Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3)

by Milo James Fowler

  "Get away from me!"

  I raise my other hand with menace, and a matching set of claws flex outward from my fingers. Before I'm aware of what's happening, my body launches up out of the sand, and I descend upon the scientists with a vengeance that's not my own. My claws rip into them both, blood splashing upward and outward, staining the ground. They writhe under my wrath as I watch, horrified, unable to stop. I shred their suits and their bodies. I squeeze my eyes shut as an all-consuming rage takes control—it's in control, and it's not mine.

  I'm not the one doing this to these men. I can't be.

  I pray for it to stop.

  I sit up from my mattress and cough, choking on the ash covering me. My heart races, pounding like a fist against my chest. I blink, and my eyes sting. Wiping at them only smears the dust from my hands. The interior of my shelter is caked in a layer of ash a centimeter deep. I cough again, feeling the grit coat my throat. How did all this get inside?

  I break open a hydropack and rinse my eyes, nose, and mouth. I reach for my face shield and gloves. Fits of coughing erupt from the other shelters.

  The men are in danger.

  "Luther!" Plato rushes toward me as I emerge from beneath the tarp, fastening my face shield into place. He too is covered in the stuff. "Are you all right?"

  "What's happened? A sandstorm?"

  "If there was, we slept through it."

  I look down the rows of shelters. "Get the men together. We need to assess the situation."

  We shout out the names of our brothers as we go from one shelter to the next and help them overcome their disorientation, wash their faces, get their face shields on, and join the group forming in the center of our village. The invisible Presence I've felt before is stronger now, hovering over us as I look upon the men. They stand dazed and perplexed in a half circle, their jumpsuits filthy.

  It's as though we've been marked.

  A strange thought.

  I train my gaze on our surroundings—silent and still beneath the scorching sun—for any sign of movement. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for; anything that can take the blame would be helpful. The men are on edge, and the last thing they need to hear from me are musings on an invisible Presence watching us.

  "What do we tell them?" Plato stands beside me, his back to the men.

  "All accounted for?" I fight to keep my nerves steady.

  "We're all here." He curses quietly, shaking his head. "What the hell happened?"

  I can't allow the men to panic.

  "Hey Luther, did we sleep through some kinda dust storm or something?" Rip pipes up over the murmuring of the others, and some of them chuckle.

  I can always count on him to lighten the mood. "Yes—" I begin.

  "How did it get inside? I've got ash a couple centimeters deep in my shelter, wall to wall," cuts in one of the men from the back of our assembly. The other men echo his description of the situation, their voices building as tension rises, reaching a crescendo. "No way it could've gotten in on its own!"

  I hold up my gloved hands to quiet them. My mind flashes back to the dream where claws came out of my fingers. I fight to clear my thoughts, even as I remain unsettled by both of the bizarre nightmares I've had today.

  "My friends, you're not alone. We're all in this together. Remember that," I say in a strong, surprisingly confident voice. They begin to quiet down. Their tinted face shields stare at me without expression. "We must remain calm and confront whatever comes our way unified, as one. We're strong together, my friends, strong enough to survive any freak sandstorm that gets us a little dirty." I turn to Plato, hoping I've bought him enough time to develop the sort of rational explanation he's known for. I pat him on the back with a puff of dust and quietly wish him luck as I step aside.

  "Luther's right. Only with peace of mind can there be reason." He clears his throat as he steps forward. "While we were sleeping, there was some kind of...wind disturbance that swept through our village, stirring up the dust inside and out—"

  "Load of crap! Look—the tarps are clean on the outside, just like we left 'em. There's no sign of any sandstorm." The vocal dissenter elbows his way to the front of the crowd. He's called Holmes, always one for a good argument. "You don't have a clue what's happened. Admit it, Plato. You're dumbfounded, just like the rest of us." He gestures to the others who murmur in agreement. "The truth is, we don't know what kinds of things are living out here on the surface!"

