Wake Me After the Apocalypse Read online

  Wake Me After the Apocalypse

  Jordan Rivet

  Copyright © 2018 by Jordan Rivet

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contact the author at [email protected]

  For updates and discounts on new releases, join Jordan Rivet’s mailing list.

  Editing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing

  Book cover design by www.ebooklaunch.com

  Wake Me After the Apocalypse/Jordan Rivet - First Edition: August 2018

  Created with Vellum

  For Willow Hewitt,

  writing partner, friend, and Friday companion,

  who believed in this book all along

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jordan Rivet

  Chapter One

  Waking up from cryosleep was Joanna’s least favorite activity—and this was only the second time she’d done it.

  It felt like drowning at first. She was enveloped in a viscous liquid that pressed closer than her own skin. Her body seized as her vital functions reanimated: heartbeat, blood flow, lung contractions. Awareness returned in a rush, and she felt an overwhelming urge to claw her way to the surface and gasp for air, but she couldn’t control her limbs yet.

  Instead she floated down, down, until her back touched something solid, and she settled slowly onto the bottom of the tank. She kept her eyes closed as the thick cryo liquid drained from her face, leaving behind a slimy residue, as though a snail had crawled all over her bare skin.

  The cryo machine beeped steadily by Joanna’s right ear. Consciousness had shown up before her body was fully warm—unfortunately—so the next sound she heard was her own teeth chattering. The cold ebbed gradually, leaving her nauseous and trembling, suppressing the urge to vomit. A few of her teammates had thrown up in their tanks during their training runs, and she was determined not to emulate them, even as she became aware of a truly foul taste in her mouth.

  Joanna had only one opportunity to practice waking from cryosleep during her orientation. Then, she emerged from the slippery depths of stasis already looking forward to a hot meal and a stolen kiss from Garrett. Today’s awakening wouldn’t be quite as cozy. But after sleeping for over two hundred years, she was about to join Garrett and the others in the vital task of resettling the earth. She could handle a little discomfort.

  “Remain still until program terminates.”

  The disembodied voice startled her, and her limbs twitched, the cryo liquid sloshing around her. The machine continued to cycle through the countdown sequence.

  “Cryo drain completes in thirty-two seconds.”

  The recording sounded different from what she remembered. Slightly muffled and frantic. She hoped her hearing wasn’t damaged. The human body wasn’t designed to sleep for hundreds of years, and she expected some negative consequences. At least her heart was beating, an eager patter that got faster the longer she lay there in the receding puddle of goo.

  Her front half was free of the cryo liquid now. The sequence wasn’t complete yet, but Joanna couldn’t wait any longer. She opened her eyes.

  Red light bathed the stone ceiling above her, refracted through the clear lid of her tank.

  That’s odd. The chamber had a distinct blue tint when she climbed into her tank what felt like the night before, and she remembered the ceiling being a lot higher. Something wasn’t right. She blinked through the goo coating her lashes, but the red glare remained. She opened and closed her hands, trying to get the blood flowing through her body. She should be able to move more than this by now.

  The beeping by her ear became shrill, almost siren-like. Joanna drew a sharp breath, and a gurgling rattle made her jolt in surprise, banging her arms against the sides of the tank.

  “Remain still until program terminates.”

  She’d forgotten about the tubes running into her mouth and nose, delivering a precise mixture of chemicals designed to preserve her body in stasis. Her lips were numb, but she could just see the tubes, outlined in that strange red glow. She sucked in another breath, the gurgle echoing in the mostly empty tank.

  “Cryo drain completes in five seconds.”

  Almost done. Three . . . two . . . one . . .

  The tank’s seal cracked with a dull hiss, and the first brush of air tickled Joanna’s skin. She yanked out the tubes, retching as the ends slithered from her throat. She wiped the remaining goo off her face with shaking hands. Her body was warming up, and pins and needles prickled in her arms. Relieved she could still move, she braced her hands against the top of the cryo tank and pushed. It didn’t budge. She pushed harder, fighting against two hundred years of inertia to open her Plexiglas coffin.

  The lid tipped up—and smacked into something with a thunk. She hadn’t imagined the lowered ceiling. A huge slab of stone rested at an angle above her cryo tank, preventing the lid from opening more than a few inches. Oh no.

  All of her training warned her not to panic. They’d talked about not panicking so often during orientation it became a running joke with her teammates.

  “We’re having apple pie today, Joanna. Don’t panic!”

  “Don’t panic, everybody, but the boss says we have the day off tomorrow.”

  “Garrett’s looking at you again, Joanna. Don’t panic!”

  But when Joanna woke up from her two-hundred-year sleep with a big hunk of rock trapping her in her cryo tank, she freaking panicked.

