"Don't you see them?" Sheylia's small voice carried a dreamy quality. I wondered if she was sleepwalking. "Can't you hear them?"
"Who, Sheylia?" I glanced back into the cave behind us to see if anyone else was there. We stood alone with her. "Who do you see?"
She inhaled deeply, and a slight smile played on her lips. "Visitors." She took another deep breath of the night air, her arms floating out from her sides. "They're coming, Daiyna. Our husbands are coming. We get to be mommies!"
One of the others cursed and turned away. "Can't see a damn thing. Go back to bed." The rest straggled after her, murmuring among themselves.
"Don't they want to meet their husbands, Daiyna?" Sheylia asked me.
I didn't know what to say. Many of our sisters were not keen on the idea of becoming breeders in order to repopulate the earth. They'd been able to live without men for years, and they'd gotten used to it.
"Just look around," they'd say. "Would you really want to bring a child into this world?"
Maybe they were right. Mother Lairen chided them gently, as was her way, reminding them it was both our duty and blessing to be mothers of the next generation. It was our destiny, she told them. But they would have nothing of it. As a sign of their resistant solidarity, they shaved their heads to the scalp.
"Don't you want to see your husband, Daiyna? Don't you want to know what he's like?"
"We'll probably get the same one, Sheylia." I cast her a sideways glance, and she smiled broadly.
"Then I hope he is both handsome and strong, and that he is kind to both of us." She turned to me with a slight frown. "You really can't see them?"
I shook my head. There was nothing to see.
If only I'd been right.
"They're just over there…" She pointed and brought my hand up with hers, our fingers intertwined, directed westward. "Maybe ten kilometers away now. They can see us too, I think."
I strained to see, but it was too dark and too far. "Sheylia... Have you always been able to see like this?"
"No." She sighed happily and grinned at me. "Pretty neat, huh?"
My mind flashed back to the sandstorm and our climb. I tried to fight the idea that something had changed us, telling myself that Sheylia was only seeing things, hearing things. But then I heard it too: the low hum of a vehicle, maybe more than one. Faint, but distinct and growing louder, carried to us on the cool breeze blowing up the face of a sheer cliff below.
"Is it—?" I listened again. "What you hear, is it the sound of an engine?"
She brightened and clapped her hands. "Yes! Isn't it wonderful, Daiyna? We have to tell the others!" She turned away, overjoyed.
"Sheylia—"
They shot her.
She seemed to float for a moment, hanging in mid-air as a patch of blood blossomed across her gown. Then came the report of a rifle in the distance, and I flinched, crouching instinctively, looking toward its source.
I could see. The night was no longer black as pitch but instead it glowed with a hazy blue light. My focus sharpened as I blinked my eyes and stared. I could see them. Two or three kilometers out from the base of the foothills below, they came at us in two jeeps, the tires sending up plumes of dust in their wake.
"Why, Daiyna?" Confusion froze Sheylia's soft features as she stumbled backward and dropped headfirst over the ledge.
"No!" I grabbed her legs, my fingers digging into her cool flesh. The rock face beside me shattered with a bullet's impact, and the rifle reported again, echoing in the night. I didn't let go of her. "Mother Lairen!" I shouted. "Help!"
Chaos had ensued. A dozen of my sisters came running out of the cave, and two were shot before they heard my warning. With short cries, they fell from the ledge and were silenced by the jagged rocks far below. No one knew what was happening—only that we were under attack. At first, I was the only one besides Sheylia who could see in the dark, but then others became instantly gifted in the same way. Their eyes widened as they pointed and screamed wildly.
The bodies of our fallen sisters were being eaten where they lay, broken and bloody. The attackers—a dozen in all—had left their weapons behind and their jeeps idling as they lunged, one over another like rabid dogs, up onto the rocks to tear into their prey.
Even now my stomach turns at the memory. I have never felt so powerless in all my life.
