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

by Milo James Fowler

  Markus raises an eyebrow. “Get ready to dodge a few bullets, men!”

  The circle of superhumans releases a chorus of wild shouts as Markus dashes forward, blurring out of focus with incredible speed. My gun is wrenched aside, but I hold on tight and squeeze off every round until the clip empties. Spurts of blood drift through the air; I know my shots found targets, but with the indistinct haze of motion all around me, I can’t be certain who I hit.

  Assault rifles briefly spit fire on my right and left, courtesy of Sinclair and Granger before they’re disarmed and thrown to the ground.

  The next thing I know, I’m on my back as well, pinned to the sand.

  “Damn it!” Granger lashes out against the two superhumans who restrain him.

  So he’s fine.

  “Sinclair, report.”

  “I’m here, Sergeant. We’re all right.”

  “No thanks to you!” Harris is disgruntled. No surprise there. “Let me up, please. I am no threat. None of us are, now that you have disarmed us so spectacularly.” He does his best to placate our captors. “It was a wonder to behold, in point of fact. To see you move like that!”

  Vincent no longer smiles. He holds a polished machete that gleams in the moonlight. “Get them out of those suits.”

  Harris’s obsequious tone takes an about-face. “Hold on now—don’t be hasty. You have already subdued us. There is no conceivable way we would pose a problem for you, so there is no need to remove our suits. They are for our protection, you see. We are from a domed city on the Mediterranean Sea, and we breathe only air that has been purified—”

  “Your suits are heavy.” Markus shrugs. “They’ll slow us down.”

  “Does your Lord Cain want us brought back to him dead or alive?” Harris demands.

  “He wasn’t too specific on that point,” Vincent admits, smirking at the stunned look on the doctor’s face. “Go on.” He gestures to his men. “Open them up.”

  We thrash wildly, doing all we can to delay the inevitable.

  “Sergeant!” Harris shrieks.

  “Turbo!” Granger screams, a last-ditch attempt. “Force! Power! Thrust!”

  I take a different tack. Despite my cumbersome suit, I jab a hand between the arms that restrain me and seize the hilt of a superhuman’s blade. Slipping it free of its sheath, I proceed to slice and hack away at every superhuman body part in range, aiming first for the hands that try to dislodge my helmet clamps. Blood sprays across my face shield, combining with the fog from my breath to make me just about as blind as I was after my crash-landing.

  “Subdue him!” Markus roars over the screams of his men, a chorus of pain that intensifies as both Granger and Sinclair follow my lead, snatching blades and going to work. “Subdue them all!”

  Shots ring out, fired into the air. I gain a little breathing room and wipe at my face shield with one gloved hand while swinging the blade in violent arcs with the other. I meet no resistance. The superhumans are wisely keeping their distance now.

  Between the streaks on my face shield, I see the one named Vincent advancing on Sinclair from behind. I lunge forward with all the strength I can muster to intercept, my blood-stained blade at the ready.

  “No!” Harris cries.

  Vincent plunges his machete into the gap behind Sinclair’s left knee and quickly withdraws his weapon, leaving her leg to buckle. Too stunned to utter more than a harsh gasp, she topples to the sand, clutching at the blood flow with her gloved hands.

  “Tell your people to lay down their weapons,” Vincent says.

  “I’m unarmed!” Harris makes it known, throwing up both his hands.

  I glance down at Sinclair as she struggles awkwardly to stop the bleeding. I point at Harris. “Take his suit off first.”

  The good doctor turns a slack-jawed face toward me.

  “You can be our guinea pig, Doc. If the air checks out, we’ve got nothing to be afraid of.” I lower my blade and look at Granger. “Tell them.”

  He nods and repeats everything I said.

  Markus scowls. “You will stop resisting us, or we will forcibly pacify you—as we have already done with your woman.”

  Despite her wound, Sinclair is visibly chafed at being referred to that way.

  “Pacify my ass,” Granger snarls, his own bloody blade gripped tight. “You want to dance? Let’s dance!”

  Vincent smirks. “You wouldn’t survive my first strike.”

