The raven haired girl held on tightly to her mother's hand as they walked down the street from their house. She squinted her bright blue eyes in the morning, winter sunlight. She didn't like it. She especially didn't like visiting her moaning, groaning, aunt she was forced to see once a month.

The visits were made worse by the fact it took hours to get there, and that she and her mother stayed there overnight, meaning that Ava had to sleep on the lumpy, bumpy couch with a scratchy, woollen blanket.

Her beady eyes always stared at her as if she was being stripped down and every flaw on her was on show. It didn’t help that she was her mum’s sister, or that she worked in ‘confidential business’. Her mum was exactly the same with what she worked at. She never told Ava what her job was, let alone where she worked.

The girl looked up at her mother in confusion. Why had she stopped? "Mum?" There was no response from the golden haired woman who stood beside her. The girl tugged on her mums sleeve with ferocity, "Mum!"

Around her, she could hear the screams of children and teenagers. She looked around in a hyped sense of terror to see adults falling to the ground, cars crashing into each other, and blood staining everything. There was a thud, and she looked to where her mother once stood.

"Mum!" the little girl shrieked as her mother lay on the floor, convulsing. She ran to her side, to see blood pooling out of her mother’s eyes, running down the sides of her tanned face. Blue was now not the colour of her eyes, but Scarlett.

"Av-Ava..." the woman choked out through a mouthful of blood, and grabbed the young girls arm, "Get...t-to...the..." choking covered over the woman's voice for a moment, "...h-house..."

"No! I can't leave you!" Ava could hear other people choking around her, but it sounded as if from behind a window. She looked down at her mum with her huge blue eyes, whose tan skin was liquid red, and golden hair now a dark copper colour.

Ava's mother silently reached up to her neck, where a small key was kept on a small, silver chain, "Take...it..." the grip on Ava's arm grew tighter, "St-stay...s-safe..." a sudden stillness took over the mothers body, and her hand slackened on gripping her daughters arm.

Ava's shock, mingled with desperation and confusion, came out in hitched sobs as her mother’s hand fell from her, leaving a huge rust-coloured smear on her nine year old arm. She put her hands on her mum’s chest, and shook her, "Mum?” she shook her again and watched as her mother’s head lolled around, “Mummy? Wake up!" desperation had now grown to hysteria, as she kept on shaking the lifeless body, “Wake up!”

The key.

It glinted in the morning sun, catching Ava's attention, even if for only a second. It was enough to make her reach out and pull it form her dead mother’s throat. Slipping it in her jacket pocket, as her tears, so many of them blocking her vision, finally fell free.

That's when she really saw it. The road around her.

Cars had crashed, bodies had fell, and only the children were left standing, crawling and laying on the ground, but alive. Fires reflected off of a river of blood, and screams, sirens and the sound of collision in every direction.

With one thought in her mind, she left her mother's body behind, and did what she could. She ran.

Chapter One

Ava.

Ava woke with a start, her eyes flying open.

Somehow, dreaming about the day the world went asses up didn't exactly leave her warm in the heart.

A small wailing sound came from the right side of her, and she turned her head in the bed. Of course. The baby. It wasn't hers, obviously. She was only eleven, after all.

She'd found the baby the day her mum had died, laying on the gravel of the roads, a dead woman beside her. She had picked her up, trying to soothe the cries coming from the infant as she ran up the steps to her own house.

She had found the baby boy the next day.

She kept away from the other children her own age or older. The ones who had survived their parents and grandparents deaths.

They had either become rabid, bloodthirsty or, like herself, a hermit, striving to keep the younger ones alive.

Ava flipped back the blanket and swung her legs out of bed. She padded over to the baby girl - more a toddler now - and picked her up out of her cot, rocking her side-to-side to soothe her cries. After a year and a half, Ava had grown used to the constant black smoke in the air from the radiation power plants that had overloaded, and the cries of the very small children she cared for, the youngest being the one she held in her arms now - a girl who she had eventually named Ella - and the oldest being seven years old. There was nobody older than her here.

