Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Healers is the third in a series of stories featuring the Hyllis family who tend to inherit “talents”. The stories are set after a plague induced apocalypse which resulted in the collapse of civilization and reduced mankind back to iron and horsepower.

Eva Hyllis and her ancestors became healers because they could feel the insides of their patients with their talents. This helps them diagnose the underlying causes of many illnesses. Having made a diagnosis, sometimes they can do something, but often they cannot. However, Eva’s children inherit telekinetic and teleportation talents. Telekinetic pressure can stop bleeding and teleportation can remove stones and atherosclerotic plaque.

As time goes on they find more and more medical conditions that their talents allow them to treat.

Then they enter a kingdom where practicing the art of healing is forbidden. When patients come to Eva in hopes of a cure, she finds herself unable to refuse them merely because the law demands that she should. Treating patients brings her into conflict with a powerful king. Imprisoned and enslaved, is there any way she and her family can win her freedom?

Excerpt

Kazy trailed behind the slender, dark-blond girl as they walked back towards Prichard’s farm. Since the girl had cut her loose from where she’d been tied, spread eagle, in the raiders’ barn, Kazy hadn’t let the girl out of her sight.

The girl’s name was Daussie. This seemed far too simple a name for someone like the one who’d saved Kazy.

The raiders had appeared at Kazy’s farm to “levy taxes”. Kazy’s father and brothers had argued vehemently that the taxes were too high. Kazy hadn’t understood the seriousness of the situation until her father had baldly stated they wouldn’t pay the tax.

The raiders drew their swords.

Within moments all the men in Kazy’s family were dead. Minutes later, her mother and grandmother were dying as well.

When the men turned to stare at her, Kazy thought she’d die next. However, their looks were appraising. Kazy’d been told she was pretty, but she’d never had cause to worry about it before. Back to the wall of her family’s little farmhouse, her knees had turned to water as she began to understand what the hunger in the men’s eyes might mean.

Over the next days, her life had become a living horror, filled with rapes, beatings, and constant threats to her life. Eventually, she decided she’d rather die than go on. She’d started fighting back against the men who took her. This eventually led to her being tied spread eagle and naked in the horse stall.

The night had been cold and Kazy fully expected to freeze to death. Though she’d wanted to die, she was so miserable in the cold she prayed for heat anyway.

She wanted to die quickly, not gradually in agonizing cold.

The misery of the cold faded when a commotion burst out in the main part of the barn. It sounded like some kind of fight. She heard grisly sounds and sudden barked shouts. Within seconds, only the voices of women were still audible. Kazy decided whoever won the fight wasn’t a talkative sort. One of the raiders was a big, mean, quiet type; maybe he’d killed some of the others?

With dawning surprise, Kazy slowly realized the women were sounding relieved, not panicked. She wondered what could’ve happened, though in light of her experiences the past few days, things could only get worse. She tugged at ropes she’d already tugged on a thousand times, forlornly hoping that perhaps she might get free before whatever newly dreadful event occurred."