Awakening: Book 1

by L. T. Marshall

  There’s something off, even if on the surface it looks how I imagine an unmanned power plant substation would look, and despite that, my inner weird voice that kept pushing me east, it’s telling me to get closer. My own mind and instincts battling with what to do and its why I’ve sat here staring at it for so long. The sensible part is screaming danger, the less logical me is telling me how harmless this looks and that there are no signs of life at all. The weak part of me is aching for some sort of connection to civilization, and a longing to touch something real and man made after so many weeks alone. It just reminds me that despite doing better, I’ve been crushingly lonely still.

  I can’t see any way in from this angle so the door must face those giant gates, which means it only has one entrance and nothing else. Not exactly a layout for any kind of worrying military base, I mean, it’s not even that big. At most you could park two of the Santo trucks inside, so I doubt it homes any more than some power grid equipment for maybe some of the further rural homes. Maybe it’s a radio station with sporadic visits or something. I don’t have a clue, as it’s hardly my area of expertise. It’s not big enough to be anything much else.

  The point is after an hour sat here, I haven’t gotten any signs of life, or any reason to not go and have a closer look, and the only thing stopping me is my own terrified level of suspicion. I’m being overly cautious, my feeble side wading in, and even the wind blowing this way is picking up on no human scent in any way. It seems completely deserted.

  I can see cameras at the corners of the building on this side and they probably have them at the front too, but they are all pointing down at the ground within the fences, so I can at least get that close without being caught on them. I guess they’re to pick up on wildlife getting in, or something. I might see more if I go around the other side and figure out what it is. It might have signs, or maybe hazard warnings, if it is just a power plant. If I know for sure, then I can stop tiptoeing around and relax.

  I exhale heavily, wiping the rolling beads of moisture from my brow and look up at the fading light in the greying sky. I should find a place to make camp and stop wasting what daylight I have left. Come back in the morning, but that means trekking further, as this is the first clearing I’ve come across in hours. There’s nothing nearby that looks like a good place to set up, so maybe I might have to sacrifice a comfy night and roll up in the bear fur right here. I can’t think of anything else to do.

  It’s either go check this out and then walk on when I know what it is, and if I can salvage anything, or camp and look at it in the new day. I’m exhausted, really need to eat and I don’t have the energy to do much of anything.

  I get up, mind in two halves, and pull my backpack up with me, lugging its heavy weight as I try to make a decision. I don’t want to be out in the open when darkness falls, as despite not picking up on any creatures of the night, I can’t be sure there aren’t any lurking in caves, or underground tunnels of which I have come across many these past days. I remember the stories, that the Vampires came out of the ground during the war. I would just prefer to stick to my usual plan of picking a site and staying there until dawn.

  I don’t wander far, realizing it’s wall to wall close knit trees in all directions but one, moving towards the building. It really is the only part here that has space to even lay down and I’m not about to sleep in the clearing near it.

  I doubt any passing big cat, bear, or such, spends much time walking its perimeter so I make the decision to pick a tree with great leaf cover and climb one. It’s better than being a sitting duck on the forest floor, and I doubt I’ll get any real sleep when I haven’t found a good place to hide out. Up a tree I can tie myself to the trunk and at least dose off and on through the night and wait to investigate this in the morning. It’ll give me a little security, and at least up high, I can defend myself if needs be.

  I end up walking a full circle and finding the right kind of trees nearer the main gates of the building. One’s with wide bases, multiple branches from mid-way up, with extra amounts of foliage and twisting crisscrossing boughs for platforms. I squeeze between two that are close together, about twenty feet up their branches merge, and curl, to make an extra wide landing place, and have to haul myself up with my backpack on, finding it a little more labor intensive than normal.

