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  Awaken

  Book One of the New Bloods Trilogy

  Michelle Bryan

  Copyright 2014 by Michelle Bryan

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover Art and Design by Laura Gordon (www.thebookcovermachine.com).

  ISBN: 978149300866 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9780993698507 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and or/occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband Ernie, my son Adam, and best buds Glenda and Paul. I would not have made it this far without you. Thank you all for my own ‘awakening.’

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 Rivercross

  Chapter 2 The Sand Lands

  Chapter 3 Mountain Gulch

  Chapter 4 The Raiders Camp

  Chapter 5 Gray Valley

  Chapter 6 Iron Bones

  Chapter 7 Littlepass

  Chapter 8 Sanctuary

  Rivercross

  It’s still dark outside, not quite morning, but I lay wide awake. The sun has yet to rise and start heating up the day. Today is my born day, my eighteenth year. I am, as Miz Emma would say, officially a grown woman. I don’t feel no different. I get out of bed, pull on my tunic and trousers, braid my hair, wash my face in the basin of water beside my bed. My morning ritual. Born day or not I still have traps to check. My worn leather boots are laying under the bed where I dropped them last evening. I pull them on and lace ‘em up real tight. I can hear gra’da snoring on the other side of the tin wall that separates my bed from the rest of the shanty. I grin to myself. With that gods awful racket it’s no wonder I cain’t sleep. Quietly, so as not to disturb him, I tiptoe around him sleeping on his cot in front of the cold hearth. I don’t want to wake him. He’s been having troubles sleeping as of late.

  On the wooden table next to my waterskin and hunting knife sits a surprise. Waiting there for me to find is a small bowl of sweet bush berries and a faded blue neck wrapper. My born day gift. It brings a smile to my face. Gra’da never forgets. The calico cloth looks a mite familiar though. I think it was once maybe a piece of Miz Emma’s apron, but it don’t matter. I know he would have made her a fair trade for the cloth, maybe some jerky or dried taters, something from the cellar. Although these days there weren’t too much left in there, it was running mighty low.

  I wonder to myself how he had gotten the berries. You had to walk a fair ways now for berries and ever since gra’da fell off of the shanty while fixing the roof his leg’s been bothering him something fierce. My guess was he talked Ben into fetching ‘em. However he got them they look mighty tasty. I pop one into my mouth and bite and the sweet flavor bursts across my tongue. I cover the rest in the biscuit cloth, saving them for later tonight but the wrapper I tie around my neck. It’ll definitely come in handy today out in the sand lands. The cloth is real soft and smells like washin’ soap. I hold it up to my nose and take a deep breath. It’s then I realize Gra’da is watching me, smiling under his bushy gray whiskers. I ain’t even noticed the snoring had stopped.

  His hair is all sticking up from his sleeping.

  “You found your gift alright then,” he says and I smile.

  “Aye. Its lovely gra’da, truly is. Thank you.”

  I go to him, kiss his wrinkled cheek, pull his blanket over his shoulders.

  “Sleep now,” I say. “It’s still barely mornin’ yet.”

  “You taking the bow?” he asks as he watches me walk back to the table.

  I nod as I put the knife and waterskin in my slingbag and hook the bow and quiver over my shoulder.

  “Just in case. You never know when you’re gonna sight a wild rabbit or such,” I say.

  “Well don’t stray too far…there’s been some sighting’s of a couple of wild wolflings roamin’ to the north. You don’t wanna run into them.”

  I nod again at his words. “Aye, I heard ‘bout that.”

  “Be careful girlie,” he says.

  I grin to myself at his worry…it was the same thing everytime. I been doing our hunting for years. Think he woulda got over the worrying by now.

  “I will gra’da…I’ll be back before noon.”

  I cover my head with my hat, pick up my slingbag and head out. The sun is just starting to crest the horizon but the morning is already warm. It was gonna be another scorcher.

