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

  THE CHILDREN OF THE EARTH

  ©2020-2021 MILO JAMES FOWLER

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  Contents

  AFTER THE SKY

  I. Beginnings

  1. Milton

  2. Luther

  3. Daiyna

  II. Connections

  4. Milton

  5. Luther

  6. Daiyna

  III. Possession

  7. Milton

  8. Luther

  IV. Origin

  9. Willard

  V. Captives

  10. Daiyna

  11. Luther

  12. Milton

  VI. Revelations

  13. Willard

  14. Daiyna

  TOMORROW’S CHILDREN

  I. Contact

  1. Bishop

  2. Cain

  3. Margo

  4. Bishop

  II. Turmoil

  5. Cain

  6. Margo

  7. Bishop

  8. Tucker

  9. Cain

  III. Rescue

  10. Margo

  11. Bishop

  12. Tucker

  13. Margo

  14. Bishop

  IV. Negotiation

  15. Cain

  16. Milton

  17. Tucker

  18. Bishop

  19. Margo

  V. Blood

  20. Cain

  21. Milton

  22. Tucker

  23. Bishop

  24. Milton

  25. Daiyna

  Epilogue: Hawthorne

  CITY OF GLASS

  I. Awakening

  1. Sera

  2. Daiyna

  3. Hawthorne

  4. Samson

  5. Sera

  II. Reunion

  6. Bishop

  7. Daiyna

  8. Sera

  9. Samson

  III. Annihilation

  10. Luther

  11. Sera

  12. Daiyna

  13. Bishop

  14. Sera

  15. Samson

  16. Milton

  IV. Conspiracy

  17. Sera

  18. Daiyna

  19. Samson

  20. Sera

  V. Restoration

  21. Shechara

  22. Luther

  23. Milton

  24. Sera

  25. Daiyna

  26. Epilogue

  Spirits of the Earth

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  AFTER THE SKY

  BOOK ONE

  For Sara

  All come from dust, and to dust all return.

  Who knows if the human spirit rises upward

  and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?

  Ecclesiastes 3:20-21

  Part I

  Beginnings

  1 Milton

  Nine Months after All-Clear

  "You'll be sorry!"

  Jackson spits blood and drags his beard across the sleeve of his blue jumpsuit, leaving a trail of crimson. He stands over me with big fists clenched, knuckles spattered.

  "You knew it could be any one of us, Milton."

  I pull myself away from him, my battered body sliding across the slick concrete of the storeroom floor. My mouth works to speak, slurring.

  "Why?"

  "It's a random draw, Milton. Always is."

  I wish it was. It should have been.

  "Why her?" I manage, shaking my head to clear the flashing pinpoints of light.

  "It was her turn." Jackson shrugs like it's just that simple.

  I sob like a child, impotent rage dissolving into whimpers. The coppery tang of my own blood oozes thick from both nostrils, mixing with the sand and ash—

  I jerk upright with a start, spitting to clear my mouth. For a moment, I don't know where I am. I look for Jackson, for Julia—they were right there with me in the bunker.

  Not anymore.

  I'm the only one here now. Outside. Free.

  I'll never get used to the silence.

  Dawn's golden fire breaks across the eastern horizon and crawls along a massive ridge of mountains in the distance. They look like sleeping giants, lying on their backs. Dark, with only their profiles aflame, they wait with craggy jaws and protruding bellies for the full light of day to awaken them from their slumber. Part of me wishes they'd rise up and greet me with a yawn. I speak to them sometimes, but I know they won't respond.

  I'm not crazy. Not yet.

  "Time to wake up, boys. It's a new day." I grab one of my hydropacks and take a swig, swish the stuff around. It's enough like water to do the trick. I wipe my mouth with a sleeve, watch the ash trickle out of my beard. I curse quietly. I must have rolled onto my face in my sleep. Probably would have smothered myself if I hadn't woken up in time.

  Not a bad way to go out, I guess. Considering the alternatives. Starvation. Loneliness.

  I bend down to tie up my bedroll. The thermal blanket is showing serious wear. Maybe I'll get lucky in the next ghost town I pass through, find an actual sleeping bag among the rubble.