She didn't count herself as a child anymore. Not after her first kill. The kids who lived with her were her children, and it was her duty to keep them fed and cared for. Eleven of them all together and each one trusted her with their lives. Sometimes, she had to kill other people so that they were safe. It was something she accepted through her early motherhood.

It was a good thing that she took archery as a girl, and had a knife fanatic for a mother. She could shoot a bird from over a hundred metres in the sky, defeat most of the people she encountered in physical combat, and her knife-throwing skills outweighed many of the surviving teenagers.

Alongside the adults, a lot of teenagers had also died, and a portion of young children. Even as she had cried, looking out of the front room window on that first day, through bleary eyes she still saw the bodies. Every person on her street, and many more who had never lived there. Dead. Fallen to the wrath of something not of their control.

Well, the government had been complaining about the population of the Earth. Now their wish had been granted.

A strained smile fought its way onto Ava's lips as she held Ella close, rocking the nightmares away. Yeah, the government had certainly gotten their wish. Ella's fingers had found their way to Ava's key, which hung around her neck as it had around her mothers, and Ava stroked the soft, downy brown hair that was growing at a rapid rate on Ella's head.

A scream sounded outside the house, strained, cracked and desperate, and Ava quickly glanced outside through the slits in the metal burglar prevention sheet, electric, unused now, to see a teenage boy – twelve maybe, possibly thirteen - laying on the road, a mob of children with knives and skewers around him.

She knew this group. The Candy Gang. Their attempt to sound sweet and harmless was greatly futile, as nobody trusted anybody in these days, and everybody knew who they were. For a moment, Ava thought that it was maybe a trick to get her out of the protection of the house – she had heard stories of people who had attempted to help another child in need by leaving the safety of their homes, only for the child to turn on them and kill them in the most torturous of ways –, but the boy looked new, different, out of sorts.

He wasn't a Candy.

Ava wasn't going to help him. It took enough of her strength just to care for the kids, let alone a deranged teenager who would probably end up killing everyone out of a mental fit.

Not happening.

Ava felt little Ella's body grow more relaxed, and her breathing slow down slightly. She was sleeping again. Ava smiled lightly, glad that she was rid of the burden to soothe a crying toddler all night, and gently laid her back in the crib that stood next to another one which held the young boy who was (by Ava’s calculations and guesses) a little older than Ella. Ava had let Kaylee name the boy, and she'd chosen the name of her older brother who had died - Jamie.

Kaylee was six when Ava had taken her in. She'd been running from the Candies - newly formed then - and ran to Ava's house with surprising speed, her red hair flowing behind her like a scarf of silk and tears falling from her brown eyes, streaking her cheeks, stark in contrast against her alabaster skin and filth-drenched clothing.

Ava had been sentimental at the time, already letting in three other children into her home besides Ella and Jamie, and knew she had to do something. She had seen the roads run red from the victims’ blood, and wasn't very willing to see it happen again. Without a thought of doubt, she had pulled back the huge metal slider - no doubt that her mother had been prepared for this kind of thing - , letting the front door open, just long enough and wide enough for Kaylee to run through the opening before slamming it back shut and sliding the huge bar back across the door, wedging it in place by a hole in the wall, just big enough to fit in the metal bar.

It took weeks for Ava to even find out Kaylee's name.

Ava softly stroked Ella's cheek, the turned back to the small, narrow window and looked through the plastic. The screaming had stopped, at last, and she could see the body laying outside the house. There were cuts all over his body, long, thin ones along his lip lines, making his face looks disfigured, a pool of blood seeping out from underneath him, and a deep gash where his heart would have been. Maybe Ava would have believed that his heart was still there, only, as Ava knew well, the Candies often took the hearts of their victims to offer to the 'Gods' they believed in.

The boy in the street was most definitely dead.

She sighed through her nose, turned away from the gory sight, and lay in her bed. She closed her eyes, twiddling the small key through her fingers, and drifted into a dreamless sleep, where she could forget about being an eleven-year-old mother.

---

Light beamed in through the small sliver of window, littering the walls with thin lines, lighting up the room. The walls were covered in peach coloured wallpaper that was peeling at the corners, and over the wallpaper were a multitude of children's drawings.

