Perhaps they no longer think of themselves as human, if they are even capable of rational thought.
The changes in their physiology could not have happened since All-Clear. Their deformities would have taken years of exposure to the biotoxins and radioactive waste to develop. The daemons could have been on the surface longer than any of us, perhaps years. Long enough for their skin to change, for their noses, ears, and eyelids to drop off, for mucous membranes to overdevelop and coat their facial orifices against the relentless heat of this dry, barren land. The fangs and fingernails didn't grow that way; they were sharpened intentionally, proving these creatures have embraced their new identity, leaving their humanity behind. They have become something new.
We all have been changed.
"What did you have to know, Luther?" Plato casts over his shoulder as we reach the last portion of our climb. "When you insisted on speaking to that thing."
I pull myself up the rock face behind him, my hands gripping the crevice below his foot. "I had to know...they're not like us. There's no humanity left in them." He waits for me to continue. "It was because of war, brothers and sisters killing one other...that we were sent deep into the earth. Part of me wondered if we're heading down that same path." Shouldn't every life that survived D-Day be given a second chance to live? "But they're not human anymore. And if we don't destroy them, they will keep coming after us...until none of us is left."
"We must kill them all," Shechara says quietly with conviction.
The rifles and jeep are only the beginning. From this night forward, we fight back against the daemons. We will go to war.
Plato pulls himself onto the ledge and reaches down for my arm. Once I'm up beside him, we offer our hands to Shechara. She smiles slightly and swings up beside us on her own. Adjusting the rifle strap on her shoulder, she gazes out into the distance. The ashen, cratered landscape looks much like the moon's under its own light.
"Anything?" Plato turns east.
Shechara shakes her head. "Perhaps they've had enough for one night."
I hope they didn't hear their comrades die and decide to return in stronger numbers. "We should bury them."
"The daemons?" Plato faces me. "They don't deserve that. Let them rot."
"We can't allow the next hunting party to find them. They may retaliate, and we'll have lost what ground we gained tonight."
With a reluctant nod, he turns to our brother who's kept watch from the northernmost cave. "Shechara will relieve you," Plato tells him.
"You put on a good show down there," says the tall, strong man we named Ali. He grins.
Plato points toward Samson, Daiyna, and the others on the east side of the ridge below. "Tell them Luther wants the daemons buried. Go."
Ali's grin fades. Nodding grimly, he takes a running leap from the ledge and glides through the air using the strong fabric of his cloak as makeshift wings. He floats, landing within meters of the group below. Hitting the ground in a forward roll, he springs to his feet, instantly the center of attention.
A smile spreads across Shechara's full lips as she watches. Was Ali's impressive display for her benefit?
"Luther." Plato beckons.
I follow him into the cave and blink my eyes as they adjust to the lack of moonlight. He takes a glowstick from his belt and cracks it. Instantly our path through the earthen passage is splashed in green light.
"Take me to Milton."
"Your ear—"
"Tend to it there. Please."
He nods mutely. I have yet to memorize all the twists and turns of these passages and caverns, but navigating them has come to Plato as second nature. Perhaps it's one of his gifts. He's promised to make a map for me, but he knows we'll eventually leave the caves. There's no reason to think of them as our home. We're here for protection only—from the sun and the daemons.
We turn down to the right, pass through two smaller caverns, then duck our heads through a low opening into a much larger cavern lit with glowsticks around the perimeter. The men and women lie asleep, divided by sex with the main floor between them. Milton's mattress is propped against the far wall. Old Rip watches over him.
"How is he?" I whisper, clasping my brother by his bony shoulder.
"Besides being comatose and possessed, you mean? Healing up, I guess." Rip chuckles quietly. "Hey, what happened to you, Boss?" He taps his own sagging ear lobe.
"Curiosity," Plato mutters.
"It's nothing." I kneel beside Milton's bed. "Get some rest, my friend."
"Don't have to tell me twice." Rip turns away. "How long until daybreak?"
"A few more hours."