  "Any chance you guys can point me in the right direction?" I glance at the mountains, jutting upward from kilometers of desolate hardpan stretching out in every direction, parched and cracked, interrupted only by occasional wounded hills—shadows of what they once were in both size and shape.

  Silence answers me. A slight breeze whisks across the ground, stirring the dust. The only sound, my own voice. And my noisy thoughts.

  The mountains don't look as much like my giants now with the sun climbing over, burning across the scorched earth as far as my groggy eyes can see. For the past week or so, I've headed straight for that ridge, the only thing separating me and this barren wasteland from whatever lies on the other side.

  "Just more of the same, right?" I sure hope not.

  I still have hope? Now that sure is something. Maybe I am crazy, after all.

&n
bsp; The sun cooks my face a little before I pull on my hood and tinted face shield. I guess I could sleep under some kind of makeshift shelter at night, but I like breathing the cold air. It chills my lungs, reminds me I'm still alive. Sometimes I breathe in a little too much of the ash and wake up coughing and spitting like this morning—but it's worth it. Being out under the stars makes me forget, sometimes.

  Then I remember: So long without fresh air in the bunker—just the recycled variety they said was perfectly fine for us.

  Never again. I'd sooner die.

  And that might happen a whole lot sooner than I'd planned. I count my packs: three hydro, two vitamineral, four protein. The last bit of ingenuity from those United World scientists before they were blown away. These packs were issued by the ton to every bunker in the sector. They'll last me two days, no more.

  That's how long I have to scale those sleeping giants and see what's on the other side. I'm counting on a city—ruins with leftovers where I can re-stock my supplies. Maybe there will be people. Survivors, like me.

  It's been two months since I came across my last neighbor. But I probably shouldn't count him. There wasn't much left. Bones, mostly, and what looked like organic matter baked into the broken concrete nearby. I called him Adam, since he was the first person I saw after All-Clear. I knew he wasn't Eve because his pelvis wasn't the right shape.

  I like people. I miss them.

  I am so, so sorry for what I did.

  Packs counted, bedroll slung across my back, every centimeter of my body covered by my jumpsuit, face shield, hood, gloves, and boots, I make my way down the rocky hillside where I spent the night. As I reach a level stretch of gravel below, I settle into an easy walking pace. There's no rush. Not anymore. Life has slowed to barely a crawl, and I'm the only one out here doing the crawling.

  I check my gloves again. Habit. A few weeks ago, I forgot to zip them to my sleeves. As I climbed down a knoll, the sand shifted and I lost my footing. My left glove snagged on a piece of shale and almost slipped off. The instant sunburn across my wrist was excruciating. Haven't forgotten since. And now I have this delightfully compulsive little habit of checking them every few minutes. Just a tug every now and then to be sure.

  All I can hear now are the dull thuds my boots make across the dusty ground and the echo of my breath against the face shield. Every morning it hits me like this: how alone we are now.

  We?

  Humankind. I can't be the only one left. That would be too depressing. There have to be others like me somewhere out there. The bunkers were designed to safeguard the continuation of our species. I survived, so others must have as well. They all couldn't have lost their minds and killed each other—or eaten each other.

  "Cannibalism is not an option." Jackson's voice echoes clearly through my mind.

  A smirk creeps across my face. He didn't say anything about murder.

  It was one way to keep the rations coming.

  Before the end, back when we had more restaurants and grocery stores than we needed, when they used to throw away extra food into dumpsters in back alleys, I'd fantasize about my favorite meals. My mouth became a wellspring of hot saliva at the thought of a large, extra cheesy pizza loaded with toppings; nachos smothered with salsa and jalapeños; lasagna with piles of garlic bread on the side... Then there were the desserts: ice cream sundaes, cheesecake –

  "Cheesecake," I murmur out loud. I shake my head.

  Why am I torturing myself?

  Because you deserve it.

  Those years in the bunker may not have erased my memories of the way life used to be, but they did train me for the life to come. I learned to eat ration packs not because of their taste (they were designed by the government geniuses to have no flavor) or because I was hungry. I ate them to survive. They nourished me and kept me alive. That was their only purpose, and they did it well enough.

