Tino was running as fast as his short legs would allow him. He was ripping through shrubs and lilac bushes, jumping over fences like a cat, and panting like a dog in the middle of a heat wave. But, despite his legs trying to give out underneath him, he continued running. Not because he wanted to run, but because he couldn't stop.
He was running through suburbia gone to hell.
Tino was running from his neighbours, his friends, and worst of all, his family. But they weren't really his family anymore, no. His family would never eat the family pet while it was still squirming and yelping on the ground, his family would certainly never feast on the neighbourhood children like they were prized pigs.
His family would never chase him down with the intent to kill.
Tino hadn't even realized the tears streaming down his face until he could taste the salt on his tongue.
It was so strange, the sky was blue and the day was pleasantly warm, a soft breeze tousled his hair, and the neighbourhood looked just like it had every other day. If one took away the crying and incessant screaming, there would be no indication that anything was wrong at all.
When he finally deemed it safe enough he came to halt behind a tall oak tree, taking refuge in the shade under its massive sprawling limbs. He looked around frantically as he took in deep, heaving breaths of air, being sure that there was nothing still on his tail.
He shook his head in silent resignation, taking in the scene around him. Nothing had changed; it was still the same quaint suburban neighbourhood.
It was only when he heard the loud, booming cry that he realized exactly where he was. He was in front of the house of the small child he used to babysit, Peter, was the small boys' name. He was just a little child, give or take 14 to 18 months old.
Hearing Peter's crying got Tino so on edge that his heart – which had just started slowing to a normal pace – began to pump even faster in his chest than what it was when he was running. The thing that got to Tino the most about the crying was the fact that the cries of the child were not the standard whining cry, but the cries of absolute distress and panic.
Tino couldn't even fathom the idea of leaving a small child behind to suffer a fate such as that of the neighbour's children.
He swallowed hard around a thick lump in his throat, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes with the flats of his hands in an attempt to ready himself. He wasn't thinking about saving himself anymore, he was thinking about the child inside the house. Without another second to spare Tino heaved himself over the white picket fence surrounding the Kirkland house and landed on the warm green grass on the other side with a huff.
Tino looked up at the large adjacent house with a critical eye, but it looked just as pristine and happy as it always did to him. But of course, judging a book by its cover was clearly not the right thing to do, seeing as that kind of judgement was the reason why he walked into his house even after seeing the front porch drowning in blood.
Tino swallowed thickly.
He was beginning to make up excuses for himself, trying to find a reason to not have to go to the door. Things like, "maybe he was just being fussy," or, "maybe there's nothing wrong on this side of the neighbourhood."
It was only when another loud cry rang through the backyard that Tino remembered why he had thrown himself over the fence in the first place. Everything was turning sour in the area, and Peter was stuck in his house where something was clearly wrong. The neighbourhood was far too quiet for there to not be something wrong. At this point, the sounds of sirens and alarms should have been ringing through the streets.
Instead of taking a few cautious steps forward, Tino ran toward the back door. He realized that if there was something wrong, or something happening to Peter, one second could be enough time for the child to meet his demise, and it would all be on Tino's head.
He did not want to be the negligent party in a child's death.
Tino opened the back door without even thinking of the possible consequences, of what could be waiting for him on the other side. He didn't even bother looking in through the window to see any possible threats. He didn't even grab for any sort of weapon to protect himself with. Tino was so scared and enraged that the only thing he could think about was grabbing Peter and running away with him. He could find a police station, tell them what was happening in town, and return baby Peter to the Kirkland's.
When Tino stepped into the house he didn't even bother sparing the grotesquely mangled cat on the ground a second glance. He took to the large staircase that he was so used to walking up, and leveraged himself on the bannister while he took the stairs three at a time. And when he reached the top floor he ran around corners with blinding speed, following his memory to the nursery, where he hoped Peter would still be resting.
When Tino whipped around the corner to the nursery, however, he was finally forced to stop dead in his tracks; because, at the door of the nursery stood the Kirkland's. Both mother and father clawing at the door like sick animals. Their fingernails were lifted and bloodied from scratching at the door for so long, and the wood beneath their fingers was worn and close to breaking.
On the other side of the door Tino could hear Peter's cries.
