Hello! This is my first story! I'm super excited to see what you guys think. Are any of you guys out there zombie nerds like I am? ^_^ I put a little bit of Hannibal into this for all of you Hannibal geeks out there, too.
Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does!
Where were you when it happened?
The common, simple question is always asked when you meet another survivor. It's taken the place of "how are you?" or "how is the weather?". Fang can remember right where he was. It was the last day that everything seemed to be going well. He woke up early from one of his many nightmares - a wild animal ripped out his throat, walking across his dream. His skin felt crushed and skinned, and the back of his neck burned, like someone was... watching him.
Fang sifted through his hair with one hand, letting out a sigh. Every night, for the past two months, ended just like this. By now, his usually straight hair was reduced to thin curls, and his eyes were constantly filled with images of antlers.
His friends thought he had had been drinking too much, but the truth was that he'd have just one or two sips of wine before going to bed. Definitely not enough to get him drunk, and definitely not excessive.
However, "excessive drinking" was exactly Fang's excuse for his brain's short circuiting. Nightmares didn't really seem to create the mess that had become Fang Walker, or at least that's what he'd expect other people to think. To others, he was positive that a few bouts of bad sleep couldn't have done such a colossal damage to him in such a short time. Although it was the reason of his actual dismay, there was no way he'd let something as trivial as a bad dream - or in Fang's case, nightmares - interfere with the way his friends thought of him.
Well, if the "drinking problem" hadn't already shattered his clean-cut appearance already.
"My name is Fang Walker," Fang reminded himself. This was something that his psychiatrist told him to do when he was experiencing many nightmares in one night. "I am in Greenwood, Delaware, and it is 3:34 AM."
That usually did the trick. It was almost hypnotic, like he would cease to feel the way he had, of course, been for the whole night. But this just made him even more restless. Almost as if someone was watching him utter every syllable of his nightly exercise, something they had done so frequently that they could say it along with him. Almost as if it made them comfortable and at ease to hear the words as well.
Fang shivered.
It was true that Fang was a very paranoid person. There were many times in which he could recall being looked at strangely because of his paranoia, and the reasons why weren't always absurd. He had been caught late at night sometimes with the bar that hung his clothes from his closet, marching about his small room. He never sat down, just crouched, so that he could get up and run fast. He slept backwards, without sheets, so that he could move out of his bed in case anything happened, and always kept a backpack filled with food, water, matches, and other survival gear next to his bedside table. He always wore shoes, even to bed. Always wore a watch, and constantly looked at the time - it was almost as if he expected it to be extremely different every time he looked at it again. But these things made up Fang Walker. This was who he was.
It pained him to think that someone might know all these things about him. Like it was reciting the alphabet. That's why he hated it.
Whenever his nightly exercise didn't work, Fang would get out of his bed and walk around a bit. He layered on warm wear on, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and took his toothbrush and toothpaste. He never left the house without necessities.
It was cold inside his house, a chill that lapped his face and laughed at his discomfort, one that always seemed to creep up at around four in the morning. Not yet morning, but not night, either. Something in between. Fang shifted the grip on his bag slowly, carefully not making a sound. He was used to sneaking out at night to see friends so that they could drink together, and his father was a very heavy sleeper anyway. Fang could hear him snoring in his room as he passed it down the hallway.
The feeling of being watched didn't leave. Of course, Fang always thought like he was being watched, but this time it felt like it was someone moving along with him, not watching. Stalking. He had never felt that before.
Filled with fear, Fang reached for his cell inside the deep pockets of his jeans. He dialed the first number that came to his mind: his sister, Tara.
One ring. Nothing.
Two rings. Nothing.
Three rings. Nothing.
She picked up on the fourth.
"Fang? What the fuck are you doing calling me up at this hour?" she hissed. "It's four in the fucking morning and I have to get to work at six."
He smiled at her vulgarity, but it quickly faded as he shivered again, but not because of the four AM chill. Stalker. "I know it's shallow and petty," he said, trying to swallow the urgency in his tone, "but I need you here."
"Son of a bitch, Fang, can't it wait?" she asked, although she knew that it couldn't. Fang wouldn't call her unless he needed it.
"No, it can't. Someone's...watching me." He lowered his voice.
"Isn't someone always watching you?"
"No. This time, they're stalking me."
She paused. "Doesn't that happen, too?"
"No. No, it doesn't."
She swallowed, a thick gulp against the receiver. "Do you think someone is actually there?"
"This time, I'm positive."
"You better be fucking right, moron," she said. Fang could hear the engine of her Buick start. "I'll be there in a few."
"Um, Tara?"
"What, Fang." It wasn't even a question.
"Can I stay on the phone with you for a bit longer?" He hated how childish and vulnerable he sounded. How he was pleading.
"Do you want me to get in a car crash?"
"I'll see you later, then."
She laughed. "Grudgingly, but you will."
He hit the end button and placed his phone in his pocket, staring at the space in between the door and the hinge, that small crack that led to the outside. He stared at it, knowing all he was looking at was a deep black, but felt mesmerized by it.
