelled and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know why they’re so uneasy… and I still don’t believe they know either.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t want to draw attention to his multiple personalities, so the conversation died. We carried on in silence, only the occasional quip breaking through the empty air.
After a couple hours of walking, we spotted the subdivision the man had been talking about and settled into one of the houses that still had a good roof on it. It didn’t stand out, and there were so many identical ones I knew it would be a safe place for us.
I ate my fill of kidlet, savouring each taste as it dissolved into my mouth from the smoke tenderizing it, and licking my fingers after I’d consumed an entire pound. Gage ate a Speedbar on a wooden chair I had brought up to the second level of the house, and read a book in silence.
This would be a good time to try a new different angle, a way to take his mind off of wanting to go back to Skyfall. It wasn’t anything fancy, just some good ol’ fashion fear. If he wanted to go back to Skyfall, he would have to be walking back to the Falconer in the middle of the night to catch Theo before he left; and to someone as timid as Gage, I could paint him some terrifying pictures.
I pulled up a plastic chair and put it by the window to sentry, then glanced over to Gage. “A lot of really dangerous animals come out at night, so I’ll keep first watch,” I said to him. “You don’t have night vision, do you?”
Gage shook his head back and forth. This was excellent then.
“The ravers are starting to take over towns that border the radiation-filled plaguelands, and they’re–”
Gage’s head shot up from his book, and his heart spasmed with fear. “P-plaguelands?” he suddenly said. His mouth dropped open and his hand flew up to the back of his neck. “We’re near the plaguelands?” I was surprised to hear fear in his voice. “H-how close are we?” He jumped to his feet and went to the window I was at.
I blinked. “I don’t know, but it’s definitely many miles,” I said slowly. “We’re not that close… why?”
Gage looked around, his heartbeat going crazy. He was scared of the plaguelands, terrified of it. “I can’t go back there. We can’t let them know we’re out here.” He scanned the dark greywastes, his eyes jutting back and forth as he searched. “That was what they were nervous about… that was what they sensed. There are others out there… they can hear them on the sound waves, they sense them. They’re close.”
Whoa. “What?” I said giving him a funny look. “No one can survive in the plaguelands but mutated animals. Who are you talking about?” Was this a head thing or a… real thing? I really wasn’t sure.
Gage’s upper teeth pressed down on his bottom lip, his chest was pulsing and he was almost hyperventilating. “I can’t return there,” he whispered under his breath, he said it with such silence I wondered if I was supposed to hear it. “We need to continue to make our home in Skyfall.”
Then, like he had realized that he was speaking these crazy thoughts out loud, his eyes shot to me and he looked away. “Never ask me about this again. If you want us to be friends… you will never ask me about this. Can I trust you?”
Questions were burning me alive. I was so curious and intrigued about this I almost felt physical pain not being able to have them answered. What was he talking about? Or was he just batshit insane?
Maybe his time encased in concrete had permanently messed him up. I wouldn’t doubt it for a second; he’d been in there for over a century. He didn’t seem to remember much from it, and I wondered if he’d been able to put himself into some sort of stasis. One thing was obvious though, this guy was pretty messed up.
Unfortunately if I wanted to keep myself in his good books, especially since he did allude to us being friends, I had to respect his wishes… even if it was killing me inside.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I won’t ask about them.”
Gage, nervous and now sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, nodded, before he ran a hand down his face and turned from me… then went back to his wooden chair. He made no mention of leaving this place at least, and eventually we both fell asleep.
But our sleep would not be peaceful. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized there was something rummaging around downstairs. My chimera instincts quickly kicked in, and I jumped to my feet. I remained as still and as quiet as I could, and tuned my hearing to try and pick up what had decided to enter our temporary shelter.
I scowled and tilted my head, then closed my eyes to give my enhanced hearing as much power as I could. That scowl only deepened when I realized I could hear a dog panting, and while I was listening, I witnessed its movements change from scrounging around the house, to climbing up the stairs.
I drew my gun and looked down at Gage. My jaw set when I realized he was still asleep, and my soured feelings towards him got another fresh injection of bitterness at this.
I walked to the window, which I had left open, and looked down. But when I saw three men below me, all three of them holding rifles, I quickly stepped away from the window, and out of sight.
One of them I recognized as the man who I’d traded the water with.
Inside my head I swore, and tried to force my heartbeat not to spike, but just a moment later I heard scratching on the door… followed by a bark.
Gage woke up with a jolt and a gasp. I reached down and grabbed his shoulder, and to my absolute disdain, he let out a small scream.
