Evelyn Earth Part 30

“It really pisses me off when you say shit like that” I growled.

“Sorry love, just an instinctive reaction of my surprise” he shrugged, “I just assumed that you were more…well informed. Or that you had at least seen something.”

“Clearly not” I looked down at my hands. Why had I stayed cooped up for so long? Was I that afraid of the outside world?”

“After the first few chaotic days everyone was out robbing each other blind. Power had been cut off everywhere and there was no sign of aid, until the angels arrived. At least that’s what the people started calling them.”
                “Angels?” I whispered.

“They looked just like you and me except they glowed with a warm light, as if they were surrounded by a halo. Personally I think they just got the other end of the stick—the light instead of the dark. Anyways Sloan and I were bunkered down for the night in hall with hundreds of other people. When the sun rose two of these angels came into the building and said that we were all in danger—that the reconstruction of the Earth had begun. They were there to take us to a safer place. You should of heard the noise Evs, people yelling their lungs off demanding explanations, but you know what? The light buggers didn’t say a word, both of them just spread their arms and beamed all of us away.”

“What” I gasped, “beamed, as in alien beamed?”

“Yeah, rays of light came out of their bodies and poof we were in a forest.”

I shook my head, this was all so unbelievable, but at the same time it made sense.

“We were in the wild, no signs of civilisation, just hundreds of people standing around dumbstruck. It was Sloan’s idea to leave. He didn’t believe in the ‘angels’ any more than I did so we split. Others followed our lead, heading off into the trees. That’s when I first began to hear the Mother’s call. I led us out of the forest and back into civilisation where I found the darkness. That was the point I think, of the angels arrival, to transport all the people to a place where we wouldn’t be interested in going.”

“Somewhere completely natural” I said, finishing off Sebastian’s thought. Our destinies didn’t allow us the luxury of seeking out serene places where the Earth hadn’t been tampered with. We were programmed to be in urban places so that we could destroy them and re-create the Mother’s body.

“Somewhere out of the line of fire” Sebastian added, “imagine if that bridge we smoked had been packed with cars, packed with people. Would you have hesitated?”

“No” I shook my head. He was right, if the angels hadn’t of come and evacuated the majority of the population then we would have killed them along with the buildings they lived in, the cars they drove and the places they sheltered in.

“We came across another one of these evacuation camps when we were making our way south” he continued, “that’s where Travis joined us. You could say I rescued him. The camp he was in had turned rabid, people were scrambling to find food amongst the trees, monopolising the water supply. He was practically starving and the worst part about it was the angels guarding his camp didn’t allow anyone to leave. You wouldn’t believe it Evs, they had set up a light perimeter that instantly beamed you back into the centre of the camp.”

“How did you get past it?”

“Looks like darkness can swallow the light” he grinned wolfishly, “I locked onto their perimeter and squashed it. It just so happened that Travis saw the whole thing and decided that our cause was more worthy. He’s a vegan” he added the last part matter-of-factly.

“That’s insane. Why would they beam everyone to safety, but leave them with no food and water…and no way to leave?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We left that camp in a hurry, but I bet there’s thousands more like it out there.”

“Was there anything else I missed? Giant space ships? The appearance of God?”

 “No” he laughed, “we came across other small groups like the one you were part of, picked up Izwan on the road and Gerard out of the bush.”

“I can’t imagine Izwan on the road anywhere, he looks so helpless.”

“He was helpless. He had escaped from another camp and was utterly hysterical because the men in his group had taken his sister as their…wife.”

“Oh god” I groaned.

“The poor lad couldn’t do a thing to stop them. By the time we found him and he led us back to the camp site everyone was gone. Looks like the angels liked to keep their flocks of humans on the move. That wasn’t the worst of it though. Every site that these large groups of people inhabited before being moved had been picked dry. Trampled, drained and eaten up. I can’t even count on my hands how many times I came across animal carcasses, half devoured, half rotting.”

“These angels, they are definitely not part of the Mother’s plan.”

“Far from it, they are the human’s saviours. Imagine if we do complete our mission, clean up the whole world for it to be repopulated with the scum that ruined it in the first place.”

“We have to locate these camps. Destroy them before they can get the chance to wreak havoc on the Earth.”

“Sounds so cold don’t it.”

I nodded. We were not only cleansers of the Mother’s body, but killers.

“It will be interesting to see what else these angels are capable of. Do you think they’ll put up a fight if we lay siege to their flocks?”

“Do angels fight?”

“Buggered if I know.”  

We watched the sun climb up into the sky in silence. I let the implications of everything that Sebastian had told me sink in before I wiped my sweaty palms on my shirt and stood up.

“Come on let’s try to see what’s in this web.”