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

by Milo James Fowler

  "The whole world is still at peace, and they're watching us," Tucker continues. "We're on a post-apocalyptic reality show! I'm sure the ratings are great. And now a word from our sponsors…"

  Boots crunch across the ground behind me, and I turn in time to see a daemon stagger out of a sublevel's open doorframe a few meters away. I freeze. We're in the shadows, hidden from the moonlight by a structure on our left. Tucker's footprints haven't moved. He must see it, too.

  The vile creature snorts, grunting to itself. Then a stream of urine issues forth from its crotch, splashing aimlessly across the broken pavement. The daemon stretches, arms over its head. Half asleep? Unarmed. Would I stand a chance against it hand to hand? I glance around at the rubble I could jump onto and climb out of reach, if need be. My muscles are tense, ready to spring into action. I watch, I wait. Maybe it will go back inside when it's done relieving itself.

  "Die, you freak!" Tucker shouts.

  The daemon turns on us with a snarl, just as an invisible gun fires beside me. The shot explodes through the creature's bulging, lidless eye and out the back of its head with a burst of blood. It grunts, staring at us stupidly, head wobbling like it's on loose. Then the legs give out, and the daemon drops to the ground.

  A strong hand grabs hold of my arm, and instantly my invisible companion materializes into flesh and blood before my eyes. Startled, I draw back from him, but he holds me tight, raising the handgun in front of his lips. "Shh," he whispers. "They don't like it when I wake 'em up early."

  As if on cue, snorting and grunting sounds come from both sides of the street, and footsteps scurry toward us through the dark. My stomach drops. It's just as I feared. These ruins are like an ant hill. And we've disturbed them.

  "What were you thinking?" I hiss, turning my fear into anger and directing it at the man beside me. The one I can see now. "You knew this would happen."

  "Usually does." He shrugs and grins, the blond stubble on his tanned cheeks folding back in creases. "They're nothing if not predictable."

  I stare at him, too furious to say more. His grip on me is firm as he guides us behind a mound of broken concrete from which we'll hold a vantage point in the shadows. I could pull free of his grasp, but I don't.

  Can I see him now because he's touching me? Is he visible now, or am I invisible like he is?

  The scurrying feet of the daemon horde become pronounced footfalls as the creatures emerge from all sides, stumbling blindly in the dark. Quickly they come upon the one Tucker shot, and they crowd around it, grunting loudly, shoving against one another. Dozens of them...and more on the way. They pass by us without any sign of noticing our presence. But all it will take is one to alert the others.

  I glance at Tucker's face. Grim, jaw set, staring hard at the creatures. Did he know there were so many? Does he have a death wish?

  The grunting and shoving among the daemons subsides as they turn their attention to their surroundings, arching their backs and craning their necks at odd angles, their arms dangling limply at their sides. Looking, listening.

  For us.

  One of them snorts loudly. Then another one does the same, sniffing the air. Smelling us out.

  We can't stay here. I pull against Tucker's grip, but he locks his icy blue eyes on me and shakes his head. His meaning is clear: we stay put.

  Please help us, I pray to the spirits. Where are they now?

  The daemons—fifty of them, maybe more—snort with their heads tilted back, their oozing nasal cavities directed skyward. They stumble away from the fallen member of their clan and spread outward. Six of them come within a few meters of us. Two face us. I hold my breath as they stagger closer.

  Every nerve in me is ready to spring upward and make a run for it. I've seen them move. I would have the advantage.

  Tucker raises his gun, keeping it level with the skull of the daemon closest to us. As the creature steps ever closer, snorting intermittently, Tucker tightens his grip, finger curled around the trigger.

  Now it's my turn to shake my head. Unless he has enough rounds to take them all out, this would be suicide.

  I tug against his hold on me, trying to get his attention. But he ignores me, his eyes fixed on the daemon now close enough to touch us if it swings one of those misshapen arms our way. The stench of rotten flesh is strong, the fluid dripping from every facial orifice defying description, it's so foul. I fight the gag reflex forcing its way up my throat.

