As my first book, “Journey To The Black City” in the series, “After: Earth” concludes, we learn that Kel’s grandfather is not being held in the Black City—the Bishop had taken him and other kidnapped shamans into The Green. It is there that Lyria, Kel, and Raven must go in pursuit of their fellow tribes-people.
What exactly is the Green? Well, on our earth we call it South America. On my alternate universe earth, it is simply The Green. We learn that even before the Great War, the pandemic influenza, and the advancement of the glaciers into civilization, the ancient city-builders, as my characters call them, tried to enter this mysterious jungle covered land. Explorers went into the rainforests, but few returned. Those who did manage to survive brought tales of horror—of monsters lurking in the rainforests. Giant insects that bit and buzzed—that drank blood, ate flesh, and carried mysterious diseases for which there was no cure. They told of savages who would attack from out of nowhere, and disappear into the dense, almost impenetrable foliage.
The explorers brought back tales of giant birds, some ten feet tall that hunted in packs in the dense grasslands east of the jungle. Green Hell they called this land—or simply The Green. It became a place of vague terrors and deadly creatures. It became a place to stay away from. Civilized men, it was said, could not live in such a place in any event—it was a place best left alone. And now, two thousand years later, the stories have only gotten bigger and more ugly.