  When I get up there, I manage to find a flat enough spot that with one of my pelts rolled out I snuggle into a dip between two parallel boughs and can properly lay down, without having to anchor myself to anything. I hang my backpack on a broken stump on the trunk and lay out on top of my makeshift bed, stretching and wriggling to see how comfy I can get, satisfied that this isn’t too bad as long as it doesn’t get windy or rain tonight. I don’t want to unroll pelts that could slide off if I roll in my sleep and draw attention to lurking wildlife. I won’t have a fire to keep some of the natural creatures at bay up here, so I have to make do with cold meat, a bumpy bed, and the rustling and swaying of the trees to lull me into slumber. Not that I think it’ll be an issue, as now I’m up here, my eyes are heavy and my brain cloudy with fatigue. It’s been a long day.

  I sit and watch the building through the foliage for a while, sat at my safe distance, watching as the shadows lengthen and become part of the dark surroundings as light fades fast. I’m already exhausted from my extended trekking, so settling down and beginning to drift off is easier than usual. Not the usual spew of weighty things on my mind to keep me awake, and it feels like only seconds of blinking and drowsiness before I zone out.

  I wake with a start, jumping slightly, and sitting up fast, banging my head on rough wood and silently yelping as I properly come to. I must have drifted into a deeper sleep so fast, because it was a second ago, I could still see my hand in front of me and now I’m in utter pitch darkness and can’t even make out what I’m sitting on. Disorientated at first until I remember where I am and how I got here and my belly rumbles because I didn’t eat. I woke with a fright for sure, and my heart is thundering through my chest as my nocturnal eyesight kicks into touch, clawing the area around me frantically into focus.

  I’m not sure exactly what woke me yet and I slowly sit up, sliding my legs up, my knees touching my chest as I rub my now bruised, lumpy, forehead, while scanning my surroundings for a cause. Taking deep breaths to calm down and center myself, letting my senses take over, rather than my scared brain.

  It doesn’t take me long to see what brought me around once I settle down and actually look. There’s a shiny black truck parked in the undergrowth beside the fence, nearer the back of the building where I first stood. It’s about ten feet further down the makeshift road. They must have just pulled up, maybe the noise, and headlights, are what roused me to alert and I watch with held breath as someone slides out and makes their way around the fence to find the entrance. An eery solitary figure, shrouded in darkness. It’s both a joy to see another person, but also a massive alarming worry, that I’m seeing another person

  They, much like the truck, are all in black, wearing a hood pulled over their head so I can’t see their face at all, but I can tell it’s male. Tall, stocky, and as he moves around the gate with his focus on his task, eerily quiet on his feet. The wind picks up gently and blows this way, guiding his scent towards me and I recoil in utter shock, like someone tasered my ass.

  He’s wolf… like me. There’s no denying that very specific scent we all carry and it red alerts me and wakes up my brain immediately.

  I have no idea why the hell a lycanthrope would be manning a power plant in the middle of the forest. I mean, maybe it’s not that big a deal, some packs live and work in the human world and have regular jobs as they try to pass off as one of them. This could be a guy who works for the power company and for some reason, likes to frequent his unmanned building in the middle of the night. I’m sure that’s probably a normal thing, for unconventional hours, or maybe if he has a special task at this time of night.

  Probably not likely, and it’s too w
eird that all the way out here, alone for weeks on end, the first person I come in contact with is one of my kind. It’s a little too coincidental, especially as I came here after following some deeper gut feeling, and stupid dreams of Sierra Santo.

  I watch, squinting through the foliage as I try to see his progress and get a better look, but the gates are obscured from my angle, and he disappears behind trees that sit between us, and out of sight. I don’t want to lose track of him in case he somehow heads in here without me seeing and shows up at the foot of my tree. I doubt I would be a welcome discovery.

  I don’t hesitate. I slide off my perch, silently climb down the tree, and crawl closer until I can see him again from another angle, ducking down behind a rock and keeping low. My senses are on major high alert, and I’m taking comfort in the fact the wind is blowing this way, so he won’t smell me the way I did him. I’m relatively safe from this distance if he doesn’t see me moving around.

