Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) Milo Fowler (different e readers TXT) 📖

the report of a rifle in the distance, and I flinched, crouching instinctively, looking toward its source.

I could see. The night was no longer black as pitch but instead it glowed with a hazy blue light. My focus sharpened as I blinked my eyes and stared. I could see them. Two or three kilometers out from the base of the foothills below, they came at us in two jeeps, the tires sending up plumes of dust in their wake.

"Why, Daiyna?" Confusion froze Sheylia's soft features as she stumbled backward and dropped headfirst over the ledge.

"No!" I grabbed her legs, my fingers digging into her cool flesh. The rock face beside me shattered with a bullet's impact, and the rifle reported again, echoing in the night. I didn't let go of her. "Mother Lairen!" I shouted. "Help!"

Chaos had ensued. A dozen of my sisters came running out of the cave, and two were shot before they heard my warning. With short cries, they fell from the ledge and were silenced by the jagged rocks far below. No one knew what was happening—only that we were under attack. At first, I was the only one besides Sheylia who could see in the dark, but then others became instantly gifted in the same way. Their eyes widened as they pointed and screamed wildly.

The bodies of our fallen sisters were being eaten where they lay, broken and bloody. The attackers—a dozen in all—had left their weapons behind and their jeeps idling as they lunged, one over another like rabid dogs, up onto the rocks to tear into their prey.

Even now my stomach turns at the memory. I have never felt so powerless in all my life.

There was nothing we could do. We had to get Sheylia inside to care for her, but I couldn't pull my eyes away from the feeding frenzy below us. It was my fault; I shouldn't have called for help. That was my punishment: forcing myself to watch. Bile rose in my throat, and my stomach churned. Vomit shot over the ledge and fell onto the filthy savages far below, but they didn't notice.

I wished it would burn them like acid.

"Daiyna, you mustn't." Mother Lairen and another—Rehana, the first of us to shave her head—dragged me, struggling, into the cave.

Sheylia was already on a mattress inside, cared for by two sisters with medkits. I crawled into a corner and watched as others scurried with rocks and boulders in tow to seal up the opening—only one of many in our honeycomb of caves.

"We must go deeper in," Mother Lairen said with tear-stained cheeks. "Those..." she faltered.

"Men," Rehana spat.

A murmur ran through the women who quickly gathered around us in a tight circle.

"They must not be allowed to follow us inside." Mother Lairen swallowed and raised her chin. "We must defend ourselves—"

"How?" a frightened voice cried. Others echoed her.

"We make weapons." Rehana stood confidently. It was as if she had expected this moment to come. "Right, Mother?"

I sat curled up in shadows not penetrated by the green light of glowsticks mounted at intervals along the earthen walls. Mother Lairen looked stunned, not one given to quick decision-making. No doubt she would have rather been fasting and praying instead of discussing the sudden need for weapons.

"Yes, Rehana. We must protect ourselves." She held out her arms as if to shelter us all. "We are the fertile womb of the future. Not one of us can be allowed to perish. We must go deep into the mountain and hope that if these...men...find a way inside, they will not be able to see in the dark as many of us now can, praise the Creator."

My mouth tasted bad. I wasn't praising the Creator. I didn't echo Mother Lairen's refrain as the others did. Thanks to this new gift of night-vision, I had seen my sisters torn limb from limb and devoured like raw meat. I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them, squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn't get the horrifying image out of my mind.

In quiet moments like this, it still comes back to haunt me.

I set down my spear and stretch, then take a seat on an outcropping of rock. Every night, I volunteer for the first watch. After Sheylia died, I was determined not to let another one of us perish. I helped Rehana and some of the others make weapons—spears, crossbows, swords, daggers—all out of the supplies the government had provided for our shelters. I don't think those UW scientists ever could have foreseen our need for weapons. It wasn't part of their plan for our future.

But we were on our own now. We had to survive.

The gravel shifts behind me and I reel, spear in hand.

"Nice reflexes." Rehana smiles, her even teeth white against her olive skin.

"Your watch?" I relax, lowering my weapon.

"Soon. Keep it up, you're doing great." She steps out of the cave and takes a deep breath of the night air. A cool breeze rustles her loose cotton garments. "How's the new look?" She rubs her clean-shaven head and points at mine.

"Itches a little." I adjust the scarf tied around my bare scalp.

She half-smiles. "You should take that off. Breeze feels great." She closes her eyes and sighs. "No reason to hide."

I'm not hiding anything. Everyone knows I've done it, along with sixty of my sisters. Mother Lairen has been in seclusion for days, fasting and praying. The fact that we don't want to be the future's fertile womb worries her. But I think part of her must understand. After two decades underground, none of us could have expected the first men we met to be cannibals.

"See anything?" Hands on her hips, Rehana scans the ground below. She too is able to see in the dark, but neither of us has the range Sheylia did.

"Nothing. You'd think they would have found us by now."

"They're men," she scoffs. "Out of sight, out of mind."

Are they men? From the distance that night, nearly a month ago,