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

try. His hatred of me is greater than his love for you. The guilt he carries only increases my influence. You should stop trying. You won't be able to bring him back from the edge of the abyss."

What the hell? This has to be a nightmare. I'm asleep, haunted by these voices from my past. Unless they're both ghosts... And I've finally lost it. Completely. Crossed the point of no return to semi-sanity.

"You won't take him," she says in a low tone, as if I'm not supposed to hear. "Not easily."

Jackson shrugs. "I've got time. They're not going anywhere, and neither are we." He turns away, leaning against the boulder as he watches the sun in its sluggish ascent.

"Eat, Milton." She pats my pocket, and a wrapper wrinkles in response.

My stomach gurgles and twists. I didn't realize I was so hungry. I pull out the protein pack and tear it open, pausing only to release the bottom of my face shield so I can slide the flavorless meal toward my teeth. I take a big bite and start chewing it down to a consistency I can swallow.

"Good?" She watches me.

I nod. "Tastes like nothing else." She giggles, and I hand her what's left. "Want some?"

She shakes her head, gently pushing it back. "You need it. You have to keep up your strength."

"We don't eat," Jackson tosses over his shoulder.

Right. Because they're ghosts.

"Don't listen to him." She bumps my shoulder with her own. "He's just grumpy that we woke him up. Maybe we should watch the sunrise tomorrow without him."

Jackson laughs out loud. "Good luck with that. You're stuck with me now, sweetheart."

"So..." I swallow another bite and hesitate. "Where are we exactly?"

He sighs and drops his head, muttering something that sounds like, "Again?" But I didn't ask him. I asked Julia.

"We're in the Preserve, Milton." She pauses, weighing her words. "This is what it looks like now."

The Preserve? That's crazy. How many hundreds of kilometers did I run? I couldn't have gone that far. And besides, this place doesn't look any different from the rest of this messed-up planet—the same endless stretches of lifeless terrain I've seen for months. No trees, no babbling brooks. She can't be right.

"This is all that's left. There is no place on earth left untouched by the cataclysmic actions of your kind. There are survivors on every continent, but their world has changed. It's not as they left it, and it's not as they expected to find it."

That much is obvious.

"You're all going to run out of oxygen and starve to death, eventually," Jackson says. "Unless you take to eating each other like those mutant degenerates. Or you could start eating them, I guess. Hunt them down." He laughs without any humor in his tone. "Better to be put out of your misery. Believe me, you don't want to see what's coming. You'll put up a good fight, but in the end, it won't matter any. Futile, when you come right down to it."

"Optimist," she teases him.

"Realist." He glances at me. "Don't let her fill your head with empty hope. She doesn't see the big picture. And she refuses to do what's necessary." He curses quietly and mutters, "All she does is delay the inevitable."

"You don't know any more than I do. You don't have the mind of God." She points at him. "You're as finite as I am."

"It doesn't take the mind of God to see the future here. Their world is destroyed. They have no way to grow food for themselves. All they can do is scavenge from what's still viable beneath their own ruins. But that supply is far from inexhaustible, believe me. I've seen it. And I'll give them a year or two at most—if they can survive that long, considering everything else." He shakes his head slowly. "Face it. The time of humankind has come and gone."

He says it like he's not human himself. Because he's not. I've got to remember that. None of this is really happening. It is—but it's not real. They're not really...real. It's virtual reality or something, my mind playing tricks on me. Hallucinating.

And I thought that voice in my head was bad. Where's it gone?

"You're wrong," she says. "They've been given a second chance."

"By whom? The Creator?" His tone sounds bitter. "You know as well as I do, he left us a long time ago. We haven't been the apple of his eye for centuries. Maybe millennia."

"You don't know that."

"Look at what he allowed to happen to his creation. He made us first, before he made them, and look at what he let them do to us!" He lapses into a string of curses.

Good ol' Jackson with his limited vocabulary.

"They've always had free will. He gave it to them in the beginning. Don't you remember? He may have made us first, but we were never first in His sight. They've always held that special place. It's been a great mystery, all along."

Honestly, I have no idea what they're going on about. They were never like this in the bunker. They barely said a word to each other. And this discussion seems pretty deep—philosophical, metaphysical, whatever. Really, really weird.

"So..." I break the awkward silence, stuffing the protein pack's wrapper into my pocket. "Any particular reason we're up here?"

"You brought us," Jackson snorts with a backward glance. "But you probably don't remember that either, right?"

I doubt it was my idea. That voice in my head... "What do you want to do?" I nudge Julia and her face shield turns toward me.

"Up for some flying lessons?" Her voice bubbles with sudden excitement.

"Huh?"

"When was it—only yesterday?" Jackson grumbles. "And he's already forgotten."

What happened yesterday? Why can't I remember anything before the sunrise? The most recent memory I have is running up here through the dead of night and—

"Cut him some slack. He's been through a lot, thanks to you." She rubs my leg tenderly with her gloved hand.

Cut me some slack. Right. And then hang me with it.

I squeeze