Spring 2007 High School Edition
Untitled
Jessica Wall
Fiction (9th-10th)
First Place
Millard High School
Teacher: Stony Myers
Janelle woke suddenly from an uneasy sleep by an eerie voice screaming words that were undistinguishable. Her room on the second floor of her parents’ large house looked dark and even scary as her bed and dresser cast long shadows on her white walls. She got quickly out of her bed, put on her slippers and robe, and ran downstairs to the front room, looking out the window. What she saw took her breath away. Dark figures were running about the street. Some were screaming, others crying. In the midst of all the commotion, she saw a red and yellow light descending from her friends’ houses. Janelle knew at once it must be fire, and she prayed that Elizabeth and Jean got out all right. The voice that had awoken her was screaming the message once again. Janelle strained her ears to listen to what it was saying.
“They’re coming! They’re coming! Run! Ride! They’re coming!”
Janelle didn’t know who the voice was talking about but she didn’t care. Quick as she could, she ran to wake her nanny.
Her parents had gone on vacation and left Janelle home with her nanny. She was an only child and often longed for a sibling.
Janelle ran up the spiral stairs and banged open the door to her nanny’s room.
“Wake up! WAKE UP!” she said shaking her nanny’s shoulder frantically. “Oh come on Marie!” she begged, calling her by her first name.
Marie groaned and opened one eye. “What is it, dear?”
“We need to leave!” hissed Janelle.
“What?” croaked Marie coming to her senses and sitting up in bed.
“There’s someone coming!” she said quickly. “There’s fire in the streets! People are screaming for us to leave and hide! What do we do?!”
“My dear! Quick! I know who you speak of but we mustn’t delay! Follow me!”
She led Janelle quickly downstairs, grabbing coats and blankets along the way. They raced into the kitchen, Marie grabbing a basket of fruit that had been sitting on the table. They made their way quickly through the kitchen door into the cold night air. Sprinting through the neatly kept grass in their backyard, they ran toward the forest.
Reaching the edge of it, Janelle felt Marie grab hold of her hand and whisper into her ear. “We must always stay together. If we get separated, hide. Stay away from everyone, even if you think you know them. What we are up against, people change more than you can comprehend.”
Janelle wanted desperately to ask Marie what they were up against, but Marie had already taken hold of Janelle’s shoulder with her other free hand. Blankets over their shoulders, fruit basket now in Janelle’s hands, they sped away yet again into the forest. Now and again Marie would whisper words of advice into Janelle’s ear such as, “Never stay on the trail,” and “Always keep your eyes and ears open for any sign of movement.”
Once in awhile, Janelle found her and Marie running along a trail only to be whisked away quickly by Marie into the deep darkness of the forest.
By now, Janelle’s legs seemed to be crumbling under the weight of the rest of her body. Finally, she could stand it no longer. Gathering all the courage she could muster within her, she exclaimed, “Marie, can we PLEASE stop? My legs are killing me, and I can’t walk a step further!”
“Oh, but my dear, we mustn’t stop! They will be tracking down as many as possible by now. You will need to learn to not think about the pain. We still have a long way to go!”
“Where are we going?”
As Marie spoke, she slowed down. When she came to a complete stop, she spoke in barely a whisper. “We will go to a hiding place I know of and from there I will explain everything.”
This hardly cleared things up for Janelle, but before she could ask any more questions, she was being pushed along again and picking up speed while doing so.
They jogged on for what seemed like years to Janelle, every now and again tripping over a tree root, only to be pulled up by Marie and pushed along again.
They finally stopped in a place where the trees above them were so thick they could see nothing but dim shadows.
Marie let go of Janelle and started walking around in circles, stomping the ground here and there as though trying to flatten the earth underneath her.
Finally she stopped jumping and whispered harshly to herself, “We have gone the wrong way! We must go west just a little longer. We will be there soon.” Marie’s whispers were cut off by voices.
“Who’s there?!” the strong, deep voice said.
“Quick Janelle, hide!” Marie prodded Janelle out of the way and into some nearby bushes.
“I said, who’s there?!” the deep voice said more fiercely this time.
Marie and Janelle stayed quiet and hidden in the bushes as the trees swayed in a cold breeze that stirred Janelle’s long dark hair and sent chills up her back.
They stayed there until they were almost certain they were alone. Marie took hold yet again on Janelle’s shoulder and dragged her on in the direction Janelle thought to be east.
“Marie,” she breathed, “where are we going? I thought we were going west, not east.”
Before Marie had time to answer, a tall dark-haired boy jumped out into the clearing. Janelle recognized him at once and stopped. Marie’s hand slipped from her shoulder, and she stopped too.
“Hello, Nicholas,” Janelle said in surprise. She and Nicholas had been good friends since kindergarten and she was not about to let Marie break that friendship by being rude and walking by. She was still in her slippers and robe, but she didn’t care. After what she had been through so far that night, it was nice to see a familiar face. She would have liked to see Nicholas right now even if she had been rolling in the mud. But there was something different about him. His face was pale, and he had a cut over his left eyebrow. He didn’t look his usual friendly self. He looked scared, even lost.
“Hi, Nic!” she said more loudly.
“Shhh!” Marie hushed her. “We’re still in danger!”
“Who’s there?” Nicholas said looking straight at Janelle as though he had never seen her before. After a few long moments of Nic studying her face, he gasped with relief, “Janelle! It’s just you! You scared me half to death, ya know!”
“Sorry.” Janelle apologized. Then looking around, she noticed something. “Where’s your family? I would’ve thought you of all people would have them with you at a time like this.”
“Come. We must go before someone sees us,” said Marie. “Nicholas, I have the feeling you lost your family to the Gunners. Am I correct?”
