Did all of my American readers have a good Thanksgiving? I know I did.

Also I hope none of you died during Black Friday. Just throwing that out there.

Got this chapter and the next chapter knocked out while I was at my uncle's ranch, and I managed to write a little somethin' somethin' that will be popping up on my blog in the next day or so. If you're interested, you can go check it out. Link to my blog is in my profile. Happy times.

Okay, I realize the prologue was confusing as all get out. It's meant to be. Hopefully you guys will be able to get a better grasp on the situation after you finish this chapter. It's all deliciously convoluted. I'm a little surprised at how complicated I'm making these first few chapters.

Character deaths galore in this chapter. Prepare yoselves.

Hm...that's all I can think of right now. Hope this sheds some light on the situation.

I don't own Danny Phantom. Enjoy. (:

Wide Awake

Chapter One

November 24, 2012

It was the summer before his senior year. It was supposed to be the summer he always dreamed about; late nights that blurred into mornings, sleeping until three in the afternoon, being with his best friends, enjoying the hype before the first major turning point of his life. Danny knew, on the last day of his junior year when the final bell rang and he traipsed out of the halls, Sam's left arm hooked around his elbow and her right hooked around Tucker's, that surely this summer would be the greatest he had ever had.

And so it started. He spent literally every waking hour he could with Tucker and Sam, playing pre-released video games in Sam's home theater and eating his body weight and then some at the Nasty Burger. He watched every sunset the Earth had to offer him, and only one passed without Sam at his side. He spoke regularly with Jazz, who decided to stay in Boston over the summer to work for a prestigious lab she was interning for at Auburn University, where she was planning on going for grad school. He never did seem to stop smiling, even when he was fighting ghosts. Nothing could get him down.

The first report came mid-June, just two weeks after school ended. It was completely random and strange, a last-minute story on the six-o'clock news. Danny was heading out the door at the time, and just happened to pass by the living room, where his parents were engrossed in the television. He glanced at the screen, where the female anchor was settled behind the desk, speaking gravely into the camera. He was just about to close the front door when her words reached him.

"...to be a flesh-eating humanoid entity on the loose." He jerked back so suddenly he was almost certain he gave himself whiplash. In an instant, he was in the living room, clutching the arm of the couch as he stared in disbelief at the television screen. Raw footage of what appeared to be a man thrashing about down the middle of a suburban street played as the anchor spoke. "As you can see, it appears to be a man. Eye witnesses claim the man was incredibly agitated, vomiting what they believed was blood, and whenever someone would reach out to assist the man, he lashed out and...bit them?" The anchor's voice finally betrayed her emotions as the screen flickered back to the live shot of her sitting on the news set, staring at the camera in utter disbelief. "I...I don't -"

"Zombies!" Jack said robustly as Maddie turned the television off, cutting the end of the story off as well.

"Oh, Jack," Maddie tutted and shook her head. She stood quickly, clearing their dinner dishes off of the coffee table and heading into the kitchen. "Honestly, people get so freaked out over the littlest things. I'm sure some kind of blood vessel in his brain burst or something."

Danny chewed the inside of his cheek. He was just about to ask how real the possibility of a zombie apocalypse was when his phone rang. All of his worries vanished the moment he saw Sam's name lit up on his screen.

Within a month, seventy-five other news stories reporting zombie-like behavior in people from all over the country cropped up on that same news channel alone. Danny was sure there would have been more, had the electricity not been shut off. In those four short weeks, the disease, which scientists believed started with a new strain of mad cow disease, had effected sixty percent of the population in America alone. Amity Park was one of the last few cities to remain untouched by the disease; while most used the borrowed time to stock up and prepare for the coming onslaught, a few seemed deluded into believing that they were protected by the ghosts that haunted the place.

Of course, they were proven dead wrong faster than anyone dreamed imaginable. After two and a half weeks of merely watching, it became apparent that the disease was spreading faster than the plague. Danny quickly established an escape plan for himself, Sam, Tucker, and their families. He would take them into the mountains. The zombies did not seem to like the mountains; the terrain was too difficult for them to cross. He would take them far into the mountains, find a cave or something, and they would stay there until the disease had been eradicated and the world was sane again. He tried not to think about Jazz. He imagined her safely stored away in the basement of the lab she worked in, waiting the disease out like he would soon be doing, too.

Of course, he should have expected his plans to completely blow up in his face. They normally did. Looking back on it, he was unsure of why he ever believed his plan would work. He never learned.