  There’s another soul out just as early as me. Shelly is already at the well in the center of the shanties filling her cooking pot. She smiles at me as I join her to fill my water skin.

  “Mornin’ Tara,” she says and I nod a greeting. “Happy born day.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Eighteenth if I recall…gods the time does fly by. Seems like it’s only been a few years since your gra’da brought you home.” She shakes her head like she cain’t believe her own words.

  “It’s gonna be a grand celebration tonight for certain. It’s not every day you becomes a woman now is it. Thomas was already out and found a nice big hunk of prickly wood for tonight’s fire. He says the secret to a good celebration is a slow burning fire and a fast burning whiskey.” She laughs at herself. I laugh too though I don’t think it’s funny at all but I don’t wanna be ill mannered.

  “Why I remember for my eighteenth born day we…”

  “Ma….hurry up with the water! I’m starvin’!” Young Thomas, one of Shelly’s two young’uns yells at her from their shanty door. Thank gods, I think. Shelly is a fine woman but once she starts talking she don’t know how to shut up.

  “I’m comin’!” she yells back. Then to me “I’ll see you tonight child.”

  “Aye, you will,” I say. I cap my waterskin and watch her hauling the heavy black metal pot towards the shanty thinking maybe I should help but then young Thomas runs out to meet her. He grins at me and waves as he takes the pot from his ma. I wave back. I like him…he’s a good boy.

  I don’t meet nobody else. The rest of the shanties are all quiet and still. Everybody’s either still sleeping or already out trying to garner some kind of offering from this barren land. I don’t even meet Lou which I think is a mite peculiar. He’s always up before dawn working on his copper still, shining and cleaning. I truly believe he thinks more of that still then he does his own shanty. Then again I guess you cain’t get whiskey from a shanty, and Lou...well, he liked his whiskey.

  I trudge over the dry earth heading out of the village, each step sending up a puff of dust into the air. Ain’t seen no rain for quite some time now. We keep hoping. We see dark clouds on the horizon sometimes and we pray to the gods that they make it this far, but they don’t. They just break up and disappear before they get anywhere near us. Gra’da believes the rain will come. He says it always does, that the gods wouldn’t be so cruel. I cain’t understand why he thinks this ‘cause if the stories of the old folk is to be believed, the gods have always been cruel.

  The old folk believe that the land wasn’t always this way, dry and barren. I grew up hearing stories of how once long ago the land had been green and alive. How every kind of plant imaginable had grown wild and that crops had covered fields as far as your eye could see, just waiting for the harvest. It was said that rivers ran swift and clear and were so full of fish they looked like shadows moving in the water. They would tell us young’uns of how the settlers long before us had built huge buildings called shop markets filled with food and supplies and you could just walk right in and take what you wanted! And that those same settlers could travel over the sand lands, in a day no less, in moving machines called ‘veacals’, and fly through the air!


  Those stories were passed down through the years and I heard ‘em over and over again. And like every other young’un I listened to them all wide eyed and reckoned every word to be the gods honest truth.

  I don’t rightly know if I believe ‘em anymore. It was my eighteenth born day, I should not be believing young’un tales, even if gra’da swore they were all true. He said when he was a boy himself he saw one of their veacals, the flying kind. Or what was left of it anyways. There weren’t much left of anything from before the Shift. The Shift…that was what the old folk called…well whatever it was that happened to the lands a long time ago. Oh I ain’t that simple. I know there’s some truth to the stories. I seen for myself ruins of old settler buildings, rotted away and half buried by the sands. And just about two leagues from Rivercross there was an old relic field that we call the pickin’ grounds. Found things there I cain’t rightly explain but they come in real handy. Something awful bad must have happened to all those folk for ‘em all to disappear like that. The old folk say it was a great war that killed off most of the folk or changed them into muties. The say the war broke the land too and made it the way we know it, a dry, dusty barren land scorched by the sun and cruel to every living creature that now walked upon it. If this was all true and the gods allowed for all that to happen, then I don’t believe they truly care if the rains come or not.

