Chapter Text
——
——
——
When the Apocalypse starts, Rose Lalonde is tucked away in a corner of the library, up on the second floor balcony. She is so safely enveloped in her book that she misses the calls of panicking friends and family, desperate to know if she is okay. She misses the first and last reports of the undead uprising, just as she misses the first scream as the infected finally break into her building.
She does not, however, miss the second scream, or the third.
And she certainly does not miss when she pulls out her knitting needles and aims for the eyes of the zombies out for her flesh.
——
John Egbert is at home, watching television, when the Apocalypse starts.
He is there as the program he was watching- something about a detective, or perhaps some sort of comedy- is cut off abruptly in favor of an emergency news report on people suddenly attacking each other en masse. He is there when the broadcast goes essentially dead as one reporter turns in front of all the cameras and begins scratching and biting the other reporter, who screams and tries to back away.
The first think he does is call his friends. He can’t think of anything else to do; the situation is too surreal, it’s stupid.
His heart stops when the first two don’t answer.
It starts again when the third one does.
——
Dave Strider is bored, incredibly so, when the Apocalypse starts.
Truthfully, all he’s doing is sitting there on his bed, wondering if he should draw or play Brobox or practice with his katana a bit.
In the end, he can’t decide on what to do, and so he does nothing at all.
That is, until the phone rings, and he reaches for it and answers, and it’s John, all hysterical because apparently the world is ending.
John is a prankster at heart, and at first he almost dismisses his claims of zombies, but something in his voice resonates with Dave, and instead he tells John to grab a weapon, and board up the house, and that he’ll be there soon.
He doesn’t know that when he grabs his katana leaves his home that he has set in motion a grand chain of events.
He also doesn’t know that he is never going to enter his house again.
——
Jade Harley is sound asleep when the Apocalypse starts.
But that does not mean she is unaware of it.
She dreams keenly of rotting, decaying corpses reaching out to devour her and her friends, of humanoid monsters with sagging gray skin and gnarled yellow fingernails.
She tosses and turns as her phone goes off, and cries unconsciously as somewhere in the world, an entire city succumbs to the plague.
When she awakens, she will find her friends in desperate need of her help and a world on fire.
But for now, she is quietly haunted by visions of the present while she sleeps.
——
Karkat Vantas is in the Principal's office when the Apocalypse starts.
He is being chewed out for speaking rudely to both teachers and students, but at this point it’s a formality. They both know he’s not going to change, and that he is only one suspension away from expulsion.
Then the intercoms comes on, and for about one minute it’s a man’s voice, calm, informing them of what is going on. Then it turns into a choking sound, then coughing, and finally something indiscernible.
Two minutes later and the principal is convulsing right in front of him, and Karkat backs away, frightened. He grabs at the pair of safety scissors hidden in his jacket (it’s the closest thing to a weapon he’s allowed to have) and watches as the principal gradually, slowly, begins coughing up blood.
The sight is terrifying, morbidly so, and Karkat can’t look away no matter how much he tries. All he can do is let himself drift into the corner while the man in front of him turns an ashen pale color.
Finally the principal stills, and Karkat hopes the worst is over. Perhaps he’ll be allowed to leave early, on the condition he keeps quiet about what he saw. The thought is foolish, given what he has just heard, but in the moment it makes more sense to him than people suddenly going rabid.
Then the adult turns towards him, and Karkat can see in his rolled back white eyes that this is not a drill.
As the man lunges towards him, Karkat whips out the scissors and holds them in front of him.
This is not the way he wants to die.
——
Terezi Pyrope is in law class when the Apocalypse starts.
She is only half listening to the lecture on the death penalty, because in all honesty, she already knows all of this. After all, she’s going to be a lawyer of criminal justice when she grows up. That’s the dream, anyways.
Then the intercom comes on, and she can only think that maybe all it will ever be is a dream, because if this isn’t a joke and the body count is that high…
Well. You can’t exactly put corpses on trial.
