Day 1
“Sarah. Tales come from the heart. Not from your brain, soul, or background. Your story Sarah comes from the heart.” Sarah watched his dads face, peering at the slight moldy peelings from the radiation burns. As she peered at his face, she could see his eyes slowly dipping into the inky grayness of death. His heart… His story had ended. But hers? Hers had just begun. And her heart was far from giving out. As Sarah and her father sat below the smoldering tree that they had once called one of theirs, she looked at the yellowed sky and screamed. Her father was dead…
Day 2
Sarah awoke to the sounds of sirens. Not sirens in the real world, but the ones that had rose her two days before when this morbid nightmare began. She looked down at her father who had quickly turned into a rotting corpse due to the lack of actual air in the air. “I won’t disappoint you dad” said Sarah. She then looted the compass off of his body, and looked towards the East, and left.
Sarah hadn’t seen a clean drop of water in days. It was probably the lights that cruddied them up. All of it had turned into this murky blue-green slush that bubbled as if it was boiling. Sarah knew to avoid water for now, considering that every kilometer or so of riverbed was covered by dead smoldering animal bones, most of it being deer that Sarah and her father had tried hunting days before. Sarah just walked along the roadsides, figuring out her next step. She hadn’t heard anything about shelters in her small English town, and she knew that the only major town, St. Lawrence, was a good forty mile walk out, and that was into the smoke. No. Sarah had to walk the way she had headed. Hopefully east would provide shelter, drinkable water, and food. Hopefully east would provide bravery. Sarah knew that for the next few days, all she would have is the east for her company, and she knew that the east would hopefully accept her. If it didn’t, her promise to her father would mean nothing.
As Sarah walked along the path next to the river, she looked around for anything of value. A stick or a rock even. Something to keep her company, and something to use for the night. But along her way, she couldn’t find anything. The heat that had nearly taken her had crisped it all up into dusty fragments. Fragments she now walked on. And if she couldn’t find anything? They would be fragments that would soon absorb her as its own.
Dawn set in the distance, and Sarah watched as the light yellow she had quickly become familiar with faded away. It turned from green-yellow to orange, and Sarah figured that it would soon go from orange to red. Sarah kept walking. She thought about how the red sky was almost like an alarm, and that if she didn’t beat the red, it would be too late. She looked left and realized that she had already beaten the distance of the river and was on a path heading back up into the now barren woods. So she stopped and looked for something. Something that would keep her protected for that night.
Orange. She kept walking down the path. She had now entered the woods. They were no longer a group of blooming pines, and the forest looked empty. Nothing was around her but trees that had been charred by the lights. Nowhere in her sight was a visible sleeping post for that night. She cried, for she knew if something miraculous didn’t happen, she would soon be dead.
Red. She kept walking in the direction she hadn’t been. Due to the past hours of panic, she hadn’t checked the compass for a direction, and she probably wasn’t headed east anymore. Even east had left her stranded. She walked, crying prayers she had heard before. Then, as darkness set, and the red turned maroon, she looked one last time for something off in the distance. It was as if she expected something else. But then it was dark… Sarah collapsed into the dusty ground. And it was there she rested, crying to herself. She knew this could be the last time she every touched the earth…
Day 3
Back in bed. 1:30 AM. “SQUEEEEE… SQUEEEEE…SQUEEEEE”. Sarah arose quickly as the loud alarms squealed outside. She quivered in bed as boots clamped up the pine stairwell towards her room. It was her father. “HONEY! We have to get to the basement.” He tried sounding calm, but Sarah saw a face she had never seen on her father before. “GO GO GO GO GO!” He pleaded to Sarah as she looked at him shaking in her bed. She finally nodded and went. They sprinted down the staircase. Around them, things shook, and outside a loud droning sound appeared, now overpowering the screeching of the alarms. Then, as Sarah reached the basement, her father tossed her onto the floor. It had hurt, but Sarah didn’t dare get up. He then got the blankets out of her mommy’s funeral room, and tossed them over her. “Stay still honey. These will keep you safe. Just close your eye…” Suddenly there was an unbearable clapping noise. She heard her father slam against the floor and scream “HOLD ON HONEY!!!” So Sarah did hold on. She counted slowly in her head. One. She heard a wind, and the blankets above her suddenly got really hot, but as she took the top one off, it got hotter, so she kept them all on. Two. She looked at the pavement that had been placed underneath her, and it began to crack and crumble. Three. Suddenly. Out of nowhere there was light. “Daddy. I see an angel.” She said, but outside, she couldn’t hear anything but white noise. The light soon grew brighter. Four. Brighter. Five. The light was so bright that the crack beneath her was now invisible and her head hurt, so she shut her eyes. Six. Seven. Eight… BOOM!...

Sarah awoke. Grey crystals had formed along her body over the night, and it was hard to breathe. She got up and shook herself off. She peered around at the trees. It was snowing. But it wasn’t snowing. She wasn’t cold or hot, but she felt sick. Her mouth was extremely dry. So she continued on her path. Nothing at the end of it. The trail seemed infinite as the gray snow blurred the path ahead. But she decided to keep on her way. Thus, Sarah thought to herself “day three” and walked on.



The trail was grey and blank and the trees that had been barren before now had massive amounts of the warm snow sitting on them. Sarah noticed how along the trail, the further along she went, the colder and colder it got. But this did not concern Sarah because of the extremely hot temperatures she had fought through to get to where she was. All Sarah was concerned about was getting out of the woods and off the creepy path.