  She shoved against the lid, trying to move the huge stone slab, adrenaline shooting through her, heart racing, gasping for breath. Her feet slipped in the cryo liquid pooling at the bottom of the tank, and she banged her elbow hard against the edge. She had to get out! Her muscles seized. Her stomach threatened to empty its contents into the enclosed space. She tried pushing the lower part of the lid and slipped again, smacking her head with an echoing thwack.

  Red stars spun before her eyes.

  That’s why you’re not supposed to panic, genius. As her vision cleared, she forced herself to breathe, to move deliberately. She felt along the edge of the tank with trembling hands. The gap between the base and the lid was wider than she thought. She might fit through it.

  She rolled over and stuck an arm and a leg through the opening. Then she sucked in her stomach and squeezed her torso after them. Fortunately, she wore one of the skintight leotards everyone had been assigned for their hibernation—another running joke with her team. They’d all laughed
about how they’d look like a slimy synchronized swim team when they woke. Well, she appreciated the slick fabric now. Her body popped free of the tank, and she dropped to the ground with a wet smack.

  When she’d gone to sleep, she had been in a vast cavern surrounded by rows of shiny, hissing machines. Her teammates had filed to their positions in their own cryo tanks, chattering nervously as they prepared for their long rest. They should be waking around her in a carefully coordinated order right now. Bright-red arrows painted on the floor guided the way to the exit chamber, where dry clothes, food, and everything they needed for the first stage of their mission awaited.

  But the big red arrow was just about the only thing still there. The faded paint flaked beneath Joanna’s trembling hands as she tried to make sense of the ruin that had once been the underground cryo chamber. Rocks and rubble surrounded her, covered in a thick layer of dust. The air smelled old, and each breath left a gritty residue on her tongue.

  Underused muscles protesting at the effort, Joanna pulled herself to her feet, ducking to avoid the stone slab that had fallen across her tank at an angle. It must have protected her from the rest of the debris, forming a safe little triangle in which she’d continued to sleep after—whatever had happened here.

  She shook her head. A cave-in. That’s obviously what happened. But how? The bunker had been constructed with meticulous care deep in an underground mine. Humanity had put the height of its technological abilities into safeguarding this facility. They had learned disaster was coming with just enough time to preserve the species and its advancements. To fill the earth and subdue it once more. Something as simple as a cave-in couldn’t have defeated them.

  Holding onto the stone slab for balance, Joanna climbed out of the little nook where her cryo tank rested and surveyed what was left of the cryo chamber. Dread seeped into her as she took in the red-tinted scene. Broken shards of Plexiglas, twisted metal, wires, and rocks cluttered the half-collapsed cavern. Bits of fabric and plastic. Charred, indistinguishable detritus. The chamber had become a tomb of debris and shattered stone. It was impossible to make sense of the carnage or begin to consider ugly words like “bodies,” or worse, “corpses.” All she saw was the rough patina of ruin.

  One thing was clear in her immediate radius, though: hers was the only cryo tank still intact.

  Bone-shaking panic overtook her at last. She clambered back into the triangular nook and checked the LED display on her tank, wondering if she’d overslept somehow. But the date was two hundred years after she went under, right on schedule. She was supposed to wake up with her team today. They were supposed to tease one another about their leotards and help each other stagger over to the exit chamber. Garrett was supposed to grin at her with that guileless smile of his. He’d offer his arm and help her stay balanced, even though she’d probably splash him with cryo goo and tell him she could walk fine on her own. They were supposed to leave the underground chamber together to start a new world.

  Instead, Joanna huddled between her tank and the large chunk of rock that had saved her life, every inch of her body quivering, and frantically pushed buttons on the machine. It was two hundred years later, and she was awake all right. Awake—and completely alone.

  Chapter Two

  Hyperventilating was not the right choice in these circumstances. Joanna held onto that thought as if it were a life raft. Don’t hyperventilate. That’s all you need to do. Keep breathing like a normal human being.

  She stopped mashing buttons on the tank and wiped some of the excess cryo liquid from her arms, splattering the dust-covered floor. She’d take one step at a time, as she’d been taught in training. She was supposed to follow the red arrow directly to the exit chamber, so that was what she’d do, even though she had a feeling the protocol she’d studied over the past few months no longer applied. And she hadn’t studied it over the past few months, she reminded herself. Her training had happened a couple hundred years ago.

  “You may experience some disorientation upon waking,” she muttered, imitating the earnest words of Dr. Huntington from the program. “This is normal. Remember not to panic.”

