Wake Me After the Apocalypse

by Jordan Rivet

  Priya cleared her throat. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes,” Joanna squeaked, tearing her eyes from Garrett’s.

  “We’re getting on into fall.” Priya stepped forward to hover by Joanna’s shoulder. “It’s a bit nippy out there.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Joanna craned her face away from Garrett and started when she realized how close Priya had come. The older woman seemed to be trying to insert her whole body in between Joanna and Garrett.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” Joanna said.

  Priya gave a sharp nod and shuffled away to open the door. Garrett carried Joanna out over the threshold.

  A chorus of greetings erupted as they emerged on a shaded wooden porch. The whole village gathered in the sunlit expanse surrounding the cabin. They surged closer, some waving, others applauding tentatively as if they weren’t sure what was appropriate in these circumstances. Most of the faces blurred as Joanna zeroed in on the three people who mattered most: Ruby, Vincent, and Chloe.

  They waited for her at the front of the crowd. Ruby wore her hair long and loose around her shoulders, bits of silver glinting in the sun-blond. Chloe’s frame had filled out with softer curves. Vincent’s face was gaunter than before, and he held an intricately carved staff in place of a white cane. They looked a little older, a little more wrinkled, but it was them. Blue Team Seven. Her family.

  They didn’t approach right away. Garrett set her in a roughhewn deck chair piled with cushions. The others watched closely, as if she were in danger of shattering into tiny pieces or disappearing into thin air at any moment.

  “Hey there,” Joanna said brightly. “Did you miss me?”

  Huge smiles broke out on her friends’ faces, and they rushed up the porch, elbowing Garrett out of the way. They touched her cheeks and hugged her tight. Joanna’s heart swelled with so much joy she thought it might crack her ribs.

  “Captain America wouldn’t let us see you sooner,” Ruby said.

  “I didn’t want to overwhelm her,” Garrett said from where he had been unceremoniously pushed aside.

  “Ruby almost burned down the cabin to get to you,” Vincent said. “I convinced her that might possibly traumatize you further.”

  “Are you traumatized?” Chloe asked anxiously, squeezing Joanna’s hand. “I can’t believe you were all alone for so long.”

  “It was only a few weeks,” Joanna said.

  “I wanted to come the moment the scout told us about you.” Chloe glared at the others. “They didn’t believe the mysterious teenager at the old mine could be you, but we knew the cryo tanks were originally programmed to open this year. And you look just the same!”

  “Except a little crispier,” Ruby said. “Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “Yes, but I’ll live.”

  “You will indeed,” Vincent said. He reached toward her. “May I?”

  “Of course.” Joanna guided Vincent’s fingers to her cheek, noticing that his hands, like Garrett’s, were rough from years of work. “No burns here.”

  “And not a wrinkle to be found,” Vincent said as his gnarled fingers explored her face. “Incredible.”

  When Vincent stepped back, Ruby took his other hand, their fingers entwining in a comfortable way. Joanna stared, surprised by the gesture.

  “Oh, Vin and I got hitched.” Ruby held up their joined hands. “Didn’t Garrett tell you anything?”

  “There has been a lot to cover,” Garrett said stiffly.

  “I’ll say,” Ruby muttered, her eyes flitting quickly between Garrett and Chloe. Then she nudged Vincent out of the way so she could give Joanna a fierce hug.

  Chloe was staring at her with wide, curious eyes, an expression Joanna remembered well. She wore her hair in a short Afro now, and she was a bit rounder through the middle, but she still had that dainty, birdlike quality. And she was Garrett’s wife.

  Joanna took a deep breath, suddenly feeling exposed as her friends gazed down at her. “You guys have anything to eat around here?”

  “That’s our Joanna,” Vincent said. “Always asking the important questions.”

  The villagers had planned a potluck to celebrate her recovery. They all brought food to share, using the edge of her porch as a buffet table. The earthenware plates were piled with a mix of vegetarian dishes, from wild potatoes to fresh berries to rough brown bread, and some small fish from the nearby river. Ruby and Chloe had a brief tussle over who would fill Joanna’s plate to overflowing, and then they set about getting their own food while Joanna dug in.

