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

by Milo James Fowler

  She slows half a step, confusion clouding her eyes. "You shot them..." she trails off.

  "They weren't right. There was something wrong with them. I could tell. But not you—you're different. Why do you think I didn't shoot you first? You don't want to do this. You don't want to kill me."

  She scowls, looking down at the concrete floor. "But you killed them."

  My rear end bumps into the elevator doors. I hit the DOWN pad, my hand fumbling spastically, my heart racing. I have to keep talking, keep her listening.

  "You don't have to be like this. You didn't ask to be this way, did you? Of course not. Those three back there, there was no hope for them. But you'll be fine. We can make you better. You'll be yourself again in no time."

  My words are having an effect on her. She's glancing down at the claws protruding from her fingers and toes. I've got to keep adding to her confusion, keep her distracted.

  "You want that, don't you? To be yourself again? You weren't created like this, not by God. It's the ash out there that did this to you, that demon-dust. The earth's not the way we left it. They did something to it, something bad, when they nuked the hell out of it, and it's infected you. But we can make you the person you used to be."

  Am I getting through to her? Is she faltering?

  Her head snaps up, eyes locked on me. "I like myself this way."

  With a shriek and a growl, she lunges at me. I cower, shielding myself. Her claws rake across my forearms as she descends on me in a vengeful frenzy. I fall back against the elevator doors, my head colliding with them repeatedly as I fend off her wild blows. Her fangs flash. She's going to sink them into my jugular. It's only a matter of time.

  I can't fight her off much longer. She's too strong.

  What'll happen to all the others below? Dozens and dozens of them with no idea what's going on up here... Will she kill them too, one by one? Or will she turn them all into mutant freaks, biting them like a vampire?

  Will she turn me into one?

  The doors slide open without warning, and I fall inside with her on top of me, her jaws snapping at my face.

  "Willard? What the—!" Tucker gasps.

  "Guns! Get the guns!" I scream.

  "Guns? We don't have—"

  "The bunker door—GO!"

  She jerks her head up to hiss a warning, and he leaps backward, trembling and wide-eyed.

  "What the hell!" he yelps.

  I throw my elbow into her face, smashing her nose. The blow stuns her for a moment, long enough for me to wave Tucker in the right direction, for him to squeeze past us. He takes off as fast as he can for the bunker door, his boots pounding up the corridor.

  All too soon, she regains her composure. She looks down at me with blood oozing from her nostrils and laughs. She's enjoying this—the thrill of the hunt. Will she kill me now or go after Tucker, save me for later?

  "You're pathetic." She spits into my face. Then she pulls me up by the throat for a brutal head butt.

  I fall to the elevator floor with a dagger of pain slicing through my forehead. Everything goes black for a second, then flashes white. Her shadow whips away and wild laughter echoes after her.

  She's going for Tucker. She'll dispatch him quickly, and then she'll be back for me...and the others.

  I have to get up. No. I have to get down. The DOWN arrow. But everything's black again, and I'm so exhausted...

  I have to warn the others below. The DOWN arrow. Where is it?

  The sound of a gunshot explodes, echoing all around me, followed by another and another. Surging adrenaline sends me to my feet. I hit the pad on the wall, and the elevator doors slide shut slowly but securely. My lungs shudder as I struggle for a deep breath. I grip the handrail behind me, falling back against it.

  They'll believe me now. They'll have to. We can't go out there. Not ever. We'll have to find another way out. We'll disable the elevator, seal the doors. Find another exit. Somewhere, far from here, where the demon-dust can't find us.

  Seconds pass like minutes as I'm carried down the shaft. My forehead throbs, tender to the touch. My forearms ooze thick streaks of blood where her claws lacerated my flesh.

  The elevator touches down, and the doors slide open. Sucking in a breath, I step across the threshold and into the security of our bunker. Our fortress. The last bastion of humanity, the way God intended us to be.

  His Chosen People.

  "Code red! Code red!" My voice comes out stronger than I would've thought possible. "Fall in!"