Then she hears the sounds of pain and choking from where the teacher is- she’s blind, not deaf- and she thinks that maybe the reason it’s only going to be a dream because she’s dead.
Then Vriska Serket, her former best friend, pulls out a switchblade and stabs the teacher through the eye, and suddenly they’re fleeing together, as though all of this is according to some vague script.
And maybe, Terezi thinks, that’s because it is.
——
Vriska Serket is having a terrible day when the Apocalypse starts.
She’s in law class, sitting across the room from someone she still thinks of as her best friend, even though she should be thinking of as former best friend, and she can just tell that Terezi isn’t paying attention, because that’s the sort of thing you can just tell about someone when you’re best friends.
The only reason she’s even in this class is because Terezi wanted to take it, and she promised to take Engineering with Vriska if she signed up.
Vriska ponders if Terezi is thinking about her in the same way Vriska is about Terezi, then immediately pinches herself for even wondering about that. She pulls out her phone instead, and is hit with a wave of alerts and headlines.
She gets so distracted looking them over, she almost misses it when static interrupts the teacher.
Almost.
Then the intercom comes on, and she listens to the sound of the world ending.
Somehow, she isn’t as terrified as she thinks she should be.
Somehow, her mind is startlingly clear when the teacher starts frothing at the mouth, and she takes out her switchblade and drives it through her right eyeball.
Somehow, she feels almost giddy when she takes Terezi by the hand and leads her out of the classroom, and her best friend doesn’t even try to fight her, and the other students simply stare at them as they leave.
Somehow, she doesn’t react as they pass by a kid in the elevator being ripped apart by the attendant that was with him.
——
Tavros Nitram is on a tour of the school when the Apocalypse starts.
Following a freak accident in which he lost his legs, he became wheelchair bound, and had to transfer to a more handicap accessible school.
He and his tour guide are frozen for the first minute of the announcement over the intercom, and when the announcer starts gagging and making awful, awful noises, the nice lady that was showing him around wheels him into the elevator.
Why, exactly, she takes them into the elevator and not out the door he never finds out, because suddenly she’s hunched over making the same awful, awful noises.
And then she’s looming over him, eyes all rolled back so he can see the tiny red veins in them, and then she’s biting into his flesh, and he can’t help but scream and whimper at the pain.
The last thing he sees before he dies is the elevator doors opening, and two girls running down the hallway.
He locks eyes with one of them, his brown meeting her cerulean in some sort of desperate plea, although what for neither can say.
And then his vision is blocked, and he is no more.
——
Eridan Ampora is on the verge of tears when the Apocalypse starts.
He’s in the front row of Shop class, closest to the teacher’s desk, because sometimes the teacher leaves out the answer key to whatever they’re working on, and honestly, if you can successfully cheat, you deserve the same grade as those that do honest work.
His former girlfriend clearly didn’t feel the same, because right now she’s about two rows back, holding hands and giggling to a boy that isn’t him, and Eridan can’t decide if he wants to bury himself or bury them.
He doesn’t hear the intercom go off: none of them do. The system isn’t hooked up into the spacious concrete room or the adjoining one next door because both were added after the school was built.
Nobody bats an eye when the teacher starts coughing and bending over. She’s prone to such fits, so they wait patiently for her to finish. It isn’t until she starts spitting out blood that anyone asks after her, and by then it’s too late.
Fe- no, his ex, is the first to notice. “Ms. P?” She calls out “are you alright?” The answer never comes, because that’s the moment the teacher launches herself at Eridan and bites him.
His soul leaves his for another realm soon afterwards, and he watches with both joy and sorrow as his body tears apart his ex and her boyfriend.
——
Feferi Peixes is conflicted when the Apocalypse starts.
She’s in shop class, holding hands with Sollux Captor.
Outwardly, she’s smiling and laughing along to the really not-funny jokes he’s telling, but somehow he’s charmed her and she can’t be bothered by the fact that they are all in really poor taste.