As she walked, Sarah cried to herself about how the last days had been stressful. Just two days before, her father died in front of her, and before that, the lights had eaten her house. She wasn't sure if the dark or the light was her friend anymore. She looked up at the grey, and immediately her crying stopped. It stopped because of the grey above her. It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. It was its own color. The color that she didn’t fear. Sarah then wiped her nose, shook her head free of the snow, and trekked onwards. And now she could see the end of the path, just ahead of her, so she ran.
The end of the path was slightly uphill, leaving what lay ahead a secret soon to be revealed to Sarah’s eyes. A secret Sarah wasn’t eager to see. What layed ahead of her frightened her quite a bit. For the imagination of a young girl runs wild, and hers was just getting started. What if there were people, but villainous people whom wanted to take her to their lair. Or what if there weren’t people at all, but rather rotted corpses staring, yelling “Join us. We’re safe and friendly.” Either possibility had been reasonable, but Sarah knew she had to move on. So she climbed the hill, taking each step slowly and ponderingly, not knowing what lie ahead. And as she reached the top; a sight was there that only could be immediately described as surprising and maddening. For Death himself stood at the top of the hill. And he stood there waiting for Sarah.
Abandoned cars, Abandoned houses, Abandoned city. Sarah walked around the crooked white fences and the bleached sidewalks. Debris was everywhere and bodies were under all the piles. Skeletal remains of houses with its skeletal people sitting in it. Sarah couldn’t help but giggle at how the surrounding houses reminded her of an old Disney looking cartoon called “Duck and Cover” she was forced to watch at school. It had this adorable turtle that was afraid of explosions and always ducked and covered when he saw a flash of light. Then it showed these goofy teenagers copying the turtle and ducking at the flashes of light. What made it funnier was how some of the people would dive into walls and floors to protect themselves from…
The light.
Sarah stopped in her tracks. She suddenly felt as the pinch in the air turned to a choke. Each step she took pained her beyond belief. She also stopped because of her sudden realization. The light wasn’t a light at all. It was an explosion. But how? Why? Sarah choked as soon the smoke around her closed in, grabbing her throat as she melted slowly into unconsciousness. “Explosion…” She repeated to herself. “ A bomb…” She coughed. Then she blacked out.
Day 1
Sarah awakened from a sleep she never remembered going into. The blankets above her were extremely hot and were wet from a pipe she heard dripping above her. At first Sarah had no idea what to do. Whether she should wait for her father or get up and walk around. So she sat. She sat and looked at the crack that had once before been glowing with an irresistible light. The crack had grown since she had last seen it. What once bladed through her arms now entrapped her arm, holding it underneath it and gripping it with fallen rubble. Sarah pulled once, then twice. But all seemed a loss as she could not free herself from its hold. She then felt around. The blankets above her were now unbearably hot, almost like an oven of her own body heat and sweat. She grabbed it with her freed left arm, throwing them across the empty basement. What lay across her wasn’t any longer her basement any longer, but an alien cell with unrecognizable rubbles and debris everywhere. But more noticeable was the quality of air and how it has a strong burning sensation like an amplified icy-hot. Sarah was unsure about what to do from there. She tried her arm again, seeing if the blankets were what kept her from being unsuccessful, but it obviously wasn’t as she strained her arm. She knew she had to get out. Maybe there was something around her to pry it open. She looked left, and the only thing she saw was an out of reach piece of rock, and what made her mad was how it was clearly capable of prying her free. To her right lay a few broken stones and chunks of floor, along with the blankets. So there was nothing of use there. All she had was the long jag of stone to her left. So Sarah tried reaching. Dive after dive, it was like she was going to get her arm free by just doing that. In fact, fifteen minutes of diving for the rock eventually freed one finger. And with that finger, she kept pushing her hand out. Two fingers out she realized what a miracle it was her hand being uninjured through all of this. After the hard effort at two, then came three, then four. Finally she was free, and proud that part one of her quest was over. She now finally got fully up, and scanned the room for her missing father. He was nowhere to be found. The only thing that was in view was rubble. But something new was the shiny red puddle that trailed itself up the stairs. At the top of the stairs lay her unconscious father. She raced up to him, scared and confused about everything happening. Burns and chunks of missing flesh were his body. And as he lay down face-first on the stairwell, Sarah thought about what to do. She knew step one was to flip him over. “DAD! HERE I COME!”
She ran up to him and pulled him to his destination of the top of the stairs. She then flipped him over and looked into his eyes. Each of them were burned out completely. She would never be seen by her father again. As she picked up her stuff and cried, suddenly there was a *cough. “Dad?” Sarah looked down at him, a little afraid it wasn’t him.
“Sarah, is that you? Sarah, I can’t see.”
“I know, DAD HELP!” Sarah was screaming.
“Sarah. I know you’re scared, but you have to listen to me. You have to calm down. Go outside and see what it looks like.” Sarah did as her father said. Outside was green. It had a misty green horizon with nothing in its wake.
“Dad, there’s nothing.” She looked over at him as he slumped on the floor. “Dad?” She couldn’t tell if he was ok. She ran to him. “Dad? Wake up Dad.”
“Sarah, listen to me. You can do this. Go outside and walk. Survive without me. I will die Sarah...”
“No Dad no!”
“Sarah. Tales come from the heart…”
Day 5
Sarah’s journey had come to an end. As she woke finally for what she knew was the last time, she looked off in the distance, at the green sunset. It had gotten chilly as the grey snow fell. Sarah stuck out her tongue, like she had with her father during their vacation to the mountain cabin. It wasn’t moist like it had been before, but she didn’t mind, because it reminded her of her story. It reminded her of the times before and after the bomb. And as she looked at her already rotting flesh, she couldn’t help but remember the past…
Sarah knew it was time to go. And as she looked up closing her eyes and accepting deaths embrace, she finally whispered, “Tell My Story.”…