"How'd we do out there?"
I nod, meeting his gaze. He nods in return.
"So we're on the warpath, then." He sighs heavily and leaves me with, "You know what you're doing. It has to be done."
I watch him go, hoping he's right.
Milton jerks involuntarily, lying on his back dead to this world, yet very much alive as a battle rages within him. Daiyna tended to his bullet wound, and it's healing well. No infection. But there was nothing she could do about the evil spirit inside him.
She says it's the same sort that entered the leader of her bunker and nearly a hundred of her sisters, driving them to mass suicide. They allowed themselves to be shut inside a cave southeast of our current location, and they died for lack of oxygen. Daiyna tried to save them, but they would have killed her if she hadn't managed to escape with Shechara and the others.
"Hold still, Luther. This'll sting a little." Plato opens a medkit at my side.
I wince as he cleans my wound with the bedside manner of a laborer. "What do you think? Where do the daemons come from?"
"The east." Plato shrugs.
"Yes, but...how did they come to be as they are?" My gaze rests on Milton's face, twisted, scowling as though he's having a nightmare. "Was it the radiation or biotoxins that changed them, or something altogether different?"
"The spirits of the earth?" Plato scoffs.
"Is that so difficult to believe? They changed us. Doesn't it seem logical that others could have been changed as well—in detrimental ways?"
"Very few things seem logical anymore, Luther."
"Do you deny your own gift?" Granted, it's a strange one, his ability to spit a blinding substance. He's always seemed ashamed of it.
"No." He wipes the blood off my neck with a swab. "What are you getting at?"
"I'm not sure." I blow out a sigh. "But I can't help wondering if other forces at work, malevolent ones, may have turned the survivors from an eastern sector into these...hostiles we've encountered."
"An intriguing hypothesis." Plato applies a healing salve to my pierced ear. "But I hope you're wrong." He gestures at Milton and snaps the medkit shut. Without another word, he heads over to his mattress for a few hours' sleep.
For Milton's sake—and ours—I do hope I'm wrong. But if the evil spirit intends to change him into a hideous daemon, then there is nothing we can do about it.
I envy Daiyna's ability to communicate with the spirits, to see them. Yet even she's been at a loss with regard to Milton. She can see the spirit fighting against his mind, striving to overcome him, but she can do nothing about it. Once it's entered a host, she says, only the host can rid himself of it. This she was told by the spirits who've helped us to survive this strange new world by giving us our gifts.
I place my hands on Milton's forearm and pray to the Creator of the universe for his healing. I see no spirits. I hear no voices. But I pray, knowing that my voice is heard. I pray it is enough.
It has to be.
The men around me are fast asleep, oblivious to the battle we've won tonight. Plato lies among them now, his eyes closed, his breath even and unlabored. I gaze across the cavern to where the women lie. We won't always be separated like this, divided down the middle. There will be coupling, and there will be children, firstborns on a new earth. Perhaps Ali and Shechara will be the first of us joined in marri
age.
But not yet. We must strike back at an enemy that has terrorized us for far too long. Now is not the time for human mating rituals. For now, we must do our best to survive each day. The time will come for sexual relations, and I long for it as much as anyone else. One or two of the women have already caught my eye—
We must wait a while longer.
I pull the bundle of maps from my belt and quietly unfold them beside Milton's mattress. My thoughts have turned to the future as they so often do, to a time beyond our present hardships. My finger traces a nameless mountain range, a series of jagged lines crossing the paper from north to south. On the west side is a large circle and SECTOR 43—LABOR FORCE in bold print. The scale, mm to km, has them approximately one thousand kilometers west of these mountains. Milton came a long way indeed if these maps are still accurate.
But we have our doubts. The scientists who downloaded them to our bunker database lived in a different world, after all.
My eyes drift to the SECTOR 50 circle—FEMALE PROGENITORS. Daiyna said their bunker was located in the foothills on the east side of the mountains. I slide my finger east slowly, tracking the distance, 70km, to the circle marked SECTOR 51—MALE PROGENITORS. Years ago, people would have spent their entire lives in search of their purpose, their reason for being. And here we have ours, spelled out clearly in black and white.
