Chapter Text
The world has just ended, and the first thing CJ does is place a call to New Orleans. She sits on the covered front steps of what was once her aunt's house, with a backpack of provisions and her little brother playing with a Rubix cube, and waits for an answer.
Her friend Erik picks up after two rings. He answers with a grunt. She exepected little else.
"So did you see that?" she says.
"See what, exactly?" he replies. His voice is slurred, as if his mouth is numb. "I see a lot of things."
"The hole in the sky," she answers. And she's seeing it right now, impossible to miss— the sky looks like it's been cleaved in two by some celestial axe, a crevasse ringed by pink and violet and blue clouds, tinged orange in the afternoon Georgia sunlight. The hole itself is nothing but void, but it seems deeper, more sinister than the space between stars that CJ sees every night.
Erik hums. "Oh yeah. That. Yeah, I saw it."
"And now a good chunk of the people around you are dead, right?" CJ asks. She's calm, for someone who just witnessed her foster family drop dead in the initial monster attack.
"Yeah," Erik confirms. "I always thought it was my dad's day job that'd kill him, not a horde of mutant gators, or whatever."
"You had gators? Damn," she remarks. "It was the chickens, for me."
"Damn chickens."
"I know, right?"
"Did the fosters make it?" Erik asks next.
CJ glances back to the house. "Nah. Kyle and Blake were first to get hit. Have you gotten in contact with anyone else yet?"
"Not yet," Erik grunts. He sounds as if he's shifting his phone to his other ear and hefts something onto his shoulder. "You?"
"Ethan wants me to find Rita first," CJ recalls. "Hey, do you think someone's still alive enough to operate an Uber? I might head your way, we should probably stick together."
"I was just on my way to the other side of the country to check on Cecil, never mind that I don't know his address." She can't tell if Erik is joking or not. It'd be better in his interests to go North and find Walker first, or back East to collect Eva and Helia. Geographically, New York first would make sense.
"Just go to LA, you'll find him somewhere," CJ guesses. "Keep me posted."
"Roger."
CJ hangs up. She sticks her phone back in the pocket of her jeans. Next to her, Ethan solves his Rubix cube, messes it up, and then solves it again. He has the hood of his sweatshirt drawn around the back of his neck, the cuffs covering most of his little hands. She has to wonder if he's going to ask to stop by the school, too, just to see if it's still in session. CJ would assume that it wouldn't be if ninety percent of the town is dead.
"CJ," Ethan says, frowning. "I'm kind of scared."
"Yeah," CJ agrees. "Can you find Stu's car keys? We'll have to drive to New Orleans if we're going to pick up Erik."
"You can't drive, though, you're still only fifteen," Ethan brings up.
"It can't be that hard," CJ waves a hand. "Just go find them, and if there are any chickens left alive, give 'em a whack. Could be worse, right?"
Ethan grumbles admittance to that as he stands up, tucking his Rubix cube into his pocket. "I needed to get my chemistry set anyway," he mutters.
"You're not seriously bringing the whole thing?" CJ calls as Ethan steps over their foster father Stu's corpse and fishes the car keys out of his coat pocket. "You'll have to carry it."
"I can carry it fine," Ethan insists. "I'll make bombs to fight the monsters with. We can't all swing a bat around and call it a day."
CJ sends a glance to her faithful wooden baseball bat, leaning against the porch railing. She has to admit, hand bombs are awfully useful against the many horde enemies in Undoing, but since this is reality, she also has to wonder about the practicality of it. Besides, Ethan is twelve— can he really make effective bombs in a short amount of time?
Something squawks off the porch— another mutated chicken, CJ thinks with mild disgust. She takes her bat and gives it a good smack, making a face at the sound of bone crunching and shaking the gooey blood off her bat. Ethan comes back out with Stu's car keys and his chemistry set tucked in his school backpack, the former of which he tosses to CJ.
"I got the keys," he says. "Dibs on shotgun."
CJ scoffs, but supposes she'll allow it. "Fine," she admits, unlocking the car and getting in the driver's seat. "Buckle up."
She throws the backpacks into the backseat of the van. CJ will admit she doesn't really know how to drive, but she's watched her foster parents do it all the time, and she's studied the Georgia driving manual. The left pedal means go and the right one means stop— or is it the other way around?
Ethan sits in the shotgun seat. He buckles up, looks at CJ looking with furrowed brow over the dashboard, and grabs the safety bar above the window.