  I have to creep on all fours, keeping still, and wedging in behind a fallen log to get a better look as I track him. By the time I figure out where he is, eyes scanning the fence and truck, he’s already inside the compound and up against the door. He moves fast, and it just conforms that he’s one of my kind.

  I hear a beep, a click, like he opened something, or had some sort of key, and the door slides to the side in front of him. It doesn’t open out like I expected, but more like something of an elevator door, that slides out of sight, back on itself, which is weird for a low-tech building.

  From here I can see inside though, and there doesn’t seem to be anything at all in the doorway, making it all even weirder. It looks like an empty concrete box, and no big inside room, or control panels, or anything from what I can peer into. That just makes the sliding door stranger if it’s concealing nothing. I move a little closer still, not convinced I’m getting a full picture, hitting the last line of trees before the clearing, and stand tall to side slide behind one and peek around. I know it’s stupid getting this near to him, but I can’t see, and this place has me so confused as to what its purpose is, or what its importance is to my instincts.

  He walks inside, turns, and faces something to the left, just behind where the door is. He leans in, ducking slightly so his face comes level with an out of sight panel.

  “It’s me, I’m back, bring me down.” A low growl to his masculine tone, most definitely a wolf. I can just tell.

  He stands tall and turns to face the open front door, my heart rate escalating as nerves consume me, and my body begins to tremble. I swear, for a second, I think he looks right at me and I dive back, flattening my back to the bark and close my eyes, as though somehow that’ll make me invisible. I’m not sure though, as he didn’t seem to react at all, and I’m probably being paranoid because I’m scared. There’s a crunching noise, the humming of the generator revs up in ferocity, and the whole building emits a long grunting moan.

  I peek back, holding my breath to steady my shaking self, quick enough to see the door beginning to slide shut as he slowly lowers down below the level he’s standing on. It clicks instantly that the floor is moving, and he’s going down. Like some sort of elevator for sure, and it explains why, on the surface, there’s no sign of life and the building is small. It’s deceptive, and the sliding door, it conceals a car sized transport to a lower level. That means whatever is down there is big enough to accommodate vehicles should they need to be taken down, and that makes my blood run cold.

  I don’t think it’s any kind of power plant, and I shouldn’t be here at all. It obviously has more going on below, and now I know a wolf is manning this station, then I have absolutely no chance of finding anything worthy of stealing and getting away without a trace. Not that I want to anymore. Everything inside of me is telling me this is a bad idea, and I need to get far away from this place as soon as humanly possible.

  When the door fully closes, I walk out in front of the tree where I’ve been hiding and peer over at where he left his truck, wondering if he maybe left anything of value there. If I’m cutting my losses, and running, then he might have something. He didn’t lock it, and he was alone. Maybe a medipack, food, clothes, or something that I can use.

  He obviously isn’t coming out right away, and I should make the most of his absence before he does come back. He might not stay and judging by the fact abandoned his truck and never brought it into the compound, I don’t think he is. I have to be quick and go.

  I run along the tree line keeping to the inner side and within its shadow and make a dash for his truck, using hyper speed to get to it fast and peek inside when I slide up against the door on the far side from the building. It’s an off road four by four, covered in mud, and debris, and obviously the perfect vehicle for moving around this terrain. I can tell right away there’s nothing in it at all. Not even general trash, or even anything in view that I would want. It’s clean and free of anything worthwhile. Not what I would expect for a truck with frequent use, so it makes this even weirder. He obviously doesn’t use it all too much to come and go. One last fleeting run over with my eyes, convinced he has nothing of worth.

  I dash back to the closest border of brush and start making my way back to my own temporary camp without looking back, this time keeping behind the trees by two rows. My breathing labored with the heavy weight of mounting panic growing inside of me like a warning signal. Heartbeat pounding in my ears as it batters my rib cage and adds to my terror. I don’t feel safe this close anymore and I should never have ventured to find this building. I don’t know what I was thinking, and the last thing I need are complications from wolves, and James Bond type buildings in the middle of forests. This has spy movie all over it, and I’m in no mood to be dangled headfirst over a vat of sharks for information I don’t have.

