• 𝓜𝓪𝓮 •

I didn't know how long I ran for. By the time I allowed myself to stop, my lungs were burning and my legs hurt with how hard and far I pushed them to go. I fell to my knees in the forest, the leaves below me crunching with my weight.

I couldn't hear the sirens anymore. They faded long ago, but I could still hear them in the back of my mind. The screaming, mixed with that female's voice stating my name, number, and where I'd escaped from.

I curled up on the forest floor, trying to slow my breathing and my erratic heart rate. I closed my eyes, hoping the few moments I allowed myself to relax wouldn't cost me whatever freedom I granted myself. I hadn't run straight. I took turns and cut myself on trees to throw the vampires off my path if they even came out that far.

I was just another sheep in their herd. They'd stop following, pronounce me missing, and that would be the end of it. I'd have to figure out how to hunt, though I assumed if I got desperate enough to kill an animal, I'd figure out a way. Either that, or I'd see if tree bark was edible.

I opened my eyes again slowly, my breathing becoming more rhythmic as I laid there. It was so dark out, and I probably could have fallen asleep there on the forest floor with how exhausted I felt, but I needed to find a place to rest that wasn't so out in the open. If they did happen to chase me this far, it would be better to stay hidden.

Pushing myself up, I forced myself to my feet. My legs felt like jello as I made them move. I didn't know where I was. When the vampires took over, I lived in Georgia. After we left the house, they threw us in the back of a tractor trailer and shoved needles into our skin. When we woke up, we woke up in a cottage in the city, our caretakers vampires since they'd eliminated all of the adults.

No one told us where it was. The first time I met Zero, he grinned at me and told me that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

I slipped into a small alcove and slid down the muddied wall until I was seated. I didn't want to sleep. I knew what awaited me in my dreams, though this time I suspected it would encompass the kids.

But I couldn't stop the heaviness in my eyelids as they closed.

Surprisingly enough, my dream didn't have anything to do with the kids or the takeover. I dreamt of my parents.

My mom, whom I looked so much like that it was almost uncanny, braided her long, dark brown hair. Her hazel eyes fell and met with mine in the mirror as she got ready to leave on her movie date with my dad. She smiled, tying the last bits of her hair before she pinched my cheeks gently.

She took my hand and led me back into the living room, where my babysitter sat looking at her phone.

"We'll be back by eight," my dad said, running a comb through his blonde hair. He winked at me. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

It was funny he said that, because I knew the type of work he did. What they both did. Even at twelve years old, they allowed me just a snippet into their working lives.

The drug business was good business, but they were working on making a life for me to where I didn't need to get into that sort of thing. They wanted me to grow up and be whatever I wanted to be, without worrying about the finances.

That was about when I would have normally forced myself awake. Because as with everything else, my mind couldn't figure out how to block out the hurt.

They left me with my babysitter. Twenty minutes later, her phone rang. I remembered how she answered, then froze and looked at me. Her face had gone white and her hand lifted to her mouth, like I did sometimes to keep myself from getting sick.

Ten minutes after the phone dropped from her hands in shock, I saw red and blue lights flashing outside. The amount of cops that showed up, just to tell a twelve year old girl that her parents had been shot as they were getting out of the car, was too much. Maybe they expected me to lose my mind in grief. But I didn't do anything. I just stood there, not fully believing them. I didn't believe them even when I saw their caskets. They had to be closed. No one told me why, though later I found out it was because both of them had been shot multiple times in the face, mutilating them to a point the mortician couldn't even figure out a way to make them look human again.

When I woke up from my dream, built up tears spilled the moment I opened my eyes. I blew out a long breath, looking out into the forest. Birds chirped overhead, and based on the level of the sun, it was early morning.

My eyes fell and I finally registered the blanket covering me. I blinked, wiping the tears from my face with the backs of my hands as I noted there was a small canister in front of me as well.

I opened it and my eyebrows drew together in confusion. There was soup inside. It wasn't steaming, so I wondered how long it had been since someone dropped the food off to me.

I looked up, searching the trees but finding nothing out of the ordinary.

There were other people in the forest with me. I wasn't sure whether that was comforting or not, but for the time being, I wasn't going to say no to food.

I brought the canister to my lips and sipped the thick liquid. There were chunks of meat inside and some sort of substance that reminded me of potatoes, but I didn't think that was the case. The taste was a bit off for it to be potatoes. But it tasted good nonetheless.

I leaned back against the muddy wall and sighed, allowing myself to feel content, if only for a moment, as I forced those memories of my parents back into the recesses of my mind.

"Thank you," I said to the air before taking another sip of the soup.