Awake: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel Read online

  AWAKE

  AWAKE

  Jennifer Reynolds

  Copyright © 2019

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Copyright © 2019

  Lynn Lamb @ Books Banners Etc.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jennifer Reynolds asserts the moral and legal right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the owner. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding other than that which it is published and without a similar condition, including this requirement being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Author’s Note

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real places or events is purely coincidental.

  ***WARNING: ADULT CONTENT AND STRONG LANGUAGE***

  AWAKE

  BY

  JENNIFER REYNOLDS

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate AWAKE to my father-in-law, John, who passed away while this novel I was writing the first few drafts. I miss you every day, old man. I hope your afterlife if everything you wanted it to be. I love you.

  Also, by Jennifer Reynolds

  Novels:

  Alone

  Shifter, Supernaturals Book 1

  Outcast, Supernaturals Book 2

  Captive, Supernaturals Book 3

  Resistant

  HIM

  Shore Haven

  Novellas

  Saying Goodbye

  Marked, Valeterra Series,

  Book 1

  Short Stories:

  Charles Wallace’s Favorite Toy

  In The Dark

  Leaving Liberty: A Shore Haven Short Story

  Hostage: A Shore Haven Short Story

  Childhood’s End: A Short Haven Short Story

  Nowhere to Go: A Shore Haven Short Story

  Coming Soon:

  TERA: A Shore Haven Short Story

  Sweet 16: An AWAKE Short Story

  Released: An AWAKE Novella

  Fated, Valeterra Series, Book 2

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER1

  CHAPTER2

  CHAPTER3

  CHAPTER4

  CHAPTER5

  CHAPTER6

  CHAPTER7

  CHAPTER8

  CHAPTER9

  CHAPTER10

  CHAPTER11

  CHAPTER12

  CHAPTER13

  CHAPTER14

  CHAPTER15

  CHAPTER16

  CHAPTER17

  CHAPTER18

  CHAPTER19

  CHAPTER20

  CHAPTER21

  CHAPTER22

  CHAPTER23

  CHAPTER24

  CHAPTER25

  CHAPTER26

  CHAPTER27

  CHAPTER28

  CHAPTER29

  CHAPTER30

  CHAPTER31

  CHAPTER32

  CHAPTER333

  CHAPTER334

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  AbouttheAuthor

  Chapter 1 – Awake

  One second, I was nothing. I didn’t exist. I was an empty void. The next instant, I was awake. I was aware that I was. That I had a form. I had thought. I was a being.

  All at once, a million unfamiliar sensations flooded through me—filling the void and bringing my consciousness back from whatever had made me cease to exist. The suddenness of my waking was overwhelming. A subconscious instinct to protect me from whatever had happened tried to shove me back into the blackness.

  When that didn’t work, when the whirlwind of sensations tried to overwhelm me, I forced my brain to focus on one of them and only one—the waking feeling.

  Why was I feeling it?

  I didn’t know. I had no memory of being asleep, of going to sleep, or of what sleep was and why it was different from what I was currently experiencing. I also didn’t understand how I knew what I had been doing before I woke was sleeping.

  My next thought was that my eyes weren’t open. I wasn’t exactly clear what eyes were, but I was sure they had to be open for a person to be awake.

  Didn’t they?

  Reflexively, I tried to blink—but nothing happened. The thought, the command was there. I simply didn’t know where my eyes should be. I couldn’t feel my eyelids, the things that had to lift for a person’s eyes to open, or the muscles used to move them to follow through with the direction. I knew I had them.

  I had to have eyelids.

  Didn’t I?

  When a person woke, they opened them to see.

  Didn’t they?

  My head started to ache. I did not welcome that pain. The ache made me want to go back into unconsciousness.

  Was the agony why I was asleep in the first place?

  Had I been asleep?

  I had to have been, right?

  When had I done so?

  I didn’t know.

  Was it bedtime? That was when people went to sleep—I think. Was I in a home, in a bed? I didn’t think so. Since I wasn’t confident precisely what those items were, I couldn’t say for sure.

  As my brain tried to answer its queries, my body attempted, again, to force my eyelids up. The things wouldn’t move. At least, I didn’t feel anything budge. Maybe, my lids were open, and I was blind.

  I wasn’t blind before I went to sleep, was I?

  I didn’t think so. My mind could conjure images of eyelids, eyelashes, and other body parts that I couldn’t yet name. I’m pretty sure if I’d been blind, I wouldn’t know what those things looked like.

  If not blind, then what? Paralyzed? If so, was it my entire body?

  It had to be if I couldn’t move something as simple as eyelids.

  God, I hoped not. That was a type of hell I didn’t want to suffer through.

  Confused by my situation, I tried to nudge other parts of my body as their names came to me. Nothing stirred even an inch. I begged my hands to reach up to touch my eyes. My arms didn’t obey the command. My fingers didn’t even twitch. Nothing moved.

