I turn toward the door beside me, next to the unit where I've spent the past two days. Laughter echoes from below as I lay my hand on the handle and push the door aside. My eyes slowly adjust to the dim light above the bed in the center of the room. The machines look familiar, as do the hoses attached to the torso and groin of my brother, Samson.
But there is nothing familiar about the sight of him.
He lies on his back, unconscious, his broad chest expanding and settling with every thunderous snore, his arms amputated and cauterized at the elbows, his legs at the knees.
I stagger forward.
My rage erupts in a hoarse scream.
12 Milton
Ten Months after All-Clear
I have no idea what's going on.
First there was that voice in my head telling me to kill them all. Then it told me to take her, forced me to. I couldn't resist the power inside me; it was overwhelming. So I took her throat in my hand…but that's when everything gets real fuzzy.
I remember squealing tires and white-hot floodlights coming out of nowhere. I wasn't really paying attention. Something came over me as soon as I touched her. A sizzling burst of energy shot through my arm, straight to my head—a rush, that's for sure—and the next thing I knew, I was picking her up and carrying her out of there.
She wasn't conscious anymore. What did I do to her? She was limp, draped over my shoulder like a sack of nourishment packs, and I was running as fast as I could, the concrete walls and abandoned vehicles rushing past the periphery of my vision in a blur, illuminated only by my glowstick.
Then we were out in the middle of the city ruins, tearing through debris-strewn streets under the moon's frosty glow. And that's when things got weirder. I was maybe two or three kilometers into the heart of the city when I stopped and lowered her body to the ground. I watched her lying there on her back. Like she was asleep. But she could have been dead.
"Why?" Why was I doing this?
You do not need her now.
The voice came from inside me, but it wasn't the same one I'd heard before, the one that told me to kill everybody except her. Somehow, it had changed. More subdued, maybe. Not as fierce?
Go.
I broke into a run, leaving her behind, alone in the middle of that street. The city ruins vanished behind me as I tore across the cratered desolation. I glanced back at the giant plume of dust in my wake, remembering the first time I ran like this, when Mother Earth chased me in all her fury. I was in danger then. That's what she told me—Daiyna—and I believed it.
But now things are different. I'm faster than I was by a factor of two, maybe ten. And I'm not alone.
That's the really weird thing.
"I always like this part." Julia hugs my arm, pressing her warm curves against me. We sit on a large boulder overlooking the valley below. The moon has faded away with the approach of dawn, and in a moment the sun's golden orb will make its first appearance of the day, peeking over the horizon before us. "It never gets old."
"For you, maybe." Jackson stands with his boots planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed over his chest. "I for one would've enjoyed sleeping in today."
"Face shields ready..." Julia holds hers up with a giggle, like it's a game. I get mine out of my jumpsuit pocket. Jackson fastens his on right away. "Party pooper," she chides him.
"I don't fancy scorching my retinas," he grumbles.
"You'll wait with me, won't you, Milton?" She hugs my arm tighter, smiling with full lips and sparkling green eyes, her long blonde hair caught by the morning breeze that wafts up from the valley floor below.
I nod. Of course I will. I'll wait until the last nanosecond with her, and we'll see the sun rise together. Just like we do every morning...that I can remember. It doesn't get old for me either. Weird, but not old. I would never get tired of doing anything with her.
Am I dead? I know they are. I killed them both.
"Three…two," she counts down. "One!"
The sun breaches the horizon in streams of molten bronze, a glorious sight to behold. And behold it we do—for a few seconds, anyway. Then we fasten our face shields into place before the harsh morning rays can do any permanent damage.
I wish we could hold off a little longer. Now with our features hidden, I can't see Julia's eyes behind that panel of reflective polymer. I see only an image of myself, my own cracked, gravel-pitted face shield and filthy jumpsuit. How have they managed to keep theirs so clean? Pristine, fresh from the bunker.
"Hungry?" she asks me.
