The Awakened (16 page)

“Ash, wait, where’s my dad?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to run.

“Ash!” I screamed. “Where is my dad?” I shifted in his arms, causing his balance to tip, and we both went spiraling to the ground. I lifted myself onto my arms, my stomach pressed to the hard ground and looked back over to the scene behind us.

My dad’s body lay across the overturned car, and he was limp as the remaining two Awakened bent over his body. Their teeth were buried deep into his flesh, pulling him apart. I was in shock. I couldn’t react. It was like watching a movie. It didn’t seem real because it couldn’t be real. There was no way. I had just seen him fighting. Blood was dripping onto the dirt in front of me, gushing from my wound, and for a moment, the pain in my face was gone. I was paralyzed. I could do nothing but watch them tear apart the body that belonged to the most important person in my life.

“Zoey,” Ash whispered, his wet, tear-stained lips near my ear, his body pressed on top of me. “We need to move. We need to go.”

I didn’t move. I didn’t agree or disagree. I felt broken, fixed to the spot, incapable of movement, incapable of feeling anything. I watched, horrified, listening to the moans of pleasure coming from the Awakened. Their harsh, loud wails struck through me, and I pushed myself up and took the gun from Ash’s hands before he could protest. I walked slowly toward them, limping with each step. They were so involved in their meal that they didn’t notice me, not until I was right next to them.

Before they could say a word or make any sort of movement, I shot both of them, perfect shots in the middle of their foreheads. They fell to the ground dead, but the damage was done. My eyes landed on the wreck of blood and flesh that was once my dad and felt my knees grow weak. I had lost too much blood, and I slipped into darkness, collapsing to the ground. The last thing I remembered was the whisper of my name on Ash’s lips.

I WOKE UP DISORIENTED WITH
pain shooting through my forehead.

“Z, don’t move,” Ash said, his arms coming out to hold me down.

“Why?” I whimpered. “What’s going on?”

“What do you remember?” he asked shakily. His eyes were red rimmed. He had been crying, and the tearstains on his cheeks were fresh.

I thought about it for a moment, but my head was pounding and thinking hurt; it hurt so badly. “There was a car crash. We fought Awakened,” I said, slowly, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my face. “My face…something happened to my face.”

He nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. “I’m fixing it now, okay, baby. I’m taking care of it.”

I finally noticed the needle and thread in his trembling hands, and I knew what he was doing. I felt the fear of further pain pass through me, but I tasted blood on my lips. “Ash. Ash, where is my dad?”

Pain flashed across Ash’s handsome features, and he looked like he was going to cry again. “Zoey, he…he didn’t…he couldn’t…”

“What?” I asked, my voice coming out in a rush. “Where is he?”

“You don’t remember?” he begged. I searched for the memory. Everything was hazy. All I could remember was fighting and the feeling of pain, pain that was still spreading through my body.

I searched through the memories of the fight and it hit me like a ton of bricks: my dad fighting over several Awakened as they tore into his skin. The memory of his limp body being torn to pieces burned in my mind, and I felt the loss wrench through me. My breathing came in short bursts, and the sky above me was spinning in endless circles. I wondered what a panic attack felt like.

“Where is he? Where’s his body?” I managed to say, my voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.

“I pulled his body away,” Ash answered. “I figured we could, I don’t know, bury him or something. I don’t know. Zoey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears thickened his voice and he covered his eyes for a moment.

I shook my head, trying to forget, trying to wipe the memory from my mind. I tried to shift my vision to see him, to see his body, but pain ripped through my face as the cut pulled and tugged. “How bad am I?”

He breathed heavily, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “You’re okay. You have cuts everywhere, but they’re going to heal. They’ll probably scar, but they’re okay. But the cut on your face is bad. I need to sew it up.”

“Can you…can you do that?” I asked, shivering. It was freezing, and I could feel a wetness seeping through my clothes.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m going to try, okay? You’re bleeding like crazy, and it needs to be sewn up.”

I nodded once and squeezed my eyes shut. “Just do it. Please just do it and get it over with.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding uncertain. Then, he cleared his throat and said it again in a stronger voice. “Okay.”