  From her spot on the shaded porch, Joanna could see more of the village than she’d been able to glimpse through the door. Dozens of log cabins sprawled unevenly across a large clearing, their wood-shingled roofs sealed with shiny black pitch. A gap between the two nearest cabins revealed a larger building with a broad stretch of grass in front, perhaps a village green. Vegetable gardens and berry bushes had been planted around many of the cabins, and well-worn paths lined with stones indicated the main traffic areas. The place reminded Joanna of a historic pioneer village. The cool breeze blowing over the porch smelled of cut pine, turned earth, and late-summer flowers.

  The villagers themselves wore a mixture of handmade plant-based textiles in earthy tones and oft-mended garments salvaged from the ruins of the old world. As they lined up for the meal, those Joanna had been friendly with at BRP climbed the porch to greet her. They hugged her and made awkward comments about how she hadn’t changed a bit, everyone careful to introduce themselves in case she didn’t recognize their faces. A few looked at her smooth skin wistfully, as if reminded all too bluntly of the passage of time. It was surreal to think that Joanna would have aged right alongside them if everything had gone according to plan. She probably wouldn’t have noticed the extra lines and soft bits on her friends’ faces if time had used her for its canvas too.

  Stranger than seeing the changes in the old BRP cohort was meeting their children. The oldest was a sixteen-year-old girl named Vashti, the eldest of Priya’s four daughters and now the closest person to Joanna’s age in the village. Vashti sat with her parents in a clear effort to prove she was one of the grownups.

  Joanna couldn’t help stealing glances at her, comparing her youthful face to the rest of them. I must not look all that different.

  Most people had waited much longer after they awoke to have children. A rowdy band of eight-to-twelve-year-olds represented the first BRP baby boom. They alternated between gobbling up their food, staring at Joanna, and chasing each other around the village. Little Robbie was among them, his six-year-old brother, Daniel, tagging along behind him on chubby legs.

  Garrett had declared a holiday for Joanna’s welcome picnic, so no one needed to rush back to work after the meal. While the children played, the elders sat in clusters on the ground or leaned against the porch, basking in the afternoon sunshine. Joanna felt as if she were watching the peaceful scene on an old film reel instead of experiencing it firsthand. It looked like Dr. Huntington’s utopian vision come to life.

  Garrett held court with a group of men not far from the porch, chatting amiably over pottery mugs full of steaming tea. Chloe lingered at his side, her little daughter, Joanna, in her arms. Tight black ringlets framed the child’s face, and she wore a sturdy dress woven of hemp. She had been shy when introduced to her namesake, staring at Joanna with solemn hazel-brown eyes that looked so much like Garrett’s. Chloe bounced the child in her arms with a casual ease. So much had changed for the bubbly young tech genius.

  “They’re good together,” Ruby said, taking a seat beside Joanna on the porch.

  “What?”

  “Garrett and Chloe,” Ruby said. “They make a good couple.”

  Joanna cleared her throat pointedly, but Ruby didn’t take the hint.

  “It took them a long time to get over themselves.” She swept her silver-and-blond hair over her shoulder and combed her fingers through a tangle. “You two were only together for a
few months, but they took three years to come to their senses and pair up. I don’t know which of them was more melodramatic about betraying your memory. But they’ve been as sweet as honey ever since. They had a beautiful wedding by the river. Chloe made her dress out of—”

  “Ruby!” Joanna snapped. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You deserve to know.”

  “But all in a rush like—couldn’t you show a little tact?” Joanna fought to keep her voice from trembling, hurt by Ruby’s callousness. “I can’t believe you’re still so—so mean!”

  “You deserve to know,” Ruby said again, “for your own sake, Joanna. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can get past it. You’ve been dealt a raw hand, but you can’t entertain the idea that maybe things will be different now, maybe their marriage was just for convenience, maybe, maybe, maybe.”

  Joanna felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “You’re worried I’ll mess with your precious chief, are you?”

