“You will bring the full wrath of the United World down upon us. How can this be what Gaia wants? You killed one of their soldiers, and now you want to slay innocent children?” She draws back toward the door, her face rippling with revulsion. “What have you become?” She grabs for the wheel on the door and spins it with one downward stroke.
I am on my feet in a split-second, slamming the door shut with a resounding clang as soon as she heaves it open. I stiff-arm it in place, the muscles in my arm tightening against her futile efforts. I take her throat in one hand and squeeze until her eyes bulge, straining bloodshot in their sockets.
But she does not struggle. She stares right back at me.
“Kill me,” she rasps. “Kill us both. I don’t want this child of ours to see the world you’ll make for him.”
A male child. This is good news—if true. “How do I know it is even mine?” I spit into her face.
“You don’t.” Her gaze holds a scornful smile.
I slam the back of her head against the door and catch her limp body in my arms as she drops, unconscious. With a low curse, I carry her to the bed and toss her onto her back like a corpse on a funeral pyre. Then I get dressed, making sure to retrieve the knife she threatened to use on herself. After a quick survey of the room for any other weapons, I prepare to leave.
Yet I linger, my hand resting on the door as I glance back at the bed. Here Lady Victoria will remain locked inside until I return, whenever that may be. I will take every fighting man and woman among the tribes with me to Luther’s Homeplace. By the time Victoria is able to summon any of the other pregnant women or older ones left behind in order to spread her lies about my plans, my warriors and I will already be well on our way to Eden. With Luther’s people and the UW spies.
One big happy family.
I bolt the door shut behind me and stride the length of the corridor toward the nearest exterior hatch.
“Lord Cain!” salutes the young sentry waiting outside.
“Summon the chieftains.” I leave the hatch to swing shut and draw in a deep breath of cool night air. Starlit heavens soar above with pinpricks of light in the deep black, but they will be visible for only a few hours more. Dawn approaches. “Have each of them bring their strongest warriors, fully armed.”
“Yes, my lord—but our fastest warriors have already—”
“Did you hear me say the fastest?” Of course they are already gone, led by Vincent and Markus. All who remain are without the blessing of superhuman speed. “I said the strongest. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Arm yourself while you’re at it. You and the other guards will be joining us.”
He stares mutely for a moment. “Y-yes, Lord Cain.”
“Go then!” I roar.
I watch the fool scurry off to obey. Then I close my eyes for a moment in the calm before the storm. I recall Gaia’s face, the moment when I knelt before her with my head bowed. She lifted my chin to meet her powerful gaze, too beautiful for mere words.
“May we honor you this day,” I whisper.
The sun will rise, and I will brave the scorched kilometers of open terrain with my warriors. The marauding goblyns will no doubt be surprised by the sight of the Shipyard’s inhabitants outside their walls. The slobbering wretches will move quickly to intercept. But Gaia will protect her people. I have no doubt.
May your will be done.
16 Milton
18 Months After All-Clear
Maybe halting Margo dead in her tracks was a bit premature, but seeing all those hard-assed warrior-types heading straight for the Homeplace raised my hackles just a bit. It didn’t bode well, that’s for sure.
Shows how much I know.
Floating a hundred meters or so above them now, I nod and give Luther a double thumbs-up, whether or not he can see the gesture from the ground. You’ve got to hand it to the guy; there’s something almost supernatural about the way he plays peacemaker. It’s like a calling for him.
In the Homeplace, he’s kept the peace between the Eden-haters and the rest of the brood. But we’re all on the same side, more or less. These well-armed warriors from the coast? Another matter entirely. They serve their own fake god, for crying out loud, and they’re fiercely devoted to her. Yet somehow Luther managed to talk them down, and now they’re climbing the foothills toward the caves, invited inside by Luther himself.
Go figure.