Ava didn't scold them for drawing, as they had little much to entertain themselves with other than art. The TV didn't work - mainly due to there not being any electricity - the only music they could listen to was the old vinyl records on an old winding turntable that she found in the attic, and they were never allowed outside. No exceptions.

 A rough, brown carpet was nailed to the floor, worn down over the years, first by herself and her mother, then, after the adults’ deaths, the kids’ feet too. The two cots had been put side-by-side together, as Ella's was missing a side, near the door, so as to collect Ella and Jamie quickly if the time called for it.

Both of the toddlers were still sleeping - as was Ava, her long, black hair strewn over her face and bed - when a small group of children appeared in the doorway, opening it slowly. Three boys and a girl, all around the age of four, crept into the room. One boy crept up onto the bed and crawled along until he was sitting next to Ava, whilst the other three tip-toed up to Ava's face, grinning at each other.

The tallest boy, who had sandy hair and grey eyes, nodded to the others, and all at the same time, lunged forwards, landing over Ava, shouting "Rah!"

Ava's eyes flew open, and she heard herself give a shout of shock as her hand snaked around the small blade under her pillow. She looked around her to see four pairs of eyes looking at her, and heard giggles around her. I should be used to this by now, she thought to herself letting go of the knife.

"Time to wake up mummy!" a dark haired boy said with a smile.

Ava laughed, "Because that's possible with you lying on me!" she shook her head, "Come on you lot, off of me." the children rolled over to the left, hitting the wall the bed was pushed up against, then bursting into giggles again, making Ava smile fondly. She sat up and stretched, "Why're you four always up so early? Don't you ever want a lie in?" she looked pointedly at the eldest boy who giggled.

The girl crossed her arms, "Not my fault Finn always wakes me up."

Ava rolled her eyes, "Come on, help me wake them lot up." she barely finished uttering the words when they bounded off of the bed, running for the third bedroom. She shook her head, and headed for the toddlers, who were beginning to stir in their adjoining cots, mumbling out calls of 'mama' and 'mum'.

Stay silent. Stay still. Stay alive.

Those were the three main objectives of Xander's life at the present moment, though, the staying alive part never really went away.

I have to get food for Lily...I have to...

Huddled in the high branches of a tall, thin tree, Xander hid away from the Candy Gang, knife hooked through his belt, and a long, thin spear in the hand that wasn't keeping him held up in the tree.

"Where is he?" "I saw him!" "Chonker’s gonna kill us if we don’t get a heart!" angry whispers between a trio of teens a small way from the tree Xander was hiding in. He gripped the bark harder as he heard the crunch of their boots across the fallen, dead autumn leaves. He couldn’t die. He probably wouldn't mind it if he didn't have his sister to look after, but she was sick, and she couldn't hurt a fly even at the best of times.

 He thought of his sister, young, innocent and fair. Only five years old. She didn't even remember their parents. At night, she would sometimes wake up, screaming of nightmares full of blood and knives and fire. That's what hurt him the most. Not the fact that sometimes there wasn't enough food, not the fact that she had never had friends, but the fact that he could do nothing to stop her nightmares.

One of the Candies growled and kicked the tree, making the branches Xander was holding shake slightly, "The Gods won't be happy! We promised them a fresh heart!"

"And they'll get it! We still have all day to get that heart, Krank." The girl spoke with a slight accent to her Australian one. English or…Irish? 

"Yeah, but Chonker wants us back for the ritual by midday. We aint gonna get a heart in less than an hour Kells, and you know what Chonker does if we don't get a heart."

"Yeah. I do bloody know! Don't fuckin' talk to me like a kid. I'm fifteen, not five." Through the multiple branches, Xander could see the glaring match between two of the group - a girl and a boy - and almost felt like laughing. Even the Candies had weak spots.

“Only just though ‘ent ya?”

“Get the fuck out of my face Krank or I swear to God your heart’s gonna be the one we take back!”

The third, another boy, stepped in and grabbed each by the arm, yanking them away from each other. "Get a fucking grip you two and stop acting like children. Chonker won't do note to you. 'Specially you Kells, not with your condition."