  Heads turn and stare. Folks drop what they're doing and swarm me from all corners of the bunker, murmured voices mingled. I raise my arms high, and gasps echo at the sight of all that blood.

  "Willard, what's happened?"

  "What's going on, Willard?"

  "Quiet down!" I clench my fists in the air. "Listen to me. We have to disable the elevator so what's up there—" I point. "Doesn't come down here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What's up there?"

  "Listen!" I keep one foot in the elevator to hold the doors open. "Somebody get me a toolkit—on the double."

  Perch and one of the women scurry away to retrieve what I'll need to open the control panel and cut the hard lines. Then let that she-devil just try to come down here.

  It would be nice to have those guns and knives. But no, not an option. Can't risk going topside ever again. This is the only way.

  Perch is back. "Here you go, Willard." He holds up the toolkit, then tosses it to me over the heads of the throng.

  I catch it with both hands. "Keep these doors open."

  "Sure thing." Jamison shoves his full weight against the open door.

  "What are you doing?" someone cries.

  "That's the only way out! You can't!"

  They press against Jamison, but he does his best to hold them back.

  "Take your time, Boss," he grunts with a grimace.

  I turn to the control panel and activate the toolkit. "Just a temporary solution, folks," I explain over my shoulder. "You don't want to go up against what I've seen." The cover plate is off. I drop it to the floor. "It's like nothing you could imagine."

  "Some kind of animal up there?" Perch calls out from the back of the mob. They quiet down to hear my answer.

  "Not exactly." The rhythmic vibration of the toolkit in my hand is familiar, soothing. I feel my pulse slow down as I activate the cutter and aim for the wiring behind the panel. "She used to be one of us. Before the ash got to her."

  "There he goes again," one of the women mutters. Others scoff, mocking me. Some of the men join in, too.

  "There were four of them." One of the lines snaps and hangs limp. Two more to go. "They attacked me as soon as they got back from scouting."

  The scoffing dies out. Now it's only whispers and low tones.

  "Sharon and the girls?" Jamison manages hoarsely. "They did that to you?"

  The next line snaps. On to the third. "Don't say that name." I shake my head. "She hasn't been herself since the first time she stepped outside. None of 'em have."

  "Where's Tucker?" Someone finally notices his absence.

  "He didn't make it." The last line is cut. I shut off the toolkit and pocket it. I turn to face Jamison. "You can let go."

  He lifts his hand and backs away a step. The doors don't move. In this case, that's a good thing. The elevator is no longer an issue.

  "So now what?" snaps one of the women. "We all die down here?"

  Of course not, idiot. I choose to ignore her. She might have gone out on one of the scouting trips, now that I think of it. There could be demon-dust festering in her lungs. I'll need to keep a close eye on her.

  "Let me through." Another woman pushes her way toward the elevator. She left the group earlier when Perch went for the toolkit. Her name's Margo. As far as I know, she hasn't been on the surface yet. But I could be wrong.

  "Clear a path, folks." She's carrying a medkit.

  She'll want to tend to my arms. Should I let her
? Or should I shove my toolkit into her stomach and turn it on high? I've never thought of using it for that sort of thing before. I wonder what would happen. Probably make a nasty mess.

  "Show's over, everybody." Perch attempts to disband the masses as he follows Margo. "Nothing here to see."

  They don't seem to agree. And they don't seem very happy.

  "So what do you expect us to do now, Willard? Go back to our chores?"

  "I'm not leaving until Willard explains himself!"

  "How long does he think we can survive down here?"

  I hold up my arms again, and the uproar dies faster than it began. Unblinking eyes focus on the jagged claw marks and trails of blood.

  "Listen up!" I shout so all ninety-odd of them can hear me. Margo waits nearby with the medkit, her dark eyes attentive. They're all watching me, expecting something. I can't say too much here. Some of them might be dormant ash freaks waiting to come into their own. "Folks, we can't go out on the surface."

  "Tooting the same old horn, Willard!" shrills a woman's voice in back. Low murmurs of dissension follow.

