This is the same story, but I had to change it because I was just writing this as some random story and then decided to make it a fan fiction. I am so sorry I had to rewrite. I hope you enjoy this story. And again I am so sorry this is not another update. I already deleted the story, but it still has the same plot and everything. Have fun reading this.
Living and surviving are two totally different things.
Surviving is staying alive. And to live you have to get by with what you have and find food, shelter, and supplies. You can't even love without getting hurt. To love, you get killed because you stop watching your own back and eventually all the people you love die anyways. So what's the use? There is no hope in survival. Surviving isn't a gift, it's an instinct. And everybody has that instinct, though some may have the instinct better than others.
But living, yeah, that's a another story.
Living is about making an impact on the world. You enjoy every minute of life without grieving and taking the world by stride. You can love, hope, and dream. Living isn't an instinct; it's a very rare gift. It's nothing like surviving.
I've got the surviving part down pretty good, almost perfected even. I follow my rules and only my rules. What I have is what everybody living now wants, a chance to stay alive. It comes in handy to know how to hunt, cook, fight, and most importantly, stay alive. Especially if you live in a world full of demons, fear, and agony. When Lurkers prowl every dark crevice looking for their next victim to claim as their own personal puppet. Where you have to kill to stay alive.
So you see there isn't exactly time to live, just to survive. Only a handful of people can actually live. So that's what my granddad told me just before he died. That was my hope for a couple of years, but as I grew older hope didn't seem to exist. It slowly faded away like everything else in this world. Living seemed impossible to me and it still does now.
See, everybody tries to live, even I tried, but very quickly I figured out one very important thing; that's what gets you killed. So I quit living and survived.
My name is Annabeth Chase. I've survived this hell hole for ten years. Fighting, tracking, and most importantly, staying alive.
Before the apocalypse, I was a cute eight year old girl with curly blonde hair with gray eyes. Most people said they saw storms raging deep inside my eyes. I didn't believe them back then. I loved school and my best friend thought I was crazy. I also was very smart for my age. None of my parents even cared about me or how good I did in school. My mother and father were split up and I had to live with my dad and the most horrible step-mom ever. I refused to call her Mom and decided on Susanne the Wicked Witch of the West, which she got very annoyed by, sometimes even angry about it. I gave myself pride in that. She had two twin boys named Bobby and Mathew. She would never let me play with them and always called me a little rotten brat that wasn't worthy of this family. I always got in trouble for what they did. My father was always in his studies and never had time for me, but had time for his other family. And my mother didn't even care about me. She left with some guy and never called ever again. I was the reject of the family.
I ran away at the age seven to my granddad's house. He knew how rough it was at my house and I spent the next two years of my life there before the epidemic. My granddad was the best person in the world. He also loved the crap out of me, as did I. At school I had a best friend named Piper. She was a fashionista. We did everything together. She always tried to keep me out of the trouble. It didn't work that often, but at least she tried. I always had a knack for getting in trouble. I was the troublemaker of my grade. I did it to try to get my parents' attention, but it never did get their attention. Granddad always laughed at my troublemaking. He called me his little troublemaker.
I guess old habits die-hard because I am still a troublemaker. A very good one I might add. But I really try to stay out of trouble these days because the Lurkers are very dangerous. No one likes to anger them. But I usually end up running into them anyways. They seem to be out to get me for no reason.
Most people try to run, hide and stay as far away from them as possible. I try to do that, too. But since I run into them a lot, I have learned how to form a plan within seconds. And when I told you I stumble upon them a lot, I mean a lot because I just stumbled upon some about five minutes ago.
I glance behind me to see that I have lost the Lurkers for now, but not for long. I stop and catch my breath. I am staring at the ground when I hear a growl. I slowly look up to see two of them in front of me. I just had to turn down the only road with the demons bathing in the sunlight.
"Shit." I say to nobody in particular.
I glare at them and take of running. I didn't have to turn around to know they were following me. I'm lucky I wore my Doc Martin boots today because i am going to be running a while.
Lurkers looked exactly like humans, which is because they are humans possessed by those evil demons. And once you become one of them, you never turn back to a human. People have tried to find a cure, but they had no such luck and I gave up hoping they would.
The only way to tell between humans and Lurkers are their eyes and mouths. They have fang like teeth that grow in as soon as you get turned into one and their mouth eventually start to decay. Their eyes are endless black pits of death, fear, and destruction. They can turn you in two ways.
One way is if you stare at their eyes longer than five seconds, you slowly start to go crazy and in a very agonizing way, the evil demons start to encompass your soul and you eventual turn to one. It looks like your soul is getting ripped from your body. The other way is if they bite you with their fangs. It is kind like the fantasy of vampires. How they suck your blood and turn you into a bloodsucker, except in the real world you aren't out for blood, you are out for extinction of the human race. This way is not as painful, but it doesn't take very long to turn. But either way is still very bad and painful.