  The daemon is close enough to lose its head if Tucker pulls the trigger. The mutant stands oblivious, twitching its eyes as it halts its approach. The others have done the same. They sway slightly on their feet, holding their position. Silently.

  Then one of them farthest from us grunts and turns away. The others do the same, one after another, staggering into the darkness. Within a minute, they've all disappeared, back into the sublevels they came from. All except the one near us. It hasn't moved.

  It stands rooted, swaying strangely, head cocked to the side onto its large, deformed shoulder. The yellow eyes stare straight at us, unblinking.

  What's it waiting for? If it knows we're here, why doesn't it do something? I look at Tucker. If he shoots it, we'll be right back where we started, with all its friends climbing out of the woodwork.

  Why's Tucker grinning?

  He lowers his weapon, tucking it into the belt of his jumpsuit. He stifles a chuckle at my reaction and gestures to the daemon, then pretends to nod off. I turn back to the daemon in disbelief. It's asleep?

  "They gotta have their beauty winks," he whispers, letting go of me and vanishing in an instant.

  The daemon disappears as well, blinking out of existence. But after the sharp crack of a bone breaking and the thump a body collapsing, it reappears, lying on the ground like a rag doll with its head twisted violently to one side.

  "Probably should've done the first one that way." Tucker becomes visible again as he grasps my arm.

  "I'm invisible when you touch me."

  He nods.

  Fear and anger squirm within me. When he let go of me to break that daemon's neck, I was exposed. For that brief instant, he allowed me to become visible while he committed that brutal act.

  No. Killing any daemon, awake or asleep, armed or unarmed, is never a brutal act. It's necessary.

  "We should keep moving," I mutter.

  "You mind?" He squeezes my arm slightly.

  "As long as they can't see me, hold on."

  He grins. "Those scientists are geniuses, I'm telling you. I don't know how they pulled it off, but I ain't complaining. Everything I touch—poof! Like a magical cloak."

  He guides me around the heap of rubble, and we resume our trek through the city. I move with more caution now, avoiding anything that will crunch under foot. Even if we are invisible to the daemons, I don't want to go up against that many of them again anytime soon—not without enough fire power to put them all down.

  I glance at Tucker's hand on my arm, just above my elbow. No man has touched me like this before, as though he's escorting me to some fancy party. Samson has touched me, or tried to. He jerked me around a few times yesterday when we were attacked, and he might have saved my life in the process. The big oaf. I hate to admit it, but I miss him.

  Only yesterday? It seems like so long ago.

  We walk in silence for a kilometer or two. My gaze roams from one blown-out structure to the next, keeping an eye out for any other daemons startled from their slumber. The sky is a deep indigo now. The stars are fading, the moon a faint disc. Morning is coming, maybe an hour or so away.

  "How does this invisibility of yours work in daylight?"

  He turns sharply on me, as if he forgot I was there. "Oh. You know. Comes and goes. Works best at night, for some reason. Not so good after sun up." He shrugs. "Hell if I know why. But that'll be the first thing I ask 'em."

  The government scientists. Did any of them survive?

  "So what did they do with all the animals? Birds, reptiles, you name it.
Where'd they go?" I might as well probe his theories.

  He frowns at me like I'm speaking nonsense. "None of those around."

  "Right...not anymore. But there used to—"

  "Not here," he scoffs. He shakes his head. "It's not like Earth."

  I try to follow his reasoning. "Not like it was."

  "You think we're still on Earth?" He casts me a sideways glance. "Seriously, does this look anything like Earth to you?"

  Of course not. The nukes from D-Day changed everything. But it's still the same planet. I'm sure it is.

  "They took us off-world." He nods to himself. "The bunkers were really in the bellies of space ships, and it took them twenty years to reach this planet. Haven't you wondered where everybody else is?"

  Now I'm lost. Wasn't he just saying earlier that the rest of the world is watching us?

  "They...didn't make it." I remember what Luther told me about what happened in Milton's bunker, Sector 43. "Or the mutants ate them." Or the evil spirits killed them, as they did to Mother Lairen and the others from my sector.