“Shut up!” I hissed to him. I looked to the door and a growl started sounding from my throat. “There are three men outside, one of them was the man I traded with. Get out the knife I gave you.” He might be immortal but I wasn’t, nor was I his teacher. I turned from him, and when I heard footsteps start to climb up the stairs, I discreetly glanced out the window. I saw that there was only one man outside of the house now. He was looking into the greywastes, his rifle on his shoulders as he kept guard.
Channelling every stealth trick I knew, I climbed out of the window, and put my pistol back into its holder. I shifted to the left, my boots lightly pressing against the black shingles of the roof, and got out of the line of sight; so when the other two burst through
the doors, I wouldn’t be seen.
My heart was hammering, adding its own background music to the lucid and streamlined thoughts coming to my head. There was no fear, no desperation. I managed to keep myself calm and collected as my boots gradually crab walked me to the left; my back pressed against the exterior walls of the old house.
And when I got into the right position, I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. There was a crash as they kicked open the door, and without mincing words, they opened fire.
Which was exactly what I had been waiting for. With the shots shattering the hot summer air, I jumped from the roof and landed on top of the man with the rifle. I aimed for his shoulders and I hit my mark. He slammed to the ground with only a muffled cry that was drowned out by the thunder cracks of gunfire above me, and I drew my knife and stabbed him in the neck.
The blade went in easily from my force alone, and with the adrenaline using my blood as a highway, the knife slid in and out multiple times like my hand was the needle of a sewing machine. In and out, one after another, until I felt his body start to seize underneath me.
I picked up the rifle, and on silent feet, I ran back into the house.
The shots quieted down and I heard talking. I ran to the foot of the stairs and looked up to see the black and white dog. His head was lowered and his eyes were two flashing spheres, and when I stepped onto the stairs, I heard a menacing growl.
I chuckled. I fucking hated dogs; they had nothing on deacdogs. I held the rifle up and positioned the dumb mutt in the cross hairs and pulled the trigger. The noise blasted my ears, like a gong being hit right beside them, but as it faded I was treated to the sound of a high-pitched yelp and the dog flying backwards and stumbling. It scrambled to its feet while its pleasing screaming continued to tickle the inner sadism that was as a part of my DNA as my yellow eyes, before it fell to the ground in a heap of flailing legs. A dog’s dying yelps were almost as satisfying as a pig’s. Both were loud about it, like they had this built-in belief that somehow their dying was more important than a regular animal’s death. And whereas any normal arian would find it heartbreaking to hear, I for one, had always enjoyed it.
“Moe?” a man cried. Without even looking down the stairs the man ran to his dog, his own yells of sadness mixing in with the chorus of pain-filled yelping.
I stepped into the shadows, leaned the rifle against a wallpapered wall with the paper now curled like an unravelled scroll, and waited with a content smile on my face.
I missed this!
“Where is he?” I heard the man who had sold me the food yell, then a thunk of a fist hitting meat. Gage being the meat. “Where is he, you mutant fuck?”
Well, I hadn’t even thought of that. Was that why we’d automatically had targets on our backs? My deduction when I realized we’d been ambushed was just starving greywasters needing food in a time of raver versus arian warfare. But maybe we’d automatically been labelled as mutant defects because of our eyes.
I heard Gage cough, but there was no answer. I kept myself poised in my hiding place and was still, until the sounds of one of them descending the stairs could be heard.
Clunk, clunk… clunk, clunk…
My heart had always been racing, but with my body a statue against a wall, I could hear the heavy beating echoing inside of my own chest. It was exhilarating. I had missed this so much, I felt cheated that it had been so many months since I had gotten a chance to kill. It was like caging a lion and feeding him dinner scraps. A predator was meant to hunt, meant to kill and consume without mercy. That was what a chimera was.
And finally, I was getting the chance to live up to my engineering.
My eyes were fixed to the corner of the wall I had my back pressed up against. I could see the end of the railing, and past that was the foyer to the entrance. All of this was in light blue of every possible shade, illuminating objects that, to a normal arian, would be covered in darkness.
Then my target stepped onto the main level, and without wasting a moment, I grabbed him by his jacket and pushed him hard. His gun fell to the ground and he stumbled backwards, crashing into the edge of the railing. The railing had stood tall against time and the elements, but it crumbled from the man’s weight, he tumbled to the ground with the broken and splintered wood.
I raised my fist and punched him in the face, and at the same time he grabbed my hair and tried to wrench my head back, I leaned down and sunk my teeth into the soft, vulnerable skin of his neck.
I had a style, all of my brothers had a style. Mine was ripping out necks, something that pleased and satisfied the bloodthirst inside of me. Kind of like Sanguine’s love of fire.
