Chapter 1

My sister would never leave me on my own. Not at a time like this. Not when I need her the most. She loves me. She's all I have anymore and I'm all she has. And she knows this. Surely? Unless the panic has gotten to her? Maybe she's snapped, gone completely mad from all this madness and just run off. What if she never loved me all this time? What if it was all just pretend. What if now that our parents are gone she doesn't feel the responsibility to look after me anymore? No. That can't be true. That can't be. But she's been gone so long. It's the only explanation. That or she's - no. I can't think like that. I can't. If she's gone - if what happened to mom and dad happened to her - that would mean I really am all alone. In a world like this. No. No. NO. What am I going to do? How am I going to survive? Who can I turn to? I'm all alone, just me, just me in this horrible terrifying -

The door to my hiding place opened and a burst of light blinded me, I could just make out a figure staring at me, a tall, slender figure with the most beautiful flowing hair I have ever seen.

"Sarah!" I exclaimed.

"Kate," she responded with a feint mocking smile. She helped pull me out of the tiny storage space I had been cramped up in. "See I told you I'd be back soon. No need to worry."

"I - I wasn't worried."

"Good. That's good, because with your big sister to protect you nothing can happen to you."

I stared at her for a moment trying to contain myself, but I couldn't. I grabbed her and pulled myself into her, hugging her as tight as possible. I could feel myself trembling and the warm flow of tears down my cheeks.

"I thought you weren't coming back," I cried softly into her ear. "I thought-"

She squeezed me back just as tight as my words trailed off. I could feel her warm loving hands rub my back slowly. I wished then and there that I could just spend the rest of my life in that position with my sister. I felt so safe. Nothing could touch me. She would never let anything happen to me.

"Okay," she said with a smile. "We need to go, you can't keep hugging me forever."

She gently pulled me off her and wiped away the tears from my cheeks. She stared at me with her big eyes, which even after all we had been through seemed to sparkle as if they were hiding the secrets to life and joy and happiness.

"Kate. Look at me. I want you to take a deep breath. I know right now things seem pretty terrible. I know you're feeling scared. And that's okay, I am too."

"I don't believe you."

"It's true, I might not seem like I am, because I'm pretending not to be. And that's what you have to do too. We won't get out of this mess if we are too busy being scared. We need to focus on getting out. Now here, have a Kit-Kat."

As if like magic, a Kit-Kat bar had suddenly appeared in her hand. I stared up at her in wonder.

"Eat it," she encouraged me.

I didn't need encouraging though and was already ripping off the wrapper and shoving each stick of chocolate into my mouth. On the last one I suddenly stopped as I realized something. I held it to my sister.

"Sorry, I forgot about you."

She smiled. "You eat it. I've got a lot more. Now come we need to move."

She helped me to my feet using that magical strength she seems to possess and lead me out of the room pulling me by the hand.

"Wait!" I cried and ran back to my hiding spot. I had almost forgotten Bizzyboo. My sister waited for me to grab my teddy rabbit and then grabbed me by the hand again as she lead the way out of the room and into the long corridor.

"You're going to have to leave the teddy at some point you know," she told me. "It's got no use to us."

"Don't speak like that about Bizzyboo!" I said, hurt by my sisters remarks.

She sighed and pulled me along at a faster pace.

The corridor we were hurrying down seem to stretch forever into the distance. It was mostly grey and blue colored and made me feel cold. The long white tubes of lights above us seemed to flicker strangely and it started to spook me out. I thought about telling my sister this, but decided not to. I didn't want her thinking I was still scared.

We passed more doors leading to rooms like the one I had been hiding in. They were big double doors, with panels of glass in the middle so you could see through them. They were so big I could only open them if I pushed really hard.

Up ahead one the doors was open for some reason. My sister noticed it and quickly pulled me closer to her. She covered me eyes with her hands as we walked past.

"Don't look inside," she whispered.

I managed to sneak a peak through one of the gaps between her fingers. All I could make out was what looked like someone sleeping on the floor and red paint spilt everywhere. I was confused for a moment as to why my sister didn't want me to see it. Then I realized what it must've been. I felt sick.

"Where are we going?" I asked Sarah.

"Somewhere safe."

"I want to go back to my hiding place. I was safe there."

"You can't. It won't be safe for much longer."

"How do you -"

There was a sudden noise from up ahead. It sounded like someone thumping hard against something. It was quickly followed by a growing murmuring, like a crowd of angry people.

