Awakening the Mare (Fall of Man Book 1) Read online

  We were not allowed to be boys and not allowed to be girls. Purity was embedded in our brains as the only way of life. Being pure was the only way to be selected as the highest level of companion. The second highest honor was a competitor. Both of those gave families of the chosen rite of passage into the city of the Ancients.

  But no one knew what all that entailed.

  The educators made it sound glamorous. I always envisioned a companion as a well kept body servant with a limited supply of energy.

  Your service was complete when they expired your resources or took too much too fast, and in that case you became a vicious watchdog, primed for battle.

  I had arrived at an age where I was in the middle age group; too old for one type of selection, not old enough for the next.

  My mother tried her hardest to appear strong when we arrived, I knew she wasn’t. Even at my young age I could feel my mother’s heartbreak. She had paid the ultimate admission price for us to live there.

  My memories go all the way back to when I was only two, so being five upon my arrival was fresh in my mind. I was filled with confusion when we arrived. Still upset over what I had witnessed, I then found myself standing in a line with everyone else when the Ancients arrived.

  They were my boogey men. The Sybaris. They were the ones we ran from in Angeles City. Yet, in Akana, they were well dressed and proper, browsing before us as if window shopping, making some of us step forward and turn.

  They acted like royalty and people bowed to them. I may have been too young to understand, but I never liked it. I guess it was because I did see what they really were.

  I’m sure the people of Akana and other towns did as well, but they refused to act as if they did. Living a short, fear free life with food at hand was more important than freedom.

  My mother was scolded that first day. Some Sybaris, a woman with high hair and too much paint on her face, grabbed my mother’s chin.

  “You smell of man and sweat. How dare you present yourself like this? And this child …” She looked down at me, “she reeks as well.”

  “I’m sorry,” my mother said. “We just arrived. We didn’t know.”

  “I should take the child to spare her of a mother such as you.”

  I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but her words caused me to creep behind my mother and hide.

  The Sybaris woman reached for me and was stopped by her husband.

  “The child cannot be taken, Nito,” he told her. “The mother has gifted the Elders.”

  Nito cocked her head in arrogance and stepped back. “Then I will wait for this one to become of age. She will be perfect then.”

  Her fingers ran across my cheek, they were cold and hard. “Isn’t that right…” she leaned down and whispered, “Mare?”

  Mare? I didn’t know what that word meant, or why she would call me that. In fact, every month when she came to choose, she called me ‘Mare’.

  I asked my mother what that meant, and she only shook her head and said not to worry.

  I was just curious. Nito seemed to single me out and that was a worry of mine. She paused to stare at me each month, case me up and down before selecting someone.

  I only paid attention when they selected small children. The mothers would proudly hand their offspring over to the Ancients. The Ancients would cradle the small children as if they were prizes. Adoring them instantly and showing them affection.

  Only once was I given an explanation from my mother on why they took the young children, why those under five years old would be selected.

  “They cannot have children of their own, so we give them ours to raise and love. They will have better lives. Much better lives than we can give,” my mother told me.

  "What about my baby brother?"

  “He was different,” my mother said. “He was a gift.”

  No. My brother wasn’t a gift. He was a sacrifice.

  5. Rite of Passage

  “Gretchen, you cannot do this,” Davis argued passionately with my mother.

  We were in the basement of an old parking garage in Angeles City, old, abandoned cars all around us. Our home was a corner sectioned off by curtains and blankets. We had been there for a while, weeks, and we hadn’t moved. It was safe.

  “It’s the only way!” my mother cried. “I have to. Vala cannot go another day like this.”

  “Like what?” he asked. “We have been good for weeks. Weeks. They can’t see or smell us down here. Or hear us.”

  “That’s because when they are near we get quiet. What about the baby when he comes?” she asked. “What about then?”

  Davis lowered his head.

  I held my doll in my hand, listening to them talk.

  I remembered Davis. My mother tells me he is just a fragment of a dream, but he wasn’t. He was there when I was child, caring for me, protecting me. He hid me when the Sybaris would come and seek a meal, swooping down at us and snatching us up.

  Many times, I remember people ejecting into the air by the force of the dark shadows, screaming in agony as they were flown away.

  Davis kept that from happening to us. He was a strong man with a hairy face and I remember his smell. It was a smooth, smoky smell.

  He always seemed to find food and water and always handed it to me with a smile. I sensed my mother didn’t believe he could keep doing it. In fact, I know, or why else would she seek our rite of passage?

  He begged her that night, his hand placed on her swollen stomach. “Don’t do this. Our child…”

  “Our child doesn’t stand a chance, Davis,” she said. “What kind of life will he or she have? Never able to speak? To make a sound?”

  “A better life than being dead,” Davis replied.

  “Vala is what is important. She already is alive. She…” my mother looked at me, “is special. You know it.”

  My unborn brother or sister was important and special too. Why didn’t my mother see that? She talked a lot about the procedure of silence. When the baby was born, the doctor cuts the umbilical cord and then cuts the vocal cord, rendering the child forever silent.