There was nothing we could do. We had to get Sheylia inside to care for her, but I couldn't pull my eyes away from the feeding frenzy below us. It was my fault; I shouldn't have called for help. That was my punishment: forcing myself to watch. Bile rose in my throat, and my stomach churned. Vomit shot over the ledge and fell onto the filthy savages far below, but they didn't notice.
I wished it would burn them like acid.
"Daiyna, you mustn't." Mother Lairen and another—Rehana, the first of us to shave her head—dragged me, struggling, into the cave.
Sheylia was already on a mattress inside, cared for by two sisters with medkits. I crawled into a corner and watched as others scurried with rocks and boulders in tow to seal up the opening—only one of many in our honeycomb of caves.
"We must go deeper in," Mother Lairen said with tear-stained cheeks. "Those..." she faltered.
"Men," Rehana spat.
A murmur ran through the women who quickly gathered around us in a tight circle.
"They must not be allowed to follow us inside." Mother Lairen swallowed and raised her chin. "We must defend ourselves—"
"How?" a frightened voice cried. Others echoed her.
"We make weapons." Rehana stood confidently. It was as if she had expected this moment to come. "Right, Mother?"
I sat curled up in shadows not penetrated by the green light of glowsticks mounted at intervals along the earthen walls. Mother Lairen looked stunned, not one given to quick decision-making. No doubt she would have rather been fasting and praying instead of discussing the sudden need for weapons.
"Yes, Rehana. We must protect ourselves." She held out her arms as if to shelter us all. "We are the fertile womb of the future. Not one of us can be allowed to perish. We must go deep into the mountain and hope that if these...men...find a way inside, they will not be able to see in the dark as many of us now can, praise the Creator."
My mouth tasted bad. I wasn't praising the Creator. I didn't echo Mother Lairen's refrain as the others did. Thanks to this new gift of night-vision, I had seen my sisters torn limb from limb and devoured like raw meat. I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them, squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn't get the horrifying image out of my mind.
In quiet moments like this, it still comes back to haunt me.
I set down my spear and stretch, then take a seat on an outcropping of rock. Every night, I volunteer for the first watch. After Sheylia died, I was determined not to let another one of us perish. I helped Rehana and some of the others make weapons—spears, crossbows, swords, daggers—all out of the supplies the government had provided for our shelters. I don't think those UW scientists ever could have foreseen our need for weapons. It wasn't part of their plan for our future.
But we were on our own now. We had to survive.
The gravel shifts behind me and I reel, spear in hand.
"Nice reflexes." Rehana smiles, her even teeth white against her olive skin.
"Your watch?" I relax, lowering my weapon.
"Soon. Keep it up, you're doing great." She steps out of the cave and takes a deep breath of the night air. A cool breeze rustles her loose cotton garments. "How's the new look?" She rubs her clean-shaven head and points at mine.
"Itches a little." I adjust the scarf tied around my bare scalp.
She half-smiles. "You should take that off. Breeze feels great." She closes her eyes and sighs. "No reason to hide."
I'm not hiding anything. Everyone knows I've done it, along with sixty of my sisters. Mother Lairen has been in seclusion for days, fasting and praying. The fact that we don't want to be the future's fertile womb worries her. But I th
ink part of her must understand. After two decades underground, none of us could have expected the first men we met to be cannibals.
"See anything?" Hands on her hips, Rehana scans the ground below. She too is able to see in the dark, but neither of us has the range Sheylia did.
"Nothing. You'd think they would have found us by now."
"They're men," she scoffs. "Out of sight, out of mind."
Are they men? From the distance that night, nearly a month ago, they looked like it. Since then, we've caught sight of them on more than one occasion, but we have been able to stay hidden. In the dark, we hold the advantage. Only once have they come close to finding an opening in our network of caves. Mother Lairen commanded us to seal it, to be safe.
We have not engaged them. For the past week, it's been so quiet on the plain below that we've wondered if they decided to move on in search of other meat.
"Think they'll be back?"
Rehana shrugs. "If they ran out of nourishment packs already, that makes us the only meal in town."
"Couldn't they have just...asked us for more packs? Why did they have to—?" My voice falters.