  "I'd say it's a little different now." Perch gestures at my arms. "So shut up and listen, Catherine. All of you. Let's hear what he's got to say." He stares some of them down, his block jaw set. Then he turns to me. "Go on, Boss."

  Has Catherine been outside? I should've taken those guns. Things got out of hand up there too fast. I was outnumbered, and they attacked me. The way it happened was the only way it could have. But what about Tucker?

  I take note of the disdain here and there amongst the faces staring back at me. My mustache itches all of a sudden.

  "I know we can't make it down here much longer. We've managed the impossible already. The fact that we're still breathing O2 is a miracle, and each one of you is to thank for that. We all play our parts for the greater good." I let those words sink in.

  I'm not the bad guy here. I'm their savior—they just don't realize it yet. They're not enlightened, but I'll show them the way. They need to be calmed down, reassured first. Then they'll fall in line.

  "Like I said before, things aren't right on the surface. There's no life out there, nothing. It's not the way they told us it would be. Those government scientists had no clue what would be waiting for us after All-Clear. They couldn't have known what would be in the air."

  Hushed whispers travel from mouth to mouth.

  "Sharon said it was fine," Catherine counters. "She's gone out there multiple times looking for—"

  "She was reckless. She lost one of the jeeps, and she lost more than that." I nod my head slowly. They're hanging on my every word now. Even Catherine is listening, her big fish mouth hanging wide open. "Sharon lost her mind." I hold up my arms again as proof. "I did what I could to defend myself. She'd been changed—all four of them. They weren't...human anymore. They were savages."

  Gasps echo.

  Jamison stammers, "But how? What changed them? How'd it happen?"

  I have my theories, and I'll tell him later, in private. I'll tell him how we need to isolate everyone who's been topside and monitor them for any behavior out of the ordinary. But for now, I play dumb.

  "I don't know what caused it, but this much is clear: they've been out on the surface, scouting things for us since All-Clear. More than once, I've seen them return without their O2 masks on. So it's got to be something out there, in the air. It turned them into dangerous psychotics. And I sure as hell don't want that to happen to anybody else."

  Margo clears her throat quietly. "And they're..." She looks upward.

  "Who is it?" Catherine demands. "They have names, Willard. Don't talk about them like they're—"

  "They're not who they were!" My outburst echoes loudly, and silence follows. "Get that through your head! It wasn't Sharon or Anna or Kelly or anyone you know. They stopped being human and turned into something else. Something unnatural." I swallow as an image of her gleaming, snapping fangs passes through my mind. "An abomination."

  Catherine stares back at me, biting her lip. Is she afraid? No longer worried about her friends above us, now she's only concerned about herself, what she might become. I see it in her eyes. And I'm glad.

  "So what do we do?" Margo asks. "After I clean up those wounds of yours." She steps closer, and my abdomen tightens. Because of her proximity?

  The DOWN arrow on the elevator lights up with a sudden ding, followed by gasps all around me. It can mean only one thing.

  "Who is it?" someone whispers.

  "Somebody up top...wants down," another one states the obvious.

  It could be her, the last one. She's finished off Tucker, and she wants more blood. Or it's Tucker. He took her out, and he's wondering where I am, why I left him. That wouldn't be good. He's supposed to be dead.

  He didn't make it. That's what I told everybody. It would definitely make things awkward to have him join the land of the living again. I would lose my credibility.

  Better for him, better for all of us, if he stays dead.

  "Not to worry." I gesture at the disabled control panel. "There's no chance anyone can get down here."

  "Or any of us can get topside," counters a fellow in the back named Mathis. "How long did you say we'd keep the elevator out of commission, Willard?"

  I didn't say. And I don't like his tone. Has he been out on the surface too?

  "Long as we need to. Long as we can." What we need are those guns. I could jury-rig the elevator one last time, take Perch and Jamison up with me. The bunker door was shut, but given time, she'll probably open it. She won't want to stay in that hallway forever. She'll leave the weapons, won't have any use for them. Not with her fangs and claws. "Eventually, she'll get tired of pushing that button." Another ding holds the moment. I clear my throat to quiet the furtive whispers. "She'll get bored and move on. She'll get hungry." No, probably not. With those bodies up there, she'll have plenty to feed on. Assuming that's her diet now. "She'll get cold, and she'll have to move on. We just have to wait her out."