He poured some water on my face, careful not to get it in my eyes. That was the least of my problems. The water stung on my wound, and I could taste the blood and water pouring down my face. He hesitated for a moment before slowly starting to sew me up. Each prick of the needle was painful, and I could feel it slip through the tough bloody skin. I looked up at Ash and saw his unease. His hand slipped and the needle plunged into my eyebrow and I winced in pain.

“Ash,” I whimpered.

He paused, the needle in his hands. “Does it hurt too much? God, Z, I’m sorry.”

“Just please keep talking, okay? Tell me a story or something,” I said. “Please.”

“Okay,” he said, going back to work on my cut. “Do you remember when we dissected that frog together in eighth grade?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, whether to block out the memory or the pain in my face I wasn’t sure. “No,” I lied.

“Well, I do. I remember thinking it was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen in my life, all those guts. I’m not going to lie; I nearly passed out, which would have been embarrassing. It would not be okay if I just passed out in class.”

He paused for a moment reminiscing before continuing. The needle sunk into the fleshy skin of my cheek and I sucked in a breath, feeling the tugging of my skin. I focused on his blue eyes, falling into them. There was nothing else but his eyes and the rhythm of his voice. “But I remember looking at you, and you were so calm. You did everything so coolly and perfectly. It’s like you knew. You took the scalpel from my hand and handed me the pencil. You told me you needed a new pair of gloves, which gave me an excuse to get away.”

I remembered. I remembered being surprised at how awkward Ash had been with the dissection. His face had been so green, and I was scared that he was going to vomit all over the lab table. I had never seen that kind of vulnerability in Ash before, and definitely not at school where he was the badass on campus. It made me want to help him, to make him feel better. 

“I don’t know. It was just a great moment, you know? It was just one of those moments where I was reminded of how great a person you are. You could have let me throw up or pass out and be completely humiliated, but you didn’t. It’s something I’ll always remember.” He sat back, his hands covered in blood. “I think you’re done.”

I raised my hand to my face and felt the jagged stitches. Sitting up, I took in inventory of the rest of my body. There were cuts, some of them shallow and some of them deeper, all over my arms and on my legs showing through my ripped jeans. I lifted my shirt a little and saw four deep scratches in my stomach. They had been bleeding but not anymore. There was dry, crusty blood on my belly button.

Ash stood up and held out his hand to me, pulling me up. The world spun for a moment. I leaned over, breathing deeply to right myself. He reached for me, but I held out a hand to stop him. “I’m fine. Where is he?”

“I don’t think you should…” Ash started to say, but it was too late. I spotted him, dragged off of the car and laying to the side of the wreckage, away from the other bodies. Ash had tossed a coat over him, hiding his face and torso.

I fell to my knees beside him, my hands reaching for the jacket.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ash said, coming to kneel next to me. “You don’t want to see him like that. You don’t want your memory of him to be of this.”

My hand stopped, my fingers falling on the soft fabric of the jacket. “I just…I can’t believe that he could be gone.” A sob was stuck in the back of my throat, and I felt the tears stinging the slash on my face. “I feel like if I see it, it makes it real.”

“I know,” he said, his voice soft. “But not like this. This…Zoey, it’s not pretty. You don’t want to see it.” I looked up at him and saw that there were tears in his eyes. He had seen, and he could barely look at the covered body now. This was not his father, but he had cared for my dad.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “You’re right.” I stood up and stared down at the body that was once my father, the only good man I had ever really known and the only person I had always known I could count on. Now the only person I had left in the world, to keep me safe and get me to my mother’s was Ash Matthews, and I hadn’t quite figured out how I felt about that yet. “I want to bury the body. I want to bury my father.”

Ash hesitated, looking around. There were bodies of Awakened all around us and they were starting to smell. “We need to do something about these bodies too. And I don’t want to linger too long. But Zoey, we can’t bury your father. The ground is frozen, we have nothing to dig with and I don’t want to be here longer than we need to.”

I looked back down at the body and back up at Ash. “You’re right…”

“We could burn him?” Ash offered up tentatively, studying my face for my reaction.

I nodded, looking around me in a daze. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Okay.”

We made a pile of the bodies of the Awakened and set them ablaze first. I covered my face with my hand, trying hard to ignore the horrible stench from the bodies. I turned to my dad. Ash looked at me as if asking for permission, and I nodded. I watched as my dad’s body went up in flames, consumed by the fire.

“Do you want to say anything?” Ash whispered.

