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

plenty of time to escape. You won’t go after him, nor will you send anyone else.” She runs her eyes along my muscled frame, savoring the sight. Her appetites are insatiable. “Then we’ll discuss what you need from me. Because you do need me, don’t you, my love? There is no one else among your ranks gifted as I am.”

I grind my teeth together, refusing to meet her gaze. Of course she is right. She is the only one who can contact my men tracking the UW scouts. Because of this, and because she carries my child, I need her.

For now.

6 Margo17 months after All-Clear

I see it all—perceive it through the senses of the little ones Tucker carries across the wilderness, strapped to his back in the portable incubators I rigged for his journey. As soon as he touched them, they vanished from sight—as with anything that comes into contact with Tucker’s flesh—but I knew they were all right. I could sense their thoughts, both the male and the female, and they were not afraid. Completely at peace, they floated in their artificial amniotic fluid, unaware that Tucker and I risked our own lives to see these two unborn children to safety.

“Sure you don’t want to tag along?” Tucker asked, cinching the belts so they were nice and snug. He didn’t want the canisters clinking against each other while he attempted his silent escape.

I shook my head. “Someone needs to stay behind to monitor the others.” I gestured lamely at the rows of incubation units around us. “Besides, the mutos won’t see you. If I were to come along, my presence would endanger your lives. Even as it is, you will have to be careful.”

“I’ll travel by night if I can. The mutos aren’t nocturnal, far as I can tell. And I won’t have to worry about my shadow without sunlight.”

“What about the moon?”

“Shouldn’t have another full one for a couple weeks. Plenty enough time for me to get where I’m goin’.”

“Due west.”

He sniffed. “That’s what they said.”

I nodded with some lingering reservation. “The spirits of the earth.”

“Yeah.” He almost chuckled. “Crazy as that sounds.”

It sounded far beyond the realms of sanity weeks before, when Tucker returned from one of his routine salvage runs on the surface. The city ruins above Eden were a virtual cornucopia when it came to useful items and well-preserved foodstuffs. Tucker along with Willard’s dogs—collared, remote-controlled mutos—made regular scavenging excursions throughout the rubble, searching and rescuing all the goods that made Eden a subterranean paradise.

On this particular occasion, Tucker returned a bit shell-shocked. He said later it was a good thing Willard and Perch hadn’t been able to see how pale he was. When he managed to get a moment alone with me, he shared about the encounter he had with his mother in the middle of a cracked and dusty street.

“Your mother?” I had been unable to contain my incredulity.

“Hear me out,” Tucker said, keeping his voice low. “I know full well it wasn’t really Momma. She died in the blasts on D-Day. But she was just how I remember her: standing there in her apron and her rose-print dress, like she was a hologram projected straight from my own mind. There she was in the middle of the street talking to me. None of the dogs gave her any notice—except for when she showed up in that dust devil.”

“A what?”

“A little twister along the ground. It spiraled toward me down the middle of the street, and I held up my arms like this to shield myself from all the grit.” He demonstrated. “When I brought ’em back down, there she was, standing right there as solid as you are right now.”

“What did she say to you?”

He sniffed, shuffled his feet—the usual tics when he starts to feel uncomfortable. “Told me a lot of stuff about myself, stuff only she’d know. Sounded just like her, too. Her voice. But I knew it couldn’t be, not out there like that. So I had her tell me straight out what was going on. And she sure did. Told me all about Milton and Daiyna and Luther and the others, about how they went west and met others of their kind—our kind—changed by the dust of this crazy new earth and made into something a hell of a lot more than human.”

“Are you certain you weren’t hallucinating? The temperature spikes can be extreme on the surface, not to mention—”

“No, I’m sure. Just hear me out.” He took a quick breath and resumed, “She—it—this spirit manifestation or whatever it was, she went on to tell me that Luther was the leader of these folks, and they were all holed-up in caves out west, near the Pacific coast. And if we—you and me—ever wanted to join up with them, that’s where we’d find ’em all.”

“You and me,” I mused. “Is there any particular reason why this spirit-projection cannot come down here and invite me herself?”

“Yeah, actually. It’s got something to do with them being unable to co-exist with all these manmade materials we’ve got. They can only move through dust and air. If they’re really the earth’s spirits and whatnot, I suppose that makes some sense. Right?”

I hadn’t been so sure. I’m still not.

“Let’s just hope they know where they’re sending you,” I told him. “Did you get an accurate count of Luther’s numbers? He will need to return in force if he is to reclaim what belongs to him.”

Tucker sniffed. “I know it’s kind of late in the game to be bringing this up, but... What if they aren’t all that interested in coming back for these little ones? What if they’re busy out there makin’ a new life for themselves instead? Making their own children the natural way?”

I remember mulling this over like it was yesterday.

“Luther is a man of integrity—the last of a dying breed. Daiyna is much like him. You tell them what Willard plans to do with these children—using them as bargaining chips