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

and seek reconciliation, they could do the same. In a way, they seemed relieved, and I had to wonder if they'd been waiting for me to come around.

"So, where to?" Samson grinned, always up for a new adventure.

Neither of them liked the idea of the east coast as a destination. Mainly because it's a lot of territory to cover, and the spirits had been so nonspecific. I've been waiting for more details ever since, but they've remained oddly quiet, failing to appear to me at all.

Days have passed into more than a week, and we continue onward, forging a lonely path through the desolation, maintaining an eastward heading according to the compass mounted on the rig's dashboard console. We've already burned through half our fuel reserves and plenty of our hydro. The tractor-trailer is a thirsty beast, and the heat is incredible through the continent's interior. Not to mention the dust storms. We had a few out west, but we were close enough to the coast for the moisture to tamp them down some. Out here, we've had to put our journey on pause half a dozen times when the dust gets so thick we can't see where we're going. We roll up the windows real tight, cover our faces, and wait it out, perspiring until we're soaked through and through. After every storm, we spend an hour blowing sand out of the engine with air compressors Samson located in the shipping container. Not sure what we'll do when they run out.

And while we have no idea where we are, we know we've traveled over two thousand kilometers to get here. No signs of survivors along the way, but plenty of familiar terrain we've come to tolerate over the past five years: desert wasteland with countless rocks, tons of ashen sand, numerous craters to avoid, and hard-packed earth as impenetrable as pavement.

As the day winds down and Samson snores through his nap, Shechara takes her shift at the wheel. I stare into the distance with my elbow hanging out the open passenger window, thinking about what it must have been like for Milton all those months before he met us. Wandering alone. He hadn't run into any daemons yet, so he'd flirted with the idea of actually being the last living thing in the world.

I can see why. It feels like the three of us are all that's left. Just us and our shipping container full of dwindling resources. Nobody around to try and take it from us. Nobody who wants to eat us. Only the monotonous groans of the truck and the creaking sway of the trailer caused by the uneven ground below. A dirt bike would go a hell of a lot faster, but we see no reason to abandon our hijacked haul until it becomes necessary. Even then, we'll carry as much as we can on our backs.

It's not like we're passing through the land of plenty here. Any ruins we find are leveled, most of them little more than massive craters—as if the cities were targeted early on D-Day. The outlying structures were demolished by the nuclear blast winds. Apparently there were no bunkers full of survivors in the continent's interior, or we would have come across a few of them by now.

Samson mentioned something about the UW Governors being caught by surprise. When the terrorists unleashed their bioweapons, the government had to act fast: rounding us up and taking us to the bunkers that were fully functional, while others still in the construction phase were abandoned. Then the bombs fell. And the rest is...our story.

We spent the first couple days of this roadless trip trying to guess why the spirits would send us east. Or why Luther would have led what's left of our people there in the first place. Geographically, it would make sense that there's a greater UW presence on the east side of this quarantined continent. It's a direct route to the Mediterranean across the Atlantic, unlike that long, circuitous route via the Pacific. So that'll mean a lot more UW ships on the coast, as well as raiders filling up their trucks with scavenged goods. Assuming they're in the pillaging business on the Atlantic side of things.

After so much silent desolation surrounding us, I've settled into a peaceful lethargy. The thought of dealing with the arrogant UW types we're bound to run into causes a knot of tension to squeeze my stomach. Part of me has wanted to turn back ever since we started. Seek the path of least resistance. But that's a joke. We're driving a stolen truck. The raiders would be out for blood if we turned around and headed west.

We don't talk about it, but I wonder every now and then who survived the Eden battle—if anybody. The Edenites had the home-court advantage, but the raiders had body armor. It could have gone either way for Cain and the cannibals. Pretty safe bet no one who survived will be coming after us.

What suicidal lunatics would drive into the interior?

Days blur into one another as we take our shifts at the wheel. We eat and drink our rations, we feed the big rig, we take turns sleeping. Heading ever east with no idea where exactly we'll end up.

Until about a week later. That's when the fuel runs out. We have a decision to make: siphon gas out of the dirt bikes to eek a few more kilometers from the truck—knowing it will need our water as well—or abandon the tractor-trailer and take the bikes themselves, load them up like horses from the ancient west and continue our journey at a faster clip.

Being the three-person democracy we are, we put it to a vote. And as much as we've appreciated the truck shielding us from the elements, we decide unanimously to leave it behind.

So after packing up all the food, hydro, weapons, ammo, and siphoned fuel that can be strapped onto three of the dirt bikes, we rev their grinding