The Arathian Series Bundle by Nicole Krizek

Author:Nicole Krizek [Krizek, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-24T23:00:00+00:00

As Maggie walked in the sand, holding strong to Rex’s hand, she couldn’t help but stare at the wreckage they passed, which lay in a straight line along the shoreline. She wouldn’t have been surprised if there were at least several dozen wrecks lined up in the surf.

Admittedly, she didn’t know much about planes, but she could see small ones with propellers, larger ones that looked like small business jets, and some that looked like military craft. There were also boats in all shapes and sizes. Most looked like sailboats and other pleasure crafts, but she could see two massive corroded metal hulls farther up the beach, that must have belonged to cargo ships. They looked nearly a century old.

“How long have the Grays been bringing people here?” Maggie asked.

“They didn’t tell you?” the mayor inquired.

“No, they didn’t tell us anything, except that you were here,” Rex answered.

“Huh… well, we’re not sure when the first people arrived, but the first big ship was the USS Cyclops in 1918.” Mayor Strickland pointed to a large husk that was resting much farther up the beach. “We don’t know much about ‘em, other than the fact that the crew died early on due to manganese poisoning from their cargo.”

“What is man-gan-ese?” Rex asked. There were some words that even the Universal Translators had trouble with.

“It’s an element that was used in the making of ammunition, but too much exposure can cause hallucinations, severe nerve damage, and even death,” Maggie explained. “Did they all die?”

“No,” the mayor answered. “After losing nearly a hundred men, they finally figured out that living in the ship was causin’ their health problems, so they began living on the land. Good thing too, since their ship ended up breaking apart from corrosion.” He gestured to the ship, which was broken nearly in half and hung out into the sea.

“What about the other ship?” Maggie asked as she pointed to the next huge husk.

“That is the USS Proteus. It crashed here in November of 1941, with one-hundred and forty-five crewmen and their captain, who became the first successful leader of our village. He was the one who rallied his crew and began this.”

Mayor Strickland swept his hand towards the jungle, and for the first time, Maggie and the others saw that the dense foliage and trees hid houses, built up in the branches, with the lowest level about twenty feet off the ground.

“Oh my God,” she mumbled as they neared.

Built out of the same wood as the trees themselves, the small buildings were nestled up at varying heights. She saw people standing at railings that ringed the structures, on suspended bridges that hung between them, and climbing down rope ladders.

Mayor Strickland explained that all of the homes were built into the trees because once a month the ocean had an extremely high tide that could rise up to fifteen feet deep at the tree-line, and extend well into the the jungle. This had caused considerable trouble for the earliest settlers,

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