Planet Urth: The Savage Lands (Book 2) (23 page)

“Well I’ll just have to stick right by her and make sure she listens, won’t I?”

“We all will,” Will says sharply.  His hand grips mine momentarily before relaxing then his thumb sweeps across the top of my wrist.  I want to close my eyes and savor the feel of his rough fingertip stroking the soft skin there, but Sully watches me.  His gaze drops to where Will’s thumb works and I shrink inwardly.  I tense.  Will’s thumb stops moving and he withdraws his hand.  My hand feels cold.  I look at it then look up.  Everyone is watching me, waiting, but for what I have no idea. 

“So
, uh, what’s the plan?” I finally say.  “What do we do now?” I look between Will and Sully. 

“What do you mean?” Sully asks
, a mysterious look flickering across his face. 

Will looks taken aback.  I wonder why both of them are behaving so peculiarly.

“We need to start getting people together to grow an army, right?  We can fight back, on a small scale, but we can fight and start the war to take back planet Urth,” I say.

The stiffness in Will’s posture loosens marginally, as if he is relieved.  I find it odd that a person so against standing our ground and battling Urthmen should look so thankful for my proposal.

“I think you’re getting a little bit ahead of yourself,” Sully says with a soft chuckle.  “There aren’t many humans running around out there, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I found you and Jericho, didn’t I?” I say defiantly and am not sure why. 

Sully holds my eyes with his as he scratches his chin thoughtfully.  “It would take years to round them up much less rally them to fight,” he thinks aloud.  “The only place where there’s a large human population is in the underground city, and they have no interest in fighting.”

A large human population living in an underground city!  The notion sounds too good to be true!

“Come on, Sully!  You expect us to believe there’s an underground city?” Will laughs mirthlessly.  “That’s a myth.  No such place exists.”

“No, it’s real,” Sully says with conviction. 

“Thousands of people living together underground and Urthmen haven’t found them, yeah, okay,” Will huffs with certainty that borders on arrogance. 

Hearing our conversation, Oliver and Riley join us.  Jericho leans against a wall with his arms comfortably folded across his chest. 

Sully stands and addresses everyone.  “Mock all you want, but I know it’s true.  I grew up there,” he stuns me by saying.  “I was kicked out when I was thirteen because I wanted to do exactly what Avery wants to do. I wanted to fight.  I wanted to lead a revolt against the Urthmen regime.  I made so much noise about it I was asked to leave.  So please, don’t tell me it isn’t real.”

I steal a glance at Will.  He looks as shocked as I feel.  In fact, after a quick glance around the room, I see that everyone wears the same expression, except Jericho and Sully. 

“You mean to tell me thousands of people live together safely?” I ask and feel the corners of my mouth falter, tears welling in my eyes.  The idea of it is all that I’ve wanted, all that I’ve dreamed of for June.  And Sully claims it is real, that he has been there. 

“More than ten thousand if you want to be more precise.  But that was before I left.”

My jaw comes unhinged.  “More than ten thousand,” I gasp. 

“Yep, and they’re just content to live there, to hide is more like it, and grow their food hydroponically with their livestock on hand.  I guess you could argue they have everything they need, you know, if you think living like rats in a sewer is a life worth living.  I didn’t.
”  Sully stares off toward an unseen place only he sees.  “I couldn’t take existing in hiding, knowing eventually we’d be found, and that other people in the world were dying.”  He swallows hard.  “I mean, Urthmen are dumb, but even if they take decades. I’m sure they’ll find the underground city.  One of the humans will slip or a solar panel will be discovered.”

“I had no idea,” I murmur.

“No one does, unless they’ve lived there as I have.  But it’s not some great place like you think it is, especially when I would go out on supply runs and see the suffering in the streets.  I’d go back down and shake my head, wondering why we were so content to just
be
, you know, to just lie down and die about everything.”

Sully’s
arms are folded across his chest.  His fists are balled tightly and I can see the rage flaring like firelight in his dark eyes, rage and regret.

“So how did they manage to avoid the Urthmen?” Will asks.

“The city is in the desert.  Nobody journeys out into the middle of the desert without a reason.  And even if they did, they wouldn’t see it.”

“I don’t understand,” Oliver says.

“This place, the city, it was the most elaborate underground shelter ever built.  Some say it was designed centuries ago to house intel on foreign countries, kind of a spy files city.  It is literally the size of a small city.  But as soon as the first bomb fell and the war officially started, the files were cleared out and the President, along with the entire government, was sent down there.”

“Who’s government?  What are you talking about?” Will asks, his brows gathered. 

“Ours,” Sully answers.  “We are all descendants of Americans.  Our ancestors were from shelters.”

My mind spins in circles as it struggles to process what I’ve heard.  Reeling, I ask, “How do you know all this?”

“I learned it in history class.”

“History class?” I ask incredulously.  “You went to school?”

“Yeah, all kids did in the underground city, which is called New Washington, by the way,” Sully says offhandedly. 

I reach out and grip Will’s arm for support.  He immediately wraps an arm around my shoulders and I feel the hardness of his thick muscles flex and he safeguards me from falling.  “I can’t believe this.  Schools, New Washington, all of it, it’s like a dream,” I mumble incoherently. 

“It’s not a dream, trust me,” Sully says and his gaze examines Will’s arm draped over my shoulder protectively.  I squirm, but Will does not let go.

“So you know exactly what happened in the war, how the world came to be this way,” I ask more than state. 

“I do,” Sully answers.  “If you really want to know, I can tell you about it.”