"R means reverse," CJ recites as the car comes to life. "Alright, there we go. Nice and easy."
Ethan didn't say it, but he knew 'nice and easy' wasn't how this ride was going to go. In what is perhaps a catastrophic self-fulfilling prophecy, their foster father's station wagon lurches backwards and knocks over the mailbox. CJ mutters the directions to Rita's house to herself as she starts onto the bumpy country road, skidding tires sending gravel hither and yon.
And so begins the drive. CJ drives fast, but once the road smoothed out, it isn't as harrowing as Ethan initially thought. He pries his hand from the safety bar and turns on the radio. Stu's favorite CNN station comes up first, with the newscaster giving a report of the current global state of affairs.
"And the crack still remains in the sky," Bob Caddage is saying, in practiced newscaster monotone. "Experts say they've never seen anything like it, and are curious as to what this means. NASA has plans to send a weather balloon into the crack to take readings, however it's not optimistic any will come back, given that there's still no word from the crafts that were in the sky at the time of the crack's appearance—"
Click. Ethan changes it to another station. It's the Lindsay Curtis Power Hour, which Ethan doesn't like as much because Curtis talks too fast for him to keep up. But it's refreshing to hear the voice of a human being with emotion, even though she sounds frazzled.
"—Still not certain," Curtis is saying. "And strange, mutated creatures have been spotted on every corner of the globe, reportedly transformed right before our very eyes— including previously domesticated animals, ranging from ranch horses to apartment goldfish and everything in-between. Our experts at NBC advise that all you listeners out there stay away from zoos and aquariums until further—" Click.
"A large amount of religious advocates are gathering outside the halls of their cities and in their places of worship, saying the end is nigh and all the mortals can do is pray and repent for the end that is to come—" Click.
"But what does this sign from the sky mean, and could we as a species have done anything to prevent it? We have a theorist here who—" Click.
"Saying it's the next coming of Christ—" Click.
"—Blaming foreign powers for this new development—" Click.
"—Population has dropped like a stone since the initial attack, and more deaths are reported every minute, local hospitals and morgues are swamped—" Click.
"—What can we do, we ask—" Click.
"—End of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…"
Ethan is about to change it again, but CJ stops him. "Chill," she says.
"I want to know what happened as much as you," Ethan argues, while the music plays through Stu's car speakers.
"I don't think anyone knows more than us," CJ retorts. She doesn't take her eyes from the road, but she does sigh. "All we can do is stick together and try not to die."
Ethan thinks about that. He takes out his Rubix cube and fiddles with it. They drive through the outskirts of their little rural town with R.E.M. singing about how it's the end of the world in major key, which Ethan is certain is the point. He has a respect for artists with substance— classic rock, he always says, is real music. (To which CJ always rolls her eyes and tell him to live a little, which Ethan doesn't understand yet.)
The song ends. In place of where a bit of current music news would be, complete with chatty DJs, there's stony silence and the faint snuffling of some animal. Ethan reaches to change the station back to the news, but CJ stops him.
"Leave it there," she says. "The music will be back in a bit."
Ethan reluctantly sets his hand back on his Rubix cube. He tilts his head thoughtfully, then looks back to CJ.
"A little ironic," he says. "We wait for our instant entertainment, so accustomed to gratification the moment we snap our fingers, while paying no mind to the people involved in making our entertainment. We're so focused on the fact that we are entertained that we don't think about the people that created our entertainment. We take it all for granted until we don't have it anymore— like, listen. The radio is silent because the DJs are dead, and all we think about is when the music will be back."
CJ stops the car and looks him straight in the eye. A long silence passes, neither sibling breaking eye contact.
"Ethan," CJ finally says. "I know we're all lame rats in a wheel, chasing in vain the cheese being dangled before us by modern media and technology, but oh my God chill."
Ethan doesn't know how to respond to that. He goes back to his Rubix cube as CJ starts driving again. The silence ends with more classic rock. CJ doesn't comment on how he must like this station, considering that it's free of that dreaded pop music, and focuses on driving.
They drive through town without conversation until CJ's phone rings. She gives it to Ethan to answer.
"I'm driving," she explains, when he looks at her in confusion. "You can't talk on the phone and drive, it's dangerous."
"CJ, you're going sixty on a country road," Ethan points out. CJ doesn't see his point. Ethan answers the phone anyway.
"UGH. RATS. EVERYWHERE. CJ, please tell me you're having a better time than I am."
