Viva La Gloria Pt. 3

"...Ow...." Billie moaned and opened his eyes. His entire body ached; he felt as if he had been trampled, which, little did he know, he actually had.
He tried to sit up, but even the slightest movement caused excruciating pain. He tasted blood on his lips, and smelled it in the bitter air. "...Gloria?" The child was nowhere in sight. 
Suddenly, a small piece of light purple cloth floated by him in the breeze. He recognized it to be from Gloria's dress, and he had a sudden sinking fear that she had been found and murdered. "...Damn it...." Billie gritted his teeth and sat up. All color drained from his face when he saw the pile of bodies, only twenty feet away from him. Was Gloria among them? Still in pain, Billie crawled over to the bloody mound of the dead. He dragged bodies aside, looking for the little girl with the golden hair. The faces of each child he turned over made him feel sick, and he silently feared the moment when he would finally discover Gloria's corpse.
However, when he reached the bottom of the pile, her body was not there. Billie considered the possibility that she was still alive, hiding someplace nearby. "Gloria?" he called out, his voice ragged and weak. He managed to climb to his feet and stumble back to where he had blacked out, looking for any place that the girl might have chosen to hide. 
He noticed the dumpster, and he staggered towards it quickly. Upon reaching it, he threw the lid back and peered inside, his hopes shattered when he found only mounds of garbage and paper.
As he was about to slam the top shut though, a muffled wail came from deep down, hidden under the papers. He clambered over the side of the dumpster and fell in, crying out quietly in pain when he landed. "Gloria, is that you?!" He crawled over and move the papers aside to find the little girl's sleeping face, stained with tears. "...Thank God...." He gently pulled her from the garbage.
"Dad...." she murmured in her sleep before wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his black leather jacket.
"Um...yeah. Sure." Billie looked down at the sleeping child, knowing what it was like to be in her place. His parents had been murdered when he was eight, and he joined a street gang, hoping for safety there. Even then, he might've had brothers and a sense of protection, but he had no one to love him, to assure him that things would one day get better.
"Maybe that's why my life's ended up being so screwed up," he muttered to himself before drifting off to sleep, Gloria still in his arms.