  Next, I attempted to flip my entire body over onto my back. I felt sure I was lying on my stomach because, at some point, I’d registered the fact that I was laying face-first on something hard and prickly. I had the same sensation in my arms and decided that I might have pinned them under me. The prickling might be grass or the feeling of my limbs waking as my consciousness had just minutes ago. Maybe my body needed a bit longer to awaken.

  I lay there for what felt like a full minute before ordering myself to turn over. Again, nothing happened, which wasn’t surprising because I still couldn’t feel my body. All I could sense was the hard, prickly stuff under me.

  Odd.

  If I was lying on something hard and prickly, that meant I wasn’t in a bed. Do people sleep on things other than a bed? Probably?

  Why was I lying on something so uncomfortable, though?

  No answers came to any of my questions. I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing before waking. I couldn’t even remember what I was doing before going to sleep. Frustrated, I took in a deep breath. That time, I smelled dirt, grass, dew.

  Those smells hadn’t been there a second ago, had they? I didn’t think so. A lot of things were coming to me that hadn’t been there an instant befor
e.

  What the hell was going on with me?

  Was I on the ground?

  Why was I sleeping outside?

  An image of a birthday balloon floating across a yard flashed across my mind in response. Maybe, I’d been at a party and drank too much. Or perhaps, I’d taken a blow to the head.

  I wanted to scream, “What the hell happened to me,” but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate.

  I couldn’t remember…anything. Terror washed over me. I ordered my body to move, my eyes to open, my mouth to ask for help. None of that happened.

  My body ignored my every command.

  I had a body. I had to have a body. I felt the weight of it pushing me into the grass. Suddenly, I felt the itchy grit of dirt on my bare flesh. The morning dew was cold. The grass waving in the breeze tickled my skin. I still couldn’t lift myself to escape the chill or the tingling.

  For what felt like the millionth time, my brain urged my eyes to open, my legs to move, my hips to shift and flip me over. My body couldn’t do any of those things.

  Why couldn’t I move? I used to be able to command myself to do these tasks, couldn’t I?

  Couldn’t I?

  My brain and my body knew I should be able to perform these actions. I just couldn’t remember ever doing them. Because of that, I couldn’t figure out how to make myself do them.

  I began to panic. Dirt shot up my nose as I started taking in deep, frantic breaths. I choked on the dust, which in turn, made me cough. The coughing caused some movement in my body. The force of the action made my upper half come off the ground mere inches before flopping back to the grass. Every time my torso did that, my head hit the ground, and pain shot through me—making me nauseous.

  My arms should’ve moved. They should’ve flexed and caught me. More importantly, they should’ve pushed me to a seated position so that I could cough up the dirt that kept filling my mouth and lungs, but they didn’t.

  The choking turned into gagging. Soon, I was going to start vomiting. I had to get off my stomach. I didn’t want to strangle on puke. I would suffocate if I landed face-first in it. My vomit couldn’t be the last thing I smelled or tasted. It just couldn’t.

  I continued to gag, cough, and choke.

  A voice in my head screamed at my body to help me.

  I nearly lost consciousness again in my panic.

  Just as I thought I would pass out, my eyes shot open and my arms jerked in front of me, caught me, and pushed me up so that my head dangled between my shoulder blades. The fog in my head cleared a tiny bit, and my mouth shot open. Vomit spewed from it.

  I vomited.

  And vomited.

  When I was too tired to throw up anymore, and my arms could no longer hold my weight, I flopped over onto my side away from what I’d spewed onto the ground, to rest. I would’ve passed out except that the smell of what had come out of me was beyond wretched. I had to move away from it—had to breathe fresh air. My legs still weren’t working, so I could do neither.

  My upper body was a bit mobile, though. Using what little strength I had in my arms, I was able to force myself into a seated position in order to look down at the pile of crap that had come out of my stomach.

  I looked at it—and looked at it—not believing what I was seeing. Most of what came up was unrecognizable as I’d already digested it. A few things weren’t. A human finger was one such item. Chunks of flesh were another. A hairball also floated in the mess. The sight of it all made me vomit more.

  I continued that way until the only thing coming out of me was nose-burning bile.

  Exhaustion sent me flopping back onto the grass as far as I could get away from where I’d been sick. I don’t know how long I lay there, looking up at the slowly dawning, morning sky and trying to pretend I hadn’t seen what had been in my stomach.

  I’m not sure if I had thoughts in those minutes or hours after being sick. I don’t know if I dozed or completely lost consciousness.

  I do know that as I lay there, I gradually began to regain movement in my lower body. First, it was my toes. One second I felt nothing. The next, they started twitching at the feel of the grass brushing across them. After that, it was my whole foot and then my legs. Rocks poked into my butt and back, making me uncomfortable and relieved at the same time.