It was the night before he meant to put his plans to action. He was sleeping fitfully, unsure in his half-sleeping state of whether or not the blood-curdling screams he heard were real or dream. It was all becoming too much for him to handle, his dreams so incredibly vivid, when suddenly he was being roughly shaken awake. His vision was blurred and he groaned as his senses slowly sharpened.

"Danny." His mother's voice was panicked. He snapped to attention at the sound, his skin suddenly crawling. "You have to go. Now."

"Mom, what -"

"Don't!" She shrieked. She was yanking him up by his shirt, glancing around the room in a complete frenzy. He noticed a thin sheen of sweat across her brow in the dim glow of his analogue clock, which currently read four o'clock in the morning. "You need to get out of here right now!"

"Tell me what's going on!" Danny seized his mother's elbows and held her still. She was forced to look at him, and he was shocked to see tears streaming down her face. "M-mom?"

"Sweetheart," Her voice was so soft. Danny felt his stomach churning. "Your...your father..."

"No." Danny shook his head, the realization of what was happening dawning on him. "Please."

"I'm so sorry, baby," She whispered, cupping his face in her hands. "He's...in our bedroom, but...I don't know...if..."

"Don't." He heard his voice waver. "I don't want to know."

"You need to leave." Maddie repeated, stroking his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb.

"I'm not leaving you here with him!" Danny shouted. She winced. "What did you think, I was just gonna up and leave while you stayed here and hung out with a...a..." She was holding her left forearm out. His eyes were drawn to a tattered hole in the fabric of her jumpsuit, beneath which sat several gaping, bleeding holes in her flesh, about the size and shape of his father's teeth.

"He bit me." She whispered. Danny felt his knees buckle. He hit the ground with a solid thump, and he didn't look up when his mother sank to the ground before him. "Danny, listen to me, okay?" Her hands were on his shoulders, his neck, in his hair. She pulled his head forward and rested her forehead against his. "Be brave, Danny. Be strong. Your father and I love you so, so much. We will always love you."

Tears were flowing freely down his face. He felt as if he had risen out of his body, and was floating up by the ceiling, watching the scene below unfold with a distinct air of detachment.

"I don't understand...when did dad...?" He choked.

"I don't know, baby, I don't know," His mother's voice was soothing. Danny closed his eyes, doing everything he could to memorize the way her voice sounded. Distantly, on the other end of the house, he heard a terrible pounding sound, as if someone was beating their fists against a wooden door. "I don't know how much time I have left. I need to end this."

Danny jerked away from her in horror. "What do you mean, end this?" He croaked.

Her face suddenly became a mask of determination. "I will not become a monster." She growled. "Nor will I allow my husband to become one. I will do what is necessary to ensure this."

He was stunned. "You have to go now." Maddie said, pulling him to his feet. She turned and seized his backpack, dumping the contents out on his bed and hurrying around to his chest of drawers. "I wish we had more time, my love, but I can't risk waiting. Not when the turn around time varies so drastically," She explained as she dumped armfuls of clothes into the backpack. As she struggled to get the zipper up, Danny seized his cell phone from his beside table and shoved it into the pocket of the basketball shorts he had fallen asleep in. He looked up to find her smoothing the creases down and handing the bag over to him. He took it and slung it across one shoulder, before lurching forward and enveloping her in a bone-crushing hug. She returned the hug with as much force as she could muster, letting him linger. Tears stung his eyes as they fell down his face. He quickly wiped them away as his mother released him, sniffling violently as she wiped away her own tears.

"Go." She shooed him toward the bedroom door. Danny stayed frozen on the spot.

"Mom?"

"What is it?"

"I need to tell you something."

"Anything."

"I...I'm Danny Phantom."

She was silent. He closed his eyes and made the change, keeping them closed after the rings had vanished. He opened them experimentally, to find her gazing at him in a mixture of incredible sadness and extreme shock. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner." He said, glancing down at his boots. "I just...I knew you guys hated him...and I was afraid that if you found out that we're the same person...you would hate me, too."

"There is nothing you could ever do that would make me or your father hate you." She said, her voice shaking in conviction. "I am so proud to call you my son. We both are. Maybe you can find a way to end this madness." She gave him a soft half-smile.

"I love you, mom." Danny whispered.

"I love you, too." She bit her lip and choked out a small sob, before pointing to his bedroom window. "Go."

He turned and flew directly out of his bedroom window. He tried to focus on the complete chaos on the streets below him, but he found that his vision was blurred with tears. He shifted into invisibility and threw himself down on the roof of a building, dropping his backpack at his side and burying his face in his hands. He sobbed until his throat felt raw, flinching and quaking when he heard the deafening sounds of his house exploding. When he finally looked up, his eyes were drawn to the empty space in the sky where the FentonWorks sign once stood proud.