  “What? No. Who has been—? Never mind. This is for you, Jo.”

  Ruby rested a hand on Joanna’s shoulder, a middle-aged hand with taut skin and extra freckles. Joanna wanted to shake her off, but Ruby’s grip tightened firmly.

  “You’ll make it,” she said. “I missed you like hell, and I know everyone else did too. You’re strong and funny and brave, and you’re going to be okay. Don’t dwell on the past.”

  Joanna swallowed as a tornado of emotions ripped through her: grief, anger, sadness, denial. She loved her team—her whole team—but it still hurt. Garrett had been trying to shield her from this pain while she recovered from her burns, but maybe Ruby’s Band-Aid-ripping style was better. Maybe it was healthier to acknowledge exactly what Chloe and Garrett had become without wrapping it in gauze.

  Abruptly, Ruby lunged over the arm of the deck chair and pulled Joanna in for another hug. As Joanna laid her head on her friend’s soft shoulder, she felt for a moment as if she were hugging her mother. Fierce. Warm. On the same wavelength. The ache in her heart eased a bit.

  Vincent strolled up as they pulled apart, both wiping their eyes discreetly on their sleeves. He tapped his finely carved cane on the porch steps.

  “Ruby?”

  “I’m here, babe,” she said.

  “I’ve come to give Joanna fair warning,” Vincent said. “Folks are going to grill you about the bunker. Brace yourself. They’re a thorough bunch.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.” Joanna hesitated for a second, choosing her words carefully. “Why didn’t you guys dig into the bunker yourselves? There are tons of supplies down there still.” She didn’t add that they might have found her a few decades sooner if they’d looked harder. Despite Garrett’s explanation, doubts about why they hadn’t come for her still lingered.

  “We tried,” Ruby said. “The lift cage was stuck at the bottom, and we couldn’t get past the rubble. Frankly, we thought the whole bunker had collapsed.”

  “It seems we gave up too soon,” Vincent said. He cocked his head to the side as if listening to make sure no one was nearby and continued in a lower voice. “Someone’s going to pay for that decision.”

  Joanna frowned. “Pay?”

  “Garrett may seem calm,” Vincent said, “but he’s pretty cut up over what happened to you. Heads are going to roll when he figures out who was responsible for declaring your side of the bunker inaccessible.”

  “You should have seen him when we realized you were the strange girl at the old mine,” Ruby said. “He went borderline catatonic for days.” She glanced down at Joanna’s burned legs. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.”

  “At least no one shot me,” Joanna said. “I count that as a win.”

  “We don’t have any guns,” Vincent said, “except for the ones they pulled out of your hideout.”

  “None?”

  Vincent shrugged. “You know BRP.” He settled into the deck chair beside Joanna, pulling a stone knife and a thick piece of wood out of his pocket. He began whittling it down with practiced hands. “They’d have sent us into the future without so much as a box cutter if they had their way.”

  “We didn’t have most of what BRP stored for us, anyway,” Ruby said. “Speaking of which . . . here comes the interrogation committee.”

  True to Vincent’s warning, a group of villagers gathered eagerly around Joanna to hear her tale. She spent the next hour giving a complete account of what she’d been through since falling asleep with the rest of them. Her audience sat on the grass or leaned on the porch, as enraptured as if she were an ancient storyteller at a campfire. They were appropriately impressed by Joanna’s epic ladder climb and her efforts around camp. She hoped her pulley system was still intact after the fire. She had been proud of that thing.

  When she recounted her trek out to the other mineshaft, they told her the stinkdamp had begun leaking into the bunker roughly a decade ago.

  “We don’t go out there much these days.”

  “I noticed,” Joanna said. “The exit was so overgrown, I thought no one had ever come out of it.”

  They told her they had also cleared everything out of the former processing plant that had served as BRP headquarters. That was why it had been eerily empty. The office she’d used as a home had been so covered with plants that they didn’t know it was there. Their salvage work had finished so long ago that she’d seen no evidence of their presence in the mine complex.

