Sarah Tries to Save the World
Sarah Tries to Save the World
By Noah Porter
© 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The entire land is wasted away. Acrid smoke billows from every corner of the earth. There are decimated houses, screaming children, crying women and mass devastation. The dead walk the Earth and the living look more and more like the dead every day.
Yet scarier than all the noise is when an eerie silence creeps up on former cities, when there are no more people to cry or houses to destroy.
Meanwhile, vicious people-turned-monsters created by a horrible mistake prowl the earth, ready to silence even more people.
Sorry. I probably sound a little bit too dark.
The name’s Sarah Sindile.
And I’m one of the people who’s survived the atomic bombs and plagues of World War 3. Now I’m determined to survive the next sets of catastrophes.
Tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes are nothing compared to what’s happening.
We are being silenced, slowly but surely, until no one will be left.
I have to try and save the world.
Prologue
Darkness falls on the fields.
I’m huddled inside a dank warehouse with my friends- there’s Aria, with her bright red hair, light blue eyes, and speed at firing and running. Then there’s Ben, a mostly serious, tall, brown-haired guy with excellent aim with a gun.
Sitting alertly next to Ben is Lily. She may be blonde, but she’s fast and a good strategist. Just for practicality purposes, she keeps her hair cut extremely short.
When it all started, we were trapped together in a building. We were just working on school at my house when a bomb was dropped, decimating every building but ours.
Ours was one of the few with a basement. Gradually, the hunger got to us and Lily, the smallest one of us, broke out. Then I went, then Aria. The three of us broke open the space to allow Ben out too and we surveyed the damage.
We salvaged whatever we could from the houses, learning to not dwell on the bloodshed and mindless gore we saw.
Then the plagues came.
They tore through the towns that were not already destroyed by bombs, killing many. In the midst of this darkness, another, larger monster sprung up. Humans turned into killing machines, tearing apart each other because they were infected by a plague.
World War 3 may have ended, but the war’s just begun for us.
Chapter 1
Our camp in Marlyn is compromised now. We’ve known that the zombies pinpointed our camp for a week or two, but the zombies keep on coming so quickly and furiously we haven’t had a chance to escape.
Even the daytime's not safe for travel, what with the bandits on the road.
Luckily, after fending off the attack last night, we were left with three shovels and some primitive weapons to help us escape.
Using these shovels, two of us started digging a tunnel during the daytime hours, while the other two sat watch for bandits or other people we’d rather not meet.
We take the work in shifts every hour, and the mind-numbing job is almost better than constantly having to stare out at the seemingly innocuous fields. Obviously, these fields are turned into a bloody battlefield every night; luckily, it’s mainly zombie blood. Lily and I are scouting out when twilight comes.
“Ben! Aria!” Lily calls, and I can almost hear the other two picking up their guns and ammunition.
Before the sun sets, Lily and I glance at each other with a look of grim determination. Ben and Aria, with their true aim and speed at reloading, rush up to the top of our base with their guns at the ready.
As soon as the sun disappears, the zombies start swarming over the nearby hill. Holding my knife at the ready, I try to mentally prepare myself, but there’s only so much you can do when you know you’re attacking people who, only last week, could have been just like you.
And then they weren't.
Zombies aren’t exactly dumb, but they’re not the brightest either. I’m pretty sure they’ve taken over major cities, but they don’t even bother to look for guns and other less crude weapons. Instead, they make do with metal pipes or, in the worst cases, their bare hands, which are (unfortunately) lethal without any aid.
Most zombies look sort of like the people they were before; the only telltale is that their eyes are luminous in the darkness and you can see a sort of craze in them. Also, they’re usually covered in dirt and blood.
The only thing we really know about how they turned into these zombies is that it’s a sort of plague that spread.
Anyways, as soon as the zombies are within shooting range, Aria and Ben are shooting. Their precision is chillingly accurate; a good twenty zombies are downed before they've even come in range of Lily and I.
Before I’m even halfway prepared, the first wave of zombies is there. I steel myself, clenching my knife even tighter than before.
Pandemonium breaks loose as I remain steady where I am, cutting down zombies that try and attack and preparing myself as the next one walks over the other’s dead body.
When we used to fight, I’d have to pull back a sense of revulsion at what I was doing. Half of these people could have been married, had children, and lived a life just like my parents did.
Ben had to tell me to get it together. I was endangering all of our lives by my mercy.
I had to become a warrior.
And I did. My mind shut off from what I had to do to survive.
Even now, as I’m battling for my life, I’m strangely detached from myself and my thoughts are few and far between, completely disjointed from each other.
When I come to myself, I realize that hours have passed since the fight began. I can tell by the faint light that dawn is coming.
Ben and Aria’s bullets are tearing through the enemies’ meager defenses, taking down nearly as many zombies as Lily and I are. The enemy’s strength is in numbers, not skill or particularly good defense tactics.
Meanwhile, Lily and I duck in between the ranks of zombies, using every ounce of strength to fight off the zombies with our knives.
More and more zombies fall, and all of us are fighting as though we have nothing to lose.