  He shrugs. "Or their ships never made it, got lost in space or something. The sun'll be coming up soon." With one hand, he pulls up his hood and reaches into his pant leg pocket to retrieve his face shield. "No suit, huh? Where'd you get your duds?"

  I glance down. The material is filthy now. "We made them." Rehana's face returns to my mind, never far away, then Shechara's. I miss them so much.

  He grunts and raises his eyebrows, impressed. With the face shield in one hand and my arm in the other, he takes us along the remains of a street that stretches on for more than a kilometer ahead of us. On either side stand the skeletal remains of skyscrapers leaning awkwardly against each other. Ashen dust clings to every twisted red iron steel beam, caked in a layer built over decades. Below them, most of their concrete sublevels are still intact. How many daemons sleep in there?

  I still can't tell which direction we're heading. "How much farther?"

  He mutters to himself yet again, his eyes darting side to side. I can't make out what he's saying. He seemed the most at ease when he was sharing his outlandish conspiracy theories. Now he's agitated. His grip on my arm tightens and relaxes spastically.

  "The parking structure at the south end. How close are we now?" I turn toward him and make an attempt at eye contact.

  He avoids my gaze. "Not going there."

  I resist the urge to hit him. I keep my voice low so it won't echo. "Then where are you taking me?"

  "To your friends."

  "So you know where they are." What else hasn't he told me? "You've known all this time?"

  He shrugs, shaking his head. "Not for sure. Where they might be, yeah."

  "And that's where we're going."

  He nods, avoiding eye contact.

  "So how close are we...to where they might be?"

  He mutters to himself until I tug against him and repeat my question.

  "We'll be there before sun-up," he says. "I forgot my boots."

  I look down at his bare feet. If the sun comes up before he finds some kind of footwear, he'll never be able to walk again. My fleeting sympathy is overridden by the fact that he won't be able to follow me with sun-scorched feet. Because as soon as this invisibility cloak goes on the fritz after dawn, I'm leaving him behind. And I'm taking his gun.

  "How do you know that where we're headed…is where my friends could be?"

  "It's where they'd be taken. If they were found."

  Taken—by the daemons? Wouldn't they just feast and call it a day?

  "Who else is here?" My voice carries the foreboding I feel.

  He turns to face me then. There's a haunted look in his eyes, and his features sag. For once he seems completely lucid. "They're not like us. They're...like the way we were before all this. Before the ash." He swallows. "They're natural."

  A glow emerges on the horizon. We're heading east.

  "The ash," I echo. I thought he believed we were changed by government scientists on another planet as part of some elaborate experiment.

  "There's something in it," he says, near a whisper. "Willard always said there was, but nobody believed 'im. And then it was too late. He started killing them, any of 'em that had gone out on the surface, one by one. Didn't matter who they were." He sniffs with a vacant look in his eyes. "He killed 'em all."

  Sector 30 had a lot in common with Milton's 43, by the sound of things. But as much as I'd like to stay and hear the sordid tale in its entirety, I have people to find.

  In a single movement, I grab hold of the gun in his belt and pull my arm free from his grasp. He vanishes for only an instant. Then his strong hand clamps my wrist, just as I tug the gun free. His eyes bore into me.

  "If Willard has 'em, they're gonna die," he says hoarsely.

  "Let go of me."

  "Let go of my gun."

  "I'll shoot you in the leg." My finger curls around the trigger.

  "And call those mutos back? I don't think so."

  Fury boils within me. I'm trapped. Of course I won't pull the trigger. But he has to let me go.

  I chop the blade of my open hand into his throat and he chokes, startled by the sudden blow. He releases my wrist and blinks out of sight. I take off running, veering south, climbing, leaping over every obstacle in my path. I glance back for any sign of pursuit, any tracks made by bare feet through the dust.

