Glass Ashes
Chapter One:
Bitter
The ashes have stained my cheeks with a black dust, tear marks cutting through the mask. The glass in the fire is shattered into little tiny shards, the bones in the fire crumbling and blackened with ashes.
Broken sobs escape my mouth, hands trembling.
"Get up, girl." The man says gruffly, grabbing me by the back of my shirt and pulling me from my kneeling position by the put out fire, but throwing me on the ground once again. My body falls to the dirt with a 'thud'. "I said, 'up'!" The man's voice is full of rage, and I raise an arm to block myself from his hits.
"Don't hurt her!" My mother cries out, also sobbing.
"Quiet you bitch!" A member from the group hits her in the face.
"Mom!" I scream, but the last thing I see is the back of a gun hitting me in the face.
My eyelids feel heavy as lead, and I struggle to open them and keep them that way.
"Clover...wake up sweetheart, wake up." Mom's voice is panicked, everything blurry and dark, so dark. "It's me, sweetheart. Everything is going to be okay."
My eyes find my wrists, bound to the arms of a chair, facing Mom. My ankles are bound to the legs of the chair, Mom is tied up in the same way.
"W-wh-what's going on?" My eyes fill with tears of fear.
"We'll be okay." Mom says, pure terror in her eyes.
It sounds more like she is trying to convince herself rather than me.
Deep voices and footsteps clamber to us in the darkness, sounding metallic and bouncing off the dark walls. They're almost here.
"One last thing, sweetheart."
"Yeah, Mom?"
"I love you, Clover."
And then, the door flung open.
One Year Later
The sunlight streams through the windshield, shining into my eyes and onto the beige leather seats of the truck.
My muscles are stiff from the cramped position of sleeping in the backseat of a truck all night. Rubbing my tired eyes, I look around. Nothing. Just me and the silence of being alone.
My worn, yet sturdy backpack sits in the passenger seat, not holding much supplies. Grabbing it, I exit the truck and shut the door quietly behind me. The air is warm, and the silence is not settling well with me, fingertips grazing my gun in its holster.
One year.
One year of running, one year of hiding, one year of wasting tears on things not worth crying for.
A year.
It's strange looking back on myself a year ago, who I was, what I did, but now, the person I was is gone forever. She will never come back, she is in the past.
I guess we don't really think too much about who we've become.
I don't want to think about what I've done.
The horizon is an orange haze, the asphalt beneath my feet absorbing my footfalls, trash littering the roads and tumbling softly from the light breeze. A beautiful day. The tree leaves shuffle together, the smell of the outdoors filling my nostrils.
A sharp alarm slices through the peacefully quiet outdoors, loud, making me cringe. Gunshots reverberate in my eardrums, invading my head. My fingers find fistfuls of my chocolate hair, my body shaking.
Snarls and growls emerge from the woods, lots of them. More than I can handle. The walkers are closing in on me, and the only thing I can do is run towards the sounds, hoping they'll save me.
Running into the woods, little branches whip me in the face, thorns snagging at my arms, legs and face also. Blood droplets drip down my face from the cuts the thorns have given me, almost as if I am crying the red liquid.
I trip over the roots of a tree, falling to the dirt but quickly rising to my feet again.
A walker protrudes from the trees, grabbing my left arm. Unsteadily, I make a grab for my knife. The smell of my human flesh and warm blood gives the walker a feral look in its dead eyes.
The walkers flesh around its mouth has been torn off, the rotted remnants jagged and torn. Its hair is stringy and lax against its grey, pungent skin.
Rotten hands squeeze my arms so hard the bones feel like they're crushing. I turn to try and break from its grip, but failing. The fingers of my left hand find the handle of my knife, pulling at it.
The walker throws me to the ground, my knife finding my skin.
A stinging on my right forearm makes me cry out. When my arm had come uncrossed, the knife dragged over my forearm, cutting me.
Stabbing the walker, I run, blood leaving a trail in the leaves behind me. The thick liquid smells of rust almost, smells salty. It coats my hands and arm thickly, eyes dotting with tears. My breath is heavy, legs still pushing to run for the sounds.
But the sounds have faded away, and I keep running for the bright clearing ahead of me. The last gunshot had been a couple of minutes ago, the sounds of hungry monsters following me.
Bursting into the clearing, a massive prison is revealed to me. Without thinking, I run towards it, my best bet of surviving.
I see people. Real people.
I run as close as I can get, silence overtaking everything, everything blurred. My body feels heavy.
My fingers find the chain linked fence, weak eyes gazing out to the people. I almost say something, anything, just a word, to let them know I'm here.
Almost.
A shrill cry stops me.
A baby.
A living being.
A moment.
It's all it takes.
All it takes to bring me back to that bitter moment.
Back to then.
Author's Note: Hello everybody! I know this isn't very good, maybe a bit rushed, but I promise it does get better, despite how hard it is to believe. This is my first fanfic so don't be too hard on me, please. Tell me what you thought! I really hoped you enjoyed.
-StarryDarkSky