Tino took one step back, then another, until his shoulders collided with the adjacent wall. The Kirkland's looked the same as they always had. Victoria Kirkland and Albert Kirkland looked like the same emotionless business tycoons as they always had. Tino couldn't see anything wrong other than the cloudy, glazed over look of their eyes.
They hadn't seen Tino yet, still too distracted by the sound of the crying baby, their crying baby, on the other side of the door; the baby that they were, most likely, going to tear apart when they finally managed to scratch their way through.
Peter continued with his loud, booming cries on the other side of the door. And if Tino didn't act fast, those cries would cease forever.
Tino clenched his fists as he watched the Kirkland's scraping at the door with their bare hands, trying to figure out how he would take the two of them.
From what he had witnessed when he arrived home from his job, his older brother was having no trouble holding down the next door neighbour and eating him alive, so it was clear that whatever they had hadn't made them any weaker. Tino was small for a young man, and he wasn't very powerful at that, so he had to calculate his next few moves carefully or he could end up being the main course for the Kirkland's.
Tino looked around himself for anything that he could use as a weapon, but found nothing other than a small ceramic vase. He didn't want to risk moving anymore in fear that he would alert the Kirkland's, so he decided to make do with what he had.
He wasn't aiming to kill, just to knock them out or stun them to give him enough time to retrieve the baby. He hoped that whatever illness the area had succumbed to wasn't spreading to other parts of the city.
He tried to force himself to believe that it was something curable.
Tino tightened and relaxed his fingers around the vase as he judged what way would be the best way to attack the Kirkland's. He was just about to calmly walk forward and strike one of them when a loud snap rang through the air. It was so loud that they baby stopped crying, and made Tino stop in his tracks.
The Kirkland's broke the door down, with their combined weight and the deep scratches in the door; it could no longer sustain itself.
Instead of taking the calm and calculated route like he wanted to, Tino went into a frenzy. He didn't have the liberty of taking his time anymore; Peter Kirkland's life was depending on his actions.
Tino let out a loud yell to distract the Kirkland's, hoping that being a bigger prey, they would be more interested in trying to make a meal out of him. They subsequently stopped in the middle of their trek like Tino had hoped, and turned to look at him. A loud, pleased sounding noise rang forth from Victoria Kirkland, followed by Albert's own hum of approval.
They were taking the bait.
Tino backed up and held the vase – clenched between both hands – like he was getting ready to hit a baseball.
It was Victoria Kirkland that he hit first; he would remember it as clear as day for the rest of his life. The sound of the vase shattering to pieces, followed by the loud crack of her head as it hit the ceramic floor. He remembers staring down at her with a panic-stricken gaze, wondering if he had killed her or not. He had been so disturbed by what he had done that he wasn't paying attention to Albert Kirkland only a few feet away from him.
He only noticed him when Albert wrapped his hands around his throat and throttled him to the ground.
Tino let out a choked off sound when Albert opened his mouth, revealing his bleached white teeth, as he prepared to take a chunk out of Tino. Tino cried out, his free hand frantically scouring the ground for a broken piece of ceramic. When his hand happened upon a piece, he didn't even have time to think about what he was doing before he plunged the broken shard into Albert Kirkland's left eye.
Albert Kirkland stopped moving, and so did Tino.
He just killed Albert Kirkland; he just stabbed him in the eye with a piece of ceramic glass. The cold body lying dead on top of Tino was a man he used to babysit for, a man who used to pat his head and ask him how school was doing. Albert Kirkland was a man who loved his two children – albeit in a strange way – and probably had no control over his actions.
Tino wanted to cry, to scream, but he needed to get Peter and bring him to a safe place, and even if he did choose to cry, the weight of Albert Kirkland would not have allowed him to do so.
Tino shoved the lifeless body of the man to the side of him, quickly standing up and brushing himself off. He looked back at the damage he had done, saying a silent prayer for the Kirkland's, and for their older son who was, hopefully, not in a similar situation.
Tino had a hard time believing that after what he had seen, though.
Tino trudged toward the nursery, rubbing at the bruising flesh on his neck. His legs felt weaker than what they had even after he had run. His face felt damp and clammy, and his clothes clung to him like they were covered in syrup. Tino tried not to think about what was covering him, he tried to tell himself that it was sweat covering him.