  Her voice echoed through the chamber, scratchy from disuse. It was the first time she’d spoken in two hundred years. She wished she’d chosen a better line. Something about one small step for humanity would have done the trick.

  “‘You may experience some disorientation.’” She snorted. “Nice one, Joanna.”

  She had expected to experience all this in the company of her teammates. They’d said goodbye to their families, to everyone they had ever known, but they were supposed to have each other. She couldn’t really be the only one left. Someone else would pop out any minute now.

  She peeked out from the nook by her cryo tank.

  “A-Any minute now.”

  Nothing moved in the vast chamber, except for a red emergency light flickering on and off. No tanks opening. No bodies stirring.

  Joanna swallowed hard, ignoring the bitter taste of cryo gel, and climbed out of her nook to examine the nearest tank, number 187. It held her friend Troy, a grim, gangly fellow a few years older than her. He had a frank honesty and gallows humor that had been welcome as they prepared for the end of the world. His tank should have cycled down at the same time as hers, so the pair of them could join the rest of their team in the exit chamber.

  Now, nothing was left of Troy’s cryo tank but smashed metal, cracked Plexiglas, and a slim white object protruding from beneath another slab of rock. She crept closer, trying to identify the white thing in the muted light, and stiffened. Bone. A femur, if she wasn’t mistaken. Other small white fragments scattered amongst the metal shards.

  Joanna lurched backward from Troy’s skeleton, senses reeling, and her foot caught on a rock. She flailed her arms, trying to regain her balance, but overcompensated and pitched forward onto her hands and knees. Sharp pain shot through her wrists.

  Disorientation. Right.

  She huddled on the ground for a few minutes, pressing her hands and knees into the dust, trying to stave off panic. This couldn’t be happening. It was all too much. She wanted to crumple, to flatten her face against the ground and go right back to sleep, but she couldn’t give in. Not yet.

  She’d landed with her head sticking out past her row, so she could see up the aisle of tanks. From 1 to 1000, they were scheduled to commence their countdowns in an orderly fashion. The occupants would awaken a few at a time and follow the red arrows to the exit chamber. It looked as though the tanks closer to the exit had taken a serious beating when the ceiling rained down on them. Crushed pieces of metal and plastic spilled into the aisle, along with trails in the dust from leaking cryo liquid, long since dried up.

  Joanna twisted her head the other way, her neck creaking like an old lady’s. Before, the machines had stretched as far back as she could see, interrupted only by the stone pillars holding up the ceiling. Now, rocks big enough to build pyramids stretched the width of the chamber. The huge chunks of stone blocked off the rest of the cryo tanks completely.

  The entire back of the cavern had collapsed.

  “Garrett,” Joanna called. That should have been her first word upon waking in the new age. His tank was back there, number 337. “Garrett, can you hear me?”

  Her voice echoed, faded. She had thought the smashed machines around hers—number 188—looked bad. They were battered, broken, filled with bones. But the tanks from 200 onward were entombed so completely in stone it was as if they had never been there. Garrett and the others were gone.

  “Please,” Joanna whispered. “Is anyone else awake?”

  Utter silence answered her plea. Joanna knew she had to move or she really would collapse. She began to crawl down the aisle, away from the rubble sealing away the tanks above number 200. Maybe it was for the best that most of the ruined cryo chamber was inaccessible. She didn’t want to see Garrett looking like Troy, all bone and dust.

  “Don’t think about that, Joanna. There will b
e time for that later. S-Stick to the program.”

  She kept moving, hand over hand, inch by inch. With each scrape of her knees through the dust, it got a little easier. At last, she built up enough momentum to pull herself to her feet. She lurched unsteadily up the aisle, following the faded arrows whenever they weren’t obscured by rubble.

  Her steps echoed eerily, the red sheen of the emergency lights casting a hellish glow over her surroundings. The occasional beep or faint hiss broke the oppressive silence. Some of the machinery must still be running. The cave-in looked less severe the closer she got to the exit. Hardly daring to hope that someone else was still alive, she pressed onward.

  After passing dozens of smashed cryo tanks, she reached a group that was relatively undamaged. Tanks 1-50 held the Green Team. These early risers were supposed to awaken a few hours before everyone else and establish order in the exit chamber. The fifty coffin-sized tanks were dark but unbroken, covered with nothing more than dust and a few pebbles.

  If they’d had time to emerge and readjust, maybe their tanks would have powered off by now. That could explain why they were already dark. Joanna captured the hopeful thought as if it were a firefly in a jar. Maybe she wasn’t alone.

  She approached the nearest tank on unsteady feet. It would all be fine. The early risers must already be awake. Soon she’d step into the exit chamber and find a cup of hot tea waiting for her. Or better yet, coffee.