If only it were that simple. If only everything had gone according to plan.
The scientists could never have predicted the shifting sands or the spirits of the earth or the daemons. What sector do they hail from, these mutant men from the east? I slide my finger in search of a Sector 52 or 53, but the map ends fifty kilometers east of our bunker. I was able to print out the sectors north of ours before the database went offline, and I arrange them now, lining them up. Like a child with a favorite puzzle, I've done this many times before. The mountain range extends to the north another two hundred kilometers. On the west side, northwest of our current location, nothing is labeled. But one hundred fifty kilometers due north of the Sector 51 bunker is SECTOR 31—TRADE WORKERS. Fifty kilometers beyond that is SECTOR 30—ENGINEERS. These two bunkers would have held all the supplies and skilled tradesmen necessary to start rebuilding. Undoubtedly, the engineers would have chuckled at the sight of those shelters my brothers and I constructed. I'm certain we would have done far better with the proper tools and materials.
Why were we divided this way? Did the United World government actually believe the world of the future would function in the same way as their own? The North American Sectors had been governed by the nations of the UW for decades, ever since the collapse of the United States of America following the second cold war. Each of our sectors had its own specialization, whether that be the arts, sciences, labor, engineering, trade, human reproduction, peace-keeping, or anything else the UW deemed important. We supplied them with everything they needed. In turn, they kept us divided, yet thoroughly efficient. They didn't want to see us unite as a nation again, but they wanted us to continue contributing to the world as our ancestors had for centuries. Most citizens were content with the arrangement. But there were, of course, dissenters who called themselves Patriots. No one took these rebels seriously.
Until they released their toxic bioweapons, and the UW governments unleashed hell on earth, retaliating with nuclear strikes intended to annihilate every trace of the toxins as well as those who were infected, both human and animal. The scientists, sociologists, and psychologists in charge of the North American Sectors Survival Program rounded us up and sent us below to the bunkers they'd prepared for us. Everything was carefully planned and executed. No glitches.
For twenty years underground, I looked forward to the new life we'd build together upon leaving the bunker. I never questioned our purpose. But now? All I have are questions. Perhaps I'm no longer the man I was.
I tap Sector 31 with my index finger. How many of the trade workers have survived? Are their supplies and materials still intact? How far north do the daemon raids extend?
Plato, Daiyna, and I have discussed various options for the next few months, and we've agreed on few. But one thing we know: we're stronger now together than we ever were apart. When we eventually decide it's the right time to make our journey northward, we'll go together, all of us. Or we won't go at all.
I line up the remaining two portions of the map and smooth out the wrinkles of the uppermost page: SECTOR 1—PRESERVE. A lush, heavily forested wilderness interrupted by flower-speckled meadows, gurgling streams, and windswept lakes of fresh water. On D-Day, no bombs were dropped in the Preserve—off-limits in times of war. The rebels' bioweapons decimated all animal life, but everything else would have remained.
So we were told by the bunker database.
Plato has his doubts. Even if world leaders had managed to protect the Preserve, the nuclear winters that ravaged the earth after D-Day would not have halted at the threshold of Sector 1 and proceeded no farther, regardless of any energy field in place. The atmosphere would have carried fallout for years as ash and poison drifted down into the soil and groundwater below.
I have to believe the Preserve still exists, in one form or another. How else would we be able to breathe? Nothing grows in these southwest sectors. The oxygen must come from somewhere.
Once we're able to subdue the daemons, we'll leave the caves en masse in the solar-powered vehicles we obtain, invite the engineers and trade workers from Sectors 30 and 31 to join our ranks, and then make the trek northward to begin living off the land as did the pioneers of old: building homes, planting and harvesting crops of real food, raising families. A good life, one unlike anything we've ever known. There in the Preserve, we won't be divided; our sectors will no longer have any meaning.