"Too bad." Jackson curses, shuffling his boots. "We've got nothing."
"He does." She pats my leg, just above my knee. I stir at her touch. "Samson made sure you had a few packs when he brought your suit to you. Don't you remember? Before you were shot by those mutants."
"He doesn't remember any of that." Jackson faces us. "Doesn't matter anymore. We've got just one thing to agree on here, and we can't keep putting it off. You know as well as I do that he's—"
"You remember, don't you, Milton?" She squeezes my thigh as she leans into me. "Luther, Samson...Daiyna?"
The names are familiar, and I remember who they are. But they're from a long time ago. Before this—here, wherever we are.
"He doesn't know what you're talking about." Jackson scoffs.
"Stop trying to interfere," she warns him.
"I don't have to try. His hatred of me is greater than his love for you. The guilt he carries only increases my influence. You should stop trying. You won't be able to bring him back from the edge of the abyss."
What the hell? This has to be a nightmare. I'm asleep, haunted by these voices from my past. Unless they're both ghosts... And I've finally lost it. Completely. Crossed the point of no return to semi-sanity.
"You won't take him," she says in a low tone, as if I'm not supposed to hear. "Not easily."
Jackson shrugs. "I've got time. They're not going anywhere, and neither are we." He turns away, leaning against the boulder as he watches the sun in its sluggish ascent.
"Eat, Milton." She pats my pocket, and a wrapper wrinkles in response.
My stomach gurgles and twists. I didn't realize I was so hungry. I pull out the protein pack and tear it open, pausing only to release the bottom of my face shield so I can slide the flavorless meal toward my teeth. I take a big bite and start chewing it down to a consistency I can swallow.
"Good?" She watches me.
I nod. "Tastes like nothing else." She giggles, and I hand her what's left. "Want some?"
She shakes her head, gently pushing it back. "You need it. You have to keep up your strength."
"We don't eat," Jackson tosses over his shoulder.
Right. Because they're ghosts.
"Don't listen to him." She bumps my shoulder with her own. "He's just grumpy that we woke him up. Maybe we should watch the sunrise tomorrow without him."
Jackson laughs out loud. "Good luck with that. You're stuck with me now, sweetheart."
"So..." I swallow another bite and hesitate. "Where are we exactly?"
He sighs and drops his head, muttering something that sounds like, "Again?" But I didn't ask him. I asked Julia.
"We're in the Preserve, Milton." She pauses, weighing her words. "This is what it looks like now."
The Preserve? That's crazy. How many hundreds of kilometers did I run? I couldn't have gone that far. And besides, this place doesn't look any different from the rest of this messed-up planet—the same endless stretches of lifeless terrain I've seen for months. No trees, no babbling brooks. She can't be right.
"This is all that's left. There is no place on earth left untouched by the cataclysmic actions of your kind. There are survivors on every continent, but their world has changed. It's not as they left it, and it's not as they expected to find it."
That much is obvious.
"You're all going to run out of oxygen and starve to death, eventually," Jackson says. "Unless you take to eating each other like those mutant degenera
tes. Or you could start eating them, I guess. Hunt them down." He laughs without any humor in his tone. "Better to be put out of your misery. Believe me, you don't want to see what's coming. You'll put up a good fight, but in the end, it won't matter any. Futile, when you come right down to it."
"Optimist," she teases him.
"Realist." He glances at me. "Don't let her fill your head with empty hope. She doesn't see the big picture. And she refuses to do what's necessary." He curses quietly and mutters, "All she does is delay the inevitable."
"You don't know any more than I do. You don't have the mind of God." She points at him. "You're as finite as I am."
"It doesn't take the mind of God to see the future here. Their world is destroyed. They have no way to grow food for themselves. All they can do is scavenge from what's still viable beneath their own ruins. But that supply is far from inexhaustible, believe me. I've seen it. And I'll give them a year or two at most—if they can survive that long, considering everything else." He shakes his head slowly. "Face it. The time of humankind has come and gone."
