Riley, before she was on her own, lived with her mom and dad in a family community called Silver Star. This family community heavily focused on community farming. Each family or house had their own garden and were expected to grow various fruits and vegetables and to contribute in any way.

When Riley was about twelve years old, her mom, as she was washing laundry, asked her to get some more water from the stream that was placed near the edge of the community. Happily doing so, she took the 10 minute walk to the stream and talked with the other community children and played around a bit.

Suddenly, there was a bunch of screaming. The children near the stream looked at each other worridly. Some kids ran back to their families, some stared into the distance to see what the comotion was. When the screaming became more intense and got closer, the Riley saw many people holding weapons, tearing into homes and killing the community members.

The other kids by the stream saw the same thing. A few ran back to their families to help defend, others ran off to save themselves. Riley, on the other hand, froze. She just stared at the chaos, not knowing what to do. After what seemed like an eternity of doing nothing (which only turned out to be about a minute), her feet carried her over to a dead log overed with moss. She couldn't think, but her body managed to move her inside. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her breathing quiet.

The people invading were part of a survivalist gang that had been scouting the town for weeks. Their main plan was to take as much food as they could carry. A lot of the gang members decided to raid houses as well to grab things they spotted while scouting. The secondary goal was to cause as much chaos as possible so that it would be harder for the family community to rebuild. This way, they could keep coming if they wanted to. Many gang members interpreted this as killing anything that moved.

Riley blacked out a bit after she closed her eyes. She woke up an hour or so before dusk. She saw the carnage and was horrified. Blood was everywhere, bodies shrewn about. The neat, clean, and organized gardens were no more. There were no animals in their stalls or pens.

Riley collected her thoughts, and they were drawn to her family. As she ran back to their little one bedroom house, Riley did her best to not look down. Every time she did, she saw the bloodied face of someone she knew her whole life. Men, women and children.

When Riley got back to her house, she barely recognized it. The garden was picked and uprooted. The front wall was caved in. It took her a while to even find a way in. She managed to squeeze through a small window over the kitchen area. Then she made it into the bedroom. She saw both of her parents lying dead on the floor.

After craddling her parents bodies and crying over them, something snapped in Riley. She grabbed the backpack that her dad would take to market and started filling it. She grabbed a few clothes, a set of throwing knives her dad kept under the floor boards in the closet, some preserved foods that the thieves forgot, and stuffed them inside the backpack. Then she went over to her mom. She gave her a hug and a kiss and grabbed the necklace that her mom always wore. Next, she went into the living area that doubled as the kitchen. She grabbed a small bible that she would see her dad read from on occasion. Usually it was left on a stand next to his seat, but it had been tossed around and she found it laying in the middle of the room. Lastly, she grabbed a notebook that her mom always had in the kitchen. She hadn't really looked at it before, but knew it would be important.

She left the house that she was born in and didn't look back. As she was making her way towards the gate, you could see people mourning. Some people were picking up what they could. Some were holding on to their dead loved ones. Some were doing their best to pile the bodies so they were out of the way. Riley stopped for a moment as she almost stepped on a bat. She grabbed it and threw it on her shoulder. She walked out of what would have been the gate, if it hadn't been torn down, and didn't stop.