Wow. I seriously was not expecting those kind of comments from you guys. I literally had to check back the next day to see if they were real. I can safely say you guys are all the motivation I need for this fanfic. Thank you. Thank you so much
In other news, I spent the best part of last week thinking all of the chapter's plots, and boy, are you in for a hell of a ride. As long as my writing is good enough, of course. At the moment, Jake isn't in the spotlight that much. That's kinda how he likes it, but that's all about to change. Enjoy the chapter!
Also, shout out to TheCurtisclan. I was not expecting a comment from you. Coming from you, that comment meant a lot.
Chapter 2: First Night
My brother looked at me in surprise and confusion. "Wha-" he began, but never finished. We heard the familiar muffled cry of the madman coming from the other side of the door, then a new noise, a high-pitched shriek, from what could only have been an old lady. I ran to the door for my Mum and Dad, my brother close behind. When we stepped out to the terminal, everything was chaos. People evading the scene as fast and as loud as they could, running from shops and seats that, seconds before, they had occupied.
I then saw the madman on top of the old lady, viciously clawing at her face. The old lady's rucsack broke open, it's contents chucked out, clothes became spattered with blood. It was all I could do not to throw up whatever was left in my stomach.
"Oh, Jesus," Mark managed, and turned away. I cover my mouth with my hands, Why wasn't anybody doing anything? my stunted mind registered, and the madman continued his relentless assault on the old woman.
Amid the chaos, I was then grabbed from behind. I opened my mouth in protest, but I then saw my dad, and the pained expression on his face. I then noticed my mum behind him, holding Felix, and relaxed in the knowledge that they were both okay.
"C'mon, lets get out of here, okay?" he reassuringly whispered into my ear, and I immeadiately nodded. He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the scene.
Behind me, I could finally hear the panicked shout of guards, and a gunshot. I flinched at that, and then saw Mark catching up. He managed a smile.
At the back of my head, I gained a nagging feeling. Don't look back, whatever you do, do not fucking look back. My dad was still held on to me. I loosened his grip. My dad, with a sympathetic smile, let go of me.
I glanced back.You idiot,the ominous voice in my head claimed, and I saw two guards wrestling the wounded madman to the ground. Next to him, the tattered remains of a human being in a blooded fur coat. I looked away and cringed.
It was the first dead body I had ever seen. But it wouldn't be the last.
An hour later, the five of us caught sight of a bench and slumped on it.
After the shock that was the encounter at the terminal, a guard examined the bite on my brother's arm, and approached us. "Jesus, son,are you quite alright?" he queried. Mark's adrenaline had kept his pain at bay for a while, but I guessed now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he was in a world of hurt. My dad spun round to look at Mark. "Mark, what's he talking about - Whoa! Mark, what the hell happened?"
Mark looked slightly dazed. I would be too, considering the speed at which things happened. "Uh..." he began, but trailed off. "Me and Jake were going to the men's room, when we saw the uh... the guy that attacked the terminal. He went straight up to me and bit my arm. It was weird, how his face was... he was acting like a rabid dog. Anyway, when he ran outside - well, you know the rest."
My mind wandered briefly back to the madman's rampage on the old woman, but immeadiately shut it out. "Honey, can you get the wipes out? we need to cover it. Also some antiseptic spray." My mum nodded, and hurriedly unzipped our rucsacks and pulled out an antiseptic spray. which read "Kills 99.9% of all bacteria."She then brought out a packet of wet wipes. "Goddamn loony bit one of our men too. I'm just glad we showed up before he could sink his teeth into anybody else."
After my dad had finished cleaning Mark's still bleeding wound, he turned to the guard. "Thank you, officer, but if we could, we'd really like to get going now." The guard nodded his head and smiled. "I understand. Have a good day now."
Me and my family walked on. After the encounter, added to the KFC I had eaten, my stomach acid was at full blast, and I could taste the vomit at the back of my throat. Mark walked beside me, looking slightly pale. The madman had bit out a sizeable chunk of flesh from his wrists, so he wouldn't exactly be shining beams of sunlight from his face. My mum and dad walked quicker now, looking harried. As we made it to the entrance-hall, we collapsed on the considerabley comfy bench.
Dad pulled his phone from his pocket, and phoned a taxi. My mum sat next to Mark. "How's that bite mark, honey?"