“Please, tell me.  Tell all of us what happened,” I say in a voice far stronger than I feel.  

I gulp hard against the lump of dread that has collected in my throat.  Sully has information, answers to so many questions that have plagued my brain since I was old enough to understand the condition of the human species.  And now, all of those questions are about to be answered.  I hope I can handle all of it.  I hope I can handle the truth.

Chapter 15

“It started in 2059 when a terrorist organization composed of religious fanatics called Jaish-e-Al-Queda overthrew several governments in the Middle East in a coordinated, multi-country coup,” Sully begins.

“A coup?” June asks? 

“A takeover is what a coup is, and in this case it was violent,” Sully answers.  “So America learned of this and sent the military to a place known as Pakistan to guard their government from being removed from power.  See, our government knew Pakistan was the only country in the Middle East with nuclear capability of firing on America,” he continues to a rapt audience.

The room is still, as if everyone waits with bated breath for him to
keep going, to share with us what set our current situation into motion.

“While the military was over there, here, the people were freaking out.  They knew World War III was coming, that the religious fanatic
s didn’t care if they died as long as they killed us first.  They believed that in the afterlife they would be rewarded for killing evil Americans.”

“Oh my gosh,” I gasp.
  I’ve never been given insight into the original cause of the war. I only knew that it happened.

“This war was going to be the end of the world
as far as all of North America was concerned.  Underground shelters were built all over the county as more and more people panicked.  The underground city was redesigned for the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff so he could keep a working government in the event that the worst-case scenario came to pass.

“What America didn’t know was that while
they were so busy worrying about a nuclear holocaust, Jaish-e-Al-Queda had operatives in Iran, one of the countries they overtook, who worked alongside scientists and created a weapon known as Anthricin, a hybrid of the highly toxic protein
ricin
found in the seed of the castor oil plant and
anthrax
, a disease caused by bacteria found in spores.”

“Wait, what?” I stop Sully from going on. 
“What does all that mean?”

“Biological weapons,” he says and I feel the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end.  “After a few years of experimenting, Jaish-e-
Al-Queda had in their possession bacteria and viruses that would cause widespread sickness and death among humans and animals. They eventually loaded Anthricin into rockets and launched them with the intent to kill.”

“That’s what caused the Urthmen to be the way they are and the Lurkers and the spider monster and that enormous bat you killed when we hid in the tree,” June
turns to me and says in one breath.  Her cheeks are rosy but the rest of her is pale.  I move from Will and envelop her in my arms.  Her heart patters madly against my midsection. 

“It’s okay, June,” I whisper in her ear.  “This is history.  Sully is teaching us about the
past.”

In truth, I am sickened by what I am hearing.  The idea that human beings, regardless of where they lived and what ideologies they held, intentionally killing one another is unconscionable. 
What for
is the real question:  Power?  Money? Greed?  Control?
I can’t imagine anything worth killing another of my species for other than the protection of my sister, or myself.  And now the people present are added to that list.  This religion of which Sully spoke, was it worth ending the entirety of civilization?  The members of Jaish-e-Al-Queda must have thought so, and were stark-raving mad in my opinion. 

Will’s voice, smooth and steady like
water flowing over rocks in a slow-rolling river, returns my attention to the here and now, to the future.  “The humans in the underground city, New Washington, they are descendants of survivors of the attacks?” he asks.

“Pretty much,” Sully answers.  “But this group, Jaish-e-
Al-Queda, they didn’t start in North America.  The first rocket loaded with their biological weapon was launched at Israel, their fiercest enemy.  As soon as that happened, Americans took cover.  Rich and powerful people had space reserved in the underground shelters.  The rest were left to wait.”

“Why didn’t we do something?  Why didn’t America fight back?” I ask.

That fiery glow undulates in Sully’s eyes when his gaze lands on me.  Is it pride that lights the fire or something else entirely? I wonder.  “The American government did.  They fired on Iran first.  But Jaish-e-Al-Queda got wind of it and, before the country was obliterated, launched their missiles here.”

“
There was no turning back once that happened,” I say slowly, the gravity of what humans, my American ancestors, experienced knocking the air from my lungs.  “The people who weren’t in shelters, their fates were sealed.”

Sully nods somberly.  “Those who weren’t killed in the first few days went mad as their bodies deteriorated slowly, transforming them, mutating every cell inside their bodies.”

“The viruses did what they were supposed to do,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. 

“And it affected every living creature.  I guess one of the countless things Jaish-e-
Al-Queda misjudged was how quickly their weapon would spread.  Everyone on the planet who was exposed became infected, but not all died.  The ones in the underground shelters were okay.  But above, they changed into something else, something monstrous.”

“Early versions of Urthmen.” I complete Sully’s thought.  

“Exactly,” he says.

A stunned hush befalls the room.  We heard the stories from our parents
, but for some reason, hearing Sully recount it as he does gives us a better feel for it, more of a firsthand account.  His words are chilling.  Our origins are simpler to explain.  The Urthmen are another story entirely. 

“The P
resident and Joint Chiefs launched nuclear weapons and destroyed the rest of the world knowing what had happened in Israel after the biological weapons detonated.  Reports came in about creatures.  America and Canada were the only places where nuclear bombs did not fall.”

“So North America really is the only
place where life exists?” June asks.  I hear the tremor in her voice, the fear.  We’d been taught that North America was the only inhabitable place on the planet where life was supported, but we never knew for sure.  We’d only heard stories passed down from generation to generation.  Somehow, hearing him verify those stories, I feel more terrified and isolated that I did before.