by Noah Porter
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.
Chapter 6
We head towards Zentyn when we woke up, which used to be an enormously large city (according to the size of it on the map, at least.) Well, there’s also the fact I visited it once and watched the news report on the situation there.
It promised to be a great scavenging location, due to the fact when the tsunamis threatened to hit, it was evacuated within hours and the evacuees left pretty much everything but absolute necessities behind. Of course, this included all those wonde
rful canned foods that we, as survivors of the natural disasters, etc., were forced to live upon.
It was a shorter trip than usual from Lynin City to Zentyn, and we each only have a few shifts of working and not working. That’s pleasant enough; what’s even nicer is that we have some fresh food to complement the ugly, brownish mush we often have to consume from cans. The mush looks bad enough, but the metallic taste is even worse.
Anyways, we arrived in Zentyn at what we found to be about an hour before twilight. Apparently, we had slept much longer than usual in Lynin City. Despite the risks of being caught by the zombies after losing track of our time, we still sent out a group.
Maria went with Ben and Lily, while Aria and I scout the other few buildings. Zentyn was actually, shockingly, barely wrecked at all. The buildings were in fairly decent shape (regardless of the tsunamis which were due to hit here, and they probably hit Joryn instead). With ease, we scrounged a good thirty cans- in one of the houses, we found ten all stashed away in a ‘hidden’ compartment!
The time passes quickly as we carry armfuls upon armfuls of cans from houses to base, gradually wandering further and further away from our base. Unbeknownst to us, the bright sun is slowly disappearing from the horizon, leaving shadows around every small corner and darkness in those places which sunlight barely perpetrated anyways. We are oblivious as we happily gathered more and more food, and I smile to watch Maria skipping along the gradually darkening streets.
We are caught on our farthest trip away from the base when the sun finally set. I glance up a second after the sun must’ve set and panicked. Ben follows my gaze and, with one of the quick reactions he’s famous for in her group, bellows, “Drop your food! Grab your weapons!”
He thrusts a small dagger into Maria’s hand and, realizing I am still immobilized, slaps me in the face to alert me.
“We are about to face who-knows-how-many zombies. GET. A. GRIP.”
I’m livid for a few seconds, wanting nothing other than to scream my head off, before calming down. “Thanks.”
But those few seconds of precious time are slipping through my fingers, and with every ticking second the zombies are probably invading the city even further. We’re all sprinting towards the base, and only make it about half of the way to the base when the zombies finally reach the center of the city.
They began throwing themselves at us mercilessly, scrabbling over everything to reach us and hitting everywhere, everything, and everyone they can with their crude weapons to try to damage us (and accidentally slaying a few of their own).
The air is thick with fog, and an onslaught of zombies attacks each of us. I feel a moment of panic and fear for my friends before snapping back into warrior mode. I fought for my life, wildly spinning around when I could to make sure my friends were safe.
I mindlessly attack the zombies swarming me, edging my way closer to the base whenever possible. Aria and Lily are holding their own coolly and methodically (but not quite holding their own well enough to help the rest of us), but Ben struggles to protect both Maria and himself from the murderous zombies.
I begin to realize that there’s no way we can make it into our base without zombies following us in, and zombies in a tunnel would probably make the tunnel collapse. I’m desperately searching all around, looking for somewhere, anywhere, where the zombies couldn’t follow us.
My eyes lock onto a lone tower, with a ladder perilous for humans and probably downright stupid for zombies to climb. I point at the tower when I have a brief reprieve from fighting, and I know Ben and the rest of them realize what my idea is by the way a grim determination comes into their eyes and they try to walk towards the tower whenever possible.
It seems like hours, though in actuality only forty-five minutes, till we reach the water tower. I’m the first one to hoist myself up into the tower by a combination of perseverance, nimbleness, speed, and a little bit of luck.
Then I’m paralyzed by fear, watching as Aria climbs the tower too but praying that the remaining three fighting can make it up.
A few zombies try to climb the ladder, but Aria shoots them down with a small revolver with some incredible accuracy. All I can think of is the safety of those remaining on the ground.