The girl, light haired and tanned, pulled her arm away from him sharply, "Don't be bloody reminding me of that. We all saw what Josiah went through with Spirit."

Xander furrowed his brows in confusion for a moment. Was there something wrong with her?  He quickly shook his head. No, he couldn't worry about her. Not after all the kids the Candies had murdered. As he peered down, he saw the second boy pull the arguing pair away, "Come on. Chonker never said note about the heart being a person's..." his voice became muffled the further the trio went from the tree. Xander sighed silently in relief.
-
Bright midday light shone down on the small cluster of trees, and leaves crunched beneath Xander's feet, bare of course. None of his clothes fit him, and he made Lily wear most of them. The few clothes he did find in the smashed up shops were rarely anything better than a pair of shorts or a netting vest.

A caw sounded to his right, and his head flipped round, his long blonde hair whipping his face, looking into the high trees.

A bird. The spear left his fingertips and flew through the air, puncturing the bird, making it fall to the ground with a cry of pain, then a thud. Glancing around, Xander ran up to the bird, which now lay flightless on the ground.

Kneeling in the soft leaves, he pulled the spear from the bird's body, causing blood to spatter his face. He wiped the spear blade on his oversized jeans that were kept held up by string, and then slipped it through his make-shift belt. The bird was small, but could easily feed both himself and Lily for a few days.

Cracking the bird’s neck - just to make sure it was dead - he slung it into the sports bag that he kept with him when he went hunting. It had been a gift for his eleventh birthday from his father. Even though he knew a lot of people would see a sports bag as a stupid gift, he thought the world of it. Simply because it was one of three things he had left of his dead parents.
He swung the bag over his shoulders, and then ran from the woodland area, dodging trees and bushes as he did.

The streets, once filled with people, were now deserted. Skeletons littered the roads, and cars, now nothing more than metal frames, twisted and crumpled in the windows of old shops and houses. Xander made his deep green eyes avoid every bone by simple memory. The amount of times he had been down this same road, he couldn't even count. And yet, even after all this time, all the rains, the blood still stained the gravel.

Xander weaved his way skilfully through the wrecks, his feet avoiding glass shards and sharp metal. Lily was close, only a few roads away. But still, every time he left her, he was always afraid that a Candy had got her. The sun still felt like a fire on his back, but the only thing he could do was ignore it. If he gave into the pain he’d be captured for sure.

The small house that served as a house and protection for the brother and sister came into view, and Xander’s speed picked up. The house was more of a shack than a house. Crumbling walls, shattered windows and a chimney that wasn’t even safe for a crow to land on. He knew they’d have to leave soon, but for now, he was happy to call the decrepit, falling down house home.

Running across the garden, Xander came to a standstill before the wooden door and rapped on it with his knuckles in a small pattern. He was breathing hard, and when he heard the bolt unlock behind the door and felt it open, he slid inside the house with both ease and relief.

He bolted the door closed just as a pair of arms wrapped around his waist. He put his arms around the little girl that clung to him and pulled her close. Xander bent down and kissed Lily’s golden head, then picked her up and walked down the hall with her as she began to cough. “Hey baby girl, how’re you?”

The coughs slightly subsided, and she answered, “’M okay. Tabby won’t wake up though…” Lily rested her head against Xander’s shoulder, and played with the string of his bag between her fingers.

Xander sighed. If Tabby – a cat they had had since before their parents had died – wasn’t waking up, she was probably dead. Yay, he thought, resigned. “’I’ll check on her soon poppet, but let’s sort out this bird first, okay?”

“Bird?” Lily asked, excitement in her voice.

“Mhm. I think it’s a duck.” He pulled off his bag and dropped it onto the kitchen counter top.

“Ooh, I like duck!” Lily’s small mouth widened into a sweet smile.

“You like everything.” He put Lily on the counter top, then opened the bag and pulled out the bird.

Lily shrugged, “Not everything. I don’t like Brussels …”

Xander tapped Lily’s nose, “Can’t blame you for that buttercup.” Then both he and Lily broke out into giggles.