Evelyn Earth Part 39

“Are they all as deluded as you?” he asked blandly as he stood up, “all of these people with these horrible powers. Do you all think that you can magically change the world?”

“You’re an idiot” I spat back at him, “it is people like you who have allowed our world to get to this point. This is not magic! This is nature, nature at its essence. It is tangible and it is real and it will be the thing that saves us all.”

“How can a power that kills, destroys and disintegrates things save us? That’s like saying a nuclear bomb is a good thing for fucks sake. When has force ever brought about peace? You should know about history Evelyn, tell me that please, when has war or global destruction, ever brought about world peace?”

“If a nuclear bomb targeted everything that was wrong on this planet and left no traces of its presence then it would be a fair comparison to our power, and it would be a good thing. A GREAT thing!” I threw my hands up above my head, “I’m done talking, we’re leaving, Manoel lets go.”

“You’re just going to walk away from me again?” he said in angry disbelief.

Evelyn Earth Part 38

“Evie I don’t know what to do, what do I do? Tell me what to do goddammit!”

“I don’t…arghh!” The searing pain ripped through my shoulder and I tasted blood as I bit my tongue.

“Hold on okay, just hold on. Hey you! Yeah you mate, get water. WATER!” Owen yelled at someone behind me. A familiar voice yelled back in panic and Manoel’s face appeared above Owens. His eyes widened in horror before he stepped out of my line of vision. All I could see now were the orange and ochre spots. They were multiplying all around me as if they wanted to smother me in their warmth.

                “You’re on fire, you’re on fire Evie and I don’t know what to do, its burning two holes right through you and I don’t know how to stop it” he said frantically. I felt his hands touch my face and I tried desperately to focus on his yellow eyes, but everything was so blinding.

Evelyn Earth Part 37

The Earth shook, one thunderous boom after another sent seismic waves throughout the area. My eyes would focus on one falling building before losing sight only to regain the vision of crumbling walls. Sounds swam in and out of my consciousness, voices, screams and gentle whispers. I couldn’t feel the sun on my skin anymore. The darkness churned inside me, restless, but unable to break free.

                My throat felt dry. I tried to swallow, but my tonsils were so swollen that only a rasp of air made it through. I summoned up as much saliva as I could and gulped it down only to choke. A coughing fit took hold of me and I clutched at my neck in pain.

                I felt a hand on my back and instinctively shied away from it. Where was I? It was dark and the ground I was lying on was freezing. I barked out the last remnants of air left within my lungs and inhaled deeply through my nose. The hand returned to stroke my back and I shrugged it off before rolling over. I was expecting to see stars, or feel a breeze on my skin, but a decaying ceiling stared back at me sending wafts of mould to overwhelm my senses.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 36

As the last remnants of his flesh evaporated into the wind my mind caught up with my body and I realised that there were still two guns trained on all of us. In that moment I knew that my reaction would have to be faster than the scavenger scum’s and for that I had to let go. So I did.

Two gunshots boomed mere metres away from me, but they sounded oceans away. I felt time stand still as my black dragon burst its way free out of my chest, thrusting my arms outwards and snapping my neck back almost to breaking point.

 Everything became still and quiet. I tried to open my eyes, but my lashes fluttered freely—it was simply pitch black.

“Is this death?” I whispered to myself. My voice broke the silence and I could hear Luiz’s wailing, diminished to a scared whimper, overshadowed by the rapid voices of frightened boys.

Five more gunshots fired off in quick succession. They sounded muffled and delayed, but there was no mistaking them for what they were. I felt each of them hit me, one after the other after the other. They entered the embodiment of my darkness and were swallowed up by it.  

Evelyn Earth Part 35

I needed to get back to Sebastian and tell him everything that I had learned. I knew that he would feel the same way about this as I did because as much power as we had within us and as much reverence as we held for the Earth we weren’t willing to begin a genocide of the human race. There were no two ways about it, if we started on the slippery slope of killing whoever was in our way then we would end up not caring about killing everyone. The fact that this was not only a possibility, but a probability made me shiver.