He says it like he's not human himself. Because he's not. I've got to remember that. None of this is really happening. It is—but it's not real. They're not really...real. It's virtual reality or something, my mind playing tricks on me. Hallucinating.
And I thought that voice in my head was bad. Where's it gone?
"You're wrong," she says. "They've been given a second chance."
"By whom? The Creator?" His tone sounds bitter. "You know as well as I do, he left us a long time ago. We haven't been the apple of his eye for centuries. Maybe millennia."
"You don't know that."
"Look at what he allowed to happen to his creation. He made us first, before he made them, and look at what he let them do to us!" He lapses into a string of curses.
Good ol' Jackson with his limited vocabulary.
"They've always had free will. He gave it to them in the beginning. Don't you remember? He may have made us first, but we were never first in His sight. They've always held that special place. It's been a great mystery, all along."
Honestly, I have no idea what they're going on about. They were never like this in the bunker. They barely said a word to each other. And this discussion seems pretty deep—philosophical, metaphysical, whatever. Really, really weird.
"So..." I break the awkward silence, stuffing the protein pack's wrapper into my pocket. "Any particular reason we're up here?"
"You brought us," Jackson snorts with a backward glance. "But you probably don't remember that either, right?"
I doubt it was my idea. That voice in my head... "What do you want to do?" I nudge Julia and her face shield turns toward me.
"Up for some flying lessons?" Her voice bubbles with sudden excitement.
"Huh?"
"When was it—only yesterday?" Jackson grumbles. "And he's already forgotten."
What happened yesterday? Why can't I remember anything before the sunrise? The most recent memory I have is running up here through the dead of night and—
"Cut him some slack. He's been through a lot, thanks to you." She rubs my leg tenderly with her gloved hand.
Cut me some slack. Right. And then hang me with it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. I killed them both, along with everybody else in the bunker. Will the rest of them be visiting me too? Is this my punishment, my hell? God knows, I deserve it.
God?
I glance over at Jackson. It was all his fault, and I killed him for it. Do I have it in me to do it again? I don't know if I can, or even if I'd be able to. How do you kill a ghost, anyway? Make it say its true name backwards? Something like that, I bet.
"I'm not finished with him. We're not finished." Jackson shakes his head slowly. "You two can go and play house all you like, but you'll get the idea eventually. There's only one thing for him to do, and you've given him the ability to do it. You can't take it back now."
"C'mon." She tugs at my sleeve as she slides off the boulder, ignoring Jackson. "We'll leave him here and go have our own fun."
She's just like I remember her, so full of life. She loved me for me, not anything I could do for her, and I never understood it. How does anyone love like that? But I loved her back because of it, or regardless of it. All we ever had was each other, all the way to the end.
Her end. At my hands.
Yet here she is again, coaxing me off the boulder, giggling at my reluctance. I wish I could see her smile, her sparkling eyes, those thick locks of golden hair, smooth as silk. Her skin, firm but soft, and delicious. I swell as scenes of our love-making play through my mind.
Apparition or not, I'll go with her wherever she leads me, even if it's to my death. That would only be fair, right?
"Don't wander off too far," Jackson mutters, rooted.
"This way, Milton." She leads me by the hand, our gloved fingers intertwined. We climb up the grade toward the plateau above, the gravel shifting beneath our boots. "You're going to love this!"
I love her. More than anything. I always have. I don't care if she's dead or if I am or if none of this is really real. It doesn't matter right now. We're together again.
I glance back at Jackson, his broad figure a dark, motionless silhouette against the rising sun. Why is he here? I don't want him to be. I thought I was finally rid of him.
"Here we are." She sighs, releasing me as we reach the top. Hands on her shapely hips, she turns and tilts her head, her face shield glinting. "Want me to go first?" Another giggle, one that makes her shoulders bounce a little.
"Where?" I step toward her.