Danny stood, took several shuddering breaths, and allowed his mind to switch over to hero mode. He immediately thought of Tucker and Sam. He glanced over the side of the building he chose to break down on. The streets were going to be impossible. As he watched, three cars slammed into various fire hydrants, buildings, and telephone poles. Non-infected people were sprinting down the sidewalks, screaming as zombies tore after them. Danny swallowed as he watched the zombies move; they were unlike anything he had ever seen before. They were far faster than he originally imagined, and far more vicious. He saw no sign of Tucker or Sam, so he hoped they were still at their respective houses.

Tucker's house was closest, so Danny set off in that direction. He kept himself invisible, soaring high over the buildings until Tucker's house came into view. He dropped in altitude, investigating the scene as he approached. The lights were off, which he supposed was not a good sign. In fact, considering how frantic the people on the street were, Tucker's house was suspiciously comatose.

His first mistake was coming any closer. He spotted a broken window on the third floor; it looked as if someone had thrown a chair through in their haste to escape. He dropped down a bit closer and spotted a motionless body on the sidewalk in front of the house.

Mr. Foley had jumped. He either leapt out or was pushed out of the window to his death. If Danny's heart beat while he was a ghost, he was certain it would have stopped at the sight. He dropped lower, his eyes on the back of his best friend's father, and before he realized it, he was level with the broken window. On the very edge of his vision, he saw movement, and that was when he made his second mistake. He looked up.

Mrs. Foley had been bitten just hours previously, but she looked as if she had been sick with the disease for months. Boils and sores were spattered across her face and neck, and the skin beneath it was sickly and pale. Her eyes, once a warm and welcoming hazel, were now a cold, flat grey. He was certain that one eye did not even have a pupil for how light they were. Danny reared back as she lurched toward the window. She seized the window frame, leaned out, and screamed. Her voice was deep, broken, and alien to him. He realized his mouth was hanging open in shock, but he could not bring himself to close it.

He was completely overwhelmed by this new blow. Suddenly he felt an overpowering need to find Tucker and protect him, so without thinking about it, Danny rocketed forward. He slid into intangibility and drifted right past Mrs. Foley without even alerting her to his presence.

Tucker's room was empty. The sheets were turned up, as if someone had recently scrambled out of them, and Danny noted Tucker's beret was missing from its' usual resting place on a hook by the door. Tucker seemed to have used his backpack to collect his belongings in, too, because Danny spotted a pile of discarded school supplies beneath Tucker's computer desk. He searched the rest of the house, just in case, but he realized Tucker had probably taken off in a similar fashion to Danny. He wondered if Tucker's father got the chance to say goodbye.

Danny drifted out of the house, unable to tear his eyes away from Mrs. Foley, who was now tearing back and forth from one side of the room she was apparently trapped in to the other. He tried not to think of his father or what he looked like before...

Danny snapped his eyes shut, willing the tears to disappear. He would have time to grieve later, when he was reunited with Tucker and Sam.

His eyes snapped open and he was off like a rocket again, the only thought he was able to form being Sam. His non-existant pulse quickened and adrenaline boiled in his veins as he prayed that she was okay. Losing her was impossible to imagine. He could not bear the thought of it.

He nearly fell out of the air when the mansion came into view. Her home was in the northern half of the city, in the area notorious for families with impossible amounts of money. Each house was bigger and grander than the last, and Sam's was one of the biggest and grandest. Naturally, it was perched on top of a decent-sized hill, making it clearly visible to everyone within at least a half-mile radius. So when Danny rounded the corner, he was given a clear view of Manson Manor.

Which was completely engulfed in flames.

"Sam!" He bellowed, speaking for the first time since he left his house. He sped forward desperately, sliding effortlessly into intangibility and diving into the flames. She had to be okay. She promised.

"Do you ever think about dying?" She asked, closing her eyes lazily as the sun dipped below the horizon. Danny shot her a sideways glance, momentarily admiring the way the sun brought out the subtle violet highlights in her raven hair.

"Nah," He lied, turning his attention back to the pinkish hues left in the sky, bleeding into a deep red on the underbellies of a few stray clouds. "Why, d'you?"

"Well, yeah. Sometimes." She sighed, leaning back on her hands and staring straight up at the sky. "Like, when, or how. Who I'll be with. What I'll be wearing. That sort of thing."

"What you'll be wearing?" Danny asked incredulously. Her eyes were closed, he noticed, as she smirked. "You never think about clothes."

