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

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, and 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