My eyelids sag, and I catch myself before I nod off. As soon as day breaks, we'll send a group east in our newly acquired vehicle to scout out the daemons' nest. Dawn will arrive before I know it. I should try to get some sleep.
I gather the maps and fold them back into my belt. My gaze falls on Milton before I turn away and head to my mattress. He's sleeping easier now, no longer tossing restlessly. Perhaps my prayers were heard.
Or perhaps the evil spirit has won the battle inside him.
I shake my head. Of course the Creator heard my prayers. He hears and sees all, as He has for all time. I can't allow myself to doubt. To do so only leads to despair.
A shadowy form moves toward me from beneath the low cavern arch. I can tell by her gait and slim, muscular figure that it's Daiyna.
"No change?" Her voice is quiet as she gathers her flowing cloak to keep from brushing the bare feet of our sleeping brothers.
"He's at peace." I watch her as she looks at Milton. "What do you see?"
In the faint green light, her dark eyes focus on Milton's sleeping form and remain there for a few moments before turning back to me. "The battle is over for now."
She has my full attention. I envy her gift, and she knows I believe her, unlike some of the others in our midst. "Is the spirit gone from him?"
"No." She shakes her head and bites her lip. "But it's not fighting against his will. It's like they've agreed on a ceasefire."
"He's been fighting all day. Yet it hasn't overcome him."
"I don't know what's really happening, Luther. Only what I see. And I don't know why I can see and hear these things." She wipes her brow and sighs, exhausted. "The daemons are buried, as you asked. We could've torched them just as easily."
"Others would have been drawn to the smoke."
"Let them come. We'll kill them too. How's the ear?" She looks at it with more interest than concern.
I touch it gingerly. The healing salve is still wet. "Fine."
"You're not going to turn into one of those things, are you?" The makings of a smile curve the corners of her lips. Before I can fully appreciate the sight, the curves vanish. "Seriously".
I restrain a chuckle. "I certainly hope not. But if I do, you have my permi
ssion to put me down."
"I wouldn't need your permission." The glint in her eye softens her words. "Ali is armed and watching over the vehicle until daybreak. We didn't know how to start the engine, so it's right where the daemons left it, fifty meters out. Shechara has night watch on the ledge until dawn. Everyone else will be coming in for a few hours of sleep. We all need to rest."
The meaning in the look she gives me is clear, and I nod. I plan to get an hour or two of sleep if I can. "Ali and Shechara left alone? Do you think that's wise?"
The curve returns to her lips. "You've noticed it too?"
"I don't know what you're referring to." I fail to maintain a straight face.
She almost laughs. "I think you do!" she whispers, glancing around at our sleeping brothers and sisters to be certain they haven't been woken. "What do you think?" She steps closer to me. "Should we discourage it?"
"Did you leave them together on purpose?"
"What are you suggesting?"
"It's a simple question." I feign an impassive shrug.
She shakes her head, eyeing me as she backs away. "Go to bed." With a hint of the smile left intact, she moves across the cavern to her mattress in the midst of our sleeping sisters. Her feet barely seem to make contact as they glide across the cold rock.
I catch myself watching her go and dip my chin, turning my attention to the waiting mattress closest to the arched cavern entrance. Exhaustion weighs my steps until I sink heavily onto the firm cushion and roll onto my back. My senses swim dizzily and I close my eyes, more than willing to surrender completely and be carried away by the darkness.
"Luther!" Samson's whisper, much like the rest of him, is bigger than most. He grips my shoulder as he collapses onto the vacant mattress beside mine. "You awake?"
"No, of course not, my friend." I rub my eyes and face him. "Don't tell me you're going to sleep with that."
Beside him on the mattress where a lover might be, cradled under his brawny arm, is the rifle he confiscated tonight. He strokes it tenderly and grins.
"This is but the start of a beautiful relationship, Luther. I'm not letting her out of my sight. We've got plenty more daemons to dispatch."
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