Chapter Text
The thing about the tragic recaps you hear on the news is that a good deal of the time, they start out the same.
“It was a day just like any other,” “We never saw it coming,” “Everything had just seemed so normal,” yada, yada.
Unfortunately, your own sorry ass fell directly into that cliche on that day. You had woken up with a surprisingly sparkly attitude considering it was a Monday. You had taken a shower and got dressed, then went downstairs and tried to be civil with Kankri during breakfast. You had failed that previous goal, and tried not to smash your bowl of cereal directly over his self-righteous head. Then you had stormed upstairs, crammed your schoolwork into your bag, thunked your way back downstairs, and stomped your merry way out the door towards the bus station. All according to plan.
The bus ride to the city and towards your school was the same ordeal as ever, with the bus driver giving her familiar disgruntled stare in the rearview mirror, and the local douchebags “bro”ing it up in the back of the vehicle. You had popped in your earbuds, and let the rhythm of Will Smith’s rapping carry you away from the unpleasant ride; you had a good mood to uphold, and if it meant treating your attitude like finely spun glass, then so it would be. You would walk around all day with your hands cupped around it screaming “DO NOT TOUCH,” if you had to. Nothing was going to wreck this.
...But then of course, something did.
The brakes whined, and the bus came to a pitiful stop, finishing with a quiet sputter. The driver sat frozen at the wheel for a moment, as if she hadn’t comprehended why she still wasn’t moving. The riders, yourself included, all went silent as she tapped the gauge on the dashboard, let out a quiet curse, and lumbered outside. A moment later, she barked out a louder, more exasperated swear. Turning your head to look through the back window, you saw a long, dark trail following the bus’ path. Great. Your damn vehicle had been leaky. You were all stranded on a quiet road, framed by wheat fields.
“Well, this is fantastic,” you grumbled, putting away your earbuds and moving to stand upright.
“What are you doing, dude?” a douche from the back called, watching you sling your bag over your shoulder.
“Walking, I guess,” you growled. Kankri was off at work by then, and Dad had been preaching out of town for the past week. There was no way they could have picked you up, and it wasn’t like anyone there would have lent you a ride, if they had one. School was kind of a must, considering the state of your grades and how close you were to the end of the quarter.
You meandered through the isle and started to descend down the stairs when the bus driver let out a restrictive sound; an “ah, ah, ah!” of sorts. The kind of sound that told you that ‘whatever the fuck you think you’re doing, stop.’ You raised your eyes in her direction, ready to give her a verbal thrashing because what goddamn credentials did she have to tell you what you could and could not do?-- you halted in your tracks.
She had positioned herself flat against the side of the bus, her larger form pressed as tightly as possible against its surface. Her eyes were set rigidly in front of her; she must’ve heard you, rather than seen you. You had stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate on her command.
“So…?” you had asked, wearily looking out into the wheat field by the bus’s side. Seeing nothing.
“Don’t move,” she had breathed back with a sense of urgency far out of place from the current situation, “there’s something out there.”
The rest of the bus had caught on to the scent trail of bullfuckery that was wafting from the front of the bus; they prowled until they were standing right behind you, gazing out into the field as well.
“None of you move,” she gritted towards them. Her braced arms were trembling. Her eyes were flickering now, trying to comprehend something’s form, and you snapped your head to follow her line of sight. You saw it.
“Holy fuck,” you wheezed. The others’ attention focused on you.
“What?”
“What did you see?”
“Tell us!” Their voices rose like a chorus. Doing an effective job of ruining what little cover you all might have had. You stomped your heel quickly, and spat at them.
“If you want to get out of this predicament with all your body parts intact, kindly take those flapping lips of yours, and zip them.”
“Predicament?” one of them echoed, and just like that, they all realized that they were neck deep in a steaming pile of dog shit. They went silent.
But it had taken far too long for them to be quiet.
The thing bursted from the field in a sprint, releasing a garbled shriek as it headed towards your group. Everyone was screaming as the bus driver surged forward to meet it, suddenly driving her fist through its eye socket and kicking one of its kneecaps with all her might. Jesus Christ, she had guts.
“Go!” she bellowed, starting to curb stomp the fallen body. She didn’t need to say it twice; everyone scurried from the bus and started to race towards the city, its silhouette looming from a solid few miles away.