"They're not like us, Daiyna. You know what Mother Lairen calls them."
"Daemons."
She chuckles. "Well, don't try to figure them out. They're not human anymore." She punches me playfully in the arm. "So we can't carry their spawn. Right? Human and daemon DNA aren't compatible." Her eyes become dead serious as she gazes out into the night. "We won't be their cows. And we won't be their dinner. We should kill every one of them."
"Then you'll need this." I toss her my spear and turn to enter the cave. My shift is over. I need sleep, not talk.
"You know I'm right, Daiyna."
I don't want to hear this again from her. More of us will die if we confront the daemons. Mother Lairen has advised defense only—keeping hidden. In any kind of offensive action, we wouldn't stand a chance against their weapons and vehicles.
"Three of us have died already. You really think we should risk more?"
"What did you study?" Rehana raises an eyebrow. "When we were below."
"Biology and genetics—the sciences." Since most of us were sent to the bunker before we finished our secondary education, we were given multi-terabyte databanks and thirty consoles to help us complete our studies. They functioned well enough until All-Clear, providing us with a wealth of knowledge about a world that no longer existed. But what did that have to do with killing the daemons? "Why?"
"Science. Natural selection, right?"
I nod, already guessing where this is going.
"The whole animal kingdom's gone. All that survival of the fittest stuff—we're it. We're all that's left. Kill or be killed. We can't keep hiding and hope they'll go away. That's not how it works." She grips the spear with both hands and jerks it toward the darkness below us. "We've got to wipe out those bastards!"
She may be right. If they're still prowling around these mountains, it'll be only a matter of time before they find a way into the caves through some unguarded cleft in the rock. Then more of us will die.
Perhaps even more than if we'd taken the offensive in the first place.
"You should tell Mother Lairen your concerns."
A small rock hits my shoulder from above. My muscles tense. I reach for the dagger at my belt and scan the night for movement.
"What was that?" Rehana is at my side, spear ready as she watches the area above the cave's yawning mouth.
I kneel to pick up the stone.
"Just a rock?" Rehana hisses. "If a daemon's up there, he's going to hell tonight!"
"If it's a daemon, he would've shot us already." I squeeze the rock, smooth and cool in my palm. It's a survivor, like us; but it survived on the surface while we hid below. What horrors did it witness? "It's nothing." I let it fall to the ground. "I'm going to bed. Don't get yourself killed out here."
She gives me the finger before a stone hits her square between the eyes. She curses, doubled over. The rock lands beside the one I dropped. They look identical.
"What the—!" She touches the bridge of her nose gingerly and groans. "Show yourself!" She brandishes the spear. "You cowards!"
"Keep it down."
"Somebody threw that at me!"
"No one's up there. It must have slid down on its own, like the other one." There's no movement above us. "You all right?"
"I'll live." She holds her spear in a defensive posture, facing the cave. "I'm smacking the next one to the moon."
"Have fun." Determined to get to bed, I break into a jog—
"Daiyna. Take a look at this."
Something about the tone of her voice makes me stop and turn back. She's no longer looking above the cave. Now the ground at her feet holds her undivided attention. She stares, frozen, at where the two rocks lie.
One deliberate step at a time, I return. I don't join her side. From where I stand, I can already see what she's looking at: the rocks are scraping across the ground, turning slowly, revolving around a central point in the dust.
"Daiyna?" She licks her lips and takes a hesitant step away, her gaze transfixed. "What's your scientific explanation for this?"
I don't have one. The muscles in my stomach tighten, and the back of my neck tingles. Is this fear—or dread? The stones spin faster, whirling like the hands of a clock gone awry. The ledge trembles beneath our feet.
"Rehana..." I hold out my hand, beckoning to her as I back into the cave.
"Yeah, maybe I should—"
The gravel and dust launch upward, hiding her behind a screen of rushing sand. She screams, and the head of her spear swings outward only to be broken off by the power of surging earth. I call out her name, my voice drowned by an avalanche of rocks descending from the slope above, falling in a haphazard pile just outside the cave entrance.
