Fallocaust (The Fallocaust Series) by Quil Carter Page B

though, he was an orphan, raised by the town leaders. He was described as cold hearted, unemotional, cruel and ruthless. He had even gotten the per diem job as executioner because of his nature. Mom told me he liked killing people so much Greyson thought he might as well kill the diseased or condemned while he was at it. Mom said she heard him laugh once as he shot a baby, but I don’t think that was true.
Mom had really hated him.
I plucked a few notes on my guitar. A special one I had made for myself after my parents had died. It was still in tune, I usually had to tune it after every session. I had built it pretty well but the knobs always seemed to loosen easier.
Today found me sitting on a concrete block in the town square. Reaver was behind me on one of his favourite spots on top of a large shed. He was sitting on a pile of crates, probably watching me.
I was used to it now, and deep down I felt kind of special that he had decided to follow me, even if I knew it should have scared me. At first I was sure Greyson had paid him to keep an eye on me after my parents died. And maybe he had, but I had heard Greyson make quips about him doing it. So I knew he didn’t anymore, unless they were trying to throw me off.
    I knew if I was ever to find out why Reaver had started and continued to follow me, I would hear it from Leo or Greyson, but they never said enough for me to go on. Greyson and Leo were the only ones who seemed allowed to talk to Reaver like that. Everyone else was too afraid.
And everyone told me I should be scared of him too…
    To be honest, I had been mad at first more than scared. The first time he had followed me was when I had left the block. I had to convince Sadii I had a weapon on me, which I didn’t. She knew how dangerous it was outside the walls, but at that point I didn’t care. My parents had died a month previous and this was one of the first times I had left my house.
It wasn’t because I needed quiet though, I had wanted to die that day.
    I had nothing on but a tattered t-shirt, jeans, and a few books. I had decided that day that I couldn’t take it anymore.
    My hands were red and raw from scrubbing the house top to bottom. The bleach I had used had eaten away a lot of my skin. I had gone crazy in there, thinking back. My mom and dad had been so ravaged by disease before they were taken to quarantine, that they had left imprints of blood and bodily fluids; the smell had been horrible. In our house, the house we had fixed up and made a home.
    I stayed outside their quarantined shacks and I refused to move. I didn’t leave until Leo forced me to take a walk with him. I remember seeing Reaver skulk in the shadows, not realizing he was their executioner. I broke down when I heard the gunshots.
When I came back to our house, the smell was unimaginable. The flies were everywhere and hundreds of maggots had infested their blood and fluid stained beds and any place they had laid while they were sick. Their bodies seemed to have secreted this vile fluid from their pores and wherever they sat, I could see maggots wiggling around in the stains. Little grains of rice that seemed stationary, until you looked closer and could see hundreds of writhing bodies.
    I stayed up for days, scrubbing. All I would do was clean, cry, clean, scream. The cleaning kept my mind off of my reality. My parents were dead, I was alone in the greywastes. In this fucked up, mad house of a world King Silas had created for us. Far away from Tamerlan, my factory town outside of Skyfall, far away from any hope of safety.
    I wouldn’t last long, and I would probably die in the worst possible way. I had seen the ravers, I had seen them eating people alive. One of the mercenaries that had accompanied us to Aras was the one that haunted me the most. His shrieks woke me up at night, his begging eyes haunting me. The crazed radiated ravers had disembowelled him and had eaten his organs while he was alive.
    Humans were never meant to