You glanced over your shoulder as you ran, urging the driver to join the race. There was a flood of relief when you saw that she was still upright, backing away from the form on the ground. Horror flitted across her face as she surveyed her blood-coated forearms, yet she quickly picked up a jogging pace with resolve stamped on her mouth.
“Come on!” you had called, taking a brief moment to look ahead and note the others’ forms still close by, yet in front of you. You turn back just in time to see her shouldering yet another attacker, falling to the ground in an urgent tussle.
“No!” you shouted, her form growing smaller as you continued running. She bucked and swung her arms at the body, struggling, and struggling, and... She went limp. You whipped your head forward again, pointedly ignoring the moisture streaking down your cheek.
The jog was terrifyingly silent, and the only sounds were quiet pants and feet slapping the road. You had half a mind to stop and whip out your earbuds, but you wrestled down that lurking thought each time it raised its intrusive head. ‘Someone had just died of something lodged safely in the ‘not fucking natural’ zone, you incompetent dunderfuck. Were you really going to try and drown out the reality of the situation with Will Smith?’
The group elected to stick together. You took occasional walking breaks every mile or two, then got right back to running. There was a silent agreement that stopping wasn’t an option. You found yourself lurking near the rear, corralling the weaker people ever so slightly in front of you to ensure they didn’t get lost. The headrunners glanced back at you, asking for input every once in a while. Each time, you had nodded them forward, in the same direction. That was what you got for being the first to try to leave the bus. Being appointed leader was nice and all, but the temptation of telling the others to take their expectations and shove it up their asses was settled on the back of your tongue. You hadn’t asked for the role (surprisingly), and you sure hell didn’t have any worthwhile answers to this problem. You tried to lead anyways.
Half a mile before you reached the skyscrapers of the city, something changed. Brooding clouds had settled in the sky, and the sound of glass shattering and people screaming hit you before the symphony of midday traffic did.
“Let’s huddle up,” you had suggested. Everyone slowed and bunched together like a trembling flock of sheep. You had nearly snorted at the timid action. You were people, not livestock.
“Keep moving forward,” you called with uncertainty, unsure of what else to do. You tried taking a few steps to get everyone into motion.
Then a growl rung out.
“Shi--” you started to swear, right as the group exploded into a billion pieces before your eyes. Every person for themself. You watched a frothing monster tackle a man to your right, watched them writhe for a solid half of a minute before the man’s rigid form sagged like a slaughtered chew toy. A woman in front of you grappled with another one, pushing and shoving like kids in a schoolyard fight. Your legs moved before you told them to. You heaved yourself through the chaos, gasping for clean air.
Suddenly, the mouth of the city was in clear sight, right in front of you. And suddenly, you had the overwhelming urge to turn around and dash back the way you came, screaming.
People were running, limping, crawling in the streets. Windows shattered as figures slammed civilians into buildings, and even from this distance you could see red smearing every available surface. A car or two rolled into the chaos, and mowed over both humans and monsters alike; speeding up as if they were nothing more than roadkill. A person’s howl carried itself towards you, and you witnessed them collapse, blistering in the street. On fire.
“Oh my God,” you breathed, dumbstruck.
Interrupting your daze, someone shouldered past you, shoving you roughly as they tripped towards the city. You stumbled, looking up to see them staring directly at you, mouthing, “I’m sorry.”
“What--” you started to ask before it dawned on you. ‘Fuck, fuck, FUCK--’
Another person shoved you to the side, and your hands flew out to wrestle them, meeting air instead of resistance. The thing ignored you entirely, still powering its way towards the first shover. You stayed still, bewildered, as it pounced on them, its torn jaw unhinging and leaving ragged bites anywhere and everywhere.
Why hadn’t it attacked you?
There was little time to mull over the question, because a car’s horn blared you to attention. It was swerving back and forth, doing its best to avoid hitting everyone as it drove in the direction you’d ran from. You worriedly traced its sharp turn to your left, then its veering back to the road. You took a few nervous steps back. It zoomed directly towards you, picking up its speed. You tried to step to the side, found yourself framed by two feasting monsters on either side, occupied with your ex-group members.