Despite his best efforts, as soon as Tino reached the nursery he felt the attack coming on. The smell of fresh blood and the idea of what he had just done finally becoming too much for him to ignore. Tino leaned forward, holding himself up straight with his hands on his knees, trying to think of something other than what was going on. But, in the end, he found himself unable to hold back his lunch from the afternoon, and expelled all of the contents of his stomach on the carpet.
This was just the beginning of his attack.
Just as Tino was starting to feel the asthma attack starting to pull at his lungs, a sound stopped him, but it was only putting off the inevitable attack. From the nursery, Peter Kirkland began cooing softly, reacting to seeing Tino's face peeking around the broken door frame.
Tino's face lit up upon seeing Peter safe and sound. Peter's pudgy cheeks turned up in a large, adoring smile.
"Peter," Tino walked toward the small crib, stooping over the crib to look in at the small baby who was currently reacting to having his name called by Tino. He gurgled and let out a small snort, his little arms reaching up for Tino.
Tino picked the baby out of the crib and examined him for any wounds; he looked fine and sounded fine as well.
Tino brought the baby to face level. "Hi, Peter, I haven't seen you in a while!"
Peter only cooed and grabbed Tino's nose in response.
Tino smiled, finally his heart was beginning to calm its frantic pace, and finally the smell of fresh blood stopped assaulting his nose. Finding Peter had made him feel so much better than he had almost completely forgotten about being covered in blood. It almost completely made him forget the increasing tightness in his lungs.
He should have known.
Tino's smile fell even though he tried to keep his spirits up for the oblivious baby, "we need to go, Peter, I need to get you somewhere safe before I collapse."
Berwald was never someone that used words as a way of expression, rather he chose to use facial expressions and small hums to let people know what he was thinking or feeling. It was not because he was shy or anxious that he never spoke, but because he could never think of anything to say. He could never get his voice out.
Even now, in this situation, Berwald could think of nothing to say. He got back to his apartment to realize that the entire complex was taken over by denizens of people hopped up on something that caused extreme violence. They were so wild and off the wall that Berwald could barely hold his own against some of the smaller ones.
He was also almost certain he had seen blood on a few of them.
He chose to leave the place, deciding that if he drove around for a while the police would probably have the place cleared out by the time he came back. What he didn't expect was the whole street to be filled with those strange people.
"There must be another drug legalization protest going on," Berwald thought to himself, but at the same time flicking the automatic locks on the doors. There was no danger in taking precautions; there had been a number of instances when innocent bystanders were taken down by angry protesters. Berwald didn't particularly fancy being a statistic in some stupid protest.
Berwald started slowly advancing on them, frowning at how they were so oddly scattered. Usually groups of protesters would clump together and scream and shout with signs held over their heads. There was none of that going on.
Berwald's frown deepened when some of them started noticing him, but instead of ignoring him or shouting something, they started lugging themselves toward the car.
Berwald honked the horn when two of them walked out in front of the car and started walking toward it. Berwald had to bring the car to a near halt at this point. He didn't want to hit anyone, but he wanted them to think that he would and revved the engine.
Still no reaction, in fact, more of them started toward the car.
Berwald laid on the horn.
He started rolling down the window to tell them to get away from his car, and considering he was not a person for confrontation, this meant something was wrong. What caused the concern was that he saw something in their eyes, or rather, didn't see something in their eyes.
But, when the window was halfway rolled down, and Berwald was about to open his mouth, a hand reached through the window at him. Berwald leaned away from the hand, trying to open his mouth and speak but nothing was coming out.
This was the exact situation that his speech therapist spoke with him about, the situation where he would get so mad that he really couldn't find the voice to speak up.
Berwald instead started rolling up the window so the person reaching their arm in at him would get the hint that he wasn't playing. But they didn't catch the hint, even when the power window was forcing their arm and crushing it against the interior plastic.
Berwald pulled his hand off of the power window button and instead pressed his foot down on the gas. Surely the people surrounding his car wouldn't be foolish enough to choose to stand in the way of the moving vehicle.
Berwald had been wrong in stranger situations, but this one took the cake. Instead of moving out of the way for the car, they began trying to climb onto the car. As if climbing the car would help them escape being hit. They were acting as if they were completely mindless.
Berwald brought the car to a halt again, thinking that a lawsuit was the last thing he needed in his quaint little factory life. He wanted to say something to them, wanted to at least tell the man with the arm in his window to move, but he couldn't find the voice. Instead he sat there with his mouth hanging agape and no sound coming out but short little choked sounds.
