Haven

• Zachariah Perry, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2020

Siobhan lived on the run. She needed to move fast to survive. Her world was overgrown with plants. Beasts had grown to enormous sizes and become something closer to monsters. The other survivor she had met briefly had said that meat, if you managed to obtain it, and fruit from trees were the only food that remained.

Siobhan knew better.

There was an abandoned farm at the edge of the city. A safe haven, a relic from the world before. She remembered back to before the Event. Pampering. Attention to her every need. Her intelligence brought fame. She was taught tools that helped her to survive. She spent her nights at the farm, growing plants. It was hard but rewarding. There was only so much water on the farm, so she only used it for bathing and crops. Drinking water was collected from other areas, like abandoned houses or apartments. She needed supplies to keep the farm running. Spare parts, mainly. The electronics on the farm were solar powered and she was grateful to be able to use them once she made repairs.
Morning till night, Siobhan scavenged, collecting parts, water and fruit in her backpack. To get past the monsters, Siobhan was armed with a strip of steel from the side of a barn which she had fashioned into a sword. She didn’t have the refined technique from TV, but she had picked up enough to defend herself. Siobhan was on a scavenging run, but as she collected some fruit, a beast, snakelike, slithered towards her, snapping with its beaky mouth. She fled, but it quickly gained on her. She realised that if she continued to run, she was doomed. Instead, she turned to face it. She thrust her sword through its head.

She cut a large chunk of meat off its side, wrapped it in plastic and put it into her backpack, then continued on her way. She found some scraps of metal and wire in an abandoned house.

Late that evening, she scaled the fence at the back of the farm, glad that it kept monsters out, then began dinner based on the cooking
channel. Garden shows taught her enough for usable crops on the farm for two meals a day.

She was lucky.

She knew there were others who were starving. Siobhan wished she could find them and share but she was alone, and she knew it. She lay down and reminisced.

She remembered the days before the Event. Days of television, pampering, fame, and carers attending to her. In her days at the zoo, her intelligence made her famous. The humans loved her - a monkey who could build robots while hanging by her tail. She missed her carer, who smuggled a TV into her enclosure with educational videos that she watched and rewatched. She was able to survive because of what she learned from her. She could only hope the carer survived.

Siobhan slept, dreaming peacefully. Sleep, like the farm, was her haven.