The driver’s gaze finally snapped to his front, too focused on his flanks beforehand. His mouth formed into an ‘O,’ and in the windshield’s reflection, you could see your own mouth doing the same damn thing. He yanked his steering wheel to his left, your right.
Physics jumped in, eager to prove itself to be a grade-A bitch.
Inertia carried the car forward as it turned, but it rolled. You scrambled backwards and watched in horror as the car performed a sideways somersault. A dismembered leg caught your heel, and you tumbled over, spread-eagled on your back and stunned as the vehicle thunked onto its side with a massive gust of dust. Directly on your left arm.
Your shriek nearly drowned out the explosion you heard in the city, only a heartbeat after the crash.
For a solid second you were assured that you had passed out, vision blackening from the overwhelming sensation. Your nerves were screaming and berating you, ‘Why weren’t you moving your arm from that spot? Why weren’t you trying to wiggle it out-- Ow, fuck, fuck! Never mind, keep it still-- Ow! For the love of fucking Jesus in a goddamn breadbasket, stop struggling!’ You thumped your free hand on your chest, trying to beat out a proper breathing pattern for a moment; hyperventilating was only making this worse. It wasn’t working, so you swept your hand across your face, a consoling gesture. You stifled a moan instead, the motion catching on cuts all across your face. There must have been glass everywhere. Your hand flopped back to your side, and you opted to stare at the sky instead.
This couldn’t be happening.
But it just had.
This wasn’t fucking fair! Fuck the universe, fuck the forces governing it, and fuck its shitty ways.
No matter how unfair it was, there wasn’t anything you could change about it.
If you could have just pulled your arm out from under the car and found a way to reunite with your family, you would have never taken Kankri and Dad for granted ever again.
Over half the city was bargaining for the exact same thing, blockhead.
Your throat closed as you realized that everything you’d ever aspired for, ever dreamed of achieving, had been effectively closed off to you. A door slammed in your face. Just like that, done and gone. Everything you had ever done was pointless. A dry sob caught itself in your chest, but the sadness was already fading.
You weren’t a failure for never getting what you wanted.
...So.
This was it. The end of the line. It was coming at you, as inevitable as the fact that the sun would set and later rise. You couldn’t do anything about it, so sitting back and letting it come to you was the most dignified choice.
Acceptance.
You blinked at the last thought, letting the word register in your head a little more firmly. You flipped through your earlier thought process, just as confirmation.
Fucking shit.
You had rocketed through the five stages of the Kübler-Ross model in less than two minutes.
Your subconscious mind had registered you were royally fucked before your conscience had. You had coughed out a laugh at that.
You wrapped your right arm around your torso in a self-comforting hug, yanking your mind back from straying to the screaming pain in your left arm.
Glass crunched from the other side of the car suddenly, causing you to flinch. You had forgotten about the driver. A twinge of guilt caused you to twitch your nose in self-disdain. But the now-familiar moans were what caused you to freeze.
“P-Please…” the driver sobbed on the other side of the car, likely still dragging himself from the carriage. More glass crunched. You thought he had managed to stand up.
“I have kids stuck at my house,” he tried to reason. His voice still sounded hopeless. Your eyes were trained to the sky, pretending you weren’t hearing this entire scene play out.
“No!” he screamed, chopped off mid-yell. A louder crunch sounded out, and fists banged against the side of the car. “I have family-- Please, please, plea-- help!” he started to gurgle. He was probably suffocating in mucus and blood, spewing it everywhere as he shouted. He tapered into silence. Multiple satisfied groans crept their way to your ears, and you shuddered as wet sounds started ruthlessly. Tearing, chewing, the kind of wheezing people make when they’re pausing to catch their breath between cramming their faces. You were shaking, bundling yourself directly against the underside of the car, working to make yourself smaller.
Then the agonized wailing began. It wasn’t from the same source as the scene right by you; the distressed calls start small, then gradually grew. You twisted your head, tired of staring at the misleadingly subdued sky. It wasn’t helping your heart rate slow down, anyways. Your eyes caught onto a figure racing by the car, and you understood the sounds in their entirety.
She was on fire, like the singular figure from earlier. She patted frantically at her flaming clothing, arms flailing and only fueling the fire. Your eyes were glazing as you watched, too shocked to fully comprehend the heat. She tottered two steps in your direction and fell forward, her face propped a few yards away, aimed towards you. Your heart was galloping again, more because ‘FIRE!’ rather than ‘PERSON ON FIRE!’
