REVIEW: And Then I Woke Up (novella) by Malcolm Devlin

And Then I Woke Up is a blend of horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction. I bought my copy new.

We'll just say this entire review is a spoiler. 

Review:

Spence is one of the many cured patients at Ironside, a special facility. Although calling it "cured" is a bit misleading, since relapses can certainly happen. At any rate, in group therapy, he and the other patients tell each other their stories - what they were doing when they got caught up in the narrative, what they did while they were infected, and how they came to be cured and end up at Ironside. When a woman named Leila arrives at Ironside, Spence gradually befriends her, until eventually she trusts him enough to tell him that she's leaving - she's going to check on Val, the person who acted as leader in her group and reinforced the narrative. Spence decides to go with her.

This story takes the idea of a zombie apocalypse and asks what, in the event of one, would be even scarier. The answer: that there were never any zombies and uninfected to begin with. The true "infected" were instead people who, through mass hallucination and a few charismatic believers/storytellers, thought they were surrounded by friends and family who'd suddenly become zombies. Efforts to use the military to deal with them only further convinced them that this narrative they were caught up in was the truth. 

The most successful solution turned out to be keeping the infected and uninfected separate, leaving food and medical supplies in areas the infected could get to so that they didn't become desperate enough to try to confront uninfected people. 

I'm not sure how I feel about how things turned out, especially considering the obvious connections to real-world societal divisions. It seemed to boil down to "the groups need to stay separate in order for the world as a whole to continue to function, reintegrating only when all sides are willing and able." But who's to say there wouldn't be more fractures, people believing a new variant of the narrative? And is it really a good idea to leave so many people unaware of the actual consequences of their actions?

Well, this was definitely a thought-provoking read.