  When I was able, I used my newfound movement to roll my body further from the disgusting mess that was now drawing flies, ants, and other creatures. No animals had come snooping around yet, which was the only good thing I could say about the situation.

  I didn’t look back to see what else I’d spewed up.

  My brain kept asking why there were human body parts in my stomach, but I had no answers for it.

  To distract myself from those unpleasant thoughts, I worked on convincing my body to move. I needed to stand up, to get out of the grass, to clean myself. My nose was fully functional, and the reek I smelled wasn’t just coming from the pile of vomit. It was coming from me.

  When had I last bathed?

  Sitting up for so long made me lightheaded. By some miracle, I didn’t throw up anymore, though.

  When the world stopped spinning, I looked down at myself for the first time. I was nearly naked, and not because I had on skimpy clothes, but because the clothes I did have on were in tattered strips and covered in God only knew what.

  I also had part of a syringe-dart sticking out of the side of my thigh. Pulling it out hurt only a tiny bit. I scrutinized the object. I sniffed it to see if I could get a whiff of anything. I couldn’t tell by sight or smell what had been in the syringe.

  What had happened to me?

  Had I been in an accident?

  Had someone attacked me?

  Drugged me?

  I tried to remember, but I couldn’t bring to mind anything before waking up in the grass and regurgitating an entire human finger. The more I tried to force memories to surface, the more realization set in that I didn’t have any memories.

  I began to panic.

  I started hyperventilating.

  My head spun.

  While thinking all of this, I’d slowly begun to rise to my feet. I only managed a few steps before I fell to my knees and nearly passed out. It took everything I had in me to force my breathing to slow.

  Once I thought I had control, I began asking myself questions. Over time, many things had come to me. I knew what a human finger was. I knew that I was kneeling on the grass. So, I knew what things were. However, I didn’t know me. I didn’t know my name. I had to feel my body to discover if I was male or female. My breasts told me I was female. I knew what “parents” were. I didn’t know who mine was. I couldn’t remember where they were, what their names were, or even what they looked like. For that matter, I didn’t know what I looked like.

  I touched my face, trying to get a sense of my appearance. Mostly what I felt was dirt. My mouth seemed on the small side. I had what I thought was an average size nose. Likewise, my ears felt a little big, my forehead broad, and my hair was a matted mess. I ran my fingers through the strands and pulled out a knot of dark brown hair.

  My body started to panic again. Before I could lose consciousness, I smacked myself hard across the face, shocking my brain back into reality. I started the slow inhalation and exhalation to calm myself.

  As soon as I was composed, I stood and looked at my surroundings.

  I’d been lying in a field. I could see trees off in the distance to my left and a building that might be a house on my right. I didn’t recognize any of it.

  The image of the balloon floated across my mind. The yard it was in was not that field. I was almost positive that yard was near a body of water. There was no water anywhere near me.

  How the hell had I gotten to the field from there?

  I prayed that those memories would come back just as my knowledge of things had.

  From a distance, the building looked abandoned. I studied it for a long time before starting in its direction, but nothing moved in or around it a
s far as I could tell.

  My legs shook the entire time I shifted them under me. I still had strength in the muscles that knew what I wanted to use them for, but I was a bit unsteady. I must have been unconscious for a long time. I staggered for the first few feet before my gate smoothed out to a relatively steady, low stride.

  Not far from where I’d woken, lay a male body. The man wasn’t unconscious. He was dead. He looked as if someone or something had been eating him. I turned away quickly, but not before noticing that he was missing a few fingers.

  Panic built in me again.

  Had I been the one eating the man?

  Was the finger I’d thrown up his?

  Anything was possible, I supposed, but I didn’t go back to my pile of vomit, fish out the finger, and compare it to the remaining few digits.

  Forcing myself to get a grip, I told myself that for all I knew, someone had made me swallow the man’s finger. Just because I’d thrown the object up didn’t mean I was a cannibal. It didn’t mean I’d willingly done anything to harm him.

  I turned back to the man and examined him. If I’d known him… If I’d been the one to kill him… I’d remember. Wouldn’t I? I didn’t want to relive whatever I’d done, though, I knew I needed to get my memories back.

  I got nothing from the man. No sparks of recognition. No feelings of emotion. Nothing. He didn’t have any form of identification on him. His military garb didn’t have any labels or insignias on them. There was nothing to give me any answers.

  Growing frustrated, I left him and started toward the house. A few paces from the body, I found a small black case. Inside it was syringes filled with a yellow-tinted liquid.

  Had that been what someone had injected in me?

  I knew the needles weren’t mine. I didn’t look as if I were someone who’d been carrying a case of them…but the man did. For the life of me, I couldn’t think why he would have them, though.