The only thing bringing her down is her ex sitting two rows in front of them.
She sees his shoulders droop, and she can’t help but feel guilty for making him feel like this.She knows it was the right thing to do, because he’s mean to everyone and way too possessive, but she can’t force herself to stop caring about him.
She’s so caught up in all of it, that she almost doesn’t notice how the teacher is leaned up against the board, making horrible rasping noises.
When she does, and points it out, it’s too late, and suddenly Ms. P is lunging at Eridan and biting him, tearing off his skin and leaving a red patch of blood and muscle. Feferi wants to scream at him to move, to do something, but they are both immobilized.
Everyone is frozen in place, then someone screams, and suddenly everyone but her is running.
Sollux has left her by the time Eridan reaches her, and she still can’t bring herself to move as she looks at the blood splattered onto his shirt and scarf.
Then he’s biting her, tearing into her, and it hurts so much, and why can’t she move, and why is this happening?
And then she dies, and she doesn’t have to wonder anymore.
——
Sollux Captor is on cloud nine the day the Apocalypse starts.
He’s sitting in shop class, holding hands with none other than Feferi Peixes, and she’s actually laughing at his jokes, and it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard, just as she’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. Sitting in front of them is her overbearing ex, but right now he can’t bring himself to even think about that douchebag.
He doesn’t hear the intercom go off: no one does. It’s not even hooked up to the building, after all.
He doesn’t notice when the teacher starts wheezing and gasping for breath and clenching her hands. It’s normal for Ms. P to have panic attacks, after all. She just needs a couple minutes to calm down.
He does, however, notice the crimson she’s ejecting from her mouth when Feferi notices, and he panics with everyone else when Ms. P lunges at Eridan.
As their teacher feasts on the teen’s torn, bleeding flesh, he is tugging on Feferi’s hand, begging her to move, but she is frozen and staring.
He is the last one to leave her, and that is all the difference it takes to end his life.
One minutes thirteen seconds later, he trips, and suddenly both Eridan and Feferi have caught up to him, only their eyes are rolled back and bloodshot, and they aren’t responding to him.
Then Eridan tackles him and begins tearing the flesh of his arm, and Feferi claws at his face and eyes.
Before he dies, he hears footsteps and the loud, unmistakable roar of a large piece of machinery.
——
Kanaya Maryam is not human when the Apocalypse starts.
She has not been human for a very long time.
She’s next door to the shop class, in the room where all the dangerous tools are kept, because she alone has proven that she can handle blowtorches and chainsaws and some of the other dangerous tools the school still has around for some reason.
When the screaming next door starts, she’s working on a sketch for a stage design as a favor to a friend at one of the three work tables there.<
She is calm, collected even, as she gathers her small amount of things into her satchel, which she carefully tucks under her shirt so that it doesn’t swing wildly about when she goes about killing zombies, which she already knows she will. She’s known for a long time this day would come.
Before she leaves, she takes one of the portable chainsaws.
For anyone else, this would be a terrible weapon.
But Kanaya Maryam is not just anyone, and so she picks it up with ease and slips out of the workshop into the classroom with the rest of the shop class students, and from there into the hallway leading towards the rest of the school.
She doesn’t need to go far before she spots two students she was once acquainted with begin biting and eating a third.
She probably could have saved him, but she settles for avenging him instead, and cuts down all three of them, one by one, with her unwieldy weapon.
Not once do they try to attack her.
There is nothing to gain by eating a vampire, after all.
——
Gamzee Makara is lighting up in the boys bathroom when the Apocalypse starts.
His best friend has been called to the principal's office yet again, but as long as Karkat doesn’t leave him for good, Gamzee’s cool.
Gamzee’s cool with a lot of things.
He’s cool with it when the intercom comes on, and the guy is talking all calmly.
He’s still cool with it when the guy isn’t calm anymore, and Gamzee is pretty sure he’s dying. He’s even cool with it when the guy stops making sounds completely.