  “Let’s all take a deep breath here and settle things like reasonable human beings—and highly evolved human beings.” Harris steps between them. The superhumans maintain a tight perimeter, ignoring the lacerations they received, now blossoming in wet patches under the moonlight. “It’s clear we are not getting anywhere like this, so why don’t I make a proposition?” He pauses, waiting for an invitation from the superhumans to continue.

  “You waste your breath, old man,” Markus says. “Lord Cain has spoken, and we follow his command.” He gestures to his men, and they move like the wind.

  Granger hits the ground first, screaming and lashing out with his borrowed weapon. But his retaliation doesn’t last long. First a blade punctures the joint at his elbow, and the weapon in his hand drops to the ground with a puff of dust. Then he lies still, groaning.

  I’m next. But I drop the blade and don’t fight back. I need to conserve my strength for when they decide to remove my suit. I’ll have to deal with whatever violent changes overcome me at that point. I trust—without knowing why—that these superhumans will be true to their word. That if I don’t retaliate, they won’t harm me.

  Ironic, considering they’re prepared to remove my only protection from this toxic environment.

  “Finally, you see reason.” Harris nods.

  A pair of superhumans take hold of my helmet. They start unlatching it.

  “My O2’s almost out anyway.”

  “You are a brave man, Sergeant,” Markus observes. “Your comrade was squealing like an infant by this point.”

  “We’re not scared.” Granger favors his injured arm as another pair of superhumans work on removing his helmet, struggling with the remaining clamps. “But you should be. Who knows what kind of mutant freaks you’ll have on your hands once we catch a whiff of your air.”

  Markus chuckles. “We’ll put you down, if need be.”

  “Dead or alive,” I remind the engineer. “We’re wanted men, ol’ buddy.”

  Granger curses.

  I take a quick breath and hold it as the final clamps release. My helmet lifts free, exposing my face to the chill of the night.

  Will I ever see my family again?

  “Breathe it in, Sergeant,” Markus says. “Our air flows from Gaia herself, permeating all that it touches. There is no way for you to—”

  He’s interrupted by a new player on the scene: an engine roaring through the dark with headlights on full blast, as blinding as the sun in all its glory. I shield my eyes with one hand and recognize the vehicle—a black, armored Hummer. It must have been running on silent mode until now, revving as it skids to a halt a few meters away.

  Who sits behind the wheel? Impossible to tell behind those tinted windows. A fanged mutant? Someone from Eden? Or a survivor from some other enclave the UW knows nothing about?

  “Looks like our ride’s here.” Granger smacks the superhuman’s hands away from his helmet and slaps the clamps shut. “Sorry fellas, but we’ve gotta go.”

  Markus and Vincent have our assault rifles at the ready. They order their men to do the same, taking aim at the intruder. Ignoring me and my crew for the moment, they fire volley after volley into the vehicle’s exterior, the shots deflecting with sparks of light.

  I grunt as I latch my helmet back into place and release the air I’ve been holding. A little light-headed, I gulp down whatever O2 my suit still has to offer and roll onto all fours. Then I heave myself upright. “Can you move?”

  “Go, Sergeant.” Sinclair sits in a pool of her own blood. “I would only slo
w you down, I’m afraid.”

  “You kidding? Why do you think we brought this guy along?” Granger holds his bloody arm out to Harris. “Work your magic, Doc!”

  A stunned look is plastered across the good doctor’s face. His eyes dart from the vehicle to the superhumans, and he squints at the bursts of weapons fire illuminating them in the night.

  “How about it?” Granger urges.

  Harris nods, blinking, unable to ignore the cacophony around us. “Of course—but my medkit, it’s back at the jeep.”

  I glance at the Hummer taking fire from all sides. The resilient vehicle continues to withstand the abuse without a single window broken. How many are inside? Are they armed? What are they waiting for?

  “Can you stand?” I step beside Sinclair.

  “With help.” She nods.

  “We won’t get far,” Harris says. “Do you have a plan, Sergeant?”