“I…I don’t know what to say,” I said, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. I was shivering like mad despite the incredible heat that was surrounding us. “I love you, Dad. You died protecting me, and I’ll never…” I choked on the words. “I’ll never forget that.” I felt the tears again, and I held them back. I refused to let them fall. “Let’s go. I just want to go.” I turned away and walked back over to the mess that was the broken car.

We spent a good twenty minutes getting what we could out of the car. We grabbed packs and stuffed them with as many necessities as we could: clothes, water, the first aid kit, food and the map from the glove compartment. We started walking alongside the highway, walking for at least an hour before we stopped. I could still see the smoke in the distance, the lump in my throat growing larger and larger.

“What’s the plan now?” Ash asked, after taking a gulp of water.

“We keep up with the plan that my dad had,” I said, pouring some water onto the edge of my t-shirt and using it to wipe the remaining blood off my face. “We head to Nebraska.”

He looked exhausted. “And how far away is that?”

I sighed. “We’re probably about six hours of driving from Constance, which means, I don’t know. Four or five days of walking?”

Ash’s eyes grew wide. “Right. Okay. Five days.”

My fingers were folded tightly into fists, the nails biting into the skin of my palms, and I could feel the stretching of the cuts on my legs. I was exhausted, so tired. Every inch of my body was in some kind of pain, and I was covered in dirty and blood. I needed to be clean again. I wanted to wash everything about this day off of me. And I was still on my stupid period.

“We have to do it, Ash,” I said firmly, standing up and shouldering my pack again. “Now, let’s go.”

WE HAD BEEN TRAVELING FOR
about six hours when we decided to stop. There was a thick forest, and we stumbled upon a small creek. It was frozen over in a thin sheet of ice that was easily broken through with the butt of my gun. It was too small to fully submerge ourselves in, but that would have been a bad idea anyway. It was freezing, and I had no desire to remove any clothing. The stream was adequate enough though, and I used some of the water to clean myself up, scrubbing as much of the crusty blood off my skin as possible. My teeth were chattering and the tips of my fingers were blue.

I was scared to build a fire, though we really needed one. We had already encountered a couple groups of Awakened while on the road, and I didn’t want to call any more attention to ourselves than necessary. Lighting a fire would be risky. I bundled myself up tight in a coat and took the first watch.

We spent a couple hours in silence before I broke down and built a small fire. It was freezing, and I knew it would not be long before it started snowing in these parts. I pulled out my useless phone out of my pocket, where I had kept it out of habit. The screen was blank, dead, and I remembered when I could check the weather, the time, everything with the slight touch of the screen. Now, I didn’t know if it would get hotter or colder, whether it was going to rain or snow. I didn’t even know if we were going in the right direction.

I had been spoiled back home, and now, on the road, I was helpless. Now I felt completely responsible for the boy that I had a feeling I was falling for, the boy my dad had saved. I didn’t know how to save Ash any more than I knew how to save myself. He was curled up on the ground, but awoke when I started the fire. He spotted it, eyes wide and grateful.

“Is that a good idea?” he whispered to me, reaching his hands out toward the fire. “We don’t want any wandering Awakened to notice.”

“At least we can fight them,” I said back, wrapping my coat tighter around me. “I’d rather fight for my life than die of hypothermia.”

He nodded. “Do you want to switch?”

I shook my head. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when I’m tired. I could use some time to myself.”

He nodded again, pulling the collar of his coat above his ears and curled up closer to the fire. It wasn’t long before his soft snores filled the air again. I sighed, settling up against a tree trunk, my gun in my hand.

I felt like laughing, and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the fact that I had so much grief and panic and fear piled up in me that I didn’t know when it was going to burst out. I couldn’t handle all these emotions piled up inside me, and for the moment, I pushed them down.

I felt stupid. I felt foolish. I read more than any person that I’d ever met. I worshipped strong female characters who knew how to fight, how to kill and save the day. I fell in love with the strong male leads. I escaped into these worlds, and I’d always wanted to live them. Worlds where things got worse before they got better but where the day was always saved—where the good guy always won.

The real world wasn’t like that. I was more terrified than I had ever been in my entire life. I had a gun in my hand, but I didn’t feel like a hero. I didn’t feel like Arwen or Katniss or Hermione. I didn’t feel brave, like a survivor. I felt like a little girl, who was scared and alone. The situation was hopeless. Unlike the books, I didn’t think there was a way to beat the bad guys. I didn’t even know who the bad guys were.