Once the last of the warriors has entered the Homeplace, I plunge from the night sky like a falling meteorite or something less sparkly and land sure-footed on the hillside with just a couple extra steps to balance myself. I tug my goggles up onto my forehead and clear my throat quietly.
Samson whirls around to face me. “You’ll stop doing that one of these days,” he grumbles. “Sneaky devil.”
“Sorry.” I take my life in my hands every time I show up behind the big guy without any warning. One swing of his mighty steel arm and my head could go flying, leaving the rest of me behind. Risky, sure. But so much fun. “Everything okay here?”
Samson glances at the muscle-men invading the caves of the Homeplace, the sweat on their exposed skin glistening in the green light of glowsticks mounted along the earthen walls inside.
“What do you think?” His voice rumbles like a small earthquake in his broad chest. “We’re sleeping with the enemy. I hope Luther knows what he’s doing.”
So do I. “I should tell Margo to keep her distance, find some shelter until things settle down.”
Samson shakes his head, running a hand down his beard. Then he gives it a pensive tug. “Luther wants to speak with those UW folks before Cain arrives. He’s hoping to sway them over to our side, convince them Willard and the Edenites are not to be trusted. Those babies they’ve got won’t be safe until they’re here with us.”
“You think they’ll go for it—the UW crew, I mean?”
Samson narrows his gaze. “You’ve met them. How do they strike you?”
“They’re doing their best to keep it together, I think. They’ve seen things here they never could’ve imagined. Two of them are going to start noticing a change in themselves pretty soon. Their protective suits were compromised, cut open by that guy with the swords—the one doing all the talking earlier.”
“Which two?”
I shrug. “Not their leader—a sergeant in the United World Marines named Bishop. Good guy, I think. Level-headed. Unlike their doctor, who’s kind of an emotional wreck. Both of their suits seem to be functioning. It’s the two support personnel, a man and woman. Don’t know their names or anything.”
Samson nods, waiting for me to go on. Over the past few months, he’s gotten used to the weird way I dispense with information.
“Oh, and they picked up a kid along the way. His name’s Lemuel—from Cain’s bunch. Exiled, he said, sent out into the desert to die for his sins. Real Old Testament, y’know?” I chuckle lamely.
Samson frowns. “They have one of Cain’s people with them?”
“Margo was in communication with his girlfriend. Something like that. I didn’t get the whole story.”
“And you left them out there with this Lemuel?”
“Uh...” Suddenly it doesn’t seem like the best idea. “I had to make sure everything was okay here—”
“Mission accomplished, Flyboy. Now haul your ass back over there and make sure we haven’t invited wolves into our fold for no reason. If those UW people are already dead—”
“He’s just a kid, man. Scared crapless, by the looks of him.”
Samson raises one of his mechanical fingers skyward. “Get going. And pray to the Creator they’re all right, or you’ll have some explaining to do when you get back. You’ve never seen Luther angry, have you? No? Well, you’re in for a real treat.”
I back away. “Okay, okay. But you’re wrong about this kid. I can feel it.”
“I hope so—for the sake of his escorts.” Without another word, he turns a
way to stomp down the earthen corridor into the network of caves beyond.
Muttering inventive insults about the tin man under my breath, I take to the skies, feeling the ice-cold rush of air dig into my eyes before I remember to readjust the goggles. I aim my trajectory back toward the armored Hummer five kilometers west. Glancing over my shoulder, I see the sky on the eastern horizon begin to evolve from star-punctured black into a deep indigo above the mountain range in the distance. Dawn’s on the way.
And, with it, the regularly scheduled dangers of daily life on this continent. Sure, Margo’s vehicle stood up pretty well against automatic weapons fire, but a close-range blast from a daemon’s RPG is something else entirely. Detonated under the vehicle’s belly, it would bloom from the ground upward in a pillar of fire eating straight through the steel and cooking everyone alive inside.
Not a pleasant thought.