"We need to hurry." Sarah pulled me along faster. She started running. I could barely keep up with her - she was practically dragging me.

I tried to ask her why we were running towards the noise, but I couldn't find my breath. We came to an intersection with another long corridor and we turned right. The noise was a lot louder now and the thumping sound had gotten louder. I could hear the cries of desperate people.

We reached a small corridor and turned down it. A sign indicated an emergency exit. We burst through the door and into a stairwell. Directly opposite us were two large double doors with glass panels in the centre of either. This was where the noise was coming from.

A massive crowd of people were on the other side of the door, a man at the front with a large scar on his forehead and blood dripping out of his eye glared at me for a moment. He terrified me.

Me and my sister froze for a moment and so did the people on the other side of the door. The man then suddenly pointed at me and yelled something and the people on the other side went bezerk.

My sister pulled me along with her and we leapt up the stairs. "Quick!"

The angry crowd seemed to be screaming at us now as I was pulled up the stairs, four at a time. I felt like I was bouncing up.

Just as we reached the top of the stairs we heard a smash from below and turned around to see someone sticking a bleeding arm through the now broken window of the door. It lashed at the latch of the door, trying to undo it.

"Shit!" Sarah said and we carried on up the staircase.

My mind seemed to lose itself in the terror of the moment. All I was aware of was the increasing sound of the mob lashing at the door below us and the pull of my sister's hand.

I was out of breath now. Sarah may as well have been carrying me, but I was barely aware of this. Next thing I knew we were bursting through a door into another passage just as the sound of the mob below us increased dramatically and we knew by their pounding footsteps that they had launched up the stairs.

"Down here!"

We turned down another corridor and I saw Sarah was reading the signs outside each room as we ran past. I tried to read them too, but we were running too fast and my eyes were too blurred from my tears.

She burst into another room and pulled me in behind her. She closed the door behind me and slid the bolt shut. We looked around the room. It was some kind of storage room with lots of up cupboards. Sarah immediately slung the backpack off her back and unzipped it. Inside were a lot of kitkats, lunch bars and other chips and sweets.

My eyes lit up. She noticed this and smiled in response.

"We can't survive on chocolate and sweets alone," she said and pulled a smaller tog bag from out of the bigger one.

She then begin to go through the cupboards and snatch what she could from each shelf and shove it into the bag. Bandages, medicine containers, cotton wool, and a bunch of other things I didn't recognize.

"What can I do?" I asked.

"See if there's anything useful around."

I nodded and looked around the room. Beside the cupboards surrounding the room there was also a small bed in the corner and a table with a sink in it near the back of the room. Behind this table was another doorway, but without a door. It lead into a dark room with more shelves and cabinets like the one I had spent most of the day hiding in.

I opened the first set of cabinets and saw rows of books. The next set had some weird bones and skulls which gave me a bit of a fright when I opened it. It reminded me of the biology classroom at my school. The next cabinet had something useful in it.

"Look what I found!" My sister turned around and as she did so I turned on the torch blinding her in the face.

"Hey, cut that out you jerk!" She cried out shielding her face, but then she noticed the big torch in my hands and she smiled. "That'll definitely be useful."

I smiled broadly, but it faded quickly - from down the corridor we could voices approaching. My sister stared at me with a terrified face. She lifted her finger to her lips.

She ducked and crept over to the door, trying to peer out the glass window in the middle of it. She then put her ear against it and listened to the approaching sounds. It sounded like two men talking to each other as they drew nearer.

Quickly my sister ran over to me. "We gotta hide!" she hissed.

She pulled me into the small back room, which didn't have any lights on. She saw the small cabinets and told me to get inside.

"What about you?" I whispered back. She wouldn't be able to fit inside with me.

"I'll be fine," she hissed back at me. "Just promise me no matter what happens, you'll stay inside there."

I didn't respond. I couldn't.

"Promise me!"

I gave her a small nod.

"Good."

She grabbed her bags and looked around her. The table near the back of the room had a gap underneath the sink. She shoved herself into this. From where I was crouched in my little cabinet I could see through the door of my little side room and into the bigger one.

My sister glared at me. "Close the door!" she hissed motioning with her arm.

I nodded again and closed the door of the cabinet, leaving a gap just small enough for me to peep through. I clutched onto Bizzyboo as tight as I could. It wasn't as comforting as my sister, but it would have to do.

The voices were now right outside the room and we could hear what they were saying.