Her arm snaked its way towards you, a desperate reach, but all you did in response was choke on the smoke from her burning skin.
“Help,” she whined, the remainder of her breath going up into the flames.
The pain, the smoke, and the terror finally caught up to you as you stared into those bubbling sockets.
You passed out.
_______________
You can’t imagine the conversation you’ll have years in the future with your grandchildren, all cozied up by the fire where the current apocalyptic bullshit was but a mere dream.
“Grandpa, grandpa!” they’d chant as they curled around your massive armchair, “what were you doing when the world went to shit?”
You can’t imagine the conversation, because there’s no way in hell you’d be able to look them in the eyes and tell them, “Oh, you know. There was chaos, loss, and an overwhelming amount of death going on all around me. But I didn’t see most of it, ‘cause I was conked out for a solid span of time.”
All you know is that you’ve been drifting in the dark soup of unconsciousness long enough that your skin is likely pruning. Your limbs skim the surface, but you always sink back down before you can catch a breath… You jut your chin forward, feeling your lips ghosting the air above and…
_______________
You nearly drown. Someone’s dumping water down your throat while you’re trying to suck in air, and the end result is disastrous. It goes up your nose and burns your gullet, so you automatically spit it right back into the donor’s face.
You don’t bother to observe whoever’s crouching above you, you simply curl to your side, and pretend that the numbness in your pinned arm isn’t setting off warning sirens in your head. It’s not like you’d be hearing them loud and clear, anyways. Your body is aching like you just ran ten miles, and your mind is filled with a fog heavy enough that momentarily lifting it for the sake of consciousness makes you feel like a goddamn bodybuilder.
“‘M Going back to sleep,” you mumble to no one in particular.
“No, no, no, no!” the stranger chants from above. You scrunch your nose as your mind stutters over how quickly their words had shot out.
“One ‘no’ was ‘nough,” you complain to the asphalt, “and screw you; ‘M exhausted.”
“Uh,” they falter for a moment, “I’m sure that moving around will make you feel better!” The false enthusiasm in the person’s voice is downright aggravating, like sandpaper for your patience.
“Your logic ‘s like telling someone with a broken leg to ‘walk it off,’” you growl, eyes still shut. Your subconscious gives you a prod, waiting for something… Oh. “You obtuse fuck.” There you go.
“Well, at least he’s saying something,” another voice calls from afar. You can’t find it in yourself to give a damn over how many people are around you. You’re still trying to toe your way back into that soupy black unconscious state; breathing on the surface is ten times worse than being down there.
“‘Night,” you sarcastically sigh, hunching further into yourself, your pinned arm still extended much to your displeasure.
A pair of arms seize your shoulders and shake you viciously upright then, and they only halt when you let out a startled yelp, pain flaring in your trapped arm. They drop you instantly, and you crumple back downwards like a ragdoll.
“GG…?” Your assailant summons their companion over, “I found the reason behind why he’s been stuck out here, of all places.” Footsteps ring out as the companion strides over to you.
“I would have already strangled you if I had both of my arms available,” you hiss, finally cracking a weary eye open.
A teen your age leans over you, donning a medical mask and what seems to be three decades of dirt all over his body. His hair is shaggy and overgrown, and his eyes tell you that he’s been through hell and back, with his vision seemingly splintered on one side, due to his rectangular glasses having a shattered lense. He’s meticulously coated in bandaids and bandages, looking like 50% gauze, 50% man. A small distance behind him, another teen your age is crouched. She has doodles decorating her mask, and rips and tears riddling her tank top and joggers. Her hair’s tied back in a practical pony tail framed by her bangs, and the lenses of her circular glasses are impossibly clean.
“How have you not been attacked?” the girl asks, a singular brow raised. The bloodstained encounters before your blackout come flickering back to the forefront of your mind with the question, and the gravity of the situation slams into you like a freight train.
“Fuck!” you jolt upright, only to be yanked back by your arm. Your breathing pace picks up exponentially, with your heart hammering against your ribcage.
“‘Fuck’ is right, buddy,” the boy agrees, giving a solemn nod as he sits back on his haunches.
“Am I going to get an answer…?” The girl butts in hopefully. She tilts her head in a sickeningly curious manner.