  Not everyone did it to their child. Those who didn't usually moved on, because their crying infant endangered the entire community.

  My mother and I left Angeles City just before dawn one morning by horseback. The first day she was fine and the second day of travel she started getting the pains. She kept looking over her shoulder, I guess to see if Davis was following us. He wasn’t.

  As we crossed around the Salton Sea, we found shelter in an old shack, and there my mother squatted as if she were passing a bad meal. Instead, she gave birth to my brother.

  She didn’t cut the cord, she merely twined it, placed him and all the matter that ejected from her body into a sack, strapped it to her back and, after resting only briefly, continued on our journey.

  I thought my newborn brother had died, but occasionally he whimpered. My mother stopped a few times to feed him from her breast, to keep him strong, keep him healthy.

  As night fell on the third day, we stopped.

  A long row of torches ignited brightly and a deep voice called from the darkness, “Leave the horse.”

  My mother didn’t have much strength, and she lowered me to the ground, then climbed down.

  I only saw shadows.

  She held my hand and we walked a few feet.

  “You have come for what reason?” the man asked.

  “I seek rite of passage for me and my daughter into Esperanza.”

  “What do you bring to earn this passage?”

  She slipped the sack with my brother from her shoulder. “The highest gift.”

  “Bring it forward. Leave the girl.”

  “Stay here, Vala,” she whispered.

  “Mommy.”

  “Shh. Stay.”

  Her hand slipped from mine and she headed toward the torches. A large man emerged from the shadows; I was unable to make out his features. He took the sack and brought it to his no
se.

  “How old?”

  “Two days.”

  “The remnants of the womb?”

  “It is in there.”

  He nodded at her. “Get the child. You have earned passage. Come inside. In the morning you will be brought to Akana.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” My mother backed up, raced back to me and grabbed my hand. The gatekeeper waved her forward and we walked toward the line of torches.

  “Look forward, do not look at them or look back,” she instructed as we passed by them.

  I was a child. Of course I was going to look.

  They were all men, large men, who I thought looked monstrous. Their features extended and distorted, faces pale.

  As we moved by them, one lifted my brother from the sack.

  “What are they doing, Mommy?” I asked.

  “Keep moving, baby, keep moving. We’re moving forward. We’re safe.”

  I peered over my shoulder once more when my infant brother cried. It was the first full cry I had heard him make.

  After turning my head to peer forward, my mother paused and drew me close into her, clutching me with every emotion.

  My brother cried out again, his wails carrying in the night air.

  Crying.

  Screaming.

  And then with a single slurping sound, my brother cried no more.

  6. History

  They could not have known. If they did, they played cautious and naïve. But I honestly believed my classmates were truly ignorant to what the Sybaris were, and what they did.

  Our educational system was nothing more than a brainwashing technique. Then again, were they actually brainwashed? They had not witnessed the things I had witnessed. They did not witness distorted beings brutally consume a seven pound infant. That was my introduction to the so-called Promised Land.

  An impression that would last forever.

  What information I did get was only minimal, and what my mother wasn’t afraid to share. The educators told us a history that they wanted us to believe. In a twisted way, it coincided with what my mother had told me.

  There were two types of Elders; the ones within the limits of Esperanza and the ones that stood outside the limits. Those were Sybaris Elders. On this Earth the longest, left without substance for a long time, and while their minds were clear and reasonable, they were never able to return to their once beautiful physical form, so they became the gatekeepers.

  Infants less than one week old were the highest delicacy, reserved for the Elder Sybaris. However, the infants only held powerful effects for the Elders if they were a willing sacrifice from the human mother, such as my own mother did with my brother. As if the poor infants’ bodies held some sort of magical ability. The Sybaris believed that if enough were consumed the Elders would regain the energy and life that the infant was destined to have.

  Infant sacrifices were not magical. My brother was nothing but a ticket inside my family’s extended death sentence.

  The Elder Sybaris were a combination of both species of the Sybaris race. They had the mentality and genius of the pompous Ancients who picked through us once a month and looked like the Savage Sybaris that ravaged and killed outside of Esperanza. The Savages had no law and order, little reasoning or intelligence, and they killed to survive, stalked and hunted.

  They actually frightened me less than the civilized ones because a Savage could be outsmarted.

  Davis had always said that.

  The Sybaris divided. When they were given the chance to reemerge, the Savage population failed to follow the rules. Instead of pacing their feeding, they hungrily consumed anyone they could, as fast as they could.

  It had adverse reactions and they became beasts. Much like what happens to humans when a Sybaris takes too much too fast from them.

  Humans transform into an abomination of life, both physically and mentally. The Ancients use them for watchdogs, soldiers, and fighters.

  We are taught in history that the Gods had placed Sybaris, man, and animals upon this Earth tens of thousands of years before. As animals are placed upon the Earth to feed man, so is man placed upon this Earth to feed the Sybaris.