  "What are you suggesting?" Samson moves to loom over him with brawny arms crossed, straining the seams of his extra-large sleeves. "You think something attacked us? By sprinkling a little ash in our shelters?" He scoffs, and some of the men chuckle.

  "They could go either way," Plato mutters to me. "If they panic, they'll want to return to the bunker."

  "Not an option." I clench my jaw.

  "We should seal it shut." He grabs hold of my arm as the attention of the men divides between Holmes and Samson, shouts flying from both supporting factions. "There's still time. I can set off the charges."

  Will the bunker be the death of us? Already I see the line drawn between the men. Will they split up—some remaining on the surface to face what comes while others go below, back to the familiar security of concrete and steel where we spent the past two decades?

  I can't allow them to do so. We must move forward. We must overcome this fear of the unknown rearing its ugly head and press on. There's no viable alternative.

  "Do it." Resignation weighs heavy in my tone.

  Plato squeezes my arm and moves quickly down the hill.

  I watch the men as they argue, turned in on themselves, oblivious to anything else. They've overcome so much, only to fall apart at the first sign of the unexpected. Where is our unity? Where is our strength? Was it only a brave facade?

  If we're being watched, we undoubtedly appear weak. If this is a test, then we've failed. If this was merely a preliminary strike of some sort, we may not be strong enough to survive what comes next.

  "Are you watching us?" I whisper. I feel the Presence now close around me, encompassing our village. My heart quickens as my senses tingle. "What do you want?"

  "We should've never left the bunker—not so soon after All-Clear." Holmes has a good number of the men on his side, gathered around him and nodding, murmuring their assent. "We should've made sure it was safe first before we started setting up camp."

  "We did." Samson's posture hasn't changed, and the men siding with him—including Rip—have also adopted it, arms crossed as they nod their approval. "Everything checked out: O2 levels, toxicity, radiation, all of it. We're fine out here."

  "You're sure about that? You've made certain there aren't any fallout freaks anywhere in the vicinity?"

  Is that what he's worried about? I feel myself relax. At least he doesn't share my concerns. It may be better for the men to think they're up against some band of mutant pranksters instead of an indescribable force of nature—if the nature that remains has any force left in it.

  "So that's what's got you scared, Holmes?" Samson laughs heartily, throwing back his head. "You think a bunch of mutants came through here while we were sleeping and—"

  "Have you got a better explanation?" Holmes demands. "Well? What does the mighty Samson have to say?"

  Samson shakes his head slowly, no doubt scowling behind his face shield. "It was just some crazy dust storm, man. You act like we've been attacked or something."

  "Maybe we have!" Holmes shouts. "No one knows exactly what's happened, but it happened while we were sleeping. All of us. And if they come again—I don't want to be killed in my sleep!"

  The men on his side echo "That's right!"

  "They who?" Rip retorts, dwarfed at Samson's side. "Did you see any footprints in your shelter? Cuz I sure as hell didn't. You've got no evidence for these worries of yours, son. And that's not like you at all. Get a grip on yourself!"

  Holmes backs away, pointing at the older man. "You can stay out here and die if you wan
t, but I'm taking my stuff back into the bunker. At least in there I can sleep in peace!" He reels to face the men behind him and shouts, "Who's with me?"

  A roar of approval answers him, and they disband to retrieve their belongings from their shelters. I've seen enough.

  "Wait!" Hands raised again, I approach them, pleading with them. "My friends—my brothers—please, hear me!"

  They stop and turn, but they don't join Samson and the others. They remain scattered, each headed toward his own shelter. Holmes turns away.

  "My friends...Holmes—" His face shield turns back toward me. "You have a valid concern, and you're right: We don't know what's happened. But we can't allow it to divide us. We must stay together, for it's in our unity that we've always found our strength." I gesture with my arms outstretched as if to embrace them all. "We're brothers, and if there is an adversary who wishes us harm, then it's only together as one that we can—"

  "Preach it to your choir, Luther." Holmes shakes his head. "We don't want to die out here."