He pounded one fist on the glass and managed his best glare, but still, the arm remained inside his car, reaching for his face.
It was only then that Berwald realized that the situation he was in was far more than just angry protesters hyped up on some sort of new drug, and that if it was drugs, it was very intense ones. There was blood under the nails of the hand reaching in through his window, some of it was old blood and some of it was new, suggesting there had been more than one offense. In fact, as Berwald started looking through the windows in his car at the other people surrounding him, he realized most of them were stained with blood. Some only had light spatters of blood on them, but others were covered from head to toe.
A few of them even had blood around his mouth…
Berwald stepped on the gas, no longer concerned about the well-being of the people surrounding his car. Surely they weren't concerned about his; they were trying to kill him.
The car didn't move, it only made a light humming noise in protest to the gas pedal being pressed down on.
In his moment of realization Berwald had let too many of them surround his car; he would never be able to drive through them all. His little Volkswagen could barely hold a large load of groceries, let alone half of his neighbourhood.
As the numbers increased Berwald heard several tension snaps from behind him that he knew didn't mean anything good. When he turned around, he saw that the back window of his car was about to collapse from the weight of everyone trying to force their way in.
He would have been better off running from them.
That was when it occurred to Berwald that he could run away.
Berwald looked up at the power sunroof on his car, glad that none of the protesters had decided to try to climb through that. He was lucky that they seemed to be too simple to think about anything other than the task at hand. If Berwald was fast enough, he could open the window, climb through, and hopefully jump over the crowd.
At this point Berwald really wished he had accepted the gun his father had tried to force on him for his birthday.
Berwald grabbed the power window button and forced it down, biting his bottom lip in hopes that none of them would realize what he was doing. When he deemed the window too slow, he grabbed the roof and snapped it off.
There was no point in worrying about what happened to his car anymore, and he could use the window to protect himself.
Berwald gathered his bearings and stood up on his seat, his towering height allowed him to climb onto the roof with relative ease.
As soon as the protesters saw Berwald on the roof, though, they grew ravenous. Instead of just casually trying to get at him, they all ripped at each other, through each other, to get to Berwald. The sounds they made had him cringing as well, as they got increasingly louder when they could finally see him fully.
They just couldn't manage to climb the car.
He observed the crowd, trying to judge how many of them had gathered around and where his best vantage point would be. But, as he was scanning, he saw something lying on the road that made his eyes widen and his head spin.
On the side of the road there lay a small boy with white blonde hair, surrounded in a pool of what Berwald was sure was his own blood. In his hands he clutched a small stuffed puffin, its white face soaking in the blood of the child.
Berwald could only look in horror at the lifeless child on the road.
This had proved his theory that these were not just protesters, there was something severely wrong with these people.
Berwald looked away from the child and began scanning the crowd again. There was no point in dwelling on it; there was nothing he could do now for the dead child, he could only wish that he had gotten there sooner.
Berwald jumped from the car when he saw a path that was fairly open. But he landed on his ankle with a painful crack and fell to his knees with a shout.
Finally, his voice.
Berwald clutched at the ankle, it wasn't broken, but he had definitely bruised it with the jump.
The crowd of cannibals, as Berwald had chosen to call them after seeing the child, were already steadily advancing on him.
He tried to get up once, but put too much pressure on his ankle and fell to the ground with a pained and frustrated shout.
He held the glass of the sunroof out in front of him as one of them tried to fall into him. It didn't react, only opened its mouth and put on display a pearly set of white teeth with flesh wedged in the gaps. It was trying to bite him.
This finally got Berwald on his feet, and despite the blinding pain, he began running away from the scene.
He was being chased down by a group of insane people, all coming after him for the sole purpose of eating his flesh. He felt his heart race at the idea, and decided not to look behind him and focus instead on the task at hand. He needed to find refuge, or at least find a police station where he could tell them what was happening.
Berwald had been running for so long, he hadn't even realized the air beginning to cool down. It was close to sunset, and Berwald was completely lost. He had been in such a panic, for the first hour he was running without any direction.
He halted under the shade of a large oak tree; his pursuers had long since stopped following him. With his back against the tree, he felt his eyes trying to slip shut, the silence was so peaceful.
