A little huff left the woman's lips as she lowered herself the last little way down the ledge, landing herself deeply in the little pile of snow that had built up there, sinking down just enough to have her wish she had worn something a little more substantial than sneakers. At least she had thought to grab a coat in all the chaos, the pathetic little attempt at finding a normalcy in things which she was more than glad that she had, as the air was just bitter enough to be nipping at her skin. It was the sort of weather that Mia would be far more happy with being curled up indoors with a nice cup of tea and a good book - whether she was reading it or Ethan was reading it to her - as a cosy fire crackled in the fireplace, but unfortunately it seemed that was not a luxury she was to be afforded at that moment.
Of course it wasn't. Why would she have ever thought that things would ever be easy for her?
She bit back a grumble, one that would not necessarily be counterproductive but also would not do all that much to actually help her situation and, taking a mighty sigh, finally took a moment to look about where she had wound up.
It did not need any real stretching of her imagination to come to the conclusion that it was not a good place to stumble into. Buildings that had seemed to have been once been perfectly comfortable houses had been reduced to a wrecked shell of what had once been. As she passed them by, she was not at all reassured by the discovery of a great many marks on the walls that seemed a great deal closer to claw marks than something that could have been passed off as some strange force of nature. Mia was quite content with never having to become acquainted with whatever the claws that had caused the scratch marks belonged to, and so she moved quickly, unable to shake the strangest sensation that she was being watched.
When the feeling of being watched grew past the point where she could just brush it off as her imagination playing tricks on her because she was stressed, she finally dared to slow a little to look about for any possible cause for this. The only living creature within sight was a crow, the bird presently perched on the roof of one of the ruined buildings and watching her with the sort of specific smugness that it seemed only birds were truly capable of.
"Oh, shoo, won't you?" the woman said to the bird, feeling a little foolish about it but wanting to, if anything, break the eerie silence for even just a single moment, "I'm sure you don't want to be out here any more than I do."
Funnily enough, the crow actually did reply to her. Or at least it replied as best a bird could reply. It let out a single caw, wings stretched wide as if it was planning on flying off before simply ruffling its feathers and settling itself back down again, head cocked to one side as it resumed its task of watching the woman again.
Mia, in turn, let out a nervous little giggle at this. It wasn't that she found any particular humour in the situation, but of all the releases she could do, this was certainly the least likely to lead to something worse, and there was no time for her to get caught up in her emotions. No, she needed to keep a level head, find her child then get the ever-living hell out of there as soon as she was capable of.
Evidently it was not quite so easy to keep a level head, or any head at all in the Village as it should have been.
No sooner had she ducked around the corner that seemed most likely to lead her further into the village, having decided there was nothing to be gained skulking about the outskirts indefinitely, did she notice a splattering of blood on the ground, a royal crimson against the white of the otherwise untouched snow. It was not until she took a moment, extended only because she really was not sure if she actually wanted to have an answer, to locate the source of this blood did she let out a little 'oh'. The blood was not human, for what little relief that could offer her, but rather that of a goat. Or several goats. Or, more specifically again, several parts of several goats. Strung up from the trees was a trip of severed goat heads, some fresh enough to still have dripped blood after the most recent snowfall, some old enough to have drawn the few flies that were still willing to go out in the cold. The closer she got to the macabre menagerie the more she could smell the corpses too, and they were far from smelling pleasant, and so she hid her nose and mouth in the sleeve of her coat to try and get at least a little bit of relief from this sensory onslaught.
When nothing stood out to her as being particularly significant beyond the threshold of goat heads, she decided to bite the metaphoric bullet and approach the nearest house that seemed to be in an acceptable condition. She paused for just a moment as she approached, listening for any possible signs that something was amiss, and only when she was sure that things were as well as they could be, she knocked on the door. Well, she tried to knock on the door, after the first knock the door swung open with a little squeak of the hinges that made her wince a little.
"Hello?" called she, not feeling right about just straight up wandering into the house unannounced, "Is anyone here? There was an accident and-"
"Hush up now, little missy!" came the answer to her question, the speaker, an old man that had hidden himself away behind the curtain to the house's store room, peered out cautiously before he waved her over to where he lurked, "Did anyone see you come in?"
"Anyone?" Mia repeated, approaching the man while remaining at a cautious distance. He seemed, from what she gathered, to be extremely paranoid and she certainly did not want to do anything that would cause him to lash out at her. "No, you're the first person I've seen since I got here."
"Person?" the man scoffed, "I ain't talking about any-" He fell silence as a strange, pained howl broke through the unnatural silence. His eyes stretched wide, darting about the area as if the very devil themself was going to appear before him, "They're coming! Are you armed? Tell me you've got a gun?"
"A gun?" she once more echoed the man, "No, I don't. Whose coming? Sir, are you in danger?"
"Miranda guide me," he hissed under his breath, taking a moment to fumble behind him, the franticness of this certainly not putting Mia's mind at ease, "You know how to use one?" As he spoke this, he shoved a old, worn gun into the woman's hands before hurrying off to try and secure one of the windows.
"Of course, but why do I-"
Her question was answered before she had even been given the chance to fully finish asking it. One moment her newfound companion was struggling with the fruitless task of trying to keep the window shut, the next he was being dragged right through it. The sheer human terror in the man's scream was enough to cause her to cringe raising the gun up with the intention of trying to help, but it seemed that whatever it had been was far too quick, the man and his assailant quickly vanishing from sight.