  They go to their shelters and disappear inside. My arms drop to my sides as I stare after them. I won't attempt to persuade them anymore. Is it because part of me agrees with Holmes? Do we even belong out here on the surface?

  This world is no longer our own.

  Regardless, the bunker will be sealed shut, and we'll have to move forward with a breach among us the likes of which we've never dealt with before. I'll have to do my best to convince them there is nothing to fear...while convincing myself of the same thing.

  Am I the only one who feels this Presence pressing in? I can't be.

  "What are you?" I whisper. "Spirit of the wounded earth? Souls of the departed?"

  Was there no room in the Afterlife for the billions of lives suddenly extinguished all at once on D-Day? That couldn't be. The Creator exists outside of time and space and would have been able to foresee all the horrific acts His creation were doomed to commit. He would have made room in Heaven for the victims. Hell would have been reserved for those responsible.

  What about the other forms of life that once thrived on our planet? Mammals and birds, fish and reptiles, amphibians and insects. They lived and breathed, just as we did, on the surface of our shared world. Before the end, were any of them sent below? Or had the government scientists believed we could live without them?

  The earth is so empty in their absence.

  "Are you...?" I whisper, unable to articulate my thoughts.

  Could it be that the Presence I feel is in actuality the collective spirit of all the creatures who once lived in this world, those for whom the planet was first created? Could it be that they've never left us? That the bioweapons and bombs were never able to completely destroy them? Do they continue to live on...as this brooding life force?

  An explosive blast thunders from the bunker, and the ground trembles. I catch my breath, my heart lurching, even though I knew it was coming. Plato has done it.

  My fingers tingle strangely, and I look down at them. Sharp claws slowly retract through holes torn in each of my gloved fingertips.

  Time stops.

  In the silence, I stare at my gloves. I turn them over in between heartbeats and swallow. I wiggle my fingers and see each one through its hole—both hands, both gloves. I exhale in a short burst and grit my teeth.

  The dream...

  What's happening to me?

  Men are shouting and running, all of them moving en masse across the plateau, down the hill.

  "Luther—the bunker!" One of them grabs at my shoulder as he rushes by.

  I turn slowly, moving as I do in dreams. But as I look down the hill, I know this is no dream. Smoke, dark and thick, billows upward from the bunker's blackened blast door. The rock face around it has caved inward, large chunks of earth lying on top of one another against the sealed door. There is no way it can be opened again, either from within or without. The mechanisms have been destroyed, and even if Holmes wants to dig through the rock face around the door, he'll be unable to penetrate the reinforced steel to enter the shaft below.

  The deed is done. There is no going back now, not for any of us.

  I look at my gloves again, my feet rooted. A cacophony of shouts echoes below me, and there may be fighting. I can barely hear it though, as all my senses are overwhelmed by one question.

  I flex my fingers, and the claws, long and sharp like an eagle's talons, extend outward, gleaming under the sun.

  What am I?

  3 Daiyna

  Four Weeks after All-Clear

  We've been changed.

  I don't know when or how it happened—maybe during that first dust storm that came upon us in the night as we traveled—but something has turned us into more than we were. I try to accept it as Mother has advised us, that this is our new reality.

  It's in the evenings like this when I'm alone that these thoughts return. I have to do something to pass the time and keep my mind alert; otherwise I'll surrender to the sleep that lurks in the shadows, and my sisters will be left in danger. Only a couple hours more, then my watch will be over. One of the others will pace across the width of this cave with a makeshift spear, holding the hungry daemons at bay.

  The only way we've managed to stay alive is by outwitting them with our gifts, as Mother Lairen calls our new abilities. The daemons don't seem very intelligent, even though they're the ones with the vehicles and real firepower. We have only what we were able to piece together after we stripped the bunker bare and headed up to these caves in the mountains. My weapon is an ingenious combination of a two-meter long PVC pipe, some duct tape, and a serrated scrap of steel. I've yet to use it in battle. None of our weapons have been put to the test. Our gifts alone have kept us alive.