“Yes, ’m.” he said shakily. Janelle noticed a single tear trickle down his cheek.
“Then you must come with us.”
“Thank you,” he said graciously.
“Now, we must all link hands. Never let go. Ever!” Janelle couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She wasn’t a baby! She was thirteen years old! This was too much advice from Marie for one day. But she did as she was told anyway.
As they walked together through the endless darkness, Janelle was reminded of the question she’d asked earlier and eagerly asked it again.
“Marie, I thought you said we needed to go west, not east.”
“We need to make sure we’re not being followed, dear,” she answered quietly.
They walked on for a good part of the night, changing direction now and then until finally they stopped. Marie started jumping all over the earth as she had done before, reminding Janelle of a mad woman who should have been confined long ago. Every time she landed, she would make a “THUMP. . . THUMP . . . THUMP. . .” on the ground until. . . “CLUNK!”
Marie landed hard on what sounded like hollow ground. Then she got on her hands and knees and started brushing away dirt and leaves. She stopped, sat up and wiped the sweat from her forehead. It was then that Janelle noticed that where Marie had brushed dirt away, there was a hard wooden surface.
“SNAP!”
Janelle, Nicholas, and Marie all whipped around in alarm. Something was moving in the bushes. Janelle looked at Marie wondering what to do. But to her horror, Marie was gone. She had vanished while Janelle and Nic were staring transfixed at the bushes.
Janelle turned to Nicholas for advice, but he looked just as frozen to the spot and brain dead as she was. Suddenly a dark man bounded out of the bushes, gun in his hands, a devilish grin on his face. Another light-haired, long-necked man stepped out also and stood by his partner. This man was not grinning, but glaring at them, pointing his gun directly at their faces.
“What is your name, boy?” said the long-necked man.
“Um,” said Nic, “James Catchworth.”
“Oh is it now?” said the dark man in the same deep voice Janelle and Marie had heard earlier. “Then where did you get the cut over your eye? Are you sure it wasn’t created by a, let’s say, fence post?”
Janelle could then tell by the look on Nic’s face that he was trying hard to look puzzled. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was clothes-pinned by a branch while running into the forest.”
“Oh! And do you usually take nightly runs through the forest?” said the long-necked man.
“Of course not, smart one! I was out hunting, saw some soldier-like figures, got freaked out, and ran.”
Janelle’s insides made an uneasy squirm. Although she was used to Nic’s mouthing off, she felt sure he would contain himself this time.
“The why is SHE here?” he said, indicating to Janelle.
She wanted nothing more than to be invisible.
“Talk for yourself, girl!” he demanded. “Why are you here?!”
Janelle stood frozen to the spot. She didn’t know what to say. A split second later, Marie, silent as a fox, charged out from the bush behind the two men and hit the long-necked one in the head with a large club. He fell to the ground, unconscious.
The furious dark man then rounded on Marie.
Quick as a flash, Nic did the most stupid thing Janelle had ever seen him do. He ran up behind the dark man and kicked him in his muscular hind leg just as he pointed the gun at Marie’s face.
The dark man turned, bewildered for half a second and, with his back to her, Marie hit him, too, over the head with the club.
Marie then collapsed to the ground in weariness.
This time, it was Janelle who stepped forward. She put down the fruit basket, heaved Marie up, and told her firmly, “We need to find that hiding spot. There we can rest and you can explain all this to me.”
“You don’t understand,” Marie said, tears streaming down her face now. “These two will know about that hiding spot. They saw me dig it up. That hiding spot is no longer safe. We’ll have to find shelter and safety somewhere else.
The truth of these words hit Janelle hard as though Marie had slammed her over the head with the club too.
“But you’ve got to know some other hiding spot,” she said frantically. “Other Gunners will have heard all the commotion. We have to get out of here.”
“I am out of ideas,” Marie said. “There is nowhere else to my knowledge that we can go.”
Janelle looked at Nic. He was looking at the ground, thinking hard.
“We might could go somewhere I know. If we could get there, I’d imagine it would be pretty safe. No one knows about it except for John and Delbert. That’s where I was headed when I ran into you guys.”
“Perfect!” said Janelle. “Let’s go! Quick!”
“I don’t know where we are, though,” Nic pointed out.
“Nic,” Marie said, “we are five miles south of the big bridge that crosses the stream.”
“If you could take us to the bridge, I can find it from there,” he said.
Janelle picked the fruit basked back up and they were off.
It was nearly dawn when they finally arrived to Nic’s hiding spot. Exhausted from that night’s adventure, the threesome sat in a circle with blankets draped around them for warmth.
“So, what is going on?” Janelle asked exasperatedly.
Marie took a deep breath and began her story.
“The Gunners, as you may have heard them called, are a bloodthirsty bunch of people who do nothing more than track people down to. . .” Marie’s shaky voice trailed off.
Janelle, desperate for an answer, turned to Nic. He looked as ready to hear more as she did.
“Janelle,” said Marie finally, “they take as many people captive as possible. They think of it as a game. They live in no one particular spot, traveling so as not to be found. Every once in awhile they get restless, take their guns and go into town. They scatter families as a sport, take men captive, and deprive them of basic necessities until they join their band. The thing is, this is the first time it’s happened since before you were born. We thought we were safe. We thought they had all died out. Until now.”
Marie’s words left Janelle empty. “We should be safe here, though,” Janelle thought out loud.
“Yes, we should. Now we should get some rest,” said Marie, taking on her parent-like tone again. “We should be safe to go home this evening. I’m sure our families will be fine.” These words gave a new air of hope.
So each lay back, huddled tightly in their own blanket, with new hope for a happy ending.
| English Department | College of Humanities & Social Sciences |