I find them right where I left them, parked behind an outcropping of rock with the engine off. I didn’t know how long they’d have to wait for me to return, so conserving fuel seemed like a good idea. Judging by the extent of the vehicle’s damage, the solar cells along the roof are no longer able to provide auxiliary power—even in direct sunlight.
Dropping from the sky, I stick my landing like a pro a few meters away from the dark headlights. If Julia could see me now... I can’t help recalling my first flying lesson with the spirit of the earth taking the form of my long-lost love. Landing without crashing involved a steep learning curve at the time.
The spirit has always appeared to me as Julia, and at first it bothered me a bit, knowing she was nothing more than a projection of my own memories—filtered through a supernatural intelligence I can’t even begin to understand. But over the past few months, I’ve actually grown to think of her as being Julia—just a different version of her. Julia 2.0 or something. She never appears to me in the guise of anyone else, so the name’s stuck. She kind of likes it, I think. It gives us a connection; we belong to each other.
Or I’m losing my mind again. Always a possibility, and always something I wake up fearing. I came close, once—possessed by an evil spirit. Hard to believe, but true.
Before D-Day, back when the United World had the North American Sectors running so smoothly, producing everything the rest of the world needed overseas so they could live in the lap of luxury, there had been no such thing as good or evil. The whole concept of moral purity versus depravity was relative, depending on the belief system you subscribed to.
Not anymore. Here, on this desolate continent, there’s good, and there’s evil. The benevolent spirits of the earth—manifesting themselves to me as Julia—wish us well, having bestowed upon us certain abilities that make living in this harsh environment tolerable. Super-speed, night-vision, far-sight. Flight. The abilities themselves are derived from the animal kingdom—something I’ve never fully comprehended—since the spirits themselves originated from those billions upon billions of creatures annihilated on D-Day.
I don’t really understand that, either.
But there are also malevolent spirits of the earth who roam freely about, intent on further destruction—ultimately, extermination of the human remnant on earth. Somehow, these evil spirits are also from the animal kingdom. And when they appear to me, they manifest themselves as my psychotic bunker commander from all those years ago: Jackson. The man I killed with my bare hands…then dragged into the storeroom to lie beside all the other rotting corpses, men and women Jackson forced me to execute after a fabricated food shortage.
Julia lay among them.
The driver’s side door of the Hummer swings open, and Margo steps out. “All clear,” she says. Her look is direct, meeting my gaze and holding it.
“You read my mind.” I wink, striding toward her. “You’re not going to believe this, but Luther invited Cain’s whole bunch over for dinner, and you’re the guests of honor.” I duck to glance inside the vehicle and give the kid up front a salute. Lemuel looks away, unimpressed. The UW crew appears to be alive and un-slaughtered, so Samson’s concerns were groundless. “Whenever you want to get moving again…”
She nods, glancing eastward. “I’m not sure about this, Milton.” She lowers her voice. “Cain wants these people dead.”
“It’s not how I thought things would play out either, I’ll give you that.”
“Is Luther sure he’s doing the right thing?”
Her eyes are earnest, and even before I reply, I can tell she won’t believe me. There’s a great deal of uncertainty in my mind, courtesy of Samson and my own doubts about the situation.
“Luther knows what he’s doing. I mean, he’s kept us all alive since we escaped from Eden, and he’s been doing a great job of collecting and uniting the survivors we’ve come across since then. He wouldn’t jeopardize what he’s worked so hard to build over the past few months, I’ll tell you that much.”
She shakes her head. “His people are not unified. That could pose a problem.”
How could she know that? She’s never been to the Homeplace. She has no clue how things are going there.
“What do you mean?”
Her facial features sag. She looks defeated before she’s even begun to fight. “There are two factions among your people: those who want nothing to do with the United World and who would go back to Eden and destroy them if given the chance, and those who do not embrace their new abilities and would return to Eden to have them surgically removed, if possible. Then there are those like Luther and you, caught in the middle. Seeking peace.”