I relished the idea of being an Earth Warrior, but I didn’t want to lose my humanity in the process. I couldn’t just become a mindless destruction machine because the Mother had found me compatible with her ideals. It wasn’t who I was.

I stood up and brushed the chalk-like remnants of the rock from my fingers. All the boys were looking at me expectantly and I realised that they were counting on me to help them.

“I have to go and find my friends” I said pointlessly, they all stared back at me blank faced, waiting for me to do something, but it was bloody impossible to mime that out so I just turned and started walking away.

Evelyn Earth Part 34

After a moment’s pause though I realised that it would be useless to track down Sebastian and the others as they could be anywhere. Frankly it would take too long. My best option was to follow the group of men and find out what they were doing. It was my job after all. If they had ill intentions towards the Earth then I would need to neutralize them. How did you even determine such a thing though? It was all so confusing.

                I grumbled to myself as I paced up and down the roof of the shop. I really didn’t want to get into a fight, but my inner instincts were telling me to run after the men.

                “Dammit” I whispered before taking a step towards the edge. I concentrated a small mass of darkness in my legs and the balls of my feet and stepped off the barrier. I landed with a thud on the sidewalk and a rim of concrete dust billowed out around me. I left two size seven foot imprints behind me as I launched into a run.

                

Evelyn Earth Part 33

“It’s people like him that we can’t rely on” Sebastian seethed, “I don’t even know if I can rely on myself. We are all human after all. Our emotions could change what we believe in in a split second” he spun around to face me “we aren’t reliable Evelyn, how could She have trusted us with so much power?”

“Calm down” I put a hand on his chest and a flicker of my power transferred to him. I felt the fear and indecision that was broiling inside him. We weren’t much different after all, not on the inside. We were both caught up in something so tremendously huge that our tiny human minds couldn’t full comprehend everything that was going on.

“I think we’ve talked enough for today—too much actually. The other warrior will be here by nightfall, all we have to do now is wait, wait and not worry about all of this.”

He nodded in agreement, but his face was still creased with concern.

Travis, Gerard and Izwan came into the clearing led by Sloan and Sebastian’s features instantly resumed their previous hardness.

Evelyn Earth Part 32

           

“Why did you disconnect?” Sebastian growled as he himself extracted his consciousness from the Earth’s web.

           “There’s no point in standing around now playing Pictionary when the other soldier can make his way to us and we can speak in person” I replied.

           “You can be a real piece of work sometimes. You bloody well know that we could have continued searching for more warriors. We could have seen the full potential of this glowing map She’s made for us.”

          “Do it yourself if you fucking want! You speak as if you’re so sure about everything. Why do you think the second warrior tapped into our connection at precisely the time when we were connected? And for only a split second for that matter! They knew we were there somehow, and I for one can’t feel the web if I’m not connected. What if it was a false cry for help?”

         “You can’t know that. It could have just been a coincidence.”

         “Why does our Mother’s web glow Sebastian? Why does it fucking glow? What I saw in the vision she sent us was silver, it was fucking silver and hard like ore trapped within a rock” I exploded with irritation. He refused to analyze the information that was in front of him. Maybe he did just see things clearer than I did, he saw what he thought he was meant to see whereas I was bombarded with contradictions and confusing flashes of facts.

          I watched his face as he worked through what I had just said.

         

Evelyn Earth Part 31

“Wait, I have one more thing I wanted to ask you” he looked at me intently, “when you think of killing thousands of people do you feel as if it’s the right thing to do?”

                “When I’m in tune with the Mother I think my own beliefs get hijacked by her. I feel like I should do anything, anything at all for her benefit and that includes killing.”

                “But when you are just you, just Evelyn…”

                “I don’t know” I shook my head from side to side, “when I think about my friends, your friends, people I actually know I don’t want to kill them, but what happened with Marla that was just wrong, but here I am the next day and I can already feel the memory of her fading.”

                “It’s the same with me. I can’t help but want to protect my friends and if I had family I think it would be a completely different story.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Are you close with your parents? Brothers? Sisters?”

                “No.”

                “Maybe that’s why we were chosen by the Mother, because we had no real familial connections of our own. No real long lasting friendships.”

               

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.