"At the moment, It's fine. It still hurts a lot, but... not so much that I'm screaming, d'you get that?" Around the hall, the place seemingly wasn't affected by the chaos at the terminal. Coffee shops and restaurants lined themselves up against the wall, a couple of kids stood at the corner draining their pennies into a gumball machine, two groups, probably relatives, jogged to each other and embraced. Everything felt more normal, less like a terrorist attack.
I pulled out my phone to play Brickbreaker. Unsurprisingly, I had drained all the battery tapping away on the flight. I mentally kicked myself for being such a wimp. A few hours into the flight I had tried to get some sleep, as the view of the clouds below me, and the sky above me had, to my surprise, gotten a little boring. As in nervous boring, if you can get that. Lucky as I am, I had the window seat right next to the right wing, which made napping virtually impossible.
Looking around for something to entertain me during the wait for the taxicab, I caught sight of a large screen tv in the corner of the hall. It was playing CBS News, a company I had only vaguely heard about. I couldn't hear the reporter's voice, but I could quite clearly see the caption text on the right of him:
"300% increase in poisoned crops," the caption read.
I shuddered. Until I became old enough to have my opinion on things, every scary thing I read about in the newspaper, or heard of in the news, terrified me to the core. The supposed swine flu pandemic had me hesitating to touch anything. The bullshit about the 2012 apocalypse had kept me awake for months, right up to the day it was supposed to happen. It was now taking all my willpower not to stick my middle finger to the TV.
I then noticed the gumball machine was right underneath the of what I felt, curiosity and outright boredom got the better of me. I leant to the side to speak to my mum. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out 50 cents. "Alright if I get something from the gumball machine over there?"
My mum nodded. I then walked over to the machine, carefully avoiding people striding in my way. I reached the gumball machine, then strained my neck upwards to hear the news properly.
"...but while this strange new strain of fungus has affected southern states, the FDA has kept this mysterious toxin away from other areas of the US." Screw this shit. I quickly ambled away to stop myself from hearing any more. I tried to jog back, but was met with too many people trying to get where they were going. When I managed to get back to the bench, my parents were gone. I tried not to panic, but felt my breathing get quicker. I looked around for any sight of them, face getting strained, but relaxed when I saw them calling them to me from outside next to the taxi.
I saw Mark sitting in the back, further examining his wound, then my parents fitting thier rucsacks into the boot of the car. I ran forward to join them.
The childhood excitement then swept over like a remembered memory. I momentarily wondered what my grandparents were like, if I would remember them, or if they would even remember me.
Sitting on the back window seat of a car, watching the world go by, this was the place were I felt most relaxed. Think about it. No-one can touch you, there's no sound except for a somewhat soothing rumble, it's an overall pleasant experience. Especially now, given the situation.
My mother sat next to me, looking eagerly out of the window, with occasional cries of "Hey, I remember that!" or pointing out various landmarks. I hardly needed her, however. The history was so obvious, you could see just a little bit of it on every street corner. My mum was enjoying pointing out to me the many Civil War battlefields in and around amount of learning that could be done here, the activities, were so overwhelming I practically forgot about the buisness at the airport.
There were streets lined with museums, and streets that felt like museums. Monuments to historical figures were placed on nearly every main street. Going out of the city and into the residential areas, My mum pointed out to me the James River from the bridge we were on.
We encountered many things on our way to our grandparents, but early on in our journey my mum insisted, despite paying more, on taking a slight detour to St John's Episcopal Church, where, my mum told me, Patrick Henry had given his great speech.
My grandparents lived near the Pocahontas State Park, and my mum took time to point out the entrance of it. The idea that hours before I had looked at the entire regional area from the window seat of a plane, now was delving deep into the heart of it's surburban areas and into the tiniest corners that were streets and houses, was amazing, if not a little homesick-inducing. But then again, I shouldn't be homesick. I was born in Richmond, and it was something my peers at secondary school often had a jab at me over. I spent a while thinking I wasn't British enough to be British, or American enough to be American. Thankfully, I had parents who would help me no end over that, and I didn't let it bother me.
Without warning, the taxi came to a halt outside a two-storey house made of white marble. Plants dotted the pebbled pathway to the front porch. I felt a nagging idea telling me to stay in the car, mainly because it was so comfy. But when I saw my mum pay the fare with fumbled hands and rapiidly exit the cab, it was all I could do not to follow her in the same fashion.