Gritting my teeth, I lunge forward and thrust my hand through the rushing wall of sand. The friction burns, shredding my flesh, and I cry out. But I clutch onto Rehana's forearm, and she clasps mine. I pull with all my strength, and she releases a guttural scream as she passes through the screen. Dodging a shower of rock that plummets straight for us, I yank her to the side, then shove her ahead of me. We clamber up over the growing pile of rocks and crawl deep into the cave beyond. There we collapse, gasping as we catch our breath, deafened by the rumble all around us.
"It's sealing us in..." I can't hear my own voice.
The avalanche covers the mouth of the cave meters at a time. A spasm of pain distracts me. Blue-white in my gifted vision, my outer garment is torn ragged from the elbow down, and the skin on my forearm is nearly gone, dark and wet with blood.
"How?" Rehana squirms beside me and curses. Her clothing has been reduced to rags, and most of her bare body looks as raw as my arm. She needs a medkit ASAP.
"Don't move. I'll be right back."
Clenching my jaw against the pain and cradling my arm carefully, I stumble to my feet and head deeper inside. The rumble of the falling rocks reverberates all around me, and in the caverns on all sides, the others stir and wake, sitting up in confusion. Their eyes stare after me as I pass them.
"Are you injured, Daiyna?" Mother Lairen stands before me.
I stop abruptly and catch my breath. "Rehana...she needs a medkit."
Our Mother beckons two of the girls nearby from their beds. "Tend to our sister. Where is she, Daiyna?"
"At the mouth of the cave." My heart thuds unevenly.
"Go," Mother Lairen dismisses them and faces me. "You need tending as well, my child. Come with me."
I hesitate. Her calm demeanor is oddly out of place considering what's happening.
"Mother, an avalanche has sealed the cave. We need to move into another section, or we can wait and dig our way out once it's over. Some of us gifted with strength could—"
"There is no need, child. We are in good hands. The Creator is protecting us." She turns away. "Come. Let me heal you."
My arm throbs as I follo
w her through the main cavern. Her bare feet seem to glide across the smooth rock. She is not dressed in her nightgown like the others but in the loose cotton garments we wove in the bunker. They hang on the sharp edges of her frame.
No one has seen her for more than a week as she's fasted and prayed. I hope she has finally found herself. For her sake, as well as ours.
"Sit down, Daiyna." She gestures to a cushion on the ground as we reach her corner of the cavern. An alcove set apart, it's more private than the communal sleeping quarters the rest of us share. "Please."
I hesitate. Maybe because I've never been alone with our Mother before. Or maybe because I know she doesn't approve of my shaved head. But I also know she's not one to hold grudges, so I cross my legs and sit on the cushion, careful not to bump my arm into anything. She retrieves a small plastic medkit from the storage chest beside her bed and pops it open as she kneels before me. She keeps her languid gaze on my ravaged arm as she tends to it, dabbing at the oozing blood with a sterile pad.
"Do you believe in the Creator, Daiyna?"
That catches me off guard, and I stammer, "Uh-yes. Of course I do."
A smile plays on her thin lips. "What exactly do you believe?" She doesn't look up, but I can tell she's waiting for an answer.
I swallow, knowing what she wants to hear. Should I tell her what I truly believe instead? A Creator who allows her entire creation to destroy itself isn't a deity worthy of anyone's belief, but is instead no better than a sadistic daemon.
"I believe—" I cringe as she gently cleanses my arm with fluid from a hydropack. "The Creator has given us a second chance. It's up to us to do what we can with it." I pause, weighing my words. "But I wish she would do more to help us out."
Mother Lairen stops and holds my gaze. In her eyes is the peace and assurance I crave. "Oh She is, my child. Have no doubt. She is helping us more than you know. She has sent Her Spirit, and it moves among us now, bestowing upon us these miraculous gifts that are our blessing. Can you not see? Because of Her infinite mercy, we are so much more than any mere mortals have ever been before. This is an amazing time in the history of humankind, don't you agree? And we have been chosen to live it."
Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) Page 6