Sarah Tries to Save the World Read online

  Then it shut itself off.

  We look at each other, at a loss for words. I fumble with the radio, accidentally pressing a button that turns on a bright light. We gasp as we look at the wall. The intriguing messages “follow the white” and “DEK is to blame” are imprinted on the wall. Curious and shocked, we wordlessly stare at each other.

  What on earth could this message mean? And more pressingly, why were all three things there, as though someone had placed them there for a purpose? Do they have a link between them?

  The next second, we hear banging noises surrounding us. Apparently, while we were preoccupied doing all this, the sun had begun to set and the zombies were literally out for blood. After carefully stowing away the piece of paper, we pull out our weapons, ready to fight to reach our safe base.

  I give Aria a reassuring look and she nervously smiles back at me. It’s time to fight.

  Running out of the door, we rushed into battle. Ruthlessly, we attack when we can and parry the clumsier attacks, ducking if we need to. Only one objective is in sight for us; we have to reach our base safely.

  We don't have enough energy (or bullets) to survive another full-on attack right now. As we grapple to reach the base, I’m pleasantly surprised to discover that Aria also has skills with a knife to rival her skills with a gun, although admittedly her gun skills exceed anything she could accomplish with a knife.

  Whilst we fight our way through the masses, all anyone is able to see of us in the fading daylight is the shine off our blades. Finally, we reach our destination. I remain fighting while the rest of them fall into the hole. Although I’m parrying the attacks all around me, I can still manage to see the wave of zombies about to jump on me. I am luckily pulled down into the base by Ben a split second before I’d be submerged under the wave of zombies.

  I fight to slow down my ragged breathing, taking deep, slow breaths. It takes me a few minutes, but I do calm myself down. When I’ve finally regained my normal breathing speed, the implications of what we saw in the warehouse (before we were suddenly attacked) hit us ALL.

  “The sun hadn’t set yet when they attacked us,” I say slowly. “That never happens. The zombies take a few minutes to come out and be ready to fight….”

  “Which means that they must’ve known we were here for some reason,” finished Ben.

  Aria’s eyes widened. “I’ve also never seen so many in one place…”

  I voice the conclusion I knew that everyone must be thinking. “There was something there, something that the zombies didn’t want us to know.”

  We look at each other with grim expressions on our faces. It was all too plausible, even for not-so-intelligent zombies. They still have enough intelligence to know when information is not good for enemies to know.

  The only question was - what did they want us to miss? What was so important about Perlin City that the zombies would attack before the sun set, at the risk of being burned by the sun?

  Chapter 3

  We’ve been tunneling practically all night. At the suggestion of Aria, we’re heading in the direction of Sunrise City, a place she visited on vacation once. She says it was a nice town, peaceful and quiet.

  We’ll just have to see if Sunrise City’s remained that way, or if darkness has fallen on the once cheery city.

  Breakfast receives the ‘all-time-smallest-breakfast’ award, with a single canned jar of food for the four of us to share together. That’s another reason we’re heading to Sunrise City. Without food, we’re goners, even with the small supplies of edible food we find on the zombies after full-scale battles.

  Not that we could sustain a full-out battle, anyways. Our bullets are running dangerously low. We arrive at about noon, and this time, Aria doesn’t come back down from checking the surface with a smile.

  “It’s all gone. The buildings are so destroyed that they’re not even worthy enough for the dump. Well, other than one rickety old lighthouse that wouldn’t serve as a base for anyone. But it’s worth a try to comb through the ruins and search the lighthouse for food before night falls.” She says this in a gloomy voice that gives me no hope as to the ruins having any food.

  Nevertheless, we all clamber out of the tunnel and begin searching around. The closest building to me was a torn down dump that could’ve, a hundred thousand years ago, passed for a dump in slightly better shape with some faulty construction problems. I began to paw through the dirt on the ground, finding a single can of soup in the decent-sized building (if you could still call it that.)

  Aria and Ben both found a single can, too, so we will (hopefully) be eating better tonight.

  It all depends on the food we find here- if we find about ten cans, we can treat ourselves and have an entire half a can, as opposed to a quarter of the can.

  Lily ends up finding three cans in her slightly-less-of-a-dump building, which resembles a building as much as a triangle resembles a square. But hey, it’s better than usual!

  Anyways, after storing away our food in the base, we head to the lighthouse, where we’ll hopefully find even more canned food.

  As we head inside the lighthouse, a husky voice says, “Well, ain’t that rude. Didn’t even bother to knock on the door, did ya?”

  Aria jumped about a mile into the air as a white-haired man with twinkling blue eyes moved out of the shadows.

  “The name’s John Pemberly. But just Old John’s good enough for me. I’m an adventurer, or at least I used to be, before this blasted war and apocalypse. And who might you be?”

