Sarah Tries to Save the World (3 page)

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 the 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.

Anyways, bright and early the next morning, we climb back into our tunnel and begin digging towards Lynin City, a place Maria had gone on vacation.

As we work, Aria fiddles the dials of our newly acquired radio to one of the few remaining channels- channel 822, the government-owned news channel.

A static, but still loud, voice echoes in the dank tunnel surrounding us.

“And today, we have a message from-” the static takes over the next few words until we identify one finally- “about a-” another static attack- “DEK341. You’ll recognize it by - If you ever-” yet another static attack- “find something titled this-” another static attack- “wishes you to bring it to the capitol in any way possible. In other news, Penelope Whitman - dead - message on wall-”

We all raise our eyebrows at each other before I clap my hands to my mouth. The other four stare at me, not even attempting to hide their surprise.

“DEK341! DEK! DEK is to blame!”

All four of them drop their jaws open suddenly, dumbfounded at this. The ‘puzzle pieces’ all fit. The only question is, what’s DEK to blame for? Maria immediately starts pacing back and forth. It’s a few minutes before anyone finally asks her what she’s doing.

“Um, what’re you doing, Maria?” says Ben.

She looks up at him with a panicked look on her face.

“How could I’ve read those symbols?” Huh, so she can recognize them as symbols now. “They’re not English. I didn’t hear the message about DEK341 on the radio because my family never owned one. Why don’t I remember learning them?”

We all look at each other, even more confused, but continue digging towards Lynin City. As I dig, I, too, wonder how she could’ve learned that language. More importantly, how could she have learned that language and not remembered about it?

Chapter 5

We arrived in Lynin City around dawn, with Aria, Ben, and Lily all digging while I keep moving our possessions. Oh, plus, I was carrying Maria along every time the tunnel expanded. Well, to be more accurate, expanded enough that where ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was sleeping needed to be used for the dirt we were digging out to go into.

Maria finally woke up at around 10 am, after we had expanded our little underground base and cooked a bit of breakfast. She rubs the grit out of her eyes, standing up slowly before gratefully eating her portion of breakfast. She said through a mouthful of fresh, homegrown bread, "I know there's a river here if we want to get a fresh supply of water."

I eye her grimy clothing and face and nod vigorously. "Not to be rude," I start, "but you need a little bit of a wash, as do all of us. And we need fresh water.”

Aria and Lily agree, but Ben shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and shrugs in rapid succession. It actually looks a bit like a dance move, and I begin imitating him until he cuts across me with what he must’ve been about to say.

"Washing up isn't that important," he mumbles.

I laugh. Of course he'd think that that. He is a guy, after all. All four of us girls shake our heads back at him.

He spreads his hands, giving us some wide eyed and innocent looks from his eyes. "What? It isn't that important!"

I roll my eyes at him, saying loftily, “Boys.”

Then it’s all hands on deck as we grab our weapons, in case we need them to defend Aria when she surfaces. She climbs up to the surface, comes back down, and tells us that Lynin City is nice, semi-clean, not really destroyed at all, and ready for scavenging.

I nod my head in satisfaction and we all go look for food. We find a decent haul, but not fantastically awesome (‘fantastically awesome’ is defined as ‘what we found in our last city, Mynton’ in our book, by the way).

We come away with ten new cans of soup, corn, and other food before we walk into a semi-destroyed warehouse. I hear a sharp intake of breath from either side of me. Spray-painted on the walls, yet again, are the words 'follow the white' and 'DEK is to blame'.

I feel torn between groaning and humorlessly laughing. Whoever spray-paints these walls is really serious about their message. Almost too serious, because who would be crazy enough to travel to all these places to do this? More importantly, why? Why would they leave the ever-enigmatic message I've grown sick and tired of here and those other places?

We slowly leave as a pack, making the short trip back to the base quickly, tossing the cans of food into our base, and quickly refilling our water bottles from the nearby river.

I lean over, tentatively placing a single foot in the water to check the temperature.

The next thing I know, I’m forcefully pushed from behind and faceplant into the (luckily deep) river. I splutter in indignation as I stand, drenched, in the river.

Well, I say ‘stand’. I’m actually treading water, seeing as it’s deeper than 5’9” (my ridiculously tall height.) Ben’s standing on the muddy ground, doubled over because he’s laughing so hard. Maria looks like she’s having a fit of hysterics, while Aria stuffs a fist into her own mouth to stop laughing and Lily gasps for air, laughing so hard she’s actually crying!

I look at each of them carefully, my eyes narrowed, before I realize that Ben was the only one anywhere near me when I was pushed in. With one fluid motion, I reach out and pull his legs until he topples into the water. Ha! Serves him right. It’s HIS turn to splutter at me, before recovering and expertly splashing water in my face.

I send a ‘tidal wave’ of water back at him before taking a huge breath and submerging myself entirely. Glancing back up at the surface, I notice that Maria, Lily, and Aria have all either jumped in or been pushed in, and are now arguing with Ben.

I seize the moment and dunk Ben’s head back underwater while he’s distracted. Relatively quickly, he pushes me off him and resurfaces. Apparently, though, the other girls have been preparing. All three of them splash water into his face until he opens his mouth to speak.. and Maria lands a perfect splash of water right in his mouth!

He spits it back out and, raising his hands above his head, pants, “I surrender!””

I nod in satisfaction before jumping out, pulling my now-soaked brown hair out of my face with a pink hair tie, forgetting that I had ‘borrowed’ it from Aria and was only supposed to use it when it was dark out and she couldn’t see it.

Aria’s eyes widen in comprehension before narrowing as she yells at me, “So that’s where my hair tie went!”

I laugh hysterically. “Catch me if you can!”

I love these moments when I feel like we’re actually teenagers. Okay, we ARE actually teenagers. BUT, you know what I meant. I meant, I like it when I feel like I’m actually able to act like a teenager.

The next second, a bucket entirely full of water comes cascading down my back, effectively re-soaking me just after I had begun to dry! Obviously, I chase Aria and Maria (who were responsible for the bucket of water) and Ben (who had been distracting me) for a good 15 minutes before they finally surrender and we all take a breather.

We spend another hour or two just playing in the river (it felt so good to swim and wash up after so long!) and so, by the time we get out, we all have hands and feet so wrinkled we looked like 80-year olds.

But Maria’s got a goofy grin on her face… and luckily for my nose and her, the layer of filth that must have covered her for who-knows-how-long was finally gone. Definitely worth the hours we spent.

That’s when the sun begins to set and we all stagger back to our base, ready to spend another night in our dark and damp base, our moment of fun gone.