As the sun begins to rise, a zombie approaches me, slightly shorter than the rest. Her once-shining caramel hair is matted with dirt and her blue eyes have a craze in them.
How could I not recognize that face, that hair, that height? My stomach gives a jolt.
Mariella Wakeman. She was my best friend through all of elementary school up through 9th grade, when she moved. Now, I'd have to kill her or die myself.
I try to knock her unconscious with the flat of my knife. There’s no way I’m going to kill my best friend. It doesn’t work; she still stands before me, and as she stabs at me with her weapon, I’m lost in a series of memories and can’t accept what’s happening.
Ben notices that I am immobile and shoots. As the bullet tears through Mariella’s heart, my mind freezes for a second.
Then my mind registers what has happened, putting two and two together after I see the blood gushing from her body and she slowly becomes still. I kneel down by her side, numb with shock but knowing that the tears will come later.
The sun begins to rise, and the zombies start to retreat. I barely notice as Lily covers for me and shots take down zombies all around.
My best friend’s, gone in just a single moment. All because of a plague that she couldn't control.
In death, the craze has left her blue eyes and she looks just like she did the last time I saw her.
Ben stands me up, shakes me, and looks me straight in the eyes. "She's gone."
Placing a shovel in my hands, he pats my back gently. I stare at the shovel for a few minutes before I begin work, finally accepting that this can’t be a hallucination.
Blinding tears rise up in my eyes, and a choked sob bursts out of my mouth as the sun rises in full and I dig a grave for her. Together with Lily and Aria, I gently lift her body into the grave.
Her eyes are still open, but unseeing, and the craze that came from her being a zombie left them. I stifle a sob as I gently shut her eyelids.
Pressing her hands to my lips gently, I bury her in the grave she never should have had. There’s an emptiness and an ache inside of me at the same time, and all I can do is stand there. Just immobile, staring at the grave.
Finally, Aria comes up to me and gently says, "There's nothing you can do for her anymore. She's in a place where no one can ever hurt her again."
Slowly, I nod. I let them place me on the grimy, stained pallet we take turns sleeping on. My mind shuts off almost instantly after the hours I spent fighting, and I gratefully ease into dreamless sleep.
When I wake up about an hour later, I quietly grab a shovel from the side of the base and begin digging the tunnel. I release my grief into the work, tunneling even faster and harder than I had before, fighting back the tears by mindless work.
I throw myself into it, detaching my brain from my body, and eventually I forget why I was digging, and don't even care that I don't know why. I just know that I had to keep doing it.
Ben silently joins me, knowing this is the best way to help me, and together we tunnel for hours upon hours.
I work until my arms become dead weight from exhaustion and my eyes see only a blur of dirt and grime in front of me. I keep working endlessly, and my brain pushes the memories of what had happened to the back of my head.
By the end of that day, the tunnel has become extremely deep and has excellent stability. Finally, we could build a small underground base, close the entrance behind us, and dig our way to the next town (without having to worry about meeting zombies or bandits).
We immediately dig a tiny base for ourselves at the lowest part of the tunnel, just large enough for us and all our supplies.
Hurriedly packing our supplies into the small chamber we’d dug out, we begin to seal the entrance behind us as we leave.
With every clod of dirt closing us into our tunnel, I’m mentally blocking my mind from what had happened. When the final piece of dirt went into the wall, my memories of what happened were in the farthest part of my mind.
“So, where exactly are we going now?” I ask matter-of-factly.
Lily quickly says, “I say we should go to Perlin.”
We all look at each other, confused. None of us know where Perlin is, except, apparently, Lily. She’s the daughter of a high-ranking government official and moved a lot, so I guess that makes sense.
Noticing our blank stares, she continues, “I lived there once. It’s northeast of here.”
I shrug. What harm can it do? I reply, “There’s no guarantee anyone will be alive, or any buildings are still standing there, but it’s the best chance we have.”
Everyone nods, and so we all start digging our way towards Perlin.
Three of us are digging at a time (as we only have three shovels), and the other one is either sleeping or making the next (most likely unappetizing and disgusting) meal.
We continue digging until, finally, we all take a break to sleep.
This time, I’m not as lucky with dreamless sleep.
Mariella’s standing in front of me again, and I have a knife in my hand.
This time, there’s no Ben to save me.
Instead of the numbness I remember feeling during the actual fight, there are tears falling from my eyes.
What’s stranger is that I can sense that the Mariella I remember is inside the zombie, if I can only draw it out.
“Leave her!” I yell in desperation.
Instead, the Mariella-that’s-a-zombie attacks me.
There are sharp pains on me, but when I look down at the wounds, my body is without blemish.
Instead, there are gaping holes in Mariella.
I try to block the blood gushing out of her side, but she keeps attacking me and more holes keep opening.
The last thing I remember is her body falling to the ground after she’s stabbed me so many times that, had I received the injuries, I would be dead.
I wake up, panting.
It wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be real.
I lie awake for hours thinking on the dream, until I finally ease into normal sleep, without nightmares to disturb me.