  When the noise of the building cranks up again, I don’t know if it’s the floor moving up again to reset, or if he’s coming back. It stops me in my tracks and I instinctively drop to the dirt and turn around. I crouch where I am, and watch, waiting with held breath, peering through the trunks and bushes to see the door, until the moaning cranking noise of heavy innards moving comes to a halt. Yet the door doesn’t open. Nothing happens at all, except the return to a previous hum. I don’t think it was him, I think maybe the floor comes up again when they reach a destination, and I relax a little, blowing out my air with relief, moving again from this tree base to the next to make my way back to my perch.

  I almost make it all the way in when another loud thumping noise pauses me in my tracks and makes me look back nervously, so jumpy and on edge, with all my senses kicking into a higher mode of efficiency. This time the noises are less intense, less mechanical, and more like regular people noises.

  The building appears to be coming to life as it increase, the doors make swooshing noise, but nothing seems to open. There’s a bang, sliding of maybe bolts, I can’t tell. A beep, a woosh, like the noise a piston makes, and then I can make out the swing of a heavy metal door and gravel rolling and sliding from it.

  Lights flick on all around me, so suddenly from concealed posts further out in the trees it makes me jump, my heart misses a beat and frozen ice flairs in my veins, and I find myself illuminated in the previously dark space. Blinded by the sudden solar strength, blazing pain that hits me in the eyeballs. I start blinking, shielding my eyes as my nocturnal vision craps out and gives me an instant headache, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

  I wasn’t expecting this entire area to be brightened up like standing under a sun lamp at close range and pull my wits back around me. I dart as fast as I can for the nearest sign of darkness and hope they didn’t see me. The lights must be extended above the canopy on masts further out that I didn’t see, as everything around me is brighter than daylight, and I have no one direction to go to that will get me out of it faster. The entire space is bright as hell. I run, heading towards my mountain in the far distance, and concentrate on nothing else except escape. Screw my backpack and furs, I don’t
need them right now.

  I sprint, dodging, jumping, clearing fallen logs as twigs and leaves scratch my face and hands, and rip at my skin in passing. Breathing labored and loud, panting. I aim for the shadows, not looking back, in case this is because of me, that maybe he did see me out there and whatever this place is, no one is meant to know. I put my head down and hyper speed the best to my ability, only just make it to a skidding halt into darker bushes when an alarming piercing noise fills the air around me. It has a horrible effect on my body and senses, rattling my brain inside my skull, as my physical self crunches up, instantly immobile and I grab my ears.

  It’s a siren, honking hard and loud, in a pitch that causes me physical pain with its sheer volume, echoing in the air and making the surroundings shudder in trembling response. My heart elevates, until I think my chest is going to explode, my body straining to turn to wolf to get away faster, but I don’t let it. I need to keep these clothes, more than ever now, and I need to get back to my tree to grab my stuff and go at some point too.

  My gut tells me to abandon it all, forget about the clothes issue for now, and just run, but my logic is telling me to calm down, and halt, and rationalize about this, and stop reacting. That they couldn’t have seen me, as the cameras point down, and I didn’t venture near the fences. That he maybe just looked my way, but I saw no sign of reaction or recognition that someone was out here.

  This could just be coincidence and something they do, even without someone like me lurking nearby. They couldn’t know I was there if there even was a ‘they’, and what really would they react like this for? What could they possibly be hiding that a young girl like me posed a threat against?

  That wolf, he might have been solitary, although he did talk to someone on whatever that intercom thing was, so maybe there’s only two of them and this is still a power grid of some sort. I know a lot of that contradicts what the other parts of my brain are telling me, but self-preservation has a funny way of trying to shake you into being less manic. Lying to myself can help abate the fear and get me moving, instead of freaking out.