Chapter I

"Would you rather fight zombie sized chickens or chicken sized zombies?" he asked, "zombie sized chickens," I replied without another thought, "why?" he asked, "it's obvious, whether a chicken is massive or tiny, it still thinks like a chicken," I answered. He pondered on that thought as we kept walking down the street to school, I didn't know why, it seemed open to me, but then I didn't mind, it gave me some quiet time to think.

My name is Cameron, a fifteen year old introvert, or at least that's what everyone else says, I don't normally care about what other people think but I pretend to so that they don't dwell on the case and bother me too much, so if someone calls me an introvert, I'll smile at them and say 'I am indeed' but I wouldn't blame them, judging from my behavior at school I earned all the creepy tags.

I was a certified goth without the makeup and the scary attitude, people have many theories to why I'm a cold human being, maybe it was the fact that I was adopted, or maybe the fact that I ran away from every single foster home I had been put and was currently devising a plan on how to run away from the new one, or maybe the fact that I enjoy watching people feel pain, I don't know which they stuck to but I'll go ahead and say all the above.

I didn't have a typical childhood, I was abandoned at birth, most of my foster parents were cruel, I didn't fit in with the kids at school, I never had any friends so I just spent my whole life locked up inside. So I did the reasonable thing and ran off, it didn't take long for child services to find me and relocate me to a different home, I didn't know how that always worked out.

Cause I was sure before you adopt someone you are told whether they are a flight risk or not, but people didn't seem to care about that, they always welcomed me with open arms,  maybe it was my face, I didn't know. I had run from four different homes and the child services were getting "annoyed with my behavior" which I didn't care at all about, but I honestly didn't want to be put in an orphanage so I promised to keep it down. Which was why I was still living in Philadelphia, with a nice married couple living in a pretty nice house and going to a pretty nice public school. It was tolerable but there was something wrong, maybe it was the fact that they were so good to me I felt bad that soon I was gonna leave and never look back, it was probably that.

"But if the chickens are massive won't they think of you as little to no threat and attempt to eat you the same way they eat grasshoppers and worms," he said, bringing me out of my inner conversation. He was Kai, the only friend I had ever made in any school I had ever been in, I don't know why I became friends with him, he was somewhat like me, didn't have friends, didn't fit in but the problem was that he tried. He is pretty funny and definitely talks too much which I find annoying, but he wasn't good enough for the cool kids, or basically any other type of kids, which was why we found each other, at first I didn't want a friend but he was persistent, took him a month but I concluded that maybe he'd be more quiet once I accept his friendship. I was wrong.

But once you get over the fact that he's annoying you get to see him for him, even more annoying on a deeper level, which I was fine with, it made me talk a lot less to myself. Which maybe was an improvement, so he was like an anchor that held me in between madness sanity, plus it was nice to hear someone else's voice that wasn't mine.

His family was fully biological so that made me feel a bit jealous, he was black and his mom was British, lucky kid. He had long black hair but not long enough for an Afro, just enough that made it look cool, he normally wore a red hoodie, black jeans and black sneakers which I'm sure he trademarked as his style. He was five feet and fifty five inches which meant he wasn't that tall neither was he short. He was a big fan of comics, which was one of the only things we talked about, he had brown eyes and an average build. By average I mean he was leaning towards skinny.

"I'm pretty sure if you are able to make a loud enough sound, the chickens will be threatened and back off, worms on the other hand can't which is why they are considered completely harmless," I stated, "huh, didn't think of that," he said, we kept walking and finally got to the school. Thornston high was the name, we were both juniors so we didn't get bullied that much, we still were, just not as much as we were a year before.

We walked through the gates and into the main building which was packed as always, hundreds of kids walking around, each with a different story and most of them were messed up. I didn't talk much but I definitely saw more than what I needed to see, and the knowledge I had about the good people of Thornston high was enough to make a novel, but I probably won't . We walked through the crowd and stopped at my locker to pick up my books and drop off my bag and Kai went off to do the same.

But as usual this was high school, and weird kids like me couldn't pick up their books and go to class in peace, "hey freak, brought back any dead people lately," a voice I grew to know and avoid as much as possible said behind me, "oh gosh, I was gonna bring back your grandmother but she said she hated her family so much she was better of dead," I replied, that wiped that grin off her face, "it's cute when he tries to fight back," she said to the girl on her right, typical, she couldn't come up with a comeback so she refers me to the third person. "What do you want Veronica?" I asked, the smile crawled back into place as she said, "to relocate to a different locker so that I don't have to look at your weird face anymore," I knew that's what she wanted.

She had been asking me that since the first day and frankly it was getting annoying, in normal circumstances I would have agreed to do that, but I had been relocated so many times because people wanted to have their best friends as locker mates but I was tired, and plus using my face as an excuse was just low, "not happening," I replied as I locked my locker, "fine then, maybe now I can get my boyfriend to negotiate with you," she said, and that should have been threatening to any other random kid, but I was used to it.

She was gonna get a big muscular jock from the football team to beat me up with some of his friends, she was very capable of doing that, she was one of the hottest and most popular girls in our school, she was the usual, white, long blonde hair, green eyes, red lips, slim build, somewhat athletic from being in the cheer squad and she wore a black skirt that showed off her smooth legs a maroon shirt and a leather pink jacket to top it off. She was beautiful, and I liked her for that, most guys would have seen the pricky attitude and lost interest but not me, in fact, the attitude made her even more attractive. Then there was her squad, the classic one girl on the right and the other on the left, comparatively less pretty but still wore expensive clothes, they did not speak unless spoken to and they always backed her up in a fight even when the fight was pointless, they were basically like dogs. "Whatever," I shrugged my shoulders and walked away, she was probably annoyed and wanted to shout at me but I was a safe distance away and she had to let it slide unless she wanted to make a scene.

I went to my first class which was geography, but as I walked through the doors something felt odd, I did choose geography to learn geography so maybe that was it, I told myself, I should've known it wasn't. I took my usual seat in the middle of the class next to the window and waited for the rest of the people to settle in, once the lesson started the teacher started on this new topic that I did not understand, but that's just how it is for average guys, then things started to feel weird.

Everything the teacher said started to make sense, he was teaching fast and I was totally getting it, I didn't write anything down but I could remember exactly what he said from the beginning and how he said it, I wasn't trying to understand but I was. 'Is this what parents mean when they say you'll understand everything once you're older' I thought, "...and it will be answered by Cameron," I looked up surprised that he said my name out of the blues and said, "a seismometer is an tool that receives seismic impulses," the teacher was obviously taken aback by my answer because it looked like I was very distant, "that's...right, that is very correct," he replied, he turned back to his book and continued teaching and the kid next to me leaned over and said, "good catch, he was trying to catch you off guard with a random question we probably haven't learnt yet," that was unsettling, "what do you mean?" I asked, that was an earthquake question, we're learning volcanism."

With that he turned back to his own books and continued minding his own business, now that was definitely weird, because I didn't know a thing about earthquakes. Something weird was happening and for once it was happening to me.