"- must be somewhere around here," said the first voice belonging to a man.

"Nothing in here, just more beds," came another man's voice, this one a bit further away.

A figure appeared outside the door to our room and tried to open it. "This one's locked."

I couldn't make out what he looked like through the window of glass, but I could see that he was a black man. My sister waved at me frantically and I realized my gap had grown a bit too big. I closed the door fully and just listened to the now muffled sounds.

"Must be something important inside then," said the other man.

"Or they just didn't bother to unlock it. Either way I don't see how we're getting in." I could hear a shoving sound as he must've been trying to ram the door down. "These doors are too thick. Come on let's keep looking."

"Don't be so useless," the other man said. There was a brief pause and then a sudden and shrill sound of glass shattering rang through the air and made me jump bumping my head on the cabinet above me.

A terror ran over me as I heard someone playing with the lock and then the door swing open. The two men burst into the room.

"Jackpot," one of them said.

"How are we gonna carry all this shit?"

"Look around for something, don't be a dick."

I heard the footsteps as one of them walked around the room. I opened my cupboard by the tiniest of fractions and glimpsed out into the room. The black man was standing by the cupboards near the door that Sarah had been rummaging through moments ago. He was a big man with big muscles and a bald head.

The second man was a skinny pasty white guy with thin blonde hair, he was on the closer side of the room, coming closer to the table which my sister was huddling underneath. She looked as terrified as I felt.

The skinny guy was searching up and down the cupboards for something. As he stretched his arms up to reach the higher shelf, his leather jacket lifted up revealing a gun tucked into his pants. I almost gasped out loud.

"Dammit, someone's already been in here," the black guy said as he went through the other cupboards. "These are all open and all the good shit is gone."

"There's a lot this side," the white guy replied. He then turned and looked at the table. "Fuck look at this."

He walked over to the table and I felt my heart jump.

He reached over and turned on the tap by the sink. Water begin pouring out. "Thank god, it works!" He began to gulp it down and I watched as the water went down the drain which was inches above my sisters head. "Water has never tasted this good!" he exclaimed.

The black man was still going through the cupboards on the other side of the room. He stopped and looked back at the door with a quizzical expression. I could see the broken glass laying on the floor and a fire extinguisher laying down inside which must've been how they broke the glass.

"Hang on," he said. The white guy was still gulping the water from the tap through cupped hands and ignoring his friend. "That door was locked from the inside. You can't lock it from the outside. Who ever was in here, is still here."

His friend stopped drinking the water and looked up. My sister's eyes bulged. My heart sunk.

A smile grew on the skinny white man's patchy face and he looked around the room as he spoke, "Ooh really? That's interesting." His gaze shifted into the dark corner in the back of the room and his eyes seemed to connect with mine. I looked away. Had he seen me? Was the darkness in my little corner room enough? I didn't dare close the cupboard anymore incase I created movement. He started to slowly walk towards me. I didn't dare breath.

He slowly reached for his gun in his pants and pulled it out, pointing it ahead of him.

"Who ever is in here, you better show yourself," the big black man said. "We won't hurt you. We can help each other."

My sister looked straight at me and shook her head. I wasn't sure if this meant she could see me in the dark or if she just knew where I was. The skinny man with the gun was still inching towards the back room.

"That's right," the white guy said with a smirk,"there's nothing to fear."

He glanced back at his friend who motioned with his head that he should check out the room I was hiding in. Skinny white guy nodded.

He took a step forward and then looked to his left and down, directly where my sister was hiding. His smile broadened.

My sister leapt out of her hiding spot, but the white guy grabbed her. She lashed out wildly and bit him in the hand that was trying to hold her, he screamed out in pain and dropped his gun. My sister kicked him in the shin and he cried out again letting go of her. She turned to run away but immediately bumped into the big black guy who was too strong for her. He held each of her arms in his strong hands. She wriggled and wormed and tried to lash out with her legs, but he spun her around so she her back was up against him.

"Well, well, what do we have here," he pulled her arms behind her back and held them both with one giant hand. With the other he turned her head slightly so he could see her face. "She's quite the little fighter isn't she?"

The white guy walked over to her still clutching his hand, which was dripping blood now. "That bitch bit me! What's wrong with you, you bitch?!"

Suddenly he slapped her hard in the face. My sister looked stunned. I clenched my fists. I felt so powerless and terrified, but I wished I could help her.

"Hey!What the fuck? Don't hit a lady!' the black guy said, still holding my sister tight.