It takes Gamzee almost seven minutes to decide he should go look for Karkat.
He does so slowly, and it isn’t until he’s just outside the cafeteria that he even sees his first walking corpse. Not that he knows that’s what he’s looking at.
It doesn’t really matter that much to him, anyways.
He’s cool with it as the zombie with a blue cat-ear headband dives at him and begins clawing into his flesh.
He’s cool with it as other zombies join in and begin gnawing on his skin.
He’s cool with it as he takes his last breath in
And he’s cool with it when his heart stops beating.
——
Equius Zahhak is at lunch with his little sister when the Apocalypse happens.
She isn’t really his little sister, but it’s the most natural way to think of her, and so he calls her ‘sis’. She is equally fond of calling him her brother, so neither of them have any problems defining their relationship as familial.
They’re at the back of the cafeteria, because it’s less noisy there, and Nepeta doesn’t like loud noises because her hearing is extra sensitive.
She slides him her milk carton while another friend gives her their extra juice, and he can’t help but wish everything stays like this forever, where nobody is picking on either of them.
Then the intercom comes on, and they are doomed before they even know what’s happening.
The second the Apocalypse is announced, students begin panicking and running out, and it reminds him of the stampede scene from “The Lion King”.
It’s Nepeta’s favorite movie, so nobody will fault him for that being the first thing to come into his mind. (Its also his second favorite, not that he’s said as much to anybody.
Nobody thinks to use the emergency exit doors, and so Equius instead hoists Nepeta onto his shoulders, so she doesn’t get lost in the crowd, and they fight their way to entrance.
They don’t know that all the lunchtime staff have already turned into zombies, and have been biting students since the end of the intercom announcement. It’s impossible to tell who is and who isn’t turned in the sea of people, so Equius powers through as fast as he can.
He’s gotten the two of them about three quarters of the way across the room when he stumbles as he feels a terrible pain in his arm. He doesn’t realize he’s been bitten until they get to the entrance, at which point he shrugs her off his shoulders, and tells her to go on.
She refuses to do so.
He had a feeling she would.
——
Nepeta Leijon is doodling when the Apocalypse starts.
She sitting at lunch with her brother in all but blood and another friend, imagining herself in the future.
She has three cats, and Equius is there, and so is her crush, and everyone is happy and together.
She knows full well it’s a fantasy, but why should that stop her from imagining something happy?
And then the intercom comes on, and everyone is running and screaming, and Equius picks her up and sets her on his shoulders, and they’re running through the crowd.
They’re almost to the door when Equius suddenly stumbles, and he never stumbles, and she knows something’s really, really wrong.
She doesn’t know how wrong until both of them are sprawled out onto the floor, and Equius is telling her to run and save herself.
She can’t. She can’t leave him. She tells him as much.
Then he’s crying, and she starts crying too, until suddenly there’s an incredible pain in her leg, like she’s being eaten by fire ants, only worse.
Then her eyes cross and her vision goes white, and she is gone.
——
Aradia Megido is already dead when the Apocalypse starts.
She can do nothing but watch as the people that kidnapped her use her body for horrible experiments, both of the scientific kind and of the magical kind.
In life, she had come to accept her fate, but in death it has given her nothing but rage.
So her spirit lingers on, and on, in that same white room all those tests took place in.
Maybe one day someone will come along and see her.
Maybe one day, if someone sees her, she can tell them how to lift the curse that started the Apocalypse.
But if she ever is seen, and if she ever does tell, it won’t have anything to do with any adult.
You can never trust adults, is what she’s learned from being in this place.
They were supposed to look after and protect children like her, but instead they have abused her and tried to harm everyone else.
So no, she isn’t going to stop the curse from spreading until she meets someone that understands her.
But she can’t help but hope that it happens soon, because she doesn’t think it’s very fun being as bitter as she is all the time.
But she’s committed to this path, and she isn’t going to change her mind.
——
——
——