Courageous

Prologue - The start of it all

She was tired, so tired, but she had to keep going, her mum would be worried sick. She was running as fast as she could. It was a mistake to stay late at school. She was only thirteen but she was already overloaded with homework, and she was struggling to keep up so she had attended a group tutoring session without telling her parents. Only now did she remember her mum wanted her home early after the recent kidnappings of children in her neighborhood. Her backpack was bumping up and down on her shoulders, which were getting sore. As she ran the familiar scent of rubbish floated up to her and she knew she was close. Sasha ran the last couple of blocks before slowing down at the door. Her heart started pounding when she saw the door slightly ajar. Stumbling quietly through the door, panting a little, she saw that the contents of the apartment buildings lobby had been strewn across the floor. Plants lay sideways with their soil spread over the floor. Chairs and tables looked like they had been kicked and battered with their legs snapped off. Sasha's heart began thudding again as her eyes followed the dirty footprint leading up the stairs to her family's floor. She walked up the stairs, eyes on the muddy footprint and found more plants and chairs upended and broken on the second floor.

As the walked along the corridor she noticed that there seemed to be more than one set of footprints now, all still heading towards her childhood home. Sasha turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. From where she stood she could see the apartment door closed, and blood was seeping from underneath. She reached into her backpack she pulled out her swiss army knife.Her parents had given it to her in case anything was to happen. She approached the door, hands shaking a little from fear of what she would find inside. Surely the attacks would be on the street not in people's homes. She knew her parents had done some shady stuff to keep from going bankrupt, but she never thought that they would've made enemies from it. Her mind raced back to when she had come home from school one afternoon and saw her Mum and Dad arguing loudly with a tall woman with long red hair. Her hands drifted to her hair as she remembered. They had been startled when she had walking in, and the talking had silenced. Her parents had told her to go to her room. She tried to protest but her dad had a mean tone in his voice and her mum looked pale and scared. So she had obliged. She realised now that the red-headed woman was probably a warning, meant to be not as threating as a man. She cringed to think that women were weaker than men. She personally had been the fittest in her year including the boys because she had worked hard in gym class for years. She valued her strength.

She tucked her knife into her pocket, reached for the doorknob and turned. What she saw was the subject of her nightmares for the next 6 years. The blood pooling at the front door was from a man lying a few feet away. He had a knife in his hand and she picked it up and stashed it away. It might come in handy. Her parents had obviously put up a fight. She didn't have a large house and her family's few belonging where everywhere. Her house looked as if a bomb hit in and it might've judging by the singed curtains and blackened carpet. The dining room table and chairs lay broken and on their sides. Her comfy couch, where she had spent hours huddled with her parents watching T.V, was ripped and dirtied. The T.V itself was smashed and bits of it were scattered amongst other rubbish. As she turned she called out her parents names. She didn't have any sibling so her Mum and Dad were her number one concern. There was no answer. She scrambled past the broken chairs into her Mum and Dads bedroom. Nothing but broken furniture.

She didn't know what to do. She couldn't stay here. They might come back again. She couldn't risk it. She scoured her room along with the kitchen and her parents safe, which turned up just about nothing, for supplies. She emptied her books and papers out of her backpack and stuffed the supplies inside. Then, as quickly as she had entered, she left. Out of her house, her apartment block and her suburb. She had to getaway. She had to find a safe refuge when she could start looking for her parents.

It was past midnight when she stopped exhausted from walking so far and collapsed at a bus shelter. Sasha knew it wasn't the safest place to stay but if she kept walking she might end up getting picked up by social services and she couldn't risk that happening. She sat down on the bench and thrust a small blanket over herself.

She whirled around after thinking she heard something. After not finding anything, she shook her head at herself for being so jumpy. She turned back to her makeshift bed to find a black clad figure grab her and cover her mouth with a cloth. The last thing she remembered was struggling against the attacker before going limp as they picked her up and carried her over their shoulder off into the night.

Thanks for reading my story. If you enjoyed it, stay tuned as I release more chapters

Also feel free to point out any errors throughout the book and I will fix them as soon as I can
xx Soph