  I pull the brim of my hat down a bit lower to shield my eyes. The sun is climbing now in the cloudless blue sky and getting brighter. I look out over the landscape that lies before me, shimmering already in the morning heat. The hard baked, cracked ground I’m walking on with its sparse scraggly brush and stunted prickly trees that only grow to your waist is so unlike the green wet lands of the stories that I cain’t help but laugh at us young’uns for being foolish enough to believe them at all. Don’t even know why the stories were knocking around in my head this morning. Maybe ‘cause it was my born day and I was thinking about tonight’s celebration.

  Born days were real special in Rivercross. We ain’t usually got much cause for celebratin’ so when we do the whole village gets involved. There would be food, storytelling, music. Gra’da or Thomas usually did the storytelling, and Shelly, well even though that woman’s voice hurt your ears from her talking, her singing could bring you to tears it was so lovely. Lou would break out his brewed whiskey…that always made the old folk smile. And just thinking about Miz Emma’s sweet berry bread made my mouth water. She always made berry bread for everybody’s born day, if we could get berries that is, and it was the best I ever tasted. Well it was the only I ever tasted but that don’t mean it weren’t the best. Gra’da always said there wasn’t none better in the world but I reckon he ain’t been more than two days travel from Rivercross then I have ever done.

  Rivercross is my home. Lived here my whole life. Not much to look at. Ten shanties built out of whatever could be scavenged from the pickin’ grounds. Mostly plastic and metal, a bit of rock, some wood if you were lucky enough to find it. About twenty five of us or so lived here, mainly old folk. Besides myself there were only three other young’uns. There used to be more but sickness came about five years ago and took some of the folk, old and young alike. Even gra’da fell mighty sickly. I tended to him for days, wiping down his fevered face, holding his hand, willing him to live. He had been the only lucky one, he had fought it off. The others...they weren’t so lucky. It didn’t affect me none though. I cain’t remember ever being sickly a day in my life, but I do remember that. It had been a real bad time.

  Rivercross was just a good a place to live as any, I reckon, and better then some. We were family. We looked out for one another. We grew what we were able, in the tired soil. Sometimes if we were real lucky we’d get enough rain for a fine harvest of taters or yellow corn. It was always a good year when that happened. We foraged for some, hunted and trapped what game we could find. Hunting had been a lot easier with gra’das iron shooter but we ain’t had no lead slugs for it going on two years now, so I did my hunting with my cross bow. Gra’da said I was a natural with the bow and the snare wires we got off a trader some time back. Cain’t rightly remember what we traded for ‘em but it was the best trade we ever done. Dirt dog meat was the main source of food for the folk of Rivercross now and my snare wires did most of the supplying. I don’t mind. I look forward to checking my trap line every morning, up and out before the sun got too hot and the day so dry so that all you could taste was sand grits. It was quiet and peaceful and allowed me time to think. And sometimes, when I was just standing, listening, watching for the sun to rise, I could swear the land would speak to me. Nuthin like real words….nah that would be bat shite crazy. But I swear I could hear it waking from its nightly slumber and welcoming the sun. I could even tell sometimes when the rain was going to fall ‘cause I could feel the lands eagerness for the water.

  I tried once to explain this to my friend Ben, but he just stared at me all simple like and said I’d best keep my mouth shut ‘bout that else everybody would think I belonged out in the sand lands with the muties. So I never mentioned it again. A secret between me and the land.

  I move up the trail a bit more and hunker down by a scraggly bush to check on my next trap. Unlike the ones before this one has snared a dirt dog. Good. I had promised fresh meat for tonight’s stew and I didn’t want to disappoint. I hook the furry carcass onto the strap of my slingbag and say a quiet “thank you” to the critter for its sacrifice. Ben scoffs at me when I do this. He calls it superstitious shite but I believe in thanking the land for providing and I ain’t going to admit it to him but I truly believe the land hears me when I do.