It's Eva. "This is Ethan," he shouts into the phone, louder than the rattling of loose gravel beneath the tires. "What about rats?"
"They're everywhere, that's what's about rats! Ugh, whoever says high school is the best time of your life clearly never had to live through an uprising of rodents. Do you know how many rodents live in Harlem, Ethan? Do you?"
"No," Ethan says bluntly. "I don't really care, either."
"Give me the phone," CJ sighs, pulling over. She takes the phone from Ethan and listens to Eva grumbling about stupid mutant rats.
"So, server-master, what's your plan?" Eva asks. CJ can picture it now— Eva with an entrail-stained crowbar in a holster on her back, one hand on her hip as she stands in the middle of a sea of dead mutant sewer rats.
"My plan?" CJ is confused. "What are you talking about? I mean, right now I'm making sure everyone is alive."
"No, like, are you coming up to New York or what?" Eva demands. "I mean, I can't go down there. I'm the leader of the Harlem Militia. Plus, Georgia's humidity would make my hair frizz out like you wouldn't believe."
"I planned on it," CJ promises. "Erik is going to try and collect Cecil from LA, and I'll probably end up meeting Walker halfway. Can you hold out until then?"
"Oh, I've got Helia," Eva answers, like it's not even a question. "Best student doctor this side of the Atlantic, y'know."
"Eva, stop it!" another voice that can only be Helia's demands.
"What? You don't want me praising you to your girlfriend?"
Helia makes an indignant noise, and Eva allows herself an amused snicker. "Anyway," she says. "Hurry up here, will you? Harlem's still standing, and I intend to keep it that way."
"Alright, I will," CJ promises. "I'll— WHAT THE SHIT THAT'S FIRE."
CJ drops the phone and throws the car into reverse just as a wall of fire erupts from the side of the road. Ethan grabs the safety bar again, his Rubix cube tumbling off his lap and onto the floor. It didn't catch anything flammable, by some miracle, because the fire stops the next second. A little black girl Ethan's age with a gas tank thicker than her torso strapped to her back runs into the road, brandishing the nozzle of a flamethrower like a sword. "Die, chickens!" she cackles. "Burn at the hands of the superior species!"
"Rita!" Ethan calls, sticking his head out the window. "Good, you're alive!"
Rita turns her head, pushing her round glasses up on her nose. "Oh, hey."
Ethan wriggles out of his seatbelt and jumps out of the car. "We were looking for you," he says. "Are you doing okay?"
"I just burned my house down by accident," she admits, tucking the nozzle in its holster at her side and clutching the strap of her messenger bag. "But otherwise, I'm okay. You?"
"I nearly experienced heart failiure because of CJ's bad driving," Ethan says, nonchalant. "Otherwise, I'm okay. We're headed to collect the rest of the Minutemen."
"When I said we should all meet up sometime, I hope y'all know this isn't what I meant," Rita admits. "Sounds cool, though. I'm in."
Ethan grins, and opens the passenger door. "Hey, CJ, will everyone fit?"
"If we make Erik sit in the trunk with Minerva, sure," CJ guesses.
Now that the fire is gone, CJ picks up the phone. Ethan can hear Eva yelling indignantly, demanding to know what's happening, Spanish profanity peppering her words.
"We found Rita," CJ answers, in brief, classic rock blaring from the radio. This time it's something meandering from 1985. Considering the atmosphere, it's more than a little dissonant. "We're headed north. I never got to ask, is Helia doing okay as part of your militia?"
"I'm fine," Helia's muffled voice calls, grabbing the phone from Eva. "But I've looted every convenience store on the block for Band-aids and peroxide. These rats don't cut deep, but they cut often. You be careful too, alright?"
"Just stay safe," CJ insists. "Don't put yourself in harm's way."
"I could say the same for you," Helia teases. "Try not to die on your way up, alright? For me?"
"For you," CJ promises. In the background, Eva drawls something that sound suspiciously like "Gaaaaaaay."
CJ ignores this. "I'll see you up there," she says. "Alright? Hang in there until then."
"I'll keep Eva in line, don't worry." Eva makes a noise of protest, but then Helia hangs up.
CJ tucks her phone in one of the cupholders, then leans back and takes a Snapple from the cooler in the backseat. She pops it open with a hiss from the can, takes a swig with her elbow out the open window of the car, and looks back over to Ethan in the shotgun seat. "Which way to the interstate?"
Ethan pulls a map out of the glove compartment. CJ starts the car again, skidding at sixty miles per hour down a Georgia country road.