  Eventually, Joanna got around to describing the supplies she’d recovered from the storage tunnels and those still to be found deep underground. Her listeners grew especially attentive during this part. They groaned enviously when she mentioned the protein bars and astronaut food she’d been living off so far.

  “We started out with nothing,” a wiry man named Marco explained. “We’ve had to rely on our fields and gardens, cultivating whatever wild plants we could find.”

  “What did you do until everything started growing?” Joanna asked.

  “Foraged.” Marco spat on the ground. “Those were the hard years.”

  “And that was after we clawed our way out of the wreckage of the bunker,” said another man, Priya’s husband, Aaron. “I’m surprised even this many of us made it to the surface.”

  “So much for a carefully coordinated exit procedure,” Ruby muttered.

  The others bowed their heads, perhaps remembering their own close-knit teams that hadn’t made it. Garrett had said they were only now getting their numbers back up. Their initial losses must have been dreadful.

  “BRP had no idea what they were getting us into,” Garrett said. “We weren’t prepared.”

  Joanna looked up at him. “Even with all our training?”

  “It might have been enough if we had all the resources stored in the bunker, the tools, seeds, and medicine especially, but also the manuals and information. Without any of it . . .” Garrett spread his hands wide as if they couldn’t quite encompass the struggles they had endured.

  Hard work was etched on his face now and on the faces of all the villagers. The deep lines around Marco’s eyes made him look older than his thirty-six years, and he had lost several fingers in a scavenging accident. Aaron’s arms were roped with thick muscles he definitely hadn’t had back when he was a random acquaintance from Yellow Team Four. Even Marco’s wife, Winnie, whom Joanna remembered as a quiet, delicate girl, had strong, calloused hands and sun-damaged cheeks.

  Again Joanna had the impression she’d gone back in time instead of forward. She imagined that these families were nineteenth-century pioneers who had broken their backs over the land. They had suffered so much to build this humble settlement, lamenting the loss of the fully supplied bunker they believed was inaccessible. If only they’d tried a little harder to get to it.

  “Well, what do you say, Chief?” Marco said. “Shall we head out to the bunker at first light?”

  “We’re already behind on the harvest,” Garrett said. “This day off has set us back.”

  Aaron
shrugged his muscular shoulders. “The bunker will still be there in a few weeks. It’s going to be a big job if there’s as much stuff down there as Joanna says.”

  They discussed it for a few minutes, and Joanna was struck by how well they all seemed to know each other. It was unsettling to see Marco, Aaron, and Priya acting as much a part of Garrett’s inner circle as Chloe, Ruby, and Vincent. She felt the absence of Blake, Troy, and Beth all the more acutely as Garrett listened to the counsel of these relative strangers.

  Eventually it was agreed to wait to unload the bunker until after the harvest. The whole village would be busy in the coming weeks, and it would give Joanna time to regain her strength. She would join the expedition, as she knew her way around the still-unstable exit chamber and storage tunnels.

  Garrett, Marco, and Ruby got into a heated debate about the distribution of labor for the upcoming harvest while Priya and Aaron gathered their daughters to help clear up the buffet. The four girls talked and laughed while they worked, challenging their dad to balance more and more plates in his arms until Priya scolded them all. Vincent drifted to sleep in the chair next to Joanna, a half-carved wooden spoon resting on his lap among the wood shavings. Marco’s wife, Winnie, strolled over to Chloe, her brand-new baby strapped to her chest in a woven reed carrier, and asked Chloe’s advice about sleep schedules while little Joanna Beth played in the dirt nearby.

  Joanna couldn’t help looking around at her friends’ aged faces—at their handmade clothes and cozy cabins and wild, happy children—and feeling she had missed out. The others were clearly proud of what they’d accomplished over the past eighteen years, the hardships they’d overcome. She wasn’t sure how she fit in now that they had gone through so much without her.

  Garrett caught her eye, and she forced a smile. She was about to speak to him when little Robbie grabbed him by the hand and dragged him off to see an insect he had found, leaving Joanna behind on the porch.