  I didn’t even blink an eye. Being a human among the throngs of zombies meant that friendliness was a must. I mean, if you’re still civilized, you should probably be civil to the other civilized people. If that even makes sense. Also, wordiness has no point. You’re blunt and not quite as polite as you would be.

  “That’s Aria, Ben, Lily, and I’m Sarah. Sarah Sindile.” I extend my hand and he shakes it.

  “Nice to meet you. Now, as I’m an old man, and likely to die the next time a massive zombie attack comes, I reckon I oughter pass on my old map.” He turns around, grabbing what seemed to be a small, ordinary piece of paper. He starts to unfold it, and it takes up a good five feet by five feet of space. “This here’s my beauty. A map of a good space here. Here’s where we are- Ah, I remember those two cities….” He gazed at certain points on the map, and started to reminiscence at length about the distant cities before stopping himself. “It’s yours now. I’m an old man and don’t need it.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” asked Ben, looking at him. “We could use your help.”

  John waved an arm impatiently. “No, no, I’m too old, I’d only slow you down. Take the map- and come take some food! It’s more than an old man like me could’ve eaten in his entire lifetime!”

  John takes us to a cabinet filled with “exactly 100 cans” according to him.

  “I counted them myself,” he said proudly. “I grow my own crops up on the roof, and the cans I just take off the zombies. Who knows why the carry them, anyways. It’s not like they eat them.”

  My stomach turns at the thought, but I’m still grateful as he pushes cans upon cans into Aria and Lily’s hands, before pushing bags full of home-grown food into my hands. Then he tosses cartridges of bullets into Ben’s hands. “I don’t need all this.”

  “Now, you best be goin’, younguns. The sun’s gonna come down soon, and you’d better have tunneled to a new city before the sun goes down. Before you go, however, I need to tell you something.”

  His twinkling eyes grow dead somber as he looks each of us in the eye.

  “Follow the white, y’hear? DEK is to blame for all of this; so no, no, just follow the white. Never DEK. Always the white.”

  His genial and jovial mood returns a second later.

  “Thank you, younguns, for visiting me. I haven’t had some visitors in who knows how long! But you need to leave.”

  As I open my mouth to thank HIM for all he’s given us, he says, “And no
protesting that you have to help me defend myself. I’ve lived a good long seventy-five years, with fifteen of them being either a time of war or a time of great disasters, and I intend to live another good long seventy-five years and be a crotchety old man of a hundred and fifty! Now, be off with you. Goodbye!”

  He waves us out the door, and I smile to myself, the cryptic message he said earlier completely disappearing from my mind. I have no doubt that THAT particular old man, though he might live to a hundred and fifty, will never become crotchety. “Old John” was the jolliest old man I’ve met in my entire life.

  We head back into our tunnel and each ate a single bite of fresh bread- which was heavenly- and an entire can of soup.

  Also, we decided our good luck would probably hold if we decided to sleep good and long, until the sun had more than risen for the next day. So we all clambered back into our makeshift beds, settling ourselves down for a blissful twelve hours of sleep, never dreaming what was to come the next day.

  Chapter 4

  I woke up after having slept from just-before-twilight to three hours after dawn. It was amazing! Anyways, apparently Lily and Ben had already been up and tunneling (having to pause every few minutes to go pick me up and move me- poor them!) for an hour.

  “We’re going towards a place called Mynton,” says Ben, tossing me the map.

  I look across it till I find Mynton, raising my eyebrows at him. “Why Mynton? Tieryl is closest…”

  “Closest isn’t necessarily best. And we’re going there because Lily over decided going to Mynton would be the best... what did she say exactly.. ‘strategic move at this point in time for us’.”

  I shrugged before picking up a shovel and getting to work. Mynton is a good distance away (judging by the map, anyways), and we need all hands on deck to get there quickly.

  In a few hours, we finally reach Mynton, and Aria’s reaction is, thankfully, good, when she jumps back into our tunnel after conducting a little.. investigation of the town.

  “It looks like a bog-standard rural country town, huge fields that could’ve been used to grow crops, with most of the buildings at least forming a visible structure of a house or even almost completely open houses. There’s a really good chance of us finding food in some of those houses. If I had to guess why I thought it’s still standing, I think it’s just such a small and country town that neither of the countries in World War III would have considered it of any importance whatsoever.”

  A few minutes later, I nod in agreement. This town is definitely a little town that nobody would’ve bothered to attack. We split up into groups of two with our weapons at the ready. Ben and I head towards one building, while Lily and Aria go towards the other.

  I find plenty of food in the kitchen, which I stow away in my bag, but something catches my eye beside one of the closets.

  There is a tiny little indentation in the wall, so small that at night or if you weren’t looking closely, it wouldn’t even be discernible from the wall around it. I call Ben quietly, and we walk up to the wall.

  As I run my hands over it, I find that the indentation is a lever. Pulling on the lever slightly, I gasp as it opens up a small door into a room half the size of our tunnels.