The loud sound of a baby bawling pierced through the thick veil of silence, causing Berwald to look toward the house behind the fence to his left. But the crying wasn't the only thing that got Berwald's attention, it was a sound he had heard coming from his mother all too many times.
The sound of his mother wheezing and gasping for air.
Berwald stood on the other side of the fence, looking at it as if it would become transparent and reveal to him what was on the other side. When that didn't happen, Berwald grabbed the top of the fence and pulled himself up to see over.
He looked around the yard yet he could see nothing, but he could still hear the sound of the child crying and the horrific wheezing, and it was clearly coming from somewhere outside.
Berwald's brows knit together in confusion as he scanned the backyard over and over, but finally it occurred to him.
Berwald looked up the tree he was currently standing under, and realized the sound was coming from directly above him. The sound was coming from a small tree house.
He dropped himself down from the fence, careful to avoid landing on his inflamed ankle, and looked around the tree for a ladder.
The ladder was really small, so small only a child could really climb it properly. He assumed immediately that it was a child up there with his small brother, and considering the entire neighbourhood was covered in blood, they were probably hiding. Berwald didn't want to scare them, especially the one having the asthma attack as it would only make it worse, so he tried to announce himself.
He opened his mouth, but his voice wouldn't come out.
He cursed himself, eyes glaring down at his shoes as if getting angry at himself would help him find his voice again.
"Come on, I need this,"he thought to himself, clenching his hands into tight fists at his side.
"Are you OK?"
Finally, his voice; Berwald was so pleased with himself he could almost smile and laugh, his speech therapist would have been proud of him working under pressure. He wouldn't allow himself to get excited thought, it wouldn't be good for the situation he was in.
The wheezing voice became louder, but it wasn't from being scared, it was the asthmatic trying to speak. Nothing was coming out, though, but Berwald knew they were trying to ask for help.
"Stay," it was only one word, and Berwald wished he could say more, but it was better than nothing.
Berwald used the small grips on the ladder to bring himself up, but being as tall as he was, he could have easily grabbed a branch and pulled himself into the small fort in one go.
On the last grip, Berwald ducked his head as much as possible to fit into the insanely small fort, the weight from his own body was hurting his own ankle but he chose not to say anything about it. He needed to help whoever was hurt.
Berwald looked up and was shocked, the person wheezing and gasping was not a small child like he thought. The person he was seeing was almost as small as a child, but they were clearly much older, a high school senior, or a college freshman at the most. He was holding a small baby and rocking it back and forth, wheezing so much that his face was pale, he was near passing out.
Berwald reached his hands out, forcing himself to say, "give me." It came out sounding more demanding and intimidating than he wanted, but the boy was about to drop the baby and possibly hurt it, albeit unintentionally, and Berwald didn't want to see that happen.
The boy only looked at him like he was insane, and clutched the baby tighter.
"You will hurt the baby," Berwald said, arms still outstretched.
The boy looked down at the baby in his arms, eyes scanning Berwald carefully. The boy opened his mouth to say something but only a loud wheeze escaped.
He fell back but Berwald was fast enough to grab the baby from his arms.
The boy crashed into the wall, his breath coming in even shorter bursts than before. He was clutching at his throat and squeezing his eyes shut, no good, he was beginning to panic.
Berwald dragged himself up next to the boy and without a word, pulled the boy forward with one arm and pressed his chest to his own. He settled the baby in his outstretched lap where it finally stopped crying so much, settling down to soft cries and murmurs.
The boy seemed frightened by Berwald's actions at first, pushing at his chest weakly. He stopped quickly though, when he realized that Berwald's intentions were not bad.
Berwald sat there with the boy for a long time, so long that the sun had completely set before his breathing began to settle. For a while, Berwald was afraid that the boy's panic attack had gotten so severe that he wouldn't be able to come out of it without being hospitalized, but he relaxed in time. He only wondered why the boy didn't have his inhaler on him, considering it was something so important one would think it would be the first thing picked up; especially in such a stress inducing situation.
Berwald decided to ask those questions at a later time, and looked down to check on the boy, only to realize that he had fallen fast asleep along with the small baby.
Sorry for the long wait, it's exam week and I haven't had much time to myself.
A/N: I named the Kirkland's after British royalty; Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, to be exact.
A/N: I'm sorry for how boring these chapters seem, I'm just trying to get all of their back stories in order before I move on to the real plot. I promise after the next chapter it will start getting better, just hang in there!