“You got all that from my subconscious?”
“You are an open book, Milton. You fear for Luther and his people. You can’t help it.”
“My people. I’m one of them now.”
She nods. “So you say. But you don’t identify with them completely.”
“Hey-uh…” the short UW fellow calls out from the backseat, leaning forward. “Are we getting this show back on the road? Guy’s gotta eat!”
I take a step back. “You should go. Just make sure you—”
“I will.” She climbs into her seat.
“Of course you will.” She already knew what I was going to say: look out for Lemuel. We have no idea how his people will react to seeing him riding with the enemy. “I’ll follow and keep a lookout ahead of you.”
She gives me another direct look that makes me feel naked before her. “Thank you, Milton.” With a weak attempt at a smile, she shuts the door and fires up the engine. The headlights flare white, blasting through the early morning darkness.
I raise a hand to shield my eyes and slide my goggles into place. As I do, I see her standing behind the vehicle. She looks out of place there, having appeared without warning like a ghost, glowing red in the taillights. My heart skips a beat at the sight of her.
She always has this effect on me.
“Julia.” I want to run to her and gather her into my arms, but it’s like I’m in a dream, and my legs turned to stone when I wasn’t looking.
She smiles at me but waits until the vehicle has taken off before she approaches. I know I should follow the Hummer, soaring above, keeping an eye out for any unforeseen dangers. But as Julia melts into my embrace, there’s nowhere else I’d ever want to be.
“It’s been so long,” I whisper. Weeks since our last meeting—maybe longer. I can’t be sure. She nuzzles my chest, squeezing me tight without a word. “Where have you been?” I always ask her this.
She comes and goes with no understanding of the time that elapses in between. If it’s true that she somehow represents the spirits of all the animals who once lived without fear of humankind, then it’s also true that she’s not a tame spirit.
No one could hope to contain her.
“I’ve been watching you,” she says.
“Where?” I glance about, but there’s no higher ground.
“You’ve missed me.” She gazes upward with emerald eyes that seem to glow in the dark. Wisps of her golden hair undulate in
the frigid breeze.
“You know I have.” I kiss her forehead, her skin warm and soft against my chapped lips. “Where do you go, when you disappear for so long?”
She shrugs as if it makes no difference. “Here and there. This is a large continent, you know. It takes a while to get from one end to the other.”
“Not for you.” I squeeze her against me. “What do you do out there all by yourself?”
A mischievous gleam shines in her eyes. “I’m never alone, Milton. There are many of my kind here. Not all of them are as social as I am. Most of them are shy around humans.”
“Other spirits.” The Hummer’s engine is almost out of earshot now. “Like Jackson?”
“Yes.” Her smile dims. “But he no longer spends much time in that guise.”
Glad to hear it. Almost a year ago, the evil spirits of the earth tried to convince me to blow Eden’s nuclear reactor. At the time, I was almost swayed by Jackson’s persuasive arguments; but, thankfully, Julia’s love intervened. Maybe it was only an ethereal remnant of the loyalty and devotion pets showed their trusted owners back in the day, but I prefer to believe it’s love.
Because I love her, now more than ever before—even when she was alive.
“Is he still up to no good?”
“He hasn’t changed in that regard,” she says quietly, her gaze pensive.
I watch her for a moment. “What is it, Julia? He hasn’t gone back on his word, has he?”
She shakes her head. “He is not a man, that his promise would be mutable. He will never attack you or your people again.” She pauses. “Not directly.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “So he’s bending the rules now, in other words.”
She bites her lip, looking as human as Julia ever did. “He has influenced the survivors who live on the coast. Cain and his people—they worship him without knowing who or what he truly is. He has deceived them all, and his deception could lead to the ruin of all that you’ve fought for these past months.”
I glance eastward, but the Hummer is nowhere in sight. “I have to stop them. If they’re headed into a trap—”
Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) Page 62