The only known way to get rid of them is to kill them and the human with it. Nobody has found a way to save the human soul yet.
The wind is whistling in my ears and I would have enjoyed this if it was on different circumstances. I glance behind me to find three more have joined my pursuers. One even looked like my neighbor, Lance. And they were only a few yards behind me. Why did I have to pick the only ones in the city that were so damn fast? I went pass shop after shop. I even spotted a McDonald's. That made my stomach grumble, I hadn't eaten in a day. I silently threatened it as I ran. I couldn't think of food now, I was being chased. I spotted an abandoned warehouse in the distance to y left. This was going to be a longer run than I thought.
I veered to the left towards the building, my Doc Martins pounding against the black top. I headed for the parking lot breathing hard. I started to slow, but my Granddad's voice ringing in my ears made me pick up the pace. I was so focused on the warehouse in the distance that I didn't notice a pole just to my right. My jean leg caught on the shredded pole, cutting me pretty deep, and leaving some of my jean material back there, but I didn't look back to see the damage, I picked up the pace and went into a full on sprint. I really hoped they didn't pick up the jean material or they could have my scent. I risked another glance to see that my jean leg was starting to get soaked in my blood and that my backpack had teared towards the top.
"Damn." I whisper yell at myself.
The one advantage the Lurkers haveis that they can smell blood and I just told any one of them within a two-mile radius where I am. Lately they are interested in my blood more than others and I cursed at myself for letting this happen. I ignored the pain and held back the tears. I ran for the center of the parking lot, waiting for them to arrive. There was no use in trying to get inside the warehouse. It looked pretty heavily locked. I noticed a Hermes staff carved in the wood above the door. A secret sign that humans lived here. I just really hoped that wasn't an old carving.
I watched as they approached. I studied each one of them. None of them seemed to have a weapon, but my lookalike neighbor looked to have a deadly looking shard of glass. I noticed he had the same bracelet I let him borrow when we were eight. At least I never liked Lance; he was a jerk who used to shove me into walls when I was little. He even broke my arm once. The stench was almost overwhelming as they breathed through their mouths. I didn't see why they didn't use their noses to breath.
Three more had join the group while I watch them approach, making it a total of eight Lurkers. I watched as they surrounded me. I pulled my hood up on top of my curly blond hair that probably looked like a mess to hide my eyes from their pits of death. I turned in a slow circle, not meeting their eyes. I unsheathe my dagger from the strap on my thigh and got in a fighting stance. I felt the cool metal peeking through the old leather on my fingers. I relaxed. I have survived for ten years now and I wasn't about to let these assholes beat me now. With my dagger in my hands and my knowledge of how to fight I put on a determined face and charged.
My mind went into overdrive. The Lurkers slowed down. I knew exactly where going to strike me and I did the same thing but faster. I charged towards the ones I ran into in the beginning. They swung their fist and I dodged. I took one of them at a time. I ran out of the circle they surrounded me and turned. One of them found a very pointy stick and tried to shish kabob me with it. I swung to the side coming up behind it and dug my dagger into the back of its throat.
He dropped dead and I moved on to the next one. I turned into a hurricane, slashing and taking down everything in my path. I took down over half the Lurkers, but I was not done yet. Six down two to go. The one in front of me growled and barreled towards me. I sidestepped, feigned an attack to the throat, and swung my arm around, using the force to knock him down. I brought my dagger down to its skull. I heard a satisfying crack and turned to the last one, who use to be my neighbor with the shard of glass. I turned a little too fast and my hood fell off revealing my eyes and curly blonde hair. I didn't have time to fix it since my neighbor, Lance, charged me. I just hoped he didn't catch my eyes.
He seemed to know most of my attacks and dodged most of them. I widened my eyes because most Lurkers are more stupid than this. He didn't turn fast enough and I caught him in the arm. He screamed in rage and charged me. I stepped aside just in time to see him clamp down with his fangs and got a mouth full of air. I backed up, and tripped on a crack in the asphalt. I fell with a very hard thud on my back, my dagger skidding away from me. He pounced towards me, bringing the glass towards my face. I rolled away and grabbed a big rock. I hefted it above me as far as I could while laying down and before he could register that he missed me I brought down the rock and his blood splattered all over my face.
I stood up and felt the stinging pain in my leg. I grabbed my dagger a couple of feet away from the now dead Lance lurker thing, and turned around to see five boys staring at me with stunned expressions. I stare right back at them and limp towards the door they were kind of blocking.
I hope you liked this update to the chapter. I enjoyed writing it. If you have any tips on how to make my writing better pm me or review my story. I will try to update as soon as possible. Sorry I had to rewrite this, but I just recognized that I used one of my old nonsense stories and forgot you change the characteristics of some characters. Review if you want to and thanks for reading.