  But if it's Tucker...

  The same would apply to him.

  "I don't think we've got that long, Willard." Mathis points at the vents in the walls. "Without fresh O2 from above, we've got nothing to filter through the system." He shakes his head. "It could go kaput in the middle of the night. What then?"

  I step into the middle of them. This is the moment I've been waiting for.

  "There's another way out," I say with absolute certainty.

  Eyes widen. Murmurs flow. Catherine and Mathis are suddenly without words. But of course they are. They had no idea about this. Neither did I.

  I hope to God I'm right.

  Time for the big reveal. I let the silence run on long enough for their anticipation to build sufficiently. Then I let them have it—as much as I can engineer on short notice.

  "There's a system of tunnels behind one of the walls in our bunker. Used to be for groundwater routing, back in the old days. Now it's empty."

  I point vaguely in the direction of our southwestern corner. If these fortuitous tunnels exist, they should take us right up under that town the panther-women found.

  "They're just waiting to lead us to our new home. Might require a bit of elbow grease to get the job done, but I think we're up to the task." I grin at the looks on their faces. Wonderment now. Glances are exchanged, shoulders drop with relief. I clap my hands once, loudly. "So what do you say we break those sledgehammers out of storage and get to work?"

  Voices rise with enthusiasm. Most turn away with newfound optimism, but every party has its pooper.

  "How come you haven't told us about these tunnels before now, Willard?" Mathis steps forward, his voice raised. The disbanding of the masses slows to a halt as they turn to watch me. "You've never mentioned them. Not even once."

  My jaw muscle twitches as I meet his insubordinate stare with as much confidence as I can muster. I know I'm right. I have to be. There's another way out of here, and it's behind the southwest wall. We just have
to punch through the concrete, then they'll see. The sledgehammers should do the job nicely.

  Almighty God, I pray I'm right.

  "Tell me, Mathis. Would you take the emergency exit if the front door was wide open?" I grin at his confused look. "Until now, we haven't needed another way out. But now we do. That's why I've decided to mention it. You don't want to stay down here forever, do you?"

  My response seems to satisfy everyone else, and they drift away, chuckling among themselves. Perch leads a handful to the storeroom with, "Sledgehammers this way!"

  Jamison moves to join them. I grab his arm. "The southwest wall. Start there." Makes sense, that being the direction of the town she found. But I feel dizzy all of a sudden... My knees give out.

  "Steady there," Jamison grunts under my weight. He helps me to the concrete floor, wet with my own blood. He glares at Margo.

  "Don't give me that look. I didn't want to interrupt him." Margo douses my arms with fluid from a hydropack. "He was on a roll."

  "You could've tended to him while he was giving his speech," Jamison mutters. "Just look at him."

  "He's lost some blood, but he'll be all right. Help me cut away his sleeves—what's left of them." Her hands are soft and gentle on me.

  Jamison stands. "Southwest wall!" he directs the others. "Get started!"

  So it begins.

  Ding. The elevator again. Guess she's still interested in me.

  I have to smirk at that.

  "Looks like a tiger came after you, Boss. What the hell?" Jamison curses.

  Tucker's reaction was the same: What the hell? Maybe the demon-dust is from hell. That would explain a lot. The nukes from D-Day opened a portal into the dark side, and now... I'm not thinking clearly.

  "It was like nothing I've ever seen." My tongue is sticky. I try to swallow.

  "Drink." Margo holds the remainder of the hydropack to my mouth, but I hesitate. "Drink," she insists, and I obey.

  Much better. I swallow easily. "They morphed somehow, teeth elongating into fangs, fingernails and toenails into claws. It was...surreal." I shake my head. "Can't explain it."

  Jamison bites his lip. "And Tucker? Did they... I mean, how did they—?"

  "Morbid," Margo interjects. She's cut away the shreds of my jumpsuit sleeves, and now she applies the healing salve, glistening in the spare light.