"She's no lady! She's a fucking bitch. She fucking bit me! I'm bleeding. Look at me, I'm bleeding."

"Well it's a good thing we're in the hospital then isn't it?" The black guy responded. He looked down at my sister. "What's your name, sweetcheeks?"

My sister didn't respond. She just remained staring blankly ahead, breathing heavily.

The black guy leant his face closer to my sister's so he was breathing down her neck. "You need to calm down sweetcheeks," he said softly to her. "Now tell me your name."

He tightened his grip of his one hand around my sister's throat. I could see her wince. "I said tell me your name."

"Sa - Sarah," she chocked out.

"That's a nice name," he said. "Now would you please explain to us what a pretty girl is doing all on her own hiding in a hospital?"

Sarah didn't reply instead she tried again in vain to wriggle herself free. "Whoa whoa, calm down there, sweetcheeks. You are alone right?"

The white guy who was busy wrapping a bandage around his hand suddenly looked around the room. "Is there someone else in here?"

He walked over to Sarah and grabbed her by the throat violently, choking her so much that I could see the color fade from her face. "I said is there someone else in here?"

I could see a tear roll down my sister's cheek and she tried to respond, but he was gripping her so tight she couldn't get her words out. He let go and she blurted out in one go, "I lost my family this morning and I didn't know where to go so I just came to the hospital, it was the first place I thought of. Please don't hurt me, I didn't mean to hurt you I was just scared just please let me go."

I could hear the fear in her voice and it scared me to see my sister so vulnerable.

"You were just scared?" The white guy said scornfully. "That's no reason to go around biting people."

The black guy spun my sister around and looked her in the eyes. he spoke in a soothing tone. "Now listen here Sarah. You don't need to be scared anymore, we're going to help you. We'll look after you now."

He was still holding her tightly. "Now I'll only let you go if you calm down. Are you calm?"

"Yes." my sister said through clenched teeth.

"You don't sound calm. Take a deep breath, that'll calm you down."

"Hey look what I found," the white guy had started rummaging through the cupboards again. He was holding up a small package for his friend to see. My sister tried to look back to see what it was, but the black guy held her neck keeping her facing him.

"Deep breath," he told her. "Come on."

My sister took a stubborn but slow breath.

"Again," her captor said encouragingly.

She took another deep breath, she was starting to look relaxed.

"Good," the black guy replied.

Suddenly the white guy who had snuck up right behind my sister put something onto her arms which were still being held behind her back by the black guy. I realized it had come from the packet he had found and when he pulled my sister to the side I saw what it was. Cable ties.

"What are you -!" My sister cried, as the two guys dragged her across the room and threw her onto the bed. "Let go of me!"

She tried to get back up to her feet, but the big man just shoved her down, keeping her on the bed. I saw the skinny one walk across the room towards my hiding spot. He knelt down to the ground and my heart jumped, but then I realized he was just getting his gun he had dropped earlier which had fallen to the floor right in front of me.

That was it! I should've taken the gun, it was only a few feet away, I could've used it to save my sister. I felt a sinking feeling creep over. I had had a chance to help and I had missed it. I was a failure.

"You said you were going to help me!" My sister cried, "What are you doing?"

"We will help you," the big man said, "but you need to help us with something first. This isn't a free world. That's something you're gonna have to learn."

My sister glanced up at this man with a sudden realization, her glance then fall upon his crotch which was right in front of her face. It seemed to be bulging outward. She looked back up at him in disgust and spat on the floor in hatred.

"Don't waste that," the black man chuckled, "You'll need all the spit you have."

With that he undid his belt and his pants fell to the floor revealing a massive dark penis. Now I had seen a penis before, at school in sex-ed and my dad's when I was a lot younger, but I had never seen one so startlingly big and rigid. It seemed impossibly large. Like a frightening animal.

"Suck," he told my sister.

She was staring at the enormous dick with wide eyes. She shook her head.

Just then the skinny guy stood next to her with his gun pointed right at her head. "Look here," he said, "there's two ways out of this. Either you do exactly as we say, and we come out of this happy and we look after you like we promised or you don't do what we say and well, then no one comes out happy. It's up to you."

My sister stared at the gun for a moment and then her eyes shifted and for a second she was looking straight at me and I knew she didn't want me to watch and she was trying to tell me to look away, but I couldn't draw away my eyes. I was stuck in both horror and fascination as I watched what she did next.