My dad smiled at me. "Wow, look at this place. Mark, c'mere." Mark looked up from rubbing his bite. "Whoa." he then leapt off the car seat and followed mum. He wasn't giong to get there before me, however. I followed him so eagerly I barely registered the traction of the pebbles and nearly slipped. I walked more slowly then, taking in the vast, intricate surroundings. Before I made it halfway up the pathway, my mum was already tapping at the knocker.
A few moments later, the door opened, and a familiar figure emerged from it, Me and my grandparents had talked many times over facebook, but to see them in the flesh was wholly different. My grandma emerged in a beautiful blue and purple dress. When she saw my mum, I could swear she nearly cried.
"Oh, my dear Caitlyn, where did you go for 13 years?" she said, squeezing her tightly. When she caught sight of Mark however, he seemed to be the only thing in the world.
"Where have you been, you beautiful boy?" she demanded, but not before rendering Mark as a human teddy-bear and planting a classic grandma kiss on his forehead. As it was with Mark, it soon was with me. She set her eyes on me, pointed at me with her free hand and gave a wide grin.
"Jake Williams, do not think for one second that I forgot about you!" She let go of Mark and made her way to me. She then took hold of me and I felt an unexpected wave of emotion. Unlike Mark, I returned her hug. "Long time no see, honey," she managed to croak, and I remembered her saying that whenever we caught up on facebook. "Unlike this loser, you actually talk to me." She gestured a back thumb back to an ashamed-looking Mark. "Well, I am the talkative type," I said in my best American accent, and she laughed. "Go on, your grandpa wants to see you." I nodded, and followed my mum into the house.
Behind me, I could hear my grandma remaking acquaintance with my dad; "C'mon kid, you can tag along too."
When I had entered the house and finished saying hello to my grandad, my grandma came back to me. Indoors, I could see clearly what she looked like. She was one of those women that only seemed to grow more beautiful as they became older. She brought me and Mark together, and said: "Now since you two are going to be staying here for the rest of the week, why don't you go and pick out you tooms? Your parents are there already."
Me and Mark walked up the grand mahogany steps, an were met with seven rooms. Seven. This is going to take some getting used to, I thought. Upon discovery, I found that one of the rooms was a toilet, one a bathroom, one a store cupboard, and the other four bedrooms. I guessed that one was for me, one for Mark, one for my parents and Felix, and the last for my grandparents. I was left with one choice as my brother had already picked one out. I entered the room left for me and was met with a plain, peachy-coloured room with a magnificent bed, and a desk with a round lamp on it. I curiously looked around for a switch, but found none. I rested my hand on the lamp, and it turned on. I was always fascinated with cool things like that, nifty additions to inventions. Ergonomics, my D+T teacher called them.
I touched the lamp again to turn it off, and made my way downstairs where I could smell my grandma cooking already.
Tea was a nightmare.
It had started off pretty well. my grandma decided to make us meatloaf. "Why not?" she said when I asked her. "It's all you'd be eatin' were you over here." My dad silently scowled at that.
I sat next to him, and asked him what it was about his in-laws that he disliked so much. "They weren't exactly happy to see me when I first arrived here with your mum. Granted, I didn't make a very good impression myself, but one thing left to another, and, well..." He trailed off, unsure of how to finish.
I walked away confused, How two good people could end up with such a bitter resentment for each other, I would never know. And it only got worse from then on. When tea arrived, we all sat around on a big table. What questions I had for them I had now forgotten, and my mum and my grandparents talking seemed to be the only thing keeping us from an unbearable silence.
I don't remember the exact details, but a few semi-insulting comments from my grandad and grandma were enough to make my dad lose his temper. The shouting began, and I looked at Mark, who shrugged. I made a gesture to go upstairs to our rooms, and he nodded.
On my way up the stairs I could hear my grandma shouting "Now look what you've made the poor kids do!" That only seemed to spur me on, and when me and Mark retreated to our new rooms, I felt more homesick than ever. Not the best start to a holiday you've been anticipating for weeks, I thought. Since I still wasn't hungry, I tried to get some sleep.Just forget about today, today was horrible. The flight, the airport, the reunion. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow they'll apologise to each other. Just get some sleep.
I slept.
And a few hours later, things got really crazy.
That's all guys! If any of you are from Virginia or know a lot about it, I may or may not need a list of glaring errors I made. This next chapter, the story will turn itself upside down and do a few somersaults while it's at it. Until then, it's goodbye from me.