Stinks...
That was her first thought as awareness set in. Cracking her eyes open to the immense darkness, the little blonde girl tried to move. She winced at the first signs of nausea. She felt sick. With each passing moment, despite the frigid dank air, sweat began to break on her forehead.
Something heavy lay across her chest, blocking her ability to sit up. She pushed it up a few inches before it stopped, trapped between something she couldn't see. Instead she tried to push it past her head. The object bent near the middle easily and she was free.
She shivered and moved to her knees, trembling. Without looking behind her she knew without a doubt it had been an arm that had trapped her. Taking a deep breath, she immediately regretted it as the raw stench of rotting flesh filled her lungs. She doubled over and vomited.
After regaining her senses she stood, slightly unstable on the squishy surface of a torso. Blinking into the darkness she was relieved to find that she could now make out her surroundings. Hundreds of corpses piled onto each other registered in her vision. They were of all shapes and sizes. Many small children like herself. They were deformed, torn open, some even in pieces. Some even appeared to be asleep.
They spread out as far as she could see. Feeling infinitely tiny, the girl crouched to her knees and shivered. Then, she began to cry. Why was she here? What had happened?
Who was she?
She didn't know how long she sat there, even after the crying stopped, but all at once a single word came to mind.
Siblings. It made something inside her chest ache.
She mused over the word. Siblings. Plural. More than one. A brother is a sibling right? There was something else as well. A...a sister! A sister was also a sibling.
Did she have siblings? Somewhere her mind answered. Yes. She did.
A shuffling of movement and a heavy thump startled her. She shot up, and scanned the area.
Nothing moved. Then, once again there was a slight shifting sound. It was coming from the other side of the...pile. Suppressing the uneasiness of her stomach, the girl stretched out and began to move toward the sound. She cautiously peaked around the shoulders of a corpse. The body of a boy not much older than herself was slumped to the ground, shoulders moving as if breathing hard. One of his legs was trapped between a pair of cadavers.
He raised his head, black hair matted with blood, to meet her eyes. With out the slightest idea of how she knew, for some reason she had known that his eyes would be red. A look of recognition crossed the boy's features, followed closely by confusion. Hesitatingly, the girl crawled over.
Together they freed his trapped leg in a short matter of time. Afterwards, the two sat side by side, in a strange sense of peace. The girl looked over, noticing the dotted lines that created a strange pattern on his face and joints, like a twisted sort of puzzle.
Glancing down at her own hands, she found that her nails were sharper than the boy's. There was a string of red blotches on the back of her hand and on the inner part of her elbow. The sight triggered a flash of images in her mind.
Pain. Struggling. Boiling fluid. Then, tubes, the sounds of animals screeching, a jumble of kanji on various labels. Finally, desperation.
She looked back towards the boy, they locked gazes. No words were needed as they stood and began to move.
It was an uneasy feeling as they set out, helping each other over obstacles, sometimes slipping when a foot hold was coated in whatever bodily fluid happened to be oozing there. Being barefoot made the experience all the more unpleasant.
The little girl was forced to once again empty her stomach when as she stepped on a rotting skull. The skin slid, making her tiny toes slide into the eye socket with a disgusting squelch. The smell had been the final straw.
She discovered as they traveled that a majority of the bodies were on top of animal remains. The sheer number of human remains were not as numerous as she had first assumed. However, this revelation did little to lift her spirits.
It was disorienting being in almost total darkness with no sense of time. She didn't know how much time passed before they spotted an exit ahead of them. As they moved closer, the number of bodies decreased until they could feel dirt being caked onto their slimy feet. The exit, or maybe entrance, was oval shaped and narrow.
A breeze swept fresh air over them, which was welcomed with a relieved smile.
Then suddenly they arrived. A few feet ahead of them was a cave entrance. Beyond that, moss covered trees.
A sniffling noise from the right caught the two toddler's attention. Two turquoise blue eyes stared at them in a mixture of horror and relief. The little girl's long silver hair dragged the floor behind her; it was matted with blood and dirt. With teary eyes and a shaking finger, she pointed towards the entrance.
The blonde girl looked forward once again and found to her surprise, a large spider web covering the upper half of the entrance. The spider itself was busily working away, oblivious to the three children. The raven-haired boy and blonde girl exchanged a glance and walked over to the silver haired girl, both extending a hand. After a bit of reluctance, she accepted their hands.
Without letting go, the three of them crouched, silently scooted under the web, and stepped out into the fresh air. The trees created a solid covering for them, the sunlight only touching the ground in rays. The ground was a mixture of moss, grass, and rotted vegetation. Various bird calls filled the air. The trees creaked under the pressure of the wind.
The blonde girl let go of her companions' hands and looked around, feeling something she had the distinct feeling she hadn't felt in a long time. Freedom.
xoxoxoxox
The earth steadily sloped downward from the cave, but the ground was even. Traveling over it was less tiring than climbing the terrain inside the cave. The three children didn't look around, too tired to be interested. Too scared to stay still. The plants had dwarfed them since they left the mouth of the cave. Tall ferns made them nearly invisible. As the blonde girl crawled over another tall tree root, she thought about the cave. Looking back, the entrance had been surrounded by ivy and heavy foliage with no hint of the horror that lay inside. For some reason that bothered her.