  Shizen...it was hot! I take off my hat and wipe the dust and sweat from my face with my neck wrapper. A warm southerly wind picks up and feels real good blowing through my sweat soaked hair. The day is heating up real quick. I’d best be finished before the sun sits too high in the sky.

  I keep moving up the trap line, start humming a tune that pops into my head. I try to remember what song it’s from. I don’t recall ever hearing Shelly or gra’da sing it before, but they must have. I hum it a bit more, it scratches at my brain. Maybe, I think, it’s something my ma used to sing to me when I was a baby, wouldn’t that be something. I don’t remember my ma, or my pa for that matter. Never knew ‘em, but I reckon I must have had them at some point. Nobody in Rivercross ever knew ‘em. Don’t rightly know where I come from. Gra’da found me he says, one day while he was out scavenging. All he was looking to find was some medicinal herbs or at least some good tradin’ trinkets but instead he happened upon me. He says I was just a laying in a building husk crying my fool head off and as dirty as the day was long. He reckoned I’d been there a couple of days at least and that no one was going to come looking anytime soon. There was no sign of my folks, he don’t know if I was left there on purpose like or if something awful bad happened to my ma and pa. As low as it sounds I like to think they were eaten by devil cats or taken by a dust storm. It kind of makes me feel better than thinking they had just left me on my own to die. Anyhow, now gra’da was saddled with a bawling, hungry baby so he figured he may as well take me home and he reared me ever since, for eighteen years now. So today was really my “found” day. I always laugh when he says that.

  He’s been real good to me, taught me everything I know. He’s a mighty fine shot with the crossbow and the iron shooter, but he says there are days when I’m a hell of a lot better. He taught me to plant for harvest and to find and brew the medicinal herbs needed to treat sickness and infection. He showed me how to make stew and corn biscuits, though mine always turn out awful bad tasting. He even taught me to read and write some. Even though I didn’t see the point of that, he kept saying it would come in handy some day so I didn’t argue the learning.... much. I just went along with it. Cain’t say an opportunity has ever arose out in the sand lands for me to use my word learning, but as long as it made gra’da happy. He loves me like a real gra’da though some days when I rattle his nerves he s
ays he should have traded me instead of keeping me, but I know he don’t mean it.

  The hot wind is blowing stronger now and I can taste the dust in my mouth. I use the neck wrapper to cover my nose and mouth and turn into the wind, towards Rivercross. The sun is getting a mite high in the sky, Ben is late this morning. Then as if my thoughts conjure him up, I see him, running across the scraggly ground as if a bunch of devil cats were nipping at his heels. I smile underneath the wrapper. That boy was always rushing to get nowhere.

  The familiar “Hey Tar-Tar,” reaches my ears shortly before I’m lifted up in a bone crushing hug.

  “Happy born day.”

  I punch him in the shoulder.

  “Put me down you mule turd!”

  He does as I say and I look up into his face, amazed again that I have to do so. Growing up I was always the bigger and taller one, being as I was a few months older. But this year he has grown so much. He must be a good head above me now. It was a mite unsettling. He is covered in a layer of dust from his boots to the top of his sun yellow hair but his brown eyes are shining bright with laughter.

  “And how does it feel to be an old folk now.”

  “What? Who you callin’ old?” I say and snort a loud “Hah! I can still kick your butt boy, like always, so show some respect!”

  He laughs, a loud belly bustin’ sound. That laugh always brings a smile to my face.

  “Aye, no doubt you could,” he says. “I brought you something.”

  I grab eagerly for the cloth he takes from his sling bag but he pulls it out of my reach and holds it high above his head.

  “Hey! Not yet. We gotta eat first. Me and pa have been out since before dawn and I’m starvin’!”

  His words irritate me some and I let it clearly show but it just makes him smile more. He truly enjoys torturing me.