  From the corner of the tiny room, a girl’s frightened blue eyes stare back at my green ones. Although she looks frightened, I notice a flash of silver behind her back (a knife, obviously) and determination in her piercing blue eyes.

  I softly whisper, “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not zombies or bandits.” To prove I meant what I said, I dropped my weapon, which had been standing at the ready ever since we had emerged into Mynton.

  She still remains at the ready with her knife, and I can tell that she’s still not let down her guard. “Who are you?”

  “Sarah Sindile. This is Ben.” I gesture at Ben and she darts a sideways glance at him, evidently not having realized that he was there. “It’s okay, we’re on your side- as long as you’re against the zombies.”

  She tucks a strand of her currently-filthy brown hair behind her ear. “Of course I am. Why do you think I hid here?”

  I extend my hand slowly to her, carefully staring into her determined eyes. “Then, Miss, we would be most happy to help you survive. We have food, a larger shelter, and a map. We could use you.”

  She doesn’t respond immediately. Actually, she looks a bit shocked about my up-front manner. Ah, well, seeing as thousands of people have already died, it makes no sense to not be friendly to some of the few people left.

  She looks from Ben to me, choosing to ignore my outstretched hand, which I withdraw immediately. “Why would you need me?”

  “You hid yourself in a very clever way, a way only a human would discover. We could use your ingenuity.”

  I glance at Ben and he half-nods. I know we’re both thinking the same thing- she also doesn’t deserve to be living here. She can’t be older than a fourteen-year-old, and we can’t leave her here to starve or be killed by zombies or bandits.

  She gives another sideways glance at both of us, and I can tell she’s finally let down her guard by her hand timidly reaching out for mine.

  I shake her hand gently. “Now, you know my name. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Maria. I’m thirteen, and no, I’m not little. Yes, I did come up with the idea of the hiding place myself, as well as made it. No, I’m not sure how I actually survived. I just remember hiding in here and hoping my house wouldn't be bombed. I survived a day or two by fighting the zombies before making my hiding place. I sneak out once a day to grab food from the kitchen, but otherwise I stay in here to keep safe from bandits.” She says all that in one breath. I chuckle inwardly. And she thought I was too straightforward?

  “Well, Maria, it is very nice to meet you. Why don’t you come outside with us and meet the rest of our group?” Ben finally spoke, and she looked at him cautiously.

  “There’s more of you?”

  I answered, “Yes. There’s Aria and Lily. Neither of them would hurt a fly. I hope you don’t mind, but we looted your kitchen for food.”

  As we walk out, Ben mutters in my ear, “I’ll explain to Aria and Lily what happened.”

  I nod. Maria awkwardly stands next to me until Aria and Lily come up to us and both hug her.

  She visibly relaxes.

  “Nice to meet you, Maria,” says Aria kindly. Then she says, “Where’s a good base for the night? Has anyone found a place?”

  Maria says, “The tower. It has iron support beams and a retractable ladder- the zombies can’t tear down the supports and it’s good for guns.”

  I exchange a surprised look with Ben. Apparently, she’s going to be more useful than we thought.

  “Right, can you show us where it is?” asked Ben. We all followed her to it, and I have to say, it WAS a good base.

  “Just a quick question-” began Lily. “Why didn’t you camp there, since it’s such a good base?”

  Maria replied, “Bandits, plus I need access to food, but as it’s only one night for us, at least I think it is…” She trails off.

  Lily nods in understanding.

  Huh. I knew this thirteen year old was smart, but Maria also seemed sort of.. world-wise. Almost too much so, like the innocence had been taken from her before she had a chance to grow up normally.

  Anyways, we grab a bit of food and all our weapons from our underground base before disguising the entrance.

  Before the sun sets, I pull out the strange document we found in Perlin City. I study it for any pattern, any at all, when Maria suddenly speaks up from near my elbow.

  “DEK341, I wonder what that means. And why d’you think they’d have those words on the top of the paper but gibberish in the main part of it?”

  I jump and very nearly drop something over the edge of the tower. “H-how can you read those symbols?”

  She looks, confused, at me. “It’s just English….”

  I look right back at her. “No, it’s not. It’s in t
he same language as the rest of the paper, if it IS a language.”

  Her brow furrows. “You really don’t see the title DEK341 on the top of the paper?”

  I shake my head, exchanging a meaningful look at Ben. How could she have learned how to read that?

  Wait a second.. DEK341. Could that have anything to do with the enigmatic message ‘DEK is to blame’ printed on walls and told to us by complete strangers?

  That’s when the sun set, and everyone but Maria began sniping from the tower. I didn’t have a chance to reflect over what had just happened, what with ‘DEK’ and her reading the message. We stave them off relatively easily, and Maria goes to sleep.

  All of us (except, obviously, Maria) take turns sleeping. One person sleeps at a time, the other three are watching for zombies.