Then, deciding that she had other things to worry about, the girl shrugged it of and began to follow the boy and silver-haired girl once again.
Time passed, with no sign of another living creature. The temperature steadily dropping along with the sun. Fatigue and hunger began to take their toll on the children, who stumbled more often as their bodies gave out.
When the sun had disappeared behind a distant mountain, and breath became visible, the three fumbled their way under the shelter of a large fern. Curling up together for warmth, despite the filth they were covered in, they fell into a disturbed sleep.
Sometime during the night, the blonde girl woke to her heart pounding.
She swore the sounds she heard were feet surrounding the area. Noises merged together and became drums, the sound becoming painful. She covered them in vain to try to protect them from the noise.
Suddenly there was a scream like that of a women being mangled. Then, silence loomed over and she could hear nothing but the sound of flesh tearing, and smell the stench of blood. It took everything to keep from throwing up. Then, the noise stopped and all that was left was a new sound of something large in the sky approaching her.
xoxoxoxox
A warm, sticky hand on the blonde girl's cheek woke her for the second time. Blinking from the sunlight, she stared up into two sets of eyes, one scarlet and one turquoise. She sat up slowly and looked around her.
The fear from the previous night seemed like a distant dream. After the bird had flown over she had passed out. She smiled reassuringly to her two companions and stood, pushing the fern out of her way.
Without waiting, they began their journey once again. A thick mist clung to the air until the sun was high in the sky. The animal life reappeared as the air warmed. The plant life thinned out until they were able to see more than a few feet. The grass also shortened until it was only at waist height. Then, the trees opened up to a large valley. In the distance, a small village was surrounded by rice paddies.
After a moment of hesitation, the blonde girl started forward. She was stopped almost immediately by the sound of whimpering. Behind her the other girl had her long hair snagged by a bush of thorns. Tears dripped down her face as she tried desperately to free herself. However, every time she tried to pull away it tangled more. Darting forward, the blonde and the boy began to pull on the matted locks.
No progress had been made an hour later. The boy was trying to comfort the blue-eyed girl as she sobbed. The blonde stared at the thorns in disdain, her small brain scrambling for a solution. She barely noticed as the light began to dim. Finally, she looked up as a dark shadow fell over the area. Storm clouds filled the sky, rushing over their heads as if they were in a race to reach the mountain.
The blonde stood and began to scan the ground around them. She paused when her eyes landed on a medium sized stone. Then, she crouched to her knees next to it. It was round in shape, and, unlike others she had seen, it had an almost waxy appearance. She ran her fingers across its surface. Her brain supplied a name: flint.
She stood once again and found another medium stone. Running back as the first drops of rain hit her back, she sat on her knees and brought it above her head. Then, with all her strength she slammed the stones together. Raising it again she repeated the action. Her companions watched her silently, the steady sound of the stones hitting each other filling the air.
Minutes passed by before the first chip appeared. Shifting her angle the blonde continued her task. The flint began to come off in pieces. As her stone slammed into the already broken pieces, it shattered, shards flying into the air, one clipping her chin.
At last, a reasonable sized shard broke away. Breathing heavily, the blonde picked it up in her hand, one of the edges slicing her fingers in the process. She winced and took hold of the opposite side. Then she turned towards the other girl.
Taking a handful of the dirtied silver hair, the blonde began to cut her loose. The rain was coming down quickly now in fat drops. When the girl was finally free, the blonde dropped the shard and turned towards the direction of the village frantically. They needed to reach it before the storm worsened.
The meadow before them stretched downhill and ended in a break of trees. Beyond the trees, rice paddies. Then finally, would be the village itself.
The boy came up to stand next to her, and nodded. They would have to run. The blonde reached around and took the silver-haired girl's hand and ran out into the open.
Tall grass whipped at their arms and faces as well as the raging wind. Rain slammed into their little faces.
By the time they reached the trees, the storm released its wrath. With a vague sense of the village's direction, they stepped forward under the trees.
The canopy above shielded them from the brutal force of the tempest. As the pressed forward the ground beneath their feet became slick and unstable. The trees began to thin and as the trio moved closer, a steep bank appeared before them. Losing her footing, the blonde slid to a stop on the edge of the flooding river. Several feet below her, the gray-brown water raged to the right, taking small bits of debris with it. As her companions, joined her the ground beneath them shuddered.
Their screams were lost to the storm as the bank gave way underneath them plunging their small bodies into the frigid water below.
Whew, this took a bit longer than I thought it would. Obviously this has a much darker tone than my other stories.
I would like to thank my wonderful betas whitewolfgirl and ChristinaAngel! They've been a big help.
I'll do my best to force chapter 2 out of my head soon.