Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

"Surprised?" Her teeth flash white against flawless olive skin.

"How?" I manage weakly, my throat dry. "You're...dead!"

"Really? I look that bad?" She curses, then frowns with half a smile. "Thanks. You look good, too—from what I can tell."

I release my face shield and drop it to the ground. I stare at her.

"That's better." She winks. "Growing out your hair, or just lazy?"

How can this be? "How did you get here?"

The other one speaks. The voice is familiar but unwelcome. My abdomen tightens.

"We're here to send you off, Daiyna." She steps forward, beside Rehana, and takes off her face shield. Her fiery red hair billows around her pale, pinched face. "You have a long journey ahead."

Mother Lairen. This can't be real. I must've passed out. I'm dreaming this nightmare.

"He told you, didn't he?" Rehana raises an eyebrow.

Told me? Who? I shake my head sluggishly.

"You will go west," Mother Lairen says.

What about the Preserve? Aren't we going north?

"You will go to the coast. The path will be difficult. There will be others like you that you will meet along the way, and you will convince them to join you. It will not be easy." Mother Lairen casts a sidelong look at Rehana, one of both disapproval and resignation. "But it is the choice he made for you."

"He chose life over death, Daiyna." Rehana grins again. "So you will live. All of you."

"For now." Mother Lairen's eyes are cold as they glare at me. "Your days are numbered. The age of humans has come and gone. You will not last long on this New Earth."

Rehana frowns at her. "Doomsayer."

"Realist," Mother Lairen retorts, folding her arms.

This is so bizarre.

Rehana approaches me, and my first instinct is to draw back. But I don't. She wraps her arms around me and squeezes. I can't fight it. I melt into her embrace as tears sting my eyes, spilling down my cheeks. I've missed her so much.

"I will go before you, my sister," she whispers into my ear. "You have nothing to fear."

Nothing to fear...

I gasp. The voice of the spirits—

The sun blinds me, burning my wet cheeks. The sand canopy has vanished. Barely a breeze stirs now. I replace my face shield as fast as I can in the sudden absence of any shade.

Milton stands in front of me. "Weird, huh?"

"You saw them too?" I stare at my reflection in his cracked face shield.

"Sort of. They looked like...people I used to know."

"The spirits?"

He shrugs. "Yeah."

But they were real. They had substance. Some kind of physical manifestation, taking the form of people from our past… Copied from our own memories, stolen from our minds?

"Only we can see them?"

"I guess we're special, you and me."

The spirit manifesting itself as Rehana said he chose life. Did she mean Milton?

"They gave you a choice." What could it have been?

He looks away. "I hope I made the right one." He doesn't elaborate.

I nod slowly and look around, look for them—Rehana, Mother Lairen. But they're gone. Samson sits in the vehicle where we left him. Luther and Shechara stand a short distance away, their backs to us as they gaze into the west. No swirling sand. No spirits of the earth.

"So now what?" I feel empty inside, weightless...and yet something stirs deep within me, something I haven't felt for a very long time. Is it hope?

"The sky's the limit." He stretches his back, looking ready to return to the clouds.

I almost smile. "And after the sky?"

He nods, and the sun shines from his face shield. He watches Shechara and Luther.

"That'll be tomorrow."

TOMORROW’S CHILDREN

BOOK TWO

For Sara

"Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever."

Ecclesiastes 1:4

Part I

Contact

1 Bishop18 Months After All-Clear

I look into the mirror over the sink, but the face staring back at me is not my own. Maybe it was, once. Now I can’t be sure. The eyes are wrong: dead in their red-rimmed sockets. Yet somewhere down deep, shoved under and held there by forces beyond my control, a heart still pumps. Fresh blood circulates. Lungs manage to squeeze oxygen out of the air.

So I’m alive. For what it’s worth.

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, inhaling, exhaling. Focusing on the moment. I allow my gaze to return to the mirror, drawn like a cold hand to flame. Somewhere, beneath the surface, I glimpse a ghost of the man I was: James Bishop. Husband. Father. Soldier. It’s enough to press on with—that scrap of myself.

They haven’t destroyed me completely.

Not yet.

I pull on the heavy-duty hazard suit over my combat armor and zip up the interior lining. Attendants seal the orange outer layer to lock me inside. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic, or I would be hyperventilating right now. O2 is circulating well enough via interior cooling vents. The oxygen supply smells okay, tastes all right, and will last six to twelve hours, depending on my exertion level. I don’t plan on overdoing it. And I don’t intend to take that long.

Get in, get out. Do the job. Do what they expect. Nothing more.

“Test, test,” a voice comes through internal comms, loud and clear, as my head is encased within a triple-polymer helmet. “Sergeant Bishop, do you copy?”

I stare at the scrawny scientist in a white lab jacket—pencil neck, golf ball eyes. Copy? The geek seems to enjoy playing military.

“Yeah.” I nod.

The scientist smiles with gums more prominent than teeth, his head bobbing in a quick series of jerks. “Your entire team will be wearing these next-gen environmental suits, Sergeant. They will provide complete protection against whatever viable contaminants you come across over there. Even if a toxin manages to penetrate the outer layer, you’ll have enough time to radio the chopper and get out before your primary protective lining is compromised.”

Comforting. And what makes it even better? These government geniuses don’t have a clue what I’m going to find over