The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2 (The Fallocaust Series) by Quil Carter

heart lurched at his voice, and more tears burned my eyes.
    Elish responded to Reaver, “No, he disabled all cameras and hid all the proof, if that is what he did.”
    “What’s going on?” I sniffed. “Do you have the boys?”
    “No,” Elish said sharply back. I clamped my mouth shut and tried to force down the constriction in my neck that told me if I spoke any more words I was going to start sobbing like an idiot.
    They hadn’t found the boys yet... but why did they want to know if Leo performed brain surgery?
    Elish was talking to Reaver; Reaver didn’t sound happy at all. I stayed on the phone watching my boots become speckled with tears.
    I hated it here, I hated being alone.
    “Elish?” I croaked. “Can I take the quad to Tintown? I don’t want to stay here.”
    Why was I asking him permission? Maybe I was used to answering to chimeras now.
    “Yes, I insist that you do. Go to Tintown and keep the phone charged and ready. We are tracking Jade and Killian now.”
    Did that mean they found signs of them? I knew better than to ask.
    “We’ll keep in touch. Don’t travel to any location that doesn’t have cell reception and don’t take the blocker off of the phone either,” Elish said, and with a quick goodbye he was gone.
    And here I was alone again but at least there was some light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how faint. I could get out of this bunker that I felt was slowly squeezing the life out of me.
    So I was a vagabond, but at least I had a lot of money and a quad, so maybe in a way I had just emotionally freed myself. If there was one thing I had going for me it was that being in the company of chimeras gave me a lot of fringe benefits. Though black cards were as good as worthless in the greywastes I had a couple thousand dollars stuffed on my person.
    There were no teary goodbyes to the bunker, or to Aras. As I rolled the quad out of those steel doors I realized I had been saying a slow goodbye to my home for the last couple of months.
     
    I rolled into Tintown three days later. A town twice the size of Aras, with large walls made up of concrete blocks, rusted sheets of metal, and old cars. There were no deacons but like Aras they had sentries, dozens of them. Standing like crows behind the rust streaked walls, all of them wearing thick wool jackets and ear-flapped hats.
    “Hey, mate! I haven’t seen you around before.” I smiled to myself as the cheerful boy looked down at me with a friendly grin. It was such a contrasting response to what I got in Aras I felt my spirits get lifted. This might not be home but they had greywasters on the walls and right now that meant the world to me.
    “My name is Reno formerly from Aras,” I called up to him. “That place has gone to shit and I need a town to bunk in for a little while and a place to stash my quad.”
    The young man nodded; his eyes squinted as he looked up at the grey sun. “Yeah, we have been getting a few of them since legion law came into play there. Come on in and make yourself at home. Paul stashes the vehicles for travellers just leave it where it is and you can collect and pay once you leave. Half a buck a night, is that alright?”
    I nodded. We had similar arrangements in Aras. “Sounds good, bro.”
    The sound of rusted metal scraping together could be heard. In front of me two flat pieces of sheet metal reinforced with a bolted on chain-link fence scraped open. It was like the rusty old gates of heaven opening up for me, though anything that wasn’t that bunker was heaven.
    I walked through the doors and was immediately greeted by the smell of smoke, rotting meat, and dirt. There was nothing more greywaster than that; it put another smile to my face. Skyfall smelled like fucking flowers and pretention and I was more than happy to get back to my roots.
    I gave the gate keeper an appreciative wave and walked into Tintown, deliberately taking in deep breaths as I found the main street. It was a single road with