  Mother Lairen—the oldest and wisest among us—believes the Creator in her infinite wisdom bestowed these abilities upon us as an act of divine mercy, knowing we would need them to survive in a strange new world.

  She might be right. But I have my own ideas.

  We're mutants.

  Something in the air we're breathing—or in the contaminated dust at our feet that has a bizarre tendency to move at will—has gotten inside our lungs and changed us. I don't know how, but the results are clear to see. Some of the women can hear sounds from great distances. Others can see farther than humanly possible. A few now have the strength to move large boulders. Most of us can see in the dark, which is obviously helpful during these night watches. Everything I see, from the barren land below to the ridge of the mountainside, is cast in a bright blue monochrome by my gifted eyes.

  I'm sure there are sisters in our midst who have yet to become aware of their abilities. That's the funny thing about these gifts—they tend to emerge without warning, right when we need them most. Perhaps they do come from the Creator as part of her provision.

  But from the start, it's felt like something else.

  I sensed it the moment we stepped out of the bunker a month ago and looked out across this lifeless world. Yes, it was empty, missing every living creature that used to thrive on its surface. But even in the desolation, I instantly felt a Presence, one I couldn't name or describe.

  We weren't alone—that much I knew for certain.

  Maybe it was some sort of intuition, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be long until this Presence—or life force, or energy, as I struggled to give it an identity—manifested itself, either benignly or malevolently. Many of the others, including Mother Lairen, dismissed the idea as medieval superstition. They believed in the Creator as the one and only supernatural force to be reckoned with.

  But some of us have come to believe this nearly tangible Presence we feel is more than just a figment of our collective imagination. It's directly related to our gifts.

  They appeared among us following the sandstorms.

  A few days after All-Clear, when the blast door to our bunker finally gave us the green light, we carried everything outside that might later prove useful. The life support systems had shut down as
soon as we opened the door, so there was no going back. Some of us wanted to build shelters nearby in case we needed the bunker for safety. There was talk of dangerous rain and other remnants of the fallout we had yet to endure. But Mother Lairen insisted that we let go of the past and move forward to create a new life for ourselves. So we made a mass exodus, all one hundred fifty of us, toward the caves up in the mountains less than a kilometer away. Very slow going at first—until that first sandstorm.

  The weird thing about it was that there was no storm, really; there was no wind. The dust and ash started moving at first, seemingly of their own volition, swirling across the tops of rocks and along the ground at our feet, increasing in both volume and intensity. We found shelter in crevices, covered our face shields with our arms as the dust devils whirled the sand and gravel upward, expanding outward. We hid between boulders, beneath the tarps and sheets and mattresses we carried. After the storm, we all were covered in a thick layer of ash.

  I remember the taste of it in my mouth, the stale grit on my tongue. My face shield had been shut, fastened to the collar of my jumpsuit, but somehow the stuff had penetrated the polymer. The same happened to each of us. And as we shook ourselves off to resume our climb toward the caves above, we immediately became aware of the strength and agility we now possessed. We were able to leap from rock to ledge, swinging from one handhold to the next with ease, as we scaled sheer rock faces with our supplies in tow. It came as instinct, and we marveled at our newfound abilities. We quickly came to enjoy our gifts as we put them to use.

  Mother Lairen later said we'd been born again, christened by our Creator with the dust of a new earth. Yet at the time, she seemed unnerved by it. I'd never seen her so disturbed by anything. She grew very quiet and would not eat with us during our mealtimes. She said she was fasting and praying. It wasn't long afterward that we reached the caves, so we had something else to turn our attention to: making a new home for ourselves. For a while we tried to forget about the sandstorm and our miraculous climb.

  Then one moonless night, Sheylia—a frail girl—said she saw something in the distance. A few of us joined her, and though we craned our necks and squinted our eyes, looking left and right from atop our perch on the rock ledge, it was in vain.