"My name is Fang Walker," Fang reminded himself. "I am in Greenwood, Delaware, and it is 4:03 AM."
Bang.
Immediately, Fang's body went cold. The stalker was tired of hearing it. Time after time, as he stayed in his house afraid to go outside. He could hear a deep voice say, yes, you're in fucking Greenwood. You haven't been anywhere else. Instinctively, his hand reached in his back pocket, retrieving three of his many knives. He had never needed to use them on a person, but he was damn good at throwing knives. He had made sure of it.
The paranoia that so commonly filled Fang was unbearable. His body was shaking, tremors of fear responding to him. In his mind, however, Fang didn't even notice it. He didn't even feel the pins and needles digging into his skin and warning him not to chase it. To live in his own mind.
He was so sick and fucking tired of it.
A flash of silver came from one of the windows, and Fang heard a gunshot fire. He dropped to the ground, anticipating the pain that was no doubt about to come at him, but it didn't come. It was almost as if the shot had fired at something outside the house.
"What the fuck?!" he heard a voice scream from outside. Was that his stalker? His would-be killer?
Fang raced to his room, grabbing any sort of weapon he could find. His running shoes made a loud thump against the hardwood floor of the house. Fang grabbed anything he could find that would aid him survival - medicines, imperishable foods, water. It was a tight fit in his backpack, but he knew that he could empty it later. The seething heat of paranoia was digging into his skull, and his eyes were burning, blurry. He couldn't focus on one thing without his vision diverting onto something else.
Fang wasn't going to be able to meet up with Tara. He wanted to call her at that very moment, to apologize. Because he was going to end her life the second she came to his house. He knew it. He knew it.
He fucking knew it.
There was no time to redial Tara's number. Greenwood was a very small town, and he was positive that she would be there in a second. But what had distracted the stalker? What was outside? What was so bad that he had to blow his cover to Fang and destroy it? No matter what was out there, there had to be more. And they weren't going to stop at his stalker.
"Shit," Fang whispered. "Shit, shit, shit." The curses escalated louder and louder, and he scrambled to get to the car.
And then it hit him: where was his father? There was no way that he had time to go and get him, or to find that he was already gone. Fang didn't have the time. All of those memories of his father came into his mind as he reached for the keys of a car he didn't know how to drive. Them at the football game. Fang showing his father his straight As on his report card. His father driving his mother out of the house, telling her that he didn't need a woman who "fucked other men." Fang pleading to his father that he would never drink again and to please, don't hit me because of it, because I don't want to be like you even more than I have already become.
He wouldn't mind his father being gone, he thought bitterly. But deep down, he knew he did. Fang swallowed thickly as his throat became dry.
Fang approached the front door of his one story house. He stared at the black space between the door and the hinge, and wondered if it would ever be bright again after tonight, and laughed at his pessimistic attitude. He had always been a "glass empty" kind of guy.
The door rattled as Fang fumbled to open it, bracing himself for the cold wind in Delaware, and whatever was outside. He couldn't see anything, even as the faded morning light helped aid his eyes, but he could definitely hear it.
Moaning. A chorus of moaning, from a group of something that did not sound even remotely human. It was coming from the woods behind his house, from the window that his stalker was at. Fang raced to the car and flung his backpack onto the passenger seat, putting the key in ignition and doing whatever he could. He didn't know how to drive, really, he was only fifteen, but he had learned a few things from the guys he would drink with - it just wasn't much.
As soon as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the street, he grabbed his phone and dialed Tara's number again.
One ring. Nothing.
Two rings. Nothing.
Three rings. Nothing.
Four rings. Come on, Tara, pick up.
Five rings. Still. Nothing.
It kept ringing and ringing, and it almost made Fang dizzy.
"Hello, you've reached Tara Walker. If it's really urgent and I'm not here, then you can find someone else, because chances are I'm too lazy to do something about it. Leave a message, and if I like you, I'll give you a ring back. Toodles, T."
Fang threw his phone in the back seat of the car, anger pulsing through his veins. He had to leave his house. Someone was trying to kill him. His sister Tara won't even answer him. She had to have been at his house minutes before he even left, but something was blocking her way.
And then he saw them. Six of them, maybe more. People, shambling into the clearing from the woods in Fang's rearview mirror. It was too dark to see their facial features, but they weren't chasing Fang's car. They were after the house right next to his, one with a car pulling out of the driveway and heading the opposite direction Fang was going in.
The neighbors were on the same lines as Fang was, but everyone in town knew that the way out was south, where Fang was headed. Definitely not north. That just dragged people on the edge of town, shrouded by nothing but underbrush and thick trees. A dead end, that way. The neighbors knew that. It made no sense why the would be heading right into the woods where more of those people were. Those moaning things.
Fang let out a laugh, a shaky, jittery laugh that hurt his dry throat when it coursed out of his mouth. Idiots were idiots, he supposed, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He just assumed that his neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, were smarter than that. They were both doctors, even, with a remarkable sense of navigation. Fang shrugged and focused on the road.
"My name is Fang Walker, I don't know where the fuck I'm heading, and it is 4:19 AM."
What did you think?
-SociallyObscene