  So now when my stomach growls, when I feel that sharp hunger pang knifing me, I don't even think about what I want to eat. That part of the equation doesn't exist anymore. Things are simpler. My hunger is relieved by a ration pack. No use reminiscing on the flavors of a past life.

  It's too soon to eat. With only a handful of packs left, I need to be careful. Hydration is no problem with this jumpsuit the scientists designed. The cooling system recycles my piss. Used to gross me out, but not anymore. I've learned to appreciate it. So even under the hot sun, three hydropacks will see me all the way to the top of those mountains. But I need to make the other rations last. Once I start climbing, I'll need my strength.

  I hum while my footsteps keep the beat. I don't recognize the tune. Something original? Improvised and improved, one bar at a time. I have to do something in the silence, or it'll get to me. The overwhelming enormity of it. The finality. And me, all alone, swallowed whole by it.

  I really don't want to go crazy.

  Spending time hiking the great outdoors was never really my thing before the end of the world. I liked to swim or run in the Preserve on occasion when I could get the time off. It was great to see the wild life. I was in their world, visiting. The earth belonged to the animals, and we took it from them. We took it, and we destroyed it. We destroyed them. In the past few months, I don't know how many kilometers I've covered. But I've done more than enough hiking to last a lifetime.

  The earth is so quiet now, I can't help but wonder if it's sleeping. Should I walk on tip-toe to keep from waking it? No birds with morning calls. No snakes to slither, no lizards to blink in the sun. This land was a desert once, full of life.

  Now it's an ash-scape, blown to hell. Like the rest of the planet.

  I glance over at the road, asphalt rippled and twisted like a frozen river. The InterSector highway at one time, with vehicles rushing in both directions. As long as it heads east, I'll keep it nearby; but if it decides to change direction, it'll be on its own. We've traveled together for a long stretch, linking each other to a past when life was good and gas cost seven bucks a gallon.

  "We should've seen the end coming," Jackson would often say. "There were signs. Good God, there were signs."

  He was a big man, and the way he told it, his father had been a professional ball player back in the day. I didn't doubt it. Jackson carried the genes of a bull. Years in the bunker had dulled his features, and his beard covered most of his face, but you could still see it in the way he carried himself. He was made to be a leader.

  He would have killed us all.

  I whirl around at a sudden noise behind me. A rock, tumbling down the hillside. Maybe I disturbed it as I passed by. It eventually finds a resting place and lies still.

  Well, that's the most action I've seen in weeks. I almost smile.

  I resume my trek. The mountains look as far away as they did when I woke up. I fight off the weight of defeat that's always lurking for an opportune moment to strike.

  "There's no better direction to go." My voice is loud, hollow-sounding against the face shield. It's pretty clear what's on this side of these mountains—the spawn of Mars and the Sahara. It can't be like this everywhere. Somewhere out there, a tree is still growing. Grass, green and lush. A cool stream of fresh water. And people.

  I just have to find them.

  Defeat sulks back to the sidelines to wait. It will have another chance to play in this game. If I counted my nourishment packs right, this is only the first quarter.

  Another rock moves on its own, skidding down the slope at my right. It falls against a boulder and lies flat.

  I stop and face it. Stare at it.

  Hope is a funny thing. I've been longing for months to find another living soul—human, animal, or otherwise. Hell, even a cactus would have sufficed. Every morning, I awake with that hope burning in my gut.

  But now I stand staring at the second rock that's moved in as many minutes, and I'm feeling a bit disquieted, I have to admit.

  "Hello?" I call out. I should take off my face shield if I really want to be heard. I look up to my right, then
turn and check behind me.

  It's only logical to assume I'm not alone. Before the end, there were more than nine billion people on the earth. Figure a few billion were lost on the surface thanks to the bombs and toxins and nuclear winter that followed. And a few billion more probably didn't make it underground, couldn't hack it. Lost their minds and killed each other in the bunkers. Or their airlocks malfunctioned, infecting everyone inside. Worst case scenarios. But that would still leave a whole lot of survivors to make the breach after All-Clear.

  And what about animals? Any left on the surface couldn't have made it, obviously, and most of the ones taken below were eaten. But some could have survived. And hadn't those government geniuses collected two of every species, male and female, up in the Preserve? They were looking ahead. Planning, always planning.