Lily, too, climbs the tower, but Ben is hindered by having to protect Maria. He tries valiantly, but a few zombies get at Maria and strike quick blows on her head, knocking her out immediately. Another three zombies hit her side, opening a ginormous gash. My heart plummets to my feet as Maria falls to the ground and Ben slings her body over his shoulders.
He carefully begins maneuvering himself up the ladder, and I stifle a cry at the sight of both him and Maria. The gash in Maria’s side is oozing blood, and the pallor of her face convinces me that she needs help quickly. Ben finally struggles his way up the ladder, and I watch as he hoists both himself and Maria up onto the platform.
He tenderly takes Maria, who is limp and almost completely, dreadfully still, and lays her on the platform. Lily is firing shot after shot onto each of the zombies that try to climb the tower, while I try to stop the blood pouring endlessly out of Maria’s side.
I’m only attentive to her needs, listening to her feeble breaths with a terror festering and growing in my mind. I barely notice as the tears brim over my eyes and she struggles to push herself into a sitting position.
I know she knows that any efforts to save her are futile, but hasn’t accepted it. Again, her eyes seek to find mine, and she moves herself painfully slowly to wipe away some of the tears that are rapidly coursing down my face.
“Don’t cry,” she whispers imploringly to me. “Just laugh, forever and always.”
Her face turns whiter and whiter as she says quietly to me, “Hold my hand.”
I grasp her hand, looking into her tearless eyes with a grief unable to placed into words. She squeezes my hand.
“I’m leaving now, S-Sarah. J-just d-don’t l-look away!” Her eyes look at mine even more imploringly than before.
I look at her again, squeezing her hand back. “Don’t be scared, Maria.”
She whispers, “I’m not.”
She takes one more deep breath. I keep looking at her till the end, when the hand that had been squeezing my hand grows limp, and her blue eyes see nothing anymore. Then I press her hand to my lips, before the tears come out in deep sobs I can’t stop from choking out of me.
I cry for all the things that might’ve been with her, for a beautiful life ended, and although eventually all the tears have dried up, an unutterable grief still remains. I sit vigil with her body quietly after that. Night ends, day begins, and all I can do is stare back in her now empty eyes.
I close her eyelids gently before I finally force myself to stand up. Her frail body looks vulnerable in death, and I carry it down to the ground gently and dig a grave for her. My tears mingle with the earth after I bury her.
I watch the sunrise the next morning, knowing she would’ve loved it. My eyes wander over the glorious sunset and I realize that, although she was cruelly robbed of life, I must instead remember the wonderful time she spent with us and know that it is not an end for her, but a beginning of something which people on Earth can only catch a glimmer of. It is mysterious and so immeasurably massive that not even the wisest man on Earth could fully comprehend it till their passing on.
I leave fifteen minutes later with a sense of finality, not letting myself dwell on what lay behind but forcing myself to look forward.
Chapter 7
We decide to head towards Butioret, an enormous city that Ben says will definitely have some food left over to scrounge from. Instead of the sobbing, noisy grief I endured last time, I just feel an emptiness in me that I can’t fill. It threatens to consume me, and I feel removed from life as though no one else was there.
Again, I endlessly dig until there’s an entire layer of dirt under and over my nails almost thicker than my nails themselves. It takes us three tedious days to reach Butioret, during which time plods
along slower than I ever remember it going. I feel gentle pats on my back, hear meaningless sweet nothings, and other forms of ‘encouragement’ during them, but the hollowness in my stomach is still there.
When we reach Butioret and emerge onto the surface, I calm my mind and go through the motions of looking for food as usual, with all four of us searching together in a big group, not even feeling relieved when we gather the biggest haul of food we’ve ever gotten in a single place.
Then we come to a locked up warehouse, large and seemingly weak, but when I try to break open the door with Ben, I feel a searing pain through my leg and the door hasn’t even budged.
Lily gasps, and I look at her, mystified. In response, she raises her arm and points at a symbol painted on the door. The same one we saw in Perlin City. The insignia Lily’s dad had on his lapel, according to Lily at least.