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

other daemons startled from their slumber. The sky is a deep indigo now. The stars are fading, the moon a faint disc. Morning is coming, maybe an hour or so away.

"How does this invisibility of yours work in daylight?"

He turns sharply on me, as if he forgot I was there. "Oh. You know. Comes and goes. Works best at night, for some reason. Not so good after sun up." He shrugs. "Hell if I know why. But that'll be the first thing I ask 'em."

The government scientists. Did any of them survive?

"So what did they do with all the animals? Birds, reptiles, you name it. Where'd they go?" I might as well probe his theories.

He frowns at me like I'm speaking nonsense. "None of those around."

"Right...not anymore. But there used to—"

"Not here," he scoffs. He shakes his head. "It's not like Earth."

I try to follow his reasoning. "Not like it was."

"You think we're still on Earth?" He casts me a sideways glance. "Seriously, does this look anything like Earth to you?"

Of course not. The nukes from D-Day changed everything. But it's still the same planet. I'm sure it is.

"They took us off-world." He nods to himself. "The bunkers were really in the bellies of space ships, and it took them twenty years to reach this planet. Haven't you wondered where everybody else is?"

Now I'm lost. Wasn't he just saying earlier that the rest of the world is watching us?

"They...didn't make it." I remember what Luther told me about what happened in Milton's bunker, Sector 43. "Or the mutants ate them." Or the evil spirits killed them, as they did to Mother Lairen and the others from my sector.

He shrugs. "Or their ships never made it, got lost in space or something. The sun'll be coming up soon." With one hand, he pulls up his hood and reaches into his pant leg pocket to retrieve his face shield. "No suit, huh? Where'd you get your duds?"

I glance down. The material is filthy now. "We made them." Rehana's face returns to my mind, never far away, then Shechara's. I miss them so much.

He grunts and raises his eyebrows, impressed. With the face shield in one hand and my arm in the other, he takes us along the remains of a street that stretches on for more than a kilometer ahead of us. On either side stand the skeletal remains of skyscrapers leaning awkwardly against each other. Ashen dust clings to every twisted red iron steel beam, caked in a layer built over decades. Below them, most of their concrete sublevels are still intact. How many daemons sleep in there?

I still can't tell which direction we're heading. "How much farther?"

He mutters to himself yet again, his eyes darting side to side. I can't make out what he's saying. He seemed the most at ease when he was sharing his outlandish conspiracy theories. Now he's agitated. His grip on my arm tightens and relaxes spastically.

"The parking structure at the south end. How close are we now?" I turn toward him and make an attempt at eye contact.

He avoids my gaze. "Not going there."

I resist the urge to hit him. I keep my voice low so it won't echo. "Then where are you taking me?"

"To your friends."

"So you know where they are." What else hasn't he told me? "You've known all this time?"

He shrugs, shaking his head. "Not for sure. Where they might be, yeah."

"And that's where we're going."

He nods, avoiding eye contact.

"So how close are we...to where they might be?"

He mutters to himself until I tug against him and repeat my question.

"We'll be there before sun-up," he says. "I forgot my boots."

I look down at his bare feet. If the sun comes up before he finds some kind of footwear, he'll never be able to walk again. My fleeting sympathy is overridden by the fact that he won't be able to follow me with sun-scorched feet. Because as soon as this invisibility cloak goes on the fritz after dawn, I'm leaving him behind. And I'm taking his gun.

"How do you know that where we're headed…is where my friends could be?"

"It's where they'd be taken. If they were found."

Taken—by the daemons? Wouldn't they just feast and call it a day?

"Who else is here?" My voice carries the foreboding I feel.

He turns to face me then. There's a haunted look in his eyes, and his features sag. For once he seems completely lucid. "They're not like us. They're...like the way we were before all this. Before the ash." He swallows. "They're natural."

A glow emerges on the horizon. We're heading east.

"The ash," I echo. I thought he believed we were changed by government scientists on another planet as part of some elaborate experiment.

"There's something in it," he says, near a whisper. "Willard always said there was, but nobody believed 'im. And then it was too late. He started killing them, any of 'em that had gone out on the surface, one by one. Didn't matter who they were." He sniffs with a vacant look in his eyes. "He killed 'em all."

Sector 30 had a lot in common with Milton's 43, by the sound of things. But as much as I'd like to stay and hear the sordid tale in its entirety, I have people to find.

In a single movement, I grab hold of the gun in his belt and pull my arm free from his grasp. He vanishes for only an instant. Then his strong hand clamps my wrist, just as I tug the gun free. His eyes bore into me.

"If Willard has 'em, they're gonna die," he says hoarsely.

"Let go of me."

"Let go of my gun."

"I'll shoot you in the leg." My finger curls around the trigger.

"And call those mutos back? I don't think so."

Fury boils within me. I'm trapped. Of course I won't pull the trigger. But he has to let me go.

I chop the blade of my open hand into his throat and he chokes, startled by the sudden blow. He releases my wrist