Where had the Awakened come from? Were the bodies stolen, or had they left on their own accord? Was Liam insane for thinking that someone had released them? Nothing made sense, and we knew so little. I had only one plan: to get us to Nebraska. I had nothing past that. I couldn’t stop questioning absolutely everything. What if my mother wasn’t even there? What if she and Caspar were dead?

I woke Ash up after a couple hours and slept next to the dwindling fire. I had trouble sleeping. I was exhausted, like there was nothing left in me to keep going, but the anxiety was keeping me awake. I shifted, tossing and turning on the rough ground.

Ash scooted closer to me, holding out his hand. I stared at it for a long pause, wondering what he was doing. He rolled his eyes, and ran his fingers through my hair. I closed my eyes, comforted by the feel of it. It felt like home. His hand reached for mine and I let him take it. I fell asleep, the heat of his palm against mine, feeling the gentle beat of his heart in the soft skin there, lulling me to sleep.

When I woke up, it was daylight and Ash was eating a small breakfast of jerky. He held the bag out for me, and I took it gratefully, running a hand through my damp hair. My stomach felt sorrowfully empty after the quick meal, but there was nothing else. What little food we had needed to last the entire journey to Constance. We didn’t say anything to each other, besides to pass the water bottle back and forth. I was so tired. Each step felt like it could be the last, and I didn’t think I could take another, until I did. I kept pushing myself. I refused to ask for a break, and we kept plodding along, keeping the highway alongside us.

We didn’t see anybody else on the road; it was almost as if this major highway had been abandoned. I had driven this highway before, going back and forth between New York and Constance. I knew that there were always cars on here, especially during the day. And there
were cars
, but they were abandoned, empty, stuck in a traffic jam that would never move.

It was a devastating example of what the world had become. I wanted to talk to Ash, to remind myself that I wasn’t completely alone that I had someone with me, but it made me feel like we were the last two people on earth.

I felt like I was going to lose myself. I was already forgetting who I was.

Two days passed with no incident. We slept, watching watch over each other through the night, and walked as far as we could during the day. We didn’t talk to each other at all, except to ask questions that required short yes or no answers.

It was the third day when we ran into the pack of Awakened.

We were stumbling along the woods looking for a clearing to set up camp for the night when we bumped into them. They moved so slightly, and they had been sleeping. I didn’t even know they could sleep. Ash held his arm out to me, and I ran into him with a slight “oof” escaping my lips. He raised his index finger to his lips, his eyes wide. I counted the Awakened curled up together, using each other for warmth.

I wondered for a moment whether they needed it, if they even felt the elements. I shivered as we started backing up slowly. My eyes stayed on them the entire time, afraid they could hear me breathing, that they could hear my heart pounding like crazy in my head.

That was the perfect moment that my body decided to betray me. I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t help it. I sneezed. Loudly. Great, I was going to die because I sneezed.
Ash reached out for me, and we both looked hurriedly over at the Awakened. They seemed to still be asleep, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

We turned around and started making our way in the opposite direction. I was afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid that the crinkle of the leaves under my boots would alert them to our presence. I could tell Ash felt the same because our pace was hurried but careful.

We had made it at least a mile away when Ash let out a breath and I paused, leaning against a tree, waiting for my heart to calm down. I was hot and sweaty, whether from the walk or the panic I was feeling I didn’t know, and I peeled off my coat. I examined the cuts on my arm, relieved that they were beginning to heal. My nose wrinkled in disgust at the scars that seemed to be forming in their place. I was definitely going to look like a fighter from now on. My fingers ran along the jagged strings that ran through my face. I winced at how tender it still was.

“We should move on, Z,” Ash said, taking a gulp from his bottle and holding it out to me. I shook my head and turned to walk away. I bumped into something, something solid and cold. I looked up and screamed.

The Awakened had caught up to us, silently. They had probably been following us ever since we had left them in the clearing, letting us get further and further away from the highway and deeper into the woods. Ash and I both grabbed for our guns in our holsters but there was no time. They looked starving, and they were on us in an instant.

“Run!” I screamed.

Ash didn’t hesitate. We both turned and ran, sprinting through the woods, running for our lives.