She points, and I follow her finger aimed across this barren plateau to its abrupt end, maybe fifty meters ahead of us.
"Off the edge?" I sound like a stupid kid.
She spreads her arms out from her sides and backs away from me. "Watch and learn."
She runs away, her laughter filling the moment. I watch her backside as she takes off, faster, gaining momentum. A grin stretches my face. I'll let her have a head start, but I'll overtake her easily. With each stride she takes, I feel a tug, a yearning for her. I can't let her go.
I dash after her, coming abreast of her in an instant.
"What took you so long?" she says.
"Had to make it seem fair."
"What?" She tilts her head.
"Aren't we racing?"
"Are we?" She reaches out to touch my shoulder. "Look down."
I don't know how or when it happened, but the ground has disappeared. It's still there, but it's not where I left it. Now it's hundreds of meters below us. We're soaring...through the air.
Flying?
"Ho!" My stomach seizes up, and my limbs flail wildly.
"Relax, you're doing great." She pats my shoulder. Her movements are effortless, like an angel, a dove. "You'll get the hang of it again."
Again? I beat the air with my arms and pump my legs, fighting to stay afloat. Being up here is a fluke. I'm going to fall at any moment, plummet back to the earth and break every bone in my body. My heart pounds crazily as adrenaline floods my system. How is this happening?
"Try to float, like you would in a pool. You don't have to fight to stay in the air. Just let it happen naturally."
Easy for her to say. It's obvious she's done this before. "H-how…?" I manage.
She giggles. "Close your eyes. Imagine yourself drifting on a cloud. You wouldn't punch your way through a cloud, would you?"
Point taken—not that I've handled many clouds in my day. Gritting my teeth, I force myself to stop thrashing my limbs.
"Take a deep breath now. Just relax, Milton. It's not about effort." She turns over onto her back and stretches out her arms and legs. "Enjoy it."
I try letting my limbs go limp. Oddly enough, I don't drop instantly. I don't sense any change in altitude at all. She's still beside me.
We're not floating on air here. The wind rushes against us, flapping the baggier portions of our jumpsuits
. We're moving, flying fast. But where to?
I swallow, then lick my dry lips. "How is this possible?"
"Doubts from the fastest man on earth?"
"That's a...gift." It's what they told me. From who? No idea, but they had gifts, too—special abilities. Luther, Daiyna, Plato. So long ago and far away from here.
I used to want to fly, back when I was a kid. I had recurring dreams where I could swoop over the heads of crowds, and they'd look up and gasp, amazed at my superhuman ability. Some kind of psychological complex, probably. But I never made it this high, and never this fast.
"I...always wanted to do this." My voice is barely audible.
She nods. "I know."
"How?" I never told her. I'm sure of it.
"I know you, Milton. I was with Daiyna for a time, but now I'm with you, and I know all about you. Everything, both good and bad. I know the burden you carry. You blame yourself for the evil you were forced to do. But you need to let it go. You need to release yourself."
"I killed you." My throat closes up. My eyes sting. "I killed all of you."
"You were in a horrible place. There was nothing you could do—"
"I should have killed him sooner." I was a coward. So weak.
"You can't wallow in regret, Milton. You can't change the past, and you can't let it control you. If you do, he wins."
Jackson? "Why is he here?"
"Why am I here?"
"Because I love you."
She giggles and dips her chin. "I love you too, Milton."
My insides fill with warmth, and tears trail down my cheeks. I'm glad my face shield hides them.
"No matter what, remember that I love you. And that you love me. Let go of the past, Milton. Embrace this moment, right now." She takes my hand and squeezes it. "With me."
We pick up speed then, diving headfirst through the blue, the wind flattening our suits against us and tugging at my hood, rattling my face shield. I can't tell where we're going, but the landscape below is passing faster than I could have imagined possible, so much faster than during my superspeedy sprints.
"Do you know where we are?" she asks.
Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) Page 30