My teeth pierced his flesh, and I had to fight against his hands desperately pulling my hair and grabbing the side of my face. I closed my eyes tight to protect them and tried to finish him off. Like a snake swallowing a mouse, I opened my jaw as wide as it could go, before I clamped it shut and started to thrash my head back and forth.
The man gasped and tried to scream. I felt a pain in the side of my head from his scratching and pulling, but it was shaken off by my head snapping back and forth. Finally, I freed the piece of neck I had been determined to bite off, and was rewarded by a gush of liquid hitting my face.
I opened my blood-covered eyes, the warm cruor stinging them, and looked down to see his neck quickly become covered by red. I leaned down to try and get in another bite, only to have his hands let go of my hair to clamp over the wound.
As I watched this man desperately try to stem the flow of the gushing blood, my chest rocked from the heat this act of killing was bringing to my body. It could only be described as orgasmic, it has always been orgasmic. And though this man was a disgusting parasite still walking along the rotting carcass that was the world, there was a momentary bond between us, like two lovers intertwined.
My mouth was open in a grin as I watched him try to save his own life. Under the filth he wasn’t that bad on the eyes, and probably in his thirties. I would be lying if I said there wasn’t burning elsewhere, and when I shifted myself onto his body, straddling him, I felt the tightness in my pants, and a hard cock against my thigh.
But the lust wasn’t for him. It was for my master that I would be seeing soon. Just knowing that I was so close to seeing him again threw me into a frenzied excitement. In the daylight I wanted to see him because I loved him and missed him, but under the covers of darkness my body was aflame and aching with anticipation to have him inside of me. To experience our all-night sessions. I wanted him to take me, and draw out orgasm after orgasm. I wanted his cock in my mouth. Fuck, it had been so long since I felt that cock twitch and throb between my lips as he came.
And with those flames inside of me, I leaned down and took the still-alive greywaster’s cheek into my mouth. While he grunted and gurgled, I bit down, the soft, stubble-speckled piece of meat tightening in my mouth before my teeth punctured it. I then pressed harder and pulled, until I severed the cheek and held it in my jaws.
The man had no more screams. He only looked at me with his eyes bulging; his hands clasping his neck while it shot blood out from in between his fingers. He watched as I dropped the piece of cheek onto his chest; then I tilted his head to the side, and with a smile, bit off the second one.
Then I sat on his navel, leaned down, and started eating the two pieces off of his own chest, consuming and enjoying the sweet and tender meat. I’d never had arian cheek before, not from the face anyway, but I do believe this would be something I’d be eating in the future. It would taste even better cooked, the fat, with some heat, would melt and tenderize the meat. Fried for sure, perhaps with mushrooms and shallots, or if I was feeling like really treating myself: seared and roasted in the oven.
When I was done I looked up at the man and saw that he was dead. His hands limp, and the blood that had been gushing with such vigor between his fingers, now stagnant. He had died with his eyes fixed on me; I had been the last thing he saw.
&nbs
p; I rose, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, and turned to find Gage.
He was standing only three feet from me, the expression on his face stunned and horrified.
“I’m leaving,” Gage said. I was surprised that his voice, usually timid and unsure, like he never wanted to speak his feelings out loud, was hard. “I’m going back to the Falconer and I’m going back to Skyfall. If you follow me… I’ll have no choice but to kill you.” He walked past me, no bags or anything in his hands, and headed towards the door.
I threw my hands up into the air and dropped them. “This is fucking normal for this place, asshole,” I yelled at him. “It’s called the greywastes, and I’m what’s called a chimera!” I started walking to him but when he heard me following he whirled around and he held out his hand.
“They realized something when I was sleeping… we’re heading north.” Gage’s eyes flared. “We’re heading towards the plaguelands, aren’t we?”
“We’re not going into the fucking plaguelands, Gage,” I snapped. “So you and your multiple fucking personalities are fine. We’ll be in Mantis soon…” I took a step towards him. “Just go–”
“Quiet!” Gage snarled. He glared me down; his stance showing me he wasn’t fucking around. “I meant what I said. If you take one more step. I’ll kill you. Let me go. We’re not going near the plaguelands, and I will not be with someone of your ferocious nature.”
I wasn’t stupid. I had seen what Gage could do. I glared at him but said nothing, and after several tense moments, Gage nodded. He then turned around, and disappeared out the door.
I walked up the stairs, passing the dead dog and stepping on his blood. I went into the room we had camped in and saw the second dead greywaster. He was dead, but there wasn’t a mark on him, only a great deal of blood which I could see had come out of his ears.