Awake: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Reynolds Jennifer

Author:Reynolds, Jennifer [Reynolds, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Zombies
Published: 2019-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18 – Meeting the Humans

The humans arrived that afternoon. We were still in the community center, talking, and eating. The day had turned into a support group meeting with everyone telling their stories, their fears, and their hopes for the future.

I watched everyone talk and gradually understood why they were okay with their segregation. Douglas had explained, but I hadn’t comprehended it. Speaking to the group, though, seeing how scared and damaged so many of them were from what they’d gone through, I thought despite all the reasons the humans gave for placing them here out of the way of the fighting and away from the rest of the humans, the real reason, whether anyone admitted to it or not was that most of those people wouldn’t be able to fight. They wouldn’t survive living on the edge of the battle, and they wouldn’t be able to handle living so close to a race of people they’d spent years killing for no other reason than mindless hunger.

If the humans put most of those people in the thick of the battle, they’d kill themselves or let the halves do it for them. I know that injecting someone with a cure and stabbing them through the brain are two different things, but in ninety-eight percent of the time, the outcome will be the same—the death of someone. Another one percent would end in them having to brain a half. And still another half percent would be them watching newly awoken person die because the cure couldn’t work fast enough or having to kill them for the same reason. That was too much death for people who’d once killed so many.

I wasn’t saying the humans weren’t battle-scarred either, that they weren’t suffering from P.T.S.D., that they didn’t have suicides from those who couldn’t or didn’t want to go on fighting, but as a people, they had a reason to fight. Their future depends on them doing so. That makes them stronger. Our race doesn’t hinge on the death of the zombies. Yes, we rely on the cure to create more of us, but I think there were enough of us then that our people could go on if we were able to procreate.

Having said that, I did feel as if those that thought they could fight should, and for the same reasons that the humans did. They needed to survive, and we needed to help ensure they did. I hated the memories of what I’d done. They kept me up most nights or woke me. They snuck up on me when I least expected it and made me cry for seemingly no reason. And for that, I wanted to fight. I wanted to be out west, injecting as many of those creatures as possible. To atone for what I’d done, I needed to help ensure that both the humans and whatever the hell we’d become had a future.

I said nothing to Sophia about the decision I’d made. The humans wouldn’t object to my volunteering to go.

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