Oheneba Boateng

Honors English 10B

Ms. Marcy Fine

May 18, 2016

Let Our Walls Stand

Commodore Faris fears for the future of Fort Frederick. A place without Doctors,

Researchers, Parents or Loved ones. It was a pure and rather unfortunate reality. Behind a

fifty-foot wall and sheltered by gray four-meter houses was not much to be roused over; but it

was safe. It kept away the plague, the hard-shelled beasts and the pain of loss. The wall was

never left out of prayers. “Let our walls live, let our walls protect.”

Three fast metallic knocks were heard from the door to the glass panoramic room.

“Yes… who is it?”, responded Commodore Faris.

“Lieutenant Penelope of the squadron class of 2185”

“Yes come in.”

She sprang into the Commodore’s office and spoke hurriedly as rain-like sweat dripped

down her face. “Sir!, we’ve received word from Fort Fresno!” she paused, took a deep breath,

and resumed. “Good morning Commodore, Lieutenant Penelope reporting with news from

Central Intelligence regarding the Rapidly Acquired Viral Entities, also known as R.A.V.E.”

Faris immediately bursted up from his hover chair knocking the device back into the

wall. “It can’t be. We can’t let it get here! We’ll all die! Those things kill you! They make your

organs blow up!” The iron-clad Commodore had been reduced to a sacred little girl.
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Penelope continued, “Sir, Fort Fresno reported to us the recent actions of the cockroaches

known as R.A.V.E. It has been reported that these creatures have succeed in infiltrating the forts

in Washington state and are now moving toward California state. They anticipate that R.A.V.E

will hit Fort Fresno in twenty-four hours. They will reach Frederick in about a week.”

“After Fresno, we’re next aren’t we?” shivered the Commodore. Calm down , he thought

to himself, “we’ll have to do something about it. That is, if we want the human race to see light

of years to come….we’ve got to take our stand. Lieutenant, assemble a team, we’re setting out to

the Plains.”

Only those who carried useful traits such as a tall structure or glistening blue eyes were

the only ones allowed to live behind the protective walls. Those without useful traits were sent to

survive in the Plains. The Plains was a deserted barren land torn by the Global War of 2180 and

contaminated by nuclear residue. The group set out to the Plains with three objectives in mind.

Survive, stop R.A.V.E., and bring none of them back to the fort. These were the three objectives

for any group wanting to stop R.A.V.E. So why is the huge swarm of cockroaches headed east?

None of the groups ever survived. The beasts started in Russia and cleared out the entire eastern

hemisphere. With that thought in mind the Commodore expressed no hesitation.

Lieutenant Penelope assembled three of Fort Frederick’s most genius Scientists and two

of its most honored Soldiers. With this group, victory for the humans was promising. Led by

Commodore Faris, the group dived into the sterile wasteland in an unbreakable state-of-the-art

military tank.
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Feeling irritated, Penelope bursted,“Sir, how will we pull this off?, you seem to have

given little thought to this. They can’t be killed. Humanity has tried everything. Bombs, drugs.

We’ve used everything and yet they continue to spread the disease!”

“Has anyone tried burying them?”, implied Faris.

“What!”, exploded out of the mouths of all seven people in the tank.

“Its simple, just bury them...bury the things that make you sad...put them in a place that

they won’t hurt you.”

Dr. Smith, an elderly man who received the final Nobel peace prize, agreed with a slight

nod of head. “Well commodore. We’ll take your word.”

Two days passed after their departure and the group stopped. They stopped in the ghost

town where the thriving city of St. Louis stood once. “Okay here, it is where we’ll keep the

vermon.”

“How do you know they'll come here Commodore?”, asked sergeant Devon.

“They feed on humans, after all, they are mindless creatures that spread a terrible

disease.” The Commodore always held back painful tears when speaking at the thought of the

violent death of his wife to the R.A.V.E.

Over the two days, the group had set up a grounded twenty-foot tube entry which lead to

an underground Global War burial hole. The beating of a million wings sounded across the

horizon as the pale orange-pink sky turned black. The speed of the insects vigorously shook the

tank and the excitement of the creatures radiated in the air. They only thought in their heads:

humans. Hundreds, maybe thousands at a time, the insects forced their way into the tube. It

seemed as if the tube sucked them up like a giant vacuum. At the moment of complete silence,
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Dr. Smith and Lieutenant Penelope rushed to seal the tube with an instant cement seal. The

adhesive had the ability withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb.

“We did it”, said Faris. A slow teardrop fell down the right flank of his face followed by

blood from his eyes. The bright blue color of the tank’s interior turned bright red in an instant.

He coughed and spewed out blood. The Iron-clad Commodore was dying without a cure.

Penelope’s eyes widen and she yelled in horror. “Sir there’s one on your back!”

“Let our walls stand, return….. and live”, said the Commodore in a fading breath.