"Get the hell outta here!" shouted he, and she did not need to be asked twice.
Not giving herself the chance to question exactly what was happening - if she was able to escape with her life there would be plenty of time to question things when she was safe and well away from there - she broke into a run, practically throwing herself out the door just as the wall she had been near came tumbling down. Things were not all that much better outside. In fact, they were a great deal worse.
Everything had been almost unnaturally still when she had arrived, and yet it had managed to descend to veritable bedlam. Creatures that seemed so terribly close to human for something that she could tell was not at all human, the closest closest any of them got to being human human landed them just a little left of the fact. She hadn't wanted to see the source of the claw marks, but in the partial lighting she could see not just bloody claws but also fangs flashing with a deadly intent. Not wanting to find herself on the the business end of either, she ran.
She did not know where she was running to, but running seemed like a great deal better of a plan than standing there like a sitting duck. Even as those monsters who were closest to her noticed her escape, she managed to duck out of the way of their swipes in the nick of time. One holding a mace had gotten dangerously close to her face, which she thought with significantly more clarity than she gave her actions was not very fair at all. She caught sight of a hole in the foundations of a nearby building and, with no other real option being presented to her in that moment, she scrambled her way into the hole.
Luck seemed to have been on her side in that moment, likely feeling guilty for having so royally screwed her over for the rest of the day, as she found herself alone in the dark. Not wanting to push that, she fought the urge to shine her phone's torch about to make sure everything really was as empty as she thought, and instead scurried into the far corner of the space. She presumed, as she huddled herself into a ball to make herself as small as she could, that she had entered into the basement of the building. A building that had hopefully already been thoroughly torn through so it would be presumed empty. This assumption did not have a particularly pleasant source, as she was only partly right about being alone.
Mia was the only living being there, yes, but the former owner of the house was far too close to her for comfort. Former, unfortunately, in several different ways as his throat had been torn clear away from the rest of his body. A merciful end, she hoped with the sort of hope that seemed in any other context far too morbid to ever be considered genuinely hopeful. Much to even her own surprise, she leaned over to the body, shutting his eyes to give him a little more dignity in his death, and also so she did not have to have his wide, lifeless eyes as a reminder of what could easily befall her if she was not careful.
The smell of smoke rolled in through the little hole that she had crawled through to get into her little hiding space, and so she quickly buried her face in her shirt to try and block at least some of it. If she was to cough and alert the creatures to her being there, she was sure that a second body would find its place of eternal rest in the basement of a house in a village she had never been before, and she would be damned if she let something so pathetic happen. No, she was determined to not meet her end there, not after everything she had already lived through.
It would be ironic, however, if she did end up dying in some dank old basement considering it had only been three years since she had been freed from the Baker's own dank old basement. She really did spend a lot of time in dank old basements that she wildly did not want to have to be in, didn't she?
After what could have either been an eternity or a matter of minutes - at that time both felt equally real - Mia finally noticed that things had fallen silent. Silent as the grave, one might think and that would not be necessarily wrong in light of the circumstances.
"Are they gone?" asked she, directing this to the corpse that was her present unfortunate companion. Of course, she was not expecting a reply to this nor did she get one.
Gritting her teeth, steeling her nerves just in case she was about to make an absolutely terrible decision, she finally stirred. When a cautious peering out of the hole suggested that the area was empty, she let the breath she was holding escape as she crawled her way out again. Well, she managed to crawl half of the way out the hole at least before she was informed that this was a terrible, very bad and altogether not good idea.
In the formerly empty space before her, a creature landed, far larger than any of those she had previously run from. There was something oddly noble about this beast, for while his clothes were tattered, beard - or perhaps fur, or perhaps a combination of both - was shaggy, he held himself with a pride of disposition. It was not the prideful disposition he held that caused the woman's heart to skip several beats, but rather the significantly less metaphorical battle hammer he wielded. A battle hammer that, if the blood stains upon it was anything to go by, he knew exactly how to use.
She had expected the hammer to be swung down upon her, finally killing her despite her best efforts to keep struggling along, but it never came. The creature crouched down to her level, sniffing at her as she remained as frozen as humanly possible, trying to not push the creature to do the inevitable. He tilted his head to the side, still far too close to her for any sort of comfort, his breath more than strong enough to blow her hair back a little.
To her great surprise, however, the beast straightened himself back up, let out an almighty roar - one that she had heard before, just before the first living human she had seen since she arrived was killed - and bounded off again, followed by the smaller but still fearsome creatures. She hadn't realised they were there, and so seeing them swarming off out of hidden places made her realise once again just how close she had been to a violent death.
Only after she was completely sure that every single one of the creatures was gone did she rise to her feet. She took a moment to brush herself down, checking for any injuries that she might have sustained that she didn't notice, but when she was sure she came away unharmed, she dared to move. Trying very hard to not acknowledge the smouldering buildings or the flaming arrows that had caused this, or the blood that was rapidly cooling on the snow, she walked on. She only stopped briefly when she heard a voice crackling from a radio in a destroyed building.
"Hello? Hello, if there are any survivors out there, come to my - to Luiza's house near the fields."
Mia missed the very tail end of the transmission as she saw a figure, hunched over and moving at a pace that suggested old age, and so broke into a run to try and meet up with the person. She hoped it was a person, but even if it was one of the creatures they were moving just slow enough to suggest she could outrun it if she absolutely had to. As she neared she could just begin to hear the old woman's rambling.
"In life and in death, we give glory..."