"Hi people!" I'm new to this site so I don't exactly know what to do and I'm a little confused, so you guys tell me if I do anything wrong. Anyway, I got this idea from a movie and I LOVE Maximum Ride, so I thought I'd put them together. I don't know exactly how long this story will be, but I promise it won't be crazy short. This will be a Fax story, with maybe a little Eggy. Enjoy!
FANG:The insistent pounding of thick soled, knee-high, black boots on the cement should have driven my fear from my mind. It didn't. And I was a naïve fool to think it would. To hope it would. That anything would. The tortuous emotion had plagued my mind for months leading up to this, making me edgy, snappish, and all in all ready to crack. Worse than my own fear was my family's. My mother's. Her dirty, tear-streaked face haunted and taunted me just like the fear. What did you expect, mind taunted, that they would just smile happily and wave as you marched off to war? No. I hadn't expected them to just be content with me going Aboveground, but they had known, from the moment I was born, that this would happen.
That on my twenty-first birthday I would be forced to join the troops that went Aboveground to get the supplies we needed to survive. I had no choice. None of us did. I had expected them to at least have had accepted it. But no. Five hours ago, at exactly twelve AM, two soldiers had come to the spot my family had claimed as ours and woken my parents. My mother's agonized scream was what had woken me. She'd grabbed onto my shirt and hadn't let go until the my father had to force her fingers out of the worn fabric.
I'd tried to calm her down, reassure her, but she wouldn't hear. "Mother, I'm coming back, I promise, I'm coming back to help you take care of our family." She just buried her face in my father's chest and sobbed harder. Now, in the dark, damp tunnels of the sewers we Undergrounds lived in, where rats scurried and all was quiet except for the echo of our marching, I thought of my family, of their dear, smiling faces, and was comforted, the fear lessening a bit for the first time in months.
I thought of my mother, who as wise and insightful, always full of advice and helpfulness. She was sweet and lovable and liked by all. She was timid, tiny, and shy, but if you threatened those she loved she became a vicious mother cougar, ready to strike at any danger to her cubs. I thought of my father, Jeb Walker, was like me in every way. Neither of us were beefy, but we stronger than we looked, and by no means were either of us skinny, though we were not as healthy as we should be, because life as an Underground was hard, but we both had muscular bodies, courtesy of the work we had to do to keep the system going, to keep all of the Undergrounds alive. But still, my father and I were more cunning than we were brutal.
My father always knew when I was lying, or holding back the truth, and always managed to worm whatever it was out of me. I though of my siblings, all three of them. Angel, the youngest at fourteen, was the sweetest and sort of the peacekeeper of our family. Zephyr, fifteen, was the smartest of his siblings. He was a master of technology and, despite being so young, his skill was often used on Rebel missions that required hacking. And Ella, a year, was tough and agile. She could fight better than any boy I knew and had begged to join the Rebels at twenty-one, but the strict rule that women were not allowed in the battles kept her from trying anything too drastic. The punishment for violation of this rule was banishment. Banishment meant being forced Aboveground. Being forced above ground meant certain death.
The fear tightened my stomach again. Aboveground was exactly where I was headed. "Halt!" The commander at the front of the small army shouted, stopping every young soldier in his tracks. While I'd been lost in thought, we had made it to the manhole closest to where the Unders were staying. The way we stayed hidden and safe from the Aboves was by never staying in one place for more than a week, and moving almost immediately after raids like the one we were about to have. we were constantly moving. We went from city to city and back again to keep from being discovered. it has worked so far. it has worked for almost thirty years. I don't want to think about it not.
The commander suddenly barked that we needed a volunteer to go up and scope out up top. Everybody instantly looked to the person beside them and tried to make themselves shrink. "How about you?" The commander pointed toward me. Hopefully, I turned and looked at someone beside me. Everyone to my right instantly scattered. Same with the left side. I sighed and started forward. Up front, I looked up at the manhole, then the ladder leading up to it, then to the commander, who was standing next to me. He nodded encouragingly, a bit of sympathy in his eyes. Sighing again, I started up the rusty ladder, every rung bringing me closer to the terrifying I reached the top, my head only inches from the manhole, I couldn't resist glancing down at my reluctant companions. They were all watching attentively. "Inform us what the surroundings are around the hole, son." Said the commander. Slowly I pressed both palms to the cold, slimy metal. Taking one last deep, shaky breath, I steeled myself, sensed the other below me do the same, and pushed.
So yeah, that was it. It was a little short but they will get longer. Please review and tell me what you thought. I welcome any criticism.