She opened one eye, making a dramatic flourish out of her eye roll, which earned a chuckle from him. "You're right. I don't. But sometimes, when I have to go buy a new shirt or something, I'll wonder...will I be wearing this when I die?"

"I've never thought about it like that." Danny said curiously. "It's kind of morbid to think about. Don't you think?"

"Well...not when human lives are so delicate. They can end just like that." She snapped her fingers, her head still thrown back and eyes closed. "They can end at any time, really. In the blink of an eye."

"Why're we talking about this?" He asked, growing more and more uncomfortable with the apparent ease with which Sam spoke of her own death.

"Just been thinking about it a lot lately." She shrugged, still not looking at him.

"You can't die." He muttered.

She turned to look at him that time, her brows knit in confusion. "What?"

"I...I don't...want you to...y'know...die." He said the last word so softly it was almost as if he was afraid to say it too loud. "It would...seriously suck." Her eyes softened and the faintest blush crept across her cheeks.

"I wouldn't even dream of dying without saying goodbye first. That's a promise." She assured him. And he believed her.

"Sam!" He shouted over the roar of the flames. He strained to hear, but the only sounds he picked up were shattering glass and crumbling framework. He shot into her room, which was completely full of smoke, so much so that it was difficult to see, but empty of any human beings. He flitted through all the rooms, cursing her father for designing the house with so many rooms and hiding places. Once he was satisfied that she was not on the fourth floor, he dropped down to the third.

He made it all the way down to the first floor without seeing any signs of anyone before he finally found something. Her kitchen seemed to be at the very heart of the fire; flames twice as tall as him leapt up and licked the ceiling, leaving jet-black scorch marks over the expensive paint. He peered desperately through the flames and spotted it.

One of the bar stools had been completely flipped over, as if someone had been sitting there and jumped up in a hurry. A plate with a half-eaten piece of toast sat in on the counter where he assumed the bar stool originally stood. He lurched forward, his hands fluttering over the scene, and as he got closer to the toast, he spotted the faintest trace of her plum lip gloss around the crescent-shaped bite mark.

It seemed like Sam had gotten up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack when news of the epidemic reached her. He flew out of the mansion, keeping his eyes trained on the windows, watching closely for any signs of life. There were none. He floated over the driveway and glanced down, and suddenly he noticed that Sam's car was missing.

Relief washed through him, making him go weak at the knees. He was certain that had he been standing he would have collapsed. As it was, he simply darted down the driveway, ignoring the fact that her front gate was still standing wide open, determined to find her. Amity Park was not that big, it did not seem like such a stretch to try and find her.

He searched for ten minutes, before he spotted the top of her Grand Cherokee as it shot down a side street. He kept up with it, slowly lowering himself closer, flinching as the car narrowly avoided slamming into people still running and screaming like mad. Danny had almost reached the conclusion that Sam was the most skilled driver he had ever seen when it happened.

It was like watching her car crash in slow motion. He noticed she was heading off to the left, toward a gas station, and he was almost happy that she was pulling over to fill up. He wondered if she was planning on leaving Amity Park. It did not cross his mind that it was odd that she was not slowing down until she slammed into the gas pump.

The force of the explosion actually blew him backwards, sending him flipping three times through the air before he was able to catch himself. He stared in utter disbelief as the entire gas station was engulfed in flames. And then, for the second time that evening, he lurched forward toward the inferno.

He did not bother screaming her name that time. He slid into intangibility and landed beside her car, bringing himself up to the windows to peer inside. The flames had burst through the floors, making it difficult to make out what was inside. He saw her, though, or who he assumed was her, in the driver's seat. She was still clutching the steering wheel. He was in shock. It was not until he noticed another human-shaped mass wearing a charred red hat in the passenger's seat that he snapped.

He stumbled backwards and fell, straight through the concrete and into the ground, allowing himself to sink ten feet into the earth. All noises from the outside world were immediately cut off, leaving him completely and utterly alone. His broken, heaving sobs were much louder than before. In less than three hours, he had lost everything he had ever held close to his heart. His father. His mother. His home. And now, Sam and Tucker. He knew it was them in her car. The most painful part about it was that they were alive just seconds before. He watched them die. And he could do nothing to save them.

Tourists used to joke that Amity Park was a literal ghost town. Had someone said that to him two months earlier, he would have rolled his eyes and walked away. But now, he thought as he hiked his backpack higher on his shoulder and sped toward the east, that couldn't be more true.

Understand now?

Haha, sucks to suck.

Next chapter should be up soon. In the next few days. Keep an eye on it.

As always, thanks for reading.

- Tori