  “Their ammo will run out before long, and when it does—”

  As if on cue, the superhumans pause to reload with mags fished from deep pockets in their cloaks. The vehicle lurches forward suddenly, driving a few of the shooters back.

  “The tires!” Markus shouts. “Go for the tires!”

  A fresh barrage erupts. I curse as the vehicle’s tires blow out beneath it, sinking into the sand. The superhumans cheer like cavemen subduing a mighty dinosaur—

  Until a sudden sandstorm descends on them from above without warning, whirling violently and whipping the rifles out of their hands, dispersing the superhumans, driving them into the night screaming something about demons as they disappear in blurs of speed.

  I blink, unable to believe my eyes as the form of a man materializes out of the whirlwind. The storm dissipates as abruptly as it arrived, leaving everything eerily still.

  “We don’t have much time.” The man approaches us at an easy stride, caked in dust and wiping the stuff from his black goggles. “They’ll be back.”

  12 Tucker

  17 months after All-Clear

  Thinking back on it now, the particulars are a little fuzzy. Maybe it had something to do with the pain of being shot or the fear of getting eaten alive. Either way, I’m grateful for it. Kind of dulled the sharp edges around what was sure to be the stuff of nightmares—for the final few minutes of my life, anyway.

  I’d dealt with the mutos plenty before, so I knew what to expect from their kind. I knew where I stood with them. They were hunters; I was prey. But up to now, I was able to stick to the shadows and the cover of nightfall as I went about doing Willard’s bidding. More often than not, that involved fastening fancy shock collars onto every muto I could find. They never saw me coming, and by the time they realized what I’d done, I was already well out of range. If I was real quiet, I could slip off into the dark without being noticed.

  Not the case when you’ve been shot and left for dead in the middle of sun-scorched earth. Invisible man or not, you bleed. You leave a trail of crimson across the hard-baked ground when you crawl over to a patch of shade behind a boulder. You curse your shadow that only makes itself known in direct sunlight, oddly enough. As if that’s fair in any way. You grab hold of the gun they’ve left you—those sons of bitches who made off with your precious cargo and shot you for your troubles.

  “Keep them safe,” I told that third sentry, parting words between the two of us. Last words, I figured at the time.

  Lying here now in this cool, dark cave on a padded cot, in the quiet with only my thoughts and recollections to keep me company—and the sting of the healing salve doing its job on my wounds—it’s all I can do to keep my mind from straying back to those godawful moments.

  The mutos in their jeeps made a beeline straight for me. By the time I got myself into the shade, I knew there was no point in hiding. The mutant freaks had already spotted my blood. But I hoped to take out as many of them as I could before they started tearing into me, chewing on my intestines like sausage links.

  I’ve got a good imagination. Always have. But I didn’t appreciate it much once I started visualizing the feeding frenzy about to ensue.

  Crouched low behind the rock, handgun at the ready, spare clips good to go, I grit my teeth against the pain, cursing myself in silence to remain conscious as the sunbaked terrain swam around me. I couldn’t pass out. Not that I wanted to be fully conscious when the mutos started their bloody feast, but I did want a fighting chance. And if there happened to be an extra round left over when things started turning south, I’d have the option of sealing my own fate—with a gun muzzle up tight against the roof of my mouth and a split second between the trigger pull and the hole out the back of my head.

  The jeeps skidded to a halt less than twenty meters away, and I heard the mutos snorting, growling and cavorting as their ragged boots hit the ground running. Despite their lack of nasal appendages, the creatures had a keen sense of smell—something I’d learned all too well in previous encounters.

  The first one to reach me had only a moment to notice where the blood trail ended in a small pool, having cascaded down the side of the granite behind my back. I raised the 9mm and squeezed off two rounds. The muto’s head whipped back as blood and brain matter exploded out the back of its skull, and the body went limp in midair.

  I considered grabbing the creature’s weapon, a UW-issued assault rifle, but there was no time. The others were already upon me. I didn’t count rounds or targets. I just aimed and fired, one headshot after another, picking them off as they approached with their weapons at the ready, aimed in my general vicinity.

