PROLOGUE
monsters day and night - tw. mentions abuse

Maria Gardner had always seen her life as a constant source of deliberate pain. There was her father who tormented her entire family and her mother who had no choice but to stay.

The woman had always thought that she would leave the home as soon as she turned eighteen, that had been her plan for so long. But then her mother got pregnant with her sister, Isabel, and that plan faded away because she knew she couldn't abandon her in that house.

Isabel grew up to know the abuse that was happening inside the Gardner home; she was always protected by her big sister and so was her mother. Maria constantly made herself the target of her father's rage — she went from the quiet little girl who hid under her bed to a quiet young woman who protected the ones she loved.

Protecting them from the very person who was supposed to protect them from people like him.

It was bitter sweet, she had her father in her life just not in the way she wanted it to be. She couldn't remember if it had always been this way or if something had happened to make her father behave the way he did but it didn't matter — he was evil, Maria was sure of it.

The world had ended significantly quick, it was a 'mere outbreak, should be cleared up soon' they said everyday over the radio, but it only got worse. Her parents, Lionel and Catalin Gardner were volunteering at the hospital in the City as they were both doctors — coincidentally it was how they first met.

The Gardner women didn't have to rely on a "I tripped and fell" approach when they had medicines and bandages at their home. And a man who knew all the right places to hit.

After a short while, the City fell and so did the Gardner family. Lori Grimes was their safe haven, the woman had known them since Maria was young and they moved in next to door shortly after they married.

Isabel and Carl soon became friends as Maria offered to tutor the young Grimes when she wasn't busy at college. This caused Isabel to want to also be tutored but under their hard facade they only wanted to get out of the house and away from their father.

The Grimes woman was the first to spot the two as Isabel clutched onto her older sister, whose eyes were wide as army planes flew over their homes, shaking the very earth under their feet. Being the mother that she was, she ran over to them despite Carl's cries and Shane's yelling — she pulled the two along and the five left their homes behind them with no place left to go.

People were rising from the dead, it was impossible, something out of a movie but no, it was happening and they were scared. It was understandable that Maria had no idea what to do but most of all it was understandable that she lost the one person she was meant to protect the most.

It was painful and overwhelming but she was twenty years old, living in a world where people rose from the dead and wanted you for its first meal. But even when Rick came back and families were reunited, it didn't matter that the world had ended because for a split second everyone was happy.

However, the Gardner sisters knew that happiness was short lived as they had been running on borrowed time their entire lives, for all they knew their parents were dead and they only had each other.

But just like chess, one by one the Gardner's would fall until only one was left standing. Though it would be the Gardner that didn't even want to live at all.

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