  Tossing caution to the wind, I sprint down the middle of a mangled street. Too much time has been wasted already. I can't allow fear to slow me down. If the daemons show themselves, I'll take out as many as I can with this gun and out-maneuver the rest. Mid-stride, I check the chamber, the magazine. Six rounds left. Better than a chunk of concrete.

  The sky glows brighter, anticipating dawn's arrival. A new day is coming.

  So much has happened in the last twenty-four hours. Yesterday at this time, I awoke with a message from the spirits. We had nothing to fear. We were to travel east and, in so doing, leave our brothers and sisters to be slaughtered in the caves. They're all dead, Milton told us. How can I make any sense of that? Do the spirits want to destroy us? Why won't they speak to me now?

  Their silence is as unsettling as the first time they spoke to me. No, this is worse. It makes me wonder if it was all in my head to begin with. Hearing voices—not the sort of thing usually associated with a healthy psyche. Maybe I'm like Tucker. Over the edge, unable to deal with my own survivor's guilt.

  They say when you've lost your mind, you're the last one to know about it. Who are they? I must have read it in the bunker database.

  So if I'm completely out of my mind, and if there are no spirits of the earth who've been guiding me all this time, then everything is my fault. The attack on the caves, our getting stranded, the disappearance of Shechara, Luther, Samson. The only reason they came here in the first place was because of that voice I heard. A voice that no longer exists.

  My eyes start to sting, and I curse. Tears trickle down my cheeks and cling to the inside of my head covering. My lungs shudder, but I don't slow down. I can't. A short sob escapes me before I can stifle it. When was the last time I wept like this? What the hell is wrong with me?

  Rays of morning sunlight illuminate the thick layer of dust and ash that covers the ruins around me, making them shine like the broken remains of a celestial city. The blue haze of my night-vision fades, and now everything is tinted by the goggles I wear. I can only imagine how golden the sun must look to the naked eye. I can almost remember it. I focus on that memory until the tears stop trickling. I take a deep breath as my boots beat a steady rhythm across the ground.

  Less than a kilometer ahead, the street dissolves into an expanse of desert sand. The south end of the city. I'm getting close. I look east, then west. Where's that parking structure we found?

  There they are—the charred remains of those skyscrapers, maybe two kilometers west of my current course. The farthest one, angled awkwardly, held the parking garage in its sublevels. Hope st
irs within me. I'm close now, so close. I will find them.

  "With or without your help," I mutter—either to the spirits or to my own psychosis.

  A bullet skids across the crumpled pavement a meter in front of me as a firearm reports from the right. Adrenaline floods my system with a jolt. I leap sideways and back, finding cover behind a frozen puddle of plastic and steel that might have been a large commuter vehicle at one time. I grip Tucker's gun with both hands, ready to take out the first daemon to rear its lumpy head.

  Grunts echo as boots crunch toward me from the other side of the street. At least three of the creatures, from the sound of things. Strange they didn't hit me; they're usually better shots. Maybe they're not as good with moving targets. Or they're not completely awake yet. Regardless, they know where I am now. I'll have to make each bullet count.

  A loud grunt becomes a garbled cry cut short. Something clatters to the ground. Shots are fired, but not at me. Then everything is still, silent.

  I risk a quick glance over the mound providing my cover. Three daemons lie in the street, two shot dead. The third's head is on backwards, its weapon missing. I frown as one of its boots disappears into thin air, then the other. Its legs jostle as the footwear is tugged free.

  "You followed me." I stand, the gun down at my side. I don't know if I should be glad or annoyed. My gaze drifts across the daemons' bodies.

  Boots scuffle, sounding like he's putting them on, buckling them up. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't even mutter to himself.

  "Thanks." I gesture lamely at the fresh corpses.

  "I can't take you into that parking garage," Tucker's voice comes from the empty space beside the barefoot daemon. "They've got infrared and thermoptic scanners set up in there. They'll see me."

  "They?"

  "The naturals. I told you about 'em. But I know another way in, east of here. I can take you there, and we can look for your friends."

  What more does he have to do to earn my trust? Why am I so reluctant? I can't shake the feeling that something isn't right—with him, with me... I don't know.