“No,” you sharply reply, “because I don’t have a fraction of an idea.” The boy shrugs with a contemplative look in his eyes.
“That sounded like an answer to me.”
“Shut up,” both you and the girl say in unison. You can see the glimmer of a grin in the boy’s eyes, despite the harshness of your words.
“Moving on, we’ve gotta get you out of there and head out of the area,” he switches rapidly to business matters. You give a forced, humorless snort at the statement.
“So, do I get any time to say goodbye to this arm, or are we just going to head straight into sawing it off?”
“Puh-lease!” the girl chuckles, waving a hand at your apparently hilarious comment. “It’s not like we have any weapons that we could chop it off with!”
So if they had a blade, amputation would have been a legitimate option for these two. What the fresh fucking hell.
“--And,” the boy jumps in, gaze trained on your panicked expression, “we’d only amputate if we needed to make a super quick getaway.” He places his hands firmly in his lap, as if he’d just settled a controversial matter with absolute finality.
“Well gee, consider me comforted,” you stutter back. Your nerves are engaging in a fist fight with your fatigue, and are winning. Anxiety fiddles with your propped-up arm, making it wobble. It’s getting harder to snark these assholes, but you damn well are going to try your best anyways.
“So what are you going to do, O merciful god and goddess?” you question them, taking a moment to cringe at your stupid name-calling. Living up to their appointed nicknames, they ignore the dumb portion of your sentence.
“We’re gonna rely on some good old fashioned strength,” the boy explains as he clambers to stand up, moving around to the other side of the car. The girl places something by her feet, then trots to his side. Together, they each move and grasp an edge of the bottom side of the car.
“One, two, three,” they count in unison, and surge their strength downwards, pulling the weight of the car onto the carriage. The side edge of the car, where your arm is trapped, rolls with the duo’s motion. The edge works about as effectively as a two ton rolling pin; the fact that your arm is so numb proves itself to be a small mercy in how you don’t feel your arm breaking, you only hear it. The true mystery is how it hadn’t been shattered beforehand.
“Shit,” you choke out, stunned by the horrible snap. Unsure whether you can actually move the limb independently, you opt to scoot away from the car entirely. You go back to the fetal position, and nurse your arm, holding it close to your chest as a telltale throb begins to make an appearance. You let your thoughts wander, thinking about the sun on your skin and the smell of the roadside grass rather than whatever is going on beside you.
Metal bouncing on the pavement, followed by an insistent car alarm slap you back to the present. The two teens look almost guilty, as if they’d been caught trying to jack the car instead of lift it off of a civilian, like good Samaritans. The boy ushers the girl to grab the object she’d put down earlier and holy shit is that a rifle? The thing is half as tall as her, yet she shoulders it with the confidence of a huntsman… Er, huntswoman.
“Can you watch our backs? We don't know whether or not the car alarm will bring them in, so we’ve got to be careful. Also, don't forget the whole deal about using too much ammo,” the boy waits until the girl nods. “I’ll carry the guy,” he calls, pacing to your side. You roll your drooping eyes.
“‘The guy’ has a name you know,” you tiredly sulk. He maneuvers his hands around and up you go; he’s got you in the fireman’s carry.
“Woah, that’s crazy. I have a name too!” he says, almost mockingly. He breaks into a jog with no warning, and your injured arm bounces against his back hard enough that your pain-stricken groan is absolutely inevitable.
“Ugh,” you whisper to yourself as the momentum sticks a metaphorical middle finger in the direction of your pain tolerance.
“Hey,” the boy interrupts, “better broken than gone altogether, am I right?” If you could look him in the eyes, you know he’d be giving you a crooked grin right now, one that would match his tone perfectly. You’re unamused.
“Fuck your optimism,” you slur.
Your consciousness starts to slip like soap in wet palms. You grasp and grasp with no purchase, then decide to give up on the entire ridiculous game, relishing the darkness that oozes into the corners of your vision. Something itches in the back of your mind as you sway over the ground…
“The bodies. The bodies are all gone,” you murmur. The asphalt sports an array of blemishes and bloodstains, but you have yet to see a single corpse. The boy says nothing.
Three gunshots ring out from a small distance away.
This time, unconsciousness slips over you like a warm winter coat.