  Thousands of years before, Sybaris had ruled the Earth. We are told they were a peaceful species, unlike man. They fed from man and fruit, never taking too much. The Sybaris built cities all over, and man was their laborers and slaves.

  Then one day man rose up against the Sybaris. They brought plague upon the Sybaris, by substituting horse blood for human blood. While the Sybaris declared war against man, man retreated across the sea and far into the desert.

  The Sybaris couldn’t cross the waters, and therefore they eventually began to starve. They had to move into the hollows of the Earth and the veins of tombs they had built for their Elders. They avoided sunlight because the longer they went without food the more vulnerable they were to the rays of the sun.

  For thousands of years they crept out at night, taking only what they needed to survive. They became folktales to the human race. Legends of undead, immortal, evil beings. The Sybaris are not immortal. Although they are strong and powerful, they do die, though they age much slower than man, and their life span is thousands of years.

  We are told the Gods freed the Sybaris from the dark imprisonment by casting death and destruction on man. They rose from the ashes and reclaimed what was theirs.

  The Sybaris who call themselves the Ancients supposedly began to gather man to save him from the Savages. They weren’t saving us, they were hoarding us, rationing us for their future use.

  I don’t know what is true and what is not. I do know I feel differently. Unlike others my age, I have seen what the Savage Sybaris do to human beings. The Elders are mere thinking beasts that don’t hesitate to consume a newborn life. The civilized Sybaris are nothing more than cleaned up Savages preparing us all for our eventual death. I know that man had his place on this Earth for thousands of years as well. In my youngest years, I remember David saying that man caused the events that destroyed the human race.

  The truth is out there beyond the confines of Esperanza and I will find it. One day, I will find it.

  7. The Day

  I may have been young, but I remembered the first day I felt not only my fear, but the sheer terror of those around me. I was no older than four, and had a mentality of such. I always knew we ran, were told to be still and quiet, I didn’t understand why until that day.

  There were four of us, all little girls, all around the same age. We had found these plastic dolls. They were replicas of beautiful women with long blonde hair and grown up figures in plastic boxes, sealed and in perfect condition.

  We were seated after dinner on the floor of what was once a store between empty shelves. We were playing with these dolls, pretending. I don’t remember the exact details, because our play time was cut short.

  In Angeles City, men and women carried weapons called guns. They were loud and banged. The Sybaris tried to collect them all, because the weapons killed them as easily as they killed man. At one time man used them on each other, but not after the event. When the Sybaris rose, news of our species hurting each other was unheard of.

  The bang of a gunshot caused me to drop my doll, but it didn’t frighten me as much as the sound of Davis’ voice.

  He screamed my name so loudly and with deep conviction and urgency, I felt it. There was something terribly wrong and I jumped up to find him.

  “Vala! Where are you?” Davis yelled.

  I could hear the shuffling and shrill screaming. People were hurt.

  Names of my friends were called out; they scurried away like I did. Just as I turned to run from behind the shelf to find Davis, a Savage Sybaris leapt over the shelf and landed on the floor before us. His distorted and gray skinned body twitched as he eyed his victim.

  The Savages didn’t stand upright, they moved like a simian being. Arms long and narrow, fingers crooked, he opened his mouth with a snarl showing his grotesque fangs.

/>   With a swift swing of his arm, he snatched one little girl by the throat and jumped high in the air with her in his grip. She screamed for a second and then it rained blood on me.

  I was trapped in the shelving area and another Sybaris was there, then another. While both grabbed onto a child, jumping and racing away with their catch, I seized that moment and took off.

  Hands covering my ears, I ran as fast as I could. No matter where I turned, I saw them.

  Grabbing people, ripping into their throats as they flew off. But like a bird stuck in a house, the Savage Sybaris didn’t have an easy escape. They'd fly toward the ceiling only to be shot by one of us, then they’d release their victims.

  Lifeless bodies of people I knew, children I played with, dropped before me, as did the dead Sybaris.

  I kept running, zigzagging through a maze of horror until I found a hiding spot in the back of the store. I cornered myself there and squatted low, bringing my knees to my chest. I wasn’t alone. The body of my friend Liddy was there on the ground before me lying facedown.

  My eyes fixed upon her, watching the puddle of blood around her tiny body grow wider like a river. Her neck had been torn apart. Then she twitched. Her fingers moved and her body jolted. She jerked and flipped seamlessly from her stomach to her back. Her arms retracted to her body as her back arched and mouth widened.

  I believed at first she was hurt and still alive somehow, until her head turned my way and I saw the gray of her eyes.

  She made a snarling sound, then automatically sprang to her feet in a crouched attack position. She tilted her head and her neck cracked.

  Her face was death gray and the whites of her eyes filled with blood.

  After a single growling sound she lunged toward me and I could only cower back and close my eyes, screaming.

  Bang!

  The loud and close gunshot startled my eyes open. Liddy was on the ground, and Davis stood there with a gun in his hand. He reached down and lifted me quickly into his strong arms, cradling my head against his shoulder. I clung tightly to him with my arms and legs.