  I wince now at the memory of the muto with the death grip on his rifle, how when my first shot plowed through his left eye with a burst of yellow pus and blood, the creature’s trigger finger jerked back and froze there, spraying bullets like rain. They pocked the ground with little geysers of dust and raced in a line, straight for my outstretched leg. I was too weak to move anything but my shooting hand by that point, leaning there against the boulder with my head back, drenched in sweat and blood—most of it my own. I howled in agony as a dozen rounds ripped into my leg.

  The mutos seemed taken aback at the primal sounds coming from the shade, and they halted their approach for the moment, staring bug-eyed and slobbering.

  “Yeah, you know me,” I managed to rasp at length, my throat raw. “The invisible man. I’ve collared hundreds of your pals.” Through blurred vision, I saw them crowd around me, six or seven of the horrors, snorting and staring with their lidless eyes, unable to blink even if they wanted to. “C’mon now. Have at it. What are you waiting for?” My words slurred at that point. I knew I wouldn’t be ending things on my own terms. I didn’t have the strength. “Ain’t you hungry?”

  They jostled against one another in excitement. Their exposed nasal cavities twitched and snorted sharply, some kind of preliminary reaction. Then their fangs came at me, teeth that had once been human but were sharpened to points, perfect for biting and tearing into flesh. They didn’t care that I was covered in a cold sweat and going into mild convulsions—either from blood-loss or fear, tough to tell which. They were hungry for meat, pretty much always on the brink of starvation, by the looks of them. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Neither could cannibal freaks, apparently.

  I seized up, fists clenched, muscles tight. I remember feeling the teeth like two dozen needles piercing into my arm all at once—like getting a flu shot back when I was a kid, but twenty times worse. And that was only one bite. I screamed out, banging the back of my head against granite as three more fastened their jaws onto me. My invisibility had posed no problem for them at all.

  I look down at my arm now, bare and glistening in the greenish light of the glowsticks mounted on the cave walls around me. My skin is covered in healing salve. Almost every square centimeter of my body is lathered in the stuff. From the warm, prickling sensation, I can tell it’s working its magic.

  I don’t bother trying to move. I tried before when I first woke up in this strange place, a
nd it was nothing doing. Maybe they gave me some kind of paralytic to keep me still while the medicinal gel did its work. I sure was a bloody mess out there by the time they found me.

  The details of my rescue are unclear. I remember the biting, and I figured that would be my last memory—the awful sensation of fangs and claws tearing, releasing spurts of blood and revealing the juicy organs underneath. More horrific than anything I could have ever dreamed up.

  Then a blast of sand and dust washed over us, choking me mid-scream and alarming the mutos something fierce. The sounds they made with their blood-drooling mouths in no way resembled human speech, but I thought I recognized a tone of terrified familiarity with the sudden sandstorm. Or maybe I was hallucinating. Either way, once the dust began to swirl around me like a whirlwind, driving the mutos back, shrieking and fleeing to their jeeps, I coughed and allowed a smile to stretch across my face as I cracked an eye open to take a peek at the afterlife.

  What I saw instead was the form of a man descending out of the dust cloud as if it had been his chariot or something equally biblical, a man covered from head to boots in the cotton sandcloth of a desert nomad. The black UW-issued goggles strapped over his eyes were directed straight at me as he walked on the air—or so it seemed.

  That was one of the fuzzier details, I have to admit.

  Grin intact, I started losing consciousness at that point, but not before an oddly familiar voice said “Gotcha” as strong arms encircled me.

  But that couldn’t be right. For one thing, the voice that seemed so familiar at the time holds no meaning for me now, yet I really doubt that a complete stranger would have walked right up to my half-eaten invisible body and given it a great, big hug. Would’ve been a bloody mess.

  Regardless, when I awoke who-knows-how-many hours later, I found myself in here, and I knew right away where I was. Not because I’d ever been here before, and nobody told me where here was—I’ve yet to see a living soul—but I used the process of elimination to figure it out.

  There were three options I could think of, but only one made any sense.