As soon as I opened the front door to my house, I knew something was wrong.
First of all, it was only early afternoon, so Leah should have been there. Every day, without fail, I would come home from school to find my godmother sat at the kitchen table in front of her laptop, her spiky dyed red hair sticking up in every direction possible and wearing her favourite bright orange sweatpants, despite being in her mid-forties and despite the burning clash with her hair. Yet today, though her laptop was open on the table, there was no one in sight.
Second of all, there was a faint scent of something burning. I couldn't quite put my finger on it though, and it was so faint that if I hadn't been on guard already because of Leah's absence, I might not have noticed it.
But before I could do anything more than frown as I closed the front door behind me, something moved behind me and a gloved hand covered my mouth.
My mind was instantly consumed by panic, my heart racing and my blood pumping as I tried to understand what the hell was going on. Was this a robbery? But in broad daylight, on a Tuesday afternoon? I couldn't make sense of anything; there were only meaningless thoughts catapulting around my brain that I couldn't seem to pin down.
Then suddenly, Leah was there.
With a gun.
I'd never heard a gun go off before apart from on TV, and when she took the shot it felt like my eardrums were exploding. The hand that had been clamped over my mouth fell slack and I felt whoever had been standing behind me fall to the ground — Leah's shot had found it's culprit. I dared not look but instead ran towards Leah's outstretched hand, my ears still ringing, my body moving forward and leaving my brain behind as I tried to make sense of the fact that my godmother had a gun and had just used it to shoot someone.
She pulled me into our tiny kitchen and locked the door behind us, looking more alert than I'd ever seen her before, but before I could speak she was rummaging for something under the sink and eventually pulled out an old backpack, which she shoved forcefully into my arms.
"Everything you need is in here, you hear me?" she said frantically, as bangs and scrapes filled the corridor outside. "You have to get as far away from here as possible, you won't have much time and they'll be on your tail but you can't let them get to you or we'll all be lost. Go through the forest, you know your way and you can lose them there—"
"Leah!" I cut her off, tears welling up in my eyes. "Please tell me what's going on!"
Her dark brown eyes met mine, wide and sincere, and I searched them for some sort of meaning. Not five minutes ago I had been walking home from school, my mind mulling over all the homework I had to do, and suddenly it was like I had stepped into a horrendous nightmare that I still couldn't wrap my head around. Leah's gaze was frantic, but I caught a flicker of something that I couldn't place.
"I'm sorry, Erin, there's no time to explain," she said, placing her hands over mine which clutched the old backpack. "Please just know that I love you so so much, and I hate to do this to you but there's no other way. Trust me, soon you'll understand—"
An almighty crash sounded as the door to the kitchen broke down and I was thrown against the counter, Leah onto the floor. Through the dust and debris I could just make out a hoard of people dressed in black from head to toe trying to get in through the hole they had created, all carrying guns.
"Erin!" I couldn't see where Leah had fallen and her disembodied scream seemed to echo around my empty brain. "Get out of here!"
I hastily threw the backpack over my shoulders and jumped up onto the counter, sending leftovers from last night's dinner all over the place as I forced the window open and jumped onto the ground outside. Pushing all other thoughts away for later, I let my animal instinct to escape take over and sprinted as hard as I could for the cover of the woods at the end of our garden, but before I could reach the trees I was thrown off my feet by a huge explosion.
The damp scent of grass and dirt filled my nostrils as I rolled twice, only coming to a stop because of the heavy backpack still on my back. The metallic taste of blood running from my nose met my tongue, and my ears were ringing yet again as I tried to get up. But as soon as I looked towards the house again, mere shock made my knees collapse once more.
Where the kitchen had been was now only a gaping hole, fire and smoke billowing out of it and debris raining down. The hole in the side of the house stretched to the upstairs, and I could see my bed hanging over the edge where the floor had been blown apart, clothes I had cast aside when deciding what to wear that morning still strewn over it. I couldn't make any sense of my thoughts and didn't even let myself think of Leah, and even as I laboriously got to my feet a second time I could see more black-cladded people running around the side of the house, towards me. I made a beeline for the woods, hoping that the cover of the close trees would be enough to grant me an escape.
I had no idea how long I ran for, let alone where I was going; all I knew was that I had to put as much distance as I could between me and the people who had blown my house up. After a while the sound of their footsteps behind me began to fade as I darted between trees, taking random turns and diving through bushes so as to stay off the beaten track, and soon after I realised how much the muscles in my legs were aching and my lungs were burning. I darted behind a fallen tree and crouched low on the ground, listening intently for any hint that someone was close by, but after a few minutes of silence I knew I'd managed to outrun them.
I sighed and leant against the damp bark, my chest heaving as I fought for breath. My mind was still far behind all that had happened, enveloped by a frenzy that I couldn't calm, and at the forefront of it all was Leah, her red hair and orange sweatpants, and her sincere brown eyes meeting mine. Of course, I knew now what the flicker of emotion I'd caught in them before I'd had to run was.
Pure, unfathomable fear.
